Random cute stuff

Also, Mr. Aldrin had an active military career before his astronaut days and i'd say he hasn't forgotten how to throw a damn good punch -- just look at his wide stance

10/10 well-deserved punch

additional info

at the time, Aldrin was 72 years old, 6 foot 2 inches, and 250 pounds. Sibel (the man he punched) was 37 years old

Sibel has made multiple "documentaries" about the moon landing being fake and has repeatedly harassed the astronauts involved, in this instance getting Aldrin to agree to the above meeting by pretending to be doing an interview on space for a Japanese children's television show

Buzz Aldrin's step-daughter was present, and in addition to being poked repeatedly and aggressively with a bible (Sibrel wanted him to swear on a bible that he went to the moon) Aldrin felt the man following them into the hotel refusing to leave them alone might pose a threat to her

Basically, for this past 1.5 years I still can't figure out the reason as to why Song Mo's father hates his own son so goddamn much

(I couldn't find the appropriate pic online, and this was the only one I got from my screenshot stash)

(edit: i found more by going through my own tag)

I've noticed ever since Provoke and this drama (and as far as I've heard Pursuite of Jade too, tho I didn't watch it), that the director Zeng Qing Jie is most excellent at the visual stuff and explosive beginnings in his dramas, but the ending is usually a bit of (or a lot of) a mess in every sense of the world. I can wiggle my brain to find a certain logic, but when I zoom out and try to look at the picture as a whole, some characters or actions just don't make any sense.

Like, yes, Song Yi Chun married the woman that he didn't like, and the son from that union was more accomplished than the son from the woman that he DID like.

But that's it. That's literally IT. This was ALL Song Mo did. Song Mo didn't meddle in his father's career, quite the opposite - at the start he tried everything to earn his father's approval. There wasn't even any prophecy of him bringing Song Yu Chun down or anything of that sort!

So tell me why Song Yi Chun, instead of general neglect and just having some amount of resentment for him (this is obviously awful as a parent, but I'd understand it on just a basic human emotions level), he:

gives him slow incurable poison over a period of presumably several years

regularly punishes and beats him half-to-death

delights in Song Mo's future misery because he's getting married to an "awful" woman, and finally -

tries to make Song Mo kill him, just so that Song Mo would be executed for defying Imperial Order

Do you see how proportions are off? They are so off they're not even in the same time-space continuum

And I would understand if Song Yi Chun was just Like This as a person - the knock-off pathetic het version of Xue Yang with all his slaughtering-the-whole-mansion-for-his-severed-pinkie, but here is the thing - Xue Yang is Like That with everything in his life, meanwhile Song Yi Chung is generally more or less normal.

so like

WHY.

why is there so much visceral hatred over his own son?

Even with Dou Zhao and her father's other wife there was also major conflict and (as far as I remember) there was some amount of murderous intent going on. But that was almost impersonal from the wife's side - she just needed to get rid of Dou Zhao to secure her own daughter's position and also remove the reminder of her own guilt, but she would not get out of her way to do even 10% of the stuff that Song Mo's father did

so

Song Mo’s uncle found out the corruption of Song Mo’s father’s true love’s family and because of Song Mo’s uncle the true love (little brother’s mother) was made a prostitute (working for ministry of music, was just high end prostitutes and entertainers for officials and high ups).

Then the emperor granted the marriage for Song Mo’s parents and suddenly this guy mourning his one true love becoming a prostitute is in laws with the emperor’s best friend and the person who destroyed his one true love. Any child born from that marriage will be hated by him and eventually he finds a way to kill the second child. But for the first pregnancy he is too scared of his brother in law to harm the child. Song Mo is born and then from his first words and actions is like a miniature of the ”evil” brother in law who destroyed the one true love.

Song Mo’s father is too scared to try and do anything to the emperor’s best friend, but he can never act ”normal” toward the miniature of his enemy that was born from the ”wrong” wife.

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.