#Rigging Equipment and Rigging Supplies

[ajetromat]

Getting Around the World of Rigging Supplies and Equipment: A Complete Guide

Rigging supplies and equipment are the unsung heroes of the heavy lifting and complex maneuvers world, making it possible for manufacturing, transportation, entertainment, and construction as well as other industries to proceed safely and effectively. Rigging gear is essential to the practical management of large loads, from towering cranes on building sites to carefully planned stage setups. This thorough book explores the many facets of the world of rigging supplies and equipment, including their various types, important uses, safety precautions, and important factors to take into account when choosing the appropriate equipment for any operation.

Comprehending Rigging Supplies and Equipment

The term "rigging equipment" refers to a wide range of instruments and materials that are painstakingly created to guarantee the secure and effective transportation of large loads. Below is a summary of a few typical types:

Hoists: Used to lift or lower heavy items vertically, hoists are mechanical workhorses. Different weight capacities and operational requirements are met by variations such chain hoists, lever hoists, and electric hoists, which provide versatility in a range of applications.

Slings: Slings offer flexible support for lifting and securing loads. They are made of materials such as nylon, polyester, wire rope, or chain. With configurations like endless slings, double-leg, and single-leg options, they can adjust to a variety of lifting situations.

Shackles: U-shaped connections with bolts or pins holding the opening secure, shackles are strong connectors. Shackles with bolt-type, round-pin, and screw-pin designs provide unique benefits and safe attachment locations for rigging elements.

Hooks: Hooks serve as a link between the loads that rigging equipment lifts and itself. They are essential links in the rigging chain, with alternatives like eye hooks, clevis hooks, and grab hooks, each suited to particular load capabilities and attachment requirements.

Hardware for Rigging: Turnbuckles, wire rope clips, thimbles, and swivels are the parts of hardware needed to put together and modify rigging arrangements. These elements are essential for preserving load stability and enabling efficient lifting operations.

Uses for Rigging Supplies and Equipment

A wide range of businesses and endeavors employ rigging equipment, including:

Construction: To lift and move heavy machines, steel beams, and concrete panels, construction sites mostly depend on rigging equipment. The skyline is dominated by cranes with rigging gear, guaranteeing the secure lifting of cargo to the desired heights.

Shipping and marine: Rigging equipment is essential to marine operations because it makes it easier to load and unload cargo, secure containers for transportation, and perform repairs on board ships. Everywhere in the world, ports and shipyards depend on rigging gear to remain operational.

Entertainment Industry: The elaborate setups of stage lighting, sound equipment, and scenery for plays, concerts, and live events are made possible by Rigging Equipment and Rigging Supplies, which takes center stage in this sector. Prioritizing safety, motorized hoists, truss systems, and rigging accessories turn imaginative ideas into real experiences.

Manufacturing: To move large machines, parts, and completed goods along assembly lines, manufacturing facilities need rigging equipment. Rigging gear-equipped overhead cranes optimize industrial operations, increasing productivity and workspace utilization.

Safety Factors to Take Into Account When Rigging

Safety is the cornerstone of rigging operations, and there are strict procedures in place to guard against mishaps and safeguard people and property. Important safety factors consist of:

Training: Employees who operate rigging equipment safely receive in-depth instruction on a variety of subjects, including hazard identification, load calculations, and rigging procedures.

Inspection: Rigging equipment is routinely inspected to look for indications of fatigue, damage, or wear. To preserve operational integrity, any compromised equipment is quickly removed from service and replaced.

Load Capacity: To guarantee safe lifting operations, rigging equipment is never subjected to loads more than its rated capacity. Load weights are precisely calculated.

Secure Connections: To reduce the possibility of load shifting or detaching during lifting, rigging components are firmly fastened to loads using the proper hooks, shackles, and slings.

Selecting Appropriate Rigging Equipment

When choosing the right rigging equipment, it's important to take a number of things into account, such as:

Load Requirements: Choosing rigging equipment with the right capacity and configurations is influenced by the load's weight, size, and center of gravity.

Environmental Conditions: The choice of materials and coatings for increased durability is influenced by environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and exposure to corrosive substances.

Application-Specific Needs: Optimizing performance and safety through the customisation of rigging equipment to meet specific needs such as clearance height, reach, and maneuverability is important.

Compliance with Standards: In order to guarantee adherence to strict safety standards, rigging equipment conforms with industry standards and laws, such as those outlined by agencies like OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

In summary

For companies that depend on the secure and effective handling of large weights, rigging supplies and equipment are essential. Organizations may increase productivity, reduce risks, and promote a safety culture in rigging operations by being aware of the many kinds of rigging gear, following safety procedures, and choosing the right equipment for given applications. Investing in top-notch rigging equipment guarantees seamless operations and protects the safety of people and property alike, whether it's on a busy construction site, a busy shipping dock, or an enthralling concert stage.

[riggingequipment1]

What is Rigging Equipment?

Need rigging equipment and rigging supplies? Check out Bishop Lifting for the best prices where you can buy online easy and shipped directly to you.

[qiwemakowu]

Siemens cubicle bus manual

[fuzzkaizer]

VOCU - VTE-1600B Compact Tape Echo

"Vocu stands for Vivid Output and Capable Unit. This is a super refined and compact tape delay that can be used in any application, from studio to live guitar rigs. This is one of my pride-and-joy pieces, and it sounds and works incredibly well.

Uses the same loops as the Roland Space echo range – a full-featured tape echo that’s a little larger than a paperback book

Accepts mic, instrument or line level inputs

Has three delay modes – 150-600ms, 500-1600ms and a combination of both short and long heads

Has mix/wet-only switch (Cue/Mix Direct) for use as an effects send, controls for Master Level, Echo Time, Repeat and Echo Level as well as Input Level

The Flutter control engages an off-centre plastic wheel against the pinch roller to introduce extra warble and a sense of a machine that's less well-maintained

The Flutter lever will rest at the mid point giving a sensible level of flutter, or can be pushed harder against the pinch roller for momentary bouts of extra warbliness)

POWER: It takes a 15v centre positive power supply "(not included – enquire, we may have something suitable)"

cred: reverb.com/TRS - Music Equipment Trading Post

[ltwilliammowett]

Behind door no. 3 of today's first Advent Sunday hides a small but fine fighter - the US Brig Niagara

US Brig Niagara

More about her here:

The US Snow-Brig Niagara is a two-masted, square-rigged sailing vessel and she was the relief flagship of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. And she was constructed from 1812 to 1813 in to protect the vulnerable American coastline on Lake Erie from the British and played a pivotal role in the battle for the lake. At that time she had a crew of 155 men and boys who manned her sails, 18 carronades and two long guns.

On September 10th, 1813, nine small ships — six of them, including Niagara, constructed at Erie – defeated a British squadron of six vessels in the Battle of Lake Erie. A pivotal event in the War of 1812, it led to regaining Detroit, lost at the war’s outset, and lifted the nation’s morale.

After the battle, Niagara assisted in the transporting of Harrison's army to the mouth of the Detroit River in preparation for an invasion of southwest Ontario. On 25 April 1814, command of Niagara was transferred to Arthur Sinclair. After repairs, the fleet—consisting of Niagara, Lawrence, Caledonia, Scorpion and Tigress—departed Erie for Detroit. In Detroit, soldiers under the command of Colonel George Croghan embarked with the fleet, bound for Mackinac Island. The fleet arrived on 26 July and landed on 4 August. The battle was ultimately lost, with Croghan being forced to retreat back to his boats. On 13 August, the fleet arrived at the mouth of the Nottawasaga River where they attacked a blockhouse owned by the North West Company.The blockhouse was destroyed by the British, along with the schooner HMS Nancy, to prevent their supplies from being captured.

After the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the war, the majority of the surviving ships that participated in the Battle of Lake Erie were disposed of in 1815, Niagara was sunk for preservation on Presque Isle in 1820.

Raised in 1913, she was rebuilt for the centennial of the Battle of Lake Erie. After deteriorating, the restoration of Niagara was started again in the 1930s, but was hampered by the lack of funds caused by the Great Depression and remained uncompleted until 1963. A more extensive restoration was carried out in 1988 in which much of the original ship was largely destroyed. The incorporation of new materials and modern equipment makes it ambiguous as to whether it is or is not a replica.

[my-writings-and-musings]

The thirst for Sexwave knows no bounds, but gotta give Bumblebee credit for a solid second!

Gotta love some Soundwave being all tender and concerned about reader, so here, have some fluff! Soundwave struggling with all his feelings is just fun to write tbh...

Soundwave x Reader

Decepticons rarely lived pleasantly on Earth, as their primary means of survival was avoiding humans who covered all but the most isolated and brutal portions of the planet, but their Cybertronian hardiness meant most could endure extreme conditions without much danger.

Unfortunately, you as a human allied with said Decepticons didn't possess such luck. You'd fallen ill after one too many exposures to cold and rain, forcing the Con in your company to take drastic measures to keep you safe while he searched for the help you needed.

Between the fever and the countless miles of travel you weren't quite sure where he'd taken you, but the time spent snuggled under a load of blankets in his warm cockpit had been nice enough that you didn't care where you'd ended up. The endless frozen wastes and sparse buildings led you to believe somewhere up far to the north, but the Con had found a secure enough bunker and rigged up an effective climate control device by your tiny cot, so you didn't care about the specifics. All that really mattered now was that he'd been gone long enough for you to drift in and out of a feverish sleep multiple times. That still worried you, even if he often went out for similar stretches in the past. It was impossible not to fear for his capture every time he left your side...

Metallic clanks echoed up the tunnel to the outside world, and you snapped awake as the rumble of the bunker seal opening and closing quite literally shook the sleep out of you. Though still exhausted and delirious, you recognized the patter of approaching Cybertronian footsteps straight away, and relaxed when you noted two familiar walking patterns; one with two pedes and one with four.

A Felicon bounded into the circular cement room and came to a halt with a skid, metallic claws sending up a brief shower of sparks before two bright red optics focused on you. Carrying a pouch between his sharp teeth as delicately as he could, Ravage approached you with a tentative sniff, looking you over as he always did after you'd fallen ill. Not entirely coherent, you smiled and put up a hand to meet his muzzle.

"Glad to see you too." you greeted, allowing your heavy head to rest on the pillow as the Felicon sniffed your hand and endured the brief petting quietly. He moved aside when Soundwave entered the room, a literal crate of supplies tucked under an arm. Brushing some of the lingering snow and ice from his armor, the mech dropped to his knees beside your cot, checking you over for a fraction of an instant before he got to work. Cracking open the crate with his claws, he pulled out what appeared to be enough medical supplies to stock a small clinic.

"Medical equipment; acquired." he said in recognition of the obvious, focusing his attention on a kit that appeared to be full of medication for every kind of human illness. You doubted the owners had parted with so much willingly, and couldn't help but hope no one had been squished to provide these.

"How did you...?"

"No casualties to report." Soundwave answered, firm but calm enough that you believed him fully. Organizing his haul into piles by category, he surprised you further when his claws delicately plucked a bag of food from a thick thermal wrapping, allowing you to catch a whiff of the first hot meal you'd encountered in weeks. You couldn't even imagine how he'd acquired such a thing, and no explanation was forthcoming once he finished organizing everything. "Supplies fully restocked and expanded."

Ravage ensured his bag was added to the pile before he settled at your side, offering warmth and comfort as Soundwave gingerly handled the bag of food before laying it down in front of you.

"Rations overdue." he instructed with an obvious desire for you to eat, unable to hide the tiniest hint of uncertainty in his voice as he sat back on his heels. Understanding what he meant, you happily complied, hungry and quite touched by the gesture.

"Thanks, Soundwave." you croaked as you unwrapped the still steaming meal, your exhausted body beyond thankful for some much needed nourishment. The comment made the bot pause, his helm lowering a fraction of an inch as he briefly averted his gaze to mumble his reply.

"Gratitude... unnecessary.'

Ravage made a sound that more resembled a snicker than one of his usual growls, and only wiggled his tail in the picture of innocence when Soundwave fixed him with a hard stare.

[louisupdates]

The Habit He Can’t Break 3/4

IQ 123 | Gordon Masson | 9.11.2023

We Made It

Making sure that the Faith in the Future tour delivers Tomlinson to his growing legion of fans, PM Sherwood’s first long association with the artist manager, Vines made him the obvious choice when the artist first began his solo career.

“I remember doing a lot of promo dates around the UK and US before we started touring properly,” says Sherwood of his work with Tomlinson. “In fact, one of the first shows I remember doing with Louis was in Madrid when he played in a stadium, and I could see it was a taste of things to come.”

The partnership between Sherwood and Vines is crucial. 

“In terms of the show growing, our biggest challenge is keeping costs down, because we’re extremely cautious on ticket pricing,” says Vines. “We don’t do dynamic pricing, we don’t do platinum ticketing, we don’t do paid VIPs, we don’t increase ticket prices on aisle seats – all those tricks that everyone does that most fans don’t know about: we don’t do any of those.”

“So, when it comes to the production side of things, we need to be incredibly careful. But I’ve been working with Craig for a decade, and he knows the importance of trying to keep costs as low as possible. For instance, we’ll run the show virtually a number of times, so Louis can watch it with the show designer, Tom Taylor, make comments and tweak things. Then we’ll go into pre-production. But we try to do as much in virtual reality as possible before we take it into the physical world.”

Sherwood states, “Basically we started out with two or three trucks, but now we’re up to nine, and things seem to be getting bigger day by day.”

Thankfully, Sherwood has amassed a vastly experienced crew over the years, allowing them to handle even the most unexpected scenarios. “I’ve been touring since the dawn of time, but the core crew I work with now has been together since about 2010, and I trust them implicitly, so I’ll leave it up to them who they hire, as long as they think I’m going to like them, and they all get along with everyone. So far, it has worked well,” Sherwood reports.

And the veteran crew has dealt with some terrifying weather extremes on the current tour, including a show at Red Rocks in Colorado, where the audience were subjected to a freak, storm with golf ball-sized hail stones injuring dozens of people. 

Elsewhere, the crew has had to act quickly when the threat of high winds in Nashville caused problems on that outdoor run. “We didn’t want the video screens blowing about above the heads of the band, so it must have been amusing for the audience to see us taking them down,” Sherwood reports. 

Indoors in Europe, the environment has been more controllable. The production itself involves an A-stage set 180° across the barricades, although Sherwood says that on occasion, a catwalk is also used by the perimeters. 

“It’s a great lighting show and fantastic for audio, as we have phenomenal front-of-house sound engineer – John Delf, from Edge Studios – who makes life very easy for the rest of us,” says Sherwood. He also namechecks Barrie Pitt (monitor engineer), Oli Crump (audio system designer), Tom Taylor (lighting designer), Sam Kenyon (lighting technical director), and Torin Arnold (stage manager), while he praises Solo-Tech for supplying the sound, and Colour Sound Experiment (CSF) for taking charge of lighting, video, and rigging equipment.

Indeed CSE has 10 personnel out with the Faith in the Future tour. “We have eight screens on the road – six on stage plus two IMAGS that we use wherever appropriate, the company’s Haydn Cruikshank tells IQ.

“We need to tweak the rigging on a daily basis, as we move to different venues, but other than that, it’s a fairly smooth process thanks to Craig Sherwood. He is old school and planned and worked on the production very far in advance, which is a great scenario for all involved. Craig is definitely one of our favorite production managers to work with.”

Garry Lewis at bussing contractors Beat The Street is also a fan of PM Sherwood.

“Craig split the European tour into different runs. So, from Hamburg to Zürich, we had two super high decker 12-berth buses for the tour party and two 16-berth double-deckers for the crew,” says Lewis. “After the show in Athens, we still have the two super high-deckers, as Louis knew them – he prefers to spend time on the bus, rather than in hotels – but we also have two 12-berth super high-deckers for the crew, as well as another crew 16-berth double-decker.”

Lewis continues, “We’ve worked with Craig for a good few years, and we have a great relationship with him. He plans everything way in advance, so it means it’s all very straightforward for us with no issues. So, we use single drivers for each bus, except on the longer runs, or when our drivers are scheduled for prolong breaks, and then we’ll fly an extra drivers as needed.”

1/4, 2/4, 4/4

[rainydaywhump]

Whumpcember Day 10: Freezing

From my merman whumpee Zale's story, only this time it's about the diver who tried to warn him away from the oil rig. A prologue, if you will.

@whumpcember @pigeonwhumps @i-eat-worlds . Lmk if you want to be added or removed! I'm always worried that people get too many notifs but don't want to seem rude by mentioning it.

CWs: near-death due to hypothermia; male human whumpee; no whumper just nature; technical descriptions of saturation diving ops gleaned from Wikipedia and a lot of articles that interviewed divers

Douglas was in trouble.

It had been a routine excursion. He and two other saturation divers were on their fifth day at depth; all of them had gone on more jobs than they could remember, so they were all experienced. You had to be, to be a sat diver. Well over 600 feet down, wielding their technical skill to repair pipelines and machinery underwater in low vis, knowing everything there was to know about their equipment, gear, and their limits…and, even with all that, about eight other people on the ship or in the bell making sure they didn’t die in one of the many, many ways that pressure, air supply, or just the simple fact that they were in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico in winter could kill them.

Stereotype had it that saturation divers were headstrong and always wanted to be in charge. After all, they had most dangerous dive jobs they could choose to take; they had to be brave. So yeah, Douglas and the other guys on his team were all pretty intense, but none of them could be the impatient, argumentative type. Living in a hab for over a month with the same four or five guys would drive anyone mad, but you couldn’t let it fuck with you too much. You had to be able to chill, get over the inherent sense of claustrophobia that comes with cramped conditions and no sunlight to speak of, and not let minor annoyances get in the way. Then, after surfacing, you could keep as far away from that one annoying guy as you wanted.

Their equipment kept them alive in compression. In turn, they had the job of keeping themselves cool mentally.

This one time, Douglas had been interviewed by a guy for a documentary on modern maritime mishaps. ‘Mishaps’ was a pretty funny word for incidents that sometimes resulted in divers being obliterated in an instant by pressure change, but Douglas was an affable speaker who wasn’t too worried about that sort of thing. It was rare. To lighten the mood, he told the guy, “Really, I’d be more nervous if I was part of the life support supervisors! Think of the pressure…literally and figuratively.” That joke never got old.

On this day, though, Douglas’ mind was only on his work. Every now and then he’d have the luxury of looking at a cool chunk of coral or fossil or manmade debris, but he usually couldn’t afford to take a break and get distracted. Especially now. Visibility was low and the currents were strong, and Douglas had a job to do. He had one more hour under here before the next guys could take their shift.

Douglas’ team was specifically inspecting and reinforcing an underwater cable that carried power from offshore windmills to the mainland. The cable had to be incredibly thick and durable to withstand the sea floor (and the sea creatures that occasionally liked to nibble on it; once, on another job, Douglas had seen a mako shark take a bite out of a pipeline), and they had to be continuously monitored and repaired. A lot of that could be done remotely, but the dive teams were essential.

Welding underwater, fastening flanges around pipelines, methodically inspecting each length of pipe or cable, of hull or propeller…being underwater for so long and with such tasks was interesting enough, but what often struck Douglas was the sheer size of everything he was working with. Including the ocean itself. In times of higher vis, Douglas could look out on all sides of him and practically get lost in the overwhelmingly beautiful blue. It was almost hypnotic. His human eyes couldn’t even hope to comprehend it all.

…and in low vis like this, Douglas was happy that he only had to comprehend what was visible in the beam of his headlamp: the cable in front of him and the tools on the lift bag beside him. He moved slowly and carefully, making sure his umbilical stayed untangled.

His umbilical was quite literally his lifeline. The several-inches-thick cord tethered him to the diving bell, which was likewise tethered to the ship. Aside from keeping him attached in case of emergency (and to find his way back), the umbilical contained cables for electricity to power his headlamp, voice comms, camera, and locator. It also delivered a steady supply of air and warmth: helium, oxygen, and a tinge of nitrogen, all heated in this case, and a hot water supply that circulated around his dry suit. Temperatures were frigid down here.

So he was quick to notice, while working on a particularly jagged cut in the cable, that his left arm was suddenly freezing.

Douglas’ headlamp swung to the offending arm. It took him a second to locate the problem, but, sure enough, there was a fresh cut in his dry suit’s arm. What was worse, he realized after a beat, was that the hot water supply had stopped circulating: it was now leaking out into the open ocean and leaching Douglas’ heat with it.

He was in trouble, but he kept calm like always. As long as he had his umbilical, he’d be okay. The supervisors and techs in the bell would know by now that there was something wrong; they couldn’t communicate with him, but they’d be able to see on the monitors that something was wrong with the hot water supply. He began swimming back with it. Into his voice comms with the other two divers, Douglas said, “Puncture in my suit. Heading back to the bell.”

To his alarm, the response from Lynns was fractured, unintelligible. Douglas gritted his teeth and continued, hand-over-hand, to struggle against the current and try to get back as fast as possible. It had been less than a minute, but, already, his lower half was so cold that it felt like it was on fire. Wondering why he wasn’t making as much progress as usual, the diver turned back and realized with icy horror that his legs were barely moving. He could barely feel them when he flexed a muscle.

Douglas pulled on the umbilical with renewed vigor, but panic was starting to ebb at the edges of his mind. Why isn’t the team pulling me on their end? It didn’t make sense, and as the seconds ticked by, the current felt stronger as Douglas felt weaker. Thirty-five-odd degrees Fahrenheit was already dangerous on land, but in the water and as encumbered as he was…

…he was choking on heliox. His lungs were rattling his body with cold shock breaths. To his immense relief, the umbilical started to be reeled back in to the bell –

It’s too slow. The umbilical was about 200 feet in length, and Douglas had reached its end for his work on the cable. He noted this fact with increasingly numbed thoughts. I hope the team doesn’t feel guilty when they can’t get me back in time. Fuck! How’d this all happen so quick? How could he have been working steadily one moment, and then the next --

Something tugged at his arm.

Douglas looked blearily up and almost started spasming with cold shock again. A person was pulling him steadily forwards – but this person wore no tanks, had no line, had no headlamp to see him by. When they turned around to check that Douglas was still with them, their eyes shone in his lamplight.

When they smiled, their teeth were sharp and gray.

Douglas wouldn’t have resisted even if he could. In his weakened state, the thing that tripped him up the most was how easily this person (angel? Apparition?) carried him through the water. Even when Douglas went limp and stopped making any effort to swim, the person lugged the weight of him and his gear across the current until, through the murk, the bell’s moon pool loomed overhead.

Douglas’ memories were hazy after that. He could recall several things that were probably not in the right order: Lynns hugging Murphy as Aldaine and Wright cut his suit off; a huddle of warmth that started to sting, to which Lynns hugged all three of the others in relief; voices on the radio to the surface; mentions of how lucky he was. Douglas was too drowsy to care all that much. He knew he would be absolutely horrified by his brush with death once he was more awake, but now, before he passed out into a deeper sleep, the only line of thought that he could grip concerned the creature who had saved him.

He could have sworn, in addition to their strange eyes and teeth and strength, that they had a tail.

....

Definitely using Douglas as a character for Call of Cthulhu rpgs, only this character will encounter something a bit more cosmic horror-y than a mer

[thiswasinevitableid]

Perfect Specimen (Sternclay)

I decided I wanted to do something for Monster March, and @bellafarallones and I were riffing on this amazing art from @panthermouthh, as the design on Doctor Frankenstein is not unlike how I personally picture Stern.

A few content notes: This is NSFW, and given the subject matter it touches on death. There's also animal death but everything comes out okay in the end.

It’s the perfect night for mystery and horror. The very air itself is filled with monsters. 

And if Joseph’s lab does not have a monster of its own by the time this thunderstorm is done, he’s going to walk out the highest window in the castle. 

Four years of research, another year of planning, six months of gathering supplies, days and nights without sleep, the burns on his upper arm, the white in his hair, all of it has been for this moment. 

The instruments tell him the voltage from the storm is the highest he can hope for, and a moment later the readings from the nodes attached to the experiment tell him a bolt has connected long enough and strong enough to restart the heart. 

He rigged the lift table to be moveable by one person, but it’s still exhausting to strain against the chains, to control the force of the descent, all the while sweat mingles with the rain as it drops from the platform. The instant the table touches the lab floor, he wrenches the handle to close the gap in the roof, shutting out the storm at last. Now all that’s left is the crackle of the equipment, the distant thunder, and his heart beating so loud that for a moment he can’t manage to move. 

When his stethoscope can’t find a twin beat in the chest of his specimen, he sags to the floor, pushes himself back until he’s resting against the nearest table and tosses his gloves away in frustration. He digs his hands into his hair, gripping at the root, wanting to scream in frustration but somehow, after all this time, afraid someone might hear.

He did everything right, picked every part as carefully as if the body were his own. No beer-saturated livers, no bad hearts, no black lungs for his specimen. And it still hadn’t worked. 

The window calls to him. He tugs his hair again, frees his hands only to dig his nails into his palms. No. He can do this. He’s Dr. Joseph Stern, he has brought life to lower animals and god damn it he will bring life to this one. 

He rises, brushing off his lab coat, brain already churning on a new plan. 

Then the figure beneath the sheet sits bolt upright and starts to scream. 

—-----------------------------------------------------------

The last thing Barclay remembers is his room at the Lodge. He’d been alone, the doctor had told Mama and the others they couldn’t come in, not unless they wanted to risk the flu that was stealing his energy and breath away. He could feel he was dying, and he was so scared, he’d begged the man to at least let him see them in the doorway, but his usual doctor had passed from the flu himself. This one, sent from the city, had talked to Barclay like he had rocks for brains and didn’t even stay with him until the end. He’d cried out, weakly but still a cry, for his friends. 

And now he’s crying out again, thrashing at the fabric above him. Fuck, he’s in a shroud and he can’t move, they’ve fucking buried him alive. That thought horrifies him so much he wrenches upward, freeing himself from the confines of his coffin and gasping for air. 

Only there’s no wood or dirt anywhere. Just broken, leather straps hanging off his wrists and a white bed sheet tangled around his waist. A laboratory gleams and hisses around him, and to the right of his bed stands a man in white lab coat. 

The man's hands are over his mouth in shock, his blue eyes wide with excited surprise. Barclay  notices the streak of white in the front of his black hair as lightning flashes across the skylight. 

“You’re alive. Alive!” He steps forward and Barclay leans away, body too full of residual panic to do anything else. 

The scientist holds out a hand, as if Barclay is a spooked dog hiding under the bed, and says slowly and quietly, “Don’t be afraid. You’re not in danger. My name is Dr. Joseph Stern. This is my lab. And you…” a rapturous smile spreads across his face, “you’re my specimen. My vindication.”

“Specimen?” Barclay’s voice creeps upwards.

“You can talk.” Dr. Stern carefully sets his hands on the metal table Barclay mistook for a bed, “amazing, thank god I didn’t use my first choice of head and neck, it’d been damaged by hanging and might have-.”

“Woah, woah” Barclay holds up his hands, trying to get the doctor to make sense. It’s then that he sees his hands aren’t the ones he remembers, and they’re sewn to arms where the skin is a few shades darker. He tosses the sheet aside and finds the rest of his body the same kind of patchwork, clutches his face and notices a beard that wasn’t there before. 

He starts screaming again. 

“Please, stay calm-”

“What did you do? What the fuck did you do to me? What am I?” 

“You’re a modern golem. A, a testament to science and progress.”

Barclay growls and grabs for him, dragging him close by the front of his coat, “Where the fuck is my body? My real body.”

“This is your real body.” The man pushes him back, cheeks slightly pink, “you’ve never had another one.”

“The hell I haven’t! Where is it, where’s, where’s the body of Barclay Cobb?”

The doctor stills, staring at him with fascinated confusion, “He…he’s in Kepler cemetery. Where he was buried. I needed his brain. And his eyes. But I left the rest of him there. Unless.”

“Unless?”

“Unless he’s here now?”

“Yeah. Yeah he is. He’s here and he’s confused and none of this is making that any better.” Tears sting his vision and spill down his cheeks

“I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t expect this. Everything I read suggested that bringing you to life would potentially give you a soul. Or raise you without one. Not, not just bring back someone who was lost.”

“Feel like we have that saying about not believing everything you read for a reason.” He replies helplessly.

A slight smile, “True. And being cutting edge with my research meant there weren’t a lot of reference points.”

“Look” Barclay wipes his eyes and stands, finds himself actually looking down at the doctor, who himself must be six feet tall. The new height is the first thing about this whole mess that doesn’t feel like a curse, “whatever you did, it didn’t go how you expected. I’m not some new creature, I’m just a normal guy in a fucked-up  body. So I’m gonna let you go back to the drawing board and I’m gonna go home and give my friends the biggest fucking hug I can manage.”

“You can’t” Dr. Stern steps between him and the door, “They won’t recognize your new body, and they might be upset if they put together what happened. More to the point, grave robbing and desecration of a corpse are serious charges and I have no plans to be brought up on them.”

“That sounds like a you problem.” He ties the sheet around his waist. That’ll have to work for now. 

Blue eyes narrow, “Mr. Cobb. Barclay” the doctor brings his hands to his sides but makes no move to get out of the way, “People fear what they don’t understand. Right now, I barely understand what’s going on with you. How do you think people in Kepler are going to react?”

“Doesn’t seem like I’m much safer here.” Barclay glowers at the pistol sitting on one of the tables.

Stern sighs, “Several of my predecessors died when the animals they brought back with electricity turned on them. I don’t plan on joining them. It would have been an absolute last resort; Barclay, years of my life have led to this moment, and I’m not going to discard them lightly. Or let them walk right into the path of an angry mob.”

Barclay steps around him, and fingers grab his arm.

“If your old self saw this self coming down the dark road toward him, what would he do?”

“....Probably panic and run inside. Lock the doors and windows so he couldn’t get in and hurt my or my friends.” 

“Now imagine how one of your less gentle neighbors might react.”

“Fuck.” Barclay wraps his arms around himself. His next step lands wrong, his legs unsteady, and sits heavily down on the floor. When he looks up, the doctor is hurriedly making notes. 

“So, what, is the plan to make me sleep down here? Because staying in a dungeon sounds fucking miserable.”

The doctor shakes his head, “No. Lord knows there’s plenty of space in the castle, and I have a room ready for you. Um, just give me a few minutes to get it heated.”

More than a few minutes later Stern returns, dust on his coat, and gingerly extends a hand. Barclay takes it, and allows himself to be led up into his new home. 

He only manages a few hours of sleep before pain wakes him. Anywhere he’s been stitched hurts. When it gets to the point where he can no longer comfortably lay in bed, he groans and gets up in search of the guy responsible. 

The only light and noise in the house is still from the direction of the lab. Inside he finds Stern diligently filling a notebook with words and diagrams. The doctor doesn’t see him right away, and he wonders if this is even a good idea. The guy brought him back as an experiment, seems shocked that Barclay is a person instead of an empty vessel. Maybe asking for help will just cement the idea that Barclay needs to stay here for his own good. 

Then again. 

In the lamplight of a less panicked mind, Joseph Stern doesn’t look quite like the confident, business-like doctor ready to order Barclay around like he’s nothing. There are dark circles under his eyes and his black hair is a mess from wind sneaking through the skylight. And when Barclay awoke, monstrous and afraid, Stern didn’t flinch from him. 

“Uh, Doctor Stern?”

The man looks up, and Barclay pushes down the urge to haul him up to bed before he passes out at his desk. 

“Do you have anything for the pain?”

“That depends on where it is.”

Barclay explains the situation, Stern’s expression tinged with disappointment by the end. It’s only as the doctor unlocks a drawer that Barclay understands the emotion is directed at himself instead of Barclay. 

“It didn’t occur to me that your nerves would react that way, though it makes perfect sense. Here” He holds out a tin of bitter-smelling salve, “this should help numb the pain if you rub it around the stitches.”

“What is it?”

“A topical painkiller. I developed it when I was earning my degree. The number of my colleagues who thought it was fine to give patients who needed to work to keep a roof over their heads ingestible pain relief that made them groggy was shocking. I wanted my patients to have another option.” 

“Thank you, doctor.” 

The other man smiles, subtly steadying his swaying body against the lab table, “You’re my housemate, not my servant. Call me Joseph.”

It’s only the fact that those last three words sound as if they haven’t been spoken in a long, long time that Barclay doesn’t roll his eyes at the idea that a rich boy from the city  won’t see him as a servant. Instead, he takes the tin, returns to his bed, and falls into a deep, if somewhat tingly, sleep. 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph wakes to the smell of coffee and toast and the patter of the rain on the windows. He’s glad he managed to crawl into bed last night instead of passing out at his desk again; it’s cozy here. 

He and Barclay spent the last thirty-six hours in opposite states of energy; Joseph was unable to sleep, anxious to write down every observation and note from Barclay being resurrected. When the anxiety started to fade, a wave of pride would come and buoy him along as he imagined everyone who mocked him being forced to admit he was right. The source of his excitement, on the other hand, spent the entire time in such a sound sleep Joseph checked him twice with the stethoscope to make sure he was still alive, and left him some clothes once he was certain he was. His guess is that, among the many effects of being brought back, Barclay’s body registered the life-giving jolt as a massive expenditure of energy. Not to mention that panic can really take it out of a man. Joseph knows that much from experience. 

The smell of frying meat mingles with the toast now. He should get up and have breakfast. 

He should figure out who in the castle is even making breakfast.

Joseph hurries out of bed, tying his robe as he descends the stairs. In the kitchen, humming as he moves from stove to table and back again, is Barclay. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Making breakfast. I’m sure you’re the kinda guy who survives on coffee and thoughts or whatever, but some of us need actual food.” The knife he’s using on a potato finds his finger instead, nicking it, and he pulls back with a sigh, “I’m sure the bigger hands will be good for something, but right now they’re a pain to get used to.”

Joseph shakes the thoughts of what those hands could do from his sleep-addled head as Barclay ties a small bandage–he must have found them in the lab– around the cut. There’s also a fresh burn on the back of his left hand; he must have hit it on the oven. 

“I’m sorry, I know the new body must be hard to adjust to. In my defense, I didn’t think you’d be cooking.”

The taller man pulls the percolator from the stove, looking at him warily “What did you think I’d be doing?”

“Recovering and gaining control of your body for the first few weeks. Frankly I’m proud of the fact my careful work means you’re up and moving so soon, and the apparent transferring of your muscle memory into a new body is intriguing.”

“Yeah, if you’re not the guy banging his head into things. Or dealing with how itchy a beard can be.” 

“I can buy you a razor if you want it gone.”

Barclay studies his reflection in a hanging pot, running his hands over the beard that’s barely past stubble, “Nah. I like how it looks. Mine always came in patchy.” He moves sausages onto a plate, “guess I oughta thank you for picking a handsome face for me, even if you did put stitches on it.”

“You can blame the fox that ate his nose part way off for that.”

Barclay grimaces.

“Sorry. I’ve been rooting around graveyards and charnel houses for so long it’s sort of…skewed how I talk about these things.”

“I mean, it seems like its’ kinda your life’s work so I get it. But no surgery talk at the table.” He sets the sausages and toast on the wood, then a plate down in front of Joseph and one in front of himself. Joseph pours them each coffee and they eat in awkward but not unpleasant silence. 

As they’re walking past the fireplace in the dining room, Barclay pauses to look at the chess problem Joseph laid out a month ago. 

“Do you play?”

The other man nods, “Learned how when I first started working at the Lodge. We, uh, we could play sometime.”

“I wish, but there’s a reason that’s just been sitting there. My work comes first.”

“I thought that was done. Or are you just going to keep making more guys like me?”

“No” he meets Barclay’s gaze, tries not to feel guilty for the distrust he finds there, “I have so much to learn from you. I’ve re-written some of the core beliefs of science, and I need to put my findings in enough order to present them eventually. Then there’s the fact that the process of constructing you has massive ramifications for the field of surgery.”

“So is my job just to lay in that fucking lab all day?”

That had been his plan. The moment Barclay turned those brown eyes on him and told him his name, it all went up in smoke. 

“I’ll need to ask you questions now and then. And if possible have you do a few physical tests; that serves a second purpose of making sure your motor function isn’t deteriorating or you’re not getting ill from some unforeseen side effect of all this. Other than that, well, my home is yours to make your own.”

They leave it at that, Joseph retreating to his lab and Barclay wandering back towards the kitchen. 

It’s just after six when Joseph is comparing his notes to those of one Professor Cold. There were rumors he’d succeeded in restoring not one, but two, bodies; his twin sons had been killed in a carriage accident. Joseph sees the groundwork for such a feat in the notes, but the way Cold writes about his potential subjects has always bothered him. They were living, breathing men with hopes and ideas and he sees them as nothing more than projects. 

Than specimens. 

Joseph closes the book, sets his notes in order for the night, and returns to the main floor of the castle. Barclay is in a chair by the fire, a book of Virgil in his lap and his focus on the window that faces town. 

“Barclay?”

“Mm?”

In his old life he knew how to be charming. Maybe it’s time to dust off that skill. 

“I’d be honored if you’d join me for a game of chess and a cup of coffee.”

Barclay looks him over, firelight dancing along the line of his jaw. 

“Honored, huh?”

He nods and offers his arm. Barclay smiles, amused, and stands to take it.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------

They’d been making progress over the last month, in more ways than one. Barclay’s skill and comfort with his new body improved, he grew more relaxed when Joseph asked him questions for his research, and his glances toward town are not nearly as melancholy. The reason for that last change is obvious. 

“Okay, either a carriage splashed you or you decided to take a mudbath in the center of town.” Barclay helps Joseph out of his coat as the doctor pulls off his boots.”

“Not quite. There was a puddle in the cemetery that I swear was up to my knees.”

Barclay looks at him, eyebrows raised and lips quirked in a smile “Looking to replace me?”

“Never. But you were the reason for my visit.” Joseph straightens the black vest stretching across Barclay’s chest, “you were so worried you’d be forgotten. I needed to find your grave. Barclay, it’s so covered in flowers I nearly missed the inscription.”

“Oh.” Barclay looks lost and sad, as if Joseph had found him in the middle of the forest, miles from home. 

Joseph takes his hands, “You’ll see your friends again. We’ll figure out a way to re-introduce you without setting off mass panic. I promise.”

Barclays mood had improved massively after that. Which is puzzlement, not panic, is what grips Joseph when he finds his friend crying at the kitchen table. When he asks what happened, Barclay points to a bundled rag. In it is a rabbit kit, eyes open and glassy.

“I, I found it a few others, they got stuck against the outside wall when that tree came down last night” Barclay sniffles, “I moved them so they could find food but that one I, I must have held him too hard, I, I didn’t mean to. I, what if I do it again, what if I can’t be gentle anymore, what if I, I hurt something else, or someone else?” 

Joseph steps next to his chair, only for Barclay to hide his face in his waistcoat. He lets him cry–he hasn’t since that first night–and cautiously pets his hair. 

“Wh-what if I’m too much of a monster?”

“Barclay, look at me.” Joseph gingerly cups his chin, pushes his shaggy auburn hair from his forehead so he can see his face, “you’re not a monster. You’re a wonder, and more than that you are gentle. And kind. This was just an accident, one we can learn from.”

Barclay sniffs, wiping under his eyes.

“A monster wouldn’t cry for a rabbit. Or be thoughtful enough to give it a shroud.”

That gets him a watery smile. 

“Go rest for a bit. I’ll take care of everything.”

Barclay slowly gets to his feet. Joseph waits until he’s in the library, then gathers the sad bundle and slips down to his lab. 

It’s fiddly, frustrating work, but it’s worth every second when shakes Barclay from his lap and shows him the rabbit, fur slightly on end but nose wiggling calmly, and asks if he’d like to help him choose the spot to set it free outside.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------

He’s getting better about not working to and past midnight, but after Barclay made a particularly delicious shepherds pie for lunch today, Joseph had passed out cold on couch the moved to be by the library fire (it’s more comfortable sitting side by side on it than in separate chairs) with his head on Barclay’s shoulder. 

He’d awoken, now on top of his companion, to find it was four in the afternoon and he was behind on the monograph he’s writing on how to effectively reconnect eyes to the brain.

Barclay’s footsteps are just audible under the crash of the storm outside. Joseph isn’t surprised to see him in the doorway; electrical storms set him on edge. Neither of them can figure out if that’s some lingering effect of the experiment that brought him back to life or if the dislike of lightning is somehow stored in a particular body part.  But when it happens, Barclay prefers to be wherever Joseph is.

“Anything I can help with?” Barclay sets a hand on the back of Joseph’s chair. 

“Nothing comes to mind–no, wait, I think we have a few items on my initial checklist to cover.” He pulls out the stack of papers recording the various physical functions of Barclay’s body, “let’s see, the remaining one is, um, is…”

Barclay leans down, then blushes at the underlined words,“Figures you’d be that thorough.”

“We don’t have to test it. Now or ever.”

“What does testing my, uh, sexual functioning involve?”

“Seeing if you can achieve erection and release.”

Barclay’s blush deepens, “Yeah, about that. Kinda confirmed it myself.”

“In that case I’d just need to collect ejaculate. Just to see if you’re, um, able to reproduce like this.” The clinical language is his last hope of not admitting that part of his reason for wanting to know that is personal; his fantasies will be more accurate if he knows whether he could let Barclay come in him without fear. 

Curiously, his more detached tone does nothing for Barclay’s reddening cheeks. 

“We can do that. If, if you want. Hate to leave you with an unfinished checklist.” He says it so tenderly Joseph wants to cry. 

“Okay. Please take off your clothes and go sit on the lab table.”

Barclay obeys, and as he does Joseph sees just how far down the blush goes. 

“Should I…” Barclay gestures to his crotch. Joseph picked his cock out himself. He doesn’t remember it being so intimidating. Or so tempting. 

“Let me.” He steps between Barclay’s legs, the closeness feeling safe than watching from a chair would be; if they did that, Barclay could see his face, might realize how hopelessly smitten Joseph is. Worse, Joseph might learn that Barclay enjoys being watched and ordered around by a seemingly in control Joseph, and then he’d really be screwed. 

His fingers brush Barclay’s cock and the cook sighs and laughs, nervously, “Y’know, usually make a guy buy me dinner before he does that.”

“Does paying for our groceries count?”

“Guess soOH, oh” Barclay’s legs fall wider as Joseph begins stroking him, “yeah, yeah just like that.”

Joseph grips the edge of the table with his free hand. Focus, if he can just focus-

Barclay’s cock is fully hard, heavy in his hand, and when he runs his thumb over the head the other man bucks and moans. His head tips back and Joseph tries to focus on the scars, on what they mean, but all he can think about is dragging his tongue.

Barclay moans again, fucking into his hand, and Joseph’s vocal cords act without permission. 

“That’s it, big guy, I want this to feel good. I want my perfect specimen to enjoy himself.”

Brown eyes snap open and the noise from those plush lips is a whimper. 

“Do you like when I call you that?” He asks, hopeful at the prospect of something he didn’t know he wanted until a moment ago.

“Uh huh, Joseph, please-”

He squeezes the base of Barclay’s cock, letting his nails graze his balls, “That’s sir to you.”

Barclay grins, “Fuck yes it is. Sir. I, I like when you look at me like a project, like a puzzle, no one ever paid attention to me like that, like you, fuck, sir” his head tips forward and his lips find Joseph’s neck, mouthing and kissing at it and soaking his collar in the process. 

“Messy” He scolds. Barclay whines, cock starting to slide more purposefully in his fist, but keeps up his barrage of kisses. 

“Don’t care, sir, promise I’ll make it up to you, want you so bad, tired of waiting.”

“Waiting for what, big guy?”

“You” Barclay says weakly, moan spilling out of him as cum spurts between them. Joseph should be hurrying to catch it with something, but he doesn’t want to lose this moment, doesn’t want to stop feeling Barclay’s breath on his neck and arms around his shoulders. 

He risks a kiss to his beautiful specimen’s forehead and gets a happy sigh in reply. 

“Your turn, sir.”

“Barclay, we don’t need to, you’re probably tired and I should-” 

His lower back slams into the table so abruptly he yelps. 

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, sir” he growls, “I said it’s your turn to be stuck on this fucking table.”

Between the baritone rattling his bones and his terrified excitement at how easily Barclay turned the tide on him, he forgets the reason he hasn’t done this since his first year of university until Barclay rips away every scrap of clothing covering his crotch. 

“I…I can explain”

“Don’t need to” Barclay’s eyes are wide and hungry as he takes in the slick folds, “saw the scars on your chest that time you got acid on your shirt and had to get it off in a hurry.”

“If it’s not to your taste we canFUCK, fuckingchrist” His back and head hit the table as Barclay wrenches his legs over his shoulders and drops to his knees.

“Oh it’s to my taste, sir, because I can do this from how fucking wet you are from just touching my dick” He shoves three fingers inside, fucking Joseph insistently and laughing as the heels of his shoes catch the cooks upper back.

“Lookit you” Barclay sounds like he’s drooling, “this why you made me so big, sir? Because you know just how fucking needy you are and you have to have something nice and thick in you before you can relax.”

“No, I mean yes, maybe, fuck” His hands thwack against the metal, “don’t make me think anymore, I can’t, I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t” Barclay purrs, warm lips ghosting over his dick, “just lay back and lemme give you everything you need. Don’t need to be a genius, just gotta let me use this” he curls his fingers “needy thing whenever I want. And let me do this, too” his lips close around Joseph’s dick and Joseph forgets every word that’s not a curse or a plea for more, his world becoming nothing other than Barclay’s face and fingers against him, his forearm trapping his hips so he can only writhe uselessly as Barclay takes what he wants. 

Joseph digs his hands into Barclay’s hair, certain that if he doesn’t hold onto something his whole body will come apart from the force of his impending orgasm. As it is, when it hits his scream is embarrassingly high and broken, though Barclays only reaction to it is a groan. 

As Barclay pulls back and stands, Joseph can see the slick on his beard, and moans when the cook licks his fingers with a blissful expression. 

He lunges upward at the same second Barclay bends down, kiss reverberating through his entire being as his monster–no, his lover–holds him close. When they finally break, Barclay literally gasping for air, Joseph rests his hand on his beard and smiles as the other man rubs against his palm. 

“You okay?” Barclay murmurs, fingers playing comfortingly along Joseph’s cheek.

“That’s an understatement. Even if a think you might have strained my hip flexor throwing my legs up like that.”

“Sorry” shame creeps across his face and Joseph will not stand for that. 

“I don’t mind, big guy. Though maybe next time I’ll tie you down until we learn just how your strength plays out in the bedroom.”

“That means you’ll have to do all the work, sir.” The smile is back, honey-sweet and warm.

“I can handle that. I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Barclay chuckles and kisses him again, and Joseph sets aside his planning in favor of staying in his arms a little longer.

[robotnik-mun]

And while we're on the subject of birds, spare a thought for Doctor Quack-

This guy couldn't have had it easy. He went from being Royal Physician to becoming the sole doctor of a refugee camp, and for the next ten years had to attend to the medical needs of multiple differing species with differing needs. Babies delivered? He has to do it. Eggs need incubating? Also him. Mammals, birds, reptiles? Gotta attend to all of them. And if that isn't bad enough, he has to do all of this while working with limited supplies and medical equipment, most of which is what can be scavenged out of Robotropolis and jury-rigged into being functional.

How many nights do you think he stayed up, wondering if the machinery works correctly, if the medicine will hold out, if the health of the villagers will be good enough to prevent serious emergency? Was he around when Julayla fell sick? Did he feel responsible when she died? How much guilt do you think he has, for those he could not save? And that's without getting into becoming a father, bringing a brood of ducklings into a world where the future seems so bleak...

... and all the while having to deal with one Sonic T. Hedgehog. Whether as a little kid or a teenager, you just KNOW at least one of the doc's ulcers can be traced to him. In the Knothole Days he probably kept a "_ Days Without Sonic Nonsense" poster somewhere.

[brandwhorestarscream]

Tfe skyfire x starscream

I'm actually gonna draw from some previous source material we've made up here, and say that the bitties in question are the jettwins. They're not Skyfire's sparklings, but he's the one that steps up to raise them.

The seekers are all on the run and, if I'm being honest, have probably vacated the entire North American continent. GHOST isn't an international organization, after all, and flight makes travelling and escape so much easier than groundbound mecha like Tarantulas, for example. They've gone somewhere that's pretty much unreachable by humans: the highest point on the planet. Mt. Everest. The temperatures are nothing compared to deep space flight, and there's plenty of wind and solar energy for them to harness to get an energon synthesizer going.

They've been living on the dl for months and building up an actual base for themselves at the peak, when Starscream's newly rigged together scanners pick up a very peculiar signal under the melting ice caps of earth's poles. Looks like a cybertronian cache of sorts! They head out immediately, before anyone else can snipe the findings. Who knows what it could be? It could be incredibly useful, be it medical supplies or something that might be able to get them permanently off this Primus forsaken rock.

You know what happens here. They find Skyfire in cryosleep beneath the ice: with everything on this planet thawing, they were finally able to get an actual read on him despite being here for so long. Starscream is... god. There's so many emotions at once he doesn't even know what to call it. He's relieved, he's overjoyed, he's terrified, he's angry. They excavate him in a hurry and search for any equipment he may have lost at the time of the crash, but it's all beyond repair.

Skyfire is incredibly disoriented. He's so confused, he's so dizzy and his audials are ringing incessantly and why does Starscresm look so different? For him, it's only been a couple kliks since he got the warning that there was a critical failure in his systems and then he was falling. He blacked out, and now he's here. He's so sore though, and none of his systems are functioning properly, and Starscream is damn near hysterical that it's clear he's missed a lot. They get him back to their little camp, get him some energon, let him rest and decompress. The twins are handed off to Skywarp and Nova so the two reunited lovebirds can have a chance to talk. Starscream tells Skyfire the full story, not overwhelming him with details but all the main points. What happened after his disappearance, the whole mess with the war, earth's revolving circus of pitslag, GHOST, and finally... the bitties.

Skyfire doesn't even mind that they aren't his. Starscream suffered so much carrying them, having them forced on him, but is doing everything in his power to love and raise them properly. Sky's an overgrown lovesick puppy and adores Starscream for all that he is, and he falls in love with the twins the first moment he gets to hold them. They're so tiny compared to him, but so wiggly and curious. They're attempting to climb all over him, nomming on his fingers and poking at his face with their tiny baby hands, giggling and chirping as they clamber up on his head because Look How High!!!!! He passes the infant vibe check with easy and the sparklings are immediately smitten with them. Skyfire fondly remarks that they're beautiful, just like their carrier, and quietly mentions that... he knows it's been awhile, but if Starscream will still have him, he'd love to still be with him. Starscream just smiles and calls him an idiot: as if he'd let him get away!

Skyfire is such an incredible sire to his adopted sparklings. Literally the best they ever could have ended up with. Loves them like his own, so attentive and sweet and patient. He honestly coddles them even more than Starscream does, and has such a hard time telling them no 🤭 he hasn't built up an immunity to puppy dog eyes yet, so he's always sneaking them extra treats. He loves to hold them, they fit so perfectly in his arms, he's always volunteering to hold them for naptime rather than laying them down in their little crib. Starscream is happier than Skywarp and Nova have seen him in a long time, and the whole group of them are a perfect happy little family 💖

[silentcartoonist2018]

Captain Underpants Epilogue AU Chapter 7: Noon

Chapter 7

As he was replacing his red curtains in his office, Mr. Krupp felt like he was almost normal again, thanks to the wet towel he wears around his neck. Sure it made his shirt soaking wet, but it was a necessary sacrifice. 

Before long, it was already noon, all the students are out for recess, the teachers and staff are eating lunch at the staff lounge and Mr. Ree should be arriving at his office with the ring at any moment.

Any moment now….

Aaaany moment….

……..

Mr. Ree was late. Was fixing the ring more difficult than he thought?

….

After a few minutes, Mr. Krupp decided to just walk to Mr. Ree instead.

But when he opened the door, who should arrive but Mr. Ree himself!

“Oh! Uh…” Mr. Krupp stammered.

“What’s with the towel?” asked Mr. Ree.

“Long story. You got the ring fixed?”

“Yeah, about that…”

Those weren’t the words Mr. Krupp wanted to hear.

“There were some components in there that look surprisingly more advanced than they look. So I’m proposing an option where I can give it to you now, but in its basic functioning capacity. I mean, It’s supposed to be a toy ring with flashing lights right?”

“Absolutely not! It has to work just the way it did before with every single part inside it! Otherwise I can’t go back to—well I can’t say it but…Look, all that matters is that I get it fixed to working order no matter what!”

“That’s what I thought you’d might say. So here’s an alternative: You’ll have to wait a little longer till I can get them figured out.”

“How long are we talking about??”

“It depends on how soon I can obtain the right equipment. But it’s gonna be pricey.”

“I’ll pay you! I’ll pay out of pocket!”

“You— what ??”

All of a sudden, Krupp pulled out his wallet. 

“How much do you need?”

“Uh, you don’t—“

“Aw, what the heck. Just take all the bills I have! Everybody uses credit cards anyway! Just get what you need and fix that ring as soon as possible! Ok?”

“Oh…Ok…? Mr. Ree is visibly perplexed at the principal’s sudden act of…something adjacent to “generosity” but doesn’t entirely feel like it, because “desperation” was literally written all over Mr. Krupp’s face.

“Great! Now I’m gonna be busy gathering my composure. My coffee might have made me slightly jittery today. Bye!”

*SLAM!*

And just like that, Mr. Ree was shoved out of the office, door slamming behind him. Mr. Ree stashed away a total of $125, a few loose coins and a stray button into his wallet and went about his day. 

Mr. Krupp proceeded to bang his head against the wall for 15 minutes. He followed it up with primal screaming, some sobbing, occasional stomping on his own toupee, flipping his own desk and cleaning up the papers and supplies that fell out of the drawers.

Up until this point from the start of the day, he had been using all the water in his water cooler just to keep his towel damp. 

He cleared his schedule for an entire day and is barely catching up on paperwork by having Ms. Anthrope slide paper through the door, one at a time, and as silently as possible. Some of the water on his head dripped onto his paperwork and he had to jerry-rig a makeshift drying line for his paperwork in front of his desktop fan. His workload is at a trickle . 

At this rate, he may never get around to functioning as a normal…underpaid jerk of a principal that takes out his problems onto every person around him.

How is he going to spend the rest of the day avoiding people? 

Heck, how is he going to get through the year? The rest of his life??

It was at that point he realized that his towel was no longer damp enough, it stopped raining outside, and he used up all the water in his office. 

So much for barricading all day.

He looked at the clock: 1:15 . 5th period just started not too long ago, so the halls should be empty. 

Mr Krupp grabbed his earbuds and cued up some classical music on his phone. When he poked his head out into the hallway, he could hear a few noisy classrooms nearby and distant footsteps coming from the gymnasium. If he’s lucky, maybe he won’t accidentally run into a student on their way to the same restroom he was going to. 

It’s all should be stupidly simple. 

Down the hallway to his right is the teacher’s lounge. His best option if he wanted to avoid as few classrooms as possible. The only problem is that two other employees are having a late lunch and a very lively conversation. He really didn’t want to talk or accidentally get dragged into a conversation anybody today, so he decided to go to the other side of the corridor towards the boys’ restroom. 

Therein lies another problem: around this time, there were two classrooms that were particularly noisy. 

One was the music classroom (that he had to reopen due to multiple complaints from the PTA), which had a teacher that, as far as Mr. Krupp was aware, tends to snap his fingers a lot while conducting band class. The other classroom, also as far as he’s aware, is in the middle of doing group science projects, which, of course, means noisy students. And if there’s one thing he knows about getting an entire room to quiet down regardless of school subject, it’s usually with a loud voice and a finger snap.

Krupp put his earbuds on and turned up his phone’s volume and stared down a several foot long hallway. It was just him, some century old classical music from a century old musician from Europe—maybe Austria (Disclaimer: it wasn’t Austria), and a slightly stained, somewhat sweat-covered, used face towel from the gymnasium.  

As he picked up the cadence in his step, he was able to make it past the stairway and the secretary’s office. By the time he approached the music room, he turned up the volume on his phone. For a split second, off the corner of his eye, he saw the music teacher snapping his fingers and, much to his relief, he couldn’t hear it. All he had to do was pass the science classroom and he’ll be 5 feet away from the restroom. 

4 feet. 

3 feet. 

2 feet.

His hand finally reached the door when suddenly…

…he felt a tap on his shoulder. 

“AAHH!!”

Quickly he took out his earbuds, “YOU NEARLY GAVE ME A HEAR—oh, Hi, Edith!” Krupp’s tone quickly changed. 

“S-sorry, Principal Krupp!” Edith stammered, reeling from Mr. Krupp’s outburst and then regaining her composure. “I haven’t seen ya all day.”

“Yeah, uh…” Mr Krupp nervously readjusted his toupee. “I was busy. Really busy .”

“Oh, should I come back later—?”

“NO! No, I mean, it’s alright, I just wanted to wash my face real quick, but that can wait! Hehe…” Mr. Krupp blurted out in one breath. 

This was the worst possible time to be meeting with his girlfriend. He desperately wanted to say, “I’m really sorry, but I’m a bit preoccupied right now!” That’s pretty much the most rational thing he could have done.  And yet, he couldn’t say it. 

“You doin’ alright? You look a bit antsy today…and a bit pale.”

“Of course! I was just thirsty and I can’t wait for Mr. Ree to get the rin-I MEAN—an extra cooler, so right now, I’m settling for tap water from the bathroom.”

“Didn’t you just say you were just washin’ your face?”

“Ummm….uhhh……”

“Never mind. Anyhoo, I was lookin’ up places to go for our redo date and-“

“We’re doing a redo date?”

“Of course! I mean, I had a good time last Friday, but everythin’ you planned didn’t go the way you wanted it to go, did it?”

Mr. Krupp grew flustered. “N-no! Don’t worry about—“

“So I’m thinkin’ that since you were the one doin’ all the plannin’ since date one. I think I should…y’know treat you for a change!”

“Oh yeah?” Krupp’s hand stopped pushing against the restroom door. 

“How do you feel about going out of town for a day trip?”

Mr. Krupp raised his eyebrows. “That sounds…pretty interesting, actually. Where do you want to go?”

“So, there’s this museum down in Dayton that has—“

For a split second, it JUST occurred to Mr. Krupp that right behind Edith, he could see through the window to the front of the science classroom, mentioned previously. He could have sworn he heard the sound of children talking amongst themselves, followed by the teacher speaking noticeably louder. Through the same window, he could see a silhouette of the teacher’s hand. However small it was the shape was unmistakable: a hand cocked upward with a thumb and middle finger pressed together. Right before they—

SNAP!

If not for the fact that he was inside an elementary school (and in front of Edith), he’d be screaming out as many curse words as possible right now.

……………………………………

Falling face-down on the floor, Krupp had returned to the mindscape again.

“Yet another case of bad timing, Benny?” Wiseguy taunted whilst jotting down a sixth tally mark on a passing chalkboard that quickly vanished back into oblivion.

Krupp proceeded to bang his fists on the floor. “I WAS BEING CAREFUL TOO!!!”

“And yet you still got tripped up by your girlfriend.”

As he was getting up, Krupp suddenly heard Edith’s voice. 

He looked around behind the EGO booth to see the same floating screen out on the water. It was still focused on Edith's face and Edith was still looking at him. Yet somehow, she doesn’t seem to look like she noticed that he fell under another trance again. But aside from that, something much more important stuck out to him. Krupp could definitely recognize the tone of Edith’s voice, but to him it sounded, really, really, REALLY muffled.

“I can’t understand her? No….NonononoNONONO!!!!”

Quickly, Krupp grabbed Wiseguy by the shoulders, shaking him with great intensity. “I’m getting a second chance for our date! She was going to tell me where she wanted to go and now I can barely make out anything she says?? WHAT SORCERY IS THIS ?”

“H-hey! Shake any harder and you’ll— whoop . There it goes.”

Too angsty to react to the fact that he shook Wiseguy’s head off, Krupp immediately turned back to the EGO door to bang on it in hopes of getting this “other person”’s attention. But before he could shriek “ YOU JERK! GIMMIE BACK MY BODY!! ” to the person he assumes is behind the EGO door….

“…. ….. …….. ……..!”

He heard another person’s extremely muffled voice. Something much louder and closer than Edith’s.

“……….?”

“… … …? … …… ..…..~!”

It would be one thing if Edith was having a one-sided conversation with him, but it’s another when he could actively see vague shapes of his hands entering and leaving his field of vision and seeing his vision bobbing up and down as if he were agreeing to something…. 

“There we go,” Wiseguy grunted as he reattached his head. “Crazy how you can still understand the tone of a conversation even though you can’t understand it word-for-word, huh? Whatever it is, it sounds pretty lively.”

As much as Krupp wanted to deny it no matter how much his blood turned cold, no matter how chilly his spine became….

…….that voice was unmistakable. 

“ Holy mashed avocado sauce !” Krupp said in disbelief, clasping his metaphysical hands on top of his metaphysical head. “That’s my voice, isn’t it!? A-am I actually responding to her? I-I’m answering her and I can’t even hear what I’m saying?? God! I don’t have any control over what I’m saying to her either! WHAT AM I EVEN—!?”

Krupp started to notice something in Edith’s expression. There was something drastically different about the way she looked at him. 

The glimmer in her sky-blue eyes seemed to shine brighter. She looked so much happier. She was even blushing and even looked like she was flirting with him!

When he heard his own and Edith’s voice’s muffled laughter, Krupp started to clench his fists.

Wiseguy peered over Krupp’s shoulder. “Your rant got suddenly quiet.”

“I’ve….never seen her look at me that way before…Not since our first anniversary date.” Krupp said, with a bitter tone. “It’s infuriating …”

“I don’t suppose you’re feeling jealous of yourself are you?”

Krupp’s eyes widened, as if he came to a sudden realization. “Hey, clown. If this is what it feels like when the other guy is in control. Is it the same when I’m in control? You must have met him.”

“Quite a bold hypothesis, Mr. Krupp.” Wiseguy grinned slyly.

Krupp turned towards the clown looking straight at his eyes. “You must at least know who this guy is, right? Who is he ?”

“I’d love to tell you….but sadly, my knowledge is only as good as yours…. somewhat . But even if I did know, where’s the fun in spoiling it when you should take the satisfaction in finding out yourself?”

There was a long pause. More laughter in the background seemed as if it was mocking Krupp.

Before Krupp could say “That sounds like a sorry excuse for saying that you’re just lazy”, that same mysterious force yanked him back through the EGO door. Not too long after, a shadowy figure tumbled out in Krupp’s place, with his elongated shroud trailing behind.

“You sounded like you had a good time.” Wiseguy said to the shadow.

The shadow only grinned in response.

………………..

When the principal came back to his senses, Edith was hugging him rather tightly. Somehow, he felt a slight drop of water on top of his head directly under what appeared to be a crack in the ceiling. His toupee felt like it slid out of place, and his tie felt slightly loose…but miraculously his clothes were still intact!

“Thanks, Principal Krupp!” Edith said excitedly. “We’re gonna have a great Saturday!”

“Uh, yeah! Looking forward to it!” Mr. Krupp answered sheepishly. “Uh…just so we’re clear, can you go over it again just one more time?”

“Huh? But I just explained it 3 times already.”

Whoever this other guy is, he’s a complete moron!! Krupp thought begrudgingly.

Mr. Krupp’s face turned red. “Right…never mind.”

“Oh! Let me text you the directions to the museum and the place we’re gonna eat.” 

LUCKY! Mr. Krupp thought, trying to resist the urge to pump his fist in the air. “That’s great! I’ll commit them to memory!”

“You’re the best,“ Edith said, beaming. “ See ya tomorrow!”

Edith turned back towards the cafeteria to restock food. Krupp just smiled blankly and waved. After a few minutes, Krupp started to walk back towards his office, looking down at his texts from Edith. They were directions to a science museum and an evening farmer’s market. The museum felt like a wild card, but he’s looking forward to the farmer’s market. He’s never been to one as a customer before.

As Krupp entered Ms. Anthrope’s office, he suddenly noticed something rotten in the air that seemed to come from his office. When he walked in, the smell led him to the wastebasket next to his desk where some flies were flying around. Buried under a layer of crumpled paper was a particularly rotten half of an unusually large potato, along with what looked like wires attached to it.

“Who dumped this trash in my office?” The principal wondered.

……………………………………………..

Extra Chapter: An Entry From Someone’s Journal

Friday was a disaster. 

It was bad enough that I lost my Project Friday morning, but it was even worse when I found it. On (SCRIBBLED) HIS desk. A whole summer’s worth of tinkering away in the cave, reduced to proverbial ashes. The outer casing had melted into a puddle and the pieces I salvaged after it hardened still had pieces of wood. Not good especially if I wanted to recycle it back into filament in case a rebuild was warranted. I wonder if there’s a video out on the web showing how to “purify” used PLA?

Something to think about later. Right now, I’ll need to focus on retrieving as many of the important parts as soon as possible. Otherwise, I’m rolling everything back by 14 months. 

Time’s running out….

To-do List:

(SCRIBBLED)

(SCRIBBLED)

(SCRIBBLED)

(SCRIBBLED)

Distract Mr. Ree

Find Mr. Ree’s office!

-Devlog entry No. 72., Operation: Still Yet-To-Be-Named.

[mariacallous]

When turbine blades for the United States’ first offshore wind project left port in September 2023, headed for the Vineyard Wind 1 project off Massachusetts, they were traveling on a barge instead of a wind turbine installation vessel, or WTIV. These purpose-built vessels are common in other parts of the world and make the job much, much easier. A WTIV is a transportation and construction rig in one. Frequently equipped with a big crane, deployable legs, and a dynamic positioning system, WTIVs can support the installation of several humongous turbines per trip.

There are dozens of WTIVs plying the world’s waters. So, why were the Vineyard Wind 1 blades delivered on a barge? This expensive, inefficient workaround was necessary because of a century-old law known as the Jones Act.

Also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, the Jones Act requires anyone transporting goods from one point in the United States to another to use an American ship. And by a modern interpretation of the old law, an offshore turbine counts as a point in the United States. The trouble is, the United States doesn’t have any WTIVs. And without the appropriate equipment, the country’s offshore wind efforts are being plagued by the need for repeated, smaller-capacity barge trips that have added costs to projects already beset by financial difficulties. Danish energy company Ørsted, for example, cited vessel delays when it canceled two planned projects off the New Jersey coast: Ocean Wind 1 and 2.

The country’s first Jones Act–compliant WTIV, the Charybdis, is currently under construction in Texas. While originally planned for completion in 2023, labor constraints have pushed the Charybdis’s launch back at least a year, possibly into 2025, says Dominion Energy, the vessel’s owner.

The Biden administration’s goal is to deploy offshore wind turbines capable of generating 30 gigawatts of power by 2030. That’s more than 2,000 turbines. To meet this target, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), part of the US Department of Energy, says there’s a need for four to six WTIVs. But as 2030 draws ever closer, the incomplete Charybdis remains the only one.

The Jones Act is tricky to navigate. For a vessel to be compliant, it must not only be built in the United States and running the country’s flag but also be owned and crewed by Americans. Consequently, US shipyards enjoy a monopoly, which allows them to demand massively inflated prices.

When finished, the 144-meter-long Charybdis will boast over 5,000 square meters of main deck area and accommodate up to 119 people, supported by on-board cabins, mess rooms, and shops, as well as a cinema, gym, and hospital. But the WTIV’s cost has climbed from US $500 million to $625 million. Meanwhile, the major shipyards in South Korea could have built a similar vessel in less time, for less money, and with a more powerful crane.

The reason for the Jones Act’s longevity, says Colin Grabow, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is that while it tends to benefit only a few people and businesses, the act goes unnoticed because there are many payers sharing the increased costs.

The Jones Act is one in a string of protectionist laws—dating back to the Tariff Act of 1789—designed to bolster US marine industries. The Jones Act’s existence was meant to ensure a ready supply of ships and mariners in case of war. Its authors reasoned that protection from foreign competition would foster that.

“Your average American has no idea that the Jones Act even exists,” Grabow says. “It’s not life-changing for very many people,” he adds. But “all Americans are hurt by the Jones Act.” In this case, that’s by slowing down the United States’ ability to hit its own wind power targets.

Grabow says those most vocal about the law—the people who build, operate, or serve on compliant ships—usually want to keep it in place.

Of course, there’s more going on with the country’s slow rollout of offshore wind power than just a century-old shipping law. It took a slew of factors to sink New Jersey’s planned Ocean Wind installations, says Abraham Silverman, an expert on renewable energy at Columbia University in New York.

Ultimately, says Silverman, rising interest rates, inflation, and other macroeconomic factors caught New Jersey’s projects at their most vulnerable stage, inflating the construction costs after Ørsted had already locked in its financing.

Despite the setbacks, the potential for offshore wind power generation in the United States is massive. The NREL estimates that fixed-bottom offshore wind farms in the country could theoretically generate some 1,500 gigawatts of power—more than the United States is capable of generating today.

There’s a lot the United States can do to make its expansion into offshore wind more efficient. And that’s where the focus needs to be right now, says Matthew Shields, an engineer at NREL specializing in the economics and technology of wind energy.

“Whether we build 15 or 20 or 25 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, that probably doesn’t move the needle that much from a climate perspective,” says Shields. But if building those first few turbines sets the country up to then build 100 or 200 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2050, he says, then that makes a difference. “If we have ironed out all these issues and we feel good about our sustainable development moving forward, to me, I think that’s a real win.”

But today, some of the offshore wind industry’s issues stem, inescapably, from the Jones Act. Those inefficiencies mean lost dollars and, perhaps more importantly in the rush toward carbon neutrality, lost time.

[itstimewehavesomesoliddick]

I remember when the gameplay trailer for payday 3 came out you kinda vague posted about disliking it, did you ever elaborate on what you disliked?

@metalgeara-10cii-arc-210 sorry for the delay but here it is

Basically I've seen footage of the beta since then and some things aren't as bad as I thought but I still see a lot being wrong with it, some of my thoughts about it are below (tl;dr at the bottom)

The UI is worse, they had a perfect coop hud in payday 2, all it needed was to fit indicators for some of the new mechanics and it would have been fine, now you have to play a guessing game of which health bar is yours while going cross eyes because all you ammo and equipment stats are on the other side of the screen, and they got rid of the interaction circle for some reason, so instead of having a very clear indicator of how long an action takes, now you have to squint to look at a tiny square filling up (also they added a crosshair for filthy casuals)

I still have gripes with the gazillion particle effects on some things because unreal engine move, especially the grenades, turns out the flashbang also blinds you by making you not know what the fuck you're looking at thanks to patented Nvidia PhysX™ drivers

I still hate the new look of all the characters, heisters look unnaturally lanky (and the devs getting rid of the suits as the default outfit), all the SWAT guys look the same, all blue uniform black tacticool gear, which is a big departure from 2 where you could always easily tell SWAT tiers and types apart (even on normal the heavy SWATs had a distinctive white helmet and yellow shoulder pads), plus the new special enemy designs sucks, the bulldozer went from a bulky green (or full black) EOD guy that easily stood out in a crowd to basically a blue SWAT guy but bulkier, the Taser went from having a different silhouette and color palette to just another blue SWAT with a couple of yellow bits glued on him, the new grenadier is the same, same base color, just muted red bit, a gasmask (same color as balaclavas) and grenades on his chest to tell him apart, they also made the cloaker go from a stealthy ambusher that punished going around alone and rewarded watching your teammates' backs to a fast walljumping ninja

I also hate the new look of equipment, in the first two game all your equipment had this jury-rigged-with-hardware-store-parts look, medic bags were just that, a bag filled with pharmacy first aid supplies, the ammo bag was a bag full of gun store ammo boxes (before being a rucksack full of magazines), the old look of the turrets was and MP5 rigged to a raspberry pi with 2 motors inside of a tool case, now we have this futuristic self deploying milspec futuristic turret, or clean cases of kevlar plates, it really took away quite a bit of the aesthetic (like how the first hideout was a laundromat's basement)

Then there's mechanics like being able to shoot through a shield's viewport, which completely nullifies their purpose of rewarding teamplay by making someone need to flank them, and they're completely cheapened as an obstacle since you can just slide to stagger them (instead of breaking your leg by sliding on asphalt into a level 4 shield being held by SWAT operator wearing 30 pounds of gear), besides we already had an enemy invincible from the front unless you took an accurate shot, it was call a tan SWAT

Speaking of sliding, there's all the trend chasing flavor of the year mechanics, the sliding being one of them, there's the power meter that you fill with kills they stole from RAID:WW2 so you can pull a more powerful weapon out of your ass, sure some weapons in payday 2 were silly like that, but grenade launchers were usually balanced out by a poor ammo economy

Also now your armor doesn't automatically regenerate apparently (unless I'm getting this wrong), I really don't see the point of having two healthbars that don't regenerate on their own, I always thought the point of it was to allow you to pop out of cover and to reward some risk, now I don't know what they're trying to do

I'm also not a fan of the new skills system, basically they replaced the old one, which promoted teamplay with different trees/roles all bringing different things that helped the team, now it's closer to an ARPG, with 3 different effects that trigger buffs depending on conditions, effects that can stack and chain together etc, it's all very min-max-y, because ARPG mechanics is exactly what I wanted in my Heat (1995) simulator

Speaking of trend chasing, they seem to be copying the Modern Warfare reboots for this one, by both having the same tacticool animations as everyone else (especially the grenade throw) and by making the guns wildly shake from left to right because that's how recoil works apparently

Another domain they're emulating the MW reboot in is the sound, with guns that sound muffled and completely lack punch and bass like a sewing machine, whereas Payday 2's weapons sounded great, this might be due to Simon Viklund leaving, which also brings me to my next point:

No Bain = no buy, I know Simon hated doing the voice, and I'd have easily settled for Locke, but instead of a professional, experienced criminal mastermind or an Afrikaner veteran mercenary, we now have an irritating, sarcastic, quippy, annoying mission control

This also applies to the music, half of Payday was the fantastic soundtrack by Viklund and with him gone, I'm not sure I want to hear whatever they replaced him with

After audible pain, I can talk about a visual one, and the fact that even in the beta there's also eyepopping oversaturated CS:GO tier weapon skins plus weapon charms and stickers, which also shows their priority, I hated the weapon skins in Payday 2 since day 1, 95% of them looked terrible and I don't expect it to get any better, which also brings me to my final point

When I saw the menus for Payday 3, it was clear to me that they wouldn't be caught lacking a second time monetization wise. When Payday 2 released, it was never meant to have weapon skins or purchasable outfits, and those menus reflected that, but not in Payday 3, everything is already ready for it to be a live service game with all the gazillion DLC cosmetics you could imagine, the menus are all already set up to be filled with purchasable items down the line, leaks already showed "payday credits" so I have a feeling that we're already headed down microtransaction road, even with the cope of "muh it's just for cosmetics!", especially knowing their publisher Starbreeze (the same one that made them break their promise of never putting in microtransations in 2, they made that promise for the last game, yet now they're already implementing the framework for them before it got out of the beta)

TL;DR: Just like in many other cases, Payday started out as an indie franchise with a unique and interesting premise, then the sequel got popular and monetized, the studio grew, and now the latest entry is nearly unrecognizable from the original, completely diluted by time and the core studio founders leaving, they used to be a stone standing out of the river, now time has made them a grain of sand going with the current

Payday went from Heat (1995): The Videogame to Just Another Modern Shooter (Cops & Robbers flavor)

I might end up getting it much later down the line but I'll be real with you, I loved Payday since 1, I slowly watched it move further and further away from what it was and for this one, I'm not hyped at all

[beardedmrbean]

More than 200 defendants in one of Italy's biggest mafia trials for generations have been sentenced to a total of more than 2,200 years in jail.

The three-year trial saw individuals allegedly linked to the 'Ndrangheta sentenced for crimes ranging from extortion to drug trafficking.

Those sentenced included a former Italian senator, though the verdicts can still be appealed.

The 'Ndrangheta is one of Europe's most influential criminal organisations.

The case illustrated the mob's broad influence over the politics and society of southern Italy. Experts said the convictions of white collar workers, including local officials, businessmen and politicians, showed the far-reaching impact of organised crime on Italian institutions.

Among the most notable people to be sentenced was Giancarlo Pittelli, a lawyer and former senator for ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's party Forza Italia. Pittelli received an 11-year sentence for collusion with a mafia-type organisation.

Others convicted included civil servants, professionals across various industries and high-ranking officials, who were critical to the 'Ndrangheta's success in infiltrating the legitimate economy and state institutions.

More than 100 defendants were acquitted.

The judges presiding over the case were put under police protection over fears for their safety.

Originating in the impoverished region of Calabria, the 'Ndrangheta is considered one of the world's most dangerous criminal organisations. It is estimated to control as much as 80% of Europe's cocaine market.

The gang boasts an estimated annual turnover of around $60bn (£49bn).

The trial was held in a call centre on the outskirts of the town of Lamezia Terme, converted into a high-security courtroom equipped with cages to hold the defendants and large enough to hold some 600 lawyers and 900 witnesses. Charges included murder, extortion, drug-trafficking, loan sharking, abuse of office and money laundering.

Over three years, proceedings demonstrated how the Calabrian syndicate extended its reach across continents, eventually operating as far afield as South America and Australia. Its members infiltrated the local economy, public institutions, and even the health system, rigging public tenders and bribing local officials.

The trial, the largest of its kind since the 1980s, saw judges examine thousands of hours of testimony. Former mobsters turned collaborators with the justice system testified about the activities of the Mancuso family and their associates, who wield extensive control over the province of Vibo Valentia.

The Mancuso family, from the town of Limbadi, are one of the most powerful of the 150 clans which make up the 'Ndrangheta.

Anna Sergi, a professor of criminology at the University of Exeter, said: "This trial confirms convictions of classic mafiosi, sentenced for offences traditionally more associate with criminal activities, such as extortion or drug trafficking."

She added: "However, it is important to note how the different types of people involved, including white collar workers, provide a more comprehensive view of the entire province and the connections between various mafia clans."

Most of the defendants were arrested in December 2019, following an extensive investigation spanning at least 11 Italian regions, which began in 2016. Approximately 2,500 officers took part in raids targeting suspects in Vibo Valentia, an area primarily controlled by the 'Ndragheta's Mancuso clan.

More than 50 former mafia members agreed to cooperate with the trial, among them Luigi Mancuso's nephew, Emanuele.

Their testimony shed light on the inner workings of one of Italy's most powerful mobs. The trial revealed that 'Ndrangheta members allegedly concealed weapons in cemetery chapels, used ambulances for drug transportation and diverted public water supplies to grow marijuana.

Those who opposed the organised crime group faced grim consequences, including finding dead puppies and goat heads left in front of their houses, torched cars and vandalised shop windows.

"This first round of sentences demonstrates how challenging it is to combat the 'Ndrangheta due to its political, economic, and financial connections," Antonio Nicaso, a writer and organised crime expert, said.

[ltwilliammowett]

Ship terminology

I thought I'd take you on a little trip into the world of ship terminology but in summary form.

The word ship itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon scip or the Gothic skip, both meaning boat. But there is also a distinction, because when we say boat we mean a small vessel without decks that is or can be transported on a ship.

At the back is the stern and at the front is the bow with the head, the ship's toilet and the figurehead.

From Greek and Roman antiquity until long after the Grand Armada of 1588, warships carried soldiers accustomed to conducting sieges on land as an offensive force. The soldier on land felt secure in his castle, even though a castle is essentially for defence, and When one went to sea to fight battles, warships had to be equipped with castles. In fact, there were two self-contained castles in each ship, one forward and one aft, known as the forecastle and the aftercastle. From these castles, soldiers fired slingshots, longbows and crossbows. These castles almost disappeared with the advent of muzzle-loading cannons, as the weight was too great. This is almost recognizable in the galleons of the late 16th-early 17th century. Where the forecastle was only one deck high and the aftercastle still quite high. The name forecastle has survived over the years, albeit often in a shortened spelling and always abbreviated in pronunciation, the famous fo'c'sle.

(x)

In the course of the 17th century, the afercastle became the quarterdeck, the officers' quarter, on which the wheel was located from 1740. Before that, the whipstaff was located slightly below and not on the maindeck. If there was a cabin on the quarterdeck and a deck above it, it was called the poop deck.

Between the forecastle and the aftercastle was a large area called the waist, which was open until the early 19th century. century, exposing the gun deck below. This gave sailors quicker access to the guns and reduced the ship's weight. From 1805 onwards, it became more and more standard to close the deck and this became a whole upper deck or maindeck, with accesses and vents that were covered with gratings.

(x)

In between were the gundecks with the great cabin and the wardroom and the berth deck with the gunroom, the places where the guns and crew lived. Under this was the orlop deck, which was an ideal storage area and at the same time a recreation room for some of the ship's crew. Since the deck did not have to be cleared or converted during combat operations, cabins and rooms placed here were permanent and could even be locked. This was also the place where the surgeon could be found.  

At the bottom is the hold, the area where the ballast was stored and the barrels with the supplies. On the side of the ship were large square recesses, the gunports, which have existed since the 1520s, from which the guns were fired.

(x)

The masts, often three (mizzenmast, mainmast and foremast) from the 16th century onwards, often carried a platform. These were known as tops, which were placed halfway up the masts to provide a point of attachment for various rigging and to serve as a fighting platform; the topmen, the hands that worked at the top, were the most nimble of sailors and were considered the crème de la crème of sailors.

Before the invention of the rudder in the 12th century, a ship was steered with a long oar or sweep fitted over the stern on the right or steer board side of the ship. The Norse were the first to use a single oar; Greek and Roman ships had two steering oars, often connected and controlled by a tiller. It is not known why the Vikings had chosen the starboard side; their choice, however, became universal.

In the course of time the term steerboard changed to starboard; it has no connection at all with stars. It was found awkward to put a ship alongside a jetty on the side this oar was shipped. By preference ships were put alongside starboard side outboard. A plank was put across from shore to ship, and over it stores were embarked. This plank or board was called the ladeboard or loadboard, later larboard. There was doubtless much confusion over the use of the terms larboard and starboard, but after 1580 there was a way out. The French with their high ships' sides devised a shortcut to handling cargo: they cut a loading door or ports its in the ship's  side- known as port side. If you go near the direction towards the back it is aft and towards the front it is foreward.