#guncotton

[mass-mind-control]

Successful burn test of recently synthesized nitrocellulose.

#low explosives #nitrocellulose #guncotton #nitration #burn test #deflagration #success #diy #chemistry #recent projects

[hg0qgmcsi]

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#fore-and-aft #Pontederiaceae #woadman #bedamn #Fidessa #bicyclers #nailsart #vice- #roommates #magnetospheric #celation #atmo- #guncotton #potables #encyclopedically #mezair #looks #cup #ferociously #supercrescent

[elancholia]

People in the late 20th century thought the fundamental arc of human history was exploration, whereas now it looks like it's information processing.

In traditional science fiction, the historically progressive human urge is wanderlust, the pull of unknown geography, horror vacui or amor vacui depending on how you look at it. Those writers invoke the elapse of time that separated Kitty Hawk from the moon landing. They recite a procession of discoverers that includes Columbus or the Polynesians and whose next logical steps are space colonization and superluminal travel. Era-defining technologies are transportation technologies. You still get this now, sometimes. In a much-dunked-upon scene in Star Trek: Discovery (2017), a character's litany of great inventors includes the Wright brothers, the guy who invented FTL, and Elon Musk.

The corresponding fear, of course, is alien invasion—that we are not Columbus but the Indians.

Now, the developments actually restructuring people's lives are either of the computer or on the computer. The PC, the internet, smartphones, social media, LLMs. Bits, not atoms. It has been this way for some time, though it hasn't fully made its way into culture. The progenitors of the new future are writing, the printing press, the abacus. We can see the arc clearly in retrospect, now that the future seems likely to be defined by machine learning.

Just as before, there is some anxiety that our trajectory will lead us into the grip of alien intelligences, horrendous and devouring.

If you go back to the period stretching (roughly) from the late 19th century through the Second World War, stories often hinge on wonder-substances and novel fundamental forces. This was, of course, an era in which a new force or element was turning up every other week. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting one. They discovered guncotton when some guy left his fouled lab coat next to an oven. Hence, Vril, the Ray, the "eighth and ninth solar rays" of Burroughs's Mars. In later stories, this sort of stuff is generally secondary, though superhero fiction preserves more of the old mentality.

#disclaimer that this is schematic and half-baked #meta stuff #culture #speculative fiction #ai #about fiction

[visceravalentines]

cane-cutter blues

Bo Sinclair x AFAB!Reader

this was originally supposed to be a comfort fic. in reality, this is literally the opposite of a comfort fic. read this only if you want to be discomforted. did you know there is a type of rabbit in Louisiana called a swamp rabbit, or a cane-cutter? they can swim. i hope this information serves you well in the future.

1.9k words. dubcon through-and-through and Bo is an ass. reader is well north of Stockholm. the whole fic is a metaphor for god knows what. dacryphilia, an abundance of prey imagery and some gore. I feel the need to credit @ventiswampwater with the creation of this genre of fic which I like to refer to as fuckweird bc it is fuck weird.

He finds you. He always does. It's not like you were hiding, not really; you've long since given up any hope of that. The town and his brain are maps of each other. You can't hide from him here. 

He walks up to you slow, stands over you. You cannot look at him, or you won’t be able to look away. You curl in on yourself tighter like a grub in the earth. There is a sinkhole, ragged and sucking, cold in your chest. 

He takes a knee in front of you and says nothing. Your sobs are deafening in the silence of his stare but you cannot stop them; your diaphragm kicks below your ribs like a rabbit in a hawk's claws. You press your hands to your mouth and stop breathing, feel your lungs fold. Maybe, if you are still, he'll forget he ever saw you.

"Hey," he says in a voice like guncotton. The air in your lungs rushes past your lips to meet him with open arms. "Why you cryin', baby?"

You shake your head no. No, not crying. No, not baby. He puts his hand on your knee and you make a sound like something that is realizing it is dead. 

"Tell me what's wrong, pretty girl." 

His voice is soothing, solicitous. Your eyes are drawn up to meet his and there is sympathy there, thin and filmy. Behind it there is something else. You cannot look away. He scares you so bad and your whole jaw trembles and you need him to hold you even if he holds too tight. 

His brow draws together. "You hurtin'?" 

Too much. That is too much. You cry out and the hole in you groans and the floor begins to absorb you, you can feel it, feel yourself seeping into the carpet and the cracks of the boards below and the dirt below that, speckled with bones. Someday, you will crawl beneath the foundation of this place to die. 

He coos and gets on both knees, big hands sliding up your thighs. "Ohh, baby mine." 

He forces your legs open and scoots between them and you are exposed, a rotten log eviscerated, and how badly you want him to fill you with warmth and how badly you want to claw at his face until he leaves you alone. 

"Tell me where it hurts," he says, wiping his thumb through the damp on the curve of your cheek. "Is it here?" He draws his finger down the center of your forehead to the bridge of your nose. 

You shake your head. No. The brain doesn't feel pain, you learned once. Before you came here and got lost. Your brain hasn't been the same since the sinkhole. Since the first time you died. But you know better than to run those trails anymore. Nothing lives in that part of the woods.

He leans in to kiss your brow. You squeeze your eyes shut and brace for the impact. He cups your neck in his hand. His thumb can reach all the way around your trachea but he doesn't squeeze this time. His hand melts to the center of your chest. "Is it here?"

Almost. Almost. You whimper. Your heart is flinging itself against the cage of your ribs, desperate to be rid of you, desperate to be clutched in his hand. Your blood belongs under his nails. You picture him with gore streaking his face, the meat of you in his mouth. Handsome. 

He pulls the neckline of your tank top down with one finger and presses a kiss to your breastbone. His hair tickles your chin. His teeth scrape at the skin stretched taut over bone. Fleshless. You have lost so much of yourself, peeled off and dripped out along the back roads, sunk in murky water, tufts of fur scattered to the wind. 

He could fix you. You know he could. You've watched him fix cars and radios, roofs and windows. Once he pulled a thorn from Jonesy's paw with all the care of a surgeon. You want him to hold you like that. You want him to mend you. You know he knows how. He took you apart in the first place, slit your belly and dug through your innards for the best parts. Swallowed them whole and raw and salty. Surely he could stitch you back together again. 

He sighs, shaking his head. "Can't do a thing for ya if y'don't help me out here."

"There," you say hoarsely, pressing your hand to the gap between your ribs. "Right there." You can feel your pulse eddying beneath your palm. You want to take his hand and hold it there until the hurt stops. Until the blood clots. You want him to cradle you like something precious and domestic. A dog. A tool. 

He doesn't seem to hear you. Lately you've been speaking out loud but it's only in your head. Lately he doesn’t speak your language. He pushes your legs further apart and his tongue darts over his lips. 

"Is it here, baby?" He pushes his knuckle into the seam of your shorts, catching against your clit. You moan and it trembles in the air like a snare pulled taut. He’s got you. He’s got you.

An almost-smile skitters across his face. "Right there, huh?"

Your lip quivers. The world shakes. The rabbit thinks it can run. Your rib cage is collapsing like a house that is sick of being everything but a home. He strokes you in a slow circle and the fabric pinches but you nod. "Right there," you whisper, digging deep into the muck of yourself to find the bright side. Twisting your words into sounds he understands. This is how he loves you. This is how he fixes you.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He grinds his knuckle against you while his free hand works at his belt. Below the pinch there is a spark and you lean your head back against the mattress and choke. A fresh wave of tears brim over your lashes and they are hot as they streak down your cheeks. Your lips are swollen and stuck together. You lift your hips without being asked and he pulls your shorts off. The carpet is rough against your ass. You wait for him to put you where he wants you because that's how he does it. That's how he makes you whole. 

He pulls you onto the floor beneath him and the change in elevation spikes the pressure in your sinuses. "Daddy's gonna fix it, baby," he mutters as he pumps his cock. "Gonna make it better."

He prods at your entrance and you suck the saliva from your tongue and swallow. He burrows into you and you gasp and it hurts. You are too soft and too strong for this, and that's always been your problem, and maybe if you were hard and brittle you would have shattered long ago instead of tearing like wet paper again and again. 

Your nails dig into the carpet as he pistons his hips, groaning as you give way around him. The sting subsides like stings always do. The bloom between your hips is warm and honey-gold. You turn your palms to the ceiling and let his love diffuse through your blood, sigh and hiccup as it spills into the hissing void in your chest. 

He huffs with every snap of his hips. He pushes your knees to your ribs and you see his hands are filthy; he’s been working in the shop. Grease smudges your skin like sorrow. The things he adds to you are never the ones you would have chosen. The things he takes you didn’t know you could live without. 

He fancies himself a hunter, but you know he is a scavenger. He finds your hurt rotting in the undergrowth and skins it, turns it inside-out, pins it to the wall like a trophy. It isn’t his; it doesn’t belong to him. But it is easier to hang on the wall than it is to outrun the hawk.

“You been lonely?” he grunts.

Loneliness dogs your steps like a hunched and withered thing. Sometimes you think you are the only one alive in this place. Sometimes you know you are a ghost. Sometimes you wish he’d give you a baby just so you could hear a different person crying. “Yes.”  

“Been missin’ me, huh?”  

You miss him when he’s right beside you. You miss him when he’s asleep with his arm across your chest, suffocating you without meaning to. You miss him every moment he’s not inside your body and even then you are counting the minutes before he leaves you again. “I always miss you.”  

He cracks a smile. “Always, huh?”  

You miss a version of him you’ve never met. A version who never made it out of the womb alive. A version you dream about, sometimes, in the springtime when he lets you sleep with the windows open. 

The tears begin again. 

He moans. His thrusts pick up speed. “Pretty when you cry, baby. Tuggin’ on my heartstrings.”  His thumb finds your clit again and you whine and buck beneath him. “I know. I know.”  

The joints of your hips are burning. The carpet is scraping your back. You can’t breathe right; air comes in rationed gasps. You are pinned to the dirt and dying. But it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. You can’t remember why you were upset. The emptiness inside you is full of brown leaves and beehives and covered in vines. He’s too rough and it’s too much and you subsume yourself in it. The water is cool and it lifts you. An animal is screaming in the woods, under the bed, in your throat. The rabbit loves the hawk in a way without words. 

“Let it go, baby. You need this.”  

Your brain is misty and you can’t think backwards. The trail is lost. You don’t remember who you are anymore. You only ever think of him. His hands on your body, his lips on your skin. How many bites remain of your heart?  Is there any left for you?  

Where is his heart, and why can’t you have any?  

You are dangling by a snare-string, now and always, and you watch it fray and you feel it snap and you fall to the ground and into the sky. You kick so hard you break your own back and feel bliss. You feel bliss. He is drowning you in honey and you feel better. You feel better. 

"Yeah,” you hear him purr. “That's what she needs.”

He is always right, and you are something else. 

He fucks you through it. He’s right behind you, crashing through the brush, splashing through the mud, groaning and gripping at your bones. “Fuck…’m close, girl….”  

Your ears are ringing. Your eyes are elsewhere. The hum of the hive. The wind in the trees. Water up to your throat. He will finish, he will leave you. You will hide. He will find you. Sunlight through the canopy. Dirt beneath your paws. Bees in your chest. The view from the mantle above the fireplace. He takes your skin and chews your heart and leaves you to decompose. 

When he cums he claws at your underbelly but there is nothing vital left. You are bones. You are hollow. You are already dead. 

He eats and leaves and leaves a mess. He pulls out and honey seeps into the carpet. You follow it through. You rot beneath the house. You swim into the swamp. The sinkhole swallows you up. You disappear amidst the green. 

He says something, but you don’t speak his language. 

#bo sinclair x reader #bo sinclair #bo sinclair fanfiction #house of wax fanfiction #slasher x reader

[sweetmeatdale]

#history #halifax #Halifax explosion #mont blanc #imo #tumblr polls #polls

[anotherplacemag]

The Point of the Deliverance | Alex Boyd

The Point of the Deliverance is a real place, a marker, a line crossed by vessels returning home from rough seas. It can be found on the West Coast of Ireland in the harbour of Portacloy, and would let sailors know that they had reached the safety of calm waters. This project, which took up some ten years of my life, provided me with a compass and a direction, something I desperately needed at the time.

I had dipped my hands into liquid silver, and in the light they had turned to black, darkening before my eyes. This chemistry, when combined with collodion, an amber-coloured substance made from guncotton dissolved in ether, allowed me to capture images using a process from the late 19th century. The photographic history however didn't interest me as much as the aesthetic and the unique way of making work. Often I'd find myself alone in a dark tent on a hillside, developing images and spending hours trying to capture something elusive, beyond the immediate. In the thin places.

I followed the long line of the Atlantic coast as it winds from the South of Ireland to the North of Scotland, guided by the words of Tim Robinson, Sorley Maclean and Seamus Heaney. These writers whose exploration of ancient settlements, peatlands, and Gaelic-speaking communities opened up a different way of connecting to the land. Along the way I climbed the mountains of Skye and Kerry, stood in the shadow of ringforts on the Aran islands, and walked countless miles across the Outer Hebrides in all conditions. The legacy of more recent generations, from rusting bicycles and cargo ships, to the remains of environmental protests in County Mayo, all caught my attention in these endlessly fascinating celtic landscapes.

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book - ‘The Point of the Deliverence’ is being released as a photobook, and is available to pre-order now from Kozu Books. This is going to be special folks... highly recommended!

All images & text © Alex Boyd

[necarion]

Alternate history where the formula for guncotton (nitrocellulose, also smokeless powder) was discovered in the early Renaissance. It is a decent amount more explosive than gunpowder, in that it has about 30% more energy and burns way more cleanly. It was also possible given technology of the time.

What would be interesting is that it would allow significantly higher charges than the metallurgy would be able to handle. Even at the time, overcharging the cannons (and handguns) would lead to explosions (and petard hoisting), so having an even better explosion wouldn't make for stronger cannons than was possible at the time. It might allow riffling earlier because of reduced fouling, but mostly just makes the guns easier to use.

What would change? I think you might get explosive shells earlier, although as I understand it, getting high explosive shells to not be shock sensitive in the initial firing was a considerable challenge that folks may not have been up to pre-19th century. More likely, you'd get increased use of mines, barrel charges, and grenades earlier.

But there would also be an expanded civilian use, I think. Gunpowder was used in metal mining, but it isn't all that great. But Nobel invented dynamite because of its civilian uses. So I could see there being enhanced infrastructure, like clearing of cataracts, earlier in history than we ended up with. (Funny result: some of the cataracts that were great for water-power of mills are cleaned up, so Lowell Massachusetts doesn't end up a textile center). You might also have a higher access to metal ore than in the counterfactual.

Ultimately, not much would change, though, I think.

#History #Explosives #Counterfactual

[farsight-the-char]

TIL that Cotton is a major part of current firearm propellant production, and other forms of explosives.

Nitrocellulose, "guncotton" is made using cotton (Cotton is 90% cellulose).

Current shortages in munitions are in part because of cotton logistics getting scrambled by climate change.

#science #personal political posts

[nebulousmistress]

A Decent Drink

I've been mixing medical knowledge with Dragon Age magic all year, this was bound to happen.

I'm a chemist. I've already reworked the Chantry bomb into guncotton and nitroglycerin, bypassing the black powder stage entirely with the singular application of some mineral spirits. Why wouldn't I find Justice's distaste of alcohol and Dragon Age Lore's own stories of Wynne crushing drinking contests post-Faith and take things to their logical conclusion?

Pure alcohol tastes like ass. It just does, it's ass. It's also a really weak poison that does a number on the liver while only vaguely affecting the brain. But deathroot? I'm already using deathroot like laudanum in the Clinic, why not take the next step? Laudanum is bitter as all getout. So is campari.

It takes a day like this for Anders and Justice to make the connection and start experimenting on themselves in science's greatest and most venerable tradition.

Story takes place maybe 6 months to a year before Act 2 starts.

#fanfiction #mad science corps #whatever i'm going to end up naming my da world state #a great and venerable tradition #ao3 #dragon age 2 #anders dragon age #justice dragon age #drinkin'

[evita-shelby]

Between the Shadow and the Soul

Chapter 47

CW: mentions of sex

Taglist: @joossieisdabomb @johnathancanines @peakyblindas @kissmyquill @zablife @whitejuliana1204 @theshelbyclan @theshelbyslimited

Eva Leonor Smith Shelby had been born and raised to be the perfect woman, and as such a perfect woman must be a great hostess.

Unfortunately for her governess and her family, Eva was also born with a flair for theatrics. She liked acting, dancing and being the center of attention up until the war did a number in her.

But she was healing, the scars had gone from angry red to an almost invisible white and while she could never truly be the wild and carefree Evita Smith, she could be the fascinating Mrs. Shelby.

“You used to be so quiet and meek when you came here that no one could ever believe you were the wild horse of a girl Jack and Ethel talked about.” Polly thinks the cape is a bit much, but Eva wants the whole of the United Kingdom to know who Mrs. Shelby was.

The party would be lavish and costly, but elegant and tasteful. It would have a feat impossible to reproduce anywhere else and it will not be ruined by fucking Mosley and his so-called spontaneous speech. He’d be ‘so inspired’ by Mrs. Shelby's determination to thrive despite all odds and her brief military career under the legendary Pancho Villa, that he’d introduce the New Party.

A Party that will only serve to help transition its members in the British Union of Fascists in 1932.

Still, her grand entrance would make everyone forget his speech even happened and it would be the photograph of her that would be making headlines. The New Party and Mosley can go fuck itself.

“I think I just needed time to remember how much I enjoyed taking the spotlight away from assholes. People will forget him and his fucking speech, but they’ll never forget me and my fiery entrance.” she grins wickedly as she wastes another match on the square of magic silk Bethany Boswell gave her as an early birthday present.

The silk in her hands disappears in a short orange flame without harming her nor leaving any ash behind. One of a kind, made with the same ingredients as guncotton and the flash paper used by magicians, but improved upon with some old and forgotten Romani magic.

The dress underneath would be red like passion, made exclusively for her by a very gifted seamstress in Birmingham who was ahead of the times.

It was stunning and elegant and had just a few little details that made her realize the seamstress was very aware just how sexually active the Shelbys were. It was a little mortifying, but this woman had just ensured Eva never went to her competition as long as she was in business.

--

“Have I told you how much I love you?” He asks playfully, kissing her in those places he knows drive crazy with lust.

They’re careful not to be too loud and rough here in one of those little rooms only them and the servants know about. Tommy may be rather tame in bed, but he gets off on the risk of someone catching them doing the beast with two backs. Eva doesn’t mind admitting that she likes the thrill of fucking where someone could see them, reminds her of that night they made love under the stars in that little part of the beach.

“You don’t say as often as you used to, aren’t you afraid your wife might forget?” she said taking his hands and guided him towards the thins silk straps holding her dress up.

“M’not classically educated like her, she’ll have to accept that her husband likes letting his actions speak for him.” He said rolling a nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she bucks her hips against his in response.

--

Mosley thrived on people’s attention, that was his true weakness.

His desire to always be the center of attention made him a terrible guest, a horrid friend and a shitty husband.

Bethany knew what she was doing when she gave her a sweeping magician’s cape black as ebony. Its mysterious with that very witchy oomph, making it perfect for her grand entrance.

Tommy had just finished taking care of business when she appeared in her billowing silk cape, hood shadowing her face except for her bitch red lips curled in a wicked smile.

“And here I thought I was Mr. Shelby’s honored guest.” He said hiding his petulance like a child that’s been denied a toy as he hands her the match she asked him for.

“I suggest you move away from my spotlight, Sir Oswald.” Eva can’t help ,but say in a sickeningly sweet voice and drops it onto the fabric pooled on the floor.

Eva drinks in the gasps, the flashes of cameras and walks to her husband while the majestic cape burns into nothing. She see’s it in the photographs tomorrow, her standing surrounded by fire and Mosley shrouded in the shadows of her light.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to properly introduce the woman of the hour, Mrs. Eva Shelby.” Tommy holds out his hand and Eva takes it.

With her little performance, she just made them Mosley’s number one enemy.

--

“Like a witch straight from hell.” Polly chuckles as they mingle with the guests. “They’ll never be able to recreate that no matter how much they try.”

“Mosley is absolutely livid, even if he makes his dumb speech he won’t make as much noise as he had planned.” Eva drinks the champagne and relished what little alcohol she’ll be able to drink tonight. She doesn’t need it though, she’s drunk on victory and it hasn’t even been an hour.

“Not drugs, whores or even booze. Its attention, isn’t it?” Polly asks her as they confirm Eva’s theory.

“Same reason Carranza hated being seen as a humorless old man, same reason Obregon couldn’t stand Vill and Zapata being better liked and the same fucking reason every president I know kills his opponents.” Eva knows that Aberama is just about done with the finishing touches om his proposal, but Polly remains talking to her over strategy.

They stand in front of the slightly gaudy portrait in the dining room. The one done by Polly’s old lover, Ruben Oliver.

“They need the love of the people in order to keep their power. Mosely sees Tommy’s popularity as a threat, just ask the maids of Westminster who they think is the most handsome MP now?” Eva explained.

“I saw that fucking portrait when I first saw you, you know. I never thought I’d see the context for it.” She says looking at the large painting Michael seconds ago looked at with envy.

It was inspired by classical paintings and those of the early 19th century with a modern twist. Cost a pretty penny and had been lauded as Oliver’s masterpiece with how well he captured his Muse’s essence.

The Eva in the portrait leaned her head lovingly on her husband’s shoulder and looked contently at the viewer, brown eyes shining with mirth following you like a friend looking for you in the middle of the crowd. Its a beautiful painting, but its clear to all that the Shelbys are perfect.

They had been younger then ---they weren’t old yet, just older at thirty-three and thirty-nine respectively---, Tommy had yet to wear glasses and Eva had yet to consider having a second baby.

“We’re eloping in a week, I don’t want to take any chances.” Polly tells her and smiles like a woman in love when Aberama crosses the room to her.

--

“Aren’t you being a bit of a masochist, Eva?” Michael said when she allowed them into her circle.

“I wanted Don Quixote, but their Kitri is Jewish and our guests are all anti-Semitic.” She answers as if they were still friends.

“Explains why Florence sent her gift ahead of time.” He said and for a moment he’s the Michael he used to be.

“Nice entrance, by the way, I think I heard one of the journalists here say it’ll be the talk of London for months to come.” Gina says, jealous that no one here gives a shit about some Yankee girl.

“The Wicked Witch of Warwickshire.” Michael smirked thinking he’s going to ruin her at the next meeting. He was under the assumption she was blind without her second sight.

“Oh, God, Mickey, don’t go inflating her ego, my family already raised her to the status of holy prophet.” Izzy comes with a giggling Nayeli on his arm.

“Gina, meet our cousin, Nayeli Cardone, she’s the dowager Countess of Cabrera, freshly exiled from Spain.” Nayeli and Michael lock eyes and greets Gina a split second later.

“Just call me Nayeli, my daughter is the one who inherited my late husband’s titles. Not that it matters now that Spain has fallen.” Nayeli says modestly.

Eva hadn’t meant to let this happen, but Nayeli had shown up with Izzy and it was too late to stop them now. Besides, having the aristocracy know that Fascism was coming for their titles would dampen Mosley’s momentum.

“How did you meet your husband? I thought all the Rileys were from Mexico.” Gina asked still believing Mexico was some backwater country.

“My dad is from the Canary Islands, and when my mother was dying of cancer we returned to our home in Tenerife so she could see it a last time. I met Ferran when he was recovering from an illnesses in Mexico amd we just instantly clicked together like pieces of a puzzle.”

A puzzle Michael is about to figure out.

“We got married the second we docked in Gran Canaria with his mother and mine as our witnesses.” She says with an sad smile.. whether it was because of the memory or the brief flash of understanding in Michael’s eyes), Eva doesn’t know.

“How old is your daughter, Nellie?” Michael asks, heart racing, but his face doesn’t betray his emotions like Gina couldn’t hide her spark of jealousy.

“Ana will be five in January, she was born two months early while we were in Barcelona visiting my mother-in-law.” Nayeli lies with a smile, but not well enough for Gina to quash her suspicions.

This will be fun.

“Have you seen my mum, Evie?” Michael asks a respectable amount of minutes after Izzy drags Nayeli to meet with some other blue blood who believes Mosley’s hubris before discreetly making her exit.

“Gardens with Aberama, or should I say, your new stepfather.” She says knowing it irks him to know he has to share his mother with Gold of all people. Especially with the guilt that gnaws at him for indirectly causing Bonnie’s death. “Take the long way through my parlor, the last thing you want is to see is your mother being intimate with a man.”

Eva doesn’t need to specify which parlor, there is only one she cares enough to deem it as hers and it’s the one with a door that connects to the greenhouse and the other to the sunroom.

He blushed as intended and nodded before he left her alone with his bitch of a wife. Same bitch who was giving Mosley the eye behind his back.

Izzy and Linda would be coming to charge her the ten pounds they wagered on Gina exposing herself here.

“The little Countess is Michael’s daughter isn’t she?” Gina asks angrily.

“I think that’s something between you and your husband, Mrs. Gray.” Eva was grateful Tommy’s meeting has finally ended and she has a reason to cut things short. “Oh, look at the time, the performance is about to begin.”

#eva smith shelby #tommy shelby x oc #thomas shelby x oc #thomas shelby fanfic #peaky blinders fanfiction #oc fanfiction #thomas shelby imagine #tommy shelby fanfic #thomas shelby #peaky blinder fanfic #between the shadow and the soul

[mass-mind-control]

#chemistry #energetic materials #nitrocellulose #guncotton #recent project #flammable #diy #nitration #kno3 #h2so4

[xtruss]

How Plastics Are Poisoning Us

They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them?

— By Elizabeth Kolbert | June 26, 2023

Annual production of plastic exceeds eight hundred billion pounds; much of it ends up as microplastics, spreading across the ocean. Illustration by Daniel Liévano

In 1863, when much of the United States was anguishing over the Civil War, an entrepreneur named Michael Phelan was fretting about billiard balls. At the time, the balls were made of ivory, preferably obtained from elephants from Ceylon—now Sri Lanka—whose tusks were thought to possess just the right density. Phelan, who owned a billiard hall and co-owned a billiard-table-manufacturing business, also wrote books about billiards and was a champion billiards player. Owing in good part to his efforts, the game had grown so popular that tusks from Ceylon—and, indeed, elephants more generally—were becoming scarce. He and a partner offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could come up with an ivory substitute.

A young printer from Albany, John Wesley Hyatt, learned about the offer and set to tinkering. In 1865, he patented a ball with a wooden core encased in ivory dust and shellac. Players were unimpressed. Next, Hyatt experimented with nitrocellulose, a material made by combining cotton or wood pulp with a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids. He found that a certain type of nitrocellulose, when heated with camphor, yielded a shiny, tough material that could be molded into practically any shape. Hyatt’s brother and business partner dubbed the substance “celluloid.” The resulting balls were more popular with players, although, as Hyatt conceded, they, too, had their drawbacks. Nitrocellulose, also known as guncotton, is highly flammable. Two celluloid balls knocking together with sufficient force could set off a small explosion. A saloon owner in Colorado reported to Hyatt that, when this happened, “instantly every man in the room pulled a gun.”

It’s not clear that the Hyatt brothers ever collected from Phelan, but the invention proved to be its own reward. From celluloid billiard balls, the pair branched out into celluloid dentures, combs, brush handles, piano keys, and knickknacks. They touted the new material as a substitute not just for ivory but also for tortoiseshell and jewelry-grade coral. These, too, were running out, owing to slaughter and plunder. Celluloid, one of the Hyatts’ advertising pamphlets promised, would “give the elephant, the tortoise, and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts.”

Hyatt’s invention, often described as the world’s first commercially produced plastic, was followed a few decades later by Bakelite. Bakelite was followed by polyvinyl chloride, which was, in turn, followed by polyethylene, low-density polyethylene, polyester, polypropylene, Styrofoam, Plexiglas, Mylar, Teflon, polyethylene terephthalate (familiarly known as pet)—the list goes on and on. And on. Annual global production of plastic currently runs to more than eight hundred billion pounds. What was a problem of scarcity is now a problem of superabundance.

In the form of empty water bottles, used shopping bags, and tattered snack packages, plastic waste turns up pretty much everywhere today. It has been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, thirty-six thousand feet below sea level. It litters the beaches of Svalbard and the shores of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, in the Indian Ocean, most of which are uninhabited. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of floating debris that stretches across six hundred thousand square miles between California and Hawaii, is thought to contain some 1.8 trillion plastic shards. Among the many creatures being done in by all this junk are corals, tortoises, and elephants—in particular, the elephants of Sri Lanka. In recent years, twenty of them have died after ingesting plastic at a landfill near the village of Pallakkadu.

How worried should we be about what’s become known as “the plastic pollution crisis”? And what can be done about it? These questions lie at the heart of several recent books that take up what one author calls “the plastic trap.”

“Without plastic we’d have no modern medicine or gadgets or wire insulation to keep our homes from burning down,” that author, Matt Simon, writes in “A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.” “But with plastic we’ve contaminated every corner of Earth.”

Simon, a science journalist at Wired, is especially concerned about plastic’s tendency to devolve into microplastics. (Microplastics are usually defined as bits smaller than five millimetres across.) This process is taking place all the time, in many different ways. Plastic bags drift into the ocean, where, after being tossed around by the waves and bombarded with UV radiation, they fall apart. Tires today contain a wide variety of plastics; as they roll along, they abrade, sending clouds of particles spinning into the air. Clothes made with plastics, which now comprise most items for sale, are constantly shedding fibres, much the way dogs shed hairs. A study published a few years ago in the journal Nature Food found that preparing infant formula in a plastic bottle is a good way to degrade the bottle, so what babies end up drinking is a sort of plastic soup. In fact, it is now clear that children are feeding on microplastics even before they can eat. In 2021, researchers from Italy announced that they had found microplastics in human placentas. A few months later, researchers from Germany and Austria announced that they’d found microplastics in meconium—the technical term for an infant’s first poop.

The hazards of ingesting large pieces of plastic are pretty straightforward; they include choking and perforation of the intestinal tract. Animals that fill their guts with plastics eventually starve to death. The risks posed by microplastics are subtler, but not, Simon argues, any less serious. Plastics are made from by-products of oil and gas refining; many of the chemicals involved, such as benzene and vinyl chloride, are carcinogens. In addition to their main ingredients, plastics may contain any number of additives. Many of these—for example, polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, which confer water resistance—are also suspected carcinogens. Many of the others have never been adequately tested.

As plastics fall apart, the chemicals that went into their manufacture can leak out. These can then combine to form new compounds, which may prove less dangerous than the originals—or more so. A couple of years ago, a team of American scientists subjected disposable shopping bags to several days of simulated sunlight, in order to mimic the conditions that they’d encounter flying or floating loose. The researchers found that a single bag from CVS leached more than thirteen thousand compounds; a bag from Walmart leached more than fifteen thousand. “It is becoming increasingly clear that plastics are not inert in the environment,” the team wrote. Steve Allen, a researcher at Canada’s Ocean Frontier Institute who specializes in microplastics, tells Simon, “If you’ve got an IQ above room temperature, you have to understand that this is not a good material to have in the environment.”

Microplastics, meanwhile, don’t just leach nasty chemicals; they attract them. “Persistent bioaccumulative and toxic substances,” or PBTs, are a hodgepodge of harmful compounds, including DDT and PCBs. Like microplastics, which are often referred to in the scientific literature as MPs, PBTs are everywhere these days. When PBTs encounter MPs, they preferentially adhere to them. “In effect, plastics are like magnets for PBTs” is how the Environmental Protection Agency has put it. Consuming microplastics is thus a good way to swallow old poisons.

Then, there’s the threat posed by the particles themselves. Microplastics—and in particular, it seems, microfibres—can get pulled deep into the lungs. People who work in the synthetic-textile industry, it has long been known, suffer from high rates of lung disease. Are we breathing in enough microfibres that we are all, in effect, becoming synthetic-textile workers? No one can say for sure, but, as Fay Couceiro, a researcher at England’s University of Portsmouth, observes to Simon, “We desperately need to find out.”

Whatever you had for dinner last night, the meal almost certainly left behind plastic in need of disposal. Before tossing your empty sour-cream tub or mostly empty ketchup bottle, you may have searched it for a number, and if you found one, inside a cheerful little triangle, you washed it out and set it aside to be recycled. You might also have imagined that with this effort you were doing your part to stem the global plastic-pollution tide.

The British journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis used to be a believer. He religiously rinsed his plastics before depositing them in one of the five color-coded rubbish bins that he and his wife kept at their home in Royston, north of London. Then Franklin-Wallis decided to find out what was actually happening to his garbage. Disenchantment followed.

“If a product is seen as recycled, or recyclable, it makes us feel better about buying it,” he writes in “Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future.” But all those little numbers inside the triangles “mostly serve to trick consumers.”

Franklin-Wallis became interested in the fate of his detritus just as the old order of Britain’s rubbish was collapsing. Up until 2017, most of the plastic waste collected in Europe and in the United States was shipped to China, as was most of the mixed paper. Then Beijing imposed a new policy, known as National Sword, that prohibited imports of yang laji, or “foreign garbage.” The move left waste haulers from California to Catalonia with millions of mildewy containers they couldn’t get rid of. “plastics pile up as china refuses to take the west’s recycling,” a January, 2018, headline in the Times read. “It’s tough times,” Simon Ellin, the chief executive of Britain’s Recycling Association, told the paper.

Trash, though, finds a way. Not long after China stopped taking in foreign garbage, waste entrepreneurs in other nations—Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka—started to accept it. Mom-and-pop plastic-recycling businesses sprang up in places where they were regulated laxly, if at all. Franklin-Wallis visited one such informal recycling plant, in New Delhi; the owner allowed him inside on the condition that he not reveal exactly how the business operates or where it is situated. He found workers in a fiendishly hot room feeding junk into a shredder. Workers in another, equally hot room fed the shreds into an extruder, which pumped out little gray pellets known as nurdles. The ventilation system consisted of an open window. “The thick fug of plastic fumes in the air left me dazed,” Franklin-Wallis writes.

Nurdles, which are key to manufacturing plastic products, are small enough to qualify as microplastics. (It’s been estimated that ten trillion nurdles a year leak into the oceans, most from shipping containers that tip overboard.) Usually, nurdles are composed of “virgin” polymers, but, as the New Delhi plant demonstrates, it is also possible to produce them from used plastic. The problem with the process, and with plastic recycling more generally, is that a polymer degrades each time it’s heated. Thus, even under ideal circumstances, plastic can be reused only a couple of times, and in the waste-management business very little is ideal. Franklin-Wallis toured a high-end recycling plant in northern England that handles pet, the material that most water and soda bottles are made from. He learned that nearly half the bales of pet that arrive at the plant can’t be reprocessed because they’re too contaminated, either by other kinds of plastic or by random crap. “Yield is a problem for us,” the plant’s commercial director concedes.

Franklin-Wallis comes to see plastic recycling as so much (potentially toxic) smoke and mirrors. Over the years, he writes, “a kind of playbook” has emerged. Under public pressure, a company like Coca-Cola or Nestlé pledges to insure that the packaging for its products gets recycled. When the pressure eases, it quietly abandons its pledge. Meanwhile, it lobbies against any kind of legislation that would restrict the sale of single-use plastics. Franklin-Wallis quotes Larry Thomas, the former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, who once said, “If the public thinks recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment.”

Right around the time that Franklin-Wallis started tracking his trash, Eve O. Schaub decided to spend a year not producing any. Schaub, who has been described as a “stunt memoirist,” had previously spent a year avoiding sugar and forcing her family to do the same, an exercise she chronicled in a book titled “Year of No Sugar.” The year of no sugar was followed by “Year of No Clutter.” When she proposes a trash-free annum to her husband, he says he doubts it is possible. Her younger daughter begs her to wait until she goes away to college. Schaub plunges ahead anyway.

“As the beginning of the new year loomed, I was feeling pretty good about our chances,” she recalls in “Year of No Garbage.” “I mean, really. How hard could it be?”

What Schaub means by “no garbage” is not exactly no garbage. Under her scheme, refuse that can be composted or recycled is allowed, so her family can keep tossing out old cans and empty wine bottles along with food scraps. What turns out to be hard—really, really hard—is dealing with plastic.

At first, Schaub divides plastic waste into two varieties. There’s the kind with the little numbers, which her trash hauler accepts as part of its “single stream” recycling program and so, by her definition, doesn’t count as trash. Then, there’s the kind with no numbers, which isn’t supposed to go in the recycling bin and therefore does count. Schaub finds that even when she purchases something in a numbered container—guacamole, say—there’s usually a thin sheet of plastic under the lid that’s numberless. A lot of her time goes into rinsing off these sheets and other stray plastic bits and trying to figure out what to do with them. She is excited to find a company called TerraCycle, which promises—for a price—to “recycle the unrecyclable.” For a hundred and thirty-four dollars, she purchases a box that can be returned to TerraCycle filled with plastic packaging, and for an additional forty-two dollars she buys another box that can be filled with “oral care waste,” such as used toothpaste tubes. “I sent my TerraCycle Plastic Packaging box as densely packed with plastic as any box could be,” she writes.

Eventually, though, like Franklin-Wallis, Schaub comes to see that she’s been living a lie. Midway through her experiment, she signs up for an online course called Beyond Plastic Pollution, offered by Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the E.P.A. Only containers labelled No. 1 (pet) and No. 2 (high-density polyethylene) get melted down with any regularity, Schaub learns, and to refashion the resulting nurdles into anything useful usually requires the addition of lots of new material. “No matter what your garbage service provider is telling you, numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7 are not getting recycled,” Schaub writes. (The italics are hers.) “Number 5 is a veeeery dubious maybe.”

TerraCycle, too, proves a disappointment. It gets sued for deceptive labelling and settles out of court. A documentary-film crew finds that dozens of bales of waste sent to the company for recycling have instead been shipped off to be burned at a cement kiln in Bulgaria. (According to the company’s founder, this is the result of an unfortunate mistake.)

“I had wanted so badly to believe that TerraCycle and Santa Claus and the Easter bunny were real, that I had been willing to overlook the fact that Santa’s handwriting looks suspiciously like Mom’s,” Schaub writes. Toward the end of the year, she concludes that pretty much all plastic waste—numbered, unnumbered, or shipped off in boxes—falls under her definition of garbage. She also concludes that, “in this day, age and culture,” such waste is pretty much impossible to avoid.

A few months ago, the E.P.A. issued a “draft national strategy to prevent plastic pollution.” Americans, the report noted, produce more plastic waste each year than the residents of any other country—almost five hundred pounds per person, nearly twice as much as the average European and sixteen times as much as the average Indian. The E.P.A. declared the “business-as-usual approach” to managing this waste to be “unsustainable.” At the top of its list of recommendations was “reduce the production and consumption” of single-use plastics.

Just about everyone who contemplates the “plastic pollution crisis” arrives at the same conclusion. Once a plastic bottle (or bag or takeout container) has been tossed, the odds of its ending up in landfill, on a faraway beach, or as tiny fragments drifting around in the ocean are high. The best way to alter these odds is not to create the bottle (or bag or container) in the first place.

“So long as we’re churning out single-use plastic . . . we’re trying to drain the tub without turning off the tap,” Simon writes. “We’ve got to cut it out.”

“We can’t rely on half-measures,” Schaub says. “We have to go to the source.” Her own local supermarket, in southern Vermont, stopped handing out plastic bags in late 2020, she notes. “Do you know what happened? Nothing. One day we were poisoning the environment with plastic bags in the name of ultra-convenience and the next? We weren’t.”

“We now know that we can’t start to reduce plastic pollution without a reduction of production,” Imari Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck, both environmental engineers, observe in “Plastics,” forthcoming from M.I.T. Press. “Upstream and systemic change is needed.”

Of course, it’s a lot easier to talk about “turning off the tap” and changing the system than it is to actually do so. First, there are the political obstacles. For all intents and purposes, the plastics industry is a subsidiary of the fossil-fuel industry. ExxonMobil, for instance, is the world’s fourth-largest oil company and also its largest producer of virgin polymers. The connection means that any effort to reduce plastic consumption is bound to be resisted, either openly or surreptitiously, not just by companies such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé but also by corporations like Exxon and Shell. In March, 2022, diplomats from a hundred and seventy-five nations agreed to try to fashion a global treaty to “end plastic pollution.” At the first negotiating session, held later that year in Uruguay, the self-described High Ambition Coalition, which includes the members of the European Union as well as Ghana and Switzerland, insisted that the treaty include mandatory measures that apply to all countries. This idea was opposed by major oil-producing nations, including the U.S., which has called for a “country-driven” approach. According to the environmental group Greenpeace, lobbyists for the “major fossil fuel companies were out in force” at the session.

There are also practical hurdles. Precisely because plastic is now ubiquitous, it’s difficult to imagine how to replace all of it, or even much of it. Even in cases where substitutes are available, it’s not always clear that they’re preferable. Franklin-Wallis cites a 2018 study by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency which analyzed how different kinds of shopping bags compare in terms of life-cycle impacts. The study found that, to have a lower environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have to be used forty-three times and a cotton tote would have to be used an astonishing seventy-one hundred times. “How many of those bags will last that long?” Franklin-Wallis asks. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck also note that exchanging plastic for other materials may involve “tradeoffs,” including “energy and water use and carbon emissions.” When Schaub’s supermarket stopped handing out plastic shopping bags, it may have reduced one problem only to exacerbate others—deforestation, say, or pesticide use.

“In the grand scheme of human existence, it wasn’t that long ago that we got along just fine without plastic,” Simon points out. This is true. It also wasn’t all that long ago that we got along just fine without Coca-Cola or packaged guacamole or six-ounce bottles of water or takeout everything. To make a significant dent in plastic waste—and certainly to “end plastic pollution”—will probably require not just substitution but elimination. If much of contemporary life is wrapped up in plastic, and the result of this is that we are poisoning our kids, ourselves, and our ecosystems, then contemporary life may need to be rethought. The question is what matters to us, and whether we’re willing to ask ourselves that question. ♦

— Published in the print edition of the July 3, 2023, The New Yorker Issue, with the headline “A Trillion Little Pieces.”

#Plastic Poisoning #Toxic Chemicals #On Earth and Under Seas #Microplastics #Plastic Pollution #PFASs #PBTs #MPs ​DDT & PCBs #E.P.A. #MIT Press #Coca Cola | Nestlé | Exxon | Shell #Greenpeace

[spxnglr]

☎️ 𝙶𝙷𝙾𝚂𝚃𝙱𝚄𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂, 𝚆𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝙳𝙾 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚆𝙰𝙽𝚃? || meta + childhood? || @halbermenschen​

Ya know what I was actually going to do a HC for this so thank you for this!

To sum it up, Egon’s childhood was...very different from that of other kids, for a couple of reasons, the first being his own interests and hobbies. Check out this paragraph I’ve included in his bio on the main blog page, made of quotes taken from official literature:

Throughout his childhood, in the quiet suburbs of Cleveland, Egon Spengler had provoked that reaction more than once: “I think you’ve been spending too much time with that Egon.” While his friends were indulging in the delights of childhood - cutting school, shoplifting, minor acts of vandalism - Egon Spengler was making a nuisance of himself in the public library/developing a new compact explosive made of guncotton and chicken dung. “If I catch you around that Spengler kid, you’ve had it.”

From this, naturally, it can be deduced that he was a bit of a lone soul - and definitely someone parents didn’t want their own kids playing with. I think this essentially planted the seed of independence, while simultaneously making it harder for him to actually make friends in later life.

Another factor we have to include is his parents, particularly his father. Now, Egon’s father migrated to the US from Poland after the Second World War. He was Jewish, so that should tell you enough about what he had to endure. 

However, from when his son was a very small child, he instilled a tremendous amount of pressure for him to excel. Fortunately, Egon proved to be a child genius, finishing school at age 13. Despite this, he never felt as if he’d done quite enough, and that was primarily because his father encouraged said feelings. Nothing, and I mean nothing, Egon could do was ever adequate for him - even completing two PhDs by the time he was 22 years old, and the final straw was when Egon began his third Doctorate in Parapsychology, a genre that was still relatively unknown and, at that point, not really considered “proper” academia. 

His father expressed his shame at what he thought was a terrible decision, but by this point Egon had had enough. He cut contact with both him and his mother, and when his father died only a year or so later, Egon’s biggest emotion was relief. Finally, he could live his life the way he wanted, a trait that can be strongly seen in him now.

Why did he cut his mother off? Because he felt as if, by not intervening in what was essentially the emotional and mental abuse he’d suffered, she was guilty by association. In later years, they have reconnected, but their relationship is strained to this day.

Anyway, yet another ramble from me, but this stuff is important when dealing with Egon in his current time. Thank you for the ask!

#𝙸'𝙼 𝙰𝙻𝚆𝙰𝚈𝚂 𝚂𝙴𝚁𝙸𝙾𝚄𝚂. (SELF) #𝙸 𝙲𝙾𝙻𝙻𝙴𝙲𝚃 𝚂𝙿𝙾𝚁𝙴𝚂 𝙼𝙾𝚄𝙻𝙳𝚂 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙵𝚄𝙽𝙶𝚄𝚂. (HEADCANONS) #𝚆𝙴'𝚁𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝚈 𝚃𝙾 𝙱𝙴𝙻𝙸𝙴𝚅𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄. (ASK) #halbermenschen #abuse tw #death mention tw #mental abuse tw #emotional abuse tw #holocaust mention tw

[magioffire]

❝ i’m miserable. been a tough few days. ❞

red dead redemption starter prompts ; accepting

@moldcursed

   The two of them, it seemed, were having a rough couple days. The interaction between them began with screeching (mostly on Vali's end), gunshots, and cursing (mostly on Ethan's end), but the chaos eventually died down once the two of them realized that the other was only an active threat if the situation demanded it. Usually. Two crimson eyes watched Ethan from within the darkness, perched atop the broken remains of of a metal awning, bent towards the ground in an awkward matter, like something much heavier than either of them used it as a sort of springboard to propel itself across the rooftops. Bullet holes riddled the building, both old and new, a few still smoking from the spent gunpowder.

    The scent of burnt guncotton and sulfur burnt his nostrils, causing the fae to scrunch his nose up in a look of mild disgust. "Oh, I'm sorry about your tough week, I’m sure that makes you feel real justified in shooting at everything that moves." Vali sneered. The human before him was a strained bundle of nerves, sleepless, stretched thin and terrified, clutching onto the only thing that evened the playing field between him and the monsters that stalked the village. Vali honestly couldn't blame him too much.There weren’t many beings here within the village that did not attack on sight, and even if they were some semblance of docile, that didn’t necessarily make them pleasant.

    Vali opened his massive wings, unfurling the eyespots hidden within, and jumped down onto the ground before the human. He leaned in closer, inhaled Ethan’s scent, and caught that familiar smell that most humans carried around with them. Somewhere underneath the sheen of plastic and wrought metals they covered themselves and their world in, still remained the muddy remains of what once was, never truly leaving, just buried down deep. He also sensed something else with his antennae when he approached Ethan -- something climbing, twisting, growing inside him.

      Valeriu’s brain was keenly trained to recognize fungal infections, just as ants were wired to recognize and dispose of cordyceps before they infect the entire colony. Like an ant, Valeriu's instinct inclined him to kill Ethan, and then kill himself -- all for the good of the hive, of course. The truth was, he might have acted to kill them both, if he was anywhere within the vincity of his old swarm. Luckily for the both of them, he would not be able to return to his swarm anytime soon. And so the instinct to defend his home at all costs died away. It seemed all here were victims of the megamycete, not a single organism left untainted by the mold.

     “You reek, reek the same way the lycans do, but you’re obviously not as ...badly affected.” Both in appearance and in behavior. All in all, the human looked and seemed to be a relatively average human man. A shame then, he was taken from his likely normal life, and thrown into this hell-pit along with the rest of them. The moth took a step back, exhaling his frustration, the tenseness within his body slowly wringing out. “You are the first infected I’ve met whose mind isn’t gone, so that’s good.” Don’t know how long it will last though, for either of us. “You weren’t one of the original inhabitants of the village, were you?” Vali asked. The human looked too....modern, to be living in a backwater village such as this, but he could be wrong. It wasn’t like Vali was an expert on human culture and idiosyncrasies. “When did you arrive here?”

#ic. #village verse. #moldcursed #of course ethan and vali's first interaction would be akin to: #'im swinging around on your ceiling fan like a gargoyle. youre hitting me with a broom. we're both screaming'

[bcklink]

Satran Women's Embroidery Work Poly Silk Saree with Unstitched Blouse Piece  

Draping Styles: Saris are traditionally draped in different styles based on regional and cultural preferences in India. Satriani's rinted poly silk sarees for women can be draped in many ways, including her Nivi style, which is the most common and popular drape style. Other regional styles include Bengali style, Gujarati style, and Maharashtrian style. Each style of drape creates its own look and enhances the overall look of the saree. 

Fringe and Palu: A saree usually has a decorative fringe along its entire length and a contrasting or complementary Pallu, which is the loose end of the saree that is worn over the shoulder. Fringes and pals feature intricate patterns, embellishments, or contrasting colors that add visual interest and elegance to the saree. 

ACCESSORIES: When wearing a Satran print Poly silk saree for women, you can accessorize it to enhance the overall look. Traditional accessories such as bangles, earrings, necklaces and anklets are often paired with the saree. Additionally, you can choose a matching or contrasting blouse design, style your hair in a traditional or modern way, and wear matching shoes to complete the ensemble. 

Opportunity and Cultural Significance: Saris have significant cultural and traditional value in India. It is often worn during festive occasions such as Diwali, Durga Puja, weddings, religious ceremonies and cultural events. Considered an elegant and graceful garment, the saree represents the rich traditions and diversity of Indian culture. 

Saree Care and Maintenance: To ensure the longevity of Satran women's printed Poly silk sarees, it is important to follow proper care instructions. It is usually recommended to dry clean these sarees to preserve the color and quality of the fabric. If you prefer to hand wash, use a mild detergent to gently wash the saree. Avoid squeezing or twisting, and let it dry naturally in the shade. Iron on low or fabric-friendly setting. 

Availability: Satran printed Poly silk sarees for women without sewn blouse portion are available through various channels including online retail platforms, traditional saree shops and authorized Satran retailers. Online platforms often offer a wide range of colors, designs and sizes. 

Polysilk, rayon, chiffon, georgette, and other fabrics that are smooth, light, highly absorbent, and beautifully designed are ideal. But the main reason is that they don't stay the same all day long like cotton sarees. 

Cotton is the most preferred fabric, but it is also very difficult to care for. It looks clean and fresh, but wrinkles quickly. You can always prefer to wear soft cotton sarees, guncotton sarees for regular office use. The advantage of wearing soft or mulled cotton is that it does not wrinkle as easily as pure cotton. Pure cotton should always be washed. But with soft cotton and mulberry cotton, it's easy to wear all day, even when traveling, and you don't even have to start. 

Cotton is always preferred for formal wear. The reason is that cotton can work wonders in business meetings, but it doesn't. please visit here https://amzn.to/3Qyli8Q for more details. 

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.11 (Before 1900)

3114 BC – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, begins. 2492 BC – Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation. 106 – The south-western part of Dacia (modern Romania) becomes a Roman province: Roman Dacia. 355 – Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II. 490 – Battle of Adda: The Goths under Theodoric the Great and his ally Alaric II defeat the forces of Odoacer on the Adda River, near Milan. 923 – The Qarmatians of Bahrayn capture and pillage the city of Basra. 1315 – The Great Famine of Europe becomes so dire that even the king of England has difficulties buying bread for himself and his entourage. 1332 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol. 1473 – The Battle of Otlukbeli: Mehmed the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empire decisively defeats Uzun Hassan of Aq Qoyunlu. 1492 – Rodrigo de Borja is elected as Head of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Alexander VI. 1675 – Franco-Dutch War: Forces of the Holy Roman Empire defeat the French in the Battle of Konzer Brücke. 1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia. 1804 – Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria. 1812 – Peninsular War: French troops engage British-Portuguese forces in the Battle of Majadahonda. 1813 – In Colombia, Juan del Corral declares the independence of Antioquia. 1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren. 1871 – An explosion of guncotton occurs in Stowmarket, England, killing 28. 1898 – Spanish–American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.

#Events