#the massive paragraph at the end there probably isnt really anything

[relative-dimension]

“The Ambush”

Season 1, episode 8 - 11th January 1964

[id: The Doctor, Susan Foreman, and Barbara Wright all shout and hammer on a window from the inside, as Ian Chesterton stands behind them and waves both hands /end id]

As with last episode, the scenes of the Tardis gang escaping are really good, and the Daleks are presented as a genuine threat in a way they won’t really be in a lot of episodes after this.

Is it an entertaining watch: 3/5, eh, it’s fine. There’s a good tense buildup to the Daleks’ attack on the Thals, and like I said the escape scenes are well done.

Does the production hold up: 4/5, I have many questions about the Dalek sculpture they find to throw down the lift shaft. Like. What the fuck was up with that? Apart from that, though, the designs are as good as always.

Does it use its time well: 3/5, this episode sits at the midpoint of the story, and it does feel like a transition between the two main plotlines - the investigation of the city and capture by the Daleks, and the attack on the city with the Thals. Shame that the second of those is much more boring than the first. Nice cliffhanger, though.

Are the characters consistent and well-used: 3/5, they don’t all get their own Moment in this one, but none of them are directly shafted by the plot to focus on side characters or anything.

Is there anything actually going on under the surface: 4/5, this episode being the real introduction to Thal culture, we get the return of the idea of nuclear devastation, the development of their pacifism (which will come back into play next time) and a few lines about the Daleks being racist.

Does it avoid being a bit dodge with its politics: 3/5, I’m not entirely sure how to explain this, but something seems wrong with the fact that all the Thals are white and blond and that makes them, as Susan put it last episode, “perfect.” Obviously this was the BBC in 1964 so it seems like the fact that the cast is entirely white wouldn’t really be worth noting - except this story is saying something about racism. As Ian puts it, the Daleks are motivated by “a dislike for the unlike,” and many, many, many other Doctor Who episodes after this will draw parallels between the pepperpots and Nazi ideology. Their utter hatred for the Thals, and, in later iterations, all other life, is what motivates them. But when the Thals are oh so beautiful and perfect and white, I can’t help but feel that they’re trying to present some sort of reverse racism, where the Daleks are the monsters because they find western beauty standards repulsive (that’s not true obviously - the Daleks are the monsters because of all the murder - but bear with me, I don’t think I’m spouting complete and utter bollocks). One way of reading this might be that the Daleks hate the Thals because (as stated in the story) the Thals have mutated into a more “perfect” form than the Daleks did, or something. This got very long because I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to say, but there are implications by having the Thals be white and described as “magnificent people.” There’s not enough there for me to knock it below the last episode, but it’s there. Probably. Idk.

Overall Score - 20/30

[near-seth-experience]

This is a long, personal, 3 in the morning kind of ramble. Writing as if I'm explaining things to others tends to help me get my feelings out. Don't feel obligated to read this, but you're welcome to. I'm mostly just thinking out loud here. I'm on mobile, so sorry if this gets long. I don't know if Keep Reading cuts are possible on the app, and if they are I havent learned how to insert them. I'll probably delete this later so whatevs.

I think this topic could apply to a lot of selfless people out there, so I think putting some things into words might be helpful to others.

Anyways, I've thought about this before, and I'm not sure if I've ever talked about it, but I'm pretty sure I've pinpointed a pretty massive reason why I feel lonely and incredibly dissatisfied all the time:

I've always felt that I was considerate to a fault. I'd never put my needs ahead of the needs of others. To this day, I still have lots of difficulty when it comes to looking after numero uno. I learned early on that I needed to keep others appeased in order to feel safe. My siblings frequently butted heads growing up, and one of them often had these big fights with my dad. Lots of tears, yelling, a rare hole in the wall, that kinda thing. It fell on me to keep tempers from flaring. Ultimately, I became the kid my dad always called when he needed help with yardwork. I became the kid who would hand my mom a soda after a heated phone call with a high-maintenance sibling, and I'd sit and let her vent to me. I became the kid who would unload the dishwasher or take out the trash without being asked to do so. Whenever things got heated, I would shift into the role of family de-escalator. Point is, I've always lived for others, and no, this isnt one of those posts talking about living for yourself, yadda yadda yadda. I'm thinking in a different direction, but it'll wrap back around.

Recently I've been trying to think of this in a positive light. As shitty as things might have been, I've grown up to be incredibly considerate. It's one of my better qualities, the beginning and end of my list of good things I can confidently say about myself as a person. It was always out of necessity or fear. It was always pretty damn unappreciated. It always kind of felt like I was everyone's bitch. But it was good of me all the same.

Now that I'm my own person, I've realized two things. Firstly, I love helping out. I love knowing that someone is better off for having me by their side. It's kind of why I loved proofreading in my college English courses. I loved being thanked and feeling valued and wanted for my efforts. I loved the gratification of knowing that someone's story or essay received better marks thanks in very small part to my help. I love knowing I made a mark in someone's life for the better in some way. My personal golden rule is essentially to ask yourself at every turn if there's some little thing you can do to ease another person's burden. If the answer is yes, and the means are within reason and your comfort zone, do it.

The second thing I realized was something that is said a lot: relationships flow both ways. Nobody in my life— not my 2 or 3 superficial friends, not my family, literally nobody— has deserved the amount of effort I have spent for their sakes. I'm burnt out. I'm dissatisfied with my life because everything I do for the sake of another person feels like a chore. I am constantly taken for granted, and the only reason I still bother is because it's even tougher to go against my nature and do nothing. It's not like I'm asking for recognition, but just once I'd like to hear sincerity when someone thanks me. Even better, I'd like someone to legitimately care enough to look into my eyes for a change, see how not-okay I am, and ask themselves if theres anything they could do.

I can only think of one time that has ever happened, and the circumstances are still a trigger of mine so I'm gonna keep the story brief.

(TW Death & Animal Death. Skip this next paragraph if you need to)

My senior year of high school, a freshman was found dead in the school swimming pool. No foul play suspected, people just didn't see him go under during or between gym class. Real tragic. So the school goes on lockdown while they look into things, and then they cancel the rest of the day. I go home, and I find my dog dead. She was old and losing vision, and she fell into our backyard swimming pool. It was partially drained for the winter, so she didnt drown, we think falling down four or five feet onto the concrete of the shallow end while blind may have just been a massive shock. Heart attack, or she hit her head or something. Who knows. Anyways, my mind connected the two events. Two pool-related deaths on the same day. For the first class on the following day, my teacher arranged the desks in a big circle and it was honestly a really good hour-long discussion about loss and grief, but it hit me so hard that people thought I knew the freshman student. The teacher, and a friend of mine both came up to me after class, I told them what happened, got a hug from the friend, and sent home for the day by the teacher.

(/End TW)

That was the only time in memory where someone has ever looked at me and knew I wasn't alright, and I imagine it must have been very obviously written on my face. Now, back to the point. The amount of times I've seen the troubled faces and heard the troubled voices of those I care about and did any little thing to help is severely disproportionate to the amount of reciprocation. It's like I actively look to see if people need me, but they never even care enough to consider looking if I need them.

So, here are my takeaways:

I'm dissatisfied with life because I'm tired of bending over backwards for people who don't even deserve to have me, and that's basically all I'm doing with my life.

I'm lonely because that covers literally everyone I know personally.

So fuck 'em.

I feel like I have some kind of void inside me, and don't think I'll ever have true fulfillment in this regard unless life throws me a cheesy series of events that results in me finding my soulmate or at least something mutual. (Lmao, yeah right. Press X to doubt).

People often say "live for yourself" or "you dont need others to be whole" in regards to this kind of thing. While that's generally sound advice, people do have different natures. Living for others is how I live. There's no way around that, it's who I am, so my interpretation of "living for myself" is choosing for myself who to live for.

[lipcolour]

i truly believe in my heart and soul that me as a person was not made for any type of social interaction and relationships..no matter what, i dont think ive ever had a relationship in my whole life that i've just enjoyed and not experienced stress and misery over. and at this point i have to blame myself cause what else could it be..i cant keep blaming other people. i just feel taken advantage of constantly which is a really vain and dumb thing to say for someone with such low self esteem. i think i give my whole self to people a lot and when its not appreciated or acknowledged i just feel so lost..and i just want to retreat back into myself and never speak or enjoy someones company ever again lmao. i have too much love to give and to me thats a good thing..i often think about how i really dont have much to offer, but if someone ever decided to love me back that they would perhaps be lucky because i really would give them all of me..all my love and passion would go into them. but i feel like thats all i have to offer lmfao and i need to realise that isnt a good thing to a lot of people? a lot of love can be overwhelming and suffocating. but i also feel like its all i have. just because its what i want, and the way i love and like to be loved..doesn't mean thats what other people want. nothing is permanent and that should be a comforting thought and for some things it is, but in this case it just makes no relationship ever feel worth it? and most of the time they arent...like what is the need to go through frustration and sadness or any other hardship to maybe feel some happiness along the way when its inevitable that it will end one day, whether it be in a negative way or not!! it doesnt feel worth it at all & i guess and i want to find a relationship that feels like its worth it. the need to make things better and work it out is so important to have.. & i guess thats my own problem cause im not a person to confront or to seek out a solution but i’ll just stay in solitude and either hope it gets better or just deal with it like any other inconvenience in life. i think i am a bit of a pushover and thats trouble for myself? i hate analysing things when it means that i have to come to terms with the fact that people are hurting me and im just letting them because i have no concept self worth and like them too much to do anything about it. then i just feel like im pitying myself too much, and im almost embarrassed to feel that way..like get over yourself? in general i've never been someone to seek out friendships, mostly because of anxiety and insecurity in myself but also just because i'm constantly stuck between the mindset that "if things are meant to work out; they will and whats meant to be will be" and "you have to put effort into things if you expect anything to come out of it". im someone that will rarely ever text first because i believe that if someone really wants to talk to me..they will. i never consider that maybe someone else feels the exact same way and thats really selfish of me but i cant really help it? i dont think of myself special enough for anyone to really want to talk to me, so i never message anyone first in case its an inconvience or maybe they just dont want to speak to me..and im always telling myself like if someone randomly messaged me i would be more than happy to speak to them so why would it be different for anyone else.. my whole life is just me vs my rational mind!!! none of this ranting has a point tbh i just started this cause im feelin..emotional(tm) about shit but now im just stating random facts about myself and not even ranting about what im sad about rgrkthh. im pretty awful with words and even after all this i still dont feel like any of my feelings are explained well enough..and not because im a ~complex~ person but just because i find it so hard to explain how i feel tbh and i know that it could probably be explained so simply in a few sentences but instead i rant in massive paragraphs like these and end up going on a huge tangent about unrelated stuff that is also wrong with me. in general...id maybe put effort into shit if i felt worth it but i never do.. my  self worth is at -84838576 and thats why   expect everyone else to do shit for me and if they dont ? they hate me ? i love having a black and white mindset

[thehighastronomer-blog]

High Energy Cosmic Rays

Last time, when I talked about momentum, I opened like 20 tabs from the Oh My God Particle about cool stuff I thought needed sharing.

What is a cosmic ray?

Basically anything that isnt light that is flying fast enough at us to not originate locally.  Hence cosmic.  The highest energy of them have been observed since the sixties, but serious questions were asked about their origin and mechanics after the Oh My God! Particle in 1991.

What kind of matter are they?

They’re typically charged, baryonic matter.  But it’s really, really important to take Einstein’s matter and energy equivalence to heart here.  As you’ll see in the next section, the fact that it was once a proton or iron nucleus doesn’t matter because it is now a beast almost entirely made of... energy... and any attempt to interact with it to determine it’s progenitor particle would end... poorly.

How energetic?

It is often said that the OMG particle has the momentum of a 100mph baseball, and that is useful in conveying one aspect of how energetic this particle was.  But because we don’t have a sense of subatomic scales, we can’t fully extend the analogy.  

Gamma Gamma Hey!

Special relativity has a lot of interesting and counter-intuitive predictions for behavior of fast things.  From the outside, their length of the traveler decreases.  Time, as experienced by the traveler, slows.  The mass of the traveler increases.  These are called Lorentz Transformations, and their mathematics, once derived are relatively simple.  The important equation common to all of these transforms is the definition of the Lorentz Factor (lowercase gamma).

( \gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^{2}}{c^{2}}}} )

Where v is the velocity of the traveler and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.  When you have any kind of dilation, it will be of this magnitude.  Essentially, gamma tells you how relativistic shit is gonna be.  The fastest thing we have hurled into space, Deep Horizons, has a factor of 1.000 000 001 469.  At fifty percent the speed of light, you’re are 1.155 times shorter, slower, and more massive to an outside observer.  The largest scientific machine (and probably any kind of machine), and it can get individual protons up to 

99.9999991% the speed of light, and that corresponds to a Lorentz Factor of 7,460.

So.  That OMG particle?  It had a Lorentz factor of 319,438,000,000.  So whatever it was, the overwhelming majority of it was energy, in a ratio of 

319,438,000,000 to 1.  

Where do they come from?

holds flashlight in front of face

NOBODY KNOWS!!

Of course I am just kidding.  Just like anything with such a relatively short observational history, Astronomers have a pretty good idea on what mechanisms can propel matter like this.  (If you’re thinking of rail guns you’re not far off).  The major differences amongst researchers is on what physical process is generating the conditions necessary.   I will primarily focus on the neutron star theory, but anywhere you have obscenely high magnetic fields and a source of charged material, you will get cosmic rays.

I just wrote a paragraph and a half on neutron stars, so thats probably going to be the next post.  When a big star dies a fiery death there is sometimes a neutron star that remains.  Dense beyond description and on the order of tens of kilometers in diameter.  Large stars spin, but not a lot (our sun rotates once every 26 days or so).  But when something spinning shrinks, the angular momentum is conserved and, like an ice skater pulling in their arms, they rotation speed increases.  So our neutron star will be spinning 10,000 times per second, or more.  Magnetohydrodynamics is several times more complicated than the name implies.  “Spinny thing makes magnet” should be sufficient for our purposes.  A magnet in the order of 10^8-10^11 tesla (on Earth the magnetic field is 10^-5 T, give or take).  Any iron that escaped in the supernova cloud from the neutron star’s explosion gets swept up by the field and ejected out of the poles to one day slam into an atmosphere like ours.

A competing model has them ejected, as part of the jets coming out of active galactic nuclei, with a similar magnetic field rail-gun type event.

Finally, there’s a very interesting idea that dark matter, when it enters the ergosphere of a supermassive black hole, will fragment and via a Penrose process (I’ll do a post on that too) ejects protons at phenomenally high energy.  This model is very much in the minority, but its neat nonetheless.

Still a problem remains

The cosmic rays, by their very nature, should not be able to travel vast (Beyond our local galaxy cluster) distances without being slowed by the cosmic microwave background.  There is an upper limit on kinetic energy, called the GZK-limit, above which it ceases to move freely through the universe without losing some momentum to... for lack of a better term, drag.  This would seem to rule out extremely distant sources from the early universe.

[sxmmersover]

Insecurities, Jealousy, internal conflict and… Hypocrisy?

I’ve known Emma for a little over a year. we’ve been dating a week. that leaves pretty much a whole year where i wanted to be with her exclusively, but she wasn’t ready for relationship. 

i’d only really been properly single 2 months when i met Emma. 2 months to process and get over a 3 year relationship amid final year coursework, clearly not nearly enough time. i was nearly there though, i’d asked out a couple girls on dates with little success… but i was moving on. i knew once she’d given me the smallest ounce of attention and interest that i was hooked. she was stunningly pretty, wickedly wild and a total nerd loser at heart like me.

Classic Joe move, obviously caught feelings super fast even though it was clear this girl was on the anti relationship warpath. maybe i could’ve just seen her as a fuck, but Emma also treated me as something much more a lot of the time, so i dared to hope one day she’d come around to being with me. true she made it ever so clear the last thing she wanted was a relationship, but in many ways we treated each other like we were at least ‘seeing each other’. it caused me a lot of pain to know she’d kiss other guys on nights out etc but it brought a lot of comfort that i was the only person she was sexual with, shed always end back in my bed at the end of the night. i lived with that, it wasn’t what i wanted but it was the compromise i made to keep this girl i really liked in my life. i appreciated Emma’s honesty, it says a lot about her that she’d be completely upfront about what she did at the risk of me cutting things off.

The real focus of this post is sex, and my very confused feelings on it so that’s where i am gonna try to steer it now. my problem is holding things Emma did with other people whilst i was in her life against her. i don’t mean that i beef her, or v rarely do. its more when i’m low i think of those moments and think of the girl i love spitefully, its an awful feeling but i do and i want it to stop so bad.

a little ways in whilst continuing this casual friendship i hooked up with another girl multiple times. i don’t really know why i did, i guess it was purely because i could. Emma found out and was mad at me for keeping it from her. rightly so i should have mentioned it, but i was in denial thinking that i had no reason to tell her, i was just covering my ass.

Anyways, a little while later we were past that and it seemed we were getting very close, we even mentioned potentially proper dating. the problem was i was moving away so in the end what was the point. mid April while Emma was in Scotland she fooled around with a guy up there. it hurt me a lot true, i thought we were going to be dating when she got back, i felt a lil betrayed but she also never said we were exclusive so wcyd. when Emma came back from Scotland we fought and i told her she either committed to me or we stopped speaking. in a brutal fashion she said no way so i ended it. fair enough on her part but so far from what i wanted obviously.

during the time we weren’t speaking Emma slept with a guy a couple times. i can’t really understand why this still makes me want to vomit nearly 8 months later. its not the literally fact another dick was inside her, we both have sexual history obviously. its not like she cheated on me so its no that either. i guess its simply because hes the only other guy shes been with in the time i’ve been in her life. maybe that in that moment she was with him, she knew i existed, knew i loved her, wanted her more than anything, but instead chose to be with him. i know it isn’t as simple as that though, we weren’t on speaking terms so it wasn’t a simple choice between the two of us. i don’t really worry that much about him being a better shag. i know im good, but i still can’t her description of that night as ‘oH mY gOd the sEx’ like its burned into my brain. i still remember sobbing endlessly onto my friends floor as i saw her tweets showing he’d stayed over in her bed and they’d gone out for food and later that she had feelings for him. all while saying she needed to get over me. the whole thing still makes me want to fucking pull my hair out. literally some of the worst few days of my life.

that paragraph was heavy. i guess the point is that it doesn’t matter anymore. Emma never wronged me, but it still hurts and i subconsciously hold it against her. which isn’t fair on either of us. but see, this whole thing isn’t about trying to beef her being the whole sex thing is NOT one sided at all. by Sean, we’d both slept with one other person, not that numbers count, but my point is how can i be angry at her when i did the exact same thing, and i did it first? i even did it sober and many many more times than her. i also did it while we were on good terms, she did it while we weren’t even speaking. objectively emma sleeping with sean was no different to me sleeping with laura. i dont even think about laura, it was so unremarkable. emma probably feels the same with sean so why do i fixate on it so much?

fast forward many months theres little to talk about sex wise until Emma slept with a girl on a night out in late October. this one was a lot shittier in my eyes, she’d told me she didn’t wanna be with anyone else and i believed her, BUT and its a big BUT, we still weren’t exclusive so technically she didn’t wrong me. it hurt a lot, i felt so betrayed and so worthless but they are my own feelings to deal with, we weren’t exclusive so she was free to do whatever.

i don’t really have the energy to debate straight and gay sex but to me gay sex doesnt really bother me. so the fact emma fooled around with 2 girls recenly doesnt bother me to a massive extreme. hurts a little bit 1-2. what hurts a lot more was that she fooled around with connor who i was assured a million times over was just a pal but we literally werent even speaking then so can’t beef, but for whatever reason it still hurts.

see now while me and Emma weren’t speaking i started speaking to another girl in what i’d consider a fairly serious way. like we saw each other a lot, she met my fam but that was lit because they wouldn’t let me have a girl over without knowing her. probs because she was Mexican smh. SO THIS IS MY POINT. i slept with this girl, took her to college in the morning etc went on a couple dates yet im hung up over emma’s drunk pulls? WHY? that makes me such a hypocrite. well, at least i can recognise that. maybe i see myself as a victim? maybe its a lack of empathy? but from my understanding emma isnt bothered about me sleeping with other people (obvs before we got into a relationship). i evens slept with another girl in the UK. again counting numbers is silly but since we met emmas slept with 1 other guy to my 3 other girls? so why do i hold it against her and feel so shite about it? maybe i’m a bad person i wish i had a clear cut answer.  

perhaps how i see alice, laura and sindy as literal specs of dust compared to the wonder that is what i have with emma is how she views sean and those girls and thats why its not a big deal to her. maybe its not something to feel sick about all the time. like i said before the whole polygamy thing for the first year we knew each other was certainly both ways.

this has helped a lot, its emptied my head an awful amount. i just want us both to enjoy a long and loving relationship and for the past not to hold us back. its late and i should sleep. this post has literally 0 plan, a literal thought train but its also months worth of thoughts all rolled up into a big mush.

i wanna make it clear Emma isn’t responsible for my feelings, nor do i think she is. i just wanted to explore my own gripes to try and understand them a little better, maybe even resolve them in this little egg head of mine.

i know none of this matters now. i love this girl more than I've ever loved anyone. if we aren’t together at LEAST 5 years i’ll feel cheated by the universe. goodNIGHT