#early rocket design

[stone-cold-groove]

Rocket surgery.

[zayneshottestgal]

Sylus dating a girly badass🐦‍⬛

Having a similar darker clothing style

Tries to suddenly match with you. If he sees you’re a fan of a certain brand/designer he will buy a few items that also suit his taste. If you point out how he didn’t seem to own pieces from that designer before and accuse him of copying you , he’ll tease and ask if you own the brand and can control who can wear it . he of course also buys you all the pieces you want from new drops and tells his henchman to keep a look out on any vintage pieces you’ve been struggling to find.

He thinks obvious matching outfits are too cheesy but also still has the desire to have that obvious sign that the two of you are together when out in public . Matching jewelry seems to do the trick. Matching rings and necklaces. If you have lots of ear piercing , and tattoos and tease him about the lack of his own . He would consider letting you pierce his ears. Tattoos he said he would think about ( he forgets).

“That designer you like is having a show here soon , is their space in your work schedule to go?”

“ do I think that jacket is too similar to your other one? I don’t see anything wrong with having a jacket that detailed if you think you don’t have enough clothes to go with it , we’ll go buy more”

“I left a gift on the desk in your suite consider wearing it tonight”

Having a detailed beauty regime

Most nights Sylus leaves you alone during your night routine but some nights he gets curious….. (*cough* clingy) . He seems like the type to have a effective but small skin care routine so your pamper nights look a little foreign to him

He teases you for it , calling you a true princess, a beauty rocket scientist , a professional beauty queen anything that flusters you and gets on your nerves . But honestly he’s happy to see you taking such detailed care of yourself and that you can still have your relaxing nights even at the n109 base.

He makes sure to keep all your things stocked and take notice of your preferences , which scents you like for soaps, which lotions you prefer to use , What goals you have for your skincare etc. he’ll read up on the methods you use and their benefits ( ex.dry brushing and milk baths) . He doesn’t want to ask and bother you but still wants to be informed.

If you suggest certain methods and products to add to his routine he will consider them sincerely. 9/10 he will implement them ,the 1/10 is if the method takes to much time or he just doesn’t like the product . But he trust your judgment full heartily and even comes to you for advice .

If you try to pamper him one day he will try to resist it but not for long . He thinks he should be the only one to spoil you but since you really wish to return the favor he cannot say no to you. I think he would be quite relaxed during the whole process, he doesn’t get to sit back and truly relax often ,so he’ll take advantage of it. He’ll try to thank you in a special way after especially since he has so much “extra” energy now.

“Is the beauty queen almost done with her routine?our flight in the morning is quite early.”

“Someone’s skin feels extra soft today ,any spare tips for a guy like me”

“What does this do? Hmm…that’s certainly interesting,they sell other varieties of this too right, do you only like this one ?”

Driving a motorcycle and having a sports car

Sylus likes that you also have a motorcycle it makes you more comfortable when riding on his . He also appreciates that if a deal goes bad you can drive the both of you home if he’s unable . He still keeps a helmet at his place so you don’t have to consistently take yours from off your bike just to ride on his. He makes sure your helmet is the highest quality and that your bike is in top shape .

If you have a sports car that you like driving around Sylus would have his men clear the roads in the east side of the N109 zone so that you could drive as fast as you wanted without traffic . He wouldn’t mind sitting in the passenger as you had your fun. He loved that you had that thrilling and adventurous side of you. He was proud that he had the resources to fuel that passion.

When you guys are parked for dates he has mephisto watch over your car . He never bothered doing that for his own car he didn’t care much if it got stolen/damaged he could buy another. But he knew your car meant a lot to you and was protective over it . “Your baby” as you call it. If it ever broke down and needed new parts he had the mechanic and new parts at the house within the next hour . He would not track you or have mephisto follow you around , all he ask is that you text him when you get home especially on those stormy nights . If you are leaving late at night to go back to linkon he insists on driving you himself just to make sure you get home safe . He’ll have one of his men follow you guys so that he can get home. The peace of mind is more then worth the trip.

“no one will steal your baby sweetie I have my men watching over it relax and enjoy the meal”

“ the mechanic said the new part was a perfect fit and that they can have it done within in an hour”

“No eating in the car because it makes a mess ? Sweetheart we’ve made worst messes in this car then just ketchup, I’ll hire a cleaner”

Caring for mephisto and the twins

You’ve grown to like mephisto and he seems to be warming up to you as well. Since he’s a mechanical bird you can’t really give him treats like you would a regular bird. But you still kiss the top of his head when he lands next to you and you thank him for watching over you when sylus can’t do it . Sylus will never admit but he is a bit jealous of his little crow . He made mephisto a custom bird stand for when he’s at your house so that he doesn’t have to perch on any old available surface . Sometimes mephisto lets you put bows on him. When he returns to Sylus to report to him ,Sylus slightly laughs at the bird with the big pink bow . “You’ve gone soft mephisto “ ( he’s projecting).

As for the twins sometimes when you’re back home at linkon or out on vacation with Sylus you bring them back souvenirs. They always appreciate them . They’ve gotten into the habit of waiting at the door when they know you and sylus are on your way home from the airport. You always hand them their gifts right away.

When you’re at sylus house and he’s busy with whatever ,you usually play with the twins. If they ever need any advice from a women’sperspective they always go to you . Even if they don’t need a women’s perspective just another perspective in general and it’s something they might be too shy to ask sylus they go to you. They truly see you as another leader and respect you just as much as sylus.

“ if I didn’t know any better I would think the twins were your henchmen”

“What were you and the boys talking about earlier, it’s a secret? Alright then”

“You want to take the twins AND mephisto with us on vacation. I guess since there’s room on the jet but don’t run back to me when they get you off track to see all the places you wanna go too”

(A.N) longest post I’ve written for love and Deepspace and it’s for sylus lol . I’ll make one for zayne too it’s wrong to abandon one husband for another . Let me know if you enjoyed it in the comments and what I can improve on . Thank you for reading .

-do not repost , translate my work (copy into A.I ) on to other websites . Please and thank you

[fandom]

Space! ft. NASA

It was a big year in our part of the cosmos. We’ve invited our friends at @nasa​ to recap all the stunning scientific advances that gave us a deeper glimpse into the galaxy around us this year.

JWST Showed Us Space with New Eyes

In July 2022, we saw the first full-color images and data from the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made: the James Webb Space Telescope. This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” is speckled with glittering stars, and called the Cosmic Cliffs. It’s the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but the infrared Webb can peer through cosmic dust thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI 

Artemis I Flew Us Beyond the Moon 

NASA’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), lifted off for the first time on November 16, 2022, launching the Orion spacecraft on a journey around the Moon. Orion has now traveled farther from Earth than any other spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and safely return them to Earth. The Artemis I mission is the first part of a new era of deep space exploration. The program is designed to take astronauts back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars.

Credit: NASA

This One’s for the Dinosaurs

NASA’s DART mission successfully redirected an asteroid—the first time humanity has ever changed the orbit of a celestial object in space. On Sept. 26, 2022, the vending-machine-size spacecraft slammed into the stadium-size asteroid Dimorphos, slightly shortening its orbit around its much larger companion asteroid Didymos. Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth before or after the test. The objective was to test this “planetary defense” technique, should an asteroid ever pose a threat. Note: there are no known asteroid threats to Earth for at least the next 100 years, but NASA is keeping an eye on the skies, just in case.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

Be sure to follow @nasa​ for more!

[reasonsforhope]

"On a blustery day in early March, the who’s who of methane research gathered at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, California. Dozens of people crammed into a NASA mission control center. Others watched from cars pulled alongside roads just outside the sprawling facility. Many more followed a livestream. They came from across the country to witness the launch of an oven-sized satellite capable of detecting the potent planet-warming gas from space. 

The amount of methane, the primary component in natural gas, in the atmosphere has been rising steadily over the last few decades, reaching nearly three times as much as preindustrial times. About a third of methane emissions in the United States occur during the extraction of fossil fuels as the gas seeps from wellheads, pipelines, and other equipment. The rest come from agricultural operations, landfills, coal mining, and other sources. Some of these leaks are large enough to be seen from orbit. Others are miniscule, yet contribute to a growing problem.

Identifying and repairing them is a relatively straightforward climate solution. Methane has a warming potential about 80 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, so reducing its levels in the atmosphere can help curb global temperature rise. And unlike other industries where the technology to decarbonize is still relatively new, oil and gas companies have long had the tools and know-how to fix these leaks.

MethaneSAT, the gas-detecting device launched in March, is the latest in a growing armada of satellites designed to detect methane. Led by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, or EDF, and more than six years in the making, the satellite has the ability to circle the globe 15 times a day and monitor regions where 80 percent of the world’s oil and gas is produced. Along with other satellites in orbit, it is expected to dramatically change how regulators and watchdogs police the oil and gas industry...

A couple hours after the rocket blasted off, Wofsy, Hamburg, and his colleagues watched on a television at a hotel about two miles away as their creation was ejected into orbit. It was a jubilant moment for members of the team, many of whom had traveled to Vandenberg with their partners, parents, and children. “Everybody spontaneously broke into a cheer,” Wofsy said. “You [would’ve] thought that your team scored a touchdown during overtime.”

The data the satellite generates in the coming months will be publicly accessible — available for environmental advocates, oil and gas companies, and regulators alike. Each has an interest in the information MethaneSAT will beam home. Climate advocates hope to use it to push for more stringent regulations governing methane emissions and to hold negligent operators accountable. Fossil fuel companies, many of which do their own monitoring, could use the information to pinpoint and repair leaks, avoiding penalties and recouping a resource they can sell. Regulators could use the data to identify hotspots, develop targeted policies, and catch polluters. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to be able to use third-party data to enforce its air quality regulations, developing guidelines for using the intelligence satellites like MethaneSAT will provide. The satellite is so important to the agency’s efforts that EPA Administrator Michael Regan was in Santa Barbara for the launch as was a congressional lawmaker. Activists hailed the satellite as a much-needed tool to address climate change. 

“This is going to radically change the amount of empirically observed data that we have and vastly increase our understanding of the amount of methane emissions that are currently happening and what needs to be done to reduce them,” said Dakota Raynes, a research and policy manager at the environmental nonprofit Earthworks. “I’m hopeful that gaining that understanding is going to help continue to shift the narrative towards [the] phase down of fossil fuels.”

With the satellite safely orbiting 370 miles above the Earth’s surface, the mission enters a critical second phase. In the coming months, EDF researchers will calibrate equipment and ensure the satellite works as planned. By next year [2025], it is expected to transmit reams of information from around the world."

-via Grist, April 7, 2024

[artbyblastweave]

Recently a post has been doing the rounds about military propaganda in the latest COD, yea yeah, sky’s blue, fork in kitchen, et al et al. This got me thinking about the shooters I actually play, and one thing that strikes me about the multiplayer shooters I play is that a lot of them dodge that same major discourse bullet by expressly grounding themselves in amorality and Kafka-esque dysfunction- a structural fingerwag towards their own content, acting as a paradoxical green-light to enjoy the game with no sense of moral injury. And there’s a big example of one that didn’t do this that kinda winds up with egg on its face as a result. 

To start with, I’m thinking about Team Fortress 2. The original Team Fortress, inasmuch as it’s possible for a game where you shoot each other with real firearms to be apolitical, was fairly apolitical. The soldiers had no markers of identity beyond their arbitrary team affiliation; the fighting was over no discernable real-life resource or point of political tension; the environments were decontextualized labs and facilities. It was platonic violence. 

Team Fortress 2 rolls around. Now that the general novelty of a 3d multiplayer class shooter has eroded, development stalls out on the following aesthetic problem; you can’t have semi-realistic militaristic character models rocket-jumping themselves across the map in the early 2000s. The cartoonishness is too dissonant when you’ve got similar semi-realistic militaristic characters in much more “grounded” games. Eventually they resolve this by taking the other tack, leaning into the cartoonishness, crafting character models so completely bombastic and over the top that no action taken in gameplay, no matter how absurd, will ever feel dissonant. This philosophy extends into the map design; the environments are farcical. Military instillations built mere yards from each other, with paper-thin pretenses of being civilian facilities despite the constant gun battles occurring inside. It’s self parody. And when the game extends to the point of having lore and worldbuilding, the idiocy becomes diegetic. This is a conflict fought on the behalf of idiots, by idiots, over idiot-goals, in spaces designed by idiots. It’s completely amoral, but it’s also contained amorality, since the fighting doesn’t spill out of these Helleresque Designated Pointless Fight Zones- and that leaves the mercs sympathetic enough that you can play them as protagonists in stories that take place “off-the-clock” without a ton of tonal dissonance. I can’t stress enough that the TF2 protagonists are amoral PMCs who work for callous megacorps. In a vacuum, this is not a well-regarded Kind Of Guy around here. There is some implementation of this broad concept that would invite a shitload of discourse that I’ve never seen materialize!

A lot of hero-or-character-based multiplayer games do this, abandoning any pretense of player heroism or productivity in the conceit in a way that shields them from a lot of moral and logical criticisms. Apex Legends and Monday Night Combat are explicitly in-universe bloodsports. Atlas Reactor and Rogue Company are cyberpunk corp-on-corp warfare. Dirty Bomb is about loosely affiliated mercenaries picking over the remains of an evacuated city. I think that Valorant is PMCs in a resource war (Not completely sure on this one.) The never-released Battlecry was expressly tied to actual nation-states, an alternate history where great powers fight wars via singularly-powerful champions instead of via traditional warfare. And in Battleborn the PCs were a hastily-assembled coalition of smaller hastily-assembled coalitions, which means that it makes perfect sense that any combination of these people might be fighting alongside or against each other, at any given time.

Here we see commonalities. Amoral participants. Larger governing bodies delineating clear fight zones centered on specific, if deliberately silly or petty, goals. Most crucially, PCs that are very loosely affiliated with each other, such that you’d see them in different configurations, fight to fight, day to day, as they’re contracted or shuffled around by the powers that be.

You know a game that doesn’t do any of this? Overwatch. 

Overwatch gets 80% of the way to being a superhero universe; it falls short primarily because Blizzard chose not to explicitly market it as such, but it’s got everything short of the purposeful brand designation- powered heroes, super science, codenames, Faceless Hydraesque terrorist groups with shadowy, powered enforcers. There are specific allegiances implied by this; specific policy and interpersonal goals implied by this that aren’t really reflected in six-on-six grudge matches in a smattering of inexplicably depopulated civilian environments. There are roughly half-a-dozen villains associated with Talon, four or five independent villainous mercenaries, and everyone else is a would-be superhero. Why is most of the core roster of the world’s premier superhero team performing some kind of terror attack in London? Why is a woman who murdered a civil rights leader trying to stop them, with the help of two avowed anti-Omnic mercenaries and three Omnics? Why did a cryogenics researcher weaponize her tech and come along for the ride? Why are a dozen envoys from tech conglomerates, grassroots movements, and paramilitary defense forces throwing down over a Gazebo in a charming Greek resort? Fuck if I know. Fuck if the writers know!

So, to round it out, I think that there’s a structural difficulty for multiplayer shooters to stand for something, or advance a philosophy, or whatever. The smart ones embrace this by shielding themselves in ablative nihilism, preemptively deflecting criticism by painting the gameplay as hollow and barbaric, but fun! But Overwatch- Overwatch 2′s tagline is “Get back in the fight.” What Fight? Why? Against Who? Call Of Duty might be a horrific mouthpiece for militarism and imperialism, but when it valorizes the military, it’s at least picking a side! Overwatch is just so strange to me because it’s somehow got the worst of both worlds- it uses these heroic, aspirational language and visuals to hype up a gameplay loop that’s ultimately the exact same kind of cynical, aimless abattoir as the games that are smart enough to explicitly be about amoral paid killers!

[odinsblog]

Everything about the Starship was the result of a series of decisions designed to make spaceflight cheaper. The methane fuel. The steel structure. The method of construction. Even the rocket’s enormous size. All of it was a gamble to create a system that is fully reusable, bringing the cost of getting to orbit down to a small fraction of what it is today and making space almost infinitely more accessible.

However, one decision in the process didn’t just result in the destruction of the rocket, it generated a cascade of failures, one that’s likely to set the program back by a least a year, erasing the chance of NASA’s scheduled return to the Moon in the process. That decision is 100% on Elon Musk.

HERE’S THE TL;DR VERSION

The no-clamps slow throttle-up meant Starship stayed on the pad for a long time, throwing up concrete, rock, and sand in all directions, damaging the pad, nearby facilities, and Starship itself.

By the time it left the pad, that debris had already destroyed three of Starship’s engines and likely damaged valves and systems that would lead to additional engine failures as well as an incorrect fuel mixture.

Starship was slow to reach every point in the flight plan, suggesting that other engines were not able to throttle up to compensate for the lost engines.

At what should have been stage separation, either software errors or more smashed hardware kept the main booster firing long after it should have shut down.

The result was an uncontrolled spin that required Starship to be destroyed.

WHY THIS IS 100% ELON MUSK’S FAULT

Starship is the work of hundreds of talented engineers and thousands of employees who put their best into making this thing go. The design is extremely daring, and something of a wonder. The engines are amazing, even if they have demonstrated that reliability is currently lacking. The whole system of construction promises to revolutionize the space industry.

But there are two parts that were left out of Starship that absolutely doomed this flight and the decision not to include them falls right with the guy at the end of the first row at “Star Command.”

Those parts were not parts for the rocket. They were parts for the launch pad.

For some reason, Musk became convinced early on that he did not want the launch tower to have:

A flame-diverter or flame trench to redirect the blast from the booster’s engines

A water deluge system to dump a massive amount of water around the launch tower during liftoff

The launch facilities at Kennedy have both of these. Even the launch pads used for the much smaller Falcon 9 have both a flame trench and a water deluge. They help to protect not just the launch pad, and the surrounding area, they also help to reduce the noise. Which sounds trivial, but that noise is energy. That’s what broke up the concrete under the Starship Stage Zero, not the fire. That’s what sent car-sized chunks flying in all directions.

A flame diverter and a water deluge would have greatly reduced, or even eliminated, the damage to the area around the pad. They would have prevented the blow back of debris that damaged Starship before it even left the ground. It might have headed off the whole cascade of events that resulted in that button being pressed 4 minutes into the flight.

We don’t have to guess about whose decision it was not to implement these systems, because Musk already said he decided to skip these systems over the recommendations of his engineers. Musk even had a preview of what was going to happen, as past test flights of the upper stage also resulted in significant spalling of concrete structures and damage to at least one of the ships. He just made them try different kinds of concrete.

The parts for a water deluge were actually on site, ready to install, but Musk decided to forego that installation—likely so he could enjoy the pun of launching his super-joint on 4/20. Which was something Musk had joked about doing months ago.

Hopefully he enjoyed the joke, because the EPA and FAA are going to be thinking long and hard before they authorize another flight from Boca Chica. All those engineers, and all those workers, and all their good work, is held hostage to Musk’s whims.

Also a victim of Musk’s decision to leave these vital pieces off the table? The Artemis Program at NASA. Musk has already been awarded the contract to create the first lunar lander for the new program, but that lander is absolutely dependent on Starship. It’s a sure bet that Musk won’t have his part of the program ready on schedule. It’s going to be some time before we even so another test flight.

In the meantime, SpaceX can repair the damage, build a flame diverter, install that deluge system, clean up the software, and ditch the whole “pitch over” means of stage separation for something simpler—like using the second stage engines to push the stages apart with an unignited shot of methane.

See you in 2024, Starship.

Maybe.

👉🏿 https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/22/2165317/-A-Starship-Post-mortem-Why-the-giant-rocket-failed-and-why-it-s-Elon-Musk-s-fault

[thydungeongal]

D&D 5e being poorly designed issue #499:

Flesh to Stone requires three failed constitution saves to actually petrify anything, and even then requires ten rounds of concentration to make it last longer than a minute. Constitution is the most common save to have a bonus in in this system, and since it is a sixth level spell, this bonus tends to be quite high. As a result, this spell pretty much never actually does what it is billed as doing.

If the target does make their saves, this effectively translates into 3-5 rounds of a single target being restrained, at the cost of a sixth level spell slot and concentration.

The web spell, meanwhile, creates an area of effect in which any creatures that fail their dexterity saves are restrained. Dexterity saves are pretty common, but they have to keep making them as long as they're in the webs, and it's a strength check (rather than a save, so usually a lower bonus!) to escape. The spell requires concentration, but the maximum duration is an hour.

That's right. Web is objectively and unambiguously better than Flesh to Stone, despite being four spell levels lower. This is because the people making 5e wanted to get rid of save-or-suck effects, but didn't want to get rid of the spell names, and so nerfed them all to the point of uselessness. There is no use case for Flesh to Stone that would not be better served by Web or some other, notably lower than sixth level spell. You could cast Web with that sixth level slot, and it'd be a waste of resources, but it would still be less of a waste than Flesh to Stone, because it lasts longer, is slightly harder to resist, and can affect more than just one creature.

This is your game design on nostalgia and self-reference.

Yeah there's a lot of weird and conflicting ideas going on with spells in D&D 5e because they really lacked a coherent set of design goals: the designers seemed to have lacked a clear consensus on whether they wanted the game to be a balanced (albeit tipped in the player characters' favor) tactical combat game like 4e or an old-school experience with lots of nasty save or die effects. Part of the issue is that at an early point in the design process they decided not to take 4e's lead on monsters effectively having their own unique spells and spell-like abilities, and instead decided that the same spell lists should be available to both monsters and player characters.

And as anyone who's played 3e will tell you, when spells are as readily available and effortless to use as in Hasbro D&D and both sides have save or death spells available, it leads to rocket tag. And rocket tag is really not conducive to a fun tactical combat game that is supposed to be slightly tipped in the player characters' favor.

(Rocket tag is also the name of the game at higher levels in TSR editions of D&D and I feel it does harmonize better with the sheer amount of "fuck you" design in those editions. I think the assumptions written into the rules that combat isn't supposed to be fair or fun affects that very much.)

Anyway, so it's not just pure nostalgia, it's a combination of nostalgia while at the same time trying to copy D&D 4e's homework but not understanding the assignment. The biggest issue with D&D 5e in the context of all the various editions of D&D is that it had the benefit of more than thirty years of design and still ended up without a clear set of design goals besides "let's make the game that's the most D&D!" Like, ultimately as a dungeon game it's fine, but given the context of what's come before it should've been great.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket

Bullet on Wheels: The 1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket

Easily one of the wildest General Motors dream cars of the Motorama era, the Olds Golden Rocket was the epitome of Jet Age design. Let’s take a closer look. 

Throughout the 1950s, Harley Earl and his forward-looking crew at the GM styling studios frequently turned to aircraft and space travel for their inspiration. There might be no better example of the automaker’s guided-missile design theme than the far-out Golden Rocket, Oldsmobile’s Motorama dream car for 1956. “The Supersonic Age comes to automobile styling!” the company proclaimed.

1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket

Constructed in fiberglass on a shortened Oldsmobile passenger car perimeter frame with a 105-inch wheelbase, the Golden Rocket was essentially a bullet on wheels in side view (above.) But under the skin, the show car was fairly conventional with a 324 CID, 275-horsepower Olds Rocket V8 up front, Hydra-Matic automatic transmission, and leaf-spring rear suspension. The custom wheels employed integral brake drums, and a pair of fuel tanks were housed in the rear fenders. Note the “dotted-line” segmented whitewalls, a novel feature that never went any further.

1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket

At a little more than 200 inches long but less than 50 inches tall, the Rocket sported an impressively low silhouette, which required some ingenuity in the packaging of the two-seat cabin. For easier entry and egress, a roof panel popped up when the door was opened on either side, while the steering wheel rim swung upward and the bucket seats rose three inches and pivoted on their mountings. Upholstery was blue and gold leather, while the speedometer was housed in the steering wheel hub. The lap belts and driver pedals display a strong aircraft influence.

While the Rocket seems to be one of the more obscure GM dream cars in current times, it did include some ideas that turned up later on the General’s production models. The stubby rocket-type tailfins would adorn some memorable Cadillacs of the early ’60s, while the split-window teardrop rear window is extremely familiar. It was next tried on a dead-ended 1958 Corvette styling proposal, then famously appeared on the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray coupe. As with a number of GM Motorama dream cars, the fate of the Golden Rocket was not officially documented, reportedly, but it hasn’t been seen or heard from in years and is presumed destroyed.

1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Rachel O'Donoghue

he coverage from several leading news organizations of Sunday’s escalation exemplified how omitting a single crucial detail can distort the entire narrative.

The New York Times ran an early headline stating: “Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, which fires rockets at Israel.” The missing word? Preemptively. Israel preemptively struck launching sites being prepared for an imminent attack just hours later.

The headline’s implication was undoubtedly deliberate—NYT presented a skewed image of an aggressive Israel, seemingly provoking a broader regional conflict by needlessly attacking Hezbollah.

This narrative was echoed by the Los Angeles Times and CBS News, with the former downplaying Hezbollah’s drone and rocket strikes, while the latter went as far as to suggest Israel might have both ignited a wider conflict and hindered ceasefire negotiations.

In one of the more hyperbolic and misleading headlines, the Daily Mail claimed the Middle East conflict had “explod[ed]” as Israel bombed Lebanon and Hezbollah fired “150 rockets towards the Iron Dome.”

One doesn’t need to be a munitions expert to know that Hezbollah doesn’t aim at the very missile interceptors designed to neutralize its rockets.

[cosmichorrorsarestillnicerthanme]

How bout a ZZZ? Ask Belle x cunning hares reader

Reader fights using half of a mech(whichever mech you feel is appropriate) they found in a hollow

I had a blast writing this, though I spent more time on the Mech than the interaction so if it feels a bit off compared to my usual, sorry!

Now! Your Wish Is My Command!

“Combat Rigs like this one were used-” you began to say as you adjusted the rotors of the cooling unit, getting a shock in the process from the left over processed ether, causing you to exclaim “agh! Mother-” before letting out a deep breath and starting over.

“Combat Rigs like this one were used early on to explore Hollow Zero back when it first formed. You’ve run into some of the tech descended from these in the Companion Hollows and its distant cousins in Belobog Construction. Though when these were first made; Ether Corruption wasn’t something very well known, neither was Ether Shielding, at least not on a large scale. Not to mention these things were slapped together in a couple of months with some Shoddy but aggressive A.I. Cores and a lot of the safety features in both of them weren’t exactly up to snuff, especially with the extremely volatile Ether Reactors that, when they got too hot, could melt the entire thing into a ball of molten slag with pilots still inside or A.I.’s programming breaking and hijacking the rig. So, over time as boots on the ground got more and more concerned about the Rig’s going rogue and we learned more and more about hollows, they were phased out. Replaced by heavy, non-piloted machinery with better made and adapted A.I., and small, highly trained groups of people guided by Bangboo.” You explained as you continued to run maintenance on your Rig.

“Then how’d you get your hands on one?” Belle asked, still craning her neck up to look at you.

“Found it in a Companion Hollow not too far into The Hollow Zero Exclusion Zone, from the looks of it, The A.I. Core broke and went on a rampage and flew out of Hollow Zero before the Reactor ran out of fuel and it shut down in mid air, causing it to crash. I had to rip off pretty much all of what remained of the plating and replace a lot of the underlying hardware due to Ether Corruption. The A.I. core was pretty much unscathed, and that’s been a headache and a half to try and work on. It's a stubborn piece of scrap.” you shouted down as you pulled out the damaged Ether Canister and looked it over, seeing if you were going to be able to salvage it.

“This massive thing can fly!?” Belle exclaimed, shocked.

“It could, without the A.I. Core I’m locked out of a ton of the subroutines, including the Flight Check.” you answered as you walked down the catwalk.

“Though considering the Payload this thing could carry, that may be a good thing. Going out in a giant ball of exploding fire sounds as cool to me as the next guy but I’d prefer not to have what was left of my body buried in a matchbox.” you stated as you walked past Belle, still examining the canister.

“What does that mean?” Belle asked, more than a bit concerned for her NOT CRUSH.

“Well, if I got this thing fully loaded with the max it could carry and still be able to go airborne and accounting for the Reactor… that would be around the equivalent of around a megaton of TNT exploding over the sky’s of New Eridu. More than enough to take a sizable chunk out of the city if it was on the ground.” you answered before placing the canister on the table, and pulling out a set of tools.

“That’s… terrifying.” Belle muttered, a chill running down her spine.

“Yup, that’s why I only use the heavy artillery this model was known for if absolutely necessary.” you stated as you continued to work on the canister.

“I know I’ll probably regret asking… but what does that mean?” Belle asked.

“This model was made as a form of highly mobile artillery piece, designed for the express purpose of cracking heavily armored targets with heavy ordnance from any spot on the field. Because of this, it could launch missiles, rockets, and other forms of munitions with little to no modification. It was the swiss army knife of high calibers, explosives, and magnetically accelerated weaponry.” you answered simply, putting your tools down and turning to face Belle.

“Now then Proxy time for me to ask a question, why the sudden interest?” you inquired as you looked Belle dead in the eyes.

“Can’t a girl like giant killer robots on her own time?” Belle clumsily retorted.

“Not you, one half of The Legendary Proxy Phaethon.” you stated clearly.

“Then could you at least ask a girl about her ulterior motives over a bowl of noodles?”

“Are you trying to ask me out?” you asked, eyes narrowing.

“Yes.” Belle declared, tossing all subtlety to the wind.

“Are you buying?” you asked, tempted.

“Half.” Belle answered with a shrug.

“Hmm. Let me get cleaned up and changed, give me a bit.” You said as you walked past Belle and towards the Cunning Hare’s main building where the Showers were.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You closed the door behind you before walking forward, turning down the hall, and then leaning back on the wall before sliding onto the ground.

You were NOT prepared for this.

Quickly, you fished your phone out of your pocket and dialed the best person you knew for this kind of thing.

Nicole Demara.

The second you saw her name you were already calling her.

“C’mon, c’mon, pick up Nicole.” you muttered as the dial tone rang.

“Hey there! You’ve reached Nicole Demara, Leader of the Cunning Hares! If you have a job for us, say what it is at the beep! If you don’t, BUZZ OFF!!” Nicole’s pre-recorded voicemail shouted at you.

“NICOLE HELP! BELLE ASKED ME ON A DATE! WHAT DO I DO!?” you whisper yelled into your phone in a panic.

Oh god what were you going to do?

You couldn’t just blast your way out of this with rockets and explosives!

Not that you wanted to after all Belle was… Belle.

And you were a Grease Monkey who works with a dangerous robot that can blow a hole in the city.

How in the world were you going to survive this?

[nimrochan]

I don’t think that my few handfuls of followers on various social media accounts realize that I’m an American-Israeli. I’ve been watching things unfold and staying silent for the most part. I know it’s very easy to have an opinion from the comfort and safety of my home, but too many people are also echoing online opinions without enough information or thought behind them. Although it’s fair to say that I’m biased, I think it’s important to view conflicts from multiple perspectives. Including and especially from someone from the actual region/culture that everyone outside of it suddenly has an opinion on. And I think I’m ready to say what I wanted to say:

Why aren’t people more angry with Hamas?

I’ve spent some childhood years in Israel. Every week on the news was another incident - a bus b*mbing, a car b*mbing, a s*icide b*mber… I remember being terrified of getting on buses, or going to public places. I remember soldiers standing at the entrance of every mall, and I remember hearing how one soldier died while stopping a s*icide b*mber at a mall entrance - both were women in their early 20’s. Until today my father tells me to avoid crowded places, and to always stand in a corner with my back on the wall to observe my surroundings.

When I moved to America I had moved on from these memories and didn’t really think about them. But the attacks never stopped. For DECADES. And over the last few years I did notice that very few non-Jewish Americans were aware of what life is like in Israel - having a barrage of rockets rain on you every once in a while. Having alerts to warn you to head to the nearest shelter. Israel has the protection of the Iron Dome. But it’s not perfect, and some rockets do hit their targets. Also, you know, maybe people shouldn’t be firing rockets unprovoked into another country?? (Don’t even get me started on Hezbollah, too.) No one bats an eye if other countries randomly shoot rockets into Israel, but as soon as Israel retaliates to try destroying the area where rockets come from, everyone comes out of the woodwork to condemn them.

Some of my American family members have an app that dings every time rockets are fired into Israel. I could never bring myself to download it. The number of dings drives me crazy.

In fact, if you ever wanted to buy a piece of jewelry or sculpture made of Hamas rockets, there are businesses upcycling them.

If you’re not from Israel, I just want you to imagine the number of rockets that regularly have to come into your country for any rockets-to-products businesses to even exist. For reasons beyond my comprehension, a lot of political parties in America want to defund the Iron Dome, a system designed solely for defense. But I digress.

Gazans never had an Iron Dome and yet Hamas gives no regard to the lives of their own people when they fire openly from homes, schools, hospitals. When they hide hostages and weapons in heavily populated areas.

I remember frantically texting and calling people on 10/07 to see if any of my family members were harmed or killed in the attack. All while anti-Zionists already rallied on social media to offer no sympathy and blame the attack on the Jews on, the Jews. Right. Luckily, whatever close family I had in the area was far away enough from the attack that they were spared, and they soon evacuated. My second cousin and her kids were only spared because they happened to be away, but their home was in ashes and their friends and neighbors were dead.

Israel is a small and close-knit country. I don't have words to describe how we grieved. 1200 innocent civilians sl*ughtered for no reason. That number is just a little under half of the number of deaths on 9/11, and it was done without the help of airplanes, just men running around killing people. The youngest one was 14 hours old. This is the largest m*rder of Jews since the Holocaust. I won’t even go into detail about how some of their bodies were mutilated because it’s too horrific for me to want to type it out. In fact I left the most disturbing footage out of this post. I had been avoiding seeing the footage of Shani Louk, but it was shown at the exhibit too and I’ll never be able to forget it for as long as I live. It made me sick to my stomach.

Look at the pictures. Look at all those shoes. The last time I felt such powerful emotion staring at shoes was at a Holocaust museum. A lot of item displays included their owners’ smart phones showing their final videos on a loop. The people who attend the Nova festival tend to be laid-back, free spirits. They show up covered in glitter and wearing fairy-wings, waving rainbow flags. They lived next to Gaza because they felt safe there, and they often supported Palestinians. Listen to the unhindered joy in the voice of the man calling his father to tell him he had m*rdered ten Jews. One of the most disgusting parts of this is the fact that people protested outside this exhibit as well.

When I brought myself to browse social media again, over and over I saw posts about how “they deserved it” and “they had it coming.” The same people, the same self-proclaimed “feminists” who would shared the #MeToo and #YesAllWomen hashtags, people with immensely large followings, were now having no sympathy for the Israeli women who were r*ped, basically saying “she asked for it.” People defending and excusing Hamas because they “weren’t created in a vacuum.” When did we start excusing r*pe and t*rrorism for ANY reason? On that note, don’t you think Israel’s aggressive defense of itself also stems from a historical reason, shaped by outside forces?

And then there are many voices still expressing plain denial! This was the most well-documented t*rrorist attack in history, because the attackers filmed it with pride, and yet over and over I also saw people posting about how “it never happened,” “they would never do that,” and how these t*rrorists were just “resistance fighters” with propaganda crafted to “make them look bad.”

In my home state of New York, I saw people marching wearing same types of scarves that these “resistance fighters” wore to commit crimes against humanity so recently, tearing down posters of Israeli hostages instead of hanging their own posters on innocent killed Gazans and sharing in the grief.

I see people over and over calling Israelis “white colonists,” when in fact MOST OF THEM ARE BROWN, dark-skinned just like their neighbors (if I showed you photos of my family in Israel, you'd be surprised to learn they aren't Arabic). We are an ethnic minority on this planet and in every country except Israel, but antisemites love to flip the script and paint us as majority white colonizer oppressors. When the majority of Americans calling for the abolishment of Israel are themselves actually living on colonized land (I mean, really?) When most of North Africa has been colonized by Arab populations, yet everyone seems to conveniently forget that. Most alarmingly, I see people marching the streets and praising Hamas and the actual 10/07 attacks.

These same people probably could never spot Gaza on a map before 10/07. Where were they for the Chinese Uyghurs? Where were they for the mass murdered Syrians? For Afghans left at the mercy of the Taliban? For Iraqis killed after 9/11? For Darfur? Because no news unless Jews, right? How can you say you care about Muslims and then praise Hamas? How can you be Pro-Palestine and Pro-Hamas at the same time?! There is a huge, sick problem in America when college students here are applauded by overseas t*rrorist leaders on goddamn Twitter.

And these “Queers for Palestine”- where is the support for the gayest, most feminist, and most liberal country in the Middle East? (Go ahead and look up which country in the Middle East holds annual Pride Parades.) Where is the support for the millions of Arab-Israelis and other non-Jews who call Israel their home? Where is the support for the Arabs and non-Jews also killed on 10/07? Where are the feminists using their voices to demand Hamas return the hostages that are very likely being r*ped as I type this?

I feel like I’m going crazy telling people that there is a lot of fake news and propaganda being spread by Hamas and eaten up by the West. I am not the kind of person to use the phrase “fake news.” But when I see some extreme footage allegedly showing the IDF doing something especially horrible, I count the hours or days before the news is silently retracted because it turned out to be incorrect. Propaganda against Jews has seeped so far into gentile culture over the decades that people don't even realize it. It’s become sickeningly casual and normalized in all kinds of circles. Hell, I don’t even know who to vote for or who secretly wants me dead - the left side with the pro-Hamas crowd or the right side with their white supermacists .

No, I am not denying that a lot of innocent Gazans are dying horrific deaths. When I see footage of injured Palestinian children, I don’t look away and pretend it doesn’t happen, because it does. But what about Hamas dressing up as civilians, firing weapons among civilians, and continuing to hide the hostages??? What about the 15-17 year old brainwashed children marching with guns? When is enough enough? You know which army doesn’t hide in civilian clothing, or recruit children, or parade naked dead women around after they’ve killed them?? Take a guess.

War is fucking awful. And I'm not trying to justify it, just trying to articulate why this is such a clusterfuck of a situation. Someone please name any other country that wouldn’t retaliate and demand their hostages back after such an ugly, unprovoked attack. Someone please explain to me why the hatred is so intense and out of proportion. Again, DECADES of attacks. Someone please tell me what should be done - because if you do nothing, then 10/07 happens over and over and over again. Israelis are all living, breathing people with families just like Gazan civilians are. Stop dehumanizing us.

Why is it that after the Ukraine-Russia war started, when most westerners were on Ukraine’s side (including myself so don’t jump down my throat), that individual Russians living in western countries did not feel threatened the way individual Jews are being threatened? That war actually seems a way more black-and-white situation to me. Why did the Israeli singer for Eurovision need presidential-level protection from the mob gathered outside her hotel? Why did the other contestants continually insult her? You think every single Jew on the planet has a say in what happens in Israel?

Why am I going on social media to dumb down, only to see posts like “Reblog to increase IDF soldier s*icides” and “Like to # CeaseFire” and “From the river to the sea” (that expression basically means to promote the killing of all Israelis, I don’t care how you look at it). Why are you trying to call a cease fire with t*rrorists who are known to constantly break ceasefire, then make a surprised Pikachu face when they do it again?

Anti-Zionism is a clever cover for anti-semitism. The very definition of Zionism is the pursuit of an independent Jewish state (of which there is currently only ONE - for comparison, there are 57 Muslim countries). A lot of people don’t even know what Zionism is when they call themselves Anti-Zionist. And if you do? Most Jews are Zionist. You can’t separate semitism from Zionism to make yourself feel better. Israel is such a tiny country, it takes 6 hours to drive end-to-end across the longest part. While all over the world, synagogues are being threatened, Jewish graveyards are being vandalized, and Jews are being attacked, you are absolutely telling me and my people that we don’t deserve a safe space. And yes, Jews are indigenous to the Middle East just like Arabs are.

How do people rally against discrimination, but in the same breath act like discrimination towards Jews doesn’t count? You can’t reason your way out of it. You do not get to tell me what is and isn’t antisemitic.

Hamas does NOT give a damn about the actual land that Jews are living on. Hamas’s ultimate goal is to kill all Jews (it's LITERALLY spelled out in their government charter), is that what people want?? And even if you deny it, you think you could theoretically move all 8 million Jews out of Israel to where exactly?

You think other countries want to welcome a mass migration of 8 million Jews? (Remember why Jews left in the first place?) You want literal t*rrorists to have a stronger foothold in the Middle East?

Why do the surrounding countries condemn Israel, yet not step up to help Gazans either? Why won’t they open up their borders?

I’m sick and tired of people who have zero stake in the Middle East and very little knowledge just jumping on the bandwagon and virtue-signaling like it’s some clear black-and-white situation when it’s not. And then having the nerve to lecture ME. I’m angry and I’m frustrated.

Bring them the fuck home.

[stone-cold-groove]

Popular Mechanics Magazine - March 1930.

[jamneuromain]

I have an idea omg. We need more of Lloyd and reader... What about a situation when Lloyd got injured, like he kicked someone's ass , got his knuckles bleeding, or maybe he got a cut or smth... and the reader though she's aware of her blood-seeing problem ofc decided to help him, trying to fight her hemophobia best she could because Lloyd needed her help. Or it can be quite the opposite, the reader got hurt in some way, bleeding a bit, and Lloyd decided to help her because he knows her reaction to seeing blood and all. What do you think?😬☺

Hi Elena😌❤️ （sorry that it took so long I accidentally deleted my draft ... and took very long to recover from the devastating fact :l

Your "Lloyd got hurt" idea certainly is very interesting....👀

So, what would happen if Lloyd got hurt and he has no one else to turn to but his secretary with hemophobia...🤔

Bleed Out

Lloyd Hansen x You

Warning: Mob AU, Mob!Lloyd, Secretary!Reader (Driver!Denny Carmicheal), Graphic Depiction of Blood and Violence (I guess Lloyd is a warning of his own?), Reader has hemophobia (fear of blood), a lot of cursing.

Summary: Lloyd is under your protection for now.

A/N: This is the sequel to A Whiff of Blood, Thank you for all your love to Mob!Lloyd<333

One thing, one particular feature you like about the apartment you're living in, is that this little condo - along with the rest of the building and five other blocks in the vicinity, belongs to a high-end resident community that has strict security guard patrol schedules and limited key-card access. These precautions resulted in rocket-high market prices and a rather wealthy neighborhood, as the owner of these buildings forbids renting, for every keycard that could access the front gate, elevators, and their matching apartments, accompanied by facial recognition embedded in the little chip. When you get home every night (or afternoon, if you are lucky), you have to press your keycard and stand before the camera before the gate grants you inside. This brings quite some comfort for you, working for a mob boss named Lloyd Hansen, and knowing that his associates are basically "wanted" by rival gangs for the valuable information they possess.

While it is impossible that you could afford such an exquisite apartment with your salary, though very well-paid, you are truly grateful because Lloyd signed this condo - his condo - to you without a word (or asking a dime from you) when you told him during your final interview that you will be needing a week to relocate before starting the job.

That's when you made up your mind that Lloyd Hansen is a boss worthy to work for.

It's not a big place. Having two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Decorated in white, black, and grey, clearly matching Lloyd's taste when he asked his lawyer to give you the key card and have you move in.

You've lived here for three years now. Adding soft cushions and light-colored sets to the tedious design here and there. Like the sunflower tablecloth and daisy plates and bowls. Like the pink polka dot sheets and duvet covers. And the fluffy slippers, taken out from the cabinets, ready to be put on as soon as fuzzy socks don't work their magic any more.

You are finishing washing the mug you just used. After putting it on the racks, you wipe your hands with a clean cloth. It is a workday tomorrow, and you intend to sleep early to wake up with a fresh spirit to deal with your (sometimes) moody boss. Treating yourself to a nice little read in the bedside lamp radiating yellow glow - another decoration that you feel much needed for this place, you reach out to turn off the lamp when there's a sudden rush of knock on your door.

You zip your mouth shut.

The news two weeks ago, about a woman who was curious about the baby crying at her door, was yanked out of her apartment as soon as she opened the door, being raped and killed in her own bed.

You are smart enough not to ask "Who is it", letting this unexpected guest learn that a young female is at home.

When the unexpected visitor doesn't hear your reply, they knock on the door more fiercely, nearly knocking your heart out of your throat.

You remember the tutorial online: Approach the door with caution, and check the surveillance camera. If there's no one in sight, call the cops. If there's anything out of the ordinary, like a baby or a kitten by the door, call the cops.

In summary, call the cops.

Your fingers hover above your phone, having the police number on speed dial, when you turn on the surveillance camera monitor by the door.

A very bruised, cut, and tired Lloyd, having a gun in his hand, banging on your door as he winces in pain.

"Goodness gracious-" Your gasp gets stuck in your throat. Opening the door in an instant, there's nothing else in your mind than keeping him alive. Your goosebumps on high alert as Lloyd's eyes scan over you. You pull him in, checking that the hallway is secure, before closing the heavy door as quietly as possible.

You turn to him, "Mr. Han-" Your words stop mid-sentence as you feel the need to fight the bile down your throat.

Yes. Mr. Hansen is very much covered in the one thing you hate most in the world.

Blood.

Blood splattered on his chest, his ridiculous choice of the blue-white striped polo shirt and cuts littered over his face and bare arms. His pants are dripping. Some crimson-colored liquid will stick permanently onto your floor and your beloved carpet.

Redness, some stained into near-brown, all over his figure.

You hold your breath, not letting the iron taste linger to make matters worse.

Lloyd walks, more like limps to each of your rooms - now that you can breathe a little while the blood smell is gone temporarily, and convince yourself that it's just ketchup on your boss (though you doubt that trick works) - and inspects each of them with his finger on the gun's trigger.

Taking in the whole situation, three things pop into your mind.

Lloyd is in desperate need of medical attention.

You are most likely to faint as soon as he returns, seeing this amount of blood.

Lloyd wouldn't knock on your door if this isn't desperate for him as well.

As Lloyd approaches, you are wrecking every brain cell to work a way out of this.

" 'S anyone here?" He asks, pulling the safe of his gun back on, before plopping down on your couch and groaning because he most definitely pulls one or two, if not a few of his wounds.

However, one of THE most brilliant ideas comes to you when you are holding your breath.

You shake your head, raising one finger to tell him you need a moment - or you hope that your running off conveys the message, and dash towards your bathroom.

Lloyd sags down on the couch, not even bothering to get up or turn his head to watch whether you've pulled out a gun pointing at him. You probably wouldn't do so, since you chose to pull him in, instead of letting him bleed out by your door.

When you appear in front of him again, his body briefly stuns a moment, before emerging in a burst of full-blown laughter. He laughs so hard that his laughter turns into coughs, which leads to him pressing his hand over his chest in case he tears his wounds further.

You place your hands on your hips. Compared to him, you are least amused by your idea.

You smoothed your hair back and put on your scuba diving goggles from a paid leave last year. Lloyd personally oversaw your two-week vacation, paying from your hotel suite to your travel expenses, and even ordering you full scuba diving equipment for your one-hour scuba lesson.

Of course, you weren't actually interested in becoming an expert, but the scuba equipment was too nice to be thrown away.

"Not funny." You breathe through your mouth. Even though the orange plastic - or glass, you don't quite know which - changes how the bloody Lloyd looks in your eyes, it still doesn't completely change the idea that Lloyd is, in fact, covered in blood, as much as you don't want to think about it. And it definitely doesn't block the smell of blood, which probes the nerves at the back of your nose whenever you breathe through your mouth.

Lloyd scans your "outfit", his laughter slowly dials down, eventually turns into a lazy smile ghosting his lips, "You're right. It's not."

It's over 10:30 pm, and you usually would have been sleeping, or lying on your bed, at least. But no, you are stuck in the living room with your boss who's about to die any minute, and you are only able to stand in front of him, alive and thinking, with a fucking scuba mask on.

So, fuck this.

You roll your eyes at your cold-blooded boss. "Should I call your doctor? Or send you to the hospital?"

The smirk disappears.

Although he didn't say "no" to the hospital, by now you've realized the hospital choice was crossed off the board, as he chose you instead of ringing the police - which will no doubt lead to an investigation since Lloyd is the most notorious mob in Los Angles.

You search for the first aid bag that you stocked away when you moved in. It has rarely been used.

"Doc's dead." He murmurs, but loud enough for you to understand. He spoke with a sadness that only appears when he has lost one of his people. "I took Jared to his clinic."

You know Jared, he is one of the muscles working for Lloyd. He helped take care of one of Lloyd's rivals, Brewer.

"The deal with the Russian mobs tonight went wrong, but we got out in one piece." Lloyd explains curtly, "I got him to Doc's place to get stitched up. But we were attacked... Doc died, so did Jared."

So... two of his people.

Medical alcohol and Q-tips were picked from the bag, then a roll of gauze. You place those on the coffee table.

"I think you need something bigger than a Q-tip." He chuckles, unbuckling his belt, removing his pants. You open your mouth wanting to argue it's probably best that he doesn't move right now, but you silence yourself when you see a flesh wound -

Blood trickles down his thigh, leaving a scorched round hole on his leg. You turn your head to the other side as soon you feel the need to hurl. Even with your goggles on, deep down, you know that it's blood, not ketchup, nor some red paint oozing from his body.

“Don’t puke on my shoes. Crocodiles died for it.” A strangled grunt comes out of his mouth when he finished speaking, having your heart tug in the slightest of agony.

The belt he took off just now is turned into an instant tourniquet on his thigh. The blood drips slower than it did, but it keeps ruining your carpet.

“Yeah, I bet the crocodile spirits hate you right now.” You mutter under your breath, snatching a face mask from the first-aid kit, taking a small inhale after you put it over your face.

Much, much better now.

Lloyd snorts out a short laugh, “You look like one of those bird-man in the Middle Ages when they are battling the plague.”

“Yeah well,” You place your hand on your hips, feeling somewhat braver to deal with this bloody mess all over your living room, “You’re about to bleed out on my couch, so let’s start with you telling me what else I can help with.”

Lloyd spares a glance at you when he’s busy rolling the gauze and pressing it onto his gunshot wound, his expression uninterpretable. Though you would guess that he is mildly impressed.

“Got any liquor? Something strong?” He raises his brows almost challengingly, “I don’t see any painkillers here, so … Bourbon? Whiskey? Scotch? Anything?”

You do have a bottle of whiskey that your cousin gave to you when you moved in. He’d come to visit and lend a helping hand from time to time. You take two glasses from the cupboard and half a bottle of whiskey.

You could use some liquid courage with a murder scene and your psycho boss in the middle of this lovely condo.

With the aid of whiskey and your patching and cleaning of the rest of the wounds, Lloyd is able to sleep through the night soundly without worrying about being a rigid corpse in the morning.

Yawning, and accidentally stretching his patched-up wounds, he allows a string of curses to flow out of his lips. Judging by the sunlight peeking through your curtains, he’d say it’s 9 or 10 in the morning. Last night, he was tired when the adrenaline gradually faded away, and he did not have the chance to take a close look at your – used to be his – place.

You did not put this place through any major changes, just some minor traces, reminding him that he is, in a sense, invading this cozy little apartment with his banged-up body.

With a decent set of fresh suit, shirt, and tie on the chair beside the bed.

Faint murmurs come from the other side of the door, Lloyd tenses up immediately, pulling his gun under the pillow, where he stocked last night, and turns the doorknob slowly.

“… shut up.” He hears you smack someone’s arm jokingly.

Your voice blends in with the voice in his memory of last night, when he winced in pain as you tried to take out glass shards from his forehead with a pair of tweezers, when he swung another gulp of whiskey from the bottle.

“Fucking hell, woman, I swear you’re trying to scoop my brains out rather than finding the glass pieces.” He grumbled.

“You’re lucky I didn’t kick you out, Mr. Hansen. Now I’m kindly asking you to shut up so I can take care of your wounds before it could get any worse.” You said impatiently, having struggled between the discomfort in your stomach and your determination to get him patched up, but adjusted your attitude soon after, keeping your mouth shut and pushing his upper body so he would lean on the couch and be still, while you turned on the flashlight to search the little glass piece on his forehead.

The warm and shallow breath fell on the ridge of his nose. It was broken, sure, tingling and itching, but it also meant that you were close, close enough to kiss-

“Cuz, are you sure that-”

The male voice is cut off when Lloyd in a black suit appears in front of you and a young man. One of his hands behind his back, you know far too well he’s holding the gun and will shoot your cousin’s brain out if you don’t explain quickly.

“Morning Mr. Hansen. This is my cousin, Connor Ashborne, studying at UCLA Med School.” You smile politely towards your boss, “I called for him to check up on you, since you refused to go to any doctor with a gunshot wound. He’s here to provide professional medical assistance.”

“Mr. Hansen,” the young man extends his hand for Lloyd to shake, “I’ve heard of a lot of things about you.”

“Lots of bad things, I hope.” Lloyd throws in a comment half-sarcastically, plopping himself down on the couch, ignoring your cousin’s extending hand, “Shit.” When he stretches his wounds again, the gauze must have clotted with his flesh for this level of pain.

“Cuz?” Conner turns his choice to your hand, “It’s your call. I can’t force your boss to do anything.”

“Yeah, me neither.” You mutter, “He’s more stubborn than a bull with eyes on the red flag.”

“Careful there, sunshine.” Lloyd gulps down some whiskey, numbing the pain in his thigh, “I can hear ya’ loud and clear.”

You silently shrugged towards your cousin, letting him know that you could not be of help any more than he did. “You should probably head to your classes.” You speak softly towards Connor, “Say hi to your sister for me, will you?”

“Sure thing, cuz. Remember those antibiotics and pain meds for the... patient in the kit.” He pulls you into a hug, “No need to thank me, I know, I'm one of a kind.”

Yeah, he's a one-of-a-kind dick when he wants to be. You can't help but smile knowing that his ego bloated after coming to your aid.

“I’ll see you around Christmas, yeah?”He asks.

“Around Christmas.” You confirm, patting his back.

Connor shoots you a wink and a “Bye, cuz”, grabbing the bicycle helmet on the kitchen counter and rushing out of your apartment like a gust of wind.

"A-hem." Lloyd clears his throat.

You let out a long exhale, realizing the big problem-o is still sitting on the couch like he owns this place – he indeed still does, as you have helped combing through his real estate. He owns the whole residential community – more specifically, has a lot of shares in the company which runs this residence, at the very least. Putting your best, and most professional courtesy on, you ask Lloyd, “I’ve called Denny earlier this morning. He’s now driving around the block. Denny has driven to your place and picked up the usual breakfast from your cook. Should I call him and tell him to come up? Or you’d like to head to the office right now?”

“Tell him to come up. I’ve been shot. It seems fair to skip work this morning.” Lloyd has the usual smug smile on his face. Stepping into his crocodile shoes onto the floor, spreading his arms over the couch, he looks down at the ground before narrowing his eyes and raising a sharp question: “You’ve had the carpet thrown out?”

Of course, you’ve had the carpet thrown out. Or you would throw up five times per hour.

You thought so when carrying the blood-soaked carpet downstairs, after making sure Lloyd was asleep around midnight. As his secretary, it is your job to make sure he doesn’t have to worry about anything besides his business.

You carried the carpet downstairs, avoiding cameras as carefully as possible, with your ridiculous scuba goggles and face mask on, and dumped the carpet, into another residence trash can two blocks further. With his blood and his scent on it, it is easy to lure those henchmen away if they bring hounds to search for Lloyd.

Lloyd does not go down without a fight, that you were certain. You were also certain of the fact that the transaction gone wrong would make relative parties involved less than happy, hence the ambush at Doc’s place. If they struck once, it seemed possible that they would strike again, knowing that Lloyd was hurt.

Also packing hydrogen peroxide, a powerful bleach, and a pack of Q-tips with you, you carefully erased the traces of Lloyd’s blood from the street to your residence building, and inside the elevator.

“Miss Y/L/N!” The security guard exclaimed on seeing you back inside the building. He was smart enough not to comment on you pulling your scuba goggles and face mask off, but smiled warmly, “A rough night?”

You smile back, “Hi Henry. I hate to pull ranks on you, Henry, I really do. But in less than ten minutes you are going to get a call from your boss, who has gotten a call from his boss, asking you to do exactly what I tell you to, which is to make a copy of the surveillance footage of the security cameras, and delete the original copy stored in the computers stored somewhere in this building. You are also going to tell me whether anyone has dropped by when your shift ends this morning, who looks suspicious, asking questions even though they don’t live here.”

The smile froze on Henry’s face, “Miss Y/L/N, it’s against the company orders…”

Just then, the phone on Henry’s desk rang, which Henry took the minute it made a sound.

The smile turned to a serious frown.

“…Yes. Yes, Sir. I’ll see to it.” He hung up the phone after a polite “Good night”, straightening his security guard uniform, and moved around the desk, “This way, Ma’am.”

After burying your head in the toilet bowl and throwing up almost half an hour ago, you had used your cell phone and called Lloyd's business partner up ahead, told him that Lloyd had issued a command to erase surveillance camera footage of a specific building and asked to keep a copy.

His business partner, hauled up from his bed because of this phone call in the middle of the night, knew better than to refuse.

… and that was why the Russian mob drove through the block later that morning at 1 a.m. and did not find a trace of Lloyd taking shelter in your condo after circling the area for quite some time.

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[seat-safety-switch]

Perhaps you have heard of Magneti Marelli. You probably don't really know what it is they do, other than that their logo shows up at races and sporting events. I'll fill you in: they make Italian car parts. Yeah, it's probably their fault that your Alfa Romeo doesn't start, but they're getting better at it.

For instance, the parts are now built in Mexico, so at least the folks making them these days know how to turn a screw all the way. The easy failures are all ground off by the glorious, ever-present drive towards the Assurance of Quality. An army of accountants, design engineers, and analysts work tirelessly to make sure they never break the same way twice. What's left? The really crazy problems.

In the early post-war period, NASA had this same kind of problem. They'd occasionally send up a rocket, and then it would come right back down instead of punching the universe directly in the eye. The cause? Obvious, stupid faults. You've done it, I've done it. Leave a cord unplugged. Forgot to fasten that clamp. What's a gasket? Slowly, they started to work all these problems out.

Now, the only problems NASA hits are occasionally that they send a probe up that mysteriously disappears from the ether. Just gone. They'd send another identical one, but the last time they did that, there was a deep voice that said "no more, please," and everyone decided it would be best not to stick their fingers in that particular hole until they were good and ready. Modern Italian car electronics are much the same way. Just a few big, creepy problems that nobody sane wants to deal with.

So: Hats off to Magneti Marelli, the enormous, soulless equipment manufacturer that has – at the same time – somehow also trapped the spirit of an 18th century sorceress directly inside the body control module of my Fiat. She sure doesn't like it when I roll down my windows, unless I roll down more than one of them at a time on every second Tuesday. Yes, I could fix the problem, but that's just asking for worse trouble.

[soleminisanction]

Putting together that list for the death of Superman introduced me to something I'd never heard of before, and now I need to do a write-up about it because it's just so 90s it makes me smile.

Picture this: it's 1993. Over in Japan, Sailor Moon has spent a little over a year rocketing up the charts as a full blown cultural phenomenon that won't slow down any time soon, and western companies want in. Only one company's going to score the license, however, and their first attempt at a localized adaptation (not a dub) was still a year away.

So what's everyone else to do? Make their own pretty fighting princess cartoons to merchandise, of course. And Mattel's first plan was to rope in DC Comics, since they already had the perfect superhero princess on hand.

Not Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld -- who, honestly, would've been an amazing fit for this in retrospect -- no no. Their plan: turn Wonder Woman into Sailor Moon.

Thus: Wonder Woman and the Star Riders.

I love how you can tell those designs were made for dolls because, just like the original She-Ra, they're about 50% hair.

Two of the other characters in this line-up are also adaptations of DC superheroines: Ice (in white/pink) and Dolphin (in blue) respectively. The other two characters, Solara (in yellow) and Star Lily (the token Black) were created for the series, though apparently Star Lily would go on to inspire a kid from the WW Rebirth comics named Star Blossom, so that's cute.

There was supposed to be a line of toys and a cartoon for this franchise, but the only thing that was ever completed was this one little 14-page comic released through a cross-promotion with Kellogg's Cinnamon Mini Buns cereal.

NGL, I find the silly little thing deeply amusing because it's just. So 90s, and so obviously written to sell toys. Like how it's set mostly in this "magical palace" mostly made up of big open rooms with like, one piece of furniture each (so you can more easily move to dolls around). Or how despite being called "the Star Riders" there's exactly two differently-colored pegasus-unicorns, one pink for Wonder Woman and one white for Dolphin, because they're presumably the most expensive dolls and parents will only be willing to spend so much money.

The villain, Purrisa, feels like they came at her from the angle of Magical Girl Catwoman. She gets to ride on a flying cowardly panther and wants to steal the heroines' magical macguffin gems because that's what the plot tended to be in these early 90s Sailor Moon rip-offs (including Sabon Moon, come to think of it).

It's interesting to see this rough approximation of early 90s girly comic art try to replicate the signature sparkles & laser beams style fighting of a magic girl battle show though.

And of course they give Diana a magic wand with a star on it. At least, I think that's what that is? The bottom kinda looks like an umbrella. Maybe she's supposed to be throwing something.

She still has the lasso. I mostly want to share this page because it's the best shots we get of Sailor Diana with the massive cape and even more massive hair. Not to mention the pink bracelets and Star Sapphire belt.

NGL, I kinda wish they would've made that doll.

So yeah, that's Wonder Woman and the Star Riders: goofy, fluffy, never got off the ground, with its toy designs mostly repurposed into something called Tenko and the Guardians of Magic. But still I think a very entertaining little time capsule.

[argumate]

dear mediocre bird of prey, would you share resources to learn about nasa’s functioning and fucking up? cursory google search didn’t turn up all that much

although the real tragedy isn't that they lost two shuttles it's that they built them in the first place; Maciej Cegłowski wrote the best summary of the shuttle program back in 2005:

There is no satisfactory answer for why all this commotion must take place in orbit. To the uneducated mind, it would seem we could accomplish our current manned space flight objectives more easily by not launching any astronauts into space at all - leaving the Shuttle and ISS on the ground would result in massive savings without the slighest impact on basic science, while also increasing mission safety by many orders of magnitude. It might even bring mission costs within the original 1970's estimates, and allow us to continue the Shuttle program well into the middle of the century.

and he just posted a summary of where he thinks the Artemis program is going in 2024:

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder what’s going on here. If we can put a man on the moon, then why can't we just go do it again? The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960’s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. It took NASA eight years to go from nothing to a moon landing at the dawn of the Space Age. But today, twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever.

Articles about Artemis often give the program’s tangled backstory. But I want to talk about Artemis as a technical design, because there’s just so much to drink in. While NASA is no stranger to complex mission architectures, Artemis goes beyond complex to the just plain incoherent. None of the puzzle pieces seem to come from the same box. Half the program requires breakthrough technologies that make the other half unnecessary. The rocket and spacecraft NASA spent two decades building can’t even reach the moon. And for reasons no one understands, there’s a new space station in the mix.

In the past, whatever oddball project NASA came up with, we at least knew they could build the hardware. But Artemis calls the agency’s competence as an engineering organization into question. For the first time since the early 1960's, it's unclear whether the US space agency is even capable of putting astronauts on the moon.