#Concentrate Deals Near Colorado

[thcpalisade]

Unveiling Excellence in Cannabis Concentrates

Our Happy Camper concentrates promise a potent and flavorful experience, ensuring you explore the pinnacle of cannabis excellence. Elevate your enjoyment with the finest concentrates meticulously crafted for connoisseurs at The Happy Camper Palisade.

[preferredrolloffservices]

Innovative Uses for Trash Dumpsters Beyond Waste Disposal

When people hear the name dumpster, waste collection is the first thing that should come to mind. However, this is not all there is to it, with dumpsters being put to a wide array of creative functions within waste collection. In Preferred RollOff Services, which offers rental services for trash dumpsters it's time to point out the creative ways dumpsters are used in various scenarios. Here, we venture a bit deeper into innovative uses of dumpsters, especially in Colorado Springs.

1. Temporary Storage Solutions

It can use the spot as a temporary storage solution. During a renovation of a house, moving, or performing an intensive cleaning, it may be necessary to have a dumpster on hand, thereby being a dedicated space for things you are not yet ready to get rid of. Instead of crowding your home and yard with your boxes and furniture, you can store these in a dumpster safely until you are ready to deal with the same. It is very helpful for oversized items which would not be accommodated in any other storage container.

2. Community Events and Festivals

Garbage dumpsters can be used at community events and festivals. Instead of having trash cans scattered around a place, bigger dumpsters can be rented so that waste is dispersed in a better way. This way, the events remain clean as well as the procedure of waste removal becomes easier. During the closing of any event, dumpsters are easily collected, hence making the after-clean-up much easier as well.

3. Landscaping Projects

A dumpster in Colorado Springs is best for those homeowners taking up landscaping projects. This is because it will help heap debris and unwanted materials off your yard rather than piling them all over. A homeowner can conveniently dispose of their soil, branches, or old landscaping materials. It leaves your yard organized and safe as you work on your project without litter.

4. DIY Renovation Projects

Home makeover enthusiasts are likely to accumulate a lot of waste when making Do-It-Yourself adjustments. Sometimes there may be a need to remove old fittings, drywalls or construction debris after construction work is complete. The easiest way of going about it would be renting a dumpster. All that will remain will be a clean working environment devoid of distractions hence enabling one to concentrate on the work. Having a container in your backyard or near your workspace can make a huge difference to productivity and safety in protecting against injury and damage from materials left behind.

5. Seasonal Cleans

Whether it is spring cleaning or moving into a house for the holidays, there will be those seasonal cleanouts that generate huge amounts of trash. A roll-off dumpster can be used as a single source for getting rid of all unwanted items rather than taking numerous trips to the local trash facility. This will make the cleanout process much more efficient because homeowners can fill a dumpster at their convenience.

6. Creative Projects

Artistic minds find beauty in trash dumpsters. For example, artists have been found to upcycle furniture that came out of a trash dumpster into an art project or even as unique decorations. In addition to waste management, creativity encourages us to alter our perception of waste.

Conclusion

A trash dumpster in Colorado Springs might be mainly for holding away the trash but it serves much more purposes, much more than what is obvious in mind. From temporary storage solutions and organization for community events to DIY projects and creative ventures, dumpsters are versatile tools for cutting through most tasks.

Here in Colorado Springs, Preferred Roll-Off Services LLC offers competitive trash container rental prices for everyone in order that these applications do not cost a fortune. We can help make dumpsters more effective for the very simple reason that they support better organization, efficiency, and creativity in any project just by putting a different twist on how we use them.

[heartmindandsnow]

Even when one of us is feeling pretty empty, the other one is near by...

Because writing is cathartic for me, it's a long story... so read it only if you really want to.

[And it was a pretty good story... don'cha think]

We all struggle with something, and in those times, the kind of partner you want in it, is the one that can recognize it for what it is. As an overload of our weakness... whatever that may be for us individually. [Footnote:] And might I add to said to weakness circuit breaker... not one that walks away and leaves you dejectedly alone for you to deal with your grief by yourself because your parent rather unexpectedly died. That's horrible, what we need is a compassionate teammate.

My struggle is it's hard for me to discern the difference between when someone wants to end a relationship vs just put it on pause while they themselves have a moment of weakness... because they don't think they want to burden their partner with said moment. It's not until they realize it's a growth process they can just be... in a relationship, without judgement and without fear. Because both her and I, with our respective former spouses, it's all we really ever knew. Walking on egg shells, was a common occurrence for us both, as was the ridicule.

[Side quest]: It's an odd place I know, because the entire world around you wants to judge you for who you are, what's important to you and what you believe in, what kind of job you do, how much money you have, what kind of car you drive, who you associate with, how you dress or look (I struggle with that one), and whatever other metric flavor of the day... but Master Oogway answer's to this is: You just have to believe... (and also who gives a fuck because we'll all be dead so soon).

The real metric to judge any relationship by is to just be at peace with each other, no fighting, no bitter or condescending comments, just wholesome, loving, positive moments that you constantly find yourself thinking about how extraordinarily lucky you are to be with the person who you find insanely attractive because of it, even if it does come with a side serving of "I don't particularly like this [x] thing".

But it's also ironic how said moment, can cause me to reflect and concentrate the moment, because I'm an engineer, turn it into a lens. Fear of abandonment is a real bitch and what it does to the mind. Especially when you've learned early on to be 'extra' for your partner, because you believe they deserve it, but it's also because I am over compensating in not wanting that partner to leave. [Hint: they totally do deserve extra, but sometimes they need to prove that back too via emotional equity].

[Main story line]: We 'share' coffee mugs, because she asked for one of mine. So I gave her two instead. It's in these moments, realizing that I'm also dating an extraordinarily sensitive person, sometimes I think she just needs to rest and sit in my shade for a bit. Because hers is empty metaphorically in the above mug, and it's a way for me to show her while my coffee cup is completely full, I'm here... near by to save a space for you, waiting for the 'the universal great coffee maker' to fill you back up, before picking up where we left off in life's journey.

[Contextual back story]: In Colorado, we were on a rather difficult trail given the altitude, and she stopped so many times, especially on the way back. Apologizing profusely for "holding me up", I gave up telling her not to worry about it after the first handful of times. It was a reaction to her ex spouse, he was perpetually annoyed with her and her shortcomings. I just waited for her... saving the exact same space for her, but physically. Don't get me wrong, despite my three weeks spent at altitude for ski weeks, my heart was pounding too, so it's not like I was going to mind the brief respite. But her coffee cup here, was less full than mine. I can't magically give her oxygen in this case, but I can allow her to just rest.

We attended a concert at Red Rocks, that blew the both of us away. She never tailgated before... lol. Trevor Hall and the Colorado Symphony, sang of one lyric that particularly poetic, Between the moon and sun, I won't give up on you.

I imagine myself to be more spiritually mature than she is, I am after all 3 years older and 7 years ahead of the life altering bookmark of time: divorce. So, while I wait physically as in a difficult trail, or emotionally with a metaphoric empty coffee cup, I am here to give her space, but also not so subtly remind her, such a space isn't necessary when you are with the correct person for you - one who recognizes your short-comings, and hugs you for it anyway.

[Main story line]: If she's in my shade, then I am her tree. Do I always want her to be in my shade? No... I am here for her to recognize that while she needs regain strength within my protective domain, I encourage her to join me in the full brightness that is the sun, and absorb its energy... to ultimately give back to our partnership and her extended social circle.

It's ultimately about growth. Growth as individuals, and growth as a partnership between two people.

I want to grow with her... regardless of where that happens because also attributable to Trevor, I just want to be connected to her soul.

She reads this, and for that I'm glad - because currently this is my only lifeline to show her just how craz I a.. wait, how wonderful I am and how wonderful we would be... together.

As a team. Team Hungarian...

[smythevolvocars6]

Smythe Volvo Cars

Smythe Volvo Cars is the authorized Volvo vehicle in Summit, Westfield, Union, Newark, and Scotch Plains, so residents who can communicate in English may feel secure. volvo dealer near me You can see Smythe Volvo Cars if you turn that direction. For drivers of Volvos, the Smythes are like relatives.

Volvo near me

In Summit, New Jersey, Smythe Volvo Cars is regarded as the best Volvo dealership. For us, this is the most important thing. Even though you weren't happy with the service you got, please stick with us. We go above and above to ensure that the cars you buy from us are sturdy, fuel-efficient monsters that can drive on our roads without incident. We have gained the trust of our clientele by always going above and beyond for them. We will not stop until you are satisfied with the deal we were able to get for you. Our customers are aware that they can count on us to go above and beyond to meet their needs. This emphasizes how crucial it is that we meet your criteria.

We have knowledgeable staff members available to assist you in finding the ideal Volvo in Union, Newark, Kansas City, or any other place. This strategy may be more advantageous for some drivers than for others. At our Summit Volvo dealership, we promise that every vehicle we sell will be of the highest caliber and will exceed your expectations. This vehicle is affordable for everybody. There are many different types of vehicles in this category. Any of these Volvo vehicles is capable of doing this: S60, V60 Cross Country, XC40, XC90, XC60, or S90 are the options available. Our recently introduced automobiles are ideal for families because of their roomy interiors, powerful engines, and comfortable seats. We will not be concentrating on it at this time. Modern safety measures and advanced connectivity are included on every new Volvo car. You may be sure that this package is made to meet all of your requirements for daily driving. Why did we decide to put this policy into effect? Why? Making sure you have an amazing trip is our top priority.

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This app for car maintenance contains bug fixes and software updates. If you value the longevity of your Summit, NJ automobile, we guarantee to adhere to these rules strictly.

At Smythe Volvo Cars, our knowledgeable sales staff will be happy to show you around until you locate the car that best meets your needs. For them, documentation won't be a problem. Your efforts have paid off because all of your articles have been accepted. Fortunately, this is the current situation. Applying for a car loan is easy and quick with our local Volvo dealership. In order to accommodate your needs, we provide a range of financing alternatives for both new and used cars. As a result, we were able to reach our objective. Our staff of knowledgeable finance specialists in Summit, Colorado can assist you in finding the best car loan or lease. All budgets and financial challenges are welcome. We are here to meet all of your needs. These data are required if you wish to apply for a lease or loan for an automobile.

One of the many reasons Volvo drivers are happy is that they can easily get reliable repair and maintenance services.

Volvo dealer near me

Our research indicates that frequent professional vehicle maintenance is the best approach to ensure your automobile lasts as long as possible without sacrificing quality. We are aware of this reality. We know this to be true right now. Visit our Summit, NJ location as soon as possible if you need expert Volvo repair services. You can see how simple it is to get about Summit Township. I sincerely value your consideration. Remember what we've spoken about thus far? It will make sense of what transpired. Our knowledgeable technicians use only original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts and accessories, so they can maintain or repair your car more quickly and inexpensively. You may thus be sure that you will receive excellent support from us. Quick action is crucial as time is of the essence.

The knowledgeable team at Smythe Volvo Cars is dedicated to giving every customer the best possible service, from finance to maintenance to test drives. At every turn, our dealership is dedicated to giving you outstanding customer service. Please do not hesitate to contact us in the event that you require any assistance. The directions to our showroom in Summit, New Jersey are provided below. We really hope that our timely response to your inquiries will inspire confidence in you.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kim Stanley Robinson on "our rewritten imagination"

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of sf's most important utopians, and his utopianism is a model for what we can aspire to. With climate collapse novels like New York 2140, Robinson reveals a utopian vision that is about resiliency in the face of disaster:

https://boingboing.net/2017/03/18/new-york-2140-kim-stanley-rob.html

While his novel Aurora presents an important rebuttal to the fundamentally dystopian idea that we cannot save the Earth and so must colonize space to ensure the continuance of our species:

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-auro.html

This so infuriated the reactionary wing of "hard sf" that Robinson also wrote a nonfiction piece explaining both the science and philosophy behind that vision:

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

But my love affair with Robinson's utopianism began with "Pacific Edge," which remains my go-to novel to brighten my spirits in my darkest hour:

https://boingboing.net/2015/01/15/audio-edition-of-pacific-edge.html

It's the book that's uppermost in my mind as I work on my own next novel, a utopian, post-Green New Deal book called "The Lost Cause."

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/force-multiplier/#gnd

Robinson's nonfiction is every bit as good as his fiction, and, more importantly, every bit as visionary. Some of us may find it "easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," but not Robinson.

http://lab.cccb.org/en/angry-optimism-in-a-drowned-world-a-conversation-with-kim-stanley-robinson/

Importantly, his vision of a sustainable future is both "deep green" and "bright green," grounded in the use of technology to contain and ameliorate the human footprint on our planet.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/20/save-the-planet-half-earth-kim-stanley-robinson

Robinson is a high-tech pastoralist, a guy who disappears into the Sierras with nothing but a backpack for months at a time (he recently told me that he's not writing fiction for a while so he can concentrate on his definitive history of the Sierras).

Robinson was offline in the Grand Canyon when the pandemic struck, rafting down the Colorado River. When he emerged, "it was into a different world. I’ve spent my life writing sf...But I was still shocked by how much had changed, and how quickly."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-coronavirus-and-our-future

Robinson says the pandemic is "rewriting our imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable. We’re getting a different sense of our place in history. We know we’re entering a new world, a new era."

(This is what I love about his work!)

Robinson talks about the pandemic as a kind of training-wheels practice run for the climate emergencies in our near future - a chance to realize how unprepared we are, and how urgent it will all be, and how much we need to do.

"When disaster strikes, we grasp the complexity of our civilization—we  feel the reality, which is that the whole system is a technical  improvisation that science keeps from crashing down."

Coronavirus slays the science denialism that is the ideological basis for climate inaction. "Do we believe in science? Go outside and you’ll see the proof that we do everywhere you look. We’re learning to trust our science as a society."

Science fiction does crucial work here: "Science fiction traces the ramifications of a single postulated change; readers co-create, judging the writers’ plausibility and ingenuity, interrogating their theories of history. Doing this repeatedly is a kind of training."

"We’re now confronting a miniature version of the [climate] tragedy of the time horizon. We’ve decided to sacrifice over these months so that, in future, people won’t suffer as much as they would otherwise... the time horizon is so short that we're the future people."

"To my mind, this new sense of solidarity is one of the few reassuring things to have happened in this century. If we can find it in this crisis, to save ourselves, then maybe we can find it in the big crisis, to save our children and theirs."

"This knowledge that, although we are practicing social distancing as we need to, we want to be social—we not only want to be social, we’ve got to be social, if we are to survive. It’s a new feeling, this alienation and solidarity at once."

"We’re hearing two statements. One, from the President: we have to save money even if it costs lives. The other, from the CDC: we have to save lives even if it costs money. Which is more important? Money, of course! says capital. Really? people reply, uncertainly."

He's got something really important here, it's what's given me hope in my darkest hours.

Before the crisis, I worried that by the time the climate emergency was so manifest that it annihilated denialism, it would be so far gone that nihilism would spring up to replace it.

As in, "OK, fine, you were right, we should have done something about the rhinos. But since there's only one left, why don't we find out what he tastes like?"

The crisis feels like, as a civilization, we were that asshole who refused to wear a seatbelt, but then had a car-wreck that put him in a coma -- from which he miraculously recovered, and now he wears his seatbelt every time.

And like that asshole, we (unforgivably) had to kill a bunch of innocent bystanders to learn a lesson we should have taken to heart a long time ago.

But the only thing worse than our world paying that ghastly price would be to pay it and learn nothing from it.

This isn't the worst crisis of our lifetime. Probably not even the worst pandemic. We've got more coming, in the form of waves of climate emergencies. This was a wake up call -- it's time to get our asses in gear.

BTW, that Pacific Edge book that I read every time I get low? It's just been reissued with the other books in the Three Californias trilogy as a "Tor Essential" with an intro by the amazing Francis "Red Plenty" Spufford.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250307569

Image: Rob Beschizza

[architectuul]

FOMA 28: Infrastructural Scars

The impact that geopolitics has on our natural and built environment is enormous. In times of concentration of power and wealth, or in moments of major crisis, massive infrastructural projects have often been chosen as the way to project dominance and power over people and nature. 

A sinking bunker on an Albanian beach. | Photo by © Alicja Dobrucka

One current example of such a piece of infrastructure is the Mexico-United States barrier which has been proposed by President Trump to become a heavily fortified border wall. A massive investment of 25 billion dollars which has been proven to be easily surpassable and not very effective. 

A section of the border fence between Mexico and the U.S. in Mexicali, Baja California. | Photo © Guillermo Arias

These kinds of interventions are more often massive pieces of propaganda rather than an effective tool to achieve a specified goal. In this way they present a steep price to pay for someone’s personal masterpiece. The following are a collection of five arrogant projects which stand tall as monuments to the short-sightedness of their commissioners.

The World Archipelago represents all continents, Persian Gulf on February 5, 2009. | Photo © NASA by © Jesse Allen

The World Islands is an artificial archipelago constructed in the rough shape of a world map, located in the waters off the coast of Dubai. Construction of the 300 islands began in 2003, only to halt due to the 2008 financial crisis; even though 60 percent of the islands had been sold off to private contractors back in 2008, development on most of these islands has failed to initiate. As of late 2013, only two of the islands had been developed.

Islands are created by dredging sand from the coast. | Photo by © Elian Stefa

One of the two developed islands. | Photo © Creative Kingdom Dubai

Often described as the only man-made mistake visible from space, the story of Salton sea dates back to the end of the late 1890s when a Californian developer decided to divert part of the Colorado River and bring water to the dry but fertile desert of the Imperial Valley. In June 1905, however, unusually strong floodwaters overwhelmed one of the channels and gushed into the valley. Bringing the flood under control took two years of work by 1,500 men, by which time the Salton sea, the largest inland body of water in California, had accidentally been created.

Postcards of the Salton sea exhibiting the leisurely activities available.

The current state of the Salton sea. | Photo via Public Domain

The Russian Woodpecker DUGA-1 was a soviet radar system operated from July 1976 to December 1989 near Chernobyl and Chernihiv in Ukraine. The DUGA system were extremely powerful, and appeared without warning, sounding like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise at 10 Hz worldwide, interfering with legitimate broadcasts, and much more.

Soviet over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system. | Photo © Clay Gilliland 

The systems were extremely powerful, over 10 MW in some cases, and broadcast in the shortwave radio bands. | Photo © Ingmar Runge

Albania’s bunkers are a ubiquitous sight in Albania, with a total of 173,371 bunkers constructed during the communist regime. While they were never used for their intended purpose, the cost of building them was a huge drain on Albania's resources, diverting them away from more pressing needs, such as dealing with the country's housing shortage and poor roads.

Untouched for decades, the bunker shields a tree. | Photo © Alicja Dobrucka

A bunker transformed into a seaside residence. | Photo © Alicja Dobrucka

Basilica of Yamoussoukro resembles St. Peter’s in Rome. | Photo via Wikimedia

Contrary to common belief, the world's largest Catholic church is to be found not in Rome but in Yamoussoukro, a small city in the war-torn African state of Côte d'Ivoire. The massive Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, whose architecture is clearly inspired by the Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome, can comfortably seat 7,000 worshippers, but although Mass is celebrated regularly in the basilica, it is rarely filled to more than a minuscule fraction of its capacity.

The basilica in the surrounding context. | Photo via © Google Earth

The basilica in the surrounding context. | Photo via Public Domain

The case studies available here represent a sample of the research done for Utilitas Interrupta: An Infrastructural Index of Unfulfilled Ambitions curated by Joseph Grima, with associate curator Elian Stefa, for the EXD’11 Biennale. The Concrete Mushrooms project is composed of a book and a documentary film which focus on the reasons for building more than 750,000 bunkers throughout the country of Albania, and how the locals now coexist with them by repurposing them. The bunkers were never used for their intended purpose but have instead become a symbol of the Albanian landscape, often being transformed into chicken coops, silos, hotels, and tattoo parlours. 

---

#FOMA 28: Elian Stefa 

Elian Stefa (1985) is a Tirana based architect and curator. His work focuses on exploring ambiguous territories, revitalisation of abandoned spaces, and collaborative design. Recently he has been selected to join the fourth cycle of the Future Architecture Platform 2019 with ARTiLERIA: Reawakening Sazan. Previously he has participated at the Albanian Pavilion at the 13th Architecture Venice Biennale with Concrete Mushrooms, a project which transforms Albania’s 750,000 bunkers into tourist attractions, demystifying the communist territorial legacy in Albania published by dpr-barcelona. Other notable pojects include acting as Associate Curator and General Coordinator of ‘Adhocracy’, exhibited at the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial, the New Museum NYC, and Lime Wharf London; and exhibitions at La Triennale di Milano, the EXD’11 Lisbon Biennale, Stazione Futuro at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni of Torino, the Helsinki Museum of Cultures, Strelka Institute, and the Harvard GSD.

[givemeacrownofwords]

The Best Friend (Part 12)

A/N: Well hi there! It has been pretty much 6 years since I have posted anything on this blog. It’s been way, way too long. A lot of things have happened to me in six years. I’ve been in my first long term relationship, finished college (bachelors and masters degree), landed my first real job, moved out of my parents’ house, pulled through my depression, and the list could go on. The one thing I haven’t done that I should have been doing all along was writing. About a month or two ago an old follower of this blog reached out to me about “The People We Were”. I was so proud and excited that someone still remembered my fanfics even after all this time. I want to get back to a lot of things that I’d been writing, including that fic in particular, which has always held a special place in my heart. But I recently discovered that I had an unfinished chapter of this fic, The Best Friend, sitting in my old writing folder. It seemed like a good place to begin finishing my old work (the irony). It’s with great excitement and anticipation that I finally post this, to whoever is still out there and following this blog. I missed writing so much and I’m hoping that this will be the true start of me getting back to it on a regular basis. Now that I’m done rambling, hope you enjoy! 

**Summary: Andrea (Andy) Kent has known Tony Stark since she was a little girl, they are best friends and she is intimately involved in the Iron Man project, but what will happen when her work on the suits puts her in grave danger?

Part 12:

Tony’s POV:

It was only as he was running toward danger that Tony realized he was completely unarmed. Luckily, Rhodey had incapacitated a great deal of Twist’s men on his way to setting him free and leaving with Andy. Tony managed to grab a pistol off an unconscious body slumped against the wall and continued briskly down the hallway after checking that it was fully loaded. He scoured the whole compound, kicking down door after door and searching room after room. Twist was nowhere to be found.

Finally he heard footsteps. He cocked the pistol and raised it in front of him. One of Twist’s goons seemed to be running desperately for the exit and had found himself straight in Tony’s path.

“Freeze meathead.”

The man stopped in his tracks and raised his hands above his head.

“Where’s Twist?” Tony demanded, resting his finger on the trigger so that this guy knew he meant business.  

“Don’t shoot me!” the henchman cowered, “He’s already gone! He got in a helicopter with a couple of men and took off with the suit!”

Goddammit, Tony thought, and he stepped up to the man and punched him square in the jaw with the pistol. It had been a gut reaction, done out of anger and frustration, and the man instantly dropped to the floor unconscious. Not only had Twist near killed his best friend, he’d gotten away with a suit. That was a big problem, and Tony knew he’d have to answer for it to SHIELD if he didn’t get it back.

He swiftly found the exit to the near deserted compound and ran out onto the dirt clearing in front of it. Tony collapsed onto his knees in exhaustion and put his head in his hands. He didn’t even look up again until he heard the Iron Patriot land in front of him less than an hour later.

“He got away didn’t he?” Rhodey asked matter-of-factly once he’d lifted the metal faceplate of his suit.

“Yeah,” Tony responded flatly.

“And he’s got Mark 42?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” Rhodey cursed sharply under his breath. He then gave Tony a hand and got him up out of the dirt.

“How’s Andy doing?” Tony asked concernedly once he was back on his feet.

“I managed to get her to a hospital right outside of Boulder. She’s stable and conscious. That girl’s tougher than she looks,” Rhodey gave him a reassuring smile. Tony smiled back, happy to hear that and relieved that his friend hadn’t said another word about his missing suit.

“Think you can get me there?”

Andy’s safety was Tony’s top priority right now, not his worries about SHIELD and not the suit.

“You bet,” Rhodey replied reassuringly, reaching out his arm for him.  

Tony latched on to the suit, and with that, they took off into the quickly darkening sky.

Andy’s POV:

Andy felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Every inch of her body was sore, she could barely sit up, but she was alive and conscious and safe atop a hospital bed, and she couldn’t be more grateful for it. Pepper Potts was sitting directly at her side, holding tight to her hand.

“Before Rhodey left I had him phone SHIELD with the coordinates of that compound. They’re sending Clint and Natasha, and Fury is going to get on the scene as soon as he can too,” Pepper explained to her nervously, giving her hand a squeeze. Andy could tell that she was worried about Tony, and truthfully she was too. She only hoped Rhodey got back in time to help him escape the compound before Twist pulled any more of his dirty tricks.

“I know it’s going to be ok,” she replied to Pepper weakly. Andy had so much more to say to her. She knew that Vin had stirred up problems between her and Tony, and it was all her fault. With a violent tremble, Andy tried to sit up. Pepper attempted to stop her but she pushed up with enough force to finally do it.

“I want you to know Pep…” she turned to the other woman, who looked like she hadn’t slept in days on her behalf, and her stomach did a guilty backflip inside her, “I need you to know…there was never anything like that between me and Tony.”

And there never will be, she also thought internally. Andy had been so wrong to love him like that, to want him to be any more than a brother to her, her best friend. It was Vin who taught her that, even if it had been in the most demented and sickening way possible.

Pepper sighed audibly, she sounded both exhausted and relieved. The thought of it had clearly been weighing on her deeply, but she knew Pepper wouldn’t have come all the way to Colorado if she felt that there was even a ghost of a chance that Andy had betrayed her like that.

“I know,” she responded softly with a gentle smile.

Suddenly, the two women heard a commotion outside the door to the hospital room.

“Mr. Stark I can’t just have you barging in on a patient like this! Ms. Kent is in very fragile condition and it is my advice that she not be crowded while she’s still in recovery.”

“No one’s going to crowd her because I’m going to be the only one going in there,” Andy heard Tony retort, to the objection of several other voices surrounding him.

Upon hearing him outside, Pepper immediately got up and ran through the door. Andrea watched her embrace Tony tightly and give him one of the deepest kisses she’d ever seen since he’d gotten back from New York. Nick Fury, Maria Hill and Rhodey all stood close by.

Andy made eye contact with Fury through the open door and he began to approach her intently but Hill stopped him with a hand to his chest. She thought she heard the SHIELD agent ask him to give her some time, and he looked like he wanted to fight her about it.

“Don’t you get it? If we don’t find out where this Twist bastard is today then he’s completely lost to us. And so is that damn suit,” Fury’s irritation was directed both at Tony and at Agent Hill.

“Clint and Natasha are holding Vin at the compound. I doubt Andy knows anything about where Twist was going to go next, but I bet you anything that he does,” she continued to insist to Fury.

The SHIELD director shot her and Tony an angry look before disappearing from the doorframe and down the hospital wing. Andy heard him check in with Agent Romanoff through his earpiece as he walked away. Hill quickly followed in his wake and Rhodey too, listening to the doctor’s orders to give her space.

Andy finally watched Pepper take Tony’s hands and touch her forehead to his. They both closed their eyes and stood there like that for a moment before Pepper pulled away and took her leave down the hallway too. Then Tony turned and walked into her room.

They hadn’t really spoken to each other since their fight on the day she was kidnapped. So many emotions washed over Andy at the same time in seeing him again, the strongest one being relief for his safety.

He was slow to approach her bedside at first, and he was giving her the type of smile that she had become very accustomed to when they were kids. It had “apologies for getting you into trouble, but you’re the one who chose to be in my mischievous company” written all over it. Andy returned it, weakly but genuinely, and tried to sit up straighter than she had been before. The pain and weakness she felt all over her body made her wince and tremble.  

“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy,” Tony finally sat by her bedside where Pepper had been a few moments ago and encouraged her to stay laying down.

She listened and they were silent for a full minute, concentrating on the whirring and beeping of the hospital equipment rather than the unsaid words between them. Tony was the one who finally broke the silence.

“I’m just so glad you’re ok…” he breathed a sigh of relief and put his hand on hers, squeezing gently.

Andy knew she should have felt ashamed, Vin and Twist had broken her down and finally told Tony the truth about how she felt about him. Instead she felt freer than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

“This isn’t your fault Tony, it’s mine. You were trying to protect me and I should have taken it more seriously. I put you in danger, I hurt Pepper, and we lost a suit…”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Mark 43?” Tony quickly interrupted her, but not in anger. He had an amused look on his face, and he was clearly trying to distract her from her apology and her feelings of guilt. She was so grateful for that.

“It was supposed to be a surprise…” she chuckled weakly and hesitated

a moment before asking, “Well…did you like it?”

“Come on Andy, I loved it!” he exclaimed too loudly. Some nurses peaked into the room through the window to make sure everything was ok before moving on with their rounds on the hospital floor.

Andy let out a laugh, allowing her heart to be light for the first time in what felt like a really long time. Her joy got caught in her throat when she remembered that the design was lost for sure now, or in Twist’s demented hands.

“What are you going to do about Twist?” she asked Tony seriously.

He was silent for a moment and he looked thoughtful. His brows furrowed and she saw anger flash in his eyes. “SHIELD will make sure he’s neutralized,” his response was flat, he was clearly holding back. It would have been obvious to anyone listening that he was lying.

Tony was still clutching her hand and she squeezed back now supportively. “They’re going to need your help, they always do,” Andy replied.

Tony laughed dryly, unable to hide how he truly felt. “Always calling my bluff, ever since we were kids.”

“Come on Tony, Twist made it personal. He used Vin to do that. And I’m not going to take this laying down anymore either. I should have been stronger in there from the beginning, I let them both get to me.”

“But you were strong Andy. I never treated you the way I should have…but you’ve always been there for me.”

Andy’s heart filled up hearing that. Tony wasn’t one for apologizing but she knew that’s what he’d just done, in his own way.

“You will always be my brother Tony,” she replied steadfastly.

Their eyes met and nothing more needed to be said. They both knew that the rest of it all was history.

Not a second later they heard a commotion in the hallway again. It was Fury, arguing with Agent Hill once more about coming in to talk to her. Andy saw him close to the doorway and before Tony could react she beckoned him in. That was all the permission he needed before he bolted past Agent Hill and straight to her bedside.

“Before you say anything Agent Fury I think I have an idea of where Twist might be. He was the one who tried to kidnap me in LA. And he had to have had it in with the cops because he was released way too quickly after he was arrested. He’s got some sort of connection to the town and it might be a good place to start.”

“But would he be stupid enough to go back there when he could go anywhere else in the world?” Tony was the one who responded and Fury nodded in agreement.

“He has a buyer for the suit. I think he was trying to throw us off the scent by coming all the way out here. And trying to draw us all away from home base.”

Fury looked skeptical for a moment, while Tony beamed with pride and excitement at the new lead Andy had given them. “She might be right,” Fury finally conceded, “I’ll see what Romanoff and Barton got out of Vin and then we’ll regroup to LA.” With a sweep of his black trench coat he made his way toward the hallway. He turned and gave Andy a gentle look before saying, “Just try to stay out of trouble for now won’t you Ms. Kent?” He waited for her to nod in agreeance before disappearing around the corner. Agent Hill, who had been lingering outside, trailed quickly behind him.

Andy waited until she was sure Fury was out of earshot and then blurted to Tony, “I’m coming back to LA with you. There’s no way you’re taking down Twist without me.”

He looked shocked at first but for some reason Andy knew he wouldn’t disagree, and she wasn’t wrong. “We go back together,” he began cautiously, “as long as you’re well enough to fly. I’ll talk to Pepper, she got here in the company jet. And just so you know, if you’re joining this fight it’s only so I don’t let you out of my sight for a minute until it’s over and Twist is done.” It was a quick, no nonsense answer and Andy knew it wouldn’t get any better than that.

“I’m on board,” she replied.

“Alright, I’m going to get Pepper and Rhodey and we’re out of here.” Tony then left the room just as quickly as Fury had only moments ago.

Back to LA to find Twist, to get the suit back, to end this.

And I’m finally going to get to fight back.

[ratherxintense]

[[Julia’s attempt at character development - a compilation of meta on events that shape the muse’s personality and behavior. Fair warning: none of these events are very fun.

Life before the Legion - At eight years old, Brightest Fox is half-starved, scraped and bruised and bug-bitten from head to toe. He scavenges with his sister and learns the many dangers of the wastes. She has widened his small mind to fit a catalogue of necessary fears - poisoned water in the well, scorpions in the dirt, evil men in the night. Fox fears all of these things and has no room left for ghost stories. He knows that the wasteland hates children and wants all of them dead. For his sister, he tries to stay alive. He trusts her and wants to trust others - at least make a friend. But for now, her voice and their campfire at night are the only true comforts he has.

Separation from his sister - Fox is better fed in the camp with the men in red and black. Every aspect of his day is decided by strangers, but he fears challenging them. He only fights when they tear his sister away - and learns quickly that fighting is as useless as he expected. He feels helpless, the core of his life ripped out and set to be replaced by militant dogma. He is mute for months following. Beatings fail to make him speak, but drive a cold anger into him. He unleashes it on practice targets, on the dirt beneath his feet, on other boys who mistake him for a weakling or look to be weaklings themselves. Each spate of concentrated violence is rewarded by his instructor. He receives injury and deals it back greivously, with nothing to lose. His many fears remain, but he bears them silently. He has no family to speak them to. Instead he fights through each day in the pursuit of crushing them.

Deathclaw massacre - By ten years old, Vulpes earns a "proper" name. His restored voice is stripped of warmth, and he lives immersed in the violence of the Legion, hungry for the approval of his instructor. His last instructor chose him to live when a monster tore into their camp. The other boys were doomed, and Vulpes crushes his creeping guilt by proving every day that he is the better legionary after all. That he must have been worthy of survival. He crushes the memory of their screams by beating boys twice his size in fights. He crucifies his first profligate and makes himself laugh. When he wakes up sweating in the night, the image of a deathclaw snapping its jaws around his sister cold and real, he dashes for the wastes and lights fires, squashing moths between his palms as they evacuate the brush.

Near Crucifixion - By seventeen, Vulpes has faced the scorpions and the evil men, and every abstract fear that had kept him close to his sister's side as a boy. He has beaten them all - they fear him. But his methods were met with disapproval by the Centurion Domitius, and fifteen gruesome lashes bring him to the delirium of near-death. He hates the sound of his own pain, almost wishes for the mercy of that deathclaw from his nightmares. Caesar's divine intervention is all that keeps him clinging to his old image. He will remake himself - a legionary fit to serve the master that has saved his life. He will live completely for the purposes of that master. Serving any lesser man would be an act of disloyalty, a trait which he despises. As soon as his wounds close, he forces on a red uniform and submits to training as a frumentarius.

Encounter with Hector - Life among the frumentarii allows Vulpes to move beyond direct violence. He relishes subterfuge, even as the vicious spirit of a killer still squirms inside him. Punching an enemy becomes less satisfying than charming it before sliding a knife between its ribs. The prospect of engaging outsiders makes him eager, and he crosses the Colorado alone, obsessed with impressing his Lord Caesar. Hector seizes every notion of strength that Vulpes thought he had, and shakes them until they are pulverized. Vulpes does not remember who he is as he staggers over the desert. He laughs at visions of charging deathclaws, and beats his head until he no longer feels brain matter pressing on his skull. Hector screams pure auditory terror into him from somewhere far too close, and eventually disappears. Vulpes walks east knowing that a monster worse than him exists. That knowledge drives him to torture the Legion's captures without mercy, to rain green death on Camp Searchlight and raze Nipton to cinders. He must be a monster, a loyal, better monster. Like every pain before it, he will take the pain in his head and make himself hurt others ten times worse. No casualty is innocent. Even if they are - they are only moths in a brush fire.

[moodycastiel-writes]

level-headed

requested by anonymous: i have a Castiel x Reader request! :) Reader had snuck off on a hunt that Cas had warned her to not go on, and she gets injured bad during the hunt, and since she’s super scared, she prays to Gabriel to help her since they’re friends. And when they get back to the bunker, Cas freaks out when he finds the reader unconscious in Gabriel’s arms, and Gabriel tells him what happened and Cas lectures reader as to why he didnt want her to go (he loves her too much to lose her).

summary: you’re hot-headed and cocky, too cocky for your own good. when you catch wind of hikers going missing up in the Colorado mountains, you take the case for yourself. castiel catches you while you’re packing and argues that you can’t go, especially not alone, which leads to an argument between the two of you where you storm off and end up going anyways. What you thought was one wendigo turned out to be a pack of them, and you’re in way over your head.

warnings: angst, some strong language, depictions of blood and gore teeny tiny bit of season 13 spoilers

pairing & characters: castiel x reader, gabriel, winchesters(mentioned)

You typed away furiously at your computer, you pen scribbling onto your notepad, taking notes on an upcoming case. Five hikers gone missing in the span of five weeks, none of the bodies had been found. Each of the campsites had been torn to shreds, and there were no tracks to indicate what did it. You, being the smart hunter you are, knew it was immediately a wendigo. You took out several wendigo over the past several years that you’ve been a hunter, so this should be a piece of cake.

You slammed your laptop shut and shoved it, along with your notes, into your backpack down by your feet and quickly stood up, excited to get out and get on a hunt by yourself again. You loved Sam and Dean Winchester, you really did, but they always put you in the back seat when it came to hunts. You were a good hunter, better than the Winchesters, but they were too cautious when it came to you. A solo hunt was something you needed to blow off some steam, especially something that would take skill and concentration, instead of a simple salt-and-burn.

Just as you were about to head to the armory, the door to the bunker opened, and in walked Castiel.

“[Y/N], hello,” he greeted you as he walked down the large staircase.

“Castiel,” you greet, acknowledging his presence.

“Where are you off to,” he asked, noticing you were alone in the bunker, Sam and Dean off looking for a lead on finding a way to open the door to the apocalypse world.

“I’m going on a hunt. Don’t wait up,” you responded, brushing past him. You didn’t get far, as a gentle grip on your upper arm held you in place.

“Wait, [Y/N], maybe you should wait for Sam and Dean to get back and you guys can go together,” he offered, releasing his grip on your arm. You gave in an incredulous look and scoffed at him.

“I’d rather not. People dying, y’know,” you told him, and iciness laced through your voice. “It’s no big deal, I can handle it.”

“[Y/N],” he sighed, “please.”

“Please what, Castiel? I’m a damn good hunter, I can take care of a stupid case on my own,” you shot back, your voice beginning to raise.

“Yes, [Y/N], know that, but–” he started, but you had already cut him off.

“There is no ‘but’. I’m not some damsel in distress. I’m a hunter.”

Castiel looked at you through squinted eyes. He could feel the heat your temper was radiating, and was trying to diffuse your anger before you erupted.

“[Y/N], just listen to me. Please, I–” but you had already heard enough, ripping your arm from his grip and sending him an ice-cold look that brought chills even to him.

“Fuck off, Cas. I can handle this myself.”

Before he could get another word in, you had already stormed off, your temper at its boiling point. You stomped and grumbled your way down to the armory, throwing all the weapons and medical supplies you needed that could fit in your bag and you were out door in no time. You jammed your keys into the ignition of your ‘78 red Mustang and sped off to Colorado, dreading the long drive.

—

When you arrived at the motel in Colorado the next night, you wasted no time in unpacking everything and opening your laptop again, going over your notes ten, twenty more times. By the time all the information was burned into your mind, the sun was already rising. You had about fifty missed calls from Castiel, and ignored all of them, still angry with how little of faith he had in you. You were going to prove to the angel that you were a good hunter, and you deserved to be treated like one.

You grabbed your backpack off the ground by the foot of the bed and rummaged through it, making sure you had everything you needed.

Medkit? Check. Flare guns? Check. Shotgun? Check.

You grabbed your car keys and made your way to the door, eyes lingering on your phone that lay abandoned on the glass end table. There was a voice in the back of your head scolding you, telling you to apologize to the angel for having such a thick skull, but decided against it, leaving the phone long forgotten on the table as you headed out the door.

It took only a couple minutes of driving to get to the edge of the reservation and you were out of the car and started your trek through the forest. You pulled a map of the reservation out of your back pocket and opened it up, finding where you needed to go easily. Each hiker that had gone missing had set up camp in a five mile radius of each other, and right in the middle of all the disappearances, there was a massive cave, hidden to the common, everyday average-joe type of guy. You knew the cave was the perfect place for a wendigo to hide out, especially since the area was major in camping and hiking. You were less than five miles away from the first campsite, so you figured you were roughly ten miles from the cave. If you went fast enough, you should be in and out before nightfall. With a triumphant grunt, you folded the map in your pocket and headed onward, pulling the strings on your backpack tight against your body.

—

By hour three, you had finally made it to the first campsite, or what was left of it, anyways. Most of it was still blocked off due to police investigation, but with no officer on duty to block off the area, you were able to sneak through the site and continue on.

“God, this is taking forever,” you grumbled to yourself as your boots sloshed through the mud for the umteempth time, forcing your aching legs to push on. You could see the mouth of the cave in the near distance and picked up your pace, speeding up to a light jog. You reached around to the mouth of your backpack and grabbed the flare gun, holding it tightly in your left hand as you used the right to put more flares into the pockets of your jacket, just incase.

As you approached the cave opening, you stood on guard as you raised the gun, walking further into the damp cave. The further you walked, the darker and colder it got, sending a chill coursing down your spine. The sudden pungent stench of what could only be described as death filled your nostrils, and you knew you were getting close.

You slowed your pace down to a complete stop, listening to see if the wendigo was anywhere near you. Wendigo’s were good hunters, but you were better.  A low growl pierced through the silence, the hair on your neck standing up straight. You turned just in time to dodge the claws of the beast, ducking down and rolling out of the way. You stood back up quicker than the wendigo could recompose itself and shot the flare directly into the creatures chest.

You didn’t wait to see it go up in flames, instead you reloaded the gun and pressed on, determined to find survivors in the cave.

As you continued, you saw a break of light straight ahead, and jogged to the opening in the cave. To your delight, five bodies were suspended from the ceiling of the cave, only one of them appearing to be conscious.

“Help me,” the hiker groaned out as you approached him, “please.”

“Hey, you’re going to be okay. It’s dead,” you reassured him, cutting the man down with the knife you kept stashed in your jacket.

“All of them?” he questioned as you helped him to the ground.

“There’s more than one?” you asked, your voice shaking ever so slightly.

“There’s at least five of them.”

“Mother—”

A force strong enough to knock down a building came flying at you, sending your body crashing against the cave wall. You groaned in pain as your head slammed against the damp ground, the flare gun falling just out of arm's reach.

Two more wendigos came out of hiding, joining the one that had just attacked you. Regaining your composure as quickly as you could, you rolled over to the right and grabbed your gun, shooting a flare into another wendigo, it’s body going up in flames.

The other two let out a scream, one of them lunging towards you faster than you could even imagine. It brought its hand down, swiping its claws down your left arm. You screamed in pain, kicking your legs out to throw the creature off of you.

Blood pooled from the new wound, enticing the second wendigo to lunge at you, as well. You barely had time to register its attack before it was on top of you, grabbing you by the neck, lifting you in the air.

Your gun dropped to the ground with a clatter as it was getting harder to breathe. You flailed against the tight grip of the wendigo, trying to break from its grip. Finally, it threw you down to the ground, the feeling of your ribs breaking under the pressure of you overwhelming you. You rolled into your stomach, trying your best to reach for the gun when a third wendigo entered your line of sight.

As your fingers gripped the handle of the gun, claws raked down your back, digging harshly into your flesh. Another scream tore its way through your already sore throat at the feeling of your torn flesh. You pulled the trigger on your gun, sending another flare out into one of the wendigo, taking another one down. You rolled over onto your back, your body screaming in protest as you quickly reloaded the flare gun again and took down another wendigo.

When you went to reach into your pocket to grab another flare, you came out empty.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” you cursed, out of flares. One more wendigo remained, and you had no way of killing it, just a pistol and a knife, which would only piss it off more.

The remaining wendigo lunged at you, sending you back down to the ground, your head smashing against the cement ground. White spots danced across your vision, and the last thing you saw before total darkness was the wendigos face above yours, it’s white eyes staring deep into your soul.

—

When you woke again, your first thought was that you wish you didn’t. Your entire body was screaming in pain, and you could feel your body shutting down. Your tongue sat uncomfortably in your mouth as the metallic taste of blood was all you could focus on. Warm blood trickled down your face, landing in the pool of blood underneath your suspended body.

You tried to wiggle your way out of the ropes keeping you tied to the ceiling, but every movement made the brink of unconsciousness loom over you. You turned your head to the side, the body of the hiker torn to shreds over to the edge of the cave opening. Fuck. You wanted to cry, your efforts to save at least one person in vain.

You heard the growl of the last wendigo as it approached you, and you felt it lick a stripe up your leg where your pants were torn, lapping up the dried blood. You cringed at the feeling, trying to kick it away.

The wendigo ran its claws down the back of your left calf, breaking the skin there while it crushed the bones in your right. You tried to scream, but your mouth was too dry to even let out a noise.

The pain turned white hot, and you felt yourself beginning to pass out again, and you prayed that you wouldn’t wake again.

—

Halfway across the world, a certain archangel in hiding was enjoying his day hidden out in a run-down motel, trying his hardest to regenerate his grace, when he felt the familiar tug of someone praying to him. Usually, he ignored any and all prayers, seeing as most of the time they came from the Winchester duo, but for some reason, he actually listened to this one.

Gabriel, please help me.

Gabriel’s eyebrows furrowed at the sound of your voice as he continued to listen. I screwed up, bad. I need help. Please, Gabriel. God, please be hearing this.

Gabriel knew you, you were hunting with the Winchesters when you guys first encountered him at that college where he was giving those douchebags their ‘just desserts.’ You were hotheaded and arrogant, and he knew you were going to grow to be a damn good hunter. He knew the last thing you would ever do was pray to him, or any angel for the matter.

He followed the tug of your prayer, and in an instant he was by your side in what looked like to be a cave. He looked up at your unconscious body suspended from the ceiling and his blood turned cold. Using as much grace as he could, he cut you down from your bindings and held you tightly in his arms. You groaned at the contact of your raw skin on his.

With a flutter of his wings, no longer were the two of you in the cave, but you were in the warmth of the bunker.

“Hello?” Gabriel called out, hoping someone was home to help you so he could leave. He couldn’t be here, not now while the Winchesters and Castiel were depending on his help to save their friends, or whoever they needed to save.

“Gabriel?” a voice called out, the figure of Castiel coming into view. His confused expression morphed into one of immediate worry at the sight of your body in his brothers arms, the only sign of you living were your shallow breaths rising and falling unevenly.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, his voice shaking as he was beside Gabriel in an instant.

“I don’t know. I heard her praying to me, and when I found her, she was already unconscious.”

Gabriel lied you down on one of the couches in the room on your back, your blood leaving a stain on his clothes.

“Help me heal her,” Castiel ordered, his hand already on your forehead, his grace flowing through you. Gabriel complied with no arguments, his hand resting gently on your arm as his grace mixed with his brother’s.

Soon, all your open wounds were stitched closed, the only sign of your past hunt being the scars left behind. Your breaths were coming out more even now, and the pain in your body subsided.

“I’m going to take her to her room,” Castiel whispered, a forlorn expression on his face.

“I should go,” Gabriel responded. “Helping her used up a lot of my grace. I need to recuperate.”

Castiel nodded absentmindedly as he scooped your body into his arms, taking you to your room. He heard the flutter of Gabriel’s wings as he left the room, your body held tightly in his arms as he walked to your room. Once inside, he placed you gently on your bed, making sure your pillow was tucked safely under your head, trying to provide you with as much comfort as he could. He pulled your desk chair over to the edge of your bed and sat down, waiting for you to stir, his hand gripping yours tightly.

—

When you woke again, you expected to see the fiery pits of Hell; your bedroom was the last place you expected to be. You let out a groan from your body being so stiff, but otherwise felt no pain. A hand was gripping your own, and you gave whoever the person was a gently squeeze to that hand.

“[Y/N],” you heard a voice gasp from beside you, the sudden contact lossed.

“Cas?” you groaned, blinking your eyes open, adjusting to the harsh light.

“Yeah, [Y/N], it’s me. I’m so happy you’re okay,” he said, relief flooding over him. He helped you sit up, your back resting against the wooden headboard of your bed, a pillow bracing your lower back.

“What happened? How did I get out?” you questioned. The last thing you remembered was being dinner for that ugly son of a bitch.

“Gabriel heard your prayers.”

“Gabriel?” you asked. “I didn’t even know I was praying to him.”

Castiel nodded his head. “He said you were unconscious when he arrived, you must have been dreaming.” A silence settled over the two of you, and your argument from the other day was all you could think about.

“Cas,” you whispered, grabbing his hand. “I’m sorry.”

Never in your thirty-five years of being alive have you ever spoken those words. You never apologized, regardless if you were in the wrong or not. “I was in way over my head. You were right.”

Castiel said nothing, his eyes trained on your hand in his. “I should have more faith in you, [Y/N]. But I should never have let you leave this bunker.”

You sighed, using your other hand to guide Castiel’s face to look at you. You rubbed your thumb gently on his cheek before dropping your hand. “Cas, please listen to me. I have one hell of a thick head, and I would not have listened to you no matter the circumstances. I thought I could handle it, but I couldn’t. That doesn’t mean I’m not a good hunter”

“You’re a great hunter, [Y/N], I know that, I know that better than anyone else, and I know that you have this part of you that needs to prove you’re the best, which means you refuse to ask for help on anything, but you need to understand how dangerous that is,” Castiel spoke gently, not wanting to cause another argument. “You don’t need to be so competitive all the time. It’s okay to need others once and a while.”

You winced at his words, guilt washing over you like a tidal wave. You knew he was right, how self-destructive your tendencies were, but you couldn’t just change over night. You didn’t know if you could change at all. You were raised in the hunter life, and your father made damn sure you were the greatest hunter out there. The constant tests he laid out for you, and how he reprimanded you if you failed… You shuddered at the thought.

“Cas, please,” you pleaded, but for what? You weren’t even sure.

“You matter, [Y/N]. You matter to a lot of people. You matter to me. You need to know that, you have to.”

An overwhelming feel of different emotions settled over you, all of them too powerful for you to begin to say anything to Castiel. Instead, you tugged him to you and wrapped your arms around his center, resting your head against him. “I’m sorry,” was all you could muster up. You expected Castiel to stiffen underneath you, for him not to reciprocate your actions, so it surprised you when you felt his arms wrapping around you, pulling you closer to him.

“You have to be more careful,” he muttered, finally breaking away from your embrace. You nodded your head slightly, a small smile coming up on your face.

“Thank you,” you whispered. A sudden wave of fatigue settled over your body, and you stifled out a yawn.

Castiel helped you back down the bed, grabbing a fluffy blanket from your desk and covering your body until just your head peaked out. Your eyes fluttered shut as you snuggled into the warmth of the blanket, and as you were just on the brink of unconsciousness, you could have sworn you felt lips against your temple.

Castiel watched your sleeping form from the doorway, contentment settling over him. He flicked the light off in your room and smiled softly at you. “You’re welcome.”

[phroyd]

For 63-year old U.S. Post Office carrier Peggy Frank, that Friday marked her first day back at work after recovering from a broken ankle. At 3:35 p.m., Frank was pronounced dead after paramedics found her unresponsive in her non-air-conditioned truck. In September, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed what seemed a forgone conclusion: Frank died of hyperthermia — she overheated.

A few months later, in November, the Woolsey Fire swept through Malibu and parts of the San Fernando Valley. The blaze killed three and forced the evacuation of almost 300,000 people, burning 96,000 acres and destroying 1,643 structures. Then, after heavy rain in areas scarred by the fire, came the mudslides in December and January that killed one person and closed portions of the Pacific Coast Highway.

For most of the population, climate change is too big a thing to grapple with. As the theorist Timothy Morton argued, it’s a “hyperobject” — it is too big, too sprawling in time and space, and too complex to see fully from any single vantage point. It’s numbing. But by narrowing our focus, we can catch more than a glimpse. It may be easier to understand climate change at the regional level, says Katherine Davis Reich, associate director of UCLA’s Center for Climate Science. “We can all appreciate what climate change impacts would be in our backyard and act on that, much more than at the global level.”

Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States, is perched precariously on the edge of the Pacific. Not long ago, it was the nation’s frontier; today, its cultural industries produce the globe’s films, music, and television, always hunting for the next new thing. Here, the line between the present and the future has always been thin. As it swelters, burns, erodes, and collapses, that barrier may have been swept away altogether. For L.A., 2018 was not a sign of things to come. It’s a sign of things that have arrived.

That Los Angeles should exist at all is itself a tale of the extraordinary becoming commonplace. An underpopulated backwater until the discovery of oil in 1892, today’s L.A. is a thick smear of civilization over what may not actually be a desert, but what certainly has the mythic feel of one. Precariousness is the resting state of L.A.’s collective unconsciousness.

The city has been grappling with ecological collapse since its beginnings — and not just in films like Chinatown or San Andreas. In 1927, the Los Angeles Times warned of an environmental reckoning: “I was pessimistic enough to imagine that self-confident Los Angeles had forgotten Babylon, Palmyra, Palestine, China and Timgad. What I now saw was our own beloved land. And I saw sand dunes, sage brush, aridity, stately ruins, idle derricks, desolation.”

“By the end of century, a distinctly new regional climate state emerges.” This climate includes a new, fifth season: a super summer.

Even the most dire predictions don’t suggest that Los Angeles will go the way of Timgad — a Roman colony in modern-day Algeria that is now covered by sand. People will still flock here, and even if the city were to collapse, it would happen over a much longer time scale. Still, by 2069, Los Angeles could well be on the way to a new season of misery.

“With the exception of the highest elevations and a narrow swath very near the coast, where the increases are confined to a few days, land locations see 60–90 additional extremely hot days per year by the end of century,” one study concluded. Downtown Los Angeles could experience up to 54 days measuring 95 degrees or higher by 2100, a ninefold jump. By then, temperatures in Riverside could reach over 95 degrees for half the year.

“By the end of century,” the authors of the study found, “a distinctly new regional climate state emerges.” This climate includes a new, fifth season: a super summer, driving people indoors for weeks at a time, stressing the power grid with heavy demand for air conditioning, and wreaking havoc on agriculture and, by extension, the food supply.

Climate change plays favorites, and the heat increase would not be evenly felt. In fact, its unequal distribution could create an “environmental justice story,” explains Davis Reich. “Areas like the San Fernando, the San Gabriel Valley, or the Inland Empire, where the extreme heat burden is already greater, are where the season of extreme heat will occur — parts of the region that are arguably less well-equipped to deal with compared to places like Santa Monica.” There’s a dark irony there, since wealthier people produce more carbon emissions. “The people who have contributed to the problem the least are going to suffer from it earlier and more,” Davis Reich says.

Meanwhile, beaches in Los Angeles will be facing their own threats. Rising sea levels will attack the coast in at least two ways: inundating beaches and eroding cliffs. “Our beaches are compromised. Not just from overall sea level rise, but also coastal storm events,” says Lauren O’Connor Faber, the city’s chief sustainability officer.

In 2017, scientists modeled the effects of sea level rise on 500 kilometers of shoreline in Southern California. A sea level rise of 0.93 to two meters, they predicted, would result in the loss of 31 to 67 percent of beaches in Southern California, including some of its most well-known. A separate USC studyconcluded, “In Malibu, both low and high sea level rise scenarios suggest that long segments of beach will essentially disappear by 2030.”

“Those beaches are the basis for a lot of California’s identity,” said the first study’s lead author, Sean Vitousek, an assistant professor of civil and materials engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Vitousek was part of another research project predicting that because of rising sea levels, sea cliffs in Southern California would erode, on average, up to 120 feet over the next 80 years. By comparison, the rate of cliff erosion in California over the past 80 years maxed out at 1.5 feet. At the end of the century, the model predicted an increase in cliff erosion of “27–185% above historically observed retreat rates.”

Those changes put more than just surfers and beachcombers in peril. In 2060, sea level rise will likely put between 414 and 3,979 homes along the coast in the L.A. region at risk of flooding — up to $3 billion in value. Beach nourishment — artificially adding sand to bulk out the shoreline — is one option but may not be enough. The coast could be armored with sea walls, cliffs shored up, and sea gates constructed. Vitousek says that a shoreline retreat strategy might be needed — but it won’t be easy. “Because there is so much money involved in all of this, people will fight tooth and nail to keep themselves on the coast for as long as possible,” he says.

And as the coastline advances, the forests around Los Angeles have already begun to burn.

In December 2017, a series of 27 wildfires ignited in Southern California, including the Thomas Fire, which burned more than 281,000 acres across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, resulting in two deaths and the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Less than a year later, the Woolsey Fire burned 96,949 acres, spreading south from the mountains into Malibu, where it destroyed hundreds of homes and killed three people.

If you think think of 1994’s Northridge earthquake as L.A.’s signature disaster, the coming decades may make you reconsider. Because while climate change may not have much effect on earthquakes, it will lead to more — and more destructive — wildfires. The area burned by Santa Ana fires is predicted to increase by 64 percent by the middle of the century, compared to 1981 to 2000, while non–Santa Ana fires, which occur from June to September and are concentrated inland, will increase by 77 percent. The number of structures destroyed will rise as well — 20 percent for Santa Ana fires and 74 percent for non–Santa Ana fires. Santa Ana fires currently threaten 3,400 structures in an average year, while non–Santa Ana fires put 440 structures at risk per year.

Eventually, all that risk adds up.

“One thing that often gets lost is that wildfires are perfectly natural,” Davis Reich says. “These landscapes were made to burn and need to burn periodically to be healthy. When we build into our wildlands, there is a risk that our buildings will burn. We have to confront that more seriously than we have in the past.”

After fires destroyed a neighborhood in the Bay Area in 2017, local politicians debated the wisdom of rebuilding homes in high-risk areas. There was little appetite for such a move there (or for similar efforts in parts of Southern California), but eventually it may become too expensive to continue rebuilding in high-risk spaces. The Los Angeles Times mapped the 1.1 million buildings in California located in zones at highest risk for fires, showing clusters in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Palos Verde Peninsula, Mission Viejo, and Yorba Linda. Nearly all of Topanga, Paradise, and Malibu were also at risk. Few political leaders want to discuss managed retreat yet — but in 50 years, they may have to.

Climate change is no longer on the horizon. It has arrived.

The masterstroke that allowed Los Angeles to grow may be the one that causes it to retract: Los Angeles depends on imported water, whether from the Owens Valley or farther abroad. As the globe warms, those supplies will dwindle and become harder to manage. Sixty to 70 percent of the water used in Southern California comes from the San Joaquin River and Tulare Lake basins, the Sacramento River basin, Mono Lake, and the Colorado River basin. (The bulk of the remainder is pumped local groundwater.) Of that, 75 percent is drawn from spring snowmelt from the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, and other mountain ranges.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in November 2018, projected “substantial reductions in snowpack, less snow and more rain, shorter snowfall seasons, earlier runoff, and warmer late-season stream temperatures.” Snowpack reduction in Southern California mountains could reach as high as 50 percent by the end of the century. At the same time, water flow in the Colorado River could be down 35 to 55 percent.

Water demand in 2050 is projected at 1.4 million to 1.7 million acre-feet per year, while supply is projected at 1.4 million acre-feet per year. At best, it’s break even. At worst — well, ask Cape Town.

And those estimates may underrepresent the risk to L.A.’s water supply. A 2015 study concluded that “the mean state of drought in the late 21st century over the Central Plains and Southwest will likely exceed even the most severe megadrought periods of the Medieval era,” causing “an unprecedented fundamental climate shift with respect to the last millennium.”

Another study conducted in 2016 found “a pronounced increase of droughts and aridity in the Southwest during the latter half of the 21st century.” A megadrought — one that would last multiple decades — “could become commonplace.” Droughts of that magnitude were associated with collapse of the Angkor, Anasazi, and Maya civilizations.

“There are two futures in front of us,” says O’Connor Faber, CSO of Los Angeles. “One in which we do not act, do not take leadership. We let the disasters happen. That’s an untenable future. The good news is that’s not at all the future that L.A. accepts.”

It’s not a future that the state of California hopes will come to pass. In 2006, the state enacted a cap-and-trade system to reduce its carbon emissions. A new state law mandates that by 2045, California will rely solely on clean electricity. In recent sessions, state legislators have begun to reshape the laws that govern the state’s housing market, hoping to encourage denser buildings oriented around mass transit, rather than sprawl that forces drivers onto jammed freeways.

For its part, the city of Los Angeles has embarked on an ambitious effort to do what it can. As Mayor Eric Garcetti told Rolling Stone in September, “We’re not waiting for Washington. The cavalry isn’t coming.”

So the city is building up local water supplies and curbing demand, increasing the tree canopy and building out cooler infrastructure to reduce its heat island, spurring the installation of solar power, and armoring its beaches and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Progress has already been made: Emissions at the port have dropped by double digits, tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers have been installed, and improvements in public transit are coming.

As she works through the list, Faber O’Connor says she recognizes the magnitude of the task but has reason to hope. “I’m feeling very positive,” she says. For her city, climate change is no longer on the horizon. It has arrived. And like a car speeding down a clear freeway, the city is racing to catch up.

Phroyd

[theculturedmarxist]

     By    Patrick Martin    

       29 June 2019  

Four hours of nationally televised debates Wednesday and Thursday among 20 Democratic presidential candidates demonstrated the gigantic disconnect between the claims of this pro-war, pro-corporate party to be driven by concerns for the well-being of working people and the reality of poverty and oppression in America, for which the Democratic Party is no less responsible than the Republicans.

The stage-managed spectacle mounted by NBC marked the formal beginning of an electoral process dominated by big money and thoroughly manipulated by the corporate-controlled media.

The attempt to contain the growing left-wing opposition in the working class and channel it behind the second oldest capitalist party in the world necessarily assumed the form of lies and demagogy. For the most part, the vying politicians, all of them in the top 10 percent on the income ladder, made promises to provide healthcare, jobs, decent schools, tuition-free college and a clean environment for all, knowing full well they had no intention of carrying them out.

No one—neither the millionaire media talking heads asking the questions nor the candidates—dared to mention the fact that that Democratic Party has just voted to give Trump an additional $4.9 billion to round up, detain and torture hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including children, in the growing network of concentration camps being set up within the US. Facts, as they say, are stubborn things, and this one demonstrates the complicity of the Democratic Party in the fascistic policies of the Trump administration.

The second night of the debate featured the front-runners, former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden has a long record of reactionary politics, including in the Obama administration. Sanders is continuing in this election his role in 2016 of channeling growing support for socialism into the framework of a right-wing party.

The fraud of a “progressive” Democratic Party and presidential candidate was summed up in the near-universal declaration of the media that Senator Kamala Harris had emerged as the clear winner, part of a coordinated effort to promote her candidacy. The African-American senator was lauded for attacking Biden for statements boasting of his ability in the past to collaborate with segregationist senators and his past opposition to busing for school integration.

It was Harris who adopted the most transparently bogus posture of left-radicalism in Thursday night’s debate, repeatedly declaring her agreement with Bernie Sanders and raising her hand, along with Sanders, to support the abolition of private health insurance in favor of a single-payer system. By Friday morning, however, she had reversed that stand, claiming she had “misheard” the question and declaring her support for the continuation of private insurance.

Harris climbed to the Senate by serving for years in the Bay Area of California as a law-and-order district attorney and state attorney general, defending police killers and bankers engaged in foreclosure fraud, including Trump’s current treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has been among the most rabid of Democrats in attacking Trump as a stooge of Russian President Putin. In Thursday’s debate, her main foray into foreign policy was to denounce Trump for being soft on Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

She is being promoted most enthusiastically by those sections of the ruling class, whose views are promoted by the New York Times, who want the Democratic campaign to be dominated by racial and gender politics so as to mobilize the party’s wealthy upper-middle class base and divert and divide the mass working class anger over social inequality.

Many of the candidates fondly recalled the Obama administration. But those eight years saw the greatest transfer of wealth from working people to the super-rich in American history. The pace was set by the initial $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, which was expanded to uncounted trillions in the course of 2009, combined with the bailout of the auto companies at the expense of the autoworkers, who suffered massive cuts in benefits and a 50 percent cut in pay for new hires, rubber-stamped by the United Auto Workers.

The Obama administration also deported more immigrants than any other, a fact that was raised in a question to Vice President Biden, who confined himself to empty declarations of sympathy for the victims of Trump’s persecution, while denying any comparison between Trump and Obama.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado attacked Biden for claiming credit for a bipartisan budget deal in 2011 with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Far from a genuine compromise, he said, the deal “was a complete victory for the Tea Party. It extended the Bush tax cuts permanently,” as well as putting in place major cuts in social spending which continue to this day. Bennet neglected to mention that he had voted for the deal himself when it passed the Senate by a huge majority.

It was remarkable, under conditions where President Trump himself declared that the United States was only 10 minutes away from launching a major assault on Iran earlier this month, that the 20 Democratic candidates spent almost no time discussing foreign policy.

In the course of four hours, there were only a few minutes devoted to the world outside the United States. The silence on the rest of the world cannot be dismissed as mere parochialism.

Many of the Democratic presidential candidates are deeply implicated in either the policy-making or combat operations of US imperialism. The 20 candidates include two who were deployed as military officers to Iraq and Afghanistan, Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard; Biden, vice president for eight years and the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and five senators who are members of high-profile national security committees: Harris and Bennet on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand on the Armed Services Committee, and Cory Booker on the Foreign Relations Committee.

If these ladies and gentlemen decide not to engage on foreign policy, the reason is clear: the Democrats know that the American people are adamantly opposed to new military interventions. They therefore seek to conceal the preparations of American imperialism for major wars, whether regional conflicts with Iran, North Korea or Venezuela, or conflicts with nuclear-armed global rivals like China and Russia.

In the handful of comments that were made on foreign policy, the Democratic candidates struck a belligerent note. On Wednesday, four of the ten candidates declared the main global threat to the United States to be China, while New York Mayor Bill de Blasio opted for Russia. Many candidates referred to the need to combat Russian interference in the US election—recycling the phony claims that Russian “meddling” helped Trump into the White House in 2016.

On the first night, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, asked to name the greatest global security threat, replied, “The greatest threat that we face is the fact we are at a greater risk of nuclear war today than ever before in history.” This remarkable declaration was passed over in silence by the moderators and the other candidates, and the subject was not raised on the second night at all, including by Bernie Sanders.

[kennethetaylory-blog]

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[sciencespies]

Western wildfires spark stronger storms in downwind states

https://sciencespies.com/environment/western-wildfires-spark-stronger-storms-in-downwind-states/

Western wildfires spark stronger storms in downwind states

A new study shows for the first time that wildfires burning in West Coast states can strengthen storms in downwind states. Heat and tiny airborne particles produced by western wildfires distantly intensify severe storms, in some cases bringing baseball-sized hail, heavier rain and flash flooding to states like Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas.

Typically, western wildfires and storms in the Central U.S. are separated by seasons. As blazes begin earlier each year, however, the two events now strike closer together.

Earth scientist Jiwen Fan, a Laboratory Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, began investigating a relationship between the two phenomena when she noticed that the west’s 2018 wildfires overlapped with storms in the Central U.S. She found that both events occurred simultaneously for a week. Looking further, Fan found it was the first time these storms and wildfires had concurred in 20 years where storms lasted over four days.

“I thought, maybe there’s some kind of connection there,” said Fan, who led the new study. Her team used data describing the storms’ hailstones and rain levels, as well as the fires and smoke plumes, to explore a possible mechanism behind the connection. The group used weather models that track heat and smoke particles to explore how the fires could remotely influence weather.

“We need to be careful and informed,” said Fan. “The more we understand about the contributing factors behind storms like this, which cause massive property loss, the better we’ll be able to prepare for them. And, as we look at the future climate, we know wildfires will increase, particularly in the west.”

“Severe storms in the Central U.S. are also projected to increase,” Fan added. “Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that these co-occurring events would happen more frequently, and the impact of western wildfires on central storms may become increasingly important in the future.”

The paper was published Monday, Oct. 17, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Smoky skies, stronger storms

What’s behind the relationship? Let’s begin with fires raging in the Western U.S. As they burn, these fires release incredible levels of heat. Some of the blazes, for example, warmed the fire area 10-40 times hotter than typical background temperatures in July. They also release billowing smoke particles, called aerosols.

That heat creates a strong difference in air pressure. Near the fires, air pressure is high. In the stormy Central U.S., air pressure is generally lower. As high pressure builds near the fire, the surrounding air flows toward lower pressure air, strengthening wind that already flows west to east.

Those stronger, westerly winds then carry smoke aerosols from western to central states. Along their journey, the winds pick up and carry atmospheric moisture, too. Now transported into storms brewing above the Central U.S., the greater concentration of moisture and aerosols kicks off a series of storm-strengthening reactions.

Like water droplets pooling on the needles of a redwood tree, the aerosols provide extra surface area on which water vapor can condense. As the water condenses, it releases heat. This added heat provides energy that strengthens storms. When a storm is sufficiently strong, the condensed water droplets freeze and start to form hailstones.

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Inside the storm, strong updrafts repeatedly lift the hailstones up. Every second a hailstone spends inside the storm is another moment it can collect more cooled water droplets, creating a bigger and bigger hailstone, like string after string added to a ball of twine. Once the stones grow too heavy to be lifted by the storm’s updrafts, they drop down, dealing damage to crops, buildings, cars and occasionally people.

Local wildfires in the Central U.S. also strengthened the same storms, according to the study, but to a less significant degree. Those wildfires are much weaker than their western counterparts. Fan’s group plans to look for similar connections in other regions.

The findings could help inform future severe weather forecasts, said Yuwei Zhang, first author of the new study and a postdoc in Fan’s research team.

“The cost of the storms we studied exceeded $100 million in damage,” said Zhang. “If we know that distant wildfires contribute to stronger storms, that information could bring about better projections, which might help avoid some degree of destruction.”

The Carr Fire, which claimed a quarter of a million acres in California, and the Mendocino Complex Fire, which dealt $257 million in damage and burned 280 structures in the same state, were among the fires under study.

Hail in a changing climate

Many areas in the United States will see increased wildfires — that means more aerosols from wildfires will be lofted into the Earth’s atmosphere and influence its climate in ways that scientists are working to understand. In addition to enhancing severe storms through wildfires, how will the warming climate directly affect severe weather, particularly storms that produce hail?

In a separate study published in the journal Earth’s Future, Fan explored how climate change could alter hailstorms in the Central U.S. Fan found that some storms are sensitive to climate change, resulting in more frequent large hail, while other storms don’t hold that same sensitivity. Those sensitive storms are associated with a large-scale weather pattern, which is different from that of the storms insensitive to a changing climate.

“By linking the impacts of climate change on hailstorms to the easier-to-model large-scale weather patterns, this study advances our knowledge of hailstorm predictability with important implications for risk management,” Fan said.

PNNL authors of the study on western wildfires influencing Central U.S. storms include Fan, Zhang, and Manish Shrivastava. Cameron Homeyer of the University of Oklahoma, as well as Yuan Wang and John Seinfeld of the California Institute of Technology, are also authors.

PNNL authors of the study on the response of hailstorms to anthropogenic climate change include Fan, Zhang, Jingyu Wang, Jong-Hoon Jeong, Xiadong Chen, Shixuan Zhang, Yun Lin, and Zhe Feng. Rebecca Adams-Selin of Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, is also a contributing author.

This work was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation, and made possible through resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility.

#Environment

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