#ts gravity rises

[introloves]

Just thinking about being super Domestic with Aone! He starts thinking about what a great little wife you’d be and how sweet you are. One day you casually mention what a great father he’d be if you guys had children and it does something to him! 💓

papa! aone + housewife! reader + HEAVY BREEDING KINK + talk of pregnancy (no kids) + princess complex + pillow princess! reader + overly protective! aone + praise + mating press + squirting + size kink + overstimulation + dacryphilia + creampie + f! reader

— word count; approx 2k

you treat him so gentle- a big man like him coming home to you after a long day of work always brings out a near overwhelming need to take care of him, to be there at every beck and call, waiting for him so pretty, looking towards the door with every second coming closer to him coming how to you.

everything you do for him doesn’t go unnoticed, aone doesn’t say much, but he returns your sweet kisses with an equal amount of love and adoration for his sweet little wife.

you’re near ravenous when he finally comes home, shrugging off his coat, boots taken off at the door, handkerchief in hand to wipe any lingering dust and dirt from his hands- not wanting to dirty any surface you’d spent all day cleaning. he’s even apprehensive in giving you his coat- looking at you with pinched lips, grunting while gently placing it in your waiting hands.

he doesn’t touch you until he’s all showered, even when you insist that it’s okay, the dirt beneath his nails from working, from being outside all day makes him feel dirty, you’re his princess, his pretty baby- how could he ever think to lay a soiled finger onto your soft and well taken care of skin...

he usually relents to your whines, begrudgingly bending down to place a quick kiss to your pretty lips- puckered and waiting for his own to press onto yours. he makes a straight line to the bathroom, showering, rolling his shoulders back once he steps out- towel secured ‘round his hips, and once again walking in a practiced route to your shared room.

he doesn’t change, he can’t because as soon as he’s out, you’re sat on the bed. pillows, blankets- comforter fluffed daily in anticipation for him to fuck you.

eyes eagerly drinking in his every step, water running down rounded out muscle, not so defined- not anymore. the home cooked meals that you make for him has treated him well, form fluffed out with muscle that’s more fitted for his job, it’s dense and packed in, thick. it makes your pussy throb.

“how was work papa?” you question sweetly, legs spreading wide to receive his body, slick folds wetly (and loudly) parting for him while you pin your knees on either side of you, giggling at the way he sucks a breath in every time, eyes looking at the pussy he so adores, mouth salivating.

he loves coming home to you.

he loves how soft you are, warm- thinks there’s nothing better smelling and more comforting than sinking deep- so very deep into the tight and wet heat that is your pretty pussy.

letting the towel fall at the foot of the bed, his cock hangs in a thick curve over his heavy balls, pretty white pubes decorating his crotch, tummy clenching in anticipation, it’s a sight seeing him get hard, thick length bending with how big he is- even fully hard there’s a delicious curve, gravity not too kind to him.

“good... i missed you.” aone mumbles. huffing as his now cleaned, calloused- thick... such thick hands reach to finally touch, soothing up the expanse of your legs, wondering how someone so pretty- so beautiful is laid out beneath him, pussy drooling for a cock like his.

you purr, smiling, body twisting- pushing up as his hands press you down.

“missed you more... was thinking about you- ‘bout something in particular.” you mumble, lidded eyes wandering up to his neck. watching the pretty blooming blush roll down all the way to his chest- wanting to reach up and remark and fading hickies, fingertips ghosting along faded lines of your nails dug in the moment of overwhelming passion.

“hm.” he hums, giving you his whole attention as you speak- looking at your lips as you form every word, planting heavy hands to the apex of your legs, digging the pads of every finger into the giving flesh, encouraging you to continue with a nod, all while kneading and squishing your body.

“was just thinking what a good papa you are- was thinking if you’d give me a baby... to keep me company while you leave.” you breathe, pulse quickening at the thought- head spinning the second the last word tumbles free, all because you’re suddenly pulled down.

it’s near audible, a lowly groan spreading forth from the deepest parts of his chest while he huffs- pale chest rising and falling rapidly, cock visibly throbbing- balls clenching, there’s even a moment where he thinks he may cum.

“f-fuck- a baby?” he exhales, tipping his head back, the stutter making you look at him with a hint of curiosity.

blinking away the base need to shove his cock inside, blinking away the need to push your head into the bed and dump load after load of his cum inside you, all with the intent to make you round with his kid he pulls your legs up he comes down towards you.

all to make you fat and pretty and waddle around while he takes you hand in hand everywhere you need to go.

he doesn’t realizes his hips have instinctively rutted down into you- too caught up in the thought of holding you while fat with a baby the two of you made.

hands dimpling your soft skin- muscle memory carrying every action, already folding you down, knees nearly pressing against your chest, heavy cock slotted onto your cunt, squished between your bent legs.

“i’ll give you a baby. my princess wants a baby.” he grunts, gone dizzy. all of this taking place in mere seconds of you spilling the thought. he says it like it’s a command from you, tunnel vision suckering him in, barely able to see you in the absolute need to give his princess everything her pretty heart desires.

you don’t know where he’s gone, obviously lost in a heavy headspace- popping the head of his still throbbing cock into you, crying in suspense. this is all so exciting, he’s always so eager to bring you what you want, always willing to move the stars and moon for you and now he’s answering to the fantasy you built up all day.

“p-papa!” you squeal, sucking in a breath when he barrels into you with a near punishing thrust.

this is different, he’s different. he’s always cautious with every thrust, but there’s no regret or remorse while the second slam of his hips knock into you. kicking legs just barely able to squirm at all with the way they’re perched on his broad shoulders, you watch as they dangle, watch while he stares you down, his own body moving with intent- drilling into your sopping pussy.

“papa!” you yell this time, soft hands holding onto his arms, his large palms resting on either side of your face while he folds himself down, the creak, sway of the bed dangerously loud- sucking every breath from inside your lungs.

he’s never been this rough, never- and your lips curl with every open mouth yell.

he fucks into you like you’re not there, thick cock splitting you open- filling your cunt, bringing you so very early into a blinding orgasm.

it’s so wet- eyes wet, pussy wet while you squirt and gush, crying out tiny little whimpers of his name as every wave of orgasm takes you. it splatters all over his thighs, painting his tummy, dripping back down onto you hotly.

this is all he needs, needs you wet and messy, needs your pussy swollen and slicked with need and cum so you can take such a big cock easier- if you take it easier he can use every inch of strength he has to dig the swollen and still throbbing cockhead right up to your cervix. he can almost see the swollen ring so ready to take his cum, displacing your own weepy orgasm, making room to receive all of his own thick, milky orgasm.

“good girl- my good girl.” aone nearly chokes, unfocused eyes zoning down onto your bent form, pussy lips and folds sucked in and out in with each drag.

you’re melted, reduced to a babbling little baby under his large mass- doing so well, taking someone so strong and so big like him with nothing more than a few overstimulated tears. drool forming at the corner of your mouth, the only thing you can do is wait for his cum like the pretty princess you are.

“papa- ‘ts too much- too much.” you gasp, wandering eyes roaming up his neck, landing on hardened eyes.

“no- no it’s not. you want a baby. i’m giving you a baby.” he speaks- knowing this is hard on someone treated like a doll, soft hands digging into the veined arms of his, same hands that never work too hard for anything at all, all because he insists on treating you with any and everything.

and just like everything else, he knows he needs to cut this short- knows you’re tired and wanting to drift off onto a nap, so aone fucks you deeply.

he needs to bend further and kiss away the tears spilling down your soft and plush cheeks- heated with the exertion he’s putting your body under, gently apologizing. the high and heated coiled need to breed you slowly waning, now just needing to paint your pussy with his cum.

“it’s okay- it’s okay, papa loves you- you’re okay.”

the gentleness, lowly and grunted words truly bring you peace, trembling under him- hiccuping at the thrusts he gives you, exhaling heavy when he tips forward to an orgasm finally.

sealing hips down to your own, rutting with securely placed knees down onto the bed.

he pushes you up a good amount, crinkling the bedding around your limp body, pistoning shallow thrusts, each one stickier- messier, harder to deliver as he cums. thick cock pulsating in need, sinking into such silky gummy walls all shaped to the form of his large cock.

he huffs equally shallow breaths, tired- so tired from an intense fucking, balls squeezing up tight to his body, every contraction followed by a deep squish of him to you.

“fuck- fuck.” aone groans, his shaking form transferred down to you, slowly bringing your aching legs off the perch of his shoulders. he gathers the last bit of strength residing in his body to take care of you, once more- with a gentleness only found in someone who’s been cautious of their own strength their whole life, he places your legs onto the bed.

you’re still dizzy as he does so, unable to keep the seizing of your muscles down- body heated and sweaty with how he folded your form into his desired state, slowly blinking your eyes more and more open.

blurry gaze landing on him, watching with a slowly growing smile as he looks at you with a reserved guilt.

“it’s okay.” you whisper, only able to whisper for the time being- “i’m okay.”

but even with what you say, he brings a large palm to your tummy, holding it there- reminding himself that it was to give you what you wanted. you just look so broken now, limbs unmoving, all dead weight while he positions your body much more comfortably.

with a nod, he pushes down any worry to hold you tight- swollen muscle wrapping your precious body up. your giggles bringing forth a near exasperated smile from him- wondering how his sweet baby still can be so... sweet after being fucked like that.

sleepy face burying into the crook of his neck while he fights to keep his softened cock inside you, pulling his princess onto him, slotting the plushness of you against his body.

“pretty.” he mumbles once the two of you are relaxed, basking in the tiredness throbbing throughout two fucked out forms.

“pretty baby.” aone whispers, bringing down a large hand to your tummy.

you can’t lift your head off his chest to give him a sweet smile, instead giggling with how well your papa takes care of you, how well he loves and gives you everything your pretty pink heart wants.

#aone #aone takanobu #aone smut #aone takanobu smut #haikyuu smut #aone x reader #aone x reader smut #aone x y/n #aone x you #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x reader smut #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n #smut #one shot #requests #no.name

[heamatic-archive]

It is SINDAY but you know what i just want some nice feels so have this oc o }

Its not uncommon now for battles that require both of the elemental brother's full power these days,, tense, heart ponding moments where the best they can do is play their part- and cling to the momentary moments of respite whenever possible, now was one such moment- and it wouldnt last long..

Fujin was quick to take the hand that didnt hold his blade and put it to the back of his brother's head to push their foreheads together gently, letting their energies overlap and twine together at their most potent point. It felt almost like the blankets theyd find as youths,, wrapping up tight and snug and safe before they learned the true gravity of their roles.

" I am still here, Raiden. " He managed through shaken breaths. " I'm not going anywhere.. not without you. Until the end. "

          :･ﾟ ⚡┇It may not be uncommon for battles to erupt these days, but this particular battle the brothers share is particularly disastrous — catastrophic. Doom is upon the horizon — the bloodshed too grand — they’ve all fallen: their champions, and more. So much more. All the souls... gone. Raiden’s desperation only grows exponentially with the amount of Netherrealm soldiers pouring in endlessly. This time; this battle, may well be the last.

            Rain pellets upon the warzone heavily, drowning feet — splash like rising diamonds come with every strike of lightning. It is inevitable, Raiden knows — feels it. His ichor bubbles beneath his flesh, energies boiling with grief as he fights to his last breath. Then, finally, the oni’s stop coming — giving the brothers much needed respite. Except the Thunder God knows this is only precursor to much worse than they have already endured.

            He feels a hand clasp upon his slick one with strength — strength Raiden does not possess any longer. His hold is weak, but resolute. Fujin. Beneath the deluge they stand, breathing fast. Bleeding. He is still here. But for how long? Raiden could not bear to know Fujin would have succumbed to battle. Their foreheads touch, water dribbling between them — the last tears of Earthrealm. His hand clasps behind Fujin’s neck, holds him there, closing his eyes momentarily. It is soothing, and for a moment he forgets his surroundings.

                           I'm not going anywhere.. not without you

                     Until the end.

            Except this is the end, isn’t it? There is no coming back. Raiden knows it. The next wave will do them in. His energies have been weakened, but Fujin’s still feel bright as moonlight.

            ❝Please forgive me, brother — ❞, the demi god speaks, for the first time in so long, with overflowing emotions. He feels Fujin frown. Feels anxiety rise. Feels his mouth part to say something, but Raiden gives him no chance to do so.

            A portal opens behind the Wind God, a portal leading to a place unknown: a realm untouched by the likes of Shinnok or Shao Kahn, rivalling Edenia in its beauty. Again a lick of Fujin’s energies shows his anxiety rising — he knows. He knows what Raiden is about to do with what is left of his weakening power — it is too late to break away — Raiden, with the last of his strength, shoves Fujin into the portal — hears his cry, his desperation — and the portal closes before the Wind God can escape — Raiden sealing it, keeping him from returning.

            The ground shakes beneath the Thunder God’s feet, crumbles around him. The rain conceals his tears as he gazes upward at the bleeding skies.

            Do not forget me, brother. Tell our tale to those who will listen so my mistakes will not be repeated. I love you. Goodbye.

#axrsinal #╰ *:･ﾟ❤ ──❝ e-mails ❞ ❪ asks. ❫ #╰ *:･ﾟthread ──❝ thunder god ❞ #[ DID SOMEONE REQUEST FEELS???? ] #apocalypse tw

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) kadala STAR WARS

Fox wakes up.

After everything, he's not expecting to. Not after what he had done - how uncharacteristically stupid he had been. He had done what he had, expecting to die, to be killed so that the nightmares would end and his brothers would be saved - it's what he deserves, after what the Chancellor had made him do. His brothers would see a future, he had made sure of it, but it wasn't a future for Fox, not with all the people he had killed, even if he hadn't meant to.

They haunt him. They scream in his dreams and he can feel their blood on his hands, he can see their faces every time he closes his eyes. He sees them as they were as they died, killed by his hands and with his weapons. It’s not always the same people haunting his nightmares, they’re interchangeable and they blend together - there’s been so many of them - but there’s always one that stays, clear and loud and there.

Fives.

Fives with his frantic voice, with his wild conspiracy and dilated eyes, and the gaping, burning hole in his chest, blackening the otherwise plain plastoid. The hole Fox put there. It never should have happened - it was supposed to stun, he had turned his blaster to stun as soon as he heard it was a brother the Guard were going after - and maybe that’s why Fox couldn’t forget his words or chase the ghost of the dead ARC from his thoughts. The more he thought about him, the less crazy Fives had seemed. The hate-filled eyes of his brothers followed him through his days, accusing - because he had committed the worst sort of crime against his brothers, he had killed one of them - and Fox doesn’t bother trying to keep them at bay. They hate him, and Fox doesn’t blame them. He hates himself too. It could have been the weeks of lost sleep or maybe the patchy memories he couldn’t string together, but Fox found himself continuing the dead man’s investigation, chasing rumours and diving into the darkest parts of the Republic.

What he had found only made Fox hate himself more.

Fives had been right , and Fox had killed him. He had killed the brother who had been trying to save them all.  His brothers were dying in droves, and it was Fox’s fault. By killing Fives before he could bring the knowledge of what the Chancellor was to the Jedi, Fox had all but signed the death warrant of the Republic and allowed Palpatine to keep the power he was using to control the war from both sides.

Fox had known immediately what he had needed to do. He had compiled all the data into a single file, written out his goodbyes, and set it all to send on a timer. Then he had left to confront the Chancellor, never letting on to the Guard what was going on - but with Thorn marching on no one gave him a second look, no one would worry about his comings and goings - and looking to buy his brothers time to receive and read the results of his investigation. They would pass it on, Fox knows, because it was a threat to their men and their Jedi. Fox had never had a Jedi, never understood the love his brothers had for them, but he’s seen the way so many look at their Generals, how many of them love their Jedi Commanders, and he knows that they’d protect them.

They would be able to save themselves, and build the futures they all hadn’t dared to dream of. Fox wouldn’t be part of it, didn’t deserve to be part of it, but he was fine with it. He would die to ensure his brothers would be free, as a final apology to Fives, and to Rex, who had had to watch his vod’ika die in his arms - something none of them deserved, and it was especially heinous that he had had to deal with the trauma of knowing his brother was killed by his ori’vod. They may never have been especially close, not like he had been with Cody or Wolffe, but it was hard not to remember the little blond cadet Cody had brought back to their bunks all those years ago whenever he looked at the confident and scarred Captain Rex’ika had become. Rex couldn’t look at him anymore, not without a burning hatred in his eyes, and Cody and Wolffe were rarely ever on Coruscant, even if they had wanted to see him - which Fox doubts. Neither of them would love a brother-killer, not after the Malevolence and not after Sergeant Slick’s cold-blooded betrayal.

He doesn’t deserve their forgiveness, would never receive it, but apologizing for what he had done took some weight off his shoulders before his inevitable death. He had marched into Chancellor Palpatine’s office prepared to die, but at least he’d been able to warn his family, to share what he had found. He had thought that, at best, the Chancellor would have him killed then and there, that he would summon his Guard like he had with Fives. Fox hadn’t been expecting the man to throw lightning out of his fingers, and it hadn’t even registered until the burning pain tore through him, boiling his blood in his veins until the world went white.

Then he woke up.

He didn’t die, and Fox’s scattered, foggy mind has a hard time coming to terms with the fact. He blinks groggily into the darkness, body alight in agony, and he has a moment of overwhelming terror. He can’t see - where is he - why can’t he see?

Fox gasps, bile and blood burning the back of his throat as he chokes and wheezes, eyes rolling desperately, trying to see anything at all - but it’s just darkness. Fox forces himself to calm down, to categorize what he can tell of his situation as he had been trained for. His limbs are shaking, and he feels like he’s been flayed open alive. From what he can tell, he’s slumped against cold metal, arms held above his head by heavy manacles, and the chains clatter with every tremor that shakes his sprawled frame. His legs tingle uselessly, but he can still move them - or at least he thinks he can, from the sound of plastoid dragging across the metal floor - so the Chancellor’s attack hadn’t paralyzed him. He feels like he had been stabbed multiple times, then lit on fire and left to suffer. 

Fox isn’t sure how he isn’t dead yet - better yet, he doesn’t know why he isn’t dead yet. Instead, he’s chained in some dark, stale room that tastes of badly recycled air and smells like blood. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, or how long he will be here, with his arms going numb as gravity pushes the blood from the suspended limbs. The only courtesy he’s been shown is that he wasn’t chained standing up. With nothing else to do, Fox is left to drift.

He drifts in and out of consciousness, wondering, despite himself, what was going to happen to him. He drifts, and he dreams - and as time continues to pass without anything to mark the passage besides his own overwhelming hunger and thirst, Fox wonders if anyone will come. He knows, deep down, that he won’t be rescued, but it brings him a dark sort of amusement to think of Palpatine coming back to torture him to find his dead body here. He wants to die.

And yet he doesn’t.

He continues to cling to life - a life he doesn’t deserve. It’s almost funny that after so many casualties, that it’s Fox who can’t seem to die. It’s Fox who continues to close his eyes, hoping that he’ll finally march on, only to open his eyes once more and curse the world. Why was it him who wouldn’t die, when there were so many good men who deserved to live more than him. Men like Thorn, who had hope no matter how bad it got, and who’s mangled body had been left for the wildlife to eat. Men like Fives, who had tried so desperately to save everyone, but would never see the fall of the man who had been pulling all the strings.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the first time he woke up, but Fox finds himself flung back into his body by the sudden overwhelming presence of noise after so long of just the sound of his own rasping breath. Light burns against his eyelids. There are warm hands pressing against the burnt skin of his neck, drawing him close to a firm chest. Fox tries to flinch away on instinct, fighting against the hold - how long had it been since someone had touched him? Had it been when that last time Thorn had last clapped him on the shoulder and promised to see him soon? - and a rushed, familiar voice washes over him.

“Fox. Fox.” Someone says, as his arms are gently lowered one by one by another pair of hands. “ Udesii, ori’vod. Udesii, ni olar, Fox.” Fox sucks in a ragged, gasping breath, body quivering, and he coughs around a dry, bloody throat. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes, afraid that it’ll all melt away into darkness once again. “You did it, Fox. You did it.”

His voice rasps when he speaks, rough with disuse, “Me'bana?”

“Palpatine is gone, vod.” Fox shivers, and agonizingly slowly, he forces his eyes to open. An orange pauldron meets his gaze, and Fox nearly sobs.

“Cody.”

“Yeah, ori’vod.” Cody chokes, and Fox suddenly realizes that he’s not the only one who’s shaking. “I’m here. And if you ever do something like this again I’m going to kick your ass. You’re not allowed to march on yet, vod.”

Fox chuckles wetly, turning his head to press his nose against the rough fabric of his brother’s blacks, ignoring the uncomfortable press of cold plastoid against his ravaged body because it’s something other than the cold metal he had had to deal with for so long. “Ni ceta.”

“Udesii.” His little brother breaths, voice thick, pressing his face into Fox’s no doubt greasy hair. “You have nothing to apologize for, Fox. As long as you’re alive.” Cody shivers again, and Fox forces his laden arms to rise, ignoring the fogginess of unconsciousness rising up to drown him once again, and he clumsily wraps them around his brother’s hips like he had all those years ago when Kote would crawl into his pod during summer storms. “You stopped him, Fox. He can’t hurt you anymore - he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

“Good.”

“Sleep, vod.” Cody murmurs, curling around him protectively. “You’re safe.”

Fox sleeps.

#star wars #fanfiction #cole writes #whumptober 2020 #no.1 let's hang out sometime #commander fox #commander cody #whump #waking up restrained #shackled #fix-it

[9w1ft]

this post is for any swiftie who is on the fence about this, or anyone who has heard about kaylor for the first time. please allow me a few minutes of your time.. pretty please with a cherry on top? i see you. ready to scroll past this. please. in this moment. please. give it a read. two years ago i was right where you were. please look this time. it is so important to what is going on now and taylor needs you to understand fully about scooter.

we are at a turning point. taylor’s life’s work was just bought up by scooter braun and it is important for everyone to read this perspective because as swifties we have to understand the full gravity of the situation in order to best defend taylor against her worst nightmare. you may think the kimye situation is terrible enough, but add to it this:

Scooter has been a manager for a one joshua kushner for the better part of this decade. as in, the brother of the guy who is running major arms of our whitehouse without qualification. scooter’s job is to improve his client’s image as it relates to securing foreign investments as josh is a uh.... ‘venture capitalist’ in charge of investing his family’s assets. if you’ve been looking into scooter, go ahead and look into him too.

josh started being seen with then 19 year old (think about that) rising star karlie kloss. considering the amount of push in tabloids that this otherwise nobody started getting, these two are easily identifiable as a PR relationship. he does work with many overseas investors, and karlie helps bring them in where josh alone cannot (please take the time to look up about PR relationships and how common they are. also look up ‘bearding’ and how common it is to set up a PR relationship so that a manager can better mask who a client loves, should that be problematic to a target demographic)

taylor and karlie were formally introduced to one another at the end of 2013. they became best best friends. inseparable. seen together everywhere. anytime they are together their happiness is palpable.

did you know there was a slice of pavement in new york city by where karlie lives with the initials TS♡KK engraved? they were thick as thieves!

i am not going to ask you to believe taylor and karlie dated one another. and if you believe that, i’m not going to ask you to believe they are still together. as for the first point, well, the visual history between them (and between taylor and other women integral to her life story) is overwhelming and if you would like to look at what i feel are the most straightforward stuff browse my blog @kaylorwelcomecenter and beyond.

but i digress. let’s assume taylor and karlie were just best best friends, then

...well, okay, they got caught kissing (we think that’s what Dancing With Our Hands Tied is about). but let’s say they were drunk? regardless, the smiles don’t lie—i think it goes without saying that taylor and karlie were important to one another. karlie influenced taylor to stay in new york, for example, instead of moving to london. karlie changed the trajectory of taylor’s life.

and you know they meant the world to one another because of songs with specific lyrics pointing to that like You Are In Love (taylor had an instagram post of her and karlie road tripping at big sur with the caption ‘on the way home’), and on reputation with songs like King Of My Heart (‘drinking beer out of plastic cups’ ... google “taylor swift beer” and see what photos come up), and Dress (watch her perform it with karlie watching, as she sings “i don’t want you like a best friend”).

karlie signed with scooter and in 2016 trump assumed office. jared kushner suddenly represents our nation. from then til now karlie has grown further and further distant from taylor as her relationship with jared’s brother continues.

that pavement? construction happened and the TS was mysteriously cut out and replaced with a J along with the freshly laid concrete.

rep tour starts and includes the song “don’t take the money” by jack antonoff in the preshow playlist. please listen to that song.

karlie announces her engagement to josh and the very next concert taylor sings Curious with hayley kiyoko and is in charge of the line “calling me up so late at night are we just friends? say you wanted me but you’re sleeping with him.”

the only time they are seen in public is at the nashville concert in august, and there is a photo of karlie celebrating her bachelorette with her sisters. strange that the same ambience of the photo down to the curly pink straw was replicated in You Need To Calm Down. karlie’s straw says ‘bride’ while taylor chose the word ‘lover’

after passing through karlie’s hometown, taylor sang “Speak Now” and was shaking with electricity in her delivery.

taylor comes out as a democrat. says something compelled her in the past two years to start speaking out.

karlie and josh suddenly hold a surprise wedding (coordinated by scooter’s team) while taylor is en route to australia. i say surprise because it came out of nowhere, (wouldn’t you say it took taylor by surprise?) had close to nobody documented in attendance, and the tabloid articles pushed it constantly during the bad press the kushners were getting in conjunction to ... world events involving a us citizen that was a member of the press...

taylor lands in oceania and sings I Knew You Were Trouble and slips in a firey “and the saddest fear comes creeping in that she never loved me”

on the very last night of the rep tour, a kaylor sign (representing the pavement mark) gets put up on the big screen as taylor sings “you belong with me” and bows in front of it.

in between then and the lover announcement, taylor all but confirms that half of one of the reputation concept photos is a collage of her and karlie’s eyes. ...i mean, she even encircled which eye is hers on the lover album cover 😂

because their first wedding was such a drag, karlie and josh held a ‘bigger reception,’ also coordinated by scooter’s team, and they had the audacity to give out shots of patrón as party favors 😡 taylor is not in attendance.

now scooter buys her music??

not only is this guy responsible for bad behavior surrounding kimye, he also has orchestrated the obliteration of one of the foundational relationships of taylor’s life. whether it was platonic or more than that, i don’t want to waste my time convincing you because either way, hearing scooter’s name makes taylor cry. and i am a thousand three hundred percent positive that it isn’t just about bullying surrounding kimye.

think about that. think on it.

we need to support taylor (and god am i worried about karlie in her own right!) and it goes beyond the kimye drama because this man and his client are predatory and downright creepy. and given the political connection? dangerous. they ruined her reputation and took away her best friend. literally took her name out of the pavement and ‘married’ her friend off in the eyes of the public. this goes far f*ing beyond bad management practices. this is so unforgivable.

and i cannot stand for people jumping in the comments telling us we are all delusional. honest to god i thought this was all ‘a reach’ two years ago. i was there. but i gave things the benefit of the doubt and i looked into it. i did my research on the music industry, and on hollywood and PR relationships. taylor wanted us to get political, right? please take this a step further if you already haven’t and look into the structures that control our society. taylor is dropping easter eggs for us, right? we need to look for clues. taylor is drawing attention to LGBT issues, right? look at the intersection of that and the music industry, suspend disbelief for one instant and imagine if taylor herself was gay, what her relationship with karlie may have meant to her, and how it was torn apart, at the very hands of the men who took over her music.

i am being serious. people calling us delusional might like to tout themselves as being sane or more in touch with the world, but they are literally sticking their heads in the sand on this one and turning a blind eye on something that is so cutting for taylor... now and over the course of her whole career. and each and every one of them best get off anon and stick a name to their words and proudly stick a pin to their comments, and @ taylor (i am dead serious. at your words to @taylorswift) if they are oh so confident, because when this blows open they’ll be on the wrong side of history on this one and i want them to know it and own it and learn from it. because this a huge life lesson and we are poised to take what we learn and give back to our idol by defending her in full force and it’s harder to fight when you’re sitting on your hands.. what role are you going to play? please... make the jump.

#kaylor #taylor swift #lover #ts7

[tsfanart]

And now for an original, non-TS related story...sort of.

Warnings: One moment of self-flaggelation/guilt-tripping/mentioned violence

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Anthony. Now, Anthony was in eighth grade, and he loved science more than anything, especially birds. So when the yearly science fair came along, Anthony decided to hand-build a mechanical parrot...named Toucan, because why not.

Anthony spent weeks working on his design. His father helped him set up his own workshop in the garage, and he worked day and night chopping, drilling, sanding, and painting until Toucan the Parrot looked perfect.

But of course, this wasn't an art project--he had to give it a scientific element, too. So, he decided to make the parrot fly. Away went all the wood blocks and chisels and out came the wires and gears. Before long, the wooden wings had become mechanical, and Anthony had even built his own remote control to use it with.

One day, when the bird was finally ready for a test run, Anthony took it into the backyard so he could fly it. But while his remote did succeed in getting the wings to move, he couldn't seem to control what direction they went in. But hey, that wasn't the end of the world. After all, science was about failure, right? Still not deterred, Anthony went to his room and drew up a graph of his different flight trials thus far, trying to determine if there were any factors that made the bird fly for longer.

Now, Anthony had a little brother named Derek, and Derek loved Anthony more than anything. He thought Anthony was the coolest older brother in the whole world. But, unlike Anthony, Derek didn't like science fair season. He didn't like it when his big brother didn't pay attention to him and only focused on his work.

One day, after a series of terrible flights and the realization that Toucan the Parrot's wings just weren't syncing up with the remote's commands, a frustrated Anthony stalked into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

Derek perked up at the sight of his beloved older brother. "Hey, Anthony! Wanna play checkers with me?"

"No, I don't want to play checkers, kid," Anthony snapped as he forcefully opened a loaf of bread.

Derek's face crumpled at the other's outburst, and before Anthony could even understand the gravity of what he'd done, Derek had left the room.

He ran out to the garage where Toucan the Parrot was sitting idly on the workbench. He looked around the room and locked eyes with Anthony's data chart. With a scowl, he took a scrap of paper from the table and used a marker to write "BIG MEANIE BROTHER" on it. Then he took a glue stick and slathered the other side, and he stuck it on the data chart right where Anthony had written his name.

He turned back to the bird and picked it up. "I hate you, Toucan the Parrot!" he screeched. "Anthony never talks to me anymore thanks to you. I hope you're happy!" And with that, he picked up the bird and smashed it onto the ground.

"Derek? What's going on in here?"

Derek's head shot up upon seeing Anthony. He took one look at the damaged, wooden bird in his hands, and burst into tears.

"I'm sorry Anthony, I shouldn't have broken your bird, but you were spending so much time on it and you never talk to me anymore and I was mad. But you worked so hard on it and you spent so much time on it and it was wrong of me to break it. I'm a terrible little brother and you should probably just fry me up in a grill," he sobbed.

Anthony just stood in the doorway of the garage and took everything in, from the look on his tearful brother's face to the gutting realization that the other's words were true. But he still wouldn't pass eighth grade without a project, and as he caught sight of his defaced posterboard, his anger started to rise a little.

But suddenly, another whimper from Derek made Anthony soften yet again. Okay, he realized, he was going to have to handle this matter delicately. He couldn't just stand there staring forever. He had to find a way to tell his brother he was sorry for ignoring him and to reassure him that the bird was probably bound to break anyway, while also getting the point across that two wrongs didn't make a right. Finally, he came into the middle of the room and put his hands on his brother's shoulders.

"Fry? Don't...really, Der, Toucan's cheap--the wings refused to pair--but what did you glue to my chart?"

#my work #original fiction #sort of #shaggy dog story #the things we used to share

[livingcorner]

Laundry-to-Garden: How to Irrigate with Graywater – Modern Farmer@|how to use grey water in the garden@|http://modernfarmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Home-Greywater-System-Diagram.jpg@|21

What is graywater, exactly? Household wastewater from washing machines, bathroom sinks, showers, and bathtubs is considered “gray” because it is only lightly soiled and poses a minimal health risk. As long as you’re only putting biodegradable products down the drain, graywater is perfectly safe for irrigating plants. Kitchen sink water is technically considered graywater as well, but because of its grease content it often requires additional treatment before being used for irrigation.

In contrast, blackwater – what you flush down the toilet – requires intensive treatment before it may be reused in the landscape, which is not a feasible (or legal) DIY project.

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There are brain-dead simple ways to recycle graywater – we list a few here – but they require sloshing around with a bucket or some other form of manual labor every time you want to irrigate. And there are high-tech methods as well, but these require serious plumbing knowledge and a significant financial investment. The washing machine method is in between – anyone with basic household tools and good mechanical abilities can pull it off in a weekend. It will run you a few hundred dollars for supplies.

The Basics

Laundry machines are equipped with a pump to push the wastewater out of the machine and into a sewer pipe. The brilliance of this system, first developed by Art Ludwig of Oasis Design in Southern California, is that is uses a washing machine’s built-in pump to distribute the wastewater through a system of subsurface pipes to irrigate individual plants around the yard. The water flows out into mulch-filled basins around each plant, where the roots can access the moisture.

This design is most effective for watering fruit trees, berry bushes, edible vines, and other large permanent plants. It is not useful irrigating lots of little plants, like flowers beds, lawns, and annual vegetables.

A few other caveats:

you can’t irrigate areas uphill from the washing machine (the pump isn’t strong enough)

you also can’t irrigate plants on a slope (though you can run the water downhill from the machine to irrigate a flat area below)

don’t use this method if you’re washing dirty diapers in the washing machine (that makes it blackwater)

don’t apply the greywater to plantings along streams or on swampy ground (to avoid contamination)

you may only use biodegradable products in your washing machine (this means no bleach, borax, or sodium)

Is It Legal?

Graywater systems are increasingly embraced by authorities across the country, especially in regions where water is scarce. Most greywater systems require a permit (and often a licensed plumber) to install them, but the washing machine system is unique in that is explicitly legal for homeowners to install it without a permit in five states – California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and Wyoming – and with a little negotiation at your local building department, is likely to pass muster in most localities (though a permit maybe required).

Municipalities tend to be lenient in how they regulate the washing machine greywater systems because this approach does not alter your household plumbing, and the graywater remains below ground at all times, eliminating any health risks. Still, check with local authorities before proceeding. Graywater rules for a number of states beside the five above may be found here .

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Step One: Calculate System Size

Before you get out your tools, pick up a pencil and paper and determine how many plants you are able to irrigate. Engineers have elaborate methods to make such calculations, but that’s not necessary for our purposes. For each load of laundry you run per week, plan on irrigating 1 to 2 fruit trees, 3 to 4 berry bushes, 3 to 4 edible vines, and 6 to 8 smaller perennial plants (such as roses, lavender, or artichokes) per load.

These guidelines are based on 20 gallons of water per load, which is typical for most washing machines. However, it’s best to check your owner’s manual for the exact water use of your model and adjust your plans accordingly (compact and water efficient machines may use half that amount).

Also, consider your soil conditions. If the soil is sandy, irrigation water drains away quickly; conversely, drainage is poor in heavy clay soil. If drainage is very poor, spread the wastewater over twice as many plants as recommended above. In extremely sandy soil, cut the number of plants in half to make sure there is enough moisture to go around.

Finally, use common sense in calculating the irrigation requirements of individual plants. A newly planted fruit tree requires a fraction of the water of a large mature tree. And drought tolerant species like olives and figs require much less water than moisture-lovers like blueberries and asparagus.

There is no need to get too scientific about the calculations – if in doubt, it’s better to overwater with this system because the mulch pits act as a sponge, allowing the roots to absorb the water they want and minimizing the risk of drowning the plants.

This diagram shows how to run irrigation tubing to the plant(s) you’ll be watering. CREDIT: Andrew Chahrour, Clean Water Components.

Step Two: Dig the Trenches

Washing machine pumps are not very powerful, so the plants to be irrigated should be within 50 feet of the machine, assuming the terrain is more or less flat. A network of flexible tubing buried in trenches below the soil will deliver water to each plant. The trenches can go up and down over modest humps and dips in the landscape, but should not run directly uphill. (the 50 feet doesn’t include any distance that the piping runs down an incline to reach the planting area, as gravity takes care of that part).

Starting from the exterior wall of your home closest to the washing machine, dig a shallow (2 to 3 inches) trench to the nearest plant that you wish to irrigate. Stop the trench at the edge of the “drip line” of the plant – directly below the outermost leaves and branches – and from there dig a trench to the drip line of the next plant, to the next, and so on.

Then dig a trench approximately 10 inches deep and 8 inches wide in a circle around the drip line of each plant. Another option that works well for smaller plants that are planted in a row is to dig a straight trench along the edge of the drip line on one side of the row (up to a maximum length of about 12 feet). The trenches will be filled with mulch to absorb the graywater.

Step Three: Lay the Pipe and Spread the Mulch

Lay 1” HDPE flexible tubing (often referred to as poly pipe) in the shallow trenches, cutting it and inserting barbed “Ts ,” “elbows ,” and other fittings where necessary. Run ½” tubing off the main 1” line to each of the deeper trenches, leaving a few inches of tubing sticking out into each trench. Secure the fittings with hose clamps .

Washing machine pumps are only strong enough to push water through 10 to 12 irrigation points at once. If you’re going to irrigate more plants, divide the pipe network into two zones with a three-way valve . The valve should be left accessible in a valve box so you can operate it manually.

1-gallon plastic pots provide a simple way to keep the mulch inside the trenches around each plant away from the outlet of each pipe so the water can flow unobstructed. First, cut off the bottom of the pot. Then drill a 1 ¼-inch hole into one side of the pot about 2 inches above the bottom. Fill the bottom of the trench around each plant with 4 inches of wood chips (compacted with your feet). Slide the pots over the ends of the tubing in each trench, with the bottom of the pots facing up so the top of the pot is resting on the mulch.

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Then fill the remainder of the trenches around each plant with wood chips. Use a concrete stepping stone as a lid for each pot. Cover the tubing in the shallow trenches with soil, leaving a few feet exposed at the end by the house so it can be connected to the washing machine.

Step Four: Connect the Washing Machine*

Locate the flexible drain tube behind the washing machine and remove it from the rigid “standpipe” that drains the wastewater into a sewer or septic system. Connect the flexible drain tube to a 1” three-way valve using a 1” barbed male adapter and a hose clamp . Connect one side of the valve to the sewer standpipe using a 1-inch diameter PVC pipe and fittings, configuring the piping as needed so that the valve is against the wall in an accessible location near the standpipe and at least a couple inches above the height of the washing machine.

Choose the location where the piping will pass through the wall to connect with the tubing outside. Drill a test hole through the wall using a ¼-inch bit to ensure that there are no studs, wiring or piping in the way behind the wall. Then drill a 1½-inch hole through the wall. (Another option is to run the pipe through the floor and outdoors through the exterior wall of a crawlspace of basement).

Run 1-inch diameter PVC pipe from the open end of the valve through the wall, leaving about two to three inches of the pipe protruding on the outside of the wall. Use a 1” pipe strap on either side of the valve to support horizontal pipe and secure it to the wall.

Connect a 1” PVC “T” fitting to the open end of the pipe outside the wall, with the open ends of the fitting oriented vertically. Connect the bottom of the T fitting to the poly tubing on the ground with 1-inch diameter PVC pipe and fittings, as needed. Cover the last bit of poly tubing with soil.

Connect a piece of 1-inch diameter PVC pipe to the top end of the T fitting of sufficient length to rise above the height of the three-way valve indoors. Connect an air admittance valve (also known as an “auto vent”) to the top of the pipe (this device prevents foul-smelling air from circulating back through the washing machine and into the house). Seal the hole where the pipe passes through the will exterior grade caulk, both inside and outside the wall.

*Use Teflon tape on all threaded fittings. Glue unthreaded fittings together with PVC cement.

Operation and Maintenance

The system operates on its own unless you are using multiple irrigation zones. In that case, you’ll need to turn the three-way valve in the valve box outdoors once per week. Simply divide up the total number of loads you run each week into two equal sets. After the first set is completed, turn the valve to irrigate the other zone for the rest of the week.

The mulch in the trenches will slowly decompose and settle. Top it off once per year, and every few years scoop out all of the mulch and replace it (spread the old mulch around your plants). You may also need to periodically expand the diameter of the mulch trenches as the plants grow (especially for trees).

The three-way valve next to the washing machine allows you to divert the greywater into the sewer standpipe, rather than into the irrigation system, during periods of heavy rain or while making repairs. This is also useful if you wish to occasionally use bleach in the washing machine.

These are general guidelines only. For further information, greywater system supplies, troubleshooting advice, and guidance on using this method in a variety of contexts see the San Francisco Graywater Design Manual , Oasis Design , Clean Water Components , and Greywater Action .

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source https://livingcorner.com.au/laundry-to-garden-how-to-irrigate-with-graywater-modern-farmerhow-to-use-grey-water-in-the-gardenhttp-modernfarmer-com-wp-content-uploads-2017-03-home-greywater-system-diagram-jpg21/

#livingcornernews

[hak-7]

A THIRD OF THE KINGDOM

The Human Nature

Man means intelligence, mind that G-d design for the human being. Not the mind that the world has given you, but the mind that G-d intended for you to have. That mind has more faith in Creator than it has in creation. And that is the power that makes it superior to creation. Now where is the proof of this? The Bible says and G-d made man a degree, or a little below the angels. And Allah(SAW) revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) the last prophet that G-d made man a little above the angels. What does the angel represent? Angel represent the forces in this universe, in this creation and beyond the universe also that obey its Creator.

That’s what the angel mean. The forces of nature, the forces of matter, gravity, electricity, all of these things are angels in some sense. We also have influences in our human make-up. These are angels in our human make-up and G-d is in complete control over these things. He control the universe, the creation through the natural law of the universe. And He controls us through our own nature. Our nature may stray and follow something other than G-d, but our nature cannot totally separate, it has to come back, has to come back to Almighty G-d. You see?

It says that He made the man a little above the angels, meaning that human beings can rise above the forces of creation. The human being can become superior to the forces of creation and that’s what we have to become. And that is why Allah(SAW) says to the Prophet in the Qur’an that he made his man a little above the angels. Why? Because satan had taken the angels, a third of them from their places in obedience to G-d. He took even the forces of creation away from obeying G-d. What third? The human third. He couldn’t take the sky, he can’t take the planets, he can’t change the planets, he can’t change the nature in metal. But he can change the nature in the human being because you have free will, free mind. You can follow something outside of your own nature.

So satan took a third of the kingdom, he took the human being down from his place in heaven, place in the order of G-d. Not in the sky somewhere in a spiritual place, in the universal order of G-d. He took the man out of that place. Human being out of that place. How did he take him out?The book says, rejoice not, whole Palestina. Have you read it in the Bible? Rejoice not whole Palestine. It says Palestina, another name for Palestine. Rejoice not whole Palestine, for out of the serpent’s root, shall come a flying cockatrice. A Trinitarian doctrine. Believe me or not, I’m telling you the truth, plain truth, nobody can do anything with it.

Out of the serpent’s root shall come a flying cockatrice. We know from studying the mythologies, that bird means spiritual makeup of the human being. We know that from studying the mythologies. And if this is a bird that has some threefold, threefold nature, then what it stands For. Spiritual religion. What religion has this Trinitarian makeup? Christianity.Oh mister, I thought you were trying to get together with the Christians. That’s right. And this is the best way to get together with the Christian. Not going to get together with them in their underground world of sin and confusion and ignorance. Let’s get together in the light of day.

Let us examine now the cockatrice bird. Says that this bird was a bird hatched by a snake. It was a bird’s egg, but the egg is hatched by a snake. And when the bird from the egg was born, it had both the characteristics of bird and snake. And it is called the cock-a-trice, means twice, but it’s a play also on trice. Satan always has his hidden mark. Which means three. Two means that from one life to another life. From a lower life to a higher life. What is this now going to evolve from a lower life to a higher life and is going to become a terror for the very people that they were trying to save. Palestine, G-d was trying to save it. And it was destroyed by the Europeans. And when it was being destroyed that prophecy came, “Rejoice not whole Palestine.”

What part of Palestine now will rejoice that Jerusalem is being destroyed? The Essence, that part of Palestine that was right in heart. That hated Caesar and also hated, what’s his name? Herod. Hmm? He-rod, He-rod the ruler. The Jewish puppet who was over the Jews. The sincere religious society of the Jews, hated both. They didn’t want the Romans dominating their lives ,their land, and their lives, and they didn’t want the puppet Herod ruling over them. But Herod was successful. Why? Because he was backed by Pharisees and Sadducees. “Rejoice not whole Palestine for out of the serpent’s root shall come a flying cockatrice.” They were saying, the Gentiles are conquering the holy land. The Jewish nation is finished as a nation, as a political body and we are glad because they had become corrupt. They were persecuting the good ones among them and oppressing the good ones among them.But a voice came from the prophet saying, “Rejoice not whole Palestine, this is just the beginning.” The Gentile is marching down your nation now, but they are going to raise the cross.

Imam W.D. Mohammed (raa)

[kathleenseiber]

Inside Biology’s Black Box

This article from the March issue of Cosmos has been shortlisted for the 2020 Eureka Prize for Long-Form Science Journalism. The prize will be announced November 20.

A new device for bioengineering embryo-like structures is shedding fresh light on those earliest, most mysterious – and largely unobservable – moments of human development. Great leaps forward in safe, successful pregnancies and congenital defect prevention await, but so do a host of ethical questions.

The development of two stem cell groupings at 6 hour increments. Credit: Jianping Fu

I count six little ziggurats side by side, stolid and squat and obviously man-made. They are not going anywhere, but in between them things are on the move.

Circles of dots have begun to roil and rotate, angry blimps rising up  among the static trapezoids, their contents swirling in a frenzy of disorder. Then, in each one, a ring solidifies and grows in the chaos.

It’s fleeting, and the jiggling hoop is soon churned back into the mass as the riot spreads unchecked.

These dots are human cells and their acrobatics are the beginnings of human life, though not as we know it. There is no womb, no pulsing maternal heart. Instead, the cells are born in an elaborate plastic chamber under constant video surveillance, and I am witness to their first two days of existence, compressed into a sparse 18 seconds by the wonders of time-lapse video.

The architect of this dazzling piece of cellular music hall is bioengineer Jianping Fu, whose field of expertise – mechanobiology – tries to understand how living cells change in response to physical forces.

Working from his University of Michigan lab on the outskirts of industrial Detroit, Fu is bringing the measured mindset of the machine-builder to the job of constructing life. He is one of an elite cohort of scientists trying to build a replica of the human embryo from the ground up to try to understand just how we are made – and where it can all go horribly wrong.

This area of science aims to alleviate the gamut of reproductive misery, from the anguish of infertility and miscarriage to gathering information about drugs like Thalidomide, which seem innocuous but have grave consequences if taken during pregnancy.

Fu’s bundles of cells, dubbed embryoids, could be used to screen drugs for toxicity in the womb. They might also unravel the mystery of why two out of every five pregnancies fail before 20 weeks. But these scientists, tinkering at the dawn of life, don’t know how far the cells can develop. There is talk their creations could one day provide a source of organs for transplant. The spectre of a baby in a dish looms ominously in the public imagination.

Which is why Fu’s bit of kit, written up in Nature in September and described by leading embryologist Ali Brivanlou as “a major advance in the knowledge of early human development”, is also an invitation for humanity to do some circle time on what it means to build a human.

The invention that’s created this excitement is a simple-looking chamber with three channels. In one, Fu places pluripotent stem cells, blue-sky building blocks that can become almost any human cell. They are immortal and can be frozen and thawed, forming a renewable resource that can be used for years.

Some of these are embryonic stem cells, originally derived from human IVF embryos. Fu also uses “induced pluripotent stem cells” – iPS cells for short – that come from adult skin cells re-programmed back to a primal state.

In the second channel Fu pours a liquid containing morphogens, the fertilisers that hurry stem cells on with the job of remaking themselves over and over. In the third, he lays a gel to support the growing masses, each one hived into its own mini-domain by evenly spaced support posts – the ziggurats.

In many respects there’s nothing novel about this. Researchers the world over are growing stem cells into structures that mimic the early embryo, before getting them to switch course in the first few weeks and become heart, brain or kidney cells.

These grow to make mini organs or “organoids”, about the size of a stunted chickpea, that are used to model diseases on the lab bench and test if drugs or gene tweaks might be a cure.

But Fu is aiming to make the whole shebang.

There’s no diverting cells off into hearts and brains – rather, he wants them to run their course and become something that resembles the early human embryo.

Fu has pushed these embryoids as far as anyone’s been yet and, true to his engineering pedigree, he’s done much of it by inventing a new 3D world for the stem cell colonies to grow in.

“Most excitingly… in this first set of experiments, is the fact that in a subset of those colonies we start to see some asymmetric tissues, asymmetric embryonic structures,” he tells me by phone.

Credit: Jianping Fu

Embryologists tend to get breathless about symmetry, or lack of it. After natural conception, when the sperm fuses with the egg to form the singlecelled zygote, there follows a cascade of dividing, with new cells budding outwards in a uniform ball which, at day three, becomes the 16-cell morula – Latin for mulberry, which it resembles.

But around day six there is a major break from the order of symmetry, as the front-to-back, belly-to-spine axis appears. Anyone aiming to make a human embryo needs to nail this. Fu didn’t just meet the milestone; he also produced the cells that become the amniotic sac – the fluid-filled bag in which the foetus floats.

“These asymmetric structures, basically they resemble the core of the peri-implantation human embryo,” he says.

Implantation. It strikes at the heart of this project. Somewhere between six and 12 days after conception, the human embryo nestles into the fleshy wall of the uterus. This is essential if the pregnancy is to continue. But when it goes wrong, it’s disastrous. Nearly three quarters of all pregnancies that miscarry by 20 weeks are a failure to implant. And the two months after implantation are when the embryo is most vulnerable to the effects of drugs or maternal infections that cause birth defects.

Given the gravity of these issues, you’d think an avalanche of research would have shed light on them. In fact, we know so little about the period it’s called the ‘black box’ of embryology.

The implanted embryo, key to the enigma of early life, is mostly invisible to science. The first reason is structural: the embryo is sequestered in a uterus beyond our gaze. The second is ethical: scientists have grown human IVF embryos for 13 days in the lab, but no one has gone beyond two weeks.

Endorsed by the UK’s Warnock Committee in 1984 and then by the US National Institutes of Health’s Human Embryo Research Panel in 1994, the 14-day rule bans lab research on embryos beyond that point.

It is around this time that a groove called the primitive streak appears in the embryo: among other things this marks a cut-off beyond which twinning is impossible. This is the defining line of the individual human which, some believe, is morally significant. The 14-day rule is enforced by legislation in at least 12 countries.

The reasoning is clear, but the effect is to keep the black box in shadow; science hasn’t had a way to illuminate it.

Now the spotlight falls on Fu’s plastic channels, properly called microfluidic devices. In Fu’s earlier experiments, only around 5-10% of his embryoids reached that asymmetry waypost. But in his lab just a short drive from the factory where Henry Ford christened the first of his Model Ts, Fu has rewritten the rules of embryoid production.

“With this microfluidic system, now we can generate such human embryo-like structures with very high efficiency, up to about 95%,” he says.

Fu’s system isn’t just meeting quality benchmarks, and this is where the parallels with Motor City’s early denizens become a little more pronounced. “It is a scalable system,” he says. “I would even say that now… it becomes a manufacturing system, depending on the needs, right? Depending on how many you need.”

Fu’s tone is measured, matter of fact. But on this moonshot to the dark side of our collective beginning he carries the interests of Everyman, so be reassured that he tells his tale with deep concern for our wellbeing.

What if we could develop a screening mechanism, that’s an adjunct to pharmaceutical development, that enabled us to provide a safeguard for a new drug?

When he says the system “will be very useful for high throughput screening”, that clinical parlance describes the potentially vast benefits to real embryos of testing hundreds of drugs on embryoids first. His work could also show why so many pregnancies miscarry – and improve our measly IVF success rate of 20%.

Indeed, his precision-tooled temperament may be a prerequisite for the kind of slog needed here, to get an embryoid to trace the footsteps of a real human embryo, in something the scientists call recapitulation. It is only by mimicking the true-life course that a dish-bound doppelganger can give test results that are valid.

And that is a big ask, not least because there is no gold standard; the ‘black box’ means there is no definitive embryo library to provide reference points for the journey. Then there are the endless variables in embryoid research: the physical layout of the device, when to add morphogens and chemical signals, and countless other tiny details.

Which is where Fu took his Enterprise into deep space. His embryoids reached the early phase of another critical developmental stage called gastrulation. When the furrow-like primitive streak appears at 14 days, it signals that the cells below, a little like the settling of ploughed earth, are falling into three layers: the ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm, respective precursors of skin and brain, muscle, and internal organs. Their emergence heralds the laying down of the body plan.

But Fu’s embryoids also showed something else undeniably human. Budding off from those furiously dividing balls were the barely discernible outlines of germ cells. These define the male and female sex – they are the cells that go on to produce sperm or eggs.

Megan Munsie is Deputy Director of the Centre for Stem Cell Systems at the University of Melbourne and has been entangled with the stem cell story for two decades, first as a researcher and now as an expert on policy and ethics. The appearance of these sex cells left a deep impression.

“This is a part of human development that we just really can’t follow,” she says. “The start of the germ lineage I think is absolutely fascinating.”

Nor was it the only aspect of Fu’s achievement that gave her pause.

“When we looked across his images I found them quite extraordinary,” she says. “In almost all the clusters in the wells the patterning was consistent, and as you can imagine in this area of biology there is often quite a lot of inconsistency.”

That cookie cutter reliability is essential if you want to screen a bunch of drugs for harmful effects; the substrate has to repeat faithfully across each test. One example, of course, stands out.

“Thalidomide, who was expecting that? What if we could develop a screening mechanism, that is an adjunct to pharmaceutical development, that enabled us to provide a safeguard for a new drug?” asks Munsie.

Barely a kilometre from Munsie’s office, across Melbourne’s verdant and expansive Royal Park, Andrew Elefanty is using stem cells to try to make bespoke blood for people whose bone marrow has failed, or is in overdrive making blood cells that don’t work properly – the leukaemias.

It is the kind of medicine that shows just how personalised the embryoid project could become.

Credit: University of Michigan Engineering

In order to create the customised blood, Elefanty’s team at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute takes blood samples from volunteers. The immature red cells are removed and, with the help of genes delivered in a virus, programmed back to a pluripotent state – they become iPS cells.

In crimson culture fluid in blue-capped flasks, these iPS cells are then urged by the team towards the embryoid stage. But, unlike Fu, the team halts development at the point of gastrulation, directing the cells to become mesoderm alone.

Why? Because it is that layer, as Elefanty shows me in a stunning photo, that fashions the seminal version of our biggest blood vessel, the aorta, in whose walls, at this rudimentary time, the red blood cells are made.

Duplicate Elefanty’s process with the blood of someone with leukaemia and the hope is that, one day, you could make healthy blood for them that’s a perfect match.

But I’m confused about something.

Since stem cells were first coaxed into tiny 3D brain-like structures in 2008, scientists have produced a cornucopia of organoids. All of these – mini brains, hearts, kidneys and even blood cells – can be made directly from pluripotent stem cells. Why, then, would you want to push them through the embryoid pathway first, which seems to be taking the long way round?

“The way that works the best, if you like, is if you try to direct them via a trajectory where you do actually try to replicate some of the steps during embryonic differentiation,” says Elefanty. “That’s the road map that you’re following.”

The whole process is artificial, but there’s something of a “nature knows best” adage at its heart. Elefanty is leveraging nature’s navigational toolbox, whose items have been checked off by the rigorous oversight of evolution, to make a better blood cell.

The embryoid pathway could also be a way forward for organ replacement.

Writing in Nature in 2018, stem cell pioneer Martin Pera and colleagues noted that mini brains, livers and kidneys made from stem cells are pretty basic, and that maybe we can do better.

“Initiating organ development in an environment as similar as possible to the developing embryo might… generate structures that more closely resemble mature, functional organs, for drug screens or even for transplantation,” they write.

Usable organs, however, both in terms of sophistication and size, would need the embryoid to be pushed much further along the developmental path than it has been. Elefanty points out two largish hurdles to that ever happening.

“If you don’t have the right cell type you can’t make a whole embryo. And secondly, what people can’t underestimate is the difficulty in reproducing the environment that is the same as the implanted embryo,” he says.

Here’s the rub. Fu’s whirling cell clusters are the right ones to make the headline act of the embryo, but are missing the supporting entourage: the trophoblasts that become the placenta, and the hypoblasts that go on to make the yolk sac, needed to nourish the early embryo.

These are critical kit in their own right, but they also play a key role in what is called patterning, which plots the layout of the body – for example, getting your liver and spleen in the right spot or crystallising the geography of the brain’s bumps and folds.

Here, however, the incoming breakers of science seem relentless.

In 2018, Japanese researchers cultured human trophoblast stem cells for the first time, raising the prospect of an artificially grown placenta. Another announcement last June, however, may have leapfrogged that altogether.

A group led by Xuefei Gao from the University of Hong Kong created something called “expanded potential stem cells”. With some clever chemical coaxing they heightened the potency of human embryonic stem cells and iPS cells – stem cells on steroids if you like. Crucially, expanded potential stem cells can make those missing bits – the placenta and yolk sac.

The final step would be replicating implantation, and in October 2019 the Salk Institute’s Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte led a team that created expanded potential stem cells from mice, some by reprogramming cells from the critters’ ears, to make what they say “could potentially be… fully functional synthetic embryos in vitro”.

Jianping Fu looks on as postdoctoral fellow Yi Zheng examines stained stem cells. Credit: Jianping Fu.

Equipped with placenta and yolk sac, these are primed to become fully fledged foetuses – and Belmonte successfully implanted the structures in a mouse uterus. Only 7% took and, after a week, they were badly malformed. But it is early days.

As the science rushes onwards it is hard enough to understand it, let alone pass judgment on how far it should all be allowed to go. There are ground rules in place. The 14-day rule is as bedrock as ethics gets, exerting global influence. But, for the purposes of regulation, is an embryoid an embryo?

In Australia it probably is, even though no one is pushing the experimental agenda at anywhere near Fu’s level.

Dianne Nicol is Chair of Australia’s Embryo Research Licensing Committee, which would make any such adjudication should the question arise. It hasn’t – yet. She originally trained as a developmental biologist and is now a Professor of Law at the University of Tasmania.

Nicol directs me to The Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, which defines a human embryo as something made by fertilisation of a human egg by a sperm. But it goes beyond that, to things with a human nuclear genome that have “the potential to develop up to, or beyond, the stage at which the primitive streak appears”.

“That does seem to me to include these embryoids that have a capacity to develop to the primitive streak. And if that’s the case then we have a regulatory environment to deal with them,” she says, careful to stress she’s speaking in her capacity as legal academic, not Committee chair. Should the Committee decide similarly, research like Fu’s in Australia would require a licence.

The Act specifies that any research on human embryos must be done under a licence issued by the Committee, a second layer of scrutiny after review by an institutional ethics committee. The decision whether or not to grant such a licence would, almost certainly, take cues from philosophers who specialise in stem cell ethics.

One job for those professional thinkers is to look at why the primitive streak is a moral line in the sand, beyond the question of individuation.

The standard answer is that it heralds the arrival of ectoderm, which prefigures the nervous system, which transmits pain that will, way on down the track, be perceived by a conscious brain. So the primitive streak seems to mark a point beyond which harm could be inflicted.

I asked Insoo Hyun, a Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University in the US, if the moral weight attached to the primitive streak is justified.

“I think, from a secular point of view, it is very hard to defend that, because we’re not even at the point where we’ve got functioning neurons or any kind of capacity for experience or pain,” he says.

Hyun also notes that many versions of the 14-day rule are nuanced, specifying that culture of embryos cannot go beyond 14 days or the appearance of the primitive streak, whichever comes first.

That points to 14 days being relevant only because it coincides with primitive streak formation. But the whole embryoid project could rejig the developmental order – scientists could, theoretically, make the primitive streak happen earlier or later.

Adding to the regulatory imbroglio are the tectonic shifts we’ve seen in the ways of concocting human life, from test tube babies to reproductive cloning.

In 1996, biology superstar Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Fashioned by putting DNA from a sheep’s udder cell into a sheep embryo – a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer – Dolly was proof of concept for reproductive cloning, which remains universally banned in humans.

Along with those reproductive advances, Hyun tells me, the laws that define embryos have shifted focus. “You’re seeing embryo definitions in legislation that have less and less to do with how it was created and more and more to do with what they can become,” he says.

You’re seeing embryo definitions in legislation that have less and less to do with how it was created and more and more to do with what they can become.

Which suggests, he adds, that the lawmakers are preoccupied with one big issue when it comes to reproductive technology: “Does the thing in question have the power to make a baby if transferred into the womb?”

When the moral rightness of something hinges on what it could become, you have what philosophers call an “argument from potential”. But such arguments, says Hyun, can get hoisted on their own petard as science advances.

What would happen if, following Belmonte’s work, you could program a human skin cell into an expanded potential stem cell that could ultimately make a baby under the right conditions? In that brave new world, would a flake of dandruff meet a requirement for moral protection?

And what of social potential? If regulation itself prohibits transfer of research embryos into a womb, should that allay concerns about what they might become?

Good ethics, of course, starts with good facts, and Elefanty reminds me that our capabilities are limited.

“There is still a considerable degree of concern over making embryos in a dish which will make viable organisms and so forth because that’s still got a degree of playing God associated with it,” he says.

“I think it is partly moot because I think the technology is nowhere near there.”

Elefanty could well be right. And no one is even remotely suggesting we could, or should, grow a baby in a lab. But the science is moving at speed, and so it may be prudent to get our ethical ducks in a row sooner rather than later.

Just in case.

This article appeared in the March 2020 issue of Cosmos magazine. You can subscribe to the magazine here.

Inside Biology’s Black Box published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[romanssippycup]

Surgery: Part 1

Logan Angst anyone? :}

I’ma just tag a bunch of people. @what-even-is-thiss @cup-of-blue @leesacrakon @ts-sideblog @storytellerofuntoldlegends @anonymous-snake @prinxietys @dolphin-squirrel @evilmuffin @fancifulfox @the-prince-and-the-emo @organizeddiscord @pantton-sandacers @thagrinbery @here-to-vent @justanotherpurplebutterfly @romananalogicality @prplzorua @softlogic @toxicsanders @remmythepegasis (let me know if you want to be tagged or not in future updates)

“Though the mind may not remember, the heart will never truly forget.”

Suddenly, Virgil awoke. He gasped as he sat up and regained the consciousness he had lost. Shaking in fear, he could vivdly remember the needles going into Thomas’s arm right before the anesthesia kicked in. With his arms clutched to his sides, he struggled to stand up and take in his surroundings.

It was a mixture of black and white. He couldn’t see anything or anyone else around him. What was outlined were only shadows of what once stood proudly. The mind palace. Virgil Thought. The defined form had vanished and slowly but surely, the shadows in front of him began to fade as well, until the shades mixed together to form an endless, grey void.

This was new. It was change. Virgil of all the sides hated change the most. His eyes grew white with fear as he began to run into the nothingness, calling out the names of those he held dear. “Patton! Logan! Roman!” He quickened his pace after hearing nothing in response. He tried to call again, but was quieted by a strong pair of arms snatching him out of his sprint and resting a hand on his mouth.

Instantly, the darker aspect recognised Roman’s embrace and relaxed as much as he could in his hurried state. Virgil shifted his gaze up into the prince’s eyes to see the same amount of fear within him staring back intently. Roman cautiously released and the two sides gaze at each other, exchanging a wordless conversation. Neither of them had the correct answer to any questions that could have been asked about the current situation. It was not until another voice was heard off in the distance that their exchange was put on hold.

They bolted without a second thought, running to where they thought the sound was coming from. For hours it seemed they dashed on, the noise getting louder and more defined. It was sobs, coming from the one they all knew to be the most emotional of the group. They found him, curled up on the ground, clutching onto something as tight as a toddler would cuddle a stuffed animal. Standing over him, they had never seen him so heartbroken or torn apart in all of their life.

His cardigan was ripped in half. His hair dishelved. His glasses shattered on the ground. A wet spot accumulating under his face as the tears streamed down from his eyes. They could tell he had not moved since the procedure had begun. Seeing the happy aspect like this ripped both of their hearts in two. Gingerly, they sat down next to him, knowing full well comfort was unatainable It was clear Patton knew something that they didn’t.

1 week earlier...

“Mr. Sanders. The results have come back and we are afraid to inform you that your frontal lobe is failing. If we do not act quickly you may die within the month.” Gasps were heard all around the room.

“What can we do!?” Thomas’s mom was practically in tears as her husband tried to comfort her. Thomas was unable to speak as the news was relayed to him.

“We can attempt to do a partial brain transplant, but he will most likely forget everything he has ever learned.” The doctor folded his hands quietly and prepared to be bombarded. And bombarded he was. The room flew into a panic. Facts about cost and life thrown back and forth, friends and family both fighting. Voices escalating. People crying. Logan and Thomas both watched in sheer paralysis as the scene unfolded in front of their eyes. 

The human couldn’t take all of this chaos. He clocked out and dove straight into the mind palace to collect his thoughts better. In front of him stood Logan who also looked like he had seen a ghost. They stared at each other in complete silence before the logical trait gained the voice to speak. 

“Depending on if...your parents have enough money to pay for the surgery, I suggest you take the offer.”

“What?” Thomas didn’t think his eyes could get any wider.

“It is a proven fact that...life is more valuable than knowledge. I think you should take that fact deep into consideration while making a decision.” 

Thomas broke eye contact with his logical aspect as he looked at the ground. Slowly he nodded and agreed. “Okay. I think you are right. Even if I do forget everything, I can always make new memories.” He picked his head back up and returned Logan’s gaze, greeting him with a smile. “I can’t stop being positive even through this rough time. Thank you Logan.”

Logan nodded, his unchanging eyes withholding his true thoughts about Thomas’s decision. “Of course Thomas. I was always here, helping you assess situations and the best ways to deal with them. This just so happens to be...one of the most unexpected decisions we have ever had to make.”

Thomas nodded. “It is.” An awkward silence ensued, before it was broken by Logan who cleared his throat.

“They have settled down. You might want to go back to the real world and reveal your answer to them.”

“Oh. Alright. I will see you later.” Thomas turned to leave, but looked back to his logical aspect as the human’s lips curled into an immediate frown. “Logan? Please...don’t tell them. Don’t tell them anything. Nothing about any of this. For everyone’s sake.”

Nothing on Logan’s features changed. “I do not plan to.”

Thomas looked back away whilst nodding in agreement and returned to the real world in silence, leaving Logan standing in the midst of an empty room.

“-what do you think Thomas?...thomas?”

“Huh? What?” The human jolted out of his trance only to be met with a dozen of pairs of eyes staring at him, causing his anxiety to rise. 

Virgil walked into the mind palace, causing Logan to jump. “Woah what the heck is going on here?” He was casually sipping juice from a Capri-Sun pouch as he strode up to the logical trait, almost finding out the truth. 

Absentmindedly, Thomas stomped on his own foot, alerting the anxious aspect to a different part of Thomas’s brain. “Ah! What?!” Instantly Virgil removed himself from the room and ran to where he was being called. Logan breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the anxious aspect had not found out the gravity of the situation. 

Somehow Thomas managed to bite back his whimpering about the pain coming from his right foot so as to not alert anyone else around him. He began to recall what the company in the room were talking about whilst he was in the mind palace. 

“O-oh yes. Um...I believe that life is more important than my memories. I know that I won’t be the same, but we can’t let that stop us from living. Even if I won’t remember you all, my heart will never forget. And who knows? Maybe one day I might regain all my lost memories. I choose not to live in fear.” Thomas motioned to all of his loved ones as he spoke, to which they all nodded in solemn agreement.

“Then its settled. We will schedule the brain transplant for one week from today.” The doctor reorganized his notes and began to shake hands with the people in the room that had previously argued with him before. Everyone had deeply respected Thomas’s decision, to the point where the peace had even affected Thomas.

As Thomas laid down to rest for the night, Logan retired to his room and locked the door behind him. He had immediately collected the information from tonight’s hospital visit, so none of the other sides could have access to it. Calmly sitting on his bed, he began to ponder what Thomas’s decision entailed. It was obvious both he and the Thomas everyone knew only had a week to ‘live’ essentially. 

He glanced down at the information file in his hands. For once in his life, he had no idea where to put it or what to do with it. Should he transfer it somewhere else? He scowled and arose from his bed, beginning to scour his book shelves for an answer. After a while of searching, Logan picked a book and began to flip through the pages until he found what he was looking for. Grabbing a pen from his nightstand, he clicked the end and began to write in the book...

----End of Part 1----

#sanderssides #Logic sanders #Patton sanders #logan sanders #morality sanders #roman sanders #prince sanders #sanders sides #princey sanders #anxiety sanders #virgil sanders #thomas sanders #thomassanders #angst #Logan!angst

[thesweetblossoms]

Free Of Gravity ✨✨✨

🌴🌴🌴Tonight, my darlings let’s play a game of opposites; when your heart is heavy, think of a coppery pink butterfly as it traipses across a field of wild iris, chamomile and lilacs, when you cannot sleep, think of a dream from which you would never want to awaken, such as sipping coffee with a plate of almond croissants and a vase of ivory roses, while wrapped in a rumpled white cotton sheet at the Hotel Du Cap Eden Roc, when you cannot dream, think of a pleasing memory, such as collecting seashells and seagull feathers at a misty beach at dusk, when you cannot float think of the lavender palo santo smoke as it rises and falls with the shimmering afternoon light, when you cannot pray, sit quietly, be still and breathe, for there are more ways of praying than we know, when you cannot write, think of the inscriptions you would write on the copies of the books you would give to your dearest friends, when you cannot awaken, think the of dew on morning peonies, when you are afraid of the darkness, remember the poetic incantations of the balletic stars, when you cannot love, remember the feeling of being free of gravity that you felt before the tears ran down like an undulating stream through mountains blooming with poppies, when you cannot listen remember the song that made you dance, when you cannot dance remember the lyrics that set you free, when you cannot play music, think of the higher realms that you can only reach through its hands, when you cannot be still think of a saguaro that travels through time while rooted to space, when you cannot play remember that lightness is a quality of the trees that soar in a summer desert tempest, when you cannot see, close your eyes so that the light no longer limits us to the visible wavelengths, when you cannot garden, remember the perfume from a blue and white creamer cup of cut lime nicotiana, when you cannot read, remember the secrets that are waiting to be revealed, in the poems of TS Eliot or the musings of Virginia Woolf, when you cannot imagine, spend time in nature and you will no longer see the boundaries between the stem and the flowers, the earth and sky, or, you and I, when you cannot be near the sea, remember the salt that healed your wounds and the spray that cooled the burning within, when you are cold, think of an afternoon in the Arizona desert in July, when you are hot, remember climbing icy stairs with small children, in Toronto in January. When you are lazy think of the joy that comes from a collection of paintings, or playing a beautiful song on the piano, after weeks of practice, or submitting a book for publication, when you are uninspired, go to a garden and let the petals wash away the debris of the ordinary, and; when you cannot remember, think of what you cannot forget. 🦋

#design #healing #lifestyle #love #gypsy #bohemian #style #flowers #perfume #magic

[daleisgreat]

Mallrats

Last year I was alerted that Arrow Video was releasing a special 25th Anniversary BluRay of the 1995 Kevin Smith cult classic, Mallrats (trailer). I was not familiar with Arrow Video before, but after browsing their catalog, it appears they specialize in Criterion-esque special editions and restorations for films that may not receive the prestige critical acclaim the average Criterion release does. I remember seeing the “spot the sailboat” comic book ads for the film around its release but missed it during its brief theatrical run. It was not until catching the TV cut of Mallrats off ABC around 1997/98 that I was first introduced to Kevin Smith’s works. I already elaborated on my history with Smith’s films in my review for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot last year, so I will not drone on about that again except to say that both Clerks and Mallrats are my two favorite Kevin Smith films. I believe this will be my third time buying it on video. The original collector’s edition DVD received a lot of early buzz from DVD review outlets on how to nail a suite of special features and for having one of the best early DVD commentary tracks. I then upgraded to the 10th Anniversary edition DVD with a bonus extended cut and new anniversary interviews and other bonus content. This BluRay keeps most of the early bonus feature content and adds in a bunch more I will be detailing soon, but for now, I imagine you want to hear about the actual Mallrats movie.

The succinct way to explain it is how Kevin Smith does it in his four-word elevator pitch, “Clerks in a mall.” Essentially it boils down to the film’s two leads, TS (Jeremy London) and Brodie (Jason Lee), getting dumped by their girlfriends Rene (Shannen Doherty) and Brandi (Claire Forlani) in the opening scenes. The duo decides to recover from their sorrows by hitting up their favorite spots in the local mall, where they run into their exes and attempt to win them over with some help from fellow mallrats Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith). Naturally, TS and Brodie have some opposition to overcome to win back their loves in the form of Brandi’s father and local bigshot, Svenning (Michael Rooker), and head mall security guard La Fours (Sven Thorsen). When I first saw this film on TV around 1997/98, it hit at the perfect time when I was in ninth grade, and I was likely within a few years of the last wave of kids where going to the mall was THE thing to do with friends when you asked: “Hey, want to go and hang out somewhere!?” Mallrats captures the spirit of killing time in the mall with nice little asides debating which food stands are really part of the food court, whining over the latest exhibit clogging up the showcase area of the mall, standing in line for celebrity autographs and gleefully beating up eagerly anticipating the Easter bunny.

When I first experienced the film around age 14, I had no idea what Jay and Silent Bob were talking about with their gratuitous weed jokes. Still, they had a hilarious demeanor about them as they delivered their lines, and they instantly won over 14-year-old Dale. Brodie seemed like the coolest cat with his countless wisecracks throughout the film. Jason Lee and Kevin Smith both went on to say in the bonus interviews that despite the film’s initial theatrical failure, Jason Lee’s performance caught a lot of eyes and opened the door for him to bigger and better roles. It would behoove me to acknowledge Mallrats has the best of the dozens of Stan Lee movie cameos. It is more of an extended cameo where Lee says more than his usual five-to-ten words of dialog and instead has a full scene with Brodie when he bestows his wisdom of true love to Brodie to motivate him to win over Rene. Lee is legitimately good in the scene, so much so that Marvel Studios had his Mallrats cameo referenced during Lee’s cameo in Captain Marvel.

Arrow Video did a bang-up job packing in a ton of extras in this two-disc BluRay set. There are now three cuts of the film included. The first disc has the original theatrical cut, while the second disc has the extended cut that released with the 10th-anniversary edition and now also includes the TV cut, which is full of a ton of awesomely bad overdubs of expletives. Smith recorded a new introduction to the TV cut highlighted with a fun story of why Mewes’s dubs are so godawful. I would recommend passing on watching the Extended Cut, as it mostly restores the film's original opening, which features a series of longer opening scenes where it takes a while for Brodie and TS to get dumped, and for the movie to eventually find its way into the mall. Instead, I would recommend watching the hour-long archival bonus of the deleted scenes that has Smith and Vincent Pereira explaining why the scenes did not work and have a good time on why they remained on the cutting room floor. I did make sure to re-watch the original DVD commentary track again with Kevin Smith, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, and Scott Mosier. They are all nonstop entertaining throughout, remembering their time with the film while Fargo was also filming down the street and how Team La Fours fought to get credited in the movie. It is probably up there with UHF being my favorite commentary track, so make sure not to skip over it! New extras for this BluRay are highlighted by a new 12-minute intro from Kevin Smith retelling his highs and lows of the production. My Mallrats Memories is a new 30-minute interview with Smith recollecting his time on the film and how he assembled the cast and crew, and what lead to landing Stan Lee in the movie.

Mr. Mallrats: Tribute to Jim Jacks is Smith’s eulogy to his recently deceased producer on this film, and he gives a loving history of how Jacks went from movie fan to having a successful career in the business. Blunt Talk is a new ten-minute interview with Mewes recounting his early acting career and how he did not consider himself an actor until people started recognizing him from Mallrats. Hollywood of the North is a new ten-minute animated doc with periphery crew members who have many production stories about shooting in the Eden Prairie Center Mall and dealing with complaints from the mall owner. There is a physical blueprint insert which is a perfect recreation of Jay’s blueprints shown in the film of how he plans to take out La Fours. Also new are two hours of raw dailies compiled together. I did not watch it in its entirety because the quality is very raw, like worse than VHS SLP raw, but it was still fun to jump around in bits throughout it and see the cast and crew chatter before and after filming. I didn’t mean to deep dive this much into the bonus materials, but I believe I have covered almost all of the new content, but trust me, there is a lot more bonus archival content from previous DVD releases, so rest assured View Askew fans that there are several hours of extras to sink your teeth into. Every time I watch Mallrats every several years, I cannot help but get clued in better to some of the jokes and dialog that went right over my initial viewing as a teenager. Thankfully, the film has aged well, and I enjoyed it as much as I initially did in the 90s. I have a good feeling if you’re a View Askew fan or mostly a fan of Smith’s earlier works, then you probably already have this Arrow Video BluRay in your collection. However, for others on the fence wondering if this edition is worth upgrading to, I can safely vouch that Smith and Arrow Video spared no expense to ensure this BluRay is packed to the gills with new (and archival) content to make sure you get your money’s worth!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Inglourious Basterds Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut) Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT Trauma Center The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#Mallrats #Kevin Smith #ben affleck #jason lee #jason mewes #jay and silent bob #silent bob #random movie #shannen doherty #claire forlani #michael rooker #sven thorsen #jeremy london

[robertkstone]

Porsche Mission E Cross Turismo Prototype Review: Mission Accomplished

I’m liquidly gliding through the winding corners in the hills above Malibu. To my right is Stefan Weckbach, Porsche’s EV mastermind behind the Mission E Cross Turismo I’m driving—which happens to be the exact same development mule that made its debut on the show stand in Geneva. We’re doing about 45 mph, sandwiched by an escort of light-bar cop cars to shield us from the churning 5 p.m. Friday traffic. Our windows are down because the Mission E’s huge glass canopy has no UV protection—and, well, there’s no AC, either. But at the moment, I’m oblivious because Weckbach is explaining something about the all-electric Mission E that absolutely fascinates me.

He’s talking about its sound. No, not the noise this car is making right now—which is the usual thin soar of high-pitched tones when my right ankle extends and the car surges toward that black-and-white’s back bumper in front of me. Rather, it’s something that’ll be entirely original once the Mission E reaches production.

But first, let’s climb down one branch of this car’s family tree and get a clearer perspective on the Mission E’s brief lineage (it’s a placeholder name, by the way). We originally encountered its reptilian menace at the 2015 Frankfurt show. That one was a squat four-door coupe with impractical suicide doors and whopping rear haunches; its raised, rounded-rectangle headlight nacelles were composed of a quartet of slitlike beams at its corners, these framed by vertically stretched bracket symbols that drop below the bumper to define twin cooling intakes. Adequate cooling is a big deal for Weckbach. When we lapped Laguna Seca in that electric sedan from Brand T, it depowered before the checkered flag in fear of rising drivetrain temps. The Mission E’s cooling is being scaled to allow a full-power Nürburgring Nordschliefe lap. When I asked Weckbach to describe it, he just replied, “It’s very complicated,” and smiled.

The new J1 chassis holds a few particles of Panamera DNA but is genetically engineered to carry a 90-kW-hr battery in a Tesla-like slab under the floor. At either end of it are front and rear motors that combine for about 600 hp capable of spitting the car to 100 kph in under 3.5 seconds (I’m guessing 3.2 to 60 mph, as Porsche’s performance stats are crazy conservative). Weckbach assures me that the rear motor will have the louder voice in the relationship, lending it a decidedly rear-drive personality.

In reality, though, this particular Cross Turismo is actually a sort of mechanical and electrical approximation. The combined power here is less than 600 hp, its battery pack isn’t correct, the whole car’s a couple hundred pounds overweight, and the frunk for carrying cargo up front is temporarily filled with prototype electronics. The car we’re in is a four-seater, but the production model should also see five-seat variants. The first time I shut the door, a Porsche handler winced and asked that I please close it more gently (a power door closure sucks it in the final few millimeters). This is a brittle test mule. Nonetheless, it’s packed with promising clues. Its lateral torque vectoring, Model S­–like center of gravity, and 911-ish four-wheel steering give it a responsiveness to steering inputs that’s more like a giant shifter kart than a chunky-tire all-terrainer; despite the extra pounds and missing horsepower, my moments of acceleration are smile-stretching previews of coming rail-gun attractions.

The Cross Turismo has been brought here to Malibu—rather than us to Zuffenhausen (a lot easier logistics)—to act as a giant thermometer: take the temperature of consumers (and the press) in the land of Teslas valeted at every steakhouse and sushi place. Should they greenlight this mild crossover?

Ah, what’s there to debate? The Mission E’s platform was expected to spawn multiple EV variants, and what’s a more obvious one than a sort of sporty/lifestyle crossover?

At the moment, there’s an open garage door for this car in the premium EV neighborhood. (It’s expected to be priced in Panamera territory.) It’s shorter, about 6 inches longer, and 30 percent more powerful than the Jaguar I-Pace. The Model X may be Tesla’s crossover, but the Cross Turismo is really more like a half-foot-shorter, butched-up, dual-motor Model S with husky all-terrain tires to slightly elevate its stance; there’s off-roady black eyelids over the wheel arches and a (presumably) optional roof rack and bike carrier on the back. Compared to the four-door coupe, the Cross Turismo’s extended roofline—à la the Panamera Turismo—expands interior space a bit. And a sweet idea that you don’t see often enough in lower-stance EVs is a battery cutout for rear foot room—what Weckbach calls the “foot garage.” It sacrifices a few kW-hrs but lowers the rear passengers’ knee height while raising their happiness, plenty.

One of Tesla’s strongest cards has always been its Supercharger system; for several years, it has been the world’s only credible mass-scale, truly fast-charging network. By the end of next year, though, Porsche thinks it’ll have a trump card: a constellation of more than 650 U.S. sites, some with up to 150-kW rates, all courtesy of Electrify America—and really Volkswagen, who reluctantly financed this almost public-works-scale project as part of their Dieselgate settlement. More threatening to Tesla, more than 300 of these will be intercity stations capable of supporting—get this—“Turbo Charging” (take that, mere Superchargers). Many of these, prepared for 800 volts and 350 kW, will be intense enough to replenish 250 miles of the Mission E’s 300-plus miles of range in 15 minutes. (Superchargers are now 120 kW.) Finishing off its check-every-box approach to charging, Porsche intends to let you individualize your home charging rate between 11 and 22 kW and eventually offer non-contact induction charging for, well, I guess, lazy people, too. Oddly enough, the word “Turbo” is being considered to also specify its alpha version of the Mission E (trading on its implication of peak performance trim, not the pinwheel thing that makes more horsepower).

But—oh—I forgot about my conversation with Weckbach about the Mission E’s sound.

I compliment him on how deftly the Mission E’s dash teleports the early 911’s iconic wraparound, five-gauge instrument cluster into a hi-res-screen-everywhere-you-look tomorrow. But how can a Porsche be exciting and nearly silent at the same time?

Weckbach answers that there’ll be a button. Press it, and microphones on the drivetrain will modify and amplify the actual drivetrain sound. I tell him of an early interaction I had with Tesla about the Model S’ absence of a noise-masking combustion engine. On a fanciful whim, I emailed their PR person, “In its place, how about a mild, artificial soundtrack that subtly calms or focuses your mood?” I got back a reply: “Elon doesn’t like your idea. He says Teslas should be completely silent.” Henry Ford didn’t like my suggestion of blue Model Ts, either. Weckbach laughs.

Then he stresses that this won’t be a prerecord sound or the digital rumble of a fake gas engine. Instead, it’ll be an enhanced sound, more authentic than the pops and snarls sometimes electronically overlaid on an ICE.

Sounds good to me.

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[oghenk55]

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[neilmillerne]

Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results

There’s no denying that HIIT is a great way to train and improve your health and fitness. But HIIT-mania has many of us in the mindset that more is more and faster is better. After all, that’s the goal of all those AMRAP exercises and ladder workouts — as many as possible, as fast as possible.

However, that’s not the only way to build muscle. “If you want to improve muscle definition and see muscle growth, you have to induce muscle fatigue, which will stimulate repair,” explains Pete McCall, spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise and host of the podcast All About Fitness.

HIIT, which is considered explosive exercise, is one way to do that. But “at some point, you need a new stimulus to the body,” McCall says. And one new stimulus is to slow down.

THE BENEFITS OF SLOWING DOWN

You may roll your eyes at the idea of slowing down, especially if you’ve been told to do this in other areas of your life (work, dating, life overall). But just as completing a work project with haste or starting to plan a wedding after a good first date can lead to bad results, working out too quickly can lead to poor form, which can then lead to injuries.

It’s especially important for beginners to perform strength exercises slowly. “Your joints, ligaments and tendons haven’t become acclimated to so much stress,” explains Noam Tamir, founder of TS Fitness in New York City. Moving slowly allows your body and brain to learn how your muscles should move and feel during an exercise so you can perform it safely and effectively.

But experienced exercisers also benefit from slowing down. It’s a principle called time under tension, which refers to how long your muscles are under tension during an exercise. The slower you move, the harder your muscle fibers have to work to control the motion, which leads to muscle growth, McCall explains.

For example, 10 squats at a speed of 1 second down and 1 second up will take you 20 seconds. If you slow down and take 4 seconds to lower and 2 seconds to lift, it’ll take 60 seconds. That’s three times more time under tension.

READ MORE > IDEAL REP RANGES FOR WEIGHT LOSS AND 4 MORE GOALS

Now, that doesn’t mean three times the muscle growth. It’s simply a different way of training and can help you grow stronger in different areas. “If you are constantly training fast, you’re not teaching yourself to decelerate, which minimizes the potential for strength gains,” says Tamir. “We’re stronger in our negative movements than our positive ones.”

Translation: You are stronger when you are moving against gravity (lowering into a squat, lowering dumbbells to your chest in a bench press) than you are powering up (rising to stand, pushing the dumbbells up). So don’t ignore working on that strength.

HOW SLOW SHOULD YOU GO?

McCall recommends weight training slowly one day a week. There is no one-set protocol for slow training. He suggests moving at a pace of 4–6 seconds down and 4–6 seconds up. You only need to do two sets of 10–12 reps really slowly to have it be effective.

If that sounds like it’ll take decades to complete your workout, consider Tamir’s paces. He has beginners start at 4 seconds down, 2 seconds hold, 2 seconds up, then transition to something like 3 seconds down, 1 second hold, 2 seconds up.

Whatever pace you choose, remember to breathe. “Inhale during the negative phase and exhale during the positive phase or at the top,” Tamir recommends. “This will eliminate creating too much extra tension in your body.”

Be warned: You will be sore the next day since your muscles aren’t used to being under tension for so long. Foam roll or do other recovery work, and you’ll feel better and be prepared for your next workout.

The post Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2x5B6I9

#Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results

[almajonesnjna]

Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results

There’s no denying that HIIT is a great way to train and improve your health and fitness. But HIIT-mania has many of us in the mindset that more is more and faster is better. After all, that’s the goal of all those AMRAP exercises and ladder workouts — as many as possible, as fast as possible.

However, that’s not the only way to build muscle. “If you want to improve muscle definition and see muscle growth, you have to induce muscle fatigue, which will stimulate repair,” explains Pete McCall, spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise and host of the podcast All About Fitness.

HIIT, which is considered explosive exercise, is one way to do that. But “at some point, you need a new stimulus to the body,” McCall says. And one new stimulus is to slow down.

THE BENEFITS OF SLOWING DOWN

You may roll your eyes at the idea of slowing down, especially if you’ve been told to do this in other areas of your life (work, dating, life overall). But just as completing a work project with haste or starting to plan a wedding after a good first date can lead to bad results, working out too quickly can lead to poor form, which can then lead to injuries.

It’s especially important for beginners to perform strength exercises slowly. “Your joints, ligaments and tendons haven’t become acclimated to so much stress,” explains Noam Tamir, founder of TS Fitness in New York City. Moving slowly allows your body and brain to learn how your muscles should move and feel during an exercise so you can perform it safely and effectively.

But experienced exercisers also benefit from slowing down. It’s a principle called time under tension, which refers to how long your muscles are under tension during an exercise. The slower you move, the harder your muscle fibers have to work to control the motion, which leads to muscle growth, McCall explains.

For example, 10 squats at a speed of 1 second down and 1 second up will take you 20 seconds. If you slow down and take 4 seconds to lower and 2 seconds to lift, it’ll take 60 seconds. That’s three times more time under tension.

READ MORE > IDEAL REP RANGES FOR WEIGHT LOSS AND 4 MORE GOALS

Now, that doesn’t mean three times the muscle growth. It’s simply a different way of training and can help you grow stronger in different areas. “If you are constantly training fast, you’re not teaching yourself to decelerate, which minimizes the potential for strength gains,” says Tamir. “We’re stronger in our negative movements than our positive ones.”

Translation: You are stronger when you are moving against gravity (lowering into a squat, lowering dumbbells to your chest in a bench press) than you are powering up (rising to stand, pushing the dumbbells up). So don’t ignore working on that strength.

HOW SLOW SHOULD YOU GO?

McCall recommends weight training slowly one day a week. There is no one-set protocol for slow training. He suggests moving at a pace of 4–6 seconds down and 4–6 seconds up. You only need to do two sets of 10–12 reps really slowly to have it be effective.

If that sounds like it’ll take decades to complete your workout, consider Tamir’s paces. He has beginners start at 4 seconds down, 2 seconds hold, 2 seconds up, then transition to something like 3 seconds down, 1 second hold, 2 seconds up.

Whatever pace you choose, remember to breathe. “Inhale during the negative phase and exhale during the positive phase or at the top,” Tamir recommends. “This will eliminate creating too much extra tension in your body.”

Be warned: You will be sore the next day since your muscles aren’t used to being under tension for so long. Foam roll or do other recovery work, and you’ll feel better and be prepared for your next workout.

The post Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2x5B6I9

#Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results

[johnclapperne]

Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results

There’s no denying that HIIT is a great way to train and improve your health and fitness. But HIIT-mania has many of us in the mindset that more is more and faster is better. After all, that’s the goal of all those AMRAP exercises and ladder workouts — as many as possible, as fast as possible.

However, that’s not the only way to build muscle. “If you want to improve muscle definition and see muscle growth, you have to induce muscle fatigue, which will stimulate repair,” explains Pete McCall, spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise and host of the podcast All About Fitness.

HIIT, which is considered explosive exercise, is one way to do that. But “at some point, you need a new stimulus to the body,” McCall says. And one new stimulus is to slow down.

THE BENEFITS OF SLOWING DOWN

You may roll your eyes at the idea of slowing down, especially if you’ve been told to do this in other areas of your life (work, dating, life overall). But just as completing a work project with haste or starting to plan a wedding after a good first date can lead to bad results, working out too quickly can lead to poor form, which can then lead to injuries.

It’s especially important for beginners to perform strength exercises slowly. “Your joints, ligaments and tendons haven’t become acclimated to so much stress,” explains Noam Tamir, founder of TS Fitness in New York City. Moving slowly allows your body and brain to learn how your muscles should move and feel during an exercise so you can perform it safely and effectively.

But experienced exercisers also benefit from slowing down. It’s a principle called time under tension, which refers to how long your muscles are under tension during an exercise. The slower you move, the harder your muscle fibers have to work to control the motion, which leads to muscle growth, McCall explains.

For example, 10 squats at a speed of 1 second down and 1 second up will take you 20 seconds. If you slow down and take 4 seconds to lower and 2 seconds to lift, it’ll take 60 seconds. That’s three times more time under tension.

READ MORE > IDEAL REP RANGES FOR WEIGHT LOSS AND 4 MORE GOALS

Now, that doesn’t mean three times the muscle growth. It’s simply a different way of training and can help you grow stronger in different areas. “If you are constantly training fast, you’re not teaching yourself to decelerate, which minimizes the potential for strength gains,” says Tamir. “We’re stronger in our negative movements than our positive ones.”

Translation: You are stronger when you are moving against gravity (lowering into a squat, lowering dumbbells to your chest in a bench press) than you are powering up (rising to stand, pushing the dumbbells up). So don’t ignore working on that strength.

HOW SLOW SHOULD YOU GO?

McCall recommends weight training slowly one day a week. There is no one-set protocol for slow training. He suggests moving at a pace of 4–6 seconds down and 4–6 seconds up. You only need to do two sets of 10–12 reps really slowly to have it be effective.

If that sounds like it’ll take decades to complete your workout, consider Tamir’s paces. He has beginners start at 4 seconds down, 2 seconds hold, 2 seconds up, then transition to something like 3 seconds down, 1 second hold, 2 seconds up.

Whatever pace you choose, remember to breathe. “Inhale during the negative phase and exhale during the positive phase or at the top,” Tamir recommends. “This will eliminate creating too much extra tension in your body.”

Be warned: You will be sore the next day since your muscles aren’t used to being under tension for so long. Foam roll or do other recovery work, and you’ll feel better and be prepared for your next workout.

The post Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2x5B6I9

#Why Slowing Down Leads to Better Results