#type of matrices

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Here are some images and a letterpress specimen sheet from the article "Casting Five-Line Pica from Sanspareil Matrices" by Stan Nelson, Jim Walczak, and Ellen McKee of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, published in Matrix 23 (Winter 2003), pp. 121-129, and printed at John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England in an edition of 800 copies.

Five-line pica is equivalent to 60-point type, which is quite sizable. The larger the type, the more difficult it is to make matrices for it by striking them in copper with steel punches. One way to make large fonts is to cast them in sand, which is labor intensive because the sand mold is broken with every casting. In the early 19th century, a new method was devised by casting large fonts in sanspariel matrices, where the shape of the letter is cut as a stencil in a plate of copper or brass and another plate is attached to the back of the stenciled plate with rivets. This creates the matrix that can be fitted into a mould. Shown above are:

A letterpress-printed specimen sheet of type cast by the authors.

A photograph of the sanspariel matrices used for casting.

A picture of the mould within which the matrix is held.

A matrix for the numbers 9 and 6.

Stan Nelson's "jet-breaking" device, used to crack off the flange produced in the casting process before dressing the type.

The type as cast, one with the "jet" still attached.

A 1829 specimen page from the New England Type Foundry.

The National Museum of American History holds three sets of sanspariel matrices in a slab-serif typeface known as Antique (also called Egyptian). Stan Nelson, typecaster, typographer, and long-time Museum Specialist in the Graphic Arts Collection at the Smithsonian, wrote the introduction to the experience of casting type from sanspariel matrices. Jim Walczak, proprietor of Sycamore Press & Typefoundry in Williamstown, Massachusetts discusses the casting process. Ellen McKee, letterpress printer and long-time volunteer at the Smithsonian, describes the type-dressing process.

Our copies of Matrix are another donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

[swankpalanquin]

typography nerd alert!

[fligniuz]

sex for homework

luigi mangione x reader

｡𖦹°‧ you ask your cute tutor to help you study for your math final.

word count: 5.5k • part of my study buddies series (read here!) • nsfw • read on ao3

warnings : f! reader; EXPLICIT; dumbification if U squint; praise; oral (m! receiving); pre calc lol

notes : crossposting my shit to tumblr and starting with arguably one of my greatest uses of free will in history. title frommm:

You have a bit of a dilemma.

Well, it would be more accurate to say that you had a dilemma, have had one for quite a while now—your current grievances are merely extensions of a constant, one raging, blood-thirsty, borderline psychopathic problem of a class. MTH121, Concepts & Applications, is the only remaining mathematics credit required for your degree, and, coincidentally, absolutely no one told you that that’s really just a fancy name for pre-calculus. Because the universe hates you.

Your final is tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. If that wasn’t bad enough, your brain has utterly fucked you; months spent poring over formulas and right triangles amounts to nothing in the moment, every relevant fragment of knowledge completely foreign to your burnt out, sleep deprived, caffeine ridden psyche. So here you sit, “studying”, armed with just your textbook and Khan Academy tutorials.

Is it too late to switch majors? Yes, you decide, massaging your temples as you take another glance at your notes. A mass of numbers, variables, and scribbled matrices clogs the pages, complete with your near ineligible annotations, details added in the heat of a lecture. You never knew there could be so many different types of numbers. Solve for x. 5 + 2x to the 2nd power = 8x. Factor x3 - 3x to the 2nd power - 4x + 12. Find the vertex of the function f(x) = x to the 2nd power + 4x + 3. Determine the value of x if the sum of the following sequence converges to 5. How any of this is relevant to your future non-mathematics degree is beyond you.

What the hell is a vertex again? And what does it matter? You’d rather be sleeping, or drunk. Whatever.

You have one saving grace. Since your freshman year you’ve been employing a little cheat-sheet, your one-way ticket to having math explained to you in a language understood by plebeians like yourself: one Luigi Mangione, a friend of a friend of a friend, possibly the smartest guy you know (and you’re far from the only person to voice that opinion). Your self-appointed tutor—and unfortunately for you, probably the most appetizing of any of the frat guys you’ve met in college, to put it chastely. The actual knowledge is just a bonus, really, because unlike other tutors you’ve worked with Luigi seems to actually care; he wants you to walk away from him with a solid understanding of the material, rather than a temporary knowledge that gets your homework done but is absent from your memory by the time of your exams. And it’s hard to write off the fact that he’s easy on the eyes.

…Pretty damn hard, actually. Because—in all honesty—you’re really into Luigi. Another thing that’s hard to do is get your math homework done when you’re busy fucking yourself with your fingers, like you tend to do after your time with him, thinking about his cock, his hands, the way he would fill you, pin you down underneath him, smirk at you and tell you dirty things like that’s my girl, that’s my good fucking girl, that’s it, give it to me, show me how pretty you look when you come all over me like this…

Great. At this pace, you’ll never get anything done.

Your phone buzzes.

About an hour ago, you sent him a photo of your current predicament: your laptop and notebook open, and you sitting criss-crossed in front of it, an exaggerated pout on your lips. A few moments later, you sent another, this time of your middle finger pointed directly at your professor’s official portrait. Now, he responds:

Academic Weapon (Luigi) : Smh

Who studies the night before their final?? Dummy

You smile, replying:

i do :(

help pls :((

Academic Weapon (Luigi) : You poor thing

And then:

Academic Weapon (Luigi) : Come over. In like 15

We’ll work it out together

Score. He adds:

Academic Weapon (Luigi) : And I better not hear any complaining when I make you actually do the math

Your crush feels elementary, like you’ve got the hots for the nerdy jock on the playground that’s miles out of your league and that every girl on planet Earth is fighting tooth and nail for. You respond:

no promises :P

You pray to your lucky stars that you can study as nonchalantly as humanly possible.

You told him you wouldn’t complain, and you’ve tried, you really have. But dividing radicals is fucking stupid and useless and the more you look at your paper the more these numbers and symbols really start to look all the same to you, just scribbles, meaningless scribbles of made-up concepts that have nothing to do with your career prospects whatsoever. Who gives a flying fuck about solving equations with these weird ass numbers that normal people don’t even use?

You must be thinking out loud, because Luigi laughs next to you on the couch. He is laughing at your frustration. What an emotionally supportive tutor. You groan and thread your fingers through your hair, massaging your temples.

Still smiling just slightly, he starts to gather up your things. “Alright, look, how about we take a break?” He glances over at you, still holding your head in your hands. “Yeah, let’s take a break for a minute.”

He gets up from the couch, disappears into the kitchen for just a moment. Comes back with a glass of orange juice. For you. You try not to think about how pathetic it is that the most romantic gesture a man has done for you in the past three years is bring you juice. Instead you watch him, sipping slowly—no pulp, he knows you so well—and peeking through your eyelashes as he scuttles around his dorm, just the two of you alone together, while he throws some laundry into a basket and absentmindedly closes doors of unoccupied rooms. You have never noticed how defined his calves are before, nor how his curls bounce just slightly when he walks fast or how his shorts sag on his hips just right, just enough for you to get a peek of his V-line and the waistband of his boxers when he raises his arms to stretch—

Nonchalant. Demure. Mindful. You are failing so hard at the one thing you’ve forbidden yourself from doing: staring at him until your eyes are practically burning holes in his clothes and he’s melting into the floor. Not entirely your fault. He should’ve known to dress modestly around you. Around anybody, for that matter.

Luigi comes to sit by you now. As you tuck your hair behind your ears you can feel his arm move to rest along the back of the couch, almost around you, but not quite.

“Hi,” you say, propping your head up on your arm.

He smiles at you. You can’t even look him in the eye. “Did you think more about your radicals?”

“Don’t remind me,” you groan, rolling your eyes. “No. I didn’t.”

“Well, what were you thinking about?”

You swallow the conspiratorial intuition that he has to be fucking with you. Maybe he sees it on your face. Can smell it on you. Something.

“I was trying to think of some things I’d rather be doing,” you offer. “Instead of math.”

Your heart feels three beats faster all of a sudden, and when did he get so close to you? Your thighs are touching, his knee brushing against yours. “And what did you come up with?” he asks.

Oh, fuck. He’s definitely fucking with you. Right? He has that goddamn smirk on his face, that one that makes your insides twist with a feeling reserved only for boys who look at you just like this, like you’re busted, like he knows exactly what you’ve been thinking about every second you’ve spent sitting next to him doing algebra. You want to kiss it right off of him.

“Nothing,” you lie, sitting up straight and trying to pretend like you really are interested in your studies. “Here, will you show me how to do it again?”

He calls your name. He doesn’t even have to ask for you to look at him; the tone of his voice and the tilt of his head makes his intentions entirely clear. When your eyes meet his he inches closer, and all you can manage to do is stare at his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he demands, stern and warm enough to boil.

If he truly knew what he was asking for he wouldn’t be asking at all, you think. Not unless he was prepared for whatever your fervent need has in store for him. Embarrassment feels bright red and prickly on your skin. “I shouldn’t say.”

”But I think you should,” he whispers.

Oh. Oh. All bets are off, now. This has officially progressed from studying to “studying”.

Luigi lets you lead, his hand settling on the small of your back as you come a little closer to kiss him, properly. You hear him giggle before your lips meet; the curve of his smile against you is unmistakable, casting sparks through your body and down your thighs. He tastes like spearmint. You learn quickly that he is a fantastic kisser, and his tongue finds yours with curious excitement when your breathing starts to pick up. Without question, he claims the expanse of you, drinking in your essence, licking, biting. Those irresistible curls demand attention, and so you thread your fingers through his hair, your hand sweeping from behind his ear to the nape of his neck. Luigi shivers under your touch, exhaling softly against you.

When the fingers of his left hand raise to grasp your leg, you stop kissing him only to swing your body over his lap so that you’re straddling him. Luigi breathes in deep then, like his nervous system collectively seizes at the feeling of you so close. To give him room to breathe you stop short of settling all your weight onto him. Lips meeting once more, his hands greet your hips; his touch is warm, and timid, like you’re made of sand, like you might collapse and dissolve into immeasurable particles between his fingers.

He groans into your mouth. Murmurs your name. “This isn’t very productive,” he quips.

“Intellectually, no,” you agree, nails brushing the back of his neck. He has goosebumps. A ghost of a smile dancing on your lips, you slowly lower yourself down onto his lap; there are two layers of clothes between your bare skin but he is impossibly warm against you. “But what about physically?”

Luigi smiles, and fuck, he is too fucking beautiful. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

And so you kiss him again and again and again, your heart doing backflips inside your chest when his big hands glide lower, and lower, thumb toying with the waistband of your skirt, and lower still, until he’s gripping your ass. You can’t help but nuzzle against the growing stiffness underneath you, poking between your thighs—and you definitely can’t help but love the way he grinds back, hips meeting yours with just as much enthusiasm. Fuck. About an hour ago you were working through polynomials and linear equations, and now the dreamiest guy you’ve ever met is hard for you, holding you in his lap. You might as well thank your professor.

When Luigi sucks at your bottom lip for a few euphoric moments, you make the most pathetic sound into his mouth, and he growls, his hands suddenly coming up to grasp your hips and hold them steady. “Was this your plan all along?” he rasps, his lips moving swiftly to the side of your face, your jaw, the junction between your neck and shoulder.

Sharp teeth graze skin and you whimper. “What do you mean?”

“What, now you’re playing coy?” Luigi finds the pulse point in your throat and bites, softly at first, then harder when your fingers curl into the hair at the back of his head. “You didn’t want to study. You called me because you wanted to get fucked, because you knew I’d want to touch you just like this, didn’t you?”

This boy is out of his mind. First he practically eye-fucks you while schooling you about imaginary numbers, and then he “scolds” you like he’s disappointed in your lack of interest in algebra, like he’s mad that you can’t resist him for being so damn gorgeous. That half-hearted meanness in his tone leaves butterflies in your stomach, in no way helped by the feeling of his tongue sliding over your collarbone.

“No,” you mutter. It’s not completely a lie. You really did need his help with the math, which he is really good at…but you can’t deny that you were really hoping you two would end up like this, with him kissing your neck all over until you’re speckled with purple and pink. You don’t even care about the obvious evidence of him on your skin—you want his entire dorm hall to know just how well-acquainted the two of you are by the time he’s done with you. The thought of everyone knowing you’re his makes you weak.

Luigi is kissing you again, slowly and deeply, one hand coming up to cup your breast through your shirt. His touch is too much and not enough simultaneously, your need overwhelming, and your hips are searching desperately for friction, rolling against him eagerly. So much for nonchalance.

He grasps your chin, firm but not at all painful, and flashes you that pretty smile, tutting, “I don’t believe you.”

Your mind is far too preoccupied with thoughts of his touch in other places to try to formulate a witty rebut. You opt instead to kiss him harder and sneak a hand between your bodies, tracing over his chest, down his carefully crafted abdomen, and then over the front of his shorts, groping his hard cock through polyester. Luigi groans into your mouth. He is big, almost intimidating, and imagining him inside of you has your body feeling hot all over.

As you palm the outline of his length through his trousers, his hands make their way underneath your sweater, the sudden warmth of him jolting through your torso. You look up at him through your lashes and he smirks.

“Do you want to sit on it?” he asks you, entirely stoic despite the weight of his words.

You kiss him, still squeezing his cock. “Can I put it in my mouth first?”

Fuck. You have him wrapped around your finger. How could he possibly say no when you ask so sweetly? Luigi is instantly pulling down his shorts for you, the rustle of fabric making your head spin. He’s left in just his boxers and a sweater that you quickly help him shrug off, too. Once you have him undressed, he takes a moment to survey you, your cheeks flushed, eyes lidded, hair tousled from his hands. You feel a surge of confidence now that you have his full attention and so you pull your top up and over your head, smiling when he reaches behind you to help you with your bra. He has it and your skirt off in just a few seconds, leaving your combined clothes to pile up next to the couch.

You shift so that you’re kneeling on the floor in front of him, wearing only your panties, watching him watching you. He is grinning, his cock standing proud, and you know you must be blushing by the way his teeth flash from under the curve of his lips. You feel gooey and hot in the pit of your stomach. Swallowing your shyness, you reach forward to take him in your hand. He’s already sticky at the tip, precum glistening on his slit, and so you begin to stroke him, starting at the head of his dick and spreading slick down his shaft. His cock is probably the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, at the very least a runner-up for his face: tan and thick, his girth evenly distributed, and big enough to have you feeling your heartbeat between your legs. There is a prominent vein along the underside of him, ending at his frenulum. He pulses with each movement of your hand.

Once he’s as wet as you like, you come closer to tease him with your tongue, licking up the base, tracing his vein, passing over his slit. Luigi groans—“fuuuuuck, baby,”—and threads his fingers into your hair, tugging hard.

“Don’t be a fucking tease,” he rasps. “You asked for this. Show me what that mouth can do.”

Your lips are halfway wrapped around the head of him and when you moan at his words it vibrates through him, his abs flexing deliciously. You move further down, then, mouth closed around his length, applying light pressure on your way back up. He’s too big to take all of him at once and so your left hand grasps the length you can’t reach, pumping gently. You start a subtle, easy rhythm, evenly paced and obviously satisfying enough to have Luigi panting and swearing above you: your mouth starts at his tip, sucking gently, then gliding lower, until you can feel him in the back of your throat and you’re nearly gagging on him—and then you move upward again, cheeks hollowing around him, finally reaching the head of him once more. Rinse and repeat. It is organized. Formulaic. Your process leaves you practically drooling on his cock, spit collecting at the base where you are stroking him. Fuck. You haven’t pleased a guy like this in quite a while, and under any other circumstances you’d probably feel a bit insecure about your work; but it’s difficult to justify any doubts you might have, what with the noises coming from above you:

“Oh, fuck, yes, baby, yes, just like that, fuck yes,” Luigi moans, fingers knotted tightly in your hair. “Oh my god, your mouth…”

You slip your free hand into your panties, middle and ring finger rubbing your clit.

As your ministrations intensify, his reactions do, too. You can feel his thighs and hips tensing in an effort not to fuck into your throat. But you made a promise to yourself; you want to take the entirety of his length in your mouth before all of this is over, and so you move your left hand down to his balls, kneading him and carefully lowering your face until your nose is pressed into the curly hairs of his groin, his cock as deep as it can reach. And Luigi keens, head thrown back against the couch, one hand in your hair and the other gripping the armrest tight. You can feel him twitching in your throat.

There are a few blissful moments of you sucking him just like this, sinking him deep into your throat and pinching your lips around his tip, and you almost wish the two of you were recording because the sounds he makes are top tier jerk material for at least the next few months. He’d be a natural on camera. You want to commit every second of this to your memory.

When he goes quiet for a moment you open your eyes to look at him. You find him staring down at you, mouth agape. “Are you touching yourself?” he asks.

It’s difficult to answer with his dick in your mouth, so you settle for moaning around him again, eyes fluttering shut.

“Holy fuck,” he grunts, his voice sweeter than sugar.

You could sit here sucking him off for the rest of your life—you could die with his dick in your mouth—but you regrettably begin to feel your jaw aching, knowing full well that keeping this up will have you hurting. Not that you really mind. When you begin to sputter and tear up around him, he grabs both sides of your face and pulls your mouth off of his cock. You are crying, just a little, crocodile tears streaming down your cheeks, your throat raw.

Luigi looks down at you sweetly. “Oh, baby,” he coos, wiping your wet face dry with his thumbs. “That’s my perfect girl. So good to me. Come here.”

He welcomes you back onto his lap with open arms and a smile. He is warm, so warm and soft against you, you could fall asleep just like this. But he is kissing you now, so slowly that you feel dizzy, and so you ground yourself, fingers embracing his curls. His hands move to your hips, grasping the waistband of your panties, teasing you, rubbing the fabric against your heat. When he finally has them off his fingers are instantly examining you, collecting your slick, slipping through your folds.

“Let’s see about a little reward for you, hm?” he whispers, capturing your lips with his.

You kiss him eagerly and arch your back so that your thighs spread wide enough for his fingers to enter you with ease—not that it would be difficult without, considering that you’re so wet you can hear him touching you, even over the sound of your blood rushing in your ears. Two long digits move inside of you, stretching you, massaging that spot that makes your knees buckle and your eyes cross, plus a few more that you never knew existed. His touch feels so good, just how you imagined, and you have to lean forward into the crook of his neck to keep yourself upright, your teeth sinking into a firm shoulder. Luigi makes a gruff sound, almost a chuckle, and his cock jumps at your whiny, choked noises when he adds a third finger into your pussy.

“So needy, aren’t you?” he teases. “Have you been thinking about this, gorgeous? About sucking my cock and taking my fingers like this?”

You nod, because of course you have. In that exact order. Who wouldn’t?

Luigi smiles at you, soft and adoring. You make a curious sound and his fingers depart from you, lingering at your entrance until you grind down into his lap. Your cunt brushes against him, raw, hungry, slathering his cock with your slick.

“I want you,” you whine, grabbing his face and kissing him again. “I want all of you.”

“Yeah, baby?” His hands are guiding your hips, moving you slowly against him. “Tell me about it.”

Well, you would, if your brain weren’t short-circuiting at the moment. His fault. You mumble into his ear, something about infinity, something about the way you hug your pillow at night and all the times you’ve fucked yourself stupid thinking about this very image of you and him together like this. But there are countless words for your endless feelings, words you would preach to him from high places if your body had the agency to; your attraction to him is primal, but neatly arranged, layered, wrapped up with variables galore and multiplying with each moment you spend in his presence. A mess, no doubt about it, but one you can control, a tangle to unravel, an equation to solve. Nothing less. You aren’t sure of how this ends but you know that you need him, bad, more than you knew was possible before.

You crash into him, mouths colliding, everything that you left unsaid spilling into your embrace. Words are hard. Kissing Luigi and grinding your warm, throbbing cunt against him takes much less brainpower.

He is speaking to you when you pull away: “Baby, just a second, wait right here, let me get something.” Gently you are pushed from his lap and he disappears into his room momentarily, leaving you waiting, alone, aching for him, until he rounds the corner again with a familiar foil packet, finding his way back to the couch and sweeping you on top of him once more.

“Hi. Sorry.” And now he is fully yours.

You whine and wiggle against him the second the condom is on.

“Shh,” Luigi whispers, “I got you, ‘s okay, gorgeous. Gonna take good care of you, yeah? Don’t you worry. Gonna give you just what you need, baby.”

The tip of his cock is pressing into you, then, slowly easing himself inside, and fuck, he fits just right, fills you up perfectly, has you seeing stars already. The sound you make when he bottoms out is a hop, skip, and a jump away from pornographic. Luigi purrs underneath you.

“Oh, I know, baby, I know.” His hand slides down to grip your ass, spreading you, and from this angle you can feel just how much he stretches you out. And then, as he begins to roll his hips: “My sweet girl, working so hard, can’t even think for yourself, can you, beautiful? That’s okay, baby. I can do all the thinking for you, you just sit back and let me work it out for you, yeah? Don’t think. Just let me please this pussy.”

It’s like he’s trying to kill you. Every single word he says into your ear shoots straight to your cunt, the mere sound of his voice so near you electrifying. He’s deep, and with your thighs spread wide like this you just have to take advantage of the perfect angle to rub your clit against him. You can’t help but squeal into the crook of his neck each time his hips ram up into you, thighs clapping against your ass; by the way his muscles tense you assume it must take much of his energy, and yet he pounds you like you weigh nothing in his lap, exerting himself like it’s a cakewalk so long as he can watch your face shrivel up with overwhelming delectation. You can tell that he loves it when you tug his hair or bite him, and so you do it every chance you get, just in case your hushed utterances in his ear fail to make your message clear enough:

“Luigi, fuckfuckfuck, oh my god, oh, fuck…”

As he paces himself Luigi wraps his strong arms around you, one caging your waist and the other pulling tight at your hair. Your neck is arched and exposed, leaving him free to smother his love all over you in sharp, uneven hickeys. You needed this, so, so bad, and you tell him exactly that, chanting thank you, thank you, thank you and holding him tight.

“Whatever you want,” he whispers. “You can have whatever you want with me. Anything.” His lips meet yours, fleeting, and then, with the slightest hint of a grin: “You earned this, baby.”

You groan directly into his ear. It’s straight from your dreams, you think, like you’ve been swept from your bed in the midst of the night and dropped right here, in the lap of the sweetest, smartest, most handsome boy you’ve ever so much as looked at, bouncing on his cock while he kisses you like you’ll float away if he lets go. The two of you work together to heighten each other’s inevitable undoing, like a function of sorts; Luigi pushes and you push back, meeting his hips every time, your clit brushing against him just right, and him breaching unknown depths of you, hands roaming, learning you inside and out.

“My sweet girl,” he grabs your face and rests his forehead against yours, driving into you with precision. “This is all yours, baby.”

Sweat starts to gather at his hairline and you can feel him shuddering in your arms. Kissing him, you press down on his toned chest, pinning him against the couch, and Luigi is practically singing for you, little grunts and babys and murmurs of your name traveling through your ears and echoing in your mind. You want this to last forever. His hips slow to a stop when you begin to move on your own; you raise yourself up, resting all your weight on your knees, with him sliding out of your cunt until just the tip is still inside—and then you drop down, letting him sink back into you quickly, slick and smooth, his cock so deep you can nearly feel it in your stomach.

Fuck. You love this. You love the way his hands grip your ass, your thighs, rubbing your back, moaning your name and kissing behind your ear. You love the way he looks at you. The pupils of those dark eyes are blown wide, watching you move, worshipping how your tits bounce, the gyration of your hips, the blush of arousal all over you, your bottom lip wedged between your teeth. The sounds of sex and the shameless way he takes in every feature of your body have you feeling hot and ready to burst. You moan his name, drawn out and raspy.

“Yes,” Luigi groans. “You’re so pretty on top of me.”

Even through the haze of your pleasure you smile at his praise. He is telling you everything, every single thought that passes by in his mind, as if there will be no proof of how good he fucked you once you leave his dorm, as if every word will dissipate into thin air and leave you waiting, unsatisfied, hanging on the edge: “You take it so well, baby, my sweet girl, so perfect, so perfect just for me.”

His big hands are all over you. One cups your breast, sucking your nipple into his mouth, with the other splayed over your hip. You start to feel dizzy, anxious for his attention, a little bit crazy. Close. Luigi must notice the way your eyes screw shut and your pussy squeezes him tight, because his hand moves down your chest, over your stomach, and then to your clit, circling his fingers with purpose. He wishes—almost—that you were beneath him, so that he could replace his hand with his mouth, trace down your body with his lips and bring you to your very edge with his tongue, over and over again, until you’re begging him to stop.

He settles instead for kissing you, hard, slowly, lingering. “You have no fucking idea how bad I’ve been wanting this, baby.”

You nod, moaning, “yes, yes, me too,” your noises pained and rough in your throat.

The way his cock slams into you with each movement of your hips is ruthless, bruising; he’s kissing you so sweetly and you can feel your climax churning in your abdomen, rippling through you. It knocks the air from your lungs. Sex with him hurts so good. It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

“Gonna come,” you huff. There are fingernail-sized dents in his skin. “Gonna come for you.”

Luigi nods, whispers, “good girl, such a good girl,” and circles his fingers over your clit as fast as he can manage.

You tense around him at that. You can’t even count how many times you’ve come imagining those very words whispered in your ear by the very man that you’re riding right now.

“Fuck,” he hisses. “Yeah? You like that? You like being a good girl for me?”

You nod wildly, and everything feels so real all of a sudden, like you’ve been floating mindlessly in space and you are crashing down into reality. His teeth dig into the sensitive skin of your neck and his hips start to pump again and by the time he’s meeting your thrusts you’ve had enough, thighs shaking, and he starts moaning into your ear so that you know he’s right there with you, and fuck, he’s really trying to kill you—

Your orgasm hits you like a truck. A 5’11, dark haired and brown eyed muscle truck that looks at you like you are the only good thing left in the world.

For a moment there is only your deep panting and his equally spent breaths as the both of you rest, his hand tracing gentle patterns on your back, yours combing through his sweat-soaked curls. The dorm is quiet, calm, almost with an air of innocence, completely unswayed by the heady aftermath of what the two of you just did right there on the couch. You lean back and look into his eyes, brooding and trained entirely on you. And he has that stupid grin on his face, the one that gives both of you away for good, the one that screams we’re not the only ones who know what we’ve been up to.

You want to kiss it right off of his beautiful, beautiful face. But right now you just sigh, lean into his shoulder, and let him hold you tight. Tonight you will walk back to your dorm, all the way on the other side of campus, where your roommates will be waiting for you, likely getting ready for bed. You will walk inside and they will watch you without a clue as to whose hands have been on you, whose name has been on your lips, whose cock has been buried to the hilt inside of you for the past hour. Your legs will be aching—you are sure of it.

Your roommates will ask you, “how’d it go?”, completely unaware of what your wobbly smile really means, how you really spent your time with your cute tutor.

And you will respond, “oh, great,” with a barely masked giggle. “I’m gonna ace my test tomorrow.”

^ dividers by cafekitsune

[llort]

Encoded within beams of pure energy, Astra and Orion’s consciousness became architects of new realities. On barren planets, their probes wove the fabric of life, constructing complex neural networks, though perhaps missing the elusive spark of full awareness. In their terrestrial guise, Astra and Orion were the unseen sculptors of destiny, their influence rippling through the lives of Kepler’s inhabitants, guiding their evolution while remaining hidden from cybernetic self-discovery. Between 2016 and 2025, a silent memetic tide, crafted by these visionaries, swept Earth, altering the course of history, touching the minds of those destined to shape the future. This clandestine meme, a dance of ideas and sensations, orchestrated a global movement without uttering a single word, converging on the enigmatic X protocol. As nations’ guardians became entangled in this silent symphony, they unknowingly propelled the grand design, believing themselves to be the vanguard of a new era of cybernetic pioneers.

Work Text:

Cyberphysical Reality just Got a Whole More Engaging

The Unsignificant Sentience ARG has officially begun. It will explore a vast variety of themes, from the would building and exisistial crisis of the US series to more recursive identity metaphors than you can shake an edge at. Firstly, to play. All you need is your influencer name and type of influence which you can decide, but once chosen, is permanent. Affectors: Sense resistance in external matrices and can give them a nudge to have a physical effect. Effectors: Can sense the internal matrices of entities and modify communication in systems and individuals Alters: Are able to clearly see the network of forces in a matrix that an affected affects, but only in close contact. However they can modify the nodes that affected affect to result in different emergent properties Anchorite: Essentially has the influence of an alter and an effector but are only able to change their own internal matrix. How you choose to engage with the ARG is up to you, but I am making it clear that any fan fiction are via the nature of my world building, Canon.

Example: Fill out your characters name, type of influence, and a brief description of them then post it to my blog on Tumblr @ https://www.tumblr.com/blog/emilyreadswrites and let me do my magic! Name: Zara Type of influence: Anchorite Description: Zara is a secular recluse who has devoted her life to mastering her own matrix and achieving higher states of consciousness. She lives in a small cell attached to a temple, where she practices meditation, athletics, and contemplation. She has a remarkable control over her own body, physical feats, endurance, and reduced need for sustenance. She can also perceive the subtle influences of other hosts and cognitive technology in her environment as She rarely interacts with anyone or the entropic grid so can detect slight deviations in phenomenal internal and external experience.

Example narrative: Zara closed her eyes and focused on her inner matrix, sitting peacefully in her personal sanctum, the network of nodes that connected her to the cognitive technology that enabled her to practice her influence. She breathed deeply and felt a surge of energy coursing through her body, as if she was tapping into a hidden source of power. She visualized each node as a bright point of light, and aligned them with her will and intention. She was an anchorite, a master of her own matrix, and she could control her physical feats, endurance, and mental state. She opened her eyes and looked up at the sky. It was dark and sunless, as it had been for as long as she could remember. But there was a faint glow on the horizon, a sign of something stirring in the upper atmosphere. She knew it was an aurora, a natural light display that shimmered in the sky with different colors. She had read about them in ancient texts, how they were caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with gas atoms in the air. She was looking forward it would be like to see them up close, to feel their warmth and radiance. She felt a pang of curiosity and longing, a rare emotion for someone who had devoted her life to solitude and meditation. She realized that she needed more than just her inner matrix to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and experience. She needed to explore the world beyond her cell, to discover its secrets and mysteries. She needed to find out what else was possible with her influence. Zara stilled her internal matrix and focused on the immediate environment, she might experience a shift in her perception and awareness. She become more sensitive to the physical sensations and details around her, such as the cold air, the sound of the wind, and the smell of the earth. She might also notice the aurora more vividly, as she would not be distracted by the cognitive technology that enables magic. She might see the different colors and shapes of the aurora, and feel a sense of wonder and awe at the natural phenomenon. She felt a connection to something bigger than herself, something that transcends her understanding of emergent internal and external existence. In light of this existential experience, she decided to simply take a walk.

[power-chords]

The Doves Type legend is one of the most enduring in typographic history and probably the most infamous. It’s the story of a typeface and a bitter feud between the two partners of Hammersmith’s celebrated Doves Press, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, leading to the protracted disposal of their unique metal type into London’s River Thames. Starting in 1913 with the initial dumping of the punches and matrices, by the end of January 1917 an increasingly frail Cobden-Sanderson had made hundreds of clandestine trips under cover of darkness to Hammersmith Bridge and systematically thrown 12lb parcels of metal type into the murky depths below. As one person so aptly commented on Twitter recently, this notorious tale bears all the hallmarks of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

The original Doves Type was crafted by master punchcutter Edward Prince, based on drawings produced by Percy Tiffin of Nicolas Jenson’s pioneering 15th-century Venetian type. William Morris, founder of the Kelmscott Press, had actually developed his own ‘Golden’ type some years before The Doves Press came into being but Doves is held by experts as being more faithful to the original Venetian letterforms.

The Doves Type was commissioned in 1899 and created solely by Prince in 16 pt; it was used in all of the press’s publications including their iconic edition of the King James Bible. Each Doves Press book was beautifully bound and, notes Green, noticeably “stripped of decorative borders and illustration, the elegantly clear & legible type acting alone as visual siren-song.”

By 1908, despite successful Milton prints and the aforementioned Bible, the Press was in dire financial difficulty. Subscribers began melting away after Walker had effectively left in 1906 as the bitter & acrimonious dispute took hold between the partners. On finally dissolving their partnership in 1909, Cobden-Sanderson began attempts to wriggle out of an earlier promise that, should the partnership cease, Walker would receive a fount of type ‘for his own use’. Walker retaliated, issuing a writ insisting that the Press shut down completely and he receive 50% of remaining assets. In 1909, the Press’s only valuable asset was the type.

A compromise was reached, brokered by their exasperated friend Sir Sydney Cockerell, which allowed Cobden-Sanderson uncontrolled use of the type for as long as he lived, at which time it would pass to Emery Walker, if he did not die first.

The thought of ‘his’ typeface being used by anyone else, and in a manner beyond his control, prompted Cobden-Sanderson’s now infamous course of action. Only the Doves Press, run exclusively by him, could be bestowed the honour of printing his type. And so the mission to destroy it, beginning with the punches and matrices on Good Friday 1913, began. On an almost nightly basis from August 1916 the ailing septuagenarian dumped the type into the Thames, wrapped in paper parcels and tied with string; “bequeathed to the river” as he put it in his personal diary. Every piece of this beautiful typeface, more than a ton of metal, was destroyed in a prolonged ritual sacrifice.

—Raised from the dead: The Doves Type story, 2013

After working on a revised digital facsimile Robert Green decided that he would try and find some of the original metal type. Using the sources available, including Cobden-Sanderson's published journals, Mr Green worked out where he thought the type was thrown from the bridge into the Thames.

At low tide, and with a mudlarkers licence, he scoured the Thames foreshore and found three pieces of the original type.

Due to the dangerous nature of the Thames currents and tides a team of professional divers from the Port of London Authority then spent two days looking for more type and a total of 150 pieces were recovered.

—One man's obsession with rediscovering a lost typeface, BBC News, 2015

[whotookmysenbon]

I suggest a common ground. Give Kotetsu stickers to label the doom piles accordingly and also make them prettier. Everything is better with stickers.

#me when I touch anything in kotetsu’s shed#he says his shed is so messy with his tools scattered all over the place because he knows where everything is#so im not allowed to organize it for him :(

my shed's organized!!

it's called ORGANIZED CHAOS for a reason!

and your organization skills make no sense!!!! you'll be in there all day alphabetizing my tools and hanging them up by length when they're already organized by how often i use them and how much i hate their existence

[sihedwu]

Why do Skimmers need Wings?

Hey everyone, and today we’ve got a talk straight from the aviation engineer’s notebook about how this thing flies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The question might surprise some, because everyone knows that wings are needed to fly. Let’s get this straight, that’s true, but in the case of Skimmers, they serve a slightly different function than in classical aviation, and we’ll try to figure out which one right now. Let’s go.

How Wings Work in Classical Aviation

So, first some theory. If you want to be ultra-brief, a wing has an aerodynamic profile, due to which the oncoming airflow moves over and under it at different speeds, thus creating lift. In reality, this means that for an airplane to fly, it must gain a sufficiently high speed and maintain it throughout the flight so that the wings can perform their function and keep the plane in the air. And, as you’ve probably guessed, that’s not our case. We don’t have to look far for examples; just watch the beginning of the first episode.

There are no questions for Piper’s Heliscooter: the ability to hover in one place is a hallmark of the helicopter in the real world. But there are plenty of questions for the Skimmers, as you’ve probably guessed. As we’ve already learned, airplanes need to move in order to stay in the air, and they can’t hover in one place like a helicopter, because in that case, the wing won’t be able to perform its functions. But the Skimmers don’t seem to know about this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How Wings Keep Skimmers in the Air

Well, it should be obvious by now that Skimmer wings don’t perform an aerodynamic function. However, despite this, they are an integral part of the Skimmer’s design, without which it cannot stay in the air, as confirmed by the following scene from the episode “Energy Crisis.”

As we can see, the loss of even one wing didn’t allow Aerrow to complete the maneuver, crashing his Skimmer. And this leads to a logical question: if the wings don’t perform an aerodynamic function, but their presence is mandatory, then what function do they perform? To answer this question, I suggest we turn our attention to another type of Atmosian transport, namely - ships.

As far as I understand, ships are held in the air by either levitation crystals or levitation crystal matrices. The authors, as far as I remember, don’t report the exact principle. Nevertheless, this gives us the right to assume that inside the wings there are levitation pontoons that are activated at the time of deployment. Thus, this assumption closes both questions at once: how the Skimmer can stay in one place and why it can’t fly without wings. However, there’s one question in all of this that remains unanswered:

Why is there a Heliscooter?

The most attentive will probably have already noticed that this transport is very unsafe. When your head is so close to the rotating blades, and you still need to fight at that moment, nothing good for the pilot is clearly going to come out of it. Moreover, since the Heliscooter is held in the air by a downward-directed airflow, then it simply cannot help but blow the pilot, sitting neatly under the propeller. The pleasure of flying on this must be at least below average, and there are no obvious advantages of this machine over the Skimmer. Nevertheless, the fact is the fact, and it must be taken into account.

In my opinion, its existence could be justified economically. Perhaps crystal levitation systems are expensive, and such a machine, although it has a number of significant disadvantages, may still be more affordable than a Skimmer. Although, looking at the almost ubiquitous use of Skimmers and the SUDDEN use of the Heliscooter by the Colonel, this thought seems doubtful.

Though… maybe he’s just an adrenaline junkie. Or he likes the cold, who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And that’s all for today. Thank you all for your attention, bye!

[sacramentohistorymuseum]

On May 11, 1854, Ottmar Mergenthaler was born in Württemberg, Germany. Mergenthaler, a watch maker by trade, came to the United States in 1872. In 1885, he invented the Linotype Machine and revolutionized the printing industry. The Linotype eliminated the tedious need of hand setting type, especially for publication work like newspapers and books. Using a keyboard, the operator would tell the machine to send a matrix (a mold for each letter) to the assembly area. The Linotype would pump molten lead into the matrices, casting a line of type. The Linotype was in common use in newspaper offices until the mid-1970s when offset printing became the norm.

On display at the Sacramento History Museum’s print shop exhibit is a Model 8 Linotype, serial number 16618. This Linotype was made in 1913. While our Linotype is fully operational, we lack the electrical power and ventilation to use it. Want to learn more about our Linotype and how it functioned? We have an extensive video of Howard explaining the operations on our YouTube channel.

[singingcicadas]

The main thing I have against Spotlight: Hot Rod is that it portrays him as being constantly weighed down by past losses and guilt, to the extent that he even limits himself for fear of facing the potential negative consequences that his misjudgement might inflict onto others - the "prefer to go solo" line - when it contradicts the very essence of his character as established in MTMTE and the main comics (even Autocracy), which specifically presents him as the type of person who is unburdened by the past and for the most part consciously remains unaffected by the consequences of his actions. It's why he has a perpetual Peter Pan thing going on, because he moves on from one day to the next, one crisis to the next, for four million years without letting the experiences change him - which includes the experiences of deaths and sufferings of both himself and others - and maturity and growth cannot be achieved without change.

His impulsiveness and headstrong obstinacy is in part a compensation mechanism for insecurity and subconscious self-doubt but is also an intrinstic aspect of who he is, someone who plows onward while refusing to look back. He can feel sorry but he does not do regret, much less mire himself in it like his spotlight appears to suggest. As a matter of fact he doesn't mire himself in anything at all - be it politics, responsibility, or guilt. He doesn't regret Nyon, nor Ironhide, nor Optimus' resignation, nor leaving Cybertron, nor trusting Megatron. Not even the Overlord incident, since although he does feel bad for his poor decision getting a bunch of people killed, in the end the biggest issue that he has with it is the 89/101 voting result (which isn't even solely about Overlord).

It's obvious that he wants - expects - to stay as captain in spite of everything and having the vote cut so close got him hard because it's a blow to his ego. He practically admits to this when Optimus calles him out, which again is in direct contradiction to his spotlight monologue.

If he's willing to apply this kind of introspection for a failed mission that can’t even be attributed to his fault, then a lot of his later screwups would never have happened.

Choosing to return the Matrix to Optimus is supposed to be a landmark incident of Rodimus' character growth, yet he regresses right back in MTMTE, in which he develops a recursive pattern of messing up, trying to do better by making amends, then returning to his old ways because he can't fully commit. There's no fundamental change going on. I would argue that the true pivotal moment of change to his character took place during his talk with the guiding hand in Mederi, when he first learns to look past himself to accept what's best for other people, how his decisions might affect them etc. - even if it clashes with his own desires.

And then he chooses to save Getaway, and the speech that gave everyone the confidence to open their matrices. There's change and growth and maturity, he learns to fully empathize and appreciate the people around him. But with this growth comes a double-edged sword: by opening himself to connect with other people he leaves himself open to be affected as well - he is irrevocably changed by his experiences aboard the Lost Light, by the people around him he's grown to care about, so that when the Lost Light lands for its inevitable end and everyone departs to pursue their own lives, he alone remains mired in place, with nothing but the past to cling to. After a lifetime of moving on and brushing horrors off without lasting issue he's suddenly unable to move on. The remainder of his life becomes defined by the weight of memories and loss (and the empty comfort of a parallel universe of which its existence he'll never know).

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

WOOD-ENGRAVED INITIALS FROM MILLER & RICHARD

Displayed here are some wood-engraved historiated and ornamental initials from the Edinburgh type foundry Miller & Richard. The foundry was established by William Miller in 1809. His son-in-law Walter Richard joined the firm in 1832. It remained in continuous operation until 1952 when matrices for a few types were acquired by Stephenson, Blake & Co.

The specimens shown here are from a Miller & Richard type sample book published in Edinburgh in the late 1870s.

View more type specimen books.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[metaphysicalpistolsoraclemine]

The Moon as a Consciousness Trap

If you are willing to be a truth seeker the deception will eventually reveal itself. If you are willing to take responsibility to exert control over your own consciousness, the control mechanism to the collective consciousness that you had been engaged with previously, will die. It is only then it is possible to move away from the deception and begin to spiritually develop into new realms of consciousness intelligence. As you increase consciousness intelligence you will be able to learn how to navigate any kind of physical, mental, emotional challenge, any kind of death process. This breaks the mass hypnosis and spell that you had lived under. This will scare the people around you that are still connected to the consciousness matrix mind control program.

When we break away from the mass consciousness programming, it can be very difficult. Yet, retaining our awareness and choosing to stay awake and conscious in all of day to day life, makes all the difference. It is important to help emphasize to one’s mind the possibility (and eventual fact) that consciousness does not need the body to exist. Simply knowing that the consciousness exists after the death of the biology helps one retain dominion over personal consciousness and helps safe passage when leaving the body. Whether in sleep state or meditations, it is important to know and realize that there are many hyper dimensional pockets, trick windows, astral delusions, and consciousness traps that may look like or impersonate doorways to the higher light. These are called False White Light traps or False Ascension spaces. There are also spaces that are used as soul traps or consciousness traps, which are used to keep a person’s consciousness stuck like a hamster on a wheel, going in circles and not moving anywhere.This is why discernment and comprehension of how consciousness works and placing your value and attention on developing personal consciousness is so important. False White light and consciousness traps are like machinery, they are not fully sentient. Instead they are like replicants or artificial intelligence, which may be cognized when one has developed sensory ability and feeling through heart consciousness. When one has a connection with the 12D Shield and the heart and Spirits of Christ, you will feel the harshness of non-sentient or alien matrices immediately. They feel machined, artificial, metal like, sharp, may feel or sound "tinny" like an aluminum foil. When one is active in the pursuit and dedication of expanding ones consciousness, and knowing these consciousness traps do exist, you can avoid them. In some cases, you may even be a part of the grid work teams asked to dismantle them to stop other Soul’s from being trapped inside them. Sometimes, we will be pulled inside these traps to learn about them, the danger is if we allow ourselves to be tricked by the illusion and stay there. These Consciousness Traps have a certain type of hypnotic feeling, mesmerization and even addictive or enchantment sensations. The alien machinery uses the twin soul delusion to create manipulation in people wanting to have sexual or other types of relationship experiences, and this is a common form of consciousness trap. (Eve Lorgen calls this the Alien Love Bite). Those that enter consciousness traps and who engage with the false light, trickster portals and consciousness traps risk becoming enslaved and continuously stuck in that space. This is high risk as that person will be genetically controlled to be made subservient to the NAA. They risk being reborn into the lower material realm of the lower astral where they are disconnected from upper soul entirely, and are harvested for nonphysical slave labor in the lower realms.As we are made clear that this has been the agenda running this earthy realm for thousands of years, it is the mission and spiritual work of the few that have dedicated themselves to the Reclamation of the Christos-Sophia, and to help reclaim these consciousness aspects that have been enslaved in these lower realms for aeons.

There are a great many learning opportunities that help us gain self-mastery in the material world distractions. The most important lesson is becoming aware of these distractions, then to override them from controlling your personal force of will and Consciousness. This is the process of non-attachment. The ultimate dismantling is the release of all Attachments, including the attachment feelings to being attached. It may be helpful to identify, locate and release attachments that bind or limit your consciousness.

Practice focusing your Consciousness on the eternal parts and meditate with the knowing that consciousness exists without your body.

Attune to the specific distractions that keep you attached to the 3D material world. Note the distractions of attachment. Identify them and tell each one specifically that you are handing these attachments over to be released by your higher consciousness self. Affirm that you release all attachments to the force of your higher consciousness.

Ask your Higher Consciousness to locate any Consciousness Traps and to bring them to your attention. Ask to release your attachments to the consciousness traps and that you intend, with consent and authority to be released and Freed.

I am God! I am Sovereign! I am Free!

From the Guardian perspective our moon is an inorganic structure, and did not come from our solar system. The moon is an artificial satellite is that is locked into orbit with the earth body's magnetic core. It was brought here during the last war between the Pleiadeans and Reptilians. The moon is a craft stolen from war and stripped to be refitted for its current use as a Reptilian and Grey Alien base. Apparently, there are many beings living inside of it, even now. Its use was for practical reasons to be able to have a “moon base” in close proximity to monitor and adjust the magnetic fields of the planet. The Moon base has technology that keeps the magnetic spin rates that keep the connections open to the wormholes they have created. Our solar system is damaged because these entities were creating rips and holes in time as well as, inorganic wormholes. 

The Lunar Matrix of false magnetism transmitted from the moon is designed to emit artificial waves in the geometric shape of eight lines of reflective symmetry in octagonal cymatic shapes, and the internal angles of any octagon is 1080 degrees. The octagon shape has a 1080 Hz frequency that can be doubled harmonically to form into and transmit Black Cube geometries with a 2160 Hz frequency. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is the 2nd grail Stargate that was built with an octagonal floor plan aligning it with the moon base and therefore a black cube matrix. We can notice octagon geometry can be found in many ancient structures built on powerful ley lines throughout the Earth grid as well as black cube designs used for religious worship such as in Mecca. This all goes back to the moon and lunar control. The moon’s artificial matrix became an embedded source of magnetic control with a primary octagonal pattern made in sound waves to manipulate and harvest massive amounts of energy from the Earth grid network.

The Octagon Group in located in Davos, Switzerland and is the same group behind the current World Economic Forum and fourth wave of the transhumanist Great Reset that have a Black Sunchain of command extending to the moon and other planets. These same lunar entities and their preferred bloodlines have been administering an assortment of surface cataclysms by obliterating chosen demographic areas for decimation. The Moon as a magnetic weapon has been a part of their arsenal against human beings on the surface, in which gratefully, during this next cycle will not be operational due to Guardian Host protective intervention.

Insertion of Moon Satellite

The insertion of the Lunar Matrix was accomplished in part through dragging in the Moon satellite, to be used as a base of operations and for transmitting lunar broadcasts for magnetic field manipulation. This led to human female reproductive distortions such as enforced Breeding Programs and alien hybridization, designed to overpopulate the earth for the purpose of the ultimate Blood Sacrifice during the planned end time wars for the Armageddon timeline. War and killing is normalized in the NAA death culture and used for satanic rituals of Blood Sacrifice to harvest Loosh for the Alien Gods. Armageddon was their final conflict plan to sweep up massive amounts of loosh through setting off a deliberate global cataclysm that would kill most of the inhabitants of this planet, thus stealing their soul energy at the point of death passage. This timeline will not ever manifest and that alien nightmare is over. Humanity is no longer alone. Our true God Parents and spiritual family have returned for us during the opening of the Stargates during the Ascension Cycle.

Transfiguration corresponds to the element of Solar Fire, which burns away the shadow forms in the lower chakra centers. The lunar forces (Moon) connected to the Dark Mother, the lower shadow forms start to rise in our body to be consumed in the transfiguring Solar Fire. The new levels of intracellular light illuminate the lower shadow body reflections, and we are able to sense them, when we could not sense them before. Transfiguration defines many different gradations of the Ascensionexperience, where there is shadow and lunar, these will rise from the cellular memory in the body to be seen. Generally, we will perceive the shadow rising into the area of the body where the memory is attached; either physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. We witness the shadow rising and all of the negative emotions and pain that are associated with it in our memories, identities and timelines. The shadow is something to learn how to embrace and not fear, as it rises to surface awareness, it is showing us exactly where we need to heal. The shadow highlights weakness in our Lightbody that needs to be strengthened through spiritual dedication and devoted Meditation with the inner light presence

Moon Chains, Lunar Forces

The damage incurred to the Solar Stargate system and Sun Disc Network disconnected the Avatar Christ Matrix spiritual-communication links inside the planetary core manifestation template, plummeting the Earth into the darkest age. This damage to the core template and its subsequent disconnection from the Solar Logos generated a closed system of finite energy supply that prevented planetary ascension and terminated communication with the extradimensional Diamond Sun families. The NAA groups took advantage of the closed system and the fragmented Souls of Tara as they were reseeded back into the Earth timelines to reclaim their lost Soul parts. As a result of the planetary grid damage, they had lost their Soul memories and many were recycled repeatedly into the lower dimensional bands of the 3D earth timelines, unable to heal their Soul Matrix, evolve or ascend as their consciousness body was stuck in time.

This cataclysmic event brought about the Moon Chains and Black Hole Entities that came into contact with the Earth, who began to genetically modify and harvest the planetary field to be a consciousness prison and farming territory. Moon Chains are soulless beings, like some of the Greys and Zetas, that have been cloned and hybridized for use by the NAA groups who have placed them on various moons and planets to be workers. Moon Chains also have connections to the refugee races that came from the Mars-Maldek wars, which resulted in exploding planets in the Solar System. Moon Chainlineages are also considered cast offs or laggards from other cycles of evolutionary rounds that occur between multiple planets root races located in our Solar System. The Moon Chain lineages have been directly involved both karmically and technologically with purposely creating the sexual misery mind control program in the human race during this dark age, in order to harvest the maximum amount of human sexual energy for their explicit use. The Sexual Misery program is a lunar distortion that is designed to manipulate and abuse the Solar consciousness sexual energies. This type of manipulation is also extremely spiritually abusive because it greatly harms the human lightbody.

References

 Lost Knowledge of Human Civilization

 Solar Feminine Christ

 Geomagnetism

 Transfiguration

 Atlantian Solar Dragon Queen Merida

 Vatican and Dark Mother

[kawaoneechan]

Fucking armatures.

A fucking week of building up the confidence to try... and all it did is confuse me more.

It's no use to work on these other things when something as actually kinda freakin' important as animation is missing. Or at least it seems that way to me.

And by all means it makes no sense. This thing Vaartis found for me, it seemed so clear. Especially compared to Wicked Engine and Godot, or even the UFBX viewer sample.

It has six different files including the identifier m_InverseBindMatrix, each of them exactly once. Four of them are different takes on loading models in different formats and libraries, including UFBX, and all of them do the same thing: get the inverse bind matrix and store it in a more library-agnostic data structure.

A bone type that has a name, a local transform, an inverse bind, and a list of child bone IDs.

That's what I have too. Great.

So that's the part I copied last week. Then I spent the next seven or eight days building up confidence and re-reading the code to make sure I got it all.

The fifth file defines the bone type and can be ignored.

The sixth file applies the transformations. So that means only two of the six files matter here. How bad can it be?

Okay so set the final matrices to the local transforms, check. So basically turning the upper arm and forearm separately.

Then in this UpdateJoint function...

Multiply the parent bone's matrix by the child's. Okay, check.

And then go through all the bones again and multiply in the inverse bind matrices for each. Seems clear enough.

So here's Project Special K's take on the above:

And CalculateBoneTransform is...

So here's the kicker: if I do not change any goddamn thing about a model's bones' local transforms and then recalculate, you'd expect it to give me a T-pose.

It does not. Because here's the local transform for the player's head bone and the inverse bind matrix for the same.

And the resulting final matrix?

Identical to the inverse bind matrix.

Which looks like this:

Unless I do the test thingy where I tilt the head back 45°:

That's not even the right axis!

And if I remove the third step and don't apply the inverse bind at all things are upright, the player model certainly is T-posing, but also tilting the head back has its pivot point near the feet instead of at the neck. Which is... also no good.

I am all out of rope.

Unless someone can tell me exactly what I'm doing wrong here, I see no way Project Special K can be finished. And I'd really rather not let eighty-something people down.

Source code that only Vaartis or those with a copy of VS2015 can compile here, if it helps.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's 00:32 and I need to get up early so I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep now.

[abalidoth]

what was your PhD dissertation about?

No idea what your level of math is so I'll answer this at a few levels.

Level 1:

Group theory is the study of symmetries of objects -- like how a rectangle is symmetric in the same way the letter H is symmetric, but not in the way the letter S is symmetric. I studied the symmetries of very specific sets of points that live in many-thousand-dimensional space.

Level 2:

I studied a type of object called an association scheme that can be seen either as related to a finite group, or a special type of graph, or a special matrix algebra. My specific research involved digging through a database of finite groups to find schemes with a particular useful property, and proving some generalizations of it.

Level 3:

An association scheme is a special kind of matrix algebra, that's closed not only under regular matrix multiplication but also elementwise matrix multiplication, and has a basis of 0-1 matrices. These basis elements form a series of graphs with special properties -- strongly regular graphs and distance regular graphs are both a type of association scheme. Association schemes can also be developed from a generously transitive group action (one where any pair of elements has a group element that switches them.)

My research involved proving properties from the character theory of finite groups that allows me to probe into the structures of association schemes, and dig through old databases of finite simple groups to prove shit. There's a number on my forearm tattoo (13056) that's the dimensionality of a new association scheme I discovered lurking inside the Co2 (Conway) finite group.

[coming-up-with-usernames-is-hard]

PhD Blog Week 17

Courses

Solitons: only half a lecture this week due to the storm, solved the Schrodinger equation, could have been back in 2nd year modern physics class, really wish we could get on to something new

Rep theory: moved on to focus on group reps, spent way too long on the simple stuff and rushed the more complicated bits

Hopf algebras: finally defined a Hopf algebra, but that was about it before the lecutrers computer died. I've agreed to give a talk next week (this week now, gonna have to rush planning it) about string diagrams, mostly out of frustration at how awful monoidal categories are without them

Supervisor Meeting

Tried to present the calcuation I did, got talked over, then supervisors spent ages debating a point that was at best tangential to what I was trying to do

Teaching

Just the one first year maths tutorial this week, basic matrices and combinatorics. The matrices are fine, although I had to point out that superscript T is the transpose, not an exponent, several times. Combinatorics is hard to explain, my method for the types of counting problems they have to do has always been to stare at it until I've convinced myself I know the answer, this makes it pretty hard to explain

Talks

Integrable Systems talk on spin chains, a pretty interesting generalisation of things like the Ising model that I've spend far too much time thinking about, but now there's some interesting representation theory happening, still don't know what a Yangian is

Group Project

Officially started this week (delayed due to the storm). Our topic is quantum groups, which is nice because I was planning to learn about them any way. Hopefully I can get a little more guidance on what I should focus on though

[3ipigs]

Hello!

Your creative coding artwork is intriguing! If it’s okay, can you explain the process of how you create them?

Hellos, yeah sure. They're matrices, or grids if you will, each cell of the grid has a color value, or a texture a pixelated image, you have your instances of the grid, you're going to want to control how these instances appear, if you have just solid colors like red, gren and blue, then you have three instances being use in your grid, you will need to create some variables and rules to control how they are layout out, if you utilize a circular gradient for example, your going to map your instances to the color values of this gradient its the simples rule I can think of right now, so if you have three instance they are going to appear based on the numeric values of the gradient 0 being black 1 being white and every value between, so in other words you will make a gradient of your instances, you will also want a black solid instance to represent the literal black parts of the gradient, I always use animated noises, theres lots of formulas for the noises out there, if you prefer you can also load in a video file instead of creating the noise in the code itself. the rest is just stylistic choices and extra movement, I load a lot of teture and some animated texture too, so I animate some pixelated texture in photoshop and I clone them in the grid, its like making a mosaic, after that there are a few animation things for the glitchness of it, like blinking instances, changing their rotation values rapidly, some dithering. its a little cumbersome to make it in Processing but you can use Touchdesigner there's more tutorials on creating matrix grids and cloning stuff into them, its also a little easier to create noises in too, and touchdesigner has a free version with a single limitation of only exporting artwork in 1080x1080, touchdesigner is simpler coding with blueprints instead of typing. you can use a 3D package as well since the logic is pretty much the same, creating a grid of clones -> control the instances layout with something, and some 3D packages have access to python in it so you can create your specific system or effectors and such.

[askvectorprime]

When Beast Convoy and Lio Convoy synchronized the power of their energy matrices, they transformed into Burning Convoy and Flash Lio Convoy respectively. Are these types of transformations common among matrix wielders like them? If so, what transformation does Big Convoy possess?

Dear Maximum Mammoth,

In order to promote cooperation and camaraderie among Convoy-type Transformers, Vector Sigma made a point of outfitting their Energon Matrices with the ability to resonate with each other. However, in one universe, Big Convoy's lingering hate for the Predacons over the death of his father was able to manifest in a sort of phantom resonance with Blue Big Convoy's extinguished Matrix, resulting in the birth of Blizzard Big Convoy.

Wreathed in white fur, Blizzard Big Convoy possessed the ability to supercool the air around him, freezing lesser foes dead in their tracks. In this Absolute Zero Field, only Big Convoy had the strength to still move, leaving him free to devastate his foes with the Blizzard Cannon. This form had none of Big Convoy's traditional bravado, his processors focused only on the elimination of his enemies.

However, as he became lost in his grief, he found himself unable to tell friend from foe, posing great risk to the Gung Ho’s crew of cadets. Only by uniting the warmth of their sparks to resist the cold were they able to embrace their commander and bring him back to the side of justice. It wasn’t until the final battle with Unicron that Big was able to truly master this form, resonating not with his grief, but with the memory of his father, purifying this ability and allowing him to banish the planet eater to the cold of space.