June 23
I woke up late, and my wing muscles were stiff and cramped and my feathers were also all out of place, 'cause I guess I hadn't done a very good job of preening them at all.
I would have gotten laughed at for them being in such a sorry state back in Equestria. Luckily, nobody was here to make fun of me. Although I wouldn't have minded another pegasus. Sometimes after really bad storms, when we'd drag ourselves home, some of the weather apprentices would help preen our wings while we were napping.
I slid off the futon and plodded into the bathroom and climbed over the edge of the bathtub and that was when I remembered that all the water fell through the drain and I couldn't stop it, so my plans of taking a hot bath were already foiled.
That was too bad, because that would have been the best thing to relax my muscles, so I started to think of what I could block the drain with. I knew if I got a pretty good seal around it, the water would stay in the bathtub like it ought to, so it was just a matter of finding the right thing. A lot of bathtubs in Equestria had rubber plugs, but I didn't have one of those, and even if I had, it wouldn't have fit, because there was a grate that arched up.
It was full of little holes to let the water out, and maybe you were supposed to put something in all of them. If that was so, it was dumb.
There wasn't anything in the bathroom that would work, and I thought about what else I had in the apartment but the best I could come up with was a washcloth. I didn't think it would stop the water from going out, but it might slow it down some.
Then I got the bright idea to use some of a plastic bag, because I had a couple that my groceries had come in. So I got out of the tub and put the washcloth in the plastic bag, thinking that the bag would seal against the drain and the washcloth would help it.
My idea worked well enough, I had to hold it in place with my hoof until the water came up to my fetlocks, but after that it stayed in place as long as I didn't move around too much. And so I stretched out in the soothing hot water, wishing that the tub was wider so that I could stretch out my wings, but even with them mostly folded the hot water really helped relax my muscles.
I stayed in there until the water started getting cold, then I pulled my makeshift drain-cover off and let the water drain out and went out onto my balcony and stretched out my wings and shook off, then started preening myself right.
By the time I was done, I felt a lot better. I still had a lot of stiffness in my wing muscles, and I thought I'd do a little short flight to work it out, but I wanted to get something to eat first.
I had to get waffle batter—that got added to my list, along with a proper bathtub plug—and I was going to have oatmeal, but my kettle didn't work. At first I thought it was broken somehow, but then I remembered that the electricity was probably still gone. Opening the electric icebox proved it was; the helpful little light inside of it didn't come on, and it wasn't all that cold inside, either.
So I ate the rest of my carrots and then I flew off the balcony and did a treetop patrol of the neighborhood—high enough that I was above all the wires, but low enough that I didn't have to ask anyone for permission to fly, and that I could easily land if one of my wings cramped up.
I did know how to glide down from any altitude with a hurt wing, but it was a lot less pleasant to have to fight a muscle cramp all the way down from cloud-level.
I saw that the tree had been cut up to clear the road, and the wires that it knocked down had been put back up on their poles, but I guess that alone hadn't made the electricity work again.
When I'd landed back at my apartment, I stretched my wings again and then was going to check my Facebook but my computer didn't work either without electricity. Humans have a lot of really neat stuff, but I guess one strong storm can make it all worthless.
I cleared off my desk and made another dreamcatcher for my next-door neighbors; I thought that they might like to hang it in their bedroom and hopefully it would bring good dreams to all three of them. I put three different feathers on it, the smallest for Trinity and the biggest for Caleb and I was pretty happy with it when it was done. I'd give it to them if I saw them playing outside today, or tomorrow when Jeff was having a party in his backyard.
When I checked my mail, I found that I had a letter from Peggy. She said that she was having fun back home in Colorado and that the first thing she'd done once she had gotten back home was go on a short vacation with her parents and she sent me a picture of her standing at the very top of a mountain, which she said was called Pikes Peak. It was really beautiful, and it was right up with the clouds. I hadn't seen any views like that when I was on the train, and I knew that when I went to visit her, we'd have to go there.
And she asked me how my trip had been, too. So I wrote her a letter back telling her all about it, even the part where I got lost in the forest, and I also told her about the storm last night. I wished that I'd had some pictures to send to her, but I didn't, so hopefully my words were good enough.
Then I folded it and put it outside for my mailperson and then read a couple of Kipling poems. One of them was about a storm at sea and it made me think of the lashing I'd gotten last night and of the breakers rolling on Lake Superior, or the storms back home and how harsh the sea can be when it's angry. And there was another one about how hillmen like their hills and not the sea, and I knew some ponies who wouldn't set hoof on a boat because they didn't like the movement, even if the harbor was completely calm.
There was a third poem that followed those and looked really interesting called The Undertaker's Horse, but I had to go to meet with Liz, and then right after that I was going to go to practice-fight, so I had some more vegetables for dinner and then I took my glaive and flew off to Kalamazoo College.
Liz and I talked about the kings some more, and she was able to use her computer to show me a chart of when each man was king, and that helped me a lot. I wish I had known about it sooner, and she said that she had found it last night after talking to me because she remembered that was kind of confusing.
And she told me a little bit more about the history of the area, and I told her how before unification, all the different pony tribes had fought with each other and then when things started getting bad the pegasuses and earth ponies made a pact and that had worked out pretty well because together we were stronger than the unicorns and pretty soon we had pushed them back far enough that the earth ponies could start to grow enough food for both our tribes, but then after a while the land went bad and even they couldn't fix it and then winter came and it didn't leave, no matter how hard the pegasuses tried to drive it back, and then things just got worse because everyone was fighting for what little food there was.
Liz said that she imagined that the tribes in the Middle East fought for the same reasons.
Then she said that after the end of Chronicles, I might like Ezra, because it was mostly about rebuilding and finding your way back. And she tapped her fingers on the desk and looked over at my glaive and I asked her what she was thinking about, and she sighed.
She said that since I hadn't asked she had been thinking of not telling me but that wouldn't be right, because I was an adult and so she asked me if I had heard about Orlando. I told her that all I knew about it was that it was a city in a state called Florida and it had a kingdom for an imaginary mouse. And then she told me how a self-proclaimed ISIS terrorist had decided to go into a gay nightclub and kill and wound over a hundred people.
Liz told me that every religion had extremists, and they tended to take a very narrow part of their scriptures and make them the most important thing, and then they would lash out at the people who they thought were their enemies. And she told me that the most dangerous people were the ones who were preaching a gospel of fear and hate, because they would goad some of their listeners into violence on their behalf. And she told me that even some people who called themselves Christians did that—she said that if I listened to the news that I might hear people claiming that Islam was a religion of hate, but as often as not those who said it were haters themselves.
Well, that was a lot to think about, and I thanked her for meeting with me and we agreed to meet again next week at the same time, and then I took my glaive and went down the hill.
There were a lot of people at the bottom of the hill, and I wound up not remembering too many names, 'cause I was still kind of tired from last night. Karla was there; she was kind of short and bulky and had a thick braid all the way down her back. She came right up when I landed and introduced herself and then told me that I couldn't use my glaive because they had padded weapons, and I said that I had known that already.
It was kind of fun to watch people putting on their armor—it was the first time I'd seen people help each other dress, but I guess they had to because even for them there were a lot of fasteners that were hard to get to, and it just looked like it was easier with help (although there were some people who dressed themselves).
And Stellan came, too, and like he'd said he would, he had a padded glaive for me to use.
I wound up really interrupting their practice, because everyone wanted to watch me, and I felt kind of embarrassed at first. Stellan and Karla both wanted me to show my moves kind of slow, and so I slowed them down as much as I could so that they could see what I was doing, but that also meant that I fumbled it a lot. I'd never thought about how hard it was for my instructors to do the moves slowly so that we could learn them.
But that was good for me, 'cause I was really out of practice, and when I was done there were a couple of things—mostly diving moves—that both Stellan and Karla thought were too dangerous to try in practice, but they said that everything else was okay.
And then because she thought it was only fair, she sparred with Stellan. She had a quarterstaff, which is basically a stick of wood, and he was using a sword which he could hold with one or both hands.
Both of them called out what they were doing at first, but then they kind of got into it and forgot and sped up a little bit and it was a little hard to follow, but I got the idea.
Then Stellan said that he would practice with me, and since I didn't have any armor, he said that we would move very slowly.
We probably spent an hour figuring out each other's fighting style, and then we sped it up a little bit. Karla said that Stellan would only defend himself and not attack, while I was free to try and hit him. I thought that was a little unfair, but he said it was okay, and then he said I could move at normal speed, and I wasn't allowed to hit his helmet.
It turned out that a lot of the moves I knew were pretty ineffective against him. We hadn't really gotten much teaching on how to fight someone who just stood there, and the best tactic I knew was ambush from a cloud, and that wouldn't work when I couldn't do a diving attack or bring down a cloud.
But I still got some pretty good hits in and I even managed to knock his legs out from under him once.
After that, he did a few attacks on me, and he moved really slow on purpose, so I was able to defend almost all of them. Even so, he did manage to get me in the withers once, and even though his sword was padded, it hurt.
Stellan and Karla ended the night by fighting one more round against each other and this time they went at their normal pace and I could barely follow along. She could use both the head and the butt of her quarterstaff to hit him, and block in the middle, too, and she wound up winning after she managed to knock the sword out of his hand.
It was starting to get dark, so they picked up all their gear and took off their armor and I flew home and put my glaive away and I could see by the little blinky lights on my internet box that the electricity was back on and I thought about turning on my computer and visiting Facebook for a little bit but I was really tired, so I just went to bed instead.
Silver gets to meet the Knights that go Eek.
Im hoping to go down my sisters for teh weekend, for the big yearly multi team two day all out combat. Metal practise weapons against decent to good quality period armor and padding. Most injuries are due to momentum impacts and bad positioning.
So much stuff needing power, so little distributed storage.
7510519 I thought I heard the Tesla car people were working on a home system. The huge battery would charge at night and reduce the occurrence of brownouts due to peak demand. This might mean fewer powerplants would be required and make wind power more practical.
Surprised her computer didn't work. Most of them have batteries and are good for a few hours. Of course, you do lose internet access so Facebook and stuff is useless.
Quarterstaff is WAY more effective than you would think. The speed & reach are better than a short sword. Impact weapons are better than sharp stuff against armor.
We have a big war against Keid ( California) here in Phoenix. Every Winter, the winning king gets a trophy & the loser gets Idaho or so I remember (it has been 30 years)
Rarely would truer word be said.
Sure is convenient that Peggy thought to send a physical letter. Still, it is Silver's preferred medium.
Hmm. That history sounds a bit different than the one we've heard before. I suppose both perspectives are going to be slanted, but I'm more inclined to believe the one that has each of the tribes at one another's throats, especially given Silver's stance on unicorns in general. (Specific unicorns are friends, as opposed to the concept of Unicorn.)
Liz's stance on the issue is probably the healthiest one. Extremism in any form is dangerous.
Yeah, pegasus glaive techniques probably assume both a significant height advantage and a quadrupedal opponent, unless there are techniques specifically developed for minotaurs. It's going to take some work to adjust them for the SCA crowd.
7509006 most of the outdoor transformers in germany are in neat little brick buildings (well today most of the tranformator buildings are made whole from reinforced concrete) (inb4 germany is so much smaller)
¿Do you know what is crazy about the Westborough Baptists and Dæsh? They read their religious books and do what it says.
7510519
I think you mean "the knights who say... squee!"
Interesting that this is different from the 'gospel' hearthwarming story given in the show. It makes sense given we've seen that Equestria isn't culturally homologous, I'd guess there's versions favouring each tribe somewhere or other. I wonder if there's arciological evidence to fit any of the interpretations over in Equestria.
7511169 The Unicorns run the libraries.
All in a all a good day.
7511105
No it's not, for several reasons. First a Reuleaux triangle is just that, a triangle. It has three distinct corners which classifies that as a triangle. Then curves of constant width have specific chords of constant width. A brief foray into my CAD software showed that they don't have constant diameter. Finally, radius and diameter are scalar multiples of each other. If it somehow had constant diameter, it would also have a constant radius. That also wasn't meant when I said that the diameter can define a circle. I meant that every time I work with a circle in real life. If i want to measure it, buy round stock, turn something on a lathe, make a dimensioned drawing, specify a thread, it's all diameter. This bleeds into the math as well. Like catcube mentioned, we have diameter based geometry equations. It also bleeds into other equations. Pitch line velocity, for example, is calculated with the diameter. In theory the radius solely defines a circle, but in reality they both do.
well in practice it's 2.093 radians (calculate to however many sigfigs you want). Or 120 degrees as degrees are still widely used, at least in the U.S.
so mathematicians continue to distance themselves from application.
7510616 they are, but they aren't available yet and the system is expensive
7510616 Tesla already has it developed and I believe rolled out. It's genius because you can set it up to draw during off peak hours then use the battery during peak to save buttloads of money.
Likewise it is practically a required accessory if you have your own power generation.
Look at Silver McGyvering!
Theological discussions don't usually involve bringing a polearm along, unless it's a very heated debate.
Here we go...
I dare anyone to be near a pony sparring with a glaive and pay attention to anything else.
7511555 tesla does have what is called the power wall released, its about 3.5k a unit, and it can be set to draw from grid during off hours.
In addition Tesla is pushing for Solor Energy development, specifically solar pannal roofing. (Instead of boxes on the roof, the roof is the pannel)
7512967 have you seen the solar panels that look like clay tiles? Those are cool
My best friend is a gay liberal Muslim. The Orlando shooting hit us both pretty hard. Also, having a Muslim as a close friend makes all the bile directed at them a bit personal to me.
What're you doing to me, Biscuit?! I'm starting to get Meijers ads on fimfiction!
7511119
7510519
What about The Knights Who Say 'Ecki ecki p'tang zhoooooooo boing huminurmnurmnmnmn...'?
7511114
That's exactly what Liz was talking about. Extremists read their holy book, take specific parts, and then violently defend only those parts.
7516206
You have it backwards:
The moderates are the one's cherrypicking. The the extremists are the 1s reading and following the whole text. Any christian reading and following the whole bible will, out of necessity, be a violent religious sexist bigot.
7516265
Both sides cherry pick actually, it's a matter of what they cherry pick and how violently they defend what they chose. Extremists pick the more violent/conflict-ridden sections and then aggressively defend them from anyone who might, might infringe on them. Moderates pick less divisive sections and are less antagonistic with their defenses.
7516285
Keep telling yourself that and you might start to believe it. One is suppose to convert or kill nonbelievers and destroy all religious texts other than the 1 True Bible.
7516265
You are confused. There is nothing in Judaeo-Christian scripture proposing that we should be attacking members of other faiths or nonbelievers.
Islamic scripture, however, does contain exactly that, in the here-and-now.
7510519
Did you make it? And if so, did you have a good time?
7510616
I think you're thinking of the power wall, and I think it's already in production/available.
I just watched a video about that--about how wind power can't adjust to demand as fast as is needed for the way the grid is designed--and the narrator suggested that possibly, electric cars which are plugged in and charging could help solve the problem, but I suppose the power wall could, too.
7510737
She's got a desktop, not a laptop, so no batteries for when the power's out.
Ironically, since I get my internet through my cell phone, as long as the tower's still up, I can get online and do all the things I normally do. I think I've got at least one blog post which I posted during a two-day blackout--I was charging my laptop from a power inverter in my van with an extension cord run through the window and was working by the light of two oil lamps.
Totally agreed. It's a blazing-fast weapon, and someone who knows how to use it well can totally wreck your shit.
7510774
7510960
Honestly, she would almost certainly have been taught that ponies prefer paper letters during her roommate-training.
I think that the pageant in the show is a rather glossed-over history of the war, and I also think that the pegasi and earth ponies would probably work as allies before too long, just because they have a definite symbiotic relationship. Although I would expect that it wasn't universal; probably different tribes in different towns had different priorities.
Agreed 100% on that.
Well, they'd probably learn to fight not only other ponies (and maybe not that so much any more) but also other aerial opponents like griffons and rocs, Fighting on the ground would just toss away one advantage that they have.
Probably the regular guards learn it, since they're in mixed-tribe units, but there's no sense for it to be taught in general. A flock of pegasi isn't going to fight on the ground unless they're stupid.
7510983
We've generally got grey cylinders on telephone poles, or green boxes on the ground. It's kind of ugly to leave all that infrastructure out in the open, but at the same time that makes it a lot easier to fix when it breaks.
7511114
No, they generally find passages that align with their worldview and inflate them in importance and then ignore other passages which say things that they don't like, or which call into question their actions. The Westboro Baptists would do well to turn to 1 Corinthians 13.
(I'm not familiar enough with the Quran to suggest a passage)
7511119
The squeeing probably started the moment she flew down into their practice carrying her glaive.
7511169
I'm sure that the unicorn version of the story has the wise unicorns being besieged by the ignorant masses . . .
The history of the tribal fighting has, in my opinion, been neatly packaged into the hearth's warming tale which has the right moral but leaves out some of the more complicated aspects of the war, sort of like how you might learn about history in primary school. I think that the historians do know and do have records of the battles but that's really too complicated a story to tell for hearth's warming.
7511227
Not in the Crystal Empire.
7511236
7511527 7511555
I haven't done much research on it, so I don't know if it's actually available now or not. However, I do wonder if for the average consumer the cost can be recouped in a reasonable amount of time? I suppose there would be a variety of factors, and it might very well be cheaper than any other battery system you could have where you were generating your own power on-site (that having been said, a lot of the US has net-metering laws, which means that if you're connected to the grid you can sell your extra electricity back to the utility, essentially using the grid as your storage battery).
To give a personal example, I switched one house where I lived over to CFLs shortly after moving in. I calculated out that the cost savings over time would be negligible (at the time, CFLs cost about $10.00/each) but one of the other advantages was reducing the load on the antiquated aluminum wiring that the house had.
And one house later, and I'm now almost entirely switched to LEDs, since they've gone from $120.00/each when I first started looking into them, down to a much more reasonable $3.00 or so.
7511933
I suppose it depends on what sect you're talking about. I envision that Methodist conferences are pretty boring; on the other hand, when you get a bunch of northern Baptists and Southern Baptists together there's probably a very real chance for bloodshed.
Why being an exchange student to the US sucks. . . .
I can assure you that I would not be paying attention to anything else.
7512967
That's really a good idea. If I had the money, I'd have that installed when I get a new roof on my house.
7514103
*hugs*
I know those feels, man. My co-worker went on a rant about "Indian Indians" and then he saw the look on my face and said he hoped I wasn't offended and I told him that my brother's wife is Indian. Sadly, that didn't stop him from continuing his rant, which was basically "An Indian was an asshole to me once so therefore they must all be bad."
7516206
It's a great store. Come out here and visit some time and I'll show you.
Well said.
7516335
Which version of the Bible says that?
7534988
An interview Joe Rogan recently did with an ex-member of the church was pretty fascinating. The main point I took from it was a true curiosity will kill fundamentalism.
8246194
Apparently, Joe Rogan had some conspiracy leanings himself (I think he was a moon hoaxer back in the day) but as he learned more, he came to understand how wrong he was.
Yeah, I think that if you spend the time to learn about something on your own--like, an honest effort, not only reading the stuff that agrees with your point of view--it tends to blunt fundamentalism. I was a lot more conservative before I went to a liberal college; to my good fortune, instead of hating everything that was new and different, I started to wonder if my old worldviews were maybe a little bit wrong. Just being a theatre major kind of forced me to rethink some of my views on homosexuality.
Back to cute pony being adorable while just... doing nothing but whatever she feels like.
And we start with seeing agent Silver Glow acting on her true mission, using this as a chance to study human military tactics to better hone Equestria's skill at subduing those who resist the coming Cuddlequest!
Liz's answer on bad weather at sea is rather self contradictory. First saying that no, it just happens on her own, and then saying that nope, he does use it to punish assholes as well. I get what she is going for is, 99% of the time, it's just normal weather, but there is that rare occasion when Big G (No, not the massive, Tokyo smashing lizard, the boringer Big G) just says 'And fuck you' to some ship. But oddly put.
Orland..oh..... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........
Being able to just pop out to the back yard for a quick snack #ponyperks
The ATC people don't quite get the whole "I need to do this to tell the weather right and do my job tracking this storm' thing. Or that Silver is probably better at flying through clouds then 99% of the pilots you deal with. Still some fine tuning to deal with ponies being a thing. But Silver has a very Silver outlook on it, don't be pissed at what you can't do, just focus on what you can.
Does gotta be an all new thing for the weather people to try parsing, getting that kind of detail about what the clouds are doing. Likely not much one pegasus can tell them, but get a team up there taking readings from all around.....
Then Silver shows the real proof she's a pro at this kind of thing. The moment things lighten up and she has a chance, take a nap till it's time for round 2.
But just.... damn is she a super dedicated pony to this. Things would go just fine without her, she doens't need to go through this, but she is damn well going to do whatever small thing she can to help people out during a storm! As cute and naive, and as much of a precious cinnamon roll as Silver is most of the time, when she gets her game face on, holy fuck is she hardcore.
Now he's also gotta worry about ponies replacing weather jobs, not just technology.
Gotta love losing power in a storm. I haven't had that happen recently, but my work last week had the weirdest fucking thing during one, power never flickered, but somehow JUST the parts of our servers that handle talking to anything outside of the store shit themselves so hard, they are still down and we had to bypass and jury rig a new way around them. Given we are a retail store, that was not good, since it meant none of the registers could talk to any banks or credit card companies to approve sales.
Also for all the 'just bury them' might make sense to Silver, it has it's own issues. Development I used to live in had all underground wiring, and we had power outages fairly regularly, the would last for hours, if not a all day. The grid was just so old that it wan't able to handle the larger energy usage of modern times, and being underground, it was almost impossible to easily find the fault or fix it, plus too expensive to do what they needed to do, and just replace the whole thing. So yeah, underground is less likely to have issues, but when it does it's a much larger pain in the ass.
Also, her wording... just.. Silver.. you are amazing. That stupid tree went and spilled all of HER electricity out of the wires!
Weather noobs helping out by preening the pros wings while they rested, that is at once both oddly sweet, and seems just like the kind of random 'you exist just to do my bidding' situation you get in hierarchical structures like that.
Silver versus the drain the refused to be plugged! In the end, Silver wins! Pony ingenuity FTW!
And damn that blackout is taking awhile... oh well, being able to deal with no power like it's nothing more then a very mild inconvenience, #ponyperks
Dealing with cramps mid flight..... ouch. Now I wonder if pegasus foals are told something like 'no flying for an hour after you eat!'
Pony see high up place like mountain top, of course pony gotta go there! It's the feline in them at work.
Yeah, the movement on a boat takes some getting used to. Usually dealt with some seasickness for the first day or two of a cruise.
And again, I like how Liz treats Silver, she seems to be one of the few that treats her just like she would any other person, and like the adult that she is.
"Kingdom for an imaginary mouse.'
We'll get to that.
And the extremist thing, is another good reason it's likely Tia and Luna do their best to head off ponies seeing them in those terms as much as possible.
Liz is also one of the best at actually helping Silver to understand humans as a whole. Others just focus on little things, or social rules, on what you should or shouldn't do, Liz actually helps her to understand the WHY of it.
Does feel odd she'd bring her glaive all the time even if she has to use the padded one.
But of course noone is going to want to do anything but watching the pony show off that she actually knows what she's doing with this stuff.
Also BOOOO Taking out the Death From Above! Tactics takes out, like, her whole key portion of her fighting style!
More proof the pegasi are the rogues of the pony tribes, sneaky sneaky cloud ambushes FTW!
But, damn Silver getting some fighting practice in is awesome!
9033633
When left to its own devices, Silverus Ponyus finds ways to entertain itself, adorably.
All shall be conquered.
That's the one problem that sometimes arises when one both is a preacher and also a believer in science. I base this on my father, who is both a retired minister and also a chemistry major (probably, I'm not actually sure if he got the degree). It's a fine line. Also, as with all things, it's possible that Silver didn't get all the nuance when she recorded it in her journal.
Speaking as the author, while there probably weren't a disproportionate number of mass shootings in 2016, it sure felt like it as they came up one after another in the story. Especially with one of them actually in Kalamazoo. . . .
Some of them likely don't fully comprehend Silver's abilities and skills . . . that having been said, commercial jets can fly through clouds perfectly well, and Silver Glow would never see or hear one coming (not in time to avoid it anyway), and the thought of a pegasus strike has probably given more than one high-ranking FAA official grey hairs. It's not an unsolvable problem (or at least one that can be put to an 'acceptable risk' level), but it's still very much a work in progress.
And yes, to the FAA's great good fortune, Silver is very much a deal with the cards as they fall pony.
What a whole team could do is far beyond the imagination of any weatherperson . . . moving clouds around or whatever happens to be needed. Bouncing the rain out early, or holding it in longer--all of those things could be done with enough ponies. And yeah, even with just one, they can get the kind of detail that is honestly above their understanding. If pegasi have cloud strength formulas or classifications (and they probably do), Silver could happily rattle off numbers that no human could hope to understand. "It's a type 3 cumulus with minor nimbus tendencies. Decent flow, minor counterflow, lake-fed, medium uptake, medium to high outflow. Mid-energy, 4 on the Cloudsdale Standard scale, heavy bottom structure with thin internals and a loose top."
When the weather gets bad, she's got to catch a nap when she can. Probably in really bad storms, there are apprentices ferrying food to the lead teams.
Say what you will about Silver Glow, she was made for feral weather. Her place is in the sky, among the clouds, fighting and directing the storms every way she knows how.
I bet even an apprentice weatherpony knows more about clouds and weather systems than any meteorologist. Although I'd say that they're probably not as good at global systems as we humans are.
I haven't lost it long-term in a few years (like, more than a flicker or two). The weirdest thing was when we lost three-phase at our shop. The lights were on, but our compressor and one of the hoists didn't work until that got fixed.
Underground power lines are a mixed blessing. The installation cost is generally higher, maintenance can be more difficult, and of course they're prone to failing in floods. On the other hand, they aren't pegasus hazards, and they tend to keep working in the wind and rain and ice storms. These days, especially for new installations, it's probably best to take each on a case-by-case basis.
And she is being kind of selfish--it spilled everybody's electricity out of the wires.
As I said above, ponies who are still training would do best in the big storms to help maintain the ponies who are on the front line in whatever way's needed. Sort of like squires in the middle ages, or pit crews in NASCAR. A good pegasus wouldn't abuse that, and of course anypony who was helping in that way would wind up learning a lot from his or her mentor.
The stove might have won against Silver, but the bathtub won't.
It's not like she has electricity on her cloud, so while she's gotten used to it on Earth, it's not something she needs to have. Plus, in a city, it's less inconvenient. Where I live, when the power goes so does the well pump, and while I have no real issues with the lack of power, the lack of water gets old really fast.
The ponies that survive fighting storms over the ocean know how to deal with wing cramps.
Also, yeah, it's probably old mare's tail levels of wisdom. Don't go flying for an hour after you eat, or you'll attract sky-sharks.
Silver's not that territorial, but you know that there's at least one pegasus who has to land on every tall thing.
I generally don't have a problem with it, but it does depend on the boat (and I've never spent that much time really at sea). One of my fondest memories is on a 30' sailboat in the North Sea with 10' waves--everyone on the boat got seasick except the captain, his 6-year-old daughter, and my brother, who didn't have a choice, since said 6-year-old fell asleep on him.
Say what you will about religion, Liz has it together where it counts. She won't pull punches.
Incidentally, the person she's based on once said "I've decided to go big or go home; my next sermon is going to be on racism."
Silver's not wrong.
Oh, totally. Although, ironically, they're closer to gods than anyone on Earth.
She does. And she's careful to not just start spouting the fundamentalist 'if you don't worship my way, you'll burn in Hell forever' on Silver, which IMHO is the best way to go about it. I can't remember who said it, but it was something about how the athiest who does good works is better than the Christian who does, because he's doing it without expecting a reward at the end. Plus, for Liz and presumably others, the existence of another sapient species does call into question some of the tenants of their religion, and to really simplify things, how can Liz be sure that pony god isn't God's path for ponies?
Well, you never know if you might need to use an actual glaive. After all, humans are having fighting practice for some reason, right? Presumably to prepare for monster attacks, and how would Silver feel if she was there and a monster showed up and she didn't have her glaive?
I can say from personal experience that watching someone who knows their stuff when it comes to combat is worth every moment. I've been a test dummy in some demonstrations, and watching my partner take my knife with me having no idea of how it actually happened is awesome--I was holding it, and then it was bouncing off the wall.
It's true, most pegasi fighting styles are based upon Death From Above.
To be fair, you know damn well that unicorns have a 'hide behind a tree and cast spells' fighting style.
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There's gotta be a pony-portable IFF ping she can wear.
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I did look up portable transponders, and while they theoretically can exist, battery life is a problem (it’s a big ping), as well as the potential dangers from radio waves that close to the body. Radar reflectors that would make her look bigger are a potential option, although that wouldn’t do her much good against general aviation craft, since most of them don’t have radar to my knowledge. Given her low altitude, most of what she’s going to have to avoid (assuming that she follows ATC’s instructions) is going to be relatively slow-moving and likely reasonably easy for her to spot.
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In all fairness, Christianity is less along the lines of making it an actual commandment and more along the lines of portraying people who do so as in the right... which is far from the only thing in the Bible that you need to quietly ignore if you want to function in modern society.
Welcome to Earth, Silver. We're fucked, but we won't admit it.