i learned that the world record for the loudest thing ever shouted belongs to an Irish female teacher who shouted the word “quiet” at 121 decibels, the equivalent of a jet engine (x)
DISGUSTANG
oh my god?
Okay please read this whole article because there is important information in ther, including;
1. She never yells at her students- her record breaking 121 decibel shout happened during an event she’d been invited to. She was defending her title after setting the previous shouting record during a competition at a church camp, where she got to 119.4 decibels
2. The only reason she entered the first competition was because her twin sister had entered and was about to win with a shout of 119.1 decibels.
3. They took her to an expert to try to understand how she shouted so very loud and his conclusion was that her supernatural volume was fueled entirely by her need to beat her sister.
this feels like a good time to say that when I was a teenager I went to hear Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman talk about Good Omens the book (I know! I know!!!) and they said that one of their favourite things about writing it together is that it brought their two fandoms together and caused all the terry fans and the neil fans to hook up. So suddenly they started seeing all these couples where one was a skinny goth Gaiman nerd and one was jolly fat little Pratchett nerd. “And,” said Terry, “they looked like lots of number 10s walking down the street together!”
and now I realise that of course Az and Crowley are the ultimate number-10-in-human-form couple.
I realize it’s just because they’re trying to introduce the audience to the concept of Pokemon and everything but nothing will ever be funnier to me than prof oak being like “these are creatures called Pokemon, they live in all sorts of environments!” like imagine if you met a biology professor and they were like ‘I’ve been studying these intriguing creatures called “animals’
I maintain that Pokemon starts to make a lot more sense when you stop thinking of the Professors as biologists and start thinking of them as children’s science communicators, which, in a world where children as young as 10 are expected to make their way in a world populated by superpowered fauna almost entirely alone, stands as an important and laudable career. “There are 150 animals” becomes the in-universe equivalent of “There are three states of matter.” There’s too much information in this field to dump on a grade-schooler all at once, so Professor Oak is here to mete out animal facts as they become relevant in an easy-to-understand way.
That being said, I would love to see what kind of shit the real Pokemon biologists are on. I’m just imagining some disheveled, overcaffienated researcher writing a grant proposal for their study on why certain wingull seem to evolve into pelipper faster when they hatched in the winter or something. There’s bird shit on their glasses. They haven’t left the lighthouse in months. This is their life’s work. Ash Ketchum doesn’t need to know about real Pokémon biology.
