Rotating space station orbits Earth. Image from “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

Ha. Do not taunt Copilot.

I have *now*.

British Columbia is *never* giving it back.

"... And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day ... friends they may think it's a movement...."

I’d rather hear Vogon poetry.

So Bree hinted at this story a few days ago, but I want to circle back now that I have permission to share it.

WHISTLES OUT: A WHISTLE CREW MYSTERY

Wow.

I wrote FORTRAN programs on punch cards in college. I was the first licensed student operator of their brand new IBM 1130.

GM: Charisma check.

Mamdani: [rolls natural 20]

GM: that’s a d6 how did you

Mamdani: [direct to camera] Did you know you can check out board games at your local public library? 😊

Smoke on the Water

Lots of answers in classical music …
Beethoven 5
Beethoven 3
Grieg piano concerto (500 ms max)
Brahms 4
Orff Carmina Burana
Tchaikovsky 4

Grieg piano concerto, in under a second.

Interesting question to begin with, but then 😲 at the first comment: “I wrote the OED entry …”

That update is pending on my phone and I’ve been dreading it.

Zork flashback: “You are knee deep in bat guano …”

Grey’s law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

I thought of the falling whale:
“I wonder if it will be friends with me?”

To Poochie is to disappear (verb, transitive) an unwelcome character as quickly and bluntly as possible. Relevant bit in the Wikipedia article:
-----
Poochie gets clumsily removed ..., and a handwritten intertitle explains, "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet."

This compelled me to research the verb "to Poochie". Does everyone else already know this?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Itc...

Cool thread for music nerds, who may look at 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 and think "wait, isn't that just like ...?"

Made me look. Sure enough, could have been the same time in Pensacola, FL and Ontario, OR.

I was gonna mention that.

Ooh, I like this, and it captures well “Your religion is fine as long as it doesn’t hurt people.”

It also calls to mind the joke:
“What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel [1989]

Asteroids [1979]

Asteroids [1979]

Leisure Suit Larry