#petroleum poisoning

[aficionadoenthusiast]

happy earth day!

[eeveelution-world]

Petroleon (peh-TROH-lee-awn)

Ignition Pokemon

Poison/Fire

Evolves from TBD

[silvaurum]

the mass death of disabled people is not sustainable or eco-friendly either.

Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

The Broken Truth by Reavis Z. Wortham

A Tucker Snow Thriller #2

My ~ Oh My ~ What a great addition to a thrilling series!

What I liked: * Tucker: widow, single parent, needs time to grieve but always there for his teenage daughter, strong, lethal, has his own moral code, has been uncover with his brother, thought his job with the TSCRA would be easier, seems to be “snakebit” more often than desired ~ Love him and want to see more of him

* Harley: Tucker’s younger brother, partner when under cover in the past, family man, married to Tammy with two young sons, adopting Jimma, a bit hyper, in synch with Tucker on the job, civilian with a business of his own

* The relationship between Tucker and Harley and they way they work fluidly as a team

* Chloe: strong, resilient, survivor, good friend to Jimma, has been through a lot, missing her mother and younger sibling, would like to just be a teenager at some point in time – as would Jimma

* Tammy: Harley’s wife, strong, lethal, protective, good mother, loving wife, can identify with her

* Russel & Jenny: good friends, strong, capable, there for those they care about

* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing

* That I felt part of the story and cared about the outcome

* That some of the criminals wore gray rather than black hats and perhaps some can change their ways

* Being made aware of the part the oil industry and its product has on the world

* That it made me think

* Knowing there is another book to look forward to

What I didn’t like: * Who and what I was meant not to like

* Wendell Cross, who he works for, the methods and means he used to implement his plans, and his disregard for just about everything – except himself

Did I like this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Definitely

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks-Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC – this is my honest review.

5 Stars

BLURB

The endless Texas landscape hides all manner of sins… Special Agent Tucker Snow knows there's big money roaming the fields under the wide Texas sky—and the cattle rustlers committing large-scale thefts on remote ranches know it, too. But when a prominent local rancher dies unexpectedly and his property is quietly sold to an unknown buyer, Tucker suspects there's something more sinister going on in his jurisdiction than the usual steal-and-resell racket. Still raw after the tragic death of his wife and young daughter, the lawman can't bear the thought of more innocent lives destroyed by people whose greed poisons everything around them.  Working alongside his brother, Harley, Tucker uncovers a dark ring of organized crime that goes well beyond cattle rustling—a breed of deception and greed that has turned into a silent killer and will take down anyone who crosses its path. The question is whether Tuck and Harley will be able to shut it down before it finds the people they love the most…

[mr-ys-phantasma]

🌙 Moon Phases 🌙

Agatha Harkness X Fem!Reader

Chapter 1. - Chapter 2. - Chapter 3

Chapter 4. - Chapter 5. - Chapter 6

Chapter 7. - Chapter 8. - Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Word Count: 1588

Chapter 10:

You approached Jen, who was trying to think.

"What ingredients do you need?"

You had not been around a lot of Potion Witches but you knew Jen would need certain things to start making the potion.

You merely prayed you would find them soon enough in this huge house, for enough time had already been wasted.

Jen thought carefully for a moment. "I need frankincense and the gut of a eusocial insect."

Alice extended her hand, grabbing Teen's lower arm. "We'll handle that first part." She said and, along with the boy, rushed to find the two ingredients.

Jen took a deep breath, trying not to overthink or let the ticking sound of the clock distract her. She needed to be concentrated, for there was no room for error.

"I need a corpse that's been decaying for at least 30 million years."

Your eyebrows went up, not expecting that such a thing could actually be part of an antidote. It was in those times you really hated potions and was reminded how complicated they were.

"Is that something that's available? Cause I don't know what you're talking about." Agatha commented, anxiously waiting for the swelling to go away.

"Why do I have to translate? It's zooplankton." Jen explained, but that did not seem to ring a bell to any of you. "It's in petroleum products."

Suddenly, Lilia seemed to get an idea. "That we maybe can do."

Agatha nodded. "Lilia, let's go."

You watched the two women go and you glanced at Jen, feeling odd to be left with her.

"You help me find a cauldron or something to use!"

You could only nod as you both started to search the kitchenware, but nothing seemed fitting enough or your cause or big for that matter.

Your eyes went to the square sink, and a crazy idea popped into your mind. It was crazy. It was perhaps wrong, but right now, you were literally fighting for your life.

"The sink!" You pointed out, earning her attention.

"Huh?" Jen exclaimed.

"The sink is big enough, and we can clog it, so the water remains."

Jen looked at you for a moment, wondering if you had gone mad, but then she looked at the sink, and she could somehow imagine it that it could work.

"Okay... I can work with this," she agreed and once again focused on you. "I need one more ingredient. Eye of Newt, " she explained, but you only ended up staring at her for a little longer, blinking slowly. In the end, she gave up. "You fill the sink, I will go get it"

"Sounds like a good plan" you agreed.

You would not really point out that potions was your weak spot, though by now it might have been obvious enough.

Choosing not to comment, you watched her leave in search of a spice pantry while you placed the tab in the sink and let the warm water flow.

The clock next to you kept counting down, making your heart race faster due to the poison but also due to worry. A constant reminder that your chances of survival kept getting smaller was not helping keep you calm.

You placed your hands on the kitchen bench and leaned slightly forward, head hung low. As you felt the hot steam coming from the pooling water, you closed your eyes and tried to take a few deep breaths.

You sure did not remember the trials being that stressful the last time, yet centuries had passed ever since.

The sound of the clock seemed to slowly go away, blending with the background noises until it was a deep but weak echo at the very back.

The sudden change made you open your eyes, wondering what was going on. To your surprise, the house seemed dark and with barely any light present.

The faint sound of multiple steps came from a door to the very left, and you found yourself slowly walking towards it, leaving behind the kitchen and the sink that was halfway full.

As you kept walking, the sound of steps grew louder, and as you took a turn to the left; you could not help but gasp silently.

The hallway or room or whatever was meant to be there seemed to have expanded and was covered in darkness. The only thing visible was the light of torches, casting shadows on the faces of some familiar men.

"Get the witch!" One shouted, lifting a heavy object with both hands.

"Grab her!"

"Demon!"

"Kill her"

Your instincts told you to run away, to get as far away as possible but sudden fear clouded your mind; paralysing you.

You could only stare as the angry men kept shouting, the sound of chains triggering dark memories within you.

"No... no, no...no..." You repeated again and again as you brought your hands in front of you, forming an X in a futile attempts to protect yourself from the hits that were about to come.

Your white magic glowed in your palms and around your fingers, your instincts about to use it to protect you against the old enemy that had been brought back.

Before it could, however, it was stopped.

A strong pair of arms grabbed your wrist and shook you faintly as a muffled voice barely reached your eyes.

Gathering the courage, you dared to open your eyes only to see yourself with one knee against the wooden floor.

The angry men from before were gone, the lights were back to normal, and Agatha was holding your wrists; having almost gotten hit by your magic.

"You are with me, sugar?" She asked, bending slightly as if trying to ensure you would not fall; her grip on your wrists strong.

When Agatha was coming back with Lilia, she felt triumphant. She knew she found the ingredients into Jen's products, and she would use that as a chance to expose her dirty secret about her "natural" products.

However, before she could; Lilia seemed to get trapped into some sort of illusion or nightmare; one that actually worried Agatha, mostly on what the old witch had seen to terrify her that much.

Once this was over, she had made her way towards the kitchen when she saw you; staring at nothing. She called your name but her smile had disappeared once she realised you were also fighting an illusion, one to make you beg.

Her instincts kicked in and she handed all of the products she had right into Lilia's hands, not caring if the older witch would be able to handle the new load and quantity.

She rushed towards you, worry evident in her eyes. Your white magic seemed to flare when she approached but she managed to grab your wrist and shake you slightly, hoping this would help you snap out of it.

When you opened your eyes, she could barely find the strength to stare into your pained and terrified gaze. She had never seen that look on you, and it worried her of what could have taken place while she was away from you.

When you finally calmed down, a deep breath left your lips, and you could finally answer her. "I... I am, " you replied as you stood up with her help.

She did not seem to truly believe you, but as the sound of a ticking clock reached you, you were reminded there was not a lot of time for small moments.

You moved back to the kitchen just in time to meet the others, seeing them almost all as terrified and shaken as you; with the exception of Teen, who had not drank the wine.

Wasting no time, you cleaned the bench of any unnecessary items and placed all the ingredients on the marble top. When Jen had seen her products, she parted her lips to argue but chose not to; and only instructed you to add the ingredients in the proper turn.

Then, another obstacle showed up.

"Any bright ideas on how to set this sink to boil?" Jen asked, since the warm water you had filled the sink with was mot enough.

Agatha looked at her. "You didn't think of this before?"

Jen held back the need to snap at the former dark witch. "In the middle of a traumatic hallucination? No, Agatha, I did not!"

She took a deep breath as she tried to ignore the sound of running water. Because if it wasn't enough the poison and the timer, the Road had chosen to flood everything outside.

And thanks to the crack Agatha made before, saltwater was entering and you all feared when the time was up; that crack would stop holding resistance.

Thankfully, Teen seemed to know of something.

"Is there a sous vide?" He asked, and Jen smiled, a passive congratulation in his quick thinking.

Agatha arched an eyebrow and looked at you and Lilia, the ones standing closer together.

"That's something people know about?" She asked, and you only shrugged your shoulders, as clueless as the others on the topic.

Potions were never your strong suit, and neither was cooking, pastry, or anything having to do with a kitchen. You were a descent gardener, but your talents, unfortunately, laid elsewhere.

"It's a super fancy cooking tool. It heats water to a specific temperature, so you can cook your meat evenly." Teen explained, coming back with a weird object in his hand.

The clock let ouf a louder ticking noise, a reminder that you were almost down to the last minutes.

Chapter 11

[ch3rriiii-bunn]

I was wondering if you could do where Muzan and Douma have a female partner who has tattoos

And they don’t understand the concept of tattoos . Like they would ask them “Why would you sit in a chair and have needles pierce you repeatedly . You humans are weird.”

And they would be like “It’s called art.”

Tattooed s/o♡

This idea is so cute. Hope you enjoy this!

Warnings: fem!reader, reader is described to have tattoos, fluff, a little suggestive on doumas part

Douma

Douma first noticed your tattoos when you joined him for a bath. His knowledge of tattoos are people who were/are criminals, and he felt pity for you, evening going as far as to ask what crimes you've committed. "I've never seen criminal tattoos in these designs though," he said.

You chuckle. "These aren't criminal tattoos. These are tattoos with different meanings to me that I wanted to have put on my body," you explained. "Is there a special reason you want these meaningful tattoos? It's beautiful, I won't lie, " he asked, tracing his slender fingers over your tattoos outlining the shape of them. "Not really anything special, really. I also love the art designs of it all," you said only for douma to look at you confused.

Douma decided to join you and see for himself how a tattoo is done. The tattoo place you went to is safe and welcome to humans and demons. There was no hostility there, so your demon boyfriend douma didn't need to hide himself. As the tattoo artist began adding a new tattoo on your arm, douma sat in the chair next to you, watching intensity on what's happening.

Minutes soon turned into an hour. You'd think douma would be frustrated, but he still had his eyes locked on the needle piercings your skin. "Y/n, doesn't that hurt?" He asked "yes but it's fine, " you respond. "How strange... not only are you sitting in this chair for hours, you're ass probably hurting you, but you want to take this pain just for an artysle you want?" He asked, and you only nod.

After the session, you signed being relieved from the pain but smiled at the beautiful design done on your arm. "I thought it was silly at first that you sit in this chair for this long, having these needles poke into your skin repeatedly, but I see that it's worth it for you. I still dont understand, but seeing you satisfied, good, " he said.

As the tattoo artist applies petroleum jelly on your tattoo and then wrapping a bandage, you notice douma still sitting in the chair, but this time examining your body. "Baby, is there something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm just thinking about where I want you to tattoo my name on your body. Maybe on your boob or under your boob maybe" he thinks with his chin, resting between his fingers

"Douma!!!"

Muzan

Muzan has lived for centuries. He's not stupid on what tattoos are. However, he's not that educated on them. Muzan didn't like the tattoos on your body and even went as far as to shame you for it.

"How revolting. Why would you even let needles sink that dirty ink into your skin permanently? And humans wonder why they are so weak. You're putting that poison in your body," he said with disgust. "But I'm healthy... if the ink was dirty, my body would show clear signs of infection, but I'm okay," you said, almost laughing at his assumption.

You practically begged muzan to come watch you get a tattoo. "You should be grateful for the time I'm wasting just to sit here and watch you put that filth in your body," he spits out with his arms crossed. "Yeah, yeah, I'm grateful," you said with your head tilted, letting the tattoo artist make the design you want on the side of your neck.

As time went by, muzan grew impatient from sitting in the chair for almost 2 hours. His foot began to tap until he had enough. "How much longer is this going to take? You've been sitting in that damn chair for almost two hours now." he complained. You chuckle. "Art takes patience. You can't rush it, " you said only for muzan to make a first in anger. "What a foolish answer"

Once you were done, muzan took a good look at your neck. "Do you like it?" You asked. "It's not ugly. Why blue roses? I thought red roses were your favorite," Muzan asked curiously.

"Of course, I love red roses, but I wanted to try something different this time. You always talk about the blue spider lily and sadly I haven't seen one but since we both love flowers and you love the color blue why not get a blue rose for a tattoo" you laughed.

"What an idiotic thought to have. Wasting that time just to have a blue flower that's not the flower I wanted, " he said, turning his back to you, but his ears turned red at your stupid yet cute idea.

[fatehbaz]

On April 21, Ali Hussein Julood, a 21-year-old living in the Iraqi town of Rumaila, on the outskirts of one of the world’s largest oil fields, died from leukaemia. He was told by doctors that pollution from gas flared in the nearby field, which is operated by British Petroleum (BP), had likely caused his cancer. “Gas flaring” is a low-cost procedure used by oil companies to burn off the natural gas expelled during drilling. [...] [I]t also contributes to global warming [...]. Some of the pollutants released during this process, such as benzene, are known to cause cancers and respiratory diseases. Ali, who had been battling cancer for six years when he died, was only the latest victim of the environmental degradation caused by international oil companies like BP in Iraq.

In towns and villages near the country’s vast oil fields, thousands of other men, women and children are still living under smoke-filled skies and suffering avoidable health problems because company executives insist on putting profit before lives. [...]

[A] confidential report from the Iraqi health ministry recently obtained by the BBC blamed pollution from gas flaring, among other factors, for a 20 percent rise in cancer in Basra, southern Iraq between 2015 and 2018. A second leaked document, again seen by the BBC, from the local government in Basra showed that cancer cases in the region are three times higher than figures published in the official nationwide cancer registry.

Like many other problems and crises that are devastating the lives of ordinary Iraqis today, the chain of events that led to the poisoning of southern Iraq’s skies by international oil companies also started during colonial times.

---

In the early 20th century, as its navy transitioned from coal to petrol, Britain found itself in increasing need of oil to run its empire and fuel its numerous war efforts. [...] In 1912, Britain formed the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) with the purpose of acquiring concessions from the Ottoman Empire to explore for oil in Mesopotamia. Following World War I, it brought modern-day Iraq under its own mandate [...]. By 1930, the TPC was renamed the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC) and was put under the control of a consortium made up of BP, Total, Shell and several other American companies. Together, they pushed for a series of “concession agreements” with the newly formed Iraqi government which would give them exclusive control of Iraq’s oil resources on pre-defined terms for long periods. By 1938, the IPC and its various subsidiaries had already secured the right to extract and export virtually all the oil in Iraq for 75 years. These concessions were granted to the IPC and its subsidiaries while Iraq was ruled by British-installed monarchs and under de facto British control. Thus the state had almost no negotiating power against the British-led consortium [...] In 1955, the Iraqi government started to voice its desire to use the gas being flared in Rumaila and Zubair for electricity generation. In 1960, while negotiating a concession with the IPC, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim formally asked the company to let Iraq exploit the gas that it was not using. The same demand came up again and again [...], but IPC and its subsidiaries repeatedly turned the Iraqi government down. [...]

Following the 2003 invasion, the Iraqi oil industry was once again privatised as a result of pressure from the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As was the case in the early 20th century, any negotiations on oil extraction rights took place when Iraq was still under foreign occupation [...]. When the process of auctioning off oil fields in southern Iraq began in 2008, the Iraqi government offered foreign oil companies long contracts of up to 25 years, reminiscent of the early concessions agreements with the IPC. These included stabilisation clauses, which insulated foreign companies from legal changes that might emerge over the course of their contracts. This meant that the companies were, and continue to be, unaffected by any environmental regulations passed by the Iraqi government to reduce pollution [...].

---

Looking back at the development of the oil industry in southern Iraq makes apparent that the kind of pollution that killed Ali has been in the making for some 70 years. His death – like the deaths of many others who succumbed to pollution-related cancers in his country – was not an unavoidable tragedy, but the natural consequence of a long history of colonial violence and extractive capitalism.

Predatory colonial practices that began over a century ago caused southern Iraq’s vast oil reserves to be left under the sole control of foreign companies today – companies that over and over again put profit before the lives of the Iraqi inhabitants of the lands they exploit.

Ali’s death is yet more proof that colonial violence is far from over and that it has many different faces.

---

Text by: Taif Alkhudary. “Southern Iraq’s toxic skies are a colonial legacy.” Al Jazeera (English). 12 June 2023. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[starseedpatriot]

What do you think of this? Seems legit and speaks to how hard they have to work to poison us.

___

FOLLOW UP To My Chemically Injected Watermelons Are Hitting American Grocery Stores This Summer Post Today

Dr. Robert Debease purchased a normal watermelon and a new chemically injected watermelon to show you the difference

The chemical used affects your brain & hormones

“Chemically injected watermelons in our marketplace, here's how you identify it:

I'm cutting open this watermelon here. And as you can see, when I pat the flesh, it looks pretty red.

Now here's an entirely different watermelon, and look what happens when I pat the flesh.

Look at the difference between these 2. (See video for clear comparison)

The one with the dark red has definitely been treated with or injected. Even worse injected with a chemical called Erythrosine.

Erythrosine makes watermelons look redder, but here's the big issue. Erythracene is a gut toxin that is made from petroleum that could damage your microbiome and it's a bioaccumulator.

Meaning, it can be stored in the fatty tissues of the body.

It can affect a person's brain and possibly even their hormones and make them sick over time.

And the worst part is you and your family have probably been eating erythrazine for years because it's found in just about everything:

Like breakfast cereals, watch out kids, dairy products, frozen foods, juice drinks. Again, we have to watch out for our kids and so much more.”

h/t @WallStreetApes

https://x.com/wallstreetapes/status/1794940175522615793?s=46

[fireangelsstuff]

hello. I have sent this ask to another NZ blog as well but I would greatly appreciate you answering too as I am trying to get multiple people's opinions.

i might have the opportunity to move to NZ. with everything going on in the US I am really scared about Trump and am thinking about taking it but I wanted to ask you about your current ruling party. It seems like they are maybe rightwinng and kind of like the US Republican party are trying to gchange the government to give themselves more power which makes me fear they are another russia back antidemocratwic party like the GOP. do you think this is true ad that democracy is in danger in NZ? Are they popular? Do you think NZ will remain a democracy in the future?

Hello anon,

I'm going to be honest things are a little unsturdy at the moment

Our current ruling party formed a coalition with two other parties but thanks to the vigilance of the New Zealand people (politics is a very common discussion in this country and we don't shy away from it nor our opinions on it) we have managed to uncover the links between particular members of the coalition (the ruling parties) and the Atlas network lobby

It's worth noting that the current ruling government did not win by popular vote and had to form and alliance with two other parties to secure the ruling position

We have very good reason to believe it is related directly to project 2025 and that their reason for doing so is to gain access to drilling for oil in our Territory

There is currently more oil under New Zealand's Territory both land and sea then there is in Saudi Arabia

You may want to familiarise yourself with the geology of gas and oil fields ( we have one of the largest gas fields in the world - the Maui) but natural gas is normally a pocket at the very top of a very large deposit of oil and there is far less gas than there is oil

Here's a little tidbit for you: the official story is that there was a venture made by petroleum companies in order to discover it - technically a farmer on the central plateau found some of his cattle poisoned and got some environmental guys to come and check what was happening turns out what was in his pond was crude oil. How do I know this? The guy that went to the farm to verify it is my father's second cousin.......

Anyway the government of the time covered it up and ensured that oil would not be able to be drilled on New Zealand land so they started exploring out at sea

Back to the political situation

The coalition is made up of three parties which are all to some degree right wing, some more than others

Since being elected they have managed to make themselves the most unpopular people in the entire country.........

Sufficed to say due to the fact that speaking openly about politics in this country is a fairly normal everyday event we have managed to put enough public pressure on the government to back down on several things and many institutions such as universities who have self-governance have defended their positions publicly, others have done it in more subtle ways

For example they defunded Te Reo Maori language education and in response the New Zealand public maxed out bookings in Maori language classes all over the country..........

Our democracy is currently under threat from foreign interference and we are well aware of the consequences of backing down

I can assure you that the New Zealand public will not be doing so under any circumstances, maybe we get that from our Irish ancestors 🤷‍♀️

Personally I think it comes from having been ruled by the British and having our economy intentionally tanked after we removed their influence from indirect power over our government in the 60- 70's right after oil was first discovered in New Zealand which we then insured would not be able to be drilled for on land, having had the French committed terrorist act on our soil by sinking the rainbow warrior, and previously telling the US that they were bullies and vehemently opposing nuclear power which ultimately resulted in a ban of the technology and a freeze out of communal military action and support...........

We understand what it is to be a target of people who feel they are "superior" than you, and by we I mean boomers right down to millennials, our Gen z are currently experiencing their first event but I can imagine that their parents are passing on the stories of the past

They may be the ruling parties in government for now but I can guarantee you that next election they will be voted out vehemently

They are currently planning to attempt to undermine one of our founding documents the treaty of waitangi

This document is a very complicated piece of our history to say the least and due to breaches of that contract we are one of the few countries that have ever paid reparations in terms of the returning of land and money

The treaty guarantees certain rights and the treaties principles bill is basically an attempt to rewrite one of the articles

Imagine someone attempting to rewrite part of the US Constitution - that's how big of a deal it is......

Unfortunately the way our government is set up means it does not rule over the country, it is designed to be in service of it with many checks and balances which is what has prevented many of the things this ruling party has attempted to do

I will simplify it by stating that even the ruling government party can be prosecuted if they attempt to break the law

Attempts to put through policy that undermines statutory laws will be prevented by our national law society, the Human rights commission has issued warnings to the government, as has the sitting waitangi tribunal council

We are lucky that here our journalists have been doing the exact job they should have been

Do I believe our country will remain a democracy?

We have had anti-corruption legislation and the necessary checks in place for a very long time after watching how it happens in other countries and ensuring it couldn't happen here

They can try, but we will not go quietly and we'll take them down with us if necessary

[alexanderwales]

Game Review: Factorio: Space Age (pt 2)

This is the second part of my review of Factorio: Space Age, covering the planets. This will have more spoilers than the previous section, but also include more cohesive thoughts on the expansion as a whole.

Vulcanus

Once you've built a spaceship, you have a choice of three planets to go to, and you can do them in any order you'd like. Each planet comes with its own researchable rewards, which require you to build up a base on the planet capable of making a science pack and shipping it into space (or alternately, to remake all sciences on the planet, but this is stupid and pointless given what lies further down the tech tree).

I chose Vulcanus first. There are five resources here, three of which can't be found anywhere else: coal, sulfuric acid, calcite, tungsten ore, and lava. Lava gets used to make anything having to do with copper and iron using the foundry, which is most of the things in Factorio. Sulfuric acid gets used with calcite to make water, which is one of the notable things missing from Vulcanus, along with oil. Plastic requires a long chain to make: coal liquefaction into heavy oil into light oil into petroleum into plastic. Because rockets require plastic twice (LDS and blue chips), you eventually need to set up a fairly sizeable build for this.

I didn't find any of this to be too interesting. Infinite resources are at least different, but there was nothing that fundamentally changed how I view the game, and I ended up setting up a bus with more fluids than usual, mostly making on-site plates, pipes, steel, etc. The art for it is cool, and impassable lava is at least a little constraining, but I didn't feel like it was all that great.

Tungsten ore is the main material from Vulcanus, and it's defended by the other major thing that makes the place unique, the worms. Each worm has a territory, and until you've killed your first worm, you don't have access to a tungsten ore patch, only loose scraps that have been laying around.

The worms are long and segmented, very distinct from the biters. They disable electronics with their attacks, making fountains of lava beneath you, and overall I think they're cool ... except that they're a little too easy to defeat. I set up a grid of 50 turrets with armor-piercing ammo, and that proved sufficient.

This is a boring solution. I wish it didn't work. It was the first thing I tried, and afterward I thought ... well, what was the point of that? I don't have a good solution to what you'd want to do to stop this from working, but I do think this is sort of bad design, since it's a "more dakka" solution. I've also seen that you can build a tank and take one out with a single uranium shell, which is even worse design. What I wanted was a fight were I needed to use poison capsules, land mines, strategically placed turrets, etc., some kind of mixed-asset offensive package, and what I got was fifty turrets in a stupid grid. I really do try to not be one of those players that optimizes myself out of having fun, but it's hard to motivate myself to do something the pointlessly hard way when there's something simple, easy, and foolproof.

The other thing about demolishers is that they have their own territory, and that territory never changes. This means that if you want to expand beyond a relatively modest starting patch, you need to kill them ... but unless you're going for a megabase, you don't need to kill more than three or four of them across the entire time playing the game, and since they only attack if you build in their territory, those worm encounters become like 1% of the Vulcanus experience.

I would have liked if the worm territories changed. I think it would have been cool if they fought each other for dominance over an area in a way you could capitalize on, or if they would expand into places that no one had claimed, or places a dead rival had left behind. It would have been cool to require the player to build up some do-nothing machines or other infrastructure to keep the worms back, like a sort of "build this at the edge of your territory to be in constant motion to convince the worms that it's occupied" type of thing. But instead, you just kill the worms and that's that, you never see them again unless you go hunting them. According to my end-of-game statistics, I killed 8 small demolishers and 2 medium demolishers, which was probably 5 more worms than I needed to kill, since I ended up with a lot of empty space I didn't do anything with.

So overall, Vulcanus is the weakest of the planets for me, and I think that's at least partly down to the under-use of the worms and the simplicity of the "new" mechanics.

Fulgora

Fulgora contains the ruins of a vast civilization, and there are no resources except the heavy oil between islands and the scrap that's left behind. Solar is terrible on Fulgora, but there are lightning storms at night, and lightning towers can collect it into accumulators to power your base.

Scrap gets "recycled" into a bunch of different things, and so it quickly because a nightmare of sorting things out, dealing with excess products, and turning complex materials into simple ones. There are no iron plates, those need to be recycled from iron gears. There are no copper platers, those need to be recycled from copper wire. Blue chips, which in any other circumstance need to be jealously guarded, are found in abundance.

I found this to be great fun. The challenge is certainly unique, turning the production chain on its head, but it has a nice "ramp" to it, as first you get a pile of crap, then you turn it into things, then you uncover excesses that are gumming it up, and the problems keep coming, but they usually come after you've solved some other problem.

When I started, I did a sushi belt (ed. - a sushi belt is a belt that contains multiple unsorted good, controlled by circuit conditions which allow certain limits of each item to go by, named after conveyor belt sushi restuarants), which was good enough for the short term and got me all the basic technologies, but ran into all the problems that come with a sushi belt, and switched over to a belt-based sorting system of splitters that could handle two full green belts of scrap input.

There is, for me, one big miss on Fulgora, which is that the lightning storms are basically not a challenge at all. You set up a grid of substations, each with a lightning rod, and that protects your base. You set up accumulator fields on one tip of the island, and this is a pretty boring solution. If you went to Gleba first, you can instead set up heating towers that burn the fuel you get from scrap, but this doesn't seem like it saves terribly much more space, and either way you need the lightning towers, so I'm not sure it's worth anything, and I never implemented that plan.

One of the other big challenges of Fulgora is that it's a set of islands, and there's no way to place anything on the oil sands. Additionally, there are two types of islands, one with a fair amount of space and minimal scrap, the other with tons of scrap and almost no room. In theory, this encourages a rail world, but in practice, the first island I plopped down on was the one I stayed on the entire time, and my rail network, such as it was, extended to only two of the smaller islands to guarantee all the scrap I would ever need. I think I rolled high on one of those islands: 63M scrap is a ton, but that's what I ended up with on default settings. With the drills from Vulcanus, expected output is double that, and with the legendary drills I can now produce, it would be 787M. There's simply not a need to place rails elsewhere.

I do feel that Fulgora would have benefitted from some enemies of some kind, either those that lived on the oil fields, so you'd have to build defenses on the edges of the islands, or some kind of robot enemy that you needed to kill to take islands from. Given the setup of an abandoned high-tech planet, and the electrical weapons you unlock there, it would have been nice to have some reason or chance to use them. I've definitely played Factorio scenarios with bot opponents and buildings that can be captured after the AI's defenses have been breached.

Still, the scrap sorting puzzle was a good one, with many solutions, and Fulgora was a ton of fun.

Gleba

Gleba is a swampy fungi planet. There are no conventional resources except for stone, and pretty much everything else is derived from two plants, jellynut and yamako, that get broken down.

The main mechanic of the planet is spoilage, where materials break down over time. Jellynut and yamako last for about an hour, the products you get from them are much less, a material made from both of them, bioflux, lasts a lot longer, and nutrients, which are fed to the new building, the biochamber, last hardly any time at all.

Spoilage is cool because it requires a very different mindset. Normally in Factorio, you're building up big buffers to minimize downtime. On Gleba, you want as little buffer as possible, just constant rivers of materials flowing by to be as fresh as possible, because if anything stays still for too long, there's a chance it'll spoil, which will stop the machine trying to take the ingredient, which can create a spoilage cascade.

My initial plan was to have some kind of circuit-based just-in-time system, where every machine would be monitored in order to see what ingredients it needed, and everything would be made fresh-to-order.

I ended up not doing this, mostly because demand stays relatively constant, and where it doesn't stay constant, you can just eat the spoilage costs. There's so much abundance that you really don't need to care about half your crops going to waste.

The other reason I didn't end up going with this is because unfortunately, the "river of goods" solution has essentially no complications to it, and you can simply dump everything into a recycler/incinerator at the end. In some of the Factorio overhaul mods, this concept is called "voiding", a way of dealing with byproducts, and if you make voiding easy, you essentially remove a logistical challenge, which means less gameplay. I kind of get why they made this easy, but ... I don't know. I did kind of want something that would require a big, complicated solution, a factory that dances on the edge of clogging itself up.

I ended up with a completely belt-based system, with a belt of jelly and mash, then a belt of bioflux, all nutrients made on demand, and production lines in defined blocks. The final build does 520 science/minute, which becomes 2Ks/m with full-prod biolabs, most of which goes into the trash, since it's not actually consumed all the time.

One of my favorite little puzzles of Gleba was the metals, which are produced with bacteria that spoil in a minute, becoming ore. There's a process, with bioflux, of having bacteria make more bacteria, but if the bacteria ever stop flowing (if, for example, you have enough ore), then they spoil and die, and the whole production line stops. So you need to build in a little kickstart system that will inject new bacteria if it's needed, and I found that to be delightful to work on.

The other major thing on Gleba are the enemies, which are pentapods. Pentapod eggs are necessary to make biochambers and science, but after you have one, you can set up breeding, which is dangerous given they can make more of themselves, but definitely the way to go. There are three forms of pentapod, all with their own weaknesses, and ...

Look, I went to Gleba last, but I put up a defensive wall fairly early on using only materials that I had gotten from Gleba, and then basically never had any cause to think about the pentapods again. Because I slapped this down with blueprints, it took all of ten minutes, most of which was spent fixing the kind of scuffed corners (skill issue). So I would say the amount that I actually got to experience the pentapods was pretty minimal. I also shipped in four artillery turrets that are crowded around a box of ammo, supplied by site-made shells using imported tungsten, and the circle almost entirely contains my pollution cloud, so in theory it's just an easily solved problem.

It might have been different if I had gone to Gleba first, I don't know and can't say without actually doing that, but I would have liked a little more of a challenge, and this might be where being a veteran hinders me.

Overall, I really enjoyed Gleba, the mechanics were new and unique, the little puzzles inherent in design were interesting, and I thought that overall it had the best art direction of the four planets, which is saying something, because I think they're all great on the front.

Aquilo

On every other planet, a "cold start" is possible, building up from just what you find laying around. Aquilo is different: it's a planet with ammonia oceans and some scattered liquid vents, and part of the point of it is that you need materials from outside, including anything made from iron, copper, or stone. You can't softlock on other planets, but you can softlock on Aquilo.

Aside from requiring pretty solid planetary logistics, Aquilo's main mechanic is heat. It's cold enough there that bots don't work very well, and everything has to have a heat pipe near it for it to function, including pipes and belts. To heat up a heat pipe takes either nuclear, fusion, or the heat towers that burn up fuel, and if the heat ever stops flowing, everything will seize up, requiring heroic efforts to get running again.

There's not all that much to Aquilo. You pull up slurry from the ocean, split it into ammonia and ice, use them together to make ice platforms, import concrete, and then combine oil and ammonia to make rocket fuel, which is used to both launch rockets and to toss into heating towers for power and heat to keep everything running.

The science pack is easy, though it require imported holmium plate, and my entire 200 science per minute production line was run off a tiny cluster of buildings that would have been pretty trivial to expand.

It seems to me that Aquilo is at least partly inspired by Seablock, an infamous mod where you start with almost nothing on a tiny island that you have to expand with the mineral sludge you dredge up with an offshore pump. But Seablock is a very long mod, one that typically takes hundreds of hours, and here ... well, there are a handful of challenges, and they're not all that challenging. I think I could probably list them out now.

Making ammonia also makes ice. You can void excess ice through repeated recycling, but ammonia can't be voided except by combining it with crude oil to make solid fuel, which can then be put in an incinerator. I solved this problem with a simple circuit condition.

Science and some crafting uses coolant, which must be cooled back down after use. If you just keep making coolant, eventually the system will seize up, since you won't be able to put more hot coolant into the system. But because this is a lossy cycle (you lose half the coolant) you can just hook a pump up to a tank and only inject more hot coolant into the system when below a threshold.

Outposts need their own heating for the pumps to work, and those outposts are, on default settings, quite far away. This requires setting up a self-sufficient little heating module that's either serviced by train or which runs entirely with materials found at the outpost. I ended up doing two different modules, one for oil outposts and the other for everywhere else ... but I never actually had to use them, because there were sufficient resources for tens of thousands of resources right next to the starting area.

As the "final boss", I am underwhelmed, and even as one of four planets I find myself a little underwhelmed. I don't know how much postgame stuff I'm going to do, but I can't see that there's going to be much challenge in going large on Aquilo, except that I might have to build another ship for moving in materials (as currently I have a single ship that makes a circuit of the solar system for materials and also handles shipments of science).

There is also, again, a lack of enemy. Once the rocket fuel setup was done, I had a single scare when ammonia backed up and stopped ice production, which shut down the water chem plant, which killed the turbines and stopped power to the entire base. But that didn't even freeze anything out, and it was fixed pretty easily from a restart module I'd built earlier, and after that, the ammonia issue was fixed to never have that problem again. If the cold is the enemy, it's not enough of one for my tastes.

Integration

With each planet you conquer, you get a new science pack, which opens up new technologies, and in theory you, can use them on other planets. These buildings are very powerful, and so there's some incentive to return to old factories, rip up old designs, and install new ones using the better buildings.

I did eventually do this, but I'm not sure how much I actually needed to. My furnace stacks were replaced by the foundries from Vulcanus, supplies by a hauler ship exclusively for calcite, though I did make an abortive attempt to just harvest calcite from space using a stationary space platform.

(I made four of them before giving up on the project, and found out only later that asteroid spawn rates depend on how many chunks large the ship is, so the ideal build has asteroid collectors on very long arms, and there's nothing in the game that tells you about the asteroid spawning thing, so ... whatever, it's opaque and very gamey hidden stuff, of the kind that I hate.)

I replaced my circuit production areas with the EMP, which saved vast quantities of resources and also made more circuits at a much faster rate within the same blueprint. I upgraded most belts to green.

I didn't end up using the biochambers much, in part because they need nutrients to run, and 50% prod with more module slots is great, but not so great that I wanted to set up a biter egg farm that could potentially blow up in my face.

Cryochambers just came too late for me to implement them anywhere, though I probably would if I kept playing to the megabase stage, or if I'm gunning for an achievement that requires updating Nauvis.

So I think, strangely, when considering how the planets impact each other, they ... kind of don't all that much? Yes, having foundries on Gleba means that you can make all your belts and things at a fraction of the cost, but how much doesn't that really impact anything? It meant that my ore production areas could be smaller, I guess. Is that worth anything? I kind of don't think so, if I'm considering the main gameplay to be in terms of design and decisions. Foundries saved me from having to lay down a furnace stack. EMPs saved me from having to have expansive red circuit lines to get the blue chips necessary for rocket launches.

Ideally, I would have liked one or two killer techs that mostly work through combining each planet's "thing". Like imagine that there was a combination recycler and foundry that melted down whatever was put into it, giving you molten copper and iron in exchange, creating a whole new kind of problem in exchange for ... I don't know, much much faster recycling, or less loss from recycling, or maybe a recipe that allowed true voiding. Or if you went to Gleba and then Vulcanus, and were able to bring biochambers that would allow the cultivation of some new specimen specific to that environment, maybe something that would allow better plastic production, or could pull water out of the air, both of which are kind of a pain in the ass on Vulcanus. Couldn't there be some kind of new bacteria swimming in the oil sands of Fulgora? Not something that would trivialize any challenge, something that would be a reward for having two flavors of research from two different planets. Ideally, there'd be six of these in total, allowing for each pair to benefit each other pair, but at that point I start to feel like I'm just asking for new content.

I cracked my game back open to check the tech tree, and all the Aquilo techs require all three planets. The are two techs that require mixed packs: Rail Support Foundations, which simplify rails for Fulgora, and Railgun Damage, which increases the power of the railgun. That's it. This screams missed opportunity to me.

So in terms of how the planets and their mechanics interact with each other ... I would say that they mostly don't, which is a bit of a shame. The biochamber in particular requires nutrients, which makes it effectively unusable on Vulcanus and Fulgora ... unless you're shipping in heroic quantities of bioflux, I guess, though I don't think that I could ever see myself doing that. I guess maybe on Vulcanus, which has the aforementioned plastics problem? But it feels like the kind of thing that would mostly be done for a stunt rather than because it was actually the right thing to do. And potentially on Nauvis, but it does seem like a megabase thing to do, rather than normal play. I will have to do the math, this too might be a skill issue.

(Real quick: 1 Bioflux makes 8 nutrients in a standard biochamber, which is 12 with prod, which is 24 MJ. A biochamber consumes 500kW, so with no spoilage nutrients allow 2 crafts of the 2 second oil cracking recipes, which means that every Bioflux can, at most, turn 960 heavy oil into 1080 light oil rather than the 720 light oil it would normally crack into. But obviously since the Bioflux has to be shipped in, it ends up being less than that. This is obviously more effective than shipping over oil itself, but ... man, I don't know, this seems very weak, even with adding in productivity to other steps. I guess the use case in Nauvis, where you're in theory shipping Bioflux anyway in order to feed captive biters, but that's still premised on an oil shortage that I never actually experienced.)

I do also want to say that quality had very little impact on my play. I tended to carry around some high quality quality modules and use them when crafting infrastructure, but in most cases it just wasn't much to write home about. It's most important for the ships, and for personal stuff, but it never felt that important.

And finally, I do want to give a shoutout to how easy and effective remote viewing was. One of the things I'm going to eventually do, after a Factorio break, is the 40 hour achievement run, and I have to imagine that a lot of that is just landing on a planet, doing the unlocks, building a rocket to get back, then having starter bots do all the actual base building for me, which is pretty cool.

Conclusion

Space Age took me about 140 hours, and I would say that about 10 of that was idle time while I was waiting for legendary ship parts or for a buildup of materials. The Jacknape-class ships have an issue with ammo production where they can more or less keep up with rockets, but the belt buffer goes from the front of the ship to the back, meaning that it empties from where it's needed most, rather than emptying where it's needed least, and yeah, having a fully stacked buffer takes a hot minute of waiting. Similarly, the quality module I made works over sufficient time scales, but especially while waiting on quality quality modules, there's a real temptation to just leave it running rather than actively playing.

130 hours for a veteran player is a long time for an expansion, much longer than I would have expected, even knowing what I knew about the expansion going in. Some of that time I don't count as expansion time, like all the parts where I was just doing normal Factorio stuff, and I did end up building adapted malls on each of the planets, which added on more time that could have been cut out by making an effective blueprint the first go-around, and which I don't really count as expansion time, because there's not much that's unique about making the new malls. But even if I'm arbitrarily cutting things out, that's still a ton of time.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with it, and I think I'll be more happy with it once there's another round of iteration, QoL, changes based on feedback, and modding. The modding scene for Factorio is really really good, and I have to imagine that the expansion is only going to make it better, particularly some of the changes that were made to implementation.

But I do think that it could have been more, and maybe this is just coming from a guy with more than a thousand hours in this game and multiple overhaul mods under his belt. It's very possible I would have had a better time with it if I'd chosen a higher difficulty, though of course that's very hard to know ahead of time. Certainly there were some design misses for me, and at least some of that is because I have enough experience that I can fix things with circuitry, plan a base that doesn't immediately become spaghetti, and see the deadlocks coming. I'm not saying that it wasn't hard, because parts of it certainly were, and I'm not saying that I made a bunch of perfect bases with no major flaws, because there were designs that needed to be ripped out and belts that needed to squeak through. But I think I would have preferred more complexity, more problems, more more more, and I'll have to hope that mods can give it to me.

All that said, this is the best expansion I've ever played, they put a ton of work into making sure that every planet was truly different from the others artistically and mechanically, and it's a 10/10 from me.

(I do plan on getting all achievements ... eventually. The "win in 40 hour" achievement seems very doable, and that's the hardest of the lot, though the others might take some significant time. It took me multiple years to finally getting around to doing the last green chip achievement, so I'm in no rush.)

[iamthekaijuking]

I feel Rompopolo is weird because it's probably the brute Wyvern that really went for the insectivore niche, probably more so than Barroth. Like the long Claw reminds me of the middle Claw of the Aye Aye, the long but wide beak gives me Bee catcher vibes, but the fatty body is throwing me off. But in short Rompopolo looks like they took traits of every insectivore they knew off

The long claw is definitely good for digging around in wood and crevasses for bugs, but the beak and long tongue are too.

Their ancestors probably lived like alvarezsaurs or woodpeckers, poking through wood and shoving their beak into the opening to slurp up entire insect colonies. It might have even used its poison gas to knock out its food first. But eventually they came to the oilwell basin and started preying on creatures stuck in the oil like the petroleum fly.

[sickmachete]

HEY !! HERE ARE SOME RANDOM FIRE SAFETY TIPS !!

AVOID HILLS. seriously. the radiant heat coming off the flames pre-heats nearby grasses/fuels located above (heat rises!) which is what cause fires to "run" up hills lighting up long strips in the blink of an eye. you cannot outrun a fire that's chasing you up hill.

EVEN IF you are standing below the fire all it takes is one stray ember blown in the wind to start a fire below YOU and then you're really screwed. if you're caught on a hill, run to the side and (if possible) try to get to any charred/burnt zones behind the fire.

charred/already burnt black areas are safe zones. they will not easily re-burn and can become refuges to retreat to (but still be mindful of smoke inhalation).

healthy green grass lawns can also be temporary safe zones. the moisture held in lush grass makes it a lot more difficult to catch fire and can work as a temporary refuge in the case of a house fire. however, TO BE CLEAR: this does NOT apply to tall forest meadow-type grasses. when i say healthy grass im talkin like suburban manicured lawns okay? if your lawn is looking crusty dry brown then thats not gonna be a good place to run to.

most mild carbon monoxide poisoning (aka smoke inhalation) can be cured by simply taking in fresh air. severe smoke inhalation may require further medical treatment though.

fire needs FUEL + OXYGEN + HEAT in order to burn. if you removed ANY of these 3 things, the fire will go out. this is known as the fire triangle. the reason why water works against fire is mainly because it's cold, however it also helps by "drowning" the fire, depriving it of oxygen.

on this note!! if you're cooking and your food catches on fire inside the pan, DO NOT! pour water onto it!!!! that will only make it splash. what you're gonna wanna do is grab a pot/pan lid and gently slide it onto the pan. this will cut off its oxygen and put the fire out. DO NOT! slam the lid onto the pan!! this rush of wind/air could blow the fire right out of the pan and directly onto you/nearby furniture!

CHECK YOUR FIRE EXTINGUISHERS!!! please!! not all fire extinguishers are meant to be used on the same fire!!! while it can vary (and you should definitely look up the ratings for your own location/extinguishers) many of them will have specific class ratings written along the label. here in the USA, those ratings are in letter form (ie: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D, and Class K). sometimes these ratings are combined (ie: Class ABC), meaning that a Class ABC fire extinguisher can be used on a Class A, B, or C fire.

FIRE EXTINGUISHERS AND THEIR ASSIGNED FIRES

CLASS A: these extinguishers should be used on wood/paper/plastic (ie: your basic trash fire).

CLASS B: these extinguishers should be used on flammable liquids (ie: alcohol, gas, petroleum, greasing oils <- not food oils though!!).

CLASS C: these extinguishers should be used on electrical fires (ie: sparking cables, your computer spontaneously combusted and is on fire, etc).

CLASS D: these extinguishers should be used on combustible metals (ie: magnesium, titanium, potassium, sodium, etc. if that metal shit in your garage is burning, use Class D).

CLASS K: these extinguishers should be used on flammable cooking oils/greases (ie: your stove is on fire, your barbecue's on fire, etc).

CLASS ABC: these extinguishers can be used on any of the Class A, B, or C material fires.

DO NOT USE THE WRONG EXTINGUISHER. they are labeled differently for a reason!!! a Class ABC extinguisher (for example) will make a Class K fire splash! you will cause that big old greasy fire to splash right back onto you!! Class K extinguishers are specifically designed to safely put out fires without disturbing the liquids/oils so please please please check the labels of your extinguishers.

AND REMEMBER TO "PASS" !!!

HOW TO USE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER — P.A.S.S.

PULL the pin in the handle.

AIM the nozzle at the base of the fire.

SQUEEZE the lever slowly.

SWEEP (across the base of the fire) from side to side.

[mapping-elysium]

Coast Orb: Snow Shivers

WEST

More coast with abandoned buildings and piers

Pre-revolution effort to gentrify the coast

Coal city

Boom town from when revachol was powered mostly by coal

“in the shadow of Saint-Martin”

Supplanted by offshore petroleum and hydropower from Esperance

Infrastructure crumbled. Now a poor area “only the weakest remain”

Below the mines: L'Ossuaire Municipal, Revachol's underground cemetery

Les Petits rats attempt to to find Le Royaume (royal burial chambers)

EAST

Canal and Martinaise

[see PLAZA ORB] whitest part of town

Run-off point of a long forgotten canal

NORTH

Church

1 of 2 remaining stave churches

Originally of a set of 8 called Les Sept Souers “other six sisters were destroyed during the revolutions”

World’s end

Islets

Sea Fortress: The 114th Anti-Aircraft Division of the 4th Army of the Commune of Revachol

Résurrection: Popular spa for  Ozonne residents

A couple of other islets scattered and uninhabited

Martinaise Inlet

Bay of Revachol

1200 m depth

Ozonne

SOUTH

8/81 - raised motorway

Separates Martinaise from Jamrock

Buildings under the motorway (Labyrinthine alleyways)

The Pox

Once a park for the Old Military Hospital

In the 20s was a quarantine center during measles outbreak

Abandoned after the outbreak

Completely wild now, overrun by feral dogs and wolves

Police keep deepest corners cordoned off

Precinct 41

Line of motor garages 

Repurposed silk mill

Central Jamrock

Utility district - Library, florist, saramisizian restaurant

Brothels, drug dens and Zemlyaki(gang) chopshops

Built around lake formed by meteorite strike [Ship in the middle]

Below

sand poisoned with industrial run-off. The storm drainage. Hidden bunkers

NOTES: This is unfortunately the last of the notes I had written ahead of time so things may move slower. Hopefully I've made enough posts that you all can understand the format I'm going for. Joyce's Reality Lowdown is going to take a long time to work through

Shivers - Winter, slow to let go of Revachol, flecks some more wet snow from above...

You - Look around you.

Shivers - The snow falls lazily, making the beach sand paler still, mixing with the rust-coloured sewage run-off.

Shivers - And to think -- it seemed as though it were already spring.

You - How does it feel?

Shivers - Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. To distract yourself, you look around...

Replaced with "Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. The toes of your one bare foot are growing numb. To distract yourself, you look around..." if HasShoes() == false and (CheckEquipped("shoes_snakeskin_left") or CheckEquipped("shoes_snakeskin_right"))

Replaced with "Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. Your bare feet are growing numb. To distract yourself, you look around..." if HasShoes() == false

You - What's in the west?

Shivers - More winding coastline lined with abandoned buildings. Crumbling piers, salt water lapping at their dark piles. Grey and red, forgotten city blocks. What remains of the pre-revolutionary effort to gentrify the coast.

You - And beyond that?

Shivers - The waters turn black. Coal City in the shadow of Saint-Martin, a boom town, back when coal extracted from countless shafts near the city was needed to power Revachol.

Shivers - No more. The coal was supplanted by petroleum from the ocean floor and hydropower from the Esperance. Everything crumbled. These days, only the weakest remain in Coal City. Their hopes of getting rich linger in the defunct shafts under their feet.

You - What is there?

Shivers - Below the old mines -- L'Ossuaire Municipal, Revachol's underground cemetery. *Les petits rats* brave the underground passageways, trying to get to Le Royaume...

You - Le Royaume...

Shivers - ...where the Filippian kings were interred, with their doctors and their admirals. Mausoleums, burial chambers, leaf gold still remains on the Double Door of the Morning.

You - That's where Cuno said he's gonna go...

Shivers - Yes. To peel the gold off with his fingernails.

You - Les *petits rats*...

Shivers - Children under 14. They go underground, looking for artefacts to sell to foreign museums -- and for fabled relics. Their parents let them. They go deeper...

You - Deeper...

Shivers - ...after rubies, melchiorite, lapis lazuli plundered from Safre and Seol during the time of the Suzerain. In the burial chambers of the kings: Grand Old Filippe, Guillaume II, and even in the mausoleum of Filippe the Opulent.

Shivers - Two kilometres underground, in a winding shaft along whose walls mirrors have been placed so that daylight may eternally fall upon the richest of all the kings.

Shivers - The mausoleum contains untold quantities of gold -- and that special, purest-of-the-pure magenta cocaine favoured by Revacholian royalty.

Electrochemistry - Did someone say *untold quantities of cocaine*? Drop everything immediately and go looking for this hoard!

Logic - How can it be pure if it's magenta?

You - Wipe the snow from your shoulder.

Shivers - Few *petits rats* return from the shafts -- and even fewer find what they're looking for. A small child steps out of a black tunnel, with silver trinkets in her pockets.

Shivers - All around her, white snow on the extinguished coke furnaces, and on the weather-worn shacks, where fathers beat their sons after drinking. The snow melts on your fingers, turning to water.

You - What's in the east?

Shivers - The canal you crossed to get here, and beyond it -- Martinaise proper, the district the police forgot to police. There is laughter, lights, attempts at entrepreneurial activity, cynicism.

Shivers - Someone is scraping snow off their windshield. At the roundabout, in the midst of which a statue of Filippe the III serves as a destination for grade-school field trips and a fine perch for winter birds.

You - And further...

Shivers - A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood.

Replaced with "A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. You've seen it. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood." if Variable["jam.dlc_truck_shivers_orb_done"]

Replaced with "A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. You've heard about it. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood." if Variable["village.idiot_cocaine_dlc"]

Conceptualization - Clean white light, coming from the windows of a clean cube-shaped office building hidden amidst ruins. A secret...

You - What's in the north?

Shivers - The abandoned church. One of two remaining stave churches which were collectively called les Sept Soeurs. The other six sisters were destroyed during the Revolution.

You - And further north?

Shivers - A serpentine strip of land weaving its way into the Martinaise inlet. Unfortunates on the run -- from the law, from themselves -- sometimes hide out on nearby islets. Little dots in the ocean that are occasionally submerged when the tide is high and the weather foul.

You - And on the islets?

Shivers - The remains of a camp on a jagged piece of rock -- a tent, old dishes and cutlery. Long since abandoned. A hermit crab scuttles among the debris, looking for a new shell.

Shivers - Further out, the lights burn bright on Résurrection; way beyond Martinaise -- a popular spa destination for ample-bodied Ozonne kids with equally ample pockets.

You - And on the other side of the inlet?

Shivers - Then there's Ozonne... but the snow falls too thick. You cannot see that far.

You - Before that? Before the curtains are drawn...

Shivers - The Bay of Revachol, vastness, great depth -- over 1200 m at its deepest. Water, air brinier than here. It is crisscrossed by huge cargo ships bearing company logos: Wild Pines, ZAMM, Moriyn.

Shivers - And, at the farthest reaches of the Bay of Revachol -- the shadow of Coalition Warship Archer, on perpetual patrol duty, ready to unleash artillery fire if you were to rise up against the market. You shudder.

You - What's in the south?

Shivers - The raised motorway, 8/81, separating Martinaise from Jamrock. Vehicles whoosh past one another day and night, while those who reside in the labyrinthine alleyways beneath the motorway attempt to carry on with their lives in the snow and the slush. And south of the 8/81 is the Pox.

You - The Pox...

Shivers - ...was once a park, a place for reflection and recuperation for the patients of the Old Military Hospital. In the Twenties, it was used as a quarantine centre during a measles outbreak that killed many children. Most everyone has avoided the hospital and surrounding park ever since.

Shivers - The Pox is completely wild now. Evergreen thickets covered in snow and industrial dust. Feral dogs and even wolves roaming in packs. The police try to keep the deepest corners cordoned off.

You - But still...

Shivers - ...heavy drug users do slip through and hole up in the Old Military Hospital, hoping to find something to get high on among the hastily abandoned supplies. Or just to overdose in peace.

You - Further south...

Shivers - A line of motor garages with armoured carapaces, hunched in the cold. A mechanic is hard at work, patching up bullet holes in the side of a Coupris 40. These are the garages of Precinct 41. Snow settles on the roof of the re-purposed silk mill that serves as your station. Shivering RCM personnel hurry in and out of the main entrance.

Mack Torson - "Wonder if Vic's found his hetero-sexual life partner yet." The man in the fishnet wifebeater looks over at Chester McLaine.

Chester McLaine - "Damn, I don't know. Even a real *bröderbund* like that can't survive everything..."

Shivers - Around you, the snow continues to fall. To the west, the ocean swells.

You - No, it was home. I want more.

Shivers - The stairs descend -- to Central Jamrock. A man named Kuklov has a snow-covered stall there, in the market across the bridge. He sells kebab infested with fly larvae to your colleagues who believe eating it will make them immune to food poisoning.

Shivers - Snow falls on the utility district: the library, the florist, the Saramirizian restaurant that offers homemade wine. And also on the brothels and drug dens, and the chop shops of the zemlyaki.

Shivers - All of this built around a lake that formed in a meteorite strike. At the centre of this lake, there is a little ship. There are lights at the bottom of its hull. They are lights directed toward the sea floor, looking for something, like whiskers...

You - For what?

Shivers - A chill comes over you, crawling down your back. The sand under your feet is wet. Somewhere in the south, tarpaulin flap in the wind.

You - What's below me?

Shivers - Layer upon layer of sand poisoned with industrial run-off. The storm drainage. Hidden bunkers. Rats scuttle...

You - Tell me a secret of the sands, wind.

Shivers - Someone's stuffed a big old polar anorak into a concrete pipe under the boardwalk. It would keep you warm. You will probably never happen across it, but who knows.

You - Stomp your feet for warmth, brushing off the snow. [Finish thought.]

Kim Kitsuragi - "We should keep moving. Who knows when this snow will let up?"

[solarpunkbusiness]

Meet the Nigerian women spearheading solar projects

32-year-old green energy entrepreneur Yetunde Fadeyi will never forget what inspired her to start a clean energy company in Nigeria.

As a six-year-old, Fadeyi’s best friend, Fatima, was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in her Lagos home, along with her father and pregnant mother.

“She often came over for sleepovers. But that day she didn’t,” says Fadeyi. “It was the time that they were stealing people’s generators, so they kept [the generator] in an enclosed area and by the time it was morning they were dead.”

After a childhood in Lagos plagued by intermittent electricity, a degree in chemistry and training in solar panel installation, Fadeyi started Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability (REES). The non-profit is dedicated to climate advocacy and providing clean energy to poor communities in rural Nigeria.

Bringing solar energy to Nigeria’s poorest homes

Since its inception in 2017, REES Africa has provided solar energy to over 6,000 people in the poorest parts of Nigeria, funded by grants and philanthropic donations.

It supplies solar microgrids, which generate energy through solar panels and store them in battery banks for distribution. The small grids bring high quality, cheap and constant power to up to 100 homes each, powering light bulbs, radios, sockets and other low energy appliances.

Fadeyi says that energy companies don’t see any potential for profit in poor and marginalised communities. With around 40 per cent of Nigerians living below the national poverty line, it’s up to companies like Fadeyi’s to fill the gap for now.

Professor Yinka Omoregbe is hoping to bridge this energy gap as CEO of Etin Power, providing energy to offgrid communities using mini solar grids. She brings a wealth of experience to the role as a former national advisor on the reform of Nigeria’s petroleum sector and a former state attorney general.

In its first year, Etin Power provided electricity to over 5,200 people in three neglected coastal communities in Edo State, southern Nigeria. While the results so far are small, Omoregbe’s ambitions are far bigger.

We will have proven that it is possible to profitably give green energy to vulnerable communities.”

[ultrameganicolaokay]

Poison Ivy #11 by G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara. Variant covers by (1) David Nakayama and (2) Seb McKinnon. Out in April 2023.

"It’s no secret that Ivy can be very convincing, but with her newfound powers, she now has people wrapped around her finger. Janet’s time at the spa goes south when Ivy uses her…persuasive powers…to blockade a petroleum processing plant. Things take a wild turn, though, when the employees become violent and Ivy must protect the women she initially set out to destroy. So much for a relaxing spa retreat!"

[silvaurum]

let me say it louder:

the use of petroleum based plastics is not, itself, inherently, unsustainable or ecologically bad.

the profit driven mass extraction and mass production of petroleum based plastics at the expense of the biosphere is the unsustainable, ecologically bad part.

humans using resources to survive is good. that's just us being part of the life systems of earth! and that can include using metal mining and plastics.

the problem is the owners, the rulers, who take those resources destructively because it makes them more money. the problem is the bourgeoisie will destroy anything for a profit, no matter what the product is supposed to be. food grows out of the ground for free, but they've still turned agriculture into a for-profit horror show that poisons ecosystems, strips the topsoil, and still lets people starve. the methods, the scale, and the lack of care are the problem.

but if our systems were run to focus on keeping people, and the earth, alive... we would still grow corn, just not like we do now. we would still make plastics, just not like we do now.

humans are also a part of nature. we deserve to live, too. all of us. having the tools to do that for more people than ever is an amazing boon. that's a worthwhile use of our resources! keep that close to your heart when we talk about using our resources in better, less destructive ways. and who actually decides how those resources are used. (hint: not disabled proles.)