Horse Meshi. Delicious, in Horse.

cheers to the future of humanity (and the future of us)

[ID: Digital illustration in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun. The illustration takes place during the ship/home arc, specifically chapter 21. At the center, Vash is grabbing Wolfwood by the collar and pulls him into a kiss in the middle of a celebration. The pair is colored in vibrant warm hues while their surroundings are colored in cooler colors like green and teals. Luida, Brad, Meryl, and Milly are shown amongst the crowd, occupied in the celebrations as Vash and Wolfwood share a moment by themselves at the center. END ID]

Not to keep beating dead horses like I so much love to do but I am still completely Flabbergasted and Astonished at how you (Merle Ambrose) could discover the most terrifying fact that a child that is essentially under your care has been indoctrinated into a cult (which, by the way, a process that has taken over the course of years) ((by an agent that has been stationed in a direct position to make it easier to access and manipulate children, that has easily escaped your notice for such a long time)) that worships a nihilistic entity whose ultimate goal is the absolute and total destruction of Everything and Everyone around you, and your one, single, simple-sentenced response to that is to say "Oh, that's a shame. He (Duncan) always was pretty terrible. Hope he gets better someday." And then to move on from those extremely worrying and dangerous bundle of issues permanently without taking any sort of action to protect the vulnerable and make sure nothing like this ever happens again

i think if i painted my ex situationship i'd be cured it's the most shallow but intense connection i've had w anyone i think i am so obsessed w how she looks i want 2 photograph her/paint her forever rant in tags but ive talked abt it b4 so feel free to ignore

beginning to see american "if you dont vote for the blue warmongerers then you are personally responsible for the red warmongerers getting into power"

the romance/relationship system in bg3 is genuinely some of the worst designed shit i've ever seen in any game with that feature but at least the memes we get out of it are funny. once saw someone comment something along the lines of 'patch note: waving at gale will no longer cause him to buy a house for the two of you to retire in' and i've never recovered since

vitalasy going WHO IS INFLUENCING YOU ? DID YOU TALK TO MAPICC? as his immediate reaction to the zam betrayal and you can hardly even hear him say this because his mic cuts out is top 10 craziest eclipse moments to me

Californians are way too chill about earthquakes how yall just living with the whole earth shaking around you at any given moment maybe that’s god telling you you’re not supposed to live there

Neptune BLUE!

I spent a day-and-a-half on Friday and Saturday researching the planet Neptune in order be able to write a scene in Galaxy Federal about a Neptunian planet.

All my fiction entails a high degree of research, since I am an expert in nothing other than writing itself yet I seek to convey great verisimilitude and accuracy in my work. One of my greatest hopes for my fiction is that people will be able to read it and, when my prose touches on their areas of expertise, they'll be able to nod in satisfaction and say "That's how it really is." And, so, I am ever researching things as I write.

But most of this stuff is just flesh for the background. When, in contrast, a scene comes around where I have to research literally every part of it, it becomes a much more demanding exercise! In this case I wanted to be able to describe Cherry standing on a platform at the top of a Neptunian world, and, while this may sound like a simple ask—"It's blue, right? And cloudy?"—it's definitely not.

What is the composition of the atmosphere? What color is the sky above? What color are the clouds? Are there different types of clouds? Are they above or below? What are their shapes? What are the wind conditions? Relative to what? What are the temperature conditions? At different altitudes? What are the pressure conditions? What consequences of extremely low-pressure environments should I be aware of? Where do all the different sky and cloud colors come from? How do the colors compare to one another? What do the near-infrared and near-UV look like? Might there precipitation? What would it be like? What would the air smell like? How would sunset affect the colors of whatever happens to be visible? Is there any relevant photochemistry affecting atmospheric conditions, and if so what is it? Can the planet's rings be inclined outside the equatorial plane? What is its gravity? How bright is its sun?

Most of these questions need to be answered not in order to literally convey the information in prose, but simply to make sure that I don't accidentally get the narrative details wrong. There are resources that describe Neptune's highest clouds as reddish; others say white; others still say bluish—and all of them are referring to those clouds as seen from above, not below.

I do have some control over the variables. A question like "How windy is it?" can be answered "Right now, it's whatever you need for it to be." But that's sloppy, and I like to minimize my slop. So, for precision, someone like me would have to go and learn a little bit about the Neptunian winds—all while taking care not to overgeneralize Neptune's specific example. (Thankfully we have Uranus for a comparison, but unfortunately Uranus isn't always so helpful, as it basically looks like a sleeping kitten.)

Another confounding factor is that the Internet seems to be becoming a worse and worse medium for doing this kind of esoteric fact-based research. Many resources are simply not reliable (being little more than unaudited discussions on message forums), and the search results are forever clogged with irrelevant or insufficiently detailed results. ("Hey, kids! Did you know that Neptune is a PLANET and that it is BLUE?!") At one point I thought about just buying a whole book on Neptune, but I discounted that because, for one thing, scope creep, and, for another thing, Neptunian planetary science is a surprisingly active area of research and we are still learning fundamentally new things about Neptune's atmosphere even today. Lots of books about it are already outdated!

I enjoy research, thankfully, and I certainly put in a tour-de-force for this one, reading dozens of webpages and watching hours of videos. I dodged a lot of bullets because of my research, like not accidentally having my characters' blood boil by setting the air pressure below the Armstrong Limit. And in the end, I wrote a good, solid, 2,500-word scene. It's beautiful, and, I hope, it's breathtaking.

But even so, for all my research I was aware that I am still not actually any closer to being an expert on Neptunian worlds, and I knew that my research was very thin by this measure, and that my depth of understanding remains poor. And so I knew the likelihood for mistakes was high—and that's not even counting the areas where I decided to give up and let slop win. (In the end I just made up an answer for the question of what the air smells like.)

Sure enough, a few hours after I had finished writing the scene on Saturday night, it occurred to me: "Wait a minute, J! What would it sound like to talk in that air, if one were to breathe it in? It's almost entirely hydrogen and helium!"

I rushed back and did a bit of emergency research, and discovered the answer that I had feared, and had to revise the scene accordingly to ensure that anyone inhaling that air speaks in a high pitched-voice. And that, my friends, is why some scenes are better in writing than in movies!

^ _ ^

Part of being Canadian is how similar we are to the US, and honestly not a single person on earth I think could genuinely pin point the difference between Canadian and American culture but the average Canadian. Americans assume we're the same as them (we aren't), even a bunch of Canadians think we're Americans, especially around voting seasons, and about half our cultural identity is "we're Not American!" but there are some cultural differences and if we all spoke French equally we could have had a language distinction but nooooo. Despite not being America unfortunately such a fuck off massive country right below your teeny tiny ass country (population wise) does result in a cultural avalanche from said fuck off massive country. Especially when you share a language.

The war of 1812 will forever be funny to me though because Americans were like "hmm maybe Canadians would also like to tell the British to fuck off, we will invade to show them!" And Canada was like *burns down the white house* and we've been tentatively chill with each other ever since lmao (even when we probably like. Shouldn't be cool with America but like. We could not risk that implosion politically or otherwise it'd be suicide).

operation unfuck my life is ongoing and while not positive it is Going and i am not in a pit of despair

one would think seeing all venice content on my ig would make me extra sad but honestly aside from missing my friends who are there what ive seen so far looks for lack of better word,,, kind of lame,,,,,

A moment that stood out to me in Dragon Ball: Super Hero was that when Krilling shouts at Gohan that Piccolo is going to die as he’s getting his shit kicked in by Cell Max, it isn’t Gohan that jumps in to save his mentor, but fat Gotenks.

Piccolo always seemed like a character nobody besides Gohan, Goku, Krillin and Dende really cared about. It was great seeing Gotenks charge in to help Piccolo. It was nice seeing him, 18 and Krilling actually giving a shit about our green plant slug man beyond just a “oh noes, he can’t stall for Goku/Vegeta to arrive anymore!” plot device.

ugh I had a friend today, who is famous for going scorched earth, decide to go scorched earth with me. shocking i know, but still, hate to see it

man i think the amon plotline is just kind of weak in terms of world building

I read the “Good omens 2 is bad on purpose” theory and while the author is annoying it does make sense! However I don’t think they’re aware that if it’s true it could only ever be the death/rebirth type set up for an End of Evangelion style “I Hate Every Single One Of You” ending

every day i come to the conclusion that my sister is a Lot to deal with sometimes. and it sucks bc she's the family member im closest to but more and more lately she's just been... idk. obnoxious is the only word i can think of. and it's not even necessarily to or about me, it's just in general.