#space pegasus

[space-pegasus]

Time to introduce people to a very fascinating bird, or pegasus we should say. The Hoatzin! First off they stink like really bad, they have a very pungent aroma like a pile of manure and that’s because of their diet. They use their huge crops to ferment leaves, flowers, and sometimes fruit however since leaves make up the majority of their diet they need to eat a lot of them since leaves offer very few nutrients. But hey they also have two claws on each of their wings :)

These pegasus live in the tropical flooded swamps and forests. However their flight abilities are poor compared to other flighted pegasus due to their small keels. However they are proficient enough swimmers and nimble enough in the trees that they will more often jump into the water to swim away when threatened only scrambling up into the canopies once they feel the danger has passed.

[spacewonder19]

Mysterious spiral near LL Pegasi ©

[hermesmoly]

Utterly devastated nobody told me there was a vase painting of Poseidon rushing toward Medusa's decapitated body while one of her sisters looks like she's trying to stop him from seeing the bloody scene... implying he either visits her regularly or she called for him before she died :(

[pallanophblargh]

It's nice to have salvaged "Mirrorsight" cover art. By which I mean I re-scanned it after giving the original a much needed facelift.

It's definitely one of my favorites from the series.

[shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

I swear this is a Cinderella boy vid

Just watch it if you love Chase

Cause I do

Very much

NEON PEGASUS <3

STARGOTH FOREVERRRRRRRRRR 🥺

[bishopony]

solemn stardust <3

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[seashoreships]

i see Space Core as a kid so FILLY BE UPON YE!!

[ponyartistbrainiac]

ITS FINISHED thank you everyone who supported me over the years this is my 3000th pony drawing I started in 2011 and this milestone means alot to me

I tried to keep the pixel style intact so it fit with the rest of the pictures in the collection and like the others it is Outer Wilds themed with as many of my longest standing and most important supporters I could fit. Thanks again for everyone who supported me this long. After I finish my commissions I think its time to take a break from ponies for a while and start on something new and Outer Wilds inspired I hope you are all as excited as me.

Let me know what you think <3 and its time to celebrate!

Commissions will resume soon.

[lonestarflight]

The Apollo Boilerplate (BP-26) "being mated to the SA-8 Saturn I Block II (AS-104) launch vehicle on Launch Complex 37B (LC-37B).

The radial configuration of the forward restraint straps of the Pegasus B/Pegasus 2 micrometeoroid detection satellite can be seen inside the cavity of the Command Module. I think the squarish structure to be two of the stowed/folded solar panels of the satellite."

Date: April-May 1965

Mike Acs's Collection: link

[sys-shenanigans]

PONY PONY PONYYYYYY

Pony in the mind, had to draw our Dainslief's pony bein all magical and star-y hehehe. We got more pony ideas that we wanna try n get 'round to hopefully soon!

-Jon🚬 [ he/him ]

[space-pegasus]

Like Oilbirds and some Swifts on earth the some pegasus are capable of echolocation. Even more fascinating is that the pegasus based on Aerodramus swifts are capable of making nests out of their own saliva.

[roosterarts]

They did it! The mad lads at SpaceX did it! They launched a 15-story spaceship into a quasi-orbit above Earth! IFT-3 was crazy and I loved every second of it.

Anyways, here's some art I did while waiting for the launch.

[kingspacebar]

Theyre… uh… friends

[quirkymarshmallows93]

Gas Station Stream of Consciousness Post

Gas Stations as Liminal Spaces

I've had quite a few hyperfixations in my day - ATMs, laundry detergents, credit cards - so my current one pertaining to gas stations is fitting considering my affinity for liminal spaces and the dedication of this blog to them. Liminal spaces are transitory in nature, hence their portrayal in online circles through photos of carpeted hallways, illuminated stairwells, dark roads, and backrooms, among other transitional points.

Gas stations are posted online as well; images of their fuel pumps or neon signage photographed through a rainy car window communicate their liminality and the universal experiences they provide to all of society. Perhaps they are the ultimate specimen of a liminal space. The machines they are created for, automobiles and tractor trailers alike, themselves are tools for motion, vestibules that enable travel and shipment across long distances at high speeds. Cars and roads are liminal spaces, albeit in different formats, and gas stations serve as their lighthouses. Vehicles at filling stations, therefore, are in a sense liminal spaces within liminal spaces within liminal spaces.

The uniqueness of a gas station as a liminal space, however, is its intersection with the economics and aesthetics of capitalism. Gasoline (and diesel fuel) is a commodity, downstream from crude oil, merely differentiated by octane ratings. Some argue that minute distinctions between agents, detergents, and additives make some brands better than others. Indeed, fuels that are approved by the Top Tier program, sponsored by automakers, have been shown to improve engine cleanliness and performance, but this classification does not prefer specific refiners over others; it is simply a standard. To a consumer, Top Tier fuels are themselves still interchangeable commodities within the wider gasoline commodity market.

The Economics of Gas Stations

The market that gas stations serve is characterized by inelastic demand, with customers who reckon with prices that fluctuate day in and day out. This is not to say that consumer behavior does not change with fuel prices. It has been observed that as prices rise, consumers are more eager to find the cheapest gas, but when prices fall, drivers are less selective with where they pump and are just happy to fill up at a lower price than last week. In response, gas stations lower their prices at a slower rate than when increasing prices, allowing for higher profit margins when wholesale prices fall. This has been dubbed the "rockets and feathers" phenomenon.

When portrayed as liminal spaces, gas stations are most often depicted at night, places of solitude where one may also enter the adjacent convenience store and encounter a fellow individual who isn't asleep, the modern day lightkeeper. The mart that resides at the backcourt of a gas station is known to sell goods at higher prices than a supermarket, simultaneously taking advantage of a captive customer, convenient location, and making up for the inefficiencies of a smaller operation. It may come as no surprise, then, that gas stations barely make any money from fuel sales and earn their bulk through C-store sales. This is a gripe I have with our economic system. Business is gamified, and in many cases the trade of certain goods and services, called loss leaders, is not an independent operation and is subsidized by the success of another division of a business, a strategy inherently more feasible for larger companies that have greater scale to execute it.

Nevertheless, most gas station owners, whether they have just one or hundreds of sites, find this method fruitful. Even though most gas stations in the US sell one of a handful of national brands, they operate on a branded reseller, or dealer, model, with oil companies themselves generally not taking part in the operations of stations that sell their fuels. The giants do still often have the most leverage and margin in the business, with the ability to set the wholesale price for the distributor, which sells at a markup to the station owner, which in turn will normally make the least profit in the chain when selling to the end customer at the pump. This kind of horizontal integration that involves many parties lacks the synergies and efficiencies of vertical integration that are so applauded by capitalists, but ends up being the most profitable for firms like ExxonMobil, who only extract and refine oil, and on the other end of the chain merely license their recognizable brands to the resellers through purchasing agreements. Furthermore, in recent years, independent dealers have sold their businesses to larger branded resellers, in many cases the ones from whom they had been buying their fuel.

A Word on ExxonMobil's Branding Potential

The largest publicly traded oil company in the world is Exxon Mobil Corporation. It is a direct descendent of the Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil, which was broken up in 1911 into 34 companies, the largest of which was Jersey Standard, which became Exxon in 1973. This title was generated by a computer as the most appealing replacement name to be used nationwide to unify the Humble, Enco, and Esso brands, decades before AI was spoken of. The latter brand is still used outside of the United States for marketing, arising from the phonetic pronunciation of the initials of Standard Oil. In 1999, Exxon and Mobil merged, and the combined company to this day markets under separate brands. Exxon is more narrowly used, to brand fuel in the United States, while Mobil has remained a motor oil and industrial lubricant brand, as well as a fuel brand in multiple countries.

Mobil originated in 1866 as the Vacuum Oil Company, which first used the current brand name for Mobiloil, and later Mobilgas and Mobilubricant products, with the prefix simply short for "automobile". Over time, Mobil became the corporation's primary identity, with its official name change to Mobil Oil Corporation taking place in 1966. Its updated wordmark with a signature red O was designed by the agency Chermayeff & Geismar, and the company's image for service stations was conceived by architect Eliot Noyes. New gas stations featured distinctive circular canopies over the pumps, and the company's recognizable pegasus logo was prominently on display for motorists.

I take issue with the deyassification of the brand's image over time. As costs were cut and uniformity took over, rectangular canopies were constructed in place of the special ones designed by Noyes that resembled large mushrooms. The pegasus remained a prominent brand icon, but the Mobil wordmark took precedence, which I personally believe to be an error in judgement. This disregard for the pegasus paved the way for its complete erasure in 2016 with the introduction of ExxonMobil's "Synergy" brand for its fuel. The mythical creature is now much smaller and appears only at the top right corner of pumps at Mobil gas stations, if at all.

Even into the 90s and the 21st century the Pegasus had its place in Mobil's marketing. In 1997, the company introduced its Speedpass keytag, which was revolutionary for its time and used RFID technology, akin to mobile payments today, to allow drivers to get gas without entering the store or swiping a card. When a Speedpass would be successfully processed, the pegasus on the gas pump would light up red.

When Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999, the former adopted the payment method too, with Exxon's less iconic tiger in place of the pegasus.

The program was discontinued in 2019 in favor of ExxonMobil's app, which is more secure since it processes payments through the internet rather than at the pump.

What Shell has done with its brand identity is what Mobil should've done for itself. The European company's logo was designed in 1969 by Raymond Loewy, and is a worth contender for the "And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self" meme. In recent years, Shell went all in on its graphic, while Mobil's pegasus flew away. I choose to believe that the company chose to rebrand its stations in order to prevent the malfunction in the above image from happening.

ExxonMobil should have also discontinued the use of the less storied Exxon brand altogether, and simplifying its consumer-facing identity to just the global Mobil mark. Whatever, neither of the names are actual words. As a bonus, here is a Google map I put together of all 62 gas stations in Springfield, MA. This is my idea of fun. Thanks for reading to the end!

[texasthrillbilly]

Directed by Taika Waititi