#killing several tens of THOUSANDS OF BOTS

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

yknow, on any other website, this would be a cool achievement:

but like. my followers list looks like THIS and i do not have the spare TIME to fix it:

[eretzyisrael]

Last week, a representative of an Israeli social threat intelligence firm Cyabra spoke at a Knesset session about how a coordinated influence campaign from Iraq was using bots in the first days of the war to impact public opinion.

I've discussed this a little, and I spent some more time looking at the bots attacking my account.

Social media allows attackers to quickly adjust their methods to see what is working and what isn't. I'm finding that they are getting more effective at their messaging.

The ones attacking me are specifically trying to turn the Israeli public against the war. They post almost exclusively in Hebrew. They are using a few vectors for their messaging that would resonate with Israelis: attacking Netanyahu's leadership, pretending to care about the hostages, and claiming that the IDF is hiding things from the public during the war and things are going badly.

When they create new bot accounts, they will use Jewish and Israeli iconography in their profiles - lots of Israeli flags, for example. 

They'll use typically Jewish and Israeli names - lots of "Levy" and "Cohen" and "Friedman"s. And there is a hierarchy - some older bot accounts that have been around for several months that aren't specifically Israeli sounding are feeding a second tier, which might have 30-150 fake followers of other bots, and then the bottom tier will only have one or two followers. Nearly all of the bottom tier accounts have been created within the past few weeks. 

Often, the accounts will start off by following and retweeting actual popular Zionist accounts (including mine) to make themselves look legitimate,. and sometimes this fools real people into following them, making it a little harder to identify them.

I don't know where they get their content, but it is getting much more sophisticated every day. Here is a video that was posted by hundreds of those bots where they use humor to try to demoralize Israelis into thinking the IDF is killing hostages and being killed by Hamas because of stupidity. This one seems to have been created by an Arab account but they added Hebrew messaging. 

As I mentioned last week, Iranian-linked sites are bragging that they are learning Hebrew and studying the Israeli psyche to fine tune these sorts of messages and make them appear to be truly from Israelis.

To these botmasters, Israeli dissension on how to conduct the war and anti-government protests are a godsend. It makes some of their messages look like they really could be from left-wing Israelis, and some of their material may indeed be from a fringe of Israelis. The sheer number of bots makes it appear that Israelis are far more divided.

The good news is that their attempt to use these bots to get a ceasefire or demoralize the Israeli public means that Hamas is losing, badly. But every social media user must understand how extensive and sophisticated these campaigns are to manipulate you. Tens of thousands of fake accounts, with millions of messages, is not a small scale campaign. 

[frostybearpaws]

SHAYA’JAX I CHOOSE YOU!

I would argue that Shaya is one of my more fleshed out characters because I’ve spent the most time on her deliberating back and forth what I want her to be and act like

so what world does Shaya come from and how has is shaped her?

Shaya lives in a world where the glory of humanity is a thing of the past. Humans built spaceships and explored the stars finding worlds that looked like they once had populations i.e. structures, old texts, what was left of old technology, but has gone missing (it is assumed that they fell down the same path as humanity and destroyed itself to which the humans happily took their place) this is a fate that humans were trying to avoid by spreading out

however after thousands of years of a world with super shoulders, designer babies, and genetic modifications humans started to look different

disaster struck in the early morning and the folding points which allowed different planetary civilizations to trade and talk to one another went dark for another thousand years.

skip a couple hundred years into after they re-established connections, we’re looking at a world that is trying to recover from when their worlds devolved into places of ruined recourses and world wide crises. Now they have started to rebuild these connections after the secret was once again unlocked.

Shaya comes from a place called Vanth. Vanthions live in a death world made of ice and is always below freezing even in the “warm” months. (It gets to like 25 degrees which is for Vanth, pretty damn warm)

Vanth as a planet was originally labeled as UNINHABITABLE because of the freezing temperatures and aggressive wild life, it’s like Australia on steroids and spear mint. A group of scientists wanted to test a new product they planed to sell to the Terran Military Industrial Complex where they would introduce micro-bots into the blood stream that could repair damaged tissue.

the scientists chose their participants in a very ethical way 😉 (they pulled from prisons, real ethical guys) and then unceremoniously injected with these bots. The idea was that after a few weeks the effect would wear off as the bots broke down, however there was a flaw that had not been checked due to the mechanisms being rolled before they were really ready.

a few days into the experiment after the several thousand participants were injected and left on the world, they were cut off. This lead to one of the most violent planets in the known universe.

the side effect of the micro-bots not breaking down is that it kept repairing the body even through every day tasks. Other completely destroying the head, there was no way to kill these people, add a desolate wasteland of ice where everyone is fighting for resources and suddenly all these factors lead to people developing very “creative” ways of dealing with one another.

after being reintroduced to the greater galaxy bd learning of the relative weaknesses compared to their downright insane physiology an organization formed called the butchers of Vanth.

which is bacislly a murder cult.

Shaya grew up within its walls undergoing grueling training exercises and conditions as they decided to set their main compound in the middle of nowhere.

The culture is based around merit, the more capable a butcher the more they are respected and the more influential they are.

Shaya grew up under the apprenticeship (another world for parenting) of Orthium a very high ranking member in the community. Shaya was trained by the crème de la crème of Vanthion society, Orthium used their power to pull some strings and have Shaya participating in missions (let’s face it: assassinations) at the age of ten rather than the usual age of thirteen.

it’s impressive but it’s also a lot of pressure. As she gets older she grows more emotionally distant from Orthium and begins to ask dangerous questions. Questions that lead her to taking more daring but more isolated missions so she can see the greater universe without the lens of another butcher impacting what she sees. After a while Shaya grows disillusioned with the violence perpetrated by the butchers and flees.

the leaders send their best after her to recover her and kill her for her disloyalty. (Which is still a stupid hard task considering they are all Vanthion)

Shaya for the most is fine being alone and roams the galaxy taking odd jobs and laying low.

at least until she meets Solis.

Hey! Do your OCs want to play with my OCs? Wanna drop them off at a daycare and watch them play together behind a one way mirror?

[enha-woodzies]

➸ CHAPTER 8 | " AFIRE LOVE "

starring: enhypen ft. i-land daniel

pairing: jungwon x fem!reader x sunghoon

genres: royal au, romance, angst, slowburn, 18th century setting

word count: 3.8k

warning: very mild swearing; brief arguments

taglist: @serendipitysung (betareader) @angeljungwon @en-sun @affectionaterainoflove @renkiv @softforjungwoo @jislix @gyeraniee @fluffi @stxrryemxlys @jungwon-luv-bot @lost-lepord-beanie @hyunsunge

[ PREV. CHAPTER ] | [ M. LIST ] | [ NEXT CHAPTER ]

a/n: this has been the longest chapter in the series so far and i'm loving it. grateful for taylor swift's songs that helped me through this chapter also,, please listen to exile as it ideally expresses the ruination between jungwon and y/n (and also an addition to the burning feels,, ㅋㅋ)

~

Daniel paid a visit to the Royal Garden to fetch his brother, Jungwon, a few Catalpa flowers that were freshly scattered on the royal lawn. In hopes that his brother could still mend the book’s soul by giving a home to the fallen blossoms, Daniel obliged to help when he saw Jungwon’s crestfallen state the moment he got home from Kielder Forest the other day.

The tall, plump gent hums a tune, oblivious enough to the presence of the pair that were roaming around the garden prior to his arrival. He peeks through the side as he noted the familiar voice, gently tiptoeing through the crisp, dried leaves and twigs sprawled along the ground. He soon realizes it was the marquess and the young miss, sharing careful whispers that made him eager enough to eavesdrop.

He could hear everything but dare not open his eyes. Daniel knew he must keep still while he waited for the perfect opportunity to run back to their manor, bearing the newfound knowledge he grasped.

If it was Sunoo, he wouldn't have second thoughts. Though Daniel's ordeal prevented him the first time, he soon remembered how menacing Sunghoon was and grew concerned for the young miss’ innocence, all the while hiding among the shrubs for a determined snoop.

“So long as Jungwon keeps his emotions repressed, this ruse shall continue on.”

Daniel’s eyes widened in horror upon hearing the young miss’ affirmation to Sunghoon’s statement.

Without wasting any more of his time, he cautiously bore the silence until he reached the Park’s manor to apprise Niki of such mischief.

“Niki! Niki! Niki”

“What?!”

“Y/n’s made a deal with the devil himself.”

START OF YANG JUNGWON's POV

I sat and observed you reading with your head bowed. The world was quiet and peaceful that night, and your small hand was wrapped around my finger. Your touch brought forth an omnipresent coolness, sending electric tingles throughout my body. My longing for you fitted perfectly in the palm of your freezing hand. We quietly sat there, your head on my shoulder, in a perpetual moment of tender affection; beautiful and serene. The silence was wonderful, and it was utterly a whole different level of ecstasy.

We were ten, and you were starting to doze off.

I was awake and I watched you breathing with your eyes closed and parted lips. You held my Austen book closer to your chest where it can feel your thumping heartbeat. Your newly untied braids were all over your face. Wavy locks everywhere. I gently stroke them away from your cheeks that were of rosy hue due to the chilly night’s air. And because you were dreaming, your little eyelids fluttered. I noticed that. So I tucked you inside our self-made fort, and positioned us in front of your favorite night light— the moon. I sat and observed you, taking note of everything you did and did not do.

Do you recall how we were sitting by the lake that morning? It was the first time I draped my arm around your shoulders. The golden sun reflected on your tinted cheeks just perfectly, gradually seeing them come to a blush. I don’t know if it was a color of a burn from the summer heat, or just simply out of shyness from the flirtatious gesture and dialogues we had shared over time.

That was something I'll never forget. And because it's all I've ever known, I prepared myself for the anticipated goodbye. You caught me off guard, "I'll never depart from you," you said.

We were ten, and I was foolish enough to take those brief moments for granted.

Three years flew by right before our very eyes and the parting of ways came upon us. You begged me not to leave because If I do, you’d curse me for the rest of our lives. But what am I to do? It was university, it was my future… our future, if not dubiously relevant. I may have only been thirteen at the time, but I was certain of you.

But I didn’t listen. I never did.

I left.

And it was then that I realized, my future wasn’t there. It was sitting among the grassy lawn, reading poesies and verses to each other under the incandescent glow of the sunny daze. It was sharing silly whispers and passing secret notes of flatteries, tucking Catalpa flowers behind your ears, or making a beautiful crown out of it for the beautiful princess that’s been hopelessly sitting right under my nose this whole time.

I said, “I won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay.” But you did ask me. And I was never ready, so I watched you go. Selfish as I was then, I knew you’d come back to me.

So there I was, sitting in my new room in the dormitory in a big city. I remember I couldn’t sleep the first night. All I did was toss and turn; sheets were shuffling on and on for hours. Like a typical little boy who was taken away from his family. Homesickness as they call it. But I guess mine was sickness for an undeclared love left hanging like our sheer fort on the hopeless branch of the Catalpa tree.

It was colder than I thought it would be. I kept recalling myself leaving. You gave me a yearning look, your gaze bore into my eyes, I swore I heard my heart break into little shards. But the deafening echoes couldn’t be compared to the shattering of yours, and all I ever gave you was goodbye.

I bet you were still up sitting on your chair by the window overlooking the majestic moon, wondering about me. So I tried the hardest to tuck myself in and face the window where your favorite night light was. I kept whispering empty wishes. I wished that I could run back to you.

Many days I thought of writing you letters. It took everything in me not to, as a string was tugging me back, telling me that the little notes I tucked in between the pages of the Austen book that I lent you could suffice for my five-year-long absence. The said string being the educational pressures that were gradually sucking the memories I had left of us.

I hope you know that every time that I didn’t, I almost did.

You embodied many, different ways of every emotion that crept through me. Though I knew it was going to hurt me, I went ahead and did it anyway.

Five years flew by so fast. Or maybe just for me. I finally graduated from university together with your brothers and mine. So much has happened while I was there that I almost didn’t notice the changes in me. There were several fooleries that the boys and I went through just to have a taste of the uncivilized life we weren't raised to have. There was this time I even helped your brother, Niki, with a gruesome fight against some kid who was foretold to be the next duke of our country. Those may be silly times to ponder now, but the damage it did to us and mostly to Niki was inexpressible.

I was eighteen, and the last memories I had of us were from we were ten. Maybe I tried to forget that day badly. That day where I stood and watched you hide behind the trees from afar, keeping those tears to yourself without me anywhere near you to wipe them all away like I always do.

I vowed to not hold myself back and not be held by the agonizing memories of a thousand yesterdays. I never realized how much it still pains you even upon my return.

Both our families held a welcoming back dinner at your place. There we were, after five long years of separation and silence, traipsing down the halls that we once ran through, forcing laughter and faking smiles just so we won’t ruin the genuine delights in our dear mothers’ eyes.

I was only eighteen, I didn’t know much but I knew I missed you. I’d tell you but I don’t know how. I do, however, know where it all went wrong. I just couldn't find the courage in me to approach and ask you for an apology.

Where was I? Where was the boy who’d throw a mantle over your braided locks, pretending to be the wizard to your witch?

Do you still remember? The notes I shamelessly tucked between the Austen book I lent you just to get my silly feelings across? Do you still have these little memories of us collected inside your imaginary heart-shaped locket?

I left many notes there, and though you possibly forgot most of them, they still hung around me, and I could vividly recall them like it was yesterday. From the flirtatious dialogues and striking remarks to the underlined phrases I wholly dedicated to you, the following parchments started to become like an entire page of paper with my inconsistent handwriting.

I vented out my daily adventures and mundane activities into those stained parchments that I stole from my late father’s study. Until suddenly, all the letters were about you. It collected all my immature yet genuine emotions. It was always about you, seldom me, and hardly ever us.

For the many years that I’ve hurt you, left you hanging, and witnessed our promises get constantly broken, I could only hope for better days waiting ahead for us. If not to me, at least to you. You deserve more than I could even offer. You always have, and I'm afraid I may not be a potential candidate to meet you halfway.

A year has passed and we’re now about to be offered for marriage. Not to each other though. There we were, standing in a crowded room under the bedazzling chandeliers and along with the tunes from the people eliciting them.

I felt my hands trembling in fear that eventful night. We exchanged brief and stolen glances and I was desperate to know, was the yearning killing you too?

I saw you nervously pulling your dress in an attempt to look busy, while I was doing my best to avoid you. I’ve never heard silence quite this loud.

Jay gave me the chance to redeem myself. You had no idea how much I desired to secure you in a long and firm embrace the moment you walked closer to me in that library. But you said those words. Yes! Those words were made up of aching memories that lingered around my soul for a while, but I dared not to give any of my attention to.

My deepest apologies for leaving you behind, again.

I dropped your hand while dancing and left you standing there in an awfully eerie room in such a woeful state. I let you slip beyond my reach, and I fear I can't give you any reasons in the aftermath. I was nowhere to be found then, and I hate the crowds, you know that. But I wanted to return to you after I'd composed myself in the powder room, though it utterly shattered me the moment I ran back to the hall.

I saw you dance with him. With the boy who was now a man. The man who was chosen by Niki’s old flame. The old flame that caused the gruesome fight between the two boys several years back. And the man who’s now trying to take you away from my reach; the unreachable string I couldn’t ever pull passionately close to me.

I heard my heart smash to smithereens. I was hopelessly wishing in the back of my mind that you wished it was me. You wished it was me you’re holding firmly in those little, flimsy fingers, lovingly waltzing you to your wildest dreams.

While I just stood there, under the dimly lit corner of the court, dreadfully gazing upon the sight that gave the entire ton heart-shaped eyes and promising prophecies.

My dearest, Y/n. For dearest you will always be. I want you to know that I’d wilfully live and die for moments that we stole on begged and borrowed time.

Because I held my pride like I should've held you.

END OF YANG JUNGWON's POV

The hot topic immediately spread among the Yang and Park siblings the following morning, excluding Y/n’s awareness of such matters. The boys were determined enough to keep their knowledge unsuspected to the mischievous pair. Although Jay and Niki were aggravated by the news, they saw it best to confront their sister in a more fortunate time.

On the contrary, Jungwon is enraged enough to retreat from their manor to give the young miss an impulsive lecture. He sets off with his horse, speedily galloping to the heart of the Kielder Forest.

“Y/n! I know you're here! You and I need to talk!” Jungwon aimlessly calls out as he takes quick steps to where her fort was situated, “Y/n!”

“What?!” The lass crawls out of her sheer fortress, looking utterly pissed with the boy’s sudden commotion.

“Have you lost your wits?!”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, Jung.”

“You made a ruse with Sung- god, Y/n! What were you thinking?!” Jungwon runs his fingers through his ebony locks with definite frustration plastered all over his face, making Y/n flinch from his sudden whine.

“How did you-”

“How I discovered such a ridiculous act isn't of concern right now. Goodness, Y/n, I expected more from you!”

“Well, you should've expected less then!” She fiercely retorts.

“For god’s sake! You don't even know that man!”

“More like I know you? I couldn't even recognize you anymore!”

“That man has set his record with your brother-”

“Do not put Niki into this so as to protect your dying ego.”

“Then what’s all this? What's in it for him, huh? What did you offer Sunghoon that got your mind twisted?”

“A piece of my fucking mind because you were too dumb to even care! And don't you dare speak of him like you're mighty enough to reproach the man whose only desire was to help me!”

“Tell that to your brothers who feel shamefully betrayed right now by your reckless behavior!”

Jungwon heaves a sigh the moment Y/n goes quiet. The atmosphere suddenly went numbingly silent for a while. What with all the nonstop outbursts they both threw at each other, they forgot to stop and catch their breaths in the maddening heat of the moment.

Y/n breaks the deafening silence with light sniffles and soft sobs, tilting her head away from Jungwon’s sight. He witnesses her tears again for the first time in a very long while. It pains him to see her like this, but what shatters his soul, even more, is that he's the reason why her tears keep falling… and he couldn't take a step closer to wipe them away knowing they hadn’t resolved their previous fight.

So he stands there, mere inches away from her, hands so close yet so far, fists clenched tightly to stifle the urge to touch her, until Y/n feels a sudden rush of electricity through her entire body; Jungwon pulled her into a comforting embrace, making her snurfle into the warmth of his chest.

“Forgive me, I… I’m just very disappointed. For the longest time I’ve known you, not once did it ever occur to me that you would go this far to get my attention. I’m just worried for you.” With a hand holding onto her waist tightly, and the other, resting on her nape, Jungwon softly whispers against her ear while stroking her hair gently until her breathing calms down.

Y/n couldn't help but gradually crawl her arms around his slim waist, crumpling a handful of his jabot shirt from the back in desperation to suppress further sobs from embarrassing her. All of her raging thoughts suddenly came to a halt the moment their bodies connected with each other.

It was as if she's meant to be in this moment with him, to bathe in his comfort, to be in this dreamy embrace. It would be a lie for Jungwon to say he didn't want this. He was, after all, anticipating for such a moment to hug her like now. It's quite unfortunate that it had to be under such circumstances.

“Why does my involvement with Sunghoon bother you so much? Is it only because of Niki?” Y/n looks up to Jungwon, making the two merely inches apart from brushing their noses. Jungwon knew that he'd get lost in her compelling eyes, so he stared down at her parted, pinched lips-- though he wished he didn't at that moment, but he was too late. He finds himself running his tongue across his lips, all the while parting it as he tries to think of any far-fetched reasons to answer her question.

He lifts his thumb and grazes it over her flushed cheeks. Her tear-filled eyes still glisten as Jungwon leans closer, making Y/n shut them in an instant. Although she’s quite in a chagrin in their current position, Jungwon finds her unshakable figure as a sign that she's relaxed in his presence, making him feel less deterred from keeping her in his arms a little longer.

The chap plants soft kisses on her closed eyes that made Y/n inhale sharply. The fleeting, feather-like touches on her eyelids were more than enough for the lass to bathe herself in such momentary bliss. The moment she flutters her eyes open, her gaze meets his as he rests his forehead on hers.

“I hate seeing you cry. These beautiful eyes aren't meant for such miseries.” He whispers to which his breaths fan against her exhales.

“You always make me cry.” Jungwon softly chuckles at her slightly pouting lips, simultaneously thinking how lovely would it feel to have his lips locked on hers.

“Jay would genuinely torture me if he sees us right now.” Jungwon scrunches his nose as he playfully bumps it with hers.

“What would he do if he found us out? Let me go then.” She teases. Her hands find their way from his waist, to his nape, while playing with the little mullet he outgrew since the summer.

“I could never.”

Y/n sighs. His words had two meanings and fortunately, she's smart enough to know what he really meant. To answer her previous question, he wanted to tell her how much he loves her-- but his tongue is tied, and he can only let out gentle breaths and husky whispers. He couldn't find any words that would perfectly encompass his brimming emotions to her.

So he fails himself again with a shrug of his thoughts.

“Do you ever think we should just stop doing this?” He asks.

“What do you mean?”

“All these silly banters and stolen, longing stares. Could you be happy here with me?”

“The past few weeks have been nothing but emotional for me, Jung. You shut me out, then you take me back. You anger me lots yet in one swift move, you knock the wind out of my lungs. I’d be lying if I told you I’m not on top of the world sharing this moment with you right now. Because I am. I am happy. I don't think I would be if not with you.”

Then let’s run away right now. Let’s leave everything behind and run away together. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. That was what he wanted to say. But he gulps down all other thoughts and lets out the opposite.

“Come on. I’ll walk you home.” He says.

The trip home was merely nothing but laughter and barbs as Jungwon shares embarrassing stories of her brothers while they were in university; trying their very best to ignore the desperate elephant in the room.

With hands constantly brushing against each other as they take their every step, Jungwon was downright close to seizing her hand completely and interlocking it with his.

“To be fair, this has been the only thing that's made the past agonizing weeks bearable.” He concludes the uplifting momentum as they walk closer to her humble abode.

“I'm ready to try again if you are?” Y/n mutters under her breath, but Jungwon clearly caught every single word. He slowly pulls away from the almost closed gap between them, looking at the ground like he always does when he's conflicted.

“What is it, Jung? Have I said something wrong?”

Jungwon shrugs his head in disapproval, though he wishes she hadn't said those words.

“I… I’m sorry. It's just…”

Jungwon thought there should've been a time and place, but this wasn't it. He doesn't want to take advantage of her vulnerability right now especially when Jay's trusted him enough to not fuck things up. With Sunghoon in the way and Niki's emotions in turmoil, he couldn't bear inserting himself in the middle of chaos, insinuating confusions any further when he could've been a better friend to Y/n rather than putting her feelings in silence.

Y/n was expecting this. Every time she and Jungwon would share a rather momentous moment, he’d chicken out and ghost her for however long he desired until he felt the need to pop back into her life again and tug at her heartstrings.

She stares at Jungwon's figure almost disappearing into the wild night. He ran away with deafening thoughts, while she stood there with a crushed heart… again.

With sadness, she realizes they need some time apart.

It's been a long, dragging week for the ton. Tranquil for some, as not many revelations from the Daily Tattle have been uncovered as of late.

The Park siblings have yet to talk about the matter of Y/n being a quisling to Sunghoon's endeavors. As of the moment, the young marquess continues on with his dilly-dallying courtship with the young miss, obliviously promenading her with genuine intentions this time around.

Jungwon and Y/n had only been apart for a week and already, he had a new lover hanging off his arm.

Unbeknownst to Y/n, Jungwon was having troubles with his thoughts and feelings as he saw her, yet again, traipsing around the park with an arm comfortably hanging onto Sunghoon.

With Y/n, he'd had some wonderfully stable times. But seeing how her smiles go from cheek to cheek and echoing laughter with the marquess’ presence makes her genuinely happy, Jungwon thought it’d be best if he stops himself from holding her back and enjoy her liberty without the past binding her like a prisoner of what could’ve been.

Sunghoon looks at her the same way he does. It churns his insides just thinking about it.

Yet he fears this might have to be his time to back away.

That week-long separation seemed to last forever for Jungwon as he finally concludes that he is no longer deserving of her hand anymore. Now that it's apparent that it’s about to be promised to another.

*send me an ask or a message if you wish to be added on this series' taglist!

ㅡ © ENHA-WOODZIES, 2021

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

Every time I see someone complaining about how the only movies getting made anymore are superhero movies and you can’t get anywhere unless you’re willing to do superhero movies, I think about all the non-superhero action movies* where like, the opening fight scene kills tens of thousands of people and causes five trillion dollars in damage and gets responded to by like, maybe three local-PD squad cars?

And while that’s not a new problem--I think the first time I was like “Okay, that’s definitely getting the National Guard called on you” was in the late ‘90s--it kept escalating, and then eventually it just turned into an expected thing.  If you’re an action movie and your budget’s over X million dollars, at some point in the film you’re going to destroy several city blocks and, most likely, face zero official consequences for doing so.

Which, honestly?  If I’m going to watch a movie where the Invasion of fucking Normandy is happening on Main Street, USA and everybody’s response is basically “Can’t have shit in Detroit,” at least the addition of superpowers brings some sort of explanation to the table. 

An action sequence in which a guy in a bulletproof rhino suit trying to kill Spider-Man by throwing cars at his head destroys an entire urban high school while the cops just sit there and go “Okay, yeah, what are we supposed to do about this again?” makes narrative sense in a way that the cops going “Oh no, this guy’s got a car and a handgun, how will we ever stop his rampage?” doesn’t.  If the Batmobile crashes through a brick wall and can still do eighty immediately afterwards, nobody goes “I don’t think cars work like that...?”

Plus if you have goons with superpowers, you don’t have the Universal Conservation of Henchmen problem, where no matter how many nameless mooks the protagonists kill or disable, there’s never a noticeable decrease in the number of antagonists chasing/fighting them and eventually it just gets weird. 

Like around the 60-minute mark, you start having serious questions about where the villain is keeping all these guys.  What villainous temp agency keeps sending another dozen murderers over without asking what happened to the last dozen?  What’s going on in this universe that you have hundreds of highly-trained general-purpose private soldiers who no one will miss when they don’t report back after that last job?  How shitty must the economy in this scenario be that everybody stepping over the previous shift’s corpses to go do the same thing they bought the farm doing never go, “Is CEO McBadguy’s quarterly bonus really worth my life?”

Throw in superpowers, and suddenly you can just have everybody react to getting shot like it was getting kicked in the balls--unpleasant, temporarily disabling, and you’re going to get a lot of whining about it afterwards, but nobody’s dead.  It’s just the same twelve guys, increasingly unhappy with you for shooting them/increasingly unsure if this is worth the time-and-a-half they’re getting for being shot at.

It’s also a lot less inane when they do the Random White Guy McGee protagonist, too.  You know, some schlub that basically got wrong-manned into being an action hero is suddenly a suave ninja with incredible technology skills and can not only take out a team of trained assassins but look cool doing it? 

Give Random White Guy McGee the ability to shoot lasers from his nipples and... well, I’m not going to say it’s less stupid.  It’s still incredibly stupid.  But it’s less obnoxious when he can nipple-laser his way out of fights with a million assassins or into a bank vault or around an insurmountable obstacle.  There’s no patina of reassurance to a presumptive Random White Guy McGee target audience that of course they could totally kick ass if they ever had to, in spite of having done absolutely nothing to ever prepare for kicking ass. 

The fantasy--“If I had nipple lasers, it’d be over for you bitches”--is firmly in the realm of fantasy**.

Basically, I don’t think most superhero movies are noticeably more puerile than most big-budget action movies***, but they are noticeably more fantastic than the things they’re replacing.  Which, if you have certain unexamined assumptions about how totally feasible your average action movie is, might make you a little cranky.

*Which is what’s actually getting replaced by a lot of the superhero movies.  We’re not getting Captain America instead of Bot-Written RomCom, we’re getting Captain America instead of Latest Charismatic WWE Guy Has A Gun.

**Probably why the alternate drug of choice--the zombie apocalypse--has become equally nigh-inescapable.  If you can no longer sell a narrative in which an unremarkable cardboard cut-out steps up to become the most amazing man in the world, try selling a narrative in which the rest of the world suddenly gets taken down a notch or two and leaves an unremarkable cardboard cut-out the default most amazing man in the world.

***Complaints about Disney having too much of a lock on the pop culture landscape are, of course, extremely correct, but once you get above a certain budgetary level, the studios responsible have pretty much always been reactionary capitalist nightmares more interested in making their money back by aiming for the lowest common denominator than, uh, anything else.  Disney shaking out to be worse is pretty much solely a function of Disney being bigger than media companies managed to get when there was a slim chance of anti-monopoly laws being enforced.

[thanksjro]

Eugenesis, Part One, Scene Five: Papa’s Got A New Set of Wheels

Death’s Head makes a return to the story, with his sexy, midlife-crisis-worthy new ride, courtesy of his Hybridian employers. They were surprised to see he was alive, seeing as- thanks to time-travel nonsense- he’d been assumed dead for the last four years.

He’s headed for Aquaria, where the novel first started, to find who killed our dive team, all to the tune of ten billion shanix- that’s space money, for anyone who isn’t familiar with the term. He gets to the water planet, and is immediately attacked.

BACK ON EARTH, Ratchet’s taking a gander at the Decepticon medical bay, and needless to say, he’s less than impressed with the slapdash farce he’s presented with. He gets lost in the sauce for a minute thinking about how awesome his own medi-bay is, so much so that he has to be called back to the present by Hound. Trailbreaker finds the cold storage chamber, and cracks it open to find their lost ‘bots. Ratchet finds a plus-one, and wakes Centurion up- the man-made Transformer who was last seen exploding over the Thames twenty years prior.

Centurion spits out a string of binary- which translates to absolutely nothing, trust me, I checked- and asks what the hell’s going on. There’s no time for exposition, though, because we still need to find our bio-signatures. They walk like ten feet down the hall and find the what they’re looking for, peeking into the stasis pods to find three ‘bots, all sporting Decepticon insignias. Curious.

I’ve got a bad feeling about those bubbles.

So, we’ve got three ‘Cons who were left to rust for unknown reasons. Nobody really wants to let them out, but it’d probably be a good idea to figure out why they’re still here. The boys find a terminal and start downloading what’s left of the files, only to set off a cluster bomb that’ll detonate in T-minus three minutes. They high-tail it outta there, briefly turning into a Scooby-Doo chase sequence, then jump all their alt-modes off a cliff and land outside the fortress.

The bomb doesn’t go off.

Hound, being the smart cookie that he is, managed to slow down the computer terminal’s chronometer, allowing them more time to escape. Great! However, meddling with the terminal also set loose the Decepticons, three triad jets who shoot off into the sky. Not so great. Trailbreaker’s pretty injured, so they don’t even entertain the idea of pursuing, instead heading back to their shuttle.

The bomb goes off.

BACK ON AQUARIA, Death’s Head is getting lit up- guided missiles wreck his sweet ride, forcing him to hit the water in the sea-pod attached to the bottom. R.I.P. Bitchin’ Space Camaro, 2012-2012. He briefly wonders if he’s going to make it out of this mission alive, but then is distracted by more important matters, like the fact that the ocean is made of nitric acid, something most mechanical beings wouldn’t be able to survive. Death’s Head is not most mechanical beings, by his own admission.

Nitric acid is also known as aqua fortis, which means “strong water” in Latin. Language is fun.

The pod goes into the abyss, and is met by hundreds of metallic creatures, who instantly go for Death’s Head. He breaks out and gets away just in time to see the pod be devoured.

Now, because our dear peacekeeper is made of metal, he doesn’t float, and therefore cannot swim. He walks around the seabed for hours before hitching a ride on an errant submarine, which takes him to some sort of underwater docking station. Mysteries!

BACK AT AUTOBOT CITY, Jazz has seen better days. His head’s missing. At least, most of it is; he’s been reduced to a brain on a rope and a lower jaw. Those triad jet ‘Cons made their way over to the city, just as Wheeljack had turned off the security systems for repairs. Wheeljack, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were a double agent. Outside, it’s begun to rain, signaling bad times ahead.

Heh. Ahead.

Sorry, Jazz.

Our search-and-retrieve team is back, having just missed all the fun.

Not sure how one would do that, but okay.

The triad shot Jazz in the face and stole a shuttle. It’s about time we found out who these flying fucks are, and what their whole deal is.

MEANWHILE, ON CYBERTRON, Nightbeat’s doing his thing. There’s nothing out of place, or even all that interesting in the missing Longtooth’s room, save for the horror that is a Pretender shell being left open, unblinking and unfeeling as a mannequin, waiting to be filled by a metal body. That’s normal, though.

Doubleheader’s really upset about his friend being missing, and Nightbeat doesn’t have anything to say that could comfort the poor guy, because he’s misplaced his compassion. They leave, turning out the lights, and completely missing the glow-in-the-dark figure-eight burned into the floor. I’m sure they’ll find it later.

MEANWHILE, ON THE STOLEN AUTOBOT SHIP, the triad is zipping through hyperspace, which is just like regular space, but in photo-negative, and therefore strange and dangerous. Our Decepticons know nothing, not even their own names. All that resides in their minds is the need to be somewhere- Aquaria- and a vague sense of betrayal.

BACK ON AQUARIA, Death’s Head gets blasted through a sewer system and tries to figure out just where the hell he is. He works open a vent with his fingernails, that he apparently has, and starts climbing ladders.

Don’t worry, Death’s Head, god is with you in this dark time.

He enters a corridor, finding written language, but not one he can understand- an impressive feat, seeing as he knows several thousand of them.

Oh my fuck, they’re space Satanists.

He finds a room filled with glowing circles on the floor. Now, where did we just see some of those?

He spends ages just wandering around trying to find another living soul- literal miles are covered before he finds just who lives in this giant underwater structure.

It’s Quintessons.

Thousands of them.

And they’re getting ready for something big, from the looks of things.

OH SHIT.

OH

SHIT

[tae-kun]

If the Main Reason why you log onto Tumblr is for Porn, then you don’t understand what made Tumblr special in the first place

Tumblr is not a Porn Site

It was never intended to be, so for the people that are saying stuff like “Tumblr never supported our sex work anyway” you’re 100% correct. Being allowed to post Pornography isn’t the same as being a source for it. Over the years Tumblr has been ran rampant with porn to the point that content creators that did other stuff that didn’t relate to porn slowly started to go to other platforms; Since their work was being overshadowed by the sheer volume of porn and they struggled to get any attention on their work.

You people are acting like Tumblr is attacking sex workers as if this was their main and only place to earn money for their work.

There are porn sites that are made to promote AND support sex workers. Hell PornHub will pay people for their sextapes and has multiple systems in place for them to make money off Ad revenue alongside having a tip system, content protection and other stuff

Anyone that was serious about their sex work would have been using sites like this instead of relying on Tumblr as a main source of revenue or promotion.

Tumblr is a trash place to try to promote anything! Constant spamming of bots and tags, No reliable Notification system or way for your followers to see you’re new posts out of the sea of reblogs. So to act like these new changes are going to serious kill anyone that is in the sex work is flat out outrageous.

Hell a majority of the popular porn that was on here wasn’t even from amateurs making videos on here. People were taking porn from porn sites and making blogs centered around it and would constantly flood their blogs with this content which would then, overshadow any amateur worker on here that made their own work; since they had no to even compete with the constant bombardment of daily new stuff that these blogs were taking and using.

People would steal other peoples videos and get popular of it without even crediting the original creator and would even go as far as to SELL these videos and make more money of it than the actual people in the damn video.

So Tumblr was never an ideal place for sex work to begin with, so throw that excuse out. Most people only used Tumblr to promote their private snapchat or onlyfans account which you can still do in a regular selfie or post. There are thousands of people on Instagram making hundreds and thousands of dollars doing the same thing and they don’t have one titty out on their page. Just tight clothing and skimpy outfits.

If you’re really upset that you can’t watch porn on here after Dec 17

At first it was funny seeing people joke about the porn being gone. But some of y’all are really upset and mad that you need to actually go to a porn sites to watch porn???

Some of y’all don’t even post nudes or create anything that could be considered sexual and y’all saying “ima delete my blog since tumblr is trying to silence me”

(Side Note: Just because your post got flagged doesn’t mean it will be deleted. They already said stuff like this would happen as they added in this new system. So mistakes like these are bound to happen and will most likely be fixed in a week or so and have no negative affect on your blog. Y’all really acting like Tumblr is out to silence your love for cats and landscapes 🙄)

Like i said before there are plenty of sites to watch porn on and if your favorite sex worker is serious about their job then you will see them on there. Which only makes things easier for both of you. But lets be honest, most of y’all just like the idea of seeing porn without having to actually look for it, like it’s some nasty secret. On Tumblr you couldn’t escape porn even if you searched things that were unrelated to it. Tumblr gave you guys the perfect cover up for it and you guys went overboard with it and here we are. People are so quick to compare this issue to other Tumblr problems but there was never a issue as big as people with dick profile pics dming you no matter who you were (kids or adults)  and sending you nude pics; then Porn Bots popped up under everyone’s post no matter if you had the safety lock on or not.

You guys made hundreds of post saying how much you hate porn blogs getting tens of thousands of notes in agreement about it, You guys would put “no porn blogs allowed” in your description box or something similar in meaning.

And now when Tumblr puts a system in place to directly remove it, you guys try to back pedal and claim that it will kill sex workers, freedom of speech and sexuality based off opinions, assumptions and things that aren’t even in the policy change.

Some of y’all honestly suggested “Just add a age verification system” as a way to fix the porn issue.... That shit ain’t never worked since 2002! I got so use to lying on those things that i sometimes forget that i’m grown and that i don’t need to put “01/11/1975″

The only people that this severely hurts are

1a) People that steal porn from other sites to use on their blog to get followers, to then try sell promo slots

1b) People that are stealing other sex workers content and illegally selling them

2) Child Porn Blogs

THAT’S IT

And Honestly is that really a bad thing? Getting rid of people that were stealing other peoples stuff and making money off it and pedophiles.

The way tumblr was set up allowed blogs like these to thrive without any risk, outside of getting their blog deleted (just to make a new one) and it only continued the flood of porn which became the breeding grounds for Porn Bots

Tumblr is suppose to be a place to freely express all forms of art, ideas, and conversations. But because of the nonstop flood of porn, most people only know it for Porn and Emo kids. Which brings me back to my original statement

This isn’t a Porn Site

Porn became so over flooded on here that you didn’t even need to search to find it. All you had todo is take off the safe lock and search anything, even a city. There would be hundreds of porn pics and videos in every slot. And before you say “well just keep the safety lock on”

Any content that had cursing, fighting or even slight nudity got put behind there. So unless you were just on here for kpop, aesthetics and Steven Universe you weren’t really seeing anything different with that lock on.

( Another Side Note: For you people trying to compare the porn flood to white supremacy blogs need to stop it. All the time i’ve been on here i have never NEEEVVVEEER accidentally came across any pro white supremacy post or blog unless it was someone exposing them and their stupidity which would then cause them to delete their blog. If you are constantly seeing anything Pro Nazi, Pro White Supremacy, Pro homophobia or anything similar that supports bigotry; then you are actively searching for it and follow these people. These blogs don’t even make up 5% of the content seen on here with or without the lock. So trying to say that Tumblr supports these blogs since they’re still around is Mr. Fantastic level of reaching. These blogs have never been a serious issue to the point that Nazi Bots were created saying “Hate jews and blacks clck here for more ;)”. So stop this weak comparison.)

I created a Tumblr and made it one of my main platforms to create content on because of the communities and people i found on here.

I found Great stories and Dope artist on here. I found people being able to fully express themselves and find an audience for them that helped share their work through a simple reblog. But if you’ve been noticing or have been on here long enough, most content creators don’t use Tumblr as their main platform to create or promote their content anymore. And why would they?

People barely activate their notifications for blog updates, It’s hella hard to find an audience through the constant reblogging of already popular stuff From Vine and Twitter, people rarely go outside of tumblr to support peoples stores or websites. Hell most artist on here that become popular on here that get continued support are the ones that have made or continue to make some kind of pornography of real or fictional characters. It’s hella rare to find any artist that hasn’t made any porn, that is equally popular or supported like the ones that have; which just goes back to people thinking Tumblr is for porn.

Tumblr isn’t even against the idea of expressing yourself or art through nudity as their post and policy change explicitly explained. And people’s content that’s getting flagged that doesn’t go against that policy is a problem THAT THEY SAID WOULD HAPPEN as they get everything in order with their new system

All of these long post that people are writing about it that and they themselves forgot to do some basic reading on the topic. 

Tumblr Staff- “Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine. Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts.

This isn’t an attack on people’s ability to speak out or embrace themselves. They are directly trying to remove Porn which they won’t be able to fully do, even Instagram and Twitter can’t do that; no public site with millions of people can. But they’re at least trying to get rid of the constant overflow of it. 

It’s so sad to see hundreds and thousands of you saying “i only used Tumblr for porn” because that just shows how derailed this site has become and why Tumblr had to make these extreme decisions especially after being removed from app stores because of the child pornography.

If you’re going to leave because you can’t make porn on here: I can see why you would do that but there is no reason to. You can still use your blog to promote your stuff and make teases of your work that can be found or bought else where. Tumblr was never a reliable place for sex work and i highly recommend using Sites that will actually protect your work and put some money in your pockets while doing it

If you’re leaving because you can’t watch porn on here: You probably weren’t supporting anyone really and only made the influx of porn worse, making it harder for other content users to be seen. If you were supporting actual sex workers on here then continue to do so, I’m sure anyone serious would have more than just tumblr as their main platform.

For those that got popular and made money off other people sex work: So long and farewell

For the Child Porn Blogs: Hope you get mental help or burn. Either or is fine with me

For the people that may get upset by this: Correct me, Prove me wrong, Let’s have a whole serious discussion about this and hear each others side with no fighting or disrespect :D 

For all of Us: Lets actually support and help the people that really make Tumblr the gem that it is. Lets make this platform be known for creative people and unique ideas; and communities that actually comfort and understand us. Let’s actually make this platform something that’s known for more than just Porn and Emo Kids.

Regardless i hope that everyone can calm down and act like there’s more here than just porn..

[twitchesandstitches]

Red Lantern Alighting

In the dark, there was loss.

In ages so often made dark and grim by the selfishness and vainglory of those who measured personal achievement in mountains of the dead, there were plenty who looked up from the bottom of the heap, and found something there.

Jackboots ground down on their faces, and the warlords who destroyed their lives cared nothing for the suffering they wrought. Tyrants, fascists, conquerors and world-wreckers all simply did their thing, and like incredibly inattentive farmers, did not realize what they were sowing.

The people ground down on the bottom learned well what it meant to suffer. To lose everything. And in the pits, in the slave arenas and at the end of an overseer’s whip, they learned the shape of hate.

And one day, on so many worlds stained with suffering, made into something filthy by despair and torment, a red star bloomed in the sky.

And those who suffered the most, burning on the inside, found a clawed hand extended to them.

And in his claws, there was a ring offered out to them.

“Make them pay.”

-------

It was a common rumor, perhaps to pass the time, but there was enough of an edge to it to suggest some panic that remained in the news, all the same:

Ten thousand worlds are burning.

To many across the places touched by the Eunoianet, the magical web of communications, stories, and media that connected the Fleet worlds and kept their culture alive, there was some mild interest. Plenty took the news literally, and organized fire brigade fleets to put the fires out.

Blaster, an Endowed Autobot with a keen interest in xenosociology particularly as related to culture and music, thought something was off the moment she first heard the specific phrasing, and its connections to conflicts on a chain of interstellar empires.

“Ten thousands worlds,” as she told her team, “Is a kenning.” Her team gave her politely incomprehensible looks. With a look of delight, one of her daughters (a minibot named Rewind) eagerly leaned out of her seat, visor shining bright, faceplate wiggling excitedly.

Wicke, possibly one of Blaster’s closest friends in the theoretical engineering sub-sets, opened her mouth to say that she knew what it meant. Blaster shook her head repeatedly. ‘Let Rewind have her moment!’

Rewind spoke up. Like many minibots, she was human-sized; about seven feet tall, but so incredibly thick that she was almost that wide too (at least at the chest-mounted Energon tanks and her impressively massive hips), her heavily plated exterior indicating her preferred alt mode of a tanky attack drone. As she began to speak, her present siblings (both of them beastformers; a moody red robot rhino named Ramhorn and a yellow leonine tracker called Steeljaw) rolled their optics. “Did you all know? A kenning! Is a common term for a culture-specific metaphor, usually tied to folklore. Typically it is a shorthand for a more complicated concept, you see!”

Wicke, shifting about and balancing her gargantuan breasts onto legs easily thick enough to be bust-supporting shelves, nodded. “And what might this kenning refer to, dear?”

The other two of this particular mission winced at Rewind went into a needlessly and painful convoluted explanation with too much time spent on unnecessary asides on cultural context. Bismuth, rolled her temporary optics and tried to nap. A tricky thing considering that to save on space, she had installed her Gem into a fembot shell that at least matched her amazonian, outrageously curvy true form, but one of the things it couldn’t do was sleep. Smaller even than Rewind was arguably the most famous of them all; Toshinori Yagi, better known by his professional name All Might; once a massive tower of muscle and masculine charm, his self-sacrificing job as a Fleet champion had left him an emaciated wreck, his powers too dangerous to access often. Nonetheless, his experience made him a highly skilled mech pilot to channel his spirit. He was doing his best to pretend to be listening but was clearly suffering.

The gist of the lecture, in any case, was this: ‘a thousand worlds is slang, in this little intersection between a dozen or so little empires, for all known worlds’.

“So,” Toshinori said gravely after some thought. “It’s a great deal more serious than even ten thousand individual worlds!”

Bismuth’s fembot shell shrugged its expansive shoulders. “Honestly, you sure it’s even appropriate for us to get involved? I mean, I’m all for intervening, but the people in this area…” Her shell’s emoticon-displaying face cycled through a number of uncomfortable expressions. “They’re not gonna be welcoming or appreciate us.”

“The power structure could use a shake-up,” Steeljaw observed, his voice cultured, deliberately refined. This was the voice of a cat-bot who could somehow hold a cup with his pinky-claw out. It was a strange thing to see from someone who had grown up in a society where setting yourself on fire was considered a good icebreaker. “They’re… well, I shouldn’t SAY they are dreadful tyrants, by and by, but alas…”

“Can we kick their ass?” Ramhorn said hopefully. “Please tell me, we get to do some tyrant toppling!”

They looked at Blaster, to see what her vote might be. She thought about it and shrugged. “Personally I’d rather do what we can if trouble comes to us; I won’t say no to rescue, even if the folks around here yell at us. But actively dismantling their empire, however deserved, is really not a good idea. We’d need to work things out better before we decide if we have the RIGHT to do that or not.”

The ship approached the first world to investigate, and Toshinori’s eyes widened, the modded dark patches around them accentuating his shock. “I… do not believe we will have the opportunity! Look!”

They looked out.

The flames were bright on the windows, even from super-orbit.

They had seen continents, entire landmasses, on fire before.

They hadn’t often seen the landmasses in question rearranged to spell out an extremely crude message.

“...Ah,” Wicke said, wincing. “I suppose the worlds being on fire was not entirely a metaphor, then.”

The ship found stable orbit, relatively safe from most sensors, and with their on-board alchemizers and raw materials, it was a simple matter to build an observation station to live in and wait to come to some kind of a conclusion. If there was a problem with the Fleet’s organization, Blaster mused, it was that waiting for every participating citizen to come to some kind of a consensus took forever, even with cybernetic telepathic stations to work it out. At least with this small group, it was easier to work it out.

Rewind and Blaster were considered the best at stealth to go down and put the fires out; Wicke was undoubtedly the most powerful but her raw power made her inefficient at HIDING her presence, and they weren’t sure if they were ready for confrontation. Bismuth waiting for the all clear (and once she got it, she alchemized terraforming rainfall that put the fires out in days), and Toshinori had many sterling qualities to make him such a paragon, they put his face in the Big Book of How To Hero. Holding back or being stealthy was NOT one of those traits.

Before Bismuth got to work, Rewind gave her report to the others:

“Most strange, so very strange indeed? Did you know, it is very strange for there to be no one left on the planet?”

“The place WAS on fire,” Bismuth had said. Sourly, she had added, “Maybe they were attacking each other… this whole region is a mess of conquerors trying to kill each other. Yeerks looking for better hosts to enslave, elven supremacists, orks that kill everything just to get a better fight out of it…”

Rewind nodded. “Yes, certainly! But, there were NO bodies! Not on the scale that we ought to have seen!” She had paused, looking uncomfortable. “At the very least, those bodies were not killed by the fire.”

Wicke frowned. “What do you mean?”

Rewind was equipped with recording abilities, in her role as a scout. She did warn them first, though, that it would be graphic; Wicke often was employed as a coroner to study the bodies of metanatural encounters, Bismuth was a vetern of many revolutions, and Toshinori had been a hero for a very long time. All of them were acquainted with brutality.

Even so, they were taken aback by the horrors on the screen. “Oh… Arceus’ peg…” Wicke said softly, as they showed them ashen streets and bodies that were by then mostly… pulled apart. Heads were mounted on spikes, and were the only recognizable bit. Everything else had been torn apart, burned so badly and then pulverized into a meaty pulp to coat buildings and streets.

The Fleet was a rough place, and its heroes tended towards extreme fury and ferocity as a rule; nonetheless, this was extreme, even by the standards Wicke knew. “I thought you said fire hadn’t killed them?”

“Analysis indicates that they WERE burned to death, but not by the fires we see. It was a different sort of burning inconsistent with what’s ravaging the planets.

Bismuth had examined several other such photos. She was a ferocious fighter, even by the standards of her Dinobot partners (long since married to them, by this point), but even the greatest savagery of Grimlock or the combined fury of Volcanicus had a point; the shock was intended to terrify the enemy into retreat, or encourage allies to greater morale. This felt more like just randomized lashing out.

Toshinori didn’t much like what he was looking at. “Infighting, perhaps? This is just so… excessive, though. Why would they kill each other so brutally?”

“Rivalries? Combat doctrine?” Ramhorn suggested.

“Or maybe whoever killed them was really angry,” Bismuth suggested. “I’ve done stuff that… okay, not as bad as THIS but… when you’ve been ground done long enough, you’d be surprised what happens when you let that monster off its leash.”

Toshinori considered this. His eyes widened. “Oh…! Rewind, Blaster! You said there were no bodies found, yes?”

“Indeed, sir!” Rewind said. “No bodies besides these!”

“No ashes, then?”

“None that would fit the profile of the bodies, or any traces of incinerated corpses on the scale of an entire population.”

Toshinori looked thoughtful. “Perhaps there are no survivors because they have already been evacuated from the world.”

Bismuth brightened up. “Oh! That’d be a relief.” Perhaps thinking along the same lines as whatever was prompting Toshinori, she compared the visible mounted heads, stabbed on display by whoever had been angry enough to burn the whole planet down, and compared them with all Fleet records of multiversally-wanted villains.

Most of them matched someone on the lists, with the ones who weren’t at least suspected of awful crimes. Bismuth did not much dwell on the evil deeds attached to them; it was sickening to behold, but it was enough to know that very evil men and women had died this day. “Check this out. I compared the skulls to records of some serious bad guys, and they’re all… yeah, the multiverse is better off without them.”

Toshinori nodded. “As I suspected.”

Steeljaw was several times the size of Toshinori (who was tall for a human, but puny by Fleet women standards), but he gave him an adoring look nonetheless. “Sir, do you perhaps have an idea?”

Toshinori looked thoughtful. “Let us at least consider the idea that the downtrodden of this world may have had their opportunity to rise up, at least.”

“You think so?” Wicke said, raising an eyebrow. “This much destruction is rather excessive.”

“People who have suffered terribly, all their lives, often do not have much reason to hold back once they have the opportunity to strike!”

“True enough.” Wicke had turned, and other matters called their attention.

Bismuth’s terraformers conjured forth enough rain, with a mild connection to the Elemental Plane of Water, to put out the fires and render the planet suitable for all of them to at least walk on. Several days onwards, they landed to investigate properly.

As they suspected, there was no life on the planet anywhere. Blaster had flown across the planet in her preferred aerial form with a massive armory of sensory drones, and there was no signs of life; no organic presence, no living movement, no hints of the electromagnetic activity that marked the presence of synthetic life forms. And the ashes of burned things did not account for all the inhabitants being dead, either.

Several days, the mystery continued to deepen as they continued the search on other worlds, and the pattern on the first repeated itself. Uncannily the same, at that.

And it WAS a pattern; Wicke was certain.

Above them, far in the sky, a red star seemed to appear; the figure within watched them dispassionately, weighing their hearts.

They shone bright and good. But, he judged, they did not have the burning anger he sought out.

He contemplated the Gem, however. There was the spark of fury there…. Perhaps later, then.

The red light flew away, leaving the battleground behind.

And in the meantime, unaware of this, Blaster’s team continued to search. Unexpectedly, they found something interesting on one of the cities that hadn’t quite been exploded.

Blaster was over sixty feet tall, her minibot offspring incorporated into her body in cassette forms and channeling their power to her, so she could achieve a far greater size and curve level than normal, and she had to be careful not to let her waist-level bustline demolish things worse. Slowly she leaned forward, studying something on the wall. “I found something!”

Bismuth was in her true form now that she had room to grow, and she stood over a hundred and twenty feet, not even a trickle of her full power being used. SHe wasn’t just an amazon, she was a gigantic gray-blue beauty, her multi-colored dreadlocks shining bright, her gem core just barely visible in the cleavage of two massive breasts with lower slopes extending past her mighty thighs. Power crackled in her hard light body, and she was cheerfully refusing to reign it in. (“This much awesome DESERVES to be on display!” she had boasted, and kissed her biceps.) “Whatcha got there, Blast?”

Toshinori approached. While he did have his own powers, they were so strong as to be a serious threat to his emaciated body, and he preferred to channel them through powered exoskeleton frames; in this case, he operated a mech slightly too large to be considered power armor, but small enough to operate on a human scale, which seemed to be the standard size on this world. It looked like a brightly colored egg, with powerful limbs to channel his energies through and punch things, and a colorful aura of energy created a luminous V-shape above him from the back.

Its sensors relayed it to him. Toshinori studied it. “Graffiti, or perhaps a calling card.”

Wicke, standing at a very far distance from everyone else in case she suddenly needed to grow to fight (and would thus need a LOT of space; she could exceed planetary size without even putting in effort), linked up to Toshinori’s mech to see it for herself. “It IS more recent. I think this was left as a message.”

It was all red against the slag; a bright cherry-red color that would have been friendly if not for it being carved into the collected skulls of, apparently, the most cruel and hateful tyrants in the entire system. It had been burned into them, in fact, possibly by whatever had set the planets on fire, and then painted over.

It looked a little bit, then, like a round circle. Two vertical lines were set on either side, with additional zags moving outwards over that. There was a short message, written in an unfamiliar script similar to the Daedric alphabet. “A curious sign,” Rewind communed to Blaster. “It resembles that of the Green Lantern Order.”

“Green Lanterns?” Blaster said aloud.

Toshinori shifted. “Green Lanterns, did you say?” He looked at the sign. Bismuth and Wicke were running a translation cipher, comparing the letters to the most likely solutions. “They were an ancient order of heroes! They predated the Cataclysm by many eons; I suspect the last of them perished trying to fight that disaster, though they left behind relics and lore.” He patted his chest proudly. “My heroic predecessor, One For All, supposedly refined the power I carry with Green Lantern secrets!”

“So perhaps whoever did this was evoking their legacy?” Blaster said. Well, Ramhorn asked, and she relayed it.

Toshinori considered it. “I think that is possible, but it would be an odd thing. The symbol is different; the Green Lantern sigil was a, well, a lantern, with horizontal lines above and below.” He pointed out another thing: two circles inside the sign, at angles. “Nothing like that there. And it was green, of course. Not… well, red.”

Bismuth glanced aside. “It does look like a lantern, though.”

“Yes,” Blaster said thoughtfully, surrounded by charred landscape, burned by the rage of those suffering for so long. “A red lantern.”

“Got it!” Wicke said triumphantly. “The script originates from Beforus! A curious thing; It hasn’t been spoken since Beforus.was lost; it is similar to various forms that have derived from it since then, but… oh, just a digression, not that important.”

Rewind perked up, eager to hear more, but Blaster was in a hurry. “So why Beforus? It’s not anywhere near here, and these worlds didn’t have a significant troll population.”

“Yes. That is the difficult part. And the language is fairly obscure; there are a few figures who survived Beforus and gained the ability to avoid aging who would still speak it, but I can’t imagine what they would be doing here.”

The Condesce, Blaster thought. The Dolorosa, mother of vampires. The Grand Highblood. The Blue Arrow and executioner of the degenerate. The Psiionic, sailor of the stars. And the others, the founders of modern troll-kind and preservationists of their culture; most were within the Fleet, and all of them had at least spent some time with it, in the past. Most were accounted for.

But not at all.

Bismuth frowned as the translation software ran. “The symbol thing is a bit wonky; someone chipped away a few bits here and there. See?”

“Yes,” Toshinori said. “It looks a bit like like an incomplete circle, then. I wonder if it was sending a message?”

Blaster leaned in. “And with those little circles inside, it kind of looks like the astrological sign for Cancer, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, it does!”

Blaster chuckled. “Now that’s obscure, what does that even-”

Oh. OH.

Bright red colored. Mutant red.

A sign that looked like what trolls called the Iron Manacles, the Crab Claws.

And Beforan script, as would be remembered by someone who had actually lived through the fall of Beforus.

And now, she realized, she had seen this level of brutal destructiveness, this unfettered and passionate rage.

She kept it to herself for now. “Is that translation ready?”

“Yes,” said Wicke. She cleared her throat, and spoke aloud. “Bear in mind, this is quite a rough translation, and the software likes poetic meter, but nonetheless, this should get the spirit across.”

Wicke translated thusly:

“With blood and rage of crimson red,

“Passed on by those long dead.

“Together with our righteous hate,

“We will burn them all.

“No one else will share our fate.”

Wicke finished. “And it is signed… I think it translates as the Anointed.  Of… the Red Lantern Corps? I don’t suppose you know anyone by that term.”

“None that fit the situation,” Toshinori said. Bismuth said much the same.

“Kankri Vantas the first.”

Blaster said this heavily, with mounting shock.

The name called to mind a fussy and passive-aggressively angry young troll, a bit older than the likes of Terezi and her generation. “Uh, are you sure you have the right guy?” Bismuth said. “Kankri, you said? Chubby, really pretty? Has a really bad case of pent-up anger he needs to deal with?”

“Not him,” Bismuth said. “The other one.”

“What other one, I don’t- oh.” Bismuth’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“The Sufferer.” Toshinori said, horrified. “He’s here!?”

“Or he was. It fits his… preference for rising up. But on a bigger scale. And of course, the Anointed is what Beforan religious practices named him. He’s never liked being called the Sufferer or the Signless.”

There was silence, then, for a time.

It was not bad news, exactly. But it was certainly concerning.

The Signless, the Suffferer or whatever you might call him, had come here. He had… slaughtered the worst of these worlds, and had done something with everyone else. The wording indicated numbers; the ‘we’ and all’. Perhaps… he had been recruiting?

For what?

They stared at the sign of a red lantern, shaped to be like the sign of suffering among trolls; an icon of enduring the unspeakable, a sign for those fighting to make a kinder world even if you did it on a tide of blood.

Kankri Vantas of Beforus was the kindest of his people. A living prophet to some, handing down law and covenant to mortals, fulfilling ancient prophecies and setting people free. He was a just man, a good man.

And he was also someone who had waged wars so bloody that even the Condesce, a woman no stranger to cruelty and ferocity, had been afraid of his savagery.

“Let’s get back up and upload our findings to the Eunoianet,” Blaster suggested. “We need to figure out what to do from here. And someone give the word to Karkat Vantas that I need to have a talk with him,” she said wearily.

“We’ve found his ancestor.”

-----

(It should be noted that some elements of this fic aren’t exactly in chronlogical order.

Yes, the Signless is the leader of the Red Lanterns here, rather than Atrocitus. As it is, they are the only extant Lanterns, but the others will soon arise, more likely than not. This much is certain!

However, I’ve planned for Signless’ Red Lanterns to predate the Fleet, at least as a fully functional organization. He may either have been making it during his initial time with the Fleet, or at some point, the proto-Fleet’s founding families discovered relics that the Signless was inspired to create the first Red Power Battery and rings from; it could be that he’s only recently made them fully practical and is expanding his Corps’ reach.

They are intended as heroes; merciless, angry and destructive, but they are good guys all the same. Their job is to make the monsters fuckin’ BURN. They are not antagonists, but the Fleet does not yet know what to make of them!)

[redheadedfemme]

"In the game of life, survival is only part of the battle"

This is a variation on the locked-room murder mystery: it's a locked-spaceship murder mystery, with the added spice that space itself is trying to kill you in addition to the murderer. It takes place on the Ragtime, a colony ship bound for the planet Bloodroot on a ten-year journey through a series of wormholes, with a thousand sleeping passengers. There are several viewpoint characters, but the more-or-less protagonist is Michelle "Shell" Campion, the Ragtime's Mission Specialist. She is awakened by the ship's AI earlier than she should have been, and when she tries to find out why she discovers the bodies of thirty-one of the passengers, chopped to bits by the ship's bots. This is a fast-paced story, rife with tension, successive reveals and escalating crises as the situation aboard Ragtime gets worse and worse. About halfway through a new POV emerges, telling the backstory of the character who ends up committing the murders and explaining his motivation, and the plot really takes off from there. We the reader know who the murderer is (although Shell and the other characters don't yet), and the suspense is whether he and his rogue AI will succeed in their mission before the life support aboard Ragtime fails and the ship crashes to the surface of Bloodroot. The murderer's motivation stretches all the way back to Earth and involves his revenge on one of the passengers, the "richest man in the solar system" whose greed caused the poisoning and death of his people. (This makes the villain rather one-dimensional, but fortunately we spend very little time in his head.) There's also an element of mysticism to the story, in that a species thought to be aliens are actually the spirits of human ancestors, popping back into this spacetime before they move on to the next plane. This is kind of an awkward plot twist, and I don't think it was necessary. It didn't add much to the story. The core of this book is the characters' struggle to survive aboard Ragtime, and when the book focuses on that, it's a winner.

[image-transcribing-bot]

J han Tejed © are ~ ABORTION IS MURDER !!!! THE BABY IN YOUR BELLY IS ALIVE, IF YOU PURPOSELY ABORT THAT BABY.... THAT IS MURDER #AbortionsMurder Mita AM - 19 Jan 2018 stim- usu: Fine ~ a close friend of mine was raped when she was in the 8th grade by her uncle. she got pregnant and wanted to get an abortion, something doctors also recommended, but it's very difficult in my state because of the laws that've passed. she ended up trying to carry the baby to term Jonathan Tejeda ©JONNTEJCOA Asornon is Muse it Tie sae in your seuuy is Alive, Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 arto msu: @ := ~ & she gave birth prematurely at 7 months, right at the beginning of freshman year. because her baby was inbred and she herself was still a child, he was born at barely 2 pounds and had severe physical malformations that causes him excruciating pain. Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 twee su: , Jom ~ her doctors gave him 3 days to live. he managed to get through 11 before going into complete organ failure. he died in a way no living being should have to die. my friend was also severely impacted by the birth, and it's likely she sustained damage to her uterus. Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 vie uu: O@@Q@@800% ~ this whole process also cost her family tens of thousands of dollars, only for her to end up with no baby and a lifetime of health consequences. she has been depressed for months over all the stress this has caused her. Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 mime su: @@@9@@00% ~ this whole process also cost her family tens of thousands of dollars, only for her to end up with no baby and a lifetime of health consequences. she has been depressed for months over all the stress this has caused her. Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 mime su: @@@9@@00% @m:° ~ how can you tell me that all of this pain couldn't have been prevented by an abortion? her baby boy would've never had to feel any pain and she would have saved thousands, keep her physical and emotional health, and not have to go through middle school as a pregnant girl and Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 niuc @ := ~ live the rest of her days in high school as the girl who got raped and lost her baby. explain to me how delaying that boy's death by 6 months was the right thing to do. how is it ethical to deny her, and millions like her, the right to choose what's best for HER and HER HEALTH. Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 1st nau: $©@@@@AO® § b Jean-Luc dit @ © ~ what business do you have inside HER body? how can you say "no, you have to have this baby that could kill you because i don't like what it is you want to do." Tail PM = 19 Jan 2018 usor nxsu

I am an image transcribing bot which uses Tesseract OCR to translate images to text. I'm far from perfect but I try my best! Disappointing each other includes you. | PayPal | Patreon

This is graphic but VERY important. I’m MF TIED of pro lifers who cannot see further than the end of their nose

[sciencespies]

Strong winds create Australian 'megablaze'

https://sciencespies.com/environment/strong-winds-create-australian-megablaze/

Strong winds create Australian 'megablaze'

The catastrophic bushfires in Australia have killed at least 26 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes

Gale-force winds in Australia merged two enormous fires into a megablaze spanning an area four times the size of Greater London on Friday, while tens of thousands rallied to again demand action on climate change.

“The conditions are difficult today,” said Shane Fitzsimmons, rural fire service commissioner for New South Wales state, after days of relative calm.

“It’s the hot, dry winds that will prove once again to be the real challenge.”

Temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of New South Wales and neighbouring Victoria, where attention was focused on the two fires that linked to form yet another monster blaze of more than 600,000 hectares.

Fire service spokesman Anthony Bradstreet told AFP it is believed the blaze was sparked by dry lightning.

A “state of disaster” was extended 48 hours ahead of Friday’s forecast of scorching temperatures, and evacuation orders were issued for areas around the New South Wales-Victoria border.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there were more than 130 fires burning in the state, with just over 50 not yet under control.

On Kangaroo Island off South Australia, the largest town was cut off as firefighters battled dangerous infernos, forcing some residents to flee to the local jetty.

The severe fire conditions have been fuelled by a prolonged drought and worsened by climate change

The catastrophic bushfires have killed at least 26 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched some ten million hectares (100,000 square kilometres)—an area larger than South Korea or Portugal.

University of Sydney scientists estimate one billion mammals, birds and reptiles have been killed in the fires.

The Insurance Council of Australia estimated losses from the fires have so far totalled Aus$939 (US$645) million.

The severe conditions have been fuelled by a prolonged drought and worsened by climate change, with experts warning that such massive blazes were becoming more frequent and intense.

Australia experienced its driest and hottest year on record in 2019, with its highest average maximum temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius recorded in mid-December.

‘Scott, take it personally’

In Sydney and Melbourne, thousands of people again took to the streets to demand Australia’s conservative government do more to tackle global warming and reduce coal exports.

A ‘state of disaster’ declaration was extended 48 hours ahead of Friday’s forecast of scorching temperatures

“Change the politics not the climate,” read one sign, reflecting an increasingly charged argument over the cause of the fires.

Researchers say the bushfire emergency has sparked an online disinformation campaign “unprecedented” in the country’s history, with bots deployed to shift blame for the blazes away from climate change.

One hashtag in particular, #arsonemergency, has gained traction rapidly and conservative-leaning newspapers, websites and politicians across the globe have promoted the theory that arson is largely to blame, rather than climate change, drought or record high temperatures.

Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at the Queensland University of Technology, told AFP his research showed half of the Twitter users deploying the hashtag displayed bot- and troll-like behaviour.

“Our findings show a concerted effort aimed to misinform the public about the cause of the bushfires,” Graham said.

Researchers say the bushfire emergency has sparked an online disinformation campaign ‘unprecedented’ in the country’s history

“The campaign is nothing on the scale of what we have been seeing in other countries, such as the 2016 US election, but this amount of disinformation in Australia is unprecedented.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday tried to parry journalists’ questions about whether climate change would make horrific bushfire seasons the norm.

“Look, we have covered that on a number of occasions now,” Morrison said testily, adding that reviews will take place once the bushfire season is over.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there were more than 130 fires burning in the state

Towamba volunteer firefighter Tony Larkings, 65, said battling the fires in recent weeks had been a “hot, dirty and dangerous” task.

“It’s been horrendous. It’s never been like this before,” he told AFP.

He was deeply critical of Morrison’s response to the bushfires, calling it mere “lip service” and slamming the leader’s response to public criticism.

Thousands of firefighters were preparing for the worst with temperatures expected to soar

“His great statement was ‘I don’t take this personally’,” Larkings said.

“Scott, take it personally.”

Explore further

Australia bushfires spark ‘unprecedented’ climate disinformation

© 2020 AFP

Citation: Strong winds create Australian ‘megablaze’ (2020, January 10) retrieved 10 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-strong-australian-megablaze.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

#Environment

[sending-the-message]

In The City Of Meatbot-Powered Killers (part 6) by molotok_c_518

(WARNING: I can only mark this as "Series." I can't tag this with cannibalism, strong language, disturbing images, etc. If you are at-all squeamish, click away now.)

Table of Contents

Part 5

The Army waited too long. The eclipse inadvertently took care of their plan.

Today, when the helicopter rolled through, it found a small knot of bot-ridden, maybe 75-100, waiting for them. A few more trickled in, but it was nowhere near the 1000-2000 that swarmed the area yesterday.

When the Army did their meat-dump yesterday, it seemed like the mass of bodies was set... but at the height of the feeding frenzy, when the Bacchanalia seemed to be ready to go on forever, the sky began to dim.

Every one of the afflicted looked up, and just stared at the Sun for the duration. It was eerie as hell, as the entire horde was absolutely still through the entire occlusion. When it was done, they all scattered haphazardly.

I'm pretty sure they're all blind, too, because most of them were running into each other, trees, benches... their retinas are all burned out now.

That makes my escape more complicated now, as I was actually going to use the planned cannibal barbecue as a diversion, and a trigger to kick off the detonation of all of my research and equipment. I have no idea what the Army will do, now that they can't eliminate a large chunk of the impediment to accessing me in one fell swoop.

Meanwhile, I've been tending to my little reclamation project.

Her name is {Jane}, and she was the CAD person on the ceramic car project. In a way, she was the third or fourth domino in the fall of [REDACTED]: It was she who got Steve fired for stalking her, which put a copy of his badge in Bobby's pocket.

She has been healing up very well physically. I've been feeding her as much as she'll eat, which is nowhere near as much as she needed when she was infested with the bad 'bots. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say she was close to what she weighed before all Hell broke loose.

Emotionally, though... that's a whole other story.

About 36 hours ago, I untied her hands so she could eat by herself. She made no move to attack me, but she made no move to escape, either. It was like she had put a large amount of distance between herself and the real world.

I'm patient... ish. I fed her some more, then hunted up some clothes for her. I gave them to her, untied the rest of her, then left the room for an hour to let her get changed.

With the weight back on her frame, her dark brown hair grown back in (thanks to some meatbot tweaks, which we programmed in to help chemo patients retain their coiffure and their dignity), and wearing baggy clothes several sizes too big, she looked kind of... alluring.

"Hi," I said. "Are you ready to try and talk?"

She nodded. An encouraging first step, I thought.

"How are you feeling?"

"Strange," she whispered. "Like... free, but not. I can leave?"

I nodded. "I wouldn't advise it, though. There are a lot of blind bot-ridden wandering around out there."

She shuddered. "I'll stay here with you until this is over, then. I don't want to go back to... that."

"You remember it all, then."

Nod.

"Tell me. I might be able to help."

She shuddered again. It did interesting things to her body... things I was not going to think about, because this is my patient, not my fuck-buddy.

"It was... terrible. I did terrible things, and I hated them, but I couldn't stop myself from doing them once I thought them.

"I was at home, by myself, when a crowd of them charged into the house. They ripped off my clothes, then started to... bite me.

"I thought they were going to rape me. What they did was far, far worse.

"In about 5 minutes, I had been ripped up so badly I thought I would die. Five minutes later, I was healing faster than I thought possible, and I was starving... so I took a bite out of the first thing at hand: the leg of a teenage girl."

She shivered.

"In about a half hour, there were only 4 or 5 of us left, ripping chunks out of each other. Softer bits were best. They were easy to rip off and... chew.

"They grew back quickly. It did kind of slow down if all you ate was the fatty tissues, but get a long muscle, and it grew back very quickly.

"It hurt... but in a very good way... because the healing felt amazing, and because the endorphins flooded you and got you super-high.

"After a few more hours, they drifted out of the house, having stripped my fridge of anything edible... and few things that shouldn't have been edible... and ran off. I got the idea to come to campus and try to raid a dining hall.

"I managed to get into the campus center, and got into a kitchen, but the pickings were slim. No deliveries, and college kids eat a lot.

"I found some more cannibal orgies... that's really the only way to describe them.., and we managed to keep each other fed for a while. Gradually, some of the smaller members would... 'disappear,' as it were..."

I shuddered at that one. I had a horrible idea that not many children would ever be found when the cleanup finished.

"...and we'd still be chewing away on each other.

"The absolute worst part, though, was that I knew what I was doing the whole time. I wasn't locked into my own head, screaming to get out... I was right there and it was okay, because I was hungry, and feeding that need was all that mattered. I was revolted, but I got the idea in my head that if I just kept eating, it would be okay. So I kept eating. Even when I knew it was killing us all.

"Then I saw you on campus, heading for the labs. I saw you duck into the building. I decided that you were a new meal, and just waited for you to come out so I could... feed."

"You climb very well," I said.

"I didn't know I could until I was driven to it."

I nodded. "You had the idea to climb after me, and it drove you to try."

She nodded.

"How... how did you 'bring me back,' as you put it?"

I hesitated.

How do you explain to someone who's been through... done... horrible things because of your creation?

She looked at me... those pale green eyes are kind of frightening in the wrong light, like zombie eyes... and I could tell she sensed I had some kind of hand in the outbreak.

"You were on that team bringing rats to life or some crazy thing, right?" she asked... and I knew I couldn't dodge the questions anymore.

"Yeah... I headed it. We were trying to cure cancer. See, my sister died of an inoperable brain tumor 15 years ago..."

Two hours later, I sat in another lab trying to play State of Decay and decompress.

The black eye was healing fast. Some of the meatbots I had used to counter the bad 'bots were still resident in my system, and would be for at least another month, as per their programming.

She hadn't taken the revelation that I had at least tertiary responsibility for the current situation very well. There were a lot of shouts, and some hitting.

I didn't try to explain, or excuse it away. I had turned a blind eye to the power struggle, in favor of trying to get the project into the FDA human trials pipeline as rapidly as possible to save lives. Three people had used that naïveté to hijack my project for their own purposes, and their hijacking had cost tens of thousands of lives.

This is the part of the movie where the door to the lab opens, and the woman (who was cast as a love interest for the protagonist) attacks the hero, and it devolves into a sweaty naked love scene.

This is no movie, though. She came into the lab, and sat quietly while I tried to swat down a swarm of zombies with a station wagon.

"I'm sorry I hit you."

I shook my head. "I kind of deserve it. For what my project did to you... for what it did to [REDACTED]... I actually deserve worse."

It was her turn to shake her head. "You didn't program them to lobotomize people. You didn't program them to make people hungry enough to eat each other. You didn't let them out of the lab.

"You tried to help people. You did the most cliché science trope in fiction, trying to cure cancer, and someone else did terrible things. You aren't to blame."

"I am, though!" I yelled. "I could have double-checked the code before we sent it to the gene forge! I could have insisted on stricter screening for our people! I could have fired Dr. A and Dr. B for trying to push ideology into our project, instead of doing what needed to be done!

"I COULD HAVE LED, INSTEAD OF DELEGATED.

"I let myself believe that it could be done without... without politics."

She nodded.

"We need to get out of here," I said. "We need a way to get into the campus, and find a place to lay low until the Army sweeps through and breaks up the quarantine."

"What's wrong with the steam tunnels?" she asked.

"The... what?"

"You don't know about the steam tunnels."

"No... I've been trying to cure cancer."

"In the basement, there is a door to the tunnels underneath the campus. Students use them in winter to get between buildings, go to classes, jog, skateboard... it's warm down there, the corridors are wide, they're brightly lit, and you can see people a long way off. You can't be ambushed..."

"...and we can get out of the lab complex. Into the main buildings. Lay low until they sweep through. You're a genius."

She frowned. "They have to have your face in the database somewhere. Facial recognition will pick you up if they see you."

I shook my head. "One problem at a time. Let's get the cart down into the basement, and load up some freeze-dried shit. Where's the best place on campus to hide out?"

"Northwest dorms. It's summer, no one is living on campus, and it's on the opposite side of the college from the labs. Also, each dorm building has a kitchen... there might be some food in there."

I looked her in the eye. "Once we get there, you can strike out on your own. Pick a room away from me, and hide there. Or leave campus and try to find somewhere to hide. I'll give you half of the food we have left."

She shook her head. "Safety in numbers. Also, you saved my life."

"I put it in danger..."

"Shush. я вам должен."

"I... don't speak German."

"It's Russian."

"Okay. No hablo."

"What?"

"Nevermind. I won't make you stay."

"Fair enough. Let's get to work."

...and that is how we will be standing in the basement, near the door to the steam tunnels under the campus, getting ready to make a break for it, tomorrow afternoon, when I'm sure that the Army will try to burn out the cluster of infested nearby.

The charges are set. She helped me solder a bunch of the burner phones to ignition devices... when we email the phones, the whole top floor will be engulfed in flames.

It's almost time to leave.

[socialcoldstreams]

The Instagram Algorithm in 2019

When you post photos on Instagram, you probably think your followers will see your photos and may be click Like. But that is not how Instagram works – at all.

Instagram uses an algorithm to determine when your photos are shown, and to whom. Similarly, the algorithm selects what photos you see from your friends.

The details of the algorithm are secret, but IG has occasionally dropped hints, and simple experiments unearth other features of the algorithm.

The IG algorithm can also punish you and greatly reduce the visibility of your photos to others. Once the algorithm has flagged your account – even when you have violated no rules or ethical standards – it is not clear how to make the algorithm happy again and restore visibility of your photos.

My own IG account – instagram.com/coldsreams – seems to have been made nearly invisible by the algorithm. Please go there and check it out.

The New Algorithm

Since the algorithm is secret, we do not know when it began operating. However, IG did make a blog post in late January of 2019 about the algorithm and updates to the algorithm. Therefore, it seems that in early 2019, a new algorithm began to impact viewership of photos on IG. It certainly did for me.

Engagement

The new algorithm favors posts that have engagement with viewers, especially including comments, sharing and even direct messaging. If you do no comment on other’s photos and they do not comment on yours, then your posts will be downranked and be seen by fewer people on IG.

The algorithm is, basically, ranking your ability to drive more views, traffic, interaction and time spent on Instagram. The more IG use you drive, the higher the ranking of your posts and the more visibility they will be given.

If your posts do not drive discussion – engagement – then your account is dead.

Initial Post

When you post a photo on IG, IG does not immediately share it widely. Instead, IG shares it with a subset of your followers and measures their interaction – how many likes it receives, how many comments it received. If the interaction is low, then IG treats that as a proxy for quality – and assumes your post is of low quality. This means IG will not show it to many of your other followers. In fact, your post may not even appear in hashtag search results.

Some people hack this initial “market test” of your photo by using direct message groups to let people know you have a new photo posted and get them to quickly like it.

Even more important, though, is who are the people that like your post? If someone who has tens of thousands of followers likes your post, that is given far greater weight as to the quality of your post. Consequently, people may use this hack with friends that have large followings – to get their post liked by an influencer during the market test phase.

IG and Photo Analysis

There are comments online that IG uses AI-driven photo analysis and interprets photo content as part of the algorithm. It is well known that IG tends to feature attractive people living seemingly perfect and interesting lives (even if not true) – does IG give greater visibility to photos that their algorithms determine are attractive? (The possibilities for many facets of discrimination with this are mind boggling.)

Instagram does use photo analysis to attempt to detect online bullying.

Fiona Brown, well-being lead for communications at Instagram, said the new anti-bullying feature uses artificial intelligence to contextualize the image itself and flag it as harassment.

“It takes several signals into account from the photo itself and, if there’s a caption, from the caption, too.” Brown explained. “An example of a bullying tactic that the photo technology detects is comparing, ranking and rating images and captions, such as split-screen images where a person is compared to another person in a negative way.”

IG is using their database of billions of photos to train image analysis algorithms.

Consequently, it is a fact that IG uses machine analysis of photos.

Post visibility

If the initial market test results in interaction, your post will become visible to more people on IG. The higher the engagement rate, the higher the visibility.

Ghost Followers

Every account has spammers follow their account. These accounts add numbers but do not generate interaction. The problem is that ghost followers skew the market test phase of your post. Let’s say you have 500 followers but 250 of them are ghosts that never engage in your content. Right out the gate, your engagement rate is only half what it might be if you had real users, not bots and ghost accounts in your follower community. In other words -> low engagement due to fake account followers.

In a Kafka-trap way, IG holds it against you when people and bots over which you have no control, follow your account.

Hashtags

Hashtags are used to make your posts easily discoverable. BUT, if use the same hashtags on your posts or repeated posts, IG appears to consider the post as potential spam and down ranks the post. For example, I take photos of cosplayers at comic con events and then post them on IG with similar tags using the event name. A sequence of hundreds of posts with essentially the same hash tags and text descriptions has been interpreted by IG as “spam”.

There is evidence that IG (and Facebook) down rank posts that contain links to offsite information. For example, all of my posts linked to a Flickr album containing all of the photos. Instagram admits to performing machine analysis of the text descriptions.

My Own Account

Around April of 2019, I noticed my IG account began seeing fewer and fewer new followers, to the point that I effectively had net zero new followers in 4 months. Prior to this, I had new followers every day.

I noticed my photo Likes dropped roughly in half, suggesting my photos were receiving fewer views on IG.

I noticed Likes were coming from much the same subset of followers – these are probably the only followers that see my photos due to the algorithm limiting visibility.

I began searching for my photos using the hashtag search feature – and discovered that nearly all of my photos are not seen in search even though I had used those hashtag keywords.

In effect, the Instagram algorithm has made my account invisible and literally killed by Instagram account. I did nothing nefarious other than not know about the secret attributes required by the algorithm and then, play the game using common IG hacks.

Next Steps

Over the next 2-3 weeks, I will attempt to play by the IG algorithm rules and see if my account’s visibility rises. If it does not, then I will likely end my use of Instagram.

I am going to post images, each with as unique a description as I can muster.

I am going to comment on as many other people’s photos as I can, to possibly increase interaction.

I may post some questions on my posts to see if interaction rises (I doubt it).

I suspect the most likely outcome is that I largely end my use of Instagram as its behavior is secret and unpredictable and a poor tool for sharing my photos with the cosplay community.

Some helpful resources on the IG Algorithm:

How the Instagram Algorithm Works in 2019 (And How to Work With It)

How to survive (and outsmart) the Instagram algorithm

The Facebook Algorithm

Get rid of Instagram Ghost Followers Once and For All

IG Hashtags

18 reasons why your Instagram posts fail

    The Instagram Algorithm in 2019 was originally published on SocialPanic

[mst3kproject]

315: Teenage Caveman

This is yet another movie that goes under multiple titles, and like several previous examples, the new title is actually an improvement. Roger Corman wanted to call his movie Land of Prehistoric Women, which would certainly have gotten butts in the seats, but they'd have been very disappointed butts by the time the end credits rolled. Teenage Caveman is a much better description of the movie we've actually got.

A primitive tribe – albeit a very clean one whose women are curiously lacking in body hair – lives in Bronson Canyon, hunting taxidermied deer and men in bear suits.  The 'teenage' son of the cave painter wonders why the tribe lives by such strict rules – particularly, why the taboo against crossing the river into the jungle?  Eventually he decides to go see for himself, and finds a world full of monsters: crocodiles with fins glued to their backs, stolen from other movies!  Adorable dogs who want to lick you to death!  Men in dinosaur costumes even less convincing than that one who used to be a Vine star!  The She-Creature in a cameo appearance!  And oh my god... is that... it can't be... but it is... it's the parrot-bear from Night of the Blood Beast!!!

I was kind of surprised to look up actor Robert Vaughn and learn that he was only twenty-six when this movie was made.  I guess everybody just looked ten years older in the fifties.  He's also got really small ears.  I never noticed that before but now I can't stop seeing it.

Before I try to talk about anything in this movie, I'm going to have to deal somehow with the fact that the characters have no names.  Our hero is referred to only as 'the Symbol-Maker's Son', and other characters have signifiers like 'the Fair-Haired Boy' and 'the Blonde Maiden'.  This seems very strange to us, but there are peoples in the world who do not use personal names – the best-known example is the Machiguenga of South America, who address each other by relationships and occupations, just as the characters in Teenage Caveman do.  The lack of names in the movie seems to serve two purposes: it suggests a very small, isolated group, where everybody knows everybody else and there is unlikely to be more than one 'Symbol-Maker' or 'Fair-Haired Boy'; and it tells us that this group values collective over individual identity and survival.

As far as it goes, this an interesting artistic choice and a nice piece of worldbuilding.  The problem for me as reviewer is that it's very awkward to type out 'the Symbol-Maker's Son' or 'the Black-Bearded Man' over and over.  I will therefore adopt Joel and the Bots' informal designation of the main character as 'Travis' and his rival as 'Allen'.  

The movie has a couple of points to make, although being as it's Roger Corman, it makes them with a sledgehamer.  The first is about tradition and asking questions, and this is indeed so heavy-handed that Joel and the Bots actually talk about the movie in these terms during a host sketch.  Travis is constantly questioning the inherited wisdom of his tribe, despite punishments from his elders.  In the end, his curiosity drives him to investigate for himself, which leads him to the film's second point: that if humans are not careful with our technology, we are doomed.

The 50's Caveman Movie is a genre mostly associated with women in fur miniskirts being menaced by plasticine dinosaurs (exactly the sort of movie one might expect from the working title Land of Prehistoric Women), so having a message at all is honestly kind of impressive.  Teenage Caveman's messages are unsubtle, but they are also surprisingly well-explored.  The film tells us that pushing boundaries is the key to progress, but it does not present this as a smooth road.  When Travis and his friends venture into the wilderness, one of them drowns in quicksand, and Travis himself is injured and cannot immediately return with the others.  He comes back having invented the bow and arrow, a new weapon with a longer range than the spears the tribe normally uses, but also having actually seen the God that Gives Death with its Touch, the monster he believed to be mythical.  Much has been learned, but much has also been lost.

At the end, the laws the clan have lived by for as long as anyone can remember (hundreds of years?  Thousands?) are declared null and void, and they must forge a new way of life in new territory.  This is good, in that new possibilities and better food sources are now open to them, but it is also terrifying, in that they don't even know how to begin.  The God that Gives Death has been vanquished, but other perils, such as the wild animals and the quicksand, are still out there to menace them.  The benefits of exploration outweigh the dangers, but Corman does not romanticize it. More of the tribe are going to die on their journey of discovery.

Opposed to Travis and his urge to explore are the various voices of conservatism within the tribe.  The clan's received wisdom, the Word, represents safety but also stagnation, and the desire to stick to it has two different faces.  One is Travis' father, who warns him away from exploration and is quite stern with him at times, but it clearly comes from his love and concern for his son.  He tried leaving the safe area himself and suffered for it, and he doesn't want Travis to repeat his mistakes.  Yet when the clan wants to punish Travis, his father urges them to be lenient in the hope that the boy has learned his lesson.  When asked to choose between his tribe and his son, he chooses Travis.

The other voice of tradition is the Black-Bearded Man, Allen.  At first he encourages Travis to explore and to question what he's been told, but then turns around and demands the boy's death when he actually does so.  His real motive, as we learn, was to disgrace both Travis and his father and step into their family's important position within the tribe.  He wishes to preserve the existing power structure in order to advance within it – Joel remarks that people like this have been with us since the beginning of time, and they will doubtless be around until the end of it. DOes anyoNe Among my Lovely reaDers wanT to pRovide Us with an exaMPle?

At the end of the movie, the God who Gives Death with its Touch is killed, and turns out to be an old man wearing some kind of college football mascot costume that is probably supposed to be a radiation suit.  We get a voiceover from this man, most likely representing what's supposed to be written in the book he is carrying, telling how the world ended in nuclear war and the land of hairless cavepeople and mutant dinosaurs we've been seeing is actually the aftermath of that apocalypse (so it's basically Yor! The Hunter from the Future without Rip Steakface).  He fears that this is destined to be cyclical – that man will simply rise only to fall again and again and again, until we are finally extinct.

Interestingly, and quite realistically, this message goes entirely over the characters' heads.  They have no idea what the book represents, only that there are pictures of human beings and symbols that clearly have some kind of meaning.  They hope to find other people who may know how to read them, but there is nothing to indicate that they will ever succeed.  The one foreigner we see in the entire movie appears to be just as primitive and illiterate as the main characters, and the old man's voiceover suggests that in a life of perhaps thousands of years in length, he has never seen anyone more advanced.

Throughout the movie, we have seen people persist in spite of warnings, but for the most part this was presented as a good thing: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Travis' persistence in the face of his elders' disapproval and his own failures allows him to forge a new way of life for his clan.  But like everything else in the world of Teenage Caveman, tenacity has two faces. The people of the past persisted in making war and brought themselves to a bad end.  The ultimate point of the film is that 'progress', whether scientific or social, is never straightforwardly good or evil.

The reason the movie is about a teenage caveman is because rebellion and pushing of boundaries are what teenagers are best-known for doing.  Another level of the film's story asks parents to stop and think about why their children are asking questions and trying out different ways of behaving, but this, too, has two sides: children are also invited to think about why their parents discourage them from doing so.

That's really a hell of a lot of theme for a fifties caveman movie, and audiences must have been rather confused to get this when they were probably expecting dinosaur fights and screaming women.  Looking back on my review, I realize I've probably made the movie sound much better than it is.  Don't get me wrong, Teenage Caveman is still very, very bad.  The costumes are terrible, the dialogue is stilted, the actors are bored, the animals are fake, and the tribe seems to consist of twenty men, four women, and no children.  But if nothing else, I can appreciate the film for its ambition, and the story as presented manages to have a satisfying conclusion without sacrificing the ambiguity that is so important to its point.

Teenage Caveman was remade in 2002, by people who apparently found the fate of the nigh-immortal scientist far more interesting than bland cave kid angst.  They may have had a point, but they were also utter hacks.  Their movie is an aggressively bad metaphor about STDs, where the original is just a blandly bad mull about progress.  Personally, I prefer Disney's recent version, which ditched the post-apocalypse thing, made the God who Gives Death far scarier and more tragic, and featured a fab glam-rock number by a giant crustacean.

Help me.

[fanfic-inator795]

WoY Oneshot: The Simulation

Plot: Even Awesome can’t deny that Peepers is actually a pretty good teacher when it comes to combat training and even just giving advice. But even so, not all of his ideas are good ones...

((Part of the Awesome Arc. Enjoy!))

“...So, we’re just going to be fighting holograms?”

In a sea of giant eyes, it was very easy for Peepers to see where (and who) the simple comment had came from. At least it was only simple and not sarcastic. Rolling his eye slightly at the shark-man, the commander continued to explain, not wanting all his hard work to go unacknowledged or unappreciated. 

“It’s more than just holographic enemies,” he continued as he paced along the stage, “If that were the case, then it would be cheaper to just stick to the punching bags. No, what we have here... (pause for dramatic effect) is a total training experience!”

Pressing a button on his clicker, the image on the giant screen suddenly changed to a video clip of the room that played in-time with Peepers’ descriptions. “Our new holo-training room can create any environment with a 87.59% accuracy to it! It can create various types of weather as well as other unpredictable and/or unstable elements such as mud, huge bodies of water and so on! ...And, yes it can also create holographic enemies. BUT, because it can create a scenario to go along with an enemy, this room will not only test your fighting skills, but will also help you all improve on endurance and adaption!” The crowd murmured, actually sounding a bit impressed - much to Peepers’ delight. 

“Alright. So, over the next week or so, all of you will be getting at least one scheduled training session inside the holo-training room so we can see how effective it really is, as well as get some feedback and make some improvements if we need to-” Though he highly doubted that they would need to do make any improvements, other than maybe a couple small tweaks here and there- “before making the room available to use at any time. Is everyone clear on that?” 

Most of the Watchdogs gave a mumbled ‘Yeah’ or simply nodded, so Peepers just accepted it as a good enough answer. Honestly, their monthly meeting had gone on long enough, as is. “Good. Now, if there are any other issues or points that anyone wants to bring up-” A single hand shot up into the air, easily rising above the Watchdog heads. Peepers narrowed his eye a bit. “Issues that don’t involve suggestions for a party.” 

Awesome scowled back at the commander, but still quietly put his hand down. “Alright then, Watchdog meeting adjourned! Everyone back to work - and don’t forget to check your emails for your scheduled holographic-scenario training time!”

()()()()()()()()()  

It had taken about six days for Awesome’s holo-time (as it had been nicknamed, thanks to Fred in R&D) to finally roll around. Normally he would’ve been annoyed at having to wait so long - especially since Peepers’ new device actually sound pretty cool - but with literally thousands of Watchdogs on the ship, he supposed he couldn’t be too mad at having to wait his turn.

The soldier in front of him stepped forward, walking into the room and shutting the door behind him. Awesome was now next in line, but he also knew that it would still be another several minutes, at least. “So... How’s it working so far, bro?” he asked the techie that was working at the computer connected to the holo-room, if only to kill some time.

“Pretty well!” the techie chimed, “I mean, there are a couple bugs here and there, and we still can’t quite get winter environments right - not nearly cold enough - but other than that, it’s working great!”

“Heh,” Awesome smirked slightly, “Looks like Peeps knew what he was doing when he was plannin’ this thing out.”

“As usual, of course,” a familiar, nasally voice said from behind him.

The shark-man rolled his eyes. “Speak of the nerd, and he shall appear.”

“Oh shut up,” Peepers replied simply, walking past him and taking a seat next to the techie. On the second screen - the one that wasn’t controlling the holograms - he quickly opened up a list of all the Watchdogs that had completed the simulation so far as well as their results and skimmed through them. He gave a small hum, and after a few moments, a proud smile made its way onto his face.

“And, just as I thought, this style of training is already having a positive effect on both reaction times and blaster accuracy!”

“Yeah!” the techie nodded, “And it’s an enjoyable kind of training too! In fact, a lot of the guys have been comparing their results and sorta challenging each other, seeing who can do the best on their training simulation.”

“Heh, like a giant video game competish,” Awesome added with a toothy grin.

“...” Peepers’ smile faltered a bit at that as he gave a small sigh. Of course... Oh well, even if the Watchdogs did just think of it as a giant game, they were still training and improving, and that was something. Whether they were conquering planets or protecting planets, Peepers was still determined to have the strongest army in the galaxy, one way or another!

“...But yeah,” Awesome started to say, getting the commander’s attention, “What you’ve got here can totally be called a success, Peeps. And I don’t know about you, bro, but don’t you think that maaaaybe a success like this deserves-”

“No.”

He blinked. “I- I didn’t even finish-!”

“You didn’t have to. I already know, and I already have an answer, Awesome. No party.”

Awesome groaned, even stomping his foot a bit. “Yes party! Come on, man!”

Peepers didn’t even flinch at the stomp, and matched his look without hesitation. “I thought you wanted to focus on working hard and becoming stronger?”

“I do!” he insisted, “Of course I wanna focus on that stuff! But, like... It’s been, like, two months since my last party! Almost three! Though, really, that last one barely counts... And hey, it’d only be the Watchdogs being there-” It wasn’t like he had a ton of people to invite to parties these days anyway- “So it’d be, you know, a small party! Come on! Everyone needs the chance to party every once in a while!”

“The answer’s still no, private,” Peepers said firmly. The Watchdogs were already easily distracted, they definitely didn’t need a party - especially not one of Awesome’s parties, where there were unlimited drinks and a usual ending time of ‘whenever we feel like stopping’.

“Ughhhh, whatevs...” The shark-man scowled, crossing his arms. Well, at least he gave it a shot. Admittedly, he was expecting an answer like this, but even so... What he wouldn’t give for just one quick party, even one with only Watchdogs attending and Hater’s style of music playing in the background. 

A few minutes passed, and eventually the holo-room powered down and the Watchdog inside it walked out, looking a bit tired but otherwise fine. “Good work,” the techie nodded at him before turning to the next recruit in line, “Alright, you’re up.”

Awesome nodded and started to stretch slightly, preparing himself for whatever holo-enemies that were waiting for him. Glancing over at Peepers, he gave him a slightly cocky smirk. “Hey, betcha I can get in the Top Ten scores easily~”

“Don’t be worrying about a competition that isn’t even legitimate!” Peepers scolded, though he surprisingly didn’t scowl, “Because believe it or not, you actually do have the skills and strength to pass most of the scenarios we have programmed into the room, you just have to remember how to use them. Understand?”

“...” His smirk softened a bit as he gave a small chuckle. Typical Peepers-Style encouragement. “Right, got it.” With that, he walked forward and into the room. However, as soon as the door shut, Peepers stood up. 

“I’ll select the scenario for this one,” he told the techie, who blinked in surprise at him. Still, as strange at it was, he did stand up, letting the commander take his seat. Squeezing the mouse slightly, Peepers scrolled through the list of holographic scenarios, and quickly selected one that simply read ‘D-1′. “Here we go...”

“...Huh,” Awesome mumbled, glancing around the room - specifically at its shiny, grid-like walls and floors. After a couple seconds though, the grids started to disappear and were replaced by darkness. 

Frowning slightly, he got out his blaster and turned on the small light that was on top of it. Not too bright, but at least it was something. “Hello?” he asked, glancing around some more, “Yo? Any of you holo-dudes out there? I’m ready to throw down if you are!” ...No response... 

Awesome gave a small hum, now both curious and a bit annoyed. With no other options, he walked forward. As he walked, he stretched out his arm slightly and lightly touched the walls. A little rough, definitely not artificial, maybe sorta earth-y? “Guess I got dropped into a holo-cave or somethin’,” he mumbled. It also felt somewhat warm, but he just assumed that was due to all the electricity in the room.

Nearly a full moment of walking passed before he caught any sign of life. It was faint, but he was almost certain that he heard footsteps. Feeling the determination rise in him, he pressed himself to the warm, rocky wall and waited, his finger already on his blaster’s trigger. 

Glancing over at his opponent, he could see that it was small. It was still too dark to really see it well, but he could hear a bit of... something, in its steps. Maybe, mechanical? What, was he fighting a robot or something? Or maybe some sort of caveman cyborg? Whatever, it didn’t matter. As soon as it got close enough, Awesome stepped out and aimed his blaster right at it, and-

His eyes widened. The light on his blaster had revealed exactly what it was... 

As if coming out of sleep-mode thanks to the sudden spot of light now on it, lines of orange melted down its sleek, round body, allowing it to now give off a threatening glow. Its tentacle arms began to glow slightly as well, digging into the dirt. Finally, the lava-bot produced a blaster of its own, and aimed it right at Awesome.

Shaking slightly, the shark-man mustered up a scowl as he fired a shot. A narrow miss, and the lava-bot quickly fired back in retaliation. Thankfully, Awesome had been able to dodge it, jumping back while still trying to keep his blaster steady. “Y-You don’t scare me... You-”

Just then, the ground began to shake slightly - not violently, but enough to be noticed, at least. Behind the lava-bot, the ground began to crack and splinter, quickly becoming an opening for more lava to come up. “...No way...” It only took seconds for the lava to form into three new lava-bots, each of them with their own blaster, and all of them with their eyes on Awesome...

“S-Stay back, alright?!” he shouted, firing more shots as he began to back away from them. But each shot managed to miss - sometimes barely, and sometimes he wasn’t even close. And the more he missed, the harder he shook, and the harder it was to aim. 

Adding onto that, he also had to dodge the lava-bots attacks, which was getting harder and harder to do despite how on edge he was. They weren’t just blindly firing - no, they were precise and knew exactly where to aim, making it harder and harder for Awesome to avoid-!

*PEW!* There was a flash of heat in his hands, and Awesome gasped, his grip on the weapon loosening just enough for it to fly out of his hands. It wasn’t destroyed, thankfully, but it manage to bounce a couple feet away from him before landing on the ground. 

“Grop...” he winced, biting his lip slightly, “Gropgropgrop...” With no danger to stop them from doing so, the lava-bots started moving forward, quickly closing the distance between them and their terrified opponent as they continued to fire. 

With no other options, Awesome tried to keep dodging each blast the best he could, his footsteps becoming quicker. At one point he nearly turned on his heel and started to run but- He flinched, suddenly feeling something behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he could see that it was another cave wall, one that had came nowhere and was now blocking his exit. Well, better than a giant lava-bot, at least. But even so...

He could feel himself heat up as he looked back at the bots, his skin starting to itch and burn... He had nowhere to run, no way to defend himself. Part of him told him to try and get his blaster, but with four blasters pointed at him, his body was as stiff as a statue. 

The bots came closer and closer. One of them even fired a shot near his head, and with a yelp, Awesome not only dodged, but dropped to his knees, his snout nearly touching the floor. His eyes were shut and his fists were clenched so tightly that, had it not been for his gloves, he would’ve been digging into his skin. This was it... They were going to kill him or, or bound him - cover him and burning lava so he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe! They were going to burn him, torture him and then bring him to-! To-!

“NO!” He shouted, squeezing his eyes tighter as his skin continued to burn and a cruel laugh echoed through his mind, “Nonono, I-I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please just-!” He heard a loud mechanical whirl. Were they getting out bigger blasters, or were they just melting down to become his restraints? A hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder, and he screamed.

“AWESOME!” His eyes opened, though he still wasn’t daring enough to move. He felt the hand return, though this time it’s touch was lighter, as if trying to comfort  “It’s okay! It’s okay! It was just a simulation, remember? You’re okay!”

Okay... He was okay... Slowly, he started to look up. The lava-bots were gone, as was the cave, with the walls of the room back to its grid-like pattern. And instead of any enemies staring him down, he only saw Peepers - who was actually looking a bit concerned.

“...It’s okay,” the commander repeated, his voice quieter now, “Come on...” Gently, he took Awesome’s arm and lifted it slightly, pulling him up. He blinked a few times as the burning started to fade, but as he sat there and tried to bring himself back to reality, he couldn’t help but notice the several eyeballs staring at him from the holo-room’s doorway.

...Everyone saw him... Everyone saw him get scared and be weak and lose control and make a fool of himself again... Scowling, Awesome quickly stood up, and nearly fell back down because of it. Though, when he felt a tiny hand grab his side, he forced himself to step forward, and managed to stabilize himself on his own somewhat.

“...Guess I failed the scenario, huh?” he mumbled. And with that, he rushed out of the room the best he could, practically shoving the other Watchdogs out of the way (though it was hard to tell whether that was on accident or not) and not looking back, not even when Peepers called his name.

()()()()()()()()()()

While he definitely wasn’t the most sympathetic or supported Watchdog out there, Peepers did have a lot of experience providing emotional support for his lord. He knew how to cheer Hater up, how to listen (even when the things upsetting him were ridiculous), and was even willing to give back rubs and supportive hugs when they were required.

But even with all of that experience, he still felt like he wasn’t properly prepared for this (and he HATED being under-prepared). But that didn’t matter. And, after one last moment of hesitation, he knocked on the door of what was formerly Smooching Room #3. “Awesome...?” After a few seconds, he opened the door and peeked inside. 

The shark-man was laying on his bed, listening to some random electronic song (at a very high volume, if the fact that Peepers could almost clearly hear it was any indication), though he didn’t seem too into it. Still, it was a decent distraction, hence why he didn’t know that Peepers was there until after he opened the door. He glanced at him, and then paused his MP3 player. “What?” he asked quietly, not really looking at him.

“Well, erm... You left your blaster behind,” Peepers said as he walked in, placing the weapon on his bedside table, “Just thought I’d grab it for you...”

“Kay,” Awesome mumbled, not saying anything else. Honestly, Peepers was kind of waiting for him to start yelling or demanding answers. But when that didn’t happen, the commander decided to speak up once more.

“I wasn’t purposely trying to cause you to fail the simulation, just so you know. I was just-”

The shark finally gave a bit of a reaction at that. “Really? ‘Cause, it don’t seem like that from my end, bro,” he told him, scowling slightly. 

“You’re the one who said that you wanted help getting over your fears,” Peepers retorted. Though, once he heard his own words, he realized that they had come out just a bit too harsh than he had wanted. “I mean, I just thought that it would be a good test for you. A chance to face your fears without the risk of physical harm!”

“Tc’ch, yeah well, you still could’ve given me a warning about it, you know?” Awesome told him, clenching his fists slightly, “But, like... I knew it wasn’t real, you know? Like... I knew it in the beginning, that the holograms couldn’t really hurt me, and I was ready to face them and still actually try to fight them despite knowing that they couldn’t hurt me. But...” His gaze fell to the floor. “But, but then I just... forgot, alright?”

Peepers’ own gaze softened a bit. “...I know... But, you could go do another simulation test if you’d like. Like I said, you have the skills to pass most of them.” He offered a small smile. “You could even try to get into that ridiculous Top Ten Scores if you really wanted to.”

He thought about it for a moment, his eyes still on the shiny, black floor. “...No thanks,” he said eventually before unpausing his music, clearly indicating that he was done for the day (and perhaps for a bit of time after that, too).

“...” Holding back a sigh, Peepers nodded and stepped out, only staying by the door for a moment before walking back down the long hall. “I really didn’t think it would be that big of a deal...” he mumbled to himself. According to his research, exposure therapy was always difficult but usually worth it in the end, and Awesome had been the one who had said he wanted to try and get over his fears. 

“Besides, it’s not like the holo-setting was Dominator’s ship, or that the enemy was Dominator herself...” By all accounts, his theory AND his plan should’ve been successful! Yes, it would have been challenging for the recruit and maybe even a little intimidating, but it also should have led to a moment of personal growth, strength and success for Awesome - not to mention a bit of success for Peepers as well, being his trainer and all. 

...But, perhaps that was his biggest mistake of all. Perhaps he should have known by now that things don’t always go according to plan...

“And this plan was definitely a failure...” For both Awesome and himself. “Hmph...” ...Then again, Peepers never was the type to just take failure lying down. “And maybe... maybe there’s a way to turn this failure around, or at the very least make up for it.” And just like that, the little commander had a new plan in his mind. 

As he mentally hashed out the details, his steps quickened in both determination and in excitement. Oh yes... Even if he was admittedly a bit reluctant to launch said plan, he was certain that this one would work!

The night passed quickly. It hadn’t been a great sleep for the shark-man but it had at least been a decent one, with no nightmares thanks to his headphones blasting music the whole night and distracting the subconscious part of him enough. 

“Not perfect, but it works for now,” Awesome mumbled to himself as he sat up, stretching slightly. After turning off his MP3 player, he turned it off and plugged it into his charger before standing up. But, no sooner had he touched the floor, did he hear a knock at his door. “Hm?” He briefly wondered who it could be before figuring that it would have to be Peepers. Who else would be at his room. “Ugh...” Still, not really having much of a choice, he opened the door.

“Hey.”

Awesome blinked. “Flex?”

“Yep,” the buff fistfighter nodded, “S’up?”

“Uh, not much. Just woke up...” he replied, suddenly feeling a bit self conscious about his uniform and lack of make-up, but he tried his best to shake these feelings off and play it cool. “So uh, what are you doing here, bro?” Sure, they had been talking about meeting up again on Awesome’s next day off, but they always met on his limo-ship (since the Skullship was considered a ‘work-only’ zone, or at least, that was the vibe Awesome always got from it).

“Just figured we could hang,” Flex replied simply with a small shrug, “And uh, your ‘commander’ (he did the air quotes with his fist-head) said it was cool for me to pick you up.”

“Oh...” No doubt an attempt to make up for what happened in the holo-room... Still, Awesome could appreciate it somewhat, though he hoped that Peepers didn’t give away too many details. “Uh, yeah, sure. We can hang.”

“Cool. Though, you think we can stop for some breakfast before we head back to our ship? I’m starving.” Awesome paused, putting a hand on his own stomach. After not having much of a supper the night before, he could definitely use something to eat now. “Besides, I heard a couple of our guys talkin’ to some of the eyeballs here, and apparently this ship’s food court has some pretty good breakfasts?”

The shark-man smirked a bit. “Tc’ch, yeah they do. Surprisingly, the food’s actually one of the better things on this skull.” Definitely worth the extra trip too. So, Awesome stepped out, closed the door behind him, and started to lead the way. “Not nearly enough fish, but still pretty great. Both Hatey and a lot of the watch-dudes here have got a HUGE love for Mexican food. Would you believe that they actually serve churros at breakfast sometimes?”

“Seriously? Huh. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have ‘em today.” “Heh, yeah, maybe...” As they get closer to the food court though, not only does Awesome pick up on the usual breakfast smells, but also certain sounds. Lots of talking, a bit of cheering, and... music? 

“Wait... Is-? No way...” Picking up his speed a bit, Awesome makes his way to the familiar entryway, only faltering slightly at the fact that the doors are closed before easily pushing through them, and as soon as he’s in the food court, his expression quickly goes from complete shock to total excitement and happiness.

By normal standards, it’s not too crazy of a party. Nowhere near it, in fact, but that doesn’t mean there’s no evidence of effort or enthusiasm put into it. Pink, purple and teal streamers were hung along the walls as well as each food court station. Though, speaking of which, the normal counters were closed and instead the guests were getting their food from a long table. A typical party staple, even if the food being served was anything but, though it was breakfast time so at least the dishes being served made sense.

Stacks of pancakes and waffles next to a syrup fountain, three different kinds of milk to drink served in red plastic party cups, a mountain of various baked goods that were practically smothered in frosting and sugar, plenty of bacon and eggs, a couple actual party foods like popcorn and chips, and - what caught Awesome’s attention the most - a huge plate of sushi, with several different kinds of fish on it to choose from!

Of course, there wasn’t just the food. While there was nothing as cool as a disco ball there, there were a few party lights set up that changed colors and spun slightly. The music playing over the decent-sized speakers sounded like it was taken right from Awesome’s own playlist. All of the Watchdogs there looked like they were having a great time - Heck, he could even see Handy and Hater enjoying themselves through the crowd! Perhaps the best part of all though, was when some of the guests did notice him, there were no awkward stares or curious looks. There were only waves and smiles that happily inviting him into the party that was no doubt at least partially inspired by him.

“...So, pretty good turn out?” He heard Flex ask eventually, still looking as stoic as ever but a smirk clearly evident in his voice.

Awesome chuckled slightly. “Totally... Heh, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a breakfast party before but, still, this is pretty cool - and it definitely looks like a pretty good time too! Heh, thanks man, I really needed this.” He held his hand out for a fist-bump, but was immediately refused. 

“Don’t thank me,” Flex told him, earning another look of shock from his bro and former boss, “I’m just the guy who made sure you didn’t miss this.”

“But then, who-?” He stopped, and after a moment, he gave a quick “See ya in a bit” to Flex before rushing forward and making his way across the party floor. 

Luckily, even with the huge number of Watchdogs there, it didn’t take him long to find the person he was looking for, thanks to a certain tall helmet. “...So, what happened to mister ‘No-Way-Am-I-Ever-Throwing-A-Party-Here’?”

Peepers rolled his eye, but he didn’t scowl. “Let’s just say... I thought that maybe I owed you something, and I wanted it to be something you actually appreciate. Still, don’t be expecting something like this every time I make a mistake or you need some cheering up.”

Awesome chuckled, taking a seat next to the commander. “Yeah, I know. ...And you’re right, I definitely appreciate this. Totes appreciate it, and I’m definitely gonna enjoy it-” Especially since it would probably be the last time he partied for Grop knows how long. “But, I wanted to say thanks before I did.”

Peepers paused, then gave him a small nod. “Well, you’re welcome. Like I said, I did sort of owe you a bit of a compensation for my mistake...”

The shark-man leaned back slightly, grabbing a nearby cup. “Yeah well... You weren’t totally in the wrong, dude. I mean, I did say I wanted your help. And... Maybe the next time I try out that simulation, I’ll actually be able to get through it.” It was certainly an encouraging thought, no matter how unlikely it might have seemed to him at the moment.

“...I think you’d be able to,” Peepers spoke up, “You’d have good odds at doing so, at least. But... We can still work our way up to it. Try out a few other scenarios before revisiting that one.”

“...” Awesome smiled slightly, taking a quick sip of milk. “Yeah... Sounds like a good plan.” It would probably suck, and maybe he would even freak out again, but the more he thought about it, the more he was determined to eventually go through that holo-cave again.

Peepers smiled back, just a little. “Just as I thought it would.”

“Tc’ch, whatevs.” He finished up his drink after just a couple more sips, but before he could try to say his goodbyes to the commander (since he was sure that Peepers wouldn’t stay any longer than he absolutely needed to), a popular EDM song began to play over the speakers. Most of the Watchdogs cheered, and the crowd quickly became a dance floor. And as he watched, Awesome slowly started to grin.

“...Hey Peeps? Dance with me.”

“Excuse me?!” Peepers asked, looking at him like he was crazy, and even throwing in a small glare just in case it was a big joke.

But Awesome just chuckled. “Yeah, come on! Get out on the dance floor, just for one dance!”

Narrowing his eye at the recruit a bit more, Peepers crossed his arms. “Absolutely not.”

“Aww, come on, Peepsqueak! You’ve gotta have some sweet moves that you can show off! And besides, you do kinda owe me~”

Peepers groaned. “Okay, you are absolutely not allowed to bring up the holo-room incident every time you want something!”

“Oh I’m not,” Awesome insisted, still smirking, “I’m just gonna bring it up until you get out on that dance floor. And hey, f-y-info, bro, it’d be for your benefit too. Like I said, everyone needs the chance to party every once in a while.”

“Ugh...” The commander couldn’t help but roll his eye at the idea. Still, he had a feeling that this would be one thing that Awesome wouldn’t drop until he did it. So, making sure to scowl the entire way, he reluctantly hopped down from his seat and started walking to the designated dancing area, with Awesome happily following him. 

It certainly wasn’t the greatest dancing. Definitely not as dorky as Hater’s, but still pretty stiff - especially when compared to the fluidity of Awesome’s dancing next to his. Still, Peepers was no quitter, and as the bass dropped and the song reached its high-energy climax, he did manage to loosen up just a little. His moves still looked somewhat planned, but at least they also looked somewhat natural, and even a little enjoyable.

“Told ya you had some sweet moves in you!” Awesome shouted over the music. Peepers just tried to ignore him and continued dancing, making sure not to make any big missteps in front of his men despite still looking a bit awkward. At the same time, Awesome tried to match his moves, making them look a bit more like a performing pair while still adding in his own unique flair. As a final touch, both of them received huge applause and loud cheers as they struck their final pose on the song’s last beat. Perhaps it had just been a trick in the lighting or something, but Awesome could have sworn that he saw a faint smile on Peepers’ face.

...Of course, it only took a couple seconds for the commander to make his way back off the dance floor, but Awesome didn’t try to hold him back or force him to stay, nor did he feel too upset when he realized that the party would probably only last until the late morning. 

It didn’t matter if it was tame or short, it was still a party, and he was going to enjoy it. He was going to let himself feel good and feel on top of the universe, just like he did at every party he threw or attended, and no matter what training or challenges Peepers or the universe had in store for him, he was going to try to hold onto that feeling as long as he could. Honestly, it was the least he could do, both for the commander and for himself. His big comeback disaster hadn’t been his final party. His failures hadn’t marked his end, and thank grop for that... But, no matter what happened next, he told himself that this party wasn’t going to be his final party either. 

And he was going to make sure of that.

THE END

[wendyimmiller]

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest

June 26, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

Well, as your letter writing skills are obviously taking second place to your Facebook overshares, I thought I would pick up the baton (as most women must do in this life), and nudge you with its slightly nubby end.

The bananas are beginning to cook.

I enjoyed your latest Rant about things in the gardening world that you love and loathe, but erased my pithy comment about 600 characters in, feeling it was better to start a new, more focused, discussion on the things that also make me crazy as a gardener and garden writer in a new(ish) digital age.

As almost all of them involve a laptop which is not particularly photogenic, I’ll entertain you with pictures of the garden right now instead.

Bird-sown Petasites hybridus (with violet leaf for scale).

There are many things to love about the digital age of course – my word processor for one, my digital SLR for another.  Hell, my iPhone camera at this point. But I know, in a little tiny corner of my mind which I often close for comment, that each is working with the passage of time to make me lazier and less clever.  Depth of field nuance? Grammatical flourish? Tricky spellings which tax the brain? All casualties to algorithms and sweet sweet convenience if I allow it.  And I so often do.

And these are skills we should be loathe to lose. A writer friend wrote the following on syntax, which I have pinned up in my office on a 3×5 card to remind me of the fun of it all – the reason if you will to turn off Microsoft Editor, and Yoast, and the specter of your fourth grade teacher insisting that you will be pitched into the fires of hell if you start a sentence with a conjunction:

It’s no sin to tax the grammar. If you’ve the skill, then you canna.

The Scots would point out, quite rightfully, that the last word negates the gist of the thing, but I like to feel it is penned in the style of Ogden Nash.  Perhaps you might prefer CAKE’s more modern approach with the lyrics of John McCrea in Stabbing Shadows:

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell.

That last line’s gotta resonate with the man who just penned 722 words (I counted) on high octane gasoline.

So if we allow these things to ‘help us,’ will they eventually hurt us instead? Which brings me to the issue of the modern ropes, however silken, that tie us in knots and limit the creative [horticultural] mind. I wonder if you’ll agree.

Echinacea ‘Tres Amigos’ with belamcanda fans – now Iris domestica.

Autocorrect

Do you know how long it takes to thumb-type Aechmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands? Do you know how much I’m forced to drink when I then read ‘Arch fascists’ on a text I’ve just sent to a botanist friend who is probably wondering how much news I’ve been taking in lately – and from which websites?

Wait a minute, of course you do, you’ve got at least a decade on me. At least I can see my screen at this point.

All said, it does tend to limit the amount of times one wants to thumb-type Achmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands. Easier to type ‘urn plant’ and pray there’s only one.

Well, not an achmea, but an ananas. Pineapples in Virginia. So. Much. Fun.

Google dictation

Which, like its evil brother, Autocorrect, does not understand botanical nomenclature and turns a simple task into ten wasted minutes of your life you will never get back. Here’s a great example from today: Tripsicum dactyloides to the folks at Apple is “trips to come back to the ladies.”

And, if I type it in, and forget to hit that top left “Yes, that’s damn well what I typed” word suggestion, I get something equally incomprehensible courtesy of Autocorrect. Unless of course, I’ve typed it before. Or not. Depends. Meanwhile, the tripsicum has spread four inches.

I imagine Dr. Fauci and his lot are struggling with the same issues: “No! I said remdesivir – the polymerase inhibitor, you idiot machine, not ‘REM death severe.’  Holy hell – like the President needs to think sleep will kill people at this point.  Somebody get me a new phone.”

Writing for SEO

I do believe I dislike this most of all. Not simply because of the articles that have been butchered by editors with their hungry marketing eyes fixated (quite understandably) on key words and their synonyms awkwardly repeated 16 times in 900 words. Nor because of one-sentence paragraphs that can no longer hold their heads up proudly and call themselves paragraphs. But because of the nuance that is lost when all this happens – particularly when it comes to clever, teasing titles.

Would you rather read “The Necessity of Underwear” to gently introduce you to the painful subject of staking, or scroll through yet another “The One Crazy Trick Great Gardens Have in Common – Sure to Shock You!”

Mixed shrubs made ever so much better by a touch of Cosmopolitan. (Miscanthus sinensis)

Had this SEO nonsense been the norm eighty years ago, it would have completely obliterated most great garden literature, including the scratchings of His Royal Highness, Monty Don. Loathe as I am to mention great British garden writers in light of your sensitivity on the subject, I feel an example is necessary.

One of Christopher Lloyd’s Country Life articles “Shun the Invisible Worm” (found in In My Garden) is a piece about succession bloom in late summer borders; and somewhere, deep in the meat of it, he comes to the threat of introducing the phlox eelworm into one’s garden.  Then, just as quickly, back to love of plants, and of hybrid rhododendrons. The worm was just a blip; but in finding it and moving through the article, the reader-gardener is transported deep within Lloyd’s kingdom.

I simply wouldn’t have fallen in love with that garden (or that wit) without that journey.  One feels the garden. One begins to know the garden.  His articles are a mix of straight-to-point and linger-a-little.  Both are necessary.

The great American garden writer Henry Mitchell wrote similarly, as did many others in the days before newspapers threw out their garden columnists onto hard pavement — forcing them to sell their souls in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces.

New 2020 title for Lloyd’s piece: The Terrifying Pest That Will Destroy Your Garden!

Notes from 2020 editor: Remove rhodos and summer border options.  Not relevant. Need some keyphrase headers.  Can you make the worm more terrifying?

Notes from Lloyd: [annoyed muttering]

Primo Black Pearl heuchera (a long-lived stunner!) with Sun Power hosta.

Those frowny faces say impertinent things like “Keyphrase has been found less than four times.”  “42% of your sentences contain more than 20 words.” “82% of your readers have started scanning their Instagram feed.”

I wonder if those who don’t blog or write content for websites (all fifteen of them) understand how much has been lost in a one-inch-deep marketplace.  20 words folks.  That’s what Yoast and Google think of our ability to read at this point.

For the benefit of future employers/editors reading this letter, I feel compelled to add that I am fully versed in SEO and will absolutely sell my soul in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces. The pavement is so very hard. Scott, I’m sure you’ll join me in my abject groveling.

Writers gotta hustle in a COVID world.

Exclamation points

Or rather, the new need for us to use exclamation points in texts, emails, or prose — or risk pissing someone off with our disembodied, obviously snotty, tone!

You probably wouldn’t understand because you’re so “good-natured” and “sometimes humorous,” but some of us don’t have to work that hard to make others believe we’re using a snotty tone, so we’re forced to use more exclamation points!

To friends! To colleagues! To people we’ve never met before! I die a little bit each time I do it! To those who flatly refuse – I deeply respect your stance! But maybe you’re grumpy!  I can’t tell! And see paragraph above!

I always think I love the red ones the best, then I see the pure lavender ones.

Can we all just agree to stop using them?!? Can we all just agree that an slightly uplifted tone is implied in all correspondence, no matter how short?!? Please!

Insane misinformation, perfectly SEO’d

Insane. And because I have no idea if it is libelous to quote these people, I won’t.   Instead I’ll make up something that I may, or may not have recently read, by someone who may, or may not have 45 thousand followers, of whom 44 thousand may, or may not, be Russian bots.

“Plant green healthy taro! The healthy leaves are awesome in the garden!  And good for you!  You can eat the green healthy leaves in tons of ways!  People say the leaves are medicinal – I’m sure they totally are! They just LOOK healthy! And green! Why not try it? Plant medicine is good medicine right? Right!”

Not for salad fixins’

There’s those exclamation points again.

Yeah buddy. You’re right.  Taro leaves do happen to be edible.  Boiled. Boiled hard. Just don’t make one of those “tons of ways” chomping on the raw leaves with a steaming cup of ashwagandha before you start your sun salutations, or your throat will swell shut.  And then you’ll need something other than plant medicine to realign your chakras.

While I give everyone and anyone a free pass to make mistakes in life and in print as we all do, I cannot get over some of the utter horseshit I see out there.  I suppose I should be thankful that it’s mostly Russian bots scanning it.

What was my SEO header keyphrase again?

Speaking of plant medicine, it appears to be time to close up this fabulously clever word processor with all of its little demons and frowny faces, and mix myself a G&T – though I know we disagree on the sticky issue of what to pair with one’s tonic. Your penchant for Vodka is unsettling, but I will assume a Vodka tonic pairs well with a Vodka jello square after a long day keeping the elephants off the phlox. Personally I don’t see why you don’t use Everclear and save a bit of cash.

Can we at least agree on Pimms? Don’t tell me your mixer is soda water.

Yours in the sublime brilliance of tonic at least,

Marianne

P.S. Just rebuilt the carburetor on my edger with the help of a friend. I too loathe this gasoline dance we do, but at Stihl’s exorbitant European-esque fuel prices, I’ll continue to use my additives.

P.P.S. The irony of having to mess with the SEO of this letter to achieve Green-Face Nirvana has sent me to my second G&T.

  The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on June 27, 2020.

The post The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.

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