Random cute stuff

This photo is known as The Pale Blue Dot. It was taken by Voyager 1, a space probe meant to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. Far from dying, she's still out there doing her job and is the furthest human made object from Earth.

In the mid 80's, they knew Voyager 1 would soon pass beyond where her cameras would matter and she needed to save power, so the question became: what's the last thing she should take a picture of?

Carl Sagan and Carolyn Porco both independently had the same thought: take a picture of Earth. Us. Yes, it would be essentially just one pixel. It wouldn't be scientifically useful. It might even damage the camera because of how intense the sun is, even forty times as far from Earth as Earth is from the Sun. But they got it sorted because it's NASA.

3.7 million (not billion) miles away, that's Earth. Caught in bands of light, artifacts of the Sun's incredible power even 4 million miles away. We are an island in a sea of radiation and vacuum and it's all we have.

I can't say it better than Sagan did, so I'll let you alone with his words:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan

It’s not “people who contour are themselves automatically racist” but that the desired face shape created by contouring is one that, at the end of the day, pretty much reflects existing white standards of beauty. A thinner, pointier nose, smaller chin, high angled cheekbones and (on occasion) smaller lips. Also if you’re darker skinned you have to use a much lighter shade of foundation  thus ending up with an overall lighter face.

Presumably to discourage Mo Xiayui from going to border/war….

Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism:

But every time I think of him I think of him whining near the pond threating to throw himself into the water if his crush doesn't talk to him it's so pathetic that any cool thing he did afterwards or his insane face card just get cancelled out.

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.

The last 10 or 15 years have seen a real takeover of neutrals, beiges and grays and whites, in consumer goods and interior design. We've all seen the car color chart. Other people smarter than me have discussed the reasons for this, the caution brought on by economic instability. Nobody wants to paint their walls green because their home isnt a place to get comfortable, its an investment that will need to be made palatable for a new buyer (and why give yourself the extra task of repainting when youll have so much else to do when you move).

The way this obligation is connected to her being the last survivor of Lishan and Lishan being one of the factions that let down the Prince of Ding, so she needs to also pay the debt that Lishan ones. And the current Prince Ding is her childhood hero.

She told Prince Li that if the original engagement went through she would have had to kill him on their wedding night.

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.