TheReallyWilly

Chun Lo, Illustrations.

Absolutely epic illustrations from artist Chun Lo.

So, my partner has an old phone- It served them for many years now, but it has one issue: Charging it is hard. Their current charger is hanging on by a thread (literally), and can barely do its job. The phone and the charger came together: They've never used another charger for said phone.

Now, they've tried to replace the charging cord several times. But it doesn't matter how much they've searched what damned specific charger the phone uses, none of them work. They finally decided to bring it to a phone shop and ask what should they use.

The guy at the shop looked at the phone for a bit, and explained: "The port itself is broken. The charger you have works with this phone because they've mutually broken each other into the same shape, in a way that no other charger is shaped. The port itself has corroded in a way that only accepts the charger that shaped it like that in the first place."

And while this is of course a frustrating situation for my partner, I feel like there's a metaphor here. I could write a goddamn story about this. These two half-broken old things have been together for so long they've destroyed each other in a way that keeps them from working with anything else. They've hurt each other in a way that barely keeps them functioning together, and have been rendered useless with literally anything else.

Growing up with your starters

Bulbasaur: Somehow, nomming on my clothes… has become a weird habit of theirs.

Venusaur: That hasn’t changed now that they’ve grown, but they’re very gentle.

Charmander: It’s my first attempt, but I made a plushie so that he wouldn’t get lonely.

Charizard: That plushie seems to be his favorite even now.

Squirtle: Squirtle’s a bit timid and hides behind me at the smallest things.

58, 209 Americans died in the Vietnam War (1961-1975)

54, 246  Americans died in the Korean War (1950-1953)

25, 000 Americans died in the American Revolution (1775-1783)

15, 000 Americans died in the War of 1812 (1812-1815)

13, 283 Americans died in the Mexican-American War  (1846-1848)

4,576 Americans died in the Iraq War (2003-2011)

Also:   The annual number of deaths in the USA from infectious disease is about 75,000. That’s twelve months’ worth of deaths.  We are slightly over the annual death count for infectious disease after only four months and seven days.

Canada’s northernmost capital city, Iqaluit, briefly turned pink and purple on January 12th, 2016. A CBC meteorologist explained that the incident was most likely due to a phenomenon called light scattering, which is caused by the refraction of the setting sun on particles in the atmosphere. Neither of these two pictures have been edited.