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peachesofteal · 3 months

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Dad!John Price/female reader The Ocean anthology Note: The orcas mentioned in this series are based on a real population. Coolest things on this planet.

The strait is quiet.

Fog rolls across glass, painting grey sea smoke on top of clear, hyaline waters, mirror images cast from horizon to cliff. It’s a prehistoric stillness, the kind that’s sung low in the belly of this passage for millions of years, volcanos and glaciers all doing their worst, their best, to shape and carve this land to be as it’s known now.

Granitic wall looms above and below, plummeting into the earth beneath you until the water is too deep to see where it ends and hell begins, water and plants and light refracting into a teal green color. painting the pitch something most only see in magazines. It stretches tall too, forms the base of the islands, of all the land that flanks the strait, and you have to crane your neck to see where rock ends and soil begins.

It’s a marvel onto itself, but you’re not here for the geology.

Where are they?

Your paddle dips, pushes, forging a path through the quiet, preternatural stillness, wrists to ribs moving with hypnotic pace. Left, right, left, right. Dig. Dip. Your lungs burn, muscles ache, and still you paddle, up and down the coast, maintaining your determined pace in the face of exhaustion, forcing yourself past the brink of logic and reason, as always, in the pursuit of passion. You focus on your breath, on the cold, settling it in your bones, falling into the beautiful rhythm that is paddling, cold sea spray dripping down to your gloves.

It’s easy to get lost in the quiet of the water. The fog and the cliffs crowd inwards, silent watchers of a sacred place, protectors of a balance long disturbed and derailed everywhere else in this world. Your paddle strokes in perfect time, kayak cutting through the eerie mists and propelling you forward, focus fixed on the horizon, looking, listening. Waiting. You simmer in the silence, straining to hear the telltale blow of air, the signal of surfacing.

Nothing comes.

Where are they?

Salmon jump in front of the kayak, shattering the serenity in their wriggling flight.

The residents elude you. You say good morning to an otter, a sea lion the size of two men, some curious Dall’s porpoise, but are left bereaved at the noticeable absence of the pods.

It’s the first day. It’s okay, it’s only the first day.

The alarm on your watch goes off, just as the lighthouse, affectionately named Little Rock, looms ahead, faded and chipped green paint calling you back to the cove, a glacial breeze whipping under your goretex and neoprene, cutting to the quick, right down to flesh and bone.

Time’s up.

“Did you see them?!” Aly bounces on her toes at the edge of the dock, running alongside the pace of your paddling.

“No.” Your tone is light, but you don’t hide the disappointment, and she smiles sadly, sympathetically. What a smart kid.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you coming in now?” You nod, motioning to the beach, and she skips ahead, running down the steps onto where millions of little pearled rocks give way under her feet, echoing the same as you run the fiberglass bottom of your kayak aground, popping your legs out on either side.

“I know you wanted to see them.” Her eyes are wide and a little fearful. You frown.

“I’ve got all year, I’ll see them. Don’t worry.” The assurance is tepid, but present, and she shrugs.

“You should ask my dad. He knows where they are a lot.”

“Oh yeah?” You could try. She nods, excited, shiny dark braids gleaming in the mid-morning sun. You glance around, looking for an adult, or someone who accompanied here down here, but there’s no one, and you chew on it, pulling your boat higher up than the tide will reach today. “Shouldn’t you like, be in school or something?”

“I do school online.” She rolls her eyes, gap tooth grin stretched across her face. “It’s for gifted kids but I always finish early.”

“Does your dad know you’re running around this place unsupervised?” She shakes her head, and then sobers, glancing towards the woods.

“I’m not unsupervised.” What? You look the same direction, but all you see is the shadow of the forest, darkness so thick you’re not sure you could see your way in broad daylight.

A chill traces your spine, ice cold and cautious, slow in its discovery, pressing against your skin like it’s moving under your clothes. You gasp, whirling and-

There’s nothing. Only the lapping of the tide, the gentle waves that rake through the shore. Your beached boat. Remnants of the morning’s mists.

Must’ve been the wind.

The Ranger’s daughter giggles. You raise an eyebrow, and then motion up the hill.

“Want to head back with me then?”

“Aly!” The Ranger’s voice reaches you, even a hundred meters away. She sprints ahead of you, and your stomach twists, iced over fear spreading through your veins.

He’s going to freak. He already hates you and now he’s going to think you kidnapped his kid or something.

“Where have you been?”

“Down at the water.” She kicks a rock, beaming. One of his too wide palms sweeps over her forehead, moustache and lips kicking to the side with a sigh.

“Not supposed to be down there on your own, remember?”

“I wasn’t.” She stands tall with her insistence, and proudly points at you. “I was with her.”

John straightens. He stares at you with a scrutiny that you’ve never felt, an intense pressure building behind your eyes, in your thighs, incinerating all the muscle in your body until you’re sure to explode.

The silence is painful, and Aly hops from one foot to another.

“You find ‘em?” There’s no softness in his eyes for you, only a hard edge, hand coming to rest on his daughter’s shoulder.

“No.” You think he’ll turn away then, drift away in the wake of this encounter, but he holds you steady there, caught between him and the earth, crushing weights on either side. It’s unnerving, this stranger, this Ranger, a moon to a tide, and you swallow when he finally speaks, it’s with that rich timbre, the accent that twists you up in boundless knots.

“They make you earn it.”

“You should sleep with your window open.” Aly pipes up, and John’s mouth twitches.

“You can hear them in the cove, in the middle of the night.” He explains. “They hunt and play in the shallow off the beach pretty often. Though it’s too cold to be sleeping with your window open.” The last piece is serious, like a warning, but you’re already vibrating with anticipation, attention fixed through the trees, like you can see down the hill to the harbor.

When you turn back, John is watching you. Hard muscle and tone turned dulcet, there’s less shadow in his eyes, replaced by something wild, willful.

There for a second. Gone in the next.

“Well I’ve… work to do.” Paltry effort. It sticks in your mouth the way this man has stuck to your mind, lurking and wandering, leaving you wondering what he's doing on the other side of your bedroom wall, your living room. Wondering what he’s like, what he’s really like, under the clipped and caustic words, the churlish airs swirling around him whenever he lays eyes on you. He’s the definition of surly, and the reluctance to interact with you stings, even though you shove it down. Secrets lay beneath his ribs, you have no doubt, protected by his thick coat and wide frame, a mass of tenured muscle and strength visible under the heaviest wool.

He nods.

You turn your back.

"Leave a note, when you're goin' out." He's got Aly in hand, halfway up his side of the porch, breath fogging in the space between your bodies. "Shouldn't be out alone, without anyone knowing, alright?"

Leave a note.

"Alright."

#more vibes and not much else #John price #john price x reader #the ocean anthology

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louthestarspeaker · 18 days

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[ID: A collection of six images of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory promo material. The images are in the style of a magazine, with a cover and interviews from each of the Nublar Six, minus Brooklynn.

The cover has all of the Nublar Six lined up on the docks in Costa Rica, just after they made it back to the mainland. Yaz and Sammy are holding hands, Kenji has a hand on Brooklynn's shoulder. All the kids are smiling nicely, with the exception of Darius whose smile is kind of awkward and looks a little uncomfortable on camera. The title of the magazine, The Dino Times, is splashed across the top of the page. Just below it is the subtitle "Who are the Nublar Six?". Below the photo of the campers is text that reads, "Meet the miraculous survivors of the Jurassic World catastrophe in this exclusive, celebrating the anniversary of their return."

Each of the interviews has a picture of each of the Nublar Six as a young adult, their name printed large, and a little logo for The Dino Times in the corner. A transcript of the text of each interview reads as folllows:

Darius: Dino Nerd Turned Hero

Darius Bowman never would've expected a shy, nerdy kid from Oakland could become the leader of the Nublar survivors.

"Back at Camp Cretaceous I had to learn to trust myself and my friends to make it through. It was a terrifying experience, but what they were doing to those dinosaurs at that facility just wasn't right. Somebody had to do something."

Since his return, Bowman has traveled all over the country giving talks about dinosaur conservation, and has worked with the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife.

Ben: Brave Soul Against All Odds

Ben Pincus had perhaps the most dramatic metamorphosis as a result of his experiences at Nublar.

"I was terrified of pretty much everything," he said. "Germs. The dark. Non-organic snacks. And then all of a sudden we were up against actual dinosaurs."

Luckily, Pincus found an unlikely ally in a baby Ankylosaurus he named Bumpy.

"Bumpy is my best friend. She helped me face my fears and see how much I had to contribute to the group."

We'll have to see if the campus office can make an exception for Bumpy as Ben gets ready for college in the fall.

Sammy: Cattle Rancher, Dino Wrangler

Sammy Gutierrez lived with her parents on a Texas ranch before Camp Cretaceous. Ever the optimist she remarked, "At least I was already used to big animals before that whole fiasco! There;s really not much difference between a longhorn and a Triceratops if you think about it."

Back at home, Gutierrez maintained that positive attitude by staying busy.

"I have my own ranch, now. And my girlfriend, Yaz. And tons of pies to bake! We don't have time to keep worrying about all that running for our lives stuff!"

Yaz: A Track Star and Her Team

Yasmina Fadoula went from national track star to Nublar Six survivor in the span of months, and the aftermath hit her particularly hard.

"I wasn't used to feeling helpless. Before, I would just push through to the finish line no matter what. Nublar made me realize you can't win all your races alone."

She credits her relationship with fellow survivor Sammy Gutierrez as a major source of support.

"I've been going through a lot of anxiety since coming back, and Sammy's been there constantly. I want to show her I can be the strong person she sees in me."

Kenji: Cool Kid Finds New Family

Kenji Kon has declined to comment on his father's incarceration.

"All that matters is my new family. They're the ones who always had my back."

The Nublar Six have been instrumental in Kenji's return to normal life, from his relationship with Brooklynn, to his best friend Darius.

"All I wanna do is chill, you know? I've moved out somewhere peaceful. Started my climbing school. All is good in Casa de Kenji."

End Transcript. The page of Kenji's interview has a ragged edge, like the page next to it has been torn out. There is no interview for Brooklynn. End ID]

#jurassic world chaos theory #jwct #jwct spoilers #image described #thought it'd be good to have a version of the post with image descriptions #was just gonna add the ID to a reblog of someone else's post but i thought it should go in the main tag :)

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dynoguard · 2 years

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The Dinosovians are Here to Stay, But Who Are They?

B.K. McNair, Eon Magazine

It is June. I’m in a medium-sized dance studio in uptown Chicago. I’m here to meet the past, face-to-face, but I’ve forgotten my stepladder. The past’s ambassador is seven foot seven inches tall, has a foot long muzzle filled with razor-sharp teeth, and equally sharp talons.

She’s also a person. This is my first time meeting a Dinosovian. I am unsure of the etiquette,but thankfully one of us has done their research. She pushes her hand into mine and shakes it. Her name is Deinah Keenfoot. It is a translation, she tells me. Her real name would take a piccolo to recreate.

We sit down to talk.

Excerpts from B.K. McNair’s profile of Dinosovian civilian life are available (top to bottom, left to right): Each with a lore snippet.

“A Change of Career” - Dr. Drake Sharpdome, Paleontologist (68).

“Leading Man” - Gerry Nuthetes, Actor (38).

“Do you have an appointment?“ - Deinah Azureback, Office Manger (43)

“ Ancient Beats “ - Quilliam "3 Large" Trimbo, Musician (45).

“ What is coffee, Anyway? “ - Crez Paraso, Barista (28).

“ Keep Austin Prehistoric” - Apatricia Rootminder, Builder (83).

“ Exiled to Paradise” - Nip Megal, 'Tech Bro' (56).

“ A Respectable Carnivore “ - Ty Y'Scute, “Importer” (36).

“Plumage and Claws “ - Deinah Keenfoot, Dancer (48).

#dynoguard #dinosaurs #dinosaur #dinosovian #unreality #ai assisted artwork #midjourney edit #anthroart #triceratops #apatosaurus #parasaurolophus #scalie #deinonychus #velociraptor #humanoid animals #worldbuilding #questionably canon

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vintagegeekculture · 2 years

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One “conspiracy theory” I find very likely, and under-researched, is the idea that the search for the Abominable Snowman and Yeti in the Himalayas was actually a cover for Western intelligence operations in Central Asia.

Colin Dickey is the best known proponent of this in his cultural histories. The high point of all of this was the 1950s-60s, when everyone was searching for the Abominable Snowman, numerous movies were made on the subject, and most notably of all, Time Magazine put out an expedition to find the Abominable Snowman run by Tom Slick and Colin Byrne. Both Byrne and Slick have numerous CIA connections and on occasion, operated as intelligence agents openly. For example, Colin Byrne – literally the leader of the Life magazine Snowman expedition – was a spearhead in the 1959 CIA plan to extract the 14th Dalai Lama from Tibet to India.

As for the reason for all this, you have to remember that going back to the time of Rudyard Kipling and Mark Chapman, the whole logic behind the “Great Game” of spies between Britain and Russia in the Northern India and Afghanistan….if “logic” is really the right word to use in this instance, to refer to the jittery thinking of paranoid empires….is that sea-based powers like Britain was (and like the US is) cannot really counter land powers with large land routes in Central Asia, like Russia and China. China’s Central Asian autonomous regions, for instance, despite being landlocked, inaccessible and utterly unassailable, were always seen by Western intelligence as the weakest part of the Chinese empire and the easiest to peel off. Especially since they were often abandoned by the Central government to Warlord rule (notably, Western China was mainly ruled by the Ma Clan of Muslim Chinese Warlords in the Republican era). Not to mention the fact the region was a war hotspot, with numerous border conflicts of the 1950s that the nascent People’s Republic fought against India and Russia, which are often not well reported or even known in the West. In Kissinger’s book, he remembers being asked by the Soviets, as a kind of what-if, what the US would do if the Soviets were to bomb the Chinese atomic production facilities at Lop Nor (Kissinger dissuaded them).

I do remember reading an absolutely jaw dropping detail that I haven’t been able to confirm anywhere else in a history of the Russian war in Afghanistan: during the 1980s, most Soviet/Afghan war intelligence was relayed by a US intelligence base and listening post in Xinjiang. Boy, I bet the CIA still wishes they had that!

It is also true that the search for prehistoric wild men in Central Asia, despite being mostly based on dubious tall tales from oxygen deprived mountain climbers, was related to “scientific racism.” Specifically, the outdated scientific belief that different human physical/racial types evolved independently from Homo Erectus outside of Africa, have completely different intermediate lineages, and are borderline separate species. Now, if you were to find semi-humans in Asia walking erect and more like men than apes, it would absolutely clinch the idea of the independent evolution of different human types, who had different intermediate stages. Hence, Carelton S. Coon, the founder of scientific racism in the US who argued different races were separate species, was actually invited to the Byrne/Slick expedition of 1954. Coon, despite being the literal President of the American Association of Anthropologists, always had a chapter in all of his books arguing for the existence of prehistoric wild men like Bigfoot and the Yeti.

To be clear, all of this does not mean that there is no Yeti, however, the search for it in the West is intimately intertwined with intelligence services that use it as a cover, and racists who are hyper invested in them as it proves their scientifically discredited pet theories. It goes to show that the search for the Yeti is only the visible iceberg tip breaking the surface of a larger story, one of empires and politics in Central Asia.

#yeti #cryptids #abominable snowman #tibet #china

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xxtc-96xx · 1 year

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Since Scarlet and Violet have now established that time machines are a thing, what do you think a past and future versions of Mew and the Mewtwos would look like? Or prehistoric and iron as the case may be.

Granted a prehistoric version of Mewtwo would likely not exist, being a product of science after all, but who cares about logic.

Honestly the paradox pokemon might not exist if it’s speculated they’re ripped straight from sci fi magazines you find in the school library, maybe it’s not a Time Machine and that’s why humans can’t return once they go through it but only “Pokémon” can

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thetamehistorian · 8 months

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I recently rediscovered the joy of Primeval and it's derailed all of my other writing plans so enjoy this snippet I guess!

Portsmouth, UK

Captain Hilary Becker had survived SAS selection, two tours of duty – which had included four miserable months in the Afghan desert with insurgents taking pot shots at him on the regular – and growing up as the only boy in a household with three older sisters.

That was to say that he categorically refused to let an overgrown prehistoric chicken become the reason his mother received a knock on the door from a sympathetic officer. With the butt of his EMD rifle nestled firmly in his shoulder he let off another burst and finally hit the sodding thing. It had been getting a little too close and bite-y for comfort for a moment there.

“Sitrep Captain?” Evan, his second and frequent bane of his life asked over the comms, presumably in the hopes that she could get off babysitting the scientist duty and have a piece of the action.

Becker didn’t so much nudge the stunned dinosaur back through the anomaly as shove it home with extreme prejudice. Look, what Abby didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “Fan-fucking-tastic, Lieutenant.”

“SNAFU, copy that sir.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Becker could hear the grin in Evan’s voice. There were days he was glad that Special Forces hadn’t recruited female officers back when he’d been in training. Evan was exactly the kind of feral that would have thrived in that environment, which probably explained how she’d ended up in his unit, thinking about it. It took a certain type of person to last at the ARC.

Becker tried not to contemplate what that must say about him.

Heaving himself up, EMD still trained on the anomaly, he held back at grunt as the scar tissue on his side twinged at the movement. “ETA on Temple?”

“Two minutes,” came the reply, echoed a second later by the man himself.

Finally, some good news. After the fiasco with the first, very broken, locking mechanism, and then the creature incursion, Becker could do with some haste.

“What are these little buggers anyway?” he asked, having set up in a better position to snipe any others that got ideas about coming through.

“Eoraptors,” Temple informed him, slightly out of breath. Over the sound of the comms, Becker could hear approaching footsteps. “Late Triassic.”

“Small, fast, lots of teeth, omnivores,” Matt added helpfully from somewhere halfway across the country.

Two anomalies opening at once wasn’t exactly common, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened during his time at the ARC. Becker hoped they were having more luck corralling the herd of peaceful giants back through their anomaly his team were with the overgrown chickens. Sorry – Eoraptors.

With a scuff of boots on the floor, Connor Temple burst into the room, set down the new locking mechanism and activated it with a speed that would have the instructors at Sandhurst grudgingly impressed. This time, blessedly, the anomaly behaved itself and shrunk down to a closed state. Connor let out a sigh of relief. Becker did too, but he was more subtle about it.

Then the mad genius that Becker had the misfortune to call his colleague looked at him, grinned in a mildly manic way that could have been either the result of too little sleep, or humour, or both, and said, “So, James, eh?”

Despite his attempt to hide it, Becker did not miss the way Connor’s eyes flicked down to the ID plate on his EMD, the one that matched the dog tags round his neck which clearly proclaimed him to be one Captain H J Becker.

He was well aware of the ongoing debate at the ARC regarding what those initials stood for and was just glad that Connor hadn’t overheard the first part of the conversation.

There was a reason he went by his surname, after all.

Banging his head against the wall, Becker looked up toward the ceiling of the powder magazine – grade II* listed Hils, Maddy has enthused upon their arrival, one of the best examples of a bastion trace fort in the country - and once again cursed the universe for opening an anomaly at his favourite sister’s place of work.

SNAFU - "Situation normal: all fucked up" or 'this sucks, but that's the normal state of affairs'.

#primeval #fanfiction #my writing #captain becker #connor temple #matt anderson #ocs

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nyaagolor · 9 months

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Hello! I have a sv question for you!

(Apologies if you have already answered something similar)

Turo/Sada’s time travel machine came up in conversation between me and a friend, and I mentioned out loud the ‘imagination machine’ theory, and the more we talked about it the more it made sense!

The theory is that rather than being a true link to the past/future, the machine only leads to what the operator wants it to lead to. This would explain why sada and turo’s versions of the machine are visually the same, why all the past/future pokemon have very similar traits (past pokemon all being extra spiky/dinosaur looking and future pokemon all having the same chrome & jointed look), and why there is no mention of hisui/hisuian pokemon in Sada’s research. It also explains why the pokemon seem to fit very well into the environment (too well, but the paradox pokemon aren’t on the bad end of that) and why all versions of the pokemon are found in a wacky occult magazine.

Please keep in mind we haven’t seen masters or dlc content, but if anything in there supports/denies the theory please do not hesitate to share!!

Also I apologise for the length of this ask, but Thankyou for reading!!!

No worries abt the length! Half my posts are under a readmore bc I'm longwinded so I get it haha. Anyway, totally agreed, there is no way in hell it's an actual time machine

Like you said, the time machines function identically and seem to have pokemon based on modern fictional interpretations rather than actual prehistoric pokemon. They resemble scifi costumes or children's dinosaur drawings more than actual genuine creatures, and I think that goofiness is supposed to be a clue that these are made from the professor's ideas of paradise rather than a genuine time machine

Not only that, but the whole game seems very centered around wishes moreso than time. It does have a lot of components of legacy, and you do get dialogue about "the future of Paldea" and whatnot, but most of the dialogue seems focused around treasure, wishes, and wants rather than time. It also makes more sense when you think about Terapagos-- it seems way more like a wish pokemon than a time pokemon, and since the tera crystals are powering the time machine anyway, I would hazard a guess that the entire thing is a wish granting machine. I also think that would elevate the themes of the professor's storyline-- hunting for treasure and wishes gone wrong, etc etc.

Anyway tldr I'm with you, I don't think it's a time machine I think it's a wish machine. DLC might contradict this so we'll see! Masters can suck it tho that game means nothing to me

#mod vex #ask #headcanons

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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 10 months

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"..."SHARK-TOOTHED LIZARD," AN ALLOSAURID THEROPOD FROM MID-CRETACEOUS NORTH AFRICA."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the original painting and published cover art to "Prehistoric Times" Magazine #86 (Summer 2008), artwork by William Stout, featuring a Carcharodontosaurus “shark-toothed lizard”, an allosaurid theropod from mid-Cretaceous North Africa.

EXTRA INFO: Carcharodontosaurus is a representative of a family of dinosaurs that may well turn out to be the largest meat-eating dinosaurs of all.

Resolution at 876x1157 & 810x1048.

Sources: www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/william-stout & https://blog.everythingdinosaur.com/blog/_archives/2008/07/21/3803292.html.

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uvmagazine · 1 year

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Asbury Park High School Students Artwork Published in Prehistoric Times Magazine!

Asbury Park High students were able to show their artistic talents by getting their work published in Prehistoric Times Magazine.

View On WordPress

#Asbury Park #Asbury Park High School #Ghana Session #Monmouth County #Prehistoric Times Magazine

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marnanel · 5 months

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I wrote this fifteen years ago and just found it again

And I wake from strange dreams, yellow light blinds my eyes, tearing the sleep away from my flesh. I stagger naked down the stairs, feeling my way blind into the kitchen, trying to catch the slippery tail of a dream. Coffee filter, coffee, all by touch, pulling out the glass jug, filling it with water. As I turn on the tap, the leaf brushes my skin.

My head clears like dye spreading through water. I look down at the sink, at the plant in the sink. Leaves upon leaves wrapped in a circle like a half-unfolded tortilla wrap, with a gap in the centre to take its water. This plant, I remember, is a cousin of the Venus flytrap; it's a holdover from prehistoric times, like cockroaches and alligators. I put down the jug and step back in alarm. Now I remember my dream.

I dreamed I was in a garden… we were in a garden, I was plural. High hedges surrounded and delimited the garden; the old yew and privet made the only break, sudden and vertical, between neatly-trimmed lawns and skim-milk sky. Not quite in the middle, but close to the edge, grew the plant, this plant, but closed up and ten feet tall.

Often, in my dream-garden, the I-which-was-us had to pass through from one side to the other. Each time we edged nervously around the fecund plant-being there, for to touch its leaves was sudden blinding death. And then on the appointed day it opened, it opened as we were passing, and for an eternity we held our backs to the hedge, white-eyed and hardly daring to breathe, inching past with the petals of death before us.

This plant's smell— how did I not notice that before? Strangely primaeval… of rotting fruit and torn flesh. People, animals, for thousands of millions of years have smelled the smell I'm smelling now. I rub my eyes, and the dancing colours before them blend with the smell before my nose.

As an adult, I read an article in a magazine once about Japanese knotweed; it reminded me of my childhood. Japanese knotweed was introduced to England by a nobleman botanist, who failed to see the importance of a plant's ecosystem in regulating its life. Away from all natural predators, the knotweed grew unstoppably, so fast you could almost hear it growing.

There was a churchyard where the knotweed took hold— a few seeds blown in by the wind, perhaps, or dropped by the birds. Within days, the natural mosses and grasses were strangled; within weeks, the tombstones were buried beneath gently-nodding heart-shaped leaves and bright flowers. The occupants were buried: the names on the stones had become unreadable.

Some people told of getting knotweed in their gardens and putting down weedkiller to no avail; the only recourse was to send all the soil, down to the bedrock, away in a van to a laboratory to have it cleaned. But the owners of the garden merely hoed and raked and put down more weedkiller, and went up to bed in hope that the knotweed was dead. Next morning they came downstairs to see a tendril curling out from behind the radiator… They left the house.

I have seen a nettle break through a concrete floor to breathe the air above. They say that in ancient times, prisoners would be executed by tying them down onto a soil bed where bamboo had been planted. Within a few days, the bamboo had broken through skin and flesh and bone out to the other side; the prisoner died in the bamboo's bid for life.

I read that article as an adult, but the story reminded me of my ancient fear of bindweed, jack-by-the-hedge and all other inscrutable plants that infest without mercy and without empathy in the world. They began to grow in the childhood places I played; I drew back, chilled. The heart-leaves popped up again and again; soon they grew tall and burst out in white flower: defiant; uncaring.

Stuck in the middle, an afterthought, is the great pink flower of the plant— tarty, gaudy, unpolished as a prehistoric flower ought to be; it probably accounts for the smell, too. The magenta is close enough to the dream-plant's cardinal red flower to re-form the connection in my mind. As I look at the plant, the dream-plant wraps itself around it and becomes one with it.

I manoeuvre carefully around the edge of the plant, without touching it, to fill the jug with water, lest the leaves are also leaves of blinding death. At another time I might mock at this, but my mind is still sleeping and ideas close to my heart are the most plausible: suddenly my mind has passed in a world where plants like this spontaneously grow like mould in the kitchen.

Perhaps there will be one growing out of my desk, in my car, out of my computer's keyboard, budding slowly with a quiet repeated cracking noise in the silence. I wonder what will happen after it touches me, after the plant-death.

I hear a noise.

I turn around.

#cw phobias #plants

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hplovecraftmuseum · 10 months

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Many of Lovecraft's tales contain elements that give a new and more scientifically plausible perspective to standard occult themes. The Shadow Out Of Time was a tale many critics have sited as pure 'Science Fiction'. It was one of Lovecraft's last fiction writing efforts and was highly thought of by writers like L. Sprague deCamp and Colin Wilson who otherwise did not care for much of his work. In fact Colin Wilson's story, The Mind Parasites was highly influenced by HPL's story. The Shadow Out Of Time appeared in the pulp magazine ASTOUNDING STORIES not long before HPL's death. The tale concerns a college professor who seems to have been suddenly overtaken by a new and alien personality. In fact his mind has been transferred to the body of a monstrous alien life form from the prehistoric past of planet earth. The alien creature's consciousness is at the same time living in the body of the professor. Eventually they switch back. The traditional occult theme of 'demon possession' is masterfully given a modern upgrade and a terrifying origin in this Lovecraft tale. (Exhibit 357)

#lovecraft #the shadow out of time #demon possession #colin wilson

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extremelyputridfishbreath · 10 months

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I think she removed her blog due to club penguin staff bad mouthing her for being "rude". Honestly she's right about alot of awful changes, and how greedy staff got with ignoring the playerbase, and only focused on disney advertisements. It felt like a total disconnect between player and club penguin team, where there was a huge partnership between the audience and people working on the game now gone because we had to have multiple advertisements and multiple frozen parties instead of story or orginal.

Really wish Club penguin island had a system like Sky's. Making EVERYTHING membership only was wild.

It also sucks how people who worked on the game were like "yeah this advertisement party was so much fun because I enjoy movie/show" while disney did nothing but use the game as a billboard for a very long while.

I am actually really mad that there was no show or movie, and how early toys or merch became so limited, but disney kept asking the team to do advertising parties constantly.

I understood not many people like her, while yeah rude at times, she was right about alot of unnecessary or rather weird changes to the game itself. Also she kept alot of media that's now lost forever unless someone kept everything from her blog.

I kinda find it mean that someone at the staff bad mouthed her when all she did was make a blog that gathered more players, and was loved something so much to archive it because it is indeed- important to internet history and how the internet changed with technology and the history of human interaction. Now it's gone.

I'm not saying that's why she deleted her blog, but you wanna place bets? I'd be heartbroken if someone at club penguin called me annoying or so on. I do not remember who said stuff about her, but I do remember seeing it.

But she had every right to be as critical when disney swept the rug out from under them and used the site as a massive billboard after blackout. We could've had more story events, more fun events with sensei, all of it wasted on disney stuff while merchandise was no longer made, and a magazine limited to uk only. Yeah, I know she was a bit harsh at times but I most certainly do not blame her one bit. Disney did help, but they did alot of harm too. It litterally drove players away.

to be fair to staff, considering sara has openly accused staff of intentionally ruining the game several times and even directly "attacked" (i say it in quotes because she didn't like do anything super bad, but she still. went after him) spike hike during the star wars takeover...i can't exactly not see why staff became wary of her after a point. (examples being here, here, here, and here). i mean sure other than directly naming and shaming spike hike these are small complaints, but sara's blog as a whole became increasingly negative even towards non takeovers like the future party (which to be fair she doesn't HAVE to like every party), so when you take that and the whole. "SPIKE HIKE IS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR GAME GUYS" thing into consideration...i can kind of see why staff started questioning her intentions since there's a world of difference between being called lazy for bugs and going after specific staff members.

granted, sara was probably like a kid or teenager when she ran her blog. i also don't know her or if her opinions changed in the last seven years since her final update! so i'm not mad at her for not understanding how much staff can reasonably do when disney goes "you're doing a takeover/making new items for our latest cashcow", or how easy it actually would be to fix certain bugs on an increasingly older flash game. i also really, REALLY hated takeovers when they were introduced and literally quit during the prehistoric party as a kid, so it's not like her opinion about them, wasn't too uncommon either (even if i've personally come around to most of the takeovers with a few exceptions now).

also like, to be fair to staff it's not exactly like they could say anything besides "elsa is SO fun and she's SO fitting to randomly be in the game :) with no consquences like herbert going after her for making the island colder! go have fun with olaf and anna!! just fun frozen FUN that fits the game totally!!!!!!!!!!" when it's disney we're talking about here. disney, who killed the owl house and acted like it was sad about it later, disney who pointlessly privated club penguins entire twitter account (making it's tweets lost to anyone who's not actively still following it, and nuked it's entire english youtube channel to the point where both her youtube channel and the archive channel made for it were two of the main places to find videos that would've potentially been lost forever- and that's not getting into the rest of the countries who had youtube channels for club penguin who now potentially lost videos of the game forever too!

i'm not saying disney would like, straight up kill the game or fire staff for going "hey, we would rather do original content instead of making items for the good dinosaur"...but i am saying given disney's track record of shutting even beloved games down that actively had passionate staff behind it like TTO? when TTO not only still had fans but also a prototype sequel they surely could've built upon if the original just had to go? yeaaaaah i'm never gonna blame staff for the disney related direction the game went. undoubtedly, even though some staff are fans of starwars, or monsters inc, or what have you, i seriously doubt it was only them pushing for takeovers, if any of them were their idea at all.

i haven't played sky so i can't say much, but not even the membership dilemma was exclusive to club penguin. webkinz went from being pay to play to free to play...which involved literally pulling the rug under users who had bought dozens of pets (a necessity to even keep your account from 'expiring', so one could argue webkinz actively forced you to keep buying pets) from being able to access several games they could formerly play, places in the game they could formerly visit, items and room themes they could formerly own, etc all for new "deluxe members" to be able to own things you could just have by buying new pets to keep your account active, and for free players to honestly have a GUTTED, terrible experience trying to play the game. build a bearville didn't let you even have a cub condo (house) to decorate until you bought a build a bear, animal jam still only allows nonmembers to have two slots of animals they can switch between...and gave members one thousand slots to use. panfu basically paywalled colors and a lot of other things too, though at least they did have gold panda trials and membership days sometimes which i did remember being very fun as a kid. but my point is while that membership model doesn't sound half bad, club penguin was not unique in that aspect (and honestly i'd argue it wasn't good, but not as bad as other mmos of the time).

i also agree about the merch! it's really a shame so much of the merch didn't come to some countries (i'm still baffled the english/uk magazines didn't get brought to america or canada, especially since the game originated in canada), and eventually went on to be phased out altogether. and a movie would've been fun as long as disney was kept far, FAR away from the creation of it!

honestly if you asked my thoughts on the deletion i think it's just as likely she remembered her blog was still up and didn't see the point of it being up with the game being long dead (which made a lot of her posts telling you how to play card jitsu or adopt puffles for example pretty pointless outside of cpps players using the guides or archiving how the game used to play), or that the fandom itself played into that factor bc even with staff not liking her much people were out here impersonating her, cybrbullying her, making twitter accounts dedicated to hating on her, et cetera. or maybe she noticed people started talking about her more, remembered her blog, cringed at it and decided it needed to go…but this is all speculation, and unless sara uses her long defunct tumblr account to say why her blog was deleted we're likely not gonna know the specifics. so maybe staff going "yeah we started thinking she was out to get us" or making a offhand watermark joke when people discovered her twitter account got syspended could've factored in but like. i am almost entirely sure if it was specifically because of people it wasn't just them, especially since iirc all of their criticism towards sara was long after she stopped posting publicly and other than staff speculating she tried to be against the game so her blog got more traffic they didn't really talk about her much, whereas you could find players talking about not liking her far more easily (but i could be wrong) and being waaaay meaner about it

but yeah while i disagree with her or really anyone blaming staff wholly for the takeovers she was 100% right to go after disney. while i think some takeovers are actually really fun or could be really fun if you removed the branding (the marvel takeovers shockingly have little to do with marvel when you look past the branded items, inside out could work without the branding since it's not like it invented the trope of personified emotions, teen beach movie is basically just a summer themed music jam, finding dory could've been an underwater party, even muppets world tour could've been good if it wasn't muppets and leaned towards the world travel aspect!), i would've loved to see more original parties return like the medieval and april fools parties, or even make brand new ones like say, a world penguin day mini party that taught everyone about all the irl species of penguins (especially chinstraps. i fucking love chinstraps)! disney alienated a lot of players (myself included, i left during the prehistoric party and only came back after being devastated by the news club penguin was dying) and well...actually, lets talk about the closure

ignoring cpis imminent closure a year later (which was undeserved, but i didnt see it to the end), i played basically EVERY day club penguin was open the second i found out around februrary 2017. and hoooo boy you couldn't go five seconds without bots spamming vuvuzelas, usually with penguins arranged to make a swastika. the chat filter, while understandably so was waaay too strict to make proper conversation, and while you're not playing an actively breaking game like webkinz post webkinz x overhaul (which is good, because club penguin didnt die selling broken items without saying they no longer function like webkinz is going to), and while staff was undoubtedly being funneled towards cpi which likely made stomping out bots harder....

disney, much like sara predicted killed their franchise...and she was right to call it out, even if she was unfair to staff at times

#like i tried looking for staff talking abt her on known twitter accounts but other than polo making a joke about her twitter randomly going #down and putting a watermark with his name on it and hearing about interviews where billybob and spike hike admitted they didnt trust her #i did NOT see much of them really say much of anything about her (granted i had to use a mirror of twitter because i dont have a account)#but if you look up her name you can literally see a fan wiki acting like shes their fan character sooooooooo #granted that was probably ALSO a kid but like. cant imagine that was great compared to posts she might not have even seen

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Moneylike

My latest column for Locus Magazine is “Moneylike,” about the relationship between money, liabilities and coercion:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

For years, economics textbooks have included a “money story”: once upon a time, we bartered, trading chickens for cows. This was hard. If the going rate is 8 chickens for a cow and you only need 6 chickens, how could the chicken farmer make change?

The answer was gold, variously said to have been chosen for its rarity, or its divisibility, or its shininess, or the ease of working such a soft metal. Whatever the reason, these anonymous prehistoric traders all agreed that gold would be our medium of exchange, our store of value and our unit of account.

This story was handed down to generations of economics students, despite the fact that there is no evidence for it. The basis for this story was pure reasoning: “What circumstances could have given us money?”

This kind of thought-experimental reasoning is endemic to neoclassical economics, as Ely Devons joked: “If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘what would I do if I were a horse?’”

But as far as anyone can tell, this is not where money came from. Rather — as David Graeber wrote in his seminal “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” — the origin of coin money is in the need of conquering states to provision themselves. To feed soldiers garrisoned in imperial territories, emperors imposed a tax on farmers, that had to be remitted in the coins that soldiers received in pay. Farmers who didn’t pay their taxes faced terrifying, violent consequences and were therefore willing to sell their produce to soldiers in exchange for those coins.

Money, therefore, arose out of liability: farmers valued coins because they had a nondiscretionary liability that could only be settled with those coins (their taxes). People who weren’t farmers would also accept coins, because they knew that the farmers needed them, and since they needed to trade with farmers, anything the farmers would accept was therefore valuable to all.

This money story is a lot more morally fraught than the story of gold arising spontaneously out of the need to give back change for a cow. It involves gross acts of coercion. It’s kind of nice to think that money arose spontaneously out of free trading, but it didn’t.

Over and over in history, we see examples of money emerging through the need to settle a nondiscretionary liability. If there’s something you need and you can only get it by acquiring a certain token, that token becomes money to you. You will do work for that token. If lots of people need that token, it becomes money for them. If enough people need a token, almost anyone will accept it in payment for almost anything, because someone else will accept it from them.

Now, some nondiscretionary liabilities are still more-or-less voluntary. If you want to defeat an ogre and the wizard of the woods will only give you the magic sword if you bring her 11 enchanted mushrooms picked on a moonless night, the money-ness of the enchanted mushroom is still grounded in voluntary trade.

But mostly, money-ness comes about as the result of someone with more power than you demanding something of you. Take the hut-tax: in the early 20th century, British colonial rulers in the conquered lands of Africa demanded that each person owning a hut pay a tax in shillings. If you didn’t pay your hut-tax, British soldiers would burn your hut down. This was an effective means of getting conquered Africans to take on brutal plantation duties — all you had to do was offer payment in shillings and anyone with a hut would line up to do your job for you.

The idea that money comes from liabilities was popularized by Warren Mosler, the progenitor of Modern Monetary Theory. In Mosler’s lectures, he illustrates the point by asking, “Who will stay after the lecture to stack chairs and mop the floor, in exchange for one of my business-cards?” When no one raises their hand, he adds, “What if I told you that there was an armed guard at the door and if you don’t give him a business-card, he won’t let you leave?” Of course, every hand shoots up.

Mosler’s door-tax turns his cards into money.

By showing us where money comes from, Mosler answers lots of seemingly imponderable questions, like “Why do I spend so much time chasing meaningless pieces of paper?” (because if you don’t have the paper, something bad will happen to you).

He also answers the question, “How do they always seem to find $778b for the military? Where did the $3.4T in covid relief payments come from? Won’t we all have to pay a lot of taxes to repay those debts?”

The “debt” of money-issuers is nothing like the debt of money-users. If Mosler owed an audience member a thousand business cards, he could just order them from the printer. He doesn’t have to stack chairs and mop the floors to earn his own cards. He’s the source of the cards. No matter how many cards he owes, he can always pay.

Which is not to say that the number of cards Mosler hands out doesn’t matter. If there are too many cards, he’ll end up stacking his own chairs — because there will be so many cards in circulation that tonight’s audience will be able to get them surplus from last night’s. If there are too few cards, he’ll end up with all his chair stacked but he’ll still have a room full of people who don’t have business cards and can’t leave without getting shot by the armed guard (this is also called “unemployment”).

This is what people mean when they say “government budgets aren’t like household budgets.” Governments don’t have to “balance their checkbooks.” They do have to balance their economies, lest they create inflation (by attempting to buy more than is for sale) or unemployment (by spending so little that no everyone is able to find work). Governments can’t make things on demand, but they can make money whenever they need to.

Governments can impose nondiscretionary liabilities on the people who live in their borders — they can tax them. It is this tax — this liability that you can only pay in the government’s money — that makes money into money.

Now, obviously, governments aren’t the only entity that produce a token that acquires moneylike properties because there’s something some needs — or just badly desires — that can only be acquired using the token. If you went to a county fair this summer and bought tickets for the midways rides, you experienced a moneylike token. It’s possible that the kids in your company were willing to trade labor for these tokens (“I’ll do your chores if you give me five tickets”). You will also have doubtless seen that as the day drew to a close and the desirability of getting on a ride declined, so did the moneyness of the midway tickets.

The midway owners don’t mind. They don’t need to you return your midway tickets so they can sell them anew the next day. When you hand a carny five tickets to ride a wild mouse coaster, they tear them in half and throw them in the garbage (this is also what the federal government does with our taxes — just zeroes out that amount on a spreadsheet — governments don’t spend our tax dollars, they make new dollars, just like midways hand out new tickets).

Which brings me to cryptocurrency. One thing even crypto boosters will affirm is that there is very little for sale in cryptocurrency. Pretty much the only thing you can buy with crypto is other crypto (and crypto-adjacent things like NFTs). If you want to buy a house with crypto, you need to find someone who’ll give you dollars for it, first. Even drug dealers — made wary by the privacy problems with permanent public ledgers — are loathe to accept crypto these days.

This makes crypto very un-moneylike and it is responsible for a general lack of liquidity in crypto markets. Recall that even non-farmers would accept imperial coins as payment, because they needed the things that farmers had. People outside the crypto world are monumentally disinterested in accepting crypto for anything. Even Tesla bailed on its plan to sell cars for crypto. Hell, even the Bored Apes hamburger shack stopped accepting Bored Apes coins in exchange for hamburgers.

There is one nondiscretionary payment you can only make with crypto: ransomware payments. Once your computer (or your pipeline or hospital or city or school district’s computer) has been infected with ransomware, you must buy crypto with dollars, or you lose all your data. We can think of ransomware as the hut tax of crypto — a coercive liability that creates a baseline of liquidity for crypto tokens.

But there’s a plan to create a bunch more nondiscretionary liabilities that can only be settled with crypto: web3. Remaking the web so that every click comes with a crypto price-tag is billed as a way of eliminating the need for ads and the surveillance that comes with it. I’m skeptical of this — as John Deere, Apple and other companies have shown us, even if you pay for the product, you’re still the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio

Whether or not web3 advocates sincerely believe that adding a price-tag to every part of the internet will make it free of ads, there is one effect it will absolutely have: it will create a tax on the internet that can only be paid in crypto, which will make crypto more moneylike.

Image: Corey Coyle https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sauk_County_Fair_Ticket_Booth_-_panoramio_(2).jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Sauk County Fair Ticket Booth.]

#pluralistic

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