#merced county

[marsmonster]

the cowsss

[officialnortherncalifornia]

The San Luis Dam in Merced County, California. Photo by Zurfa from Wikipedia.

[centralcaelectric]

[googlemapsgems]

Merced County, California (courtesy of Google Maps via GeoGuessr)  

[dragonroilz]

lore written by Ccmaci:

She used to be your typical low brow Karen, but then she tripped into the rabbit hole of really fringe conspiracy. She didn't trust America to train her for the coming thermal nuclear crisis cause they put steroids in the military's food that down the line will turn their children into sleeper-agent-zombies, and she doesn't go to foreign governments because when you get your picture taken for a passport, the flash from the camera imprints your Social Security Number into your brain, a number she believes decodes the subluminal messaging in fast-food commercials that make you want to not question the yearly 0.50 cent price raises for a burger (burgers which are laced with micro-pathogens that cause you to love the concept of being called in for jury duty, obviously).

The only place that was safe place to acquire military training was [insert fake county name here], a legally unrecognized country off the coast of Alaska, with a population of less than 200 people. Obviously, all boats are rigged with ice-berg attracting magnets which go off incase an American hasn't had their daily intake of jury duty micro-pathogens, so swam the coast of Canada as to avoid crossing the boarder where she'd likely be asked to give the Canadian government a sample of her blood (cause we all know what horrors Canadian's can commit with 2 liters of blood from a woman born south of the global hemisphere).

Anyways, so she makes it to the unrecognized country, and thankfully they let her into their militia cause SHE GOT JACKED FROM LITERALLY SWIMMING FROM WASHINGTON TO ALASKA. Obviously she did her homework before this, and was already pretty knowledgeable on basic military concepts like rocket jumping, so this was really just to round out the edges on her proficiency's (that's what she thinks, in reality she really needed this training to be competent lol).

Sadly, after discovering the unrecognized country was literally planning thermal-nuclear-warfare, she decided to leave Alaska, which strangely after she did, all evidence of that legally-unrecognized country ceased to exist. She was later picked up by Mann-Co after being coerced into thinking that she was stopping the enemy from furthering the goals of the shadow-government-fast-food-conglomerate, and as been working with the fem-mercs ever since.

similar to how the mercs lie to normal soldier about all being american, the female mercs lie to female soldier about various beliefs like how they're totally not all vaccinated and all of the rations delivered to them are definitely not inspected by the government. shes particularly distrustful of the scout and medic, the former being a borderline material gorl, and the latter being involved with more than questionable medical practices.

[have-you-been-here]

Los Baños, California, USA (Merced County)

[mercurygray]

Hii Merc, could I please request #11. "the lover in the sky" for Fred and Brady? Thank you <3 — @shoshiwrites

Thanks for letting me take my time on this one, @shoshiwrites! I hope you don't mind Fred's having...a bit of a crisis.

There was a shiver in the air.

Fred hefted the empty coffee thermos into the back of the jeep, grateful that it had been a busy day and the thing was mostly empty. She was glad she'd thought to bring her tanker jacket, earlier - the warm one with the good zipper that fit nicely over her uniform coat. Summer was still cool, and night out on the tarmac cooler still. She'd left Ken and his crews with fresh coffee, the last of the day, and now it was time for home, and bath, and bed.

"Fred!" Lieutenant Brady's voice came up out of the rising dark. "What brings you out here?"

"Passing out the rest of the coffee. Ken said it was going to be a long night." She paused, and followed his eyes in the direction of the plane, Brady's Crash Wagon in large friendly letters on the side. (Everyone had heard that story, about how he'd brought the thing in from Greenland on no wheels, and they'd renamed it shortly after.) "I could ask you the same thing."

"Checking in on her," he said with a smile. "Looks pretty good, doesn't she?"

"I wouldn't know," Fred admitted with a good-natured shrug. "I've never been inside one." Not even for a little barnstorm, she wanted to add, before someone starting laughing about the absurdity of working at at airbase and never having actually been inside a plane. City girls don't take plane rides at county fairs - and Clubmobile women take boats to Europe.

Brady, however, wasn't laughing. "Do you want to?" he asked, sincere as anything. She snorted, and then realized he was serious, and shrugged in assent. "Are your fellows all done inside, Herb?" Brady asked, shouting under the belly towards the mechanic and his box of tools.

"It's your ship, Lieutenant," Herb said. "I'll leave the stairs out, for when you both need to come back down. You got a flashlight? It's getting mighty dark out here."

Brady waved his and Herb nodded and let them be, Brady steering her towards the tail of the plane and the hatch with its folded down stairs. "Here, you'd better take this," he said, handing over the flashlight, warm from his pocket. "Once you get up top, go along the gangway and watch your feet."

"Don't you want to go first?"

He shook his head. "Ladies first," he said, and waved her on forward.

It was dark, here in the tail of the fort, the only light the two large panels in the sides with their machine guns standing at the ready. She fumbled for a moment with the flashlight until it finally turned on, the small beam casting here and there over the inside of the plane. It felt like being inside the attic of an old house, seeing the ribs of the aircraft jutting out of the walls at regular intervals, the panel of the floor creaking as she made her way around the guns and the bubble of the turret and its enormous oxygen tank, carefully passing by a chair and radio to an even smaller gangway, and passing between an enormous empty space. "Bomb bay," she heard Brady say behind her. "Careful there, there's a step up past the turret. Go left once you're up there."

The step up was over a large opening that must have led to the nose - the light was slightly better down there. Fred hoisted herself up and tried not to move anything, flipping the flashlight off to appreciate the scene in the last bit of light from the sunset. All of this to put a piece of metal in the sky.

Brady climbed up into the right-hand seat, pleased as anything. "How on earth do you manage all of this all at once?" Fred said, trying to make sense of the buttons and switches, each with a name and label more arcane than the last.

"It's just practice," he offered, "A lot of flight hours. And there's a checklist we go through when we start - fuel levels, pumps, ignition switches. Then we pump and prime the engines and start them one by one. Put your hand here," he said, gesturing to the handle between the two seats. "When we're ready on the runway for takeoff, you'd push this forward -" his hand closed around hers on the double-handled throttle - "and away she goes."

She felt strangely powerful, her hand gripping the bar of the throttle, empowered by the feeling of his hand on top of hers. "So," he said. "What do you think?"

Fred looked out the windows once more. Around them the airfield was deep orange and purple, the sun nearly finished setting over the distant tops of the trees. They weren't all that high up, here in the cockpit, but it was still somehow both wonderful and strange to see the field from this height, and pick out the lights just starting to come on in the distance, the pairs of headlights winking and swerving out of the gates.

"Amazing," she said, her voice full of emotions she didn't know she had. All of this could go up into the sky, and fly and fight and come back down again. Day after day, week after week. Hundreds of men, in hundreds of planes, all of it part of one vast, uncountable effort, beautiful and yet terrible in its beauty.

She looked over at Brady, sitting sideways in the copilot's seat, one foot dangling over the door below, and didn't even have time to think about what was happening before he'd leaned over and kissed her right in the middle of her laughing lips.

Time stopped for a moment, and for a bare second it was only the two of them in the dark, breathing together, lips warm.

"You look so pretty now," he offered, almost breathless. And then his smile fell, and the light went out of his eyes. "Fred, please, say something."

There was pressure behind her temples, a high whine between her ears, a magneto that wasn't powering on. Words failed to connect. "…I think I need to leave."

She didn't quite know where she was going - she'd left the flashlight up front with him. She stumbled down out of the cockpit, taking the easiest route out and launching herself out of the pilot's door onto the dark ground below, the asphalt jarring her knees and eating into her hands.

Somewhere behind her she heard him call her name in the dark, but she was starting the jeep and fumbling it into first, hands shaking against the wheel and feeling like her whole heart was about to burst in her chest the same way she had in the cockpit, filled to the brim with the thought of all that love and all those lovers in the sky.

Her heart was still pounding when she parked and made her way back to the Clubmobile, leaning her forehead against its smooth, safe metal side. It's against the rules. This is against the rules. He kissed me. John Brady kissed me.

And the loudest, strongest thought of all - no one told us at training what to do when you don't know if you don't mind.

[tf2heritageposts]

Do you think the mercs know how to play some common mid American games like cornhole or horseshoes? If so who do you think is the best at the county fairs?

soldier and engineer. those two fuck ass when it comes to cornhole

[coldcanyon]

Man in Field, Merced County (c.a. 1925)

Frank Day Robinson

[officialnortherncalifornia]

The Bloss Mansion in Merced County. Photo by Nehrams2020 from Wikipedia.

[shellibocs]

e xx

a few!

elenore leanne parker. or just elle. the man the milf the legend, the one that started it all. elenore is my fc5 deputy and the reason i started these blogs! she also has a cyberpunk 2077 au, where she is another merc that works with iseul occasionally. shes got a couple ausc but in most, including in her original verse, she is shipped with john seed. in her cyberpunk au, she is shipped with saul bright!

emily louise parker. elle’s younger sister, emily is not present for most of fc5, but she comes back in fcnd as my captain of security! emily is shipped with wheaty, the two were childhood friends that reconnected after emily returns to hope county

ethan moreno. my dead space oc! a food microbiologist, who spends most of the game hiding in the hydroponics deck. he is shipped with @loriane-elmuerto ‘s maya gutierrez

[remembertheplunge]

Wednesday December 16, 1987

Cold. High clouds. A few stars peek through.

Lucky we saw "Our Town" the other night. "Blessed be the tie that binds".

The word this am in all my five books I'm currently reading is "seeing". Stop looking and start seeing.

Office party today___wine, fun,  laughter.

Home___ Mom comes around the corner, crying. “I want to tell you something. Sam is dead.” 

Should we tell him (Dad). "No. Tell him after. After the Mansion House."

The Mansion House: Christmas Carols. Turkey dinner. Food glorious food.

Home:

We tell dad to take a deep breath

He says "tell me. Cat? Rat? George? Sam?"

Mom rounds the corner “He died this morning’

Dad “ I should have listened to you. I should have gone to see him.”

End of entry

Notes: 11/4/2024

Sam was a friend of my father’s. They had known each other since youth. In the 1940s they went to Havana Cuba and had wild times together.  In 1987, they were in their mid 60s. They had been close friends. Sam, who lived about 100 miles from where my parents lived, died of cancer.

Our Town is a play written by Thornton Wilder. It is set in three acts, representing youth, young adulthood, marriage, and the last act is about death. In the play, the church choir sings the song “Blessed be the tie that binds”. In the late 1930’s, my father played the role of George in the play. His wife in the play, Emily, dies in childbirth. Her body is taken to the town  cemetery where she talks with others who have died before her about life and death. In 1987, My parents and I had seen the play days before we learned that Sam had died. I think having just seen it helped my Dad through learning about Sam’s death..

My father told me once that he had a dream in which he had died. After death, he was at a train station. He was waiting to board a train. His friend Sam was there. My Dad died in 2000 and could finally meet Sam at the station, board the train and they could ride off into the mystery together. 

In 1987 I worked for the Stanislaus County Public Defender's office. We had our Christmas party on December 16, which is the party I refer to at the beginning of the entry

"home" refers to my parent's house in Atwater California

The Mansion House was a restaurant 7 miles away in Merced, California.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the The Desert Sun:

High temperatures continue to scorch Californians across the state Friday.

Dozens of cities in Southern California reached 90 degrees and above just before 6 a.m., the National Weather Service San Diego posted on social media.

It comes amid days of excessive heat warnings plaguing regions throughout the state and at least one city breaking a heat record.

That unfortunate title goes to Indio, which reached 121 degrees on Sept. 5, beating its previous record by one degree set in 2020, according to the NWS San Diego.

The primary reason Californians have been suffering from heat is an upper-level ridge or an upper-level high-pressure system over Southern Nevada and Southern California, said Dave Munyan, a meteorologist with the NWS San Diego.

In simplified terms, these ridges allow air to collect and sink. Munyan explained that there is a relationship between pressure and temperature, and the air heats up as it compresses. Hotter weather is generally seen under these ridges, spanning multiple states.

The ridge started “really strengthening” Thursday and will continue through Friday and linger through the weekend. It has refused to weaken and move from our area, he said. It’s why people checking the weather forecasts for the week may have seen a slight uptick in their Sunday, even Monday, temperatures, Munyan said.

What is the weather right now?

High temperatures continue throughout California on Friday and through the weekend, bringing with it excessive heat warnings and other heat advisories. Here are just some of the triple-digit temperatures forecasted across the state, according to various NWS offices in California:

A portion of southwest California, including Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks, Burbank, and East Los Angeles, is under an excessive heat warning through Monday evening, facing temperatures up to 115 degrees.

The Western San Fernando Valley remains under an excessive heat warning through Monday evening, with highs up to 118 degrees. The Inland Empire, also under an excessive heat warning through the same period, can see temperatures of 102 degrees or soar up to 114 degrees.

A portion of central California, including Bakersfield, Tulare, Merced, and Fresno, is under a heat advisory through Saturday evening. Temperatures will be between 102 and 107 degrees.

Sacramento, Redding, Stockton and other cities in the Carquinez Strait and Delta, Sacramento Valley, northern San Joaquin Valley and surrounding foothills are under a heat advisory through Friday evening and will see temperatures between 100 and 109 degrees through Friday evening.

The Coachella Valley and San Diego County deserts are also under an excessive heat warning Friday, with highs between 112 degrees and 120 degrees forecasted.

[beardedmrbean]

An illegal immigrant man has been arrested for the shooting death of two sisters in their home in Dallas last week, while he also allegedly shot his daughter during the same incident. 

Jose Santiago Chairez, 50, has been booked into the Dallas County Jail, and faces charges of capital murder and aggravated assault, according to Fox 4 KDFW.

Chairez allegedly shot sisters Catalina Valdez Andrade, 47, and Merced Andrade Bailon, 43, in the head inside their home in Farmers Branch on Nov. 24 at around 4:20 a.m. Farmers Branch is a city in Dallas about 11 miles north of Downtown Dallas.

Chairez’s daughter was also at the home and was shot in the arm, per a police report viewed by The Dallas Morning News. She told officers her father shot her and the sisters, according to the report.

A motive for the deadly shooting is unclear. It is also not known what type of relationship Chairez had with the sisters or why Chairez’s daughter was in their home at the time. 

Chairez was arrested on the day of the shooting and was given a bond of more than $2 million. He also has an immigration hold that prevents him from being released, according to Fox 4.

The shooting took place in the 13200 block of Castleton Place.

[afarcryfrommymain]

Far Cry OC Tournament Round 1A

Esther Seed v Orayani Ragadio v Wesley Beltran

Voting and little about our contestants under the cut!

Esther Seed (@vampireninjabunnies-blog)

About: Esther was born on March 20th 1994, in a very small rural community outside of Atlanta, Georgia to the local pastor David Shea and his wife Mary. She's the youngest of three, her sister Sarah is ten years older and Michael is four years older. She didn't fit in very well as a child due to being skipped ahead several grades. Her parents did the best they could to make her childhood a happy one and for the most part succeeded despite their deep poverty. She graduated from Harvard University at eighteen with her Ph.D in Psychiatry, focusing on childhood and religious trauma. Esther participated in competitive archery while in University and was champion three years in a row. She met John Seed in a nightclub not long after, and they dated for a year before she moved to Montana. During that year she'd worked as a social worker but quit from burnout when the systems flaws kept her from saving a child in an abusive home. She and John married and lived very happily for around two years despite her passive aggressive conflict with Joseph. Until one night after an argument with Joseph went too far. She and John attempted to leave Eden's Gate and Hope County but Joseph ran them off the road into the river. Now three years later the Reaping is in full swing, John and the rest of the county believe she's dead. And she's trapped in a bunker by Joseph with her children working to escape. Esther is 5"0, 98lbs, long copper red hair, big brown doe eyes. Fair skinned and covered in freckles with an hourglass figure. A fairly small, delicate woman. She has two tattoos given to her by John. The Seven virtues in latin under her right breast and a small bumblebee with John's initials on her pelvis. Later in her story she has the word PRIDE carved into her left shoulder blade by Joseph.

Does your OC have anything to share?: "Esther is an accomplished archer and equestrian. She is quite good at mounted archery and being as petite as she is she favours stealth and ambushes if she has to fight."

Orayani Ragadio (@broken-balance-baby)

About: She's from the post-canon au of Far Cry 3 where Jason becomes a merc! Filipino Aeta girl, she's also a starting journalist and meets Jason and his team in the middle of a warzone in Southern Philippines. she's very sweet, polite and always optimistic, she also doesn't seem very smart because of that but she is. she knows how to handle a bow and arrow and Jason teaches her how to use guns in their story.

Anything else we should know?: "she's very small! like say about 5'1 or so. so it's possible she could use her size to her advantage LOL"

Wesley Beltran (@stacispratt)

About: wes beltran considers himself a generally calm person, and this is true until his friends are in danger. staci and joey are his only family in hope county, and he'd do anything for them. after the seeds take them from him, his singular goal is to rescue them at any cost. at first, he agrees to help the resistance, because the more people fighting the cult the better, but the second any task doesn't directly help him get joey back from john (his first goal), he'll ditch it. he doesn't want to waste time, he wants to get right to joey, and also get his hands bloody punishing the people who have hurt her. after he gets accustomed to his brand new bloodlust, he prefers to use knives/blades/shovels to kill cultists over guns. it's more personal and painful for them. this is especially so with john seed! killing him from a distance with a gun would take all the reward out of killing john. also, it turns out that john seed's obsession with him scratches a very particular, desperate, life-long need inside wes to find someone who loves him more than anything, and his priorities after he rescues joey starts to blur into something that includes soaking up john's obsessive love forever and ever so he can (maybe, possibly) finally feel so full of love he'll never starve for it again! that's not to say john and wes don't beat the shit out of each other, because they do, most notably at wes's confession where wes beats john over the head with a metal pipe to rescue joey, and at wes's atonement, where john tattoos wes and then wes hunts john down until john gets the upper hand and steals him away to his bunker where, you guessed it, they beat the shit out of each other again. when marshal burke dies, wes blames the resistance. staci suffers near-death torment at the hands of jacob seed, and wes can't reconcile this with the idea that the resistance cares at all, because he's so sucked up in the well-being of his own two best friends. eventually, consumed with his mutual obsession for john seed, wes joins the cult and becomes john's right hand man and favorite chosen. he doesn't particularly take pleasure in torturing or killing innocents, but his loyalty to john has cemented itself and he'd do anything for him, just as he'd do anything for joey & staci. plus they still get to make each other bleed without politics also boomer is his bestie :)

Anything else we should know?: corruption arc through obsessive love babey.

[rabbitcruiser]

Flying East (No. 1)

The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including the San Francisco Bay. The Association of Bay Area Governments defines the Bay Area as including the nine counties that border the estuaries of San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and Suisun Bay: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties such as the Central Coast counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey, or the Central Valley counties of San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus.[9] The Bay Area is known for its natural beauty, progressive politics, prominent universities, technology companies, and affluence. The Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex multimodal transportation network.

The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the Bay Area dates back to 8000–10,000 BC. The oral tradition of the Ohlone and Miwok people suggests they have been living in the Bay Area for several hundreds if not thousands of years. The Spanish empire claimed the area beginning in the early period of Spanish colonization of the Americas. The earliest Spanish exploration of the Bay Area took place in 1769. The Mexican government controlled the area from 1821 until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Also in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in nearby mountains, resulting in explosive immigration to the area and the precipitous decline of the Native population. The California Gold Rush brought rapid growth to San Francisco. California was admitted as the 31st state in 1850. A major earthquake and fire leveled much of San Francisco in 1906. During World War II, the Bay Area played a major role in America's war effort in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, with the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, of which Fort Mason was one of 14 installations and location of the headquarters, acting as a primary embarkation point for American forces. Since then, the Bay Area has experienced numerous political, cultural, and artistic movements, developing unique local genres in music and art and establishing itself as a hotbed of progressive politics. Economically, the post-war Bay Area saw large growth in the financial and technology industries, creating an economy with a gross domestic product of over $700 billion. In 2018 it was home to the third-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States.

Source: Wikipedia