#atomizer factory

[panelswithoutpeople]

Dr. Locrian's Asylum from The Nightmare Factory

by Joe Harris and Ted McKeever

adapted from Thomas Ligotti

[fihas]

evil webweaving

[kefnut-the-gweilologist]

hm

[garbagequeer]

DIFFERENT #bethel? ben button of sacrificing yourself to the gargoyle king / fiy daytime hallucinations are a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia but listen have an awesome day 😁 you will NEVER be her (bisexual betty cooper)

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

Art Manipulation Credit to IMIJ Factory

[thejohnfleming]

Before I Go: John Dowie has thoughts on both Kens Dodd and Campbell...

John Dowie has a new book out entitled Before I Go… We chatted via FaceTime… John Dowie (Photo by Steve Ullathorne) ME: Wikipedia calls you a “humourist” and says that, among other things, you are an “arthouse proto-alternative” comedian whose work mixes parody, fantasy, impersonations and taboo topics. What is an “arthouse proto-alternative” comedian? JOHN D: No idea.  ME: Am I allowed to…

[lifewithaview]

Alex Borstein and Seth MacFarlane in Family Guy (1999) Da Boom

S2E3

New Year's 2000 is approaching, and Spooner Street is preparing for a big holiday bash. When Peter hears about the impending disaster of Y2K, however, he panics and locks the family in the basement. His fears turn out to be well-founded when the world's computer systems go haywire and civilization is destroyed by atomic blasts. After digging out of the rubble, the family decides to travel to the Natick Twinkie factory in the hopes of finding food and building a new town.

*This episode was the first appearance of Peter's future nemesis, The Giant Chicken; however, his real name, Ernie, is not revealed until later in the series.

[fabioverochef]

EUREKA ATOM EXCELLENCE 75 STRESS TEST

[charyou-tree]

I need people to understand that Uranium is an eldritch horror

I'm not talking about radiation, or nuclear weapons, or anything that you can do with uranium, I mean its mere existence on Earth is a reminder of cosmic horrors on a scale you can barely conceive of.

When a nuclear power plant uses Uranium to boil water and spin steam turbines to keep the lights on, they're unleashing the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star.

Allow me to elaborate:

In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. The primordial fires of the Big Bang produced almost exclusively the two lightest elements, along with a minuscule trace of lithium. It was a start, but that's not much to build a universe out of. Fortunately, the universe is full of element factories. We call them "stars".

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion, smooshing light elements together to make heavier elements, and releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process, powering the star and making it shine. This goes on for millions to billions of years depending on the stars mass (although not how you might think, the bigger stars die young), the vast majority of that time spent fusing hydrogen into yet more helium. Eventually, the hydrogen in the core starts to run low, and if the star is massive enough it starts to fuse helium into carbon, then oxygen, neon, and so on up through successively heavier elements.

There's a limit to this though:

This chart shows how much energy is released if you were to create a given element/isotope out of the raw protons and neutrons that make it up, the Nuclear Binding Energy. Like in everyday life, rolling downhill on this chart releases energy. So, starting from hydrogen on the far left you can rapidly drop down to helium-4 releasing a ton of energy, and then from there to carbon-12 releasing a fair bit more.

But, at the bottom of this curve is iron-56, the most stable isotope. This is the most efficient way to pack protons and neutrons together, and forming it releases some energy. But once its formed, that's it. You're done. Its already the most stable, you can't get any more energy out of it, and in fact if you want to do anything to it and make it into a different element you're going to have to put energy in.

So, when a massive star's core starts to fill up with iron, the star is doomed. Iron is like ash from the nuclear fire that powers stars, its what's leftover when all the fuel is used up. When this happens, the core of the star isn't producing energy and can't support itself anymore and catastrophically collapses, triggering a supernova explosion which heralds the death of the star.

What kind of stellar-corpse gets left behind depends again on how massive the star is. If its really big, more than ~30 times the mass of the sun and its probably going to form a black hole and whatever was in there is gone for good. But if the star is a bit less massive, between 8-25 solar masses, it leaves behind a marginally less-destroyed corpse.

The immense weight of the outer layers of the star falling down on the core compresses the electrons of the atoms into their nuclei, resulting in them reacting with protons and turning them all into neutrons, which creates a big ball of almost pure neutrons a couple miles across, but containing the entire mass of the star's core, 3-5 sun's worth.

This is the undead heart of the former star: a neutron star.

If, like many stars, this one wasn't alone but had a sibling, it can end up with two neuron stars orbiting each other, like a pair of zombies acting out their former lives. If they get close enough together, their intense gravity warps the fabric of spacetime as they orbit, radiating away their orbital energy as gravitational waves, slowing them down and bringing them closer together until they eventually collide.

The resulting kilonova explosion destroys both of the neutron stars, most likely rendering the majority of what's left into a black hole, but not before throwing out a massive cloud of neutron-rich shrapnel. This elder-god blood-splatter from the collision of the undead hearts of former stars contains massive nuclei with hundreds to thousands of neutrons, the vast majority of which are heinously unstable and decay away in milliseconds or less. Most of their decay products are also unstable and decay quickly as well, eventually falling apart into small enough clusters to be stable and drift off into the universe becoming part of the cosmic dust between the stars.

However,

Some of the resulting massive elements are merely almost stable. They would like to decay, but for quantum-physics reasons decaying is hard and slow for them, so they stick around much longer than you might expect. Uranium is one such element, with U-238 having a half-life of around 4.5 billion years, about the same as the age of the Earth, and its spicier cousin U-235 which still has a respectable 200 million year half life.

These almost-stable isotopes were only able to be created in the fiery excess of energy in a neutron star collision, and are the only ones that stick around long enough to carry a fraction of that energy to the era where hairless apes could figure out that a particular black rock made of them was emitting some kind of invisible energy.

So as I said at the beginning, Uranium is significant because it stores the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star, and we can release that energy at will if we set it up just right.

When you say it like that, is it any shock that the energy in question will melt your face off and rot your bones from the inside if you stay near it too long?

[valtsv]

I think I look at your posts too often cause my parents told me one of my aunts works in a “saint factory” and my only thought was “damn, just like the tumblr guy was talking about”. And not like. The place where they make saint statues.

in the silt verses this would be the equivalent of claiming that you're directly related to someone who worked on the atom bomb

[secretmellowblog]

Les Mis Hidden Name Meanings: “Fantine” (posting here because it got popular on TikTok)

Every character in Les Mis has a name with a deeper symbolic meaning— here’s a video I made for the official @barricadescon TikTok about the meaning behind “Fantine!”

Transcript and Digressions I left out of the video, under the cut:

Every charcater’s name in Les Mis is either a pun, a reference to a historical/mythological figure, or had some deep symbolic meaning — and sometimes it’s all of them at on.

The name “Fantine” comes from the french word “enfantine” or “childike, infant-like.” Her name basically means “Baby.” And obviously this speaks to her innocence and niavetee. But also “baby” is kind of,.,, well it sounds more like an informal term of endearment than an actual legal name?

And that’s because– Plot twist– Fantine isn’t her legal name! What is her legal name? She doesn’t have one.

And the reason she doesn’t have one is directly tied to political turmoil of the era she was born into.

Fantine grew up an orphan living on the streets, without a family without parents. Hugo tells us the origin of her name:

“she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown. (...)She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained.”

This moment is adapted beautifully in the Manga adaptation by Takahiro Arai, which I recommend to anyone who loves Les mis, manga, or any combination of those things.

But now let’s talk about the Directory.

To wildly oversimplifly a lot of complex history: Before the French Revolution, the Catholic Church’s records of baptismal ceremonies were often used as a registry of people’s legal names. During the French Revolution, the Revolutionary government– including the Directory– put in place a series of policies we now call “dechristianization,” where they attempted to dismantle the power of Catholic church.

Fantine was born during the age of these dechristianization policies. So she was never baptised, her baptismal name was never recorded, so she has no recorded legal or family name. She’s slipped through the cracks of the legal system, and ended up completely anonymous.

It sets Fantine up as this anonymous child of the Revolution– a stand in for everyone who was left behind when the Revolution was left behind, and kings were restored to the throne.

Fantine’s namelessness is meant to show atomized . How she has NO support system. She has nothing to connect her to other people, nothing to connect her to a support system.

Finally, the way Fantine tends to “slip through the cracks” is something that follows her throughout her life. When she’s fired from her job at a factory, Maroy Madeleine never learns of it– Fantine has this tendency to overlooked and forgotten. She is born anonymous and she dies anonymous. At the end of the story, she is buried in an unmarked grave, with not even the name “Fantine” on her headstone.

It ties into novel’s questions about which people we consider worth remembering, whose lives are worth being records.

And obviously Fantine is not the only character in Les Mis whose name has a deeper symbolic meaning. If you have any other Les Mis character names you’d like to explain, leave their name in the comments below.

Thank you for watching!

From the description of the original tiktok, here are some things that were left out of the video for time:

How this all relates to Cosette’s name(s)

Fantine’s nickname “The Blonde,” and how this relates to the way she’s dehumanized by Tholomyes

How the 2018 Bbc series fundamentally misunderstands Fantine’s character, and how one sign of this is that they give her a full legal first and last name

How Fantine’s name shows up/is revealed is significant parts of the story (like when Valjean reveals her signature on a letter to Thenardier, allowing him to take Cosette away)

How Fantine’s inability to write ties into the way it’s difficult for her to record her own story

How some of Valjean’s last words are revealing Fantine’s name to Cosette

Thanks again for reading!

[moistmailman]

Botw/totk Ganon kinda had it rough honestly. All of the other Ganons had to fight a Link who was mostly normal. The most adnormal one probably being Wind Waker Link. These Links were just heroic kids who went across Hyrule to save the land. They were tough, sometimes childish, but still normal.

Meanwhile he had to deal with the most feral bastard ever. This Link is a chaotic son of a bitch. It’s bad enough that in his first adventure this 5’1” blond immediately chose violence upon waking from a 100 year nap, while also having no memories at all. He was essentially in factory reset mode and his brain went on first instincts, which was violence. Head empty except for the violence.

But then in his second adventure he started vehicle warfare and spread even more violence across Hyrule. Imagine fighting someone and they immediately build a tank in a few seconds and make your entire existence extinct. This man is basically a caveman who figured how to split atoms. He flat out pillages the remains of monsters and uses them to kill even more monsters. Imagine a guy beating you over the head with your buddy’s arm. That’s what he does.

When’s Zelda’s around though he’s tame and normal. She literally keeps him in line. He’s the princess’s knight everyone expects him to be. But when Zelda’s gone, something snaps in him and he becomes this picture

[gallusrostromegalus]

You ohhhandedly mentioned tessai livong through ww2 and… wow thats true there were a lot of characters that got a first row seat to both conflicts, even if only the second was really impactful on japans history. Does urahara, yoruichi, tessai, the vizored or any of the shinigami have any specific feelings on ww2/the nuclear bombs? I know its a wild fucking question but it literally just occurred to me and i cant stop thinking about it.

Yeah WW2 is an entire 5-chapter arc in the fic because apparently Kubo is from Hiroshima, and Karakura town is based on his memories growing up there. Stuff that happens during that arc:

The Soul Society's sole warning that something catastrophic might be coming is the arrival of an irradiated and enraged Coyote spirit from the Trinidad test site. It's up to Newly-appointed captain Komamura to calm it down and explain what happened, and Mayuri is able to work out that atomic weapons are real from it's descriptions. He gives Soul Society about a month before the humans drop one on a city.

Unfortunately, he's correct.

***

Urahara and the Visoreds use the fact that they're already dead to mitigate some of the damage from the bombing by walking into the epicenter and shoving carbon rods into the most radioactive points, stemming much of the radiation damage, but there's nothing they can do for the initial wave of destruction.

It involves going through a new gigai every trip and learning what if feels like to have the flesh actually melt off your bones, but Hirako Shinji and the other Visored are no cowards, least of all about Hard and Dirty Work.

Tessai makes Ururu and Jinta out of spare parts from Urahara's Gigai experiments to house a heavily damage Kitsune and Tanuki spirit pair from a shrine that was destroyed. Ururu is the Tankuki, and the older one- Jinta seems a bit more 'organic' because Tessai learned a lot making his sister, and because as a Kitsune, he's a better actor.

***

Soul Society is in major trouble though.

with the sudden influx of souls- first from the bombing, but then from the radiation sickness and the famine that followed, the living and spirit worlds are in danger of becoming unbalanced.

It's a Major Crisis!

Fortunately for them, people with sociopathy tend to operate really well during Crises, and I realized the reason Mayuri hasn't been fired or killed by the time Ichigo shows up is that when shit hits the fan, Mayuri's lack of emotional response to the suffering of others means he can buckle down and fucking DELIVER.

Expansions to the pocket dimension that the queue of incoming souls is housed in? He didn't sleep for two weeks to get it done on time, but there was more than enough room when the bomb dropped and for the few months after as casualties continued.

Emergency rations for all these incoming factory workers that know nothing about farming? Behold, Nutritionally complete meals that you can eat right out of the box! And smaller, friendlier ones for the kiddies!

Hell, the 12th division even makes instructional propaganda videos about how safe and tasty these new foods are, featuring The Grand Clown Himself, and distribution centers featuring his likeness, so Mayuri enjoys a peculiar popularity in the Rukongai, not unlike an off-brand and sometimes educational Krusty The Clown.

Just ah. Stop asking questions about the ingredients list.

***

"I'm not fucking killing civillians." Says Kenpachi when Yamamoto begins to bring up the historical method that the Shinigami have used to balance out sudden influxes of souls from the living world.

"Oh?" Yamamoto glares at him. "You have a better idea?"

"What's them big fuckers that come outta tears sometimes? Hundred feet tall, black, bird faces?" He asks, waving as he tries to remember the names.

"...Menos Grande?" asks Ukitake, who has gotten remarkably good at interpreting for the man next to him at meetings.

"Yeah!" Zaraki grins, patting his six-foot-tall colleague on the head like a small child. "You said they're like... combination creatures of a thousand souls each right?"

"Zaraki is correct." Pipes up Tousen, who is also extremely eager to not murder civilians and even more eager to absolutely fuck up the army of Menos Aizen has been gathering in Hueco Mundo. "-It wouldn't be *easy* but dispatching approximately Five hundred Menos in the next week seems much more doable and much, much more morally sound than killing five hundred thousand civillians. Sir."

Kaname can feel the curse nails on his back starting to bleed from Aizen's glare but he presses on.

"-There appears to be a significant population of them gathered on the far eastern edge of Hueco Mundo. It would probably take most of the 11th Division's forces but-"

"IKKAKU!" Zaraki is already bellowing out the door to his lieutenant. "TELL EVERYONE TO PACK AN EXTRA PAIR OF PANTIES, WE'RE GOING ON A HOLLOW HUNT!"

There is a distant but enthusiastic whoop form Ikkaku in reply.

"An excursion into Hueco Mundo is exceptionally dangerous." Unohana notes, voice placid as he returns to the table.

"-and? I don't do this job because it's safe 'n' easy." Zaraki shrugs.

Her neutral expression softens just a bit into a small, affectionate and perhaps ever-so-slightly lascivious smile. "May I suggest that a detachment of the 4th Division accompany the 11th? It won't make the work easier, but it will mitigate some of the risk."

Yamamoto groans, aware that the decision has been made for him.

"Fine." He grunts. "Take a detachment of the Ninth too, you can use that newfangled radiodar whatsit to keep me updated."

"Pardon?" Mumbles Kaname, slightly woozy from blood loss.

His circulatory situation is not helped when an illusion-blind-to-the-blood Zaraki grabs him about the middle and starts carrying him off under his arm in exactly the direction the 9th and 11th are not like a particularly bewildered purse Chihuahua.

***

Aizen... almost strays from his path.

The Hogyoku is slow and tiresome, his first plan to barrage Karakura with Menos to create the Oken is being trashed and actually being forced to work his job of Rukongai Management is- Well, it's reminding him just why he started this quest to Dethrone God.

What loving creator would make an afterlife of squalor, where the 'lucky' are cursed to outlive everyone they know and love? Not one worth worshiping, surely.

But actually being out here, setting up emergency food distribution, implementing the latest in civil engineering from the newly arrived and seeing it immediately improve the quality of life, uniting families and... actually helping people? it's making him question his path. Perhaps- Perhaps God is not some uncaring regent on a distant throne. Perhaps God is something that lives in all souls, a kindness and goodwill towards one's fellow man, and to spread the will of a loving creator, one must Act to Enact God's Will...

Gin Panics.

He has not spent the last 300-odd years dangling the Hogyoku in front of Aizen, stuffing him full of spiritual energy to feed to the machine that generates reality like he was fattening up a goose for Pate, only to have him give up his quest for divinity NOW.

He's gonna have to do something drastic.

He's gonna have to convince Aizen he was right all along, and that he needs to keep using the Hogyoku.

He's going to need to use Aizen's own Illusions against him, and convince Aizen that the souls of the citizens of the rukongai aren't worth playing a Benevolent God for. That the whole thing needs to come out and be replaced.

Sure, it's a dick move

but those are his specialty.

***

It's the night before the 11th and the two detachments are supposed to leave for Hueco Mundo, and Yamamoto's been doing some thinking.

He is also in Zaraki's quarters at midnight sharp. "Captain-General." Nods Unohana, pausing mid-activity to acknowledge him. "Bruh." Zaraki grunts to indicate they were busy. "I need to borrow Zaraki for an hour or so, and then you may continue." he says, and then steps back outside so the man can get untied and dressed.

"This better be good old man, I know you haven't been married for a few centuries but REALLY-" Zaraki grumbles, emerging and putting his sandals on. "Don’t worry, it’ll take twenty minutes tops, all you have to do is stand behind me and don’t hide your rage." Yamamoto explains. "-We'’re going to go see the central 46." Zaraki pauses mid-sandal, slowly looking up at him with an intrigued arch to his brow. "Yes, it’s forbidden." Yamamoto says, not tearing his gaze away from the moon above them. "-But I've received reports that the Central 46 has acquired blueprints of the... Device. Used in the living world earlier this month and I'm nipping this at the damn bud." Zaraki grins, and finishes putting his sandals on.

The Central 46 are alerted to the Presence of Yamamoto and Zaraki by the main gate to their district being kicked through the wall of the council chambers.

"Hello, Sages and Wise Councilors of the Soul Society!" The Old Man greets them as he steps through the hole he just made, and The Barbarian squeezing through after, sword casually over his shoulder. "Well isn't this a surprise, everyone here in a full meeting at One in the Morning on a Teusday!"

"Wh-What is the meaning of this?" one of the head councilmen sputters, mustache bristling. "Shinigami are forbidden form this place, I'll have you both execu-!"

"Shut up." Yamamoto glares, and sparks fly from the corner of his eye. The hem of his Haori is starting to smolder and singe as well as he approaches the table the councilors are crowded around the blueprints from the living world.

"Now, we are all good and honorable people here." Yamamoto says, casually waving a hand in what would normally be a placating gesture but now only made his sleeve flicker as Ryujin Jakka grew hungrier. "-But I've been around long enough to know how Power corrupts."

"And we've all been exposed to a new, horrific level of Power."

"Oh, of course, you would never! It's unthinkable to sink to such a level!"

"...but it's been a few weeks. The initial shock has faded, and you're starting to understand the full toll of the destruction." he explains, strolling up, the diamond insignia on his back spreading across his shoulders as the Haori singes. Behind him, Zaraki is following with an unpleasantly carnivorous stroll, yellow eye lazily moving from face to face, taking stock of all those present. "...and you are perhaps developing a new standard of devastation and suffering to wish upon your enemies."

There is some muttering, some protesting, and worse, some agreeing. They are silenced by a sudden electric crackle of Energy from Zaraki.

"I’m just here to tell you all-" Yamamoto continues, unperturbed. Or perhaps so perturbed he's warped all the way around to a deep, ruthless peace.

"If I hear any ONE of you has taken steps to develop a weapon like this-" he points a finger at the blueprints, which singe and then burn, a low, slow flame that reduces them completely to ash.

"-I’m going to kill all of you."

"Actually," he explains, as the blueprints finish burning and the table catches as well, fire blooming and crackling, lighting him from beneath. "I’m going to kill all of you and your families. By which I mean, I’m figuring out who all your ancestors were going back Five generations, Kill them, and kill all their descendants."

The table burns, and the floor is threatening to catch, but nobody can move to ring the fire alarm or grab a bucket of water.

"-Because that’s the kind of indiscriminate destruction these things cause." he explains. "It's a damn shame to say this, but this is the first time we've been able to settle whole families in the same town- because five, six, even seven generations of families, from great-great grandmother to the newest infants were burnt together in an instant."

"So if you want to wield that kind of destruction, you best be prepared to deal with those kinds of consequences." he growls, and suddenly sweeps his hand over the fire, which snuffs out immediately.

Slowly he turns to go, and regards Zaraki behind him.

"Oh, and just in case any of you had thoughts of hastening my retirement in regards to this matter-" he speaks up, and points to Zaraki "-Near as I can tell, this asshole is immortal and indestructible, so if I happen to be dead, he'll do it for me, won't you?"

"Yes, sir." Zaraki Nods, eye fixed on the head councilor, committing his face to memory, blade and crackling eagerly.

"-and he's nowhere near as speedy and clean a killer as I am, so I suggest you don't test either of us." Yamamoto grins, and Ryujin Jakka can't help but flicker off his brow for emphasis.

"Goodnight, and go fuck yourselves." Yamamoto bows, and exits through the same hole he entered.

The walk back to the 11th is largely silent, but Yamamot can feel the pleased-yet-curious thrum of reiatsu from Zaraki.

"Question, boss-" he suddenly speaks as they approach the 11th.

"You're not supposed to question orders, Zaraki." He sighs. He'll make a proper shinigami out of him. Eventually.

"...Request for clarification, Boss-" Zaraki tries again, and Yamamoto nods. "-Why me?"

Yamamoto arches an overgrown brow at him.

"Not complainin'-" Zaraki explains, pointedly looking up at the moon and scratching his neck in deferment. "-But Byakuya's got more sway with them and Gin's definitely better at terrifying first impressions."

"Hm." Yamamoto nods. "It's in the follow-up, not the impression, you see."

"I do not." Zaraki says. For all his faults and frustrations, Zaraki sure keeps Yamamoto on his toes about not being lazy and actually explaining himself.

"-I am very serious about you killing them and their descendants if they ever think about making one of those devices." he sighs and Zaraki nods, waving a hand for him to continue. "-So I picked the Shinigami most invested in a peaceful future to make sure my orders would be carried out."

Zaraki still looks confused.

"You're my only captain with children, Zaraki." Yamamoto explains. "I know you only give half a rat's ass about the court guard, but I've seen what you'll do for Yachiru."

Zaraki nods understanding now, and a few more paces of silence pass between them.

"...Thank you, Sir." Zaraki mutters, bowing his head and using the honorific with genuine intent for the first time since Yamamoto had known him. "-For understanding."

"Thank you, Captain Zaraki." Yamamoto nodded slightly, stopping before the gate to the 11th. "-For understanding as well."

"-Now get back to Captain Unohana before she schedules some sort of blood test of a thousand needles for me!" Yamamoto grunted, prodding at Zaraki with his cane, and the man didn't need to be told twice.

[centrally-unplanned]

Atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Based or Cringe?

Hiroshima = based, Nagaski = cringe, we having it both ways today baby!

But okay to not meme, this is a very complex question. Fundamentally, the mass-scale strategic bombing of civilian targets in World War Two was a dubiously effective policy that killed millions of innocent people. I judge no one for strategically bombing tank factories with the accuracy you had in 1943, that is just the harsh realities of that war, but that is not a description of what Allied strategy was (or not just, they also bombed tank factories). There were legions of air power proponents executing a strategy of "maximizing civilian casualties to break the back of the enemy", killing babies was the point, and the horrors of things like the firebombing of Tokyo are literally inconceivable to those who have never been in such times. Morality is not divorced from results - if it worked, if it made Germany & Japan surrender after a night of bloodied streets, then I would be hard-pressed to fault them. But that isn't what happened. It probably did something, sure, but the calculus is grim.

From that lens you can see Hiroshima as a culmination of a horrible strategy; but I don't think that is the only lens you have. World War Two was, in my opinion without peer, the highest stakes conflict humanity has ever fought. Nazi Germany's combination of dystopian vision and backed-by-steel ambition makes it the worst government to ever exist; Japan is certainly in the top 10 as far as these things go. And while we with our tables of GDP and steel output can say the Allies had it in the bag, that is never how people fighting a war see things.

Additionally, the methods of World War Two emerged from the almost-as-cataclysmic horrors of World War One; a conflict that utterly destroyed the governments of half the countries that fought it in. And their replacements were...not great! It was not a war that broke imperialism to usher in liberalism, even if steps were made that way. After WW1, people were desperate to find a way to fight the next war in a way that wouldn't condemn themselves to endless trench warfare they had gone through, one that wouldn't bring them to the brink of collapse, even if it fucked over the other guy.

Strategic bombing was born from this impulse - its founders truly hoped it would break the back of opposing nations, that once you "won air superiority" and started smacking Berlin the white flag would be raised. This didn't happen, but you didn't know that in 1941. Or in 1942. Or in 1943. Maybe it's just around the corner in 1944? You really want to stop now? 90% of Strategic Bombing Commands quit just before their enemy's will is finally broken, don't you know? In hindsight it is easy to say, in 1944, that they should have taken to foot off the pedal, that the war was won, and that this strat wasn't the way. And to be clear, they should have, they should have done that. Better men would have done that. But that is the high bar I am holding them too, not the floor. In this time period most people just didn't think civilians got spared in war, it was a different time. Morality's aim is universal, but the steps of the individual towards them can only be contextual. I think they were wrong, and to be clear by 1945 it was becoming quite obvious that the war was over and this was unnecessary. But few of us are so immune to the sins of inertia in a war.

From that lens, Hiroshima is the most justified civilian-targeted strategic bombing conducted in the entire war. Because unlike the inertia-creep of the Dresden firebombing, it had a very clear purpose - compel the Japanese government to surrender by demonstrating a weapon they could not hope to defeat, something that would save tens of thousands of American lives and likely hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. I believe it did do that - not only do I think it was at least as important as the Soviet declaration of war, but the one-two punch of timing them together was a calculated psychological blow that certainly didn't hurt.

But more importantly Truman was not privy to the sessions of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, he could only guess where they stood. Within that context Hiroshima was a calculated gambit that makes sense; because strategically bombing civilian targets was the order of the day at that time, and that all the big solo-military targets were essentially bombed away at that point, the idea of some kind of "display" against a dummy target or something - to a government the US had barely any communication with, wasting a scarce resource - was just not politically in the cards. Hell, neglecting to bomb Kyoto for cultural reasons, and doing things like dropping leaflets warning civilians ahead of the attack to flee, were already tail-end of the humanitarian practices of the time. I cannot armchair judge Truman for making hard calls with the stakes as high as they were.

However, Nagasaki was a classic interia case. It was done because the US had the bomb and we were bombing cities. It made even less sense than campaigns before, because now the US had a "reason" to think surrender might be imminent, so giving it a few days had far more logic. This one I judge much more harshly. It was the decision of a system that just did violence by default. Which of course it was, it was World War Two. But results are morality - Hiroshima probably saved Japanese lives. Nagasaki did not. Them's the breaks.

[literallymechanical]

Zap Energy says that they’ve solved Z-pinch by “shear stabilization”, where they have different sections of the plasma moving at different velocities (faster outside, slower inside). Doesn’t shear like that cause instability, not suppress it? Or are plasmas not subject to that law of fluid dynamics

You’re thinking of instabilities in flowing plasma like it’s turbulence in flowing fluid. This is partially correct, but like... okay. So, the field of physics that governs the movement of plasma is called magnetohydrodynamics, where you introduce Maxwell’s equations into Navier-Stokes. It is horrible. I am but a humble mechanical engineer, and I leave the physics to physicists.

The physicists tell me that Zap Energy's science is solid.

Bit of context: Zap Energy is taking an old fusion energy concept from the 1950's called a Z-pinch, and revamping it with modern plasma physics.

A Z-pinch works on the principle that passing an electric current through a conductor generates a magnetic field, which in turn crushes (or "pinches") the conductor. The first observations of the pinch effect were in hollow metal tubes that were used as lightning rods, like this one from a factory in 1905:

Image by Brian James, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Plasma is electrically conductive, and is subject to the same compressive pinch effect as metal. Lightning itself is a plasma pinch, actually.

When you pinch a plasma, it heats up. The fast-moving, charged plasma particles repel each other and push back against the magnetic field until the system reaches equilibrium. The stronger the plasma current, the harder the pinch, the more pressure, and the more heat. With sufficient plasma current and the right hydrogen isotopes, you can create a pinch strong enough to induce nuclear fusion.

The pinch effect was first utilized by a class of fusion machines called Z-pinches in the early 1950's. However, those Z-pinches were extremely unstable. The most common analogy is that compressing plasma with a Z-pinch is like trying to squeeze jello with rubber bands.

UK Atomic Energy Authority, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Both linear and toroidal Z-pinches have been built. The toroidal Z-pinch above shows some of the characteristic kink instabilities of a pinched plasma – it goes all squiggly. Researchers started adding external magnets to Z-pinches to help reduce instabilities (which eventually led to the development of the tokamak), but could never get a truly stable plasma. Z-pinch fusion research was largely abandoned in favor of the tokamak and stellarator.

However, the external magnets of a tokamak or stellarator are massive, complex, and use incredible amounts of power. The University of Washington and Zap Energy went back to the old concept of a magnet-less linear Z-pinch, but with a more modern understanding of plasma physics. They discovered that by using a flowing plasma rather than a stationary one, with a faster flow rate on the outer layers (a "sheared-flow" Z-pinch), they were able to achieve great stability with no magnets.

Credit: Zap Energy

Rather than filling a chamber with stationary hydrogen and then pinching it, they blow a "smoke ring" of plasma around a cylinder into their chamber. An electrode at the tip of the cylinder then fires a pulse into the plasma, which creates a pinch with a complex velocity profile.

Credit: Zap Energy

Zap Energy’s physics basis is good. They’ve pretty convincingly demonstrated that sheared-flow does indeed stabilize a pinched plasma, and if they can pull off magnetic confinement fusion with no magnets, it will be massively cheaper than any other method. The uncertainty that Zap is facing comes from mechanical considerations (in particular, electrode erosion is a tricky problem to solve), and the relatively thin margins for efficiency that are inherent to any pulsed fusion technique.

[ca-8]

I really really loved your DogDay fic (like a lot), so I thought I'd request a DogDay x player reader fic about the nightmares both of them would more than likely have when this is all over and they've escaped Playtime Co, and how they'd try to be there for each other when they happen.

Black curtains smothered their view. (Y/n)'s body was light. Someone must have carried them from the sweet warm hug of their mattress and into the shadowing atmosphere. Fabric rippled and swayed gently just barely beneath their falling figure, separating inches before contact... And so, falling past the waving curtains that faded harshly into cracking rubble.. Falling past the growing cracks swirling into light pink, stretching tubes and blue fuzzy ropes... Falling into hell's fiery, drifting red smoke through long, thin fingers that cursed away flesh... Elliot's voice welcomed them once again.

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DogDay x Reader Rippling Deja Vu (Part 1)

(WARNING: The following contains scenes of graphic body horror and mutilation)

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Wet spider webs caught them, like a Venus fly trap breaking the fall of a frightened butterfly with a torn wing. A chill ran down their spine, causing them to stir in their sleep, and soon, (Y/n)'s eyes fluttered open. Dim flickering light beamed down them, watching them. Cold goo kissed the back of their neck. They shuddered and pulled themselves up, dragging behind lines of webs connecting them to their new bed. It tugged, urging (Y/n) to fall back into its embrace, until the lines finally broke. They collapsed on freezing tile. When (Y/n) opened their eyes, the first thing they saw were the tattered clothes they wore on the day they entered the gates of hell: a dirty tank top torn at the side and thin jeans caked in dust and dried blood. Their eyes widened. "No...No no no no no....!"

Rapidly swatting off the remaining clinging webs, (Y/n)’s bottom collapsed onto the tiled floor. Their quick and heavy breaths rushed into the dusty cold air, flailing around in tiny clouds before fusing with the hallway’s stretching darkness. After finally casting off the last piece of the web, their hands suddenly went still, trembling in place, then clenching into fists a few times as if they were holding a Grabpack’s trigger.

(Y/n) looked up. Blinking light illuminated parts of the stretching shadow for brief seconds, beckoning them to let them light their way. But they couldn’t move — they wouldn’t dare move. As soon as they’d jump to their feet, something meant to lie still, something first made for play and learning and innocence that then would become a shell for screams and blood and torn flesh, would come after them and pull and dig and prod and eat at each breathing morsel they offered. (Y/n) sat still, very, very, very, very still. 

Then they got up. Their trembling body begging to stay safe under the only working light began to get pulled by marionette strings. (Y/n) started to choke on their cry for help and fought with every atom within them to stop moving, but the blackened jaws had already consumed them. And through all that desperate effort, a pathetic whimper only left their lips. 

GO BACK

RUN

HIDE

HELP

THE HOUR OF JOY

One, then four, then ten, then innumerable warnings laced in trauma appeared under the blinking lights. Blue and red and yellow overlapped with one another, shouting over each other, screaming at a once naive, curious fool. (Y/n)’s body didn’t listen, it just had to see what that gorgeous cherry red light was growing in the distance.

They attempted at another cry for help, but only another quiet muffle sang along with the factory’s distant curling cogs. First wiggling their fingers, then shooting their hands up to their face, (Y/n) felt for a mouth, a hint of lips or drool or just anything, but nothing. Just a blank (s/c) canvas of skin. Their throat erupted in shouts and wails, they even tried pulling at the canvas, and still nothing — the fool had become a shrieking tomb. 

The walls stopped moving, and they looked down to see their legs glued to the floor. 

And the ground began to roar.

Ripples and rumbles threw (Y/n) off their feet and forced them to watch the rear of the hallway. Flickering lights hinted to the devastation’s core; a flash of a human skull protruding from rising, cracking tile, a glimpse of light showing onto its growing body that melted from bone to a curling wet tongue rounding into a pink and blue twirling body, and that blinking, twirling body grew larger as its organs and bones stuck out and into darkened pink, stretching arms, weaving through a monstrous ribcage, tying together blue and purple fur and paws with ravaging whetted claws, growing and growing and growing against the cracking floor and screaming walls, growing and growing and growing and growing and growing

until it stopped.

And the human skull twisted, slowly rotating on its spinal column. Curling all the way around, blood rained from inside the splitting bone, emitting an appalling crackling echo as bits of it snapped off onto the ground. One of them hit the fool in the forehead. Finally, it stopped once completing its orbit.

It stared at (Y/n), and (Y/n) couldn’t help but stare back at it. Naked teeth and unblinking empty eye sockets, sloshing pulsating guts and creaking legs. They wanted to run, to hide, anything to stay as far away as that thing as possible. Its mouth opened, and its jaw stretched down and down and down toward the floor, bits of bone snapping and muscle from beneath bulging from the holes and stretching and stretching and its teeth reached to the ground and dug underneath the tile. 

It stopped. It winced. It pushed forward, claws scraping against the tile as its mouth excavated gathering tile, making the walls and ceiling screech such a deafening bawl. Faster it crawled, right down the hall, right towards (Y/n).

Right as glowing dots of life awoken in those empty sockets, they regained control of their body again. They scrambled onto their feet and bolted down the hallway. 

“A……?”

The hallway seemed to curl in on itself, but that didn’t stop them. (Y/n) so desperately wanted to cover their ears from that godforsaken screech but they couldn’t risk it. They just had to make their legs push faster, no matter how much they ached or cramped or were being sucked into the earth-

“..An…l….”

They were slowing down. Something of a thousand pounds became attached to their ankles and drove them into the melting floor. They yelped and fell right onto burning slosh, howling in pain and immediately yanking themselves up. Pained gasps and whines heaved from their lips, and they looked back to see the boiling floor had engulfed their legs, spreading up to their calf. (Y/n) spotted sections of their skin closer to its mouths peeling back to reveal bubbling muscle, before it all were to be swallowed. 

“....Angel…”

They tried hauling themselves up, but grew unsteady and fell back on the burning slosh. (Y/n) let out an agonizing cry as skin began to peel off from their arms. Smoke rose from their body, as if the spirits of their faded bits were already accepting the inevitable end. They peered over their shoulder — the creature was standing over them.

“.....Angel…!”

It dug up their body. (Y/n) violently flailed against its gasp, and through their tears they saw muscle plunging from their arms and legs and more of that thing’s hands wrapping around their tiny, weak, insignificant body, twirling around their waist and making them feel their spine slowly snap.

Agony, sweet deserving agony, topping with the fool’s suffering melody

“(Y/N)!” 

And they were back in their bed’s warm embrace. 

(Y/n)’s eyes snapped wide open, letting out a fresh, tearful waterfall streaming down their flushed cheeks. The first thing they saw in darkened solace were a vast, open, empty mouth and eyes that were scrunched up in blazing worry. But this uncanny face was that of familiarity, of warmth, of real joy; yet they couldn’t stop the quickened breaths.

“Angel, it’s okay, look at me, everything’s okay,” DogDay said, although by the tone of his voice, he was starting to panic as well. 

With trembling, non-melting arms, they cautiously hauled themselves up, and their breathing began to slow. Putting his giant paws against their back and on the side of their face, DogDay gently shushed them as his thumb stroked their wet cheek. 

“That’s it, just focus on breathing, you’re doing so well, angel…” With that giant smile as bright as the sun, his guiding whispers lit up the room. Before they knew it, the alerts for death rang silent and (Y/n)’s heart became steady. DogDay sat down on their bed and placed them on his lap, and for a few minutes, he held them close to his fuzzy, vanilla-scented chest. 

Then, (Y/n) spoke up in a hoarse voice: “I’m sorry.”

DogDay stopped petting their head for a second. “Now what are you apologizing for, angel?” he uttered in bewilderment. Words bubbled up inside their throat but they couldn’t bear to speak. He looked down and continued to stroke their shaking head and back. “Another dream about the factory, I take it?”

(Y/n) tensed up and nodded. His grip on them became tighter, but not too tight. 

At first, he didn’t know what to say. Decades of being trapped with nothing but tiny savaging predators taking joy in tearing off his skin little by little, day after day, left him blinded in miserable need. In rare moments of peace, he always dreamt about an angel descending from above and down in the hellish depths that once housed happiness, and blessing those worth saving with freedom. But not once did he see him reaching that freedom; in fact, he still wonders to this day what he did to deserve being one of the only survivors after failing so many so dear to him. And he despised it. 

The DogDay he was conditioned to never think about himself so much. He should always know what to say, especially now. His beloved angel had suffered through so much just like he did, and to make matters worse, they were apologizing for it. If anything, he should be the one…

…”I’m sorry too.”

“What?” (Y/n) gazed up at him. Even in the darkness, the light in their beautiful eyes beamed such radiant sacred life. Life that he swore to protect since that day.

“I-I’m… I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to witness and endure so much, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you when you saved me, I.. I’m sorry that you took in so much pain, I-! I…” DogDay took in a breath — ‘don’t cry, this isn’t about you.’ — “I…I’m sorry, angel. You’ve been through so much, and for our sakes… for my sake.”

He embraced them back into his chest, squeezing his eyes shut to fight back stubborn tears. “You have every right to be like this — to cry, to lash out, to get so, so scared — after everything that’s happened, you’re allowed to be this vulnerable more than anyone else.” 

They were so quiet. ‘Did I say the right thing? I didn’t make them upset, did I?”

But he did. Something inside (Y/n) cracked at last. Their chest tightened and pulsated and wallowed up, and something crawled up their throat that made them gasp for air and for more of him. They quickly wrapped their arms around DogDay’s torso and let out a shuddering wail as tears flowed freely down their cheeks and onto his chest. 

Feeling his heart hammer against the wet spot they buried their face in, he froze in place. Then his smile drained every ounce of uncertainty, and he held his angel once again. 

“That’s right, angel, let it all out. You’re safe right now,” he softly muttered to them, letting a tear fall from his eye, “and I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again.”

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AND that’s it for right now! As with the last request, there’s a shorter word limit for posts that directly respond to Asks, so I’ll be cutting it off right here and will be posting a Part 2 soon! Sorry this took me a bit to release; new college quarter is starting and I've had a little bit of writer's block, but I have overcome it!! Thank you so much to @paragon-of-obsessed for requesting this, and extra thankies for liking my last DogDay fic! This was so much fun to write, and I can't wait to dive into the next part!

Like what ya saw? Well you can commission your own private piece now!! Read more about that here! Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!~ 💜💜💜

(Also my ao3 is the_real_catnap_98 if ya wanna follow me on there - same posts are (gonna be) on there + fanfics staring my OCs!! (...and a self-insert, lOOK lIFe iS HArD-/lh)