gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

So, I have to say something. 

This is my favorite post on this website. 

I’ve seen this post in screenshots before, and the first time I read it, I cried. Just sat there with tears running down my face. 

Because this, right here, is the best of us, we humans. That we hope, and dream of the stars, and we don’t want to be alone. That this is the best of our technology, not Terminators and Skynet, but our friends, our companions, our legacy. Our message to the stars. 

I’m flat out delighted, and maybe even a little honored, that I get to reblog this.

Pioneer’s Song, by Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish

“We sent them out to the planets,

To worlds beyond our own,

Where frail men dared not venture,

They traveled on alone,

Though they may be no more than robots,

To the stars they steer,

And we wish them on our journey,

All the luck of the Pioneer.

They set their course for Jupiter,

The ruler of the worlds,

To gain their speed from his mighty pull,

As from a slingshot hurled,

They stole for us his image,

His secrets guarded dear,

But gave in turn a royal gift,

To the luck of the Pioneer.

Then on and out to Saturn,

The ringed queen of skies,

And through the very rings themselves,

They carried our distant eyes,

We feared then for their safety,

But they could know no fear,

And they left their name on the gap they found,

By the luck of the Pioneer.

The sun grows dim behind them,

A billion miles or more,

The stars are e'er before them,

A glittering distant shore,

An age will pass before a day,

A stranger sun draws them near,

And till that day we'll raise a toast,

To the luck of the Pioneer.

But should some other find them,

As the galaxy they roam,

And study these strange craft of ours,

And seek to learn their home,

Why, they carry our maps upon them,

In friendship written clear,

And we give to the race that reads them,

All the luck of the Pioneer.

And when men someday follow,

To the places they have been,

We'll take the paths they've marked for us,

And see the sights they've seen,

To Jupiter and Saturn,

To the stars themselves we'll steer,

And we pray that God but grant us then,

The luck of the Pioneer.

And we pray that God but grant us then,

The luck of the Pioneer.”

Here he is with the lemon btw

By the way, just like a PSA in case anyone else is unaware of this as I was – DO NOT KEEP ELECTRONIC BIKES AND SCOOTERS INSIDE

My apartment is now completely uninhabitable, and at least one of my housemates lost pretty much all of their possessions, because an ebike’s battery exploded. Apparently this is quite common, and the manufacturer obviously doesn’t publicize the risk a great deal at all.

Just. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t let this happen to the people you live with. thankfully we’re all safe, and it could’ve been much worse, but. I would not wish this on anyone

From what I recall, the first time I saw 'rainbow capitalism' from a big brand was this image from Oreo in 2012.

It created a lot of controversy. Calls for boycotts and such. But Oreo didn't take it down. They were unapologetic and didn't try to appease the homophobes or backtrack.

And I know this sounds weird, but it was like a shift. Proof that public opinion or acceptance of queerness was widespread enough for a company to consider it profitable.

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

The above is from this article from The Guardian.  The images are from MYA Network. The caption on their website reads:

Source: ‘When a sperm and egg get together, the body creates tissue in order to support the developing pregnancy.  Here are photos of that tissue from 5-9 week pregnancies.  This is called the gestational sac, and it’s like the “house” for the pregnancy. Inside this sac there are cells that have the potential to become a fetus but there is no visible embryo at this stage. We rinsed off the blood and menstrual lining (decidua) for these photographs.’

The published images sparked a lot of debate, leading to the story being picked up by other news outlets. For example:

Source: ‘Last week, the Guardian published images of pregnancy tissue after abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The small size and appearance of the tissue were shocking to many. We have all absorbed, knowingly and unknowingly, the pervasive anti-abortion narrative that a pregnancy resembles a tiny baby starting in the earliest weeks. Though an early embryo can be seen under the magnification of ultrasound, it can take months for it to be perceptible to the naked eye.’

Source: ‘People have responded in disbelief, citing the (magnified) images they’ve seen on ultrasounds. […] ”Think of the illustrations on pregnancy and medical websites. The Mayo Clinic, one of the preeminent medical organizations in the country, shows week-by-week illustrations of embryonic and fetal development without any context of scale, like the rulers in the MYA photos.’

As stated in the article, whilst people talk about a ‘heartbeat’ at 6 weeks, there is no heart developed at this stage - only a group of cells that will become part of the heart.

Source: ‘But what exactly do we mean when we talk about a “fetal heartbeat” at six weeks of pregnancy? Although some people might picture a heart-shaped organ beating inside a fetus, this is not the case. Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.’

It should also be noted that the images show an embryo, not a fetus, until the 9th week.

Source: ‘In human pregnancies, a baby-to-be isn’t considered a fetus until the 9th week after conception, or week 11 after your last menstrual period (LMP).’

The co-founders of the MYA Network responded in a New York Times article.

Source: ‘Many people, even those who support abortion rights, did not believe the photos were accurate. Some insisted we had deliberately removed the embryos before taking the photos. The images weren’t consistent with those often seen in embryological textbooks, magnified on ultrasounds or used in anti-abortion propaganda; these enlarged images are not what you see with the naked eye after an abortion. A Stanford gynecologic pathologist has validated our photos, but many people could not believe the pictures were presented unaltered.

I’ve never seen pictures like this.

sound off everyone what’s the worst texture. just in anything. for me it’s ground beef not even a question

I just want to dwell a little bit on the raw awe that the Webb telescope pictures evoke in me. We built a thing, we spent 20 years building a thing, and we flung it over a million kilometres away, and the thing we built takes … pictures of infinity. Pictures of 13 billion years in the past, pictures of the birth and death of stars, galaxies colliding, snapshots of other worlds. Lightyears of distance, aeons of time, glories almost beyond imagining.

This is a thing humanity can do. We can pool imagination, we can pool resources, we can devote decades of our lives, to building a camera that can photograph infinity. We can reach out, fling a piece of ourselves, our ingenuity, our dedication, our collaboration, our imagination, and create a lens so that we can see, we can touch …

There are people who say that pictures like this make them feel small, so tiny in comparison to the vastness that’s out there, but we touched that vastness. We took its picture. We put our palms on the panes of infinity. We flung a tiny tiny fragile machine, a collection of mirrors and motors and shields and fuel, out into the absolute vastness of space, more than a million kilometers distant, and took a picture of a dying star orbiting its partner two thousand lightyears away.

I mean, yes, we are tiny, we are incomprehensibly tiny, and so is everything we do and everything we build. But all that shows is that something so tiny can still do that. Can reach that far. Can witness that much.

We are incomprehensibly tiny and an incomprehensible miracle, that we can be so tiny in all this vastness, that everything we witness in these pictures aligned in such a way that we could form, and that in response, as tiny as we are, we can think and imagine and create on a scale that can … witness the universe right back. Touch it. Focus its light into an image of a billion, thirteen billion years ago. Share that image with a billion other minds.

We can see wonders. Absolute wonders. On a scale to beggar meaning. What more purpose do we need than that?

Sorry. Just. Sometimes science does something that just … wraps a whole fist around your heart and just goes … this is what wonder is. The wonder of the universe. And the wonder of us. This is what wonder feels like. This is what awe feels like.

This is what it feels like to be tiny. This is what it feels like to be infinite.

I love the stars so much.

I feel like we should have a worldwide holiday every time new james webb images are released, you know? I hate that I just see these pictures which are arguably the single most incredible things humans have ever done, and I’m just supposed to scroll past them and move on. I wish each drop of images was a huge deal that everyone was talking about and freaking out over. We should be treating these like the fucking moon landing.

(I truly don’t mean this in an “ugh” sheeple way, I just hate the way our fractured media/social media landscape means everything gets parceled together and nothing individually stands out).

men in black still holds up so well imo the jaded old man getting partnered with an insubordinate rookie (and it works bc they’re both fucking insane). the lore. the creepy cockroach alien wearing a human as a suit & planning world domination. the kitty and his lil necklace. the wazzzzzzzzup aliens & talking pug. the special effects and pre digital haze. the quote where k says “fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe. five hundred years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. imagine what you'll know tomorrow”

"These are the twins, weEEEEKQKQGGG, and Bob."

Can you imagine how much Tolkien would have lost his goddamn mind if he ever learned about Vatertag/ Männertag? A male-only holiday literally called “Men Day” where to celebrate bros being bros, you build incredibly elaborate drinking wagons and then take them for hikes in the countryside where you appreciate nature and sing walking songs while drinking the entire time. Dude would have lost his shit and retconned that into the shire immediately,

On that note, Hobbit Bollerwagen would be fucking NUTS.

For non-Germans, yes this is a real thing and it’s effectively “Take Your Drinks Cabinet or a Walk Day.”

You can only reblog this today.

I love when there’s a really bending heavy episode because you just KNOW Sokka is about to get the dumbest C plot

They stuck that boy in a hole for 22 minutes

The best version of this is that the righting process for the Cactus Juice episode was clearly “ok we’ve made them all lose their powers, how the heck do we de-power sakka when he doesn’t have any?” “Make him get high as fuck.”

What Germany should actually submit next year- this version of Ingo ohne Flamingo’s Saufen, Morgen, Mittags, Abends rearranged as a a baroque Bach aria.

 @useless-germanyfacts

Word to the wise y’all. Don’t wear a butt plug to your MRI

Don't wear a chastity device to one either. Even if it's a silicone/resin cage, the locking mechanism is still metal, it WILL try to yank that thang asunder. The GOODEST boys are the ones who DON'T risk damaging their body and a $1.2million machine.

There’s no way on earth anyone has to be told this I’m hallucinating this post there’s just no way

And let’s not forget the gent in Brazil who brought a GUN into an MRI room recently, shoved into his waistband. The gun went off and shot him in the lower abdomen, ruining a portion of his exterior anatomy. He died of associated injuries a couple of weeks later.

Here is someone demonstrating how strong those are with a fucking paperclip.

And here’s the famous example with a metal oxygen canister and a watermelon.

DO NOT FUCK WITH MRI MACHINES.

we as germans should just send some random person with a funny performane to esc, no one really votes on music anyway so yeah at least it’ll be fun

Bernd das Brot 2024 with Ich Will Hier Raus Techno Remix