January 22
Humans don't like leaving snow on the pathways and roads. When I got up to exercise, there were people pushing roaring red machines which flung the snow off the pathways and onto the grassy lawns. There were also some humans using more traditional shovels, pushing and scraping it out of the way.
The main pathway (which Peggy says is called a 'sidewalk' because it's beside the road) up the hill was clear and dry. All the steam that they ran under the sidewalk made it warm enough that the snow melted right off.
Obviously, they weren't smart enough to extend this property to all the cement, because the rest of the sidewalks on my route weren't very clear at all. Or maybe they just don't have enough steam for all of it.
One of the things I find most appealing about the route I normally take is how confusing it is. I hadn't appreciated that at first; I'd just started trotting along through a neighborhood with nice homes.
Roads have names, and they have little green signs at all the corners that tell you what the name of the road is. It takes a bit of getting used to; the sign doesn't tell you what road you're on, but what one you're about to cross. When I thought about it, though, it made a lot of sense to do it that way. The pilot of the car would see the upcoming street and know if she was supposed to follow it, or keep on going the way she was going. (Is the word for cars 'pilots' like for ships and airplanes, or 'drivers' like for trains? I'll have to ask Peggy.)
Anyway, I discovered that Academy Street makes a lot of weird turns. You trot to the top of campus and a little bit beyond, and then you have to make a left onto Academy. You follow that around a curve (which is where the little triangle of grass I like rolling around in is), and then you have to make another left turn to stay on Academy St. After that it continues straight westward, until it ends at Dartmouth.
I normally loop around Grove, but this time I thought I'd take Dartmouth all the way out to the main street. Peggy had pointed out a little store there where cars can eat gas and people can buy food.
I was nearly to the main street when I saw Winston (Aric's truck) sitting in the driveway of an ugly house with peeling paint. I thought about knocking, but then decided against it, since there weren't any lights on in the house, and many people aren't early risers. It's because they like to stay up until late in the night and then sleep past the sunrise.
There was another similar truck in the driveway, although it looked a bit rougher than Winston. I wonder if he got both of them from the same place. I wouldn't have gone back a second time.
I wasn't paying enough attention when I got to the main street, and I got a faceful of slushy snow that a big orange truck with blinking lights threw up at me. The snow was heavy, wet, and salty. I'd actually started flying after it before I remembered that we weren't supposed to do that—in fact, we were supposed to stay well clear of vehicles that were moving. I could have caught it, though; it wasn't moving very fast. And then I could have told the pilot what I thought of him pushing a bunch of snow onto a pegasus who was just minding her own business.
The sun was just coming up when I got back to my dorm. Peggy was still sound asleep, so I very quietly put on my vest. I'd noticed that the clouds were low and sparse, and I thought I might try to see if I could wrangle one.
Once I had my clearance, I flew up to a likely candidate. Up close, clouds aren't as substantial as they appear on the ground, especially after they've been around for a bit. This one was a straggler from the storm, and it had spent most of its moisture in the storm. Probably once the sun got all the way up, it would be no more than a memory—but I could use it for a nobler purpose.
The first trick to wrangling a feral cloud is to isolate it. I flew around its boundaries, cutting it out like a sheepdog might. Once I had a feel for it, I began to work my way inward.
This was something we'd rarely practiced. Normally, cloud-wrangling is a team job; you have a couple on the downwind side holding it back, and one on the upwind side ushering it along, and maybe a quartet on the points to force it inwards. With just me, it was going to be a chore.
I'd love to say that I succeeded in the end, but I didn't. I couldn't feel it like I'd felt the snowclouds yesterday, and despite my best efforts, little tendrils of it kept getting loose.
I was over downtown when I finally gave up. I'd made some progress; it was thicker than it had been when I'd started. If I'd had all day to work with it, I would have been able to capture it, but it was all right that I hadn't. The exercise had been good for me, and I now better appreciated the limits of my cloud magic here on Earth.
I'd want to find a denser cloud, and cut off a small portion of an edge. That would be the solution. And not pick a bigger one than I could handle on my own, too.
Just the same, it pained me to go to weather class emptyhooved. And I kept thinking about how the cloud had gotten away because I hadn't been good enough to get it by myself, and I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention to the professor. There would be more clouds, and I was going to find one that I could catch.
Philosophy class wrapped up with Aristotle, and we had to take a test proving that we'd been paying attention to what the Greek philosophers had said. We weren't allowed to use our books, but we could use our notes if we wanted to, and some people were upset about that 'cause they hadn't taken very good notes, but I had so I thought I'd do very well on the test.
After classes, because it was Friday, a lot of students were playing outside, and I joined them. There was plenty of snow for everyone to play with, although we had to be careful to stay clear of people riding sleds down the hill. They couldn't steer very well, and if you got in their way you'd get knocked over.
At dinner, Sean told me that I was famous on YouTube. I didn't know what that was, so he showed me. He said that one of the sophomores had taken a video of me rolling around in the snow and uploaded it to the internet, which I guess not only computers have, but portable telephones as well.
It felt pretty good to be famous. Not that many ponies are famous enough to star in movies, and here I was on an internet television, having lots of fun in the snow. I watched through it a couple of times, and Sean asked if I wanted to comment on the video. I thought about it, but then I couldn't come up with anything that sounded good. And the movie kind of told the whole story, especially since it was called 'Pegasus playing in the snow.'
He told me that later he could come over to my room, or I could come to his, and he'd show me how to download the video so that I could show it to ponies back home if I wanted to. That was really kind, but I felt a bit guilty when I said yes, 'cause I still haven't come over and watched Star Trek like I said I would. And I wasn't that sure that downloading it would help, unless that put it on a filmstrip somehow.
So I told him that I would only let him help me with that after we'd watched a Star Trek movie, and he thought that was a great idea.
I think you might be making Silver Glow a little too alien.
She's been in a car, so she should know that there is a single driver. Equestria has trains and wood stoves, so I can't see her being baffled by the concept of fuel.
The only thing is I can't tell if maybe Silver Glow is having a translation problem on the "eating gas" vs. "fuel" thing--maybe the Equestrian language uses the same word for both.
Edit: When I read this after hitting "post", I realized it can come off as hostile. I blame too much vodka. At any rate, I'm enjoying the story, and wait for the new chapter every day. It's the second-highest point of the weekday, after the Pinochle game we play at lunch.
Edit x2: Dude, you need to sleep sometime. You're posting this at midnight EDT, and you've got way more irons in the fire than me.
Ah, I was wondering if that was going to pay off.
D'awww. For her occasional snark about Aric's poor truck or subtle jabs at unicorns, she's a real sweetie.
Too bad about that cloud. That's one thing I keep wondering about; will she ever get a cloud and bring it to class, and just what will happen if she does?
Nice chapter as usual, Biscuit.
7043639 Agreed. Silver already knows they're machines, but thinks the humans name them. Saying they 'eat' is like you're making her dumber by making her forget that they're machines.
7043695
Naming machines isn't actually that unbelievable. We used to name machines--and still do, for ships. The first locomotives had names, and a lot of Boeing 747 airframes used to have names. In the Tenerife disaster, the Boeing 747s involved were the Clipper Victor and the Rijn, for example.
We've just become so used to machines that it's become rote to us. When you sit back and think of it, though, we have some pretty fucking cool stuff going on. As Louis CK put it, when you go to the airport, you're "participating in the miracle of human flight." and "...sitting in a chair in the sky!"
YouTube fame.
Sooooo Sean and Silver Glow then?
Wait, Silver mentioned sidewalk heating tubes back on January 14.
I'm tickled that she's so casual about going for a roll in the snow. I want to see that video!
7043732
7043695
But I do name my machines. My car's name is Grace.
7043789
I suspect that the steam tunnels for the university run below some of the sidewalks.
7043695 Don't forget that her native language is Equestrian, not English. She probably doesn't know the word "refuel", so uses the closest approximation she knows.
Now i feel sad for never encountering a course that did this!
7043814 ... They have trains in Equestria, you know. Refuel is a term they know.
If he starts her on the first movie, he will lose all respect.
Multiple pickup trucks in front of a house? Found the Agriculture frat. Bonus points if it's called Farm House.
7043789
I always find it interesting the people that name their cars. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're a "car person" or not. I've had two named vehicles, courtesy my sister: Rebeka and Veronica. I once named a bicycle Betty. It just has to feel right, I suppose.
7040751 I see that salt. Can't deny that it's there. Also, I didn't really mean she was racist. It was a joke.
Just fuck my shit up and kill my dreams. Putting it off for another couple chapters.
First contact with a new race: post a YouTube video of it unaware playing in the snow.
Pretty realistic I could totally see people capitalizing on "Pony videos" if a way between our world and equestria were ever opened.
7043639
You know, I tougth she was wondering if the term used to desing the one who drive is pilot. After using a car a few time already, she should know that yes there is someone controlling it. Doesn't mean she know how to name him.
7043820
7043639
Also maybe she's using the cutesy terminology on purpose. It is a thing that people do for some reason.
My inner pedant feels the need to point out that, at the very least, Ponyville's streets have names. Quoth Applejack in "The Ticket Master":
Plus it's kind of hard to have a postal system without some way of designating addresses, especially in larger cities. I suppose this is a matter of Silver's personal experience.
Aside from that, very nice chapter, especially the cloud wrangling.
7043639
Ah, what a difference a word would have made.
What she meant was 'is the person who controls the car called a pilot, like on a boat (and I should have included 'or airplane') or is the person called a driver, like on a train (in American, usually 'engineer'). She's aware that there is a person who controls the car, but she doesn't know what that person is called.
She's not baffled by the concept of fuel.
It's a translation problem.
Back in the steam days, I've often seen it said that trains stopped for coal and water, or that the train took on a fresh supply of coal, or whatever. Google searching showed that 'refuel' wasn't in very common useage prior to the 20s, for what that's worth.
She also might have gotten some of her terminology from slang she's picked up from other people. Aric might have said that his truck has a huge appetite for gas, for example, or that he has to stop by the gas station to feed his truck.
Anyway, from piano lessons I know that All Cars Eat Gas.
I'll use the same excuse for making the occasional dumb mistake.
I slept in today, 'cause I only have to work a half-day today.
7043695
It's a translation problem. I'm not fluent in any foreign languages, so I can't personally attest to the limits of what you learn in class versus how the language is used in the actual foreign country. Also, in America at least, there's often a lot of anthropomorphization that goes into cars and other vehicles, and she probably picked up the concept of cars 'eating' gasoline from another student.
7043674
Yes, and it won't be very much longer. You'll have to wait and see what happens.
7043732
A number of my cars were named, until I finally got so many that I just stopped bothering. There was the Millennium Biscuit, Dusty, Winston, Ambrose (short for Ambrosia), Grover, and Babe the Blue Truck; I even called the tow truck I was normally assigned Charon.
7043819
In my high school chemistry class, we were allowed to use notes, but those notes had to fit on a 3x5 card.
Story time!
My Chemistry teacher was an angry black lady named Mrs. Slaughter (I am not making this up). She told us we could use notes on the final, but no bigger than a 3x5 card. If someone wanted to borrow our notes, she advised that we sell them for $5.00.
Well, I did just that. I typed up everything that I felt was important, used a photocopier to reduce it small enough to fit on both sides of a 3x5 card, and sold them for $5.00 apice. Naturally, it wasn't that long before I found myself in the principal's office for selling cheat sheets; I insisted that was what she'd told us we could do. She was cool enough that she not only admitted to having said that, but she thought I was pretty smart to have taken her advice.
7043820
Actually, refuel is fairly recent. It's not even in my 1956 dictionary. I checked under 'fuel' as well, and only found fuel as a noun, or fuelling as a transitive verb.
Fun fact: One of the ways that you can determine fake quotes is if the person used a word that wasn't used, or wasn't used in the way that people now use it.
To your main point, yes, they do have trains, and yes, they do understand the concept of putting a fuel into the train in order to make it work. To be historically accurate, they would not call that 'refuelling,' though. Also, it's very likely that the firepony on the train is responsible for feeding the boiler.
7043933
What was up with that movie? The Enterprise was searching for a giant trash bag or something. I read a Mad parody of the episode long before I saw the movie, and figured that it would all make sense when I watched the movie, but I was even more confused.
7043945
Good guess, but no. Aric owns both of those trucks.
7043956
I really need to write that blog post, just to quantify the differences between racism in humans and tribalism in ponies.
7044072
It will be soon. She needs the right kind of cloud on the right day.
7044092
Yeah, of course! That kind of video would go viral so fast.
7044199
Yes, that's what she was wondering.
7044284
They do, but have we ever seen street signs? I made a reference to that in a story, actually. Everyone in Ponyville knows what all the streets are named, so they don't put up signs. Visitors to Ponyville have a problem. . . .
Yeah, you need some way to designate addresses, but it doesn't have to be a system like we have. A small town like Ponyville may not have any actual addresses; if pony names really are unique, that would be enough; otherwise you could say something like "Applejack of Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville" or whatever.
7043788
Sean's already hooked up with Christine.
7043789
Oops; i'll have to fix that.
It's not quite the same, though.
7044465
It did kind of come across as her searching for the right words when I look at it in hindsight. Part of it is when you said "pilots like ships," I thought of the actual maritime definition of a pilot, who is an expert in the local area that advises the ship's master. The image it conjured was having somebody in the right seat telling the driver where to turn, and my first though was "c'mon, she knows that's not true."
7045138
I changed the wording a little bit to make it clearer, I hope.
And you're right on about what a ship's pilot does these days, It gets complicated depending on the type of ship, Perhaps 'hemsman' would have been more appropriate.
I ought to go back through some NTSB reports and see what they're calling the guy who's controlling the steering and throttles.
7045152
The wording was probably only unclear to the few people who know that "pilot" for a ship is different than from the "pilot" of an aircraft, in that the ship's pilot doesn't physically steer. I'm actually a licensed aircraft pilot, and the second definition didn't occur to me--though I wasn't kidding about the vodka. If you get the chance, try the Svedka brand.
Something that occurred to me while re-reading: has somebody brought up to Silver Glow about touring the control tower/ATC facility at her local airport? She's going to be spending a lot of time talking to them if she goes out every morning, and it's nice to put faces and names to the voices for both sides. Also, if they know why she's doing what she's doing, they can also be better able to predict what she's up to every morning, and they'll be a lot more confident in their dealings with her.
I learned a lot from touring the Class C facility in Springfield, Missouri, and how what seems like plenty of time to fulfill a request to the pilot in the air can be asking way too late to the controller. The radar scope was 18" in diameter, and the controller was lining up landing aircraft like ducks in a row. (As cool as it looks when you're looking out at an airport to see the airplanes lined up, it's even cooler to watch an air traffic controller do it with a radar scope and a radio. If you get the chance to see this in person, take it.) A pilot of a Cessna who had flown in was given number 5 or so for landing when he was practically in the traffic pattern, and he piped up that he was low on fuel. His position was about 1/2" from the middle of the 18" scope, and the controller had to scratch her head and figure out how to rejigger the aircraft she already had lined up to get him in earlier. It was easy to see that if the pilot had brought up the low fuel thing 10 miles and 20 minutes earlier that her job would have been really easy, and now it was complicated. I learned to bring up possible issues like that as early as possible.
7044481 How much did you make off that? Pretty damn smart idea.
7045253
That's a really good idea.
There is something weird about only talking to a disembodied voice. One of the wrecker companies I drove for, my dispatcher was named Judy. I never met her; she was always just the voice on the other end of the radio. That always bothered me--I knew everyone else at the company, but not her.
7045284
I think about $50. Not too bad for what little investment I had in the project.
You know, you're a real CLOUD TEASE Author-san!! T________T
They don't have sidewalks in her Equestria?
But... Canterlot and Manehattan have them! What do they call them, in that case?
7060430
Hoofpaths.
7044246 My turn.
Creating more jobs: Sure, demand can help create jobs, but on the other side of demand is supply. A mass of people with demand for, say, televisions, will not make the televisions appear and create those jobs like magic. Someone with money could see that demand and pay for the resources and labor (jobs) to make and sell them. Alternatively, they could create the supply of televisions, which would make jobs, and if the product is good, there will be demand.
Increasing wages: Sure, everyone who works wants to make more per hour (and get richer in the process). However, the money supply is not infinite anywhere, and it all has to come from somewhere. If all wages were to be jacked up, it would mean that as one person gets more money, someone else loses their job. It wouldn't be 1:1 like that, but that's the idea.
Building infrastructures: Yes, they would build such things to make money. But they can't do it by themselves. They have to get it built, and if they want it to keep returning the investment, they have to keep it in good condition, meaning repairs. As for schools, compare private and public schools. The private schools tend to have better results than the public ones. The public ones aren't as motivated to maintain or produce better results, as they're fairly secure in the financial department since public schools get money mostly from the government. Private ones have no government to back them up, so they have to earn their money. I've been in both private and public schools, and I really believe I learned more (or at least better) in the private schools.
I also asked for evidence of trickle-down economics not working, what you would replace it with, and how you know things about me. If you can answer the first two, I may change my opinion.
7060936 Trickle-Down (or supply-side) economics is built upon two flawed premises: That demand always increases and that decreasing a company's costs will lower consumers' costs.
You can see a microcosm of supply not leading to demand with the failure of 4k televisions to capture any significant market share over the past couple years, despite massive marketing pushes from manufacturers. Before that it was smart TVs, 3d TVs, ect. A glut of supply will force prices to drop until products are actually valued at what the market will pay, which, in Sony's case especially, was prohibitive to their future growth.
Most cost savings are no longer passed onto the consumer. Instead, capital is stockpiled until you can buy out a competitor, thus removing the primary downward pressure on product costs. Why would anyone lower the price of their product if people are buying it at the current price? The expected "race to the bottom" hunt for efficiency and cost reduction between companies has been largely replaced (or reached its natural conclusion) with mergers or the exploitation of foreign workers.
edits:
After that it continues straight westward, until it ends at Dartmouth. -- commas after that, westwardly (cannot move westward)
like I'd felt the snowclouds yesterday, --- snow clouds
I hope that she does not watch the Star Trek from Abrams:
Abrams does not care about canon or continuity; when he makes a movie in a franchise, he uses character-names and makes his own movies with no regard for the franchise. ¡If he wants to make his own original movies, he should make original movies instead of ruining franchises! ¡The movies called "Star Trek" Abrams make are STINO (Star Trek In Name Only)! ¡I hate the way Abrams goes around ruining everything!
So, these people gave her a Facebook on day one. But it took two weeks to show her Google, and three for smartphones and Youtube? Hrrmmph
7498042
She's had a smartphone since day one (but she almost never uses it, because it's not very hoof-friendly), and she's had access to Google and to YouTube and all that.
They're new things and she doesn't really see the use of them. And I can say from back when I was in college that I was like that with new tech: I got my first e-mail address in college and thought it was a total waste of time, and my buddy and I mocked companies that were putting website addresses on their products, because neither of us thought the internet was ever going to amount to much.
I'm thinking that Peggy must be getting used to her roomie saying something like: "I almost caught a cloud today" and to realise that she actually means that literally.
7893322
Peggy did have some training before becoming a pony's roommate, but you're right, there's still a lot she's got to get used to about it.
Grrr?
I think that would be rather costly
om nom nom
Haa, the camera phone. Guess she knows about those now too
8006574
Feral weather can bite a pegasus.
It would be. I think that they just put the steam tunnels under the sidewalks because they had to run them somewhere, but they weren't going to steam-heat all the sidewalks since that would be a huge waste of money.
Silver Glow constantly gets to make new discoveries on Earth
a little store there where cars can eat gas and people can buy food.
ya cars eat gas.
9257392
Well, when you consider it broadly, they do.
I have to say I actually tried searching that video on YouTube, I knew that's a silly attempt but still
10645426
Oh, I so wish that videos like that were on YouTube.
Later on, to your inevitable frustration, Silver Glow winds up wearing a GoPro for cloudwork, stormwork, and skiiing. Totallynotabrony actually did a drawing of her in full flight gear (with GoPro):
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/7/10/1197358.png
7044481
LMAO. I love it.
11302818
Ooh, I have a picture of her:
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/879533986303606834/999131297496711201/fSFdtaRPNG.png