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afeelgoodblog · 2 years ago

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The Best News of Last Year - 2023 Edition

Welcome to our special edition newsletter recapping the best news from the past year. I've picked one highlight from each month to give you a snapshot of 2023. No frills, just straightforward news that mattered. Let's relive the good stuff that made our year shine.

January - London: Girl with incurable cancer recovers after pioneering treatment

A girl’s incurable cancer has been cleared from her body after what scientists have described as the most sophisticated cell engineering to date.

2. February - Utah legislature unanimously passes ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy

The Utah State Legislature has unanimously approved a bill that enshrines into law a ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy.

3. March - First vaccine for honeybees could save billions

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the world’s first-ever vaccine intended to address the global decline of honeybees. It will help protect honeybees from American foulbrood, a contagious bacterial disease which can destroy entire colonies.

4. April - Fungi discovered that can eat plastic in just 140 days

Australian scientists have successfully used backyard mould to break down one of the world's most stubborn plastics — a discovery they hope could ease the burden of the global recycling crisis within years. 

5. May - Ocean Cleanup removes 200,000th kilogram of plastic from the Pacific Ocean

The Dutch offshore restoration project, Ocean Cleanup, says it has reached a milestone. The organization's plastic catching efforts have now fished more than 200,000 kilograms of plastic out of the Pacific Ocean, Ocean Cleanup said on Twitter.

6. June - U.S. judge blocks Florida ban on care for trans minors in narrow ruling, says ‘gender identity is real’

A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.

7. July - World’s largest Phosphate deposit discovered in Norway

A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway, pitched as the world’s largest, is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 50 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.

8. August - Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

If the claim by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of South Korea’s Quantum Energy Research Centre holds up, the material could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and perfectly efficient electrical grids.

9. September - World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

10. October - Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines. Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will share the prize.

11. November - No cases of cancer caused by HPV in Norwegian 25-year olds, the first cohort to be mass vaccinated for HPV.

Last year there were zero cases of cervical cancer in the group that was vaccinated in 2009 against the HPV virus, which can cause the cancer in women.

12. December - President Biden announces he’s pardoning all convictions of federal marijuana possession

President Joe Biden announced Friday he's issuing a federal pardon to every American who has used marijuana in the past, including those who were never arrested or prosecuted.

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And there you have it – a year's worth of uplifting news! I hope these positive stories brought a bit of joy to your inbox. As I wrap up this special edition, I want to thank all my supporters!

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

#best news of last week

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ecrivainsolitaire · 5 months ago

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A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

#valid ai criticism #ai #llms #DeepSeek #ai bubble #ChatGPT #google gemini #claude ai #this is gonna be the dotcom bubble again #hope you don't have stock on anything tech related #computer literacy #tech literacy

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reasonsforhope · 1 year ago

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Scientists have developed a new solar-powered system to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water which they say could help reduce dangerous the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera.

Via tests in rural communities, they showed that the process is more than 20% cheaper than traditional methods and can be deployed in rural locations around the globe.

Building on existing processes that convert saline groundwater to freshwater, the researchers from King’s College London, in collaboration with MIT and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy Systems, created a new system that produced consistent levels of water using solar power, and reported it in a paper published recently in Nature Water.

It works through a process called electrodialysis which separates the salt using a set of specialized membranes that channel salt ions into a stream of brine, leaving the water fresh and drinkable. By flexibly adjusting the voltage and the rate at which salt water flowed through the system, the researchers developed a system that adjusts to variable sunshine while not compromising on the amount of fresh drinking water produced.

Using data first gathered in the village of Chelleru near Hyderabad in India, and then recreating these conditions of the village in New Mexico, the team successfully converted up to 10 cubic meters, or several bathtubs worth of fresh drinking water. This was enough for 3,000 people a day with the process continuing to run regardless of variable solar power caused by cloud coverage and rain.

[Note: Not sure what metric they're using to calculate daily water needs here. Presumably this is drinking water only.]

Dr. Wei He from the Department of Engineering at King’s College London believes the new technology could bring massive benefits to rural communities, not only increasing the supply of drinking water but also bringing health benefits.

“By offering a cheap, eco-friendly alternative that can be operated off the grid, our technology enables communities to tap into alternative water sources (such as deep aquifers or saline water) to address water scarcity and contamination in traditional water supplies,” said He.

“This technology can expand water sources available to communities beyond traditional ones and by providing water from uncontaminated saline sources, may help combat water scarcity or unexpected emergencies when conventional water supplies are disrupted, for example like the recent cholera outbreaks in Zambia.”

In the global rural population, 1.6 billion people face water scarcity, many of whom are reliant on stressed reserves of groundwater lying beneath the Earth’s surface.

However, worldwide 56% of groundwater is saline and unsuitable for consumption. This issue is particularly prevalent in India, where 60% of the land harbors undrinkable saline water. Consequently, there is a pressing need for efficient desalination methods to create fresh drinking water cheaply, and at scale.

Traditional desalination technology has relied either on costly batteries in off-grid systems or a grid system to supply the energy necessary to remove salt from the water. In developing countries’ rural areas, however, grid infrastructure can be unreliable and is largely reliant on fossil fuels...

“By removing the need for a grid system entirely and cutting reliance on battery tech by 92%, our system can provide reliable access to safe drinking water, entirely emission-free, onsite, and at a discount of roughly 22% to the people who need it compared to traditional methods,” He said.

The system also has the potential to be used outside of developing areas, particularly in agriculture where climate change is leading to unstable reserves of fresh water for irrigation.

The team plans to scale up the availability of the technology across India through collaboration with local partners. Beyond this, a team from MIT also plans to create a start-up to commercialize and fund the technology.

“While the US and UK have more stable, diversified grids than most countries, they still rely on fossil fuels. By removing fossil fuels from the equation for energy-hungry sectors like agriculture, we can help accelerate the transition to Net Zero,” He said.

-via Good News Network, April 2, 2024

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dandelionsresilience · 3 months ago

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Dandelion News - April 1-7

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles! Last month’s Doodles are free to the public, so go take a look :D

1. Galapagos tortoises at Philadelphia Zoo become first-time parents at nearly 100

“Mommy, the female tortoise, is considered one of the most genetically valuable Galapagos tortoises in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ species survival plan. [… T]he zoo said it is “overjoyed” at the arrivals of the four hatchlings, a first in its more than 150-year history.”

2. Massachusetts home-electrification pilot could offer a national model

“In total, the program is providing free or heavily subsidized solar panels and heat pumps to 55 participating households, 12 of which also received batteries at no cost. […] It’s a strategy that program planners hope can help address the disproportionate energy burden felt by lower-income residents of the region[….]”

3. National Park Rangers rebel against queer erasure on Trans Day of Visibility

“[… A] group of over 1,000 off-duty, fired, and retired National Park Service employees launched Rangers Uncensored, an online archive that restores and amplifies LGBTQ+ stories quietly scrubbed from government websites since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.”

4. World's largest wildlife crossing reaches critical milestone

“Over the next few days they'll be adding 6,000 cubic yards of specially manufactured soil to cover the crossing, a mix of sand, silt and clay inoculated with a bit of compost and hyperlocal mycorrhizal fungi, carefully designed and tested to mimic the biological makeup of native soils around the site.“

5. Bipartisan bill to boost green building materials glides through House

“[B]ipartisan legislation the House of Representatives passed in a 350-73 vote last week would give the Department of Energy a clear mandate to develop a full program to research, develop, and deploy clean versions of the building materials.”

6. Tribal Wildlife Grants Funding Announced

“Tribal Wildlife Grants are intended to help Tribes develop programs for the conservation of habitat and species of traditional or cultural importance[….] Typically funded projects include: conservation planning, fish and wildlife management and research, habitat mapping and restoration, inventory and monitoring, and habitat preservation. […] A total of $6.1 million is available for this round of funding[….]”

7. Germany adds another one million PV arrays to take solar total to 104 gigawatts

“Following a rapid rise in household solar panel installations, Germany’s total number of PV arrays has passed the five million “milestone[.…]” Solar systems already cover almost 15 percent of Germany’s electricity demand, BSW-Solar said. […] The total capacity of all PV systems installed in Germany surpassed 100 GW at the start of the year.”

8. Stronger together: Bilby conservation efforts enhanced by Indigenous knowledge

“Ms. Geyle said the results showed combining [conventional science and traditional tracking methods] more accurately estimated bilby abundance than using either technique individually[….] "[… ensuring] that Indigenous people remain central to decision-making about their lands and species that inhabit them," Ms. Geyle said.”

9. Lennar will build 1,500new Colorado homes with geothermal heat pumps

“The homebuilder is partnering with Dandelion Energy to install the tech, which is efficient but expensive — unless it’s built into new homes from the start. […] And by eliminating the need for new gas pipelines and reducing the peak electricity demands on the power grid, subdivisions built on this model could save a bundle on utilities as well[….]”

10. New strategy launched to protect Tanzanian biodiversity hotspot

“Conservationists have launched a 20-year-long project to protect what is arguably Tanzania’s most biologically rich landscape: the Udzungwa Mountains. The strategy places notable emphasis on communities living here, with more than half of its budget allocated to social and economic projects and managing human-wildlife conflict.”

March 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

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dreamofhircine · 4 months ago

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SNAPSHOT

When you signed the contract with Pinnacle Transport & Logistics it was because it was the only thing hiring that could get you off-colony sooner than a year out without indenturing yourself in the process. Mercenary companies were like that, high turnover for low to moderately skilled labor. It was a good deal.

PT&L wasn't one of the big five but they held contracts for a handful of systems, a few up and coming colonies. Nothing too impressive but they were recruiting a lot, manning up for something bigger. They were even paying better than mine day labor rates just to come in and get tested at their portside offices.

You went because you could use the money even if they didn't sign you, even if they said you weren't worth the cost to take into orbit. The staff was professionally cold and efficient, never sparing a word that wasn't part of the script they must have memorized. They spent hours hooking you up to electrodes, running scans and tests and endless aptitude batteries after you'd checked in. More needles and probes than you'd ever had in you before, eyes looking hungrier and hungrier behind their splash-guard visors the longer they continued.

Eventually you passed. You passed so well that someone in a suit came down before you even had a chance to wipe the electrode signa-gel off or change back into your jumpsuit and she came with a thick stack of paperwork and a few digital pads with it all laid out for you to sign, review optional.

It seemed like good terms with a quick scan. An indefinite contract but both parties could cancel as necessary, operational conditions permitting. A signing bonus that would have been a year's wages in the mine. A salary even the techs at Colonial Admin would have jumped over to private for and room and board that didn't come out of your pay. They were even offering medical coverage.

You signed. You barely read beyond the summary sheets. You didn't negotiate, too worried that this was a joke and they'd drop the punchline on you if you didn't dry the ink fast enough or sign the digital seals before some unseen timer ran out. The corporate rep just smiled the whole time and said that with your scores, you qualified for a special new program they were recruiting for, something better than the augmented infantry or aerospace fighters PT&L featured on all their sizzle reel ads.

They were standing up an experimental mech corps, a new kind of pilot for a new kind of machine. Faster to train, easier to use, a totally new generation of tech but much harder to find physiologically compatible pilots. There were surgeries, she said, augments they'd need to make to your body. To your brain. Things that would make you and your machine sync together like your brain and your body does.

You'd heard of something like that, the political fanatics on the edge of the Economic Zone of Control were supposed to use things like that. WARSPRITES, or S-MAGs, the rumors were spotty and the corporate news never ran any stories about them but word traveled far down the transit lanes, packed right along with the workers tending the mineral trades.

The corporate rep and a new batch of technicians in surgical gowns so white and unblemished that they almost hurt to look at sat you back down in the exam room after you signed, techs swarming around and fitting you for a new kind of probe. Electrodes and sensors all around your skull, digital goggles over your eyes. She said it was the first step, a 'neural snapshot' that she needed to have recorded for your medical records before the rest of the processing began.

It started quick, once you were settled in. No fanfare, just a sharp prick at your neck and then there were lights. Flashing, bright, pulsing. Warmth and stillness flowing out from the pinpoint in your neck, rolling down into your limbs like hot sap. You heard something like bells in the distance, a tapping or clicking or snapping getting louder as the flashes got brighter and started to sear into your eyes, into your brain, burning hot and painful. White light, white noise, thunderous, roiling, boiling up and up and then nothing. Then nothing. Then nothing.

The first thing you notice when the goggles come up is how cold you are, like a chill had snuck into your bones while you blinked. Your hand is shaking but you can't reach over to still it, bound by too-tight straps to the chair. To a different chair than before.

"Welcome back to us, Pilot Registration Number PTL-7954. I understand that you're very disoriented right now, " a voice begins saying, too loud and too abrasive in your suddenly very sensitive ears. As the blurry edges of your vision clears away you start to see the figure, someone new and unfamiliar.

Everyone was new. Sterile white labcoats swapped out for strikingly bright orange cleanroom suits, faces all obscured behind masks & goggles with mirror-finish tint as they work around the room at beeping, flashing panels or circle around you taking notes. "But we really must get through this."

You start to form a question, but a raised finger from the technician in front of you catches it in your throat. "In accordance with the New Oslo Corporate Armistice Settlement all neurologically augmented combat-rated employees, " They rattle off from a tablet, before pausing.

"That means you, of course, are to restored to the earliest viable neurological engram to be offered a chance to voluntarily end their current service contract." Bored, droning, like reading a weather report. "I can answer questions you have, but please make a decision quickly."

Your mind is still moving slow, hazy, stumbling. You heard the words but they meant nothing. Your hand is still shaking and you try to focus on it, look away from the stranger and catch your bearings again. Center on something familiar. The whole room is different. And cold. Your hand is different too. Studded now with implants. And cold.

There are ports, scars, burns, scratchy little tattoos across your hands and forearm disappearing up into the sleeves of a green medical gown you don't remember putting on. A machine nearby is beeping, starting off some quickly muffled alarm. Your breath is fast and ragged.

You tear your eyes away from your arm. Even just that had been too much, the phantom kickback too great. You're so skinny. Gaunt and pale and wounded in ways you can feel are old, bone deep and part of you now. The technician starts up again after sharing glances with the screen. "This neural engram is from your initial indoc, about twenty years ago."

That hits like a fist to the gut, and they didn't even pause to let it sink in for you. Business as usual. "You've had ten years active, ten years on ice. Your record is actually very impressive for an earlier cadre like you, it's probably why Allied Interorbital Freight bought your contract."

"But if you don't have any questions, I really need that answer. We have a full slate of neural restorations to do and we're running a bit behind. Do you want to continue your contract, or activate your severance clause?" they ask, tapping away at the monitor in front of them.

You can see a small reflection in the shiny visor they wear. Of you. Of something that looks like something you could be. Of something emaciated, drained, dotted with black metal ports and unfamiliar piercings. You can just barely make out the swell of breasts, of all things, beneath the gown.

The longer hair framing your unfamiliar face is the most shocking part. You'd never worn it like this before, always so closely cropped for mine work. The alarm kicks in again, louder, blaring a few notes longer than before. You need to leave. You need to go home. You need to go home and tell the foreman you want to keep your job. "H.... Home..." you mutter, as another tech steps in with a needle next to you.

The one that was talking to you shakes their head, and stops typing. "Hmm... Let's chalk this one up to a unstable state then. Reset to the most recent mental state and then roll back to...." They order, checking another monitor "Five years post-indoc. That's after the surgeries, a few contract deployments. The baseline capture will be a lot more compliant."

"Always like this with the early ones, don't know why we bother going all the way back when they just beg to go home." the tech with the needle muttered, stepping behind you and out of sight while the lead tech laughs. "You know how it is with NOCAS compliance, we have to give them a choice but nobody audits the logs too closely as long as a snapshot makes the right decision in the end."

The rising panic in you fades with the words and with the prick of something new in your neck, some pressure behind your eyes and wrapped around every thought loosens up and the fingers you hadn't noticed were gripping the armrests with enough force to turn paper-white slacken and release. The visor goggles slip back down, the same painful light and noise trying to burn your brain out again but you don't burn. You're too cold for that. You were so cold, now. Everything was so cold now. Then it was nothing.

#mechposting #mechsploitation #writing tag

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saphronethaleph · 5 months ago

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Mothballs

“Checklist step forty-seven,” Mira Tern said, glancing down at her datapad, then back up at the computer systems. “Check that battery power is above eight percent charge… where’s the indicator for that…”

TY-3 whistled, and Mira glanced at the astromech.

“Thanks,” she replied, returning her gaze to the control panel. “And it’s, uh… right, twelve percent. I guess we’ve been going a bit slower than we should, huh?”

They’d have to be, if the generator they’d brought in had recharged the ship’s emergency batteries that much.

She flicked her comlink on. “Hey, Flynn, what’s the status on the reactors?”

“We finished providing the reaction mass and hypergolic slug for reactor one twenty minutes ago!” Flynn answered. “Everything down here is closed up and ready, you’re the one who’s delaying us at this point!”

“Right, right, I get it,” Mira replied, rolling her eyes, then checked her datapad again. “Step forty-eight… okay, here we go.”

She flicked two more switches, activating self test, and the emergency lights flashed on and off once.

A holo of the ship appeared, and Mira and Tye both gave it a once-over.

“Looks all green to here, Tye,” she declared, and the astromech rocked back and forth slightly in confirmation. “Great. Step forty-nine.”

She triple-checked the numbers, then flicked a control. Another.

Some of the switches on the panel lit up, others went dim again, and Mira moved back and forth between three different duty stations as she followed the flowchart on her pad. Then, finally, everything converged on a single control, and she took a deep breath.

Then pressed it.

There was a kind of subliminal thump, the whole ship trembling slightly, then telltales and indicators lit up all across the board.

“Reactor one start,” she reported, into the comlink again. “Everything looks good from up here, Flynn!”

“We’re all good here, too,” Flynn replied. “Reactor one is running smoothly, we’re getting a good efficiency curve, within five percent of nominal. They mothballed this ship well.”

“Then let’s get on with activating the rest of the reactors,” Mira decided. “How long until I can begin the start procedure for Two and Three?”

“We’ll be good in… fifteen, twenty?” Flynn said. “That’s for Two, we’ve been doing some of the prep work while we were waiting. Make yourself useful and get some of the other systems unlocked and online.”

“Hey!” Mira protested, shaking her head, then tutted. “Well, whatever. I’ll bring up… shields, I guess? Does One have enough power for that?”

“It should, but let’s not chance it until Two is online,” Flynn said. “Sensors should be better.”

“Got it, sensors it is,” Mira agreed, signing off, and switched to another file on her pad. “Okay, step one is… of course it’s on the other side of the bridge…”

She picked up her toolkit with a huff, and began schlepping it across the bridge to the sensor control station.

Halfway there, she paused, and looked out the armoured window.

The ships in the Chommell Sector Reserve Fleet were far enough apart that she could only see even the capital ships as toylike shapes, lit by the distant sun, and the escorts were not much more than points of light. Much closer, though, was the Makepeace, the Nebulon-B all the reactivation teams were working off, and she smiled a not particularly charitable smile as she looked out at the engineering support frigate… and four of the five other Star Cruisers that they were here to reactivate.

Bringing the Reserve Fleet from mothballs to full active status would take months, of course. They were operating off canned air and only pressurizing certain rooms, and there were less than a dozen engineers per ship for a truly vast war vessel. But it was happening, and it was inexorable… and it was happening for hundreds of Reserve Fleets, all across the galaxy.

Star Cruisers, Star Destroyers, heavy frigates, cruiser squadrons… the Military Disarmament Act limited the strength of the New Republic Defence Force, the active military, but putting everyone serving the arms industry out of work straight away would have been an economic catastrophe in a galaxy that had sorely needed to avoid them.

And the result was… something the First Order could have no idea was coming. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been foolish enough to pick a fight with the Republic.

TY-3 whistled, and Mira sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” she said, finishing her trek to the sensor panel. “Plug in and start the self test, will you? Now we’ve got reactor power this should go quicker…”

#star wars #Palpatine will have a bad day in a few months #mothballs #mobilization #fleets take time to reactivate

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beardedmrbean · 7 months ago

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Neil said something dumb again. He claims that there is no "return investment" from going to mars. And considering how much we got from the technology that got us to the moon I think he is wrong.

Neil is upset that Musk has put together a team that might actually pull it off.

There's a whole mess of different technologies that will need to be invented and perfected to make that happen, on top of the current year tech that will need to be made more robust and efficient.

Not like they'll be able to set up a nuclear reactor on the planet or any other way of generating electricity that isn't either solar or fuel cells and will likely be a combination of the two which will result in better batteries and solar panels being made for starters.

Ways to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere and pull water out of thin air all kinds of things.

Honestly a Mars base would be the ultimate "green" venture if there was going to be any kind of lasting presence because the window for getting to mars is only open for a while

Can't get things there quick no matter what the emergency is either so it's going to be a huge test of everything they use to get there and stay there so they'll want to make the most out of every ounce of stuff that goes up there.

Neil is either a fool or abandoning objectivity in favor of partisanship.

Or both

#anonymous

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semcoinfratechworld · 6 months ago

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#All-in-One Battery Machine #Battery Testing and Sorting #Battery Assembly Solution #Battery Welding Machine #Streamlined Battery Manufacturing #Efficient Battery Production #Battery Manufacturing Technology #Advanced Battery Machines #Testing and Sorting for Batteries #Cutting-edge Battery Assembly

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homestuckreplay · 8 months ago

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hauntingly relaxing basslines to grow/disappearify pumpkins to

(page 818-825)

Jade irradiates a tasty dinner for Bec, leaving it full of ‘nice depleted steak isotopes’ (p.819). I was wondering about the science behind this, and learned that while radioactive decay naturally gives off heat, it’s probably not enough to cook a steak. Radioisotope thermal generators convert the heat of radiation into electricity, and there’s a lot of theory about radioisotopic batteries that could operate similarly to solar cells, but their efficiency is below 2% in laboratory tests.

This got me thinking about Skaia as a perfect conserver of energy – on page 193, Rose expends six units of build grist to construct three Perfectly Generic Objects. On p.261, she deletes them and regains six build grist. Next page, she uses the recovered grist to build a platform extending from John’s house, and finally on p.485 turns that platform back into six grist to build more stairs. In the real world, there is always a loss of energy and raw materials when changing something’s form, and many games model this (for example, an in game item costing 100 gold but only sold back for 50) to discourage players changing their minds. But Sburb explicitly allows for this experimentation, and a similar principle could explain why Jade’s uranium powered devices are so efficient.

Speaking of Jade’s technology, we see her ECLECTIC BASS, which is a kind of triple keytar. It definitely does not need to exist but it is so cool that it does. Jade (via the narrator) is frustratingly vague again with ‘obviously it's too complicated to play it in person like this’, refusing to clarify what ‘in person’ means, but I’d guess it’s a remote controlled hand or several that can play bass remotely without the limitations of human fingers. Possibly controlled through her other invention: the computer.

Instead of a regular desktop, Jade’s LUNCHTOP works through beams of light emitting from small floating polyhedrons, positioning her literally within the digital space. Amidst floating clouds, extra pixels and jpeg debris, and spinning chromosomes of light is a cool dragon as a wallpaper, icons for Pesterchum, Echidna (probably a browser) and Fresh Jamz!, which has an icon of a musical note over a jar of fruit jam. Is Jade a composer too? Did she write her own hauntingly relaxing bassline that caused the plants to grow? Is this a hobby she and Dave have in common?

Jade’s hauntingly relaxing bassline (p.822) is a great companion piece to WV: Ascend, showing Jade’s island in its current state as opposed to in extended timelapse. The house, with its orbs atop spires, is clearly modeled on a now broken part of the frog statue, and was designed to fit in with the existing architecture and shape of the island (it forms a peak to the small second mountain). The house was built for aesthetics, not function, and is primarily vertical especially towards the top. No wonder Jade ‘almost never use[s] the stairs’.

Putting the timeline together, we know that Jade is about to message John at 16:34 his time (p.110), but they don’t actually talk until 17:25 (p.169), almost an hour later, at which point there’s an explosion outside Jade’s house. In page 822’s animation, an aeroplane flies low over Jade’s island and drops off a delivery (a blue package – something from John, perhaps?). This must be an uncommonly loud sound in a remote area. Depending on how this flash syncs with the timeline, this may or may not be the ‘explosion’. Either way, Jade will be on the computer during the explosion, and as her likely homemade computer involves complete immersion in the digital surroundings, I can believe that she would interpret a noise from her computer as something that’s happening outside her house.

We’ve explored Jade’s room, interests, musical talents, fetch modus, and now computer. In all of these she’s been set up differently to her friends. We have yet to explore the rest of her house and its surroundings (featuring, presumably, strange themed decor, a large humanoid doll and a piece of visual art Jade has created) and to meet Jade’s grandfather, witnessing her attempts to evade and eventually strife with him.

> Jade: Open Echidna and watch your favorite Squiddles episode.

#homestuck #reaction #chrono

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lesbicosmos · 11 months ago

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day 1 of @painlandweek !!

day 1 prompt: language of love / sickfic

summary: charles gets hit by a witch's spell that was originally intended for edwin. edwin takes care of him in the aftermath.

notes: title from unknown/nth by hozier <33

also on ao3!!

i could break beneath the weight of the goodness, love, i still carry for you

Ghosts couldn’t get ill – at least, not in the traditional sense. They had no immune system to be affected, so they never had anything to worry about in terms of typical human diseases. It was possible, however, for a ghost’s physical form to be altered by supernatural intervention: curses, enchantments, hexes, and the like; and the side effects of these could resemble what a ghost would recognise as sickness or injury.

Running a detective agency for troubled ghosts meant Charles and Edwin had dealt with their fair share of paranormal maladies. Luckily for them, Edwin’s extensive collection of medical tomes and the many spells he had learned over the years were usually just the thing they required to help the soul in need. It was usually a client; it was very rare that the soul in need was either of the two of them – and it never happened on any of their ‘typical’ cases.

Their current case was not a typical one.

They had thought they were done with witches after the pandemonium with Esther Finch back in Port Townsend, but they could not have been more wrong. They were currently fighting another one, who was ironically also trying to trap ghosts – not to hook them up to her spectral energy super-battery, but to use them as test subjects for the potions and spells she invented. They were ‘free guinea pigs’, she had claimed. ‘An abundant supply.’ Of course, the Dead Boy Detectives Agency couldn’t have that. When they had a young woman who had died sometime in the 1960s come by the office to tell them about her 18th century girlfriend who had been kidnapped, they immediately took the case.

So, several days of researching and keeping watch on the witch later, the four detectives had arrived at her house, prepared for anything. They had distracted her for long enough for Charles to sneak down into her cellar and rescue the ghosts trapped down there in iron cages, including their client’s partner. Now all they had to do was get rid of this witch once and for all, or at least come to an agreement. They didn’t enjoy having to take drastic measures against those who wronged their clients, but sometimes they were necessary.

The four of them were outside in the garden facing the witch, who didn’t look alarmed in the slightest. She wasn’t amused, though. She hadn’t got that manic grin on her face that Esther had when she was torturing souls. No, this witch clearly just wanted the four of them out of her way. And evidently she was more than willing to use force. As Crystal gripped her arm, slipping into her mind, Edwin prepared a spell. He was focusing intently, desperately trying to ensure it was ready for when Crystal let the witch go. Unfortunately for him, the witch also had psychic abilities, and was much more efficient at fighting back against Crystal than they had anticipated. She broke free of her grasp, Crystal falling backwards into Niko, and the witch turned to Edwin.

He was still crouched on the floor, swirling a blue liquid in a vial and muttering something in Latin, and hadn’t had the chance to move or attack before the witch made her move, muttering something in an ancient tongue and throwing her hand forwards in front of her.

Edwin shut his eyes tightly out of instinct, preparing for whatever this witch had cooked up for him in her mind.

“Edwin!” he heard Charles scream.

He heard footsteps quickly approaching, presumably the witch drawing closer to increase the strength of her attack. A green light shot forwards, so bright Edwin could almost see it through his eyelids. A strangled gasp echoed around the walls of the garden as ghostly body collided with concrete patio.

Edwin’s eyes burst open at the gasp that was most pointedly not his own.

Directly in front of him, Charles lay on the ground unmoving, his cricket bat thrown aside. A green glow gently faded from his chest, where the spell had clearly hit him square-on.

“Charles!” Crystal shouted, moving to run to him, then retreating when the witch turned instead to her, her hand still pulsing with the magical light.

The witch simply laughed. Edwin fell to his knees beside Charles, who still hadn’t moved a muscle since he collapsed.

“Charles!” Edwin gasped, out of breath and panicked. “Charles, can you hear me?”

Edwin gently shook Charles’s shoulders, and his eyes slowly opened, looking up. Then, his eyes moved downward, and Edwin followed his line of sight until he reached his hand, where Charles was weakly giving a thumbs up.

Fundamentally, Charles was fine. He couldn’t feel any pain, aside from the dull ache of where the spell had hit him directly. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move, only that it suddenly felt as though he weighed several dozen times more than he did before. Even lifting his hand to signal to Edwin had made him feel as though he was trying to deadlift an elephant. It was strange, feeling this sensation of exhaustion, something he had not physically felt in so long. He’d felt it mentally, emotionally; there had been many times he’d gone to sleep – or, at least, the closest a ghost could get to a state of rest – but he’d never felt the tiredness so viscerally, never ached all over just to move.

“Can you talk?”

He tried. It didn’t work. Not only was it too much to open his mouth, but he came to realise he couldn’t even breathe. When he tried, it was even worse than lifting his hand, this time as though he had the weight of a building sitting on top of his chest. It wasn’t that he needed to breathe. He hadn’t actually absorbed oxygen into his lungs since that cold night in the attic, but it was their strange ghostly equivalent to breathing that allowed him to speak, and right now he couldn’t.

Charles’s head moved ever so slightly from side to side. That was just manageable.

“Not full paralysis, okay…” Edwin muttered under his breath, looking Charles up and down. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, this time looking him in the eyes.

Edwin didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t leave Charles in this state, but there was still a ghost-napping witch to deal with. But if he didn’t know the specifics of the spell Charles was hit with, he couldn’t know what the full effects would be. He could be off trying to deal with the witch while Charles ‘s spectral form faded away for all he knew, unnoticed in the silence. He began to panic. He needed books, but all the volumes he could think of that would help were back at the office. He looked up to Crystal and Niko, who were still facing the witch.

All of a sudden she dashed off, through a gap in the hedges at the edge of the garden.

“Get him back to the office,” Crystal told Edwin. “We’ll deal with her.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve got this, you go and help him!"

Edwin hurled the vial he had finished concocting to Niko, who caught it in one hand.

“Throw that at her. Make sure it smashes, and make sure you do it on the property. It should trap her here for now, we’ll figure out what to do with her another time.”

The girls nodded, turning and following the path the witch took out of the garden and out of sight. Edwin turned back to Charles.

“I’m going to lift you up now,” he said.

Charles didn’t do anything to argue – not that he physically could – so Edwin got his footing before sliding one arm under Charles’s shoulders and the other under his knees, lifting him up.

Something in Charles’s mind had expected that Edwin wouldn’t be able to lift him. He was far too heavy, too weighed down; Edwin was strong, but he wasn’t that strong. He had been wrong, of course. The spell hadn’t actually turned Charles to lead; it only felt like it had. His limbs fell straight downwards as Edwin carried him through the witch’s house to the huge mirror on the wall in the entranceway.

He stepped through it, and they were in their office within a second. Edwin hurriedly but gently lowered Charles down onto the small sofa.

Charles really didn’t like that he couldn’t breathe. He knew he didn’t need to, knew he hadn’t really breathed in years, but that didn’t stop the habit. He was panicking, and that only made him feel the need more. Soon, he was gasping, desperately trying to inhale but being unable to as his chest wouldn’t rise an inch.

Edwin had been carefully arranging his limbs on the sofa, desperate to make him as comfortable as possible. That helped calm him down, but it didn’t stop the attempts. He had to breathe. He needed to breathe. Not being able to reminded him of being under that lake, hiding beneath the surface for as long as he physically could to shield himself from the oncoming attacks from the boys he had once considered his closest friends. He so desperately wanted to reach out, to grab onto Edwin’s arm, but the most he could do was wriggle his fingers around.

Clearly noticing his distress, Edwin grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“Charles, you don’t need to breathe my dear. You’re okay. Just try and relax, I know it’s uncomfortable.”

Edwin’s voice grounded Charles, and he closed his eyes, focusing on the sound and the feeling of Edwin’s hand in his. He wished he could squeeze back, thank him for being there as always.

“Are you alright?” he asked once Charles was no longer trying to gasp for air.

Charles barely managed a nod. Edwin placed a gentle kiss on the top of his head before standing up, letting go of Charles’s hand and pacing over to his shelves. He thought for a moment before reaching out and grabbing a book, an old one with yellowing pages and a dark purple cover. He flicked through, his eyes darting back and forth across the pages until he found what he was looking for.

“I think it was a paralysis hex gone somewhat wrong,” he explained, moving back over to Charles and sitting on the sofa beside him, the book open on his lap. “It’s a specific type of witchcraft, a spell which the caster has to specifically cater it to the intended victim. Since she forged the spell for me, it’s having a milder effect on you.”

This is mild? Charles thought. He would have groaned in annoyance if he physically could.

“It should wear off on its own, but I’m afraid it’s going to be several hours.”

Charles closed his eyes once more, rolling them as he did so. Edwin turned to place the book on the arm of the sofa, giving him another free hand to comfort Charles with. He placed it gently on his chest.

“Can I do anything to help?” he asked.

Charles’s hand twitched next to Edwin’s thigh, moving ever so slowly towards him. Edwin looked at Charles’s eyes, and could tell by the soft pleading look he found there what he was reaching for. Edwin took his gloves off, reaching out to take Charles’s hand back into his own. He knew he would need the direct contact, the softness of skin-on-skin, the only true feeling he could have in his afterlife. Edwin gently stroked circles on the back of his hand in the repeating pattern he knew always calmed him down.

Edwin hated seeing Charles like this. He was always so energetic, constantly moving around wherever he was, barely ever stopping to relax. It felt wrong seeing him stuck so still, unable to move and unable to talk. It should have been me on the other end of that spell, Edwin thought. Charles’s endearing yet frustrating need to protect him had ended in suffering for him once again.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when he felt Charles squeeze his hand, just weakly. He turned to look at him at once, worried.

“What’s wrong?”

Charles managed to shake his head. Nothing was wrong, he was just trying to tell Edwin something. Holding his hand was perfect, just what he needed to ground him and ensure him he was still there, this ailment was temporary. But there was one other thing that would help even more; one thing that had helped Charles calm down and relax so many times since they had met, even if it had taken quite a few years for him to ask for it. He moved his eyes back and forth, hoping Edwin would notice, looking at him and then at the desk behind him, over and over until Edwin got the message.

Edwin turned his head to the desk. The only things on it were a stack of books, the ones Edwin was currently part-way through reading.

“The books?”

Charles nodded. Moving his head and face was becoming more bearable by now, so he managed to open his mouth just slightly - even though he still couldn’t talk, he managed to mouth something, and Edwing could easily make out what he was saying.

“Read to me,” he said soundlessly.

“Of course,” Edwin smiled.

It was strange, how much Edwin reading to him comforted Charles. It wasn’t even the book itself, not usually. What really meant so much to him was simply hearing Edwin’s voice, so gentle and only for him. He’d always thought he shouldn’t like it. It should remind him of the night he died, the night his life slipped away from him as this strange ghost boy read his favourite detective comic aloud. And it did remind him of that night, but that night wasn’t a bad memory for Charles, not really. The hours before the attic, the months of abuse from his father that led up to it…they were the bad memories, the ones Charles wishes he could forget. But the trauma of his death itself had been diminished by the presence of that kind boy, the boy who had become Charles’s everything. So yes, Edwin reading to him did remind him of his death, but it reminded him of the kindness of a stranger, of just why he had chosen this boy over heaven itself in the first place, of why he loved him. Edwin’s voice made him feel at home, more than the house he grew up in ever did.

Edwin stood up to pick up the book from the desk, but as he turned around he found Charles seemingly trying to shuffle around on the sofa.

“Charles, what are you doing?” he asked worriedly. “You’ll exhaust yourself.”

Charles’s eyes flicked to the space on the sofa beside him, his deep brown eyes looking into Edwin’s, asking a question.

“Ah,” Edwin realised. “Let me help.”

He placed the book on the floor in front of the sofa, kneeling down.

“Are you alright with me moving you?”

Charles nodded. Edwin repeated the movements he’d done at the witch’s house before: one arm under Charles’s knees; the other under his shoulders, and he lifted him just enough to move him further towards the back of the sofa, leaving space for Edwin to climb next to him.

That was just what Edwin did, sitting beside him and manoeuvring them so that Charles’s head rested on his chest, the way he would have been if he could have moved himself. His movement did seem to be improving gradually, and he shifted his own legs to tangle with Edwin’s. Edwin supposed it was because his legs were furthest from his chest, so didn’t suffer the effects of the hex as drastically.

Edwin intertwined his fingers with Charles’s, picking up the book with the other hand. He pressed another gentle kiss to the top of his head before beginning to read.

In addition to not suffering from normal illnesses, another thing ghosts didn’t do was sleep. Similar to the supernatural intervention however, they had their own complicated equivalent to restore their energy when required.

Neither of the two of them required it, though. And ghosts didn’t get sore throats from reading aloud for too long either, so Edwin read Charles the entire book. By the time they finished, the sun had already half-risen, a pinkish orange glow illuminating the office.

“How are you doing?” Edwin asked, after the first few minutes of silence in several hours.

“Brills,” Charles replied, his voice back, and as confident as always.

He snuggled impossibly closer to Edwin, burying his face in his chest.

“Wait,” Edwin said, pausing the gentle strokes of his hand up and down Charles’s arm. “When did the hex wear off?”

“About an hour ago,” Charles admitted, his voice slightly muffled against Edwin.

“Why did you not say something?” Edwin chuckled. “Or start breathing again?”

“Didn’t wanna interrupt you. I like your voice.”

Charles lifted his head slightly, rolling further onto his front to look up at Edwin, smiling.

Edwin laughed softly, smiling back.

“Thank you,” Charles said. “For doing that.”

“Of course, Charles,” Edwin held him somehow even closer. “You know I am always here for whatever you need.”

“I’m always here for you too,” Charles assured.

“Yes, well…it was very reckless of you to jump in front of that hex for me.”

“What was I supposed to do? You said it yourself, it had a weakened effect on me. It would’ve been worse on you.”

“Well, yes I suppose, but my point still stands.”

“Sorry love but there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’ll always jump in front of witches’ curses for you,” Charles kissed the tip of Edwin’s nose softly.

Edwin sighed. He knew there was no arguing with Charles, ever-protective as he was.

“Well, did you enjoy the book?” he asked, changing the subject before he thought too much about the extent of Charles’s devotion to him and started to feel like crying over how much he loved the charming impulsive boy he got to call his boyfriend.

“Oh. Uhh…” Charles trailed off.

“Did you pay attention to the plot at all?” Edwin laughed.

“Your voice is very relaxing.”

Charles didn’t know how else to answer. It was the truth – what was being read wasn’t important, only that it was Edwin reading it. Edwin shook his head slightly, the smile never leaving his face.

“I suppose I’ll just have to read it to you again, then,” Edwin faked disappointment.

“Oh no,” said Charles, dramatically leaning backwards to put his hand over his heart in faux shock before leaning in to kiss Edwin.

Just as their lips brushed, the front door to the office burst open. Both of them sat up on the sofa to see Crystal and Niko running in.

“Oh, thank god you’re okay,” Crystal sighed, rushing forward to hug him.

Charles hugged back with his free arm, the other still wrapped around Edwin’s waist, and Crystal squeezed next to them on the sofa. Niko knelt on the floor in front of them.

“’Course I am,” he said proudly. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, and I had Edwin to look after me.”

Charles turned to face Edwin, his signature smile plastered across his face. Edwin could only grin back.

“The hex faded on its own, Charles,” he said. “I did nothing.”

“You read to me! That helped.”

“Aww,” Niko smiled.

“How did you two get on last night then?” Charles asked the girls.

“We were done in like an hour,” Niko explained.

“Yeah, that potion you made worked its magic and she couldn’t leave.”

“I’m glad.”

“We went back to Crystal’s after. We figured Charles would want some time to get better before we came barging in here.”

“Thanks Niko,” said Charles.

“We’re just glad you’re alright,” Crystal squeezed his arm.

“I’m aces, don’t worry.”

Charles leaned his head on Edwin’s shoulder, holding both him and Crystal close. The case wasn’t fully closed yet – they still had a witch trapped in her own house with all her equipment she could easily use to figure out a way to escape to deal with – but for now…yeah, for now they were aces.

#AHHH SO EXCITED TO FINALLY POST THESE #the first few have been sitting in my ao3 drafts for like two weeks 😭#dead boy detectives #edwin payne #charles rowland #payneland #my fics #painlandweek #painland week #my dbda posts

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ashenquill · 9 months ago

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Cub Cub Cub Cub Cub Cub Cub Cub

^ I've been thinking about him, can you tell?

Cub Vex Fanne, (half) brother of Scar Conn Goodtimes, thought the last name "Goodtimes" was stupid and got it changed to something "much more professional" during his angsty teenage phase. Looking back, he thinks that it was an overreaction and wouldn't have changed it, but he does think it's a funny conversation starter. You guys are brothers? "yep." Oh, which one of you is married? "neither of us." Oh... but your last names are different...? "yep." Did... one of you take a different parent's name? "nope." ???????

Cub is a vexian hybrid, and his penchant for mischief is obvious in everything he does. Like, actually everything. He's a very successful and well-known inventor, responsible for devices such as the Cubble Telescope, a device which allows you to spy on the Nether or End, but always leaves a stain on your face after use. He claims this is due to "void overflow from spying across dimensions", but is actually just a design feature that nobody knows how to override. This, among other things, gave him his reputation as a little too smart in the scientific field.

Cub's vex magic is much more flexible than Scar's, as he is a full vex hybrid instead of half. His specialty, however, is the ability to make things function more efficiently. Invention wasn't always his passion, but any sane person with the ability to make basically anything work would consider the field strongly. He loves to get on Scar's nerves with his magic, as well, and often takes the batteries out of the TV remote so that only he can use it. The vex magic usually snitches on him though, allowing Scar to feel when he uses it. (Scar usually carries batteries around now, just in case.)

When Scar was injured as a teenager, Cub made it his mission to help his brother walk again. He spent countless hours designing, testing, and troubleshooting walking braces until he finally came up with a working design. The braces are powered by enchanted crystals containing both his and Scar's magic. They drain Scar's magic while he wears them, as well, often leaving him tired and weak after using them. Cub is still trying to make a more efficient design that won't be so taxing for Scar, but in the meantime, all he can do is encourage Scar to limit his use of the braces, no matter how pointless of a fight it can be.

More little factoids:

Smells clean & sterile (hospital room vibes)

Book smart - Special knowledge of technology

Likes: helping Scar, seeing him happy/healthy, pranks and mischeif

Dislikes: idk man he's just a chill dude

Passions: tech, magic

Habits/other details: Older than Scar but way less social, cleans/fidgets with glasses when he’s nervous or overstimulated

Active-ish in his environment - kinda bossy sometimes but also super laid-back, doesn’t hold grudges but will take revenge if convenient, very chill but not here to deal with idiots, unless it’s funny, if it’s funny he would absolutely lean into someone’s stupidity, he’s based like that

Special, plot-relevant skills: builds good shit, programmer, magic = activation

Good sleep schedule, but always tired

I shall return with more headcanons in the future so oooo you wanna follow me and read them oooo (/nf)

#cubfan135 #hermitcraft #hermitblr #character headcanons

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cartoon-cass · 3 months ago

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I head canon that the Solver has slowed Tessa's aging, in your Solver AU by a ton as otherwise Tessa would be in her 40s by canon, no idea how much but I guess no older physically then her mid 20s, her aging might even be paused at 21 which is the ideal age biologically for humans where they're at their peak. I also head canon that the Solver will allow Tessa to gain nutrition from things like batteries and other drone food items after using the Solver for a while, though not efficiently human food is much better for her and more pleasant besides. After the core collapse won't give her many other options though, and she might be on a drone diet even before then if the scientists decide they might as well as save time on prepping her food by feeding her like the rest of the experiments No idea how far off the mark I am with my thoughts but I thought I should share

I never even thought of slowed aging, I was struggling with ideas on how to make Tessa younger at the start of the pilot, I have no idea on how to write a 40 year old, at least as a main character, so thanks for that idea. So by the time of the pilot she’d be around her twenties, totally not because that’s around my age which will make writing her just a bit easier, projection? who that?

Oh yeah Tessa can eat drone “food”, it’s about on par with how normal human food tastes but Tessa is chuffed about it as she always, not, so secretly wanted to eat a battery but she at least had the common sense to know that was a bad idea. Now she can live her life eating all the forbidden snacks without consequences. For what she actually needs to survive, technically she only needs drone oil but if she eats normal food she needs less of it. Basically if she doesn’t eat normal food the solver needs to make all the vitamins, proteins and whatever else you get from food, which means the solver needs to work harder and if the solver needs to work harder it needs more oil.

For whether the scientist feed her, the building above the cabin fever labs looked like a big office building so I just imagine that they had an office cafeteria so she just gets stuff from their. Basically shitty prepackaged food but it’s at least something. The scientist did test whether she could survive without food, after that they tried making food a reward but honestly Tessa preferred the oil. Like based on how feral all the solver infected drones act around oil that stuff probably tastes great to them. So Tessa chose to stop eating herself just to get away from the taste of microwave food, the scientist would have to give her more oil other wise it would mess up the tests so ultimately Tessa got what she wanted.

I did some calculating and based on that this post took me about an hour to write my letter per minute is about 30 and 5.6 for word per minute, an average adult writing speed is 68 letters per minute and 13 for word per minute. Oh boy I’m really slow haha, there’s a reason I got extra time on tests.

#murder drones #tessa james elliot #solver tessa au

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paintedbirds-worldbuilding · 2 months ago

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Sundered Isles custom assets

So, I have some custom assets I plan to use for an upcoming thingmajig. There are also a few here to help flesh things out in case I want to try something different, or if other people want to use this idea. If enough people show interest, I might make this a more complete thing.

Mech Frame

Support Vehicle

When you first acquire a Mech Frame, also acquire 2 assets for that frame.

[X] Your mech frame is complete with legs, a torso, arms, and head, and can take on up to 3 modules compatible with mechs. It has up to 3 base Integrity, and 9 base Power. Any moves taken while piloting the mech expend 1 Power. [ ] Your mech frame is more robust, and can take on up to 6 modules compatible with mechs. It has up to 5 base Hull, and 12 base Power

[ ] Your spatial perception near your mech has been honed, you can now expend 1 Power to negate the effects of any Suffer Moves.

Integrity: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Power: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Onboard Reactor

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has an onboard power source, in place of some batteries. For a -1 penalty to your action die, on a move, you can gain 1 Power instead of loosing 1 Power.

[ ] Your mech now passively generates the power it needs. Moves no longer expend Power to execute unless otherwise specified. For a -1 penalty to your action die, you can still gain 1 Power on a move.

[ ] Your mech now recharges its own batteries faster than it can spend it. Moves now generate 1 Power, and for a -1 penalty to your action die, you can generate 2 Power on a move instead of one.

Capacitors

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has large capacitors distributed however you wish. When you Withstand Damage, On a miss, any charged capacitors explode, and you suffer an additional -1 integrity, and cannot charge those capacitors until you Repair. You have max 2 capacitors. These can siphon 1 Power each, which can be spent as Power at any time.

[ ] You have 4 additional capacitors. When you Enter the Fray, you can charge up to 2 capacitors at no cost to your Power

[ ] Your capacitors are better shielded. When you Withstand Damage, you no longer risk suffering additional integrity losses.

Capacitors: [ | ] [ | ] [ | ] [ | ] [ | ] [ | ]

Umbilical Cable

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has a large cable running from somewhere on its torso or head into a power supply in another location. This generates you 1 Power every move, after all other parts of the move are resolved. When you Withstand Damage, the umbilical cable is severed, and you no longer gain Power.

[ ] Your mech's umbilical cable is better shielded. When you Withstand Damage, only on a miss is the cable severed

[ ] Your mech's umbilical cable now can siphon more current. You now generate 2 Power every move while the cable is not severed

Severed: [ ]

Light Armor

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has metallic armor plating. This armor has 1 Integrity, which is used before the frame integrity.

[ ] Ceramic reinforcements improve combat testing. This armor has 2 Integrity

[ ] Replacement of the armor with alloyed lamellar-joint plating has reduced weight and further increased integrity. This armor has 3 Integrity, and can Dodge to negate Withstand Damage once per combat

Integrity: [1] [2] [3] Dodge: [ ]

Heavy Armor

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has ceramic armor plating. This armor has 3 Integrity, which is used before the frame integrity.

[ ] Reinforced installation points improve armor efficiency. This armor has 5 Integrity.

[ ] Layered composite armor increases weight substantially, but improves performance against weapons. This armor has 7 Integrity, and once per combat, when you would Withstand Damage, you can also Reduce Damage. When you Reduce Damage, if you take minor damage, don't Withstand Damage, if you suffer serious or major damage, treat it as minor or serious damage respectively. If you are still going to Reduce Damage, perform the roll for Withstand Damage, on a strong hit, don't Withstand Damage, on a weak hit, treat it as a strong hit. on a miss, treat it as a weak hit.

Integrity: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Reduce Damage: [ ]

Reactive Armor

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has 5 shaped charge panels that, in preparation for damage, explode. When you would Withstand Damage, you can expend 1 charge to not Withstand Damage. These charges can be replenished when you Repair, however if all charges are expended, discard this asset

[ ] Your mech has 10 shaped charge panels.

[ ] Your mech has specialized mounts for reactive armor. Do not discard this asset when expended

Charges: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Coilgun

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has a Coilgun is armed with 20 ammo. When you Strike or Clash with a Coilgun round, suffer -1 ammo and -1 Power, and mark progress on a hit. If you Resupply or Repair in a place where your ammo can be replenished, you may exchange any earned +supply or repair points for 2 +ammo.

[ ] Your Coilgun now also accepts conductive gas canisters as ammo. When you Strike or Clash with a conductive gas round, suffer -1 ammo and -2 Power, and mark 2 progress on a hit, or 1 on a miss.

[ ] You Coilgun now accepts debris as rounds. You can Resupply mid-combat.

Ammo: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]

Laser Rifle

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has a laser rifle has 3 heat. When you Strike or Clash with the laser rifle, suffer up to -3 heat, and an equal amount of Power, marking as much progress as suffered heat. Each move the laser rifle is not used, it recovers 1 heat, to a maximum of 3 total heat.

[ ] Your laser rifle is now more efficient. When you Strive or Clash with the laser rifle, you now only suffer -1 power.

[ ] Your laser rifle can replace its heat sink. Suffer -1 supply to regain all 3 heat.

Heat: [1] [2] [3]

Rotary Autocannon

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has a Rotary Autocannon. When you Strike or Clash with the rotary autocannon, suffer -1 Power, gain 1 Stress, and mark progress on a hit. If your stress hits or surpasses 5, suffer -1 integrity and momentum. Stress drops by 1 every Strike or Clash the rotary autocannon is not used

[ ] Superior heatsinks allow you to hit 7 before suffering integrity and momentum.

[ ] Improved radiators allow you to hit 9 before suffering integrity and momentum. Stress drops by 2 every Strike or Clash the rotary autocannon is not used. The heatsinks can also be launched at targets. If launched, suffer -1 supply, mark progress equivalent to half of your stress, rounded down, and set stress to 0

Stress: [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Thrusters

Mech-compatible Module

[X] Your mech has thrusters. If used in a Combat Move or Exploration Move, gain +1 to your roll, but suffer -1 fuel. If you Resupply in a place where your fuel can be replenished, you may exchange any earned +supply for +ammo. You have 5 fuel

[ ] Improved thrusters increase mech mobility. You can suffer -1 fuel and Power to Dodge to negate Withstand Damage once per combat.

[ ] You can use your thrusters to attack enemies. When you Strike or Clash with your thrusters, suffer -1 Power and fuel, and mark 2 progress.

Fuel: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Dodge: [ ]

SF/SI modules which are mech-compatible:

Engine Upgrade

Heavy Cannons

Missile Array

Overseer

Reinforced Hull

Sensor Array

Shields

Stealth Tech