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fleurcareil · 1 year ago

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West Manitoba: Inglis & Riding Mountain

After driving 370k east from Manitou Beach, I finally crossed into Manitoba, thereby losing an hour to the time difference. Although the prairie provinces look small on the map of Canada, they're really still quite large to cross, especially if you take the backroads that go puzzle-like EW, then NS and back EW around the fields (some roads paved and the less-travelled ones unpaved). A long drive during which I belted along with my oldies playlist such as ABBA, Elvis, Dire Straits, Supertramp & the Beautiful South but also the Weeknd & Venga Boys! 😁

I hadn't planned any touristy things as this day was mostly a bridge towards Riding Mountain, which was too far to drive in one go and also fully booked for the Labour Day long weekend. Sunny & warm, I did have a few spare hours to hopefully spend on a beach...

Lake of the Prairies is another massive hydro reservoir (I'm unsure about the ecological impacts but it's certainly good for climate change), which looked almost threatening from the dam due to the strong wind, but luckily Asessippi provincial park's beach provided some respite as it's on a protected inlet.

I had thought of chilling here for a few hours to soak up the sun, but the water was uninviting and as the wind continued to get stronger, I gave up relatively quickly and made my way to the tiny village of Inglis.

Despite having taken so many already, I couldn't resist one last picture of the fields as these were my favourite colours 🤩; a combo of light-green and brown co-growing crops - no clue what they are but likely that it's to minimize soil erosion (as I was taught in one of my conservation courses).

I had been forewarned by the hotel owner that it was "an old place" which was a gross understatement 🤣.... it's a shame I didn't take a picture, fleeing the flies when I got out of the car, but being above a bar it looked like a western saloon, with less paint remaining on the wooden boards than imaginable! But it was clean and I had the place to myself, and my concerns about late-night bar noise dissipated when I was the only guest for dinner, whilst a few would trickle in for one drink (or to buy smokes), and then disappear again. The owner was a nice chap, who had moved here as a compromise to his wife midway between Saskatoon and Winnipeg... what people do for love! 😜

Besides its bar, Inglis boasts the only remaining row of 1920-40's era "Standard Plan" grain elevators which have been renovated as a national historic site (promise, these will be my last pics of grain elevators 😅). Over 6,000 of these structures used to be across the Prairies, but most have been torn down or fallen apart, and this is the only place where there's still a row of multiple elevators, each owned by a different company competing with each other. For example, the Reliance company (2nd from the left) owned a total of 254 elevators across the country!

The farmer's truck would drive into the building through the large side-doors and after weighing, drop the grain through the grated floor. The grain would be hauled up by buckets into the tower to later fill train wagons through the exterior pipes. The little houses at the front were where payments would be made, and gossip / banter exchanged between the men😆.

The next day, I was excited to make my way over to Mountain Riding national park, of which I had read an article over 10 years ago and I've been looking forward to visiting ever since. So-called "an island of wilderness surrounded by a sea of farmland", it's a bit out of the way but here I was finally, so I had booked 3 nights of camping... a bit risky in September but hoping the cold & rain would stay away just a bit longer 🤞 (it didnt!)

Coming from the west, I dropped by Deep Lake first which has a pair of iconic red chairs that are dotted throughout national parks. The water being so calm tickled my paddling desire 😁 however that turned out quite an ordeal; I first needed to get the SUP inspected for aquatic invasive species and then my pump hose repair broke down leaking air like crazy 😫. 1.5 hours later I did manage to get on the water and although the scenery was nothing special, I was happy to be out! Very subtly, the colours were starting to change from the summer greens to fall orange... 🍁

Towards the end of the afternoon, I arrived at Wasagaming which had a great resort town vibe with lots of people hanging out at the beach and enjoying a pretty sunset 😍.

In Canada, the weather often suddenly flips around Labour Day, and this year was no exception; it started raining overnight and temperatures plummeted so was already regretting my camping choice! Luckily it did dry up mid-day so that I could get out of the tent and visit a Wishing Well surrounded by pretty flowers.

I wished for two things; that my pump hose would hold and that it would no longer rain, and lo behold both came to be!! 🥰 (next time, I'll wish for world peace 😉). Someone had recommended to paddle Katherine Lake, where I was able to get close to a beaver lodge and clearly see its underwater construction.

The lake had been quite small & I was up for some more, so I only partially deflated the board, stacked it in the back of the car and drove to nearby Whirlpool Lake for a second paddle... I had forgotten however to include a time frame for my wish 😛, so inflating the board back up was a huge struggle (with both hands trying to close the leaks 😣), and by the time I was on the water, the wind had picked up & menacing clouds were coming my way... I cut my losses after 45 minutes and just made it in time back to the car before the first rain dropped. The red wine over meatballs & soup made up for the cold weather so that I could dive straight from the restaurant into the warm sleeping bag! 😊

Next morning, I got up early to have another attempt to see bison in their summer pasture grounds where a herd of 40-50 is being maintained - they're in process of converting more forest to grassland so that in the future the herd can be expanded but for now that's the maximum number of animals that the habitat can sustain.

First observation from the viewing tower was that the smoke had returned but then I spotted some black dots on the landscape, in total some 30 animals! Driving a bit further along, there was a separate group of 13 that was close to the road, so I turned off the motor and sat sipping my tea while hearing them munch 😍. To my surprise, they came closer & closer until they walked straight past my car! Perfect way to start the day!

Back at the campsite around 11, I made a hearty breakfast of bacon & cheese to warm me up, while prepping dinner for the campfire that night. With the clouds and cold I was not in a mood to go for a long hike or paddle, so instead I did a smaller one which showcased ancient beach ridges (supposedly where the trees are) and a pretty birch forest. Disturbingly though, I also saw 5 big bear poos (full with berries) on the narrow trail which freaked me out a little, so I ended up almost running back to the parking lot... the night before, my neighbour camper had seen a bear walk by around 3am (chased away later by rangers)😮 so I was getting nervous - too much wildlife for my taste!

In the nearby city of Dauphin, I had hoped to visit its Ukrainian catholic church which is supposed to have beautiful frescoes, however it was closed for tours after the long weekend... the laundromat that morning had also closed for the season, so these were all signs summer was getting to an end... time to go home!

Back at Wasagaming, the sun unexpectedly came out so I went for a small hike on a floating boardwalk through the marsh... you know I like my boardwalks so was happy again, even more so when I saw a green heron (a smaller cousin of the "regular" great blue heron), a muskrat as well as a beaver!! 😍🥰 When I mentioned to a woman that the bison had been so close this morning, she said her car got rammed once by a bull causing $8,000 in damages! 😮

In the evening, the campfire & double set of clothes kept me comfy warm, and so did my mummy sleeping bag, but when it was 2 degrees when I woke up it was clear that this was my last night tenting... Getting dressed, eating breakfast and brushing teeth with ice-cold water was not fun so it was a dash to my heated car! 😄

I hadn't slept much because there was a pack of wolves loudly howling throughout the night... they seemed close but as sound travels far when it's quiet, I'm sure they were far away (or maybe not?!😅). This together with all the other wildlife things of the last few days however did make me think twice about going alone for the park's signature 14k hike up Bald Hill... by now the park was deserted (everyone back to school) and although I contemplated waiting at the trailhead until other people would show up, I realized there was no point in pretending I wasn't scared... the whole idea is that I have fun rather than checking things off a list!

On the way out of the park, there was still a viewpoint over the Manitoba escarpment and the impressive East Gate to admire and then that was goodbye to Riding Mountain!

Wildlife: 2 great grey owls, 11 deer, 2 loons, 1 hawk, 1 falcon, 1 coyote (crossing in front of my car), 47 bison (including 5 calves), 5 bear poos (almost counts as a bear😅), 1 green heron, 1 muskrat, 1 beavers, howling wolves (all at Riding Mountain)

SUPs: three at Riding Mountain

Hikes: two at Riding Mountain

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thecollegefootballguy · 4 years ago

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The Real 2020 Season: Week 2

Hello everyone, welcome to Week 2 of The Real 2020 Season! We’re imagining how things would have gone in the 2020 football season if COVID hadn’t ruined everything.

Week 1 featured a few big games amid a sea of tune-up matches without much excitement. Nothing too earth-shattering, but we’ve got some real good matchups this week.

If you want to start from the beginning here is Week 0.

The Rankings

Week 2 AP Poll

1. Clemson 1-0 (1-0) 2. Alabama 1-0 (0-0) 3. Ohio State 1-0 (0-0) 4. Georgia 1-0 (0-0) 5. Oklahoma 1-0 (0-0) 6. LSU 1-0 (0-0) 7. Penn State 1-0 (0-0) 8. Florida 1-0 (0-0) 9. Oregon 1-0 (0-0) 10. Notre Dame 1-0 11. Auburn 1-0 (0-0) 12. Texas A&M 1-0 (0-0) 13. Texas 1-0 (0-0) 14. Oklahoma State 1-0 (0-0) 15. Washington 1-0 (0-0) 16. UCF 1-0 (0-0) 17. Minnesota 1-0 (0-0) 18. Utah 1-0 (0-0) 19. Indiana 1-0 (1-0) 20. USC 0-1 (0-0) 21. Cincinnati 1-0 (0-0) 22. Iowa State 1-0 (0-0) 23. Iowa 1-0 (0-0) 24. Tennessee 1-0 (0-0) 25. Michigan 0-1 (0-0)

The Narrative

The Big Ten took one on the chin in Week 1 as Michigan fell to Washington and the Wisconsin was upset at home by Indiana. Two of the league’s better programs already have their Playoff hopes on life support after one week. It’s not a good look for the conference. The ACC similarly had a disappointment after North Carolina fell at UCF, leaving Clemson the only team in that conference in the polls.

The SEC and Big 12 didn’t have many marquee games so not much changed for them. Besides USC’s scheduled loss to Alabama in Dallas, the PAC-12 actually had a pretty good week thanks to the Huskies’ win combined with Utah’s victory over BYU. Oregon also didn’t get upset by North Dakota State which should count for something.

UCF’s win over the Tar Heels is another big win for the G5 and the American specifically. The Knights are once again charging for the NY6 spot. I’d say they’re gunning for the Playoff but we know that the committee probably won’t let them in unless something very weird happens.

The Games

Week 2 still has a high number of bodybag games, but we’re still going to see some high profile out of conference matchups.

Winning teams are highlighted in bold.

Ohio at Boston College Louisville at #1 Clemson Samford at Florida State Mississippi State at NC State Syracuse at Rutgers Appalachian State at Wake Forest Elon at Duke Gardner-Webb at Georgia Tech Wagner at Miami FL #11 Auburn vs North Carolina (Atlanta, GA) Pittsburgh at Marshall VMI at Virginia #7 Penn State at Virginia Tech Kansas at Baylor #22 Iowa State at #23 Iowa North Dakota at Kansas State #24 Tennessee at #5 Oklahoma Tulsa at #14 Oklahoma State Prairie View A&M at TCU #13 Texas at #6 LSU Alabama State at Texas Tech Eastern Kentucky at West Virginia Western Kentucky at #19 Indiana Northern Illinois at Maryland Ball State at #25 Michigan Michigan State at BYU #3 Ohio State at #9 Oregon Connecticut at Illinois Tennessee Tech at #17 Minnesota Central Michigan at Nebraska Tulane at Northwestern Memphis at Purdue Southern Illinois at Wisconsin Norfolk State at Charlotte FIU at #16 UCF Indiana State at Middle Tennessee Hampton at Old Dominion Louisiana Tech at Southern Miss North Texas at #12 Texas A&M Army at Rice Alabama A&M at UAB UTEP at Nevada Akron at New Mexico State Robert Morris at Bowling Green Saint Francis at Buffalo Kennesaw State at Kent State Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Miami OH Coastal Carolina at Eastern Michigan San Diego State at Toledo Western Michigan at #21 Cincinnati Boise State at Air Force Colorado State at Oregon State New Mexico at #20 USC Southern Utah at Utah State Wyoming at Louisiana Fresno State at Colorado Fordham at Hawaii UC Davis at San Jose State Arizona State at UNLV Cal Poly at California Stanford at Arizona Sacramento State at #15 Washington Houston at Washington State Montana State at #18 Utah Kentucky at #8 Florida East Tennessee State at #4 Georgia Vanderbilt at Missouri East Carolina at South Carolina Georgia State at #2 Alabama Arkansas at #10 Notre Dame Southeast Missouri State at Ole Miss Campbell at Georgia Southern Troy at Massachusetts Howard at Arkansas State North Carolina A&T at Liberty

Now that’s more like it. Week 2 produced some incredible games and huge upsets that shook up the Playoff picture. Three top ten teams fall as #9 Oregon held off #3 Ohio State in Eugene to give the Buckeyes a horrific blow to their Playoff candidacy. Meanwhile, #13 Texas came to Baton Rouge and managed to beat the defending champions. In the biggest upset of them all, #7 Penn State was downed by a Virginia Tech team that was supposedly reeling from a loss to Liberty in Week 1. The rest of the usual suspects did just fine but the top 5 is going to look different.

To further the embarrassment for the Big Ten, #25 Michigan was upset by Ball State of all teams, completely humiliating the 0-2 Wolverines. Perhaps less surprisingly, Nebraska and Purdue were upset by Central Michigan and Memphis respectively. It was a blood-letting of a week that could very well keep the Big Ten out of the Playoff entirely. The only silver lining was #23 Iowa’s close victory over rival #22 Iowa State.

The other ranked vs ranked matchup saw #5 Oklahoma shake off a slow start to beat #24 Tennessee in Norman. The third Chick-fil-A Kickoff game in two weeks saw #11 Auburn beat UNC. If the Tar Heels hadn’t lost to UCF in Week 1 it would have been a ranked vs ranked affair but oh well.

The G5 had a very good week overall. UCF and Cincinnati continue to roll as the spearhead of the AAC. Marshall beat Pittsburgh at home to announce their candidacy for the NY6 bowl. The MAC is on fire, following up Buffalo’s Week 1 upset over Kansas State, meanwhile Ball State and Central Michigan recorded upsets. Toledo beat San Diego State as well, likely knocking one of the Mountain West’s more consistent programs out of the NY6 race. Appalachian State, the usual torch bearer for the Sun Belt, lost to Wake Forest.

Outside of perhaps two dozen interesting matchups the rest of the games aren’t worth talking about. Week 2 still means that plenty of teams were playing snore inducing tune-up games.

The Standings

We’re still mostly in non-conference play so the standings won’t change too much yet, but here they are if you’re curious. Each league is already having a storyline develop.

The Big Picture

By far the biggest story of the young 2020 season is the apparent complete collapse of the Big Ten. For over five years, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, and Wisconsin dominated the league and each had squads capable of making the Playoff if they weren’t beating up on each other. In just two weeks, all four of these teams have lost a game they were favored to win and it looks like the Playoff chances for the entire league are on life support already. Michigan’s loss to Ball State is extra embarrassing, and starting out 0-2 is not good for Jim Harbaugh’s job prospects.

The other huge event is the home loss of the defending champions. LSU lost a ton of talent from their 2019 team and struggled to keep up with a Texas team that gave them trouble the year before. On the flip-side, it finally looks like the Longhorns might be back. It definitely is one of UT’s best true road wins in a long time. Time will tell if the Big Ten will rebound and if the Horns can capitalize on their victory.

At the G5 level, the MAC is making a big push for the NY6. Long considered one of the weaker G5 conferences, the MAC already has three P5 scalps only two weeks in. Gotta love that MACtion. On the other side, the Mountain West, usually the #2 G5 league, only has one unbeaten team left in Boise State. The Broncos are of course the favorites to win the conference, but it still hurts the league’s image. The American is still the top dog with 4 unbeaten teams led by UCF and Cincinnati.

The New Rankings

Week 3 AP Poll

1. Clemson 2-0 (2-0) 2. Alabama 2-0 (0-0) 3. Georgia 2-0 (0-0) 4. Oklahoma 2-0 (0-0) 5. Oregon 2-0 (0-0) 6. Florida 2-0 (1-0) 7. Texas 2-0 (0-0) 8. Notre Dame 2-0 9. Auburn 2-0 (0-0) 10. Texas A&M 2-0 (0-0) 11. Ohio State 1-1 (0-0) 12. Oklahoma State 2-0 (0-0) 13. Washington 2-0 (0-0) 14. LSU 1-1 (0-0) 15. UCF 2-0 (0-0) 16. Minnesota 2-0 (0-0) 17. Utah 2-0 (0-0) 18. Iowa 2-0 (0-0) 19. Indiana 2-0 (1-0) 20. USC 1-1 (0-0) 21. Cincinnati 2-0 (0-0) 22. Penn State 1-1 (0-0) 23. Missouri 2-0 (1-0) 24. Liberty 2-0 25. Memphis 2-0 (0-0)

Polls usually change wildly following such a bloody week. Ohio State is knocked out of the top ten, but only just. Oregon now replaces the Buckeyes as the fifth real Playoff contender outside of the usual suspects. Even with LSU and Tennessee’s losses, the SEC still dominates the polls. Five of the top ten come from the SEC and Missouri jumped into the top 25 to replace the fallen Vols. The Big Ten is completely outside of the top ten which is a staggering sight to see. With Iowa State’s loss to Iowa it looks like the Big 12 is going to be fought over by Oklahoma and Texas, just like the old days, unless Oklahoma State has anything to say about it. The Big 12 has 3 teams in the top 15 so they have a great case to be the #2 conference in the nation following the SEC at this point, though even the PAC-12 can start making noise with Oregon and perhaps even Washington in the mix.

The American is still the only G5 league represented in the polls, but they now have three teams in the top 25 with Memphis joining the party. UCF has even cracked the top 15, this early in the season it might give a bit of hope for G5 fans that they could even make the Playoff if, say, the Big Ten and one more P5 conference can’t fill the slots. Liberty joins the AP poll for the first time ever thanks to their week 1 win over Virginia Tech and the Hokies’ upset of Penn State. How high can the Flames fly?

So that’s Week 2 of the Real 2020 season. Things are just heating up, so tune in next time for another exciting installment!

#college football #Clemson Tigers #Alabama Crimson Tide #Georgia Bulldogs #Oklahoma Sooners #Oregon Ducks #Florida Gators #Texas Longhorns #Notre Dame Fighting Irish #Auburn Tigers #Texas A&M Aggies #Iowa Hawkeyes #Virginia Tech Hokies #Ball State Cardinals

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luoup · 7 years ago

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hello @strawberry-void! i was your secret santa for the @voltronexchange! i saw you liked hunk, pidge, and lance, and since i love garrison trio and am living in a very cold place this year, i decided to write our favorite troublemakers on a snow planet!

it’s kind of in bits because i had no idea how to set this up, but i tried to include most of the categories. i think i got friendship, adventure, some fluff, a bit of humor, one scene of emotional h/c, and holiday-specific... if you count winter as a holiday. whoops.

happy winter, and happy new year!

The planet Lumrae finally came into sight, slowly filling the Blue Lion’s viewscreens with swirling white and traces of blue.

“There it is,” Hunk said, pointing. “Our new home for the next month.”

“Even from space, that looks cold,” Lance muttered.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the Guardian of Water and Ice?” Pidge asked, and Lance elbowed them, pushing them away from his pilot’s chair – at least until they came back with an elbowing twice as hard into his own ribs.

“Okay, you two, enough,” Hunk interfered before the others could descend into an all-out pushing war. “We’re gonna be stuck here for a while, don’t start stuff now.”

“Of course. I’ll just wait until his guard is down,” Pidge agreed with an ominous smile, and Lance squawked some kind of defense that had to be cut off as he navigated his Lion through the descent to the surface.

Lumrae was beautiful, but Lance was right – it was cold. The planet was situated just on the outer edge of the habitable range of its sun, and its seasons consisted of cold, colder, and really goddamn cold. The seas were practically half made up of icebergs, only liquid because of their currents and tides, and every landmass was covered in thick white snow frosting every mountain and plain. And the system’s sun was powerful, sending flares all the way to even Lumrae. In addition, the planet had tremendous magnetic fields – fields so forceful that Voltron’s comms would struggle to get to and from the planet’s surface, especially combined with the solar flares. It wasn’t cut off completely, but it did mean that communications would be few and far between for the next month or so, with pre-planned check-ins mostly scheduled between predicted flares.

As the Blue Lion descended towards the planet’s surface, Lance broke the introspective silence. “I can’t believe we’re going to be here for a whole month.”

“Not necessarily a full month,” Hunk reminded him. “We could finish early and be done sooner.”

“Yeah,” Pidge said, “between Hunk and me, this shouldn’t take long at all. The hard part is figuring out how to detect the fleet’s signals and determine how to sort those out from everything else, plus decoding. Building the satellite dishes themselves will be a piece of cake.”

“‘Two Geniuses Build Yet Another Never-Before-Seen Type of Detector,’” Lance said, a hint of acidity in his tone. “What am I even here for? I’m just the Lion taxi since Yellow and Green can’t handle cold like this.”

At that, Hunk hugged his friend as best as he could with the pilot chair in the way. “We can’t do everything on our own, just two people,” he said. “We need three, at least, and you’re the best choice for someone to come and help us. You hang around with us all the time, you know how we work and how to help and not hinder. We need you.”

“Also, if Hunk and I were left on our own for a few weeks we’d probably get sucked into the work and forget to sleep or anything,” Pidge added. But they put their hand on Lance’s shoulder, the gesture at odds with their sarcastic tone.

It was going to be a weird (and cold) few weeks, but together these three could do it. Garrison Trio, no matter what.

The set of buildings the three were staying in used to be a research station for a group of aliens a number of years – or whatever passed for years out here – ago. It was long abandoned, but still functional enough, especially with Blue helping to power the heat.

The plan was to stay for three or four weeks, working to build a set of satellites that could detect and analyze signals from a new Galra fleet. Rumor had alerted Team Voltron of its creation and warned that the new ships had cutting-edge technology and weapons that had the potential to cause tremendous damage if they got up and running, or worst became a common ship type in the Galra army.

Hunk and Pidge were best-equipped to design and create the tracking system, but they needed the room and stability to work which meant they had to stay planetside somewhere they wouldn’t be noticed and work. They couldn’t do it alone, so Lance was coming along to help. Everyone was busy and had many responsibilities to Voltron and the Alliance, but this was taking priority for the moment. Lumrae was lovely and secluded, and they had everything they needed there. There were a few issues, though, as there always would be.

“It is so. Quiznacking. Cold.” Lance muttered, rubbing his hands together.

“Quit whining and help me with these boxes,” Pidge snapped, hauling a crate nearly as big as they were into a large room they would be using as a workspace.

“How are you so comfortable?” Hunk asked, the sound of his teeth chattering audible from where he was standing as close to one of the heat vents as possible.

Pidge rolled their eyes, shoving the crate into its place and returning for another. “I’m from Finland, and we lived in Minnesota for a while before Dad transferred to the Garrison in Arizona. I’m used to cold, I just hate being outside in general. Besides, our armor is temp-regulated. We’re not going to get frostbite or anything.”

“Okay, Your Wintery Majesty,” Lance said, “you may be from the world of snow, but I am Cuban and I am cold! Arizona was fine, but this is the polar north and I am not made for this!”

“Seconded,” Hunk said. “Hawaii is great, and Arizona’s bearable if a little dry, but this is kind of ridiculous. There was ice on Blue just from landing here!”

“Kepler save me from tropical boys and their fear of a little frost,” Pidge muttered. “Now hurry up. The sooner we unpack, the sooner we can go inside and heat the buildings. You’ll warm up faster if you move.”

The cold was unbelievable, but the three were nothing if not curious, so it was only a matter of time before they were venturing outside. In the cases of Lance and Hunk there was much bundling up and debating beforehand, while Pidge just stood back and muttered to themselves. They were uninterested in going outside not because it was cold but because they would rather stay in and work on the project or one of their own, but they had been coaxed and coerced into coming along. Really, everyone seemed to mostly be convincing each other, but eventually they all got themselves together and it happened.

The outpost was backed up on a forest of tall blue-gray trees that resembled the conifers of Earth’s boreal forests. Every branch and needle was dusted with snow, and deep drifts covered the ground. The rest of the building’s surroundings were fields, wide and open under the sky. They could have been prairies in a warmer climate, but there was so much snow over everything that they might as well have been mud flats for all that could be distinguished beneath the thick blanket of white, spread as far as the eye could see.

The sun was up, although it was a cold light that did nothing to warm the air. The snow glittered like a field of diamonds, and even Hunk and Lance, warm-weather lovers to the core, were excited and energized. Pidge seemed half-up half-down, their familiarity and comfort with snow and cold shadowed by memories of their family, scattered to the stars. But they were nothing if not adaptive, and their friends’ energy was contagious.

The group explored for a while, familiarizing themselves with the landscape around the station and digging their way through the snows. It was exhausting work, but finally Hunk remembered that he’d seen some snowshoe-like things in one of the storage rooms and ran back to get them. Movement issues solved (Pidge had been waist-deep or more in some areas, and even Hunk and Lance had struggled to move at any speed), they ventured further, forging paths into the forest and, once that turned out to be damp and cold and dark, turning and exploring the snow-meadows on the other side of the area.

Despite the cold, there was enough humidity that the snow packed well, allowing for lower-effort walking and easy packing. Between the three of them, the building was simple.

They made the Blue Lion first. Lance insisted, “She brought us here and keeps the place warm, the least we can do is honor her by building a statue in her name! And made from her own element, too,” and so the Left Leg of Voltron got priority. She also had to have her head rebuilt twice because they had underestimated how hard they needed to pack the snow to make the muzzle stay on, and then Hunk sneezed and the whole right half of the face fell off.

Green was next. She was easy because she was the smallest Lion and they already had Blue for scale. Pidge spent an inordinate amount of time detailing the broad shield on her back while Lance and Hunk made snow angels and tried to regain feeling in fingertips, respectively.

Yellow was the last and biggest snow Lion. Getting her size right meant that Pidge or Lance had to work on her back armor while Hunk held them up to reach, and his perfectionism meant that they had to redo the design three times before the Yellow Paladin was satisfied. But finally his snow Lion was deemed good enough to stand as a representation of his beloved Leg robot.

They glittered brilliantly in the light of the setting sun – the Blue, Green, and Yellow Lions of Voltron. Yellow was the biggest, solid and densely packed. She was so strong and well-structured that they could climb on her with no damage to the statue. Green was smaller, but every detail was sharp and accurate. Pidge had also jammed a series of branches into the ground nearby in imitation of her vine cannon. Blue looked perfect represented in snow, and Lance had hauled a few chunks of ice from the frozen creek near the forest and heaped them near her tail as if she’d just fired an ice blast.

Eventually it was too dark and cold (well, cold

) to stay outside and the three returned indoors, talking alternately about plans to make a Black and Red snow lion tomorrow, and what to have for dinner.

“Hunk and Pidge come see this right now!”

There was a terrible crashing sound as the Left side of Voltron dropped everything they were holding and bolted from their workroom to the living space where Lance’s shout had come from. Pidge had a blowtorch in their hands, holding it awkwardly like their brain had gotten stuck somewhere between planning to use it as a bat or a flamethrower. Hunk had… a wrench. Also a bruise on his forehead from where he’d banged it in surprise when Lance had called for them.

They were expecting some kind of emergency, a disaster approaching or in process, something. So they were both more than a little confused when they arrived and there was nothing there except a very excited-looking Lance.

“Dude, we had better be under attack or something, I swear to stars,” Hunk said, bracing his hands on his knees and leaning over to catch his breath. “You can’t do that to my heart.”

Pidge dropped the blowtorch. “What in quiznak could be so important that you’d call us like Zarkon just appeared in the kitchen wearing Hunk’s frilly apron?” they snapped, adrenaline with nowhere to go leaving them staticky and irritable.

Lance looked like Christmas, his birthday, and victory against the Galra had all just happened simultaneously. He didn’t say anything at all in response to his friends’ words. Instead, with an awestruck look on his face, he pointed out the window. The other two approached cautiously, and what they saw outside took their breath away faster than any cold wind.

The sky of Lumrae was illuminated with brilliant light. Ripples of blue rolled like waves across the darkness, flaring up and down, flickering like candles, blooming like flowers. Flashes of white faded in and out, and shards of ember-orange sparkled occasionally throughout the expanse, glittering like stars.

It was beautiful.

They all stared for a while, struck silent by the sheer power of the display. Suddenly Pidge spun around and bolted for the door, startling the boys and nearly knocking Lance over on their way.

“Pidge, where are you going?” Hunk called.

Lance was already following. “Wait for us!”

The two caught up to them in the small room that separated the research station interior from the harsh outdoors. They were trying to get their snowsuit on, but were in such a rush that they’d mixed up the leg holes and were now stuck half-in, half-out of the thing. Hunk helped untangle them while Lance got the other suits out, and once they were all bundled up the trio ventured outside.

In the time it had taken them to get ready, the northern lights hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. The snow reflected the light, shining blue as the sky flickered and flared above. Between the ribbons of light, the stars could still be seen, shining as bright as ever but taking a backseat to the planet’s polar lightshow.

Pidge didn’t slow at all. They charged out straight into the fields surrounding the outpost, heedless of the cold, the heavy drifts of snow, or the darkness. Lance followed close enough to keep from losing them, and Hunk came after the both of them, protesting sincerely as he hauled some flashlights and the snowshoes that would allow them to actually walk on top of all this snow, you know? Like we want to? Pidge? Pidge, wait up!

Despite the fact that the snow was almost as deep as they were tall in places, the Green Paladin didn’t slow down until they reached the middle of the field. There, they flung herself to the ground, the snow almost absorbing their entire body in its vibrant green snowsuit. The outpost and its floodlights were a good distance away, and the entire rest of the planet was uninhabited, leaving the lights in the sky unbelievably bright and big enough to swallow the mind.

Lance and Hunk finally caught up – Lance almost stepped on Pidge’s head before Hunk grabbed him. Lance opened his mouth to ask questions or tease or needle, but Hunk slapped his mittened hand over his mouth. He made Significant Eyebrows at his friend, nodding carefully towards Pidge.

The Green Paladin was lying flat on their back, staring at the sky. They looked… drifting, almost half-conscious, like they were somewhere else in her mind. It wasn’t clear whether it was a good or a bad place. Quietly, Lance lay down on their right side, Hunk on their left. Neither one said anything.

Lumrae’s northern lights danced overhead. The patterns were never the same, changing like waves, like leaves, like shifting sand. At times the banners of blue flared so bright that the stars were almost blinded out, then the lights would fade and the constellations would return. Blue, white, orange, with flickers of other colors like smoke, gone just when you looked at them.

Finally, Pidge spoke. “Matt and I used to watch the auroras, when we were little. We lived in a few different places, but my mom’s sister lived near Inari way up north. The northern lights are really strong up there. Our parents would take us out from the town, we’d find somewhere big and open where we could see the north, and we’d look for the lights. We stayed up so late past our bedtimes, those nights, but we were excitable kids who loved the sky, and both of our parents were astronomers. None of us could resist it. If I could see the auroras, I wouldn’t sleep until they’d faded.

“The auroras are stronger here. At home, they’re mostly green, sometimes white or pink or red or blue. This… it’s familiar, but it’s not the same. Earth’s lights – my lights – they’re different colors, they’re fainter, they don’t move the same. I’m looking at the aurora borealis, but home is a million miles away and I don’t know where my family is.”

“It’s like watching ocean waves from the bottom of the sea,” Lance murmured. “I’m not like you; I’ve never seen the aurora. We only ever saw pictures. These are really different, though. Honestly, back home I almost didn’t believe they were real. They look so… alien. Earth’s northern lights looked impossible, supernatural, and now I’m looking at this and it’s even moreso.”

He took a deep breath. “Every time we go to an ocean planet, one with lots of water and beautiful beaches, I can’t help but think of my family. My mom would always say she suspected I was half-mermaid, ’cause I wouldn’t ever leave the water until the very last minute, and always got right back in as soon as I could. I practically grew up on the beach, and being at the ocean without my family feels weird. Dissonant.”

Hunk spoke next. “Every time I’m in the kitchen, I’ll turn around and expect to see my grandmother there. Or my sister, or my mom, or my brother. We always cooked together, nobody was ever alone in the kitchen. The castle’s kitchen couldn’t be more different from the one in our house, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a kitchen, and my family isn’t in it.

“I miss them. But at the same time, I still love cooking. I’m learning how to use a ten-thousand-year-old Altean alien kitchen, for stars’ sake! And I’m not trying to belittle your feelings – at least I know they’re all safe on Earth. They’re still doing what they do, just… not with me. But I can miss my family and the memories of cooking with them while still enjoying cooking now. It’s not the same, but it can still be nice.”

“Nobody is trying to replace the memories,” Lance said. “I wish my parents and all my siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles would be at the beach with me every time we land on a water planet, but hey – I’m getting to explore alien planets! I miss them, but I can still enjoy the oceans out here. At least I’ll have some awesome stories to tell when we get back to Earth.”

Pidge released a shaky breath, letting it cloud their vision of the flickering auroras for a moment. “Yeah. It’s beautiful out here, no matter what happens or who’s here to see it. And of course it’s not the same, we’re on an alien planet in a totally different galaxy! These aren’t even technically the aurora borealis, since we aren’t on Earth,” they added, making the other two laugh.

“But if aurora borealis is for the solar-activity-caused lights near the north pole like aurora australis is for the southern lights, couldn’t this technically still be called aurora borealis?” Hunk asked. “Unless we’re actually at the south pole… wait, how do we even know which is which, or if alien planets even have a north and south? I don’t know anything about this planet, I need more data to respond to that.”

Lance snorted at the science-babble while Pidge just sighed and patted vaguely at Hunk’s hip, the best part they could reach as they lay there in the snow. “Who even knows. This is space, and aliens are weird. We can ask Coran, but we might just get a gibberish answer. I can never tell if he actually knows all those things or if he has no idea whatsoever and is just bullshitting super super hard with the best poker face in the universe.”

The group settled back into quiet for a while. There were shooting stars visible between the auroras – the sky was alight with movement. A huge comet blazed past, bright enough to dim even the brightest flares of the lights for just a moment, and Pidge reached out to take the hands of their friends.

They would be seeing the revontulet with their family soon. And maybe before they all went home, they could take Matt and Dad here to Lumrae and show them the alien northern lights, too.

The fire crackled gently, alien fuel causing it to burn a little redder than most Earth-based fires might, but warm nonetheless.

The mission was almost over. They had finished the detection system that would track the new Galra fleet. The satellites to pick up the signals had been designed, prototyped, and tested, and were ready for proper production by a close ally of Voltron with advanced tech-building resources. Hunk, Lance, and Pidge would be going home to the Castle of Lions soon.

But not tonight. They were still packing up, coordinating details and fine-tuning arrangements. Also, there was a powerful solar flare going tonight, as well as what Lance and Hunk called a blizzard and Pidge said was just a little snow you big babies, so takeoff would be sometime in the next few days. Blue was mostly ready to go, but was fortunately still heating the little research outpost. That combined with the fire and a pile of blankets ensured that everyone was quite warm and comfortable.

They were also all piled onto a couch-thing that was probably supposed to hold two people max, not that they cared. Tangled with each other like kittens, with blankets heaped on top, the three talked and joked and told stories, lazily, half-asleep.

Lance and Hunk still weren’t totally convinced about cold climates, but they did like it. There was something about snow that islands and beaches just didn’t quite match, and it had been great fun to run around and explore in it, building snow castles and snow Lions and snow Alteans (Lance had found the weirdest bit of lichen for the moustache), tracking wildlife and each other through the fields and forests - and the snowball fights. The many, many snowball fights.

It hadn’t all been perfect, though. The heat went out a few times in the station, leaving everything frosted and chilled until Hunk and Pidge could determine what was wrong with the system or Lance could figure out why Blue wasn’t connecting properly. Hunk caught a cold for a week and a half, sneezing and snuffling nonstop and complaining about Lance and Pidge’s badly-prepared soups.

Pidge themself fell through some ice into a frozen lake, but as it turned out they’d done that a lot back home and knew how to get themselves out – not that it didn’t give Hunk and Lance heart attacks and vow to never go near frozen lakes again, babying the Green Paladin for days after until they snapped and threatened to lock both of them outside unless they cut it out.

Lance got chased by some… ice geese? They were quite large and mostly transparent, and apparently very offended by the Blue Paladin’s discovery of their (tiny, fluffy, adorable, snowball-resembling) chicks. But he escaped without injury (by hiding in a snowdrift until the geese gave up the hunt) and now knew to avoid little snowballs that squeak-quacked if you picked them up and cuddled them.

So, a few misadventures, but fun nonetheless.

In between all the winter wonderland adventures, though, they had been working very hard. In a few days the three would be leaving Lumrae behind and heading in Blue for the warmth of the Castle of Lions. Much remained to be done before then, but for now there was a lull in which they were taking full advantage.

Eventually, the talking ran out and soon all three were fast asleep. Lance shifted and shuffled and finally settled down, sprawled halfway across the others. Hunk talked to himself in his sleep, mumbling about ice cream and snow cones and how it was really quite cold but of course he’d take another, alien desserts were such a fascinating research topic. Pidge’s eyes moved rapidly beneath their eyelids, but judging by the tiny smile on their face, it was all were good dreams.

It was quiet. Outside, the snow fell silently on the wintery planet. The only sounds were the snaps and pops of the fire, the soft sounds of humans sleeping, and Blue Lion’s purring as she crouched beside the station, warm and waiting.

The snow fell on Lumrae, and above the clouds the lights danced.

#voltronexchange2k17 #cryptidromantic #voltronexchange #voltron #lance #pidge #hunk #fic

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buttercup-bard · 7 years ago

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Thank you so much for tagging me @mademoiselle-lani, this was so much fun I love this stuff way too much! <3 <3 <3

four temperaments: sanguine | melancholic | choleric | phlegmatic

hogwarts house: gryffindor | hufflepuff | ravenclaw | slytherin

life path number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 22

brain lateralization test: left 70% | right 24%

Tagging @morgendaemmerung89, @bakerstreet-irregular, @currently-in-my-mind-palace, @missmuffin221, @singingfutch, @softelesbian, @ginnyweatherby and @ila-221b (Only if you want to of course! <3)

#tag game #quiz #me #mademoiselle-lani

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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How sports is Seven Worlds, One Planet: Episode 6?

Kei Nomiyama / Barcroft Media via Getty Images

David Attenborough’s new show is epic ... and sports.

We continue our extremely important mission to conduct a scene-by-scene review of the BBC’s new nature documentary, Seven Worlds, One Planet, in order to see how sports it is. We determined that Episode 1, which focused on Antarctica, was reasonably sports. Asia was very sports, as was South America. Australia was more drinking than sports, and Europe was extremely sports. Now it’s time for ...

Episode 6 North America

Scene 1: The Hare Hunt

Unless you’re either exceptionally lucky or exceptionally cynical in your choice of teams, following sports can be a thoroughly miserable experience. Every year, most teams fail, and they fail in heartbreaking ways. A sports obsession is a form of emotional gambling, and the house tends to win. Why do we do this to ourselves? I think it’s because we have to. Humans are fascinated by games, and, once captivated, it’s difficult to escape.

Sports might be a bad bet, but for many people they’re nourishing in a way that — the efforts of political punditry aside — cannot be found anywhere else. Also, while there’s not much joy in watching your team fail, it’s a lot of fun to watch everyone else’s also fail. Sports are schadenfreude.

Anyway in this scene a lynx repeatedly fails to catch a hare.

I spy with my little eye...a snowshoe hare #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/Y2nCQi8tDe

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

I think, if we were somehow turned into wild animals, most of us would choose to be apex predators. Being a prey creature, constantly at risk and having to stay on high alert all the time ... well, that sounds really too stressful. But most hunts end in failure, and barring freakish luck, predators seem hungry all the time, which can’t be any less stressful.

I think the lesson here is not to be a wild animal.

This particular lynx is stalking snowshoe hares in the depth of the Yukon winter. It looks cold, hungry, and miserable, and has to walk hundreds of miles in search for food, and when it finds one the hare just hides in a bush. A second hare also runs away and hides in a bush. Being a hare and getting chased by a lynx can’t be fun, but being a very peevish and hungry lynx would hardly be a good time either.

Aesthetics 10/10

Cats must be nature’s most stylish terrestrial predator. Even the smaller ones, like lynx, move with an instantly-recognisable grace. They’re beautiful creatures, made even lovelier by the pristine snow of the Canadian north.

youtube

Good lynx.

Difficulty 8/10

It’s obviously quite hard to catch a snowshoe hare.

Competitiveness 8/10

Frankly the hares seem to have the lynx overmatched, although the continued existence of any lynx at all implies that the contest is closer than it looks from these scenes.

Overall 26/30

I hope we’ve established that failure is, perhaps, the essence of sport.

Scene 2: Chubby Fish Boys

In Tennessee, a fish is building a fortress. And honestly, it’s pretty impressive:

BBC Earth

This contraption is the responsibility of a male river chub. In early spring, these foot-long fish embark on a quest to breed. The males seek out a quiet section of river in which to build a nest. These structures can get rather elaborate — they’re significantly larger than the fish themselves and can contain up to 7,000 pebbles, all placed by mouth. The males, for some reason, also decide to get much uglier:

What you would see looking out from a microwave. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet #isitready pic.twitter.com/V64RyDcyUo

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Sorry boys, but bloated-foreheads-with-weird-growths is very much not my aesthetic. But my opinion doesn’t much matter to a river chub. What matters is the nest. These rocky piles provide shelter from both current and predators, should a female chub choose to lay her eggs there, and so building the best nest becomes fiercely competitive. Pebble theft is common.

Eventually the lady chubs make their choices, the eggs are laid and fertilised, and a new generation of fish is reared as the Mississippi slowly washes away those hard-build nests.

Aesthetics 1/10

These are some ugly fish and I really don’t like them.

Difficulty 4/10

Granted, it would be more difficult and time consuming without arms, but I imagine I could make a pile of several thousand rocks without too much trouble.

Competitiveness 8/10

Fighting over building materials and doing your best to build a very good nest? It’s a cut-throat chub world.

Overall 13/30

This is architecture. Architecture, while cool, is not sports.

Scene 3: Tidal Bears

Thanks to various quirks of geography, sections of the eastern coast of North America are subject to some of the planet’s highest tides. Tide present opportunities for land animals to harvest the rich bounty of the seas, and there’s no more opportunistic land animal than the bear.

Tidal zones might be rich in food but they’re also disgusting, rank places, with the stench of half-rotten seaweed everywhere. You can almost smell it coming through the screens. But we’ve dealt with the turd penguins, so we’ll forgive this bear family their rancid crab snacks. This is, or so we’re told, the cubs’ first visit to the seaside. They seem to be enjoying it:

A fierce hunter retreats with his starfish catch#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/QjLDxWpig7

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Sibling rivalry...a tale as old as time#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/0zgCE3yKzp

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

However! Much like last week in Europe, the baby bears encounter a male whole isn’t their father, and are forced to flee up a tree to avoid his wrath. Fortunately, just like during the Finnish forest scene, nothing too bad happens. The grumpy male bear leaves a scent mark on the tree — how anyone might smell with so much seaweed around is beyond me, but bears have noses many thousands of times more powerful than ours, poor things — and the family skedaddles back to safety.

Aesthetics 5/10

These are some adorable, bears but while I love the seaside I have a visceral reaction to seeing much exposed seaweed. Gross.

Difficulty 8/10

The various climbs the little bears undertake seem sort of difficult, as evidenced by:

He’s beauty and he’s grace, he’s fallen on his face #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/UYONQtceiT

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Did I add this just because it’s cute? Yes, obviously.

Competitiveness 0/10

Despite things threatening to happen, nothing actually happens.

Overall 13/30

A stroll down the beach to munch on some crabs is not sports unless someone actually tries to fight the big bear at the end.

Scene 4: Fireflies

If you’re lucky enough to live in a part of the world inhabited by fireflies, make sure you take advantage of those lazy summer evenings when the temperature is just right to draw them out. The little beetles twinkle in the air like borrowed stars, adding magic wherever they go.

BBC Earth

Since this is nature, of course, the flashing of their lights is basically morse code for “S E X M E P L S”, the sort of neon signs one might imagine populating a red-light district, but the lurid nature of the show hardly takes away from the beauty.

And since, again, this is nature, sometimes the lights are a trap. There are some species of fireflies which have evolved the ability to mimic others species mating signals, using their lights to attract an innocent bug looking for a mate and eating it.

This sequence doesn’t show that degree of aggressive mimicry, but we get an accidental one instead, with fireflies finding themselves glowing postmortem in a spider’s web, which summons more fireflies which etc. It’s a very pretty dinner.

Aesthetics 10/10

Yeah this is an easy call.

Difficulty 7/10

This isn’t talked about at all during the scene, but I really wonder how on Earth individual fireflies manage to cut through the noise of tens of thousands of other fireflies to hone in on potential mates. Is their vision short-ranged enough that most of the lights gets diffused into the background? If you tried to get me to pick a specific firefly out of that video I would not do a very good job.

Competitiveness 7/10

Following on from the last part, I’m slightly baffled as to how fireflies differentiate themselves from their firefly competitors. Many mating rituals have an obvious ‘fitness’ component to them, but I can’t tell here. Is it because the world of coleoptera sex is just too alien for me to comprehend? I hope so. (The spider part gives this zero bonus points because that shit is really just too easy.)

Overall 24/30

If humans could glow, synchronised people-glowing would be an Olympic sport.

Scene 5: The Tale of the Naughty Prairie Dog That Only Listened To Its Mother Sometimes

Once upon a time, there were six little prairie dogs living in a hole in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. They were good little prairie dogs, or so they thought. They played nicely with each other (sometimes), kept the burrow clean (sometimes) and even listened to their mother (sometimes). They liked their burrow, and had lots of good grass and seats to eat. The six little prairie dogs had a good life.

They were neighbours with a burrowing owl family, and were good friends with their chicks. They didn’t see them very much, because the owls preferred to come out later, but the chicks liked to play almost as much as the prairie dogs and the mother owl wasn’t nearly as strict as the prairie dogs’.

The prairie dogs thought that their mother worried at little bit too much. She insisted that they not go too far from their burrow — the world was “big and dangerous,” she said, and they were small and many creatures might find them tasty. Their mother also forced them to return to the burrow at a moment’s notice, even if they were having fun playing or had found a particularly tasty patch of grass!

Their mother, the prairie dogs decided, was clearly overthinking things. Surely the world couldn’t be as dangerous as she thought. Nothing scared the cubs.

She is having none of it #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/JHIYxbTc9u

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

So slowly, as they got older, they started sneaking further away from the burrow. Whenever they could, they’d also wait a little longer to respond to their mother’s recall shout. Nothing bad ever happened. The world didn’t seem so big and dangerous after all.

One day, as they were playing, the little prairie dogs noticed the burrowing owl mother driving off a badger. “I wish she was our mother,” the eldest and most rebellious of the little prairie dogs. “Look how safe she keeps her family! Our mother just tells us never do to anything.”

The prairie dogs kept playing, glad that the badger had gone away. They’d never seen a predator before, but something told them them the badger was bad news. But with it gone, they could eat and play all day.

The eldest of the little prairie dogs was wrestling with his youngest sister when they heard their mother shouting for them to come home. “Let’s go back,” said his sister.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-dog,” said the eldest. “There’s nothing here that can hurt us. That badger went away ages ago. Mother’s just being ridiculous again. Stay and play.”

“Are you sure?” said his sister.

“Of course I’m sure.”

So the two little prairie dogs kept on wrestling.

The look your dad gives you when you announce that the whole family is going on a juice cleanse.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/v7DH1OxmyS

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

For the rest of his short existence, the eldest of the now-five little prairie dogs had to live with the guilt of his sister’s death.

Aesthetics 7/10

The prairies are not the continent’s finest scenery, but the little prairie dogs are very cute. And quite tasty-looking.

Difficulty 6/10

The ending wasn’t very difficult, but the badger did a lot of hard work to sneak up on the prairie dogs. The burrowing owl attack was pretty good too.

Competitiveness 10/10

Badger against baby prairie dogs? Not a contest. But a little burrowing owl (8 ounces) taking on a whole-ass badger (20 pounds) to defend her young? That’s the stuff right there.

Bonus point for the, uh, ill-judged prairie dog wrestling.

Overall 22/30

Depressing sports. Also, listen to your mom, kids.

Scene 6: Meep Meep!

Like many others, I was devastated to discover that roadrunners were neither blue nor locked in an elaborate, contraption-fueled feud with technically adept but curiously stubborn coyotes. Roadrunners are, in fact, little brown birds that like to eat lizards. Here is one on the hunt.

Practising for when Coyote turns up.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/vbRCqA2zxW

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

I was also devastated to find out that they don’t actually say “meep, meep”. It’s as though Looney Tunes was lying to me all along.

The roadrunner hunt is really quite odd. It doesn’t go after a gila monster (fair enough), and fails to chase down a couple of spindly-legged speedsters (fair enough), but it totally ignores a half-buried horny toad, and then at one point investigates a tasty-looking lizard of unknown description and instead of catching it lets it run away. And then chases after it.

I’m starting to suspect that roadrunners aren’t that smart. And with the lizard hunt not going very well, this one settles on a centipede. Job mediocrely done — my kind of bird.

Aesthetics 7/10

There’s a pure component to aesthetics, certainly. A goldeneye duck, for instance, is a beautiful bird in any context. But there’s also an aesthetic of time and place, and a roadrunner in the American West just feels right. It’s dusty and dirty chasing, after other dusty and dirty things, and while I might have preferred something blue and meepy, this’ll do.

Difficulty 5/10

Catching lizards in the heat can’t be easy, but there are so many unforced errors here it’s hard to give this a high difficulty score even when the hunt ends up mostly failing.

Competitiveness 8/10

Idiot bird vs. lizard seems like a pretty good fight.

Overall 20/30

Running aimlessly and mostly failing to get the job done? That’s a sport. I mean, I’ve just watched an Arsenal game.

Scene 7: Mullet Hunt

Somehow this is not a hair metal tribute band’s tribute band. I’m sorry if this disappoints you. Instead, we have grey mullet, a medium-sized coastal fish moving south with the currents off Florida. They’re moving south in vast numbers, too, with millions of fish heading towards their spawning grounds.

The mullet stay close to the shore in order to avoid the worst of the predators, yet somehow manage to go more or less undetected by the human sea-goers. But running in-shore only works for so long. Eventually the mullet draw the attention of a group of tarpon, large fish with a very large appetite. And so the hunt begins:

To get close to the mullet in the shallows, the tarpon turn on their sides now the mullet can’t see their shining silver flanks.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/mhgpgzO4Jx

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

The tarpon gorge on the mullet, and are soon joined by sharks and pelicans. But no matter how many predators converge upon the giant school, they can’t make much of a dent in its numbers, and the mullet keep moving south sans a few thousand fish.

Aesthetics 9/10

I very much enjoy the overhead shots of bait fish, and it’s especially fun to see them having to move around predators (the tarpon are magnificent) as well as human interlopers.

Difficulty 6/10

The tarpon, sharks and pelicans have it pretty easy. The mullet are jammed so tight to the shore that there’s nowhere to escape, so they mostly don’t. For the mullet there’s safety in numbers, but only for reasons of sheer probability.

Competitiveness 5/10

Not much of a fight, but I think sheer weight of numbers plays a factor here. The tarpon are trying to reduce a population 10,000 times their size. Granted, they probably think that sounds more ‘delicious’ than ‘intimidating’, but it’s a relatively tall order.

Overall 20/30

Sure. Fishing is a sport.

Scene 8: Sea Cows

America’s swamps aren’t always hot and humid. The shape of the continent allows arctic weather systems to penetrate right down to the south coast, dropping the temperature below freezing. Alligators can go into a sort of cold fugue state, dropping their heart rate to a beat per minute and sticking their snouts above the ice to make sure they can still breathe. But manatees cannot, and so they need to migrate somewhere warmer.

The waters off Florida should still be too cold for them during the winter, but Florida is an unusual place, and that strangeness manifests itself here through some surprisingly benevolent hydrology. The peninsula’s underground river systems are significantly warmer than the sea, and that’s where manatees see out the cold.

Some manatee babies get bored of all the waiting and play an unusual game:

BBC Earth

Yes, that is an alligator

In the depths of winter it’s not sleepy alligators which threaten the manatees. Instead, it’s boats. Florida’s water-ways are obnoxiously packed with motorboats, and dozens of manatees are killed by propellor strikes every year. Many of those that don’t die bear the scars of collisions, which are common even on young manatees.

Maybe learn to sail, Florida?

Aesthetics 7/10

Manatees aren’t cute, but the overhead shots have a sort of dreamy quality, like we’re watching a surrealist film about ambulant gnocchi. Also, the frozen alligator is very cool.

Difficulty 10/10

The baby manatee annoys an alligator. ANNOYS. AN. ALLIGATOR.

Competitiveness 4/10

Ok, let’s be fair: it’s a pretty sleepy alligator.

Overall 21/30

Most of this sequence is not a sport. Annoying alligators? That’s definitely a sport, albeit one I must legally recommend you not partake in.

Scene 9: White Whaling

I knew I shouldn’t have used so many Herman Melville references in the first episode, because we now have a genuine white whale hunt on our hands. Canada is warming faster than any other country on the planet, which has led to some difficult times for polar bears. Used to hunting on sea ice, which gives them a platform and a means to ambush the marine mammals they eat, the bears have had to adapt to a warming climate in which ice is much rarer.

Fortunately, bears are adaptable. Along Hudson Bay, a group of bears has developed a new hunting technique: they go whaling.

Polar bears are so dependent on the ocean, they are officially classed as ‘marine mammals’.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/pZzBtdLbFc

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Bears, as it turns out, are not very good at chasing down belugas by swimming at them. But the older, smarter bears have a better technique: standing on a small rock, conveniently placed some distance into the water, and dive-bombing the whales as they swing by. This technique proves more fruitful, and one bloody encounter later, the bear is dragging a very dead whale to shore to share with his friends.

Polar bears are fucking terrifying.

Aesthetics 8/10

We’re used to seeing polar bears in icy conditions, so it’s quite nice to see them frolicking somewhere else.

Just a polar bear lying in a flower meadow #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/jiU5WDG7TO

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

As ever, the drone shots are magical.

Difficulty 10/10

An adult beluga can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. Imagine having to kill one in an ambush fast enough that it couldn’t escape.

Competitiveness 10/10

It takes a lot of brains and patience for the bears to overcome the fact the whales are far superior swimmers.

Overall 28/30

Diving is a sport, and it’s even more of a sport if you have to try to kill a whale with your teeth as you dive. From hell’s heart I bite at thee etc., etc., etc.

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my-greatseo-love · 5 years ago

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Khalid Health lab

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vxnomouspoxson-archived · 7 years ago

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Ernessa Matthews

Four Temperaments: Sanguine | Melancholic | Choleric | Phlegmatic

Your temperament is sanguine. The sanguine temperament is fundamentally spontaneous and pleasure-seeking; sanguine people are sociable and charismatic. They tend to enjoy social gatherings, making new friends and tend to be boisterous. They are usually quite creative and often daydream. However, some alone time is crucial for those of this temperament. Sanguine can also mean sensitive, compassionate and thoughtful. Sanguine personalities generally struggle with following tasks all the way through, are chronically late, and tend to be forgetful and sometimes a little sarcastic. Often, when they pursue a new hobby, they lose interest as soon as it ceases to be engaging or fun. They are very much people persons. They are talkative and not shy. Sanguines generally have an almost shameless nature, certain that what they are doing is right. They have no lack of confidence.

Hawthorn - The Illusionist May 13 - June 9 Hawthorn signs in Celtic tree astrology are not at all what they appear to be. Outwardly, they appear to be a certain persona, while on the inside Hawthorn's are quite different. They put the term "never judge a book by its cover" to the test. They live seemingly average lives while on the inside they carry fiery passions and inexhaustible creative flame. They are well adjusted and can adapt to most life situations well - making themselves content and comforting others at the same time. You are naturally curious, and have an interest in a broad range of topics. You are an excellent listener, and people seek you out as an outlet to release their burdens. You have a healthy sense of humor, and have a clear understanding of irony. You tend to see the big picture, and have amazing insight - although you typically won't give yourself enough credit for your observations. Hawthorn signs match up nicely with Ash and Rowan's

Performer Performers are outgoing, charming people with a strong sense of fun. Because of their desire to communicate, they tend to be more talkative than many other soul types. If you are a Performer type, you’ll tend to be good with words and perhaps even show a dramatic flair when it comes to expressing yourself. You will generally feel comfortable being the focus of attention and may dress or behave in a way that attracts attention to you.

Your passionate nature and tendency to express strong emotions may make you appear a little volatile to more down-to-earth types. A caricature of this type would be an entertainer like Jim Carrey or Joan Rivers—both of whom share the Performer’s love of hamming it up.

More than any other type, the Performer needs the approval of others. You need to be told when you’ve done a good job. Speaking of jobs, you may find it unbearable to spend eight hours a day in a solitary cubicle—your need to connect with others is too strong. You may go out of the way to make your job fun or to entertain those around you just to keep things amusing.

Leader

It would be hard to imagine you being anything but the leader in any group. In fact, taking any kind of subservient role may feel demeaning to you. As a Leader type, you have a natural air of authority, and a charisma that makes you stand out in a crowd. (Think how out of place Elvis might have appeared if he’d stood in the background playing saxophone instead of being the front man.)

You bring to this life an innate wisdom, which is why people will look to you for advice. You may sometimes make decisions on your own without thinking to involve others, and once you’ve made up your mind, you may be reluctant to change it. This may work in an emergency, but in other circumstances it can give the impression that you are arrogant or condescending.

It can be hard to find good role models, given the scarcity of Leader types, but you can always refer to history to see how individuals such as Alexander the Great and John F. Kennedy used their leadership skills. Not every Leader becomes a president, of course, and many end up in humbler circumstances. You can always recognize Leaders by their inner confidence and occasionally by their coterie of followers or assistants.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor | Hufflepuff | Ravenclaw | Slytherin

Badger Characteristics: Smallish - Patriotic - Protective - Passionate - Blunt - Aggressive

Life Path Number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 22

People with a Life Path 3 are the most artistic in the bunch. You find ways of creating the most beautiful things in this world such as art, music, literature, etc. You breathe life into culture, and make it seem so simple because of your natural gift for expression. This explains why the entertainment industry is chock full of Life Path 3's. Noteworthy examples include: Chris Rock, Jackie Chan, Jamie Foxx, Nelly Furtado, Snoop Dogg, and Rihanna to name a few. Your mindset will do well by ignoring any cynics or defeatists you may come across. Stay headstrong with your creative outlet & true to you goals, and they will often pay off personally, financially, or both. All Life Path 3's tend to enjoy life and all that they can get out of it. The extraverted 3's love being in the spotlight and showing off their talent. On the other hand, introverted 3's lean more toward solitary creative pursuits that can garner them a following without being in the spotlight, such as an artist or writer.

Brain Lateralization Test: Left 34% | Right 72%

Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what’s not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, organization, and the ability to explain their ideas verbally, leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

Tagged by: @ericbrandonrp

#• I am made out of stars and nightmares and blood off all that I killed • — headcanons

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cowgirlontheloose · 6 years ago

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The Shaman and the Swift Fox

Some time in the early 1990s, I had a dream. A female form appeared to me. Maybe a goddess, shaman or fairy creature? She didn’t explain herself. She told me I had to help wildlife. I can’t recall her exact words. But I understood I had to take some sort of action. Then she faded gently from the scene just like in the story books. Poof!

The morning of my dream, I nibbled my toast and thought hard. Mug of tea in hand, I went to my computer and wrote three similar emails: one to the Swift Fox recovery team in Alberta and Saskatchewan; one to Burrowing Owl recovery on the prairies, and one to threatened Black-tailed Prairie Dogs in Saskatchewan’s Grassland National Park. I volunteered my services for three months. “Use me however you want,” I wrote. “I’ll scrub cages, count poop, run errands, type, do paperwork or answer phones.” I provided a bio, some glowing references and hit send.

I was free-lancing in those days — writing for various magazines and organizations. I worked from home, where I could glance from my computer screen out the window to my wild, overgrown 80 acres. Now and then, creatures would plod, scurry, bound or fly by: turtles, fox, deer, raccoons, skunks, wild turkeys, blue heron and a host of tinier beings that I couldn’t see. But I knew they were there.

Most of my research and writing concerned endangered species. I adored learning about their biology; how they all play a role in keeping our world turning. It thrilled me to discover that the lives of Barn Owls, Kangaroo Rats or Flying Squirrels actually had an impact on my life and the planet. Not directly maybe. But through a chain of influences, weather systems, tiny and significant world events — each one influencing something else and something else and something else — I finally understood how dependent we all are on forces we are mostly clueless about.

One example (and there are millions more) let’s take sea otters, sea urchins and kelp forests to see how we are all connected. By the way, there are no exceptions to this rule. None.

Kelp forests provide homes for a vast number of creatures. Just like any land forest, kelp removes C02 through photosynthesis and turns it into energy it needs to flourish. Along come hungry sea urchins — small, spiky critters that eat kelp. Generally, there are plenty of sea otters around to eat some of the urchins so that everything is balanced tickity-boo and everyone has enough to eat. So far, so good, including all the teeming smaller species also living in the watery forest. But humans have been working overtime dumping toxins and garbage into the sea. Exacerbate this horror with oil spills, over fishing, coastal development and soon otters vanish, leaving the hardier urchins to multiply and literally eat the kelp forest to death along with everyone else living within.

This particular chain reaction doesn’t stop there of course. It goes on from one thing to another, interacting with other chain reactions all over the planet. Eventually, you and I, our kids and grandkids are affected. It’s a glacial process, so most people don’t notice until it’s far too late, until we wake up to something like the horrors of climate change.

And now, back to my fateful dream and the send button.

A few months later, I found myself in Edmonton at the office of Dr. Lu Carbyn, a Canadian Wildlife Service scientist and chairman of the Swift Fox (Vulpes velox) Recovery Team. The task he set me was to locate myself somewhere near Medicine Hat, Alberta. There I would give talks to schools and community groups about this little fox, why it’s recovery was vital, and how we could all help by not shooting, trapping, poisoning, paving over or digging up their grasslands home.

I was also expected to have informal visits with some of the major ranch owners. It was these large spreads on which the fox depended after all. And it’s a well known fact in conservation efforts that some Canadian land owners — and no doubt, the world over — do not ever want it known that a vulnerable species was spotted on their property because it could lead to restrictions for the rancher. Their unofficial motto if this should happen is “shoot, shovel and shut up.” I’m not suggesting that any of our prairie ranchers fall into this category. I’m just reporting what I heard again and again in the field.

All this talking in front of groups was a scary stretch for a shy sort. And the thought of me — clueless female Easterner — presuming to educate Western ranchers who possessed more know-how and grass-roots intelligence than I could blink at, made me want to turn tail.

But a deal was a deal.

Lu rounded up a vehicle for me, a cranky, rusting station wagon with balding tires which frankly, was not reliable (I wasn’t about to complain, believe me), and off I went to Elkwater, pop. 80-ish. Here I boarded with the gung-ho and endlessly inventive Lyall family: Noreen, Don, Richard, 6, and Alec, 4. (Our adventures together will have to wait for another time, alas.) Their home was a few miles from Elkwater on the rolling prairie I love so much. Highway 41 stretched by our door, north to the Trans-Canada and south to Wildhorse, Montana, one of the loneliest border crossings I have seen.

Before settling in Elkwater, howerver, Lu and I trucked south-east to Val Marie, Saskatchewan (800 km) with several Vulpes velox in cages. Some had been wild trapped in the U.S., and others raised in captivity at the Cochrane Ecological Institute in Alberta. We would be releasing them in Grasslands National Park in hopes of establishing a sustainable presence there.

Forget Banff, Jasper and the Rocky Mountains. Grasslands is possibly Canada’s most gorgeous natural treasure. Established in 1981, this 907 sq. kms. protects one of our country’s remaining un-meddled-with, mixed-grass/short-grass prairie. The park is home to several species in various states of peril: Bison, Burrowing Owls, Black Footed Ferrets, Greater Short-horned Lizards and Black-tailed Prairie Dogs.

The night before the release, Lu and I camped in this magical place bathed by the misty light of stars and full moon. As his tent was hidden over the brow of a hill and I was located below on a flat expanse, I seemed to have the entire planet to myself. I woke several times and crawled out to pinch myself in disbelief. Coyotes wailed and shooting stars fell. And beneath my bare feet the prairie sighed.

Next day’s release was, in some ways, anti-climactic. So many years and resources, so much funding, will and people power, had brought us to this moment, yet it was just the start of an unfolding mystery. Would this little fox survive long enough to become an integrated part of Canada’s living tapestry again?

We opened the eight cages and stood well back. Some bolted, some crept from captivity to the glory of big sky and vast grasslands. My eyes shimmered. Those sleek, camouflaged coats blended flawlessly into the prairie hues. I blinked. Like wraiths they melted away one by one.

Once settled in Elkwater, I set up appointments with every school and group I could find. I’ve long forgotten how many there were, or how far afield I roamed. I fondly remember a lively one-room school in Buffalo, Alberta, somewhere between Bindloss and Jenner. Although it was in the middle of nowhere (at least to this Easterner) and clearly a fading hamlet, the school was full of life and energy. Online now, I see that Buffalo is listed as a ghost town, although the minuscule post office and store were operating as of 2015. No sign of the school.

Oh so many schools! The elementary kids had lots of question and comments, always a forest of hands waving at me. The high school crowd was generally stoney-faced — too cool to reveal themselves in any way. I left those presentations feeling like a boring idiot, but hey — I tried. The most interactive and fun schools were Hutterite colonies — Spring Creek, Cypress, Box Elder, Elkwater. Here I was warmly included and herded on chatty tours of the colony by pink-cheeked, giggling youngsters. Once, my son Adam, was visiting me on his way back to University in New Zealand, and came with me (I probably forced him) to one of these colonies. I know he answered a barrage of questions about what New Zealand was like. I hope he remembers that time. This is the kid whose only apparent childhood memory is of me chasing him upstairs whacking at his legs with a wooden spoon.

I covered thousands of lonely miles. One night on my way to Consul, Sask. (1.5 hours drive — was I nuts?) a full moon poured a fantastical light onto the prairie. I pulled over, got out and lay down in the middle of straight-and-flat-as-an-arrow Highway 13. I don’t know why I did it, but the prairie sang to me in four-part harmony that night.

I surely recall heading south an hour one cold night to Manyberries. Up and over the high bench of the Cypress Hills I drove, straining my eyes for elk and moose. Then down to the long flat stretch to Montana.

I passed the sign that said something like Warning — No Gas Or Services For The Next 100 Kms. and tried not to add a sub-text which urged Better Say Your Prayers, Sister.

The road was bare and I hummed happily. Suddenly snow — an instant, blinding white-out and the road vanished. I crept to a standstill. Yes, I knew possibly only a few kilometres from me, lights glowed from a warm ranch house at the end of a long laneway. But I had no hope of finding that. I waited, my heart rattling in my throat.

Fifteen minutes later, headlights glowed behind me and a transport truck swirled past. How could he possibly see? But now I had quickly fading tracks to follow, which I did. There was no way I was going to risk turning around and hitting the ditch. Ten minutes later, the white-out stopped dead. Bare highway appeared and the transport’s light drew away from me. On I went to Manyberries, trailing clouds of dumb luck and good fortune.

Did I make any difference to the Swift Fox effort? Who knows. My time volunteering was precious beyond measure and enriched my life and understanding of how the world turns. And what of Vulpes velox (also called the Kit Fox) today in 2018? Once common from the Canadian prairies south to Texas, No thanks to humans, it was extirpated from Canada in 1930. Between 1983 and 1997, conservationists introduced more than 900 of these house cat-sized animals to the Canadian grasslands. It is estimated that 600 are living and reproducing in our country today.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) designated the Swift Fox as extirpated in 1978. It was uplisted to Endangered in 1998, and since 2009 was further uplisted to Threatened.

Wildlife Preservation Canada says the Swift Fox recovery is considered “…one of the most successful endangered species translocation programmes in the world.

#wildlfe #biodiversity #writing #biology #animals #adventure #dream #preservation #endangered species #foxes

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shadowkage · 8 years ago

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( I somehow couldn’t reblog the original post so I made a new one. )

Four Temperaments: Sanguine | Melancholic | Choleric | Phlegmatic

Your temperament is choleric. The choleric temperament is fundamentally ambitious and leader-like. They have a lot of aggression, energy, and/or passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were choleric. They like to be in charge of everything. However, cholerics also tend to be either highly disorganized or highly organized. They do not have in-between setups, only one extreme to another. As well as being leader-like and assertive, cholerics also fall into deep and sudden depression. Essentially, they are very much prone to mood swings.

Holly - The Ruler (July 8 - August 4) Among the Celtic tree astrology signs the Holly is one of regal status. Noble, and high-minded, those born during the Holly era easily take on positions of leadership and power. If you are a Holly sign you take on challenges easily, and you overcome obstacles with rare skill and tact. When you encounter setbacks, you simply redouble your efforts and remain ever vigilant to obtain your end goals. Very seldom are you defeated. This is why many people look up to you and follow you as their leader. You are competitive and ambitious even in the most casual settings. You can appear to be arrogant but in actuality you're just very confident in your abilities. Truth be known, you are quite generous, kind and affectionate (once people get to know you). Highly intelligent, you skate through academics where others may struggle. Because many things come to you so easily, you may have a tendency to rest on your laurels. In other words, if not kept active, you may slip into an unhealthy and lazy lifestyle. Holly signs may look to Ash and Elder signs for balance and partnership.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor | Hufflepuff | Ravenclaw | Slytherin

Lawful Good- A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

I mean, for my default Sasuke it fits?? But I’m still shocked.

Dark Triad: Psychopathy [ 1.2 ] | Machiavellianism [ 2.3 ] | Narcissism [ 1.9 ]

Machiavellianism is a tendency to be manipulative and deceitful. It usually stems from a lack of respect or disillusionment for others.

Cool and confident - if not a little over-polished - sables are the most graceful of the herbivore personalities. With their outstanding physical presence and successful work ethic, they enjoy the universal admiration from colleagues and friends. Dapper in dress and noble in bearing, their tastes and lifestyle are refined and restrained and they disapprove of flashy or ostentatious behavior in any form.

Sables are Super-sleek

Attractive to the opposite sex and popular with their own, sables create a sense of well-being in those who surround them. There is a downside to this adulation however, for the sable sometimes feels pressured into leadership roles that it has no desire to fill, and even though it's not known to be particularly soft-hearted it's the first person to help someone in need.

When life's obstacles are not sufficiently challenging sables set even higher personal goals and, with boundless energy, subject themselves to a vigorous regimen of biking, running, or hiking. Whether tooling around in a sports car or simply running on the beach, speed holds a special fascination, and sables love nothing more than the feel of wind in their hair.

Sables in the Workplace

In business, sables are admired for their excellent negotiation skills and their ability to make courageous decisions. Because of the ease of which they earn money, they tend to be profligate in their spending habits and don't hesitate to spend money on leisure activities.

Sables fiercely protect their hard earned reputation for integrity, taking pride in their ability to make business deals with just a handshake. They are cautious about giving that trust to others, however, which further aggravates their reputation for taking themselves too seriously.

Sables have a particular distaste for routine of any kind, and their work must always be demanding and fast paced. As a high-powered salesperson, stock-broker or manager they are consistently in the top echelons of their field and should avoid jobs that have little chance for advancement.

(Meh. Not a big fan of this one.)

Life Path Number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 22

Obviously, I don’t know the year he was born in. I think he might be 4 though??

Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale: 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

Your score is 10/30. Scores below 15 indicate low self esteem.

Brain Lateralization Test: Left | Right

Left brain dominant individuals are more orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. They can have trouble comprehending emotions and abstract concepts, they can feel lost when things are not clear, doubting anything that is not stated and proven.

Overall you appear to be Left Brain Dominant

#dashgames #headcanon

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stevenvenn · 7 years ago

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Steven's Nifty 50 of 2017 - Albums #50 - #41

It's that time again and I'm not disappointing you. Here are my favourite albums of 2017 starting with albums 50 - 41 (of 50). These are in no particular order just how I saw them relating to each other. Doing a true countdown would be too nerve-wracking. You can listen to my favourite cuts from each of the albums on Spotify and watch them on YouTube (links below). You can also read my thoughts on the albums below the links broken into 5 posts counting down by 10s. Enjoy and feel free to comment.

Spotify playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/user/stevenvenn/playlist/7qSpcgdwXuoLtIStRQeRto?si=09LiErQ9QwCONq0XEfG91Q

Youtube playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqUMf7mP_mnMOmDl94VCPIJPFliPf62a5

NOTES

41. Four Tet - New Energy (Text Records)

Kieran Hebden is back in 2017 with another beautiful collection of rich samples, zen beats, and incredible melodies that make this album, on his own Text Records label, a startling release. Incorporating small sounds of birds, countryside, and other natural sounds Hebden makes this more of a meditative headphone listen than an upbeat groover (but then that's what we've come to expect from Hebden this many albums in). There's something of the gentle grace of Boards of Canada and the 90s ambient of Aphex Twin in the retro electronics and economy of well-constructed layers. The dulcimer on "Two Thousand and Seventeen," steel drums on "Lush," and kalimba on "You Are Loved" as textural examples carry us along on their magical long loops as dreamy, marshmallow-y, and tiny synth stabs throb and dissipate over top of low tempo percussion samples. The looped melodies often create a rhythm all on their own in a lot of the songs. The meditation album session wraps up with the pulsating zen bumper "Planet" incorporating temple bells, spacey moog, and Japanese string samples. Nothing especially new here but there is a simplicity and organic quality that Hebden has really carved out over his career. This has helped him maintain his status of one of the best in electronic music.

42. Bonobo - Migration (Ninja Tune)

Another artist Simon Green has, like Four Tet, been exploring the confluence of soothing organic sounds, acoustic instrumentals, and world music with a infectious glitchy rhythm that crosses into low-key jazz textures at times. Here we have kalimba, harps, and other African instruments crashing into soft meditative synth pads. This might the most "easy listening" album by Green in his discography (not meant as a slight). The use of smooth singers like Rhye's Mike Milosh make Migration a truly chilled out affair and one of the most tranquil and relaxing listens yet.

43. Indian Wells - Cascades (Friends of Friends)

Italian producer Pietro Iannuzzi returns with a meditative collection of intricate and clean-sounding techno complete with beeps, blips, and bounces that all flow together beautifully like a dreamy electronic river. The sounds are all very colourful and bright and deliver a hypnotic and mesmerizing quality overall. There's a certain feeling of travel through music here as if by train, boat, or plane in sped up montage expressing the look of a well worn and stamped passport. Also you can't help think of the natural world of sights and sounds with song titles like "Alps" and "Forest Hills." There is a sound akin to Pantha Du Prince and other electronic producers who take you on a journey both within a song and over the course of an album and Iannuzzi's is no exception. The title track "Cascades" and the album as a whole embodies that impression of flowing falls, sounds continuing to rush by as you sit beside and get carried along by rapid beats and sounds.

44. Bing & Ruth - No Home of the Mind (4AD)

The project of composer and producer David Moore No Home of the Mind is his first on the exclusive label home for all things arty on a grand scale, 4AD. It's a dreamy and melancholy release of repeated piano notes that move along with the rhythm of a train on songs like "How It Sped." There's an emotional quality to Moore's playing that recalls other composers who cross over into the ambient and electronic genres like Max Richter and Brian Eno. Alongside all the thought-provoking and mesmerizing piano drones and repetitive phrases are various textures provided by synths and samples. What Moore's newest release also resembles too me at times is the soundtrack work of Michael Nyman. Indeed a lot of No Home of the Mind feels very cinematic.

45. High Plains - Cinderland (Kranky)

No year end check-in would be complete without a release by Scott Morgan (aka Loscil) who has released some of my favourite minimal electronic albums over the years. Following on the heels of his excellent release Monument Builders as Loscil, Morgan teams up with classically trained cellist Mark Bridges as High Plains for an album inspired by a small town in the Wyoming mountains. This a very wintry and melancholic affair with incredible depth from both collaborators with Morgan effectively laying the musical groundwork for Bridges' solemn and isolated cello sound. There's a bit of a modern twist on chamber music here that feels like a bleak winter scene from a prairie noir. At the same time there's a touch of Tangerine Dream to the pulsating electronic beds by Morgan that can't help but create images of open nocturnal spaces and thrilling mystery in the listener's mind.

46. Slow Meadow - Costero (Hammock Music)

Matt Kidd and his moving chamber ensemble and sound project return with a sophomore album of inventive, soaring, and melancholy compositions. There's a feeling of recalling past memories forever clad in amber with a patina of sadness. This pensive quality pervades the whole album but it's not so much sorrowful as accepting of memories as just the sometimes darker side of life broken up by moments of grace and sunlight. There's a really intimate quality to Kidd's compositions that describes a lot of emotion and depth just below the minimal musical surface.

47. Sarah Davachi - All My Circles Run (Students of Decay)

Vancouver-based ultra-minimal drone composer Sarah Davachi's albums always sound more like feeling you get walking around an art gallery looking at Mark Rothko paintings than following any kind of distinct rhythm. Many of the compositions here are in fact beatless and made of minimal mesmerizing drones for strings, piano, organ, and voice. In a similar way to Rothko, the simplicity is deceiving at first but if you spend time with his work you can see a lot of emotion and depth unfolding after prolonged exposure. Musically Davachi is Rothko's compositional kin. The seemingly isolated and lunar soundscape of "For Voice" takes its cues from haunting classical vocal pieces like Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna" best known as the music used to set the mood of the moonscape portion of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The very minute variances in the drones here lend Davachi's pieces a feeling of nordic temperature and desolation as well with the glacially paced tonal whispers reverberating in the listener's mind long after the song has ended. There's a real sense of the importance of the smallest of variation having incredible impact.

48. Ryuichi Sakamoto - async (Milan)

The Japanese composer musical artist has been creating stunning works for 40 years or more and after a battle with cancer years ago he has released his first solo work in 8 years after being busy with other sound projects and working on the soundtrack to The Revenant. async is a literal soundscape to float within comprised mostly of soaring background retro synths, field recordings, spoken word, and occasional appearances by Sakamoto's solemn and haunting piano. The inspiration for this release was creating a soundtrack for an imaginary Tarkovsky film. You can really feel how Sakamoto interpreted the pace and experimentation of the Russian film master. There are art sound experiments that are very cinematic like the excellent "disintegration", "walker" and "full moon" that sound like art installations. The title track is a captivating piece that wouldn't be out of place as an experimental dance piece full of chilling percussive attacks on instruments. Sakamoto has always pushed the boundaries of music as a "visual art" and the moods and impressions that async provides are incredible.

49. Hotel Neon - Context (Fluid Audio)

The Philadelphia-based trio have created here an incredible sea of sonic texture that you immediately immerse yourself in and float. All the song titles are reflective of either the times they seem to have been made perhaps (early am) or perhaps reflect Hotel Neon's desire to describe the feeling and headspace you would be in at those times, either dreaming, in hypnogogic states, or walking in the early hours of a cold morning with streetlight radiating and filling up the streets with soft orange light. There are no beats to Context just various realms of foggy and dense sound to step into.

50. Federico Durand - La Niña Junco (12K)

Hailing from Argentina Federico Durand set a very strict limit for his wonderful sophomore collection of songs that speak of the small objects in life and our memory of those precious moments that the objects take us to. There's a nostalgic sentiment to the weathered and dusty keepsakes from our younger times that make us smile when we consider them. So it is with Durand's improvised compositions here. The album was recorded in just one take, over a series of two days, using only Durand's aged and well worn Crumar Performer synthesizer and some loop pedals. The economy of instruments mirrors the economy of sounds but despite the feeling of "small" there is a lot of emotion and reflection to the songs on La Niña Junco. The melodies and pulses are minimal but the effect is intriguing. I feel like he's a bit of an Alexander Calder of electronic music here, creating simple but beautiful mobiles of fragile pieces, not of twisted bits of wire, but of quiet simple notes. Like Calder the motion of the parts is tranquil and effortless but incredibly reflective and beautiful. So much from so little.

#nifty50of2017 #stevenvenn #bestof2017

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gaddabouttravel · 7 years ago

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#2: The Impossible Question

As a Gadd by name and a Gaddabout by nature I've travelled a lot - 46 countries and counting to be precise. I'm a traveller through and through and I'll openly admit that my passport is my most valued possession. Closely followed by my completed Merlin 1994 Premier League sticker album!

One of the questions people often ask me is what is my favourite country? Up until relatively recently that question made me break out into a cold sweat. I dubbed it the ‘impossible question’ as it can be almost impossible to answer. It's a bit like asking someone what is the best way to make tea, which as any Brit will tell you, can be a highly contentious issue! It boils down to personal preference. There genuinely is no right or wrong answer. It is incredibly hard to condense a million different (and mostly awesome) memories into a one word answer.

How do you even begin to compare and judge different countries and put them in an order of favouritism? Is it related to the people? The food? The weather? The scenery? Its history? Or does it just simply come down to how much you enjoyed being there? In my experience the criteria is dynamic. Answers differ wildly from person to person, responses inevitably change over time and are dependent on your mood when the question is posed. What is flavour of the month today might not be top dog after the next travel adventure. Until recently my favourite country used to change more often than I changed my socks!

I’ve contemplated the impossible question a lot over the years. It has proved to be an excellent way to kill time on 18-hour bus rides across Asia or as a welcome distraction to the unforgiving sound of snoring travellers in dorm rooms. The competition has been fierce but I can proudly say I finally have an answer to the impossible question.

My favourite place in the world is a place close to my heart. In many respects, I consider it my second home. I had heard great things about this country from fellow travellers and it didn't disappoint. When I first visited this country in 2014, I was blown away by the laid-back vibe and their generous hospitality. I was travelling alone, just my backpack and a hopefully heart. Weirdly though, from the moment I got off the plane I felt like they adopted me as one of their own.

It's a very passionate and proud nation, particularly when it comes to sport. That naturally struck a chord with me given my 10-year career working in the sports industry. Their passion and pride is infectious, even if you're not a native. Some of my happiest memories from my time here involve sitting in a bar and cheering on the Habs with a bottle of Molson beer in hand!

It's often described as the 'cool little brother' to its bigger, more prominent neighbours. That's exactly why I love it though - it's understated. This country doesn't feel the need to shout from the rooftops about how great it is. Like a top of the range sports car it lets the experience speak for itself.

It has the best of everything in my opinion. The best that human nature and Mother Nature have to offer. It's littered with beautiful lakes, imposing mountains and vibrant cities which you can’t help being in awe of. It's the second largest land mass in the world, yet somehow maintains a personable ‘boy next door’ feel to it.

The climate can be unforgiving too but instead of complaining about it, they celebrate it and make the most of it. They actively encourage people to get out and enjoy the simpler things in life – camping, hiking and enjoying the coast. There’s plenty of it too! This country has the longest coastline in the world. 512,100 miles of it! I have always loved being by the sea. I find it very humbling to stand next to the ocean and to listen to the roar of the waves. It always gives me great perspective on life. I certainly gained great perspective in the time I lived and worked here. This country is a half glass full kind of nation and as a half glass full kind of girl, I like that mentality. They appreciate what they have, rather than focusing on what they don’t have.

I'm a complete foodie too and this country offers up some excellent culinary delights. Sampling weird and wonderful food is one of the best things about travelling for me. The food here is a prime example of how they celebrate diversity and difference too, whether it's tucking into amazing sushi on the West Coast, enjoying some delicious steak reared on the prairies or devouring some French inspired poutine after a night on the town!

More than anything I have such affection for this place because they seem to have their priorities right. I have great empathy for their values – compassion, respect, openness, willingness to work hard, to support each other and a great belief in equality and justice. A very simple ideology but in an increasingly complex world sometimes it is good to get back to basics.

I gave up everything I knew and loved to start a new chapter of my life here. A massive gamble but one I am pleased to say paid off. I chose to make this country my home and it rewarded me in abundance, with lifelong friends, once in a lifetime opportunities and the chance to live the life I always imagined. For that I will always be eternally grateful. This may sound like a gushing account of my favourite country but that’s what travel does to you. It leaves a deep and lasting impression. As a country, it may not be perfect but it comes pretty damn close in my eyes.

So, what is my favourite country in the world?

Canada of course.

#gaddabouttravel #canada #travel

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punkatcarkeek · 7 years ago

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Final Words

Through my time at Carkeek Park, my view has shifted from the bigger picture of the forest to the intimate details of my environment. Surrounded at first by predominantly indiscriminate green, I watched a patch of ladyferns grow to full height while my eyes adjusted to the variety of species around me. Almost every week, I noticed new plants, fungi, or animals and learned to see the minute changes in height of specific plants or flower life cycles. While I tried to absorb the environment around me, the forest tried to absorb the trail back into wilderness. In order to observe for my final journal entry, I had to force my way through trail sections where plants on both sides of the trail were overgrown, touching or nearly touching in the middle. Although I felt this way before I began my observations, my time in Carkeek reinforced my reverence for the natural growth of forested environments and enhanced my perceptiveness for the diversity of species to be found in any environment. Despite the energy required to go out and document so much every week, I rather enjoyed the removal from urban environments Carkeek Park allowed, and I would agree that natural history is indeed innately pleasurable.

Before I took this course, the Puget Sound Region was an abstract space, with the Puget Sound being a sort of synecdoche for all lake-like bodies of water this side of the peninsula. I knew that both Lake Washington and Lake Union were relatively near UW campus, but I couldn’t remember which lake is which. I had no idea about the wide diversity of environments in the region: the different types of forests, the prairies, the wetlands. I had never been to the peninsula or seen a tide pool before this class. I had seen drumlins, but had no understanding, name, or explanation for their existence. I was not entirely oblivious; I understood that forests dominate the area between the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, and there are a series of islands littering the water between the Olympic Peninsula and the rest of the state, but there was so much I had no idea I didn’t know.

The Puget Sound Region, I have learned, includes a variety of landscapes, each with a wealth of unique species. I’ve learned the lakes and many major rivers, including some that have been drained or straightened in the process of urbanizing the Seattle area. I understand the thousands of years of glaciation and tectonic activity that resulted in the unique topography of this region. I had the opportunity to visit more unique environments this quarter than I have had since moving to in Seattle. One of the reasons I moved to the Pacific Northwest is because the landscape here is absolutely beautiful. I have only fallen more in love with this region.

Observing the change in a landscape over time, noticing more than simply deciduous leaves falling or flowers blooming, but noticing change in height, flower number, or the emergence of a new species allows for the intimate knowing of a natural place. My extended time at Carkeek Park enabled the sea of green by which I was surrounded to become a menagerie of Pacific waterleafs, large-leaved avens, fringecups, lady and swordferns, Indian-plum, thimbleberry and salmonberry plants, and numerous trees. I have no doubt that if I return again to that location, I will notice even more species and will never be sure if they are new plantings or simply evaded my eyes previously. Though I currently know no other specific landscape that I know as well as my observation location at Carkeek, I’ve begun to be more intimately acquainted with the more general landscape across the Puget Sound Region. As I’ve said, the forests flanked by mountains have become a patchwork landscape of western hemlock or Sitka spruce dominated forests, prairies, wetlands, alpine and subalpine regions, and many others. The trips that allowed me to see these varying landscapes and unique species have widened my perspective on the variety of ecologies across the Puget Sound Region, but none as intensely and as minutely as my observation of Carkeek Park. The repeated and extended exposure to a specific location truly helped me attain a deep understanding of the specific details of the landscape and the species therein, a perspective I don’t think can be achieved through any other means.

I took this class with the intent of learning to identify plants of the region. My ultimate goal was to be able to, while hiking around this side of the Cascades, point out plants along the trail and identify which ones were edible. While it theoretically is easy enough to learn to identify plants on my own, I was uncomfortable with field guides and unsure of my ability to make correct identifications without a second opinion. This class gave me a starting point to plant identification, introducing me through in-the-field learning and working backwards with a known plant to the field guide description. This class easily exceeded my goals and also taught me ethnobotanical history and a variety of bird species. Now that I have had this class as a springboard, my interest in natural history and my curiosity about other species has only continued to grow. I have learned to identify plants and a few birds outside the scope of this class, as well as various species of slugs and a handful of fungi and lichens, kingdoms I was excited about before beginning this course. I feel encouraged to slow down outside and notice the minute details of the plants and animals around me. I’m inspired to continue learning about any environment in which I find myself.

To me, prior to this class, “natural history” included geomorphology and flora of the landscape. It never occurred to me that natural history should include animals, particularly birds, many of which are migratory and therefore not inherently bound to any one geographic locale. I never considered natural history something I would find fascinating or in which I would have a vested interest. I’m still, unfortunately, unsure about the specific relationship between human activity and natural history. At which point have humans altered an environment so much that it can no longer be called “natural”? How far removed from nature are humans that their activity should be delineated into a separate study? These questions and similar others seem to plague natural historians, so I shouldn’t feel too badly. However, I think it’s interesting that some acts of indigenous peoples are considered part of natural history while actions by, especially European, settlers are generally considered outside the scope. I find this vaguely dehumanizing, this separation of indigenous versus colonizing; I feel it reduces indigenous peoples to a more animalistic and primitive status than how colonizers are viewed. I’ll continue to work with my personal boundaries on my own time.

This class taught me to slow down, to be not only present in the environment, but to be present within the environment. I learned to notice species and their unique attributes and relationships to the ecology as a whole. I’ve become more invested in natural history after observing the changes in one landscape over the span of months and also after seeing the wide variety of ecologies across the Puget Sound Region. This class has only emboldened my reverence for natural landscapes.

#natural history #journal #puget sound region #pacific northwest

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