slatestarscratchpad:

mariusgaaazzh:

(as told by my astronomy prof, and I don’t bother to fact check because it’s too fucking great). My people are assholes and I am so proud. 

so. the Moon has seas, those splashes of the darker basalt rock. and as we had no problems seeing them, they all have nice sounding Latin names, Sea of Tranquility, Ocean of Cries, etc. 

the far side of the Moon, however, we haven’t seen much of. and the general consensus of the International Astronomical Union was that if someone were to fly over, take pictures and discover another sea, it has to be named after a state of mind, following the pattern.

and so it happened, that in 1959 a Soviet probe was the first one to fly over, take pictures and discover exactly one sea on the far side. and what do they do? they name it Mare fucking Moscoviense. the Sea of Moscow. (and all the possible landmarks - after Soviet cosmonauts). 

this is the closest one can get to drawing a dick among the stars in real life.

of course, there is a scandal. the IAU gets together for a yearly conference in Paris or wherenot and tries to figure out how to live on. 

and their solution is the most elegant ‘now go fuck yourself with that dick’ I ever came across.

they decided to acknowledge Moscow as a state of mind.

so if you were ever looking for a scientific justification to say “I feel so moscow” you now have it. 

I thought this was going to be fake, but confirmed true.