#making up world building like master Airplane intended

[tcfactory]

Party Planning and Other Deadly Hazards I

5k words of Shang Qinghua bonding with Linguang-jun over being overworked and underappreciated

For the sake of this story, Mobei is roughly 15, Shang Qinghua and Linguang-jun are both 18. Shoutout to @mysteryteacup, whose analysis posts convinced me of the potential in "Linguang-jun is Very Young, Actually". Our Mobei-jun's birth name is Mobei Xuebao (Snow leopard), Shang Qinghua is Shang Cangshu (Hamster), Linguang-jun is Mobei Taifeng (Typhoon)

Also on AO3.

It all started with a small change. You see, Shang Qinghua's shizun made a reckless promise that whoever could push a medicine deal through with the Black Mire Sect - a minor sect skirting the edge of demonic practices by specializing in gu poisons - would take over as his new head disciple. The sect was situated right on the borderlands between the human realm and the northern demon kingdom and they were very reluctant to trade away any of their precious poisons, because they faced constant harassment from a lesser tribe of Snowtusk Boar demons just on the other side of the border. Clearly whoever could get them to agree to a deal would have to be a naturally gifted negotiator!

Usually Airplane ignores these kinds of risky assignments, but the temptation of skipping three years of backstabbing, social climbing and manual labor was too tempting. Besides, he knew how to solve this one. It was one of the wife plots in PIDW so Luo Binghe could marry the sect leader's beautiful daughter.

Step 1: Get rid of the boars. He could, of course, not do this on his own. No way. However, through the power of authorial knowledge, he could tip Mobei-jun off that the tribe stole one of the ancient artifacts of the Mobei clan after a chaotic battle and hid it away in their stronghold. His prince was a little skeptical, but Qinghua had not led him astray yet in the few months since he became his spy. The next time they met, Mobei-jun was generously splattered with pig demon blood and he was proudly holding a crystal necklace that could control all the ice sheets of the northern sea at once, apparently.

So that was that for the boars.

Step 2: Wait a little for the other local demon tribes to fight out who gets to settle in the newly vacated prime location. Shang Qinghua made a passing comment about how the Silkwing tribe could supply a 'generous benefactor' with the highest quality fabrics in the entire northern kingdom and would you look at that, this conflict got resolved much quicker than in PIDW.

Step 3: Introduce the sect leader and their new, much more agreeable, demon neighbors to each other. The Silkwing tribe happened to be a tribe of crane demons who, just like the Black Mire Sect, specialized in insect keeping. Their most prized specimens were the various demonic moths and spiders they cultivated for their silk, but they kept a wide variety of other critters as well. It was a match made in heaven! (Or rather in one of Master Airplane's caffeine fueled all-nighters, just so Binghe could meet a cute bisexual crane girl at the negotiations and turn the whole adventure into a two-brides-special wedding.)

Step 4: Profit! Trade agreement in hand Qinghua showed up at his shizun's house and received his much deserved promotion. The whole plan went off without a hitch, job well done, success and happiness all around! The next morning he moved into the head disciple's apartment and breathed a sigh of relief that he no longer had to live in fear of someone discovering his association with Mobei by barging into his bedroom without knocking.

If only that was the end of it.

-----

Shang Qinghua has barely settled into his new duties as head disciple when one morning Mobei-jun grabs him straight out of bed, before he could comprehend what's happening or put on some actual clothes, and drops him off somewhere in the Northern Palace.

"Baobao, what in the fresh hell did you bring me?!"

The outrage cry comes from a stressed looking demon youth who stares at Qinghua like someone handed him a dead rat instead of a report. He's obviously a Mobei relative, his black hair glossy with a blue-ish sheen and his demon mark a bright teal, but his hair is done up with feathers and beads in the style of the wind demon tribes.

"Qinghua. He's good at organizing." As if on second thought, Mobei-jun snarls at the other demon boy, showing all his teeth. "He's mine. If you hurt him, I'll kill you."

After that he wordlessly stomps away, leaving the equally confused human and demon behind.

Shang Qinghua wants nothing more than to ask a million questions right now - where is he? why did Mobei take him here?? who's the other guy??? - but now that he's more awake than asleep he's suddenly realizing that the room is extremely cold and he's only dressed in his sleeping robes. Are his toes turning blue?! His toes are probably turning blue.

"Here." A delicately carved box is shoved in his face, open and full of uniform black pills. "Aurora Pepper pills. I asked to borrow the domestic staff from Xiao Bao’s castle, but if you are the only help I get, I want you not to freeze to death."

"My lord, are they safe for humans?" They should be. It's one of the plot devices he made up so the Wives could visit the North and still wear their ridiculously skimpy outfits without dying, but who knows what an ice demon would have mixed into them. Shang Qinghua carefully picks just one and pops it in his mouth anyway.

"No idea, they were for my mother. You are a cultivator, are you not? You can survive a little poison."

If this demon is as young as he looks - as young as his outfit leads Qinghua to believe, which is somewhere between fourteen and twenty - then his core is not yet settled. Even if the ice demon parentage runs stronger in him - which is obvious, he's wearing the equivalent of summer robes for northern demonkin - he would have bouts when his core slants towards wind and he would find the cold of the north unbearable for a few days. So this is likely his own stash of pills he offered one from, which is awfully nice when one of your kin just dumps their human on you.

"This lowly one thanks the young master for his generosity!"

"Hmph. At least you have manners, unlike your master." The youth retreats behind a desk piled so high with scrolls and bamboo slats he’s barely visible behind them. "Qinghua, was it? This lord is Linguang-jun."

"Answering, this one is Shang Qinghua, head disciple of An Ding peak." He thanks his survival instinct that he manages to fold into a bow before his surprise shows on his face. Based on the nephew abandonment incident he always pictured Mobei's uncle as someone much older.

"An Ding? Good. Maybe you will be of use, after all." Linguang-jun gestures for Shang Qinghua to join him at the desk. "On account of his sudden spirited showing in regards to the Silkwings and the recovered artifact, my royal brother has finally taken interest in his third-born son. To welcome him to court he ordered a feast to be held, the success of which will determine Mobei San's standing in court and reflect on this lord’s qualifications as an organizer."

"Forgive this lowly one for the question, but why is the Mobei-jun's own brother in charge of such affairs? It should be the duty of the royal seneschal." Or perhaps the queen consort. Since he never had to write a wife plot with any member of the main Mobei clan he might have handwaved a lot of the court related worldbuilding. Still, he's certain there were at least three or four people who had to be unavailable before such a task would land on the desk of the king's brother.

"This lord is the seneschal," Linguang-jun says in a dejected voice. A pained frown slips past his not-yet-perfected mask of stoicism and Shang Qinghua realizes that 1. Linguang-jun is very, very young to be filling this position and 2. he’s probably one stroke of misfortune away from an anxious meltdown. This Qinghua can relate, kid. "My royal brother's temper has decimated his household and, in his paranoia, he refuses to replace the staff he kills. Ever since this one's mother passed three years ago, he has been tasked to fulfill every duty pertaining to household management, including those of the late queen consort."

After looking over a crumpled scroll detailing all of Linguang-jun's current duties, Shang Qinghua has a sudden understanding why the demon resents his brother so much. It’s not just the duties of the royal seneschal, he is doing the work of at least five different people, all of them near full-time jobs in their own right!

"Sorry kid, you are clearly too young for this shit." He didn't mean to say it out loud, but luckily for him the demon doesn't react to the irreverent tone beyond an agitated twitch of his eyebrows. "All right, let’s see what we have to work with."

It proves to be very little. Shang Qinghua looks over the list of the available staff (too short), the amount of food and other supplies Linguang-jun managed to drum up since his brother saddled him with this task last evening (not nearly enough to feed the obnoxiously long guest list) and the time available to them…

“He wants you to put together this party in three days?!” For someone who had only been a vague shadow with malicious intent in the back of Shang Qinghua’s mind whenever he thought about the dangerous demons he might run into while serving his prince, Linguang-jun is rapidly gaining a lot of his sympathy. “Can you even get all these guests here in three days? Jiuzhong-jun lives two months away even if he takes the fastest horses!”

For a royal prince’s introduction to court it was important to get as many of the bigshots present as possible, so they could all take a good look at him and decide if they wanted to try to sic their own spawns on him for a courting chase or not. Jiuzhong-jun doesn’t have any children yet, but he has plenty of nieces he could try to marry out into other clans. He would never miss the chance to come and gawk at the introduction of a Mobei prince.

“Mhm. Xiao Bao has that part covered. While we make this feast happen somehow, he’s going to spend the next two days transporting in all the guests with his portals.” Linguang-jun digs into one of his many piles of scrolls and shoves one detailing the scheduled arrivals into Shang Qinghua’s face. “At least the issue of housing them until the party solves itself on its own. Granny Oxbones is the reigning queen of the guest wing and she wouldn’t accept my input on where to put all these guests even if I bothered to offer any.”

Airplane carefully files it away in the back of his mind that when Linguang-jun gets stressed enough he still refers to his nephew with familiar nicknames as something to consider later, and tries to focus on the task at hand. So the current Mobei-jun hasn’t eradicated all of the old servants - the kitchen and housekeeping staff escaped his paranoia, as well as most of the guards and the hunters - only the ones in the highest positions. That should solve at least part of their problems.

“Okay, so we only have to handle decorating the feasting hall, source a fitting outfit for my prince and get the food ready.”

“What about the serving staff? I don’t have enough people to cater a party this big.”

“That’s easy, have the guardsmen fill in. Let them do something more than standing around and gawking. If there are complaints about the task being below them, tell them that they can take from the leftovers, most of the guests will be too busy brawling or scheming to eat anyway.” Demons love to eat, same as everybody, and even a bite or two of the delicacies served at their lords’ table should be ample temptation to get the guardsmen on board. “But this does mean that we need to make sure that the food is great. Does Linguang-jun have the menu from either of the elder princes’ introduction feasts? No reason to break our brains coming up with something new, nobody will care as long as the food is good enough.” It’s still an awful amount of work for three days, but it’s not undoable if he can tap into the Mobei clan’s supply network and doesn’t have to account for whatever happens to the guests before and after the feast. 

“I think I have the menu for Mobei Er’s feast somewhere.” Linguang-jun abandons the desk to rifle through one of the filing cabinets dominating the walls of his study. “We will need to substitute some of the dishes, because that feast was in winter.”

“Still better than having to write the whole menu from scratch.”

“En.”

“Does Linguang-jun have any suggestion where to get my prince a suitable outfit?” For the lack of anything better to do, Shang Qinghua starts organizing the scrolls left on the desk. Linguang-jun’s handwriting is very similar to Mobei San’s, but nothing at all like the blocky characters of the current Mobei-jun. They probably learned from the same ice fairy tutor, which further confirms how absurdly close they are in age.

“I have something arranged with the Silkwings,” Linguang-jun calls back over his shoulder, halfway disappearing into the cabinet as he digs among the stored scrolls. “But - Hah! Found it! - Qinghua has to be the one to convince Mobei San to go. He won’t go anywhere if this uncle tells him to.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t just gape at me,” Linguang-jun says, smacking him reasonably lightly over the shoulder with the scroll until he gets the hint and takes it. “Take this down to the kitchen, then tell your master that if he doesn’t want to go to his own feast wearing my old robes, then he should go visit the Silkwings, the sooner the better.”

Shang Qinghua pales at the idea of wandering the main Northern Fortress alone. “I- this servant worries that the kitchen staff will not heed his words…”

Linguang-jun seems to consider this for a moment, but he finally comes to the conclusion that his life is easier if his nephew’s pet cultivator doesn’t come to harm. He digs around in his desk until he produces a bone hairstick with a bead and a feather dangling from it. “If you wear this, the staff will know that you are working for this lord. Ask a maid for directions and be quick about it!”

True to Linguang-jun’s words, the staff is nothing if not cooperative once they realize that Shang Qinghua is working directly with him to stop the upcoming party from crashing and burning. The demon aunties and uncles running the kitchen fill him in, between tallying all the ingredients they are going to need for the feast and plying him with sweet treats, that the staff has been in a panic ever since the first orders about the feast came in. There is the grim threat of death hanging over their heads if the end result isn’t impressive enough and Mobei-jun feels humiliated by their showing. Apparently this is going to be the first bigger event Linguang-jun is organizing on his own, without the help of his late mother, and his staff is worried about sabotage.

“Does Linguang-jun have many enemies in court?” Shang Qinghua asks, lifting a tiny demon granny up so she can take stock of one of the too tall ingredient shelves.

“He has one and it’s more than enough! Mobei-jun never got over it that his late queen mother birthed one more son after the acceptable period for fratricide was over.” Airplane was proud of that world building detail. Obviously no demon lord wants to have any relative who might challenge his claim, but eradicating the entire extended family is a very fast way for a clan to die out. So, following a leader’s grab of power, there’s a socially acceptable five years when they can murder any relative they can catch, but once that’s over they are expected to limit themselves to those who challenge their position. “I tell you, daozhang, it’s not a coincidence the feast is happening when the hunters are away and we are low on supplies! And what is the king doing instead of procuring a beast for the fighting showcase of his son? Drinking and lazing around in his quarters, that’s what! Poor Xiao Bao, such a sweet snowflake, this old granny worries that his entry to court will be ruined!”

-----

Shang Qinghua is still turning that around in his head when he goes to find Mobei Xuebao later - It took almost no effort to get the grannies to reveal his prince’s birth name. Such a cute name for such a fierce demon! Airplane jokingly wrote it on the margin of his drafts, but he never expected the System to take it and run with it - carrying a big mug of fortifying ice slushie.

His prince looks beyond exhausted after opening portals all over the demon realm since morning and he accepts the refreshing drink without so much as a growl. He does, however, hiss angrily at Qinghua when he recognizes the hairstick stuck into his bun. “How dare he claim you?! You are mine !”

“Ah, my prince, please be calm! It’s only a token so the staff won’t eat me. I am to return it once we are done here.” Qinghua is actually not sure about that, but better not aggravate his prince when he’s in a possessive mood.

“You’d better.” He stops trying to rip it out of Qinghua’s hair, but he still stares at it angrily while Shang Qinghua rattles off the details of the arrangement made with the Silkwings. Mobei shows no enthusiasm for getting new court robes tailored, but at Qinghua’s insistent nagging he makes an affirmative sound that yes, he is going to go, now stop asking .Airplane is not perfectly sure what the kitchen aunties put in the slushie, but Mobei’s mood almost thaws by the time he eats the last of the sweet berries they added to it. A wonderful good mood that lasts for all of five minutes before Linguang-jun turns the corner and yells at both of them.

“What are you still doing here?! Don’t you have things to do other than standing around?” Linguang-jun is flushed a pale pink from exertion and possibly frustration. He’s dressed for a hunt, carrying a Japanese style longbow almost as tall as him and a quiver of elegant, black-feathered arrows. It’s fascinating to see how Airplane’s throwaway details got implemented into the world - he made a passing note that Mobei’s grandmother was an eastern wind demon, then he made one of Binghe’s wives a wind demoness based on a Japanese princess and bird motifs and poof! The world combined these two details into multicultural Linguang-jun. He has to bite his tongue before he could ask Linguang-jun if he had a katana somewhere.

Mobei is clearly not happy to see that his uncle is gearing up to leave.

“Good time for a hunt, uncle,” he sneers. Linguang-jun sneers right back.

“ I am going out to fetch our hunting expeditions back so we have meat to serve at the feast. Someone has to, unless Baobao would prefer to play pretend with snow and ice and berries!” They both flinch, which is interesting. Clearly that’s a reference to a formerly fond memory. When Linguang-jun continues he’s not meeting their eyes and looks just a little sheepish. “Go get your rags, nephew. My reputation rides on the success of this feast. I’m not going to sabotage it.”

It’s hard to tell what Mobei Xuebao is thinking, but his expression seems a lot less murderous than a minute ago. “Take Qinghua with you,” he says, ignoring completely the way his cultivator freezes up. “He has a sword. He can fly high and scout for you.”

What is this? It almost sounds like an olive branch! If only it wasn’t poor Airplane being handed over like a cheap token of reconciliation, it would be great .

Linguang-jun gives Shang Qinghua a hesitant look, but Mobei chose a good way to sell his pet cultivator: Linguang-jun might be part wind demon, but even he can’t fly very high. Give Qinghua one more of those pepper pills so he doesn’t freeze in the icy wasteland and he can track their hunters down in a snap!

Before he can mount an argument about the general fragility of humans and the dangers of the desert, he is grabbed by the arm and the next thing he knows, he’s being swept up by Linguang-jun’s black wind. Nothing can compete with Mobei’s portal powers in terms of speed, but this is not too shabby either, and unlike the shadow portals, being turned into wind doesn’t make him sick. Perhaps because he doesn’t currently have a stomach to feel sick.

While they dash through the desert, Linguang-jun quickly fills Qinghua in: they need to recall three hunting parties, all of them within a day’s travel by horse from the castle. “There are others out hunting, but they are too far to make it back for the feast. And after we are done, I’m going to leave you somewhere out of the way and catch a Diamond-Clawed Tundra Devil.”

“Ah. For the fight showcase?”

“En.”

“Isn’t it the king’s duty to procure whatever his son is to fight?” His question is met by minutes of sullen silence so he startles when Linguang-jun finally deigns to speak again.

“There’s a wolf-bear-hybrid prepared at the palace. Da-ge wanted to give it to one of his concubines as a pet, but the lady has much better taste than to take a mangy mutt like that.” Qingua can’t see Linguang-jun’s expression, but the derision is obvious in his voice. It’s unclear if it’s directed at the concubine or his brother. “It would be acceptable prey for a less skilled prince, but Xiao Bao deserves better.”

“Huh. You really adore your nephew, don’t you? I figured he was wrong about you.” If he lives to tell the tale, Shang Qinghua is going to blame his current immaterial state for the failure of his brain-mouth filter. Never startle the person carrying you at high speeds!

He’s not even surprised when he tumbles painfully onto the snow, Linguang-jun standing above him with a murderous expression, the bow raised as if he’s ready to beat the hapless cultivator with it. “Does he still go around telling everyone about- even his pet cultivator?!”

“No! No, my lord!” He suspects it’s only because Mobei San doesn’t consider Qinghua important enough to fill him in about his backstory, but it’s technically true. “Servants gossip! I heard it from the servants in Mobei San’s castle!”

Linguang-jun lowers the bow, but his face colors with either indignation or embarrassment. He’s more expressive than Mobei, but it’s still not easy to read him. “Good. Do not ever dare to gossip about this lord! Understood, you, you…” He looks at Shang Qinghua sitting in the snow like a plump, bruised peach, face almost disappearing into the soft pelt the kitchen aunties dressed him up in. “You hamster!”

Airplane can’t help himself: he laughs. Then, when the laughter finally feels like subsiding, he notices the baffled face Linguang-jun is making and laughs some more. “Forgive me, my lord. I am not laughing at you. Except. My name does happen to be Shang Cangshu.”

The absurdity of it all finally douses Linguang-jun’s rage and the demon huffs a laugh. “Of course it is. Should I get a bowl of sunflower seeds for you tomorrow, hamster-daozhang?”

“I prefer melon seeds! But worry not, my lord, I can bring my own.” It must be a good sign that Linguang-jun is teasing him. A little bit of harmless farce is always good in anxiety-inducing situations, and the demon appeared to be on the verge of exploding all day. “I do have to wonder, though… I heard that when that incident happened, Mobei San was around four? So you must have been a rather young child yourself.”

Linguang-jun gives a tense, awkward nod and a scene starts to unfold in Airplane’s mind. This is not something he had written, but it is something he could have, if he ever tried to put Mobei-jun in the limelight for a while. Emboldened, he continues: “Traveling at the speed of wind as you do must not leave a lot of room to change course if, say, a tear to the human realm suddenly opens up in front of you. It must have been a terrifying experience, for both of you. Easy to lose track of each other in an unfamiliar world, hostile territory or not.”

Linguang-jun turns his head away, clearly trying to school his expression into a blank mask, but he is too worn down and anxious to manage it. He looks disarmingly young like this; just a teen with too much work on his plate. “He refuses to so much as speak to me unless he has no other choice. What does it matter how it happened? I admitted to trying to kill him.”

Of course he did. For Mobei San to survive an assassination attempt - a smart one too, leaving him in the heart of a cultivator sect that has a longstanding feud with the Mobei clan - was a testament to his talent even at such a young age. If Linguang-jun admitted that it was an accident, it would have only painted him as incompetent, which was the fastest way to political suicide even before he could officially get into court. “Ah, but he lent you this servant, hasn’t he? I think my prince doesn’t hate you as much as he wants to.”

“Hah! That will not save my neck when my nephew becomes Mobei-jun and comes to eradicate the threats from the family.”

“No! He would not kill you, I’m certain of it.” As he wrote it, Mobei-jun at the time of his ascension was secure under Luo Binghe’s wing and didn’t bother to go after any of his relatives - unless they attacked first, that is. “Leave it to this Qinghua, I will smooth this misunderstanding over in no time!”

The look of doubt Linguang-jun gives him almost hurts. “Wait until after the feast before you try. I’m short enough on staff without you getting yourself killed.” The demon makes a sharp gesture with his hand and a burst of wind pushes Shang Qinghua to his feet. “Up you get, hamster-daozhang. We have work to do.”

It all falls in place like a well-oiled machine after that, even the hunt. Turns out that Diamond-Clawed Tundra Devils are really fascinated by flying cultivators for some reason. The beast stands on its hindlegs, reaching fruitlessly for the flying sword, and doesn’t even notice Linguang-jun sneaking up on it until he traps it in a qiankun box. They work well together, Shang Qinghua and Linguang-jun, and the demon stays cordial - almost friendly, even! - to his nephew’s pet cultivator in the following two days.

-----

“I’m so glad that it went well, my prince!” Qinghua sighs a few days after the feast. He’s trying to subtly rescue some of his paperwork from Mobei, who decided that he wants to have this conversation while sitting on his human’s desk. “I wish I could have been there to see, but my shizun would have noticed if I was missing any longer and, let’s be honest, the chances of someone mistaking me for a side-dish were much too high…”

Mobei hums something vaguely positive, then very indulgently lifts one of his hands so Qinghua can remove the papers from there. “Good work.”

“Thank you, my prince! But I really didn’t do much. Your uncle did most of the work.” By the end of the third day Linguang-jun was openly bemoaning that he wanted to go to bed and sleep for a century. Airplane can only hope he got some rest since.

Mobei Xuebao growls at him in warning, clearly not happy with the direction of the conversation, but Qinghua has dealt with so much shit in the last week that he’s too tired to be properly intimidated by empty threats. “No, really! I know he had a horse in this race, but he really wanted you to have a cool ‘welcome to demon court’ party. He caught the Tundra Devil for your fight and he certainly didn’t have to do that!”

“That was Taifeng-shushu?” There’s no better way to describe Mobei’s expression of surprise than ‘cute’. It’s a good reminder that despite his frosty disposition and already powerful physique, Mobei Xuebao is also still a teenager. (Airplane is not geeking out over learning Linguang-jun’s name, he is not . Mobei Taifeng was on his list of potential names when he brainstormed for Luo Binghe’s right hand man, before he even started writing - a character who eventually got split into Mobei-jun and the OG Shang Qinghua, because Tired™ second-in-commands who try to betray their employers so they could have one good day of rest please were more of a comedic relief trope and that didn’t fit the tone of the story.)

“Yes, my prince. This servant was there when Linguang-jun chose and captured the most impressive beast from the pack.” He was so picky about it too! He made Qinghua fly over the Tundra Devil pack five times before he identified the biggest one and by that time the beast noticed the flying cultivator. That’s how they found out about its fascination with the shiny spiritual sword.

Thinking about Linguang-jun reminds Qinghua of the hairstick he conveniently ‘forgot’ to return. He puts it in a plain box and pushes it to Mobei Xuebao. “My prince, I had no chance to return this to Linguang-jun, so you would do this servant a great favor if you passed it along.” Mobei makes a soft noise as he pockets the box, looking almost smug that Qinghua is, indeed, returning the token. His good mood makes the human a little reckless about how far he’s willing to push this matter. “My prince, I know you have no reason to trust this servant on matters of your family, but I have heard many rumors and hearsay while in the Northern Palace. I think there might be a misunderstanding between you and your uncle, so if you could talk to him openly when you return the hairstick-”

“Qinghua has not led me astray so far,” Mobei interrupts, his eyes narrowed. “This prince will talk to his uncle. But if Qinghua is mistaken…” He lets the sentence hang ominously in the air, but the sentiment is clear: if Shang Qinghua is wrong, then all of his credibility is ash.

“I understand, my prince.”

It's going to be fine. It has to be! Otherwise the System would have interfered, like it always does when he's about to alter the plot.

Right, System?

#svsss #linguang-jun #mobei-jun #shang qinghua #making up world building like master Airplane intended #tc writes #fun fact: I had to fight the autocorrect every step of the way bc it wanted to 'correct' hairstick into hair tick #not remotely the same thing #please don't #I already have a follow-up for this in the works btw #to the tune of #how do you fix a sick ice demon so your other ice demon doesn't freak out and break your neck? without your shixiongs finding out? #the answer is you don't #nothing gets past Mu-shixiong #so you just grin and bear it and sigh to the heavens when it turns into a wife plot #because of course it does #anyway please go check mysteryteacup out their writing and meta are chef kiss #thousand times better than anything I do honestly

[beesmygod]

So TotK seems to be clicking where BotW wasn't. Any insight on what the key differences are that work for you?

note: i played botw up until the calamity ganon fight and then went "yeah ok ive played a zelda game before", put it down and never went back. didnt play the dlc

i dont think anyone would be surprised to know that im a "majoras mask was the best zelda" guy but the reason has little to do with the "darker tone" or the lore but because reusing assets allowed the dev team to greatly (GREATLY in this case holy shit) expand on the actual contents of the game itself. i love gold/silver best for the same reason.

botw is like running around an empty movie set. theres nothing in that fucking game. at the time, due to the proliferation of crafting mechanics infesting literally every AAA game, it felt like nintendo was more focused about hitting all the checks on a checklist of tired mechanics that were included just for the sake of saying they had it. crafting! weapon durability! open world! pbbbbt.

none of these things proved to be enjoyable to me. keeping in mind that ive been playing zeldas since the snes (skipping only a handful of handheld games), the changes felt like steps away from what makes zelda games unique. crafting felt like an arbitrary step between me and potions. i wanted to swing my master sword with power, not experiment with clumsy weapons that stop existing after i finally get a feel for them. and the open world, frankly sucked.

mm rewarded me for my curiosity. experimentation and exploration would lead to interesting or gratifying results (did you know theres a paper airplane in ikana canyon...). botw is like playing in the window xp background. theres barely any landmarks, except shrines, or anything to do outside of getting the yiga clan's ass. theyre easy to pick out because theyre literally the only people on the road. the world is put to waste; i cant play with it, i can just observe and be extremely artificially hindered by its vastness.

this doesnt really fit anywhere else in the above open world rant, but trading the shrines for small and sparce dungeons was a huge let down. i was hoping for a series of cohesive puzzles intended to help my mastery of my newest weapon or ability. you know. like a zelda game

totk fixed this and every other problem in the best way possible; the devs dumped a ton of toys into my playpen, gave me a hot glue gun, and told me to go buck wild. i love to build a horrible contraption to solve my stupid problems or kill me instantly. i love that experimenting with weapons involves actual experimentation if you desire or you can have an inventory exclusively full of spear type weapons with vastly different properties by gluing a bunch of rocks or monster parts to it. but most importantly....the "stock up->head out->explore->return" loop no longer feels like i have to go to the dmv over and over.

sure, the depths are artificially large in the way that the map in botw was; theres not a lot to do except reveal the map and do plot stuff. but the overworld was given a complete overhaul using the empty map as a starting point. theres actually stuff to look at, ruins to explore, caves to investigate, holes to jump into, and all that shit in the sky to explore. the sky map might be sparse but its meticulously crafted so that just the process of explorating the archipelagos feels like a puzzle you need to solve, as opposed to a hurdle you have to jump.

there is so much more to do in totk that im pretty sure im over 20 hours in and havent done any of the regional main quests. ive been running around picking up side quests, uncovering the map, exploring the depths, fucking around in the sky, and dying my clothes. but its not annoying or overwhelming. it feels more alive and less like a weird map in an abandoned gmod server. im having fun.

for crit: imo, one of the biggest criticisms i have for both these games is that the voice acting is horrendous. nintendo has too much money to be tapping people who sound like they just got out of the shenmue soundbooth. zelda was not improved by voice acting and they should probably go back to everyone just having short exclamations like "HEH HEEH!" or "hmmm...".

also link doesnt roll anymore and its really fucking me up. im really struggling here lol. i keep trying to do dark souls shit and every fight involves me accidentally zooming in with the sheikah slate instead of locking on, hitting l1 istead of shield, and whistling for my horse instead of drinking estus.

also nerf rain

[johnhardinsawyer]

The Great Reversal

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

1 / 29 / 23 – Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Matthew 5:1-12

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

“The Great Reversal”

(In Our World . . . As in Heaven)

This past summer, I watched the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once[1] on an airplane and the movie helped make for a thrilling airplane ride.  Everything Everywhere All at Once – which was nominated for 11 Oscars this past week – is all about a woman who runs a laundromat and lives a relatively simple, unhappy life in what seems like “the real world.”  But then she encounters different versions of herself in what could be described as parallel universes – or the “multiverse.”[2]  The movie is crazy and confusing at times with a blending of different versions of reality (or realities) in different universes.  In one universe, the laundromat owner is getting audited by the IRS and there’s a shootout at the IRS office.  In another universe, she is a kung fu master/movie star.  In another universe, her fingers turn to hot dogs (remember how I said that the movie is crazy).  Anyway, one of the wonderful things about the movie (spoiler alert!) is that eventually, the laundromat owner becomes the best possible version of herself and she works to build the best possible version of her world – of her universe.  

Have you ever wondered what you might be like in another universe?  I imagine that in another universe, I might just be able to climb mountains without getting winded, and work differential equations without any scratch paper, and be able to perform Shakespeare from memory, and have a full head of hair.  But I don’t live in any of those universes.  Instead, I live in this universe, where I could learn to do or achieve just about all of these things but it would take some work on my part.  Building a better version of ourselves and building the best possible universe – or the best possible world – would be quite a challenge.  

Both of today’s scripture readings show us a version of what it looks like in the world – in the universe – that God intends.  God’s world – the kingdom of heaven – looks and acts so differently from the world that we see and know.  It’s almost like the kingdom of heaven has a completely different set of rules, a completely different economy, a completely different moral reality.  

Even though there are so many differences between ancient Galilee – where Jesus first preached his so-called “Sermon on the Mount” – and the twenty-first century world where we are reading these ancient words, there are some things that haven’t changed in the slightest.  If you ask yourself, “What does it take to get ahead in this world?” people were wondering the same thing twenty centuries ago.  And, in today’s passage, when Jesus sits down in front of these crowds of people who have gathered to hear him, they are all wondering things like, “What does it take to get ahead in a world where the rich keep getting ahead and the poor keep getting farther behind?  What does it take to get ahead in a world where those who have power lord it over those who do not?  What does it take to get ahead in a world where there is so much violence, and sadness, and anger, and worry, and it seems like nothing will ever fix any of these things?  What does it take to get ahead in a world where things seem so heavy and hard to bear?”  Hmmmm. . . We aren’t all that different from those who lived so long ago, are we?

Jesus – who, up until this point in the Gospel of Matthew – has been calling his disciples to follow him, and healing people of what ails them in all of the neighboring towns, telling them to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)  “Turn toward God, for the empire of heaven is so close you can touch it.”[3]  “Change your life.  God’s kingdom is here.”[4]

This “kingdom” – or “empire” – as Jesus calls it, is a different kind of world.  And, for those hungering and thirsting for a different kind of world, these words of blessing and challenge describe the qualities of the people who live in Jesus’s new and different world.  

If we look closely at this passage, Jesus offers eight “Beatitudes” or “Blesseds.”  As commentator Warren Carter describes them, [5] the first four beatitudes critique the world as it is – a world in which there are many who are “poor (or broken) in spirit,” “those who mourn,” “those who are meek,” which in this case means those who quietly and resolutely persevere in faith even when God seems far off,” and “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (or justice) when it comes to how the world as we know it works.”[6]  In Jesus’ words, God makes these people “heavenly kingdom people,” and comforts them, and gives them all they could ever want or need in this world, and fills them up with every good thing.  

The second four beatitudes paint a picture of the world as God intends it to be through the actions of faithful “heavenly kingdom” people:  a world that can be so merciless but God blesses those who are merciful, a world that is not committed to the truth but God blesses those whose hearts are true and pure, a world that is filled with violence and the powerful get away with murder but God blesses those who enact God’s merciful reign (calling them God’s own children because they follow God’s peaceful and merciful example), and a world in which those who do the right thing are persecuted but God blesses those who do the right thing, no matter what.  “You might not feel blessed right now,” Jesus says, “but blessed are you, for your reward is on the way in the kingdom of heaven.”[7]

Just as an aside, remember, Jesus is saying these words on a hillside beside the Sea of Galilee to a group of – mostly poor, downtrodden – people, weighed down by the oppressively heavy boot of the Roman Empire.  But these spoken words of Jesus were passed down by word of mouth and then written down – (perhaps by someone named Matthew) and then read to a group of Matthew’s people – of persecuted Jewish Christians in the first century.  And, here we are – all these years later – hearing and reading them, again.  This is where our lives might diverge a little from the lives of those who first heard Jesus’ words.  They suffered in ways that most of us are blessed to not know, personally.  Yes, there are those in our world who speak of being on the receiving end of religious persecution because of how they read the Bible or who they will or won’t bake a cake for.  We are fortunate, however, in our own nation to be free of the life-and-death kind of persecution the early Christians experienced.  This is not the case in other parts of the world, though.  There are plenty of places and situations, however – even in our own lives – where those who try to do right and live according to the example of Jesus don’t get ahead.

To a cynical person, God’s kingdom of heaven and the qualities of God’s “kingdom-of-heaven-people” might seem foolish.  I mean, whoever heard of people with broken spirits getting what they need or the meek receiving special status?  Only strength gets you special status, right?  And the pure of heart?  Maybe that works in fairy tales, but not in the real world.  You’ve got to be hard hearted in this world to get ahead, right?  And the idea of being a peacemaker might sound nice, but the practicalities of peacemaking are often messy and sometimes dangerous.  The way of the kingdom of heaven is not the way of our world.  It’s like an alternate universe that doesn’t exist anywhere close to our own.    

The seeming-impossibility of the kingdom of heaven is what Paul points to in today’s first reading, in which Paul writes:

The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,

I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I’ll expose so-called experts as shams.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered stupid—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”[8]

“Everything we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”  Just like every blessing in the beatitudes comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.

Because the God we believe in is the God of reversal, in which the lowly are lifted up, the slaves go free, the sick and broken are healed, the sinners are forgiven, the dead are raised, and we – as humanly weak as we are – are given access to God’s grace and the spiritual gifts to share that grace with all the world.  God gives us, by the Holy Spirit, the gift of becoming the best kingdom-of-heaven-versions of our ourselves so that we might make this world – our world – on earth, as it is in heaven, with God’s help.  This gift – this task, this calling – is a humbling one; one that seems too much for little old lowly us to bear.  But we trust in the One who takes little old us and lifts us up, granting us the gifts we need, and the strength to persevere, and the courage to be peacemakers, and the will to do the right thing even if we do not benefit . . . even if we are reviled for doing the right thing – the loving thing, the holy thing so that the kingdom of heaven comes near and changes the world around us for good . . . so that we may be a blessing and the world may be blessed through us with God’s help.

You know, I don’t know if there is such a thing as a multiverse – alternate universes in which we live alternate lives.  For all we know, this universe – this world – is the only one we have been given.  But this universe – this world – is the one into which God chose to send Jesus Christ so that a new heaven and a new earth would be built.  God is about the business of making all things new.  And the new heaven and new earth are not beyond our grasp, right now.  The world we see and know – and all who live in it – will not always be this way.  In and through Jesus Christ, God is turning the world upside down.    

May we be humbled and blessed by the seemingly foolish task of joining in God’s great reversal.  May we never stop seeking, and hoping, and working for God’s great reversal.  Because God is working – through us – to build the best possible version of the world.  May we seek the best for this world – the best that God intends.  And may we – and the world, through us – be blessed.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

-------

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Everywhere_All_at_Once.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse.

[3] Matthew 4:17 – Paraphrased, JHS.

[4] Eugene Peterson, The Message – Numbered Edition (Colorado Springs: NAV Press, 2002) 1334. Matthew 4:17.

[5] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000) 131.

[6] Paraphrased with gratitude to Warren Carter (131-134).

[7] Again, paraphrased, with gratitude to Warren Carter, 134-137.

[8] Eugene Peterson, 1565-1566.

[vodkassassin]

world state: refresh, chapter two

Last chapter: “—From the description, it’s basically the same as the synopsis of your run of the mill VRMMORPG anime, except the virtual games are real worlds.”

“Sure, but if they’re real worlds, then what does being a Game Master mean?”

Shen Yuan grins down at him.

“Hey, Airplane,” he says. “How do you feel about being an actual god?” [Read ch. 1]

—

“Oh, yaaawn!” She throws herself back onto the plush surface behind her and stretches her arms above her head. “Man, what a chore! Hey, Dorazou, make a note to always double check the Mission Rating before accepting an Assignment in the future. No way in hell am I gonna be doing that again!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny avatar cheers, pumping a little red scaled fist into the air. “Reminder set! Hey, Host, if it’s any consolation, this system thinks you totally aced it!”

“Hmm,” she crosses her arms and stars at the collection of screens that have popped into existence before her. “The mission grading will be the judge of that. Let’s see, here…. Oh, awesome! I earned a double S score! You know what that means!”

Dorazou gives another little roar cheer that sounds more like a kitten's mew than anything. Ah, so cute! “Host may close her next Assignment! Congratulations!”

The agent gathers her hair up into a loose and messy bun at the top of her head, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Awesome. Let’s choose something easy, why don’t we? That last world was only an A-rank, but it gave me a lot more trouble than I bargained for. It should have been labeled at least S-tank! Dorazou, bring up all available Assignments. B-rank or lower only, please!”

“Gotcha!” The tiny dragon-themes sprite gives a little twirl, it’s clunky arms flailing adorably. “Assignment list set to: Easy!”

“Perfect, thanks! Let’s take a look, now… Otome-world…. Fantasy style cooking show star, haha. I have zero talent in that area, so please decline it for me, Dorazou…. Another Knights Order needs a Pure Heavenly Maiden for such and such ritual, ah, that honestly just sounds so sinister, decline! And here we have yet another otome assignment, damn. These things are such pests. Oh, what’s this?”

Sitting up, the agent leans in and peers closely at the screen, eyes bright in excitement. “Hey, Dorazou! This one calls for a team of agents!”

“That is correct!” Dorazou says, beaming. The dragon floats up to sit comfortably on the girl’s shoulder. “System Agents 74 and 81 have put in a request for additional manpower in the Game Master Assignment for World-120MAX. If Host accepts, she and four other agents will be tasked with working under the leadership of Agent 74 in creating and managing a Game World.”

She tilts back again, kicking her legs up into the air with some excitement. “What’s the deadline?”

Dorazou is quiet for a moment as it studies the screens. It gives a hearty cheer and pats the agent on the head. “No deadline! Host will remain on Agent 74’s GM Team until it is decommissioned by the Team itself!”

She jumps off the beanbag entirely to float up into the air, catching the little dragon sprite and hugging it to her chest. “Awesome! So it’s basically a neverending paid vacation, if we want it to be? That totally rocks! Dorazou, we lucked out with this one!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny system cheers, looping its scaly arms around her neck in a hug. “Is Host choosing this Assignment, then?”

“As if I’d ever turn down a chance like this! System Agents hardly ever get to work together! Dorazou, please confirm my acceptance!”

“Assignment chosen! Does Host wish to rest in the home space before starting?”

“Nah, I’m way too pumped now,” she clenches her fists and grins. “Dorazou, let’s go meet our new friends!”

“RAWR! World-120MAX loading! Twenty-eight percent! Fifty-percent! Eighty-three percent! World load complete! Entering database now!”

The agent grins as she dissolves into light. This is gonna be sweet!

—

“Nice to meet you! My name is Myra Khol, System Agent 23! I’m here for the Game Master Team Assignment!”

“The what?” The boy says, expression just positively befuddled as it has been when she’s first loaded into the world, and Myra tilts her head in slight confusion. Has this guy never met another agent before?

She hops down from the tree and steps over to him, a little surprised when he takes a step back in return. Man, this guy is shy! How cute!

“Wait a minute, did you just say ‘System’?” The boy straightens up, his eyes going even wider than they’d already been. “Does that mean you are also a transmigrator?”

“What else would I be?” Myra huffs out with some bemusement. “You guys clearly haven’t put any people in this world yet, so the only ones you’d be seeing are yourselves or another agent.”

“Agent…” the boy echoes, holding the fan up to his lips in thought. It’s an endearing gesture, something so old fashion being slightly out of place with the futuristic fantasy design of the boy’s outfit, and yet it still somehow fits him.

Myra blinks at him, and then decides to take pity. From the looks of it, this kid is a noob at the job. She remembers when that had been her. The good old days!

“Didn’t your Systems explain it to you guys yet?” She asks.

At her words, the boy’s expression darkens. “The System? No. Why would the System explain anything?”

Oh. That sounded like anger, there. Myra reaches out a hand and nervously scoots her precious Dorazou over until it’s hidden behind her back. The little dragon makes a tiny noise of confusion, but goes along with it.

The boy narrows his eyes at her action. “Speaking of systems… is that one yours?”

“Um, well,” Myra coughs. “Yes? But! Dorazou is such a sweet little thing! Wouldn’t harm a fly! Please take care of it!”

The boy looks confused. “Wouldn’t harm a fly! Have you never been threatened with Punishment Protocol?”

Myra gapes, aghast. “No! That’s reserved for triple S class worlds on the highest difficulty setting! Why would an Assignment like that be given to newbie agents?”

The boy stares at her, face pale.

“Oh.” Myra presses her hands over her mouth, staring at him in horror. “I mean, I’ve heard it happening only once. Someone being given an extreme-difficulty Assignment for their very first world. It was basically an impossible mission, but she luckily managed to complete it successfully. The Assignment Parameter glitch that led to it was suppose to have been fixed since then, though. Are you really saying…?”

The boy lets out a weak sounding laugh, bowing his head. He rubs the back of his arm across his eyes, and Myra feels something in her chest ache at the sight. These two agents… they’ve really been through the wringer, haven’t they?

Clearing her throat hesitantly, she asks, “The Assignment said there were two agents behind the request. Since you’re here, where’s your partner?”

“He’s on the other side of the Level, touching up on some persistent glitches that are occurring in quadrant five,” the boy releases an aggravated sigh. Then, he glances at Myra in surprise. “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? My name is Shen Yuan, it’s really nice to meet you.”

Myra grins back at him, relieved. “Is it? For a moment there, I thought you weren’t happy to see me.”

“Are you kidding?” Shen Yuan laughs again, and this one is much lighter. It suits him way better than the faintly grieved sound from before. “I am ecstatic to meet you. It’s nice to know that we’re not as alone as we thought. Here, I’ll take you to my… partner. He should be about finished by now.”

Myra bounces onto her toes in excitement. She grabs Dorazou by the tail and troops after Shen Yuan when the boy turns his back and begins to walk away.

“Man, not being given a tutorial world really sounds like it sucked,” Myra says, side eyeing her new teammate as she comes up beside him.

Shen Yuan has an odd smile on his face when he replies. “It was… definitely something, yes.”

“You want me to lodge a complaint with Management?” She asks, a pinch of worry between her brows. “If all three of us do it, they’ll have to take another look at the glitch and make double sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Shen Yuan is quiet for a long while as they walk along the quaint little dirt path. The silence stretches into minutes, and Myra decides to leave him to his thoughts, because it looks like he’s pondering something pretty deep.

She busies herself with checking out their surroundings as they move along. Shen Yuan has called this area the Level, and she’s assuming it’s the first of its kind, and therefore intended to be the Starting Area for the Players when they enter into this world. She’s done her reading while loading into the Assignment, so she’s fairly confident in her ability to assist Shen Yuan and his partner with whatever sort of administration work they need help with. So far though, from what she’s seeing, the two of them are actually off to a really good start. One or both of them must have some sort of experience in world building.

What a perfect Assignment for them, if that’s the case.

Especially if what Shen Yuan says is true, and he really had suffered through a triple S class of extreme difficulty for what was suppose to be their tutorial world. He really deserves a paradisal vacation such as this, where he can recuperate from the troubles he’d faced.

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Shen Yuan finally says, voice so quiet that Myra wouldn’t have heard it if the rest of the world around them wasn’t dead silent. It seems the audiosphere hasn’t been set up, yet.

Myra glances over to her side, and finds Shen Yuan staring down at the ground with a frown on his pretty face. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

“You said they already patched the glitch, so it shouldn’t have happened. They — whoever they are — clearly didn’t do their job.”

Myra bites her lip, and hugs a strangely quiet Dorazou to her chest. “Yeah, so we should file a complaint, right? And we can get the rest of the team on board with it, too, once they get here. I’m sure they’ll agree, too.”

“The rest of the team?” Shen Yuan asks, frown still present. He flicks his wrist, and the fan opens with a sharp snap and a skillful flourish. Myra stares at the action in awe. So refined! So graceful! And the fan itself was exquisite.

“I’m sorry, could you elaborate on the… Assignment Parameters you mentioned before? Xiao Lei and I just needed help, and the system said we’d have it. It didn’t explain what that help was, or where it would come from.”

Xiao Lei must be the other agent, Shen Yuan’ partner. Myra files the name away and directs a bright smile in the direction of her new teammate.

“Sure thing! Basically, your request generated a new Assignment in the listings for agents. It asks for five agents to form a team directly under you and your partner, though Agent 74 is suppose to be the team leader. That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?”

Shen Yuan blinks at her, before his frown returns in full force. It looks faintly irritated this time, and the boy calls out, “System, what is my, uh, Agent number?”

There’s a faint sound of static, before a slightly stilted and robotic voice replies, “Host is filed as Agent 81.”

Myra glances down to see a Siamese cat, tail poised elegantly in the air and ears perked upright, weaving between Shen Yuan’s every step like a ghost. The cat glances up at her and blinks it’s bright blue eyes at her with an indifferent gaze.

“Oh, is that your System? It’s so cute!” She squeals.

The cat glances away from her, and Shen Yuan huffs.

“It’s an absolute snob, is what it is,” the boy refutes.

His system doesn’t look back up, and Myra feels a little bad for it, but…. Well, she supposed, if she’s been trapped in an SSS-rank hell world for her first Assignment, she might have some resentment toward her system, too.

She clutched Dorazou to her chest at the terrible thought, and is comforted when the little dragon spite turns around to nuzzle her back. It seems she’s really lucked out, huh?

“Does your system have a name?” She asks, scratching Dorazou behind the ear.

“Does it need one?” Shen Yuan asks coldly.

Myra cringes, glancing down at the aloof-looking cat that darts between his legs. It doesn’t even twitch at the way that it’s host speaks about it, and Myra decides to change the subject least the air becomes too awkward.

“So, um, I guess your partner is the designated team leader, then!” She tries, her smile fixed in place.

Shen Yuan shrugs. He flutters the pretty fan in front of his face and holds his other arm behind his back. He looks like some sort of regal young master of an ancient dynasty, with a posture like that. Myra wonders what the setting of his last world had been. Imperial court drama, perhaps? That sort of plot was almost always a guaranteed S rank.

“It suits him,” Shen Yuan says. “He has the most experience in creating worlds, so I guess I’d follow his lead even if he wasn’t the boss. Though, I’ll definitely be there to advise him, so he doesn’t get too carried away.”

“Carried away?” Myra wonders.

“It happens, sometimes.” Shen Yuan grimaces. “If it’s true that we’ll be a team, then I’ll be counting on you to keep an eye on him, as well.”

“Yes, of course!” Myra is a little confused, but Shen Yuan obviously knows his partner best, so she’ll take his words to heart. She salutes him. “You can definitely rely on me for that!”

This gets her a faint smile, and she inwardly cheers. This boy is surprisingly difficult to get a response out of. Myra hasn’t met someone like him in a long time.

Suddenly, Shen Yuan pulls to a stop, and gestures ahead of them. “We’re here,” he says, and then sighs. “Looks like he’s not finished… I wonder….”

Myra looks ahead of them, to see a huge structure looming in the distance. The forest they’ve been strolling through has given way to an open plain, grasslands mixed with an opaque sandy desert. A few hundred meters away sits a hulking building, which in closer examination is not a building at all, but in fact some sort of autonomous being. It’s collapsed on its side, limbs askew, a central panel of its torso gaping open to allow its mechanical insides to be strewn about throughout the grass and sand around it. There’s faint noises of metal hitting against metal coming from within it, and when Myra squints, she can just make out a tiny figure perched on the very edge of the thing’s opened chassis.

Shen Yuan takes a step forward, and Myra keeps back. He closes his fan with a satisfying clack and slips it into the pocket of his shorts, and then cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Shang Lei! Come here!”

Oh, so the other agent’s name was Shang Lei, not Xiao Lei.

Myra pokes at her lip in thought as she watches the distant figure poke it’s head up out of the mechanical innards of whatever creature they were tinkering around inside of. Shen Yuan, Shang Lei… those names both sound pretty Chinese to her. And in Chinese, Xiao is often used as a diminutive or an endearment. So, this must mean that Shen Yuan and Shang Leo are actually very close friends, right? Myra covers her smile with a hand.

Due to context gathered from Shen Yuan's earlier words, it must also be likely that they were partners in their last world. Meaning that Shang Lei also experienced what was, in layman’s terms, called a Hell Assignment. And it is likely that the Hell Assignment was also Shang Lei’s first Assignment, given that Shen Yuan has no idea about a lot of System Agent common sense.

If they were partners all this time, if Shang Lei had previous transmigration experience, he’d have schooled his partner on it by now. And yet, Shen Yuan was ignorant of a lot of things.

Myra presses both her palms to her cheeks and sighs quietly as she watches Shang Lei approach them. Shen Yuan has stepped up to meet him, but she can clearly see the hesitant way that Shang Lei holds himself, the wary way that he eyes her. The way that he slides himself into the shadow of Shen Yuan’s barely taller stature when he realizes she’s looking back at him.

She sighs in her heart, as well, and clutches Dorazou in one arm like a teddy bear. Her system pays her on the hand.

“—apparently posted an assignment asking for other agents to come and lend us a hand.” Shen Yuan is explaining quietly to his partner — his friend. He gestures at her with a hand. “This is Myra Khol, the first one to accept the mission.”

Myra steps forward the smallest step she can take without it seeming like she’s wary of them, too. It still makes Shang Lei duck even further behind Shen Yuan. She does not let it dim her smile.

“Hi, I’m Myra, System Agent 23! I’m pleased to meet you, boss!”

Shang Lei peeks out from behind his friend with wide eyes. There’s a complicated expression on his face.

“... Nice to meet you, too,” he mumbles, and curls back behind Shen Yuan as soon as the last word is out.

That is it! Myra has decided! She will help these two to the best of her abilities, not because it’s the Assignment, but because she wants to!

Dorazou! Edit Assignment self parameters!

[[Host!]]

The dragon sprite makes a soft noise from within her grasp. She sees the way that Shang Lei’s eyes dart down to it, and the frown that graces his face as he glances shyly back toward her with an expression that almost looks faintly concerned. For her. And given the fact that it’s very possible that Shang Lei’s opinion of systems is the same as Shen Yuan’s, due to their not-so-great past experiences, the look that he’s sending her now makes Myra’s heart melt.

[[Assignment parameters, self edit mode!]]

Myra’s smile broadens.

Take care of Agent 74 and Agent 81! Priority!

#scum villain's self saving system #bofuri #cheating men must die #world state: refresh #update #vodkassassin fanfiction #cucumberplane #vodkas ocs

[mattginnow]

JFK

Matt Ginnow Matthew Ginnow

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I’m particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward–and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man’s history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were “made in the United States of America” and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year–a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority–even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out–then we must be bold.

I’m the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we’re going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”

Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

Matt Ginnow, Matthew Ginnow

[bnrobertson1]

EXCELLENCE IN PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Death Stranding* is a wowing mind-fuck of an experience, surreal and mundane and draining and invigorating. Unafraid to constantly show you Norman Reedus’ bare ass while pontificating on the nature of modern existence, the game is unlike any before it, a venerable nightmare for marketing people and gamers expecting something more tried-and-true. 

Choose a Caption!: “I intend to help all of humanity through these apocalyptic times. But first, a peek of me bottom for the ladies.” -OR- Reedus Rump: Kojima’s Metal Gear-esque Weapon to Appeal to Women. 

Death Stranding is also the host to the best piece of product placement in recent memory. The product? Monster mahfucking Energy** drink, a (demonic?) elixir that boosts main character Sam’s stamina when consumed- a life-giving tonic with only 160g of sugar. You don’t drink water in the game, you drink Monster. Hell yes. For a game about wandering the wreckage of a nuclear-ish event, it’s a masterful touch, eloquently capturing our need as humans to technologically improve everything (yes, even the liquid responsible for life), a destructive compulsion that is the vertebrae and driver of the game’s narrative. Many in the press find this shameless money-grab to be tasteless, but the fact Coca-Cola (a corporation!) undoubtedly paid millions to get it so prominently in the game only speaks to its preposterous-yet-probable presence. It’s probably too subtle to be a Kojima-nod to the futuristic satire of Idiocracy, but Monster Energy will undoubtedly go down as the real world’s Brawndo (just without the electrolytes).    

*More Thoughts on Death Stranding (BEWARE NON-SENSICAL SPOILERS): God Bless Hideo Kojima, the man goes for it. Arguably video game’s most beloved auteur and inarguably the one who most wants to be referred to as “Kubrikickian” and/or “enigmatic,” the mastermind behind the beloved Metal Gear games proves incapable of working small or with gloves with his Death Stranding, leaving both fingerprints all throughout and editors’ calls unreturned. Hours-long cut scenes waxing philosophical about technology’s dooming yet liberating role in our future? Check. 4th wall breaking, star-fucking pop culture references? Check. Singular gameplay whose laborious nature quite soundly proves larger points about things ranging from literary theory to the gig economy? Check. Check. Check.

But between the preposterous acronyms, convoluted packing systems, and Conan O’ Brien cameos, there glimmers dots of genius. Those willing to wade through the oft- incomprehensible industrial-military-complex babble are rewarded with “Holy Shit” moments, those boundary and/or sense exploding things of which Kojima is King. Death Stranding is no different, and although the game never reaches the heights of the Metal Gear games, there are specific parts that unleashed that goosebump wave of awesomeness. The bolo gun that wraps up your enemies instead of killing them, your ability to hog tie the unsuspecting with an elastic strand, the focus on oil and blood as the life force of all things- these are but some of the elements of the game that really work, dripping into the game at just the rate where you keep interested but not overwhelmed.

But the best moment in the game is in a cut-scene where your baby companion (did I mention Kojima is weird?) literally stops bullets with its mind to save you. Now, the prior sentence shouldn’t make sense, and probably doesn’t. But the real nonsensical thing is just how powerful it hit. In a game about loneliness and the brutal nature of existence, this self-less act is totally unexpected but gives you the real feeling that someone has got your back (even if it proves to be a futile gesture). It’s effect was reminiscent of similar film sequences. After about 15-months of Covid I would say the point was comforting in a way I was not anticipating whatsoever. 

Being the only one of my friends insane enough to finish the game’s deliberate but nonetheless grotesquely overlong runtime (60+ hours of fetch quests!), my fellow Metal Gear fans have asked: is it worth playing? To which I really don’t know the answer. It’s absolutely bold and tries to tell a tale that could only be told in the video game medium, but then again, video games aren’t particularly great ways of telling stories. At points it felt like its design was made to be played in the pandemic: it’s time-consuming, meditative, and at times utterly mind-numbing. At its peaks, the game is reminiscent of Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump, another generally somber post-technological tale, albeit with less alcoholic robots and more characters named things like Die-Hardman. It’s not nearly as *fun* as other AAA titles, but then again the diametrically different approach of Doom Eternal didn’t inspire a couple thousand words.    

**I can’t remember my first cigarette, beer, or kiss but I do remember the first time I had a Monster Energy drink. Due to some mental, emotional, and physical deficiencies, I was unable to fly for about 6 months- just the thought of driving to the airport turned my anxiety- and palm sweat- on like a firehose. But knowing this fear was simply incompatible with modern life, I gave myself a building block of a goal- make a flight from my then-home of Austin to somewhere close enough that I could rent a car and drive home. I chose Dallas because I had an incentive: to see obscure musical group Nine Inch Nails*** performing at one of the Metroplex’s many arenas.

Getting on the plane took some assistance- specifically in the form of about 2 grams of Alprazolam. The barbiturate calm pressed the right buttons beautifully, having me giggling about clouds as opposed to obsessing about how we were in a speeding steel cylinder 7 miles above the surface of the earth. But when we landed in Dallas about 30 minutes later, the ease evolved into a potent sleepiness. Which is fine if you’re headed to a hotel, or virtually anywhere else in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but not so much when you’re about to see an Industrial concert with 8,000 other people not exactly known for their chill. Plodding along, I finally made it to the concert, hoping to order a Red Bull as big as its namesake to get me out of blah bliss and into banging. The venue only sold Coke products, so in my apathetic exhaustion, I decided to order a Monster, an energy drink to that point I identified with redneck culture and thus avoided. Finding the whole thing pretty funny- and strongly buzzing off the fact that I had somehow faced my fear and gotten on an airplane- I figured there was probably no better place on earth to try a tall boy Monster Energy Drink Zero Sugar than FUCKING DALLAS, ie, the Monster Energy Drink of America.

The flavor I ordered was in a white can and poured out looked like some sort of large sea mammal had just bricked into a cup. Disgusted but not discouraged, I grabbed the glowing goblet like it was the reins of a dragon and took it by its mighty wing, by which I mean swig. Surprisingly tasty, I thought. Not the Pepsi-fied version of Red Bull I was fearing. The house lights then were dimmed, indicating it was game time. I wisely bought another Monster and went into the show, thinking 32 oz of liquid electricity was exactly what I needed to match Reznor’s energy.

You’re goddamn right I took a picture of my first Monster! 

Whatever chemistry was going on in my body was probably bad, because it felt awesome. Even though Nine Inch Nails had performed a majority of my favorite stuff the night before (their first of two nights in Dallas), the concert was as engrossing as was hoped- the loudness and lights simultaneously pummeling and transcendent. While it goes without saying that it wasn’t for everyone, the entire 3-hour ride back to Austin I was laughing like a maniac, having won a small battle (flying) and getting a big reward for my efforts (NIN). So, when anybody asks me what the ludicrously huge can of white can of energy drink I’m proudly, obnoxiously enjoying tastes like I am genuine when I tell them: “Carbonated Capri-Sun. And Courage.”      

*** I had been scared of NIN growing up too, specifically the video for “Closer” which made my 10 year old guts squirm like worms with its hanging meat and imagery that was confusingly gory yet sexual. I also went to a conservative all-boys school where wearing NIN stuff was rarely allowed, and when it was you’d be shamed by one of the change-petrified cliques that ran the place. My position softened a bit after the landmark Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt,” but what confirmed my fandom was when I heard “The Hand that Feeds” on a Chicago strip-club sound system- since then, they have soundtracked much of my life. Lesson: There lies wisdom in Strip Clubs.      

[itconsultants]

SharePoint Consulting Guide

Before you acknowledge SharePoint Services from any supplier, you should be happy with the sort of assist you'll with being. The most ideal approach to do this is by asking the organization a couple of fundamental inquiries. Investigate!

SharePoint is an immense and rather confounded stage which you can't do except if you know every part of it. Presently, on the off chance that you are running a little association, this is very vital. In any case, there's a manner by which you can get the assistance you need. Indeed, by rethinking Microsoft SharePoint Consulting and execution administrations to an outsider substance, you're guaranteed of getting the best outcome.

Before you acknowledge SharePoint Services from any supplier, you should be happy with the sort of assist you'll with being. The most ideal approach to do this is by asking the organization a couple of fundamental inquiries. Investigate!

5 Key Questions That You Need to Ask a SharePoint Consulting Company

Before you accept SharePoint services from any provider, you need to be satisfied with the kind of help you’ll be getting. The best way to do this is by asking the agency a few essential questions. Take a look!

1. Who Will Be Doing The Work? Will You Hire Other SharePoint Consulting Firms?

In the virtual and globalization world that we're at present living in, it's entirely expected for SharePoint administrations to be contracted and subcontracted. In this way, despite the fact that you might be consenting to an arrangement with one advisor or association, there's a decent possibility not a similar organization will do the task.

In the event that you just need advancement or coding work, workers for hire and subcontractors are not something to stress over. Be that as it may, it's a fundamental factor on the off chance that you need certain characters or people to connect straightforwardly with your end clients.

2. What Are Your SharePoint Consulting Payment Schedules and Fee Arrangements?

A decent number of SharePoint counseling offices work on hourly expenses something which, while interesting to a few, may deplete you a ton of cash (particularly in case you're running a little association or non-benefit). Whichever the case, there's no set in stone. All things considered, it's anything but's a business or inclination practice. The main thing you need to do is to concur on explicit task expectations or timetables.

3. Does Your Company Offer Unique SharePoint Features or Services?

Truly, nobody is a SharePoint counseling proficient in all things. It's wide to the point that it's actually difficult to see every last bit of it in spite of what you'll hear from certain organizations. In actuality, some are specialists in building Information Architecture, others dominate in SharePoint marking and work processes just as making interfaces to a large group of different frameworks.

All things considered, what you ought to consistently remember is that you'll never get any office which offers all SharePoint administrations. Eventually, it will boil down to the particular objectives you are attempting to accomplish. For example, in case you're searching for SharePoint record the board help, go for the association with the most involvement with that space.

4. Does Your Agency Provide ‘Soft’ SharePoint Implementation Features?

You should ensure that the SharePoint counseling administration isn't just a tech master yet in addition ready to help you in client administration or appropriation. Inability to do so implies that the whole execution will gain out of power, come up short and become the wellspring of jokes inside the association.

You should ensure that the SharePoint counseling administration isn't just a tech master yet in addition ready to help you in client administration or appropriation. Inability to do so implies that the whole execution will gain out of power, come up short and become the wellspring of jokes inside the association.

5. Which Project Method Does Your SharePoint Implementation Follow?

The expression, 'Rome was not implicit one day,' should come into your psyche at whatever point you consider getting SharePoint administrations. This kind of execution carries gigantic changes into the association, particularly from the administration point of view.

Hence, it's in every case great to guarantee that your SharePoint expert is tremendous with the advanced venture the board frameworks like Agile and Waterfall. It's nice to do this interaction in stages as it's anything but a superior input instrument from partners and improves the client selection framework.

5 Reasons Why You Need a Microsoft SharePoint Consulting Service for Your Non-Profit or Small Business

It's difficult to move your whole organization reports into one open area. You'll see that on occasion, things don't work out like they're assumed, and it's very disappointing. Truth be told, you may even need to dispose of the whole undertaking. We might want to console you of the significance of SharePoint administrations and furthermore why you need to counsel a certified organization for help.

1. SharePoint Implementation is Not like DropBox

Never befuddle SharePoint to DropBox or even Box. com. These are altogether various administrations with independent development ways. DropBox was made around the standard of effortlessness, and its motivation was cloud record sharing just as synchronizing reports across various gadgets like telephones, tablets, and PCs.

This is something which DropBox does amazingly well in addition to its UI takes a to some degree recognizable document structure. From a client selection perspective, it's anything but a generally consistent progress.

Then again, SharePoint administrations are intended to make autonomous and totally assorted biological systems of web parts that can help you in tackling distinctive business needs. Furthermore, they'll help you in improving your joint effort levels at an endeavor viewpoint. They were not made as capacity arrangements however extremely convoluted frameworks that exist all alone and interface with a few other business applications.

2. SharePoint Was Not Originally Built for Non-Profit or Small Businesses

It's difficult little measured associations that look for SharePoint counseling administrations. Since its dispatch back in 2001 until the year 2011, SharePoint was authorized and sold as a basic on-premise tech answer for both enormous size and medium associations. Such implied that you needed to have an unbending framework effectively set up so you can manage the cost of it.

It was only until 2011 when Microsoft opted to integrate it with the Office 365 cloud offering a feature that it become affordable and available to non-profit and small organizations. Today, both large-size organizations and medium companies have staff members who have dedicated their time to providing the best SharePoint services. They handle things such as administration, infrastructure creation, and developing the right interfaces and customizations.

3. SharePoint is Not a Simple Task or Something You Can Just Do by Yourself

A few group believe that they can dump documents from DropBox or old organization crashes into the SharePoint framework, and afterward share URLs with their workers. Assuming you likewise feel something similar, we exceptionally urge you to reevaluate getting a SharePoint counseling administration.

In truth, comparing SharePoint services to DropBox is like trying to compare an airplane with a bicycle. While many know how to ride a bike, not many can fly a plane with all its complicated electronics and technology. Following this analogy, let’s take SharePoint to be our airplane, a complex system with many pages, web parts, apps, navigation, document management solutions, and security encryptions.

4. There’s No Margin for Error with SharePoint

A few group believe that they can dump documents from DropBox or old organization crashes into the SharePoint framework, and afterward share URLs with their workers. Assuming you likewise feel something similar, we exceptionally urge you to reevaluate getting a SharePoint counseling administration.

5. It’s Difficult to keep up with the Current SharePoint Evolution

Another reason why you need to hire a SharePoint consulting firm is because this is a technological tool that never seems to ‘sit still.’ It keeps on changing, introducing new applications, customization options, and web parts. Over the past couple of years, new revisions have brought about changes in the user interface as well as improved ways of doing things.

Now, when such changes begin to happen, you’ll have little control over them. After all, SharePoint exists in the cloud and not in your server. It’s such a complex piece of tech with several LinkedIn conferences, meet-ups, and groups dedicated to it.

Therefore, unless you have a considerable amount of time aside from your daily duties, you’ll hardly have any time to learn about it. Luckily, with a SharePoint consulting agency, you have a company that understands the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of this continually evolving tool.

Conclusion

This is all you need to know when it comes to getting SharePoint Consulting Services. However, at the end of the day, whether you opt for the services of a SharePoint consulting firm or decide to carry out the implementation by yourself, one thing is clear. It should always be for the success of your large, small- sized or non-profit business. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of resources and end up with frustrating and discouraging results.

#SharePoint Consulting

[twelvesignsrp]

congratulations laura, gemini is now marco eduardo marino-heart with the faceclaim luke pasqualiano !

Character Sign: Gemini Character name: Marco Eduardo Marino-Hart Birthday: June 21, 1997 Sexuality: Bisexual Gender: Cis-Male Moon Sign: Capricorn Faceclaim: Luke Pasqualino Power: Telekinesis

In the days that followed the bonfire night, Marco began to notice that something was amiss. The objects in his flat seemed to have a mind of their own, never staying in the same place as he had left them previously. His bedroom furniture was the most prone to these strange occurrences. It wasn’t uncommon for Marco to wake up in the morning with the furniture in his room completely rearranged. Anyone else might have panicked or claimed that a ghost was behind the manifestations, but Marco found it fascinating. He began to document each occurrence, trying to pinpoint the source of the issue.

It wasn’t until he was looking for his chopping knife one evening that he finally figured it out. There, in the middle of his kitchen, was the knife, hovering five and a half feet off the ground. Curious, Marco raised his hand and beckoned the knife over. To his astonishment, the knife floated towards him and placed itself neatly into his outstretched hand. Marco never did finish making dinner that night, but he did learn plenty about his new telekinetic abilities.

In the months that followed, Marco threw himself into perfecting his powers. He read more books than he could recall on telekinesis, from paperback bestsellers like Carrie to thick textbooks on the laws of physics and psychokinesis. He started off small, bending spoons with his mind and lifting coasters off the coffee table with a flick of his wrist. Like everything he puts his mind to, Marco perfected his craft. He started to move bigger objects, lift heavier things. He’s gotten so good at his abilities that he can have several objects moving simultaneously without giving it much thought. Getting chores done has never been easier. Though it may seem as though he is using his powers foolishly, Marco has a plan that he intends on setting into motion. Until then, he is focusing on becoming as powerful as he possibly can.

Studying: Aeronautical Engineering

Biography:Marco Marino-Hart was born on June 21, 1997, exactly one hour before his sister, Ruth, followed him into the world. For as long as he can remember, Marco’s been told that he’s special. His parents like to remind him that even as a baby, he seemed to be aware of the world around him, taking in his surroundings with wide-eyed curiosity. His inquisitive nature flourished with age. His mother and father watched in awe as their son mastered anything he tried. Walking, talking, reading… Marco excelled at everything he did at an astonishing rate.Recognizing his incredible potential, his parents enrolled Marco in as many lessons as they could possibly cram into their young son’s schedule. A private tutor came by the house each day to teach Marco mathematics, sciences, literature and latin. Once he was done with his lessons for the day, piano and tennis lessons were there to eat up whatever free time he had left. He never admitted it to his parents, but his favourite time of the day was when he got to see his sister. He missed Ruthie during the day when he was locked up in his parents’ study revising multiplication and division charts. He asked his father several times why Ruth couldn’t go to the lessons with him, but his father always replied by saying that he was different from his sister. You require special treatment because you’re gifted, Marco.Still, his best times were spent playing with Ruth. Outside of Marco’s lessons, the twins were inseparable. Thick as thieves, they got into all sorts of mischief together, scaling the side of the house to sit on the rooftop and avoid their father’s party guests, tiptoeing through abandoned houses and buildings they happened to come across, gallivanting in the bogs near their country home. Life was always an adventure for Marco with his sister by his side. She was his best friend, his only friend. Starting school a year earlier than Ruth proved to be difficult for him. Marco had trouble bonding with the kids in his year group. They were all a year older than him and found his talk of airplanes and space travel boring.Though Marco talked up school to his sister, the truth of the matter remained that he was incredibly lonely. He couldn’t have been happier when Ruth finally joined him the following year. He stuck to her side like glue, unbeknownst to him that her friends found him odd. One of the people that Ruth did befriend was Desmond Beaumont, who quickly became Marco’s friend too. The three stuck together at their parents’ dinner parties and at school. It seemed like life had finally found a balance, one in which Marco could be himself and still have friends.

Things changed again once grammar school came around. Des drifted away from the twins, favouring loud parties and illicit activity. Ruth became the beautiful Imogen Song’s shadow, and Marco once again found himself alone. He threw himself into his studies, working on numerous projects and receiving notable recognition for them. One of his projects earned him a place at Stanford University’s summer program for promising students. During the summer in which he turned 17, Marco found himself whisked away to California to converse with likeminded people. It was during this trip abroad that he met Rachel, a second-year law student. Rachel was unlike anyone he had ever met before. For the first time in his life, Marco found himself hopelessly attracted to someone else. He spent every free moment he had with Rachel. When she took him to bed, Marco realized that there were many things he hadn’t yet learned. He was surprised to find himself unable to say good-bye to the Californian beauty when the time finally came. With the promise that they’d Skype each other once a week, Marco returned to rainy England and never heard from Rachel again.

A-Levels kept him busy during his final year in school, and Marco was delighted when he received a place at Durham University in the fall. His parents were ecstatic. He moved up north and started his first year in aeronautical engineering. Again, the well of loneliness returned. Marco felt like he was back in primary school, wishing for his sister to be there with him. He called Ruth every morning and night during that first year. He returned home at the end of second term to find the house in turmoil over his sister’s desire to study art. Marco intervened and managed to convince his parents to let Ruth study up north with him at Durham.Little did he know that their lives were about to be turned upside down that following summer…

Five interesting facts about your character:

Marco is trilingual. He is fluent in English, Italian and French. While he learned both English and Italian in his household, he decided to pick up French at school to prove his sister wrong. Since they were kids, Ruth has always insisted on calling Marco a ‘robot.’ In an effort to prove his sister wrong, he decided to learn the language of love to recite French poetry to her. He now speaks it fluently.

Growing up, Marco played both polo and tennis. He used to play tennis at his parents’ country club with Dane Deluco.

Marco has a particular interest in space and space travel. His dream is to become an astronaut some day.

Though his parents offered to buy him any car he wanted for his 18th birthday, Marco opted for a bicycle, claiming that exercise helps him think when he’s working on a difficult problem.

Marco has a severe seafood and carries an epipen on him at all times.

Character Quote:

There is no great genius without some touch of madness. - Aristotle

If your character had a patronus what would it be? and why? A hawk - hawks are known for being extremely intelligent, having keen eyesight and being good hunters.

#gemini #accepted #we are complete!!!

[conneratlf635-blog]

New to this, what'& #x 27; s the best flight sim for novices?: flightsim

The market presently uses many different terrific flight simulator yoke options. Brands such as Logitech, CH Products as well as lately Honeycomb have produced some really good products to assist you get the most out of your trip training. If you intend to come close to trip simulators in such a way where you discover the most, I 'd advise getting FSX or Prepar3D plus either the A2A Cessna 172 or Piper Cherokee for the appropriate platform.

How do I use Google Flight Simulator?

Microsoft has announced a new installment of its long-running Microsoft Flight Simulator series. The series has generally been PC-only, and although this installment is part of the Xbox Game Pass program (which is also available on PC), Microsoft still refers to it as “Microsoft Flight Simulator for PC.”

You can transform the trip problems, have fun with various weights, and take off from countless airports from around the world. X-Plane has a multiplayer functionality that enables you to race with actual people to establish truth leader of the skies. Or, jump online to play with various other gamers and also engage on different flight missions. Our editors independently research, test, as well as recommend the most effective products; you can learn more about our evaluation procedure below. We might receive compensations on purchases made from our picked web links.

. Like Abelenky's wonderful solution though, they may never truly feel like what it does to have real airflow over the controls [or jump off the path] Lengthy story brief it's fantastic for every little thing (especially emergency procedures) other than the actual stick as well as tail things. Learning the principles of radio interaction can be frightening for pupil pilots, and also veteran pilots might sometimes battle to stay up to date with the fast pace of ATC interaction. The good news is, there are lots of simulation options offered to assist pilots practice appropriate radio method as well as master the ATC interaction skills required for secure flying.

Pilot a WWII bombing plane, modern airplane, or space capsule

The worth of a sim (any kind of sim!) to find out to fly is EXTREMELY (extremely) restricted.

Kerbal isn't your regular flight simulator, however More help it's a fun and also engaging handle the category nevertheless.

This is specifically real on ground-reference departures, landings, as well as maneuvers, where I really feel sims drop far short of fact.

I spent a lot of time (years) flying MSFS before getting into a cockpit for real.

I think its excellent if you get the trip yoke, rudder pedals and also the simulator. I suggest downloading the test variation of a simulator prior to you purchase however. Simulation can likewise help pilots boost both vfr and boost and also IFR navigating abilities.

You require quick reasoning to use the brakes, and not get terrified when a car drives as well close. Though it is not entirely comparable to an auto, it takes a great deal less time to quit it then to securely stop an airplane. Take a look at the Assistance Center for a quick intro on how to respond to inquiries, specifically acknowledgment of photo sources and citation when creating statistical data. I also have about 3500 hrs "flying" huge tin on VATSIM (if you are severe concerning COMPUTER simming and also don't know about VATSIM, Google for it right now!). There is the psychological reaction; that thrill, that sensation of benefit, that unquantifiable human reaction to flying that is a lot greater than operating the machine.

The 22 Ideal Army Battle Flight Simulators of 2020.

What is the best flight simulator?

If you want to approach flight simulators in a way where you learn the most, I'd recommend getting FSX or Prepar3D plus either the A2A Cessna 172 or Piper Cherokee for the appropriate platform. Yes, it's an expensive first step, but you would be getting a very accurate Cirrus Perspective Flight Simulator Massachusetts model of a training aircraft.

Looking for an out-of-this-world experience that will take https://augustcvgy568.skyrock.com/3331096898-The-10-Finest-Trip-Simulators-for-COMPUTER-in-2020.html you to infinity as well as beyond? Prepare yourself to require to the celebrities with Kerbal Room Program. Build your own spacecraft as you take charge of the titular area program for a lovable unusual race called Kerbals. Using realistic and precise aerodynamics and also orbital physics, this video game makes uses you to check out area and also maintain your team alive. You also have to craft your ship to ensure it takes off.

[weartandculture]

Inson Wongsam :

                           Traveling and seeking on a new world

Silpakorn University during half a century ago like a small world in a narrow frame and not as open as today because communication with the outside world is difficult. The news received from Europe which is considered a civilized world. Most of them are publications especially books about art are the best medium. Aside from that, it is a story of Professor Silp Bhirasri and some students who have studied in Italy which is like a lap of western art. Being a good artist is believed to have many basic elements. One important element that helps artists to create works more efficiently is the experience of both life and art. Artists must accumulate both types of experience as fuel to drive creativity. In addition, artists must have imagination, which is an abstract world in which artists can

transform into concrete through their artistic strategies that they are good at. Lastly, the artist must have ingenious intelligence enough to collect experience. Imagine being a work of art with quality. The search for experience of life and the artistic experience of Inson is different from general people that may be obtained from reading books. Travel to study abroad traveling to experience the new world of Inson is different from general

people traveling by airplane or international boat. But Inson chose to travel by motorcycle. Inson is therefore the creator of the legend in the modern art industry of Thailand and is an endless story to this day The land that Thai artists in the past have dreamed of visiting the most is Italy, France and various countries in Europe, especially Italy, which is considered the most charming because it is the birthplace of genius artists like Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), as well as Professor Silpa Bhirasi (CorradoFeroci: 1892-1962) Inson has a strong desire to travel to the land of art himself but traveling across the continent more than half a century ago is not as easy as today. It is even more difficult to travel through the streets through different terrain. He must meet people of many nationalities and languages, and the most important thing is that having money is a very important factor and knowledge of foreign languages but both is not a stumbling block for him because he thinks money can be obtained if skilled and intelligent. As for language, the same thing is because “language .. (dogs) can learn” when he is a human, why can not learn the language of people together Inson wants to travel to a new world that he has never seen on land which is very difficult for general people but Inson intends to prove his ability to do so. Inson therefore began to plan his travel carefully by offering travel to Berie Lucker, a Lambretta scooter dealer, the company has given a scooter for use in traveling. In addition, Inson also requested funds from Esso Company Limited to ask for support in the amount of travel oil which also received a good response Therefore, the problem of the traveling vehicles therefore disappeared but still having problems with personal expenses while traveling Inson solved the problem by bringing more than 200 pieces of his art into works on paper that can be conveniently rolled into a cylinder tied to the car. Inson’s works include printmaking, line drawing, and sketching. These works, Inson, are displayed in various locations. To sell to make money as traveling expenses From New Delhi Inson to travel to Lahore, Karachi. Inson exhibited at The Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan (1957). ) Upon arrival  at Tehran, Iran. Inson exhibited with Preecha Na Bangnoi (an old friend at Silpakorn University) at Gilgamesh Gallery, Teharan. (2032) When traveling to Turkey, Inson exhibited solo works at the Consulate de France Istanbul, Turkey (1963) When traveling to Athens, Greco-Inson exhibited works at Plaka Art House in Athens (1963) only in Greco, which is the source of civilization of that world Inson was especially impressed. He stayed in Athens for about 2 months to admire the great Greek art. He then traveled to live with Corfu fishermen for 6 months because he was impressed with the beautiful nature andfriendliness of the fishermen. On Corfu Island, Inson met an American artist named Alexander Is a New Yorker and was the person who bought a certain amount of Inson’s print work with the promise that once he returns to New York, he will pay later and will accept the client on Corfu Island, Inson created a new set of woodblock prints. To keep selling as a factor in traveling further throughout the journey of Inson must overcome many obstacles. For example, while traveling to Istanbul Turkey’s capital runs out of money, can’t sell photos So there is no money He had to live with a fish seller and ask for bread and grilled fish every day without paying.by deferment to the fish dealer that if able to sell the image, fish and bread will be paid. Soon Inson was starving Esso Company in Bangkok sent 200 US dollars to bid for Inson’s work in Bangkok, giving him money to pay for bread and grilled fish. About suffering because of lack of money during that trip Inson must always experience He told me that he once lacking money, without money to buy food, had to fast for two days without knowing where to make money from the picture, it can not be sold in the end, must use the walk in the community then lay down on the ground to ask for attention when he saw that somebody came to see it enough Therefore got up and opened to receive donations in hats. In this way he can survive. Aside from fasting sometimes without money Inson must sleep under the bridge. These things require a strong and witty mind to perform in order to survive. However, finally, Inson traveled to Rome. Around August 1963 (1973), it took time to travel from Bangkok to Rome. Italy for almost 2 years. Seems to be the first person in the world to ride a scooter from Thailand to Italy. By using a scooter produced in Italy and sent to sell in Thailand, is the first person to successfully drive back to its place of origin In Rome’s journey to Rome was like worshiping sacred things in the city of art. Inson desires to reach Geovenni,near Florence, home to Professor Silp Bhirasri. The visit to the birthplace of Professor Silp is Damrong Wong- upparaj, another student of Professor Silp Bhirasri. Traveled to join with Even if the professor had already left this world but to pay respect to the master at the front of the house would be a great joy for both of them while in Florence, Italy, Inson and Damrong displayed art at the Numero Gallery in Florence (1963). Their artistic performances were a tribute and remembrance of their teachers. After Damrong went back to Thailand. While Inson desires to travel to Paris France instead of Rome because at that time, Paris was like the capital city of modern art Rome is just a glorious past. For this reason, Paris is his dream destination. Inson traveled to Austria and exhibited solo works at the Gallerie Fuchs in Vienna, Austria (1957), then traveled to Switzerland and France by train because the scooters are no longer in a condition to travel long distances Go Inson gave to the Thai Embassy in Rome and traveled to various countries in Europe until finally Paris, France. While Inson traveled to Paris He almost didn’t have any money. But luck always stayed with Inson. He has worked in a Vietnamese restaurant as a waiter and promoted to Chef Resulting in food to eat and income. Then, after 6 months, he resigned to work that he was skilled at, namely painting, decorating, welding, advertising signs, Inson stayed in Paris until 1966. During that time Have the opportunity to study art at L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts De'coralifs until graduation. After that, Inson exhibited art works at the Gallery de Huat Pave, Paris (1966) and many other times which is quite successful. Giving him the capital to pursue his dreams in another hemisphere, New York, USA. Inson sets out from Paris, the center of 19th-century modern art. To New York City, the center of modern art in the 20th century. Inson traveled with an American woman named Barbara Wood (Brabala Wood) who studied art in France While he only has one dollar Many years in foreign countries, he knows that finding money is not difficult. Finally, Inson was able to build a studio in the East Village successfully He stayed in New York for about 6 years before moving to New Jercy Inson lives in the United States for about 7 years (1967-1974), living with Barbara.

 Inson and Barbara have a son, Inson Wood (now director of architecture and design, David Easton Incorpolation Graduated from Cornell University and a masters degree from Harvard University). Barbara lives with cancer while his son was 14 years old. Inson married another American woman named Laula Lipnin but parted ways when Inson returned to Thailand in 1974. While residing in New York Inson has held solo exhibitions and collaborations with other artists many times, such as solo performances at Lichfield Gallery Conn, and collaborated with Brazilian artists (1967), showing solo works at Eleven Gallery New York (1968), showing joint work with Phanom Suwananat (1914-present, an old friend at Silpakorn University studying at New York City at that time Currently residing in the United States of America) at De Mena Gallerly, New York City (1969).Living in New York City is not that easy but with being a life fighter and capable around the example Allowing to survive in every situation Starting from renovating the hair salon to a studio and showroom that he produced using the knowledge inherited from his father who is a silversmith. The knowledge gained from Silpakorn University and design, studying from Paris. By Inson, using scrap brass, copper to make earrings, necklaces, bracelets using plating methods into various colors doorknob, window hook and scrap materials used to make candlesticks, place  trees and other home decorations, and Inson’s studios are receiving attention, and there are enough customers to help Inson live without difficulty. The But with the hustling lifestyle of the big cities, he saw that living in a capitalist world characterized by competition and cost of living is difficult, stressful, leading to various diseases. Finally, he saw that If living in a drought-free world Would not be good for his sensitive mind Inson decided to return to his homeland. In order to return to their roots in the year 1974 after living abroad for more than ten years. The thing that Inson brought back was Life experience and art experience Without assets and money Inson said that “… When going empty-handed, coming back empty-handed …”.

อินสนธิ์ วงศ์สาม กับการเดินทางและการแสวงหาบนโลกใหม่

มหาวิทยาลัยศิลปกรเมื่อครึ่งศตวรรษที่ผ่านมา เหมือนโลกใบเล็กๆ ที่อยู่ในกรอบแคบๆ ไม่เปิดกว้างเหมือนปัจจุบัน เพราะการสื่อสารกับโลกภายนอกนั้นกระทำได้ยาก ข่าวสารที่รับมาจากยุโรปซึ่งถือเป็นโลกอารยะนั้น ส่วนมากเป็นสิ่งพิมพ์ โดยเฉพาะหนังสือเกี่ยวกับศิลปะเป็นสื่อที่ดีที่สุด นอกจากนั้นก็เป็นคำบอกเล่าของศาสตราจารย์ศิลป์ พีระศรีและศิษย์บางคนที่ผ่านการศึกษาจากประเทศอิตาลี ซึ่งเป็นเสมือนตักศิลาของศิลปะตะวันตก

การเป็นศิลปินที่ดีนั้นเชื่อว่าต้องมีองค์ประกอบพื้นฐานหลายประการ องค์ประกอบสำคัญประการหนึ่งที่ช่วยเสริมให้ศิลปินสามารถสร้างสรรค์ผลงานได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพคือ ประสบการณ์ ทั้งประสบการณ์ชีวิตและประสบการณ์ศิลปะ ศิลปินต้องสะสมประสบการณ์ทั้งสองประเภทไว้เป็นเชื้อเพลิงขับเคลื่อนการสร้างสรรค์ นอกจากนี้ ศิลปินจะต้องมี จินตนาการ ซึ่งเป็นในโลกแห่งนามธรรมที่ศิลปินสามารถแปรเป็นรูปธรรมด้วยกลวิธีทางศิลปะที่ตนถนัดและเชี่ยวชาญ ประการสุดท้ายศิลปินต้องมี ปัญญา ที่แยบยลพอที่จะมีประมวลประสบการณ์ จินตนาการให้เป็นศิลปกรรมออกมาได้อย่างมีคุณภาพ การแสวงหาประสบการณ์ชีวิตและประสบการณ์ทางศิลปะของอินสนธิ์ต่างไปจากคนทั่วไปที่อาจจะได้จากการอ่านหนังสือ เดินทางไปศึกษาต่อต่างประเทศ การเดินทางไปแสวงหาประสบการณ์จากโลกใหม่ของอินสนธิ์ต่างจากคนทั่วไปที่เดินทางโดยเครื่องบินหรือเรือโดยสารระหว่างประเทศ แต่อินสนธิ์เลือกเดินทางด้วยรถจักรยานยนต์ อินสนธิ์จึงเป็นผู้สร้างตำนานให้กับวงการศิลปะสมัยใหม่ของไทยจนเป็นเรื่องเล่าขานไม่รู้จบมาจนทุกวันนี้

ดินแดนที่ศิลปินไทยในอดีตใฝ่ฝันที่จะไปเยือนมากที่สุดคือ อิตาลี ฝรั่งเศส และประเทศต่างๆ ในยุโรป โดยเฉพาะอิตาลีนั้นถือว่ามีมนต์เสน่ห์มากที่สุด เพราะเป็นถิ่นกำเนิดอัจฉริยะศิลปินอย่าง มีเกลันเจโล บูโอนาร์โรตี (Michelangelo Buonarroti : 1475-1564) เลโอนาร์โด ดา วินชี (Leonardo da Vinci : 1452-1519) รวมถึงศาสตราจารย์ศิลป์ พีระศรี (Corrado Feroci : 1892-1962) อินสนธิ์มีความปรารถนาอย่างแรงกล้าที่จะเดินทางไปยังดินแดนแห่งศิลปะเหล่านั้นด้วยตนเอง แต่การเดินทางข้ามทวีปเมื่อกว่าครึ่งศตวรรษที่ผ่านมาไม่ง่ายเหมือนทุกวันนี้ ยิ่งยากลำบากมากขึ้นเมื่อต้องเดินทางไปตมถนนผ่านภูมิประเทศที่แตกต่างกัน ต้องพบกับผู้คนหลายชาติ หลายภาษา และสิ่งสำคัญต้องมี เงิน ึ่งเป็นปัจจัยที่สำคัญยิ่ง และความรู้เรื่องภาษาต่างประเทศ แต่ทั้งสองสิ่ง ไม่ได้เป็นอุปสรรค์สำหรับอินสนธิ์เพราะเขาคิดว่า เงินนั้นสามารถหาได้หากฝีมือและมีปัญญา ส่วนเรื่องภาษาก็เช่นเดียวกันเพราะ “ภาษา..(หมา) เรียนได้” ในเมื่อเขาเป็นคนทำไมจะเรียนรู้ภาษาของคนด้วยกันไม่ได้

อินสนธิ์ต้องการเดินทางไปยังโลกใหม่ที่เขาไม่เคยเห็นทางบก ซึ่งเป็นเรื่องยากมากสำหรับคนทั่วไป แต่อินสนธิ์มุ่งมั่นที่จะพิสูจน์ความสามารถว่า เขาทำได้ ดังนั้น อินสนธิ์จึงเริ่มวางแผนการเดินทางอย่างรอบคอบ โดยเสนอการเดินทางแก่บริษัท Berie Lucker ซึ่งเป็นผู้จำหน่ายรถสกูตเตอร์แลมเบรทตา บริษัทฯ ได้มอบรถสกูตเตอร์ให้ใช้ในการเดินทางคันหนึ่ง นอกจากนี้อินสนธิ์ยังขอทุนจากบริษัท เอสโซ จำกัด เพื่อขอการสนับสนุนที่น้ำมันในการเดินทางจำนวนหนึ่ง ซึ่งก็ได้รับการตอบสนองด้วยดีเช่นเดียวกัน ดังนั้นปัญหาเรื่อง ยานพาหนะในการเดินทางจึงหมดไป แต่ยังมีปัญหาเรื่องเงินค่าใช้จ่ายส่วนตัวระหว่างการเดินทาง ซึ่��อินสนธิ์แก้ปัญหาด้วยการนำผลงานศิลปะของเขามากกว่า ๒๐๐ ชิ้น เป็นผลงานบนกระดาษที่สามารถม้วนใส่กระบอกผูกติดกับรถได้สะดวก ผลงานที่อินสนธิ์นำไปได้แก่ ภาพพิมพ์ วาดเส้น และงาน สเก๊ตช์ ผลงานเหล่านี้อินสนธิ์นำไปจัดแสดงตามสถานที่ต่างๆ เพื่อจำหน่ายหาเงินมาเป็นค่าใช้จ่ายในการเดินทาง

จากกรุงนิวเดลลีอินสนธิ์เดินทางต่อไปยังเมืองละฮอร์(Lahore) การาจี อินสนธิ์จัดแสดงผลงานที่ The Arts Council of Pakistan นครการาจี ประเทศปากีสถาน (พ.ศ.  ๒๕๐๕) เมื่อเดินทางไปถึง กรุงเตหราน ประเทศอิหร่าน อินสนธิ์จัดแสดงผลงานร่วมกับปรีชา ณ บางน้อย (เพื่อนเก่าที่มหาวิทยาลัยศิลปากร) ที่ Gilgamesh Gallery, Teharan. (พ.ศ. ๒๕๗๕) เมื่อเดินทางไปถึงประเทศตุรกีอินสนธิ์จัดแสดงผลงานเดี่ยวที่ Consulate de France นครอิสตันบูล ประเทศตุรกี (พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๖) เมื่อเดินทางไปถึงกรุงเอเธนส์ ประเทศกรีช  อินสนธิ์จัดแสดงผลงานที่ Plaka Art House กรุงเอเธนส์ (พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๖) เฉพาะในประเทศกรีชซึ่งเป็นแหล่งอารยธรรมของโลกนั้น อินสนธิ์ประทับใจเป็นพิเศษ เขาอยู่ที่เอเธนส์ประมาณ ๒ เดือน เพื่อชื่นชมศิลปกรรมที่ยิ่งใหญ่ของกรีก จากนั้นเขาเดินทางไปอาศัยอยู่กับชาวประมงบนเกาะคอร์ฟู (Corfu) เป็นเวลานานถึง ๖ เดือน เพราะประทับใจธรรมชาติอันงดงามและความเป็นมิตรของชาวประมง ที่เกาะคอร์ฟูอินสนธิ์ได้พบกับศิลปินชาวอเมริกันคนหนึ่งชื่อ อเล็กซานเดอร์ เป็นชาวนิวยอร์ก และเป็นผู้ที่ซื้อผลงานภาพพิมพ์ของอินสนธิ์ไปจำนวนหนึ่ง โดยสัญญาว่าเมื่อเขากลับไปถึงนิวยอร์กแล้วจะจ่ายเงินให้ภายหลังและจะรับอินสนธิ์ไปอยู่ด้วย 

ที่เกาะคอร์ฟูอินสนธิ์ได้สร้างงานภาพพิมพ์แม่พิมพ์ไม้ชุดใหม่ขึ้นจำนวนหนึ่ง เพื่อเก็บไว้จำหน่ายหาเงินเป็นปัจจัยในการเดินทางต่อไป ตลอดการเดินทางของอินสนธิ์ต้องฝ่าฟันอุปสรรคนานัปการ เช่นขณะเดินทางไปถึงอิสตันบูล เมืองหลวงของตุรกีเงินหมดขายรูปไม่ได้ จึงไม่มีเงินติดตัว เขาต้องอาศัยอยู่กับพ่อค้าขายปลาและขอขนมปังกินกับปลาย่างทุกวันโดยไม่ต้องจ่ายเงิน โดยผัดผ่อนกับพ่อค้าปลาว่า หากขายรูปได้จะจ่ายค่าปลาและขนมปังให้ อินสนธิ์อดอยากอยู่ได้ไม่นาน บริษัทเอสโซ จำกัด ในกรุงเทพก็ส่งเงินค่าประมูลผลงานของอินสนธิ์ที่กรุงเทพไปให้ ๒๐๐ ดอลลาร์สหรัฐ ทำให้เขามีเงินจ่ายค่าขนมปังและปลาย่าง เรื่องความทุกข์ยากเพราะขาดเงินระหว่างการเดินทางนั้น อินสนธิ์ต้องประสบอยู่เสมอ เขาเล่าให้ฟังว่า ครั้งหนึ่งขาดเงินไม่มีเงินซื้ออาหารต้องอดอาหารถึงสองวัน โดยไม่รู้จะหาเงินมาจากไหนรูปก็ขายไม่ได้ในที่สุดต้องใช้วิธีเดินไปในชุมชน แล้วล้มตัวลงนอนดินเพื่อเรียกร้องความสนใจ เมื่อเห็นว่ามีคนมามุงดูพอสมควรแล้ว จึงลุกขึ้นเปิดหมวกรับบริจาค ด้วยวิธีนี้ทำให้เขามีชีวิตรอดไปได้ นอกจากเรื่องอดอาหารแล้ว บางครั้งไม่มีเงิน อินสนธิ์ต้องอาศัยนอนตามใต้สะพาน สิ่งเหล่านี้ต้องอาศัยจิตใจที่แข็งแกร่งและไหวพริบปฎิภานอย่างมากจึงจะเอาชีวิตรอดได้ อย่างไรก็ตาม ในที่สุดฮก็เดินทางไปถึงกรุงโรม ประมาณเดือนสิงหาคม พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๖ (ค.ศ. ๑๙๖๓) ใช้เวลาในการเดินทางจากกรุงเทพฯไปถึงกรุงโรม ประเทศอิตาลีเกือบ ๒ ปี ดูจะเป็นคนแรกของโลกที่ขี่รถสกูตเตอร์จากประเทศไทยไปถึงประเทศอิตาลี โดยใช้รถสกูตเตอร์ที่ผลิตในอิตาลีแล้วส่งมาขายที่เมืองไทยอินสนธิ์เป็นคนแรกที่ขับกลับไปถิ่นกำเนิดของมันได้สำเร็จ

การเดินทางไปกรุงโรมของอินสนธิ์เสมือนการไปนมัสการสิ่งศักดิ์สิทธิ์ในนครแห่งศิลปะอินสนธิ์ปรารถนาจะไปให้ถึงเมือง Geovenni ใกล้เมืองฟลอเรนซ์ถิ่นกำเนิดของศาสตราจารย์ศิลป์พีระศรี การไปเยือนบ้านเกิดของศาสตราจารย์ศิลป์นั้น มีดำรง วงศ์อุปราช (พ.ศ. ๒๔๗๙-๒๕๔๔) ศิษย์อีกคนหนึ่งของศาสตราจารย์ศิลป์ เดินทางไปสมทบด้วย แม้ศาสตราจารย์ได้จากโลกนี้ไปแล้วก็ตาม แต่การได้ไปคารวะอาจารย์ถึงหน้าบ้านคงเป็นความปลื้มปิติของคนทั้งสองอย่างยิ่ง ระหว่างที่อยู่ในเมืองฟลอเรนซ์อิตาลีอินสนธิ์และดำรงได้จัดแสดงผลงานศิลปะที่ Numero Gallery เมืองฟลอเรนซ์ (พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๖) การแสดงงานศิลปะของทั้งสองคนเป็นการแสดงคารวะและระลึกถึงอาจารย์ของเขาทั้งสอง หลังจากนั้นดำรงก็เดินทางกลับประเทศไทย ขณะที่อินสนธิ์ปรารถนาที่จะเดินทางไปกรุงปารีส ประเทศฝรั่งเศสแทนที่จะอยู่กรุงโรม เพราะช่วงเวลานั้นกรุงปารีสเป็นเสมือนนครหลวงของศิลปะสมัยใหม่ กรุงโรมเป็นเพียงอดีตที่เคยรุ่งโรจน์เท่านั้น ด้วยเหตุนี้ กรุงปารีสจึงเป็นจุดหมายปลายทางที่เขาใฝ่ฝัน อินสนธิ์เดินทางต่อไปยังประเทศออสเตรีย และได้จัดแสดงผลงานเดี่ยวที่ Gallerie Fuchs กรุงเวียนนา ประเทศออสเตรีย (พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๗) จากนั้นเดินทางต่อไปประเทศสวิสเซอร์แลนด์ และฝรั่งเศส ด้วยรถไฟ เพราะรถสกูตเตอร์ไม่อยู่ในสภาพที่จะใช้เดินทางไกลได้อีกต่อไป อินสนธิ์จึงมอบให้สถานเอกอัครราชทูตไทยในกรุงโรม แล้วเดินทางไปยังประเทศต่างๆ ในยุโรปจนภึงกรุงปารีสประเทศฝรั่งเศสในที่สุด ขณะที่อินสนธิ์เดินทางไปถึงกรุงปารีส เขาแทบไม่มีเงินติดตัวเลย แต่โชคมักเข้าข้างอินสนธิ์เสมอ เขาได้ทำงานในร้านอาหารเวียดนามเป็นเด็กเสิร์ฟ และได้เลื่อนตำแหน่งเป็นกุ๊ก ทำให้มีอาหารกินและมีรายได้ จากนั้น 6 เดือน เขาจึงลาออกไปทำงานที่ใช้ความสามารถตามที่เขาถนัดคือ งานทาสี ตกแต่ง เชื่อมโลหะ ทำป้ายโฆษณา อินสนธิ์พำนักในกรุงปารีสจนถึง พ.ศ. 2509 ระหว่างนั้นเข้ามีโอกาสได้เข้าศึกษาศิลปะเพิ่มเติมที่ L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts De’coralifs จนสำเร็จการศึกษา หลังจานั้นอินสนธิ์จัดแสดงผลงานศิลปกรรมที่ Galleries de Huat Pave กรุงปารีส (พ.ศ.2509) และที่อื่นๆอีกหลายครั้ง ซึ่งประสบความสำเร็จพอสมควร ทำให้เขามีทุนเดินทางตามความฝันในอีกซีกโลกหนึ่งคือ นิวยอร์ก สหรัฐอเมริกา

อินสนธิ์ ออกเดินทางจากกรุงปารีสซึ่งเป็นศูนย์กลางของศิลปะสมัยใหม่คริสต์ศตวรรษที่19 ไปสู่มหานครนิวยอร์กซึ่งเป็นศูนย์กลางของศิลปะสมัยใหม่คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 20 อินสนธิ์เดินทางไปพร้อมกับสตรีชาวอเมริกันชื่อ บาร์บาร่า วู๊ด(Barbara Wood) ที่ไปศึกษาศิลปะในฝรั่งเศส ขณะที่เขามีเงินเพียงหนึ่งดอลล่าร์เท่านั้น หลายปีในต่างแดนทำให้เขารู้ว่าการหาเงินไม่ใช่เรื่องยาก ในที่สุดอินสนธ์ก็สามารถสร้างสตูดิโอที่หมู่บ้านตะวันออก(East Village)ได้สำเร็จ เขาพำนักในนิวยอร์กประมาณ 6 ปี ก่อนจะย้ายไปอยู่ที่ มลรัฐนิวเจอร์ซี(New Jercy) อินสนธิ์ใช้ชีวิตอยู่ในสหรัฐอเมริกาประมาณ 7 ปี(พ.ศ.2510-2517) โดยใช้ชีวิตร่วมกับบาร์บาร่า อินสนธิ์และบราบาลามีบุตรชายด้วยกันหนึ่งคนชื่อ อินสนธ์ วู๊ด (ปัจจุบันเป็นผู้อำนวยการฝ่ายสถาปัตยกรรมและการออกแบบบริษัทDavid Easton Incorpolation สำเร็จการศึกษาจากมหาวิทยาลัยคอร์แนลและปริญญาโทจากมหาวิทยาลัยฮาวาร์ด) บราบาลาเสีชีวิตด้วยโรคมะเร็งขณะที่ลูกชายมีอายุได้ 14 ปี อินสนธิ์ได้แต่งงานกับสตรีชาวอเมริกันอีกคนหนึ่งชื่อลอร์ลา ลิพนิน(Laula Lipnin) แต่แยกทางกันเมื่ออินสนธ์เดินทางกลับประเทศไทยในปี 2517 ระหว่างที่พำนักในนิวยอร์ก อินสนธ์ได้จัดแสดงผลงานเดี่ยวและผลงานร่วมกับศิลปินอื่นๆหลา���ครั้ง เช่น การแสดงเดี่ยวที่ Lichfield Gallery Conn และแสดงผลงานร่วมกับศิลปินบราซิล (พ.ศ.2510) แสดงผลงานเดี่ยวที่ Eleven Gallery นครนิวยอร์ก (พ.ศ.2511) แสดงผลงานร่วมกับพนม สุวรรณนาถ (พ.ศ. 2457-ปัจจุบันเพื่อนเก่าที่มหาวิทยาลัยศิลปากรไปศึกษาอยู่ที่นครนิวยอร์กขณะนั้น ปัจจุบันพำนักอยู่ในประเทศสหัฐอเมริกา) ที่ De Mena Gallerly นครนิวยอร์ก(พ.ศ.2512) การใช้ชีวิตในนครนิวยอร์กไม่ง่ายนัก หากแต่ด้วยความเป็นนักสู้ชีวิตและมีความสามารถรอบตัวอย่างอินสนธ์ ทำให้เข้าเอาชีวิตรอดได้ทุกสถานการณ์ เริ่มตั้งแต่ปรับปรุงร้านทำผมให้เป็นสตูดิโอและห้องแสดงเครื่องประดับตกแต่งที่เขาผลิตขึ้นโดยใช้ความรู้ที่ได้รับสืบทอดมาจากบิดาที่เป็นช่างเงิน ความรู้ที่ได้มาจากมหาวิทยาลัยศิลปากรและการออกแบบที่ร่ำเรียนมาจากปารีส โดยอินสนธิ์นำเศษทองเหลือง ทองแดง มาทำเป็นต่างหู สร้อย กำไล โดยใช้วิธีชุบให้เป็นสีต่างๆ นำลุกบิดประตู ตะขอเกี่ยวประตูหน้าต่าง และเศษวัสดุเหลือใช้มาทำเป็นเชิงเทียน ที่วางต้นไม้ และของแต่งบ้านอื่นๆทำให้สตูดิโอของอินสนธิ์ได้รับความสนใและมีลูกค้ามาอุดหนุนพอที่จะช่วยให้อินสนธิ์มีชีวิตอยู่ได้โดยไม่ลำบากนัก แต่ด้วยวิถีชีวิตที่เร่งรีบบีบคั้นของเมืองใหญ่ทำให้เขาเห็นว่า การมีชีวิตอยู่ในโลกทุนนิยมที่เต้มไปด้วยการแข่งขันและค่าครองชีพสุงนั้นยากลำบาก เครียด จนนำไปสู่โรคภัยต่างๆจนในที่สุดเขาก้เห็นว่า หากอยู่ในโลกที่แล้งน้ำใจต่อไป คงไม่เป็นผลดีต่อจิตใจที่อ่อนไหวของเขา อินสนธิ์จึงตัดสินใจเดินทางกลับมาสู่มาตุภูมิ เพื่อคืนสู่รากเหง้าของตนในปี พ.ศ. 2517 หลังจากใช้ชีวิตในต่างแดนนานกว่าสิบปี สิ่งที่อินสนธ์นำติดตัวกลับมาคือ ประสบการณ์ชีวิตและประสบการณ์ศิลปะ โดยปราศจากทรัพย์สินและเงินทอง อินสนธิ์กล่าวไว้ว่า “…เมื่อไปมือเปล่า ก็กลับมาตัวเปล่า…”

BRENDA LEE - ALL ALONE AM I

[geekprincess1]

TEXT OF PRESIDENT JOHN KENNEDY'S RICE STADIUM MOON SPEECH

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

[battybat-boss]

Presidents & Politicians That Told The World Who Their 'Bosses' Really Are & What They Said

This is an article that originated from Collective Evolution in 2015. We are reposting it now to bring awareness to the 'Deep State' that currently to controls and has been global politics and major institutions for a long time. 

This is why the “deep state” is far from a “conspiracy theory.”

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays (“the father of public relations”), Propaganda, 1928 (note that Bernays' book, Propaganda, begins with the above quote).

If you told somebody 10 years ago that there existed some sort of secret group or “secret government” pulling the strings behind the scenes of government policy, international law, various global rules/regulations, and more, they would have called you a “conspiracy theorist.” Today things have changed, largely as a result of information leaked by Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and various other whistleblowers and activists in recent years. Their bravery has shed light on the world of secrecy that's been blinding the masses since its inception.

I've mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again, did you know that the U.S. Government classifies more than 500 million pages of documents each year? Did you know that the United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret? For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, but its existence was hidden until the mid 1960's. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, it was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years. Then we have the entire black budget world, a world dominated by secrecy that was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a couple of years ago. This deals with what are known as “Special Access Programs.”

It's not just statements that these “high-level” people are making. It's all of the proof and evidence that goes along with it.

***You can read more about the black budget HERE***

Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer

Former Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, is one of Canada's best known and most controversial politicians. He was first elected in 1949, and was the youngest cabinet minister appointed to Louis S. St. Laurent's government eight years later. He held senior posts in the governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau. He achieved the rank of senior master (Deputy Prime Minister), and went on to become the Canadian Defence Minister. He is best known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces, and in September 2005 he became the first person of cabinet rank in the G8 group of countries to state unequivocally that “UFOs are as real as the airplanes flying overhead.”

Here's what he had to say about the world of secrecy:

It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark. (source)

 The 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson 

Woodrow Wilson, an American academic, politician, and the 28th president of the United States, had this to say (among other things) in his book The New Freedom. The book also contains several other, similarly eye-opening statements:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.  (source)

The 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Here's what JFK had to say in one of his most famous speeches:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. … For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. (source)

John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of The United States

John C. Calhoun was the 7th Vice President of the United States, from 1825-1832. He was also a political theorist during the first half of the 19th century.

Here's what he had to say:

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. (source)

This quote reminds me of a great clip from the Thrive documentary by Foster Gamble, heir to the Proctor Gamble corporation. He was groomed for the establishment, but chose a different path.

New York City Mayor John F. Hylan

John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925. He has been famously quoted as saying:

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. (source)(source)

Senator William Jenner

A United States senator who said this to Congress in 1954:

Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means … We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state … It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government … This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable. (source)

Senator Daniel K. Inouye

Inouye was the highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history, serving the democratic party from 1963 until his death in 2012.

There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. (source)

34th U.S. President And 5 Star General, Dwight Eisenhower

In his farewell address to the nation, president Eisenhower offered these words of caution:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. … Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful message and goals. (source)

This speech is relevant to share here,  because the disastrous rise of misplaced power within the military industrial complex has indeed occurred…

Benjamin Disraeli, First British MP

The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. (Coningsby, Book 4, Chap. 15.) – Page 131

26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt

President Roosevelt revealed this information:

“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great staffs, both of the old parties have ganged aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them in martialling [sic] to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people, to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler government.” (source)

The list of quotes is very large and could fill a number of pages, so I will stop there.

[viewsource]

President John F. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University – Sept 12th, 1962

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

[tortuga-aak]

Details of the new B-21 Raider bomber that's a secret even to Congress

The Pentagon's Inspector General is going to investigate which details about the B-21 Raider should be classified.

It's been touted as capable of eluding any air-defense system in the world, but little about the bomber is publicly known.

Air Force leaders have said that it will be able to fly manned or unmanned missions and will have improved stealth technology.

Secrecy and classification parameters of Air Forces' new "in-early-development" next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber will be analyzed by the Pentagon's Inspector General to investigate just how many details, strategies and technological advances related to the emerging platform should be highly classified.

While Air Force developers say the long-range bomber is being engineered to have the endurance and next-generation stealth capability to elude the most advanced existing air defenses and attack anywhere in the world, if needed, very little about the bomber has been released by the Air Force or discussed in the open public. Perhaps that is the most intelligent and "threat-conscious" approach, some claim. Nonetheless, Congress directed the Inspector General to conduct and inquiry into this issue, asking if there is sufficient transparency and communication about the new weapon.

Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, told reporters May 15 that the service hopes to "balance program classification with the transparency we are shooting for to make sure we are not releasing too much or hindering too much information flow. They are analyzing what should be released."

US Air Force

The Air Force of course wants to maintain the openness needed to allow for Congressional oversight while ensuring potential adversaries do not learn information about advances in stealth technology and next-generation methods of eluding advanced air defenses. Such is often a challenging, yet necessary balance. Pentagon developers have often said there can be a fine line between there being value in releasing some information because it can function as a deterrent against potential adversaries who might not wish to confront advanced US military technologies in war.

At the same time, US commanders and Pentagon leaders of course seek to maintain the requisite measure of surprise in war, meaning it is also of great value for the US military to possess technological advantages not known by an enemy.

Furthermore, funding, technology development and procurement questions related to the new bomber are also subject to extensive Congressional review; the question is whether this should be limited to only certain select "cleared" committees — or be open to a wider audience.

While the Air Force has revealed its first sketch or artist rendering of what the B-21 might look like, there has been little to no public discussion about what some of its new technologies may include. Analysts, observers and many military experts have been left only to speculate about potential advances in stealth technology.

Bunch did, however, in a prior interview with Scout Warrior, clearly state that the new bomber will be able to hold any target at risk, anywhere in the world, at any time.

Bunch, and former Air Force Secretary Deborah James have at times made reference, in merely a general way, to plans to engineer a bomber able elude detection from even the best, most cutting-edge enemy air defenses.

"Our 5th generation global precision attack platform will give our country a networked sensor shooter capability enabling us to hold targets at risk anywhere in the world in a way that our adversaries have never seen," James said when revealing the image last year.

However, while Air Force developers say the emerging B-21 will introduce new stealth technologies better suited to elude cutting-edge air defenses, Russian media reports have recently claimed that stealth technology is useless against their air defenses. Russian built S-300 and S-400 air defenses are believed to be among the best in the world; in addition, The National Interest has reported that Russia is now working on an S-500 system able to destroy even stealthy targets at distances up to 125 miles.

Russian Ministry of Defense

Nevertheless, James and other service developers have added that the new bomber will be able to “play against the real threats.”

Although official details about the B-21 are, quite naturally, not available — some observers have pointed out that the early graphic rendering of the plane does not show exhaust pipes at all; this could mean that the Air Force has found advanced "IR suppressors" or new methods or releasing fumes or reducing the heat signature of the new stealth plane.

The Air Force has awarded a production contract to Northrop Grumman to engineer its new bomber. The next-generation stealth aircraft is intended to introduce new stealth technology and fly alongside - and ultimately replace - the service’s existing B-2 bomber. Beyond these kinds of general points, however, much like the Air Force, Northrop developers have said virtually nothing about the new platforms development.

“With LRS-B (B-21), I can take off from the continental United States and fly for a very long way. I don’t have to worry about getting permission to land at another base and worry about having somebody try to target the aircraft. It will provide a long-reach capability,” Lt. Gen. Bunch, Air Force Military Deputy for Acquisition, told Scout Warrior in an interview last year.

Prior to awarding the contract to Northrop, the Air Force worked closely with a number of defense companies as part of a classified research and technology phase. So far, the service has made a $1 billion technology investment in the bomber.

“We've set the requirements, and we’ve locked them down. We set those requirements (for the LRS-B) so that we could meet them to execute the mission with mature technologies,” Bunch said.

Wikimedia Commons

The service plans to field the new bomber by the mid-2020s. The Air Force plans to acquire as many as 80 to 100 new bombers for a price of roughly $550 million per plane in 2010 dollars, Air Force leaders have said.

For instance, lower-frequency surveillance radar allows enemy air defenses to know that an aircraft is in the vicinity, and higher-frequency engagement radar allows integrated air defenses to target a fast-moving aircraft. The concept with the new bomber is to engineer a next-generation stealth configuration able to evade both surveillance and engagement radar technologies.

The idea is to design a bomber able to fly, operate and strike anywhere in the world without an enemy even knowing an aircraft is there. This was the intention of the original B-2 bomber, which functioned in that capacity for many years, until technological advances in air defense made it harder for it to avoid detection completely.

The new aircraft is being engineered to evade increasingly sophisticated air defenses, which now use faster processors, digital networking and sensors to track even stealthy aircraft on a wider range of frequencies at longer ranges. These frequencies include UHF, VHF and X-band, among others.

Stealth technology

Stealth technology works by engineering an aircraft with external contours and heat signatures designed to elude detection from enemy radar systems. The absence of defined edges, noticeable heat emissions, weapons hanging on pylons or other easily detectable aircraft features, radar "pings" have trouble receiving a return electromagnetic signal allowing them to identify an approaching bomber.

Since the speed of light (electricity) is known, and the time of travel of electromagnetic signals can be determined as well, computer algorithms are then able to determine the precise distance of an enemy object. However, when it comes to stealth aircraft, the return signal may be either non-existence or of an entirely different character than that of an actual aircraft.

Northrop Grumman

At the same time, advanced in air defense technologies are also leading developers to look at stealth configurations as merely one arrow in the quiver of techniques which can be employed to elude enemy defenses, particularly in the case of future fighter aircraft. New stealthy aircraft will also likely use speed, long-range sensors and maneuverability as additional tactics intended to evade enemy air defenses — in addition to stealth because stealth configurations alone will increasingly be more challenged as technology continues to advance.

However, stealth technology is itself advancing — and it is being applied to the B-21, according to senior Air Force leaders who naturally did not wish to elaborate on the subject.

“As the threat evolves we will be able to evolve the airplane and we will still be able to hold any target at risk” Bunch said.

Although the new image of the B-21 does look somewhat like the existing B-2, Air Force officials maintain the new bomber’s stealth technology will far exceed the capabilities of the B-2.

At the same time, the B-2 is being upgraded with a new technology called Defensive Management System, a system which better enables the B-2 to know the location of enemy air defenses.

The B-21 will be built upon what the Air Force calls an “open systems architecture,” an engineering technique which designs the platform in a way that allows it to quickly integrate new technologies as they emerge.

“We’re building this with an open mission systems architecture. As technology advances and the threat changes, we can build upon the structure. I can take one component out and put another component in that addresses the threat. I have the ability to grow the platform,” Bunch explained.

Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Val Gempis

Air Force leaders have said the aircraft will likely be engineered to fly unmanned missions as well as manned missions.

The new aircraft will be designed to have global reach, in part by incorporating a large arsenal of long-range weapons. The B-21 is being engineered to carry existing weapons as well as nuclear bombs and emerging and future weapons, Air Force officials explained.

If its arsenal is anything like the B-2, it will like have an ability to drop a range of nuclear weapons, GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions and possibly even the new Air Force nuclear-armed cruise missile now in development called the LRSO — Long Range Stand Off weapon. It is also conceivable, although one does not want to speculate often, that the new bomber will one day be armed with yet-to-be seen weapons technology.

“We're going to have a system that will be able to evolve for the future. It will give national decision authorities a resource that they will be able to use if needed to hold any target that we need to prosecute at risk,” Bunch said.

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