Hi, friends!
Happy Monday! In honor of Earth Day, let’s talk planets. Do you have a favorite planet? Are you still salty that Pluto was downgraded from planet status? Is there a planet in a sci-fi that you always wanted to visit? I would check out any of the Class M planets in Star Trek, at least one of them has to have decent beaches but no sandflies or mosquitoes. Xandar in the Marvel universe was pretty cool until Thanos fucked it up. So you know, maybe there too.
I like planets with rings. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They just seem to have that special bit of fancy; they are the most chic of planets!
They are so cool! I wish Earth had rings like that.
We probably did, once upon a time. I seem to recall that rings are a characteristic of most newly formed planets. My guess is that the gas giants still have their rings because of their massive gravity, but I remember reading that eventually those rings will disperse.
Definitely Planet Claire
Nibiru, aka Hypothetical Planet X.
My much older brother took me to this when I was a little kid & it messed me up wanting to meet aliens for a long time!
I would have said Mars from the Expanse but Musk and his assholes would be there.
/Cue: “I’m surrounded by assholes!” And “Shit, there goes the neighborhood.”/ Space balls.
The planet Druidia looks nice.
Pass on Arrakis… Too spicy.
Planet of the Apes would be a lot of fun! All of those silly monkeys playing their funny games!
I wish people of Earth could be there, but I’m sure it’s a million light years away.
Speaking of interplanetary visitors, I was just reminded of The Little Prince, who zipped around little planets until he came to Earth.
He met a fox who wanted to be tamed. I was just sitting on my porch when I heard a rustling noise, and a fox strolled right past my steps, maybe ten feet away. This fox had no interest in being tamed, though, and it bolted across the street.
That’s so cool! I would love to see foxes. I did disturb a cute lil’ Dekay’s brown snake doing yard work today when I got home from the office.
I’ve seen enough of them to almost think they’re alien intelligences. Dogs are more relatably human than them. Deer can sort of be mapped onto cows or sheep. Foxes are… their own thing.
I never understood why we don’t have foxes by my green belt but on a remote nearby island we have tons of foxes. Now I know…
https://salish-current.org/2023/08/04/humans-urged-to-stay-away-from-san-juans-red-foxes/
The ecological interactions between foxes and humans are complicated, to be sure. Around here part of the issue is whether coyotes have entered the picture. Coyotes dominate foxes, but people like foxes and not coyotes. How that dynamic is worked out, and whether it means foxes feel safe enough to hang out, is too complex for me to figure out.
Jupiter…because without its gravity Earth would be nothing but a constantly bombarded ball of craters and fire.