November 18
I got up Peggy to go trotting, and as soon as we got outside, I could feel that there was a storm coming, so I looked up in the sky, and it was clear. Peggy said that it was really warm for November, and I didn't like that, 'cause that meant that the storm would have more energy. So I was kinda distracted when we were trotting towards Jeff's house, 'cause I was thinking about how warm the lakes might be and how much moisture a storm could suck up off of them. I thought if it came early, it wouldn't be so bad, but if it waited until later in the day it could be a bad storm, and as soon as I got back to the room I was going to look at the weather predictions and the weather maps.
Caleb and Lindy and Trinity were enjoying it. They all had coats but they weren't wearing them, and Caleb said that it was going to snow tomorrow, and they were looking forward to that. Trinity said that he was wrong; it was too warm to snow, and he said that she'd see. He said it was going to rain tonight and then it was going to snow.
So when I gave her a short ponyback ride she asked me what I thought, and I said that it might snow. I said that I hadn't seen the weather maps, so I couldn't predict it for sure, but that the temperature could drop enough for snow. And she got excited by that, because snow was fun to play in.
Me and Peggy decided that we'd go Pokemon hunting with them, but not until tomorrow afternoon. Peggy said that she'd want a break from studying by then, and I wanted to know if Pokemons would be out in the snow. Lindy said that she thought that they would be and maybe there would be new kinds who liked the cold.
The girls hugged me before they got on the bus, and Caleb gave me a hoof-bump, and then me and Peggy finished up our morning trot.
I told Peggy to use the shower first, 'cause I wanted to figure out what the weather might do before I took my shower, and she didn't argue, 'cause I sat right down at my computer and looked at the weather, and decided that there wouldn't be rain until the afternoon, and then it did look like it was gonna get a lot colder.
And then I checked the human predictions, which said mostly the same thing.
I sent a telephone telegram to Mel, telling him that I would be able to stormwatch but he'd have to pick me up if he could. And then I packed all of my flight gear into my saddlebags so I would have it, and my thermodynamics things, too, and also a couple of cans of anchovies. I didn't have any hay left, 'cause I'd finished it a while ago.
I filled up my camelback, too, but I didn't put that on. It wasn't convenient to have it along with my saddlebags, although I thought that I could wear it over them if I had to. I could fly without it, but if I had time after class, I'd get it.
When Peggy came back in the room, I went into the bathroom and took my shower, then sat on my bed and groomed myself, and then the two of us went to breakfast together.
They had some waffles, but they were thin square ones that didn't look very good. Peggy said that she thought that they were probably pre-made frozen waffles that they'd gotten. So I got some oatmeal and scrambled eggs, and sat down at our table.
Everyone was looking forward to the weekend, even though it meant a lot of studying and finishing up projects that should have been done sooner. I'd been smart and I thought that if any of my professors decided to have the final exam today instead of waiting for next week, I'd be ready for them, but it didn't sound like anybody else would be.
I said that I thought tomorrow night would be perfect for our group shower, because that would be a perfect break from studying, and everyone else thought so, too. We decided that we'd meet a couple of hours after dinner in Christine's room, and then when everyone was all there, we'd go to Hoben and borrow their shower for a little while. Reese asked if he could wear a bathing suit and Meghan said that that wasn't the point of it.
When I was done eating, I left for thermodynamics, and I got there early and had to wait in the hall. I'd wanted to be there a little bit early in case Lisa had any last-minute changes to our lab assignment, but she didn't. Crystal Dawn came up, though, and she asked if I could help her review, 'cause Austin wasn't too interested and she knew that I was really smart, and I said that she should have asked sooner, since it was really late to start studying now. But I said that I would, and told her that she could sit with us in the lounge after class.
After the other class had left, we went in and sat down next to each other, and then Lisa came in and she gave me an odd look, but she took the seat on the other side of me without saying anything.
Professor Brown said that we were going to learn in the first part of the class, and then we'd have some review, so he started by telling us about equilibrium problems, and it was a bit different, 'cause you had two starting elements which joined in the middle. And then the next thing that he talked about was reversible reactions, and showed us how we could use a limiting case to help solve it. And that was the three basic types of alchemical reactions, which were parallel, series, or reversible, and he told us that we knew that we could use the steady state approximation or the equilibrium approximation.
He gave us an example of a series-reversible reaction, just to show us how to combine everything that we already knew into a new type of problem, and reminded us how important it was to break things down into simple parts, and then he moved on to review, where we could ask him questions and he'd answer them.
There wasn't a lot that I thought I needed to know that I didn't already, and it was kind of frustrating listening to other people ask for clarification on things I thought he'd explained pretty well during class. But I listened anyways, because there was a chance that he'd answer a question that I didn't know I should have had.
When class was over, I went and shook his hand, and thanked him for teaching me, and then me and Lisa and Crystal Dawn went down to the lounge and got out our notes. And I felt bad for Crystal, 'cause as we took turns giving answers, it was obvious that she was behind, and I didn't know if she'd catch up. She should have thought about that sooner, but I guess it was too late for should haves. So we did our best to help her, because you couldn't let a friend down when she needed you, even if it was her own fault that she did.
And by the end of it, she knew a lot more than she had when we started, and me and Lisa had both benefited, too, because re-explaining things helped us remember it.
I flew up into the sky and looked around. It was still clear out as far as I could see in all directions, and it was a lot warmer—the temperature had come up by almost ten degrees since me and Peggy had gone trotting.
I landed and relaxed until lunchtime, 'cause I didn't have any homework to do, and I might need a lot of energy this afternoon.
On my way to lunch, I saw Peggy walking across campus, and she was wearing some dirty clothes and had sawdust in her hair. She said that she'd been working in the art shop on her project, and she had most of the main parts of it in place, even though she wasn't much of a carpenter. She said that she was going to have to go out and get something for the spring, and she was thinking about using bungee cords.
I found some fish that looked edible at least, and I also got some bread and salad. And when I sat down, Christine said she'd given up on their hot food because she was fairly sure that they were trying to poison everyone, so she just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then when Sean sat down, he reached in his pocket and got out a plastic bag of fruit loops, and Christine grabbed it out of his hand and clutched it to her chest.
Sean said that he'd heard rumors that there was going to be a Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night, so then everyone was talking about what they had for Thanksgiving dinner, and some of it sounded kind of strange. Cranberries weren't very good; they were really sour. If you didn't have anything else you could eat them, but why would you want to if you had better food? And why would you put bread inside the turkey and not eat it by itself?
They wanted to know what we did for Thanksgiving in my village, or if we even had it, and I said that we had a Harvest Festival, and ate the last of the fresh summer crops that wouldn't keep for too long, and there were lots of cakes and pies and there was a big dance, and it was one of the few times even all of the fishermen would show up.
And I told them how one year when I was a filly, a rogue storm came in and so everypony left to secure their boats or go up in the sky and fight the storm, and we got left behind on the ground but didn't mind too much because the older ponies who were watching us let us eat as much pie and cake as we wanted. I had a really sore belly after that, and I never liked sweets as much afterwards.
Me and Sean walked to math class, and I looked up at the sky. I could feel the pressure changing and I knew that off in the distance there was a storm coming, and I hoped that it would wait until classes were over. I thought that Professor Pampena would understand if I had to leave, but I didn't think he'd be too happy if I galloped out of his last lecture.
He told us more about curl and how we could use it to figure out if a vector field was conservative, but also to convert line integrals into double integrals, and that was Stokes' theorem, and he showed us how that worked, and also that we could use the principle to convert surface integrals into line integrals or the other way around.
We had to decide which way our work was going, so we'd know if it was positive or negative, and he said that it didn't really matter which we chose, but we just had to make sure it stayed the same in all our calculations.
He showed us a couple of pictures to remind us of the right-hand rule, although I had to remember it on my own 'cause I didn't have a thumb or fingers to use. And then he showed us how to use Stokes' theorem by comparing it to Green's theorem, which we already knew, and told us that work, flux, and curl were independent of coordinates, and showed us how we could break a three-dimensional object down into lots of little two-dimensional ones that proved it was true.
Then he had a little bit of review, too, just to make sure that everyone knew everything that we'd learned, and we finished up a little bit early, because everybody seemed to understand. And I shook his hand on the way out, too, and he thanked me for giving him the equations in Equestrian for him to puzzle out.
We didn't have any homework, so I studied instead, and I was feeling pretty good by the time we were done, and I hadn't heard from Mel yet, which meant that I still had time before the storm.
Sean's portable telephone made a funny noise, and he got it out and looked at it and said that it was a weather update, and it said that there was a severe storm watch for Kalamazoo County that would be starting soon, and he hadn't even finished reading it when my portable telephone beeped, and it was Mel and he said that he was on his way to get me. So I got my gear out of my saddlebags and got dressed, and Sean was nice and filled up my camelback for me, and then I took my saddlebags in my mouth and carried them back to the dorm. I could have had had Mel pick me up from Harmon, but I didn't think that he knew where it was, so it was smarter to have him get me from Trowbridge.
I didn't have to wait too long for him to arrive, and when I got in Mel's truck, I saw that on his dashboard he had a sticker that said that he'd voted, so I asked him if he was disappointed in how Trump had gotten elected, too, and he sighed and said that he should have known, with me being at a liberal college that I'd only ever heard bad things about him and only good things about Hillary.
Well, I said that I hadn't really heard as much as I ought to have, 'cause I'd watched a couple of the debates and I'd gone to the primary to see what it was like, but I hadn't paid as much attention as I guess I ought to have.
He opened his mouth like he was gonna talk, and then he just rubbed his chin with his hand, and for a minute he just kept driving without saying anything, but when we had to stop for a traffic signal, he said that to start with, he'd never liked Hillary. Mel said he didn't like how she'd kept her own computer mail server instead of using the one that came with her job, because it seemed like she was doing that to keep her computer letters private. I thought that they should be, but he said that when you were a government employee, people had the right to read them.
Then he told me that even that wasn’t the most important thing about it, but she also had done important work on it, and she hadn’t kept it safe enough, so people had been able to read her mail that shouldn’t have been, and then they published her mail on the internet so that anybody could read it, even things that were important to the safety of the country, and then everybody got to look through them, and they’d found lots of bad things in them that showed how what she said in public wasn’t the same as what she said in her computer letters.
He said that he also thought that she represented how politics was corrupt: Hillary had been a politician for thirty years, and he said that he thought that she was a bit two-faced. He told me that she kept talking about how she represented the common man, but at the same time she got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak privately to bankers, and so maybe she was a little bit two-faced, since she'd say one thing in public and another thing in private.
So he said that he didn't like her because he didn't trust her, and he wasn't sure that she had the honesty and integrity that a president ought to have.
Then he said that she had some policies that he did like, and maybe if the democrats had had a different person running for president, he would have voted for them. They'd had Bernie Sanders, but Mel said that he thought Mister Sanders was a little bit too socialist.
So I asked him if there was stuff that he liked about Donald Trump, because I thought it would be kind of petty to have just voted for him because he didn't like Hillary. And he told me that some people thought it was a problem that he didn't have any experience, but that he thought that was an advantage, and said that Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower hadn’t had any experience and they'd been good presidents.
He said that he liked Trump's stance on immigration, which was to get people who were in the country illegally out and back where they had come from. He said that because they would work more cheaply than Americans, people would hire them instead of Americans who needed jobs, plus there were violent and dangerous immigrants who shouldn't be in the country.
He told me that in Europe they were having a big problem with that, and it wasn't bad over here yet, and Trump was going to make sure that it stayed that way.
Mel told me that he was also going to renegotiate some of the bad trade deals that the country had gotten into, and that that would mean that there would be more work in America. He said that factories moved to other countries because it was cheaper and then sold their products in America, and that put people out of work, and he said if I'd ever seen the big factory on Sprinkle Road, that used to be a factory where lots of people built cars but General Motors had moved it to Mexico and everybody had lost their jobs. He said lots of his friends had lost their jobs when they'd been moved overseas, and Trump was going to fix that.
And he also told me how he thought that overall Trump had more in common with the feelings of the lower and middle-class people than Hillary did, and Mel liked how he said what was on his mind, instead of weaseling like politicians did when you asked them a question.
Then when we got to the parking lot, he said that he was sorry for bending my ear but I didn't mind. Sometimes the best way to learn stuff is to just listen to what other people have to say.
As soon as he parked, he unfolded his computer and looked at the weather maps, and said that we were cutting it a little bit close if I wanted to get up in front of the storm. So I had a drink of water and then I got out of the truck and looked up into the sky but I couldn't really see where the storm started from here on the ground, since it was overcast as far as I could see.
When I got up in the air, I could see the dark clouds off in the distance, and they were still a ways off, but they were getting closer. And it was a solid mass of darkness as far as I could see in both directions, and on the weather map it had been red, so that gave me an idea what it was going to be like.
I had time to check and make sure that my radio was working, and I also told Mel what I was seeing, and then I circled around and waited for the storm to come.
It was as bad as I'd thought it would be, 'cause of all the energy it had picked up all day. I kept watch on the ground while I was waiting for it to get to me, and I could see the trees bending and moving around in the wind gusts, and all the lightning flashing off in the distance, and then I started to see cars coming along the 94 Highway that were dripping wet and had their windshield squeegees on, and I started preparing myself for the storm front.
I had just enough time to get one more message to Mel, and then I got hit by it, and I was ready but it still pushed me back and down, and I fought the clouds to get my altitude and position back even though I couldn't see the ground any more. And I took one look back at Kalamazoo glittering in the distance, and then it was also swallowed up in the curtains of rain, and there was just me and my little light freezing the raindrops in the air every time that it blinked.
When the weather was like this, it was hard to tell sometimes where the clouds ended, and I probably went up into them a few times by mistake. I was flying completely by feel, getting a sense of the storm and shouting at Mel on the radio whenever I got the chance.
The first part of it went by me and then it got a little calmer, and I could sometimes see lights on the ground, when the squalls eased off a little bit, and then the wind would gust and the cloud would dump out more rain and it was gone.
There was a lot of lightning in the storm, and that was something that I could see, although a lot of times the sky just lit up and I didn't see the bolt, but there were a bunch of them that were close enough to me to see, and I called those out, too. And I checked my watch a couple of times to make sure that I was still holding my position, although since it only measured the distance to the airport, I could have been anywhere on that arc, so whenever I got a chance, I looked down in the hopes of seeing the cars on the 94 Highway, 'cause with their headlights on they were like a long lighted snake.
I'd been in the storm for over an hour when it started to thin out a little bit, and I asked Mel if it was passing or if I needed to hold my station. He said that the weather radar showed that it was moving by, so I turned and flew back towards the Speedway, just on the tail of the rain. And as I got down a little bit lower, I noticed that most of the trees had had their fall leaves stripped off of them by the storm, so I guess that was how trees did it on Earth. They just waited for a big storm to take their leaves.
I landed on top of the giant S, and I almost forgot to spark off and had to do a really awkward landing so that I wouldn't zap my tail, and then I sat up there for a minute, looking around at the rain-soaked ground, before I jumped off and glided down to Mel's truck.
He said that the weather looked clear and there weren't any reports from spotters of other storms behind this one, so I shook off and got in, and he said he could take me back to campus, but I convinced him to take me to Taco Bell instead, 'cause I hadn't had dinner.
So we went through the drive-through, and he ordered food for me and then he even paid for it which was really nice of him, and then he let me eat it in his truck, so I was really careful not to make a mess by mistake, and when we got back to campus, I nuzzled him and he said that I was the best spotter he'd ever worked with, and he said that he was going to miss me when I went back to Equestria. And I told him that I was going to miss him, too, and I hugged him and thanked him one more time for dinner, and then I hopped out of his truck and went across the lawn and back to the dorm.
I wasn't sure if Meghan was still in her room or if she'd gone to Aric's already, so I went there first, and she was busy studying so I said that she should come up to my room when she was done. And then I went back upstairs, and I guess Peggy had gotten tired of studying, 'cause she was playing euchre with Ruth and Kat and Rebekka. And she also had some vodka, and everyone had a White Russian, and she made one for me, too.
I was pretty wet still, so after I'd hung up my flight gear, I put a towel on my bed and sat on it so that I could dry off. And I watched them play until they were done, and then Kat said that she didn't want to play another game, so I took her place, and Ruth had to go to her room and get a glitter marker and a pair of lounging pants, which she said I should wear so I wouldn't get cold. And after I'd put them on, she drew hearts on my hooves again.
Me and Rebekka lost, 'cause she wasn't very good at the game, but it didn't matter, because we'd had fun. And then we just sat and talked, even after Meghan had come up to the room. So it was pretty late when we finally decided to go to Aric's, and I'd been good and not had too much to drink.
He was already in bed when we got there, and I felt kind of bad for spending so much time with Peggy and our hallmates when Aric had been alone, but he said that he didn't mind—he said that he'd gone to bed a bit early because he'd had a headache from studying so much, and Meghan asked if he was trying to make an excuse for not having sex, and he laughed and said that he was never too tired for sex.
But even though he'd said that, he wasn't as frisky as he normally was, and I think we overwhelmed him, and when he was done, he snuggled up with his head on Meghan's breast and he fell asleep pretty quickly, and I couldn't be mad 'cause it was pretty cute.
Knocks over soapbox and stands up,
Ok I enjoyed Mel a lot in this chapter. Although I did not vote for Trump or Clinton in this election he nailed on the head why I could never vote for Clinton. I did agree with some of what Trump was campaigning on but his "locker room" talk and his disrespect for immigrants from war torn countries upset me. I voted for a third party candidate becuase neither major party put forward a candidate that was qualified IMHO. The real travesty here was that more people didn't have the courage to take a chance and vote third party. That is also my biggest gripe about the American political field that it is so dominated by two parties that they have no reason to work together becuase it has become us vs. them in politics.
Gets off the soapbox and leaves it up for anyone else.
The future Equestrian weatherponies will have H-1B designation as they aren't displacing American workers.
:( I don't wanna read anymore... it's almost over and...
It's like the end of Star Trek Voyager... I just don't think I'm strong enough.
Wait, those count as waffles?
Considering they had been serving frozen waffles for breakfast, I'd say her fears are well-founded.
7884614
That really doesn't count since they are just multiples of each other.
Really not looking forward to the end.
7885237 Maybe there will be celebrity cameos in the last chapter(s).
I'm glad Silver is getting some alternate viewpoints... even though I, personally, don't like Trump, I don't think it's a good idea to have a visiting pony get all of her information from a group of people who (mostly) think the same way, politically. Exposure to many different sources is the best way to form an opinion, after all
In that vein, I have to wonder if someone is going to mention to Silver, regarding her Bible studies, something along the lines of "Oh, yeah, there's a whole bunch of human religions, and even whole groups of people who don't believe in any of them!" I'd think at least one person at the college might mention something along those lines. Unless someone already did and I missed it. Or, perhaps, I forgot about it, which is entirely possible as it's almost 4 am and I should be in bed and what the hell am I doing up so late?
7884963
Those count as coasters.
I vote for Cosmic AC. Just as soon as I sort out the code.
All the fun things with the maths are even better when you can actually understand what you are doing with it. I think the x^n Mod 13 is useful for storing arrays of ability scores in Pathfinder etc when using a 3-15, D5 based rolls. Best example of Stokes and Greens Ive heard, is driving down a length of road only a few miles around a thousand square miles of nature reserve, counting up the roadkill, and the double integration gives yo a measure of total population in the reserve?
Chemical reactions are fun. Series, Parralel, Reversable, and the one he didnt mention, Turing Oscilatory Reactions. I wonder if Pinkie found out, she would throw a quiet party for The Last Apple.
As for politicians. When Watson came out in 2011, because of its behaviour, it was proposed to use it for analysing medical data, like a GP over the phone. At 24/7 operation and far cheaper, it turned out to be extremely successful. Of course, the computers got vastly cheaper since then, and humans wages keep going up. In 2017 its claimed that the total conversion of the entire legal paperwork, rules, laws, judgements, will be completed. At the same time, th HP XDome server is supposed to be released, wth up to 4 times the Ram of the origional Watson supercomputer. On Each Blade. 8 Blades per rack, 16 racks per cabinet. Now do the same for politicians, bankers, stock market traders, CEOs, everyone who makes billions and wants to cut costs so they can have even more.
I finally understand what they meant by Coyote Ate His Own Feet. He ran out what he was stood on to consume.
And the waffle maker is still broke.
Any more storms due, or is this the last of the wash cycles for Silver before she goes back. On th New Year?
Now back to your regularly scheduled winter infections. Todays special. Hacking cough with green globs.
The problem of having two girls to please instead of one.
⸘How can anyone be so naive‽:
Lincoln was a politician for decades at both the State and Federal Level before he ran for President.
Eisenhower spent most of his political career as an officer where he had to command thousands of Soldiers under his command while interacting with the Civilian Government. As Supreme Allied commander and Operation Overlord had the command of millions of Troops and had to work with the Civilian Governments of the Troops.
¡The Dunnings–Krugers have elected President Dunning–Kruger! May the Invisible Pink Unicorn help us —— ¡may her hooves always remain unshod!!
7885264
No evidence exists for the existence of gods, so it is illogical to believe in any gods.
7885358
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/11/22/1301126__safe_twilight+sparkle_princess+twilight_underhoof_sitting_floppy+ears_grin_starlight+glimmer_raised+eyebrow_nervous.png
Eh hehe heh.... That's what I get for doing a quick google about politicians with little experience without looking harder, I guess.
7885376
At least Starlight Glimmer did not order the residents of Starlight Village to drink Grape-Flavored Flavor-Aid (Jonestown inspired Starlight Village). This brings up an interesting point:
Both the Great & Powerful Trixie and Starlight Glimmer were arrogant when they ruled villages. Their rule was terrible and ended badly. Princess Twilight Sparkle is humble; she knows that she has much to learn and asks for advice and help. Humility is good; while, arrogant ignorant ambitious stupidity ends in tragedy.
7885412 The big question, we weren't going to get "Humble" this time. Which would you choose? The shifting lying corporate globalist stooge, or the stupidly ambitious and arrogant prick? Everyone's like "well, we're fucked either way." So I chose someone who more aligned with my own interests than not and had a chance of winning. Besides, we are people who still have power and pull, it takes a lot of us to make change, so rulers don't have absolute control. The Equalist ponies found their leader was a bad pony and practically ran her out of town.
7885482
I did read a good story that used one of the Voyager probes. It was Twilight that saved it before it was destroyed entering their planet's atmosphere, Luna was going to let it be destroyed because it was unknown and possibly just junk.
7885574 Link to that story please?
That's not the one where they listen to 'Sounds of Earth' is it?
7885592
Here you go, it's called Voyage's End.
7885442
That is an easy question:
I chose someone who knows how to run the country over arrogant ambitious willful ignorance. Cracked covered this:
We would be lucky to live in the world of idiocracy, as oppose to the world of Trump as President.
Yes, Silver Glow, that is just exactly what our trees do...
I can't believe the way some people have been acting lately--rioting, beating people up and destroying things, just because their favorite candidate happened to lose an election. I'm pretty sure that has never happened before in American history. If I wanted a visiting alien pony to see us at our best, this would be a bad time for it.
7885764 So you ignore the failings of a career politician who has so many skeletons in their closet, that you'd still vote for them because they have "experience" and you believe the other one is stupid? I can respect your idea that yes he is stupid at times, a lot of people can see that. Are there any other reasons though?
Also, that Cracked video..... I'm not even going to respond to that video specifically because hearing what they had to say was just insulting to my intelligence, and I think I know most of the news he's referring to. It's cherry picked with no analysis or substance too. Fk Cracked.
Just to point this out to everyone, Cracked is a click bait, fake news gossip rag website littered with Progressive Op-Ed opinion pieces and propaganda that's almost at the same level as BuzzFeed. They were good back in the day, but they've been taken over by this political ideology. For a great example of this, if anyone here loves or plays video games, or is a real gamer, this video below will piss you off. (There's even a pretty good response video showing off why this Senior Editor at Cracked is full of shit.)
In short, this unfunny 20-something San Francisco hipster douche says that gamers are all inherent sociopaths who have murder boners they use video games to act out their violent fantasies with, he can't name more than 2 "non-violent" games at all, he's trying to guilt trip all gamers to be ashamed that violent games are popular, brings up real world gun violence for no reason (Yeah, I saw your anti-gun bias slip in there), claims only rich people can play video games, claims the term "gamer" means being an online troll, lies about GamerGate by saying it's a "harassment campaign with ties to white supremacy groups", and he cherry picks the hell out of his sources by even citing Feminist Frequency writer, Johnathon Macintosh, who's an insane moron that believes that there is a real Patriarchy.
That was just in the first 3 and a half minutes! This guy is a physical manifestation of Progressivism, political correctness, and the mainstream media in general. This video is one of the ways people are getting red pilled on this secular political religion and why a lot of them are wanting to fight back against it.
7885641 Awww yaay, that's one of my faaavorites.
7885902
Agreed. Violent protests are not the answer.
7885764
7885986
Okay, seriously now. You've both been at this for a couple weeks now. This is not the venue for this. This is not a political forum. This is the comment section for a story about happy colorful ponies. Could you both kindly shut the hell up and take this elsewhere? Say... PMs?
7886086 Can we petition Knighty for a feature like a Dropdown box where you can put long strings of text in, but it doesn't crowd the comments?
7884826
7885237
The end is neigh...er nigh!
I'm filled with bittersweet anticipation at the thought of this journal's conclusion. Keeping up with SG's entries has become a pleasant, daily routine. Odd how a fictional band of characters have become so intertwined in my mind that I often wonder what their thoughts or reactions to things I see around me would be. (I think I've said that before.)
I feel this work should be commemorated somehow. It has inspired others. Introduced new friends. Brought forth great debates and general silliness. Thank you Admiral Biscuit. Thank you for this fine work of art you've contributed.
Edit: And thank you Admiral's editors et al. Though the common reader may not see them know that your contributions are appreciated as well.
7885986
⸘Do you live under a rock‽ Trump is far worse than Clinton.
7886204 So you just use "he's a bad man!" without substance and blatantly ignore everything Clinton has said or done. I'm questioning your sanity at this point.
I can't help feeling that Silver was a bit too passive here. I get the impression you wanted to include someone who was pro trump in order to balance things out, but in the scene you've created you basically have Silver not really engaged in having a conversation with this person.
And Silver has something of a history with Trump supporters, after a fact. I would imagine she'd probably want to bring that up, for example, or point out that she herself was a minority and not from the states.
Oh my god Silver you can't just cheat on your labmate like that! You have to have a discussion before you start doing science with someone else.
The one thing I dislike so much about the current political situation is how goddamn condescending people come off as. Just because you're at a liberal college, or any college, you get lumped into a certain group and everyone assumes you subscribe to every aspect of said group. Mel has some assumptions about how college people view things politically and it shows. He comes off as defensive initially and if Silver wasn't so detached from everything I can imagine that this conversation could have gone pear shaped very quickly.
Sometimes projects take as long as you have. My senior project is probably going to be a bit like that. I'm going to be doing most of the code (I'm our head mechatronics and controls person) and I can work on that until it's due.
Not to mention that Hilary got asked if she was corrupt and she didn't say no.
So, catching up on this Biscuit... We had (formerly) frozen waffles, bread from 2016, unlabeled juice and bread sliced so thin I'm not sure it's bread.
2 kinds of cereal.... neither were fruit loops. I think I get a certain girl's behaviour at a baggie of fruit loops.
Next time Biscuit, Windsor... it can't be any worse.
The Pegasus abides.
Contradiction?
needs a period
7892307
It was supposed to be Kat that didn't want to play. Correction made; thank you!
Well... politics.
I strongly disagree. But I'll leave it at that, so as not to further clutter things.
Anyway! When did cold weather actually get to Michigan? Isn't it supposed to be cold in the Midwest by this point?
8002791
We had a kind of messed up winter.
I can assure you that I was using the actual weather for the day, each and every day of the journal. Weather Underground has a really nice weather history function, and it breaks it down by the hour.
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4.bp.blogspot.com/-JpJzIahrw7A/UfCdIQ0d7bI/AAAAAAAAC5w/zK6dfZzvO6w/s1600/soapbox.jpg
It was important for Silver Glow to see both sides of the issue, especially since most of her friends are likely to be very liberal, and I think it's also important for all of us to make the effort to rationally discuss things that oppose our point of view. I've never liked single-minded people who think that there is an easy answer to any societal problem, or for that matter, that there's only one solution to any given problem.
7884727
Correct. Theoretically, if there were enough of them, they'd displace meteorologists, but it's unlikely that they could bring over enough ponies to control the weather worldwide, at least not in a short timeframe.
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And it's ironic that I haven't replied until it actually is over. Trust me, the last few chapters were really hard on me, as well.
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No, not really.
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Tau is very important. Haven't you been following the comments?
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Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen came to Gusty's going-away party.
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Agreed. And it's important for her to understand, at least a little bit, that we don't have a near-Goddess ruling us, but instead our system is supposed to let the majority of the people decide the route that they want the country to take. And of course in such a system, some people are going to be happy about how things are going and some people are not.
Oddly, I'm not sure that that ever did come up. It might have, but I don't remember if it did. And that's one that I did mean to get more in-depth on, but never did as much as I meant to.
7885309
Despite all the rhetoric over here in the US about immigrants taking our jobs, automation has taken far, far more, and building a wall won't keep the automakers from investing in robots on the assembly line, or trucking companies looking really hard at autonomous trucks that have no hours-of-service regulations. The only way to be safe is to have a job that can't be outsourced or automated.
Exactly!
I don't think that there were any thunderstorms left, just snowstorms.
7885335
I know, right?
7885902
Well, they ought to have a running of the leaves to get them to all shed their leaves in a nice, orderly fashion.
Oh, no, it's nothing new. There were protests after Obama won, people hanging and burning him in effigy, and so on. As I recall, there was a fair bit of griping after Bush II won as well, although I'm not sure what there was by way of organized protests. That was a long time ago, and I was still kinda living in a bubble back then.
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I think that by and large, most of them were peaceful, but of course whenever you get a bunch of people together, someone's got to do something dumb. Really regardless of circumstances. Back when I lived in Lansing, riots after MSU games weren't all that uncommon, unfortunately.
7886175
That would actually be a really nice feature. Or a [page_break] command like you can use in blog posts, so if you want to read more you have to click on it.
7886195
I've thought that, too, although I'm not sure what a proper commemoration is. The comments section, I guess, is as good as any.
Probably a Silver Glow Con is a bit out of the question.
And thank you, again, for being one of the contributors.
7886687
Yes, I think you're right. Although it's kind of something that's sort of hard to reconcile in your head, especially if you're not used to it or not expecting it. I can give two examples: one of my followers unfollowed me and sent me an angry PM after I published Donald Trump Grabs Princess Celestia's Pussy. He said that I'd betrayed him. I didn't really know what to say to that.
And then one of my co-workers, who I had assumed would be very anti-Trump, was telling me how proud he was to vote for Trump and how much he was looking forward to the changes that Trump was going to bring, and I didn't really know what to say. I strongly disagreed with him, but I also didn't want to get into a political argument with him, especially since he was doing me a favor and giving me a ride home at the time (and it was about 30 miles, and he was going out of his way to do it, so . . . ).
See, the thing I've noticed with everyone is that they'll see what they want to see. So Mel's probably got a vision in his mind of shady-looking Mexicans sneaking across the border to steal jobs, live off welfare, and sell drugs, and it never actually occurs to him that SIlver Glow is also an immigrant, because she's nothing like that.
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Yeah, my boss keeps saying that I'm a 'city slicker' because I'm a democrat. Never mind that I've lived the majority of my life in towns with populations of less than 2,000. Silver doesn't exactly understand how politics works in the US, which is probably her salvation in this case, and she is wise enough to know that people selling things will often say whatever will get them the sale even if it's not true--she's not that much of a rube.
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And sometimes they take longer . . . which is why I'm playing catch-up on the comments now.
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I have a little bit of PTSD at the, um, Gentleman's Clubs in Windsor and being the only sober one there and seeing things that I can't unsee . . . as long as we stay away from those, it probably won't be so bad.
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8015546
The problem, it seems to me, is that people, especially people in the United States, treat politics like a secondary religion. I don't mean they follow politics religiously, but rather that they treat being a republican as a sort of religious ideology, and therefore it's unquestionable. Effectively, this leads to people feeling 'betrayed' when confronted with someone they might otherwise look up to suddenly confronting them with an opinion that doesn't align with their political religion.
8015648
You know, that's actually a really good way to put it. I'd always just thought about it like a sport, but most people don't get all crazy and irrational about their favorite sports team. Religion is probably a much closer analogy.
Missing an "I" there.
[triggered]