#only in los alamos...

[character-of-all-time]

oh, more nuclear fun facts: did yall know that approximately one orphan source is reported each day :D

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

I am absolutely LIVID about the documents case being dismissed. Because the motion to dismiss alleged the illegality of Jack Smith's appointment and funding.

I understand that Aileen Cannon is a goddamn joke in Trump's pocket, but to dismiss on THAT?

He was legally appointed by the Attorney Geberal of the United States, as is appropriate and called for in ANY case that may be politically charged to ensure the independence of the DoJ and prosecuting team. When the Attorney General appoints a special prosecutor there is not only nothing illegal about funding their investigation but it is illegal NOT to, as that is obstruction of justice to impede an investigation.

And I'd be saying the same thing about Ken Starr who I found a waste of oxygen who was on a witch hunt, bc whether *I* thought it was a witchhunt, the AG thought it was worth an investigation and that means it gets fucking investigated.

This is such a shockingly bullshit ruling, it's not even trying to pretend legal grounds. You can't claim partisanship against the DoJ as its long been seen as part of executive branch and a Cabinet post, but an independent agency. Just bc Trump subverted that independence does not make it less true.

I bet Merrick Garland is having kittens right now.

And ok, so I get this piece of shit judge ruled on his mishandling bc they were found in Florida... but those documents came from DC originally, did they not? I mean we can prove providence. So couldn't a theft of national security materials charge be filed in DC? And if there are any military documents, as rumored, can the Commander in Chief be prosecuted under the UCMJ? He has a fucking rank. Pretty sure that's never been tested, why not test it now?

[ncytiri]

how are ppl still talking about oppenheimer so incorrectly.

[creature-once-removed]

.

[geejaysmith]

The urge to close-read the entire series for the express purpose of charting out a slowburn TsubaMari relationship progression vs just saying “actually they were dating the whole time, they got engaged between AXZ and XV and just didn’t tell anybody”.

[leirathemartian]

They also want to gut other NOAA services that do research that CAN be about climate change, like the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which is NOAA's general research wing. In the DoE section, they want to commercialize much of the work the DoE National Labs do, making them focus only on "fundamental science", with any "applied or technology development" done by companies. They have no concept of how science or research works, only seeing it as a product to be sold. NOAA NWS is the one responsible for thunderstorm and tornado watches/warnings, as well as hurricane predictions, which rely on massive supercomputer clusters that individual companies are not going to buy for themselves. NOAA does MANY hugely valuable services, but because it's doing science and research for the sake of bettering the world instead of profit, it has to be dismantled, according to them.

Reminder: the companies and political entities pushing Project 2025 have addresses and go out to lunch a lot and should never eat a spitless meal for the rest of their lives.

Practice bagpipes outside their secure compounds.

Follow them around ringing a bell wherever they go.

If they are going to be farcically evil, be Animaniacally good. Be the definition of chaotic justice.

Also, vote. It might just kick the ball down the road a bit, but that gives people more time to organize a concerted resistance (in no way on any social media platform) to the fascist creep happening in America. It is possible to take this country from the bastards who control it, it will take work, effort, and occasionally going offline and talking to humans though.

[shockercoco]

「 ✦Masterlist ✦ 」

Welcome, stay a while :) ~~ * smut ~~

Austin Butler

Like a Snake - Feyd Rautha *

Only Pleasure Remains - Feyd Rautha *

Unconventional Confessions *

Little Do You Know

Bloodlust - Feyd Rautha*

Consequences *

Unwanted Help - Feyd Rautha

Snap Out of It

Seduction by Deception - Feyd Rautha*

No I'm Not *

What Were You Thinking

The Lucky One - Benny Cross

An Honorary Member - Benny Cross

Rainbow vs. Leather - Benny Cross

Dangerously yours - Benny Cross *

Excuse Me? - Benny Cross

Whatever It Takes - Benny Cross*

A House to a Home

Callum Turner

Whiskey - Major John Egan

Modern Loneliness - Major John Egan

Cillian Murphy

Moving to Los Alamos - Oppenheimer - my 1st post

Farleigh Start

There We Go *

Untitled *

Just One More *

Mike Faist

Cheer Up * - Art Donaldson

Necessary Revenge* - Art Donaldson

Timothee Chalamet

Don't Mind Me *

I Told You So

Glen Powell

Chasing Feelings - Tyler Owens

Nothing Like Honey* - Tyler Owens New! - 10/24

(Each section is oldest to newest)

❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀❀•°❀°•❀❀•

❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•

[thefearandnow]

So with Oppenheimer coming out tomorrow, I feel a certain level of responsibility to share some important resources for people to understand more about the context of the Manhattan Project. Because for my family, it’s not just a piece of history but an ongoing struggle that’s colonized and irradiated generations of New Mexicans’ lives and altered our identity forever. Not only has the legacy of the Manhattan Project continued to harm and displace Indigenous and Hispanic people but it’s only getting bigger: Biden recently tasked the Los Alamos National Lab facility to create 30 more plutonium pits (the core of a nuclear warhead) by 2026. So this is a list of articles, podcasts and books to check out to hear the real stories of the local people living with this unique legacy that’s often overlooked. 

This is simply the latest mainstream interest in the Oppenheimer story and it always ALWAYS silences the trauma of the brown people the US government took advantage of to make their death star. I might see the movie, I honestly might not. I’m not trying to judge anyone for seeing what I’m sure will be an entertaining piece of art. I just want y’all to leave the theater knowing that this story goes beyond what’s on the screen and touches real people’s lives: people whose whole families died of multiple cancers from radiation from the Trinity test, people who’s ancestral lands were poisoned, people who never came back from their job because of deadly work conditions. This is our story too.

The first and best place to learn more about this history and how to support those still resisting is to follow Tewa Women United. They’ve assembled an incredible list of resources from the people who’ve been fighting this fight the longest.

https://tewawomenunited.org/2023/07/oppenheimer-and-the-other-side-of-the-story

The writer Alicia Inez Guzman is currently writing a series about the nuclear industrial complex in New Mexico, its history and cultural impacts being felt today.

https://searchlightnm.org/my-nuclear-family/

https://searchlightnm.org/the-abcs-of-a-nuclear-education/

https://searchlightnm.org/plutonium-by-degrees/

Danielle Prokop at Source NM is an excellent reporter (and friend) who has been covering activists fighting for Downwinder status from the federal government. They’re hoping that the success of Oppenheimer will bring new attention to their cause.

https://sourcenm.com/2023/07/19/anger-hope-for-nm-downwinders/

https://sourcenm.com/2022/01/27/new-mexico-downwinders-demand-recognition-justice/

One often ignored side of the Manhattan Project story that’s personal for me is that the government illegally seized the land that the lab facilities eventually were built on. Before 1942, it was homesteading land for ranchers for more than 30 families (my grandpa’s side of the family was one). But when the location was decided, the government evicted the residents, bought their land for peanuts and used their cattle for target practice. Descendants of the homesteaders later sued and eventually did get compensated for their treatment (though many say it was far below what they were owed)

https://www.hcn.org/issues/175/5654

Myrriah Gomez is an incredible scholar in this field, working as a historian, cultural anthropologist and activist using a framework of “nuclear colonialism” to foreground the Manhattan Project. Her book Nuclear Nuevo Mexico is an amazing collection of oral stories and archival record that positions New Mexico’s era of nuclear colonialism in the context of its Spanish and American eras of colonialism. A must read for anyone who’s made it this far.

https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/nuclear-nuevo-mexico

There isn’t a ton of podcasts about this (yet 👀) but recently the Washington Post’s podcast Field Trip did an episode about White Sands National Monument. The story is a beautifully written and sound designed piece that spotlights the Downwinder activists and also a discovery of Indigenous living in the Trinity test area going back thousands of years. I was blown away by it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/field-trip/white-sands-national-park/

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists have discovered the first indication of nuclear fission occurring amongst the stars. The discovery supports the idea that when neutron stars smash together, they create "superheavy" elements — heavier than the heaviest elements of the periodic table — which then break down via nuclear fission to birth elements like the gold in your jewelry. Nuclear fission is basically the opposite of nuclear fusion. While nuclear fusion refers to the smashing of lighter elements to create heavier elements, nuclear fission is a process that sees energy released when heavy elements split apart to create lighter elements. Nuclear fission is pretty well known, too. It's actually the basis of energy-generating nuclear power plants here on Earth — however, it had not been seen occurring amongst the stars before now.  "People have thought fission was happening in the cosmos, but to date, no one has been able to prove it," Matthew Mumpower, research co-author and a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a statement.

Continue Reading.

[queenshelby]

Chemical Reactions (P. 19)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer x Student Reader

Warning: Age-Gap, Infidelity, Smut, Torture

Words: 1,807

Note: The fic is spoiler free and my own fantasy and imagination. It is not historically and scientifically accurate.

Meanwhile, in Los Alamos, Robert was on the lookout for you, wondering where you were. It was unusual for you not to check in with him and, when he looked for you in the plutonium laboratory and at your lodging, you were still nowhere to be found.

Confused and worried, Robert made calls to other members of the team and questioned those responsible for guarding the facility. Yet, nobody had seen you since yesterday evening and this alarmed him.

Had you left Los Alamos without informing him about it? Did you decide to proceed with an abortion despite him begging you not to?

It all made no sense to him and, eventually, even Kitty caught on that her husband was distraught.

Robert began pacing restlessly around his living quarters, thoughts whirling in his brain.

"Would you stop it, for god's sake!" Kitty interrupted Robert abruptly, snapping him out of his reverie. She saw her usually calm husband losing himself to frustration and worry about you, another woman out of all people.

"I am sure your whore is fine, wherever she is," Kitty remarked angrily, causing Robert to look at her sharply. The hurt flashed briefly in his eyes before masking them. He knew better than to argue with her, especially right now.

"Perhaps she came to her senses and decided to terminate the pregnancy, because if she doesn't Robert, it will ruin us both," were Kitty's final words before she stormed off, slamming the door shut behind her. Her bitter words continued to haunt him as he returned to his ceaseless wandering. He couldn't shake the fear that somehow, everything might come crashing down around him, tearing apart his world.

Outside, the sky turned gray, threatening rain. Inside, Robert paced aimlessly in his living space. He wanted nothing more than to find you safe and sound, secure in knowing that his worst fear wasn't coming true. But try as he might, there was only silence on the phone lines, and the faces of his colleagues became increasingly grim.

They too realized that something was terribly wrong. Time passed slowly, torturously, but Robert refused to yield to despair. There was always hope—it didn't matter how small—that you were alive and well.

And so, Robert sat, waiting patiently amidst these thoughts, hoping against hope that someone would provide news about you. As minutes ticked away, his desperation grew stronger, consuming him whole until, suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

Robert quickly crossed the room, opening it cautiously. To his immense relief, it was Lesley Groves standing outside, carrying a somber expression. Robert had called him earlier that evening, trying to find out where you were but Groves had information of your whereabouts at the time.

“General,” Robert exclaimed, his voice filled with urgency. “Have you heard anything?” he asked worryingly and Groves took a deep breath, visibly attempting to regulate his emotions.

“There’s been a development,” he finally responded, taking care to choose his words meticulously.

“She was apprehended early this morning," Groves informed Robert and a weight seemed to descend upon him, crushing his chest.

“Apprehended? What does that mean exactly?” he asked, and Groves cleared his throat, clearly choosing his response carefully.

“Someone claimed that she was passing along classified material to the soviets and now she’s under investigation by Pash," Groves informed Robert and these words hung in the air, leaving Robert reeling.

"She would never do that! She understands the importance of confidentiality," he argued vehemently, his conviction evident in every word.

Lesley Groves simply nodded solemnly, acknowledging Robert's concern but refusing to comment further. "These allegations need to be thoroughly investigated," he reminded Robert, "and until they are cleared up, you must put aside any personal feelings, Robert."

"Absolutely not," Robert insisted, unwilling to accept such accusations leveled against you before making his demand.

"I expect her to be released immediately. This is ludicrous and I won't stand for it!" Robert protested fiercely, his determination apparent in his tone.

"Calm yourself, Robert" said Groves, trying to placate Robert's growing agitation. "We cannot force her release as the charges remain serious."

"Serious charges based on what evidence?" retorted Robert angrily.

"If they have concrete proof, let them present it. And if she is held in confinement based on a mere allegation, then I am afraid my position here becomes null and void and I will be required resign immediately. She is the third scientist who has been arrested this week and I cannot run this project under such circumstances," Robert threatened as, with an intensity that surprised even himself, Robert held Groves' gaze. They both knew that should you truly betray them, the consequences could indeed be dire.

Groves' face tightened, showing a mix of anger and resignation. Clearly irritated by Robert's stubbornness, he attempted to reason with him.

"Look, Robert, I know this situation is difficult for you, but you can't let emotions cloud your judgment. Our mission depends on trust and loyalty amongst everyone involved. I assure you, I will personally see to it that proper procedures are followed and she receives fair treatment. However, please remember – it's crucial for you to maintain composure," Groves lectured him and inwardly, Robert cursed his own weakness.

He knew that he could not simply resign from the project and, yet, he considered it.

The thought of seeing you locked away in prison, enduring painful conditions that may harm both you and the baby...it was beyond his comprehension. The notion of bringing forth new life under such terrible circumstances felt utterly incongruent with his dreams of a hopeful and war-free future together with you.

"I need you to get her away from Pash. You warned me about his techniques, and you said he wouldn't hesitate to use extreme measures," Robert pleaded fervently, his eyes full of desperation.

"This is out of my hands, Robert," replied Groves reluctantly, feeling helpless in the face of mounting pressure.

"She is pregnant," Robert pressed, his voice trembling slightly, unable to hide his anxiety.

"Jesus, Robert! Is the child yours?" Groves enquired gently, probing into matters he hadn't expected to broach today. Even though he recognized the depth of Robert's love for you, the potential complications arising from your affair remained uncertain territory for them both.

"Of course, the child is mine," Robert confirmed firmly, displaying a mixture of pride and protectiveness towards you and your unborn baby.

"Unbelievable!" muttered Groves, seemingly lost in thought. "I will talk to my superiors and see that she is transferred to a proper military facility for investigation," he promised Robert sincerely.

Seeing no alternative solution, Robert sighed heavily in agreement, grateful for whatever chance there was for you to be safe.

"Thank you," he breathed, conveying his gratitude nonverbally.

He believed that you could help save countless lives in ways undreamt of, and it broke his heart to think that your brilliance might go unrealized due to false allegations. In addition to being your lover, you also played a vital role in Robert's ambitions, having brought fresh perspectives that often led to breakthroughs. With a heavy heart, he retreated back to his residence, struggling to hold onto his dwindling hopes for your freedom.

It pained him deeply, imagining you trapped beneath layers of bureaucratic red tape, potentially subjected to Pash's cruel tactics. Every second spent contemplating the possibility evoked an unshakable terror inside him. The prospect of you suffering torment while awaiting trial weighed heavily on his conscience, stirring anguish he struggled to suppress.

His sleep eluded him throughout the night. Each toss and turn merely intensifying his dread, reflecting his restless state.

As dawn approached, he found solace in strolling through the small gardens surrounding his quarters. Nature's beauty served as a temporary balm to the distressing situation, allowing him a momentary respite from reality.

When the sun rose high overhead, casting warm rays across the landscape, he returned indoors, determined to focus on his work. Though he tried valiantly to immerse himself in projects pertaining to weaponry, his mind continually drifted toward you.

He was at breaking point not knowing what would happen to you and his unborn child, the baby conceived in secret. It haunted him all day long, and little did he know that it would be almost a year until he would see you again.

Tags:

@sunbeamseas @saint-ackerman @oatmealisweird @naxxsstuff @amanda08319 @r-m-cidnah @elysiannook @cillshot @infireddabdab @tastycakee @harrysbestiee @lilybabe22 @adalynlowell @henrywintersdearestgirl @ietss @thatgirlthatreadswattpad @ryiamarie @axionn

@heidimoreton @nela-cutie @futurecorps3 @delishen @nosebleeds-247 @thirteenis-myluckynumber @gills-lounge @hjmalmed @lost-fantasy @tiredkitten @sidechrisporn @smallsoulunknown @charqing-qing @hopefulinlove @aporiasposts @shycrybaby @me-and-your-husband @hjmalmed @lacontroller1991 @galxydefender @aporiasposts

@galxydefender @hunnibearrr @saint-ackerman @lunyyx @gentlemonsterjennie1 @ihavealotoffandomssorry @nadloves @lost-fantasy @nolucesn@mcavoy-girl @hjmalmed @bloodybagels @obeyme4life @richiesgroupie @blushykiss @tatumrileyslover @teawithsatanx @orijanko @rhaenyra4ever @xcinnamonmalfoyx @budugu @nadloves @kmc1989 @bloodybagels @obeyme4life @richiesgroupie

[youthereader]

Near Zero part 6.

PAIRING: cillian murphy as j. robert oppenheimer x fem!reader

SUMMARY: 1.1k words. Brought on as part of the Manhattan Project, your old physics professor sees you in a new light.

RATING: E; barebacking, infidelity, age gap (10+ years), secret relationship

A/N: Although based on real life characters, this is J. Robert Oppenheimer as played by Cillian Murphy, a fictional character, and does not intend to be accurate. This is merely for entertainment. This is the first of two parts in Santa Fe! A little smutty, a little fluffy.

masterlist

You would be forgiven for forgetting there is a wide, wide world beyond Los Alamos by how isolated it is. The train takes you and a dozen colleagues out to Santa Fe and in between listening to the men speaking, you take in the countryside.

Though the days are getting colder, the sun remains, everything swallowed by its brightness as the train crawls along. You are wedged between Robert and the window, and hear Feynman admit to bringing his bongos.

“Whatever for?” you chuckle. “Richard, your poor wife.”

Robert had been jealous of Feynman when you danced during the mixer, but Richard was happily married, coming along to visit his spouse in Santa Fe as she was treated for tuberculosis.

“It might do her some good,” he retorts, shrugging.

“Or get you thrown out.”

He rolls his eyes. Lately, you’ve been teased for being a bore again, which suits you fine. Since the incident with Nichols, you don’t want to stick out at all, or to be seen as adventurous. He granted the weekend pass, but up until boarding that morning you hadn’t felt sure of anything.

The journey is a little over an hour, and once you arrive, Robert lets you past him to make your descent from the carriage. Your group idles in the entryway to the station, before you break off into pairs or trios. Some are leaving to find a bar, others to the few hotels in town. You have your suitcase in one hand and your coat in the other, Feynman and Robert shaking hands and separating.

There are worse things, to be seen with Robert walking down the main street, you suppose. You give Feynman a short wave as he goes to find transport to the hospital, keen to see his wife. Robert beside you, his hand touches the small of your back.

“You should have sent your things ahead,” he murmurs.

“I can carry this,” you say, but he stoops to take your suitcase from you.

You walk together to the hotel, reaching the front desk and check in separately. You join again at the steps to the elevator, eyes meeting.

“Meet you here in an hour for lunch?” he asks, friendly.

“Of course, Oppie,” you reply, beaming at him. “See you then.”

You arrive at your room, your suitcase with a bellhop beside you. You give him a generous tip, shutting the door as you kick off your shoes. You take out a cigarette and light it, tossing aside your hat on a chair as you walk through. Your room is modest, but far grander than anything you’ve ever slept in. Like so many others before the war, the struggle to make ends meet meant only dreaming of rooms like this, with a bed made for you, tiny little soaps and monogrammed towels on rails in a washroom all to yourself.

There’s a knock in the distance as you wander, and you move back to the door to answer it, not peeking through the spyhole. Robert stands there without his hat, hands on his hips.

You smile at him, letting him through. You agreed earlier that being seen taking separate elevators, going to two different rooms, was the better idea.

“How is your view?” he murmurs, coming through.

You follow him as he looks out the window, lifting your cigarette back to your lips. He takes in the stretch of street below.

“It’s better now,” you murmur.

He takes a moment for the words to stick, and he glances back, his eyes dropping to your bare feet.

“Are you sure you don’t mind I visit your room? I only would impose in case mine was bugged.”

He makes it sound as if he is unworthy of your attention, and you glance away with a smile, exhaling.

“You are so beautiful,” he says, and you stare at him, your cheeks warm. “You are always so beautiful.”

Occasionally his words still astonish you, even after learning his language over the years. He approaches you, hands coming up to hold your face. You kiss him for the first time in days, sighing as he pulls you into an embrace. When he pulls back, he takes your cigarette for a quick puff.

“Are you quite hungry yet?” you murmur.

“Starving,” he replies, and he kisses you again.

He all but devours you as you walk into the bedroom, cigarette hastily mashed in the ashtray, the dish nearly knocked off the nightstand in your hurry. Your tongues tangle as you give yourself to him, your chest a vice as your pour into him, holding his face as your hips cradle his.

A bed. A whole bed to yourselves, and it’s heavenly. His hand is under your dress and between your thighs, your breath catching as he rubs you over your underwear, the weight of his body on yours pressing you further down…

In no time at all, you both are naked, rolling together with the blankets pushed aside. Your hair curtains you both as you lie on top of him, your legs twining. Not quite joined, you stretch out the moment longer, revelling in the fact that there are no barriers between you. This is the first time you’ve seen each other completely naked, and he can’t stop touching you everywhere, caressing you and kissing you.

You cry out when he pushes inside you, pulling you down, your whole body shaking as he stretches, his blue eyes endless beneath you. The smell of his bare skin makes you want to cry.

“Robert,” you moan, eyes fluttering shut when he rubs where he splits you open.

He kisses the column of your neck and grazes his teeth there, knees pulling up for better leverage, fucking you slow and hard. You dissolve into pure pleasure, slumping forward as he holds you against him, chest to chest…

“Darling,” he whispers, and then he curls his fingers in your hair.

You kiss him hard, having recovered enough to be fully within your body once again. He groans, muffled against your lips. You cling to one another, and you sense him trying to delay the inevitable, his breath coming in short pants against your neck. The push and pull of your bodies becomes a frenzy, as he gives in to it all, pulling back at the last second to finish on your stomach.

You both stare down at the mess, panting together, his forehead pressed to yours.

“Are you alright?” he whispers, and you nod dazedly.

“I would like a drink now,” you whisper, and he nods.

A beat or two and then he begins to chuckle, long and low, slumping so he lies half on top of you, his growing laughter filling your ears.

Also, congratulations to Cillian for winning the Golden Globe for Oppenheimer! I was at work when he won so I didn't get to see his speech live. :/ Anyway, thank you for reading and know that all likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated. 🖤

Taglist: @indulgence-be-thy-name @forgottenpeakywriter

[oldguydoesstuff]

When I worked for DEC, I used to love reading the internal DECNotes message board that had collected stories from Field Service about weird installations of our computers.

By far the best one concerned a PDP 11/73, like the one above, that was used to measure nuclear bomb yield. The story went that the system was in a shaft leading to the underground test chamber, and it took readings on the explosion in real time until it was vaporized.

I always hoped this was true but took it with a grain of salt - but this archive.org post about just such a setup at Los Alamos backs it up. The test method is quite ingenious too - the system uses time domain relfectometry (TDR) measurements to measure a length of cable between the bomb and the computer. As the bomb explodes, the blast eats away at the cable, and they can figure out yield and stuff based on how fast it happens.

The PDP 11 is indeed not spared in the process, it transmits its results to a distant receiver before being destroyed what can only be at most seconds later.

That's why the instructions are clear to say "start with a PDP 11 you no longer love." lol.

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think a lot of my complaints about Oppenheimer might boil down to- "it's a movie about Oppenheimer, not Los Alamos, and I kinda just wanted a movie about Los Alamos."

But also, which things get call backs later in the film and which things don't, and whether or not the call backs make sense? Doesn't? Really? Track? (Granted, I just saw the film, so maybe it needs to marinate more.)

But like, we spend a whole scene establishing that Oppie knows that New Mexico thunderstorms break before dawn....so that when it's raining in the Trinity test, we're like "oh! But he knows about the rain." ....which...ok? Sure.

But at the beginning of the film, we get a whole sequence where he tries to kill a teacher with a poisoned apple, realizes that was fucked up, and is able to stop it from harming anyone. Rather than like...connecting this to how he creates the bomb, realizes the damage it will do, but is UNABLE to stop it- the only call back is...he tells Jean about it and she tells him that he needed to get laid?

And speaking of Jean. Oh Jean. Jesus, Nolan needs some therapy about women. But like... the fact that Oppie reads the "I am become death" line *while having sex with Jean*- why? Why is the movie trying to connect that moment to the Trinity Test. It FEELS like it could be a metaphor. At the Trinity Test, its all about the duality of accomplishment and dread- of success and impending doom. But why are we connecting that to him sleeping with Jean the first time? If she played a larger role in the movie or in his eventual "downfall", it might make for a metaphor. But....it doesn't? So why, except to have another scene with topless Florence Pugh? (Which, hey, I get it.)

Nolan, if you are going to create a mental connection between fucking a beautiful unstable communist woman and the *Trinity Test*, at least have it mean something, my dude. Otherwise it just feels like a "heeeeey, I understood that reference" moment.

[zaccariacombat]

World War II is the most personally fascinating period in all of history for me. Nothing intrigues me like it does. I do have World War II buff tendencies at heart, but I tend to keep it under wraps most of the time. While that is considered a stereotypically straight male interest, it is not exclusively so by any means.

Why do I bring up sexuality? Well, I immediately gravitate towards any book that features a gay male relationship in the time of World War II, particularly between military men, because it satisfies two of my deep interests at once. Two of my favorite novels are Look Down in Mercy by Walter Baxter and Wingmen by Ensan Case. To me, these both exemplify the kind of book I want to read, but they execute them in different ways; Look Down in Mercy is much more literary in style compared to the midcentury popular war fiction style of Wingmen. Nevertheless, these books reach something deep in me that almost no other book I have ever read featuring gay men and World War II ever has before, and I think I figured out why: the vast majority of modern fiction involving a gay relationship in World War II falls into the category of traditional M/M romance fiction, and I prefer a gay male relationship in World War II that is not bound by the conventions of romance fiction, as well as has engaging historical details beyond set dressing.

I will be clear that I don't look down on romance fiction at all. It simply is usually not for me. I have given romance novels a good shot because I was looking for more gay World War II content to satisfy this niche interest of mine. A lot of them I even enjoyed, but it was almost always at a rather surface level. They didn't stick with me like Wingmen or Look Down in Mercy, with one exception, which I will get into later. At fist, I wondered why. I have since realized that pure, traditional romance novels are not for me because there is a fundamental mismatch between how I enjoy relationships in fiction and the inherent structure of a romance novel: I don't like a guaranteed happily ever after or happy for now ending. I want there to be at least some doubt that the ending will be positive, so if it is happy, it feels much more valuable. I can really enjoy an unhappy ending if it tells a compelling story, and the lack of that possibility makes the HEA or HFN endings in a romance novel feel so cheap to me. I understand that the reassurance of a positive ending is a driver for many people's interest in romance, so I know this is just a personal thing.

There is one book that falls into the M/M romance umbrella that did resonate with me, though, that did stick with me. That is this very obscure, Kindle-only book called Box 1663 by Alex Sorel. It involves an army photographer falling in love with a scientist at Los Alamos. What made it work for me, despite it being marketed as a romance novel, is that it didn't feel like one. Instead, it was a historical thriller, involving some of the greatest secrets of the war, that also involved a gay romance. It is not marketed as such at all, however. It also involved all these historical details around Los Alamos that made me really excited.

I think another flaw common in gay romance fiction taking place in World War II is that the setting feels like a total backdrop to the gay romance. I'm a World War II buff! I want to enjoy the setting, too! Reading about all the planes in Wingmen is so exciting to me. Look Down in Mercy has extremely vivid descriptions of the war that could range from beautiful to absolutely disgusting. Honestly, I like the scene descriptions as much as the actual plot in that book. That's how good they are. Box 1663 lets the reader know all about the Los Alamos laboratory and the dry landscapes of New Mexico. It was not just set dressing. The laboratory actually meant something; it was related to the thriller plot.

The thriller plot and historical details kept me so engaged in Box 1663, despite it being marketed as M/M romance and thus being guaranteed to not have a doomed relationship. This is what keeps me from totally avoiding all modern M/M romance during World War II. I can look past the guaranteed positive ending if I could end up with another Box 1663. It hasn't happened, but I don't want my enjoyment of this particular niche to be totally stuck in the 20th century. I want to give modern works a shot, too.

It feels so hard for me to find the kind of book I want to read that I started writing one myself. Back in 2020, I started writing a novel surrounding an American bomber crew in World War II. Two of the guys in the crew do end up falling in love. I think I will go back to it eventually and rewrite much of it. My writing has improved since then and I see where I wrote myself into a corner.

Basically, it feels so hard for me to find the kind of book that perfectly engages two separate interests like this. The World War II fiction authors generally don't care all that much about gay relationships, and the authors who want to write gay relationships are generally not especially fascinated by World War II. The kind of book I want to read is in an absolutely minuscule niche. I hope I can find more, but for now, at least it has motivated me to start writing my own novel.

If you have any recommendations, let me know! Please don't recommend The Charioteer, though. I already know about it, I tried reading it, and it didn't work for me at the time. I keep meaning to go back to it, though. But, if you have any other books that I may like, I would love to hear about them. This niche is so small that I probably already know about it, but possibly not!

[fatehbaz]

Seventy-five years after two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan — killing hundreds of thousands of people in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — one small community in the Northwest Territories is still haunted by its connection to the blasts. Across Great Bear Lake from the 533-person hamlet of Délı̨nę sits the historic mining site of Port Radium. [...] [T]he Canadian government quietly called for uranium production as part of the country's involvement in the Manhattan Project. That uranium was sent south to help the United States with the race to build a nuclear bomb. [...] [N]ear Great Bear Lake, workers would eventually wonder about the risks they took delivering sacks of ore on their backs as they sent it south — without being told what they were about to be complicit in. [...] Days after the blasts, the Canadian government announced the country's role in the explosions, citing the Great Bear Lake mine's uranium as a key ingredient for the project, said Geoffrey Bird, a professor at Royal Roads University in Victoria who studies tourism and the history of remembrance. An English-language sign connecting Port Radium to the atomic bomb was photographed in Délı̨nę in December 1945. [...] While the Canadian government hasn't apologized to Délı̨nę, the community has apologized to Japan. [...] Locals in Délı̨nę say many ore workers and their family members developed cancer later in life. [...] In the book If Only We Had Known, which tells the story of Port Radium from the eyes of the Sahtúot'ine, elders remember workers' clothing covered with dust, windy days when ore was caught up in the air and children playing games in mine tailings.

Text by: Katie Toth. “Spectre of atomic bomb still looms over N.W.T. community 75 years after Hiroshima.” CBC News. 5 August 2020.

---

[O]n 6 August 1998, 10 members of the small Sahtugot’ine Dene community of Deline (Fort Franklin) in the ‘Northwest Territories’ apologized in Hiroshima for the atomic destruction of that city – and the death of over 200,000 civilians – exactly 53 years earlier [...]. Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. [was] placed under state control during World War Two. They [the Dene] were allowed only to help it [uranium] on its long and winding way, 3,000 miles by river, lake, road and air, from Port Radium on Great Bear Lake to Port Hope on Lake Ontario, where, from 1942-45, the suddenly precious ore – the ‘new gold’ of the atomic age – was, together with ‘Belgian’ uranium from the Congo, refined and dispatched to Los Alamos, the desert lab in New Mexico secretly building the new, city-smashing Superweapon. [...] Beginning in the 1970s, and spiking sharply in the 1980s, many of the men who had handled and carried the ore – and the men who had mined it – began to die from cancer [...]. The “Dene,” the CBC ‘revealed,’ “were never told of the health hazards they faced, even though the government knew … as early as 1932 that precautions should be taken in handling radioactive materials”. Instead [...] “workers [were] dressed in casual clothes and uranium dust [...] covered the men like flour.” [...] [A]s detailed in a December 1998 article [...] in First Nations Drum: [...] [T]he mine was kept running at a very high pace [...]. The Dene were employed as ‘coolies’ packing 45-kilogram sacks of radioactive ore for three dollars a day, working 12 hours a day, six days a week. This at a time when the ore was worth over $70,000 a gram. [...] In 1998, the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee released a 160-page [...] report, “They Never Told Us These Things.” In a 2011 article in Maisonneuve, Salverson recounts a community meeting in Deline to discuss the report, “where [non-Dene] lawyers delivered a year’s worth of uranium-impact research from the archives in Ottawa,” revealing that in “the mountain of papers we dug up … there is not one mention of the Dene, your people.”

Text by: Sean Howard. “Canada’s Uranium Highway: Victims and Perpetrators.” Cape Breton Spectator. 7 August 2019.

[eowyntheavenger]

By Emily Strasser | August 9, 2023

At the theater where I saw Oppenheimer on opening night, there was a handmade photo booth featuring a pink backdrop, “Barbenheimer” in black letters, and a “bomb” made of an exercise ball wrapped in hoses. I want to tell you that I flinched, but I laughed and snapped a photo. It took a beat before I became horrified—by myself and the prop. Today is the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, which killed up to 70,000 people and came only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima that killed as many as 140,000 people. Yet still we make jokes of these weapons of genocide.

Oppenheimer does not make a joke of nuclear weapons, but by erasing the specific victims of the bombings, it repeats a sanitized treatment of the bomb that enables a lighthearted attitude and limits the power of the film’s message. I know this sanitized version intimately, because my grandfather spent his career building nuclear weapons in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the site of uranium enrichment for the Hiroshima bomb. My grandfather died before I was born, and though there were photographs of mushroom clouds from nuclear tests hanging on my grandmother’s walls, we never discussed Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the fact that Oak Ridge, still an active nuclear weapons production site, is also a 35,000-acre Superfund site. At the Catholic church in town, a pious Mary stands atop an orb bearing the overlapping ovals symbolizing the atom, and until it closed a few years ago, a local restaurant displayed a sign with a mushroom cloud bursting out of a mug of beer.

Oppenheimer does not show a single image of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Instead, it recreates the horror through Oppenheimer’s imagination, when, during a congratulatory speech to the scientists of Los Alamos after the bombing of Hiroshima, the sound of the hysterically cheering crowd goes silent, the room flashes bright, and tatters of skin peel from the face of a white woman in the audience. The scene is powerful and unsettling, and, arguably, avoids sensationalizing the atrocity by not depicting the victims outright. But it also plays into a problematic pattern of whitewashing both the history and threat of nuclear war by appropriating the trauma of the Japanese victims to incite fear about possible future violence upon white bodies. An example of this pattern is a 1948 cover of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, which featured a white couple fleeing a city beneath a glowing orange sky, even though the book itself brought the visceral human suffering to American readers through the eyes of six actual survivors of the bombing.

The Oppenheimer film also neglects the impacts of fallout from nuclear testing, including from the Trinity test depicted in the film; the harm to the health of blue-collar production workers exposed to toxic and radiological materials; and the contamination of Oak Ridge and other production sites. Instead, the impressive pyrotechnics of the Trinity test, images of missile trails descending through clouds toward a doomed planet, and Earth-consuming fireballs interspersed with digital renderings of a quantum universe of swirling stars and atoms, elevate the bomb to the realm of the sublime—terrible, yes, but also awesome.

A compartmentalized project. The origins of this treatment can be traced to the Manhattan Project, when scientists called the bomb by the euphemistic code word “gadget” and the security policy known as compartmentalization limited workers’ knowledge of the project to the minimum necessary to complete their tasks. This policy helped to dilute responsibility and quash moral debates and dissent. Throughout the film, we see Oppenheimer move from resisting compartmentalization to accepting it. When asked by another scientist about his stance on a petition against dropping the bomb on Japan, he responds that the builders of the bomb do not have “any more right or responsibility” than anyone else to determine how it will be used, despite the fact that the scientists were among the few who even knew of its existence.

Due to compartmentalization, the vast majority of the approximately half-million Manhattan Project workers, like my grandfather, could not have signed the petition because they did not know what they were building until Truman announced the bombing of Hiroshima. Afterward, press restrictions limited coverage of the humanitarian impacts, giving the false impression that the bombings had targeted major military and industrial sites—and eliding the vast civilian toll and the novel horrors of radiation. Photographs and films of the aftermath, shot by Japanese journalists and American military, were classified and suppressed in the United States and occupied Japan.

The limit of theory. Not only is it dishonest and harmful to erase the suffering of the real victims of the bomb, but doing so moves the bomb into the realm of the theoretical and abstract. One recurring theme of the film is the limit of theory. Oppenheimer was a brilliant theorist but a haphazard experimentalist. A close friend and fellow scientist questions whether he’ll be able to pull off this massive, high-stakes project of applied theory. Just before the detonation of the Trinity test bomb, General Leslie Groves, the military head of the project, asks Oppenheimer about a joking bet overheard among the scientists regarding the possibility that the explosion would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world. Oppenheimer assures Groves that they have done the math and the possibility is “near zero.” “Near zero?” Groves asks, alarmed. “What do you want from theory alone?” responds Oppenheimer.

Can the theoretical motivate humanity to action?

One telling scene shows Oppenheimer at a lecture on the impacts of the bomb. We hear the speaker describe how dark stripes on victims’ clothing were burned onto their skin, but the camera remains on Oppenheimer’s face. He looks at the screen, gaunt and glassy-eyed, for a few moments, before turning away. Americans are still looking away. As a country, we’ve succumbed to “psychic numbing,” as Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell call it in their book Hiroshima in America, which leads to general apathy about nuclear weapons—and pink mushroom clouds and bomb props for selfies.

On this anniversary of Nagasaki, the world stands on a precipice, closer than ever to nuclear midnight. The nine nuclear-armed states collectively possess more than 12,500 warheads; the more than 9,500 nuclear weapons available for use in military stockpiles have the combined power of more than 135,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.

If Oppenheimer motivates conversation, activism, and policy shifts in support of nuclear abolition, that’s a good thing. But by relegating the bomb to abstracted images removed from actual humanitarian consequences, the film leaves the weapon in the realm of the theoretical. And as Oppenheimer says in the film, “theory will only take you so far.” Today, it’s vital that we understand the devastating impacts that nuclear weapons have had and continue to have on real victims of their production, testing, and wartime use. Our survival may depend on it.