Optimus Rhymes

Nobody even talk to me right now.

HOW DO WE GO FROM THIS-

TO THIS???????????

WHY?????? WHO??????? HOW??????? His LIPS?? His stupid glasses??? WHY IS HE BROWN!!!

I can't even. The Bumblebee movie NAILED their designs. It was perfect blend of G1 designs and realism. It was so fun to watch. ALL I WANTED WAS TO SEE MORE OF IT. BUT NO. NO!! ALL WE GET ARE 2 FREAKING MINUTES OF ACTION AND THEN THIS MONSTROSITY. WHO EVEN SIGNED OFF ON THIS. IT LOOKS MORE UGLY EVERY TIME I SEE IT. THEY DIDNT EVEN INCLUDE HIS HEADFINS!!!! WHEELJACKS DESIGN IS SO MUCH FUN AND THEY LITERALLY JUST THREW IT OUT THE WINDOW AND FOR WHAY????????? I hate him.

To everyone who likes this design. I am sorry. I respect your decision. I am happy that at least someone can find joy in... this. But dear god. I hate him so much.

I love the attention to detail in this show! It always irks me when shows just use random physics equations for science-y scenes so this was a real delight when watching the episode

All of the equations that appear around Rok as she tries to figure out how to get to the Protostar are real equations and formulas needed to make the correct calculations.

‘Arrival to Earth’ but it’s a family road-trip.

75 essential single-character verbs (单字动词)

When I started consuming more native Chinese content, I quickly discovered an area in which my knowledge was lacking: single-character verbs. In my experience, it’s very easy to focus on learning words consisting of two or more characters and overlook single-character words.

Driven by curiosity, I went through my Anki deck (and also wracked my brain) to generate a list of characters/words that I have learned over the past couple years (roughly). Then I selected 75 verbs that are fairly common and important to know. They skew towards intermediate and advanced vocabulary.

Definitions are from MDBG. For characters with additional meanings that I am not yet familiar with, I have bolded the meanings I want to share.

(1) 抢 qiǎng - to fight over / to rush / to scramble / to grab / to rob / to snatch

(2) 救 jiù - to save / to assist / to rescue

(3) 扶 fú - to support with the hand / to help sb up / to support oneself by holding onto something / to help

(4) 催 cuī - to urge / to press / to prompt / to rush sb / to hasten sth / to expedite

(5) 夹 jiā - to press from either side / to place in between / to sandwich / to carry sth under armpit / wedged between / between / to intersperse / to mix / to mingle / clip / folder / Taiwan pr. [jia2]

(6) 咬 yǎo - to bite / to nip

(7) 砸 zá - to smash / to pound / to fail / to muck up / to bungle

(8) 毁 huǐ - to destroy / to ruin / to defame / to slander

(9) 嚷 rǎng - to shout / to bellow / to make a big deal of sth / to make a fuss about sth

(10) 塞 sāi - to stop up / to squeeze in / to stuff / cork / stopper

(11) 贪 tān - to have a voracious desire for / to covet / greedy / corrupt

(12) 拆 chāi - to tear open / to tear down / to tear apart / to open

(13) 掏 tāo - to fish out (from pocket) / to scoop

(14) 跪 guì - to kneel

(15) 摘 zhāi - to take / to borrow / to pick (flowers, fruit etc) / to pluck / to select / to remove / to take off (glasses, hat etc)

(16) 拎 līn - to lift up / to carry in one’s hand / Taiwan pr. [ling1]

(17) 扛 káng - to carry on one’s shoulder / (fig.) to take on (a burden, duty etc)

(18) 拽 zhuài - to pull / to tug at (sth)

(19) 愣 lèng - to look distracted / to stare blankly / distracted / blank / (coll.) unexpectedly / rash / rashly

(20) 搂 lǒu - to hug / to embrace / to hold in one’s arms

(21) 垮 kuǎ - to collapse (lit. or fig.)

(22) 撑 chēng - to support / to prop up / to push or move with a pole / to maintain / to open or unfurl / to fill to bursting point / brace / stay / support

(23) 甩 shuǎi - to throw / to fling / to swing / to leave behind / to throw off / to dump (sb)

(24) 围 wéi - to encircle / to surround / all around / to wear by wrapping around (scarf, shawl)

(25) 愁 chóu - to worry about

Keep reading

Yes, even in Star Trek the most famous machines have been essentially human in appearance (Data in TNG, the Doctor in Voyager) which IMO has always bugged me.

I will note that there have also been the exocomps and recently some other non-humanoid ones, but there aren't any individuals that are nearly as popular as those mentioned before.

I was chatting with my mom today about how unique Knight Rider is as a show for one reason only- having a character that's honestly, genuinely, and truly a car.

(Yeah, sure, there's Transformers, but watch any Transformers show and you'll see that they rarely keep the robots in car mode for any scenes. The car modes are almost exclusively used for scene transitions or for action set pieces.)

Knight Rider is different in that it challenges the viewer to imagine a character who is a car. This character is Kitt. There is no way for him to stop being a car, even when it's inconvenient for him, or even when it's inconvenient for the plot. Kitt, as a concept, asks the viewer to empathize- what would being a car genuinely be like? What challenges would that present? What advantages?

This is where most robots in fiction, and fiction that claims to analyze humanity through the lens of robot characters, ultimately fail. I'm hard-pressed to find another work of sci-fi with a lead character in such a genuinely divorced role from humanity. Most fictional robots have:

Hands, to physically interact with a human-scaled world in the way that humans do,

Faces, for humans to relate to, and

Eyes, for humans to look at, and tell where the robot is looking.

Kitt has none of these. He never gets any of these at any point. The show even reflects on this in episode 22 of season 1, where he projects eyes onto his screen for the little girl who's trying to understand him. Yet even this is temporary- he gets rid of them after only a minute, and the girl gets used to the real him accordingly. It's never portrayed that these attributes (of hands, a face, and eyes) are some kind of upgrade that Kitt is missing.

However, Kitt is still undeniably 'human', and this is the most important part. Kitt's way of thinking isn't alien just because his body is different. It's what he is thinking about that's been altered from the traditional human experience. This leads to a fascinating exploration of topics such as:

Accessibility. Kitt is constantly analyzing where his body can go and to what places he has access to. Even Michael Knight learns to start thinking this way as he grows closer with Kitt, to the benefit of them both. The question of what Kitt can do vs what he can't do given his body is at the core of Michael's problem solving when the show is at its best.

Priorities. What does Kitt care about? Again, it's deeply important that the first answer to this is "his friends", but barring that, what else? Things like a good road or the polish of bodywork become elevated in importance through his perspective.

Prejudice. A lot of science fiction has the trope of "robot racism", or the idea that there's a portion of humans who actively believe that sentient robots are not equal to humans. Knight Rider, however, never takes this easy drama. Humans treat Kitt differently, and sometimes with a shocking amount of disrespect (even after he's revealed himself to be a person,) but it's never out of malice. It's out of ignorance. The bulk of these humans have only the best intentions. This presentation reflects upon real-world prejudices through a different lens than the aforementioned trope, which has, by now, been thoroughly beaten to death.

Again, it's the fact that the show actively goes out of its way to tell the audience that Kitt has a soul (season 2, the episode literally titled "Soul Survivor"), yet doesn't shy away from the genuine differences he faces from being nonhuman, that makes it so damn compelling to me.

(Mind you, the way the show usually "explores" these themes is through the lens of comedy that relies on Kitt's differences being the butt of the joke. . . and that the inclusion of these deeper themes definitely do NOT cancel out the show's genuine problems with sexism/racism! But-)

I really do consider Knight Rider to be science fiction at (or at least close to) its finest. Which is an insane statement out of context, I realize, but I hope after reading this post you might be able to understand why. Knight Rider set the bar for robots in fiction for me and nothing has been able to compare since.

TL;DR: Kitt is a car. This is deeply profound.

the food situation on voyager is so fucking dire compared to every other star trek series like their chef is cooking for a bunch of alien species he’s never encountered before and has no idea what their palates are like so he’s just throwing shit at a wall and hoping it sticks, they can barely use the replicators, and they can’t even go over to the captain’s quarters for a nice homecooked crew meal because unlike every other starfleet captain she’s so bad at cooking she can burn replicated water. that’s the real horror of the show tbh

Yup, all the weather is shifted - rainy season, first snows, etc. Even some of the wildlife has disappeared in my lifetime (fireflies, some songbirds)!

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

Can you imagine just how loud Cybertron is. 

The amount of noise pollution on the planet from the amount of engines, ground mode and aerial mode adding to the chaotic noise of the city-states. The fact that hearing planes take flight outside of my room would be a constant as there are seekers and other aerial frames flying about in the sky. Silence is practically impossible unless it’s by some type of noise cancelling device which itself is artificial to help those who don’t want to deal with all the noise or how they would be used to the sounds. 

And then how JARRING it is when they land on Earth and it’s SO quiet. Cities such as New York and Chicago don’t compare to the noise on Cybertron and it is so weird to get used to for Transformers. There’s places where there’s no sound, where the sound of cars going down the freeway and the electric hum is practically nonexistent in the mountains where there’s no civilisation. And then going back to Cybertron and realising just how LOUD it all is. Man. MAN.

This was meant to be a quick warm up, but it turned into a comic that I’ve wanted to draw for a while. This is something that is extremely important to me, and I appreciate it if you read it.

A while ago, I heard a story that broke my heart. A family went a cat shelter to adopt. The daughter fell in love with a 3-legged cat. The father straight up said “absolutely not”. Because he was missing a leg. That cat was that close to having a family that loved him, but the missing leg held him back. Why?!

Many people have the initial instinct of “nope” when they see an imperfect animal. I get it, but less-adoptable does NOT mean less loveable. 9 out of 10 people will choose a kitten over an adult cat. And those 10% that would get an adult cat often overlook “different” animals.

All I want people to do is be open to the idea of having a “different” pet in their lives. Choose the pet that you fall in love with, but at least give all of them a fair shot at winning your heart.

Don’t dismiss them, they deserve a loving home just as much as any other cat. They still purr, they still love a warm lap, they still play, they still love you. Trust me, next time you are in the market for a new kitty, just go over to that one cat that’s missing an eye and see what he’s all about!

75 MORE essential single-character verbs (单字动词)

People seemed to really enjoy my recent post 75 essential single-character verbs (单字动词)...so here's 75 MORE VERBS.

It was really difficult to put together the first list. I had a spreadsheet of literally hundreds of characters that I had to whittle down. So I was happy to give some of the eliminated characters a second chance.

Definitions are from MDBG. For some characters with additional meanings, I have bolded the meanings I want to highlight.

(76) 欠 qiàn - to owe / to lack / (literary) to be deficient in / (bound form) yawn / to raise slightly (a part of one's body)

(77) 顿 dùn - to stop / to pause / to arrange / to lay out / to kowtow / to stamp (one's foot) / at once / classifier for meals, beatings, scoldings etc: time, bout, spell, meal

(78) 逗 dòu - to tease (playfully) / to entice / (coll.) to joke / (coll.) funny / amusing / to stay / to sojourn / brief pause at the end of a phrase (variant of 讀｜读)

(79) 沉 chén - to submerge / to immerse / to sink / to keep down / to lower / to drop / deep / profound / heavy

(80) 挡 dǎng - to resist / to obstruct / to hinder / to keep off / to block (a blow) / to get in the way of / cover / gear (e.g. in a car's transmission)

(81) 晒 shài - (of the sun) to shine on / to bask in (the sunshine) / to dry (clothes, grain etc) in the sun / (fig.) to expose and share (one's experiences and thoughts) on the Web (loanword from "share") / (coll.) to give the cold shoulder to

(82) 聚 jù - to congregate / to assemble / to mass / to gather together / to amass / to polymerize

(83) 派 pài - clique / school / group / faction / to dispatch / to send / to assign / to appoint / pi (Greek letter Ππ) / the circular ratio pi = 3.1415926 / (loanword) pie

(84) 叠 dié - to fold / to fold over in layers / to furl / to layer / to pile up / to repeat / to duplicate

(85) 缠 chán - to wind around / to wrap round / to coil / tangle / to involve / to bother / to annoy

(86) 嫁 jià - (of a woman) to marry / to marry off a daughter / to shift (blame etc)

(87) 逼 bī - to force (sb to do sth) / to compel / to press for / to extort / to press on towards / to press up to / to close in on / euphemistic variant of 屄

(88) 喊 hǎn - to yell / to shout / to call out for (a person)

(89) 躲 duǒ - to hide / to dodge / to avoid

(90) 抓 zhuā - to grab / to catch / to arrest / to snatch / to scratch

(91) 藏 cáng - to conceal / to hide away / to harbor / to store / to collect

(92) 瞒 mán - to conceal from / to keep (sb) in the dark

(93) 挑 tiāo - to carry on a shoulder pole / to choose / to pick / to nitpick

(94) 扑 pū - to throw oneself at / to pounce on / to devote one's energies / to flap / to flutter / to dab / to pat / to bend over

(95) 踏 tà - to tread / to stamp / to step on / to press a pedal / to investigate on the spot

(96) 断 duàn - to break / to snap / to cut off / to give up or abstain from sth / to judge / (usu. used in the negative) absolutely / definitely / decidedly

(97) 捡 jiǎn - to pick up / to collect / to gather

(98) 拖 tuō - to drag / to tow / to trail / to hang down / to mop (the floor) / to delay / to drag on

(99) 肯 kěn - to agree / to consent / to be willing to

(100) 挖 wā - to dig / to excavate / to scoop out

(101) 摔 shuāi - to throw down / to fall / to drop and break

(102) 伸 shēn - to stretch / to extend

(103) 摸 mō - to feel with the hand / to touch / to stroke / to grope / to steal / to abstract

(104) 绕 rào - to wind / to coil (thread) / to rotate around / to spiral / to move around / to go round (an obstacle) / to by-pass / to make a detour / to confuse / to perplex

(105) 飘 piāo - to float

(106) 碰 pèng - to touch / to meet with / to bump

(107) 染 rǎn - to dye / to catch (a disease) / to acquire (bad habits etc) / to contaminate / to add color washes to a painting

(108) 搁 gē - to place / to put aside / to shelve

(109) 铺 pū - to spread / to display / to set up / (old) holder for door-knocker

(110) 托 tuō - to trust / to entrust / to be entrusted with / to act as trustee

(111) 捧 pěng - to clasp / to cup the hands / to hold up with both hands / to offer (esp. in cupped hands) / to praise / to flatter

(112) 剥 bō | bāo - to peel / to skin / to shell / to shuck

(113) 挠 náo - to scratch / to thwart / to yield

(114) 填 tián - to fill or stuff / (of a form etc) to fill in

(115) 瞅 chǒu - (dialect) to look at

(116) 蹲 dūn - to crouch / to squat / to stay (somewhere)

(117) 溜 liū - to slip away / to escape in stealth / to skate

(118) 坠 zhuì - to fall / to drop / to weigh down

(119) 撩 liáo - to tease / to provoke / to stir up (emotions)

(120) 牵 qiān - to lead along / to pull (an animal on a tether) / (bound form) to involve / to draw in

(121) 装 zhuāng - adornment / to adorn / dress / clothing / costume (of an actor in a play) / to play a role / to pretend / to install / to fix / to wrap (sth in a bag) / to load / to pack

(122) 望 wàng - full moon / to hope / to expect / to visit / to gaze (into the distance) / to look towards / towards

(123) 编 biān - to weave / to plait / to organize / to group / to arrange / to edit / to compile / to write / to compose / to fabricate / to make up

(124) 冻 dòng - to freeze / to feel very cold / aspic or jelly

(125) 抛 pāo - to throw / to toss / to fling / to cast / to abandon

(126) 喷 pēn - to puff / to spout / to spray / to spurt

(127) 刻 kè - quarter (hour) / moment / to carve / to engrave / to cut / oppressive / classifier for short time intervals

(128) 逃 táo - to escape / to run away / to flee

(129) 偷 tōu - to steal / to pilfer / to snatch / thief / stealthily

(130) 吐 tù - to vomit / to throw up

(131) 摁 èn - to press (with one's finger or hand)

(132) 瞪 dèng - to open (one's eyes) wide / to stare at / to glare at

(133) 递 dì - to hand over / to pass on / to deliver / (bound form) progressively / in the proper order

(134) 扭 niǔ - to turn / to twist / to wring / to sprain / to swing one's hips

(135) 轮 lún - wheel / disk / ring / steamship / to take turns / to rotate / classifier for big round objects: disk, or recurring events: round, turn

(136) 混 hùn - to mix / to mingle / muddled / to drift along / to muddle along / to pass for / to get along with sb / thoughtless / reckless

(137) 揪 jiū - to seize / to clutch / to grab firmly and pull

(138) 卷 juǎn - to roll up / roll / classifier for small rolled things (wad of paper money, movie reel etc)

(139) 瞧 qiáo - to look at / to see / to see (a doctor) / to visit

(140) 刺 cì - thorn / sting / thrust / to prick / to pierce / to stab / to assassinate / to murder

(141) 搜 sōu - to search

(142) 遮 zhē - to cover up (a shortcoming) / to screen off / to hide / to conceal

(143) 争 zhēng - to strive for / to vie for / to argue or debate / deficient or lacking (dialect) / how or what (literary)

(144) 撤 chè - to remove / to take away

(145) 闪 shǎn - to dodge / to duck out of the way / to beat it / shaken (by a fall) / to sprain / to pull a muscle / lightning / spark / a flash / to flash (across one's mind) / to leave behind / (Internet slang) (of a display of affection) "dazzlingly" saccharine

(146) 耍 shuǎ - to play with / to wield / to act (cool etc) / to display (a skill, one's temper etc)

(147) 忍 rěn - to bear / to endure / to tolerate / to restrain oneself

(148) 摇 yáo - to shake / to rock / to row / to crank

(149) 戳 chuō - to jab / to poke / to stab / (coll.) to sprain / to blunt / to f*ck (vulgar) / to stand / to stand (sth) upright / stamp / seal

(150) 晃 huàng - to sway / to shake / to wander about huǎng - to dazzle / to flash past