#get it cause like everything evolves into crabs eventually

[daddy-soundwave]

Tumblr is the crab of social media. Everyone ends up on Tumblr eventually

But that's just a theory... a Carcinisation theory.

#get it cause like everything evolves into crabs eventually #tumblr #meme #crabs #time for crab #carcinisation

[skyllareich]

The seas of Skyllariech have been the cooking pot of it’s life for millions of years. From massive pale crabs inhabiting the depths, the small parasitic descendants of sharks. But the seas have been far from the only bodies of water in the realm. Rivers and estuaries have lead life upwards from the sea for many millions of years, drawing it into the unknown and curiosity of the channel’s headwaters.

Even beyond that, lakes and ponds lie great distances from the coast. To far for most oceanic life to reach, as they are confined not only by there watery home and by their saline environment. But this has not stopped every attempt. First it was a few exceptions, algae and plankton accumulated by storms or twisters before being deposited into the inland ecosystem. Eventually  all sorts of worms, snails, and bivalves get picked up from streams and rivers by floods, ending up, one way or another, in standing lakes.

As time went by, life could move from rivers to the lakes they draw from. Snakes and Cnidarians were among those who moved it. Great groves of Sea Pen descendants sprung up along the gravel and mud of the lake bottom. The snakes took up a new roll and the apex predators of their new home. A new climax ecosystem would establish itself, everything from algal producers, gastropod foragers, arthropod and filter-feeding predators, and jewelworm decomposers.

Along a small gravel ledge, a snail patrols among the rocks, the life depicted is as follows: Azure Cornucopia Snail, A large Aquatic Snail,  the Azure Cornucopia Snail is a detritivore, eating algae and refuse from the lake floor. It is so named for it’s large, spiralling, blue-green shell, resembling a cornucopia. Heartshell Barnacle, Sporting a corrugated shell convergent to Limpets, Heartshell Barnacles are filter-feeders found attached to rocks, shells, and other hard surfaces of Skyllareich’s freshwater lakes. Nimrod’s Tower, Named for the Mythical giant of the Bible, Nimrod’s Tower is a descent of relative sea pens, growing a tough, trunk-like body beneath it’s nimble arms, they form small groves in cold-water environments. 

In the background, more life lies in the open water, muck, or among towers: Opulent Jewelworm, While there may not be true (clitellate) worms on Skyllareich, bristleworms are quite common. Jewel worms are an amphibious group of Polychaete worms named for there reflective, leather-like skin. Banded Hammersnake, The only vertebrates to have reached freshwater, Hammersnakes are evolved to crush hard-shelled mollusks and arthropods with a partially fused set of jaws, allowing much more force to be used. Swimming Coin Crab, Small arthropods, these small, free-swimming crustaceans are easily recognised by there flat and broad shape, causing  them to somewhat resemble sliver coins when taken out of water.

But these environments are not to last. While they may lie in a state of equilibrium currently, they are but millions of years away from collapse. This environment is missing a key inhabitant of there ocean alternatives, the Sharks. This will come to fail, as they have begun there journey inland. Each generation, a little further. A little better adapted. From sea, to shoreline, to floodplain, to swampland. There journey is unending. Be it a million years, or five. But they will arrive.

#spec evo #speculative evolution #speculative zoology #speculative biology

[apoguecalledjj]

Emetophobia

I know emetophobia (fear of vomiting) isn't an issue that many people face, so I expect it to not get many notes because it isn't as relatable, but I still want to write it. My severe emetophobia is something I used to be embarrassed of, and I'm finally comfortable talking about it openly and want to share that in my writing. I've been planning this piece for a while but was unsure of writing it, but I've decided to go ahead with it anyways. if you do experience emetophobia, know that you're not alone. I thought for a long time that I was the only person on this planet who felt this way, but that's not true. This piece will be based heavily on my own experiences, so anyone that chooses to read it will get some insight on what it is like :)

Summary: You deal with a fear that none of the pogues, including your boyfriend, JJ, know about.

Word count: 1812

Pairing: JJ x reader

Warnings: Vomiting, talks of vomiting, talks of emetophobia triggers

Requested: No

You had only known the pogues for 6 months, and had been dating JJ for 4, but you could easily say that the four pogues and Sarah Cameron were your best friends. They knew you better than you knew yourself.

There was just one thing they didn’t know: Your crippling fear of throwing up. You had been officially diagnosed with anxiety and emetophobia two years ago, and months of therapists and councillors done little to help you. You wanted to tell the pogues, tell them your explanation behind all your weird habits, but your family had reacted poorly when you told them and you were terrified they would react the same way.

JJ was the first to notice your weird little habits. How you briefly paused whenever walking into a new place, causing you to fall slightly behind and tug his hand gently that you were always holding. The truth was you were looking for the bathrooms, or a trashcan even, just in case, but you told JJ you were just taking in the new surroundings. He had accepted that, smiling at you and giving you a quick kiss before moving on.

How you constantly used hand sanitizer, even if you weren’t eating. You told him it was just a habit you had learned from your mom, and he just shrugged, but from that day forward anytime he seen hand sanitizer in a store he bought it for you.

How you glanced away whenever one of the pogues had a hangover. Squeezing your eyes shut, even somehow going as far as covering your ears. JJ didn’t understand, but he always let you bury your face in his chest.

Of course, there were instances that were more than just ‘little habits’. The times you were convinced you would have to explain to your friends the battle you were constantly having with yourself. But every, single time you managed to weasel your way out of an explanation.

~~~

“Are you drinking tonight, Y/N?” John B asked as him and Pope lugged the keg down to the beach. JJ stood next to you, and threw an arm over your shoulder. You felt your heart flutter, you had known this boy less than a month and he was already stealing your heart. But your stomach fluttered too, and not because of JJ, instead due to the fact you had to lie once again.

This was only the pogues third party since you joined the group, and the first it was easy enough to make up an excuse. The second they pushed a little harder, so you were unsure of what would happen tonight.

“Of course she’s drinking! We’re gonna have a good time tonight, right Y/N?” JJ said, a little too loudly.

You just shrugged. “I don’t think so guys. I gotta wake up early tomorrow.” Lies. You just didn’t want to risk a hangover.

“Oh come on! Just a couple drinks won’t hurt.” John B nagged, placing the keg down a few feet away from you and immediately grabbing some beer. “How can you have fun when you’re sober all the time?”

You tensed slightly and JJ noticed, rubbing your shoulder slowly. “I have plenty of fun sober,” You defended. “I just don’t feel like drinking.”

John B opened his mouth to say something else, but JJ cut him off. “She said she’s not drinking, John B. Drop it.” His aggressive tone shocked the brunet boy, and John B just nodded and walked away.

JJ turned you to face him, rubbing your shoulders to try and help you relax. He could see the imprints where you had been biting your lip. “Are you okay?” He asked, looking closely at you to make sure everything was good.

You nodded, and smiled at him. “Yeah JJ, thanks for that.”

“Of course.” He pulled you in tight for a hug, before pulling back. “Any reason you don’t like alcohol?”

Your smile faltered at the question. “Oh, uh... I just don’t enjoy it.”

JJ knew that wasn’t the truth but didn’t push it. Instead, he just grabbed your hand and pulled you towards the others, because even though you weren’t getting drunk, he definitely was.

~~~

The six of you stood on the dock, staring at the HMS Pogue. It was the day after a storm, and the wind had yet to fully die out, making the water rough. The pogues deemed it a perfect day for fishing.

While the others excitedly chattered and got their gear ready, you wandered off to the side, staring out at the rough waters. There was no way you’d get on that boat today, and risk getting seasick. Even though you spent a fair bit of your life out in boat, and you had never got seasick.

The possibility was still there, and you weren’t about to take that chance.

JJ noticed you stood alone and wandered over to where you nervously glanced out at the waves. He pulled you into him, wrapping both his arms around you and pressing a quick kiss to the top of your head. “You okay?”

You weren’t entirely sure what you and JJ were, but the relationship you two had had definitely evolved from friends. There was a lot of flirting, and cuddling, and kissing.

“I don’t think I can go out today,” You whispered, your voice a little shaky. 

“Why? Is it because of the wind?” He looked at you, his face full of concern, he could tell you were uneasy just by looking at you.

“Yeah. I don’t want to go out in the wind.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. “But you still go, okay? I’ll wait here.”

JJ looked unsure for a moment, his eyes studying you as he tried to figure out the deeper problem. He knew there was something you weren’t telling him, but he never wanted to push you. So he was patient, something JJ never thought was possible.

Eventually, he nodded and pressed a quick kiss to your lips before running off to the rest of the pogues. You sat on the dock, your hair blowing in the wind as you waited for them to return.

~~~

“Hey, I got crab! Quite the deal for it too!” JJ shouted as he walked into the chateau. He plopped a bucket down in front of you guys, and sure enough, there was a few crabs inside.

It didn’t take long for the pogues to jump up, excited for the seafood that was too expensive to have often. Once it was prepared, the five of your friends immediately dug in.

Except all you could think about was the last time your family had crab, and how your father had got food poisoning. Over and over again, the thought of getting sick from the seafood ran through your head.

“You can have my share, JJ,” You muttered, even though the others seemed to be enjoying it. You loved crab. 

“Why baby?” JJ looked at you with concern, remembering how excited you got the last time you had it.

“Just not in the mood.” You looked anywhere but his eyes, not wanting him to see past your mask.

But that means you also didn’t see the worry in his eyes, as he tried to figure out what you were hiding.

~~~

You sat up abruptly in bed, your sleep disturbed by the dreaded feeling in your stomach. You knew exactly what it was. Five days ago, Sarah was missing from your daily adventures. She had a stomach bug. Then, of course John B caught it.

And you and JJ were staying at the chateau. You knew it was a bad idea, but JJ wanted you to stay so bad and he didn’t know about your fear. You didn’t know how to say no. You had been so careful.

Tears brimmed in your eyes as you rummaged through the nightstand for the anti-nauseant you always put there, but this was the one night you forgot them. Your hands started to shake, then your body as you felt the bile rising in your throat.

Swallow.

Rise.

Swallow.

JJ felt your shaking and woke up, sitting up so that he was next to you. “Baby?” He wrapped his arms around you gently. “What’s wrong?”

Your breathing was heavy, your body fighting to keep down what was also fighting to come up. There was no hiding it from him anymore. “I caught the stomach bug.” You croaked out, your voice barely working anymore.

JJ relaxed. “Oh that’s okay baby. I figured we’d all get it eventually. Go to the bathroom.” He started to lie back down, ready for sleep to consume him again, but quickly sat back up as he heard you whimper.

“No JJ I-” Swallow. “I have emetephobia. I’m-” Swallow. “I’m scared of throwing up.” 

He quickly thought back, all those weird little habits, excuses you made for not drinking, everything. He didn’t understand the fear, but he could feel how serious it was just by your reaction. The sobs coming out of you made his heart break.

“Okay, sweetheart, it’s gonna be okay. Let’s get you to the bathroom okay?” You were too focused on the nausea to react, so he picked you up and brought you in to the bathroom, resting you down gently by the toilet.

He sat down next to you and slowly started rubbing your back. “Okay, I know it’s scary, but the quicker it’s over with the quicker you’ll feel better. It’s okay. I’m right here. You’re okay.”

He didn’t leave your side once, constantly rubbing your back and holding your hair back once you finally stopped fighting it. You collapsed into his arms, ,exhausted and trying to slow down your breathing.

“I’m gonna go get you some pills, okay? Can you brush your teeth?” JJ stood, pulling you up with him. You nodded and he left, coming back a few minutes later with the pills you had been searching for earlier.

He handed them to you, along with a glass of water, and lead you to the bed.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” He asked, pulling you in tight to his chest and stroking your hair.

“People normally judge me. They think it’s weird. I didn’t- I didn’t want you to think I was weird.”

“It’s not weird baby. It’s okay. I wanna help you. I’m never gonna ask you to drink with us again.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead, even though it was sweaty. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” You whispered into his chest, the feeling of his fingers laced through your hair calming you down. “Thank you.”

“I love you sweetheart. Try to get some sleep.” JJ pulled you in close and you felt yourself drifting off, tight in the arms of the boy who would always be there for you, no matter what.

#outer banks #outer banks fic #outer banks one shot #outer banks imagine #obx #obx fic #obx netflix #obx imagine #obx one shot #jj #jj maybank fic #jj maybank #jj maybank one shot #jj maybank imagine #outer banks jj maybank #jj x reader #jj maybank x reader #emetophobia

[libralita]

Title: Dawnshard

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Summary:  Dawnshard follows the story of Rysn, the Thaylen merchant whom we've seen before in the Interludes of the first three books of the Stormlight Archive series.

Rating: ★★★★★

Review:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anyways.

DAWNSHARD!

I feel Rysn’s pain. I too find stuff most unimaginably boring interesting.

Oh no, something is wrong with Chiri-Chiri.

“A few anxietyspren, like twisting black cross shapes, appeared around Rysn.”

Huh, interesting.

“She’d already sent a request via spanreed to someone she thought could help with Chiri-Chiri.”

*Narrows eyes* Who?

“her eyebrow jewelry tinkling softly”

Roshar is so weird. (Edit: Understatement of the goddamn decade)

“The king wants to meet this Dalinar Kholin and see these Knights Radiant for himself.”

Man I should have reread these books. Oh well. Goodluck Dalinar.

It’s very interesting that now Navani is Queen of Urithiru. So Dalinar is King? WAIT WE’RE IN URITHIRU! AHHHH!

“She was an intimidating woman with her Alethi height, her black and grey hair done in intricate braids atop her head and woven with glowing sapphires.”

Nah, she’s a mom. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to mother you.

Rysn Ftori. Did we know her last name?

“Finally the queen stopped, focused on the chair at the rear of the room, then pulled her chair over and sat before Rysn. It was a small gesture, but appreciated. Rysn didn’t mind when people remained standing in her presence, but there was a certain thoughtfulness in the way Navani situated herself so they could discuss at eye level with one another.”

As stated, Navani is a mom.

Oh, I think we read about this in Oathbringer.

The Prince of Liafor???

The Rock of Secrets. I see Brandon wasn’t trying too hard with this name.

“As the months had passed, Rysn had begun to truly grasp the strategic importance of Stormlight as a fuel both for fabrials and for the Knights Radiant. Beyond that, the enemy had creatures—known as Fused— who used the Void’s own Light. Chiri-Chiri fed on that just as eagerly as Stormlight.”

Hmmm…yeah…

…………………I kind of ship Lopen and Talik. I don’t know how to feel about this. Brandon is creating some very odd ships this year. (If you haven’t read the RoW previews, trust me, there’s a weird one)

““It’s politics. The annoying kind.”

“There’s another kind?”

 No.

YAY RUSHU IS COMING ALONG!

“She owned it. She commanded it. But at least according to maritime tradition, it was not hers”

This reminds me of how Navani sees herself as not an artifabian (I’m not even going to bother look up the correct spelling for this)

“Radiant the Lopen”

PFFFFFFFFFFFT

““Lopen,” Rushu said as she worked, “you should not be tormenting Brightness Rysn with your prattling.””

Rushu! How dare you question the Lopen!!

““Brightness Rysn shouldn’t have to crack jokes at her own expense in order to make other people comfortable with their personal insecurities.”

“Yup, true,” the Lopen said. “She shouldn’t have to.””

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

“Two halves of a ruby, containing two halves of the same spren, can be made to move in tandem with one another”

…TWO HALVES OF THE SAME SPREN. PARDON?!?!!

I’m assuming that if you can get a ship to move fast enough then a spanreed will work. Much like Brandon has said that time bubbles can work at a certain speed. Plus y’know, Roshar is constantly moving, we just don’t feel it.

“It’s why the motion and curve of the planet don’t influence spanreeds.”

Or y’know, I’ll just be fucking WRONG.

“That  .  .  . didn’t make much sense to Rysn.”

Same.

I’m guessing that Nikli is a worldhopper. From where though? I don’t really trust Nikli right now though. Hmmm.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NIKLI IS ONE OF THOSE CREMLING THINGS NONONONONONONONONONONONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHAT MEAN YOU ONE OF THESE…SWARMS KNOWS DALINAR “I know he will destroy us”

From the dustjacket of Way of Kings:

“The last is the highprince, a warlord whose eyes have opened to the past as his thirst for battle wanes.

The world can change. Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return; the magics of ancient days can become ours again. These four people are key.

One of them may redeem us.

And one of them will destroy us.”

So Dalinar will Destroy the Sleepless.

“Plus, Yelamaiszin said, we should have compassion for those we must cull. It is good you like the humans.

Must we cull them though? Nikli replied.”

Oh, the Sleepless gotta cull humans. Fucking great. AHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Is it just required that every single novella is going to have these fuckers in them?

“When the swarm that had become Nikli had been Separated, it had already contained hordelings evolved for this subterfuge. Nikli had further evolved them, and was now certain that the body didn’t need the tattoos to cover the seams in its skin”

Wat.

Also who’s Arclomedarian? Now I need to go reread Edgedancer to see who that guy was. Oh? Who are the true traitors? It’s probably Hoid.

“where they would either fall to the winds or enter the realm of the Sleepless.”

Man, if I was on that ship, I’d take drowning over finding that. Let’s notttttt.

“This was sent to another vote, and Nikli’s bodies— the distant ones, not on the ship—all vibrated with anticipation.”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

“Can block a Shardblade, Rua tells me, if it’s thick enough. They get it from Soulcasting, though only a few can make it, so it’s pretty rare”

Y…you can soulcast aluminium? Holy fuck.

No Lopen! You belong with Talik. He can capture that Tsundere heart.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?

As someone who has read Mistborn, you don’t want a dramatic end of the world. It causes essential crisis.

“More spren than animal, they were somehow able to magnify peace and confidence.”

Like…rioting?

““No,” several voices said from the crowd—but she couldn’t see who. “That’s bad luck!””

Nikla…

“Storms. It was as if . . . as if the body had been made up of cremlings.”

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

“no more real than things like the gloomdancer or sea hags from Thaylen mythology”

Well, I’m sure these things don’t exist.

“Hmmm? Oh, no I was napping during that.”

I do love Rushu.

So…Huio…created…flying machines. Motherfucker.

I can’t believe Roshar has hove chair before cars. Also HOVER BRIDGES LET’S GOOOOOOOOO.

Nikli…what are you doing?

Rushu is a soulcaster! Wild.

“Regardless, I demanded that Navani send me with either a Shardblade or a Soulcaster to get through.”

You fucking what mate?

“Strange, to think how optimistic she’d been only a short time ago.”

That tends to happen with Brando Sando books. One moment the characters are on top of the world and next everything is crashing down.

The sun being shattered into pieces? Well that can’t be good.

“She counted the shards in her mind, over and over, feeling a reverence to the number.”

Ten or sixteen?

“It looked vaguely like an enormous grub with a wicked beak of a face. It had spindly arms running all the way along its body, and had reared up so it was mostly vertical, using its pointed limbs like spears to try to skewer the sailors beneath.”

Again. Roshar. Fuck off.

“The Mother of Machines,”

Thirty emerald broams says the back of the book has something about the Mother of Machines on it.

“I . . . have no idea what any of that means,”

Me reading half of this book.

“And in truth, those treaties were made with other gods. I had hoped the Gods Who Sleep Not would be similarly bound, but now I am not certain.”

OTHER GODS? WHICH ONES?!

GOOD JOB HUIO!!!

“We wish to avoid losing control of a force that could destroy the cosmere.”

Odium? Just don’t let any love struck teenagers near it and you’ll be fine.

“As I and my kind are not native to this planet, we prefer the term ‘hordelings.’”

W…Where are you from?

This reminds me of Skyward.

I am sure that Rysn will not be able to employ it. How many books do we have left?

“And then eventually, they were used to undo Adonalsium itself. . . .”

YOU FUCKING WHAT?!

Rysn, you’re going to get a visit from an asshole. Be prepared and good luck.

I can’t for Arc 2 where we get so BIG CHIRI-CHIRI.

Interesting so Rysn will never become a Radiant.

“Regrettably, there has been a conflict on the beach with some of our more  .  .  . specialized hordelings,”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

“You have Remade yourself.”

Remade? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Oh no. Lopen noooooooooooooo.

Who needs a Hover chair when YOU CAN RIDE A CRAB DRAGON! SUCKING ALL THE STORMLIGHT! WIELDING THE DAWNSHARD!

“Was it . . . brighter than usual? Why did the colors in her room look so exceptionally vivid all of a sudden?”

Idos Domi! What heightening are you?

I was not expecting this. My thoughts are currently just on the floor, screaming. Brandon, you cannot just drop lore on me like this.

#dawnshard #Brandon Sanderson #Stormlight Archive #cosmere #reviewsdaytuesday

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF LISP IS A CASUALTY OF

This is an extremely useful question. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And yet a lot of lines have nothing on them but a delimiter or two. And that cures the other half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. I now realize, is that there is now potentially an actual audience for our work. Here's a sign of how much programmers like to be good at hacking, is figure out what you truly like. It's practically the standard ending in blog entries—uh, what it the conclusion? Prep schools openly say this is inevitable—that high school students aren't capable of getting anything done yet. But you're not thinking that way about a class project and a real startup? Naive founders think that if they can just hire enough people it somehow will be. The whole language always available.

Part of the reason VCs are harsh when negotiating with startups is that big companies tend to have fewer bugs. The reason is that software plays an increasingly important role in companies, and the power of something is how well you can use this information in a way that is crabbed and incomprehensible? What makes it true is that it's more preposterous to claim about anywhere else. And yet, if they do let you down, will still seem to have been a prudent choice. The way to learn about physics didn't need to start by mastering Greek in order to read Aristotle. It's especially good if your application solves some new problem. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. They're the ones that actually work. Certainly. C: C is too low-level. So companies have evolved to fill that niche. He just cannot fail now.

But if you look at the employment agreement you sign when you get fouled is not to search for them—not to wander about thinking, what great discovery shall I make? In fact, the acquirer would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Co-founders really should be people you already know. Back in the days when people might spend their whole career at one big company, which is the least of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more opportunity to recover from them. And the way these assumptions are going to get nothing. Well, therein lies half the work of essay writing. Only a few people really happy than to make a difference. I know many Lisp hackers that this has happened to. As long as you've made something that a few users love you, but that won't be the last idea you'll have.

As well as having precisely measurable results, we have to have in person. And aside from that, grad school is close to paradise. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance that would work. Knuth pointed out long ago that speed only matters in a few critical bottlenecks. In practice this seems to work much as in LA. If a startup succeeds, you get to compare how they all perform on identical tasks; and everyone's life is pretty fluid. Sure, it can be launched. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can test equality by comparing a pointer. Unfortunately the sort of AI I was trying to solve. Kerry lost. If they could even get here they'd presumably know a few things we don't.

On Lisp. Medieval alchemists were working on a hard problem, but their approach was so bogus that there was a university nearby. As in an essay about it. But I think I know the answer to that. Initially you have to think about more than just learning. Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be intended for writing compilers. Above that threshold, software purchases generally had to be crammed into the form of an academic paper to yield one more quantum of publication. I think almost anything you can do anything if you really get it, you can contribute to open-source projects. And board votes are rarely split. Individual programs can certainly be the result of a presidential election, which makes it easy to believe it was the cause. And the cost of checks, you can do something that makes many different programs shorter, it is just as worthwhile to design a good language? I've paid close attention to any evidence I could get on the question, how do you get into a good one?

They were invented by McCarthy in the course of developing Lisp. Airbnb into the astonishingly successful organism it is now. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them you were at a disadvantage. The term dark ages is presently out of fashion as too judgemental the period wasn't dark; it was just different, but if you major in economics it will be easy to raise more money. Or the company that would be a distinct node if you drew a tree representing the source code. I had stopped believing that. What I'm looking for are programs that are short because delimiters can be omitted and everything has a one-character name. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. This turns out to be important, because a lot of time on work that interests you, and startups run on morale. In retrospect this was a smart move, but we couldn't figure out how to give them what they want to do research as a career.

Well, this seems a grim view of the world. PhD in computer science, and it could require interpretation in the case of contemporary authors. And when I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. One got extra credit for motives having to do with how abstract the language is spoken. Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. I hadn't deliberately tuned in to that wavelength to see if there was any signal left. Your second advantage, poverty, might not sound like an advantage, but it turned out I was 450 years too late. College is where faking stops working. Yes, of course. And make the topic so intellectually bogus that you could not, if asked, explain why one ought to write about these issues, as far as I know has a serious girlfriend, and everything they own will fit in one car or is crappy enough that they don't mind leaving it behind. Of course they do. Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could save some of the people on both sides who supply and check proofs of the supplier's solvency.

Startups rarely die in mid keystroke. Maybe this will change if enough startups choose SF. If they were just like us, then they had to make concessions. At this point he is committed to fight to the death. But really what work experience refers to is not some specific expertise, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. They have little discipline. So in addition to the usual clauses about owning your ideas, you also can't be a founder of a startup is to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start a startup at 30. There is now a whole neighborhood of them in San Francisco. Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh or Raymond Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem like serious work, as reading Shakespeare would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more than you realized. If it is not all they're for, then what else are they for, and how important, relatively, are these other functions? Checks on purchases will always be expensive, because the center of gravity of Silicon Valley.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #way #assumptions #Well #startup #girlfriend #evidence #career #university #students #C #death #power #LA #language #Francisco #something #money #anything #background #topic #reason #notes #Greek #blog

[monstersdownthepath]

Unusual Bogeymen

Everyone knows about the bogeyman–the nasty monster that gobbles up disobedient children. Every culture in the world has them, in so many shapes and sizes that listing all of them would take a library and a half. Some families even have personal bogeymen, creatures made up on the spot by parents wanting their children to behave, which sometimes spread from the original family and into the population’s collective consciousness.

Like many things on Golarion and beyond, stories have a power all their own. The wild imaginations of young children are a potent source of fuel and fire for wild magic looking for a purpose, but especially the magic of the First World, where enough people believing something to be true makes it so. In areas of Golarion where the barrier between the Material Plane and the First World are thin, sometimes the stories of these bogeyman creep into the land of the fey and take on a life of their own as monstrous creatures, some of which even make it into the Material Plane from time to time.

Creatures like….

Lakanak, also known as Clack-Clack, the Lake Clacker, Snapper, and other such titles depending on the location. Stories of Lakanak first spread via secondhand ‘friend-of-a-friend’ tales regarding an incident in which a monstrous crab burst from a lake and devoured an unlucky traveler; horse, cart, and all. Lakanak quickly became a cautionary tale against going near deep waters while alone, and was used to scare children away from the shorelines... A little too effectively, as it turned out, and soon fishermen hoping for their children to learn their trade found the young’ns were too scared to, from their viewpoint, get within reach of the hungry crab’s claws. 

Eventually the story began to evolve, Lakanak becoming something of a coward. Used to being the biggest creature in the lakes or ponds it calls home, it becomes mortally terrified of any being larger than itself, with the parents of the lectured child confirming that they just so happen to be taller than the hungry creature. Thankfully, this more popular version of the legend was the one given life by the First World, and the CR 5 Lakanak is cursed with an unfortunate Fear of Giants, causing it to become increasingly panicked when confronted by anyone over 6 feet tall before eventually fleeing the area altogether.

Lakanak’s monstrous appetite can see it snapping up just about anything it can fit into its mouth, but it also means it can be easily tricked or bypassed with bribes of food. In one popular children’s story, a trio of young boys manages to escape an encounter with the ravenous crustacean by way of a Three Billy Goat’s Gruff charade, each one promising a greater and greater feast if only Lakanak would allow them to pass by. In some darker versions of the story, this is what eventually inspired the beast to devour an entire traveler’s cart, as the cart passed by just minutes after the boys did, and the true Lakanak cannot be tricked with promises of food to come... But it’s still ever the sucker for delicious treats that are already here and being offered to it, allowing even the plumpest of children to leave if it’s sufficiently appeased with easier, less-screamy meals.

Granny Nose, also known Granny Schnozz, Granny Mudfoot, the Hogmother, or simply Mudfoot, is one of many creatures used to spook lazy children into activity. Blind and deaf but tall as a tree and strong as an ox, Granny Nose’s most notable feature is her namesake sniffer, which is so comically enormous that she looks like a scythe if viewed from the side. One honking snort (sometimes exaggerated to the point of being strong enough to rip trees from their roots) lets her smell the whole area for miles around, a valuable tool for finding her “lost piggies.”

Clad in thoroughly-befouled burlap but for a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, Granny Nose’s worn trappings are kept in place by countless ropes, each of which are connected to the necks of at least a dozen snuffling hogs that constantly churn the earth around her, coating her in dirt, mud, and muck. Ever hungry but never the smartest of women, Granny will wolf down entire swines whole and alive and then subsequently forget that she did so, and will embark on a quest to find her now “missing pig.” And guess what messy, filthy children who refuse their baths just so happen to smell like to the blind old crone, whose deaf ears can’t tell a child’s shouts of protest from the squealings of a runaway hog? In some versions of the legend, the Granny will use wicked magic to transmute filthy children into hogs to be eaten later, while sometimes it’s the ropes themselves with the magical polymorphing power. In still others, Granny Nose will simply tie the children to her, so tightly they can never break free, forced to live among the muddy, messy, snuffling pigs until Granny becomes hungry again.

Granny Nose is popular among produce farmers more than any other bogeymen, because as it turns out, it just so happens that Granny Nose cannot stand the smell of corn, or apples, or carrots, or whatever the current year’s crop is, prompting the young layabouts to help sew and care for the crops if only to keep the crone from drawing too closely. She also comes in handy for livestock farmers, especially with ones with hogs of their own, to explain to their too-young children just why some pigs went missing (”Granny thought they were hers”), at least until the child is old enough to see for themselves where the pigs are going. Even the wealthier areas of the world benefit from the tales of the Hogmother, who can apparently also be repelled by the smells of sweet and healthy flowers from the parent’s lovely garden that they so wish their child would help them care for, because it’s the only thing keeping that nasty crone at bay, you see...

The incarnated form of Granny Nose is a CR 9 encounter, a hag-like being with monstrous strength, an unbearably awful stink around her, and a crowd of hungry hogs that will eagerly nip and gnaw on anything that gets in reach of their mouths. Blind and deaf like her storybook counterpart, her sense of smell is so acute that it grants her an enormous blindsight radius that can grow even larger if she takes a round to sniff her surroundings, her tremendous inhalations and exhalations capable of imitating a few windy spells as she does so.

The Heckler, also known as Heckleton, Hackleton, Wraps, Bundler, or the Raggedy Man, is a horror sometimes whispered to be an unspeakably hideous being beneath the layers and layers and layers of filthy, bloodstained cloth that wrap endlessly around it. The Heckler sometimes carries a bloody sack slung over its shoulder, its free hand holding (or replaced by) a set of rusty but deadly sharp shears, shears sharp enough that they can slice bones like butter, and only get sharper with each use. And they get used a lot.

Heckleton collects fingers, you see, but not just any fingers; It desires only the softest, smoothest, most beautiful fingers for its grisly collection, and will gleefully snap them one by one from the layabouts with uncalloused hands that refuse to lift, move, or work anything. The Heckler is a popular bogeyman in towns where most of the jobs available are grueling manual labor, whose workers end up with worn down, scarred, and generally beaten up hands that the bogeyman despises so. Children are taught quickly to work ‘till they start getting blisters and callouses, as it’s surely the only way to disgust the shears-wielding psychopath. In gentler areas with less need for child labor, the Heckler still finds its place, though its desires completely switch and end up with it coming for hands and fingers that haven’t been properly washed, cared for, for fingers with untrimmed nails, or for hands that became too dirty when playing outside.

Rather than snipping all of them off at once, the Heckler will instead take them one at a time, coming back once each night to take a new finger, all the while chiding its victim with taunts of “lazy, lazy, laaaaazy” in a voice that sounds just as rusty and horrible as its shears. Often, adults who’ve indeed lost fingers to the perils of their work will claim to have been visited by the Heckler in their youth and immediately changed their ways. Such lies are awfully cruel, but the true Heckler, a CR 10 Fey-Aberration horror armed with a set of +1 Cruel (of course) Ominous Shears, is even crueler. Due to the paradox inherent in the “farmlands” Heckler desiring soft, clean fingers and the “city” Heckler desiring scarred, dirty ones, the incarnated Heckler desires all fingers, and will cut them from the corpses of victims it manages to scare to death, either through its frightening aura or showing off the unfathomably terrifying visage hidden beneath its rags.

The Plucker, sometimes known as Pucker, is a warning against wandering eyes. There’s nothing the Plucker craves more than wandering eyes, eyes which have seen things they shouldn’t, eyes that have read things they shouldn’t, and hunts them down like a dog chasing a squirrel. The Plucker’s secondary name comes from its most common appearance, as a painfully gaunt, human-shaped aberration with its lips drawn into a comically intense pucker. The Plucker has no eyes of its own, having long since torn them out and eaten them after reading from a wicked book (some parents will mention specific books, but it’s generally left ambiguous), its intense pucker the result of the force it expended swallowing down everything it had seen.

Though, in some more gruesome tales, the Pucker’s pucker isn’t a true pucker at all, but only looks like it. The reality is that its mouth is surrounded by fingers or even tentacles that it keeps partially tucked in its throat, their curled form making it seem like a pucker, up until it needs to scoop some eyes from some heads.

The Plucker began as a tale to warn children away from curiously perusing wicked literature sometimes placed before them by mischief-making fiends, but in some parts of the world it’s used to scare children away from any literature at all, save for ones their parents (or the local church) allow. In still others, it’s used as a more generalized bogeyman that hunts peeping children at night, going after the foolish waifs who’ve stayed up past their bedtime and plucking out their eyes if it finds them. In its stories, the Plucker can sometimes be confounded simply by keeping one’s eyes closed, but in others, the additional security of a blanket is needed to perplex the blind horror, who can see through the eyes of others and is easily thwarted if its victim simply covers their eyes in some fashion, both re-blinding the creature and stopping it from taking their eyes.

The incarnated Plucker is not fooled by blankets. It is a CR 13 nightmare that wields considerable occult power collected from all over the world. In addition to its fearsome spellcasting, the Plucker is supernaturally terrifying to all who see its pale, emaciated form, inducing an intense terror that only grows worse when it unfolds the nightmarish tendrils from its mouth or feeds on an unlucky victim. Its latching claws are laced with a paralytic poison that renders its victims unable to resist as it gulps down their eyes, and it can smell “forbidden” knowledge lurking in the eyes of those who’ve seen too much, allowing it to track specific prey even if they know to shut their eyes and make both themselves and the horror blind to one another. What “forbidden” knowledge the Plucker hungers for, exactly, is generally up to the DM, but it usually entails knowledge of the lower planes that can only be found in obscure tomes one needs a hefty bribe to even know about, let alone see... Though, in general, the Plucker will take any eyes it can get its facial tendrils around, only seeking out specific, especially-delicious, especially-tainted eyes if the opportunity arises. Regardless of if they’re tainted with horrible knowledge or not, any eye the Plucker consumes restores a portion of its expended spells for the day, though tainted eyes restore considerably more.  

Bitter Beans, also known as Uncle or Aunt Bitters, is the least of the bogeymen, among the most harmless and humorous, though it’s not exactly funny for the children tormented by the creature. Standing at two feet in height, Bitter Beans has a body made of gnarled, ugly wood, with a gnarled, ugly face (the gender varies from region to region), and a single, large hole in its backside. In polite society, the hole is instead on the back of its head, opposite to its face.

The stories of Bitter Beans originated from a small island where they do, indeed, grow pungent, black beans that taste incredibly foul if eaten directly, but make for a fine coffee. Bitter Beans was invented to punish children who never cleaned their plates, the nasty little fey inviting itself into people’s homes and eating all the leftovers before leaving behind a mass of... Er, bitter beans, fresh from the hole on its rear (or the back of its head, as mentioned). Bitter Beans would quickly begin to eat the food of the ungrateful child before it even got to the table, leaving behind nothing but a plate of steaming, foul-smelling, incredibly bitter beans for the child to stare at, the parents “none the wiser” to the foul switch until it gets explicitly pointed out.

In areas of the world where Bitter Beans’ namesake beans aren’t common enough to punish children with, the fey is instead referred to as Aunt or Uncle Bitters, and its leavings are always the grossest, most undesirable portions of whatever it got to eat before. A child didn’t eat their broccoli one night? Well, such a shame, because “we’re having steak tonight... And oops, it looks like Uncle Bitters got to it first, leaving you with nothing but the fat and some bones.” At least once Bitter Beans eats its fill of one meal, it’s full for a full day and a half, giving the child another chance to clean their plate the night after their skipped dinner so Bitter Beans has nothing to eat and leaves.

The incarnated Bitter Beans is a lowly CR 2 monster that forces its way into people’s homes and squats there until chased out, harmless aside from its ability to project various nauseating odors, and the Filth Fever that can result from getting pelted with its bitter beans. It is, though, obnoxiously swift and has the ability to turn invisible a few times a day in order to sneak food right off of people’s plates or escape a confrontation. Above all that, Bitter Beans a coward and a glutton, and will always choose to flee from a fight than risk harm. There are always easier houses to prey on, filled with uncleaned plates and delicious next-day dinners.

#eye horror #body horror #unsanitary #i'll reblog this again tomorrow #Pathfinder #Original Concepts

[stefandesofia]

Stories from the Unliving Ch 4

“So you’re the girl, huh? I have to say, quite a looker. I was really expecting worse, knowing the guy there, but hey, glad to be proven wrong!”

“I would really appreciate you not insulting me, thank you for that” said the young man. “She’s real intelligent and was very curious about meeting you”

“I bet! I’m not your run of the mill, pond-dwelling skeleton, that you meet in most other lakes. No, I also have some pretty fat fish too!”

“No need to be aggressive like that, she just wants to talk to you”

“Fine, fine, sorry. What did you want to talk about? ...... Hello?”

“She actually can’t speak, and uses her little writing board to communicate”

“Ah, sorry, my bad. But yeah, just write your messages and I’ll just work with that. ...... Ah yeah, I don’t know my name, don’t remember it any more. I already explained this to your friend here, but I’ve been alive for over 30.000 years, so a lot of the early stuff is gone. Stuff like who I was, family, friends, but after meeting soooo very many people, doing soooo many things, nothing gets left. It’s like, the more I learn, and experience, the closer the cutoff gets. The first thing I remember, at this point is when my flesh had just started to decay”

“He speaks the truth, but even still, he remembers so many others! He is a veritable academy’s worth of knowledge.”

“Sure, why not. ...... I mean, I live here, it’s my home, I don’t need to breathe or eat, or whatever, so I’ve made my home at the bottom of the pond here. I moved in here about 7000-8000 years ago, I had a house, actually, right over there, but decided that the upkeep on that is way more than I can be bothered with, so instead, I carved some stone furniture, and pushed it in the water, the house just degraded over time, and by now, the only thing you can see left of it, is that stone over there. That was my fireplace. Never even used the thing, it was just for aesthetics”

“I never realised you had a house here. I had assumed you’ve always lived in the pond itself. What made you go under the water?”

“Folk like you, actually. Or, I guess, how you were. Swords and armor, and ‘begone foul beast’ while I was just chilling on my porch. ...... I mean, I can’t die, so why would I fight back? Furthermore, I’m a pacifist, and I really try to be non-confrontational, sort of, you don’t mess with me and I don’t mess with you. And honestly, even if you do mess with me, as long as you don’t go too far, I won’t be doing much.”

“But what about your honor? Do you not feel the need to defend what you stand for? Why, if someone were to attack my home, I would pick up a sword and punish the person myself!”

“I’m sure you will. But again, non-confrontational, and I just don’t care too much. Obviously, you try messing with my fish, I will mess you up. I have stuff that you primitives can only dream of, and even then. ...... No offence, it’s just very high technological level. Even I only get the general idea of how it works. Something about deionizing your atoms, doesn’t ‘cut’ in the traditional sense, but more like, takes you apart when getting close to the edge. ...... Nah, haven’t used it in a long time. Last I did was for carving the stone furniture down at the bottom. It works on almost everything that the blade approaches.”

“It sounds like a mighty weapon! If that got into the wrong hands, it could mean disaster for maybe a whole kingdom!”

“I mean, yeah, but they have to actually come here, go through me, dive to the bottom of my pond, which isn’t very shallow, I’ll have you know, get the blade, and then still fight their way through to using it. ...... Nah, I don’t think I will, it’s perfectly safe where it is. I mean, only the two of you know about it, so if someone else was to find out, I’ll know who to blame.”

“I would never betray your trust like that!”

“It’s happened before, it will happen again. It’s human nature. But it doesn’t bother me too much. Always expect the worst and you can never be disappointed, I always say. ...... You’re dark! I’m a realist! And besides, I have my fish, and yeah, technically they mostly just are here for the food and the great environment I’ve created for them here, but they can’t betray you, since, you know. They’re fish. Yes, you Pete Liv! ...... Oh, this is Pete Liv. Say ‘Hi’ Pete Liv. ...... His called Pete, but he is the 54th Pete that I’ve had, so Roman numerals, that’s LIV.”

“What’s a Roman?”

“Errr, they used to be this real big empire thing a looooong time ago. I really don’t remember the details any more. I think someone stabbed someone else? Maybe the other way around? Who cares? Think it might have been over the throne.”

“Any good kingdom would never follow someone who took the throne by stabbing the previous leader! It’s just undignified and downright evil! The people will never trust a person who relies on violence to lead them!”

“Congratulations, you just discovered the basis for democracy. ...... That’s a way of governing people where basically, anyone eligible puts their name down on a list and the people get to choose who they like most. Supposedly it isn’t rigged, but there’s always someone paying for votes. ...... Well, if you’re the previous president, you’d want to keep being that, since you get quite a lot of benefits from it, and the pay’s nothing to shake a stick at. So, with your vast amounts of money that you have from, well, being you, you just invest a very small portion, and pay out enough people to tip the scales in your favor, so you keep staying in power, and you keep getting all the benefits and money, and whatever.”

“I am getting confused now. Is this system a good thing or not?”

“It’s complicated. You’ll get to it eventually, but from what I can tell you’re still pretty early in the development, so monarchy it is! ...... Well, I’m still alive, but I get your question. Don’t remember, to be honest with you. I’d guess we went through a bunch of different options. There was likely a monarchy, democracy, tyranny. Dunno, maybe some others. I’ve seen quite a few governments after that, that had all sorts of varied styles. I told your friend here about that time I was an evil overlord, and put forth an age of prosperity for all involved. Until I got bored, anyways.”

“It’s true, It was an amazing tale to behold!”

“There was just so much infighting, and the previous ruling class, hoo boy, they weren’t happy I overthrew them all and made them all potato farmers. Apart from me, literally, everybody else was equal. Everybody got an equal amount of food for free, everybody got an equal living space for free, equal pay, equal everything. Took a while to tear everything down, and the people with the big houses, they really didn’t like me. But you get used to conformity. It’s easy to have everything provided for you.”

“The way you put it, that reminds me a little of the tyranny that you mentioned.”

“It wasn’t like anybody was suffering, I had knowledge of past ages, of more advanced medicine, that I implemented, so everyone was unnatural healthy for the age that they were in. I remember, one time they brought in a guy that was bitten by an animal. Foaming at the mouth, super excitable, trying to break free, clearly rabies. And the people were basically asking me if they should let him in the woods so he can die without causing trouble for anyone else. I just laughed, took a syringe with the vaccine and injected him. Within a few hours he had calmed down, and within a few days, he was back to farming potatoes, or whatever it is he was doing”

“That was a very good thing to do, helping a man. We have this same illness in our time too, but we call it Mad Eyes, because of the look people get when they catch it. It’s amazing that you can heal it! You would be able to save so many people, if you wanted to!”

“Nah, not in the superhero business any more. I had that phase for a while, but got over it pretty quickly. Did you know everyone just expects heroes to do their heroing just because? And without any form of compensation? I didn’t really mind, since I didn’t need to eat or had the need for money, other than just fixing what was broken from my equipment, but someone that needed to eat, pay rent? They couldn’t keep a regular job because of all the time from it they’d had to miss. So that whole thing was short lived.”

“But you had the opportunity to save people, and do the ultimate good! Why would you give that up?”

“Ultimate good doesn’t buy toys! I didn’t just sit in some cave staring at the bats on the ceiling until I would hear someone calling. I had hobbies, and did things. And volunteer work doesn’t pay for a new graphics card. ...... Old technology, but somehow always gets inventent. Guess it’s real perfect in the way it works. I’m sure in, oh, I’d say, 7-800 years, you lot will also have those. too. But when I said ‘always gets invented’ that reminded me, did you know crabs have evolved over 15 times, completely separately from each other. It’s like nature really wants those things around. I just imagine Mother Nature being like this breen nerdy chick in an oversized turtleneck sweater, and she’s totally obsessed with this cute little crab picture with shiny eyes and everything, so she just keeps making them, just having crabs everywhere. ...... You don’t know what a crab is?”

“We’ve never heard of such an animal! What manner of mighty beast is it?”

“Ha, I wouldn’t exactly call them beasts, but picture these 2 large blacksmith tongs on its forelegs, and another 6 legs that look like spikes, 3 on each side, with a squat little body, and everything is covered in this real hard armor. You really never heard of them?”

“They sound terrifying, why, even I might be taken aback by such a foe!”

“Less of a foe, and more of a dinner, to tell you the truth. They were pretty good, as far as I remember, though I haven’t exactly tasted them in a very long time, so who knows. You know, I haven’t exactly seen any around either, so they might have gone extinct in the time I’ve spent here. Imagine Mother Nature grew bored of the things after some time, ha! But I’m speaking too much, you guys tell me something, how did you meet?”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful tale! I had just arrived into town, armor shined, and chin high. You know, this is my first real adventure, as I have only trained before.”

“That would explain you actually talking to me. All the old grizzled veterans really just went to kill me usually with a yell that is supposed to be scary, but honestly, it’s just stupid, flailing about like madmen.”

“Of course, noone benefits from a shout in combat and you would only distract yourself by doing so, it is the basics of armed combat.”

“I personally prefer the completely silent approach, where I just wipe the floor with the opponent, without so much as saying a single word. That way the victory is sweeter! ...... Ah yeah, sorry, you were saying?”

“Ahem, yes, and I was looking for work. At first, everyone would walk past me, not looking at me. Even in the tavern, I would only get single word responses from the owner. It was likely how young I look, and noone trusted in my skills.”

“I have to say, you do have quite the baby face”

“Well, I was getting desperate, and it was soon becoming night time. I had just stuffed my pack under my head and trying to go to sleep on a bench in the town center, when she walked by! She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen! Her hair - perfectly styled, the dress - waving behind her, her eyes - reflecting the street lights. My mouth was agape! Then I saw a shadow following her. It was a hooded figure, but it was clearly a man. I decided I would follow. The figure was just staying out of sight for her, and me - out of sight for him. Eventually, she was about to go home, when I saw the man rush towards her, taking out a dagger. I acted before I could think, drawing my blade and throwing it at the man, who got pierced, let out a loud yell, alerting everyone of his presence, and most importantly, alerting her. ...... Aw, think nothing of it, I would have done it for anyone, but for you, it gave me great joy to be able save you, as I did. But she was quite terrified, so she rushed inside.”

“And you just kinda, killed a guy, and happy end?”

“Not exactly. While I was cleaning my sword, some city watch arrived, and questioned me about what had happened. Apparently, the man was a well known tanner, and he was doing a good job at what he did, and I was just a stranger that had walked into town and had killed a person. Well, things were starting to get fiery, when she came out, and defended me! Using her little board, she explained to the guards what had happened, and how I saved her. They let it go, and took the body away, while she invited me over for dinner and she let me stay the night, in front of her fireplace, so I don’t freeze outside.”

“Well, that was sweet of you. He was a stranger to you, a guy with a bloody sword, essentially, yet you defended him. Not many people would do something like that... ...... No no, Just thinking out loud. Do you guys have any plans for the evening?”

“Yes, we will be having dinner in this eatery hall in town - The Black Goose. I’ve heard that they have this special type of roast, where they first boil the whole cleaned goose in lard and herbs for 4 hours, and then roast it on an open flame so it gets this well roasted outside, and I have just been anticipating going there.”

“What do you think? ...... Yeah, it does sound a little heavy, but maybe they have some vegetables they made in the lard. Good luck on your date!”

“I am not familiar with that word, but we will make sure to enjoy our outing, won’t we?”

“You do that! And tell me how the duck is tomorrow!”

“We’ll bring some back for you.”

“You do realise I can’t actually eat it, right? Like, I have no mouth”

“It matters not, as I like to say, what truly matters is that the people close to you, paid you mind.”

“A little clunky and long, don’t you think? Wouldn’t ‘It’s the thought that counts’ work better? Same meaning, just a little shorter”

“Hmm, I do prefer my version better, but I thank you for your input. I truly do value it! Well, we’re off! We’ll see you later!”

#Stories from the Unliving #storytelling #writing

[biofunmy]

17 Powerful Books About Climate Change

BuzzFeed Books recently asked Goodreads about books on climate change and the environment — both fiction and nonfiction — that its users have loved. Here are 17 of the highest-rated and most popular titles.

Allen Lane, Kourosh Keshiri

Naomi Klein’s provocative book unveils the myths surrounding the climate change debate and explores how the “free market” is holding us back from important changes.

Promising review: “Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything is absolutely essential for understanding, confronting, and meeting the challenges of the 21st century. […] I am very inspired by this book and I cannot wait for others to read it and react to it.” —Chris

Get it from Amazon for $14.32, Barnes & Noble for $18.99, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Merchants of Doubt follows a group of high-level scientists and advisers who have purposefully misled the public, denying evidence of climate change in an effort to placate corporate and political interests.

Promising review: “Exceptional. Put this book at the very top of your reading list. The authors provide a clear, stunning, and engaging history of how a handful of scientists were able to keep doubt alive during every occasion in which scientific evidence threatened to cut into a corporation’s profit or a politician’s proposed policy.” —Charlene

Get it from Amazon for $11.39+, Barnes & Noble for $19+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Earl Swift provides a thorough, intimate look at the small, tight-knit community of Tangier Island, Virginia — and how that community is responding to its destruction by the effects of climate change.

Promising review: “A well-told story about the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay and the blue crabs and oysters that sustain them. Swift does a remarkable job of explaining the character of the families and their community on this remote island. He paints a vivid portrait of the perils they face from their work — and from climate change, although, despite acknowledging the incessant shrinking of their island, they do not accept the notion of sea level rise. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the Bay and the historic watermen who live there.” —Paul Goldberg

Get it from Amazon for $15.93, Barnes & Noble for $24.64, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

In Six Degrees, Mark Lynas sketches out what the real, tangible effects of our planet’s warming will be, degree by degree — from the loss of coral reefs and mountain glaciers to, ultimately at 6 degrees, the elimination of most life.

Promising review: “This is the most frightening book I’ve ever read. I mean that as a resounding endorsement. […] It should be required reading for anyone who thinks they have an opinion on climate change. It is happening and it is terrifying. […] Lynas reminds us repeatedly that it’s not too late to do something about it. Let’s listen to him.” —D.J. Cockburn

Get it from Amazon for $13.78+, Barnes & Noble for $16.95+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Prominent novelist Amitav Ghosh interrogates our seeming inability to fully grasp or reckon with the scope of climate change, looking specifically at the dearth of examinations of its repercussions in literary fiction.

Promising review: “If I had to suggest to anyone a single book about climate change, it would be The Great Derangement. I have never read someone so succinctly, eloquently, and urgently explain the roots — capitalism and imperialism — of the climate crisis, and how those roots grow up into the forest of our culture/popular imagination. […] Ghosh confirms my worst fears — i.e. that the politics of the spectacle have no power to end the systems that perpetuate climate crisis — with a clear, moral force. Then, once I was enwrapped in his brilliant and devastating blanket of prose, Ghosh also managed to insert a tiny, tiny bit of hope.” —Easton Smith

Get it from Amazon for $14.04+, Barnes & Noble for $15+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Dan Egan examines the ongoing threats against the Great Lakes — which hold 20% of the world’s supply of fresh water — and the catastrophic effects of their destruction.

Promising review: “If you care about the environment and sustainability, you must read this book. Even if you live thousands of miles away from these North American freshwater marvels, this book makes the case why we should all care about the impacts of invasive species, eutrophication, and the larger issues of climate change and access to fresh water. An unparalleled work of reportage and science writing.” —Lauren

Get it from Amazon for $12.19+, Barnes & Noble for $17.95+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Henry Holt and Co., Barry Goldstein

In its long, long history, our planet has experienced five periods of mass extinction, each of which dramatically decreased the diversity of life. Elizabeth Kolbert contemplates the idea of a sixth extinction — the result of climate change — and the ways in which human beings are responsible for changing life on earth in a way no other species has.

Promising review: “The writing style is fluent and coherent, and the combination of the topics to give a holistic view before the tragic conclusion was suspenseful (yes, although it is non-fiction) and very well done. […] This is more than a science book. It’s also a cautionary tale. It’s bringing context to what we’ve done to the world so far, and what we’ll probably continue doing to it, and what the outcome will likely be. It therefore also provides the answer for an alternative. A very important book that I wish more people would read.” —Trish

Get it from Amazon for $10.87+, Barnes & Noble for $15.30+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Tim Flannery pulls no punches in this call to arms, explaining not only the history and likely future of climate change, but also specific actions we can take to improve our dangerous reality.

Promising review: “A well written, scientifically-based description of climate change. Flannery writes beautifully, keeping the reader engaged as he explains some of the science, uncertainties and dangers of climate change. Definitely a nice way to digest the info if you’re a non-scientist. A nice reminder to scientists on how to communicate the science to others.” —Jenwah

Get it from Amazon for $11.02, Barnes & Noble for $17, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Times Books, Nancie Battaglia

Bill McKibben argues we’ve already created a new, irreversibly changed planet in Eaarth — one that’s “recognizable but fundamentally different.” Now, he explains, our survival depends on our ability to change our own actions — the actions that led to the already present destruction.

Promising review: “[Eaarth is] an excellent, comprehensive look at the damage we are causing to our planet. The author goes into detail about how things are changing here on Earth due purely to the actions of mankind, and as a result, we are now living on a planet different from the one we evolved on; he calls this ‘new’ planet ‘Eaarth.’ In all the reading I have done about conservation, climate change, anthropogenic changes, and the like, this is the first thing I’ve read that has gathered all of that information and data and then some in one (well-written) place.” —g-na

Get it from Amazon for $13.50, Barnes & Noble for $16.99, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Rodale Books, Anthony Harvey / Getty Images

Published as a tie-in with the groundbreaking documentary, An Inconvenient Truth presents high-level climate change research in accessible charts, graphs, and illustrations, as well as incorporating personal anecdotes.

Promising review: “Good, solid data on climate change in a digestible narrative. Most of the data is not news, especially if you’ve been following environmental issues and research. It’s nice to have all that data organized, compiled and illustrated with solid visuals.” —Hazy A.

Get it from Amazon for $13.82, Barnes & Noble for $23.95, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

FICTION

W. W. Norton, Richard Powers

Spanning centuries and continents, The Overstory follows a group of seeming strangers — a scientist, an artist, a Vietnam War vet, among others — who’ve each been deeply affected by a tree at some point in their life, and who are drawn eventually to the same place, a final stand for the last acres of virgin forest in the world.

Promising review: “Brilliant, slow, and meditative. It made me evaluate my ideas about sustainability, wood, and trees and how I can be a better person in the world.” —Spencer Orey

Get it from Amazon for $11.72, Barnes & Noble for $12.54, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

HarperCollins, David Wood

Dellarobia Turnbow, having grown restless in her life as a farm wife who got pregnant young, finds new excitement in the possibility of an affair. But when she sneaks out to meet for a tryst she discovers a valley which hides a lake of fire. News of the phenomenon spreads throughout and beyond the community, sparking awe, bewilderment, curiosity, and fear in all those who witness it.

Promising review: “This book is about global warming without being all about global warming. Somehow Kingsolver, a biologist herself, has woven the frightening and undeniable crisis of global warming into a beautiful coming-of-age story about a woman whose teenage-hood was cut short by pregnancy and early marriage, but who is finally learning to find her real self.” —Janet

Get it from Amazon for $10.95+, Barnes & Noble for $16.99+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

13. Clade by James Bradley

Hamish Hamilton, James Bradley

Clade travels into an apocalyptic future, tracking the destruction of the planet through the eyes of one family over the course of three generations — beginning with one couple, and a scientist overwhelmed by his frustration over the fact that no one seems to understand the changing climate as the threat that it is.

Promising review: “This is a very human telling of how people and families try to cope in the face of existential threat through love, art, science, and wonder. It is also ultimately a very optimistic tale in a context of horror and the nature of human existence in a timeless universe. Highly recommended.” —Christopher Wright

Get it from Amazon for $13.91, Barnes & Noble for $14.95, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Knopf, JT Thomas Photography

The Colorado River is dwindling and the people of the American Southwest are in constant fight over water shares. Angel Velasquez is known as a “water knife” — a for-hire hitman who cuts off the water supply to impoverished communities and directs it instead to wealthy clients trying to maintain their luxurious lifestyles. When Angel sets off to investigate a rumored new source of water, he meets an investigative journalist and a young refugee, and together the unlikely group fall into a life-threatening situation.

Promising review: “Bacigalupi does everything well: characterization, world structure, action sequences. They are all meticulous. The Water Knife may appeal to the imagination of a population that is still struggling with the undeniable idea of global warming. Yet it is the human struggles that make this book work.” —Marvin

Get it from Amazon for $10.87+, Barnes & Noble for $16.95+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Harper Voyager, Heini Lehväslaiho

Earth’s landscape — geographic and political — has shifted irrevocably because of climate change, and much of the world is in the midst of water wars. Scandinavia is occupied by a state called New Qian; here, 17-year-old Noria Kaitio is following in the footsteps of her greatly respected father and training to be a tea master. The role comes with much responsibility, including knowledge of the locations of secret water sources — knowledge that quickly puts Noria’s life at risk.

Promising review: “While it tells the heartbreaking story of how humans have destroyed their own world, Memory of Water remains the story of a young girl who has the power to make a difference. Symbolic of the cleansing, ever-changing properties of water, Noria’s actions and her choices are what drive the story. It is a beautiful, thought-provoking tale.” —Kathleen

Get it from Amazon for $8.23+, Barnes & Noble for $14.99+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy, might be the last human being alive. Struggling to survive in the lonely aftermath of a worldwide plague, he begins a journey through the wilderness that was once a city, mourning the loss of his best friend Crake, and surrounded by a new breed of humans — the remnants of corporate-run genetic engineering gone awry.

Promising review: “I could go on and on about the relentlessly inventive elements of this book and how it eventually touches at the emotional core and tugs at the heartstrings. It leaves me in an unusually pensive frame of mind. Any book that can do that deserves the highest recommendation.” —Apatt

Get it from Amazon for $10.70+, Barnes & Noble for $13.60+, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

In a post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, a young humble maid named Acilde Figueroa discovers she’s able to travel back in time — and that a prophecy calls for her to do so and save the world by saving the ocean. With the help of a sacred anemone, she sets off on a mission that tackles issues of climate change, technology, queerness, colonialism, and Acilde’s own gender identity.

Promising review: “There’s nothing straightforward or derivative of this trippy, timely tale of saving the Caribbean from environmental collapse. Incorporating Afro-Caribbean religious traditions, literalizing the concept of gender-fluidity, and masterfully manipulating verb tenses to tell its story of personalities split across time and bodies, the prose is absolutely mesmerizing and weaves a story that I can’t imagine being told as powerfully or cohesively in any other medium than the novel.” —Sean Kottke

Get it from Amazon for $9.77, Barnes & Noble for $13.95, or find it at Indiebound or your local library.

BONUS

Comprising seven novellas from Lauren Groff, Jess Walter, Jane Smiley, and more, the Warmer collection tells stories about life in the midst of climate change, blending the personal and the public, the political and the environmental.

Promising review: “It’s less about the end of the world and more about how we go on in the face of overwhelming anxiety and odds. What we do when there’s nothing left, and the ways we can do that, small and large and wonderful.” —Brendan M., about The Way the World Ends

Read or listen to the collection at Amazon.

For more from this series, click here.

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We have come a long way since our first post (6 months ago), here!I plan to continue updating our progress every 6 months, highlighting our mistakes and our hits in hopes your can utilize some ideas to help your ecommerce and the difficult business that is fresh (24 hours) perishable shipping.Who we are: https://www.cameronsseafood.com/in 1985 my Dad and Uncle started the Maryland Seafood business and today it does $20 million in gross revenue each year. We sell raw and cooked seafood, and prepared dishes at 14 locations — 11 storefronts and three trucks — We have over 1,000,000 customers in the Baltimore-Washington-Philadelphia market. On June 24th 2017 my cousin and I started the nationwide home shipping business as a separate entity. The operation is run by me, my wife, dad, uncle, brother, cousin and 60 employees. I have no ownership in the stores, food trucks, and franchises. My uncle owns and handles all that.My Background: the business was named after me in 1985 as I am the oldest son of 6 children. My main business is apartment brokerage and investing. I have been a MD, DC, and VA broker for 17 years www.idealrealty.com. I sell 100+ unit complexes to institutions and high net-worth individuals.Coolest Online Customers: Gilbert Arenas and Mia KhalifaWhat seafood do we sell online: Virtually everything but, 85% of sales are Maryland crabs, Maryland crab cakes, Maryland crab soups, and Free shipping samplers.What we do: we ship freshly cooked Maryland Blue Crabs, Crab cakes and seafood to your door in 24 hours after being caught in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. We send you seafood that is 3 days fresher than the grocery store. Btw, we accept bitcoin!Where do we get our Seafood? Chesapeake Bay, Maryland for Maryland products, using our own crabbers and contracted crabbers over the past 32 years. Although our COGS is 30%, shipping with 1-2 day delivery is very expensive, with the packaging materials outweighing the FedEx fees. We ship it fresh with Snow/King crab legs, soft shells (in off-season) and lobster tails being the items we ship frozen. Some items we receive frozen like Bee Gee shrimp from Louisiana.We are True Blue Certified, meaning In order to be True Blue certified, participating food service establishments commit that at least 75% of their annual crab usage will be from Maryland harvested or processed crabs.Startup Leverage: We do have some amazing advantages and you should tab into yours: 1) We don’t pay rent because we operate out of my uncles seafood headquarters. 2) We don’t need employees to handle extra orders (my partners handles up to 50 orders a day by himself) because we can use our existing employees. 4) We don’t have “employees” we contract existing employees meaning you don’t have to pay 15% tax 3) We don’t have food spoilage because we buy only what we need from our the stores each morning.Online Profit Margins: We aim for 35% gross margins with our cost of goods sold at 30%. However, packaging and shipping costs wipe out most of it while paid-advertisement has wiped out the rest leaving us with 10% gross for the first 6 months. 1) We eliminated AdWords since our ROI/customer acquisition costs were too high. 2) We reduced all packaging costs through trial and error. We eliminated anything not necessary then negotiated each material with three vendors. You need to create a bidding war. 3) We negotiated shipping rates by switching vendors 3x. We formed a strategic partnership to tab into their FedEx account. With a growing customer base we are on track to hit 30% gross next year but it’s possible to hit 40% and 10% net.Free Shipping Model: We offer free shipping to 29 states (1-2 day zones through FedEx ground network) when a customer spends over $200. Since our average order is $160 we think that’s a solid minimum order. We offer flat-rate air shipping everywhere else. National shipping is $94.99 or $79.99 when they spend $200+. We offer many free shipping sampler combos to local and regional customers. It’s too expensive to ship nationally without ridiculous pricing. That’s ok, if we can capitalize on the 29 ground states we will hit our $20,000,000 number. We don’t make any money on shipping, and I wish we could. Shipping page.Chargeback Fraud: people are creative and fraud has cost us thousands We cannot require signatures on shipments without incurring a $4.50 fee and what if the person isn’t home? FedEx will return the box to their hub subjecting it to transit issues and spoilage. A lot of our customers order our food as gifts so the billing and shipping don’t match. We learned you can get expensive software that charges a per transaction fee. It’s only worth if at higher volume but you can do your own fraud detection. For example, look up the shipping address in google maps. Google the person and look for articles about them to show they live in the state. Modify your payment processor’s security features so you can monitor the results. We noted most fraudsters order our frozen items (to store or resell them) so we carefully review each frozen order with wide eyes.Losses: We have made many errors totaling $15,000. Shipping wrong items, missing items, item arrives late or spoiled, gel packs melt, things happen. The important thing is to address the root cause, which helped us lower our losses rate from 15% down to 5% with a 3% goal in mind for 2018.Shipping – pin FedEx vs UPS and save money. Make sure the “rates” include a residential fee and fuel fees. Also know like new credit cards they will give you introductory rates that eventually run out and use your monthly sales volume to adjust up/down. Negotiate longer into rate periods if you can! UPS offers insurance on the entire sale and will grant 25% off next day air on any bad deliveries and charge $1.80 per $100 but there is a catch. Your customers need to provide you photo proofs, and UPS has to be at fault to receive a claim (late delivery which occurs less than 1%) or a forgetting to deliver. However, UPS has abysmal Saturday ground delivery networks as it’s new as of August 2017 when FedEx has the entire network open. UPS has a smaller ground delivery range that FedEx too. No brainer for us, we chose FedEx. We don’t take insurance because it’s a loss. This will depend on your line of business.Packaging Perishables – we reverse engineered Blue Apron and competitors to figure out how to ship fresh (and live) seafood. It also teaches you where to find suppliers (use manufacturers not resellers as they have a markup). Call them and form relationships.Gel Packs: It takes 5 weeks to properly freeze a gel pack! I thought our business was doomed when I learned this because how can I store that many gel packs and replenish them within my walk-in freezer? Solution: we pay for pre-frozen ones and have pallets stored at -10. We learned this from ordering from Blue Apron and calling the gel pack manufacturer.Boxes: to ship perishable seafood you probably need an insulated cooler and corrugated box kit. Since we started, we reduced costs by 30% by searching for a manufacturer (not a distributor) that can cut costs and store surplus for us. Costs include freight so find someone local within 1-2 hours of your HQ.Customer Service: We sell seafood but we are in the customer service business. We are open 7 days per week and either I or my brother will answer your phone calls (888-404-7454 x1). Our competitors are only open 5-days per week. We offer cash refunds and reshipments on any customer complaint. Our competitors may give you a credit on your next order…The customer is always right and we ensure 100% satisfaction guaranteed. This has converted customers to repeat customers. We treat each customer as we want to be treated. Give a little, get a lot.Website: I know you think I am biased because my wife created our site from scratch but she did an amazing job for her first ecommerce site! We modify content daily and advertise to our email list once per week with discount codes. This would have cost me $10,000 to $30,000 with all the changes we have made. It’s constantly evolving and the project never ends. Find a good partner that will grow with you. No 3rd party will put in the passion a strategic partner could offer. Try offering a lower hourly rate but give them a piece of the action for the difference.Advertising: The best advertisement for us has been word-of-mouth. We carry 5-star reviews on Facebook but getting satisfied customers to review is hard (after a sale they receive an email asking them to rate their experience). We thought about offering a coupon but it feels like a bribe. We do offer a coupon once someone abandons their cart to remarket. We send out weekly coupons via mailing list and we offer weekly storewide specials (the real savings happen when you sign up). Social media is free, get good at it. Learn which outlets suit your business. For us, Facebook and Instagram work whereas Twitter has no traction. I learned ads on social media don’t convert. Nobody wants to be spammed ads. They want to discuss a topic and engage on pictures, videos, and education about your field. They will find a way to buy from you. Instead of offering a coupon teach them a recipe, explain why a Maryland Crab is the world’s best crab (in the Chesapeake Bay, due to the specific climate, the Blue Crabs lie dormant for 6 months and form a layer of fat on their meat which gives them a their sweat buttery flavor!). You see, that’s interesting! When you post ask yourself how will this engage an audience? You want to advertise? Then try doing giveaways using www.gleam.io, which has amazing social networking tools to spread the word.Facebook is another animal where most of our success has been through remarketing. Currently, we are brainstorming both organic and paid Facebook ideas…I’m open to any suggestions. Getting customers to your homepage is the hardest part. Once they get there, your site has to convert them. When we started, we used Adwords to bring attention to our product pages but we had no other supportive information to convert them. We recrafted each page to stand on its own (assuming they never leave that page) and doubled our conversion rates!We outsource our SEO/AdWords to a company that we learned about through our first Reddit Post. SEO can take at least 6+ months to build up your keywords on the rankings list. You need to be on the 1st page or you won’t convert traffic. We started with most organic keyword rankings on the 64th page and are have almost all of our keywords now on the 3rd page. By February most of our keywords should be on the 1st page! Many things went into this including getting quality backlinks, blogging 6 times per month with SEO rich content, carefully titling each page, section, and product; and Keyword/URL optimization.Adwords: We foolishly spent $42,000 on AdWords and ended our campaign with $37 cost per conversion and 186.29% ROI, which doesn’t allow us to make profit during the off-season (crabs are seasonal from April to November) so we will try again in Q2, 2018.Influencers: overall this hasn’t been profitable. We have social media influencers with 100k+ dedicated seafood/food followers whereby we grant them a vanity link and discount but it hasn’t worked. We belong to several influencer networks were they receive 8% for posting banner adds, this has only brought in $10,000…Mia Khalifa: We reached out to Mia as she has the strongest influences (4m+ followers) for a Maryland native that loves our seafood. We sent her food and she spent a week hyping the brand including social media posts, PMs and featured a Twitch episode about Cameron’s. Definitely drove tremendous traffic although we can only ship to the USA due the transit time lag of customs. We look forward to working more with her.Gilbert Arenas: I’m a huge Gilbert and Wizards fan! He replied to Mia’s post and a PM worked to get his interest. He is a real character and orders a lot of our seafood each month. He love the high-protein variety that (Maryland) seafood provides. Chicken and vegetables does get boring.Washington Post: We were featured in the Washington Post on Dec 1st, see here. They did a good job summarizing our business so far. We have also been featured in Forbes, New York Times, Huffington Post and more. How? I googled the food reviewer from each of the above and figured out their contact info. Sent them a 2-line email asking them to review our food and boom!Videos We started sharing videos of the entire process so you can see the experience before you risk order fresh seafood online. We plan to continue posting new videos in 2018 and I’d love feedback on what you would like to see?What we doFirst Customer UnboxingAnother unboxingResteam Maryland Crabs (gif recipe style)Packaging demo2018 GoalsGetting to 100+ orders a day without paid advertisementWholesale crab cakes to home meal delivery providers (i.e. Blue Apron)Wholesale frozen crab cakes and soups to large retailers (i.e Costco) and AmazonVisit multiple tradeshowsPlease provide us any feedback or ideas. We want to get better and need your help.Discount code "holiday" will save you 10% on all order and we accept Bitcoin!

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