April 3 [homework day]
April 3
Sunday could have been a repeat of Saturday, except that I still had homework to do: I hadn't gotten it all done Friday. So when I got up I put on my flight clothes and called the airplane controller for clearance. I was still in the bedroom and Aric was leaning on an elbow listening to me, and he said that it was pretty strange to listen to me asking for permission to fly, especially since I hadn't yesterday.
I felt a little bad about that, but I'd stayed low over the water and kept an eye out for airplanes.
So I told him that I was being responsible like he was responsible last night in not driving Winston home, and he sighed and said that he'd forgotten that he'd left it on campus. I said that if I knew how to drive a truck I could bring it back to him, and he said that would be really funny to see but you needed a special license to operate a vehicle.
Humans don't let you do anything without a special permit. It's kind of dumb, but there are probably lots of rules that you need to know in order to drive.
Aric said that there were places with little cars called go-karts and that I could try driving one of those. He didn't think that any of those places were open yet because of the weather, but when they were it would be fun to go out to a track and race.
I thought so, too, and I decided that I would pay more attention to how to drive when I was riding in cars.
The sky was clear today, and almost all the snow from yesterday was melted already. I flew west out of town and across the 131 Highway until I got to the Kal-Haven trail, which went all the way to South Haven. I'd kind of made up my mind that one day I was going to fly all the way there and back, but that would be a full day trip, and I didn't have time for it today, so I only went a few roads down the trail and then back again.
The only people I saw on the trail were a pair of women who were jogging together, and I flew down and greeted them before flying on. I would have greeted them again on the way back, but they were nowhere to be seen, so they must have turned off on one of the roads that crossed the trail.
When I went into our room to put away my flight gear Peggy said that I smelled a little different than normal, and she wondered if I was wearing some kind of perfume or had changed to a different shampoo and I told her that I was in estrus because it was the spring even if the weather wasn't behaving.
She said that it was weird that it made me smell different, and I said that I thought it was weird that humans could smell it in ponies but that they couldn't smell sexual changes in each other. I asked if it bothered her and she said that it didn't, it was just different.
I took my shower and then the two of us went to breakfast together, and then it was time to get to work.
I started off on my essay for anthropology, thinking that whenever I got stuck I could take a break from it and do some math. I had decided that I would stick with what kind of food they ate, and where they found it and how they prepared it. Obviously, the easiest way to find out would be to just go into the village and start eating meals with them, but sometimes when you were a guest you ate different things than your hosts normally would. If I ate in a different place than everybody else, I could just smell around the other houses and see what kinds of food I smelled, and if it smelled the same as what I was eating, which would be a start.
I thought that once I'd established myself with them at least a little bit, they would return to their normal diet, especially if they were foraging. Usually that means that you can't keep a lot of extra food around because it doesn't always keep for long, so you eat things when they're available and then move on to the next food source.
If they didn't move their settlement around, that meant that there was ample food year-round for them, or they had some way of preserving it for the lean season. So that would be something good to know, too. According to the map with the pamphlet, their town was near a river, so maybe they fished. That was something I could look for, too: fishing tools.
I could verify what they ate by going out on foraging trips with them, to see what they picked and what they didn't. I thought that they might find me useful, since I could fly and maybe get to things that they couldn't, and I could also search a wider area.
However, if they weren't so willing to show me where they gathered food—because maybe they were afraid that if I knew, I might steal it from them—I could also watch from a cloud perch and see where they went when they thought I wasn’t around. But that was kind of risky, because if they saw me then they probably would be suspicious of me from then on.
I thought overall it was a pretty good plan, and so I sort of got all my thoughts in order and started writing it.
By the time I was done, my voice was tired—it was a lot of work talking to my computer—and so I turned off the microphone and was about to start on my math homework when Peggy said that it sounded like it was a good time for a break, so I helped her put all her laundry in the washing machine and we sat in the laundry room and talked while we were waiting for it to be done so that it could go in the dryer.
Overall, that took about two thirds of an hour, and once it was safely in the dryer she set an alarm on her telephone and we went back to our room to do more work.
I'd gotten done with my math and was checking over my answers when her alarm went off, and once everything was put away in her room I asked Peggy if she would read over my essay because she was better at English than I was, and she said only if I would check over her math homework, which was a fair exchange.
Since we couldn't do both at the same time—neither of us would learn if we simply corrected each other's mistakes without discussing why it was wrong—she threw a coin up in the air which is how humans often decide things. She won, so I started pushing my chair over to her desk, then she said that was a silly way to do it, and she told me to sit on my bed, and she'd sit next to me.
I didn't think she could write like that, because paper is not very stiff, but she was smart enough to bring her math textbook so that she could make a little lap desk out of it.
She did pretty well; only a couple of mistakes and they were sort of dumb mistakes: once I pointed them out she saw what she'd done wrong and fixed it. And it was a good for me, too, because it was more practice on how humans write math.
Then she took her turn reading over my paper and she had some stuff to correct, but not a whole lot, and she said that she thought all the writing I was doing in my journal was probably really helping me with English. I said that I had bought a new notebook at Meijer because I'd almost filled the one I had and she didn't believe me, so I showed her that there were hardly any pages left in it.
After dinner was over, I caught up on my computer mail. Gusty had sent me a letter formally inviting me to her play, and because human computers couldn't write Equestrian she had written it out in horn-writing and then taken a picture of it and included that, which was something I hadn't thought of doing.
I showed Peggy, who couldn't read it at all, and then told her what it was about, and she said that sounded interesting. Then I sent a computer letter to Mister Salvatore telling him about it because it would probably be easier for him to arrange for trains than it would be for me.
When that was done, I asked Peggy how to put a proper letter into my computer as a picture, and she showed me how to do it with her printer which could also take pictures of papers and make more of them or put them in computers. That was really clever of it.
I read about what my friends were doing on Facebook for a little while, and then I thought it was time to go to bed so that I'd be well-rested for the morning. Peggy turned off the lights in the room, except for the little one on her desk, and when I got into bed I thought how strange it felt to be alone. I’d gotten spoiled over the last week, spending most nights sleeping with Aric or Meghan, and I thought that I could go over to Meghan’s and ask to stay but then I decided I probably shouldn’t come over unannounced this late at night.
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I'm surprised there isn't already an Equestrian language extension for computers. Maybe Gusty just doesn't have it?
She could also nose through their trash, a time honored tradition among anthropologists.
hum I am wondering if Silver can get pregnant after all she / her DNA is not pony not human either but as life says any thing is possible life will strive to be created.
just a interesting thought.
I wonder if one side of your mind was going for 'in season' and the other side 'available' and they met in the middle?
7263618
It was "in season" in the first draft, then I edited and didn't catch all the words.
All corrections made, thank you.
You are now legally obligated to include go-kart ponies in a future chapter.
<--See? She wants a go-kart, too. You wouldn't want to disappoint her, would you?
I don't think Silver quite appreciates the lethal potential of cars, possibly because she still subconsciously thinks of them as living beings. After all, if you could just train cars to stop before they hit people, they wouldn't be nearly as dangerous. Sadly, it doesn't work that way.
It'll be very interesting to see what Amy makes of Silver's essay. This should be a fascinating experience for both of them. It does seem like a good plan... assuming the people Silver's studying don't immediately freak out upon seeing the tiny flying horse.
Sweet baby Jesus on a pogo stick, I can just about imagine her reaction on seeing a smart car.
Oh! Oh! I know that one!
We had a conference on the evolution of human sex for my anthropology class, some kind of "bonus" activity for valentine day.
Since we can reproduce all year long, the smell was useless and made us an easier target for predators. Natural selection came and got rid of it for us.
7263756 Also assuming they don't think she looks tasty, which is a problem among some humans too.
7263484 All I could think during that part was "study their poop".
7263481
Me too! After all, Unicode already has all of Linear A in it, a language we may never be able to translate. And lately more and more computers are using Unicode by default...
7263498 Centaurs have to come from somewhere! Or satyrs.
7263481 Betcha there are several, all mutually incompatible.
7263481 Even if there were a character set, though, they'd either have to learn to type it, or the voice recognition would have to learn Equestrian. It seems likely Equestria nerds made the sets. But between the technical knowledge to set it up and the already difficult hoof-keyboard interface issues, it also seems likely that their human handlers decided it wasn't really worth the bother.
7264619 Ultimately, it depends on what kind of language Equestrian is. If it uses a phonetic alphabet, then it would be easy to translate, with how easy depending on the number of characters. Type the romanized Equestrian word on a normal keyboard, and it could be automatically translated. It would be like:
pathos --> πάθος
If it uses a pictographic written script like Chinese, the same approach works, except typing a romanized Equestrian word would bring up a menu of possible characters that the writer intended.
7264204 Well if they want it to be more then just a new font and some code points it's going to need some software to back it up. And of course Unicode committee has to be a committee about it, then there is the question of what other equestrian languages do you add. The unicorns have their own script, as do all the other races and pretty soon you find yourself making a whole 'Equestian' version Unicode to cover every language in their world and so you need to dial it back to what is really necessary and eventually end up with the standard equstrian and maybe griffon and dragon... in short pretty much where they started but it took about 7 years to get there in the first place.
7264697 Sure, but Silver doesn't type, she dictates. I'm not entirely sure how those types of software work but if Equesrtian doesn't have super straightforward sound - letter pairings it has got to be way more complicated.
Gusty wouldn't have to do that of course but she might also just be more comfortable hoof writing.
7264451 vary true.
It's my headcanon that a ponycentric "keyboard" would be a two-lever rig (like this thing here) with a number of positions on each lever, where the pony would push one lever and then the other down a certain number of "notches" and then release both to register a character. It wouldn't be as fast as a typical 101-key, but it would be relatively easy for a pony to use.
This just occurred to me today, so apologies if it's already been answered. Is this Meghan meant to be a nod to the Meghan from the 80s MLP cartoons?
Ahh, homework days. Lots of experience with those. It's typically both Saturday and Sunday for me.
I also want to see silver driving a go cart, preferably with a spin-out or something like that. Indie places exist as well.
I know silvers pain for filling up a notebook. I'm on notebook two for one of my classes and I've used more layer this quarter than the previous two.
I would like to see Silver attempt to drive a go kart or watch Aric as he drives Winston. That aught to be good.
7263910
...Ah, not quite. Wherever you got that information is probably using outdated sources. Obligatory Wikipedia reference.
My favorite of all the studies that showed significant evidence supporting olfactory factors in human sexual activity was done using strippers by monitoring how much they made in tips correlated with their menstrual cycle. The study showed that the women would earn a statistically significantly higher amount in tips when they were in the week before their period was to begin, which corresponded to the time they'd be most fertile.
Wasn't there a leaked graphic for the show that showed bales of hay along the roads in Ponyville as if they were going to have a car race of some sort?
7265264 Not quite. There is still some odors, it is unavoidable.
But there is no strong scent, no flow of pheromones. In fact, we've mostly lost the organ needed to perceive pheromones. Any of the remaining olfactives signals are very subtle.
On the other hand, some annimals, like horses, do display a strong signal to catch the male's attention.
7264909 I had it that you select characters by tilting the disks like a gamepad controller. You could get 12 positions easily, maybe even 16 on each disk. Add a rotation of 1/2 key width each way to access alternate characters, for both disks and you'd have a 72 or 96 character keyset.
7265264 The unanswered question there was: Did those strippers get more tips because of how they smelled, or because of how they behaved, during their most fertile days? I'd guess it might be possible they tended to put a little extra effort into their performances on the days they felt more into it.
7265391 ... which brings up the question of whether Silver Glow's noticed human menstrual cycles. Or how human birth control measures affect whatever signs she's sensing, for that matter.
I guess ponies in this Equestria don't really need birth control because they'd just time it with their cycles. I'd usually say they could just use spells, but somehow I don't think Silver Glow would trust a unicorn to do that.
7263756 It doesn't work that way yet. People are working on it, and they're getting really close. I'd give even odds at least some cars would have a very reliable version within the next five years... but not all, and besides, Silver Glow is apparently traveling to 2016!US, not 2021!US.
I wonder how long it'd take someone to figure out how to cast a spell on a computer to fill in gaps in programming?
wasn't her plan on the train tour to get more independet and figure things out herself ? ^^
7263481
It would be complicated to program, and all the ponies are expected to be fluent in whatever the native language is where they're studying. The usual values I use for the Equestrian alphabets (and I can't remember if I mentioned specific numbers in this story) are 14 characters in Earth Pony, and 42 in Unicorn.
7263484
I thought about that, but I don't think Silver Glow would think of it. Midden heaps are gold mines to anthropologists and archaeologists.
7263498
I have considered using that in a story, but not this one. A human can't get Silver Glow pregnant.
7263676
I shall. And probably bumper cars, too.
7263756
She understands that they are machines, but she doesn't appreciate just how much of a weapon a car potentially is. She's never piloted anything, so she has no frame of reference for the skillset required.
Well, that is a problem with the plan (which is why it's hypothetical) Assuming that Silver Glow were to try and study a culture that had little to no outside contact, one of three things would happen: they'd assume she was a god of some sort, and worship her; they'd assume she was a demon of some sort, and try to banish her or worse; they'd just see her as a tasty snack.
7263788
Do you mean a smart car like a Smart ForTwo, or a smart car like a Tesla that can drive itself?
7263910
But AFAK, the smell's still there (or at least some of it), because some animals react to it.
7264180
I consider that a potential outcome if SIlver Glow were to actually try and study a tribe far removed from humanity.
Also something that probably wouldn't occur to Silver Glow.
7264204
How long does it take for something like that to be compatible with multiple platforms? Especially with the non-unicorn ponies using speech-to-text for most of their computing needs? I still see lots of stuff where it can't even handle some punctuation marks (and you see &), for example.
7264451
I prefer centaurs, just because there aren't enough HiE (or PoE) fics where the offspring is a centaur.
7264486
Yes, there would be. Possibly dozens or more.
7264619
That's my thought. It exists, but there isn't a standard, and it's kind of kludgy, and all the exchange ponies already speak English (or whatever the native language is where they're studying), so there's no need to bother. Simpler to just use off-the-shelf equipment for now and let the ponies cope with it. Most of them don't use computers all that much anyway.
7264697
It does, and the two different alphabets use either 14 characters or 42.
7264796
s2.quickmeme.com/img/3d/3da068a36b17c32ffccc387dd8389ffbd9cc4e0c7af4f0caccea3134146f41b0.jpg
7264909
The way I picture it is that there are literally only two 'letters,' and they type everything in pony Morse, and then when the book's typeset (or whatever), they convert it back to Equestrian.
7265197
No; that's purely a coincidence.
7265214
Silver crashes her go kart and flies away from the burning wreck. . . .
There was one class where I filled up a whole notebook, but only one. I usually took pretty sparse notes.
7265243
Nothing like learning how to drive by watching someone drive. Or even worse, learning over the telephone, which is how I got instructions in driving a flatbed with air brakes.
7265264
I'm sure that was a fun study, with lots of on-site observation.
7266124
Yes; she mentioned that Peggy smelled different. She could also smell when Sean and Christine had settled their Star Trek vs. Star Wars argument 'the fun way.'
It would probably affect it, but since it's not something that she's going out of her way to pay attention to, she probably hasn't really noticed.
I've always assumed that they have readily available effective birth control, because when they're in estrus is when they're most likely going to want to have sex, and when they need it the most. Unicorn spells are one option (I would assume that besides the usually common spells we see, most unicorn mares know how to cast an effective contraceptive spell on themselves); charms or the like are another, or even enchanted condoms. Heck, there's probably even a 'morning after' spell.
7266766
Yes, but arranging a trip to MSU to meet up with Aquamarine and stay in her room is easier than arranging a three-pony trip to Madison to watch a play.
7268361
While the technical aspects could be handled in a week or two, getting it rolled out to general availability would probably take months, maybe even a year. Unicode is only using 24% of its code points, and it already includes darn near all of the non-extinct writing systems, and the Equestrian additions don't have to be backwards compatible or interoperable, because there is no pre-existing standard. About the only thing they'd have to worry about is sort order. Does Sparkle come before or after Pie? But then there'd be bug fixing to do, so...
Most of that confusion with punctuation, and things like & is actually just a failure on the part of that specific web developer. The computers involved already have all the data necessary to do the job correctly, it's just that the guy feeding the instructions to the machine is, intentionally or not, feeding it incorrect instructions.
I could talk for hours on the subjects involved here, but that's esentially it.
Or maybe I'll keep going.
Unicode has been releasing new major versions every June since 2014, so, if the Equestrian languages weren't added in June 2014 (version 7.0) they would surely have been added in June 2015, in version 8.0. I say 'surely' because, well, they're adding 72 emojis on the 21st for version 9.0, and they did something similar in 8.0*, and emoji are kinda unimportant, comparatively speaking, and the technical challenges of adding a whole new script are not much greater than the challenges of adding emoji. Especially if the script is well defined, as it seems the Pony languages are, in-story. If one of the Equestrian languages was more difficult to implement, perhaps because it was less phonetic and more ideographic, then it might take another release cycle to bring it out, but they wouldn't hold back on the easier ones.
*Unicode 8 introduced emoji like taco, burrito, unicorn face, and popcorn, along with emoji skin tone modifiers.
7268361
That depends on the platforms. To get workable speech-to-text, you need a fairly large database of speech with associated text (typed out, not just written, because optical character recognition is not perfect and you do NOT need another source of uncertainty to mess around with). So the speech-to-text pony stuff will come a good deal after the Equestrian font (perhaps a new subset of Unicode) becomes widespread. (And let's hope they read horizontally, because if they don't read left-to-right or right-to-left - if, for example, they read top-to-bottom - then we're going to have trouble).
And then there's the question of how the platform will handle the update. The bigger open-source platforms will almost certainly just issue a patch (which will still take a while to shuffle itself into certain versions), while I imagine some proprietary systems will bring out an entirely new version, now with Equestrian language support.
7272976
So in a nutshell, it's reasonable to assume that Equestrian fonts and Equestrian voice to text might take several years to become commonplace in the computer world?
Probably text first, starting with sites like Google and Facebook; custom software to handle the fonts (I assume that when you change keyboard languages, there's a program that re-maps the keys, because if you had to type in the unicode for each individual letter nobody would want to use that system), and then eventually Equestrian voice-to-text software. Presumably tech-savvy ponies could find gainful employment tweaking that software.
And of course for the non-unicorns, custom keyboards, pointing devices, and so on.
That is weird. Humans are a pretty nose-blind species. I'm surprised Peggy could smell the difference.
Indeed SIlver. Also to mitigate the number of accidents (to a certain degree of success).
Hmm... Eventually, there will be translation and language tools hopefully. But for now, at least Silver has the pleasure of voice-recognition. Just imagine if this happened a few decades ago...
Yeah, they're not adding those alphabets until Unicorn 9.0.
At least version 8 already has U+1F984 ("Unicorn Face"): ???? (Picture: cdn.calref.net/files.calref/78/356091b5_Screenshot-from-2016-06-07-14-54-18.png )
7275096
Yeah, first they'd just create a new layout (especially - or possibly several competing ones, since (afaik) there's no standards body for those. Even if it's inconvenient for ponies to use, this would allow Equestrian to be typed on computers without special hardware (and by humans, for that matter).
And once there is enough of a market, somepony will probably design some kind of hoof-ergonomic keyboard.
The ponies determine how many codepoints language requires, and submit a request to the UnicodeConsortium. The software of the user-end willl deal with text-input, text-flow-direction, displace, et cetera. Existing fonts need pony glyphs added to them or one needs to create new fonts with glyphs.
The next annual update of MacOS will include the update to Unicode. Windows probably will require the user to update their computers manually (I do not get why, in the 2010s, Microsoft cannot properly support Unicode). Macs just work whether they are Big MacIntosh or MacIntoshes.
It seems like the Universes came into contact a few years ago. Given that regular Equestrian uses only 14 letters and the Unicorns use only 42 letters, they should have been added to the Unicode-Standard years ago and all MacIntoshes and IOS-Devices should support Equestrian already.
7281170
Licenses and permits at least demonstrate when you took the test that you met a certain minimum standard. Whether or not that's enough is open for debate. I have to take state tests to prove that I know how to work on cars; I also took the truck air brake test for fun . . . and passed. I've never actually seen an air brake first-hand, nor have I ever worked on such a system, nor would I know how to diagnose it if one actually showed up in our shop. (I could probably figure it out eventually.)
It might not have been so bad. Back when I was in college 20 years ago, there wasn't all that much that we were required to do on computers; so she probably would have done it all pen-and-paper. Maybe had a typist she could borrow for certain assignments.
7283288
I wonder what the threshold is for that type of thing? Like, how big a potential user-pool do you need before it becomes worth designing something, and cost-effective to produce?
7439995
I think it would be more of a question of how quickly people wanted to use the language, and how many people were going to use it. My thought would be that at this point, there are probably a number of different proprietary typefaces/interfaces that have been designed, but not a full international standard yet, and I think the biggest slowdown would be getting ponies to make suggestions as to how the system ought to work.
7477083
Air-brakes have amazing stopping potential.
Unless you're in a semi, then they just slow you to a stop.
My impression of Silver's experiences on Earth have been one part KIki's Delivery Service and one part Forest Gump. It's been a compelling combination of feeling culture shock and viewing significant events that are largely unique to Earth from almost a child-like perspective (and even everyday things we take for granted). It transitions from analyzing Marxism to "Oh look, fire truck!" I have to say that I'm loving the paradox. I can't help but wonder when the manure will hit the fan, though, as far as Silver's 'relationships' with Meghan and Aric are concerned. From what I can tell, polyamory must be a fairly everyday occurrence where Silver comes from but is hardly commonplace (or favorably looked upon, for that matter) where she is now. I can't help but think that some drama's gonna rear its ugly head real soon.
7852304
I don't know that much about air brakes, but I do know that drum brakes in general work amazingly well until they get hot, then they're not so good anymore until they cool down again.
8007998
That's one of the best summaries of her character I've heard! She's fairly smart, but she's also in a totally alien world and trying to figure it out as she goes.
Meghan and Christine have some advice for her about that. Bear in mind, that to Silver Glow's mind, sleeping with Meghan [in a literal, not a sexual sense] is perfectly normal, and it's just something that friends do.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies ) spent a lot of time with the tribes of New Guinea. They don't eat mushrooms, they think that mushrooms are poisonous & will kill you. He's all "No they won't." & would eat mushrooms in front of them to prove it. Somebody finally told him to stop doing that because it was REALLY upsetting people, so he did.
10252969
I have to think that doing soemthing that’s basically taboo in front of a culture as a ‘see, it doesn’t’ move is, well, kind of dickish. I mean, some of the dietary restrictions in the Bible were surely put there because if you don’t cook pork right (for example), it might make you sick or kill you; if you were trying to make a new Jewish friend, you wouldn’t be eating ham sandwiches in front of them and insisting that they try one. Likewise, while I don’t know Jared personally, I have a feeling he’d be offended if someone from an Asian culture butchered a dog in front of him and then offered him a piece to snack on.
Even though it’s not poisonous, and it won’t kill you.