Whisper to the Void

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.

The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?

This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.

No One Like You

now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"

1. Scavengers Reign

Scavengers Reign follows three groups of survivors who crash land on an alien planet as they traverse various ecosystems to get to safety. There is a lot of thought put into the flora and fauna they encounter, and it explores their relationships with each other and with the crew members as they are assimilated into the environment. Plus, the art is absolutely beautiful.

Unfortunately, season 2 is very very unlikely to be greenlit (but I'm holding out hope and still think it's worth watching).

2. Pantheon

Pantheon is one that is incredibly underrated. It's about two teenagers uncovering the development of uploaded intelligence, the transfer of human minds into computers. Maddie Kim is a bullied, computer savvy freshman who lost her dad to cancer while Caspian Keyes is an apathetic prodigy living within an abusive household. Overall, it covers themes of grief, love, and what it means to be human. It gets pretty philosophical and mind-fucky at times, and I love how the animation reflects that. Just look at that title sequence:

And thankfully, this one was finished.

3. Inside Job

Inside Job is about an ambitious but overworked engineer working for the shadow government. I'll admit that this can lean into some crass humor/animation, but I think it's well balanced with other aspects of the show. I love the mc's characterization. Reagan is motivated but feels held back by the incompetence of her boss and co-workers. She wants to move through the ranks but has a hard time taking care of herself. She becomes best friends with the male lead, her foil, but never falls in love with him romantically. The series is overall both hilarious and relatable.

This one has also been canceled after the first season :(

4. Creature Commandos

Creature Commandos has a clear comic book style and is about a group of imprisoned nonhumans sent to protect a princess from Circe. Like Inside Job, it can lean into some sexual humor, but it pales in comparison to the show's characterizations. I really only remember their compelling backstories and how each character was affected by them.

It's a short watch of 7 episodes, and season 2 is in production.

5. Bojack Horseman

Bojack is fairly well-known, but I can't not include it. Even though I personally had to adjust to the art style, it's not something I ever thought of as ugly. And the animation at some points is memorable and really highlights the more serious scenes. The comedy is also well-balanced and includes a lot of dry humor and visual gags.

(Just remembered that the first 2 seasons are kind of hard to watch, so I totally understand if it's not worth going through for you)

6. Common Side Effects

FIRST TRUE COLOR PHOTO OF AN ATOMIC NUCLEUS!

FIJMU News 10-19-21

Today, the world's most powerful microscope has photographed in real color the core of a single atom. The nucleus of an atom is like the delicious yolk of a hard boiled quantum egg, containing protons and neutrons (red) as held together by gluons (tan filaments). All known substances are made of atoms with nuclei like the one seen above.

The atom used was a Thulium atom because of its highly photogenic traits, bright coloration, and nice atomic number. According to microscopy professor Minnie Lewker, "Atoms have been photographed before but never in real color. They usually look almost like waves of light and dark instead of real, tangible objects as they are."

The same microscope team was also able to take the first known photograph of an electron:

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

bed creature