this morning NASA abandoned their mars rover Opportunity (aka Oppy) because it (she) got hit by a storm on Mars and it knocked her camera and wheels out and her last words to the team were “my battery is low and it is getting cold”. I know she’s a machine but I’m devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby
they didn’t abandon her!! they tried eight months to reach her!!!! as their last farewell to her yesterday they played her “I’ll be seeing you” by Billie Holiday:
“I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you”
They love her so much and they tried so hard!!!
Oh man, It doesn’t end there.
This isn’t the first song NASA sent Opportunity. They had a playlist:
It’s on Spotify, it’s called “Opportunity, wake up!“
This is what’s great about NASA and it’s what’s great about people. These are world-class engineers. When they sent a rover to another planet they could have easily looked at it as just another scientific tool. But people don’t do that. We can and will get emotionally attached to the most inanimate of objects. We can and will anthropomorphize anything. And frankly Opportunity’s camera mast looks like a little face with eyes and everything, so why not?
So they started calling it her.
They nicknamed her Oppy.
They told her to take a selfie not long ago.
After 15 years of Oppy flipping the double bird to her original 90 day life expectancy, when a planet-spanning dust storm finally knocked her out and she stopped responding to the engineer’s wake-up messages, they started playing music for her.
And after 8 months and almost 1000 unanswered wake-up messages, when it was finally clear that Oppy was never going to wake up, the last thing these world-class NASA engineers did for their little rover on another planet
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.
you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today.
it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.
about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.
i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.
but i think – to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-
i think opportunity knew it was loved.
every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.
that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.
Everyone in your world can teleport within 10 feet of the person they love the most. Your best friend wonders how you always seem to be there just when they need you.
State Farm puts out a series of joking commercials. The punch line being that of all the people in your insurance agent’s life, you’re the one they care about most- you’re the person they can teleport to.
It’s bold of them to joke about something so controversial. After all, who your ‘port is can make or break a relationship. Study after study has been done on the ‘port between parent and child and psychiatrists are always analyzing your ‘port history.
The commercials are tacky, too. They make fun of the power inherent in a person’s greatest love. That’s what a ‘port is, after all, your love for someone being strong enough to take you to wherever they are. All in all State Farm’s “good neighbor” commercials leave people shaking their heads and laughing uncomfortably.
Caitlyn’s not laughing when a man brings a gun to her school.
Her class is on the yard and there’s no warning- he’s just there, with a gun, and her kids are frozen.
Mickey’s too close too close and not moving and the man is turning the gun towards him. Mickey’s only 8 and he drives her nuts most days. He cries and screams and he runs away and he makes things up and he loves his mom and his sister and he cried when Caitlyn got stitches and she loves him she loves him she loves him.
She feels a moment of disorientation and suddenly she’s between the man and the boy.
She doesn’t hesitate, just wraps herself around Mickey. Then she closes her eyes and reaches inside herself for the first-easiest-always, thinks I love you I love you I love you and feels the shift of the ‘port.
And her eyes land on Zeke, who is jerking to his feet in shock, and she feels a huge wave of relief. Zeke’s been her ‘port since they were months old and her aunt got up one morning to find two babies in the crib instead of one. These days they usually plan their visits and Caitlyn’s never brought a kid before, so Zeke has questions in his eyes.
Before he can voice any, she’s pushing Mickey towards him and gasping out “I have to go back-”
And she’s thinking of the next closest kid, Jasper, one of her rough and tumble boys, he’s so big, 8 years old and almost as tall as her, Jazz is learning to control his temper and his energy but there’s a sweetness to him that comes out at the oddest moments. It’s easy to declare I love I love I love and then she’s grabbing Jazz and sending herself back to Zeke’s shelter.
He’s a little more prepared this time, reaching out to steady her and guide Jazz away while she turns her thoughts and heart to the next kid.
And she’s gone and grabbing Topher, her sweet boy who listens and cares and tries, and they’re back to Zeke.
And she’s gone and grabbing Zornitsa, her scampy little comedian, and back to Zeke.
And she’s gone and grabbing Ariel and Kaho and Clarissa, her gymnast trio with their fierceness and their determination, and back to Zeke.
This time she thinks to shrug her backpack off and gasp out “There’s a list- in the emergency folder-”
And then she’s gone again.
When she reaches for Heidi, her zippy little miss who won’t touch fruit and loves worms and has grown so much, that she lands inside. She pulls Heidi and Adela into her arms and shifts back to Zeke.
Her kids are away from the man with the gun and she feels shaky. She takes a couple breaths, bracing her hands on her thighs. Then she thinks of passion-dedication-exasperation, guide and guidee, and wraps that all around her I love I love I love.
The next moment she’s in a closet turned office made all the smaller by the crush of people in it. She looks up at her boss as several kids stifle startled yelps and Colin looks back with wide eyes under his tangled mop of curls.
“What-” he starts to ask.
“Third grade was on the yard, there wasn’t time to get indoors, but I think I got them all safe,” Caitlyn tells him.
“How?” he asks.
“Like this,” she says, voice tinged with hysterical laughter.
She wraps her arms around Carmela, Elizaveta, Winona, and Joanna and reaches for Zeke. She drops the girls off and goes back to Colin, who goggles.
“I know you need to stay on site, but I thought you should know that I’m evacuating our kids,” Caitlyn tells him.
Colin shakes off his astonishment and squares his lanky shoulders.
“Can you get to kinder?” he asks, eyes lighting up.
“Yes,” Caitlyn says, “with Nancy there that will be easy.”
“Get them all out,” Colin says, “and tell Nancy to start listing who is safe, have her message me.”
“Will do,” she says with a nod. She grabs the three remaining kids and takes them to Zeke.
She thinks of Nancy then, they have different classes this year but they’re still brain mates, still the team, and it’s easy to wrap finishing each others sentences and communicating without words around her I love I love I love.
Nancy startles when she appears, and several of the babies scream. Team Kinder moves into action, hushing and calming. Nancy just waits, meeting Caitlyn’s eyes.
“Colin sent me, I’m evacuating you guys,” Caitlyn explains. “I can take as many as I can hold at a time. How do you want to do this?”
Nancy nods once.
“Start with Mr. Mason and Bashir and Rafael,” Nancy says. “I’ll have the next group ready when you get back.
Caitlyn nods and grabs them.
Things go pretty smoothly after that. Nancy sends kinder off a group at a time and then quickly takes control of the chaotic crowd that Caitlyn has already saved.
Caitlyn moves on grade by grade, finding her way to the colleagues she is so so grateful to work with.
By the time the cops secure the man with the gun, the school is empty, everyone 150 miles away.
When they ask later how she did it she looks right at them.
“Love is love,” she says, “there’s no such thing as more or less,” she shakes her head slightly, “it’s not quantifiable, there’s no scale that can measure it, love is.”
That’s it, the Professor is truly the King of Sass
The letter didn’t come from the Nazi party, but from the publishing house which had expressed an interest in the German translation of The Hobbit. Tolkien’s response really is a thing of beauty, though, so it deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully
J.R.R. Tolkien.
(Letter 30)
The Hobbit wasn’t published in German until 1957.
This might just be the politest “fuck you” ever written.
W.h.a.t.
Not just “I wish I had Jewish ancestors, but I don’t,” but also “you do realize that’s not what ‘Aryan’ actually means, right,” and “you guys are making it pretty hard to be proud of my German heritage.”
Update: Sauron is not afraid of hobbits. He was unaware that hobbits existed up until very recently. he literally did not have time to be afraid of them, they went from a 0 to 100 threat level in twenty seconds. There he was, minding his own business worrying about the usual Elves and Men when suddenly these kids are on his lawn and now he’s dead, like just;
What did— who–
did I just get one-shotted by an infant how is this occurring
Honestly I have to love this whole thought process that the Fellowship must have cultivated in Sauron, like…
“These children have found the Ring! But they’re taking it to the elves, of course. I will simply have to catch them on the way.”
“Well, the elves are still not to be trifled with, it seems. It looks as though they have a group of intrepid heroes, how cute! Wait, who’s leading them? Aw, hell.”
“OKAY! Olorin’s out of the way, and now I can finally kill them all and reclaim the- OH DAMMIT, IT’S IN LOTHLORIEN.”
“Well, okay. They’ve taken it onward. Curunir says one of the halflings is still carrying the ring, so he’s going to capture them and we’ll see how this develops. Thankfully Olorin’s still out of the picture and their little group just shattered into pieces, so that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Aaaaaand Curunir shat the bed. Excellent. Trees, who would have thought? Okay, so we’re back to plan A: conquer Gondor, because if the Ring’s going to be anywhere, it’ll be there.”
“Wait, who’s on the– Isildur’s WHAT? Ohhhh. Ohohoho. Oh now everything makes sense. Isildur’s Heir is back, and he’s here being all prideful again. That’s fine. Really. I’ll just crush him and his kingdom, and then nobody can stop me!”
“WHAT? FUCKING WHAT? THEY SENT HIM BACK? Ugh, alright, alright, I’m cool, I’m fine. He’s still got that stupid wizard costume on, and I’m still stronger than he ever was. It’s not like he can come toe to toe with me, even if he does have an army behind him. This’ll be fine.”
“They’re… actually marching on the Black Gate? Sweet lord, I didn’t think they’d actually do it! This is perfect, everyone’s right here! Olorin, the human princeling, most of the remaining fighting forces of Men, all I have to do is kill them now and– Wait. Someone just put on the Ring. Someone just– That’s a halfling. They’re inside the mouNTAIN OH GOD NAZGUL GO GO G–”
…aaaaaand curtain.
you can laugh but that is literally what happened
This is the single best brief summary I have ever seen of the entire point of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“Hey Goediun, did you finish- ah hell, not MORE earth wildlife.”
“This planet’s completely fucked up Clyod.”
“What the fuck are THOSE?” Guenoid demanded, peering over his co-worker’s mass to squint at the pojection.
“Third-most dominant carnivore on the planet.”
“Yeah but what’s the little thing next to it?”
“Same species.”
“You’re emusifying me.”
“Absoultely not. This thing’s got the genetics from hell. Apparently they just have hundreds if not thousands of copies of any gene they might need and can suffer drastic radiation, inbreeding or rapid enviornmental selection and come out mostly functional organisms. Both of these are actually pretty far from the species average- here, this is a more common specimen.”
“Oh that’s not so bad-”
“Remember how the Humans are Pursuit predators?”
“Oh no. Don’t tell me it can do that endless “Fun Run” Human-Steve did last year for the Beeblebrox Children’s Hospital?”
“It can!” Goeduin writhed gleefully at his partner’s discomfort. “They can do continuous runs for hundreds of miles through the polar regions of the planet, and at tremendous speed! Some of them have a sustainable gallop of over 50 miles per hour!”
“What’s that in civilized Units?”
“uuuuhhh… 210?”
“FUCK.” shouted Clyod, collapsing back into the sleeping tank, though he suspected that there would be no rest for him this cycle as images of the wretched earth creature pursuing him flashed through his ganglian network.
“They’ve got a bite strength that can snap through our building materials and even human bone!” Goeduin continued, vibrating with the kind of wild humor that belied genuine terror. “Thier senses are even more accute than Human-Steve’s! It’s got his entire hearing range and then up into our ‘hypersonic’ vocal range!”
“Great, it can tear me apart after hearing me talk smack. Terrific.” Clyod sighed, dedicating himself to another round of nightmares.
“And it’s Chemosensitivity! They can track prey by the oils left from the prey’s footsteps for MILES! they can even track scents through the air and underwater or buried in in six feet of ‘concrete’!”
“Good grief. With compettion like that, it’s no wonder the humans are so barbaric. Please tell me it’s stupid.”
“They’re comparable to juvenile humans in terms of reasonaing capacity and may be more socially intelligent than adult humans, living in communal groups that can have DOZENS of members. Also they hunt in packs.”
“WHY??” Clyod begged “Why do you even subject yourself, and furthermore, why subject ME to this kind of knowledge? I won’t be able to rechage and be all gross and floppy in the morning.”
“Human-Steve is getting one.”
“…Pardon?”
“Humans keep them as domestic companions. Apparently they’re socially intelligent enough to get humans to raise and feed thier young for life.”
“and. Human-Steve. Is taking on one of these? He’s not worried about it eating him?”
“He said it might nibble on his appendages while it’s teething but that the one his parents kept when he was an infant-”
“HIS PARENTS HAD A DANGEROUS CARNIVORE IN HIS HOME WHILE HE WAS AN INFANT?”
“He showed me many images of them playing and cuddling together. They are quite fond of human children, and not just as snacks.”
“Please tell me he’s getting the little kind.”
“He’s getting a variety called a “Siberian Husky”. He said it was very fluffy.”
