#trying to make fossil fuels happen and it just

[etruatcaelum]

Dismissing his apology with an errant flick of her fingers, Salem turned to gaze into the cauldron for a moment; to conceal a wisp of amusement at the expense of poor Arthur’s dislike for aura and dust, as much as to gather her thoughts. (The problem with him, she thought—such as it was—was how difficult he made it not to stray off subject.)

She hummed.

“Well,” she said, voice droll, “atrum and aura and dust are the foundation of this world; one might as well despair of humankind needing air to breathe, water to drink…”

…steam to effect the rotation of a wheel, and so to produce electricity; Salem had never voiced her observation that mankind’s reliance of dust was not for lack of trying. Dust gave better heat than charcoal, burned cleaner than coal or oil and far longer than any gas…

Trade in konurgic wiring for pure metal, change aura for electricity: the need for aura and dust would remain, in the generators feeding power to the machines. Why deny reality?

But far be it from her to disdain his ambitions.

“…regardless,” Salem murmured, “aura—these grimm will need to remain in stillness for quite long enough that they must have an auraleric center to prevent…” a wandering gesture. “Liquefaction. Thus, aura will be of no concern, and as for dust–”

Her lips twitch.

“—grimm have made and made use of dust since time immemorial,” she said dryly. And then, idly extending her hand, palm flat and facing toward him: “I can do… this.”

A mirage-like shimmer, and as her brow knit in concentration, the light hitting her skin turned, just so. Her palm became as a mirror, reflecting a perfect image of Arthur’s face back at him. Then—with another hazy ripple, an imperceptible twist—the image melted and coagulated again as a grainy picture of a wave breaking upon the cold, grey floodplain hundreds of miles to the east.

Salem released it a moment later, exhaling, her hand closing into a loose fist as it sank to her side. “…I have both– human sight and grimm; it is like… reading musical notation in order to hear the music in the mind. It took… a very long time to learn how to do it. Ideally–”

Oh. Perhaps she has been overthinking it, too.

“—I suppose threading konurgic signals through a matrix of luminescent dusts within the glass could work,” she muttered. “Certainly it would be simpler.”

Were he a bit more self-important a man (and he did know that many thought him the height of that particular flaw), that might have stung. Were he in less of a creative, open-minded mood, it still might have landed as a pinch to his ego. He had rather thought that what he'd been proposing had been more compensating for, as she said, the human inability to read the world the way the grimm did, and merely proposing some method of the grimm borrowing their crude human senses as a form of translation...still. Her point was well-taken.

It resulted, however, in a small smile under his mustache, a little more restrained but severely amused and self-deprecating. "I'm human, you mean. My apologies if that came off as correcting something the grimm lack; I was envisioning the proposal as something more like filtering the data the grimm takes in, using our crude human senses as the filter...which is not unlike what the machines we create do, yes." He shook his head, pencil tip tapping very lightly on the table as he bit the tip of his tongue in thought. Her interpretation of what he'd been saying was...not unfair, really. And she was right: it was, in many cases, merely the way in which a doctor functioned, for good or ill.

"The translation performed by scrolls is likely a good starting place, yes. But even those rely partially on the aura of the user, and dust." It was his turn to make a slight expression of distaste. The reliance of modern technology on dust was its own issue, he supposed, irrelevant to their current discussion...and while a part of his brain meandered down the familiar path of dust-less communications and electrical engineering, it was a worn and weary one, and far less exciting than the work she was putting before him. "Which, based on what you've said before, I assume would be a far more reasonable starting point for this endeavor than that of humanity's world communications." Well. Alright. Maybe he was still a little bit bitter about the towers himself.

"...translation into something approximating bits would be fascinating...binary only exists because it is simply easier to code a computer with something that simple, but as you say, we aren't programming anything or anyone here. Direct transmission of soundwaves - or the numerical measurements that make up soundwaves, to grimm - should be the easiest bit of this, as even without a true filter, simply transmitting those waves should be interpreted by our human senses as the appropriate noise. Image or video, then, is the primary struggle..."

Wasn't it always? Cameras were always the easiest devices to trick because light was so easily manipulated, because it was easier to change around the data they stored...light, color, depth, these were all things far harder to record than volume or pitch.

[unsolicited-opinions]

The Israel thing confuses the shit out of me, I've gotta say.

I consider myself left wing politically. Pretty darn left. (Or what I thought "left" meant.) I have voted for progressive parties/candidates in every election (local, national, EU-wide) since I was legally able to do so. I am a Pride-flag-waving lesbian, a feminist (I legally changed my surname to my mothers last name in solidarity when I was still a teenager!), a vegan, an environmentalist (I don't drive a car, I don't fly, my home is fossil fuel free, powered entirely by wind and solar generated electricity) and a union member. I'm very careful about everything I buy, always looking for the most ethical option. No "fast fashion". No Twitter since Musk took over. No Amazon Prime.

I try pretty hard, every day, to walk the walk, y'know? Not just talk the talk. I try to live my beliefs. Not just perform them. Even though it is often inconvenient. (Having to constantly look stuff up. See where my money would be going. Check for bad business practices. Who owns what. Who do they vote for. Who do they donate to. How and where is it made. Who made it. How are they treated. What's the carbon footprint. What's the energy efficiency rating. Etc, etc, etc.)

When the October 7th attacks on Israel happened, I immediately realised 'I don't know enough about this' and so started reading about the history (and present) of Israel and Palestine. There were things I felt I needed to know and understand before I threw my lot in with anyone.

One of the earliest things I learned was that Israel existed before Palestine (fact one. And it seemed important.) and Jewish people existed thousands of years before there were Muslims. I learned (fairly quickly and not in great depth) about the Hebrew Bible, the Bar Kokba revolt, the origins of Islam, the Arab conquest of the Levant, the Edict of Expulsion, the Alhambra decree, the 19th century pogroms and the Pale of Settlement, Theodor Herzl and the origins of Zionism, WW1 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust, the first Arab/Israeli war, Black September, the Munich Olympics, the first and second intifada, Hamas and Fatah, culture and laws in modern Israel...

I feel like I did my homework. And I concluded, given what I had read, that I was quite broadly on Israel's side. It seemed to me that the Jewish people have every right to be there. Israel has every right to exist. It's where the Jewish people originated. They purchased land there legally. They achieved polity and declared independence. They have fought and won wars over it. What more could anyone ask for? They're indigenous to the land, they have always been there (to a greater or lesser degree), the ones who left paid for the land when they returned, they fought wars for the land and won. What other ways can they prove or earn their right to be there? They have done more to "earn" their existence on that land than any other people on Earth.

I do not understand the "left"'s antipathy toward Israel, Israelis or Zionism. It makes no sense to me.

Yes, war is awful. Of course. Innocent people dying is awful. Of course. But that does not seem to be what is being protested. It is Israel's very existence that they object to. And I do NOT understand that. I have tried. I have read what I believe to be a fairly thorough account of the history of the land and its people. And I simply cannot get onboard with what my comrades (...) on the left are saying and doing. It just does not make sense to me. It doesn't fit.

And at the moment (since October 2023) it is in all left wing spaces. Feminist bookshops I once frequented. Environmental organizations I was once a member of. Pride parades I once marched in. All are now obsessed with the BDS movement and bashing Israel and Zionists. And it's not even a question. It's just a given. If you are a feminist or queer or an environmentalist you must also (obviously!) hate Israel. And I just cannot logically understand WHY.

Jews don't often encounter non-Jewish progressives these days who can be normal about Jews, rational about Israel, and see what we see...so I can't tell you how much I appreciate this and you, Anon.

Thank you for sharing these thoughts.

I have so much respect for the integrity required to tell oneself "I don't know enough to have an opinion, so I'm going to make an effort to learn more."

I can count the non-Jews I know who have done that on one hand.

The LGBTQ+ Jews I know (including family) all tell me that while they feel secure, safe, and included as LGBTQ+ persons in Jewish spaces, they don't feel at all safe as Jews in LGBTQ+ spaces, and that breaks my heart because I know how important that sense of community is to my LGBTQ+ family and friends and I understand how much that loss must hurt.

Like most of us, LGBTQ+ Jews are liberals who thought they shared values with other progressives until October 7th taught us that while we might have felt solidarity with them, they didn't feel solidarity with us...and jumped at the opportunity to feel righteous about being hateful.

Many (perhaps most) of us similarly lost communities because you're right that all the progressive spaces aren't just unthinkingly hostile and willfully ignorant, but actively hateful and parroting Jew-hatred tropes from the middle ages, the Czars, the Soviets, and a Fuhrer. In liberal spaces. While claiming to be progressives. While claiming to be AntiFa. While claiming to despise Nazis and bigotry. While allying themselves with Islamist movements which favor genital mutilation, child brides, and honor killings.

If you'd like to get in touch without the anonymity, I'd welcome that - because I'd like to see more of your writing.

Again, thank you. This made my day.

[nuwanders]

While I respect what you're trying to do and I agree with the general idea and sentiment behind there's just the problem that boycotts don't work in our contemporary world unfortunately, especially on big companies like microsoft, I remember when this happened with hogwarts legacy and it didn't change anything, in the end that just became a sort of weird purity test, I din't buy that game cause I had no interest and even if I did I hate jkr, but I don't see any use in shaming people who do.

I don't think you're doing purity testing or anything similar, and the effort is admirable, but I think believing that people that buy the game don't care about palestine is wrong, I think it's more that they don't see the use in trying a boycott that will fail.

Btw I hope the boycott succeds I sincerely don't think it will, I myself am not buying the game for a while and will probably pirate it, but it's my personal choice and I don't see the use in shaming people for playing it as it won't win them over and will most likely make them bitter towards the cause, people are fickle and selfish by nature, and the same thing happened with hogwarts legacy. People said it revealed those who played ad unworthy allies, but I don't think we should exclude people by worthiness, you don't win by having "quality" you win by having "quantity".

That's just my two cents on the subject though

consumer boycotts can and do work. a few highlights taken from here (emphasis my own):

Affirming the role the BDS movement has played in the Israeli economy’s “spiral of collapse,” as 130 leading Israeli economists describe it, in September, the Chairman of the Israeli Export Institute said: “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape.” He added, “Economic boycotts and BDS organizations present major challenges, and in some countries, we are forced to operate under the radar.” Israel’s projected annual GDP growth rate for 2024 is 0%, according to leading credit rating agency S&P, and some 60,000 Israeli businesses are projected to have shut down during this year of ongoing genocide. Global sales of McDonald’s, a prime BDS target, “fell by 1.5% between July and September, the biggest decline in four years, more than twice the size forecast by analysts. It followed a 1% drop in the April to June period.” In October, fossil fuel giant Chevron, a priority target of the BDS movement, halted a $429 million expansion of an Israeli-claimed fossil gas field amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its brutal bombings in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond. In August, in a significant BDS win, French insurer AXA was forced to sell its investments in all major Israeli banks. In November, Carrefour closed all branches in Jordan due to BDS pressure. Carrefour’s partner in most of the Arab World, the Majid Al Futtaim Group, reacted to BDS Jordan’s boycott pressure by ending all business with the French retailer in Jordan. In November, the Boycott PUMA campaign confirmed that, following relentless BDS campaigns worldwide, the German company had ended its complicity with Israel’s apartheid regime. In December, the Strauss Group, a complicit Israeli multinational food and beverage corporation, was forced, due to an effective BDS campaign, to sell off its shares in the US-based company, Sabra, which mass produces the culturally-appropriated popular Arab dip, hummus."

looking further back, boycotts, divestments and sanctions played a crucial role in dismantling the apartheid state in south africa. from here:

Boycotts may have been a form of activism that was easier to implement on a variety of different scales, but it provided a very extensive impact on apartheid in South Africa. The very threat of boycotts of South Africa in the 1984 Olympics pushed the leader of the IOC to go against the Olympic Charter and keep South Africa out of the Olympics – making the decision as early as 1981. This showed the power the boycotts had built up, and the authority they carried. The boycotts were seen as being so effective that even the IOC would not be able to withstand their financial and diplomatic fall-out. South Africa would finally rejoin the Olympic community in Barcelona in 1992, “following the commencement of governmental talks to finally bring an end to apartheid.”

that targeted boycotts can be extremely effective is not up for debate. but i think the crucial thing to acknowledge here is that they are one of the most easy and accessible forms of protest because they do not require you to actually do anything.

your argument would hold water if i was demanding that everyone go out and start blowing up embassies or setting themselves on fire. but BDS is literally just asking people to do nothing at all.

this isn't a moral purity thing, it's a statement of fact that boycotts only work if people participate. and they fail because of the exceptionalist arguments you're spouting here: "it's my personal choice." ok, sure. it's my personal choice to not get vaccinated. it's my personal choice to vote conservative.

the other thing is that microsoft is one of the more egregious targets on the BDS list, for reasons better outlined here. i know that this isn't the fault of the folks working at bethesda, who will be several degrees removed from the heinous shit happening at the top. but BDS has specifically listed Microsoft's gaming division as a key component of the boycott, for the very fact that video games are perhaps the easiest product for the average consumer to opt out of.

tldr;

boycotts are effective

they are easy

they only work if people participate

BDS has specifically named bethesda

people should therefore boycott bethesda

i don't think i'm being unreasonable in expressing disappointment at the large swathes of TES fans who see themselves as above it

[alpaca-clouds]

A Reminder of the Fact, that Billionaires are not Real

I know. I know. Most people right now expect me to do more historical write ups. But please listen to me for a moment. This is kinda important. Because with Trump trying to make himself a fucking god emperor or some shit, I need y'all to understand this one thing.

This is a reminder: Billionaires are not actually real. As in: There is not a person who has a ten-figures amount of money on their bank account or anything like that. Nobody. Not Elon Musk. Not Jeff Bezos. Not Zuckerberg. Nobody. They are valued in the billions, but they are not actually billionaires. In fact some of them might not have so much as a million on their bank account from all we know.

So, why are they billionaires?

Because they own assets. Everyone who is really, really rich does not own money, but assets. Those assets are:

Real Estate and land

Luxury vehicles, yachts, private jets etc.

Art

Investment portfolios

Shares in companies

Stuff like mines and natural ressources

Patents and Copyrights

General stuff Marx would call: "The means of production"

The "net worth" that gets thrown around is just what people estimate the stuff those people own is valued at. But again: Very for of them have more then a few million actually on their bank accounts. And this also is the reason why right now we have so many billionaires.

Because since the entire bullshit in 2008 (for those who just turned 18: The real estate bubble burst and what not - watch "The Big Short" for more context) something has been happening called "the asset inflation". Basically the worth of all those assets has shot up in price BY A LOT, which made people who had been "just" multimillionaires before into billionaires suddenly.

But what you need to understand is, that this is just... It is fictional. It is a mirage. And if we all could just agree on that, they literally would have nothing. Because you cannot eat a yacht. You cannot eat company shares. You cannot do shit with any of that. You cannot even buy something with that.

You know how billionaires buy stuff? They go to a bank and go: "Hey, look at all this shit I have. I want to buy XY, so if you give me the money to do that, I will tots pay you back. And if I don't, you tots can take some of my shit, fair?" And the bank will go: "Yeah, whatever. Here. Have 20 billion fantasy dollars."

But all of this just works, because everybody agrees that if the billionaire or the bank sold whatever assets the billionaire offers up to someone else, they would actually get the money.

I wrote about this before: This is why we cannot get away from fossil fuels. Because right now everyone who has the money to invest in energy has not actually real money, but just valued assets - and those assets are oil pumps, and coal mines, and gas plants. And if we all agreed that we no longer want oil, gas and coal, those would be worthless - and those investors would no longer have money. Because their "money" is just the worth that those mines, pumps, and plants have.

And that is also, why they are so much against the "capital gains tax". It is more than it appears to be on the surface. See, a capital gain is, when those assets you hold gain in value. Which currently happens at an alarming rate. Some of them gain literally 20 or more percent in value each year. So if you implement proper capital gains taxes, those "billionaires" would have go give some part of the theoretical monetary gain they made each year from the inflation of those assets - and obviously newly gained assets - as money to the government.

Just look at our most hated billionaire: Elon Musk. In 2023 he had a net worth of 180 billion, in 2024 he ended the year on 410 billion. That is a gain of 230 billion. Almost all of it falls under "capital gains taxes". Now, let's say we implemented a really, really soft capital gains tax of just 5%. Which is nothing in terms of tax. You and I pay more taxes on our salary. But 5% of 230 billion is 11.5 billion. And because you cannot pay taxes in assets, Elon would need 11.5 billion to actually pay his taxes. And he does not have that. Nobody does. Again, I doubt that there is really anyone who has more than a billion in liquid assets (= actual money or anything that can be used as flat payment). In fact I doubt that most billionaires have actually a billion in liquid assets. Some might have several hundred million, sure, but nothing more. Again, this is basically monopoly money.

And if they would implement a capital gains tax this entire fantasy construct would come down. Because, yeah. Nobody actually has the liquid assets to pay the taxes. And they would have to admit that.

Right now their influence is build mainly on the fact that most people do not understand how "rich people economics" work. Which is why you need to understand it.

They do not have money. They have just assets. And those only are worth billions, because people let them get away with claiming this.

You know. We can just... adjust for that.

[crystaleclipse10]

A look into the Ninja's powers

Welcome to my analysis of the powers of each of the 6 main Ninja. How each power feels and its source for each Elemental Master, and how it reflects in their personalities. This has headcanons and canon explanation. Hopefully it all makes sense

Cole: Cole’s power comes from deep within the ground. He can feel the power of the earth in his guts, strong and steady. It’s grounding. It’s constant. The earth is always somewhere below him. No matter where he is, somewhere there’s earth—whether it’s deep within a mountain, everywhere; or leagues under the sea; or so far beneath the sky it is practically invisible—it will never not be there. It’s reliable. Yet it takes different forms: dirt, rocks, magma, sand; it’s all part of the ground, versatile. It’s protective; it encases and preserves ancient ruins and fossils, it gives shelter to those seeking refuge. It connects all living things—it reaches every part of the world. It cannot be forced to move, but it can be guided. It is the foundation of everything.

“You've never been farther underground. Never been more surrounded by the very thing that powers you. The Skull Sorcerer thought he was burying you, but what if he was actually bringing you closer to the earth? To the source of your elemental power?” “So what do I do? Try to connect with the earth?” “Perhaps. Or perhaps you just have to stop worrying so much and let the earth connect with you.”

Zane: Zane can sense his ice powers in his mind. It can exist in the coldest of climates, and when it melts, turns into something just as powerful; it is not wasted. It carves its way through anything—glaciers. The rivers of ice creep forward slowly but surely, taking everything in its path. It’s steady and cold, but its bite can be unrelenting. Frostbite, hypothermia—just as cold as ice is. And icicles, especially when shot as a projectile, are like daggers; sharp and dangerous. But it can numb pain. It tames something burning hot into something pleasantly warm. It is hard and strong, but it can crack—and if that happens, it can be made whole again with a little time. It is reliable and quiet. It can create a protective barrier. It’s there when it needs to be.

“This isn’t about numbers…it’s about family.” “He’s protecting us.” “I am a Nindroid, and Ninja never quit. Go Ninja, go!”

Jay: Lightning. He can feel it buzzing on his skin and nerves, able to be condensed and controlled. Pure energy, electricity. It’s volatile and dangerous. But it can be essential to life. It’s everywhere—thunderstorms, static, neurons firing in the brain. If it wasn’t for electricity, the brain would cease to function and life couldn’t exist. It’s quick—blink and it’s gone, just a thread of light that comes and goes. But its impact is remembered. A thunderous boom, a scar of soot, sometimes even a blaze set in its wake. Its glow is practically too bright to look at; a source of light for even the darkest of caves. Just one spark can start a fire or illuminate a building. It’s a source of power—for vehicles, technology, buildings. Even though it is not always visible, lightning and electricity are all around, ready to be called upon.

“Control the power inside you. When you feel a surge welling up, harness it.”

Kai: Kai’s power over fire comes from the breath—air is fuel for fire, and controlled breathing can control the blaze. It is not a matter of force—though hot anger can stoke fire—but harnessing the buzzing potential in the air. Fire can be destructive; a wildfire is chaotic, unyielding, and intense, burning everything in its path. But it can be life-giving, too. It’s cozy. It provides warmth on the coldest of nights. It can cook food, boil water, ward off frost. It is the essence of the sun—the largest blaze that allows life to exist. It burns with passion and ferocity, but if it loses strength, there will always be an ember remaining. Almost nothing can beat back a big, hot fire. It can be a weapon or a defense; it hurts to touch, and no one without immunity would dare go near. Without fire, life could not be sustained.

“I just wish I still had my powers. I was Master of Fire. I could've made a new fire like—like...like this.” “Oh, do not worry, Kai. Elemental Power comes from within, like courage. Sometimes it wanes, sometimes it waxes, but it cannot be stolen.”

Nya: The power of water flows through her veins. Water is ever-changing and powerful. Even the strongest rocks erode under the power of water. It’s relentless. It can defeat ghosts because it is always changing and shifting, while ghosts are stuck trying to be one thing and refuse to change. It cleanses and heals. The first thing to do for something dirty is to wash it with water. And it’s part of blood, something vital for people to live. It’s restless. The ocean never stays still; it does not like to be contained. The tides are as constant as they are powerful. The entire ocean moves with the tides; the constant in and out of so much water shapes the coasts. Rivers bend and flow around obstacles; no matter what is in the way, it will eventually reach the ocean—the largest body of water filled with plants and animals. Water supports life and creates ecosystems. It’s the heart of the wild.

“Jay, the ocean's good for much more than food. As we go deeper, I can feel its elemental power growing. It's almost overwhelming.”

Lloyd: Perhaps the most vague but also the most powerful element is Lloyd’s. Is it Power? Creation? Energy? Life? Lloyd is connected to the Source Dragon of Life, not Energy. Whatever the case, it comes from his heart. If it is Life, that is where it is strongest—the beating of a heart shows life in a living being; it is impossible to live without a heart. It’s everywhere—inside Lloyd, in his comrades, his students, his masters, nature around him. His love for the world is his true self and makes his heart powerful. His goodness gives him strength. His drive to save the world fuels his passion. Life is inside of him, but it can also be taken away. It can heal, but also hurt. When it is taken away, overused, or corrupted, it leaves him weakened and sick. But it can save his life in a fight—and it has. It is a combination of the core elements of Creation: Lightning, Ice, Fire, and Earth—LIFE (thank you @secretlyharumi for helping me realize this!). They can be utilized individually, but also combined into something potent and beautiful. Without life, nothing would exist. It is the thread of the universe, stitching together things similar and different; big and small.

“I’m already the Golden Ninja. How much more power do I need?” “You’ve only scratched the surface! You have the potential to move mountains. Power of the First Spinjitzu Master!”

I like the idea the Ninja's personalities and powers are mixed

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Electrons, not molecules

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

When hydrocarbon barons do their damndest to torch the Earth with fossil fuels, they call us dreamers. They insist that there's a hard-nosed reality – humanity needs energy – and they're the ones who live in it, while we live in the fairy land where the world can run on sunshine and virtuous thoughts. Without them making the tough decisions, we'd all be starving in the frigid dark.

Here's the thing: they're full of shit.

Mostly.

Humanity does need energy if we're going to avoid starving in the frigid dark, but that energy doesn't have to come from fossil fuels. Indeed, in the long-term, it can't. Even if you're a rootin' tootin, coal-rollin' climate denier, there's a hard-nosed reality you can't deny: if we keep using fossil fuels, they will someday run out. Remember "peak oil" panic? Fossil fuels are finite, and the future of the human race needn't be. We need more.

Thankfully, we have it. Despite what you may have heard, renewables are more than up to the task. Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how much renewable energy is available to us, here at the bottom of our gravity well. I failed to properly appreciate it until I read Deb Chachra's brilliant 2023 book, How Infrastructure Works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Chachra, an engineering prof and materials scientist, offers a mind-altering reframing of the question of energy: we have a material problem, not an energy problem. If we could capture a mere 0.4% of the sun's rays that strike the Earth, we could give every person on the planet the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, only colder).

Energy isn't just wildly abundant, though: it's also continuously replenished. For most of human history, we've treated energy as scarce, eking out marginal gains in energy efficiency – even as we treated materials as disposable, using them once and consigning them to a midden or a landfill. That's completely backwards. We get a fresh shipment of energy every time the sun (or the moon) comes up over the horizon. By contrast, new consignments of material are almost unheard of – the few odd ounces of meteoric ore that survive entry through Earth's atmosphere.

A soi-dissant adult concerned with the very serious business of ensuring our species isn't doomed to the freezing, starving darkness of an energy-deprived future would think about nothing save for this fact and its implications. They'd be trying to figure out how to humanely and responsibly gather the materials needed for the harvest, storage and distribution of this nearly limitless and absolutely free energy.

In other words, that Very Serious, Hard-Nosed Grown-Up should be concerned with using as few molecules as possible to harvest as many electrons as possible. They'd be working on things like turning disused coal-mines into giant gravity batteries:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Not figuring out how to dig or flush more long-dead corpses out of the Earth's mantle to feed them into a furnace. That is a profoundly unserious response to the human need for energy. It's caveman shit: "Ugh, me burn black sticky gunk, make cave warm, cough cough cough."

Enter Exxon CEO Darren Woods, whose interview with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and editor Alan Murray contains this telling quote: "we basically focus our technology on transforming molecules and they happen to be hydrogen and carbon molecules":

https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/leadership-next-exxonmobil-ceo-darren-woods/

As Bill McKibben writes, this is a tell. A company that's in the molecule business is not in the electron business. For all that Woods postures about being a clear-eyed realist beating back the fantasies of solarpunk-addled greenies, Woods does not want a future where we have all our energy needs met:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-most-epic-and-literal-gaslighting

That's because the only way to get that future is to shift from molecules – whose supply can be owned and therefore sold by Exxon – to electrons, which that commie bastard sun just hands out for free to every person on our planet's surface, despite the obvious moral hazard of all those free lunches. As Woods told Fortune, when it comes to renewables, "we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders."

Woods dresses this up in high-minded seriousness kabuki, saying that Exxon is continuing to invest in burning rotting corpses because our feckless species "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society." In other words, it's just too late for solar. Keep shoveling those corpses into the furnace, they're all that stands between you and the freezing, starving dark.

Now, this is self-serving nonsense. The problem of renewables isn't that it's too late – it's that they don't "generate above-average returns for our shareholders" (that part, however, is gospel truth).

But let's stipulate that Woods sincerely believes that it is too late. It's pretty goddamned rich of this genocidal, eminently guillotineable monster to just drop that in the conversation without mentioning the role his company played in getting us to this juncture. After all, #ExxonKnew. 40 years ago, Exxon's internal research predicted climate change, connected climate change to its own profits, and predicted how bad it would be today.

Those predictions were spookily accurate and the company took them to heart, leaping into action. For 40 years, the company has been building its offshore drilling platforms higher and higher in anticipation of rising seas and superstorms – and over that same period, Exxon has spent millions lobbying and sowing disinformation to make sure that the rest of us don't take the emergency as seriously as they are, lest we switch from molecules to electrons.

Exxon knew, and Exxon lied. McKibben quotes Woods' predecessor Lee Raymond, speaking in the runup to the Kyoto Treaty negotiations: "It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."

When Woods says we need to keep shoveling corpses into the furnace because we "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society," he means that his company lied to us in order to convince us to wait too long.

When Woods – and his fellow enemies of humanity in the C-suites of Chevron and other corpse-torching giants – was sending the arson billions to his shareholders, he held back a healthy share to fund this deceit. He colluded with the likes of Joe Manchin ("[D-POLLUTION]" -McKibben) to fill the Inflation Reduction Act with gifts for molecules. The point of fantasies like "direct air carbon-capture" is to extend the economic life of molecule businesses, by tricking us into thinking that we can keep sending billions to Exxon without suffocating in its waste-product.

These lies aren't up for debate. Back in 2021, Greenpeace tricked Exxon's top DC lobbyist Keith McCoy into thinking that he was on a Zoom call with a corporate recruiter and asked him about his work for Exxon, and McCoy spilled the beans:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/01/basilisk-tamers/#exxonknew

He confessed to everything: funding fake grassroots groups and falsifying the science – he even names the senators who took his bribes. McCoy singled out Manchin for special praise, calling him "a kingmaker" and boasting about the "standing weekly calls" Exxon had with Manchin's office.

Exxon's response to this nine-minute confession was to insist that their most senior American lobbyist "wasn't involved at all in forming policy positions."

McKibben points to the forthcoming book The Price Is Wrong, by Brett Christophers, which explains how the neoclassical economics establishment's beloved "price signals" will continue to lead us into the furnace:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

The crux of that book is:

We cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing.

Nearly 100 years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Today, we can say that it's impossible to get an oil executive to understand that humanity needs electrons, not molecules, because his shareholders' obscene wealth depends on it.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

[greatbeholderbrooke]

I've recently been seeing this article making rounds around this website and particularly people misusing this very cool advancement to imply that modern nuclear reactors are "unsafe" or "dangerous", which is partially due to the just blatantly bad journalism on display here.

The accomplishment of this new reactor is definitely exceptionally impressive but I think that news websites (Even ones specializing in science) have been mischaracterizing the reactor as "meltdown-proof" which is just - wrong? and implies that current reactors are just begging to meltdown.

The cool thing about this new reactor is that its passively cooled, but that doesn't mean its INVULNERABLE to nuclear meltdowns, for example the Chernobyl meltdown happened completely independently of whether it was cooled passively or not.

In fact, passive cooling would only pose an advantage in situations where ALL pumps and backup pumps break and the core doesn't get coolant pumped to it. That's happened exactly once: in Fukushima and only after a literal tsunami hit it, and there's no reason to think that the passive Helium coolant in this new reactor wouldn't also just break. Fukushima happened because of corruption in regulation, preventing suitable defenses against this exact thing from getting built, not because of unsafe reactor design.

There's also some articles like this one which talk about the new reactor being "self-regulating" which is true, but misses the point that the vast majority of nuclear reactors in service today are also stable in the exact same way. Negative feedback loops are a HUGE part of reactor design, the most popular reactor design today is the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) which is incredibly stable - PWRs just truly hate increasing (or decreasing) energy output.

Most nuclear reactors today are already incredibly safe, even if you had complete control over a nuclear reactor it would be effectively impossible to cause a meltdown on purpose - both the physics of the system and the thousands of automated components would beat the ever loving shit out of any hope of trying to do so.

Articles like these just turn this impressive achievements into a kind of fearmongering over the "dangerous" nuclear reactors currently being used. The fact is that nuclear reactors are incredibly safe, PWRs are an incredible feat of engineering genius and its a genuine shame that the general public isn't aware of how much care goes into their design and safety, let alone how useful and essential they are in our electrical systems.

Modern nuclear reactors are clean, they are safe, and they are vital to a healthy energy grid in the post-fossil-fuel future.

A really good read I highly recommend is Colin Tucker's How To Drive A Nuclear Reactor. He's very clear and very frank with the workings and reality of nuclear power today.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Kabru & Mithrun's Life-Changing Road Trip

.

safhkjkhf no but also fake!Kabru is entirely flat because Mithrun doesn't have depth perception...

.

Between this and the information that the team has a 1:2 ratio of guards to criminals, with the guards often appointed by their families as a melodramatic show of loyalty to the realm - which is...possibly literally true, considering the prestige of badassery; but, considering the criminals and the danger, also very possibly a polite euphemism for what amounts to a public sacrifice... I kind of ferally want to know about the dynamics of the Canaries. Are they loyal to each other, or to the cause? Are they all just under the threat of execution? Kabru expected the captain of the squad to be an aristocratic guard, them being more trustworthy than a semi-pardoned criminal ofc, but instead he's...whatever exactly Mithrun's legal status is; I've avoided some details of his backstory.

...I might have to go back and try to actually mentally distinguish these people from each other.

.

Laios Heaven is actually Kabru Hell, and vice versa. It's a very efficient system!

.

*giggles* Kabru is having a weird, upside-down day.

.

"Don't wish often" is such a threatening thing to say, honestly. Don't want. Don't try. Don't be alive, or this place will try to kill you and eat you, for it, too, wishes to live, and that is how the continuation of life works.

It's so so interesting how elves clearly have ANSWERS, answers that our party have been searching for, which would've made their whole adventure easier, and the elves just aren't telling people. To maintain their own power over other races? Probably. Because knowing about demons who'll offer you unlimited power would be a dangerous temptation to many? In fairness, probably that, too. But it sure as hell serves them first.

.

Oh yeah, this definitely reads as aristocratic youths joining the Canaries isn't per se voluntary on their families' parts. It's the elvish Suicide Squad.

.

The timeline isn't making sense. When Mithrun banished the giant mushroom, it was clearly implied that it went to where and when Team Touden were when we'd last seen them, just after their first incident with the changeling mushrooms and then the dwarvish cable car. However, now the pop-up side panels are saying that Kabru and Mithrun's week in the dungeon together is happening at the same time as Team Touden goes through their shapeshifter adventure, barometz, Golden Country, griffins... Which makes sense if one assumes the Canaries & co went into the dungeon right after Kabru first spoke to them, which does seem right in terms of those characters' plotline and personal timetables. But there was no indication, when it cut over to them, that we'd suddenly gone backwards a week in the comic's timeline; indeed, the giant walking changeling mushroom incident suggested it was a single continuity...

Is this just a continuity error? Did I miss some clarifying signifier?

.

Kabru: [tells Mithrun his own backstory back at him]

Mithrun: You left out the soap operatic relationships rooted in royal intrigue, which in turn was rooted in millennia of other royal intrigue.

Kabru: Yes, but I need it to be understandable to a man who's mostly just going to ask me how the goat-demon tast– I mean, uh... Your story structure was bad, so I simplified it.

.

Oh shit, that's the thing Marcille is studying! She doesn't know it summons demons!

...My instinct is, "if only someone told her instead of completely outlawing the knowledge, forcing her to stumble blindly into the consequences on her own!" But, uh... I'm not sure this would actually stop her. She's very determined, and also has her share of wizard hubris. This is, of course, a driving question of the story.

.

It wasn't easier to kill them? It wasn't easier to simply stop drawing magic from the infinite-power dimension?

...ok obviously not the latter, because, y'know. Fossil fuels. But seriously it wasn't easier to just kill them?

.

It's sooo intersting how everyone else views Laios's love of monsters as a dangerous moral failing, when it's really just...ecologist enthusiasm. The man thinks this class of being is Neat. He is harming literally 0 people about this. He isn't even forcing anyone to eat them, just inviting them really enthusiastically and/or pointing out that this is necessary in order to achieve their shared goal of saving Falin.

Yes, obviously this could be subverted into something terrible by an encouraging demon. Just like, obviously, a desire to protect and preserve people can be! Or a desire to live happily with your loved ones! Laios isn't worse than any other Lord of a Dungeon; y'all just hate monsters!

.

Kabru that is SO gay, jfc. I object on principle to the phrase "no heterosexual explanation", but--

.

M! V! P! M! V! P!

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Friendship? Teamwork? Mutual respect and shared understanding of goals? Mithrun is a very useful ally because he really does Only want to stop the demon; he doesn't care about the geopolitics of it. Though his perspective is still very elvish and he definitely will kill our beloved protagonists without hesitation if they seem like they're going to be a problem.

.

I would read an entire novel about the formation of the halffoot union, honest to god. I bet it was very exciting. I bet someone tried to kill Chilchuck at least once.

[fucknugg3t]

idk man something that got my attention was when you look for stuff that’s critical of good omens and Neil you’ll find people upset with season two yeah and it’s like yeah I can see why people would be upset there but it kind of just ends there which sort of is disappointing like I don’t see anyone bothered by the fact in the first season of the show one of our protagonist the witch lady is like so clearly messing around with pseudoscience and racist conspiracy theories but that’s just like completely brushed off and treated like it’s weird but no one’s really bothered or pulling her aside and being like hey dude looking out for the environment and animals and things is great! And being into witchcraft and paganism is a belief type thing that doesn’t automatically hurt anybody but a lot of the magazines you’re reading and giving these children have some conspiracy theories and racist ones too and even the stuff that does concern the environment isn’t really fleshed out or like talking about what the solutions are like when it came to the nuclear power Adam didn’t think about geothermal energy or wind turbines or hydropower it was just let’s remove nuclear energy and still get energy from it and it’s treated as kind of a crazy thing like oh these people want to get rid of energy and not this type of energy causes problems let’s switch to something that’s safer for everyone also crazy how fossil fuels aren’t mentioned at all? And also this is one of our protagonist this is someone we’re supposed to be rooting for but when she’s written like this and no one calls her out on like racism and conspiracies it’s all just chalked up to witchyness it makes pagans look really bad and conflates racist conspiracies with paganism and environmentalism(not even consistent or good environmentalism which is another problem making looking out for the environment seem silly or inconsistent) they could’ve given her a Sokka type arc yk where she’s talked to and she’s like oh you’re right this is mean let me stop and just stick to the witchcraft

oh my god also the fact the witches being burned were actually witches like that’s NOT what happened and it undermines the amount of women and men who were fucking lynched and burned alive because they acted out of line with societies insane restrictions

there’s also something to be said about the fact you have good and bad but human seems to mean neutral which not how that is? Not even how it’s portrayed in the show the angels are clearly not good they’re hypocritical and just as brutal and unforgiving so this isn’t good vs evil and humans aren’t neutral humans here seem to be just loads of people choosing between things that hurt people or not that’s not really neutrality because it’s not a monolith it’s every person on earth and each one is different with different morals so Adam who is clearly trying to be good by the end isn’t neutral I can’t understand how angels have warped the concept of goodness but if that’s what they’re going with they need to address that at the end say something like this is real goodness it’s communication community caring for people choosing to help when possible etc but instead it’s like angels are good demons bad humans neutral bruh there’s probably more like religiously off and morally off I can totally see it and see me missing some stuff

also the little girl Adam is friends with is leaning into shitty terfy type fake feminism like she’ll make comments about when a woman has a boyfriend the little girl says she’s lost and strayed from feminism and holy shit that’s not funny? It’s played as if it’s meant to be funny but that’s just conserving like the kids are clearly meant to be a little bit mean and not quite with it when it comes to morals they play a game about burning at the stake and yeah that’s fucking awful but none of this should be played as a joke and never taken seriously I wish there was a scene where some adult sat down with them and was like hey that was mean that’s a mean thing to say think about it for a second what you said means this did you mean that? Is that like what you want to be saying? Aziraphale couldn’t said something like that he is the literal Angel and the guy always trying to get people to be nice he was trying to get satans son to be nice so you’d think he’d take the opportunity to talk to the kids and pull a little Angel on your shoulder moment also weird how in the last episode the kids face the four horsemen and the two aren’t like trying to stand in feont of them and protect them or even literally just talk to them and guide them through it like everyone’s sort of just standing there for a bit and the kids and demon Angel duo plus the other two adults aren’t trying to protect the kids even the lady who made sure the missle didn’t hit the children didn’t get in the middle of these four horsemen trying to minupulate these children and yes you could say the Angel and demon are trying to kill the kid but that’s a last resort and even then I think they’d both get in the way of the four horsemen first and try to talk to Adam and see what he thinks what he’s doing and planning and then try to say hey are you chill what’s the deal alright you’re trying to not get the world ended amazing let’s help you before resorting to KILLING A CHILD??? Because literally if they just checked they would’ve found out oh the kids chill and even if the kid wasn’t chill you still have to check and protect him

it could’ve been interesting to see a situation where they have to protect this child while also figuring out how to talk him down or at least attempt something like that before realizing they didn’t have to like maybe they have a struggle between doing things the easy way vs the safe best way that would be difficult for Crowley and aziraphale the show version at least would be feeling incredibly guilty feeling like either choice is betraying someone I feel like in general there should’ve been more interaction at least in the end of our main characters at least like one solid interaction instead of just standing there

also the scene where the witch whose entire life and purpose was the stop the apocalypse just taking a pause to have sex with the witch hunter dude was crazy like yeah sure just spend the entire show pretending like you’re going to save the world and you know exactly how even though you’re not going to you don’t know how and what you do know is that you’re going to have sex with some guy who shows up I guess? Like the world is ending and they go ok now! Are you serious and the witch ancestor lady doesn’t seem bothered when she prophecies this like oh the world is ending and my descendent is going to get laid instead of finding how to fix it all ok cool the entire show she acts like she knows she’s going to save the world and exactly how because of the prophecy but she actually doesn’t ???

and also also witchcraft isn’t Christian? Liek correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that incredibly chastised and considered demonic in Christianity? It’s considered like evil(which is wrong witchcraft is separate from Christianity and not demonic they don’t praise the devil or believe in him im pretty sure) so like that’s just mixing different spiritual stuff and calling it a day right??? Like are we just supposed to pretend that’s ok?

also just fuck Amazon in general but also for how short their shows are the entire damn season is only six episodes and it’s just plot point after plot point it’s not blended well and there’s no filler type thing where there’s any scene that isn’t literally just a plot point it’s really disappointing how a lot of shows and movies are just like that now it’s seriously hard to watch and it makes the intimate scenes even more jarring because it feels like everyone’s rushing so hard end of the world we’re all going to die we’re in survival mode no time for friendship those two are having sex now we’re going to just sit on that for a while and show it to you ok back to the world ending

there’s probably more too but that’s been on my mind

[greenerteacups]

Hey GT, glad to see you're back! I'm still halfway thru Lionheart (just read the world cup chapter, what a delight) and your notes got me wondering.

I'm sure you've probably answered this before but how do you manage to make the world feel so rich? I'm not that into the fandom so I don't know If there are some things fanon agreed upon or if it is your own musings about the magic world. Like Draco explaining to Hermione about portkeys or how many languages Krum speaks.

How do you decide what's important enough to get a mention? Where do you go when you need answers and Canon is not enough to provide it?

Thanks for the kind words, and for the question! It's a matter of personal taste, like anything. Some writers prefer an athletic, streamlined plot, with only as much worldbuilding as you absolutely need (how does Panem run a command economy of 4.5 million people primarily on fossil fuels when its coal district has a population of less than 10,000? fuck off! who cares! they're Y/A dystopias about a TV show where teens beat each other to death!). Some writers, on the other hand, won't bother to start the story until they know the pH of the soil in every region of the world they're writing about. I'm somewhere on the second half of the scale, in that I'll give details that aren't strictly necessary to the plot, just because I like to feel like I'm writing about a world where real, extraneous things can happen. Some details are foreshadowing; some details are Special Mouseketools that will Help Us Later; and sometimes, you just get to know a cool fact about portkeys.

I guess part of the fun of building out a world is getting to think about Everything, which is what my brain normally does. I have a pretty broad body of literature as a starting gate, so there's plenty of room to play. E.g., when I started writing Krum, I thought about how he's not super fluent in English in canon, and that naturally made me ask why, because he clearly has taken English, so either he only started lessons recently or it hasn't been a priority for him; and then I went "wait, what's his first language? Bulgarian, right? But Durmstrang isn't — hang on—" and then I pulled up an actual map of Europe, which led me to realize that he wouldn't likely be speaking his first language at Durmstrang, which means he already had to become bilingual just to start his wizarding education, and that explains part of why he doesn't have a ton of time/effort to spare for a third language, plus he'd probably have a translator available whenever he traveled with a team because he's a B.F.D. — etc., etc. And then you keep thinking about that until you remember that you're supposed to be writing a fic, and you scramble to get back to doing that. Only now, you have worldbuilding! Congrats.

To try for an even halfway useful answer to your question: worldbuilding becomes most important when it creates limitations, because limitations define your characters and give them chances to develop/reveal themselves. So the details of portkeys become important because they explain the limitations of magical travel, which is a big nebulous ??? in the original series, since the introduction of teleportation via Apparating means that all other forms of transportation become inefficient by comparison. It also means the limitations introduced by travel — that is, not all characters can be in all places at once — also go away, because anyone can be anywhere immediately. From a narrative perspective, this sucks massive horse ass. Hence: I dumped a shit ton of limitations on Apparation (i.e., (1) it requires a ton of energy, (2) it's really fucking hard, (3) it's really fucking dangerous, (4) it's more of both the farther away you're going, (5) it's more of both the more people you take with you, (6) you can't Apparate without a clear destination in mind which means (7) you need to have been there already, and so (8) some people prefer not to do it). Hence, I also put limitations on portkeys (i.e., they have to be set up well in advance, you need to identify out both destinations precisely beforehand, and the calculations are difficult to do). Those limitations, and the Watsonian explanations you create for them, are your worldbuilding. They're what make the world feel real, because they give it grit and character. They give you a more complete sense of what you can and cannot do.

The rest of it is taste and preference, really; it's what interests you, and what parts of the world you want to explore. That's going to be unique to every author, and that's the beauty of worldbuilding — it reflects the parts of the world that you like to think about.

[gammija]

usa people of voting age. i dont have to tell yall all the ways harris sucks, and i dont have to tell yall how trump sucks in all the same ways and more, but there's one area in which they do differ greatly and demonstrably: their attitude to climate change. the current administration has shown that the democrats believe climate change is real and are making efforts to improve. are they doing amazing? of course not. yall love cars and oil. but things are being done!

now please consider what will happen when the usa, #1 contributor of CO2 in the world historically and still at the top currently, completely stops doing anything to improve that; in fact increases their investments in fossil fuels greatly. Consider not just its literal effects on the climate, but in particular its secondary effects on every sliding-ever-rightwards government right now, looking for any excuse to do nothing.

i know yalls politicians like to point to chinas emissions as a reason to stay inactive - but for basically everyone else, you guys are china. so please... try to make sure that the leader of the biggest economy in the world will be doing something, anything, to reduce global warming for the next four years

[mllemaenad]

The thing about Fallout is ... I don't actually think Bethesda really broke the concept until Fallout 76. I have seen people wring their hands over the Nuclear Option quest in Fallout 4 being incompatible with Fallout's themes, but I don't really agree with that.

There's that tired, defeated sounding voice over at the start of every game, after all: "War, war never changes". And I remember: I remember having to blow up both the Mariposa Base and the Cathedral in the original Fallout; I remember destroying the Enclave oil rig in Fallout 2. That's three whole buildings with people in them, just like the Institute.

While they are role playing games with a lot of choice and consequence built in, the Fallout series does consistently railroad the player in one sense: you are inserted into the narrative at a point where the situation has escalated to the point where you have to go to war. There are many side quests that give you the opportunity to find alternative, peaceful solutions to conflicts – you can fix broken machinery and forge alliances or just shout at people until they calm down, and that all works – but in the main quest, the fight is inevitable.

And that makes sense. The ghost that haunts the narrative of every Fallout game is the morning of the 23rd of October, 2077, when everybody fired on everybody else at once. You ask yourself – "How could they do that?" The scale of the destruction, the sheer number of deaths, the absolute no-win scenario that created for every nation in the world makes it sound utterly unthinkable. But they did it.

You get a lot of historical backstory on how they got there, of course: the over reliance on fossil fuels, culminating in a last minute switch to nuclear power; the collapsing economies and failing institutions; the extreme ideologies embraced by the world's super powers; the horrifying disregard for human life that spread everywhere well before anyone launched those missiles. You see all the off ramps that weren't taken along the way.

But more importantly, you live it, every time. You never set out to fight a war or blow anything up. You're trying to find a damn water chip, a GECK, your father, the guy who fucking shot you, your son. But at the end of the day, you always find yourself recruited, and you always have to destroy something. Then you can see for yourself how it happens. The world had passed its point of no return the day you arrived in it, and you just have to deal with it. War never changes.

But with Fallout 76 ... I mean, it's the problem of a single player narrative in a multiplayer game. The premise is that you are one of many vault dwellers emerging into the world to rebuild, but in practice you are The Chosen One, all over again. The Vault Dweller, singular. If you imagine it as a single player scenario it's not that bad, although it is retreading old ground: the Enclave has another one of their delightful genocidal plans, and in the end you have to turn their weapons on their plague-ridden creations to stop the nightmare from spreading. It's a tragedy, because you are risking this little patch of unpolluted land, where crops can still grow and people can still live – but you're alone with only the resources you've been able to scrape together from the detritus of this fallen society, so what choice do you have?

Except. Well. You are not alone. Not even a little bit. In theory you should have a vault full of fellow geniuses to collaborate with. And unlike other games in the series, your fundamental issue is not that you are dealing with multiple groups of people with such different ideologies that they will never agree. Those people existed, but they are now dead or fled (At least originally; I am aware that expansions have since changed the situation). In theory you are now accompanied by a group of people who should, like you, be focused on doing everything they can not to destroy their new homeland.

And worst of all, because it's a multiplayer game everybody gets a bloody turn. You don't launch your weapons, battle the scorchbeast queen and then fade into a montage describing the literal fallout of what you have done. No, you do the whole thing over again for the XP and the loot. So now you are basically using nuclear weapons for post-apocalyptic big game hunting, and it drives me up the wall.

War never changes. Let's launch the nukes for fun.

[justki11ing]

alright gang, story time (this happened last night and was too hilarious to not share).

basically, me and my friend were having a debate about what the best energy drinks are, which somehow evolved into a theory session about what mabel juice is made of.

and, naturally, we just had to try making some.

we tried to guess what the recipe was based on show canon. 🤓☝️according to the gravity falls episode sock opera: - mabel juice energizes you (i'm assuming it has some sort of gatorade in it? it sure does look colorful enough for it) - stan also described mabel juice as "if coffee and nightmares had a baby" which obviously meant we had to add coffee in too. (yes, with the gatorade because our dumb asses thought that'd somehow boost the energy it would give; and it would also look colorful.)

and in a shocking development, mixing different energy drinks together with coffee does not result in an energizing rainbow-colored drink. instead, it results in.... whatever this thing is.

(we didn't have plastic dinosaurs but i think the tiny scraps of jelly and rainbow sprinkles are close enough. ish.)

my friend was brave enough to actually try some of it (i applaud her heroism), and... well...

to give you an idea, here's some descriptions of what she thought of the taste, quoted: "the trauma of a thousand emo children"; "if someone dropped a strawberry in the dirt, deep fried it, and then turned it into those gummies with a rubber aftertaste"; "nuclear warefare if they spray paint in the bombs"; "if the stars bled and and that blood was mixed with fossil fuels"

and then i came to a terrifying realization; we didn't make mabel juice. WE MADE BILL JUICE.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The journalist John Vaillant’s book “Fire Weather” begins in the spring of 2016 in the boreal forests surrounding the remote Canadian city of Fort McMurray, where a fire is growing. Although wildfire is a regular part of life in northern Alberta, this fire was destined to be different. “A new kind of fire introduced itself to the world,” Vaillant writes. 

Ushered in by soaring temperatures, drought and high winds, this wildfire obliterated thousands of buildings, forced 88,000 people to evacuate and turned downtown Fort McMurray into an apocalyptic hellscape. At the time, the Fort McMurray fire was unprecedented. But Vaillant saw it for what it really was: a harbinger of terrifying things to come. 

Inside Climate News spoke with Vaillant about what we can learn from the fires currently burning in Los Angeles; the parallels between this disaster and what happened in Fort McMurray in 2016; and what we should expect from what he calls our “century of fire.”

“We’re going to have to let go of a lot of the 20th century,” Vaillant said. “That’s what these events are telling us. The 20th century is over, and we really have to rethink how we do everything, from how we get our energy to how we build on a planet that we have made much more dangerous.”

KILEY BENSE: Can you talk about the connections between climate change and the fires in Los Angeles? What are the causes of these fires?

JOHN VAILLANT: We’ve seen a lot of local [blame]: It’s,“Well, the governor didn’t do this, and the mayor didn’t do that, and that reservoir wasn’t full.” None of that would have made a bit of difference. Whenever those 100-mile-an-hour winds are blowing, it just doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Who’s in charge is the wind; who’s in charge is the fire. And who made it worse is human beings by burning fossil fuels at an extraordinary rate for 200 years straight. 

My tendency is to look at things more systemically, and what climate change does is it takes naturally occurring phenomena and makes them more intense and more erratic, and also creates conditions for them to occur in places they didn’t normally occur. We all know Southern California is flammable. It’s part of the rhythm of this landscape. But they hadn’t, historically, had to deal with fires of this intensity with this frequency. And so that’s the other thing: these events are going to happen more and more often.

California really is in a position to move the needle globally on climate change, because it’s the fifth biggest economy in the world. If California took a particular stance on petroleum, took a particular stance on building codes, took a particular stance on insurance coverage in dangerous environments, it could set the tune. This is an opportunity for Los Angeles to be a leader in building for the 21st century.

BENSE: Could you talk about how we have to rethink firefighting? Particularly for a fire like those in Los Angeles, what are some of the challenges that modern wildfires pose to firefighters?

VAILLANT: “Twenty-first century fire” is a term I coined in “Fire Weather” to try to encompass this new fire situation we find ourselves in, which is hotter and drier, makes fires able to ignite and move, propagate and grow, often exponentially faster. 

Exponential growth is a concept that humans have a really hard time with: the doubling, doubling, doubling, doubling, doubling, and how fast that happens. That’s what fires do. That’s how they can grow. 

We saw that to terrible effect a couple of nights ago. This blowtorch of embers descended on Pacific Palisades and Altadena, and you cannot fight a fire in those conditions. Even the planes were grounded. The winds were so strong they couldn’t even fly, and your fire hose is going to blow right back in your face when it’s blowing 70 miles an hour and the heat coming off, it’s like a blast furnace. Think of a bellows in a foundry. It’s huffing and puffing and intensifying. That’s what the winds, the Santa Anas, were doing. 

As I interviewed firefighters for “Fire Weather” in these catastrophe zones, they said the firefighting operation became a life-saving operation, and that’s really the only realistic thing you can do until the wind settles. The fire is simply unfightable.

When you have a wildfire coming into the WUI, the wildland urban interface, and entering a community across a broad front, often over a period of days, that’s called a siege event. It’s quite a militaristic term, but that’s what it feels like: You are being besieged by the fire. In those circumstances, firefighters don’t get any rest, and because it is so hot now, because nights no longer cool down the way they used to, you don’t get the dew that you used to get. It means the fire, in many of these cases, is expanding aggressively during the night. This did not used to be a common characteristic among wildfires. Now it is.

The difference between fires and firefighters: They both breathe oxygen, but one of them gets tired and one of them doesn’t. The fire doesn’t get tired, but many of these firefighters have been going for two days straight. It was the same in Fort McMurray. It was the same in Redding, California, in 2018, and in Lahaina. Our bodies aren’t made for that, and you’re doing intense physical work under the highest stress, operating heavy machinery, and you haven’t slept in two days, and you’re probably under-hydrated, you probably haven’t had time to eat, you could very well be hallucinating. 

[kudzucataclysm]

🔋🏢🪖💵🧬🗺️😲0️⃣🙅 -> sci-fi asks for s!e gooooo

JESUS CHRIST REN 😭😭😭 i’ll do my best…as i havent written anything in forever so sorry if my answers suck-

🔋What’s the state of energy technology in your WIP? Is solar old news, or still being fought for?

solar is probably being explored but its not much up and running so to speak. energy technology relies primarily on hydropower and fossil fuels and also alien blood 🌞

🏢What’s the state of architectural technology in your WIP? Are there cities floating in the sky, or are houses still made of bricks and steel?

Its the same as it ever was tbh? except in the NEC where some basic building foundations are made of an alien metal that can rebuild itself when it’s destroyed, at least for the first few times. after that it gets a bit unstable and Freaky Shit Happens

ig the NEC is the only sort of case in the world where a city is BUILT like a mountain of sorts?? i imagine everywhere else on earth fuckin. rolls their eyes at the sheer stupidity and weirdness wnv the city appears in the news (all the time) cuz like wtf. that CANNOT be structurally sound-

🪖What’s the state of military technology in your WIP? Are armored giant robots fighting wars, or still regular people with guns?

ngl this has me brainstorming…theres def weird shit going on military wise- but it also makes me ask myself if there ARE any “militaries” on earth after mars took over…ig closest thing to a military force is the police then…IM GONNA RESEARCH THIS ACTUALLY IM GETTING IDEAS-

and yeah they carry regular guns and not-regular guns; they also carry anti-chimera technology cuz u cant really apprehend half alien suicide bombers with regular stuff 😭 there is a substance that’s poisonous to chimera and martians tho, the best i can describe it rn is basically their kryptonite? its extremely hard to come by and manufacture tho (as you need the fossilized organs of dead martians and on earth that is basically an impossibility) so what police tend to have is like…factory made, bootleg imitations of it. it doesnt outright kill chimera but its like a bit of an effective tranquilizer of sorts. in the form of bullets, ow

actually i just remembered! ig what can be considered the closest thing to military technology is that One Guy on one of the moons and a sort of “living satellite” who is Another Guy whos orbiting earth constantly. groundbreaking asteroid defense systems those two, i wonder if theyre friends. the Moon Guy is sipping on pina coladas as we speak and trying to watch the elections on a shitty barely functioning RCA tv

💵Is currency different in your WIP? Is it all digital, or does physical money still play a role?

physical money is still a thing in se, its just that the US dollar is the most unstable currency in the world now lol. the NEC has its own currency actually but some businesses also take yuans and us dollars. it just depends on whoever 🎣

i’ll have to think more on this tho. i dont think atm machines and debit cards exist hmm 🤔

🧬How different are the aliens, biologically, from humans in your WIP? Are they bonding over shared mammalian traits or unable to comprehend each other?

there is next to no bonding over shared biological traits between martians and humans lol. they KIND of have a shared ancestor/creator of sorts but in different ways ⛹🏽 humans are meat, and martians are not…? some scientists on earth theorize that theyre actually a type of fungus, others even say theyre “rocks” of some kind.

i will ig say that martians (not as a whole) can find the inner workings of the human body absolutely fascinating if they have the time/intelligence to care or learn abt it! its so complex, something that theyre (in comparison) very much not and i have a couple of martian bg characters who dedicate their whole existences to studying the human body. humans meanwhile find martian biology very ANNOYING and DUMB and “HOW DO THESE THINGS EVEN EXIST” kind of thing. humans biologists and physicists i suppose have been forced to question EVERYTHING abt EXISTENCE becuz of martians and its a field of study that people on earth r sort of desperate for but like. u have to understand people have driven themselves genuinely insane and to suicide trying to figure out wtf exactly martians are lol

🗺️Do the aliens have settlements on other planets? How many?

nah, just earth. martians dont really…have an understanding of how their spaceships work, i’ll just say that *side-eyes*. they also cant detect other lifeforms in or around the solar system (that they can see at least) and earth is basically their neighbor so. yay!!! why bother trying to find anything else or go anywhere else

😲Are there any human customs that the aliens find strange, offensive, gross, or confusing? Which ones?

martians r pretty straightforward in their thinking, the way humans process and experience emotions is extremely confusing to them. they basically have EXTREMELY SIMPLISTIC TUNNEL VISION when it comes to a lot of things…also the practice of burying our dead they find wasteful at worst, kind of disrespectful at best.

0️⃣Has the human population been devastated to almost nothing? What happened?

earth had a global nuclear/antimatter war, then got hit by asteroids(?), the asteroids knocked earth’s magnetic field out of whack, the ring of fire exploded which made the yellowstone supervolcano explode, which caused a massive global cooling event and its in a new ice age now

during all this is like a very shadowy, very secret (accidental) alien invasion going on and wildlife is dying off from this and famines and the outbreak of psionics and superpowers and a whole bunch of other bullshit tbh-

ANYWAY YEAH global human population is LowTM but its being Managed. martians r trying to get the population back up and running yippeee thx guyz 🏌🏽‍♂️ what would we do without them

🙅Were there people completely untouched by the apocalypse? How?

uuuuuuuhhhhhmmmmm *looks up at the previous answer and scratches chin* man i dunno lol 🌞

[sugarand-everythingnice]

The Beast Comes Out ___

Had to hand it to the guy- Shockwave never did things by halves.

Call it logic, call it scientific process, call it torture- Whatever the mad mech put his mind to, he calculated every plausible action and reaction and was quick to recalculate when results suffered from the hypothesis. Honestly, it was kind of impressive. Y'know, if that industrious mind hadn't churned out some of the most horrific weapons of the war.

And wasn't focused entirely on making his existence a living hell.

Wheeljack resisted the urge to squirm, fighting to slow the panting rhythm of his vents trying to cool his bound and battered frame. If it was just pain, he wouldn't be having so much trouble with it, but Shockwave had long since moved past pain in regards to the subject of his latest experiments. Pain was normal, pain was expected.

Shockwave was not looking for normal.

It had taken a couple sessions for the Wrecker to catch on, largely due to the fact the scientist had sedated him pretty heavily the first few goes. The early interactions were a mostly incoherent blur of strange bubbling tubes and tapping keys and a pervasive numbness, but either the sedative had atarted to not work so well or Shockwave had lowered the dosage, because he was a great deal more aware these days. Aware and able to listen, as the massive purple mech spoke quietly to himself as he meticulously reviewed the results of his efforts.

There were fossils floating suspended in tubes, literal fossils of beings that had dominated Cybtertron's distant past and Shockwave had figured out how to extract something from those fossils. Which he had decided to test it on the singular captured stray Autobot, just to see what might happen.

Well, the mech probably had some kind of logical reasoning or hypothesis or whatever, but from Wheeljack's point of view, it was nothing more than basic curiosity turned up to 100. Because as far as he could tell, there was no Primus damned reason why some injections of fossil stuff should be making his self-repair go absolutely nuts. Look, he was an engineer before the war, then a demolitions specialist, cyber-biology was very much NOT his forte. And it didn't help that he was only getting bits and pieces of things, whenever Shockwave started to ramble to himself or moved the slab around and he got a look at one of the various screens full of code and notes and terminology that made no fragging sense to someone without the correct background of study.

Still, he did his best with what he had, stored internal screenshots and took notes in the hope that when he finally made it out of this hellhole, he'd be able to send the packet off to Ratchet and at least get some help figuring out what in the frag had been done to him.

As far as he knew, according to his own internal diagnostics, his self-repair was reading something wrong with him and was currently going bonkers trying to fix that perceived wrong, which had all his systems going on overdrive, sucking down his fuel and depleting his material stores and making everything too warm and Primus damnit did his protoform itch. He hadn't felt so completely at odds with his own body since his first instar, growing in the initial armor that would develop with him to maturity. At least during that mess, he'd had family and friends to help ease the stress of it all and hadn't been trapped at the mercy of a mech that had literally had his emotional cortex lobotomized.

Pretty much the only upside was that Shockwave had caught on to the rapid depletion relatively early on, and had decided that reducing his test subject to a starved Empty was not the goal of his experiment, so there were three or four lines tapped into his frame feeding in supplements and energon. Not enough to stop his tanks from clenching with hunger, but it kept his self-repair from cannibalizing things. As though roused by his wandering thoughts, Wheeljack felt his fuel tanks twist and clench, his insides seizing up, and he grit his dentae against the intense discomfort, swallowing hard to keep thickened oral lubricant from seeping free. His intake felt sticky and gross from the lack of refreshed fluids, an unfortunately common sensation after the millennia of war basically tanked all their resources, but it never got any easier to bear. Especially when there wasn't a mission to focus on, something to keep his mind off how much his body ached and his mouth tasted like old batteries.

He realized too late that he'd unconsciously shuttered his optics when he heard a low creak from way too close for comfort, and he snapped his optics open in time to see Shockwave had apparently finished with whatever note taking he'd been doing and was currently looming over his test subject. That single expressionless orb of an optic peered down at him with all the interest and focus of an oddly shaped desk lamp, but he knew better than to take the huge mech's blankness at face value. Ha. Face value.

"Hngh. S-See somethin' ya like, big guy?"

Audial antennae flicked, that big red optic brightening briefly.

"Subject maintains original personality and mental faculties. Cognitive testing may be required for later stages."

A chill ran down the Wrecker's spinal strut, and he just kept himself from grimacing.

"Scuse you, if anybody needs their head checked, it's tall, dark an' high on god blood."

Shockwave just stared down at him, and Wheeljack resisted the urge to squirm. The huge purple mech flicked his antennae again, then straightened, stepping away towards a side table Wheeljack had come to recognize as the main work bench for his particular torture.

"Cognitive testing for Lord Megatron a logical conclusion according to recent behavioral changes. Consult with medical team."

It took far too much effort to keep back the bark of laughter that wanted to escape, and though he managed, Wheeljack still had to bite down on his lower lip to hold it in. The soft metal pinched, but he ignored the small pain to focus his efforts on not bursting into hysterical giggles. His humor died as Shockwave returned, a syringe of green-gold substance held carefully in the long delicate digits of his only hand.

"Data log, 0323_2420, Project: CNA Assimilation. Current readings report heightened immune response, stronger than originally calculated but well within range estimates. Injections of extracted Predacon nuclei yet to induce adaptation response, threshold may be unique to each individual subject. Will require a wider test group to confirm. Injection 013, commencing."

Wheeljack let himself squirm this time, fighting to get as much of his frame away from the approaching needle as he could. It was ultimately a useless endeavor, seeing as the slab was magnetized every time the jerk decided to do this part of things, but he still tried, leaning his full weight into the neck and limb restraints in pure stubborn defiance. He snarled his engine as the needle slid smoothly under his armor, piercing through muscle cabling directly into his base protoform just like every other injection before.

Primus, he hated how easily Shockwave got away with scrap. All planned ahead and calculated and working around the fact he'd modified one of his arms into a giant kriff-off cannon larger than most mechs were tall-!

Rage simmered, familiar and hot, just under his spark as the eerie green-gold fluid was forced into his body, his hyperactive systems catching on to the new input and sending a cascade of notifications and scrambled data across his internal HUD. Something beeped elsewhere in the room, and Wheeljack was vaguely aware of Shockwave stepping away, but his mind was occupied by the burning ache that spread under his armor, pulsing in time with his sparkbeat. It felt like something was crawling around inside of him, following the path of dispersion from the injection site, and it made his tanks churn with nausea.

Armor flared against his will, his fans whirling up to their highest setting as his systems revved into overdrive, heat building so quickly and intensely he ended up with his head lolled back, intake gaping in a desperate effort to get more air circulating through his frame. Red and gold and green flickered and flashed across his internal HUD, his vision swimming as his optics tried and failed to focus on something, anything around him. His winglets, a little smushed but otherwise just mildly numb, suddenly flexed harshly underneath him, and he found himself bowing up from the slab to try and give them space as that burning sensation burst into a piercing kind of pain pulsing through the little offshoots. Vaguely, a part of him wondered why. Winglets like his weren't anything special, just some evolutionary remnant from when Cybertronians began to transition from mechanimal alts to vehicles, an in-between state that was either completely lost or developed into expressive doorwings. He'd modded his a long time ago, kitted them out with extra sensors and things to make them useful, but they were still mostly just cosmetic little things. Not important, not useful.

But now they were burning and there was something wrong with the way they were pressing against the slab underneath him.

Faintly, he could hear someone screaming, their vox crackling and skipping with strain, but he couldn't pinpoint it, his processor muzzy and fogged with heat and growing pain. It wasn't until he felt something crack, and the screaming pitched up into an agonized screech, that he realized that it was his vox making all that noise.

Several pops and cracks happened in quick succession, following the burning down his spinal strut and deep into his frame. Monitoring machines were beeping and shrieking around him, and he could faintly make out Shockwave's voice, an edge of satisfaction to that hated vox that made his tanks churn. And then they were churning for another reason entirely, clenching and twisting inside of him as he gagged and coughed on his own oral lubricant, feeling like he desperately needed to purge something foul from his systems but there was nothing there to be rid of. His dentae ached and pulsed, his digits feeling as thought they were being pulled from their housings, everything was hurting and he could do nothing to stop it. Just endure. Just hold on. Endure. Hold on. Endure. Hold. ON.

Heat and pain. He was nothing but heat and pain. And rage. So. Much. RAGE.

A dull creaking, followed by a sharp ping, and he felt his arm was free. Movement became an absolute necessity, overtaking his mind with the desperate need to flee. He could hear something roaring, angry and hateful, and he didn't care, heaving on the restraints holding him against his will. Something tried to stop him, reaching for him, and snapped at it, dentae only just missing slim purple talons as the binding around his neck tore free. He set his dentae to the task of freeing his other arm, ripping into the metal restraining him like it was nothing but tinfoil, then he was up, thrashing under the influence of a fresh pulse of pain before he managed to get a grip on the bonds around his legs. They crumpled under his hold, and he ripped them entirely loose from the slab.

Something whined, power cycling into something dangerous, and he dropped to the floor just in time to avoid the cannon shot.

He saw a huge purple blur, a splot of red somewhere towards the top, an angular shape pointed towards him growing in brightness, and he scrambled into motion. That was danger, that was a threat. That needed to be dead.

Coming up from under the damaged slab, he full body tackled the purple thing, engine snarling as he bared his dentae, winglets flaring high and wide, wider than they had before but he couldn't focus on that he had to destroy this threat, this danger. Sharp claws dug into thick armor, providing ideal purchase for the hooked barbs jutting from his forearms to tear into, while he slammed his knee spikes whatever soft bits he could.

Fresh spilled energon filled the air with its sharp tang, and his snarl took a hungry edge, his tanks twisting empty. A part of him rebelled harshly against the thought that rose up in his mind, and he had to concede- Hungry or not, this was not a place to feed. Dark and dank and rife with dangers he could sense like optics on his back, the downed threat sprawled out on the floor before him was too big to drag with him. He would have to find food elsewhere, once it was safer.

Finding a way out was refreshingly simple. Tearing out the bleeping noise next to an archway caused the archway to open into a passage, and he took off as quick as he could, clawing his way up into the most shadowed parts of the ceiling to get himself out of sight and out of mind. He tracked the small silver and purple things towards an exit, and crouched up high until a lone one approached. It was simple to tear the thing's head off, and he only hesitated a moment over the idea of taking it with him for the life fluid he could smell spilling out of it, but it was too ungainly to bother with when he didn't have a safe place to carry it off to. Another time.

The openness around him sang of freedom, opportunity, and he took it in both servos, changing his shape to find speed and bolting off across the desert. Freedom was his, and nothing was ever going to take it from him, ever again.

___

ENJOY! :D

WOAH THIS IS SO GOOD!!

Oh my god I love how well you know all their biological anatomy and such 😭

But yes! This is the stuff I want to veer towards! You have given me so many ideas ♡♡♡♡