#to be a lot smaller by like a significant degree

[bethanythebogwitch]

I haven't talked reptiles in Wet Beast Wednesday in a while (and the first time I did it got like 9 notes) so I'll do it again with marine iguanas. Admittedly they're more amphibious than aquatic, but there's no Moist Beast Monday and I think they're cool so it'll have to do.

(Image: Doug Jones in The Shape of Water a marine iguana basking on a rock)

Marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) are large lizards native to the Galapagos Islands. They are unique for being the only extant lizards that spend time in the ocean. As of 2017, there are 11 distinct subspecies that are isolated from each other by the islands they live on. Occasionally a member of one subspecies will end up on the wrong island and produce hybrid offspring. Marine iguanas also can but very rarely do hybridize with the land iguanas of the Galapagos, with whom they are believed to share a common ancestor.

(Image: an iguana perched on a rock

Marine iguanas vary in size based on subspecies, with those from smaller islands reaching a smaller adult size. In general, they race from 12 to 56 cm (4.7 - 22 in) from snout to rear, with a tail ranging from 17 to 84 cm (6.7 - 33.1 in). Males are significantly larger than females, up to twice the weight and noticeably longer. Marine iguanas are robust, with relatively short limbs. Their leg bones are heavy, to provide ballast while swimming. Their tails are laterally flattened and provide propulsion for swimming. They have a row of spines down their backs that provide stability while swimming, similar to a fish's dorsal fin. Their feet have powerful claws and can be used to cling onto and push off of undersea rocks. Marine iguanas were noted by many explorers for their dark color, including Charles Darwin (who referred to them as "clumsy" and "disgusting"). This dark color helps them warm up quickly after diving in the sea.

(image: an iguana going for a swim)

A major feature of the marine iguana is its diet, which is a huge factor in their semiaquatic lifestyle. They feed almost exclusively on green and red algae that grown underwater. To reach the algae, females and smaller males browse the intertidal zone during low tide, while larger males and abnormally large females can swim out to the deeper subtidal zone to forage. They can spend an hour underwater one one breath and dive to 30 m (98 ft), but most dives are much shallower and shorter. Only the largest males swim offshore and dive to significant depths for their food. Because they are positively buoyant, divers must actively swim or cling onto rocks to stay underwater. Most individuals will return to the same spot for feeding and competition over feeding spots have been known to happen. Larger males that swim out for their food have the advantage of less competition for their feeding spots. The species has adapted to be able to fast or subsist on reduced for long periods. During El Nińo, where food supplies can be reduced for years, they will actually shrink, with even their bones getting shorter, then return to full size once the food supply is restored. Because they consume excess salt with their food, marine iguanas have developed the ability to filter the salt out of their blood and expel it through glands in their nostrils. The secreted salt can then be sneezed away. Juveliles spend the first few months of their life feeding on (WARNING: GROSS) the feces of older iguanas. This helps them develop the culture of symbiotic gut bacteria that helps them digest algae. In fact, their digestive systems are so specialized to algae that they can't switch diets.

(image: a marine iguana grazing on algae underwater)

As ectotherms (cold-blooded animals), marine iguanas need to keep themselves warm to survive. The water around the Galapagos is typically around 11-23 degrees C (52-75 F) while their preferred body temp is 35-39 C (95-102 F). This high preferred temperature helps with their digestion. To keep themselves warm, the iguanas spend a lot of their time basking in the sun, especially after swimming. They can also reduce their heart beats while cold to help prevent heat loss. Basking iguanas can cover large beaches. They live in colonies that usually range between 20 and 500 individuals but can sometimes get up to 1000 members. Their biomass to area ratio can be the highest of any reptile. While they are considered gregarious, they display no social behavior such a grooming. The closest they get to a group activity is sleeping next to each other to conserve heat at night. They also get along with other species, such as Darwin's finches, mockingbirds, and crabs who will pick parasites off their skin. Divers may allow cleaner fish to pick off bits of dead skin. Another lizard, the lava lizard, likes to visit colonies to hunt flies attracted to the iguanas. The iguanas allow the much smaller lizards to climb all over them. Marine iguanas often share beaches with Galapagos sea lions, who will occasionally allow the iguanas to climb over them.

(image: a group of iguanas basking together)

(image: a male marine iguana, identifiable by the rough scales on his head, with a lava lizard climbing on him)

During mating season, male iguanas stop being as chill with their neighbors, attempting to establish a territory and push other males out. They also change from their normal dark appearance to a much brighter coloration. Territories are usually bordered by rocks or crevasses and can be found next to each other in groups. Males will attempt to attract females to their territories while fighting other males to get access to their females. This behavior is called lekking. Females show a distinct preference for larger males and it is the largest males that are most successful at maintaining territories. Medium males are forced to patrol the edges of territories to try to pick up mates while small males often pretend to be female to sneak into another's territory and attempt to mate. Males with territories defend them with special displays where they will raise their dorsal spines and open their mouths while bobbing their heads around. If another male challenges the dominant, they will display at each other. If neither submits, a fight will start. Males fight by headbutting and trying to push each other around. These fights can last for hours and the participants will occasionally take breaks. In most cases, one will eventually display a submissive posture and retreat, though in a few cases the fight has escalated to biting and scratching. When courting a female, a male will nod at her and approach in a sideways walk. Smaller males without territories may also try mating forcibly. Females only mate once per year and will signal rejection to additional suitors by nodding at them.

(image: a male performing a territorial display)

(image: two males headbutting each other in a territorial battle)

Mating season usually lasts between December and March. Females will lay eggs about a month after mating. The eggs (usually 2 to 3 but sometimes up to 6) can collectively weigh up to a quarter of the mother's weight, which is very large for an iguana. They are laid well above the tide line and buried in sand or soil. In places with few good nesting sites, mothers will guard their eggs after hatching to make sure other females don't dig therm up to steal the spot. When females fight over nesting spots they are less disciplined than males and will quickly resort to biting. The eggs hatch after 3-4 months. Females reach sexual maturity after 3-5 years while males do so after 6-8 years. They live an average lifespan of 12 years, but can live up to 60.

(image: a female iguana digging her nest)

(image: a group of juveniles climbing on each other)

Marine iguanas are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, while a few populations are instead considered endangered. A major threat to them is warming seas, which can reduce the red and green algae populations and replace them with inedible brown algae, leading to starvation. Marine iguanas only have a few predators and most of them target juveniles or small adults. As a result, the adults demonstrate island tameness, a lack of wariness to potential predators. This has left them vulnerable to predators introduced by humans, such as dogs, cats, rats, and pigs. Despite these invasive predators being present for ver 100 years, they have not developed any anti-predator defenses against them, a phenomenon called ecological naïveté. They also do not fear humans and will allow tourists to approach them, which has led to injuries and the spread of human-introduced diseases. They are protected by laws of Ecuador and most of their range is in protected areas. Efforts to remove invasive predators have seen some benefit. They are difficult to keep in captivity due to their specialized diets, and they have never been bred in captivity.

(image: a male with his bright mating season coloration)

[thosearentcrimes]

The Achaemenid/First Persian Empire is kind of wild. At the time of its greatest conquests it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, by a significant amount. Like any good empire it's a triumph of logistics, of course, but what's unusual is the character of the logistics in question. The kinds of empire we're used to are generally either basically maritime (Roman, Spanish, British, American) or basically horselord (Xiongnu, Parthian, Mongol, American) or Chinese (special case, the general tendency for there to exist a Chinese Empire is impressive in its own right but relatively familiar).

The Achaemenid Empire touched a lot of seas and bodies of water (Indus, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Tigris and Euphrates, Red Sea, Nile, Mediterranean, Aegean and Bosporus, Black Sea, Caspian Sea) and certainly these would have been used to facilitate logistics to some degree (Persian invasions of Greece relied on naval support, for example), but it certainly seems like the fundamental lifeline of their state was their extensive system of roads. The Romans talk a big game about their road system but ultimately the major logistical corridors of the Roman state were maritime and riverine. The Inca Empire was similarly road-based, likewise a hilly/mountainous region, and is also extremely cool, but didn't last nearly as long and was much smaller.

Herodotus says: "There is nothing mortal that is faster than the system that the Persians have devised for sending messages. Apparently, they have horses and men posted at intervals along the route, the same number in total as the overall length in days of the journey, with a fresh horse and rider for every day of travel. Whatever the conditions—it may be snowing, raining, blazing hot, or dark—they never fail to complete their assigned journey in the fastest possible time. The first man passes his instructions on to the second, the second to the third, and so on." A different translation of a section of this passage is famously associated with the US postal service.

Herodotus may be wrong in the details because the actual intervals between adjacent waystations seem to have been on the order of 16-26km, a distance a rider could reach in an hour (and perhaps most relevantly, a pedestrian or army might reach in a day), and as such it's certainly plausible horses were changed more than daily, as is attested in later relay postal networks, but it's easily possible he was right about their incredible speed. A perhaps somewhat generous estimated speed of government messages along this route is ~230km/day, by analogy of the pirradazish to the Pony Express and barid systems. This would make them faster than Roman communications, though certainly we have to recognize that maritime transport is ultimately faster and more convenient for trade in bulk goods and food. All figures taken from H.P. Colburn, "Connectivity and Communication in the Achaemenid Empire" Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013).

That's so cool! It's several hundred BCE and they have a complex permanent relay system with stations every couple dozen km, on a system of roads running throughout an empire thousands of km from center to edge. Just for one road, like the Sardis-Susa section that the Greeks usually talk about, that's over a hundred stations, each with a stock of supplies, backup mounts and riders, accommodations, anything else they might need, and Sardis-Susa was just one possible road stretch among many. That's incredible! I wish we knew what the people who made it and ran it thought. What was the life of a gas station attendant waystation operator in the reign of Artaxerxes I like?

It's kind of tragic that the Achaemenid Empire has been marginalized historiographically for so long. Generally it was treated as significant for its invasions and meddling in Greece, for ending the Babylonian captivity, or for providing a ready-made empire for Alexander to take over. It's not nothing, other places and time periods end up with much less of an imprint on our contemporary understanding of the past. We know a lot of cool stuff. But I wish we had more reflections on Persia from within. Most of what we seem to have is reports from Greeks, fragmentary letters and steles, and precious few excavation sites.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Set Long-Term Goals

Consider this mind reframe when setting a long-term goal: Long-term goals are a string of short-term goals that work together to culminate in a more nuanced or lofty outcome.

In my opinion, I believe that long-term goals should be determined based on how they positively support a certain aspect of your lifestyle, rather than designed with a strict plan in mind (at least for 5-10 year goals). As we know from the past few years, our long-term plans can easily fall through due to factors out of our control.

So, with these variables in mind, I would say you need to split your long-term goals into 2 main categories:

Evergreen Goals: These goals are fairly straightforward and rely more on an input-output method to achieve them vs. many external variables or contextual success attached to them. Examples of evergreen goals would be saving for retirement or maintaining a healthy body/weight loss/getting a certain certificate training or degree (not in a specific program, but in a general field), and acquiring items like a designer bag. You're in control of whether you put a certain amount of money into an investment portfolio, how much energy you consume in a day, and how much time you spend filling out applications/studying material. While external factors play a role, the success of these goals heavily depends on your determination, consistency, and focus. You just have to play the long game vs. the short-term game to see the results you desire.

Dynamic Goals: These goals take a lot of external factors into account and can heavily rely on many different parties to ensure you succeed. These long-term goals can be to work in a certain type of position or company, graduate with a specific degree or from a specific university/program, live in your dream home, become a successful business owner/author, etc, find a specific type of partner, etc. While self-betterment paired with consistent, strategic, and focused effort play a significant (majority) factor in these goals, you still need the stars to align for these goals to actualize in the way you currently envision them in your mind.

So, when creating long-term goals (especially dynamic goals), set these 5-10-year goals with the intention to be unrelenting about the outcome and flexible about the path to achieving them. Envision the result you desire and why that would improve your life/happiness. Then, work your way backward to the smaller milestone goals you would need to achieve. Once you get to the first major "milestone" that needs to be completed, devise creative and strategic solutions to begin working on this shorter-term goal. Make your 5-year goal into a series of 5 1-year plans. Reverse engineer to embrace the endless possibilities and potential for your success.

Hope this helps xx

[waxingrunes]

you said in a tiktok somewhere about sirus loving to hold 2 of remus' fingers and it got me curious, do you think sirius would ever experience littlespace and if so how do you think remus would be about it?

Personally, I have never seen Sirius as someone who would experience little space, but I do think that it’s possible he could experience regression to a degree.

It’s no secret Sirius grew up with one of the starkest upbringings that battered his mental health into what it was as a teenager and onwards. Being Sirius, meant he grew up with a heavy load of expectations saddled to his back and a strict image to maintain. Yes, he came into his own within early adulthood and has always been somewhat of a rogue against his family name, but that doesn’t diminish the fine line of teachings he’s had nor the extensive abuse he’s suffered. He is a smart man, a resourceful and practical one who can make good of most situations once given time to think about it. I don’t think he relies on a lot of people to get what he wants, partly because he’s never allowed himself to and because he seldom trusts. I think Sirius’ trust issues could even delve deeper than Remus’ but that’s a conversation for another day.

Considering the above, he is someone who has a lot of trauma and that’s putting it lightly. He has a natural charisma about him but there’s also a lot of masking that goes unnoticed by the many, but not by Remus. When Remus came along and their friendship/relationship began to blossom, I think Remus was the one person that simultaneously dislodged and lodged something into his brain. Remus is someone who he quickly learned he didn’t have to be anything that he didn’t want to be around and with that, came comfort. There is argument for James being a similar totem for this but as Remus is a different kind of love I think it’s more significant.

Remus is someone who, despite coming with his own difficulties, anxieties and flapping from time to time (including a very mild temper issue) is overall a grounding presence. He is calm and doesn’t need to take up space by volume, and has a more quiet confidence to him. In the right lights, a quiet authority too. Sirius has always felt like Remus could deflate him with a look, calm him with a touch and be that fixed north point on his compass towards home. Sirius knows Remus has him in a way he’s never felt with a romantic partner before. He can be his base self and truly unmask around this man which in turn brings unparalleled ease of physical and mental rest.

So, this is why I believe Sirius can and likes to regress every so often. He will slip into a submissive place of being pliant and alleviated of any worries, allowing Remus to physically take charge of what’s happening. I believe he will simply seek that umbrella of comfort and protection he finds in his Moony (he strictly calls Remus by this name, Moony, when he’s in that state) and lean into the warmth, allowing Remus to take charge of him for however long he needs that respite for. I wanted to reflect that on a superficial level with that two finger hold because I think it shows the innocence that comes with Sirius when he’s in this state. He doesn’t want anything else, other than to be cared for by his Moony and Remus will do everything and more by instinct because he knows exactly what he needs. Sirius will have certain telltale signs when he’s having one of these episodes or days, and Remus has learned them carefully so he can adjust his attention and behaviour accordingly. It’s something that would’ve been discussed as his mental capacity would be definitely altered.

Little space is full regression to a considerably lower age which I don’t necessarily think he does, but regression to a mentally smaller, perhaps more vacant version of himself where he isn’t exactly as present as he would be normally, I think is very likely.

[philosophicalconservatism]

The Sex College Attendance Gap.

There has been a lot of concern and confusion over numbers which show women now attending university at higher rates than men. But there is a core reason for this phenomena which should not be a mystery to us. Women as a group, according to psychometric testing, tend to be more agreeable; they tend to “go with the flow” and are less likely to step out of the margins of what is socially expected. Now over the last several decades (beginning in the latter half of the 20th century) certain parties began to promote the idea that the university should become the default destination of essentially every American young person, in the name of "equality". College was to become just as natural and automatic for the average American citizen as elementary level education, even if it meant diluting the quality of a university education. It was to become a normal baseline, socially expected activity.

In times past, the formulation of career goals preceded one's desire to attend college (college was a means to an end) but now the desire to attend college preceded the formulation of individual career goals. That fact in itself began to alter the nature of these institutions. This was not the university of yesteryear defined by a finite number of high skilled, high demand, practical majors or specializations. Now the palette of choices would be expanded endlessly to accommodate every possible whimsical interest in order to accommodate a student body that was increasingly attending university just for the sake of attending.

If we relate this overall trend to what we stated above about the natural tendencies of females as a group, things begin to become more clear. If attending college becomes a normal baseline, socially expected activity, women will tend to just naturally flow into it, and will do so more consistently than men. What are the consequences of this? Well that is unclear at this point. Financially, young women tend to take on a substantial amount of debt, more so than even their male university counterparts, yet they tend to choose lower paying majors (or non-paying majors such as Women’s Studies). Socially, some wonder whether the perceived prestige of a college degree will cause women to limit their romantic and marital choices, in which case we will obviously have a large number of college educated women chasing a much smaller number of college educated men.

The full significance of this trend remains to be seen.

[earthstellar]

Caminus is a disabled Titan and I love him

His physical body has been completely separated into parts and fully utilised to the maximum possible degree for the sake of his Citizens

He was never going to be able to be fully repaired in the first place, and instead of even trying, he decided to put all of his remaining energy and resources into entering a permanent physical dormancy so his people would have somewhere to live and thrive

The effort it takes him to keep himself operational enough to provide the basics for his Citizens means that the strain severely impacts his remaining cognitive capacity and communicative ability

The Camiens realise the extent of Caminus' love for them, the extent of his devotion to his people being so great that he has given them every physical and mental part of himself to build upon and thrive

Even if those parts were already damaged upon arrival, it doesn't matter-- Caminus fulfils his duty into perpetuity

The most important thing the Camiens derive from Caminus himself is not fuel or power or infrastructure, but his eternal love

He has imbued his people with his creativity, curiosity, a more spiritual approach to philosophy, a cultural emphasis on friendship and mutual aid borne out of a need for resource conservation-- Thus providing environmental and resource awareness via his very state of being

We don't know much about Caminus as a person, aside from his heartbreak at the betrayal of Life Maximo and how the fallout from that was enough to send him away from Cybertron and leave Metroplex behind

But I think we can take some reasonable guesses from what we know of him through the optics of his Citizens and from what we know of his actions in general, and say that Caminus is--at his very core--devoted, loving, creative, sensitive, strong

And he is very much a disabled character. The fact that he is physically and mentally disabled is a critical part of why the Camien culture is the way it is, informed how this society developed, and even lent quite a bit to the creation/revival of Cityspeaking as an art form, which allowed him by proxy to help Metroplex from afar even while largely dormant himself

I don't see Caminus himself discussed very often, but he is absolutely one of my favourite characters

A Titan who brought an entire people and civilisation into existence, while also being physically and cognitively disabled.

He is never repaired. He cannot be repaired.

And that is fine; His love for his people is undying. His spark continues to spin, hidden far below the surface, for as long as love itself can live-- Far beyond any physical or metal tolerances, Caminus loves his people.

Forever.

And even without repairs, that is enough for the spark of a Titan.

(This isn't to romanticise the state of his health and his difficulties, but rather, is to highlight that his personal motivation is primarily his love for his people.)

Being disabled does not stop anyone from loving.

And we actually get to see that with Caminus!

In a lot of media, disabled characters are often highlighted for what they don't have, rather than what they do have and who they actually are as people.

The way Caminus is portrayed, his disabilities are critical to not just his own story but to the stories of all Camien people in one way or another. His influence and the impact of his state of health is massive.

But we also get to know who Caminus is, as a person. He values connections with others, he is loyal, creative, caring, and so on. He has significant compassion and dedication towards smaller beings, and values life. He had close relationships with his respective Prime and his "brother" (Metroplex).

I just really like Caminus a lot, idk I'm at work so this is probably not as coherent as I'd like lmao

[moonlit-tulip]

What's your favorite ebook-compatible reading software? Firefox EPUBReader isn't great, but I'm not what, if anything, works better.

Very short answer: for EPUBs, on Windows I use and recommend the Calibre reader, and on iOS I use Marvin but it's dying and no longer downloadable so my fallback recommendation is the native Apple Books app; for PDFs, on Windows I use Sumatra, and on iOS I use GoodReader; for CBZs, I use CDisplayEx on Windows and YACReader on iOS; and I don't use other platforms very often, so I can't speak as authoritatively about those, although Calibre's reader is cross-platform for Windows/Mac/Linux, and YACReader for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, so they can serve as at least a minimum baseline of quality against which alternatives can be compared for those platforms.

Longer answer:

First off, I will say: yeah, Firefox EPUBReader isn't great. Neither, really, are most ebook readers. I have yet to find a single one that I'm fully satisfied with. I have an in-progress project to make one that I'm fully satisfied with, but it's been slow, probably isn't going to hit 1.0.0 release before next year at current rates, and isn't going to be actually definitively the best reader on the market for probably months or years post-release even assuming I succeed in my plans to keep up its development. So, for now, selection-of-ebook-readers tends to be very much a matter of choosing the best among a variety of imperfect options.

Formats-wise, there are a lot of ebook formats, but I'm going to collapse my answers down to focusing on just three, for simplicity. Namely: EPUB, PDF, and CBZ.

EPUB is the best representative of the general "reflowable-text ebook designed to display well on a wide variety of screens" genre. Other formats of similar nature exist—Kindle's MOBI and AZW3 formats, for instance (the latter of which is, in essence, just an EPUB in a proprietary Amazon wrapper)—but conversion between formats-in-this-broad-genre is generally pretty easy and not excessively lossy, so you're generally safe to convert to EPUB as needed if you've got different formats-in-this-genre and a reader that doesn't support those formats directly. (And it's rare for a program made by anyone other than Amazon to work for non-EPUB formats-in-this-genre and not for EPUBs.)

PDF is a pretty unique / distinctive format without any widely-used alternatives I'm aware of, unless you count AZW4 (which is a PDF in a proprietary Amazon wrapper). It's the best format I'm aware of for representations of books with rigid non-reflowable text-formatting, as with e.g. TTRPG rulebooks which do complicated things with their art-inserts and sidebars.

And CBZ serves here as a stand-in for the general category of "bunch of images in an archive file of some sort, ordered by filename", which is a common format for comics. CBZ is zip-based, CBR is RAR-based, CB7 is 7-zip-based, et cetera; but they're easy to convert between one another just by extracting one and then re-archiving it in one's preferred format, and CBZ is the most commonly distributed and the most commonly supported by readers, so it's the one I'm going to focus on.

With those prefaces out of the way, here are my comprehensive answers by (platform, format) pair:

Browser, EPUB

I'm unaware of any good currently-available browser-based readers for any of the big ebook formats. I've tried out EPUBReader for Firefox, as well as some other smaller Firefox-based reader extensions, and none of them have impressed me. I haven't tested any Chrome-based readers particularly extensively, but based on some superficial testing I don't have the sense that options are particularly great there either.

This state of affairs feels intuitively wrong to me. The browser is, in a significant sense, the natural home for EPUB-like reflowable-text ebooks, to a greater degree than it's the natural home for a great many of the other things people manage to warp it into being used for; after all, EPUBs are underlyingly made of HTML-file-trees. My own reader-in-progress will be browser-based. But nonetheless, for now, my advice for browser-based readers boils down to "don't use them unless you really need to".

If you do have to use one, EPUBReader is the best extension-based one I've encountered. I have yet to find a good non-extension-based website-based one, but am currently actively in the market for such a thing for slightly-high-context reasons I'll put in the tags.

Browser, PDF

Firefox and Chrome both have built-in PDF readers which are, like, basically functional and fine, even if not actively notably-good. I'm unaware of any browser-based PDF-reading options better than those two.

Browser, CBZ

If there exist any good options here, I'm not aware of them.

Windows, EPUB

Calibre's reader is, unfortunately, the best on the market right now. It doesn't have a very good scrolled display mode, which is a mark against it by my standards, and it's a bit slow to open books and has a general sense of background-clunkiness to its UI, but in terms of the quality with which it displays its content in paginated mode—including relatively-uncommon sorts of content that most readers get wrong, like vertical text—it's pretty unparalleled, and moreover it's got a generally wider range of features and UI-customization options than most readers offer. So overall it's my top recommendation on most axes, despite my issues with it.

There's also Sigil. I very emphatically don't actually recommend Sigil as a reader for most purposes—it's marketed as an EPUB editor, lacks various features one would want in a reader, and has a much higher-clutter UI than one would generally want in a reader—but its preview pane's display engine is even more powerful than Calibre's for certain purposes—it can successfully handle EPUBs which contain video content, for instance, which Calibre falls down on—so it can be a useful backup to have on hand for cases where Calibre's display-capabilities break down.

Windows, PDF

I use SumatraPDF and think it's pretty good. It's very much built for reading, rather than editing / formfilling / etc.; it's fast-to-launch, fast-to-load-pages, not too hard to configure to look nice on most PDFs, and generally lightweight in its UI.

When I need to do fancier things, I fall back on Adobe Reader, which is much more clunky on pretty much every axis for purposes of reading but which supports form-filling and suchlike pretty comprehensively.

(But I haven't explored this field in huge amounts of depth; plausibly there exist better options that I'm unaware of, particularly on the Adobe-reader-ish side of things. (I'd be a bit more surprised if there were something better than SumatraPDF within its niche, for Windows, and very interested in hearing about any such thing if it does exist.))

Windows, CBZ

My usual CBZ-reader for day-to-day use—which I also use for PDF-based comics, since it has various features which are better than SumatraPDF for the comic-reading use case in particular—is an ancient one called CDisplayEx which, despite its age, still manages to be a solid contender for best in its field; it's reasonably performant, it has most of the features I need (good handling of spreads, a toggle for left-to-right versus right-to-left reading, a good set of options for setting how the pages are fit into the monitor, the ability to force it forward by just one page when it's otherwise in two-page mode, et cetera), and in general it's a solid functional bit of software, at least by the standards of its field.

The reason I describe CDisplayEx as only "a solid contender for" best in its field, though, is: recently I had cause to try out YACReader, a reader I tried years ago on Windows and dismissed at the time, on Linux; and it was actually really good, like basically as good as CDisplayEx is on Windows. I haven't tried the more recent versions of YACReader on Windows directly, yet; but it seems pretty plausible that my issues with the older version are now resolved, that the modern Windows version is comparable to the Linux version, and therefore that it's on basically the same level as CDisplayEx quality-wise.

Mac, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

I don't use Mac often enough to have opinions here beyond "start with whatever cross-platform thing is good elsewhere, as a baseline, and go on from there". Don't settle for any EPUB reader on Mac worse than the Calibre one, since Calibre works on Mac. (I've heard vague good things about Apple's native one; maybe it's actually a viable option?) Don't settle for any CBZ reader on Mac worse than YACReader, since YACReader works on Mac. Et cetera. (For PDFs I don't have any advice on what to use even as baseline, unfortunately; for whatever reason, PDF readers, or at least the better ones, seem to tend not to be natively cross-platform.)

Linux, EPUB

For the most part, my advice is the same as Windows: just go with the Calibre reader (and maybe use Sigil as a backup for edge cases). However, if you, like me, prefer scrolled EPUB-reading over paginated EPUB-reading, I'd also suggest checking out Foliate; while it's less powerful than the Calibre reader overall, with fewer features and more propensity towards breaking in edge cases, it's basically functional for normal books lacking unusual/tricky formatting, and, unlike Calibre, it has an actually-good scrolled display mode.

Linux, PDF

I have yet to find any options I'm fully satisfied with here, for the "fast launch and fast rendering and functional lightweight UI" niche that I use SumatraPDF for on Windows. Among the less-good-but-still-functional options I've tried out: SumatraPDF launched via Wine takes a while to start up, but once launched it has the usual nice SumatraPDF featureset. Zathura with the MuPDF backend is very pleasantly-fast, but has a somewhat-unintuitive keyboard-centric control scheme and is hard to configure. And qpdfview offers a nice general-purpose PDF-reading UI, including being quick to launch, but its rendering backend is slower than either Sumatra's or Zathura's so it's less good for paging quickly through large/heavy PDFs.

Linux, CBZ

YACReader, as mentioned previously in the Windows section, is pretty definitively the best option I've found here, and its Linux version is a solid ~equal to CDisplayEx's Windows version. Like CDisplayEx, it's also better than more traditional PDF readers for reading PDF-based comics.

iOS/iPadOS, EPUB

My current main reading app is Marvin. However, it hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer available on the app store, so I'm currently in the process of getting ready to migrate elsewhere in anticipation of Marvin's likely permanent breakage some time in the next few years. Thus I will omit detailed discussion of Marvin and instead discuss the various other at-least-vaguely-comparably-good options on the market.

For general-purpose reading, including scrolled reading if that's your thing, Apple's first-party Books app turns out to be surprisingly good. It's not the best in terms of customization of display-style, but it's basically solidly functional, moreso than the vast majority of the apps on the market.

For reading of books with vertical text in particular, meanwhile, I use Yomu, which is literally the only reader I've encountered to date on any platform which has what I'd consider to be a sensible and high-quality way of handling scrolled reading of vertical-text-containing books. While I don't recommend it for more general purposes, due to awkward handling of EPUBs' tables of contents (namely, kind of ignoring them and doing its own alternate table-of-contents thing it thinks is better), it is extremely good for that particular niche, as well as being more generally solid-aside-from-the-TOC-thing.

iOS/iPadOS, PDF

I use GoodReader. I don't know if it's the best in the market, but it's very solidly good enough for everything I've tried to do with it thus far. It's fast; its UI is good at getting out of my way, while still packing in all the features I want as options when I go looking for them (most frequently switching between two-page-with-front-cover and two-page-without-front-cover display for a given book); also in theory it has a bunch of fancy PDF-editing features for good measure, although in practice I never use those and can't comment on their quality. But, as a reader, it's very solidly good enough for me, and I wish I could get a reader like it for desktop.

iOS/iPadOS, CBZ

YACReader has an iOS version; following the death of my former favorite comic reader for iOS (ComicRack), it's very solidly the best option I'm aware of on the market. (And honestly would be pretty competitive even if ComicRack were still around.) I recommend it here as I do on Linux.

Android, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

It's been years since I've had an Android device, and accordingly have very little substantial advice here. (I'm expecting to move back to Android for my next phone-and-maybe-also-tablet, out of general preferring-open-hardware-and-software-when-practical feelings, but it'll plausibly be a while, because Apple is much better at long-lasting hardware and software than any Android manufacturers I'm aware of.) For EPUB, I recall Moon+ reader was the best option I could find back circa 2015ish, but that's long enough ago that plausibly things have changed substantially at this point. For CBZ, both YACReader and CDisplayEx have Android versions, although I haven't tried either and so can't comment on their quality. For PDF, you're on your own; I have no memories or insights there.

Conclusion

...and that's it. If there are other major platforms on which ebook-reader software can be chosen, I'm failing to think of them currently, and this is what I've got for all platforms I have managed to think of.

In the future... well, I hope my own reader-in-development (slated for 1.0.0 release as a Firefox extension with only EPUB support, with ambitions of eventually expanding to cover other platforms and other formats) will one day join this recommendation-pile, but it's currently not yet in anything resembling a recommendable form. And I hope that there are lots of good reader-development projects in progress that I currently don't know about; but, if there are, I currently don't know about them.

So, overall, this is all I've got! I hope it's helpful.

[fatehbaz]

me: in the break room on phone, smiling widely, nodding with satisfaction, sighing

coworker: “what are you looking at???”

me:

They thought they might get stuck in the mud, but there was no thought of turning back. It would take another hour and a half to get to their destination. Giving up was not an option. They were after a holy grail of conservationists  —  a live sighting and registration of one of the rarest of the rare armadillos in the world, the elusive Chacoan fairy armadillo (Calyptophractus retusus), also known as the greater fairy armadillo, the mythical culotapado of local lore, or tatujeikurajoyava to the Guaranis of the Bolivian Chaco. Alternatively called tatu or coseberu by those in the cities, or “the cryer” by its 18th-century discoverers, it is also known to science as Burmeister’s armadillo. There was a lot of excitement. [...] Hearts were pounding with anticipation. [...] [T]he team was headed east, up Bolivia’s Highway 7, Doble Via La Guardia, toward the mining town of Camiri in the transition area between Amazonia and the Chaco dry forest. [...]

“There was no doubt, we had a culotapado,” said Bustillos, using the local name for the Chaco fairy armadillo, grateful to observe one of the rarest species in the world, alive. He explained how its back end appears to be sealed with a shield that keeps soil from sliding back as it digs down, and permits it to move and “swim” down at a 45-degree angle. [...] Bustillos said those were important observations of this unique animal, just fractions of an inch to an inch longer than its smaller cousin, the pink fairy armadillo of Argentina. It acts like a mole in its adaptations to subterranean life, said Bustillos, but instead of caving in search of food or escape, it submerges itself — swimming in the sand — and there it lives unnoticed. It is a species of armadillo in the family Chlamyphoridae. “It has a unique tail which he can use as a tripod,” Bustillos told Mongabay. No other armadillo has that use of its tail, he said. [...] What distinguishes the Chacoan fairy armadillo from other armadillos is that all others have a hard shell,  Bustillos explained. This one has a soft shell, like skin [...]. “It was just a shock seeing such a strange naked pink-looking animal,” he added. “Huge claws for its size. Delicate looking. It makes a noise like a baby.” [...]

That noise was heard, by many of the first to see the peculiar little animal, as a cry of the [...] “duende,” the ghost-like pixie humanoid of South American myth, and so it is also called, “el lloron,” the crier. [...]

Closely related to anteaters and sloths, but not to the similar-in-appearance pangolins, armadillos range in color from the baby pink in Bustillos’s hands to the dark brown of the ‘tatou,’ as the giant armadillo is also known. [...]  [T]here is a subtle but significant difference in the hue of the pink in this armadillo versus those of the same species found in the Gran Chaco itself [...]. The ones found in the Amazonian region are a baby pink color, like a pale salmon, he notes, while in the dry forest of the Chaco the same species is a darker, stronger, more vivid pink. [...] Encounters with the lighter-hued fairy armadillos in this area are still fewer --  just 12 registrations in the 161 years since 1859, making it the rarest of the rare. Underscoring the rarity of this find and the difference in appearance, Bustillos noted that after a 10-year intensive effort by the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area, Bolivia’s largest national park, the result was just 12 official registrations between 2000 and 2010. Only three have ever been registered in Argentina, and Paraguay registered eight in the period of 1959 to 2020 [...].

-------

Headline, images, captions, and text published by: Milan Sime Martinic. “Sighting of super rare Chacoan fairy armadillo in Bolivia ‘a dream come true’”. Mongabay. 21 December 2020. [Includes photos by Ivan Gutierrez Lemaitre, and commentary by field researcher Huascar Bustillos Cayoja.]

-------

Bonus round, involving the other species of fairy armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus, the pichiciego or pink fairy armadillo of Argentina):

[brunchbitch]

So I’ve had three PT sessions so far as sort of a tune up for my back issues. I’ve been surprised at how much weakness I have in certain muscles (especially around my hips). It feels like each time I go in, she has to make the exercises even more basic to try to limit pain. And it’s so frustrating - with my job, it’s come into even starker focus how young I am to be having these issues. I spoke to my PT about that and she was like “yes you are young, but you also have a lot going on in your back”.

Today she gave me this thick belt thing that I could wear daily to stabilize my sacroiliac joints (basically sits low on my hips). I was hoping it wasn’t what I needed bc it reminds me of back braces (though obviously much much smaller and less noticeable) but as soon as I put it on, the lower back pain on my right side disappeared. I won’t wear it to bed (whereas the back braces I would) so that’s nice, and it’s just a temporary thing while we’re focusing on strengthening the muscles around it, AND it’s amazing that something so small could help my lower back pain, but it’s still hard to come to terms with.

When I was 12 and approaching this massive life changing and life saving back surgery, the surgeon told me I would be able to do everything after the surgery that I did before, with the exception of something like gymnastics or very high impact sports like football. But I started running at age 16/17 and got a stress fracture in three vertebrae right below where the fusion ended, and since then it feels like I haven’t been without some sort of pain throughout my back/neck. I was reading back through some of my medical records and I didn’t realize that even after the fusion, my curves are still 24 and 35 degrees I think? Which would be significant curves for someone who hasn’t had surgery. My PT has told me definitively that I will need surgery to extend the fusion in my lumber/sacral joints; it’s just a matter of when. I hope to put it off for as long as possible, but it feels so defeating and scary to think of how much more my mobility will be affected. And my ED brain is definitely using this as a way to argue that I absolutely need to lose weight to support my skeletal/muscular system.

[not-a-perfect-metaphor]

Do you think that Stephen amell and Jeffrey Dean Morgan know about j2 ?

Very interesting question!

Those two specifically? I’d guess no.

However, that being said -

(I’m going to combine this ask with another ask, “how do you think it works for Jared and Jensen with who knows what about their relationship?”)

I’m also 100% certain that it’s not black and white; meaning it’s not simply a matter of ‘these people know everything, and these people know nothing.’

We’ve seen plenty of evidence by now to support the fact that a lot of people seem to know at least a little, and then a lot of those people probably know a little more than a little; maybe enough to put some basic pieces together or maybe just enough to form some basic assumptions…essentially many varying degrees of ‘in the know,’ that’s what I’m getting at.

Then, there’s probably a much smaller circle of people who definitely do know, either accidentally (let’s hope there aren’t many of those) or purposely; purposely meaning they were brought intentionally into the know as trusted confidants.

But they still likely wouldn’t be privy (in any kind of a significant way) to the detailed specifics or to the layout of long-term plans, etc., etc.

Lastly, we can speculate that there’s an inner-circle made up of a very small handful of people (we’re talking the four adults who are all directly involved and then probably a few additional very close friends/family members).

ANY access to solid, indisputable information that could legitimately bring into question the Js’ created narrative would ABSOLUTELY have to be kept as exclusive as possible. That’s the most crucial factor for the Js and their immediate family members when it comes to maintaining their livelihoods and protecting their well-being.

Ultimately, we can really only guess who might or might not have that highest level of intel.

I’m curious to know, actually, who you guys think could be included (besides the obvious four).

As for Stephen and J.D.M, I’d put Stephen in the ‘knows a little/maybe has entertained some speculations’ group and J.D.M in the ‘knows a little more than a little; enough to put some basic pieces together’ group.

What does anyone else think?

—————

Edit: there’s another category of people I should definitely include in this - the people who don’t necessarily have any information or evidence beyond what’s available to everyone else (the general public) but who have seen/heard/etc. a large enough percentage of what’s out there to have arrived at certain ‘non-platonic’ conclusions over the years.

Yes, I’m referring to the lovely J2-tinhat family, and obviously within this category there are many additional categories based on levels of knowledge, varying opinions, time periods, all kinds of factors…and the time periods factor can be a pretty significant one, because as many of us know, there have been numerous instances of ‘history being re-written.’ For example - things being erased from everywhere possible, things being reframed, things that simply did not happen at all being written about as if they did, yada yada.

So, meaning: in regard to certain things, if you weren’t around to first-hand witness them or to directly hear about them or to see the changes to the narrative as they were being created, you may not have that information.

Then again, it’s also just as likely that you would have come across accounts of those instances by those who were there, so…actually it probably doesn’t make all that much of a difference 😜.

[betweenthings2]

"I thought the same thing." :(

Thank you for the prompt!! The list is here if anyone else wants to see it.

"I thought the same thing," for responses to "I thought you were dead."

George is getting tired of this. He's not tried of Matty, no, he could never get tired of Matty, but he is getting tired of the worrying. He's getting tired of worrying about Matty. He's always going to worry to some degree--that's what happens when you like someone--but he'd like to worry a little less. He'd like to worry about normal things, like car accidents or the weather. Instead, what he actually worries about is Matty hurting himself, Matty doing something stupid.

Those worries aren't going away anytime soon, though, especially now as he sits in an emergency department waiting room, desperate for news about Matty. He'd thought they were ok. He'd thought Matty was doing ok. Apparently he was wrong, because he got a phone call saying that Matty was in the hospital after going out. George should have gone with him, should have put the fact that he was tired and wanted to go to bed early aside so that he could have kept Matty safe. No one will tell him anything yet. He'd tried, but the nurse behind the desk had just told him to take a seat and that someone would come talk to him when there was news. When George tried to get upset or push for more information, she threatened to call security.

That was almost an hour ago and George can't stop his spiraling thoughts. Is Matty ok? What happened? Who was he with? Did he take something? What did he take? Is he going to be ok? Is he even alive? What if Matty is dead? What would happen then? What would George do without him? What if Matty did this on purpose? What if Matty is dead?

Eventually, a doctor comes out and calls Matty's name and George jumps to his feet before the doctor is through with Matty's name. She tells him that Matty overdosed, that they had to give him Narcan and that he's resting comfortably now. She says that they want to keep Matty under observation until the morning to make sure that he doesn't develop a reaction to anything he took or was treated with. When George asks if he can see Matty, the doctor offers a sympathetic smile and directs him to Matty's room.

Matty is awake when George opens the door. He looks awful, like he's hungover and gone ten rounds with the bouncer. He looks small, too, smaller than George thinks he is, and sad. He's looked sad a lot lately.

"Hi," George murmurs, pulling the door closed behind him. "How do you feel?"

Matty gives a half shrug.

"Do you remember what happened?"

"Not talking about it."

"You can't ignore this, Matty," George says. "I can't let you ignore this."

"I'm not talking about it."

"I thought you were dead," George tries.

Matty doesn't say anything.

There's a sudden surge of anger that washed over George, hot and red, and despite the fact that he knows Matty is unwell and he doesn't blame Matty for that, he snaps, "Are you listening to me? I thought you were fucking dead."

"I thought the same thing," Matty admits in a very quiet voice.

"What?" George asks before he can stop himself.

"I thought the same thing. thought I was going to die on that sidewalk, George, and I don’t want to fucking talk about it, so if you're gonna yell at me about it, you can come back in the morning."

George reaches out and takes Matty's hand, careful of his IV, but he doesn't say anything right away, just runs his thumb over Matty's knuckles. After a few moments, he says, "I'm sorry. I was scared. I am scared."

"I'm sorry I scared you," Matty says quietly. "I am."

George nods. "You can't just ignore this," he repeats, running his thumb over Matty's knuckles again. "You overdosed. That's, that's fucking significant. You can't just," he pauses, "just carry on like normal."

"I meant it when I said you should leave if you're going to try to talk about it," Matty repeats. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Matty," George starts, "this-"

"I'm tired and I'm scared," Matty interrupts. "Please just be here with me. Please."

"Matty," George starts again.

"Please" Matty repeats. "I, I thought I was going to die on a fucking sidewalk in front of that stupid bar that you hate and I'm begging you to just be here with me right now. Please. You can be mad at me in the morning. You call yell at me, lecture me, tell me how fucking stupid I am, but please, do it in the morning."

"Ok," George agrees. "Ok."

"Thank you."

There's quiet for a while, broken only by the steady beeping of the heart monitor, until George speaks, saying, "For the record, I don't think you're stupid. I don't want to lecture you or yell at you, I just," he pauses, "I don't want to lose you."

Matty doesn't say anything. He would like to tell George that he's not going anywhere, that he's not going to kill himself, on purpose or on accident, but evidently that seems cheap and a little bit cruel. It's easier be quiet, then, when then silence gets too heavy, mumble, "I'm sorry."

"I know," George agrees. "I do. So am I."

[lord-squiggletits]

After I write that new IDW Optimus meta, the next one is gonna be a post of "why I really hate that theory about Rodimus being a better Prime than Optimus and how it doesn't even match the themes of IDW OR canon fact about how the Matrix functions."

But the TLDR that I feel like encapsulates where a lot of this fanwank comes from, is that I feel like ppl don't properly appreciate that the context of Optimus and Rodimus' leaderships are extremely different.

Like, Rodimus only led a ship of about 200+ people. This means that the scale of his leadership responsibilities and the risks/consequences/stakes of his actions as leader were much smaller in scale. However, it also means that just because he only led one ship of people doesn't mean that his choices weren't important/weren't indicative of his personal character (that is to say, just bc it was only one ship doesn't mean that it had no meaning or significance at all).

On the other hand, Optimus led an entire freaking army over a 4 million year war that arose from political tensions that began even before he/most of the people in the war were born. That means that the consequences of his leadership had extremely far reaching consequences no matter what he did, which grants him a large degree of culpability/blame for his actions. HOWEVER, it must also be said that under the pressure of fighting an impossible war, just because OP wasn't able to "stop it sooner" doesn't mean that he was a morally bad/incompetent leader, because a whole galactic war is such a huge burden that one person can't possibly stop it or influence/control everything to make the most morally correct and peace-causing decisions.

TLDR can we please stop pitting Optimus and Rodimus against each other when the contexts of them being leaders was so vastly different (and they had such different leadership styles in general) that you can't really say "who's the better leader" without minimizing either of their accomplishments/magnifying their respective flaws.

Also, canonically speaking the Matrix can be wielded by anyone who's confident/at peace/self-righteous enough to believe they're worthy of it, which was shown not only by the ending of LL where a bunch of regular ass crewmates were able to use copies of the Matrix, but by the fact that the first Prime/ruler of Cybertron Nova Prime was a massive piece of shit who colonized people, yet was still a Matrix bearer who wielded the true/original Matrix.

And also Primus is literally Just Some Guy and not some omnipotent god who's an objective arbiter of morality that can point at a guy and go "YOU are the Specialest Boy Ever and are Divinely Mandated To Be A Good person"

So the entire premise of why ppl even make theories and debate about this is beyond me lol. In IDW1 the Matrix is more of a social/cultural symbol than it is an actual measurer of morality, which is in line with IDW1's consistent themes of challenging the inherent rightness of authority

[hcmiey]

ok CRAZY question so stay with me here. but let's say post canon vince ( who's married/bfs with tyler ) got sent back to 1998 during the desert dream situation ... like everything else is the same but he retains his memories. like, how would he feel? would he have done anything different? just curious <3

oh vince would FEEL alright. it’s not really a secret that my local man does not consciously recall most of the events of the desert dream. he remembers the significant parts, like michelle dying, and then some smaller details he remembers unconsciously, like some of the moments with tyler, and to a lesser degree, with dale, dante, and jay. so on a completely casual note, vince would find it really disconcerting to be back there and would honestly be a little curious to relive it. though the thing is, after spending so many years recovering and actually … uh … being loved? vince would find it REALLY difficult to be around michelle. of course that’s because she’s actually alive here, but vince would have virtually no desire to actually be romantic with her. not because he doesn’t love her, but because he now knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who makes him happy. what life he truly wants. there isn’t really a what-if for vince when it comes to that.

i don’t think vince would be ABLE to do things the same as they were originally. first of all, he just doesn’t remember what they were originally. second of all, the thought of going back in time would deeply, DEEPLY freak him out. the thought that he has gone back to a time where he doesn’t have tyler scares vince beyond belief. it makes him feel like somehow all of that joy and healing he experienced was some sort of pipe dream, and he’s just back in this situation where his wife has cheated on him, his dad is lying to him… no doubt he and jim have developed a better relationship too over time, and it would kill vince to feel like somehow he hasn’t earned that. that all of that effort was for nothing. and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from acting… well, crazy! he’d immediately act distant and cold with michelle and he’d practically run into tyler’s arms. would try and coerce him into the back room, where he’d be driven mad by the proximity and would end up kissing him. vince is the world’s worst time traveller because he can’t help but reveal what’s going on. he’d kiss tyler and tell him, “i know you don’t get it, but you’re mine.” and tyler wouldn’t get it. he’d think he does, he’d think vince feels the undeniable connection between them, and he’d respond in kind. vince would become a priority for him, on the same level as his family. and when it comes time for them to take a hostage, i doubt zoe would even have been in the equation. 

though i will say that one big difference that vince would make consciously is to try not to get michelle killed. he’d get skittish whenever she’s around a gun, and i was originally going to talk about how vince would attack tyler when he tries to take michelle away, but i honestly think that’s a lot more because he’s reacting instinctively to tyler trying to leave. cringe moment! when your wife (tyler) is being taken away by violent captors (is leaving of his own will) and you violently attack the captors (your wife) to make sure your wife does not get got. cringe! still, though. vince would obviously still be deeply triggered by guns and would simply not make the call to make a run for the doors. both because he doesn’t want michelle to get shot and because he doesn’t want to leave tyler behind. and when jim gets concussed instead, it would be crazy for vince since he wouldn’t even remember if that actually HAPPENED in the original timeline.

in any case, i do think most of the desert dream would play out the same, but vince and tyler would indeed be romantically and sexually entangled and michelle would 100% survive the desert dream. i can’t remember if michelle still asks you if it’s really over between you two if you initially forgive her, but either way, vince would break up with her. he just would. maybe she knows about tyler, maybe she’s oblivious, but vince just can’t be with her anymore. i don’t think it strikes him in the moment that his future is changed if she’s still alive — zoe has to live as a child of divorce rather than having michelle be dead, and that divorce is going to put a dent in vince’s finances and all sorts of other details. michelle would likely end up with the house, and vince would be ousted… all this other stuff that he isn’t accounting for because he just feels so guilty that she’s gone even if he wants his future to proceed as if she were. i am tempted to say that vince might realize this later down the line and then let her die in the rubble, but there’s just no way vince could look her in the eye and do that. vince couldn’t kill ANYONE in cold blood. i just don’t think he’s capable of it. but i do know at the end of it all, he’d tell tyler to come find him. say, “it’s over between me and my wife. i’ll be waiting for you in missouri.” and i know tyler would try and keep him around, but vince WOULD still escape. because he wants his future the way it always has been. he loves tyler so much and cherishes his future with him so deeply that he can’t possibly want it any other way.

[poisonoptions]

happy new year! to be honest i haven’t had a lot of time to put together an intro, so i’ll be brief. these are the choi siblings, jinyoung and soojung, who are very different but also the same. their relationship currently isn’t in the best place, but maybe things can get better for these kids, who knows! due to the shadowbanning issue, i prefer to plot over at d*scord, so feel free to add me @ bluestmonday. if you prefer dms though, it’ll take me a while but i’ll be sure to get to you so nw!

general information:ㅤ jinyoungㅤ/ㅤ soojungㅤ/ㅤ more

jinyoung and soojung are the children of an upper class family that has a history of being emphatically pro nullivi, pro anomaly assimilation. they were raised to assume leadership in their father’s law firm, whose most prominent client is biofirm pharmaceuticals. the usual absent parents and great expectations narrative applies.

shouldering the worst of the family’s demands, jinyoung was pushed into the role of the rebel. his ability kept him sick for a good portion of his childhood, and nullivi only made matters worse – which never dissuaded his parents from insisting he take it. they seemed hellbent in making a project out of him, desperate that he makes a point for them. but jinyoung was just a synthesis of his body and the drugs that kept it bound. like everything else, their ambitions for him faded from his grasp.

soojung was the neglected second child. she was the one watching jinyoung command attention around the house, feeling pathetic when she found herself envying the screaming and the sleepless nights. her problem was never needing the attention, managing without the help. it wasn’t hard to see why she was determined to not just succeed, but do twice as well as what was expected of her. soojung kept her head high, well acquainted with the banality of disillusion.

as far as recent events go, jinyoung was a year into his master’s degree in business law three years ago when he disappeared. his family maintained discretion over the matter, implying he’d taken a sabbatical year. weeks later, soojung was able to help track him down in athens, then munich, then los angeles. but it was in london that he was arrested for possession, and his family intervened to ensure his return to seoul. back to the life he was so desperate to escape.

soojung is indifferent to his return, she pretty much thinks it was better for everyone when he was gone. but her parents are getting their way at any cost, which is their natural inclination. she’s become invested in campus politics in the meanwhile, a pet project she’s nurturing to remind herself that she can. when she joined together for daehan, she considered taking a smaller role and avoid scrutiny into someone of her background becoming the face of the group, but she couldn’t help herself. she has a bit of a complex about limiting herself for the sake of others.

some plot ideas that come to mind atm: childhood acquaintances, study group mates, past and current significant others, people weaved into both of their lives (maybe even not realizing the relation), anyone who wants to start a club or smth (i'm out of ideas for one but a club sounds fun).

for jinyoung, people he met when he was working on his master's degree the first time around and have whatever feelings on seeing him back, people he met during his so-called sabbatical who he never believed he would run into again.

for soojung, any kinds of relationships within together for daehan (people who support her candidacy or don't, someone who invited her to the group, etc), fellow preppy kids to congregate with, people who take issue with said preppy kids!

[trans-cuchulainn]

related to that other post i made about reading speed, whenever people are like "you shouldn't just read easy fiction books, you need to Challenge Yourself and Broaden Your Mind and Do Analysis" it annoys me because i am the kind of person who does enjoy close readings and analysis (uh, have you seen my blog), but also i have two brain-heavy analysis-focused jobs that challenge me plenty and that my brain is not just broadened but actively melted by trying to juggle them on a daily basis. so a lot of the time i read as a means of relaxation and a way of giving my brain a break, and i have no interest in making that particular hobby Harder and More Challenging for myself

i want to read easy books! i want to read books that feel like a hug! i want to reread the same romance novel five times! i want to read pacy genre fiction that i can understand on a first read! i struggle to get through 800-page classics that require constant consultation of a dictionary or a companion volume and as such i don't tend to read those for fun! and... i also have multiple degrees in literature, because the things i read academically and the things i read purely for pleasure fulfil very different functions in my life, and i do not think equating one with the other is actually of benefit to anyone

because honestly, "literary analysis" and "reading for pleasure" are not wholly separate concepts but they are a venn diagram not a circle and the stuff that's only in the reading for pleasure half is just as valuable and worth doing as the stuff in the middle or, if that's your jam, only in the analysis half (though personally i don't make a habit of doing things i get zero pleasure out of unless i have to). and the overlap is smaller for some people than for others, and some people don't get pleasure from close-reading, and frankly that's fine too?

and if you have very boring repetitive jobs which do not stretch your mind in the least (as i have had in the past) then Challenging Books play a more significant role in not letting your brain atrophy, i get it, i've been there, i've had some incredibly boring jobs and i did find myself seeking out intellectual stimulation from other aspects of my life. but not everybody has those jobs. some people are in fact having to grapple with and analyse vast amounts of information on a daily basis and are just trying to chill in their downtime and that isn't like. some kind of moral failing, omg. yes, even if that means only reading fanfic

so. basically. stop telling other people what to read, stop making assumptions about other people's analytical skills or intelligence based on how they approach their hobby, stop making out analysis as some kind of Moral Duty for anyone who wants to read books. and sure people have bad and misinformed opinions about or readings of books, but i can guarantee you the people who are approaching reading as a personal challenge and an ethical duty are having just as many bad and misinformed opinions about them as those who are just vibing, tbh

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA's Voyager team focuses on software patch, thrusters

Engineers for NASA's Voyager mission are taking steps to help make sure both spacecraft, launched in 1977, continue to explore interstellar space for years to come.

One effort addresses fuel residue that seems to be accumulating inside narrow tubes in some of the thrusters on the spacecraft. The thrusters are used to keep each spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. This type of buildup has been observed in a handful of other spacecraft.

The team is also uploading a software patch to prevent the recurrence of a glitch that arose on Voyager 1 last year. Engineers resolved the glitch, and the patch is intended to prevent the issue from occurring again in Voyager 1 or arising in its twin, Voyager 2.

Thruster buildup

The thrusters on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are primarily used to keep the spacecraft antennas pointed at Earth in order to communicate. Spacecraft can rotate in three directions—up and down, to the left and right, and around the central axis, like a wheel. As they do this, the thrusters automatically fire and reorient the spacecraft to keep their antennas pointed at Earth.

Propellant flows to the thrusters via fuel lines and then passes through smaller lines inside the thrusters called propellant inlet tubes that are 25 times narrower than the external fuel lines. Each thruster firing adds tiny amounts of propellant residue, leading to gradual buildup of material over decades. In some of the propellant inlet tubes, the buildup is becoming significant. To slow that buildup, the mission has begun letting the two spacecraft rotate slightly farther in each direction before firing the thrusters. This will reduce the frequency of thruster firings.

The adjustments to the thruster rotation range were made by commands sent in September and October, and they allow the spacecraft to move almost 1 degree farther in each direction than in the past. The mission is also performing fewer, longer firings, which will further reduce the total number of firings done on each spacecraft.

The adjustments have been carefully devised to ensure minimal impact on the mission. While more rotating by the spacecraft could mean bits of science data are occasionally lost—akin to being on a phone call where the person on the other end cuts out occasionally—the team concluded the plan will enable the Voyagers to return more data over time.

Engineers can't know for sure when the thruster propellant inlet tubes will become completely clogged, but they expect that with these precautions, that won't happen for at least five more years, possibly much longer. The team can take additional steps in the coming years to extend the lifetime of the thrusters even more.

"This far into the mission, the engineering team is being faced with a lot of challenges for which we just don't have a playbook," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for the mission as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "But they continue to come up with creative solutions."

Patching things up

In 2022, the onboard computer that orients the Voyager 1 spacecraft with Earth began to send back garbled status reports, despite otherwise continuing to operate normally. It took mission engineers months to pinpoint the issue. The attitude articulation and control system (AACS) was misdirecting commands, writing them into the computer memory instead of carrying them out. One of those missed commands wound up garbling the AACS status report before it could reach engineers on the ground.

The team determined the AACS had entered into an incorrect mode; however, they couldn't determine the cause and thus aren't sure if the issue could arise again. The software patch should prevent that.

"This patch is like an insurance policy that will protect us in the future and help us keep these probes going as long as possible," said JPL's Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager. "These are the only spacecraft to ever operate in interstellar space, so the data they're sending back is uniquely valuable to our understanding of our local universe."

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have traveled more than 15 billion and 12 billion miles from Earth, respectively. At those distances, the patch instructions will take over 18 hours to travel to the spacecraft. Because of the spacecraft's age and the communication lag time, there's some risk the patch could overwrite essential code or have other unintended effects on the spacecraft.

To reduce those risks, the team has spent months writing, reviewing, and checking the code. As an added safety precaution, Voyager 2 will receive the patch first and serve as a testbed for its twin. Voyager 1 is farther from Earth than any other spacecraft, making its data more valuable.

The team will upload the patch and do a readout of the AACS memory to make sure it's in the right place on Friday, Oct. 20. If no immediate issues arise, the team will issue a command on Saturday, Oct. 28, to see if the patch is operating as it should.