#exposure and experimentation is important!

[razielim]

90s Power Macintosh OSs were more like the modern Windows PC experience than you'd assume if you never used one or if your first Macintosh was the colorful zany iMac G3 acquired by many schools in the early 2000s. Sure, in the 90s if you had Microsoft, you were very likely still using MS-DOS, or Windows-through-DOS (until Windows 95) and therefore getting a bit more technical experience mileage. But a lot of people grew up using DOS like it was nbd to boot their games through the command prompt, only to grow up not particularly computer-savvy. Apple is not alone in pushing for non-specialization experiences; Microsoft also has had aspirations of becoming Extremely GUI (remember their weird and frustrating all-tile concept of the 2010s?) as part of its business strategy and regularly tries to make the "Home" (as opposed to "Pro") OS setup more difficult to use for technical purposes.

I cannot attest to the modern Mac experience but must mention that many CS/IT professionals/academics LOVE Macs. If a person loves LaTeX and/or Linux, I suspect they're at least Mac-curious. It was a whole fad with computer nerds in the 2010s to cobble together a Windows/Linux PC that looked and functioned as close to a Mac as possible if they couldn't afford a real Apple machine.

My opposing hypothesis is that declining tech literacy is mostly a consequence of the proliferation of Extremely GUI "don't even fucking worry about it" tech, and that's more a problem of using phone-as-computer or tablet-as-computer and wanting all computers to therefore function as a phone/tablet, rather than which laptop/desktop OS you go to bat for or which one you grew up with because the truth is all available laptop/desktop options require more tech literacy just to get started on than making do with a phone/tablet.

Also I know it's a joke, but the idea that someone more tech literate than you must be autistic... is a good way to notice you're perhaps not as tech literate as you think lmfao. Basic human curiosity, competence, and urge to tinker/play does not require a diagnosis! The problem with Extremely GUI solutions is not that they're Evil™ but precisely that they take these behaviors away as an option!

[mypoisonedvine]

PLEASE I HAVE A REQUEST:

Reader is deathly afraid of physical touch and she’s a student of Jonathan Crane’s. She begins to question whether or not exposure therapy is humane and decides to write a research paper against the idea of exposure therapy and Dr Crane plots against her and finds out her fear, inevitably forcing her to confront her fear with non/con(???)

I’m thinking totally brutal / slow burn and Jonathan is just a full psycho in this, not offering her any mercy. He Def does his research and Def traumatized reader

PLEASEEEEEEEEEE

(because this is just drabbles, I'm not going to be able to flesh this out the way you've envisioned, but I love the concept so I will do something based on it!) obviously this is dark, warnings for kidnapping and threats of noncon

haphephobia - the irrational fear or overwhelming aversion to physical touch.

You were far from the only psychopathology student who got into this line of work due to personal experience. Actually, more often than not, this interest begins for people with their own relationship with mental health-- maybe something as simple as a long battle with clinical depression, maybe trauma or abuse, maybe a history of addiction. You would hope that this made most of the students more equipped, more empathetic; that was true, but it also meant that there was a little more... instability among the cohort than you wanted to admit.

And yet, you hadn't even noticed that the worst of them all was right there in the front of the class, teaching.

"I read your paper," he explained, pacing back and forth, sparing long glances at you. "It was quite good. But your conclusions are weak."

Normally, if you'd been receiving this sort of feedback during office hours, you would just tilt your head and ask 'how so, Professor Crane?'

But considering you didn't even know where you were, strapped to an exam table in some dark basement, you weren't as inquisitive as usual. "See," he continued, approaching you, "if you want to disprove exposure therapy, you can't just do a systematic review of previous literature-- you need to get in the field, experiment yourself."

He lowered his voice as he stood closer to you, leaning over you, looking at you with a sort of fascination and pity.

"After all," he continued, "I'm a... fierce advocate of psychiatric experimentation."

"Yeah," you panted, the initial panic of waking up here fading into a general, steady terror, "I'm beginning to realize that."

"And you're always free to have your own opinion-- I think it's important that my students utilize their right to disagree with me-- but in this case, well, you just can't deny the results."

He was fucking smiling as he discussed it-- he was proud of what he'd done, of what he was going to do to you. "I can," you insisted, "if they're not ethical."

He rolled his eyes. "Always such a good girl," he cooed. "Let me worry about the ethics and you-- you can just worry about what I'm going to do now that I've got you tied up down here, where nobody will ever find you."

Bringing his hand closer to your face, you turned it away with a whimper. "Please," you whispered, "I-- you know I can't--"

"How does it feel?" he asked. "Right now, knowing I might touch you?"

"It's..." you trailed off, struggling to find a train of thought with him so close. "It's anxiety-inducing, obviously. It's dread."

"Filled with dread just because I'm getting close," he smirked. "You're in serious need of intervention, sweet thing. I can't believe you've gone without help for so long."

"This-- this isn't help, Professor--" you began to protest, but you winced as he gently brushed a finger over your cheek.

"You look like you're in pain," he noticed.

"It hurts," you hissed. "It hurts to be touched."

"Hurts how?"

"Like... like I'm raw all over. Like my body is one big burn," you whispered, eyes still shut tight as his hand moved down to gently caress your neck.

"And you've ruled out any medical cause-- an autoimmune disorder, hypersensitivity of the skin?"

You nodded, biting your lip to try to think of something other than the pain he was inflicting-- the pain you were totally helpless to. "There's no... physiological cause..."

"It's all in the mind," he finished for you, "and what a powerful mind you have. You're one of my best students, you know-- it's a shame you're limited by your fear. Fear of the truth, fear of breaking your precious ethics... fear of the future."

Your eyes shot open when his touch trailed down even further, toying with the neckline of your shirt; if any human contact was painful, you hadn't even prepared for the overwhelming anxiety of being touched in a way that had even the slightest sexual undertone. "Y-you don't really think you're that powerful, do you?" you pressed. "That you can take away fear?"

He shook his head. "No, dear, I don't have to," he replied. "I don't take it away-- I use it."

Just as his touch wandered, so did his gaze, and you shuddered under his dark stare as he started to properly grope you; his breathing picked up a bit, his lip twitched-- he even darted his tongue out for a second before smiling again.

"And now," he grinned, "I have you to use, too."

[cupcakeslushie]

The empyrean that Leo was subjected to, does that make him a little unhinged like Donnie? Or due to his limited exposure, and I’m guessing his training he’s able to handle it?

You’ve might explained this before in your comments but I can’t find anything 🙈

So I think it’s a common assumption in my AU that Empyrean is the cause of Donnie’s mental issues…but Donnie’s poor mental health is due to all the torture and trauma that Draxum put him through, and the Empyrean only heightens it by making his visions more realistic, and his emotions more erratic.

In the EW verse, Empyrean enhances emotions that are already there. This is why Draxum becomes obsessive with figuring out his mutation formula and training Three. Over the years, without the Empyrean, he would’ve been able to focus on more important things, like raising Three properly, and was even heading in that direction, but then they started collecting it. Stern parenting and simple tests became horrible abuse and dangerous experimentation.

For Leo, Kitsune was incorporating her own magic with his exposure. So the Empyrean made her spells to control him stronger. What helps snap Leo out of this control is seeing his brothers for the first time, and more importantly, what happens to him during his three week coma (which should be explained in the next update or so). His coma will act as almost a system reboot for his mind. This will cause the unusual turn around in his behavior, that we’ve heard Cass talk about. When Leo sees his brothers, it throws him off his game, and causes him to make mistakes, but after waking from his coma, Leo really begins to act like a totally different person to the one the Shredder has meticulously crafted.

But judging by that big pit of green goop, Leo’s not going back to his family without one last Empyrean exposure. And he’s pretty angry right now. Hope that won’t affect his relationships with his brothers and father 😬.

[mxboxlocks]

Survival Log: Autumn Day ... I don't remember. Does it matter? (Days survived, 54)

Eight days stranded on this blasted island (...again) and I still haven't found Wynslow. I have however, found allies amongst the seemingly never-ending treeline. A woman that calls herself Whimsy, and a rather curious Pigman-centaur named Ike. Both have agreed to assist me on my search, and I am elated to have company again. This... place. It warps my mind in ways new and terrifying.

On our ventures, I've decided to start taking note of anything else I encounter that is strange and unfamiliar. Which happens to be most things here. Fascinated as I am, I've not much time for experimentation - I'm pressed for time as it is, and I can't afford to lose any. The following diagrams are my best depictions of the items of interest I've found thus far (to be edited).

A masterlist of my bestiary and other such thoughts can be found here.

Ignorant Bliss A name from Ms. Whimsy. It seems to be a variant of the fuel, but more liquidous and runny. Prolonged exposure lowers my mental fortitude, with more frequent periods of daydreaming and wandering thoughts. It also seems to be the lifeblood of the "fairies". If it's anything like Nightmare Fuel, I'm sure I can harness it for something. Update: See Pocket Mirror entry

Pixiwinkles Flowers that grow in caves and rocky areas with plenty of water. They emit a soft, dull humming sound that could be described as 'singing'. It grows louder when in closer proximity to Bliss, and subsequently any creatures that possess it.

Magic Petals Once again I must reiterate that I did not pick the names of these objects. Petals from Pixiwinkles. They appear to have healing qualities, perhaps they can be ground into medicine. Taste horrible.

Crystal Clears Crystals tumbled in stream water and found in brooks. They disintegrate slowly upon contact with saltwater. It seems the sandy beds of the rivers in this place are made up of microscopic particles of this opalescent-stone. It emits a strange energy, much like the gems I've documented from the mainland.

Pocket Mirror Possibly the most valuable tool that could have come out of this detour of an expedition. By combining some gold, Bliss, and Crystal Clears I've created a device that can possibly revive those whose vitality has been stolen from them. Hang in there, Wynslow. I'm coming for you.

Fairy Wings Translucent insectoid wings from the "fairy" creatures. They are thin and chip like dry leaves at the smallest movements, so delicateness is of the utmost importance when handling them. I've not found a logistical use for them at the time of writing, but they've served well as mementos. I hate these little things.

I would love to stay and document absolutely everything, but there are more pressing matters to be dealt with, obviously. And I fear if I stay here any longer than I have to, I'll end up with a new hairdo and an acute lack of humanity. And I'm quite fond of my hair.

I have to hope that with enough resolve, we can escape with as many people as a few wooden rafts can carry back to the mainland.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Gender affirming care causes mental illness

By: Andrew Amos

Published: Jul 8, 2025

Gender affirming doctors cause a serious form of mental illness called shared psychosis. They stop children with developmental problems learning to separate reality from fantasy. Gender identity obscures this unethical behaviour.

Fantasy: Trans women are women! Reality: Trans women are men who want to be women, which is impossible.

Like the rest of modern medicine, psychiatry is being transformed from a clinical discipline focused on optimising health to a commercial activity focused on maximising revenue. Once commercial medicine realised that responsibility for patient safety was doctors' biggest financial risk, it started limiting their exposure by offloading the risk to patients using informed consent protocols.

Gender affirming medicine would not exist without this movement to limit doctors' duty to guard patient safety. The oath to protect patients from harm is the foundation of traditional medicine. By contrast, affirming doctors claim that it is more important to promote patients' right to choose gender identity than to protect their physical and mental health.

The whole medical profession shares blame for allowing gender affirmation to progress beyond the experimental phase. However, psychiatry bears greater responsibility for failing to correct the false claim that transgender identities are healthy variants of normal.

Any competent doctor with a basic understanding of human psychology knows it is impossible that healthy child development includes the desire for castration, hormonal sterilisation, and amputation of the breasts. I have written other essays which examine why gender affirming care is incompatible with competent and ethical medical practice.

This essay describes a specific harm caused by gender affirming doctors: the creation and maintenance of the shared delusion that trans women are women and trans men are men. While this belief is a self-evident absurdity to everyone but trans rights activists, it has been indoctrinated into vulnerable gender confused patients to leverage their distress for political purposes.

Gender affirming care causes shared psychosis

Every sane human being understands it is impossible to change sex. Even so, people continue to pursue this impossible dream, which makes them unhappy. For most, left to themselves, the desire eventually fades and they return to normal life.

A few of the rest continue to want to change sex in some symbolic way, but develop healthy accommodations with reality such as gender non-conformity, or mild mental illness such as cross-dressing.

Competent, compassionate treatment of these patients acknowledges their desires, analyses the distress and dysfunction caused by conflict with the real world, and uses psychoanalytic psychotherapy to help them productively re-engage with reality.

Until recently the number of people unable to tolerate the reality that sex can not be changed was vanishingly small, and they preferred to remain hidden. They either completed suicide or retreated into fantasy, often leading to extreme measures like self-castration.

Psychiatrists who treated these patients had no doubt they were affected by severe mental illness. They only started considering physical treatment alternatives like hormones and surgery after psychotherapy failed to help.

Even while they were experimenting with physical treatments these doctors remained convinced that their patients were psychiatrically unwell, and that the physical treatments would not cure their mental illness. They justified physical treatments as harm minimisation strategies. They did not claim that their patients were changing sex.

Unfortunately, a later generation of gender doctors were persuaded by the anti-psychiatry movement that accurately diagnosing the mental illness associated with trans identity is social coercion. They concluded that it was more important to support the political campaign for trans rights than it was to improve trans patients' physical and mental health.

To pursue this political goal, gender doctors created a pseudoscientific cover that allows trans patients to avoid conscious awareness of the immutability of sex. Gender identity is the central fallacy of gender medicine. It is a scientifically meaningless label designed to obscure the fact that the desire to change sex is a mental illness.

Gender doctors and activists use the illusion of gender identity to promote the delusion that trans women are women and trans men are men. Biological sex has a real and specific meaning, while gender identity is undefined. This means that most people instantly recognise that "trans women are biological women" is false, while "trans women are women" confuses them because it is not meaningfully related to their experience. Most people rightly decide that unless it directly affects them they can safely ignore gender medicine (and gender politics).

Gender doctors and activists who convince gender confused children and adolescents that trans women are women and trans men are men create a form of psychiatric illness called shared psychosis.

Shared psychosis involves a dominant person or group imposing false beliefs on a submissive person or group. It shares features with the abusive relationship style now recognised as coercive control. At the start of a shared psychosis submissive partners are aware that other people don't share their dominant partner's delusional beliefs, but they lose this awareness as their own psychosis develops.

Over time, the dominant partner limits the submissive partner's opportunities to reality test by limiting their contact with other people. At some point, the submissive partner is so convinced of their partner's delusions that those beliefs become almost impossible to challenge. This leads to further isolation and dependence.

Following the same pattern, under the cover of gender identity, gender affirming doctors impose their false theories about gender onto kids and families using the authority of medicine. Both kids and families become dependent on the ideology and the trans community. Eventually trans ideology becomes psychologically impossible to challenge.

However, broader society continues to believe that biological sex exists, and has little interest in gender. A good example is the widespread insistence that men not be allowed to compete in women's sport. Trans patients and their families have been trained to believe that these mainstream views violate their human rights, which maintains their isolation and dependence on the trans community that champions their false beliefs.

Ending the indoctrination of gender affirming care

Shared psychosis is not well understood. Shared delusions can be more difficult to treat than the delusions that occur in other psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia, with little response to medication.

What is certain is that patients with shared psychoses are extremely unlikely to recover while engaged with others who share their false beliefs, and the best treatment is to help them develop relationships with people who don't share those beliefs.

Gender affirming clinics and the networks that support them make it almost impossible for trans patients to escape the fallacies used to justify their treatment. There are whole communities dedicated to maintaining the harmful delusion that trans women are women.

No doubt many of the people who chant these delusions at protests don't actually believe that trans women are the same as biological women, but it is equally certain that they don't care because they are promoting a political position, not pursuing patient health.

Psychosis is caused by faulty reality testing. The only cure is to restore the ability to separate reality from fantasy. For trans kids indoctrinated by gender doctors, the main test is whether they continue to believe that trans women are women, or whether they understand that trans women are men who want to be women, and that sex change is impossible.

The necessary steps to end the indoctrination of gender confused kids into a delusional belief system are:

Hospital and health systems must eliminate the gender affirming clinics which encourage gender delusions

The medical profession must call out and reject the use of trans children to promote the political goals of trans rights activists

The medical profession must enforce its traditional role as the protector of patient safety based on evidence, declare that gender affirming care is an experimental treatment with unpromising results, and discipline unethical medical behaviour

Gender affirming care and the integrity of medicine

At the time of writing it does not appear that the medical profession will voluntarily acknowledge its responsibility for the harms done to trans kids treated with gender affirming care and reverse course.

As the public has become aware of the absurd claims of the trans rights movement, politicians and the legal profession have started stepping in to correct the failures of gender medicine. Across Europe and the U.S. bureaucrats and judges have recognised the absurdity of the claim that trans women are women and trans men are men, and are limiting the harms being done.

Even as doctors have refused to accept the evidence that gender affirmation is more likely to harm kids than help them, courts and legislatures are overruling them to insist that they protect vulnerable children by returning to traditional medical principles.

However, while court decisions and legislation can limit the harms being done, only the medical profession can end them. A profession that does not have the integrity to honestly evaluate and reject a treatment paradigm based on delusion can not be trusted with patient care.

[jabberwockprince]

Hello! I've been seeing your post about the Spina Venatores. They're so cool and I'm kinda interested about your girl Poultry, I'm wondering can you talk more about her?

YEAAA glad you like em!

Poultry is my beloved, stressed, constantly struggling, perfectionist girlgenius chicken! <3 ohh where do I start with her ... she's the only human in Spina Venatores, a girl who figured out how to mix mankind's logic and the arcane. her role in Spinas

i'll put the rest under a read more bc it got a bit long o7

she's the little girl mentioned in Darley Clatter's in-game Stories! Lilian! at least until bluepoch releases a Darley Clatter anecdote where they show the actual Lilian lmfao

they don't explicitly state that Lilian is a human afaik, but since her father is hiring an arcanist to get her the best horse in the world, I interpreted it as how humans will hire arcanists for frivolities like this

(screenshots taken from the wiki because I can't be bothered with opening the game rn lmfao)

either way, Poultry is that little girl; spoiled, bratty, precocious, too smart and observant for her age, eager to have adventures and have everything she asked for. she was so enamoured with her childhood friend Darley Clatter and arcanum as a whole that she asked her parents to make her into an arcanist despite being a pureblooded human--when she found out this is Literally Impossible, it sort of ruined her friendship with Darley Clatter due to resentment and jealousy, and she put all of her time and efforts into finding a way to BECOME an arcanist, to mix both humanity and arcanists into one, instead of having humans recreate arcane skills with machines and whatnot

and she ACTUALLY succeeded, she figured out the differences between human and arcanist physiology through experimenting with arcane creatures and critters, and then regular animals with arcamun similar to Pickles and whatnot--horrible horrible stuff going on, stuff that leads sometimes into creating homunculus and chimeras and things that should not be alive! which got her kicked out of her university!

now. I'm fully aware that, as far as we know in canon, it's impossible for pureblooded humans to become infected or to make use of arcanum the same way arcanists do--one needs the smallest amount of arcanist heritage, no matter how diluted through the ages, for that to happen (like Semmelweis). it's all biology and physiology and science stuff. so for Poultry, her theoretical process of becoming arcanist involved a lot of. well. forcing her body to naturally adapt to arcanist cells and produce them. which could only happen through unethical self experimentation, something she could only get in Manus Vindictae

Venison recruits her on a whim, convinces the higher ups that her knowledge and experiments could be weaponized against mankind, and in turn, they give her the resources needed to go through her dream of becoming an arcanist. and these resources are Spina Venatores! because everyone there has specific arcanums related to the human body--flesh, blood, bones, etc! and it fucking works! frankenstein's monster! her body can NOW slowly adapt to arcanum!

the DOWNSIDE is that the constant exposure to arcane creatures guts and blood of all sorts (one of Spina Venatores' jobs is to hunt down mythical beasts, aside from hunting down important targets) actually caused Poultry to become infected with the Beyond Disease--the Manus Mask she wears was explicitly given to her by the higher ups to fuel her extremely weak arcanum into something actually useful (think of Enigma's explanation about low tier vs high tier arcanists and batteries). but ALSO to slow down the Beyond Disease, because Manus is invested in seeing if they can genuinely turn a human into an arcanist with the intent of creating more cannon fodder to turn into Disciples and Followers (yknow, the monsters arcanists turn into when they wear the masks)

so unbeknownst to Poultry, she's become an experiment within Manus Vindictae!! and shes probably going to die very soon!!

a fun fact is that her arcanum is both related and powered by delusion and belief, becoming stronger the longer she believes herself to be arcanist like any other, but also hinting towards the Beyond creature that infected her being a fairy of sorts.

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[yevetteheiser]

Yevette Heiser - Shares Expert Photography Tips to Elevate Your Smartphone Images

Smartphone photography has come a long way, allowing everyday users to capture professional-quality photos with just a device in their pocket. But how can you take your smartphone images to the next level? According to renowned photographer Yevette Heiser, it's all about mastering key photography techniques. Here, Yevette reveals how small adjustments can make a huge difference in your smartphone photography game.

1. Understand Lighting for Stunning Photos

One of the most important factors in photography is lighting, and this is no different when shooting with your smartphone. Yevette emphasizes the significance of natural light. "Natural light helps to capture the true colors and textures of your subjects," she says. For optimal results, shoot during the golden hours — early morning or late afternoon — when the light is softer and more flattering. Additionally, she advises avoiding harsh midday sunlight, which can create unwanted shadows and overexposed highlights.

For indoor shoots, positioning your subject near windows or soft light sources like lamps will also produce beautiful results. If you're shooting at night or in low-light conditions, consider using your phone’s built-in night mode or experimenting with external lighting sources such as ring lights.

2. Focus on Composition

Composition is key to any successful photo, and Yevette Heiser encourages smartphone photographers to pay close attention to how they frame their shots. The rule of thirds is one of the simplest and most effective composition techniques she suggests. To apply this rule, imagine dividing your frame into three equal horizontal and vertical sections. Place the subject of your photo along these lines or at their intersections for a balanced and engaging image.

Another useful tip from Yevette is to experiment with different perspectives. Instead of always shooting at eye level, try different angles like from above or below the subject. This can give your photos a unique and dynamic feel.

3. Use Your Smartphone's Manual Settings

While most smartphone cameras offer automatic settings, Yevette Heiser advocates for taking control of the manual settings to create more personalized, high-quality shots. Many modern smartphones allow users to adjust aspects like exposure, ISO, white balance, and focus manually. This can result in more creative control and help you capture the perfect shot in any situation.

For instance, by manually adjusting the exposure, you can avoid overly dark or bright areas in your photo. Adjusting the ISO can also help reduce noise in low-light conditions. Yevette recommends experimenting with these settings to understand how each element affects your final image.

4. Editing is Key to the Final Touch

Once you’ve captured your photos, Yevette suggests spending some time editing them to bring out their best features. While it's tempting to rely on filters, she emphasizes the importance of fine-tuning adjustments like contrast, brightness, and saturation to enhance your image while keeping it natural.

Editing apps like Lightroom or Snapseed are popular among smartphone photographers because of their advanced features. Yevette advises using these apps to sharpen details, correct colors, and remove any distractions from your image. A little editing can turn a good photo into a great one.

5. Experiment and Practice Regularly

Finally, Yevette Heiser stresses the importance of practicing and experimenting with different techniques. “The more you practice, the more you'll discover what works for you,” she explains. Whether it’s playing with different lighting setups, trying out new angles, or experimenting with editing tools, constant experimentation helps you develop your own unique style as a photographer.

Conclusion

In summary, Yevette Heiser - Reveals How Photography Techniques Can Elevate Your Smartphone Images by focusing on understanding light, mastering composition, using manual settings, and refining your images with editing. By following these expert techniques, you’ll be well on your way to creating stunning, professional-looking photos with nothing more than your smartphone. Remember, practice is key, so keep experimenting and have fun capturing the world around you in beautiful new ways.

[springfallendeer]

Mania - A Lethal Company AU

Introduction: “Mania” is a Lethal Company AU that is highly inspired by the game, in its current incomplete state. It is also a slight FNAF: SB AU, in the sense that many of the OCs present in the story originate as FNAF OCs. Certain characters from FNAF may also make something of an appearance, though they will not be central focuses of anything.

The AU borrows a lot from the game while also tweaking (or even adding) a lot of details for the sake of more thorough worldbuilding/immersion into the story. Certain monsters present in the game will not be featured in the story at all. Others will exist but in largely modified states, in order to transform them from aimless environmental hazards to creatures all existing in the same ecosystem.

A lot of what happens or what is described in the AU is not going to perfectly mirror content from the games. This is not a lore accurate AU, but one that is building off of concepts seen in the game. Something that is based more off of blind, lore-free exposure to the game and full of “What if” speculation on how a world like this might reasonably work.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Characters: Listing the present OCs and the people that they belong to here, as well as mentioning all of the current planned/possible cameo characters that are liable to appear in story snippets. Characters listed can be minor, but the overall idea is that they’ll be recurring and hence important enough to be specifically named.

OCs) - OCs that will be present in the story (and will ergo largely be the focus of the story).

Ayala: Primary protagonist of the story, belonging to me (@springfallendeer). Ayala is human and has been employed by the company in order to pay off her many legal fees and fines, which have been accrued as a result of being (Falsely) convicted for criminal activity. 

Through crazy twists of luck and a surprising willingness to adapt, Ayala has survived being abandoned on Mania (as well as on other moons) MULTIPLE times, for long periods of time. As a result, she has learned a lot about how to survive on these otherwise uninhabitable moons.

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Jho: Another key protagonist of the story, belonging to (@twistedviper). Jho is a Bracken of the “Neckbreaker” variety, which is just a fancy way of saying that he is basically the typical in-game Bracken. His specific species has been named after its preferred method of killing humans.

Jho originally starts out hostile towards Ayala and is a threat held back only by his own confusion and desire to understand what humans actually are. But he eventually softens up and forms a strong bond with the woman, thus assuring her continued survival during her frequent incidents of abandonment.

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Pluto: A soft protagonist of the story, belonging to (@justaduckarts). Pluto a Ghost Bracken, which is a non-hostile subspecies of Bracken that gives off an ethereal, ghostly glow. She inhabits the same facility as Jho and eventually goes on to become his breeding partner. Her docile and curious nature also makes her friendly towards Ayala (and other humans) from the get-go.

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Hive: A soft antagonist belonging to (@justaduckarts). A man-made experimental hybrid creature that can be classified (loosely) as a “Maneater”. Hive was tailor made to be an efficient hunting machine that can take control of other creatures, namely Loot Bugs, Circuit Bees, and Maneaters. The problem was that he turned on his creators and now freely roams Mania, where he establishes himself as a looming threat.

Though he dislikes humans, he recognizes that he is in need of them in order to achieve his goals. As a result, he only briefly takes interest in killing and devouring Ayala. After which point his interest becomes more along the lines of claiming her as a suitable nest for his clutches of mindless offspring.

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Carlos: Antagonist and asshole, belonging to (@justaduckarts). Carlos is a human, and is the primary reason that Ayala has been put into the situation that she is in. He is a person of high power and authority who saw someone that he wanted, couldn’t get them, and proceeded to do everything in his power to punish her for it.

He is flat out a bastard using his high status to commit heinous acts against those who are beneath him. Plain and simple.

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Aberrant: A minor but beloved protagonist, belonging to (@pulsarsatellite). Aberrant is a Creepvine Bracken, which is a generally non-hostile but troublemaking subspecies of Bracken that clings to walls. He is a bit of a mischief maker, but he is never out to do actual harm to Ayala or to any of the other humans; at least so long as he remains unprovoked.

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Constance: A minor but distinct protagonist, belonging to (@thelonereni). Constance is a Sugarlump Tradesman, which is a unique subspecies of Bracken which lurks in an impossible to access nest. Her whole gimmick is that people can bring items to her (or lure live prey to her) to trade them for anything that she might have.

She is a creature shrouded in mystery and her true appearance will likely remain unknown. Just know that she is far more aware of the goings on of her environment than anyone might realize.

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Casterai: A soft antagonist turned protagonist, belonging to (@rnekopallet). Casterai is a Thorned Hunter, which is a subspecies of Bracken primarily encountered outdoors, though they do sometimes come inside. They are adapted to thrive in the harsh desert environment surrounding the facility. Initial hostilities are short lived, following which point Cas and Ayala come to friendly terms.

They’re still pretty dangerous with most other humans though. Largely because visiting humans tend to be unwilling to try and make nice with the random surface dwelling Bracken that will try to drain them of their bodily fluids if given the chance.

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Mars: A soft antagonist that eventually becomes something of a soft protagonist, though they may be better described as the anti-hero. He belongs to (@xnanosilverx). Mars is a man-made entity best described as a “Braken”, though his genetic makeup is far more complicated than one would gather at a glance.

Mars was produced in an attempt to create obedient and powerful entities that could be sent out to distant moons in order to gather resources. He is strong, intelligent, and able to fend off most enemy mobs with ease. But due to his treatment, he has developed a strong distaste for humans. As a result, he remains hostile towards Ayala for a while and considers her a threat. Though he does eventually soften up.

Only towards her though. He will still flat out kill any other human that he encounters.

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June: A soft antagonist turned tense protagonist, belonging to (@xnanosilverx). June is a human coming from a rival colony, thus making her and Ayala enemies from the get go. At least from her perspective, and from the perspective of those with power over her.

She is betrayed by her crew and as a result, she is left stranded on Mania, where she is expected to die. However, she encounters Ayala and (following some not so pleasant confrontations) winds up reluctantly teaming up with this rival worker in order to survive being stranded in the harsh environment until she can make it back to her colony.

From there, she, like Ayala, finds herself being regularly left behind by her crew. Though her circumstances are less a failure to return to the ship and more her assigned crews intentionally abandoning her out of fear. These continuous bouts of abandonment are what inevitably leads to these women forming a long term alliance, as cooperation assures both of their long-term survival in these harsh environments.

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FNAF Characters) - Note that more may be added in the future and they likely will not exist in a robotic form, but as a form of monster or human.

Sun: Standard Bracken x Thorned Hunter hybrid. Spends most of his time outdoors. Non-hostile. Protagonist. Unlikely to be involved in main story stuff and more as passing “Haha, look who's here!” and then I’ll write lewd things.

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Moon: Thorned Hunter x Ghost Bracken hybrid. Spends most of his time indoors. Generally hostile towards humans but easy enough to befriend. Antagonist turned protagonist. Unlikely to be involved in main story stuff and more as passing “Haha, look who's here!” and then I’ll write lewd things.

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Eclipse: Thorned Hunter x Creepvine Bracken hybrid. He suffers from gigantism and is therefore much larger than others of his kind. He is relatively innocent and curious in nature, though he can be quite dangerous if provoked. Firmly assigned to the protagonist status. Unlikely to be involved in main story stuff and more as passing “Haha, look who's here!” and then I’ll write lewd things.

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Afton: A human of the highest status in Ayala’s colony. One of the few aware of the dark reality of the system and why it works the way that it does. Raw antagonist working from the shadows, ultimately doing everything in his power to maintain the status quo. Will not be featured super frequently, though he will still be considered a major part of the story.

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Location: The primary aspects of the story setting will take place either on “Mania” (a non-canon moon crafted specifically for the purposes of this story) or in space, aboard the Colony.

Mania can be described as a “Super Moon” (in the sense that it is larger than the lifeless planet that it orbits, which has a far denser core and therefore a stronger gravitational pull). It is a celestial body with a unique atmosphere that is regularly plagued by potent electrical storms, which have an intense and adverse effect on mechanical objects. These storms make landing on or attempting to leave the moon an incredibly risky endeavor. It is not uncommon for transport vessels to crash when attempting to land or escape the moon. So much so that even the surface of the planet is littered with valuable metal scrap and rare resources.

Lore-wise, Mania is a celestial body that was briefly targeted for mining operations, as it is naturally heavy with a range of desirable ore and mineral deposits. It was highly sought after due to this, and due to the fact that mechanical items will thrive there… On good days.

When not plagued by magnetic storms, Mania acted as a “goldmine” that was practically overflowing with valuable goods. The strange workings of the atmosphere allowed mechanical objects to be used without manufactured power sources, which also allowed workers to go about their business for longer due to lack of a need to recharge or replace batteries.

However, on days when magnetic storms were active, fatal accidents would frequently occur. Mass power outages would periodically send entire facilities into chaos. Workers down in the mine tunnels would abruptly find themselves trapped in complete darkness with absolutely no means of communicating to those on the surface. Transport vessels in active touchdown or takeoff would abruptly lose power and crash.

While the mines were active, multiple employee deaths would take place on a weekly basis. The unpredictable nature of these magnetic storms made predicting their arrival near impossible, which in turn meant that attempts at working around the weather were also poorly executed.

Due to the frequent issues and the massive slew of casualties accrued over a short period of time, all mining operations were abruptly shut down and the moon was abandoned. Mania now exists as a moon which is only meant to be visited by the most desperate of collection crews.

The Colony, meanwhile, is one of many massive spacebound vessels in which huge populations of humans reside. There are many colonies, and likewise many distinct crews which all work for the same company. These colonies are very much at odds with each other, and each has its own distinct societal expectations. Conflicts between crews are not uncommon.

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Mobs: All of the mobs listed will be monsters featured or otherwise encountered throughout the story. Remember that much of the lore regarding these creatures will be changed, largely because I’m a whore for speculative biology and I LOVE to put things together in a way that creates an interactive world.

Canon Creatures) Note that this category will ALSO feature fan-made subspecies

Harmless Entities)

Tulip Snake: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore.

Manticoil: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore.

Roaming Locust: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore.

Outdoor Entities)

Eyeless Dog: The standard form will be present, as well as a Subspecies called “Spore Dogs” which have a symbiotic relationship with Ghost Bracken. The subspecies is actually docile and will only appear late at night.

Baboon Hawk: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore. Males might be specified as being bigger.

Kidnapper Fox (and Vain Shroud): Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore. Possibly with some moon-specific variants that act the same but have different colors.

Circuit Bees: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore.

Forest Giant: Will be standard to what we see in the game. Just some altered lore.

Kamikaze Ant: A species of ground dwelling ants with access to chemical warfare. They have an acidic saliva that allows them to chew up metal, which they use to create their nests. When threatened, adult members of the colony will rush toward the target and explode, creating a shower of boiling acid that deals high amounts of damage. Can be safely lured out of their nest with food items, which creates an opportunity for their nest to be swiftly dug up and brought back to the ship.

Indoor Entities)

Bracken: The bracken will be a species heavily featured throughout the story, and will appear in the form of many subspecies. Those being the Neckbreaker (Standard), Ghost, Creepvine, Thorned Hunter, and the Sugarlump Tradesman. Not to mention the occasional hybrid. There may come the additional inclusion of other new species as time goes on and I expand upon the world.

Hoarder Bug: Will appear in the Standard form (The Hoarder), as well as in Flicker (Attracted to glowing objects) and Overcharge (Electric) varieties.

Thumper: Will appear in the Standard (Pale) and Cave (Black and gray) varieties. The Cave variety can climb and run across walls.

Snare Flea: Will only appear in the Standard variety.

Maneater: Will appear in multiple forms with slightly differing appearance, with distinguishing male and female appearances. The three distinct species will be the Standard (Charger - fast moving and chases down prey), the Hopper (Moves slowly but can leap huge distances due to specialized hind-legs), and the Mantid (slow moving ambush predator which hides and captures prey in mantis-like forelegs). The males of all three varieties have wings and will rarely leave the mines at night in order to seek out potential mates elsewhere.

Jester: The child of an Eldritch being, left brutally deformed by its parent. An unkillable and virtually inescapable entity which thrives on human suffering and seeks to regain the favor of its parent through human sacrifice. Has a fierce rivalry with its sibling, the Coilhead, who it once brutally deformed. The only of its kind which can appear on any moon at any given time. Always avoids its sibling.

Coilhead: The favored child of an Eldritch being, left brutally deformed by its sibling, the Jester. Unkillable yet easy enough to escape. Attacks humans for unknown reasons yet it is known to be ashamed of its unpleasant appearance. The only of its kind which can appear on any moon at any given time. Always avoids its sibling.

Bunker Spider: Only the standard Bunker Spider will be present though male and females will be differentiated. Mostly by the females behaving like Wolf Spiders, which carry brood upon their backs. Males are more aggressive while females try to evade threats by fleeing armed employees. Leaving her alone is ill-advised, though, as her babies may decide that it's time to become independent. At which point a swarm of baseball sized spiderlings will begin roaming the map in search of food.

Hygrodere: Just a slime. There won’t really be any variants. Though it will behave differently. It will be drawn to corpses and distracted by them for long periods of time while digesting them.

Spore Lizard: Standard variant only.

Nutcracker: Will appear in three variants who all attack slightly differently. The Standard (Shotgun. Get blasted.), the Fencer (Sword wielding. Death by impalement.), and the Berserker (Club wielding. Tracks down and beats people to death). Nutcrackers are established as being alien organisms that went on to be surgically modified in order to exist within their shells, for the sake of guarding specific building structures. Their unaltered species remains enslaved to this day and is used to perform all manner of tasks.

Velvet Stinger: A species of giant, wingless wasps which roam the interior of buildings, using gathered loot to build nests for their eggs. They resemble velvet ants and are roughly the size of a loot bug. Males lack stingers and guard the nests, whereas females have stingers and patrol the environment in search of food and resources. Both sport a massive set of mandibles, which are used to maim and cut apart prey.

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Environmental Hazards: This segment only really exists to introduce a few new environmental hazards that are specific to Mania, the primary moon that is explored throughout story elements.

Magnetic Storm)

A frequent environmental hazard associated with the moon. While not a constant occurrence, these storms happen on a weekly basis and it is not unusual for multiple to happen throughout a week (usually over the course of a few days).

These storms are harmless to organic life and only pose a threat to mechanical objects. While the moon is suffering from one of these storms, there will be random waves of intense magnetic force that roll across the terrain, completely disabling any mechanical item.

During exploration, these magnetic waves are largely considered a nuisance. They do not directly harm the explorers, but they do lead to regular injury or even death due to their ability to disable electronics. During one of these waves, handheld objects like flashlights and walkie-talkies will shut off and lose the ability to function. Lights inside of the building will also flicker briefly, before blacking out. Likewise, all functions of the ship will be completely shut off during this time.

For a period ranging from 5 to 30 seconds, all electronics will be completely incapable of being used. Following this period, all electronics will return to their previous function as if nothing happened.

These storms are the reason that Mania is considered to be a high risk moon, as if the ship is in active movement when a magnetic wave hits, there is a high likelihood of a fatal crash.

Sandstorm)

The main facilities of Mania are found in a well established desert environment, which means that it gets little water and has low humidity. This leads to a very dry and dusty landscape, which in turn means that during periods of high wind (which will usually take place the day before a Magnetic Storm), large amounts of sand and debris are picked up and carried for miles.

These Sandstorms alone are not a threat. They do not damage explorers or their equipment. On paper, these storms will make the landscape safer due to most outdoor mobs being unwilling to explore the area.

In practice, though, these storms are highly disorienting and are prone to bringing about the demise of explorers caught out in them. That being because the blanket of airborne sand is so thick that it is impossible to make out distant landmarks. Deaths most often occur as a result of explorers getting disoriented by their inability to see their environment, thus leading to them walking into rare patches of quicksand or simply getting lost out in the wilderness; where they inevitably get picked off by local predators once the storm subsides.

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Story:

The Earth is no more. And through no fault of humanity at that.

Centuries ago, the homeworld of the human race was destroyed. A series of inescapable cosmic events led to the planet first being left uninhabitable, and then left as little more than a blanket of asteroids floating aimlessly through the vacuum of space.

Asteroid strikes. Natural disasters. Pollution. Corporate greed and the overharvesting of valuable, but finite resources.

Alien invasions. War with beings the likes of which the human race had no means of understanding at the point of their arrival.

All of these horrific circumstances, and even more, played into the inevitable destruction of the Earth.

Which in turn led to the remnants of the human race being banished to the stars, where they would remain trapped aboard mechanical vessels as they embarked on a seemingly endless search for a new place to call home.

Many colonies were built.

Aboard these colonies went the remnants of humanity. Along with whatever plant and animal life they could be bothered to salvage.

The majority of life on Earth has since gone extinct. As humanity could not afford to save everything that inhabited the planet.

Only that which could be reliably farmed and used was granted salvation. Few animals. Few plants. The majority of each being used for food, fuel, or clothing.

The struggle for survival then swiftly moved into full swing as the fight to secure resources drove each of the colonies into dispute.

Numerous alien worlds were located and swiftly invaded in hopes of claiming access to their bounty.

Numerous alien worlds became the final resting place to countless human lives as the natives of those worlds inevitably retaliated.

Invade. Harvest. Suffer retaliation. Retreat.

Invade. Harvest. Suffer retaliation. Retreat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

All at the command of the High Counsel; those among the human race who have inherited great political power across the generations of struggle.

Always obey.

Always obey. They make the laws. The laws are enforced.

Obey the law, lest you be tried for your arrogance and dealt a fine that no job aboard the colony could ever grant you the means of paying off.

Lest you, as a criminal, find yourself recruited by The Company and sent out into the void to hunt for valued resources, until some hostile alien entity either takes your life, or you have succeeded in paying off your debt to your people.

Obey the law. Or be sent to those long abandoned worlds

Obey the law. Or be forced to salvage.

Obey the law. Or be forced to fight the ever looming fight.

Obey the law. Or be sent to them. The beast behind the wall. The beast with a body of writhing tendrils. The beast which will take your corpse as payment if and when you fail to present it with objects of suitable value.

The law is good. The law protects you. It keeps your colony strong and grants you a safe place to live, far away from the relentless hell of the alien void…

…

…..

…….

The Earth has been destroyed.

The cause? Forces beyond our realm of understanding. Entities born of infinity and destined to exist even after time has ceased to be.

Ours, and many other habitable worlds have been erased so that we, and the many other races of our magnitude, can be put to better use.

The Great Ones seek our flesh.

They crave our suffering. Our struggles for survival bring them delight. It satiates them in the way that a feast will satiate the masses.

We are their cattle. Born to be farmed and bred to be used to fulfill their goals.

We must do what is expected of us. Otherwise humanity as a whole will be culled so that new specimens can be bred anew.

Keep the masses unaware. Prevent the hysteria. The fewer of us who recognize that we are livestock, the better our odds of survival.

Serve the one behind the wall. Do its bidding. For it is the shepherd which assures our survival.

Expand the colonies. Expand the population. Send them our dead to satiate their cravings for flesh. For the shepherd will abandon their flock if it loses its worth.

Send the criminals. Use them as we always have; to benefit the free.

If there are no criminals. Create them.

Create whatever law you must in order to assure that our supply of sacrificial cattle can be maintained.

Do it.

You must.

If you want the human race to continue on, then you must.

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Extra:

The quota system is completely different in the story vs what would be seen in the game. Instead of getting 3 days to collect enough materials to meet an ever expanding quota, each worker has a debt that they must pay off in order to buy their freedom and escape the company. There is a minimum quota that needs to be met in order to pay off the fees that are accrued while incarcerated. Failing to meet this quota leads to the accrued fees being added to the overall debt.

Each 4 man team is working together to pay off their total amount of debt. All profits earned during each cycle will be divided equally among them.

Each individual worker will be released from duty once their specific debt is paid off, regardless of the total debt of the group.

Failing to meet “Upkeep Quota” (the daily accrued fees) will not automatically result in termination. However, failing to meet that minimum Upkeep Quota multiple times in a row is liable to do so.

Termination, or being fired, does not mean freedom. It means death. Either by being ejected into space and left to die (banished from the colonies due to failing to contribute to society), or by being consumed by “Jeb” after failure to deliver valuable goods.

Cycles still consist of 3 days, with a delivery expected to be made on the 4th. However, crews do not depart at the end of each day.

As opposed to daily landing and takeoff, crews will land in bases and venture out to gather resources from there. These bases are secured but must be maintained by the crew in order to deter threats.

Each base has some means of access to food and water. Workers will be charged for utilizing these utilities in excess, which will add to their accrued fees.

In the event that a base is at imminent risk of being overrun by hostile entities, emergency evacuation will take place. During such an event, workers must quickly board their transport vessel, otherwise they will be left behind to succumb to whatever fate awaits them.

Workers are given a couple of days to recover following each cycle. This is mostly to provide them medical treatment (which they are naturally charged for) in order to assure that they can continue to venture out on these dangerous excursions.

The justice system aboard the colonies is about is extreme as it comes. Breaking any law, no matter how minor the offense might be, is considered punishable by massive fine and incarceration. So stealing $1 from someone and murder are effectively punishable to the same level, though the fines that you will accrue will be (hopefully) different.

The “High Counsel” is made up entirely of people who are aware of the hidden reality of the situation. They are the people of power who create and enforce the laws in order to both keep the human population alive and under control.

There are multiple Eldritch entities in existence. Each has selected its own specific race to use as cattle. “Jeb” is the entity which is in charge of humanity. It both feeds on them and protects them from other entities that might seek to consume them.

In this setting, the gathering of scrap and other materials is very much a mislead. Jeb is the one giving humanity what it needs in order to continue to function. It has no need or desire to utilize the junk gathered by the workers. But it plays along with the little game that has been established, and likely disposes of offered goods almost as soon as they are collected. Either by sending them back to random moons/planets, or by just sending them to the colonies to be used however they will be used.

More details will be added as needed to further expand upon the ideas associated with the story.

[dragonshoard]

Fighter!Jinx only seeing in shades of pink is a double whammy since every time she wakes up there’s a second where she thinks Vi is there. You’d think the instinctive thought would fade over time, but it doesn’t.

;( ;( ;( ;( ;(

The color blindness starts when she's about 13-ish - the experimentation was much worse when she was younger and Silco didn't care so much.

Gosh but that would be so damn sad. This would probably be a thing for a long while tbh. While the color blindness doesn’t start until she’s around 13, there are times where her vision does go pink temporarily and it just reminds her of Vi (Vi who isn’t here, who is dead, who didn’t want her). 

honestly, she forgets what the world in full color actually looks like after a few years. it's hard to miss something you don't remember. But it really sucks because color can be pretty important (for example, deciphering the color of chemicals). She learns how to use her other senses and gains a better eye for detail as a result.

For a long time she sees Vi's face in almost everyone she meets. It sucks, but the trigger does fade with time and repeated exposure.

Nonconsensual exposure therapy rip

[yvetteheiser]

Yvette Heiser : Deliciously Dark Guide to Night-time Food Photography

In the world of food photography, capturing the essence of a dish goes beyond just snapping a picture. It involves careful consideration of composition, lighting, props, and styling to evoke emotions and convey the story behind the food. While daytime photography often takes centre stage, there’s a unique charm in capturing culinary delights under the enchanting glow of night, Yvette Heiser-Deliciously Dark: Exploring Food Photography in Night Settings, a renowned food photographer, has mastered this art, and her guide to night-time food photography offers invaluable insights for aspiring photographers. Let’s delve into Yvette Heiser’s techniques and tips for creating stunning food images in low-light settings.

The Allure of Night-time Photography

Night-time food photography presents a distinct set of challenges and opportunities. The absence of natural light requires photographers to be more creative with their lighting setups, but it also allows for a moodier, more atmospheric aesthetic. Yvette Heiser believes that night-time photography can add a layer of sophistication and intrigue to food images, making them stand out in a sea of brightly lit photos.

Essential Equipment

To excel in night-time food photography, having the right equipment is crucial. Yvette Heiser recommends the following gear:

Camera: A DSLR or mirror less camera with good low-light performance is essential. Look for models with high ISO capabilities and minimal noise at higher settings.

Lenses: Fast prime lenses with wide apertures (e.g., f/1.8 or f/2.8) are ideal for capturing sharp images in low light. A 50mm or 85mm lens is a great choice for food photography.

Tripod: A sturdy tripod is a must-have for night-time photography to avoid camera shake and ensure sharp images.

Mastering Lighting Techniques

Lighting is the most critical aspect of night-time food photography. Yvette Heiser emphasizes the importance of experimenting with different light sources and angles to achieve the desired effect. Here are some of her top lighting tips:

Use Multiple Light Sources: Combining different light sources can create depth and dimension in your photos. For example, use a main light to illuminate the food and a secondary light to highlight specific details or create a rim light effect.

Play with Shadows: Shadows can add drama and texture to your images. Experiment with the placement of your lights to create interesting shadow patterns that enhance the visual appeal of the dish.

Control the Light: Use diffusers to soften harsh light and reflectors to bounce light back onto the subject. This helps create a more even and flattering illumination.

Composition and Styling

Composition and styling are key elements in creating visually compelling food photographs. Yvette Heiser’s approach to composition involves a mix of classic techniques and creative experimentation:

Rule of Thirds: This classic composition technique involves dividing the frame into a 3x3 grid and placing the main subject along the grid lines or at their intersections. This creates a balanced and visually appealing image.

Adjust Exposure and Contrast: Fine-tune the exposure and contrast to ensure the image is well-balanced and the details are clearly visible.

In the realm of photography, filters have long been a tool of choice for both amateur and professional photographers and Yvette Heiser– Texas, talks about the importance of filters in photos, a renowned photographer based in Texas, has extensively explored the use of filters in her work, particularly in food and wedding photography. Her insights into the importance of filters reveal how these tools can transform ordinary photos into extraordinary visual stories. This article delves into Yvette Heiser’s perspective on the significance of filters in photography, offering valuable tips and techniques for enhancing your photographic skills.

The Role of Filters in Photography

Filters are optical accessories that attach to the front of a camera lens. They serve various purposes, from protecting the lens to enhancing colours and reducing reflections. Yvette Heiser emphasizes that filters are not just about adding effects; they are about controlling light and improving image quality. By understanding the different types of filters and their applications, photographers can elevate their work to new heights.

Types of Filters and Their Uses

UV Filters: Originally designed to block ultraviolet light and protect the lens, UV filters are now primarily used as a protective layer. Yvette Heiser recommends using UV filters to safeguard expensive lenses from scratches, dust, and moisture.

Polarizing Filters: These filters are essential for reducing glare and reflections, especially when photographing water, glass, or shiny surfaces. Yvette explains that polarizing filters enhance colour saturation and contrast, making skies appear bluer and foliage greener. They are particularly useful in landscape photography.

Neutral Density (ND) Filters: ND filters reduce the amount of light entering the lens without affecting colour balance. Yvette uses ND filters to achieve long exposure shots, creating smooth, flowing water effects or capturing motion blur in busy urban scenes. They are also helpful in bright conditions when a slower shutter speed is needed.

Enhancing Aesthetics with Filters

Yvette Heiser believes that filters play a crucial role in enhancing the aesthetic quality of photographs. By carefully selecting and using filters, photographers can achieve a desired mood or atmosphere. For instance, a polarizing filter can make a landscape photo look more vibrant and dynamic, while an ND filter can add a sense of tranquillity to a seascape.

Conclusion

Night-time food photography offers a unique and captivating way to showcase culinary creations. Yvette Heiser’s guide provides aspiring photographers with the tools and techniques needed to master this challenging yet rewarding art form. By experimenting with lighting, composition, and post-processing, you can create stunning images that capture the essence and allure of food under the enchanting glow of night. Whether you’re photographing a gourmet dish at a fine dining restaurant or a cozy meal at home, Yvette Heiser’s insights will help you elevate your food photography to new heights.

[butchstrife]

okay quick question: what the fuck is ff7 actually like, about. what’s the goal? also why does everyone i see just look like a person who could potentially have something magic abt them and then there’s just an unironic talking cat. what are the rules in this universe? (i don’t need to know about all the other ff games unless it’s necessary setup, i’m mostly just curious abt the story of 7)

Starts vibrating. This is gonna get so long.

First things first I feel it necessary to clarify that no game in the mainline Final Fantasy series takes place in the same world. FFVII is a completely different world from say FFXIV and so on. Some games have sequels and spin offs, like FFVII having Crisis Core and (groan) Dirge of Cerberus, or FFX and FFX-2. But other than that, no relation between games.

Final Fantasy VII is a more sci-fi fantasy take on the FF series, keeping the themes of magic and adventure, but adding a dieselpunk/cyberpunk twist to it. Overall the main themes of FFVII is environmentalism and identity.

The characters are pretty consistent with the themes and designs of the entire FF franchise, it’s meant to be a little silly. So stuff like Moogles, Chocobo, talking cat, all falls under that silliness of FF.

Now the fucking story, there’s so much going on in this game. For simplicity (and personal preference) I will be ignoring the FFVII Compilation in favor of ONLY explaining the original 1997 game. There’s already so much going on, no need to complicate things.

The story of FFVII follows nine heroes who all have their own beef with the Shinra Electric Power Company, the company who rules over many cities and villages throughout the world by use of their private military. Over the roughly 40 years (iirc) the company has been around, they’ve committed several atrocities against humanity and the planet itself, which is a living thing in FFVII!! It’s very very important to note the planet it ALIVE!!

Shinra has several parts of the company that are important to the story, I won’t go over the company’s entire hierarchy, but there’s important parts of the company that I absolutely have to explain.

The R&D department is arguably the most antagonistic, led currently by Professor Hojo. The bitch is this prick who is over enthusiastic about human experimentation, eugenics being a motivator behind that (not as obviously as say Albert Wesker, but you cannot ignore Hojo is largely a eugenicist)

Then we have SOLDIER, Shinra’s super-soldiers created by Hojo. These guys are experimented on and enhanced with Mako, which is well put by Barret the “Lifeblood of the planet.” Among their ranks are Sephiroth, the most famous and powerful of the SOLDIERs, and (allegedly) Cloud Strife. Plus another guy, we’ll get to him.

Then there’s the Power Company part of this power company. Shinra built reactors that pump Mako out of the planet and convert it into energy. This process depletes the planet of Mako, a resource that IS finite and that the planet needs to survive. The company markets Mako as a clean and safe energy source, in a world that previously largely depended on coal mining. However Mako energy is anything but, where the reactors are built, the native flora and fauna eventually die out, and allows monsters to thrive. Plus, exposure to refined Mako is notably very dangerous to humans, as overexposure leads to “Mako poisoning” which meddles the mind and weakens the body. (So how do SOLDIERs work then? Great question! I’ll get to that!)

The story kicks off with a group in Shinra’s crowning accomplishment, the city of Midgar, called Avalanche. Avalanche is a group of “Ecoterrorists” who are set out to take Shinra down to save the planet. The group is led by our beloved Barret Wallace alongside a colorful cast of lovable characters, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and Tifa Lockhart! Plus, the newly hired ex-SOLDIER mercenary (and Tifa’s childhood friend), Cloud Strife.

The group conducts several missions to bomb the Mako reactors in Midgar, the first bombing going off without a hitch, the second mission… not so much. After one (really easy) boss fight, Cloud ends up falling off the upper city plate down into the under city, directly through the roof of a church where he meets our mysterious Aeris Gainsborough!! Aeris hires Cloud as a bodyguard (with the payment of one date with her), as she escapes Shinra’s Turks. I’d explain what the Turks do, but just know they’re all kinda John Wick types.

Now I’m gonna speed through the rest of the game since we’ve met all four of the most important protagonists.

The rest of the game kicks off after Aeris decides to help Cloud and Tifa after they learn Shinra plans on destroying part of the city just to take out Avalanche. During their mission to save the city, Aeris is kidnapped by Shinra. Reason being, Aeris is an Ancient (later clarified to actually be called Cetra), a people who were able to speak directly to the planet, and she’s the very last one at that. The mission fails and many innocent people are killed in the fallout, as well as the other members of Avalanche. After all Aeris did to help, including saving Barret’s daughter Marlene, our heroes are determined to save her. During their mission to save Aeris, it’s revealed that the long thought dead General Sephiroth is somehow still alive, a fact Cloud insists should be impossible.

After that, Cloud is determined to track down Sephiroth and take him down for good, as revenge for Sephiroth destroying Cloud and Tifa’s hometown, Nibelheim. All of our heroes agree to help Cloud pursue Sephiroth after learning what he did to Nibelheim. Along the way we meet lots of other characters.

Nanaki aka Red XIII, a funny little talking animal who was being held prisoner alongside Aeris, rescued at the same time she was. He agrees to follow the group until he can return to his home, as thanks for them rescuing him from Professor Hojo.

Yuffie Kisarsgi (my beloved daughter), a teenage ninja and thief from Wutai, who is on the hunt for Materia (magical gems that allow people to cast magic). She joins the group after she steals their materia and promptly is defeated, deciding she might have more opportunities to get materia if she doesn’t go it alone.

The journey continues as the group heads out to find Sephiroth. Their first encounter with him being on a boat to Costa del Sol. Where Sephiroth leaves behind a limb (I think an arm? I never remember which limb is which) of his “mother” Jenova, and flees by doing a backflip and flying away. This limb transforms into a large monster that then attacks the group. After she’s defeated, the quest to find Sephiroth continues.

They travel across the world, landing in all sorts of unique locations, all in search of Sephiroth and how to truly defeat him. We meet more guys.

Cait Sith (look up how to pronounce this in Scottish Gaelic, NOT English) is a little toy cat the group meets at the theme park the Gold Saucer. He receives a fortune that the group is in trouble and cue my favorite “joined the party” moment in any video game:

Vincent Valentine, an ex-Turk who reveals Jenova is not truly Sephiroth’s mother, but instead a woman named Lucrecia, whom he was in love with. Vincent was experimented on by Hojo and gained the ability to turn into monsters. He chose to sleep in a coffin for the rest of his life as atonement for not being able to stop Lucrecia from experimenting on herself and her son. After he learns Sephiroth is a threat to the planet, he joins the group to stop him.

Cid Highwind is a skilled pilot and SHOULD have been one of the first men to go to space, unfortunately one of his crew members put herself at risk during the spaceship’s launch and he chose to cancel the launch to save her. After that, Shinra defunded his space program which he resented them for. The group attempts to steal his plane before Shinra can and he joins them mainly because he wants to stick it to Shinra, plus they broke his plane and he needs to fix it.

That’s the whole gang! Finally, crazy how many playable characters there are in this game.

Eventually the group learns of the Black Materia, an extremely powerful weapon that was created by the Cetra (shhhh don’t listen to Rebirth they lied to you) as a result of them creating Holy, an equally powerful materia that was created to rid the world of Jenova, the Cetra’s greatest enemy. They continue on a quest to find the Black Materia before Sephiroth can use it to destroy the world. (It’s kinda a Fullmetal Alchemist equivalent exchange thing, to create the ultimate protective materia, the ultimate destructive materia had to be created in return)

All the while, Shinra pursues the group hoping Aeris will lead them to the “Promised Land” a land foretold by the Cetra to be a paradise (it’s the Cetra’s afterlife lmfao, Shinra’s stupid).

Upon finding the Black Materia, Sephiroth finally busts out his ability to control Cloud, forcing Cloud to hand over the materia to him. Aaaand now I can explain how SOLDIERs work. All SOLDIERs have Jenova’s cells in them, which is what allows them to survive Mako exposure AND is also how Cloud was able to keep finding Sephiroth! Jenova, and Sephiroth, can exert control over anyone with her cells and is currently trying to create a “Reunion”, drawing in everyone who contains Jenova’s cells so she can be whole again. Which is why Cloud is inexplicably drawn to following Sephiroth (hahahaha bitch fell for the classic thinking it’s about revenge but actually just being alien mind control).

Right after losing the Black Materia to Sephiroth, Aeris heads out on her own. The group manages to follow her to the lost city of the Cetra, where she attempts to summon Holy to defeat Jenova and Sephiroth.

The group arrives too late to rescue Aeris before Sephiroth arrives and kills her. Jenova appears once again and the group defeats her. They all mourn the loss of their beloved friend, then become reinvigorated to stop Sephiroth.

They go snowboarding literally immediately after this, funniest tonal shift of all time, as they head to the northern crater. They gets their hands back on the Black Materia before they make it to a cavern in which the REAL Sephiroth has been sealed this ENTIRE TIME!!!!

Cloud leaves the Black Materia with [enter ally of the player’s choice] so Sephiroth can’t take control of him to steal it back again.

Shinra also makes their way to this cavern, Professor Hojo then reveals that Cloud was never in SOLDIER, but instead is an experiment created by him, a “Sephiroth Clone”. Cloud is led to believe that he isn’t the real Cloud Strife, and only took on that appearance from Jenova’s ability to read minds (she can do so many things) and take the appearance of others based off memory, in this case, Tifa’s memory of her childhood friend. Cloud reacts super normally to this information (he has a meltdown). Sephiroth manages to trick [whoever the player left the Black Materia with] into bringing the Black Materia to Cloud. Who ONCE AGAIN is compelled to give it to Sephiroth.

Sephiroth is back for real now, and summons Meteor with the Black Materia. It’s a meteor, exactly what it sounds like.

Then literally so much happens. I can speedrun the disc three explanation sooo well. Cloud falls into the soup (the Lifestream, think of it like the veins of the planet) and goes missing. The group decides Cid’s in charge in his place since he’s a ship captain. Giant monsters emerge out of the plant, called Weapons (creative naming all around in this game, probably sounded cooler in Japanese). The Weapons were created as a defense mechanism of the planet against Jenova. But now they’re just kinda freaking out and blowing shit up.

Cloud is found completely unresponsive in a town called Mideel, Tifa elects to stay with him in hopes he’ll get better. The rest of the group heads forward on a mission to find the Huge Materia (literally just materia but big) before Shinra. Hoping maybe they’ll be able to use it to stop Meteor somehow.

Wacky adventures ensue. A weapon shows up in Mideel and causes an earthquake that opens up to the Lifestream, Cloud and Tifa both fall into the soup.

In the Lifestream, Tifa explores Cloud’s memories. She slowly tries to piece together the real story of what happened to Cloud, and to prove that he IS the real Cloud Strife.

We learn about Zack, an actual SOLDIER, who came to Nibelheim with Sephiroth before he destroyed the village. And how in Cloud’s memories, he placed himself in Zack’s shoes. (This is who Zack is and this is one of two parts of the entire game he shows up in)

As they go on and explore Cloud’s memories, they learn that he might never have been in SOLDIER, but he WAS in Nibelheim when it was destroyed, but as an infantryman, not a SOLDIER. He wore a helmet the entire time literally only because he was embarrassed about potentially running into Tifa (he was 16 back then, typical teenager behavior).

Cloud and Tifa wash up back in Mideel, found by their friends. This happens:

(Kidding, this is just the joke I made about this scene)

They go kill Sephiroth. Free Holy, which gets rid of Jenova once and for all and with the helpful of the Lifestream (again the planet is very alive) Meteor is stopped and the day is saved!! The only question that remains is, did Holy decide humanity was part of the threat to the planet? Do they remain after Meteor is stopped? It’s up to interpretation!!! We know Nanaki lived tho! He lived on for another 500 years!!!

Anyways that’s the gist of it, there’s like, way more. You would not believe how much story is packed into this game. And I loveeee it, it’s really good :) the characters are my everythings <3

[unwelcome-ozian]

Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans’ Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century, 08 December 1994 [58 Pages, 3.48MB] – During the last 50 years, hundreds of thousands of military personnel have been involved in human experimentation and other intentional exposures conducted by the Department of Defense (DOD), often without a service member’s knowledge or consent. In some cases, soldiers who consented to serve as human subjects found themselves participating in experiments quite different from those described at the time they volunteered. For example, thousands of World War II veterans who originally volunteered to ‘test summer clothing’ in exchange for extra leave time, found themselves in gas chambers testing the effects of mustard gas and lewisite. Additionally, soldiers were sometimes ordered by commanding officers to “volunteer” to participate in research or face dire consequences. For example, several Persian Gulf War veterans interviewed by Committee staff reported that they were ordered to take experimental vaccines during Operation Desert Shield or face prison. The goals of many of the military experiments and exposures were very appropriate. For example, some experiments were intended to provide important information about how to protect U.S. troops from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons or other dangerous substances during wartime. In the Persian Gulf War, U.S. troops were intentionally exposed to an investigational vaccine that was intended to protect them against biological warfare, and they were given pyridostigmine bromide pills in an experimental protocol intended to protect them against chemical warfare.

[thefirstknife]

sorry if this is a lot to ask, but could you sum up the veil lore now that we have all of the logs? I haven't been keeping up with them.

Love your lore summaries <3

Sure thing! I'll quickly summarise most important stuff we found out in each log and I'll put links to them for reading more. Here's the link to all logs in order in a playlist on Destiny Content Vault.

First log is a part of the mission and has some extra stuff going on, but the log itself is there to just establish what we'll be listening to. The narrator of the logs will be Chioma Esi, one of the founders of Neomuna and a Golden Age scientist of the Ishtar Collective. She tells us how Maya Sundaresh, her wife, picked her up with Exodus Indigo on their way to Neomuna just as the Collapse was happening around them.

The second log is immediately a huge lore drop about the Veil and the initial reaction that people had to it. It confirmed that the Veil had already been there before they arrived, that Maya immediately connected with it and it spoke to her in her own voice, as well as how it had an adverse effect on the Exos. Chioma also mentions how the Veil is a "thesis statement to the Von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis" which I mentioned very briefly in my post, but I do not have the knowledge to explain quantum and theoretical physics. However, other people do! Please check out this reddit post about this which goes in-depth in language as approachable as possible to understand how much this single sentence means in the grand scheme of things.

Third log! Chioma is suspicious about the Veil, but Maya insists that this is where they have to settle. It's confirmed that Neomuna nanotechnology comes from SIVA which was on board all Exodus ships, which includes Exodus Indigo. The nanotech helped them build settlements quickly, but not quickly enough before all of their Exos succumbed to the exposure of the Veil.

More under:

Log number four goes into some of the stuff about the Vex and their relationship with the Veil. The Vex quickly established themselves in Neomuna and started attacking the settlement, but were prevented from going too far into it, stopped by the Veil. The Vex retaliated by creating a "screen" that isolated Neomuna from the outside world. This made Neomuni safe, but also stuck with the Vex.

Fifth log was big, and mostly concerns with the Exos again. This one revealed to us that the Veil is capable of essentially breaking down the alkahest used to make the Exos function. The Veil's power "overloads" the Clarity aspect of alkahest and essentially erases the Exos, rendering them dead. Maya reveals that she wants to use the Veil to instead "fabricate consciousness" into the newly dead Exos. Chioma is sinking further into despair about Maya's behaviour. Osiris also poses the question if Nimbus knows more about how Cloud Striders are made, implying a possible link between them and the Veil's power.

Number six! This one continues in the same vein, showing us how they speculated about using SIVA, nanotechnology that functions similarly to radiolaria (but mechanical instead of biological), and components from both the Vex and dead Exos in order to create some technology or enhance the use of the nanotech. Osiris confirms that there does seem to be some link between the Vex and Cloud Strider technology.

Seventh log shows us further experimentation with the Veil. Maya managed to build a prototype interface for the Veil which consists of an "orchestra" and a "conductor:" multiple people would connect to the Veil with the interface and follow the conductor to sync up and control the input and output, especially to parse through the data. This was very risky and dangerous. Chioma is falling even deeper into despair over how unethical and dangerous what they're doing is.

Eight! Things get worse! Experiments with interfacing with the Veil proved entirely fatal for the whole team. Maya did not seem to care about this and only cared about valuable data, while Chioma was having harder and harder time dealing with the situation. Osiris also points out how similar this whole situation is to what the Witness had done to its species; how they all used the Veil to interface with it and merge into one.

Log number nine caught us all by surprise by revealing that Maya continued with the experiments and used previously dead Exos to "fabricate consciousness" into them; she hooked them up to the Veil's interface and fabricated a new consciousness into an Exo known as Lakshmi-2. We don't know how many consciousnesses were used to create this, but Maya also used her own, giving Lakshmi her own voice and some of her memories. Big implications for everything about Lakshmi, especially Lakshmi's involvement with the Future War Cult as their leader, given that the Future War Cult was founded by Maya Sundaresh in the Golden Age. It also brought some new perspective to Lakshmi's interest in the Spontaneous Exo Reset Syndrome, as well as possibly a bigger reason why Savathun sought to corrupt Lakshmi and remove her from the City. Here's also my post recaping Season of the Splicer after we learned about this, to clear some stuff about her and Savathun's corruption of her back then.

Tenth log tells us about Maya finally succeeding in connecting people to the Veil without casualties. Months and probably years of work eventually paid off and the Veil became a viable source of power for the Neomuni and this event is probably what paved the way for the CloudArk. The Veil is described as a web of consciousness and Chioma further explains why the Vex might want it, as it would allow them to run paracausal simulations, something they aren't capable of doing currently. Chioma recognises that this should be a moment to celebrate, but she can't because she knows the Veil is dangerous but now there's a whole civilisation built on it.

Eleventh log was short and sad. Chioma tells us how she found Maya dead, alone, in the conductor's chair. It's unclear what she was doing and how she died. Chioma is unsettled by Lakshmi who is half-Maya, but "developmentally incomplete" and has her quarantined. Maya most likely died communing with the Veil, which has interesting implications for her consciousness.

Log number twelve tells us a few things about Neomuna's knowledge about what was going on outside of Neptune. Chioma detected Rasputin waking up in the Dark Age by monitoring her ex-work station on Hyperion, the moon of Saturn. Rasputin detected Neomuna and gave it a classification of "Nefele Stronghold." Chioma decided to send a Cloud Strider, Stargazer, to Earth to erase records of Neomuna, not because they wanted to keep their secrets or to save themselves from Warlords (although that must've also been a factor), but primarily to protect the outside world from the dangers of the Veil.

Thirteenth log shows us Chioma deciding to shut down the whole facility known as Veil Containment. She decided to hide it all and not to leave this mess on other people's conscience. She understood that there's nothing else to do and that Neomuna will go on, but that nobody else needs to know how they got to where they are. We're told that there's a Vex signature crawling through the logs, identified as "MSund12."

Number fourteen is where we end for now. Chioma reminds us about how the Ishtar scientists got exposed to the Vex and simulated by them 227 times, fully confirming that the "MSund12" Vex signature is one of Vex!Maya copies (number 12). Chioma decided that there's nothing more left to do or tell and that she made contact with the Vex, presumably to end her life with the hope that by doing so through the Vex, she will return to the Vex Collective and find Maya there. Osiris recaps things for us, reminding us again that the Veil is "the power of consciousness made manifest" and that the Traveler and the Light are the power of the physical world. He recognises the risks here, despite the great power being offered.

This gave us incredible insight into the Veil as a paracausal object and what it represents. Paired with the Witness cutscene, we learned a lot about what it means and how it's used. It's a paracausal entity with great powers over consciousess and the mind, capable of transferring, deleting or creating consciousness. It seems to parallel the Light and the Traveler which are both firmly based in the power of the physical world. Somehow, these two entities have been connected before and can connect again.

The Witness' species used the Veil to fuse their entire civilisation into a single being and set off in the pursuit of the Final Shape. The Veil was also specified as being somehow connected to the Traveler in the past, but that they've become separate and that the Traveler has since been avoiding coming back in contact with it. When the Witness attempted to connect them again for the first time, the Traveler fled and has been fleeing ever since. And now that the Witness caught up with it and finally did what it always wanted to do, a mysterious portal has been opened into a realm of unknown power and origin with unknown consequences to both the Traveler and the universe itself. All of this was made possible only with the Veil which means that the Veil's paracausal power of consciousness must have something important to do with it. Both the Witness and Maya Sundaresh were using the Veil to move and fabricate consciousness, though Maya worked a little bit smaller in scale.

Still, all of this is a great deep dive into some of the most mysterious aspects of the setting. The Veil is still a complicated paracausal entity, but the Traveler remains so as well. Possibly even more so right now. The link between the Traveler and the Veil is still left to explore, especially with how and why they are capable of opening a portal to an unknown dimension when they come in contact. This will for sure be in some way explored in the future, either in seasons themselves, the two remaining Veil Logs or maybe we'll have to wait for The Final Shape to know more. Either way, there's something going on here, in their connection and their parallels and their opposites; something needed to open a portal to a mysterious realm that has been described as "place of new wonders and old memories."

And yes, there's two Veil Logs remaining! One will be available next week when the next season starts and then the final one will be ready in the final season of the year. They've confirmed this in an article with the commentary on the Veil Log quest as a whole and their goals with it. I talked about it here, it's really interesting!

[materialsscienceandengineering]

In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, scientists have isolated the energetic movement of an electron while "freezing" the motion of the much larger atom it orbits in a sample of liquid water. The findings, reported today in the journal Science, provide a new window into the electronic structure of molecules in the liquid phase on a timescale previously unattainable with X-rays. The new technique reveals the immediate electronic response when a target is hit with an X-ray, an important step in understanding the effects of radiation exposure on objects and people. "The chemical reactions induced by radiation that we want to study are the result of the electronic response of the target that happens on the attosecond timescale," said Linda Young, a senior author of the research and Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory. "Until now radiation chemists could only resolve events at the picosecond timescale, a million times slower than an attosecond. It's kind of like saying 'I was born and then I died.' You'd like to know what happens in between. That's what we are now able to do."

Read more.

[industrial-horror]

Alternative Tentacles is an independent record label established in 1979 by Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra and guitarist East Bay Ray in San Francisco, California with the intention to release the Dead Kennedys self-produced single "California Über Alles". After realizing the potential for an independent label, they released records for other bands as well. They would go on to release albums by artists such as Dead Kennedys, NoMeansNo, D.O.A., Alice Donut, Lard, The Dicks, Butthole Surfers, 7 Seconds, Neurosis, Wesley Willis, Half Japanese, Blowfly, Subhumans (Canada), The Crucifucks, Victims Family, Pansy Division, Zolar X, Culture Shock, World/Inferno Friendship Society, Itchy-O, ArnoCorps, The Darts, Tsunami Bomb, and many more. In the mid-1980’s Jello Biafra became the sole owner of Alternative Tentacles.

The origins of Alternative Tentacles trace back to June 1979, the name Alternative Tentacles was used as the label name on Dead Kennedys self-produced debut single, "California Uber Alles." In true independent spirit, the band had saved their gig money for a year to produce their own record instead of waiting for an established label to sign them. The single would do better than anyone expected, garnering considerable attention throughout the U.S. and Europe. At the same time, lead singer Jello Biafra's 1979 mayoral campaign in San Francisco helped kick-start interest from the British music press that culminated in a very successful British and European tour in the fall of 1980, upon the release of their full length debut, "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables".

The original idea was for Alternative Tentacles to be based in Europe only, and concentrate on European released and exposure for then-unknown American bands after Biafra found many of Dead Kennedys fans were far more interested in the American underground than the overseas labels and press were.

The result was the "Let Them Eat Jellybeans" compilation album. "Let Them Eat Jellybeans" was quickly followed with singles by D.O.A., Bad Brains, Black Flag, Flipper, TSOL, Voice Far, Husker Du, and more. But the impact of "Jellybeans" and Alternative Tentacles turned out to be even greater outside Great Britain. "Jellybeans" and Dead Kennedys' follow-up '81 European tour is credited with breaking open the still strong underground scenes in Finland, Italy, Germany, and even behind the Iron Curtain.

Meanwhile, "Jellybeans" was also gaining steam in America. Many Americans were picking up import copies as a way of tuning in to the ongoing underground explosion in the States. Alternative Tentacles U.S. was off and running with domestic releases of new albums by D.O.A., TSOL, Dead Kennedys, Butthole Surfers, The Dicks, The Crucifucks and many more.

At the same time a friend in San Francisco, Ruth Schwartz, was starting Mordam Records label and distribution, they partnered with Alternative Tentacles Records to handle global distribution in 1983.

As the label progressed an increasing divide between Biafra and Ray developed stemming from a combination of personal, financial, and philosophical differences over the direction of the label. Biafra had a strong vision for the label's direction, focusing on politically charged and experimental acts prioritizing a more avant-garde and activist-focused roster and Ray was feeling that was increasingly too narrow of a direction. Also feeling that there was an increasing conflict of interest between the interest of Dead Kennedys and the label, Ray sold his stake in the mid-1980s allowing Jello Biafra to maintain full creative control over Alternative Tentacles, while Ray focused on the running of the band’s partnership.

In addition to musical acts, Alternative Tentacles has also published spoken word albums, many by Jello Biafra himself. Another common theme of Alternative Tentacles records over the years has been the artwork of Winston Smith, which has appeared on many of their records, catalogs, posters and shirts. Smith also designed the original Alternative Tentacles logo in 1981.

"From the very beginning, everyone agreed that the label should treat the bands fairly and decently," says Greg Werckman, who managed AT from 1989-1997. "It was never hip to be on Alternative Tentacles the way it was to be on Sub Pop. That was its appeal to me. We stayed true to our vision."

Alternative Tentacles has had a number of locations around San Francisco over the years. The first office was in the Dead Kennedy’s tour manager Mike Bonnano’s bedroom at the A-Hole, a punk rock household at Third and Bryant in San Francisco. They then went on to share offices with Mordam Records on Rodgers Street South of Market, then on Shipley Street still in the South of Market neighborhood shared with Mordam, then moved to the Mission District with Mordam Records on Folsom Street.

In 1995, Alternative Tentacles moved to their own office in the Noe Valley neighborhood in San Francisco, before relocating to Emeryville, CA across the Bay in October 2002 and the label has continued its operation there to present day.

In 2009, following the closure of Lumberjack Mordam Music Group, Alternative Tentacles Records switched global distribution to San Francisco based Revolver/Mid-Heaven.

In 2006 they re-released some classic early 80's recordings in its "Re-issues Of Necessity" series by the likes of JFA, The Dicks, BGK, The Fartz, Los Olvidados, Drunk Injuns, Free Beer, False Prophets, Amebix, M.I.A., Nausea, Mentally Ill, and the classic compilation "Not So Quiet on the Western Front."

In April 2019 Kerrang ran a long form feature called "An Oral History of Alternative Tentacles".

In March 2020, Bandcamp ran a feature on their site entitled "The Lesser-Known Classics of Alternative Tentacles Records" as part of their label profile series.

In 2023 Alternative Tentacles announced that they would be once again releasing the entire Nomeansno catalog on the label after the band had left the label in 2002, starting with the 7" "Dad/Revenge". This was followed by the release of the 1989 full length, "Wrong" in 2024.

Through 2024, the label has released over 500 recordings and has made a push to reissue some of the most popular releases on vinyl, releasing limited edition color versions both as pre-orders through their website and through a patreon program they launched in October of 2023.

In the early 1980s, Alternative Tentacles opened an office in the UK (eventually settling at 64 Mountgrove Road in London) to release special editions of American punk records that were unavailable in Europe, many of which were licensed from other independent U.S. labels. Among these were releases by SST Records' groups Black Flag and Hüsker Dü, the Dischord Records compilation Flex Your Head, and an EP of tracks from the Bad Brains eponymous 1982 album, as well as U.K. pressings of all American Dead Kennedys releases. It was also a distribution hub for Elemental Records until closed in 1994.

In 1985, Los Angeles prosecutors charged Biafra with "distributing harmful matter to minors" for artwork contained in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. The artwork was a poster reproduction of the painting "Work 219: Landscape XX", also known as "Penis Landscape" by H.R. Giger. The case ended in a hung jury and charges were not re-filed. Biafra presented a detailed account of the trial on his second spoken word album, High Priest of Harmful Matter − Tales from the Trial.

In 1994 in the wake of the punk zine Maximum Rocknroll taking Alternative Tentacles to task over Alternative Tentacles and Dead Kennedys working with EMI-owned distributor Caroline through Mordam, and banning ads and reviews from the label, Jello Biafra was assaulted at the Gilman St. in Berkeley, CA by a group of people chanting “Rich Rock Star”.

"Of course, it was easy to label me as a sell-out because I was part of the neighborhood," says Biafra of the MRR row. "It was one crab trying to pull another crab back in the bucket. For me, using a major distributor is more like the martial arts principle of using the enemy's strength against them. I want my work to be available in remote small towns and cultural ghettos. People have to have that opportunity."

In early 2000, the label and Biafra were named in a lawsuit brought by his former Dead Kennedys bandmates. The suit claimed that Biafra had failed to pay the band's members a decade's worth of royalties on the band's albums, totaling some $76,000.

All sides agreed the initial underpayment of royalties was due to an accounting error and Biafra himself had also not been paid from those royalties. However, the jury ultimately ruled that Alternative Tentacles and Biafra were "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the matter and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. The other Dead Kennedys members only learned of the royalty underpayment from a whistleblower at the record label.

A 2003 appeal upheld the verdict and judgment against Biafra and the record label of $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages. The result of the case saw the rights to the Dead Kennedys albums turned over to Decay Music, a partnership of all four members of the band (including Biafra himself), the majority of which voted to pull the records from Alternative Tentacles and license them to Manifesto Records in the United States (and to other labels in the rest of the world). This was a blow to Alternative Tentacles, leading to financial uncertainty for the label.

In 2009 while speaking The Guardian, Biafra described losing the Kennedys from Alternative Tentacles as "like getting some of your limbs blown off".

"I've used my own money to keep the label afloat. Now many of our label peers are down to one or two employees or pulling the plug altogether. That scares the living shit out of me in some ways, but I think we're better equipped because we already know how to survive hard times. It got awfully tempting to just crack up once and for all and turn into Syd Barrett after what they did to me," he admits. "But I have so many unrecorded songs and ideas that I can't not continue to make new work."

The following artists have either been signed to the Alternative Tentacles record label or had material released through them:

7 Seconds

Akimbo

Alice Donut

Ani Kyd

ArnoCorps

Amebix

Bad Brains

Beatnigs

The Bellrays

Black Flag

Black Kali Ma

BlöödHag

Blowfly

BGK

Brujeria

Brutal Juice

Burning Image

Buzzkill

Butthole Surfers

The Causey Way

Chill Eb

Christian

Christian Lunch

Citizen Fish

Comets on Fire

Creeps On Candy

Cross Stitched Eyes

Crucifucks

The Darts

Dash Rip Rock

Dead Ending

Dead Kennedys

Dead Pioneers

Death Hymn Number 9

DFMK

The Dicks

Disaster Strikes

D.O.A.

Doc Corbin Dart

Dog Faced Hermans

The Dot Wiggin Band

Duh

East Bay Ray

Eat

Eugene Chadbourne

Evan Johns and The H-Bombs

The Evaporators

eX-Girl

F-Minus

Facepuller

False Prophets

The Fartz

Feral Ohms

Fish Karma

Patrik Fitzgerald

The Flaming Stars

Fleshies

Flipper

Free Beer

Galloping Coroners (Vágtázó Halottkémek)

Geza X

Git Some

God Bullies

Grong Grong

Grotus

Half Japanese

Howard Zinn

Hack

The Hanson Brothers

Hissanol

Husker Du

itchy-O

Jarboe

Jello Biafra

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

Jucifer

Jungle Studs

Kepone

Klaus Flouride

Kultur Shock

L.A. Machina

Lard

Les Thugs

Leftöver Crack

Legendary Shack Shakers

Life After Life

Logical Nonsense

The Looters

Los Gusanos

Ludicra

Mat Callahan

MDC

Melvins

M.I.A.

Michael Gira

Mischief Brew

Mojo Nixon

Molotov Cocktail

Motorpyscho

Moms With Bangs

Nardwuar the Human Serviette

Nausea

Neurosis

Noam Chomsky

No WTO Combo

Nomeansno

The November 3

Pachinko

Pansy Division

Part Time Christians

Peligro

Pins of Light

Pitchshifter

The Phantom Limbs

Porch

Ratos de Porão

Really Red

Radiopuhelimet

Redshift

Ratos De Poråo

Sandrider

Saturn's Flea Collar

Sibling Rivalry

The Silver Machine

The Skatenigs

Skarp

Skrapyard

Slim Cessna's Auto Club

Tony Slug

SNFU

Spindrift

Star Fucking Hipsters

Stickdog

Subhumans

Teddy & the Frat Girls[11]

Thrall

Toxic Reasons

Tragic Mulatto

TARANTELLA

Triclops!

Tribe 8

Tsunami Bomb

Tumor Circus

Turn Me on Dead Man

T.S.O.L.

Ultra Bide

Unsane

VHK

Victim's Family

Voice Farm

Ward Churchill

Wesley Willis

Wheelchair Sports Camp

White Trash Debutants

Witch Hunt

The Witch Trials

The World/Inferno Friendship Society

The Yuppie Pricks

Zen Guerrilla

Zeni Geva

Zolar X