#originally made the paper version back in like...October-November

[starfall-calamity]

Tumblr will crunch the image but tis a random fun lil WIP Soul piece :}

#originally made the paper version back in like...October-November #so has been a lil bit lol #it looks a fair bit clustered on the drawing but it should be cleaner once digitally redrawn #it was a draft after all lol #there's also a bottom half but i cannot decide nor draw a pair of shoes that look good with it #shoes are hard ough #atlas art wips

[henrysglock]

Local Man Uses The Cyclical 27-Year Torment Nexus To Try And Change His Fate [EPIC FAIL COMPILATION]

You probably guessed that this is the time-travel post I've been slaving over. You'd be right. This is the newest and most formal iteration of my long-standing time loop theory (I have drafted flowcharts back from February that actually predicted a dimension/time fuckery event in 1943 in relation to Brenner, which was made canon by TFS). So...Let's just dive right in. Note: I'm planning to keep calling TFS Henry "Henry" here just for simplicity's sake.

Now, fair warning: There are a few big "bear with me"s in this post. I promise they make sense, I just need you to hear me out.

It all started with Henry's self-proclaimed superhero name: The Stardust Spider.

Some of you may have seen my original post about The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars (here).

Before anyone says "Oh, but that album didn't exist yet", a reference in 1959 about a Bowie album that wouldn't be recorded until November of 1971 is in keeping with TFS's habit of directly referencing things from the '70s that "don't exist yet".

However, all that aside, there's a specific piece I want to return to, because it bugs the living daylights out of me.

There was a cut song that was meant to go on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars titled "Shadow Man":

For obvious reasons in relation to Henry in The First Shadow, this song already stuck out.

Specifically, though, these few stanzas hit me weirdly:

You should call and see who answers For he promises to come running Guided by the truth For the Shadow Man is really You Look in his eyes and see your reflection Look to the stars and see his eyes He'll show you tomorrow, he'll show you the sorrows Of what you did today You can call him foe, you can call him friend You should call and see who answers (see who answers) For he knows your eyes are drawn to the road ahead And the Shadow man is waiting 'round the bend ('round the bend) Shadow man is waiting up ahead

The Shadow Man is you from the future. He's waiting up ahead to show you the the truth/the consequences of your actions.

Considering that the TFS version of Young "Henry" has a direct connection to both the Shadow and Dimension X from a young age, and he also experiences what seem to be Vecna-type visions, this becomes particularly interesting to me...Especially seeing as said fates are not only possible for future "Henry", but also canon for future "Henry". (See: Vecna guy vs Mindflayer guy)

So, when I see an almost comical number of lines in TFS relating to rewriting known, undesirable endings (here are a few of my favorites):

And when we revisit some of the on-film classics:

I start to think it's time we revisit the concept of time-travel and trying to change your own fate.

It's always hard to know where to start with posts like these, so I'm going to kick things off with the technical aspect: The Cycle.

Something I've talked about in the past year, mostly on Discord, is this concept of a time loop. Not just any old time loop, though. A 27 year cycle, specifically.

Not 20, not 30...

Now, we all know the TFS timeline is messy as hell and doesn't actually align with anything that's possible in filmed canon...or within its own time span, even.

For example, the attack on Mr. Newby happens both some point after October 1st, 1959 and before November 20th, 1959...but the papers for the incident report it on March 20th, 1958:

The timeline we're given also largely fabricated, as I pointed out in relation to the newspapers with dates that don't actually exist.

However, much like NINA, the sequence itself being fake doesn't mean the events didn't happen. It's just not happening in the time frame we're told it's happening in:

It's a set of real events, just portrayed on a different time scale.

So, with all that in mind, I want to lay out a timeline, starting from Season 4 and moving backwards in time:

— Vecna opens the rifts, and El opens a gate to Dimension X in NINA, both in 1986. The March 1959 Creel Murders occur exactly 27 years before the Rifts and NINA's Dimension X gate open in 1986...at which point the Mindflayer is shown to be active.

— Mothergate opens through to Dimension X at some point between November 1983 and October 1984, this being somewhere between 16-28 months prior the Rifts opening. The paper about the attack on Mr. Newby, dated March 20th, 1958, is released exactly 610 days, or 20 months, prior to the Creel murders on November 20th, 1959. It's not necessarily the exact dates that are important here (again, these dates are relatively unreliable), but the gap between the dates.

When put in accordance with filmed dates (i.e. setting the release of this paper exactly 610 days prior to March 22nd of 1959), the paper for the attack on Mr. Newby would have been released on July 20th, 1957. This would be in line with Edward Creel's move to Hawkins in the spring of 1957...while also occurring 27 years before July of 1984, at which point Mothergate is open, and the Mindflayer is active.

This July date is especially funny to me considering we get "throwaway" lines like this...with shots in filmed canon from summertime:

Top: Joyce and Jim beginning their investigation into the attic attack. Hopper Sr. is questioning why Joyce and Jim are investigating, rather than attending school. Bottom: Alice and Henry with the rabbit death scenes in filmed canon, the setting showing full foliage and both children in summer clothing. "Is it summer break?" I don't know. You tell me, Chief.

Per TFS, Henry went missing in a cave system near his home town of Rachel, Nevada (hold that thought) at some point in the year prior to the attack on Mr. Newby. We've been told that Dimension X was involved in this event in Nevada, something happened there that left "Henry" altered physically. He was also flayed at some point around this time.

This all coincides with Henry's dramatic mood shift from a "normal and good" boy to one suffering from Mindflayer-induced psychosis. This change happened in tandem with the Nevada incident, dating back 10 months prior to the attack on Mr. Newby:

If we set Henry's initial disappearance in line with filmed canon like before, it becomes September of 1956, which is just over 27 years before Will's disappearance in November of 1983, at which point we know at least one gate is open.

We also have 1952, at which point TFS Henry would be 7 per his age as a 14 year old/freshman in play canon. This exists in a 27 year interval against 1979, when El opens the original gate that sends One to Dimension X, where he subsequently shapes the Shadow into the Mindflayer.

Here comes the first "hear me out".

My questions are:

Since Henry/Vecna/The Mindflayer/etc. in general don't show any capability for opening gates before 1986, then how the hell is the Mindflayer possessing anyone in 1959?

How did "Henry" get involved with Dimension X in Nevada in the 1950s?

Unless, by some chance:

Dimension X exists all the time simultaneously (i.e. it's a space outside time)

The gates exist simultaneously across time and space in the Right Side Up in 27 year intervals. By which I mean: A gate that opens in, say, 1983 would exist simultaneously in 1956, so on an so forth.

There's the disappearance of Captain Brenner and the USS Eldridge in 1943, which would, interestingly enough, align with 1970, the supposed year of El's conception.

Then, 1952. Now, I'm not sure what's special about 1952, when TFS "Henry" was 7, because they don't actually say what happened to make that year important! They make a point to show it to us, though, meaning something happened...we just don't know what. All I can say is that 1952 does exist in a 27 year interval against El's 1979 gate. Hold that thought.

Those addressed, let's fast-forward 4 years: 1956/1983.

Now, to be fair, there is some uncertainty in my mind about whether this specific gate incident stems from Brenner's involvement with Project Rainbow in Nevada pre-1957*, or if it stems from Mothergate in 1983, or if they created some kind of wormhole between the two locations 27 years apart...but that's a concept I need to explore more thoroughly in a another post.

In short, though: Did a singular El open a singular Mothergate? Did El open mothergate? Did Mothergate actually open on November 6th, 1983...or are we just supposed to assume it opened the same night Will went missing/the demogorgon came through? We're never given a concrete date for when Mothergate actually opened.

* In TFS, Brenner claims he's dedicated his life post-1943 to Project Rainbow with the goal of finding Dimension X, and that he's doing so in pursuit of knowledge regarding the circumstances of his father's death in connection with the Philadelphia Experiment. The USS Eldridge, Brenner Sr.'s ship, disappeared into Dimension X briefly on October 28th, 1943. "Brenner Sr." was the sole survivor. "He" returned to the Right Side Up with a completely unique blood type, supposedly altered by his travels into Dimension X. This is what ultimately led to him succumbing to his injuries, due to his body rejecting all forms of blood transfusion. Brenner Jr. tells us that about 10 months prior to Henry's first stay in HNL, a scientist from Project Rainbow escaped Brenner's lab carrying a container of a dangerous material, and ended up near the same Nevada cave system Henry disappeared into. We don't know how or when this material was collected, or what it was, but we know they found Henry's Captain Midnight spyglass next to a body (identity unspecified) with no trace of that dangerous material. We get no further detail about the Nevada Disappearance.

Anyway, someone opens a gate in the fall of 1956 and/or 1983 (my money's on it being directly linked to an El in 1983 either way). No matter who did it, though, someone opened a gate at both time points, showing us this 27 year link between the 2 dates, 2 key locations.

"Henry" goes missing in Nevada in 1956, and ends up involved with Dimension X...Which aligns with the choice of song surrounding this version of the Creel family while they move into their new home:

Coincidentally, 27 years in the future, so does Will, in Indiana. Their experiences are linked across those two spaces via that 27 year period.

We know that regardless of the gate in Nevada...Mothergate, at least, stays open until from fall 1956/1983 to fall 1957/1984. That covers exact time frame that the adjusted dates for both Henry's accident with the boy in Nevada and his accident with Mr. Newby fall in (as well as Will's time between his disappearance and his flaying).

The closer we get to Will's flaying in 1984, and the closer the Mindflayer gets to crossing through Mothergate, the more TFS Henry sounds like One (post-1979) while he's possessed in 1957, the more strangely he behaves in general (almost as though the Mindflayer is more enmeshed in his everyday life/closer to the surface), and the stronger the possession attempts seem to become overall. He begins giving nightmare visions to other people, namely tormenting Virginia with spiders and her past. He has his final and most powerful "Vecna" vision on the night of the attack on Mr. Newby.

Any kind of reciprocal gate irt Mothergate in the '50s would have gone unnoticed, since the papers in TFS indicate that HNL wasn't established until Brenner showed up to take Henry in.

Mothergate closes briefly, only for a gate to open in July 1958/1985 in the underground location of the future Starcourt Mall. This, in 1958, is during our unaccounted-for 20 months between the attack on Mr. Newby and the Creel murders. (Something rattles about this and the scene where Henry nearly makes full contact with the Mindflayer, when he has a handful of duplicate lines re: his 4.07 monologue self, but I don't have sufficient evidence to make that claim with any certainty.)

That gate closes, until Vecna opens gates in Hawkins in March of 1986, and El opens a Dimension X gate briefly and simultaneously in both Hawkins/Nevada in September of 1979 (September of 1952) and Hawkins/Nevada in March of 1986 (March of 1959) during NINA, concurrently...at least one of which may have gone unnoticed, since the Rainbow Room and the surrounding labs seems to have been abandoned entirely after 1979, and HNL as a whole has once again been abandoned after the events of 1984 ("unnoticed" and "abandoned", I say as if the building isn't still being surveilled by Brenner/Owens et. al...I just mean that the building isn't in use by the government at that point in time.)

We're shown the Shadow activating all the way in Russia due to one or multiple of these events. 27 years earlier, in March of 1959, the Mindflayer once again becomes active, per TFS's adjusted dates. Chaos ensues.

At this point, "Henry" starts swapping between sounding like his young self and sounding like his 4.07 Monologuing Adult self again, doing that kind of "I've seen the future" foreshadowing talk with Joyce that his visions did with him:

Here, he also sounds distinctly like ST3 flayed Billy, specifically in the way of the scene with El in the cabin when "Billy" outlines the Mindflayer's plans for her, her friends, and all of Hawkins while crying.

The rest is, well...history. Whatever fuckery went on, it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. After all, TFS is a "canon event", meaning it had to end the way it did.

Remember those thoughts I asked you to hold?

TFS being a "canon event" means it had to end with Henry in the lab alongside baby El...thus completing our loop, which starts again with the events of 1979/1952. A 27 year loop. TFS may be indicative of a time loop.

Hence:

Out of place dates from the 1970s start to bleed into the 1950s: - A town like Rachel, Nevada, which wasn't established until 1978, now exists circa 1952-1959 after El opens a gate to Dimension X circa 1979 in Nevada circa 1986 via NINA, which exists...about 40-50 miles from Rachel.

- An album like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (November, 1971) or a song like "Chuck E's In Love" (April, 1979) gets referenced circa 1957-1959. - An article about a "younger, more handsome" alien clone of Elvis appears in a 1959 Weekly Watcher paper about the Creel murders, despite Elvis having been 24 at the time...making this an article more likely to have appeared in the '70s or later, likely sometime around Elvis' death in 1977.

2. The Shadow is always depicted as the fully formed Mindflayer circa 1956-1959, despite the shaping event happening in the 4 years between 1979-1983:

3. Henry has Vecna-type visions, despite being the only vision-giver we know of circa 1957-1959.

4. 6 different guys later in the HNL massacre: 2 with the original baby El, 2 with teen El via NINA, and 2 in an as-of-yet unseen product of NINA's Loop (see: the final scene of TFS).

All this laid out, some questions remain:

Why do Henry's visions show him the genuine, terrifying reality of his future?

Why are these visions generally lacking in coercion?

Why are Vecna chime sounds heard before the major supernatural events that deal with visions, even though we never actually see the clock? (They're heard before Virginia in the attic, before the attack on Mr. Newby, before the Creel murders, and in the basement when Henry monologues at Joyce while viewing the corpses of his family.)

Why don't these chimes play when the Mindflayer alone is present, e.g. when no visions occur? (See: Henry contacting the Mindflayer in the lab)

And we don't really get an answer to any of these. Not an easily spotted outright answer, anyway.

But what's really fascinating, which I mentioned just a second ago and takes me back to the top of this post, back to the "Stardust Spider" and Shadow Man, is the fact that despite occurring concurrently with the possession attempts...none of these visions contain an ultimatum. There's no "If you don't obey me, I'll hurt someone you love", no "I'm showing you what's going to happen if you don't obey me", nothing of the sort.

The closest we get to coercion is the bathroom vision, when Henry fights off a possession attempt in the school bathroom and ends up in a vision regarding Patty. When "Patty" starts to talk to him about his future, about how Henry's going to kill her and so many others, Henry says "you're not Patty...what are you?" Then he gets into a physical brawl with her, which is surprisingly well matched. Vision Patty encourages him during that fight, saying things like "That's it!", "We want the same thing!", and "We can have her!"

Those seem like pretty straightforward "the Mindflayer's encouraging Henry to kill" encouragements, right?

Yeah, at first glance. However...lets read that back right quick, but with Moral Objectivity Goggles on this time. Henry openly, verbally identifies that Vision Patty is "not her, not Patty", but is, in fact, something else. He does this multiple times before he lunges at "not Patty", and he is subsequently encouraged by not-Patty...who tells him they want the same thing. That's not suspicious at all. The motives here are definitely crystal clear and totally aren't conflicting in any way.

There's the straightforward surface aspect, and then something else piggybacking on it, complicating it. Hold that thought.

Other than that instance, the negative parts of Henry's visions are all just...information. They're showing him what will come to pass...almost like they're motivating him to fight the Mindflayer. Hold onto that thought too, it buddies with the previous one.

Henry's freaking out about Prancer because he's getting close with Patty, and he's worried he'll hurt her?

His vision informs him that he's going to kill more, that he's going to hurt things, that he's going to kill Patty if he stays around her and/or gives into the Mindflayer's desires. And then it happens. All of it. He kills more animals. He hurts things and people, the pets and lab animals, Mr. Newby, and Inmate 58361 being prime examples. He gives in to the Mindflayer's desire to kill and kills Virginia. He does, by the extent of his perception, kill Patty in the accident.

The same goes for his vision in the attic. Henry's up in the attic using his powers to find someone/snoop on them, fearful of opening himself up for a possession attempt?

The vision version of Patty's mother catches Henry and tells him she "wants to tell him a secret" while his body is being puppeted to attack Mr. Newby. The next time the curtain rises to show us the inside of Henry's mind, he's seeing himself as Vecna, strung up on the tentacles and strangling people with them...just like the end of Season 4. Once again, he's seeing the future that will come to pass...should he fail to fight the Mindflayer off.

We can tell it's a vision, not what's physically happening in reality, because: a) Henry's watching himself in the attic from the stage below. b) It's got the messed up red lighting c) They show us reality just moments before, not a tentacle in sight and without Henry on the stage there observing:

d) The ending of the vision doesn't match with reality:

At the end of this vision, Henry passes out both in the void and IRL, while the vision version of Henry remains crouching. That is a different guy, entirely separate from IRL/Void Henry. There is at least one other person in the visions who is not a product of the vision itself.

Remember those thoughts from a bit ago that I asked you to hold?

Well. This also happens to be the sequence where we not only get Vision-Patty repeating Henry's own words from just after Prancer's death ("It's not real. It's not real. It's a nightmare") back to him, a phrase IRL Patty has never heard, but we also get:

Visions Patty telling Henry how to fight and evade the possession, as if she knows what she's doing ("It's your dream, remember? Anything is possible").

Vision Patty telling Henry she loves him as the last-ditch effort when his "good dream" memory of the real Patty fails to save him from the possession.

These are both things IRL Patty wouldn't know or think to say, since IRL Patty fully believed that Henry attacked her of his own volition out of malice, and she needed to be shown a drawing of the Mindflayer by Mr. Newby in order to abandon that belief.

IRL Patty's behavior is not the behavior of someone who a) knows the ins and outs of Henry's situation with the Mindflayer, and b) coached him through overcoming a possession attempt a little while earlier. It's just not.

Just like before, we're seeing contradictions and complications between vision-selves and IRL selves, along with a sense of piggybacking within possession attempts, wherein the vision serves as motivation for Henry to fight harder in resistance to the Mindflayer...while the Mindflayer is possessing him.

It's starting to become my favorite thing in the world: A pattern of behavior.

In summary:

Henry's are visions are visions of his future, and they're being shown to him by someone.

They are separate from, but piggybacking on, the Mindflayer's possession attempts.

The purpose of the visions isn't solely to torment Henry or coerce him into doing the Mindflayer's bidding. In fact, the content of the visions seems curated to make Henry fight harder in resistance to the Mindflayer.

So if, for example, Vision Patty ≠ IRL Patty, but she's acting against the Mindflayer's best interest/in support of Henry...then...

I think my answer to the questions of "who", "when", and "how" should be at least somewhat clear by this point:

Someone...from the future.

Specifically, someone from 1979-1986 who has access to the gates from the Dimension X side, someone with both vision-giving and time-related abilities who's directly connected to the Mindflayer/the Hive Mind, but who has a vested interest in countering the Mindflayer, saving Henry Creel, and trying to change the course of the future.

A traitor. A spy, if you will.

"A spy...from the future?"

[gestures at the Signs] Yeah, you heard me.

A spy from the future.

So, on that note: The point in this section wherein I ask you to hear me out.

I get the feeling TFS Henry is being told and/or shown what will come to pass in the future by himself...the Mindflayer.

And you're probably going "How do you figure that one, James? Isn't the Mindflayer a villainous force?"

I mean, yeah. Of course it is. However...

There are clearly multiple forces at play within the Mindflayer (hive mind!), and TFS shows us that Henry Creel wouldn't choose to be a villain.

Thus I think the visions in TFS are situations where, as in the 4.07 rabbit scene, things look really damning on first view. They play on our empathy using small, visibly-frightened, helpless victims and shocking, violent circumstances to guide us into making the assumption that everything about the situation is inherently malicious.

We're shown this poor little guy, "Henry". He's 14 years old, he clocks in at 5'5", he's skittish/scared of (ha) his own shadow, and he's geeky to the nth degree about comic books (just LOOK at that Captain Midnight salute? What an cute little nerd). He's immediately lovable. He's also, we find out rather abruptly, plagued by horrific visions and murderous fits of possession.

The immediate response is to go "He's being psionically tortured by some sick, sadistic son of a bitch who hungers for nothing but blood and control", just like Nancy and the ST fandom collectively did with Young Henry's rabbit scene...only to be proven wrong about Henry's intentions via TFS.

I mean, does anyone (anyone who's able to read this post, anyway 🤭) look at TFS Henry, filmed Young Henry, or even Orderly Henry and go "Yeah. He totally wanted what he got, and if he had the chance, he definitely wouldn't try to save himself from that fate"?

No.

TFS Shows us that "Henry" was a terrified, traumatized boy who wanted it all to stop. He's kind, brave, and stronger than he seems. We're also shown that he's capable of overcoming the Mindflayer to issue warnings to people he cared about (i.e. telling people to run, or prophesying dangers he'd seen via the visions). He was trying to survive with next to no help while causing as little harm as possible. He was a good kid, and he certainly wasn't evil.

So, all that said...I think that, via the Shadow's hive-mind capabilities, Henry's "fronting", in a manner of speaking, in order to show this version of himself the future. Probably as a warning, probably as motivation to fight the Mindflayer, and all with a nice side-dish of "here's how you fight this thing off so that my current future doesn't become our future" before someone else tapes over the figurative laptop camera.

[coughs, drops this Brenner-Mindflayer collage on the table in front of you, and then scurries away]

With that said, I'd like to loop all the way back to the top of this post: The "Shadow Man" may be Henry from the future. He's waiting up ahead to show his younger self the true outcome of his choices.

We all know how TFS ends, though. Hence:

[EPIC FAIL COMPILATION]

This brings me to my final "bear with me" point: The matter of the strange double-agent vibes from the UD in every season.

I'm not sure if anyone else outside the unholycule has noticed this, but in every season there's at least one instance of the UD just...offering up information.

"It does?"

Yup! Let me explain.

On first glance, we look at things like Nancy's vision and even El's vision with Billy in the cabin, and we go "Oh, it's because [insert "the bad guy's cruel/he wants to scare her/his hubris will be his downfall/all serial killers want to be known for their crimes" etc here]"...but maybe that's not the case.

For example: Vecna told Nancy his backstory, and then he immediately went

"Oh hey, so not only am I revealing my identity (Which may help you find out more about me via lab records later on, things like...maybe a list of my abilities, or my weaknesses, like the fact that I have a nut allegry. Allegedly.), but I'm also gonna give you a sneak peek of my apocalypse plans. For free. As a treat. Don't use these to prepare or anything. I'm totally not giving you a head start".

Terrifying, yes. A taunt and a threat on surface view, yes...but also showing his hand. "I want you to tell Eleven everything you see" Why. Why would he want that. He may be confident in his plans, arrogant, even...but he's not that stupid.

I'm serious, though. Check it out in comparison to Henrys visions of the future. The pattern is patterning:

We can track that back to El's cabin scene with Billy, wherein he tells her she shouldn't have looked for him, warns her that they all can see her, and that they're going to be coming after her...and he cries about it. That's vision Billy. That's someone else who piggybacked into El's mind from Billy's mind. That's not real Billy, just like how Billy in Max's vision wasn't the real Billy. The person giving El that vision warns her. Why on earth would he tell her that they can see her, that they're coming for her? That's sensitive information! It would be smarter to let her think she's safe and use that false sense of security to catch her off guard.

In fact, this pattern patterns so well that I'd like to argue this: Henry's TFS visions, Nancy's vision, and El's vision are all the same type of behavior displayed in NINA's chess scene, just in different contexts.

Henry ("Henry") gives some kind of scary prophetic information ("He and the others are going to attempt to kill you", "I would very much like to show you where I am going", "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"), and then we're left to question if it's a scare tactic, manipulative misinformation, or helpful inside information.

It's not that the Mindflayer or Vecna can't hide things from people (see: "Somewhere he didn't want me to see")...like, say, the fact that the Mindflayer is now able to see El, or that Vecna's planning to open 4 gates with his 4 kills.

It's always this miraculous "Huh! Weird info-dropping behavior from the UD's side. Shouldn't look that gift-horse in the mouth though. It's probably just a writing oversight or a shoehorned exposé, so really there's no need to question it." situation where it's just...information that's offered up with no real explanation.

Some of my favorite examples:

...and it's all topped off with Max's line:

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time".

That is to say...You're telling me:

The first message from the Upside Down isn't any of the messages that are concretely Will's, but instead it's the one that's a repetitive Henry line...and it's conveyed in a distinctly not-Will style? A message that saves Joyce, something that's definitely not in the UD's best interest given her tenacity in finding her boy...but is definitely coming from the UD nonetheless?

Will, who fell total prey to the Mindflayer in less than 3 days, was not only able to figure out how to defeat the Mindflayer, but was also strong enough to convey it in Morse code? The Mindflayer, who is able to keep secrets (see below), just...let that information slip?

El, who acknowledges that the Mindflayer is more than able to hide things from her, is suddenly released into Billy's memories and allowed to find the source unimpeded?

The Mindflayer, as Billy (Remember: not actually Billy, because Billy can't give visions or invade minds), is telling El that because he's able to see her now, she shouldn't have looked for him? The Mindflayer, which was supposedly building the Fleshflayer to track El down and kill her? Suddenly he's telling her she shouldn't have done the thing that allowed him to find her more easily?

Vecna's giving up all the information about himself and his plans before he's even gotten the 4th gate open, despite him being so secretive about it up until that point?

Henry's visions in TFS are going to scare him into resisting the Mindflayer, making it less likely that he's going to upgrade to killing humans, i.e. the very thing the Mindflayer wants him to do?

None of that makes any damn sense...until we hit this last point:

Orderly Henry is known for giving inside information about "Papa" to El with no clear motive other than getting her to leave the lab.

Now, if you know my page then you know Em's been talking about double meanings in phrasing recently (see: this post about "who"s and "what"s).

So, with that in mind, I'd like you to chew on this:

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time." vs "He's been telling us His plan this whole time."

By which I mean: "He's been telling us some other man's plan this whole time."

[Mike voice] Superspy.

As a parting thought, I made it all into a nice, neat set of collages:

Not to mention this final, parting bit:

#henry creel #time loop theory #st: tfs

[synthshenanigans]

woah hey a year has been passed wowie :0

First two weren't posted here cos they were too long ago & not CJish related but love the way he took up 70% of the year lol

[ Full images + templates below :} ]

[TW for Bright Colors, maybe blood & very very vague themes of depression/suicide for like 2 drawings I believe]

Long text about the arts if anyones actually curious!!

January: An old OC I completely forgot about until making this. He's based on old radio like things :}

February: Played Person 5 Royal last year & drew Joker cos idk he's neat. Fun fact, the same day I fully finished the game was the day Storm & a Spring came out. Also while grinding in the game, I had his Bidding & VoaC covers on repeat. Which was a bit annoying to do since they weren't on Spotify yet & YT on mobile didn't have looping then.

March: The Hawaii Part ii album cover :} I did post that eventually but that's the time I actually made it. Had listened to TME a couple of months before then which got me into the album, so months later I drew it cos why not? [Also the month Vol.1 fully released on everything. What's funny is my gallery for that day was a handful of memes I saved at 4am before I fell asleep. And then the next image saved is when I woke up which was a screenshot of the whiteboard in TfaR lol]

April: First main Jash art !!! And its not even with any of the songs from Vol. 1 lol. I had his Moss cover on repeat again & now that all of Vol. 1 was out, I drew Heart in some moss. Or really in the image from the video.

May: Lil animation I made of Heart with the song Don't Hit the Lights! Link to my post & the song can be found here :}. Still really like the song & even the drawings. Might remake em eventually idk

June: Sky/socialc1imb's Clue AU! I like murder mysteries & this one was real interesting so I drew it a lot lol. Might remake that one or one of the others I made at somepoint? It'll be a bit later if I do but ye

July: A redraw of a HMS piece I originally made back in May, based on the Three Wise Monkeys thing. I like the idea of it so I keep wanting to remake it.

August: I honestly can't remember if I posted that art or not. Actually yea I don't think I ever did PFFT. It's one of the few drawings I did of myself this year & its from CJs Not Perfect cover [as you can tell by the lyrics on it]. Also one of the very very few vent-ish arts I made. I like the background more than anything but its still neat ig?

September: Art for one of the best songs ever. I love Fine, I'm Fine its so good & I listened to it for like 70% of the 20+ hours it took me to make the drawing. Still proud of it so there's the sketch I drew on paper, the one on my tablet & then the final versions.

October: There was a lot from this month due to Jashtober. I still like this one lot & it wasn't insanely rushed so I picked this one to show lol.

November: I have no idea why I made a fun lil soul. I was having an identity crisis over my art style & ig decided to draw the guy who is a walking identity crisis/j

December: Same as September. One of my favorite songs ever was covered & released, so I made a drawing like everyone else lol.

#time is wild #also love the way my art style changes each month or two #anyway tho im actually pretty happy with how much better I've gotten #have a lotta plans for more HMS/CJ stuff #just quite busy & overloaded atm lol #more will hopefully come tho #chonny jash #moss post #-atlas art-

[thisbuildinghasfeelings]

2023 Writing Cross Stitch Round Up

Thank you for tagging me @ladytessa74 and @alrightbuckaroo

I'm pretty proud of my cross stitch journey this year! 20 finished pieces since April!

April

911 Lone Star- my first Lone Star cross stitch project, created with an image of the Lone Star logo and a free pattern generator I found online. It had been a couple years since I had done any cross stitching. Working on this one was a bit of a painful week because it involved the reestablishment of my stitching calluses on my fingers.

I'm a fireman, our codes are like...fire!- The first in a series where I took a quote from the show and went on Etsy to find a pattern for some kind of image that I thought worked well with the quote. At this point, I didn't have the confidence (or the software) to come up with my own more complex patterns.

Sure, ma'am, but just so you know, I am a homosexual-Still one of my favorites. However, it was early in my cross stitching journey, so when I look at it, a few major mistakes jump out at me. This is such an excellent quote that I think I want to do an improved version at some point.

Is the lizard back?-I did this one in honor of Lou II after I found a perfect bearded dragon pattern available on Etsy.

Firefighters, you really are a smug bunch-I really like this one. I found a firetruck pattern on Etsy and modified it a bit, including changing the number on it to 126.

May

I was peckish and I wanted pudding- This is a simple one, but I created the pattern myself. From the second I heard this line, I knew it had to be a cross stitch.

It absolutely wrecks people- Cow eyes. I like this one except for the fact that I took a horrible picture of it. I think I finished it at night and was so excited to post that I couldn't wait for daylight to get a brighter picture. It's always a struggle to get a picture that's bright enough but also doesn't have the shadow of my phone across it. Luckily, since then I've discovered the perfect place in my house to take cross stitch pictures, even at night!

Did you know that honeybees pollinate a third of our food supply?- I was originally going to have four little honeybees on this one, but the finale had just aired and I was dying to get going on my planned Tarlos vows project, so it ended up just getting one bee.

June

Working on stitching the vows.

July

Tarlos wedding vows- It took 7 weeks and a comically large hoop, but I got it done. I mapped out this pattern before I had pattern making software meaning I did it by hand with pencil and paper. Plotting out the words, making sure everything was centered, making sure it would all fit, etc was quite an ordeal!

Tarlos proposal- This was the first pattern I created with my new pattern making software and it's still one of my favorites. It's love ❤️

126 Firehouse- I was incredibly proud of myself for this one. It was the most elaborate pattern I had created on my own up until that point.

August

Typical TK- I really like this one but I didn't include the full quote for simplicity's sake (leaving out the "of course") and I kind of regret that now.

We make a pretty good team-This one did not turn out the way I saw it in my head, so there were moments that I kind of hated it. Ultimately, I'm ok with it.

September

Working on my elaborate tarloft dining area project.

October

You Have All of Me, Carlos-This is without a doubt my favorite thing I've ever made. It took about 6 weeks and is the most elaborate pattern I've created to date.

November

This is real- A quote from @ladytessa74's incredible fic for her birthday.

Tyler Kennedy Strand-My best attempt at capturing the essence of TK.

Lone Star Christmas Tree Ornaments-4 stitched ornaments for my Lone Star-themed Christmas tree.

Well, he's a wise ass- A piece in honor of my favorite wise ass.

Season 1 Tarlos- The first in my cute little Tarlos series. I love tiny TK and Carlos very much.

December

Season 2 Tarlos-Cute little Tarlos part 2.

I will have at least one more (and maybe two) still this month. Season 3 Tarlos will definitely be finished before the month is over, and depending on how much stitching time I have, I may even get Season 4 done.

No pressure tagging @bonheur-cafe @heartstringsduet @birdclowns @paperstorm @carlos-in-glasses @lemonlyman-dotcom @strandnreyes @fitzherbertssmolder @reasonandfaithinharmony (gif round up?)

#lone star cross stitch

[hidekomoon]

How do u do these redesigns?

hi! firstly thank you for asking this, i Love questions

i mainly used canva, and the majority of the elements you see on them are copyright-free pictures available without the canva premium subscription. the rest are paramore photoshoots, some photos i found on tumblr, and a collage of mine that i made a few months ago.

it took me a lot of time to make them all, i spent hours looking for pictures that fit the vibe i wanted for each paramore album & inspired me. I think the riot! album was the one i struggled with the most, i'm still not entirely satisfied with it... to give you an idea of how i worked, here are some first drafts:

i had already picked the photoshoot for the self-titled redesign but it was much simpler, just the picture, a "film" filter, and the paramore logo (if you need me to show you how to make a logo transparent to use it somewhere else, just ask)

and for the brand new eyes one, at first i thought i was going to manually create all these "ripped" pictures of eyes (for the 5 eyes you see here, i picked full pictures of eyes, cut them using photopea, then added between 5 and 10 long pictures of ripped paper that i found on canva. that took me a while and i didn't even end up using it lmao). in the end i found a collage of eyes that i made in october/november and i just took a picture of that because it was way more harmonious. those eyes were from paper magazines. also you can see that when i gave up on this first idea i kept the maps background for my riot redesign.

i looooved this after laughter logo that i made but overall it was too simple a design for my taste so i redid everything. the original idea was to have a kind of postcard vibe, as you can see on the back of the album, but i couldn't find a way to keep the picture and the text in a harmonious way, and by the time i found a solution i had started the finished version you've seen on my blog, so.

now for the detail that ties everything together: the text on the back. I simply copied word for word everything that's written on my copies of each album (i own all of them except for awkif, but it's easy to find online). i found the logos online & i took photos of the actual barcodes.

what else can i say? sometimes i tried to pick the same fonts as the original album cover, and i looked up fan forums who had already answered that question. i browsed tumblr a lot to find the various photoshoots i used. i played a LOT with the canva tool that lets you modify a picture, specifically the colors in the picture, in order to make everything harmonious. and when i needed to make something transparent, i used photopea (which is kinda like photoshop, but free)

do you have a question about an edit in particular? because i'd love to go into more detail if you're interested. if i have one advice to give, it's to go crazy with it: you can literally make anything you want. & if you ever make your own redesigns i'd love to see them!!

#ask #paramore #pmorealbums*

[hldailyupdate]

Two weeks ago, the stark phrase “HE CUT HIS HAIR” began trending on social media. I can confirm its truth: the One Direction member turned solo star Harry Styles has indeed cut his hair. The usual curly tresses are gone, scissored into a tousled, swept-back look. It’s for a film role he’s currently shooting in Los Angeles. But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business.

Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023. It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

“It feels like full circle for me to be doing this,” Styles says, speaking in what looks like the stainless steel confines of his LA film trailer. He grew up near Manchester, in a village in the neighbouring county Cheshire. “My first job was with the Co-op, it was delivering papers for them,” he recalls.

Manchester was where he went to gigs with friends. It was also where he auditioned for the television talent show The X Factor in 2010 when he was 16, singing an unaccompanied version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. It led to him joining the boy band One Direction. Transcending their talent show origins (they came third on The X Factor), Styles and his bandmates became a global phenomenon. They were the first band in US chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one, outdoing even The Beatles.

With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling.

Diversification from the evanescent world of teen-pop continues with his involvement in the Co-op Live arena. It links him with two big names in the US entertainment industry. Tim Leiweke, former CEO of the concert promoter AEG, and Irving Azoff, former CEO of Ticketmaster, run Oak View Group, the company building the arena. Azoff’s son Jeffrey Azoff is Styles’s manager. “This is a big project and it would be a lot scarier if I was with people I didn’t know,” the singer says.

He has a financial stake in it as an investor. “I didn’t get into music because I wanted to be a businessman,” he says. “I got into music because I love music. That’s always going to be a first for me. But when an opportunity like this comes up, for me it feels so much about what I can bring to it as a musician, and also as a fan.”

Construction of the arena is due to begin in November. Styles has a vaguely defined role as an adviser in its design and decor. “Obviously I’m not an expert architecturally, in terms of building an arena,” he says. “I guess the weight of my involvement falls into the idea of what you want backstage as an artist. People operate in different ways after a show. Some people like a quiet space, some people like a place where you can invite all your friends.”

Arenas have a reputation as soulless venues, the kind of interchangeable setting where a forgetful star can get the name of the city wrong (as happened to Bruce Springsteen in 2016 when he cried, “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” during a show in Cleveland).

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

“There’s a lot of cold rooms that you can play in,” he says. “You definitely remember being in the ones that sound better, the ones in which you can create some sort of feeling of being at home.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.”

Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

The first time he sang in public was in the canteen of his Cheshire school, for a music competition. He recalls the feeling of exhilaration: “You’re so used to sitting in the classroom and looking up at your teachers. All of a sudden everyone’s down there and the teachers are looking up at you.”

He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.”

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to venues. “It’s such a strange time to be talking about live music, because right now it just doesn’t exist,” Styles says. He insists that the Co-op Live is designed to enhance Manchester’s live infrastructure, not overwhelm it. (The city already has one of the UK’s largest indoor venues, the AO Arena.)

“The purpose is not in any way to try to monopolise the city in terms of music,” he says. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, wanting to bring more artists there, to use this building as a reminder of why it’s such a great music city, not trying to wipe out other venues.”

After its projected completion in 2023, Co-op Live will be able to welcome its celebrity investor on stage (“If they’ll have me. I’ll have to speak to someone and ask about that”). In the meanwhile, Styles is due to embark on a world tour next February, although the pandemic has cast it in doubt.

“It’s one of those things of just seeing how things go,” he says. “I don’t think anyone wants to be putting on a tour before it’s safe to do so. There will be a time we dance again, but until then I think it’s about protecting each other and doing everything we can to be safe. And then when it’s ready and people want to, we shall play music.”

Financial Times about Harry being the new face of a new arena in Manchester. (26 October 2020)

#harry styles #harry update #article #financial times #hldaily #october 2020

[sciencespies]

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2020

https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-ten-most-significant-science-stories-of-2020/

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2020

Covid-19 dominated science coverage in 2020, and rightly so. The world grappled with how to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus, learning about how it spread (whether it was on surfaces, via droplets or being airborne) and how it affected the human body (from immunity to symptoms like loss of smell.) But scientific endeavors in other fields, whether affected directly by the pandemic or indirectly by public health measures, didn’t come to a complete halt because of SARS-CoV-2. In incredible advances, researchers used three new tools for making discoveries about the sun, discovered that dinosaurs got cancer and published a study on a discovery in a Mexican cave that changes the timeline of humans’ arrival to the Americas. But none of those moments made this list of the biggest science stories of the year. It’s a subjective round-up, of course, but one compiled by our editors after much thought and debate. Presenting the key innovations, studies and discoveries that made 2020 an unforgettable year in science:

Companies Develop Covid-19 Vaccines in Record Time

A vile of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 that was delivered to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, California

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in China late last year, more than 802 million cases and more than 1.7 million deaths have been confirmed around the world. In the United States, more than 19 million patients have tested positive for the disease and more than 338,000 of them have died. While the disease continues to spread and cause death, help is in sight thanks to the record-setting effort to develop vaccines. In less than a year, Moderna and Pfizer, in cooperation with BioNTech, created the first messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines ever to protect against Covid-19. An mRNA vaccine contains a synthetic version of RNA that tricks the immune system into thinking a virus is present so that it will make antibodies designed to fight the virus. This is different from a traditional vaccine, which is made of small amounts of an existing virus. The previous record for vaccine development was for mumps, which took four years in the 1960s, but Moderna started working on a vaccine in January and Pfizer and BioNTech began working together in March. By July, both companies began late stage trials, each with roughly 30,000 participants. In November, the companies declared their vaccines were more than 90 percent effective. By mid-December, the FDA approved both vaccines for use in the United States. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci hailed the accomplishments as a “triumph.” Now comes the complicated, months-long process of distributing the vaccines to the public.

NASA Snags Its First Asteroid Sample

Artist’s conception of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu

(NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)

In October, the NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-Rex reached out and grabbed rocks from a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid named Bennu. The mission, which took place more than 200 million miles away from Earth, marked the first time the space agency reached out and touched an asteroid. The craft was supposed to land on the mass, but the surface proved too rocky, so the team behind the effort pivoted to using a robotic arm to snatch a sample. The smashing success almost worked too well; the collection module vacuumed up so much rock that a vital flap couldn’t close. Scientists abandoned their plans to measure the sample and took days to implement an effort to successfully store the rocks. The sample should arrive on Earth three years from now. Experts think it may contain water and prebiotic material, the building block of life. Such evidence might offer clues about how life on Earth started.

Habitats Burn During One of the Hottest Years on Record

Flames surround Lake Berryessa during the LNU Lightning Complex fire in Napa, California on August 19, 2020.

( Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

As of the writing of this list, 2020 is in competition with 2016 to be the hottest year ever recorded. This possible peak continues a dangerous trend, with the ten hottest years ever documented all occurring since 2005. Perhaps no illustration of the effects of climate change this year was more dramatic than the preponderance of massive wildfires. Millions of acres in Australia, which was set up for disaster as 2019 marked its hottest and driest year on record, burned from last October into January 2020. Thousands of Australians fled their homes, and many animals died or scurried from their threatened habitats. In Brazil, fires ravaged the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, from July through October. Roughly a quarter of the ecosystem , which is larger in area than Greece, burned. Residents and animals abandoned their homes for safety, unsure of what would remain when they returned. In the United States, California recorded its worst fire season ever, with more than 3 million acres destroyed. Massive fires have dominated the state recently, with seven of the most destructive burns taking place in the last five years. Hot, dry summers, due in part to climate change, have set the region up for longer, more volatile fire seasons.

Scientists Discover Signs of Possible Life on Venus, or Maybe Not

Venus is a world of intense heat, crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of corrosive acid.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In September, astronomers published a pair of papers saying they detected a gas called phosphine on Venus. They said the discovery, which was made using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, suggested a living source for the gas because other conditions on the planet couldn’t lead to phosphine formation. News outlets from The New York Times to National Geographic picked up the story, while reporting that some experts were skeptical of the finding. In October, three independent follow-up studies failed to find the gas on Venus. One of the studies used new data, and the other two used the initial team’s original data. In November, the original team revised their figures and said that phosphine levels were seven times lower than their initial estimate. As the debate about the presence of the gas continues, the story is important not just because of the correction, but because of what it shows: Science is a process in which findings are presented and then opened up to scrutiny and revision.

Microplastics Invade the Furthest Reaches of the Globe

Plastic debris covers the beach of the Costa del Este neighborhood in Panama City.

(Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

News that microplastics have spread into many of the earth’s habitats is nothing new, but this year, scientists published several studies showing that the amount is much greater than previously thought and the reach is much further than previously documented. In April, researchers documented microplastics in Antarctic sea ice for the first time. In June, a study published in Science estimated that 1000 tons of airborne plastic debris rains down on national parks and remote stretches of wilderness in the United States. The country’s estimated contribution of plastic waste to the oceans was shown to be double what was previously thought. And in October, scientists published a study estimating that 15.8 million tons of microplastic are embedded in the Earth’s seafloor—or a lot more than is floating at the ocean’s surface. Not only the planet’s lowest points have been trashed; scientists published a study in November that found microplastics in every sample collected from the slopes of Mount Everest, with one such sample collected at 27,690 feet above sea level. Plastic debris has infiltrated Earth’s water, air and the living tissues of so many creatures, including humans. What scientists don’t know yet, is all of the ways the pollution affects us.

Three Different Early Humans May Have Lived Together in South Africa

The Drimolen excavations and excavated fossils

(Andy Herries)

Despite being widely discredited in modern archaeology, orthogenesis—the theory that species evolve in neat succession, with new species replacing extinct species without much overlap—still looms large in the public understanding of human evolution. Researchers now say that evolution may have looked more like a scene first described in April this year, where three different species of possible human ancestors lived together in the same ancient cave in South Africa’s Cradle of Humanity. Tucked away in a roofless, amphitheater-like dwelling known as the Drimolen Paleocave System, skull fragments from Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus and Homo erectus were found to date back to 1.95 million years ago. This time period would mark the end of Australopithecus’s reign and the early beginnings of Paranthropus’s short-lived existence. Remarkably, the find could push back H. erectus’s origins by about 100,000 years; a cranium fragment scientists discovered might be the earliest fossil evidence of the species. Collapsed layers of fossil-packed sediment make precise dating tricky, but this study provides new evidence of multi-species hominin coexistence in a new geographic location, suggesting our ancestors were much more diverse than previously thought.

New AI Tool Cracks a Decades-Old Problem in Biology

Proteins are tiny molecular structures that make life on Earth go ’round. All proteins start out as a chain of chemical compounds called amino acids. Those chains then fold, twist and turn over and over again into perplexing tangles that eventually develop a three-dimensional shape. A protein’s shape defines what it can and can’t do—enter and alter certain cells, for example. When scientists can determine those 3-D shapes, the knowledge helps them understand how viruses spread, crack genetic codes and breakdown cellular infrastructure. Researchers have been searching for ways to crack the code of protein structures for 50 years. Scientists using existing technology require years of trial and error efforts to figure out a protein’s shape. This year, Google’s artificial intelligence company DeepMind debuted a deep-learning tool called AlphaFold that can determine a protein’s structure in a matter of days. The potential applications and breakthroughs this technology offers are numerous, including quicker and more advanced drug discovery. As one researcher described the find to Nature magazine, “It’s a breakthrough of the first order, certainly one of the most significant scientific results of my lifetime.”

The United States Is On Track to Eliminate Cervical Cancer

A pediatrician gives an HPV vaccination to a 13-year-old girl in Miami, Florida.

( Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In a year plagued by a different kind of virus, good news is on the horizon regarding a form of cervical cancer associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Even without increased vaccination or screening, the United States is on pace to eliminate cervical cancer within the next 20 to 30 years, according to report released this year. When pap smears were widely introduced and regularly implemented at a global scale nearly a half-century ago, cervical cancer deaths began to drop. A vaccine introduced in 2006 prevented HPV infections that lead to cervical cancer. If medical professionals ramp up current vaccination and screening efforts, cervical cancer could be eliminated even sooner than expected, according to statistical models used in the study.

The United States Watched Washington Scientists Battle Invasive ‘Murder Hornets’

The Asian giant hornet, the world’s largest hornet, was sighted in North America for the first time.

(Washington State Dept. of Agriculture)

With a nickname like “murder hornets,” Asian giant hornets were hard to ignore, even though researchers spotted only a few at first. Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) decimate honey bee populations fairly efficiently (hence their nickname) and their sting is far mightier than any common bee found in North America. But after the New York Times published an article about scientists’ efforts to get ahead of the species before they settled for good in Washington state and British Columbia, the internet was abuzz with interest. Though four hornets had been spotted since fall 2019, it wasn’t until early October that the first live hornet was captured. By mid-October, entomologists found, isolated and incapacitated a nest that contained more than 500 “murder hornets,” including 200 queens. Though scientists may have arrived there in the nick of time, it’s impossible to know whether some of those queens mated and set off to start their own colonies, so a team is still on the lookout for the stinging beasts. All in all, the internet hysteria was exaggerated—and not exactly harmless either. Search engine inquiries about pesticides jumped, and common, oft-overlooked pollinators prompted panicked calls to local environmental agencies. One good thing to come out of the story? Folks learned a bit about the importance of controlling invasive species.

In 50 Years, Humans Have Decimated Two-Thirds of the World’s Wildlife

A leatherback sea turtle hatchling, an endangered species, crawls to the ocean.

(Mark Conlin/VW PICS/UIG via Getty Image)

Since 1970, 4,392 mammals, amphibians, birds, fish and reptile species’ population sizes declined by 68 percent, according to a World Wildlife Fund report released this year. Animals living in Latin America and the Caribbean took the biggest hit; their population sizes decreased by 94 percent. Habitat destruction is cited as the leading cause of these massive losses. The United Nations’ Global Biodiversity Outlook report produced similarly grim results. The document took inventory of 196 countries committed to recovering biodiversity as determined by the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets. As dictated by the Aichi agreement’s ten-year plan, countries were to achieve certain recovery milestones like preventing the spread of invasive species and conserving protected areas. Most of the goals were not achieved or only partially met. Furthermore, the reports warned that pandemics, like the one the world is currently facing, could become more common if humans’ “broken” relationship with the natural world is not mended. In a statement, U.N. Convention of Biological Diversity executive secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said, “the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own wellbeing, security and prosperity.”

#Nature

#Nature

[uwunnie]

Update + Week 1 recap (Nov.7, 8:21 PM US Mountain Time)

Today marked the final day of the first week since this whole ordeal began. Truthfully, it feels like we somehow transported to the Dramarama video because time seemed to stop, but alas, here we are.

For the recap, I’m not going to put specific dates, but for today’s update, I will title it as such. You’ll see - this should be a pretty easy format to follow (tiki-taka),

For the sake of everyone’s timelines, the recap and update begin after this read more.

-

When news broke out regarding a Wonho’s sudden departure on October 31 (US and the like time-zones), may have been November 1 for other zones, there really weren’t that many updates in the way of efforts to bring him back. That day was full of shock, so everyone was more angry and depressed - even more so compared to now.

But after a day or two, Monbebes managed to channel their emotions into a bigger cause: Bringing Wonho home, and bringing him home we will.

Let’s recap:

Twitter Monbebes, Carter and Kei, organized the GoFundMe to raise $10,000 USD to purchase an ad in NY Times Square.

Within 45 minutes of initial service, the goal had been met.

After a couple days, the donations kept piling in and finally, as of November 3 - the GoFundMe closed at $25,102 USD ($15,102 USD over the original goal).

The ad’s payment was successful and the ad went up! However, my understanding is that the ad’s run-time ends in a few hours.

Ad’s location: New York, 42nd St. and 7th Ave., facing east.

Photos of the ad:

Reads: We shine brighter as a family, then proceeds to list each name of OT7 along with their logo and a photo of OT7 together with MONBEBE on the photo.

The board kicked off on November 6 and ran 30 times per hour for 15 seconds all day except 2-5 AM.

-

A petition calling to keep Wonho a member of Monsta X was published. Within a week, the petition is still going pretty strong with over 400k signatures. The goal is 500k, so I predict it will reach its goal within the next week.

The petition can be found here.

In addition, more projects/campaigns have been released since then and can be found in this master-post here.

Since this day, however, more projects have been revealed, so once I compile all of them, I’ll add them to the previous link.

Let’s remember:

K-MBB left sticky notes on Starship Ent.’s building. Eventually, within a few hours, a staff member was photographed collecting them.

News outlets began reporting about Monbebe efforts to bring Wonho back, thus bringing more attention to our goal.

Celebrities reached out and showed their support of Monsta X.

Monbebes began writing everyone to spread awareness - spanning as far as contacting Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president.

Naver (shockingly) released a positive article - something that’s very rare.

Efforts are still being made to spread more awareness through physical ads in South Korea.

K-MBB’s held a silent protest outside of Starship Ent.

International fans flew to South Korea to participate.

Staff said they can and will welcome Wonho back.

Staff also helped Monbebes greatly:

Met with MBB’s on the day of the silent protest to help them cut out banners.

These plaques read, “I do not want to remain just a memory,” which are lyrics from If Only.

Supported MBB’s in the fan cafe - even went as far as changing their icons, I believe, to photos of Wonho.

Continued collecting MBB sticky notes and even provided tissues at the protests for those who were crying.

Continue encouraging us to continue with our efforts.

Other fandoms have showed their support for Monsta X and MBB.

International MBB are still organizing a silent protest from what I’ve seen circulating the web.

For Minhyuk’s birthday, MBB adopted four whales as gifts. One is a southern humpback named Monbebe, another a blue whale adopted in Minhyuk’s name. I’ve heard another one was named Monsta X, but don’t quote me on it because I’m not 100% sure.

Minhyuk’s birthday tag also reached #1 worldwide trend.

A set of stars were also purchased and named Lee Hoseok and Monsta X.

NY-MBB got a dance group to dance to Follow.

UK-MBB are hosting fundraisers in efforts to raise money for a central London billboard.

As I stated prior, all sorts of ad efforts were, and still are being, made.

Over 30 tags have consecutively trended worldwide for one week - many of them reaching -#1 trend several times.

K-MBB’s used the original fan chant during one of the performances for Follow’s promotions. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, it means that they used the OT7 chant including Wonho’s name.

300 fans were allowed into the Inkigayo recording - 100 over its normal capacity.

Tower Records, international music franchise store, showed their support in their Japan branch’s sector through MX signs and posters.

MX reminders:

Wonho is still active on the fan cafe.

Majority of the members have been active on the fan cafe.

Minhyuk posted this for his birthday:

Changkyun posted this two days ago:

Wonho is still on Starship’s official site.

This photo was posted a day or two ago:

For those that may not understand, the white ink is circling Wonho’s signature and name on the wristband. Some people claimed it doesn’t matter because those bands are pre-made, but to that I’d like to point out that those bands are made out of paper and his name is printed/signed on the end, so it would have been very easy for staff to cut off the end part if they really wanted to, or were instructed to do so.

This was circulating the web:

Speculations:

Nov. 7: Shownu wore Wonho’s shirt.

Nov. 7: Kihyun wore Wonho’s earrings.

Nov. 7: Hyungwon wore Wonho’s chain.

Nov. 7: Changkyun wore Wonho’s, or a similar, earpiece.

Nov. 7: Our boys left a space for Wonho at the end of their performance. Take a look here and see what you think.

Nov. 2: MX left a space for Wonho during Follow and Find You.

Nov. 2: Jooheon’s lyrical slip-up could have been in protest of what’s occurring.

In regards to this speculation, he did this recently again as well, so my interpretation is that it’s probably related to the protest as well as exhaustion.

Starship info and overall legal matters:

As far as my knowledge extends, this is the ONLY official statement SS has released:

The explanation/speculation of this letter can be found here.

SS is involved in their own, personal, controversy. I’ve made past posts regarding the situation, but for the sake of not stirring the pot, so-to-speak, I’m going to exclude them from this particular post. Until further information about their situation is released, or I feel it’s becoming a detriment to MX, I will bite my tongue.

In regards to 🐻’s controversy, SS confirmed the photos were manipulated (fake).

🐻’s searches have been cleared, at least from my knowledge. I’ve been told that they have been, but I’m not entirely sure if they’ve come back or anything.

I know a lot of people messaged me that particular night in regards to a YouTube video talking about 🐻’s situation and everyone was concerned it would spark up the searches again. I didn’t want to say anything until I saw the video taken down, but I messaged KJ and explained the situation to him. He had no ill intent with his video - in fact, he was trying to help clear the negative rumors revolving around MX. He was just simply unaware that, unfortunately, any publicity regarding 🐻’s situation would trigger the searches again, so I explained this to him and told him about MBB efforts. He completely understood and removed the video.

-

Updates from November 7:

MX received their 2nd win!

The video and post involving Hyungwon’s speech can be found here. HIGHLY recommend watching it.

GOT7 congratulated and hugged each member, and E-Dawn congratulated Changkyun.

Only 10 Monbebes were allowed inside for the performance, so Ahgases (GOT7’s fan club) held up Monsta X light sticks during our boys’ performance in place for the MBB not allowed in. Ahgase also helped MBB with the live voting.

In other words: Ahgase and Monbebe are each other’s sweethearts. 💚🤧💜

Jooheon told MBB not to cry.

They held a fan-sign to which:

Wonho’s photo was projected on the screen behind them. A link to the photo can be found here.

K-MBB informed MX of the Times Square ad.

Changkyun stayed this is the last week of promotions.

Kihyun said he will do a cover of Believer.

I think Shownu earned his PhD? Or is going to?

Jooheon confirmed the release of the studio version of Sambakja, or he said he might. I’ve seen people talking about both, so I can guarantee 100%, but Jooheon, if you’re reading this - please.

Trends continue meaning we’ve successfully trended for one week straight.

Eshy:

Voting for MAMA has been open and Monsta X is a nominee in all except a couple categories.

There’s two ways to vote:

Voting for them in specific categories on the website, here.

Voting on Twitter as well by utilizing:

#MAMAVOTE #monstax

Current twitter tags to trend as well:

#LoveUWonho

#우리_항상_네_곁에_있을게요

@/OfficialMonstaX

@/STARSHIPent

-

Overall reminders:

Do not engage in fan wars.

Do not engage in any hate towards the duo. I’ve said this in the past and it’s practically been confirmed: They’re trying to gather sympathy through the situation they’ve caused by trying to play victim. Popular sites are posting articles painting them in positive undertones and netizens are starting to support them because of the hate they’re getting on their social platforms and what not. Those comments can also be collected and utilized in the ongoing legal case, so please, do NOT engage with them. Instead, channel your energy into MAMA voting, campaigns/projects, trends, and other positive things that will bring Wonho home to us.

Messages to MX, project created by @wonderlanddragon, ends Nov.8/9. The posted regarding the details can be found in the campaign link above!

Bunnies for Wonho, created by @thoughtsfromaclutteredbrain, has been ongoing now. They’ve also planned a new project for a video, so please send in your favorite Wonho moment along with your name and/or nickname to them!

@stay-dont-strayy creates an International MBB project. You can find the info on their blog!

Kpop group chats have been created, links here.

@sezy001234 has also created five tumblr kpop group chats, so hit her up for details on everything!

I’ve also made a kpop tumblr group chat, so if you’d like to be added, send in an ask or message!

The source to find the bunny 7-1=0 profile pictures can be found here in seven different colors.

You can leave letters/sweet messages to the boys on the fan cafe. Please be mindful of the situations at hand when doing so and also, give a little extra love to our baby, Changkyun. MBB at the fan-sign have mentioned that he seems to be struggling the most and tbh, it’s been very visible in his performances and photos.

All seven are trying to be strong for us, so let’s try our best to be strong for them. ❤️

-

We’ve made it through the first week, babes.

We can do it time and time again.

I love you all. ❤️🤧

Let’s bring our bunny home. ❤️🐰

(Posting: Nov. 8, 3:05 AM US Mountain Time // yes, it took me this long to make lol)

#monsta x #wonho #shownu #kihyun #hyungwon #minhyuk #jooheon #changkyun #im #joohoney #updates #first week #monbebe

[hippriestess]

Part 4 - I’ve Been Duped...

It was to be expected that some of those who brought us some of the less essential Fall releases would also respond to Smith's death. One of worst was the first to arrive and it came from perennial recyclers Secret Records; a repackaging of 10 live tracks from the 2002 “A Touch Sensitive” DVD – already reconfigured multiple times – on an LP titled, and this absolutely beggars belief, “Best Of” and credited to “The Fall & Mark E Smith”, a credit never once used on a release in Smith's lifetime (a few gig posters, yes but never a record). Released just 3 months after Smith's death for about £18-20, this received the derision it deserved and, judging from the number of copies for sale on Discogs and their current asking prices, it appears to have sold just a little more than fuck all.

But even this was overshadowed come March 2019 when Ozit/Dandelion released what has to be The Worst Fall Release Ever. Pressed into horrid orange vinyl, the contents of “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes” were staggeringly poor. Proudly labelled as “Non-Record-Store-Day Release” (was it turned down?) the record boasted just 8 tracks. The album tried to elide its rotten contents by calling all the tracks “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes”. Track 1 was a 6 minute version of “Last Nacht” from “I Am Kurious Oranj”. The released track doesn't actually feature within the 6 minutes so this is probably an outtake and therefore probably not owned by Beggars Banquet. There is a drop out lasting several seconds that has gone uncorrected and it's about 4 minutes longer than it needs to be, confirming the brevity of the version used in 1988 to be bob on. Tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 are live tracks from 1981, all of which had already been released on the otherwise unimpressive “Northern Cream” DVD. What is barely credible is that tracks 3, 5 and 7 are also “Last Nacht” but not further alternates, rather being Track 1 cut into 2 minute pieces and simply repeated! Did they think we wouldn't notice?! Utterly awful, thoroughly exploitative and an absolute disgrace. They also stumped up a 30 minute DVD of MES being interviewed. This bore the thoroughly unappealing title “30 Minutes On A Manchester Slag Heap”. I only ever saw this for sale on eBay but a couple of clicks confirmed that it was Ozit/Dandelion product being sold by them through that channel. The cover was of a slag heap rather than of MES. Enough said.

OK, let's tidy up, what's next?

The immediate future sees 2 vinyl releases in the August “drop” of the now-staggered, socially-distanced RSD2020; a double LP of “[Austurbæjarbíó] - Reykjavík Live 1983” on the now inevitable splatter vinyl and a single LP of  “Cerebral Caustic” on multi-coloured “bonkers” (their word, absofuckinglutely not mine) splatter vinyl because of course it is. That's all for RSD this year, a move which represents far better judgement by the organisers. A studio album out of print on vinyl for 25 years and a properly sought after live release on the format for the first time? Yeah, that fits well with what RSD was meant to be back when we all queued up for a “Bury Pts 2 + 4” 7” in 2010.

Now, a fun wee question mark was raised over “CC” when the RSD website credited the release to Demon rather than Cherry Red. It appears Demon have the Permanent Records catalogue and have also announced clear vinyl reissues of “The Infotainment Scan”, “Middle Class Revolt”, “The Twenty-Seven Points” and, perhaps most interestingly, “The Post Nearly Man”, all on clear vinyl with expanded artwork from Pascal LeGras. It looks as though these are coming in under the £20 mark (£25 for T27P) and I reckon they'll be popular – I fancy nabbing MCR and TPNM myself. A bit of a downer that all of these, except, oddly, “The Post Nearly Man” were recently rescheduled from September 2020 to January 2021 but hey ho – probably Covid-related, much like everything else.

As for Cherry Red, whilst one report had it that “Are You Are Missing Winner” was next, they are finally releasing a 3CD/2LP edition of “Imperial Wax Solvent” in October. This includes the much-discussed original mix by Grant Showbiz and a previously unavailable live set from shortly after the album's original release. This is, basically, exactly what we wanted. Hurrah! Can't wait.

Thanks to the speculation re: AYAMW, there was a little disappointment in come quarters and I can certainly see a healthy audience for a straight single LP pressing of that as it was only ever available on a picture disc vinyl before. Here's hoping they won't go for a double splatter vinyl with unnecessary extras (“Where's The Fuckin' Taxi? Cunt” on vinyl? Come on, SPARE US).  

To yr present authors surprise, an expanded edition of “The Frenz Experiment” was announced for release by Beggars Banquet/Arkive in October. I had reckoned a new vinyl edition was likely as it was the only studio album on BB not yet afforded a new pressing and the addition of a second LP with various singles tracks was no surprise either, given that there are similar packages available for “TWAFW”, “TNSG” and “Bend Sinister”. A very pleasant surprise however is the inclusion of the group's Janice Long session from 1987, their only unreleased Radio 1 session. Also, “A Day In The Life” has been licenced for the this also (it was the only studio recording from the era missing from “5 Albums”). The Long session and “...Life” are only on the CD version. As such, this release very much follows the pattern of the “Bend Sinister” reissue from 2018 and is likely inspired by the near ecstatic reception and healthy sales that release enjoyed. Nice that the CD edition is £12 this time, having been more like £22 for “Bend Sinister”.

Let Them Eat Vinyl are responsible for the illustration...they are planning an almost ludicrous onslaught of Fall vinyl. Their website currently lists an almost unbelievable THIRTY ONE Fall LP releases for the three months running September to November. Thirty-one. Now – this includes “Interim” which is already on the shelves but it also includes the “Live From The Vaults” releases. It was assumed from the inclusion of two of these on Cherry Red's “Dragnet” 3CD box that these were part of the Fall Sound Archive deal that MES cut with CR in the years before his death which makes this a bit interesting. Also, LTEV are also claiming they will release “The Post-Nearly Man” on vinyl in October, which clashes with Demon's schedule – they originally had Smith and The Fall's albums for Permanent Records releases slated for reissue in September but all except TPNM have been moved. Meanwhile, “Cog Sinister” are about to release TPNM on CD! After being unavailable and highly prized for 2 decades, we're now set for 3 separate reissues within 2 months!  Anyway, the vast majority of the remaining LTEV are discs from the 2 “sets of ten (really eleven)” although also included are the excellent “I Am Pure As Oranj” and the first vinyl edition of “The Light User Syndrome” since its original release in 1996. Caveat Emptor, as the saying goes.

Narnack are also hinting that a 3LP “Fall Heads Roll” isn't too far off. Having teased this for a couple of years, Early in 2020, it was announced that the label was folding. This announcement was deleted and Narnack immediately moved on to asking fans to suggest what additional material could be added to this new version. Never one of their best, there would have to be some impressive outtakes to persuade yr persent scribe to cough up.  

Elsewhere, Phonogram have yet to succumb to new vinyl pressings of their albums, despite the prices fetched on the collectors market for these, especially “Code-Selfish”. This may be partly due to what seems to have been a relatively low take-up for their 6CD box set from 2017. Titled “The Fontana Years”, this was just the 2CD editions of the three albums from 2007 in a box. It therefore looked weak next to the “Singles 1978-2016” box set as well as providing nothing attractive to the faithful who already had them. It hit the shelves at £35-40 a time and, unsurprisingly, remained there and can now be scored for around £20.

The much requested expansion of “The Real New Fall LP” with the original, very different mix of the album has yet to appear. At last count, contractual wrangles between the UK and US were said to be in the way but who knows? If “Levitate” can reappear, surely this can too.

Of course, we never know what else the less-salubrious end of the market will have for us but we shall approach with due caution.

The cold reality: what we get now is all there is. Mark E Smith now exists for Fall fans on paper, on magnetic tape, on vinyl and in combinations of 0 and 1. A sad fact. But it is clear that the appetite for The Fall is, if anything, increasing. Hindsight is presenting The Fall in a particularly clear light. In such a stylised, filtered and carefully marketed world, full of covert strategies and manipulative messaging, The Fall are reassuringly flawed, human, real. Their jagged edges, their constant state of flux, their DIY presentation and their disinterest in convention draws in the curious. The quantity of music suits an insatiable, want-it-all-and-now culture and, having made their albums for the vinyl format as well as bringing us so many magnificent 3-4 minute singles, their music is almost perfectly suited to today's market place where vinyl albums mix with song-by-song streams. People who love to write about music always loved The Fall and it seems that this is every bit as true today as it was in the days when we never had to wait any more than a few months for a missive of some sort, be it an album, a single, a Peel session or even just an entertaining interview.

Given that The Beatles – the most lauded rock/pop act of all time - have finally reached a generation to whom their blithe optimism means absolutely nothing, it is impossible to say how anything in music will be regarded 20 years from now. But for now, at least, The Fall endure. Their vibrations remain intense and powerful. And we, the people, dance to the waves.

Nine out of ten? Nah. Ten out of ten. Top marks. 

#mark e smith #the fall #long live the fall

[winonalakefossils]

An Unwanted Guest

“Typhoid?” The woman gasped and turned in horror to her husband standing beside her in a state of shock.

“I am so sorry to give you the news,” the doctor offered apologetically, looking from one parent to the other. “Your son’s symptoms were at first consistent with appendicitis, but I am certain now—” he halted. “It’s very serious."

The once buoyant, gregarious teenager lay on his bed in the classic typhoid state. His eyes half-opened, his body motionless, his color gone.

Mr. and Mrs. Pugh were spending the summer at their cottage in Winona Lake with their three sons. Mr. Pugh, a humorist, entertained sold-out crowds on the Chautauqua circuit, performing in Winona and other resorts in Indiana. The grim prognosis turned the joyous family tradition of vacations at the lake suddenly tragic.

The doctor gently explained to the parents that their son presented all of the symptoms of an advanced case of typhoid and that he suspected a perforated bowel.

“The contents of the bowel have escaped through a tear and spilled into his abdomen. He is raging with infection. We need to get him to the hospital for surgery if there is to be any hope of saving him.”

The grave tone rendered the stricken parents mute. They nodded their assent.

The anxious family—mother, father and brothers—stood to meet the doctor as he approached. His expression prepared them for more bad news. Richard was critical.

“I did what I could, but he is hemorrhaging.”

“What’s next?” The father’s frantic voice begged for a cure.

“Our only option is a blood transfusion,” the doctor said with some reluctance before adding, “I can’t promise anything.”

Mr. Pugh gave a pint of blood and then sank into despair when his son did not respond. Out of desperation, another transfusion was performed, this time drawing from one of the brothers.  The Pugh’s hometown paper reported a slight improvement, but two days later, 17-year-old Richard succumbed to the dreaded typhoid fever.

 When Richard Pugh fell ill in Winona Lake in July 1920, fear of an epidemic gripped the leaders at the Winona Assembly, for it had been a mere eighteen months since the Spanish flu had ravaged the newly established military training camp there.

Sol Dickey, Secretary of the Winona Assembly, spent much of 1918 negotiating a contract with the United States War Department to host a training camp in Winona Lake. The availability of dormitories and a vocational school made it an appealing location for the specialized training of draftees. Dickey traveled to Washington, and people from Washington traveled to Winona. They struck a deal, and on October 15, 1918, a thousand young men from every county in Indiana began arriving.

Trainload after trainload of enthusiastic Hoosier sons, eager to participate in the war in Europe, pulled into the station, each one greeted with the local version of pomp and circumstance: a thirty-two piece band and free cigars. A veteran of the Spanish-American War carried the American flag while ceremoniously leading groups to special interurban cars for transportation from the depot in Warsaw to the new camp two miles away on Winona Lake.

By the following morning, the camp had several cases of Spanish Influenza. The number swelled to one hundred and fifty within two weeks. At this time, schools and businesses throughout the state were already closed to prevent the spread of the pandemic. But World War I had not yet ended, and the United States government continued preparing its fighting force.

Over the next several weeks, infections surged. Nineteen men died. On November 23rd, just forty days after their celebrated arrival, the soldiers climbed back onto the interurban and journeyed south to Indianapolis. The camp at Winona Lake was officially abolished.

Although an investigation concluded that the Spanish flu arrived with the soldiers and that no fault lay with the Winona Assembly, the memory of that blighted experiment still haunted Mr. Dickey. When he first received word that the Pugh’s son was sick with typhoid, he worried that if the contagion spread, the Winona Assembly could be in for another disaster like that of 1918. To his relief, no one else contracted the disease.

The Pughs sued the Winona Assembly, pointing a finger at the beloved Studebaker Spring where their son had taken a drink a few days before the onset of his symptoms. Mr. Pugh alleged that spring water had been contaminated by a busted sewer main and accused the Winona Assembly of bearing responsibility. The Assembly could not prove that the water was not contaminated on the day that Richard Pugh drank from it. And even though no broken mains were detected, city officials decided to close all of the springs on the Assembly grounds after an inspection by Dr. Hurty of the Indiana Department of Health.

Thus it was that the tragic death of young Richard Pugh brought the passing of an era. The beloved springs whose water had once been bottled and sold, the source of cherished fountains preserved on so many postcards, the inspiration for the town’s original name, Spring Fountain Park, were now identified as a health hazard.

In a tragic twist, two months after the closing of the fountains, a typhoid epidemic swept through Winona Lake. Papers reported the death of three-year-old Sarah Taylor visiting Winona Lake with her father, a widower. The Indiana Department of Health sent Dr. Hurty to investigate after learning of several more cases. Hurty looked first at the water supply. Having established that it was not contaminated, he turned his attention to the local dairies.

Dr. Hurty was a veteran crusader against unsanitary dairy practices. He came down hard on dairies because the victims of bacteria-ridden milk were overwhelmingly children. He sought to expose those who increased their profits by diluting milk with water that, if contaminated, spawned disease. He was on a mission to put an end to milk tainted with worms, blood, pus, manure, and insects. Hurty preached pasteurization as a matter of public health, but in 1920, the vast majority of America’s children still consumed raw, unpasteurized milk.  

Armed with these facts, Dr. Hurty launched a meticulous inspection of area dairies. When the results from the milk supply came back negative for typhoid bacteria, he tested employees and found the culprit. An asymptomatic deliveryman had unwittingly contaminated the milk on his wagon and set off an historic epidemic. Winona Lake saw forty cases of typhoid and the deaths of two children, Sarah and Billy. Neighboring Warsaw recorded similar numbers. One of the worst typhoid outbreaks in Indiana put an end to the sale of raw milk in Winona Lake when the city council passed an ordinance requiring the pasteurization of all milk delivered there. Warsaw did the same.

The Winona Assembly got to work advertising clean water and pasteurized milk to reassure the thousands of summertime visitors that they would be safe from the threat of typhoid fever. That promise proved true for the next two summers, the proverbial calm before the storm.

Thousands descended upon Winona Lake for ten days in June of 1925. On one of those days, Sunday the 7th, a dense crowd of thirty thousand swarmed the grounds. Eight thousand poured into the Billy Sunday Tabernacle filling it up to the doors. The overflow streamed onto the lawn and gathered around the amplifiers. Those that could took up positions at the windows to watch the service going on inside. Parked cars blocked the streets leaving drivers to fight their way through the stationary traffic jam. This was the annual Church of the Brethren Conference, and it drew an enormous response. Nothing but humanity as far as the eye could see!

June in Indiana is a fickle month. No one can be sure whether it will be cold or hot, wet or dry. Conference-goers rejoiced at an abundance of sunshine and warm temperatures. Sprinklers overcame the dry conditions, keeping the dust down and the lawns lush. Newly installed water fountains quenched the thirst of the multitudes rushing off to their meetings or savoring a leisurely stroll.

“We had a wonderful conference!” People exclaimed unanimously when the time came to say goodbye and head back to their home towns. They had come from all over the United States for several glorious days of meetings, reunions and religious services. The warm glow of good memories left little room to complain about a few inconveniences, like long lines at the restaurants, congested roads, water fountains that occasionally belched up dirty water, and a presumed bug that had caused painful stomach aches among dozens.

In the weeks that followed, several residents and Assembly employees contracted typhoid. The number reached thirty by the end of June. At the same time, Huntington County, forty miles southeast of Winona Lake, saw its own outbreak. A doctor attending those patients discovered that all had attended the big conference. He contacted the Indiana State Board of Health. Officials immediately dispatched an inspector to Winona Lake to investigate a possible epidemic.

News of more typhoid cases continued trickling in from among the Church of the Brethren congregations around the country.

As the number of typhoid cases climbed, so did the fatalities. Alma Williams, a widow and mother of three, passed away in Elgin, Illinois. Two sisters, Rose and Carrie, who attended the conference together, died three days apart. Fifteen-year-old Galen Neher had moved to Winona for a summer job. Upon his death, his grief-stricken mother hired a lawyer and threatened to sue the Assembly.

Certain now of an epidemic, the investigator turned his attention to finding the source. Several factors had to be ruled out. Had some among the conference attendees brought the disease with them? Was milk once again to blame? Were flies transmitting disease? Were any of the food workers asymptomatic carriers?

Upon debunking these theories, the investigator concentrated on stories of foul smelling water at the drinking fountains, the barber shop and in a few of the cottages. He visited an old cistern, condemned it and cited it as the source of the outbreak. He flushed and chlorinated the mains, after which he declared the water supply in Winona Lake as safe.

In response to the flurry of newspaper articles slamming the Assembly for the use of an old cistern, the company that supplied water to Winona adamantly defended its practices and demanded a second investigation.

A new inspector arrived to reevaluate the evidence. As a precaution, he ordered the vaccination of residents and visitors to protect against further spread.

The complaints of fetid water restricted the episodes to an isolated area and rendered the cistern theory highly improbable. Furthermore, the wells supplying the water did not test positive for enough bacteria to explain the virulent spread.

Then, an employee from the water company that was seeking to clear itself of responsibility happened to notice an inconsistency in the meter readings for three consecutive days in June when the numbers had gone lower instead of higher. This could mean only one thing. Water had flowed backward through the mains.  

While the drinking water came from local wells, the sprinkler system and the public toilets drew water from the nearby canal into which residential sewers drained. By some act of very bad planning or sheer ineptitude, the public water and the canal water systems had been joined under the public toilets, separated only by a valve. When the pump at the canal broke down one fateful day in June, someone, whose identity was never learned, opened the valve to keep the toilets flushing properly. The pressure variance sent polluted canal water into the mains and straight to the water fountains, the barbershop and nearby cottages.

The health department ordered the sprinkler system to be shut down immediately and permanently since it was potentially spreading the contagion throughout the park. Health officials also mandated that Winona Lake install a modern sewage plant before its next summer season.

It’s unclear exactly how many people contracted typhoid in Winona Lake in June 1925. The town’s deadliest and last typhoid epidemic may have infected as many as one thousand, claiming at least thirty lives.

 By the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of people visited Winona Lake every summer. They strolled along the water’s edge, weaved through shady paths, drank liberally from cool springs, and flocked to the hillside to watch the sunset. They swam, fished, picnicked and worshiped together year after year. The Winona Assembly prided itself in offering comfortable lodgings amidst peaceful surroundings. Its leaders sought the best talent and most articulate speakers to educate and inspire thronging visitors. However, typhoid, an unwanted guest, sneaked in and triggered six epidemics during the first thirty years of the Winona Assembly. When one considers the introduction of pasteurized milk, the closing of the iconic springs, emergency vaccinations, and the laying of a modern sewage system, it may not be an exaggeration to say that disease achieved as great an impact on Winona Lake as any convention held there.

[nvcl347]

NANOPULUS Diagnosis (Original G/T Species)

(Updated as of 2/5/19)

-

PASSAGE 1 : ORIGIN

May 27 was the day people all around the world suddenly vanished without a trace. Families messaged loved ones, schools and businesses were closed, and people shut themselves from society. Everyone was on edge on who may be next. Some people believed that perhaps this was Judgement Day, and chaos nearly flamed everywhere. The next day, suddenly everything went quiet. No missing person reports, no anything. Turning on your local news station would only be discussing what had happened the day before with the only minor, cut-short stories here and there. Search parties went out across countries, while the overall world government kept quiet. For conspiracists, it was a miner’s dreamed hit goldmine.

The people who went missing that day never came back. Not until decades later, when by then, the incident had been forgotten by the world. Only a select few could recollect it clearly, but they had no power in their hands to challenge the authorities in court, and their days were already numbered.

PASSAGE 2 : RECOVERED CASE FILES

DECEMBER 1996

ENGAGED HENRY C. LILIAM AND JESSIE I. LILIAM REPORT SMALL PRESENTS STOLEN OVERNIGHT

NO SIGNS OF FORCED BREAK-IN DISCOVERED

SLIM WRAPPING PAPER TEARS SCATTERED ACROSS FLOOR

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***CASE CLOSED AS OF JANUARY 1997***

FEBRUARY 1998

SCHOOL BUILDING HAVING CONSISTENT POWER OUTAGES

REASON: UNKNOWN

PLAYGROUND AREA GENERATOR REPAIRED MARCH 1998

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***CASE CLOSED AS OF APRIL 1998***

OCTOBER 2003

CHILD REPORT OF LIVE MINIATURE DOLL SNAGGING FOOD FROM LEFTOVER CANDY

CANDY WRAPPER GNAWING MARKS MATCH NO DISCOVERED ANATOMY OF CREATURE IN PRESENT-DAY RECORDS

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***CASE CLOSED AS OF NOVEMBER 2003***

JUNE 2004

ANIMAL CARETAKER EMPLOYEE SARAH J. MALLS REPORT OF TINY UNKNOWN CREATURE TAMPERING WITH RODENT CAGES

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***CASE CLOSED AS OF JUNE 2004***

APRIL 2007

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT DAVID A. HAN PERSONAL BELONGINGS REPEATEDLY DISAPPEAR

ALL STUDENTS CLAIMED THEMSELVES INNOCENT

PLAYBACK QUALITY MODERATE

NO STUDENTS CAPTURED TAMPERING WITH LOCKER #34

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***CASE CLOSED AS OF JUNE 2007***

SEPTEMBER 2009

FAST FOOD STORE MONITOR #3 CAPTURES “AGILE SMALL PERSON” RUMMAGING THROUGH STORAGE CONTAINERS

PLAYBACK QUALITY DAMAGED

AUTHORITY CONCLUSION: “IT’S MERELY A MOUSE PASSING THROUGH”

***CASE CLOSED AS OF DECEMBER 2009***

JULY 2010

48% OF U.S. CHILDREN SUDDENLY REPORT “REAL” FAIRIES OCCASIONALLY ROAMING BACKYARDS

NO FURTHER EVIDENCE COVERED

***TREND IS RISING***

PASSAGE 3 : THE RELEASE

In November of 2013, the records of these incidents were released, alongside what had caused them. These creatures were sent across the world by an organization of unknown origins nor title and placed these creatures into the black market, other experimental agencies, or just out into the wild for a study of its survival in certain environments. As hypothesized, this species thrives best in forest-like environments, however, the species at the same time has no capabilities of reproduction, and cannot survive as a whole due to its weak state in natural selection. But, due to major injections of unknown chemicals, the species’ life expectancy (if healthy), is just about the same as a human’s is. Some hypothesize this may be an enhanced version of what may be the experiments causing longer mice life expectancy, which are open to the public.

The overall species according to the organizational records is titled NANOPULUS, as to which the general public has dubbed the species, “The Nano Creatures.”

PASSAGE 4 : APPEARANCE

Most reports find the species mythical or “unrealistic” due to the sheer size of these creatures. All Nanos have been recorded in the average height range of 1-3 inches tall. This has managed to give Nanos numerous places for them to sneak and hide, along with the pressure of gravity giving them no struggle to run nimble and quick from their small amount of weight. The heaviest Nano on record weighed around 12.5 grams (.44 oz), equivalent to holding a stack of around five pennies in your hand. According to the files, the experimentalists had predicted (or perhaps hoped for) a height range of 4-5 inches at average, but apparently, a certain overdose of an undefined chemical caused an overreaction to the shrinkage expectancies.

The facial features of a Nano aren’t much of a difference to a human appearance, that is until you really look at them. Their ears are sharp- much like what you’d imagine from an elf- but not very pointy at their ends, and more rounded like ours instead. Their ears will slightly shift and twitch to help pick up any signals of noise or movement.

The next thing you may notice if you look close enough at a Nano is their eyes. Their eye color is unnatural and seems to shift through every hue of the rainbow. Looking closer, unlike our round pupils, Nanos have more round oval-shaped pupils. The first thing you may think of at this is perhaps a slit cat-like eye, but it’s not exactly like that, however. The oval pupil of a Nano is wider than a cat’s and is not pointed at the top and bottom like a cat’s either. Rather, it is rounded, mirroring the sharp-but-rounded ears they have as well. It is also worth noting that when the pupil of a Nano dilates, although having a similar shape to a cat’s, it does not flatten itself into one slick line. Instead, the pupil just shrinks, like a normal round pupil as would like humans. The smaller the pupil, the more intently the Nano is concentrating.

The Nanos also heir mutated traits of sharper teeth and fingers (not to be confused with nails) for defense. Their fingers are only slightly pointed and barely can cause a bleeding scratch. This goes the same for the toes of their feet as well. They could cause a small, nagging scrape, though. As for the teeth, now they can cause some bleeding. Nothing fatal, of course, but definitely a scratch that of a paper cut for sure if they were really desperate. The teeth are only slightly pointed and are wide, too. They are also smoothly rounded, similar to how their fingers and toes are formed.

Every Nano has one thing in reference to their past: their branding. Not a burned-in branding, but a stitched branding- like a tattoo- but it’s not exactly the same thing; it’s permanent, even when damaged… it can be regenerated just like normal skin. Each symbol was made to represent the Nano’s personality, and it is made up of one single line, like cursive letters. They can depict harshness or intellect, based on the design. Wavy lines represented a calm persona, while jagged meant the opposite. The single line never overlaps with itself. Many Nanos’ brandings show depictions of animals, such as ocelots for speed, but wavy to show they were collected as well. Another branding occurrence may be a jagged alligator, representing a vicious and brash Nano. No single pair of Nanos have the same exact branding; every single one of them is different, like fingerprints. That doesn’t mean they can’t have the same meaning, though; they just don’t have the same visible imagery.

PASSAGE 5 : EYE COLOR DEFINING

The following image illustrates the colors as to which a Nano’s iris can shift between, alongside what the color represents/what the Nano at that current state is feeling/what a Nano senses somebody else is feeling. If a Nano has “mixed feelings,” the defined colors of those feelings in the irises will mix together.

PASSAGE 6 : ABILITIES

Studies show that their ears have a high sensibility to noise, capable of easily alerting them off as much as the dropping of a pen just rooms away from their position. This has assisted them in the warning of when oncoming threats are nearby way ahead of time, giving them a good amount of time to find a place to securely conceal themselves. Even if the threat was running as fast as they could, they’d be lucky to get a sly glimpse of these tiny human creatures with their swift movement.

Their nose is much similar to dogs’ as well. Not in shape, of course, but in sensibility. They are incredibly strong and can smell out a piece of pepperoni from rooms away.

Nanos, much like mice, can actually survive great falls in height as opposing to the common belief that they couldn’t even survive the fall from a countertop. A nano at the size of one inch could actually survive a fall as high as an eleven story window and get up with little-to-no damage at all. Answer? Terminal velocity. Due to their small weight and frail bone structure, they can survive great falls with minimal damage, much like mice and rats.

What if a Nano is deaf? What if they are nose blind? “Sense of Danger,” they call it. That swelling feeling in your gut that something isn’t right, is exactly what Nano’s feel when legitimate danger is nearby. Sometimes for humans, it’s an overreaction, but Nano’s instincts are incredibly accurate in this case scenario. The only downside is, this Sense of Danger is purely based off of movement. If a dangerous object is inanimate, a Nano wouldn’t be aware of it.

Nanos heir a venom in their teeth, which can be injected by bite if they feel threatened. This venom, dubbed “Nurnostium,” causes a numbing sensation upon the surrounding area of the bite, causing it to fall asleep for a short period of time (recorded 5-10 minute average lasting effect). There are no fatal effects to this bite, but in order to escape capture, it is highly effective. It takes about a full minute for the effect to fully kick in. The venom in itself is incredibly strong and could cause an entire human to fall unconscious with just a quarter of a cup's injection of it. Because the Nano is so small in size, let alone its bite, the tiny portion of venom cannot affect the threat at its entirety.

PASSAGE 7 : WEAKNESSES

One of a Nano’s biggest weaknesses, of course, would be their size. So incredibly small, they have little-to-no chance in physical combat, making them quite queasy and fearful creatures. This is why they are so distant from interaction of many other creatures besides themselves… and humans- which is where we lean into our next weakness.

Curiosity kills the cat. With no recollection of almost anything of their past, they have an IQ intelligence of as much as a newborn child. Some will learn naturally, others will need introduction of “good and bad,” if their Sense of Danger doesn’t do the trick for them. All in all, Nanos are quite stupid for their age, and need a little help.

Tagging along with curiosity, explains their interest of sociality between themselves and humans. This urge won’t exactly occur to them until Nanos get a good look at what their physical appearance looks like. This isn’t necessarily a “good look” type of thing where they stare at themselves in the mirror, but a good look where they care to inspect themselves in their own point of view and make comparisons. ‘Arms? Hands? The big creatures have them. Legs? Feet? They have those, and I do too.’ Because humans are so similar in physical appearance compared to Nanos (who socialize with each other very well), it drives their interest and mental questionnaire as to ‘why they’re so much bigger compared to us,’ and want to socialize with them as they would each other. However, then their fear-factor comes in as to how absolutely massive humans are, which is why Nanos abstain themselves from view despite their urge to interact with us… like a war is going inside themselves. Go with willful curiosity? Or go with natural instinct?

Why is this considered a weakness? Well, if a Nano does fuss up to interact with a human (intentionally or accidental), there of course will be humans that are kind, maybe confused, and gentle. Others, as we know, will just be assholes. You know exactly what I’m talking about, which is why this is considered a weakness, and needs no further explanation.

Next weakness, is manipulation. Because of their feeble minds, Nanos are incredibly vulnerable to misdirectory, as when someone gains a Nano’s trust, they gain their trust. Nanos when they allow someone/something into their comfort zone, signals strong loyalty and affection. But, as easily as it can be achieved is as easily as it can be lost.

Their final weakness, which really isn’t too severe in any way, is their vocals: so small in size, Nanos can only vocalize to one another like mice. Air pressure on their lungs causes their pitch to rise incredibly to inaudible, squeaky-grunty chipmunk babble. Gradually, as they do learn language, however, they can minimally speak basic words like “yes,” “no,” or other such words/names. But, their grammar isn’t the best, and will talk much like cavemen, and the factor of their high-pitched voice still stands.

On the topic of vocals: unnaturally, and without any logical explanation on record, Nanos never pronounce proper names correctly, and they never entirely learn how to pronounce them either. The only ones they ever seem to get right are their own and others’ in the Nano species. Sometimes, they’ll never even attempt to pronounce someone by their real name, and refer to them as a single adjective or descriptions along the lines of “bad man,” “big man,” “strong,” “loud,” etc. Once someone/something is given a name, it keeps that name throughout the Nano species.

-

Feel free to use in writing/illustration. Do not steal or repost. Be sure to tag me so I can see your work!

Tags if interested - @anqshusxx @pizsospa @depressed-owl-in-narnia @cloud-addict @gianttol @mini-macaroon @tiny-artist-ace @gt-confessions @gt-handhelds @a-sweet-pea @lord-of-the-pastries @so-very-small @sawyergt @sadtinyissad @territorial-utopia

#nanopulus #nano species diagnosis #nano #nano species #nano creature #writing #species #g/t #g/t community #giant/tiny

[vynru]

A redraw of this monstrosity. Or, the old one is a monstrosity (time-taken-wise, it’s not that ugly either). I quite like this redraw, actually. It took me from the 11th of May until now– which is a little more than a month. Long time, huh? Of course I wasn’t able to draw for all of that time, but let’s take a look at the old version from 2017…

This thing. This freaking thing took me almost two years.

This is not an exaggeration. I used to have a habit that every single time I made a significant change I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep (I pretty much always did), I would save the drawing as a new file. This means that between 2016 and 2017 I had saved countless of different files of the same drawing, numbered from A1 A2, etc, to D51, and because of this, I was able to check how long each phase of the drawing took me.

But then, here goes: The sketch was made before the 25th of April 2016 until the 12th of April 2017. Yes. A full year to make a sketch. I wouldn’t call it sketching, though. I used 3D models in CSP and countless of pictures I made of my own hands and family members who posed for me, which I traced, tossed out, and tried again because I couldn’t cobble it together properly or just wasn’t happy with because 3D models look stiff and real people don’t translate well to an anime-ish style. I’m pretty sure I somehow managed to learn my first bit of anatomy by screwing around with this single drawing for a full year. It’s kind of a shame, really. Because of this ridiculously patient perfectionism, I don’t have any completed trashy drawings of where I first started anime-style. And I really would’ve loved to redraw something that’s just objectively horrible instead. But ah well.

The line art was done between the 12th of April 2017 and the 6th of September 2017… almost 5 months. In this time, I’m pretty sure I redid the shoes (the line art ended up being traced & edited over pictures of my own shoes (these became Hiroshi’s, but I mostly made the shoes thinner and added that rectangle, which was a zipper on my real shoes) and my sister’s (Naoki’s), both of which I had stuffed with toilet paper to appear filled on the pictures). I redid a bunch and had no muscle control from being very inexperienced in drawing digitally, so I would often spend hours and hours on just a tiny portion of the drawing (I also wanted the lines to be p e r f e c t and just refused to use any stabilization tool). It was honestly starting to feel like a world map I was working on.

Then, it took me over a month to do the base colors, from the 6th of September 2017 until the 22nd of Oktober 2017. Again, not working on the drawing all the time, bad muscle control, just having no knowledge whatsoever about colors and being way too perfectionistic for my own good was to blame for this.

The shading, surprisingly, only took me from the 22nd of October 2017 until the 4th of November 2017– a small two weeks. Apparently, I had somehow taught myself the basics of drawing anatomy/anime in only one illustration. It sounds like some sort of strange online scam, but I swear, it has got to be the most inefficient and tedious way to practice something. Almost two years could have been spent filling so. many. sketchbooks.

But now, over three years after I started this drawing, I was finally able to recreate it without tracing anything and using very little reference except for my own drawings. I’m usually not against using reference, but I wanted to use as little as possible for this specific redraw just to see if I could “stand on my own legs” this time.

And honestly, I’m extremely happy with the result. I even managed to pick colors I like a lot without adjusting them with a filter (I didn’t do that in the original either… which is very visible OUCH), so I think I can safely say that, after over three years of drawing digitally, I’ve finally “finished” this drawing… Until I redraw it again, that is! Because I definitely won’t just let go of this now that I’ve put just so. much. time into this drawing, so I’ll likely keep coming back to it every few years to see how much I’ve improved.

#voc hiroshi #voc naoki #vynru oc #oc #original character #ocs #original characters #draw this again #draw this again meme #digital art #digital drawing #redraw #draw this again challenge

[sweetnestor]

this is not a dream #1 | no, something seems wrong

the real reason ethan was taken under the teamiplier wing | teamiplier/ego au

WARNINGS: suicide, murder, blood, self harm, drug abuse, alcoholism, sex addiction

AN: hey hi hello does anyone remember the one fic i posted in october, previously known as ‘entirely bonkers?’ yeah, well i rewrote it and now it’s this!! ive taken much more time with this fic and given it the attention it deserves, so pretty much all the chapters may be dramatically different from the original version. each chapter title is a line from a different song, which will be listed in the tags.

i have to warn you, this fic is very dark and very graphic. read at your own risk. but also enjoy!!

~October 2016

This was good news. Great news. The best news. This was going to change everything. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe that’s why Ethan couldn’t stop crying, losing it, unhinging for the thousandth time.

It had been on and off for the last few weeks, the tears. He didn’t know why, but it felt like every little thing made him burst. Not only did Ethan cry, but he also yelled and screamed. Most of all, he would break whatever was in sight. He’ll throw things, punch, kick… He’ll go out in the middle of the night and take a bat to an unsuspecting mailbox. He was usually aware when he did these things, meaning it wasn’t technically a blind rage that sent him into these episodes. He’s gone through several mugs, a few controllers, and he even had to buy a new camera one time. All because of these tears and weird destructive urges he couldn’t control.

He wanted to throw his phone just after this call. It was a good call, though. It was life changing. But he had to force himself to calmly set the device down on his desk and move away from it. Ethan got to his feet, sniffling and sobbing, and then he tore off some of the foam padding on the wall. Did it matter? No, he was moving at the end of the month. He could destroy a few more things.

Foam pads were strewn across the floor by the time he was done. But Ethan still felt… destructive. No, worse. He knew what he wanted to do. He just had the slightest worry that it would actually work this time. But he had to do it.

Blood was pounding in his ears as he pulled on his sweater and beanie. Before he knew it, he was in the car, driving to the location he had been to plenty of times before. He parked some distance away and walked the rest of the way.

In all honesty, he had no idea what led him to this the first time. It was like this feeling in chest and gut, like an impulse. Once it fell into his head, he had to do it immediately. There was no going back. Crying was one of those things he felt like he had to do. This, however… this was a lot darker.

A few cars passed as Ethan approached the bridge. None of them stopped. None of them ever did. He couldn’t help but appreciate that. He didn’t know what would happen if this got back to his family. He had quite a bit to lose, but he still boosted himself up on the railing. This was really stupid, he thought to himself as he looked down at the drop he’d seen many times before.

“Something’s wrong,” he spoke to himself before leaping off.

The cold, bitter air hitting his face was the most painful part, as strange as that was to admit. But what if it actually worked this time? He didn’t even say goodbye to his dad as he left the house. He’d never get to experience that job in Los Angeles. He’d never interact with his online community again. Would this be the one to do it?

“Nope,” Ethan mumbled once he was face down on the ground. Dirt was in his mouth, and his face was numb from the cold. He sat up and coughed, both relieved and disturbed that he didn’t die. Again.

Ethan sat back and brought his knees to his chest, shivering. Was it going to be like this once he moves? Would he be able to control it?

~

“He can’t help us, he’s a kid!” roared the booming voice of Darkiplier. It echoed around the spacious, black room, enough to make any mortal’s blood run cold.

“We need all the help we can get,” replied the soft and frighteningly serene voice of Peevils, who was sat on top of the desk across the room. “Besides, the younger they are, the more powerful they can be.”

Her pitch black eyes gazed down at the stoic mortal sat in the armchair. He was sat up straight, on the edge of his seat. His usual brown eyes had rolled back into his skull and his mouth was gaping open. Dark was was “stood” by the body, his suit clad form flickering with distortion. He was always in black and white, but a blue and red aura was always around him. The biggest thing that fascinated Peevils was that this man, her supposed lover, was impossible to touch. Well that, and she could hear him in her mind and he could speak to her personally, even when their mortals were present.

Peevils, on the other hand, was from a whole other galaxy. She couldn’t quite remember how she got to Earth, much less how she got in contact with her mortal. All she knew was that her mortal was very willing and complicit. Peevils had cool powers too, but she seldom used them on this planet. Her aura often mixed with the mortal’s, making it a weird greyish yellow.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let your mortal make that decision,” spoke Stoneface in his deep, intimidating voice. No one knew where he came from, or what his true powers were, aside from killing people after intimate affairs. He had much paler skin compared to his mortal, and his eyes were greyer than concrete, while his aura was black. You couldn’t look into his eyes without feeling paralyzed to the spot.

Everything surrounding the trio was dark and dim. The atmosphere was that of another realm. No human would be able to stand with them for very long. No human, except one.

“The mortal needed him for his own desires, not ours,” Dark growled. “And he was coping at the time, so I couldn’t intervene. But… I felt something. It was like a whisper.”

“So we just wait til the boy arrives,” Peevils concluded. “I feel it won’t be a waste.”

“You feel a lot of things,” Stoneface said back.

Her face fell. She stared ahead wordlessly, and imagined what she wanted to happen, and then it was real.

Stoneface immediately started gasping for air, his relaxed composure turning into nothing but pain and panic. His body began to rise up from the couch and it contorted into unnatural folds.

“Mercy! Mercy!” he strained out just before his bones could snap.

Peevils lifted, a ghost of a smile on her face.

Then, the room lightened up. The walls went back to white as the door to the office opened, and the trio were back in the human world, thanks to the one human they all knew.

Kathryn walked in, carrying a brown paper bag. A tall, dark haired, skimpy dressed woman followed behind her, looking curiously around the room. Peevils quickly looked down, knowing her eyes were prone to cause panic, and Dark was nowhere to be seen. The human led the other human over to Stoneface, whose eyes suddenly went back to a humanistic hazel.

“Hi, I’m Tyler,” he greeted, and the woman smiled in returned. He offered his arm. “If you’ll follow me…” And the two were off into another room.

Then, Kathryn turned towards Peevils, but instead was met face to face with Dark, who did not look happy.

“We were having a meeting!” he snapped, trying to look threatening.

She rolled her eyes and moved her arm forward, making the image fade away. After that, she reached into the paper bag and pulled out a plastic ziplock bag that was contained with white powder. Kathryn waved it in the direction of Peevils.

The blonde’s eyes flickered once. Kathryn had her attention now, so she slowly bent down towards the coffee table, opened up the bag and poured out some of the contents onto the glass surface. In the blink of an eye, the alien was sat on the floor in front of the table, using an old business card to make her series of lines. She hunched over the table as she snorted to her heart’s content, and when she looked up, her eyes were not black, but brown and humanlike.

“Alright, Amy’s back,” Kathryn said in affirmation. Then she turned to her boss.

He still had that horrifying expression on his face, but at least the body wasn’t moved. The last thing Kathryn wanted to do today was to pry Dark and his mortal away from something illegal or fatal… not that he could die, anyway.

“Don’t you dare…” the hallucination spoke, appearing behind the armchair.

She didn’t even hesitate to straight up bitch slap the body across the face. The last aura was finally gone, and the body had, for lack of a better phrase, come back to life. He swore in pain and held his cheek.

“Mark?”

“Yeah, what the fuck?”

Kathryn nodded once and pulled the last item from the paper bag. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She shoved it into Mark’s hand and then crumpled up the bag, tossing it in the bin.

Mark just sat there for a moment, still coming back to himself. He felt that internal twitch, though, so he twisted the cap off the glass bottle and took a swig. Then he moved to the floor, next to his girlfriend, who was now baked like a fucking cake. Just another day in the office.

Now, Kathryn was able to get back to her actual work. She sat at one of the computers, but then paused as she thought of the newcomer they were expecting. Poor kid had no idea what he was walking into.

~November 2016

The team noticed something about their newest member. It wasn’t what was on the inside, no. Not the reason why they brought him over here.

Ethan was happy. Giddy. Very doe eyed. Upon arriving to the office on the first day, he thanked Mark many times for the opportunity. He was just… not what you would expect from someone like him. He almost seemed normal.

See, when you’re like Mark, Amy, and Tyler, you get this feeling, an instinct, even. They could sense each other’s demons, even when they were dormant. Amy and Tyler feel Darkiplier’s jitters when their Mark got rubbed the wrong way. That was probably because Peevils and Stoneface were so connected to Dark, and by extension, their mortals. They could all sense each other inside and out. In their logical, human eyes, the feeling of the three demons scheming in the background was seen as “impending doom.” The only human able to see past that was Kathryn, and none of them knew why.

But Ethan? He seemed like any ordinary human, and that was just weird. There was almost no impending doom vibes coming from him as the days went on. This wasn’t what they had been expecting.

“So…” Mark prompted one day, “how’ve you been? Y’know… since the move?”

“Fine,” Ethan mindlessly responded. He was on the computer, doing exactly what he was hired for.

The other four exchanged looks. Apart from Kathryn, they were experiencing withdrawals from their… coping. The plan was to get the other guys to meet Ethan’s other guy… just to see what would happen. The latter was proving to be difficult, given that there was no instinct or any indication that his bodily occupant wanted to come out, or that it was even there. Did that guy even have a name?

“You’re f-fine?” Amy repeated irritably, her voice shaking. “Y-You dropped everything, moved all the way here, and you’re just fine?”

Now Ethan caught onto the tension. He turned in his chair, only to feel deeply intimidated by the staring. Something was off, and it wasn’t just the stupid crying fit growing in his chest and throat.

“I’m just glad I’m here,” he said, but it didn’t feel like the right answer.

“What’s wrong with you?” Tyler blurted out.

“What?”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Kathryn sighed in annoyance as she buried her face in her hands.

“God, I’m sorry,” Tyler quickly said. “I didn’t mean that, fuck. I’m an asshole, I’m sorry.”

Mark could feel it, though. A cold chill went down his spine,  telling him that he was right to bring Ethan in. He felt a tightness in his throat, this feeling of dread sitting heavy on his shoulders. He hadn’t felt this with the other two, this had to be Ethan.

“You don’t miss what you left behind?” Mark asked as he got up from the couch, putting on a hard face. “I mean… you sacrificed your whole life for this, didn’t you?”

The dread only grew. Ethan shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Yeah, but I made that decision,” he timidly replied.

“Like the grown up you think you are?” Amy mocked.

It was there, right there. The four nearly gasped as Ethan’s eyes flickered to black once. But the boy quickly shook himself and stood up.

“I’ll be right back.”

The surge of emotions lifted as soon as he left the room. But then, the walls went black, and the three auras appeared. Meanwhile, Kathryn let out another annoyed groan.

Mark’s body froze where he stood, and his head fell back as Dark made his appearance. Tyler’s body paled, eyes turning grey. Amy appeared sat on top of the coffee table with her legs crossed, eyes black and empty.

“Hey doesn’t even know what he is!” Dark shouted, his image flickering angrily around the room.

“Of course not, he’s a kid,” Peevils shot back coolly. “And you’re not the one who asked him to come here. Why are you concerned now?”

Dark appeared in front of her, his face inches from hers. “I felt it! There is something there, but the boy isn’t letting him through! He’s powerful, and I am powerful. That’s why I could feel him!”

“Don’t make me slap your mortal,” Peevils threatened as she waved her hand through him.

“So what do we do?” Stoneface asked, getting the couple back on track. “Do we let the mortals handle it?”

“Provoking him did help a little bit,” Peevils pointed out.

“Yes,” Dark agreed. “They have to push him past his limits. Whatever it takes. If they have to destroy whatever humanity he has left in him, then so be it. He has to be disturbed, humiliated. Anything to get to what’s truly lying within.”

“So you guys are going to go silent, then?” Kathryn asked.

“It’s the only option,” Peevils confirmed.

That prompted the human to quickly flee the office. She had to make a big order.

~

Ethan managed to find a corner store down the road. The blind rage he went through caused him to break more things, and his knuckles were bleeding yet again. He also debated jumping off one of the high buildings, but this city was far too busy for anyone to not notice. Instead, he found another solution. He was sure his ‘friends/colleagues’ wouldn’t miss him for a few more minutes. Or at all.

Tear tracks were on his face as he went through the aisles. Look at him, a grown 20 year old, unable to control his crying. How did he get like this? He was never this emotional about anything! Sure, the group had ganged up on him, but things like that weren’t likely to make him burst into tears.

He calmed down some more when he found rubbing alcohol and bandages. However, there was only one box left of the latter, and it was pink and flowery. Reluctantly, he took the box and went into the next aisle. There were painkillers, vitamins, and sleep aids. For a second, a flash of lacing his friends’ drinks with pills went through his mind. It was short, but vivid. One by one, passing out around him.

He chuckled and kept walking. “Yeah right…” Then, he stopped in his tracks, went back and grabbed the biggest bottle of sleeping pills he could find.

After paying for his items (and getting some weird looks from the cashier), Ethan settled for sitting under the awning outside the store. He didn’t feel like going back to the office just yet, despite the fact that it was already getting dark. As he tended to his hand injury, he tried to forget all that he damaged. Several cars parked on the side of the road now had cracked windshields, and a few more mailboxes were wrecked. He could only hope that there weren’t any witnesses. He had only been in LA for about a week, he couldn’t get arrested now.

“Hey darlin’,” greeted a sickly sweet female voice.

He turned to find a red headed woman perching down next to him. She was wearing a rather revealing top under a fur coat along with a really short skirt. It rode up as she crouched down, making Ethan lose his words for a moment.

“H-Hi,” he replied, keeping his eyes on his injured hand.

“Did you get into a fight, honey?” the woman asked.

“Something like that…”

“Strong man, aren’t ya?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m putting on Hello Kitty bandaids.”

The woman giggled and moved closer to him. “Strong and cute.”

There was a feeling. Pinning her to the ground, a hand around her neck as the back of her head hitting the concrete. Slamming her head into the ground until she bled to death. Watching her green eyes lose their panic and fade into nothingness. Is it bad that it was nice to think about?

“Marsha!” called a familiar voice.

It was Kathryn. She approached the pair, her hood up and her hands in the pocket. Ethan was relieved to see her.

The redhead got to her feet. “You’re not here to send me to that friend of yours again, are you?”

“Why, do you have other plans?” she asked in return.

“Yes! I found a new friend!” Marsha pointed down at the boy with Hello Kitty bandaids.

Kathryn glanced down at him. “Yeah, not him. Can’t afford to have Tyler beat his ass right now.”

That was both confusing and not reassuring at all. Could Ethan down the whole bottle of pills without either woman noticing?

“Well, I’m not going. I’ll ask Sydney. She knows where to find you guys,” Marsha said in conclusion.

“Awesome. Ethan, get up.”

He didn’t need telling twice. Kathryn gestured for him to follow, and they walked back towards the office together.

“What’d you do?” she asked, nodding towards his hand.

“Don’t ask,” he said with a sigh. Not like he could properly explain it, anyway.

Luckily, she didn’t press the topic. When they approached the building, she stopped in her tracks and pulled a brown paper bag from under her sweater.

“I won’t ask questions,” she told Ethan. “But neither will you.”

____

next.

#blankgameplays #darkiplier #ethan nestor x reader #teamiplier fanfic #stoneface tyler #kathryn the editor #i literally do not know what tags to use omg #sweetheart writes #tinad #anyway this is a thousand times darker than the original version hahahahahahah #im excited #song: nightmare by set it off

[the-werdna]

My final thoughts on Persona 5

So, after having had a few days to reflect on it, here is my overall thoughts on Persona 5

Here are my overall thoughts.

In terms of gameplay, this is easily the best Persona game. The combat is greatly improved both in presentation and in options, with the expanded types of attacks and ways abilities can interact (say, hitting someone who is frozen with a nuclear attack for extra damage) combat is just more dynamic. You can be a lot more tactical with how you build your Personas, with there being some interesting builds you can go for. The dungeons too were overall amazing, with rather than having the randomized setups, the dungeons were purposefully designed and save for two of them being kinda dull, were overall a massive step up. All in all the gameplay was great in that regard.

When it comes to Social Links (I am just going to call Confidants that, deal with it) they are really a mixed bag. In terms of non-party member social links, I think P5 has the best ones on average. All but two of them were really good, with only Devil and Tower being just alright in the grand scheme of things. I liked that they even gave the Velvet Room attendant social link more with there being some interaction between fusion quests.

However, that said, I think the party member social links were by far the weakest. Save for Futaba's and Yusuke's social links, they were just boring. Worse, everyone else' social links just rehashed the same character development the character gets in the main game, making it feel redundant and doesn't take them anywhere new. Like, I couldn't for the life of me describe how Ryuji, Ann, or Makoto grew in their social links that was not also conveyed and shown BETTER in the main story. And Haru's social link was basically the most cookie cutter social link in the game. Futaba and Yusuke get a pass due to their social links actually giving them more growth than what the main story gives them.

Speaking on characters, oh my god I hate Morgana so, so, so very much. And its not just because of the whole "go to sleep" thing. Oh no, that's only a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. No, its the fact that Morgana never shuts up! For 90% of the game, Morgana is with you, commenting on every thing you do. Non stop. And not just comment, but blatantly repeat information I just heard five seconds ago. Morgana is the vehicle for the game to treat the player like they're a moron. And it never fucking ends. Like, look, in terms of the level of annoyance, in any given moment, Teddie was probably more annoying than Morgana. But I don't hate Teddie, because he doesn't follow you around for the entire game and never shuts up! The sheer volume of annoyance is what makes me want to see Morgana dead.

Also if I have to hear Morgana screech "oooooh, looking cool Joker" one more time, I may snap.

However, my biggest problem with P5 and what in the end prevents what on paper is  the overall best Persona game from being my favorite is its overall pacing. Persona 5 is the longest of the three game's in the series I've played, with it having clocked in about 30 hours longer than my P4G playthrough and 40 hours longer than my P3:FES playthrough. Yet despite that, the game felt like it had less content than the others. So often it just felt like the game was actively wasting my time, with long drawn out sessions where player control was taken away, with entire weeks where you do nothing but sit through dialog with only the occasional moment to actually say something. October and November were the worst, with both months having more days with no player control than those you could actually do stuff.

And that really annoyed me. Since my favorite parts of the Persona games are the life sim parts where you go around and do social links. Yet every time I got into it, the game would drag me away and force me to sit through a cycle of loading screens, dialog, loading screen, dialog, loading screen, Morgana telling me to go to bed for no reason, loading screen, and repeat 10 more times. It made the game feel like a slog, where too often I didn't feel like I was playing a damn game.

Finally, I feel the execution of the story left a lot to be desired. P5 seems to have tried to do more with the story than P4 did (which was more character focused), but really fell flat from the more subtle stuff that made P3's story so good. It felt very... heavy handed, with the game beating you across the head with its themes and message to the point where I started to get annoyed and wanted to scream "Okay, I get it! Just please stop making the same damn point about how oppressive and ignorant society can be that you've make 30 times already!"

Also, I thought the ending was super rushed, having even less foreshadowing a build up than Izanami did in the original version of Persona 4. But I’ve already ranted about that before.

In the end, despite most of the above being negative, I did enjoy Persona 5. As a whole it is a really good game. The issue is there isn't much for me to say about what it did well, because the things it did well were things Persona 3 and/or Persona 4 did well. If I were to describe the game it would be really run, except someone stands behind you and lightly pokes you in the back of the head every five minutes. A bunch of things just annoyed me all throughout or took me out of the experience. That is why despite all the things Persona 5 does right, Persona 4 is still easily my favorite game in the series.

That said, I am very excited for the inevitable Persona 5 Crimson or whatever its Golden equivalent will be. Since I feel that many of my problems could easily be corrected with not too much effort in an expanded rerelease

#Werdna gives opinions #Werdna plays stuff #Persona 5 #Persona.

[suzanneshannon]

Chapter 7: Standards

It was the year 1994 that the web came out of the shadow of academia and onto the everyone’s screens. In particular, it was the second half of the second week of December 1994 that capped off the year with three eventful days.

Members of the World Wide Web Consortium huddled around a table at MIT on Wednesday, December 14th. About two dozen people made it to the meeting, representatives from major tech companies, browser makers, and web-based startups. They were there to discuss open standards for the web.

When done properly, standards set a technical lodestar. Companies with competing interests and priorities can orient themselves around a common set of agreed upon documentation about how a technology should work. Consensus on shared standards creates interoperability; competition happens through user experience instead of technical infrastructure.

The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C as it is more commonly referred to, had been on the mind of the web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as early as 1992. He had spoken with a rotating roster of experts and advisors about an official standards body for web technologies. The MIT Laboratory for Computer Science soon became his most enthusiastic ally. After years of work, Berners-Lee left his job at CERN in October of 1994 to run the consortium at MIT. He had no intention of being a dictator. He had strong opinions about the direction of the web, but he still preferred to listen.

W3C, 1994

On the agenda — after the table had been cleared with some basic introductions — was a long list of administrative details that needed to be worked out. The role of the consortium, the way it conducted itself, and its responsibilities to the wider web was little more than sketched out at the beginning of the meeting. Little by little, the 25 or so members walked through the list. By the end of the meeting, the group felt confident that the future of web standards was clear.

The next day, December 15th, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen announced the recently renamed Netscape Navigator version 1.0. It had been out for several months in beta, but that Thursday marked a wider release. In a bid for a growing market, it was initially given away for free. Several months later, after the release of version 1.1, Netscape would be forced to walk that back. In either case, the browser was a commercial and technical success, improving on the speed, usability, and features of browsers that had come before it.

On Friday, December 16th, the W3C experienced its first setback. Berners-Lee never meant for MIT to be the exclusive site of the consortium. He planned for CERN, the birthplace of the web and home to some of its greatest advocates, to be a European host for the organization. On December 16th, however, CERN approved a massive budget for its Large Hadron Collider, forcing them to shift priorities. A refocused budget left little room for hypertext Internet experiments not directly contributing to the central project of particle physics.

CERN would no longer be the European host of the W3C. All was not lost. Months later, the W3C set up at France’s National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, or INRIA. By 1996, a third site at Japan’s Keio University would also be established.

Far from an outlier, this would not be the last setback the W3C ever faced, or that it would overcome.

In 1999, Berners-Lee published an autobiographical account of the web’s creation in a book entitled Weaving the Web. It is a concise and even history, a brisk walk through the major milestones of the web’s first decade. Throughout the book, he often returns to the subject of the W3C.

He frames the web consortium, first and foremost, as a matter of compromise. “It was becoming clear to me that running the consortium would always be a balancing act, between taking the time to stay as open as possible and advancing at the speed demanded by the onrush of technology.” Striking a balance between shared compatibility and shorter and shorter browser release cycles would become a primary objective of the W3C.

Web standards, he concedes, thrives through tension. Standards are developed amidst disagreement and hard-won bargains. Recalling a time just before the W3C’s creation, Berners-Lee notes how the standards process reflects the structure of the web. “It struck me that these tensions would make the consortium a proving ground for the relative merits of weblike and treelike societal structures,” he wrote, “I was eager to start the experiment.” A web consortium born of compromise and defined by tension, however, was not Berners-Lee’s first plan.

In March of 1992, Berners-Lee flew to San Diego to attend a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF. Created in 1986, the IETF develops standards for the Internet, ranging from networking to routing to DNS. IETF standards are unenforceable and entirely voluntarily. They are not sanctioned by any world government or subject to any regulations. No entity is obligated to use them. Instead, the IETF relies on a simple conceit: interoperability helps everyone. It has been enough to sustain the organization for decades.

Because everything is voluntary, the IETF is managed by a labyrinthine set of rules and ritualistic processes that can be difficult to understand. There is no formal membership, though anyone can join (in its own words it has “no members and no dues”). Everyone is a volunteer, no one is paid. The group meets in person three times a year at shifting locations.

The IETF operates on a principle known as rough consensus (and, often times, running code). Rather than a formal voting process, disputed proposals need to come to some agreement where most, if not at all, of the members in a technology working group agree. Working group members decide when rough consensus has been met, and its criteria shifts form year to year and group to group. In some cases, the IETF has turned to humming to take the temperature of a room. “When, for example, we have face-to-face meetings… instead of a show of hands, sometimes the chair will ask for each side to hum on a particular question, either ‘for’ or ‘against’.”

It is against the backdrop of these idiosyncratic rules that Berners-Lee first came to the IETF in March of 1992. He hoped to set up a working group for each of the primary technologies of the web: HTTP, HTML, and the URI (which would later be renamed to URL through the IETF). In March he was told he would need another meeting, this one in June, to formally propose the working groups. Somewhere close to the end of 1993, a year and a half after he began, he had persuaded the IETF to set up all three.

The process of rough consensus can be slow. The web, by contrast, had redefined what fast could look like. New generations of browsers were coming out in months, not years. And this was before Netscape and Microsoft got involved.

The development of the web had spiraled outside Berners-Lee’s sphere of influence. Inline images — a feature maybe most responsible for the web’s success — was a product of a late night brainstorming session over snacks and soda in the basement of a university lab. Berners-Lee learned about it when everyone else did, when Marc Andreessen posted it to the www-talk mailing list.

Tension. Berners-Lee knew that it would come. He had hoped, for instance, that images might be treated differently (“Tim bawled me out in the summer of ’93 for adding images to the thing,” Andreessen would later say), but the web was not his. It was not anybody’s. He had designed it that way.

With all of its rules and rituals, the IETF did not seem like the right fit for web standards. In private discussions at universities and research labs, Berners-Lee had begun to explore a new path. Something like a consortium of stakeholders in the web — a collection of companies that create browsers and websites and software — that can come together to agree upon a rough consensus for themselves. By the end of 1993, his work on the W3C had already begun.

Dave Raggett, a seasoned researcher at Hewlett-Packard, had a different view of the web. He wasn’t from academia, and he wasn’t working on a browser (not yet anyway). He understood almost instinctively the utility of the web as commercial software. Something less like a digital phonebook and more like Apple’s wildly successful Hypercard application.

Unable to convince his bosses of the web’s promise, Raggett used the ten percent of time HP allowed for its employees to pursue independent research to begin working with the web. He anchored himself to the community, an active member of the www-talk mailing list and a regular presence at IETF meetings. In the fall of 1992, he had a chance to visit with Berners-Lee at CERN.

Yuri Rubinsky

It was around this time that he met Yuri Rubinsky, an enthusiastic advocate for Standard General Markup Language, or SGML, the language that HTML was originally based on. Rubinsky believed that the limitations of HTML could be solved by a stricter adherence to the SGML standard. He had begun a campaign to bring SGML to the web. Raggett agreed — but to a point. He was not yet ready to sever ties with HTML.

Each time Mosaic shipped a new version, or a new browser was released, the gap between the original HTML specification and the real world web widened. Raggett believed that a more comprehensive record of HTML was required. He began working on an enhanced version of HTML, and a browser to demo its capabilities. Its working title was HTML+.

Ragget’s work soon began to spill over to his home life. He’d spend most nights “at a large computer that occupied a fair portion of the dining room table, sharing its slightly sticky surface with paper, crayons, Lego bricks and bits of half-eaten cookies left by the children.” After a year of around the clock work, Raggett had a version of HTML+ ready to go in November of 1993. His improvements to the language were far from superficial. He had managed to add all of the little things that had made their way into browsers: tables, images with captions and figures, and advanced forms.

Several months later, in May of 1994, developers and web enthusiasts traveled from all over the world to come to what some attendees would half-jokingly refer to as the “Woodstock of the Web,” the first official web conference organized by CERN employee and web pioneer Robert Calliau. Of the 800 people clamoring to come, the space in Geneva could hold only 350. Many were meeting for the first time. “Everyone was milling about the lobby,” web historian Marc Weber would later describe, “electrified by the same sensation of meeting face-to-face actual people who had been just names on an email or on the www-talk [sic] mailing list.”

Members of the first conference

It came at a moment when the web stood on the precipice of ubiquity. Nobody from the Mosaic team had managed to make it (they had their own competing conference set for just a few months later), but there were already rumors about Mosaic alum Marc Andresseen’s new commercial browser that would later be called Netscape Navigator. Mosaic, meanwhile, had begun to license their browser for commercial use. An early version of Yahoo! was growing exponentially as more and more publications, like GNN, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, came online.

Progress at the IETF, on the other hand, had been slow. It was too meticulous, too precise. In the meantime, browsers like Mosaic had begun to add whatever they wanted — particularly to HTML. Tags supported by Mosaic couldn’t be found anywhere else, and website creators were forced to chose between cutting-edge technology and compatibility with other browsers. Many were choosing the former.

HTML+ was the biggest topic of conversation at the conference. But another highlight was when Dan Connolly — a young, “red-haired, navy-cut Texan” who worked at the supercomputer manufacturer Convex — took the stage. He gave a talk called “Interoperability: Why Everyone Wins.” Later, and largely because of that talk, Connolly would be made chair of the IETF HTML Working Group.

In a prescient moment capturing the spirit of the room, Connolly described a future when the language of HTML fractured. When each browser implemented their own set of HTML tags in an effort to edge out the competition. The solution, he concluded, was an HTML standard that was able to evolve at the pace of browser development.

Ragget’s HTML+ made a strong case for becoming that standard. It was exhaustive, describing the new HTML used in browsers like Mosaic in near-perfect detail. “I was always the minimalist, you know, you can get it done with out that,” Connolly later said, “Raggett, on the other hand, wanted to expand everything.” The two struck an agreement. Raggett would continue to work through HTML+ while Connolly focused on a more narrow upgrade.

Connolly’s version would soon become HTML 2, and after a year of back and forth and rough consensus building at the IETF, it became an official standard. It didn’t have nearly the detail of HTML+, but Connolly was able to officially document features that browsers had been supporting for years.

Ragget’s proposal, renamed to HTML 3, was stuck. In an effort to accommodate an expanding web, it continued to grow in size. “To get consensus on a draft 150 pages long and about which everyone wanted to voice an opinion was optimistic – to say the least,” Raggett would later put it, rather bluntly. But by then, Raggett was already working at the W3C, where HTML 3 would soon become a reality.

Berners-Lee also spoke at the first web conference in Geneva, closing it out with a keynote address. He didn’t specifically mention the W3C. Instead, he focused on the role of web. “The people present were the ones now creating the Web,” he would later write of his speech, “and therefore were the only ones who could be sure that what the systems produced would be appropriate to a reasonable and fair society.”

In October of 1994, he embarked on his own part in making a more equitable and accessible future for the web. The World Wide Web Consortium was officially announced. Berners-Lee was joined by a handful of employees — a list that included both Dave Raggett and Dan Connolly. Two months later, in the second half of the second week of December of 1994, the members of the W3C met for the first time.

Before the meeting, Berners-Lee had a rough sketch of how the W3C would work. Any company or organization could join given that they pay the membership fee, a tiered pricing structure tied to the size of that company. Member organizations would send representatives to W3C meetings, to provide input into the process of creating standards. By limiting W3C proceedings to paying members, Berners-Lee hoped to focus and scope the conversations to real world implementations of web technologies.

Yet despite a closed membership, the W3C operates in the open whenever possible. Meeting notes and documentation are open to anybody in the public. Any code written as part of experiments in new standards is freely downloadable.

Gathered at MIT, the W3C members had to next decide how its standards would work. They decided on a process that stops just short of rough consensus. Though they are often called standards, the W3C does not create official standards for the web. The technical specifications created at the W3C are known, in their final form, as recommendations.

They are, in effect, proposals. They outline, in great detail, how exactly a technology works. But they leave enough open that it is up to browsers to figure out exactly how the implementation works. “The goal of the W3C is to ensure interpretability of the Web, and in the long range that’s realistic,” former head of communications at the W3C Sally Khudairi once described it, “but in the short range we’re not going to play Web cops for compliance… we can’t force members to implement things.”

Initial drafts create a feedback loop between the W3C and its members. They provide guidance on web technologies, but even as specifications are in the process of being drafted, browsers begin to introduce them and developers are encouraged to experiment with them. Each time issues are found, the draft is revised, until enough consensus has been reached. At that point, a draft becomes a recommendation.

There would always be tension, and Berners-Lee knew that well. The trick was not to try to resist it, but to create a process where it becomes an asset. Such was the intended effect of recommendations.

At the end of 1995, the IETF HTML working group was replaced by a newly created W3C HTML Editorial Review Board. HTML 3.2 would be the first HTML version released entirely by the W3C, based largely on Ragget’s HTML+.

There was a year in web development, 1997, when browsers broke away from the still-new recommendations of the W3C. Microsoft and Netscape began to release a new set of features separate and apart from agreed upon standards. They even had a name for them. They called them Dynamic HTML, or DHTML. And they almost split the web in two.

DHTML was originally celebrated. Dynamic meant fluid. A natural evolution from HTML’s initial inert state. The web, in other words, came alive.

Touting it’s capabilities, a feature in Wired in 1997 referred to DHTML as the “magic wand Web wizards have long sought.” In its enthusiasm for the new technology, it makes a small note that “Microsoft and Netscape, to their credit, have worked with the standards bodies,” specifically on the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, but that most features were being added “without much regard for compatibility.”

The truth on the ground was that using DHTML required targeting one browser or another, Netscape or Internet Explorer. Some developers chose to simply choose a path, slapping a banner at the bottom of their site that displayed “Best Viewed In…” one browser or another. Others ignored the technology entirely, hoping to avoid its tangled complexity.

Browsers had their reasons, of course. Developers and users were asking for things not included in the official HTML specification. As one Microsoft representative put it, “In order to drive new technologies into the standards bodies, you have to continue innovating… I’m responsible to my customers and so are the Netscape folks.”

A more dynamic web was not a bad thing, but a splintered web was untenable. For some developers, it would prove to be the final straw.

Following the release of HTML 3.2, and with the rapid advancement of browsers, the HTML Editorial Review Board was divided into three parts. Each was given a separate area of responsibility to make progress on, independent of the others.

Dr. Lauren Wood (Photo: XML Summer School)

Dr. Lauren Wood became chair of the Document Object Model Working Group. A former theoretical nuclear phycist, Wood was the Director of Product Technology at SoftQuad, a comapny founded by SGML advocate Yuri Rubinsky. While there, she helped work on the HoTMetaL HTML editor. The DOM spec created a standardized way for browsers to implement Dynamic HTML. “You need a way to tie your data and your programs together,” was how Wood described it, “and the Document Object Model is that glue.” Her work on the Document Object Model, and later XML, would have a long-lasting influence on the web.

The Cascading Style Sheets Working Group was chaired by Chris Lilley. Lilley’s background was in computer graphics, as a teacher and specialist in the Computer Graphics Unit at the University of Manchester. Lilley had worked at the IETF on the HTML 2 spec, as well as a specification for Portable Network Graphics (PNG), but this would mark his first time as a working group chair.

CSS was still a relative newcomer in 1997. It had been in the works for years, but had yet to have a major release. Lilley would work alongside the creators of CSS — Håkon Lie and Bert Bos — to create the first CSS standard.

The final working group was for HTML, left under the auspices of Dan Connolly, continuing his position from the IETF. Connolly had been around the web almost as long as Berners-Lee had. He was one of the people watching back in October of 1991, when Berners-Lee demoed the web for a small group of unimpressed people at a hypertext conference in San Antonio. In fact, it was at that conference that he first met the woman that would later become his wife.

After he returned home, he experimented with the web. He messaged Berners-Lee a month later. It was only three words:“You need a DTD.”

When Berners-Lee developed the language of HTML, he borrowed its convention from a predecessor, SGML. IBM developed Generalized Markup Language (GML) in the early 1970’s to make it easier for typists to create formatted books and reports. However, it quickly got out of control, as people would take shortcuts and use whatever version of the tags that they wanted.

That’s when they developed the Document Type Definition, or as Connolly called it, a DTD. DTDs are what added the “S” (Standardized) to GML. Using SGML, you can create a standardized set of instructions for your data, its scheme and its structure, to help computers understand how to interpret it. These instructions are a document type definition.

Beginning with version 2, Connolly added a type definition to HTML. It limited the language to a smaller set of agreed-upon tags. In practice, browsers treated this more as a loose definition, continuing to implement their own DHTML features and tags. But it was a first step.

In 1997, the HTML Working Group, now inside of the W3C, began to work on the fourth iteration of HTML. It expanded the language, adding to the specification far more advanced features, complex tables and forms, better accessibility, and a more defined relationship with CSS. But it also split HTML from a single schema into three different document type definitions for browsers to adopt.

The first, Frameset, was not typically used. The second, Transitional, was there to include the mistakes of the past. It expanded a larger subset of HTML that included non-standard, presentational HTML that browsers had used for years, such as <font> and <center>. This was set as a default for browsers.

The third DTD was called Strict. Under the Strict definition, HTML was pared down to only its standard, non-presentational features. It removed all of the unique tags introduced by Netscape and Microsoft, leaving only structured elements. If you use HTML today, it likely draws on the same base of tags.

The Strict definition drew a line in the sand. It said, this is HTML. And it finally gave a way for developers to code once for every browser.

In the August 1998 issue of Computerworld — tucked between large features on the impending doom of <abbr title=”Year 2000>Y2K, the bristling potential of billing on the World Wide Web, and antitrust concerns about Microsoft — was a small announcement. Its headline read, ”Browser standards targeted.” It was about the creation of a new grassroots organization of web developers aimed at bringing web standards support to browsers. It was called the Web Standards Project.

Glenn Davis, co-creator of the project, was quoted in the announcement. “The problem is, with each generation of the browser, the browser manufacturers diverge farther from standards support.” Developers, forced to write different code for different browsers for years, had simply had enough. A few off-hand conversations in mailing lists had spiraled into a fully grown movement. At launch, 450 developers and designers had already signed up.

Davis was not new to the web, and he understood its challenges. His first experience on the web dated all the way back to 1994, just after Mosaic had first introduced inline images, when he created the gallery site Cool Site of the Day. Each day, he would feature a single homepage from an interesting or edgy or experimental site. For a still small community of web designers, it was an instant hit.

There was no criteria other than sites that Davis thought were worth featuring. “I was always looking for things that push the limits,” was how he would later define it. Davis helped to redefine the expectations of the early web, using the moniker coolas a shorthand to encompass many possibilities. Dot-com Design author and media professor **Megan Ankerson points out what “this ecosystem of cool sites gestured towards the sheer range of things the web could be: its temporal and spatial dislocations, its distinction from and extension of mainstream media, its promise as a vehicle for self-publishing, and the incredible blend of personal, mundane, and extraordinary.” For a time on the web, Davis was the arbiter of cool.

As time went on Davis transformed his site into Project Cool, a resource for creating websites. In the days of DHTML, Davis’ Project Cool tutorials provided constructive and practical techniques for making the most out of the web. And a good amount of his writing was devoted to explaining how to write code that was usable in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. He eventually reached a breaking point, along with many others. At the end of 1997, Netscape and Microsoft both released their 4.0 browsers with spotty standards support. It was already clear that upcoming 5.0 releases were planning to lean even further into uneven and contradictory DHTML extensions.

Running out of patience, Davis helped set up a mailing list with George Olsen and Jeffrey Zeldman. The list started with two dozen people, but it gathered support quickly. The Web Standards Project, known as WaSP, officially launched from that list in August of 1998. It began with a few hundred members and announcement in magazines like Computer World. Within a few months, it would have tens of thousands of members.

The strategy for WaSP was to push browsers — publicly and privately — into web standards support. WaSP was not meant to be a hyperbolic name.” The W3C recommends standards. It cannot enforce them,” Zeldman once said of the organization’s strategy, “and it certainly is not about to throw public tantrums over non-compliance. So we do that job.”

A prominent designer and standards advocate, Zeldman would have an enduring influence on makers of the web. He would later run WaSP during some of its most influential years. His website and mailing list, A List Apart, would become a gathering place for designers who cared about web standards and using the latest web technologies.

WaSP would change focus several times during their decade and a half tenure. They pushed browsers to make better use of HTML and CSS. They taught developers how write standards-based code. They advocated for greater accessibility and tools that supported standards out of the box.

But their mission, published to their website on the first day of launch, would never falter. “Our goal is to support these core standards and encourage browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access to Web technologies for all.”

WaSP succeeded in their mission on a few occasions early on. Some browsers, notably Opera, had standards baked in at the beginning; their efforts were praised by WaSP. But the two browsers that collectively made up a majority of web use — Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator — would need some work.

A four billion dollar sale to AOL in 1998 was not enough for Netscape to compete with Microsoft. After the release of Netscape 4.0, they doubled-down on bold strategy, choosing to release the entire browser’s code as open source under the Mozilla project. Everyday consumers could download it for free; coders were encouraged to contribute directly.

Members of the community soon noticed something in Mozilla. It had a new rendering engine, often referred to as Gecko. Unlike planned releases of Netscape 5, which had patchy standards support at best, Gecko supported a fairly complete version of HTML 4 and CSS.

WaSP diverted their formidable membership to the task of pushing Netscape to include Gecko in its next major release. One familiar WaSP tactic was known as roadblocking. Some of its members worked at publications like HotWired and CNet. WaSP would coordinate articles across several outlets all at once criticizing, for instance, Netscape’s neglect of standards in the face of a perfectly reasonable solution in Gecko. By doing so, they were often able to capture the attention of at least one news cycle.

WaSP also took more direct action. Members were asked to send emails to browsers, or sign petitions showing widespread support for standards. Overwhelming pressure from developers was occasionally enough to push browsers in the right direction.

In part because of WaSP, Netscape agreed to make Gecko part of version 5.0. Beta versions of Netscape 5 would indeed have standards-compliant HTML and CSS, but it was beset with issues elsewhere. It would take years for a release. By then, Microsoft’s dominion over the browser market would be near complete.

As one of the largest tech companies in the world, Microsoft was more insulated from grassroots pressure. The on-the-ground tactics of WaSP proved less successful when turned against the tech giant.

But inside the walls of Microsoft, WaSP had at least one faithful follower, developer Tantek Çelik. Çelik has tirelessly fought on the side of web standards as far back as his web career stretches. He would later become a member of the WaSP Steering Committee and a representative for a number of working groups at the W3C working directly on the development of standards.

Tantek Çelik (Photo: Tantek.com)

Çelik ran a team inside of Internet Explorer for Mac. Though it shared a name, branding, and general features with its far more ubiquitous Windows counterpart, IE for Mac ran on a separate codebase. Çelik’s team was largely left to its own devices in a colossal organization with other priorities working on a browser that not many people were using.

With the direction of the browser largely left up to him, Çelik began to reach out to web designers in San Francisco at the cutting edge of web technology. Through a stroke of luck he was connected to several members of the Web Standards Project. He’d visit with them and ask what they wanted to see in the Mac IE browser. “The answer: better standards support.”

They helped Çelik realize that his work on a smaller browser could be impactful. If he was able to support standards, as they were defined by the W3C, it could serve as a baseline for the code that the designers were writing. They had enough to worry about with buggy standards in IE for Windows and Netscape, in other words. They didn’t need to also worry about IE for Mac.

That was all that Çelik needed to hear. When Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac launched in 2000, it had across the board support for web standards; HTML, PNG images, and most impressively, one of the most ambitious implementations of the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specification.

It would take years for the Windows version to get anywhere close to the same kind of support. Even half a decade later, after Çelik left to work at the search engine Technorati, they were still playing catch-up.

Towards the end of the millennium, the W3C found themselves at a fork in the road. They looked to their still-recent past and saw it filled with contentious support for standards — Incompatible browsers with their own priorities. Then they looked the other way, to their towering future. They saw a web that was already evolving beyond the confines personal computers. One that would soon exist on TVs and in cell phones and on devices we that hadn’t been dreamed up yet in paradigms yet to be invented. Their past and their future were incompatible. And so, they reacted.

Yuri Rubinsky had an unusual talent for making connections. In his time as a standards advocate, developer, and executive at a major software company, he had managed to find time to connect some of the web’s most influential proponents. Sadly, Rubinsky died suddenly and at a young age in 1996, but his influence would not soon be forgotten. He carried with him an infectious energy and a knack for persuasion. His friend and colleague Peter Sharpe would say upon his death that in “talking to the people from all walks of life who knew Yuri, there was a common theme: Yuri had entered their lives and changed them forever.”

Rubinsky devoted his career to making technology more accessible. He believed that without equitable access, technology was not worth building. It motivated all of the work he did, including his longstanding advocacy of SGML.

SGML is a meta-language and “you use it to build your own computer languages for your own purposes.” If you hand a document over to a computer, SGML is how you can give that computer instructions on how to understand it. It provides a standardized way to describe the structure of data — the tags that it uses and the order it is expected in. The ownership of data, therefore, is not locked up and defined at some unknown level, it is given to everybody.

Rubinsky believed in that kind of universal access, a world in which machines talked to each other in perfect harmony, passing sets of data between them, structured, ordered, and formatted for its users. His company, SoftQuad, built software for SGML. He organized and spoke at conferences about it. He created SGML Open, a consortium not unlike the W3C. “SGML provides an internationally standardized, vendor-supported, multi-purpose, independent way of doing business,” was how he once described it, “If you aren’t using it today, you will be next year.” He was almost right.

He had a mission on the web as well. HTML is actually based on SGML, though it uses only a small part of it. Rubinsky was beginning to have conversations with members of the W3C, like Berners-Lee and Raggett, about bringing a more comprehensive version of SGML to the web. He was even writing a book called SGML on the Web before his death.

In the hallways of conferences and in threaded mailing lists, Rubinsky used his unique propensity for persuasion to bring people several people together on the subject, including Dan Connolly, Lauren Wood, Jon Bosak, James Clark, Tim Bray, and others. Eventually, those conversations moved into the W3C. They formed a formal working group and, in November of 1996, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) was formally announced, and then adopted as a W3C Recommendation. The announcement took place at an annual SGML conference in Boston, run by an organization where Rubinsky sat on the Board of Directors.

XML is SGML, minus a few things, renamed and repackaged as a web language. That means it goes far beyond the capabilities of HTML, giving developers a way to define their own structured data with completely unique tags (e.g., an <ingredients> tag in a recipe, or an <author> tag in an article). Over the years, XML has become the backbone of widely used technologies, like RSS and MathML, as well as server-level APIs.

XML was appealing to the maintainers of HTML, a language that was beginning to feel somewhat complete. “When we published HTML 4, the group was then basically closed,” Steve Pemberton, chair of the HTML working group at the time, described the situation. “Six months later, though, when XML was up and running, people came up with the idea that maybe there should be an XML version of HTML.” The merging of HTML and XML became known as XHTML. Within a year, it was the W3C’s main focus.

The first iterations of XHTML, drafted in 1998, were not that different from what already existed in the HTML specifications. The only real difference was that it had stricter rules for authors to follow. But that small constraint opened up new possibilities for the future, and XHTML was initially celebrated. The Web Standards Project issued a press release on the day of its release lauding its capabilities, and developers began to make use of the stricter markup rules required, in line with the work Connolly had already done with Document Type Definitions.

XHTML represented a web with deeper meaning. Data would be owned by the web’s creators. And together, computers and programmers, could create a more connected and understandable web. That meaning was labeled semantics. The Semantic Web would become the W3C’s greatest ambition, and they would chase it for close to a decade.

W3C, 2000

Subsequent versions of XHTML would introduce even stricter rules, leaning harder into the structure of XML. Released in 2002, the XHTML 2.0 specification became the language’s harbinger. It removed backwards compatibility with older versions of HTML, even as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — the leading browser by a wide margin at this point — refused to support it. “XHTML 2 was a beautiful specification of philosophical purity that had absolutely no resemblance to the real world,” said Bruce Lawson, an HTML evangelist for Opera at the time.

Rather than uniting standards under a common banner, XHTML, and the refusal of major browsers to fully implement it, threatened the split the web apart permanently. It would take something bold to push web standards in a new direction. But that was still years away.

The post Chapter 7: Standards appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

Chapter 7: Standards published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[orbemnews]

Life on Venus? The Picture Gets Cloudier A team of astronomers made a blockbuster claim in the fall. They said they had discovered compelling evidence pointing to life floating in the clouds of Venus. If true, that would be stunning. People have long gazed into the cosmos and wondered whether something is alive out there. For an affirmative answer to pop up on the planet in the orbit next to Earth’s would suggest that life is not rare in the universe, but commonplace. The astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, could not see any microscopic Venusians with their telescopes on Earth. Rather, in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, they reported the detection of a molecule called phosphine and said they could come up with no plausible explanation for how it could form there except as the waste product of microbes. Five months later, after unexpected twists and nagging doubts, scientists are not quite sure what to make of the data and what it might mean. It might spur a renaissance in the study of Venus, which has largely been overlooked for decades. It could point to exotic volcanism and new geological puzzles. It could indeed be aliens. Or it could be nothing at all. Dr. Greaves and her colleagues remain certain about their findings even as they have lowered their estimates of how much phosphine they think is there. “I am very confident there is phosphine in the clouds,” Dr. Greaves said. Clara Sousa-Silva, a research scientist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and one of the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, said, “I think the team in general still feels pretty confident that it’s phosphine, that the signal is real and that there are no real abiotic explanations.” But, Dr. Sousa-Silva added, “there’s a lot of uncertainty in all of us.” In the wider circle of planetary scientists, many are skeptical, if not disbelieving. Some think that the signal is just a wiggle of noise, or that it could be explained by sulfur dioxide, a chemical known to be in the Venus atmosphere. For them, there is so far no persuasive evidence of phosphine — let alone microbes that would make it — at all. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be faint,” said Ignas Snellen, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands who is among the skeptics. If the signal is faint, he said, “it’s not clear whether it’s real, and, if it’s real, whether it’s going to be phosphine or not.” The debate could linger, unresolved, for years, much like past disputed claims for evidence of life on Mars. “When the observation came out, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’” said Martha S. Gilmore, a professor of geology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Dr. Gilmore is the principal investigator of a study that has proposed to NASA an ambitious “flagship” robotic mission to Venus that would include an airship flying through the clouds for 60 days. “I think we’re skeptical,” Dr. Gilmore said. “But I don’t personally feel yet that we want to throw out this observation at all.” The surface of Venus today is a hellish place where temperatures roast well over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But early in the history of the solar system, it could have been much more like Earth today, with oceans and a moderate climate. In this early era, Mars, which is now cold and dry, also appears to have had water flowing across its surface. “Potentially, four billion years ago, we had habitable environments on Venus, Earth and Mars — all three of them,” said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor at the Technical University Berlin in Germany. “And we know that there is still a viable, thriving biosphere on our planet. So on Venus, it got too hot. On Mars, it got too cold.” But life, once it arises, seems to stubbornly hold on, surviving in harsh environs. “You could have potentially, in environmental niches, microbial life hanging on,” Dr. Schulze-Makuch said. For Mars, some scientists think it is possible that life persists today underground, in the rocks. But the subsurface of Venus is too hot, said Dr. Schulze-Makuch, who two decades ago scrutinized whether any parts of that planet were still habitable. Instead, he said, Venusian life could have moved up, to the clouds. Thirty miles up are short-sleeve temperatures — about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Microbes in that part of the atmosphere would stay aloft at that altitude for several months, more than long enough to reproduce and maintain a viable population. But even the clouds are not a serene, benign place. They are filled with droplets of sulfuric acid and bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the sun. And it is dry, with only smidgens of water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. Still, if that was the environment that Venus microbes had to survive in, it was possible that they had evolved to do just that. Phosphine is a simple molecule — a pyramid of three atoms of hydrogen attached to one phosphorus atom. But it takes considerable energy to push the atoms together, and conditions for such chemical reactions do not seem to exist in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine could be created in the heat and crushing pressure of the interior of Venus. Even with the lower amounts of phosphine that Dr. Greaves’s group now estimates, it would be unexpected and surprising if Venus’s volcanic eruptions turned out to be so violently voluminous that they spewed out enough phosphine to be detected where Dr. Greaves’s team said it was: in the clouds, more than 30 miles up. “We can’t easily rule in or out volcanism to explain this new, lower phosphine abundance,” said Paul Byrne, a professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who pointed to the many unknowns about the planet and its geological system. “It’s probably not volcanism. But we can’t say for sure.” On Earth, phosphine is produced by microbes that thrive without oxygen. It is found in our intestines, in the feces of badgers and penguins, and in some deep sea worms. In 2017, Dr. Greaves found indications of phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. Different molecules absorb and emit specific wavelengths of light, and these form a fingerprint that enables scientists to identify them from far away. The measurements found what scientists call an absorption line at a wavelength that corresponded to phosphine. They calculated that there were 20 parts per billion of phosphine in that part of Venus’s air. Follow-up observations in 2019 used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, a radio telescope in Chile that consists of 66 antennas. Those again turned up the same dark line corresponding to phosphine, although at lower concentrations, about 10 parts per billion. But other scientists like Dr. Snellen did not find the analysis by the scientists, and the suggestions of a biological source, nearly as convincing. The ALMA data, which recorded the brightness of light from Venus over a range of wavelengths, contained many wiggles and the one corresponding to phosphine was not particularly larger than any of the others. Dr. Greaves and her colleagues used a technique called polynomial fitting to subtract out what they believed was noise and pull out the phosphine signal. The technique is common, but they also used a polynomial with an unusually large number of variables — 12. That, critics said, could generate a false signal — seeing something when there was nothing there. “If your signal is not stronger than your noise, then you just cannot succeed,” Dr. Snellen said. Other scientists contend that even if there was a signal, it was much more likely to come from sulfur dioxide, which absorbs light at nearly the same wavelength. Dr. Greaves argued that the critics did not understand the precautions taken to rule out “fake lines.” She said the specific shape of the absorption line was too narrow to match that of sulfur dioxide. As the scientists debated back and forth, there was an unexpected surprise in October: the ALMA observatory had provided incorrectly calibrated data to Dr. Greaves, and it contained spurious noise. For weeks, the Venus researchers waited in limbo. When the reprocessed ALMA data became available in November, the noisy wiggles around the phosphine absorption line were diminished, but there now also appeared to be less phosphine — about 1 part per billion over all, with places that might be as high as 5 parts per billion. “The line we’ve got now is much nicer looking,” Dr. Greaves said, even though it was not as pronounced. “But it is what it is. We now have a better result.” Bryan Butler, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M., said he and others had looked at the same ALMA data, both the original and reprocessed versions, and failed to see any sign of phosphine. “They claim they still see it, and we still claim that it’s not there,” Dr. Butler said. “From a purely data scientist’s viewpoint, nobody is backing them up because nobody’s been able to reproduce their results.” A new paper by a team of astronomers, led by Victoria S. Meadows at the University of Washington, says that a more detailed model of Venus’s atmosphere developed in the 1990s shows that phosphine in the cloud layer would not even create an absorption line detectable from Earth. The team found that the phosphine would have to be some 15 miles higher in order to absorb the light. The research will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “What we’re showing is that the gas above basically doesn’t cool to the point that it can absorb until it gets to about 75 or 80 kilometers,” Dr. Meadows said. “Which is well above the cloud deck.” Other scientists delved into older observations of Venus to see whether there might be signs of phosphine hidden there. In 1978, a NASA spacecraft, Pioneer Venus, dropped four probes in the planet’s atmosphere. One of them even continued sending back data from the surface for more than an hour after impact. Going back through the Pioneer Venus data, Rakesh Mogul, a professor of chemistry at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona, spotted telltale signs for the element phosphorous in Venus’s clouds. “There is a chemical, most likely a gas, that contains phosphorus,” Dr. Mogul said. “The data does support the presence of phosphine. It’s not the highest amounts, but it’s there.” However, scientists looking at data from Venus Express, a European Space Agency spacecraft that orbited Venus from 2006 to 2014, came up empty for phosphine. So did astronomers — including Dr. Greaves and Dr. Sousa-Silva — who were trying to identify a different absorption line of phosphine in infrared observations from a NASA telescope in Hawaii. Dr. Greaves said the Venus Express and the infrared observations in Hawaii did not peer as deeply into the Venus atmosphere, and thus it should not be a surprise that they did not detect phosphine. The levels of phosphine, if it is there, could also be changing over time. That would make it more difficult to come up with definitive answers, much like the enduring mystery of methane on Mars. More than a decade ago, telescopes on Earth and an orbiting European spacecraft reported the presence of methane in the Martian air. On Earth, most methane is produced by living organisms, but it can also be produced in hydrothermal systems without any biology involved. But the methane readings were faint, and then subsequent observations failed to confirm it. Perhaps the readings were misinterpreted noise. When NASA’s Curiosity rover arrived on Mars in 2012, it carried an instrument that could measure minute amounts of methane. The scientists looked and looked — and measured none. But then, Curiosity did detect a burst of methane that persisted for weeks before dissipating. Later, it detected an even stronger outburst, but then it was gone again. Mars scientists remain at a loss as to the quick appearance — and disappearance — of the methane. The Venus phosphine debate will remain a stalemate until there are further observations. But the coronavirus pandemic has shut down ALMA as well as NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, a telescope aboard a modified 747 that can study infrared light from high in Earth’s atmosphere. The balloon that would be part of Dr. Gilmore’s flagship Venus mission could resolve the uncertainties by directly collecting samples of air. It would be able to find not only the phosphine but also carbon-based molecules of any microbes. “We really need to be in the clouds,” Dr. Gilmore, of Wesleyan University, said, “because that is the habitat that is hypothesized to support life.” Planetary scientists are in the process of putting together their once-a-decade recommendations to NASA about their priorities. There are many intriguing places to study, and NASA usually undertakes only one costly flagship mission at a time. A flagship mission also takes longer to build and one for Venus would not be scheduled to launch until 2031 at the earliest. NASA is also considering a couple of smaller Venus missions for its Discovery program, a competition in which scientists propose missions that fit under a $500 million cost cap. One of them, DAVINCI+, would be a 21st century version of one of the Pioneer Venus probes. It would be able to look for phosphine, although just at one place and one-time. The second proposal, VERITAS, would send an orbiter that would produce high-resolution images of the surface. Although it does not include a phosphine-detecting instrument, one could be added. And at least one private company, Rocket Lab, wants to send a small probe to study Venus in the coming years. “Further observations are warranted,” said Dr. Butler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “There’s nothing you can point to that says, ‘Oh, yeah, we absolutely see phosphine on Venus.’ But, you know, it’s tantalizing.” But he also said, “I would not bet my life savings that it’s not there.” Source link Orbem News #Cloudier #life #picture #Venus