#Container Logistics

[freightforwardingindonesia]

Sea Freight from Indonesia

🌍 Connect Indonesia to the World with Ocean Freight Need reliable sea freight services from Indonesia? Since 1993, Keenam International has been the trusted freight forwarder offering official ocean shipping solutions — without undername — for exporters seeking to ship globally by FCL and LCL containers. Based in Jakarta and serving all major international ports, we move your goods efficiently…

[keenaminternational]

Sea Freight from Indonesia

🌍 Connect Indonesia to the World with Ocean Freight Need reliable sea freight services from Indonesia? Since 1993, Keenam International has been the trusted freight forwarder offering official ocean shipping solutions — without undername — for exporters seeking to ship globally by FCL and LCL containers. Based in Jakarta and serving all major international ports, we move your goods efficiently…

[ariadne-mouse]

For the "I wish you would write a fic where…" I don't know if this counts because it's not a new fic, but:

"Was? Essek? I thought you were out of town?"

Caleb wakes up with obsidian flakes of a'a in his hair and and no memory of the last few years. His very-new boyfriend has adopted his cat, there's a court case for his attemped murder, and he might have been a ghost?

A followup to The Fire Kept Closest, from Caleb's POV, filling in the timejump to the epilogue.

Thank you for the ask! It took me a minute to get to this ask game, but here we are. I am not writing exactly to the prompt, but I hope you like this 830-word slice of post-fic Volcaleb nonetheless!

-

"I would like to go, I think."

Essek paused where he had just gathered a scoop of cat kibble. The awaiting dish lay on the floor, empty. "Are you sure?"

"Ja," Caleb answered. He folded the local newspaper he had been reading in half, the headline visible: Corporate Clash: Cerberus takes the stand. "I know it's best my situation stays out of the spotlight, at least for now, but I want him to see me. To see my face, and know that I know." His expression darkened. "I want him to sweat."

At Essek's feet, Frumpkin yowled his impatience, unaware of corporations, or bureaucracy, or indeed the significance of newspapers beyond the fact that they were sometimes fun to sit on.

"Calm down, calm down," Essek tutted, and gave the beast his meal. He smoothed a hand down Frumpkin's back, thinking. "I'll go with you, if you really want to go."

Caleb smiled grimly. "Danke. I would like that. But I have an idea, also - you can help."

-

Vence Nuthaleus cleaned up well in a suit, and he knew it. It was unfortunate that the volcano on Rumblecusp had popped its top as soon as it had, but he was still safely ensconced in respectability - and more importantly, plausible deniability. Research was only as good as records available, and his land use recommendation report had been scientifically sound with the data from the island's active seismometer network.

It didn't even alarm him that he was playing a kind of mutually assured destruction game with Cerberus. They wanted to publicly shed him as a "bad actor", especially convenient given his contractor status - but if they did, he'd reveal they had been the ones to disconnect the last seismometer. He had enough leverage in writing to make the accusation compelling, and they knew it. The thing they might most want to pin on him... well, they didn't have any evidence of that. All told, it was in Cerberus's best interest to protect him. And so he wore his most approachable suit, and a polite smile, and answered questions as earnestly as he could when he was on the stand. Mardoon Estate only wanted money, after all, and Cerberus certainly had plenty of that. Vence didn't need to be scapegoat for it all to work out eventually.

The courtroom around him was full for the spectacle. The door creaked open every so often as the gawkers and media came and went, like bees buzzing on a hive. He sometimes saw familiar faces from the island: Dr. Vilya, Beauregard, Thelyss. Today the last of these was sitting in one of the back rows by himself, glaring at Vence like he always did when he was there. Too bad; being a stuck-up trust fund baby wouldn't help Thelyss here.

It was some minutes before Vence's attention was drawn by a spot in the standing room in the back that had not moved at all for some time. Even as his mouth answered the current question on autopilot, his eyes were drawn to look at the vacuum of stillness.

A dead man was looking back at him.

Vence's words curdled in his throat, choking his breath.

He was there. Caleb Widogast was there, standing among the throng.

"Mr. Nuthaleus?" prompted the examiner.

"I... I..."

The ghost - it could only be a ghost - stared at him with those eerie blue eyes, unblinking. He was dressed like he had been, for a hike on the mountain. There was even a lightweight heatsuit half-zipped and tied around his waist.

He looked exactly like he had when he had died. When--

Vence couldn't pull his gaze away. "Could- could you repeat the question?"

The examiner repeated it, and again Vence did not hear.

Nearby, Thelyss was standing up. He favored Vence with a last look of contempt before making for the double doors. The crowd parted to let him pass, but Widogast did not move. And Thelyss... walked right past him, like he wasn't there.

A chill rolled down Vence's spine and his breathing came faster. He could hear a ringing noise, his vision was narrowing.

With effort, he turned a smile to the judge. "I'm sorry, I think I need a moment."

When he turned back, Caleb Widogast was gone.

-

Outside in the hallway, Essek leaned on the wall next to Caleb, who sat heavily on a bench. The heat suit was stuffed back into a bag.

"Feel any better?"

A muscle in Caleb's face twitched, and his hand balled in a fist. "A little. I don't know. Seeing him-" His breath left him in a gust. "It was harder than I expected."

Essek touched his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.  "Come, then. Let's go. We can learn what happened later. Frumpkin is waiting for you at home."

This last tactic was always a surefire way to bring a little smile back to Caleb's face, and it proved to be so now.

“Ja,” Caleb agreed, straightening up.  “Let’s go home.”

[smile-files]

i have finished my homework... now i need to eat dinner... (i am normal and healthy and GOOD!)

[cellarspider]

7/30 germs.

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

We return to a movie that disrespects the archaeological importance of roads, Prometheus.

I am still not over that. I will never be over that.

This time, content warnings for continuing frat boy archaeology, cringeful application of racist terms to lily-white androids, me screeching about site contamination some more, and Apollo’s dodgeball striking this movie with a glancing blow about masking.

So, back in the theater in 2012, I had already lost sympathy for the cast. They were being set up as stock horror movie characters, they were doing their jobs in a way with a certain flair for the incompetent.

And one of them, I suspect, the movie intends to make into a “flawed but you feel for him” kind of guy. Or, I hope they intended to make him “the guy in the slasher movie who you hate and want to see die”. That’s Holloway, one of the two archaeologists. He’s robot racist.

Like, seriously robot racist. The whole crew is, David literally gets referred to as “boy” here, which isn’t so much a dogwhistle as a tornado siren. No wonder David is quietly starting to show his disdain for the human crew.

“They're making you guys pretty close [to human now], huh?” “Not too close, I hope.”

One of the few themes the movie handles halfway competently is the parallel between the humans stumbling all over themselves as they rush to go meet their makers, while David is already experiencing the disappointment of actually meeting his, and finding out they’re a bunch of clueless assholes. Are we supposed to believe the same of the Engineers? I don’t know. They definitely think of humans as lesser, though. More to come on that later.

Because right now, an expedition is barrelling toward the alien structure–again, driving all over the FCKING ALIEN ROAD–and they’re doing it with only six hours of daylight left, because Holloway literally says “It's Christmas [...] and I want to open my presents.”

I cannot communicate how heinous this character felt. The actor did a perfectly fine job playing him, but if Charlie Holloway was real, his name would be said with the same venom as that of the man pictured below: Heinrich Schliemann, the man who found the real, actual city of Troy, and immediately dynamited a trench through the royal palace, destroying who knows how many artifacts from the period the Iliad was based off of. Yes, I picked out the most assholish-looking photo of him I could find on purpose.

Also, Holloway’s an anti-masker, apparently.

I’m going to step back for just one second and list the one practical, movie budget reason why characters might take their helmets off. The costume designers did an admirable job coming up with something that fits the general requirement of a helmet in major studio releases, prior to The Mandalorian: make the actor’s faces completely visible, because without actors with a strong sense of physical presence and voice acting, you’ll lose connection with the audience.

They did a great job with that. Unfortunately, shiny helmets are a bastard to digitally edit film crew out of. 

It’s not impossible to place lights and crew so that the audience won’t notice them. Alien certainly pulled it off. Clear plastic elements in helmets also mean other logistical challenges, though: fogging being the main one. This, and cooking your actors in a fishbowl under studio lights.

Both problems can be simultaneously combated by installing A/C fans within the helmets, but because these helmets are entirely clear, you’re limited to hiding them down near the neck, and anybody who’s done similar for a cosplay or suit will know that it’s potentially noisy and not always effective. You can actually see condensate on the helmets in the movie, though whether that’s from the actor’s breath or a deliberate choice, I don’t know.

All this adds up to increased time resetting actors (i.e. cleaning sweat off of them without disrupting their makeup), more exhaustion from said actors, and the worry that the highest-paid, plot-critical actors may decide they don’t want to do a sequel if the shooting experience is too physically unhealthy.

And then there’s also more time spent carefully arranging crew and lights to hide their reflections, or more time making some poor VFX artist erase a transparent, curved reflection from frame and replace it with something else, or make the actors more comfortable by adding the glass in later with CGI, at the potential loss of some realism. The average modern movie studio would choose one of these VFX-driven options and demand it done in a week, which is why VFX artists need to unionize.

So. I understand at least a few logistical reasons why you don’t tend to make actors wear helmets for too many shooting days. But it has to be balanced with the story. It has to feel believable. It has to fit the story. It has to not make your characters look like mud-witted morons.

As soon as they find liquid water and the oh-so-deadly CO2 levels start to drop, Holloway takes his helmet off.

“Don't be an idiot.” “Don't be a skeptic.”

Flames on the side of my goddamn face.

Now, this is the moment a lot of people lost sympathy for the human characters, even back in 2012. It was a dumbass idea even then, in the pre-’rona years. Sadly, Millburn the biologist isn’t written smart enough to punch Holloway in the nuts over even thinking of doing this, because we have two problems with what Holloway’s doing here: Biology, and biology.

First, biology.

(https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/13-viruses-virus-3d-model/1071200)

Obviously, they don’t know if anything’s in the air. He could find out that humans are deathly allergic to alien dust mites. He could have just caught himself a case of space covid, which he and the lemmings that follow him can then transmit to the entire crew if he’s not kept in quarantine. They can sterilize the sealed suits, but they can’t sterilize the inside of his lungs. Yet.

Second, biology. 

Specifically, Earth biology. Do you know how carefully modern space agencies sterilize anything that’s headed for Mars, or anywhere else that might have a biosphere of its own? A lot! They sterilize everything a lot! Because microbes are hardy little bastards. We’ve never found extraterrestrial life, only precursor molecules that show the capacity for life to develop in other places. How are you going to verify you’ve found alien life, or even those precursors, if you can’t prove that your samples are uncontaminated? What happens if microbes from Earth manage to survive the trip and establish a foothold somewhere? What if they destroy native life?

This movie’s characters treat this with only a fraction of the gravitas that the cinematography does, which is part of why this remains so jarring throughout. The practical sets, the art direction, and the camerawork are all excellent. The editing continues to do its best, though it almost feels like things were cut very tight through this to speed things along and to give more time, unfortunately, to what the characters are doing. 

their crimes against my sanity are not done yet

⛬

(Previous) | (Index) | ⛬

⛬

As a side note, rounding up some discussion from a previous entry: The most excellent artist @noordzee pointed out that the clashing artistic style of the moon and stars slapped onto the carving of Kʼinich Janaab Pakal I. In the previous post, I focused on the link between that carving and its use in ancient aliens conspiracy theories. But let's dig a bit into actual Maya iconography around celestial bodies instead.

Now, I am not an expert on Classical Maya stuff. Not in the slightest. And there is a lot of information on their art that is linguistically inaccessible to me, as a non-Spanish speaker. But out of the Maya art and writing that survived the book-burning conquistadors, we have some iconography for the moon and stars, and they don’t look like what’s in the movie.

I wasn’t able to find any specific pieces of art that contained stars, but I did find the glyph for star, ek’. 

I was only able to find depictions of a crescent moon in the context of the moon goddess, where she tends to be sitting on the crescent like a chair, or one part of it is shown behind her, almost like a tail (though I can’t be certain whether that’s due to chipped paint).

The moon by itself was somewhat harder to find. I couldn’t find any Maya depictions of it with my limited poking around of the spanish internet, but I did find a (much later) Mixtec depiction of the moon, complete with a lunar rabbit! Much like East Asian cultures, the darker markings on the moon are culturally interpreted as a rabbit shape.

Thanks again to nordzee for pointing out the dissonant art style, because the real mesoamerican art on this subject is phenomenal.

Next time, the movie will hurt me more, so if anybody else has fun facts to share or details to point out. PLEASE. Ease my pain.

⛬

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

Alt text citations:

None this time. Many ramblings, though.

[supplyside]

Expanding the Panama Canal

[platypusisnotonfire]

I am doing perhaps the most hilariously overboard and unnecessary world-building thing (probably not the most….creating 5 accurate conlangs based on languages from 800ad merging and gaining specific vocabulary from 2000 years of life in very different planets is probably up there since that took a year and I only referenced one of them in the actual book… but that was a different book/universe)

I am currently making MANY spreadsheets of duty rosters to logistically make Exodus Terminal run with 53 people and still have scouting missions happening. Every department has its own sheet and all 53 characters have their own sheet to describe exactly where everyone is at any given point in time. There’s also a « crew by alphabetical order » sheet and a « crew by rank » sheet to help inform the choices of where people best slot in.

[chiropteracupola]

ohohoh, you have a sharpe werewolf au? do you want to share any details from it?

“Wellington’s mastiff, they call you. They’ll have another name for you once this is known,” sneered Ducos, looming down from his high horse. Sunlight glinted on his spectacles, and Sharpe snarled, his teeth bared. “My, my, Major Sharpe, what big teeth you have.” And so saying, Ducos set spurs to his horse and rode from that place. Sharpe swung his head from side to side, his mind still a dull mess of anger and confusion and fear. He hung suspended between Cooper and Hagman, each of the riflemen clamped on to one of his arms to keep him on his feet. Even in the punishing sunlight of that drought-dusty courtyard, he was cold without his coat. It was that cold that brought him back to himself.

you BET I have a sharpe werewolf au!

[linoguy]

and so the gift giving season begins

[homoeroticjunoincident]

wh

[alwayswonderingandwandering]

maersk

[wolfchans]

i was making a edit for an event on underrated movies/tv and i hated what i was making so bad that now i'm back to square one to brainstorm what the heck i'm gonna do for it TT

[keeps-ache]

ggghhg i hate vehiclessssssss ghghghhghhhhh [dies dies dies forever]

[illithilit]

Sometimes, inspiration comes from historical shows. Sometimes that comes from centuries old rumors of things that probably didn't happen like that.

All this is to casually say: blood eagles are a thing that do genuinely happen exactly like that or worse in the Hells, and their brand of magic will keep you alive and suffering through it as long as they so please.

As a side note, though, I suggest you only look up what I'm talking about if you're comfortable with torture and gore.