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springbloggy · 7 months

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Found out about this story from the lost media wiki forums and thought it was so interesting and funny. I am hoping toyblr can have more info on this toy.

In 2003, there was a toy recall at Walmart, but not for any of the expected reasons. The toy was a baby's sound machine, meant to soothe babies to bed. The toy was shaped like a tugboat, with some cute sea critters to top it all off.

The problem? Many parents listening to the ocean wave sounds heard a faint voice repeating "I hate you" over and over again. Whether the audio of a voice saying "I hate you" was actually in the sounds, or if it is a case of pareidolia is unknown, however interestingly in one news article*, Walmart did not chalk it up to the phenomenon, calling the noise parents were concerned about "beeps" instead.

The toy was very quickly recalled, no evidence of its existence is documented outside of photos and news articles from the time period. It is a miracle the high quality photo displayed above exists at all.

This is where I think toyblr could step in, if any of you guys have collected toys from 2003 or know someone who has, see if you have this toy and if its audio still works. It would be an incredible find for such a bizarre and somewhat funny search.

More important info:

This toy was under Walmart's "Kid Connections" brand and was presumably manufactured in China. However, the toy could have been manufactured anywhere outside of America as stated in a rant against the brand:

To save money, Wal-Mart contracts with manufacturers to make several private label toys, which are sold under names such as Wal-Mart's Kid Connection. Profit margins on these products, many of which are manufactured outside the United States, are often twice those of brand-name toys, said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he continues to do business with the retailer.

This toy was made as a cheaper alternative/competitor to Fisher Price's Ocean Wonders Aquarium toy. While there's similarities in design and function, Ocean Wonders Aquarium does not share the same audio as the recalled toy.

I would love for this to be found some day, for the novelty factor and curiosity if the audio really did include that "subliminal message".

*which I will not link to due to it coming from a very alt-right news source, however is linked in the lost media wiki post for those truly curious on the full story

#toyblr #lost media #recalled toys #walmart #fisher price #toys #interactive toys #toddler toys #toy #bootleg toys #bootleg #springy thoughts #cursed toy boat saga

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bogleech · 26 days

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Marine environments have repeatedly experienced new record temperatures for years now, and marine life subsequently keeps finding new ways to die in droves. This time it's most likely a neurotoxic protist, though it could be some other parasite. Sawfish are critically endangered and this phenomenon is killing them right now at several times the normal rate. It makes me so fucking murderously livid that everyone responsible for environmental degradation was allowed to continue making money the same way my entire life and still does while the consequences happen right in front of everyone.

REPUBLICANS (yes, those republicans) even identified climate change from man-made pollution as a serious threat over fifty fucking years ago. Then suddenly they turned into conspiracy theorists who reject all scientific fact, and the other half of America's government just won't do anything useful because they still get all their money from big oil.

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satoshy12 · 3 months

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I am going to beat you UP BOOSTER GOLD!!!

In the future, all of the earth will be conquered. In a pretty easy way. Without wars and similar situations, and while under tyranny, it was actually a good place. A true utopia without heroes, villains, and similar. +++ In the past, It had been a normal day in the Justice League as Portal opened and a group of heroes and villains came out: Just looking around, and all of them tried to jump Booster Gold and Flash. As the Justice League after stopping them asked why the time traveler wanted to beat them up that badly, all of them wanted to do it. It was funny to see Lex and Superman working together after all. +

They began to explain. ____ It all began with the introduction of young Dr. Daniel Fenton, a true child prodigy and self-made wealthy boy dedicated to helping others. Everything was going smoothly until Booster Gold decided to share his unconventional thoughts. He Suggested! That the child could potentially conquer the world using the current setting. And then told him a range of bizarre ideas, including a communications jamming system, missiles, traps, self-activating lasers, and even an indoor lagoon filled with piranhas.

Danny: "Piranha. Why ever would I want… piranha?" Booster Gold: To eat the heroes And also think about a secret underground grotto with a speed boat for escape purposes. And-and-and gigantic Moving Weapons of doom, they'd be huge and destroy anything in their path!"

The Flash intervened, urging Booster Gold to leave, and Danny bid them farewell, expressing gratitude. The Flash: Come on, Gold, we should leave. + As they departed. Danny pondered the peculiar suggestions, acknowledging his abundant wealth and free time and contemplating the need for a new and interesting hobby. ++ Danny had come to this world to be a hero. But he never tried to pull a Vlad. And when he is done, he can show that he is better at it than him! All he needed was to plan to not fail.

++ So after 5 years of planning, at the age of 19, he started his Conquest of the World, which was pretty successful in his victory speech. He thanked Booster Gold and the Flash for telling him he could change much more and much better if he were a villain and just took over the world! And he did! ++ While in the Justice League and Legion of Doom, who were in hidding, all at once slowly turned their heads to the duo. Like in a Horror Movie.

++++

Back to the present/Past

Both groups are happy that Flash and Booster Gold didn't meet the child prodigy; it turns out he was still at least 10 or 9 years old at the moment. A few years before he became famous, he was just living alone somewhere on Earth.

But that means a new plan!

Lex, like Veronica Cale, was pissed that the boy was able to take over their company, but then again, the boy was able to take over all the companies in America at the same time.

But now, in the past, they can think of plans—good plans! With their Guiding they can do so much! Same with Heroes.

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 10 months

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Writing Advice #?: Don’t write out accents.

The Surface-Level Problem: It’s distracting at best, illegible at worst.

The following passage from Sons and Lovers has never made a whit of sense to me:

“I ham, Walter, my lad,’ ’e says; ‘ta’e which on ’em ter’s a mind.’ An’ so I took one, an’ thanked ’im. I didn’t like ter shake it afore ’is eyes, but ’e says, ‘Tha’d better ma’e sure it’s a good un. An’ so, yer see, I knowed it was.’”

There’s almost certainly a point to that dialogue — plot, character, theme — but I could not figure out what the words were meant to be, and gave up on the book. At a lesser extreme, most of Quincey’s lines from Dracula (“I know I ain’t good enough to regulate the fixin’s of your little shoes”) cause American readers to sputter into laughter, which isn’t ideal for a character who is supposed to be sweet and tragic. Accents-written-out draw attention to mechanical qualities of the text.

Solution #1: Use indicators outside of the quote marks to describe how a character talks. An Atlanta accent can be “drawling” and a London one “clipped”; a Princeton one can sound “stiff” and a Newark one “relaxed.” Do they exaggerate their vowels more (North America) or their consonants more (U.K., north Africa)? Do they sound happy, melodious, frustrated?

The Deeper Problem: It’s ignorant at best, and classist/racist/xenophobic at worst.

You pretty much never see authors writing out their own accents — to the person who has the accent, the words just sound like words. It’s only when the accent is somehow “other” to the author that it gets written out.

And the accents that we consider “other” and “wrong” (even if no one ever uses those words, the decision to deliberately misspell words still conveys it) are pretty much never the ones from wealthy and educated parts of the country. Instead, the accents with misspelled words and awkward inflection are those from other countries, from other social classes, from other ethnicities. If your Maine characters speak normally and your Florida characters have grammatical errors, then you have conveyed what you consider to be correct and normal speech. We know what J.K. Rowling thinks of French-accented English, because it’s dripping off of Fleur Delacour’s every line.

At the bizarre extreme, we see inappropriate application of North U.K. and South U.S.-isms to every uneducated and/or poor character ever to appear in fan fic. When wanting to get across that Steve Rogers is a simple Brooklyn boy, MCU fans have him slip into “mustn’t” and “we is.” When conveying that Robin 2.0 is raised poor in Newark, he uses “ain’t” and “y’all” and “din.” Never mind that Iron Man is from Manhattan, or that Robin 3.0 is raised wealthy in Newark; neither of them ever gets a written-out accent.

Solution #2: A little word choice can go a long way, and a little research can go even further. Listen carefully to the way people talk — on the bus, in a café, on unscripted YouTube — and write down their exact word choice. “We good” literally means the same thing as “no thank you,” but one’s a lot more formal than the other. “Ain’t” is a perfectly good synonym for “am not,” but not everyone will use it.

The Obscure Problem: It’s not even how people talk.

Look at how auto-transcription software messes up speaking styles, and it’s obvious that no one pronounces every spoken sound in every word that comes out of their mouth. Consider how Americans say “you all right?”; 99% of us actually say something like “yait?”, using tone and head tilt to convey meaning. Politicians speak very formally; friends at bars speak very informally.

An example: I’m from Baltimore, Maryland. Unless I’m speaking to an American from Texas, in which case I’m from “Baltmore, Marlind.” Unless I’m speaking to an American from Pennsylvania, in which case I’m from “Balmore, Marlin.” If I’m speaking to a fellow Marylander, I’m of course from “Bamor.” (If I’m speaking to a non-American, I’m of course from “Washington D.C.”) Trying to capture every phoneme of change from moment to moment and setting to setting would be ridiculous; better just to say I inflect more when talking to people from outside my region.

When you write out an accent, you insert yourself, the writer, as an implied listener. You inflict your value judgments and your linguistic ear on the reader, and you take away from the story.

Solution #3: When in doubt, just write the dialogue how you would talk.

#writing #writing advice #accents #fan fiction #classism #language #u.s.-centric af because I've only lived so many places

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whitecreekvalley-if · 5 months

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[ Demo TBA ] • Character descriptions • Pinterest •

Genres: Slice of life, drama, mystery, romance

WCV is rated 18+ for explicit language, violence, alcohol and drug use, and explicit sexual content.

Life's taken a nosedive—no apartment, no job, no friends. Desperation pushes you to cling to a chance from a kindly stranger offering a ticket to a town hidden beyond mountains and plains, a place people don't seek but always seem to need.

Welcome to Whitecreek Valley, where the Brass Pine Ranch needs your unique skills to mend a crumbling homestead, and a crumbling family. As you tackle the decay of the ranch and the town alongside the rancher's son, deeper troubles emerge—livestock falling ill sparks fears of a town on the brink of extinction. Can you navigate this community, help them rejuvenate, or will it become another link in the list of ghost towns of America's Wikipedia page?

FEATURES

Customization: Appearance, personality, gender & sexuality, what job they had before, their hobbies, etc. Choose how they feel about being a farmhand, how they're adjusting to the rural life, and - with your choices - how the town as a whole sees them. Are they part of the community or an perpetual outsider?

Skills: Depending on your previous job, you'll have a unique set of skills to help the community. Choose to learn new skills, like woodworking, bronc riding, or sheep shearing, to mention a few.

Animal husbandry: The distances around Whitecreek Valley are hefty, so it's necessary to have at least a horse to get around. Choose your favorite out of a cast of individual equines, each with their own personalities. Also, help a calf into this world and realize how fun it is to raise a baby cow! As long as you're in good standing with the rest of the herd, of course.

Rebuilding: Try your best to rebuild the Brass Pine ranch, and the town adjacent. The better job you manage, the more opportunities (and challenges) come your way.

Community outreach: A dying town is still home, and there are stories to be heard, problems to solve. Lend a helping hand to your new community and see how one kindness can pay itself back.

Romance: Not everyone in town is adverse to strangers, and if your heart yearns romance, there is a chance for a spark along the way. Just be careful as to who you're trying to woo in front of whom. Small town gossips, we've all seen it.

Mystery: There's something hanging over the valley, like a rot in the air. Why are people moving out? Why are exports not moving out? And who's behind the animals getting sick? Don you detective hat and lend a hand to the entire four local police officers working the bizarre case.

THE LOCALS (RO'S)

THE RANCHER'S SON

Mason "Mace" Gannon - 27 - he/him

He used to be so much fun. I miss hanging out with him, out by the bonfires. He'd always make everyone feel so included and happy, and oh, that homemade cider he'd bring? Warmed us up on those chilly late fall nights, when we had nothing else to do. Did I tell you about the time he got us all to go skinny dipping? He was such a charmer, I wonder --

Imagine Mace as your human golden retriever – the guy who's a blast to be around, a bit mischievous, and the first to rush to your aid whenever you need it. After being gone for five years to live his rodeo dreams, he's back, now the sole caretaker of the family ranch in his hometown. He goes to great lengths to keep his personal issues personal, and it's the butt of many jokes how he's always there to help others but has the worst time asking for help himself.

He's you boss, and probably one of the best you'll ever get. Just don't pay mind to the spats between him and his dad.

THE BARTENDER

Alice Marks - 25 - she/her

Alice, she's a feisty one! Like her poppa, rest his soul. How I love the drinks she comes up with at the bar, and that horse of hers! She could go into rodeo, but I don't think after what happened with her pa... Oh, but she's a wonder! Always there with a quip, how they drive her suitors mad. Good thing she stopped with the talk about moving away, the town would be so dull without her!

Alice is the town's most known inhabitant, running the show from the only bar in town, which she just happens to own. Her mind is like a machine for fun, and she's the brain behind all the pop-up events and happenings around town. Sure, she can be a bit like a hurricane of enthusiasm, but hey, that's Alice for you. If the town had a social heartbeat, it'd be Alice – the vibrant, smartass soul making everyday life feel like a blessing.

THE DEPUTY

Word of the wise: Never challenge Alice to a drinking game. You will lose, spectacularly, and it'll all be on film.

Judge Gannon - 34 - he/him

Judge is a bit strange, don't you think? He just vanished as soon as he turned eighteen and popped back out of nowhere! That must've been, let's see... Five years ago? He doesn't spend much time with us commoners though, but I think I've seen him at the bar once or twice. I don't actually think he knows how to make nice with people, he always has that glower on. Gets it from his dad, let me tell you --

Bold and straight to the point, Judge isn't out here trying to be intimidating – it just kinda happens. If his brother is a golden retriever, he's definitely the doberman of the family. He's got this brash, no-nonsense vibe that some folks mistake for arrogance, especially when they try laying on the charm and he's not having it. He steers clear of small talk unless it involves his job, and when duty calls, he's more than ready to throw down to protect his town and county.

There's this local urban legend that he cracked a smile once, but it's like spotting a unicorn – not everyone's buying it.

THE LAWYER

Mercedes "Sadie" Diáz - 32 - she/her

The new girl, yes! Oh, a beauty! And so curious. I do love sitting down with her though, oh the stories she brings from the big city, so intriguing! I hear she finds our town intriguing too, the mayor once - don't tell anyone I told you this - the mayor once said he caught her breaking into the city hall archives! I know, scandalous, but good on her, maybe now someone will argue that my neighbors fence post --

Sadie, the big-shot lawyer from the city, doing her solo act in town. When she's not in court, folks are lining up just to get a piece of the urban tales she's got. A trailblazer and truth-seeker, she's got this knack for poking her nose where it probably shouldn't be, and surprise, she knows more local secrets than the town gossip. Sure, she's all passionate and calculated, a bit out of sync with the town's warmth, but hey, that logical mind of hers might just shake things up and get the town back on track.

It's a well known fact that she could get access to places with the right documents, but she herself has said it's more fun to pick locks. Go figure.

LIST OF MAJOR NPCs

LIST OF MINOR NPCs

#interactive fiction #wip #if wip #if: intro #cog #choice of games #interactive novel #choice script #or is it #choicescript #idk idk

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kp777 · 5 months

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By Thom Hartmann

Common Dreams

Nov. 16, 2023

What baffles me is why a TV news personality who earns $2.9 million a year would go to such lengths to avoid even mentioning a solution that’s been signed onto repeatedly by virtually every Democrat in Congress for over a decade.

Why did NBC’s Kristen Welker use an incomplete frame for her question about Social Security at last week’s GOP debate, and why didn’t Lester Holt or anybody else correct her?

Here’s her question:

KRISTEN WELKER: “Americans could see their Social Security benefits drastically cut in the next decade because the program is running out of money. Former President Trump has said quote, ‘Under no circumstances should Republicans cut entitlements.’ Governor Christie, first to you, you have proposed raising the retirement age for younger Americans. What would that age be specifically, and would you consider making any other reforms to Social Security?”

The simple reality is that if a person earns $160,200 a year or less, they pay a 6.2% tax on all of their income. In other words, a person making exactly $160,200 pays $9,932.40 (6.2%) in Social Security taxes.

If you earn $12,000 a year, $56,000 a year, $98,000 a year, or anything under $160,200 a year, you also pay 6.2 cents of tax toward Social Security on every single dollar you earn. If you made $10,000 last year, you pay $620 in Social Security taxes: 6.2 percent. Like the old saying about death and taxes, you can’t avoid it.

BUT those people who make over $160,200 a year pay absolutely nothing — no tax whatsoever — to fund Social Security on every dollar they earn over that amount. After Warren Buffett or Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos pay their $9,932.40 in Social Security taxes on that first $160,200 they took home on the first day of January, every other dollar they take home for the rest of the year is completely Social Security tax-free.

If somebody makes $1,602,000, for example, it would seem fair that, like every other American, they’d pay the same 6.2% ($99,324) in Social Security taxes. But, no: they only pay the $9,932.40 and after that they get to ride tax-free.

If somebody earned $16,020,000 it would seem fair that they’d pay the same 6.2% to support Social Security as 96 percent of Americans do, but no. Instead of paying $1,004,400 in taxes, they only pay $9,932.40.

Hedge fund guys who make a billion a year — yes, there are several of them — can certainly afford to pay 6.2% to keep Social Security solvent. At that rate, they’d be paying $62 million on a billion-dollar income in Social Security taxes as their fair share of maintaining America’s social contract.

But, because the tax rate is capped to “protect” the morbidly rich while sticking the rest of us with the full bill for Social Security, those titans of Wall Street pay the same $9,932.40 as the doctor who lives down the street from you and earns $160,200 a year.

This is, to use the economic technical term, nuts.

And, while every wealthy person in America knows all about this because it’s such a huge benefit to them, I’ll bet fewer than five percent of Americans know how this scam for the rich works. (I searched diligently, but couldn’t find a single survey that asked average folks if they knew about the cap.)

There is no other tax in America that works like this. Most have loopholes designed to promote specific socially desirable goals, like the deductibility of home mortgage interest or children, but no other tax is designed so that anybody earning over $160,200 is completely exempt and no longer has to pay a penny after their first nine thousand or so dollars.

And here’s where it gets really bizarre: if millionaires and billionaires paid the exact same 6.2% into Social Security that most of the rest of us do (and paid it on their investment income, which is also 100% exempt today), the program would not only be solvent for the next 75 years, but it would have so much extra cash that everybody on Social Security could get a significant raise in their monthly benefit payments.

But because America’s morbidly rich don’t want to pay their share for keeping Social Security solvent, Republicans are having a debate about how badly they can screw working class retirees.

They ask:

“Shall we cut the Social Security payments?”

“How about raising the retirement age from 67 (Reagan raised it from 65 to 67) to 70 or even 72?”

“Or maybe we should just hand the entire thing off to JPMorgan or Wells Fargo and let them run it, like we’re doing with Medicare? We could call it Social Security Advantage!”

“Or how about turning Social Security into a welfare program by ‘means testing’ it, so rich people can’t draw from it and every budget year it can become a political football for the GOP like food stamps or WIC?”

Responding to Welker’s severely incomplete question, Chris Christie hit all four:

GOVERNOR CHRISTIE: “Sure, and we have to deal with this problem. Now look, if we raise the retirement age a few years for folks that are in their thirties and forties, I have a son who’s in the audience tonight who’s 30 years old. If he can’t adjust to a few year increase in Social Security retirement age over the next 40 years, I got bigger problems with him than his Social Security payments. “And the fact is we need to be realistic about this. There are only three things that go into determining whether Social Security can be solvent or not. Retirement age, eligibility for the program in general, and taxes. That’s it. We are already overtaxed in this country and we should not raise those taxes. But on eligibility also, I don’t know if out there tonight and if you’re watching Warren, I don’t know if Warren Buffett is collecting Social Security, but if he is, shame on you. You shouldn’t be taking the money.”

Christie was the only one of the five Republicans on the stage who even dared mention taxes.

Nikki Haley said:

“So first of all, any candidate that tells you that they’re not going to take on entitlements, is not being serious. Social Security will go bankrupt in 10 years, Medicare will go bankrupt in eight.”

Neither of those assertions are even remotely true, but, of course, this was a GOP debate. She continued:

“But for like my kids in their twenties, you go and you say we’re going to change the rules, you change the retirement age for them. Instead of cost of living increases, we should go to increases based on inflation. We should limit benefits on the wealthy.”

Her other solution, apropos of nothing, was to end government responsibility for Medicare and privatize the entire program by shutting down real Medicare and throwing us all to the tender mercies of the health insurance billionaires:

“And then expand Medicare Advantage plans. Seniors love that and let’s make sure we do that so that they can have more competition. That’s how we’ll deal with entitlement reform and that’s how we’ll start to pay down this debt.”

Ramaswamy’s answer was so incoherent and off-topic I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say he rambled on about the cost of foreign wars (Ukraine, Israel) “that many blood-thirsty members of both parties have a hunger for.” Apparently, Vivek doesn’t realize that Social Security isn’t part of our government’s overall budget but has its own segregated funds and trust fund.

Since it’s creation in 1935, Social Security never has and never will contribute to the budget deficit or influence any other kind of government spending.

Tim Scott said we should take a cue from Reagan, Bush, and Trump and just cut billionaires’ income taxes again because that does such a great job of stimulating the economy (not) and then claw back the inflation-based raises people on Social Security have received the past three years.

“Number two, you have to cut taxes. … So what we know is that the Laffer Curve still works, for the lower the tax, the higher the revenue. And finally, if we’re going to deal with it, we have to take our annual appropriations back to pre-2020, pre-COVID levels of spending, which would save us about a half a trillion dollars in the next budget window. By doing that, we deal with Social Security and our mandatory spending.”

DeSantis was equally incoherent, also refusing to answer the question about raising the retirement age and completely avoiding any mention of the sweetheart deal his billionaire donors get on their Social Security taxes. Instead, he said we needed to get inflation under control and stop Congress from “taking money from Social Security,” something Congress has never done and legally never will be able to do.

All this incoherence aside, Republicans appear to have a plan to deal with Social Security.

House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson has been pushing a “Catfood Commission” just like Reagan’s 1983 commission that raised the retirement age to 67, reaffirmed the cap on taxes, and made Social Security checks taxable as income. He no doubt expects his commissioners will provide “recommendations” Republicans can run with to cut benefits without raising taxes on their billionaire donors, all while blaming it on the commissioners just like Reagan did in 1983.

When Johnson said that his “top priority” was creating such a commission “immediately” and that his Republican colleagues had responded to the idea “with great enthusiasm,” Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee responded on Xitter:

“A week into his tenure, MAGA Mike Johnson is ALREADY calling for closed-door cuts to the Social Security and Medicare benefits American workers have earned through decades of hard work.”

But back to the original question. I understand why Republicans refuse to even consider lifting the cap on Social Security taxes so their morbidly rich donors won’t have to start paying their fair share of Social Security to keep the program solvent.

I’ve been watching Kristen Welker on television for years, and she’s generally been a pretty straight shooter as a reporter. Ditto for Lester Holt, who sat right beside her. This, frankly, astonished me.

Were they afraid Republicans would exact revenge on them if they raised the question of the tax cap?

Or was it precisely because they’re making millions, just like most of the executives they answer to?

More broadly, is this why we almost never hear any discussion whatsoever in the media — populated with other news stars who also make millions a year, managed by millionaire network executives — about lifting the cap?

One hopes the answer isn’t that crass...

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

#social security #social security tax #social safety net #republicans #republican party #corporate media #journalism #2024 presidential election

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highonmarvel · 8 months

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Isolation

Steve Rogers: Steve comes back.

An entry for Day 5 of the exciting @sintember challenge!

Prompt: Isolation, ft Steve Rogers (Captain America) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Warnings: NON-CON, signs of declining mental health, captivity, 18+!

When Steve first put you in his basement, you nearly scoffed at the cliché: prisoner in the basement, like he couldn’t be bothered to be even slightly more creative. That was a few days ago, you think. You really had no way of telling. You remember screaming and banging on the door—you can still see the faint lines your nails scrapped onto it—but you can’t remember when that was. At first you counted a day as the next time you woke up, but you gave up, not because it’s obviously wildly inaccurate, but because you lost count of that, too.

You were hungrier than comfortable, but by no means starving, so maybe in that way it couldn’t have been too long, right? Without change, there is no time, and there has been no change in the basement since… however long it’s been. You couldn’t even rule out it had been months, though evidently ridiculous as that was considering your relative physical health (or, at least, as far as you can tell, or as far as you’re willing to believe), your sense of trust is out of balance.

Steve had been your best friend, you trusted him most, you never for a split moment thought he would hurt you. Steve, who’d you known all your life, time, as well, you’d known all your life: if you couldn’t trust Steve, could you trust your sense of time? You didn’t realise how much people rely on time, even when they have nothing important to attend to; time is the one constant, hours pass whether you want them to or not: you have no constant now.

You sit on the mattress (stained with a little blood you assume must be your own) hugging your knees to your chest, staring straight ahead. You weren’t going mad, you hadn’t had any hallucinations, had you?

Down here, there had only been the sounds you made—your breathing, your screaming, your crying—but your ears prick at an unfamiliar noise. It’s not unfamiliar, really, just one you haven’t heard in a while. Metal, not a lot, shifting around…

A key in a lock!

You scramble to stand up just as Steve pushes open the door, and your eyes lock immediately. You can’t help but notice even now he still has that superhero stance, his posture, standing tall and strong; assuring to everyone else, intimidating to you. But you refuse to allow yourself to be intimidated.

Steve doesn’t say anything as he begins his decent down the stairs; he looks away, but you stay fixated on him. When he reaches the floor, he turns to you with a smile.

No thought, you just sprint.

You dart towards the steps, but he easily scoops you up, and you’re bent over his shoulder, screaming as you hit your fists against his toned back and kick your legs uselessly in the air.

Another sound you hear, it sounds familiar, sounds like words being formed by a noise different to the one you make when you speak. It’s so bizarre to hear Steve speaking, so bizarre to hear anyone speaking but yourself after all (?) this time of hearing the same melody. It’s so bizarre, in fact, that you don’t really even register it, what he’s saying, until you’re dropped onto the mattress on the floor, falling quite a way (relative to what you would be used to hopping into bed) with a shriek.

“I’ve been alone, too,” he says, towering over you, blocking the single light that illuminates the basement, the light that hasn’t once turned off since you were thrown down here, it hasn’t even flickered.

He suddenly drops to his knees, straddling you. This position feels familiar, too; his knees caging you as you writhe under him in distress; it feels like the second time, now. It is the second time. And the first time this happened it ended with you being literally thrown into his basement. What would he do when he was done this time?

“Look…” he gently raises your right hand to his eyes, examines it, and then tilts it to display your nails to you; they’re bitten down so bad you’re bleeding, or maybe you’re bleeding from clawing at the door, either way, they’re damaged, fairly badly, and you stare back at your own fingers in shock. How could you not have noticed this?

“When you’re alone,” he says, gently, softly laying your hand back down to your side, “You hurt yourself. That’s why you need to stay with me.”

Right! You were at his place, as usual, and as you were falling asleep when he started, started speaking about how you needed to stay with him, because you needed him. Though while he violated you, he spewed the opposite.

“I need you…” he grunted.

You shake your head to rid yourself of the thoughts, but that memory seems to be replaying in front of your very eyes, a huge wave of déjà vu crashing over you as Steve strokes the side of your face. You slap his hand away, and that loving gaze he’d been showering you in turns dark. You try to throw a punch to his jaw but he catches your wrists and gives you a disapproving look. It’s extremely frustrating this seems to be so easy for him.

With nothing else to do, you start kicking and screaming; you’re sure it won’t accomplish anything, but you refuse to just roll over and accept this, no. You twist and turn under him until, to your surprise, he raises himself just high enough for you to turn all the way over. Before you can comprehend your little freedom, he brings his knees back down to the back of your own, and though it’s evident he’s not using all his weight, it’s still enough to make you cry out.

He lets his knees fall to the sides and manages to restrict your movements enough to tug your shorts down.

You want to scream No! but after all this time, you’re not sure if your voice can work to form actual words; you’ve only been screaming and sobbing for days. Or hours? Since he left, you haven’t spoken since he left, and you’re not sure if you can now.

You hear him spit in his hand and his soft groans as he strokes himself, and you’re lucky you can’t see it. You try to claw at his legs as you feel him line up with your entrance but he manages to pull your wrists together and shove them into your back.

He enters you slowly and with a soft groan, tears springing to your eyes as you sob, incoherent; you’re sure you’d plead with him to stop if you could. He ignores you and thrusts deep, in and out; you’re sure his careful movements may have looked loving and respectful to someone on the outside, yet it was anything but, despite what he’d have you believe.

“I need you…”

⍟

#sintember 2023 #dark!steve rogers #dark!steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers x you #dark steve rogers #dark steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers x you #soft!dark!steve #soft!dark!steve rogers #yandere steve rogers

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arminreindl · 6 months

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Gharial rescued from sea

Another instance of more recent croc news, a "giant" gharial was found in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Balsore, eastern India.

According to news articles, the animal, an adult Indian Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), meassured around 13 feet or in metric close to 4 meters in length while weighing some 118 kilos.

The gharial apparently got caught in a fishing net and was found by fishermen, who promptly reported their catch to the Forest Department. The department then handed the animal over to Nandankanan Zoological Park, where the crocodilian still resides.

That's all the information given to us by the article, which you can read here, but there's two key notes I wanna touch upon.

The first is size. At 4 meters, this gharial was decently large for sure and as someone who has seen a (stuffed) female of slightly greater proportions I can attest that it must have been an impressive animal. However, I think its worth mentioning that Indian gharials are capable of growing even larger. The female I just mentioned is accompanied by a stuffed male nearly 5 and a half meters in length, with some reports claiming sizes even greater than that.

Me and the Vienna gharials

The second point is the mysterious presence of a gharial this far out at sea. This is simultaneously unusual yet also very much reasonable from the point of view of paleontology.

On the one hand, Indian gharials are critically endangered. Their range today is incrediply spotty and isolated and to my knowledge they aren't found anywhere near the coast these days.

However when you look at how the range was meant to be like, then you see that they definitely reached the river deltas and coastal regions. So our image of gharials as this inland freshwater species is more based in circumstance than reality.

This becomes especially apparent once you begin to consider the paleobiogeography of gharials. Based on our current knowledge, gharials most likely originated somewhere in Eurasia or Africa, spreading from there across much of the eastern hemisphere and beyond (full disclosure I am not considering thoracosaurs to be gavialoids, more on that can of worms later maybe). Anywho, phylogenetic analysis and the fossil record both suggest that gharials then crossed oceans and settled South America sometime prior to or during the Miocene, where they diversified and gave rise to the gryposuchines. Some species even remained saltwater species, such as Piscogavialis, which lived in the coastal waters of Peru.

Although gryposuchines were once thought to be a distinct subfamily of gharial, recent research suggests that they were but an evolutionary stepping stone, with some South American form once again crossing the Pacific and settling down in Asia where the much more basal "tomistomines" or false gharials (a misnomer) still resided. And while the gryposuchines of South America went extinct, those that returned to Asia survived and eventually gave rise to the Indian Gharial of today.

Left: A cladogram showing the relationship between Gryposuchinae and modern gharials Right: Piscogavialis swimming overhead some marine sloths of the genus Thalassocnus by @knuppitalism-with-ue

So ultimately, seeing a gharial in saltwater is much less bizarre than one would initially think, its just that habitat destruction and overhunting have largely pushed these gorgeous reptiles further inland and to the brink of extinction.

#gharial #indian gharial #gavialis gangeticus #gavialidae #news #croc #crocodilia #crocodile #india #herpetology #gavialinae #gryposuchinae #piscogavialis #some paleontology #palaeoblr

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arbiterlexultionis · 7 months

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Instant Eternity

Time travel involving the infinite realms is truly a bizarre thing. Sometimes it follow one set of rules, and sometimes that set of rules may as well not exist. Usually, however, it works in one of two ways, the first is when the time travel is achieved through artificial means such as clockworks portals and allows for the altering of the timeline as one would expect time travel would allow. The other type of time travel is through natural means, portals usually, and it’s just that, Natural. That portal to the past opened up in the past the same moment it did in the present. If you step into the portal in the year 2000 then you already stepped out of the portal hundreds of years ago. It’s A Thing That Already Happened. Danny himself experienced this, as while chasing Vlad through time they fought in the middle of a Roman coliseum and, whoopsy daisy, set a really big fire. A fire which Danny had learned about years before he even had his accident.

So, the infimap can take the user anywhere, anywhen. And the infimap is just that, a map. It doesn’t make new roads, it just drags you across already existing paths. So it is a natural form of time travel, if you use it to go in time to kill your grandfather in order to insure your never born your interference will result in your grandparents falling in love and your birth.

Danny realizes that anytime he needs to heal from a battle or has gone 156 hours without sleeping or eating he can use the infimap to pop back to the past for a few days and then have the map bring back to the “Present”, exactly one second after he left. A three week vacation that lasted one second. At first he’s really wary about using this, worried about accelerated aging or getting lost in the time stream and a hundred other issues. At first.

It’s been months sense the accident. Sam and Tucker have both shot up several inches. Danny, on the other hand, hasn’t grown sense the accident. At all. They fought a ghost who could rapidly age opponents, a single slap turned Tucker into a decrepit old man. The ghost wrapped his hands around Danny’s throat and spent 5 minutes trying to strangle him while Danny bought time for Sam and Tucker to pull off the plan. The sucked him into the thermos, his influence on time ceased so Tucker returned to his proper state. “Jeez it sure is lucky he didn’t try and age me, right guys? Ha ha ha”. Danny gets blasted through a natural portal while making a trip through the zone and spends years trying to get home, not aging a day.

He can’t deny it after that, can’t ignore it. He’s immortal. He’s going to live forever. He’s going to watch his friends and family whither away and die out. He’s going to have to spend the rest of his life wandering from place to place trying not to get outed as the same 14 year old who save someone’s great great grandma 100 years ago.

After having his first middeath crisis, suddenly the only reasons he had to not spend years on end wandering the world and the past is gone, even if he loses the infimap, worst case scenario he’ll just take the long way home. Suddenly, he’s dreading the next 80 years of the “Present”. He decides that if he’s going to watch his friends and family grow old and frail he’s going to make sure it’s takes as long as it possibly could, from his perspective. By the time they’re 20 Danny’s gonna have 200 years under his belt.

He becomes a temporal tourist, hopping into the past every time the late night fights and schoolwork become to much. Spends years in every civilization imaginable, mastering every skill he can, leaving legends in his wake.

I feel like Danny and his adventures do have a lot of potential for story’s, as it’s a pretty good setup for having Danny in any type of time period or historical event for extended periods of time, fighting in the trenches of World War I, exploring the Americas during the era of colonialism, sailing the seas a swashbuckling vigilante pirate. I, however, have most of my related ideas being based around crossovers. So most of that will be in part two, so that people who like to filter out all that can still see this post.

#danny fenton #danny phantom #fic prompt #dp au #story prompt #writing prompt #danny phantom au #dp #Danny’s Immortal #temporal tourist #Temporal Tourist AU #Danny the next time Vlad goes on and on about his TWenTy YeARs ExperIANce: That’s cute #Dash pulls up to start something and Danny fresh from spending 13 years as a baker in Ancient Rome is just like Who’s this strange child?#He completely forgets about a English project for Lancer and when Lancers standing in front of his desk asking for it #Danny just like “it’s in… Um… in the bathroom “the bathroom? “yes “ okay go get it. Now.#Danny comes back two seconds later with the best project Lancer has ever seen. it’s autographed by Shakespeare #he had to ask what the project was before he left.

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