A Section Of NCSX, A Fusion Reactor So Ambitious And Advanced For Its Day That It Was Cancelled While

a very big tree in gongqing forest park共青森林公园 in shanghai

Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega TASTE (2024) Dir. Dave Meyers Styled by: Ronnie Hart and Enrique Melendez

Well, I heard you're back together and if that's true You'll just have to taste me when he's kissin' you If you want forever, I bet you do (I bet you do) Just know you'll taste me too

SABRINA CARPENTER and JENNA ORTEGA — Sabrina Carpenter: Taste (Official Video)

chinese gardens in winter by 糖果味道

|| Lizards

Benny x Lu full blurb

Without thinking, because she is twenty four now and has been to the beach and has swam with friends and has lived a life, Lu shucks her dress, her shoes, her slip and dives into the lake, nylon undergarments ruined and only just sufficient to be considered a covering. It’s fine, it’s normal, she comes up to the surface and she knows, somewhere far back in her mind she knows, her chest and its scar is visible but it doesn’t matter. The sun is bright, the water is reflecting so strongly she has to squint and through it all Benny is tossing his hair out of his eyes and laughing between puffs of exertion at treading water. He is laughing at having jumped in, at the fact she went for it, too. It doesn’t matter that her body is on display, as a gruesome curiosity or an incitement to desire.

She is swimming with Benny and it’s all just fine.

It makes the moment so utterly enjoyable Lu feels like all her longing to be out here, to be surrounded by this big vast world— it’s been close to right, very near what she’s needed, it’s just made a little better with him and that’s unfortunate as he lives in Chicago. Benny shouldn’t be in the city, he should be in a sparkling lake with minnows assaulting his feet and diamonds of water caught in his lashes.

They’re laughing at each other, so much so they’re close to drowning, and they don’t have to say why. It’s perfect.

She could count each of his lashes as she swims around him, so close and so circular she’s half minnow herself, Benny’s eyes don’t leave her face and he’s stopped laughing enough to look mildly wary at her antics. She’d like to count his lashes, she realizes, she never really thought of how many there were, distracted perhaps, by his beard at other times.

Back when he had a beard: she knew that about him. Back when she stuffed cardboard into her brassieres: she knew that about her.

She keeps circling him and can’t make any progress on counting his lashes because he begins to laugh again, but it’s short and aggravated and she waits for him to explain it, she knows he will.

“What’re you, half mermaid?” there’s quashed competition in his voice, he’s betrayed at her leaving off their giggle fit to actually swim.

“You sure aren’t.” she laughs back, his neck is almost fully in the water, “Those big strong shoulders can’t hold you up? Am I going to have to tow you to the rock?”

Benny takes the teasing well, his face clears if anything, quick to laugh at himself. “You’ve got an advantage, you come here a lot. I’ve been rottin’ in the city.”

Lu gives an approving nod at his conclusion, it aligns with her own. “Yes, so you’ve gotta fix that. You should come out here more often.”

He doesn’t need to come here. Here with her.

There’s all manner of woods and water and nature just outside his stupid city but that’s not an option somehow, not with the way he’s here with her when he could be in the woods with Jack or out on a boat with Maureen. He chose here, instead.

“Yeah, I should.” Benny just agrees because they don’t have to say all that, say that it feels right and different. It just is for now and they can let it be.

She watches him lay back in the water, floating along with the gentle ripple and his ears are below the water and his eyes are on the big blue sky above them and Lu thinks that’s a perfect idea so she floats back too, staring at the sky they once knew so well, wondering if he misses it like she does- in a way that’s half agony of separation and absolute terror of ever being made to reunite with it.

Bucky doesn’t get that; he’s still flying.

Ida and Gale would still be if their governments weren’t so shit to them.

Jack never wanted to but he’d done it for the country, for his people, because it was right. From how often Benny and Jack see each other, like they’re dosing each other up by sheer proximity, Lu guesses they shared that singular motivation.

She turns her head, one ear clogged and filled with water, her other cheek so far into the lake it’s almost lapping up her one nostril; but she can see Benny floating near her, he has his eyes closed.

He gets it, she thinks, heart so full she could cry from happiness for once.

“-don’t you want to fall asleep like this?” she wants to ask him, says it aloud only because she knows his ears are under the water, his face doesn’t even twitch, his eyelids are smooth without a crease of a squint or a frown around them, his nose is ever so gently upturned and Lu wants to place her hand under his head, keep him like this forever, let him enjoy it like she does, “You could, I’d keep you up, make sure you don’t drown.”

When Benny turns his face to her she blushes hot even in the freshwater lake, he looks like he’s caught her at something she shouldn’t be doing, a chiding look of kindness but it reminds her she shouldn’t be treading water and staring at his face like she loves him. If only he could see himself. He’d understand it then. Anyone would.

It’s Benny. And it’s perfect and before he pulls his head up fully he lets himself sink a little and does a slow lazy flip in the water and she feels him tickle her foot on the way back up.

It’s much the same laying on the toasty flat limestone rocks on the lakeshore. Benny and her, burning their backs on the rock, tender bellies getting scorched by late afternoon sun, underwear drying out as crispy as the grass. He’s got his eyes closed again, lashes fanned out on freckling cheeks. And Lu is watching him once more and thinking how much she’d like to be a couple of lazy lizards with Benny.

She snickers at the thought.

“What’s that?” he hums.

Lu shakes her head, disbelieving that she’s about to embarrass herself like this but at least he still has his eyes closed, “I was thinking that we’re a pair of lizards.” And that she’d like to keep being a lizard with him and have a lizard family.

Benny doesn’t laugh at her, his nose crinkles in a mildly disgusted way but he looks like he’s gotta agree despite it all, she feels so fuzzy by that. “I think my back is gonna stay on the rock when I sit up.”

The clasps of her bra are digging into her spine but, otherwise it’s burning and fabulous and she wants to stay forever. The look on his face, lazily tilted towards hers on the rock with his eyes half masted and open, agrees so eloquently Lu wants to— she doesn’t know. So she settles with reaching out and resting her hand on the browned meat of his pretty shoulder. Benny’s eyes droop further and they chide her ever so gently for the fire it ignites in them both all at once, and Lu would love to be two lizards and stay here forever.

General Electric Turbine Plant, Schenectady, NY, 1940. Alfred Eisenstaedt. Silver gelatin.

2025 GRAMMY Nominations for Sabrina Carpenter and Short n' Sweet

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.

Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.

If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries. 

Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest! 

An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.

Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.  

Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.  

Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.  

The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027. 

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook. 

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