August 6
Gusty was awake before either me or Aquamarine. She was either nervous about her play or eager or maybe both.
The three of us got out of bed and tried not to disturb Cayenne, who was flopped on her side next to Aquamarine. Her folding computer was still on the other bed, and so was the bottle of Jacapple, but there wasn't as much in it as when we'd gone to bed.
I was worried that she might sleep through Gusty's performance, and I couldn't imagine how sad that would make Gusty, and I kind of looked over at Aquamarine and I think she was thinking the same thing and we'd drag Cayenne to the theatre if we had to.
Gusty said that she had to go to her room and take a shower and groom and put on clothes and I said that the showers were big enough for all of us and it would relax her if we groomed her and she wasn't really sure that she wanted to and Aquamarine nuzzled her shoulder and nibbled on her mane a little bit and she untensed a little bit. She said that we could, but we'd have to go to her room 'cause her shampoo and brushes and clean clothes were all there.
When we opened the door there was a basket of coffee and muffins outside, and a little card that said good morning. Aquamarine took it inside so that nobody would trip over it and so when Cayenne woke up she'd have coffee, and then we went down the hall to Gusty's room.
I really liked the bathrooms that they had. There was a nice big bathtub that could have fit us all, and the shower was separate and had two showerheads.
Gusty was kinda embarrassed to get undressed in front of us, which made me kind of sad. It was like she'd lost some of what being a pony was, although I think I remember that she was from Canterlot and a lot of ponies there wear clothes all the time, I've heard. But it still didn't feel right to me.
Once me and Aquamarine started washing her, though, she started to relax a little bit, and then she started saying bits of her dialogue which was a little bit odd but maybe that's a thing that actors do. At first I thought she was talking to us, but she was looking off in the distance.
Neither of us got too clean, 'cause we were spending all our time working just on Gusty but that was okay.
When we turned off the water she shook herself off and then started drying herself with a hot-air blower. I'd tried using one once and didn't like it—it made my coat feel funny and my mane feel crunchy.
We got out her brushes and started brushing her coat, and once that was done Aquamarine sat down and combed her tail while I did her mane, and I kept having to stop while she looked in the mirror and put on makeup. I thought it was kind of heavy, but she said that was important for the theatre to really bring out her facial expressions, because they were hard to see from far away and so you wanted to overdo it.
Then she got dressed in underwear and loose pants and a loose shirt with buttons so she wouldn't mess up her mane when she took it off to put her costume on, and she nuzzled both of us and thanked us for getting her ready.
Just as we were getting ready to leave and get ready ourselves, there was a knock on the door and then it clicked open and Nicky came in. Her clothes were all wrinkled and she looked really tired but her face lit up as soon as she saw Gusty and the two of them hugged each other so tightly I thought that they might break some ribs or something.
We knew that they'd want time to themselves, so we wished Gusty luck again and each hugged Nicky and then we went back to our room.
Cayenne was still in bed when we got back to our room, so Aquamarine stood by the side of the bed and I pushed her off onto Aquamarine's back, and she carried Cayenne into the shower. I turned on the cold faucet, and Aquamarine walked under it and refused to move until Cayenne started yelling at her and I started swearing back, and it turned out I knew a lot more creative curses than she did.
Cayenne marched out of the shower, still dripping water, and picked up a cup of coffee in her field and drank it in a few gulps, then she opened up her bag and got out some aspirin, then she came back in the bathroom for a proper shower.
So the three of us got showered and groomed together, and Cayenne wanted to go down and see what was for breakfast. She got just eggs and Aquamarine and I shared a bowl of steel-cut oats.
Our helpers came down while we were eating and took the table next to us, and even though we had our own conversation and they had theirs it was nice to be next to them. Miss Parker asked if Nicky had arrived yet and I said that she had, and she was with Gusty. None of us knew when Gusty had to go get ready, but I knew that Aric had to be in place an hour before the show opened, and I thought that was probably the same for the actors, too. So I didn't think that we'd see her before the show.
We had plenty of time, though, so we took our time eating and then we all enjoyed a cup of coffee, and when we were finished we still had time to walk around a little bit before we went to the theatre.
It was about a kilometer from the hotel, and so after we went back to our room long enough for some last-minute grooming and turns in the bathroom, we met up in the hotel lobby and walked to the theatre.
It was a kind of strange looking building—it looked like a barn that had been added onto, but I'd seen a barn-theatre near Augusta, so I guess that was one way that humans built them.
The theatre wasn't as nice inside as the other ones I'd been in, either. It looked kinda unfinished. And the stage was strange; it was an island instead of being a normal stage, which I guess meant that you could see everyone from every side.
We'd gotten seats that were close to the front, and we decided that we'd sit with my helpers next to me and Aquamarine's helpers next to her and Cayenne in the middle.
I saw some people who were sitting across from us pointing in our direction, and there was also a pair of earth ponies in the crowd, but they didn't have as good seats as we did. Aquamarine waved at them, and they waved back at us.
And over to our left, I saw a man who looked really familiar, but I couldn't figure out where I'd seen him before. I think a lot of people knew him, 'cause a few people were waving at him and pointing to him and the grey-haired man sitting next to him.
I still hadn't figured it out by the time the lights dimmed down, and I turned my attention towards the theatre.
When the play started, the kind of shabby look to the building didn't matter at all, because all my attention was on the stage. It was a little different than when I'd seen it in Wisconsin: they'd changed their blocking (that's what it's called when actors move around) so that they could face every part of the audience, and I wondered how much work must have gone into that. I'd have to ask Gusty if it was harder to remember lines or harder to remember where you were supposed to go and when you were supposed to go there.
Gusty got a short round of applause when she first came out on stage, and I think it disoriented her a little bit, because she'd started to say her line and then she had to wait until the applause stopped. As soon as she started her first long speech, though, she was back in perfect form, and the whole crowd fell silent.
She was right in front of us when she put the flower on Lysander's eyes, and that was a little bit strange because at one moment she was looking at us but seeing something beyond us.
It was over too soon, and when she'd said her final line the theatre exploded in applause, and when the cast came out for their bow, everyone got on their feet and kept applauding loudly enough that I thought maybe the ceiling would come down. If there were people walking by outside that didn't know this was a theatre, they were probably really confused at all the noise.
All the actors went out the front, so that they could greet the audience in the lobby. And I guess being first out of the theatre would be one advantage to sitting in the very back, although you wouldn't have as good a view as we did.
But it gave us a chance to talk about the play, and I was especially happy that Mister Barrow and Miss Parker had gotten to see it. They both thought it was really really good, and even Mister Salvatore said that when he was in school, Shakespeare put him to sleep, but this had kept him on his toes for the whole thing.
Even though it was rude to eavesdrop, I couldn't help but overhear everyone else talking about how wonderful it was, and I thought so too.
When we finally got out of the theatre I made a point of greeting all the actors, because it would be really rude to just ignore them and run off to see Gusty, like a lot of people were. I couldn't actually even see her, but there was a big cluster of people around her.
We waited until the crowd had thinned out a little bit before we made our way over. The other two ponies we'd seen found us, and so we all introduced ourselves. They were Sterling Silver and Viola, both from Manehattan, and they said that they loved the theatre and had planned their vacation around seeing as many different performances as they could.
They said that Canada hadn't been their first choice, but there was a really long waiting list for New York and California, and they did a bit more research and found out that there were lots of good theatres and theatre festivals in Canada, so they were trying to visit as many as they could. They'd been in Montreal and Toronto and on Monday they were getting on the train and heading west.
Then Viola said that she didn't mean to be rude, but they wanted to greet Gusty before they left, and they had another performance to see at the Avon theatre, but they would love to treat us to breakfast at their hotel tomorrow if we could, and Sterling Silver told us their telephone number so that we could call them in the morning.
Well, we didn't really get much of a chance to talk to Gusty in the theatre, 'cause I could tell that she was getting kind of tired from all the well-wishers, and besides we had a lunch reservation soon, so we just nuzzled her and told her she'd done a great job and we were looking forward to lunch.
We took our time walking to the restaurant. Mister Salvatore had reserved a whole room, and he said that he didn't know how many people were going to be there, because Gusty was allowed to invite anyone she wanted to. Cayenne said that was kind of unfair, and I smacked her with a wing. I don't think she was being serious, but it did sound mean.
The restaurant was called The Prune, which was a really strange name, and it was kind of a strange building, too—it looked like a house, but it said 'restaurant' in big letters down the front.
So we went into the room that we'd had reserved for us at at first it was a little awkward because a woman with dark hair took one look at Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn, who went in first, and said that it was the feds. Then I said that they were my helpers, and they'd driven us here, and she kind of blushed and said she was sorry.
Mister Salvatore and Mister Barrow looked at each other and took out their wallets and showed them to her, and Miss Cherilyn told them to be nice to Ruby.
The bald man and his grey-haired friend were there, too. And there was also another beautiful woman with ebony skin and dark hair, and an older woman with big glasses.
Miss Parker and Miss Cherilyn were most impressed with the two young ladies, and Mister Barrow went right over and introduced himself to the two men, and I thought that maybe the older woman would feel left out, so the three of us went over to her.
She was a famous theatre director called Zelda, whose husband had started a famous theatre in Washington, D.C., and she was a very well-known play director. She was really nice, and she said that Gusty had done a marvelous job and it was the first time she'd seen a pony acting in a serious role.
Well, the ebony lady—whose name was Uzo—overheard that and said that Gusty had done a very good job on Orange is the New Black, and Zelda said that she didn't doubt it, because it was obvious that Gusty put all of herself into every character.
We'd finally all gotten comfortable with each other when Gusty and Nicky arrived, and Nicky took one look around at everyone who was in the room and for a second I thought she was going to turn and bolt but she went around and shook everyone's hand and then she sat down next to Gusty and took her hoof and Mister Salvatore frowned a little bit but the grey-haired man got a big smile on his face.
I'd kind of guessed that the two women were from Orange is the New Black, and I found out that the two men were really well-known Shakespearean actors, and that they had both been knighted because they were so good. And it was kind of a strange dinner, 'cause there were times I felt like we were really left out of the conversation, and maybe it would have been better if we hadn't been there. I don't think that was on purpose, but it would have been the same thing if I'd invited Gusty to a cloud convention—she wouldn't have known anything about it at all, and it would have been really hard for her to participate.
And I knew a few things about human theatre, because of Aric. Cayenne and Aquamarine must have really felt a bit left out.
But after some drinks, and a lot of praise for Gusty (which she deserved), people started talking about other stuff, and pretty soon there were a lot of conversations going on.
We spent most of the afternoon there, which was the longest lunch I've ever had in my life. I think Cayenne was the only one who was used to it, 'cause she'd been to some formal dinners in Canterlot.
Everyone had gotten tickets to see H.M.S. Pinafore, which was a musical play about sailors and love and I really liked it, because it kind of reminded me of home.
A bunch of Gusty's fellow actors had also watched it, and so we split up after the play was over. Cayenne said that she was going to try and crash an after party, and me and Aquamarine decided that we'd walk around town a little bit and then go back to our hotel room. Miss Cherilyn had made friends with Uzo and Ruby, and they went off to a bar together, and Miss Parker was talking to Zelda. I wasn't sure where Mister Salvatore and Mister Barrow had gone.
So we walked along the river and got caught up on what we'd done over the summer. I told Aquamarine more about flying in storms and how I was going to fly over Lake Michigan to Chicago next week, and she told me that her experiments were going really well, and said that she'd spent some more time with the horses, too, and the last time she'd been shod the farrier had done a really bad job of it and next time she was going to be smart and have a proper farrier work on her hooves.
When we got back to the hotel, both of us were ready to relax, so we got a bottle of white wine sent to our room and sat in the giant bathtub sipping our wine, and we made a bet on whether or not Cayenne would come back before we went to bed. I didn't think she would, but I was pretty confident that she'd be in bed by the morning, and we both agreed that next time we saw her, she'd smell like sex.
Out of all Human culture, I suspect Gilbert and Sullivan would be in the top 10% that ponies fall in love with.
But then, there are still many humans who have yet to properly appreciate it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/03/world/japanese-hail-the-mikado-long-banned-imperial-spoof.html
7627322 It was in the comics. Buck Withers was a star polo player.
I took some liberty with Zelda Fichandler; she actually passed away June 29, 2016.
Likewise, I couldn't easily find what plays were done in Stratford on August 6th, although H.M.S. Pinafore was in fact part of their 2016 lineup.
bald man, knighted for being a good actor... would that be Sir Patrick Stewart you are vaguely describing, Admiral?
.... Sir Patrick and Sir Ian?!?
7628118
Possibly . . . care to venture a guess as to who's with him?
Of course Silver did.
7628132 Gandalf the Grey
Cayenne was playing Dungeons and Dragons. She drank a magic potion and was transmuted from a Pony into a Hangover. That's why she was dumb enough to try to out swear a sailor. (That's her story and she's sticking to it)
Working on or near the ocean gives a +2 on all cursing rolls.
7628121
And you win an internet.
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/611767136ad5f0a15ff2899f86183a9e0a37a253/0_33_1877_1575/master/1877.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=cc96c7e058e6b3deb1f4465fdbe5f87c
I wonder if John de Lancie has spoken with Sir Patrick or any of the other Trek alumni about ponies. I remember hearing that Robert Picardo mentioned ponies once or twice.
I'd love to hear Patrick Stewart recite some of The Six Deeds of Harmony.
7628071 You are incorrigible Biscuit! You totally know what I meant!
7628009
Why would the ponies think it's OK just because they also have an immortal they look up to? They have tons of experience with powerful beings that needed to be stopped. Accepting things because the deity demanded it is like saying Discord's era was A-OK because god of chaos said so.
Whoops.
Thanks, Admiral. I absolutely wanted to laugh like a maniac in the middle of the night. I'm sure my family isn't worried about my sanity at all.
JESUS CHRIST.
"Mister Salvatore frowned a little bit but the grey-haired man got a big smile on his face."
Ooof, directly in the feels.
Also based on your reply to my green card comment i have decided Mr. Salvatore is frowning because he realizes that as soon as a human and pony get serious about a long-term relationship it's going to cause a lot of diplomatic headaches. And paperwork.
7626834
I don't count the group photo in the beginning. It's actually hard to use stuff from early in the show because it really was off (and there's a bunch of repeated models), they've gotten better with newer stuff. Our town (last time I did a count of entirely new characters) had pretty close to 50/50. The apple family thing isn't something I realized. I can't think of any explanations off the top of my head, but there might be some. Although it isn't super bad. I'm counting 12 adult males vs 18 adult females. No colts though. It's interesting that you mentioned the farm thing, because applejack is the only female that we actually see doing heavy farm labor. Besides her, it's all males. so in ponyville when we're wandering around town on a random day, most of the males would be working and not in town. Plus the most even ratios are at holidays and social events (not necessarily hearthswarming, but stuff like the gala or the running of the leaves). I'm not super sure about the royal guard thing. In my headcanon, Ponyville isn't close enough to canterlot to commute. I also hadn't noticed the foals, but it might just be a statistical quirk (ponyville is way to big for a 1 room school). The foal thing doesn't make much sense. the sex ratio doesn't really change much with population age. Although we still are only really seeing small snippets, not entire populations.
that's what I thought.
Bald... grey haired friend... knighted...
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen?
So I guess you went with FBI after all? Then again, it's also a generic term for a US government agent.
Well, Gusty got some really good friend to take care of her.
Please do the breakfast with the tourist couple, more new face to discover is always nice!
On a side note, I'm surprised that no one suggested an Aquamarine x Silver pairing yet. They've got the chemestry part down. Especially in this chapter...
Wouldn't it be them? Or does she ignore Miste Salavatore's antics at this point?
7629036 Understandable. Just bad memories can trigger bodily reactions of fear and the like, eh?
7628983
Ah, but that's the rub you see. As I said, there's no real, efficient way to store electrical power.
There are certain, unavoidable, thermodynamic inefficiencies in converting energy from one form to another. For most power plants, this involves converting chemical energy (burning fossil fuels and breaking chemical bonds) or nuclear energy (breaking atomic bonds) into heat. That heat is then converted to mechanical energy via a steam turbine. And that mechanical energy is finally converted to electrical energy by a generator. It has been quite a while since I finished my chemical engineering studies and I can't remember the specifics, but an efficiency around 25% sticks in my head. I could definitely be wrong on that one, but I know it's not particularly high. And that's physics and thermodynamics. There are hard limits on how much useful energy you can wring out of a given temperature differential. Believe me, most power plant operators would sell their mothers for a fraction of a percentage point increase in efficiency.
So, now you've finally created electricity, but you want to store it. You can use capacitors (I don't think there's much energy loss with those) but there are limits to the charge density you can achieve there too.. Though I know there's a lot of research being performed on the subject. Aside from those, there are dozens of other schemes... pumping water into reservoirs... Spinning giant flywheels... Giant caverns pumped full of pressurized air... But in all cases you're taking electrical energy, converting it back to mechanical energy of some sort... And then back to electrical. With all of the inefficiencies and power loss that entails. So of course an intermittent power supply is going to be several times as expensive as a reliable power source.
Of course, there are times when you need to use expensive intermittent power sources, such as the pumped storage facility you mentioned. Mostly because good, cheap, reliable power generation facilities such as coal, gas, or nuclear fired boilers take a long time to ramp up and down their production. And human power consumption has some very abrupt shifts in demand. A city might have a baseline power demand of 50MW at night when everyone is asleep... And then jump right up to 100MW at 8:00 am as everyone wakes up, turns on their lights and coffee makers, and heads to work.
Your big nuclear plant can't ramp up that fast. So you fill the gap with something with a quicker response time but that's far more expensive per watt. A gas turbine generator perhaps. Or maybe a giant flywheel, or water pumped up a reservoir, etc. But you'll want to use as little of those as possible, because they are expensive and/or inefficient.
Now, on top of all that, you throw in a Megawatt of random, intermittent power from solar and windmills. Before I could use my cheap baseline power generators for the whole 50MW at night and 100MW during the day, and only use the expensive stuff during the transition. Now I'm running at 49MW at night and 99MW during the day... And I'm constantly using my expensive quick response power sources to try to balance the load every time a cloud blows by or the wind slows down. As a matter of fact for every Megawatt of expensive solar or wind generation I built, I have to build the same amount of expensive quick response power generation!
Wind and solar are useful energy sources, and they have their place... But that place is in isolated systems and not as part of the electrical grid.
Sorry if that was a bit long winded. But as an engineer it really irks me to see people with 'good intentions' work so hard on paving a road to those generally lead you. The general public's ignorance of the infrastructure that keeps them alive and keeps civilization turning is both terrifying and depressing.
If I remember correctly... Maybe and no.
The US falls were shut down by building a temporary dam across them. So in that case, no. They didn't.
There is also a treaty (1950 Niagara Treaty) that says...
How much it could divert is something my googlefu failed me in finding. Anyone more knowledgeable on this would be appreciated.
Thinking about it, veterinary medicine is probably one area that Equestria is ahead of Earth no matter WHAT the general tech levels are. It's just because Ponies, Cows, and a bunch of other critters can talk & so more money was spent on the medical research.
The big problem is likely that Equestrians are similar but not identical to their Earth counterparts. Sort of the difference between monkeys and humans. IDK how long (& how expensive) the Earth testing is before you can sell the stuff on Earth but IMO you can't just sell stuff off the shelf. I'd bet the rent money that there are some regulatory hoops to jump through 1st.
I'd also bet that the same high IQ types that smoke bath salts tried smoking Poison Joke. (Bevis and Butthead's kids, no doubt)
7629047
Is Equine Piroplasmosis actually infectious to Ponies in your universe or is it just the Canadian immigration people matching aliens to horses because they look similar? If so I'd guess there are no Equestrian exchange students for Texas or Mexico or if there are any they're kept far away from horses or area where ticks could be lurking.
As for T.equigenitalis well that might be a little more embarrassing to explain (maybe Cayenne should get herself checked).
7628105
Out of all Human culture, I suspect Gilbert and Sullivan would be in the top 10% that ponies fall in love with.
I do agree, though. They love musicals.
<blushes> I've never actually seen a Gilbert and Sullivan play. Or been in one.
7628110
Oh. I did read that . . . way back when . . .
1.bp.blogspot.com/-6lwXtWmT3ow/UvmSIQcGO1I/AAAAAAAAVxE/_B4Y-UhZlvk/s1600/exploding+mallet.jpg
Best get out my comics and re-read them
7628135
I didn't used to think that there was any difference in how sailors swore, until a coworker's daughter joined the Navy. She'd say things that made me blush. I now assume in the Navy that they scrape paint, barnacles, and whatnot off the ships simply by swearing them off.
You are correct!
7628141
At least +2; I'd say that the modifier goes up the further inland you travel.
7628163
That's a good question. I would think so, especially if de Lancie goes to Star Trek conventions (which I assume he does).
Oh hell yes.
7628248
But they've accepted Celestia as their ruler, and not Discord or Tirek, so what she says goes.
7628256
Correction made; thank you!
7628351
No, just Sir Patrick Steward and Sir Ian McKellen.
themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Ian-McKellen-Patrick-Stewart2.jpg
7628487
Oh God yes. Now on the pony side of things, they'll probably just smile and congratulate the happy couple.
"What's your reason for wanting to travel to Equestria?"
"I'm in love with a pony."
"Congratulations!"
7629216
They would view being willing to sacrifice a child to her as acceptable?
7628502
It's the lack of colts that I find most significant. After all, there could be any number of reasons why an adult might not make it to the reunion, but you'd think that parents would bring their kids, so that would be a representative sample of gender distribution.
I don't know if that holds true, since I assume that farm mares would also generally be working on the farm. It's possible at things like the market, ponies more generally trust mares, so mares are the salesponies, but that could be either a cause or an effect.
I wasn't thinking that they commuted, but that they moved there outright.
But let's consider the canon families, where we generally know the gender distribution.
Apple family: two mares, one stallion.
Rarity's family: two mares
Twilight's family: one mare, one stallion
RD's family: AFAIK, we don't know anything about her family, so I'm not counting it.
FS's family: one mare, one stallion
Pinkie's family: four mares
So that gives us a total of ten mares and three stallions, with RD's family being an unknown.
7628634
You are correct!
7628762
She's using the term generically--they look like some sort of government agent.
7628784
She does.
Will do!
By the end of SIlver Glow's journey, she's going to be embroiled in a love dodecahedron with multiple genders and species involved.
Yes, it should be them. Thank you!
7629046
Well, it's a good survival trait. "I ate this once and I got sick so I probably shouldn't eat it again." This is why I won't drink tequila, either, BTW. Although in that case there was definite correlation between the tequila and the waking with a horrible hangover and no memory of what had happened the night before.
7629079
Hmm, I did a little bit more reading, and their current proposal is also to build a cofferdam. Although the fact that there is a treaty about how much water should go over the falls suggests that they could, if water levels were low, potentially divert enough to mostly dry up the falls. But I don't know for sure.
7629111
And they can also tell you how effective the treatment is, what they ate before they got sick, etc. Something that animals on Earth can't do. Plus I think in general the ponies care more about other animals than we do.
Yeah, and that's one reason for some of the uncertainty at the border. They don't know if Equestrian ponies can get or carry Earth equine diseases, and it's probably safer to assume that they can until you prove that they can't.
Likewise, you'd want to carefully test any medicines before you just assume that because they work on an Equestrian goat they'll work on a human goat, or whatever. That's one of the reasons why there are pony doctors available on Earth, who can not only consult online as needed, but can be flown to a treatment site if hooves-on care is required. And of course there is a similar arrangement in Equestria--a pony doctor could do the basics, but if you've got to do an emergency appendectomy, it's a good bet that a pony doctor would have no idea how.
7629206
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94t2qWgRHRg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBNAefAmrdU
What shall we do with the drunken unicorn, early in the morning?
"really well-known Shakespearean actors, and they had both been knighted"
"Bald" "grey haired"
You've got to be kidding.
I bet he did.
(If only Salvatore knew about Silver and Meghan. )
OK, now I'm seeing how this could go.
Do the princesses know of these potential hazards to the populace of Equestria ...or have they long since found cures, which the people of Earth would likely trade some of their wonderful human toys to acquire?
Well known grey haird Stratford Knights? I dunno, Brian Blessed,? Tom Baker? Some very high powerd characters there.
Somewhere, some when, Shakespear is writing his own Text. The Knights Of Odd Essay.
7629301
Just like any other human in equestria story then
Wait a minute...
7628144
I ship it.
7629206
<blushes> Hm, not sure about this one, colloquial?
Telling your working class/blue collar friends you listen to opera is painful, though not perhaps as painful as the looks of disdain from the well-heeled when you turn up to a performance of Lohengrin in combat pants and work boots.
Okay what does Gusty and Aquamarine look like again? I keep drawing up a blank. Gusty, I think I was able to find, but Aquamarine is a toughie to find...
7630574
Aquamarine (obviously, older)
orig15.deviantart.net/94c6/f/2014/118/1/3/aquamarine_by_jeatz_axl-d7gefql.png
Gusty
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/d/db/Comic_issue_40_Gusty.png
7630589 Oh okay. Yeah I googled Aquamarine once and that was what I got, I wasn't quite sure that was the one but sure enough, that was the correct design. And that Gusty, yeah I didn't get that version of Gusty on Google. Thanks for the help.
Silver, unicorns are crazy. Sure, some can get away with being called "eccentric", but not a one of them is entirely sane. I thought you of all people would have realized this by now.
Also hey, this is topical:
[youtube=jKmq0RiPUJA]
7629036
but biologically speaking they aren't Equus caballus so you could make an immediate extremely strong case that they aren't horses.
that's an oddly specific headcanon. I also wouldn't even call it even vaguely confirmed. I don't like olives. Do all Americans dislike olives as well?
I'm not really either. I may play around a bit and see if treating it similar to electricity gets me anywhere. Although i'm super busy right now.
yeah, that's more along the lines of tech. Although it could go the Mass Effect biotics route.
yeah, they can be a little finicky. My mom never had much luck with them either. And lol, don't keep them with fish that can eat them. It's a good general rule.
So if we divide all the work that needs to be done on a farm. There's heavy stuff and lighter stuff. But there's also just other things that need to be done. There's also other things that need to be done. Things like selling product, shopping, banking, just general running a household stuff that takes place off the farm. If we only see one group doing the heavy labor, then the other group has to pick up the slack. Especially as go to town isn't high on the list after lots of heavy labor.
adding parents to make the math work(otherwise you couldn't calculate the gender ratio for rarity and pinkies families) and using apples biological parents (ie, mom and dad) I found that the gender ratio of the population to be either 1.8 plusminus 1.13 or 1.8 plusminus 2.76 (F/M) with 95% confidence using a student t distribution (low sample size). so having a gender ratio of 1:1 would be a very real possibility based on the families. I wasn't exactly sure which formula I should be using and I spent 8 hours doing math today so I don't feel like doing a better analysis. Adding the schools actually makes the error bars larger. There are two things that make these equations tick. Standard deviation and the t-score. The standard deviation is a measure of how close the data points are together. A larger standard deviation means that the data points are further apart (the points 1,1,2 have a lower standard deviation than 1,5,9) and in the gender ratio calculation increasing the standard deviation increases the error. The t-score is determined by how accurate you want your result to be and how many samples you have. The more samples you have the smaller it gets and the more accurate you want your answer the larger it is (95% is pretty common). a larger t-score will increase the error bars on our gender ratio calculation. If we add the schools and the extended apple family, our t-score drops by about 0.2, but the standard deviation could easily double. Both have drastically more fillies than colts while this wasn't the case with the main 6's families so I'm willing to both of them are a statistical quirk. However, we aren't doing this the best way. It'd be best if we could just look at the list of characters, but i'm tired and overall really busy so I don't feel like doing it. I'm probably missing other stuff as well, but i'm tired.
to the range
and if not, they both would help her
The first show I saw as Theater in the Round was Equus... which is probably far more problematic with ponies around then normal.
7629623
"The Horse Genitals"
I love science.
7629058
Heh, no worries!
I'm not going to disagree with your numbers--I don't know if they're quite right or not, but that doesn't really matter because we both know that they're close, and I'll agree that there are losses any time you change energy from one form to another, no matter how good your system is, because that's just the nature of the beast. And I also agree with power plant owners being willing to sell their mothers for a few fractions of a percent of efficiency gain; heck, automakers dropped the external antenna on most cars for the marginal increase that gives in fuel economy, and you know when you're worried about the drag of--basically--a stick of coat-hanger wire, you've already found all the low-hanging fruit.
What sometimes gets overlooked in these discussions is the cost of the product from start to finish--from the coal mine to cleaning up the fly ash pile after the plant shuts down. And that's something that wasn't always thought about; there are some rivers near where I used to live that are heavily contaminated with PCBs and in Ann Arbor there's dioxin moving towards a couple of major water source . . . and in both cases, the company which made the pollution is long gone, so now the cleanup, if any, is borne by the taxpayer.
So yes, on an overall level, wind and solar aren't as reliable and aren't as cheap per megawatt as other systems--I'm not going to deny that. But if we factor in pollution, carbon dioxide output, and so forth, that may change the equation . . . or it might not, I don't know. There might be improvements or new breakthroughs that improve upon the process, or there might not. I don't know that either. I guess it's a question of what kind of system you want, and whether you can make it work for you or not. I personally would like to see more of a push towards renewables and away from conventional plants, but having said that I'd also like a more realistic discussion of the costs and benefits of each, because of course each type of plant has its inherent advantages and disadvantages.
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In the story, nobody has a firm answer for that. Ponies need to stay away from areas that are known to be infected, and it would certainly not be recommended that they spend time in horse pastures, just to be safe. And the Canadians aren't sure, either, because there isn't any literature on the subject.
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If she had a good reason, maybe.
7629467
Cold shower + Coffee.
Wild horses couldn't keep those two away from a pony performing A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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The STD is curable; however, you usually don't know that you've got it in your herd until the mares start miscarrying and you lose a whole breeding season as a result. The other disease, I don't think they have in Equestria. I think there's a very good possibility that the ponies would eradicate disease-carrying parasites if they could. They've already modified their weather in ways we can only dream of, so why wouldn't they eradicate ticks?
7630385
I never worry too much about offending the well-heeled. They can look upon me with disdain all they like.
7630620
"Only poor people are crazy. Rich people are eccentric."
It's true, though. Having that magic horn attached to your brain messes up your thought processes. Ask any pony without a horn.
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True. They might be immune to all human/equine diseases, or only some--what would keep me up at night, were I a epidemiologist in this universe, would be if they could carry and transmit a disease even if they themselves didn't get sick. Take the case of the tick-borne illness; maybe it doesn't affect ponies at all. But maybe they carry the parasite in their blood and are happily passing it along.
Part of the reason why I came up with some of those odd bits of headcanon was because (despite the show's models) I didn't like the idea that a unicorn was simply an earth pony with a stick on her head--there are some biological differences between the tribes, some of which are obvious and some of which are not. Another one (which I can't remember if it's come up in this story) is that pegasi generally keep their canine teeth, while the unicorns--if they have them at all--generally file them down.
See, why I didn't add the parents was because it's a reasonable assumption that you need a mare and a stallion to produce a foal, so of course there would be one of each--there'd have to be.
Obviously, it's hard to draw good conclusions from the data we have, because they're not always consistent with background ponies, they now use more character models than they did, and even in my above example the ratio would change dramatically if we find out in season 7 that Rainbow has six brothers.
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7631914
Yeah, that's probably one you shouldn't show ponies.
7638446
Everything sounds fancy in Latin.