#{ its all happening }

[balkanradfem]

So I was swimming the other day, and I noticed a male in a yellow shirt on the riverbank. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, hoping he wouldn't notice me, the treacherous freak. But, he didn't even look towards the river; he hanged around a tree, and collected something from it. Then he went away. I blinked, and then looked twice at the tree and realized – it was the tree I planted. It was the peach tree I planted there 4 years ago. He was collecting peaches!

Somehow in all of my stress with medical issues and laptop and everything else I have going on, I had forgotten to check my peach tree to see if the peaches are ripe. But there it was, a proof that the peaches were not only ripe, but good, because someone came to the riverbank only to collect peaches, and only from that one tree. My peaches had to be good. I had planted a peach tree and now the local community has free peaches!

Incredibly happy, I went to check on the tree after I was done swimming; it's not a grafted peach, it grew from a wild seed, so peaches are small. Some ugnrafted peaches would grow bitter fruit, and I didn't know the flavour of this one. I found the tree covered in fruit, with a bunch of peaches on the ground; I opted to collect the ones on the ground, because they looked healthy and ripe. And then I tried one. It was perfect. Incredibly sweet and not a hint of bitterness.

I am so proud of my little peach tree, back when I planted her, she was my height, she was growing in my spot in the community garden, and I had to dig it out because we're not allowed to grow trees in the community garden. So I planted it in a public space, tied it to a big stick to protect it from the city maintenance crew which commonly cut down small trees, and made sure to water it for the first few months. Year after year I would pull out all of the flowers from the tree, because the branches were so weak, they would have broken if peaches grew on them! I've seen fruit trees break and fall because of this issue. This year was the first one I decided the tree was strong enough to hold fruit, and I let it all grow. None of the branches broke, and now we all can have peaches. People living in the area don't have to go to the store to get them! They can just walk on the riverbank and peaches are right there.

The riverbank has sour cherries, plums, walnuts, willows, lindens, and now peaches! What a wonderful way to live, planting fruit trees in public so people would have all kinds of fruit in the summer for free. I managed to help out! I was harvesting all the other stuff growing there and hoped I could contribute to the tradition. Yay peaches!

[very-feral-lesbian]

“cause i see what everybody else sees, i watch the same show, i don’t think the buddie fans are wrong”

[crowlixcx]

Nothing quite like a group chat full of queers:

[fawnvoice]

girls........it TRULY aint over TIL ITS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

[confessionsofatvjunkie]

Happy Benson and Stabler might kiss and it’s only been 24 years in the making Day to those who celebrate! 

[genderwip]

got anime ass on the dashboard now

[batboyblog]

To explain, a federal Judge in Arkansas ruled that a ban on gender affirming care passed in 2021 was unconstitutional.

Arkansas says it'll appeal, to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. the 8th circuit covers, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. ALL those states other than Minnesota have laws like the one that was struck down in Arkansas

thus! if the 8th Circuit upholds the lower court judge's ruling than across all those states these bans are unenforceable and assumed dead.

[myfirstandlast]

i got approved for a place AAAAAAAAA

[baristabomb]

...weird amount of dunmeshi fans have been saying being a caretaker in a relationship is the worst thing ever..marcille must want to killl everyone soo bad because doing things for people suuuucks sooo muchh

it's an act of love, not just a job i promise. we all want someone who's willing to take care of us in some way, just like how senshi shows care for others by cooking for them :'|

[cyancees]

i have neither a good imagination nor aphantasia, but a secret third thing

[trinketdealer]

👼🏼✨🙏☁️

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[oars]

[hattersarts]

im already at the south downs cottage guys, catch up

[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.