#in my unpopular opinion

[templeofshame]

is it a hot take that "you shouldn't pay, it's your birthday" is ridiculous if you picked the thing and invited people. if people wanna pay for something as a gift, great, but inviting people out to some fancy restaurant to buy you food is just shitty

[eatfreeordie]

Unpopular foraging opinion: while harvesting a bunch of inedible stuff to take some generic aesthetic cottagecore photo is silly and not interesting, foraging inedible things sustainably for art is no worse for the environment than a lot of things people do for art. And making bad art is actually valid.

[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.

[soosoosoup]

sunset serenade

[stealingpotatoes]

How do you think tl4j would react to seeing videos of how they used to act?

they'd probably cringed out or thinking "i need therapy", but what'd be even more fun is seeing videos/pictures of EACH OTHER

[banjo-bugs]

I truly genuinely believe they would get along so well

[niinnyu]

Yuuji, first place in my jjk popularity poll.

[cosmicdreamgrl]

𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘬 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: (73/?)

[bklily]

HOW ARE WE FEELING TWST ROOK FANS

[creepfactors]

a man needs a maid

lord help me because im having many a serious thoughts about them; i reiterate the slowburn potential is wild!

[templeofshame]

Unpopular opinion, the "history hates lovers" assumption that any close same-gender relationship is actually a homophobically censored sexual relationship, while accurate in instances is genuinely harmful in erasing both romantic and platonic relationships that aren't sexual and just in making it harder to consider the complexity without the assumption that it's homophobic

[5hrignold]

i meant to put this together days ago but here’s pim gifs from the new episode let’s all pretend it still just came out lalalala

[blackseafoam]

Just got halfway through TCW s3 and SUDDENLY Ahsoka is all grown up with her two light sabers!?? When did that happen? (I am aware of the time skipping but DAMN! That caught me off guard)

Anyway I love it when she makes this face, goodbye.

[fuck-you-showerthoughts]

Let the patriarchy get to you! Keep mutilating that body, good things are ahead. Get even more dangerous hormones!

I’m replacing my estrogen with adrenaline and my dick with a buzzsaw as we speak and I’ve never felt more alive

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN | 240810 • JJAM & CHK CHK BOOM @ MUSIC CORE