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The universe is full of tractors. Well, maybe not the universe. We can only really talk about Earth. So far, NASA has failed to prove that tractors exist on other planets. They also haven't proven that they don't, so we'll just continue with what I said in the first place.

Tractors are one of humanity's most versatile tools. You can tow. You can plow. You can hoe. You can do wheelies in front of a crowd of drunken rednecks. I'd like to see you do all of these with a shovel. Maybe a particularly talented donkey, but let's be honest, the quality of donkeys has never been that consistent.

If there is a problem, it's maintenance. Like any moving thing with thousands of intricately arranged parts, sometimes you have to squirt oil in it and take care of it. Otherwise, your tractor won't show up for you when you need it most (impressing a different set of drunken rednecks with your talent for hoeing.) Lots of folks nowadays don't want to do maintenance, me included.

Luckily for all of us, there is a solution. It's called "ancient-ass tractors abandoned in farmers' fields." Sure, a lot of the things you do to them look like maintenance. Putting oil in, unsticking seized engines, that kind of thing. When the tractor is old, though, and has failed from some previous owner not doing the maintenance, the work you're doing now is called restoration. And that's way more fun! Gets you on YouTube.

The really good news is that there's lots of broken old tractors out there. Buy a couple at once, improve your odds! You owe it to those poor aliens out there, living on planets without any tractors yet.

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https://edinburghguide.com/festival/2025/jonah-non-grata-assembly-rooms-review-2025-21762 FOUR FIFTHS for Jonah Non Grata in EDINBURGHGUIDE.COM!

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Another FOUR STARS for Jonah Non Grata, and I love this review - "like a hymn sung by an abandoned dying child.. but it's very funny, and deserves a full house." Come!!!

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100% Martin and Douglas.

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[ID 1: The future is crucial to science fiction not as a specific chronological register, but as a locus of radical alterity to the mundane status quo, which is thus estranged and historicized as the concrete past of potential future.

ID 2: There is a further parallel here between science fiction and historical realism: in the latter the past, while of course more fixedly determinate than the future in science fiction, is of value not so much for its literal accuracy in all detail (Scott's slips are as notorious as Flaubert's pedantry) as for its role in establishing the historicity of the present -- in the sense of denaturalizing the present by showing it to be neither arbitrary nor inevitable bu the conjunctural result of complex, knowable material processes. end ID]

exactly. exactly.

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( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀)

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welcome to my farm where I keep my dark horse my black sheep my scapegoat and my underdog. my canary in the coal mine died ages ago

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Cabin Pressure: Ottery-St-Mary via

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Donato Creti

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People Who Aren’t Evil But Have Evil-Sounding Names

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every scifi writer: in 2025 the machines are smarter than anyone thinks they are

real-life 2025 horror: everyone thinks the machines are smarter than they are

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““Good evening ladies and gentlemen. 1st officer Douglas Richardson here, just to let you know we’re making our final approach now into what I am fairly sure is Fitton airfield. Unless it’s a farm, or just possibly the A45, it’s not the sea because that’s blue. I should perhaps explain that Captain Crieff and I have a sportsman like little bet on today about who can fly the best after drinking a liter of vodka through a straw. Captain went first, you may have noticed the take-off was a little bumpy, particularly over the golf course, now it’s me to land. Just as soon as I decide which of these two runways to aim for and I’m happy to tell you that I feel lucky! So on behalf of all your crew today may I just say GERONIMO!””

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Douglas Richardson, Cabin Pressure (Abu Dhabi)

Favourite Cabin Pressure quotes 1/5

(via wholockedslytherinatcentralperk)

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