pacific rim fucks severely for a lot of reasons but my favorite is that it opens with "the lizard aliens are unionizing so we built robots running on the power of love to fight them you got all that right" and before you have time to really process that concept bam gunshot body on the floor and the movie goes "now consider the vast power of grief in this setup" it never really stops considering
if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.
WIZARD PSA: Chronomancy might be weird and confusing, but one of the few solid rules of the discipline is keep your promises. Time is a library, and you don't want to meet the librarian.
best thing tumblr ever did for me is the term "rotating it in my mind". it's really true that sometimes you think about something real hard but you can't tell what the thoughts are exactly. it's revolutionary stuff, i might even say
googling shit like "why do i feel bad after hanging out with my friends" and all of the answers are either "you need better friends" (i don't; my friends are wonderful) or "your social battery is drained, you need to rest and regain your energy levels" (i don't; i've got tons of energy, it's just manifesting as over-the-top neurotic mania). why is this even happening. it's like some stupid toll i have to pay as a punishment for enjoying myself too much
#theres a thing called 'larp drop' thats essentially this#esp since when having a great time you might be more inclined to disregard your limits and ignore discomfort#(and forget to eat/drink if its larp whoops)#and then once you have a moment to yourself it all comes crashing in#source: once forgot to eat at larp and had a sobbing fit in my car that ended the instant i bit into a chicken nugget - @queerfarmgremlin
astronomy club sent up a weather balloon w a gopro in it last friday. put in three packs of fruit snacks so they could have a giggle over eating fruit snacks that had been to space.
balloon went up into inner space, about 90,000 feet. came down right near the dinosaur park. a few physics teachers drive out to get it, crack it open on the way home to start watching the footage.
fruit snacks are missing.
multiple sources confirm that fruit snacks were put in balloon and sealed in with duct tape. physics teachers check entire balloon. no fruit snacks.
physics teachers watch footage. all 7 hours of it. right in the middle of footage, there are about 8 minutes of visual and audio static when balloon is in orbit. no other interference with balloon recorded.
Happy just-over-ten-years to this post. Early in its life, it was viewed by a seventeen-year-old aspiring astronomer who DESPISED it, thought it was the dumbest Space Post ever, got mad every time it crossed her dash. But this wasn’t anybody I knew, and she did the mature thing and didn’t send any hate mail about it, and went off and got her whole entire astrophysics degree without me ever finding out. So how do I know about this person’s deep dislike for this post? BECAUSE. I have, at press time, been sleeping next to her for three and a half years
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
It's that time of year again and I think we should all enjoy this, as well as familiarize yourself with your local fireworks laws, the non-emergency line or see if there's a fireworks reporting hotline. I would very much like to not be in the path of a wildfire.
Well, despite being Told Off by God and then Fined To Hell in 2023 and missing last year due to being in the hospital with "The Flu", my pyrotechnically inclined neighbor seems determined to double down and also gotten his illicit wildfire-starting devices early this year, as this afternoon's dog walk by his garage revealed TWO palettes of fireworks.
Apparently there was some kind of race scheduled at a local park or something so I've been trying to avoid the main trail but a little while ago when I had to cross near it I overheard the following shouted exchange
Higher feminine voice: woo, look at you go! You're jogging! Keep it up!
Lower masculine voice (panting): you know it! Last place is still a place, baby!
And goddamn if that didn't rewire my brain a little bit.
I know of a trail racing company that gives the slowest racer who finishes every race a DFL award: Dead Fucking Last. I was a little taken aback by this until I had it explained to me that those last-place finishers are pretty much uniformly people for whom finishing at all was an accomplishment: people undergoing cancer treatments, absolute beginners, runners in their eighties, extremely pregnant people, you get the idea. Moreover, what you see as this person crosses the finish line is all these sporty trail racers, many of whom finished the race literal hours earlier, cheering their hearts out because they respect that, yes, DFL is still a place, baby.
Honestly, y'all, I'm begging you. Take the time to think and learn for yourself. Even if it's just something casual like knitting or cooking. Exercise your brain. It's important.
oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!
Also, don't forget LibreOffice - basically an older, free, open-source versions of Microsoft Office, plus you can use LibreOffice Draw to open and edit PDFs.
Is there jank? Sometimes. Is it better than paying Microsoft a single solitary cent? Yes.
I hate it when people are like “if you don’t like ___ maybe you just aren’t a REAL star wars fan.” because the only prerequisite for being a star wars fan is hating star wars and everyone knows this
I am trying to sleep, but I can't because my mind is stuck on one question:
Are Mandalorians a shoes on or shoes off culture when they are at someone's/their home?
Let me elaborate. As you probably know, in some cultures, you take off your outdoor shoes once you enter a private living space (not a store, or public building, etc.). In others, you seem to commonly keep your shoes on. And in some, it seems to be more of a case-by-case thing.
But what do Mandalorians do?
Boots do belong to beskar'gam, and beskar'gam is very important, culturally. The mental image of people hanging out in full armour but in socks is a bit weird, too. And in case something happens, you want to be ready and not have an entire aliit hurry to put boots on, right?
But then again, that somehow does not feel right. I cannot put my finger on why, though. I guess it might be both my own background as a firm 'no shoes in homes' person, but also the fact that, doing what they do, their boots would probably be rather dirty. Like, imagine the dirt you'd bring back in with you. Just as if you went hiking and came in with your dirty shoes. So, from that angle, it might make sense for them to actually take off their shoes.
The worst thing is, it is not even relevant. I am not working on any fic, or picture, or whatever I would need that information for. It is just a random thing my brain decided to latch on. And since I can't decide on what makes more sense:
Which one do you think is it? What makes more sense considering Mandalorian culture? Are there maybe even snippets of text that I can't remember that support either one or the other? Any thoughts, anyone?
so they don't seem super strict about it because i also found passages where people did have their boots on indoors, but it's rude even by mando standards to put your feet up on a chair, and bardan, gil, and kal all either take off their boots or wipe them at the door
im pretty sure one of the legends of the force books has boba taking his boots off at the door but i don't have a searchable pdf for that one lol
I've always thought of them as preferring shoes off indoors. If you've been running around in full beskar'gam, you might have been going somewhere or doing something that's likely to get your boots NASTY. Taking off shoes and gloves at the door might be common both for comfort and cleanliness. It does make me wonder about closures, though. It doesn't matter how many times I do it, it still takes me a minute to get my boots laced on properly and snugly so I can run around all day. We don't really see laces in Star Wars, and it makes me wonder what alternate means of securing their shoes tightly might be popular with Mandalorians?
chelsea boots (a slip on style that ends just above the ankle) are MASSIVELY popular for mandos. that's what boba and jango wear. din wears a modified skecher blaine orsen, which is a chelsea boot
chelsea boots, not being much longer than a shoe, and being slip on, and not having laces that need to be hidden, and massively popular for mando cosplay. personally i've done a heavily modified laced boot, motorcycle boots, and a blaine orsen. the blaine orsens are by FAR my favorite
so the boots themselves are pretty easy to take off and put back on, but the stuff around them isn't necessarily. prequels and original trilogy style armor like jango and boba have is generally referred to as 'modern era' and will typically have a shin plate, boot plate, or no plating. jango has shin and boot, boba (original trilogy) has no plating below his knees. OT boba can take his boots off no problem at all, jango is going to have to fuss with a bunch of plates. annoying
the style of armor in the mandalorian show and the book of boba fett is referred to as 'post imp' and regarding lower leg covering, gaiters are practically a requirement. new boba, bo katan, the armorer, axe woves- gaiters of some kind. if you dont have gaiters you have shin plates that pretty much encompass the entire shin- din and paz for instance. you might have a gaiter and a plate. not impossible to take off at the door but definitely more inconvenient and you have more pieces lying around
gaiters typically close with a zipper and velcro and have an elastic strap running under the boot, and tend to be fairly tight. kind of a pain to take on and off a lot. can't really speak on shin plates ease of removal and putting back on, i don't wear them because i don't want to deal with them
also the thing is, fussing with your boots while in full armor is typically quite hard. people typically put armor on working from the feet up, because once your chest plate is on, good luck doing anything fussy down there
now with all of that put together, and being in total agreement with 'mandos boots probably get gross, they have reason to value the cleanliness of their home, and theyve been canonically shown to at least be conscious of this' here is what i propose should be on the porch/outside the door/in the mudroom of most mandalorian homes:
a bench or stool of appropriate height to rest your foot on while removing or putting on your boots and related shin paraphernalia
a boot brush- you know the metal ones you can scrub your foot through while standing?
plentiful racks and hooks and cubbies to store boots, plates, and gaiters in
...How did I forget Chelsea boots existed? Lol. Great points. Personally, I make things harder for myself and wear my regular lace-up boots in beskar'gam, and then cover the laces (I'm making boot plates to better cover and protect the whole area), but I'm sure in-universe an option like that would be wildly unpopular. But yeah, I also think Mando'ade would love having benches, boot scrubbers and cubbies for armour and shoes. Honestly, a very similar set-up to what lots of ranchers and farmers have, in all likelihood. There's probably a hose or dish of water near the boot scrubber, as well as some stiff and soft bristled brushes for dry dirt.
For Mandalorians that live in a ship/nomadically, I've got some relevant points. My family grew up in a travel trailer and often worked in areas where our bathroom was the only one available but you didn't have much time for breaks, so taking off shoes and putting them back on was not practical even for slip ons. The expectation was to scrape your shoes off on the pull out stairs before entering (functionally a boot scraper) and keeping ONLY to the linoleum areas (kitchen and bathroom). You did NOT walk on carpet with shoes, you did NOT enter the bedrooms with shoes, you DID sweep daily and mop weekly.
For Mandos in combat environments, it's probably strictly shoes-on just for safety. When I was in the Army, taking off boots was extremely inconvenient even without gear on in a garrison environment so you basically only took em off to sleep-- and sometimes not even then tbh, just letting your boots hang over the mattress. In deployed environments it makes even less sense to take off your shoes for extended periods of time because you never know when you're about to take incoming. Military culture compensates for its shoes-on habits by having extremely frequent and thorough cleaning of all living/work spaces.
You could integrate these cultural options with canon so that removing boots in a house is a sign of extreme comfort/familiarity with whoever lives in that house. Not only are you entering a very private space, but you'd have to have such a secure confidence in your safety to remove shoes for an extended period of time. It could be a huge compliment to the host... or maybe a backhanded slight if you're implying it wouldn't matter if they did attack.
some people think this is a shitpost so i want to clarify that i am dead fucking serious. make mage the official gender neutral honorific NOW. i want it on my passport. i want it on my bank account. i want doctors and judges to use it for me. i don't care if it sounds a little silly. people thought "missus" sounded crass at first. call me mg.
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