Because sometimes what you need most is to watch a baby armadillo named Spock, yes, Spock (look at those wee Vulcan ears!), lapping up milk from a teeny-tiny bowl at Zoo Wroclaw in Poland:
After Spock’s mom, Hermonia, showed no interest in her newborn pup, zookeepers jumped in to raise him by hand. It took the keepers a little while to successfully get Spock to nurse because he wouldn’t drink from a bottle or an eyedropper. This tiny red bowl, however, turned out to be just right. By the time Spock reached 6 weeks old, he’d already tripled his weight.
Head over to ZooBorns to learn more about Southern Three-banded Armadillos and Spock the armadillo pup.
Fun fact: In Spanish, -illo is a diminutive suffix (ending that makes a word a smaller or cuter version of the original).
Armado = armored. As in English, adjectives can be used as nouns, so armado can also mean “armored one.” Armadillo = little armored one.
So imagine, if you will, a couple of Conquistadors standing around, unable or unwilling to ask a Native person what things are really called, and this animal walks by.
NASA just saw something come out of a black hole for the first time ever.
You don’t have to know a whole lot about science to know that black holes typically suck things in, not spew things out. But NASA just spotted something mighty strange at the supermassive black hole Markarian 335.
Two of NASA’s space telescopes, including the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), miraculously observed a black hole’s corona “launched” away from the supermassive black hole. Then a massive pulse of X-ray energy spewed out. So, what exactly happened? That’s what scientists are trying to figure out now.
“This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare,” Dan Wilkins, of Saint Mary’s University, said. “This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe.”
NuSTAR’s principal investigator, Fiona Harrison, noted that the nature of the energetic source is “mysterious,” but added that the ability to actually record the event should provide some clues about the black hole’s size and structure, along with (hopefully) some fresh intel on how black holes function. Luckily for us, this black hole is still 324 million light-years away.
So, no matter what strange things it’s doing, it shouldn’t have any effect on our corner of the universe.
i don’t understand why people don’t instantly respond to “what would your dream superpower be” with the ability to manipulate probability. think about it. what’s the chance someone will drop 1mil in front of me? 0%? let’s make that 100%. what’s the probability i’ll wake up tomorrow and be X gender? 100%. what’s the probability my bathtub is filled with mac and cheese? 100%.
as a casino employee I can confirm this would be terrifying as fuck
I still like teleport, no error, whether I’ve ever been there or not.
The superpower of
probability
is terrifying for other reasons.
what’s the probability my bathtub is filled with mac and cheese? 100%.
Consider all the unlikely things that must occur in just the proper sequence for this to happen. It’s not just wishing 50 gallons of mac & cheese into existence – that’d be a different superpower.
No, we’re talking about some serious reality bending here.
Like maybe: an 18-wheeler hauling a load of instant Kraft macaroni & cheese collides with a tanker truck filled with water outside your home. Both vehicles erupt into flame, which cooks the combined noodles & cheese mixture within a small non-nuclear mushroom cloud of an explosion.
The cooked mixture of mac & cheese (and burning fuel!) rises into the air on thermals a hundred feet above your house, exactly above your bathroom.
At just the right moment, as the starchy cloud of cheesy noodles reaches the apex of its hideous arc, a freak storm causes a lightning bolt to crash down out of the blue, blasting a hole in your roof above the bathtub.
Shingles and plywood explode away from the roof and are diverted to the side by sudden 50 mph crosswinds… which, because of freak weather conditions, are perfectly timed to whisk away the roof debris but stop just as suddenly before the descending cloud of mac & cheese can be blown aside.
Four seconds later there is a moist mighty THLUPPPPnoise as ~50 gallons of half-cooked, badly mixed mac & cheese & diesel fuel land in a soggy mess within your bathtub.
Ding! Your bathtub full of mac & cheese? Probability 100%.
Also: two dead truck drivers, untold collateral damage from the explosion, a wrecked roof, dangerous storms trashing the neighborhood, and a disgusting inedible mess in your bathroom.
Oh wait, you wanted it perfectly cooked, ready to eat? Too bad… you didn’t specify that. And if you had, imagine the FURTHER ridiculous unlikely events required to make that happen.
Because you’re not just wishing shit into existence. You’re shifting realities.
Which, if you’re selecting for a very improbable circumstance means moving a LOT of existing reality out of the way – which takes energy. Because reality has inertia & momentum just like a river does, and does not want to be diverted.
This might be the most terrifying super power ever, just from its side effects.
I mean that can easily be reversed by making the probability of always getting EXACTLY what you want without anyone being worse off in any way, shape, or form from x% to 100%
You can also make there be a 100% probability of getting the ability to shapeshift or teleport happen
