#American Rare Earths

[faultfalha]

Donald S. Swartz II has been appointed the new CEO of American Rare Earths. Swartz, who has a MBA from Harvard and over two decades of experience in the field, is taking over for the outgoing CEO, Frank Olson. "I am excited for the future of American Rare Earths," said Olson in a statement. "Donald is more than equipped to lead the company into a new era of prosperity." Swartz is expected to increase the company's production of rare earths, which are used in a variety of high-tech applications. "I am committed to ensuring that American Rare Earths remains the world's preeminent producer of rare earths," said Swartz. "Our team is dedicated to meeting the needs of our customers, and I am confident that we will exceed their expectations."

[entropyvoid]

There is a particular subgenre of post I keep seeing on this webbed site wherein people denigrate individualistic cultures but talk about collectivistic ones like they’re the absolute best thing to happen the world and have no flaws of any kind and I really have to wonder how many people making or reblogging those have actually had the opportunity to live in both

[narwhalsarefalling]

“oh but rey, if you’re both in academia then won’t you have similar ideas and writing styles?”

no no, you misunderstand. i’m an environmental scientist.

my cousin is a brain surgeon.

the problem with being in academia while having a not-very-common american surname is that you and your cousins always get a “3% plagiarized” score because we all have published papers under our last names.

this WOULD be solved if any of my 3 academia cousins changed their last names when they got married, but they already had their PHDs/MDs at that point and it was legally and logistically too much of a headache.

so anytime i have to turn in a paper it always has this “3% plagiarized” score on turnitin just because of my full name. and it ALWAYS gets flagged in the system JUST because of ONE unique word.

[mcmansionhell]

this house may or may not be real

on grayness in real estate

Allegedly, somewhere in Wake Forest, North Carolina, a 4 bed, 5.5 bathroom house totaling more than 6,600 square feet is for sale at a price of 2.37 million dollars. The house, allegedly, was built in 2021. Allegedly, it looks like this:

A McMansion is, in effect, the same house over and over again - it's merely dressed up in different costumes. In the 90s, the costume was Colonial; in the 2000s, it was vague forms of European (Tuscan, Mediterranean), and in the 2010s it was Tudor, dovetailed by "the farmhouse" -- a kind of Yeti Cooler simulacra of rural America peddled to the populace by Toll Brothers and HGTV.

Now, we're fully in the era of whatever this is. Whitewashed, quasi-modern, vaguely farmhouse-esque, definitely McMansion. We have reached, in a way, peak color and formal neutrality to the point where even the concept of style has no teeth. At a certain moment in its life cycle, styles in vernacular architecture reach their apex, after which they seem excessively oversaturated and ubiquitous. Soon, it's time to move on. After all, no one builds houses that look like this anymore:

(This is almost a shame because at least this house is mildly interesting.)

If we return to the basic form of both houses, they are essentially the same: a central foyer, a disguised oversized garage, and an overly complex assemblage of masses, windows, and rooflines. No one can rightfully claim that we no longer live in the age of the McMansion. The McMansion has instead simply become more charmless and dull.

When HGTV and the Gaineses premiered Fixer Upper in 2013, it seemed almost harmless. Attractive couple flips houses. Classic show form. However, Fixer Upper has since (in)famously ballooned into its own media network, a product line I'm confronted with every time I go to Target, and a general 2010s cultural hallmark not unlike the 1976 American Bicentennial - both events after which every house and its furnishings were somehow created in its image. (The patriotism, aesthetic and cultural conservatism of both are not lost on me.)

But there's one catch: Fixer Upper is over, and after the Gaineses, HGTV hasn't quite figured out where to go stylistically. With all those advertisers, partners, and eyeballs, the pressure to keep one foot stuck in the rural tweeness that sold extremely well was great. At the same time, the network (and the rest of the vernacular design media) couldn't risk wearing out its welcome. The answer came in a mix of rehashed, overly neutral modernism -- with a few pops of color, yet this part often seems omitted from its imitators -- with the prevailing "farmhouse modern" of Magnolia™ stock. The unfortunate result: mega-ultra-greige.

Aside from war-mongering, rarely does the media manufacture consent like it does in terms of interior design. People often ask me: Why is everything so gray? How did we get here? The answer is because it is profitable. Why is it profitable? I'd like to hypothesize several reasons. The first is as I mentioned: today's total neutrality is an organic outgrowth of a previous but slightly different style, "farmhouse modern," that mixed the starkness of the vernacular farmhouse with the soft-pastel Pinterest-era rural signifiers that have for the last ten years become ubiquitous.

Second, neutrals have always been common and popular. It's the default choice if you don't have a vision for what you want to do in a space. In the 2000s, the neutrals du jour were "earth tones" - beige, sage green, brown. Before that, it was white walls with oak trim in the 80s and 90s. In the 70s, neutrals were textural: brick and wood paneling. We have remarkably short memories when it comes to stylistic evolution because in real time it feels incremental. Such is the case with neutrals.

Finally, the all-gray palette is the end logic of HGTV et al's gamified methodology of designing houses with commodification in mind: if you blow out this wall, use this color, this flooring, this cabinetry, the asking price of your house goes up. You never want to personalize too much because it's off-putting to potential buyers. After twenty years of such rhetoric, doesn't it make all the sense in the world that we've ended up with houses that are empty, soulless, and gray?

A common realtor adage is to stage the house so that potential buyers can picture their own lives in it. In other words, create a tabula rasa one can project a fantasy of consumption onto. Implied in that logic is that the buyer will then impose their will on the house. But when the staged-realtor-vision and general-mass-market aesthetic of the time merge into a single dull slurry, we get a form of ultra-neutral that seems unwelcoming if not inescapable.

To impose one's style on the perfect starkness is almost intimidating, as though one is fouling up something untouchable and superior. If neutrality makes a house sell, then personality - at all - can only be seen as a detriment. Where does such an anti-social practice lead us? Back to the house that may or may not exist.

In my travels as McMansion Hell, I've increasingly been confronted with houses full of furniture that isn't real. This is known as virtual staging and it is to house staging as ChatGPT is to press release writing or DALL-E is to illustration. As this technology improves, fake sofa tables are becoming more and more difficult to discern from the real thing. I'm still not entirely sure which of the things in these photos are genuine or rendered. To walk through this house is to question reality.

Staging ultimately pretends (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) that someone is living in this house, that you, too could live in it. Once discovered, virtual staging erases all pretensions: the house is inhabited by no one. It is generally acknowledged (though I'm not sure on the actual statistics) that a house with furniture - that is, with the pretense of living -- sells easier than a house with nothing in it, especially if that house (like this one) has almost no internal walls. Hence the goal is to make the virtual staging undiscoverable.

If you want to talk about the realtor's tabula rasa, this is its final form. Houses without people, without human involvement whatsoever.

But what makes this particular house so uncanny is that all of these things I've mentioned before: real estate listing photography, completely dull interiors and bland colors all make it easy for the virtual furniture to work so well. This is because the softness of overlit white and gray walls enables the fuzzy edges of the renderings to look natural when mixed with an overstylized reality. Even if you notice something's off in the reflections, that's enough to cause one to wonder if anything in the house is real: the floors, the fixtures, the moulding, the windows and doors.

This is where things are heading: artifice on top of artifice on top of artifice. It's cheap, it's easy. But something about it feels like a violation. When one endeavors to buy a house, one assumes what one is viewing is real. It's one thing if a realtor photoshops a goofy sunset, it's another to wonder if anything in a room can be touched with human hands. I won't know what, if any, part of this estate costing over 2 million dollars actually exists until I visit it myself. Perhaps that's the whole point - to entice potential buyers out to see for themselves. When they enter, they'll find the truth: a vast, empty space with nothing in it.

The better this rendering technology gets, the more it will rely on these totally neutral spaces because everything matches and nothing is difficult. You are picking from a catalog of greige furniture to decorate greige rooms. If you look at virtual staging in a non-neutral house it looks immediately plastic and out of place, which is why many realtors opt to either still stage using furniture or leave the place empty.

Due to the aforementioned photography reasons, I would even argue that the greigepocalypse or whatever you want to call it and virtual staging have evolved simultaneously and mutualistically. The more virtual staging becomes an industry standard, the more conditions for making it seamless and successful will become standardized as well.

After all, real staging is expensive and depends on paid labor - selecting furniture, getting workers to deliver and stage it, only to pack it back up again once the property is sold. This is a classic example of technology being used to erase entire industries. Is this a bad thing? For freelance and contract workers, yeah. For realtors? no. For real estate listings, it remains to be seen. For this blog? Absolutely. (Thankfully there is an endless supply of previously existing McMansions.)

The thing is, real estate listings no longer reflect reality. (Did they ever to begin with?) The reason we're all exasperated with greige is because none of us actually live that way and don't want to. I've never been to anyone's house that looks like the house that may or may not exist. Even my parents who have followed the trends after becoming empty nesters have plenty of color in their house. Humans like color. Most of us have lots of warmth and creativity in our houses. Compare media intended for renters and younger consumers such as Apartment Therapy with HGTV and you will find a stark difference in palate and tone.

But when it comes to actually existing houses - look at Zillow and it's greige greige greige. So who's doing this? The answer is real estate itself aided by their allies in mass media who in turn are aided by the home renovation industry. In other words, it's the people who sell home as a commodity. That desire to sell has for some time overpowered all other elements that make up a home or an apartment's interiority to the point where we've ended up in a colorless slurry of real and unreal.

Fortunately, after ten years or so, things begin to become dated. We're hitting the ten year mark of farmhouse modernism and its derivatives now. If you're getting sick of it, it's normal. The whole style is hopefully on its last leg. But unlike styles of the past, there's a real, trenchant material reason why this one is sticking around longer than usual.

Hence, maybe if we want the end of greige, we're going to have to take color back by force.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including extra posts and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar, because media work is especially recession-vulnerable.

[imagine-darksiders]

Transformers Prime: Optimus + Reader. Chapter 1.

So, I read @lovinglonerhybrid 's post here. And it absolutely had me in a chokehold, so this is based off that premise. I'm in the UK so please excuse my ignorance of American states lmao.

So, there is a part 2 to this, but I'm going away for 4 days and wanted to get some of it posted before then.

You've broken down fifteen miles short of Jasper's city limits in the dead of night. Deciding to hike in to town, you feel the earth rumble beneath you, and over the horizon, something enormous approaches...

Chapter 1: 9352 words.

-------

It’s a rare and covetous thing, to find even a single moment of peace in the midst of an intergalactic war.

The gap from one of those precious moments to the next seems to grow wider and wider every time, until their frequency is so negligible, it becomes hard to recognise them for what they are anymore.

For everything Earth could have offered Optimus Prime, he hadn’t been expecting it to relinquish the gift of peace so willingly. But he’s glad – more than glad – to accept them when they come, even if he’s only stealing glimpses of tranquillity on the sand-swept road leading out of Jasper.

Low-beam headlights lazily trace over the faded tarmac ahead of Optimus’s tyres as he trundles along Highway 49, one of only two roads that surround the small, sleepy city of Jasper. It’s a very routine patrol, one he obligingly excused Bumblebee from taking after his poor scout all but begged Optimus to give it to someone else, beeping out promises that he’ll take double shift tomorrow night, if need be.

All this on the back of Miko announcing another of her ‘slumber parties’ at the base, much to Ratchet’s noisy chagrin and Optimus’s private amusement. And, of course, when Bumblebee found out that Rafael would be staying the night too… Well…

‘You’re too indulging,’ their old medic had admonished from his workstation, the broad expanse of his back turned to the Prime, ‘He ought to learn he can’t always have his way.’

But it was a harmless indulgence, and Prime was more than happy to take over the patrol in this instance.

Besides, he had an arguably selfish reason for doing so.

If he’d admitted as much out loud, Ratchet would have scoffed and sent a pulse of chiding dismissal crashing into Optimus’s EM field. ‘You don’t have a selfish component in your body,’ he might say.

But this… Optimus muses, gazing skyward as he trundles down the highway in vehicle mode, letting the crisp, night air slide through his grill and cool his powerful engine… This is the appeal of a solo patrol.

Every now and then, there are times when the Decepticon activity goes quiet, Fowler has nothing to report, and Optimus can almost pretend that he’s just another Cybertronian enjoying a long, quiet drive through the Mojave wilderness. And while he remains ever vigilant, keeping every sensor poised outwardly in a constant surveillance of his surroundings, the old bot still permits at least one sense to wander.

Somehow, it’s always his sight.

Oftentimes he catches himself doing it. Other times, on nights that are quiet and still and clear like this one, there’s a wire-deep longing that overrides his logic gates, and the Prime won’t notice that he isn’t keeping his processor and his optics on the dusty road ahead of him. He’s too busy stealing long, pensive looks at the stars above him, scattered like a-hundred-billion souls sprawling across a curtain of crushed velvet.

It’s out there… somewhere… riding a lonely orbit on the furthest reaches of the galaxy’s Centaurus arm.

Cybertron.

Home.

Their first home, he amends gently, depressing his accelerator to speed up when he realises he’s starting to crawl. Earth is as much their home now as Cybertron ever was.

Sagging on his suspension with a low hiss, Optimus drags his hidden optics back to the road ahead, and all at once, he nearly lurches to a halt, his exhaust pipes sputtering out a hollow sound to betray his surprise.

There, parked several feet from the road a few hundred yards ahead of him, is a vehicle.

Prime’s senses sharpen to a startling focus.

Pumping his brakes, he slows down again, and the roar of his engine fades to a fluctuating hum.

A Decepticon…?

He doesn’t feel anything trying to breach his EM field, nor does he pick up on any resistance when his scanners hone in on the vehicle – ‘Ford. F250. A Pickup truck.’ Year….? Optimus’s focus narrows to a pinprick… ‘Eighty-seven.’

It’s red - a faded, dusky red like some of the sun-baked sandstone at Red Rock Canyon. As Prime’s massive form rumbles on through the night, looming closer and closer to the mysterious truck, his lights reflect off something situated above its rear bumper, the presence of which quells his flaring codes and eases his rigid frame.

A number plate.

Thick, black numbers and letters stand out against the white rectangle, though it isn’t the sequence that alleviates Optimus’s suspicion, it’s their mere presence.

No Decepticon he knows would ever suffer the ‘indignity’ of having a human number plate stapled to their bumpers.

Primus, even the Autobots have foregone the accessory after Fowler gave up trying to keep Bumblebee from losing his, Ratchet from ‘misplacing’ his, and Bulkhead from bending his irreparably whenever he transformed. Optimus had given it a go, for a time… mainly because he was growing worried that their overworked liaison would quite simply combust if he had to intercept one more phone call from ‘concerned civilians’ who were reporting a semi-truck driving through Jasper without its registration.

The Prime’s number plate came to its own crumpled end when he sat down on his berth one evening without removing it first.

One genuine, slightly sheepish apology to a very fed-up liaison later, and Optimus was informed that he and his team no longer needed to wear the plates.

So, the presence of one on this truck is a good sign. It’s less likely to transform and cause an incident.

That does, however, open up an entirely new avenue for concern to creep in.

A crash, perhaps?

Several dark skid marks indicate that it must have veered off the road after a hard, panicked brake.

He can’t pick up any biological signatures either. Even when he casts a wider net, all his sensors catch are the heat signatures of a few tiny, Earthen mammals scurrying about over the sand before they dart into various rock formations when he rolls by. But just because he isn’t picking up the presence of a living human, it doesn’t negate the possibility of a human being inside…

Frame suddenly taut, Optimus trundles to a cautious halt on the road alongside the truck, his engine idling like some great, murmuring beast in the quiet of the desert.

A throaty hum seems to escape his smokestacks as he peers down at the smaller truck, contemplative… considering… Then finally, relieved. There doesn’t appear to be anyone inside, judging by what his headlights illuminate through the cab windows.

What is it doing out here?

It definitely wasn’t here yesterday when he made the drive into Jasper. It isn’t a vehicle he recognises either, and he’s been doubly vigilant of late regarding all the civilian cars, bikes, trucks, vans, and even agricultural vehicles in and around the town.

Privately, he’s been compiling a catalogue of them all, for his own reference.

If there’s a threat to his human charges lurking about in their hometown, Optimus needs to know about it. A Decepticon disguised as a civilian vehicle would be an effective method of infiltration.

Casting one more, cursory ping out into the night to check that he’s definitely alone, he at last begins to unfurl himself into his bipedal mode. Metal plating slides away from his grill, pulling back and rolling along the body of the semi as he rises onto newly revealed pedes. The mechanical whines, whirrs and buzzes are terribly loud and alien amongst the desert’s natural ambiance, but soon enough, the air falls still once again, and a monolithic Cybertronian stands in the place where a Peterbilt used to be.

Soft, cerulean light spills over the abandoned truck as Optimus settles his optics upon it, easing his enormous frame down into a crouch and draping one arm across his knee with a ‘clunk.’

At first glance, he hadn’t noticed anything especially odd about the truck save for its unexpected presence. Leaning sideways, he casts an optic over the front bumper and finds nothing out of place, no damage to indicate a crash, no broken headlights or crushed bonnet.

It’s the same story with the truck’s bed. Only when Optimus hauls himself upright and treads carefully around it to inspect the other side does he notices the glaring problem.

The whole vehicle is canting onto its offside front tyre, a tyre that sports a rather sizeable puncture, considering how flat it is. And from the looks of it, this one was only ever meant to be used as a temporary spare. A quick glance into the truck’s bed reveals what he assumes must be the original tyre, flat as well, with the silver head of a nail jutting from the centre tread block.

Optimus clicks his glossa softly for the owner’s run of bad luck.

Right away, he sends a ping to his team, advising them to be wary of stray nails along this stretch…

He receives several pings in return. Immediately comes Bumblebee’s frustration, buzzed over the airwaves like a sulking sparkling who’s been told his toy was broken. Given the Scout’s inclination to race at top speed all over these roads, Optimus doesn’t doubt he’s just vexed at the shuddersome notion of having to slow down.

Arcee and Bulkhead respond in kind as their leader absently moves his attention to something strange obscuring part of driver’s window, letting their concern wash over his field.

‘Popped a tyre, Boss?’ Bulkhead’s message hits his comm, informal and probing, but with the warmth of care behind it.

Optimus is quick to send a pulse of reassurance back through their shared channel. He’s fine. If one little nail was all it took to take a Prime out of commission, they’d all be in serious, serious trouble.

The channels go quiet after Arcee and Ratchet send their short, concise responses, and once again, Optimus is alone on the road, peering down at a small sheet of paper that’s been taped to the inside of the truck’s front window.

Gradually, he furrows his optical ridges until they almost click together into one, solid line, the apertures inside each optic whirring and shrinking as he reads the words scribbled on the paper.

He recalls the first time he encountered the languages of Earth as they were written. The looping letters, graceful and elegant, chasing one another across the front of the letter Agent Fowler gave him as part of an unofficial welcome to the United States.

Optimus had held the paper so delicately between two of his digits, blinking down at the dark ink soaked into repurposed cellulose fibre. It was beautiful.

When he remarked as such, Fowler made a noncommittal comment that you could tell a lot about humans from their handwriting.

Optimus would sometimes find himself glancing over the children’s homework when they left their books out unattended on the table in their recreational area.

Jack’s neat and sensible cursive. Miko’s chaotic, glittery script that rose and fell and ventured outside the lines because she was usually paying more attention to her music than the words she wrote in her textbook. And Rafael, of course, with his quick, almost frantic stokes of the pen as he tried to scribble his thoughts down as fast as his brain could make them, only to end up losing his confidence halfway through a sentence, doubled back, drew a single line through the words, and started again on a fresh page.

This handwriting though… written in blue, splotchy ink and stuck with a piece of scotch tape to the truck’s window, makes Fowler’s words ring true in Optimus’s processor.

He can tell a lot about the human who wrote it.

‘Please don’t steal/break into my truck,’ it reads. The word ‘please’ has been underlined several times. ‘Not worth much, it’s all I’ve got. Tyre is flat, spare tyre too, so can’t get far anyway. Walking to town to find help bcos phone died and I don’t have a charger. Be back soon. Thanks.’

The ink has run in several places and rendered some of the letters illegible, as if water has been dropped on them from above.

Optimus isn’t naïve. He’s seen the children cry, more times than he can bear.

Then underneath all that, in much smaller writing stuffed underneath the first message like an afterthought they forgot to leave enough space for…

‘P.s, if the truck is still here in 3 days, assume I’m dead.’

With a sudden groan of his metal frame, Optimus braces a servo on his knee and hurriedly pushes himself to his pedes once again, helm swivelling sideways to stare down the length of the road.

The truck’s nose is pointed in the direction of Jasper, but the town itself is still about a fifteen-mile drive…

Surely they wouldn’t make the journey on foot…

But if the note is any indication, then…

His processor flashes again to the children; Miko in particular, and the alarming disregard she has for her own safety. The boys are guilty of that as well, though to a lesser degree.

Suddenly, there’s a very high likelihood that there might be a human wondering through the vast Mojave, alone. Worse still, Bumblebee had reported just last week that there’s been an increase in Decepticon patrols in the area around Jasper. No doubt Megatron has been ramping up his efforts to locate the Autobot base. Their growing presence in the vicinity of town makes these roads particularly treacherous…

Optimus ex-vents roughly, more troubled than frustrated.

Blue optics narrow at the road ahead, and once again, the peace of the desert night is filled by the sounds of living metal collapsing back in on itself.

A powerful engine roars to life. Somewhere nearby, a startled jackrabbit darts beneath the safety of a sagebrush, hiding herself amongst its silvery leaves.

Unblinking, her wild eyes stare after the great, thrumming beast as it moves on down the road.

—————-

You’ve had a lot of ideas in your life.

Some good. Some bad. Some that have paid off, but most that have gone nowhere at all.

Perhaps you were growing tired of going nowhere…

What else would have possessed you to up and move all the way to the middle of Nevada state on the back of a job offer that came from a man your uncle purported to know?

‘Oh yeah, Terry? Did a job with him a few years back for some cattle baron out in the sticks. ‘Course, Terry always wanted his own dairy… Want me to tell him you’re lookin’ for work?’

Turns out, Terry did end up getting that dairy he always wanted. And as it happened, he was looking for a farm hand.

Does it count as nepotism if you’re fairly sure your uncle had only met your future employer once?

Beyond a certain point, you simply couldn’t care less.

A job is a job, even if it is out here in the desert near a town you’d never heard of a month ago.

Dust-caked trainers trudge to a weary halt in front of a large, green road sign.

The moon, thankfully, hangs fat and luminous in the cloudless sky. So at least you don’t need a torch to see, not now that your eyes have had time to adjust the darkness cloaked over the desert.

With your run of bad luck, you half assumed the heavens would have opened by now and given the Mojave a nice, little dose of rain.

“Well,” you mutter aloud to yourself, peering up at the green sign with a grimace, “Could be worse…”

‘Jasper – 10 miles,’ reads like a slap to the face.

Still… It’s better than the fifteen miles.

You must have walked at least five already, dragging your legs behind you like extra baggage that doesn’t want to cooperate.

It has to be beyond midnight now. Well beyond, you suppose.

You’ve been walking for the better part of two hours, slow and sluggish and exhausted. The journey getting to Nevada had been tiring enough, then as soon as you crossed state lines, your tyre caught a puncture going over a particularly nasty pothole that had snuck up on you.

After an hour spent in the blazing sun jacking up the truck and changing to the spare, you set off again for another several hours of travel. Then, twenty miles out of Jasper, just as you dared to celebrate being home-free, the unthinkable had happened.

Who hits a pothole and drives over a nail in the same, damn day? Apparently, the same person who forgot to buy a charger adaptor for the truck.

No charger? No phone.

No phone…? No calling for help…

Your chest expands and deflates with a bone-tired sigh, turning your gaze back onto the long, dark road ahead of you. Tears sting at the inside of your eyelids, and for a moment, you consider letting them fall, if only to ease some of the pressure building up behind your temples. But crying hysterically about the unfairness of the world hadn’t un-punctured your spare tyre, so why would it help the situation now.

“Come on,” you coax yourself, hauling one leg out in front of the other. Rinse. Repeat. “Not far now.”

Just a few more hours…

The going is slow, tough, draining. Even the dark shapes of rocks start to look enticing as you pass them, letting your eyes slide over to them as you wonder just how safe it would be to fall asleep in the desert by the side of a road.

Ever since you broke down a few hours ago, you haven’t seen one, single vehicle out here.

‘Which,’ you hum, pursing your lips and tipping your head back to peer up at the bleary sky far above you, ‘Isn’t so bad…’

The stars are numerous, and startlingly clear out in the wilderness. The moon as well seems brighter here, unobscured by clouds. She makes for a quiet companion on your journey towards Jasper, her starry brethren endlessly stretching out to each corner of the horizon.

Suddenly, you feel very small. A hopeless traveller trying to find port in a sea of sand and rock.

Swallowing roughly, you hike your tattered rucksack high onto your shoulder and tear your gaze from the stars.

It’s quiet out here, save for the rustle of sage bushes disturbed by the warm breeze, and the skittering of rocks as night-time animals go about their hunts.

Perhaps that natural silence is why the sudden introduction of an entirely new sound unnerves you so much.

You jerk to a halt, ears straining to hear something approaching from the distance. Underneath the thin, worn soles of your shoes, you start to feel it; the road thrumming with gentle vibrations, growing stronger every second.

Lighting quick, you whirl around to face the way you’d come, hands flying up to grip anxiously at the straps of your rucksack.

You’d have thought you’d be excited to see those headlights rise up above the horizon line. At last! A stroke of luck! A potential ride! Potential help.

Instead, it’s as though the sudden appearance of two, dazzling lights blooming into view as they crest over the hill finally jar some sense back into your dizzy head.

The haze of fatigue lifts slightly, pushed away by little bursts of adrenaline as your brain fights to wake you up to an unconscious threat.

You’re alone out here. Defenceless, phoneless. You don’t know the area. Nobody knows you’ve broken down… You try so hard to think the best of people, but now that you’ve had one doubt, a hundred others start to scurry around in your brain, demanding attention.

You can see the vehicle, or their lights at least, but you doubt they can see you yet, this far down the road. You wonder what it is. Car? Truck?

… Alien spacecraft? Despite yourself, you let out a snort at that. Isn’t that infamous military base supposed to be in Nevada? The one hiding alien activity?

Right. Sure.

Despite your scepticism however, a thrill of fear rushes down the length of your spine as if to say, ‘Oh? But are you sure sure?’

 Gulping audibly, you take a few steps sideways off the road, stealing a glance at a cluster of large rocks that sit conveniently just several yards to your rear.

You have a decision to make.

Maybe you’ve been alone on the road for too long, and isolation has bred a paranoia in you that’s so deeply rooted, you can’t shift it at a moment’s notice. If the sun was out, perhaps you’d be less apprehensive, but the night, no matter where you are, makes everything seem so much more… treacherous. It hides things. People, motivations, monsters.

And though it pains you to do so, you swiftly decide to err on the side of personal safety.

The vehicle is closer now, and your blood trembles as the roar of a loud, formidable engine thunders over the tarmac. Yet you’re still certain it isn’t close enough to have caught you in its high-beams.

On sluggish legs, you haul yourself about and make a clumsy dash for the rocks, clenching a fist around one strap of the rucksack and using your other hand to grab the closest rock and swing yourself behind it. Dropping to your backside, you flatten your spine against the cool, solid surface, eyes wide, heart beating hard against the cage of ribs keeping it from leaping up into your throat.

‘Coward,’ a voice in the back of your head scoffs, sounding suspiciously like your father. You shake it loose. Now is not the time to be bothered by old ghosts.

The thundering engine draws nearer, rumbling in your chest as it seems to creep towards your hiding spot at a pace even a glacier would be impressed by.

Around the corner of the rock, you can finally see the glow of its headlights smoothing over the tarmac, illuminating the sand and brush all around you. Hurriedly, you tuck your toes right into the shadow cast by your rock, keeping a breath held hostage behind clenched teeth.

“Come on… Come on,” you urge it frustratedly, aware that every second you spend not moving is another second towards sunrise. If you’re not on the dairy ready for work by then…

The vehicle rolls to a stop.

It stops.

The temptation to let out a frustrated scream is only held in check by your tongue getting stuck to the roof of bone-dry mouth.

They saw you. They must have seen you. There’s no way they could have known you were here otherwise.

Idiot!

Wasting time on the decision has only taken it right out of your hands in the end.

A bead of sweat escapes your hairline and rolls down the side of your face, following the curve of your cheek. Should you run? Keep hiding? Did they stop by coincidence? If they meant no harm, they’d have seen you hide and kept on driving, wouldn’t they? Stopping is suspicious. It conveys a desire to engage.

And then something really strange happens.

“Excuse me?”

And… Well, you’re… not entirely proud of the choked gasp that jumps out of you, nor the way you flinch as if you’d been struck.

When did they – He? It’s a low voice, deeper than anything you’ve heard in a long while, full of bass but soft like distant brontide.

When did he get out of the vehicle? You didn’t hear a door open, nor close.

You nearly jump out of your skin when he speaks again.

“I’ve frightened you…” Despite how gentle the timbre is, his voice is loud, like he’s speaking all around you, not just behind you. “I apologise,” the stranger continues, “That is the last thing I meant to do.”

What the Hell is he talking about?

There’s a long, unpleasant stretch of time until he speaks again.

“Was that your… Ford?” he asks, like he’s testing the word on his tongue, “Up the road?”

Shit. You’re starting to regret leaving that note. He must have read it and knew someone would be walking into town, alone and vulnerable.

The vehicle's powerful engine is still idling, strong and steady, buzzing along the ground and up through the soles of your feet.

It goes against your nature to ignore someone when they’re talking to you, but there’s still a part of you clinging to the hope that he’ll just give up and move on if you don’t respond or show yourself. Perhaps he’ll think you were just a figment of an overtired imagination…

Of course, instead, he persists. “Please.”

Jesus, he almost squeezes the word out, oozing dejection.

“You have nothing to fear from me… I’m a friend.”

A friend indeed. You huff quietly to yourself. You don’t even know him. He doesn’t know you. He’s trying to coax you out of hiding after watching you flee from his vehicle. Hardly the foundation for a good friendship. Still, you have to wonder why he doesn’t just come around the rock to stand over you if he’s so keen.

After another few seconds of stubborn silence on your part, the voice speaks again.

“Will you at least step back from the rock?”

What?

“There are scorpions on it, and I fear you’ll get-“

You don’t think you’ve moved so fast in quite some time. One moment you’re pressing yourself to the rock, and the next, you’re scrabbling to your feet with gusto, lurching away from your prior hiding space and spinning around, skin already crawling.

Sure enough, a pair of giant scorpions are scuttling around on the flat top, their tails held aloft, proud and large in the moonlight.

“-Hurt,” the stranger finishes.

Snatching your head up, you find yourself staring right into the vehicle’s headlights, and you instantly grunt with discomfort, raising a hand to shield your eyes from the light.

“Oh.” There’s a pause, the vehicle’s engine skips, and the lights suddenly dim, plunging you into almost darkness save for the dim glow of residual light. “Forgive me. Is that better?”

“Much. Thanks,” you respond automatically, only to turn rigid once you realise you’ve spoken aloud.

Well. He’s already seen you. No point pretending you can’t talk either…

Again, the stranger’s vehicle makes an odd noise, it’s engine hums gently, and as you lower your arm to seek out the man you’ve just opened a line of conversation with, you finally see what you’d been hiding from.

A monstrous Peterbilt sits squarely across the width of the road, entirely alien in the barren, rocky landscape. Smokestacks on either side of its cab reach towards the sky, glinting silver in the moonlight. It looks red under the meagre glow, with lighter panelling on the main body and dark, blue accents on the wheel trims and storage compartment. The grill is, in a word, massive, standing taller than you are, sporting a logo you don’t recognise on the front.

All in all, it’s a hell of a truck. Powerful, you imagine. Expensive too.

You try not to let your mouth hang ajar.

“Where-” Your voice cracks, still dry. “Ahem…! Where are you?”

Glancing around, your hackles start to rise. You can’t see the speaker anywhere. Which is why you let out an embarrassingly shrill yelp when his voice rumbles directly from the semi.

“I’m right here,” he assures you, polite enough not to show his amusement whilst you flap your mouth open and closed.

No, you shake your head. No, that is too weird. “What, are there like… speakers on the outside of your truck or something?”

There’s the tiniest of pauses, followed by a simple, concise, “There are.”

Oh. Well, then. That answers that burning question.

“Okay? So, um… Can I… help you?” you ask awkwardly, screwing one side of your face up.

The man seems to hesitate, allowing a pregnant pause to hang in the air between you before he replies, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Somehow, your expression twists even further south, and you begin casting your eyes over the semi, squinting through its dark windshield to try and catch a glimpse of what’s on the other side.

“I saw your truck on the side of the road,” the unseen man continues, “I feared you might have been hurt in a crash, so, I stopped to check that you weren’t still inside the vehicle. Then I found your note.”

He falls silent, and the air is dominated once again by the purring of his semi’s engine.

“Okay?” you prompt, still unsure of his motivations.

“It said you need help.”

He trails off, waiting. You’re promptly struck by the idea that he’s trying to guide you to some conclusion he hasn’t yet revealed. Finally, just as you start to grow restless, he forges ahead, “These roads can be hazardous for a lone hu-“

Suddenly, the truck’s engine revs, drowning out his voice for a second and sending you leaping backwards, startled.

“- A lone traveller…” he clears his throat just after the roar of its exhaust cuts out. Then, “Ah, If I may be so bold...”

All of a sudden, the passenger side door unlatches and swings open, and you’re presented with a clear invitation into the darkened cab. “May I offer you a ride into town?”

You wonder if he can see you turn stiff at his suggestion. Your body all but pleads on hands and knees for you to accept. What’s the worst that could happen, after all?

Well. You’ve watched several documentaries and movies that give you a pretty good indication of what ‘the Worst’ entails, thank you very much. You don’t like that he’s inviting you into his truck without showing his face to you yet. You’d like to gauge the person you’re speaking to. Get a bead on him. Is he big? Strong? Tall? Could you overpower him if it came down to it? Does he look like he’s hiding a weapon on him?

All these questions only serve to dry the moisture in your throat.

“I… That’s… very kind of you,” you admit, wringing your hands together as you take a small step away from the semi, “But I’m sure it’ll be okay, it isn’t that far.”

“At an average speed of three miles per hour, you will reach the outskirts of town in just under three and a half hours.”

You blink, caught off guard. ‘And they said we’d never need to use equations after we graduated.’

“Maths guy, huh?” you cock a hip, laying a hand across it and shooting the truck’s windshield a tentative smile, “Maybe I walk at four miles an hour.”

“Two and a half then,” he quips back just as smoothly, the door to his semi still hanging open. When he continues, you can’t help but notice that the cadence of his baritone voice rumbling through the speakers has turned to something a little more sombre, quieter, like he’s trying to impress upon you the gravity of a situation you don’t yet know about. “But time and distance aside, I do not wish to leave you to walk into Jasper by yourself, particularly at this time of night.”

He speaks like he’s been to elocution lessons. Every word seems to be carefully selected, every vowel and consonant articulate and refined.

It’s disarming. He’s disarming. But you’re still not convinced.

“Listen… Thank you, again. But…” It feels rude, like you’re committing some kind of faux pas in turning your back on the semi, yet you can’t shake the nagging voice at the back of your head, telling you that there’s something not quite right about the man in the truck. Not bad, just… off.

“It’s a kind offer,” you tell him again lamely, turning on your heel. And so, you recommence your weary march for Jasper, tossing one last sentiment over your shoulder, “But I’m sure I can make it on my own. Take care, okay?”

You almost expect him to argue, but all you can hear is the now familiar drone of the semi’s almighty engine. For several paces, you can feel a pair of eyes watching you, scrutinising and pensive, if a little baffled by your short yet polite dismissal.

When you make it another ten feet, heaving your tired legs after you over the tarmac, your ears perk up to the sound of an engine revving.

Smokestacks chugging, the massive truck pulls out of its standstill, unseen behind you.

Chewing on the inside of your lip, you keep your gaze fixed to the ground ahead and raise a hand, flapping it about in an apologetic farewell as you meander further off the road and onto the sand, giving him plenty of space to get past.

You start to frown when you make it twenty paces without being overtaken by the truck.

That frown only grows deeper when the engine keeps churring away behind you, rubber tyres crunching tiny particles of sand under their treads as it crawls along in your wake.

Is he…?

Tearing your eyes off the toes of your shoes, you send a fleeting glance over your shoulder, surprised – but not much – to find the nose of the Peterbilt creeping slowly along in your peripheral vision, keeping pace with you.

Your frown eases back, and you quirk a brow at him instead, calmly asking, “What are you doing?”

And just as easily, the voice returns, “If you will not allow me to drive you, I will happily escort you to your destination.”

You can’t help yourself.

“Ha! ‘Escort.’” The snicker jumps out of you faster than you can raise your hands to press your fingertips against an unbidden grin. “Sorry,” you immediately try to amend, “You just sounded so serious.”

“… I… am serious?”

Letting your hand flop back to your side, you give your head a shake, still grinning. You really do meet all sorts on the road.

“Regardless, I’m sure you have far better things to be doing with your time.”

How the truck matches your walking speed without his engine faltering or sputtering, you’ll never know.

A strange noise gurgles from its exhaust, almost perfectly reminiscent of a troubled hum.

“On the contrary,” the driver responds, pulling forwards a little until only the grill overtakes you, and for a moment, you worry he’s about to drive across your path, “There is nothing at the moment that concerns me more than getting you safely where you need to go.”

Huh. Of all the genuine, stubborn…

“Look.” Your shoes scuff up a cloud of sand as you draw to an abrupt and decisive halt, turning bodily towards the truck. Hands splayed on your hips, you glare at the windscreen, aiming approximately for the driver. A second later, he must have hit the brakes because the semi lurches to a stop as well, hissing noisily.

Still, he doesn’t step out.

“You seem like a nice guy,” you start, trying to keep your chin raised and your tone stern. You fail, of course. Your voice cracks nervously, but at least you try. Taking a deep, steadying breath, you finally elect to stop beating around the bush and just address the elephant in the room – or desert, as it were.

“But I don’t make it a habit to get into random trucks with strangers.” You make it a point not to directly accuse him of having ulterior motives, but you hope you’ve at least driven home your main concern. At best, he’ll grow offended that you’d think him capable of such a thing and – hopefully – move on. At worst… Well. You brace yourself for that, teeth grit so tightly, your jaw starts to ache as you flick your eyes over towards the truck’s driver-side door, waiting.

The truck in question does something odd then. It… sinks? At least you think it does, lowering on its axles by a few inches like the wheels have just deflated. It’s difficult to tell in the dim moonlight though, and it’s over so quickly, you can’t be sure you saw anything at all that wasn’t just a trick of the desert.

How long have you been awake?

You’re busy calculating the hours you were driving when the stranger’s voice is kicked out over the speakers again.

“You assume I mean you harm…” he utters.

And just like that, the stern, rigid scowl is instantly wiped off your face.

He sounds…

…sad.

Not offended. Not angered by your thinly-veiled implication.

Just sad. Dispirited, even. As if it’s only just occurred to him that you might have perceived him as a threat.

It’s almost painful when the pair of you dissolve into an uncomfortable silence that lasts for several beats of your rapid-fire heart.

Biting down on the inside of your cheek, your brows drift apart whilst you try to think of something to say. Trouble is, you’re afraid that speaking again will only make things worse.

You have no idea what’s going through his head. What if his dejected tone is followed by something worse?

“I’m sorry,” you backtrack, pressing your lips together and chiding yourself for faltering, “It’s nothing personal, just… I-I should probably get going before I fall asleep standing up.” You give a stilted laugh, but it soon turns into an awkward sound made at the back of your throat, lips pulled over your teeth in a grimace.

Dipping your head, you swallow thickly and grip the straps of your rucksack again. But just as you make to turn away, the semi’s wheels abruptly twist towards you. It’s ever so slight, just enough that the truck rolls a few paces in your direction before it stops again, its grill pointed straight at you.

With an audible gulp, you go to take another step back, staring at the metal in anticipation. Your retreat is soon halted by the mellow rumble of his voice.

“I understand your hesitation. And I know that the word of a stranger may not hold much weight,” he begins slowly. The Peterbilt inches forwards again. “But I can assure you, you have nothing to fear from me…”

Shifting on your feet, you let go of your bag and clutch instead at your elbows, brows tipped up indecisively. He’s persistent, you’ll give him that. He also speaks with a candour you’ve never encountered outside of a film or a storybook. Frank and forthright in a way you’ve never been privy to. Is that why you’re hesitating? Is that why he seems ‘off?’ Because his level of sincerity doesn’t have a place in your world?

Perhaps you’ve been spending so much time by yourself, it’s turned you distrustful. Maybe you’re just getting cynical. Looking back on your journey here, you realise that only other person who you’ve spoken to was a disinterested server who took your order at a drive-thru… That was four days ago. How long before that did you listen to someone who wasn’t the people on your truck’s radio?

Why is it so suspicious that this trucker wants to help? Hell, you’d be concerned as well if you saw some poor bastard hiking alone through the desert at night without a friend in the world.

Christ, you need some perspective.

The driver must see the conflict painted like a brand across your expression.

“Would it reassure you to know that this vehicle is operated entirely remotely?” he pipes up.

You blink once. Then again to wake yourself up a little more, pulled from your inner turmoil. “What?”

“This vehicle,” he tells you, “It is an unmanned vehicle.”

Curiosity overtakes suspicion faster than you can uncross your arms and stare at the grill dumbly, face opening up in surprise. “Wait. You mean it’s one of those self-driving things?”

“In a sense.” The semi’s engine rumbles softly, and the not-driver adds, “I am what you might call… the safety driver.”

Now that is curious.

You don’t even realise you’ve taken a step closer. “Really? But I thought that sort of tech was still in testing?”

“It is,” he replies, “We are, however, attempting to advance to field-tests, to see if these vehicles can autonomously haul freight in areas with sparser populations, to minimise the risk of collision.”

“Hence why you’re driving it out here in the middle of the night,” you realise aloud, raising an inquisitive brow at the windscreen, “So you’re really not in there? You’re driving it from somewhere else?”

“Would you care to see for yourself?” he asks kindly.

Your wide eyes flit to the passenger door when it eases open once again, though this time, it seems far less foreboding than before.

Tugging a loose piece of skin between your teeth, you give the silver steps leading to the door a scrutinising glance.

That does reassure you…

Slowly, still at least a little wary, you coax your legs to move, and they begrudgingly carry you onto the road. You approach the semi-truck with all the caution of a doe crossing an open meadow.

As you venture closer, its engine kicks up a notch, emitting a steady, gentle purr as if the vehicle itself is pleased with your acquiescence.

Suddenly, as you move along to the open door, you’re dazzled by a light flickering on inside the cab, bathing what you can see from this angle in a calm, golden hue.

From down here, it looks… just like an ordinary interior.

And lo and behold, as you stand on your tiptoes to see in, you find the driver’s seat is eerily devoid of its occupant.

You let out a breath that emerges shakier than you would have liked it to.

“Wow,” you laugh, impressed.

Maybe just a quick peek…

A vast chunk of apprehension breaks away from your chest and vanishes into the ether as you shuffle towards the steps, raising an arm and stretching your fingers across the space to the grab handle that sits invitingly just beside the open door.

This side of the truck is bathed in silver moonlight, and it’s only now that you’re this close that you happen to notice something you hadn’t before.

You almost wince when you spot them.

Although shiny and speckled with only the lightest dusting of desert sand, the metal panelling on the semi is covered in signs of wear and tear.

Enough to give you pause, at least.

For a moment, you’re taken aback, turning bodily away from the open door and cocking your head at the myriad of scratches that criss-cross their way up towards the semi’s roof.

All the paint in the world couldn’t hide some of those shallow nicks and lines that have been scraped out of the metal. In any case, something big must have scuffed it. Perhaps another driver in their own Peterbilt? Or perhaps it’s all damage sustained in testing the vehicle’s automated capabilities.

Clicking your tongue, you absently raise a hand to stroke your fingertips gingerly along the length of a particularly prominent scratch by the door.

“Oh dear,” you tut softly at the side of the truck, “You’ve been in the wars, haven’t you?”

Without warning, the engine that had been buzzing so gently suddenly ramps up and starts to vibrate firmly beneath your fingers, so strong you can even feel it judder the ground through the soles of your feet.

Recoiling like you’ve been zapped, you whip your head around to peer through the open door, half expecting the driver to admonish you for touching his vehicle.

As swiftly as it started however, the thrumming engine dies down, and the truck returns to its soft, benign idling. “My apologies,” comes that gentle voice again through the speakers, “Just an overactive combustion chamber.”

“Is it... safe to ride in?” you retort, giving the back of the truck a sidelong glance.

“You will find very few vehicles safer than this one,” he tells you patiently, “I will not allow any harm to befall you, as I would not allow it to befall any of my passengers.”

Your shoulders jump with a silent laugh. “Befall,” you parrot, fighting a smile, “I love the way you talk.”

“… You do?” His speakers buzz with a pleasant hum.

Fingers flexing anxiously, you reach out once again and slide them around the grab handle beside the door, finding that it’s unexpectedly warm under your palm.

“So, I just… get in?” you ask, only to cringe immediately, realising you probably sound like a fool who’s forgotten how to get into a truck.

Before you can rebuke yourself harshly though, the absent stranger offers his response. “Do you require assistance?”

“No, no,” you rush out, placing one foot on the first, silver step and hoisting yourself up off the ground, bringing yourself level with the cab’s seats.

Your eyes grow wide with wonder as you take in the interior.

“Oh, wow,” you breathe, suddenly hesitant to pull yourself up those last few feet.

“Is there something wrong?”

“It’s just… It’s so clean!”

Laid out before you is a perfectly ordinary truck cabin. Soft, grey leather covers the seats, with the same dark colouration on the roof, doors and most of the glovebox, interspersed by a rich, black steering wheel. The soft light, you discover, is emitted by multiple strips of blue neon LEDs that the driver must have fitted underneath the radio dials and dashboard, casting the truck’s interior in a cool, soothing glow.

But most astonishingly, for as much as you search, you can’t spot a single thing out of place. It’s absolutely immaculate. There isn’t one receipt stuffed in the door pockets, no traces of sand or gravel dirtying the footwells, no loose change tossed into the centre console…

Dumbfounded, you glance into the back, but all you find it a dark, grey panel and a shelf set back into the semi’s rear wall, meant for use as a bed, you surmise. It’s empty, unsurprisingly. Not a blanket or a pillow in sight.

Finally, your suspicions are put to rest. This truck doesn’t look lived in at all. He really is operating it remotely.

“God, it looks brand new in here,” you marvel aloud, suddenly hyper-conscious of the abysmal state of your old pickup. The scratches on this semi’s exterior play briefly on your mind but you brush your musings aside, too fatigued to consider the contradictions of a worn exterior but an immaculate interior.

Instead, you feel a frown crease the skin between your brows.

It really is immaculate in here…

Glancing down, you scowl disdainfully at your filthy shoes, the tank-top that’s stained irreparably by dropped food and greasy finger-smears, and trousers that are tattered and worn at their hems.

“Is everything all right?” the ‘driver’ asks again. His voice must emerge from the speakers on each door, low and warm, filling up the cabin.

“My shoes are dirty,” you admit out loud, your grip on the handle turning slack until you sink a few inches back to the first step, “I’m dirty. I-I don’t want to get sand and crap all over your truck.”

“I don’t mind.”

Spoken with more consideration than you’ve heard in a long, long time.

You pause at once, brows tipping up in the centre of your forehead.

A deep inhale through your nose brings with it the unobtrusive scent of leather, with the faintest undertone of adhesive sealers, giving the interior that ‘new truck smell’ that so many drivers try to replicate artificially.

Comparatively, it’s been several days since you passed a rest stop that had showering facilities. Those that did asked for a hefty charge. You’d glanced down at the handful of coppers in your centre console and decided you could go without. Now, you’re starting to regret that decision. Every now and then, whenever you raised your arms to stretch or flip the visor down in your pickup, you’d catch an unpleasant whiff of yourself wafting out from under your light, cotton shirt.

Embarrassed as you are to confess that you’ve been severely neglecting your personal hygiene, you swallow past a lump in your throat and croak, “I… haven’t exactly washed for a couple of days… I wouldn’t want to make your truck smell…”

And in a tone so kind it threatens to brings a tear to your eye, the stranger answers consolingly, “I think your scent is perfectly fine.”

It’s so damnably genuine, you can’t even find it in yourself to point out that he isn’t here to smell you, so his point is moot.

“I…” One more cop-out strikes you. “I don’t have any money,” you murmur truthfully, ashamed, “I can’t pay you for the fuel, or-“

“-I ask for nothing in return but your company,” is all he says, cutting you off as gently as his profound voice will allow.

And just like that, you’re out of viable excuses. Or perhaps your body has noticed the comfortable seats right in front of it and you don’t have enough fight left in you to deny it a sit down. Besides, any reasons you come up with to dip are likely to be met with a counterpoint.

Even so, you can’t help but hesitate for one more question, hand clasping and unclasping around the grab handle. “Are you sure it’s okay? I’m not going to get you in trouble or anything am I?”

The next sound that hums through his speakers is so soft and rich, you think it’s the truck’s engine playing up again, at least until the stranger cuts the noise off by saying, “You do not look like trouble to me.”

If he only knew.

The sound prior, you realise, was a chuckle, the first one you’ve heard out of him yet. Something in the measure of it settles the last of your nerves, only slightly, just long enough to have you throwing caution to the wind. With a final heave, you pull yourself the rest of the way inside, sliding gingerly into the comfortable passenger seat. You never notice how the metal below your foot shifts microscopically, lifting you closer to the cab.

It takes a lot of restraint not to let your eyes drift closed, nor to slump backwards into the wondrously giving material on your spine.

Instead, you sit stiffly with your rucksack keeping you upright, legs pressed together, hands folded neatly in your lap. If you make any kind of mess in here, you’ll be mortified.

After a moment, you remember to close the door, but just as you turn and peel a hand off your thigh, you jolt, staring agog at the door as it swings slowly shut with a dull ‘click.’ All of its own accord.

“Full remote access,” the voice pipes up as the engine below you roars to life, and then you’re moving, and all you can do is stare through the window at the desert drifting by whilst trying to ignore the uninvited ache in your chest.

“Seatbelt.”

His gentle prompt spurs you to reach over and grab the fabric near your shoulder, tugging it across your body and fumbling a little to slot it into place. Suddenly, you feel an invisible pull on the belt, and the metal buckle finds its way into the socket on your next pass.

‘Must be magnetic,’ you muse distractedly.

“Are you comfortable?”

Blinking back the moisture in your eyes, you turn to glance at the empty driver’s seat. It’s bizarre, and more than a little unsettling to see the steering wheel turn itself around as the truck pulls back onto the road, driven by unseen hands.

When you don’t immediately respond to his query, the man continues just as patiently as before. “If it is too cold, I can turn up the heater. Or… perhaps you are too warm…” He hums to himself, thoughtful. “You have been exerting yourself.”

You instantly become aware of the light sheen of sweat that hasn’t quite dried on your forehead. Puckering your face up into a solemn smile, you shake your head and at last respond. “Not to worry. It’s very comfortable in here.”

What follows is a poignant moment of hesitation before the voice speaks again. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but… You do not seem comfortable…”

The open-ended statement fades into silence, and you’re left casting nervous glances around the cabin again. “How do you-?” you start, tugging your shirt further down your arms, “Can you see me? Like… in here?”

Again, there’s a pause, barely longer than a second, yet long enough for you to notice it.

“Cameras,” comes his measured response, “Both external and internal. They’re how I spotted you on the road.”

“Oh, I hadn’t even considered that… Of course.”

Suddenly self-conscious, you reach up and begin to paw uselessly at your dishevelled hair, humming though a thin-lipped smile. “I must look a sight,” you half joke.

“You look tired…” he replies diplomatically, and there’s nothing in it for you to be offended by.

Rubbing a thumb over the wrinkle slowly carving a home between your brows, you heave a dreary sigh. “It’s been a long journey.”

“I can only imagine… And… Where does it culminate, if I may?”

“Terry’s Dairy?” you offer, “Uh, it’s this little farm just on the outskirts of Jasper.”

The truck beneath you gives a reverberating thrum. “I know the pastures, but I’m afraid you will find they lay beyond the ‘outskirts’ of the city.”

Letting out a groan, you knock your head back against the seat behind you, staring bleakly up at the ceiling. “Of course… How far?”

“Only a few miles, to the East of Jasper. We’re coming in from the Northwest highway. I can get you there in twenty-five minutes.”

“Twenty- Oh, no, no. You really don’t have to do that,” you protest, shifting in the seat to frown at the empty driver’s seat in lieu of anywhere else to look, “Just drop me off in town and I’ll walk the rest. You’re already going out of your way for a stranger.”

“I am dropping you off at your destination and not a mile before,” he tells you steadily.

His uncompromising tone brooks no argument.

You stare at the spot a person should be for several, long moments, debating how much you could push an argument. He’s already coaxed you into his truck, his powers of persuasion are rather good. What chance do you have, sleep-deprived as you are?

Conceding sullenly, yet appreciatively, you let your back touch the seat, settling into it a little less hesitantly. “You won’t be taking no for an answer, I assume?”

He only lapses into a stubborn silence, an answer in and of itself.

That quiet is broken, however, when you suddenly let out all the air from your lungs, a smile growing across the width of your face as the breath escapes your nostrils in a sigh. “Thank you for this… Really. You’re saving me a lot of grief.”

The blue neons on his dashboard seem to flare a bit brighter for all of a second before they dim again. “I am glad to be of service,” he replies warmly.

“Oh my god,” you blurt without warning, leaning forwards in the seat and staring through the windscreen with wide eyes, “I’m so sorry, you’re being so nice and I’m so rude – I never asked your name.”

“Nor did I yours,” he points out, “You may call me Op-“

Suddenly, a burst of static buzzes through the radio. You shoot it a funny look.

“Optimus,” the stranger admits over the static with a hesitance you pick up on right away, drawing your gaze from the dash, “My name is Optimus.”

“Optimus?” you repeat incredulously, a small smile quirking at the edges of your mouth, “Wow… You must have had creative parents.”

“I appreciate that it might seem… an unusual name…”

“It is,” you agree pleasantly, “I like it. Makes you sound cool. Unique. My parents just stuck me with Y/n.”

At once, Optimus echoes your name, and you’re jarred by the sound of it coming from someone else’s lips, reverberating around the truck. It’s been a while since anyone used it.

“Y/n,” he says again in his velvety timbre, “It’s a fine name. I like yours too.”

[dailyadventureprompts]

Do the ethnostates inherent in major fantasy ever feel real weird to you? You’ve got elftopia (full of elves, where everyone speaks elf and worships the elf gods), orc-hold (full of orcs and maybe their slaves, where everyone speaks orc and worships the orc gods), and dwarfton (made by the dwarves! for the dwarves!).

You might have some cosmopolitan areas, usually human-dominant, but those are usually rare enough in-setting that they need to be pointed out separately. Is this just based on a misunderstanding of the medieval era, and the assumption that countries were all racially homogenous?

This has been bouncing around my brain the last little while. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is it just in my head?

I think what you've noticed is a quirk of derivative fantasy writing, which like a lot of hangups with the genre originates in people trying to crib Tolkien's work without really understanding what he was going for:

Though it contains a lot of detail, Tolkien's world is not grounded. It functions according a narrative logic that changes depending on what work in particular you're focusing on at the time (The Hobbit is a fairytale full of tricks and riddles, Lord of the Rings is a heroic epic, The Silmirilion is a legendary history).

One of the reasons the races are separate is to instill the feeling of wonder in the hobbits as POV characters for the reader, other folk live in far off places and are supposed to feel more legendary than our comparatively mundane friends from the shire. The Movies captured this well where going east in middle earth was like going back in time to a more and more mythologized past.

In real life, people don't stay static for thousands of years, no matter how long their people live. They meet, mingle, war and trade. Empires rise and fall creating shrapnel as they go, cultures adapt to a changing environment. This means that any geographic cross section you make is going to be a collage of different influences where uniformity is a glaring aberration.

What the bad Tolkien knockoffs did was take his image of a mythical world and tried to make it run in a realistic setting. Tolkien can say the subterranean dwarven kingdom of Erebor lasted for a thousand years without having to worry about birthrates or demographic shifts or the logistics of farming in a cave because he's writing the sort of story where those things don't matter. D&D and other properties like it however INSIST that their worlds are grounded and realistic but have to bend over backwards to keep things static and hegemonic.

Likewise contributing to the "ethnostate" feeling is early d&d (backbone of the fantasy genre that it is) being created by a bunch of White Midwestern Americans who were not only coming from a background of fantasy wargaming but were working during the depths of the coldwar. Hard borders and incompatible ideologies, cultural hegemony and intellectual isolation, a conception of the world that focused around antagonism between US and THEM. These were people born in the era of segregation for whom the idea of cultural and racial osmosis was alien, to the point where mingling between different fantasy races produced the "mongrelman" monster, natural pickpockets who combined the worst aspects of all their component parts, unwelcome in good society who were most often found as slaves.

This inability to appreciate cultural exchange is likewise why the central d&d pantheon has a ton of human gods with specific carveouts for other races (eventually supplemented with a bunch of race specific minor gods who are various riffs on the same thing). Rather than being universal ideals, the gods were seen as entities just as tribalistic as their followers.

[headspace-hotel]

My opinions on invasive species are so complicated that no matter what opinion you have about them I will want to argue.

If you say "invasive species are a constructed category and not inherently evil" you unlock the part of me that rages about the impact of Bradford pears and honeysuckle bushes on my ecosystem.

If you say "Invasive species are bad and we have to get rid of them" you unlock the part of me that has a glowing admiration for Nature's ability to adapt and survive.

I don't really agree with "a species transported outside of its native environment is changing the ecosystem and that's bad" as a principle, because nature is constantly changing and there is no original unspoiled state of the ecosystem. However I don't trust this argument coming from somebody that hasn't spent hours and hours pulling wintercreeper or seen a forest understory sterilized by bush honeysuckle.

Oftentimes I believe that invasive species take over because a keystone species has been removed from the ecosystem. For example my hypothesis is that the destruction of the Canebrakes in the Southeastern USA made the region vulnerable to invasion.

I also think that the way the ecosystem is interacted with and managed by humans causes invasive species to invade

However ultimately I think each species and each individual region of Earth is its own unique case.

Kudzu for example is a food and fiber plant used and cultivated since ancient times in China. It is a mutualistic symbiont with humans, with both of our species strongly contributing to the survival and thriving of the other. Kudzu must be controlled by harvest and use by humans; since using it for food, medicine, and clothes has declined, it has begun to show invasive behavior IN CHINA, WHERE IT IS NATIVE

Dandelion is a weed that is mostly confined to ecosystems very heavily disturbed by humans, and it has strongly positive effects on those ecosystems. It is also a mutualistic symbiont with humans.

Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii is an incredibly virulent invasive species in Southeastern USA forests, virtually destroying all other plant biodiversity in the understory where it grows. The cause of this is pretty simple, Arundinaria gigantea a keystone species was removed, and regular controlled burns were stopped when Native Americans were forced off their land. Thus there was a niche left gaping wide open in the ecosystem.

A. gigantea (river cane), our native bamboo, has the property of forming ridiculously dense clonal colonies in damp lowland areas. The Southeastern USA invasives that are majorly problematic seem to have similar habits. A. gigantea is also disturbance dependent, particularly loving fire, but these days you mostly find it in vacant lots and along fence rows. Similarly most of our invasives need a moderate disturbance level to take over. The trouble is that A. gigantea is nearly wiped out through much of its range, and rarely reproduces sexually, so it can't spread like the invasives can.

Each plant has to be understood as its own unique living creature with its own way.

I desperately want to learn about Pyrus calleryana in its native habitat and learn the ways of this plant, as I don't understand it yet...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Circular battery self-sufficiency

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If we are going to survive the climate emergency, we will have to electrify – that is, transition from burning fossil fuels to collecting, storing, transmitting and using renewable energy generated by e.g. the tides, the wind, and (especially) the Sun.

Electrification is a big project, but it's not an insurmountable one. Planning and executing an electric future is like eating the elephant: we do it one step at a time. This is characteristic of big engineering projects, which explains why so many people find it hard to imagine pulling this off.

As a layperson, you are far more likely to be exposed to a work of popular science than you are a work of popular engineering. Pop science is great, but its role is to familiarize you with theory, not practice. Popular engineering is a minuscule and obscure genre, which is a pity, because it's one of my favorites.

Weathering the climate emergency is going to require a lot of politics, to be sure, but it's also going to require a lot of engineering, which is why I'm grateful for the nascent but vital (and growing) field of popular engineering. Not to mention, the practitioners of popular engineering tend to be a lot of fun, like the hosts of the Well That's Your Problem podcast, a superb long-form leftist podcast about engineering disasters (with slides!):

https://www.youtube.com/@welltheresyourproblempodca1465

If you want to get started on popular engineering and the climate, your first stop should be the "Without the Hot Air" series, which tackles sustainable energy, materials, transportation and food as engineering problems. You'll never think about climate the same way again:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#3kg-per-day

Then there's Saul Griffith's 2021 book Electrify, which is basically a roadmap for carrying out the electrification of America and the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

Griffith's book is inspiring and visionary, but to really get a sense of how fantastic an electrified world can be, it's gotta be Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works:

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

Chachra is a material scientist who teaches at Olin College, and her book is a hymn to the historical and philosophical underpinnings of infrastructure, but more than anything, it's a popular engineering book about what is possible. For example, if we want to give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder), we would only have to capture 0.4% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface.

Now, this is a gigantic task, but it's a tractable one. Resolving it will require a very careful – and massive – marshaling of materials, particularly copper, but also a large number of conflict minerals and rare earths. It's gonna be hard.

But it's not impossible, let alone inconceivable. Indeed, Chachra's biggest contribution in this book is to make a compelling case for reconceiving our relationship to energy and materials. As a species, we have always treated energy as scarce, trying to wring every erg and therm that we can out of our energy sources. Meanwhile, we've treated materials as abundant, digging them up or chopping them down, using them briefly, then tossing them on a midden or burying them in a pit.

Chachra argues that this is precisely backwards. Our planet gets a fresh supply of energy twice a day, with sunrise (solar) and moonrise (tides). On the other hand, we've only got one Earth's worth of materials, supplemented very sporadically when a meteor survives entry into our atmosphere. Mining asteroids, the Moon and other planets is a losing proposition for the long foreseeable future:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

The promise of marshaling a very large amount of materials is that it will deliver effectively limitless, clean energy. This project will take a lot of time and its benefits will primarily accrue to people who come after its builders, which is why it is infrastructure. As Chachra says, infrastructure is inherently altruistic, a gift to our neighbors and our descendants. If all you want is a place to stick your own poop, you don't need to build a citywide sanitation system.

What's more, we can trade energy for materials. Manufacturing goods so that they gracefully decompose back into the material stream at the end of their lives is energy intensive. Harvesting materials from badly designed goods is also energy intensive. But if once we build out the renewables grid (which will take a lot of materials), we will have all the energy we need (to preserve and re-use our materials).

Our species' historical approach to materials is not (ahem) carved in stone. It is contingent. It has changed. It can change again. It needs to change, because the way we extract materials today is both unjust and unsustainable.

The horrific nature of material extraction under capitalism – and its geopolitics (e.g. "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.") – has many made comrades in the climate fight skeptical (or worse, cynical) about a clean energy transition. They do the back-of-the-envelope math about the material budget for electrification, mentally convert that to the number of wildlife preserves, low-income communities, unspoiled habitat and indigenous lands that we would destroy in the process of gathering those materials, and conclude that the whole thing is a farce.

That analysis is important, but it's incomplete. Yes, marshaling all those materials in the way that we do today would be catastrophic. But the point of a climate transition is that we will transition our approach to our planet, our energy, and our materials. That transition can and should challenge all the assumptions underpinning electrification doomerism.

Take the material bill itself: the assumption that a transition will require a linearly scaled quantity of materials includes the assumption that cleantech won't find substantial efficiencies in its material usage. Thankfully, that's a very bad assumption! Cleantech is just getting started. It's at the stage where we're still uncovering massive improvements to production (unlike fossil fuel technology, whose available efficiencies have been discovered and exploited, so that progress is glacial and negligible).

Take copper: electrification requires a lot of copper. But the amount of copper needed for each part of the cleantech revolution is declining faster than the demand for cleantech is rising. Just one example: between the first and second iteration of the Rivian electric vehicle, designers figured out how to remove 1.6 miles of copper wire from each vehicle:

https://insideevs.com/news/722265/rivian-r1s-r1t-wiring/

That's just one iteration and one technology! And yeah, EVs are only peripheral to a cleantech transition; for one thing, geometry hates cars. We're going to have to build a lot of mass transit, and we're going to be realizing these efficiencies with every generation of train, bus, and tram:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

We have just lived through a massive surge in electrification, with unimaginable quantities of new renewables coming online and a stunning replacement of conventional vehicles with EVs, and throughout that surge, demand for copper remained flat:

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/copper-wire-price-remains-stable-amidst-surplus-supply-and-expanding-mining-25416#:~:text=Global%20Copper%20wire%20Price%20Remains%20Stable%20Amidst%20Surplus%20Supply%20and%20Expanding%20Mining%20Activities

This isn't to say that cleantech is a solved problem. There are many political aspects to cleantech that remain pernicious, like the fact that so many of the cleantech offerings on the market are built around extractive financial arrangements (like lease-back rooftop solar) and "smart" appliances (like heat pumps and induction tops) that require enshittification-ready apps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

There's a quiet struggle going on between cleantech efficiencies and the finance sector's predation, from lease-back to apps to the carbon-credit scam, but many of those conflicts are cashing out in favor of a sustainable future and it doesn't help our cause to ignore those: we should be cheering them on!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

Take "innovation." Silicon Valley's string of pump-and-dump nonsense – cryptocurrency, NFTs, metaverse, web3, and now AI – have made "innovation" into a dirty word. As the AI bubble bursts, the very idea of innovation is turning into a punchline:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/

But cleantech is excitingly, wonderfully innovative. The contrast between the fake innovation of Silicon Valley and the real – and vital – innovation of cleantech couldn't be starker, or more inspiring:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

Like the "battery problem." Whenever the renewables future is raised, there's always a doomer insisting that batteries are an unsolved – and unsolvable – problem, and without massive batteries, there's no sense in trying, because the public won't accept brownouts when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing.

Sometimes, these people are shilling boondoggles like nuclear power (reminder: this is Hiroshima Day):

https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-australia-to-join-the-nuclear-renaissance-but-this-dream-has-failed-before-209584

Other times, they're just trying to foreclose on the conversation about a renewables transition altogether. But sometimes, these doubts are raised by comrades who really do want a transition and have serious questions about power storage.

If you're one of those people, I have some very good news: battery tech is taking off. Some of that takes the form of wild and cool new approaches. In Finland, a Scottish company is converting a disused copper mine into a gravity battery. During the day, excess renewables hoist a platform piled with tons of rock up a 530m shaft. At night, the platform lowers slowly, driving a turbine and releasing its potential energy. This is incredibly efficient, has a tiny (and sustainable) bill of materials, and it's highly replicable. The world has sufficient abandoned mine-shafts to store 70TWh of power – that's the daily energy budget for the entire planet. What's more, every mine shaft has a beefy connection to the power grid, because you can't run a mine without a lot of power:

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

Gravity batteries are great for utility-scale storage, but we also need a lot of batteries for things that we can't keep plugged into the wall, like vehicles, personal electronics, etc. There's great news on that score, too! "The Battery Mineral Loop" is a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute that describes the path to "circular battery self-sufficiency":

https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/07/the_battery_mineral_loop_report_July.pdf

The big idea: rather than digging up new minerals to make batteries, we can recycle minerals from dead batteries to make new ones. Remember, energy can be traded for materials: we can expend more energy on designs that are optimized to decompose back into their component materials, or we can expend more energy extracting materials from designs that aren't optimized for recycling.

Both things are already happening. From the executive summary:

The chemistry of batteries is rapidly improving: over the past decade, we've reduced per-using demand for lithium, nickle and cobalt by 60-140%, and most lithium batteries are being recycled, not landfilled.

Within a decade, we'll hit peak mineral demand for batteries. By the mid-2030s, the amount of new "virgin minerals" needed to meet our battery demand will stop growing and start declining.

By 2050, we could attain net zero mineral demand for batteries: that is, we could meet all our energy storage needs without digging up any more minerals.

We are on a path to a "one-off" extraction effort. We can already build batteries that work for 10-15 years and whose materials can be recycled with 90-94% efficiency.

The total quantity of minerals we need to extract to permanently satisfy the world's energy storage needs is about 125m tons.

This last point is the one that caught my eye. Extracting 125m tons of anything is a tall order, and depending on how it's done, it could wreak a terrible toll on people and the places they live.

But one question I learned to ask from Tim Harford and BBC More Or Less is "is that a big number?" 125m tons sure feels like a large number, but it is one seventeenth of the amount of fossil fuels we dig up every year just for road transport. In other words, we're talking about spending the next thirty years carefully, sustainably, humanely extracting about 5.8% of the materials we currently pump and dig every year for our cars. Do that, and we satisfy our battery needs more-or-less forever.

This is a big engineering project. We've done those before. Crisscrossing the world with roads, supplying billions of fossil-fuel vehicles, building the infrastructure for refueling them, pumping billions of gallons of oil – all of that was done in living memory. As Robin Sloan wrote:

Did people say, at the dawn of the automobile: are you kidding me? This technology will require a ubiquitous network of refueling stations, one or two at every major intersection … even if there WAS that much gas in the world, how would you move it around at that scale? If everybody buys a car, you’ll need to build highways, HUGE ones — you’ll need to dig up cities! Madness!

https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/room-for-everybody/

That big project cost trillions and required bending the productive capacity of many nations to its completion. It produced a ghastly geopolitics that elevated petrostates – a hole in the ground, surrounded by guns – to kingmakers whose autocrats can knock the world on its ass at will.

By contrast, this giant engineering project is relatively modest, and it will upend that global order, yielding energy sovereignty (and its handmaiden, national resliency) to every country on Earth. Doing it well will be hard, and require that we rethink our relationship to energy and materials, but that's a bonus, not a cost. Changing how we use materials and energy will make all our lives better, it will improve the lives of the living things we share the planet with, and it will strip the monsters who currently control our energy supply of their political, economic, and electric power.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 1)

Beaver Moon - the first full moon of November Beavers are known to build their winter homes in November to prepare for the first frost, which is why some say the November full moon is called a Beaver Moon. Other sources claim that the name comes from early Native American tribes setting beaver traps in November to use their pelts for warmth in the winter months.

Blood Moon - a full moon that coincides with a full lunar eclipse and that has an unusually reddish appearance During a full lunar eclipse (when the full moon is completely in the darkest part of Earth's shadow) a small amount of the sun's light from around the edges of the Earth passes through the Earth's atmosphere and hits the surface of the moon. Because of the properties of the different colors of light, the moon appears red. (More dust or particles in the Earth's atmosphere will make the moon appear redder.) The red appearance of these full moons gives them their name.

Blue Moon - the second full moon in a calendar month Because most months have more than 29.5 days, there's bound to be some months with more than one full moon. When you have two full moons in a single calendar month, the second is called a blue moon. The term blue moon is also used in the phrase "once in a blue moon" to describe something that happens very rarely.

Harvest Moon - the full moon nearest the time of the September equinox The full moon that occurs closest to the fall equinox (approximately September 23rd) is the one called the harvest moon. Usually in September but sometimes in October, the harvest moon is so named because of the extra moonlight it provides in the evenings to farmers harvesting their summer crops. The angle of the moon's orbit relative to the horizon causes the fall full moon to rise faster than usual, which makes it seem like the moon is rising at the same time (near sunset) for several nights in a row, providing bright moonlight for harvesting.

Hunter's Moon - the full moon after the harvest moon The term has origins from the Algonquin tribes. It is apparently called this because this is the time of year when hunters would begin to store meat for the winter months. Like the harvest moon, the hunter's moon also appears to rise faster providing extended moonlight for hunting in the evening.

Long Night Moon - the full moon that occurs nearest the winter solstice Also known as the Moon Before Yule. The winter solstice is also the day with the fewest daylight hours and the longest night, hence this moon's name.

Strawberry Moon - June's full moon Either the last full moon of spring or the first full moon of summer, the strawberry moon occurs in June and signals the start of the summer, when strawberries ripen in the US. The name apparently comes from the Algonquin tribes. A European name for this moon is the Rose Moon, or the Honey Moon.

Supermoon - a full moon occurring when the moon is at or near the closest point to Earth in its orbit When the moon orbits the Earth, it is not always the same distance from the Earth. When a full moon reaches the point in its orbit that is closest to Earth, known as the perigee, it appears brighter than at other points and so we call it a supermoon. Originally, the term supermoon was used to describe either a full moon or a new moon occurring at or near perigee but later, the meaning was restricted to only a full moon at this orbital point.

Wolf Moon - the first full moon of the year 'Wolf moon' is the name for the first full moon in a calendar year, and since a full moon occurs every 29.5 days (a period known as the synodic month), the wolf moon always occurs in January.

This graphic shows the position of the Moon and the Sun during each of the Moon’s phases and the Moon as it appears from Earth during each phase. Not to scale.

Moon Phases:

Earthshine:

Though the Moon is in a crescent phase in this photograph, most of the darkened, Earth-facing side of the Moon is still dimly visible, illuminated by sunlight reflecting off our planet. This reflected light is called earthshine.

Daytime Moons:

The waxing Moon rises over a ridge in the Wasatch Mountains, Utah.

Though the Moon is often thought of as a nighttime visitor, it’s also visible during the day as a faint, pale presence. The best times to see a daytime Moon are perhaps during the first and last quarter phases, when the Moon is high enough above the horizon and at about 90 degrees from the Sun in the sky. This helps make the Sun’s reflected light bright enough to see as it reflects off of the Moon. The Moon can be seen in the daylit sky at any phase except for the new moon, when it’s invisible to us, and full moon, when it’s below the horizon during the day. The crescent through quarter phases are high in the sky during the day, but the daytime gibbous phases can be glimpsed only just before the Sun sets.

Sources: 1 2

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 2) ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[atlaculture]

Favorite Foods: Katara

Since Katara was forced to take on a traditionally maternal role at an early age, I'd like to think her favorite Water Tribe dishes are the ones that are quick and easy to prepare. I also feel that Katara would be fond of the few fruits and edible greens available in the arctic, as it brings back fond memories of foraging with her mother and grandmother during the warmer seasons.

Sea Prunes (Entire 1st Row)- Katara doesn't express many food preferences in the show, but she seemed pretty enthusiastic about eating sea prunes, so I assume it's a meat she enjoys. Sea prune is another name for the black katy chiton, a type of mollusk. Their shells are dark and leathery, earning them nicknames like "sea prune" and "gumboot". Sea prunes are a traditional protein source for many indigenous peoples in Alaska and western coastal Canada. I think Katara would enjoy them sauteed with Chinese (Earth Kingdom) five-spice or tossed with seal oil in a kelp salad.

Suaasat - A Greenlandic Inuit soup. It traditionally consists of a thick broth made of seal meat, barley, onions, and potatoes. I'd like to think that she likes any dish where you can just throw all the ingredients in a pot and feed a lot of people fast.

Boiled Crab - She likes crabs because they're relatively easy to catch and even easier to cook. You just boil them and crack them open!

Pitsik - Dried Arctic Char. Like crab, she enjoys the simplicity of preparing it. You simply fillet the fish with its skin on, score and salt the flesh, hang the char to let the arctic winds airdry it, and you have a delicious jerky-like snack! They are also rather visually striking when you hang them up.

Akutaq - Meaning "mixed together" in Inupiat and Yupik, this dish is traditionally made with whipped fat, boiled fish, and berries. Commonly used berries include cranberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, bearberries, and crowberries. A sweet and savory meal that Katara and her mother probably used to make together.

Suvalik - If akutaq is “Arctic Ice Cream”, then suvalik is “Arctic Fruit Salad”. It’s traditionally comprised of emulsified fish eggs and seal oil mixed with berries. It’s described as creamy and sweet. This dish is known in Yupik culture as qerpertaq.

Bannock - Also called palauga in some Inuit dialects and alatiq in Yupik. Bannock is an unleavened flatbread found throughout North American indigenous culture. Since the flour has to be imported all the way from the Earth Kingdom, it was a rare treat for Katara growing up. She also likes how easy it is to make.

For more Water Tribe dishes, check out my Cultural Cuisine tag.

Like what I’m doing? Tips always appreciated, never expected. ^_^

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

[chronically-ghosted]

lover, share your road

AO3 Link

rating: explicit 18+

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

summary: 1931. North Texas. An ecological apocalypse has turned the countryside into a skeletal wasteland and its survivors into hungry, desperate creatures. You and Ellie cross Joel's path by accident and agree to a relationship that is mutually beneficial – a rare thing in times like these. But, in a paradise at the edge of the world, as the rot of the world sinks its teeth in, you and Joel find yourselves relying on each other for sentiments you both believed to be long dead.

major tags: idiots in love, sharing a bed, praise kink, a pining vibe, a happy ending, minor age gap (10 years at most), AU no outbreak, food scarcity, mentions of suicide and depression, panic attacks, depictions of a sick child, love as a metaphor for a kind of sustenance and fertility, eventual smut, some horror elements, a first degree slow burn, and finally present to you the most sacred tag of all: dust bowl daddy

a/n: this is the result of my 500 follower challenge where you all voted for the character, pairing, trope, kink, vibe and ending. what a fantastic year last year was and i'm so excited that this is my first fic of 2024! thank you for your patience while i got this beast out the door!🤍i could not have done this without the support of @ravensmadreads and @perotovar! It was recently Raven's birthday so please, for me, send her a happy birthday note! thank you to @saradika-graphics for the dividers!

prologue: between the earth and sky part i: go west, to the southern plains, go west to breathe part ii: and in their falling, rise again part iii: part iv:

Moodboard by the fantastic @mads198-9 ! 🤍

Playlist

History of the American Dust Bowl

Sources

[kanagenwrites]

So. Tuesday sucked.

We've all had a chance to come down from the "what the fuck" of it all, and we're starting to see the usual circular firing squad. Lots of lib centrists are doing everything they can to throw trans people, minorities, and basically anyone who isn't a finance bro under the bus, as is (very tiresome) tradition after both victories and defeats in the Democratic Party. I will be 42 years old in a few months, so this is far from the first time I've seen it, and sadly, I'm sure it won't be the last. To the lib centrists and those carrying water for them: This never works. Please stop trying it. Trans issues were not a major motivator; I'll get into that below. Sit down, kids, it's time for Auntie Kana's Fireside Dialectics.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of my followers are significantly younger than me. (Imagine that, an audience that skews young on Tumblr.) A lot of you folks probably haven't been following politics for very long, and you've been able to participate in them for even less time than that. For some of you this is probably your first election as an adult, and it kinda feels like everything blew up in your face, doesn't it? I was about your age for 2000, when the election was nakedly stolen by George W. Bush, and not much older for 2004, when despite his disastrous presidency Bush the Younger rode a wave of 9/11-brained racism to the last popular vote victory the GOP had prior to (likely) this year. So I get it. I really do.

If you're living in the USA you have probably had a subpar education in politics and civics. This is largely by design - education is horrendously underfunded and there is a sustained attack on the ability of teachers to even discuss things like the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the genocide this country was founded on, and so on and so forth. Economic education isn't much better; you very likely got a short lecture on basic supply and demand and an argument-from-authority that "socialism doesn't work." All this combines to leave a lot of folks totally baffled as to how something like this election happens.

But it's pretty simple. It's just material conditions. That's it. What the media isn't telling you (because there's no profit in it, and the media is nothing but a clickbait engine when they aren't open propagandists) is that there has been a massive anti-incumbent wave of elections across the world. How massive? Japan's LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since the establishment of Japan's postwar democracy, managed to lose their recent election.

And why are material conditions so shitty? That's a complicated question, but a lot of it is the fact that we had a lengthy period of low inflation followed by a period of extremely high inflation due to the absolutely botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A bag of Doritos used to be 2.50, and now it's like 6 bucks. That's worse than all the inflation (and naked price-gouging, because there's a lot of that going on too) I experienced in my life prior to 2020, squeezed into the space of a year or two. This smacks everyone in the face every time they buy groceries, and while the government and the Federal Reserve were doing everything they could to manage inflation (and understand what a big deal it is for me, the anarcho-communist, to say that the US actually did an extremely fucking good job of doing it, because every other country on Earth had it worse than we did), they did fuck all to actually improve the material conditions people were experiencing. Wages were not keeping up with the cost of living, and price-gouging wasn't being dealt with.

Remember the 600 bucks Joe Biden still owes you? The American electorate sure the fuck does. Invisible backrooms liberal wonkery does not connect, regardless of whether it works or not, but going back on a promise? People remember that shit.

It's a rare incumbent that could win in an environment like this, especially when tied to a track record of doing exactly fucking nothing to actually help people from the perspective of the vast majority of the population. Kamala Harris was not that incumbent. She was a singularly uninspiring candidate who failed to connect with voters so thoroughly that she was on track to lose her home state in the 2020 Democratic primary. Nobody liked her (except a few very eager and very loud fans in the K-Hive), and speaking as someone who lives in California, I am not surprised she ate shit. She was a terrible choice for VP and a terrible choice of successor for Biden, but because Biden('s handlers) insisted on pretending he wasn't obviously declining before our very eyes, Harris, a singularly uninspiring candidate, had three months to build and run a campaign.

And it was still weirdly close.

Now, there's two possibilities: Either she actually ran an amazing campaign and it's incredible that it was even this close, or Trump is just so loathsome that even in a massively anti-incumbent environment he didn't bring anyone new to the table. Given that Trump is on-track to receive less votes this time than he did in 2020, and how many of those votes seem to have been cast for Trump and no one else down-ballot, I think it's more of the latter than the former. Trump brought the usual suspects, while Kamala successfully drove away voters that even Joe fucking Biden and Hillary fucking Clinton were able to bring home. Not on the left, not in minority demographics, but across the board. After all, if things are horrible and you're being promised that "nothing will fundamentally change," (literally an early-presidency quote from Joe Biden, whose agenda Kamala Harris 100% aligned herself with) and keeping in mind that the average American voter is not nearly so plugged into the minutiae and the day to day of politics (as evinced by the sudden peak in google searched for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on Tuesday), why the fuck would you bother to vote?

Hopefully you have a better idea how we got here now. The question, of course, is where do we go from here? I will probably continue posting about this from time to time, especially if there's interest, but my advice is this:

We are still here. We will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on. Plan accordingly.

Things will get fucked up. Things will always get fucked up. That is the nature of things no matter who is running the government. Plan accordingly.

Organize. Develop parallel structures of power and assistance, because the government is likely going to be even more useless to directly assist you than it already was. Our greatest strength is each other, and our ability to care for and help one another.

I have been here before. You will be here again. It always feels like it's the worst thing ever to happen. That never really goes away, but your ability to deal with it, to plan around it, to endure it, and to rise up again on the other side of it and say "No, fuck you" is entirely under your control and within your capabilities. And you will get better at it as you do it. And you are not doing it alone. None of us are.

Do not give up. Do not surrender. This isn't the end, or the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning: it just is.

Now go watch a video of a cat doing something cute, or read some smut, or whatever gives you joy. You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself. That's General Order #1: Take care of yourself.

Solidarity, y'all.

[yandere-romanticaa]

trigger warning: abuse, animal death, malnutrition, my horrible writing. not proofread, we die like men!

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐍 - part 1. (you are here!)

masterlist.

The bitter scent of nicotine clings to him wherever he goes, his cold, brown eyes devoid of life as he wakes up and gets ready for another day. Every day is the same - wake up, get ready for work, work, head back home, rinse and repeat. He was living. But, he was not alive.

As long as he could remember, this was the life which Viktor Martinović (read as Martinovich) was leading.

Growing up his family was always distant. Cold. Even scattered at times. He had some siblings, some alive, others long gone from the Earth. To him they were all like air, non-existent and invisible but yet oh so relevant. His father hailed from Croatia while his mother was an American. Viktor could recall some more peaceful times as he would sit on the front porch of his house, his grandmother serving him tea while his grandfather told him many stories. Be it folklore, urban legends, random stories he made up, Viktor loved them all. Unfortunately, he could not see his grandparents very often as they lived in the US and the cost of travel was a rare luxury to him.

The time he spent with his grandparents was precious. He was positive that it was the only time he felt true joy and tranquility. With them he could be a little boy and do what all the little boys did - run around the streets with his feet bare, fall hard onto the ground and skin his knees, find dead animals on the ground and poke at their remains.

That last thing became a favorite past time of his.

Be it birds, dogs, cats, hedgehogs, no tiny critter was safe from his clutches. At first he did nothing but poke the dead critter with some random stick. Its lifeless eyes would stare back at Viktor, taunting him to take more action. However, one day his father caught him poking a mangled little bird which Viktor did not understand was wrong. The anatomy of the animal had caught his interest and he had no other children to play with. What was so wrong with having a hobby? His horrified father dragged Viktor by the ear back home that day, his grip so tight that crescent shaped marks were left behind on the soft skin due to his fingernails.

His father was an awfully conservative man. Everything and everyone had their place in the home and that included Viktor, who just happened to be at the bottom of the food chain because he was the youngest. Viktor does not remember his fathers face very well.

He never liked him.

All meals would start with prayer and would end with his mother and sisters putting away the plates, sometimes with Viktor's aid. He wanted to be good. He wanted to be useful. His father always taught him that he was a man and that men needed to be strong. This is not something you should concern yourself with, his father told him one chilly autumn morning.

This is a woman's duty, said his stone-faced father.

He was around 8 years old when his beatings started.

Despite his young age, Viktor was a very gifted child. He understood that something was off about his family. The way in which his siblings would flinch away once father entered the room, the way mother was always in a hurry to serve him coffee and a hot meal the moment he got back home despite being on her feet all day set him on edge.

He was very sensitive when it came to his mother.

She was his first and only real friend. She was his rock, his hero. Viktor was often sick which caused him to be physically frail and weak. His complexion was always pale as a ghost, his lips always thin and bloody from him gnawing on them and his tiny hands were always covered in cuts and bruises. The eldest brother in particular always just loved to make fun of Viktor when it came to his lack of strength. You can't even break into a sprint!, the cruel boy would taunt him as he held Viktor's book high up in the air, tearing pieces of the pages in the process.

Viktor hated his brother. He loathed him. Religion was not something he was 100% sure he believed in but during evening prayers, Viktor would always put his concentration on the fact that he wished his brother was dead. A grizzly thought indeed.

He wished for him to die the cruelest, most painful death imaginable.

The older he got, his dream only seemed to grow further and further away.

His two sisters never paid any attention to Viktor unless it was absolutely necessary, such as clothing or bathing him. Viktor was not capable of doing many things on his own because he was like a little doll. Frail and easy to break. He lived in a big house in coastal Croatia, an old city known as Dubrovnik, where the summer was long and the sun shined so bright that Viktor never wanted to go outside because his pale skin would turn a disgusting red even with the tiniest of exposure. He would spend his days locked away in his room, reading, studying or maybe playing a game which he had stolen from his brother.

He always took a little pride in the fact that his brother never caught him being so sly.

His sisters would usually be in school in the afternoon or somewhere out and about while his mother took care of the chores. Despite his fathers words, Viktor wanted to help her in any way he could. His heart would melt at the sight of his mother as she would lean down to give him a kiss on his forehead, her tired eyes shining with love. She would never give him tasks which could tire him too much which the young boy silently was thankful for. His favorite chore was chopping up vegetables and meat and in no time, he became quite skilled with using the blade. If it was possible Viktor even started to carve intricate shapes from fruits and vegetables, usually roses because his mother was very keen on them.

She never had the heart to eat any of them.

The outside world was filled with squeals of laughing children, frustrated fishermen and the bustling tides but Viktor did not need that world.

He had his own little bubble which he was more than content with. It was also convenient for him that he was homeschooled, which allowed him to spend even more time with his beloved mother. She was a doctor and a really good one too. Other than teaching him the basics such as reading, writing and mathematics, she would often throw in some more obscure things such as philosophy and anatomy. She taught him about the human body, where each organ was and their purposes.

Viktor was always enamored with this vast sea of knowledge.

The human body is like a machine, his mother would say. Treat it well and it will operate well.

Time passed. Viktor had started to grow and was 11 years old now. He was still sick, still useless according to his father. The man was a renowned fisherman and would always bring home the biggest and best kills. He would take his eldest boy with him and teach him everything he knew, hoping that one day his son would become a master at this craft as well.

Viktor hardly ever went on these trips. The sea was a cruel mistress and weak men could not be near it. His father had barely managed to teach him the basics but the scorching sun and the bustling activity was too much for him. Viktor's skinny little fingers would always be injured from carrying the heavy cargo, which his brother always made sure to make even more difficult for him by giving him even more to carry.

He was a lost cause when it came to fishing, which was his family's main source of income.

No matter, Viktor would think.

He had his own skill sets which those baboons could never understand.

Viktor would hone his skills with the blade in secret, his usual victim for practice being the very fish which were caught earlier that day. Sometimes he would stay up all night and sneak up back into his room at the crack of dawn, his hands smelling horribly which caused his sisters to gag a little if they caught a whiff of the air. Viktor studied the insides of the fishes, taking dutiful notes and hiding them all in the wooden floorboards where nobody could find them. Scattered carcasses of other animals become precious to him as he always had to be swift lest he wished to be caught by someone. Hiding them was always a pain and concealing the smell was the hardest task he could just barely pull off.

Not all secrets can be kept hidden though. Viktor found out that the hard way when his brother caught him dissecting a dead poodle. Viktor fell to his knees and begged his brother to not spill the beans, fat tears caking his face as he hiccuped horribly, his whole body shaking like a leaf. His brother merely looked down at him with a sneer as he shouted for their father to come to the garage. As Viktor heard the approaching footsteps his heart was beating so hard that he was positive that he was going to die of a heart attack right then and there.

His brother was the devil. The exact replica of his father. He was in every way, his son.

Viktor could not walk or talk properly for three months after that incident. He became something akin to a dying houseplant, unmovable and withering away in the darkness. He stopped eating completely and became skinnier than ever. His father locked him in his room but took his books away just to add more salt to the wound. Countless days passed and Viktor was rotting in bed, slowly dying from the lack of sustenance and the massive sorrow which took over his very being. Spring had been long gone and summer was over as well. He didn't even realize that it was October.

It was his birthday.

On October 31st, Viktor was woken up with a soft knock on his wooden door. It was his mother, who was holding a tray filled with food. There was even a little chocolate flavored cupcake with a single candle sticking on top, the whick not quite lit yet. His mother wished him a happy birthday and shared the meal with him. Viktor ate the food quietly, his appetite not quite out there but was still grateful for the miniature feast. His mother took out a small lighter and lit the candle.

Make a wish dear, she said softly.

Viktor gripped his sheets with all of his remaining strength, his knuckles so tight that he almost injured himself. He could feel the delicate touch of his mother who sat next to him, her presence like the calm evening breeze. With a sigh, Viktor closed his eyes but before he could blow out the candle a thought popped into his mind -

Just what was he going to wish for?

He did not see himself making it far in life despite his top notch grades. His family, father in particular, would always drag him down back to the ground. All of the money they had would most likely go to his siblings with just a tiny inheritance left to his name and when his parents both eventually passed the entire estate would go to his brother.

A lump formed in his throat as Viktor came to the realization that he had nothing to live for. He had no one on this Earth other than his mother.

He was no better than a ghost.

However, ghosts could not rest until they fulfilled some sort of quota in their lives, that one last thing for them to do so that they can finally take their final breath and bid their old life goodbye.

That goodbye came in the form of a cough.

It was his father.

His dark eyes stared down at Viktor, a strange glint of determination shining brightly inside them. With his arms crossed and mind set, he spoke:

"The weather may not be ideal but it is advantageous for your.... condition. You will not rot away in the sun, nor in this room like some coward."

His father took a few strides closer towards him, his footsteps so heavy that he could feel the floor creak beneath the heavy pressure. Viktor felt his whole body tense up as he was forced to look his father in the eye, his teeth clenching so tightly that it felt as though his jaw was going to break from the pressure. The only thing that gave him an iota of comfort was the fluffy blanket across his body, its softness a weak shield in stark contrast to the rough man before him. Viktor felt his fathers hand land on his shoulder, his touch disturbingly friendlier than usual.

"You will head out with your brother soon, to the sea. It is time you start pulling your own weight properly. I won't ever allow any son of mine to be weak."

Viktor's eyes widened - Christ, how could this be happening? Why was this happening? Cold terror came over him as he felt his lunch threatening to be spilt all over his parents.

It was soon prevented by a thought. A very devious thought.

On this little excursion it was just going to be him and his brother. All alone, at sea. The only thing keeping watch over them would be the grey stormy clouds high above them.

And just like that, Viktor had hatched a plan.

There was no going back from this moment.

🔪 TAGS: @shamelessdarkprince, @latolover, @yandere-wishes, @moyazami, @sunhareskies, @connorsui

Ahaha, here it is, the long awaited backstory for my OC, who finally has a full name! I decided to split it into several parts because it was getting kind of long and I really just wanted to post something about this guy. The demand for him is honestly kind of silly... Dare I say overwhelming even.

If you have any criticisms, ideas, complaints, literally anything - I'm all ears! My askbox is always open for a chit chat!

[satellitebroadcast]

We will not forget, and we will not forgive. 16/9/1982 The 42nd anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: Telegram 42 Years Since the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, and the War of Genocide Continues

42 years have passed, and the Palestinian memory still holds the recollection of one of the most heinous crimes in modern human history. This massacre was committed by the gangs of the zionist occupation army and its collaborators in Lebanon against unarmed civilians, including Palestinian refugees, their Lebanese brothers, and dozens of others of various Arab and foreign nationalities. The massacre claimed the lives of more than 3,500 martyrs and left hundreds missing. The murderers committed the most brutal acts of killing and torture, cutting open the bellies of pregnant women, slaughtering children, women, and the elderly, and destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants. For three consecutive days, the killers unleashed all their hatred and savagery, carrying out one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity. Its psychological impact remains present in the minds and hearts of all our Palestinian people and all the free and honorable people in the world. This horrific massacre occurred in the wake of the zionist invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the steadfastness of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against the invading forces at the gates of Beirut for three months. During this period, the occupation failed to break through. They managed to enter only through deceit and Western-American collusion, which provided guarantees and promises to the Palestinian revolution forces to protect Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Just days after the revolution forces departed, the Nazi gangs, under orders and support from the zionist occupation army led by war criminal Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, stormed the camp inhabited by thousands of Palestinian refugees, poor Lebanese, Syrians, and others, where they proceeded to kill every living being they came across. Despite the brutality and savagery committed by the occupation army and its tools, the world turned a blind eye to prosecuting the criminal murderers and pursuing them as war criminals. The genocide being perpetrated against our people in the Gaza Strip proves that as long as criminals remain outside prison, they continue to accumulate crime, savagery, and fascism, sitting at the top of the racist zionist entity, which today poses a threat to all humanity and to all the free and honorable people in our nation and the world. The 42nd anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the war of genocide led by the occupation army in partnership with and complicity of colonial Western American silence and official Arab betrayal against the Palestinian people continues to unfold. Today, our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Al-Quds face a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing rarely seen in contemporary human history. The aim is to liquidate the Palestinian cause and implement the zionist-imperialist schemes to control the resources and wealth of the peoples of the region and colonial domination over the world. While the occupation army commits the most heinous crimes using the latest in American-zionist Western killing machines against an unarmed people who have only the will and faith in the justice of their cause and their right to a free and dignified life like all the peoples of the earth, the Palestinian people continue their resilience and steadfastness, writing the most wonderful epics of heroism and sacrifice, rejecting subjugation and surrender, and affirming their commitment to the option of resistance as the only path to liberation and return.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre 42 years ago served as a model and a lesson for our people and a warning to all who bet on American and Western guarantees and promises, which are synonymous with lies, hypocrisy, and conspiracy against peoples yearning for liberation from the yoke of occupation and enslavement. As we remember the horror of this massacre, we call on the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, all international legal and human rights institutions, and all advocates of freedom and justice worldwide to continue exerting pressure by all means and methods until the war of genocide against our people in Gaza and the West Bank stops. We demand the prosecution of the leaders of the zionist entity and its army and their trial as war criminals so that the murderous criminals do not escape punishment, as did the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre 42 years ago. On the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, we renew our pledge to the martyrs of the ongoing massacre that our people will continue the path of struggle and resistance until all their usurped rights are restored, no matter how long it takes and regardless of the sacrifices made. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Central Media Department September 16, 2024

[poll-position]

Putting these in alphabetical instead of Top 12 order so not to skew the results.

[haruhey]

Wish I Never Met You

check out my masterlist!

Word count: 4k

Fluff | Angst | Thank you @weretheones and @normanplusdaryl for betaing <3

You’re part of Daryl’s past, but you could also be his future.

or

A bad day leads the two of you to each other.

or

Whoever said it’s better to love and lose Never loved and lost you

Daryl barely made it through sophomore year.

In all honesty, he was impressed he even got to junior year. When Merle left at the tail end of spring, he - in all of his younger brother naïveté - thought he would come back before the semester ended, taking him from the dump they called a house and from that asshole they had the unfortunate pleasure of calling their old man.

But July came and went, then August, and by the time the new school year rolled around, Daryl stopped waiting for him - just shouldered his backpack and went to school because where the fuck else was he supposed to go?

He gave the whole school thing two weeks. It was enough time to mark off attendance - to lay low before he traded his backpack for his crossbow and started hunting for that weird butcher shop three blocks down to make some money - and he had intended on following it.

Intended, being the right word, because the plan went to shit the second Mr. American History started pairing people up for those dumb, mandatory, biweekly collaborative projects.

Intended, because it just had to be you he was paired with, didn't it? His stupid classroom crush he tried so hard to stop thinking about?

He remembers seeing you for the first time in some math class in sophomore year, and he’d, in his hormone-ruled, bored-out-of-his-mind teenage brain, spent the better half of the period just looking at you. He never worked up the courage to say anything about it to anyone, but you were the prettiest thing he’d seen in his 16 years on Earth, and he hated the way you made his hands all clammy.

Even years later, he looks back on the months he spent being your friend, and he still feels that crushingly familiar clench of his chest.

Maybe it wormed its way almost permanently into him those weeks he first sat next to you in American History. It was a compulory course and both you and he hated it. The teacher - Durand, but Daryl took to calling him Dickhead and Deranged just to see which would make you roll your eyes the hardest - was a notorious douchebag, round glasses over a nose that was entirely too big to stay on his face and three strands of gray hair that seemed to be holding onto his head by spite alone.

He never seemed to take Daryl seriously, even though Daryl knew more than double the amount of history you did. You could pick his brain for hours about the pirates and the Sumerians and the Cherokee and their legends, and he’d let you, despite the glare that marked over his face for anyone else.

In exchange, you let him pick your brain, too. Over the piece of apple pie the two of you would share on the rare occasion you’d both scraped together enough to figure it would be worth buying, he asked about your future. He tried picturing himself with you through it all despite knowing there was nothing for him outside of this shithole town, and he listened to you talk.

He could listen to you talk for hours.

You had big dreams, considering you came from the same place he did, but he had faith you could do it. He knew you could, and even looped his pinky with yours, your thumb pressed up against his while he promised to make it to graduation. He had to watch you toss your cap and flip the bird at 4 years of hell, didn’t he?

But then winter came, and with the Christmas break rounding the corner, Merle came back too, peeling into the dirt road in front of the Dixon dump and taking Daryl along with him. You remember coming back when the second semester started, the same room that had once been used for History now a Government class, and you had hoped to suffer through it together.

You made it through one school week until you’d started asking around.

Nobody got themselves involved with the Dixons - with their surly tempers and their permanent scowls, but you’d gotten into the habit of ignoring those words when you were with Daryl - so when no answers turned up, you weren’t really surprised.

You figured he must have finally gotten his out from his old man.

It was only at graduation that you’d found out what happened to him, overhearing one of the principals talking about how both of Will Dixon’s sons had run away from home and how he’d drunkenly bragged about finally beating sense into them, and, though you knew it was selfish, as the ceremony ticked on, you still hoped Daryl would come back in time to watch your cap toss.

He never did.

When he finally did come back to Georgia, it was a little over a full year later. The old lady that ran the diner the two of you hung around after school had told him that you got a scholarship offer in May - some bigshot school out west - and that you’d packed your bags and left in August.

You weren’t set to come back until the year ended in April, and he wasn’t planning on staying.

He wasn’t planning on making staying anywhere a habit, and, in the blink of an eye, twenty years passed.

A second blink and the world fell.

Everything changed so quickly that it truly did feel like an instant as minuscule as a blink - the dinosaurs had the meteor, and life before them had the ice age - and he couldn’t help but wonder if this was just a breath before a new age flooded in.

It seems like everything he thought about was about the future. Some of it he would have considered trivial before - when the next meal would come, when the next time he’s going to fill his canteen is and where the next source of freshwater is - but, in this blip of time, he hesitates to call it that.

Sometimes, when he went out on his bike or shouldered his crossbow and slipped his knives into his holsters, he thought about how Li’l Asskicker and Carl would grow up - how they would never really get to be kids in the same way Rick probably wanted them to be - and almost nothing he did felt trivial anymore.

It scared him, he guesses - how much he cared about those kids and how much everyone else did, too.

He wished someone cared about him like that when he was younger.

It was good, though, this pressure. Daryl was never really one to half-ass anything in the first place, but with the intake of Woodbury and the Council’s decision to start bringing people in, there was a new drive to care. It rippled through the prison, and he liked it, being a part of something bigger than himself.

He felt like someone new.

Someone that mattered - that did good - instead of being some asshole with a bigger asshole for a brother.

At least, he did until he saw you.

Two weeks after taking in the people of Woodbury - with one week spent out recruiting and another spent in the infirmary because they’d met some less than friendly people who definitely did not fit the recruitment criteria - he saw you from around the corner, an all too familiar face helping Carol with meal prep in the courtyard.

He didn’t eat lunch that day, and to say he avoided you was an understatement.

There was something about you that brought back feelings he would have rather left in the past. You reminded him of when he was a teenager, stuck in his shitty hometown with his piece of shit old man and no way out. But at the same time, you reminded him of those nights spent down at the creek, skipping stones and staring at the stars, that comforting lack of second-guessing because he knew he was, for the first time in his life, in the company of someone who actually wanted to spend time with him.

You reminded him of that diner with the warm apple pie, and he never could forget the first time his heart ever beat against his ribs like it was too big for his chest.

But, most of all, you reminded him of first love and his broken promise - of a future he could never have had.

Daryl hated it, being confronted with his past like that.

So yeah, maybe he did revert back to his old ways of hiding and just trying not to think about his problems, and yeah, maybe he did take one too many runs back to back so he wouldn’t have to keep fighting the urge to look for you despite simultaneously being scared shitless at the thought of talking to you, but it was successful in staying away from you, and that’s all he cared about.

Or, well, he thought it was.

Because, though it’s been nearly two decades since you’d thought about high school - with it long since becoming college, and college into adulthood - it’s crossed your mind more than you’d liked to admit lately. It’s an odd feeling, an ill-fitting nostalgia creeping through the holes of your blanket-covered cell bars, but it was oddly comforting. You never thought you’d ever think of that place as comforting, but maybe it wasn’t high school that you found yourself chasing in the dead of night.

It was him.

Daryl never really knew how popular he was - here, and back then, when those minutes before and after gym class divulged into shushed remarks about his looks and half-serious confessions of crushes muttered to the secrecy of the changeroom’s four walls - but you did. You were always on the other side of it, silent in your agreement.

Woodbury - or, well, ex-Woodbury - was no different.

He’s a far cry from that scrawny little kid you split your lunch with all those years ago, but there's still the linger of boyish handsomeness to him that made your cheeks heat when you thought about him too long. There was no mistaking him for anyone else, but that subdued, ultraviolet warmth you’d grown familiar with was gone from his eyes.

He’s not seventeen anymore, flipping his uncut hair from his face as he taught you how to skip stones and catch fireflies, but you wanted to talk to him all the same. There’s not much left from the old world - let alone much that you could have considered good, or wanted to remember - but he’s one of the few things you’d cared enough about to keep safe from the pulling tide that faded your memories.

He made that shitty town more bearable, even if it was for those few months. Gritting your teeth and enduring had become tiring until he’d grimaced at that first History Inquiry project and made you laugh with the annoyed upturn of his lip. 

You’d planned on thanking him at graduation, but he’d left months before then. 

You’d planned on a lot of things to be frank, but there’s no reason to linger in the past when now is a shell of what then was.

There’s even less of a reason when now feels heavier than then ever was.

Today would have marked ten days without incident, a first foray into the monumental double digits until the sun had set behind the return of the run crew’s RV and Beth was forced to flip the number back to zero.

It’s been four hours since they came back - a quarter of the group gone from the unfriendlies they’d met, another dealing with the aftermaths of the encounter and one more made up from those the crew’s recruited - and it’s the first time in those four hours that you’ve left the dingy wing of the infirmary.

You didn’t hate it in there. Far from it, actually, with Hershel and the others being half-decent company and seeing the work you did benefiting people, but the infirmary, especially on days when the crews rounded back, meant the stinging smell of blood and death lingered no matter how much you scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It stuck to every crevice on your body, and it permeated. Guilted you for not trying hard enough and not knowing enough.

On days like this, everywhere you went seemed too small and too unforgiving, and you’re not sure if you can stand tossing and turning in your bunk. The night sky is a friendlier sight than your ceiling, and the view from the abandoned watchtower is a hell of a lot better than the tiny, barred-up window at the corner of your cell.

If you’re lucky enough, maybe sleep will steal you for a couple of hours before the sun comes up. At least enough to make it through the next day.

You have faith it will - you can already feel the first wave of exhaustion pull at your bones.

Taking a breath, you press your hands into your pockets after pushing the door to the Prison open and slipping out. Autumn is beginning to seep through the cracks of summer and the nights are starting to get colder, but your jacket should be enough until you climb up and find sanctuary in the sleeping bag you’d left there three days ago.

It doesn’t take long to reach the door - if you jig the knob to the right before twisting and skip the third step from the top, the trek upwards is close to silent - but when you open it, the creak yields, at first, an expletive before the annoyed voice tears through the quiet.

“I already told ya I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout-”

The volume of him makes you take a step back, the sound of a man making your body lock up for just a second before you recognize the mess of hair atop his head and the wings stitched on the back of his vest, and you make quick work getting to him, crossing the platform in a single stride.

“Daryl?”

And he’s quick to realize the person speaking to him isn’t Carol like he’d thought. Though he really really really hopes it’s not you, the familiarity of your voice leaves little room for speculation, even before he turns his head and - for the first time in a long time - really, really looks at you.

“Oh.”

His heart beats in his ears and locks his throat before he can muster up anything else to say, and for a second, you wonder if you should introduce yourself to him. 

“Sorry, I, uh, wasn’t expectin’ no one to be here.”

But the knowing upturn of his eyebrows - his apology, and the way he scoots himself over to make room for you the same way he did in those library reading nooks - tells you you don’t need to, and your shoes slide against the concrete as you drop down to a sit.

He remembers you, too, the sweat of his hands too obvious with the fact, even though he wishes he didn’t.

He wishes there wasn’t a familiarity in the way you sidle your body against his, swinging your legs underneath the railing and over the balcony, and he wishes he couldn’t feel the heat coming off of you.

He wishes it didn’t wrap him up like the warm rays of sun, and he fights down a smile at the fact that you always were so bright. He wishes he didn’t remember you like that - glossed over in a blinding, yellow hue.

Daryl wishes he never remembered you like sunshine - he wishes he didn’t still.

Picking up the glass next to him - just to occupy himself and bide the time until his nervousness hopefully washes away into general apathy - he takes a sip before setting it down and taking a pull of the cigarette in his other hand.

The smoke is slow to fill his lungs, but he welcomes it anyways, holding it there as the nicotine-drawn buzz settles in his brain, and then he breathes it out, angling his head up and away from you.

You never liked it, the Malboros he’d swiped from his old man that he’d keep tucked in the smallest pocket of his worn-down backpack, but you’d told him one night, not unlike the one you’re both trying to find solace in right now, that you were scared of what his father might do if he found out.

Then you slipped in the obviousness of his health, just to break the tension of vulnerability, but it hit Daryl like a truck, the fact that he’d never had someone think about him like that before - like they actually cared.

“Heard your brain cells can rot if you do that.”

He raises an eyebrow at you only to be met with a small smile playing at your lips and the slightest bit of a sparkle in your eye, and the taste still lingering on his tongue reminds him of what he’s been doing. The glass is half full with the room-temperature whiskey he’d tried to make himself feel better with after stitching up his own wounds, and there’s ash from his smoking gathered beside one of the railing's poles, and despite the knowing you’re probably right, he sighs, waving your concern away.

“Ain’t worried. Don’t got a lotta them anyways.”

The cigarette between his fingers is lit still, and he takes another drag before the grayed end of it crumbles to the floor, fighting the upward tug of his cheeks at the sound of your amused huff and your quick response.

“That’s why you gotta take care of the ones you still have, Daryl.”

Scoffing, he tilts the edge of the glass towards you, holding it out for you until you take it from him, and he tries not to think about how the tips of his fingers burn when they brush up against yours. It’s not as sweet, the innocence of a teenage crush long since faded into the dull pang of expired love and loss, but it rushes through him all the same.

He would have offered you a cigarette, too, but you’ve never been one to pick up habits that bad.

A comfortable silence falls over the two of you then, the sky offering a serenity the two of you are less than strangers to, and you wince from the liquor when you finally take a sip. It’s nothing like the moonshine he’d smuggled from his dad’s stash - it went down a hell of a lot smoother than you remember that shit going - but your tolerance has taken a nosedive since weekends unwinding and inter-departmental parties had ended.

Besides, the only places you could get alcohol back in Woodbury were way above your paygrade.

Placing the cup back onto the concrete, you steal a glance at Daryl, spending just a second studying the curve of his nose and the jut of his cheekbone. He’s more handsome than he’s ever been, and you can feel the heat rush up your neck before you blink away the thought.

Get a hold of yourself.

But you can’t, not when he’s so close, and you’re not sure if it’s wholly unselfish, what makes you drop your eyes down from his face, but you do, and you realize why he was so on edge when he heard the door open.

He’s fidgeting. Ever since he put out his cigarette, he’s restless and can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands in the same way he was when you’d asked him why he never wanted to go home back in the school library, and it sends you back, too, a familiar pit growing in your stomach. It’s like he’s that kid again, scared of telling you - or, well, people - things that hurt because his stupid brother and dad drilled into him that he’s less of a man for even feeling hurt in the first place, and it’s equal parts infuriating and concerning.

You can tell that the gears are turning in your head as you try to piece him together; a run crew came back just today, and you haven't seen him in a little while. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection - especially with everyone’s propensity to talk about how Daryl brought them in - and though you might regret it, you decide to pry.

Not pry, just ask.

Conversation used to flow so easily between the two of you. Were you naïve to hope it would again?

“Bad day?”

It’s small, your voice, teetering in the air with its uncertainty, but Daryl doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he glances down at the space between you, wrapping his fingers around the highball before meeting your gaze, and he bites the inside of his cheek, weighing the option of telling you or not.

“Jus’ tired is all.”

And though he hesitates those first few words, your eyes are so kind - so genuinely caring - that he can’t stop himself from saying more.

That was what he was scared of.

Why hasn’t he let you go? 

“Sick’a fuckin’ losin’ people.”

The frustration when he speaks is palpable, and you’re not sure if it’s bravery or stupidity that makes you move - maybe it’s both, culminating in your own desire that someone would finally see through your crippling bravado and offer you a hug or something - but your hand snakes out to grab his before you even think, shaking it slightly in the strength of your squeeze.

Then he freezes, and for a second, you think you must have overstepped - that he’s going to push you away and yell at you and leave - but he doesn’t. He just takes a breath, the heft of it rising his shoulders then dropping it as he squeezes your hand back harder, a silent thank you in the press of his fingers against yours.

But still, he lets go, afraid the warmth in his chest might make him do something he regrets, and you chew at the dried skin of your lip, thinking about the right thing to say.

Fuck, you could never navigate things like this - it got better as you got older, sure, but words always seemed to fall short when it came to you and him - and when you finally settle on something, half of you wonders if it was just because you thought it better than nothing.

“I feel you.”

Because what else are you supposed to say? That it’s going to be alright and that he shouldn’t blame himself because it's so blatant he is? It’s thin ice you’re walking on, the fear of sounding patronizing drowning out the spark of hope you want to light him with, because you remember the man he was. He’s never had anyone fighting in his corner, and you’re not callow enough to think he thinks of you as something - someone - different.

But he does. He does think of you as someone different, and he wants to say more, but he doesn't know where he stands with you, or with himself. If he says what he’s thinking - that he feels like it is his fault and that he’s not sure if he could ever stop feeling like that. That he’s scared shitless and like it’s some big joke that people actually look up to him for things - wouldn’t that make it feel too real?

So he doesn’t. He just tips the lip of the glass against his and takes another sip to make sure his mouth is occupied, staring down at the bottom ridge of it until you speak again, and he’s helpless to do anything but look at you.

“At least it’s beautiful out tonight.”

He’s sent back to twenty years ago then - the scrawny redneck you’d somehow deemed good enough to be your friend forcing his old habits back to the him of the present - and he can’t help the squeaked little noise of a response. Words have always been hard for him, too. They’re hard for him to think of and even harder for him to form, and it’s made worse by the fact it’s almost like he’s back at 16, convinced that you’re too pretty to talk to.

“Yeah.”

And though you hear his hum of agreement, he never looks away from you, admiring the curve of your familiar smile and the rise of your cheekbones.

The lurch of his heart comes back then - the same beat against his ribs that he hated all those decades ago - and it’s stark then, the realization you’ve never really left him.

“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”

Pressing his lip to the edge of the glass once more, he welcomes the burn of whiskey when you smile at the moonlit horizon, and he watches as you lean your chin against your arms.

You’re beautiful - more beautiful than all the colours in the star-speckled sky - and he could stare for hours.