fae

"Copy. Moon joy."

"I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working."

"Houston, if you could give me about 20 new superlatives in the mission summary for tomorrow that will help out my vocabulary a little bit, that would be great. Thank you."

“If you’ve ever seen the top of the spotlight of the top of the Luxor at night in Vegas, this looks like what it wants to be when it grows up.”

"To all of you down there on Earth... we love you, from the moon. See you on the other side."

"We just went sci fi.

"It is so great to see Earth again. To Asia, Africa, and Oceania: we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. We see you too."

"We will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other."

“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it Carroll.” (The name of Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife)

"Amaze amaze amaze."

"I said that we do not leave Earth, but we choose it. And that is true."

"Christina has been sleeping head down in the middle of the vehicle, kind of like a bat"

"It's really fun to be floatin' around, it just makes me feel like a little kid."

"Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful."

"'Homo Sapiens' is all of us, no matter where you're from or what you look like. We're all one people."

"We're going to power cycle the toilet from the ground."

"I'm proud to call myself the Space Plumber."

"We were all eagerly awaiting the chorus." (After Mission Control cut off Pink Pony Club early when waking up the crew)

"Copy heart. Copy bracelet." (In response to Wiseman giving his daughters heart hands and showing them the bracelets they made him that he was wearing)

“Welcome back. We are still here. They are in space.”

"Copy. Bubble wrap nominal."

"We have rediscovered the chocolate snacks."

“The truth is, the moon really is its own body in the universe. It's not just a poster in the sky that goes by, it is a real place."

“We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers, we will do radio astronomy.”

"I've seen a lot of new perspectives, but my perspective has not changed because I launched with the perspective that there is enough for all." (After being asked if they had a new view on humankind.)

also apparently this rock art dates across multiple periods spanning thousands of years? but i couldn't find much detail on that so i can't give specifics

but yeah, this isn't just a memory of giraffes, but of giraffes now absent encountered by people just 2000 years (the difference between the late roman republic and today) out of the ice age, in a climate unfamiliar to any of the hundred billion people born since the desertification of the sahara drove the ancient egyptians to the nile, near the start of the agricultural revolution

the time between this and the birth of the sahara was nearly as long as the time between the birth of the sahara and now, in which all recorded history is contained, and all languages we can recognise at all - the language and culture of these people would be totally alien to current libyans, twice the difference between the oldest european language and english, predating all but libya's mountains!

Trout 1 has shunned your worm!

Trout 2 has shunned your worm!

Trout 5 has shunned your worm!

Trout 8 has shunned your worm!

Trout 7 has shunned your worm!

Trout 3 has shunned your worm!

Trout 5 has eaten a snail.

Trout 9 has shunned your worm!

Trout 10 has shunned your worm!

your friends and contemporaries are also a tremendous resource, and you should ask them too! But there’s just no replacement for the expertise of someone who has been knitting for sixty years. Part of this, also, is that older crafters can often give you materials to help you start, and your broke millennial friends usually can’t. My mom has more wool than she will ever use in her life, and she knows it. When one of my friends wanted to start knitting, my mom just gave her this gorgeous silver handspun yarn she’d made but wasn’t attached to. Yarn like that is expensive! Handspun yarn from someone who has been spinning for thirty years doesn’t often happen to beginners! And starting with good materials is better than starting with bad, because it helps you develop taste and a sense of quality more quickly.

Experienced crafters are often able to help you avoid learning bad or damaging habits—as a teenager, my sewing teacher spent a lot of time teaching me how to do things so that I didn’t get repetitive stress injuries (like she did). They’re going to be able to lend you books, send you ancient angelfire html pages with the most exacting instructions on earth, show you the good places to get crafting supplies that aren’t am*zon.

it’s been 9 years since i wrote this. i was experiencing 24/7 anxiety so badly that i needed serious medication. these days in the back of my car is an “emergency party box.” when people admit they no longer really celebrate their birthday; i tell them to put the sash on and queue up kesha, we’re going bowling or something. these days i can’t spin around without finding something i am enamored with. these days i list 3 things i’m grateful for before i fall asleep. you’re probably one of them, just by virtue of you existing.

at the time i wrote this, i was suffering through a severe panic attack literally every night. i tortured my brother with constant 2 AM calls just to hear someone else breathing, because i couldn’t be alone in the silence.

i rarely wish i was still 23 even though ironically i had more hope back then. what i can tell you is this: i love the same way, but bigger now. i’ve worn the velvet cape to several business meetings. i spent thursday in a crop top without caring what my stomach looked like.

i told her i like her; i often dress as a witch. i still got glass in my foot this morning. i’ve kissed maybe a thousand people since then and met a million more than that; passing like the shadow of a hammerhead in trains and planes and buses.

i saw you, beloved, there, maybe, on platform in south station. you didn’t speak, but you said: i struggle to give the nothing meaning. the nothing fills up everything. it is just loud and yellowed panicked silence. i can’t stop shaking.

on the roof, birds curl together against the chilled spring wind. the sky outside of the craft store was an iridescent pink. the nothing already had meaning; you are giving it meaning by witnessing.

I’m currently trying to get a member of the british peerage to give me £50 because we’re distant cousins. I appreciate her.

she travels around for these videos and one day she went to Manchester and parked on a road called Collier Street.

Collier Street has (or had, at the time) another car park at the end of it - the SIP car park. SIP is a private company that runs these. the signage on Collier Street indicated that the payment machine there was where you’re supposed to pay, so Zoë and a fuckload of other people assumed that that was where you got the tickets. Zoë put it on her car and went about fucking with whoever she decided to confuse today

she gets back to her car, has a parking ticket, and is confused

again - she paid for a ticket. she wasn’t trying to get out of paying.

because she’d bought a ticket from the machine that the SIP car park instead of the council run machine that is actually on a different road, she’d been ticketed. and, rightly so, she contests it and the person at the council says that the rules are the rules and there’s clear signage

Zoë: the signage is misleading

council: we don’t believe it is

Zoë: well, I was misled

council: we believe the signage is adequate

Zoë, being Zoë, doesn’t agree with this. she pulls up literal years’ worth of data on the history of that sign, the parking on the road, and the number of people who got ticketed. very early on, she says she’s not actually bothered about her own ticket, but she’s upset that people are being caught out and sees that it’s a money-making scheme for the council. she speaks to parking wardens, who mostly seem to agree that the signage is misleading. she has data. she calls them back. same response.

Zoë, being an artist, makes her own sign. which she puts up below the official one. and then she waits to see how long it is before it’s taken down.

[note: there was a side quest sometime during this - it went on for months - where she put cones in the parking spaces. the council moved them onto the pavement/sidewalk. this made it inaccessible for wheelchair users, people with prams, other people who can’t just move around them, which is illegal. so she called the council repeatedly to complain about the cones and monitored them until they were moved. this took ages - we are talking weeks.]

Zoë’s sign gets taken down.

the signpost it was attached to, with the misleading sign, becomes a point of pilgrimage for British people who appreciate a good bit of humour with the intent of bullying the local government. it is COVERED in stickers.

her sign is taken down. the sign is not changed. more people get tickets.

[there was a second side quest, where Zoë discovers that the SIP car park - the private one - doesn’t have planning permission. she doesn’t let this slide.]

not happy with this, Zoë calls in to the local radio station. which has a Q&A with Andy Burnham. the Mayor of Manchester. she calls in and asks him about this. Andy Burnham says he’s taking her concern into consideration and will look into it, and get back to her if she calls in next week.

she’s not put through next week.

she contacts his office.

no response.

she calls in again and brings it up.

[all this is happening while she’s repeatedly ringing the council to ask them about it]

she has gone from “harmless tiktok prankster” to “calling out government incompetence”. with a MASSIVE platform.

eventually, after her being interviewed by the BBC, Manchester City Council puts up a sign saying where the actual car park for Collier Street is (there is a running bit where a council worker misheard her and thought she said “Collyhurst Street”, which to my knowledge does not exist. Zoë now exclusively refers to it as that, including in her radio appearance and on her phone calls)

she isn’t done. she now has a petition to force the government to change vague signage. the government said no, all their signage is adequate. she’s now fighting with them. in one of her most recent videos, she was on the phone with the House of Commons enquiry department trying to figure out how to contest it. she’s brilliant.

The rings have 1px wide borders that oscillate out of phase with their interiors, and your eyes perceive the phase shifted borders as moving edges. It’s really neat, our optic nerves have specific hardware for edge detection and this gif fools it!

Exhilarated by the atmosphere of sheer madcap anarchy created by the subtle variations in their visual acuity, a group of friends trying on each others’ glasses Friday reveled in the glorious mayhem of their somewhat different prescriptions. “Whoa! Everything is super blurry!” said Katherine Grant, 27, evidently transported with unfettered glee to the fairy tale world of a friend with a minor astigmatism in her right eye.