#bundle them together and observe them under a microscope

[cerealmonster15]

i want jamiazu + idikei to go on a double date so badly i think the vibes would be So Very Turbulent

[bestworstcase]

regarding the roseblance: this is how penny describes it.

Ruby is capable of traveling at an extreme velocity from one point to another by breaking herself down to her molecular components, thus negating her mass, and then reassembling them at the destination, theoretically making it possible for her to transport all of us in the same way, as mass no longer matters.

and as far as fantasy technobabble goes it’s... fine, the science is silly but nobody is watching rwby for realistic physics, and narratively it’s a serviceable explanation that clarifies ruby’s ability to carry passengers, something we’ve already seen her do several times, which helps to ground that ability right before it’s utilized to circumvent a serious obstacle. i want to be very clear that i’m not out to arbitrarily nitpick the silly science here but not anywhere else, because that would be dumb; i just have an alternate (and just as silly) interpretation that hinges on taking penny’s description as a hypothesis.

so disclaimers dispensed with: lmao That Makes No Sense. or rather, it’s the kind of explanation that sounds reasonable but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny or if you know anything about how molecules work. hence, reading it as a hypothesis penny comes up with to explain what she’s observed.

my first supposition is that “petal burst has no discernible mass” is accurate, because that’s the observation that penny is trying to make sense of. in other contexts it’s shown that penny’s tactical software has some kind of scanning functionality built in, which among other things lets her almost instantly pick cinder out of a lineup of illusory copies. zero mass is an otherwise odd assertion to make here, so my assumption is that penny’s tactical software interprets petal burst as ruby disappearing and then reappearing at a different location, akin to teleportation. penny herself, however, sees a swirling abstract blob of color flying through space from the starting point to the target destination, so she puts these two observations together to land on “ruby does something to ‘negate’ her mass.”

how?

the essence of penny’s hypothesis is: a single molecule can move extremely fast, therefore ruby must be breaking herself down into a cloud of independent molecules to circumvent the limitation of her total mass. BUT:

1 - what do we mean by “molecular components” here? are we talking lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, the biological macromolecules that make up the building blocks of life? or does penny mean that ruby breaks those down, too, into their smaller constituent molecules—and if that’s the case, why does her semblance arbitrarily stop at molecules? why not go all the way down to atoms?

(NB: there is precedence for semblances being able to do this in general; glynda would have to be able to reassemble stuff at the molecular level for her telekinesis to restore broken objects to their unbroken original state.)

2 - but the obvious problem here is that. molecules have mass. if petal burst is a diffuse cloud of every molecule in ruby’s body, then penny’s tactical software should be able to recognize it as an object—or more precisely as a swirling blob of many microscopic particles with a total mass equal to ruby’s. it’s like disassembling a lego castle into a pile of individual legos. the total mass doesn’t change, the lego ‘molecules’ are just less organized.

3 - further, although a single molecule can move faster than a human body by orders of magnitude, it’s going to bang into other molecules and ricochet in all sorts of random directions as it travels. this slows its effective speed down considerably. it’s not implausible that aura could compensate for random walk, allowing every one of ruby’s molecules to move in relative synchronization from point A to point B, but travel in this manner really isn’t a “mass no longer matters” scenario.

4 - and why the swirling abstract bundle of rose petals thing? sure, no matter how you slice it petal burst is just a stylized artistic representation of ruby snapping the laws of physics like a brittle twig, but if all she’s doing is breaking herself apart into a molecular cloud and then firing herself like a human particle beam why does it LOOK LIKE THAT?!

note that we HAVE a genuine example of a character traveling in the manner penny describes, but it’s not ruby—it’s salem, and when she does it, it looks exactly how you would expect billions of microscopic particles to look, and we see her putting herself back together when she arrives:

petal burst, by comparison, has a coherent form made up of contiguous ‘petals’ which swirl around each other in regular patterns. there is no transitional state wherein ruby becomes the petals or the petals become ruby; they just appear as she pops out of existence, or the petals unfurl and bam! she’s back.

if the aesthetics of petal burst were only a stylistic choice meant to represent ruby breaking apart into a cloud of particles in a visually interesting way, then for the sake of consistency, shouldn’t a similar aesthetic be applied when salem does the same thing?

unless, of course, it’s actually not the same.

with this in mind: i submit that ruby is, in actuality, a probability warper.

specifically, that her semblance manipulates the probability that she will be in a given location at T+x seconds, and then her aura makes it happen. 

bear with me for a minute.

in v1, ruby’s semblance works like this: she hurtles forward at superhuman speed, shedding rose petals in her wake.

first question: where do those petals come from? what are they?

even though ruby’s semblance isn’t a ‘true’ speed type, it does involve high velocity movement through space, so i think harriet is still a useful point of comparison here. when harriet uses her semblance, she leaves tracks of something that looks like lightning but doesn’t behave like real electrical discharge; it’s illusory, the same as ruby’s petals.

i think it’s something like the aura equivalent of waste heat; flickers of aura burning up as it absorbs the extreme friction and pressure exerted on ruby/harriet as they blitz through space at tremendous speed. an aura-based optical phenomenon exactly like yang’s fiery hair, blake’s shimmering afterimages, or the schnee family’s snowflake glyphs. the metaphysical connection between aura and identity is what gives rise to such varied appearances, but it’s all just energy emitted or lost as a byproduct of using a lot of aura all at once.

so far, so normal.

second question: have you ever noticed that half the time, when ruby uses her semblance this way, she’s not running?

harriet’s semblance seems to manifest through the actual physical motion of her legs as she sprints. at most, she can lunge forward at high speed and with incredible force by leaping forward. but ruby has always been able to straight up fly, even turning on a dime in mid-air with no apparent effort.

for example, when she and penny are running away from the atlesian soldiers in 2.3, ruby picks penny up and launches them both along a new alley. they’re not just riding the momentum of ruby’s initial leap off the wall; her face stays screwed up with the effort of maintaining their speed as they fly, and right before they crash we see her go limp as her aura is depleted.

[visual aura cues were still kind of inconsistent at this point, so it’s a little unclear if ruby completely runs out here, or if she’s got some left but not enough to meet the high energy needs of her semblance, but regardless: it almost seems like she starts to pass out from how hard she’s pushing herself, and then they immediately crash.]

if you pay attention in these early volumes, there’s a handful of other times when ruby just zips from one place to another without moving her body, very much like the gliding thing salem does in 8.9.

if it were just a shot here and there where ruby streaks across the screen in a static pose, i’d put it down to an animation trick to make the speed read more cleanly by not cluttering up the five or six frames when she’s visible with a run cycle... but because there’s also these other moments where the flying/gliding persists through multiple consecutive shots, we know it’s a Thing.

ruby being able to maneuver this way is therefore our first hint that there’s more to her semblance than meets the eye.

so: how do you fling yourself through space fast enough for your wake to toss large heavy objects around behind you? there’s a boatload of plausible answers, but in light of how petal burst has developed up to this point, the one i like best is this:

maybe you think you’ve got a normal speed semblance, but what you’re actually doing is setting the probability that you will be at your target destination in x seconds to 1, causing your aura to move you there at whatever speed is necessary to make it happen. when you give yourself time to think about it you ‘run,’ because that’s how speed semblances work, right? but the more you practice the less you have to think about it, and sometimes you’re just laser-focused on getting where you want to go, and all you need to do really is have the conviction that you will get there, so you stop going through the unnecessary motions and trust yourself to get where you’re going.

...theoretically petal burst could become a legitimate teleport if ruby stopped conceiving of it as movement through space and began to consider it more in abstract terms of being where she wants to be, when she wants to be there. but it’s likely to keep acting predominately like a speed semblance, albeit a really weird one, for as long as ruby still thinks of it that way.

this brings us to petal burst itself. what even IS this?

like the small petals we see when ruby uses the speed-like ability, i think these swirling ribbon-petal things are waste aura. this would explain the lack of discernible mass: it’s just energy, aura and light, and therefore massless.

but if this is ruby’s aura, then where is ruby herself? where does she go?

i think ruby can use her probability-warping semblance to make her whole body act like a matter wave. she seems to be nowhere because she might be anywhere with a >0 probability of ruby being there. this is absurd, obviously, but no less silly than pretending molecules don’t have mass and in my opinion infinitely more fun. let me have this.

1 - penny perceives petal burst as a “negation” of ruby’s mass because the visible portion is just aura and light and something as wacky as an entire person’s body behaving like a wave just isn’t something her sensors and software are equipped to interpret accurately.

2 - ruby brings passengers along by adjusting the probability of them being next to her when she lands, no molecular disassembly or reassembly required. it also seems to me that physically carrying somebody, as she did with penny in volume two, is FAR more energy-intensive than fiddling with their probable location. possibly this arises from it being physically easier to, say, hop over a wall by yourself than it is to hop over a wall with another person in your arms; in a no-magic situation, success in the latter scenario is less probable, so perhaps it’s likewise more difficult for ruby to bring the probability of it happening to 1?

3 - when she carries nora in volume 4, we see nora’s pink aura + pink crackles alongside ruby’s red aura and petals. several months later, in volume 6, ruby carries weiss the same way, but this time we see ruby’s petals tinged light pink by combination with weiss’s white-blue aura, no weiss-like snowflakes or sparks. and a few more months after that, when ruby picks up a group of her friends and carries all of them, it’s just a regular petal burst. i believe this is indicative of ruby’s growing skill and confidence in her ability to manipulate probability for objects other than herself, and perhaps specifically this ability becoming more energy-efficient with practice?

group petal bursts seem to be a joint effort—ruby’s semblance adjusts everybody’s probability and provides a sort of model for their auras to work with, and then their movement is fueled by everyone’s pooled auras. if that’s so, it seems reasonable that greater efficiency can be achieved by more thorough blending of shared aura—and conversely, that poorly-blended auras would look like multiple separate petal bursts spiraling together, and well-blended auras would just look like ruby’s normal petal burst but bigger.

4 - under this theory, it’s very simple to explain how the petal burst can separate to maneuver around obstacles. all ruby has to do is set the probability of collision with those obstacles to zero, and her aura takes care of the rest. the visual splitting of the petal burst is merely a representation of ruby making it  impossible for a collision to happen.

5 - if ruby is a matter wave and the petal burst a massless swirl of light and aura, how is it possible for her to be knocked out of it if she collides with somebody or takes a hit? well, in essence her semblance allows her to act like a wave while her position is unknown, but when her position becomes known—for example as a result of her making contact with another object—the wave function collapses as the probability of her being HERE becomes 1, and then she has to play by the normal rules again.

6 -  ruby spends months using abilities like carrying passengers or “splitting apart” to navigate around obstacles, seemingly without conscious awareness that she is in fact able to do those things. both of these things are skills ruby began to use in v4—but in v7, when oscar asks if she’s always been able to separate the petal burst, she answers “i don’t know! i don’t normally think it through that much,” and in v8, she’s baffled when penny tells her she can use her semblance on the whole group.

the probability warp interpretation offers a possible explanation for ruby’s odd lack of self-awareness. petal burst is literally dependent on uncertainty! on not knowing exactly where she is until she gets there! ruby has taken advantage of this by cultivating a habit of just going for it, doing stuff on reflex, acting as the moment demands—which is what makes her semblance so BONKERS, but it  also inhibits her ability to synthesize new tricks into her mental map of what she’s capable of until an outside observer points them out to her.

[see also: “you don’t give yourself enough credit” and ruby’s habit of underestimating and doubting herself.]

7 - other people seeing petal burst doesn’t interrupt it/collapse the wave function because the petal burst is essentially just the exhaust fumes emitted by ruby’s aura; it doesn’t create information about where she is, only where she was and might be.

to conclude, i want to highlight something intriguing in the v4 character short.

most of the time, when ruby uses her semblance evasively, we see her dodge  as the petal burst starts to form, so it’s less ruby dodging with her semblance than it is ruby dodging and immediately using her semblance to reposition herself for a riposte from a direction her opponent can’t anticipate.

HOWEVER, during the fight with the beringel in the short, it gets... weird.

so, context. ruby has just blocked a few punches. now, as she lunges forward, trying to get a counter in, the beringel slams its hands together...

...and lands the hit. see that little bit of the buckle on her arm and the collar of her cape sticking out between its hands here? this thing SMASHES her.

a mere three or four frames later, the camera flips 180° to show this from the opposite side... and ruby is GONE.

she doesn’t dodge this, and she doesn’t get grappled and then break free—she just straight up fucking VANISHES.

and then:

petal burst.

this is already a very unusual maneuver from ruby, because it happens out of order—normally petal burst starts to form first, and ruby vanishes as the rosebud shape stabilizes—but what makes it even more strange is that petal burst appears all around the beringel, rather than the more standard manner of petal burst forming as a swirl centered around ruby. this is, of course, a consequence of ruby already being “gone” when petal burst begins.

i believe what we’re seeing here is a third ability that ruby stumbled into without realizing what she’d done during the journey to mistral.

when the beringel smashes her, the probability of ruby evading this attack becomes 0 and the probability that she’ll be hurt (physically or by burning a lot of aura to shield herself) becomes 1. but then that just... doesn’t... happen. ruby disappears and petal burst zooms away exactly like she DID sidestep or duck under this attack.

it’s as if ruby went “nope!” and retroactively flipped the probability of the beringel hitting her. she got hit and activated her semblance so fast that she managed to behave like she hadn’t gotten hit.

ruby rose can give herself i-frames.

[voltagesmutter]

Treehouse 🌳🏡

Request: how do u think the boys would think/feel about a s/o who lives in a treehouse? ok not the backyard treehouse, more like a house in a tree? ya know, those big fancy ones

Kiro:

Finds it very strange Miss.Chips lives so far away from the city, how do you get snacks at night when you're hungry?!

Very similar to his little secret house amongst the side of the lake, tucked away and hidden from prying eyes. 

Loves coming over, it makes him feel like you are the only two people together in the world, no work distractions, screaming fans or agents to ruin your moments. 

Brings over mountains of snacks when he comes so you don’t run out when he stays over, although he’s normally already eaten most of them within a few hours, promising next time to bring more. 

Secretly starts bringing his stuff over, starting with small objects you don’t notice until one day a desk, monitor and surround sound home system is plugged into your living room, ‘But now we can play games together with amazing sound’. 

Would give up his fame and career, just to spent eternity with you in your peaceful treehouse.

Lucien:

Wants to move in with you straight off the bat.

Love’s everything.

Starts bring stuff over each visit that he thinks will look nice, one day he turned up with an array of microscopes, books and notebooks, ‘We’re going nature hunting’. 

Adores spending time with you so he closely monitors the beautiful surroundings and also the nature of the animals (This boy is smooth). 

Comes over and likes to sit under the stars at midnight, observing your beauty amongst the fireflies.

Victor:

Thinks its cute, but it’s not for him. He loves the lavish lifestyle and prefers for you to stay at his house rather than yours.

The first time you show him your place he is slightly gob-smacked at your place, thinking you would live in apartment block like every normal being in Loveland. But then again, Victor didn’t see you as normal, he saw you a ray of sunshine like an energetic bundle. 

The more he studied your house, the more it made sense you would live here: The tranquil sounds of nature, the birds chirping in the morning, no traffic or press when leaving the house, it was like a little of heaven to Victor, mainly because you was fast asleep in his arms.

Gavin:

Gavin loves where you live, he finds it beautiful and tranquil, just like you. 

The best thing about it is the seclusion: One he knows no-one is around to hurt you, two he can fly in and out as he pleases. He knows you're safer tucked away outside of the city amongst the trees, where no gangs or dangerous people have viable access to you.  

He think it’s beautiful seeing you so one with nature, after all in high school you was a slight green thumb so living amongst nature made perfect sense. 

He adores your house and hopes one day he will also share it, making it his home.

[terror-slut]

Food For Thought

Something  quite smutty I wrote a few months ago and originally posted on AO3. It's quite a long read, but I thought I might as well post it on here.

Pennywise x reader, Bob Gray x reader.

Genre: smut, horror

word count: 4578

Teeth. Rows and rows of sharp, pointy teeth piercing her neck then, taking root in the thrumming jugular vein in her neck. It burns, it burns so fucking bad that she’s surprised the intense pain hasn’t taken it’s inevitable toll on her yet, although she questions if perhaps her mind is trying to separate itself from her body. Somehow, she’s still aware of her surroundings, although everything appears hazy. Around her, everything is spinning, spinning, spinning as if she has just gotten off a fast whirling carousel after eating one too many cotton candies.

Her head swims, not able to rationalize a thought that makes sense, or any thoughts at all. The blinding pain is so extreme, resembling the feeling of a thousand needles stabbed into her skin without a care or a goal, agonizingly slow and painfully breaking the skin apart to expose little streams of warm blood that puddle together at her feet.

 She wants to let out a noise, any noise. Her mind screams at her to call for help, be smart, use the vocal cords mother nature blessed her with. Instead, all that leaves her now iron tasting, blood filled mouth is the last soft, dying gurgle of a defeated prey.

 Her body is covered in a soft film of sweat when she wakes, barely registering her unaware, still very much asleep husband that lies next to her. Her heart races, adrenaline coursing through her on edge body as she attempts at steadying her ragged, uneven breath. The clean, white sheets are bundled up at the foot of the  bed, odds-on kicked off by her at the pinnacle of her nightmare. A shaky sigh leaves her lips as she runs her clammy hand through the sweat soaked strands of her hair.

 The same reoccurring nightmare has been terrorizing her for the past 7 days, getting worse and worse, feeling more realistic each time it enters her mind. The bags under her eyes now have a purple hue to them due to the lack of sleep she has been getting. Truth of the matter is, she has been too frightened of going to sleep at night, doing as much as avoiding it entirely. There was enough housework to keep her busy, and that was even after she had been done going through about every single file she could probably prepare for upcoming work meetings.

Her husband, Michael, had laughed at her silly avoidance behavior, telling her that steering clear of such a silly thing as a simple nightmare would only make it worse. And so, with Michael’s scornful words ringing in her ears, she decided to give sleep one more chance. A decision which she deeply regretted by now.

Beside her, the man in question is still peacefully asleep, unaware of the horrors playing through his wife’s mind. Wobbly legs swing over the side of their shared bed, eyeballing additional crescent, nail shaped imprints on her legs in the soft shine of the moonlight invitingly streaming through the opened window. Another sigh falls of her parched lips, this time more in annoyance than in an attempt at calming herself down. She has the habit of attempting to fight off the monster who’s teeth claim her neck nightly, except, in the real world, no one is there, which only results in her accidentally marking up her own skin while asleep. Still, it is freaky how many scratches are carved into her skin by now. It’s hard to believe she has done them all in the span of just a week. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think…

 But now she is just scaring herself. Monsters don’t exist and she wasn’t a child any longer, she had long passed the age of believing in anything supernatural or evil.

 Slowly, her uncovered feet connect with the cold linoleum tiles, carefully tiptoeing over to the bathroom Michael and her shared. Before locking the fake silver handled door, she flicks the light switch on and scans the bathroom in its entirety, something she hasn’t done since she was a teenager. she carried her childhood fears with her for quite a while longer than just her childhood, but eventually, she had grown out of them. Something that seems irrelevant to the reoccurring nightmare.

 Come on, she tells herself as she sits down on the toilet seat with shaky hands, how old are you again? Old enough to be married. Old enough to have a degree and a job. Old enough for her mother to start asking for grandchildren. Way too old to be scared over puerile, meaningless nightmares.

 Once the toilet is flushed, and with them, hopefully her fears – something her mother had taught her a long time ago; after a bad dream, you flush the toilet and down the drain goes the nightmare – her tired eyes find their reflection in the bathroom mirror. She washes her hands, slow but thorough, the water washing away the remnants of foolish dread.

 Maybe she should paint the town red again, it suddenly hits her. The thought of going out was something that hadn’t occurred to her in quite a while, but maybe a sloppy, rough fuck from a complete stranger in an unfamiliar setting would be exactly what it would take to get her mind off of things.

 And so, at quarter to one in the middle of the night, a young woman in a skin tight dress tiptoes out of the half empty apartment, her husband left soundlessly asleep, blissfully unaware of his wife’s infidelity. The door softly falls in the lock behind her and the warmth of the lingering summer air hits her face in a comforting way, as if to tell her ‘don’t worry. He won’t find out. He’s never found out before.’

 The empty asphalt is silent under the roaring Audi, and her ringless finger – she’s not stupid enough to wear her wedding ring on a night like this – flicks through the similar sounding radio stations, silently pondering if it was worth going to The Sitting Duck, a bar on the outskirts of Derry. Derry was a small town, mostly consisting out of elderly. Anyone with a future had left the dying excuse of a town long ago.

In her mind, in theory, she knew she should feel guilty about cheating on the man whom she pledged faithfulness to in front of the alter, but she could not muster up the strength to actually be guilt ridden. She loves Michael, she does. But a girl has needs, and love won’t fill up those lust crazed, empty holes.

 -

  When she spots him – him and the balding 60 year old man a few seats away from him, who’s undressing eyes roam over her like a starving animal observing it’s next meal – she can tell he’s not from Derry. No one born and raised in Derry dresses or smells that good. She walks past the fine-looking and deliciously scented man (cinnamon? Pumpkin? Some strong earthy undertone) and sits down across from him, where she observes the gangly man like a scientist examines bacteria under a microscope before deciding if she wants to close in on the kill.

 He is a man of importance, it radiates off of him effortlessly like a heatwave in the middle of June. His suit clad shoulders are broad, and his legs are clunkily folded under the bar, and oh, good God, she realizes, he must be taller than any man she has ever had before. His features imply that he’s a young man, older than the woman sniffing him out like a famished dog, but not by more than a handful of years. In his white gloved hand is what seem like a bloody Mary. Typical.

His hair is dark and slightly messy – not that she minds; if she was allowed to have her way with him, his messy hair would be the last thing either of them had to worry about – and his eyes-

 Fuck.

 And his electric eyes have found hers, amusement glistering on the surface. A god awful embarrassment red sneaks up her heated cheeks, and she’s sure she looks like a creep, or a stalker, or maybe both; a creepy stalker, but no. He is actually tapping the seat next to him in an inviting fashion, cocks his head to the side as if to dare her to come over. She dares.

 “Hi,” she sheepishly introduces herself to the hypnotizing being in front of her. A lazy smile graces his lips as he shakes her stretched out, ringless hand with his gloved one.

 “Hello,” his voice is unsurprisingly husky, the gravel of that singly greeting sending a pleasant shiver down her spine. “I couldn’t help but notice you looking thirsty from over there, all by yourself.”

 Before she can even begin to mutter her apology, sorry-I-am-a-complete-idiot or maybe even a refuting huh-who-me-no-way!, he raises her glass to her, then winks. The fucker winks.

 “You know, you can just order them at the bar,” he teases her, nudges her with his elbow like they’ve been friends for years.

 “Gee, thanks. I’m not allowed out of the basement much. Not used to this whole leaving the house thing,” she jokes, and he throws his head back laughing like a little kid, and butterflies flutter through her entire being without as much as a warning. Jesus, this man was really God damn fine.

 He grins, introduces himself as Bob Gray, and orders her a bloody Mary with extra lime, the assumption she made about his own pick-me-up turning out to be accurate.

 “So, what do you do?” she curiously inquires, making a case of brushing her thigh past his knee while settling down on the bar stool right next to the lanky man.

 “Do?”

 “For work. Or are those gloves a fashion statement?”

 “What gloves?” She stares at his uncovered hands, no ring, nimble but long fingers wrapped loosely around his glass and heat creeps up her cheeks for the second time that night. She could’ve sworn he was wearing gloves earlier. Her eyes dart from his hands back up to this bright blue eyes and plump lips, curved up into a grin, all teeth and genuinity.

 “You’re a bit of an odd one, aren’t you?” she’s starting to feel an awful lot like having a fever dream, the sense of slipping between being asleep and wakefulness swimming through her mind. Could it be the lack of sleep from the previous nights? It had to be, or perhaps a trick of the light. Before the disorienting bewilderment consumes her, said ungloved fingers link with her bare arm to catch her attention, careful and soft, as if not to startle her.

 “Are you alright?” God, and he’s nice. He’s nice and he is funny and he looks even better than all her favorite dirty daydreams, and she wants the nightmares gone so bad and she wants more of his touch, more of him, so fucking bad.

 “Yes. Yes, more than fine, actually.”

 Michael doesn’t pop up in her mind like he usually does when she accompanies an attractive stranger home, not this time. She could be sorry, but it seems hypocritical. There was no way in hell she was letting the man sitting next to her go, not with the way his lingering touches, against her knee, soft on her arm, pressing on her shoulders, still burn on her skin like winter fire. Just as she had suspected, the current stranger does not live in the hopeless excuse for a town, but he does stay at the Derry townhouse. He takes her there, wastes no time on niceties, just how she likes it. It’s like he can read her every thought, sense the desperation for relief radiating off of her.

 Sweet, plump lips bridge the distance the second she gets her coat off, hungry, desperate, searching. Biting.

 “F-fuck,” she breathes against him, warm blood dripping down her bottom lip like honied tea spilling over the edge of a hot mug.

 “I’m sorry,” the red liquid coat his apologizing lips now, curled up in a Cheshire cat grin. His tongue unapologetically darts out from in between his parted lips, long and pink, licking away her spilled blood, first off of his own lips and then of hers, like she’s nothing more than a tasty treat. Fuck. She hit the fucking kink lottery.

 “You’re not,” she ascertains playfully, hands brazenly and without a warning shoving the lanky man that easily towers over her down on the musty couch in the deprecated room of the townhouse. He lets her, she’s awfully aware of how he lets her small frame overpower his much bigger one. In a tangle of limbs, the man of all her dirty daydreams yet to come yanks her down with him, lips chasing each other as a unexpectedly soft chuckle escapes from her throat.

 “You’re right, little one,” his breath is hot on her neck, and his hand tugs on her hair with a pleasant sting to it. His teeth graze the undisturbed skin hungrily, rows and rows of sharp, pointy teeth piercing her neck and then his tongue leaves a hot, long stripe down the length of her throat. “I’m not so sorry. I’m not sorry at all.”

 The tight but steady grip his big hands hold on her hips renders her dizzy with white hot, blazing want for the stranger below her. A laugh, one similar to the one he had let out earlier on the evening, but now somehow more cruel, escapes from his throat as she wiggles under his iron grip, desperate for more physical contact.

 “Tell me what you want, little one. Maybe I will decide to be kind enough to give it to you,” the pet name he has for her flush her cheek a bright red and send an unapologetic rush down her legs,

 “I want you,” she whimpers meagerly, entrapped by the delicious dig of his warm digits in her sure-to-be-bruised-by-tomorrow skin, and he cocks up one uninterested eyebrow at her sweaty face.

 “Not good enough.”

 “I want…. I want you inside of me,” and she’s convinced that did the trick when his fingers finally move, away from her hips and lower, lower, lower… The hem of her dress comes apart under his probing fingers, a soft, anticipating groan escapes her. His fingers are so close to where she needs them most, the warmth of him radiating brightly against the soft flesh of her thighs, and then… And then he stops.

 He snorts, displeased yet entertained by the eagerness of her trashing around in his grip, the needy whine falling off her lips.

 “Your cock inside of me, I want your cock inside of me, please!” she begs, her dress is ripped to pieces now, something that would cost any other stranger a mean fucking slap across the face, but not him. Not Bob fucking Gray with his magic hands and silver tongue.

 The old couch creeks underneath the shifting weight of the tangled together mess of limbs as he flips her naked body over sloppily like a rag doll, rough and careless and pressed along the length of her body. The suit on her one night only lover crinkles as he ruts his hips against her completely naked form messily, his hand teasingly on her clit, insufferably slow, soft circles. His cock is hard and infuriatingly out of reach, the few layers of clothing extracting a needy groan from her.

 “Such a dirty, dirty girl,” he grins in her hair as he pulls his hips away from hers, the contrast of the delicious sound of the teeth of his zipper being undone and the emptiness against her behind earning him an eager buck of her soft hips.

 For just a fleeting moment, a questioning when the hell did he take my panties off runs through her mind, but the thought is gone as fast as it showed up when he ruthlessly teases her already dripping cunt with the head of his cock, so barely there and wet, and fuck, since when was she such a pleading mess? A chuckle leaves his lips when she eagerly bucks her hips back again, begging and writhing against the tall stranger for more.

 “I want your cock inside of me, who?” He’s cruel, he’s awfully and unreasonably cruel and she feels like tears could stream down her cheeks from pure, undenied pleasure that she knows he can give her.

 “B-Bob, please,” she gasps, the tip of his leaking cock on her throbbing clit now, hot and heavy and- and then it’s gone again. A tsk in both her ears so vivid it feels like the noise is coming from inside her skull overpowers her own pleading whine for some contact, any at all.

 “Sir?” it’s a strangled question coming from her throat that provides her nothing but a correcting squeeze, first her ass, then her nipple when she stays quiet underneath him.

 “Come on, little one. You know what I want. You’ve said it before,” he hotly hisses down her neck, teeth sinking in the soft skin of her shoulder as a warning, and then it hits her. She does not stop to wonder how he knows about her past experiences, too drunken on the unadulterated bliss of him.

 “Daddy, daddy, daddy, please!”

 “Good girl. Good, impatient, little girl,” he giggles, he fucking giggles openmouthed against her cheek like he owns her as he sheaths his full length into her cunt all at once, hot, hard and filling.

 Stars rest on the field of her vision when he doesn’t even fucking bother to let her adjust to the alien full feeling of him, hitting every single spot so God damn ass kickingly perfect that it takes her a full minute to realize that moaning noise is coming from her. As far as she’s able to rationalize any different thought than oh God, oh God, oh fuck, yes she ceases her whimpering.

 “Don’t hold back those tasty moans now,” he growls, almost sounding inhuman, blended with the rhythmical thrust of his hips, knocking the breath out of her. His cock hits spots she wasn’t aware of having, like he shaped his cock to fit her dripping cunt like a perfect match.

 “Tell me I’m the best you’ve ever had in your miserable short little life time. Better than your disappointingly, small-dicked husband,” the pretty stranger has a way of making every word that leaves his mouth sound filthy. He has her draped uselessly over the couch as he pounds into her like there’s no tomorrow, it’s hard to get anything else but mind-dulling moans out.

 “Tell me,” he hisses, pulling her body flush against his, his big hand wrapped dangerously tight around her throat.

 “Y-you have the best cock I’ve ever felt in my miserable short little life time,” she chokes out with heated cheeks of embarrassment, knowing the man currently filling her up won’t be satisfied with any less. “Better than anyone else’s.”

 He chuckles, letting go off her throat not a moment too soon, black patches in her vision threatening to take over, the rhythmic slap of his flesh against her roaring around in her ears.

 “I’m going to c-cum,” she gasps, the satisfying stretch of his cock too much with the way his nimble fingers have found their way down from her throat to her clit.

 “Oh no, you won’t. Not until daddy says you can.”

 She clenches dangerously tight around his cock, earning a harsh slap against her aching pussy, leaving her gasping for air.

 “I don’t recall giving you permission to cum yet, my eager little cum slut,” he hisses against the base of her skull, tugging on her hair painfully brutal. The tone in his voice is ruthless and threatening, but his cock twitches inside her like it’s living its own life, and the mere thought of his warm cum dripping out of her has her moaning, and she clenches around his girth again, prepared to deal with whatever consequences he sees fit to punish her with.

 The intake of his breath is sharp when his seed spills, hot and thick, triggering her own orgasm. The tremble in legs would’ve been sure to have her fall to her knees if it wasn’t for the old couch underneath her, supporting her weight. Stars appear behind her closed lids, hoping, praying to whatever deity that the overpowering, blissful surge between her legs never ends, that perfect Robert Gray and his perfect cock never leave from the snug space between her trembling legs.

 They stay like that for a while, minutes, hours, after they come, she couldn’t tell you even if you held a gun to her head. The final peaceful moments before the storm. Then, he pulls out of her, cock gone soft and his seed dripping down her legs like it belongs there. She bites her lip, sad to let him go. He pats her head, as if to tell her good job and she finally switches positions, her muscles thanking her.

 The couch lets out a protesting creek when she shifts her weight from her bruised knees to her sore ass, the ripped up dress she wore earlier that night catching her eye.

 “You fucked up my dress, you know.”

  “I want to eat you,” he ignores her remark with a low growl, and she laughs, closing her eyes as she revels in the afterglow of sex and uncramping her muscles. It’s like a second orgasm all over again.

 “As much as I’d love that, I have to get back to my husband,” when he stays silent, she turns to look at the handsome man in front of her, only to see his blue eyes flicker to an unsettling shade of yellow and drool dribble down his chin. It’s unsettling, triggering goosebumps down her entire body.

 “I really should get going,” she repeats, blinking twice, praying that what she’s seeing in front of her is an illusion, a trick of the light, the unenviable costs of her lack of sleep.

 It’s none of those things. It’s not an illusion, nor a trick of the light, nor consequences of insomnia. In front of her now, where handsome Bob Gray stood mere seconds ago, now stands a terrifying 7 feet tall clown. His hair is a fiery red and his body is clad in a Victorian style clown costume. She has never really been scared of clowns before, but then again, the clowns she did meet didn’t shapeshift from handsome men into clown creatures in front of her, nor does the clown face seem etched into their skin.

 “Y-you’re not real. You can’t be real,” He — no, it, because the being in front her could not be human in any way, shape or form — uncovers its teeth in a sickening twist that could almost pass as a smile, teeth that suddenly look all too familiar to her, she now realizes with a start.

 “I-I’m not real?” It mocks the small, now trembling woman on the musty townhouse couch in front of the large being. “My cock was real enough for you, was it not?”

 “You… If I knew what you were, I would’ve never…” She needs to get away, or she can guess how this is going to end. How her life is going to end. Oh, God. She fucked this. It. Whatever the fuck it was.

 “Please, daddy,” it ridicules her voice, and fuck, it sounds eerily similar to her own. “You have the best cock I’ve ever felt in my miserable short little life time.”

 It watches as the doomed human now uselessly claws her nails at the door, naked and afraid. A laugh bubbles in its throat.

 “Don’t go hurting my feelings now, little human,” the clown’s voice is so different from Bob’s, higher pitched and laced with insanity and sadism. “You would be so lucky to have me in this form.”

 “F-fuck you!” she attempts to retaliate before realizing that she should probably focus on getting the fuck out of here, away from the clown in every sense of the word. Her nails desperately dig at the wooden door that challengingly stands in front of her, the doorknob that she knows was there earlier now gone.

 “Oh, but I did, little one, and you thoroughly enjoyed it,” it says in a singsong-y purr, higher now than she has ever heard it, and the pet name it made up for her now sounds more like a fucking threat than anything else. “Look at me.”

 Turning around to face the shapeshifter may be the hardest thing she has ever had to do, but the monster waits for her as if it has all the time in the world, - it probably does, she realizes - a demonic laugh ringing through her head, sharp and deafening. Her naked body trembles as she finally turns, tears ready to spill over her sweaty cheeks, faced with eight beady little eyes and equally as many legs, it’s gigantic mouth curled up in a sickening smile.

 She screams. She screams like she’s never screamed in her life before, a bad horror movie fucking scream that cracks, insanity closing in on her mind before the monster does.

 “Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear,” it roars through her skull, and it’s so close she can almost taste it’s foul breath on her face, stinking of blood and shit and piss and death. The fear is paralyzing, there is nothing more she can do but sit and watch as the horrifying being, enormous and disgusting, heaves itself towards her trembling frame, with only one purpose. To kill. Her screaming as ceased now, all that’s left is a pile of hopelessness filled to the brim with fear, as if it’s been the only emotion she has ever felt before. Hot tears stream down her pretty face, but it awakens no mercy in the beast’s eight yellow eyes, only hunger and a sick sense of sadistic joy.

 It’s humongous jaw then snaps open, glistering teeth welcoming her field of vision with a sickening cackle that can only come from the disturbed soul of the entity.

 Teeth. Rows and rows of sharp, pointy teeth piercing her neck then, taking root in the thrumming jugular vein in her neck. It burns, it burns so fucking bad that she’s surprised the intense pain hasn’t taken it’s inevitable toll on her yet, although she questions if perhaps her mind is trying to separate itself from her body. Somehow, she’s still aware of her surroundings, although everything appears hazy. Around her, everything is spinning, spinning, spinning as if she has just gotten off a fast whirling carousel after eating one too many cotton candies.

Her head swims, not able to rationalize a thought that makes sense, or any thoughts at all. The blinding pain is so extreme, resembling the feeling of a thousand needles stabbed into her skin without a care or a goal, agonizingly slow and painfully breaking the skin apart to expose little streams of warm blood that puddle together at her feet.

She wants to let out a noise, any noise. Her mind screams at her to call for help, be smart, use the vocal cords mother nature blessed her with. Instead, all that leaves her now iron tasting, blood filled mouth is the last soft, dying gurgle of a defeated prey.

 “Hmm... you taste as good as you feel.”

[fangirl-imagines]

By The Fire//Nick Kringle x Reader

A/N: Requested by @artlovingbre​

Nick couldn’t get out of the village fast enough. He didn’t even care that he was heading further and further away from any warmth the village provided the closer he got to the frozen lake hidden by tall douglas fir trees. Christmas was getting closer and closer but he wasn’t even sure he could make it to December 25th without having a nervous breakdown. Not with Santa’s Helpers following him around everywhere, Noelle making everyone call him Santa, all those hard landings, and the smell of reindeer that he could never seem to get out of his clothes anymore. As if you could see the anxious thoughts swirling around in his head, you squeezed his hand so tightly in yours that he could feel it through his thick red gloves. 

“Hey, you still with me there, Nick?” You stopped in front of him and smiled up at him teasingly. 

You had never called him Santa and he appreciated that. To you he was just Nick and that's what he needed right now. You were bundled up in a heavy scarf, hat, and mittens, and a thick y/f/c coat but your cheeks were still tinged pink from the cold. You were adorable. He relaxed slightly with a small sigh and nodded. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve just got a lot on my mind still.” He gestured vaguely to his head with the hand you weren’t holding. “Christmas is only twenty days away.” He said it like it was his death sentence and it wasn’t lost on you. 

“Hey,” You took both his hands in yours and rubbed them gently in both of your smaller ones. “Come on, it’s your day off, you don’t have to worry about that today. Today there’s no sleigh crashes or chimneys to go down or Santa’s Helpers or reindeer.” 

Nick winces slightly at the thought. 

“Just you and me, some hot chocolate, and ice skating.” You kissed his gloved hands then let them drop from yours. 

Nick was quiet for a moment, thinking this over. “You know I always fall right?”

You looked up at him unamused, “Work with me here Nick.”

“Sorry, sorry!” He shook his head, looking down at you and pursing your lips. “Just don’t laugh at me okay? Please?” 

Your face softened with your heart. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Now come on.” 

You shook your head, tugging him forward through the woods. You broke out into a grin as the two of you stepped forward into the clearing around the lake. The lake was far enough from the village that almost no one ever came out to use it. Nick’s father had been the one to show it to him and Noelle as kids. As a kid it had felt like it was a thousand miles away from the rest of the world and that’s exactly what he needed right now. 

You let out an excited squeal, letting go of Nick’s hand and rushing towards the edge of the lake, dropping your bag off your shoulder and double clicking your boots/skates that Noelle had given you last Christmas. Nick laughed as he watched you, following you at a slower pace. He stepped up to the edge of the ice as you took your first glide out onto it. You laughed happily, arms out for balance as you glided smoothly across the ice. Your eyes were closed, your nose and cheeks were already tinged pink from the long, cold walk there, but you were smiling widely. Nick smiled back as he watched you. 

You opened your eyes back up and cocked your head at him. “Well are you coming or what?”

Nick looked down at his own boots and shook his head. He really did always fall and he was still sore from yesterday’s sleigh crash. It was the only reason he’d been given a day off really. He plopped down in the snow and pulled off his boots, pulling his skates out of his bag and starting to pull them on. As he started to lace them up you he worked his fingers slowly, still watching you on the ice. Santa training had been rough on you too even though you would never admit it to him. 

Ever since he’d become Santa people had been watching you under a microscope too, looking to you as the next Mrs. Clause and watching to see how’d you do. His mother was constantly dragging you away to try and show you the ropes that everyone expected you to be perfect at. Meanwhile you were also trying to get him through his Santa training and were there for him dealing with the loss of his dad but never once did he hear you complain. Seeing you relax and have fun for a change too was nice to see. You made another lap around the ice going backwards this time. 

You looked at Nick unimpressed, “I thought Santa was supposed to be fast? Five hundred and twenty-six million kids in one night and all that?” 

Nick rolled his eyes, “I’m not actually Santa yet.” 

You rolled your eyes playfully, turning on your heels and swaying over the ice in a figure eight. Eyes on Nick, there was no way for you to see the cracks forming in the middle of the ice. Not until your skate caught in one of the splintering chips, sending your body falling back and through the ice. Nick stopped lacing his skates, looking up at the sound of the ice breaking. He saw the exposed water and floating chunks of ice, he saw that you were gone but the realization that you were under the ice wasn’t something his brain could process. He blinked once, then again, then he started running. 

The water was freezing cold, pricking your skin like needles and shocking your body like you were paralyzed. In the cold, dark water you couldn’t tell where the surface was, where the hole you’d fallen in was. The thick weight of your coat and boots were dragging you down as you fought to find which way was up. You couldn’t see the the lights outside of the water or hear Nick screaming your name. You barely felt Nick’s hand gripping your arm before you lost consciousness. You felt like you’d only been out for a few minutes when you felt yourself being jostled and something rubbing against your arm furiously. You groaned and tried to bat it away but something thick and heavy kept you from moving your arms much. 

“Oh my garland! Nick, I think she’s waking up!” A high pitched voice yelled from above you. Noelle. 

“Noelle, please, give her some space!” Another softer voice urged. 

Mrs. Kringle. 

You groaned again. You were warm all over and your body exhausted. You had to focus all your energy on opening your eyes and slowly forced them open. Immediately you found yourself staring into two familiar blue eyes. 

“Y/N? Y/N, can you hear? Please say you can hear me?” Nick pursed his lips. 

You forced a smile. “Loud and clear.” You groaned, “What happened?”

“You fell through the ice and Nick had to pull you out!” Noelle yelled, causing you to crane your neck to look at her standing above your head. 

That’s when you realized you were laying on the floor in the Kringle’s living room beside the fireplace roaring. There were a pile of blankets covering you so thickly that you could barely move your arms. You struggled underneath them and Nick rushed to help you loosen them. 

“Careful! Please be careful!” He fussed while taking your hands and cautiously helping you sit up. 

His forehead was creased thickly as he smoothed his hands over your shoulders, pulling his thick red and white coat tighter around your shoulders. You let yourself relax into its softness, your wet hair clinging to the white fur. You smiled at him reassuringly. He caught your eye and relaxed his shoulders. His hand came up to stroke your cheek softly. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been out for about an hour.”

You opened your mouth to reply but were cut off by Noelle again, “Nick she almost drowned! Of course she’s not okay!” 

Nick threw her a look that made his mother shake her head. “Come along, Noelle. Why don’t we go get Y/N some hot chocolate to warm her up.” She smiled reassuringly at you and Nick, which Nick returned gratefully, as his mother led Noelle out of the room. 

Nick sighed as they left, turning all of his attention back to you. 

“Thank you.” You mumbled, relaxing back into the soft fur lining of his red coat. “I think you saved my life.” You gripped his hand in yours and squeezed. 

“Please, don’t ever scare me like that again.” He closed his eyes tightly, keeping his tears at bay even though you could see the way his eyes glistened when he opened then back up. “I saw you go under the ice and I just, I can’t do any of this without you Y/N. I just can’t.” He swallowed harshly.

He was barely keeping it together but when you wrapped your arms around his neck and squeezed he lost it. Tears flowed freely down Nick’s face, soaking into your shoulder but you didn’t mind. 

“I’m right here.” You muttered, “I’m okay. Everything's okay.”  You squeezed him back tightly, shivering slightly in his shaking arms. 

“Holy night, you’re still shivering!” He pulled away, grabbing one of the many blankets around you and pulling it tighter around your shoulders. 

You covered his hands with you as they fussed with the blankets. He stopped and looked at you, eyes still worried, but they fluttered shut when you closed yours and leaned up, pressing your chapped lips against his softly. The kiss was gentle and deep, warming you all over more than blankets or hot chocolate or even a fire ever could. For Nick, the kiss did more than just give him the usual warm, butterflies in his stomach feeling that it usually did. For Nick it was a reassurance that you were there, that you were safe and back home with him, and that you were together and everything was going to be alright. You only broke apart when you both couldn’t hold your breath any longer but Nick pressed your foreheads together, arm wrapped around your back to keep you close. 

“You stopped shivering.” He observed, catching his breath. 

You laughed, smiling at him. “I think you warmed me up.”

“Oh.” Nick blushed as he always did in these situations. “Well, um, maybe I should try that again?”

“Yeah, I think you should.”

And he did.

Until neither of you were shivering anymore. 

[v2-vinny-deuce]

Fresh Cut Flower Preservative Packets

What's going on with those little cellophane bundles of powder that accompany blooms?

They contain a botanical additive that is a nourishment, hydration specialist and antibacterial http://www.flowersdelivereduk.org.uk treatment. Utilized legitimately, botanical additives will enormously expand the vase life of your new cut blooms.

Sustenance: The nourishment the additive gives is a sugar. Plants produce sugar through photosynthesis from water, carbon dioxide and daylight. At the point when a blossom is cut from the plant, photosynthesis is never again a possibility for the generation of sugar. The sugar is expected to proceed with advancement of the bloom bud into a blossom. With this sugar, the blossom will perform better as far as size, shading and vase life.

Hydration: While cut blooms won't photosynthesize, they will come to pass. That is, water still is taken up by the stems and discharged into the air through the stomata. A bloated bloom is a hydrated blossom. A withered bloom is one where the cells don't have their full measure of water. The outside ring of the stem of the bloom, simply under the bark, is comprised of small cylinders or vessels. This gathering of vessels or vasculature is in charge of transporting water from the roots, or vase in this circumstance, to the leaves and blooms. Water adheres to it self and all in all will in general be drawn up the stem by the persistent dissipation of water through the pores in the bloom and leaves. Be that as it may, when a bloom has been dried out through the typical course of post collect and transporting, the science needs a kick off. At the point when the pH of an answer is progressively acidic, the atoms are increasingly hydrophilic... or on the other hand they will in general stick together more. Along these lines, a great additive incorporates an operator to bring down the pH of the arrangement, which empowers hydration. This is typically a mellow corrosive, for example, citrus extract.

Control Bacteria: The water in the vase or holder can rapidly turn into a microorganisms soup. Everything necessary is a couple of stray bits of plant tissue and some idle microscopic organisms. Include some sugar from the additive and you have a formula for overcast, rank water. The issue isn't only a stylish one. Microscopic organisms in the water will shape connects the stem of the blossom, hindering the water from coursing through the stem of the bloom. A decent flower additive contains an antibacterial specialist to prevent the majority of this from occurring.

Here's a monstrous mystery about these parcels. Most bundles are 5 gram parcels which make one 16 ounces of arrangement. Most normal vases hold something like one quart of water. In the event that you don't adhere to the guidelines for blending the vase arrangement, and end up making an answer that is excessively feeble, you might give enough sugar to develop microscopic organisms while not giving enough antibacterial operators to stop the development. This is where clear water with no additive would be superior to an inappropriately blended arrangement. When you see that the water in your vase has begun to wind up overcast, it's a great opportunity to dump the water, flush the stems, give them a well put together and set them back in the cleaned vase with crisp water. This by itself will twofold the life of your blossoms.

Shockingly, some blossom wholesalers trust that the customer's underlying observation is the only thing that is in any way important. They trust that the most critical factor while picking an additive bundle to disseminate with their blossoms is the cost. They won't spend the additional three to five pennies to give the 10gram parcel that ought to be given. Rather, they trust that the purchaser will be happy with any bundle since they don't have the foggiest idea about any better. That shallow view implies that customer's general impression of blossoms is that they don't keep going as long as they should, and the water gets filthy and rancid all around rapidly. Over the long haul, these purchasers may swing to interchange blessing thoughts other than blossoms, and this damages the botanical business all in all.

[spaceexp]

O marks the spot for magnetic reconnection

ESA - Cluster Mission logo. 10 April 2017 ESA's Cluster mission is challenging the current view of magnetic reconnection – the breaking and immediate rearrangement of magnetic field lines in the collision of two plasma flows. According to a new study, most of the energy dissipated during a reconnection event is not released at the crossings, or X-lines, between the two plasma flows but rather in swirling vortices, or O-lines, where magnetic field lines bundle up and spiral together. The new finding, which contradicts the accepted consensus, is an important step in the process of understanding the mechanisms that accelerate particles in space plasma.

X- and O-lines during magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: ESA

Plasma permeates the cosmos. The mixture of charged particles – electrons, protons, and heavier ions – is found in the atmosphere of the Sun, in the magnetic environment of Earth, and in the vastness of interplanetary and interstellar space. An important phenomenon occurring in plasma is magnetic reconnection, which happens when the magnetic field lines of two colliding flows of plasma are broken and reconfigure immediately afterwards in a different geometry. In the process, the energy stored in the magnetic field is transferred to the kinetic energy of particles in the plasma, accelerating them in the form of two jets of high-speed particles launched in opposite directions. Magnetic reconnection happens, for example, in the magnetosphere of Earth, where it is triggered by a change in the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field carried across the Solar System by the solar wind, the stream of electrically charged particles flowing from the Sun. As a result, plasma particles are accelerated and can infiltrate the upper layer of Earth's atmosphere – the ionosphere – causing the beautiful polar lights, as well as disruptive magnetic storms that can interfere with satellites and telecommunication networks.

X- and O-lines during magnetic reconnection. Credit: ESA

Scientists study magnetic reconnection using space missions like ESA's Cluster, which consists of four spacecraft flying in formation through the Earth's magnetic environment, as well as laboratory experiments and computer simulations. Bridging the microscopic and macroscopic aspects of magnetic reconnection, from the particle level to the large-scale flows of matter and energy, is one of the major unsolved questions concerning this ubiquitous process. In particular, scientists are striving to understand how energy is dissipated when the magnetic field lines break, eventually leading to the acceleration of particles. One aspect that seemed well established – the identification of the sites where energy dissipation takes place – is now being shaken up by a new study based on data from Cluster. These results call for a rethink of the standard view of magnetic reconnection. Under scrutiny are the two magnetic field line geometrical configurations, X-lines and O-lines, which arise when two flows of plasma collide. The main X-line is located at the crossing of the two flows, whereas smaller X-lines as well as O-lines – whirlpool-shaped vortices where the magnetic field lines swirl together – may appear throughout the broader diffusion region.

X- and O-lines during magnetic reconnection (close-up view). Credit: ESA

"We always thought that, in a magnetic reconnection event, energy would be dissipated at the X-lines, but the new evidence shows we've been looking at the wrong place," says Huishan Fu of Beihang University, China, lead author of the study published in Geophysical Research Letters. "In fact, most of the energy is being dissipated at the O-lines instead." Previous studies based on observations of magnetic reconnection events suggested that energy must be dissipated at the X-lines, which are the sites from which the two jets of high-speed particles are launched. However, these analyses did not include an accurate estimate of the location of X- and O-lines, as there was no method at that time to infer the magnetic field line geometry throughout the diffusion region. The new study is the first to apply a recently developed method to reconstruct such topology, and it was this that enabled the scientists to reliably identify the sites of the X- and O-lines in the plasma. The method, developed by Huishan and collaborators and published in 2015, was tested on data from Cluster and NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS), which also consists of four spacecraft, as well as on the output of three-dimensional simulations. It provides the mathematical formalism not only to reconstruct the geometrical configuration of the magnetic field in the space between the four spacecraft that took the measurements, but also to expand the reconstruction to a broader region surrounding the spacecraft.

Cluster's path through X- and O-lines on 9 October 2003. Credit: ESA

The team applied this method to a magnetic reconnection event recorded by Cluster on 9 October 2003, when the spacecraft passed through a reconnection diffusion region, moving on the night side of Earth, in the magnetotail of our planet. This was a rare and valuable event because the four spacecraft were flying through the diffusion region, only about 200 km apart, where they encountered several potential sites of X- and O-lines. "With our method, we could reconstruct the topology of the plasma that the four Cluster spacecraft had flown through," explains Huishan. "We were extremely surprised to see that the electric current was very weak at X-lines, while it was very strong at the O-lines. This means that, contrary to our expectations, the O-lines are where most of the energy is dissipated." The new finding, which is in stark contradiction to the present-day consensus, suggests that something profound is missing from the current understanding of magnetic reconnection.

An artist's impression of the Cluster quartet. Credit: ESA

The strong energy dissipation at O-lines is likely due to the current-driven turbulence, which is also very intense at the O-lines as revealed by Cluster. Huishan and his colleagues have not yet uncovered how exactly the current drives the small-scale turbulence; they are planning to perform a detailed analysis of this process in the future. "This is a leap forward in our investigation of how particles are accelerated during magnetic reconnection," concludes Philippe Escoubet, Cluster Project Scientist at ESA. "This surprising discovery shows the importance of a multi-spacecraft mission like Cluster to study space plasma." Related publications: H. S. Fu et al. (2017), Intermittent energy dissipation by turbulent reconnection, Geophysical Research Letters, 44, 37–43, doi: 10.1002/2016GL071787 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071787 H. S. Fu et al. (2015), How to find magnetic nulls and reconstruct field topology with MMS data?, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 120, 3758–3782, doi:10.1002/2015JA021082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015JA021082 Related Links: For Magnetic Reconnection Energy, O–not X–Might Mark the Spot: https://eos.org/research-spotlights/for-magnetic-reconnection-energy-o-not-x-might-mark-the-spot' ESA Cluster mission: http://sci.esa.int/cluster/ Cluster overview: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster_overview2 Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA/C. Philippe Escoubet/Beihang University/Huishan Fu. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

[dorcasrempel]

“Nanofiber yarn” makes for stretchy, protective artificial tissue

The human body is held together by an intricate cable system of tendons and muscles, engineered by nature to be tough and highly stretchable. An injury to any of these tissues, particularly in a major joint like the shoulder or knee, can require surgical repairs and weeks of limited mobility to fully heal.

Now MIT engineers have come up with a tissue engineering design that may enable flexible range of motion in injured tendons and muscles during healing.

The team has engineered small coils lined with living cells, that they say could act as stretchy scaffolds for repairing damaged muscles and tendons. The coils are made from hundreds of thousands of biocompatible nanofibers, tightly twisted into coils resembling miniature nautical rope, or yarn.

The researchers coated the yarn with living cells, including muscle and mesenchymal stem cells, which naturally grow and align along the yarn, into patterns similar to muscle tissue. The researchers found the yarn’s coiled configuration helps to keep cells alive and growing, even as the team stretched and bent the yarn multiple times.

In the future, the researchers envision doctors could line patients’ damaged tendons and muscles with this new flexible material, which would be coated with the same cells that make up the injured tissue. The “yarn’s” stretchiness could help maintain a patient’s range of motion while new cells continue to grow to replace the injured tissue.

“When you repair muscle or tendon, you really have to fix their movement for a period of time, by wearing a boot, for example,” says Ming Guo, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “With this nanofiber yarn, the hope is, you won’t have to wearing anything like that.”

Guo and his colleagues published their results this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His MIT co-authors are Yiwei Li, Yukun Hao, Satish Gupta, and Jiliang Hu. The team also includes Fengyun Guo, Yaqiong Wang, Nü Wang, and Yong Zhao, of Beihang University.

Stuck on gum

The new nanofiber yarn was inspired in part by the group’s previous work on lobster membranes, where they found the crustacean’s tough yet stretchy underbelly is due to a layered, plywood-like structure. Each microscopic layer contains hundreds of thousands of nanofibers, all aligned in the same direction, at an angle that is slightly offset from the layer just above and below.

The nanofibers’ precise alignment makes each individual layer highly stretchable in the direction in which the fibers are arranged. Guo, whose work focuses on biomechanics, saw the lobster’s natural stretchy patterning as an inspiration for designing artificial tissues, particularly for high-stretch regions of the body such as the shoulder and knee.

Guo says biomedical engineers have embedded muscle cells in other stretchy materials such as hydrogels, in attempts to fashion flexible artificial tissues. However, while the hydrogels themselves are stretchy and tough, the embedded cells tend to snap when stretched, like tissue paper stuck on a piece of gum.

“When you largely deform a material like hydrogel, it will be stretched just fine, but the cells can’t take it,” Guo says. “A living cell is sensitive, and when you stretch them, they die.”

Shelter in a slinky

The researchers realized that simply considering the stretchability of a material would not be enough to design an artificial tissue. That material would also have to be able to protect cells from the severe strains produced when the material is stretched.

The team looked to actual muscles and tendons for further inspiration, and observed that the tissues are made from strands of aligned protein fibers, coiled together to form microscopic helices, along which muscle cells grow. It turns out that, when the protein coils stretch out, the muscle cells simply rotate, like tiny pieces of tissue paper stuck on a slinky.

Guo looked to replicate this natural, stretchy, cell-protecting structure as an artificial tissue material. To do so, the team first created hundreds of thousands of aligned nanofibers, using electrospinning, a technique that uses electric force to spin ultrathin fibers out from a solution of polymer or other materials. In this case, he generated nanofibers made from biocompatible materials such as cellulose.

The team then bundled aligned fibers together and twisted them slowly to form first a spiral, and then an even tighter coil, ultimately resembling yarn and measuring about half a millimeter wide. Finally, they seeded live cells along each coil, including muscle cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and human breast cancer cells.

The researchers then repeatedly stretched each coil up to six times its original length, and found that the majority of cells on each coil remained alive and continued to grow as the coils were stretched. Interestingly, when they seeded cells on looser, spiral-shaped structures made from the same materials, they found cells were less likely to remain alive. Guo says the structure of the tighter coils seems to “shelter” cells from damage.

Going forward, the group plans to fabricate similar coils from other biocompatible materials such as silk, which could ultimately be injected into an injured tissue. The coils could provide a temporary, flexible scaffold for new cells to grow. Once the cells successfully repair an injury, the scaffold can dissolve away.

“We may be able to one day embed these structures under the skin, and the [coil] material would eventually be digested, while the new cells stay put,” Guo says. “The nice thing about this method is, it’s really general, and we can try different materials. This may push the limit of tissue engineering a lot.”

This research was funded, in part, by MIT Research Support Committee Fund.

“Nanofiber yarn” makes for stretchy, protective artificial tissue syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[nancyedimick]

Is projecting ‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’ onto a wall of the Trump Hotel a trespass?

Activists project phrases and the emoluments clause on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (Liz Gorman/Bellvisuals.com)

CNN (Nicole Chavez & Emily Smith) reports:

Visitors to the Trump International Hotel in Washington were greeted with a provocative message Monday night: “Pay Trump bribes here.”

Artist and filmmaker Robin Bell said he projected those words onto the hotel’s facade from a van across the street, hoping to call attention to accusations that President Donald Trump is allowing foreign leaders to pay for access by staying at a Trump property just a few blocks from the White House. …

Bell also projected the text of the emoluments clause, which prohibits US officials from accepting foreign gifts, onto the hotel’s facade, alongside images of the Turkish and Russian flags.

Is this criminal trespass — or perhaps grounds for a civil lawsuit? It turns out that the answer is probably not, whether it’s anti-Trump messages, anti-Islam protesters projecting a Muhammad cartoon on a mosque wall, antiabortion protesters projecting an image of an aborted fetus, or (as is more common) unions projecting critical or offensive messages on the walls of businesses that they are protesting.

I think a specially designed law might well be able to forbid all projecting of text or images onto others’ property. But existing law likely doesn’t, at least unless the projection so interferes with the business (and for a considerable time) as to constitute an actionable “nuisance.”

The only case I’ve seen that has yielded written opinions on this question is Int’l Union of Painters & Allied Trades Dist. Council 15 Local 159 v. Great Wash Park, LLC, 2016 WL 4165919 (Nev. Ct. App. July 29, 2016). The court there concluded that the union had no First Amendment right or labor law right to project a message onto an employer’s wall. But it also held that the projection is just not against the law in the first place.

The majority opinion simply notes that states take two different approaches to “trespass.” Some define trespass as “invasion of land occurs through a physical, tangible [and more-than-microscopic] object.” (Smells wafting from a pig farm, for instance, are borne by physical objects, but they aren’t trespass.) Others also allow trespass lawsuits “when intangible matter, such as particles emanating from a manufacturing plant, cause actual and/or substantial damage to the [property].” Under either approach, this sort of light projection wouldn’t be a trespass.

Judge Jerome Tao, though, wrote a much longer concurring opinion (in addition to joining the court’s opinion) and one that strikes me as very interesting and thoughtful. First, he noted that:

Virtually all of the “light trespass” cases cited by the parties, and in the court’s order, concern the potential trespassory effects of “ambient” light, by which I mean light intended to serve a legitimate ulterior purpose on a nearby property but which incidentally happens to leak or diffuse onto the claimant’s property; common examples of this include construction lighting or light reflecting off the screen of a drive-in movie theater.

In contrast, this case involves something arguably different: a beam of light specifically and intentionally directed at the … property and nowhere else that served no purpose other than to intentionally light up the … building the way the Union wanted….

Nonetheless, he concluded that light reaching someone’s property just didn’t qualify as trespass under the law:

To analogize to a conventional trespass, a trespass committed by a person walking onto prohibited land would be no less a trespass if that person also happened to invade other nearby properties as well during his travels. Similarly, a pedestrian’s physical presence on the land constitutes a trespass regardless of whether he was there as part of an exercise routine utterly lacking a message, or whether he was there to make a point about something. Whether that person also trespassed onto other properties along the way, and whether his trespass was with, or free of, communicative purpose, are fundamentally irrelevant to whether a trespass occurred …

The [property owners] argue that the beam of light itself is, by definition, a “tangible” thing that can “invade” real property. … But what does it really mean to say that something is “tangible” or amounted to a “physical” invasion? … [The owners’ argument] is that the light projection constituted a trespass because light is composed of “particles” (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which the [owners] cite in their brief), and those particles are tangible and therefore capable of physically intruding across the [owners’] property line. But whether something is “tangible” or not does not seem to me to be a proper or clear legal test, at least not one that can be readily understood and applied to a wide range of facts.

Instead, the argument strikes me as a syllogism based upon superficial pseudo-science, and I am not sure that the outcome of this case ought to be governed by this kind of approach.

As an initial observation, the science relied upon by the [owners] appears to be wrong, or at least incomplete. If one really wants to get into the physics of the question, light has the properties of both a wave and a particle. …

More fundamentally, technical merit aside, scientific analysis and legal analysis are two different modes of inquiry designed to accomplish very different goals. … Even if it were unequivocally true that a quantum physicist would think of light as formed of particles, that conclusion alone should not govern whether we should find a trespass here as a matter of legal analysis and underlying public policy. …

Properly framed, I think the question before us is not whether light is tangible or not, but instead: what legal right inherent in property ownership does the light projection supposedly violate? …

Fundamentally, the right to own property is the right to exclude others from entering, using, or possessing it. In a real sense, whenever property is bought or sold, what has really been purchased is the right to sue someone in court for trespass for entering, using, or possessing the property without the owner’s permission. …

We are confronted with a clash between very old law and evolving new technology. Trespass is one of the oldest torts known to Anglo-American jurisprudence, dating as far back as twelfth-century England. But back then, even the most advanced thinkers of the day were not aware of such things as atoms, electrons, or photons. …

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the tort of trespass was originally limited to physical invasions of property by people or objects composed entirely of matter. … In an era lit by wax candles, and then whale-oil lamps, and then kerosene, there was not much that one could do to another’s property with light. But nowadays light can be so many more things and can be used in so many more ways; searchlights, lasers, and light projectors of the kind involved in this case are now commonplace. The inquiry here is whether the bundle of rights traditionally protected by the ancient tort of trespass should be read to include the right to stop the newly-developed light projection used here.

And the answer to that inquiry, Tao concluded, is that the question should be treated under the tort of nuisance rather than the tort of trespass:

The torts of trespass and nuisance are closely related, so much so that some courts have observed that expanding the tort of trespass to cover such things as light, gas, or odors effectively blurs the two torts together and makes them one. … Light invasions — at least of the kind at issue here — are better suited to be addressed by the law of nuisance than the law of trespass.

The fundamental conceptual difference between a trespass and a nuisance is that trespass is the right to exclude something absolutely, while nuisance is the right to exclude something that might have to be tolerated in small quantities but may become the subject of judicial relief when it becomes excessive and unreasonable even in an urban environment. … Thus, the tort of nuisance involves a balancing of competing interests with an eye toward ascertaining the reasonableness of the intrusion, while the tort of trespass is absolute and involves no such balancing.

What this means for this case is that, by claiming a trespass to have occurred, the [owners] are seeking an absolute bar against the invasion of projected light, without any inquiry whatsoever into whether the intensity, duration, or other qualities of the projection were unreasonable or excessive. … [But] every property located in a densely populated urban area … is continually bombarded by multiple artificial light sources, including such assorted things as street lamps, commercial neon signs, neighboring porch lights, automobile headlights, helicopter searchlights, … and the like. … All of these lights affect the appearance of the property with varying intensity and duration, some brief and barely perceptible, and some with great intensity for long periods of time. …

Ultimately, when the question is properly framed, the answer strikes me as quite simple: I do not think that the absolute right to block artificial light emanating from somewhere off of the property — without any inquiry into its intensity, duration, reasonableness or unreasonableness — should be included within the “bundle of rights” that one acquires when purchasing a parcel of land in a densely populated urban center like Las Vegas. …

On the other hand, simply because a property owner does not have the right to exclude all light emanating onto a property under trespass law does not mean that one must tolerate every kind of light that is beamed onto the property no matter how excessive or unreasonable it may be. In some cases, projecting artificial light onto someone else’s property might constitute an actionable private nuisance. The district court’s order contains no factual findings regarding whether such a nuisance occurred in this case, and so that question is not before us.

I would add that it would be hard to show that a projected message is a “nuisance” in the legal sense of the word, at least unless the message causes some harmful physical effects (e.g., it shines brightly into some guests’ windows and keeps them up at night). But it seems to me correct to say that any claim by property owners, under existing tort law, should be raised under a nuisance theory rather than a trespass theory. Whether a legislature should enact a new statutory right not to have text or images projected onto your property is a separate matter.

And that leads us to a practical question, but perhaps one with some legal significance: Wouldn’t it be relatively cheap to hire someone who’ll also stand on the sidewalk and project some light over wherever the protesters are projecting it? That wouldn’t make the wall look pretty, but it should be enough to make the original display illegible.

Or perhaps someone could just block the projector’s beam (though that might be easier or harder depending on where the projector is located). The Independent (UK) (Maya Oppenheim), for instance, reports that the protester in the Trump incident “said it took around ten minutes for security to come and block the projector.”

If one or another self-help solution is indeed relatively easy, should that matter to the legal analysis?

Thanks to Prof. Andy Sellars for the pointer to the most recent incident, which led me to reprise (in edited form) an earlier post of mine, which I put up shortly after the Nevada decision came down.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/16/is-projecting-pay-trump-bribes-here-onto-a-wall-of-the-trump-hotel-a-trespass/

[wolfandpravato]

Is projecting ‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’ onto a wall of the Trump Hotel a trespass?

Activists project phrases and the emoluments clause on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (Liz Gorman/Bellvisuals.com)

CNN (Nicole Chavez & Emily Smith) reports:

Visitors to the Trump International Hotel in Washington were greeted with a provocative message Monday night: “Pay Trump bribes here.”

Artist and filmmaker Robin Bell said he projected those words onto the hotel’s facade from a van across the street, hoping to call attention to accusations that President Donald Trump is allowing foreign leaders to pay for access by staying at a Trump property just a few blocks from the White House. …

Bell also projected the text of the emoluments clause, which prohibits US officials from accepting foreign gifts, onto the hotel’s facade, alongside images of the Turkish and Russian flags.

Is this criminal trespass — or perhaps grounds for a civil lawsuit? It turns out that the answer is probably not, whether it’s anti-Trump messages, anti-Islam protesters projecting a Muhammad cartoon on a mosque wall, antiabortion protesters projecting an image of an aborted fetus, or (as is more common) unions projecting critical or offensive messages on the walls of businesses that they are protesting.

I think a specially designed law might well be able to forbid all projecting of text or images onto others’ property. But existing law likely doesn’t, at least unless the projection so interferes with the business (and for a considerable time) as to constitute an actionable “nuisance.”

The only case I’ve seen that has yielded written opinions on this question is Int’l Union of Painters & Allied Trades Dist. Council 15 Local 159 v. Great Wash Park, LLC, 2016 WL 4165919 (Nev. Ct. App. July 29, 2016). The court there concluded that the union had no First Amendment right or labor law right to project a message onto an employer’s wall. But it also held that the projection is just not against the law in the first place.

The majority opinion simply notes that states take two different approaches to “trespass.” Some define trespass as “invasion of land occurs through a physical, tangible [and more-than-microscopic] object.” (Smells wafting from a pig farm, for instance, are borne by physical objects, but they aren’t trespass.) Others also allow trespass lawsuits “when intangible matter, such as particles emanating from a manufacturing plant, cause actual and/or substantial damage to the [property].” Under either approach, this sort of light projection wouldn’t be a trespass.

Judge Jerome Tao, though, wrote a much longer concurring opinion (in addition to joining the court’s opinion) and one that strikes me as very interesting and thoughtful. First, he noted that:

Virtually all of the “light trespass” cases cited by the parties, and in the court’s order, concern the potential trespassory effects of “ambient” light, by which I mean light intended to serve a legitimate ulterior purpose on a nearby property but which incidentally happens to leak or diffuse onto the claimant’s property; common examples of this include construction lighting or light reflecting off the screen of a drive-in movie theater.

In contrast, this case involves something arguably different: a beam of light specifically and intentionally directed at the … property and nowhere else that served no purpose other than to intentionally light up the … building the way the Union wanted….

Nonetheless, he concluded that light reaching someone’s property just didn’t qualify as trespass under the law:

To analogize to a conventional trespass, a trespass committed by a person walking onto prohibited land would be no less a trespass if that person also happened to invade other nearby properties as well during his travels. Similarly, a pedestrian’s physical presence on the land constitutes a trespass regardless of whether he was there as part of an exercise routine utterly lacking a message, or whether he was there to make a point about something. Whether that person also trespassed onto other properties along the way, and whether his trespass was with, or free of, communicative purpose, are fundamentally irrelevant to whether a trespass occurred …

The [property owners] argue that the beam of light itself is, by definition, a “tangible” thing that can “invade” real property. … But what does it really mean to say that something is “tangible” or amounted to a “physical” invasion? … [The owners’ argument] is that the light projection constituted a trespass because light is composed of “particles” (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which the [owners] cite in their brief), and those particles are tangible and therefore capable of physically intruding across the [owners’] property line. But whether something is “tangible” or not does not seem to me to be a proper or clear legal test, at least not one that can be readily understood and applied to a wide range of facts.

Instead, the argument strikes me as a syllogism based upon superficial pseudo-science, and I am not sure that the outcome of this case ought to be governed by this kind of approach.

As an initial observation, the science relied upon by the [owners] appears to be wrong, or at least incomplete. If one really wants to get into the physics of the question, light has the properties of both a wave and a particle. …

More fundamentally, technical merit aside, scientific analysis and legal analysis are two different modes of inquiry designed to accomplish very different goals. … Even if it were unequivocally true that a quantum physicist would think of light as formed of particles, that conclusion alone should not govern whether we should find a trespass here as a matter of legal analysis and underlying public policy. …

Properly framed, I think the question before us is not whether light is tangible or not, but instead: what legal right inherent in property ownership does the light projection supposedly violate? …

Fundamentally, the right to own property is the right to exclude others from entering, using, or possessing it. In a real sense, whenever property is bought or sold, what has really been purchased is the right to sue someone in court for trespass for entering, using, or possessing the property without the owner’s permission. …

We are confronted with a clash between very old law and evolving new technology. Trespass is one of the oldest torts known to Anglo-American jurisprudence, dating as far back as twelfth-century England. But back then, even the most advanced thinkers of the day were not aware of such things as atoms, electrons, or photons. …

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the tort of trespass was originally limited to physical invasions of property by people or objects composed entirely of matter. … In an era lit by wax candles, and then whale-oil lamps, and then kerosene, there was not much that one could do to another’s property with light. But nowadays light can be so many more things and can be used in so many more ways; searchlights, lasers, and light projectors of the kind involved in this case are now commonplace. The inquiry here is whether the bundle of rights traditionally protected by the ancient tort of trespass should be read to include the right to stop the newly-developed light projection used here.

And the answer to that inquiry, Tao concluded, is that the question should be treated under the tort of nuisance rather than the tort of trespass:

The torts of trespass and nuisance are closely related, so much so that some courts have observed that expanding the tort of trespass to cover such things as light, gas, or odors effectively blurs the two torts together and makes them one. … Light invasions — at least of the kind at issue here — are better suited to be addressed by the law of nuisance than the law of trespass.

The fundamental conceptual difference between a trespass and a nuisance is that trespass is the right to exclude something absolutely, while nuisance is the right to exclude something that might have to be tolerated in small quantities but may become the subject of judicial relief when it becomes excessive and unreasonable even in an urban environment. … Thus, the tort of nuisance involves a balancing of competing interests with an eye toward ascertaining the reasonableness of the intrusion, while the tort of trespass is absolute and involves no such balancing.

What this means for this case is that, by claiming a trespass to have occurred, the [owners] are seeking an absolute bar against the invasion of projected light, without any inquiry whatsoever into whether the intensity, duration, or other qualities of the projection were unreasonable or excessive. … [But] every property located in a densely populated urban area … is continually bombarded by multiple artificial light sources, including such assorted things as street lamps, commercial neon signs, neighboring porch lights, automobile headlights, helicopter searchlights, … and the like. … All of these lights affect the appearance of the property with varying intensity and duration, some brief and barely perceptible, and some with great intensity for long periods of time. …

Ultimately, when the question is properly framed, the answer strikes me as quite simple: I do not think that the absolute right to block artificial light emanating from somewhere off of the property — without any inquiry into its intensity, duration, reasonableness or unreasonableness — should be included within the “bundle of rights” that one acquires when purchasing a parcel of land in a densely populated urban center like Las Vegas. …

On the other hand, simply because a property owner does not have the right to exclude all light emanating onto a property under trespass law does not mean that one must tolerate every kind of light that is beamed onto the property no matter how excessive or unreasonable it may be. In some cases, projecting artificial light onto someone else’s property might constitute an actionable private nuisance. The district court’s order contains no factual findings regarding whether such a nuisance occurred in this case, and so that question is not before us.

I would add that it would be hard to show that a projected message is a “nuisance” in the legal sense of the word, at least unless the message causes some harmful physical effects (e.g., it shines brightly into some guests’ windows and keeps them up at night). But it seems to me correct to say that any claim by property owners, under existing tort law, should be raised under a nuisance theory rather than a trespass theory. Whether a legislature should enact a new statutory right not to have text or images projected onto your property is a separate matter.

And that leads us to a practical question, but perhaps one with some legal significance: Wouldn’t it be relatively cheap to hire someone who’ll also stand on the sidewalk and project some light over wherever the protesters are projecting it? That wouldn’t make the wall look pretty, but it should be enough to make the original display illegible.

Or perhaps someone could just block the projector’s beam (though that might be easier or harder depending on where the projector is located). The Independent (UK) (Maya Oppenheim), for instance, reports that the protester in the Trump incident “said it took around ten minutes for security to come and block the projector.”

If one or another self-help solution is indeed relatively easy, should that matter to the legal analysis?

Thanks to Prof. Andy Sellars for the pointer to the most recent incident, which led me to reprise (in edited form) an earlier post of mine, which I put up shortly after the Nevada decision came down.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/16/is-projecting-pay-trump-bribes-here-onto-a-wall-of-the-trump-hotel-a-trespass/