#Kill Mosquito Machine

[bitefreetech]

MOSQUITO FREE SURROUNDING!

Creating a completely mosquito-free surrounding is challenging but not impossible. Here are some additional steps you can take to further minimize mosquito presence Kill Mosquito Machine:

Mosquito-Repelling Plants: Planting certain types of vegetation around your home can help repel mosquitoes. Examples include citronella, lavender, marigolds, and basil.

Mosquito-Proof Your Home: Seal any gaps or cracks in walls, windows, and doors to prevent mosquitoes from entering your home.

Outdoor Fans: Mosquito Killer Machine For Outdoor Mosquitoes are weak flyers, so installing outdoor fans can create enough airflow to disrupt their flight patterns and make it difficult for them to land and bite.

Natural Repellents: Burning citronella candles or using essential oils such as citronella, lavender, or eucalyptus can help repel mosquitoes from your outdoor living spaces.

Mosquito-Proof Your Yard: Consider using barriers such as mosquito netting or screening around outdoor seating areas to create a mosquito-free zone.

Regular Maintenance: Keep your yard well-maintained by regularly mowing the lawn, trimming bushes and shrubs, and removing any debris where mosquitoes could breed or hide.

Reduce Outdoor Lighting: Mosquitoes are attracted to light, so minimizing outdoor lighting, especially during peak mosquito activity times, can help reduce their presence.

By implementing these additional measures, Mosquito Control Machine you can create a more mosquito-free environment around your home and outdoor living spaces. However, it's important to remember that complete elimination may not be achievable, especially in areas with heavy mosquito populations.

[lokigodofaces]

missing my lizards in my apartment in brazil right now

[delilahsturniolo]

⟡ ݁₊ welcome to the end of the world! (please leave your sanity at the door.)

𝒊𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 . . . four friends: nick, matt, chris, and you—find themselves stuck together at the end of the world, trying to survive a zombie apocalypse with nothing but their wits, a questionable supply of snacks, and zero emotional maturity. you’re just trying to stay alive without losing your mind—or falling for someone on the team.

𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 . . . kinda dark humor, cursing, mention of weapons, slow burn, reader x matt.

CHAPTER ONE: LIEUTENANT WHISKERS.

read more parts here

you wake up with a half-eaten granola bar in your mouth, one sock on, and a very loud alarm going off outside. it’s not your alarm. your phone died three days ago, and even if it hadn’t, the lack of wifi really killed your will to function. there’s a mosquito bite on your neck that may or may not be a zombie hickey (probably not, but you checked it three times anyway), and your hair is doing this weird apocalypse-frizz thing that no amount of dry shampoo can fix.

the room smells like moldy hope and whatever deodorant chris found at the last gas station. you’d complain, but you���ve smelled worse. you’ve been worse. yesterday you slipped in a puddle of what you hope was expired tomato soup and landed directly on your dignity. it’s probably still there, lying between a crushed can of green beans and a questionable boot.

“you’re finally awake,” says nick, poking his head through the busted doorframe like a dramatic woodland creature. his hair’s sticking up on one side, and he’s wearing a tactical vest he definitely didn’t know how to use before the world fell apart. “you were snoring so loud i thought you were one of them.”

“how do you know i’m not?” you mumble, pulling the granola bar out of your mouth and blinking at him like a crusty-eyed cryptid. nick squints. “mmm. if you were a zombie, you’d have better posture.”

rude.

nick is the strategist of the group. in a past life, he played too much chess, hoarded survival gear “for fun.” and absolutely had a reddit thread on “how to escape civilization when it inevitably collapses.” now he’s thriving. he has spreadsheets. spreadsheets. in the apocalypse. the rest of you would probably be dead without him, but you’d never say that out loud. he’d get smug. like, “i-told-you-so” smug. nobody needs that energy in a world full of rotting corpses.

you groan and swing your legs off the couch, or what’s left of it. the springs poke you with the subtlety of a drunk raccoon. you’re about to ask where the others are when someone tosses a half-empty water bottle at your face. “hydrate,” matt says.

he’s standing there, wearing fingerless gloves and holding a crowbar like it’s just an extension of his soul. his shirt has one tear down the side (not on purpose, probably), and there’s a smudge of dirt across his cheek that makes him look exactly 17% hotter than any reasonable person should be during the end of the world. unfair. you would never admit this to his face, though.

matt is the muscle of the group. not in a gym rat way—though, yeah, his arms could probably bench press a vending machine…but in a “i will defend you from zombies and emotional damage” kind of way. he’s quieter than the rest of the group, brooding in a way that’s not annoying, just… kind of intense. but also? kind of (very) hot. which is inconvenient because you’re literally trying not to die out here.

“where’s chris?” you ask, chugging the water like there’s no tomorrow. which honestly, there most likely isn’t. “probably doing doing dumb shit on the roof again.” matt mutters, looking out the shattered window. right on cue, chris drops into the doorway from above.

“roof’s clear!” he says, brushing leaves off his hoodie like they personally insulted him. “also i found a cat. his name is lieutenant whiskers now. he’s our son.”

you blink. “you were gone for fifteen minutes.”

“a lot can happen in fifteen minute.” chris says, holding up the cat like simba. the cat looks mildly pissed off but accepts its fate.

chris is chaos incarnate. if you gave him a sword, he’d swing it around before accidentally stabbing a zombie in the eye and pretending it was on purpose. he’s the wildcard of the group—completely unpredictable, usually hilarious, and somehow always finding the weirdest loot. one time he came back with a working slushie machine. no one asked questions. you just drank the mystery-blue sugar water and moved on.

nick appears again, this time holding a clipboard. a clipboard. where did it even come from? did he have it this whole time? has it been living in his vest? “okay,” he says, tapping it with authority. “today’s objectives: one, scavenge the convenience store down the street. two, avoid dying. three, find duct tape.”

matt frowns. “duct tape’s not a priority.”

“everything is a priority when you’ve got this much falling apart,” nick says.

“matt,” you say, “remember when your backpack strap broke and you carried your bag like a baby for six miles?”

“…that was a tactical decision.”

“sure it was.”

matt glances at you, mouth twitching into a tiny, unfair smile. it does things to your stomach that you do not have time for.

the four of you gear up, which mostly means putting on mismatched layers and checking your pockets for snacks. matt hands you a knife without saying anything. it’s not fancy, but it’s sharp and kind of comforting. you don’t thank him out loud. instead, you nudge his arm lightly and he bumps yours back. it’s small. stupid. but your heart does a little weird fluttery thing and you hate it. you all move out like a heavily armed band of garbage gremlins. nick’s in the lead with his clipboard (which somehow feels like a weapon), matt takes the flank with that crowbar, and chris is already ten feet ahead, trying to teach lieutenant whiskers how to detect zombies.

the streets are quiet. too quiet. like the undead are all in a meeting somewhere discussing new strategies. “do zombies strategize?” you ask quietly.

“no,” nick says.

“absolutely,” chris says at the same time.

“i don’t care,” matt mutters. “they die the same.”

you’re just about to make a joke about zombie politics when you feel a prickle down your spine. a shuffle. a groan. a smell.

“zombie at two o’clock!” nick yells, snapping his clipboard shut like he’s about to use it as a shield.

and suddenly it’s all chaos.

matt steps in front of you with his crowbar like it’s a natural reaction. chris hurls a can of beans like a grenade and screams at the top of his lungs. nick mutters something about “this is why we make plans.” and dives behind a mailbox.

you draw your knife, your hands shaking just a little. matt glances at you—quick, sharp, eyes checking to make sure you’re okay. you nod, just once. he nods back.

and somehow, in the middle of all this madness, with the groans of the undead echoing through the street and chris trying to name every zombie after a disney villain, your heart thuds way too hard for way too many reasons.

welcome to the apocalypse.

try not to fall in love.

or do.

it’s the end of the world, after all.

© delilahsturniolo

💌: do we fw this or no

[abigailovesz]

𓂃 PATHETIC!JJ vs cheez its 𓂅   

fluff! (idk if i like this one guys uhh)

jj maybank had done a lot of dumb things in his life.

set off fireworks inside a cop car? sure. tattooed “p4l” on his literal ass during a bet? absolutely. tried to surf a moving jet ski? obvious yes.

but nothing compared - nothing - to what he was currently doing for you, the girl who had, somehow, without even trying, completely rearranged his internal chemistry.

he was currently trying to fish a bag of cheez Its out of a broken vending machine. at 2:34 in the morning. shirtless. drunk. covered in mosquito bites. with only one flip-flop on.

why?

because you had offhandedly mentioned once - once - during a movie night two weeks ago, “I really love Cheez Its - like the white cheddar kind. y'know?” jj had immediately locked that in his brain with the urgency of someone memorizing nuclear codes.

which is why he now had his arm stuck inside the vending machine outside the closed down gas station three blocks from the chateau. “pope's gonna kill me,” he muttered as the glass door rattled under his weight.

“What are you doing?”

he flinched so hard he smacked his head on the machine.

you were standing barefoot on the sidewalk, wrapped in one of his hoodies that hung down to your knees, blinking at him like she was in some dream.

jj grinned. “hey, baby. fancy seeing you here.”

“It’s 2:30 in the morning.”

“time is a social construct, sweetheart.”

"mhm, and you’re half-naked and stealing cheez its.”

“romantic gesture,” he said proudly, holding up a single squashed snack that had fallen into his palm. "for you.”

you stared at him.

he beamed. “white cheddar. I remember these things. I’m boyfriend material - like what they say..”

you walked closer, arms crossed, a sleepy smile pulling at your lips. "you climbed inside a vending machine for me?”

“no,” he said, offended. “I attempted to climb inside a vending machine. huge difference. and also-” he trailed off, checking his trapped arm. “okay, maybe I am stuck.”

you laughed, nose scrunched. “god, you’re such a disaster.”

“yeah, but I’m your disaster,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“And you reek of bug spray and-”

“Still cute though,” he interrupted, smiling with exactly one dimple popping out. “right? you’d still kiss me?”

"yes, fine, i would -"

suddenly, the vending machine finally gave way, releasing the entire row of cheez Itz and jj screamed in victory. “yes! bow to me, you see all that hard work i just-” he gathered the packets in his arms and offered it to you like simba in the lion king.

“for you, m’lady.”

you took a bag, still giggling. “this is the dumbest thing anyone’s ever done for me, jesus christ jj.”

he reached out and clasped his hand around your hip and gave it a little squeeze. “well i'm the first and best..”

you and him walked back to the chateau hand in hand, jj still shirtless, still with one flip flop, and carrying twelve bags of cheez Itz like they were holy offerings. because when it came to you, jj would absolutely do anything for you.

[fea-resources]

Unhinged Discord Commentary As RP Starters Pt. 1

*throws sparkles everywhere* This is how you cheer someone up, right?

There's some places you don't want sparkles.

Shame on the lame.

I didn't run into a wall this time. I ran into the fridge.

How can one go through life never saying words like "sexy" or "sexual". Like, what else would you say? "Intercoursy"? "Intercoursal"?

Okay but where are their NOSES.

Why is that cute? Science explain please.

RABBIT STEW FOR THE RABBIT STEW GOD.

The horse confirmed for a necrophiliac.

Let the bear and horse be together.

Horse x Bear forever.

He's a slut. All you need to know.

Slap a sexy bunny suit on his ass. Go. Live out your dreams.

He's a slut, not a stripper.

*throws a brick* Stay down this time.

Love is like a machine… sometimes you need a good screw to fix it.

Hey good lookin', what's cookin'? Get it? Because I'm an arsonist.

I'd really like to thump your bible.

I'm agnostic but damn I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy.

You'd be surprised how many are curious to taste human flesh.

Well I didn't say he was a slut without talent.

That may be but [Name] just might kill him with embarrassment first.

He never counted on SEX APPEAL. Should've sent a lesbian, not a gay.

Oh, I'm still gonna fuck with your assets. Emphasis on the Ass.

Well that's good. I hear murder is frowned upon.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS PROMISED. SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME OVER.

You tell me. You're the one tryna serenade me to bed and then stab me, ya kinky fuck.

I trusted you! …not sure why since we, like… just met.

CLOSE YOUR EYES SO I CAN KILL YOU.

Are you telling me you don't want adventure, glory, and best of all, FIERY DEATH?

Adventure and glory sound nice but… I don't know about that last part. I'll get back to you on that one.

The answer is "Yes" cuz let's be real, bards only immortalize the ones that die.

In other news I didn't think it was possible to almost choke on a hiccup yet here we are.

"You had accountability issues as a child"… wait, do you actually think I outgrew those?

I probably committed more blasphemy than anyone else in that whole building but damn it was fun.

One day [Name's] gonna hit just the wrong nerve and I'm gonna grab that scarf and strangle them with it.

Let grandpa bemoan his age.

May the salt be with you.

The mosquitos never bother me and everyone asks why and I tell them its because I have too much salt flowing through my veins.

*chugs a whole jar of pickle juice without breaking eye contact*

Consume them. C O N S U M E.

I changed my mind, that's Plan C. We're skipping B.

That was bad and you should feel bad. But I know you won't, so I don't know why I said it.

I've been laying here like a jellyfish on the beach for an hour but sleep is just not happening.

Yes, I had to. I would literally die if I didn't do it. I'd explode. Poof. It'd be awful. [Name] bits everywhere.

Wanna help me shove a slut into a volcano?

Man, I almost didn't have to be a Top for once but SOMEONE. TRIED TO KILL ME.

I would say to stab [Name] but then I remember that he likes it.

I'll bet a dick up the ass that you can't beat me.

Don't fuck where, fuck me.

…thanks. I totally. Feel so much better now. About my impending doom.

Man, it really sucks down here. I pity you, small man.

Small enough to reach places in a time of crisis? Yeah, except in the crisis of reaching the top shelf.

Well I know what rabbits do to anything that holds still long enough. But do continue.

Needs more well-cooked faces.

Now I know why my parents sheltered me.

*confused rabbit squawking*

That may be so but I'm not the one with a thing for the head fucker.

Instruction manual: do not buy the [Name] pet if you are not prepared to say "god damn it" at least twice per day.

This is going to get me killed, oh god yes.

HOW DARE YOU SSS-SSSSS-SSSS-SSSPEAK THE TONGUE OF MY SSSS-SSS-SSSSSSSS-SSSNAKE PEOPLE 🐍

I salted my head off to Hell and back the other day so now its your turn.

Hold my acupuncture pins.

Fuck them and rescue the high horse they rode in on because that horse doesn't deserve to be ridden by them.

It's mid-June, yet I can't feel my toes.

Just chant "shadow no shadowing" three times. It worked on the dog.

I had to read it three times because the first two times I read it as "his mum is IN the ground" and I was like… wow, that's dark, and then I realized it said his mum IS the ground.

Hey, I'm not judging, except… no, wait, I'm totally judging.

Don't know what you're talking about there, Salty McSalterson.

So you know that one night in minecraft we were rushing to get back home and got ourselves and the path blown to Hell by creepers? I went to fill those holes in and guess what shows up as I'm working on filling them with no way out.

I'd say they should put their dukes up but tell them to put their leggies up instead because that's all they have.

So would this be a bad time to say "its the thought that counts"?

A baby? I don't have time for a baby. I can barely handle my own job. Babies are trouble. Put it in the mailbox and send it back, and if I see a head or a leg sticking back out, you are gone.

Devour him! ...Imeanwhat. Sorry, what, no cannibalism here.

They seem like a Diapers-Until-6-Years-Old kinda person.

Can we be like. Drugged-pot-hippies-but-not-really-high together?

Earlier I was like "I'm worried" and another person told me "you need to stop worrying, it's concerning".

Bright eyed and bushy tailed is a squirrel on crack.

So… death = normally taboo cuddles and affection? I should die more often.

Cuddleslut Mode Activated.

Help me sink [Name] to the bottom of the ocean. I don't know where s/he went wrong but I'm ending them.

I'm sorry that s/he's probably gonna corrupt the shit out of [Name], but conversely, [Name]'s not sorry at all.

'What AREN'T we up to?' is a better question. What we're up IN is the answer.

Screw you and your fricking long legs!

Listen to that wind moan. Wind doesn't have hands but it does blow.

Maybe a chair to the face will quiet them down.

So where do I get these highs you have? It must be nice.

I have no idea where my highs come from. They just pop in and serenade you and then sneak off the next morning like a filthy hoe after a good night of steamy sex-- I have no idea what I'm saying anymore A LO HA OOOIIIIII...

Don't you dare moan you sinner!

[abutchsuccubus]

The Forever Winter haunts me; follows me like a shadow made of clicking triggers. Its art design is unparalleled in its ability to make painterly scenes of horror out of AI actors following basic instructions. Watch a squad of NATO Cold War era troopers march down the streets of a ruined metropolis, only to see bombers rain ravenous killing machines on them; humans whose identities have been sandblasted off to make room for more violence. As they fire, desperately trying to save themselves, a swarm of biomechanical mosquito drones wearing children’s faces sweeps down to ensure their death. You watch, and wait for the killing machines to run after a new sound before you scurry down loot their bodies for cigarettes, booze, and shitty snack food.

Another vision; on a dusty plain that was once California antiquated T-80s open fire on a mech the size of a house. It fires back with a gun that roars like a false lion. Their battle sends a stray shell into you as you loot the bodies of elite shock troopers with faces like painted dolls; you nearly die go scurrying for cover while idiot gods above you keep killing one another.

You come onto a battlefield at night. Everything is still, quiet, serene. At least you convince yourself it is, until you see a clutch of those mindless killing machines swirl around something in the guise of a ten foot woman with claws like concertina wire, wearing the corpses of her flock on her hips, stalking the battlefield like a hunched heron. You hide from them by running between corpse piles, until one of those mosquito drones sees you and lets out a scream made of clanking metal. Everyone knows you're here, it's time to run.

All of these have happened to me, and more horrible things besides. It is a world of the most ragged, hellish beauty and I am in love. If you have a PC that can handle it, you need to try it. (I have a 9800X3D and a 5080 and I still get sporadic frame drops because they're still working on optimization. I'd be harsher about this if they weren't in EA.)

[fatehbaz]

"defending civilization against bugs"

lol the mosquito sculpture

see Pratik Chakrabarti's Medicine and Empire: 1600-1960 (2013) and Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (2012)

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Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a lecture to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce [...]. [H]e argued that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope."

Text by: Rohan Deb Roy. "Decolonise science - time to end another imperial era." The Conversation. 5 April 2018.

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[A]s [...] Diane Nelson explains: The creation of transportation infrastructure such as canals and railroads, the deployment of armies, and the clearing of ground to plant tropical products all had to confront [...] microbial resistance. The French, British, and US raced to find a cure for malaria [...]. One French colonial official complained in 1908: “fever and dysentery are the ‘generals’ that defend hot countries against our incursions and prevent us from replacing the aborigines that we have to make use of.” [...] [T]ropical medicine was assigned the role of a “counterinsurgent field.” [...] [T]he discovery of mosquitoes as malaria and yellow fever carriers reawakened long-cherished plans such as the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914) [...]. In 1916, the director of the US Bureau of Entomology and longtime general secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science rejoiced at this success as “an object lesson for the sanitarians of the world” - it demonstrated “that it is possible for the white race to live healthfully in the tropics.” [...] The [...] measures to combat dangerous diseases always had the collateral benefit of social pacification. In 1918, [G.V.], president of the Rockefeller Foundation, candidly declared: “For purposes of placating primitive and suspicious peoples, medicine has some decided advantages over machine guns." The construction of the Panama Canal [...] advanced the military expansion of the United States in the Caribbean. The US occupation of the Canal Zone had already brought racist Jim Crow laws [to Panama] [...]. Besides the [...] expansion of vice squads and prophylaxis stations, during the night women were picked up all over the city [by US authorities] and forcibly tested for [...] diseases [...] [and] they were detained in something between a prison and hospital for up to six months [...] [as] women in Panama were becoming objects of surveillance [...].

Text by: Fahim Amir. "Cloudy Swords." e-flux Journal Issue #115. February 2021.

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Richard P. Strong [had been] recently appointed director of Harvard’s new Department of Tropical Medicine [...]. In 1914 [the same year of the Panama Canal's completion], just one year after the creation of Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine, Strong took on an additional assignment that cemented the ties between his department and American business interests abroad. As newly appointed director of the Laboratories of the Hospitals and of Research Work of United Fruit Company, he set sail in July 1914 to United Fruit plantations in Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. […] As a shareholder in two British rubber plantations, [...] Strong approached Harvey Firestone, chief executive of the tire and rubber-processing conglomerate that bore his name, in December 1925 with a proposal [...]. Firestone had negotiated tentative agreements in 1925 with the Liberian government for [...] a 99-year concession to optionally lease up to a million acres of Liberian land for rubber plantations. [...]

[I]nfluenced by the recommendations and financial backing of Harvard alumni such as Philippine governor Gen. William Cameron Forbes [the Philippines were under US military occupation] and patrons such as Edward Atkins, who were making their wealth in the banana and sugarcane industries, Harvard hired Strong, then head of the Philippine Bureau of Science’s Biological Laboratory [where he fatally infected unknowing test subject prisoners with bubonic plague], and personal physician to Forbes, to establish the second Department of Tropical Medicine in the United States [...]. Strong and Forbes both left Manila [Philippines] for Boston in 1913. [...] Forbes [US military governor of occupied Philippines] became an overseer to Harvard University and a director of United Fruit Company, the agricultural products marketing conglomerate best known for its extensive holdings of banana plantations throughout Central America. […] In 1912 United Fruit controlled over 300,000 acres of land in the tropics [...] and a ready supply of [...] samples taken from the company’s hospitals and surrounding plantations, Strong boasted that no “tropical school of medicine in the world … had such an asset. [...] It is something of a victory [...]. We could not for a million dollars procure such advantages.” Over the next two decades, he established a research funding model reliant on the medical and biological services the Harvard department could provide US-based multinational firms in enhancing their overseas production and trade in coffee, bananas, rubber, oil, and other tropical commodities [...] as they transformed landscapes across the globe.

Text by: Gregg Mitman. "Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia's Plantation Economy." Environmental History, Volume 22, Number 1. January 2017. [Text within brackets added by me for clarity and context.]

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[On] February 20, 1915, [...] [t]o signal the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), [...] [t]he fair did not officially commence [...] until President Wilson [...] pressed a golden key linked to an aerial tower [...] whose radio waves sparked the top of the Tower of Jewels, tripped a galvanometer, [...] swinging open the doors of the Palace of Machinery, where a massive diesel engine started to rotate. [...] [W]ith lavish festivities [...] nineteen million people has passed through the PPIE's turnstiles. [...] As one of the many promotional pamphlets declared, "California marks the limit of the geographical progress of civilization. For unnumbered centuries the course of empire has been steadily to the west." [...] One subject that received an enormous amount of time and space was [...] the areas of race betterment and tropical medicine. Indeed, the fair's official poster, the "Thirteenth Labor of Hercules," [the construction of the Panama Canal] symbolized the intertwined significance of these two concerns [...]. [I]n the 1910s public health and eugenics crusaders alike moved with little or no friction between [...] [calls] for classification of human intelligence, for immigration restriction, for the promotion of the sterilization and segregation of the "unfit," [...]. It was during this [...] moment, [...] that California's burgeoning eugenicist movement coalesced [...]. At meetings convened during the PPIE, a heterogenous group of sanitary experts, [...] medical superintendents, psychologists, [...] and anthropologists established a social network that would influence eugenics on the national level in the years to come. [...]

In his address titled "The Physician as Pioneer," the president-elect of the American Academy of Medicine, Dr. Woods Hutchinson, credited the colonization of the Mississippi Valley to the discovery of quinine [...] and then told his audience that for progress to proceed apace in the current "age of the insect," the stringent sanitary regime imposed and perfected by Gorgas in the Canal Zone was the sine qua non. [...]

Blue also took part in the conference of the American Society for Tropical Medicine, which Gorgas had cofounded five years after the annexation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Invoking the narrative of medico-military conquest [...], [t]he scientific skill of the United States was also touted at the Pan-American Medical Congress, where its president, Dr. Charles L. Reed, delivered a lengthy address praising the hemispheric security ensured by the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and "the combined genius of American medical scientists [...]" in quelling tropical diseases, above all yellow fever, in the Canal Zone. [...] [A]s Reed's lecture ultimately disclosed, his understanding of Pan-American medical progress was based [...] on the enlightened effects of "Aryan blood" in American lands. [...] [T]he week after the PPIE ended, Pierce was ordered to Laredo, Texas, to investigate several incidents of typhus fever on the border [...]. Pierce was instrumental in fusing tropical medicine and race betterment [...] guided by more than a decade of experience in [...] sanitation in Panama [...]. [I]n August 1915, Stanford's chancellor, David Starr Jordan [...] and Pierce were the guests of honor at a luncheon hosted by the Race Betterment Foundation. [...] [At the PPIE] [t]he Race Betterment booth [...] exhibit [...] won a bronze medal for "illustrating evidences and causes of race degeneration and methods and agencies of race betterment," [and] made eugenics a daily feature of the PPIE. [...] [T]he American Genetics Association's Eugenics Section convened [...] [and] talks were delivered on the intersection of eugenics and sociology, [...] the need for broadened sterilization laws, and the medical inspection of immigrants [...]. Moreover, the PPIE fostered the cross-fertilization of tropical medicine and race betterment at a critical moment of transition in modern medicine in American society.

Text by: Alexandra Minna Stern. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Second Edition. 2016.

[anti-mugamin]

You should edit Toru Mugami into getting splated by a electronic mosquito zapper.

Now I am very against the idea of a machine which indiscriminately kills insects. I do not think these should be used except to kill Mugami Toru.

[batfamilywonders]

Batfam incorrect quotes

Dick: I’m the smartest, wisest person in this group. Tim: Really? Then why is your hand stuck in a vending machine? Dick: I paid for my Mars Bar, I’m getting my Mars Bar.

Tim: Isn't it weird that people kill mosquitoes just because they're annoying? Stephanie: Damn, if people did that to each other, Jason would've killed me years ago.

Tim: How the hell are you still alive? Dick: Honestly, I’m just as confused as you are.

Dick: Oh, fiddlesticks! That really ruffles my feathers! Stephanie: Please, just say fuck.

Jason, digging his grave: Long story short, this is my grave.......Want me to make you one too?

Tim: Silence is golden. Stephanie: Duct tape is silver.

Stephanie: Just took a personality test and got an A+.

Stephanie: *on the phone with Jason* I can’t talk right now, I’m doing hot girl shit. Jason: You’re pulling Oreos apart and saving off the frosting to make a mega Oreo, aren’t you. Stephanie: Maybe.

Store Worker: Would a “Dick” please come to the front desk? Dick, arriving at the desk: Hello, is there a problem? Store Worker, pointing to Tim and Jason: I believe they belong to you? Tim and Jason, simultaneously: We got lost. Dick: I didn’t even bring you guys here with me—

Tim, singing: I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need— Damian: A family. Stephanie: A better love life. Jason: Mental stability. Dick: *clueless* Bagels?

Tim: I don't know, it's not my cup of tea. Damian: Well then whose is it? Tim, staring at a cup of tea: I don't know!

Bruce: If we lose, you’re out of the will. Jason: I was in the will?

Teacher: Your child was in a fight. Dick: Oh no, that’s terrible! Tim: Did they win?

[bitsbug]

Getting myself weirdly worked up about the common misconception that 'purpose' is a thing that exists with regards to evolution.

Like, I get it, niches can very well seem like some designed role, crafted to further along the Divine Machine of Nature. When confronted with an organism you don't like, the first question is "What purpose does it serve? Is it insignificant enough to be eradicated?"

But this very much isn't how the natural world works; evolution isn't a planned process. It's a bit more like.. y'know those videos of an algorithm being trained how to walk through trial and error? It's like that, but with a million more variables. And much like the algorithm, there is no forethought involved in evolution - it's only the immediate ''reaction'' to (aka whatever works to survive against) environment circumstances. There's not even the "goal" of survival, it's just that things which don't survive are unable to pass on whatever made them not survive, while things that did survive do.

Now imagine this process happening billions of times in parallel, all interacting with eachother, and all changing themselves in response.

The conditions a population experiences most, and the other populations it interacts with most, will inevitably affect its 'algorithm' for continuing to exist. This friction will pressure it to become more specific in how it functions, and it will come to rely upon how the things around it function. In turn, its environment starts to rely upon how it functions, however indirect that may be. It's all separate systems pressed against eachother, morphing so they align in a way that fits.

So, you can see how this can be so easily mistaken for a purpose. But the distinction is very important, because a species' entire *being* is the thing its ecosystem has molded to, not just one aspect of its lifestyle. Fleas and mosquitoes both take blood from larger animals, but they absolutely aren't interchangeable - their method of feeding, prey choices, life stages, and even movement are completely different, and something else in their respective ecosystems WILL rely on these traits for its own survival. Removing even that one thing will daisy-chain across the system, hindering the survival of everything involved.

That's why vying for killing entire species willy nilly is a bad thing, even if evolution is a morally neutral process with no true meaning behind it! And also why 'purpose' is a bogus concept to apply to this extremely complex system!

[immoralimmortals]

Akatsuki Member Songs and Headcanons Part 2

I told you I could do this post over again with new songs! Some of the associations are more based on headcanon than others. The songs are linked in the headers. Hope you enjoy!

Hidan: BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA by Will Wood

This song...is definitely about someone who cannot die. Whats more: it is also definitely someone who has a strange relationship with pain and suffering. Hidan in canon so very clearly dislikes being in pain if he is not in his ritual form. Simultaneously, he says he'd love if someone managed to kill him. (I know he may be sarcastic but imagine the possibilities if he's not!) He's a gratuitous man of contradictions and confidence, and I think this song carries it well. Throughout are mentioned symbols of health and longevity in grotesque situations. You KNOW this man's body is fucked up, both by his hand and others. I want to cut him open and study him like an anatomical doll. The whole "interview" in the middle is me eventually grabbing him by the collar and going what the hell is fucking wrong with you! How can a severed head breathe and talk!

I've also heard that WW wrote this as a test to himself to get as many words in a normal length song as possible. It suits how much Hidan fucking talks. I also think it's a nice nod to the fact that he quite obviously introspects and thinks *a lot* despite being portrayed as headstrong and stupid.

Notable lyrics:

And through flight-or-fight revelation shame the Black Box Warrior He skipped this town and headed straight down history

His ego a mosquito, evil incarnate good incognito

For what? For what? For what it's worth If it was going to kill you boy, it would have by now For what? For what? For what it's worth There's no more looking back, it's looking up or looking down

He wondered if Christ Consciousness would charge a cancellation fee Auf wiedersehn, au revoir, he gripped his wits right by their ends

A bloody knife to split your infrastructure, wine to rev your motor function Coital machinations of the dead Well, you mainline your animus, karate chop your abacus And learn to be an animal instead

You've lost your mind and almost lost your life before So you'll be fine

Sasori: Thumbnail by Louie Zong and Brian David Gilbert

Something I've mulled over a long time is how the contradiction of how a man who prefers things to be long-lasting can also be so impatient. My interpretation so far is that this implies some level of anxiety; he wants things to last if they are comfortable for him to exist. That's why he doesn't mind his fight with Kankuro taking longer, despite just bashing Deidara for playing around. I think l, in perhaps the kindest way I can, that he is both shallow and more sensitive than he'll ever admit.

This is a song about wanting interactions condensed. If you tell me something bad, get it over with. But also, I don't know how to give you more than what I have. He's insecure about what he emotionally brings to the table, im sure. I figure that's a big reason he's destroying his humanity down to the core.

Notable lyrics:

Keep it quick, say it brief If it's fast, it will be a relief Short on time, that's a gift Count your seconds, and they'll catch the drift

Don't like what's revealed here When your depth of field's near, it's hard to come close Chip stones from the boulder Suddenly, my vulnerability shows Oh, you can crop and trim, 'till all that's left Is the essence of a presence that is feeling bereft Avant-garde, just the gist of a tale That is less of an image, and more of a thumbnail

How novel is a novel that can fit on one sheet It seems that I'm destined to fail To compress myself to the size of a thumbnail

Itachi: Blood on My Name by The Brothers Bright

Need I say more? Lots of individual lines that match up with his circumstances, especially his imminent death and the bodies he unfortunately racked up. And...of course...the Uchiha name is bloody as hell. His fate is inevitable, it is in stone and he is dragging his corpse to the finish line.

Notable lyrics:

When the fires, when the fires have surrounded you With the hounds of hell comin' after you I've got blood And I've got blood on my name

When the fires, when the fires are consuming you And your sacred stars won't be guiding you

Can't you see I'm sorry? I will make it worth your while Made of dead man's money You can see it in my smile Oh, Lazarus, how did your debts get paid? Oh, Lazarus, were you so afraid?

It won't be long, 'til I'm dead and gone Watch the fires rise, burn through my skin Down to the bone, scorchin' my soul

Konan: Saturn by Sleeping at Last

As tragic as life is, Konan is defined by her hope. This song references how others have come around time after time to help her see the light. This is a song that gets me emotional. It is slow, lingering, and forces you to drink it all in, every star and sorrow alike.

Notable lyrics: its literally the whole song so here's one verse

You taught me the courage of stars before you left How light carries on endlessly, even after death With shortness of breath You explained the infinite And how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

Deidara: Boss by The Correspondents

This man HATES his fucking job! He was just out there, vibing, and was forced to be an Akatsuki and remains more or less to exact revenge on an idea (that the Sharingan is perfect art). Petty bitch! But he kind of has a point, at least with the being forced to be Akatsuki part.

Notable lyrics:

I would love for this to not be an issue I would love to just laugh in your face But I'm finding it hard to dismiss you When you're the one running the place

We didn't ask for you to lead us We didn't want you to be boss You have done nothing but deceive us And it exacerbates our goals

Kakuzu: Six Feet by Patent Pending

This song is nearly perfect for my headcanons about him. The world is harsh, you must do as you must. He takes no joy in it. His ability to understand you or not does not affect your situation or relationship as shibobi. It is going to be what it is regardless. We are going to work until we die.

Notable lyrics:

When you hear that whistle blow, only the weakest go home Like their pain don't put food on their plate

You're keeping up, I see Well, it's a big world and it's only getting bigger And if you wanna be the best then you've gotta beat the best

Ain't nobody coming when you make the call 'Cause every man gunnin' for the first to fall Fill that bucket 'til the well runs dry It's left, right, left, 'til the day you die

Zetsu: Stalker's Tango by Autoheart

GREAT song if you want one for a ship with him. Describes over the course of its verses the increasing invasiveness and intensity of a stalker's relationship with the listener. References to being able to appear anywhere AND shape-shifting? Bonus! Also has a very calm yet arrogant, self assured air about the singer. I think it's great for him. I can imagine myself tied up in a chair while he explains himself to me with this song.

Notable lyrics:

I know, I know, I know this situation's strange It takes a little getting, a little getting used to

I know, I know, I know I'm always in your place But don't you see, my dear? I am your Doppelgänger I have your face

It's not that complicated, no matter what they say You'll never meet another me It's not that difficult to get your head around You'll never meet another me You'll never-never-never-ever-ever meet another me

Pain: Godhunter by Aviators

Hunting tailed beasts while claiming to be a god himself? A song where perhaps the godhunter becomes so powerful shes a God to be hunted???? YES!

...okay that last bit is largely my own very indulgent interpretation of this song. But I LOVE how it would suit him, being both the god and the godhunter in the plot of the story.

Notable lyrics: its literally the whole thing. Here's some cherry picked lines.

When you're holding on to majesty You'd fear the hunt, a travesty That balance may return

If you're something more than flesh, ascended And you've taken on the rest To end it then she'll find you in a dream, tormented Godhunter's gonna hunt you down

Tobi/Obito: The End of the Rope by They Might Be Giants

Who doesn't love a good villain song? You could almost think it's from a musical, how dramatic and explanatory it is. Very good representation of the heel turns this man makes to the protagonists throughout his character arc.

Notable lyrics: its the whole song. Here's the first verse.

How thoughtless of me How dumb can you be? Hopeless, wasn't that What you called me? And in fact It was even more true than you knew

Kisame: Delirium Tremendous by Felix Hagan & the Family

Kisame's a bit of what the kids would call, uh…blackpilled? He enjoys himself, yeah definitely, but he also knows he's a special kind of traitor, the lowest of the low. In my book, that makes him a little less low than some other villains in the series, but he would not agree.

To me, this song is a couple things. Most obviously, delirium tremens after drinking. Next overtly, it's about not being able to fit in. More specifically, it's about not being able to fit in among misfits who are defined by their abnormality, their abhorrent nature to regular society. He is a very alienated man, he wants the good, but he has accepted he is not and that the world as it is will never be that way unless someone else (Tobi/Madara, in his view) takes it by the reigns and changes everything about how it works. He yearns for something he does not feel he has earned or deserves. It captures a lot of vibes and emotions I associate with Kisame all at once: lonliness, sensation, aggressiveness, fighting, longing. AND it's a fucking bop!

Notable lyrics:

What would make you get so battered That your bones betray you, start to shatter And you can’t relate to all the happy little night-time boys and girls

Save breath, crave death Can’t be much worse And I'm sick, sigh, can’t abide This twitching track from wet to dry I’m too old to cry, too young to die Too rabid for the pack So I’ll spit, try to hold it in Search for a sign of life within And I’ll fake a grin, until my skin Is starting to crack

So just stay cool and break through this sick delirium state I got wasted, now I’m tasting the cruel justice of fate

[senka-mesecine]

How do you think Barnes would react to him having a child with reader after the war? Like she finds out she’s pregnant, she dips while he doesn’t really notice because he’s a busy man, but when he checks on her post war, there’s a baby Barnes

---

What's with this about him not noticing?

He absolutely would notice.

Don't really think a mosquito lands without permission surrounding the perimeters of the platoon without him noticing sooner rather than later.

But, in equal measure, lets be realistic, an active warzone is barely a place for a female serviceman, least of all a pregnant one --- heck, it's barely a place for most men --- so if you leave, he lets it happen (orchestrates it, in fact, whether you like it or not) because it ought to happen. What are you really looking for by staying anyway? Getting stupidly killed? Making a statement? Being spiteful? Being responsible for two lives instead of one? This isn't the place to be playing out theatrics and melodramatics; this is your cue to go. And that's non negotiable. Like I mentioned someplace before, fact is, he might write you up for being sent home personally because you're a hindrance to yourself in this state, others and certainly him, being a direct cog in his machine of war; he's practical like that, if anything. Fiercely realistic. Might even act a bit cold and callous on purpose so you leaving would be easier and so you wouldn't stick around lingering due to a charge of emotions. He tells himself, he'll settle this when he's done fighting because that's the right time for these things to be settled. But, really, Barnes ensuring you get the heck out of them is literally the last line of him being protective over you one can imagine in a situation like this. There's almost something understatedly passionate about it; Him quietly doing everything to make sure you leave and still have a head attached to your shoulders when you do.

[snapthistiger]

exercise 04032024

bike ride to the gym

6 hours lifeguard work

8 x 10 incline sit ups

3 x 10 pec machine

3 x 10 lat raise

3 x 10 low row

30 minutes on the step mill

3 x 10 cable row

3 x 10 cable press

bike ride to Kroger and then home

the gym workers and lifeguards received Hershey kisses

work started out slow but was busy mid shift. the swim team was practicing and a water aerobic class was going and there was a water safety instructor class and then 5 kids playing in the small pool. close to 50 people in the water for awhile. i was on one stand and another lifeguard on another stand for swimmer surveillance

mowed the yard this afternoon with mother in law's riding mower. not a physical work out at all. the mosquitoes are terrible. the mosquito control folks say that is due to the drought last summer killing off some small fish that eat mosquito larva

top left = beautiful blue sky

bottom = hardly any traffic on my bike ride to work at 430am

hope you have a peaceful afternoon and evening..

[spartacus-alignment]

Ancient Empires // Cybertron Vs Mojiura

During the time of Early Earth (Pre Dinosaur era) the planet was fought by Megatronus with his army of the entire Nephilim race and the Morgans. The Morgans and Megatronus were fighting over the planet for its Energon. This is called the Battle of Pangea.

The Morgans pulled a trump card by imprisoning 15 warriors into the planet’s core and slaughtering the rest with a powerful spell that turns the metal warriors into dust

Megatronus was so embarrassed by this defeat that he went to the Morgan’s home planet and destroyed them all. Killing its ruler, stealing the staff of Rosal and destroying their source of magic. 

The other Primes were furious at this act genocide, not only for the death the Morgans but also the death of Nephilim. Over some petty tantrum he had against a bunch of space mosquitoes. Hence forward he was renamed the Fallen as punishment. Despite his crimes he still kept his place within the Council, though much of his power and authority had been reduced. 

Prior to the Fallen’s action the Morgan were not a threat to Cybertron. If anything they are little more than space mosquitoes. Annoying yes, thieves that sometimes steal energon yes. But not a threat. Now the Fallen’s action that put them in war with the Mojiura Empire. Despite the Fallen having struck a blow to their home planet, the Morgans still have colony planets and they will see this act of aggression for war.  

The Primes had a vote on whether or not to go to war with this alien race. Those who want to spare the Morgans are ; Vector, Alpha, Solus, Micronus, Quintus and Zeta // Those who want the Morgans extinct are; Prima, Alchemist, Nexus, Onyx, Amalgamous, Liege and the Fallen. // Outnumbered by one vote the primes attack these colony planets and put the Morgans into extinction. As the Fallen had claimed that they are holding Dark Energon. 

To make things worse for the Morgans, Solus Prime had approached them and offered peace talks. The Morgans viewed this as an act of deception and imprisoned Solus. This only made the primes more angry and pushed them further into war in order to retrieve a captured Prime. 

The War came to an end with a Morgan named Airachnid had become disillusioned about their species and believed that the cybertronians are the more superior race. That the Morgans were fools to go up against the mightiest machines and that their species deserve to be eradicated. She was approached by Liege Maximo and the God offered her a deal. Excited at the prospect of being Liege’s servant she happily betrayed her race by allowing Liege Maximo to enter in the heart of their empire disguised as a Trojan Horse (literally) With him inside he kills all the leaders, effectively winning the war. With the Morgans weakened and without leadership the primes strike, leaving no survivors with the exception of Airachnid. They freed Solus and they destroyed the “supposed” dark energon. 

With her people gone Airachnid expected a bright future. But she was wrong. Liege Maximo betrayed her and sold her to Lockdown.

The Morgans that stayed on earth eventually died off as they couldn’t handle earth’s many extinction events. The Last known Morgans on the planet were recorded during the medieval era where they were killed off by humans for being mistaken for demons. 

Notes: These headcanons are not finalized and may change in the future.

[xtruss]

Twenty-Five Years Before The Wright Brothers Took To The Skies, This Flying Machine Captivated America

First Exhibited in 1878, Charles F. Ritchel’s Dirigible Was About As Wacky, Dangerous and Impractical as Any Airship Ever Launched

— June 11, 2024 | Erik Ofgang

“When I Was Making It, People Laughed at Me a Good Deal,” Charles F. Ritchel Later Said. “But Do They Did at Noah When He Built the Ark.” Illustration by Meilan Solly/Images via Wikimedia Commons under public domain, Newspapers.com

Charles F. Ritchel’s Flying Machine Made a Sound Like a Buzzsaw as its pilot turned a hand crank to spin its propeller. It was June 12, 1878, and a huge crowd, by some accounts measuring in the thousands, had gathered at a baseball field in Hartford, Connecticut. The spectators had each paid 15 cents for a chance to witness history.

The flying machine—if one could really call it that—was an unsightly jumble of mechanical parts. It consisted of a 25-foot-long, 12-foot-wide canvas cylinder filled with hydrogen and bound to a rod. From this contraption hung a framework of steel and brass rods that the Philadelphia Times likened to “the skeleton of a boat.” The aeronaut would sit on this framework as though it were a bicycle, controlling the craft with foot pedals and a hand crank that turned a four-bladed propeller.

The device did not inspire confidence.

“When I was making it, people laughed at me a good deal,” Ritchel later said. “But so they did at Noah when he built the ark.”

A self-described “professor,” Ritchel was the inventor of such wacky, weird and wild creations that a recounting of his career reads as though it were torn from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. Supposedly friends with both P.T. Barnum and Thomas Edison, Ritchel for a time made a living working for a mechanical toy company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he designed talking dolls, model trains and other playthings. But he was more than just a toymaker.

Left: Charles F. Ritchel filed more than 150 patents over his lifetime. Right: Ritchel's 1878 patent for his flying machine — Photographs: Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

Some years after the flying machine demonstration, the inventor proposed an ambitious attraction for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair): a “telescope tower” that would rival France’s Eiffel Tower. The design consisted of a 500-foot-wide base topped by multiple nested structures that rose up over the course of several hours, eventually reaching a height of about 1,000 feet. After this proposal was rejected, Ritchel launched a campaign to raise funds to build a life-size automaton of Christopher Columbus, which the Chicago Tribune reported would speak more than 1,000 phrases in a human-like voice, rather than the “far-away, metallic sounds produced by a phonograph.”

By the mid-1880s, Ritchel claimed to have filed more than 150 patents. Not all of them were fun. He invented more efficient ways to kill mosquitos and cockroaches, a James Bond-esque belt that assassins could use to inject poison into their targets, and a gas bomb for use in land or naval warfare.

Yet never in his career was his quirk-forward blend of genius and foolishness more apparent than on that June day in Hartford. Because the balance of weight and equipment was so delicate, Ritchel was too heavy to fly the craft. Instead, he employed pilot Mark W. Quinlan, who tipped the scale at just 96 pounds. Quinlan was a 27-year-old machinist and native of Philadelphia, but little else is known about him. The record, however, is crystal clear on one count: Quinlan was very, very brave.

When preparations for the craft were complete, the crowd watched in eager anticipation as Quinlan boarded the so-called pilot’s seat. The airship rose 50 feet, then 100 feet, then 200 feet. Such a sight was uncommon but not unheard of at the time. The real question was: Once the craft was in the air, could it be controlled?

The first heavier-than-air flight (in which airflow over a surface like a plane wing creates aerodynamic lift) only took place in 1903, when the Wright Brothers conducted their famous flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But by the late 19th century, flying via lighter-than-air gases was already close to 100 years old. (This method involves heating the air inside of a balloon to make it less dense, leading it to rise, or filling the balloon with a low-density gas such as helium or hydrogen.) On November 21, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes completed the first crewed, untethered hot-air balloon flight, passing over Paris on a craft built by the Montgolfier brothers. Later, balloons were used for reconnaissance during the French Revolutionary Wars and the American Civil War.

A drawing of the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloon Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

But free-floating balloons were, and still are, at the mercy of the winds. While balloon aeronauts can achieve limited control by changing altitude and attempting to catch different currents, they can’t easily return to the spot where they took off from, which is why even today, they have teams following them on the ground. Mid-1800s aviation enthusiasts dreamed of fixing this problem, which led to the development of dirigibles—powered, steerable airships that were inflated with lighter-than-air gases. (The word dirigible comes from the French word diriger, “to steer”; contrary to popular belief, the term, which is synonymous with airship, is not derived from the word “rigid.”) While some early aeronauts successfully steered dirigibles, none of these rudimentary airships could truly go against the wind or provide a controlled-enough flight to take off and land at the same point consistently.

In 1878, Ritchel was unaware of anyone who had successfully taken off in a dirigible and landed at the same spot. He hoped to change that with his baseball field demonstration. A month earlier, Ritchel had exhibited the airship’s capabilities during indoor flights at the Philadelphia Main Exhibition Hall, a massive structure built for that city’s 1876 Centennial Exposition. But there is no wind indoors, and the true test of his device would have to be performed outdoors.

After rising into the air, Quinlan managed to steer the craft out over the Connecticut River. To onlookers, it was clear that the aeronaut was in control. But as he flew, the wind picked up, and it began to look like a storm was gathering. To avoid getting caught in the poor weather and facing an almost-certain disaster, Quinlan steered the craft back toward the field, cutting through the “teeth of the wind until directly over the ball ground whence it had ascended, and then alighted within a few feet of the point from which it had started,” as the New York Sun reported.

Ritchel's dirigible, as seen on the July 13, 1878, cover of Harper's Weekly Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

The act was hailed far and wide as a milestone. An illustration of the impressive-looking flying machine was featured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly.

“The great problem which inventors of flying machines have always before them is the arrangement by which they shall be able to propel their frail vessels in the face of an adverse current,” the magazine noted. “Until this end shall have been achieved, there will be little practical value to any invention of the kind. In Professor Ritchel’s machine, however, the difficulty has been in a great measure overcome.”

Across the country, observers hailed Ritchel’s odd but impressive milestone in flight. In the years and decades that followed, this achievement was forgotten by almost all except a select group of aviation historians.

Wikipedia incorrectly lists the flight of the French army dirigible La France as the first roundtrip dirigible flight. But this event took place six years after Ritchel’s Hartford demonstration, in August 1884. Why has a flight so seemingly monumental in its time been relegated to the dustbin of history?

Given his eccentric nature and creativity, it’s easy to root for Ritchel and think of him as a Nikola Tesla-like genius robbed of his rightful place in history. The reality of why his feat was forgotten is more complicated. As Tom Crouch, an emeritus curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, says, it’s possible Ritchel’s craft was the first to complete a round-trip dirigible flight. But other aircraft in existence at the time probably could have accomplished the same feat in favorable conditions. “La France made the first serious round-trip,” Crouch says.

Additionally, while Ritchel’s machine worked to a point, it wasn’t a pathway to more advanced dirigibles. Richard DeLuca, author of Paved Roads & Public Money: Connecticut Transportation in the Age of Internal Combustion, points out that the hand-cranked nature of Ritchel’s craft made it nearly impossible to operate with any kind of wind. “On the first day, he got away with it and directed the ship out and over the river and back to where he started, and that was quite an accomplishment,” DeLuca says. “But the conditions were just right for him to do that.”

Dan Grossman, an aviation historian at the University of Washington, has never come across evidence that any later pioneers of more advanced dirigible flights were influenced by Ritchel. “There are a lot of firsts in history that got forgotten because they never led to a second,” Grossman says.

An artist's depiction of the La France airship Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

The day after their first successful public outdoor flight in Hartford, Quinlan and Ritchel tried again at that same ballfield. This time, the weather was less cooperative, and the wind came in sharp gusts. Still, the pair persisted in their attempt. “Little Quinlan, even if he does only weigh 96 pounds, has confidence and nerve enough to go up in a gale,” the Sun reported. Up he went about 200 feet, but this time, the wind carried him away with more force. Quinlan was “seen throwing his vertical fan into gear, and by its aid, the aerial ship turned around, pointing its head in whatever direction he chose to give it.” Although he could move the ship about, “he could not make any headway against the strong wind.”

Quinlan descended about 100 feet, trying to catch a different current, but the wind still pushed him away from the ballfield. He raised the craft, this time going higher than 200 feet, but still couldn’t overcome the wind and was soon swept off toward New Haven, vanishing from sight like some real-world Wizard of Oz.

Eventually, Quinlan safely brought the airship down in Newington, about five miles away from Hartford. The inventor and his pilot were unfazed by this setback. They held more public exhibitions that year with a mix of success and failure—including an incident that nearly cost Quinlan his life. During a July 4 exhibition in Boston, the machine malfunctioned and continued to rise, soaring to what the Boston Globe estimated to be 2,000 feet. Quinlan couldn’t get the propeller to work, and the craft continued to rise, reaching as high as 3,000 feet.

Terrified but quick-thinking, Quinlan tied his wrist and ankle to the craft and swung out of his seat to fix the propeller, using a jack-knife he happened to have on him as a makeshift tool. The daring midair repairs worked, and the craft gradually descended. Quinlan landed in Massachusetts, 44 miles from his starting destination, after a 1-hour, 20-minute flight.

Per Grossman, the human-powered method Ritchel attempted to utilize was doomed from the start. “In the absence of an internal combustion engine, there really was no control of lighter-than-air flight,” he says.

Ritchel stubbornly refused to consider powering dirigibles with engines and did not foresee how powerful a better-designed aircraft truly could be.

“I have overcome the fatal objection of which has always been made to the practicability of aerial navigation—that is, I have made a machine that can be steered,” Ritchel told a reporter in July 1878. “I claim no more. I have never pretended that a balloon can be made to go against the wind, and I am sure it never could. It is as ridiculous as a perpetual motion machine, and the latter will be invented just as soon as the former.”

Left: A page from Ritchel's ballooning scrapbook National Air and Space Museum Archives. Right: The scrapbook covers the years 1878 to 1901. Photographs: National Air and Space Museum Archives

Even so, Ritchel was influential in his own way. “He was one of the first to really come up with the notion of a little one-man, bicycle-powered airship, and those things were around into the early 20th century,” says Crouch. After Ritchel, other daring inventors launched similar pedal-powered airships. Carl Myers, for example, held demonstrations of a device he called the “Sky-Cycle” in the 1890s.

Ritchel stands as one of the fascinating early aeronauts whose work blurred the line between science and the sideshow. “I refer to them as aerial showmen, these guys who came up with the notion of making money [by] thrilling people [with] their exploits in the air,” Crouch says.

According to Crouch’s 1983 book, The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America, Ritchel and Quinlan took the airship on tour with a traveling circus in the late 1870s. Ritchel also operated his machine at Brighton Beach near Coney Island. He sold a few replicas of his device and later attempted to develop a larger, long-distance version of the craft powered by an 11-person hand-cranking crew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this idea failed to gain momentum, and Ritchel faded from the headlines. Soon, the exploits of new aeronauts would upstage him, among them Alberto Santos-Dumont’s circumnavigation of the Eiffel Tower in 1901.

Left: Alberto Santos-Dumont's first balloon, 1898. Right: Santos-Dumont circles the Eiffel Tower in an airship on July 13, 1901. Photographs: Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

Despite many earlier dirigible flights, Crouch and Grossman agree that the technology only became practical when German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin built and flew the first rigid dirigible in the early 1900s. Over the first decade of the new century, Zeppelin perfected his namesake design, which featured a fabric-covered metal frame that enclosed numerous gasbags. “By 1913, just before [World War I] begins, Zeppelin is actually running sightseeing tours over German cities,” Crouch says, “so the Zeppelin at that point can safely carry passengers and take off and land from the same point.”

For a brief period, airships ruled the sky. (The spire of New York City’s Empire State Building, built in the 1930s, was famously intended as a docking station for passenger airships.) But the vehicles, which use gas to create buoyancy, were quickly eclipsed by airplanes, which achieve flight through propulsion that generates airflow over the craft’s wings.

While the 1937 Hindenburg disaster is often viewed as the end of the dirigible era, Grossman says that’s a misconception: The real death knell for passenger airships arrived when Pan American Airways’ China Clipper, a new breed of amphibious aircraft, flew from San Francisco to Manila in November 1935. “Partly because they flew faster, they could transport more weight, whether it’s people or cargo, mail, whatever, in the same amount of time,” Grossman explains. “They were less expensive to operate, they required much, much smaller crews, [and] they were less expensive to build.”

Airplanes were also safer. “Zeppelins have to fly low and slow,” Crouch says. “They operate in the weather; airplanes don’t. An airplane at 30,000 feet is flying above the weather. Weather, time after time, is what brought dirigibles down.”

Today, niche applications for passenger airships endure, including the Zeppelin company’s European tours, as well as ultra-luxury air yachts and air cruises. But “it’s always going to be a tiny, tiny slice of the transportation pie,” Grossman says.

Crouch agrees. “People still talk about bringing back big, rigid airships. That hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t think it will,” he says.

The USS Los Angeles, a United States Navy airship, in 1931. Photograph Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

In some ways, Ritchel’s flying machine was a microcosm of the larger history of dirigibles: fascinating, fun and the perfect fodder for fiction, but ultimately eclipsed by more efficient technology.

As for Ritchel, he died, penniless, of pneumonia in 1911 at age 66. “Although during his lifetime he had perfected inventions that, in the hands of others, had brought in great wealth, he died a poor man, as he lacked the business ability to turn the children of his brain to the best advantage to himself,” wrote the Bridgeport Post in his obituary.

Even so, the public had not forgotten the brief time three decades earlier when Ritchel and his airship ruled the skies. As the Boston Evening Transcript reported, his flights captured “the attention of the world. In every country and in every language, newspapers and magazines of the day printed long stories of the wonderful feats performed by the Bridgeport aviator and his marvelous machine, of which nothing short of a cruise to the North Pole was expected.”

— Erik Ofgang is the co-author of The Good Vices: From Beer to Sex, The Surprising Truth About What’s Actually Good For You and the author of Buzzed: A Guide to New England's Best Craft Beverages and Gillette Castle: A History. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Thrillist and the Associated Press, and he is the senior writer at Tech & Learning magazine.

[crocheting-cupio]

I love the parallels of Eraser and The Way Out Is Through.

Both start off with the quiet sound of a small motor, like one in a wind up toy. Both grow and build themselves one layer at a time until they are an endlessly vast soundscape. Both reach a climax where Trent screams in anger and desperation for a brief time, then disappearing until after the intro of the next song. Both have very little lyrical content and rely more on music and ambience. Both are transitional songs that take us to a new emotional state, usually what it feels like after.

And yet, they are like night and day.

Eraser feels hot and close, like walking in a desert. You're sweating, mouth dry, breathing heavy, surrounded by flies and mosquitoes, and you can feel the sun's rays burning your skin. Every sound is almost painfully clear, to the point it's difficult not to feel overwhelmed by sheer amount of sounds. Everything feels so loud after our moment of peace in A Warm Place. It feels like we are being dragged back into the fray against our will, as if a rope is tied to our waist and some machine is pulling us back. Trent reappears to us suddenly, breaking the noise briefly, before creating another wall of noise with his desperate cries of "kill me." These emotions are so intense they feel inescapable and endless.

The Way Out Is Through feels cold and vast, like walking back to shore from the deep ocean floor. You feel surrounded, exposed, like you're being watched, and yet there is nothing here but cold, salt water and you. Every sound is muffled as if we are underwater, nothing having any sharp or sudden changes. We are being approached by something, slowly and steadily, and we are stuck in this spot. Trent's voice grows from a faint whisper to a scream we can hear loud and clear. He brings guitars with him that cut through the water. We had been in the calm and quiet for so long the clearness of the sound is jarring. These feelings quickly fade however, returning us to the gentle sounds from before, leaving the us feeling empty and drained. He ends with what he whispered at the beginning; "All I've undergone, I will keep on."

We can also compare the lyrics.

Eraser:

"Need you, dream you Find you, taste you Use you, scar you Fuck you, break you

LOSE ME, HATE ME SMASH ME, ERASE ME KILL ME, KILL ME"

He is at his limit, but does not quite realize it yet, and wishes someone or something would put him out of his misery already. He feels he has nothing to lose because he has lost everything.

The Way Out Is Through:

"All I've undergone I will keep on

Underneath it all We feel so small The heavens fall But still we crawl

All I've undergone I will keep on"

He is so acutely miserable and broken, and he knows it very well, but is determined to persist. He has lost so much, more than he thought possible, but he has not lost his hope.