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mushroommushy · 3 years

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Just some stuff on my ocs

Fauna

- She adores pretty much all berries she can get, as well as most nuts

- She cowrites books with Shellington, he does the animals and she covers the plants

- She is very jumpy, and often gets startled when approached from behind

Gazania

- She has a very fluffy tail, and sometimes chases it when she’s bored

- Knows several different survival tactics that come in handy in certain situations

- Always carries around some sort of map or exploration guide in her satchel, similar to Shellington

Freesia

- She loves to collect shiny things that she finds, such as shells or pieces of beach glass

- Is often heard running around at night, screaming because that’s just what Fennec Fox’s are like

- Is extremely attached to her yellow bandana she wears constantly, and will try to fix it herself if it is torn

Coal

- He’s very excitable, and his tail wags whenever he gets hyped up

- Climbs on everything, and often knocks stuff down with his tail by accident

- Startled by loud noises, such as fireworks, thunder or the metal of the ship rubbing together when it needs oiling and he’ll start yipping and barking like crazy

Xia

- She is ridiculously tall, at 6’1 and is only three inches shorter than Captain

- She stress bakes often, and when she does she ends up making a ton of food

- She’s kind of like the big mom of the crew, she’ll help them if they are upset

Neri

- When she was alive, she always carried a knife in her boot

- She stayed on the Diego Ramírez Islands with her brother until she caught cryptosporidiosis and passed away

- She’s overly protective of Hearth, the other ghost inhabiting the ship, but sometimes does mess with him too

Yukon

- Has a pretty bad fear of heights, he usually will not join his dad on counting populations if he’s using the helicopter

- He enjoys painting with berries he can find in the park, but his fur tends to get stained with the juice

- Adores eating white pine cones, one of his favorite snacks

Keanu

- Is one of Sage’s only friends that he can talk to, him being the only other ranger (Who he may or may not have feelings for)

- He’ll use his long tail as a scarf to keep his head comfortable when resting on hard rock

- He has gills, allowing him to breath underwater and helps Sage explore the cenote’s

Wildflower

- Is actually a huge pushover when it comes to Nightshade, fits the meek predator x badass prey ship dynamic

- She patrols during the night, while Nightshade rests and when it’s cooler

- Loves seeing how excited Nightshade gets when talking about her interests, so will ask her questions or bring her bones just to get her talking

Heather

- She is quite capable of disarming someone of their gun and pointing it right back at them if she catches them hunting illegally

- Is constantly annoyed by any men who even try to flirt with her, as she is an ace

- Some of her hobbies include cliff diving and making dream catchers

Fir

- He enjoys making frozen desserts for fun, and handing them out to others for free

- He’s a polar scout worker, he teaches the Cubs survival tactics and how to navigate the arctic

- Finds Willow’s protectiveness over him absolutely adorable

Nightshade

- Is a huge fan of vulture culture, and the ledges inside her cave that she calls home store hundreds of different bone specimens, her favorite being a Gila Monster skull

- Often starts bar fights for fun in the Western Styled saloon not too far from the valley

- Is extremely clingy to those she is close to, and has a hard time saying goodbye when they need to leave

Rose

- Has a basic understanding of medical care, and knows how to apply bandages correctly as well as a few other things (Taught herself this for Fauna’s sake after finding her injured)

- Can list every flower in the valley off the top of her head like it’s nothing (She isn’t a botanist, just knows a lot of flowers thanks to Fauna)

- She’ll video call Fauna every night, sometimes accidentally waking her up at 2 Am due to time zones and ends up feeling super bad about it

Sage

- Used to be extremely lonely, video calling family whenever he got the chance and jumping on opportunities to talk to people until Keanu joined him

- His limp foot does not allow him to run, so instead he’ll travel by swinging with vines if he needs to be somewhere quickly

- He’s considered getting a prosthetic foot so that he can actually experience running and full function in his legs

Lily

- She is extremely hypercritical of her work, taking each and every comment on it to heart meaning she is extremely sensitive especially to criticism (mostly when it’s sexist criticism with people saying no invention from a female is as good as a males)

- Her and Tweak will stay up super late, playing multiplayer games with their headsets and cursing at each other like sailors while also sweeping the floor with others in COD, Depth, Overwatch etc.

- Her best inventions so far are special boots that allow people to walk over mud and quicksand without sinking in and getting stuck, and it’s proved successful

Marigold

- She hates getting any bit of mud on her fur, it drives her insane with her being a clean freak

- Her and Evergreen bicker with each other constantly, and tackle each other until Marsh pulls them apart

- She’s often incredibly shy when it comes to making friends, she’s always worried of being judged for her clumsiness and with how quiet she is

Orchid

- Good friends with Calico Jack, and often checks up on him

- Not very easily angered, but one thing that gets him really fired up is destroying part of the forest

- He’s a FTM trans, but kept his name and sometimes still wears kinda feminine clothes because he likes too

Willow

- She’s very protective over her family, often trying to attack anyone she deems dangerous, this usually doesn’t work as they tend to be ten times her size and also not aggressive

- Often has nightmares, and will run to her big brother whenever she has one for hugs even if it’s the middle of the night

- She loves her family’s ice burrow, finds it incredible how much work was put in

Evergreen

- A massive prankster, and is constantly thinking of new ideas for her pranks

- She will troll her siblings whenever they come home by dumping mud on them

- She will respect those who don’t handle her pranks well, and will leave them alone (Ex. Belle or Lark)

Lark

- Her ears are almost always drooping or at least flopped at an angle, but she’ll sometimes cover her eyes with them

- Has been known to immediately burrow underground if she gets scared

- She is really good at cooking, often doing so for animals in the forest, for herself and occasionally for her family members if she can get it to them

Mesa

- She has severe ADHD, often stims without realizing it and is bad at reading body language

- She knows which cactus are safe to drink water from and how to get water from them

- Sometimes she blends in so well with the canyon that while on tour, the people she’s leading loose track of her, so she wears a white ribbon so it’s easier to spot her

#octonauts #ocs #octonaut ocs

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neriad13 · 4 years

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Rapture Dining Headcanons

Just for fun! And because I find myself writing a little about Rapture food politics and wanna play around with it.

- It isn’t economically feasible to raise a sizable amount of cattle, pigs or sheep within the confines of Rapture. The vast amounts of space and feed needed is just too expensive to justify it. The methane output is also something that puts a limit on how many animals it’d be safe to keep alive in a given building.

- However, they are able to raise chickens and rabbits, though they are, due to supply and demand, prohibitively expensive to buy for the lower classes. Cohen’s collection of actual rabbits in his club is a blatant show of wealth. Look at him, filling his establishment with valuable food that a large section of the population can’t afford to buy and letting it hop around. Those rabbits were definitely eaten by patrons and workers holed up in there at some point during the war.

- Seafood is big business and much, much cheaper than it normally is on the surface. At the city’s inception, crab, shrimp, mussels, clams and whitefish could be bought for less than a dollar a pound. Luxury seafood like king crab, caviar, lobster and swordfish could also be produced much more cheaply but because of the cultural baggage associated with them, they still commanded higher premiums. Unsold luxury seafood, as well as other unwanted scraps, are sold as fertilizer to Arcadia and the other farming areas of the city. Due to unregulated overfishing over the years, prices of seafood gradually went up and fishermen had to go further and further out to score comparable catches.

- Rapture’s overfishing problem was a big part of the reason why Iceland (who was claiming more and more fishing grounds for themselves) and Britain (who was being pushed out of previously international fishing grounds) were engaged in the Cod Wars intermittently between 1958-76. With the conclusion of the final Cod War, Iceland unknowing claimed Rapture itself as being within its Exclusive Economic Zone.

- Legally, the foods consumed to show off wealth and power are the rare chickens and rabbits, tuna and swordfish steaks, caviar and oysters. Ryan’s dinner parties are completely on the books...and are considered incredibly boring, menu-wise, by their attendants. Everyone with a good amount of money gets sick of even the best seafood eventually.

- Illegally, nothing says more about how much money a person has than a smuggled steak. Or pork chops. Or ribs. Or a speakeasy BBQ joint. People who haven’t had real meat in a while sometimes go a little insane with the meat parties. The ultra wealthy eat it on the regular. The lower classes will save up to buy smuggled meat for special occasions or unsold meat of questionable freshness. This is how disease outbreaks that reveal the presence of a smuggling ring break out.

- There were smaller smuggling rings run by construction workers since before the city’s opening, from the secret bays of the city through which construction materials were shipped, that were meant to be sealed off once construction was complete. Some of them were bought out by Fontaine. The ones he couldn’t buy were violently shut down. Some of them gradually dissolved as their members dropped out of the business. Some of them were blown in to the authorities and quietly shut down. None of them besides Fontaine’s operation existed in the years leading up to the civil war.

- Fake meat is also big business. There’s a few startups that offer somewhat palatable lab grown meat (also expensive), but most fake meat is soy or gluten based. Nobody has yet created a perfect facsimile of a steak, but ground fake meat products are generally fairly good.

- Because of lax labeling laws, it’s hard to know for sure if you’re getting real meat in prepackaged products. Odds are: probably not. Coincidentally, it is also hell on earth to have food allergies in Rapture.

- Arcadia grows mainly fruits, vegetables, nuts and lumber. Vast amounts of soybeans, wheat and corn are grown hydroponically in farms not open to the public. There are also multiple vineyards in operation. The cheaper ones grow their grapes hydroponically. The luxury ones have soil scooped from the ocean floor in order to give their wines that special “Rapture Terroir”.

- Tequila is the one liquor that absolutely cannot be produced efficiently in Rapture, due to the long maturation of the blue agave plant and its need for space. However, you can get tequila-flavored vodka...which is not at all recommended. Tequila is a very hot smuggling commodity.

- Dairy products are tricky business. There’s a wide variety of plant and nut milks available, which can be made into excellent cheeses, yogurts, ice creams and any other thing that requires it. They almost taste like the real thing. Icelandic dairy farmers make huge amounts of money selling their fine dairy products to smugglers. They absolutely know something’s up out there, but willingly turn a blind eye to it.

- Non-digestible fillers, outright dangerous food additives and copious use of chemical preservatives, flavorings and colorants are rampant in the unregulated world of commercial food. Will a farmer inject a carcinogenic red dye into a watermelon to make it look prettier? Heck yes, they will. Sawdust (or fish bonemeal) bread has never been so popular since the Victorian Era.

- Persephone serves the seafood that gets caught in the prison’s filters to the inmates to cut costs and to silently urge them to participate in the plasmid trials so they have the money to buy off the Deluxe Menu instead.

#bioshock #meta #a thought #my writing

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protectrightwhales · 5 years

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Ways to Help Protect North Atlantic Right Whales

North Atlantic right whale #2910, a male first seen in 1999, (top), swims with Ruffian (#3530), a 15 year old male, in Cape Cod Bay on December 19, 2018. #2910 has been entangled in fishing ropes at least once before and Ruffian has been through two bad entanglements, the first of which happened when he was only about four years old and left him with significant scarring on the top of his head, his back and his flukes. He was freed from snow crab trap ropes and a large snow crab trap off the coast of Georgia in 2017 that he had been forced to carry all the way from Canada. credit: Center for Coastal Studies, permit #19315-1

1. The lobster and crab industries are responsible for a majority of North Atlantic right whale deaths. We go into much more detail on this in our Entanglement in Fishing Gear page but the fact is, these industries are driving North Atlantic right whales towards extinction and causing massive suffering along the way. We recommend avoiding anything caught in traps or gillnets to avoid contributing to the deaths of these whales. We must decide as a nation whether consuming fish and crustaceans is worth the suffering and possible extinction of these whales as it has unfortunately become clear that the industry is not changing their practices to help these whales. When we stop eating these foods we can feel good knowing that we are no longer supporting an industry that is violating the Endangered Species Act by killing these whales. 2. If you are piloting a boat remember that it is illegal to be within 1,500 feet of North Atlantic right whales. If you find yourself within the zone, depart immediately at a safe, slow speed. We recommend avoiding as many trips on boats as you can, whether it be personal watercraft or cruise ships. The large amount of ships in the ocean not only kill and injure whales by colliding with them, they also create noise pollution. The oceans are quite literally too loud for whales to be able to properly communicate with each other. 3. When it comes to making decisions on purchases we recommend trying to buy locally-made, or at least American-made products, so that they don't have to be brought in on a container ship. The continued use of these cargo ships risks more ship strikes that kill and injure North Atlantic right whales and all other species of whales that inhabit the ocean. In one study of whale deaths around the world, researchers discovered that ships 80 meters or longer were responsible for more deaths than any other type of ship. 4. Avoid single-use plastic as much as possible and join (or conduct your own!) beach cleanups around you whenever you can. A full clean-up is ideal but if you can only grab a few things while you're there here's a few key things to pick up: plastic bags, rope and netting and anything with a loop on it (shipping straps, plastic 6-pack rings, etc.). Plastic bags look like jellyfish when they're in the water so they are a particularly bad thing for any species that eats jellyfish including sperm whales and sea turtles. The rope, netting and any items with an enclosed loop such as six-pack rings are ingestion hazards and they could entangle sea life as well so removing these and cutting them up before properly disposing of them is crucial. 5. Don't flush tampon applicators, q-tip sticks or any sort of plastic in toilets. These items float to the surface during sewage treatment and even though sewage treatment has improved over the years, lots of plastic doesn't get filtered out and ends up in the ocean. Ingestion of plastics has been documented in at least 56% of cetacean species, with rates of ingestion as high as 31% in some populations. Plastic never truly biodegrades and is a major problem in the oceans. In 1985, it was estimated to kill up to 100,000 marine mammals every year and plastic pollution in the oceans has significantly increased since then. The full impact is currently unknown as many deaths from plastic pollution happen out at sea so it's most likely even worse than we know. 6. Reducing our consumption of fossil fuels is another important action you can take to help these whales. Oil tankers strike whales and the burning of fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that contribute to rapid warming of North Atlantic right whale habitat. One of the worst threats from these industries is the seismic blasting that's used to find pockets of oil and gas. It's devastating to marine life and increased levels of underwater noise have been shown to cause high levels of stress in North Atlantic right whales. There are many things you can do to make your home energy efficient during warmer months and in cooler months so we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. There are also key things you can do to reduce the energy usage of electronics in your home or office. Switching to LED light bulbs and purchasing Energy Star-rated appliances are also important ways to reduce energy usage. And, when it comes to your car, there are many things you can do to increase fuel efficiency. 7. When it comes to lawn care, natural is the way to go. Pesticides and fertilizers are unnecessary and should be avoided. Pesticides are toxic to sea life and fertilizers cause severe damage when rain washes them into waterways and storm drains that carry them out to the ocean. The NOAA's 5-year review of North Atlantic right whales released in 2017 stated, "There is evidence that some contaminants, particularly those in flame retardants (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), detergents and pesticides (alkylphenol ethoxylates), disrupt endocrine pathways and reproduction in animals." The report also noted that a 2010 study "analyzed blubber samples taken from five North Atlantic right whales that stranded along the eastern U.S. and Canada, and detected the presence of organochlorines, PCB's, and brominated flame retardants in all five samples." 8. In addition to avoiding pesticides and fertilizers, it's best to avoid as many man-made chemicals as possible such as flame retardants, harmful cleaners that don't properly break down and as many pharmaceuticals as possible. Many chemicals don't get properly filtered out during sewage treatment and end up in lakes and the oceans when the effluent is pumped out of the treatment center. Phosphates, which are in many cleaning supplies, encourage plant growth which use up the oxygen marine life needs. They have been banned or reduced in at least 16 states but are still legal in a majority of states. Unfortunately, just because a product is legal in some areas doesn't mean it's safe. Many chemicals, such as PCB's, have been banned later on after they were found to have been dangerous but should have been banned much sooner. The long term effects of many chemicals, and the effect of chemicals combining with others (the synergistic effect) is currently unknown. It's better for our health and the health of all the species that inhabit the oceans to use natural cleaning products that don't contain harmful chemicals. 9. When new regulations need public comments, new legislation needs notes of support (or opposition) or petitions need signatures we will send out the word a few different ways. We are on Facebook and Tumblr. And, if you haven't read our Facts page yet we recommend checking that out as well. We talk about some of the things listed above with more depth, context and information so you can find out the details about what these whales are up against and how you can help them.

10. Remember that the law that bans approaching a North Atlantic right whale within 1,500 feet also applies to paddle-boarders, kayakers, swimmers, light aircraft and drone pilots (even those with FAA licenses). A special research permit from NOAA is required to be within 1,500 feet of these whales, for their own protection (and yours as getting near them can be incredibly dangerous). No one, including the writers of the actions listed above, is immune from mistakes but if we change now and get into good habits regarding these things then we can give these whales a fighting chance. Our actions are hurting these whales but it doesn't have to be that way, the change can start with us, right here and right now. These whales need as much support as they can get so we thank you for looking for ways to take action!

#whales #right whales #North Atlantic right whales #narw 2910 #narw 3530 #cape cod #cape cod bay #massachusetts #atlantic ocean #oceans #endangered species #entanglements #ship strikes #plastic pollution #marine debris #chemical pollution #oil drilling #protect right whales

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dailynewswebsite · 4 years

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US-China fight over fishing is really about world domination

China has clashed with neighbors over its fishing within the contested South China Sea, pictured right here. Controversially, Chinese language fishermen additionally enterprise so far as Argentina and Ecuador. Yao Feng/VCG through Getty Pictures

China’s aggressive, typically unlawful fishing practices are the most recent supply of battle with the USA.

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet. Beijing claims to ship round 2,600 vessels out to fish throughout the globe, however some maritime consultants say this distant-water fishing fleet could quantity almost 17,000. America has fewer than 300 distant-water ships.

In response to the 1982 United Nations Conference on the Regulation of the Sea, nations management marine sources inside a 200-mile “unique financial zone”; past which might be worldwide waters. Whereas the U.S. by no means signed the treaty, it has declared a 200-mile offshore unique financial zone.

Bolstered by beneficiant subsidies and at occasions protected by armed coast guard cutters, Chinese language fishermen have been illegally fishing close to the Korean Peninsula and within the South China Sea, a hotly contested space claimed by six international locations. By exploiting these waters China has come to dominate the worldwide squid market. Practically half of this catch is exported to different Asian nations, Europe and the USA.

Chinese language ships have even pushed so far as Africa and South America, the place fishermen have been recognized to take away their figuring out flags to keep away from detection. In 2017 Ecuador caught 20 Chinese language fishermen within the environmentally protected Galapagos Marine Reserve and sentenced them to 4 years in jail for capturing hundreds of sharks, the first ingredient in a Chinese language delicacy, shark fin soup.

In August, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China for “predatory fishing practices” that violate “the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of coastal states.”

A crew member of the Chinese language-flagged ship confiscated by the Ecuadorean navy arrives for a court docket listening to within the Galápagos Islands on Aug. 25, 2017. Juan Cevallos/AFP through Getty Pictures

China’s Overseas Ministry mentioned Pompeo was simply making an attempt “fire up bother for different international locations.”

However Pompeo’s rebuke is about greater than fish. Governments usually use the fishing trade to advance their diplomatic agenda, as my work as a historian of fishing and American international relations exhibits. America used fishing, straight and not directly, to construct its worldwide empire from its founding via the 20th century. Now China’s doing it, too.

Fishing its approach from independence to imperialism

Earlier than the 1800s, when worldwide regulation started to outline maritime rights, restrictions on fishing depended wholly on what a given nation might implement.

That’s why, on the Paris negotiation to finish the Revolutionary Struggle in 1783, future president John Adams insisted that Nice Britain acknowledge the appropriate of People to fish the North Atlantic. Its wealthy waters have been filled with cod and mackerel, however that’s not all: The fishing rights Adams received in 1783 prolonged the younger nation’s presence properly into the ocean.

As a result of American fishing rights have been acknowledged alongside American statehood, my analysis exhibits, generations of U.S. diplomats related the 2. In 1797, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering referred to as American fisheries “the fairest fruits of independence.”

Even so, for many years after independence, the U.S. and Nice Britain quarreled over worldwide fishing, resulting in many new and renegotiated treaties. At every flip, the People uniformly defended their proper to fish the North Atlantic, even threatening warfare to take action.

North Atlantic fisheries have been intently tied to American independence. George Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Business of the USA

By the 1860s, worldwide fishing had change into a key part of America’s newly expansionist international coverage. Between 1850 and 1898, the U.S. annexed quite a few abroad territories, amongst them Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. Immediately this empire offers each American fishing vessels and the U.S. army a world attain.

Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who bought Alaska and its wealthy North Pacific waters below Andrew Johnson in 1867, additionally tried unsuccessfully to purchase Greenland and Iceland, hoping to additional prolong American fishing claims throughout the North Atlantic. Throughout archival analysis I realized that Seward’s like-minded successor, Hamilton Fish, toyed with the concept of buying the Canary Islands, close to northwest Africa, as a naval depot and a base for American fishermen.

Chilly Struggle fish

For a time across the flip of the 20th century, fishing took a again seat to army may within the U.S.‘s worldwide energy performs.

After World Struggle II, although, Washington once more turned to marine sources to serve its international coverage agenda. This time the federal government used what I name “fish diplomacy” to assist construct a extra America-friendly world order.

American diplomats of the 1940s used the notion of “most sustainable yield” – that’s, the concept that there’s a stage of fishing that maximizes the variety of fish caught with out damaging the long-term well being of fisheries – to increase American maritime affect.

The thought was extra political device than scientific discovery, as historian Carmel Finley has completely explored. However the U.S. used this fake sustainability argument to cross legal guidelines and agreements that restricted international incursions into American waters whereas giving American fishermen freer reign over the world’s oceans.

Citing most sustainable yield, the Truman administration declared conservation zones to guard sure fisheries in 1945. This transfer basically barred Japanese salmon fishermen from Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Only a few years later the State Division cited most sustainable yield to argue towards limiting U.S. tuna fishing in Latin American waters.

A fishing boat moored in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1947. Rotkin/Three Lions/Getty Pictures

Because the Chilly Struggle developed within the 1950s, fish diplomacy helped the U.S. shore up allies to counter the Soviet Union.

Washington gave beneficiant subsidies to increase the fishing fleets of varied international locations – most notably Japan, whose war-ravaged economic system was revived partially by the U.S. boat-building subsidies that resurrected its personal as soon as important empire-building fishing trade. The U.S. additionally lowered tariffs for strategically situated fishing nations like Iceland, making their most important export, cod, cheaper for People to purchase.

[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]

In fact, the U.S. additionally fought communism with mutual protection alliances, arms gross sales to pleasant nations and direct army interventions. However fishery politics was a part of its Chilly Struggle plan.

This historical past helps clarify why the U.S. now sees China’s huge fishing fleet and worldwide trawling as risk. In sending its fishermen far and vast, Beijing has, wittingly or not, adopted America’s lead.

Blake Earle doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that will profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/us-china-fight-over-fishing-is-really-about-world-domination/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

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discoursecatharsis · 7 years

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I love how a*tis claim they have articles that "prove" fiction affects reality and causes people to abuse their spouse, child, sibling, relative, etc. in the most fucked up way. When those articles are from incredibly biased people who don't know how the human brain works and that people who are fucked in the head will use ANYTHING to groom a person for abuse, not just 2D cartoons/anime and ships. A*ti: "I have 100 articles of fiction affecting reality!" Actually girl, it has been disproven. 🙄

And these people are just too ignorant to get it... like to actually comprehend the issues of “fiction vs reality”.

It reminds me of these ultra conservative Christians who thought that Harry Potter would inspire their kids denounce their religion and start practicing witchcraft.

And it also reminds me of people who think that violent video games lead to an increase in murders because some kid who plays GTA or COD went on a school shooting.

If fiction inspires someone to do something wrong or illegal in real life... it’s still wrong and illegal, and they’re still going to be punished for it. Just because people ship a 15 year old and a 30 year old fictional character isn’t going to make a similar relationship “right” in the real world, and any 30 year old who has an inappropriate/illegal relationship with a teen is going to be rightfully punished for it. If someone murders people because of a violent show, they’re still going to be punished for it and society knows that murder is still wrong. People enjoying this bit of fiction isn’t going to change that. Just because there are a handful of examples of people who can’t handle this media (like violent video games) without committing wrong deeds irl... doesn’t mean that everyone else can’t enjoy that media as a result. Banning violent video games because some people (people who already had personal and/or mental issues) played said video games before going on a shooting spree is just... not practical. >99.9% of the population can handle playing those video games without killing people. It’s ridiculous to ban games just because a few psychopaths happened to be players of the games too.

I saw an ant1 the other day on Twitter who tried prove the “fiction affects reality” argument by bring up the fact that the movie Jaws lead to people killing sharks. It’s like “um no, that fictional movie still doesn’t affect reality in the way that you think.”

Yes Jaws did result in people killing sharks. But that’s because those people are dumbasses and refuse to do research on the reality that sharks rarely kill people. You’re more likely to be killed by a dog than you are by a shark. But these people watched a horror movie about a fictional shark, got irrationally scared about real sharks, and started killing real sharks as a result. Don’t blame fiction for people doing stupid or bad things. Blame the idiots who take fiction as fact because they too moronic to educate themselves.

Common sense and education are key. But ant/s just use this near fear-mongering tactic that “(this relationship/thing) is always or inherently abusive/wrong, there are zero exceptions.” Instead of just spreading blind ignorance, ant/s should be encouraging people to be practical and knowledgeable about issues and to use critical thinking skills when it comes to personal situations/experiences like relationships.

#ask #Anonymous

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notsdlifter · 5 years

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Kill Hollows: Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO:

THE FACILITATOR

Robert Warrington’s Journal

Token-Oak, Summer of 1996

8888 days before the Syndemic

I didn't see Jacob again for a long time. He spent two years committed at Shadow Mountain. They taught him, according to the grandparents, the “tools to cope.” By the time Jacob got released, he was equipped to “handle the peaks and valleys of life.” Unfortunately, those peaks were too high and those valleys too low.

I moved from Token-Oak to live with an Aunt Gina in the “big city” 300 miles away. Gina was a domineering woman who worked the night shift at a local hospital making beds and mopping floors. She lived in a mobile home nearby the hospital. Even though her house had four wheels and no yard, she kept it meticulously clean. No matter what the excuse, I was not to wake her from sleep. I spent my days tiptoeing around a rickety trailer barely grabbing door handles and plates just trying to survive. The only thing that didn’t wake Gina was reading, so I devoured books on my twin bed at the end of the trailer.

Aunt Gina and I visited Token-Oak on holidays, and even that became rare. The grandparents sent me cards on birthdays, and we had the occasional phone call filled with the truncated dialectic between the elderly and children: “[question]: how was [blank]” . . . “[answer]: it was good.” About once a year, the grandparents would visit. Most of the news I heard about Jacob was cliched mundanities about how he was “finding his way” or “the Lord’s plan for him is different.”

It wasn't until I was in high school that I saw Jacob again for any meaningful stretch. I'd bought my first car and itched to take my first trip. Vegas was out of the question. Even a day trip to the Lake of the Ozarks made my aunt nervous. Eventually, she agreed to let me stay with family. One summer morning, I loaded up my car and headed back.

Token-Oak had been calling me home ever since I left. On the drive back—my teenage nervousness with driving on the highway in full bloom—I thought about all the things I hated about the place: the smallminded bigotry of the town, the anger everyone seemed to wear around their neck like 7,000 scarves, and those fucking oak trees, dying everywhere. The broken fingers of their limbs reaching up into the sky like the tiny fingers of long-dead children. Most of all, though, I thought about that man on the driveway. I’d had dreams about his black gums for years. Waking up sweating, breathing in short puffs to avoid the ammonia stench, I’d curse the thought of Token-Oak.

I had to see it again. I had to.

Jacob was living in a dilapidated home on the south side of town. As Token-Oak’s first neighborhood, Old Town houses were built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Big houses with sprawling lawns, there was a time when well-to-do citizens lived in Old Town. In 1955, the tire plant was built nearby, and a smoky haze blanketed the area. A few years later, an oil drilling company bought a plot of land across the road from the tire plant. All through the night, the clanging of pipes and the smell of burning rubber filled the air. Families left nice cape cods and Tudor homes to flee the nuisance. Over the years, Old Town buildings and homes turned black from the smoke. Rough necks and immigrants working nearby filled the neighborhood.

Jacob bought a home there, an L-shaped two-story in between a flop house for illegals and a home with all the glass broken out and no front door.

I met Jacob one Saturday, and he was raving about his new business on the outskirts of town. The tires of his new pickup thumped as we drove over railroad tracks into a neighborhood with single room cinderblock houses. A few of the houses were ashen-black with burnt roofs and shattered windows. Many others sat abandoned like open sores on a very sick patient. The lawns were dust patches littered with trash and dilapidated automobiles. Front doors of many of the houses sat wide open like amazed faces. The smell of ether singed the air.

A pregnant dog with enlarged teats darted out of a leafless bush. As we rolled through, I felt suspicious and alert and nostalgic at the same time.

At the edge of this neighborhood, there was an aluminum building with a steel door. It was surrounded by a ten-foot razor wire fence with a remote gate. In the back of the building, there was a garage door with two commercial padlocks. White gravel was thickly spread throughout the storefront. On a long, skinny piece of plywood, a sign outside hung under the peak of the roof that read “Buy, Sell, and Trade.” It was an old-style sign, a pure anachronism that should have read “general store” or “saloon.” The remote gate slid open, and Jacob and I pulled inside.

“What is this? A pawnshop?” I said, looking up at the sign.

“Better,” Jacob said, striding to the entrance.

He pulled out a ring of keys and plucked one from a set of two dozen. After inserting the keys in the lock, he looked left and right then leaned to glance around the back of the building. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me watching him “C'est la vie,” he said. When the door opened, he turned off an alarm near the front and hit several switches of lights. There was a large sign at the entrance that read “NO MORE THAN EIGHT PEOPLE IN THE STORE AT A TIME” in block letters.

The store had shelves on every wall. On each, as best I could tell, sat jugs, glass pitchers, rubber tubing, and all kinds of chemicals. The wares displayed were a mixture of garden supply store, indoor pool cleaning agents, and farming chemicals. In the far corner, there were generators of various sizes. In the back, there were two, 2,000-gallon trailers marked with anhydrous ammonia.

There were no prices listed on any item.

As I walked around the store, Jacob stepped behind the counter and pulled up a bar stool. He smiled while nodding his head. He spread his arms and swept the shop with his eyes. After a deep breath, he blew it out like a puff off a $50 cigar. He pulled out from behind the counter a double-barreled shotgun. He broke the gun open, looked in the barrels, confirmed it was loaded then snapped it shut.

“You know what it is now?” Jacob said, standing.

“It’s a store for chemicals?” I said.

“Am I going to have to spell it out for you?”

“He touched a shelf near the door that had smaller bottles and batteries. “You got your lower rung shake and bake stuff here.” He stepped a few feet to the right next to matches and a series of plastic jugs and tubes. “Here is your Nazi Cold/P2P cook.” He stepped back a little further to a steel tank and near the generators. “I can even provide the necessaries for an industrial cook. Top quality shit, too.” And he banged a 500-gallon steel drum that reverberated through the room in a loud wobble.

“You can legally do this?” I said.

“What’s illegal here? Name one thing. Hell, I am even a licensed dealer for the fertilizer. Check the name on the jeans, broseph! That says it all.” He pointed to the back of his jeans at the Levi’s logo.

Jacob told me about his hero: Levi Strauss. During the 1849 California gold rush, hundreds of thousands of miners hit the hills and streams of rural Cali looking to strike it rich. Only a few of them found gold and fewer still made money. Most ended up broke, desperate, and dead in pursuit of the dream. But “Uncle Levi” was a visionary, instead of focusing on the unlikely profits, he outfitted gold rushers with new pants, double stitched with denim fabric. He made a killing, and his empire grew, according to Jacob, by “feeding the frenzy.”

“Sutter’s Mill is now in shambles. But Levi’s has a corporate headquarters on the San Fran pier that ships clothes worldwide.”

“So, you’re outfitting the meth crisis?”

“Nah. I’m a facilitator,” Jacob said as he grabbed the shotgun on the counter and rested it on his hip. Jacob was posturing again, and the message he wanted to convey was clear: he was not to be fucked with. He explained his profit margins and how he tipped the police to “unusual purchases” so they never gave him any trouble. There was a specific dealer, a “skinhead with a bridge piercing and facial tattoo” that bought over half his supplies each month and paid for information about any new cooks.

“Who is this guy?” I asked.

“He is quiet—comes late—after dark. He pulls his truck in the garage and takes a tank of anhydrous and some parts. Pays cash and asks who’s cooking. Some weeks, I make three or four thousand off of him alone.”

“Four thousand… in a week?”

Jacob laughed and slapped the counter.

Jacob walked to the window and pulled the string on a neon open sign. He pressed a button to open the front gate. A razor wire chain link on wheels rattled backward. Jacob walked back to the barstool on the counter and sat down with his shotgun within reach. “Watch this,” he said with a wry smile. In less than ten minutes, the place was filling up with “customers.”

The first person to shuffle in was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had wild, red hair and her freckled skin was pockmarked with sores. The skin on her face sagged in flabby pouches so I could see the outline of her skull. She blinked often and hard. A blue T-shirt that had holes across the belly had a picture of a grey wolf. It took me a while to realize that these were cigarette burns.

Her focus was in the shake and bake section. She picked up a two-liter bottle and a few packages of batteries. She shuffled to the counter, set them down, and stepped back with her eyes on the floor.

“Fifty,” Jacob said, staring a hole through the woman.

She pulled out a fifty, slid it across the counter, and picked up her supplies. She shuffled out the shop without making a sound. There was a rhythm to purchasing materials from the store, and she knew it well. In less than a minute, she disappeared between two houses.

“You see that?” Jacob said, smiling. “That’s respect. First time, she gave me trouble. But I put that shit down quick.”

“Fifty for a bottle and two batteries? That’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” he said through a pride-filled smile. “She’s going back to her house to start a batch in her little bottle. In a few hours, she’ll have a thousand dollars’ worth of “dirty meth.” He said she was a “small-timer,” but a steady customer. “In a way, she’s smart,” he said. “She does just enough to avoid being tracked by the cops or put down by the big timers.”

A few minutes later, the shop filled up with more customers. Several of which looked like they were in high school. They were looking in the “Nazi Cold” area. One of them, a kid with a backward cap and skinny jeans below his waist, picked up a jug and some tubing and brought them to the counter.

He leaned in close to Jacob and said in a suggestive whisper, “So . . . I need heat to break down pseudo or can I do it cold?”

Jacob’s face contorted into a snarl so intense his eyebrows covered half of his eyes. The kid stepped back and exchanged a glance with his friends. This question, it was clear, was not part of the well-established shop etiquette. Jacob reached up and grabbed the materials from the kid’s hands. He set them behind the counter. And walked around and seized the kid by the shoulder.

“Get the fuck out of here. I don’t know what you think, but we don’t do that here.”

I saw then that Jacob had indeed matured into a man. It wasn’t a display of force—I have no doubt he would have hit that kid if necessary—it was the fact he showed calculated restraint in handling the situation.

Jacob watched them all leave. He sat back down and explained that high schoolers just getting into the trade often wandered in the store. He did not allow store customers to discuss the making of meth inside—“no synthesis talk, no exceptions.” Most importantly, he explained, he did not make scenes with the kids. According to Jacob, they had “parents, people that cared.” A corollary to the rule, Jacob treated full-blown addicts differently.

A man walked in wearing a dirty wife-beater and itching at a ragged beard. There was an instant tension when he entered the shop. His eyes were glazed, and his fat tongue bulged in his mouth. He looked fifty but had the bouncy movements of a younger man. The skin on his arms hung in flabby rivulets riddled with acne. He had a tattoo, an Aztec chieftain astride a pyramid of skulls, with bold lettering, the phrase “Aztlán” coiling up one arm to the base of his chin. There were seven black teardrops tattooed on a single cheek. His eyes connected with the two tanks near the back of the store and he shifted in that direction.

Jacob saw the man walk past and stood behind the counter and scowled.

“Those are ag only!” Jacob said loud enough to grab everyone’s attention. The man stopped and looked Jacob up and down. Two tweakers near the door slipped out. Another customer froze and started shaking. I noticed a bulge in the man’s belt at the base of his spine. When he turned to square up with Jacob, I saw it was a gun. Guns tell the truth. You can tell a person’s experience with firearms by the way they walk. This man had been carrying for a long time.

I held my breath as I stepped back from the counter towards the back of the store. My nerves took over, and my knees shook.

The man smiled at Jacob, exposing a row of golden teeth.

“Necessito… fifty gallons,” the man said in Spanish accent.

“Motherfucker, that’s AG-RI-CUL-TUR-AL only.” Jacob’s hands reached under the counter and his fingers wrapped around a shotgun.

The man looked at the tanks and back at Jacob. There was a stillness in the room as the man’s eyes danced over the store. There was a calculus occurring in his head. When he reached the end of his conclusion, he chuckled. I heard confidence in that laugh, a sound that said he had no problems putting blood on the floor.

He reached behind his back while exposing his horsey teeth.

I hoped to make it to the back of the store, but I knocked into a pallet of aluminum cans, sending them crashing to the cement floor.

An electric snap of a tazer vibrated through the room. There was a hollow moan that mimicked the sound of the electric current. The man grabbed his chest while going down to one knee. Jacob jumped the counter with his shotgun, landing with both feet. Raising the butt of the shotgun, Jacob struck the man in the face with the butt of the gun. He caught him clean on the right cheek. The bone-chilling sound of cracking teeth preceded another moan.

The man collapsed backward clutching his face. Jacob pulled the handgun from behind the man’s back and pistol-whipped the man across the forehead. The sound of metal smacking a skull bone produced a dull “thwap.” The man balled up on the floor in exquisite pain. The man’s desperate hands grabbed the handgun and Jacob pinned his wrist to the concrete.

“Let it go!” Jacob commanded. But the man, even on his back, was defiant. He held on. He clenched his teeth and glared up at Jacob, who towered over him with the shotgun.

“Libre Soy!” Jacob said. Jacob aimed the shotgun at the soft part of the man’s throat.

The man spat through cracked lips. Blood ran down his forehead and across his face. He pulled himself up, as far as he could with his wrist still pinned, and screamed, “jódete hijo de puta!”

Jacob took the butt of the shotgun and brought it down on the man’s knuckles. I heard the man’s bones breaking against the floor. The man screamed, and Jacob shoved the barrel of the shotgun several inches down his throat. The gun barrel separated more teeth as it destroyed the man’s tonsils. There was a desperate gasp of air as the man took sharp breaths through his nose. Blood covered his face and neck. Each breath was a hollow gargle. In less than thirty seconds, Jacob had obliterated the man’s face.

Jacob grabbed the pistol off the pavement. He slid it into the pocket of his pants. Jacob released the man’s wrist. The broken fingers of the man’s hand contorted into directions in which they were not meant to turn. Jacob leaned into the butt of the shotgun pressing it into the man’s tonsils and cracked teeth. The tearing flesh caused the man to whistle a muffled howl through the gun barrel. It reminded me of how we used to blow on the bottles of our soda pops as a kid. Jacob held the gun in that position until the man was entirely out of breath. Jacob pulled the shotgun free, the barrel dripped a river of blood and mucus on the floor. Jacob raised the dripping barrel and pointed it directly at the man’s head.

There was a calmness to Jacob, though he held an intense stare. His fingers tightened over the trigger as his lips stretched over his teeth.

The man rolled to his stomach and broke into a run. He hit the steel door of the entrance so hard he tumbled to the ground in the white gravel outside. In his wake, he left a bloody trail through the shop and on the door.

Two customers stood silent, watching Jacob. Their mouths agape in shock.

I could not stop shaking. I crouched in the corner surrounded with aluminum cans. I had come so close to death. One wrong move, one fumble of the finger—hell, an unexpected sneeze—and that could have gone much differently. I forced myself to breathe in through my mouth and out my nose, counting each inhale. One . . . ahhh . . . two . . . ahhh.

Jacob walked over and handed me a spray bottle. “Calm down,” he said and asked me to clean the blood from the floor and on the door. Before I could refuse, he pulled out his cell phone and stepped past me to the back of the shop by the anhydrous tanks. He spoke in a hushed tone into his iPhone.

“The Mexicans are back.”

The voice on the other end asked a question that I heard vaguely mumbled.

“Guy’s wearing a beater—face all smashed to shit—driving a Black Silverado heading south on MLK.” There was a short pause as Jacob looked up front. He mumbled something into the phone and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Jacob took the spray bottle from me and asked me to sit behind the counter. He cleaned up the blood on the floor and the walls quickly. Bleaching it and then soaking it up with a mop. He brought in a leaf blower and had everything dry in a few minutes. He had a system for cleaning up such a mess and the tools at the ready. The store never shut down, even for a minute.

I sat inside watching customers for another two hours, focusing on my breathing. During that time, over fifty people wandered in. The clear majority of them were full-blown addicts and cooks. They overpaid for parts without a word. Throwing down twenties and fifties for things they could buy from Walmart—which Token-Oak did not have—for a tenth of the price.

Jacob didn’t speak again until late afternoon. The customers shuffled silently about. The shop filled up, there were people in front of every shelf, perhaps eight, maybe ten. All were veterans of the trade. One more walked in, and Jacob stood. He refused to let an additional person in the store and kicked one more out.

In that day alone, Jacob netted over $2500. By five, he locked the front door, padlocked the garage, and we drove out of the gate. He had this little grin on his face, a quiet satisfaction as he turned the wheel, guiding his truck back across the railroad tracks. We turned south on MLK.

As we drove over the bridge into Old Town, Jacob looked over to the passenger seat and said, “It’s not for everyone.”

“It’s not for me,” I said, still rattled from the incident. Jacob laughed and whistled to the radio. “You beat the hell out of that guy. Once he sobers up… heals up, he’ll come back.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side and looked over at me with a toothy grin. There was something he understood behind that smile, something he would not share. He turned the wheel and took a deep breath.

“He won’t.”

I thought about asking more questions, but I let it slide. It was one of those feelings people get, perhaps a conversational cue. I didn’t want to know more, so it sat. And we drove down Main Street listening to the radio as we headed towards Jacob’s home.

“Why only eight?”

“Huh?” Jacob said in response. “Eight what?”

“In the shop, why do you cap it at eight people? There is enough room.”

Jacob explained that, for whatever reason, once the shop filled up with over eight tweakers, they displayed unusual behavior. They seemed more standoffish. He felt they were “doglike” and when they “packed up” they felt fearless. So, he kept the number of customers searching the shop small at eight.

Once we arrived at Jacob’s house, we walked upstairs. He said he wanted to “show me something I’d appreciate.” We climbed out a second-story window onto an old shake shingle roof. And we laid on our backs in between two half-dead oak trees looking across the rooftops of Token-Oak. The sun set behind the buildings of downtown. Jacob lit up a joint as he looked out across the quaint tableau of the small town. He took a long draw while watching the fading daylight for a long time. It wasn’t comfortable, not exactly, because there were no comfortable moments with Jacob, but it was a pause in the madness.

Token-Oak, like so many small towns, was built around a courthouse. The building had four columns and a clock tower at its apex. Though not the tallest building in town, it was the most commanding. Blazing white and set upon a slight hill for all to see, the courthouse evoked a Grecian heritage.

In the center of the courthouse square, there was the Token-Oak. The old oak had a way of making people stop in mid-stride to take in its twisting branches. They say that the beautiful old oak on the hill was the reason the first settlers stopped in the town. The pioneers named the village after the tree, viewing its strong trunk and vast branches as emblematic of the town’s inevitable future success; a “token” of good times that were sure to follow. Every town event dating back to the 1860s was held under its branches. For a hundred and fifty years, the “token oak” symbolized manifest destiny and the rugged frontier spirit of its founders.

“It’s dying,” Jacob said. “The Token-Oak. It started dropping leaves last year, and they say they are going to leave it alone.”

We both looked out at the old tree for several minutes.

Set off from the high school, there was a football field with enough stadium lights surrounding it that gave it an ethereal feel. At night, the field glowed as a bubble of brilliant light. It made you understand the fascination so many youths had with the game.

On the outskirts, north of town, there was the meat packing plant surrounded by feedlots of soon-to-be slaughtered cows. Nearly every night, you could hear the wailing of the herd, and if you really listened, you could feel the cattle calling to those headed into the plant. Those yearning bawls were Token-Oak’s background noise

Far in the distance, about two miles northeast, some hills rolled together into each other leaving deep ruts. The view of the setting sun above those hills with the bright clouds just above was spectacular. The townspeople called these deep roots the Hollows. The forest of oaks surrounding Token-Oak was exceptionally thick, but it was a veritable riot of tangled branches along the Hollows. So thick, that some claimed, sunlight couldn’t touch the ground.

The dark lines of the Hollows meandered to a rare bald spot on the tallest hill in the county. People called this bald spot the Hilltop. The Hilltop held a macabre lore that never lost its power to scare. Back in the day, it was rumored that Osage Indians used to come from all over America to die up there. They would sit Indian-style and pile fist-sized rocks in a ring around their legs and let the elements do the rest. They were sick or old or just too sad to live anymore. They would die out in the open, sitting upright enclosed by the rock circles. And the sun and the wind would dry their skin tight, and the skeleton would stay upright in that position for months. The Osage believed the Hilltop was a conduit to the dead. A rally point for the living to meet with deceased loved ones.

There were hundreds of rock circles sitting up there undisturbed. And they weren’t all old-school circles, either. Every year, a teenager, a mother who lost her daughter to a drunk driving accident, a depressed middle-aged man, walked into the dark of the Hollows and up to the Hilltop. They sat down in a circle of rocks and “died.” Anyone who went into those woods, townsfolk said, rarely came back. If they did, they were different, disconnected from their family and friends, they might wander the town for a time, but they eventually disappeared. That fact, more than the weird stories, prevented people from fucking around up there.

The Hollows were full of off-the-grid types and had its share of meth labs and murders. Supposedly, a collective of dealers and ne’er-do-wells ran the Hollows. No one went into the Hollows for a stroll. At the crossing of two dirt roads at the base of the Hollows, someone had been dumping dead town dogs there for as long as I could remember. It was a message, a not-so-subtle reminder to anyone that might wander into the dead oaks. It worked, too. Few went in those woods. Not even the cops. Unless they were going to drag out a body. Even then, they walked in at noon, eight deep, fully loaded.

To Jacob and me, the Hollows held a nervous fascination. It was more legend than story. There were town kids that claimed to have a circle rock from the Hilltop that would whisper to them at night. Every few months, there was a fire lit in the darkness of the Hilltop. I knew a kid with a telescope who claimed to see pagan-style dancing around the fire. Everyone had a story from McClintock’s Tree Farm claiming to see lines of people in the woods. When the wind blew in from the Northeast, which was rare, a haze drifted into town that reeked like ether. There were bits of truth braided with exaggeration, yet the Hollows were real enough. It was the one thing that Jacob was scared to face.

Jacob had been trying to get me to go to the Hilltop since we were little kids. But it held such a mystical fear that we never made the trip.

We sat on the shake shingles of his roof, staring at the Hilltop. As the sun was setting, the ring of the horizon—especially north of town—was dotted with eighty-foot-tall oil rigs. Each one lit up in the shape of a Christmas tree. It gave the little town a bustling feel.

As I looked over at Jacob, he was doing it again. That weird ass thing he did when he knew people were watching him. It was his “deep-thinking-stare” and he was looking right at the Hilltop.

“We should go tonight,” Jacob whispered.

I took a long pull of my beer and shook my head in the negative.

“We should,” he said again with more force, but still no real motivation.

“People don’t come back,” I said in quick response.

“That is bullshit. That lady came back. The teacher with the two twin girls. What was her name? Amanda something.”

“She came back for two weeks. Remember? And she got a motel room and didn’t speak to a single person. Not even her kids. A few people saw her around town. She was all freaked out. Right before she disappeared. And her family moved away a few weeks later.”

“Well, the point is, she came back.”

I laughed at this, and we both looked up at the Hilltop. An October wind was blowing across town. A dust devil spun leaves along the ditches of MLK.

“We could sneak in from the north. That old creek bed that runs through Miller’s pasture. It's low and dry and rounds straight up to the Hilltop. Come on, Bha-aab. It’ll be fun. For old times’ sake?

That nickname. I hadn’t heard it in years and, hearing it now, it brought back all the old insecurities. For the briefest of moments, I had relaxed with Jacob. That silly moniker wrecked any rapport that was building. I realized, looking at Jacob, that he was waiting for the right moment to insert the jab. It was the first of many insults, I was sure. I let it pass.

Jacob took a quick pull of his beer and emptied the longneck. He threw it off his roof in a twisting parabola over the reaching fingers of the dead oaks. The bottle hit the street below and shattered.

Old Town was full of older homes with big porches. Jacob’s immediate neighbor had couches in the front yard. Another had two bumper pull campers sitting on blocks with an extension cord running to each. The house across the street had a hole in a wall the exact size of a car. It was the kind of neighborhood where breaking glass bottles was an everyday occurrence.

“You think that’s true? You think a person can talk to the dead?” he said, looking at me with squinted eyes.

I didn’t answer. We both stared out across Token-Oak. Out through the dead branches of the trees near his house. I heard the bawling of the cattle as they shuffled into the slaughterhouse plant. Faint cries floated on the wind. Just to the North, I saw roughnecks on oil rigs twisting pipe thousands of feet down into the earth. Each pipe spinning into the liquefied remains of ancient life buried beneath eons of geology.

It was a Friday night, a half mile away the football stadium was glowing. There was a helmet crack, and Jacob and I listened to the roar of the crowd. From such a distance, it sounded like an exasperated moan that twisted into the night.

Courthouse square was bathed in brilliant moonlight. A twisting string of low-lying clouds floated above. It was a beautiful side view of the town. From the third story of Jacob’s roof, you could see about everything: the Elks Lodge, McGuillicuddy Mortuary, Zion Lutheran Church, and the open ground around the massive white columns of the courthouse. You could even see the alleys between the principal streets of the town.

I took a long pull on my beer. It was my fifth, and I felt a little loose. So, I threw it in the same spinning parabola that Jacob had. I tossed it a little too hard, and a rictus of alley cats erupted as the glass of my longneck shattered below. Jacob looked at me in a broad smile, though his lips never parted. He was well past five beers, and it showed.

Suddenly, he was up on his elbows looking out at the courthouse square. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth opened in a perfect circle. He raised his index finger to point out. “Watch this,” he said.

There were people on every corner of the courthouse square. All of them standing in front of back alleys. The sun dipped below the horizon, and I didn’t remember seeing so many people moments before. But I didn’t know. I was sixteen and drinking longnecks on a roof. It wasn’t my best moment for memory.

“Who are those people?” I said, looking at Jacob. Token-Oak had several dozen town drunks that wobbled around at night. Shuffling between two dive bars on opposite sides of the courthouse like seasonal birds. They hit the Elks for happy hour, the Moose Bar for quarter beers, and then migrated to McSmitty’s Bar (a local dive named for its owner, so the drunks called it McShitty’s bar) for closing time. It wasn’t uncommon to see a few drunks slouching about. But looking out at the square that night, there were at least two dozen. All of them stumbling around.

“Tweakers,” Jacob said, “Now watch.”

Jacob had gone from leaning on his elbows to sitting, to a full stand as he looked out on the town. He was moving his index finger and mouthing numbers with a Shiner Bock still in one hand.

“Twenty-nine,” he said without looking at me. “And there is another one by McGuillicuddy’s and the cemetery, so thirty.”

“Twenty-nine?”

“Thirty,” Jacob said, correcting me. “. . . wait for it . . .”

They were all moving in various directions, at least it seemed that way at first, but as I stared out, I saw something unique. All thirty took a step at the same time, in a weird shimmy. They moved a quarter block in a few seconds, each of them with curled hands and their necks contorted way to the left. We were too far away, but I swore it looked like their teeth were shut, yet their lips curled back. They walked a few more gamboling steps. Then, as if on a cue, all thirty did the same thing again.

“Whoa . . .” I said raising to a stand, “that is fucking spooky.”

In a few seconds, most were blocked by our vantage point and disappeared behind buildings. In a few more, they were all gone, as quickly as they came.

He only nodded. “This place is full of surprises.”

And he sat and glared out at the square for at least an hour. A few groups of people wandered underneath the Token-Oak in the square. There was a rowdy group of town kids smashing pumpkins. We watched the cops give a half dozen sobriety test to patrons leaving the Elks. But the tweakers didn’t come back. Not that night, at least.

#Kill Hollows

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computingondemand · 7 years

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Norco C-24U Server Cabinet Review

New Article has been published on http://computingondemand.com/norco-c-24u-server-cabinet-review/

Norco C-24U Server Cabinet Review

For geeks like me, having a server rack in your basement is just about one of the coolest things you can have. In our last server build, we went the rackmount way, leaving the full towers far behind. This route just gave us more from the platform. With that though, having a rackmount server sitting on a table in the middle of the living room or basement isn’t the best, nor the brightest idea. However, most server racks are just too big to be useful in a home and building one takes a lot of effort. Enter the Norco C-24U cabinet.

First, this cabinet is a 19″ Server cabinet that fits the bill. The 24U cabinet is big enough to fit just about everything I could want (in my basement) but small enough to be a part of the basement and not take over. Many of us have seen the Norco cases find a home for unRAID builds, but I hadn’t even considered them for server racks, until now.

To get some of the small details out of the way, the Norco C-24U is, again, a 24U server rack/cabinet that measures in at 23.62(W) x 31.5(D) x 49(H) inch, weighs close to 200lbs, is made of SPCC cold rolled steel, and is painted with a sinister black powder coating. The rack itself can handle up to 1670lbs of pure computing madness while providing plenty of airflow for the whining fans housed inside; the rack is nearly 71% ventilated.

Features

19″ Sever/Networking Rack Cabinet(600*800*24U)

Compatible with ANSI/EIA RS-310-D,IEC297-2, DIN41494, DIN41494, ETSI standard

23.62(W) x 31.5(D) x 49(H) inch

71% ventilated rate of the high-density vented door

Heavy duty casters and leveling feet

Removable side panels

Designed for enhanced airflow

Four post, depth-adjustable rack system with 19″ mounts and square holes

Perforated roof with cable entry access in the rear

Perforated front and rear locking doors (easily removable)

Some of you may be asking, what do you have that you could possibly want a server cabinet for? Well, for one, the COD Server build, another COD Server build acting as a backup and a domain controller, a media encoding machine, a rackmount switch, a KVM, and a few other small miscellaneous systems. Having systems like this strewn about in my living space caused a bit of friction between myself and the wifey… so I had to clean up my act, the office, and the basement.

When shipped, the cabinet will arrive at your door via a delivery service in five rather large boxes strapped to a pallet (4 shown). Unpacking reveals a slew of parts and some good old-fashioned assembly instructions. Now when I say old-fashioned, I actually mean useless. For the most part, most of us assemble furniture or household items following along intently; Norco, however, has provided instructions that are illegible, unintelligible, and indiscernible. Thankfully, quick thinking folks like us hit the web to find some legible instructions (with color) on the product page – LINK. Honestly though, the cabinet is easy enough to put together without them.

Product assembly was in the neighborhood of around an hour. All the things you would expect are available, but some consideration must be made for spacing of the server mounting racks. Norco provides you with enough leeway to configure the rails to your liking, but assembly without planning will usually require some reassembly. For instance, COD’s Server build uses a rather deep SilverStone RM420 chassis which requires the racks to be spaced farther apart and closer to the front. However, with this configuration, installation of a Rosewill RSV-L4412 would require the removal of the front bezel and handles in order to close the cabinet door.

Once the assembly is complete, the cabinet’s industrial appearance reveals quality craftsmanship and that deep dark black powder coated aesthetic that can bring your inner Vader out for display. Each of the cabinet’s side panels are removable, feature quick release handles, and the front and back doors both feature the same latching mechanism that can be locked. While the front door features some beveling, the back door doesn’t. The latches are strong and once you press the release mechanism (the key hole) the latch presents itself with authority.

The top of the cabinet has cutouts for ventilation and two removable panels, while the bottom sports seven removable panels to suit any purpose. The cabinet also rides on heavy-duty casters and employs four leveling feet for a fixed implementation. The bottom supports are spot welded in place. If you were to ask me, I would prefer to see better and more frequent welds, but that doesn’t mean that this is frail.

There is an area between the folded steel, at each corner, that becomes a black hole of sorts; any items dropped during assembly of anything internal somehow finds its way between this space and is lost forever, unless you have a strong magnet and an iron will.

Inside, the rails are clearly marked for proper server installation and the included square holes allow for the installation of nearly any type of hardware. Square holes provide the most flexibility for your configuration.

When all is said and done, the cabinet is strong, sturdy, and easy on the eyes. At less than $600 USD, there isn’t much out there that can beat its quality and cost. The Norco C-24U Rack Cabinet is perfect for those that don’t need more than 24U, have space restrictions or are looking for a high-quality rack cabinet at an affordable price.

I have experimented with building rack cabinets in the past, and each time the cost rises to nearly the cost of purchasing one. Although my carpentry skills aren’t exactly stellar, I can handle tools and cut straight, but something always seems to be misaligned. If you are in the market for a 24U cabinet look no further, the C-24U is top notch.

#Featured #Norco #Server Cabinet

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itcanbepossible-blog · 7 years

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Trove Mount Codes

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deniscollins · 7 years

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As VW Pleads Guilty in U.S. Over Diesel Scandal, Trouble Looms in Europe

In the U.S., VW cooperated with federal authorities and car owners regarding the emissions test scandal and has, to date, incurred $22 billion in fines and other costs for the 600,000 vehicles. In Europe there are 8.5 million diesel VWs. If you were a VW executive, would you take a cooperative approach with European consumers and governments or a tougher approach to avoid more huge financial agreements? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Volkswagen took a big step toward resolving its legal problems in the United States when it pleaded guilty on Friday to its vast emissions deception. But in Europe, its troubles may be just beginning.

Across the Continent, the German carmaker faces not only an expanding criminal investigation but also thousands of lawsuits from consumers demanding recourse.

An Irish nurse wants compensation for the plunging value of her Volkswagen diesel car. Lawyers in London have filed the British version of a class-action suit. And a German seafood supplier claims it was tricked into believing it was going green by shipping shrimp and cod to market in a fleet of Volkswagen “clean diesel” vehicles.

The lawsuits are a potentially costly unknown, since there are far more diesel car owners in Europe than in the United States — and they only add to Volkswagen’s ballooning legal bill, which has weighed on profits and shaken management ranks.

Already, Volkswagen has paid heavily for its crimes, as the American government has tried to take a tougher approach to corporate wrongdoing. After being accused of treating Wall Street too gingerly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Justice Department, under the Obama administration, pushed in its final months to hold more companies and corporate executives accountable.

Volkswagen, which admitted to equipping cars with software to cheat emissions tests, has been a prime example of the aggressive new posture. The company formally pleaded guilty in a Detroit courtroom on Friday to federal charges that included conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act and obstruction of justice. Six executives have so far been charged in the United States, and one engineer has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud regulators and car owners.

It is too soon to tell whether the new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, will adopt the same approach as the previous administration. Separately, the fate of the executives’ cases is unclear, since five of the six people indicted are believed to be in Germany, which does not usually extradite its citizens outside the European Union.

But Volkswagen’s exposure in the United States has already dwarfed previous cases for vehicle manufacturers in pollution cases and safety malfunctions. Volkswagen agreed to pay $4.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties in the case brought by the Justice Department. It was just a piece of the overall $22 billion in settlements and fines in the United States.

“Volkswagen deeply regrets the behavior that gave rise to the diesel crisis,” the company said in a statement. “The agreements that we have reached with the U.S. government reflect our determination to address misconduct that went against all of the values Volkswagen holds so dear.”

General Motors, by comparison, paid $2 billion in fines and civil settlements over faulty ignition switches that left more than 100 dead. No executives were charged in the matter.

Takata, the Japanese auto parts maker, recently pleaded guilty to criminal charges linked to faulty airbags, agreeing to pay $1 billion in fines and penalties. Three Takata executives face criminal charges.

Daniel Riesel, a partner at Sive, Paget & Riesel in New York, said the Justice Department has been taking a noticeably harder line in recent corporate cases.

“They have made clear they are not going to be satisfied with a company plea, and would go after individuals when they can,” he said. “There is a lot of resentment against Volkswagen, and they have considerable evidence of guilt, so it is easy for the D.O.J. to follow through.”

Europe is now the big, possibly expensive, wild card that remains for Volkswagen. This week, consumer protection authorities from a group of European Union countries agreed to join forces to put pressure on the company to compensate car owners.

But the automaker, in contrast to its strategy in the United States, is refusing to negotiate with unhappy diesel Volkswagen owners.

It is betting instead that Europe’s less consumer friendly laws will allow it to avoid potentially ruinous financial damage. Volkswagen refuses to even admit that the emissions-cheating software that prompted the guilty plea in the United States is illegal under European Union law.

The scandal has exposed the stark differences between laws governing corporate behavior in Europe and the United States.

With a few exceptions, like Britain, most European countries do not provide for class-action suits, forcing owners to challenge corporations alone. Emissions regulations in the European Union are also full of loopholes, and it is harder to prove wrongdoing. There is no single agency in the bloc with the enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency or Federal Trade Commission.

Volkswagen, for its part, has good reason to take a hard line in Europe.

In the United States, criminal and civil fines, settlements with owners and other costs have come to more than $22 billion for fewer than 600,000 vehicles. If it had to pay as much per car in Europe, where there are 8.5 million diesel Volkswagens with the emissions software, the cost would be more than $300 billion — enough to destroy the company.

Even in a worst-case scenario, Volkswagen is unlikely to have to pay more than a few thousand euros per car in Europe. Still, any additional financial burden would divert yet more funds that Matthias Müller, the company’s chief executive, would rather spend to develop new models and stay on the cutting edge of a shift to electric and self-driving vehicles.

Whatever the outcome in the European lawsuits, they will be a long-running headache for Volkswagen. While the American court proceedings were costly for the company, they were at least efficient.

The class-action lawsuits by owners were bundled into one case and settled in less than a year. In Europe, Volkswagen is facing thousands of legal pinpricks — lawsuits by owners brave enough to take on one of the Continent’s biggest corporations.

A nurse named Eithne Higgins, for example, has filed a lawsuit in a district court in Castlebar, in northwest Ireland. She argues that her diesel vehicle, made by a Volkswagen unit, has plunged in value because it is equipped with the software designed to fool emissions tests.

Her lawsuit has taken on broader significance because her lawyer, Evan O’Dwyer, is trying to use it to get Volkswagen to surrender large quantities of potentially incriminating documents. Unlike in the United States, courts in many European countries do not allow plaintiffs broad leeway to subpoena evidence from corporations.

Mr. O’Dwyer is cooperating with the firm managed by Michael Hausfeld, a Washington lawyer who played a major role in the class-action lawsuit against Volkswagen in the United States. Mr. Hausfeld, whose firm has an office in Berlin, has been trying to find creative ways to bring American-style litigation methods to Europe.

Wary of the precedent that might be set, Volkswagen has hired a prominent Dublin firm to defeat Ms. Higgins’s suit. Lawyers for Volkswagen have asked an Irish appeals court to rule that the lower court has no jurisdiction.

In other European cases, Volkswagen has argued on technical grounds that the software in the cars is not an illegal “defeat device” under the region’s rules.

The company admits that the software caused the cars to produce impermissible amounts of harmful nitrogen oxides. But the software worked by changing the way the engine functioned and did not affect the emissions control system. So, according to Volkswagen’s reasoning, it did not meet the European definition of a defeat device.

Volkswagen also argues that a recall underway across Europe fixes the emissions problem, claiming that customers have suffered no damage. A similar fix was not possible in the United States, which has more stringent limits on nitrogen oxides.

The extent of the legal threat to Volkswagen will become clearer once some of the cases reach appeals courts. Mr. Hausfeld and others hope that a successful case would encourage more plaintiffs to come forward.

But it is by no means certain that a higher court would rule in favor of vehicle owners.

By Volkswagen’s count, it has won more than three-quarters of about 2,000 lawsuits that have been decided by lower courts in Germany. The relatively small number of suits, out of 2.5 million diesel Volkswagens in Germany, is evidence that most customers are not unhappy, the company says.

“Consumer law is very weak in Germany,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen. “You won’t get the big damages you get in the U.S.A.”

But Mr. O’Dwyer, the Irish plaintiffs’ lawyer, warned that Volkswagen would face a deluge of lawsuits if higher courts rule in favor of aggrieved owners.

“There are a lot of people waiting on the fence for things to happen,” he said.

#volkswagen

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dailynewswebsite · 4 years

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U.S.-China fight over fishing is really about world domination

China’s aggressive, typically unlawful fishing practices are the newest supply of battle with the USA.

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet. Beijing claims to ship round 2,600 vessels out to fish throughout the globe, however some maritime consultants say this distant-water fishing fleet might quantity almost 17,000. America has fewer than 300 distant-water ships.

In keeping with the 1982 United Nations Conference on the Legislation of the Sea, nations management marine sources inside a 200-mile “unique financial zone”; past which might be worldwide waters. Whereas the U.S. by no means signed the treaty, it has declared a 200-mile offshore unique financial zone.

Bolstered by beneficiant subsidies and at instances protected by armed coast guard cutters, Chinese language fishermen have been illegally fishing close to the Korean Peninsula and within the South China Sea, a hotly contested space claimed by six international locations. By exploiting these waters China has come to dominate the worldwide squid market. Practically half of this catch is exported to different Asian nations, Europe and the USA.

Chinese language ships have even pushed so far as Africa and South America, the place fishermen have been identified to take away their figuring out flags to keep away from detection. In 2017 Ecuador caught 20 Chinese language fishermen within the environmentally protected Galapagos Marine Reserve and sentenced them to 4 years in jail for capturing 1000’s of sharks, the first ingredient in a Chinese language delicacy, shark fin soup.

In August, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China for “predatory fishing practices” that violate “the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of coastal states.”

China’s International Ministry stated Pompeo was simply making an attempt “fire up bother for different international locations.”

However Pompeo’s rebuke is about greater than fish. Governments usually use the fishing trade to advance their diplomatic agenda, as my work as a historian of fishing and American overseas relations exhibits. America used fishing, immediately and not directly, to construct its worldwide empire from its founding by way of the 20th century. Now China’s doing it, too.

Fishing its means from independence to imperialism

Earlier than the 1800s, when worldwide legislation started to outline maritime rights, restrictions on fishing depended wholly on what a given nation might implement.

That’s why, on the Paris negotiation to finish the Revolutionary Warfare in 1783, future president John Adams insisted that Nice Britain acknowledge the suitable of People to fish the North Atlantic. Its wealthy waters had been filled with cod and mackerel, however that’s not all: The fishing rights Adams received in 1783 prolonged the younger nation’s presence effectively into the ocean.

As a result of American fishing rights had been acknowledged alongside American statehood, my analysis exhibits, generations of U.S. diplomats related the 2. In 1797, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering known as American fisheries “the fairest fruits of independence.”

North Atlantic fisheries had been intently tied to American independence. George Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Business of the USA

By the 1860s, worldwide fishing had grow to be a key part of America’s newly expansionist overseas coverage. Between 1850 and 1898, the U.S. annexed quite a few abroad territories, amongst them Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. In the present day this empire offers each American fishing vessels and the U.S. navy a worldwide attain.

Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who bought Alaska and its wealthy North Pacific waters below Andrew Johnson in 1867, additionally tried unsuccessfully to purchase Greenland and Iceland, hoping to additional prolong American fishing claims throughout the North Atlantic. Throughout archival analysis I discovered that Seward’s like-minded successor, Hamilton Fish, toyed with the thought of buying the Canary Islands, close to northwest Africa, as a naval depot and a base for American fishermen.

Chilly Warfare fish

For a time across the flip of the 20th century, fishing took a again seat to navy would possibly within the U.S.‘s worldwide energy performs.

After World Warfare II, although, Washington once more turned to marine sources to serve its overseas coverage agenda. This time the federal government used what I name “fish diplomacy” to assist construct a extra America-friendly world order.

American diplomats of the 1940s used the notion of “most sustainable yield” – that’s, the thought that there’s a degree of fishing that maximizes the variety of fish caught with out damaging the long-term well being of fisheries – to develop American maritime affect.

The concept was extra political device than scientific discovery, as historian Carmel Finley has completely explored. However the U.S. used this fake sustainability argument to move legal guidelines and agreements that restricted overseas incursions into American waters whereas giving American fishermen freer reign over the world’s oceans.

Citing most sustainable yield, the Truman administration declared conservation zones to guard sure fisheries in 1945. This transfer basically barred Japanese salmon fishermen from Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Just some years later the State Division cited most sustainable yield to argue in opposition to proscribing U.S. tuna fishing in Latin American waters.

A fishing boat moored in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1947. Rotkin/Three Lions/Getty Pictures

Because the Chilly Warfare developed within the 1950s, fish diplomacy helped the U.S. shore up allies to counter the Soviet Union.

Washington gave beneficiant subsidies to develop the fishing fleets of assorted international locations – most notably Japan, whose war-ravaged economic system was revived partially by the U.S. boat-building subsidies that resurrected its personal as soon as very important empire-building fishing trade. The U.S. additionally lowered tariffs for strategically situated fishing nations like Iceland, making their principal export, cod, cheaper for People to purchase.

[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]

In fact, the U.S. additionally fought communism with mutual protection alliances, arms gross sales to pleasant nations and direct navy interventions. However fishery politics was a part of its Chilly Warfare plan.

This historical past helps clarify why the U.S. now sees China’s huge fishing fleet and worldwide trawling as menace. In sending its fishermen far and broad, Beijing has, wittingly or not, adopted America’s lead.

Blake Earle doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/u-s-china-fight-over-fishing-is-really-about-world-domination/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

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