[zofiecfield]

no such thing as a good life

[sevensmallsphinxes]

Sphinx employee slash bodega cat that blocks the door and asks riddles, the owner has the answer of the day on a paper taped to the door.

it never notices.

[sevensmallsphinxes]

important addition from a friend:

everyone thinks REALLY hard and regulars makes two bad guesses so it feels like it's doing a good job

[bunjywunjy]

found a cool-ass sticker in a bar bathroom

[toadalled]

She is very lonely

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[mrcloudyfun]

Where is her award? She stayed in character for that whole thing!

[beardedmrbean]

She slipped a tiny bit near the end, but if you didn't know what was going on you wouldn't have caught it. 10/10 high quality spousal shenanigans

[loth-caatgirl]

she straight up villain laughed!

[zechery-deactivated20220114]

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

No guys you don’t understand.

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing

[shadows-ember]

This is humanity

[siawrites]

Happy Birthday, Curiousity.

[labelleizzy]

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

[the-cimmerians]

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

[icarus-suraki]

Happy birthday, Curiosity!

[lesnby23]

Happy birthday, Curiosity!💕

[emmathefanficgal]

Happy Birthday, Curiosity

[stevishabitat]

The rover is still operational, and as of August 4, 2026, Curiosity has been active on Mars for 4974 sols (5111 total days; 13 years, 363 days) since its landing (see current status). Via Wikipedia

[marlynnofmany]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CURIOSITY!

[yr-tiktok-mom]

[maswartz]

[jonny-r217]

[pjotwitter]

[wetheurban]

What a privilege it is to age. What a blessing. What a miracle.

[anacoluthas]

it’s not possible to go to bed. it can’t be done

[theunfairfolk]

the spirit is unwilling and the flesh it feels not so good also

[heatherwitch]

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” that was written in 1950 is set on the day of August 4th, 2026 (tomorrow)!! Now’s your chance to read it around the time it’s based in!

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

Graphic Novel: On Internet Archive.

[unamccormack]

I used to set this one for second year undergraduate creative writing seminars on writing science fiction on a double bill with Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" and no-one here gets out alive.

[regionalpancake]

!!!! Today is the only chance we’ll ever have to listen to this absolute banger of apocalyptic fiction on the very day the story is set 😲✨

Nemoy’s voice is PERFECT in this!

(A content warning if you do listen - the dog dies, though it’s not super graphic)

[regionalpancake]

I paused the robot vacuum so I could listen to this 1950’s story predicting the robot vacuum.

[importantcatpics]

@importantcatpics

[emwheezie]

Salad

[naryamirie]

just saw this personal ad from 1966 (sourced here) and god. this is really it

[tethered-heartstrings]

"stress" by yoan capote - made of bronze and concrete

[tethered-heartstrings]

[sometiktoksarevalid]