#lower unit

[aromanthur-lester]

I understand why every companion decides to travel with the Doctor on a whim because I, too, if faced with the option to pay rent in London or the option to live in a police box rent-free, would choose the second one.

[cartoonosaurusrex]

[ireallyamabear]

The choice to put Una Chin-Reily on a Starfleet recruitment poster in the late 2370s seems a nod to the extraordinary person she is and her exemplary service, but Boimler’s enthusiasm for her as a personal hero cannot mask the fact of what Starfleet execs are really doing here: while it is Starfleet tradition to honour esteemed personnel from its centuries of history, we have to look at the poster as a product of its time: it seems clear that, shortly after the devastating death toll and the rapid militarisation of the Dominion War, putting a prominent figure of the Great Exploration Age - and notedly someone who had not served in the Klingon War - as the poster person for Starfleet is an indictment that contemporary young people of the Federation are not drawn to the service as it is in their time anymore.

Critically, Starfleet has to use somebody from a 120 years ago, a timeframe that would lap generations of even especially long lived member species like Vulcans or Denobulans, to attract new recruits. Boimler says himself that seeing Una as a representative and her motto - “Ad astra per aspera” was: “Uh, it was a really big reason why I joined.” Clearly there is a wealth of recognisable Starfleet officers from 2370 and onwards, but their entanglement in the Dominion War, or at least in the Borg threat makes them unsuitable as role models for people like Boimler who cannot help but associate these contemporaries with the horrors of war and intergalactic conflict. Thus, the retreat to a “safe” historical narrative, with Starfleet still being about peaceful exploration reflects the growing divide between the realities of a colonised galaxy, the ongoing need of new bodies to fill the posts on all those ships and space stations and the aspirations and values of young people today. In this essay I will question whether Starfleet can keep its promise of scientific integrity in the face of growing political unrest in the UFP and ask what “Number One” herself would have thought about-

[northameicanblog]

Lower Calf Creek Falls, Utah, United States: Lower Calf Creek Falls is a 126-foot cascade and is very popular, because it can be reached by an easy hike on a 5.7-mile roundtrip trail. Calf Creek Falls refers to a pair of perennial waterfalls on the Calf Creek in the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in central Garfield County, Utah, United States, that total 214 feet. Wikipedia

[sinnettini]

iga świątek after winning her semifinal match at united cup (04.01.2025)

[langernameohnebedeutung]

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[emaadsidiki]

District of Columbia 🌳⛲🌿 TBT

[rudhira]

Can't stop thinking about clocks apparently... 🥰

I found this while perusing models-resource for something to convert and thought it seemed fun. It's an alarm clock from a game called The Stretchers, which seems like a paramedic version of Overcooked.

This will function as an alarm clock in most ways, except your Sims can't break it as I was too lazy to model a broken state. They can still try, though! Speaking of model, this thing has 3,300 polys. That is very high for an object of this size. I didn't check until I was far enough along that I didn't want to throw it out. :( The texture sizes are really small, though!

Found in Small Electronics with the other alarm clocks and costs §70 which is quite a bit higher than the one I cloned it from, but I figured it's overpriced like any other novelty item. And it is unbreakable.

Download: SFS

Thanks to @gummilutt for helping me with BHAVs and thanks to Centrixe for extracting the resources!

[astrinexvier]

🖖🖖LIVE LONG AND PROSPER🖖🖖

SPOILERSSS!!

THANK YOU FOR CHANGING MY LIFE FOREVER SAMATHON RUTHERFORD

i fuking love you and your nerdy rantings and your fucking badass backstory and your badass besties. you're the silver lining or shall I say chromatic interface to my...uh er I dunno whatever. I love you! and I will miss you so much!

(came in as a glitchy cyborg and came out a happy normal ma with an orion girlfriend ) fuck ya.

Like all that implant ever did was give him particle headaches! he never truly needed it did he? WIthout it he seems so much happier like truly happy. That's so damn precious. I kinda wish he had a badass scar tho that's just me haha.

[moeblob]

Summer Alt Sharena!

She's a colorless unit and the beach ball is colored for the weapons triangle. Her necklace as the Askran symbol on it and then in her hair, towards the top, is a headpiece with a flower but also horns like Askr has.

[quasi-normalcy]

Continuity and Serialization in Star Trek: A Highly Scientific Vibes-Based Analysis

[badgopher]

"Saturdays by Twin Shadow (feat. HAIM)" is how I've mentally started every post I've made here on a Saturday for the past however many years that song's been out.

I decided I needed bath bombs so I set out to do that and only realized my error when I saw the traffic control person as soon as I turned into the mall. On the Saturday before Christmas. lol

My upstairs neighbor moved out a month ago so I no longer hear about their sex life through my ceiling. My next door neighbor moved out last week so I no longer have to wear my active noise cancelling earplugs to muffle their snoring. It’s quieter around here, but the hot water takes longer to find my tap in the morning.

I deleted a whole chapter about that computer case. You’re welcome.

Never did end up doing Christmas cards this year. I’ve got mixed feelings about that.

I want to do a bunch of dumb end of year data analysis things, but I have to pull a bunch of data to do it, and that’ll take me like a dozen minutes, and that's like a dozen minutes that I could spend not doing that thing. You see my dilemma. Stay tuned, I guess?

I’m the only one on my team not scheduled off on Monday and I think Tuesday next week (and, actually, most of the next 2 weeks). It’s easy enough to keep Teams active and my work email open while I tinker on side quests.

The checkout person at LUSH is always like “oh, are these a gift?” as I unload 9 bath bombs from my basket, as if they don't get many solo middle aged dudes stocking up on bath bombs on Saturday afternoons.

Turns out I miscounted and have 1 too many bath bombs so I’m taking a bath about it.

[catenary-chad]

I've alluded to the concept a number of times, but here's my redesign for OLC Belle the Sleeping Car wildly roleswapped into a Momma/Poppa figure for Electra, as Belle the GG1. You could probably give her a better name, but Belle is passable enough since all locomotives in the US have bells, I mainly kept it to preserve the flow of her song (see below cut for her version!). Based on their status and appearance in their absolute final running days in 1984. They may look glossy and pretty (if a WILD time warp) but they were on their absolute last gasp physically at this point after running for nearly 50 years, due to a lack of suitable replacement. Her dress follows a similar logic to Greaseball's outfit in that it represents the streamlined cowl, which is why she's less mechanical than most.

Personality-wise, she's also oooooold and based on Ella Fitzgerald, even more heavily than OLC Belle since she's fits perfectly with the time/place/personality of the GG1s. Both started in the mid-30s in New York City, and were noted for being "effortless" and almost unparalleled in their field. I tend to imagine her playing more on the "cute, humble, and improvisational" side of Ella, entering the big race just to have one last good run before she retires, and forgetting lyrics and making up something that sounds natural. In my mind she wins because the tracks are rough and winding, which she's far more used to that the other Nationals, with how decrepit parts of her Northeast Corridor were in the 80s and still are now- experience is a quality that counts for a lot!

She toes the line between OC and AU since she's such a twist on the original but stays largely true to her general concept. I'll call her more of an AU and say anyone is free to use this interpretation if they want, I'm not possessive of it at all.

Realistically she'd be dead as a doornail after 1984 (GG1s will just never run in preservation, they were in such bad shape and would need so much work to function on modern systems you may as well build a new replica). But make a cheeky joke about Controls' mom "sticking the old shell on a new body and not telling the kid" and she can come back. I like to think she'd have a flirty, playful rivalry with Momma/Poppa, she'd make Light At The End Of The Tunnel a duet about how steam is great.... for power plants! The Pennsylvania Railroad just stopped getting more steam engines when it electrified lines vs axing them so she wouldn't have any historical antagonism with them.

Here's my rewrite of Belle's Song largely following the original format, but now about the real history of the GG1s

Speed and youth ain't everything

Experience is a quality that counts for a lot

The sad thing 'bout experience is

By the time you've got it

It's usually all you've got...

I'm Belle, Belle, Belle, the GG1

Had my fifty years of fun

My frame is cracked, I’m almost done

Though in my heart, I long to run

I hauled the folks, I hauled the freight

I made good time, no need to wait

Just couple up and ride with me

I’d get you where you want to be

Once I was the hope for the future, wires run from coast to coast

Service every hour, to everywhere, hauling the post!

Now it’s just tragic…

The war then came, it all fell down

Restriction made the new tech drown

Let autos win, pave over it all

Watched the railroads slowly fall

Still I was a real mainliner, they struggled to replace me

Ran commuter trains into the ground

Down by the sea…. At least it was scenic

Oh, Belle, Belle, Belle, the GG-LOST

I’m worn down, yet I’m still boss

I may not be first class, but I'm not yet worst class

I can still take you when the night is dark

I’m withered, but I ain’t lost my spark

[northameicanblog]

Wall Street, New York City: Wall Street is a street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway in the west and South Street and the East River in the east. Wikipedia

[bopbop171]

United healthcare CEO assassin playlist with Milk Man by Rare Americans WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[sufficientlylargen]

One thing that's bugged me a bit about a lot of discourse I've seen following the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO is how people talk about coverage denials, step therapies, etc. like they were personal failings of UHC, as though the solution is "United Healthcare should be more benevolent" instead of "healthcare should not depend on corporate benevolence". Like yes, UHC denies more claims than most insurers, and that is terrible and people who choose to work for them should be ashamed of this, but also we should all want to live in a world where if you have an expensive-to-treat medical situation you aren't relying on a for-profit corporation agreeing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for it.