In case anyone actually wants to know the answer: it’s the plot of Cars. The difference is literally the plot of Cars.
Highways are usually two-to-four (at the widest) lane roads that meander the US landscape. Think Route 66, dinosaur statues, mom-and-pop diners, southern gothic. There are state-level and national-level highways. Some run for a 100 miles, some, like US HWY-17, run most of the East Coast:
That red line is US HWY 17. If you follow it, you will go through tiny towns. You may hit stoplights. I kid you not, you will see spinning cows on poles. Businesses exist along highways that you are encouraged to pull over and visit. They were designed to let you see America.
Yeah.
Now, interstates were made in the 50s and were made to get people from Point A to Point B. These suckers range from four lanes to eight lanes around big cities. They cut through everything. If you want to get to a business, you have to take an exit ramp and detour. They are great for getting places fast. You can still have weird experiences on them, but usually at night, when your eyes start playing tricks on you. Or there are deer.
I-95 is a massive corridor that runs from the Florida Keys to the Canadian Border. You can see the difference just looking at the maps.
As far as writing goes:
If you want quirky character development inside the car, you’re looking for an interstate. The majority of Americans take interstates to go on road trips.
If you want mysterious and/or supernatural hijinks, you’re looking for a highway. They are weird, weird places, and they’re surprisingly easy to wind up on if you leave the interstate.
(Even in America, no one’s really sure what a freeway is. Just ignore it.)
Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.
Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together.
You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits.
Frankentrees.
As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.
On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.
But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:
I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be
I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.
I need to be more like tree
I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.
what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?
Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).
As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “
including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”
It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.
Shit’s tight yo.
Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.
Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.
This video is currently THE fastest speedrun of Super Mario 64 by a margin of 39 seconds. It differs from a regular 0 Star run (normally the fastest) because it involves skipping the first Bowser level by going into the basement earlier than intended. Using the moat door that’s normally unopenable until you finish the first Bowser level.
The actual glitch to do this took years of effort to pull off. Many agreed before that it was possible to do this in theory, and only last year was it able to be pulled off. However, it required ten stars to do so, which didn’t really speed the run up. So they used many of the techniques used in the No A Press run, like PUs and backwards long jumping, to open the door whilst it was still underwater. You can read the team’s comments here.
To recap: the Super Mario 64 speedrunning community used tricks famous in the Scuttlebug Jamboree video to get Super Mario 64′s speedrun time down by 39 seconds. They had to create a whole new category for this run.
okay, let me explain it on the example of Leafs or/and Capitals, I’m gonna try to make it as simple as possible, for those who don’t know the NHL well yet.
this is the Atlantic Division only; table of it
first three (3) teams of each division (amount of the teams in the divison doesn’t matter– it’s always three) automatically clinch a playoff spot. so let’s edit it.
as you can see, the Leafs are 4th, 3 points behind Bruins. a couple years ago it would end like this, no chance for the Leafs to get to the playoffs, of course if we’re talking about the season ending this soon.
however, we have Wild Card these years and this is where it gets more difficult. it really used to be simplier without it.
here’s Eastern Conference, all these teams except of the Islanders are in playoff position now. they’re also the only eastern teams to be so.
the Wild Card is basically (or almost literally) combination of two (2) best teams of the specific conference that have not enough points to be in top three in their own divisions.
you can see all these teams are mixed, from two different divisions.
kinda tricky thing about this is that there could be 3 teams of Atlantic Division in the playoffs + 5 teams of Metropolitan Division (3 top of the division + 2 Wild Card teams), it literally happened last season, same with the Western Conference where there were only 3 Pacific Division teams in the playoffs. so yes, the Islanders and Bolts are direct, really serious enemies of the Leafs in the run for playoffs though they’re not playing in the same division.
but what if the Leafs end up having the same number of points at the end of the regular season, as the Islanders have? well, then that’s quite easy. or not. I’m gonna explain this on the Caps, which have the same amount of points as the Blue Jackets but are still listed as first in the division.
NHL deals with this following ways.
(let’s say we’re/you’re rooting for the Capitals)
1.the first and most important thing you must look at, is the number of games played. 71 – 71. same. this doesn’t solve the problem, so here comes the next thing you look at.
(if the Jackets played one less game, they would be listed first automatically)
2. you would think the second criterion is number of wins, right? well, not exactly… the W column stands for all wins overall- including shootouts, but that’s not the column we’re thinking about now. we’re looking at this one. ROW.
it literally says Regulation plus Overtime Wins. like I said, W is wins overall, but ROW is only number of games won in regulation time and overtime.as you can see, the Capitals have won 46 games overall this season so far, but 45 of them were won in regulation or overtime. that means they have only 1 game in shootouts this season. so shootouts are really not that important to the NHL.
and as you can see, this number is the same with the two teams. again.
3.third and usually the final criterion is the number of points the Caps have earned in games against the Blue Jackets. so basically, it’s a thing about who has been better in the mini Caps-Jackets series of 4 games this season so far.
the first game of this season the Capitals played against the Blue Jackets ended with regulation win of the Capitals, 3-2, so the score is ‘2 points – 0 points’
the second game they played ended with regulation win of the Capitals, 5-0. ‘4 points – 0 points’
that’s all they have played against each other this season. they’re playing 2 more games against each other until the end of the regular season– since they’re in the same division the number of games playing against each other is 4 per regular season.
so what’s the score in the mini series? 4-0 for the Capitals.
so this is finally the reason why they’re listed first in the battle of division title against the Blue Jackets.
4. but since we’ve come this far, let’s talk about the last criterion anyway. this one is simple. NHL literally describes it as ‘The greater differential between goals for and against for the entire regular season.’
now you have to look at these three columns.
the first one, GF, stands for Goals For so the number of all goals they have scored in this season. it includes shootouts goals, where one win in the shootouts = plus one goal. this column is tied, again.
the second one, GA, stands for Goals Against so the number of all pucks they have officialy let get past their goalie’s goaline. you can see that the Capitals have been less time got scored at than the Jackets.
the third one, DIFF, goal differential is always and simply this: GF – GA = DIFF.
so 228 minus 159 is 69, that’s the Capitals’ DIFF; while 228 minus 164 is 64, that’s the Blue Jackets’ DIFF.
(DIFF can be totally below 0, Avalanche’s -96 is the worst DIFF in the NHL currently, while Capitals’ +69 is the best.)
the Capitals have this number higher than the Jackets, so even if they have lost one of the games against the Jackets in regulation (let’s ignore the GF/GA change), and the score in the mini series would be ‘4 points – 4 points’, the Capitals would still be listed first in the division, because of the DIFF.
oohhhh and one thing. what about the x next to the names of the teams?
the x next to a team means the team will 100% get to the playoffs, even if they/it lose every single remaining regular season game, even if their divisional opponents win every single remaining regular season game.
the y next to a team will soon appear to a team that will 100% end the regular season with the Divisional Title– will 100% end first in its division.
the z next to a team will soon appear to a team that will 100% end the regular season with 1st place in its conference.
the p next to a team will soon appear to a team that will 100% end the regular season with 1st place in the entire league. there’s an actual trophy for it, called Presidents’ Trophy. the latest winner of it, for the 2015-16 season were the Capitals.
okay, I really enjoyed writing this, more than I expected and I hope the anon, and so you others, find this at least a bit helpful.
ifesbob 