#I love when you talk science to me

[kissingmyeyez]

Are there any old fics out there that that deal with Bruce and Tony angst during or around Age of Ultron? Like they keep getting into fights and it feels like a knife in the heart?

If you know anything remotely similar please send it my way.

[astralzeraphias]

“he was mentally ill. this monster was a- was a sick fantasy. a product of his dementia.”

“…i saw it too. does that make me disturbed? demented? does… that make me sick too?”

[booklover223]

This will inevitably become DCxDP BUT ANYWAY

I love the idea of Danny having two sets of everything kinda, he has his human lungs, organs, etc but his ghost has their own versions. I love the idea of the core being the single most important organ a ghost has but I also love the thought that Danny can pull his ghostly heart out of his chest and because it’s ectoplasm it does what he wants so he makes it realistic and grotesque for ppl he’s trying to intimidate or he can pull out a cartoon shaped heart even make it pump through his chest and give himself heart eyes, him casually just pulling out his ghostly organs to study them for help in biology. They do have cores mind, it’s just they also have their other organs just because. Most living now dead beings have their organs because it’s an imprint from their life while the neveborn or the realm ghosts could have nothing but their core, or they could adopt a bunch of different things like a kryptonian’s lung capacity and a Martian’s shapeshifting gene

[thebluebygracieabrams]

what is the most unfuckable profession in the world and why is it accountants

[hana-bobo-finch]

a strange trend in my favorite characters I realize is that I tend to heavily gravitate toward somewhat obscure, antagonistic forces

[trollbreak]

*raises hand* are we interns allowed to diddle the beastly? or does he have a mate?

[You find yourself face to face with an exhausted looking troll in a lab coat, clipboard in hand. It seems you’ve caught them doing checks over the habitation space. This is clearly not the head of the project.

They sigh, deep enough to carry all the air from their lungs.]

“…Please do not… diddle… the experiments.”

[dickgreyson]

one of my essays from back when i studied philosophy is being put into a good answers guide at my university<3 not one of my good ones but

[apoloniaspiegelgold]

"What we need is evidence. From now on, we stick to them like glue. On the bus, at school, after school. Everywhere they go, we're there. Either we'll find some evidence, or they get so fed up with us they have to start talking. Agreed?"

- Shannon Kelly, professional stalker

[masterfuldoodler]

Anyone else use to 'train' yourself in case you went blind later in life? (attempt to do things with your eyes closed)

[iryonin]

✿ + karin 😈

PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP. @shegore, accepting.

bold for things i could definitely see or want;   italics for things i could see or am unsure of; striked-out for things i don’t want or cannot see.

FRIENDSHIP.     childhood friends   /   work buddies or coworkers   /   family friends   /   friends with benefits   /   smoking buddies   /   adventure buddies   /   fake friends   /   recently friends   /   party buddies   /   friendship of need   /   dying friendship   /   circumstantial friendship   /   partners in crime   /   old friendship   /   [your muse]   is the good influence   /   [your muse]   is the bad influence   /   [my muse]   is the good influence   /   [my muse]   is the bad influence   /   opposites attract   /   ride or die   /   frenemies   /   roommates or flatmates   /   penpals   /   exes to friends   /   enemies to friends   /   other

ROMANCE.     childhood sweethearts   /   [your muse is mines]   childhood crush   /   [my muse is yours]   childhood crush   /   exes   /   exes to lovers   /   forbidden lovers   /   highschool sweethearts   /   secret relationship   /   opposites attract   /   long distance   /   unrequited   [from your muses side]   /   unrequited   [from my muses side]   /   unrequited   [from both sides]   /   skinny love   /   friends to lovers   /   enemies to lovers   /   spurious relationship   /   power couple   /   newly entered   /   soulmates   [metaphorical]   /   soulmates   [literal]   /   awkward   /   turning toxic   /   toxic love   /   cheating   [on your muse]   /   cheating   [with your muse]   /   other 

FAMILIAL.     siblings   [half]   /   siblings   [step]   /   [my muse]   is an older sibling figure to your younger sibling figure   /   [my muse]   is a younger sibling figure to your older sibling figure muse   /   [my muse]   is a parental figure to yours   /   [my muse]   is a child figure to your muse   /   guardian figure   /   legal guardian   /   adoptive child   /   foster child   /   [your muse]   is taken under mines wing   /   [my muse]   is taken under yours wing   /   other

ANTAGONISTIC.     dangerous to each other   /   dangerous to others   /   unpredictable   /   rivals   /   petty   /   developing into sexual or romantic tension   /   based off family matters   /   based of off circumstance   /   based of professional matters   /   based off misunderstanding or lies   /   conflict of ideology   /   betrayal   /   hero - villain dynamic   /   enemies   /   fight club   /   friends turned enemies   /   lovers turned enemies   /   exes turned enemies   /   other 

[free-luigi-mangione]

Your empathy is such a stark contrast to twitter lol, all people that I seen do over there is make jokes about this situation and his reactions. Idk I never found any of his circumstances in PA especially remotely humourous, because half of them are blatant violation of constitutional rights and police brutality, the other other half is legal way of instilling fear in people.

i didn't and still haven't found anything of his behaviour in PA to be funny, at all. like i could point out exactly what, where, how he'd reacted and why and all of those answers are perfectly reasonable and understandable responses from anybody in that situation. i still haven't found anything about his situation to be funny, except for the only times he jokes in his letters and since he's coping with humour there, and he's just funny too, i also find it funny. otherwise nah.

[emotionally-charged-arson]

Character Spotlight: The Chemist (Ayreon's The Source)

Ask and ye shall receive.

In the grand scheme of countless intertwining Ayreon headcanons infesting my brain, I like to have a nice, compact theme to refer back to for each album. Arjen is borderline intentional about not putting themes in his work, but they creep in anyway and you can dig them up and work off of them with a little elbow grease.

For me, The Source is about loss of purpose, which is sort of an overarching theme of the Forever saga anyway, but it shows up on a more intimate level in this album. Especially when you pull traits for characters out of thin air when you're 14 and eventually find a red thread through the lot of them you didn't actually plan for.

I did a really general overview of most of my versions of the Source cast and their whole deal while they're on Alpha. Just a whole mess of science, religion and state all crammed into one, eventually leading to the 'Frame taking over. In some way or another, these people all know each other and support a cause of some sort. When they're forced to leave their home planet, they have to grapple with the fact that their lives there were altogether pointless and figure out how to embrace the sense of rebirth that's a part of the Forever package.

Almost all of their arcs follow the same overall timeline: they had some *thing* they had worked towards for the better part of their lives, it's all ripped away in an instant with Alpha's destruction, and during their time on Starblade, they work their way back up to a new sense of collective self-worth.

There are, however, a few notable outliers. The Captain, The Chemist and TH-1 still have that theme thing going for them at the end, but how they get there is a little different.

So. Chemist. Like I said, pretty much everyone in the cast has an idea of who everyone else is. Not this guy.

Thomas Giles Rogers is an organic chemist with zero personal affiliation with any other character pre-album story. He graduated from the same enormous central university most of them did, but had no interest in tying his research, much less his entire career, to the fate of the planet itself. Not that he was ever offered or cares about politics at all, but still.

His motivations lie on more personal grounds. Giles is prone to stress, nervous breakdowns in academic settings, all that fun stuff. He always has been. His doctoral dissertation and the ten years of his career following it were dedicated to the synthesization of safe alternatives to sensory deprivation drugs. Either supplemental to the process or replacing it entirely. His "big" project for most of that time was an injection meant to temporarily alter the human respiratory system, allowing someone to breathe underwater for therapeutic processes.

The endeavor was a total failure, for all the resources put into it. Giles is forced to abandon the project after years of constantly being denied grants to pursue its production. People not prioritizing what he wants to use it for, his ineffective presentation, him refusing to let people hire him for research to weaponize it, whatever. All that work was for nothing and it takes genuine a toll on him.

It's really just a career slump, but his self-worth is so firmly attached to his perceived academic success that he can't cope. Four years before TDTTWBD, he drops all his research, picks up some entry-level lab tech job and just goes through the motions. No grandiose motivation to save the world like the rest of these yahoos, just surviving.

But anyhow. Russell does his thing, the 'Frame takes over, and one way or another everyone except Giles is crowded in Nils' basement accepting their fate and hopelessly looking for livable planets with no power or digital resources.

Gross oversimplification of Chronicle I, by the way. Russell drags a broken android into the place, Floor shoots Simone's ear off, etc.

The only remotely plausible option is Y, pretty grim given that the surface is uninhabitable and colonization could only occur if everyone somehow grew gills. As Hansi laments when a switch goes off in his brain and he remembers some science expo he went to a few years back, where some guy was presenting prototypes for...pretty much exactly that.

By pure coincidence, Giles is one of Simone's clients, signed onto her private practice she started after quitting her job as the previous president's counselor. She knows where he lives and works, and she and Tommy manage to track him down amidst the literal apocalypse outside (on account of Tommy having no scientific background and pretty much no other use to the group than scavenging for essentials on the surface in this part. Bonus points that he knows how to use a gun and supposedly doesn't care about his own death).

Giles, like a lot of people has basically been hunkered down in his apartment since the 'Frame took power (about three weeks) and is all paranoid and starving when they find him but they find him, take him back and convince him to pick his work back up all the same.

So he's part of the group now, and alternative to everyone else on Starblade who has no point to their lives now, Giles has FAR too much of a point. Using years old notes and limited resources, he has to create the greatest scientific advancement in the history of mankind in the maybe....six months that people onboard are able to live outside of suspended animation. The total extinction of the human race to follow if he fails.

This...does not mix well with

1. his whole self-induced, major-accomplishment based pressure thing since it's a wildly amplified version of it

2. The fact that he killed a woman during Run! Apocalypse! Run! (defending another character but still) and his control to give life and take it away over so many people, existing and prospective, constantly rotating in his brain

3. The more upbeat, hopeful characters unwittingly holding their expectations for their brave new world over him and what Liquid Eternity needs to be to satisfy them

4. Pretty much everyone else involved in the political side of things deliberately ceased contact with friends or family outside the party's inner circle, to prevent distractions or the possibility of blackmail, while they were still on Alpha. That devaluing of personal relationships is what they're conditioned to and this is more the focal point of Tommy, Floor and Tobias' sort of...joint character development situation, but it has an effect on Giles. This much more openly sensitive, emotional guy is surrounded by these jaded assholes who have no sense of the pressure he's feeling in more ways than one. This effect also applies to James (Historian) in a way, and the two actually kind of have a rapport going about it at the end of Chronicle II (syncing up with their little Condemned To Live duet), but the only person who seems to fully get what's happening to Giles is Simone, someone who deliberately separated herself from said jaded political asshole clique and who has prior knowledge of his experiences on account of literally being his therapist.

All in all just. Not having a good time, insisting that he has to do this alone and eventually external assistance from one or more characters being the only thing that solves it.

The other part of this compact theme thing is that our purpose, our humanity, is defined by our relationships and reliance on other people. We need something to strive for in order to feel like a person, and ultimately that 'something' comes down to either the preservation of the self, the other, or of the collective.

Once you resolve that, there is one other thing that defines the human experience and that is death.

Death and a point, a person, to avoid it in the name of. And Liquid Eternity took both of those things away. From there arises stagnation and a lack of purpose with no means of escape, the hallmark of the Forever Race.

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(gosh, I wonder if that ties into members of the party forcing away loved ones in the name of their progress even though it was pointless in the end. Or TH-1's self-preservation being their downfall after all the talk of cooperation and acceptance of emotional openness. Who's to say.)

[hylianengineer]

I ran into My Favorite PhD Student at work the other day and she said she misses me and we should have lunch sometimes and. Um. I didn't know she was fond of me too? I mean, to the extent that she'd want to go out of her way to spend time with me? That's sweet. I hope we see each other more now.

[the-acid-pear]

Honestly to expand on my last RB a little . . .

Like, remember all those stories about UFOs and, well, not really UFOs since they were on the ground but, those stories about things some suspect to be of alien origin and while unknown what's known is that you're going to die in 5 minutes. (Radiation poisoning)

If you truly went on to believe those were made by aliens it'd be like... So sad. Like imagine you crashed a fucking shit crash you're in a new place confused lost maybe you've been looking at it for a while but now you're stranded and now everyone who so little dares to come across you will literally die an horrible death. Like man. It'd fucking suck.

[jackett-slut]

ok sorry if this sounds fucking insane. i need to write something out.

[lairofsentinel]

I love how this post forgets entirely that a lot of ppl are against GMO because they are deeply related to modifying food in order to resist certain pesticides that then end up in our food. It’s not because “contains genes”, it’s because contains non-biodegradable substances that pollute our lands and, by now, our clouds and rain. It’s about the chemicals that have tons and tons of studies showing they increase the development of allergies in the population, cause unusual hormone alterations, and even affect fetus in pregnant ppl. In the towns around the fields where they are spread, you have 3 times more cancer cases than the national mean, specially in kids. So, no, it’s not “mere genes”. It’s a lot more and deeper, related to sustainability and public health, which is also science that corporations ignore completely. What I found so curious is that most ppl from first world countries does not know that the majority of the GMO is not related to “make crops flood resistant”, but resistant to pesticides. Monsanto loves spreading that concept that GMO is just used to make “food have more vit A”. And ppl just repeat. Countries where we truly endure the use of GMO in our lands, we know exactly that GMO means.

GMO has existed forever, natives such as the incas practised it, it’s not “new”, it’s not “modern science”. Mexicas developed a hundred corn types over centuries with this technique. Again, it’s not new. Now we can accelerate the genetic modifications and be more accurate with the modern techniques, but it’s mostly to make them resistant to pesticides. Why do you think Monsanto was bought by Bayer years ago? The same corporation that sells you pesticides, that are, most of the time, non-controlled in their manipulations, is the same one that sells you food and then medicines because the illnesses related to the constant ingest of these [non-regulated] pesticides. And this is one of the many negatives effects. Another one that happens with GMO [even though nobody in this fucking place wants to acknowledge it] is the mono-cultive practices [non-rotation of the crops] that destroy the health of the soil, and if you don’t have a soil with rich minerals, the plants you put to grow there won’t develop properly or will be poor in minerals and vits. So, we have poorer food and erosion. Because, yes... GMO used in this way causes it. A big problem that, again, nobody speaking about GMO seems to know. We are not speaking about the erosion of the soils and how these practices are destroying entire countries’ biodiversity. 

Another great danger that specialists have been repeating over and over is that GMO usually forces similar modifications in different crops so different plants can resist the same pesticides that are sold in a big “bio-package”. This causes that weed and some plagues became resistant or stronger to this pesticide, so every few years we need higher doses or stronger pesticides that end up in our food and in our body [because so far, a lot of them are not biodegradable]. All the problems listed above become more concentrated. 

The other important danger is that it may happen a plague or a fungus that may be particularly prone to develop, associated with a similar modification that was used on different crops. This can endanger a lot of different crops with one single plague, causing potential destruction of big quantities of different kinds of food [this is also a very old concern known by natives since centuries ago, reason why they always tried to use rudimentary GMO techniques to favour a diversification of the crops, not the other way around like corporations do now]. So far we know, scientists have talked about this a lot, but one thing is a scientist talking about this issue, and another is a food-monopolised-corporation doing it, especially when corporations see more profit by just reducing the diversification in our food [less different bio-packages to develop]. 

And we can continue with the silly argument that “corporations are different to the GMO technique”, and even though that’s true “technically”, the reality shows otherwise. We live in a world where GMO has been monopolised. Hell, food industry is already monopolised, so don’t be so naive to think that we still can keep things separated. 

“Mere genes”. I would love so much this place to learn the topic properly before dismissing entire populations in this way. GMO, as it’s now, controlled and monopolised by corporations, is a big no-no. And dismissing the entire population whose children have 3 times more cancer cases than the national mean [northern provinces of Argentina, for example] because these pesticides, annoys me a lot. Never ever I've seen an integral post of GMO in this place. The topic is a looot more complex than the religious adoration of science or feeling superior because “I know science” or “I _believe_ in science”. Not all science is good, not all science is well tested before being used, corporation science is always a big question mark in many, many contexts, and science is always founded and moved by interests [unfortunately, more and more corporate interests by now]. Science is good, but don’t turn it into the new religion. It has limits and flaws, and it’s dirty to the neck with interests that few want to acknowledge. 

Funny how that works