Why did Team Rocket take over Silph Co. back in Gen I, anyway? Just for the money? Or a secret love of collectibles?

 Definitely using this one to vent my frustrations about how the Jurassic Park/World franchise has become the standard (and inaccurate) image of dinosaurs for pop culture. And then to make matters worse, the Jurassic World media introduced heavily genetically modified hybrid dinosaurs with superpowers, which only further served to confuse people, and now you have kids thinking Indominus rex really existed because they weren't paying attention to the "we did some serious gene splicing" conversation in the film, and the whole thing is just a mess.

I'm just not on board with using real animals as fodder for monster movies. It muddles people's perceptions of the facts and real science, and then you have entire generations growing up completely misinformed about reality. Real dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures were already amazing, beautiful animals that deserve to be appreciated and studied for what they were, not simply used as a jumping-off point for over-the-top, difficult-to-believe Hollywood creatures.

The ever-quotable Carl Sagan couldn't have put it better: "I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true."

I created another nerdygurumi design! I thought it would be fun to make a design for Pikaia, the Cambrian primitive chordate that often gets touted as the "ancestor of all vertebrates". Whether or not that's the case, it was certainly an extraordinary little critter! I remember seeing it in a documentary about the Burgess Shale when I was a kid and it stuck with me after all these years.

This pattern was pretty straightforward--all I really had to do was create a tubular "sleeve" for Pikaia's pipe-cleaner notochord (which allows me to bend and pose it in any way I like), and then crochet a fin around the top and bottom. The gills gave me a little bit of trouble because at first I was unsure how to incorporate them in a way that would be accurate, but I settled for tying the yarn on tassel-style and fringing out the individual strands to give at least a good approximation of the look and texture of feathery gills. (At first I tried to embroider them, but they just didn't look right and didn't project from the body like Pikaia's probably did. I feel like the feathery gills give it a little more personality anyway.)

 

 Pretty sure Mr. Psychic is just a fraud who hands you the TM for Psychic and shoos you out before you can confirm the results of his "mind-reading".

 Anyone order more clickbait? No? Oh well. :)

This one is making fun of how much Star Wars gets referenced in news stories trying to explain astronomical discoveries, as if the public can't wrap their minds around what a binary star system is without having to be reminded of the iconic Tatooine sunset in A New Hope. (And mentioning Star Wars probably also gets your article more exposure in search engines, too... sneaky.)

Knowing what the Lando Calrissian novel trilogy is dates me. It dates me real bad.

 When you hate your job, but love the uniform too much to quit.

Shadow Play, Chapter 10

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10

Terra stiffened—she trusted Blynn, but even Blynn wasn’t right all the time. For a split second, Terra’s mind scrambled to try to figure out what to do if Malkus Vile learned they were after the artefacts.

The door creaked open, without any further remarks from either brass head, revealing a storeroom full of treasure. “Whoaaaa,” Blynn said as she wandered inside. “We always find the coolest stuff.”

Hyren let out a relieved laugh. “How did you—I can’t believe that worked!” he said, following her inside.