Thanks I hate it
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In the alley, the dragon in hand, he approached the blackened nest. It had broken open. Singed wasps wrenched and flipped on the asphalt.
He saw the thing the shell of gray paper had concealed.
Horror. The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp. In his mind’s eye, a kind of time-lapse photography took place, revealing the thing as the biological equivalent of a machine gun, hideous in its perfection. Alien. He pulled the trigger, forgetting to press the ignition, and fuel hissed over the bulging, writhing life at his feet.
When he did hit the ignition, it exploded with a thump, taking an eyebrow with it. Five floors above him, from the open window, he heard Marlene laughing.
He woke with the impression of light fading, but the room was dark. Afterimages, retinal flares. The sky outside hinted at the start of a recorded dawn. There were no voices now, only the rush of water, far down the face of the Intercontinental.
In the dream, just before he’d drenched the nest with fuel, he’d seen the T-A logo of Tessier-Ashpool neatly embossed into its side, as though the wasps themselves had worked it there.
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A tale of two cows.
Bossie, who went to market and collaborated with her oppressors. The edge beckoned her.
And Flossie, who escaped the forced-labor dairy camp and became a legend.
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“Drink milk, kiss chickens” ?
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Yup.
The woman doing the Cow Cruzin’ was gone before I could make up my mind to get her story. She looked pretty interesting.
I saw the back of her car as she pulled into traffic. The rear bumper read, “Cow Butts Drive Me Nuts.”
When I got home, I looked them up. Here’s their website if you’re curious: http://www.potbellymanor.org/index.php
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Finnish icebreaker fleet in docked in Helsinki today 3:49 pm. I don’t think any of them have moved this winter*.
No their crews aren’t on strike. Random The Beatles cover (it might be bit of an anti-strike song but it’s funny):*
**Too obscure?
While the new icebreaker was being built, the state-owned icebreaker fleet had become a powerful strike weapon for Niilo Wälläri, the chairman of the Finnish Seamen’s Union. By the early 1950s, the strikes had become so common that they were sometimes considered a normal part of the arrival of winter. It was also jokingly said that a new icebreaker strike could be predicted simply by looking at the thermometer—the “strike limit” would be reached when the temperature dropped low enough for the seas to freeze.
Voima (1952 icebreaker) - Wikipedia
That tradition still goes strong:
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I’m just amazed at the “night sight” feature on my new phone. (Pixel 3, 2018 so not even the newest & best.) I think it works by taking many dim pics and then digitally adding them.
Orion & Canis Major:
Pleiades & Aldebaran:
I should mention that I’m in a dark-sky area & this probably wouldn’t work as well otherwise
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Buzzy kitten
Rock kitten
Beaky kitten
Variegated asshole
Cuddle kitten
Goose
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Another 360° sunset. The main show was so good I didn’t bother with the other directions.
If you look closely at the second picture you can see a sunbeam rising from the bottom center.
These were shot using “Night Sight” (see above) and I think give a better sense of the vibrancy, but lack the full depth and range of colours. If you add the colours from those to this, then maybe we start getting close to the real thing.
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My son (3) insisted on “taking” one picture. Not bad after straightening the horizon a bit. Colours here straight out of “Stranger Things”.
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I literally lol’d at that.
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Well…they’re not kidding that it’s cold in the Twin Cities!
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Icebreaker and university staff strikes loom
From this headline, I thought they were Luddites.
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