#Clock of the Long Now

[drethelin]

It’s silly but I love this thing and I kinda want one

[apollopigeon]

The Letters of Utrecht (Dutch: De Letters van Utrecht) form an endless poem in the stones of a street in the center of the Dutch city of Utrecht. Every Saturday at 13:00, the next letter is hewn into the next cobblestone,[1] with the intent to continue for as long as there are Saturdays. It takes about three years to publish an average sentence. Every year the poem grows by about five meters.[2] Every few years another poet extends the poem.[3]

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[levysoft]

Jeff Bezos, fondatore di Amazon e proprietario di Blue Origin (navette per il turismo spaziale) sta costruendo un orologio che dovrebbe funzionare ininterrottamente per i prossimi diecimila anni. I lavori sono iniziati da tempo all'interno di una montagna della Sierra Diablo, in Texas, di proprietà dello stesso Bezos.

Il progetto dell'orologio è di Danny Hillis (inventore e scienziato), che lo ideò nel 1986: per sfidare il tempo il meccanismi, alto 152 metri, ticchetterà una volta all'anno, una lancetta secolare avanzerà una volta ogni cent'anni e una sorta di cucù si farà sentire (con suoni sempre diversi) ogni 1.000 anni.

L'orologio sarà alimentato da energia meccanica prodotta dai visitatori, oltre che da uno speciale cilindro di grafite che converte energia termica (solare) in energia meccanica.

I materiali utilizzati per la costruzione sono l'acciaio inossidabile, il titanio e la ceramica (per cuscinetti a sfera che, sulla carta, non avranno mai bisogni di essere lubrificati). Nelle viscere della montagna ci sono 5 "camere" dedicate, ognuna, ai vari anniversari: annuale, decennale, secolare, millenario e, infine, quello dei 10.000 annii. La camera predisposta per l'anniversario annuale ospita un modello dinamico del Sistema Solare, delle lune e delle sonde interplanetarie lanciate nel ventesimo secolo.

Il planetario poggia su di una base di 2,5 metri: mostra la posizione di sei pianeti visibili a occhio nudo, da Mercurio a Saturno. © Long Now Foundation

Bezos deve ancora decidere come organizzare la camera del decennio, ma pare che non farà nulla per gli anniversari dei 100, 1.000 e 10.000 anni, non si sa bene se per non buttare via altri soldi o (come dice) per lasciare alle generazioni future la possibilità di esprimersi in libertà.

OPERA D'INGEGNO O VANITÀ? Questo sfizio di Bezos, che costerà circa 42 milioni di dollari, vuole essere (ha scritto in un Tweet) "un simbolo per il pensiero a lungo termine". Quando presentò il progetto, nel 2011, dichiarò che «nel corso della vita dell'orologio è probabile che gli Stati Uniti scompariranno, intere civiltà nasceranno e altre cadranno, saranno inventati nuovi sistemi di governo e avremo un mondo che non riusciamo neppure a immaginare». In molti hanno criticato la spesa per quest'opera, considerata un segno della vanità di Bezos: per altri, invece, è un'opera d'arte e, come tale, per quanto costi non ha un "valore economico" se non quello che le viene attribuito.

Al momento non è chiaro quando l'opera sarà terminata: nel sito dell'orologio dei 10.000 anni è però già possibile prenotare una visita. Oltre che fare una donazione, naturalmente.

[hinamie]

i don't normally participate in these redraw challenges but it's megumi so i'll make an exception

[speedydeputycalzonejudge]

(Clock of the Long Now)

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 136

 There is a small child floating in the Watchtower. 

They’re visibly not human, a too-big cloak of purple (what shade no one knows, all they can describe about the cloak is purple, nothing else) hanging from them as big Lazarus-green eyes glare down in something of a pout. The child huffs, blowing white hair out of their face despite it shimmering and shifting on its own already. 

How the child, inhuman or not, found their way into the Watchtower- without setting off an alarm no less- is a concern. A very large concern, but it can wait because there is a four-year old (if the child is the equivalent of a human child that is) at oldest staring down at them. 

 “Do you know where the speedsters are?” the child piped up after an awkward stare-down, none of the league members present quite sure what to do in this situation. It was probably around time to call Batman… or they could call Flash instead. 

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

romangerri + smiles

[chrisrainicorn]

Okay RWBY u reeled me back for fanart with this one I can't resist drawing a fucked up creechure

✨ i have commissions open! :D ✨

[otaku553]

2 am thoughts about roommates

[gumm1defloor]

Vox can understand Velvette just fine. They don't necessarily need to get along all the time, but they have a mutually beneficial contract that guarantees her support in the most efficient way possible, just how they both like it, short and strict and to the point. Vox does not understand Valentino. It drives him unimaginably, disgustingly insane. He knows how to handle him, make no mistake. Valentino is a never-ending powerhouse that wrangles out content from his employees like there's no tomorrow. He's proven himself to be Vox's most lucrative investment yet. He is resourceful, well-connected and most importantly predictable enough to rein in. Because he listens to you, because he needs you.

He is also, undeniably, out of his goddamn mind. Yet you've already invested too much in the corporate empire you've built together and there is no point turning back now that you have him so close to your side. It's OK however! He couldn't possibly be stupid enough to throw away the best partnership deal he's ever had just for the sake of something petty cause -oh, wait - he genuinely might just be that stupid and you never would've guessed because he's so cocksure of his bullshit that 80% of the time it ends up working in his favor anyway.

Fuck his life indeed. The kicker for this of course is that Valentino, genuinely does believe he has struck gold with Vox. Valentino is a clingy, possessive, immature, perverted, sadistic, egotistical man-child with severe rage issues and zero impulse control. No he is not aware of this at all. No he does not know why nobody is able to tolerate him and why every single person he gets close to hates his guts with every inch of their burning rotting souls. All he knows is that hell has now given him a flat faced prince in shining liquid crystal armour, riding on a cash filled horse with promises of power and luxury, who's practically handing him success on a silver platter. Doesn't mean that Val trusts him, doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy seeing him lose his shit. But at the end of the day vox has his back, and as long as Val keeps calling for him, he'll eventually turn up and make everything better. Cause hey if Vox hasn't left him yet for this long he must be doing something right. Right?

[flowersnax]

ASTRAL STIGMATA

[corviiids]

sparknotes for chapter 9 of as you like it because a very kind commenter asked for a breakdown and if theres one thing im good at it's breaking down

(spoilers for the fic obviously)

tihs chapter gave me so much trouble. i sat on it for so long i literally hated it by the time i posted it but im starting to forgive it now. it was, as ive said, originally way longer, and the next part of the fic was supposed to be the second half of this one... but it was starting to get absurd and i realised that neither part would have the weight i needed them to have if they were lumped in together. (with some relief, honestly, because i kind of had wanted them to be separate initially but didn't think they'd be long enough. i dont know myself very well.) anyway, the next chapter should be a bit of a doozy now although hopefully not SO absurdly long.

this chapter picks up where the previous cliff hung off, which is to say, after the 'shadow' akechi reveals that he's actually just the real ass guy. akechi in the palace what will he do. the chapter doesn't immediately kick off with ren's reaction though and that is because ren is the most repressed man alive and does not know how he feels about it.

so, akechi disguised himself to enter his palace, which is significant for a few reasons:

1. he's disguised as himself

which i think is ironic in a fun way, but it's also just a very basic nod to the fact that akechi pivots between which of his personae is his default. this isn't necessarily super meaningful, but he does later refer to the black mask suit as

a costume, instead of an outfit. i mean, don't read into it too much, he's just talking, but i did think that probably points to how he feels about his appearance generally.

2. more importantly, his disguise involves taking off his mask.

so he's disguised, yes, and he's disguised as himself, yes, but that disguise is a literal unmasking, which is also kind of ironic. in presenting himself this way he has literally and figuratively made himself vulnerable. they're inside his heart, and the entire time he's in the palace, he is exposed... again both literally and figuratively because he also starts sharing more with ren than he ever has. look, i just think it's fun to have a character who has so many layers that he has to lie so hard that he becomes himself again.

i only want to point this out because (this is also part of larger meta about mona lol) akechi knew about the metaverse, but there is no way to intuit the method of stealing hearts without guidance. it's such a specific and involved process. thje most akechi could work out on his own was that if you killed a shadow, that person would have a mental breakdown. no way to guess that if you send a calling card and then go in within the next 24 hours and take a physical manifestation of a thing that you didn't know existed (process) would lead to that person ahving a change of heart (result). so even if akechi had a palace and knew about it, even if he wanted to do something about it, he would have assumed there was nothing he could do about it - i also have no idea what the process would be for sending yourself a calling card, even if he DID know about the process. so basically in this fic akechi found his palace and just assumed that was it. he was like, fucked up lol. anyway

this just straight up isn't true HAHA so i put in the silly little dichotomy of akechi gently taking ren's arm to protect him from slipping on the ice while telling him that he lied about caring about him. i think in this chapter as akechi begins to openly explain more and more of his thought process, this is probably the first truly clear glimpse you get of exactly what akechi's distortion is and how deep it runs.

the things akechi says with total conviction in this chapter are just... not true, not a fair or founded way to view the world (or the art of performance haha), but he says them with total conviction, and hopefully it should show off how unreliable he is as a source of exposition. one commenter asked about this moment of akc's eyes going yellow and if it was somehting that happened in canon - not really, i was just thinking about those little moments in the game after you send a calling card where the game cuts from the person to their shadow to do a little oneliner about their distortion.

akechi's IN his own palace, so i thought it would be fun to kind of make it a physical thing that can happen to him where he sort of merges with his shadow for a brief second in the moments when the distortion is strongest.

OKAY this is one of my favourite bits of the chapter HAHA the deep soda lore. i dont expect anyone to remember all the way back to chapter 3 but:

literally nobody asked about this but i love the phantom thieves!!! i dream of all the little silly moments of being a team that they must have that we don't get to see in gameplay, for obvious reasons of it wouldn't really work in a game, but i can imagine them in my brain. i can imagine their trickshot contests that get their asses kicked. i can imagine them chanting at each other to chug while joker and oracle compete to down an entire bottle of brand neutral mountain dew baja blast. i can dream.

soda lore is gay.

i dont honestly think it's inherently a bad thing necessarily but this part does kind of set up like... you can see akechi very early on in life forming this worldview that the truth isn't always what you want, you know? this was a 'lie' he and his mother both bought into, they both knew what the truth actually was, so it wasn't real dishonesty, but they just had this little fantasy. i just thought it would be fun for akechi to have a way to bond with his mother and feel closer to her, and that way is by buying into this white lie. idk

akechi's mother isn't really a character and i don't want to form her into too much of one because i think it's very much the point that, like... he made this point in an earlier chapter but having lost her at a pretty young age i think it's quite crucial that akechi doesn't really have a fully formed image of who his mother is outside of what she was to him as a child. so i actively don't want her to feel too real or defined. im not interested in making an oc out of her because i think it defeats the purpose. that said, this line exists to maybe gesture very vaguely at the notion that akechi's mother was a very bright person who similarly was stuck in circumstances that didn't serve to foster her real potential. just the image in my mind of a person who's clever enough to get across algebraic notation in chess by flipping through a book in a few minutes, but was never exposed to the opportunity to learn chess until this moment in someone else's house, and also the particular situation of learning this skill WHILE at someone's place as a call girl, i dunno . i hope im treating this with the grace it deserves but i wanted to build just this particular image in vivid colour while also keeping the reality quite blurry and vague, just to give the reader a sense of where akechi came from while still preserving his limited pov.

my thoughts on the phantom thieves' methods (and how they compare to maruki) are definitely too long and involved to put into a post about this fic chapter specifically, but maybe one day. i also wanna stress im not like... strictly anti-phantom thief or anti-heartstealing lol but i do have thoughts about the philsophy of it and the thieves' hypocrisy WHATEVER that's not for this post. i bring this up only to crow about finding a way to bring up the experience machine (ie maruki's reality) in this fic without it being royal compliant and have it be... hoepfully... sufficiently relevant to the plot. wa hoo! the experience machine came up for the first time back in chapter 4 and im just delighted that i finally got to close that loop. by the way, that experiment is also called the lotus eater machine after the lotus eaters in the odyssey! i dunno that it's actively my favourite thought experiment but it's definitely up there and i think about it a lot.

TITLE DROP

i think i spoke once about what 'as you like it' means. it's obviously the name of the shakespeare play from where 'all the world's a stage' comes, but it has a couple more layers to it as well - akechi's palace is a place where he performs to what he believes other people want or need to see from him - so his appearance is as you like it. and his accusation of the thieves' heartstealing methods is that they twist a person's internal reality to suit their vision - that's the meaning he's taking here, claiming that joker is turning akechi into an unfamiliar new thing, as [joker] like[s] it. you get it.

this running joke of ren really hating vents wasn't something i planned but im attached to it now. prayer circle for his knees

ive basically given up on making sense of samerecarm, which is par for the course for any rpg or video game really where reduction to 0hp/revival are mechanics. like, im inclined to think 0hp is more equivalent to unconsciousness, because... well... otherwise it's pretty cold that they left akechi dead in the engine room without even looking for a way around the wall. lol. but one of mona's revival lines is 'being dead isnt easy!' or something like that, so i kind of just give up and assume it's video game logic you'r enot meant to look at too hard lol. the way i reconcile it for my purposes is to say it's a sort of metaverse-exclusive state of being which is not quite dead but sort of in a limbo state wher eyou can be brought back with specific revival magic, which i refer to as being down. that's uhhh, that's different from the battle status of down... which you get after being hit with a crit/technical/weak skill... look, don't think about it. joker in crow's arms.

this is literally meaningless i just wanted to include a cameo of my very favourite persona q2 battle theme.

[cdmodule]

Commission for @drazzymazzy of my Clock humanization. Thank you again <3

[levysoft]

Clock of the Long Now 02022 update (from We Are As Gods)

(via Clock of the Long Now 02022 update (from We Are As Gods) - YouTube)

[tennessoui]

silly soulmate au where everyone has the first words their soulmate said to them on their body somewhere and anakin’s are “excuse me sir, your shoelaces are untied” so he walks around with his shoes untied as a way of trying to bait life into giving him his soulmate

But one day he’s like super done with it and cranky after a bad day and someone taps his shoulder while he’s waiting at a crosswalk and says “excuse me sir your shoelaces are untied” and anakin snaps “your shoelaces are untied”

and obi-wan “afraid to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known enough to be loved” kenobi says “I’m not wearing shoelaces” kinda flabbergasted because he’s spent like 30 years wearing untieable shoes so no one can ever tell him “your shoelaces are untied” only to be thwarted by a beautiful, aggressive soulmate of a stranger