#even Top has Boeing

[respectthepetty]

Does it make you sad knowing that Sand had no friends as a child, so when he noticed Ray needed a friend, he really tried to be that for him just for Ray to treat him like an object?

Thank God for good friends.

[savagebisand]

THE WAY MOND POPPED UP IN THAT ELEVATOR AND I JUST KNEW IN MY BONES AND CURSED SOUL THIS NERDY TWUNK BITCH IS BOEING AND MEW GOT IN AND I WENT "FUCKING MOND?!?" AND TOP WAS. HE WAS FUCKING MOND.

[forcebookish]

one of the things that has me nonstop thinking about topmew is that they're actually a very unique type of couple in fiction but not in real life. in most fiction, people are always falling in love by accident. they meet, circumstances put them together, they're caught by surprise when they fall in love. but though both top and mew had never been in love before and didn't totally know what to expect, it wasn't a complete shock. they met through a mutual friend, they found each other attractive and interesting, so they decided to date. they fell in love because they went on dates and did romantic things together on purpose. i think neither of them expected to fall so hard, but still, the point of dating is to see if you're compatible and fall in love and maybe build a life together. and that's what they did.

i don't think that makes them boring, i think that makes them relatable! i think that makes them stand out from other fictional couples! you know, people claimed they wanted more realistic BLs, but for some reason when topmew came along, a ship based on a real life gay couple, they didn't like them?

[beyoncesfiancee]

what's on your secret internal moodboard for your wake/g1d/pyrrha trifecta, esp with the first two (since pyrrha gets a lot of love as it is)? what are the biggest wellsprings you're drawing from/aiming for with everyone's favorite scourgin' mary and inverted brutus?

i could smack a big kissy on your face for such an apropos question !

wake

is everything to me. obviously. what matters to me with her is contextualizing her canonical violence and wrath (like achilles' wrath... HELLO... she's a mortal woman whose wrath dares to reach the heights of the gods and which ultimately destroys her...) in light of her role as the leader of a revolution. she's literally not purposelessly angry or purposelessly violent. I already blew up someone else's inbox about this today lol but imo the books portray BOE as a whole in kind of a clueless way from the liberal exterior viewpoint, that doesn't really get into what a revolutionary movement would themselves value and hold as their norms & ethics. and in regard to that, how and why they use violence, and how and why violence is so much a part of wake's language.

I'm reading the zapatista reader atm and have been for the last few months, not that i really see wake as a subcomandante marcos figure because she's not as much of a speaker/demagogue, more so that much like the indigenous resistance in chiapas the sheer cultural, linguistic, and political polyphony of any BOE organization must mean that wake is a brilliant, compelling figure that people want to follow. she's not a violent brute (one way she's often depicted in fandom too...) she's a POLITICAL LEADER who has united MULTIPLE WINGS THAT OPERATE COMPLETELY SEPARATELY to accomplish HUGE OPERATIONS THAT SEVERELY STRUCK AT THE ROOTS OF THE DEEPLY ENTRENCHED EMPIRE. like... she's 100% a compelling speaker and leader and someone you trust and want to follow into suicide missions, because you know she'll bring you success. and she had and did! you can't be stupid with how you use violence and achieve that level of success!

and the one thing you need to add to wake to make canon click with her humanity is literally just that—her internal truth and her humanity. the reason why she's doing what she's doing. because the cruelty of the empire broke her heart and she has enough life and fire overflowing in her to want to keep that from happening to anyone else. the rest all falls into place once you start writing her like that

I also see her as a figure of classical greek tragedy—she's the ultimate example of being destroyed by hubris (trusting a lyctor!!), and compared to the other two points of the triangle she's the most fragile and mortal, yet also the most explosive and larger-than-life. her life is a brief yet enormous blaze compared to g1deon's eternal stonelike misery and pyrrha's lone, flickering star. and because she pursued life so hungrily and overreached in striving with the gods for greatness (there we go with achilles again), she was always doomed to death. the domain of her lifelong hated enemy. wow someone should write some dactylic hexameter greek epic poem-style about her confrontation with her own mortality in the river and how her religious beliefs are thereby challenged and her rage is fanned enough to turn her into a revenant ^_^ ahem ahem

also i think because her main squeeze has a cock people are always making them fuck PIV style and i think that's boring tbh. i mean yes it's fun and sexy and we all love a good dicking down (well many of us) but i like having her and pyrrha fuck queer style because i think it's more reflective of her character to break boundaries, fuck with traditions, be a cunt who devours and circludes, violate the norms of cav-necro penetrative erotics, and aggressively top in pursuit of her own pleasure (in addition to which... well see the last paragraph of my pyrrha answer)

i also didn't even get into the virgin mary thing but in my BOE griddlehark fic i have kind of a marian ancestor worship cult around wake (props to @katakaluptastrophy for providing the thinking behind BOE's animist ancestor worship religion) and in my dactylic hexameter thing i have a big list of epithets by clarissa pinkola estés for the virgin mary/the madonna/the wild mother: obsidian blade... the undoer of knots... she who carries the soul across fenced frontiers... the shirt of arrows... the black madonna...

also listen to this impeccable wake playlist which I'm pretty sure is by @dve if i'm am not mistaken

g1deon

is ofc the dark horse in both the books and the resultant fandom. i've already written at length about what a disservice i feel both the books and fandom have done his character (try clicking 10 random wake/pyrrha fics and NOT finding a scornful comparison of how shitty a lover g1d is or what a douche he is generally as a tactic to differentiate him from pyrrha).

so for me what's important to him, and what defines his character, is the sacrifices he makes for john both pre- and post-rez. he's hector, he's the archangel michael, he's the archetype of warrior manhood !but! in an utterly self-abnegating way. this is one facet of the way john's necromancy takes everything positive (in the +-charged sense, not in the yay happy sense) and turns it inward, perverted, and starved.

unlike a man raised in a patriarchal warrior culture, g1deon has no pride or identity in his kills and the sacrifices he makes to accomplish them, and he has no brotherhood. the two people he truly loved were both women, and he killed them both for the sake of john's goals. and he used to have a brother, even, he and john used to be brothers, but john removed himself from that role w/ g1deon for the pursuit of power.

so any way i choose to depict g1deon will be as 1) someone with dignity and selfhood in a way that the fandom only rarely seems to think he deserves, and 2) someone with a heart who has loved and lost in the name of devotion. not that he's a soft man or that he hasn't done atrocious things in john's name. but it's just to counterbalance his book&fandom portrayal in a way i feel is more fair and interiorizing.

anyway stream swim good that's basically everything I wanted to say about him... i didn't write as much about him in this answer but we really don't get much of him in the books, SMH. I don't like to go too off-piste from canon but I want to take what's there and honor the humanity hidden within it. (I have to guess that we'll have more g1deon in alecto, right? it just wouldn't be fair otherwise, right? ... RIGHT?? T_T)

pyrrha

and you didn't say especially pyrrha but i think that my secret internal moodboard for pyrrha is important as well!!! in my 5 planned pyrrwakeon fics (3 currently pubbed), none are from pyrrha's POV, and that has a twofold purpose. 1) there are already a ton of fics from her POV, as you say, as well as a whole canon novel focused on her, and i want to explore the two under-served points of the love triangle, and 2) i actually really like her as an enigma.

e.g., something people neglect with her a bit i think is her suicidality. how else can you characterize someone who falls in love with landmines? the woman swallowed bleach for god's sake. jury's still out on whether she killed herself or g1deon killed her for their ascension (i have it as her killing herself in my g1dfic but i've been thinking and now i'm not so sure i want to go for that) but if there's one thing we know about pyrrha it's that she fucking loves doing shit that's very dangerous and a horrible idea, partially to feel alive, partially to feel dead and thereby free.

so therefore my theory on her caring for nona, and less so cam & pal, is an uncharacteristic break toward life and hope in the long long slide through samsara as a means of escaping soul death that has been her 9000-year undead existence thus far. but i find the depiction of this facet of her character to be far more compelling from the outside, such as, from wake's POV, or g1deon's.

ALSO SHE WOULD NOT WANT TO BE A MOM OR DAD AND DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BEING A PARENT SORREEEEEEEEE (her "why did you bring along the baby" is about her pity for a helpless creature suffering yet more needless death, not that it's specifically hers and wake's, and her care for gideon nav & nona are on a soft human level despite herself because no one else will and not demonstrative of a secret desire for parenthood STOP MAKING WOMEN CHARACTERS WANT TO BE PARENTS *panting & swallowing bile*)

anywayyyy very very very soon forthcoming to explore this final third of the triangle is my ultimate wake/pyrrha lying liars genderfic in which she, through the proxy of getting fucked by wake, wrestles with her grief over losing both her own body and losing g1deon as her lover/partner/friend. and you can bet wake just looooves being used as a proxy for someone else to work through their issues ^_^

...

in conclusion, wake/pyrrha/g1deon is a land of contrasts. let wake have political values, let g1deon be a fucking human being, and stop making pyrrha always top. thank u.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrcgov/15993154185/

meanwell-packaging.co.uk https://www.flickr.com/photos/195311218@N08/52159853896

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[commander--wake]

commander--wake/beyonces_fiancee's top ten TLT holiday exchange 2024 rec list!

these are my top 10 best fics and art from the locked tomb holiday exchange 2024 season! I liked & loved a lot more than 10 and haven't read the whole collection yet, but these were the top 10 that leapt out to me thus far as most exciting, unusual or unexpected, made me think or expanded my brainpan, or simply so masterfully done I couldn't resist!

im gonna edit this post once author reveals happen so everyone can say yayayayay fanfic friends ^_^

fragile eyes by Marenke (fic)

my amazing gift has to top the list!!!!!!!! this is a disturbing john/harrow lolita-inspired au that feels like an eerie slow burn despite only being 1200 words. I love how the author transfers john's canonical illegitimate godhood into an illegitimate pseudo-priesthood, grooming harrow into his lone congregant and... well... read the fic ok. so thrilled with this rich interpretation of my simple prompt :)

polaroid from the sexy parties by crandairy @crandairy (art)

amazing mercy & cassy art so shaped!!!! I love the tomboyish/geeky cassy with sixthish glasses and the lusciously maned mercy! don't forget to click to the second chapter for even more goodies!

very demure, very mindful by anonymous [forever anonymous sadly!] (fic)

pyrrha/nona problematic Cohort-officer-and-secretary roleplay. pyrrha is a bad bad man and nona, well, whatever nona wants, nona gets. sexayyyyyy

drama! in the erebos rpf fandom by forjodssake (fic)

ao3 works page au of john/sarpedon and then some, tags and comments from the tower princes & others included. need i say more just click it. big LOLs found here

practice makes perfect by Mr_Fizzles (fic)

john/mercymorn/augustine dios apate major timeloop. quite dark and tragic, to my delight! I'm not much of a one for timeloops and other unusual aus like that but I'm so glad I gave it a chance, mercy & augustine's strategies and reactions kind of broke my heart and johnnnnn rotten boy

this secondhand living, it just won't do by YeeHawmura (@procrastinationaccount) (fic)

of course the ianthe/coronabeth flesh magic pwp is also a biting & intelligent character study of both sisters and their fucked-up relationship. tridentariicest shippers queens of the fandom tbh

on a distant riverbed by UserIsMe (@irenesusername) (art)

u guys already know i'm a sucker for anything g1deon, especially one that includes pyrrha/respects his relationship with her & with death. this one probably has the best ratio of minutes required to enjoy:amount of times stabbed in the heart for me. bonus cute cowboy in chapter 2

the bomb and the beast by Sarsaparilla (@sarsaparillaswords) (fic)

griddlehark beauty & the beast/gideon raised by BOE au. gideon voice on point, BOE names for days which is totally my kryptonite, and the prose is just that little bit loose and uncontrolled where you know you're in for a wild, juicy, funny ride. everyone go comment so the author does a chapter 2!!!

clinically insane & the next virgin mary by rnanqo (@rnanqo) (fic)

ianthe/john character study of my favorite scrungly rat. my comment: "something about Ianthe always being the second-favorite child, in her mortal life with Corona and then in her immortal saint life with Harrow and then in her immortal saint life redux with Kiriona, just cracks me the fuck up. Ianthe you'll never get Daddy's candy!!!!"

settle for a ghost by Raxheim (@theriverbeyond) (fic)

if you got me not only reading but RECCING a pyrrha parenting gideon nav fic you know you're onto something. the translation to modern au is very intelligently done, the subtle backstory sprinkle controlled and clever and scary, pyrrha/g1deon numnums for me, and the growing pyrrha & babygid relationship just kills. haven't commented on this one yet bc i need to chew the beef jerky some more :)

(honorable mention: haven't read yet but am HYPED AF) [edit: HAVE READ AND IT'S FUCKING INCREDIBLE]

veins running fire by duplicitoussluts (fic)

john/harrow victorian arranged marriage omegaverse with a jane eyre theme. I KNOW RIGHT???? 22k is so scary long 2 me but I fear I must read because any author whose unhinged beautiful mind could come up with such a wonderful idea must surely be a phenomenal writer, aside from which people have already talked up the fic exceedingly! so, looking fwd to it!!!

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Only Friends: BL's Parliamentary Tragedy

Okay, but Jojo's take-down on twitter of the person criticizing Thai BLs' gay representation because of their inclusion of sexuality + the fact that it's Only Friends one year anniversary is getting to me! Because, for Jojo and his team, the issue of sexuality in BL is at the very Only Friends!!! That's what the antagonism between Mew and Boston is all about!!!

Mew at the start is the very SYMBOL of BL history and tropes that the twitter commenter is admiring. He's pure and chaste, and he has the glasses to prove it. He loves romance books because they're about love that's deeper than sex. He's in for the long game, and doesn't want to waste his virginity on anything less than lifelong perfection and the happiest ending.

Meanwhile, Boston is the paragon of queer media's history. Just pure 'no day but today' immediate sensual experience and satisfaction. To show off that he knows his queer history, he's got his film photography dark room to develop all his artistic nudes, a regular Robert Mapplethorpe. If that's not anti-establishment queer enough, anyone in a relationship inspires Boston's lustful antagonism because that would mean they think that life should be deeper than the surface, and that's a sin against Boston's aestheticism. Beauty for beauty's sake only; sex for sex's sake--nothing deeper nor longer-lasting. A love story is a worst-case scenario.

But then Top and Nick come along and mess up Boston and Mew's perfectly amiable division. We should've seen it coming. The very title of the show tells us this is a show about inclusion and exclusion, who's in and who's out--in coupling and in friend circles. There's that random crown in the title sequence; this is a show of parliamentary political jostling of parties to claim power. The little motif of Boeing and his plane trinket sprinkled across the entirety of the series before his introduction in the last two episodes, hints about the coup that finally comes to send someone out.

Boston's name should have given it away that he couldn't stay, but that name's also his saving grace, a sign that maybe that beautiful slut actually escaped the prison of Thai BL branded partnerships. Boston, after all, is the kind of marriage that lesbian women practiced prior to any licensed gay marriage. The Bostonians is also the name of the novel by Henry James, an author whose queerness is the type that historians find it hard to put a finger on, for which Boston marriages are named. And The Bostonians was adapted by the non-monogamous gay film-making couple Merchant & Ivory (the team that brought, among other acclaimed films, brought the queer story of Maurice to the screen, whose protagonist gets his happy-ending by running away).

Yes, Boston was slimy and slippery, but he had a need to escape definitions that Mew, who grew up inside his own BL bubble with his supportive lesbian moms, never had. Boston's dad was a politician who wanted improvement for his country, according to his campaign poster, and was someone the youth could be into, according to his son (and for all his faults, Boston was never much for lying). Although he didn't know about what happened regarding the gender of people deeper beneath Boston's sheets, this dad accepted his son for his promiscuity and passion for the arts, in other words, for who his son was. Still, the political aspect limited who Boston could document himself as in Thailand (and Boston's 1998 t-shirt when we first meet his father speaks to political connections about the complicated emergence of Thailand's democratic state and the first democratically elected prime minister to serve a full-term who similarly went into exile). So Boston focuses on the feelings and experiences of queerness he can garner because naming it isn't something that's promised or even preferable for him.

In someone with digital savvy like Nick, Boston discovers the potential for the appreciation of discretion, someone who can help him integrate his love for fleeting moments with more long-term connection. (You know, how the internet transformed photographs into tools for social connection rather than just for private albums or high art?) Yet even Nick's digital tastes, boundary-crossing as they might be, can't find comfort beyond monogamy. Boston can't find happiness for his boundless sexuality within the confines of the Thai BL's settings.

Mew, our sweet BL cinnamon bun, would've been Boston's complete opposite if he hadn't have been persuaded to have his visual and emotional impairment corrected by the realities of queerness Boston introduced him to (a fantastic subversion of the BL boy no longer needing their glasses). Instead, Mew has to contend with feelings for a real gay man who has a sexual past, lust, and fucked up habits from a life that hasn't been perfect. Even then, Top's still a pretty classic romantic alpha-male romcom interest. But Only Friends, having removed Mew's literal and figurative blinders, let's him process that as well as any real-life, self-righteous, purity-ring wearing princess would. Mew as Harley Quinn is just short of digging his keys into the side of his pretty little souped-up four wheel drive, and he is reveling in using his bff Ray's crush on him to get revenge. The fluffy BL castle on a cloud comes tumbling down when it encounters actual queerness.

But Only Friends lives in a BL world. The branded pairs must remain the branded pairs, and Boston, despite his conniving gaze, always seemed more confused by the politicking than everyone else at club YOLO, anyways. Every character and every actor has played their roles to their purpose, giving us three theories of love and their allowance within a BL. Topmew's tenuous romcom energy persists by force, Sandray's addictive and codependent romance with all its desperate struggles and tears will remain (though everyone's concerned its unhealthy), and Bostonnick's queer tendencies, with their carnal, discrete, and digital predilections, must be banished by the final scene. But they haunt the Only Friends hostel (or should we say hostile) even when they're not there. They're the people behind the lens and behind the screen that frame everything. They are the queer urges that both make possible and, as another man walks into the room--in that undeniably provocative form of Mix Sahaphap--threaten the gay happy ending.

When I say Only Friends is one of my favorite series, it's because I think this commentary of BL is the story it was telling from the beginning, and Jojo's twitter rant just affirmed that for me. I see Aof Noppharnach as the romantic optimist of Thai BL queer possibilities. He saw how they could be utilized to tell utopic queer stories. His friend and collaborator Jojo is not cynical but his works often serve to question and prod the genre about its extents and limits. Only Friends performs this prosecution through Shakespearean tragedy ala Julius Caesar, and the contentious reactions of fans stands as a testament to its interrogation about queer sexuality's acceptability within the BL realm.

------------------------

I promised I'd tag my fellow Boston apologist @waitmyturtles when I finally posted this. I have a draft of this started that's more academic and thorough, but this is the basic idea of it all.

[lovemyromance]

Honestly imma say something controversial again but try to keep it respectful:

There's a reason I don't like Elucien. Mainly 3:

1. I don't think SJM has written Elain as wanting Lucien in any shape or form in any of the books.

2. The introduction of Azriel as a more prominent love interest who actually has romantic scenes with Elain has swayed my allegiance

3. Lucien just doesn't have the same page presence or personality as he did in Book 1

And these are my opinions. If you disagree, then keep scrolling 🤷🏻‍♀️ but if you keep an open mind, I'll try to explain, and it's mainly due to #3.

If SJM gave Lucien the same personality and page presence as he had in Book 1, I might've actually shipped Elucien.

Because again - I have nothing against him. He was my favorite in Book 1, over Feyre, over Tamlin (until Rhys I'm sorry lol but I changed sides very quick when SJM hit us with the Howl's moving castle line)

If Lucien had continued his rogueish, clever, sarcastic personality with Elain - I would've honestly shipped it a lot more. If he'd kept the same energy he gave Feyre when he met Elain in the HOW, I would've been a lot more conflicted in this ship war.

If he had told Elain to clear her mind, she needs to go offer the suriel a chicken - I would've laughed my ass off.

If he'd told Elain "your hair looks clean", like he tried to get Tamlin to compliment Feyre, I would've lost it.

But he didn't. He was one of the many people who treated Elain as breakable, as crazy, as someone who needs help without asking what Elain wanted herself. He thought she was beautiful, sure, but the words he actually said to here were just... polite. Cordial.

I get he was trying to tread cautiously, especially in enemy territory. But - he wasn't necessarily polite to Feyre in ACOTAR. He wasn't polite to Tamlin. And that's what I liked about him.

Lucien just... doesn't feel like Lucien around Elain. He becomes stiff. Less fiery. Less sarcastic.

It's like he keeps that energy with everyone, but with Elain? He's just ... meh. Like I'm sorry I just don't see any of their interactions as positive unless you add some headcanon/theory to try to explain it.

On top of that - he is literally barely in ACOWAR, barely in ACOFAS, barely in ACOSF. He should be here with his mate or at least in her court, integrating himself into her life if he wants to show that he cares - I'm not saying harass her - but like... don't move all the way to the other end of the continent either lmao??

There's giving someone space ... and then there's giving someone SPAAAAAAAAACE.

He just wasn't there in the pivotal moments where Elain was featured. He didn't figure out Elain was a Seer. Didn't really help her while he was in the NC. Was dead last to go volunteer to find Vassa. Wasn't there to rescue Elain from hybern. Wasn't there when she slayed the KOH. Moved in with Vassa in Elain's ex-fiancés manor after the war...??

Like yes he gets her the obligatory solstice present and doesn't harass her - but like?? That's not giving me much to root for.

He just seems bitter now. Like his alliances are more with Vassa & Jurian than they are with the NC. It's like SJM has shown us there's the IC in Velaris, and then there's the BOE. They're separated.

He's just not the same as Book 1 Lucien.

And again, I'm trying to be respectful and admit there's no reason he can't change - but I just don't like the version of the character he's become. The book 1 Lucien would've done anything to make Elain even look at him - and this one just... leaves?

Idk 🤷🏻‍♀️

[phalangemedes]

I kept this in my drafts cause I was gunna expand on it, but I dunno if I need to. Either way, I thought it was interesting that the refugee trio from Canaan are all just different aspects of Grief represented through the kaleidoscope of their personhood. Because mourning is a spectrum, no more or less vivid for the death being metaphorical or literal, and there’s been some weird hot takes that more or less emotive grieving is ‘strange’ or whatever, so, onward!

Judith is unable to feel her own emotions (or at least with any depth) because she's made herself an emotional void, due to training (Cohort AND Second expectations), repression and losing Marta. She was already constipated and that tipped her over to cutting her own throat so she’d emotionally starve.

The last emotive thing she had was oh captain my captain levels of obsession for the woman that rejected her romantically, DUTY, and with equal verve the self loathing for wanting that.

(Also she was being medically maltreated by BoE and then used as a Duracell so y'know, you can not like the woman for being an unsympathetic hypocrite but also, rough ol' time for Jodypops)

Corona has used the flamboyance of her emotions as a manipulation tactic since she was like.. 5 and oops it suddenly stopped working! The tits, the smiles and the twinkly eyes have no effect in camo land, if anything, they are tired of her shit and only “warm up” to her when she starts submitting to them in ways they understand (Re: BoE are a hierarchy and she is Not the top rung). She's also grieving Ianthe not wanting her (worse, choosing BABS) and failing to throw her Pretty Girl weight around as much as she used to, whilst cosplaying a Cav to feel worth something (habitual, comforting).

On top of that, she’s bouncing from pillar to post in an attempt to be desired because her worth is locked up in other’s perception of her. (She fails so hard to connect with anyone she starts chatting up G2deon's corpse like.. It's SAD even if she's Tridentarii heinous (affectionate insult))

And Camilla is forcing herself not to feel because she doesn't have time for a breakdown. She's tick listing how to “make things right” through torture (shock bracelet) being used as a means of coercion for Judith (also torture) having what was left of Pal taken away from her (I mean this literally and figuratively, because his skull, then hand, are hope AND HIM) ((likewise the BETRAYAL from a necro and a cav about it)) and being denied doing GOOD (denial of treatment of Judith). I think honestly she reacts the most MUNDANELY, by just... powering through, keeping busy, not thinking about it because then it'll be real.

And she doesn't let herself break until Paul, because she’s still trying to fix everything until the very moment it’s un-fixable. (And in some ways Palamedes takes the burden of it for her, by giving her the choice, the "it's okay, now, you can feel". All that time, bottling the HURT because she has to be useful because if she's not useful what's left? It's the vice of grief as you excuse yourself from the young woman you're caring for, it's locking the bathroom door, sitting in the bath and your body betraying you with the mother and fucker of a panic attacks. It's getting punched in the solar plexus because you turned around to make a comment and not only is that person gone, but they aren’t coming back.

None of them are any more or less tragic, but they are all acceptable and staggeringly normal forms of grieving.

[determinedowl23]

ohhhhhmy god oh my god guyssjsjaidbwisjsis IT HAPPENED I SAW IT AND IT WAS AMAZING

Notes:

Act I

I NEED TO MARRY ALFIE BOE SOOOOO BAD BRUH YOU DONT EVEN GET IT

Alfie’s so short I forgot about that lmao he’s so baby

I do really really really love Michael but I can already tell that Javert is not exactly his thing. He’s too whimsical- too Marius. Super glad he gets to do something with Alfie tho <333

Jeremy (I think) rocked the bishop omgggggg

I WAS NOT EXPECTING KATIE HALL TO BE HERE CHAT- soprano Fantine is such a foreign concept to me but she was gorgeous 

THANK YOU BOEBALL VALVERT FOR BEING THERE FOR ME I LOVE MY BOYFRIEND AND HIS BOYFRIEND

THENARDIERS ARE SO FUNNY I’ve never seen funnier thenardiers. He called Cosette Baguette when Valjean took her away

Also at the beginning of the bargain when Alfie started singing Madame T went “oh he’s got a lovely voice tho”

COSETTE NEW PINK DRESS IS SO PRETTY!!!!! It matches Marius’ bow :))))

Ok both Eponine and Cosette were mixed bags for me- I liked them most of the time, but there were a couple times their voices felt a bit… nasally? They were both very pretty tho :)

James D Gish is beautiful. My dad says he’s the second coming of Ramin Karimloo and im inclined to agree

Gavroche is king shit as per usual

They had stars in stars omggg. ALSOOO at the end the lights make it look like he has wings. Probably unintentional but he’s soooooo fallen angelcore 

As much as Michael doesn’t fit Javert, his Stars really is amazing

WE GOT ENJOLTAIRE CRUMBS 👏👏👏 The entire pause between ABC Cafe and Red & Black they were just looking at each other forever

As much as I do love enjoltaire, im an even bigger fan of Gavroche and Grantaire’s dynamic. It was the main thing I noticed about R’s character (even with Kyle Adams playing him) and I’m so happy that it’s in other productions

No Javert barricade outfit in one day more :(

Three flags??? In this economy????

Act II

Okay I did genuinely forget about the barricade outfit but it did come back! It’s different from the Staged Concert, more greenish-black and I think he has his hair down- there’s at least some strands loose on the front

OKAYYYY IM REALLY SURE TGAT BEFORE R STARTED HIS SOLO IN DRINK WITH ME HE WENT AND HELD ENJ’S HAND FOR A BIT- and after he sang and Enj left Gavroche ran over and gave him a hug it was so sweet

Alfie Boe Bring Him Home is still my favoritest thing in the entire world. I owe him my life im so serious he was my top artist for a reason

Enjolras did the Aaron Tveit “until the earth is free” opt up it was amazing

They cut Gavroche’s individual death scene which was either for better or for worse because that’s the one that always gets me crying, so I just teared up at the end

When Javert let valjean and Marius go from the sewers he turned around as if he was gonna follow them, paused, screamed, and put his head and his hand

Dude michael ball does the best suicide scene he’s so unhinged and skdjaidhaisjsj

EMPTY CHAIRS BRO. At “phantom faces” the Amis all stood up in their places in their seats, with Enj, R, and Gavroche on the center balcony right by the conductor. Also at this point he begins to scream with anger at his survival. I’ve never thought about angry Empty Chairs, but it works so well and I need to see it more

Valjean in AHFoL Reprise made me so sad bro. Insert my post about him and Donna Sheridan but add that they’re so attached to their daughter (Amanda Seyfried) and kinda don’t want to let her go to get married

The audience clapped along to Beggars at the Feast. Don’t know if we were allowed to, but we did anyways

When Marius tells Cosette her father is a saint Valjean just shakes his head no oh my god 😭😭

HE DID THE NICK CARTELL NOSE BOOP WITH COSETTE

THE BISHOP COMES UP BEHIND VALJEAN WHEN HE DIES AND VALJEAN GIVES HIM THE BIGGEST HUG EVER OMFGGGGGG

During bows when Michael came up to bow with Alfie they had to switch sides so that Michael could be on the left and Alfie could be on the right. Order has been restored to the world

In summary: Amazing show god I love Les Mis!!!!! Alfie Boe is the only one who can save me <3333

[bird-inacage]

Only Friends: Sand's Reaction to Ray VS Boeing

I know some people will be annoyed that Sand wasn't more forceful in telling Boeing to leave him alone. In my opinion, this isn't really surprising. Sand's biggest strength and weakness is his kindness. He'll make concessions for people, even those who hurt him. Ray is a prime example. Why would his ex be any different?

Boeing's Dubious Intentions

It's glaringly obvious just how uncomfortable, stiff and exasperated Sand's body language is during their second exchange. This is someone he shared his ultimate dreams and passions with, which must have made the betrayal even more devastating. We still don't have the full context as to how this all went down, but I'm sure Sand hasn't forgotten that Boeing chose to leave him. Compared to their first re-encounter where Sand appears rattled and somewhat flustered, here he seems to display a more resolute lack of patience, possibly after reminding himself of Boeing's true colours.

This doesn't erase the fact that Sand had feelings for him once, cared about him once. Sand didn't choose to end the relationship, Boeing did. So there would have been unresolved feelings that Sand had to process alone in the aftermath. For Boeing to have the audacity to swan back in rightly warrants a less than lukewarm response.

Even so, Sand shows Boeing an incredible amount of grace when he certainly doesn't have to. He tries to calmly but firmly ward Boeing off. "State your business". "Just forget it. I don't think I'll go." "Just friendship. That I can give you." He makes it very clear that Boeing can find him at the bar but nowhere else. He's trying to establish a distinct boundary, which Boeing swiftly disregards.

Sand's Unease: Where Past & Present Collide

The way Sand is reacting says to me he desperately doesn't want Ray involved. He seems eager to keep him well away from Boeing. Sand could have chosen not to mention his ex's sudden reappearance, but decides to be upfront with Ray about it. I think Sand's turmoil is a sign of worry over what Boeing may do, rather than an indication of indecisiveness over his own feelings. The reason I say this is because Sand doesn't show any warmth, residual affection or happiness in seeing Boeing again. He looks mostly wary, unnerved even.

I can also see why Sand would try to refrain from openly displaying his feelings for Ray in Boeing's presence. If he exhibits just how much he cares about Ray, whose to say whether Boeing may pull another stunt like he did with Mew/Top and try to pursue Ray instead just to be messy. The way Sand looks at Boeing is laden with suspicion and uneasiness, particularly when Ray is around. This is really noticeable when Boeing first addresses Ray - Sand's whole demeanour gets much colder and standoffish.

We don't know precisely what Sand is afraid of - that Boeing may target any ill will at Ray? Or that Ray may be affected by his ex flaunting details about their history which could cause jealousy? Things are going really well between Ray and Sand right now but it's possible Boeing could try to stir up a misunderstanding or create conflict between them.

Ray's Protectiveness: "Deal with him or I'll do it."

Ray knows better than ever what Sand is like. He's all too aware of just how painfully kind and caring his boyfriend can be, often to his own detriment. Boeing is keen to exploit this very fact by trying to appear imploring towards Sand, "You never yell at me." Ray is also acutely familiar with how Sand struggles to say no to those he cares about.

Whilst Ray observes angrily, I like to think this comes from a place of being mad for Sand more than anything. If he's seen their entire interaction play out, he'll notice that Sand has not once initiated physical contact with Boeing. He doesn't shirk him off, but he certainly doesn't respond either. He keeps his arms firmly planted at his sides, and yet Boeing keeps trying his luck. Something about the way Boeing behaves with Sand feels like he treats him as a plaything - someone he used to have wrapped around his finger. Perhaps he thinks that the power he used to have over Sand still remains.

Sand's expressions also feel loaded with shame, as if he's repeatedly chiding himself for being foolish enough to love someone like Boeing, who so cruelly tossed him aside. That somehow he feels partly to blame. Maybe this is a Sand he doesn't want Ray to see. Yet here Ray is, on the side-lines, taking all this in.

From their very first interaction, Boeing is trying to undermine Ray. You can see Ray's growth as he doesn't confront or make a fuss, but chooses to respect Sand's wishes and instead stays quietly hidden to keep watch. He looks to Sand for confirmation he'll be okay on his own before leaving. Though he can detect something isn't right, he allows Sand the opportunity to handle this first.

As soon as he sees Boeing trying to cross a line, he steps in. He's not going to permit Boeing trying to drag Sand off somewhere alone, he'd rather keep the enemy directly under his nose.

What I'm hoping to see in Episode 12 is protective Ray to come out full force. I've said this before but the entire series has been Sand looking after Ray. Whereas this would be a great opportunity for Ray to look out for Sand, and to teach Boeing a lesson at the same time.

That eye contact in the last scene was so loaded. Ray's gaze is a silent threat- 'That's my man you're looking at, don't get used to it. If you're really stupid enough to try anything on my watch, I'll tear your neck out.' Don't ever underestimate Ray, he's small but feisty.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Hi!!!

Don't know if anyone has told you yet but I think I found one for you.

from this post. hope you don't mind.

We are EP 15 - Part 2 around the 4 min mark. This was the ss I could get with the whole shirt.

Hope you're having a good day. Rose💜

Rose! I love that you thought of me when you saw this, so thank you for letting me know. And also thanks to @befuddledcinnamonroll who also reblogged a post of mine about this shirt not long after you sent this ask. And @ranchthoughts messaged me as I was writing this 😂🥰

Let me go on a tangent...

The number of items on the Thai Communal Wardrobe are quickly coming up to 160. Yes, one hundred and sixty. Out of these 160, FORTY THREE were worn in Only Friends. So it's highly likely that any new clothes that get added to the list will also have been worn in Only Friends. For example, recent additions include:

Top's shirt worn by Jane in The Trainee

Boeing's t-shirt worn by (I think) Chin (correct me if I'm wrong) in OMG! Vampire

And Atom's t-shirt (and Day's in Last twilight) worn by Phum in We Are.

Amongst several others.

Due to how prolific the clothes in Only Friends are on the communal wardrobe, I have screenshots of approx 95 other shirts, t-shirts, and sweaters worn by various characters in Only Friends just in case they're going to appear somewhere else at some point.

In no measure of my imagination would I have thought that the "Friends don't let friends go" t-shirt would be worn again in another series. I thought it had been made especially for the show, like the end t-shirts with the slogan "Only Friends Stay". But now I have to be open to the possibility that this too might reappear. Who knows!

Anyway, thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about the communal wardrobe. I am mildly obsessed by it. I had thought the sharing of clothes between series was becoming less and less - it has felt like with the industry developing there have been more series with unique wardrobe designs (maybe with more money for new clothes rather than re-using old ones) - but even last week new clothes have popped up in different series barely days apart. For example:

Wandee Goodday ep 9 and eight days later The Trainee ep 2

and Wandee Goodday ep 10 and ONE DAY LATER Love Sea ep 5

It's never going to end, right? 😂

[sainte666]

Disability Divest: We Demand the Disability Establishment End Its Relationships with War Profiteers (July 1, 2024)

Hi friends and comrades,

This Disability Pride Month, please read and sign onto this letter to the disability establishment to divest and end its partnership with war profiteers and complicity with genocide and colonialism.

Some of us are affiliated with organizations in the US disability advocacy space, and some of us are not.

Many disability organizations and their leaders have been silent about the mass disabling event and genocide that has been happening since last October. Silence is complicity.

Several US disability rights organizations, which advocate for equal rights and treatment for disabled Americans, accept funding and have fostered partnerships with major war profiteers and weapons manufacturers including Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen, Boeing, RTX/Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, and Google.

Disability rights organizations go even further than accepting money from war profiteers: they honor them with disability inclusion awards.

One example is the 2023 Disability Equality Index, presented by Disability:IN, awarded HP, Siemens, Barclays, Chevron, Intel, and 11 weapons manufacturing companies with the top score 100 of “Best Places to Work.” (All 16 companies are corporate partners with Disability:IN.)

Disability:IN is certainly not the only one doing this in the US disability establishment, and we see similar patterns with other national orgs as well. They take money from these war mongers and turn around and pay lip service to the idea of liberation and disability rights.

Read the full letter and sign: DisabilityDivest.org. All you need is a first and last name and an email address. The letter is being translated into ASL and a Plain Language version, which will be available at the top of the page once ready.

Please feel free to contact me @sainte666 if you have any questions.

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[typosandtea]

Vertibirds. 🚁⚙️🗡️🪽

So every wastelander and his dog know that the fallout 4 vertibirds crash more than settlements need help. But why is that? Here's my 2 caps on the matter. (Or: Bethesda doesn't understand aviation very well I think)

( So uh this is way longer than I expected, I was possessed🚁☢️:] )

TLDR: Horrific conditions for aviation, the difficulties of wasteland heavy maintenance, inexperienced pilots AND mechanics, and the WORST damn instrument layout I’ve ever seen

The Vertibird is designed as a fictional tilt rotor VTOL/STOL(Vertical/Short Take Off and Landing) aircraft which makes a ton of sense in the wasteland where suitable runways are rarer than hens teeth. One of Bethesda's primary visual design influences for the vertibird I suspect is the bell boeing v-22 Osprey.

This funky creature \/

This photo is from the Wikipedia page >Here< [ID: a photo of a v22 osprey aircraft in flight as seen from below and to the right, the aircraft is a medium tilt rotor aircraft with very large propellers, the aircraft is current in vertical take off or landing with the engines pointed straight up. The landing gear is extended, the aircraft is painted in air-force grey with the faint decal “marines” and the American army star on horizontal stripes and the squadron and registration barley visible on the empennage. The cargo and forward doors are open and a soldier is hanging out the front. End ID]

Now the Osprey has a bit of a reputation among people I’ve met who’ve flown in them, I've personally been told things like "if it's not leaking hydraulic fluid, that means you're out of fluid" and "its terrifying to fly in".

My screenshot. [ID: A screenshot of a fallout 4 vertibird, seen from front left in flight over bushland. the Player is manning the minigun and Paladin Danse is a Passenger. End ID]

Looking at the Vertibirds themselves we can make a few assumptions here.

The shape of the cowling and the noise they make indicates that the engines are some form of turboprop engine, likely requiring liquid fuel akin to Avtur(Aviation turbine fuel). Confirmed by the Instruments visible in the cockpit.

The most weight efficient way to move big parts is hydraulics so, they likely have complex hydraulic systems for wing positioning / AOA(Angle Of Attack) / engine angle. Likely also for landing gear since they have retractable gear in fallout 4.

That the BoS has modified them from the original design at least partially, allowing attachment to the Prydwen, likely other modifications too.

I strongly suspect that they have an APU(Auxiliary Power Unit) in the aft fuselage / empennage somewhere, since they have a massive air intake scoop on the top fuselage, they can self start their primary engines which either requires a ridiculous amount of electricity / amps or a source of bleed air. Bleed air is the most likely candidate for self start and is reasonably common on real turbine aircraft, APUs also allows for ground power without having primary engines running. Also confirmed by the instruments in the cockpit.

All of these points are well and good and common in aviation, even modifications (ie. STOL kits, survey aircraft, agricultural mods, skiis, ect). But modern aviation has some advantages that the BoS doesn't have: access to new off the shelf parts, proper verified documentation, proper test processes & facilities, and experienced personnel.

Don't get me wrong, I think Proctor Ingram is awesome, very knowledgeable and practically a miracle worker (especially with that one terminal entry about an engine failure field recovery she pulls off!!), but one chief engineer cannot maintain an entire fleet AND the Prydwen, she comments on how things are breaking often on the ship that she is very busy! Training of new engineers takes *years* to even get to basic level! Ingram can’t train anyone she is too busy keeping everyone in the air 24/7! So who is training all of these scribes? There must be a huge amount of time teaching and supervising even simple tasks! Even at their best the BoS wouldn’t be able to hope to be near the prewar standards of training! Even Ingram or other senior scribes would not be thaaaaat experienced, 10 years is not a long time to completely learn a new aircraft and implement systems & processes of maintenance. The point here is that there are inexperienced scribes maintaining these aircraft.

WOLRDS BEST CHEIF ENGINEER ❤️ \/

My Screenshot. [ID: A screenshot of proctor Ingram from fallout 4, she is standing in the Liberty prime control area. She is smiling. She is wearing her usual modified power armour frame. Preston is visible in the background with a clipboard and pen, he is wearing woody’s outfit from toy story. End ID]

Heavy maintenance in the wasteland, especially in an active combat zone would be an absolute nightmare, are the poor scribes doing overhauls on the flight deck?? Not really possible, so the BoS must have a ground facility at the airport somewhere. Also side note where is the rest of Boston airport? There is more to an airport than a terminal and 1 runway, where are all the hangars?? Likely underwater but still, no ruins??

Back to maintenance, aircraft need a huge amount of care, way way way more than cars do. light civilian aircraft IRL need a full inspection every 100 hours of flight time, which adds up incredibly quickly! For example if you have a one hour commute twice a day that’s MR(Maintenance Release) hours reached in 50 days! You legally cannot fly out of hours. And a service for small aircraft takes about 3 personnel / 2 days and that’s without any major repairs or ADs (Airworthiness Directives) to address! $$$$! Aircraft operating in adverse conditions also need additional maintenance, and coastal areas like Boston, are considered adverse conditions since the salt air corrodes aluminum and steel like nothing else! Corrosion untreated will damage your aircraft and if left too long can destroy the structural integrity of aluminum parts. The spars of aircraft are aluminum often!

My photo. [ID: The inside of a Cessna 172 wing trailing edge is shown looking inboard at the aft root rib, which is primer green, it is backlit by torchlight, the fuselage and a orange scat hose are visible behind it, it has 3 irregular shaped holes in it, 2 are by design but the third medium sized hole in the center of the image is eaten away by corrosion. End ID]

Vertibirds, between being shot at constantly and having a complex deign with a lot of precision moving parts will need a lot of repairs; moving parts means lots of upkeep, grease and inspections! The BoS by 2287 must have some sort of manufacturing back in capital, they cannot still be using old parts from the enclave after 10 years of maintenance, that’s a lot of grease, paint and hydraulic fluid!!!

The BoS must also have a refinery of some kind because Avtur is a refined fuel with some important additives like biocide. Manufacture and storage of fuel is very important since fuel contamination will bring down an aircraft! (and has multiple times IRL! :[ ). Water, microbes, and algae are real dangers to engines, with free water being the most common. Poorly sealed tanks or improper fuel storage combined with a incomplete or missed pre-flight inspection can lead to fuel starvation, since water is heavier than fuel and tank outlets are at the bottom of the tank. If you loose an engine on a twin, may God help you.

This image is from Concordia Bioscience >Here< [ID: A photo of a sample of pale yellow Jet fuel in a clear container, the sample is contaminated with water and microbes and has separated into layers with water at the bottom, then microorganisms, and then Fuel at the top, the image is labeled as such. End ID]

Getting to the most likely crash reasons now (finally), In my opinion that is inexperienced pilots and; a horrific instrument layout.

While there must be some lancers in the BoS that have been flying for the whole 10 years that they’ve had Vertibirds, I think that is likely the exception not the rule, even if they crashed a fraction of the time that do in game that’s still A LOT of downed aircraft!

Experience is only gained in practice, and unfortunately for the BoS they are (self-declared) at war so resources are thin and safe zones are thinner. I suspect that there are a lot of very inexperienced pilots without the time for the experienced pilots to really teach.

Linking to my final point, experience on an airframe itself is also important, you want to be familiar with your aircraft, even among a group of the same model aircraft they will each have quirks, like slightly different instrument layouts, slightly different handling/feel i.e. "this one flies heavier / slower" (at least that's my experience with smaller civilian aircraft) I imagine that the apocalypse did nothing for improving manufacturing tolerances!

FINAL AND MOST DAMNING POINT:

Experience can only help lancers so much when veritibirds have such a strange instrument panel layout:

My screenshot. [ID: a screenshot of a instrument panel from a Fallout 4 vertibird. it is slanted on a approximately 30 degree angle. End ID]

A bit weird looking yeah? For reference Pilot is left seat and copilot is always right seat, this applies globally even in right hand drive countries.

lets take a closer look:

My Screenshots. [IDs: Three screenshots of the same Instrument panel as above, but zoomed in using a sniper rifle scope to get a better look. The first screen shot is the pilots side, the second the center, and the third the copilots side. End ID]

All righty! So reading from top to bottom, then left to right we have:

On the pilots side: A Rotor%RPM gauge, a VOR(Very high frequency Omni-directional Range) indicator, a DG(Directional Gyro), a HSI(Horizontal Situation Indicator), and then a huge AI(Attitude Indicator),

In the center section we have: presumably light clusters (likely master warnings & cautions, gear indicators, and other status lights), a second VOR gauge, likely magnetic compass as they are usually top centre (though I can’t see it being at all accurate with all of the steel around!), the engine instruments cluster, and the APU status / control panel at the bottom. unsure of what the 3 clusters of horizontal buttons are suppose to be other than input of some kind?

In the Engine cluster: Torque%, XMSN(transmission) oil temp / pressure dual gauge, a gas producer % RPM gauge with small integrated single percent dial (like having a seconds dial on your watch for accuracy) meaning the engines have free turbines (compressor not attached to the power turbine), a dual load / fuel psi gauge, a dual engine oil pressure and temperature gauge, fuel quantity in pounds, a turbine output temperature gauge (the hottest part of your engine), and a clock.

On the copilots side: a second Rotor%RPM dual gauge, a third VOR indicator, Airspeed in Knots and MPH, a RMI(Radio Magnetic Indicator) which uses VOR and ADF(Automatic Direction Finder) on compass, a second DG, a second HSI, and a teeny tiny altimeter right in the outboard corner.

the 4 instruments on the lower copilots panel are completely unlabeled

some things of note that are from game limitations:

most of the engine instruments don't have needles at all

the DGs and the RMI use the same background asset, resulting in the DG wrongly having 'VOR' and 'ASI' on its face, DGs are self contained air driven instruments that work on gyroscopic precession, not any outside data input.

all of the instruments with a compass face all say north despite this vertibird not quite facing north.

the AI is showing wings level despite this vertibird being crashed and on a ~30 degree angle

there are not engine controls at all not even flat assets, only flight controls.

There are a lot of instruments here and most of them are reasonably OK read individually, BUT there at least 1 key instrument missing and the layout outs emphasis on completely the wrong things:

WHERE IS THE VERTICAL SPEED INDICATOR(VSI)????? That's a pretty important gauge in a VERTICAL take off / landing aircraft!!!!!!!!!! It's one of the basic six pack!!! how was it omitted??? Speaking of the six pack why is there only one ASI and Altimeter?? and why are they tiny and ON THE COPILOTS SIDE ONLY???? the altimeter is LITERALLY the furthest instrument from the pilot in a vertibird, it should be right in front of the pilot!!! the easy to miss altimeter would make IFR(Instrument Flight Rules) flying incredibly dangerous! Also why are there four VOR based navigational instruments? VOR IS GROUND BASED NAVIGATION!!! unless the BoS has rebooted the multiple ground beacons for them to navigate from that's THREE dead instruments taking up space on the panel! the RMI is slightly more useful as ADF can tune to commercial radio frequencies, though these would need to be strong!

These poor inexperienced lancers are having to look all over the whole unnecessarily crowded cockpit for basic information that should be right in front of them, causing reaction delays and possible confusion. That delay could be the difference between whether or not they are flying home today.

-> Bethesda doesn't understand what half the instruments do and while they did a good job with most of the assets, in their quest to make it retro-future / visibly different from actual aircraft, they have completely destroyed any use of logic in the layout.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading! Here’s a video of me yeeting Danse with the ‘Get out of my face mod’ as compensation haha

My Video. [ID: a video capture from fallout 4 in first person. It is night and is at oberland station facing the water treatment plant. The player is wearing power armour and the HUD is visible. The player is very close to Paladin Danse, he turns away from them and they shove him with the voice line “stay out of my way”. Danse flys a long way away while rag-dolling. The Gamer’s laughter can be heard while Danse is flying. The player follows Danse’s fall with the crosshairs. The player then walks backwards. End ID]

[akkpipitphattana]

no because i actually need to talk about this because this episode really really drove home for me how low sand exists for himself on the totem pole. he doesn’t hate himself like ray does, he doesn’t drown himself in self pity, but for sand, he is his own last priority.

with what we know from sand’s childhood, it’s easy to gather that he has likely always been the one looking out for his mom. she lacked responsibility, so sand had to step up as a kid. and when you’re a kid and you have to look out for the person that’s supposed be taking care of you, that starts the trend of viewing yourself as last on your priorities list. you need to take care of everyone else and then you can take care of you if you have any mental bandwidth left.

but that’s not obvious because if you look at sand, he seems put together. he has dreams, a goal, five different side hustles, he can cook, he exercises, he’s clearly taking care of himself, right? wrong.

because that’s the sand that he wants everyone to see. take care of yourself just enough so no one else worries because no one else can worry about you, that’d keep them from focusing on them. and god is he the KING of bottling shit up. he holds in all the pain, the emotion, let’s it fester into bitter anger, which is why he resents top so much despite the fact that it was boeing that left. because it’s easier to blame the guy you don’t know than the guy you love. it’s easier to say top seduced boeing than accept that maybe sand just wasn’t enough. it’s not that sand “never got over boeing” it’s that he never got over what happened. he never expressed those feelings beyond sassy comments and bitter eye rolls and then that audio business, but that was still in anger at top. he never acknowledge his hurt over what boeing did, even if he doesn’t have feelings for him anymore.

which is also why sand barely fucking cries. i know this seems like an odd point to make, but as a first kanaphan enthusiast i have to point out what i’ve noticed and that’s that in comparison to other first characters? sand is stone fucking cold. he gets choked, mind you, a single tear at the end of ep5 and welled up at the end of ep6 even, but the only time he REALLY breaks down are in ep10 when ray screams at him and he thinks he’s really lost him and ep11 when he reunites with ray and realizes he hasn’t. and those are MASSIVE emotional releases because sand! bottles! shit! up! he doesn’t wanna put that on anyone else, so he holds it in and only breaks down fully when it’s too much and when he’s alone.

and like we’ve seen the way he sets aside his own care for ray over and over, we see the way he loves his mom, even with nick he’s always the one comforting. so it’s no surprise that when boeing shows up, he can’t establish firm boundaries. i’ve already said this, but i really do think when boeing asked if he had a chance, sand said no, but because boeing KNOWS sand and he KNOWS that sand cares so little for his own boundaries, he’ll keep pushing. because he thinks sand will eventually break.

and now ray and boeing are throwing him around trying to see who he chooses, and i just. i need sand to snap. i need him to actually be honest about what he feels and what he wants and put himself first for once.

[bekolxeram]

I know we've been manifesting S8 Air Ops since that photo of a hangar was posted by a member of the scouting team. And I know the other side has been mocking us for being delusional when other bts photos of an aircraft came out. So here I am, taking my shipper's goggles off, and diving into the aviation side of things. I have to admit, it left me with more questions than answers.

They already have a hangar for Air Ops in S7, they don't need another one

No. The 911!Air Ops we see in S7 is the Helinet hangar at Van Nuys Airport. Helinet is a company that rents and operates helicopters for news stations, film crews, medivac service or regular charter flights. You can compare images from 7x02 and 7x03 with Google Street Views of the Helinet Hangar.

You can also see N67TV and N29HD here.

Helinet is where ABC usually rents its news helicopters from, so it's cheaper and more convenient to film a couple scenes there when helicopters are needed. It can't be used for regular filming though, because Helinet has a business to run, and when a helicopter takes off, it's so noisy that you can't even hear each other talking, let alone shooting a scene. (I recommend watching the whole video, if you're interested in accuracy when it comes to writing fics.)

It's a plane related emergency so it must be related to Tommy

Also no. Again, I've written a piece about how Tommy was not the air tanker pilot in 2x14 before, and if he was not qualified for that, he's not qualified to fly an airliner either. It's not impossible that he flies a small turboprop aircraft like a Cessna 172, but he would never have the time to get certified as a commercial airliner pilot while working as an active firefighter since 2005.

And this is a prop for an Airbus airliner.

It's actually pretty easy to tell an Airbus aircraft from a Boeing one, as the shape of the rear cockpit windows is pretty different between the two. It's just a matter of which Airbus model it is. I believe it's a narrow body single aisle aircraft from the A320 family.

Wide body Airbus aircrafts, like this A300, have their side cockpit windows more tapered to the top. It also applies to other Airbus twin aisle aircrafts, like the A330 and the A340.

On the A320 though, the side windows are flat on the top.

So it's a pretty safe bet that the aircraft we see in that bts photo is one from the A320 family. I can't pinpoint which one it exactly is, because again, I can just see a tiny section of the cockpit, not the rest of the aircraft.

So the hangar must be for the airplane then?

The hangar itself is a former Air National Guard maintenance hangar at Ontario International Airport (ONT/KONT). It's especially used for filming. There are bigger hangars at the same airport for filming, but this one looks the best on camera.

They don't need a hangar for scenes inside of the plane, they have cockpit and cabin mock-ups at the studio for them.

You can clearly see the cabin door right here from recent bts footage. It looks just like a training facility for flight attendants.

They only film on location if they want shots of the entire aircraft from the outside. Like in 1x04, the scenes of Athena responding to an alleged unruly passenger were filmed in a set. The plane crash rescue parts of the episode though, were filmed in an actual retired 757 in a tub of water.

(Lone Star worked with this exact company for 3x08. Though, that plane was a 737 I believe.)

I can't think of any disastrous scenario happening in a maintenance hangar, where the aircraft is powered off with only maintenance staff present, no passengers or crew. Well, there have been cases of planes crashing into a hangar, but even then I don't see the need for the 118 to be there. Every major airport has at least one fire station on site with dedicated foam and crash units. In fact, there is a fire station right next to this hangar IRL.

Another problem, although I'm not sure because I don't have the actual measurements, is that the celling of the hangar looks quite low. (Refer to page 44 of this document) It was originally built in 1955 to house fighter jets. The F-102, the type of aircraft operated there in the 60s and 70s, has a total height of 6.5 meters. The tail of an A320 on the other hand can reach 11.76 m from the ground. (The shortest variant of the A320 family is actually even taller, 12.51 m.) So there could be some tail bumping action if you try to tow an A320 into this hangar.

So Air Ops is still a possibility?

Yes. This hangar is quite a bit larger than the Helinet hangar, but still not as big as the actual Air Ops facility. A helicopter is obviously much smaller than a passenger airliner that can seat over 180, you can easily fit multiple helicopters in there with plenty of space left for other set props. But the problem is, they don't have enough helicopters.

They have that one replica of N211FN that they used to film the search and rescue in 7x03, that's it. All the other helicopters you see on screen, including the real N211FN that actually flies, belong to Helinet. Sure, they can get some more fake helicopters that are empty inside just for looks, but I don't see the need to spend so much extra money just to show Tommy's place of work unless it's related to some major plot points. For now, I don't see how that would fit into the story.

There is also the possibility that the hangar has nothing to do with anything aviation related. I mean, they've filmed countless ads, music videos and movies, including Ford vs Ferrari there. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe that's why that crew member eventually got the green light to confirm the hangar is indeed for 9-1-1, it tells us absolutely nothing.