“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.
i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.
so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”
And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”
I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”
And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware
One summer I was running ferry rides across a lake so people could see the waterfalls without walking 6 miles when a guy snapped my bra strap as he was boarding the boat. So i immediately threw him off, he started yelling for my manager, my boss cheerfully informed him that, yeah, she’s the captain of the boat and she can kick off anyone she wants. He goes to storm off, looks expectantly at his girlfriend, and she just goes, “Well, I’M not walking six miles, Michael! I’ll meet you back at the car!” and sits right back down!!!!
The expression on his face when he was told that he couldn’t get on the boat, then immediately told that his girlfriend was ditching him? PRICELESS. he just blinked at her and then stormed off like a child. I gave her a free hat and was like maybe rethink this relationship…….
i once had this fucker come up to order a beer. while i pour it he shows me the wanky fucking chemical structure tattoo on his arm and he’s like “hey. you know what this is” i was like “nah sorry” (never cared abt chemistry in school, plus having to look at a some rando’s pretentious tattoo gives me the douche chills). he decides to respond with “heh. you must not read many books”
i immediately stop pouring his beer. i reply: “heh. you must not want this beer.” thirsty boy immediately starts groveling like a worm “please please no i do want the beer im sorry im sorry” believe me when i say it was one of the most pathetic things ive ever witnessed
I genuinely believe that part of why it has become so normalized to be openly callous and evil in politics is that customer service culture has trained affluent people that they can treat everyone they consider beneath them however they want and still be treated kindly.
It's also crazy how much more polite people are when they know they are talking to a government employee. Once a week I staff a state "wildlife support" phone line, and very rarely do I ever have a negative interaction, even though MOST of my job is telling people "no we don't perform that service, and there is no agency that does." "no, we can't help that animal, and neither can you, as that is illegal." I tell people "no" up to 30 times per day and I've only had a prickly customer about 3-4 times, and properly yelled at only once. (And if I get yelled at I am allowed to end the conversation.)
Meanwhile, when I worked at PetSmart grooming, I got yelled at MULTIPLE times EVERY day. Over a dog's haircut that I didn't even do.
oh, no, you misunderstand me. those were my monkeys. yeah the circus and i have since parted ways. yeah it was the elephant thing, i dont really want to address that right now though
This illustration shows the relative scale of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Roman is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long — about the length of a T. rex — and over 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide when fully deployed. Roman also weighs around 18,000 pounds, or 8,000 kilograms (dry mass), which is the approximate mass of a T. rex as well.
Did you know NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is both roughly as long and as massive as a Tyrannosaurus rex? This observatory, which will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida very soon, is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms), not including the fuel. Let’s explore some of the components that bring Roman to T. rex proportions.
Artist's concepts of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (left) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (right), highlighting the 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirrors that sit in the heart of each observatory.
At the observatory’s heart sits a mirror that’s 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) across and 410 pounds (186 kilograms), or about the length and weight of a protoceratops! Roman’s primary mirror is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope’s main mirror, but less than one-fourth the weight thanks to major improvements in technology.
Technicians installed Roman’s primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument (pictured at left), in the fall of 2025.
The mission’s 300-megapixel infrared camera, called the Wide Field Instrument, is over 8 feet (about 2.5 meters) tall, which is about the length of a triceratops skull. It will give Roman the same angular resolution as Hubble while capturing an area of sky at least 100 times larger. The mission will gather data up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble.
Its sweeping cosmic surveys will help scientists discover new information about planets beyond our solar system, untangle mysteries like dark energy, and map how both normal matter and dark matter are structured and distributed throughout the universe. Casting such a wide, deep “net” into space will give astronomers plenty of cosmic bycatch as well; Roman’s crisp, panoramic views will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to do all kinds of exciting science.
The Coronagraph Instrument was installed on Roman’s instrument carrier in October 2024.
Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument is about as wide (5.5 feet, or 1.7 meters) as a velociraptor is long. The Coronagraph is designed to demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from a star and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them.
The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
This photo shows Roman’s 18 detectors, which are the heart of the mission’s 300-megapixel camera.
Roman’s “eyes,” 18 saltine cracker-sized detectors in its primary instrument, are each about as tall as an allosaurus tooth. They each have about 16.8 million tiny pixels for a total of 300 million, which means Roman’s images will be super hi-res. Each detector is made of millions of mercury-cadmium-telluride photodiodes (sensors that convert light into an electrical current), one for each pixel.
Principal technician Billy Keim installs a cover plate over Roman’s detectors.
The detectors are secured to a silicon electronics board that will help process the light signals using indium, a soft metal that has roughly the same consistency as chewing gum. Together, these ultra-sensitive detectors can capture vast areas of sky in a single shot while still revealing incredibly fine detail, allowing Roman to map the cosmos faster and more precisely than ever before.
Roman’s electrical wiring was installed on the spacecraft flight structure in the summer of 2023.
There are 1,000 pounds, or 450 kilograms, (the weight of a pachycephalosaurus) of electrical cabling, made up of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors, laced throughout the observatory. If the wires were laid out end-to-end they would span 45 miles — nearly enough to trace the entire perimeter fence in the imagined Jurassic Park! Functioning as the Roman’s “nervous system,” the cabling enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one another, provides power, and helps the central computer monitor the observatory’s function.
The Roman observatory was fully integrated on Nov. 25, 2025, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Roman’s six solar panels each measure about 7 by 10 feet (2 by 3 meters), collectively giving Roman a “wingspan” similar to a pteranodon’s! Together, they will provide a total of 4 kilowatts of power, which is about the same rate that a modest rooftop solar panel system produces during the daytime.
Over the course of two days in June 2025, eight technicians installed Roman’s solar panels onto the outer portion of the observatory.
The panels are covered in a total of 3,902 solar cells that will convert sunlight directly into electricity much like plants convert sunlight to chemical energy. When tiny bits of light, called photons, strike the cells, some of their energy transfers to electrons within the material. This jolt excites the electrons, which start moving more or jump to higher energy levels. In a solar cell, excited electrons create electricity by breaking free and moving through a circuit, sort of like water flowing through a pipe. The panels are designed to channel that energy to power the observatory.
Roman’s high-gain antenna will provide the primary communication link between the spacecraft and the ground.
The radio dish that will send data across a million miles of intervening space back to Earth spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter. That’s about the size of the largest known dinosaur footprints, yet it weighs only 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms). Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth. The dual-band antenna will use one frequency band to receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency band to transmit a deluge of data at up to 500 megabits per second.
We’re only a few months out from launch, and so close to a completely new understanding of the universe and our place within it. Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at nasa.gov/roman, and virtually tour the Roman observatory here.
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“Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!” - Leonardo da Vinci.
I was reading through Leonardo’s quotes the other day and this one caught my eye. The perfect quote for such a gen AI infected era.
If this not blows up like a Taylor Swift or Benson Boone reel, it’s another proof Tumblr either does not want you to use your brain (don’t mind me trying using popular words for the algorithm lol)
I forgot I have a Tumblr account and didn’t upload this here lol
today there was a “flash mob” set up by the seniors because it was their second to last day so they blasted the macarena over the loud speaker and did the dance in the main lobby but our headmaster knew about it so it wasn’t even funny but whilst walking past the elevator i found out why they really did this so called “flash mob”
