dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET?
LIKE THIS JUST LOOKS LIKE IT COULD BE A PERSON’S BACKYARD. LIKE YEA A LITTLE DUSTY MAYBE THERE WAS A SANDSTORM BUT THAT’S COOL I’M JUST GONNA WALK DOWN TO THE STORE P S Y C H YOU’RE ON MARS BICH!
i hate to be rude and intrude on this post but we have decent pictures of the surface Venus too!
So it’s not quite snowing on Churyumov–Gerasimenko, unfortunately; the white specks are artifacts of cosmic rays impinging on the CCDs in the camera, as well as a rotating starfield in the background (since the comet is spinning). A few specks could be dust. But, holy shit, that’s the surface of a comet. That’s a spot you could in theory cling to for dear life sit down on. The Cliffs of Comet 76pare a place.
If that isn’t the neatest shit I don’t know what is.
This is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu. Everybody knows the Great Pyramid of King Khufu, but you probably don’t know about the Shit Pyramids of his father, King Sneferu. This is a shame, because they are amazing.
When King Sneferu came to the throne of Egypt, the cool thing that all the pharaohs had was a Step Pyramid, like the original one built by King Djoser and designed by Imhotep (not the mummy). King Sneferu could easily have had one one because his predecessor King Huni had died before his could be finished. All Sneferu had to do was step in and put the last few blocks on.
But King Sneferu had a vision. He didn’t want any old Step Pyramid. He was going to build Egypt’s first smooth-sided pyramid, and make King Huni’s pyramid way taller in the bargain. It didn’t work. The core of Huni’s pyramid couldn’t handle the modifications and nowadays the Step Pyramid at Meidum looks like this:
It’s not on a hill - that’s the outer layers of the pyramid that have fallen down all around it. The name of the structure in Arabic is Heram el-Kaddaab, which means something like The Sort-Of Pyramid.
Anyway, King Sneferu was understandably disappointed and made his pyramid-builders start over from scratch at a different site. Apparently having learned nothing about the Big Fat Nowhere that hubristic pyramid ambition was going to get him, this pyramid was designed to be even taller and pointier than the last effort! Too tall and pointy, in fact - the bedrock proved to be less stable than he might have hoped, and by the time the pyramid was half-finished stuff was already moving and cracking inside of it. There are ceilings in this pyramid that are to this day partially held up by wooden beams.
The builders seem to have panicked and decided that the only way to finish the pyramid without another disaster was to make the top half lighter than the bottom half. They did this by changing the angle of the slope, ending up with a pyramid that looks like this:
Egyptologists call this one the Bent Pyramid for fairly obvious reasons. Uniquely among Egyptian Pyramids, it has most of its smooth outer blocks intact, rather than having them all stolen to build other stuff (most of medieval Cairo is built from the skin of the Giza pyramids). I’m guessing this is because nobody dared touch the thing for fear the whole structure would come down like a giant limestone game of Jenga.
I’m sure the pyramid-builders were very proud of this solution. Sneferu appears to have been less so. He had them move over about half a mile and start over. Again. Why only half a mile when he had them move 34 miles between the Sort-of Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid is a mystery. I think he wanted to keep them in sight of the Bent Pyramid so they could look at it and feel ashamed every once in a while.
And there they built Sneferu’s third pyramid, which is called the Red Pyramid. As pyramids go, it’s a very cautious one - it’s got the shallowest slope rise of any Egyptian pyramid, and while it’s the same height as the Bent Pyramid it spreads its weight over a much greater base area, making it far more stable. Sneferu seems to have been happy with this one, because he was buried in it. Either that, or after a forty-eight-year reign he just finally died and that was the pyramid they used because it was the nicest of the three.
These three pyramids together actually contain substantially more stone than the Great Pyramid of Sneferu’s son Khufu. By the time Sneferu died, his workforce had honed themselves into a lean, mean pyramid-building machine. They had already made every possible pyramid mistake. So when Khufu announced that he didn’t just want a great pyramid, but The Great Pyramid, these guys built him a pyramid so fucking great that we now think aliens must have done it.
The Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a national holiday.
That means EVERY republican senator voted to make Juneteenth a national holiday. NONE of them objected. That includes the most racist of them. So that shows you what an empty gesture it is, because the likes of Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz were like “*shrug* why not?”
They’re trying to wipe Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project clean from the curriculum and go back to pretending slavery never happened or wasn’t “that bad” and of course go back to pretending racism is over and denying systemic racism exists. That is the current news wave. That is trending, pressing, news.
And in the midst of that they go “sure, let’s make the day that literally marks the end of slavery a day of recognition” because it doesn’t mean shit.
Now, Juneteenth should be a national holiday and this would be great news if it came with approval of Critical Race Theory and MAYBE if they also passed the goddamn Voting Rights Act and stopped implementing Jim Crow era-type suppressive voting laws in a different state every month.
There’s no action behind it. It’s empty. It’s useless.
I’ll never understand why anthropomorphic animal cartoons like Robin Hood and Zootopia will go to the trouble of creating character designs that are meant to be understood as “attractive” or even “sexy” to the human audience but explicitly avoid showing interspecies romances between anthropomorphic animals. Why is THAT weird but, like, trying to make rabbits recognizably sexy-coded to humans isn’t?
Sometimes, sure, but why was Maid Marian a fox in Robin Hood? There wasn’t anything particularly “foxlike” about her personality, and it would make more sense for her to be a lion. They made her a fox only because Robin was a fox and making her something else would be “weird”, but I don’t think the wolf cop or the chicken maid or the lion prince were actually meant to represent race.
The best inter species couple is Kermit and Miss Piggy as the Cratchits in A Muppet Christmas Carol, because all their sons are frogs and all their daughters are pigs, as God clearly intended.
there are only two genders: frog and pig
I’ve pointed out to my friends that the fact that Kermit and Miss Piggy’s kids are like that means either
1) they reproduce asexually and the children are clones of each parent OR
2) Kermit and Miss Piggy are members of the same sexually dimorphic species, hence the split between their male and female children
yes I have spent too long running about potential muppet biology
oh god
Third option, when they want kids they get some fabric and make one, and hope a Hand inhabits it
Do you think there’s a ritual for inviting An Inhabiting Hand to possess the empty husk of your muppet baby?
Just wanted to show u guys that in Muppets Most Wanted, Piggy fantasizes about her and Kermit having babies and this is what they look like
So do with that what you will
Recall that in The Great Muppet Caper, Kermit and Fozzie are brothers. And this was their dad (right):
Thank you for specifying, which one of the two individuals in the picture was the dad haha
I, for one, think Shrek handled interspecies coupling the best. By this I am of course talking about the Dronkeys.
In season 3 of BoJack Horseman, we learn Diane (middle) has been impregnated by Mr. Peanutbutter (left). The fetuses are confirmed to be puppies.
This is the worst addition to this post
I am reminded of Treasure Planet.
In which Captain Amelia (left), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic cat, had hybrid babies with Doctor Doppler (middle), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic dog, whom also gave birth to the babies
I always thought that in muppet movies like muppet Christmas Carol the characters are played by the muppets (so kermit is acting and playing the role of Bob rather than being him) so the kids in that film would just be other acting muppets right?
Or is that just something my brain made up?
Last time I saw this post (YESTERDAY) it stopped at the second Eggman
What are you laughing at over there Jon?
“Oh, it would take way to long too explain…. its a three Eggman situation”
Palestinians will tell you that one of their greatest wishes is that the world would not forget them; this is what their oppressors are aiming to do. Unfortunately the attacks in Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa mosque are just instances in decades of horrific oppression and ethnic cleansing. You can directly help Palestinians by buying from them and helping them take economic power back.
The above are some examples of the beautiful and high quality products available at Shoppalestine.org including their honestly addictive Olive wood series and stunning embroidered goods (just to name a few).
these are great websites thank you so much for sharing!
another one to check out is watan palestine - it’s a palestinian-owned art studio dedicated to palestinian culture. they own offices in chicago as well as amman in jordan and they have the most gorgeous art, jewelry, home decor, clothing, accessories etc. i think almost everything is handmade, and they have detailed product descriptions for everything
also, if anyone’s interesting in purchasing an original keffiyeh produced in palestine by palestinians definitely check out hirbawi especially their where to buy page if you’re interested in knowing how to place an order to your location. the keffiyeh is such an important symbol of palestinian self-determination + solidarity, and purchasing directly from the hirbawi family would be incredibly meaningful