Hey. Why Isn’t The Moon Landing A National Holiday In The US. Isn’t That Fucked Up? Does Anyone Else

Cybertronian Units of Time: a Guide

…concocted by me, via:

Canon Definitions

Most Common Terms Used in Fandom (that I have seen)

Most Common Interpretations of Aforementioned Terms

Math That Makes Those Terms Make Sense Together

Filling in the Blanks With What Sounded Good (to me)

So essentially I began with Cybertronian units with explicit definitions in canon that are also widely used in fandom (ie. Vorn = 83 years, Joor = 6 hours, Groon = 1 hour). I then worked my way out from those and tried to keep to rough factors of 6/8/10.

Some terms that did have explicit canon definitions had to be slightly skewed from their value (ie. Breem: 8 → 6 minutes, Klik: 8 → 6 seconds) if their definition contradicted another definition that made more sense/fit better. 

At any rate, obviously no one is obligated to use this standard, but canon Transformers content has been unfortunately… awful at establishing any universal units of time, their relationship to each other, or their equivalents to human units of time.

So this occasionally makes fanfiction an absolute nightmare for people like me with a crap memory who don’t want to constantly have to scroll through a thousand pages of the wiki to remind themselves what the hell a groon is.

So, naturally, I simply spent far too long whipping up this at-a-glance guide to keep track of it & on the off chance that the fandom might adopt it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

(PLEASE REBLOG THIS IF YOU LIKE IT SO THAT MORE FANS CAN SEE IT!)

This is possibly the most wrong thing I have seen on a click bait article ever. The more you look, the worse it gets.

It claims to be an X-ray of a pregnant horse.

There are several faults with that assumption:

It is an old school film X-ray, about the size of an A4. It is no way big enough to X-ray an entire horse.

An X-ray machine big enough to X-ray an entire horse does not exist, and would pump out obscene amounts of radiation if it did.

That ‘horse’ is lying down. Good luck with that.

Something very creative is happening with its front legs, feet, hocks and skeleton in general.

It has no internal organs.

The thing it is ‘pregnant’ with is mostly situated within the thorax.

The thing it is ‘pregnant’ with appears to be a dog.

The ‘dog’ appears to be ‘pregnant’ with a cat.

The ‘cat’ appears to be ‘pregnant’ with… possibly a rat?

This is a good point. I think it can also be applied to marine environments (it's not just the coral reefs that need saving)

something i've noticed. people seem to think the most nature-y nature is forests. so forests are always prioritized for conservation, and planting trees is synonymous with ecological activism. my state was largely prairies and wetlands before colonization. those ecosystems are important too. trees aren't the end-all be-all of environmentalism. plant native grasses. protect your wetlands.

Star Trek has seen captains who are scientists, diplomats, warriors, artists, inspirations, explorers, and heroes. But never has Star Trek seen a captain who is just done with everything and wishes he could go back to bed.

Finally, a character I can relate to.

hey don’t cry. spiro the bald eagle failing at catching a crab, okay?

Poor Jankom gets no love

Yes, even in Star Trek the most famous machines have been essentially human in appearance (Data in TNG, the Doctor in Voyager) which IMO has always bugged me.

I will note that there have also been the exocomps and recently some other non-humanoid ones, but there aren't any individuals that are nearly as popular as those mentioned before.

I was chatting with my mom today about how unique Knight Rider is as a show for one reason only- having a character that's honestly, genuinely, and truly a car.

(Yeah, sure, there's Transformers, but watch any Transformers show and you'll see that they rarely keep the robots in car mode for any scenes. The car modes are almost exclusively used for scene transitions or for action set pieces.)

Knight Rider is different in that it challenges the viewer to imagine a character who is a car. This character is Kitt. There is no way for him to stop being a car, even when it's inconvenient for him, or even when it's inconvenient for the plot. Kitt, as a concept, asks the viewer to empathize- what would being a car genuinely be like? What challenges would that present? What advantages?

This is where most robots in fiction, and fiction that claims to analyze humanity through the lens of robot characters, ultimately fail. I'm hard-pressed to find another work of sci-fi with a lead character in such a genuinely divorced role from humanity. Most fictional robots have:

Hands, to physically interact with a human-scaled world in the way that humans do,

Faces, for humans to relate to, and

Eyes, for humans to look at, and tell where the robot is looking.

Kitt has none of these. He never gets any of these at any point. The show even reflects on this in episode 22 of season 1, where he projects eyes onto his screen for the little girl who's trying to understand him. Yet even this is temporary- he gets rid of them after only a minute, and the girl gets used to the real him accordingly. It's never portrayed that these attributes (of hands, a face, and eyes) are some kind of upgrade that Kitt is missing.

However, Kitt is still undeniably 'human', and this is the most important part. Kitt's way of thinking isn't alien just because his body is different. It's what he is thinking about that's been altered from the traditional human experience. This leads to a fascinating exploration of topics such as:

Accessibility. Kitt is constantly analyzing where his body can go and to what places he has access to. Even Michael Knight learns to start thinking this way as he grows closer with Kitt, to the benefit of them both. The question of what Kitt can do vs what he can't do given his body is at the core of Michael's problem solving when the show is at its best.

Priorities. What does Kitt care about? Again, it's deeply important that the first answer to this is "his friends", but barring that, what else? Things like a good road or the polish of bodywork become elevated in importance through his perspective.

Prejudice. A lot of science fiction has the trope of "robot racism", or the idea that there's a portion of humans who actively believe that sentient robots are not equal to humans. Knight Rider, however, never takes this easy drama. Humans treat Kitt differently, and sometimes with a shocking amount of disrespect (even after he's revealed himself to be a person,) but it's never out of malice. It's out of ignorance. The bulk of these humans have only the best intentions. This presentation reflects upon real-world prejudices through a different lens than the aforementioned trope, which has, by now, been thoroughly beaten to death.

Again, it's the fact that the show actively goes out of its way to tell the audience that Kitt has a soul (season 2, the episode literally titled "Soul Survivor"), yet doesn't shy away from the genuine differences he faces from being nonhuman, that makes it so damn compelling to me.

(Mind you, the way the show usually "explores" these themes is through the lens of comedy that relies on Kitt's differences being the butt of the joke. . . and that the inclusion of these deeper themes definitely do NOT cancel out the show's genuine problems with sexism/racism! But-)

I really do consider Knight Rider to be science fiction at (or at least close to) its finest. Which is an insane statement out of context, I realize, but I hope after reading this post you might be able to understand why. Knight Rider set the bar for robots in fiction for me and nothing has been able to compare since.

TL;DR: Kitt is a car. This is deeply profound.

市场菜 Farmer's Market Foods

So the farmer's market levels are SO MUCH so I thought I would do a separate list of just the foods!

荔枝 / lì zhī / lychee

西红柿，西紅柿 / xī hóng shì / tomato

番茄 / fān qié / tomato

番茄酱，番茄醬 / fān qié jiàng / ketchup*

西红柿炒鸡蛋 / xī hóng shì chǎo jī dàn / tomato & scrabbled eggs

黄瓜， 黃瓜 / huáng guā / cucumber

南瓜 / nán guā / pumpkin

西瓜 / xī guā / watermelon

地瓜 / dì guā / yam, sweet potato

苦瓜 / kǔ guā / bitter melon

冬瓜 / dōng guā / winter melon

葡萄 / pú tao / grape

草莓 / cǎo méi / strawberry

排骨 / pái gǔ / ribs, cutlet (e.g. 猪排骨 pork ribs)

骨头汤 / gǔ tou tāng / bone soup

蘑菇 / mó gu / mushroom

木耳 / mù ěr / fungus

香菇 / xiāng gū / shiitake mushroom (fragrant)

金针菇 / jīn zhēng gū / enoki mushroom (golden needle)

剁 / duò / to chop or mince

炖 / dùn / to stew

Bonus:

傻瓜 / shǎ guā / silly melon, silly goose, idiot

*NOTE: Ketchup can only use 番茄！However 番茄/西红柿 are interchangeable for tomatoes in general

I wanna know what Admiral Janeway's doctor saw that made them order her to give up coffee - and worse, what convinced her to follow that order. I mean, this is the woman that drove her starship through some mysterious Delta Quadrant nebula just to get her caffeine fix!! Whatever her condition is, it must be nothing short of total bodily annihilation.