#ack what happened to my video quality -_-

[zoology-time]

Gif and a video of the multi-lined hammerhead flatworm, Diversibipalium multilineatum, moving.

[hiraethhh-h]

throwing a weighted blanket at the om! bros + undateables (and a bonus)

warning(s): some swearing, threats of torture, implied nsfw, spoilers. 

note: no supernatural beings or humans were hurt in the making of this- also this was inspired bc my mom bought a weighted blanket and its heavy af 

the demon brothers

lucifer:

“MCCCCCC..!!!”

i- chile do you have a death wish???

momentary shock at how cute your laughter sounds (but he would never say it out loud unless you two were alone)

prepare to be chased and in demon form once he gets himself together

this man can ZOOM (i mean he does chase after mammon)

when you get caught, oH boY 

you’ll be lectured for hours on end 

“what made you think that was a good idea, mc?”

“and delete that recording of me. immediately.”

don’t worry levi is sure to save a secret file :)

anyone you were in cahoots with will be lectured and punished too

but your punishment ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

mammon:

“ADKSDHFKSJHFGKSJFH- HeY!!!”

is completely caught off-guard

crooked glasses and messy hair once he removes the blanket off of him

“why’d ya do that mc!!!”

if you tease mammon about being unable to handle the weight of the blanket-

*mammon rant activated*

“the great mammon can totally handle weight!!! i used to lift more than beel ya know!!!”

“hey! quit laughing at me mc!!!”

gets all flustered when you admit you were just teasing him to see his cute reaction

awe bby boy

probably forgives you if you promise to spend quality time with him for a few days

dont be surprised if he holds a grudge tho 

prepare to smother him with snuggles and cuddles to make him forgive you :)))

leviathan:

oh boy, you’d best be ready to deal with the consequences if you throw a weighted blanket onto him

especially if he’s doing a game run-through or grinding through a game 

“okay... just a little more and- ACK!”

like mammon, totally caught off guard since he was so focused on his game

*game over flashes on his screen*

“NOoOOo!!! My ScoRE!!!”

oh shit...

chile- you best hope you can run from levi 

pissed off at you like that one time during the TSL tournament

one of the other demon bros has to interfere and stop levi

“that stupid normie made me mess up my perfect score!!!”

mad at you for a few days 

and he will hold a grudge

but decides to forgive you if you stay with him as he plays through the game again

“i only forgave you because you’re the only one who’d love a yucky otaku like me...”

“and because you’re my henry.”

satan:

ok now you really have a death wish but i would probably do it too tbh 

ah... nothing but a normal day for satan

a cup of his favorite piping hot tea, a book, and the fire place next to him...

nothing could be better :)

until...

“what the fuck-”

tea spilled all over him and his book with the weight of the blanket = enraged satan

prepare to feel his WRatH

“so you thought this would be a great idea..?” 

turns into his demon form

threatens to try all kinds of torture methods on you and whoever was in cahoots with you for ruining his reading time >:(

satan will probably apologize to you for that and maybe to the other person depending on who it was

after that

satan will come back with his own little pranks for weeks on end

and when he finds out that you kept a recording of the little incident

:)

he’ll keep his pranks up until you finally yield

“alright. i’ll forgive you just this once, and you owe me a new copy of that book.”

“you also better delete that video if you know what’s good for you, mc.”

asmodeus:

“mc, no my hair and makeup!!!”

practically yeets the blanket off of him to protect himself

i would probably be surprised someone could yeet a heavy ass blanket off themselves but asmo is a demon so he has inhumane strength

*asmo pissed off 3000*

“mc! if you messed up a single hair on my head or ruined my makeup

*dark chuckle*

“i would’ve made sure i ruined you in more ways than one”

hHhhhH- be my guest asmo 

“oh well, i guess i’ll forgive you just this once.”

yay! forgiveness never felt so good-

“if you promise to spend quality time with just me~.”

he will literally take you out shopping the whole entire day

dresses you up in god knows how many outfits

but at the end of the day, when you both return back to the house of lamentation, he’ll take very very good care of you~

tries to bathe with you but lucifer catches wind of it :(

sore feet? asmo to the rescue!

“ne, you will delete that video right?”

beelzebub:

tbh the blanket would just feel like a normal blanket to thicc man :)

it also probably falls to the ground awkwardly

 *looks at the blanket then to mc*

“i think you dropped this”

*picks it up like it weighs nothing and hands it back then continues to eat whatever he was munching on*

whoever you’re in cahoots with either expected that to happen or is in shock with you lmao

while you’re reviewing the footage you can see beel’s muscles flex as he picks up the blanket :))))

later, beel will probably confront you about what happened 

“oh... that was supposed to be a prank..?”

seeing how kinda bummed you looked made beel kinda sad since your prank didn’t go as planned :(

what better than to make it up to you with food! :D

brings you all sorts of snacks and takes you to hell’s kitchen to make you feel better

“next time you prank me, i’ll definitely be caught off guard.”

belphegor:

is napping when you decide to try your sneak attack

as we all know, he kinda sleeps like a brick around mc so he’ll probably be indifferent to your giggles unless he gets curious

when you throw the blanket onto him

he snuggles into it

“...”

“...”

“this is really warm mc... is this what the humans call a weighted blanket..?”

belphie moves the blanket to make room for you

“why don’t you come nap with me since you’re already here..?”

snuggles and cuddles with belphie + warm weighted blanket = your heart melting :)

it’ll probably be hard to get up tho since you’re in belphie’s arms and underneath the heavy ass blanket rip

i ain’t complaining tho 

undateables

diavolo

is probably confused for a moment

until he feels the weight of the blanket

“this reminds me of some sort of torture device...”

picks it up out of curiosity until you tell him what it is

“oh! i see, you were trying to see what would happen when you threw this onto me!”

would probably ask if he could throw it at you too

but he realizes that you’d get hurt

“why dont we start a prank war?”

 but like i feel like it would be fun to have a prank war with Dia :D

plus he gets a break from all of his princely duties and you get to spend some quality time after with him ;)

poor barbatos has to clean up after most of the pranks tho :(

barbatos:

he’s doing some chores around the castle as per usual

until you sneak up on him 

or so you thought ;)

when you throw the blanket at him, barbatos catches it like it weighs nothing

he’s in a little momentary shock for a split second then comes back to reality since he was so focused on his chores

i wouldn’t be surprised bc he does do a helluva lot of things

“i hope you didn’t forget that i can see the future and different timelines.”

also knows that you recorded the little prank and decides to indulge you and let you keep it

“perhaps you can try again next time?”

cooks you up some food to make it up to you

simeon:

blinks in shock as the blanket is thrown over him

just laughs and removes the blanket

“If you were trying to surprise me, it worked.” 

he’d gently drape it over you and pull you into his arms

aklsdhjlaksdfjlk i want it too-

“i’ll have to leave soon though… Diavolo asked me to join him for tea at his castle today.”

simeon lets you go and smiles at you

“i would say don’t plan anything while im gone, but I can’t stop you.”

solomon: 

probably practicing spells or sum when you decide to strike

like some of them, he’d be shocked momentarily

“what’s this? Trying to sneak attack me?”

*queue the solomon smirk*

definitely would try to get back at you

be prepared bc this is one sneaky sorcerer

getting food at hell’s kitchen and need some ketchup?

solomon is there for you

but it isn’t ketchup ;)

its hot sauce ;)))

at the end of the day, solomon means well and laughs off all his pranks with you

bonus character!

luke:

i- why would you wanna throw a blanket at the smol child???

if you do which i hope you dont… pls do it gently

luke would probably pout and sulk at you and get rather upset

simeon would be like >:o

“how could you hurt my child?”

to make it up to luke, simeon would make sure that you bake with him

luke is down for it too, nothing’s better than a baking buddy! :D

long story short, pls PLS do not throw a weighted blanket at luke unless you want to evoke the wrath of everyone :)

[vedj-f-bekuesu]

So I was supposed to be doing secretarial work for my mother tonight. She’s doing degree-level work on mental health and I was scheduled to type up her research on Schizophrenia. But since the college has contacted her to make her aware of an extension, that has been postponed to tomorrow. But what can a working adult forced home do to fill the time void left by that?

Watch season 3 of Ninjago for the first time? Erm, okay.

So the narrative have definitely started to get heavier now. Eh, so far this is probably the weakest season for me to be honest. Like, the story writing is getting there but this season was bland in terms of entertainment. Let me just start.

-So the main ninja are back to being more active as characters now that they’re rushing a storyline, but the writing quality for them is all over the place. Kai suffers the least (that isn’t Zane), although he has the least focus in the season. The technology is a bit shaky considering that he uses the jet (in S1 and S3) and even got control of Samurai X in S2, but out of all the ninja he probably would be the least tech-savvy probably (being raised in a village as a traditional blacksmith) so it’s acceptable. What isn’t acceptable is how he was characterised in Project Arcturus. Seriously, what the fuck happened in that episode? He’s suddenly super obnoxious, ignorant of the mission Pixal is trying to drill the importance of in, and he outright endangers innocent people. And then this characterisation is ignored for the rest of the season. Were the writers asleep for the wheel for it? -Might as well get the elephant in the room out of the way now; The Love Triangle was pretty unbearable. Honestly, the biggest reason is the season seemed to try and use that as a crux for the entertainment side and it just fell flat. Nya generally really suffers as a result of it though because this shit wouldn’t be happening if she didn’t instigate it (yeah Jay blows up over Pixal’s recollection of it, but she wilfully keeps the fire burning by playing them both). One could argue that her youth means that she’s making some really foolish decisions, but it makes her come off as a bit of a bitch to put it frankly. At least she also gets more to do outside of it.  -Cole...I don’t know what to think about him. With the straight-forward love triangle perspective at the time, it would have definitely have been a douche move on his part to move on Nya even if it was instigated by her since it was clear in the second half that he was doing that and Jay and Nya hadn’t split. With the hindsight that he was never interested in her, the question is why he would this at all? Well, the first half of the season that reading is pretty easily justifiable since he seems more oblivious than anything, but it’s much harder after Project Arcturus. The reading I choose to take is that, given the later info that Jay and Cole were supposed to be prior best friends, Cole took it badly when Jay seemed to attack him out of nowhere so was just generally anti-Jay for the first half, then in the gap before the Overlord came alive again Jay didn’t patch it up and Cole found out why Jay attacked, so he decided to spite him even further. Which may be even more douchey. Ack. -Poor Jay. He seems to get a lot of shit this season, but wouldn’t you be confused if your seeming girlfriend suddenly just decided she had feelings for your friend out of the blue? And over a machine? No wonder he lashed out. And the only foreshadowing to any trouble in paradise is when he offers her Kai’s pudding cup and he does it a bit too close to her face, prompting a talk about boundaries. That’s really not enough. And given that Jay gets the most stuff outside of the main plot too (his interest in Borg Industries and the first emphasis on him being into video games, him sticking a middle finger to Child’s Play’s moral by getting into Lloyd’s comic, and even the interest in the bugs on the meteor), his biggest black mark is having to share the flat humour with Cole. -The best bits of humour were mostly the S2 characters cropping up again; while Dareth and Ed and Edna didn’t get much screentime at all, what they did get was great.  -Skales was also still the MVP for what little screentime he had. That said, the kinda retcon to the whole deal with the Serpentine’s past didn’t quite gel for me. -Sensei Garmadon seemed fairly eh at first, mostly espousing lessons. Kicking Pythor’s ass after he took his son really kicked him up a notch. -Speaking of, Pythor’s back...but he wasn’t as good as in S1. He had his moments, but generally playing lackey to the Overlord was a step down.  -I have nothing to say about Wu since he didn’t get to do that much (75% of his time was as a cyborg under the Overlord’s control). I also don’t have much to say about Lloyd "FUCKING STOP IT NOW" Garmadon since he really got no material to work with outside of bonding with his father. But most of that was in the form of lessons anyway, how is that different to what Wu did in S2? -Not any new additions outside of Cyrus Borg and Pixal, but they sure did put in the legwork. Cyrus does a fuckton of heavy lifting with the plot, he’s amusing to have around and he even got a great diet gag in the very last episode. -I actually want to talk about Pixal and Zane together because their story was really the main one. Zane is as sweet as ever, undamaged by whatever character weirdness was going on with the other ninja, and is a joy to follow. The romance between Zane and Pixal I feel was a little rushed, but the story at least tried to give some justification (since Zane is fascinated by the progression of tech and how it differs from himself). Thankfully the rest of the story is solid, and Pixal is a very good new addition (gradually learning to experience outside her programming through Zane and her need to help). For me, their story is able to hold it all together so there was still a good investment there. And I can understand why the Titanium Ninja was so shocking at the time; you expect Lloyd to pull something out as the Golden Ninja, only for Zane to step in and give his own arc some closure with sacrifice.  -I do have one quibble with the ending, but I’m saving that for the next season. You’ll see why.  -The baddies aren’t worth writing about. They’re so uninteresting. And the Overlord here is a real cardboard cutout.  -When I heard about the Digiverse I thought it was going to be this big place we got to see for several episodes, but it’s one room that’s there for one episode? And it’s not even that imaginative? Wow that’s kinda lame. I’m glad Prime Empire is taking full advantage of the concept.  -At least the pacing was fine here and the action was good. But the slow-mo is still annoying. 

Overall, the central idea is done well, but the stuff around it isn’t up to the same standard, which puts a dent in the enjoyment. Combine that with the fact that it just isn’t up to snuff on the more humourous side, and this has become the Ninjago season I enjoy the least so far. On the bright side, Pixal more than justifies why she got the privilege of being brought into Ninjago’s main cast much later.  But this is just the start of Ninjago’s story developments. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to spiel on about when we get deeper. 

[kathleenseiber]

Where’s my flying car?

The Jetsons cartoons gave a boomer generation a vision of seemingly magical powered flying vehicles. Are we any closer? Mark Pesce wonders if aero-autos are finally ready for takeoff.

Backed by billions in venture capital and a recent IPO, one startup aims to have its flying taxi on the market in three years. While they may be ahead of the pack, they’re not alone. Is this the decade we finally get our Jetsons car?

The most obvious reality check draws on our experiences around the original flying car – the helicopter. Helicopters are really loud. They transit CBD skylines every day, and from 100 metres a launching helicopter has a volume of 90 decibels – about the same as a power lawn mower. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands, and it’s immediately apparent that a world full of flying cars would be deafening. Conversation in public would become impossible. Birds, already adapting their song to the higher ambient noise levels in urban areas, would fall silent, unable to compete. We wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think.

Archer’s battery-powered two-seater demonstrator. Credit: Archer

The Jetsons’ flying car, with its soft and satisfying electronic putt-putt-putt sound, is iconic, but right here right now a quiet flying car looks like a physical impossibility. To keep a heavy bit of kit airborne requires the movement of lots of air – either through propellers or jets. Even if an aircraft were to completely eliminate engine noise (and that day is coming) it would still be pushing a lot of air around, and moving air is sound in its rawest form – a wave of compression through the atmosphere. So a quiet flying car might need to rely upon some sort of magical “anti-gravity” technology not even glimpsed in our wildest predictions of physics. Unlikely.

Even if we could solve the noise problem (give all the people and animals noise-cancelling headphones to wear?), we’d immediately run into another problem: scale. The skies over any Australian city hold only very few flying objects, measured in the tens, or, at the most, the low hundreds. Managing even that number of aircraft requires fully crewed air traffic control centres scattered around the country. Presuming a one-to-one substitution of flying cars for ground vehicles – because, of course, everyone would want one – there would soon be hundreds of thousands of flying cars above our city skies every morning and every evening.

Joby Aviation’s sky taxi. Credit: Joby Aviation.

All drivers know that, at best, other drivers on their roads can be inattentive – at worst, downright reckless. Drivers tolerate that risk where a collision means little more than a prang that can be buffed out. But even a glancing blow at speed and altitude would likely create multiple fatalities as both vehicles fell from the sky, crashing into the dense cityscape below. Given the number of prangs on an average day in our cities, our flying-car-filled skies would become a shooting gallery, raining carnage down onto an undefended population.

Operating in such a crowded and dangerous environment may simply be beyond the capacity of even the best pilots. Although millions around the world hold flying licences, all of them are taught to operate aircraft within far less crowded environments than those that will accompany the introduction of flying cars.

ASKA plans for a hybrid electric vehicle takeoff and landing (eVTOL) that works as an aircraft and ground car. Credit: NFT Inc.

A pilot does their utmost to continuously scan the volume of space they’re operating within, maintaining awareness of all the aircraft (and weather conditions) that could force them into a rapid reaction. Make that a hundred times harder – as it certainly would be during peak hour – and it falls so far beyond the cognitive capabilities of any human being as to make it effectively impossible. Pilots would never be able to maintain the awareness they need to guide their craft safely from takeoff to landing.

Despite all of these fundamental roadblocks, this year looks set to mark the birth of a realistic flying car. Toward the end of February, super-secretive startup Joby Aviation unveiled the first model of its own “flying taxi” in a YouTube video narrated by the firm’s founder, JoeBen Bevirt. The video starts off normally enough, with Bevirt talking about the decade-long research and development efforts that led to the aircraft sitting on a landing pad behind him. It’s an aircraft that looks like it has more in common with a $2000 UAV – a drone – than anything you’d see in the skies today, with six large propellers mounted above the aircraft, but parallel to the ground, just as they would be on a drone – or, for that matter, the main rotor of a helicopter.

About 95 seconds into the video, something extraordinary happens: the propellers begin to spin, as the aircraft slowly powers up. Although you can see Bevirt’s hair being tossed around as the propellers send a wash of air in his direction, he continues to speak in relatively measured tones.

Within 15 seconds, that aircraft has risen vertically above the landing pad, while Bevirt continues to speak. In terms of live demos, it’s as impressive as anything Steve Jobs ever came up with; in a single stroke, Bevirt shows that Joby Aviation has created an aircraft that’s both quiet and has VTOL – vertical take-off and landing capabilities. All of the best qualities of a helicopter, with none of the drawbacks.

Although mounted on a fixed wing, those propellers themselves are not fixed in place. Once the aircraft has attained sufficient altitude, they can rotate 90 degrees, facing forward, just as you’d see on a normal propeller-driven aircraft. That gives it both excellent range – more than 250 km – and a top speed of well over 300 km/h. The final kicker: just like a drone, it’s battery-powered, and 100% electric.

Kitty Hawk recently revealed their plans for a single-seat electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Credit: Kitty Hawk.

The weight and size of the batteries needed to get an aircraft airborne made electrically-powered flight the Holy Grail of 21st century aviation. For 120 years, energy-dense petroleum fuels have been the only real option to generate the necessary thrust. Advances in electric vehicles have come to the aid of the flying car: the same batteries that make electric vehicles cheap and reliable make it possible for Joby Aviation to create an electric flying taxi. They, and other flying car ventures like Archer Aviation, Kitty Hawk and Lilium Jet, could crowd our skies with quiet(er) flying cars.

A recent report on Advanced Air Mobility from consultancy LEK noted more than 200 similar designs in development, with 30 seeking FAA flight certification in the US. Report author Natasha Santha reckons flying taxis “will not be commonplace globally in the next five years… However, the industry has tremendous potential to scale and deliver services at the cost of a taxi today at the fraction of the time.”

The Lilium Jet’s first prototype flew in 2019. Credit: Lilium

Could these new aircraft reshape our cities? The pandemic has seen the rise of the “supercommuter”, travelling more than three hours each way to reach the office, doing so only a few times a month. Flying taxis could make such journeys fast, and cheap enough that flying becomes the obvious choice. With the urban advantage already eroded by high-speed broadband, we might see a new generation of rural residents, each with their own landing pad, ready to fly to the city at a moment’s notice. “For the regional market,” Santha says, “costs could be as low as around 40 cents per km… materially changing the transport landscape.”

What this means for air traffic control remains an open question. Santha warns that lots of flying taxis create “another set of barriers, which are related to how we can integrate larger volumes [of air traffic]… moving to remote and autonomous piloting”.

In the long-term, a “fly-by-wire” solution similar to that on commercial aircraft could see these flying cars piloted by artificial intelligence. Will that be enough to avoid mid-air prangs? Look to the skies for the answer. 

Where’s my flying car? published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/