#cheap solar light

[rmspeltzfarm]

Best Farm Security

[tinyshe]

It's all fun and games until someone brings a nail gun to the party.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

Basically, it’s discovered that to help stabilize Danielle, aka Ellie, it’d be best to have her be smaller. She refused to be turned into a kid by Frostbite/her own power ability, when Danny remembered the shrink ray his parents made. The side effect is that they’re kind of stuck as humans when they’re that small—they can use some ghost powers, but basically, it’s a weird side effect of the shrink ray. That’s canon, by the fucking way, lmao

Anyways, so Ellie agrees, and Danny will shrink himself with the ray to her size to help her out when needed/when she wants company her size, with Jazz, Sam, and Tucker occasionally helping out. Sam buys one of those really ornate Victorian dollhouses, with wooden everything, and Danny does some… renovations… so that it no longer opens and is a proper house. There’s still some oddities because it’s a dollhouse originally, but it was easier and faster to give her a home. One of the first additions was a water/wastewater system, followed like two hours later by an electrical system. Since it was so small, Danny was able to do it fairly quickly in his big size, occasionally going small and using the small window for using his powers to double check on things.

The water system had to be refilled every week, unless hooked up to a plumbing system in a house, which Danny made some outlets for in Jazz’s room—it was easier and had significantly less questions/didn’t stand out as much if placed in Jazz’s room. They usually did it every three days, though, as the plug-in process was still a bit… hinky. The tanks for holding the water were in the ‘basement’, which was mostly inaccessible from the inside of the dollhouse but basically looked like a big stand the dollhouse stayed on. Like someone ripped a full house out of the ground WITH the basement attached. There was a small access hallway down some stairs in the house for the clean water system, though.

The electric system was fairly simple, as it didn’t cost much energy to light a dollhouse and heat/cool water. There was an AC unit, Ellie’s request, but it hardly was used and was fairly efficient just due to pure size. It was fueled by ecto batteries, which Danny made sure had a few rechargability options—just because it was efficient energy didn’t mean it didn’t ever need recharging. There was a very small ecto filter, but due to its relative small size, was easy to clean and was fairly stable, so they had a whole closet of them just chilling out, both filled and empty. The battery itself could be charged by ecto sources, Danny’s own blood, or ambient ectoplasm gained by using something that looked like a solar panel and a satellite dish had a child that the batter could be placed in. The hookup also allowed for like… normal D cell batteries.

They would buy dollhouse furniture, and occasionally just buy the big version then shrink it down. Ellie had a huge old house to herself, basically, might as well go ham. And she had a fun time with the designer doll clothes Sam liked to get, although the cheap doll clothes from the store were also fun. Best option was just buying normal clothes and shrinking them, but using things that were already small or just making stuff using normal sized objects was fun.

At some point, though, the Fenton siblings decide to go on a trip. Ellie begs to be taken along, and Jazz agrees—there’s a doll showcase in Gotham, and Jazz wanted to see if anything caught Ellie’s interest. Danny, having a room in the dollhouse himself, also went along. Might as well make it a sibling’s trip, right?

Ellie can be full size for small chunks of time, which they did while exploring the expo. They found some cool things to add, and some doll clothes Ellie was far too interested in trying on, as well as some to force on Danny later. He sighed, but like—that’s his little cousin-sister, he’d put up with it. After all, he learned how to plumb an entire (miniature) house in two days when she refused to move in until it had a fully functional bathroom, so.

Anyways!

They have a fun time, and sure, lugging the relatively giant dollhouse was a PAIN, but it was Ellie’s home, and some stabilizing tech made it relatively safe to move without risking everything freaking breaking. They load everything in again, and the dollhouse is now restocked with clothes, tiny furniture, and a lot of shrunken supplies—some foods are just hard to work with full size, and are easier to shrink, okay? Also soap, paper goods, pencils and pens, books, etc. Jazz loads the thing into her car, and Danny offers to stay with Ellie in the dollhouse—so Jazz gets them in, and shrinks them down, holding onto the shrink ray in the meantime.

All is going relatively well in Gotham traffic until there’s a rogue attack.

Go figure.

Jazz ends up unconscious, and Danny and Ellie can’t do anything before the rogue is taken care of and a paramedic team comes up. They hide back in the dollhouse, listening as the medics say she seems to be okay, just unconscious. A relief, but now they’re taking Jazz away. Fenton luck states she’s one of the few actually injured. The Bat Brigade comes by, and Batman notices that there’s a wallet for one Danny Fenton. Red Robin confirms that Jazz was likely here with at least two other people, based on the ticket stubs for the expo. However, there is a strange lack of social media presence, Danny doesn’t have a photo ID, and there’s no way of knowing for SURE that it was just Danny with her, if it was just two other people, or if Danny was in the car with her. Still, as they can’t find him but DO have his sister and his wallet, they assume he might be missing, possibly kidnapped.

The Gotham PD of course take in the car, although it’s pretty trashed. Knowing well and good that the dollhouse and such things are actually quite expensive, Commissioner Gordon mentions that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Batman to maybe hold onto the Fenton’s things that *aren’t* related to the investigation.

Batman just takes everything. Including a rather peculiar looking gun that seems to have sustained some damage during the attack and car crash.

Gordon sighs. Figures.

So, Danny and Ellie end up in Wayne Manor. Most of the things end up in the Batcave, but Alfred insists that they place the doll things upstairs in the manor proper—the cave isn’t *that* damp, but doll things are small and delicate. So, upstairs they go.

At first, it’s fine. Danny and Ellie are fine in the dollhouse, and it’ll be at least a week before any of the systems NEED to be worked with.

Then Ellie ends up with a massive migraine. She gets them, on occasion, a sort of growing pain. Usually, they just shrink some medicine for her as she needs it, because she’s like—twelve. While they did have some medicine that had been pre-shrunk, when they were stocking up in Gotham, it turns out pain medicine was more expensive there. Not by much, but they figured—they’ll just stock up in Amity Park, they’ll be there in two days.

Haha. Nope.

So, Danny finally has to venture out. He lucks into finding the first aid kit—why there was one in the main living room, he’s not sure—and is currently working on trying to get open the blister packet of an ibuprofen when Alfred finds him.

Alfred stares at this tiny boy with a tiny make-shift knife trying to get into… over the counter pain medication.

Danny stares at this butler guy who had very gently cleaned the outside and noted the strange fact that the dollhouse did not open.

Danny waves at Alfred.

Alfred waves a tiny finger back.

“Hello,” Alfred says softly, which is fantastic because loud noises could get painful—part of the reason for Ellie’s headache was an argument between Tim and Damian. “How do you do?”

Danny hesitates, before he makes an exaggerated so-so gesture.

“You understand me?”

Danny nods—it’s rare for people to understand what he’s saying when he’s 5 inches tall.

“How wonderful,” Alfred smiles. “And how can I help our young guest tonight?”

Danny gestures to the blister packet.

“Pain medication? Isn’t that a little bit large for you.”

The teen thinks for a second on how to communicate. He points to the pill, then makes a slight show of pretending to grind something, like a mortar and pestle.

Thankfully, Alfred got the idea. “Would it be easier if I ground it up for you?”

Danny takes a moment to think before accepting with an enthusiastic nod.

“Very well,” Alfred says, taking the blister packet in one hand. He then hold his other out, palm up, like a platform. “Would you like to come with me?”

Danny ‘his survival instincts died when he did’ Fenton gets into Alfred’s hand.

Alfred grinds up the pill into a fine powder. Danny hands him a tiny bottle—still large in Danny’s hands, as it was not a shrunk bottle—that he had tied around his waist. Alfred fills it, and hands it back.

“I assume you came from the tiny house we have in our living room?”

Danny again nods. Alfred takes him there, setting him down outside the front door. Danny bows, and sure it’s Japanese as hell, and he’s white as all get out, but it’s a generally understood gesture of thanks. He hopes.

Alfred understands it just fine. “I bid you goodnight, then. Perhaps we will talk more, when you are feeling better?”

Danny hesitates, again, but he nods. Alfred had been nice enough, so far.

Danny heads in, quickly measuring out the medicine—shrunk pressure plates and scales and weights made what it was measuring relative—to him the weights on the hand balance scale felt the same weight. Ellie got her medicine, and they both went back to sleep.

He told her in the morning what happened. Ellie was strangely gung-ho about meeting this butler guy, and so—when no one else was around—, she and Danny went onto the tiny balcony as Alfred came in to dust.

“Oh my,” he said. “There’s two of you, now. Should I expect more?”

Both of them did an exaggerated ‘no’ dance.

“Very well, I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. I’m Alfred Pennyworth, the family butler. Welcome to Wayne Manor.”

[reasonsforhope]

"It is 70 years since AT&T’s Bell Labs unveiled a new technology for turning sunlight into power. The phone company hoped it could replace the batteries that run equipment in out-of-the-way places. It also realised that powering devices with light alone showed how science could make the future seem wonderful; hence a press event at which sunshine kept a toy Ferris wheel spinning round and round.

Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.

To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.

Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.

To grasp that this is not some environmentalist fever dream, consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel.

As our essay this week explains, solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. Making cells also takes energy, but solar power is fast making that abundant, too. As for demand, it is both huge and elastic—if you make electricity cheaper, people will find uses for it. The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.

Other constraints do exist. Given people’s proclivity for living outside daylight hours, solar power needs to be complemented with storage and supplemented by other technologies. Heavy industry and aviation and freight have been hard to electrify. Fortunately, these problems may be solved as batteries and fuels created by electrolysis gradually become cheaper...

The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything. Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.

But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.

This week marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where nobody need go without the blessings of electricity and where the access to energy invigorates all those it touches."

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - June 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $Kaybarr1735! And if you tip me and give me a way to contact you, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week!

1. Rare foal born on estate for first time in 100 years

“The Food Museum at Abbot's Hall in Stowmarket, Suffolk, is home to a small number of Suffolk Punch horses - a breed considered critically endangered by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. A female foal was born on Saturday and has been named Abbots Juno to honour the last horse born at the museum in 1924. [...] Juno is just one of 12 fillies born so far this year in the country and she could potentially help produce more of the breed in the future.”

2. The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery

“[Scientists] at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way of creating an energy storage device known as a supercapacitor from three basic, cheap materials – water, cement and a soot-like substance called carbon black. [... Supercapacitators] can charge much more quickly than a lithium ion battery and don't suffer from the same levels of degradation in performance. [... Future applications of this concrete might include] roads that store solar energy and then release it to recharge electric cars wirelessly as they drive along a road [... and] energy-storing foundations of houses.”

3. New road lights, fewer dead insects—insect-friendly lighting successfully tested

“Tailored and shielded road lights make the light source almost invisible outside the illuminated area and significantly reduces the lethal attraction for flying insects in different environments. [...] The new LED luminaires deliver more focused light, reduce spill light, and are shielded above and to the side to minimize light pollution. [... In contrast,] dimming the conventional lights by a factor of 5 had no significant effect on insect attraction.”

4. When LGBTQ health is at stake, patient navigators are ready to help

“[S]ome health care systems have begun to offer guides, or navigators, to get people the help they need. [... W]hether they're just looking for a new doctor or taking the first step toward getting gender-affirming care, "a lot of our patients really benefit from having someone like me who is there to make sure that they are getting connected with a person who is immediately going to provide a safe environment for them." [... A navigator] also connects people with LGBTQ community organizations, social groups and peer support groups.”

5. Tech company to help tackle invasive plant species

“Himalayan balsam has very sugary nectar which tempts bees and other pollinators away from native plants, thereby preventing them from producing seed. It outcompetes native plant species for resources such as sunlight, space and nutrients. [...] The volunteer scheme is open to all GWT WilderGlos users who have a smartphone and can download the Crowdorsa app, where they can then earn up to 25p per square meter of Balsam removed.”

6. [Fish & Wildlife] Service Provides Over $14 Million to Benefit Local Communities, Clean Waterways and Recreational Boaters

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is distributing more than $14 million in Clean Vessel Act grants to improve water quality and increase opportunities for fishing, shellfish harvests and safe swimming in the nation’s waterways. By helping recreational boaters properly dispose of sewage, this year’s grants will improve conditions for local communities, wildlife and recreational boaters in 18 states and Guam.”

7. Bornean clouded leopard family filmed in wild for first time ever

“Camera traps in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo have captured a Bornean clouded leopard mother and her two cubs wandering through a forest. It's the first time a family of these endangered leopards has been caught on camera in the wild, according [to] staff from the Orangutan Foundation who placed camera traps throughout the forest to learn more about the elusive species.”

8. Toy library helps parents save money 'and the planet'

“Started in 2015 by Annie Berry, South Bristol's toy library aims to reduce waste and allow more children access to more - and sometimes expensive - toys. [...] Ms Berry partnered with the St Philips recycling centre on a pilot project to rescue items back from landfill, bringing more toys into the library. [...] [P]eople use it to support the environment, take out toys that they might not have the space for at home or be able to afford, and allow children to pick non-gender specific toys.”

9. Chicago Receives $3M Grant to Inventory Its Trees and Create Plan to Manage City’s Urban Forest

“The Chicago Park District received a $1.48 million grant [“made available through the federal Inflation Reduction Act”] to complete a 100% inventory of its estimated 250,000 trees, develop an urban forestry management plan and plant 200 trees in disadvantaged areas with the highest need. As with the city, development of the management plan is expected to involve significant community input.”

10. Strong Public Support for Indigenous Co-Stewardship Plan for Bears Ears National Monument

“[The NFW has a] plan to collaboratively steward Bears Ears National Monument to safeguard wildlife, protect cultural resources, and better manage outdoor recreation. The plan was the result of a two-year collaboration among the five Tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and upholds Tribal sovereignty, incorporates Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and responsibly manages the monument for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation while ensuring the continued health of the ecosystem.”

June 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - 29 April 2024

1. Net neutrality rules restored by US agency

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and reassume regulatory oversight of broadband internet rescinded under former President Donald Trump.

2. Airlines required to refund passengers for canceled, delayed flights

DOT will also require airlines to give cash refunds if your bags are lost and not delivered within 12 hours.

The refunds must be issued within seven days, according to the new DOT rules, and must be in cash unless the passenger chooses another form of compensation. Airlines can no longer issue refunds in forms of vouchers or credits when consumers are entitled to receive cash.

3. How new mosquito nets averted 13 million malaria cases

Compared to standard nets, the introduction of 56 million state-of-the-art mosquito nets in 17 countries across sub-Saharan Africa averted an estimated 13 million malaria cases and 24,600 deaths. The New Nets Project, an initiative funded by Unitaid and the Global Fund and led by the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), piloted the use of dual-insecticide nets in malaria-endemic countries between 2019 and 2022 to address the growing threat of insecticide resistance.

4. Germany has installed over 400,000 ‘solar balconies’

This new wave of solar producers aren’t just getting cheap electricity, they’re also participating in the energy transition.

More than 400,000 plug-in solar systems have been installed in Germany, most of them taking up a seamless spot on people’s balconies.

5. Voyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space

The US space agency says its Voyager-1 probe is once again sending usable information back to Earth after months of spouting gibberish.

The 46-year-old Nasa spacecraft is humanity's most distant object.

6. Missing cat found after 5 years makes 2,000-km journey home

Five years after it ran out the door, a lost cat was returned to a couple in Nevada after it was found thousands of kilometres away. The couple are praising the cat’s microchip for helping reunite them.

7. Restoring sight is possible now with optogenetics

Max Hodak's startup, Science, is developing gene therapy solutions to restore vision for individuals with macular degeneration and similar conditions. The Science Eye utilizes optogenetics, injecting opsins into the eye to enhance light sensitivity in retinal cells.

Clinical trials and advancements in optogenetics are showing promising results, with the potential to significantly improve vision for those affected by retinal diseases.

---

That's it for this week :)

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[alphajocklover]

hey there. I—-iiii—-I’m sorry, I’m a lil a little ner nervous here. I have this uh, like, um, shy. Uh. Shy persona. Im a nerdyaverage gay dude. And I wanna be able to talk in front of like um crowds. Actually I um, had something in mind. I wanna become a big, jacked jock straight comedian. Telling hilarious and sometimes cringe and crude jokes. Getting egged on by my maybe like um, frat bros or something to tell like obnoxious straight dude joke or something. Yeah. Like super douchebag funny guy muscle straight bro who is the life of the party. Young and dumb dude. Is there anything you have that could make this a reality?

It’s nice to meet you Mike! You don’t mind if I call you Mike do you? I know it’s not your name, but I don’t love using real names in my work… also, if I do this right your name could actually be Mike soon. I think that’s a good name for a straight douchebag comedian. It’s kind of a pun actually, a play on open Mike. You could call yourself Mike Dick. Get it, cause it sounds like ‘my dick’? Not funny huh? I’ll admit I’m not the best at this, but you’re the one who wants to be a comedian, not me. And I’m going to tell you how. You need to do what everyone who has stage fright needs to do. You need to get up on that stage… and just start talking.

I bet you're probably very confused right now. I know that the very idea of talking in front of people fills you with dread, and you came to me so you could get that confidence, not some cheesy advice. But I swear to you that I’m not just giving you empty platitudes. When you get up on the stage, in that spotlight, everything will be ok. Not because you believe in yourself, but because that spotlight is being powered by a very special battery. You might remember my supernova transformations, from my earliest stories. You might also remember that I was able to take some of the energy from it using a special solar panel and put it in a battery. While it turns out that if you use that battery to power a light source… It has an interesting effect. Any guy caught in its rays has they’re wish granted, while also being turned into a jock.when I discovered this I thought maybe I had finally found out how InstaJock works, but the transformation isn’t instant, and I’m not sure if you could get that energy to travel through an app or anything, so it’s probably something else.

Anyways, head on up! At first you’ll be your regular, shy and geeky self, but as you bask in the spotlight and start to open up, you’ll slowly change. Your muscles will slowly grow, your body and face becoming more chiseled, and your sense of humor will slowly become more… raunchy. Thoughtful comedy will slowly turn into cheap punchlines about ‘stupid queers’ and crude stories about ‘crazy bitches with huge tits’. Your audience might not like your new style, but a confident stud like you doesn’t care about what losers like that think, and you’ll be certain to get a following of beefy straight douchebags in no time. Especially if you turn that spotlight on the audience. Have fun, and try to use that spotlight responsibly. The battery won’t last forever, and I’m not going to give you a second one.

[snvffsoda]

headcanons for Ren, Strade, and Lawrence for how they are when driving! //bonus Celia!!

certified passenger princess if not the one driving

confirmed by Gato he's an average driver, but has gotten a ticket for running a red light before (he was trying to get to an anime merch shop to buy a rare figure before it was sold out)

turns his AC up all the way, but will turn it down if asked nicely

drives Strade’s old car, it has a citrusy fresh smell, with a hint of Strade's cheap cologne forever permeated into the vehicle itself

cleans his car every couple of months or so, but does tend to throw and leave his trash in the back seat, usually consisting of old Monster Energy cans and fast food bags

sings loudly to the music he listens to when driving but does get self-conscious and stop when in traffic or is being watched by other drivers

tends to speed when driving, and doesn't notice when he does, like he's always in a hurry when he is at the wheel

has anime stickers on his car window consisting of his favorite anime girls he knows its a bit corny, but he’ll defend that decision with his life if told by someone it is

forgets to use his turn singles sometimes

hates the sound of cars honking or blaring during busy traffic, it irritates his sensitive ears to no need

wanta a motorcycle, but can't afford one

better than Ren, but is still kind of reckless when he does drive

can and will drive over curbs and sidewalks when needing to make a tight turn

contradictory king, it comes to calling out other drivers mistakes on the wheel

listens to music extremely loud when he drives and doesn't turn it down when you're trying to talk with him

surprisingly takes very good care of his car, mostly to hold up a nice appearance to his neighbors, or to his unassuming victims who follow him into it

don’t touch his radio, he can and will get pissed.

acts like a dad when you turn on the indoor car light and freaks out about it

speeds when driving, notices, but doesn't really care

car sex, that is all.

named his car and speaks to it like it can hear and understand him

always knows some sort of back alley or sketchy shortcut to get out of traffic every time he's in it

will curse under his breath and sometimes go on mini rants about bad drivers when seeing them on the road or driving near them

can name almost every brand or type of car he sees when driving, definitely a bit of a car nerd deep down, but will never admit to it

has been caught drunk driving, but talked his way out of getting arrested by the cops and was let go scott-free

doesn't even enjoy driving in general, it gives him anxiety, and would prefer to walk if given the option

keeps a blanket and pillow in his car for when he drives out into the woods at night he’ll tend to sleep in his car when he does

has one of those mini solar dancing flowers on his dashboard

the safest driver out of them all, though he does drive a little too slow sometimes

when alone, he’ll punch at slam at his steering wheel when overwhelmed or extremely angry

keeps a plant in his cup holder and waters it regularly

doesn't listen to music when he drives, but will get nervous when driving with someone else and turn on the radio instinctively, so as to not sit in awkward silence

has hot-boxed in his car before

keeps a can of mace in his glovebox, but has never had to use it

loves the sound of rain hitting his car window when driving, and loves to fall asleep in his car when it rains outside because of it

passenger princess 2.0

Driving? you mean a limo?

jokes aside she's a decent driver, but doesn't like to drive herself places, but when she does, she usually gets where she needs to go without any trouble, that being said,

she's been pulled over for drunk driving many times, and has always paid off her tickets or bought a fancy lawyer to make all her DUI charges go away

never drives the same car twice

has argued and yelled with her husband Harold over the phone or with him in the car while driving and has received stares from passers-by before, she doesn't care though

does her makeup while driving when she's in a hurry or on a tight schedule, and is very good at it

honks her horn at bad drivers and flips them off when they pass, definitely the most outwardly aggressive, when driving out of them all

her cars are ALWAYS clean, almost unnaturally so

keeps a gun in her glove compartment and has never had to use it though stands by it that she does need it

has scratched her business enemies cars up, and threatened to run over her husband and the business associates she despises with her car multiple times

[cognitivejustice]

With solar power, urban farms, and radical grassroots democracy, eKhenana provides an impressive model for a sustainable low-carbon future community

At eKhenana, there are 109 families on two hectares of land, one of which is dedicated to farming. Each family has a small plot on which a shack is built with recycled materials, with emphasis on open spaces, walkways and even parking spaces. Credit: Nomfundo Xolo.

In recent years, the question of what this sustainable low-emissions future could look like has animated both climate scientists and creatives. They have imagined a myriad of possibilities, some more fantastical than others.

For the residents of eKhenana commune, however, the future is already here. In this settlement in Durban, South Africa, low-consumption lifestyles, shared living in urban villages, and self-sufficient small-scale agriculture are not utopian visions but daily reality.

Former chairperson of eKhenana commune, Lindokuhle Mnguni, was dedicated to creating a “land of milk and honey” and a socialist way of life where everyone is given an equal opportunity. He, and his partner Sindisiwe Ngcobo, were attacked on 20 August 2022 in the early hours by unknown gunmen. Mnguni was killed instantly from multiple wounds to the head. Credit: Nomfundo Xolo.

eKhenana was first established in 2018 when a group of people decided to occupy some neglected municipal land in Durban. They began by building their homes, shacks, before adding schools, shops, and community spaces. The commune are members of Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), the South African social movement of the poor that fights for land, housing, and human dignity.

Today, eKhenana is made of up 109 families and the community is a model of democratic, ground-up, climate-friendly self-sufficiency. As South Africa faces rolling blackouts, the commune enjoys reliable solar power that it uses to boil water, charge phones, and keep the lights on. Through its food sovereignty garden and cooperative farming projects, it feeds itself with nutritious and cheap locally grown produce.

The watchword in building locally self-sustaining communes is sovereignty. Communities, they agree, need to be able to take control of their food and ownership of their needs without relying on the government.

To say eKhenana has managed to thrive in the absence of the state wouldn’t be quite right. The commune’s self-sufficiency has, in fact, been hard-won against a backdrop of state-sanctioned violence. Like most land occupations in South Africa, the community in eKhenana have had to repeatedly rebuild their homes after countless eviction attempts. These often-violent operations, enforced by the government and private militias, have led to the deaths of at least eight residents.

This harassment has continued even since the community at eKhenana won the right to legally occupy the land in 2019. The government and police, says AbM’s General Secretary Thapelo Mohapi, “treat Abahlali like a criminal organisation”.

The politics conducted within eKhenana couldn’t look more different to the formal state’s elite and exclusionary approach. In the commune, all decisions are reached by consensus at community meetings through radical democratic participation. Residents regularly gather at Thuli Ndlovu Hall – named after one of their assassinated comrades – where everyone is given a chance to discuss all communal decisions, from where spinach is planted to how resources like the community-owned sewing machine are shared. This agency is coupled with responsibility; all members are expected to be active in, and aware of, eKhenana’s various projects and challenges.

“Our discussion must have one answer, reached communally,” explains Mazwi. “No one can tell us what to do, not even our [former] chairperson, comrade Mnguni, may he rest in peace, because we make our decisions for ourselves.”

Like all AbM branches, eKhenana practices Ubuhlalism, their interpretation of the philosophy of Ubuntu. In stark contrast to neoliberal individualism, a driving force behind the climate crisis, this way of thinking advocates for a communal worldview that prioritises wellbeing over profit.

“Ubuhlalism teaches us how to share with other people, how to treat each other, how to build yourself,” says Mazwi. “Ubuhlalism is something you can’t touch, you can’t see, but something that you practice. It’s something inside you.”

Source

[solarpunkbusiness]

Meet the Nigerian women spearheading solar projects

32-year-old green energy entrepreneur Yetunde Fadeyi will never forget what inspired her to start a clean energy company in Nigeria.

As a six-year-old, Fadeyi’s best friend, Fatima, was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in her Lagos home, along with her father and pregnant mother.

“She often came over for sleepovers. But that day she didn’t,” says Fadeyi. “It was the time that they were stealing people’s generators, so they kept [the generator] in an enclosed area and by the time it was morning they were dead.”

After a childhood in Lagos plagued by intermittent electricity, a degree in chemistry and training in solar panel installation, Fadeyi started Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability (REES). The non-profit is dedicated to climate advocacy and providing clean energy to poor communities in rural Nigeria.

Bringing solar energy to Nigeria’s poorest homes

Since its inception in 2017, REES Africa has provided solar energy to over 6,000 people in the poorest parts of Nigeria, funded by grants and philanthropic donations.

It supplies solar microgrids, which generate energy through solar panels and store them in battery banks for distribution. The small grids bring high quality, cheap and constant power to up to 100 homes each, powering light bulbs, radios, sockets and other low energy appliances.

Fadeyi says that energy companies don’t see any potential for profit in poor and marginalised communities. With around 40 per cent of Nigerians living below the national poverty line, it’s up to companies like Fadeyi’s to fill the gap for now.

Professor Yinka Omoregbe is hoping to bridge this energy gap as CEO of Etin Power, providing energy to offgrid communities using mini solar grids. She brings a wealth of experience to the role as a former national advisor on the reform of Nigeria’s petroleum sector and a former state attorney general.

In its first year, Etin Power provided electricity to over 5,200 people in three neglected coastal communities in Edo State, southern Nigeria. While the results so far are small, Omoregbe’s ambitions are far bigger.

We will have proven that it is possible to profitably give green energy to vulnerable communities.”

[anonymusbosch]

idk, a lot of the time CA housing politics are like

right-auth: it should be illegal to be poor next to my ranch house

staunch environmentalists: if we build housing on this one patch of rare moss i will commit seppuku

misguided journalists: we should do everything we can at any cost to make sure every building is maximally earthquake-safe [implicitly: even if that means spending billions upon billions of dollars to retrofit buildings of a construction type which has never actually failed in an earthquake, at the cost of not using that money to e.g. build new safe housing or feed people]

local mayor: we've made it easier to build affordable housing by accelerating the permitting process from 2 years to 1.6 years for construction with at least 20% affordable units between 17th and 21st street if the neighbors all say it's ok, no one has solar panels, and no groundhogs on the lot see their shadows when disturbed by construction equipment

developers: we are excited to announce the opening of a new 4-over-1 luxury apartment complex where the apartments aren't big or laid out sensibly but they DO have smart fridges, smart light switches, a rent payment system that harvests your data, and ground-floor retail (bespoke reclaimed-wood furniture store, very walkable)

silicon valley: we've invented a new cheap housing with automated construction enabled by AI and the cloud to bring affordable housing to everyone. by making... prefab ADUs. it's the tesla of housing. no we haven't talked to anyone who works in construction why do you ask. mobile home? rv? what's that

someone on twitter: the solution is firebombing walmart and revolution

local news outlet: PROGRESS! 247 units of housing approved for construction! [California is, by some measures, 3.5 million units short.]

[mariacallous]

On May 14, Washington slapped new tariffs on China in what looks at first glance like the latest round of a familiar trade spat. The White House imposed duties of 25 to 50 percent on a range of industrial, medical, and clean tech goods—including semiconductors, solar cells, batteries, steel, aluminum, graphite, magnets, syringes, and ship-to-shore cranes. Strikingly, the latest measures also include a whopping 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles, effectively shutting the U.S. market to Chinese-made EVs.

Seen from Washington, these measures also look like a political move as U.S. President Joe Biden courts blue-collar voters in industrial swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania ahead of the November presidential election. It’s unlikely, however, that Beijing shares this benign interpretation. Seen from China, the tariffs look like a serious escalation of the U.S.-China contest and are probably raising alarm bells. Here’s why.

1. Washington is playing the long game. Stories of how China has become the world leader in EV manufacturing and is flooding the world with cheap vehicles have flourished over recent months. At the global level, there certainly is something to this analysis. Chinese exports of EVs jumped by a whopping 80 percent last year, propelling China to the top of the global ranking of car exporters. Yet this does not apply to the United States, where China supplied just 2 percent of EVs sold last year. (U.S. consumers appear to have a distinct preference for South Korean, Japanese, and European EV imports.) In other words, a 100 percent tariff on a few thousand cars will not hit Chinese firms hard.

A closer look at the list of targeted sectors suggests that batteries, not cars, will be the real pain point for China. The U.S. market is important for Chinese battery firms, which supply around 70 percent of the lithium-ion batteries used in the United States. For China’s battery sector, this means that the impact of the latest U.S. tariffs will likely be huge: The usual rule of thumb is that a 1 percentage point increase in tariffs entails a 2 percent drop in trade. With tariffs rising from 7.5 percent to 25 percent, the rule suggests that Chinese battery firms’ U.S. sales could drop by around one-third—or by $5 billion when one includes the entire battery supply chain. With Chinese battery-makers already seeing their profits plummet amid softening global demand, this is certainly bad news for Beijing.

Crucially, batteries are also an area where the U.S. government is investing huge amounts of public funds, in particular through the Inflation Reduction Act, which seeks to boost U.S. domestic production of clean tech goods. Seen in this light, the latest U.S. tariffs are preemptive measures to protect a nascent clean tech industry and make sure that there is domestic demand for future U.S. production. This suggests that the United States is playing the long game here, with little chance the tariffs will be lifted anytime soon. On the contrary—the U.S. clean tech market could well be closed to Chinese firms from here on out.

2. The White House is trying to force Europe to come on board and impose similar tariffs on China. Biden is probably seeking to score electoral brownie points with a 100 percent tariff on EVs, making former President Donald Trump’s proposal for 60 percent on U.S. imports from China look almost feeble. (Not to be outdone, Trump just announced that he would apply a 200 percent tariff on Chinese-branded cars made in Mexico.) Yet the reality is that Biden’s tariffs will not prove game-changing in the short term: Their implementation will be phased in over two years, and supply chain adjustments typically take time. In short, the measures are unlikely to fuel a U.S. industrial boom in time for the November elections.

What will happen before the election, though, is the conclusion in June or July of the European Union’s ongoing anti-subsidy investigation into China’s EV makers. Rumors abound of a possible tariff of 20 to 30 percent on Chinese EVs. Such a prospect is probably unnerving for Beijing; the EU is the biggest export market for China’s EVs, absorbing around 40 percent of Chinese shipments. The United States hopes that its 100 percent tariff on EVs will compel the EU to not only follow Washington’s example in imposing a tariff on Chinese EVs but perhaps also consider a higher one. This bold strategy could well work. Europe is unlikely to enjoy having its arm twisted by Washington, but the bloc will also worry that Chinese EV makers could double down on their push to dominate the EU market now that they have lost access to the U.S. one.

Chinese EVs look set to be a key topic when G-7 leaders meet for their annual summit in June. The United States will probably try to cajole Germany, which has long been dovish vis à vis China, into supporting sharply higher tariffs. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pointed to the fact that European auto manufacturers “sell a great many vehicles that are produced in Europe to China”—hinting at German fears that China could retaliate against EVs and internal combustion engine cars imported from the EU.

3. The tariffs are a serious escalation from Washington’s previous de-risking strategy. In recent years, U.S. de-risking has focused on reducing the United States’ reliance on China for crucial goods and curbing Beijing’s access to dual-use technology in a bid to avoid fueling the country’s military advances. To implement this strategy, Washington has so far relied on two main tools from its economic statecraft kit: financial sanctions (for instance, on firms linked to the People’s Liberation Army) and export controls (notably on semiconductors, which are dual-use goods found in most military equipment).

Washington is slowly realizing that these two tools are imperfect. China’s massive sanctions-proofing efforts mean that sanctions do not always deal a blow to Chinese firms, which may no longer be using the U.S. dollar (China now settles around half of its cross-border trade in renminbi) or Western financial channels such as SWIFT, the global payments system. Washington also understands that export controls on clean tech would not curb China’s ambitions in the field, as Chinese firms already have all the tech they need. This leaves only one option for U.S. economic statecraft: tariffs that leverage one of the country’s greatest economic assets—access to its market.

This is why the latest U.S. tariffs are likely raising red flags in Beijing. The United States is now severing access to its market in clean tech and other areas that China sees as crucial for its plans to become the world’s future economic superpower. If the EU plays ball, this approach would expose a central flaw in Beijing’s industrial strategy: What if the world’s two biggest markets—the United States and the EU—become no-go areas for Chinese firms dependent on exporting their vast production, leaving them with piles of unused goods? Few other markets are available for Chinese clean tech exports—outside Europe, North America, and East Asia, most countries lack the infrastructure for large-scale EV adoption, for example. This prospect may well keep Beijing’s planners up at night, with no easy solution in sight.

The question now is whether and how Beijing will react. Serious retaliation is unlikely, since the United States exports far less to China than vice versa. Given its current economic woes, China also has little interest in further weakening its economy—for example, by imposing export bans on critical raw materials, rare earths, or other crucial goods for Western economies.

As the latest skirmish in the battle for economic dominance between Washington and Beijing, the new U.S. tariffs raise a number of bigger questions: Will Washington succeed in its efforts to create a domestic ecosystem for clean tech? Will the United States and Europe manage to cooperate—or go their own ways in their economic relations with China? Will the United States continue to curb Chinese access to the U.S. market for the purposes of de-risking—and if so, in which sectors? There is probably only one certainty in the U.S.-China economic war: The conflict will continue well after the November elections, whatever their outcome.

[cherry-blossom-qf]

Also speaking of which for Undertale and freelance police magolor, what is your favorite things about earth

💙: "The Northern Lights! And the meteor showers!! And the time we all got to see the solar eclipse!!! And a double rainbows!! They're all so beautiful...!! All the monsters in town all gather together to watch every single wonderful event involving the sky!! Because to all the monsters who lived underground all their lives, the sky is a treasure.. and that fact made me appreciate the sky even more..."

🚔: "The carnivals are mostly my favorite!! Cheap rides, fun games, and questionable food brings back memories of first arriving here on earth. I still have the plushie Sam helped me win at one of those 'shoot-the-ducks' games and a funny memorable photo from one of the rides. It's probably not as dramatically poetic as UT's pick, but carnivals still hold a emotional value to me..."

[reasonsforhope]

"The search has intensified for alternative energy-saving technologies for heating and cooling that don’t run on fossil fuels.

Now, by mimicking a desert-dwelling chameleon, Chinese scientists have developed a cheap energy-efficient, cost-effective coating on houses.

They say the new material could keep buildings cool in the summer or warm in the winter without using additional energy.

“Many desert creatures have specialized adaptations to allow them to survive in harsh environments with large daily temperature shifts,” said Dr. Fuqiang Wang, author on the paper describing the invention and researcher at the Harbin Institute of Technology. “For example, the Namaqua chameleon of southwestern Africa alters its color to regulate its body temperature as conditions change.”

Pictured: A Namaqua Chameleon

...Many systems, such as cooling paints or colored steel tiles, are only designed to keep buildings either cool or warm, and can’t switch between modes.

Inspired by the Namaqua chameleon, Dr. Wang and his colleagues wanted to create a color-shifting coating that adapts as outside temperatures fluctuate...

When heated to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, the surface began to change from dark to light grey. Once it reached 86F, the light-colored film reflected up to 93% of solar radiation.

“Even when heated above 175 degrees Fahrenheit for an entire day, the material showed no signs of damage,” reported Dr. Wang.

The team then tested it alongside three conventional coatings—regular white paint, a passive radiative cooling paint, and blue steel tiles in outdoor tests on doghouse-sized buildings throughout all four seasons...

In summer, the new coating was significantly cooler than the white paint and steel tiles, according to the findings published in the journal Nano Letters.

“During spring and fall, the new coating was the only system that could adapt to the widely fluctuating temperature changes, switching from heating to cooling throughout the day,” Dr. Wang added.

The researchers say that the color-changing system could save a “considerable” amount of energy for regions that experience multiple seasons, while still being inexpensive and easy to manufacture."

-via Good News Network, September 21, 2023

[theworstofallpossibleworlds]

Can you please ask Brian what camera, lens and film he uses to shoot the eclipse?

This is a characteristically late response, but I'd love to get into it. I got into film photography by picking my dad's childhood brownie hawkeye off of a shelf and ever since then i've stayed pretty cheap with the hobby. I got a really good deal on a Kiev-80 a couple years ago. For those who don't know, its a 50 year old soviet camera made as an imitation of a Hasselblad (the camera we took to the moon). It's a medium format camera, so focal lengths work a little different than they do in 35mm

Medium format cameras like this take pictures that are 60mm by 60mm. Your typical 35mm camera takes 36mm by 24mm frames, so the added film sixe here means generally everything has to get bigger. The lenses i've gotten for this camera all have massive cases and can be carried with their own separate strap. The lens used for the eclipse is just... so big. oh my god. it's a mess. It's a Tair-33, with a minimum f stop of 4.5 and a focal length of 300mm (equivalent to 165mm on 35)

This model of the lens has very fun, characteristic stripes, the aperture control is all the way at the front, and easy to use. Focusing, however is slow, as the weight of everything creates quite a bit of friction. You can get one of these for about $80 bucks. Now 300mm here is not a great magnifier, so I also got a (faulty) accessory to extend the focus, bringing the lens to 600mm (330mm equivalent in 35). It also makes this camera, all put together, into The Largest Object of All Time.

squash and butter for scale

To see the difference between 300mm and 600mm, check out these photos of the regular, non-eclipsed sun at both lengths

You're probably wondering why these pictures look so weird. these lenses are don't have very effective coatings. you wouldn't believe the processes that go into coating your glasses, your camera lenses, your phone lenses. The easiest kind of picture to take is one where your subject is lit by a souce that is behind the photographer. things get complicated with backlight, creating ghosting and glare as seen above. the light bounces between the glass elements (and the dark filter used to photograph the sun is also glass, complicating it further). taking a direct photo of a light (especially the fucking SUN) leads to some pretty crazy unpredictable variables.

My camera has recently taken on a new malady too, where at low speeds, the shutter (which in this camera is a huge metal curtain sticks at the edge without totally closing. It causes these stripes at the edge of the picture. This can be frustrating if i forget, but I like having the issue. If i want a picture to look normal, to plan it out, to totally control it, I have a digital camera for that. I got into this film stuff for the eccentricities.

For the regular sun photos, I think I was shooting on Ilford FP4, which i think i stand developed in rodinal. At the eclipse, I only got through one roll of film, becasue the cloud cover was brutal, but i took those pictures on Kodak Tri-x 400 (developed normally in D-76). I did it all in Black and white because, in general, b&w negatives are pretty generous with mistakes. All the guides i could fine for solar photography were understandably written with digital cameras in mind, so I couldn't be totally sure about my math (as the camera is totally manual) or even my eye safety (as I'm using a viewfinder; my vision seems fine a month later)

the actual iris on this lens is right up in front. Tightening the aperture, especially when the extender is attached, leads to a vignetting issue, turning your pictures into a circle

once totality hits, the light changes dramatically. you can stare straght at it without glasses and not have to worry about damaging your eyes for those short minutes. so i didn't even bother with film at that stage. I just pulled out my DSLR with a cheap 500mm Samyang mirror lens made for pentax. It's very compact and very, VERY shitty. Shallow focus, really dark, ugly out-of-focus elements, focuses past inifinity, i love it. only got a couple pictures that way, and then put the camera down and enjoyed the experience

[dcawritings]

Twinkle Twinkle (Little Star)

Rating: Teen

Relationship: Eclipse/GN!Reader

Summary:

In the quiet emptiness of the hallway, it's all too easy to get lost in your own thoughts. You stare down at the collection of items in your hands with only the soft echo of Christmas music coming from the end of the hall leading to the living room — soothing, but distant. It has been playing since you woke up earlier that day and the sound has all but fallen into the background of the afternoon chill. (A story in which you get ready for Christmas with post-ruin Eclipse and slowly realize that you love him.)

Author's Note:

While this may be a little late for a traditional christmas fic, this is for @murasaki-rose from the DCA Secret Santa 2023 event! I hope that you find this as cute and fluffy as I did while writing it -- Eclipse is an absolute sweetheart and I love any excuse to write him being domestic :3c Thank you also to @solar-synapse for all the feedback to help make sure this piece was as polished as I wanted it to be! ;w; Your advice and writing help is invaluable!

In the quiet emptiness of the hallway, it's all too easy to get lost in your own thoughts.

You stare down at the collection of items in your hands with only the soft echo of Christmas music coming from the end of the hall leading to the living room — soothing, but distant. It has been playing since you woke up earlier that day and the sound has all but fallen into the background of the afternoon chill.

In one of your hands are several old shopping bags stuffed with ribbons, tape and various other supplies for wrapping gifts that you've accumulated over the years. In the other is a relatively small bundle of multicolored lights that have seen far better days. The strands are criss-crossed over one another in giant knots of plastic and unlit bulbs. Is it worth it to untangle them...?

Normally, your answer might have been a solid 'no'.

It isn't because you dislike the holidays or the activities related to them (absolutely not!) but simply because you rarely have a need to pull much out. Ever since moving to this apartment on your own, you didn't exactly have much of a reason to decorate for the holidays — less so after leaving the Pizzaplex when bills got heavier on your shoulders and another job offered higher pay. It was an at-home job doing database work, but... you missed seeing other people. With friends and family so far away, it meant a lot to have even a stupid little holiday party with faces you were somewhat familiar with, even if the pizza and copious amounts of Fizzy Faz served were convenient tax write-offs.

The last two Christmases were spent alone, so you never bothered to pull out much more than a small, cheap tree and some ornaments to decorate its scraggly limbs. It wasn't lonely per se, but...

A loud crash pulls you out of your thoughts. Dropping everything in your hands, you run out of the closet and immediately start to think the worst. There are plenty of boxes in the room you'd sent Eclipse to look through, and if he managed to topple them all...

"Are you okay?" you call out, hurrying down the hallway to find where your housemate had been rummaging through the rest of your old decorations. Worry starts to well up in your chest when you don't get an answer. "... Eclipse?"

"Y-Yes yes! I am alright!" a familiar, bright voice all but chirps before stepping around the corner. He looks entirely unfazed, outside of being covered in several long strings of Christmas lights and smiling like an idiot. "There was a lot of stuff to go through in your office — you had lots of boxes stacked up veeery precariously! But don't worry-"Eclipse gestures to the big tub of loosely packed ornaments he holds like a treasure. "-we made sure these didn't hit the ground!"

Relief flickers across your face for a moment before you start to laugh, the sound filling the air around you and echoing within the snug space of the hallway.

"Oh, those are all plastic ornaments," you say, patting one of Eclipse's arms. "It will take more than a little fall to break them. I think I keep the good ornaments in my bedroom closet."

Eclipse peers down at the container in his arms, then tilts his head curiously. It isn't hard for the animatronic to look endearing, but the fact that he is entirely covered in tangled lights is only making it worse. You reach out and gently try to remove the strands caught between his rays.

"I assume you found all..." you gesture at his entire body and the lights dangling over his face. "All this in there too?"

"Yup!" he nods, smile never fading. "The lights were on top of the box in a big big bundle and... well, it fell down, but we saved these since we thought they were important..."

His expression droops for a moment, but you gently pat the side of Eclipse's faceplate. His eyes lift and meet with yours and, for a breath, you feel your heart begin to race. It takes several seconds before you realize that your fingertips are lingering against the cool metal. You pull them away abruptly, heat spreading across your cheeks.

"That... was very considerate of you," you say with a smile, words honest and praying that he wasn't paying too much attention to the fact that you couldn't quite meet his glowing gaze. "I haven't actually pulled these out in a few years. I... I think they'd look really nice on the tree, if you want to help with that."

The animatronic instantly beams with joy and sprints to the living room before you even have a moment to try and untangle the lights from his body.

Christmas Eve comes and goes with very little fanfare, a lovely and peaceful evening spent in the company of someone you cherish. A friend — and nothing different, though your mind often wandered back to the moment of brief intimacy shared in the hallway; the way your eyes met with his like a spark of electricity, and your heart felt all too tight in your chest.

Just friends. Companions of fate so tightly bound together that you still wonder what possessed you all those months ago to climb through the crumbling skeleton of the old Pizzaplex.

Was it guilt? Curiosity? You'll never quite know the answer, since whatever compelled you was quickly overwhelmed by the shock of seeing the daycare attendant still functioning. Mostly functioning.

You and Eclipse spend the evening together in the living room, gazing at the tree and reminiscing about inconsequential memories of the old Pizzaplex and daycare alike. It was unknown for a while after taking him home if Eclipse could even access Sun and Moon's memory; he explained early on that he himself was something of a backup subsystem, almost like booting up a computer in a safety mode to diagnose errors and issues plaguing it otherwise.

It had been awkward for a month or so, but the two of you grew close rather quickly — especially once time allowed memories and personality quirks to seep into Eclipse's own sense of self: Moon's soft but mischievous nature, Sun's near-overwhelming need to be helpful. It shouldn't have been surprising how they fit so well together, but you still often found yourself wondering about how it all worked inside of the animatronic's mind.

You take a slow, careful sip of the hot drink in your hands. It's sweet, the aroma filling the air as you raise it up to your lips and let its flavor settle over your tongue. It's a nice contrast to the stark chill outside your apartment, making its heat feel all the more comforting as you stare at the tree.

"I think we did a good job!" you finally say, tilting your head just slightly to the side. "And the ornaments are only a liiiitle crooked."

"Are they?" Eclipse asks, tone sounding almost worried as he brings a hand up to the lower half of his faceplate. "We can adjust them again if you think-"

"Eclipse no, no I don't-" you laugh, managing to reach an arm out to keep the bot from moving off the couch beside you without choking on your drink. "It was just a joke. Promise. Besides, it's nicer if things aren't perfect."

He looks at you, silent for a few moments, then slowly leans back into the couch again. That's Sun for you, eager as always to jump and fix a problem...

The lights twinkle in multicolored splendor across the deep green of the fake tree, accented by bits and bobs of ornaments you had collected over the years — many of them were hand-made, either gifted by friends or given to you by the children of the daycare back when you managed that part of the facility. While time has blurred the memories, there are still a couple you can remember clearly, though that might be due to the fact that the ornaments are labeled with the kids' names in various colors of marker, paint and glitter glue.

"Pretty..."

Eclipse's soft whisper catches your attention and makes you giggle. "Yeah," you nod in agreement, turning and looking towards him. "The lights are really-"

Oh. He'd been looking at you.

Both of your gazes lock together for a moment before the bot averts his eyes quickly, the entire exchange only taking a moment or two but feeling almost like an eternity as heat rises up into your cheeks for a second time that day.

"I uh." You try to collect your thoughts, then nod towards the tree. "I think you did a good job on getting those lights untangled! I would have just tossed them out."

Eclipse hums, gaze trailing towards the tree. "Thank you," he says. "It wasn't too hard to do! Just takes time to unravel everything properly."

You feel impressed for a few moments before remembering that Eclipse — Sun and Moon, to be specific — are likely programmed with enough patience to tolerate such a herculean feat. When compared to dealing with a horde of small children on a daily basis, untangling a few sets of Christmas lights is nothing more than child's play (pun certainly not intended).

You sip your drink silently, trying not to think about how gently he had looked at you.

The evening is peaceful and sweet.

"Merry Christmas!"

Eclipse's voice is a bright ray of warmth amidst the frigid backdrop of winter.

You almost don't see him as you step into the room, bleary eyes blinking away the last drops of sleep; you might have slept a few hours longer if Eclipse hadn’t sent you a flurry of text messages begging you to wake up.

The bot looks at you from the other side of the couch, rays twitching with excitement. He leans forward on his knees as if eagerly waiting for your reply.

"Merry Christmas to you too, buddy," you murmur with a smile. After a moment, you narrow your gaze and raise a brow. "Have you been... sitting there all night?"

"Not all night," he corrects, glowing eyes glancing off to the side. "We needed to spend an hour or so in the kitchen to charge, but... well, we were just too excited! We want to open open open the presents under the tree!"

He shifts more onto the couch, making your face crane upwards to keep his gaze. It's easy to forget how tall Eclipse is when he's almost constantly hunching over or sitting on the floor beside you. He's simply excited, so the looming shadow overhead is hardly frightening even as he claps his hands together with a loud metallic thunk.

"And we want to watch you open your present too!"

The gesture brings a smile to your still-tired lips. Glancing behind him at the multicolored shapes sitting innocently beneath the belighted tree, you have to wonder, what in the world could he have gotten for you? It's not as if Eclipse has the ability to leave the house to purchase a gift, and you haven’t noticed him working on anything recently...

Curiosity wins out in the end, though you wouldn’t be able to deny the over-enthusiastic animatronic such a simple joy for long, especially not with that adorable, pleading look on his faceplate.

After all, had the animatronics of the Pizzaplex ever truly been able to celebrate the holidays? Outside of trying to sell something, of course — the Fazbear Corporation wasn't one to let a chance at profit slip away from them so easily — you don't recall there ever being a lot of opportunities for Sun or Moon to get into the spirit of things themselves. 

Sure, there were special crafts for the kids and a change in the decorations strewn about the facility, but… In a way, this really is Eclipse's first ever Christmas.

"Let me get something warm to drink," you finally say, smile never dropping from your lips at the thought. "And then we can open presents, m’kay?"

The bot's excited shouts echo into the kitchen as you step through the archway separating the rooms. It doesn't take very long to prepare something hot to sip on, yet by the time you return to the living room, Eclipse is already sitting beside the tree and staring intently at the wrapped gifts beneath it.

"They're not going anywhere," you tease as you step around him and sit down on the couch. The cushions sink pleasantly beneath your weight, soft and warm, and it's only then that you realize just how cold the air feels; you’ll have to get up in a bit to make sure your heater isn't acting up again. "You'll survive waiting just a little bit longer, you dork."

It's hard not to feel amused by the way Eclipse looks at you, annoyed and restless, so much like a child told to be patient. He's all but leaning against the side of the tree, waiting for the first syllable of permission to grab the golden-wrapped box nearest where he's sitting.

"We've been waiting for exactly ten hours and thirty-seven minutes!" he says pointedly. "And technically you are the one who's late to opening the gifts. I had to wake you up!"

You lift an eyebrow as you sip the hot liquid. "... And what happened to 'not being up all night'?"

Eclipse makes a low, scoffing noise but otherwise doesn't offer an answer. He simply turns his attention back towards the presents and stares at them again, so hard that it's almost like he’s trying to see through the obstructive layers to the gift within.

There's a soft whisper in the back of your head idly musing to itself — how long can Eclipse be patient? You have half a mind to find out, perhaps even making him wait until you’ve finished your drink and gone to check the thermostat, but... No, you're not quite that cruel.

"Alright then," you giggle, setting the mug down and climbing off the couch to sit cross-legged on the floor beside him. "Pick out a gift to open up." Beneath the fake green branches are a variety of boxes decorated in several different kinds of wrapping paper, so you take a moment to direct Eclipse's excitement by pointing them out. "Yours are wrapped in the sparkly gold paper, Sun's is the yellow polka-dot, and Moon's is the dark blue with the little stars."

You'd almost feel a little silly in wrapping their gifts up individually if you didn't already know how much Eclipse appreciated the distinction. Sun and Moon's individual processors and coding are still in self-repair mode, but you like the idea that they could still enjoy the holiday through Eclipse's eyes when they finally ‘wake’ back up.

"Can I... can I open them all?" Eclipse asks, picking up one of the blue boxes and giving it a gentle, experimental shake.

You nod, feeling more and more embarrassed as the words fall from your tongue. "Yeah! I figured that as long as they could like, see through your eyes when you opened the presents that it would... I dunno, I hope I didn't misunderstand when you said you could recall each other's memories..."

"Oh! No, you didn't misunderstand!" Eclipse sets the gift down and reaches out a hand to touch your cheek. The gesture is meant to be reassuring — he tends to use physical touch a lot when comforting someone — but his cool silicone fingertips feel like ice against your searing hot skin. "We just want to make sure we're following correct traditional expectations. On the internet, it said that it's rude to open presents for other people on Christmas."

You blink. Though you feel almost endeared by how sweet and polite he is, a detail sticks out in Eclipse's words that gives you a moment of pause.

"The internet?"

Eclipse's expression freezes. He pulls his hand back after a moment, looking decidedly more sheepish than before as his eyes flick back and forth to little parts of the living room that certainly aren’t as interesting as he makes them seem.

"Eclipse," you say gently. "Since when did you have access to the internet when I’m not around?"

After recovering him from the broken facility, you took every precaution to keep the animatronic safe — and that included the possibility of him getting a virus from a direct connection to your home's internet. Sure, you have a great anti-virus, a strong firewall and VPN since your job requires it, but you aren’t sure what kind of security programs Eclipse himself has onboard his processors.

Though there is a good chance that Fazco outfitted all of their animatronics with something to keep their software safe, you can't take any chances. You know of only one old programmer that had worked on Sun and Moon before the fire. His contact number is safely tucked away on your phone, but you don't want to know how much he'd charge to repair Eclipse if the bot stumbles into the dark corners of the web. 

It’s why you prefer to let him use your phone or tablet to amuse himself when you can keep an eye on him. More often than not, Eclipse was entertained by pet videos and video game playthroughs, so it never occurred to you that he’d try to connect himself directly if he had no need to do so.

You must be staring at him pretty hard while everything parses through your brain, because after a few seconds Eclipse starts to tilt his faceplate this way and that, his body language growing jittery in the same way that Sun’s does when he's nervous. Wringing his hands together. Unsure where to let his eyes fall. Anxious.

"We didn't connect directly to the internet, for the record!" the bot finally exclaims. "No broken rules whatsoever! We just..." he pauses, then quickly grabs a box wrapped in red and white-striped paper. You know it's one you didn’t wrap even before seeing the little tag taped in the corner with your name on it.

Though a part of your mind would like to continue questioning his little internet secret, curiosity has been gnawing at everything since he mentioned there was a gift for you. Even if it was little more than a kid's art project, the gesture alone makes you feel almost giddy. He went out of his way to make sure you had something under the tree, even though you had told him many times over that it didn't matter — you have the financial stability to get yourself something nice every now and again, and it was more important that he had something to look forward to. That he got a really nice Christmas experience. For all that Eclipse has been through over the last several months (perhaps even years) it's the least that he deserves right now.

So to be genuinely surprised by a gift is... really nice. It makes something twist up gently in the center of your chest that you can't quite identify.

"Alright, alright," you giggle, shifting so that you can set the box down over your crossed legs and start tearing the thin paper away in long strips. Unsurprisingly, a simple cardboard box lies beneath, easily opened with a few careful tugs at the folded flaps.

Initially, all you can see within is a small mountain of bubble wrap. It takes a few seconds to pull most of it out, but eventually you reveal a shiny metallic form hidden within one last layer of bubble wrap carefully packed around it.

Pulling the item out and unrolling the protective layers, you realize that it's a music box sitting in your palms. It's relatively small — barely larger than a fist — and it looks familiar.

There used to be a gift shop at the Pizzaplex, and this one almost resembles the little music boxes sold there, but not exactly. Those were minuscule things, cheap to produce and capable of playing a thin, tinny version of various jingles heard around the facility, one of them being the Superstar Daycare theme, but… you had really wanted one of them. Silly, yeah, but you often caught yourself thinking ‘I’ll buy one with the next paycheck’ whenever you passed by the shop, and then coming across another bill that needed to be paid first.

This one mimics the overall design of a jack-in-the-box, with a bent handle jutting out of one side and a flat top that looks like it might open up if you start to wind it. A few tiny marks of imperfection speak to it being handmade; the metal is bent a little too much on the edges, and there are places where the paint hasn’t been applied smoothly. It's colored red on one side and a deep navy blue on the other with little stars speckled across the entire thing, though it's the carefully embossed shapes of a sun and crescent moon that catch your attention most.

"It's... beautiful, Eclipse. I love it."

Your words are little more than a soft whisper, stilted despite your attempts to hide the emotions plaguing them. There's something so personable about the gift that you can't quite put a finger on, and it weighs pleasantly heavy in your hands and heart alike.

Movement in the corner of your eye pulls your attention away from the item in your hands. Eclipse has shifted quite a bit closer to you, so much that when you look up, you find his faceplate barely more than a few inches away from your face. He reaches down, one palm cupping around the back of your hands to stabilize the music box while his other hand slowly winds it up. All the while, your thoughts linger over how gentle and large his hands are, practically engulfing yours against his flat palm.

The sweet sound of the daycare jingle fills the air with gentle, dulcet tones.

"We made this," he says so quietly that you might have missed the words if he wasn't so close to you. "It took a long time. You said you liked being in the daycare, that you wanted one of the music boxes so... we thought you'd like to have your own."

There are layers of meaning in those words; nostalgia for a time when things were less lonely, bitterness for the fact you'll never be able to experience it again, and an overwhelming sense of heaviness that you can't begin to decipher properly. What... is this feeling? It makes your chest ache and your eyes start to water, wet heat building up behind your sight until you realize that everything has started to go blurry.

That heat bubbles up until it's too much, then starts to roll down your cheeks in heavy droplets. 

Ah. That's what's happening now, huh?

"Eclipse..."

You truly don't mean for your lip to quiver when you say his name. Nor do you mean to look so pathetic when his gaze meets yours — just a few inches of space between you both. Close enough to see the way his mechanical irises twitch and focus.

The bot suddenly freezes in place at the sound of your voice, entire body going stiff as ice for a silent heartbeat before his words start to run into one another.

"O-Oh my— We're— we're so sorry, sorry we didn't mean to make you cry oh goodness no we're so sorry starlight we didn't realize-" He fumbles his hands around yours as if to take the offensive item away, but you wrap your fingers so tightly around the metal shape with firm denial that it almost hurts.

"N-no!" It's hard to sound convincing when tears are actively dripping down your cheeks. "It's okay. I promise. I'm just- It's a really, really sweet gift. I wasn't expecting it to... hah, I'm just a bit more emotional about it than I thought I'd be."

A bit more emotional is a severe understatement, but it's hard to pinpoint why something so simple makes you feel as though your heart is about to burst right from your chest. It takes a moment, holding tight to your assurance and the music box both before Eclipse's body loosens up.

"It's... it's good?"

You nod. "Yeah! It's such a thoughtful gift, you... obviously put a lot of work into it." More work than you thought he'd be able to do, given the fact that you didn't have any metalworking tools available in the house. Or paint. Actually... "How in the world were you able to even make this?"

Eclipse is silent for a moment, still for just a breath before his fingertips begin rubbing idle circles into the back of your hands. He looks sheepish and fidgety again, but this time, you genuinely want to know what he's trying to keep secret and aren’t afraid to push the question.

"Eclipse..."

"So, you know when you take trips into town to do your errands?" he offers after a moment. 

You nod. Even while working from home, you still need to get groceries and take care of the random tasks that come up every now and again. "Well, we... We found out that the library down the road has a little workshop. A-and the people who work there are really, really nice!"

Oh. 

Oh god.

"You left the house?"

Eclipse immediately lifts his hands and waves them apologetically. "W-We didn't go far! Not far at all, just a few minutes walk away! W-we even made sure it was okay, emailed the librarian and asked if we were allowed to use the workshop!"

You groan. Eclipse is half-right on where your worry lay with him leaving the safety of your house, but he doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that he is a seven-odd-foot tall animatronic with no ability to pass as human. Granted, Fazco was all but driven out of town after the fire decimated the old facility, but you can’t risk someone identifying Eclipse and trying to claim him as company property.

The music box is still playing, though the tune has slowed down slightly. Maybe it's the soft sounds, maybe it's the heat in your chest — maybe it's the way Eclipse is looking at you with such wide, sad eyes that it's hard to stay mad — but you feel your anger yield to weary amusement.

"So you actually snuck away every time I went to get groceries?"

"Not every time," Eclipse denies. "Just... here and there since you mentioned wanting a music box." His words and expression grow warm, and for a moment you can almost swear that his faceplate is radiating heat. "Everyone there was really nice to me. Promise! When we told them what we were trying to do, they even showed me how to use the equipment and gave us materials to use since we said we, uh, didn't have any money."

"Well," you sigh, "I'll have to thank them sometime." And make sure nobody is going to report this to the police, or worse, a company lawyer.

As the tune of the music box winds down, finally going silent halfway through its melody, you come to realize that Eclipse hasn't moved. He's still hovering, faceplate so close that you can see all the little movements of his lips, as if there's something else he wants to say.

In fact, he's close enough that you can...

It all happens faster than your brain can process. Your body leans forward, face tilting up, lips parted ever so slightly. Eclipse's mouth is made of the same soft silicon covering his fingers and hands, made to be flexible and resilient so that he could be expressive and friendly-looking. You once wondered what those lips might feel like against yours, but nothing in the world could have prepared you when you close the inches of empty space between your faces.

Soft. They feel so... soft. And warm too, since you were absolutely right about Eclipse's faceplate heating up. Though you desperately want it to be anything but, the kiss is quick and awkward. It's only when he moves against you that reason and logic catch up with instinct and impulse.

You pull back suddenly, eyes wide and cheeks hot as fire while your brain desperately tries to come up with a worthwhile reply. Broken noises are all that falls from your lips however, bits and pieces of his name intermixed with something vaguely sounding like an apology.

Fear clutches your heart as it starts to race. You begin to push away, hoping that space might help you process your swirling thoughts, but Eclipse swiftly wraps an arm around your waist, preventing your escape.

"No," he says, plucking the music box from your hands and gently setting it down beside the two of you. Though his words could be considered shy or bashful, Eclipse's tone is firm and low. "Do that... do that again?"

You can say no.

You can tell him to let you go, and there's not a doubt in your mind that he would do so instantly. But... there's a part of you that doesn't want him to, a part that's been worming through your mind and in your chest ever since the first night he'd been with you — his hands on your back and his voice in your ear, soothing you through one of the most terrifying nightmares you'd ever had in your life.

Instead of saying anything at all, you simply lean forward and press your lips to his again.

This time it's less awkward, one moment blurring into the next as he learns how to reciprocate the motion and allow his mouth to meld against your own. The kiss is a little wetter than you expect, but that's only until you realize that there's a tongue gently pressing at the seam of your lips. You part them instinctively and allow Eclipse to taste you, one hand still on the small of your back as the other reaches up to cradle the back of your head.

It's so hot, so soft, so... so nice, actually. Your own hands are grasping at the loose shirt he wears, some old hand-me-down piece that fits him better than it ever did yourself. The fabric crumples in your fists and helps to anchor you while emotions swirl around like a storm.

And then, slowly, it's done. Eclipse pulls his faceplate back and looks down at you with half-lidded eyes, their glow so bright that it's as if you're looking into the sun itself, but they dim quickly, blinking as the two of you let the moment catch up with your bodies.

There's a quiet emptiness in the living room, the air still around you and Eclipse both. It settles for a few seconds, then fills with warmth that seems to emanate deep within your chest and lifts the corners of your lips into a shy smile.

"... Merry Christmas?" you finally offer, hoping the words could break the silence — and they do, leaving everything feeling cozy and comfortable as you allow Eclipse to hold your body up. He simply giggles, a smile mirrored on his expression as he looks down at you like you are the most precious thing in the world.

"Merry Christmas," he murmurs, then kisses you again.