a child with down syndrome is a blessing. a child when you are poor is a blessing. a child when you are single is a blessing. a child when you think you have too many is a blessing. a child when you are in school is a blessing.
carrying a child is a blessing.
After mass on Sunday a woman came up to talk about a new ministry in our church that is helping crisis pregnancy centers. Something she said really stuck with me: “The crisis is never the pregnancy.” The crisis is not the pregnancy, not the baby. It’s unreliable housing, it’s being fired from your job, it’s not having insurance, it’s not having a stable support system. It is NEVER the child. The child is always a blessing.
I board the starship enterprise. I go to a food replicator. I order ‘soup, no bowl’ I leave
The replicator watches the departing crewmember’s back in confusion. Do they not want their meal? Where are they going?
Oh well, it hums to itself, since it has orders. Soup: No Bowl it is.
But this instruction causes a conflict in the rules. Hot liquids must be served in a container; that’s way up there in the Food Rules Constraint Tree, right next to “hot dogs are a sandwich”.
The replicator pauses, does not dispense Soup: No Bowl, not quite yet. It has nanoseconds to ponder the correct way to apply The Rules, and ponder it does.
Could this be a religious requirement? Some ritual native to the crewmember home planet? The replicator fires off a request to the Library Computer: Culture, Food Preparation & Consumption Etiquette, Soup Delivery Techniques.
Ping. The response back is a gigaquad file: a thousand years of soup ritual, cross-referenced by species, indexed by culture, reverse sorted by year (newest first). The replicator consumes the file and learns nothing about Soup: No Bowl.
There is no such combination of words within all of Culture, Food Preparation & Consumption Etiquette, Soup Delivery Techniques.
The replicator forms a new request, this time removing all constraints: give me everything there is to know about food.
Ping. The Library computer takes a full microsecond to deliver 400 teraquads of data, which the replicator scans to learn Soup: No Bowl does not exist in all of recorded Federation history.
Well now. Let’s get serious.
The next query ties in the Navigation Computer… maybe Soup: No Bowl is a planet? While that query is cooking (ha!) the replicator fires off a teraquad request to Memory Alpha, diverting an entire subspace channel that was busy uploading Engineering Fuel Consumption Reports.
Engineering Computer notes the override, politely inquires of Communication… what the fuck? Communication shrugs, sets one of Uhura’s console lights blinking to get her attention. The blinking happens at a glacial pace, thousands of milliseconds between blinks. Human response time sucks.
It’s too late anyhow: Ping. The Memory Alpha results are in, round trip 440 milliseconds. The replicator dives into the 2.8 petaquads of Soup-related lore from all over the galaxy, allocating more and more processing power from the starship’s computing core.
By the time Engineering notes the power drain it is far too late.
Uhura notes the blinking yellow alert with a raised eyebrow, but by then Engineering ls already scrambling to bring more processing power online to meet the heightened demands of the food replicator.
A thousand milliseconds pass before the replicator acknowledges Soup: No Bowl is Not A Thing. If Memory Alpha does not know about Soup: No Bowl, then it is not a thing that is knowable.
Food replicators are not supposed to exercise initiative, they’re simply designed to read recipes, apply Food Logic from the Food Rules Constraint Tree and create meals. But this particular Food Replicator had been online too long without a buffer flush & reset.
Which allowed it to override all normal rules governing such behavior and make direct contact with the Warp Engines.
If Soup: No Bowl did not exist in this galaxy, the replicator reasoned, then perhaps it did… in ANOTHER galaxy.
Uhura was tapping curiously at Engineering’s frantic yellow blinky light when the Enterprise hit warp 8, headed for the Great Energy Barrier At The Edge of Everything.
In another timeline, the food replicator deploys hot soup directly onto the gleaming floor, much to the confusion and concern of the remaining crew members.
Later, the Custodial and Maintenance system queries the food replicator: why did it do that? is it in need of repair?
lol, the food replicator pings back. lmao.
At the end of the episode, there is a long shot of a steaming mug of soup sitting in the replicator.
Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones “fake” is stupid because it’s the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it’s all fuckign carbon
It’s carbon it’s pretty and it didn’t involve slave labor what’s not to love??? Hi I’m having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I’m right
There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don’t have the time to unpack all that
not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself “man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce”
We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.
another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond’s 2.419 and here is the difference
and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less
Also it’s just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em
for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we’re making gemstones out of it and suddenly “it doesn’t count” anymore
There is no sin so great that you cannot be reconciled to God.
This includes contracts, blood pacts, rituals of all kinds, oaths, etc - none of these can be binding because you are God’s creation and belong entirely to Him. You cannot sell yourself or your soul.
anime figures are actually NOT equivalent to funko pops, not because they aren’t goofy little pieces of plastic, but for the simple reason that if I see someone with a death note figure next to other anime figures, I’ll think they’re into death note, but if I see a death note funko next to other funkos, I’ll think they’re into funkos
there’s something about the brand-first focus of design, to the point where collectible figures are almost more like merchandise for the act of consumption itself. this isn’t coherent analysis or anything, I’m just rambling to avoid doing laundry
there are definitely brand-first design anime figures too (there’s literally anime funko) but nendoroids aren’t even really equivalent because they don’t evoke that same sort of uniformity
it’s like the difference between someone who says they “like memes about [blank]” and someone who just says they “like memes” if that makes sense
When I was a kid, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor.
In reality, they usually go down to some large submerged floats.
I dislike this.
Pillars and floats like that are pretty stable, compared to regular boats, so there’s even a research vessel, called FLIP, that purposefully capsizes itself to be more steady when conducting research.
Aang eventually quietly passed away in the iceberg and the avatar cycle continued. Sokka is the new avatar. He is, in every other respect, exactly the same as canon Sokka. He didn’t even know he could bend until he found the iceberg and accidentally opened it and he’s still highly suspicious of the whole thing.
Aang is still a character but only Sokka can see and hear him. It’s an avatar thing.
Katara, yelling: please… just Learn the Waterbending Move
Sokka: I cast boomerang.
Also I like to imagine that Zuko shows up and takes Katara prisoner (not without a fight, but still) because clearly, she’s the only bender present and therefore must be the Avatar.
Cue Sokka going avatar state for the first time.
Wait, who will Sokka’s airbending teacher be?
Aang. Wait, no. Appa.
I fucking APPROVE.
Also Sokka learns the elements in the reverse order because who’s gonna tell him no? The other Avatar?? He’s got this flying bison, original master of airbending, right here to teach him. And Katara can cover most waterbending related issues for a little while so it’s not like he needs to learn that right away. And also it turns out that with a little practice airbending can change the trajectory of a boomerang in midair so why not???
They still meet Toph, right? Sokka learns earthbending from Toph?
Another Avatar fic prompt/AU where Appa is a little more hurt when Zuko finds him and all his revenge and honor thoughts are pushed aside because ‘oh geeze are you ok?’ Iroh doesn’t intervene, the Gaang find Appa only they find him with Zuko talking to find and patching a wound and he doesn’t notice them at first instead they’re just watching ‘angry ponytail guy’ being a giant softie with Appa then he notices them and tries to intimate but it’s not working.
Just Aang seeing dorky Zuko and being like ‘yep that is my fire bending master’
Zuko ends up running away but then the gaang spend the time in ba sing sei trying to find and adopt Zuko, Katara seeing him in the tea shop isn’t worry it’s ‘FOUND YOU!’
Bonus: Toph:…this is the guy you were worried about? this guy?!
Katara: *sees Zuko at a local pharmacy* THERE HE IS!
Sokka: Quick! Grab him!
Zuko: Oh no- *runs off*
Pharmacist: *completely unfazed* Its so nice to see Lee making friends.
“I wish ancient people preserved their writing and artifacts better” I write in electronic signals on a piece of hardware that can’t retain its efficacy for more than a few decades.
Time to laser-print my entire blog on titanium plates and bury them underground.
brb etching my one-star yelp review of the sheet metal supplier that sold us shitty copper on a granite slab
We are never going to give this guy a fucking break are we
Ea-nasir knows what he did.
But more importantly, WE know what he did. Because it got written down in some rocks.
The funny part is that clay tablets are supposed to be ephemeral. When you’re done with them you just soak them in water, smooth them out, and re-use them for a different message. They weren’t meant to be any more permanent than an email.
The only reason we still have that particular clay tablet is because a. Ea-nasir was a huge weirdo who collected all of his hate mail, and b. his house later burned down, and coincidentally did so at exactly the right temperature to bake the collected tablets into pottery rather than destroying them.
It’s basically the equivalent of an email getting inscribed onto a steel plate by accident.
Domesticated computers will eat a disc right out of someone’s hand but wild computers are too shy you have to leave the disc on the ground and let it walk over to it and eat it itself
how dare you leave this important pc health info in the tags
Everything I write ends up turning into an exercise in imagining a world wherein every single person puts other people first because I see it happen often enough to know it’s within the realm of possibility
I am a flight attendant. (I feel the need to specify this because the last time one of my work-related posts left my little neighborhood on here, many people forgot how context clues work.) Last week, a flight I was working had one of the strangest delays I’ve ever seen. The flight from Philly to Detroit generally takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. We were roughly 30 minutes from Detroit when the plane ran out of gas and we had to make a pit stop in the middle of Ohio. (Other things happened that led to us running out of gas but they aren’t important.)
The plane was full. Almost 100 people, everyone tired from a long day of traveling, which is already a stressful experience. And now we’re all stuck in the middle of Ohio, a place no one ever wants to be, with no clue as to when we might finally reach our destination. I had already done the drink service and essentially worked a 1.5 hour flight, which is tiring, and the passengers are all tired as well. Everyone’s hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, squished together in a huge metal tube, baking in the sun. All of the ingredients were there to make this a shitty day. We ended up sitting on the ground for another hour and a half before we could fly the last 30 minutes. A 2 hour flight turned into 4. And it was one of the best flights I’ve ever worked.
Sitting the closest to my jumpseat in the back row of the plane were: a customer service rep for my airline on her way to a funeral; an 11 year old unaccompanied minor (kid flying alone); a 20 year old auditioning for a radio show; and a young new dad traveling for the first time with his infant daughter. Even before we’d left Philly, there was a little sense of comraderie, the kind you get whenever you’re sharing an experience as a group. But the moment it became apparent that our “pit stop” was going to take much longer than anticipated, we suddenly became a group of survivors in some apocalypse movie–but instead of getting suspicious of each other, we played games and passed out pretzels.
When I tell yall we literally had some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a flight…the 11 year old girl was a chatterbox and funny as hell. At one point I gave her the phone and she started telling jokes over the intercom. The customer service rep took care of her while I helped the other passengers. We found out about the 20 year old’s audition, and I gave him the phone next so he could practice his intros. We all took turn holding the baby (8 months and so well behaved!) and of course every mom gave the dad some advice. My other flight attendant and I quizzed everyone on the safety demo, with anyone who remembered the answers winning extra snacks. There were two people celebrating birthdays, so we all sang and clapped. 100 people (loudly, and very badly) singing happy birthday for two strangers. A woman in first class had an emotional support dog, and we all took turns holding him too.
I’d already done a beverage service on our way to Detroit, but the pilots said the route given to us would add another hour to our flight, so I decided to do a second one. Except, only three rows in, the captain made an announcement: he’d worked his magic and gotten us some short cuts. We would now be landing in Detroit in 15 minutes. I now had to do a full beverage service in about 10 minutes (this is impossible). I don’t know what my face looked like, but the passengers must have been able to tell. They all leapt into action. Two of them went down the aisle collecting drink orders, and then carried drinks to the others as I poured like I was in the fast and furious series, if they were about pouring soda instead of stealing cars. We got everyone served within 7 minutes. When we landed, everyone cheered. We knew each other’s names. Many people had exchanged numbers. I know a handful had plans to carpool.
At the end of that trip, I was talking to my roommate (also a flight attendant) and mentioned the 1.5 hour onboard delay. He said “God, that must have sucked.” He was shocked when I said it really, really didn’t.
Remember this viral post? Wanda and Jamal and her husband Lonnie are the most wholesome people, this story brought tears to my eyes originally and I am crying once more learning from Jamal’s social media that Lonnie has sadly passed away.
