#specifically I sampled from the surface of the log in there

[snezztheferret]

400x, assumed young Daphnia exoskeleton. Absolutely covered in bacteria

[mariacallous]

The internet sucks now. Once a playground fueled by experimentation and freedom and connection, it’s a flimsy husk of what it was, all merriment and serendipity leached from our screens by vile capitalist forces. Everything is too commercialized. We commodified the self, then we commodified robots to impersonate the self, and now they’re taking our damn jobs. We live in diminished and degrading times. I miss when memes were funny. I miss Vine. I miss Gawker. I miss old Twitter. Blogs—those were the days!

Stop me if these gripes sound familiar. In 2023, the idea that the internet isn’t fun anymore is conventional wisdom. This year, after Elon Musk renamed Twitter “X” and instituted a series of berserk changes that made it substantially less functional, complaints about the demise of the good internet popped up like mushrooms sprouting in dirt tossed over a fresh grave. Some people even complained on the very platforms they were mourning. Type “internet sucks now” into X’s search bar, you’ll see.

The New Yorker published an essay by writer Kyle Chayka on the subject, calling the decline of X a “bellwether for a new era of the Internet that simply feels less fun than it used to be.” People loved it. (Sample comments from X: “Relatable.” “Exactly right.”) Chayka claims that it’s now harder to find new memes, websites, and browser games than it was a decade ago. He also argues that the rising crop of platforms popular with young people—Twitch, TikTok—are inferior, enjoyment-wise, to the social web of the 2010s.

Both of these arguments are baffling. Memes fresher in the past? Yes, it’s tiresome to see Tim Robinson in a hot dog costume for the 500th time, but c’mon. In the early 2010s—the years Chayka longs for—the internet was all doge and doggos. It was the era of reaction GIF Tumblrs, the Harlem Shake, the Ice Bucket Challenge. Give me literally any still from I Think You Should Leave over “You Had One Job” epic fail image macros. Only glasses of the rosiest tint could recast the 2013 internet as a shitposting paradise lost.

The argument that the 2010s social web was superior amusement to the platforms now popular with Gen Z is even stranger. TikTok has major issues, but being unfun is not one of them. It’s been a springboard for some genuinely talented people, from comic Brian Jordan Alvarez to writer Rayne Fisher-Quann to chef Tabitha Brown. Binging Twitch streams certainly isn’t my thing, but people aren’t being held at gunpoint and forced to watch seven straight hours of Pokimane. They like it! They’re having fun! And how can one say with a straight face that gaming got worse? Roblox alone is a gleeful world unto itself; to pretend it doesn’t exist and isn’t a vibrant digital hangout is goofy and obtuse.

Corrosion of specific platforms on the internet—X, to pluck the most obvious example—is an observable phenomenon. (I, too, mourn old Twitter.) Musk’s changes to how X operates have made it harder to surface and verify information; his antics have driven away both advertisers and power users and allowed the cryptogrifter class to spam inboxes with invitations to NFT drops and meme coins, resulting in a digital space that feels abandoned and crowded at once. Other platforms, though, are flourishing.

Look at Discord, for instance. Its siloed structure is a throwback to the pre-Facebook internet era, when socializing online often meant logging on to specific forums. The disintegration of the Big Tech-dominated 2010s internet is creating a more balkanized social web experience, what Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler calls the “dark forest” theory, where people turn away from big, open mega-platforms in favor of more private or niche digital spaces, from nonpublic Slack channels to invite-only WeChat groups or special-interest podcasts. While some people might find that boring and hard to navigate, it’s not universally boring, or inherently difficult to navigate.

There are serious problems with the internet right now. Platform decay—“enshittification”—is real, and it’s not limited to X. Search is in shambles. Plus, the flood of AI spam has just begun. But there were serious problems with the internet 10 years ago too. Arguing that the decline of certain corners of a previous version of the internet means that the entire internet isn’t entertaining anymore is a preposterous leap.

The impulse to describe the internet as being in a dire existential crisis is an understandable one, especially if you love going online—it’s easier to get people to pay attention to emergencies, isn’t it? All sorts of decidedly not-dead things get declared dead periodically, from literary criticism to monogamy to Berlin. “My favorite platforms are faltering and I don’t like the new ones” isn’t as compelling a pitch as “The basic experience of goofing off online is on the brink of extinction!!!”

But the basic experience of goofing off and being creative online is not on the brink of extinction. Ten years from now, there will be writers—even if they’re AI chumbots churning out shitty prose on SubstaXitch, the demonic merged iteration of Twitch, Substack, and X our poor children will use—earnestly reminiscing about the good old days of 2023, when that affable menswear guy showed up on everybody’s feeds, and TikTok wasn’t banned in the US. I know this. I know it because during the era that Chayka is now nostalgic for, people were also complaining that they missed the old, good internet. (Real headline from 2015: “The Modern Internet Sucks. Bring Back Geocities.”)

This brings me to my theory about the internet. To understand how people feel about being online, look at how they feel about the long-running sketch comedy television show Saturday Night Live.

Bitching about how SNL is so much worse than it used to be is a time-honored tradition. It has been declared “Saturday Night Dead” regularly since it debuted in 1975, nearly 50 years ago. In 1995, for instance, a New York magazine writer bemoaned the “slow, woozy fall of a treasured pop-culture institution.” The cast at the time included Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Norm Macdonald, and Molly Shannon, all widely considered comedy legends in the present day. In 2017, in fact, New York ranked that cast’s run as the third-best era of SNL, ever, describing it like this: “At its peak, it’s hard to argue the show was ever better.” Quite the reassessment!

In 2014, writer Liz Shannon Miller examined the impulse people have to favor whatever era of Saturday Night Live they grew up with and watched during their formative years. “It’s a generational problem that leads to parents and kids just not being able to agree on the talents of John Belushi versus Will Ferrell,” Miller wrote for IndieWire.

A similar sort of generational problem is playing out right now about what it’s like to spend time online. Millennials grew up logging on in the 2000s and 2010s, maturing alongside Facebook. The internet from this era is the internet of our salad days. Of course watching it get eclipsed by a different iteration hurts. Of course some of us look at TikTok and wish it was Twitter—it’s the same impulse that propels family squabbles about whether the Lonely Island guys were funnier than the Please Don’t Destroy boys. Saturday Night Live has always been wildly uneven. Every era now heralded as golden was once pilloried as corny dreck.

To insist that the fun is over is to adopt an overly nostalgic stance, and one that rests on a pathetic fallacy: Just because you aren’t having fun on the internet doesn’t mean the internet itself is broken. It’s what it always has been, a flawed mirror of the cultural moment. It’s fine not to like it. But don’t pretend there aren’t young people alive right now who are having the most fun they’ll ever have online, just as there are young people alive right now who will be raving to their kids about how hilarious Bowen Yang was on SNL—especially compared to the synthetic clones of Gilda Radner and Jimmy Fallon the AI programmed to imitate Lorne Michaels cast in the 2061 season. We don’t need to make the present sound worse than it is. The future will come, soon enough.

[bayloradvancedsurfacedesign]

The Burn Test

Different types of fiber burn differently. Cellulose, animal and synthetic fiber all respond differently to flame, and analyzing how they respond to flame (from speed to smell and type of ash) will help you identify the specific type of fiber. This is important information to help you determine what specific dye will work best on each particular fabric.

We will use "change magic" to form ourselves into 3 groups of 2 or 3 people to work together to identify a series of fabrics and determine whether they should be dyed with fiber reactive dyes, acid dyes, or not use dye at all, instead coloring via surface treatments like paint.

Preparation and Supplies

A flame source. We will use a lighter.

Tweezers. Some fabrics can burn unexpectedly quickly, and tweezers ensure your fingers stay safe from the flames.

A fireproof dish. Dropping flaming fabric onto a flammable surface – or even worse, your fabric stash – could spell disaster. Always use a fireproof dish under your burn testing area.

A glass of water. Just for extra safety, I like to keep a glass of water nearby to extinguish any flames in the case they get out of control.

A ventilated area. Burn tests should be done in a space with plenty of ventilation. We will use our exhaust fan during our burn testing exercise.

Burn Test Chart, which will help you identify your fabric. We will have copies available in class, and a digital version of the burn chart is also available for you on canvas.

Your fabric swatches! You’ll each receive a series of fabric scraps to use for your burn tests as well as a log to record your observations.

The Burn Test

Hold your lighter in one hand and your fabric in tweezers in the other hand. As you bring the fabric and the flame together, note how the fabric reacts, how the flames burn and what the ashes are like. These components of the test all provide great insights into the identity of the fabric.

Some questions to consider:

Does the fabric curl away from the flame? Does the fabric catch immediately, or take a while to light? Are the flames bright? Is it burning quickly, or does it smolder out? Does the fabric simply melt as the flames sputter along? What smell does the smoke give off? What shape are the ashes? Do they fall apart when you touch them, or do they stay hard? Are they congealed onto the fabric?

Please be careful when examining the ashes, as they may still be hot or contain embers.

Use the burn test log sheets distributed during class to collect your burned fabric sample and observations described above. Use the burn chart to do your best to identify the type of fabric you have tested. Scan or take a picture of the completed sheets and post to your blogs to receive credit for your research. This will be graded as part of your blogcheck #1 grade.

Images above:

I found a great post about burn tests that I used as a resource for this post. Both of these images came from that post. Check out the burn test info directly here.

[respectable-username]

Based on the responses to my post yesterday wanting to know more, here's my guide to

🧑‍💻Code in Hermitcraft (and other SMP) Fanfic🧑‍💻

Note: This is just the interpretation of one Jr Software Engineer. If other developers have a different interpretation, I'd love to hear it in the comments or reblogs!

It's super common in Hermitcraft (and I'm assuming other SMP) fanfiction for the plot to revolve around errors in the game itself and how they affect players. The problem is, as a software engineer, this almost always immediately pulls me out of the story as the ways the game errors are described frequently don't make sense.

This is not a condemnation of writers who use game bugs as parts of their stories, as nobody expects all SMP fanfic writers to have a CS degree. Some even do it well and I adore those stories when I find them! But here are some high-level suggestions to have your glitchy plot points make a little more sense. Usually, it's just a slight change in wording that's required.

Code vs Data

"His code is glitched! He's evil now!"

"They carefully pulled at the strands of her player code, trying to find the bug that was causing her pain."

"Wow, your code is so ancient! You're from Alpha, right?"

These sorts of phrases are probably the most common ones I see that yank me right out if a story. Why? Because they're confusing data and code!

So, what is the difference?

Think of code in this scenario like the laws of physics. It's the rules that guide what can and can't happen in the world. It's what says "if you walk, you move forwards", "if you eat, you'll be less hungry", "if you use a shovel on a dirt block, it will end up in your inventory".

Data is the actual "stuff" in the world that the code changes via its rules. Data is the specific blocks in that building, that item hovering above the ground, the mobs staring at you from under the trees, the player character, the player's health, the player's inventory, the player's skin, and, in the fanfic context, the player's personality and memories.

In other words, if it's an action that can happen, it's probably code. If it's a specific thing, it and everything that makes that particular thing unique is data.

Of course, there can be bugs or glitches in the code which means that data does something it shouldn't, such as "if you put some TNT, some dead coral, and a minecart in this very specific configuration, you can duplicate the TNT." In this case, the act of duplication (ie the rules that let duplication occur) is a glitch in the code (the rules allow something they shouldn't), but the duplicated TNT itself isn't code; it's data. Data that shouldn't exist but does anyway because of that glitch in the code.

So, how could you rework the sample phrases above to make more sense?

"He got too close to a glitch, and his personality data got corrupted. He's evil now!"

"They carefully prodded at her player data, trying to find the broken property that was causing her pain."

"Wow, your data structures are so ancient! You're from Alpha, right? I can't believe you've survived so many updates without compatibility issues!"

Code vs Logs

"Xisuma looked through the code to find the source of the glitch."

This one's a little less clear cut, as there are circumstances where players could look at a version of the code. Some of the Minecraft code is Open Source (ie free to look at), and the rest can be decompiled from the Minecraft .jar (ie turned from machine-readable ones-and-zeroes back into words and stuff, although much less human-readable than what the original code would have been). The super-technical players such as the SciCrafters and I think Doc too will look at the code, which is how they make their super efficient farms and find and exploit glitches to, say, put 8 spawners in one chunk.

But generally, the code is not the first place you go when encountering a glitch. I mean, if it were that obvious from the code alone, it probably would have been caught before being shipped!

When something goes wrong, the first place to look is the logs. The logs of what the players have been doing, the logs of previous commands that have been run, the update changelogs for the game, the version history of the (admin-editable) config files, any warnings or error logs from the server itself. For example, if you have a malicious user such as, say, a Helsmit in your story, the logs would show when they entered the world and where, unless they also did something hacky to cover their tracks.

Personally, I also wouldn't say you'd have to stick to exactly what a server would realistically log if it makes your story more interesting. It's easy enough to hand wave that an admin has a mod in place that surfaces more information if it'd make the story better!

In a multi-server setting, this is also the point where the admin of your world could also reach out to the admins of other worlds and discuss if they've seen the issue before and how they solved it. The in-universe equivalent of looking it up on Stack Overflow or Reddit if you will!

Once the admin has looked at the logs and maybe chatted to others, if they still can't fix the issue via commands or config file changes, then it might make sense for them to try looking into the code if they can. Note that not all server admins are necessarily confident at programming as it's not a core part of their job.

But at the very least, at this point the admin should have a better idea of what part of the code could be bugged. This will make it easier to either a) make a patch for the bug or, more likely, b) understand what circumstances trigger the glitch and avoid those circumstances.

TL;DR: The code is not the first place admins will go when glitches cause issues; the logs are!

And as before, example sentence:

"Xisuma trawled through the logs, trying to find any indication of the source of the problem."

To Conclude

Code is the rules that govern what stuff can do and how stuff interacts. The stuff itself is data. When something goes wrong, that typically results in the data being in a state it shouldn't be in, wether that be because that thing's velocity is much higher than it should be after taking advantage of the ravager flight glitch, or because a player and a mob's data structures got combined on accident to leave them a player-mob hybrid.

Of course, this broken data is likely caused by a bug/glitch in the code. It could also be caused by somebody malicious who's purposefully trying to break things by messing with the memory in another way. It could also be because a cosmic ray hit a piece of RAM and flipped a single bit (this is an actual thing that happens believe it or not).

Either way, when something goes wrong, the admin's first point of exploration is the logs, not the code. The logs will give the admin a better idea of what the cause of the issue is, and talking with other admins could give them a solution without ever touching the codebase. But worst-case scenario, it is indeed possible for an admin to go spelunking through the codebase to find the cause of an issue and create a patch for it.

This just covers the most common code-related plot points that I personally see in Hermitcraft/other SMP fanfiction. If you have any further questions about writing code-related plot points, feel free to ask! And also, just to reiterate, this is all just my interpretation. Others may interpret differently, and if you do, I'd love to hear what your alternative interpretations are!

PS: I was also planning a section on hacking here, but this post is already getting long and that's complicated, and also I'm bad at hacking. But let me know if you have any questions related to that that you'd like to see in a follow-up post!

[junetwentyninth]

Two (2) Unread Messages

Read on Ao3

The blinking light plagues him, a constant irritation in the back of his brain as he continues working. His hands are always active, delicately filling a dropper or placing a petri dish of bacteria into the refrigerator, and the red light is always blinking.

It had been for two days now.

Every time he thinks he is ready to confront the awaiting tasks, a machine beeps or the system reminds him of another task he had been putting off and his attention is taken away. He takes it as a sign from a god he does not believe in that he is not meant to confront the light. He drums his fingertips on the counter and looks at the ceiling, waiting for an alarm or a voice or some other menial obstacle.

“Gogy, who is my message from?” The whirring over the speakers stops and, save for the quiet drum of the isolation tank, the lab falls silent while the system thinks.

“You have two messages: one from Tommy Innit and one from Dad Philza. Would you like to play a message?” Wilbur leans against a counter, his large framing wilting as he considers, moving his goggles up to rub a hand over his eyes. He should listen and respond before they get worried, but he knows he will fear worse off after. The lies fall easily off his tongue, but weigh heavy on his shoulders when he is laying in his bunk later.

“I’m doing fine.” Lie.

“I made a lot of friends.” Lie.

“Training is going well.” Lie.

“I miss you and I miss home.” True, but he can’t say that.

He knows why he has to lie but that fails to make it easier, especially when his brother continually digs for details about his training and his dad congratulates him on his ever-growing list of friends. It cuts deep that his family is happy with the things that aren’t real, though he only has himself to blame.

Sometimes he envies Dream for having no family back home to lie to, but feels a punch of guilt in his gut. Maybe he should invite him for Christmas some year.

“Would you like to play a message?” The voice, though it lacks inflection, is a tinge amused.

“No, Gogy, I do not want to play a message,” he sighs, dropping his hands to rest against the table.

“Any specific reason why the system is logging distress?” Wil can almost hear him logging the response for the EC-6 therapist who, while nice, was not the person to talk to about his guilty conscience. He would prefer his dad, but if there’s anything he knows, it’s that he doesn’t always get what he wants.

“It’s ‘cause your system sucks, Gog. I’m just too lazy to check ‘em right now.” The AI does what Wilbur interprets as a laugh and turns off the lights. Wil chuckles to himself and squints up at the ceiling, though the AI exists as a function of the ship and not a camera on the ceiling that Wilbur can stare at with mirth and amusement.

The AI exhales again and the lights return, temporarily blinding him.

“Dinner is in ten minutes, Caereac.” Wilbur turns to face the samples he’d abandoned in the refrigerator, bending towards the glass door to observe the spores more closely. There is a silent moment as he mentally marks the color.

‘Why do you only bring bad news, Gog?” The system says nothing and Wilbur sighs. Capping the open samples and collecting others from the refrigerator, he places each of them in the incubator, the warm yellow light turning them each a sick vomit color. The rest of the lab was relatively clean, but he still chooses to disinfect each surface individually, scrubbing violently at imagined stains.

His hands are red and raw when the system alerts him that Quackity is requesting his presence at dinner.

The difference between the lab and the living area is striking, starting with the wall of warm air that hits him as he enters. The living area was usually the least active area of the ship, considering they only use it officially for meals, but the expedition organizers had put in the effort to make it comfortable for that one hour of stilted, awkward conversation. The seating area chairs were comfortable and the table, though slightly too small, was secured to the floor. The kitchen was basically non-existent, with only enough appliances to rehydrate and heat their food to an edible level.

The table is bare when Wilbur exits the lab, but the other three crew members are in the kitsch, standing around the rehydrator. Dream and Quackity are talking quietly, while Sapnap stares directly into the machine as if mental pressure will make it work faster. Instinctively, Wilbur goes to grab utensils to make their table seem less sad.

“Wilbur!” Quackity startles him, grabbing him around his shoulders, and he drops a fork. “Thank you for making your appearance!”

The worst part is that Wilbur knows he is being genuine, but it still feels fake and uncomfortable. He wishes accepting Quackity’s affection, which he offers so readily, was easier.

Quackity shoves a plate into his hands, a plastic fork bumping against his thumb as he’s jostled.

“I made it just for you, Wilbur Soot.” Wil gives him a fond smile as he pronounces his name like ‘wheel-bur suit’ because Quackity, as hard as he tries, cannot do a British accent and Wilbur has given up attempting to help him.

“I made it for me,” Sapnap mutters under his breath as he shoves another packet in the rehydrator. Wilbur smiles apologetically.

The crew sits at the table in near silence, their forks scraping against paper plates. The system alerts them every so often for one reason or another - a timecheck, an incoming message from EC-6, once to tell Quackity that his joke, while funny, could not be classed under ‘protected communications.’

But, for the most part, it is a quiet, sordid affair and Wilbur is quick to escape when the system alerts them that the allotted meal time is up. He retreats to the lab where his samples sit in the refrigerador.

“G.O.G.?”

“Yes, Caereac,” the speaker crackles to life.

Wilbur pulls the samples out and places them into the reader, shutting the opaque glass door to trap in the cold air. “Can you read these samples for me?”

The machine whirs once, then again louder. The speaker comes back on.

“Yes, but it’ll take a few hours.” Wilbur sighs, running a hand through his hair. He can only assume it is sticking up in wild directions after the past few days have left it oily and unruly.

“Would you like to check your messages while you wait?” Wilbur huffs a laugh.

“No, I’m going to take a shower. Store the messages for now.” He pushes off the counter, walking to the other side of the room where the incubator stands, empty of its samples. He pushes the manual ‘off’ button and is met with his own reflection staring back at him as the light inside shuts off.

“Alright. Are you clocking out now?” He nods, then, realizing the system likely could not see him, affirms out loud. The lights turn off immediately and Wilbur is left to clean the lab in darkness. He flips off the ceiling, if for nothing more than his own satisfaction.

His shower is quick and quiet, the ship’s only bathroom being the farthest room from all of the work. When he comes out into the adjoined bunkroom, it is empty and dark.

“Time check on the samples?” he asks into the still air, cringing when the lights flicker on.

“One moment.” The speaker crackling ruining the quick British accent of the AI. As he pulls on his pajama pants and compression shirt, Wilbur wonders why EC-6 made their artificial intelligence posh.

He pulls back the sheets on his bottom bunk and the system comes back on.

“An estimated six hours, twenty-eight minutes. Would you like me to alert you when they are finished?” Wilbur pauses before shaking his head.

“No, I’ll handle them in the morning. Thank you, G.O.G.” The system bids him good night before shutting off the lights, leaving Wilbur to himself.

A red light flickers on his bedpost, flashing intermittently, begging for his attention.

Two messages unread.

He turns over and stares at the blank wall.

Author's Notes on Ao3

[prorevenge]

Underpay me, lie to derail a competing job offer and then try to humiliate me in front of the entire department? Say goodbye to your dignity and (eventually) job/business!

I'm going to leave out specific details about the company and people in question here, as some people also know about this story and I don't want to be identified.

TL;dr:

Company I'm loyal to takes advantage of my delayed graduation to underpay me

They lie to me so that I don't take a better job offer

They then claim my performance is an issue as an excuse to delay my pay raise

When I finally resign, my supervisor tries and spectacularly fails to make me look bad, and instead looks like a horrible, volatile boss.

Her department rapidly bleeds its experts in the months following my departure (I like to think this is in part because of my publicly awful treatment).

Chapter 1: The Good Years

BoringCorp hired me as an intern in the second year of my six year nightmare of college (long story). I was installed as a low-level support technician in the internal IT department, as I was a "wild card" hire, based on a recommendation and didn't have the usual qualifications.

In the three years I worked in the IT department (part time), I reimagined large aspects of how internal IT managed a plethora of internal services at the company. I designed and built several complex software systems to automate inter-department processes, systems management, security and compliance auditing and the like. Over those years I built a significant reputation for myself across many departments, including HR, the security team, engineering, marketing, etc. as someone who could not just "get stuff done", but also improve lots of other things in the process.

Chapter 2: The Downward Turn

Upon graduating, I was encouraged by my team lead (who is an awesome person) to look for a role better aligned to my skill set, and secured a role in the engineering department's systems engineering/automation team. I was offered a graduate salary, something I was unhappy with, as while technically a graduate, I had almost four years' experience in the industry at that point, and had demonstrated significant technical ability. Engineers from other departments often asked me to troubleshoot their code, so it wasn't like I was an unknown at this stage. Regardless, I accepted on the condition that I would be rapidly advanced.

As soon as I started with my new team, it was apparent that the company's engineering department was in some serious strife. Our single team of less than 10 people maintained a mostly undocumented codebase, supporting the deployment and automation of tens of millions of dollars of live customer sites... And stuff was always breaking.

Being the perfectionist and pathological problem solver I am, I immediately started looking for root causes. Most of the rest of the team, who were principally software engineers with no IT or systems background, or otherwise very inexperienced (grads with no work experience and first time interns), continued to chip away at the surface, without considering the source of our problems. This caused some friction with management, but I managed to convince them of the value of my work.

Six months in, I had identified major issues with our documentation, written up some basic (and easy-to-use) documentation standards, and even documented a large chunk of our projects. I had set up an incident logging process, and tried to pare back on our alerting/pager system to reduce "alert fatigue" and get more prompt responses from on-call team members during outages. No pay raise or even any acknowledgement of my efforts.

Chapter 3: The Struggles Begin

No one was interested in my work. No one documented anything, despite my making it as easy as possible. People kept adding bad code to fix short term problems, and despite my repeated pleas (literally every day at standup) this problem continued. Eventually I became pretty despondent about the whole thing and just started chipping away like everyone else, and commiserating with another new hire (senior engineer) who had significantly more experience than me and was equally horrified at the state of things.

I was then contacted by a recruiter for another company. Now at this point, note that I was still feeling a degree of allegiance to BoringCorp - they had treated me very well in years gone by, and I wanted to do right by them, despite their current struggles. So I kept my manager (who we shall call 'Z') in the loop about interviewing, and when I was offered a job with almost double my "graduate" salary, I told her first and gave her plenty of time for a counter offer. She assured me that they would match the offered salary within a month, and that the process was actually already underway (more on this later).

I turned down the job offer, which resulted in getting my ear chewed off by the recruiter and a very uncomfortable phone call from the CTO of the other company, almost begging me to join.

... Three weeks later, no news. I followed up. "We are looking into it, but I want you to communicate to the team why you haven't been around as much." Well, for starters the company had flexible working arrangements, and I had made it clear on multiple occasions that I was working from home. In addition, the reason I worked from home so much, is that my teammates, all of whom bar two were paid much more than me, would pester me with basic technical questions. I was sick of having my work disrupted so I could give first-year college tutorials on computer networking.

I explained this to my manager as diplomatically as possible (I avoided ripping into her about the ridiculous and offensive pay difference), and she asked me to "communicate more". Yeah, okay. I did that.

Chapter 4: The Last Straw+Camel

Three more weeks. Two past the deadline. No news. I follow up again - and hear basically the same complaint, despite having communicated very clearly and (grudgingly) worked from home less.

I started looking for a new job, again. Within three weeks I was five interviews deep in the process for an overseas company, and had a salary offer of four times my original salary. This was based not just on spoken interviews but also technical testing and work samples, so it wasn't just me overselling myself. At this point I became very angry at the degree to which BoringCorp was undervaluing me. I accepted the competing offer on the spot and started making plans to move. I also went back to working from home when I felt like it.

Fast forward two weeks, and I'm ready to put in my notice. I do so, and almost immediately I get an aggravated-sounding text message on my personal phone stating "we haven't seen you much this week and I expect you to be in for a meeting tomorrow." Clearly this set alarm bells ringing that it was a termination meeting and they were going to try to cheat me of my final pay.

Having worked in IT (and in fact having automated a significant chunk of HR processing), I was very familiar with the company's user offboarding processes. I looked for a work ticket logging my departure... And there wasn't one. Strange - policy dictates that one must be created. It occurred to me that in the past, handling dismissals, these tickets were raised with very restricted access permissions, so that the soon-to-be ex-employee had no prior warning.

Of course, I still happened to have some admin credentials in my password safe (used for automation, and which I had thankfully forgotten to delete). Upon logging in with those, sure enough, I found my very own ticket! Turns out they weren't trying to fire me, instead my supervisor (Z) wanted to put me on "involuntary paid leave" for the duration of my notice period. She also wanted me to clear out my desk during the daytime, in front of my colleagues, and deny my the chance to say proper farewells, etc.

Well, knowledge is power here. I spent the first hour backing up all of my personal data off my work laptop. I then wiped the disk clean and rotated the disk encryption keys, to ensure none of my data or personal project work could be recovered. I drove to work at 2am, cleaned out my desk and took everything home in complete privacy, and then went to sleep.

The next day, I walked in at 7:30am, dropped my wiped laptop with my old team and said my farewells. Also took the time to explain why I was basically getting booted out of the building. There was a lot of unhappiness - towards Z.

Then I went and said farewell to my current team. They were horrified by the situation and also were rather displeased with Z. I caught up with some of my closer friends that I'd worked with over the years and said my goodbyes to them as well. We had a nice, relaxed morning chatting about the good ole times and drinking coffee.

Then the meeting came along... Well, suffice to say, Z was rather disappointed that I had already handed in my laptop and cleared my desk. She grudgingly said I could stay for the rest of the day, seeing as I had already done everything I needed to do, and left in a huff.

Epilogue: The Aftermath

A few months had gone by, and I was now happily settled into my new job. I learned through contacts at the company that since my very rude expulsion, many senior engineers have left. They'd had to restructure the department to try to fix their product delivery issues, and were still unable to fix anything because all of the people who knew the functionality of the system (myself because of my documentation push, and the other engineers who built it) had left in disgust at the poor morale and working environment.

Last I heard, Z was still in her current role, but the company was bleeding cash and constantly downsizing. I don't imagine management was too chuffed with her performance.

(source) (story by Throwawayyyyyyy11235)

[thesinglesjukebox]

KITTEN - MEMPHIS

[6.82]

Time to take a big sip of coffee and log into AOL (Amnesty On Line)...

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "Memphis" sounds like reminiscing about love on Sunday mornings, a cup of a tea in hand, your hair a mess, and your bed sheets warm but messy because you're a "bedroom guy" or "bedroom girl." The whole song is warm and familiar, like an audio recording of a weekend gone too fast. It's the hyper-nostalgic conceit of "Cornelia Street," mixed with the escapist conceit of "Run Away With Me," sung by someone who clearly was an "Avril kid." The bridge is where things really take off: lines like "we can choose a house on the hillside" or "I'll be a loving mom" are clearly romantic comedy fodder, but too sweet to be cynical about. Why not indulge in fantasy every once in a while? [7]

Katherine St Asaph: Generally I like Kitten more when they're trying to be Metric than trying to be "Closer." To be fair, "Memphis" is massively better-written, with a few good sardonic lines and a lot of subtext (and Chloe Chaidez has apparently also read that Max Martin interview where he talks about nicking from Prince the trick of making verses and chorus the same). The result is less Chainsmokers than Barenaked Ladies, less Alex Pall than Maria Mena, and I'm thrilled that nostalgia is starting to mine that '00s pop-rock tract. Though I'm a little less thrilled to realize that a large chunk of the audience for this was born after "Complicated" came out, and well after those modem sounds were commonplace (let alone the Missile Command sample!). [6]

Natasha Genet Avery: In a thorough pan of "Closer," Katherine noted that The Chainsmokers let "place names stand in for realism and Blink-182 references stand in for emotional depth." Memphis, like Tucson and Boulder before it, is nothing more than a euphonic non-coastal city, the "wooden fence" fails to avert the cliche of picket fence ennui, and Avril references and dial-up modem noises are an empty nostalgia play. +2 for Demolition Guy and Bedroom Girl, which I've claimed as my superhero and villain names, respectively. [5]

Iain Mew: The sound-world of this is so well put together, making connections seem obvious. Chloe Chaidez starts off with diffident vocals and a nagging chiptune riff combined like Neon Indian, but then transform it by running that through an Avril kid's version of pop-punk. It gives just the right amount of bite amid the whimsy. The dial-up modem noises as texture sum it up: otherworldly, abrasive and nostalgic for a very specific time and feeling. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Oh the crackled fuzz of dial-up: it's the sound of one modem connecting with another, of new technology interfacing with older infrastructure. "Memphis" finds Chloe Chaidez engaging in the same sort of interactions: she talks of a "bedroom guy," reflecting on their past and staying hopeful for bright futures. The way the sample blends in seamlessly with the rest of the instrumentation, suffusing it with a soft wistfulness that perks your ears up -- it reflects how life can suddenly feel enormously different given the prospects of romance. Things may seem the same -- hell, things may actually be the same -- but a lover can make you reconsider so much. Soon, even the dullest moments of life -- the ugliest of buzzing noise -- contain a sliver of something charming. [7]

Alfred Soto: It took a few listens to get past the surface charms until I realized the surface charms were the charms: a "West End Girls" moved across the Atlantic and deposited in a Tucson subdivision where dial-up modems provide an outlet to sounds cooler than the kids will ever know. [6]

Nortey Dowuona: A thick slab of drums is dropped on top of a whirring synth patch with loping bass while shouting guitars are tangled in a mangled crash with whirring dial-up signals and spritzer synths, while Chloe Chaidez gently tells her beau to put her trust in her and never return to a place that holds a weight over them. [7]

Kayla Beardslee: Chloe Chaidez's vocals are so one-note that I'd expect the song to fall flat, but, thankfully it doesn't. There's still emotion in the softness of Chaidez's voice, the glitching dial-up sample and the guitars crashing around the fringes of the song, all of which work to build a wistful, romantic mood... I think? The dramatic situation is hazy: is this about an ending relationship ("By this time next, you'll be married," "And you let go, you are perfect"), an ongoing one ("Let's run away... We can choose a house on the hillside"), or something in between? And if the central romantic conceit of the track is unclear, how are we supposed to understand "And I/you/we'll never go back to Memphis" -- as bittersweet nostalgia, as happiness over maturing, as relief over a breakup, as general sadness? Ambiguity and multiple interpretations are fine, but the hook, as a guiding force behind the movement of a song, should have some clarity and strength to it, and I can't find that narrative clarity in "Memphis." [6]

Will Adams: The scuzzed up track, dial-up noises and Avril nod are there for nostalgia, sure, but what makes it work is the song's structure. The first two verse-choruses are near identical in lyrics and melody, with Chloe Chaidez's reflections veering almost bitter. It's not until the bridge when she drops her guard and turns toward an imagined future, and the swooning violin in the final chorus goes from cynical to sincere. "Memphis" yearns for comfort; its beauty is in realizing that it can be found not just in the past but in facing the present with someone you trust. [7]

Vikram Joseph: I love everything about this -- the unhurried, early-summer daydream of Chloe Chaidez's gently syncopated stream-of-consciousness, the pitch-shifted dial-up modem samples, the serotonin-rush chorus. For the most part, I have no idea what Chaidez is singing about, but it feels unerringly like falling in love. Avril Lavigne gets a goofy shout-out, and "Memphis" would have not just nestled comfortably on Let Go but would probably have been the best song on it. [9]

Alex Clifton: The dial-up tone sample distracts more than it adds, but it does evoke a sense of nostalgia. "I'm an Avril kid" does, too. It's nice to end the 2010s with a song that reminds me of the early 2000s, mostly because as time marches on I become increasingly aware of how distant my younger self is to my current self. But there's a part of me that lives eternally in 2003 with Avril Lavigne blaring on my stereo and endless dreams of what my future might hold, and this helps tie me to those memories so they never float away. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[the-st0ne]

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[imakebeautymistakes]

Skincare catch-up

Below are all the products I’ve used or currently use in my skincare routine. Some do their job but are nothing fancy, some are bad purchases, and some I’ll actually repurchase. 

My skin type is combination/oily, and I get acne when I’m stressed (not all over my face though, just 1-3 big pimples). I also have milia all over my cheekbones, and I’m looking into a way to have them removed by a professional since I wasn’t able to get rid of them on my own.

Cleansers

Currently using: Purity by Philosophy

Rating: 6.5/10

It does its job, but I don’t think it worked better than a Garnier cleanser I tried a year ago, and it’s more expensive. Also, the smell is a bit odd. Clean, but odd. I got this as a free gift for signing up for an Ulta credit card, and it’s definitely smooth and feels good rubbing into my skin. This will probably work fine on most skin types. However, for the price tag (and my skin type), there’s probably something better out there for me. 

Currently using: Daily Microdelivery Exfoliating Facial Wash (Philosophy)

Rating: 7/10

It’s a gentle-enough exfoliant that I can use it every morning as a cleanser in place of Purity (though if this is a big skincare mistake, someone please let me know!) It smells a bit like oranges and has a thick jelly texture. It feels refreshing and all, but again, I’m not sure how much it’s doing given the fact that I get breakouts whenever I’m stressed and I have to use other products to even out my skin tone again and get rid of acne. It does its job, but for the price, I could probably find something better for my specific skincare needs. That being said, I got the full size on sale for $15 at Christmas last year (normally $42) and it lasts a long time. 

Trial: Beste No. 9 Jelly Cleanser by Drunk Elephant

Rating: ?

Everyone can get their hands on this in one of the options for your free birthday gift at Sephora this year. If you missed your birthday, you can still get your gift by going on sephora.com and logging into your Beauty Insider account to temporarily change your birth date before you go shopping. Not a huge fan of the packaging, since it’s a little messy when my hands are wet from washing my face and I don’t want to get cleanser all over the sink and it’s hard to close if your fingers are slippery (if you’ve used this, you probably know what I’m talking about). Like Purity, the smell is a bit funky, but that could be a good sign since things that smell good usually have fragrance that can cause irritation. Still trying this though, will update later.

Sample: Kiehl’s Cucumber Herbal Conditioning Cleanser

Rating: ?

Only had a sample size that lasted a week, but I liked this when I used it. You didn’t need much product to cleanse your whole face, and it smelled really clean and refreshing but not overpowering. Lathered nice, and I’ll probably try this someday when I get more than a little sample packet. 

Garnier SkinActive Micellar Foaming Wash

Rating: 8/10

For a drugstore product, I really liked using this. The only reason I stopped was to try out the Philosophy products. My skin felt tight and clean after using this, and I could really lather to remove dirt and excess makeup. This is kind of my fallback, and my sister (age 20, combo skin) and my mom (age 50+, combo skin and rosacea) both like it too. Garnier also sells one in a blue bottle with aloe, but it’s not as good as this one and doesn’t have the micellar water. 

Toner

Currently using: Thayers Witch Hazel & Rose Petal Toner

Rating: 8/10

Does its job, doesn’t irritate, is inexpensive, and you can find it at the drugstore and Target. In the future I want to try a toner more targeted to my acne-prone oilier skin, but this toner is a catch-all, and overall a solid option in online reviews. 

Sample: Kiehl’s Blue Astringent Herbal Lotion

Rating: ?

I only got a baby sample that lasted 3 days, but this was really nice when I used it. It’s definitely for oily skin since it has alcohol in it, but it didn’t dry me out and made my pores feel nice and tight. Wish I could review more in-depth, but didn’t get a chance to use this long enough.

Neutrogena Alcohol-Free Toner

Rating: 6/10

I guess it worked (it’s been over a year since I’ve used this, though) and the smell was good, but I remember liking the Thayers better so I switched. Didn’t irritate or anything, nothing bad to say, but it didn’t leave an impression.

Serum

Currently using: The Ordinary’s Lactic Acid 10% + HA

Rating: 9/10

For my first real foray into serums, this has worked pretty well. I wanted to increase my skin turnover rate and bring my milia to the surface, and this works well, is under $10, and is gentle enough to use every night. I didn’t want to try anything too drastic since I hadn’t used serum before, and this one was great. Will keep using, and will likely try other products from The Ordinary in the future.

Sample: Kiehl’s Nightly Refining Micro-Peel Concentrate

Rating: ?

I got a small sample packet of this when I went to a Kiehl’s store for a free consultation, and it lasted about a week. I started to see results, but I ran out of the sample and went with The Ordinary since this little sucker is expensive. Seems like a great product, but not good on the budget. 

Sample: Kiehl’s Hydro-Plumping Re-texturizing Serum Concentrate

Rating: ?

Seems like a good product, and I liked it for the week I used it. No smell, smooth texture, all good. However, the price is steep, so I don’t think I’ll be buying this anytime soon. 

Spot Treatments

Currently using: Clinique Acne Solutions Clinical Clearing Gel

Rating: ?

I just bought this yesterday, so I’ll post more of a review after at least a week. First impressions: this is a spot treatment, and I don’t know who would use this all over their face like the box says you can do. It’s strong and a bit sticky (like superglue?) and you have to be careful not to touch your eyes or anything while you have some on your fingertips. It absorbs quickly, and while it’s definitely drying, you can put moisturizer over it just fine. 

Clindamycin Phosphate Topical Gel

Rating: N/A

I feel like I can’t “rate” this since it’s not OTC and I got it through a doctor’s prescription, but I loved this and if the doctor I switched to this past year hadn’t screwed up, I’d still be using it twice a day. Gentle, didn’t smell like anything, and kept my acne away pretty well. More of a preventative measure than something to use once you already have the acne.

Moisturizers

Currently using: Origins GinZing Energy-Boosting Gel Moisturizer

Rating: 8.5/10

I started using this a month ago, and I really like it, especially for a light morning moisturizer in the summer. It feels so smooth when you put it on, and the citrus smell is amazing. I like this one better than the Drunk Elephant one (below), and it’s half the price. I don’t think I’ll use this in the dry winter months, but it’s been great in warm temperatures and sunshine.

Trial: Drunk Elephant Protini Polypeptide Cream

Rating: ~6.5/10

For the price, I don’t understand the hype here. Yeah, it’s a nice thick creamy moisturizer, but it doesn’t smell fabulous and I don’t think it works better than other moisturizers that are under $40. However, my sister is in love with this stuff, so maybe it’s just me. 

Trial: Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion

Rating: ?

I picked this one up at Ulta yesterday, so I haven’t had a long enough time to test it. However, it gets rave reviews, and my first impression was that it went on smoothly and felt nice, but I’ll have more to say later.

Sample: Kiehl’s Skin Rescuer Moisturizer

Rating: ?

I liked this moisturizer a lot better than the other one I got as a free sample from Kiehl’s (below). No strong smell, applied smoothly (I’m saying this a lot, but there’s a reason), but I didn’t notice any “stress-minimizing”. 

Sample: Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Deep Moisture Balm

Rating: ?

Not for me. Didn’t go on my skin smoothly, I didn’t like the smell (vaguely oat-like? Or am I crazy?), didn’t feel great on my skin. I still had some left in the sample when I threw it out, it just isn’t for anyone with oily skin. Not sure why the girl at Kiehl’s gave me this, but whatever.

Garnier Skin Active Soothing 3-in-1 Face Moisturizer with Rosewater

Rating: 6.5/10

Not good in the summer. I might go back to it in the winter, but this probably just made the milia on the thin skin under my eyes worse when it was humid out. More for dry skin, and the fragrance was a bit strong. Also, I felt like you needed a lot of product to use on your whole face, since it didn’t glide on like some of the more gel-textured moisturizers I’ve tried. Not too bad for the drugstore, though.

Neutrogena Oil-Free Moisture Combination Skin

Rating: 7/10

I liked this, it definitely mattified my oily t-zone. The only reason I really stopped using it was because I wanted to try a moisturizer with SPF...

Neutrogena Moisturizer, SPF 15

Rating: 5/10

This didn’t work for me. The SPF made it more irritating if I got it close to my eyes or touched my eyes too soon after applying, and my nose in particular seemed really oily when I used this. Maybe only use this if you have normal-dry skin?

Other

Currently using: St. Ives Blackhead Clearing Green Tea Scrub

Rating: 7/10

I use this about 3 times a week at night, and I don’t find it too irritating like some people say the apricot or walnut scrub is. Pretty sure the beads in here are silicone, so it doesn’t tear up my face. I stopped using this for a few weeks, and when I picked it back up to try and get rid of an acne flare-up, it really helped. I definitely noticed that it was doing something when I went off it for a bit. Drugstore BHA (Salicylic Acid) that works for me.

Freeman Charcoal + Black Sugar Gel Mask and Scrub

Rating: 4/10

Are you a scrub? Are you a mask? Make up your mind. It doesn’t really work as either, with a weird thick jelly texture and huge scrub beads. Only used twice, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but even though this didn’t break me out or anything, it didn’t seem to do anything at all. Weird product.

GlamGlow Super-Clearing Mud Mask Treatment

Rating: 6.5/10

For the price and with all the ingredients including a blend of AHAs, I thought this would do more. It’s satisfying to watch the mask turn lighter gray as it dries on your face, but you’re only supposed to use it once a week, and I haven’t noticed results after a month. A fun mask to try, but I won’t be repurchasing since it’s too expensive for not enough of a result.

Burt’s Bees Conditioning Lip Scrub

Rating: 4/10

Chapstick would accomplish pretty much the same thing this does. It’s hard to scrub it into your lips, since the honey “beads” like to congeal into larger blobs, and it’s surprisingly expensive for a small little container at the drugstore. There have to be better lip scrubs out there, save your money.

Mario Badescu Facial Spray with Rosewater 

Rating: 7/10

A nice product, but I don’t get the hype or cult status. Good for a refreshing pick-me-up, but I don’t notice anything different when I don’t use it. Not really a setting spray, just extra hydration during the day if you’re into that. Good for wetting a beauty blender, though.

[phinnsyreads]

Item #: SCP-030

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-030 is to be held at Site-17 within a modified humanoid containment cell. Minor adaptations to accommodate its stature, such as an appropriately-scaled workspace and chair, are to be included. Lighting within the cell may be altered upon request of SCP-030 to a maximum of 2000 lumens via a simple dimmer switch. Should the need to render SCP-030 inert arise, staff may extinguish the lighting from the exterior switch and draw blackout curtains as necessary. Standard night-vision equipment is available for observation of SCP-030 in its inert state.

SCP-030 may request materials for personal research every 90 days. All previously requested materials are to be collected and destroyed prior to delivery of new materials. All materials are to be evaluated and screened by both research and security staff. SCP-030 is to be denied access to any modern scientific journals or texts, and fiction is to be restricted to works produced no later than 1623 CE to preserve the integrity of its innate knowledge.

Staff wishing to consult with SCP-030 in writing are to place a formal request (document #030-RS/B) with the supervising researcher on duty. All correspondence is to be retained. Staff wishing to consult with SCP-030 in person are to submit a formal request to site management (documents 030-RP/A and 17-030/A) at least 30 days prior to their preferred consultation date. All consultations are to be recorded and retained. Senior research staff may request SCP-030 be temporarily removed from its containment for a maximum of one hour to provide observational insight into non-restricted materials or events within Site-17. Under no circumstances is SCP-030 to leave the confines of Site-17. Requests must be presented in person to site management and security staff at least 30 days prior to their preferred observational release date. All observational release events are to be recorded and retained. SCP-030 has been equipped with a tracking device (inventory control code #030-17-1) so its location within Site-17 may be determined precisely at any time.

Description: SCP-030 appears as a hairless, genderless, grey-toned human 71 centimeters (28 inches) in height and weighing 12.70 kilograms (two British stone). Its solid blue eyes lack discernible irises or pupils, and resemble small cut sapphires. SCP-030 possesses an androgynous voice with a pronounced English accent not currently identifiable as specific to any modern region. It is able to converse, read and write in Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese as well as two (2) additional languages that have not yet been identified despite SCP-030's insistence that they should be "common knowledge." SCP-030 has also demonstrated knowledge of physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics and horticulture roughly equivalent to that of a 17th-century CE academic. In addition, SCP-030 has demonstrated knowledge on these topics along research lines that do not appear in the historical record. These alternative or entirely unknown approaches to research in the natural sciences are one source of SCP-030's utility in consultation.

SCP-030 remains active while a 15-lumen source of light or greater is within 1.5 meters (5 feet). In the absence of light, SCP-030 becomes inert, apparently losing consciousness and showing no outward signs of life. Within five to ten (5-10) seconds of being re-exposed to light, SCP-030 becomes active once more, appearing to come out of a light slumber no matter how long the period of inactivity has been. SCP-030 does not appear to require these periods of inactivity as a human would require sleep, and has expressed a desire to remain active as often as possible.

Biopsy analysis of SCP-030 remains inconclusive. While clays native to the English counties of Kent, Surrey, and Greater London make up the majority of its structure, traces of mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), lye, mercury, and human blood have been found in each sample taken. SCP-030 has expressed that a full exploratory surgery to determine its workings would potentially end its existence. Samples removed from SCP-030 do not regenerate, and sampling is currently discontinued to preserve its integrity. Although SCP-030 can be damaged, it does not appear to feel pain, and will simply re-mold any portion of its anatomy that experiences deformation. Notably, SCP-030 cannot be molded directly by human hands, though any number of tools may be used to alter its surface. SCP-030 does not respirate, requires no sustenance, and produces no waste, although it does infrequently request a bath.

SCP-030 refers to itself as "Ariel" and regularly requests that staff do the same. Questions regarding how SCP-030 was created and by whom are routinely answered with the seemingly rote statement: "I have been asked to forget that bit of information. Terribly sorry." SCP-030 delivers this response in the same tone and cadence each time any question regarding its origins or creator are presented. Given its composition and location of origin, a link to the Alchemists of Alagadda is suspected.

SCP-030 was discovered 6/12/████ during a mandatory archaeological survey within London's Mortlake District pending construction of a car park. It was buried approximately 2.7 meters (9 feet) below street level, contained in a small stone sarcophagus. The sarcophagus bore no markings and was assumed to be that of a deceased infant as additional graves were discovered in the survey area. The sarcophagus lid was shattered during the excavation, exposing SCP-030 to daylight. Upon being struck by the sun's rays, SCP-030 roused from its inert state to one of mild activity within a few seconds, stating, "Good afternoon" to the assembled construction team. A member of the Foundation's Greater London recon force was summoned within hours and took the specimen into custody without resistance. The limited number of witnesses were given amnestics and released.

Addendum: Document 030-C: Security Logs for SCP-030

9/14/████: Tracking system installed for SCP-030.

12/21/████: SCP-030 reports malfunction of its own tracking system. Repairs completed within six (6) hours. SCP-030 offers to assist, but is refused for security purposes.

3/13/████: SCP-030 completes 18-week seminar on Unknown Language Alpha (known as "Zephyr"), five (5) staff researchers considered fluent. Lexicography transmitted to O5-█.

7/2/████: While in consultation, Researcher ██████████ inadvertently makes several remarks regarding photovoltaic technology. Consultation ended before the researcher can substantively elaborate.

8/12/████: SCP-030 requests a supply of Magnesium and indicates it intends to ignite samples to study the light produced. Request denied by researchers.

11/14/████: Incident 030-1: Using only what appears to be standard potting soil, ginger (Zingiber officinale), a 72-gram sample of rutilated quartz, and a 23 cm length of coiled copper wire, SCP-030 produces a device capable of emitting notable levels of directed ultraviolet light through unknown means. Device is confiscated. Effects not currently replicable without direct intervention from SCP-030. Researchers currently in consultation to determine if this line of SCP-030's research will be permitted to continue. It is speculated SCP-030 may be working towards an alternative and possibly anomalous manifestation of the photoelectric effect after receiving only minimal information regarding its existence. All research by SCP-030 suspended and materials removed pending review.

[ofblasters]

                    motivated by curiosity, boredom, perhaps even malice, light fingers tripped through her files, experiment logs, even over the physical equipment itself, wrecking small amounts of havoc wherever they touched.   only hers.   lieutenant kuroon had no suspects; she knew exactly who to seize as the culprit.

                    but she could not, not actually.   for it was one of the knights of ren, one with a penchant for interfering in the lives of those he took a far too thorough interest in.   recording devices, inconveniences, taunting words and actions all were the norm for having caught his attention.

                    like the rest, there was little recourse for the scientist, but unlike most, she refused to rise to his pathetic plays to garner her anger or even fear.   when he stationed himself within her lab, she would answer politely whatever inquiries she could, and flat out ignored anything else.   silently, she cleaned up whatever he turned on end, stared blankly at his mockery, gave the ren nothing.

                    however, that attitude most certainly led to his escalation, but she would not back down.   he required a lesson.

                     it’d been simple to collect a few fibers from his robes, analyzing the dye and other chemical content within each type.   far harder proved obtaining a paint sample from the white of his mask, but that too passed without comment.   mirax merely took advantage of his antics, a quartz embedded tool far too easy to ever so slightly scratch across his mask as she ‘startled’ when it appeared suddenly centimeters from her face.  again.

                    compounding a dye - more a bleach - which would instantly react with only his uniform upon contact, spreading across its surface for maximum effectiveness, was a short project.   only slightly longer was setting the trap within the shelved above her computer console, programming the device to spray only once both physical and visual confirmation of his interference could be made.

     ‘ I'd say this is a new low. ’ / mira    »    @stalkvr​

                    the results stood before her in all their sodden bright chartreuse glory, as pathetic and comical a sight as a knight of ren had ever been.   but she refused to laugh, to even show the slightest bit of glee over how truly effective it had been.   folding her hands at the base of her spine, she gave him a sharp shake of her head.      ❝  again, sir, i don’t take kindly to my work being interfered with.  ❞     stepping closer, she schooled her features to only reflect the disappointment she wished to convey.     ❝  you can record me, interact with me in any way you see fit, but i will not tolerate you threatening my life’s work as some childish way to get my attention.  ❞     for that was all that it was, another reflection of the lack of character most of his kind held.

                    stepping up to one of the many analysis equipment in the lab, she placed a protective palm atop it.     ❝  you might have leeway with kylo ren; i do not with my superiors.  ❞     that had terrified her from the first, the pure sense of utter helplessness to protect either herself or all the edge of normalcy she struggled so long to obtain.   he could ruin it all so easily, or worse.

                   ❝  if you do not desist, i will escalate this,  ❞   a quick throw of her hand indicated his thoroughly ruined robes and mask, the black of the former and the white of the latter hopelessly dyed a near florescent yellow-green.     this was something she could most certainly get away with, especially as she could claim a different meaning for her words.     ❝  i’m not threatening you with physical harm, but i have no qualms over not warning you over more minor things and thus, ruining your things if you continue to do so to mine.  ❞

                    there was nothing to warn over.   the steely glint within her eyes ensured her meaning was crystal: this had been entirely purposeful, orchestrated specifically for his humiliation.

[codylabs]

Chapter 15: Tale of Two Bots

-date: 13/20/2094-46’\

Hello.

My name is Ɖg@}Nᶌ.

As one of the survivors of the crash of colonial vessel 46.18’\, I am starting this journal to document our experiences on this planet. In the event that we are rescued, or survive long enough to reestablish contact, this log will serve as a record on our experiences. If you recover this and we’re not here to give it to you… Then I guess we’ve failed.

And this is our story.

Well.

As I said, the colonial vessel has crashed. Near as I can tell, we were traveling near-horizontally at an altitude of several kilometers, when some type of interference or malfunction disabled the vehicles artificial-gravity engines. We hit the ground before control could be regained. The impact was directly into solid rock, at a velocity in excess of 400 meters per second. The ship carved a large chunk out of a mountainside, and half-buried itself in its own artificial valley. The impact was sufficient to free the majority of the nuclear fuel from containment, disable the primary propulsion system, and kill the entire pilot and command crew. To the best of my knowledge, I, and 52 other passengers, are the last survivors of the collision.

We have escaped the confines of the ship, and have used salvaged tarps and materials to erect a small camp on the hill above it.

More of us are injured than not. Many terminally so. Since the vessel’s power supply has largely gone into meltdown, all remaining power has been automatically diverted toward containing the damage. Periphery systems, including the auto-medics, have gone offline. I’m no surgeon, but the others are even less so.

They expect me to repair the wounded.

I’ll see what I can do.

-date: 13/21/2094-46’\

My medical tools were designed for my species specifically. They are poorly suited for the others, who are primarily carbon-based. Their bodies are squishy, ever-shifting, mostly liquid. I don’t know how to handle it. Many of the terminally injured have died following my surgery. I was able to fix a few, but… But the others are angry with me. They think I could have done more for the dying. Survivor count now 41. The names of the living are included here for posterity:

Ɖg@}Nᶌ

Klk76y

Zlfo]n

ƉN::ᶌ

&4r(/_^`;~y

iA**5{y

-@N^^>

C0gsJRY

V;M9OZ

4EtR%ibP

WA~/\hi(B

~u81FF:’

S~5VH/’QepKl

3v49EVv

iZxFpLo

wX~~E2VY

IeR&Usp

xE][fo

I6gyvPh

7ncZ9Itx

bC*$l9DSEmm

J86O/\oBZg

v89Z;vHFiv

4g0ORH

Xp;DWstNBYi

0aF2I(zLxyn7k

SGff\mBOfic8

0Xzn

TSpqQfjFn

famESw

W8{A1EdwQ

j0wX

KlcfG;B0lw0

4hArMXj4

qKhcn0U

SXz4;

PxNeLwi

w4A;mVIV5

tVkqZme

oy.}szN;XJCc

og;hgnC5j8Ca…

I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.

-date: 13/22/2094-46’\

Only one other survivor belongs to my same species. We were bound for the same colony, her and I, but now everybody we knew is gone. I’m glad I have somebody to speak to though, especially after the failed surgeries. Her name is ƉN::ᶌ, and she is kind to me. Seeing as how it looks like we’re here for the long haul, I wonder if perhaps we could begin the colony here, with only us two.

No, I can’t think that. It’s indecent.

She’s looking at me.

I am pretending to type something in.

-date: 13/28/2094-46’\

Klk76y has gotten one of the computers online, and has retrieved data from the crash. Apparently, we are on body 3.0 of this system, on one of the northern continents. It’s hellish here. There’s air, it’s hot, the gravity is high, the surface is soaked in unhealthy chemicals like water, and infested by native (and occasionally hostile) carbon-based life. Even its moon, 3.1, would have been better than this. We can survive, but it isn’t well-suited. Natural terraforming processes won’t work.

I just wish we would have crashed on 4.0. It would have been nearly perfect for our needs.

The only metal ƉN::ᶌ and I have to eat is that from the ship’s hull. Livestock and crops could easily survive on this diet, but they would rip the whole craft apart in the process. Since we’d rather leave it salvageable (by the slim hope that we could repair it someday), we’ll keep the farming systems in stasis for now.

I hope our colonial supplies are still intact. They should be tougher than the other cargo, but I don’t know.

Titanium-steel alloy plating is sure getting bland though. Hard to chew. Hard in general.

I want some fruit.

-date: 13/22/2094-46’\

Everything has calmed down now, as much as it can. The fires from the crash have died out. We’ve buried as many of the dead as we can find. The other survivors are settling into the camp, and they’ve gathered some meager supplies, enough to last the winter. ƉN::ᶌ and I can survive directly off the ship’s power, so we should be fine indefinitely. Klk76y has also taken charge as a sort of leader, and everybody seems as content as they can be.

I suppose that now is a good a time as any to give my own personal story.

It all started long ago, and far away.

It was cold and hard and small, one of many solitary, airless moon of a bloated gas giant, bathed in the light of an old, red star. To look at it, you might mistake it for a larger asteroid, or one of the many unnotable, dusty rocks that inhabit the empty voids of space.

But this rock wasn’t any rock. This was a living place, filled with rugged natural beauty. Spreading seas of liquid sand, mountains of the dust of ancient timbers, and the great, towering forests of mighty trees. Fields abounding in fruits and grains, the woods crawling with wild animals, the void alive with the radio singing of the bugs and the birds, the sun shining brightly on the leaves. And a humble people toiling with bliss beneath the stars, picking and eating their food, building their houses and roads, constructing and raising their children. It was a place where families could be happy. A place of peace.

This was my beloved home.

But I never once enjoyed it.

Why didn’t I? It was a paradise. I could have grown old and happy there. I could have been rich and prosperous. I could have had everything that people strive for… Everything but meaning.

Mind you, I wasn’t alone. There were many of my peers who considered it an utterly boring, menial existence, where our young minds had nowhere to explore, where knowledge and learning was scarce, and where our toil and daily labor did not satisfy our hunger for adventure. We were children then, restlessly longing for something more. I wish now I hadn’t been among them… But I was.

Two cycles ago, when I had just finished being a boy, but didn’t yet know what ‘man’ was, another race came to our world. They arrived in an enormous ship from some other dimension, on a mission (so they said) to explore and archive the wonders of the universe, to seek out new and deviant life, to see, hear, touch and explore that which nobody had ever experienced before, and to set up colonies among the far reaches of space. They visited us for this same reason, collecting samples from our planet, examining and studying us. (The reason for their fascination, I found out later, was our metallic bodies and mechanical makeup. Apparently, it’s something of a novelty to these squishy carbon-based people.)

Regardless, I’m sure you can understand my thoughts when they revealed this mission of theirs. How glamorous! How grand! How adventurous! How meaningful! I dreamed to accompany them, to whatever fate lay beyond the horizons of my own mind. Once, I even had the chance to speak directly withCaptain &:V->GN[], commander of the alien vessel.

“I wish I could accompany you!” I had told him. “I wish I could count myself among the colonists on your ship.”

“It’s certainly a hard life.” He had tempted me, with a twinkle in his eye. “Long years aboard a closed metal ship, and at the end of your journey, an unknown fate… It could be dangerous, it could be strange, it could require things from you that you don’t know you had. Even WE don’t know what we’ll find in that great unknown…”

He was telling me precisely the type of tale I wanted to hear, and naturally I fell for it. “I would be willing!” I told him. “And I have friends as well! We would all love to leave our world, and travel with you to the ends of the universe! We would follow you!”

He stroked his chin, and nodded. “We have set down several colonies already…” He said, as if it were my idea the entire time. “Perhaps there would be room among the organic cargo sectors for your… Particular breed of crops and livestock…”

“I hope so!” I said, and I meant it.

The next day, he announced to our people that they would be taking on passengers and cargo, whatever passengers could fit in sector 22, and whatever farming supplies we could fit in stasis in sector 43. They would allow our people to found a colony on a world of our choosing, or even, if we wished, they would allow us to return with them to their home dimension.

It goes without saying that I, along with many of my friends, signed up eagerly.

My father silently watched me as I entered the shuttle, and he had a sorrowful look on his face which I will never remember, because I never once looked back.

And so did I venture forth, to seek my fortune among the stars.

It was a lie.

No sooner had we left the system, but the crew confined us to quarters, and began to treat us harshly. They told us they were cracking down on troublemakers, and that this was just a necessary caution. But among themselves, they were communicating using their suits’ radios. My people could hear such signals plainly, and I learned to understand them.

I learned that our people were not to be set down on a colony of our choosing. Rather, we were all to be brought back to the aliens’ dimension, to be treated as scientific samples, or even used for their own purposes.

They began to experiment on us.

It was a nightmare.

I would hear the communications as they would take our people, one at a time, from the passenger areas. Always young females. Whenever the rest of us moved to intervene, the crew would summon security drones to threaten us, then say it was for our own protection.

One day we heard their purpose… Well, I feel dirty even describing it.

The females of our species naturally have reproductive systems in their abdomen areas. Normally, these organs serve only to manufacture and assemble the bodies of children. The organs are perfectly designed for the task, and they are able to do so reliably and repeatedly. Since the living bodies of children are inherently complex, the organs must be highly versatile.

The aliens saw this.

So the science team, under the direction of Captain &:V->GN[], were downloading foreign code into the women’s organs, to try and make them manufacture artificial systems: Tools. Weapons. Drones. Storage crates. Spare parts. They were trying to turn our people into living factories. This was just a proof of concept, before they returned to their home dimension and refined the idea into an industrial process.

The experiments were invasive and painful, and the women were not willing.

I began to discuss these matters in hushed tones with the other colonists, of both my own species and others. We all agreed that something needed to be done.

So one night, all at once, we staged a mutiny. We sawed through the doors of our rooms, gathered improvised tools and weapons, rendezvoused with the organic passengers, and aimed ourselves for the bridge.

It didn’t work.

They put us under guard from that point on, reinforced the doors, equipped us with stun collars, and pumped all the air out of our rooms to keep us from audio communication with the other passengers. They also encrypted their radio signals, so we could no longer listen in to them.

A cycle passed quietly and despairingly. An older friend of mine likened it to prison.

But then, days ago, it happened.

For reasons none of us know, Colonial Vessel 46.18’\ crashed.

Now here we are. The greatest adventure of my life, more excitement and strange new weirdness than I ever could have hoped or dreamed: aliens, lies, betrayal, mutiny, heroism, bravery, fierce enemies on all sides and a grave mission to follow… This is the adventure of a lifetime.

And I would trade it all away in an instant. What I wouldn’t give to be back home. My quiet, peaceful, meaningless home…

For there is no meaning to be found out here either. We’ve crossed galaxies by now, gone where none have gone, and we are no closer to something higher than when we started out. There is no height to be climbed to reach enlightenment. There is no lesson or sense or justice to bring to our predicament. Life is cruel and short, and our lives are either empty or painful. Some, like mine, are both.

So that is how I, Ɖg@}Nᶌ, got to where I am now.

ƉN::ᶌ says I’m being pessimistic. She says there is a meaning, and that God has a purpose and plan for our lives, even through our pain and misfortune, even though we do not see it.

I hope she’s right.

I prayed for the first time today.

-date: 13/30/2094-46’\

Why are we on this planet at all? Why did the command crew stop here? Did they have to land to make repairs? Did we have to restock supplies? Was there another mutiny we didn’t hear about?

I, for one, suspected the command crew was goaded into it by the science team. They noticed something interesting on the flyby, and convinced the higher-ups of the need to stop and release probes.

It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. We’ve had several unscheduled stops over the course of this trip. Always the science team wanting to collect samples or specimens, or examine some readings. Always something new and interesting to look at.

But why here? What makes this valley so special? What drew their curiosity? And what about this valley caused our crash? We may never know; all the sensors are down, many of the computer logs were damaged, and many of the remaining mission files are simply classified to us passengers.

I suppose I’m just complaining. I shouldn’t complain. What’s done is done, and now all we can do is pick up the pieces and make the most of what we have left.

Perhaps it’s just God’s will.

-date: 15/2/2094-46’\

We sent 5 men deeper into the wreck to see what they could salvage. It’s been 6 days now, and they haven’t come back out. I wonder what has happened. The automated security system is coded for all the colonists’ identities, so even if it reactivated somehow, none of them should have anything to fear… I wonder if perhaps some of the more dangerous scientific specimens have been released from containment.

The rest of the survivors are wanting me and ƉN::ᶌ to venture in after them, since our metal bodies make us tougher than the others.

She is afraid, so I will go in alone. I will be their hero. I will be her hero.

-date: 15/3/2094-46’\

I’m back. I found nothing. No signs of a struggle, no weapon damage.

But no bodies either.

Perhaps they got lost down there. I can see why they would; the crash mutilated the vessel into a veritable labyrinth of twisted metal. We can only wait, and hope that that they survive, and hope still that they can find their way back out.

While I was down there, I did stumble across the scientific sample area. It was torn wide open. Everything in the stasis chambers are dead.

But a few of the chambers are open.

And all the chambers that are open are empty.

Specimens must have escaped. Could one have killed and eaten the men we sent inside? I don’t know what manner of subjects they’d stored in the now-empty chambers, but judging by the looks of some of the others… Let’s just say I’m glad most of them are dead. Out of all the nasty things they’ve collected on their journey, I think that living robots are the most harmless of the bunch.

I’m back on the surface now, and gave my report to the other survivors. It frightened them. They don’t want to explore the wreck any deeper than necessary. I understand that.

ƉN::ᶌ is beating herself up for letting me go alone. She swears that whatever happens next, she will be there for me. I’m glad for the promise.

As it stands, Survivor count now 36.

-date: 15/16/2094-46’\

Survivor count now 28.

We don’t know what’s happening. People go missing. Randomly. Unforeseeably. Without trace. As if they decided to just walk away in those moments when nobody’s watching.

After the last incident, Zlfo]n instructed us to watch closely for anyone behaving strangely. He encouraged us to keep up conversation frequently. I don’t know what he suspects, (does he think we’re going mad one by one? Does he know something we don’t?) but I hope he’s on to something.

I modified a few power tools into melee weapons, so that ƉN::ᶌ and I can defend ourselves if the need arises. When I offered her a cutting drill, she said she would prefer to use her teeth, since they’re sharper and easier to carry around anyway.

It’s nice to have somebody to laugh with, even in times like this.

But seriously though, she’s literally going to use her teeth. This girl is crazy!

I kind of… Never mind.

-date: 15/18/2094-46’\

Somebody struck up conversation today with Klk76y. He mumbled his way through a brief exchange, but in the process, he gave something away: he didn’t possess even the most basic knowledge of Klk76y’s life or job. It quickly became apparent that he wasn’t Klk76y at all, but rather something else, looking exactly like him, bluffing his way through a conversation. Zlfo]n, ƉN::ᶌ, and myself attempted to confront him, but he attacked with an incredible physical strength, and escaped into the forest. Zlfo]n suffered several broken bones during the fight, and will not last long. Meanwhile Klk76y, the only leader we had, is gone like the others.

Also, at some point, ƉN::ᶌ managed to clip the enemy with her teeth. This drew green blood, whereas the real Klk76y would have had yellow-white blood.

Something is out there.

Something that’s changing.

It takes us one by one, probably eats us, and impersonates us to learn more before eating again.

Survivor count now 27. Soon to be 26, as there’s not much I can do for Zlfo]n.

-date: 15/19/2094-46’\

Zlfo]n pulled me close today, and told me about the shapeshifter. He described everything he knew of its abilities, its methods, its mannerisms, and its intelligence. He told me where the science team found it, what it eats, where it lives, what it wants.

(Future reader, I have transcribed his analysis, and saved it as a separate file. This is my journal, after all, and not a tactics guide. Suffice to say that this shifter is quite a character herself, and I don’t like it one bit being on the receiving end of her cunning.)

I asked Zlfo]n how he knew so much about the creature. He sighed and he told me:

Zlfo]n was on the science team.

So I took him outside the camp, and I left him to die. By now he will have perished from his injuries in the silent forest, without burial, without dignity, alone except for the memories of the women he violated. Alone, save for his conscience. I hope he has one, so that he suffered. And I hope the shifter finds him, and that she realizes we are not her enemies.

…Did I do wrong, to let Zlfo]n die like that?

I don’t think I did.

Did he deserve better?

I don’t think he did.

Did ƉN::ᶌ approve?

I think she did.

I never asked her if she’d been a part of the onboard experiments. I pray she didn’t have to suffer it, because I don’t know what I could do for her damage. I’m not that type of doctor. Heck, I’m not any type of doctor! What am I supposed to do for a damaged factory, huh? Look at it? I’m a male. Even that’s not proper.

All I can do for her is to be her friend, and love and respect and care for her regardless of anything else. And I really do love her… I’ve been realizing that more and more.

-date: 15/27/2094-46’\

Survivor count now 23.

The other survivors can’t stand it anymore. They need to get away from the wreck. Whatever the shifter wants, it is hostile. And it is near. And since we haven’t the vaguest inkling of how to face it, we need to flee.

They others all agreed to pick up and head North, as far from the crash site as possible. They are carbon-based, and can therefore subsist on native food. They collected all the weapons and tools they could find, and started off. They should be safe from the enemy… Or at least see it coming… I think they’ll be alright. I hope they’ll be alright.

Either way, ƉN::ᶌ and I need to make other plans. We are not carbon based, and therefore need to grow our own crops if we are to survive. We’ll need a farm. We picked out a pretty good spot for it to the South-East, but this planet doesn’t have a lot of dense deposits near the surface, so our crops won’t grow.

We’ll need to improvise some type of soil.

The hull of the spacecraft, combined with the minerals in the native rock, should supply our farm with all the biological sustenance it needs. It would make excellent soil. But we don’t want to stay in the craft’s immediate vicinity, so we need to somehow cut loose a massive section of the hull and bring it all of 20 kilometers to the farm.

How do we do that?

It was her idea to jury-rig the ship’s last remaining artificial-gravity nacelle. Normally, these nacelles create a gravitational dipole large enough to put the entire ship into free-fall in any direction. One nacelle may not be able to do something so grand on its own, but it still possesses a large amount of power. ƉN::ᶌ thinks it should be a simple matter to shrink this dipole and concentrate it, if only we could get to the engine room. This would allow us to ‘jackhammer’ a section of the hull loose. A slightly larger dipole will then be able to carry the disconnected section 20 kilometers through the air, and set it down at the farm. I just hope the craft has enough power left to run this stunt.

To operate the nacelle, we need to get down to the engine room and do it manually. This means risking whatever tricks and tactics the mimic has in store, but we would prefer to risk it immediately, rather than stay above ground and wait for her… Rather take her on our terms: immediately and directly.

We’re going inside tomorrow.

If we never come back out… Let it be known that ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ were here.

-date: 15/30/2094-46’\

It has been 3 days since my last entry, but we are now back. We successfully completed the mission.

But first, a word on what we found down there.

Let’s just say that at this point, the ship would need half again its weight in glue. Its main propulsion system, (everything except the one intact nacelle), is completely offline. 7 of the 8 main reactors have also gone into meltdown, and the computer automatically locked down the last one for safety. The vessel’s long-range communication systems and tracking beacon were in its lower areas, and were therefore destroyed when it contacted the ground. There is no chance of signaling home, or anywhere.

However, there were a few intact things. The perpetual-motive emergency power generators were left online somehow, and should stay remain so indefinitely, barring mechanical breakdown. These were the only thing running the ship until we got down there.

Also, we found we weren’t the only survivors. There were more, some even among the command crew, who had survived the crash but stayed underground. They were barricaded in the ship’s mid levels, and just stayed down there.

But they aren’t alive anymore.

Apparently, the mimic got to them too. Some of their survivors had taken to drawing graffiti on the walls since the computers were down. Most of it was just innocent nonsense, but then there was some stuff like “GweeV7w isn’t what he seems!” and “That’s not the real u*/~h!” and “Specimen has escaped is changing forms.”

And everybody was dead.

Eaten.

The mimic is smart. Smart enough to kill them all without putting itself in danger. Smart enough to use fear like a weapon, and fill her enemies with it. Smart enough to stay in shadows.

Smart enough to learn to hack computers.

The mimic has reactivated the security system, and made several changes to their programming. Firstly, she wiped the drones’ entries for recognized individuals, so that they now recognize everyone, every last man, woman, child and animal, as unidentified intruders. Secondly, she reprogrammed their tactical assessment system, so that they now evaluate threats based on chemical signs of aggression and fear. If any carbon-based lifeform shows fear in a drone’s vicinity, it is programmed to contain or destroy them.

Since the shifter was terrorizing everyone else while remaining calm herself, it worked perfectly: the drones would leave her alone and go straight for any of the other cowering survivors.

As for us metallic life forms, well… The mimic is smart, as I said. She knew we didn’t have a sense of smell, so she rigged a booby trap that sprayed us with hormones. We didn’t even notice, until every drone in the ship started to attack.

That was a dicey couple hours. Those drones are learning and self-adapting, and can sprout pretty much any weapon in the database. We managed to beat them, barely, by modifying one of the perpetual-motive generators into an electromagnetic pulse emitter. We almost killed ourselves with it too, but it took out most of the drones. Enough so we could slip away.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been more scared in my life than when I was down there… But… I think I might have been having fun too. Crazy how that works. It probably just depends who you have by your side in the thick of things, doesn’t it? And while we were fighting down in those dark depths, I had ƉN::ᶌ. And that made it all right.

Anyway, we made it to the engine room, and ƉN::ᶌ managed to bypass a security lock and reactivate reactor 5. From there, she was able to reprogram the art-grav nacelle, and use the immense gravity field to rip apart the hull.

We tore off half of the ship’s upper hull, along with the entirety of sector 43 (sector 43 being the cargo area where all the samples, livestock and crops from our planet were stored.) The gravity field gathered all this wreckage together, forming an enormous ‘fistfull’ of twisted metal and cargo. ƉN::ᶌ then used the gravity beam to guide this mass through the air to the farmland we designated, and spread it out there. The entire process must have been rather eerie to watch, I imagine.

There was only one problem now: if we could make use of those gravity fields, chances are the mimic could too. If she set the field to a high strength and low size, she could use it to physically crush our entire farm, with us inside.

With that kind of power, the mimic could kill anybody she wanted. And anywhere.

So, we removed the power control coupling from the last reactor, and destroyed all the spares. The coupling is small. Small enough to take with us, and keep hidden forever. So that’s what we’ll do.

We made back above ground without much trouble.

Now, everything seems in order. The livestock and seeds will be waiting for us in sector 43’s wreckage, ready to be unpacked, unfrozen, and organized into a farm. A colony. First thing tomorrow morning, we’re off to begin our new life.

-date: 3/14/2096-46’\

Two local years since my last entry.

Farm is going great. Got some trees planted, and some crops. The ecosystem is starting up, and the drilling worms have started breaking down the spacecraft hull. The cats are working as guards, which should be enough to scare away the mimic if she finds us here. I tampered with the cats’ genetics as well, to make them instinctively react defensively toward any unrecognized large organic. Meaning whatever form the mimic takes, the cats will turn on it. I’m just glad this planet doesn’t have intelligent inhabitants; that could make for a rather messy misunderstanding.

I also found an old runabout shuttle stashed in the wreckage. We turned it right-side-up, half-buried it in the ground, and are now using it as a house. Its glass hull should keep it from decay, and its engines still have enough power to run heat, lighting, and farm equipment.

The place is finally starting to feel like home. The trees are supplying power now, so we don’t have to ration anymore. And they’re beginning to bear the first fruit. We haven’t had actual food in so long, and it’s delicious.

And… Well, there’s one other thing. I don’t really know who else to tell, so I guess I’ll tell this journal.

Anyway…

I finally asked ƉN::ᶌ if she would be my wife. And she said yes. I’m not really sure what I expected her to say, since we’re the only two here… But it was the WAY she said it; it made me believe that she would have chosen me out of a crowd. Like I would have been her first choice out of all the men on all the worlds. She said yes… And I’m a married man now! I’m really happy. I really love her. I’m really glad to be alive.

That probably sounded super corny, huh?

-date: 8/9/2098-46’\

Three local years since my last entry.

We lost contact with the other survivors. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe it was local wildlife or sickness, maybe it was the mimic again, maybe something else. Anyway, let it be known that this farm contains, to my knowledge, the last 3 survivors of the crash.

3 survivors?

That’s what I said.

Because ƉN::ᶌ is pregnant.

I’m gonna be a dad.

Speaking of dad…

If this recording somehow gets to you, mom and dad… If the fabeled Time Giants ever find this log in the far future, and decide to do a favor for my present, and bring it back to you… If you’re reading this now in the comfort of your own home after I’ve left…

I want you to know that I’ve finally found that life I always dreamed of. There’s a little bit of adventure here and there, sure. (This planet seems to harbor some very improbable life. We’re always finding ourselves in some weird situation or another.) But most of all, I’ve found home. I’ve found love. I’ve found peace. And I think… With the help of God, I’ve found a bit of meaning. Here, in a filthy, watery world at the end of the universe. Here, in the valley carved by the crash of colonial vessel 46.18’/. Here, where nobody else has ever been, is where I’ve decided to stay. And here, I am happy. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

-date: 16/13/2098-46’\

There was a fault in ƉN::ᶌ’s manufacturing system. The child was damaged during final assembly, and… I’m not sure what happened. There was a problem with the release, and something snapped. There were sparks, and leaking oil.

And she died.

Her and the baby.

I made glass coffins so they wouldn’t decay. And I buried them behind the house.

I guess that’s it then, huh?

So much for our life. So much for our colony, and our future, and our children, and our love… So much for all that. Whoever’s reading this, I’d dreamed that one day we would have healthy, happy descendants who’d be able to hand this to you. And they’d say ‘Take this. This is their legacy…’

But what good are dreams?

Dreams are for young men… And today I feel old.

Anyway… If you’re reading this journal, then… Then I guess I’m long dead. The barn and the tractor and the windmill will have been eaten all away by now… Only the glass shuttle-house thing will remain; that and the coffins… Give it long enough, and the farm will probably grow all over the place… The drilling worms and trees will have digested the last of the hull wreckage we drug out here… That will make for the only soil on all of 3.0 that can support metal life, so the little forest will have reached a maximum size and stopped growing. Due to the atmosphere, the crops can’t spread seeds far enough to fertilize on the main wreck, and even the cats don’t explore very far. So. By now all the livestock will be all feral, all the trees will be huge… It will all be totally natural. Just like God intended.

It’ll be a little tiny drop of home, right in the middle of all this carbon slime. A tiny drop of home…

And that’ll be our legacy.

I’m locking the house up now, and I’m leaving.

I’m going back to the crash site. I go to find our last and greatest enemy, the mimic, and kill her. I go to ensure the safety of anybody who may come to this planet after us. I go in the name of peace. One final battle. One final adventure.

This is Ɖg@}Nᶌ, last survivor of the crash of Colonial Vessel 46.18’\, furthest explorer of a gentle people, last civilized lifeform on this planet, farmer and doctor and husband and father, signing out for the final time. Whoever finds this… I hope God’s plan for you is gentle. Gentler than it was for me.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Have a nice life.

[droneseco]

Insta360 Go 2 Review: If You Buy One Camera in 2021, It Should Be This One

Insta360 Go 2

9.50 / 10

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The sheer ease of use, tiny format, and clever selection of mounting methods make the Insta360 Go 2 an essential purchase.

Specifications

Brand: Insta360

Sensor Size: 1/2.3-inch

Video Resolution: 1440p (2560 x 1440) @ 50fps

Photo Resolution: 1440p (2560 x 1440)

Battery: 30 minute continuous (2+ hours in case)

Connection: USB-C, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

Size: 2.08 x 0.93 x 0.81in (52.9 x 23.6 x 20.7mm)

Weight: 0.93 oz (26.5g)

Water Resistance: Waterproof to 13ft (4m)

Lens: 170-degree ultra-wide-angle with lens guard

Pros

Plenty of mounting options

Easy one-button operation

Charging case doubles (triples?) as a remote control, mini tripod, and selfie-stick mount

Smooth stabilization

Cons

Poor low-light performance

Buy This Product

Insta360 Go 2 other

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The first Insta360 Go camera was both a departure from the standard line-up for Insta360 (the clue is in the name: they generally make 360 cameras), and utterly revolutionary. It was a tiny little camera you could clip anywhere, attach to a neck-worn pendant, and shoot short videos with a single button tap. It was my favorite camera—the one I took to every family event and day out. But I think it's fair to say it was a bit of a ... toy camera. The video quality was good enough to capture family moments for Instagram stories or your group chat with nana—but not a sniff on an actual action camera, and no good for professional uses.

The Insta360 Go 2 maintains that same simple to use, tiny package format, whacks up the quality of footage, and adds a ton of new features. The isn't just a little resolution bump to an already fantastic device: it's a whole new device. This could be your new "Go2" camera for every occasion. So if you buy one camera in 2021, make it the Insta360 Go 2.

Insta360 Go 2 Design

Note: I received a prerelease model for testing, which has a matt white coating. The final production model is glossy white. Not a huge difference, but please bear it in mind when you look at the photos. Functionality is otherwise identical.

Measuring 2.08 x 0.93 x 0.81 inches and weighing a mere 0.93 ounces, the Go 2 is no more than the size or weight of a thumb, equipped with 32GB of storage and enough battery power for 30 minutes of continuous shooting.

The entire lower half of the Go 2 is a button, with a one-click operation to shoot short clips, then automatically turn itself off again. The wide-angle lens also now features a removable lens guard. One is fitted already, but you can purchase extras in the event of damage. The Go 2 is waterproof to 13ft/4m (but the charging case isn't!)

The charging case is much as you'd expect, similar to a wireless earbuds case, and equally pocket-sized at 2.24 ounces.

One of the defining aspects of the Go 2 is the sheer versatility of how to mount it. Included in the package is a number of magnetic mounting accessories.

Pendant. Designed to be worn underneath your shirt, the Go 2 then snaps onto the front. The magnetic force is secure enough, but you may still find yourself worrying that someone's flailing arms will knock it to the ground.

Pivot stand and sticky mount. Remove from the base and peel the cover off the sticky tape to secure this mount to any clean, flat surface, like glass. Be sure to replace the film cover when not in use, and slot it back into the base. The base is also indented, so you can pivot it closed with the camera still secure, and protect the lens.

Easy clip. This is great for attaching to a jacket, or a baseball cap, for accurate point of view shots. It ended up being my favorite mounting method, if only for the additional peace of mind compared to the pendant.

Lastly, there's the charging case. That too is an additional mounting point, more on that in a moment.

If all that wasn't enough, you'll find a Mount Adapter bundle sold separately, for use with existing action cam / GoPro mount accessories. I received one of these for testing, which allowed me to securely attach the Go 2 to a dog harness.

This isn't an Insta360 branded dog harness I should add (though it does also have one for sale), it's just something I've been using to test action cams for years. But it's great to know that for use as a professional action camera, you don't need a new mount system, and it'll work with everything you already own.

The Multi-Function Charging Case

The case that came with the original Insta360 Go was no more than a simple battery and USB port adaptor, with a clear plastic lid to protect the camera.

For the Insta360 Go 2, the case has transformed into a mini-tripod, selfie-stick adaptor, and remote control, all in a much more secure clamshell design.

Firstly, its main use is as a charging case. While the Insta360 Go 2 main unit can handle about 30 minutes of continuous shooting by itself, the case adds another two and a half hours to that. A USB-C port on the base allows this, in turn, to be recharged, or can be used to connect to a computer for transferring files. Gone from the original design is the built-in Lighting plug; all communications (with an iPhone anyway) are now done over Wi-Fi.

Second, with two buttons and an LCD screen, the case becomes a remote control. Place the Go 2 into the case and it'll automatically connect. But pull the Go 2 out of the case, press a button to connect, and you'll be wirelessly controlling the Go 2. These buttons allow you to select the shooting mode—including things like TimeLapse and HyperLapse—as well as manually start and stop recording. The only thing it doesn't do is give you a video preview. For that, you'd need to use the app. The monochrome LCD is strictly for menu navigation and displaying status such as battery remaining.

Third, two small legs can be extended from the rear of the case, turning the entire case into a small tripod. This is great for desktop vlogging or setting the camera up for time-lapses, which need longer battery life.

Lastly, a standard thread next to the USB-C port means you can screw in an Insta360 selfie stick, Gorilla tripod, or any other standard camera accessory. That said, I should note that there is no "magical disappearing selfie stick" feature on the Insta360 Go. That's a result of the stitching process that you get when combining two hemispherical videos on a 360-camera, which the Go 2 isn't. It is possible to angle the view of the Go 2 such that you won't see the selfie stick in use, or crop it out of the final video, but it certainly won't magically disappear.

Overall, the new case is clearly where the most innovation has come for this second iteration of the Go camera. It's now an additional mounting point, increasing the versatility of the Go 2 to handle a lot more situations than simple point-of-view shots.

Image Quality, Stabilization, and Horizon Lock

Shooting at up to 2560 x 1440 (otherwise known as 1440p, or more broadly 2.5K), and up to 50fps, the Go 2 performs best in good lighting, as you'd expect from a sensor this small. As well as real-time video, the Go2 can also shoot TimeLapse and HyperLapse (1440p@30fps), or Slow Motion (1080p@120fps).

Most users will be happy with the default modes and onboard stabilization. But for pro users, there is the option of shooting in LOG color, as well as Pro video mode which stores the data from a suite of onboard sensors to inform the FlowState Stabilization algorithm. These must be processed by the smartphone or desktop app. It's hard to describe how buttery smooth this makes footage, so you'll just need to watch the review video to see it in action.

The Horizon Lock feature further enhances stabilization when shooting in Pro mode. It means that no matter how the camera is rotated, the view will remain locked in place around the rotational axis.

As for sound quality, it's obviously not something you're going to use for professional production, but for a bit of vlogging, it was surprisingly good. The review video contains an audio sample.

32GB of onboard storage may not sound like a lot, but I found it was enough for around 30 hours of pro-mode video, and it's easy enough to manage and delete clips through the app. But there is no SD-card slot, so you will need to tidy up your footage at some point.

The Insta360 App

In past iterations, Insta360 opted to create a separate app for each one of its cameras, all with slightly differing feature sets. The concept of auto-edited short stories first came to the original Insta360 Go app, for instance.

Thankfully, all devices have now been unified under a single app. That means you have access to the full range of story templates, shot lab tutorials, and more, in an interface that will quickly become familiar. And if you own more than one Insta360 camera, all the shots can be edited together.

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Utilizing Wi-Fi to connect, the Insta360 app can be used to either download clips to the phone, or edit them directly from the camera (the latter being slower, of course). Once downloaded, you can also set them to automatically delete from the camera, freeing up space for your next adventure.

While you can start from scratch, following a story template is the best for beginners. Just tap on a story template to preview (each lasts maybe 10-20 seconds), and if you like the style and music, tap next to start choosing your clips. Choose the clips in the order you want them to appear until you have the required number. The Insta360 app will then attempt to pick out the best bits, and within 30 seconds you should have your personalized video preview. From here you can make edits, such as which part of each clip is being used; or export. It's absurdly simple to make some quick montages for social media, and you can easily change the ratio to suit different formats (1:1 for Instagram, or 16:9 for YouTube).

In general, it's a pretty demanding app, as video editing apps are generally wont to be. The performance was acceptable on my iPhone X, but I dread to think what it would be like on a mid-range Android phone.

The smartphone app isn't your only choice, though. Pro users will find plugins for both major desktop video editing suites, as well as an Insta360 desktop app for Mac or Windows, which can output the best quality of video. The desktop app doesn't feature things like stories though, so it's more suited to professional editors who just want the raw footage for use elsewhere.

The app also allows you to customize the one-button operation modes. If you want it to shoot 30 seconds of pro-mode video by default, you can do that. You can also assign functions to double-pressing the button for an alternate mode.

Repairability of the Insta360 Go 2

It would be unreasonable to expect a device this small, fully sealed for waterproofing, to be easily repaired by the end-user. Taking it apart would break it. The charging case is a similar story, with no exposed screws to suggest a teardown is possible.

However, the single most common breakage in the original Go camera was the lens. As a camera designed to be taken out and about on an adventure, attached by a magnetic pendant, it was often dropped, resulting in a scratched lens. I know because I did that and ended up getting a replacement device.

Thankfully, Insta360 has addressed that aspect in the Go 2, with the introduction of removable lens guards. The device comes with one already attached, and you can purchase a pack of two additional guards when the time comes for $10.

Who Is The Insta360 Go 2 Designed For?

The Insta360 Go 2 isn't just a great action camera for everyday hobbyists. The video is good enough quality and packed full of features for even the most demanding of adventurous types, with superb video stabilization.

The tiny format makes it great for capturing point-of-view videos; from you, kids, or animals. One-button operation makes it a perfect "lifelogging" camera.

It's also small enough to easily mount to toys, such as a remote control car or LEGO train set.

The fact it's so small and discreet also makes it great for capturing life's precious moments with family and friends. Given how these are in such short supply lately, we should really make the most of them.

Should You Buy the Insta360 Go 2?

In a world where smartphones have incredible cameras already built-in, it's getting increasingly difficult to recommend any new camera purchase. As the saying goes: the best camera is the one you have on you.

But the Go 2 is one of the few devices that compliments your smartphone. Shooting video on a modern smartphone isn't exactly hard, either. Pull it out of your pocket, then you're two taps away at most. But it's still a distraction that takes you out of the moment, and puts your focus onto a screen. All it takes to shoot on the Go 2 is a single press on the body of the device. It doesn't detract from anything going on, and there are no awkward pauses or unease for the subject having a phone shoved in their face.

The Insta360 Go 2 isn't perfect, of course. Low light performance is understandably poor: the laws of physics say you can't cram a big sensor into such a tiny package. And for some, the lack of 4K resolution might be a deal-breaker. Personally, I think the jump from 1080p to 1440p makes a huge difference to the quality of the footage, and is worth the upgrade for that alone.

The sheer ease of use, tiny format, and clever selection of mounting methods make the Insta360 Go 2 an essential purchase.

  Insta360 Go 2 Review: If You Buy One Camera in 2021, It Should Be This One published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[esselley]

Kinktober #1: Aphrodisiacs | Sleepy Sex [NSFW below cut]

"Ship's log, stardate 2291. Second Officer Kageyama reporting from the planet Cary… Caryo-fill—filla—"

"Just call it the Pink Planet."

"Shut up, dumbass, I've got to use its name—"

"You can't even pronounce its name, give me that—"

"Hinata, STOP—"

The ship's log plays from Kageyama's personal recording device. The audio is tinny and underwhelming, but it seems almost too loud in the otherwise silent med bay. A scuffle seems to be occurring over the recording, before the talking resumes.

"Ship's log, stardate 2291. Second Second Officer, once removed, Hinata reporting—"

He seems to be running. Distantly heard: "You are not an officer!"  

"Everything on this planet is pink, looks the same, and Kageyama got us lost because he—"

Hinata's voice cuts off into a wheeze, presumably due to being tackled by Kageyama. The sounds of Kageyama swearing loudly while Hinata screeches carry on for a few more seconds, before the whole thing cuts off entirely.

Captain Oikawa and First Officer Iwaizumi look, with a certain mix of exasperation and dull amusement, first down at the PDR, then at each other, and then, finally, at the other two occupants of the med bay.

Second Officer Kageyama and Second Second Officer (once removed) Hinata, do not meet their eyes. The two of them stand there, stark naked, hands clasped in front of their bodies to preserve whatever slight shred of modesty they may have remaining. Oikawa doesn't see the point.

"I knew sending them there was a mistake," Iwaizumi says. He seems mostly exasperated. “Can you... explain... what happened on the planet?”

"It would have been fine if they'd read the handbook," Oikawa says. He's definitely amused.

Hinata blinks at him. "What handbook?"

"This," Kageyama says, "this is why you aren't an officer."

Caryophyllaceae is a class L planet, which means the atmosphere supports human life and the air can be breathed outside of an extraterrestrial environment suit, but the planet still remains unsuitable for human population. Oftentimes, this is due to the flora and fauna inhabiting the planet. Though Kageyama has read the handbook (he still has trouble with the name), he knows that nearly every species of plant on the entire planet is poisonous.

Hinata, unsurprisingly, has not read the handbook. Hinata is an engineer, and strictly speaking should not be allowed to accompany Kageyama on a mission to scout a new planet as it is. But Oikawa has taken a liking to him, ever since Hinata managed to save the ship from almost certain destruction at the hands of some less than friendly intergalactic visitors while the rest of the crew was captured (Kageyama helped, but repairing damaged spacecraft is not his forte).

Oikawa calls Hinata "chibi-chan", and apparently thinks they make a good team. Kageyama disagrees, nevermind the fact that he and Hinata have been sleeping together for going on four months now (if fucking in the engine room can count as sleeping together). Oikawa is almost definitely aware of it. Kageyama is only becoming more sure letting Hinata tag along was a mistake, after two hours of exploratory overtures.

So far, Hinata has succeeded in nothing aside from being annoying, interrupting Kageyama's ship's logs, and blaming Kageyama for getting lost (not Kageyama's fault). He also will not shut up about how pink everything is, because he's never been planetside anywhere but Earth, so an alien landscape is blowing his already easily blown mind.

Caryophyllaceae is definitely pink. In the early days of the planet's rotation around the sun, before it was knocked into a different orbit, most likely by a small meteor, it had developed a very specific hue across the board for all living things upon its surface. All the plants, the trees, the spongy vegetation below their feet, the occasional insects and small reptilian species Kageyama has spotted—everything is colored in bright, candy-coated shades of pink. It's so lurid it all seems unnatural, but on this planet, the color is nature itself, like green and blue on Earth. Even the sky above has not entirely escaped, a pale, milky color reminiscent of strawberry milk. It makes Kageyama instinctively thirsty.

Hinata has been gawking openly, ooh-ing and aah-ing over every single weed as though each is a masterpiece previously undiscovered. This leaves Kageyama to do all the actual work, like collecting samples and documenting his findings, which is another reason he resents Hinata being given leave to come along. He's useless.

Possibly more than useless. Kageyama hears him utter another delighted squawk, turns, and shouts, "HINATA!"

Hinata has stuck his face deep within the blossoms of an enormous, Valentine's-day-pink hanging flower—the stalk is taller than he is, the bud is bigger than his whole head. He pulls back, and Kageyama sees his nose and mouth are covered in hot pink pollen.

"Kageyama!" he yelps, "It smells like—"

Kageyama doesn't get to find out what it smells like, because Hinata, without warning, pitches straight forward onto his face, like a freshly pollinated, and probably very poisoned, pancake.

Fuck. Kageyama lets out a yell of frustration. He rapidly transmits a distress signal to the bridge of the Apex, before rushing forward, crouching to roll Hinata over onto his back.

"Hinata? Hinata!"  

Hinata is still awake, but barely. He is, however, smiling, and when he sees Kageyama hovering over him, the loopy grin he's wearing only widens.

"Ka-ge-ya-maaaa," he babbles, and then yanks Kageyama down by the front of his shirt and kisses him.

Kageyama is not prepared for it. He thinks, in the back of his mind, that he should be better at intercepting these surprise attacks—because even when not under the influence of whatever toxin is currently in his system, Hinata is prone to randomly sticking his tongue in Kageyama's mouth at every available opportunity. But Kageyama was not prepared, and now, they must pay the price.

It's like… the sensation of a large, overstressed bubble bursting in the back of Kageyama's mind—a sudden and rounded pop that unleashes a tidal wave of warmth across all his senses, like standing under a low power showerhead when its first turned on. He feels light and heavy at the same time, a little bit sweet—the flavor, not the disposition, if it is possible to feel like a flavor. He supposes Tsukishima is salty all the time, and Oikawa is pretty bitter, so maybe it is possible after all.

Following on the heels of the sweetness is a sudden ambush of lethargy—not exhaustion, but contentedness, the kind that makes it a happy occurrence to laze about with nothing to do and nowhere to be because life is good. Kageyama rarely, if ever, feels this way, and it is this second sensation that puts him back on his guard.

"H'nata," he mumbles, "Na… ta… we—we need—back to the Apex—"

"Nooo," Hinata moans, from somewhere underneath him. Dimly, Kageyama realizes that he has also fallen, right on top of the engineer.

"We're… poisoned…" Kageyama tells him. And then, to punctuate this urgent and shocking statement, he yawns.

"Whatever," Hinata responds, "we gotta have sex."

This at first makes no sense to Kageyama's sleep-addled mind, until very suddenly, it does. In multiple ways.

The first way is that, as soon as Hinata says this, Kageyama realizes that he does have a very urgent need to put his cock in, on, or around Hinata, at least once, but probably more like a lot. The second way is that he is now acutely aware of the fact that he is harder than a diamond, with Hinata's soft… softness squeezed up under him, and he groans because the thought makes him ache. This leads to the third way it makes sense—he feels like he's been blue-balled for hours, maybe days, with the level of agony he's in, just thinking about sinking his dick into all of Hinata's heat—Hinata always feels so good around him, so tight and hot, hole sucking him in so needily—

"The—poison—" Kageyama gasps, "it's making us—"

"IgottacomeorI'mgonnadie—" Hinata says all in one breath, and yes, that is probably a very realistic assessment of their current situation.

But Kageyama is so sleepy.

"H-help," he mumbles, trying to rub his face against Hinata's face, his chin, his neck. Everything feels so good but it's not enough. "Hinata… clothes…"

With their uniforms in the way, he can't feel Hinata properly, but it's all that he can do to weakly squirm around on top of him while fighting off falling into some kind of forced slumber. Hinata, who probably inhaled more of the pollen than he did, is even worse off. He just lies there looking absolutely silly, expression utterly blissed out, a tiny, rapturous smile on his face as Kageyama painstakingly peels them both out of their clothes. They're both sweating like they've got high fevers—actually, maybe they do, Kageyama realizes, when he splats his body on top of Hinata's and feels the way he's absolutely burning.

"Mmm," Hinata sighs, slowly starfishing his arms and legs out at his sides like he's trying to make a foliage angel in the soft pink moss beneath him. "Mmm, naked Kageyama… makes me so happy…" He keeps tossing his head lazily from side to side, laughing at random intervals, stretching his arms out above his head as he starts to roll his hips. His hair has fanned out under him against the moss, clashing terribly.

If the poison doesn't kill Kageyama, Hinata might.

"You are such—an idiot—" he says, "f-ffff-fuck—"

It feels like he is discovering heaven as he writhes, stupidly and slowly and sweatily all over Hinata's slick body underneath him. But maybe Hinata is the angel, sent to him amidst this obscenely rosy hell—his whole body matches at any rate, thighs flushing, nipples like rose petals, stomach and chest turning a darker shade of red.

"I really… want you inside me…" Hinata mumbles into the air, almost too soft for Kageyama to hear.

"No," Kageyama gasps, "no lube—"

"Then later," Hinata whines, "when we get back—"

This is an optimistic statement, considering Hinata has just poisoned them both, which renders both his bargaining leverage and possibly their chances of survival rather low. But Hinata is ever the optimist.

"I was really excited," he sighs, as Kageyama reaches down to palm his balls, before slipping a finger against his entrance, rubbing it lightly. Hinata keens and Kageyama can feel the way the ring of tight muscle quivers at his touch. "It's m-my—my first time on a mission. I w-wanted to… nnhh… wanted to celebrate with you… oh—I—was gonna ride you… so hard…"

Kageyama feels like he blasts his brains out through his cock when he comes, metaphorically suckerpunched by Hinata's revelation of his plans. It's like the unbearable heat is rushing out of him through his dick, taking some of the pink-hazed fog in his brain with it, and then he’s moaning, splattering Hinata’s stomach in a truly ridiculous amount of cum.

When he finally manages to blink his eyes open and look at Hinata again, it’s to see that Hinata has actually managed to fall asleep while Kageyama was busy orgasming.

“Hinata,” he says. Hinata doesn’t stir. Kageyama hopes he isn’t dead, and starts rapidly smacking him lightly, on his cheeks, then his stomach. Hinata jerks awake very suddenly, and keeps talking, like he’d never stopped in the first place.

"I wanna," he whispers, very slowly and painstakingly raising his hand so he can smear his sweaty fingers aimlessly all over Kageyama's face. Kageyama refuses to find this adorable. "Wanna ride you like a rocket…"

"You're the worst," Kageyama tells him, and Hinata's eyes roll back into his head.

Kageyama is momentarily terrified that he's actually finally succumbing to the poison, as his whole body heaves up and he arches his back like a cupid's bow—but then Hinata comes in a hot, sticky rush that seems to last forever, while he shakes like a leaf in a gale, pulling up whole handfuls of moss in his ecstasy. The whole time he cries out, wordless bliss, except for the few times Kageyama manages to make out his own name.

When he's done, he slumps back against the ground, breathing evening out, eyes shut. Kageyama leans in closer—he's starting to feel a little bit back to normal, but Hinata has again passed out cold. Unsurprisingly—the toxin was probably a shock to his system. Neither of them is dead, though.

As Kageyama thinks this, he notices something strange. The cum on their stomachs, instead of drying, or doing any other normal, cum-like things, seems to be—evaporating. It ghosts upwards into the air, turning cloudy and buoyant, before being whisked away on the breeze.

"What the fuck…" he mutters, right before swirling blue lights surround their two bodies, and he realizes, they're about to be teleported. Frantically, he starts grabbing for their clothes, his data findings, the PDR. "Shit, wait, wait—"

They disappear.

"Sex pollination," Oikawa informs them with an air of superiority, having now been told the story (sans most of the finer details). "The plant induces the urges, and once the act is completed, the resulting fluids act as both fertilizer and a way for it to spread its pollen to the surrounding area."

"Basically, you two are bees," Iwaizumi explains.

"Ohhh," Hinata says. "Cool!"

"It is not cool," Kageyama hisses. "What if we'd died from—from—our dicks exploding, or something?!"

"Crass," Oikawa sniffs. "And unlikely. The symptoms probably would have just faded after several hours. Poison doesn't always lead to death, Tobio; you should really do some further studying."

"Can we be dismissed?" Kageyama demands. He is entirely ready to end this debriefing, and put on some pants.

"I suppose so," Oikawa agrees, "if only because I don’t want to be present when the second wave hits."

Kageyama blinks. "Second wave?"

"You have to flush all the toxins from your body, obviously," Oikawa says, and then smirks. "I doubt you'll get much rest tonight, but make no mistake, you will still be expected for your morning shift on the bridge."

"I'll be there," Kageyama vows, then spins on his heel. "Come on, Hinata."

Hinata bounces along after him readily. Other parts of Hinata also bounce in turn, rather distractingly, and Kageyama wonders if the second wave Oikawa was talking about is hitting, or if this is just a normal reaction to Hinata in the nude. Either way, they need to grab their clothes and get out of there, fast.

"Where are we going?" Hinata asks.

"My… quarters," Kageyama grunts. "I need you to help me flush out the rest of this shit."

Hinata's face lights up. "Yes! I still get to celebrate!" he cheers, and Kageyama feels himself start to burn.  

The captain and first officer watch them go.

"When do you think they'll figure out there's no second wave?" Iwaizumi wonders.

"Honestly," Oikawa says, "I'm not sure they will. But I am looking forward to seeing how grumpy Tobio will be tomorrow morning."

If you’re curious about all that engine room sex, I have another fic set in this verse here! Caution: contains hyperjump orgasms.

Apex verse felt like a nice beginning to Kinktober -- “boldly going”, and all that :D We’re kicking OFF!  

[lifeonashelf]

COBAIN, KURT

Dying was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to Kurt Cobain.

That may not read like a particularly brilliant statement. You’re saying: “Taylor, I’m sure if you solicited any random sampling of people to compile a list of the worst things they could imagine happening to them, dying would end up at the top of most of those lists” (although, it would land below “being married to Courtney Love” on mine). However, the reasons I’m positing this in regards to Cobain are only tangentially related to the most common side effect of death being an immediate cessation of one’s mortal presence on this earth. Explanation: Cobain’s too-short life was characterized by profound and abiding existential pain, so in his specific instance I presume ending that life at least came with the not-unwelcome corollary of providing a respite from his suffering. Besides, the manner of his death left ample evidence that he sincerely did not want to be alive anymore, so it’s unlikely he was overly concerned with side effects. In case there’s any misconception that I’m somehow endorsing Kurt Cobain’s suicide, please feel free to text me and I’ll gladly forward you a selfie so you can see the tears that are filling my eyes right now as I revisit the devastating final chapter of a man whose music means the world to me. Yet, somehow, the strip-mining of his memory that began the very day his body was found strikes me as a tragedy which nearly equals what was done to that body.

Tucked away on one of my shelves, you will find a bootleg box set entitled Into the Black (I mean that figuratively; you will not find it—if you really want to see it, I will get it down for you; seriously, don’t start touching my shit). I procured this anthology upon its release in 1994, and back then it had the distinction of being the richest available source of previously-unreleased Nirvana live performances and songs that were never included on any of their albums. Such a find would be largely meaningless today, when a quick internet search can immediately unearth all of those tracks within seconds. But for a distraught fan to whom the prospect of facing a world where there would never be any new Nirvana music again seemed unbearable, Into the Black was an immensely cathartic salve for me at a time when I desperately needed it. The scope of the compendium remains impressive—I think it’s a way better collection than the official With the Lights Out box set that came out 10 years later—and by presenting the included material in chronological order, all the way from Nirvana’s first demo cassette to a complete recording of their final North American concert, the seven hours of tunes on Into the Black provide about the most fitting and comprehensive Kurt Cobain encomium ever delivered.

Which is part of what makes the final track on the anthology arrive like a dagger to the soul and the ears. There really isn’t a name for this closing selection—after all, it isn’t even a song. But the creators of Into the Black had to call it something in the track listing. So they called it exactly what it is: “Courtney Love’s Complete Eulogy For Kurt Cobain.”

This recording was played for a crowd of several thousand despondent fans who gathered in Seattle for a public memorial on April 10, 1994, two days after Cobain’s body was found. Its manifestation occupies a limbo unique to itself, half significant historical document, half ghoulish tabloid spectacle. Though the song “Miss World” was released on March 28, in a very real sense, it was this Courtney Love recital that served as the first proper single from Hole’s Live Through This, which would be released forty-eight hours later and subsequently propel her music career to previously unthinkable heights—a result that arguably stemmed as much from Love’s deft public navigation of her grief process as it did from the fact that Live Through This is a fucking incredible record.

Reactions to “Eulogy” (for lack of a better title) will inevitably vary by listener. If you view Courtney Love as an unfortunate casualty of Kurt Cobain’s war against himself, you will probably hear a shell-shocked widow valiantly facing her worst nightmare. If you view Courtney Love as one of the likely reasons Cobain loaded his shotgun on April 5, 1994, you will probably hear an unhinged harpy using the most intimate words her late husband ever wrote against him in a monstrously demeaning fashion. Over time, I’ve come to rest somewhere in the middle of those two poles, so I don’t quite know what to make of the recording now. What I do know is that I never want to listen to it again, and don’t really need to since it’s still vividly burned into my brain from past spins—I couldn’t bring myself to revisit it while authoring this segment about it. Because even in 1994 when I was playing Into the Black endlessly, even when I was struggling to make sense of something that seemed utterly senseless, and even when the message Love was delivering was allegedly intended for anguished fans just like me, my reaction to that audio was exactly the same as I assume it would be today: I shouldn’t be hearing this.

“Eulogy” essentially features Courtney Love narrating Cobain’s suicide note in its entirety. Since photographs of the document have subsequently surfaced in numerous places, a cursory review plainly reveals that despite Love’s proclamation on the tape that she elected to omit parts of the letter about herself and their daughter Frances “because they’re none of your fucking business”, she does in fact share nearly everything that appears on the page. Irrespective of that, her rationalization is a bizarre one—after all, it can be sensibly argued that nothing in that epistle was really the “fucking business” of anyone outside Cobain’s immediate circle. The mere reading itself denotes a sort of indecent invasion, but it is the peculiar spin the author’s self-appointed spokeswoman put on the broadcast that truly makes it astonishing. Love didn’t simply orate Cobain’s note, she annotated it, interjecting frequently to pose her own biting counterpoints to his words, sometimes leveling these ripostes directly at him, sometimes addressing her running commentary to the royal listening we. Her delivery veers between naked tear-choked agony that will move you no matter how you feel about her, and primal hissing vitriol—at one point on the recording she instructs the entire crowd to call the man they came to mourn “asshole.” It is the sound of a woman purging an entire spectrum of very private emotions in a very public way, it is an unseemly peek under the mortuary drape of a man who had just shot a gaping hole in the hearts of millions, and it is extremely uncomfortable to listen to.

I do not know Courtney Love. I have no desire to know Courtney Love. Only she could tell you how actively she calculated the channeling of her deceased husband’s musical legacy into the birth of her own. I cannot definitively state that Courtney Love exploited Kurt Cobain’s death to make herself famous; it’s not nearly that simple. I can state this again, because it’s true: Live Through This is a fucking amazing record, and it probably would have been a next-level hit even without the supernatural timing of its arrival and the uncanny way several of its key tracks seemed to capture what all of us who were shattered by Cobain’s suicide were feeling at that moment in time. But regardless of her intentions, the transmission she delivered at the Seattle Center on April 10, 1994 was undeniably indecorous. The very circumstance of it feels wrong, and witnessing it via that recording feels even worse. I didn’t want to know what that note said. I wish I didn’t know what that note said. And I wish I could listen to Live Through This—which is, to reiterate, SUCH A FUCKING GREAT RECORD—without inescapably pinpointing it as the moment Courtney Love became the first person to strike gold at Kurt Cobain’s gravesite.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the excavation.

Elsewhere in my apartment, on the bookcase directly to the right of the desk at which I’m sitting, you will also find no fewer than six biographies about Nirvana. In relation to the sum of available material, my library isn’t even close to complete; after a while, I stopped buying every associated text as they were published (once you read a half-dozen volumes about a band that only existed for a half-dozen years, redundancy becomes an issue—also, reading about Nirvana is always a dispiriting experience because no matter how good the book is, you’re inevitably going to reach THAT chapter eventually). Filed next to those is Cobain, a coffee table book which assembles almost every Nirvana-related article that appeared in Rolling Stone during their career. And directly beside that rests an even larger coffee table book entitled Journals. Kurt Cobain is the credited author, which I suppose makes sense, since nearly every word therein is in his handwriting. Nevertheless, that attribution becomes difficult to digest when you consider that the tome was released in 2002—given that Cobain had been dead for 8 years when Journals came out, I’m naturally skeptical about the scope of his involvement in the project.

I have a hard time accepting that this book exists. On one hand, the drawings, correspondence, and scribbled musings which comprise its pages offer a rare and informal glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite songwriters of all time. Yet a much larger part of me can’t discount my impression that by glimpsing these things I have in essence sneaked into Kurt Cobain’s room and picked the lock on his diary. It seems highly improbable he would have ever published this material in this form of his own volition; actually, I suspect he would have been mortified if these logs were leaked while he was alive. The justification, one would suppose, is that Cobain is a singularly iconic figure and remains an object of fascination, therefore any piece of himself he took the time to immortalize in writing has intrinsic value (even a dip recipe he got from his mom, evidently). Except the absence of his agency over this particular venture indicates that the significance of the content showcased in Journals was determined solely by outside agents. Cobain was actually fairly prolific given the brevity of his career—it would take a book roughly the same size as Journals to assemble all of the lyrics he wrote for Nirvana’s catalog. Yet, like any artist, he put most of his work through rigorous internal scrutiny and editorial refinement before he unveiled it to an audience; he was the only person who decided if and when it had value. A lot of the poetry featured in Journals was eventually funneled into Nirvana compositions; those are the pieces we can presume he was ready to share with the world—because he, you know, did share them. But when it comes to the numerous drafts of personal letters that appear throughout the tome, it seems innately obvious he did not want those to be read; if he did, he would have fucking sent them to the people they were addressed to and they wouldn’t still be present in his notebooks to be pilfered.

When the release of this relic was announced, the rabid fan in me was of course curious, and I knew this was an item I wanted in my library. But the altruistic side of me always grappled with that desire; I could never quite concur that Cobain’s inability to object constituted a license for me to read work that he chose to keep to himself. Obviously, Journals was a guaranteed best-seller, which is precisely why it was published (oh, I was never snowed by that “a way for his fans to better understand him” bullshit; I have no doubt “a way for his fans to spend money” was the primary purpose this tome was meant to serve). It certainly has intriguing bits, particularly the sections that show sketches Cobain made for early Nirvana t-shirt designs that were never produced and the numerous mixtape track-listings he itemized (sadly, due to his fondness for bands so deeply obscure they are outside the scope of even a collection as large as mine, I don’t have all the listed tunes to faithfully reproduce any of them for my own listening pleasure).

Other articles such as a grossly-gushy sweethearts note to Courtney Love and a childish screed addressed to MTV are far less interesting to me, since the only parts of Cobain they help me “better understand” are parts I already know far more about than I care to. Good and bad are basically negligible designations here anyway, since the revelatory bits and the patently trivial snippets are all culled from the same invasive pedigree. It certainly didn’t assuage my conflicted feelings about reading Journals when I opened the book and saw that the very first sentence printed in it is, “Don’t read my diary when I’m gone”… a request that becomes somewhat clouded by what Cobain wrote two lines later: “please read my diary… look through my things, and figure me out.” I did look—I looked cover to cover—but since I listened to all of Nirvana’s records long before that, I already had Kurt Cobain figured out about as much as I imagine he wanted myself or any of his fans to. A photocopy that confirms he did ordinary things like pay his phone bill doesn’t do much to augment my appreciation of all the extraordinary things he did.

By exhibiting monumental developments like Cobain’s first stab at the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” alongside snippets of humdrum humanity like his jotting down of the 1-800 number for NordikTrack, a chronicle like Journals is ostensibly meant to show that even a man who was exalted as a demigod used to put on his Daniel Johnston shirts one sleeve at a time just like the rest of us. If so, the very existence of Journals negates its own premise, since none of its content would be considered even remotely noteworthy if said content wasn’t scribed by Kurt Cobain—which only advances the misguided hero-worship that plagued his quintessence and encumbered a future suicide victim with spiritual baggage he never welcomed nor desired. Even with my limited understanding of what Kurt Cobain’s art meant to him, I am certain he would never have wanted a book like Journals to happen. Just as I am equally certain that the inflation of his esteem to such excessive heights that his admirers would be itching to read the undisclosed documents he kept in his underwear drawer played a large part in the events of April 5, 1994.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain why a songwriter who was never a solo artist is the subject of his own entry here—especially since I just chastised the publishers of Journals for giving him special treatment. It’s true that nearly every piece of music Cobain had his hand in was issued under the Nirvana masthead (except for that collaboration with William Burroughs I wrote about a long time ago… but I’m trying to forget that ever came out since it’s not much more enjoyable to listen to than “Eulogy”). Yet, thanks to the same vulturous machinations I’ve been recapping throughout this piece, the Kurt Cobain discography does indeed include one solo album to date. There is an itty-bitty asterisk next to that item, though:

* Kurt Cobain’s solo album came out twenty-one years after Kurt Cobain died.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain did not participate in the making of Kurt Cobain’s solo album.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain’s solo album is not technically an album.

Oh, also * Most of the songs on Kurt Cobain’s solo album are not actually songs.

Oh, and lastly * When Kurt Cobain recorded this solo not-album of mostly not-songs, he had no idea that anyone was ever going to hear it.

The sort-of record I’m referring to was assigned the title Montage of Heck, which is needlessly confusing for anyone familiar with Nirvana’s history, since Montage of Heck was originally the title Cobain bestowed upon one of his earliest demo cassettes. The Montage I’m examining in this essay bears no relation to that one; rather, Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is an ill-considered compilation that was released in conjunction with a congruently-monikered and congruently ill-considered 2015 documentary. Licentiously-hyped as one of the most profound musical portraits ever unveiled, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck was directed by filmmaker Brett Morgen, who was granted unprecedented access to Cobain’s personal archives and shaped that material into an allegedly insightful study of the artist’s epigrammatic life and shocking death. Since she had already exhausted the potential for monetizing her late husband’s sketchpads, Courtney Love upped the ante for this project by allowing Morgen to use the family’s personal home videos as the film’s major selling point—evidently, neither party gave a shit that two decades earlier Cobain expressed how violated he felt when strangers invaded his private life in a song bluntly entitled “Rape Me”.

I’ll keep my review of the biopic Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck brief—mostly because I didn’t enjoy it at all and the overriding emotion I was left with after watching it was anger. But it is worth mentioning here, since it was similarly levied with the purported intention of making its viewers “better understand” its subject. Strange, then, that the two most memorable moments in the movie are unabashedly salacious, and both are focused on candid glimpses of Courtney Love’s behind-the-scenes comportment rather than her husband’s. If you’re wondering what Love’s breasts looked like in the early-‘90s, or if you relish the notion of watching her toddle around the couple’s apartment in a state of opiated incoherence in the presence of their baby daughter… then, brothers and sisters, this film is the Casablanca of that specific genre. But anyone seeking a meaningful exploration of what kind of person Cobain was outside the limelight is bound for disappointment since Montage mostly underscores his least appealing traits, the unpleasant facets of his humanity that we as fans have trained ourselves to banish from our thoughts as we continue applauding his inimitable artistic contributions. Aspects which, of course, Courtney Love is central to. Her odious presence throughout the documentary, and indeed in Cobain’s orbit, serves as a manifest reminder that a man we lionize for writing some of the most exquisite songs of all time was also deeply in love with a vulgar, revolting succubus. And perhaps this is a key reason why revisiting him via panegyrics like Montage of Heck and Journals always leaves a sour aftertaste—as long as Courtney Love has stewardship over his legacy, the worst thing Kurt Cobain ever did will be always be a principal figure in each new celebration of the best things he did.

In addition to her boobie videos, Love also turned over a box of cassette tapes to Brett Morgen (if memory serves, this batch of recordings was dutifully referred to as a “treasure trove” in every press release about the project I read). Morgen cherry-picked a few bits of music from this lot for usage in his movie, which were naturally cobbled into a soundtrack that was touted to fans as a cache of “previously-unheard music by Kurt Cobain.” Since the filmmaker was ostensibly the one who decided what portions of the tapes to appropriate, he is recognized in Montage of Heck’s liner notes as its “Executive Producer”—a dubious acknowledgement that gives Brett Morgen the distinction of being the only person in the history of audio engineering credited with producing an album whose recording he wasn’t actually present for, by an artist he never even met.    

Morgen’s pastiche job doesn’t merely form the basis of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, it is the disc’s entirety. Stripped of any historical provenance generous listeners may feel obligated to apply, what the proffered material basically amounts to is a half-hour of Kurt Cobain getting stoned in his living room and fucking around on a series of out-of-tune guitars. I wasn’t present for Morgen’s listening party, so I can only speculate on how much music was available for him to sift through, or what the stuff he rejected as inadequate sounded like. But this much is clear: the pieces he chose to disseminate on Montage of Heck range from drearily frivolous to blatantly insulting. The disc offers no real insights (unless you didn’t already know Kurt Cobain got high or played guitar, I suppose), and fans searching the conclave for Nirvana songs that might-have-been will merely discover that Cobain was sensible enough not to pursue an inane number called “Burn My Britches” any further than the two-minute segment he toyed with on his couch here.

Perhaps fittingly, the disc opens with the unmistakable bubbling of a bong, which effectively sets the tone for what follows: Cobain yodeling to warm his pipes up before launching into a rudimentary power chord sequence and yodeling over that for a little while for no apparent purpose (at least Morgen gave the cut a suitable title—it’s called “The Yodel Song”). Elsewhere, attempts are made to tie this cycle of doodles into the songwriter’s established canon, such as the inclusion of the promisingly-dubbed “Scoff (Early Demo)”. Yet, while the prospect of hearing a preliminary version of the 7th-best number on Bleach may seem like cause for celebration, the actual track lands like a slap to the face once you hear that this extract which Morgen judged as precious enough for commercial immortality merely consists of Cobain scat-growling gibberish lyrics over the tune’s main riff until the tape unceremoniously cuts off 38-seconds later; identifying this nothing-morsel as a rough draft of the song “Scoff” is akin to calling a piece of paper with the word “It” typed on it a rough draft of A Tale of Two Cities. Such is the caliber of material spotlighted on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, a “treasure trove” that would have been better left buried.    

One of the few genuine items of interest among the detritus is “Reverb Experiment”, which consists of three minutes of droning throwaway instrumental noodling, but still sounds kind of cool since a lot of it sounds like the refrain of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask”. There’s also a fairly well-formed idea called “Desire” that might have been turned into something striking if its author had chosen to develop it, and the closing number “She Only Lies” is noteworthy since it features Cobain working out an idea on bass guitar instead. Regardless, nothing on Montage of Heck justifies the ballyhoo that accompanied its release, and even the marginally decent pieces are unworthy of mention on their composer’s resume—although, Brett Morgen certainly got a great resume item out of the deal; now he can call himself a “filmmaker / record producer.”

However, this was Kurt Cobain who documented these scraps on the battery-operated boombox in his apartment. And he’s an icon, remember? So—said Brett Morgen and Courtney Love and everyone at Universal Music who had their dollar-bill-mounted fishhooks in the water of this endeavor—Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings shouldn’t be treated like some gratuitous cash-grab collation of idle time-killers which Cobain thought so little of he didn’t bother revisiting most of them again. No, no, no. This is an Event. Try this: Montage captures a peerlessly illustrious artist as his fans have never heard him before, in his rawest, most intimate form, no studio, no audience, just a man and his guitar seizing inspiration out of the ether and channeling it into his instrument as he explores new incarnations of the sound that made Nirvana the band that launched a revolution. Well, hey, that sounds pretty good; we can really shift some units with an idea like that. The only problem is, if we’re going to treat this thing like a legitimate album, it has to have a legitimate hit single we can sell it with. And how do you dig a unicorn out of a pile of lo-fi cassette tapes that live in a shoebox?

Luckily, Brett Morgen found just the solution for this quandary inside that shoebox.

“And I Love Her” was issued with all the buzz of an actual lost Nirvana song—it was even pressed on 7” vinyl like a proper single. It didn’t really matter that the sound quality was wispy, nor that the performance wasn’t particularly polished. This was a recording of Kurt Cobain playing a fucking Beatles tune, dude, and not only was it previously-unavailable, no one even knew it fucking existed. And the internet went apeshit. The cosmic synchronicity of this find couldn’t have been scripted any better: the architect of the band who electrified the zeitgeist in the 1990’s covering the band who electrified the zeitgeist 30 years earlier, arguably the only other rock group in history whose rapid ascension to immortality Nirvana’s was comparable to. The concept alone was glorious, and it wasn’t merely some music nerd’s wetdream—this Moment in musical mythology Actually Happened.

Here’s the thing, though: Kurt Cobain’s rendition of “And I Love Her” only has significance because people desperately wanted it to, NEEDED it to. It was still just a lark the dude recorded in his living room one lazy night, and it still sounds just as slapdash as every other fragmentary living room lark featured on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings. There isn’t anything especially revelatory about Cobain esteeming The Beatles so highly that he learned to play one of their songs—both his backstory and his discography are liberally sprinkled with evidence he appreciated the Fab Four’s work, and in case you missed the homages there, nearly every piece of literature ever written about Kurt Cobain has helpfully cited the “Beatle-esque hooks” in songs like “About A Girl” and “In Bloom” to underline his unambiguous approbation. Even casual Nirvana fans were surely already well aware that Cobain enjoyed playing songs by musicians he admired—the dozen-or-so covers in the band’s repertoire and the fact that nearly half the tunes which comprised their legendary MTV Unplugged performance weren’t written by Nirvana provided some telling clues on that front.

The level of hype which heralded the arrival of “And I Love Her” (and Montage of Heck as a whole) intimated that a vital missing piece of the Kurt Cobain puzzle had finally been unearthed. Yet the disc supplies nothing more than a disenchanting anticlimax once you actually listen to it and ascertain that the venerated songwriter’s busy-work wasn’t all that impressive. Perhaps this is more a result of a faulty selection process—I’m willing to imagine there is some truly fantastic material on those tapes which Brett Morgen overlooked for whatever reason—but whether or not Cobain’s archives are ripe with undiscovered gems, the resounding impact of The Home Recordings is much the same as that of Journals: nearly everything in that time capsule would be appraised as inconsequential nonsense if it wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s nonsense. Which takes us right back to the pitfalls of deifying any musician to such a degree that every note they ever played is assigned an implied indispensability, even the botched ones that actually make them sound like a less gifted musician than they were.

Besides, we Nirvana fans already got our missing piece. That happened in 2002, with the release of the band’s self-titled greatest hits package. The one I bought despite owning every record which sourced that compilation, solely because there were three minutes and thirty-eight seconds of music on there I had never heard—the one and only known completed and previously-unreleased Nirvana song: “You Know You’re Right”. (Although, Courtney Love had the audacity to debut that tune way back in 1995 when she performed it as part of Hole’s MTV Unplugged set—seriously, sometimes I wonder if every single thing she’s done in the past 25 years has been predicated on a willful and concerted effort to make everyone who loves Nirvana hate her; although, her campaign of terror has made it nearly impossible to even mention Nirvana without also mentioning her, so maybe she’s a fucking genius).

In stark contrast with the nebulous scribbles on Montage of Heck or the interesting but inessential rehearsal tracks which dominated With the Lights Out, “You Know You’re Right” is indeed a revelation of almost religious proportions, a roaring burst of dynamism that is as powerful as anything else in Nirvana’s catalog—the lone tantalizing taste of a fourth record the band would never get to make, a frozen moment of fragile optimism captured just before the world as we knew it ended. “You Know You’re Right” is fucking AWESOME, and its explosive potency is all the more impressive considering that the lone recording of it which exists was essentially the group’s first stab at it. It is one of my absolute favorite songs in a catalog bursting with favorites. And I cried the first time I heard it. And I cried the second time I heard it. And the third… And, 17 years onward, I cried when I listened to it moments ago.

Plenty of Cobain’s tunes have this effect on me. Still, “You Know You’re Right” is a singular case. And I know exactly why that song, above all others, devastates me the most. It’s not because the lyrics are especially poignant, even though they are. It’s not because the track’s intoxicating promise reminds me of precisely how much all of us lost on April 5, 1994, even though it does. The reason “You Know You’re Right” tears my fucking guts out every time I hear it… is because that was it. That was the final song Nirvana recorded. And after it came out, there would never be any more. “You Know You’re Right” was the moment I had to say goodbye to Kurt Cobain forever.

I did that. And I think it’s time for the rest of the world to let him sleep, too.

Over the years, I have accumulated bootlegs of more than 200 Nirvana concerts. Roughly 150 of those shows are phenomenal, and plenty of them are of strong enough audio quality to warrant an official disclosure. That is the true “treasure trove,” a nearly limitless stockpile of unreleased Kurt Cobain recordings that could fuel a supplementary Nirvana release every single year for the rest of human history. And we already know he wanted an audience to hear that music, because he stepped onto the stage and played it for them. Since the continued fracking of his legacy is inevitable, by all means, the Cobain estate should absolutely tap into that wellspring whenever the marketplace is clamoring for fresh product or Courtney Love is clamoring for further cosmetic augmentation. I’ll buy every goddamn disc they put out, and I’ll probably buy them all on vinyl, too. And if you, personally, feel the need to explore the more obscure corners of Cobain’s discography, there are already plenty of places you can look—start with the single for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, where you’ll find the tremendous B-side “Even In His Youth” and a killer alternate recording of “Aneurysm” that blows the version on Incesticide out of the water.

Hey, I’m a fan first and a snarky asshole second; I get it. I can surely identify with the sustained hysteria enveloping his heritage. Cobain’s suicide was the single most traumatic event of my teen-hood, and all these years later I can still tell you where I was, what I was wearing, and even what I was eating when I first heard the horrifying news of his departure (my family’s comic book store in Anaheim Hills, a Groo the Wanderer t-shirt, and a foot-long tuna on white from Subway). Still, even then, I had a firm pragmatic grasp on my grief. Kurt Cobain wasn’t my mentor, my hero, someone who embodied the man I hoped to eventually be when I reached his epoch of then-unimaginable elder statesmanship (hey, when you’re fifteen, 27 seems like an eternity away—at the time I assumed when I was Cobain’s age I’d probably be doing all sorts of old-people shit like buying a house and raising babies… or at least finally having sex). He wasn’t deity to me, he was simply someone responsible for some of the most imperative music in my life; unfortunately, since music has always been a lot more imperative in my life than deities, his abrupt absence was crushing nonetheless.

But the nature of Cobain’s subsequent beatification seems to suggest that many of his fans choose to remember him as something more, a shooting star that painted a tapestry of light across the heavens before inexorably crashing down to earth, “the grunge-poet voice of a generation” and all that. Hell, to many people, he was. But despite his canonization by the masses, Kurt Cobain was not a messiah and never strived to be. He was flawed and beautiful and complex, and a mystery even to himself—in other words: he was just as fucked-up and human as any of us. Kurt Cobain is not some riddle to be solved; we will never decode him because he didn’t stay the course of his journey long enough to find out who “him” really was or would become. And his awful conclusion will never make sense, because there’s ultimately nothing sensible about putting a shotgun in your mouth and ending a life that meant so much to so many when it had barely just begun.

As we near the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s death, let’s resolve to (finally) allow him his humanity again, and to allow the still-buried pieces of his spirit he chose to keep solely for himself to remain interred with him. Because we’re only paying disservice to the topsoil of his legacy by continuing to dig. And besides, we have Bleach, we have Nevermind, we have In Utero, we have Unplugged, we have a few-dozen additional non-album tracks, and we have “You Know You’re Right”—Kurt Cobain already gave far more of himself to the world than any of us were entitled to ask for.

So if you want to “better understand” him, you won’t achieve that by reading his diary, or seeing his widow’s areolae, or hearing him offhandedly strum some ditty from his childhood to amuse himself. The best avenue available for those of us who never met Cobain to look through his things and figure him out is lighting a candle, putting on a set of headphones, and letting the breathtaking majesty of “All Apologies” surge out of those speakers and into our souls. There is no more intimate way to honor him than that. Nor should there be. Understanding Kurt Cobain isn’t necessary. As long as we understand his music, and we understand what it means to us.

We don’t need his secrets. We have his songs. And for anyone who truly holds the memory of Kurt Cobain in their heart, that’s enough.

 March 25, 2019