#I have been up in the North for many years for the record. But it still makes me laugh.

[seaslimes]

Guy from the South who moved up North recently: Bro, they left free salt on the ground again.

[terastalungrad]

Sometimes, you’re a comedian with a touring show to promote, so you do an interview with a regional newspaper.

I think that’d be the funniest possible time to reveal a big scoop, wouldn’t it?

Stewart Lee is currently touring, and to promote his Yeovil performance, gave an interview to Blackmore Vale Magazine.  According to Wikipedia, the Blackmore Vale is an area of north Dorset, south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire.  According to the comedian Jake Baker, the magazine would cover his school sports day as he grew up in Dorset.  That’s the level of news you’d expect.

The questions are friendly and easy, from a journalist clearly familiar with Lee’s work and history.

The first question is about the show’s angle.  Lee describes the nature of the show, and here’s an excerpt:

So it looks like stand-up, and sounds like stand-up, but it’s actually a kind of character piece about a desperate person who’s frightened and trying to organise the world in a way that puts them in control. And I guess you could argue that’s what a lot of stand-ups are doing anyway. Ricky Gervais to me looks like a very frightened man. He’s frightened of transgender people coming after him, the act is a defensive wall.

Fun!  This is a Ricky Gervais hate blog, so it’s nice to see a sudden, unexpected attack in an unrelated promotional interview.

Lee mentions Gervais again in response to question four.

Sometimes I become bitter and think ‘I get all this good press, why can’t I get 10 million quid for a TV special like Ricky Gervais?’ But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want that audience, it wouldn’t allow me to be better.

And then again to question eight, where Lee explains why he spends six months running new shows in the relatively small Leicester Square Theatre (as opposed to arena comics who might do 10 warmup shows followed by 60 tour dates).

You can still run it like a club gig, you can interact with people in real time. Also, you wouldn’t get better at the show because you wouldn’t have done it as many times. You can see this with an act like Gervais. Those shows have not been run in, they’re not fluid, they’re a succession of inflexible statements that would snap like twigs if the pressure of an unforeseen event was applied to them.

The journalist finally addresses this head on.  It really is worth reading the entire article - there’s a lot more than I’m quoting, including an interesting story about Sean Lock:

But here are my favourite bits:

[Gervais] still kind of copies me though, which is the weird thing. There’s still a lot of cadences of what I do but they’re used in the service of evil. In Star Wars, he’s Darth Vader and he’s taken the force, which is me, and used it for evil purposes. He was a fanboy, he was actually the booker at University of London and used to book me and Sean Lock all the time. And when he became famous for the Office, he wrote an hour-long act that was so indebted to us it was awkward. [...] If he’d come up through the circuit that would have been rubbed off him because you find your own voice doing club gigs. It took me two years of gigging five nights a week to come through the mesh of things I liked. But he didn’t have that experience in the same way. [...] Funnily enough, in his first show there were bits I’d never recorded that he’d do almost verbatim. He’d clearly remembered them. I went to see him at the Bloomsbury – on his invitation actually – with my then girlfriend and she was very concerned for me. I’d given up at that point due to lack of interest, and she was concerned for what it felt like to see my act being done to hundreds of people, it was quite weird. On the other hand, that sort of did make me think I don’t want it to be consumed into someone else’s vocabulary. And also, I think because he had a residual sense of guilt, he would always credit me in interviews as being an influence – that helped me in 2004 to get the audience back.

This is, to my knowledge, the first time Lee’s ever claimed that Gervais stole his material.  He’s certainly talked about Gervais clearly taking influence from him (though in the past, he downplayed this compared to the account given in this interview).

It’s a pretty big thing to accuse a comic of stealing material.  That’s a big taboo.  I reckon this is partly because Lee wants to discourage fans of Gervais from coming to the show.

Anyway, let’s finish by quoting the end of the interview:

It must be strange to have that level of financial remuneration and those audience figures but not really a single good review. And I expect what that does for you is create a cognitive dissonance where you have to manufacture a worldview by which the whole world is wrong and you’re right. Which can’t necessarily be very good for your mental health, although I expect the money’s nice.

[coco-loco-nut]

die first

Pairing: Max Verstappen x Reader

Summary: Max’s wife is an international superstar, who’s anxieties tend to show up in her songs

Inspired by: die first by Nessa Barret

requests open! masterlist prequel

—————————

“What are you writing, Schatje?” Max asks, sliding onto the piano bench beside you.

“I wrote a song based on my vows,” you tell him, writing down the last couple chords, humming a rhythm to yourself.

Max, ever since I met you, I knew you were special. You’re my fire and my safety, you never try to break me, and you promise to always stay. I promise those same things to you. I don’t want to live without you, I never want to learn how to fall asleep without you, I want to be in love with you forever. You are my forever.

“Play it for me?” he asks when you finish, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. You nod, gently pressing the keys, mentally noting the kinks to fix before recording tomorrow. “It’s beautiful, the fans are going to love it, I love it,” Max compliments and you grin at him.

“I’m excited to announce the album and tour, and I’m glad we follow F1 around Europe. I get to spend more of summer with you that way,” you lean on his shoulder. You dedicated the album to him, and your third record is set to be the best selling one yet.

You took the unconventional route and took his last name after marrying him this year, despite having two hit albums and international fame. You still publish under your maiden name, but the name change caused a lot of shock.

You became an international superstar with your first release and it’s only grown since. Despite your relationship with Max spanning most of your music career, the both of you are able to spend a relatively low profile life in Monaco. Everything you record in the studio down the street is sent to your Hollywood label and released from there.

The next few months see you doing press for the surprise drop that was your bestselling third album and hyping the tour. Tour rehearsals fell during training time for Max and the both of you were going nonstop.

“I have to go to bed, Schatje, love you,” Max yawns over Facetime, you wish him goodnight as you stretch for your last show in North America. Tomorrow you jet to Europe to pick up that leg of the tour.

By the time you reach London, your tour has officially lined up with F1, which means your personal box near the stage is full of drivers, who likely are being bombarded with autograph requests. You slip into your black, sparkly bodysuit and matching hells; hair, makeup, and nails perfectly done; and grab your matching microphone before heading to your mark under the stage. The roar of the crowd energized you as the intro video plays.

“Come on London, let’s have some fun,” you say into the mic before smoke fills the stage above you and the trap door opens, the platform beneath you rising you up. You launch into your opening act. Half an hour later, after prancing and dancing and singing around the stage you take a pause to introduce the next act. The crowd cheers loudly before you have a chance to speak. You look around, smiling at everyone even if you can’t see them.

“London, thank you, my name is Y/n Verstappen, that’s my show for tonight,” you tease, the crowd silences. “Nah, I’m kidding. I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that, not when you are one of the best crowds I’ve had on tour,” you tell them, giving them a second to cheer.

“Since you have been such a great host, I wanted to share something special about this next song, something not many people know, but not quite yet. Quick shoutout to the F1 drivers here tonight, including my handsome husband, y’all are cool. But not as cool as everyone else here,” you purposely leave them hanging a little, blowing a kiss in the direction of Max.

“Alright, so, this next song is not only the title of my new album, but I also took parts of my vows and wrote them into the song. I hope you like it,” you say and the crowd cheers as the first chords play behind you.

“Thank you, London! Goodnight!” After the concert, you rush backstage and into Max’s open arms.

“You were incredible, Liefje” Max kisses you. Charles jokingly gags behind you.

“Thank you, Maxie,” you whisper, hugging him tight. Your assistant hands you a towel to put around your neck and a bottle of water which you happily take.

“You had a great show,” the other drivers tell you, all complimenting the show and thanking you for the tickets. You thank them for attending and excuse yourself so you could change. Max reminds them of the post-show dinner and club plans and carries you to your dressing room. You collapse on the couch, as Max chuckles at your dramatics.

“I swear the best part of a show is laying down after,” you groan and Max gently takes off your heels causing you to moan in relief.

“Y/n! People are going to think we are doing things in here,” Max laughs, you wave him off, changing into comfy but club appropriate clothes. Max helps you take off your stage makeup, and redoes your hair as you put a little bit of normal makeup on.

“Ready, Maxie?” you ask, grabbing your purse. It is nice knowing that assistants will take everything back to the hotel for you.

“I promise I will always come back home to you, I know my driving style is agressive, but I won’t make you learn how to fall asleep without me,” Max says, his hands holding your face gently.

“I know, but I will always be scared when you are on the track. You can’t promise nothing will happen, but I know you will always try,” you tell him, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. You stay in his embrace for a minute until rejoining half of the paddock. I can be in love forever, if I die first…

[bethanythebogwitch]

So a while back I made this post

And it became very popular. While many people already knew, I did get some asking why humboldt squids are scary. So for this Wet Beast Wednesday I'm going to teach you why you should be afraid, or at least respectful, of molluscoid menace that is the humboldt squid.

(image: a humboldt squid)

Known to scientists as Dosidicus gigas and to many others as the jumbo squid, pota, jibia, and diablo rojo, the humboldt squid is the 5th largest squid in the world and the largest of the flying squids. Don't worry, it can't actually fly. They reach an average mantle length (tat's excluding the head and arms) of 1.5 meters, with some specimens reaching up to 2 meters (6.5 ft) in mantle length. The arms can reach up to another meter in length. Adults can weigh up to 50 kg (150 lbs), with females generally being larger than males. They live in the Pacific along the cost of the Americas, from the tip of South America up to California in North America. Some individuals have been known to travel farther north, up to Alaska, which is outside of their historical range. It is possible that as the ocean warms, their native range will continue to expand north.

(image: a humboldt squid releasing ink as a defense mechanism)

Humboldt squids reproduce in deep waters, and as a result we don't know much about their courtship. Males use a modified arm called the heterocotylus to transfer sperm into the female's mantle. She then lays a transparent, gelatinous egg mass that is left to float in the water column. These masses can range between 1 and 4 meters in diameter can can contain up to 4 million eggs. Hatchlings receive no parental care and most will die before adulthood. They grow extremely rapidly, likely as a self-defense against cannibalism by larger squids. Like many squid, humboldts only live for a year and die shortly after mating.

(image: a humboldt squid next to a much braver diver than I will ever be)

As with most cephalopods, the humboldt squid has cells called chromatophores that allow it to change color. Cameras attached to captured and released specimens have show two types of color-changing behavior: flashing and flickering. Flashing is when the animal changes rapidly between red and white. This is done in the presence of other squid and is likely a means of communication, possibly a form of courtship or warning to stay away. Flickering is when waves of red and white travel down the body. This is likely a form of camouflage to blend in with light flickering through the water. In addition to flashing and flickering, cameras have seen multiple forms of color changes and communication behaviors, indicating that they have a rich social life. The red color the squid turns when hunting contributes to its nickname amongst Mexican fishermen: "diablo rojo", the "red devil".

(gif: humboldts changing color)

So all that sounds pretty normal, why are they scary? Well that comes down to their feeding behavior and aggression. Humboldt squids hunt in shoals that can include thousands of members and go into feeding frenzies that can make shark feeding frenzies look like a child's tea party. They are infamous for their aggression and there are many stories of them attacking divers and fishermen. Not even they are immune to their predation, as multiple studies have found between a half and a quarter of all dissected specimens have recently fed on others of their species. Cannibalism may make up a major portion of their diet, though cannibalistic behavior seems to increase in response to stress. Their typical diet consists of fish, crustaceans, and other squids. Humboldts typically keep their two long tentacles coiled up between their arms, only for them to suddenly lash out and grab prey. These tentacles have multiple sharp hooks that have been reported to cause severe cuts in humans. Captured prey is then pulled in toward the beak and consumed. Feeding happens so fast that scientists need to us high-speed cameras to record the capture as the tentacles move so fast they prey can be caught and reeled in between frames. Eating is also fast enough that they can grab a hooked fish and skeletonize it in the time it takes a frustrated angler to pull their catch in. And if that wren't enough, they also engage in cooperative hunting, working together to catch prey. When not feeding or being hunted, they have been described as curious, though they often react to unfamiliar stimuli with aggression. Some divers have reported that humboldts will come investigate them and even act friendly, though I can't say I'd be willing to try it.

(gif: a squid attacking a camera)

(gif: hunting squid)

Numerous fishermen's tales and news stories tell of attacks on humans, but the squid do have a reason to not like us. They are fished heavily, especially off the coat of Mexico and are the most important squid for commercial fisheries. Humboldt squids make up about a third of all squid fished every year and are the most popular food squid. Squid meat is saturated with ammonium chloride, which they use for buoyancy, and must be prepared to remove the taste before eating. Not much is known about threats to conservation, though some speculate that overfishing and global warming disrupting their food supply could threaten the population. They are listed as data deficient by the IUCN. As scary as they might be, humboldt squids serve a very important ecological role in their territories, both as primary predators and as prey to sharks and toothed whales, and more research on their sustainability and conservation needs is important.

(image: a scientist attaching a crittercam to a humboldt squid)

[facts-i-just-made-up]

I've heard of the last supper, but what can you tell me about the first supper?

In nature, animals eat when they can. Though this event required a balance of calorie intake to expenditure, prey or plant selection, and many more issues; the animals themselves were not aware of these. To them, they simply ate when they could.

Unfortunately, humankind evolved and with it came manners. This rare ape found it inappropriate to simply eat grubs from their partners' hair or pick up a random slug and slurp it down. Humans invented things like silverware, because they found it rude to handle their food directly for some reason that still nobody can figure out. They decided too that one could only eat at appointed times, likely a scam from the clock industrial complex that got out of hand.

Humans decided that there would be three times to eat in a day, and only specific things could be eaten at those times: At breakfast, shortly after waking, humans would eat only fruit and grain. At lunch, about noontime or just after, humans would eat only "lunch meats" such as thin slices of animals, and finally at dinner, they could eat larger portions of animals, and more thoroughly cooked and greasy, oily vegetable matter.

This proved insufficient for many people and more meals were added- A second breakfast, elevenses, afternoon tea were added, and finally, supper.

Supper was intended to be a meal consumed shortly before bed, so its dietary focus was on non-acidic, calming foods to ensure a peaceful rest. The first recorded supper took place at 8:30PM on September 13th, 1907 BC. It consisted of a cold meat pie, a light strawberry pastry, and a pint of Everclear; all consumed by one Gerald Urgggh of North Mesopotamia.

Soon after, rumors spread of this meal and the results were divisive. Some felt it was too much, some too little too late. Kings fought wars over the rumor, and four thousand years later I realized I had no joke planned for all this and have just been brainlessly writing bullshit as I go and no way to wrap this shit up.

Sorry.

The first supper after Jesus was weaned from breast milk was Gerberus Strained Chickpeas. It is not often painted because he got that shit got everywhere. Spoons were sadly only invented in 34 AD.

[irhabiya]

white people are something else, add as many marginalized intersecting identities as you'd like and they'd still find a way to underpin all that with racism.

if you think that a certain behavior, a certain prejudice, a certain violence is inherent to a whole collective of people rather than a symptom of broader systemic issues you are racist. that is that. you're a racist piece of shit

i am genuinely so fed up with white gays and their revolting homonationalism. and the usual response to them also irritates me, because most of the time people aren't even addressing the main issue with their thought process. saying that trans and gay people exist in palestine or that solidarity is not transactional is all well and good, but why aren't you directly shutting down the implication that palestinians, and more generally arabs and muslims are inherently homophobic, transphobic, regressive barbarians? say it like it fucking is. homophobia, transphobia and misogyny are huge issues in the middle east and north africa, just like they are everywhere else. they're not woven into our fucking DNA why are you even entertaining the thought that that is the case? and these issues are only further exacerbated by us intervention destabilizing the whole region for the interest of the us empire and their western allies. last i checked palestinians don't even have the right to freely travel on their own land, visit family members they've been forcibly separated from by apartheid walls and laws, but gay rights is definitely the pressing issue here, not that they can be expelled from their homes by batshit insane settlers at gunpoint with the glee and approval of the IDF.

"ah yes, the homophobic palestinian 16 year old being tortured in israeli prisons is Bad, he should be educating himself about stonewall in the dingy jail cell he's thrown in."

do you fucking hear yourselves.

and, for the record, homosexuality isn't outlawed in the west bank, thanks to endless advocacy by queer palestinians. while racist white gays do fuck all but tut-tut at people of color all day. eat shit and die

[uncharismatic-fauna]

The Stupendous Alligator Snapping Turtle

Alligator snapping turtles (Macrochelys temminkii) are one of three recognised species of snapping turtle, all of which are found in North America. This particular species is found in the southeastern United States and the Mississippi Basin in particular. Macrochelys temminkii prefers deep freshwater, and is especially common in deep rivers, wetlands, and lakes.

The alligator snapping turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in North America, and is one of the heaviest in the world. Most individuals weigh between 70-80 kg (154-176 lbs), and are about 79-101 cm (31-39 in) long. However, the largest verified indiviual weighed over 113 kg (249 lb), and many others have been recorded in excess of 100 kg. The species is easily identifiable by its large, boxy head and thick shell with three rows of raised spikes. Typical alligator snapping urtles are solid black, brown, or olive green, though the shells of many older individuals can be covered in green algae.

M. temminkii is famous for its strong bite, which is most often utilised when feeding. The turtle's tongue resembles a worm, and at night individuals lie on the bottom of the river or lake bed with their mouths open. Fish are enticed by the bait-tongue, and when they get close enough the alligator snapping turtle's mouth clamps down around them. In addition to fish, this species may also feed on amphibians, invertebrates, small mammals, water birds, other turtles, and even juvenile alligators where their territories overlap. The alligator snapping turtle's relies on ambush techniques, and so hunters can remain submerged for up to 40 minutes. In some cases, individuals can also 'taste' the water to detect neaby mud and musk turtles. Because of this species' thick shell and ferocious bite, adults have few predators, but eggs and hatchlings may fall prey to raccoons, predatory fish, and large birds.

This species spends most of its time in the water, only emerging to nest or find a new home if their current habitat becomes unsuitable. Mating occurs between Februrary and May, starting later in the northern regions of the species' range. Males and females seek each other out, but generally don't travel great distances. About two months after mating, females dig a nest near a body of water and deposit between 10-50 eggs. Incubation takes up to 140 days, and the average temperature of the nest determines the sex of the hatchings; the hotter it is, the more males are produced. In the fall, hatchings emerge and are left to fend for themselves. Sexual maturity is reached at between 11 and 13 years of age, and individuals can live as old as 45 years in the wild.

Conservation status: The alligator snapping turtle is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN. The species is threatened by overharvesting for meat and for the pet trade, and by habitat destruction.

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a ko-fi!

Photos

Ed Godfrey

Cindy Hayes

Eva Kwiatek

Nathan Patee

[tgmsunmontue]

Get your motor runnin' - 2/6

Bradley, a bit of a (very talented) grease monkey and Jake, who has been sent to see him because he's apparently the best mechanic Maverick knows.

A longer fleshed out fic at the request of @poetryandpickles based on their idea in this post. Likely going to be 3-4 parts and likely an excuse for lots of smut. Just as an FYI.

PART ONE

PART TWO

                Bradley isn’t sure why Mav insists on sending work his way, it’s not like he needs it. And North Island is not down the road or around the corner. Not that he doesn’t mind the scenery, the man standing in front of him clearly regretting his life choices that brought him out her to the middle of not-quite nowhere with a car Bradley hasn’t even looked at yet. God. He doesn’t even know the make or model, and if it’s a newer car he’s going to have to go and get the diagnostic reader from his little house that’s hidden around the back.

                “What’s your name?”

                “Jake. Jake Seresin.”

                “Hmm. Nice to meet you. Now walk me through what’s wrong with your car.”

                “More like what’s not wrong,” Jake mutters and Bradley barks out a laugh, walks out beside Jake and winces under the unforgiving glare of the sun, doesn’t have his aviators and raises his hand to at least block the sun as he takes in the 2007 Toyota Camry and pulls a face. Of course it’s a fucking 2007 model. He listens as Jake lists off issues, not surprised to hear about the potential engine problems, or the melting dashboard, although the pooling water is something he’s not come across particular to this make and model. He’d bet good money it’s stored outdoors while Jake is deployed as well as near the ocean.

                “You have the service records?”

                “Uh…”

                “For your car,” Bradley clarifies, his lips twitching in amusement.

                “Oh. Uh yeah, in the glove compartment.”

                “Thanks. Keys?”

                He catches the keys one handed over the hood, nods his thanks. Bradley needs to look, because there were so many problems with this make and model, an accelerator pedal recall not being the least of the problems, there were also issues with brakes and wheels and he really needs to know what he’s working with and what work, if any, has already been done on the car. The idea of anyone driving around a ticking time bomb causes his skin to itch. There’re potential issues with the transmission as well for this year, along with heavy oil consumption. It’s a fucking dud of a car.

                “Did you buy it new or second hand? I’m going to need to take it for a quick spin. Want to jump in?”

                “You don’t need to lock up?”

                “I’m just going up and down, it’ll be fine…”

                He slides into the driver’s seat, waves away Jake’s apologies about the mess, because he’s seen far worse, is just hoping he doesn’t leave grease stains on any of the upholstery, but at least Jake doesn’t seem precious about it. He turns the ignition and oh yeah, crunchy. He sucks his lips into his mouth and eases it out of his drive and into the road, listening carefully, and yeah, it’s not as bad as it could be but he’s certain it could be a damn sight better. He heads back, the short drive enough to confirm things.

                “What? You making a face. What’s wrong?”

                “Well, you listed a lot already, but I’m going to need to check the transmission. But I want to go over the service records and see what has already been done. And you didn’t answer me. New or used?”

                “Used.”

                “Okay. Let me have those papers.”

                Jake hands him a collection of papers and he’s pleasantly surprised at how well organised it all is considering the rest of the car. There’s a solid seven years of records, all in chronological order and held together with a clip, but then there’s change of ownership papers from 2014, and again in 2017, showing when Jake apparently bought it. The accelerator pedal recall was carried out and documented properly, and the transmission has already been fixed.

                “What’s wrong with it? I was told it was a good car when I bought it…”

                “2006 was a good year. 2007 was very definitely not. They started getting good again around 2013. But looks like the first owner was pretty diligent.”

                “Yeah. It was like, the grandmother of some guy, and then he got it, and I bought it from him.”

                “And you don’t drive it that much, which has its own pros and cons. Lower wear and tear, but if the engine isn’t getting turned over regularly it isn’t good for the battery, but also engine fluids start to break down, parts that aren’t getting lubricated begin to corrode…”

                “Can you fix it?”

                “Yeah. Haven’t met a car yet I can’t fix.”

…            …            …

                He’s not quite sure what he’ll do if Bradshaw can’t fix it, despite his confidence. He can still drive it, even if the list of things wrong with it is growing longer every time he turns the ignition. Assuming Bradshaw doesn’t make it undrivable. His confidence is… attractive though. He drives Jake’s car directly into an empty bay and the immediate shade makes it feel several degrees cooler immediately.

                “Right. I hope you brought a book or have lots of data on your phone, because town is a little walk away…”

                “I can hang out, just point me to where I’m out of the way.”

                Weirdly there’s a little comfy set up in the corner with two worn loungers, little coffee table with some books and a pile of magazines, some Aviation Traders which makes him wonder if Bradshaw works on planes as well. There’s a small fridge and Bradshaw tells his to help himself, pulling a bottle of water out for himself and Jake tries not to outright stare as Bradshaw drinks the entire bottle in one go. Drool. He grabs a bottle of water for himself, definitely needing to cool down a little. Then Bradshaw’s sauntering off, and baggy grease-stained coveralls should not somehow be that sexy. He’s left to the music of the radio and the sounds of Bradshaw doing whatever he needs to do to ensure Jake’s car won’t unintentionally kill him.

                He plays around on his phone for about thirty minutes, resists the urge to take a sneaky photo of Bradshaw bending over and sending it to Trace, because she’d at least appreciate it, even while telling him off for taking pictures of people without their permission. Then he picks up one of the battered books and decides to start reading, it’s a romance novel but it’s clearly going to have a happy ending.

                Then he hears Bradshaw start to sing, and surprisingly he has a nice singing voice, clearly going into his own little world and forgetting Jake’s presence completely. Sings loud and sweet along to the radio and Jake can’t help but find it endearing. He even catches him playing the air guitar and air drums at different points and it’s pretty much all the entertainment he needs, although Eric and Alexandra’s relationship has at least caught his interest, Eric’s own family being so much like his own he can feel a sick sense of camaraderie for the fictional character.

                Hours slip past, the temperature drops, lights flicker on, bright in a different way. The sun is no doubt kissing the horizon somewhere he can’t see, judging by the pink and orange hues the sky is turning, from what he can see through the one raining open roller door. He’s over half-way through the book and he’s starting to feel like it doesn’t have a happy ending, and he quickly scans the back, stomach sinking as he reads the blurb. The title should have also given him a clue…

                “All finished.”

                His head snaps up.

                “What? Really?”

                “Yep. I’ve fixed up everything with the engine. Running like a dream now. Gave her new brake pads and did a wheel alignment. I mean, you’re still going to have to book her in for a proper overhaul of the seals, because salt and sun’s a bitch on rubber, so I’d recommend getting a cover for her when you’re deployed if you can’t get her stored inside somewhere. Also the drainage holes were blocked, which was why there was water accumulating, and I’ve re-gassed your aircon as well, and fixed the hole in the condensing tube which should stop the water dripping into the footwell on the passenger side.”

                Jake blinks, because that sounds like a lot of work.

                “Wow. Okay. Thanks. Seriously man, I didn’t think when I headed out here about the practicalities of everything. Really appreciate it.”

                “Well, I don’t normally accept walk-ins, but if Mav is sending them,” he shrugs, like he is used to Mav getting what he wants and Jake guesses he does. “And you drove all this way. Couldn’t really turn you away. Come on, let me ring you up…”

                Jake follows him, reaching into his pocket for his wallet, and yeah, when he looks at the printout there are quite a few parts, and five hours of labor, which doesn’t seem to match the actual hours he’s worked, and he wonders if he should question it. He doesn’t, swipes his card and considers it a bargain. The Bradshaw is handing him his keys along with a receipt and the printout.

                “And you’re free to go. Not stuck here.”

                “Hmm. Can I interest you in dinner?” Jake asks, because he’s got to ask, he doesn’t have to see the guy ever again if he says no. From the way Bradshaw’s slowly smiling at him he’s feeling pretty confident about the answer and he smiles slowly back in response.

                “Actually dinner? Or… I mean. I have a bed not even twenty yards away…”

                “Yeah? Show me?”

                “What? Never seen a bed before?” Bradshaw asks and fuck yeah, Jake likes guys who are a little bit snarky.

                “Not one with you in it…”

                “Smooth. Come on. It's a nice bed.”

PART THREE

(For the love of god do not ever buy a 2007 Toyota Camry).

[solomon-revisited]

my copy has finally arrived... sixteen old songs from my earnest friends

THE CORONER'S GAMBIT LINER NOTES

TRANSCRIPT:

HE was a guy from California who'd fallen in love with a woman from Iowa. She was working at a water testing lab. They lived in a very small house whose pipes froze every winter. The landlord would come by and put space heaters under the sink. Years later, they retained the memory of the water coming back on - the sudden sound of the shower, the rush from the sink. They slept on a foam mattress in the bedroom in the summer, and on the couch in the living room in the winter, since the house did not have central heating, rendering the bedroom essentially uninhabitable from December through March.

They were not really the kind of people to plan things: they had fun when and where they could on an austere budget. The ice skates they bought used from Play It Again Sports made for fun Christmas mornings on West Indian Creek in Nevada, one town over from where they lived. He learned to cook, and to bake: they didn't go out to eat, because there really wasn't any place to go out and eat, though on occasion they would get a pizza from Casey's, because their town had a Casey's. Under the right circumstances a gas station pizza can be just the thing, and they sometimes found themselves in those circumstances.

He made music which was slowly reaching a wider audience. If he played in New York or Chicago as many as a hundred people might show up. He was idly entertaining the idea of becoming ambitious about it: as a child, he'd been pretty pretentious, and although he was working hard to shake most of that off, a little pretension isn't a bad thing in an artist. Just as a seasoning, as a little extra flavor here or there.

One summer he took a job as a harvest help at the Farmers Cooperative Exchange down the street from the very small house where the pipes froze in winter: getting the corn and soybeans into the grain elevator and into a big Morton building where the beans formed giant mountains, which he sometimes had to climb to knock down the peaks. If you don't knock down the peaks the beans get too hot and might rot. The job didn't pay much, and he wasn't good at it, but during slow stretches he would write song lyrics on scraps of paper or in a small notebook, and when he got home from work and washed off the crop dust, he'd set the lyrics to music. "Elijah" was written like this. So was "The Alphonse Mambo."

He took a Greyhound bus to Omaha to record some of the songs, so that the album would have a nice varied feel to it, but he got very sick, which is not an uncommon thing to have happen after a Greyhound ride, and only a few songs came out the way he wanted. He kept those, and then they got married and moved to Ames because the City of Colo had purchased their home from that landlord and intended to knock it down, which they did do, he affirmed years later: and in Ames he put the album together, and then later they moved to North Carolina and a whole lot of other things happened, too, but the main thing is that this album is a document of a time when two young people in love hadn't yet located the spot on the current that would carry them to their destination, twenty-five years later, parents of two beautiful children, worlds away from Colo, the place where, for better or worse, as the saying goes, all this really began.

Dedicated to my wife, Lalitree, and to the City of Colo, Iowa.

This is the original text of the paper bag that housed the first edition of this album. I am leaving it intact rather than revising it. Stage Bidet's moment comes ever closer: let the people tremble in fear.

Elijah, Baboon, Horseradish Road, Onions, and the Alphonse Mambo recorded in Omaha with Simon Joyner, Chris Deden, Lonnie Methe, Brad Smith, John Kotchen, Steve Micek, and Pat Oakes. All of them are owed money and are to be treated with deference and respect. Five of the remaining songs were recorded at Main St. in Colo, which is a small town in Iowa, and the rest were recorded two blocks north of Emma McCarthy Lee Park in Ames, which is a considerably larger town half and hour west of Colo. Though happy circumstances currently have the Mountain Goats claiming Ames, we continue to straight up represent Colo and will put the slap down on anyone who disrespects it. Transfer and levels by Bob Durkee at FBE in Pomona, California, with Joel Huschle attending. As a result of some regrettable but inevitable conversations that took place during the transfer, Bob, Joel, and the Mountain Goats have formed a new, super-powerful punk rock machine called Stage Bidet, and we urge you to watch for us and clear us a wide berth whenever we're in your town. Instead of thanking all the people I always thank to whom I say, collectively and with no less sincerity: thanks. I am just going to spend the time left us here addressing an absent friend. Rozz: I wish you hadn't've gone and killed yourself. Though I hadn't seen or spoken with you in eight years since that night when, as far as I can tell from the reports I was later able to piece together, you tried, not without reason, to strangle the life out of me out there on the landing of Damien's apartment and I probably never would have ever seen you again anyway, it was still hard to hear that you were gone. All your friends had been predicting your death since the early eighties, and no-one could bear the thought of you growing old, but none of that did anything to soften the blow when I heard. I don't really believe that the dead see or hear what we do out here in the realm of corruptible things and I don't imagine that the anyone reads the scribblings on the backs of album jackets to them, either, so I am really only addressing a memory. To that memory I say: I thought of you now and then when I was writing these songs. I don't suppose they'd do much for you, but I thought of you all the same. All your friends miss you in some way, a little or a lot. The rumors about your final hours are dismal and tawdry: I am sure they would please you immensely. For your sake, I hope that the Christians were wrong and that you were right about whether the faithless are destined for eternal torment. In the event that you are a ghost and are wandering the earth moaning and rattling chains, I moved to Iowa from California four or five years ago, stop by any time. Have a seat on the couch until I get home from work. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator, or to the whiskey and sake on top of it. Make yourself right at home.

Album cover design by Tom Hart

[thehereticpharaoh]

The Great Sphinx

Who Built the Sphinx? The Sphinx Temple Has the Answer by Mark Lehner

Many alternative thinkers claim the Sphinx is much, much older, that it existed thousands of years before Khufu. But our study of the Sphinx and the temple lying just below it—the Sphinx Temple—says no. As certain as we can be about such matters, Khafre created most of the Sphinx. However, Khufu might have started it.

The stone-by-stone map of the Sphinx Temple allowed us to investigate a telltale clue about who built the Sphinx. Quarrymen cut the core blocks (the ones forming the core of the temple walls) so thick—some weigh up to a hundred tons—that many of them include three geological layers. And it was clear that the layers in many blocks were the same as those that run through the bedrock of the Sphinx itself. The blocks had to have come from the U-shaped ditch around the Sphinx. When workers quarried the ditch they left a large block of limestone from which the Sphinx was carved.

As I moved about the Sphinx Temple during my first year of the mapping project, I was struck by how the geological layers run continuously in many places, from one block to another, as the layers must have run in the bedrock. The gangs of young men who moved these mighty stones did not have much chance of mixing them up from quarry to temple wall. The Sphinx and its temple must have been part of the same quarry-construction sequence. But could I prove this?

The following year I met Tom, who had the expertise needed to geologically “fingerprint” the blocks and trace them back to the quarry. Tom looked at the Giza Plateau less as an archaeological site and more as frozen sea floors, petrified, pancaked, and stacked into the bedrock layers from which the pyramid builders quarried blocks, created tombs, and carved the Sphinx.

These layers formed during the Eocene epoch—some 34 to 56 million years ago, as a great primordial sea retreated northward. Under its ebbing waters, a colossal bank of nummulites, unicellular plankton-like organisms, built up. A sandbar developed on the embankment, and in the more protected waters behind it, a shoal and coral reef grew. As the sea retreated to the north, the area behind the sand bank became a muddy lagoon, inhabited by burrowing bivalves and sea urchins. A regular sequence accumulated, which petrified as soft, yellow, marly layers interspersed with harder beds.

In carving the Sphinx directly from the natural rock, the ancient Egyptian quarrymen cut a cross-section through the principal geological layers of the southeastern slope of the Moqattam Formation. The hard layers of the shoal and reef, for example, make up the lowest layer in the Sphinx and its ditch.

Tom and I began our Sphinx Temple core block study by examining each layer, or bed, of the Sphinx. We gave each bed a number and marked them on photographs and on profiles of the Sphinx. The beds were easy to distinguish as they weathered differentially: harder beds protruded, softer beds receded. Also, the relative abundance of different fossils varied. Members I and II showed the greatest differences: I is a very hard gray reef formation, while the first bed of Member II, 2b, is one of the softest of the yellow marl-clay layers. Members II and III are distinct, but the boundary is not so clear as between I and II. Aigner, following an earlier geologist, set the boundary between Beds 7 and 8.

The massive fine-grained bedrock of Beds 8–9 made for good sculpting, with far more endurance than the soft-hard-soft sequence of Member II. This is why the 4th Dynasty builders reserved Member III for the more exposed head. Details like the eyebrows have survived wind, rain, and sand for 4,500 years.

But from which beds exactly did they cut the core blocks? Would this tell us where they were in fashioning the Sphinx at the time they built the Sphinx Temple? To answer these questions we logged each block. We recorded their lithic qualities and fossil content, and assigned each block to one of seven types, A through G.

Most of the Sphinx Temple core blocks are Type A and consist of three layers: upper and lower hard massive layers separated by the soft, yellow marl layer in the middle, which runs continuously through separate blocks over long stretches of temple wall. These blocks come from beds that correspond to the lower chest of the Sphinx.

Type C blocks come from beds that correspond to the Sphinx’s upper chest, top of the chest, and base of the neck. In the Sphinx Temple these blocks cluster near the front. The quarry workers hewed the blocks from layers that would become the lion’s upper chest and top of the back and then dragged them to the eastern front of the Sphinx Temple. As quarry workers cut deeper, to the middle and lower Sphinx chest level, haulers and builders composed most of the core walls of the temple.

Block types B and D did not come from the Sphinx ditch. They most closely match strata to the southwest, exposed in the quarry cut for the Khentkawes Monument. They are less frequent and more intermittent in the temple walls than the A and C blocks. This could indicate that the builders stockpiled these blocks and brought them into the walls whenever there was a hiatus in the quarrying, dragging, and placing of the A blocks from the Sphinx ditch.

Khafre’s workers started shaping the Sphinx as they built his valley temple. And they were probably still shaping the lower lion body, cutting it out of its surrounding ditch, as they made the Sphinx Temple, Khafre’s last major addition to his pyramid complex. But they did not finish. They left the Sphinx Temple incomplete, without its exterior granite casing.

[berylliem]

While I am gutted about today's EoS announcement, it's also important to note that for lesser known series, Especially Magia Record, it's the fandom that keeps it relevant, *not* just the company that produces it.

Magia Record has a fandom that I've seen go through so much garbage, what with the bungling of NA, not just the EoS but the promotion and the pacing and the lack of transparency, the absolute dissatisfaction we had with the 3rd season of the anime, and now today's EoS. But throughout that disaster, I've seen fans on so many different platforms come out with TOP TIER content, whether it be memes, art, translations, custom JSONs for the Magia Record engine, or of course, a personal favourite of mine, the @projectmokyuu fandub.

What is next for us now as a fandom should be "Business as Usual." Keep creating and talking about our magical girls. I have this saying about our fandom that I use to explain to people why I do what I do for the magireco fandom:

"The Devil works hard, but the PMMM fandom works harder."

This is a testament to all those incredible projects I've seen over the past 5 years in this fandom. Prove me right.

With that being said, I decided to compile some of my favourite magireco projects still going on.

@puellamagishowdown, and the magical girl thunderdome going on there,

Magia Union Translations, who has been doing some SERIOUS work ever since the NA EoS announcement, making sure the new content could be understood by an English Audience, whose discord link I'm posting >>here.<<

This Magireco Minibang, which is currently fielding interest. I would love it if it were to happen, so please sign up: https://forms.gle/ZpS4fcmFX7NGxF2z6

And of course, if any of you've been following me for a while, you know how important Project Mokyuu is to me. Project Mokyuu is a fan-dubbing initiative for Magia Record's Arc 2 content, content that never made it to the North American server. If you wanna help out, or if you just want to hang out with Magireco players outside of the main server, this is the discord link. We will continue to dub Arc 2 content until we are physically no longer able to. (and honestly given our history, even past that. We have a very committed team.)

It's been one of the great joys of my life to serve the Magireco community in this way. Thank you all for all the magical girl content that's come across my dash over all these years. I love you lots, and I hope to see much more magireco content in the future, as well as with the release of Exedra in the future.

[parad-ice-lostandfound]

Prompt: "You know what I've never understood?" "Oh, is it philosophy hour with [Name]?" "Not really... I just don't get how Santa could possibly know what children in the entire world are good or bad but would need to be told what kids want. Kids aren't exactly... quiet about their desires."

Pairing: Sebek Zigvolt x Gn!Reader/Prefect/Yuu

Genre: Fluff, Slight crack

TW: NA

It was a cold, silent night. Snow covered the ground like an oversized blanket, glittering under the soft silver light of the moon. Not a single critter made a noise, every soul fast asleep under the watchful and twinkling stars...

"THAT'S TOO MUCH FOOD COLORING, ACE!"

Well, almost every soul.

In the cozy warmth of the Ramshackle kitchen stood the six friends of the Ramshackle Prefect, decorating sugar cookies that they had baked earlier.

"It's fine," Ace dismissed Deuce's wide-eyed horror and Sebek's seething at the amount of food coloring he had dropped into the icing. It was an accident, but Ace was trying to play it off as an intentional action, mixing the red food coloring with a little tune on his lips.

Epel, Jack and Ortho worked together on their share of the cookies, icing them precisely and perfectly to look like little Christmas trees, while you stood at the stove, making hot chocolate for all of you to share.

"Isn't having too much food coloring bad?" Deuce asked, eyeing the way Sebek seemed to turn red with indignation at being ignored by Ace.

"Most food dyes do not cause any adverse effects, Deuce Spade-kun" Ortho answered, "though it is advised by medical professionals not to consume too much of them."

"This isn't too much. Besides, with the white icing, it'll balance out. Relax," Ace rolled his eyes.

Epel smiled as he continued decorating the cookies, while Jack helped him out silently.

The next few minutes were spent in relative peace. Mindful of the late hour, you all tried to keep your volumes down as you worked in the kitchen.

"You know what I've never understood about Christmas?" Deuce started, effectively getting everyone's attention. "Oh, is it philosophy hour with Deuce?" Jack huffed in amusement, used to Deuce's habit of asking questions that could put one in an existential crises due to their being clubmates.

"Not really... I just don't get how Santa could possibly know what children in the entire world are good or bad but would need to be told what kids want," Deuce said as he looked at the cookie he was decorating to look like a candy-cane. "Kids aren't exactly... quiet about their desires."

A silence descended onto the kitchen, as every first year looked at the blue haired boy in varying degrees of amusement, disbelief and curiosity.

"Uh, Deuce... you do know that Santa isn't real, right?" Epel asked kindly, his tone a stark contrast to the mischievous glint in his eyes as he looked at the taller boy. Deuce flushed and sputtered, "O-Of course I know! It's just-!"

Ace, ever the nuisance, jumped at the chance. "Aw, did little Deucey believe in good ol' Saint Nick all this time?" He teased. "How cute."

"That's not true!"

"There's no need to be embarrassed Deuce Spade-kun. Many young children believe in the myth of Santa Claus," Ortho tried to reassure him, but even he couldn't hide the slight amusement in his tone.

"Little Deucey, did you send your letter to the North Pole this year?" Ace laughed, poking Deuce in the side. "I hope you've been good this year. Wouldn't want you to end up on the naughty list, would you? That'd be bad for your goody two shoes record."

"Ace, you little-" Deuce began to chase the other boy around the kitchen, face flushed red with embarassment. The ginger-haired menace laughed as he weaved his way between the appliances and the people in the kitchen, using them as shields and obstacles to slow down the other boy.

He poked his tongue out at Deuce, slipping away through the kitchen door to the hallway. Deuce narrowed his eyes as he ran after him out of the kitchen, cookies and decorating forgotten.

"I'll go make sure they don't end up killing each other," Jack said, shaking his head as he followed after them. Epel skipped behind him, pulling along Ortho to see the entertaining show.

"Sebek, can you get me some cups from that cabinet over there?" You asked the only person remaining in the room. Sebek hummed in acknowledgement, getting out seven cups and placing them in front of you.

Preoccupied with pouring the steaming hot chocolate into seven cups, you missed the conflicted expression on Sebek's face. As you decorated the beverage with marshmallows and whipped cream according to each one's preferences, sounds of the boys rough-housing in the next room had you smiling in fond exasperation.

"Here, this one's yours," you said, handing Sebek his drink. Sebek thanked you, voice low and expression uncharacteristically serious. You poked his forehead with a finger, smiling as he startled and looked at you with a confused look on his face.

"You're going to end up getting wrinkles way early if you scowl that much," you teased him, leaning against the counter as you spoke. "What are you thinking about so intently anyways?"

"It is not a matter of much importance, human."

"You're blushing though."

"I-I am not!" Sebek protested. His cheeks did nothing to help his case, turning even darker instead. You raised your arms in surrender, as you chuckled at his flustered state. "Fine, fine."

You started gathering up the bowls and spoons that had been used, placing them in the dishwasher to be cleaned. Your work was done in peaceful silence, and Sebek helped with what he could, ever the gentleman.

As you wiped your hands on a towel, he spoke.

"About what Deuce said, earlier..."

"Hm?"

"That is something... I have previously wondered as well... Not that I don't know that Santa Claus is a myth made for young children!" Sebek looked everywhere but at you, evidently embarrassed by his admission. "As Malleus-sama's guard, I cannot be misled by such childish and whimsical stories, of course! I-"

"You believed in Santa Claus too?" You asked, watching in amusement as the colour in his cheeks seemed to explode, climbing up his ears as well. "I JUST SAID I DIDN'T HUMAN, WHAT-"

"I think that's cute."

Sebek stopped, eyes wide as he stared at you. You continued, "It shows that you're innocent and pure-hearted. It's really cute." Sebek looked away and took a sip of his hot chocolate, wincing when he burned his tongue by drinking too fast. Before you could tease him any further, Ace called out, "If yall are done being sappy and disgusting, save me! Wait, shit-"

The sounds coming from the other room grew louder, taking your attention off of Sebek, allowing him to regain his composure somewhat. Deuce must have finally gotten hold of Ace, considering the loud and whiny complaints that could be heard. You turned back to Sebek, shaking your head. "Wanna save Ace from the fate that he oh so rightfully deserves?"

"I would rather have him bear the consequences of his actions," Sebek smiled, as Ace wailed in protest.

Back to Masterlist...

[anamericangirl]

I have to rant to someone who will understand how egregious and obnoxious this is because my friends are sick of me. The reaction to rural NC in this hurricane? This will be the norm if Tim Walz is VP. Walz has been dismissive, insulting, and malicious towards rural Minnesota. He said that there's nothing of value, nothing but rocks and cows. He has very clearly expressed antagonism towards rural values and culture. Tim Walz will brag about his education bills, yet he tracks down rural schools with high native populations and penalizes their funding and burdens their staff with unnecessary training and even legal threats because they punish "too high" a number of native students compared to white. I work among schools that are 99% native and they every year have mandated training to address their racial bias and face harsh penalties from the state for punishing too many native kids. They have to adapt to the loss of funding. Despite the rez saying they want to set a standard of excellence and they are proud to be breaking generational curses, Walz denies them crucial funding and punishes them for trying to help their kids learn to make the right choices. He recently signed in a bill requiring free lunches, and knowingly and purposefully did not modify the paperwork process many rural schools rely on to make up the missing our districts desperately need, which relies on students signing up for free and reduced lunches. This bill has devastated funding and left many rural schools scrambling. In addition, he continues to refuse to provide rural schools with more support to bus students, knowing that they cannot afford the costs of bussing over so many miles. Instead, he continues to pour funding into transportation for students in the cities. He has implemented bloated and wasteful mentor programs for teachers yet refuses to allow schools to take disciplinary action against students who directly threaten the lives and wellbeing of teachers. We had a gun threat at our school and the district did not expel the student who made the threat to shoot up the school because he was native and Walz's administration was likely to sue. He also refuses to do anything about our shitty retirement. We have the top (or did before he fucked us over) educators in the nation, and yet are ranked among the bottom 5 for benefits and retirement. But he refuses to fix retirement because nobody wants to teach in his schools, and if he actually fixes retirement, there will be almost no teachers left.

Walz is wrathful and vindictive to rural communities because they don't vote for him or like his policies, and he purposefully makes our lives harder. As his records show, he is a liar and a braggart. In true Minnesotan fashion, he'll underhandedly cut you while he smiles and calls you his neighbor. That man is a snake, and if you despise what you see with the hurricane response, know that he will never pass up an opportunity to make the lives of those who didn't and wouldn't vote for him a living hell, and this level of abuse of rural communities and vulnerable poor populations will get worse.

I’m obviously a little late to this but man it’s always worse than I think!

The only thing good people ever had to say about Walz was “free lunches 😍” but even that was shit when you actually look at what the policy was and the impact it had.

And instead of treating rural areas like trash because they don’t vote the right way maybe he should have been treating them better if he wanted the votes.

The response from him and Harris to the hurricane over here was abysmal and of course that just speaks to what kind of people they are and their treatment of us after that storm definitely lost them North Carolina.

Sorry you’re stuck with him over there, though.

[us3rnam3-r3dact3d]

the world (it burns through me)

Chapter 5

Ao3 | 3.7k Words | Darlin's POV

Dr. McDreamy is on the case. X-rays, bone fragments, and late night confessions.

TW: Medical jargon, discussion of broken bones, trauma, and abuse, Alexis Solaire (just ya know... general warning for her)

It had been two weeks since you’d made your prodigal return to the 10-19, and in that time, you’d managed to avoid having any conversation that delved past surface platitudes and small talk with David. You weren’t sure if you’d consider your conversation in the office to be an argument, but that’s what it felt like. You thought about apologizing. But then, you didn’t really think you were wrong. 

David drove you to the firehouse every day. You hung around the house while he was on shift, napped across the bunkroom and lounge, ate the seemingly endless snacks that spawned in the kitchen every day. He drove you back to his place at night. You chatted with his spouse while he cooked dinner. You watched reruns of Grey’s Anatomy and The X-Files in the living room late into the morning hours, too restless to sleep. You could see the front door from your spot on the leather sectional. You guarded the two of them while they slept. 

You bothered Sam, mostly to avoid talking to the rest of the fire crew. Asher followed you around when he wasn’t on a call, his pathetic puppy dog eyes wide and terribly effective. Milo had attempted to talk to you a few times. He would call out to you, the familiar cadence of bickering and teasing coloring his tone as he shouted down fleeting hallways; “Tanker!” Even after so many years of living in Dahlia, his heavy, North Eastern accent hadn’t settled into the more neutral, South Western tones of those around you. You supposed that you couldn’t shake Washington out of your mouth, even after being here for over a decade. 

You were faster than him, always had been, and you escaped into the relative safety of the ambulance bay. Neither of them followed you there, in Sam’s domain, where they couldn’t trap you in the context of your past with them. 

Sam was a fresh start. Sam and Vincent and their nervous probie didn’t know you, didn’t know how reckless and stupid and stubborn you were. You didn’t have to sit with the heaviness of it all, with the betrayal you’d levied against them, the abandonment. 

David needed you. They all did. And you’d left. They hated you. They had to hate you. 

Eventually, Dr. Collins (and he was a doctor, his gossiping little probie ratted him out) convinced you to accompany him to an off-the record appointment at Dahlia General late at night. 

“Your name won’t end up on any paperwork.” He assured, huddled in the back of the ambulance as he ran paperwork between calls. He looked so fucking good in his uniform shirt. Navy and fitted, the short sleeves curled around his biceps as tight as skin. You wanted him to lock his arm around your throat and squeeze. 

There was something wrong with you. 

“I don’t have any money.” You said.

“That don’t matter.” Sam shook his head, that little crease deepening in his brow. Perpetual worry. Continuous stress. Your finger twitched to reach across the miniscule space between you, him crouched over his clipboard on the ride-along bench, you sat criss-cross on the gurney he’d just disinfected. You wanted to ease the tension from the lines on his face, spread your grubby fingers across his skin until it went slack. “Officially, we’re providing medical treatment to no one, so there’s no one to charge for it.” 

“Clever thing.” You grinned. Sam didn’t strike you as the sort of man who blushed, but if he did,  you imagined it would look something like this. His head ducked, his mouth quirked into something resembling a smile. You could spend a lot of time chasing that expression on his face. 

 David didn’t ask questions as you walked to Sam’s truck instead of his that night. They must have conspired about this. Petulant frustration bubbled in your gut. You swallowed around complaints, huddled into Sam and didn’t meet David’s eyes as he called out the same thing he did every time someone he cared about got into a vehicle he wasn’t driving:

“Be careful.” 

Sam’s truck was smaller than David’s and older too. You ran your fingers across the leather seats and dashboard, shifting to better accommodate your still-sore ribs. He huffed as he plopped himself down into the driver’s seat. His keys jingled with the tremor of his right hand. You’d been watching Sam’s hands for two weeks now, too weak to watch his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. You could map that shake like a stretch of familiar road, curving and rough and so known to you you didn’t have to think as you drove it. 

Dahlia General was a big hospital. It was Dahlia’s only Level One trauma center, so it was where the 10-19 dropped off most of its critically injured patients. You’d crossed the threshold of the ER countless times since you were a probie, often for yourself. You had the record for the most on-the-job injuries in the house’s history. Gabe had a plaque made and everything.  

Sam didn’t pull into the ER bay, but instead into a covered parking garage that led to an employee entrance. He leaned over you to pull out a red decal that he hung from the rear view mirror. His name was inscribed in white text across the surface; Dr. Samuel Collins. 

“Not a word.” He hissed as your mouth started to fit around a smart comment. You pressed your teeth into your tongue as he cut the engine. 

You passed a series of locker rooms with a handful of exhausted looking doctors in green scrubs and rumpled white coats. They seemed not to see you, but a few of them stopped their hurried paths to shout a greeting to Sam. Some of them called him by name. Some, the younger, nervous-looking ones, scurried past him without making eye contact. If they did address him, it was always with his title instead of his name. Sam’s face darkened each time, slipping into a waxy, distant mask. 

Sam dismissed the x-ray tech handily. He had no white coat, no badge with his name, no credentials, but everybody still treated him like a doctor. He stepped into the darkened room, took a deep breath, and turned to you. His face was blank and slack. 

“Right.” He nodded. “Hands and ribs.” 

Sam ran the x-ray like it was the most familiar thing in the world to him. He laid out your hands, palm down, marked them left and right, laid a heavy, protective apron over your chest before stepping behind a wall and running the machine. He had you stretch out on a cold, metal table and took images of your ribs. He led you from the x-ray room down a secluded hallway to a small exam room, the lights still off. 

“You’re a doctor.” You said into the pin-drop quiet between you. Sam sighed out through his nose. 

“That I am.” He replied. 

“If I were a doctor,” you cocked your head to the side, let the unnatural curl of your top lip pull your mouth into a vicious sort of smile, “I wouldn’t take the pay cut to be a paramedic captain.” 

“Yeah well…” Sam’s face darkened, the joke slipping past him and landing as an insult. You swallowed around the apology that beat at the back of your throat. “We aren't the same person.” 

There was a rap of knuckles against the door of your exam room. You jumped, a jolt of pain running up your ribcage and catching your breath. Sam’s bright eyes caught yours for a moment before he reached for the door handle. 

The prettiest man you’d ever seen in your life stepped through the darkened doorway, x-ray films in his thin, long hands. He was wearing the same sort of white coat that all of the interns and residents in the locker rooms were wearing, but his was stark and pressed and perfect. Underneath it he wore a set of maroon scrubs, separate, it seemed, from the rest of the hospital. His hair was so blonde it was nearly white, his skin pale and flawless, his gray eyes shining even in the darkness of your exam room. He smiled, his teeth straight and white and sharp. He extended one of those long hands to you, and his touch was cold as fuck when you met it. He looked nothing like Patrick Dempsey, but your mind supplied the moniker McDreamy anyway. 

“Hello, there,” he smirked, his voice tinged with a smarmy British accent. You flinched at the sound of it, your face curling in disgust. His eyes flicked across your features, but seemed to find no offense among them. “You must be-”

“Porter.” Sam warned from his spot in the corner. “Please, just tell ‘em what’s going on. No flirting.” Dr. McDreamy turned on the heel of his fancy shoes, held a hand up in the scout’s solute. 

“No flirting.” McDreamy repeated. “Now, if you don’t mind, Samuel, I have a patient to attend to. Don’t forget that I’m doing you a favor.” 

“Yeah,” Sam rolled his eyes and made for the door, “add it to my tab. Just come get me when y’all are done.” 

Some childish, stupid part of you wanted to ask him to stay. Part of you wanted to reach out, fold his hand in yours, and let this whole stupid appointment pass over you like water, knowing that Sam would take it all in for you. You tightened your shaking fists and swallowed down that need like bile. 

McDreamy set your x-rays in the light box and flicked it on. He studied them for a moment before casting his eyes over his shoulder to you. 

“You’re a friend of Sammy’s?” He asked. You snorted at the endearment. 

“I’m a firefighter.” You lied. Porter hummed and turned back to his images. 

“Your hands are fine,” Dr. McDreamy said after a moment, his canines glinting as he pointed out your intact knuckles, “just bruising. Your ribs…” he shook his head and clicked his tongue, one long finger trailing over the x-ray of your shattered bones before stepping towards you and lifting your shirt to examine the swelling. “You’ll need surgery.” You pressed your lips together and recoiled from his touch. 

“Nah.” You shook your head. 

McDreamy blinked up at you. You’d finally caught him off guard, thrown him off his rhythm. 

“The bone fragments-” you liked the way his posh accent curled around the word. You shivered at that particular thought. 

“I don’t care.” You managed to cross your arms. “I’ve survived plenty of bone fragments.” Dr. McDreamy held your eye for a moment longer before sighing and nodding. 

“Sam will have wandered off by now. He can’t help himself.” He made for the door, collecting your images and handing them over as he did. You folded them until you could stuff them into your back pocket. McDreamy cringed at the sight. 

He led you through the near abandoned halls of Dahlia Gen. You’d always thought that this place would have stayed as bright and loud and alive at night as it did during the day. At least, that’s what the ER was like. The emergency room was like a living creature, teeming with movement and noise. Marie Greer was the charge nurse down there, and she ran most night shifts with an iron fist. Every time you’d ended up in her care, she’d reamed you out within an inch of your life only to bring you back again with her excellent medical skills. You wondered if she was down there tonight, running her ER like a conductor before an orchestra. You wondered what she would say if she saw you. If she would be the one who could convince you to lay down, get treated, get surgery, get better. 

You wouldn’t risk it. You’d slip out the back and hope she didn’t catch sight of you. 

“You know,” McDreamy said as he led you past a door with big bold letters stating NO ENTRY BEYOND THIS POINT, “pretty face like yours… I could work out that scar tissue faster than you can say ‘please.’” You stared up at him, that smug smile on his face. 

“Go fuck yourself.” 

Porter laughed. After a moment, you joined him, ribs be damned. 

You came upon a door that was marked GALLERY. Porter swiped his keycard and opened it, poking his head in before leaning back and motioning you in. 

Sam was sat in what looked to be a stiff, uncomfortable chair, alone in a gallery space facing a glass panel. His back was bent, elbows on his knees, his posture that of intense focus. You chanced a glance down and caught sight of a vast, brightly lit operating room. A sea of doctors and nurses were moving around a patient on a table like ants. Movements were synched and smooth, flowing between each other as naturally as breathing. Standing over the patient’s left side, at the epicenter of all of the movement, was a woman draped in surgical gowns and gloves. You could see fire red curls escaping the bun and scrub cap at the base of her neck. Her face was pinched in concentration, her hands, painted red, were tying knot after every knot into the flesh of the patient’s still-beating heart. Sam’s shaking hands tried in vain to copy her movements.

“Christ,” you breathed. Sam jolted and looked up at you. His face was strange and open in a way you hadn’t seen before. Something like grief was clear across his features. 

“Yeah,” he breathed, sitting back in his chair, “that’s um…” he swallowed, “that’s Alexis Solaire. She’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. She’s the best of the best.” 

“She’s not human.” Porter chimed from the doorway. “But then, are any of us?”

Sam stood, shook out his shaking hand, and turned away from the OR. As he did, Alexis Solaire looked up from her work very suddenly. It was like she had known Sam was watching, and she knew now that he had turned away. Her work faltered for only a moment before those careful knots were continued. 

He was quiet as he walked you out, hands firmly in his pockets. He waved McDreamy off impatiently, too quiet and withdrawn now to bother with his flirting and teasing. Porter slipped away into the guts of the hospital as you and Sam slipped out of them, into the dingy, dark parking garage. 

Sam sat in the driver’s seat, both hands shaking, his face drawn and pale. He had history in that hospital. He had people there. And it was too much for him. 

“Gimme your keys,” you said. Sam’s eyes snapped to you. 

“What?” He asked softly. 

“You look like you’re gonna pass out.” You smiled. “Let me drive.” He hesitated for a moment, only a moment, before relenting. 

Halfway through the drive, your fancy new phone propped on your knee shining directions up at you through the dark, Sam’s voice rose through the silence in the passenger seat. 

“Your ex,” he said, “the one you’re afraid of-” 

“I’m not afraid of him.” You snapped. Sam was only quiet for a breath before continuing. 

“Did he do this to you?” 

It was the question that had been hanging over you for two weeks, since you’d given Sam just a glimpse of Quinn in that ambulance. You wouldn’t be surprised if Sam had told David. That’s why you couldn’t bear to talk to him about anything serious, why you couldn’t let Milo and Asher chase you down and pull the answer out of you. It felt as though everybody was staring you down all of the time, that question sitting in the back of their throats, beating at their teeth to jump out at you. 

You gnashed your teeth against the instinct to snap at him, to tell him to fuck off, to remind him exactly how little he was entitled to when it came to your history.

But then again, he’d snuck you into a hospital, his hospital, got you looked at for nothing, got one of his fancy doctor friends to see you. You owed him. 

“No.” You gritted out. You flexed your hands on the wheel. You were speeding, just a bit, and purposefully slowed down. “He… it was some friends of his. One hook up and a guy she was seeing. I was… asking her some questions. She didn’t like that.” 

“What, you faced down two grown folks on your own?” Sam huffed. “No wonder you got your ass kicked.” 

“Hey, I walked away from that fight.” You grunted. “They did not.” Sam laughed, and then seemed to realize you were serious. 

“Lord have mercy,” he breathed, “you’re gonna give me an ulcer. You won?” 

“I did.” You grinned. 

“You’re good.” 

“I’m good.” 

Sam turned on the radio, flipping to a pre-saved channel that played shitty, rock-adjacent music that old men liked. He sang along to a few songs, off-key and rasping, his voice so unsure even though he knew the words. 

Sam’s house was deep in the woods just outside of Dahlia, surrounded by tall trees and overgrown grasses. It wasn’t big, but you knew it was expensive just by the look of it. Intentionally aged wood siding on a brick foundation, windows with curtains drawn. A wrap around porch with matching rocking chairs and a string of industrial looking lights. A coffee mug still sat on the wooden planks of the porch next to the plain welcome mat, empty and dark-rimmed. Sam bent to snag it as he passed, unlocking the door with his good hand. 

It was dark inside, still and cold. Sam flicked on a lamp beside the door. A sprawling living room emerged from the dark. A large, worn leather sectional filled up most of the space. Somebody else had decorated it. You couldn’t imagine Sam carefully matching the accents in the rug to the curtains. One wall was lined with floor to ceiling bookcases, stacked haphazardly with sterile-white medical texts. Knowing the costs of textbooks, that shelf alone must have cost more than the rest of the house combined. 

Your fancy new phone buzzed in your pocket. You snagged it out, hands still numb from the cold outside. David’s name lit up on the still-generic wallpaper. 

ETA??

You shot back a quick reply. 

My hand is fine. Ribs are broken, but fine. Crashing at Sam’s. Too late to drive. 

David wouldn’t argue with the ‘too tired to drive’ excuse. 

“Do you… um…” Sam was standing too close to you when you turned. You jumped, twinging your ribs as you did. You winced and stepped back, grasping at your side. “Shit,” Sam’s hands hovered over your shoulders, as though he wanted to steady you but he was afraid to touch, “I’m sorry, Darlin’. You okay?” 

“Yeah,” you replied instinctively, “I’m fine. Jumpy. Always… I’m always just a little jumpy.” 

Sam’s dark eyes flicked over your face. His full lips quirked up at the corners in that ghost of a smile you wanted to chase. 

“Do you want my bed?” 

“Nah,” you shook your head, “unless you’re joining. I won’t kick you out on the street.” 

“Nonsense.” Sam grinned outright, straight, sharp teeth. You wanted to run your tongue along them to see if they could cut. “It’s no trouble. And you’re injured. I’m not letting you bum it on the couch.” 

“Rich boy don’t have a guest room?” The anxious shake in your chest eased a bit as the banter broke out between you. Sam shook his head and stepped forward into your space again, his hands hovered over your shirt, his eyes flicking up to meet yours. Fuck, you were a sucker for brown eyes. 

“Can I?’ He asked. You nodded once. He lifted your shirt gingerly, his hands carefully avoiding actually touching your skin. He first assessed your stab wound, poking and prodding at the gauze before sliding one cold hand up, pressing painfully into your ribs. You gasped, grabbed his shoulder to steady yourself, and threaded your fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “I know, Darlin’, I know. Just lemme…” He ran his fingers along the line of your ribcage one more time before receding. His hand fell to your hip and held on, keeping you upright as you caught your breath. 

“How much longer are you gonna be doing that, exactly?” You gasped. 

“Well, seeing as you’re not getting surgery,” his tone betrayed his disapproval, “a while longer. I wanna make sure your chest wall maintains its integrity. One bone fragment in the wrong place can lead to a collapsed lung. I’m not lookin’ to pull you back from that particular precipice.” 

“Everybody’s so worried about my bone fragments.” You grinned. 

Sam produced an oversized t-shirt bearing the name of a medical college that you didn’t recognize and a pair of fleece pajama pants. He tried again, gentleman that he was, to put himself on the couch, but you wouldn’t have it. The two of you ended up on opposite sides of Sam’s insanely large bed. His blankets were plush and worn, well loved. Sam’s things were nice, nicer than you had expected from his appearance, but it was clear he used things about as far as he could. It was a habit you saw in yourself sometimes. You didn’t think you’d find it in some richy rich doctor with a giant house. 

Sam fell asleep quickly, his quiet puffs of breath evening out. You were so tired. You laid awake, watching out of the second story window as the trees moved in silent conversation. 

“His name is Quinn,” you whispered into the quiet of the room, “and I was in love with him. Was. Maybe I still am. He um… he was rough. But I like that. I thought I did.” You turned your head against Sam’s plush pillow. “He hurt me. Did… um… all of this shit to me.” Your fingers trailed over your face. “I gave as good as I got but… I am… I am scared of him. Really scared.” 

Silence filled the room in the wake of your rasping voice, nothing but the pounding of your heart and Sam’s quiet breaths to reply to you.

[scotianostra]

On 20th May 685 The Picts won a decisive Battle , in present-day Angus, known as The Battle of Dun Nechtain or Battle of Nechtansmere.

A wee bit longer post than I normally give you, but it is a great story, the first part tells us how a battle against The Angles helped shape the country we now know as Scotland, the second is a tale from the twentieth century, both stories are connected, read on and enjoy.........

Known as 'Picti' by the Romans, meaning 'Painted Ones' in Latin, these northern tribes constituted the largest kingdom in Dark Age Scotland. They repelled the conquests of both Romans and Angles, creating a true north-south divide on the British Isles, only to disappear from history by the end of the first millennium - swallowed whole by the history of another group, the Gaels. Together they created the Kingdom of Alba.

The Picts took part in one of the most decisive battles in Scottish history - the Battle of Dun Nechtain (Dunnichen). If the Picts had lost, Scotland might never have existed. For the Angles of Northumbria it was simply a disaster - ending their domination of Scotland.

The Battle of Dun Nechtain was fought on this day in 685 AD and is one of the best recorded events in Dark Age Scotland.

The Kingdom of the Angles under King Oswui had rapidly expanded north, moving their frontier from the River Forth to the River Tay. Since 653 AD many of the major groups of people in Scotland - Britons, Gaels and much of Pictland - had been subject to the overlordship of King Oswui. In 672 AD, after the death of Oswui, the Picts rose against their overlords, expelling Drust, their Northumbrian puppet king.

The new King of Northumbria, Ecgfrith, wasted no time in wreaking revenge on the Picts. The Picts were massacred at a battle near the town of Grangemouth, where the rivers Carron and Avon meet. According to Northumbrian sources, so many Picts died they could walk dry-shod across both rivers. By 681 AD Ecgfrith had founded a bishopric at Abercorn on the southern shore of the Forth - a symbol of Northumbria's secure grip over the Picts.

The defeated Picts took Bridei, son of Bili, as the king of a much depleted Pictland. King Bridei was actually the cousin of his mortal enemy, King Ecgfrith of the Angles, but, in true Dark Age fashion, this didn't diminish their mutual desire to destroy each other. An almighty battle was on the cards.

The Chronicle of Holyrood gives us an account of the battle: "In the year 685 King Ecgfrith rashly led an army to waste the province of the Picts, although many of his friends opposed it...and through the enemy's feigning flight he was led into the defiles of inaccessible mountains, and annihilated, with great part of his forces he had brought with him." However, we need to keep in mind this account was written hundreds of years after the event.

The Angles were advancing up Strathmore, probably aiming for the Pictish fortress of Dunnottar, when they fell into Bridei's trap. Sighting a Pictish warband, the Angles set off in pursuit, then, as they came over the cleft in Dunnichen Hill, they found themselves confronted by the main body of the Pictish army. Caught between the Picts and the loch below the hill, the Angles bravely faced their doom.

The politcal map was altered. The Picts, Gaels and many Britons were freed from Northumbrian overlordship. Gaelic poets as far away as Ireland celebrated the battle's outcome. The Pictish frontier returned to the River Forth near Edinburgh and the Bishop of Abercorn fled, never to return. The Angles never fully recovered as major force in Scotland.

It is no coincidence that the Picts mysterious disappearance occurs at the same time as the creation of the kingdom of Alba. For many years Gaelic influence in Pictland had been on the rise. The Gaelic religion of Christianity had spread throughout Pictish lands and with it many Gaelic traditions. Furthermore, through a mixture of conquest and inter-marriage Gaelic or Gaelicised royalty had succeeded to the Pictish throne (a notable example of this being Kenneth MacAlpin).

Finally in 878 AD the Pictish king, Áed, was murdered and replaced by a Gael - Giric. Giric accelerated the Gaelic takeover of Pictish politics during his reign making the Gaelic language and traditions commonplace. Even after Giric was finally deposed in 889 AD future Pictish kings such as Donald and Constantine embraced Gaelic culture. By 900 AD Pictland ceased to exist. The reign of Donald is listed in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba as a king of Alba. Pictland and Dál Riata had gone and in their place Alba - a Gaelic word for Scotland - was created. In this simple listing in an obscure book Scotland has its origins.

Fast forward over 12 hundred years to the 2nd January 1950, and a woman called Miss E.F. Smith, described as a spinster, was driving home from a party in Brechin at about 2am. Her car had skidded into a ditch 2 miles outside the area due to the treacherous road conditions. She still had another 8 miles to go so she continued her journey on foot. She felt oddly nervous as she walked along the minor road west of the A932, then she saw a number of strange lights in the distance near Dunnichen Hill. Turning south towards the village, she noticed figure in the field to her right, part of Drummietermont Farm. Each figure carried a flaming red torch in its left hand and they seemed to be searching the ground for something.

Miss Smith then saw shapes on the ground exactly like dead bodies. The figure nearest to her stooped down and examined several of these ‘corpses’, turning them over and back again, as if looking for recognisable faces. This scene lasted for around ten minutes, with Miss Smith’s dog barking throughout. Eventually she simply walked away. She only realised that the whole event was peculiar when she woke up next day and thought about it. Later she gave details of the experience to the Society for Psychical Research. She reported that the searchers wore garb like body stockings, along with tunics and flattened oval helmets. They appeared to be moving around the edge of the vanished mere, the shape of which was later traced by archaeological investigation.

Although this post battle manifestation has not been repeated. some motorists passing through Dunnichen on misty nights have caught sight of fleeting human forms which vanish before their cars hit them.

There is some skepticism as to how real Miss Smith’s sighting was. She was travelling very late at night and had already walked a number of miles, not to mention suffering a trauma from skidding her car into a ditch. The vision could have been brought about as a result of exhaustion and the effects of the cold. However, the fact that it occurred at the exact site of the Battle of Nechtansmere seems to be too much of a coincidence and it is unlikely that the woman’s dog would react to something that occurred only in his owner’s mind.

The pictures are of Pictish stones from around Aberlemno that perhaps tell the story of the battle.

[blueiscoool]

More than 200 Survivors of Mount Vesuvius Eruption Discovered in Ancient Roman Records

After Mount Vesuvius erupted, survivors from the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum fled, starting new lives elsewhere.

On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting over 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in the air. As the ash and rock fell to Earth, it buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

According to most modern accounts, the story pretty much ends there: Both cities were wiped out, their people frozen in time.

It only picks up with the rediscovery of the cities and the excavations that started in earnest in the 1740s.

But recent research has shifted the narrative. The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one about annihilation; it also includes the stories of those who survived the eruption and went on to rebuild their lives.

The search for survivors and their stories has dominated the past decade of my archaeological fieldwork, as I’ve tried to figure out who might have escaped the eruption. Some of my findings are featured in an episode of the new PBS documentary, “Pompeii: The New Dig.”

Making it out alive:

Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities on the coast of Italy just south of Naples. Pompeii was a community of about 30,000 people that hosted thriving industry and active political and financial networks. Herculaneum, with a population of about 5,000, had an active fishing fleet and a number of marble workshops. Both economies supported the villas of wealthy Romans in the surrounding countryside.

In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event with no survivors: In episodes of the TV series “Doctor Who” and “Loki,” everyone in Pompeii and Herculaneum dies.

But the evidence that people could have escaped was always there.

The eruption itself continued for over 18 hours. The human remains found in each city account for only a fraction of their populations, and many objects you might have expected to have remained and be preserved in ash are missing: Carts and horses are gone from stables, ships missing from docks, and strongboxes cleaned out of money and jewelry.

All of this suggests that many – if not most – of the people in the cities could have escaped if they fled early enough.

Some archaeologists have always assumed that some people escaped. But searching for them has never been a priority.

So I created a methodology to determine if survivors could be found. I took Roman names unique to Pompeii or Herculaneum – such as Numerius Popidius and Aulus Umbricius – and searched for people with those names who lived in surrounding communities in the period after the eruption. I also looked for additional evidence, such as improved infrastructure in neighboring communities to accommodate migrants.

After eight years of scouring databases of tens of thousands of Roman inscriptions on places ranging from walls to tombstones, I found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities. These municipalities are primarily in the general area of Pompeii. But they tended to be north of Mount Vesuvius, outside the zone of the greatest destruction.

It seems as though most survivors stayed as close as they could to Pompeii. They preferred to settle with other survivors, and they relied on social and economic networks from their original cities as they resettled.

Some migrants prosper:

Some of the families that escaped apparently went on to thrive in their new communities.

The Caltilius family resettled in Ostia – what was then a major port city to the north of Pompeii, 18 miles from Rome. There, they founded a temple to the Egyptian deity Serapis. Serapis, who wore a basket of grain on his head to symbolize the bounty of the earth, was popular in harbor cities like Ostia dominated by the grain trade. Those cities also built a grand, expensive tomb complex decorated with inscriptions and large portraits of family members.

Members of the Caltilius family married into another family of escapees, the Munatiuses. Together, they created a wealthy, successful extended family.

The second-busiest port city in Roman Italy, Puteoli – what’s known as Pozzuoli today – also welcomed survivors from Pompeii. The family of Aulus Umbricius, who was a merchant of garum, a popular fermented fish sauce, resettled there. After reviving the family garum business, Aulus and his wife named their first child born in their adopted city Puteolanus, or “the Puteolanean.”

Others fall on hard times:

Not all the survivors of the eruption were wealthy or went on to find success in their new communities. Some had already been poor to begin with. Others seemed to have lost their family fortunes, perhaps in the eruption itself.

Fabia Secundina from Pompeii – apparently named for her grandfather, a wealthy wine merchant – also ended up in Puteoli. There, she married a gladiator, Aquarius the retiarius, who died at the age of 25, leaving her in dire financial straits.

Three other very poor families from Pompeii – the Avianii, Atilii and Masuri families – survived and settled in a small, poorer community called Nuceria, which goes by Nocera today and is about 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) east of Pompeii.

According to a tombstone that still exists, the Masuri family took in a boy named Avianius Felicio as a foster son. Notably, in the 160 years of Roman Pompeii, there was no evidence of any foster children, and extended families usually took in orphaned children. For this reason, it’s likely that Felicio didn’t have any surviving family members.

This small example illustrates the larger pattern of the generosity of migrants – even impoverished ones – toward other survivors and their new communities. They didn’t just take care of each other; they also donated to the religious and civic institutions of their new homes.

For example, the Vibidia family had lived in Herculaneum. Before it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, they had given lavishly to help fund various institutions, including a new temple of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility.

One female family member who survived the eruption appears to have continued the family’s tradition: Once settled in her new community, Beneventum, she donated a very small, poorly made altar to Venus on public land given by the local city council.

How would survivors be treated today?

While the survivors resettled and built lives in their new communities, government played a role as well.

The emperors in Rome invested heavily in the region, rebuilding properties damaged by the eruption and building new infrastructure for displaced populations, including roads, water systems, amphitheaters and temples.

This model for post-disaster recovery can be a lesson for today. The costs of funding the recovery never seems to have been debated. Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.

Instead, all signs indicate that communities welcomed the survivors. Many of them went on to open their own businesses and hold positions in local governments. And the government responded by ensuring that the new populations and their communities had the resources and infrastructure to rebuild their lives.

By Steven L. Tuck.