#uncoupled engine art

[uncoupledengine]

Happy birthday to the best boi! DUCK!!!

So I have a head canon that all engines have a section of wall in the sheds that is dedicated to all of their big achievements. It’s to help them feel better when their sad, but also to remember some highs. So I drew a small section of Duck’s wall.

Top left:

This is a picture of Duck and Stepney not long after they double headed the express after the class 40 diesel failed. I feel like Stepney and Duck’s friendship is often over looked. I head cannon that their drivers totally write letters for the other engines to read.

Top right:

This is a picture of Duck having a Great Western Railway conversation with his idol The City of Truro. I would have loved to hear their conversations.

Bottom left:

This is a picture of Donald with Dilly. I feel like it is often forgotten that Duck was very important in Donald acquiring Dilly. So Duck is clearly Dilly’s second father.

Bottom right:

This is a picture of Oliver and Duck on the Little Western. It didn’t become a real Little Western until Oliver joined Duck on the line. They have such an amazing dynamic together that I wish we had more stories about them too.

On the far right is a flag that Duck received from when he helped save a man in the regatta all those years ago. This feels like something Duck would have kept for all those years and smiles every time he sees it.



[steam-beasts]

How I'd adapt TTTE BWBA s22 ep 2; "Forever and Ever"

Original summary; Gordon has a tantrum about all the changes being made to the railway and is sent back to his shed in disgrace, Gordon insists that he is happy to stay there forever but his new friend Nia from Kenya helps him to see the changes in a different light.

My adapted summary; Ever since Edward left the sheds, Gordon had been quite bitter about the changes. Now that Nia has moved in and Henry suddenly announcing that he's moving into Vicarstown, Gordon becomes enraged. In retaliation, he takes his frustration out on Nia and causes an accident.

Plot

A year had gone by since Edward's departure from Tidmouth Sheds, and despite how long it's been, Gordon still can't stop being bitter about it. Since Nia's arrival, Gordon had been disrespectful and belittles her often, bumping her out of the way and calling her a "weak little tank engine". He just directs his grumpiness on to her. One day, he hears a conversation between Henry and Sir Topham Hatt and is horrified to learn that Henry wants to move out.

(Not my art btw, it's on DeviantArt)

He confronts Henry the next day, and Henry tells him "Going to Vicarstown is my choice, Gordon. I don't need your say in it!". Gordon then goes to Sir Topham Hatt about the changes, ranting to him about the changes, but STH just says;

"Edward left Tidmouth to mentor Phillip and Rosie by his own choice, Gordon. Henry is moving away by his own choice as well, nothing can stay the same forever, you know. Just deal with it, and move on"

Sir Topham Hatt doesn't realise how much the changes are actually stressing Gordon out and agitating him.

When Gordon is getting his coaches shunted, he finds that Nia is shunting instead of Percy or Thomas. He's already angered by the sudden announcement of Henry moving out, and Nia, the one who (in Gordon's eyes) replaced Edward, decides to try and calm him down.

Gordon yells back at her, and Nia just retorts by saying;

"Ugh...I wonder how Edward and Henry put up with you, you're such hard work!"

Nia never means this in a rude way, she's just annoyed by Gordon. This remark upsets Gordon even further, so he decides to pull a trick on Nia... the same trick he pulled on Thomas decades ago.

He goes along with it and heads off with the Express early, and doesn't give Nia time to uncouple from the coach.

As Gordon speeds down the line with Nia in tow, he doesn't listen to her begging him to stop and just laughs it off.

(Imagine he's laughing maniacally)

My version of Nia was built without a proper safety valve, so she is a boiler explosion waiting to happen. Her boiler is heating up fast, luckily, her driver manages to reach her coupling rod and uncouples her. But as she's uncoupled, Gordon had reached a junction at that point and Nia ends up going off the rails and hitting a tree at full force, denting her buffers.

Later on that evening, everyone and STH find out what happened and confront Gordon about his errant behaviour.

Gordon is quick to defend himself, claiming Nia "replaced Edward and forced Henry out". This is when he tries venting his hatred of the changes. STH and everyone else just assume he's making up excuses and is overdramatic; he's not.

STH; "Excuses, excuses! I am sick and tired of your whining, Gordon! Nia is staying in this shed and that's final! We must not be so rude!"

Thomas; "You're definitely a big fat Galloping Sausage now, Gordon! You just can't go a day without complaining! Bother, even pulling the same trick on her like you did on me? That's pathetic!"

James; "Just disgusting, Gordon! I don't remember you being so horrible towards tank engines like you were today!"

Emily; "Shame on you..."

After this argument, STH tells Gordon that he's banned from pulling the Express until he gets his behaviour sorted out and is being locked in his berth. Gordon desperately begs him not to, but STH doesn't listen. He is shut up in the sheds, where he has a nightmare about Edward and Henry getting scrapped and wakes up in the middle of the night, unconsciously tearing up and reflecting on how everyone treated him and his dream.

The episode ends with Gordon whispering;

"....N-Nobody cares how I feel...my own controller doesn't c-care how I feel... why does nobody care about me?"

The episode ends.

Yeah, if I were to do Forever and Ever, it would be pretty dark and angsty. It's all hurt for Gordon and no comfort. Plus, it would show a bit of Gordon that's vulnerable and no longer all pompous and arrogant, instead all self-conscious and soft.

[whirligig-girl]

image ID: a 2-4-0 steam locomotive with a frowning face, made entirely out of green slime. A fire and boiler tubes are visible inside. The engine is at a train station and has a red four wheel carriage behind her. End image ID.

From the Guz Style Swap. Eaurp Guz is my Star Trek Lower Decks original character, a slime girl starfleet officer. When I redrew Guz in a bunch of art styles I had one more panel left, and I thought... “what am I missing... what cartoon did i grow up with with a very specific art style that i hold near and dear am I forgetting... oh. oh no. OH NO!” so I drew this cursed and beautiful thing. The very first slimegirl train!

ok let me pretend i can fit this into railway series lore... (awdry, please forgive me)

An experimental locomotive created by the LNER, Guz is a 2-4-0 passenger locomotive made out of metallurgical slime recovered from an alien spacecraft. After her initial trial, she was given to the North Western Railway on loan, indefinitely. Though the goo boiler proved to be a highly successful concept[citation needed], the slime wheels had serious flattening and wheelslip issues, making it hard to climb gradients.

Guz had trouble climbing hills and completely floundered on the steeper gradients of branch lines. In 1929, she was given metal tires, solving her biggest issue. The other engines used to tease her for her composition and her wheel slip.

Gordon would say “Just think of it! Slipping and sliding wherever you go, unable to climb hills at all. It’s disgraceful. You should be preserved, before you get scrapped... or melted down, or whatever happens to engines made of sludge.“ But Thomas had a plan. Thomas arranged Gordon’s coaches early, and Guz backed down on the front of the train. Before Gordon arrived, she melted to a puddle and clung to the rails. When the guard blew his whistle, Gordon started, but he merely slipped and slid, his wheels failing to grab the metals. Gordon was so cross that they had to uncouple him and move him away. The only engine to pull the train was Guz. It would be difficult, but with her new metal tires, she could do it if she had Thomas’ help.

[wabashmfginc]

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[ryan-rts]

I just love to stick on the model trend! But I haven't done much art recently so give it time.

Anyways, I've shown off two completed models, now I think it's only fitting that I should show off some of the many work in progress models I have.

Model making comes in leaps and bounds and has many different stages. The painting stage is a simple fun stage that I like to sit at most of the time, however it means that locos just sit in one plain colour for a long time, and that's what's happened to most of my projects. Lining out models is another stage and, for me, can be quite tedious. The amount of models I have to line out is frightening, but to have the completed model does mean more to me than having a WIP project taking up desk space! Final stages include spraying a model with a protective coat of varnish and/or weathering the model before varnishing.

Some of the models I have as current WIPs are mostly fictional and are Canon to my little model railway world.

A nice one to start with is of my GWR Collet Rebuilt City class!

In my Model World, the 30s were a weird time on the Great Western. They needed light weight passenger orientated designs for piloting duties and branch services. Charles Collett, Chief Mechanical Engineer at the time, had already come up with his Dukedogs, combining the chassis of a Bulldog with the boiler of a Duke, giving them their nickname. However, while they were ideal for the rural branch lines, they weren't best suited to piloting duties. Train piloting, more commonly known as double heading, was to help give more power to move trains. While Castles and Kings were plenty, the older designs like the Saints were finding it hard to keep up on the heavier expresses out of Paddington. Collett went back to the drawing board and brainstormed ideas. Taking inspiration from the Dukedogs, and knowing their performance on passenger trains, Collett found the perfect engines.

The GWR City Class, designed and built by Collett's predecessor, George Jackson Churchward, started their working lives in 1903, by the 30s however they were old engines of a bygone pre war time. The GWR was modifying, and there wasn't any future for them. Or so it was said.

Collett went to the withdrawal sidings at Swindon and picked out the last two members of the City class, No.3718 'City of Winchester' and No.3719 'City of Exeter', and took them into the works for modifications. The two locomotives were overhauled and received Collett style cabs.

The two were put to work on Piloting the Saints, Stars and other elderly designs out of Paddington on trains too heavy to handle. Because of their success Collett wanted to rebuild No.3716 'City of London' and No.3717 'City of Truro', unfortunately for him, No.3716's despoal dates had been finalised and No.3717 had been preserved by the London & North Eastern Railway because if its claimed 100mph run.

Later on in life, as the Castles and Kings dominated the Western Mainlines out of Paddington and the Stars were rebuilt or withdrawn, Nos.3718 and 3719 found little work. However, a notorious route was calling them. The Devon and Cornish Banks in the South West were the GWR's steepest gradients. Often trains were banked or struggled over the grades. For the larger passenger workings the two locomotives were reallocated to Newton Abbot. Express trains would stop here one of the Cities attached to the front, and the train was piloted over until the gradients were level enough. At the next station from their location, the train would stop, the City uncoupled and the Express would continue on. The City loco would then be turned and pilot another express in the opposite direction.

When reallocated, No.3718 'City of Winchester' was renumbered to No.3518 and No.3719 'City of Exeter' became No.3519. This was done so that new 5700/8750 Pannier Tanks could take their numbers in the 37xx range.

The two locomotives carried these number until their withdrawals in the 50s. They out lived all of their class, except for 3717 'City of Truro', and gained an extra twenty years on their life. They bowed out of service like proper ladies, piloting two trains over the Devon and Cornish Banks, before double heading a train to Swindon Works, their final resting place.

My WIP model of the Collett Rebuilt City Class is the Airfix City of Truro kit, which is still available by Dapol. Because of how 00 gauge can be sometimes double heading locos, this loco is a freewheeling Dummy loco, however if I could, a tender drive modification could be made so she works under her own power. My plan is to make this one No.3518 'City of Winchester' and put her in the condition she was in during her time on the Devon and Cornwall banks.

This loco was a reignited project from a long time ago, so not many pictures of her model being built are on my current phone, however I do have this photo of her in her current wip condition. She is ready for name and number plates, however due to money and also the factor that the plates need to be custom etched, Winfred, as she's been nicknamed, will be in this condition for some time. However when she gets her plates, a future update will be made.

[sunshine-vine]

I personally don't use social media outside of Tumblr, literally signed up for Tumblr exclusively for the art. Most of my IRL friends don't use social media, unless it's TikTok.

Now, marketing is not my *thing*, but business management and data analysis *are* in my wheelhouse. So, please remember to take this with a grain of salt; it's from the perspective of an analyst (with sales experience), but not a marketer. Do what works for you, and only what works for you and leave the rest. This advice is, of course, free haha.

My advice is that if you don't enjoy marketing, the best way for you to push your products is gonna be to have someone else and algorithms do it for you. The reason is, if you market your own products, you are putting in more effort for a less effective strategy, which leaves less time and energy to do what you're actually good at. As an analogy, you wouldn't want to hire an engineer and have them also managing your office or something. It's a waste of resources, from a business perspective. There are a couple of methods for uncoupling "you" from the work of "marketing"; Some are more lucrative than others.

Perhaps the "ideal" strategy starting out would be if you could trade art pieces or another talent to someone who is good at / likes doing marketing work in a service-for-service arrangement to get you *started.* This, however, is not a long term solution, because eventually you will need larger campaigns and it wouldn't make sense to be paying someone in art on a regular basis. Putting ads on your website and paying your marketer a portion of the commission works too. Again, you can research ways to ethically pay someone to run the social media side of your marketing strategy for more and better ideas there.

AI has become a controversial topic in the art community for obvious reasons, but remember when I say Artificial Intelligence I'm not talking about generative AI, I'm talking about the algorithms used to target ads. The reality is, the more targeted your ads are, the more sales you are likely to get, so brushing up on this technology so that you understand when you're getting your money's worth for ad placement is recommended. It also is going to help you be more "hands off" with your socials, because the AI algorithms will be running around the internet doing more of the work for you.

Having a community "in real life" that you are an active, contributing member of helps a lot. Go out in the area you live in, put out flyers with your website and some coupon codes. Find the artists and people who like art. Find the communities of people who get together on weekends and do things. There is bound to be an art gallery in any major city and most large towns. Even some small towns have a thriving art community. Figure out what conventions people buy art at. Where can you display and sell your art? You might be surprised how many local, small businesses are willing to display your art with a price tag on it for a small commission of the sales. Talk to your local Chamber of Commerce. They usually have resources for this kind of thing. Colleges have message boards you can post to, whether IRL or online. Public libraries and recreation centers have art shows. There are so many places in the physical world where people might see and buy your art, or at least remember your name.

Now, depending on what *kind* of art you're selling, plenty of businesses purchase art for their own use. So, if this kind of art is in your repertoire even if it's not your main source of income, you can get connected with interior designers near you, consulting firms, anyone who has access to people who make buying decisions for physical spaces, that can be an option.

Influencer marketing is a thing that can get your art in front of millions of people at once. If you know any internet micro celebrities willing to share your designs, this is something that might be an option. Again, it depends greatly on your connection with your community. Always be careful in these kinds of arrangements, of course. "Business + Friends" is a tricky tightrope to walk, and marketing contracts with influencers who you don't know can be steeply expensive.

TLDR: The secret sauce is to get out and talk to people IRL, let word of mouth build up, and let someone else handle the social media side as soon as you are able to.

Best of luck to you!! I hope even one piece of this advice helps you out. Business is difficult, marketing is difficult, SOCIALIZING is difficult, and you are having to do it ALL as an independent artist. Finding people and places to delegate some of this legwork too should hopefully expand your reach and free you up to do the work you love.

💚 Vine

Please reblog this, I'm dying out here

I'm struggling to keep up with socials. theyre scattered, divided, leaderless. I don't know which socials are even worth having other than tumblr but I would love advice! Doesn't matter if you're a creator, I want to know where you find your content!

[johannstutt413]

(requested by confronting-reflections) Blemishine/Mudrock

“...Cruelty-free Orirock processing? I’m not sure I follow.” The Doctor was reading a proposal brought to him by the Engineering department, and the main thrust of it, frankly, was eluding him.

“Not all of us can talk to rocks,” Blemishine explained - after all, this was her project, “but those who can are concerned that our current methods of processing them for use in various material components are excessively harsh. I also think that we can more efficiently prepare them through other methods, like some of the ones I wrote up in this proposal, and if nothing else it’ll be a weight off the shoulders of our rock-speakers.”

He looked at her face for a moment, watching her expression, before nodding. “You’re spending time with Mudrock, I see. I’m happy she’s making friends.”

“Th-that’s not the point, Doctor-”

“No, but it is important nonetheless.” He tapped the stack of papers he was looking through. “The reasons people do things are just as important as the things they do, and you doing this on her behalf tells me not only that you care about this, but about her. So! I’ll approve this.”

Maria bounced over to his side of his desk and hugged him. “Thank you, Doctor!”

“Of course.” He didn’t hug her tightly back, but enough for her to know he was there.

“I’ll go tell her right away.” The Kuranta pulled back, went back for a second hug, and then left to see Mudrock, taking out her phone to send her a text: “He’s gonna approve it! I’m so happyyyyy!!! :D :D :D See you soon!”

That soon was sooner than the mechanic expected, as they met in the hall on their way to two different places. “Oh, hi!”

“Hey.” The Sarkaz stopped to talk to her.

“I forgot you might be busy, honestly,” she admitted, scratching the back of her neck. “I just got really excited.”

The golemancer shook her head, since Blemishine couldn't see the smile on her face. “Always have time for you.”

“You mean that? Heheh.”

“Adorkable.” She shook her head again, chuckling to herself. “I’ll let you know when I’m done with my checkup.”

Ah, so that’s where she was going. “Kay-kay! I’ll be at my ‘bench.”

“Then I’ll head straight there when I’m done,” Mudrock assured her.

“Cool! See you then!” Back to Engineering for the Kuranta. ‘Hope it’s not too long from now...’

Depending on one’s definition of ‘too long,’ the Sarkaz’s appointment may or may not have fallen into that category; as it was, Blemishine didn’t feel the time as much because she had some work to do on making her proposal a reality. It was strange to think at times the only reason they’d met was because they were both Defender operators, but after working together on several key operations, and thanks to the knight’s natural charm, they’d become true friends. Not that Maria didn’t feel some competition with the golems the golemancer shaped from her Arts, admittedly, but competition she could win, at least…

When Mudrock arrived at the mechanic’s station, she found her hard at work putting together the keystone piece for her alternative method of breaking down Orirock - the method the pair had designed together, with some input from Earthspirit and Eyjafjalla. “I’m back.”

“Yay!” Blemishine didn’t immediately uncouple herself from her project, though. “I just need to make sure this is properly calibrated, and then I’ll be done!...For today, at least.”

“Alright. Anything I can do to help?”

The Kuranta shook her head. “Nope! And twist twist twist...Alright, now I just need to test the speed on this, so I’m sure it’s calibrated right. Goggles on!”

“Mask on,” the Sarkaz echoed, watching with interest. “That looks fast to me.”

“It is, but I’m not sure it’s fast enough? Or is it fine if they aren’t instantly powdered so long as we’re not using chemicals?” Maria took her eyewear off once the small motor stopped spinning.

The golemancer consulted the earth in her suit before nodding. “They say it’s fine. Chemicals are the problem; they don’t mind being ground up.”

“I guess they’d have to be okay with it, since it’s what you and Earthspirit suggested in the first place.” She shook her hair out of the ponytail she’d put it in while she was working, letting it fall loosely against her back. “Alright, that means I’m done for the day, then! Are you doing rounds today?”

“I talked to them on my way back. No other plans for the evening.” The Sarkaz didn’t need to specify that ‘they’ were her various golems spread throughout Rhodes Island, or that ‘no other plans’ simply meant she had all the time in the world for Maria. That was automatic.

Blemishine clapped once. “Great! What sounds good to you tonight?”

“Well...” Mudrock hesitated for a moment. “A movie at my place?”

“Ooh, sounds good to me! What are we watching?” The knight fell into step behind Mudrock as they left Engineering for the Sarkaz’s apartment.

The golemancer knew just the one, but she didn’t want to spoil it. “You’ll see. It comes on in a couple hours.”

“Cool!” They were still going to her place, though. “I’ll order us some food, then.”

“I made an order already. Should be there when we get there.”

Oh? This was new. “Alright! Um, is there anything I can do, then?”

“Wait for me on the couch?” She requested. “It won’t be long.”

“Alright, sure!” Wait for what, the Kuranta wondered…

For all the time they’d spent together, Mudrock had still always worn her suit around Maria; when they went for coffee or something, she’d take off her helmet, but outside of those (admittedly increasingly common) peeks behind the curtain, Blemishine didn’t actually know what her friend looked like under her suit. Judging by how thick it was, and how tall she was, she had to be quite a sight - a Sarkaz with Hoshiguma’s strength but with the appropriate amount of muscle, probably.

Tonight, that was going to change.

At the golemancer’s door was a bag from a Kazi’ place the knight had mentioned wanting to try. Of course, she immediately noticed that. “Oooh! I was waiting to try this place with you.”

“Mhmm.” It was starting to get hot in the containment suit. “Set it on the table for me?”

“Oh, sure!” She even remembered to give her something to do to make her feel involved. Mudrock sure was thoughtful.

In reality, she wanted out of her armor ASAP, and not just because it was making her sweat for the first time since coming to Rhodes Island. After all, it wasn’t every day she risked her best friendship to take their relationship a step in the romantic direction…It’d been a long time coming, but this was the night for it. While the mechanic set up dinner (couldn’t stop herself), Mudrock went to her room, changed out of her suit and into her one casual outfit, took a moment to calm herself, and stepped into her living room feeling expo- The lights were off. There were candles on the table. Had Blemishine...The Kuranta waved at her from the table. “I, um, wanted to set the mood. Did I get it right?”

“...Perfectly,” the Sarkaz replied, sitting next to her rather than across from her. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I didn’t, really. I was just kind of hoping? With the nice dinner and all, it just made sense to do it tonight.”

The power of the Nearl bloodline on full display - including the soft glow of the knight’s hair, entirely independent of the candlelight. If Mudrock hadn’t planned on this being a first date, she would’ve changed her plans right then and there. “Thank you for waiting on me.”

“Eh?” Maria cocked her head, since it was more visible in dim light than just blinking. “Oh! Um, you’re welcome, I guess. Heh. I didn’t even think about it like that.”

“I know.” Not like it mattered why she’d done it, in the end. The golemancer set her hand on the table; the food was cooling, but not she’d ordered couldn’t be reheated.

Blemishine took her hand and marveled at how it felt. “You’re so soft...Sorry, I didn’t want it to sound like that-”

“It’s fine.” More than fine, actually. “You’re always honest with me. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, but...it makes me sound like a ditz sometimes, doesn’t it?” It did to her, at least.

Mudrock squeezed her hand. Without soil to strengthen her grip, it wasn’t all that powerful physically, but emotionally? “It makes you easy to understand.”

“Yeah...” The Kuranta squeezed back. “Thanks for dinner, and the date. Heh.”

“Of course.” She slid her chair closer- and accidentally pulled it too far, managing to knock it off its feet and send herself falling forward.

Maria caught her without any trouble; she was so much lighter without her suit, after all. As the knight helped her right herself, the Sarkaz steadied herself by putting a hand on her thigh, her face passed close enough for their noses to touch…

Neither of them wasted the opportunity.

[desdemonafictional]

Chicken Soup, Approximately

a zadr fic

rated G for everyone

On Ao3

The moment that everything went wrong was when Dib climbed into that giant robot.

At the time, Zim was sitting in a pile of fairly comfortable trash on the street side, temporarily vanquished. For a second there he’d assumed that the day was over, so he’d just been biding his time, waiting for his PAK recovery sequence to rearrange his tissues into their correct positions. The giant robot had been slumped, powered down after its defeat, with Dib at its heels poking around in the wiring to satisfy his curiosity. And then some neighborhood mud monkey had leaned over their fence and shouted at Dib, “Hey, boy!”

 Dib looked up.

The mud monkey, slumping over the fence and waving some kind of recreation beverage, said, “You got your--your damn robot all over my lawn! Lookit Marge’s petunias, they’re, uh, flat! You done smashed ‘em! You big headed little hooligan!”

Dib looked down, at some sort of foliage flattened underneath his boots as well as Zim’s giant robot. They’d started fighting at one end of Zim’s neighborhood and ended up on the other side, and they had taken out a fair amount of lawns with the big metal feet in the struggle as Dib tried to uncouple the power cells from the inside. The neighbor on the other side was missing a chunk of roof tile.

“Oh,” he said, “sorry? It wasn’t really my fault, but sorry anyhow.”

“You better get your car off my lawn boy!” the human said, jabbing his bottle at the robot. 

“Okay, okay,” Dib said, “I will, jeeze. Give me a second, I’m trying to figure out where the power lifting mechanism connects to the joint--”

The human neighbor squinted one of his bulging eyes. “I know you,” he said, “you’re Membrane’s wacky little nutjob kid. Hey, hey, how did that worm taste? I saw you hack it up on the tv.”

Dib flipped up his collar, covering his neck. “I wasn’t--I had been poisoned, I didn’t eat it because I wanted to.”

“I saws you,” the human insisted, rattling his mostly empty bottle. “I saws you eat that worm good. You a bug eater, boy?”

Dib turned to Zim, making helpless gestures at the human on the fence. “Tell him,” Dib said, “tell him you poisoned me!”

 Zim gave the situation a shrewd once-over. While he was still immensely proud of himself for poisoning the Dib Human with that swamp worm, as he was of everything he did, he was also wary of agreeing to anything the Dib asked him in front of other people. “Zim has no recollection of this,” he said, kicking his feet against the trash bag.

“Zim!” Dib shouted. “It was just last week! You put the worm in my milkshake straw! You called me on the phone while I was on my dad’s show just to tell me about it! I had to induce vomiting or I would have died!”

“Are you sure?” Zim said, inspecting his gloves for damage. “This dirt monkey says you’re a bug eater. Maybe you just like eating bugs.”

“I do not like eating bugs!”

The human at the fence took a swig of his beverage. “You throw up bugs on purpose, boy? That’s some sick, that’s, man, that’s some crazy stuff.”

“Because it was poisonous!” Dib shouted.

“Hey Marge!” the human shouted, waving back at his house, “Marge, come laugh at the crazy bug eating boy!”

A distant voice shouted, “From the TV?”

Dib buried his nails in his scalp. “I’m not crazy! It was a rational--”

The neighbor human’s mate appeared at the fence, hair stacked precariously with curlers.  She pointed one of her claws at Dib, opened up her jaw, and erupted into caws of corvid laughter.

“Would you listen--”

A small child appeared at the fence as well, also pointing its finger at Dib and spewing laughter. More neighbors began to surface, curious about the epicenter of the amusement, and quickly joined in the ridicule. Public shaming was an activity that never failed to bring a group of earthlings together.

Zim watched with interest as Dib twitched visibly, in the middle of the garden, his whole body spasming. And then, rather than shouting and stamping and making a speech as he usually did when large groups of humans began to ridicule him publically, Dib simply turned on his heel and walked back to the robot.  He scaled the robot’s leg with a series of deft pulls, climbed into the dark cockpit, and then--quite matter of factly--punched the big red activate button. 

The arm cannons blazed to life.

“Who’s laughing now!” Dib howled, throwing his whole weight against the steering levers. The mecha rattled and roared, one enormous step heavy enough to rattle Zim’s teeth in his mouth. Black smoke poured off the auxiliary engines. Dib scream-cackled, his eyes huge and wild, as the mecha bore down clumsy and utterly unstoppable. He wrenched a knob and a hail of fire exploded the concrete all around them, chunks of it sailing up into the air as time seemed to slow down, and Zim-–in the middle of the smoke and shrapnel and wailing humans-–just stood there.

Watching.

He watched Dib, up there in that 20 ton deathbot, losing his Irk-forsaken mind, and Zim’s insides gave a horrible, perfect heave. It was like he was going to be sick, only, if he puked now there would just be little cartoon hearts all across his boots.

Wow, he thought. Look at the Dib Monkey go.

–

That wasn’t the first time that Dib had taken the invader’s breath away; it was only the first time he noticed it. There had been other moments, forgotten now—an aerial battle where their ships had been locked into a mirrored freefall, cockpit dome pressed to cockpit dome—an impromptu team-up, as Dib threw himself out the window of a building rigged to explode below him—a field trip in the park where Dib had casually handed Zim an ice cream cone, barely noticing what he had done in the midst of monologuing—

Zim’s attention was not entirely on the task of mixing radioactive isotopes into concrete solution. He turned the mixer with half a mind on the day before, turning over the memory of Dib’s nervous breakdown backlit against the yellow sky, the light glinting off the mecha around him—it was the most focused he had been on anything in a very long time, although he didn’t take any note of that change in himself. He was preoccupied with others.

Scowling, Zim thumped himself on the side of his head. “Be silent, brain meats,” he muttered, thumping himself harder. “Obey Zim.”

Across the laboratory, perched on a biohazard canister, GIR giggled and imitated him. “This is funnnn,” he said, clanking with each tap.

“It must be my brain meats,” Zim muttered. “Blasted wetware. Obey your master!”

“Maybe it’s your cute lil backpack!”

“Impossible,” Zim said. “My PAK is a state of the art piece of advanced computational brilliance. It is flawless! The error must be organic.”

GIR oooo’ed at nothing in particular. Zim gave up on his work and tossed the mixer into the vat, stalking across the lab as the isotopes quickly swallowed the mixer whole. He pulled his goggles from his head and threw them over his shoulder. The memory of Dib, sunlit and gloriously mad in his tons of deadly metal, had been troubling Zim for hours now, distracting him from even the simplest of his nefarious doings. It was like a tumor. A tumor obstructing the beautiful correct function of his intelligence interface. And if it was a tumor, well then, Zim would just have to remove it forcibly.

“GIR,” he shouted, “prep the medical lab for surgery!”

As the tiny robot went screaming ahead of him, Zim stripped off his hazmat gloves and grabbed a box of medical ones from a passing shelf. As he stepped into the irritatingly bright medical lab, the computer chimed in with, “REMINDER! Invader Zim is four solar orbits overdue for medical evaluation!”

“Ignore,” Zim said.

“REMINDER! Invader Zim is four solar orbits overdue for—”

“Ignore!” Zim shrieked. “Ignore all!”

“Acknowledged,” the computer muttered.

Zim took an uneasy seat on the edge of the operation table and pulled one of several extendable arms from the ceiling apparatus. He unfolded the square at the end and lined its edges up with his forehead, flipping down a series of lenses until the magnification on the video feed was sufficient for his purposes.

“Engage hard light scalpel,” he ordered. Heat immediately flared to life against his skin. “Incision area one by four by four.”

In a sizzle and pop, the surgical droid severed a square of skull and plucked it from the opened site. Zim squinted at the image projected across the wall in front of him.

“What have you hidden, Dib?” he said to himself, guiding the video probe deeper into his frontal cortex. There was a strange feeling as it passed into him, a fuzziness across his tongue and a static hum in his belly, but the pain receptors were neatly turned off by the PAK interface. After a minute or two of poking around in his own insides, Zim started losing patience.

“Where is it?” he snarled, poking hard enough at his brain matter that his left arm gave a spasm and knocked a spanner off the side table. “Computer! Scan for irregularities!”

“Beep,” the computer said. “Boop.”

Zim crossed his arms and tapped his heel impatiently while the program did an exhaustive malware scan. Finally, the monitor flashed in large letters: HORMONES.

“Hooooormones?” Zim read, “You mean the Dib introduced foreign chemicals into my Zim Veins?”

The screen flashed snow and then returned with the words corrected to: IRKEN HORMONES

“Computer!” Zim snapped, “Explain this!”

The computer hummed. “You appear be exhibiting primitive BONDING HORMONES, resulting in ATTRACTION and HAPPINESS.”

“The Dib did this?” Zim said. “How dare he make Zim happy against his will!”

“Uh,” the computer said.

GIR spit out a mouth full of broken syringes. “Sounds like Looove.”

“Preposterous,” Zim said. “Zim is a hardened combat veteran, not to mention an elite invader! It’s just some kind of… slow acting poison. Kinda thing. Computer, initiate blood draining protocols!”

“No toxins have been detected in the blood of Invader Zim.”

“Well drain it anyway!” Zim shouted. “I want it out of me! Right now!”

“The hormones are being produced by several of your key glands,” the computer said, sounding a little reproachful. “The source is too complex to be removed with traditional surgical procedures.”

Zim sighed and dug a scalpel out of his supplies. “Zim must do everything around here,” he said, examining the joint of his arm where he knew there to be at least one major hormone producing gland. There was also a major artery but, eh, he’d cross that bridge when he burned it.

“The source of the hormone production starter enzyme is located in the organic brain,” the computer continued. “Even if you removed the glands, once they regenerated, the enzyme would only order production to resume.”

“Curses!” Zim said. He lobbed the scalpel across the room, where it stuck in a secondary monitor with an electric fizzle and a puff of smoke. After a moment, he smoothed a hand over his uniform and righted himself.

“No matter,” he said. “I will simply have to hack my fleshware.”

He stalked over to the monitor and pulled down a keyboard from the suspended apparatus. 

“I have researched this ‘love’,” Zim said, making quote-y marks with his claws, “before. I recognize the symptoms. If I have contracted this 'emotion’ then the Dib has certainly infected me with his primitive disease in order to take me out of the game. How cunning. Not!”

Zim swung back around to the keyboard, inputting a search for “rmoance” which he belatedly, after cursing at the error404 screen for a few moments, corrected to “romance”.

“Foolish worm baby,” he muttered, “for I am Zim! Master of all research and HOLY QUIZNACK what is that?”

GIR toddled up behind him and took a look at the screen. “Pogo stick,” he said. “Weeeee-hoo, lookit em go.”

Zim had already smashed the escape key. “Okay,” he said, “never mind that. I don’t need to research romance specifically, I can just research earth diseases. COMPUTER, search the 'inter webs’ for information on curing this disGUSTING affliction.”

The computer buzzed with static for a moment, and then popped open a neatly formatted Gadzooks Answers page across the screen

The computer announced, “Mommy blogger 92 says to feed a fever, starve a cold.”

“Hmm. HMMMM.” Zim peeled back one glove and pressed it against his forehead. “But I am neither hot nor cold! Useless!”

GIR piped up, “Try thinkin about smoochies!”

“Ugh,” Zim said. “No way. There will be no swapping of the spit for this invader. The Dib would have to beg me, beg me on his weak little human knees, crawl through the mud on his hands and knees and then PERHAPS in my beneficent glory I would allow him to kiss… the mighty boots of… Zim…” He paused. A terrible expression passed over his face.

“GIR!” he shouted, “Get the thermometer!”

Two minutes later Zim threw the thermometer across the room, splattering mercury over the far wall.

“FINE!” he shouted. “Fine! The illness is a fever! How does one feed a fever?”

GIR listed a number of items, most of which were not edible. When he got as far as soap, Zim let out a heavy groan and threw himself into the spinning chair.

“Sources say,” the computer interrupted, “chicken noodle soup will DESTROY YOUR FEVER.”

“But it’s…. all meaty… and full of water,” Zim said, barely holding in a gag. He tapped his claws on the arm rest for a moment, considering. “Noodles seem harmless enough,” he decided at last. He levered himself up from the chair and marched off towards the elevator, hands clasped behind his back.

“Come along GIR,” he called, “I’m sure we have some extra soda around here somewhere….”

–

When Zim took his seat for homeroom the next morning, Dib was already at the blackboard trying to explain something to a blank-faced and uninterested audience. He was covered in white dust, practically vibrating in place, and jabbing a piece of chalk at a rudimentary graph of some footprint. He paused in mid jab as Zim walked into the room.

“…What on earth are you holding?” he said.

Zim looked down at his bowl of soup. Then he looked up at Dib. “None of your beeswax, Dibberton.”

“That’s… not my name,” Dib said.

“Hey,” a kid in the front row said, “lay off him, Dibberton.”

“That’s not my–ugh.” Dib turned back to Zim, who had neatly perched himself in a seat toward the back. “That looks like noodles in grape juice.”

Zim shoved a tangy purple noodle into his mouth. “That’s because it is, Dibberton.”

Haha! From the look on the monkey’s face, Zim has thwarted him indeed! The flavor of sucess is sweet! And also, a little carbonated.

[portable-generator]

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[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Crossing the Divide by Megeen R. Mulholland

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/crossing-the-divide-by-megeen-r-mulholland/

Megeen R. Mulholland received her Ph.D. from the University at Albany, and is a graduate of the Master of Arts program in English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University. She is a professor at Hudson Valley Community College where she teaches literature and writing. Her work has been published in Journal of Poetry Therapy; Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Plath Studies; Phoebe: A Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Theory, and Aesthetics; Roots and Flowers: Poets Write about Their Families; and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined. Her first volume of poetry, titled Orbit, has been called an “epiphany of parenthood” and is available at Finishing Line Press and all booksellers.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Crossing the Divide by Megeen R. Mulholland

In this collection of poetry, Megeen R. Mulholland presents a fascinating arrangement of text and image in which family photos set parallel to the text engender poems and in turn forge a relation to her photographer father who died in the poet’s infancy. Kodachrome slides like the train cars they depict convey the past into the present, while the selected camera angles shoot beyond the frames into a future that remains to be sorted and formed. Mulholland invites readers to build an unbroken whole from pieces of the past, demonstrating how to look and reconstruct from life’s scattered moments. Through her father’s artistry, his exploration in images of trains and travel – metaphors for mechanical innovation and psychic expansion (the stuff of poetry!) – Megeen crosses the divide, both literally in photographs of the continental divide and figuratively, as she traverses spaces of material absence to form a constant, her father’s presence in her life.

The provocative images left by her father of lone and separated train cars seem to yearn for the elusive promises of new destinations; but the gathered mementos, like her image of spokes that surround and diagram a train’s engine, lead to family and its archeology of shared genes and philosophy. A steamer trunk in “Passages,” and the poems “Proof” and “Encircled by the Engraved Band” show how objects displaced and uncoupled from their first purpose but preserved in poetry continue to carry and transmit the past. Mulholland is a poet who deserves recognition and a wide readership.

–Mary Evans, Professor, Hudson Valley Community College

What Megeen R. Mulholland achieves in Crossing the Divide is something altogether impossible: the ability to take us on a quick but profound journey through grief over lost parents and transmute it into a conversation of all the things that make life worth living. Using the convention of old pictures and slides inherited after their passing, the author penetrates into the surface of each photographic stop along the way to find the truth of character underneath, and her discoveries come to resonate very quickly as our own. So much more than just a personal journey into the generations of her Irish immigrant family, Crossing the Divide is the sort of work that you not only enjoy reading once, but want to allow to sit, brew, and then consume again, savoring the piquancy that mellows richer and deeper with each reading.

–Gram Slaton, Author of Spider Lake

These poems, tender, family stories, shaped in narrow lines like train tracks or the shape of rail cars, are compelling because they are built of images of things, like images in photographs are in the language of cameras — “no idea but in things” as WC Williams said. The poet starts with trying to find the image of a father she never knew except in family stories and the photographs he left behind. But that inevitably takes the poet to her mother with the children and the mother’s loss, and strength, the story of a couple, of the remnants of what makes memory that becomes the story.

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[uncoupledengine]

I’ve been getting back into the musical Starlight Express. For those who don’t know it’s a musical about trains. I’m sure I heard somewhere before that Andrew Lloyd Webber tried to make a production of the Railway series but it got rejected, so he created Starlight Express instead.

I could totally see James being in the musical if it had happened. His character lends so well to the campness and style of the show that I love it.

Dunno if this would count as a human au. Is it a human au if my human engine is pretending to be an engine???

[rocklandhistoryblog]

FLASHBACK FRIDAY – NEWS FROM YESTERYEAR:

GLASS HONORED – UNCOUPLES AFTER 43 YEARS ON THE JOB

Excerpt from The Journal News,

February 24, 1970 – #50YEARS AGO

Charles Glass Sr. was feted at a dinner at Cornetta's Restaurant in Piermont. Glass is pictured with friends who honored him ‪Friday night‬ upon his retirement. From right are Sal Sorriento, superintendent for maintenance; Walter B. Brooks Sr., president of Local 89; Charles Rhode, mill manager; and Richard Dawson, chairman of the event. Photo by Art Gunther.

GLASS HONORED – UNCOUPLES AFTER 43 YEARS ON THE JOB

Charles Glass, who for 17 years drove the locomotive used to switch freight cars on the Continental Can Company’s property in Piermont was honored Friday night on the occasion of his retirement at a dinner held at Cornetta’s Restaurant in Piermont. Company representatives, fellow employees, relatives and friends attended.

Glass had held other positions at the paper mill during his 43 years of employment, his most recent job, that of a truck driver, but very few people ever thought of him as anything else than Continental Can Company’s locomotive engineer. He would still have been at the time of his retirement if trucks hadn’t largely supplanted the railroad in the movement of freight to and from the Piermont plant.

“There wasn’t enough freight coming in by train for the company to need its own locomotive, so it did away with it,” Glass explained.

He said that the locomotive was sent to one of the company’s other plants. He believed it was in Louisiana. Glass said that if he ever saw the engine again, he thought he would recognize it from the dents it had accumulated during its long service at Piermont.

Glass was born in Virginia and grew up on a farm in Pittsylvania County, on which he helped to plant tobacco. The farm was only a few miles from Danville.

He was 17 when his family moved north to Nyack in the spring of 1926. Shortly afterwards, the youth got a job with the Piermont Paper Company, driving a horse and wagon taking rubbish to the dump.

The company had two horses, Glass said. The one which he drove was a white horse named “Dan.” Although the hostler would feed “Dan,” Glass had to curry and brush the horse before taking him out.

The company’s dump in those days was not in the marshland alongside the Piermont pier as it is today, abut opposite the Piermont Firehouse. Today, the area is the company parking lot. Glass remarked that much of the lot is filled land.

The youth from Virginia didn’t drive a horse and wagon for very long. He became a brakeman on the switch engine on which he later was to be engineer. All freight in those days came in by rail over the Erie Railroad and each carload of freight had to be shifted to one of 30 loading doors where it was unloaded. Later empty cars, as well as cars of freight being shipped from the plant, had to be lined up in readiness for the Erie locomotives which came in to take them out.

_____

Flashback Friday appears every Friday. To receive the full Flashback report (formerly seen in the Rockland Review), visit our website at RocklandHistory.org. To receive it in you email inbox, enter your email address at the bottom of the website’s landing page, or call the HSRC office to register your email address (845)634-9629. Thanks.

[kremlin]

if computers wanted to communicate with us, how would they do that?

i’ll humor this once since people tell me to quit being an asshole all the time

computers, even the huge neural networks at google or the supercomputers at oak ridge, have no semblance of what we consider “consciousness” in terms of existentialism or the human condition or whatever

it’s true that our brains, much like computers, operate via exchanging electrical signals between huge networks of uniform, similar logic units (neurons) over structured and organized connections joining them (synapses). there are multiple such systems in our brain (lobes, etc) that work more-or-less independently but communicate through more sophisticated pathways (neurotransmitters, corpus callosum) which allows for the nuanced behavior you see in mammals (i.e. i see a banana: photons bouncing off the banana interact with the rods and cones in my eyes, translating the wavelength & intensity of the banana’s light to structured signals that travel down my optical nerve, and are processed by my occipital lobe, which then works with my hippocampus [through the aforementioned higher-order channels]. the processed signal is matched with an extant representation of “bananas” in my memory and the conclusion “this thing in front of me is a banana, banana is food”. since food is very important to us, this will prompt information exchange with the part of my brain responsible for digestion/consumption to ascertain whether or not i should eat the banana, which would involve communicating with motor nerves, and so on, and so on)

i have absolutely no idea how brains work

a computer, let’s say a fruit picking robot, might follow a similar sequence of events and decisions. light bouncing off the fruit would hit & interact with a photosensitive sensor surface (analog: rods/cones in eyeball) whereupon a small voltage (characteristic of the implicated photons’ wavelength (color) and intensity (# of photons interacting temporally)) is generated via the photoelectric effect(analog: electrical signal traveling from optic nerve to brain). that signal represents a single pixel’s information and it, along with 2,073,599 similar ones (assuming 1080p sensor*) simultaneously travel down a network of circuity that serializes and organizes them (analog: occipital lobe) and they eventually end up at some analog-to-digital converter that turns the color information into 1s and 0s. the ADC would write those 1′s and 0′s to a block of SRAM (analog: short term memory) which provides a temporary, expensive, capacity-limited but high bandwidth medium for the OCR-like software running on the main processor to make a determination if the image captured contains fruit that should be picked or not

even though the human brains and computers share functionally similar fundamental operational building blocks (neurons/transistors), have those similar building blocks connected in such a way that allows for consistent, logical responses given consistent stimuli (synapses/bitwise logic), have multiple independent systems built from such media that communicate with one another (ocipital lobe + corpus callosum, etc/analog-to-digital converter writing to RAM via DMA which is later read by CPU) to give rise to very nuanced and sophisticated behaviors (human peeling and eating banana because he saw it and was hungry/robot banana picker manipulating solenoids and actuators to grab banana based on pixel analysis whose confidence value exceeded some threshold) they are not at all the same

there is a reason that things like asimo the robot aren’t at all what you see in a movie like i-robot. so far, i have explained why computers and brains are similar as to establish why you would ask me this question in the first place: your understanding of the “mammal eating banana/robot picking banana” scenario might not be as fleshed-out as mine but you still see the same thing at the end of the day; computers resembling conscious beings. your question is reasonable. now let’s look at where things diverge

central processing units are the most intricate and complicated parts of most computers. the newest, top of line i7 contains between 1 and 2 billion transistors. the human brain, on the other hand, contains somewhere between 21-26 billion neurons. that’s two whole orders of magnitude! that is hugely significant. but don’t be shortsighted, mislead: it’s not that we are just supercomputers. even CPUs from the 70s that contain mere thousands of transistors, ones simple enough that you can see each individual transistor with a microscope, are still able to solve hundreds, perhaps thousands of complicated arithmetic problems with zero mistakes in the time it takes you to take a sip of coffee -- our brains and our computers compromise two entirely different categories of problem-solving engines

why is this?

computers operate entirely on one fundamental premise: 1s and 0s represented by periods of high or low voltages (respectively) in some conductor. just those two and nothing else. the 1s and 0s are mere representations of reality, they are necessarily imprecise and inaccurate understandings of events and media and stimuli coming from reality. for example, take a perfectly shot 8K image of the david in rome, presented on a perfectly calibrated state-of-the-art 8K LCD display. this image is just a large list of ordered pixels which each contain 1s and 0s describing the intensity of colors of that pixel

this super state-of-the-art image still pales in comparison to what you’d see if you were actually standing in front of the david and seeing it yourself -- the light reflecting off the statue hasn’t passed through a dirty enumeration/digitization process that strips it of the important nuances like hue/chromacity/etc.** and boils it down to 24 bits -- twenty-four ones or zeroes -- that represent the perceived red, blue, and green values needed to later represent the image on a screen

audio is similar -- even with the highest end headphones and playback equipment, wave files will never match what you would hear at a live rendition of the same songs. the implicated information simply cannot be losslessly translated to ones and zeroes, making the eventual rebroadcast necessarily flawed

our brains have a more sophisticated approach

afaik (and again i need to restate i’m not a neuroscientist or biologist or anything similar) the electrical signals fired between synapses aren’t at all like the transistor-to-transistor logic*** present in a CMOS circuit. it’s not a square wave; not a timed, sequenced transmission of two voltages. it’s some complicated analog signal that contains much more information than possible with a similar transmission of 1s and 0s. it isn’t half-duplex, either, i don’t think: electrical signals are generated and perceived on both ends of the synapse, and there are feedback responses that aren’t present in computers. we are much better at keeping our perceptions of reality accurate and precise because the form the physical media embodying these representations takes is sophisticated enough to capture all -- or most -- of the nuances present in reality

there is a term describing a phenomena decievingly similar to the one described above that i’m very hesitant to reveal, it will probably lead to misconceptions. the term is sampling and it refers to taking a continuous signal (like light waves or sound waves) and turning it into a discrete one. continuous signals contain an infinite amount of information, which is to say that one could keep zooming in and zooming in on a continuous signal and keep finding newly-visible modulations and evidence that there “is still more” to the signal****. it’s infinite. a discrete signal -- like a square wave representing 1s and 0s -- contains a finite amount of information. going from continuous -> discrete always implicates a loss of quality, or a loss of information formerly present in the continuous signal and now missing from the discrete one

sampling, as described above, is sort of an analog to the differences between how computers process reality and our brains process reality. our brains do indeed “sample” reality and turn an infinite amount of information to a finite amount, but it does so in a way that is more complex than just “associating binary numbers describing equidistant timewise signal magnitudes with a perceived signal”. this isn’t an “analog vs. digital” thing, the mechanisms and sequences of chemical/electrical exchanges go far beyond “sampling analog signal and re-creating it with bits”. it’s not well understood by emeritus professors at jon hopkins. it’s not well understood by me either

what really breaks this analogy is neurotransmitters. chemicals that do something or other, i don’t understand what exactly, with neurons. seratonin, norephedrine, all those. iirc there’s something like six or eight that all have heavily contextual and relative impacts. contextual meaning that seratonin in one part of the brain can cause a completely different category of behavior than a similar amount somewhere else, and relative meaning that even if we know that increased levels of serotonin in a certain part of the brain is associated with a “happy” feeling, that such an association may be dependent on other concentrations being present in other parts of the brain

it’s all very relative and all very contextual, unlike computers. signals in computers have objective meanings and are (hopefully) heavily uncoupled with systems they weren’t created to drive. the PC register in your CPU, actualized in 32 or 64 very fast SRAM cells, will never fluctuate based on the signals traveling through the USB controller on your motherboard, for example. this is why computers are so, so, so much better suited to solve math problems: there is an ALU built for the sole purpose of adding/subtracting/multiplying/bitwise logic’ing binary numbers. these binary numbers represent real numbers, and luckily in this case, binary numbers can represent real numbers with 100% accuracy. since the signals traveling through the ALU have categorically nothing to do with anything but the input values, there’s nothing to impeded computation and it happens very quickly. there’s also nothing to “screw up” the actual sequences occurring during computation, which is why your computer never gets such problems wrong like you might on a math test in school*****

our brains are not so brutalistically decoupled. the ~25 billion neurons in your brain are connected in a way that doesn’t look anything like the conductive pathways lithographically printed onto a silicon die. in graph theory terms, the neural maps in our brains look much more like a complete graph:

 as opposed to what a computer’s transistor connectivity map might look like: a minimally spanning tree:

the result of this higher rate of connectivity in our brain, connectivity between things that might have very little to do with one another, is existential phenomena and noumenona -- specifically emergent phenomena 

if there’s one thing i want you to take home from this outrageously long wall of text is the concept of emergent phenomena 

emergent phenomena is, and i’m paraphrasing here, when higher-level, more sophisticated, architecturally complex phenomena arise from a configuration of consistently acting phenomena of lesser complexity and sophistication. emergence is seen in modern computers -- the cold exacting logic of 1s and 0s zipping through a processor, addressed lists of instructions describing arithmatical steps to be performed on a number of registers -- can give rise to something like a film being played on a monitor. a calculator performs nearly the same set of actions a CPU does, but with a calculator it’s numbers in, numbers out: no significant change in complexity. but a CPU driving a video card that reads in bits of an MPEG file and running them through a digital signal processing chip to very quickly (as in the film is presented 60 frames per second) extract pixel information suitable for a monitor? that is emergent as hell

human brains though! jesus christ. they display titanically, astonishingly more significant incidences of emergence, and -- according to my completely uninformed and laymen understanding of the brain -- this is due to the much more liberal neural connectivity in the brain opposed to on the silicon

we have electrical signals zipping to and from neurons in the brain. we have a handful of neurotransmitters that do this and that, here and there. and what do we get?

we get things like emotions, curiosity, ability to learn, ability to synthesize information based on prior knowledge. we’re able to do things like put money into a roth IRA, money that could buy food or something a much more simplistic, “robotic” creature would prefer, because we have a complex knowledge of the fact that we’ll need money when we grow old and can no longer work, and we have a concept of what an IRA is and why today’s money will multiply over the years. hell, we are able to analyze and ascertain how liable the investment firms in place today are to actually produce that money in the future, and we’re able to make an informed decision on whether or not to invest in an IRA based on how trustworthy we deem such institutions

we’re able to take our greasy ape brains and contort them to understand -- and master! -- the physical world around us, the parts that do not at all make sense to a mammalian brain primarily concerned with food, fucking, and shelter.

we built computers. we sat down and, through some amazing process, were able to teach ourselves how to think in the totally unnatural terms of electrical circuity, binary logic, etc. and make a computer. that’s nothing short of incredible

i’ll leave you with one final idea: the halting problem. the halting problem is very simply stated and understood, but implicates huge amounts when you start poking beneath the surface, which is now you, the reader’s, task. i’ll start you off

the halting problem proves, through universally valid and completely comprehensive mathematical proofs, that a computer cannot look at a program and an input to that program, and tell if the program will eventually complete****** given the input. it can’t tell if it’ll run into an infinite loop, which is loosely to say that you can’t write a program that will fix any bugs in another program

mathematically it’s impossible. it’s impossible to the same degree of certainty that exceeding the speed of light is impossible. to the same degree of certainty that gravity will exert forces of energies according to their proximity. impossible in the most absolute and severe way mankind can define

but you know what can solve these bugs? humans. humans and their brains.

wild.

----- annotations -----

* i’ve heavily simplified how image sensors work for the sake of brevity. image sensors are incredibly complicated even compared to other electronics and you’d need a physics, chemistry, and electrical engineering degree to properly understand how a digital image sensor works.

** hue/luminance/chromacity are indeed digitally enumerable. i do not know the exact information excluded by quanitization so i cheated. if you send me an ask being pedantic about YCbCr encoding i’m going to be snarky

*** i used the term TTL logic here because it provides an intended idea of the logic behind transistors talking to transistors. TTL is defined as a very specific standard and methodology no longer used today. i am aware. don’t be pedantic

**** continuous signals (nor much of anything) is “infinite” when modeled in terms of quantum physics. do not send me anything containing the words “planck length” or “superstrings”. you aren’t clever and you don’t understand quantum physics because nobody understands quantum physics.

***** our brains aren’t built to process math. math involves absolute, discrete values through which absolute, discrete answers result after comprehensively defined steps. our heavily-interconnected brains do much better at problems like “do i want to fuck or eat this bear” and “what is best way to utilize fire to kill the fucker stealing melons”, problems that have fuzzy starting premises and many (perhaps infinite) answers.

****** this is actually more amazing than you’d think at first glance because the kind of bugs the halting problem precludes solving don’t categorically involve completely unknown, outside stimulus. a program that spins until you click the mouse is obviously not determinable because the bug-solving software couldn’t have any idea of when someone will click the mouse. the debugging program can’t even spot infinite loop conditions when the target program appears deterministic and uncoupled from outside interrupts/events. that’s crazy.

[sciencespies]

Sticky proteins help plants know when—and where—to grow

https://sciencespies.com/biology/sticky-proteins-help-plants-know-when-and-where-to-grow/

Sticky proteins help plants know when—and where—to grow

Transcriptional responses vary along the root. Credit: Strader Lab

Depending on the temperature, a plant may synthesize the hormone auxin. Depending on the pathogens present, a plant may synthesize auxin. Depending on the available nutrients, water, stressors or development cues: auxin.

When a plant bends toward the light as it grows, the underlying chemical that regulates that movement?

Auxin.

Depending on the situation, the presence of this hormone can be a signal that kicks DNA transcription into gear, promoting growth and development, or it can keep transcription from happening.

An interdisciplinary team comprising members of Arts & Sciences and the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has recently uncovered a mechanism by which a plant can be affected in a myriad of ways based on the presence of the same hormone.

The research was published Aug. 14 in the journal Molecular Cell.

“You can have any cue,” said lead researcher Lucia Strader, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and associate director of the Center for Science & Engineering of Living Systems. “Light, temperature, different nutrients … the plant makes auxin in response to all of these things.” What follows as a result of that auxin release can also vary, from stress responses to leaf development to changes in the root system architecture.

Those responses are all results of Auxin Response Factors (ARFs), proteins which bind to DNA in a cell’s nucleus to facilitate growth and development in one way, or another.

The question Strader’s lab was investigating: how can ARFs do the right thing, in the right place, at the right time while at the same time preventing inappropriate responses?

The answer began with an updated understanding of the fundamental nature of ARFs.

They are always present in a plant, but ARFs are often impotent because they are bound by Aux/IAA repressor proteins, which keep the ARFs inactive, until auxin chemically uncouples them. A new understanding of the structure of the ARFs led to a new understanding about the way they connect.

The change centered on the PB1 domain, on the opposite end of the ARF protein from the DNA binding domain (where the ARF, once in the nucleus of a cell, will bind to DNA during the transcription process).

As opposed to being bound to repressor or ARF proteins in pairs, “ARF PB1 domains are like miniature bar magnets, with a plus side and a minus side, free on two ends to pair with other proteins,” Strader said. “There’s the potential for them to grow into long chains.”

Outliers in the cytoplasm

It turns out that ARF PB1 domain chain formation plays an unexpected role.

While researching ARFs, Samantha Powers, a graduate student in the lab, was tasked with tagging one of the 23 Arabidopsis ARFs as part of her research. The image she came back with was unusual. Instead of finding the ARFs in the nuclei of plant cells, they were showing up in the cytoplasm, the gel-like substance that surrounds the nucleus. “Which is weird,” Strader said.

Looking in the literature for studies showing the location of ARFs in plant cells, the team found one. Just one. And it looked much different than what Powers saw in her research: the ARFs were mostly where they “should” be, in the nuclei of the cells, with a couple of outliers in the cytoplasm.

Real-time video of YFP-ARF19 in a cell from the upper portion of the root. Credit: Lucia Strader

Powers, it turned out, had been looking at ARFs in the plant’s mature root, while the study they found had looked at the meristematic root tip, the area where young cells divide.

“The beautiful thing about plants as a developmental model is that in a single individual, at a single time point, you have every stage of development present,” Strader said. The youngest cells are at the beginning of the root system and since plant cells don’t move, they simply divide upward, building upon each other; the cells get older the farther away they are from the tip.

Powers’s finding, then, was a clue: In the younger cells, ARFs were in the nucleus, transcribing mRNA, but in the older cells, they were stuck in the cytoplasm, not doing much of anything. And in the intermediate regions, there was a mix.

Strader discussed these findings at a biophysics seminar, after which Alex Holehouse—then a Ph.D. student working in the lab of Rohit Pappu, the Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering—approached her with a specific proposal.

“He said, ‘While you were giving the talk, I downloaded the sequences of all 23 ARFs and analyzed them. I have data for you,'” Strader said.

Holehouse is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Pappu lab and is slated to start his own lab in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics in early 2020. He proposed that the ARFs that Powers and Strader were seeing in the cytoplasm were in fact protein condensates driven, in part by the “intrinsically disordered regions” of ARF proteins, the regions that lie between the DNA binding and the PB1 domains.

Holehouse postulated that the ARF proteins were transitioning from dispersed to condensed states to accumulate in the cytoplasm; similar to the way water molecules condense to form droplets.

“Conventional wisdom says that proteins have to adopt specific three-dimensional shapes to recognize their molecular targets; IDRs are different in that they are shape shifters,” Pappu said. “They can adopt different shapes depending on their contexts and these features make them ideal drivers of condensates providing they have the requisite sticky regions.

“Alex analyzed the sequences and found a very clear compositional distinction,” Pappu said.

The IDRs (intrinsically disordered regions) of particular ARFs had all the features of molecules that readily stick to themselves. Coupled with the ability for the ARFs to connect and form repeating structures—or oligomerize—via the PB1 domain, ARFs in the older cells condensed into assemblies that ensure that they remain stuck in the cytoplasm.

And when ARFs are stuck in the cytoplasm, they cannot initiate DNA transcription. “It is that simple,” Pappu said.

“We think this is a way of keeping that pathway from being active in a certain cell type without turning it off completely,” Strader said.

Plants as model systems

Guided by Holehouse’s detective work, Powers went on to mutate certain ARFs so they would all make their way into the nucleus. They found that, as long as the ARFs can make it into the nucleus to bind DNA, when auxin is present, transcription will occur, no matter the cell type.

“It’s really exciting because we have shown that forming condensates in the cytoplasm is a way of attenuating auxins,” Strader said. “Every cell is responsive to auxin when there is an ARF variant that’s constitutively nuclear, whereas unresponsive cells sequester ARFs in their cytoplasm.” A constitutively nuclear variant be able to activate genes in all cell types.

“Engineers routinely try to design biomaterials that can form depots within cells so as to control the release of material that gets tied up in the depots,” Pappu said. “What is fascinating is the level of control afforded to the localization of ARF proteins by making cytoplasmic depots, the condensates, via sticky IDRs in older cells. The depot making apparatus, comprising of molecules with sticky IDRs can tell older from younger cells. Being able to replicate this type of molecular control to make active matter would be a dream for bioengineers.”

The continuing collaboration between the Strader and Pappu labs is focused on adapting plants as model systems to study molecular and cellular processes that are tied to neurodegeneration.

That’s because this research shows a strong, positive biological role for protein condensation which, Strader pointed out, is the same process often associated with disease such as Alzheimer’s , ALS, and other prion-related disorders.

For plants, this research illustrates how condensation is a mechanism that can prevent them from transcribing genes by keeping transcription factors out of the nucleus in certain contexts, ensuring auxin does the right thing, at the right time, in the right place.

Explore further

Putting the brakes on lateral root development

More information: Samantha K. Powers et al, Nucleo-cytoplasmic Partitioning of ARF Proteins Controls Auxin Responses in Arabidopsis thaliana, Molecular Cell (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2019.06.044

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis

Citation: Sticky proteins help plants know when—and where—to grow (2019, August 14) retrieved 14 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-sticky-proteins-whenand-whereto.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

#Biology

[bunnyjoyce-blog]

Things to Keep in Mind for Your StEx Fanworlds

Also posted here on DA: https://bunnyjoyce.deviantart.com/art/Things-to-Keep-in-Mind-for-Your-StEx-Fanworlds-698056898

Need a few ideas to flesh out your fanworld for your Starlight Express fanfics? Here are some tips for you! Even if you are going the toy route of the canon, the trains believe they are the real deal. Greaseball and Rusty don't really burn coal and oil. They're likely electric-powered toys, making the whole racism pretty silly (is that the point?), but Poppa is still willing to risk his life in an elimination heat to get steam into the final race. As such, it's enough that they believe that that they're real trains who have jobs, fall in love, pursue religion, etc.. So, whether you're writing the trains as toys or the real McCoy, here are some things you can keep in mind as you explore your interpretation of their universe.

How do rolling stock relate to humans? In a lot of stories, humans seem to be a minute issue even though they would be pretty important -- Red Caboose is a house on wheels for the human freight crew; the coaches clearly enjoy their passengers; the Rockies don't like carrying hobos, and the freight trucks agree that they don't like how people talk a lot; firemen (the crewmembers that keep the fires in a steamer going) are mentioned in "A Lotta Locomotion." The rolling stock use slang that originated from humans. (Belle says she's "down at wheel" which is a play on the phrase "down at heel," and Flat-Top and Dustin say that bricks and mortar "are thicker than water," referring to the expression "blood is thicker than water.") Belle is a Pullman car because of George Pullman, a human, and in the Broadway show she says she was bought bought by a Vanderbilt, a member of the wealthy human family. Poppa mentions James Watt as a pioneer for steam engines, and Greaseball mentions Miss America -- and somebody had to graffiti Flat-Top! The whole reason trains exist is because railroads are businesses. If the passenger trains have no humans to carry, why do they exist? If no one is buying bricks or aggregates, why hire trucks to transport them? What's the point of building engines if there are no humans to pull the cars to? It's actually interesting to see how little humans factor in some fanworks. One story claimed that the first railroad tracks were made by trains, not humans (so where did the first train come from? How did they have wheels made for tracks before there were tracks?) In another case, one of my Scandinavian friends told me about a story she had read where a human OC was shipped with Electra, and in that world trains are only a little taller than humans. While the height difference might have been convenient for the couple, one now has to ask how passenger trains work in that world. Do coaches let humans ride piggyback? I'm not saying you have to give humans a major role in your stories, but it's worth keeping in mind, and it opens the door for some possible OCs. How does Caboose relate to his conductor (especially since his costume shows he used to be a boxcar)? What does Buffy do when she has a rude customer on a long train ride? Are any of the human freight crew nice to Dustin? Do any humans ever climb into a corroded engine like Rusty, or does he get neglected even by them? Who sneaked into the yard and vandalized Flat-Top? (If you are working with a toy angle, I've seen model railroads with human figurines inside passenger cars and on station platforms and the surrounding landscape. Can the toy trains interact with any toy human Control owns?) Who performs which jobs? What "non-railroad" jobs are available? Going further, what jobs are performed by humans? And what jobs are performed by trains? When repairs are necessary, to what degree can a repair truck help them? To what degree can a human help them? Who paints the trains and designs their wigs? Who keeps the yard clean? Who digs up the coal for the steamers? Who drills the oil for diesels? Where do replacement parts come from? Who builds the "newborn" trains? Are trains able to own businesses? Can there be a shopping district in the yard? Can trains change their clothing and buy more? If Pearl can move like a ballerina, is there somebody giving dance lessons? Can trains open restaurants/food stands? If Greaseball can be a bodybuilder, do trains have their own gyms? How easily do trains slip into racing mode and back? We joke in this fandom about how similar Starlight Express is to Transformers (sans the 80s cartoon's icon soundbite), yet there are definite similarities. From the overture of the original soundtrack, we know that the characters don't always look as they do in the show because Control orders them to change to racing mode. Likely, they are anthropomorphic while racing and normal trains while working. (The 3D race footage show the racers moving around normal rolling stock!) How do trains function in this other mode? How often are they in this form? Do trains regularly get time off from work? Are other kinds of vehicles alive in your fanworld? CB's fascination with semi-trucks and highway culture might suggest that automobiles are alive -- or he really, really identifies with human truckers. A friend of mine countered that (in a non-toy setting) humans might not all enjoy owning an automobile who can talk back, but then again if a person were rich enough, and if talking trains were the norm in this universe, it might be worth considering if cars could be alive. (If you're working with the "everyone is a toy" view, does Control have toy cars, planes or boats?) When and how do trains get education? We know from "UNCOUPLED" that trains can spell/read (and it would be useful if Dinah could read a recipe!) Purse is supposed to be Electra's accountant, which means he needs to have learned math, and Dinah and Buffy would also need to know math if they sell food to customers. ("Buffy here. I'll sell you a beer.") Wrench had to learn mechanics somewhere, and someone had to teach a freezer truck how to be a hairdresser if the story about Volta being based on Jeffrey Daniel's stylist is true. Plus someone had to teach them how to sing and play musical instruments. Are trains "born" knowing this when they come out of the factories? Or do they have to be taught by their parents or some kind of yard school? (Does Greaseball misspell "sorry" because he wasn't properly taught, or is that just because he survived a crash a short time before and probably hit his head?) Fun fact: The Canadian Pacific incorporated "school cars" which regularly toured the lines to give education to the children of railroad workers and aboriginals (and sometimes their parents). Make of that what you will, fanfic writers. How long does it take trains to reach mental maturity? While trains may not "age" the same way as humans do, mentally or physically, how mature are they when they are brought to life? How many weeks/months/years does it take before they can work? Race? Marry? (How old are the canon's youngest characters, Pearl and Electra, in your fanworld?) How do trains interact with their co-workers? On passenger trains, how do cars relate to their engines? How do the sleepers relate to the chair cars? How do the first-class are at the back of the train relate to the baggage cars at the front? How does everyone relate to those scenarios when there are freight-carrying cars (like horse cars and express reefers)? How do the cars on one train relate to the cars on another? On freight trains, how do the trucks interact with the engine and the caboose? How do they interact with trucks and cabooses on other trains? Many freight trucks can actually end up riding on trains that belong to another company. (A person in the east might order cargo from a company in the west, so the western railroad pays a fee to let their truck ride on an eastern line.) How do the "new" guys feel on another train? How does everyone relate to switch engines (those engines that link and unlink trains)? Rusty laments that he hitches and switches at everyone's call, implying he is seen as a servant, but is that how all switch engines are seen, or just him? What kind of rights do trains have around humans? Caboose says he'll "take the fifth" (referring to the Fifth Amendment), and the components establish that the police exist in "Wide Smile." However, at the same time the British train can be scrapped. (Of course, we all know Princey can show up in the finale depending upon the production). To what degree are trains owned by their companies, and to what degree are they their own individuals? What other kinds of laws might be in place in a world where Pacific Rim styled trains co-exist with humans? Are there any laws that protect trains specifically? (What stops one train from building another train for immoral purposes such as slavery or smuggling?) How do electric engines get to the yard? Electric locomotives get their power from pantographs or from a third rail, so while Electra probably does have head-end power to give electricity to a coach (and shoot his components for the fun of it), he would not be able to get the power necessary to move far away from electric tracks. Since Dinah and Greaseball are going steady, but Dinah is implied not to be from the Union Pacific (otherwise she would wear yellow and represent her company and her boyfriend in the world championship race), then Control's yard (in a real-train AU) would have to be near UP tracks -- which is pretty far from electric lines. In 1992-1993 the Swedish electric X2000 train toured the Continental US on Amtrak lines. In order to get it across lines without overhanging wires, the X2000 was hooked to a diesel engine! So, who might have been the engine who transported Electra to the yard? Who transported the electric Nationals? How do celebrities and media work in your fanworld? Greaseball is the reigning champion for racing. Has he ever been interviewed on TV or for newspapers/magazines? Has he ever been given a celebrity endorsement in a commercial? Electra is supposed to be a train rock star. Has he ever held a concert? Do trains, humans or both attend? While the components are supposed to be his entourage, a real musician might have even more staff such as roadies, technicians, press agents, photographers, chefs, etc.. Who handles these jobs? Does he have songs playing on the radio? The Rockies mention that in the past they tried for a boxing championship (and failed), and when Rocky One is asked to partner with a steam train, he replies that his fans wouldn't "like to see me get beat." What other non-racing athletic events are available to trains, and how popular are they? Going further, CB says, "See the news on your TV," meaning that trains have access to television. He also mentions E.T., Donald Duck, Kermit the Frog, Snow White, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh, and Bambi (and Heidi in the German version). In the Broadway version he also mentions Lex Luther and Spats Colombo. This all shows that trains are able to watch movies and probably read books and comic books. So, has a train ever published a book? Do trains have their own magazines? Magazine models? In the real world, some trains are famous for being in movies (or multiple movies). Are these regarded as film stars in the StEx universe? Who gets to have shelter? In "Starlight Express" Rusty sings, "When your good nights have been said and you are lying in bed with the covers pulled up tight." Meanwhile, Belle sleeps on a coal pile, and no one bats an eye at it. Who has houses/sheds? Who doesn't? How does money work? Considering how small bills and coins are compared to humans, how are trains paid? A money truck like Purse might use a computer to handle Electra's finances, but what of other trains? Are they paid in notes which they can exchange later for legal tender ? Are they paid in ration cards? Spare parts or merchandise? How common are conversions? CB's costume shows that he used to be a boxcar. Greaseball and Electra at least consider converting to steam. Real life freight trucks have been converted to passenger equipment (like baggage cars) and vice versa. How common are these types of vehicles? How does train society view them?

[the-orient-express]

Austria, May 1945

A heavy passenger train with troops for the Austrian-German border arrived into a small station a few kilometres outside of Passau. The engines were to take on water, but due to a heavy bombing the previous day, the Danube viaduct they were to cross afterwards was no more. The crews hadn’t received any notifications from anyone as this train wasn’t scheduled on any time tables. Accordingly big was their surprise when they arrived and the guard in the break coach had to run to the station building for a rerouting and status update on the current situation of the German railway across the border.

The front engine of the double header had been uncoupled in the meantime to be switched to the siding where the water tower was located. Her face had collected the dust and ashes from months of work without a wash-down, her eyes were slightly red from not having had any rest for days, constantly pulling troops and munition trains from border to border. But her sister looked no different despite being younger; she had seen as much of the war as everyone else involved.

The older sister nearly reached the points to switch tracks when she suddenly heard a gasp and a shrill “no” being shouted from behind her. She could only look up into the sky for a split second before the whistling screech of an aircraft bomb descended upon her, leaving her world black. The last thing she had heard was her younger sister shouting her name… Did I catch your interest? Want to read more? Enjoy the full story here: http://the-orient-express.deviantart.com/art/Ghosts-of-the-Past-682595059

Don’t forget to leave a comment please. :)