#But I have more for the floats.

[penofdamocles]

You'll all be pleased to know that the new Mountain Dew Purple Thunder flavor receives 12/12 empty cans from me, the ultimate authority on the color purple and uniquely flavored beverages. That said I'm making it into kickass ice cream floats who wants some.

[lazylittledragon]

if i had a nickel for every au spawned from twitter that i SWORE i was going to be normal about

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[but-i-hear-you-anyway]

cutest ever baby house centipede i found at work

[sunn-mechanic]

[ID in alt]

Some Papyruses :]

+ spreading my papyrus can float propaganda.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Your Cassidy design gives me life, exactly how I envisioned her.

I’m so glad y’all liked my Cassidy design!!

[albaharu]

gale holding a sword its just so funny to me

[gros-chat-fait]

Just six normal teens hanging out in the woods. --

100th post and final drawing of the year. Happy holidays and new year, everyone <3!

[thesapphiredragon13]

Heya! Sorry it’s late (as usual) but here it is! My piece for BillDip Secret Santa for @pchelaus .. hope you like my take on “Cosmic horror beyond our comprehension Bill taking a liking to flattered but confused Dipper.” !

I had a lot of fun with what features to add to give the whole ‘cosmic horror’ feel but you can never go wrong with some star speckled tentacles and extra sets of eyes lol.

[kaiserouo]

i cannot express enough how much i absolutely HATE him

[lunarharp]

..polly pocket au.. (<- a type of doll.)

[takethelx3]

Golden hour or something,,, angel baby (Troye Sivan) was on loop the whole time I was scribbling.. 👉👈

[puddii-ng]

a little bit of deicy and hansel.. for funsies

[ikusam-art]

4 day left !!

[oh-gh0st]

hiii i come bearing more art ^_^

mostly shadowpeach and mk, then mk with an oc in the last one

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think the thing i'm most disappointed about with riordanverse fandom now versus like 2014 is not only has the fandom not gotten any less racist or queerphobic or ableist (in fact in some regards its gotten worse!) but now it's just boring too. like there's no fandom infrastructure anymore - the community these days is almost entirely source material-driven - and you deviate from canon even slightly people get weird about it. whatever happened to the post-HoO fanon boom. the fandom needs to get weirder again. and self-sufficient. and less offensive.