Dammit, My Tricks Explained!

You know you’re getting older when every new person you meet looks like a permutation of people you already know.

the thing i love the most about amy santiago—and there’s a lot—is that the she doesn’t care about being mysterious or cool or any of that crap.

like, there’s a lot of superheroes and doctor whos and sherlocks running around on tv these days, and with all of them, it’s like, you have these moments where you find out that the main dudes are just. Inexplicably Good At Everything.

they can take down a bad guy, bake a perfect soufflé, field strip any firearm in under 30 seconds, and dance an award-winning rumba, and it’s fucking intimidating. it’s like the show runners want to drill the idea into your head that They Are Cool and Better Than You, like, yes fine I get it, you know?

but it’s not like that with amy.

amy doesn’t care about being ‘cool,’ so you don’t have to either.

she knows how to lip read? she probably took a course. she can take down a runner in a dress and high heels? she never missed a self defense class. she can fold a perfect table napkin? she watched a DIY video. she knows about wedding insurance? she made a whole. freaking. binder.

and if you want to be like amy? you CAN.

you absolutely can, and it’ll actually make amy so much more amazing, because then you know how much hard work it took for her to be that good in the first place.

and if she knew you wanted to be like her? amy would definitely cry and then she’d help, and that’s why i think she’s wonderful thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Everyone around you is an NPC.

Had to post this somewhere.

I’ve been thinking about Elon Musk’s Tesla.

The guy shot a car into space. A freaking car. With a fake astronaut in the seat and the words “Don’t Panic.”

And people are seeing this as this bizarre conspicuous consumption or a weird Tesla publicity stunt. As a one percenter…

…but the more I think about it, the more I realize something quite simple.

This guy had to launch a test load. He had to put something on that rocket. Given the power of the rocket, whatever they launched as a test load had to be heavy enough to properly test the biggest rocket we’ve launched since the Apollo program.

It had to be well built and solid enough to survive the launch. Now, because of the size of the load, it had to be put into a stable orbit not, as happens with smaller test loads, set to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

So, assuming everything went well, whatever they put on that rocket? It’s going to be in space for a long time. Assuming it’s not hit by a bit of debris, or an asteroid, or whatever, it could be up there for millions of years. It’s in space, so it’s not going to rust or corrode. It will eventually develop pitting from micro meteor strikes, it’s not going to last forever.

So, what does the guy send up.

A freaking car with an astronaut in the seat and the words “Don’t Panic” printed on it.

It’s corny. It’s tacky. But what else is it?

It’s art.

It’s something that’s going to still be recognizable as art in a few thousand years. After we’re all dead. Heck, it may still be recognizable as art after our species is dead - extinct or evolved into something else.

Given the fact that he had to put some kind of object into a stable orbit in the solar system, Musk picked not just art, but ridiculous art. The kind of thing that hangs from diner ceilings, the kind of thing a kid would put together.

He put something out there that screams to the void “This is us. This is humanity. This is how utterly silly we are, how completely frivolous.”

And you know what, if the first..or the only…thing an alien civilization sees of us is Elon Musk’s stupid car, I’m quite happy with that.

They might not be able to decipher the message, but they’ll know somebody was here who, given the power to fly into space used it to play.

I’m quite happy with that.

You can turn $20 worth of paint into a million dollar painting.

nervous

am in such a bad mood i just told my mood tracker notification to fuck off