#i guess it's the sulfur??

[stedesbonnets]

so i'm using the dermalogica fizz mask and it's mini exploding and sunk into my face in a minute what is this

[r-aindr0p]

Ough art block hit me so uh... random twst crossover stuff since I can't concentrate on main ptojects atm 🫠

More vatican miracle examiner propaganda and a few of the boys in magical girl/boy outfits, busts bc I'm lazy rn

[0x1000]

Something I hadn't seen noted on here yet: the all-new alchemical skull symbols! Blue is mercury (☿, spirit) and red (🜍, soul) is sulfur. Very fun!

[twisting-roads]

haopy birthmas have this

Also here's prediction for the final page of lotg (you can tell i still have not read it

THANK JACK accurate origami hat characterization.

also whos this goober

[mercless]

the nose shape... 🥰

[beeapocalypse]

GIRL. daans diagnosis of the moonscorched constantly remarking upon how they look like theyve been both burned and frostbitten. what the hell

^ this screenshot is unrelated but umm. hi per'kele 😳

[daily-dragonvale-dragons]

May 31st 2024, a Friday: Sulfur dragon (baby)

[therxtking]

Oh, What's the Skaven/Retchen situation looking like now that Gordon has been usurped? How's that going?

I FORGOT ABOUT THE SKAVEN-

Yeah they're banished from the Retchen's lands and trespassing will be taken as an act of war. Simply chased them out of their mines and establishments all the way out of the territory and didn't allow the Retchen to take anything with them.

Gordon's still deep under the palace in the cold caves hanging on by a thread in his secret bunker thing.

[neptunianrefrain]

does anyone else in this house gag at the smell of cooked eggs or is that just me

[trammellesstangent]

The people on this train may be slightly afraid of me now. I just ordered sulfuric acid and a cyanide salt over the phone.

[arolesbianism]

Also in my current main oni playthrough I'm at 22 duplicants and my goal for the playthrough is to get all of them so I'm abt halfway there but god damn do I not have enough space for more of these fuckers I'm going to be able to shove some more into my two newest colonies on the two planetoids I've traveled to so far but one of them like Just got started so it's going to be a while before I'm confident in upscaling it, and the other one is mostly made up of radioactive biomes and salt water biomes with the only more livable biomes being at the very edges and the very bottom of the map, so while I do have a pretty stable base getting set up over there it's going to be pretty obnoxious getting the living space set up due to how little space I have in my current main base area and how far away the other forest biomes are from that. On the bright side I found the mysterious hermit home on the brand new planetoid so I at least don't have to worry abt him as much, although I'm gonna be real idk how I'm going to get food production up and running since there's like No dirt, and I don't rly want to have to send someone back up through the surface magma biome to pick up any dropped off supplies.

[restlessreveries]

I don't wanna work with pipes anymore...

[iamthepulta]

Iron ore isn't my specialty, definitely not steelmaking proper, but I do know a little about the differences.

Iron loves oxygen, so unlike a lot of metals we mine bonded with sulfur, iron ore is bonded with oxygen, which takes a lot of energy to break. In order to do that, we basically give it something that oxygen likes more, like carbon. Coal/coke starts the reaction, being a combustible, and lime Ca(OH)2 allows CaCO3/CaSi2O6 to form, along with any other impurities from the ore. The molten liquid that doesn't form a gas is lighter than iron, so it floats to the top and is periodically 'tapped' out. Cast iron (little to no carbon) is produced, and sent to the Basic Oxygen Furnace, which is just a way we can control the amount of carbon that volatilizes. Steel is iron with about .8-2.0% carbon. I assume this is the point where we add other alloys. So you could make a batch of chromium steel, a batch of manganese steel, etc.

To run a blast furnace though, you have to continuously blow hot air through the chamber where the ore, coke, and lime are being fed in order to properly remove the carbon. Iron oxides only melt at very high temperatures, which is why it was a relatively late metal innovation.* These are also continuous processes; there's no stopping a blast furnace unless you use a lot of energy to restart it. Tapping out the iron and the slag is done continuously day/night.

*Footnote: Iron Age really doesn't count, in my opinion. Europe used very basic batch process methods to make iron until essentially late 1700s. Since they're hot enough to melt the ore it means you can cast the product into whatever you want rather than hammering it piecemeal via blacksmithing. China was the only one who invented the blast furnace and that technology was later lost and had to be rediscovered. However, this is a personal opinion. Take with grain of salt, etc.

I'm reading a paper on the production of steel through EAF so I hope this translation actually sounds coherent, lol.

Arc furnaces only take steel because they're batch processes. Coke/graphite is added to stimulate the arc, and then melting occurs gradually. Desirable and undesirable elements, like Chromium, Manganese, Sulfur, and Phosphorus are already included in the steel, or have been added, via gradual oxidation. (Usually not the case for proper iron ore. There's a lot of magnesium, but otherwise mostly iron, silica, aluminum, and oxygen.)

It's at this phase (and/or a BOF), which is basically the same process but only for iron ore, that sulfur and phosphorus are removed. Both will make your steel very brittle. Oxygen is usually added to collect the elements that had been added, or partition the alloy elements you do want into the steel. Then oxygen is removed again by adding silica and aluminum, and the steel is cast.

The idea, I think, is that an EAF is a more controlled environment than the blast furnace and focused on refinement, but still requires coke/coal/carbon/graphite to start and regulate the process. For the BOF, the iron is already molten and fairly pure, so it's refinement, but mostly adding carbon and alloys in.

Fundamentally, iron production is the opposite of stuff like copper's production. Iron is already oxidized, and we need to reduce it to make steel. We want to oxidize copper in order to separate it from other elements. Carbon just happens to be the way we reduce iron. So if we can find another reductant, like sulfur, theoretically we could transition away from coal.

However, this is NOT my specialty so I'm CC'ing @weekendviking in case he has some experience to add, along with thoughts about transitioning away from met coal. (Please correct any inaccuracies I have too. I tried my best but I don't know pyrometallurgy.)

success, everybody, i thought about something other than vampires for like a twenty minute stretch. the something was: electric arc furnaces

about 7% of us coal consumption is metallurgical coal, which is used (after being coked) as fuel for blast furnaces. blast furnaces smelt ore and scrap metal, usually to make steel. most coal in the united states is used for the power grid & must be replaced with renewable sources, but it's a little more straightforward to see how that swap needs to go; we need better batteries & genuine investment, there are questions about where & how those renewable sources should be generated, & i do think that our power consumption needs to fall. it's less obvious how we might replace metallurgical coal, though, because we still need steel. electric arc furnaces are efficient, cheaper, smaller, and more capable of running variable loads than blast furnaces, but almost all of them are for the scrap metal -> steel process, they're not for iron ore -> iron -> steel. but we are getting better at making them! so i read through part of a DoE powerpoint & glowered at links to mckinsey reports about it. i don't know anything really about metals mining, mostly i've just read about coal & all of that from a labor safety perspective, but i'm very curious about the, like. engineering problems (and also still labor safety & environmental problems) presented by trying to genuinely transition away from coal, which we absolutely must do, like guys even UMWA is out here like 'we gotta stop pulling this shit out of the ground' [official position of union president cecil roberts is that coal miners & their communities need a 'just transition' away from coal]

[inconveniently-discorporated]

I think I have a potentially controversial opinion on Aziraphale and the ending.

So one of the things that made me smile so, SO much, was THIS:

That PURE ABSOLUTE UTTER JOY.

We have not seen ANYTHING like that from demon Crowley. We've seen him be drunk and silly, we've seen him be amused, but we've not seen this.

Now, let's consider what we know about Heaven:

It's never fully populated. ALL of the shots are completely devoid of angels, except for a few, who are almost always just getting somewhere and never really talking to each other.

Where I thought the archangels were a tight clan, it really looks like they're super catty and prone to jealousy. No doubt they would stab each other in the back happily if it came down to it. How much of Heaven is like that, if even the archangels all hate each other?

Aziraphale already has a nervous disposition when he meets Crowley. Is he perhaps an angel that NEVER fit in? Is he familiar with being ostracized by his peers? Just how lonely IS Heaven? Crowley seems to be a pretty powerful angel, and HE doesn't even know that it's all getting shut down in 6000 years -- it's like no one talks to anyone.

Aziraphale, during their whole meeting, looks absolutely smitten. At one point, Crowley goes, "Look at you! You're gorgeous!" and Aziraphale looks over with happy surprise, just before realizing he's not looking at him but rather at what he's created. And then, when Crowley starts going on about making suggestions and asking questions, Aziraphale is IMMEDIATELY concerned and doesn't want him to get into trouble.

Aziraphale is hooked on this angel, and I cannot help but think that this is perhaps the first angel who has ever WELCOMED Aziraphale into his company.

He is hooked on this angel, and the way Crowley smiles is with the light of all the stars he's just created, and it's infectious and it brings a smile to Aziraphale's face as well. And then this angel shields him from the oncoming falling stars.

He is hooked on this angel, and then this angel goes and joins the Great Rebellion, and becomes fallen himself.

"You were an angel once," Aziraphale said, softly, at the bandstand. He remembers.

I think it's reasonable to guess that Heaven has never felt so warm as it did in the presence of millions of exploding stars, next to the (arch?)angel that may perhaps be one of the few (only?) to pay him any positive attention.

I think it's reasonable to assume that Heaven was not the same after Crowley fell. I wouldn't be surprised to find out Aziraphale had wondered about the angel, wondered if he was okay. I would imagine that Aziraphale keeps that picture of pure, angelic, unbridled joy somewhere inside of him.

So, really, is it any surprise that threaded throughout EVERY interaction, Aziraphale has this deep-down feeling that Crowley is good? Would it be any surprise that Aziraphale, an angel who goes along with Heaven as far as he can (which isn't always), feels that if HE is still an angel, then what was done to Crowley was a great injustice?

I think it would make sense that we are shown "before the beginning" not just because it is fun, but because THIS is the foundational context for everything Aziraphale thinks Crowley is, everything Crowley enjoys. I think he remembers this moment and wishes he could live there forever. With Crowley. The two of them with this happiness, forever.

But nothing lasts forever, as much as he wishes it did.

I'm not saying Aziraphale was right with what he did to Crowley at the end of s2. There is a lot I think he did wrong. I think he held onto this picture so tightly, he didn't realize that Crowley had long since let it go, and painted a new one with Aziraphale with all the shades of grey he picked up as he sauntered (or plummeted) vaguely downward (into a pool of boiling sulfur).

I don't think he was right, but I do think he is understandable. I think there was a lot of selfishness, but also some misguided selflessness too. I watched that first scene with angelic Crowley and my heart actually broke a little, because I thought, "What a shame this joy was taken away from him."

I think Aziraphale is trying to right the injustice he feels has been done. But I also think Aziraphale doesn't realize that Crowley can never go back. The concept of falling never crossed Crowley's mind when he suggested that he ask a few questions, and he will NEVER get that kind of innocence back. And Aziraphale doesn't understand, because Heaven has clearly always just been that way for him (he is already aware of the danger of asking questions).

Crowley does not want to go back because he can never go back. He can never be the same angel he was when he thought he could build a universal machine that would crank out stars for eons and eons. He can never be the same angel he was when he thought he could make some suggestions and ask some questions and co-create with THE Creator.

Crowley understands that, and Aziraphale doesn't. But I can understand why Aziraphale would want to try. And I think it's all because of this:

[therxtking]

I frankly don't think Sulfur has legitimately worked out or trained physically a single day in his life. He can't even hunt.

[rainbowpopeworld]

Whoopsie! 😇🤭💨

Heyo, ineffables, I keep seeing this come up in a lot of Good Omens fanfic I read, so fwiw, fyi:

Sulfur and brimstone are the same thing. Brimstone is just an earlier word for sulfur that comes from Old English.

Also you know that smell you get when you hardboil eggs for too long, or leave a bunch of hardboiled eggs in the fridge? That's sulfur. It's not a sexy burning smell like rubber or magnesium or creosote have; it's very much a smell like a fart.

Hope this helps, and to every one of you who writes fic: Thank you. You save lives. ❤️💙