A Canadian Space Agency project about detecting life on Mars. My contribution was minuscule, as a young naive grad student, but I hope it gets built on over time.

https://falseknees.com/comics/268.html

Who throws out a nearly full bag of chips?! They’re like 6$ here in Canada!

I can’t remember if it’s mentioned in the books, but I think the idea is that Muggle technology stops working in the presence of magic. Guns would jam, electronics would brick, etc.

Granted, this raises the question of where do you draw the line? For example, the magical world has countless exploding substances. What if they took some, stuffed it down a long metal tube, insterted a small metal object in front of it, then set fire to the explosive stuff from the back end? That’s basically a gun or cannon, and it’s hard to argue that it’s technologically complex.

Teaching: That moment when someone’s eyes light up and their whole facial expression changes from confusion to understanding. I love the challenge of figuring out how to reach that with each person.

Dancing or working out to my favorite songs: It feels like my body is taken over by the music, and I can keep going endlessly while everything else fades away.

I looked it up and wow, that’s crazy. Messi is basically naturally domesticated. If the medical conditions are genetic, he could be the start of a lineage of house pumas.

Read-onlys be like while upvoting

Before reading the questions:

• The ball was uniformly gray, with a slight shine.
• The person was genderless and featureless. I only pictured their hand and arm pushing the ball. The moment of contact was indistinct, as if the arm was hiding the ball from view.
• The ball was the size of a large watermelon.
• The table was square, about 1m² , brown-gray, with four turned legs. Same material as the ball: uniformly colored and vaguely glossy.

If I pay attention to a written piece of information (name, phone number, address, short instructions, that kind of stuff) I will remember it for months and years. Comes in handy when working with complex policies and legislation!

This is balanced by the fact that I have trouble retaining auditory information. If you tell me your name, I’ve forgotten it before you’ve even finished talking. (But if I catch it on your badge out of the corner of my eye, I’ll remember it for years.) The only exception are dog names - those I have no trouble remembering.

Haha! We’ve been scouring the discount bin at the local hardware stores for faucetry (is that a word?). By now most of our stuff is matte black because that’s all that gets returned.

Xena

Using the wrong register for the material or topic. For example, using very literary language in a technical manual… No, “peculiarities” is not an appropriate synonym for “features” or “specs”.

First heard about it on r/dndmemes during the API shit storm. I stick around because it’s so much nicer. Smaller, yes, but easier to curate I guess? I read about my specific interests and just vibe.

I used to do that too! But living in Eastern Europe, our shampoo bottles had like twenty languages. I didn’t manage to learn any, but I did develop a sense of how closely related they were.

Cyborg-like implants. I want titanium joints and UV vision and magnetic field sensors and charging my phone by laying it on my belly. Uncap each finger to reveal a small tool: screwdriver, USB key, cutting blade, etc.

Note that none of that includes or requires a constant connection to a network/internet. I want to augment my interactions with the real world, not replace them with a virtual world.

Straw hat, stylish and functional.

Microplastics!

I’m a public servant, so while it’s easy to tell people I work for The Government, it’s a lot harder to explain what I do. My job is a mish-mash of like three different roles in one of the least popular departments. When people ask, I say I work for (our version of) the DMV, and that’s usually good enough.

Charmeleon! Wartortle,

Mewtwo, Tentacruel, Aerodactyl,

Omanyte, Slowpoke…

That’s all I’ve got. I will shed a single tear in remembrance of happier days.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the difference between these icons: