#do you know how many billion poses and objects can exist-

[zincbot]

i use more drawing references than anyone alive

[pixlplayer]

How Does Hiring Brand Agency Help In Volatile Business World

Branding is frequently an afterthought in the early stages of a company's existence. When companies begin branding themselves, they do so in a haphazard manner, creating logos, visuals, and stories without prior planning.  

Without a well-defined plan, your branding initiatives may be ineffective. Even worse, you may end up conveying a misleading message. 

Businesses risk losing $80 billion in revenue annually. This issue arises from the absence of a unified brand statement and objective.

It is essential to consider branding early on and to get professional assistance. 

Here, we will explore the advantages of employing a branding and digital marketing agency.

What Services Does a Branding Agency Offer? 

A branding advertising agency is an invaluable ally that can help you communicate your brand's message, unique selling points, and values through eye-catching visuals. To establish your company's credibility in the marketplace, they will develop a brand that accurately represents your company's values and appeals to potential clients. 

The creative digital marketing agency's operations span numerous fields so that customers can count on comprehensive support in several areas. It covers all the bases, from the brand appearance to it’s business personality. 

The brand advertising agency's primary responsibilities include:

Formulating an effective social media strategy that promotes brand building

Designing company logos, and creating brand campaigns with an impressive style and messaging tone. 

Creating a distinct corporate identity from scratch.

Comprehensive brand positioning and brand strategy development 

Rebranding established businesses with the flair of innovation 

Working with a branding advertising agency can be more cost-effective over time. And after you have established your brand, you will rarely need to modify your fundamental brand identity.

Consider how Coca-Cola has maintained its status as a premier brand for a century. It has changed over time, but its famous logo, colors, and primary message of delivering pressure have stayed constant.

This is an excellent and powerful display of branding advertising strategy. 

How Does Hiring Brand Agency Help In A Volatile Business World?

In today's technologically advanced corporate climate, it is vital to have an online presence. 

Employing a branding advertising agency will do this for your business. It aids your company in establishing a distinctive brand identity and boosting brand recognition. To distinguish itself from the competition, your company requires the services of a reputed branding and digital marketing agency. 

Now, let's see how a creative digital marketing agency can assist you in creating your online reputation.

A Fresh Perspective

Branding or rebranding can be challenging for many businesses, especially those with long histories and ingrained habits. You may know your brand inside and out, but a branding advertising agency will better understand your target demographic. 

If you want your brand to stand out in today's crowded marketplace, a branding agency can assist you in reframing your ideas and identifying new opportunities. An agency can play a vital part in developing a creative and unique branding strategy by posing new questions and initiating new conversations.

Helps You Boost Your Company’s Success

Launching a new brand or repositioning and revamping an existing one is difficult. Companies seeking to target the right audience at the right time and separate themselves from the competition face additional challenges due to consumers' changing brand loyalty. 

Branding involves all aspects of a company's connections with its clients, from its logo and website to its social media and advertising profiles and customer service excellence. It is difficult for a business to maintain its competitive advantage and brand consistency across its marketing operations. 

Enhances the company's value and utility 

Branding has an important role in attracting new clients, and a well-established brand can ensure a gain in company value if it is handled effectively. This enhances the company's market position, giving it greater commercial leverage and making it a more appealing investment. 

In addition, a well-branded company will likely acquire an excellent reputation among consumers, which can only help expand its market share. Why? Because famous brands are connected with a greater level of proficiency and trustworthiness.

Vision formulation and optimization 

Branding Advertising Agencies can make your ambitions a reality by creating mockups, presentations, and proposals that correspond with the message you wish to send to the target market. 

They are masters at engaging your audience with your brand's message.

Reduces The Risk Of Uncertainty

In-house marketers might be rigid and inconvenient, but marketing companies can be adaptable and easy to work with. There will be less room for error in your marketing plan if you work with a creative digital marketing agency. 

Agencies know what methods and resources contribute most to business expansion, thanks to their years of expertise. You also won't have to worry about the expense and disruption of training new employees. 

Enhances Customer Engagement 

The unique concepts developed by a leading firm like  PiXL Player can assist you in developing consumer engagement and keeping customers hooked on your brand. 

Companies specializing in marketing design websites, monitor trends, and develop social media material to keep up with the competition and attract and retain customers.

Final Words;

Don't Ignore the Value of a Brand Image and Miss Out on the Opportunity to Stand Out!

Branding is crucial in the competitive modern marketplace. It's a huge deal in the business world, and those who failed to see its significance were defeated in the long run. 

A branding advertising agency's services can be invaluable to a business because they can assist with everything from developing a brand strategy to creating promotional materials.

To take your business to the next level, you should consider hiring the best online marketing agency. 

They can help you create a consistent brand identity that resonates with your target audience. They may aid in the creation of engaging content that is consistent with your brand and serves to expand your customer base. 

Hire a renowned brand advertising agency, such as PiXL Player, to establish your brand identity effectively. Our victorious team has been granted credibility on the global platform. 

Contact us, and we'll demonstrate how to express your company's values and objectives in the most favorable light! 

Original Source: 

[writingfics-passingtime]

Playing the Part

~8300 words of steamy Loki tickle fluff

PG13 for this one, kids. Lots of making out.

CW: some swearing, suggestive humour, mentions of murder/death, alcohol consumption

Every job has its ups and downs, and every employee their good days and not-so-good days. You’d hardly classify yourself as an employee because you didn’t get a paycheque, your entire occupation was a hazard unto itself, human-resources was punching it out on the sparring mat and your boss was either a 100-year-old super soldier or an eccentric billionaire, depending on the day and who was wearing what suit.

Wait… should I be getting paid for this?

Looking around your room that you paid no rent on, in a multi-billion dollar superhero compound, you decided that wasn’t a question you were ever going to ask. The question of the hour was which dress would best conceal your thigh-holstered gun.

Today, your job entailed one of those tasks that could be fun if you decided it would be, or hell if you had a bad attitude about it. You prided yourself on always being up for any mission, so that answered that question, though infiltrating some black-tie gala undercover was never as exciting as fighting alien forces.

You gave up feeling guilty about being a little excited when Earth faced threats long ago; no one had to know that impending planetary destruction was your favourite kind of mission to help out on.

Selecting a red strapless dress from the middle of your mission closet (which was differentiated because most of these dresses were bulletproof) you slipped it on over your underwear and thigh holster. A knock came at your door as you were reaching behind yourself to zip it up.

“Come in!”

“Agent, we- oh… Oh.” Loki’s featured turned from surprised to playfully smug in a matter of seconds.

“Can you get this zipper?” You winced at the stuck metal. He nodded and approached, you turned and held the fabric up. Before he even made it halfway to you he gave a brief wave of his hand and used his magic to unstick the zipper, bringing it to the top.

“Thanks,” you smiled, familiar with that particular kind of help from Loki. “Can you see my gun?” You did a little spin and he shook his head. “Great. You look nice," you commented, gesturing to his impeccable black suit.

“As do you.”

“Ready?”

”I suppose there are worse charades to play on a Saturday evening. Ones that don’t include fine wine and the prospect of a tussle with a Midgardian security man.”

You shot him a look as you two walked towards the garage together. “You said no Midgardian wine could be classed as fine.”

“Save for one region in Italy, I’ve discovered.” Loki shrugged, tightening the fastener on his cuff link.

You gave him a mock look of shock. “Are you telling me… you were wrong?“

“Smugness is not becoming, Agent,” Loki playfully warned.

“Hmm,” you narrowed your eyes. “Looks like I’m spending too much time with you.”

You bickered and bantered good-naturedly as you entered the garage, which was more like a hangar but only for cars. This mission would be you, Loki, Natasha, Sam and, strangely enough, Tony wanted to drive the van. He gave some excuse about wanting to test some new equipment and spend time with his team. Though you knew it was because Pepper wanted him to attend her aunt’s seventieth birthday, and Tony had a long-standing feud with that particular aunt ever since she went on a forty-five minute tirade about how much she hated Led Zeppelin. You weren’t sure if it was the sentiment behind it, or the fact that she could talk for forty-five minutes straight without the awareness to stop. Either way, Tony was on the job tonight.

“Black Widow is already onsite,“ Tony handed you three some photos as you entered and took your seats. “Your names are on the door, fake ones obviously, here they are.” Tony pulled up some information on the screens and then commanded the self-driving van to go with a few taps at a holographic control centre.

You went over the plan, the objective, who to avoid at all costs, where the gun was supposedly hidden. There was a gun used in a murder of a journalist - the employee of an old friend of Tony's, a young guy working on an exposé of a filthy-rich family dynasty in New York City. The journalist was sure the McDane family money came from arms dealing, but he was found dead just a few short months after he started investigating. The following week, Charles, the charming and likeable newly-married eldest son of the family, announced his run for mayor.

Whether Charlie McDane ordered the murder, or if he didn't even know it happened, Tony's source said this family kept trophies of their victories and the murder weapon would most definitely still be in the house.

On the face of it, it was an unusual assignment for the Avengers. If you didn't think that hard about it, you could have just sent Nat in alone. However, the McDane family was even more powerful than they loved to show on the surface, and this wouldn't be a simple theft. Hence, a small team was going in to avenge the fallen journalist.

Natasha had been planted on the inside, posing as an event manager for a soirée the family was hosting to celebrate Charlie’s birthday and, since he’d invited everyone in the political and social scene, it was the perfect chance to enter the mansion; there’s no way he’d know who each and every person was and should be.

As you walked down the road with your arm slotted through Loki's, you eyed the metal detectors at the front entrance. You gripped his arm and slid your hand into the pocket of your dress, but the pocket was hollow and only existed as easy way to grab your gun. Wordlessly, you passed it to Loki and he concealed it with his magic in the exact same way you planned to smuggle the murder weapon out later that evening.

Maybe it was Loki's elegance or your years of training that started when you were very young, but the way you two could instinctively weave around each other's thoughts, ideas and actions without so much as a glance was something special you didn't take for granted. You both had keen senses, but there was some kind of unexplainable energy that made them align perfectly.

You never let your mind wander on nights like these. On missions. Perhaps if you were less professional you'd take a moment to fantasise about what it would actually be like to go to a party with Loki. If the way he led you through the room with a gentle hand at your waist was more than a ploy to look like an adoring couple, or if he knew your favourite wine because he cared, instead of just having heard you order it a million times before.

He kept things light with jokes and little jabs, never once crossing a boundary when fake-flirting with you, but it wasn't lost on you that it was unusual to have this kind of working relationship that had all of the chemistry with none of the awkwardness. It was almost as if it was second nature now for him to pull you a little closer when you were in a nice dress, considering you'd only worn them in front of him on missions. And so he did pull you closer as you approached the bouncer to give your names.

You spied Nat at the front, leaning around a security guard's shoulder to point to something on his list. She always played her parts so well. She stole a glance at you and Loki through her fake glasses and that was it. No indication she knew you, no special treatment, no way she'd do anything to blow this. She walked up the outdoor staircase as you gave your aliased names to the guard and flashed fake drivers licenses that were pretty much real, considering the government had created them.

Loki declined the arrival champagne for the both of you, immediately leading you to the bar. You looked at him as if to remind him that you weren't here to drink, and his subtle smirk replied that he didn't care. He ordered two glasses of a merlot from the one region in Italy that'd won his respect, passing the glass to you once it was laid on the bar.

"To the finer things," he cheers'ed your glass and you scoffed with a laugh, taking a sip of the wine. The rich flavour burst through your mouth. It was dark and deep, spiced with... with... "Cedar," he offered, reading the analysis on your face. "Rosewood, cedar and some sort of stone-fruit."

"Nectarine."

He smiled and took another sip. "We don't have that on Asgard."

"This wine is good," you nodded as you two turned and deconstructed the room and all of its guests.

It made you kind of sick seeing all of these wealthy people in one place pretending to give a damn about Charlie McDane's birthday. It's not that you liked the guy, not at all, it just felt weird to know that every person in here was the exact kind of person you hunted down. Power-hungry. This mansion may as well be a lion's den. But full of naïve lions, who had no idea two apex predators just walked in.

Just when you started wondering how many people in your line of sight had also committed murder to protect their wealth and power, you saw Natasha give a subtle signal of which way the room with the safe was. Loki saw it too.

It was upstairs, but there wasn't much cover to get upstairs. The great foyer's ceiling was three stories up, the two floors above the ground floor you were on had square balconies that let the people upstairs peer downwards into the masses. Nat's fingers adjusting her hair told you that the room was on the second floor. Thankfully, there were guests on the second floor. Under the guise of admiration for the architecture and a desire to explore the great house, you pointed out works of art to Loki as you ascended the stairs together. When you walked past Natasha she smiled politely, like a good host, and asked if you were enjoying the wine.

"It's most divine. Though, I believe my beloved may be in search of a room to powder her nose."

You would have rolled your eyes at his usual choice of asking for information if you weren't aware that security's eyes were everywhere. Even on the event manager.

"You might find what you need up the stairs, down the first hall, third door on your right."

The way her hands were motioning didn't match her hushed description, so you followed the instructions in her voice instead of the way her hands were telling you.

You allowed Loki to lead you upstairs, down the first hall. When you two were certain there were no eyes, he concealed you two with his magic. The hallway was darkened. He pressed his hand against the lock and unfastened it with an unseen pure magic and you two slipped inside. It was a large office with grand mahogany furniture, decorated exactly as you'd expect Old Money Americans to decorate their office. Right down to the bear head above the fireplace and the first edition novels sitting proudly on the shelf, probably unread by their owners. That also made you a little sick: great words sitting unread as trophies.

Scanning the room for any obvious signs of the safe, your eyes settled on a panel in the wood on the side of the desk. There was a slightly smaller gap in the wood on one side, indicating hinges. You held your hands up to Loki and he conjured thin gloves to grace your fingers, then you pressed gently on the wood to engage the latch. The panel swung open to reveal the safe. Shifting out of the way, Loki took your place and placed a gloved hand on the dial. In less than three seconds, it spun rapidly in each direction before clicking open.

"We should really consider robbing banks," you whispered as the black metal door swung open and you were met with stacks of paper and envelopes.

"Need I remind you I am a Prince? If it's gold you want, darling, say the word."

"Eh," you shrugged, feeling around for the gun. "I meant more for the thrills."

Loki chuckled as your fingers found a familiar-feeling package. You pulled the envelope out and peered inside before showing Loki the sight of a small pistol. He nodded and took it from you carefully, then concealed it in some unknown magical space close to him.

You closed the safe carefully and then your gloves disappeared. Moving quietly back to the door, you listened for several moments to make sure no one was coming. Then, you both slid out and began walking down the hall like a loving couple.

Suddenly, a guard appeared at the end of the hallway. Thinking fast, you opened the closest door to you and pushed Loki inside. There was a shout you vaguely heard before you shut and locked the door again.

"Shit," you hissed. You were in someone's bedroom. Or maybe it was a guest room, considering how clean and un-lived-in it looked. There was a fireplace, like in the office, and a large four-poster bed against one wall. In the middle of the room were two plush couches that faced each other and were side-on to the door. You two walked over to them to get the vantage of being in the centre of the room and quickly searched for an exit.

"I'll cast an illusion," Loki whispered, ready to wave his hands and make it look as if you two weren't here.

"No!" You whispered, eyes wide. "They already saw us come in here. If we disappear, they'll know something's up and lock the place down."

"Then what do you propose?" He held his hands out, annoyingly unbothered by the prospect of blowing a mission. The doorknob twisted and you both snapped your heads towards it, then back at each other.

"Sit," you hissed and shoved him back onto the sofa right behind him. He stumbled and fell with a small indignant noise of surprise. You heard the tinkling of keys and your heart beat in your chest.

"Agent?"

Knowing the security team was about to enter, you acted fast. "I'll never hear the end of this," you mumbled before sliding forward to straddle his lap. His eyebrows shot up his forehead as you wrapped your arms around his shoulder and looked at him with nervous urgency. "Kiss me."

Loki didn't question it, and he certainly didn't need to be told twice. His hands found their place. One at the small of your back, one firmly gripping the hair at the nape of your neck. Then, he pulled you in for a fiery kiss.

You barely heard the door open as you lost yourself in the strength of his hold, the steady and eager grasp with which he held you. His hands found their places as if they'd been there a thousand times before, as if he knew exactly how you'd feel the safest, feel the most desired. You pulled him deeper by the back of his neck and could have sworn he made a small noise of satisfaction.

Oh no.

He kept kissing you, you kept kissing him, even after the head of the security team had cleared his throat a number of times. As much as you knew you'd already sold it, and boy you sold it well, you couldn't bring yourself to pull away. Were all Asgardians this good at kissing, or was it just Loki?

Oh. No.

"HEY!"

The sudden loud command pulled you away and, much to your internal mortification, you didn't need to feign how flustered you were.

"O-oh my," you squeaked and looked up at the man, blushing profusely.

Okay, the squeak was fake, but it felt almost real.

You stayed put where you were straddling Loki's lap and grimaced when you saw Natasha, still in character, entering the room. "What's going on, I need you downstairs to- oh!" She looked a little taken aback by your position atop the prince who, you were fuming to see from the corner of your eye, had the audacity to be smirking.

"My apologies," Loki drawled in his growly regal voice, trailing his hands around to your sides. "I simply couldn't control myself, seeing my queen in this dress..." He punctuated it with an "Mmph" and a firm squeeze at your hips. You flinched and squirmed a bit under the ticklish touch, trying to keep your composure but letting a small giggle slip out. Then, catching the pleased and mischievous glint in his eye, you dug your nails into the back of his shoulder to warn him off trying that again.

"This room's off limits," the guard tilted his head towards the door and you made to move your way off of Loki's lap. Instead, with his incredible strength, he stood with his hands still at your hips, lifting you to your feet before turning and wrapping an arm around your waist.

He looked the guard up and down, "Of course, good sir." You bit your lip and blushed, cowering in Loki's hold as you exited the room together. Nat smirked at you and winked before proceeding to fall back into character and tell the guards there was a belligerent drunk man downstairs needing to be kicked out. That man would be Wilson, who was playing his part as tipsy distraction.

Loki led you down the hall and you rounded a corner, then you broke off from him and held a hand to your chest. "That was too close," you breathed deeply once, then met his eye. You glared when he saw him smirking at you.

"Do I have lipstick on my face?" He asked, feigning worry.

"Oh, shut up," you swatted his shoulder. "I did what I had to do."

"I never knew you had the passion in you, Agent," Loki smirked again. You glared once more and peeked around the corner, only to jump and hold in a yelp as Loki's pinching fingers found your hip. "I also never knew you were so ticklish."

"That's not something people advertise- cut it ouhout!" You swatted his hand and squirmed away from him as he prodded his fingers into your side. "We have the gun, let's get out of here."

"Tsk, you're no fun," Loki scoffed.

You exited the party and made your way down the block towards the van, knowing that Nat's glasses had broadcast at least the last part of your little tussle with Loki. Steeling yourself as you gripped the handle, you reminded yourself that you were a professional, and this was sometimes a hazard of the job. You needed to play it cool when the eventual teasing came.

"Hey, lovebirds," Tony quipped the second he saw your faces.

"Hey," you chuckled, stepping inside and removing your heels the second you found your seat. "We got it."

"Here," Loki closed the door behind him and pulled the enveloped gun from the magical space he'd hidden it. "So you saw the Agent's display of passion, did you?"

"You wound me, Loki," you deadpanned. "I thought we had a mutual connection."

Perhaps those words were a mistake considering all the truth behind them. However, all the best lies were founded on truth, and for now you needed to convince everyone in the van that you weren't totally freaking out because you'd felt the most passionate attraction you'd had in years with a former villain. I mean... how predictable.

Loki looked at you suspiciously as he took his seat, but something in his gaze told you he wasn't going to prod deeper on this. Not right now, at least. Not in front of everyone.

Nat and Sam joined the fray five minutes later and you all got a move-on back to the Compound. Nat poked more fun at the position she'd found you two in, and you laughed good-naturedly at all their jokes. Loki was uncharacteristically silent, and seemed to always be looking at you when you laughed and instinctively checked to see if he was laughing too.

The jokes shifted to Sam and the wine he spilled down his shirt, then the conversation shifted to the next steps of what to do with the gun, then you all arrived back.

Tony got to work dismantling his rig, declining your help, and so you took your field weapons over to the cabinet to put them back in their places. As you were unclipping the magazine from your pistol, you felt a presence behind the door. You peered around to see Loki.

"What's up?" You raised your eyebrows and snapped the case shut, then closed the door.

He looked at you meaningfully, quizzically, but didn't say anything.

"Okay..." you chuckled uncomfortably and put the latch on the door in place. "I'm going to shower."

You made to walk past him but he grabbed your upper arm, stopping you by his side. Facing different ways, he leaned in a little closer and spoke quietly. "I can spot a lie from lightyears away."

Turning to look at him, you'd probably have been caught off-guard by how close his face was if it hadn't been for the events of earlier. You shrugged, pulling your arm from his grasp. "I didn't lie."

He scoffed and also turned to look at you, eyes flitting once down to your lips, then back up to pierce your gaze with his. "You know what I meant."

You were proud of how composed you kept yourself when you shrugged again and kept walking, swallowing hard.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Never one to waste water, you took an uncharacteristically long shower. Haphazardly smearing face wash over your skin to scrub the makeup off, scrub away the flustered energy. But no amount of scrubbing could help you forget the feeling of his kiss, and shampooing the hairspray from your head only made you remember the feeling of his fingers in your hair.

You reminded yourself that it had been a very long time since you'd kissed someone. You were probably just desperate, definitely a little touch-starved in general, so the fact that it was Loki didn't matter as much as the fact that it had happened.

That's what you told yourself over and over as you threw on sweatpants and a soft long-sleeved shirt. It was cold and the marble floors could be unforgiving, so you thought it best to go for fluffy socks, but then pulled some slippered boots over the top. You didn't bother brushing your wet hair, letting it fall where it wanted as you made your way to the kitchen.

"That smells good," you commented as Nat pulled some dish out of the oven.

"Mmm," she agreed with an excited smile. "Nico is my favourite," she admitted slyly, referring to one of the chefs Pepper would call in to prepare a bunch of heatable meals during busy periods. Delivery app drivers would probably cancel the order if you tried, thinking it must be a joke that a super solider was asking for a Big Mac to be delivered to the Avengers Compound. Besides, by the time it was scanned and made sure to not contain a deadly poison, it would be cold and stale. "There's enough for you too," Nat said, pulling out another plate and serving you a steaming slice of vegetarian lasagne.

"Thanks," you smiled, still a little distracted. Of course, with someone as perceptive as Nat, that wouldn't be allowed to slip by.

She leaned against the counter and poked at her meal, not meeting your eye to keep it less direct. "You alright?"

"Hmm?" You looked up, and so did she, then you looked back down to your food and shrugged. It was no use lying to her. "I think I'm lonely," you laughed humourlessly, nervously, sadly.

"The kiss got to you," she said knowingly, placing her fork down to give you her full attention. You didn't return the favour, nervous about what you'd say if you were really talking about this. Which, as long as you were here eating dinner, you weren't really talking about it.

"It's not like I haven't kissed a fellow Agent before to keep cover," you sighed a little, shaking your head. "It's just been a while, I guess, since I've had... anything... or, someone."

"I get that," she nodded, picking up her fork again. You two ate in silence for several moments. "This is really good," she declared through an extra-large mouthful. You chuckled and nodded, swallowing another bite. After several more moments, she said quietly, "It's okay if you felt something."

That made you choke a bit. Noticeably, unfortunately. You shook your head, but didn't deny it. "No. It's not okay."

"Why not?" She asked as if you were crazy.

"It's not okay," you repeated firmly, stabbing your fork again at the lasagna. "It's not."

Before she could attempt to pry for more information, Thor and Loki entered the kitchen together. Great.

"Good evening," Thor beamed a toothless smile.

"There's more in the fridge if you're hungry," you looked up at them in an attempt to not seem as regressed in on yourself as you felt. Thor looked at your plate and nodded in approval, opening the fridge. Then you looked at Loki, fully expecting to see some kind of calculating stare as before, but his expression was soft. He looked you over, probably noticing your out-of-character hunched posture and the way your head hung a little lower than usual, and he gave you a look that was subtly laced with sympathy.

Now that made your blood boil. Who was he to feel sorry for you?

He seemed to notice the way your jaw clenched under his gaze, and opened his mouth to say something but Thor spoke first.

"There's a film Stark wants us all to watch this evening."

Nat chuckled, finishing off her dinner. "You say that like he's showing us training videos. He's just trying to bond the team over some cheesy nineties movie." She looked at you and nodded to your clothes. "You look ready for a movie night."

Before you could explain that you'd rather go to bed, Thor beamed again. "Excellent, then! We'll all be there."

Thor was always kind to you, so you didn't want to disappoint him over something so inconsequential. You smiled warmly at him and nodded. "I'm gonna go claim a good spot," you excused yourself, aware it was almost time for it to start. You quickly did your dishes and left the kitchen, making sure to get a seat on a large armchair so you made it clear you'd rather have some personal space right now, even though it was the exact opposite of what you wanted. Maybe it would be good for you though, to remember that you were alone for a reason. That this life you chose wasn't kind too love.

Gods, love. Why did you think of that word, of all the ones out there. You were spiralling. Sentiment, you corrected yourself with a swift reprimand. Sentiment, loneliness, desperation.

You busied yourself chatting to Wanda as people filtered in, taking note of how she seamlessly wove herself in and around Vision as they sat on a two-seater next to you. Determined not to look at or think of Loki or romance or kissing or anything like that, you trained your eyes on the screen as the movie started.

But you spiralled.

There were these two main characters in the movie with this undeniable bickering co-worker chemistry that reminded you of Loki, the jokes he’d whisper into your ear during meetings, the harmless mischief he’d pull to make you laugh, the way his hand felt at your lower back- NO. You couldn’t think about that.

Wanda and Vision were in your line of sight from the corner of your eye and you saw her fingers lace through his, you then saw him place a silent kiss on the crown of her head. Biting down on your tongue, you remembered Nat and Bruce, Pepper and Tony, Thor and Jane, Clint and Laura. All those people who seemed to find love, even temporary love, in the midst of all this madness.

So maybe it wasn’t this life. Maybe it was just… you.

Biting your tongue a little harder, you reminded yourself how powerless you were compared to all these super-people. Sure, many of them were human like you, but all the other humans seemed to have someone who loved them.

It felt hopeless, knowing the only person in this room who you wanted close was so extraordinarily out of your league. He was a god. You were a human. Your life was a flicker compared to his, of course he’d never waste time indulging the likes of you.

But it felt real.

Halfway through the movie you decided you couldn’t sit there and see these buddy-cop characters fall in love. You couldn’t watch Wanda and Vision so enamoured with each other. What you needed was to hit something hard, and then go to sleep. So you excused yourself without a word or a glance at anyone. It was late, anyway. You weren’t even the first one to leave.

A turn of a black-haired form told you that Loki noticed you leaving, but the lack of footsteps behind you as you walked down the silent hall told you that he hadn’t followed you.

Slipping into your room and then into some workout clothes, you jammed your headphones into your ears and put on some classical music; you weren't sure you could stand to hear any words right now. You laced your shoes a little tighter than normal and practically sprinted to the gym, very unwilling to have anyone notice you were gone and decide to come check on you.

Hitting the bag felt good. It was the perfect consolation prize for what you'd actually prefer right now, but with every crushing of your knuckles against the thick canvas you found it easier to forget how it felt to have your fingers looped through his hair. The sweat dripping down your face replaced the feeling of his breath against your skin when you'd broken the kiss, and the aching in your obliques from your tensing and turning to hit the bag took the place of any memory of his hands at your waist. The aching was here, and he was almost gone.

After a half-hour of interval sprints, it was just past midnight and you were exhausted. Not knowing how you felt about no one coming to check on you, you traipsed back to your room in silence. The faint echoing of your footsteps through the hallways made you quiet yourself further, stepping as lightly as you could to prove to yourself that you were still a good spy. Good spies don't get caught up with feelings. Your footsteps fell, dead quiet, and you regained some confidence.

Your muscles stung the next morning but in a delightful way. You'd treated yourself to another hot shower when you got back to your room, so this morning it would probably be best to have an icy one.

As the cold water hit your skin, you felt okay again. The boxing and running last night had really shaken everything out of you, only the smallest lingering of lonely desire remained and it could easily be ignored. Of course, that was easy to say. The second you walked into the kitchen to see that Loki had heard you coming and poured you a coffee you felt a tug at your chest.

His hands closed around the mug to pass it to you and you remembered how his fingers had closed around your waist. He smiled good morning and you remembered how his lips felt against yours. Holding it all in, you smiled and took the coffee, then proceeded to have a short conversation with him like a normal person would. He made jokes about last night, but not about that, and you chuckled at them. After perhaps too short a time for how long you usually chatted, you excused yourself to go do some paperwork. You caught the way his brow furrowed a little, but he didn't question you.

The next few days were more or less like this. You'd try to engage with Loki normally but spiral a little more, convincing yourself that the more you continued like you always had, the more normal things would be again. But he was just so... beautiful. Everything about him was beautiful and now you couldn't help but notice.

One evening, nearly a week after you'd kissed, you were having a bit of a vulnerable day and you walked into the kitchen for some ice cream. Loki had just finished cleaning up after his dinner and turned to say hello, but you couldn't do it. You just turned and walked right back out again. He called after you but you didn't stop. It's not like you were going to cry in front of him, but you just couldn't do this right now.

Seeking refuge in your bedroom, you shut the door and slid down to the floor with your back against it. An immediate soft knock frustrated you, especially knowing who it probably was. You sighed and stood.

“Hey,” you greeted Loki with a nod when you opened the door, immediately turning away to make it look like you were about to do something else. “What’s up?”

Loki stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, which made you stop and give him your attention. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you lied.

He squinted for the faintest second and smiled a little sadly. “Light years,” he reminded you how he could spot a lie without harshly calling you out. It pained you that he didn’t. That his lack of sarcasm indicated that he saw you as a bit fragile right now.

You sighed a little and ducked your head to the side, conceding the point. “I’m a little haywire,” you admitted. “I think I need to get some stress out and go to sleep.”

”What troubles you?”

Ah. What a question.

You didn’t want to shut him out, but you certainly didn’t know how to explain that one simple kiss undercover had brought a massive crashing wave of insecurity and anxiety that made you feel completely unlovable. Or... maybe you could just say that?

You were silent for so long that Loki spoke again.

“I’d like to offer my apologies,” he said very diplomatically. “If I overstepped the bounds of our relationship.”

“I’m the one that made you kiss me,” you winced. “I should be apologising.”

”I didn’t mean that,” Loki shook his head. “I meant after, when we returned. When I cornered you.”

You had to laugh. “You didn’t corner me, Loki. I appreciate you wanting to make me feel better but you have nothing to apologise for.”

”Very well. But you didn’t make me,” he replied firmly.

“I know, I know…” you rolled your eyes. “A god submits to no one, I just meant that I put you in a situation that I shouldn’t have. Believe me, I’m paying the price.”

That last part came out a little faster than you’d intended it to. In fact, you didn’t really mean to say that last part out loud at all. Or maybe you did. What a perfect Freudian Slip. Quickly collecting yourself, you spotted your headphones and went to pick them up but noticed that Loki was taking slow steps towards you.

”Paying the price?” He asked carefully. You stopped and folded your arms, shrugging.

“People poke fun, you know.” You bit your tongue. Then, you saw him smirk a little. Ah. Lightyears.

“I thought we had a mutual connection,“ he raised his eyebrows, teasing you with your joke from That Night. You gave him a firm stare, but couldn’t help but notice he wasn’t that far away now.

“Loki, that was-“

“A thinly veiled truth,” he interjected, leaving no room for debate. He also left very little room between the two of you. You opened your mouth to respond, seemed to not be able to, and he smirked at your speechlessness.

"Y-you can't." You shook your head. "There's no way."

"There's no way, what?" A smiled tugged at his lips at the way your eyes widened when he took a strand of your hair and wrapped it once around his finger.

"... Mutual?"

“Now that we won’t be interrupted…” he brought his hand up next to his face, flourished it, and you heard your door’s lock click shut. You held your breath as a mischievous grin graced his lips.

Oh gods, you were looking at his lips. You couldn't seem to look away.

He lowered his voice to a gruff whisper. “Might we finish what we started?”

With the smallest nod of your head, he immediately ducked his head to press his lips against yours. Your small noise of surprise made him pull away for a second and grin, before he playfully growled and lifted you from the ground. His eyes stayed trained on yours as he walked a few steps and firmly shoved your back against the wall. Your breath hitched as his hand found that place at the back of your neck, and this time, you kissed him. Eagerly, hungrily, feeling so overwhelmingly euphoric that this was even happening.

It had to be a dream, you thought as his lips trailed along your jawline, his hot breath hit your neck and his strong unwavering arms kept you above the ground and level with his gaze. He kissed you not just like a god or a great lover - he kissed you like he wanted you. Like he‘d also been waiting to do this for an unspeakable amount of time. It felt like relief.

Pulling you both back from the wall, Loki's lips didn’t relent as your fingers tangled once again in his hair. He walked backwards and found his seat on the end of your bed, sitting with you in his lap as he had at the party.

“Gods, you enrapture me,“ he pulled away, a little breathless. He grinned and his eyes were hazy. He looked at you intensely before looking back at your lips, subconsciously slipping out his tongue to wet his own. Before you could respond, he was kissing you again. You could have melted into his touch. In fact, you were fairly certain you just might.

He leaned back and you both fell onto the bed, you on top of him. You laughed at the sudden impact and you pulled away for a few seconds to catch your breath. You looked at his adoring gaze and blushed. “I never thought someone like you could want someone like me.”

He furrowed his brow, unsure if you were about to reference his nefarious past.

”You’re so… mighty. You’re a Prince, a god, you’re wickedly smart and powerful and… and I’m just a human.”

“Watch your tongue,” Loki scolded somewhat seriously and held you a little tighter. “Don’t speak of yourself as if you’re insignificant.”

You rolled your eyes and smiled, giving him a look. “You know what I mean.”

“Of course I do, I’m wickedly smart,” he smirked and you playfully swatted at his chest. He smiled contentedly and ran his hands firmly down your sides to settle at your hips. It was an innocent romantic gesture, one to position you for further making-out with Loki, but your eyes widened at the memory of his discovery the previous weekend and the assumption that the God of Mischief was about to turn the tables.

Unluckily for you, your flustered expression rendered it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“Loki…” You warned as you saw the glint in his eye.

“That’s right…” His smirk widened to a devilish grin.

”How about you keep kissing me, huh?” You laughed nervously and leaned in closer. Loki laughed and nodded, bringing his hand up to cradle the back of your neck as you pressed your lips to his. Once your arms were around his neck, he deepened the kiss and rolled over, putting you underneath him. Still on the edge of the bed, your feet barely skimmed the floor. Then, he suddenly became the classic Loki you knew.

“Mmmhmhm!” You whined and giggled a little into the kiss as the fingers belonging to his arm around your waist started ever so gently scratching at your side. “Mmnnoho!” You broke away and gave him a pouting look. He lifted his head and smirked.

Gods. He’d never looked so unspeakably hot.

Messy curls framing his face, that look he gave you that said You’re In Trouble in his distinct Loki way, mixed with the desire in his piercing blue eyes; you’d gladly endure his torture if it meant he looked at you like that.

But maybe that’s because you had no idea what was coming.

“Darling,” he cocked his head and kissed your cheek before kissing just below your ear. “I am the God of Mischief….“ he kissed your neck in a way that you were sure was intended to tickle. You giggled and bit your lip. “And now that I've got my hands on you, you simply cannot expect me to not exploit this little weakness to its fullest extent.”

“L-Loki!” You blushed at the very real threat and he chuckled.

“How about you guide me, hmm? Where should I start?”

“I’m not playing this game,” you laughed nervously, squirming a bit underneath him and resting your hands on his shoulders to push away the ticklish kisses.

“Aw, come now,” he lifted his head and that same beautiful smirk made your heart beat quick. His hand behind your neck slid down under your shoulder blade until it sat at your upper ribs. You stole a glance down to where it may be, even though you couldn’t see it. He cocked his head again. “No? Alright, I’ll choose.” With a wink his thumb slipped around the side and up into the hollow under your arm.

“LOKI!” You gasped, clamped your arm down from instinct and immediately started squirming and giggling, even though his thumb wasn’t even moving. He grinned again and kissed your lips once more.

“You've been down all week, love. Let's have a bit of fun,” he whispered, then sprang his hand at your waist into action, scratching and grabbing at the soft skin hidden beneath your shirt. You gasped again and started laughing softly, then squeaked when his thumb started wiggling into the hollow under your arm.

"NOHOHO!" You shut your eyes and then squealed loudly when his fingers underneath you began clawing into the back of your uppermost ribs. Damnit, you thought he may start easy on you, not go for three different places at once. You were already in a desperate cackle, bubbling incoherent pleas spilling from your lips as you writhed underneath his amused self.

"I'm honestly delighted you're so ticklish," Loki teased with a chuckle. "It's adorable, really. So professional all the time, yet..." He finished his sentence by intensifying his touch and speed at all three sites of attack, drawing a small shriek from your laughing lips and a jolt from your body. "Has it always been this easy to undo you?"

“OHMYGOHOD!” You shrieked, throwing your head against the bed and trying to buck your upper body against him to no avail. He paused his torture and kissed you deeply again, lips curled into a smile as he pressed his lips to yours. You shook your head and broke away, still laughing. “Youhou’re ridiculous! We were hahaving such a nice moment and y-you ruined ihit,” you whimpered. He kissed to again to silence your complaints.

“What did you expect?”

“I-I expected a nice romantic moment!” You laughed and brought both arms between you and him to shove at his shoulders. “Now,” you gave him a stern look. “Do you want to tickle me, or kiss me? You can only choose one.”

He scoffed. “I don’t do ultimatums, darling.”

“You do now.”

“Bold.“ He stuck his tongue against his cheek then ducked his head to the side in consideration. He then looked at your face, which you’d been attempting to hold in some semblance of a firm glare. He lowered his lips to your ear and you heard him chuckle once. “Far too bold for someone so ticklish.”

He whipped his arms out from under you and pressed his weight down again, trapping your arms between your bodies as he clawed into the front and sides of your lowest ribs.

“NOHOAHAH!” You immediately fell into desperate belly-laughter as his fingers drilled and clawed into the spaces between your bones. Your feet kicked helplessly, merely grazing the ground as laughter kept spilling from you. “NOHO! NO! LOKIHI I CAHAN’T!” He shifted his hands further up your ribcage and snuck his fingers around to dig in at the back and, after one more shriek, your laughter went silent. It was trapped in your chest as his squeezing and vibrating fingers found every sensitive space on your ribs that made you want to melt into a little puddle. You were gasping for air by the time he halted his attack, squeaking and wheezing as you tried to regain your breath.

It was torture, but you hoped he wouldn’t ask you if it was worth enduring to have him this close. If he could spot a lie from lightyears away, how much easier could he spot it when he was close enough for you to see the flecks of green in his eyes.

”You’re… you’re gonna kill me,” you hiccoughed. He smirked and leaned in for another kiss. “Nuh-uh,” you pulled your finger up as much as you could from where your arms were trapped. “You made your choice.”

He grinned and slid his hands down your sides with a wink, "Oh? Then I'll gladly continue."

"W-w-wait! I dihidn't th-WAHAIT!"

His thumbs drilled relentlessly into your hips as Loki joined in with your loud laughter. You finally managed to wiggle your arms out from where they were trapped at your chest, shooting them down to grab at his fingers. Your feet having no traction and his near entire weight pressing you to the bed made it impossible to buck or lift any part of your torso, so you were completely trapped with nowhere to go as he gripped and grabbed at the skin of your hips, kneading at the pressure points that made you squeak and squirm beneath him.

When he tired of your fingers trying to grab his, he did a devilish swift lift of his own body and slotted his hands between the two of you, settling them palms-down over the majority of your belly. You made a huge gasping noise and started frantically giggling and squealing even before he'd moved his hands. You shook your head and begged for him to kiss you instead, nervous high-pitched giggles interlacing your words.

"N-noho, Loki just kihiss me, kiss me plehease! PLEASE!" You squeaked, cupping his cheeks and gently pulling him towards you. He chuckled and grinned, gently digging a few fingers in just once. You thrashed and renewed your struggling and squealing efforts. "Dohon't you DAHARE! I won't kiss you agahain if you do this!" You threatened. He cocked his head and leaned in a little closer to look deep into your eyes. Then, he grinned and whispered:

"Lightyears."

You thought for certain you'd pass out from laughter when Loki's fingers sprang into action and rippled against your hypersensitive stomach. You laughed loudly, completely powerless to stop his fingers from digging in wherever they pleased. After not much time at all, your laughter went silent and you weakly batted at his shoulders, sides, face, anything your hands could find for themselves since your eyes were shut so tight. Any words your brain even began to think of forming got lost as laughter ripped through your chest from the electric intensity of his fingers against your body.

When your hands finally found both sides of his face, you used all the energy you had left to press your laughing lips against his and, finally, he relented. You fell back with a loud gasp as he retracted his hands with an amused chuckle and took his weight mostly off you, propping himself up with a hand planted either side of your head.

"Alright there, darling?" He teased as you coughed weakly and wiped the tears of mirth from your cheeks. You gave him a scowl, but he found it adorable.

"Thihis isn't fair," you crossed your arms defiantly.

"No?" He smirked. "Pray tell, my love. What isn't fair?"

Oh. My love. His love.

That took any breath you'd managed to get back in your lungs.

"Y-you... you..." But your words were lost in the bliss of being his. He seemed to quickly understand how his words touched your heart, and it softened his teasing demeanour, and softened his smirk into a smile. "You found my worst spots so soon," you managed to murmur through rosy cheeks.

"Was only a matter of time."

"But now you have the upper hand."

"Dear heart, this isn't a struggle for power," he laughed heartily. "I do not seek to rule over you. Anything you ask of me, anything in the Nine Realms, I will give to you."

"Tell me where you're ticklish."

He chuckled and pressed a chaste kiss to your lips before falling down beside you. He hummed in contentment as he wrapped his arms around your waist to pull you as close as you could be.

"Anything but that."

[nasa]

5 of Your Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Questions Answered

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a satellite in low-Earth orbit that detects gamma rays from exotic objects like black holes, neutron stars and fast-moving jets of hot gas. For 11 years Fermi has seen some of the highest-energy bursts of light in the universe and is helping scientists understand where gamma rays come from.

Confused? Don’t be! We get a ton of questions about Fermi and figured we'd take a moment to answer a few of them here.

1. Who was this Fermi guy?

The Fermi telescope was named after Enrico Fermi in recognition of his work on how the tiny particles in space become accelerated by cosmic objects, which is crucial to understanding many of the objects that his namesake satellite studies.

Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner (in 1938) who immigrated to the United States to be a professor of physics at Columbia University, later moving to the University of Chicago.

Original image courtesy Argonne National Laboratory

Over the course of his career, Fermi was involved in many scientific endeavors, including the Manhattan Project, quantum theory and nuclear and particle physics. He even engineered the first-ever atomic reactor in an abandoned squash court (squash is the older, English kind of racquetball) at the University of Chicago.

There are a number of other things named after Fermi, too: Fermilab, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, the Enrico Fermi Institute and more. (He’s kind of a big deal in the physics world.)

Fermi even had something to say about aliens! One day at lunch with his buddies, he wondered if extraterrestrial life existed outside our solar system, and if it did, why haven't we seen it yet? His short conversation with friends sparked decades of research into this idea and has become known as the Fermi Paradox — given the vastness of the universe, there is a high probability that alien civilizations exist out there, so they should have visited us by now.  

2. So, does the Fermi telescope look for extraterrestrial life?

No. Although both are named after Enrico Fermi, the Fermi telescope and the Fermi Paradox have nothing to do with one another.

Fermi does not look for aliens, extraterrestrial life or anything of the sort! If aliens were to come our way, Fermi would be no help in identifying them, and they might just slip right under Fermi’s nose. Unless, of course, those alien spacecraft were powered by processes that left behind traces of gamma rays.

Fermi detects gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, which are often produced by events so far away the light can take billions of years to reach Earth. The satellite sees pulsars, active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes and the remnants of exploding stars. These are not your everyday stars, but the heavyweights of the universe. 

3. Does the telescope shoot gamma rays?

No. Fermi DETECTS gamma rays using its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM).

The LAT sees about one-fifth of the sky at a time and records gamma rays that are millions of times more energetic than visible light. The GBM detects lower-energy emissions, which has helped it identify more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts – energetic explosions in galaxies extremely far away.

The highest-energy gamma ray from a gamma-ray burst was detected by Fermi’s LAT, and traveled 3.8 billion light-years to reach us from the constellation Leo.

4. Will gamma rays turn me into a superhero?

Nope. In movies and comic books, the hero has a tragic backstory and a brush with death, only to rise out of some radioactive accident stronger and more powerful than before. In reality, that much radiation would be lethal.

In fact, as a form of radiation, gamma rays are dangerous for living cells. If you were hit with a huge amount of gamma radiation, it could be deadly — it certainly wouldn’t be the beginning of your superhero career.

5. That sounds bad…does that mean if a gamma-ray burst hit Earth, it would wipe out the planet and destroy us all?

Thankfully, our lovely planet has an amazing protector from gamma radiation: an atmosphere. That is why the Fermi telescope is in orbit; it’s easier to detect gamma rays in space!

Gamma-ray bursts are so far away that they pose no threat to Earth. Fermi sees gamma-ray bursts because the flash of gamma rays they release briefly outshines their entire home galaxies, and can sometimes outshine everything in the gamma-ray sky.

If a habitable planet were too close to one of these explosions, it is possible that the jet emerging from the explosion could wipe out all life on that planet. However, the probability is extremely low that a gamma-ray burst would happen close enough to Earth to cause harm. These events tend to occur in very distant galaxies, so we’re well out of reach.

We hope that this has helped to clear up a few misconceptions about the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. It’s a fantastic satellite, studying the craziest extragalactic events and looking for clues to unravel the mysteries of our universe!

Now that you know the basics, you probably want to learn more! Follow the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on Twitter (@NASAFermi) or Facebook (@nasafermi), and check out more awesome stuff on our Fermi webpage.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

[operating-neuron]

Philosophical approach to Atheism

General social survey, which is a sociological survey department created by national opinion research center at the University of Chicago. In their statistics claims that in the year 2000, 8 percent of the U.S. population identified themselves as atheists, which grew exponentially to 21 percent in the year 2014 and has gained momentum, since then. Atheism taking its roots, it’s time we ponder over atheistic approach to life. Simply put, it’s a lack of belief in the existence of God or any metaphysical or spiritual being for that matter. But what drives this “lack of belief”?  Which, I believe itself is a belief system. Atheist also call themselves rationalist, which in philosophy means a person who ‘regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge’. Being rationalist, not all atheists deny the existence of a supreme power, some argue the lack of evidence, some call it a hypothesis and some claim that the theist belief stems from evolutionary adaptation for the belief in which God gives purpose to life. Philosophy however, being a study of knowledge, reality and existence has an unbiased take on both atheism and theism.

If theist have the challenge of proving the existence of all an powerful God, Atheists have the burden of solving the problem of abstract concepts that we know is present viz. wisdom, civility, intuition, morality… and many more, The disbelief gives rise to complexity in understanding of innumerable abstract concepts that is derived from the belief in a higher super natural power. Let’s take a look at how atheism explains morality, one of the abstract concepts, possibly the most crucial of all.

Is morality Intelligible?

    Morality is one of the factors that distinguish the Human race from rest of the animal kingdom. It determines our methodological approach to good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust… the list could go on. An intangible, indefinitive abstract idea that shapes our behavior, way of life and even the law of the land we live in. But what is morality and where does it come from? Well, for theist the answer is simple, a God given gift, something that makes Homo sapiens superior and for some simply the proof that God exists. Let’s talk about the atheistic philosophical approach to morality or/and if morality even exist in an atheistic world view. There are numerous approach to morality in the philosophical realm in a quest to understand or define morality, for instance, the 18th century utilitarian theory put forward by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill which states that,

“A person ought to act so as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.”

They stress on the idea that the moral grounds are determined by the outcome of the act. something is morally good if it increases pleasure or decreases pain and bad if it decreases pleasure or increases pain. Sounds like a valid point. But isn’t pleasure subjective, i.e., doesn’t it depend on personal experiences and preferences. If so, why is that something called core morality even exists? Why do we know for sure that killing or rape is definitely wrong? That knowledge stems from our core morality. Even if we, for the sake of argument nod our heads to the definition of morality proposed by atheistic world view and agree to the argument posed, that morality is a product of evolution over time derived by the acts of pleasure and pain, from a robbers perspective robbing is pleasurable does that make stealing morally sound? Or even a murder for that matter? It is inconceivable to accept or relate to the idea that morality or ethics are psychological evolutionary results like there are biological. As Rosenberg Alex, in his book ‘The atheist’s guide to reality’ states,

“Is natural selection so smart that it was able to filter out all the wrong, incorrect, false core moralities and end up with the only one that just happens to be true? Or is it the other way round, Natural selection filtered out all but one core morality, and winning the race is what made the last surviving core morality the right, correct, true one. Which is it? It can’t be either one. The only way out of the puzzle is nihilism.”

In layman language atheism cannot uphold morality, therefore moral nihilism i.e., nothing is morally right or wrong is the only position atheists can hold. Which I believe we all agree to that is not true, morality is very real and it does exist. Not only it exist but also shape the world around us and the denial or inability to even explain the existence of something as basic and influential as morality is what makes me wonder how our rationalist fellow humans reason with the existence of morality.

An argument for God.

An argument generally posed by atheists is the absence of scientific evidences for the existence of God. This particular argument reveals the lack of understanding of science or scientific analysis. Science is the study of observable physical or natural world through observation of structure, behavior and patterns to arrive at a conclusion. It is as ridiculous a question as to expect science to provide us an answer for the purpose of life. It is simply beyond the scope of science. And that is the reason for the existence of a field called philosophy, to deal with intangible concepts. As philosophers are reputed to deal with what science doesn’t, many philosophers have made an attempt to deal with or prove the existence of a uncreated, free willed, all powerful, Intelligent and transcendent being who we know as God. Anselm, a philosopher from Canterbury in 11th century gave an ontological (metaphysics, that deals with nature of being) argument to prove the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas also a theist, nearly 200 years later refuted Anselm’s theory with one of his own, as in philosophy you don’t just disagree; you disagree with an argument of your own. Aquinas presented a five pointer argument to prove the existence of God, which is as follows.

1)     Argument of motion

2)     Argument of causation

3)     Argument of contingency

4)     Argument of degree

5)     Teleological argument.                                                  

The first three arguments deals with cosmology and hence are called cosmological arguments. Aquinas in his argument of motion argues that, If you see a ball moving, subconsciously without giving a thought you know there is a mover, someone who set the ball in motion, which is well explained by the Newtonian law of motion, or we can say that an object in motion has set the ball in motion. But this leads to another mover who has set that object in motion and if we go on that would lead to an infinite regress i.e., a never ending chain of moving objects that has set the next object in motion unless we place a static or stationary mover in the chain of movers. But why are we talking about the movers? Universe as we know is filled with massive moving objects and hence needs a stationary mover, one who has set things in motion. Similarly, in his second argument the argument of causation, he talks about the causes of things that exists around you, everything present has a cause, every effect necessitates a cause, if something ‘caused’ has caused a cause, then, that something requires a cause and that again would lead to an infinite regress (Read that again but slowly). And this chain of causes would again require a being that is uncaused. Who, has begun the process of causation.

Every being in philosophy has been segregated into two categories ‘necessary being’ and ‘contingent being’. Contingent, in other words those whose existence won’t affect the reality as we know it, you and me my friend are contingent. Aquinas in his third argument which is really dramatically similar to the first two arguments in its aim at avoiding  infinite regress, states that every contingent being has been caused by another being, and if that being is contingent too, guess what? Infinite regress!!!  And to avoid that a necessary being is needed to cause all the contingent beings. Okay! But why is infinite regress such a problem? Well let’s take a practical example of infinite regress, if you ask me for a rupee, and me not having a rupee, asks a friend for the same, and that friend asks another one and the chain goes on, the rupee would practically never reach you, would it?, For the rupee to reach you someone initially has to have the rupee. For the rupee to reach you, have to avoid the infinite regress. Similarly, for the stars and the planet to be in motion, for you to be caused, we have to avoid the infinite regress or nothing would exist, the same way how the rupee would never reach you.

What is happiness without experiencing sorrow? What is relief without pain?  Or good in the absence of bad?  The argument of degree argues the existence of degrees for properties and states

“Properties comes in degrees,

In order for there to be degree of perfection, there must be

Something perfect against which everything else is measure.

God is the pinnacle of perfection.”

How do we know that an ‘F’ grade is bad? Because we compare it to ‘A’ i.e., something perfect and hence understand the degree of value of the remaining grades. How do we know that a person is good? We compare one’s properties to the perfect being. The last and the most popular of all of Aquinas’s argument the Teleological argument, teleology being the explanation based on an objects purpose of existence. What would come to your mind when you see a smart phone? An intelligently designed object made by its creator keeping its purpose in mind. Now take a look at the human body, every body part in a perfect ratio, 15 trillion cells, 3 billion nucleotide pairs to form one human genome, makes up 79 organs that work together in coordination with the brain and the heart to keep you alive from the day you are born to the day you die. As Stephen J Gould an evolutionary biologist states “Reply the tape a million times… and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again.” The human body is a biological and a chemical marvel. This is intelligent design. The same way none of us would assume that the smart phone came into existence without a purpose because of its intelligent design, Aquinas argues the intelligent design of human body or of the universe for that matter can’t simply be purpose less.

Yes, my article is biased towards the existence of God, that’s because the reality is biased towards the existence of God. What’s your take on the arguments… and remember in philosophy you don’t just disagree; you disagree with an argument of your own.

[pereirawrites]

𝐓he Price for a Life.

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.” -  William Wilberforce. 

I quote William Wilberforce, a British leader influential in the abolition of the slave trade in Britain during the late 18th Century. Though we now live in the 21st Century, the problem of human trafficking persists, haunting the lives of millions of men, women, girls & boys in every corner of the world. Human trafficking simply put is an extreme violation of human rights involving the exploitation of vulnerable individuals in an underground industry with lucrative profits (approximately 150$ Billion annually: ILO), high demand (21 million victims), low reporting of crimes, & relatively low risks as compared to the monetary rewards. 

Every industry, including the human trafficking industry, can be examined based on demand & supply for the commodity for sale, in this case: Living Breathing Human Beings. Modern-day slavery can be studied in two forms: Labour trafficking & commercial sex trafficking. Taking the case of India, the Global Slavery Index {GSI} in 2016 estimated that approximately 18.3 million Indians were employed in some form of forced labor, often ensnaring generation after generation, living in perpetual poverty. Bonded labor as a practice, though formally abolished in India, still exists in various parts of the country by different names; from debt bondage in the granite quarries of Rajasthan, the brick kiln labor traps of disaster-prone Odisha, to the deceptive Sumangali schemes of Tamil Nadu. 

Profit hungry industries that demand cheap labor, hire illegal labor agents, who often dangle the bait of regular income & better living conditions before desperate unsuspecting victims from economically disadvantaged sections of society. The victims are then coerced into undertaking low-paid, heavy labor in dingy work environments until their fake labor contract is completed, or the high-interest loan is repaid. The false promises of well-paid employment, however, are never fulfilled, because none of the victims ever see the full sum of the promised money or repay their debts, thus creating a vicious cycle of extreme poverty in specific communities.   

Another aspect that fuels labor trafficking, is the fact that a majority of daily wage workers are employed in the informal sector which lacks proper legal regulation or labor protection, thus allowing the silent oppression of millions of individuals who can’t take legal recourse because no contracts or labor laws exist in the informal economy. Women are paid much less than their male counterparts for the same work, and disguised unemployment is also a cause of worry in the informal sector. A stumbling block in the fight for human rights, is the marriage of young child brides in various countries, at an age when they should be studying in schools and enjoying their childhood. Child marriage poses a grave health & psychological threat to the affected individuals, crushing the dreams of dozens of innocent children, in South Asia {approximately 31 million girls}, sub-Saharan Africa { 14 million}, & Latin America {6.6 million - 2012 NCBI} 

Like labor trafficking, the criminal sex trafficking industry can be analyzed on a similar note. Sex traffickers or sexual predators, often lure victims either on social media platforms (cyber-bullying) or in backward neighborhoods (kidnapping), by emotionally blackmailing individuals into giving up their bodies for a fixed price. Once trapped in the complex web of exploitation in modern-day brothels, clubs & the adult entertainment industry, victims of sex trafficking are often hidden in plain sight. Many are trapped behind the closed doors of escort services or fake massage parlors, as pointed out by human-trafficking survivor Cassandra Diamond, the founding Director of BridgeNorth, Canada. Facing immense physical violence and psychological torture on a daily basis, the men and women who finally do escape their difficult circumstances, rarely receive the necessary rehabilitation, aftercare or psychological therapy. They also mostly live in societies that unfairly discriminate & ostracize survivors because of their painful past.

How do we tackle the complicated issue of human trafficking? By identifying the four major stake-holders affected by the human trafficking industry, we can zero in on the steps required to crack down on this crime that reduces human beings to mere objects. Firstly, governments need to acknowledge that human trafficking is a critical issue, especially with the skewed sex ratios in countries worldwide {Qatar: 302 males per 100 females} which results in the sale of brides by human trafficking and forced marriages because of high female foeticide rates. Policymakers need to support the implementation of laws that increase penalties for traffickers while enhancing victim protection & strict enforcement of minimum wage and labor laws. We also need to focus on breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, economic instability,  refugee crises & female foeticide rates that lead to human trafficking, by looking at these problems through the lens of humanity & not by mere unemotional statistics.

Secondly, companies need to understand that the short-term profits from cheap labor pale in comparison to the long-term benefits of upholding labor laws (employee loyalty) and fair trade practices (customer satisfaction), which could vanish if the shameful truth of labor exploitation reaches the public, tarnishing the company image forever. Thirdly, we need to have those awkward conversations with our sons & daughters, to reduce the demand for commercial sex trafficking & help individuals realize how their actions, online and offline, directly or directly enslave millions of adults & youth in lives of torture & rape.  

Finally, by working alongside verified NGOs, volunteer groups & other dedicated organizations to create awareness on human trafficking, we can increase the reporting of human trafficking cases, thereby helping many more men and women escape the harmful clutches of this parasitic industry. Through proper rehabilitation, financial assistance and psychological therapy, the victims of human trafficking can be empowered to become the protagonists of their own stories, thereby giving individuals a second chance to live the life of their dreams. I end with a quote by Tony Kirwan, Destiny Rescue Founder & International President, “Dare to enter the darkness to bring another into the light.”

Copyright Ⓒ Megan Pereira 2020

Pic Credits: Google

[the-last-ghost]

Okay everyone, here it is! Part 7 is up and i hope you all enjoy it! I am sorry for the sudden, extended hiatus that I took but i should be able to work on this with more frequency now. Thank you all for the support; you’re all amazing! As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

Part 7

           “It was a time of wonder, of glory, of pride and yet, will remain as one of the most shameful things we have done. As I have said, we set out and turned our entire focus to war and the ability to wage it better than any species in existence; and we succeeded. We learned from our own past, from our wars with each other, and adapted it to our new advancements. Captain, we have learned the value of “shock factor” and “total war” during our history. We knew that sometimes you must commit an atrocity beyond what seems possible in order to prevent something worse from happening. We knew that sometimes in war, everyone is a target, that sometimes even the civilian populace will turn on you and thus become an enemy… sometimes it becomes better to level a city, simply to make a statement to everyone else. What is worse is that we no longer had our home; our government was gone. We became a pure militaristic society for the sake of vengeance. By the time we set out to crush the Xulrata, we had built nearly a quarter million Capital Frigates of various classes and countless billions of warships, freighters, frigates, and more of various classes. We had learned from the battle in which we lost Admiral De Maré that the concept of overwhelming firepower was drastically needed… and overwhelming it was. The Capital Ships, Endless Void, and her sister ship, Mournful Wraith, were two of the grandest that we ever commissioned. The Void, which you have heard of, was a behemoth of astonishing scale. I never served upon it but I have seen it a handful of times and am still astonished at just how large it is…” Vilantis goes quiet remembering and I cannot help but wonder myself… The ship that now follows us through the void is massive, larger than nearly every ship in the Federation! And the sheer number that he says were built… What kind of foe could possibly warrant this kind of response… What kind of rage would drive them to go to such lengths…

           “For scale,” the Sage spoke up, “I can only tell you this; the Void had 14 hangars on board, 7 per side. 10 of them could fit the Shattered Moon but it would be tight; the remaining 4 however, could fit vessels much, much larger with ease. The Void was originally made to be a diplomatic ship that could host representatives from every world in the Federation on board with ease; and she did. However, she was commissioned well before the loss of Terra. We wanted to make a statement when we joined and so built her to show our intent at cooperation and desire to bring everyone together. Yet when war broke out, we took the template for the Void and modified it; instead of hangars for several hundred kilometers, it was given armaments to fill the space. Diplomatic rooms became barracks, storage rooms turned into ordinance bays, and décor became armor. Thus, the Wraith was born; a vessel designed and built for war and war alone. We lost our home, our symbol of what we were and we all came together to mourn and then seek vengeance… Terra fell, the Wraith was born, and our entire species was out for blood. Try and imagine it Captain, every Terran was there. Every single one of us prepared and willing to do what must be done to avenge those lost to us. Untold billions of starships, frigates, warships of every class, and fleets from across the entire system came to set out on this path. Never before has there been a gathering of such magnitude and I pray there is no need for it to be seen again. What you must know is that we were seen as a race that was kind and good. Yet there we were, amassing every ship we could reach and preparing for war on a scale never before seen. Your Council was terrified and so too was the rest of the Federation. When we set out on this path for war, we knew they would never support our actions. There are many reasons for this but foremost was their concern for the well-being of their people. They did, and still do, not have the necessary capabilities to cope with the kind of conflict a war of this scale would create; we did. Aside from this issue, there was the political one as well. There was no doubt in our minds or theirs that this war would lead to outright genocide and no matter how needed or warranted it would be, they could not support it; it didn’t help that many of the populace would not be able to understand it. So, they publicly denounced us and ordered us banished should we undertake the aforementioned actions; secretly however, they informed us that they understood our reasons and would not oppose our actions, so long as we kept them away from Federation controlled space. Much was discussed and more still is classified on both sides; however, the end agreement made was that we would scour the stars, claiming nothing but materials from the worlds we would cleanse. We would claim no worlds as our own but we would travel once again and, where necessary, subdue any threats posed to your growing Federation. We have waged our war with the Xulrata for ages and have no doubts that we will be fighting for ages to come. They are not the only threats we have encountered that could pose catastrophic to your people should you encounter them; as such we approached them, per our agreement with the Council, and bid them seek you in peace, either to join or ally with them but remain separate. Many have come to your side over the years but many more have taken up arms against it. Those enemies we have quelled long before you have come to them and they have submitted themselves to you but others still have fought to the bitter end…” As he trails off, no doubt remembering such conflicts, I can’t help but wonder if some of the worlds I have seen over the years had been laid siege to by his people. “Wait, if your people have been interacting with those races for so long, how come we haven’t heard about it?” I ask, thinking that such involvement would not have gone unnoticed. “That is a good question, with no short or simple answer but I will say this, those we have interacted with have had a long time to forget just who or what it was that came to them heralding the rise of your Federation and those with whom conflict occurred, well… history is written by the victors.”

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           “So, you’re telling me that these Terrans Krii’utz is with, some are survivors while the ship they travel with was coming to their aid?” Commander Mash’tola asked, effectively summing the situation down to the bare minimums. “That and they are still requesting the Priority 1 Jump and to meet with the Commander of the Harn’we Sector, Sir.” Major Hawthun confirmed, “How would you like us to proceed, sir?” The tactical room was silent; everyone anxious to see how they would be required to proceed, as there was no real guideline for this. First contact protocols were well known, if infrequently utilized but contact with a race presumed, at best, lost to the stars? That was rare enough… let alone a response for contact with them. “Get me a link to Harn’we Command, we need to advise them of the situation at the very least and see if they have any information as to why they are back. Then, relay to Krii’utz’s ship that they are to establish visual contact here and prepare for quarantine protocol until further instructions. Let it be known that we are willing to accept them into the sector at the given coordinates but they must submit to our authority; any failure to comply or act of aggression will be dealt with swiftly and without hesitation. Ensure that the sector is cleared and that all systems are ready to receive them. We must be ready for anything, and remember, they were banished for a reason; do not underestimate them.” Commander Mash’tola ordered. Everyone started to scramble to ensure the orders were carried out, all reserves were ordered to stand ready for deployment, ships were armed and refueled, and Station Batteries were brought to readiness. “All this for one ship… let us hope it isn’t needed…” I hear the Major mutter to himself. “And if it is, then let us hope that it is enough, Major.” The Commander says, though not in reprimand; but the look in his eyes however, didn’t seem to share the belief that it would be. “Lieutenant Tu’the, how is the redeployment of non-coms going?” Hawthun asks me. “Steady as can be expected, Sir. A few of the larger craft will take a while to break anchor but they should at least be out of the Stations orbit by the time the Sanru arrives in Sector. Only one ship so far appears to be having drive issues, but we have a boarding party en-route to assist, Sir.” I inform him, though I can tell his mind is elsewhere, no doubt thinking about the coming vessel. It has been countless generations since anyone has seen a Terran ship; now we were trying to prepare a defense for something out of legend.

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           We sat in silence for a while; I was simply trying to process the implications of what has just been said to me but before I can ask more, I am interrupted by word from the bridge informing me of our required stop in the Andari Sector and the quarantine we will be placed under. As I relay the news to the Terrans, I can’t help but notice that I still have yet to discover their reasons for returning; even I know escorting my ship back safely is hardly their real objective. “It’s just protocol,” I say to them, “There is very little advice on how to proceed with you so they are just being thorough.” Though the threat of conflict seems to have us all on edge; the Shattered Moon is very clearly a highly capable warship, not the sort of vessel one would expect to be making peaceful contact with and we can only speculate as to how that will be interpreted. Still, the only thing to do is follow the orders and proceed with caution and patience. I give the orders to my crew to, upon entering the Sector, to have all weapon batteries stand down, the shields be lowered, and to expect boarding. I advise the same be done to the Terran vessel as well. “I understand the concern Captain,” The Sage replies sincerely, “however, Admiral Elona Santiri and her task force were sent to hunt the remnants of a Xulrata war-band that had fled to this sector. They managed to decimate her forces and flee before we arrived. I do not know what condition they may be in, nor to where they may have fled but while the threat of their existence in this sector remains, I will take all the precautions available.” He says this firmly but apologetically, knowing I still have my duties to uphold. “We will however, allow any boarding parties they deem fit. I would advise them of this and to increase their reconnaissance patrols; you never know where the Xulrata may end up.” I relay his response back to Command as he starts to issue orders to his crew. Now the only thing we have to do is wait. “Admiral, we are expected to reach our destination in the next three of your Terran-hours. I must go and prepare for our arrival on the bridge. Please, make yourselves at home and rest. I will call for you before we arrive.” As I make my way to the bridge, I keep thinking back to what was said; the Admiral Santiri and Gunner Vilantis. If their foes make their way into USF space, then I cannot begin to imagine just what will happen. I have already witnessed the ferocity Vilantis and his crew showed at the possibly of conflict... Now there is a full warship prepped for battle and hungry for blood... and now I’m the one bringing them home.

[mmy117-blog]

Will augmented reality make people indulge in the virtual world? ——several problems of AR

Nowadays, people have designed a lot of applications of AR in different areas. The Pokémon Go is one of the most famous AR games which is also a very successful application of AR in real life. And we can say that AR is going to play an important role in the future. Under this circumstance, many people expect that the AR technology can bring us many improvements in our daily life. And along with the improvement of AI technology, more and more people believe the game company can use AI as a heart and then create many amazing and playful games in the near future. Until now, the AR can only connect with the physical environment by cameras in the daily life. And with AI, game designers can come up with more ways for people to link the virtual world to the real-life.

However, the combination of AI and AR technology can also make a lot of negative effects to people. Sometimes the AR technology may lead to addition  because some people can’t distinguish between the real world and the virtual reality. If that really happens, then less people will be willing to work hard. As a result, the productivity of the whole society may decrease. But before we show you the negative side of that technology, maybe we can know the specific meaning of the AR.

What’s is AR? 

Augmented reality (AR) is an “interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.” - From Wikipedia.

Will you live in a virtual world?

Pokémon go AR is one of the most popular games around the world. You can use your phone’s camera to show a Pokémon in real world, trapping them to get their attention and make them pose accordingly.

Let’s imagine one day the AR is everywhere in our life---- You wear a AR glasses, it will show you the famous TV shows to you. Then, you need to attend a meeting, AR glasses make a virtual meeting room and your colleagues are all sit here. After that, you want to go to a restaurant and have a meal. You see a map on your AR glasses and you just need to follow the instructions. You can do everything you can image by AR. In that case, will you live without AR?    

You might think it is really a wonderful thing. However, spending more time in virtual life means less time in real life. There is a  research shows the mobile phone makes people feel less connected. The experience shows more than 500000 of people don’t get out of their house for half of a year. 

These people don’t have many friends, they rarely have communication with people. And they have bad health. That’s all because they are indulge in the virtual world. So how can we avoid to addicted to virtual world? Many psychologists believe that people should have more communications with others and do more sports. Don’t forget you are living in the real world.

And there are some other social problems which caused by the AR by NOW. For example, sometimes people may get injured while playing the Pokémon game since they may be too excited to run to the Pokémon but ignore the latent dangers on the streets and roads. According to the report of Screenrant news, a Pokémon player fell into a ditch while searching for a Pokémon and one of the bones in her foot was broken and she needs 6-8 weeks to recover from her injury. Moreover, some people even use their phone to try to capture the Pokémon even if they are driving! That behavior can easily lead to car accidents, cause huge property lost and casualties. To avoid that problem, the government may need to enhance the effects of these laws which prohibit people from using their phones when they are driving cars and in the meantime the game company should remind their customers to be careful while they are looking for the Pokémon to capture in some downtown areas or dangerous places which means there are many roads and the traffic condition is always busy there. 

Another Obstacle

As the developing of AR, a big problem comes out, hacking. Although this problem has existed for decades, it seems more destructive in AR’s world. When we are building a new reality in a more digital way, we need to care about out digital property, too. No matter you believe or not, augmented reality is adding your risk of losing your privacy.

As a fan of Pokémon Go, I will go crazy if someone else steal my pokémons by hacking into your smartphone. People’s privacy in the digital world is not only about money but also about the time costs in the game. If you spend a hundred hours catching and cultivating your pokémons, your account should not be worthless just because you have not pay to the game. Otherwise, it should be valuable since you can exchange money with this account. In the future, AR will keep developing and foreseeable, it will create a digital world based on the physical reality. When more and more people spending more money in AR world, the government most pay attention on it because it may become a big part of the national economy.

Nowadays, the market for “intangible personal property” (in-game items) in the gaming world already commands billions of U.S. dollars and continues to grow substantially every year. People pay for in-game goods with real cash, but generally whoever owns the intellectual property rights to the game itself actually owns the property. Different from today’s digital game, AR is easier to confuse reality because it’s built on the physical world. This means it’s very likely to attract more cash than traditional digital games.

If the government doesn’t do something like making laws and setting a fine to prevent hacking to these properties, more and more conflicts will arise  In order to solve this problem, it’s important to call on  people to think about the legal issues at stake AR virtual world.

Conclusion

Although AR already shows us a fascinating future, there are a lot of new problems come out and need to be solved. Treating them sensibly and logically, believing the potential of human, we can build an unbelievable world with AR.

References:  [1] the explanation of Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR [2] data from sino caijing (Sina Caijing 2017, https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2017-01-14/doc-ifxzqhka3024216.shtml ) [3] the accident is reported by Screenrant, https://screenrant.com/pokemon-go-dangers/ [4] Do you own your virtual property? | Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, http://www.jetlaw.org/2018/11/03/do-you-own-your-virtual-property/

[5] HYPER-REALITY - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

[6] Minecraft Earth: Apple WWDC Gameplay Reveal - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNo38kNy_EU

Written by: Avan, Andy, Mike

[kittencaboodleextraordinaire]

“Ok, but I had a Johnny first, and mine is better”: Adventures in Cyberpunk with a snarky headmate

Warning: this post contains considerable discussion of a major plot point in Cyberpunk 2077 which is discussed in the promotional materials (trailers etc) but which is not revealed in-game until after the first segment of the main story (the heist). Those who wish to remain unspoiled may instead view this lovely picture I edited of four raccoons in a trenchcoat (inspired by Critical Role’s playthrough of the absolutely delightful ttrpg Crash Pandas, which I highly encourage everybody in existence to go check out).

This phenomenal piece of art is surely the high point of this post. It can only go downhill from here.

Anyway.

So as we all know, Cyberpunk 2077 was finally released a few days ago to the expected amount of drama and fanfare, and my partner and I have been playing it together, by which I mean he’s been playing and I’ve been providing helpful advice like “We should totally buy the awesome purple car what do you mean you want a motorcycle THE MOTORCYCLE ISN’T PURPLE”. It’s not, y’know, an amazing game, but it’s pretty fun and I have already found multiple characters to ship V with, which I’m sure we can all agree is the truly important thing here. Plus of course there is abundant opportunity to make innuendo at my partner so I am a happy kitten. Mostly. There is one aspect of the story that is proving to be a continual source of awkwardness and general highly disconcerting aura. Namely, Johnny Silverhands.

At some point (I fell asleep for this part so I don’t know exactly what happened), you end up fused with a chip containing the personality of Johnny Silverhands, some kind of sort of famous dude who died a long time ago or something like that. awards self 10/10 stars for that eloquent and informative summary of important plot elements I was totally paying attention to and wasn’t asleep for at all anyway the important thing is there’s a dude hanging out in your brain with you. This is kind of weird and awkward for me, since I also have a dude hanging out in my brain with me. His name is Jonas. Jonas, say hi. J: I’m not a zoo animal and I don’t do tricks, also I reject the idea that this adds to the post in any real way. However you are very lucky because I am bored and complaining at you sounds more fun than going back to sleep. Now I’m tired and it’s 3:30 am go to bed or write the rest of this by your own damn self. That’s basically the same thing I guess.

Jonas is a bit weird. I don’t really have any idea what he is, and it’s not really within the scope of this blog post to discuss it in depth. He is some flavor of alternate personality, he is one of my closest friends, and he is a pain in the ass, much like most of my other friends. Having Jonas around is uncannily like V’s experience sharing their brain with Johnny Silverhands. Now I have a few other friends who have multiple personalities, one of whom is watching playthroughs of Cyberpunk and has appropriately described the experience as “pretty fucky”, which about sums it up. However it’s made even worse for me personally by the sheer number of similarities between Jonas and Johnny and their interactions with the people they share heads with, for (the most obvious) example, their names are really fucking similar. Jonas has matured a lot since he started appearing about 6-7 years ago but Johnny’s snark, unhelpfulness, complete disinterest in being nice, and even his body language all scream of Jonas’s original behavior, which, let’s be honest here, he still does all that anyway, he’s just nicer about it because he likes me. When Jonas and I talk, we tend to picture him as standing (or sitting or leaning against the wall or whatever) somewhere in the room with me, much as Johnny appears to V. He’s not active all the time and until very very recently was almost never “in charge”, so to speak, much like Johnny. So what we have here is somebody who acts a fuck of a lot like Jonas, has a similar name to Jonas, and interacts with their host in a manner that is almost a perfect match to how Jonas interacts with me. Somehow all of this went over my head. Then something even more uncanny happened.

Now, Jonas was originally an extremely minor character in a vast series of stories that I have made up in my head and never actually written down. He somehow evolved, without any conscious effort on my part, from a bit character who was never meant to do anything besides show up, get scolded by the authorities, and leave, to an increasingly major character, to living in my brain with me. Consequently, while he generally shares my tastes and preferences in terms of food and etc etc etc, there is an extremely major way in which we diverge: Jonas, like Johnny, and unlike me, smokes. All the time. It is Very Important to him. As such, the fact that I do not smoke and have exactly negative one billion interest in ever doing so is a source of intense frustration to him. We have had m a n y arguments about this. He knows not to push it too much and respects that it is my decision but that is not about to stop him from complaining about it loudly and with great passion. So when we encountered a scene of V and Johnny having the exact same fucking argument, ending with the incredibly blatantly Jonasesque lamentation from Johnny “Nonsmokers are the fucking worst”, it was like getting hit in the head with a brick. Actually forget the brick, it was like being hit with an entire building, and then having Jonas stick his head out the window and go “Missed me? ;)”, and then yelling back “WELL IDK BUT MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU’RE PILOTING AN ENTIRE FUCKING BUILDING IF YOU COULD TRY A LITTLE HARDER TO MISS ME THAT’D BE REALLY NICE THANKS” and then having him wink at me and assure me that head trauma builds character. It fucking doesn’t and he knows it.

After that, it was impossible to not see Jonas every time Johnny came onscreen. I still enjoy the game a lot. The setting and story are both really really cool and the loot is A+, and I really love being able to hang out in voice chat with my partner, who currently lives pretty far away, and do something fun together and experience something new. But having my relationship with Jonas, which I still have a lot of conflicting feelings about no matter how much I genuinely believe he’s a positive force in my life, reflected back at me at every turn, is bizarre, surreal, and a constant reminder of issues that have been nagging at me for a while, many of which are explicitly being brought up by the game itself. Last night we were doing a mission where V and Johnny at some point start talking and V mentions how they seem to be getting along better and Johnny suggests that maybe it’s because he’s rubbing off on V. V responds with something to the effect of “Am I becoming more like you, or are you becoming more like me?”. Jonas and I have been asking ourselves the same question for years. The only answer we were ever able to come up with is “probably both”, but the question of how much and to what extent, and if you start blending together with somebody else that much, are you really the same person anymore, and on down the rabbit hole we go, can really eat at you if you’re the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing. Which I guess we both are. And frankly we are probably not even half done with the main storyline and I doubt it’s going to stop posing these questions. 

J: so I said I wasn’t going to have any more of this and went off in a huff but actually I changed my mind I have some stuff to say. 

this is obviously weird for kitsie, and I guess it might be obviously weird for me too but it’s weird in an entirely different kinda way. it’s certainly surreal, and a lot of the questions it keeps bringing up are a lot to think about. Johnny is a program on a computer chip designed to be a copy of the original Johnny’s brain. this raises the question, and this may or may not be addressed later, how real is he? and is he the original Johnny, just on a computer chip now, or is he a different entity who happens to be identical to Johnny? and how is a person on a computer chip embedded on somebody’s brain really different from a person who’s a subroutine in somebody else’s brain? am I real? am I a part of Kitsie that just thinks differently for some reason? are we two facets of a whole being that’s kind of both of us and kind of neither of us? am I just a hitchhiker? I really don’t know. I have a lot of memories and backstory. things I did in the past, before I knew Kitsie. are those memories real? they feel real to me but on the other hand they didn’t actually happen. are Johnny’s memories real? they did happen but he’s a brain scan so did they actually happen to him? it’s a lot to think about, but hard to stop thinking.

and then there’s the other concern, which is that this is a game for kitsie to enjoy with her partner, and whenever this shit happens it wakes me up and I end up feeling really weird, like I’m intruding. which I am.  and as wonderful and understanding as he is, I’m still very much something he is getting used to and having problems adjusting to and I really understand because fuck I’m having a problem adjusting to me too. and maybe it’s stupid but I feel bad for being the disconcerting aura of uncomfortable thoughts wafting through something that’s supposed to be a pleasant and fun evening without me in it. which frankly sums up my entire existence. fuck this I’m tired I’m out of here again go tf to sleep kit.

I had more to say but “what he said” pretty much sums it up.

In conclusion, I don’t really have any objection to the story itself. It’s an interesting concept carried out fairly well that under normal circumstances I would think was really cool, and certainly it’s been a unique experience anyway. And I guess if anything the fact that it’s so unnervingly on the nose is a sign they did a good job? I’m still having a huge amount of fun with the game and the massive backlog of sidequests combined with our minimal ability to focus means that the main quest only takes up a small portion of our playtime in any case. I just needed to get all this shit off my chest.

This has been tonight’s episode of the Kitty Rambles Podcast, I am too tired to think of any good way to end this so goodnight and thank you for tuning in!

[sciencespies]

SpaceX just launched 57 new Starlink satellites with controversial sun shades

https://sciencespies.com/space/spacex-just-launched-57-new-starlink-satellites-with-controversial-sun-shades/

SpaceX just launched 57 new Starlink satellites with controversial sun shades

After a two-month gap, SpaceX has resumed launching batches of dozens of satellites in its gambit to blanket Earth with high-speed internet access.

The satellites are a new “VisorSat” variety to make them less shiny to the ground and especially to astronomers’ telescopes. But researchers say the spacecraft’s experimental new feature, while helpful, won’t fully solve problems posed by the existence of Starlink itself (or other planned thousands-strong satellite fleets, for that matter).

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, calls its internet project Starlink, and may deploy tens of thousands of the broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit. On Friday at 1:12 am ET, one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets launched a new batch of them, along with two Earth-imaging spacecraft built by BlackSky Global.

SpaceX fitted all 57 of its desk-sized Starlink satellites with a new feature: sun visors or shades.

The visors should deploy after launch and block sunlight from reflecting off the satellites’ surfaces – glare that makes Starlink spacecraft appear as bright, moving trails in the night sky that can photobomb telescope observations, blot out faint astronomical objects, and even hinder searches for killer asteroids.

The visors will probably make the satellites less bright, but it won’t stop them from interfering with astronomy, says astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

“If you figure out where to put the visors, you should be able to really cut down those reflections. And that will make the satellites no longer naked-eye objects, which is good,” he told Business Insider in June. “It won’t, probably, make them so faint that they won’t be a problem for professional astronomers.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An illustration of the Starlink satellite. (Space X)

Astronomers fear that SpaceX’s bright satellites could outshine the stars

After SpaceX launched its first set of Starlink satellites in May 2019, many astronomers were alarmed by how bright the new objects were. In the days after the launch, people across the world spotted the train of satellites, like a line of twinkling stars.

“I felt as if life as an astronomer and a lover of the night sky would never be the same,” astronomer James Lowenthal told The New York Times in November.

“If there are lots and lots of bright moving objects in the sky, it tremendously complicates our job,” Lowenthal added. “It potentially threatens the science of astronomy itself.”

Telescopes on Earth that look for distant, dim objects could pick up these false stars and ruin astronomers’ data. A single satellite can create a continuous streak of light across a telescope’s long-exposure images of the sky, blocking the objects astronomers want to study.

“It takes just a couple seconds for the satellite to cross the telescope’s field of view, but we take really long exposures with our cameras. So in that couple of seconds, a whole 10- or 15-minute exposure is ruined,” McDowell said.

The satellites can especially affect telescopes that observe close to the horizon near dawn – the kind of observations that help astronomers track asteroids flying close to Earth.

SpaceX is sharing Starlink’s orbital-path data with astronomers so that they can plan their telescope observations around the satellites’ movements. Briefly shutting off the camera as the satellite passes overhead can save a long-exposure image.

To date, SpaceX has flown nearly 600 Starlink spacecraft to orbit – the most of any satellite operator. But Musk’s grand ambitions could make it practically impossible for astronomers to avoid the fast-moving satellites.

SpaceX already has permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites, and last year sought additional clearance to put up to a total of 42,000 satellites into orbit. And that’s not counting other providers’ plans.

“If they’re coming over all the time, then knowing when they’re coming over isn’t helpful,” McDowell said. Even now, he added, sometimes astronomers can’t avoid the photobombers.

It’s not yet clear how well a VisorSat works

It’s unclear how effective the SpaceX’s new visors will be, though the company launched an experimental “VisorSat” to test the concept on June 3. SpaceX has yet to report the results of that test.

“We’re still waiting for the satellite to reach its operational orbit,” Youmei Zhou, an integration and test engineer for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship, said during a live broadcast of the launch early Friday morning.

Launching a whole fleet of visor-equipped satellites without widely sharing, or possibly knowing, the results of the experimental spacecraft visor seems like “a gusty move” to McDowell.

“I think what it reflects is that they have much more confidence now that they understand the sources of the problem,” he said.

The company doesn’t expect earlier, visor-free Starlink satellites to complete their five-year life span, Patricia Cooper, SpaceX’s vice president of satellite government relations, told Spaceflight Now in May. That means that, in a few years, the brightest satellites may no longer appear in the sky.

Satellite constellations pose larger problems that visors can’t fix

The Starlink fleet caught astronomers’ attention for how bright it was, but it revealed a much larger problem: The skies could soon be swarming with false stars.

SpaceX isn’t the only company building a massive fleet of satellites. Companies like Amazon and OneWeb have similar aspirations to establish their own fleets and rake in billions of dollars each year.

“If OneWeb goes ahead and launches its proposed constellation without mitigation, that is going to have very severe impacts on ground-based astronomy to the point that, for at least four months out of the year, it’s going to be pretty impossible to do most observations,” McDowell said.

“You might as well just shut the observatory down for the summer months, because there’s going to be so many satellites screwing up your data.”

Mitigating solar reflections also goes only so far. Astronomers also worry about invisible wavelengths of light that stand to compromise other forms of astronomy.

The Federal Communications Commission, which authorizes the flight and use of internet-beaming satellites in the US, says preventing disruption to astronomy is “not a condition” for licensing – so SpaceX is pursuing solutions on its own accord. Sources known to Business Insider also say Amazon’s Kuiper satellite-internet project is working with astronomers to reduce those satellites’ impact.

But SpaceX and others have yet to announce potential harm-reduction measures for radiowaves the satellites will broadcast, or for the infrared light they emit by producing heat. Both can interfere with telescopes on Earth that observe the skies using radio or infrared.

“We’re in a new phase of space utilization. It’s a new space industrial revolution, things are different, and astronomy’s going to be affected,” McDowell said.

“We just have to make sure we’re part of the conversation so we can keep it down to the ‘pain in the neck’ level and not the ‘give up and go home’ level.”

Dave Mosher contributed reporting.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

More from Business Insider:

#Space

[theartscenter-blog]

Student Work: The Sun Is Hot Because It’s Hot

The following piece, entitled “’The sun is hot because it’s hot’: public speaking in the era of Zoom,” was written by Amy Sayle, one of the students in Julia Green’s recent online class, Writing Through Crisis: Using Memoir to Navigate Challenging Times. The next section of Writing Through Crisis begins Tuesday, July 28th. For more information and to register for this class, visit this link.

“The sun is hot because it’s hot”: public speaking in the era of Zoom

By Amy Sayle

Revised 6/19/20

It’s 10 a.m. on the dot, my webcam is on, and I am live in front of our Zoom audience, when I open my mouth, look at the screen, and completely forget what I’m supposed to say.

The problem is not that I care what I look like. I’ve never succumbed to the hair-makeup-fashion-etc. expectations for women’s appearances.

The problem is also not a fear of public speaking. I make a living presenting to the public at a planetarium, and I am completely comfortable with large, live, in-person audiences.

This is a change from when I started doing this in 1998. Back then, after every planetarium show, I would obsess about anything I’d said that wasn’t perfect. Maybe I’d garbled an explanation of why Polaris hasn’t always been the North Star, or misunderstood a kid’s question about the planets, or said something snarky about astrology. Once, in front of an audience filled with high school students, I was trying to say “planet Venus” and accidentally transposed the initial letters of those two words.

I’d ruminate over these blunders for hours, convinced that the audience members were doing the same. I imagined the adults laughing about my mangled explanations over dinner with their kids, or while side by side on their pillows. I imagined the jokes about my mistakes that the teens would be telling at parties for years to come.

Finally, it occurred to me that it didn’t really matter. The shows were live, with no recording. My words vanished into the ether as soon as they were spoken. Probably no one remembered much of the specifics of what I said or even who I was. No one was there to see me anyway. I was literally in the dark.

But this spring, the pandemic has meant no more shows inside the planetarium. Now it’s all online live sky tours using planetarium software, followed by Q&A. This means my name and my face are also on the screen. Worst of all, the live sessions are recorded from Zoom and put up on YouTube for anyone to see.

So there I am, at 10 a.m. on a Thursday, about to welcome our audience to one of our “engaging learning opportunities, like this live virtual event!”

. . . or something like that. Who knows what I’m supposed to say? I don’t know anymore, because my mind has gone blank. The reason I’m rattled is that we’re training someone new to handle the back-end work for these live videos, and she’s joined the video only a few minutes before 10, having struggled to find the correct Zoom link. Then she’s struggled to figure out how to screen-share our intro slide, and we’ve just realized she also needs to super quickly learn Zoom’s polling feature.

In the Before Time, inside the planetarium, there was lots of technology to deal with. But I’d long become used to talking to an audience while being responsible for the microphone, lights, music, not to mention the entire universe, all while simultaneously having a group late-seated right in front of me or a toddler melting down in the background.

But dealing with a webcam, computer mic, and the weird sensation of talking from a living room to an invisible audience while seeing my own image in front of me—that all still feels very new. It feels like a major accomplishment merely to hit the correct keys at the correct moment to unmute myself and turn on the webcam. Knowing that our new person is wrestling with even more new technology, technology crucial for making this all work, is totally freaking me out.

At 9:59 a.m., the colleague who is training our new person wisely pulls the plug on the training and seizes back the host control. A hastily typed, cryptic message goes out on the chat to all of us. Something like: “you ready.”

It’s now 10 a.m., our live audience is waiting, we’re supposed to start, and this is not the start signal we’ve used with our other presentations. I’m not sure who’s typed this, whether it’s a question or a statement, or who it’s directed at. This unleashes some frantic back and forth typing, with me finally writing, “starting hope you’re ready.”

I successfully turn on my audio and camera. This apparently uses up all the cognitive power I had left, because then I promptly forget what we’re all here for. I think I forget my own name. I stumble though the introduction, then turn things over to my colleague Nick to introduce himself and our theme for the day: the constellations of the zodiac.

I breathe a sigh of relief as everything goes smoothly for the next 25 minutes. Since Nick has to do a lot of work to manipulate the planetarium software that generates the sky, it’s my job to do most of the talking. The topic is one I’ve spoken about many times, I’m in the groove, and I explain everything reasonably competently. I think I even avoid unnecessary snark about astrology, and I forget about my botched intro.

Whenever Nick takes a quick turn to say something, I check the Q&A to see if anyone’s written any relevant questions.

No, it turns out.

There are only a few questions, and they are relevant only in the sense that they relate in some way to some object in outer space. Otherwise, the questions are wildly off topic: “What’s a white dwarf?” (which the questioner has spelled “dorf”) “How long would it take to get to Neptune?” “Why is the sun hot?” Why is the sun hot? What?

We finish our presentation, and it’s time to handle questions. Since attendees can’t see each other’s questions, I decide to ignore what everyone has typed in, in favor of pretending someone has asked an excellent, on-topic question about the zodiac constellations. I answer my made-up question brilliantly.

It’s now 10:28 or 10:29, and I’m expecting Nick to segue into our outro, about following us on twitter and the like. I’m not even really paying attention anymore. I’m fantasizing about the snack I’m going to have as a reward for surviving this. I wonder if there’s still a chocolate bar left in the pantry. Maybe it’s even the orange dark chocolate.

That’s when Nick does the thing we agreed we would never do. Which is to take a question from the Q&A and pose it to the other person.

I am jolted out of my chocolate reverie by this: “So, Amy. Why is the sun hot?”

You know how our president speaks when he’s not reading from a teleprompter? How he often sounds like he has little grasp of either the concept he’s talking about or of the English language itself?

That is what happens to me. What comes out my mouth is incoherent Trumpian word salad. I haven’t dared to revisit the video, but I’m pretty sure I start by explaining the mass of the Sun by using the phrase “the Sun has a lot of stuff.” And I say words like “nuclear fusion” and “hydrogen” and “helium” and “pressure” and “temperature” and possibly I throw out numbers like “27 million degrees Fahrenheit”—but all in a way that is unmoored from logic or meaning.

In the end, I have answered the simple question, the good-if-not-completely-relevant question of “Why is the sun hot?” with a whole bunch of words that basically translate to: “The Sun is hot because it is hot.”

This is mortifying. I have spewed out nonsense, about a very basic question, live on the internet, and it’s all connected to my name and face. Worst of all, this session is being recorded. It will exist on the internet, for as long as the internet exists, available on YouTube to billions of my fellow humans, who can replay it again and again and laugh at what I said.

To recover from this, I have had to draw upon research I remember reading about once, that yes, people do pay attention to us, but no one is paying attention to us in the way that we think.

Therefore, I comfort myself with the thought that most people won’t even notice how badly I mangled that answer. Instead, they’ll notice other things, possibly like how I wear the same black shirt for every live session. Or how my hair is a one giant humido-meter, perfectly preserving a record of central North Carolina humidity from day to day, by the specific diameter and height of the frizz halo.

And I don’t care about any of that.

Though I am convinced that someone, somewhere, is still getting laughs at parties by recounting that time way back in high school when they went on a field trip to the planetarium and the lady pointed out “vlanet penis.”

[sconeboi]

don’t slip away

part 1

part 2

part 3

AU where Simon went to go looking for Baz and found him with the numpties, only to get captured and thrown into the coffin with him

(the fluffiest fluff comes in parts 2 & 3)

part 2 length: 1.7k

type: angst & fluff

warnings: a character is suicidal

(start fic from part 1, link above)

SIMON

It’s been at least a day since I was thrown into the coffin next to Baz with no escape. I have to say, it’s a little annoying to be trapped in a tight space with the person you hate the most. It includes a lot of “shut up’s,” “sod off’s”, and “Aliester Crowley’s.” We’ve already tried every game you can play with your voice, including a thousand alphabet games (thinking of a movie for each letter of the alphabet, etc.). My favorite had to be spells. 

“Listen up!” Baz says for his turn. 

“Usage?” I question.

“Snow, we’ve gone over this a billion times in class. It’s valid.”

“Usage?”

Baz sighs. “To draw attention to yourself.”

“Right. I knew that.” 

I didn’t know that.

“M for your turn,” Baz tells me.

“Uh...” I scower my brain for a spell that starts with M. “It’s the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!”

“That is NOT a real spell, Snow.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I wish it was.” I think for a moment more and then it hits me. “Man of his word!”

“Usage?” Baz asks. The bloke, he already knows it’s a real spell.

“If you’re telling the truth, a gust of wind blows everywhere. That’s such a basic one, Baz.”

“Just wanted to see if you were bright enough to remember.”

I roll my eyes, even though it’s completely invisible to him.

Suddenly there’s a creaking sound and the lid of the coffin is opened just a crack. 

“Apple for boy,” a numpty says, tossing something in. 

I kick the lid just to see if I was strong enough to thrust it open, but it doesn’t even budge from where it’s cracked open at.

“And rat for other.” I feel a thump on my chest and freeze. The coffin closes with a thud.

“Get...the dead rat...of of me...” I murmur to Baz. I can actually smell it from here.

“No, no, no, this is going to be fun,” he replies. “Let me pose a question and see if you’re worthy of freedom.”

“You little bitch,” I whisper.

“Alright...” He hesitates on even asking. “How do you feel about vampires?”

The question makes me smirk for some reason. “I don’t know, Baz, wondering if you should come out?”

“Answer the question.”

Now I hesitate. “I don’t know anything even about vampires. How am I supposed to feel anything?”

After a few seconds I sense Baz nod next to me. “Fine, your freedom is granted.” He pauses. “That’s actually the apple on your stomach, I put it there. The rat’s in my hand.”

“Oh, fuck you, Baz.” I say, groaning and reaching down to get the apple. I accidentally brush Baz’s hand and feel a shiver go down my spine.

“So you don’t think vampires are blood-sucking monsters, then,” Baz concludes as I take a bite. It’s soft and tastes a little off.

“That’s not what I said. I said I don’t know if they’re blood-sucking monsters.”

“But...” he continues. “Wouldn’t you assume from literature—”

“Baz, since when I used terms like literature, let alone read any literature.”

“Good point. Then from horror movies. You had to have assumed something.”

I think about it for a second. “No, I really haven’t. Sure, I’ve believed that you’ve been a monster, but who am I to say that’s true?”

“So you’ve made the assumption that I’m a monster.”

I start getting a bit heated. “Baz, what I meant was—”

“You’re just like my mother,” he says. “If she knew what I was, she’d kill me.” I think he may be crying; his voice sounds a bit shaky.

“What are you even fucking talking about...”

“Snow, I’ve seen the records. At the Watford Tragedy, my mother was bitten by a vampire and killed herself almost instantly. If she knew...what happened...she would’ve killed me with her. Vampires are among the worst things you can be.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Did Baz just...confess? After all these years, did he really just tell me he was a vampire? But then again, he seems so grieved. Empty, almost. 

“I’ve wanted to kill myself so many times I’ve lost count,” he continues. He smiles maniacally. “I wasn’t meant to be like this. I was meant to be the perfect child of Natasha Grimm-Pitch. I just don’t want to exist anymore. I want to die more than I have already.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop saying that,” I say. “Baz, you’re being crazy. You’re not a monster, just an arrogant prick. And you’re definitely not going to get the chance to kill yourself anytime soon.”

I realize that sweat’s rolling off my forehead. I don’t know why, but I’m generally concerned. I didn’t know Baz was disturbed like this. Disturbed, yes, but not like this.

After a long pause, Baz finally speaks again in a croaky voice, and rolls onto his shoulder to face me. “I do have the chance. Right now. I could just slip away. Tune out. I’m already dead. If I think hard enough, I can be dead dead. It’ll just take some time and some silence.”

“Are you insane?!” I’m practically hysterical at this point. “Don’t slip away, Baz. I am not letting you slip away.” I roll onto my shoulder too, but I can hardly make out his face in the darkness. “I’ve never turned my back on you. And I’m not starting now.”

BAZ

I can feel the haziness come over my head like a blanket as I close my eyes. The last thing I heard was “don’t slip away” before the inside of my head became so light that I just...left. I could still somehow sense Snow beside me. He’s holding my hand, I think. But that couldn’t be possible. I almost laugh at the thought that he would care if I died for good right here and right now. 

But don’t slip away continues to echo in my mind. 

I could kiss him. That’s what I’ll do, I think. I’ll get right to the edge of my mind, and I’ll peck in a kiss and jump off. My feet are dangling off the edge, and I can see the emptiness below. It’s right there. It’s just right there. And just as I settle myself enough to start to lean into Snow, he kisses me.

 SIMON

I can’t have him slip away. I just can’t. He’s my enemy. And someone...someone I care about. I had to do something. 

His lips are so cold. But that can change, with my help.

 BAZ

All at once my brain seems to “zoom out” and I take in the world around me. I just slip back, all at once, and my head throbs because of it. But what do I care?

I’m kissing Simon bloody Snow in a coffin. And his lips are so warm.

Aliester Crowley, I’m living a charmed life.

 SIMON

For a moment I think of Agatha. But then I think again. We’ve gone our separate ways. Nothing matters. Nothing but Baz. He’s not stopping me at all, just sort of countering my movements. I feel like he’s never been kissed. But he’s a good kisser. 

 BAZ

Is this a good kiss? I don’t know. But I’m learning from the best.

 SIMON

I take Baz’s face in my hands and lean in more, pushing him towards the wall of the coffin. I’m not sure what I’m doing, honestly. He lets out a grunt when he eventually hits the side, but lets me push him still, gentler.

“Simon...” he says softly.

I’m kissing Baz. I’m kissing a boy. And I’m loving every second of it.

 BAZ

Snow takes one hand off my cheek and runs it through my hair, brushing it back. His hand slips through so he grabs a fistful of it so suddenly that a switch seems to flip in my brain and a wave of aggression falls over me. 

My fangs pop out, and my head lurches foreword beyond my control. I pull back, pushing him away. Immediately I feel around for the rat. 

“Sorry,” Snow huffs, completely out of breath. Was that how intense it all was? To make the chosen one go out of breath just by locking lips?

“I didn’t bite you, did I?” I ask cautiously. 

“If anything I bit you,” he huffs again.

“Hold on, I have to...I have to feed.” 

“Oh, no way! With the rat?” Snow sounds like an energetic 6 year old all of a sudden. “Do you have fangs?”

“Yeah, they sort of...pop out when I need them.”

“Wicked,” he whispers. 

“Okay, cover your eyes.”

“Baz, it’s pitch black.”

“Goddamn, Snow. Was that a fucking pun?” 

I hear him stifle a laugh.

 “Okay, cover your ears.”

“Ears covered,” he says immediately.

I drain the rat quicker than I ever have in my life. When it’s done I knock on the coffin, waiting for the numpty to come get the carcass and finish it off. 

I reach over to Simon and feel for his hands around his ears. I lower them off slowly just as the coffin lid opens a little, and we both get a good look at each other.

His hair literally glows in the light.. His blue-grey eyes are nothing but ordinary, however, but the emotion behind them is extraordinary. I want nothing more than to kiss every freckle splattered on his face, especially the mole on his cheek that I’ve wanted to kiss since I was 12. 

 SIMON

With the light shining through the cracked coffin, I finally can see Baz. It almost makes me gasp. His cheekbones are so hollowed in that it looks like he hasn’t eaten in years. His cheeks fill with red the moment I look into his cement-colored eyes. All I want to do is to run my hands through his silky hair again. That, or make him smile.

“Rat...” a numpty grunts from outside. 

“Oh...right...uh...” Baz fumbles around beside him until he chucks out an object quickly, obviously not wanting me to see it. 

With a loud slam, all the light disappears, and we’re back to total darkness. 

A few seconds go by without movement, but once we both settle ourselves we practically slam our mouths into each other. 

Continue to part 3 here

[mysydneymemories-blog]

What you need to know about 5G

$80m deal to speed up SA public school internetAussies fed up with slow, unreliable internet What IS 5G? 5G is the network that will deliver ultra-fast internet to your phone or any other device. Right now, your smartphone is probably on 4G or 3G. With 5G, it could be 10 times faster. 5G means the fifth generation; its the fifth generation of network that lets you connect to the internet when you dont have Wi-Fi. It uses radio waves on a different frequency that will work more efficiently, supported by small cells on existing poles instead of mobile phone towers.

media_cameraThe speed and ability to upload and download huge amounts of data, will allow new technologies to flourish with 5G technology. When it launches next week, Australia will become the third nation in the world to get it. That in turn will spark different ways of using the internet. Billions of devices will be connected thats the Internet of Things, which is already transforming industries (more on this below). It will replace the need for the NBN, for Wi-Fi, for some but not all, not yet. A couple of weeks ago, Telstras chief customer officer John Ieraci told an Adelaide conference that the network would underpin a $12 trillion economy and support 22 million jobs. The fast speeds that 5G offers will give people the ability to download huge amounts of data, he said. That means downloading movies in seconds. It means driverless cars being able to map routes, and avoid accidents. Nimble delivery drones. It will make immersive virtual reality a reality. And it shouldnt be more expensive. In fact Telstra says data should be even cheaper. But the new phones youll need may be more expensive. What will be different? 5G is capable of delivering 20 gigabytes per second, although tests so far show its closer to 3gbps. But even at its slowest, its still faster than the best 4G speeds. Everything will be faster. Back when we first had dial-up internet, and watched single web pages load line by line, it was impossible to imagine where wed be now, with smartphones and tablets. 4G brought us into the world of streaming from our phones; of Netflix and Spotify. So it is with 5G, the next giant leap. That speed, that ability to upload and download huge amounts of data, will allow new technologies to flourish. Driverless cars will use 5G, because its so quick and every millisecond counts if theres a pending accident and a decision needs to be made.

media_cameraAustralia will become the third nation in the world to have 5G technology from next week, enabling it to become the Internet of Things even on the road in driverless vehicles. It will have health applications, such as remote surgery where you really dont want to deal with buffering. All that speed and rich data will see virtual reality become lush and more available. It will really kick off the Internet of Things. And then there are things yet-to-be imagined. Whats the Internet of Things? Its a mysterious sounding phrase that is actually very literal. Things connecting to the internet. We usually just think of people connecting, but more and more objects are being connected. Farmers can put sensors on their stock, to track where they are and even their health. Huge logistical exercises say, building a submarine become easier if you can track where all the parts are. In agriculture, it can be used to monitor soil moisture, to know when to water. Its how well have smart, interconnected cities. But its also already happening in homes. You might have a smart fridge, your kids might have smart toys. Gradually more and more things will be connected to the internet. How do I get 5G? You need both 5G coverage, and a 5G device. There is already some 5G coverage in place. Telstra projects that by the end of next month there will be patches of coverage around the city, at Thebarton, and other spots here and there. Optus will follow, and said in February that Old Reynella, Reynella East and Trott Park would be among the first suburbs to get access. There is a lot of space between those patches where 4G is still the network and in some places, 3G. Next week, Samsung will release a 5G smartphone, while Telstra will release a hub, or hotspot. Telstra chief executive Andy Penn said that was the moment 5G would become a reality. This is just the start, he said.

Almost one in three Australians are receiving lower download speeds than promised by providers, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.The ACCC's report found seven per cent of users were receiving less than half the top speed on offer by their internet service provider. Chairman Rod Simms blames poor quality infrastructure for the results, saying ISPs had a lot more work to do to improve broadband speeds.

The rollout of 5G coverage is ongoing and as 5G develops there will be more devices and more technologies to come. If you get a 5G-enabled device, it will seek out the 5G network and if it finds it, youre in. 5G will appear on your phone where 4G does now. But dont worry if you dont have a 5G device youll still get 4G, in the same way you sometimes now drop down to 3G. So youll be able to do everything youre doing now. Telstra says the new base stations will help make 4G faster, too. Will I still need broadband? 5G has been called the NBN killer. Australias beleaguered National Broadband Network has left a swathe of frustrated people in its wake. The dream of a super-fast national internet quickly dissipated. There were compromises over the technology and there have been delays in rollouts and in connections. The speeds have been slower than promised. People have had issues with their landlines after getting connected. Now, more people may delay hooking up to the NBN until they see whether they can get by with 5G using their phone deal to connect all their streaming and smart devices. And many may realise they dont need the NBN at all. Some have referred to 5G as the equivalent of fibre to the phone. But dont ditch your home internet until youve done your research. What happened with Huawei? Technology giant Huawei is thought to be spying for the Chinese Government, so the Federal Government put the kybosh on them building the 5G network. Other countries have also limited the Huawei infiltration. Australia is already riddled with Huawei gear; people have Huawei phones and tablets, and Huawei have built all sorts of communication systems, mobile phone base stations, and antennas.

The Trump administration is considering Huawei-like sanctions on Chinese video surveillance firm Hikvision, media reports show, deepening worries that trade friction between the world's top two economies could be further inflamed. Ed Giles reports.

But the 5G network would pose a massive risk to Australia if it was compromised. An enemy could use it not just for spying, but to take down critical infrastructure. The Australian Signals Directorate chief Mike Burgess has warned that 5G will give people control over everything from power to water supplies. An operative could wreak devastation on the financial markets. Huawei, of course, denies any espionage accusations. It says it wouldnt let anyone break local laws or put in backdoors ways for the Chinese government to access data. Does it matter? Banning Huawei matters in the trying-not-to-annoy our biggest trading partner stakes, but it also might matter for 5G. There are not a lot of people who can do such an enormous job, and do it cost effectively. Other companies are now stepping up, and they might be slower and more expensive. The upshot? 5G is coming, youll probably end up using it, and chances are youll think about the 4G world the way we now think about the days before Netflix. https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/prepare-for-nextgeneration-internet-5g-the-advertiser-explains-what-it-is/news-story/ccd83f898b2a173245168b4c3909be3f?from=htc_rss

[indigozeal]

In the April 28, 2000 issue of Dreamcast Magazine (available at segaretro.org), Illbleed’s director Shinya Nishigaki (and Sega producer Hiroaki Kojima) gave an interview following the game’s announcement on Nishigaki’s hopes and inspirations.  Naturally, the workings of the mind behind Illbleed are too big and beautiful to be contained in just one language, so a translation of this interview is below.

Hat tip to humanofmicomage, who alerted me to the existence of this interview with their excellent barrage of Illbleed content last October.

Just before the latest Tokyo Game Show, Sega's "hidden gem" Illbleed was suddenly announced.  The material on the title released for gaming magazines bills Illbleed as "the world's first haunted house game!"  The game's genre poses many questions: just what kind of game is this? Illbleed was created by Climax Graphics, the studio behind the rousing action-adventure title Blue Stinger, which made extensive use of cinematic techniques. The game featured sensational action scenes, puzzles that toyed with players  -  and a pervasive smorgasbord of explosive nonsense "catering to dumbasses" at every turn. Does Illbleed carry on that tradition?  We held an urgent interview with the supreme commander of the game, Climax Graphics president Shinya Nishigaki, and Sega Enterprises producer Hirokazu Kojima to get some answers.

What is a "haunted house game"?

- Illbleed has been called "Sega's hidden gem."  It really was announced out of the blue.

Nishigaki: Everyone who's visited our homepage has been getting excited, saying on the bulletin boards that "it looks like they're announcing something on March 25," talking about how we've gotta be up to something.  We're sorry for announcing it on our webpage before we even told you guys at Dreamcast Magazine.  (laughs)  But we wanted everyone to see the details in a publication like Dreamcast Magazine, so we started by announcing just the title and genre.

- On the Sega BBS, too, there seems to have been a big response, with people asking, "What is a 'haunted house game'?".

Nishigaki: We've had a lot of people access our homepage, too!  So as our initial hook, we think it's gotten us off to a pretty good start.

- That aside, "haunted house game" is a pretty cool name for a genre.

Nishigaki: With this game, when we're asked "what's the name of your genre?", for the time being, we're saying "virtual horror land," but "haunted house game" naturally rolls off the tongue more easily!   "Horror land" has a special meaning, though, since the stages are really big!  The game will take over 10 hours to complete.  So to explain the "haunted house game" concept simply, it's a game where you can enjoy exploring the world's longest haunted house!

- But how was it that you decided to take a "haunted house" theme as your inspiration?

Nishigaki: First, the only thing we didn't do with Blue Stinger was horror.  With the trends at the time, there were a lot of titles like Resident Evil in the adventure genre that were dealing with horror themes, so we wanted to set ourselves apart.  But there was always that feeling that "if we could do it all over again, we'd want to do something with horror"!  Also, one of Blue Stinger's themes was "wit" or "humor"  -  but there's a huge personal component to that. Because everyone's idea of what's funny is different, you see. But everyone has the same idea of what's scary  -  you're walking in the middle of the night and bam! someone pops out at you, that's scary. It's universal human psychology, right?  We didn't want to leave out the "mass-market entertainment" part from our approach; we decided to take a big-bandwagon approach to "horror" as our theme. [Note:I believe this is the first time in recorded history that anyone accused Blue Stinger of possessing wit.]

- There're differences in the degree of fright, but everyone is afraid of stuff that's scary.  Your approach of trying to create a piece of mass-market entertainment is consistent with your previous game, isn't it?

Nishigaki: Yes, it is!  I've always wanted to create "entertainment-oriented" work  -  things that everyone can enjoy on their weekends or free time.  And now, horror titles are becoming all the rage  -  like with The Ring and Rasen.  And there's now a renaissance in horror movies that began with Scream.  It's like we're in the middle of the second coming of the '80s horror boom that gave us movies like Friday the 13th  -  a new generation of horror.

- Horror certainly is becoming more popular.

Nishigaki: To be honest, we went back and forth over whether we should make a sequel to Blue Stinger, but, of course, we ultimately decided to go with something original, and make it horror.  And so, everyone attended a camp together, held discussions, and the conclusion we came to was: "We knew it: horror is TOUGH!".  Tackling such a well-worn theme made it all the more difficult to bring something new to the table. So we researched stuff like human psychology and approaches to horror.  We would start watching horror movies in the middle of the morning; we'd go around to see haunted houses...  For example, we'd go, what about the Super Scary Labyrinth of Fear at Fuji-Q Highland [amusement park]  -  isn't that a haunted house; what about that?  Around summer of last year, our staff got to talking about "what would a haunted house that took 45 whole minutes to go through be like?", and so we went.  Six men, together.  (laughs)  And it was really, really scary.  After that, we got the idea to create a haunted house incorporating all the tricks of the '80s horror movie trade  -  one that could be experienced through a game. [Note: "Super Scary Labyrinth of Fear" is the English name given to the Fuji-Q Highland attraction; it doesn't mesh with the attraction's Japanese name, which translates to something like the "Condemned Ward of Terror."  There is an attraction called the "Bloodthirsty Ward" within the Labyrinth, but the "Labyrinth of Fear" is the English name given to the "world's longest haunted house."  You guys figure it out.]

We've got it all in this game!

Kojima: I have to wonder if the nature of games that sell hasn't been changing recently.  In other words, I feel that we might all be getting tired of the same old games.  Right now, the games that are selling are offering material that is extremely new. Illbleed also starts out as a "horror adventure," but there are so many of those games, aren't there?  That's why something we're creating something new that sets itself apart from them  -  in other words, a "haunted house game"!

Nishigaki: Ultimately, while other titles have haunted-house elements, we decided to take it the next level.  In other words, we decided to create a game that was an adventure set in this ultimate haunted house that cost 55 billion yen to build  -  something that could never exist in real life.

- In a game, you can create as elaborate a haunted house as you like, right?

Nishigaki: Because your budget can be as large as you like!  In the game, I mean.  (laughs)  The traps are awesome, too.

Kojima: With rooms that can move at 150 km/hr and stuff.  (laughs)

Nishigaki: We have a lot of traps like that in the game that couldn't possibly exist in reality.  But we did do a good deal of research on actual haunted houses and did use them as a reference!  For example, haunted houses are dark, but you can kind of make out your surroundings, right?  And since you can see, you can spot places that look suspicious  -  you think, "it looks like something's gonna come from over there."  When it does happen like you expected, you think, "Whoa, I knew it!"  -  and when nothing happens, you let out a sigh of relief!  We studied the psychology of haunted houses and how they let you savor that sort of anticipation.  I think we did a good job of flowcharting that process to create our game system.

- That's awesome!  So you really did create the system from scratch?

Nishigaki: It's not as simple as setting Blue Stinger in a haunted house!  Of course, we incorporated the know-how we gleaned from working on Blue Stinger and the "catering to dumbasses" atmosphere, but the system had to be made totally from scratch.

A game system created from the ground up

Kojima: For example, when people are scared, their heart rate goes up, right?  That's how it is in the game, too  -  if you see too many shock events, your heart will start racing, and you'll faint or die of shock.

Nishigaki: Also, the secretion of adrenaline sharpens our senses  -  but we have only so much adrenaline.

Kojima: The game features an item called a "Horror Monitor"; one of the objects of the game is to use it effectively to detect the traps that are hidden all around you. So if something is suspicious, or if you think that it looks like a monster is going to appear from somewhere, you can look for a hint on the "four-senses sensor" on the upper part of the screen.  However, you need adrenaline to use the Horror Monitor.

Nishigaki: In RPG terms, it's like MP.  So when you use the Horror Monitor, it makes it easier to progress, but later on in the game, you can run out of adrenaline, and the game becomes a test of fortitude.  Also, we used motion capture to portray characters who are panicking or about to die with we call a "weak-in-the-knees motion."  Of course, just like with horror movies, you can also enjoy looking at the girls in the cast when they're frightened, right?

- Naturally, if you're panicking, it hampers you gameplaywise, right?

Nishigaki: It does.  If you're scared, you won't be able to stand up out of fright, but if you anticipate enemy encounters, that won't happen.  If you do a great job of engaging the enemy, you get more of a sense of catharsis than you do in Blue Stinger.

Kojima: So there are indeed weapons that appear and whatnot.

Nishigaki: When you're surprised by a ghost or monster in a haunted house, you get angry, don't you?  You want to kill it, don't you?  Well, here, you can.  (laughs)  But you can't kill everything; you also have to deal with the terrifying prospect that if you're surprised, the monster might kill you.

Kojima: Even if you die, though, if you have life insurance, you'll come back to life.

- So complicated!  (laughs)

Nishigaki: If you're bleeding, you'll be OK if you get a transfusion, you know  -  but if you don't know your blood type, it's a big problem.  There are a lot of systems like that.  There's also an element of puzzle-solving.  Each stage has a particular objective: you have to solve the mystery of the grudge of someone who was murdered hundreds of years ago, or a soldier who went missing and was killed in action  -  figure out why they're attacking people.  But because it's a game from Climax, there's just a continuous parade of utter mixed-up nonsense that occurs.  (laughs)  In Blue Stinger, you piss, you change into Santa Claus, etc., right?  There's just a steady stream of stuff like that. [Note: The allusions to life insurance and transfusions refer to systems that were excised from the final game; references to them, however, can be found in UI elements on the game disk.]

- In Blue Stinger, there was a lot of concern voiced about the "changing camera perspective."  What about this game?

Nishigaki: Much was said about the camera perspectives; they were improved for Blue Stinger's overseas release  -  so that the player could choose the perspective used.  I don't know what we'll be going with for this game, but there'll be no stress when it comes to the camera.  We've learned a lot from all of you.

- Ahh, we're almost out of time.  For our final question, do you have any words for our readers?  If you do, make it quick!  (laughs)

Kojima: Well, in any case, we have a lot of traps waiting for you.  We have a lot of promotional events in mind for the game, too.

- You're gonna build a Real-Life Illbleed in an actual amusement park or something?  Right next to Joypolis [a Japanese amusement park chain].

Kojima: That'd be interesting!  (laughs)  But honestly, I think this will be a really scary, fun game, and I hope everyone's looking forward to it.

Nishigaki: No one dies in real haunted houses, of course!  But in Illbleed, there's the sense that people really do die if they're attacked by creatures, and the fear that you might die if you're ambushed by the traps.  Normally, such a haunted house would cost too much money and could never be built, but in a video game, you can be as extravagant as you like, right?  So you see, we have a 55 billion-yen budget!  (laughs)

[Captions on article photos:]

Illbleed's mascot Dummyman: Dummyman is the Mickey Mouse of Illbleed.  He sometimes attacks visitors as an enemy  -   ironic, considering that he also gives them a warm welcome after the end of a stage!

Blue Stinger: Climax Graphics' debut title. An action-adventure set in the near future, the game was renowned for sensational action scenes that made extensive use of cinematic techniques and a smorgasbord of nonsense "catering to dumbasses."  

Climax Graphics Home Page: Illbleed's title and genre were first announced on Climax Graphics' official site.  The Illbleed promo video shown at the Tokyo Game Show can also currently be downloaded here (but only by PCs).  http://www.cgstudio.co.jp

Kemco's late-era Famicom titles: The concept of "the fear of being killed by monsters" as depicted in Illbleed is said to be strongly influenced by Western games such as The Uninvited and Déjà Vu released by Kemco in the waning days of the 8-bit era.

Shinya Nishigaki (Climax Graphics): President & CEO of Climax Graphics. Broke away from Climax to found Climax Graphics.  Known for Blue Stinger.  Also renowned for his extensive knowledge of Hollywood movies.

Hiroaki Kojima (Sega Enterprises): Producer with Sega Enterprises. Has previously worked on NFL2K, NBA2K, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, and more. Not directly involved with Illbleed but is supporting Nishigaki from behind the scenes.

Incidentally, there's a short article on the page following the interview analyzing how Illbleed uses its game mechanics to convey a horror atmosphere, and it includes a couple isolated quotes from Nishigaki and Kojima about the possibility of escaping the park:

Kojima: There are so-called "emergency exits" where visitors who are too scared to stay can give up and leave  -  but I don't whether or not they'll necessarily be able to actually get out!

Nishigaki: The emergency exits might also be traps.   There's a second layer there.  Take even Dummyman, who gives the player a warm welcome  -  you never know when he's going to turn on you.  I think that's another intriguing aspect of the game!

[shirlleycoyle]

There’s Growing Evidence That the Universe Is Connected by Giant Structures

The Milky Way, the galaxy we live in, is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies strewn across the universe. Their variety is stunning: spirals, ring galaxies shaped like star-studded loops, and ancient galaxies that outshine virtually everything else in the universe.

But despite their differences, and the mind-boggling distances between them, scientists have noticed that some galaxies move together in odd and often unexplained patterns, as if they are connected by a vast unseen force.

Galaxies within a few million light years of each other can gravitationally affect each other in predictable ways, but scientists have observed mysterious patterns between distant galaxies that transcend those local interactions.

These discoveries hint at the enigmatic influence of so-called “large-scale structures” which, as the name suggests, are the biggest known objects in the universe. These dim structures are made of hydrogen gas and dark matter and take the form of filaments, sheets, and knots that link galaxies in a vast network called the cosmic web. We know these structures have major implications for the evolution and movements of galaxies, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of the root dynamics driving them.

Scientists are eager to acquire these new details because some of these phenomena challenge the most fundamental ideas about the universe.

“That’s actually the reason why everybody is always studying these large-scale structures,” Noam Libeskind, a cosmographer at the Leibniz-Institut for Astrophysics (AIP) in Germany, in a call. “It’s a way of probing and constraining the laws of gravity and the nature of matter, dark matter, dark energy, and the universe.”

Why are distant galaxies moving in unison?

Galaxies tend to form gravitationally bound clusters that belong to even larger superclusters. Earth’s long-form cosmic address, for instance, would have to note that the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, a gang of several dozen galaxies. The Local Group is inside the Virgo cluster, containing more than 1,000 galaxies.

On these more “local” scales, galaxies frequently mess with each other’s spins, shapes, and angular velocities. Sometimes, one galaxy even eats another, an event known as galactic cannibalism. But some galaxies show dynamic links across distances too great to be explained by their individual gravitational fields.

For instance, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal in October found that hundreds of galaxies were rotating in sync with the motions of galaxies that were tens of millions of light years away.

“This discovery is quite new and unexpected,” said lead author Joon Hyeop Lee, an astronomer at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, in an email. “I have never seen any previous report of observations or any prediction from numerical simulations, exactly related to this phenomenon.”

Lee and his colleagues studied 445 galaxies within 400 million light years of Earth, and noticed that many of the ones rotating in a direction toward Earth had neighbors that were moving toward Earth, while those that were rotating in the opposite direction had neighbors moving away from Earth.

“The observed coherence must have some relationship with large-scale structures, because it is impossible that the galaxies separated by six megaparsecs [roughly 20 million light years] directly interact with each other,” Lee said.

Lee and his colleagues suggest that the synchronized galaxies may be embedded along the same large-scale structure, which is very slowly rotating in a counter-clockwise direction. That underlying dynamic could cause the kind of coherence between the rotation of the studied galaxies and the motions of their neighbors, though he cautioned that it will take a lot more research to corroborate his team’s findings and conclusions.

While this particular iteration of weirdly synced up galaxies is novel, scientists have observed odd coherences between galaxies at even more mind-boggling distances. In 2014, a team observed curious alignments of supermassive black holes at the cores of quasars, which are ancient ultra-luminous galaxies, that stretch across billions of light years.

Led by Damien Hutsemékers, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium, the researchers were able to observe this eerie synchronicity by watching the universe when it was only a few billion years old, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The observations recorded the polarization of light from nearly 100 quasars, which the team then used to reconstruct the geometry and alignment of the black holes at their cores. The results showed that the rotation axes of 19 quasars in this group were parallel, despite the fact that they were separated by several billion light years.

The discovery, which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is an indicator that large-scale structures influenced the dynamics of galaxies across vast distances in the early universe.

“Galaxy spin axes are known to align with large-scale structures such as cosmic filaments but this occurs on smaller scales,” Hutsemékers said in an email, noting that theoretical studies have proposed some tentative explanations of this process.

“However, there is currently no explanation why the axes of quasars are aligned with the axis of the large group in which they are embedded,” he noted.

The truth behind synchronized galaxies could change everything

The secret of these synchronized galaxies may pose a threat to the cosmological principle, one of the basic assumptions about the universe. This principle states that the universe is basically uniform and homogenous at extremely large scales. But the “existence of correlations in quasar axes over such extreme scales would constitute a serious anomaly for the cosmological principle,” as Hutsemékers and his colleagues note in their study.

However, Hutsemékers’ cautioned that more of these structures would need to be spotted and studied to prove that this is a serious wrinkle in the cosmological principle. “Other similar structures are needed to confirm a real anomaly,” he said.

For the moment, the dynamics behind these quasar positions are not well understood because there are few observational techniques to refine them. “As far as large-scale alignments are concerned, we are essentially waiting for more data,” Hutsemékers’ said. “Such studies are statistical and a step forward would require a large amount of polarization data, not easy to gather with current instrumentation.”

Future radio telescopes, such as the Square Kilometre Array, might be able to probe these mysterious alignments in more detail.

“One of the great things about science is that you can have a model built with thousands of pieces of data but if one thing doesn’t stick it starts to crack. That crack either has to be sealed or it’s going to bring the whole house down.”

Quasar alignments are not the only hurdles that oddly synchronized galaxies have presented to established models of the universe. In fact, one of the most contentious debates in cosmology these days is centered around the unexpected way in which dwarf galaxies appear to become neatly aligned around larger host galaxies such as the Milky Way.

These satellite galaxies are currently a thorn in the side of what is known as the ΛCDM model, which is a theoretical timeline of the universe since the Big Bang. Simulations of the universe under the ΛCDM model predict that small satellite galaxies will end up in a swarm of random orbits around larger host galaxies.

But over the past decade, new observations have revealed that a huge chunk of the satellite galaxies around the Milky Way are synced up into one tidy orbital plane. At first, scientists wondered whether that simply meant something weird was going on with our own galaxy, but a similar plane of satellites was then observed around Andromeda.

The alarm bells really started ringing in 2015, when astronomers published observations of the same phenomenon a third time around Centaurus A, an elliptical galaxy about 10 million light years from the Milky Way.

This discovery “suggests that something is wrong with standard cosmological simulations,” according to a subsequent 2018 study in Science, led by Oliver Müller, an astronomer at the University of Strasbourg in France.

“At the moment, we have observed this at the three closest galaxies,” Müller said in a call. “Of course, you can always say that it’s only three, so it’s not statistical yet. But it shows that every time we have good data, we find it, so it could be universal.”

In a 2015 study, Libeskind and his colleagues suggested that filaments in the cosmic web might be guiding these organized galaxies, a process that could cohere with the ΛCDM model. Ultimately, though, there’s no conclusive answer to this dilemma yet.

“One of the great things about science is that you can have a model built with thousands of pieces of data but if one thing doesn’t stick it starts to crack,” said Libeskind. “That crack either has to be sealed or it’s going to bring the whole house down.”

The next generation of galaxy research

This tantalizing uncertainty has motivated astronomers like Marcel Pawlowski, a Schwarzschild Fellow at AIP and co-author on the 2018 Science study, to make this problem a focus of their research. Pawlowski is looking forward to data from the next generation of huge 30-meter class observatories that could show whether other big galaxies are surrounded by either isotropic or organized patterns of satellite galaxies.

“What we have to do now is expand our search to more distant satellite systems, and find satellite galaxies as well as measure their velocities,” said Pawlowski in a call.

“The field really advanced because of this debate going on in the literature,” Pawlowski added. “It’s been really good to see how the observational evidence became more and more solid.”

Whether it’s the strange motions of dwarf galaxies in our own galactic neighborhood or the eerie alignment of galaxies over millions or billions of light years, it’s clear that the dance moves of galaxies are an essential key to unlocking the large-scale structure of the universe.

The galaxies we see captured in static positions in beautiful deep-field shots are actually guided by many complex forces we don’t yet fully comprehend, including the cosmic web that undergirds the universe.

“What I really like about this stuff is just that we are still at the pioneering phase,” said Müller. “That’s super exciting.”

There’s Growing Evidence That the Universe Is Connected by Giant Structures syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[timespanner]

What is time?

We don't really know. Physically, time is an essential parameter that we seem to need to sort out configurations of matter and energy in our universe. We also need exactly 3 dimensions of space. For thousands of years, these four dimensions have circumscribed how we classify external events in nature. Some physicists in search of the 'Theory of Everything' have suggested that at the sub-atomic scale, many more 'dimensions' are needed to mathematically sort out how particles interact, and account for the various patterns they see at these scales.

Quantum mechanics sometimes plays havoc with our understanding of how events are ordered in time. At the atomic scale, past and future seem not to have much meaning because the mathematics suggest that much of the activity would appear the same way if matter moved backwards and forwards in time (provided that the so-called 'CPT' Theorem is satisfied). It is said that the direction of time has no real physical meaning for sub-atomic systems. It is only for large ensembles of particles that a direction for time emerges. This is very much like the concept of temperature which is meaningless for systems consisting of only a few particles. Like time, temperature is an emergent quality of nature defined only for large enough systems. In some sense, time may also be an emergent quality having no real existence in the quantum world of individual particles and systems.

Does time stop when you travel at the speed of light?

Since no matter can ever travel at exactly the speed of light, you are asking a hypothetical question. We know from experiment that the half-lives of unstable particles such as muons are prolonged in OUR reference frame by an amount predicted from their speeds by special relativity. So, by simple extrapolation, we expect that for particles moving at nearly the speed of light, their times are greatly increased so that 1 minute of their time might be weeks or months or even longer in our rest frame. So, time does 'stop' at relativistic speeds, but you have to get to practically the speed of light itself to get the most extreme situation.

What does light travel time have to do with looking into the past or future?

If an object is 5 billion light years distant you are seeing what it looked like 5 billion years ago. You cannot receive an image from an object that is later than its light travel distance. In other words, the light from the distant object that was emitted 4 billion years ago, is still on its way to us, and the light it emitted 6 billion years ago already passes us by over a billion years ago. You can never look into the future. Honest. You cannot see light from an object BEFORE it emitted the light.

Is it difficult to know what is happening now if all of our information is about the past ?

Yes. because light takes a finite time to travel from place to place, we never see things the way they are, but always the way they were some time ago. Astronomers hardly ever worry about what the universe looks like at this instant because this requires information we can never obtain. We can only deduce the current picture from our models. I know of no astronomical investigation that worries about what a distant galaxy we see a billion light years away, looks like today. There is no particular, question we can pose that would require this knowledge. In our solar system, where light travel times are no longer that an hour or two, we can be properly worried about what planets and asteroids are doing RIGHT NOW, because this could have some impact (sorry) on the Earth in the near future. For this we use the predicted orbits of the bodies and make forecasts.

Why can't matter travel back in time?

We don't know why nature seems to have a problem with this, but our reality seems to be predicated on the basis that no information can travel back in time. There is an exception.

A basic feature of modern physics a revealed by the equations used in quantum electrodynamics and announced by Baron von Stuckelberg and Richard Feynman back in the mid 1940's is that matter and anti-matter enjoy a peculiar time-reversal symmetry. A matter particle traveling forward in time between times T1 and T2, is MATHEMATICALLY equivalent to the same anti-matter particle traveling BACKWARD in time between T2 and T1.

[...]

If I could put myself in the same point in spacetime where I was yesterday at noon, would it still be yesterday at noon?

Yes... but it would involve time travel and Nature doesn't seem to want to play that game with us.