#functional food manufacturers

[sevenangrybees]

I wanna see a cooking competition show where all the judges have different dietary restrictions and professional chefs have to make a meal that all of them can eat.

I wanna see someone with allergies look a chef dead in the eye and tell them they're disqualified cause they didn't check that the pecans were manufactured somewhere with no peanut cross contamination.

[hnkparts]

Whirlpool WPW10643378 Refrigerator Electronic Control Board | HnKParts

[earthranch]

At Earth Ranch, we believe that our planet's best ingredients are harvested straight from the source. Our team is dedicated to building a healthy snacking experience from the soil up, one dehydrated fruit and dehydrated vegetable at a time

[food-pharma]

Science-Based Food Developer & Manufacturing Partner | Food Pharma

At Food Pharma, we believe in the power of science to transform the way we eat. We combine cutting-edge research and technology with culinary expertise to create food products that meet the highest standards of taste, health, and sustainability. we specialize in developing and manufacturing high-quality food products like soft-chews and ultra chews, functional food bars, cups with inclusions, panned food, and more that are not only delicious but also nutritionally superior.

[nepenthean-sleep]

you know what. i've always been hesitant to describe my anaphylactic food allergies as a disability because "it's just allergies" but if you look at the numerous ways this has affected my life as an adult (because everybody only talks about kids having anaphylactic allergies):

no restaurants or fast food

no store-bought food from small companies (less accountability/resources to prevent cross-contamination)

no candy or desserts (unless they are 100% homemade, which takes a lot of time and energy if you have other disabilities like i do)

no hand-washing dishes (every place i live in has to have a well-functioning dishwasher)

no kissing people on the mouth/lower half of the face

other people cannot kiss me/put their mouth on me

no allergens in the house (really difficult to enforce with non- immediate family members!!)

always having to cook my own meals/bake my own treats/desserts

no sharing drinks/food with other people

no food cooked in other people's houses/kitchens

always having to bring my own "lunchbox" to family events, work or school, all-day events, or any other situation in which i could THEORETICALLY need to eat or drink something other than bottled water

calling food manufacturers to verify label information on new/changed foods

and none of this is counting the avoidance behaviors i developed with obsessive-compulsive disorder around age 13 in response to the panic attacks i'd have remembering about the anaphylactic shock i experienced at age 10.

i was taught to read labels at age 5. i was taught how to use my own epi-pen at age 6. my parents and i have always been careful and responsible about my allergies. it's not "i just don't like this food", it's "if i eat this my throat will swell up and block my trachea AND i'll go into shock from low blood pressure." as inconvenient as it might be for YOU, you can learn these things too and save a life. happy disability pride month; stop being a dickhead

i don't usually talk about my allergies because it gives me a LOT of anxiety but i felt this was important to share, because most people have no idea what being an adult with allergies is like. life went from "everyone at the birthday party gets a cupcake but me and i'm sad" to to "if i want to kiss someone i like, i have to make sure she hasn't eaten anything i'm allergic to in the past few days" (which is like. hugely awkward to ask of someone holy shit) or "i have to turn down the meal from my friend's mom even though she has the best of intentions and now she thinks i'm an asshole"

[transmutationisms]

in addition to being prone to an obvious naturalistic fallacy, the oft-repeated claim that various supplements / herbs / botanicals are being somehow suppressed by pharmaceutical interests seeking to protect their own profits ('they would rather sell you a pill') belies a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between 'industrial' pharmacology and plant matter. bioprospecting, the search for plants and molecular components of plants that can be developed into commercial products, has been one of the economic motivations and rationalisations for european colonialism and imperialism since the so-called 'age of exploration'. state-funded bioprospectors specifically sought 'exotic' plants that could be imported to europe and sold as food or materia medica—often both, as in the cases of coffee or chocolate—or, even better, cultivated in 'economic' botanical gardens attached to universities, medical schools, or royal palaces and scientific institutions.

this fundamental attitude toward the knowledge systems and medical practices of colonised people—the position, characterising eg much 'ethnobotany', that such knowledge is a resource for imperialist powers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to mine and profit from—is not some kind of bygone historical relic. for example, since the 1880s companies including pfizer, bristol-myers squibb, and unilever have sought to create pharmaceuticals from african medicinal plants, such as strophanthus, cryptolepis, and grains of paradise. in india, state-created databases of valuable 'traditional' medicines have appeared partly in response to a revival of bioprospecting since the 1980s, in an increasingly bureaucratised form characterised by profit-sharing agreements between scientists and local communities that has nonetheless been referred to as "biocapitalism". a 1990 paper published in the proceedings of the novartis foundation symposium (then the ciba foundation symposium) spelled out this form of epistemic colonialism quite bluntly:

Ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, folk medicine and traditional medicine can provide information that is useful as a 'pre-screen' to select plants for experimental pharmacological studies.

there is no inherent oppositional relationship between pharmaceutical industry and 'natural' or plant-based cures. there are of course plenty of examples of bioprospecting that failed to translate into consumer markets: ginseng, introduced to europe in the 17th century through the mercantile system and the east india company, found only limited success in european pharmacology. and there are cases in which knowledge with potential market value has actually been suppressed for other reasons: the peacock flower, used as an abortifacient in the west indies, was 'discovered' by colonial bioprospectors in the 18th century; the plant itself moved easily to europe, but knowledge of its use in reproductive medicine became the subject of a "culturally cultivated ignorance," resulting from a combination of funding priorities, national policies, colonial trade patterns, gender politics, and the functioning of scientific institutions. this form of knowledge suppression was never the result of a conflict wherein bioprospectors or pharmacists viewed the peacock flower as a threat to their own profits; on the contrary, they essentially sacrificed potential financial benefits as a result of the political and social factors that made abortifacient knowledge 'unknowable' in certain state and commercial contexts.

exploitation of plant matter in pharmacology is not a frictionless or infallible process. but the sort of conspiratorial thinking that attempts to position plant therapeutics and 'big pharma' as oppositional or competitive forces is an ahistorical and opportunistic example of appealing to nominally anti-capitalist rhetoric without any deeper understanding of the actual mechanisms of capitalism and colonialism at play. this is of course true whether or not the person making such claims has any personal financial stake in them, though it is of course also true that, often, they do hold such stakes.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Prescriptive diet culture, especially (but not exclusively) the sort aimed at losing weight, is ableist and sizeist, with frequent undertones of racism, classism, and sexism. It relies on the premise that all bodies can and should fit into a certain size and a certain range of “health” and ability, that fat and disabled bodies are inherently lesser, and frequently relies on patronizing or limiting the options of poor people for their alleged “own good,” stigmatizing or patronizing the food choices of non-European cultures, and judging women’s and perceived-women’s bodies more harshly than men’s bodies.

In response to this, various fat liberation, body positive, and health-at-every-size movements have arisen to challenge this narrative to varying degrees. One of the alternatives often promoted in these contexts is “intuitive eating,” in which people eat what their bodies crave, whenever they’re hungry, instead of following a prescriptive diet or schedule. This is framed as radical, liberatory rebellion and self-actualization against diet culture.

Intuitive eating is great for some people. However, there are some problems with promoting it as a universal solution.

First of all, “Everyone should eat intuitively” is just as prescriptive as any other prescriptive diet. It still frames food choices as something with a right and a wrong answer. What superficially sounds like “Eat whatever you want” actually becomes “You must eat whatever you want, and examine carefully whether you actually want it, and defend your choices accordingly.”

Secondly, intuitive eating is fundamentally inaccessible to the majority of the world’s population. Perhaps if we lived in a Star Trek universe where we could just command a replicator to create food and have it instantly ready for us, then most, if not all people, could eat intuitively. But in our own world, our food choices are constrained by time, money, and availability, as well as restrictions like allergies and sensitivities.

When I think about what food I want to eat, I have to think about what I already have. What I can afford to buy. What I have the time and energy to prepare. I might “intuit” that I crave a steak, but what I have readily on hand is a bowl of cereal. Intuition won’t help someone with chronic fatigue who can’t stand at a stove for long or chop vegetables, or someone on food stamps who has to stretch their budget, or someone who works long shifts and comes home exhausted, or a parent of three children with food allergies who only feeds themself leftover scraps from feeding them. Who has time and energy to cook a meal from scratch? Who has money to go out to a restaurant? Whose invisible and underpaid labor -- farm workers, grocery workers, restaurant cooks, homemakers -- does this system rely upon?

The third problem with promoting intuitive eating as a universal solution is that many foods are manufactured in such a way as to sensorily mislead the eater about their properties. The idea that “artificial” or “processed” foods are somehow “worse” than “natural” foods -- or that those are meaningful categories -- is ridiculous and baseless. However, it is a fact that many foods are made to mimic the look, taste, smell, and texture of foods they do not actually contain. This makes it harder for eaters to “intuit” a food’s properties by the usual means. Eaters may have to rely on ingredients lists and nutritional information rather than sensory input alone. This is especially true for people who have specific nutritional needs, like allergies or nutrient deficiencies, to either avoid or seek out specific food attributes.

Finally, even if all other obstacles were eliminated, some people are just not good at intuiting their own food needs. People with executive functioning disabilities may forget that they’re hungry, or not recognize their bodies’ hunger signals. Not everyone is naturally good at piloting a meat suit. Food is difficult, and it’s okay to need external reminders to refuel.

Intuitive eating rhetoric can sound suspiciously similar to the common rhetoric of the “natural” “wellness” movement, stemming from the premise that all bodies are born with a natural alignment to a certain standard of “health” and normative ability, and only external factors and individual choices can “corrupt” it. In reality, there are no normative bodies or abilities. Plenty of people are born with food-related disabilities, whether difficulty remembering to eat, anxiety, susceptibility to nutrient deficiency, allergies, diabetes, or all kinds of other conditions. Food is hard. Harder for some people than others. And that’s okay.

There’s nothing wrong with intuitive eating, but it’s not a universal solution to everyone’s food difficulties. We need affordable, accessible food for everyone. We need everyone to have the free time and support they need to perform all activities of daily living. We need living wages for everyone at every part of the food supply chain. We need clearly labeled food ingredients and nutritional values. We need a society where everyone has the resources, time, and support to eat whatever they want, and the information to know what they’re eating. And then, maybe, intuitive eating can be a more attainable goal for people who want it.

We also need a society in which bodily autonomy is respected, and people’s food choices and other health and bodily choices are rightly regarded as no one else’s business. We need widespread recognition that there’s no standard of health or ability that anyone “should” have and no way that anyone “should” eat, and that what matters is ensuring that everyone has equitable access to resources, which each individual can choose how to use, whether that’s eating frozen dinners every day, growing vegetables for fun, eating only purple things, or using a timer to remember when it’s time to eat. But until we achieve that society, “intuitive eating” might as well mean “let them eat cake.”

[jenroses]

After a series of appliance fails that had to result in new appliances being bought, it feels like absolute victory that we were able to fucking FIX the stove burners rather than throw the whole thing out because it was too expensive to fix. We had an oven where when it went, the replacement part was going to be $500 not including labor. It was maybe a $600 oven. That was a few years back.

When we moved into this house in 2007, we bought a bunch of new appliances and every FUCKING one of them went out within 7 years. IIRC, this stove was bought in 2003-ish, it's a Whirlpool, and they still make the parts for it, and the parts cost about $60 total. Hubby pulled the stove out, roommate did the mechanical stuff, I troubleshot it when something wasn't working, and the end result is that two wonky burners are now functional burners (we replaced the infinity switches).

Anyway, I don't think Whirlpool makes perfect appliances, but they make REPAIRABLE appliances, and that counts for a whole fucking lot.

We had a frigidaire, once upon a time, that we got an extended warranty on... but they manufactured the shelving out of non-cold-resistant plastic that cracked excessively and when we tried to get warranty service on them they said "Those are consumables" and I was like, "I'm not EATING THEM. They're just badly designed." It cost like $60 PER DRAWER for brand name replacements which promptly broke. We finally fixed things with duct tape until it stopped keeping food at the right temperature and fixing it was going to cost more than I wanted to spend on a fridge I now loathed with the hate of a thousands suns, and after about 5 years it stopped being functional enough to keep food at refrigerator temps and was repurposed into a spare freezer as that was what it was determined to do.

Meanwhile, yes, the whirlpool fridge we now have had an issue with the lid for the water filter, which we were able to replace for idk $20 and the ice maker sometimes freezes over but then fixes itself, and the light doesn't work right, but it keeps the food the right temperature, and the water works and it's the right size and we've been able to manage.

Anyway, right to repair is NECESSARY and planned obsolescence is evil.

[alexanderwales]

For Thresholder there are lots and lots of worlds, most of them just name-checked, sketched out in a handful of paragraphs as a place that people had visited before and now has little plot relevance. It's my favorite part of the series.

I'm not writing one of those chapters where I need one of those worlds, and I'm not sure I could give this one its due, but the idea I had last night was a world where people could increase and decrease the size of objects virtually at will. This doesn't work with conventional physics, but that's okay, some of the worlds can be more conceptual.

To start with, we have some ground rules: you have to be touching the thing, it can only operate on loosely defined "whole objects", and there's some kind of thing that happens with objects where they retain their physical structure to some degree, even if the square-cube law means that not everything stays functional. This is easy for things made of base elements (an iron nail becomes bigger and we can grok that it's still just made of regular iron) but it's less easy for complex organics. If you increase the size of an apple, are the individual cells increasing in size? Are new cells being generated? I think for this, I would have to say that the answer is that the world works on a level of pre-Enlightenment human understanding that the real world doesn't have, one where there aren't cells. (I am a bit sketchy on when cells were discovered, and more sketchy on what they thought was going on before that.)

As far as consequences, which is my favorite thing, I think there are a few big ones.

For one, any amount of food is enough to feed an infinite number of people. A single apple can feed a family, if they want to have nothing but apple for a meal. A single apple slice can feed a family. In fact, even the smallest crumb can undergo the process of magnification to become a full meal. But while you can make "more food" by making it bigger, the taste and texture don't necessarily stay the same. It seems to me that there's probably a sweet spot for most foods in terms of size, and eating a grain of rice the size of a loaf of bread is a very different experience than eating a bowl of rice. And if you've ever eaten one of those sourdough breads with way too large of bubbles, that's what pretty much all bread would look like if magnified, just holes with strands of gluten between them. So I think in terms of food, there would be a lot of class divide, along with a lot of processing of magnified foods to make them more palatable. Maybe a loaf-size grain of rice wouldn't appeal to many people, but you can break off bits of it and probably still make mochi with it.

Another big issue is manufacturing and the trades. In my mind, you have construction workers building the equivalent of dollhouses that then get sized up on a plot of land, but I think dollhouses are a little bit small, and most trades would work on a scale that was easiest for human manipulation. I don't think that's what we do for dolls, which tends to be nimble, finnicky work, and if you can freely scale up and scale down your tools and materials, I think you'd naturally want to work a bit bigger. Probably you would rescale on many different steps of whatever you're producing, and if this world was in the industrial age, then you would have people in factories rescaling as a human step in a factory somewhere. Another cool thing is that a chef could have a single pot and pan that they resize for their needs, and a single knife that fulfills roles we would use two or three different knifes for, though I think maybe handles would be a problem there.

Anyway, I'm not going to use this anywhere, though I do think it's cool, if maybe in a way that's not all that unique (What if Big Thing were Little Thing and What if Little Thing were Big Thing are both speculative fiction staples, see Indian in the Cupboard, The Borrowers, Ant-man, etc.). I have a bunch of outstanding questions re: conservation of momentum and some hacks that only work under certain implementations, but sometimes that's a bridge too far.

[bitter-bats-cult-of-the-moon]

Energy Explained in Other Systems

There is a lack of measurable evidence because any person that has worked with energies have had different experiences but were able to understand and manipulate energies according to their own will.

Energy has been used in many ways within culture and religion and have set beliefs depending on the system being practiced.

Next, are some given definitions defining energies within diverse philosophies.

Hindu = Prana

Chinese = Qi /Chi

Japanese =Ki

Greek = Pneuma

Hawaiian = Mana

Tibetan Buddhism = Lung

Hindu Philosophy

A Sanskrit word for "life force" or "vital principle" is often referred to as Prana. It is described as first coming down from the Sun and connecting all elements of the Universe. It has been invoked within the Hindu scriptures of the Vedas and Upanishads.

Prana is the belief of vitality surrounding all living beings. This energy is responsible for all bodily functions. There are five types of pranas, collectively known as the five vāyus.

1. Prāṇa:              Beating of the heart and breathing. Prana enters the body through the breath and is sent to every cell through the circulatory system.

2. Apāna:             Elimination of waste products from the body through the lungs and excretory systems.

3.Uḍāna:              Sound production through the vocal apparatus. It represents the conscious energy required to produce the vocal sounds corresponding to the intent.

4. Samāna:          Food digestions, repair or manufacture of new cells and growth, and heat regulations throughout the body.

5. Vyāna:             The energy that is needed for the body to have proper circulation, and the functions for the voluntary muscular system in which there is expansion and contraction processes throughout the body.

Chinese Philosophy

The earliest texts in which Qi or Chi is described was in 'Analects of Confucius' where it could mean "breath" and was combined with the Chinese word for blood.

Xue-qi, "blood and breath."

Living beings are born because of an accumulation of qi, and as the beings live out their lives the qi declines eventually resulting in death. This indicates that xue-qi referred to all living things, but it is believed that qi or chi exists within all things tangible.

For example, the wind is the qi or chi to the Earth, and the cosmic concepts of yin and yang are "the greatest of qi"

Yin and Yang which means "bright-dark," and "positive-negative" are the opposing forces needed in order to complement the concept of balance. There are thoughts that this duality symbolizes contradicting energy forces which manifest as light and dark, fire and water, expansion, and contraction. With this said, Chinese medicine states that the balance of negative and positive forms in the body are believed to be essential for overall satisfactory health.

Japanese Mythology

During the sixth and seventh centuries the Chinese word qi (or chi) was written using the same kanji script for their interpretation for energy being "Ki"

However, the meanings are a tad different.

While the Chinese use chi or qi to describe that energy exists in all things, animate and inanimate objects, the Japanese believe it is the creative flow and expressions used within our daily lives, martial arts, and symbolizes aspects of nature, and thusly the spirits. It is the transfer from living, animate beings in to inanimate which can change and manifest into various forms. It is the necessary intentions one wields.

Greek Mythology

Pneuma, "The breath of life" or "vital spirit" is composed of kinetic energies within the vessel, while Ignis is composed of thermal energies. All human beings need both kinetic and thermal energies in order to properly function.

In Greek medicine, pneuma is the form of circulation throughout the body's vital organs. Due to this the role, pneuma plays within the body to sustain consciousness. Some physiological theories suggest that the pneuma mediates between the heart, and the heart is regarded as the seat of the mind, and the brain.

In similar, Stoic philosophy, pneuma is the active and generative principles that are organized between the individual and the cosmos. The highest forms are the Gods, and the human soul. The human soul is believed to be fragments of the gods given life force in order to be born and given a vessel upon the physical plane. This exists within all animate and inanimate objects as energy transfers and changes.

Hawaiian Mythology

Mana, the spiritual energy of power and strength. This energy exists within places and people; however, it is said that mana is both external and internal concepts.

The Hawaiian people believe that individuals can gain mana or lose it depending on one's actions in everything that they do.

In mythology there were two ways to gain mana, and this was either done sexually or through violence.

To sexually gain mana one must invoke the god, Lono, deity of peace and fertility.

To gain mana through violence one must invoke the god Ku, deity of war and politics.

Tibetan Buddhism

Lung means the wind or breath. Exists as a key concept in Vajrayana traditions. Generally, it's concept relates to the understanding of the subtle body, and Three Vajras. Those three are the body, speech, and mind. Lung relates to the subtle flow of energy and the five elements. (Fire, Water, Earth, Space, and Air) Lung is mostly closely connected to the Air Element.

Lung has also been used to describe the winds or prana being used in conjunction with the subtle body during a time of exercise, but also more importantly everyday functions of the body and its own senses. There are five psychic winds which manifest into mahabhuta. These five relate to the lifeforce that animate the body-mind (namarupa) of all sentient beings.

The Five Root or Major Winds

The root winds support an element and is responsible for a function of the human body.

    The 'life-supporting wind' (Tib. སྲོག་འཛིན་རླུང་, sok dzin lung; Wyl. srog 'dzin rlung). Located in the brain, this lung regulates functions such as swallowing, inhalation, and concentration.

    The 'upward-moving wind' (Tib. གྱེན་རྒྱུ་རླུང་, gyengyu lung; Wyl. gyen rgyu rlung). Located in the chest and thorax, this lung regulates, among other things, speech, the body's energy and vitality, memory, mental endeavour and diligence.

    The 'all-pervading wind' (Tib. ཁྱབ་བྱེད་རླུང་, khyap ché lung; Wyl. khyab byed rlung). Residing in the heart, this lung controls all the motor activities of the body.

    The 'fire-accompanying wind' (Tib. མེ་མཉམ་གནས་རླུང་, me nyam né lung; Wyl. me mnyam gnas rlung). Found in the stomach and abdomen area, the fire-accompanying wind regulates digestion and metabolism.

    The 'downward-clearing wind' (Tib. ཐུར་སེལ་རླུང་, thursel lung; Wyl. thur sel rlung). Located in the rectum, bowels and perineal region, this lung's function is to expel faeces, urine, semen, and menstrual blood. It also regulates uterine contractions during labour.

The Five Branch Winds

The five branch winds enable the senses to operate.

    The naga wind (Tib.ཀླུའི་རླུང་, lu'i lung; Wyl. klu'i rlung). This lung connects with the eyes and sight.

    The tortoise wind (Tib. རུ་སྦལ་གྱི་་རླུང་, rubal gyi lung; Wyl. ru sbal gyi rlung). This wind connects with the heart and the sense of hearing.

    The lizard wind (Tib.རྩངས་པའི་རླུང་, tsangpé lung; Wyl. rtsangs pa'i rlung) associated with the nose and the sense of smell.

    The devadatta wind (Tib.ལྷས་བྱིན་གྱི་རླུང་, lhéjin gyi lung; Wyl. lhas byin gyi rlung) related to the sense of taste.

    The 'king of wealth deities' wind (Tib. ནོར་ལྷ་རྒྱལ་གྱི་རླུང་, nor lha gyal gyi lung; Wyl. nor lha rgyal gyi rlung). This wind connects with the body and the sense of touch.

[trillscienceofficer]

I've just been thinking a lot about how people like B'Elanna, who have been born into an era (and an area of space) of everyday replicator use, would think about the way we generally manufacture things now especially in a mechanical engineering context, ie mostly via machining it. Making a part with a lathe or a mill, or even something almost magical like electrical discharge machining (EDM), means you have to start with a bigger chunk of material and then work to cut and carve it until you get the part you need. More often than not the largest part of that initial material has been lost in order to get the final result, and it's not easy to get there at all within often very strict tolerances. While a lot of the operations are now done via CNC it still takes a long time, plus studying manuals and accumulating a lot of experience, to become a skilled lathe/mill/EDM technician, not to mention designs that can't be achieved at all through machining and therefore have to be excluded well before a project gets near a lathe. And it is still the most common way we manufacture so many things. Even injection molding for plastic means that you have to have a metal mold to inject your plastic into, and those molds are machined.

And of course the replicators don't work at all like that! They build something by, roughly, adding up building blocks on building blocks, which means very little waste of material in comparison, but most importantly a completely different philosophy of manufacturing and therefore also designing. I started thinking about 3D printers because it's the example of additive manufacturing (versus subtractive manufacturing, like machining) I know best, and one of the things you learn is that you can 3D print things that you would never be able to machine or injection-mold. I'm fascinated by the idea that this is the norm in Star Trek, because I imagine that the replicator, other than making food on demand, would completely revolutionize the industrial manufacturing process.

So I'm wondering how Trek engineers would look at our contemporary machine shops. Quaint, archaic? Like how we watch blacksmiths making Renaissance longswords on youtube? A workflow that would be completely incomprehensible when in your department you don't have to consider the property of every metal alloy not just because of the functionality you want your final part to have, but also how easily (or not) it will machine? Wondering how much time, energy and materials were lost whenever you needed to make even simple nuts and bolts?

I don't know, I just find it interesting to think about.

[probablyasocialecologist]

But, you may ask, why wouldn’t cleaning and menial tasks be automated in the future? It’s a valid question, but one that assumes other people will address it. This handy bit of sci-fi logic overlooks the fact that a military is a vast labor force that can be coerced—via the chain of command—into taking on “other duties, as needed.” Sure, a military’s primary purpose is to hang the threat of violence over the heads of another polity, but in the meantime there’s food to cook, passageways to clean, toilets to scrub, and so on. A professional military can be used to carry out these other tasks because it costs less. It also leads to soldiers being used for incongruous and insidious functions, such as “diplomatic missions” teaching children in occupied territories how to dance La Macarena. This helps mask the brutal nature of military occupation and manufactures consent for imperialism. Given how often mainstream entertainment, including superhero films among many others, is subsidized by the Pentagon, perhaps honest depictions of grunt work are viewed as “negative portrayals” and subject to funding getting cut for such projects. After all, if military life was shown to be as tedious as the life of a fast food worker, how useful could it be as a recruitment tool? While it’s not clear how much films and television “wag the dog” with respect to the written fiction that once inspired them (and is increasingly shaped by them), it can subtly influence whether military science fiction writers include these details in their written work. This erasure of most grunt work from military science fiction is at best romanticizing a rather mundane job; at worst, it serves—intentionally or not—as imperialist propaganda.

[nshtn]

Obviously I'm new to your blog and your writing etc. so for the uroboros headcanon request - what's your own personal favorite hc you have for Uroboros Wesker? Anything special that diverges from canon or where you take liberties? Do you consider one of your hcs to be unique to your interpretation? //chinhands

[ Albert Wesker AU info & HCs ]

[ psychological / behavioral, personal, silly ]

They are so derivative of the canon that at this point the canon is merely a cloth to unravel and make yarn to sew into what I perceive, loosely framing events around how my Wesker approaches things differently. It's not his biggest canon events that change, but much of the perceived filler and the ways in which he processes them.

I'm going to use this post to make a grander explanation and debut! Please, feel free to send follow-up questions for clarification. I adore writing for him and want to flesh him out <3.

ᴺᵒʷ ᵖˡᵃʸᶦⁿᵍ; [Mood Music]

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| ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯ |

TW for childhood trauma/C-PTSD, mentions of murder (and canon-typical violence), medical trauma...

Psychological:

He has alexithymia, learned sociopathy & psychopathy, raging C-PTSD from "familial" trauma, and an obsessive personality disorder with strong roots in maintaining unity and control.

Alexithymia: He struggles to identify positive emotions within himself that aren't crackling and popping. He prefers to drift in a none-too-powerful neutrality and sterilized apathy that feels safe because it's known. Emotions he is capable of easily slotting into, explaining, and approaching include confusion and interest, boredom and focus, confidence, anger and disgust. Emotions he most often forces down, struggles to identify (and thus properly express) or cuts away near-automatically include being ecstatic, fear, sadness and grief, empathetic compassion or sympathy, embarrassment and any kind of romance.

Sociopathy & Psychopathy: Wesker was not born as these things, he was made into them - manufactured. He has been spared no forge or flame, and has the deeply honed ability to cease feeling emotions that cause him to lose sight of his goals or disrupt his focus. This comes at the expense of fueling homicidal thoughts that rebound with the intensity of that repression. The only emotion he cannot bury to its' hilt is interest, which always springs back up later, a cockroach he can swat but cannot crush. Early into his career as a bio-weapons virologist, he is high-functioning. By the events of Resident Evil 5, he has degraded into manic and low-functioning.

C-PTSD: Growing up under Spencer's Umbrella indoctrination was nothing short of physical and psychological torture highlighted with the lingering current of medical trauma and social deprivation. Beatings would continue until morale improved, and food, water, and entertainment were privileges. Handlers, not parents, cared for him, and were routinely, purposefully cycled. Being angry or academically successful was the only thing that came with it no coattail of the hot iron of punishment. As a result, Wesker is socially maladjusted, icy, goal-married and purpose-driven, hair-splittingly sharp, pessimistic and sardonic - by many metrics, Project W's goal of fitting his initial hyperempathetic square of a personality into their round, clean-shaven peg of purpose was successful. However, not by all metrics...

Obsessive Disorder: Wesker was always genetically shackled to obsession. He has high glutamate and GABA - like many savants - and has all of the neurochemical changes associated with obsessive-compulsive behavior. Having obsession rewarded has led him to covet it and view it as a boon, allowing him to expend unhealthy focus on his goals. It, however, also plays into his inability to suppress interest and ultimately causes him to naturally slot into a compulsive need for control over even the most mundane aspects of life.

Despite this, he is not terribly violent nor does he spit forth the expected volley of constant rage. He does not enjoy the messy, frantic planning of execution and disposal; he prefers to approach situations with multiple level-headed plans of action, each plan more drastic than the last, until it reaches the point at which no other possible solution exists but utmost violence.

When he is forced to solve his problems with violence, though, he does not shy from dirty tactics and has no codex for honor in death. He will employ any tactic necessary to secure his unyielding success, whether that be causing global catastrophe, mass murder, planting spies, the violation of the geneva conventions, or any other long list of canon-typical violence native to the ultimate chase of his ideals.

There is only one thing that Wesker does not directly involve himself in when the need arises, though he is willing to do so indirectly: the involvement of children. He is not Spencer. (In fact, when in direct contact with children, he is rendered docile.)

Personal, unsorted:

He refutes a perfectly white labcoat and his choice of dress is intentionally obstinate and spiteful.

Wearing a full white labcoat fills him with inescapable dread and a feeling of childlike vulnerability that he avoids at all costs. Even in his early Umbrella days, he finds a way to get his hands on a light blue one, yellow, anything...

His later, freely-made choice of full black attire is a presentation of his internal doom-and-gloom and a psychosexual liberty - his tacticool skintight choices are intentful, he very much likes both the look and feel of tight, restrictive attire and the shine of latex and leather.

Wesker has suspicious scars. He hides them.

'Experimentation' on his form as a child as a form of punishment for rebellion has left his hands and the tender veins of his wrists compromised by ugly, threatening pockmarks. Thus, gloves.

He has had his appendix pre-emptively removed by Spencer to reduce the chance of downtime later.

He was sterilized early to reduce the chance of straying from the path of Project W, but it did not hold. This is, however, a point of insecurity for him irregardless.

His relation to Spencer was never terribly positive, the man's control over him less so, but following the reveal of Project W he has an unmatched, broiling, tossing-turning-spitting-boiling hatred.

He murders Spencer in a much more personal, slow and torturous way than his canon counterpart.

He goes into a manic depressive state that ultimately leads to the creation of Uroboros and his downfall as a result of this, though he was already veering towards a similar path because of his nurture as an imperfect man-made monster.

I am a Wesker Sweet Tooth truther, sorry (though he is picky as a result of a rebellion against childhood's near-Soylenting).

He exerts an unhealthy calorie-counting control over his diet, but depressions and S.T.A.R.S-era forward see him progressively loosen this to account for the occasional sweetie.

Big into anything that takes absurd skill to make, like Petit Fours, Macarons, Baked Alaska and Crepe Cakes (minis!) Ordered, scantly made; the time cannot be found to practice this, but in another life he might have been a profound baker.

Secretly appreciative of funnel cake and You Tiao, but they're a once-a-year thing, if at all.

Tried dehydrated ice cream from an MRE once. Chasing the mouth-feel stim ever since, he's experimented and found a hidden cache of joy in the fiber-rich bland sweet'n'salty of sprouted young coconut.

He personally makes Springerle around Christmas and carves out time to do so, then packs one or two into his diet to come as they soften. They are sweet and dense, satisfying his urge for a biscuit and a sweet in one in the initial four to six months following, and they're advantageous to make.

Likes spicy to kick him awake in the morning. Strong chai tea is a nicety. Loose-leaf pilled and snooty.

Wesker's relation with William Birkin was one of admiration, equality, intellectual debate and, eventually, feelings of great interest.

His feelings were not fully returned out of an abundance of fear and caution, but they were occasionally entertained and experimented with before the arrival of Annette. It was simply infeasible.

Birkin was an intellectual equal, if not a superior. He has fantasized of the duo they could have been had he dosed Birkin with Uroboros. Birkin was one of few willing to debate virology with him and tone-match his icy arguments, even capable of winning.

He never stopped admiring Birkin, leading to the incorporation of G into Uroboros. It is an incorporation that finds its' roots sleeping with subconscious grief, what-ifs and could-have-beens he cannot afford to acknowledge with neither time nor the sanity to grapple them.

Wesker's relation with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine were initially sour and resentful of their normalcy and outward, unlimited expressions, but quietly bloomed forth from this into crestfallen admiration, friendship, and ultimately, deathly obsession (for Chris, this also included love). [When not pairing him with a reader, of course].

Team Alpha were his piggies. His toys to break, his toys to play with, mind and mold and mentor. The Mansion Incident was easy enough to sleep Team Bravo, but the most uncommon emotion was fished from his depths and chained to his demeanor with Team Alpha: empathy, compassion.

Chris was his favorite, though. Physically equal, matching his sardonic wit in a natural easy charm as cool as he was cold. Chris' planning and teamwork skill eventually superseded Marini's, and then it grew to crux even his own. The curiosity sparked and ignited furiously at the idea that his intellect alone could not amass the sheer unity and control Chris could command signed with love and feeling.

Spencer's gift of infection is Prototype Leech Progenitor, and holds the name Progenitor 0067, which is why it is printed out as PG67A/W [Progenitor 0067 Albert/Wesker.]

It's startlingly stable, but it begins to unravel as time drags on. It is made unstable by emotion in a manner not entirely dissimilar to T-Phobos, both enhanced and injured by rage and subconscious desire; mutation increases laterally with low dopamine, high norepinephrine, and an uptick in cortisol and cholecystokinin. It is inevitably bound to cause negative side-effects as negative mutations begin to fester unchecked.

Its' primary symptom of infection includes thermochromic bioluminescence of the iris and keratinous growths. The iris' melanocytes are invaded by the virus and begin to respond to nerve endings' temperature signalling with aptly-named luciferase and rapid uncomplicated hypervascularization, leading to a red-yellow appearance.

It does not have the stabilizing matrix of Ebola genes, much to Wesker's chagrin.

It is compatible with Uroboros in a very odd way that no other virus is because of how much of its' gene expression is genetically leech.

He survives the events of RE5.

He mutates into a very large and very feral Uroboros monster with hundreds of whipping appendages, but, notably, his body remains and does not explode into a Mkono or Aheri. Here's a chibi version of his monstrous form.

Feed the feral beast enough biomass and the man's consciousness nestled within will be hooked and fished to the surface.

He requires ~5,000 - ~6,700 calories a day to maintain baseline non-feral consciousness, and far, far more to regain his intellect.

Silly:

He can sing very well.

Very much a shower hummer. Brisk cold showers cannot hold back the tide of humming Don Henley's Inside Job under his breath.

S.T.A.R.S-era saw him purchase a Walkman F15. (In fact, it would not be rare to catch him humming as he slavered over paperwork during this time, nor was he bashful of it).

He likes Jurassic Park as a book and the automatons and quadruped suits in the movies, but does not like the movies' plot portrayal.

He finds it shameful that they stripped most of the allegories and paleontological accuracy to focus on Dinosaur Scary. Absolutely a feathered theory truther who thinks Thomas Henry Huxley had it right.

Those velociraptors were utahraptors to him. No other explanation in his mind, don't try to play him for a fool.

He struggles to read subtext in books and prefers writing that isn't flowery.

He's got the same affliction as Einstein - he's autistic. He was spared any kind of clear, visible regression or failure to thrive of other skills unlike most savants. In fact, all of Project W's prospective pupils are autistic savants. Flowery, emotion-welled text gels with neither his genetics nor his upbringing.

His accent is Umbrella-manufactured and specific to it.

Diphthongs from repeated 'o' are transformed into 'au', like British, but 'r' and 't' are both retained entirely. It has its' roots in British Received Pronunciation, the traditional 'posh upper-class'ccent'.

He actually tamps it down somewhat... it's normally pretty strong. Exposure to S.T.A.R.S also transformed it into its' own filtered beast.

It shines through to a crippling degree the angrier he is. Bile-spitting Wesker sounds like he's going to roast you for your stock holdings and tea choices. (S.T.A.R.S-era Chris and Marini found this hard to take seriously)

He's a yapper level 100. So is Birkin.

You are sooner to die from thirst after receiving a disciplinary monologuing longer than any published TEDTalk (spoken as if it were copied from an official document) than you are to be murdered for simping or being pissy. He entertains debate, but is so debate-minded and source-pilled that you will be verbally beaten into submission if for nothing else than the glorious feeling of academic domination (unless you're Birkin).

He is normally quiet unless provoked into said monologue, with a deep and judgmental inner voice that never ceases.

[laundryandtaxes]

It really highlights how deeply unserious, superficial, and functionally random the populist conservative bit is for Trump (the alternative explanation is being surrounded by enough real conservatives to tame his populist impulses, but I think Trump actually learned his lesson on that even by the end of his first term) that his idea of boosting American manufacturing involves just placing tariffs on basically everything Americans purchase day to day when the vast majority of Americans cannot afford the American made alternatives where they even exist. Perhaps a shift at McDonald's didn't teach him this, but it is obvious to me that the manufacturing capacity of the country itself is a fraction of what it once was- it's not that American goods are just being outcompeted in the global market AND in the domestic market, they often just don't exist at all, or are too expensive for most American consumers to consider purchasing (which they largely have to be, in order to support anything like a living wage for the workers who produce those goods because the person making your T shirt has to eat food).

If the end goal was actually just to make more stuff here, we could just pay people to manufacture here via financial incentives- carrots such as nearly free money. This would still not solve the math problem of the cost of making goods here, but it would mean more factories and workshops making shirts and boots and plates and such, and it would mean employment in those jobs. He could tax an incredibly small population of unimaginably wealthy people to fund it and even call it an "elites tax" if he wanted. He could run it through Congress and brag that it was bipartisan whether it needs to be (due to the makeup of the House) or not. And he could actually inject money, meaningfully and directly, into American manufacturing and its growth. And I genuinely think that would be great- even if it wouldn't solve high prices, it would mean new jobs and it's possible that prices could come down a bit on products if they became more widely purchased generally, and there are enough people interested and able to purchase American made to, I would guess, sustain real growth for those manufacturers.

But that would mean that Elon Musk and literally just 800 other people would be given a new tax burden, and we can't have that because it would squash innovation. Offshoring was an innovation, once. We just ended one of the longest periods of basically free money for them in my lifetime and have seen how much good that does for working people- none.

So no, instead let's give even more tax cuts to the corporations that intentionally decimated America's manufacturing capabilities so that they could pay almost nothing for labor and have almost no accountability for workplace conditions offshore. Thanks for offshoring the work that sustained whole communities and never got replaced in many places- here are some juicy tax cuts for you in return. It's actually a joke.

[artbyblastweave]

i dont know anything about fallout except its a wild west postnuclear survivor game and there’s a jaunty lil dude who’s always giving you a thumbsup? Anyway i would love to know your thoughts on water collection/distribution and/or the economy of mended stuff.

sorry your brain is on the brink

In the context of fallout? The post-nuclear Water economy is the backbone of three different games; the plot of the first involves you getting kicked out of your fancy underground Bunker City in order to find replacement parts for the water filtration system, and the rudimentary post-apocalyptic society you explore uses a currency backed on the water standard (in lieu of the Gold Standard- one bottlecap for one bottle of water.). Water Merchants (those with access to water towers, etc) are power players in the nascent political ecosystem. The (not-very-well-considered) plot of the third game involves trying to get a widespread water purification program working for the DC area. And the central conflict of New Vegas (sometimes referred to as "the really good one,") consists of the local powers brawling over control of the still-functional Hoover Dam due to the control it would provide over the regions freshwater and electricity supply.

I liked New Vegas's take on the scavenged-equipment economy the best. The setting shift to Nevada (previous games by the same writing team being in California) is in part meant to reflect that people back west have simply run out of old-world materials to scavenge, and are now back to living in actual cities that they build out of novel materials, eating food they grow and cook- which makes for a boring place to set a game, hence the shift to the "frontier" of Vegas, where you'll encounter neo-western "prospectors" (scavengers) looking for new claims to tap for pre-war resources to supplement what re-industrialized society can produce. Many of the weapons and armor-sets you use and fight against are encountered in a mad-max style environment, but many of them aren't implausibly-still-in-use antiques- they're being manufactured by a largely off-screen 21st-century-styled liberal-democratic society that's rebuilt enough to redevelop mass consumption and arms conglomerates, the negative externalities of which are spilling out to affect those on the frontier.

[obviousniklr]

💀AiJyul in Murder Drones💀

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Recently I've been inspired to make MD designs for Aires and Juliet based off MD character designs from Picrew. And now, here's their more custom and final design as well as their info and personalities.

(Also I didn't realized until after I finished these that drones actually has 4 fingers instead of the usual 5 so... Ignore that if you noticed it, it's just a habit thing.)

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❌AIRES

• Half worker drone (external) and Half disassembly drone (internal)

• She hides her tail inside her coat

• She doesn't know she has disassembly drone abilities before her encounter with JULIET

• She likes hanging out with other worker drones and considers herself one

• MD AIRES' personality is almost like normal Aires but her side of being youthful, energetic, sweet, naive, and likes to be quirky has been raised

• She likes digging up lost human media

Other info about Aires (in terms of her DD side):

• She has additional appendages of a DD such as wings, claws, and jagged teeth, as well as enhanced performance such as speed. She only uses them in offense/violent mode

• Her hand tools are only limited to just the claw

• She can also use nanite acid from her tail and a neutralizer from her saliva

• Luckily, instead of consuming oil from other drones to save herself from overheating, she can resort to other sustenance a worker drone can digest. But in turn she tends to be more hungrier/wants food alot.

(But...if there does come a time where it's desperate and she hasn't eaten in a while, that cannibalistic nature will come. But she'll only go for the corpses/remains. Or that drone they just killed.)

• Her regenerating ability is slower. If it's a bigger body like the head, it's much more so. And unlike normal DDs, she only searches/uses non-organic material to repair herself (which she can probably find anywhere considering... there's alot of drone corpses in Copper 9 due to the DD's work)

• Her DD side DOES cause defects in some of her functions. Like the X in her eye, her visor has a blurred view on that side (except when she's in violent mode)

• The reason why AIRES and how she functions is much more pacifistic/controlled compare to normal DDs is due to her mixed programming as well as her development (aka how she grew up/how her parents taught her)

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🗡️ JULIET

• Used to be a worker drone now an assassin drone due to her group of folks converting into one after the massacre DDs have done to some of them

• Overtime, she became a trained assassin drone

• She's more resilient, skilled, and tactical when it comes to fighting

• She has a modest and polite disposition but is actually apathetic and calculated

• But sometimes she does have a kinder and softer side, often displaying Tsundere attitude

• When in battle, she uses any object she can find useful to attack or defend, but mostly prefers sharp objects

• But that's mostly because she's fond of collecting sharp stuff/weapons. You can even find her have sharp objects in her pockets sometimes.

• After her first encounter with AIRES, she gave JULIET a peach pin. Saying that "humans say there are two kinds of 'peach', there are soft peaches and hard peaches. And knowing you more now, a peach really does fit you!"

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AEDDA (Assassination of Every Disassembly Drones Assembly)

(ngl I should've named it Elimination of Every Disassembly Drones Assembly (EEDDA) instead, sounds...a bit more sophisticated(?))

Is a group of used to be worker drones whose mission is to eliminate every disassembly drone that has been manufactured, in honor of many of their loves ones who has fallen and murdered by claws. Their goal is to eliminate every single one, even outside Copper 9. They will also hunt down those who tries to blend in the worker drones society.

(Also the reason why I went with this narrative for JULIET is because there are evidences of other disassembly drones existing/ed. Still unsure tho if more are being manufactured.)

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A bit of a quick rundown of their story and their first encounter:

Also this won't be a fully detailed story, just a quick gloss of the events as well as important details. Anyways lesgo...

They first met up after class, JULIET being the new attendee, and insisted them to be friends (so she can know more about AIRES and confirm if she really is a disassembly drone). The longer they converse, the farther they went from school (or whatever facility they were taking the class), where there's no other drones to witness JULIET eliminating AIRES. Once her assumptions were confirmed, she points a jagged sword at AIRES' visor, causing a huge shift from their comfortable chat to a serious confrontation. AIRES immediately runs away, JULIET being just behind her. After turns of hitting and missing, and trying to tie JULIET with her tail, she eventually punctures the sword in AIRES' chest, followed by more and more slashes to the hard metal. When she was almost done with her job, hesitation suddenly came. She starts to become conflicted on killing a drone who she just met a few hours ago. Is she suddenly becoming compassionate again? Why now? This gave AIRES the leeway as well to talk to her, maybe persuade her to let her go or why did she suddenly stopped. Is it a conscious thing? They decided to take this matter instead to the AEDDA, maybe they can recommend an alternative.

But that wasn't the case though, obviously. JULIET asks the assembly of any possible way to let AIRES go, besides "she's half worker drone, she won't cause harm right? She doesn't even know or hasn't used her abilities before", but they will not let atleast one slide. They plug in a chip at AIRES, immobilizing her, dropping to the floor. They waited... until a pair of wings extended from her back, getting up with only the "X" remaining on her visor and a wide smile with jagged teeth. Before she could even move from her position, a railgun beam strikes at her, disintegrated her head till her upper torso, the rest of it falls back to the floor. The rest of the assembly leaves and goes back to their business as a job has been finished. One of the assembly heads gives the distraught JULIET the task to dump the remains with to "the pile", so she does what she has been told. She drags AIRES' bottom half to a large room filled with piles of drone corpses, both worker and disassembly drones, and instead of throwing her to the piles, she just leaves the remains in the middle of the room and leaves.

JULIET takes a visit to AIRES' residence, telling them that she was ordered to fetch some of AIRES' clothes. She's been delightfully welcomed and here is where she sees her room and know more about her, and how she genuinely wants to "be normal". After this, she takes her leave but before she goes, AIRES mom gives her snacks to give to her, "she can be pretty peckish when she hasn't eaten in a while".

She comes back to the pile room where... she sees a confused AIRES, just sitting where she left her. She gave her the clothes (and snacks) and tells her to go back home. Confused and not ready to leave yet, decides to follow JULIET, who comes outside of the facility and just ponders on her own. They talk more, about their worries and past, about what to do with their situation, and eventhough JULIET is reluctant of getting soft and being friendly towards a disassembly drone, AIRES makes her feel welcomed to be friends, even after the harsh things she did to her.

But they're suddenly interrupted by a new, and sharp guess. Another murder drone who has spotted them in the open. JULIET didn't waste a second to move and attack. Though she is skilled to match the speed of a disassembly drone, it wasn't enough to still get tripped and get hit by their tricks. But luckily, AIRES swoops in to save her, using her wings and claws for the first time. The two teams up to fight this single murder drone. And after finding a gun to use and a slice to the neck by AIRES' wings, they eventually defeated the drone. But before leaving it, JULIET comes closer to the remains, stabbing a hole to reveal its core and stabbing it more, multiple times, and also shooting it with a gun, till it's nothing more than glop inside a drone's torso. AIRES felt nervous after witnessing that. After this they finally go back to their separate ways and head home, with a promise by AIRES that "we should see each other sometimes and hangout" with a bright smile. "You know I can't hang out with someone like you, especially that you're supposed to be dead but... I'll find a way."

Later on, members of the assembly visits JULIET's residence and orders her to come with them to the assembly head's office. In there, they show her surveillance footage of her walking with the disassembly drone. She makes the defense that "this was probably before the time I showed her to you guys. Y-You don't know what time that happened." In which... they actually accepted it as plausible, and let's her go, for now. Due to that, JULIET became anxious of her safety now in the assembly, so that night she finally decided and plans to leave and escape the assembly facility. She stages an attack in her residence to make them assume that she has died so they wouldn't track her down, as well as removing the tracker in her badge. She snuck out when it's time and went to the surveillance room and erased any evidences of her escape, as well as all the footage that has been recorded that day. After escaping the facility, she goes to the only residence she can trust and rest for the night.

AIRES is happy that she has a roommate now, and from their last midnight talk of the day, they plan to make their own assassination team instead since JULIET hasn't given up the mission that has been embedded to her programming, and to also seek revenge from a death her loved ones.

So basically their story moving forward is that they'll be hunting DDs too, AIRES learns more info and on how to use her DD abilities, and them two growing more closer, JULIET growing back a sense of empathy.

Okay and that's all for now on the MD AiJyul talk :v. Still unsure if I wanna draw more of this in the future, but I just wanna lay down the beginning stuff for now.

Oh and lastly, Murder Drones is cool 👍👍 issa cool and quirky series 👍👍✨ hence why this happened too 😂