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donald trump will die on july 20th 2025 at 1pm pacific standard time

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Today's dragon is the Bull Dragon from Reign Of Fire

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i can’t remember who specifically for a bags post but this is for you

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That's not "the whole thing". At 2:42 the orchestra segues into a different song from the same movie "The Ecstacy of Gold", which is, uh. Well suffice to say it's an entirely different beast in terms of how hard you can go with a movie soundtrack.

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Fun fact: while the exact dynamics are of course quite different, on a broad level the before-and-after of a gravity assist maneuver are exactly the same as if you'd literally bounced the probe off of the planet like a pool ball bouncing off a wall. You can only accelerate a probe by bouncing it such that it ends up traveling in the same direction as the planet's orbit.

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

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Saffron, to get to the bottom of my feed, Nineveh or Assur depending on the exact time period. Can I go now?

STOP!

Who would cross the Post of Death

must answer me these questions three,

ere the other side they see.

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okaaaaay~! [tears open my chest and lets the newly exposed maw of the void consume you utterly]

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People love doing this

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Ball lightning while visiting a parking lot… Ball lightning is a rare phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter....

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I'm NOT the "all men think about being a woman sometimes" anon but I'll toss in that yeah, of course we do! It must be pretty cool to be desirable to your spouse! But as a straight guy that's just not possible. Most straight women simply aren't into men the way that men and lesbian women are into women. I'm just a talking head and a floating pair of hands to my partners over the years. A lot of guys think about being gay for the same reason. Wouldn't it be nice to be the subject of desire in the relationship?

Anyway, I hope more guys get the chance to try out being desirable, regardless if it comes from becoming gay or becoming a girl; it will surely be a great experience.

I should note I don't blame women for this. It's toxic masculinity doing the damage to heterosexual couples. I hope this generation can destroy it

I don’t think your experience is normal

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woag. i'm sure this character who i've never heard of before in my life would do completely ethical things to me in my Smart Home and that there are not two games entirely based around why this is a bad idea

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Aloy commission for Maple Zaddy aka Jessie!

Commission Info

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all animals have a place in the ecosystem and that includes humans and im sick of encountering edgelords who say the earth would be better off if we were wiped out. you wanna mess things up for every species that has adapted to live alongside us? as far as i can tell our existance is pretty intertwined with the world we live in, and caring about animals should include caring about humans because we're also animals. so we should probably focus on doing good with the resources we have instead of fantasizing about a big nuclear reset button. you sound like a pokémon villain.