#BLANK SPACE 1 BILLION

[mortuarywriting]

Falling into Place

Ao3 Link - [First] - [Next Chapter ->]

All things considered this isn't what you were expecting to wake up to when you went to bed. One minute you're on your phone, trying to pass out, and the next? You're here. You've had some interesting greetings in your life, but dropping about six feet and having twelve guns leveled at your face? That takes the cake

Warnings:

Reader Insert, Plus-Size Reader, The Author Regrets Everything, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Isekai, canon divergence Look we're gonna dig into the implications of omegasverse changing bits and pieces of history as well as addressing whatever the FUCK is happening as CoD's history. Idk man Godzilla is canon and nobody bats an eye at that fact and you think I'm gonna be normal about that? No

You could be having a worse day, you think, as you stare at the interrogation table you're cuffed to. They could've shot you the second you fell the six feet from the sky into a random army base. That's a very real thing that could've happened.

But no, you just had a dozen guns pointed at you in one moment and a slew of questions you didn't have satisfying answers for.

No, you had no idea how you got there. You'd been in bed tooling around on your phone and then you were falling.

They asked who you worked for, and were not impressed by your mundane answer. You didn't work for some pmc or intelligence organization. You asked them to their faces if they thought you could pass a PT test if you tried. Not that they answered or appreciated your point, mind.

It was only after you gave them whatever identifying information you had that things got… spicy.

"I would love to tell you what this designation of yours is if you tell me what you mean. Is it like a classification of civilian versus enlisted? Is it physical? Is it your horoscope? I don't know what I don't know," you explain again for the Nth time. You didn't wanna play twenty questions but here you fuckin were, captive audience and all.

The man asking you questions had lost his charming good cop look. He was getting more and more annoyed on this one, "your designation," a demand, not a question and sure as shit not an answer.

"Again, would love to tell you! I don't know what you mean! Feels like some kinda Star Wars thing," you grumble the last bit to yourself but the man cocks his head.

His eyes narrow, "what are… Star Wars, you said?"

You blink owlishly, "beg pardon?"

"Star War. Clarify."

It's your turn for your brow to furrow, and furrow it does, "Star Wars? As in the multi-billion dollar franchise created by George Lucas and eventually sold to Disney," your tone is questioning, just shy of asking if the guy lived under a rock but his expression didn't let up and the last thing you needed was bad cop, so you continued, "the story of what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? The political space series of movies versus Star Trek's more scientific and discovery based longstanding TV show? Nine major movies and the Clone Wars before Disney sunk their talons in. Like yeah we got more shows and movies that expanded the universe but they also cut out decades of book contributions in their acquisition and that kinda sucked. But yeah, that Star Wars?"

"Nine movies," his tone is disbelieving, and now it's your turn for your eyebrows to raise, "can you name them?"

You nod, "well yeah. Do you want them in episode order or release?"

His brows furrow, "did they not release in order?"

"In a sense? Three trilogies, 4-5-6 back in the late 70s early 80s, then 1-2-3 in the late 90s early 00s, and 7-8-9 through the teens. So order, yes, just… not a cohesive one."

"Release, then," he leaned back and crossed his arms, a position you'd love to mimic if you weren't cuffed to the table for… an indeterminate period of time now, actually.

"A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi-"

"Woah now, empire? What's a jeddy?"

You give him a blank look, trying very hard to mask your disbelief as you look between him and the mirror behind him. You look at your reflection, take a deep breath, and- "sir would it be easier for you to maybe check the internet?"

He seemed to bristle, nose flaring and looking at you expectantly.

You just… kinda sat there. You tapped your fingers together on the desk and kept the eye contact he was intent on. It took a good minute and him getting progressively pissier before you simply ask, "would you like the other movies now?"

You didn't expect an explosion of movement from the man. He downright snarled and slammed his hands on the table as he burst to his feet, the sudden change sending his chair screeching back before falling with a clatter. You leaned as far back as your cuffed hands would allow, eyes wide and a panic rising.

Both of you turned to look at the door when it slammed open with a barked, "Williams!" 

The man who opened it reared back a bit, "Christ, layin' it on a bit thick," he groused, his tone sounding more like someone chastising a teenager for using too much Axe body spray. He smoothed his posture back into something casual as he fanned the air dismissively with a hand, "cap wants you to take a walk."

Your interrogator- Williams, apparently- stares at the man in the door, the two locking eyes before the one in the door straightens from his purposely relaxed posture. You watch the both of them, noting the shoulders tensing as the two just. Staring at each other? Eventually the guy who'd been grilling you looked away and stormed out, the man in the doorway letting him slip out easily enough before turning a charming look back to you.

He took a minute to fan the door a few times to get newer, blissfully cool air in before he entered the room, "sorry 'bout him. He really did a number in here," the new guy tsked before closing the door quietly behind himself.

Your brow furrowed even as you slowly relaxed a bit, had this Williams guy like… farted or something? A nice quirk of ventilation keeping you from smelling something abhorrent? Either way you simply shrug as he walks in and tips the chair back up, sitting and giving another reassuring smile, "how you doing, love?"

You opened and closed your mouth a few times before simply settling on, "I'm a bit… whelmed? This has been," you give as vague a rolling gesture as you can without your cuffs rattling too badly, "a lot? And I have no idea what just set him off either?"

It's the man before you's turn to quirk a brow, "no idea?"

"If I knew the answers to his questions I'd've given 'em by now. I don't, though, and then he just started staring? And hell I just thought it was some kinda macho 'I can stare the truth out of you,'" you pitched your voice lower and pushed your shoulders out for a second to mimic the douchebag behavior before settling, "so I kept eye contact because I'm so out of my depth I have no reason to lie at all and now…" you trail off, gesturing around the room, "all that."

The man nods slowly, "alright love, could you tell me about the last five years?"

Your brows furrow, "oh fuck, 2019 was five years ago wasn't it. God, time is an illusion. Anyway, you want what I was doing leading up to and through the pandemic?"

You think he might've startled for a second but he simply moved to scratch his chin, "mhmm. Just your thoughts on the last five years is all."

So… you ramble. Because he was nice and not prodding or asking weird questions. You talk to him about your job before the pandemic, how people thought covid was just a flu until the death tolls kept climbing, how tons of governments dropped the ball on a local or country-wide level and how that kicked back onto your life, and then the absolute crapshoot of the last election cycle, the shitty 'oh no this is the new normal everything is fine' behavior that has lead to surges and cycles of a fucking plague and so on. He simply nodded, gave some sympathetic hums and winces appropriately at your experiences.

"And did you go back and watch Star Wars through that? Or other things Disney owned?"

And, well, that was a weird way to phrase it but you shrugged, "the mouse is just shy of a monopoly and not one that anybody can take that down so… yeah, I guess? They kept putting shows out and expanding their Star Wars universe so that's been kinda neat to watch but not just them, no. Couple other games and stuff like that to keep me busy, too," you kinda handwave and shut up because panic rambling to MILITARY PERSONNEL is probably not your smartest move in hindsight. Especially when you don't know his name. A+, self.

You tap your fingers against the metal table as he looks at you, "and you said covid has a long term effect of ruining people's senses of smell and taste?"

You nod slowly, "yeah, dude? It's one of the biggest warning signs for most people? Like if everything starts tasting like it was made by a middle class white mom who keeps shoving random letters in her kids names you should swab? That kinda shit?"

What rock has this guy been living under? You were pretty sure the military were supposed to be way more familiar with this shit all things considered, but you've been wrong before.

It was his turn to give you a bit of a wide eyed look before he poorly covers a laugh, "alright, that's fair. I need to go talk with my captain," he hooks a thumb over his shoulder to the window, which didn't surprise you that there had been people back there. He offers a reassuring smile as he stands, humming idly as he pushes the chair back in. He pauses mid-step, "you mentioned that there were cards…?"

You find yourself nodding slowly, "yeah it was important and you couldn't fly or go to certain places if you didn't have one for a while. Should still have a picture of mine buried on my phone," you really didn't wanna get another first-round of covid shots, you REALLY didn't wanna repeat the 24 hours of suck for no reason.

"Cool, thanks," he flashes another charming grin before he slides out of the room.

You lean back in your chair, what an odd guy. Nice though.

-------

"Right," Gaz says as he opens the door to Price and Ghost, "either our mystery guest is off her nut or she's legitimately from somewhere and somewhen else."

Ghost and Price look at each other before turning back to Gaz, this… complicated matters.

Well, it's not like you hadn't given them information to identify yourself. They'd dig up who you were one way or another.

-------

You stare blankly as the nice man from before gives you a sympathetic look, "what do you mean I'm dead?"

Behind him is a guy you're not sure if he's just fuckoff huge or if he's just moderately huge and it's forced perspective.

You don't think it's forced perspective.

You are absolutely trying not to panic spiral.

You are absolutely doing a horrible job at that.

"Well," he opens the file before him and there's a news article, proudly proclaiming "Locals Die in Horrible Freak Accident" like that's not some form of you that was looking like some smear on the pavement, "there's this. Fingerprints match up. Can check for dental if you're really curious."

"Were there even any teeth left after that," you mumble as you take and read the offered article. Seven people were involved, the pictures used are mostly flattering. Hell, you almost don't mind what pic they used for an alternate you but… "that's certainly not the pic I would've wanted. Maybe this me had different tastes?"

You take the time to actually read through the article. It's not helping because for as much as you stare at the page you're not absorbing any information. Some form of detachment, if this was really you? You'd died. A different you but a you nonetheless. You died and you're reading how it happened. There was a lot to unpack in all this and you just needed to put the suitcase away for now. You'd much rather throw it away at this rate.

You were rapidly coming to the understanding that you and Toto were not in Kansas anymore, and there wasn't a convenient yellow brick road to get yourself back home. No easy way to get the hell out of Dodge either. Was it Dodge or the O.K. Corral that was in Kansas? No the O.K. Corral wasn't in Kansas- Dodge was though, that's right. 

This analogy was getting away from you and some part of you figured this was just your brain trying to protect yourself but… wait, wasn't this a metaphor? There wasn't 'like' or 'as' or goddammit not again.

You recognize some names here and there but largely everyone involved were perfect strangers. The article doesn't cover if it would've been slow or quick. You hope for the smear that it was quick. Smears like that don't happen slowly, right? Well, not unless it's like a dramatic slide down a window, but not usually across pavement like that.

Still not sure how you feel about all of it. Bit morbid being confronted with your mortality like that.

Certainly answered a lot of questions about your theoretical passing you never thought about. Like if the obituary for you in what you know to be your own home and world is just as… really kinda just mediocre as this. Have you really done nothing of note for an obituary? Damn.

You kept pouring over the article, each pass bringing new words into focus that help connect the picture a little bit, but… Something repeated in the article made you pause, "two alphas, four betas, and an omega?" 

There was no decent way to ask about that. Any questions invoked from here would border into dangerous territory better kept between yourself and a private browser history. You knew what you were about but there was no fucking way.

"Their designations," the nice man whose name you still hadn't caught explains, "mostly explaining their secondary gender."

You look at him owlishly. You pray to whatever God might be listening that you wake up shortly. Or that the earth below your feet opens up and swallows you. Whichever comes first, the mortification will snipe you otherwise.

"Please tell me this is an elaborate joke at my expense," you are very quiet as you are trying to get really cool with a lot of things really quickly.

"Negative," the big fucker in the back practically growled and you knew that voice would do things to you if you weren't half stepped out of your own body. 

You missed whatever his followup was but your brow furrowed when you checked the date on the article, "I've been dead for months? That…" you let the paper fall from your hands. Everything about this is wild at best and very overwhelming at worst. 

A lot of this qualified as worst.

You look up at the two, missing the odd look they shot at each other as you try to pull yourself back together, "so now what? You've got a not-a-smear of me that fell from the sky onto a secure military base, and where I'm from we didn't have," you paused to gesture between the paper and the two soldiers, "dynamics was it? That was just a fanfiction special."

"Fanfiction."

The way he said it was so carefully neutral you paused, "oh my god without Star Trek to popularize fanfiction and the fan community, how has fandom evolved? Is fanfiction a thing- well, yes, it does fanfics have been a thing since Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy and even before- well, the question is more if it's still popularized? Are there still the wattpad fics of- I am getting so off track. What exactly is the next step?"

You look from the nice man to the big fucker and back, neither saying anything but looking at you with careful blankness.

You felt like you were being weighed and measured in their eyes.

You hoped to anyone listening that you weren't found wanting at least. Not when you're in the shit situation it looks like you ever so increasingly fell into.

"Considering I'm. Not smear. And very much not from here? Are blanks a thing? Or is that what a beta is I'm," you trail off, brow furrowing, "fuzzy. On the whole thing. The flavor of understanding, dynamics, and population skew tended to be dependant on the author's level of horny."

The did get a bit of a snort from the pretty one before you, the one in the back tilting his head just so as the pretty one spurred you on, "okay please don't take this the wrong way, you have given me nothing to go on but A/B/O and-" a finger was raised in question to that, you quickly explaining, "the fanfic shorthand for the universe without being a mouthful. Anyway- I've seen population numbers being roughly the same across the board, I've seen alphas and omegas at roughly 1% of the population of society on either end, I've seen alphas at about 5% and omegas at 1%- those ones are usually the most horny I swear.

"And it's all over the board, no consistency- sometimes it's betas are infertile, sometimes they're the straightman to the comedy that's an alpha and omega trying to woo each other without being too horny to function. Sometimes it's a sliding scale where being beta just means you're more the more middle-ground regulated hormonally with alphas and omegas being the opposing ends of a spectrum. Can you please say something and give me a fucking break because my panic rambles are probably like. Some kinda prejudiced. I'm still not over the 'I'm supposed to be a smear on the ground we don't even have dental images of to confirm who it is anymore' nugget you dropped on me. I think I'm doing well for this"

You would rather not tell them that as soon as you're out of this box of a room you were gonna be curled up in a ball and unabashedly weeping. That was none of their business.

The pretty one gave you what you're sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile but the quiet stretched just a bit too long. You looked from one to the other before leaning forward, "is this supposed to be soothing in some way? Because it's just a bit of an extended awkward silence and that's uh-"

It was the big one in the back's turn to give an amused snort, the pretty one looking bashful, "right, sorry, we uh-"

You jerk a bit, "wait, was that supposed to be some scent thing," you really didn't wanna say pheromones and potentially dig yourself into a deeper, more awkward hole based on Horny Pseudoscience.

Pretty rubbed the back of his neck, "something like that. You really couldn't smell anything?"

You know the exact Face you're making. It's very much your 'I have told you this and I'm getting tired of having to repeat it' face. You can tell he clocks it but for the record, because to your mortification this has to be recorded, you simply give a succinct, "no, I haven't smelled anything. Not from you, not from him," you jerk your head towards the big fucker, "and not from douchebag from be- Williams! His name was Williams. Nothing. Really had no clue why you were fanning the door when you came in."

You sigh, rubbing the heels of your palms into your eyes, "okay. Assuming I'm not about to be put into past tense a second time. Do we have any idea what popped me out here?"

The sentences are stilted, you know you're getting more rattled the longer you're here but sue you alright it's been the worst six hours of your life here.

They just continue to look at you, pretty keeping a polite almost customer service look as big one just stares unceasingly.

"Right. Okay. Am I going to be reintegrated to society or is this," you gesture around the little room as much as you can, "looking like my home for the foreseeable future."

No change in what you can see of either's expression, and you just sag. Deep breath in, deep breath out, "cool. Alright. Well. I know nothing of how biology is altered here, I'm not sure how that has impacted changes throughout history, and frankly I don't know what your pop culture has done. I'm assuming math and written languages are largely the same but in all fairness I don't know what I don't know."

You just stare quietly at the table for a bit longer before looking back at the two of them, "is there anything else you need because I can feel the freakout creeping up and while I know there's no real privacy, uh…"

The pretty one looked back to the big one, at some point you're sure you'll get some sort of names but for now? Now you watch the big one nod, the pretty one give you a polite smile and some vaguely polite bullshit your brain is swiftly going too far out to hear.

You only hope that whoever is behind the mirror is polite enough to look away as you put your head down on the table and give yourself the opportunity to, just this once, cry. As a treat.

[Next Chapter -> ]

[mindblowingscience]

Astronomers using NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just spotted tellurium, an element rarer than platinum is on Earth, in the aftermath of two dense stellar corpses about 1 billion light-years away. The findings could help researchers better understand the conditions in which precious chemical elements are created in the universe. "Just over 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev wrote down the periodic table of elements, we are now finally in the position to start filling in those last blanks of understanding where everything was made, thanks to Webb," study lead author Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study said in a statement.

Continue Reading.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Seven of Nine

By Ames

While we definitely miss Kes, her replacement on Star Trek: Voyager definitely succeeds in filling her shoes and then some. Seven of Nine may have been introduced on the show as an obvious thirst trap to boost the show’s sex appeal, but she is so much more than that. The ex-Borg bombshell, with the acting chops of Jeri Ryan and some excellently written story arcs, grows into more than just the sum of her nanobots.

Get assimilated with your hosts from A Star to Steer Her By as we explore the many facets of Seven, whose journey to regain her humanity pairs so beautifully with the Voyager’s journey to make it back to the Alpha Quadrant. Scour through our astrometrics records below for our usual Best and Worst Moments lists and listen to our hivemind discussions over on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:32:36; featuring some bonus moments from guest star drone Carl!). Resistance is futile!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor abyss of space After Seven has [reluctantly] joins the crew, one of the first thing she does is start helping out in the astrometrics lab, and in “Message in a Bottle,” she discovers the relay network that our heroes use to send the EMH over to the Dauntless and pass communication to and from Starfleet. It’s an early glimmer of hope after years of tooling around in the Delta Quadrant.

All by myself. Don’t wanna be all by myself anymore. We get an absolute showcase in acting from Jeri Ryan in the stunning “One,” in which she’s left to guide the ship through some nebula or other while the rest of the organic crew members wait in stasis. Seven’s battles with her own demons of isolation, loneliness, and self doubt play out as hallucinations, but she keeps it together enough to save the whole crew from nebula gas!

A single Borg among billions of individuals When home seems to be in reach because of a starship Arturis brings them to in “Hope and Fear,” Seven initially determines that she doesn’t want to go on this roadtrip because of how daunting she finds returning to Earth. Watching her deal with those feelings until she comes out the other side feels like a win, even if Arturis’s scheme turns out to be too good to be true.

The robot has been neutralized. May I leave now? This is just one of those little moments from the show, but I like it enough to include it. In “Night,” when Tom is trying to pass the time during months of monotony, he’s playing some Captain Proton with an unimpressed Seven, who simply deactivates Satan’s Robot with one of her patented “I am Borg”s and it’s just so charming and funny that I’ve got to hand it to her.

Are you my mother? By the time we hit “Drone,” Seven’s able to help her sort-of son One learn the merits of individuality weighed against the dangers that the Borg exemplify, no matter how tempting they may seem. Her taking this new breed of Borg under her wing shows just how far Seven has come in the season since her introduction, and her heartbreak at losing him is real and lovely.

Part of me not unlike your replicator. Not unlike the Doctor. Like Kes before her, Seven develops a rapport with the EMH that is built on trust and their outsider perspectives (oh, and horniness because the Doc can be a bit of a cretin sometimes). Seven fights for his rights in “Latent Image” when she urges Janeway not to blank his malfunctioning memory again – something you couldn’t do to one of the solid crewmen.

You and I wouldn’t be able to play Kadis-kot anymore Another great friendship we see Seven develop is with Naomi Wildman. The young Ktarian starts out terrified of the ex-Borg drone, but by “Bliss,” the two are teaming up to take on the bioplasmic organism, as the only two people on the ship not affected by its hallucinatory effects. They bond over how they don’t have anyone waiting for them on Earth, but they have each other!

Time is the fire in which Braxton burns You know I’ve got to give some love to one of my favorite time-travel stories! Seven really gets to shine in “Relativity,” jumping through time to prevent some sabotage to the Voyager and brilliantly uncovering Braxton’s madcap plan. She knowingly puts herself in danger with repeated trips through time because she knows the importance of this mind-boggling mission.

No really, are you my mother? If you liked Seven’s friendship with Naomi, you’re gonna love her relationship with the dronelings we meet in “Collective.” We meet the Borg children adrift on their vessel and threatening anyone who comes by like puffed-up stray kittens, but Seven tries to save them from themselves and takes in the four survivors (and the Borg baby!), acting like their foster mother.

Definitely in contention for worst parents in Trek While the SSHB team tends to prefer Mezoti because she’s the best, Seven takes a particular liking to Icheb. Like a mother honey badger, she protects him when she smells the danger that his parents pose to him in “Child’s Play.” She figures out their scheme to sacrifice their child and saves Icheb from getting reassimilated, even if it would help his terribly flawed people.

They’re tryna build a prison for you and me to live in By season seven, Seven’s come so far in her character development that she fights for the rights of Iko, the death-row prisoner in “Repentance.” She determines that he can be rehabilitated and given the chance he deserves because he feels true remorse. If Seven got the chance to regain her humanity after everything she did as a Borg, shouldn’t this guy too?

Their isolation may limit their potential, but if that isolation ends, so will a unique way of life This one may not be a particularly good episode, but it’s always nice to watch Seven learn a life lesson. Though she doesn’t initially understand why she should prevent the Ventu culture from getting corrupted by the Ledosians in “Natural Law,” Seven befriends the primitive people and comes to understand the value of allowing them to develop on their own terms.

—

Worst moments

Scorpions are not to be trusted Speaking of things Seven does as a Borg, when we first meet her in “Scorpion,” Chakotay is reluctant to trust this scorpion in Borg’s clothing, who is certainly going to betray the agreement she made with Janeway. And whaddaya know, Seven immediately betrays the agreement she made with Janeway! Just like the scorpion in that parable that Chakotay totally lifted.

Nevertheless, I am willing to explore my humanity. Take off your clothes. Once Seven gets deborgified, it becomes clear that she’s first and foremost here for her sex appeal. And the show is going to remind you of that. A lot. No one is more aware of that at first than Harry Kim, especially in “Revulsion” when Seven just offers to sleep with him to lessen the tension, having no idea how inappropriate that is. How else are we to notice she’s hot???

Quoth the raven: We are Borg Like Data in “Brothers,” Seven feels compelled by some unnatural force to take over a ship and fly towards her homing beacon in “The Raven.” Unlike Data, she’s not just programmed by some Soong or other, but instead is hallucinating all over the place and would like to be reassimilated by the Collective. She even holds Tuvok hostage until she learns the corvid truth.

Jenny, I got your number: Species 847-2309 A big speed bump to Seven’s reintegration comes in “Prey” when the Hirogen are demanding the crew hand over an injured being from Species 8472. Janeway tries to teach her the value of compassion for a helpless creature, but Seven loses any trust that’s she has built up by deciding on her own to issue them a death sentence and beam them over to the Hirogen vessel to be murdered.

Sometimes your words just hypnotize me While we’ve already thoroughly put most of the blame for this one on the EMH’s shoulders, Seven isn’t entirely innocent when it comes to the episode “Retrospect.” She’s quick to believe his quack psychiatry and accuses Kovin of violating her just because the Doctor tells her to. If anyone was going to view the facts first, even under duress, it should have been Seven.

From Alpha to Omega The Borg strives for perfection, so Seven gets super into the Omega particle in “The Omega Directive” so much so that it becomes an infatuation. She stops considering reason and the danger of the situation that this highly unstable particle poses, which seems entirely unlike Seven most of the time. Like, it’s a cool particle, but don’t get everyone killed just to look at it, lady.

This is a starship, not a nature preserve After living among the crew for close to two seasons, you’d think Seven would have a slightly better handle on tact by the time we get to “Someone to Watch Over Me,” but apparently she’s just as inappropriate as ever just so the writers can make a joke. Frankly, watching her study Tom and B’Elanna’s mating habits makes me roll my eyes at the inanity.

We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own Oh, and we can’t forget all the assimilating that Seven did as a Borg, even if it’s hard to blame her as a person for it. But she sure does, so we’ll take that pass and run with it. We have a perfect example of it in the flashback story in “Survival Instinct” when she forces the little mini collective who’ve been showing signs of individuality to assimilate, ruining their very lives.

It’ll be like a simple night's sleep I can’t help but harp on this moment in “Dragon’s Teeth” when Seven opens up all the crypods and releases the Vaad’waur from stasis… for absolutely no reason. Scratch that: the reason was to move the plot forward. But really. Seven of all people should know better than to release swarms of randos without investigating the circumstances first. They could be assholes!

The caretaker array is turning the frogs gay! Okay, while I’d admit that this one might inadvertently (or maybe advertently?) be the funniest episode of Voyager, you’ve got to admit that Seven downloading all the logs into her Borg brain in “The Voyager Conspiracy” is hare-brained. Like when the Doc turns himself into Mr. Hyde in “Darkling,” Seven tampers with her mind and ends up turning into a conspiracy nutjob.

Fun will now commence On the flipside, some of the moments that are meant to be comedic fall flat in “Ashes to Ashes” when Seven teaches the dronelings a basic educational curriculum. She has no idea what she’s doing in providing the basic education of the kiddos… and it’s not her job! It’s clear the writers have only stuffed her in these circumstances for some chuckles, but I see through it!

We aren’t far from the boner of your people While I’ll be the first to stand up for the Chakotay-Seven relationship (rushed though it was), any time there’s weird romantic and/or sexual bullshit in the holodeck, I admit the red flags go up. So when Seven makes herself a holo-Chakotay in “Human Error,” that’s a no no. We’ve chewed out La Forge and Janeway for this before, and just wait until our surprise spotlight next week!

—

Turns out resistance wasn’t futile! We’ve just got one more bonus Voyager character spotlight before our Enterprise series wrap – and it’s a doozy! So make sure you’ve got this holoprogram running, follow the page for future spotlights and blogtivities, celebrate with us as we get through the rest of Enterprise on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, chat with our hivemind over on Facebook and Twitter, and we are Borg!

[not-poignant]

Hello Pia! I was wondering about the pheromone flooding and it's scope? We know Efs reaction, but would you give some other examples if something like that would happen to another omega/beta/alpha/peak alpha? If this should be explained more later in UtB then of course please ignore the ask. <3

Hi hi anon!

The only thing that really gets mentioned in Underline the Black about it is that there's pretty much no research on it, and it's not well documented.

Here's the thing: peak alphas are incredibly under-studied and under-researched. They can do things not documented in science properly, because we have two problems. The first is there's only about 1 in a million. That's not too bad, there's billions of people. The second is they can brainwash anyone into leaving them alone. Peak alphas who don't want to be studied don't get studied, and most don't want to be studied.

This isn't great for characters like Gary, who might pheromone flood someone like Efnisien, and then desperately want to find out more about what happened so he can make sure it never happens again, only to find out there's almost no research or science about it, and he's shit out of luck.

And that's where I'm leaving that, because just like Gary, we all get to exist in the realm of 'but what was that.'

As someone who has experiences (particularly with extremely rare chronic illness) sometimes the answer is: There's not enough of a cohort to research exactly what that is yet, so we'll just have to wait and see.

And the reason I like that, is that it highlights how unsupported and adrift peak alphas can be within their own bodies and minds, and I like the discomfort of that in characters who are kind of intensely needing to have control, when actually they probably have the least at times!

Er so yeah it's a roundabout way of saying I can't talk more about pheromone flooding, it's deliberately left as a blank space, even within the worldbuilding. Sometimes we don't get to know because the cohort isn't large enough to study and/or understand and/or is resistant for varying reasons. And sometimes that gets to be a nice metaphor about control and lack of control and knowledge and self-knowledge. :D

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week ?

Dropped F4, it’s still great and it hurt to do it, but if I’m going to be trying the entire Absolute line I have to keep pruning. Definitely recommend any F4 fans keep reading that series, and if we get an Ultimate F4 series like I think we will I will definitely be picking that up.

Batman: Off-World #5 - Batman comparing fighting a Thanagarian in space to fighting in Gotham’s alleys is peak. Love Mahkne’s art but he undersold that punch, it needed more oomph than he drew it having. Series gives me high hopes for Absolute Superman as weird as this might sound, I think Aaron and Sandoval are going to deliver on the high octane violence that Superman rarely gets to participate in. When I read Off-World I see a blueprint for Absolute Superman moreso even than Aaron’s actual work on the mainline Superman in Action. Batman even has glowing fists and forearms! The Blacksun Twins are exactly the kind of bad guys I see Absolute Superman going up against. 13 billion people killed, Jesus Christ.

Zatanna: Bring Down The House #3 - Others might bemoan Constantine showing up but not me!

Avengers vs. Aliens #1 - For anyone who hasn’t been a fan of Hickman’s recent post-X work, this is prime Avengers/F4 tier Hickman. Anyone else notice that Hickman’s preference for Hulk seems to be a Hulk where Banner controls the body? 1610, 6160, New Avengers with Doc Green, and now this. Granted two of those were Hickman simply making do with the status quo, but he’s had two chances in AvA and 6160 to write Hulk with a blank slate, and both times he opted to eliminate any difference between Hulk and Banner. My guess is that simply lines up better with his preference for morally murky protagonists with more power than they can handle.

[this-daydream-is-dangerous-13]

Blondie? An incredible force. As a commenter said: “It’s just another Wednesday for her!”

The Swift Agenda 01 | Aug. 9–15, 2023

1. Taylor Swift ascends to unimaginable heights as she has now entered the Top 20 best-selling artists of all time (CSPC), shifting 164.5 million equivalent album units since the start of her legendary seventeen-year career, rising to the upper echelon among the all-time greats and leaving her 21st-century counterparts perpetually (with the nearest one having 120M):

— Taylor in the 161M–180M range

— 0 artists in the 141M–160M range

— 0 artists in the 121M–140M range

— 5 artists in the 101M–120M range

— 4 artists in the 81M–100M range

— 6 artists in the 60M–80M range

With the advent of streaming dominance, it’s easy to argue that modern artists have it “better” — but judging from the several tiers separating Taylor Swift, it’s evident that her success is an outlier vs. the rest of the industry, even among A-list and A+ list artists (i.e., the 15 remaining 21st-century acts in the all-time Top 100) who’ve long been compared with the pop titan.

2. Taylor Swift simultaneously charts 11 albums on Billboard 200, making her the only artist in the chart’s seven-decade history to do so 4x.

Much more impressively, she also charts FOUR albums inside the Top 10 of Billboard 200, making her the only artist to ever achieve this remarkable feat THRICE.

Billboard 200 weeks:

— Number 1: 63 (#1 woman, #3 overall)

— Top 10: 309 (#1 soloist, #2 overall)

— Top 200: 2456 (#1 woman, #3 overall)

3. Taylor Swift closes the first leg of her colossal “The Eras Tour” with universal acclaim, omnipresent impact, and industry-shaking commercial success. Official numbers are pending, but with the tour’s 53/146 dates (so far) alone, it’s estimated to break nearly every single record in existence.

4. During the last day of the record-shattering first leg of The Eras Tour, on her 6th consecutive show at the majestic SoFi Stadium, Taylor Swift announced the impending release of #1989TaylorsVersion.

With a STELLAR first-day US preorders nearing half a million, 1989 TV is essentially locked for a 1M+ debut on Billboard 200, challenging its legendary predecessor, “1989” (1.287M), or even the streaming-era juggernaut “Midnights” (1.578M).

5. Taylor Swift spends another week at #1 on Billboard Artist 100, extending her record to 76 weeks.

— Nearest male: 37

— Nearest female: 20

— Nearest group: 21

6. Taylor Swift is, once again, the #1 most-streamed artist of the day, week, month, quarter, and year on Spotify. She remains the #1 most-streamed female artist in history (54.9B) and currently outpaces/outstreams the two male artists leading the all-time rank with 60M–70M gaps on a daily basis.

Moreover, Taylor Swift occupies FIVE spots in the Top 10 most-streamed albums of the week (overall), making her the first artist in Spotify history to EVER achieve this. Each of them is gaining a whopping 10M+ streams every single day.

7. Taylor Swift now singlehandedly owns 25 spots (55.6%) in the Top 45 biggest streaming days (above 100M) in Spotify history, while the other 20/45 days (44.4%) are divided among seven male artists.

8. Midnights has officially reached 6 billion streams on Spotify, making Taylor Swift the only female artist with 3 albums surpassing the 6B mark.

9. Taylor Swift simultaneously charts songs from four DIFFERENT albums on Billboard Hot 100, making her the first solo artist to do so:

— Cruel Summer, #3

— Karma, #13

— Anti-Hero, #18

— Blank Space, #49

— I Can See You, #63

10. Cruel Summer becomes Taylor Swift’s record-extending 17th #1 song on Spotify US. Though based on projections, the highest it can get on the upcoming Billboard Hot 100 is #2, which would make her tie with Drake for the all-time record. It remains to be seen if it has a chance at #1 next week, so it’s advisable to withhold purchases and focus in streaming for now.

Meanwhile, Taylor has yet to acknowledge the SIX record-breaking Eras Tour shows at the SoFi Stadium, leaving people anticipating that SOMETHING is coming any minute now.

[goddesspharo]

weird writer questions: 3, 25, 26!

weird questions for writers asks

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

A billion years ago when we were all still beholden to PCs, I used to write everything in Windows Notepad and then copy to Word afterwards because I found it easier to write when I didn't have the distraction of fonts/sizes/italics. Over the years, I have thankfully broken myself of this habit, but sometimes when I'm stuck in the middle of a section, I'll open up a blank Word document and start writing in that - somehow the absence of all that came before and all that will come after takes the pressure off. I mostly write in word, but then update it into the google docs file corresponding to a story so that I have it on the go if inspiration ever hits. The annoying thing is that google docs always formats a space after each line break so every time I copy it back into word, I have to manually delete the space so it won't piss me off. (Also smart quotes on my iphone/ipad vs straight quotes on my macbook - just default it to straight quotes, google docs, so I don't have to find/replace every time I edit it somewhere else!)

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

There is no story so I suppose this is irrelevant, but I've always thought that when the Yellowjackets girls get rescued from the wilderness (circa 1998?), someone in the media gets wind of how the cinematic stylings of Sandra Bullock kept them going in the Canadian Wilderness, leading Kurt Loder and the MTV crew to hold a special screening of Practical Magic in Jersey for them. Years later, Van runs into Sandy B when they're filming a movie near her hometown and tells her that she's a big fan of her work, to which Sandy jokes, "You must not have seen Speed 2 then," which, let's be real, is the ONLY good thing to come out of being stuck in the wilderness for 19 months and having to cannibalize your teammates to survive.

Another hyper-specific detail re: Top Gun Maverick is that I've always assumed that Coyote's mom used to send mini-care packages to Hangman when she sent Coyote stuff because of course he went to one (1) barbecue at Coyote's when they were on leave and charmed the hell out of Mama Machado and immediately became "one of the family." (Except to Coyote's brother who has still never forgiven Hangman for innocently hitting on his now-wife/then-girlfriend at the party.)

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

Not to be Sophie Nélisse about this but it doesn't consume me. If I liked the character enough to want to explore the characterization more, then it's probably fun more than anything else? I also think it's less about getting in a character's head and more about getting their voice right. Once you have that, the rest falls into place.

[zertuchehomes]

Unlocking the Value: Creative Ways to Use Undeveloped Land in San Antonio

Unlocking the potential of undeveloped land in San Antonio is a venture that transcends the mere act of ownership. It’s an exploration into the realm of possibilities, an imaginative journey where creativity meets real estate, generating revenue in the process. In this expansive landscape, the canvas is blank, and the potential is boundless.

Let’s delve into the creative ways one can unlock the value of undeveloped land in San Antonio, where innovation transforms raw estate into thriving spaces.

Reimagining Vacant Land: Unleashing the Potential

Undeveloped land often lies dormant, waiting to be activated and transformed into something more meaningful. By embracing creative approaches, you can unlock the value of these vacant spaces, fostering sustainable development, enhancing community well-being, and most importantly, investing to make the most of the land.

1. Urban Agriculture For Profit or Self-Reliance

Undeveloped land presents an ideal canvas for urban agriculture, a sustainable practice that brings fresh, locally-grown produce to urban communities. By establishing community gardens, rooftop farms, and vertical farming systems, you can revitalize vacant spaces while either generating a profit or promoting self-reliance.

2. Using the Land as a Recreational Facility

Amidst the bustling cityscape, undeveloped land can be transformed into a tranquil recreational facility. You can utilize the land to serve as a private sports facility that can earn you a decent profit. For instance, a small soccer field in San Antonio could be rented out for $100 per hour (source). If the field is rented out for 20 hours per week, it can generate $2,000 per month.

You can also use your property as a park which can earn you good revenue in the long term (if your property is big enough). When using your property as a park, you can charge people lot rent and utility fees. Another creative recreational use for a property that is big enough is to repurpose it as a disc golf course. 

3. Wellness Retreats

Undeveloped land offers the canvas for creating havens of rejuvenation. Wellness resorts, spas, and yoga retreats can be designed to harmonize with the natural surroundings, providing spaces for relaxation, mindfulness, and holistic well-being. These retreats or resorts are also a great way to generate great profit off of your property that might otherwise be lying vacant.

4. Camping Ground

Using your property as a campground in San Antonio can be a viable way to make money. The San Antonio area boasts a thriving tourism industry, attracting millions of visitors each year. With its warm climate, diverse attractions, and proximity to natural beauty, San Antonio offers a perfect setting for a successful campground.

5. Farm

The San Antonio region boasts diverse agricultural opportunities, with favorable climate and soil conditions suitable for various crops and livestock. Whether you’re considering a small backyard garden or a larger, multi-acre operation, understanding the specific possibilities and challenges is crucial. Moreover, estimating potential revenue depends heavily on farm size, chosen crops/livestock, and marketing strategies.

The Impact of Creative Land Use

Urban agriculture has the potential to generate over $1 billion in economic output and create thousands of jobs in San Antonio.

Parks and recreational facilities can potentially increase property values by up to 20%.

The global sports facilities market is expected to reach $ 153.0 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 4.9%.

The camping industry generates over $ 167 billion annually in the U.S. and supports 1.4 million jobs (Source).

Farms contribute to local food security and provide access to fresh, healthy produce (Source).

Conclusion

As San Antonio continues to grow and evolve, the creative utilization of undeveloped land presents a pivotal opportunity to shape the city’s future. By embracing innovative approaches that promote sustainability, community well-being, and economic growth, we can transform vacant spaces into vibrant hubs of activity, enhancing the city’s livability, resilience, and overall character. As a Realtor covering land transactions, reach out, and let’s talk about creating your vision.

Click here to get more information:

Local Realtor San Antonio

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Home Buyer Rebate Skybrooke

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Preserve at Singing Hills by Ashton Woods

[dertaglichedan]

President Joe Biden is looking to revitalize his campaign with new, young energy as his disapproval ratings sit at historic lows and his likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, continues to soar in the Republican primaries.

One of Biden’s new targets to find a fresh new feel for his reelection bid could be an endorsement from one of the nation’s biggest stars — Taylor Swift.

Biden aides are drafting lists of possible donors, supporters, and endorsers, and they’ve drawn a blank space for celebrities such as Swift, who was the first artist to see a tour gross over $1 billion, with 4.35 million tickets sold across 60 tour dates in 2023.

Democratic allies and lawmakers are worried about Biden’s chances of reaching voting blocs trending away from the president, particularly young, black, and Latino voters. Biden won young voters in 2020 by 20 percentage points but now is tied with Trump, as those voters continue to be pessimistic over Biden’s age, support for Israel, and the economy

[sunrisetune]

[ID, from the OP's alt text. A four-page stylized comic done in greys and pale blues.

Page 1 - Panel 1: Outer space, showing several distant planets and a star, focusing on a foreground ringed planet that appears to have oceans and continents with large visibly man-made alterations, including bridges and a central trench of city circling the planet. Narration (in a white thought bubble): "There are 11 billion sentient life forms on this planet. Uncountable artificial intelligences, consciousnesses stored in the core, more arriving every day." Panel 2: A hand touches the top of an alien-looking casket. Narration: "One less, now." P3: The face of an alien person with an expression of grief, with pupil-less eyes, distinctive cheek markings, a metallic hoop around their neck, and a cloak. Referred to from now as 'MC'. P4: Another person appears behind the first, with a floating holographic display of information in front of their face. Other person: "I take it you are aware of the duty the late Vhixyr is trusting to you?" MC: "Yes, I was told long ago."

Page 2 -- P1: MC is pictured silhouetted from behind, standing in front of a far-future city, full of other citizens and glass transport tubes in the sky stretching into the distance. Narration: "Out of over 11 billion, me." P2: (Blank.) Narration: "Despite Vhixyr's insistence that I was just the best fit, I always wondered-" P3: MC's foot stepping on a panel. Narration: "I wondered if my dear grandparent harbored some secret resentment--" P4: MC standing in front of a doorway, raising a hand to a glowing panel on the wall. Behind the doorway is swirling shapes and light. Narration: "… or if they just thought I was the only one who could forgive them for this life-long burden?" P5: MC walking on a transparent bridge through a void filled with swirling light. Narration: "But really, all that mattered-" P6: (Blank) Narration: "Is that there are five of them. … of us."

Page 3 -- P1: Two arch-shaped desks with small cylindrical devices with three bulbs protruding from them, and a fan-shaped holographic display behind them showing a wave-form. MC: "I wasn't expecting your equipment to look so… ancient?" P2: A zoomed out view of the room, showing MC speaking to a larger smiling alien with an arch-shaped structure on their back, referred to from here as Council 1. Council 1: "For taking vibrations in the air. Ancient traditions, after all."

P3: From behind MC, still speaking to Council 1, who is pointing at their own mouth. Council 1: "And I see you've been practicing your oral language!" MC: "No small effort - but we need to be able to speak this way for a full cycle after all." Council 1: "You get used to it." P4: Showing MC now. Council 1: "I trust you have now… viewed it, as well?" MC: "… of course."

P5: Zooming out, showing both MC and Council 1, and another person in the back of the room by a large holo display. This person (Council 2) is slim, wearing a dark sleeveless shirt and a large brace over their shoulders. Council 2: "As of now, Earth has reached 89.3% of its sun-cycle." Council 1: "Then we will begin."

Page 4 -- P1: From left to right seated at the desk in front of holo displays, Council 2, Council 1, and a third Council member with a robe and a U-shaped brace framing their head, all with sombre expressions. Council 1: "Today we welcome Thonriel, third grandchild of Vhixyr, to the order of T'ddub. Thonriel has the terrible and honorable charge of speaking first today, as our order convenes for audiograph number 0X7B65D. -ahem- So… what did you think?"

P2: Thonriel (MC), wearing a grim expression and slamming their hand down on their own desk. "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is still a bad movie."

- /End ID].

Not today, Death

[leonsrightlations]

The Earth is Online Chapter 7

It really seemed like it had only been for expressing disdain. After she had finished speaking, the mosaic on the little girl’s face returned to normal. She handed the giant match to Tang Mo, then turned and ran off into the bookshelves’ depths. As she hopped away, those ponytails swayed left and right as they followed after. Her small silhouette disappeared in the shadows.

[Ding dong! The confrontation game “Who Stole My Book?” concludes.

Now settling game rewards…

Player Tang Mo was victorious and obtained the rewards: Giant Match, Mosaic’s Disdain.

Player Chen Fangzhi lost.]

The melodious childlike voice echoed in the deserted city library, entering Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo’s ears. Ordinary games will all have rewards. Even in online card games you can obtain some happy beans [1] and such. Tang Mo had already guessed that this big match was unfortunately his prize.

But what is Mosaic’s Disdain!?

This isn’t a mission clue? What kind of game reward is this?

Tang Mo’s complexion turned green and white, his mood complicated. Opposite from him, the spiritual weirdo was even more distracted.

The spiritual weirdo was this game’s losing player. If there’s a reward, normally there’s a penalty.

Losing a normal game might mean losing money. Losing a Black Tower game, who knows what would be lost.

The Black Tower hadn’t clearly announced the penalty. The spiritual weirdo guessed for a while, then slowly turned his head to look at Tang Mo. “Will I die?”

Tang Mo was unable to answer this question. He consoled the spiritual weirdo by saying, “It shouldn’t be that serious.”

The spiritual weirdo all at once gained confidence. “I believe you. You’re so smart. What you said makes sense. It won’t be so merciless. It is God. It must provide me hope and rebirth. It is my God…”

Tang Mo held his big match and gazed serenely at the spiritual weirdo who was gradually descending into madness.

The game hadn’t announced a penalty at first, which gave Tang Mo a trace of uneasiness. This feeling was like pre-dawn tranquility. [2] It didn’t conform with the normal logic of the game, which was usually more terrible and unpredictable. But at the same time, Tang Mo consoled himself: If losing the game really meant dying, then wouldn’t it mean the deaths of at least half of the world’s people?

How could several billion people die?

It shouldn’t be possible.

It shouldn’t be possible, right…

The confrontation game had already finished but the city library had not yet returned to normal Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo tried once, but were still unable to go downstairs. At the same time, there was still a blank space outside the third floor windows.

They still hadn’t returned to E-City.

Time passed by minute and second. Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo were still trapped on the city library’s third floor.

When the clock on the wall turned to six o’clock, Tang Mo’s body suddenly tensed. Sourceless panic swept his rationality away.

His heart once more palpitated at lightning speed.

His heart thumped as if in the next second it might fly out of his chest. Tang Mo supported himself on a bookshelf, but his body was completely unstable. He followed the bookshelf to sit paralyzed on the floor.

From a distance, the spiritual weirdo hurriedly ran over. “What’s wrong with you?”

The fast rate of blood flow made Tang Mo’s face turn deep red in a minute. Every inch of skin on his body was a frightening red, like a boiled crap. The spiritual weirdo stumbled back a step in alarm, but very quickly once again summoned courage and went to Tang Mo’s side. “Are you okay? Why are you so red? Your face is so hot…do you have a fever!?”

It was only that Tang Mo’s heartbeat was too fast. His state of mind was still clear-headed. He exerted himself to speak two words: “My heart…”

The spiritual weirdo immediately caught on and used his hand to cover it. “Why is your heart beating so fast? It’s at 200 beats per minute…no, it’s 300!?”

Tang Mo was already unable to speak. In his mind, he corrected: It’s 394.

They couldn’t leave the city library and there were only two people, Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo, inside.

Tang Mo had suddenly become like this and there was nothing the spiritual weirdo could do. He could only help him to the service desk’s tabletop, push the things on the tabletop away, and allow Tang Mo to lie down. Having done this, the spiritual weirdo himself ran into the bathroom and applied paper moistened with water to Tang Mo’s forehead, hoping this would have an effect.

Tang Mo’s heartbeat had already reached 532 beats per minute. He didn’t know how fast a human’s heart rate could reach, but he felt that his heart might completely explode in the next second.

Somehow, that heart which did not conform to medical knowledge resiliently persisted on.

The spiritual weirdo didn’t stop running to the bathroom, moistening toilet paper and again spreading it on every inch of Tang Mo’s exposed skin.

Tang Mo could feel that this action wasn’t helpful in the least, but he was extremely grateful that the spiritual weirdo would help out like this. He couldn’t speak, could only use his reddened eyes to look at the spiritual weirdo. He saw that the spiritual weirdo’s brow was beaded with sweat.

A whole hour later, he silently counted his heart rate and discovered that it had unexpectedly declined.

The spiritual weirdo thought that applying the cold compress was having an effect and ran several trips to apply wet paper towels to Tang Mo’s eyelids.

An unknown amount of time again passed before Tang Mo felt he could move his body. He took off the wet paper towels applied to his body and used both hands to crawl shakily from the tabletop.

The spiritual weirdo had just then come out of the bathroom. Seeing this scene, he ran over. “Are you okay!?”

Tang Mo opened his mouth and discovered that his mouth was frighteningly dry.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva and nodded with a smile, “En, it seems a little bit better.”

“Then that’s good. I was scared to death just now.” The spiritual weirdo let out a breath.

Tang Mo looked seriously at the spiritual weirdo. “Thank you.”

The spiritual weirdo shook his head. “It’s nothing. Anyway, I can’t see you there and not care.”

Their relationship at the moment was very awkward. On the one hand, the spiritual weirdo had pulled Tang Mo into an unknown game and brought him uncertain danger. From this point of view, the two of them should have been unreconciled [3], so much so that they must guard against each other. But on the other hand, the game was over, and it seemed to only be an ordinary game. Tang Mo’s health suddenly had an accident and the spiritual weirdo didn’t abandon him without looking back. Even though he didn’t have the ability to provide any assistance, Tang Mo couldn’t be ungrateful.

With things happening like this, the relationship between the two of them grew a little closer.

The spiritual weirdo said, “What happened to you just now? Your heartbeat was suddenly so fast. My dad is a doctor. Not to speak of that heart rate you reached, when a normal person’s heart reaches 250 beats per minute, it becomes unable to produce blood. In several minutes, they will die.”

Tang Mo thought for a moment and decided to tell the spiritual weirdo the truth. “You haven’t had your heartbeat speed up over these few days?”

The spiritual weirdo shook his head. “I haven’t.”

Tang Mo frowned and patiently explained. “Starting from three days ago, my heartbeat accelerated. Previously, it wasn’t as fast as today, but it was 300 beats per minute or more. At the same time, I was very anxious. This was because of the Black Tower incident. I’m not part of the ‘Black Tower is dangerous’ faction, but I’m also not completely part of the ‘Black Tower-positive’ faction. The Black Tower appearing was such a big event and I can understand it giving rise to anxiety. However, I don’t understand the heart rate.”

“Did you develop some kind of disease?”

“These days, with the Black Tower appearing, I haven’t been to the hospital.”

The spiritual weirdo thought about it and said, “Then you’d better go see a doctor soon. I’ve never heard of this illness of yours, having a heartbeat of 300 beats per minute or more and still not dying. I’m afraid in the entire world, there’s only you alone.” The spiritual weirdo joked, “Maybe you will be conscripted by the country and carefully studied as a lab rat. Ai, if it’s like that, you’d better not go see a doctor.”

Tang Mo laughed.

“Ka ta —” In the quiet city library, there suddenly came the sound of a door opening.

Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo glanced at each other. This was the sound of the city library’s first floor entrance being opened!

The two of them flew in a rush downstairs. It wasn’t clear when it had happened, but the power preventing them from leaving the city library’s third floor had disappeared. They ran with the fastest speed of their lives to the lofty rosewood [4] front doors of the library.

A key turned lightly in the keyhole and, with a creaking sound, the front doors were pushed open a crack. Sunshine passed through the door seam and shone on Tang Mo and the spiritual weirdo’s faces for the first time in a long time. That warm sensation didn’t belong to the game’s “angelic day.” It was the real sun.

Tang Mo squinted his eyes. The comfortable warmth made all the pores in his body ease.

“Yi, Tang Mo, why are you here?” A clear female voice sounded. “You came to get your things so early?”

Tang Mo opened his eyes. “Xiao Zhao?”

Tang Mo thought about how he had come to the city library to get his things the previous evening because Director Wang had said the government would commandeer the library. He took a few seconds to clarify his thoughts. “You came to get your things?”

Xiao Zhao smiled. “That’s right. My mom and dad think this Black Tower thing is very weird and plan to return to our hometown to avoid what’s happening. We’re going at ten o’clock so I came to get my stuff. Ai, didn’t I ask you first? You unexpectedly came so early? What are you holding in your hand? A match? Ah, spiritual weirdo…cough…why is he also here?”

Xiao Zhao looked at the spiritual weirdo. The spiritual weirdo nervously swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

Tang Mo calmly explained, “When I was getting my things, I ran into him and we chatted a bit.”

“You and he have things to chat about…” Xiao Zhao muttered a few words, then raised her head and said, “Then I’ll come in and get some things and not chat with you.” Saying so, the young woman raised her food in preparation for entering the doors.

Just as her leg was about to step in through the entrance, Tang Mo’s eyes opened wide and his pupils trembled.

“Zhao Yan!”

Zhao Yan was Xiao Zhao’s name. She had been at the city library for half a year and very few people would call her that name. Tang Mo suddenly called so loudly and Xiao Zhao looked oddly at him. “What is it?”

Tang Mo’s lips parted slightly, but not a single word would leave his mouth. He only looked at Xiao Zhao’s lower-half oddly. Xiao Zhao bowed her head to follow his gaze and look. Right away she saw it clearly and fell to the ground, using both hands to crawl backward several steps.

“What is this? What is this…where are my legs! Where are my legs!!!”

In an instant, tears overflowed from the rims of her eyes.

This was a young woman who had only been born in 1996 and had barely graduated university. She wailed loudly, ceaselessly using both hands to touch her lower body, but there was nothing there. There was nothing at all.

To Tang Mo’s eyes, there was an invisible line spreading from the base of Xiao Zhao’s thighs to her upper body. The places this line passed over all vanished like smoke, as if there was something erasing Xiao Zhao from this world.

He didn’t know when this line had appeared. By the time he noticed the line, Xiao Zhao’s lower legs had already disappeared. She herself was completely unaware and still stood talking with Tang Mo. 

As she cried, snot streaming across her face, Xiao Zhao’s waist had already disappeared. She crawled up beside Tang Mo’s legs, used her hands to grab at his pants, and cried bitterly, “Save me, Tang-ge, [5] save me! What’s happening? What’s happening to me? Tang-ge, you save me, ah!”

Tang Mo extended his hand to grip Xiao Zhao’s hand, but only held it for two seconds. That line moved over Xiao Zhao’s arms. Her hands disappeared.

The transparent line moved up to Xiao Zhao’s neck.

All that was left of her was a head lying on the ground, both eyes tearful as she looked at Tang Mo. It was both terrifying and strange.

“I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die. I still haven’t been in love. I still haven’t had someone I like. I want to go back and watch anime. The novel I started following yesterday still isn’t finished… Dad…Mom… I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. Tang-ge, Tang…”

Her mouth also disappeared.

That pair of eyes made moist by tears continued looking at Tang Mo until her entire person had disappeared.

Within a minute, a big living person had vanished like this.

Tang Mo’s brain was blank. However, at this moment, the thing that most frightened him was that right now he was unexpectedly utterly calm. He looked at the place where Xiao Zhao had disappeared for a full thirty seconds, then abruptly thought of something and hurriedly turned his head to look toward the spiritual weirdo behind him.

In the pitch black library, the spiritual weirdo’s body beneath his thighs had already disappeared. His pale complexion as he looked at Tang Mo showed a scared and pitiful smile. “Tang…Tang Mo. Is this the penalty for losing the game…”

“Spiritual weirdo!”

Thump! The spiritual weirdo fell to the floor.

Tang Mo immediately rushed up and grabbed the spiritual weirdo’s hand.

The spiritual weirdo wept, tears streaming across his face, snot sticking to his lips. He firmly clutched Tang Mo’s hand, seeming just like Xiao Zhao, saying over and over again, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die… Tang Mo, you save me. I don’t want to die…”

Tang Mo was powerless. He kept his hand on the part of the spiritual weirdo that hadn’t disappeared, but when that line moved, what should disappear still disappeared. He touched air.

All that was left of the spiritual weirdo was the upper half of his body.

Tang Mo said, “Don’t be afraid. There must be a way.”

The spiritual weirdo, a grown man, cried and said, “What way is there? I don’t want to die, I really don’t want to die… Tang Mo, you save me, ah! You eliminated me, you save me! You save me!”

Tang Mo didn’t speak a word.

The spiritual weirdo also didn’t speak again. He unceasingly wept, continuously crying. Time passed incomparably slowly. Just as his chest was about to disappear, he suddenly grabbed Tang Mo’s hands and used those fully bloodshot eyes to look at Tang Mo and shout, “I have a daughter. She’s in S-city. Her mom and I divorced. You help me go look for her and see if she’s still alive. She’s called Shanshan. Chen Shanshan. She must be alive, surely must be alive! You help me look for her. Just take a glance at her!”

The spiritual weirdo’s hand disappeared.

“You help me, Tang Mo, I beg you. Help me. She’s definitely still alive. Definitely!”

Tang Mo said, “Where does she live?”

“She’s attending North Jing Middle School in her first year. She…” The spiritual weirdo’s mouth disappeared.

His two eyes stared unwaveringly at Tang Mo. That transparent line moved to the base of his ears. His eyes staring without blinking at Tang Mo were frighteningly red and it seemed he had exhausted his whole body’s strength.

“I’ll go find her. She’s definitely still alive.”

That line had completely erased the spiritual weirdo’s ears, but his expression relaxed all at once. He was still crying, already unable to speak, only looking at Tang Mo. Before his eyes disappeared, he blinked his eyes at Tang Mo and a teardrop fell down, dripping onto the ground.

Tang Mo alone knelt at the city library’s entrance. Outside the doors, Xiao Zhao had vanished. Inside the doors, the spiritual weirdo had also disappeared.

The sound of eight o’clock striking resounded in the city library. As the pendulum sounded for an eighth time, Tang Mo still knelt on the ice cold ground.

[Go to sleep, go to sleep, my dear baby. Mama’s hands, gently rocking you…] [6]

A tender and kindly female voice sounded throughout the entirety of E-City.

Tang Mo stiffly turned his head and looked toward that enormous Black Tower situated 200 meters outside the city library.

Multicolored lights flickered on the tower’s black body. A day ago, the area around that tower had still been surrounded by innumerable people. Now, a day later, there remained only seven or eight people and Tang Mo, all sitting paralyzed on the ground in the same way, vacantly raising their heads to look at the Black Tower as it sang a lullaby.

The female voice finished singing the beginning and a group of childlike voices sounded out along with it -

[Go to sleep, go to sleep, my dear baby.

Mama’s hands, gently rocking you.

The cradle rocks you, quickly and calmly sleep.

The night’s already quiet, the quilt is so warm…]

The voice sang once all the way through. Wind blew across the earth, taking this wondrous singing along to even further places.

The song finished and that familiar melodious childlike voice sounded -

[Ding dong! 498.16 million players successfully loaded the game…

Saving the game…

Loading game data…

Loading player information…

Saving successful…

Loading successful…

Loading successful…

Ding dong! On November 18th, 2017, players are welcomed to enter the game.

Announcing the Black Tower’s three main, firm rules -

First, the Black Tower has the right to decide everything. [7]

Second, six to eighteen o’clock is game time.

Third, all players please strive to attack the tower.

Ding dong! Have a happy game!]

[PREV] [TOC] [NEXT]

[1] Happy Beans are the in-game currency for Fight the Landlord, a popular Chinese online card game.

[2] It’s a little unclear if this is meant in the sense that they’re currently in ignorance (night) before the revelation (dawn) or if it’s meant as a reference to “the night is darkest before the dawn” (this is also an idiom in Chinese) and is meant either ironically or seriously. ….It’s hard for me to tell lol

[3] 隔膜 - divided by lack of mutual comprehension

[4] It’s a minor point, but this could either be rosewood or mahogany. Idk. If you’re into carpentry that could be important to you.

[5] Ge as in gege, so like ‘Brother Tang.’

[6] This is a Chinese lullaby.

[7] I previously translated this as ‘everything is explained by the Black Tower’ but it’s more like ‘the Black Tower is entitled to explain everything’ where ‘explain’ also has the power to determine meaning.

Today’s chapter’s mascot is the Etruscan shrew, the animal with the fastest heartbeat in the world. Its heart rate ranges between 100 and 1200 BPM. Wow! You still have a way to go, Tang Mo! Jiayou!

(It's also the smallest mammal in the world.)

This chapter always kills me partly because it makes me sad and partly because the narrative and Tang Mo still insist on calling him the ‘spiritual weirdo’ even as he’s vanishing. LMFAO.

[webmeridian]

Hyvä vs. Luma Magento Theme Comparison: The Battle Royale

The article was initially published in WebMeridian blog.

On top of offering a respectable product at a great price to compete, Magento 2 merchants must consider the presentation. That is where a Magento 2 front-end theme comes in.

Themes are not just a way to decide what your store will look like but can affect other aspects of its performance, security, and perception by the intended target audience. Hundreds of themes are available to Magento users, but today, we are looking at Hyvä and Luma.

We will pit these Magento frontend themes against each other to see how they stack up, what they are best for, and where they have shortcomings to help you decide which would work best for your purposes.

Let’s dive in to find out more about these Magento front-end themes.

What is Luma?

Luma is one of the default themes you get when using Magento 2. Being a demo theme, does it have what you need? Well, that is what we are here to find out. The theme has a responsive design, product display, catalog navigation, checkout process, and more.

The Luma template is designed to be a modern theme, focusing on the online store’s visual appeal and user experience. The theme uses white space judiciously, creating a professional and attractive look for Magento eCommerce stores.

The Luma theme is based on the Blank theme, a basic theme meant to provide the essential components and structure you can use to create a custom version. Luma works the same way, allowing you to modify or edit the default files to create a theme inherited from the parent.

To understand this theme better, we have to look at the advantages and disadvantages of working with it.

The Advantages of Using Luma

For those who choose it, Luma benefits them in the following ways:

1. Luma is free and official

As we’ve mentioned, the Luma theme comes with Magento 2, meaning you do not have to pay any extra cost or install a third-party theme to get started. Luma is compatible and updated to the latest version of Magento 2 and is an excellent template for those looking for extensive customization.

2. Luma is mobile-friendly and responsive>

In 2023, US mobile commerce is expected to reach $447.5 billion, accounting for 41.6% of total eCommerce sales. Given that the competition is higher than it’s ever been, every eCommerce store owner has every reason to make their website more optimized for mobile and be able to fit it onto any device, including tablets, smartphones, desktops, and more.

With a great team of Magento developers, Luma is a great way to reach more customers and improve your SEO ranking.

3. Luma is a demo theme

The power of a demo theme like Luma is that it is designed to showcase the features and capabilities to you more clearly. This means you can use it to learn about Magento 2 development and customization. It shows you how it implements the core components and functionalities of Magento 2, including the template, block, layout, widget, and more.

4. Luma is fast and secure

Being an official theme, Magento 2’s developers took time to ensure that Luma is fast and secure, meaning your store loads quickly and smoothly, directly impacting your conversion rate and customer satisfaction. In addition, it supports multiple payment and shipping methods, all in a secure manner.

5. Luma is contemporary and elegant

As the skin your Magento 2 store wears, your theme must stand out visually. With Luma, you can customize as much of the base theme as you want to create a look true to your store’s branding and overall style. This includes the colors, fonts, images, arrangement, etc.

The Drawbacks of Using Luma

1. Heavy and complex

Luma may be easy to use out of the box but loads many unnecessary front-end resources and elements. That translates to a much slower website, affecting your SEO ranking and conversion rate. According to one source, Luma has 256 requests and 0.9MB of load size for a product page, while Hyvä has only 11 requests and 0.15MB for a similar page.

2. Luma is a demo theme

We know; we already said this in the benefits. However, a theme meant to showcase the best an ecommerce platform offers will have features and functionalities you do not want or need, including wish lists, ratings, reviews, swatches, compare lists, etc.

3. Luma is difficult and time-consuming

Developers will quickly tell you that customizing or maintaining Luma is hard, especially given the alternatives. If you choose to work with the Magento 2 Luma theme, be prepared to enlist the services of a professional developer or learn some advanced skills to modify or edit the default files. You may encounter compatibility issues and conflicts with third-party extensions or updates.

There’s more to say about Luma’s shortcomings, but they all rotate around it being a somewhat bloated theme and not the most developer-friendly option on the market.

Let’s get to Hyvä.

What is Hyvä?

What do you get when you improve on the basic Luma, which we have already seen is respectable? One word: Hyvä.

The Hyvä template was designed to simplify and improve the frontend development of Magento 2 stores. Hyvä is not a headless, PWA (progressive web app) or JavaScript-based theme, but instead based on PHP. It uses the built-in templating system of Magento 2 and is built from scratch using a blank theme that removes all the unnecessary bloat and complexity that comes with the default Luma theme.

The Hyvä theme leverages modern tools that developers enjoy using, including AlpineJS, and TailwindCSS, to create a user-friendly, fast-loading, responsive website. Let’s explore its benefits and drawbacks to create a more complete picture.

The Benefits of Using Hyvä

Let’s start with the Hyvä benefits to see what this theme offers you.

1. Hyvä is lightweight and simple

Hyvä is a lightweight and straightforward theme that eliminates the unnecessary bloat you may have to deal with when using the Luma theme. This saves you time and effort during Hyvä themes development for Magento 2. Hyvä also reduces the number of resources loaded on the front from more than 200 to 2, which improves your website speed and performance.

2. Hyvä is modern and user-friendly

This theme uses AlpineJS and TailwindCSS to create an attractive, fast, and impressive website that will appeal to customers and create a user-friendly website that showcases products and services. With competent Hyvä themes developers, you can customize the look to match your brand identity and style, including changing the fonts, images, colors, and more.

3. Hyvä is feature-rich and extension-friendly

You can get various features and functionalities to help you create a successful online store, including multi-language, a blog module, social media integration, multi-currency, etc. Hyvä also comes with pre-built templates that can be easily installed and customized.

The theme is compatible with over 10 extensions and is trusted worldwide by Hyvä themes development services.

4. Hyvä is inspirational and educational

Just like its counterpart Luma, Hyvä is also an educational and inspirational tool with its unique take on the developmental process. It is based on the same core components and structure as Magento 2, including layout.xml, blocs, viewModels, etc.

For a Magento Hyvä theme development company, it represents a canvas on which any vision for an eCommerce store can be drawn.

5. Hyvä is community-driven & open source

The Hyvä theme welcomes developers’ contributions and feedback with communities on GitHub, Twitter, and Slack. Even without a Hyvä solution provider, you can access the tutorials, demos, and documentation to help develop and improve the theme over time.

6. Hyvä is designed to be future-proof

The development of Hyvä is done by developers designing for the benefit of the eventual developers who interact with these themes at length and in-depth.

As such, it followed the best practices and standards of web development to offer compatibility with the latest version of Magento 2, with support for upcoming features and updates to the underlying platform. Hyvä also uses modern tools and technologies that enhance the functionality and usability of the theme.

The Disadvantages of Using Hyvä

Because it is developed to be developer-friendly, lightweight, and simple, Hyvä has few weaknesses, but it is worth mentioning what to expect or watch out for.

1. Licensing fee

The Hyvä licensing fee in 2023 stands at €1,000.00 per license, while the Hyvä checkout seems to have been discounted from €1,000 to €500 per license on the annual payment, with one year support and updates included. The subscription model costs €250 yearly, starting the second year after the initial purchase.

A one-time payment model is offering 5 years of support and updates at €1,000.00

You can contact Hyvä for a volume discount for more than one license. A licensing fee may seem daunting for those starting and looking to minimize cost.

2. Non-compatibility with some extensions and Magento’s B2B module

Although the theme makes a Magento website load quickly, it needs some work to implement initially because it’s incompatible with all the extensions on the Magento Marketplace. As such, you may need Magento Hyvä theme development services to create workarounds for a smoother operation.

3. Some code conversion is needed

All the bloat Hyvä removes has a downside. While you can still use modules from third-party services, additional coding might be required to ensure the front end looks and works as intended on this Magento 2 theme.

Hyvä vs Luma: Performance Comparison

A theme’s performance is vital to a store, given that the performance level directly affects the overall customer experience and can decide your customer’s buying journey. How do they stack up when pitted head-to-head with each other?

It comes as no surprise that Hyvä outperforms Luma on many of the performance metrics. It sheds the extra weight Luma comes with and is developed by developers for developers, in addition to having nearly perfect Google Page Speed scores out of the box.

Out of the box, Luma is good too, but the performance starts to dip as you add things and make changes. According to this blog post about an Amazon study and others discussed by Forbes, companies have milliseconds to load pages or risk losing potential revenue. Since these studies were done, the situation hasn’t gotten any easier, which is why a lot of emphasis is placed on loading speeds.

The message is clear; the longer a person waits to access what they seek, the more likely they will click back or bounce.

Using Google Lighthouse, most of the tests done by developers using these themes have shown an apparent disparity in performance between the two themes. Luma is slower because it is bloated, while Hyvä loads much faster due to its lean design.

Conclusion: Hyvä or Luma for Magento 2

Are you looking for a reliable and professional Luma or Hyvä development company that can create impressive websites for your Magento 2 store?

At WebMeridian, we have a team of developers with the knowledge depth required for development with Hyvä and Luma, allowing you to choose whichever one you feel best fits your current needs.

We can help you design and build custom themes and components to make your website stand out. Whether you need a simple landing page or a complex eCommerce site, we can handle it all with Luma and Hyvä.

With Luma, we know how to get the best out of what we have admittedly called a bloated theme. However, it is worth noting that it is not an unsuitable theme for all applications. Given that it has to function as a demo theme and template, it is unsurprising that Luma is slower and seems more bloated when compared with the lean Hyvä.

With Hyvä, our expert developers will put their skills to task, creating a cohesive look and workarounds for the theme portions that don’t quite fit without some work. Our team is focused on streamlining development to get the best out of what a theme offers out of the box and compensate comprehensively for its shortcomings.

Contact us today to find out what we can do for you concerning Hyvä or Luma for Magento 2.

[spacenutspod]

When Brant Robertson saw a new measurement of the distance to a familiar galaxy, he laughed out loud. For more than a decade, the galaxy had been a contender for the most distant ever observed. In 2012, Robertson and colleagues used data from the Hubble Space Telescope to show that the galaxy’s light had shone across the universe from about 13.3 billion years ago — less than 400 million years into the universe’s existence. Not everyone believed it. “We got a lot of flak,” recalls Robertson, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It seemed too implausible that it was at such a great distance.” It felt like he was going around claiming to have seen the Loch Ness monster. But in September, the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST for short, aimed its massive mirror and sensitive spectrograph at the same galaxy and showed that Robertson and his colleagues were right. The galaxy’s light is indeed incredibly old, dating to just 390 million years after the Big Bang. It was like someone had drained the lake, and the monster was sitting there at the bottom. And this galactic Nessie is not alone. So far, in its first year of observations, JWST has turned up thousands of distant galaxies dating to the early universe, many more than astronomers had expected. Some of those galaxies are brighter, more massive or more mature than astronomers would have thought. They are now scratching their heads trying to explain how the galaxies could have grown up so fast. Studying Maisie’s Galaxy, which dates to about 400 million years after the Big Bang, helped astronomers gain confidence in distance estimates derived from initial JWST data.S. FINKELSTEIN et al/arXiv.org 2022 (CC BY 4.0) A lot of the extreme distances still need to be confirmed, but initial evidence suggests there’s reason to believe that many, if not most, of the galaxies really are that far away. “I was expecting to find some galaxies at this [distance]. Some people were pessimistic; I wasn’t,” says Steven Finkelstein, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin. “But I was not this optimistic. I thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know what we’re going to see.’ And I was wrong.” The Hubble Space Telescope’s distant galaxies For longtime galaxy hunters, JWST’s bounty may feel like déjà vu. In the 1990s, Hubble took a long, deep look at an apparently blank patch of sky, just to see what was there. The result was thousands of galaxies, some captured as they looked when the universe was only a billion years old. Those galaxies looked mature, like they had already been through multiple rounds of supernova explosions and star formation. Thus, they were not the first to form in the universe, astronomers realized. The first galaxies must date even further back. The hunt for those original galaxies was part of the motivation for building JWST, says astrophysicist Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado Boulder. “The reason we have JWST is, they launched Hubble and saw that the things in the early universe were very evolved,” she says. “They were like, ‘Wow! There are galaxies way earlier than we thought’ ” — even further back in time than Hubble can see. Hubble wasn’t designed to see all the way back to the universe’s beginning. The telescope is sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared wavelengths of light. But by the time light from the universe’s early days reaches us, it has stretched all the way into infrared wavelengths that are longer than Hubble’s (or human) eyes can see. That’s because the universe is expanding; everything in it is moving away from everything else. And as light sources move away from us, their light stretches — the wavelengths of light grow longer, or redder. The amount of stretching of that light, known as the redshift, is astronomers’ proxy for cosmic distance and age. The present-day universe is at redshift zero. A redshift of 1 corresponds to about 6 billion years after the Big Bang. A redshift of 4 is about 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and so on. In 1995, redshift 4 was the furthest back that Hubble could detect. Over the next 20 years, upgrades to the telescope and new observing techniques pushed the frontier back to redshift 7, which corresponds to 800 million years after the Big Bang. In 2012, the galaxy that Robertson studied appeared at a possible, though at the time unconfirmed, redshift of 11.9. Later, a galaxy called GN-z11 clocked in at a redshift of 11.1, or 400 million years after the Big Bang. These tantalizing discoveries set off a search for even more distant galaxies. “This has kind of become a game in extragalactic astronomy, where everyone wants to find the highest redshift, most distant galaxy,” astrophysicist Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York said in April in Minneapolis at an American Physical Society meeting. “Become the new record holder, right? It’s fun.” By 2016, when GN-z11 was discovered, the hunt had stalled. Astronomers had wrung everything they could out of existing technology. “It really requires JWST to push to even earlier times,” Kartaltepe said, “which we need to understand the very beginnings of galaxy formation.” The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, scanned a swath of sky (shown) that has turned up hundreds of galaxies that appear to date to within 650 million years of the Big Bang (reddish dots are the most distant galaxies).NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Zamani/ESA and Webb Why astronomers want to find early galaxies The quest to find the earliest galaxies is about more than just bragging rights. These galaxies could shed light on a key event in the universe’s infancy called reionization. In the beginning, there was the Big Bang. After that initial cataclysm, the universe continued to expand and cool. After about 372,000 years, it had cooled enough for electrons, protons and neutrons to combine into hydrogen atoms. That hydrogen gas was diffuse and opaque, plunging the universe into what astronomers call the cosmic dark ages. Sometime during these dark ages, the first stars formed and began to clump together into galaxies with the help of an invisible and still mysterious material known as dark matter. But because of the opacity of that neutral hydrogen, all astronomers can really observe is that the universe became transparent again at about 200 million years after the Big Bang, as hydrogen atoms lost their electrons. “We know there was a transition where the hydrogen was reionized somehow,” Robertson says. Thanks to observations with Hubble and other telescopes, “we think galaxies are very likely the agents of that process,” he says. Light from the youngest, most massive stars in those early galaxies might have knocked electrons off atoms in the hydrogen gas between galaxies. “But how that process unfolds, we have relatively little information on,” Robertson says. JWST can help fill in those details. Taking a census of the galaxies that were around during the era of reionization could help illuminate how it got started. And so, astronomers were giddy with excitement when JWST launched on Christmas Day in 2021 and started collecting data about six months later. The first images were unveiled with great fanfare on July 12, 2022 (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30). But astronomers had to wait until the next day to download the rest of the data the telescope had acquired while getting up and running. “We knew, somewhere, on some computer, our photons were sitting there, waiting for us to see them,” Kartaltepe said. “As soon as the data were released in July, we jumped on it and started analyzing.” Astronomers sifted through the images like a cosmic Where’s Waldo, picking the reddest-looking candidate galaxies out of the pack. Extremely distant candidates popped out quickly. In several different regions of the sky, JWST found little red dots corresponding to galaxies that appeared to be at astonishing redshifts: 10, 13, even 17. Some of the galaxies seemed small and dim, as expected. But others looked big and bright, suggesting they were heftier than astronomers would expect for such early galaxies. “These galaxies, they’re just at phenomenal distances. It’s a little hard to swallow,” Robertson said in June in Cambridge, Mass., at the JWST First Light Conference. “But it’s really important to actually confirm the distances to these very, very distant galaxies, and then learn about their properties.” The most distant galaxy ever confirmed Most of the cosmic distances reported for JWST galaxies so far have been preliminary estimates based on data from the telescope’s cameras. The cameras scan broad areas of sky and use filters to let in certain wavelengths of light. These filters allow astronomers to estimate “photometric” redshifts. But to know for sure how far away a galaxy really is, astronomers need to use JWST’s spectrograph. A redshift calculated from a galaxy’s full spectrum of light uses 1,000 data points compared with a photometric redshift’s seven data points. “Until we have spectra, nothing is ironclad,” Nelson says. As part of a project called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, Robertson and colleagues collected spectra for four galaxies with photometric redshifts higher than 10 — likely close to the beginning of the era of reionization. One of the galaxies was the one Robertson studied in 2012. The distance of that galaxy, now known as JADES-GS-z11-0, was downgraded a bit, from a redshift of 11.9 to 11.58. But with one of the other galaxies, the team claimed a new record for most distant galaxy ever confirmed, with a redshift of 13.2, just 325 million years after the Big Bang. The spectra the team analyzed were detailed enough to reveal some properties of the galaxies, Robertson and colleagues reported in April in Nature Astronomy. They’re all about a hundredth the size and mass of the Milky Way, but they are forming stars at a comparable rate — a lot of stars for galaxies this small. All those newborn stars produce a lot of ionizing radiation, meaning it’s possible these galaxies could be some of the earliest agents of reionization, Robertson says. JADES has since reported about 700 more galaxies whose photometric redshifts place them at redshift 8 or greater, or less than 650 million years after the Big Bang, Robertson said at the June First Light meeting. Those galaxies’ distances still need to be confirmed, but the sheer numbers are amazing. “We’re really in a remarkable age,” Robertson said. Trusting JWST’s measurements The huge galaxy haul raises another question: How many of them are likely to be at such great distances? A potential record-breaking galaxy called CEERS-93316 is a cautionary tale. The galaxy was identified in JWST images taken for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS, survey. Those images put the galaxy at a photometric redshift of 16.4, or just 240 million years after the Big Bang. “That was higher redshift than we expected to see with CEERS,” says Finkelstein, the survey’s lead researcher. CEERS was designed to practice using JWST in its different observing modes and give astronomers some data to play with, not necessarily to set new records. In its first chunk of data, CEERS contained a surprising number of apparently high-redshift galaxies. So Finkelstein and colleagues asked the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates JWST, for some extra telescope time to chase down the spectra of CEERS-93316, as well as a galaxy that Finkelstein had found with a photometric redshift of about 12. He named that galaxy Maisie’s Galaxy in honor of his daughter, because he found it on her ninth birthday. (Maisie didn’t mind that her dad had to work that day — “I got other birthday presents,” she says, though she did wish her galaxy was the potential record holder.) When the spectral data came through, Finkelstein’s colleague Pablo Arrabal Haro, an astrophysicist at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, based in Tucson, worked through the weekend to write up results before anyone else. CEERS-93316’s 16.4 redshift turned out to be wrong. The galaxy was actually at a redshift of 4.9, putting it 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang — practically modern compared with some of JWST’s other finds. The galaxy’s photometric redshift was so high because of a weird coincidence. Light streaming from hydrogen in the galaxy was redshifted such that it looked like it jumped in brightness at a wavelength suggestive of the huge distance. But when the full spectrum came in, that single jump was revealed to be several separate peaks, suggesting a smaller redshift. Maisie’s Galaxy, however, is almost as distant as the photometric redshift implied, Arrabal Haro and colleagues reported in a paper posted in March to arXiv.org. And in an April paper posted to arXiv.org, the team reported spectra for more than 30 other galaxies with redshifts of roughly between 8 and 10. So photometric redshift estimates are generally reliable, Finkelstein says. Timeline of early galaxies JWST has detected many galaxies from the early universe (a few are shown on this timeline). These galaxies could shed light on reionization, the process that ended the cosmic dark ages, when the universe was shrouded in darkness. Some of these galaxies, the “universe breakers,” appear to be more massive than theory can explain. JWST: ESA; Background: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch and B. Robertson/Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, A. Feild/STScI, adapted by C. ChangJWST: ESA; Background: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch and B. Robertson/Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, A. Feild/STScI, adapted by C. Chang “Although we have this notable failure case, that’s a pathological case,” he says. It’s “not devastating.” That’s good news for JWST’s observing schedule: Astronomers won’t have to follow up with the full spectrum for every distant galaxy. They can believe that most of the redshifts are legit and save the extra effort of taking the full spectrum for the really interesting ones. “It is exciting that the photometric redshifts tend to hold up,” Robertson says. “It gives us some hope that some of these really distant things could be real.” Distant galaxies too bright to explain Another outcome of JWST analyses so far is that there are more bright galaxies around redshift 10 than expected. Galaxy brightness is an indicator of galaxy mass, and thus star abundance. The brighter the galaxy, the more stars it must have to produce all that light. Galaxies are born in halos of dark matter, whose gravity pulls in and concentrates ordinary matter. Cosmologists know from simulations and theory how many dark matter halos the universe would have had when the first galaxies formed. They also have a decent idea of how massive those halos were in the universe’s first 500 million years and how much of that mass ended up in the form of hydrogen and helium, the raw material for making stars. Theoretically, if all that gas turned into stars, the largest a galaxy could get would be about 10 billion times the mass of the sun. In reality, researchers expect early galaxies to be much less massive, because modern galaxies never convert all their gas into stars. JWST has not turned up any galaxy near the theoretical upper limit. But it has found many more hefty early galaxies than predicted. The confirmed JADES galaxies weigh in at about 100 million solar masses, just 330 million years after the Big Bang. Some of the CEERS galaxies seem to have over a billion suns’ worth of stars as early as 450 million years after the Big Bang. Two galaxies discovered in another JWST survey, called COSMOS-Web, appear to be about 5 billion solar masses as early as 350 million years after the Big Bang, astronomer Caitlin Casey of the University of Texas at Austin said at the June First Light meeting. “With these massive beacons, you can test the limits of how fast you can assemble that much matter in the short time between the Big Bang and the time that we’re observing them in,” she says. What astronomers find from these galaxies could point to where our existing understanding of galaxy formation is wrong. Or researchers might discover that some of the galaxies’ light doesn’t come directly from stars but instead from the ionized gas in between stars that are actively forming, Casey says. That would mean the galaxies aren’t actually as massive as they look. Finding out how early galaxies were put together is the first step to understanding our own galaxy, Robertson says. “That’s ultimately what drives a lot of galaxy formation research, is trying to understand how our home, the thing that’s important to us, the place that we live, came to be,” he says. “We’re never going to complete that full story without looking at how galaxies at redshift 10 were put together…. That’s the starting place for how we got here.” Breaking the universe … or not One set of galaxies has sparked debate over not just galaxy formation, but the theoretical foundations of the universe itself. In February, Nelson and colleagues reported six galaxies spotted with CEERS that seem to have grown so big, so fast that they directly challenge the standard theory of how structure forms in the universe (SN: 3/25/23, p. 14). These galaxies have photometric redshifts between about 7 and 9, meaning they grew up in the first 800 million years of the universe. But their stellar masses appear to rival or exceed that of the Milky Way, about 60 billion solar masses. Nelson affectionately calls them the “universe breakers.” Nothing that massive should have been able to form that fast, she says. “As soon as we saw it, we were like, this is bananas.” Barely enough ordinary matter is even believed to have existed back then to create the universe breakers, says astrophysicist Mike Boylan-Kolchin of the University of Texas at Austin. Regions where budding galaxies formed would have had to turn all their atoms into stars. Six distant galaxies (red dots, above) spotted by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS, survey appear to be too massive for standard cosmological theories to explain, though one of these “universe breakers” (top row, middle image) is not as distant as originally thought.NASA, ESA, CSA, I. LABBÉ/SWINBURNE UNIV. OF TECHNOLOGY; IMAGE PROCESSING: G. BRAMMER/COSMIC DAWN CENTER/NIELS BOHR INSTITUTE/UNIV. OF COPENHAGEN “We have this reservoir of atoms,” he says. “Almost every single one of them has to be in stars or in galaxies” if the universe breakers are for real. “If these observations and their interpretation is correct … it’s very hard to accommodate them in our current models,” he says. Over the last few months, theorists have come up with several ways to explain the universe breakers. One of the most dramatic options would be to add some extra dark energy, the mysterious substance that drives the universe to expand faster and faster, to the early universe, which would speed up all sorts of cosmic processes. “That would go in the right direction here, in the sense that there’d be bigger reservoirs [of atoms] and maybe more of them at earlier times,” Boylan-Kolchin says. “These early dark energy models do predict faster evolution of structure at early times.” More mundane options include super-compact early galaxies that could have converted all their gas into stars before the oldest stars had a chance to go supernova and blow it away. Such efficient star formation could explain the universe breakers without breaking the universe, physicist Avishai Dekel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and colleagues suggested in a paper published May 25 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. And there’s still the question of whether the universe breakers’ masses and distances will hold up. A spectrum of one of them has already revealed it to be a galaxy at redshift 5.6 with an actively feeding black hole creating extra light — so not a universe breaker after all. JWST’s second observing cycle began in July, and Nelson will take spectra of the rest of the universe breakers to find out if they are truly abounding with stars, filled with black holes or something else. Meanwhile, another group of astronomers will test JWST’s limits, hunting for galaxies at redshift 15 or greater. So by the telescope’s second birthday next summer, there may be new distance records.

[ilearnedthistodaysblog]

What was the last Apollo mission?

What was the last Apollo mission? The last Apollo mission was Apollo 17.

The Apollo program stretched from 1967 until 1972. There was supposed to be an Apollo 18, 19, and 20 but they were all cancelled. The booster for Apollo 20 was repurposed to launch Skylab, America’s first space station into orbit. The decision to cancel the last few missions was taken in 1970, after congress cut NASA’s budget. There is some evidence that after the Apollo 13 catastrophe and rescue, President Nixon wanted to cancel Apollo 17 as well.

The Apollo space program took over after the Gemini and Mercury programs which had worked to build rockets capable of orbit and putting people in orbit. The first Apollo mission, Apollo 1, was meant to launch in 1967, but it unfortunately never flew because a fire in the cabin tragically killed the crew. The next Apollo rocket to fly was number 4 and that, followed by 5 and 6 were all unmanned and were used to test out different systems. Apollo 7 was crewed and orbited the Earth. Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Apollo 9 orbited the moon and tested out life support systems. Apollo 10 sent a Landing Module down within 15 km of the moon’s surface as a test and flew home. That must have been hard for them not to go the last little bit. Apollo 11, as I’m sure you are aware, landed on the moon. Apollo landed on the moon. Apollo 13 had several problems and didn’t get to land on the moon. The Apollos 14, 15, 16, and 17 all successfully landed on the moon and returned. Apollo 17 was the last one and Gene Cernan was the 11th and last person to walk on the moon. So far.

So, why was Apollo 17 the last mission to the moon? The main reason was money. NASA was started in 1958, when President Eisenhower signed it into being. After World War 2 and the Korean War, the Department of Defense had become very interested in upper atmosphere rockets and they wanted to launch orbital satellites. High speed planes were being built that could fly at the edge of space. Russia had launched sputnik in 1957, and America felt that it was getting left behind. Every time America made a technological advance, they found that the Russians had already beaten them to it. Later on, they would find out that the Russian space program was basically held together with chewing gum, but they didn’t know that at the time and there was a desperate feeling of losing to Russia. JFK tapped into this when he became President and used it in his famous, “We choose to go to the moon … because [it] is hard,” speech. And NASA was basically given a blank check.

From the beginning of the Apollo project until the end, NASA spent $28 billion, which is $280 billion when adjusted for inflation. This seemed like a good deal while America was trying to beat Russia, but once the race was won, people couldn’t see the need to keep spending so much money. There were so many other things the money could be spent on. The late 1960s were much harder for people than the early 1960s. The growth after the end of World War 2 had started to slow. Inflation was beginning to rise, and the dollar wasn’t as strong as it had been. The Vietnam War was picking up and social problems in America were coming to the fore. Getting people on the moon was no longer a priority.

People had lost interest in the space program as well. It had been a source of national pride during the space race, but now that was over, people weren’t interested. Space flights and moon walks were not broadcast on TV, and without public opinion behind them, NASA couldn’t get funding. And without funding, there was no way to get more people on the moon.

The goals of space flight changed as well. The purpose of all 6 of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon was experimentation and geology. They wanted to know all they could about the moon. To that end, the crew of Apollo 17 were scientists and geologists. By Apollo 17, NASA realized they had learned everything they needed to learn from the surface of the moon and experiments in space could be carried out from far cheaper space stations in orbit around the Earth.

When Congress cut NASA’s funding in 1970, they had to make choices. They could continue with the moon landing planned for Apollo 18, or they could use the money for several other projects that would have more value. They obviously chose the other projects and Apollo 18 was abandoned. After Apollo 11, though, all future trips to the moon were basically doomed because they cost too much, and people weren’t interested once the race with Russia had been won. And this is what I learned today.

Read hundreds of articles like this on my blog: https://ilearnedthistoday.com/index.php/2023/05/23/what-was-the-last-apollo-mission/

Image By Harrison Schmitt - https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20378HR.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113250319

[thailandzipcode]

TOP TALLEST SKYSCRAPER (BUILDINGS) IN VIETNAM

With the development of economy and society, the rapid urbanization speed has more and more skyscrapers, becoming symbols for big cities as well as the whole country. This is evident in the large fluctuations in the list of tallest buildings in Vietnam.

After 8 years of holding the top position in terms of height, the Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower building had to “give up” the top position to Landmark 81 in Ho Chi Minh City. And the top of the tallest buildings in the country will continue to change as more and more impressive buildings with outstanding heights are being built.

Here is a list of tallest buildings in Vietnam up to now:

1. LANDMARK 81

Address: 720A Dien Bien Phu, Binh Thanh, Ho Chi Minh Height: 461.3m Number of floors: 81 floors (3 basements) Overall area: 241,000m2 Completion time: July 26, 2018 Investor: Vingroup

Located on the banks of the Saigon River, Landmark 81 building is considered the heart of Vinhomes Central Park urban area with an investment of nearly 40,000 billion VND. Owning 81 floors, the total area of ​​241,000m2, the building holds the record of the tallest building in Vietnam and is also named in the top 14 tallest buildings in the world.

Inspired by traditional bamboo bundles with strong stretching, Landmark 81 possesses unique architecture, and includes functional spaces such as hotels, serviced apartments, office blocks for rent, Officetel, shopping mall and other entertainment facilities.

What does Landmark 81 building have? Landmark 81 building is likened to the “playing paradise” of young people with all kinds of interesting and unique entertainment activities. Here you can discover: Commercial center area with enough high-end brands and luxury restaurants to enjoy sightseeing, dining and shopping. Discover Vincom Ice Rink – Vietnam’s largest ice rink for all ages Landmark Food Hall on the B1 floor converges all dishes from Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan… Modern CGV cinema with the largest IMAX curved screen in Vietnam On the first floor of the building is a great virtual living place with 2 unique decorated Vincom Landmark 81 entrances Explore Blank Lounge on floors 75 & 76 – an impressive place to experience nightlife with shimmering lights covering the whole city. Explore the Landmark 81 observatory at an altitude of nearly 400m at the top 3 floors 79, 80, 81 of the building. From Skyview, you can admire the panoramic view of the city and experience the challenge of skydiving from the top, relaxing on a floating rattan chair, traveling with a mini hot air balloon, or discovering a floating book model “Vietnamese bamboo grows”. High”. On the 81st floor, there is also a SkyTouch suspended bridge to admire the city below. Skyview floor ticket price of Landmark 81 building? The current Skyview ticket price is 810,000VND/ticket for adults, 405k/ticket for children from 1m-1.4m and free for children under 1m. Tickets are sold at basement B1 and can take a separate elevator to the 79th floor in just a few minutes.

Does Landmark 81 have a movie theater? At this Landmark 81 building, there is an extremely hot hit CGV cinema cluster with the largest IMAX curved screen in Vietnam, with a width of 22m and a height of 12.4m, bringing a completely new and overwhelming feeling. Experience the most realistic and vivid images.

2. KEANGNAM HANOI LANDMARK TOWER

Address: Pham Hung, Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi Height 336m Overall area: 300,000m2 Completed: December 2011 Investor: Korea Keangnam Group

Holding the record for the tallest building in Vietnam continuously for 8 years, Keangnam Landmark Hanoi Tower has become a symbol for Hanoi city. The building is a complex of hotels – offices – apartments – commercial centers, invested with a capital of up to 1.05 billion USD by Korean Keangnam Group.

The complex includes two 48-storey apartment towers and 72-storey office, hotel, and entertainment center buildings.

Currently, this is the most prominent Grade A office building on the Hanoi office leasing market and is the destination of many large domestic and foreign enterprises and corporations.

What does Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower have to offer? At KeangNam you will discover:

Sky observatory: From the top to the 72nd floor of the building, through the Sky observatory, you can see the whole scene of Hanoi. Rich 3D Gallery: This is an area displaying an extremely rich and vivid collection of 3D paintings, creating a feeling of being exactly like the real thing. 5D Cinema: Enjoy 5D movies with a 360-degree viewing angle with a particularly interesting experience, each movie only lasts 15-20 minutes but will give you the most real feelings, full of surprises. Artlink Gallery: Admire the works of fine art and fine art by Vietnamese painters and artisans, mainly oil paints, lacquers, and dó paper on themes of the country, people and the world. Vietnamese culture. Wish Wall: This is an ideal and romantic place for young people and couples to keep their wishes and sweet words on colorful bricks. How much is the ticket price for the 72nd floor of Keangnam Hanoi building? To get to Sky72, there will be a special elevator to go up 72 floors in less than 1 minute. And you have to buy tickets to the elevator at the price of 100k for children, from 160k for adults and free for children under 80cm. The ticket price includes all services at Sky72. On Saturday and the owner, the price will increase a bit more and decrease for groups of more than 10 people.

Does Keangnam Building have a cinema? Keangnam Building is Lotte Cinema’s first facility in Hanoi with luxurious, modern space and quality service. In particular, the building also has an impressive 5D cinema for visitors to experience and discover the difference.

Customers wishing to find office space here, please refer to the price list and services at: Keangnam Building

3. LOTTE CENTER HANOI

Address: No. 14 Lieu Giai, Ba Dinh, Hanoi Height: 272m Completion time: 2014 Investor: Lotte Corporation Korea

Officially put into operation in September 2014, Lotte Center Hanoi building is the second tallest building in Hanoi and occupies the top 3 tallest buildings in Vietnam. Inspired by the Vietnamese Ao Dai, the building possesses outstanding and impressive architecture. This is a complex building including hotel – luxury apartment – office block – commercial center.

Lotte Center is being considered as a symbol of the entire Ba Dinh administrative-economic center and is the destination of many large domestic and foreign enterprises and corporations.

How many floors high is Lotte building? Lotte Center building is built with 65 floors, including 5 basements. From the 65th floor at the roof of this high-rise building, you can zoom out to the north to see the whole 18km2 West Lake.

What does Lotte Hanoi building have to play? Lotte Center Hanoi is a world-class luxury shopping and service center, the building offers a lot of top-notch entertainment services and becomes an attractive destination in Hanoi.

From the basement 1 of Lotte Center is the Lotte Mart trade center that converges all the products, brands in the world, a diverse food court … for visitors to freely explore.

On the 5th floor of the building is a children’s play area exclusively for Kid’s Playground with diverse and extremely interesting games for children.

In particular, at the 65th floor of the building, you can experience the unique sky Walk, watching the whole city, the whole space is surrounded by glass to create the feeling of walking in the air, all four sides are clouds. Besides, at the observatory, there are binoculars arranged so that you can enjoy the view of the whole city. With a luxurious and unique space, you can comfortably pose and take beautiful photos.

How much is the ticket price for the 65th floor of the lotte building? To get to the 65th floor of Lotte Center building, you have to go from the basement. The basement is also a place to sell tickets to the observatory for about 180,000 VND/person from each batch. Sometimes the building also has a student discount program or special anniversaries.

Does Lotte building have a movie theater? It is surprising that the central area is invested up to 400 million USD by Lotte Group and is considered a symbol of Lotte in Hanoi, but this building does not have a cinema.