CompStat12 @CompStat128

Repost please. I'm truly interested in replies outside 'the usual suspects.' Starry Starry Knight the polity the main character ends up in is a very libertarian republic that has a very limited navy and is bordered by an evil empire that's going to overrun it as soon as its current civil war is concluded. The BBEE is based on late stage Roman Imperium and has the same problem of an expanding and useless plebeian class and increasingly stagnant economics. So they have to keep invading to keep feeding the plebs. The majority of the universe in the series people live on space stations. Essentially most of the good guys in the libertarian republic's entire plan comes down to 'evacuate the women and children. Fight the boarders in every corridor and either blow the station up at the end or leave it a wreck.' In part because the BBEE will be left with economic devastation. So, plenty of guys are going to get their wish. Like, a large percentage of the male population. What I'm wondering is how much of the male population will have that wish? So far, 94%.

@Jringo1508 I have had the willingness and perhaps the desire to do as you describe since I was at least 12, though the circumstances never eventuated.

@Jringo1508 Now, I have cancer, and my first thought on hearing my short prognosis wasn't about catharsis, but rather how to aid others in facing the same end. I am focused, now, and all that I write will be provided post my demise to cancer support services, and other such entities.

@YermoEd I so wish these were still being translated into English

@AdityaNoFilter @grok Hey @grok make them into DND villains

How frustrating it is that your work is completely overshadowed by “hey @grok , put her in a bikini, or take her clothes off.” I get the impression that the only way to make my account visible is by doing this... and it's really frustrating... Anyway... good night.

When the team at Site Theta-9 uncovered the object, they were puzzled. It lay embedded in a compacted sediment layer rich with hydrocarbons and microplastics, a strata firmly dated to the Late Petroleum Era. The artifact itself was small, metallic, astonishingly well preserved for its age. Bright red, though the color had softened with age, like a fossilized sunset. Dr. Imani Kova lifted it free with gloved hands and held it up to the sun. "It’s a wheeled effigy," she said carefully. The object had four identical wheels, fused to a chassis by age and oxidation. Its proportions were wrong in a way that immediately excited the linguistics team. On its side, in raised letters, was an inscription in ancient English: HOT WHEELS "Clearly a title," said Professor Gant. "Possibly a rank." They photographed it from every angle. Spectral scans revealed zinc alloy, iron, and traces of a polymer compound whose manufacturing techniques had been lost for over a millennium. The wheels did not rotate independently. They were rigid, symbolic. Ceremonial. The team reconstructed the surrounding context with reverent precision. The artifact had been buried beneath what appeared to be the remains of a single-family dwelling, a common sacred structure of the period. Nearby were shards of transparent glass, fragments of printed paper depicting stylized heroes, and the partial skeleton of a domestic animal long believed to have been worshipped as a minor household deity. A cat, the report would later note. Long extinct. Dr. Kova began assembling a theory. "The Late Petroleum Era was obsessed with speed," she said. "They worshipped acceleration. Faster transport, faster communication, faster consumption. This object represents velocity abstracted into physical form." "Hot wheels," repeated the graduate student, slowly. "Wheels that are… hot?" "Ritually heated, perhaps," Kova said. "Symbolic of transformation. Fire and motion combined." The team convened that evening in the research dome, projecting a holographic reconstruction of the object at ten times scale. Enlarged, the tiny casting marks along its underside resembled deliberate glyphs. "These are runes," Gant said. "They encode lineage." Another graduate student suggested it might be a child’s object, a depiction of a common transportation item of the time. The suggestion was noted, recorded, and quietly ignored. The Late Petroleum Era was not known for gifting children metal artifacts containing hazardous substances. That would have been irresponsible. And surely they were not irresponsible. The breakthrough came when the inscription beneath the chassis was translated. MADE IN MALAYSIA "A pilgrimage site," said Gant immediately. "A place of forging," said Kova. They published within weeks. The object, they argued, was a votive offering placed beneath dwellings to ensure safe travel. The red coloration symbolized blood or sacrifice. The four wheels represented the cardinal directions. Household speed-rituals, they concluded, were likely common. Soon, replicas of the artifact appeared in museums across the Federation. Replicas were sold to little children, whom were taught that ancient humans prayed to velocity the way earlier civilizations prayed to rain. The children played with these items in a way that would certainly be seen as sacrilege by these earlier humans, by pushing them and racing them across flat, clear floors. A popular holo-documentary dramatized the ritual. A solemn family gathers. The patriarch kneels. The red effigy is lowered into the earth. The wheels face upward, to carry wishes skyward. Two thousand years earlier, a child named Marcus had lost that exact object under a couch and shrugged before asking for another. That detail, like so many others, was lost forever. And yet, somewhere in an archive, cataloged under "Sacred Objects of the Late Petroleum Era" the red car rested in climate-controlled silence, upside down, still perfectly ready to race down a plastic track no one remembered ever existed.

Pilots from the reconnaissance company of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade showed what Lyman looks like today. The city is holding on, but is gradually becoming covered by this “web.” - "Today, the intensity of combat is measured not so much by destroyed buildings as by the amount of fiber-optic cable"

A 4000 year old city has emerged from the grasslands of Kazakhstan 🇰🇿, and it’s forcing historians to rewrite what they thought they knew about the Bronze Age. The settlement, known as Semiyarka or the “City of Seven Ravines,” is not a campsite or a village. It’s a fully planned metropolis from around 1600 BC, complete with earth walls stretching over a kilometer, organized household compounds, and a massive central structure aligned east to west. This wasn’t a temporary stop. People lived, worked, and built here for generations. Even more surprising, the city wasn’t just using bronze, it was manufacturing it at an industrial scale. Archaeologists found copper ore, crucibles, slag, and finished tools, confirming that Semiyarka produced high-grade tin bronze right on site. In the ancient world, tin was rare and strategic. Whoever controlled it controlled power. Located near major copper and tin sources and overlooking the Irtysh River trade route, Semiyarka wasn’t on the edge of civilization. It sat at the crossroads of ancient supply networks stretching across Asia. For a region long described as the land of wandering herders, this discovery tells a very different story: organized cities, specialized industry, and long-distance trade were already thriving here four millennia ago. 📸© Peter J. Brown 📸© Antiquity Publications Ltd #archaeohistories

@ADHD_weirdo_ Your image was shared through the dubbii group on facebook & I've written a response, but being hopeless at short-form writing, I've posted it here: open.substack.com/pub/jeremygarn… Thanks for your art, and for your depiction of much of my lived experience.

@GOHIPSTAR Is this going to be produced any time soon?

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@RosieWaterland And yeah, its common to over think, especially if you're lonely & forlorn.

@RosieWaterland Volunteer for a cause you care about to meet like minded people. This is how I got involved in festivals, and as a current volunteer coordinator, friendship or no, believe me, you will be appreciated.