joe m 🐀

everyone entitled to their opinion & whatnot but i’m side eyeing tf out of ya’ll normal type pokemon haters😒 you really gonna tell me drampa would be better as just a dragon?? we have enough of that shit already. leave me & my generic babies in peace🥺

normal types are great like everyone is all like “oh shit a haunter I’m spooked guess I’ll die” meanwhile snorlax is over here napping in a cemetery because he doesn’t believe in the ghosts

I found this on wikipedia last night and absolutely cannot get over it. it makes me livid

first off, i consider helicopters to be toys. they're like those neon sculptures in the early 20th century - an interesting trick, but not something you'd use for serious applications.

i mean, just look at them. they're contraptions. they're fail-deadly, if the slightest thing goes wrong they crash and explode. they are immensely complex and constantly struggling not to kill their occupants. it is astonishing to me that people have just made helicopters a normal part of life.

i can't picture how someone looks at a helicopter and goes "we should use that for things other than otherwise-impossible mountain rescue operations." it's not even like fixed-wing craft, where they COULD crash but the reality is that 99.99% of flights are safe and the exceptions are almost all perfect storms that will happen once in a lifetime. when you get into a helicopter you are condemning yourself to the grave, and if you get out safely, you're experiencing a probabilistic anomaly. they shouldn't work - and in practice, they don't! they crash a lot!

all the things that helicopters get used for daily are astonishing to me. do we REALLY need to have traffic info that badly? do we REALLY need aerial news photography? why is it legal to run air taxis? we should be using these things for life and death situations and nothing else, it just amazes me to no end that we're so casual about it.

so helicopters baffle me enough on their own. but then militaries are just like "sure, let's build special helicopters that will by their nature always have far fewer hours of operation to prove their airworthiness, and then hang tons of weapons and shit on them, and then put them in the air for hours and hours at a time"

and THEN i find out that THIS is going on, and it's just too much. it's too much! i am flipping my lid at this time!

what really puts me over the edge is that I don't know where to start. there's so much to get upset about

1. why are there helicopters that are large enough to dwarf a four-engine plane

2. why is anyone putting a helicopter in the air long enough to need midair refueling

3. why is anyone operating a helicopter far enough from base that it makes SENSE to midair refuel

4. why is anyone operating TWO helicopters in this fashion SO consistently that they DEVELOPED A DUAL-CRAFT CAPABLE TANKER JUST FOR THIS PURPOSE

5. helicopters go up and sideways and a little bit forward. like, gently, for stations keeping, or getting from one place to another eventually.* it is illegal that they can maintain a consistent forward velocity above the stall speed of any plane larger than a cessna 152. there is NO WAY a helicopter could fly in formation with a fixed wing craft. i reject this. i reject ALL of this

every time i look at the picture i come at it from a different direction, my brain randomly picks one of these things to get mad at and then i bounce through all the others as if it's my first time looking at the picture, every time. i think i'm having a stroke and i think i've been having it since 1AM

* yes, i know that helicopters can go forward very fast. but i don't accept it.

You hear the collector announce itself with a subtle rustle and sing-song chitter from above, and so you turn your gaze to the branches overhead. The fey has formed itself from a knot of wood and moss, wreathed with leaves as any respected courtier would, and in its facsimile of presence it regards you through hollow, expectant eyes. This is not a surprise. A token for passage, the Six had said, and the High Prince might let you on your way. The collector raises its tendrilous fronds toward you. What do you offer?

> _

it’s just a rock and it’s not just a rock. you picked it up in passing, with barely a thought, on the day the two of you first met. when work or circumstance took you from home for days, or months, you kept it with you, and every morning and every night you spent a while turning it over, and thinking of who you’d left behind, and turning it over. you found it jagged, sharp, volcanic; now it’s smooth as a mirror, smooth as the cold lake was on the day you came home and found no one left there to wait for you. you turn the rock over, and turn it once more, but the time’s past: you’re stalling. you raise your open palm to the canopy. it’s just a rock.

A token given, a token taken.

A piece held dear, a piece now parted.

The High Prince does not ask much, yet the High Prince knows value. His collector takes the rock from your grasp, its green fronds stronger yet gentler than what lingering memories remain.

You may pass.

You may go.

full hearts no legs can’t lose