#city space

[s2z]

Sunshine, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2024-12-30 10:13:40 by stuart murdoch Via Flickr: A slice of suburban Melbourne life unfolds on sun-dappled pavers, where a lonely pink-capped phone booth stands sentinel beside a weathered wooden bench. A stray shopping cart rests like an urban tumbleweed against native grasses, while behind, a building blazes coral-pink against the summer sky. Street trees cast their lacy shadows across the scene, their branches dancing with the morning light. A passing taxi melts into a streak of yellow motion, like a brush stroke on this urban canvas. The scene captures that liminal magic of Australian suburban spaces - where utility meets unexpected beauty, and public life writes its daily poetry in metal, wood, and light. This is a notorious corner of Sunshine. Opposite is the former Sunshine Art Spaces. As I sat 2 of my own exhibitions here I witnessed more than I care to admit to. One of several projects, that explore photography as evidence amongst other ideas. Tumblr | Instagram | Photography links | my Ko-fi shop | Off Ya Trolley! | s2z digital garden | pixelfed.social | vero | Dpreview albums | my work archived on trove at the N.L.A.

[maxiumart]

So On my other socials, I have been doing this for a bit...its day 222 now of making art pieces... 

[luetta]

[pollodastiro]

This must be the place - by @pollodastiro

PRINT IS NOW ON SALE:

[ai-dream]

[fantasista0077]

Colors Dance and Animated Voices.

Vibrant cityscapes for phone wallpaper.

[refugeed-kim]

YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE

This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.

Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.

[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.

[pixel8or]

[nestedneons]

By hirosekai

[ghostbsuter]

"You're an ancient." Zatanna breaths out, watching as Phantom's hair grew into a startling black, tiny stars being born and the comets flying.

"I am."

Breaking from her shock, she shakes her head. "You show mercy. Not many gods of their home do so."

Phantom agrees with her. "Not many of these gods have been born human before."

[bacchuschucklefuck]

january month of yuugi

[deletingmyself]

(by Benaja Germann)

[kublakola]

Ally Beardsley is so good at playing Hot Competent Adults with Messy Internal Lives. Russell is the #1 fix-it man, and the sluttiest person alive, and desperately lonely. Margaret can do more in a battle with her HSBC app than most people can do with a gun. Also she is in a codependent decade-long lesbian situationship with her former coworker and current enemy. Pete is messier than most, but goddamn if he isn't good at selling drugs, and goddamn if he isn't a great Vox Phantasma. Kristen's not an adult but she's well on her way to getting back with her ex while simultaneously championing a brand new pantheon of gay goddesses. What a pc roster.

[juney-blues]

For the last time, the Diamond Authority in Steven Universe isn't a stand-in for actual fascism, it's a vehicle for the queer power fantasy of getting your transphobic grandma to understand.

[ai-dream]