The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States
I’ve been in the middle of the ocean at night and now live in texas and it is so hard to explain to people that no, they have not ever seen the night sky. It is so hard to explain to people that what they think is a proper night sky is fucking pathetic. A disgrace.
People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.
So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.
The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.
Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.
The sky is full, fucking FULL, of stars, and you’ve never seen them.
I remember the first time I saw a properly dark sky and was like ‘oh that’s why it’s called the milky way’ and promptly started to cry
When we were on a field trip to the middle of the red sea, I remember us all crowding at the end of the boat that didn’t have lights and just lying on our backs and staring
When you see a properly dark starscape
You understand why people wrote poems and made up legends and built rockets and said heaven’s in the sky
The universe is infinite. So are the stars
I’m trying to find a picture on google images to show you what I mean and I can’t find any
You think of the night sky like fairy lights on black velvet, but it’s not it’s not it’s like, like, dust in sunlight, like - I can’t find the words.
The stars are everywhere, like sugar, like glitter, like dust. You can’t find the constellations at first, not because you can’t recognise them, but because there’s so many stars you can’t pick out the familiar line of Orion’s belt. The North star has gone from bright familiarity to almost vanishing among a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million other lights. The milky way is a line of light arcing across the sky like a moon-trail on water only infinitely, infinitely bigger.
And for the first time in your life you’ll understand why people call it a dome, because it is, it’s three dimensional in exactly the way a city skyscape isn’t.
You’ll understand why Luthien Tinúviel danced under starlight, not moonlight, why people in a time before we knew the earth was round still looked up and wondered and built telescopes and dreamed about the stars.
The stars are endless and ancient and infinite and you will stand with your head craned back and your rucksack forgotten at your feet and you’ll feel like you’re falling upwards into that great bright sky like it’s calling you home and you’ll wonder how you ever thought the stars were beautiful before tonight when all you’d ever seen were the naked empty skyscapes of your home. And you’ll cry and you’ll spend the rest of your time there gazing up and wondering and imagining what it would be like to stand among those bright silver flecks
And then you’ll come home, and look up, and fall in a different kind of love with that handful of blazing stars to stubborn to be outdone by the whole of human invention, leading you home despite the light pollution and the clouds and the endless bustle of this shrinking planet.
this is not a shot from a space telescope overlayed behind a woods, or anything. that’s not the sky as kepler or hubble or james webb see it. that’s the sky from a dark sky park in michigan. that’s the view you are missing out on from right here on earth. that’s the view that has been stolen from you.
I fell in love with the sky as a child growing up in western Minnesota, miles from a small town, near a massive lake and just downhill from an 18-hole golf course - the pure darkness broken only by a single bright light I could escape by hauling my telescope up that hill or into a nearby field
I’d often set an alarm to wake me in the middle of the night, so it was as dark as possible and my eyes as dark-adapted as they coud get, and starlight alone was enough to guide me
that’s what’s been taken from us all
OH OKAY so actually im fully ugly crying snotty-sobbing about this. what
this post was inflicted upon me so now i’m inflicting it on all of you
(full map of ~75k is too much for me to load, but i got to 40k! very laggy, but worth it.)
can not recommend letting your child do a big scream when they are frustrated enough. Just straight up ask them like “hey do you need to do a big scream?” And if they say yes let cover your ears and say okay GO and let them scream because you know what eventually when you’re really frustrated your little person with your face is gonna look at you with their ears covered and yell “HEY DO YOU NEED TA DO A BIG SCHREAM?!” and you can just… do a big scream and it won’t scare them and you will feel better too
Hey this is literally great advice for anyone just warn the people around you that you need to do a big schream and do it, so they will do it back and it is very cathartic
Glad everyone is getting so much joy from early Quaker names! Looking forward to seeing any future pets/children/bands/drag acts named after stuff on this list.
tag yourself, i’m Patience Fish
Categories Include:
Band Names: Charity Kill, Jane Snowball, Love Butcher, Revolution Sixsmith, Humble Thatcher, Thank Holland
Fake Names Your D&D Characters Made Up To Get Into A Formal Event: Eustace Cockery, Corn Russell, Marvelous Scanfield, Elizabeth Poope, Gey Poope, Job Bland, Love Beer, Rich Whale
got a new lighter. it’s shaped like a fish and it blinds you.
it had a huge sticker on it that said “this is not a toy”. the gas station i got it from had a sign infront of the display for these only that said “buy first, then test”. the first time you strike it (from the fins, by the way) you find out exactly why. they have added incredibly bright flashing blue LED lights on the eyes, which point directly into your eyes and the eyes of whoever is looking anywhere close to the fish that makes you blind.
a friend of mine was like “you can probably take this apart and cut the wires so it doesn’t do that anymore” and i told her “no i can’t. i can’t do that” and she was like “???why not?????????”
it’s just too fucking funny. this is the stupidest thing i own. thinking about that gas station clerk with like 50 more of these fucking things thinking “how the fuck am i gonna get rid of these?” makes me loose it. setting up the sign and i was literally the first person to buy one.
who thought this was a good idea.
device of instant give your roommate a headache
small mercies. i think if it had been only a smidge more horrible than it is i would have gone and just given it back.
At a young age, Wizards were taught that the best way to gauge a magic-user’s strength would be through their familiar, with the strongest familiar of them all being a Dragon. When the time came to summon your familiar, you somehow managed to summon a Tarrasque.
“It’s funny. When we designed the afterlives we didn’t take into account that where you believe you belong is where you should go. Heaven is standing room only, Hel is moderately populated, Valhalla… You’ll see if you go there. Where do you believe you should be?”
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