Beringia14

Does this summer heat make you feel like a greater naked bat (Cheiromeles torquatus)? Glands in its neck produce unpleasant-smelling, oily secretions—the scent of which has been compared to “stale socks drenched in engine oil.” Also known as the naked bulldog bat, this mostly hairless mammal can be found in parts of Southeast Asia, including Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. It typically lives in large groups, and colonies of up to 20,000 individuals have been observed. 

What is clear is that once the collapse started, it was contagious, likely for two reasons: first that collapsing areas produced invading forces and refugee flows that destabilized their neighbors and second because as you will recall above, these states are interlinked and their rulers rely on trade to furnish the key military resource (bronze) as well as to acquire key prestige goods necessary to maintain the loyalty of the aristocracy. The clearest evidence of this are the reports in Egyptian inscriptions of peoples grouped under the modern heading of ‘Sea Peoples’ because they are often described as being ‘of the sea’ in one way or another. The evidence here is tricky: what we have are a set of inscriptions, spanning from 1210 through to the mid-1100s describing fighting against – and, this being Egyptian royal writing, invariably the victory of a Pharaoh over – a range of invading peoples. What is tricky is these reports cover multiple periods of fighting and they’re using Egyptian names for these people meaning we’re not always entirely confident that we can tell who exactly the Egyptians meant to identify.

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Consequently the ‘consensus’ vision – which remains to a degree conjectural, although it is the ‘best fit’ for the evidence – runs roughly like this:

Intensifying warfare in the E. Mediterranean and Mesopotamia may have reduced the resources available for major states to confront a crisis and perhaps were already associated with some kind of unrest.

A shift to a drier climate causes harvest failures which begin to push the teetering states over the edge into collapse.

In Greece, the palace states begin to collapse one by one – probably from internal strains (e.g. an oppressed peasantry) rather than external invasion.

Because the ‘palace economy’ was so central (and employed a lot of people, including a lot of warriors), collapse within Greece may have been contagious as raids and refugees spawned by collapsing palace systems fatally strained others.

Those collapses in turn begin to disrupt trade but also produce outward movements of refugees and/or raiders, which may in part be what is being ‘remembered’ in Homer’s account of the Trojan War or the broader Greek mythological assumption that the Trojan War marks the end of the ‘Age of Heroes’ (which is how the Classical Greeks understood this period).

That same strain hits the already ailing Hittite Empire, strained by wars and defeats in the Levant against the Egyptians and Assyrians. Battered by harvest failures and increasing raids (such as those Ugarit is crying for help from), Hittite power collapses.

The states of the Northern Levant, under pressure already now lose their protector, while the other major states of the region (Egypt, Assyria, Kassite Babylon) lose a key trade partner and at least some access to tin in particular (required for bronze).

The resulting economic contraction produces internal instability (Nineteenth dynasty replaced by Twentieth in Egypt) and combined with further raiding/refugee pressures, all of these imperial powers contract into their homelands, no longer able to project power far afield.

The etymology for Mbabaram “dog” has been reconstructed back to Proto-Pama-Nyungan, which was spoken “as recently as about 5,000 years ago”:

From *dwog(a) < *udwoga < *gudwaga < Proto-Pama-Nyungan *gudaga. Related to Dyirbal guda, Yidiny gudaga.

While the etymology for English “dog” has been reconstructed confidently only back to Olde English, which was spoken from about the 5th to the 12th centuries:

In golden morning Taylors pulling T-Rex Glory Girl from the dinosaur universe, Cowgirl Fletchette from the western universe, Vampire hunter armsmaster, zombie eidolon, noir tattletale, steampunk string theory, cartoon parian etc etc all to fight Scion.

I think Taylor’s relationship with Brian is a lot more interesting, important, and purposeful than I’ve seen a lot of people consider it to be. I’ve seen people describe their relationship as feeling empty, like Taylor just chose the nearest hot guy to her to date. To be clear, I think this is (partially) true, but I think that reading is textual and intentional.

Taylor is attracted to Brian kind of because he is the nearest boy to her, but also because he’s the face of her fantasy in the first several arcs of Worm. Taylor’s early time with the Undersiders (before the Dinah reveal) is characterized by escapism and living a fantasy. For the first time, Taylor has friends who respect and listen to her, she has power, and she has control over the direction of her life. To go along with this fantasy, she has Brian, a boy who trusts her and who she feels she can trust. Taylor’s initial attraction to Brian is because he slots right in to this dream of hers. But importantly, Taylor has two fantasies - having friends and control, and being a superhero. As she explicitly states at the end of Arc 6, one of these fantasies is what she wants, and the other is what she considers morally correct. Taylor’s relationship with her morality is a different post, but what’s notable here is at the end of Arc 6, Taylor actively decides to chose what she wants to do over what she thinks is right. She is under no (serious) outside pressure when she burns the letter to Miss Militia, she is just disregarding morality to follow her preferred fantasy, which explicitly includes a relationship to Brian.

But then, not one full arc later, and Taylor is smacked in the face by what it means to chose fantasy over morality, when it turns out that her dream boy is perfectly ok with child slavery. After this moment, Taylor does not express any explicit attraction-like feelings towards Brian until the end of Arc 13, six full arcs later. That’s because at this point, with her fantasy shattered by Dinah, Taylor has become utterly devoted to what she sees as the “moral” goal, rescuing Dinah at all costs. Taylor let her guard down, she let herself get what she wanted, she tried to begin a relationship with Brian, and she was punished for it, informed that her actions led to a child getting kidnapped and enslaved, and so she refuses to allow herself to have those things for herself again.

In Arc 15, Brian fully confesses his feelings to Taylor, they kiss, cuddle, and then an arc later, they sleep together. They sleep together after winning a crushing victory against Dragon, after successfully seizing control of the city, after Taylor seems to have Coil’s assurances that he’ll free Dinah. So Taylor once again lets her guard down, takes a night off, *indulges* in Brian… and boom, blown up, blinded, betrayed, shot, forced to take a man’s life, giant monster released to attack the city. And the Echidna fight is pretty important to Taylor’s arc. It’s in this fight that she is forced to start considering the world outside of Brockton Bay. Cauldron, the Triumvirate, other dimensions, the end of the world. Taylor really internalizes the fact that she is a big fish in a small pond, and she desperately wants to jump ponds. She just lost her last life’s mission, freeing Dinah, and Dinah informed her that she would be important, that she needed to start addressing things outside of Brockton Bat, outside of the Undersiders… outside of Brian.

Taylor and Brian only interact one time post-Echidna, pre-Behemoth. There, Brian asks Taylor if she can see them together, long term. Taylor briefly has a fantasy of them living together, married with kids, and she wants it, but she has long since learned not to give herself what she wants. After Taylor turns herself in, Brian reflects that he never made her happy, and he’s *kind of* right. Brian *did* make Taylor happy, but she can’t allow herself to be happy, because when she’s happy, she lets things slip and bad things happen. Their relationship fell through twice, and each failure prompted Taylor to begin a new goal, a new life’s mission - saving Dinah, stopping the end of the world. Their relationship was empty and hollow, because Taylor couldn’t allow herself for it to be anything but.

Obviously, this dynamic draws some immediate parallels to comphet, especially because Taylor has several close friendships(?) with other women, most of which were not empty or hollow by necessity. It does invite the question of why Taylor felt like she couldn’t devote her time and emotions towards Brian, but she could towards Rachel. I’d say the in-text reason is because Taylor views Rachel as more of a project or a test; she’s determined to make Rachel like her because she can’t stand failing or giving up or leaving behind another broken friendship, like she had with Emma. Of course, one could argue that Worm would have been improved if Taylor was explicitly attracted to women, and entered into a relationship with Rachel. I do think it might be. Still, I really don’t feel as though it would be necessary, especially considering the real-world parallels of Wildbow being aromantic (to my knowledge, he did not know it at the time). You can absolutely see Taylor’s aversion to devoting time and emotion to a romantic relationship rather than a friendship as aromantic coding, just as easily as you can see Taylor’s aversion to devoting time and emotion to a man rather than a woman as comphet.

How many woo-woo-to-fascism pipelines do we have to create before we accept that any system in which we agree to prioritize what makes people feel good and comfortable over objective, observable reality is inherently prone to radicalization. How many times are we going to act shocked that people who refuse to accept scientific evidence in regards to crystal energy and repressed memories then move on to refusing to accept scientific evidence in regards to vaccines and chemotherapy. How many times are we going to hold people's hands and tell them of COURSE it's okay to believe things just because they Feel Right and not because you have even a shred of evidence and then act shocked when they start believing the people who tell them that all their problems are caused by minorities?

How many woo-woo-to-fascism pipelines do we have to create before we accept that any system in which we agree to prioritize what makes people feel good and comfortable over objective, observable reality is inherently prone to radicalization. How many times are we going to act shocked that people who refuse to accept scientific evidence in regards to crystal energy and repressed memories then move on to refusing to accept scientific evidence in regards to vaccines and chemotherapy. How many times are we going to hold people's hands and tell them of COURSE it's okay to believe things just because they Feel Right and not because you have even a shred of evidence and then act shocked when they start believing the people who tell them that all their problems are caused by minorities?

Scientifically speaking, it is observable reality that some people are born with severe gender dysphoria that is alleviated by transitioning. This is settled science; almost every study ever done shows massive benefits to transitioning with virtually no medical regrets or drawbacks. The exact mechanism that causes some people to feel this way is unknown, but the scientific evidence shows that it clearly exists and transitioning is unquestionably an effective treatment for dysphoria.

In social terms, while human sex is roughly bimodal, gender is a complete social construct. Very few people are arguing that there are zero biological differences between cis men and women, which would be denying objective reality imo*. However, gendered pronouns and clothing and such aren't objective realities, they're just some shit we made up and we can change them whenever we want. It's not any weirder for someone with a penis to want to be called "her" and wear dresses than it is for someone with a vagina to do so. Honestly, it's much weirder that we're still gendering clothing at all.

So in this case I would say that scientifically, skepticism demands that we accept the existence of trans people, and socially, it demands that we let people decide how they wish to be addressed and perceived, whether they be cis, trans, or in between.

The year is 1519, and you are Hernán Cortés. You and all of your compatriots are stuck in the most effective way to make someone a bad person: put them in a situation where they must become incredibly wealthy and powerful incredibly fast or else they will die horribly. Transatlantic voyages are absurdly expensive. Anyone in the ‘New World’ who isn’t rich enough to afford their own army is deeply in debt, with no collateral but their own sword-arm. It is an environment that does not reward half-measures. It does not even reward full measures. It only rewards putting a brick on the gas pedal and crossing your fingers - if you kill one person then you’re a murderer, but if you kill hundreds of thousands of people then you're a paragon of glory and the Spanish crown will make statues of you.

The year is still 1519 and you are Moctezuma II, Huēyi Tlahtoāni (great ruler) of the ‘Aztec Empire,’ also known as the Triple Alliance, or the Mexica. You know a thing or two about half-measures not being rewarded, because you are in a process of rapidly expanding and consolidating a nascent Mesoamerican empire. You are quite good at your job - even before you ascended to the throne, you cultivated a reputation as a skilled warrior, a dedicated student, and a devout worshiper. Your name means something like ‘lord who frowns in anger.’ It’s a fitting name, because the process of ‘imperial expansion and consolidation’ generally involves killing lots of people. To make matters worse, some weird hairy white guys showed up out of nowhere and they keep demanding an audience with you. You try every trick in the diplomatic handbook - deferment, threats, flattery, bribes - but everything you do just seems to make them more single-mindedly focused on your destruction. Later, after you are dead, they will claim that you thought they were gods.

The year is 1545, and this whole ‘colonialism’ thing is starting to peter out. Trans-Atlantic voyages are still ruinously expensive, and the pickings are getting slimmer every day - it’s not like you can go loot Tenochtitlan a second time. You’re starting to wonder if it’s time for everyone to pack up, go home, and forget about… holy shit is that a mountain of silver? Is that an honest-to-god mountain with more silver in it than every other existing silver mine on the face of the earth combined? Yes. Some call it Potosí. Many will call it “the mountain that eats men.” In a single moment, colonialism goes from a plundering campaign for recently-unemployed soldiers to a permanent institution. The alchemists back in Prague and Vienna never learned how to turn lead into gold, but the mercenaries and taskmasters in Potosí found a much simpler equation to turn blood into silver.

The year is 1571, and the economy of the Ming dynasty doesn’t feel so good. Their experiment with paper money was a failure, to put it gently. It turns out when you try to have paper currency but you don’t have sophisticated counterfeit protections and there’s also a booming cottage industry of people making paper in their actual cottages, well, you can guess how that ends. So you’re trying to shift to a silver economy. But then you run into an even bigger problem: you don’t have enough silver. So if you start demanding taxes in silver, the price of silver will skyrocket, which means taxes will skyrocket when the economy is already ailing from the whole ‘paper money’ thing. Some hapless scholar-official in Guangdong is nervously watching a peasant sharpen his pitchfork when he gets word from a messenger: some gweilo just showed up at the port with literal shipfuls of silver and they want to buy silk, tea, spices, and porcelain at outrageous markups.

Within living memory, the world was still ‘medieval’ in many ways - slow, parochial, zero-sum, carefully arbitrated by tradition and precedent. Legible. And now Spanish sailors take Bolivian silver on ships guarded by West African mercenaries and Japanese ronin, sailing to their colony in the Philippines to rub shoulders with Chinese officials, Indian sultans, and Malay merchants. All because some dipshit from Genoa got his math wrong and wouldn’t shut up about it.