my laptop is still functional but my e d & 3 kys ar now compltly unrsponsiv so whn i'm on laptop it's simply going to b a crapshoot on whthr i will b cohrnt or not. goo luck.
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Lifelike biochemistry continued to unfold in sterilized soil for six years, pointing to a metabolic theory for how biology began.
For 15 years, Sébastien Fontaine has been trying to kill dirt. The biochemist, who runs a lab at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment, wanted to know how much carbon is released by soil — just dirt alone, completely devoid of life. His team sealed dirt into jars and blasted them with sterilizing gamma radiation. Then they waited for the carbon dioxide released by the soil — a sign of ongoing microbial respiration — to drop.
They waited, and waited, and waited some more: weeks, then months. Under a microscope, the irradiated soil showed no signs of life, but it continued to emit carbon dioxide. The soil wouldn’t stop breathing.
Fontaine’s lab repeated the experiments and produced the same results. Finally, convinced that they weren’t dealing with an artifact of the experimental setup, they set out to find the source of breath in dead soil.
Now, Fontaine and his colleagues have reported that their soil samples continued to consume oxygen and spew carbon dioxide (opens a new tab) for six years. In a 2025 paper in Science Advances, they proposed that a metabolic process that powers much of life is also possible outside living cells. Their experiments point to how it could work in dirt, absent the living proteins that would typically organize it. If they’re right, some biochemical reactions, such as those that release the energy of carbon-rich sugar molecules, may not be unique to living things. Such reactions — known as metabolism when performed by cells — could even predate life on Earth, Fontaine said.
The experiments show “what happens to biomolecules when they’re left to their own devices,” said Joseph Moran (opens a new tab), an organic chemist at the University of Ottawa who was not involved with the research. They’re finding that the chemistry of life is not exclusive to life, he added. “It’s the chemistry of geology.”
Painfully sad to see stuff with Yue Qingyuan as willfully refusing or even purposefully lying to Shen Jiu about why he didn't return, thus having the entire miscommunication be his fault alone and that he's aware on some level that he's misleading SJ, which bums me out. Mainly cause I don't think it lets him work as well in the bigger picture of Bingqiu, especially in regards to Shen Yuan's own growth.
Daily dose of unhinged rambling beneath.
For one thing... he does admit (almost) immediately to what Shen Jiu had already been working up towards in his own mind and tone, and that they both believe increasingly to be "true" and to some degree is: that Yue Qi's choices left Shen Jiu in the hands of a sadist for years.
(blue for emphasis on YQY's reactions, green for SJ's)
Always gonna wonder what was Yue Qingyuan going to say before Shen Jiu "opened fire". That he was happy to see him? That he'd really tried to save him, only to find a burned down manor, maybe something that would have led to an actual admission of Xuan Su's whole deal? Maybe! We'll never know. :'] weheheh~
But unfortunately for everyone, Shen Jiu's in defense mode. To shield his feelings, he'd already decided that Yue Qi is gone -- and SJ's first reaction to people who aren't Qi-ge is pro-active hostility in order to keep himself safe, an instinct has been turned up to eleven thanks to Qiu Jianluo.
SJ does deserve an answer of course -- but I also think the conversation is set up in this sequence in order to have YQY to "realize" (big air quotes here) that no matter how he explains it, he's not going to be forgiven. So he says the raw truth: Qi-ge let you down.
From there, SJ doesn't want to hear any more apologies because to him they're just guilty words with no substance. But what YQY seems to take away from it is that his apology has been rejected. For him to try and further explain himself would be, in his own eyes and in his view of the angry boy before him, guilt-tripping excuses.
I think in the same moment that SJ was "realizing" that he is poisonous scum, YQY is "realizing" that he is an unreliable failure.
What really gets me is how in his vol 3 confession, there's an implication that he maybe did try to explain himself later on -- and then got rebuffed by SJ in some fashion? It wasn't like SJ interrupted him the first time, he definitely did wait for YQY's response. So what else could "let me finish speaking" mean...
So now he's not just explaining himself but begging Shen Qingqiu to listen. It's not a case of him just refusing to give an explanation or leaving SJ waiting for one, but also believing that he won't be heard even if he does.
Which, if some previous things he says are anything to go off of, probably had some hefty weight of evidence in his mind. 🙃
The fact that he confesses to SY because otherwise "it'll be too late" implies to me at least that he did really want SJ to know what happened to him, maybe that he even did attempt it in the years in-between, but either wasn't given the chance or didn't do it in such a way that SJ would let him finish? But now YQY thinks he's dying, so he has to seize the chance to speak up.
But the readers and Shen Yuan know it's already too late.
That's why it becomes so obvious to Shen Yuan in that moment that the truths he'd believed have led him into the exact same situation, and that he has to turn back now lest he suffer the same fate as qijiu.
If Luo Binghe's foil is his original abuser, Shen Jiu, with both of them working off of assumptions tainted by self-esteem issues and fears of abandonment...
...Then Shen Yuan's foil has to be Yue Qingyuan, where both of them fully believe that they can't and won't be forgiven for the harm they've done to someone they promised to care for, and that anything they say will only make the situation worse.
It takes becoming the outsider to someone else's perspective for Shen Yuan to realize that he has to put a stop to it.
Wait sorry but I also can't believe I forgot the cave scene so I'm tacking it on:
Really interesting how Yue Qingyuan definitively states that he's been here before, just not why. Did he intentionally say it, with an impulsive urge to have that deeper conversation? Or maybe it just slipped out?
Either way, Shen Jiu doesn't take the narrative bait, reacts predictably snappy given that he was about to qi deviate a few seconds ago, and YQY drops the topic in favor of keeping him calm. One of those moments that make you wanna pull at your hair, aaaaaaa-- It's almost the perfect intro to talking about The Everything. But just like every time before it, YQY's words/behavior hints, SJ snaps, and YQY retreats without defense or explanation. Aaa...
(Side note: it's mentioned way later in the chapter that "Yue Qingyuan wasn't the type to sigh much, but Shen Qingqiu was inevitably capable of wearing him to the bone". So I personally read this as him already emotionally exhausted even though they just started talking. Presumably because of where they are.)
But then you get to SJ commenting on the blood-stained cave around them, and then:
This was, imo, probably the closest they ever got to anything about why YQY didn't come back getting revealed. And I wonder if that tiny convo about YQY being annoying hints was included purposefully to hint at why it didn't happen.
The particular part of the chapter makes great pains to point out that YQY didn't get to see SJ very often as disciples, and that when he did he "chattered nonstop", and that other disciples were watching in apparent surprise/amusement at seeing him act like this. So we get told that YQY was actively seeking out SJ, even when he knows he's being rebuffed. He wants to talk to him about everything going on, something that a YQY who is purposefully lying to him probably wouldn't do imo.
So why the flip to sudden "Oh" from YQY. Besides the obvious Ling Xi Caves PTSD going on. 🙃
I get the feeling that MXTX added the previous mentions and then outright discussion of YQY annoying SJ to lay out the irony in how SJ reacts. A lot of SJ's character arc sets up how he's very much the guy who can't help but press on his own bruises and then get mad that it hurts -- and I think this is another example of it.
The chapter starts with descriptions of YQY talking to SJ as much as possible, then the "I don't care if you've been here before" convo followed by "I find it annoying when you talk to me", before it ends with YQY ending the scene in silence.
Maybe on a good day like a tournament, YQY can handle getting shot down because hey at least SJ is talking to him, right? But here, with SJ describing essentially exactly what happened to him, is setting off an intense trauma response in YQY, sooo I think he just does what he did when he first mentioned the caves: he pulls back and says nothing rather than defend or explain himself.
And the craziest part of all, is that Shen Jiu knows something's wrong too! If we're supposed to wonder why Yue Qingyuan won't talk, then we've gotta also wonder why Shen Jiu doesn't press further? He didn't want to sit in the silence before, he was perfectly willing to keep talking just to fill the silence. He is smart, so I really wish I knew exactly what conclusions he was drawing from YQY's sudden quiet reactions to what he'd been describing, YQY mentions of being in the caves before, and the noticable tremors.
Maybe Shen Jiu doesn't ask because some part of him doesn't want to hear the answer, echoing back on YQY's confession where he begs Shen Yuan!SQQ to listen to him and let him finish.
In this case though, it's not out of anger (though I bet YQY probably assumes as such) but because he doesn't want to consider the horrible implications of what's in front of him.
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you’re eric bogosian you’re like 70something and you think your days of being a big dick bisexual are over and then you sign on to play a character on some vampire show and within three years you’re posting oldguy thirst traps that make assad zaman foam at the mouth in your instagram comments
not everything in a story has to or should be "realistic" but in my opinion there's a level of illusion that should be maintained, and I think that's the actual problem that many people try to pinpoint with the "unrealistic" criticism. Dialogue shouldn't be written like an actual transcript of human speech, but should contribute to the illusion of a real person speaking. A character is a tool of the story, not a narrative, but we're trying to maintain the illusion that they are a person. Worldbuilding should exist to serve the story, not to be a perfect simulacrum of how every aspect of nature/society etc. would actually play out for real. But there should be the illusion that it could be real, that organizations and systems would operate in such a way, that people might behave in such a way.
in conclusion: "Is this realistic?" <<wrong question. "Does this serve the illusion or disrupt it?" <<now we're talking
A lot of companies that make things have two separate lines: consumer and enterprise. Consumer is for us poors that the company doesn't need to respect. You can buy more expensive, higher tier consumer items but it's just as fragile. You're paying for more bells and whistles. Enterprise grade is stuff that will actually last because it is often sold in a lot as part of a contract and the contract won't be renewed if the items suck. These things are often just not sold to consumers because why would you ever buy consumer-grade garbage if you could buy this?
For something like computers, this looks like how pricey "gAmiNG" laptops look all fancy but fall apart in about the same timeframe as the lower end laptops for students. But if you've ever handled the sort of laptops for banks or businesses, you'd wonder why laptops can't all be like this. People swear by Lenovo Thinkpads for a reason. Dell's Latitude (general productivity) and Precision (has the power of a gaming laptop but far less bs) lines, HP's probooks, all feel really nice and last for-fucking-ever. But you can't buy them in a store even if you wanted one.
So the trick is to buy what big organizations are buying, but you likely gotta get 'em secondhand when the orgs are done with them. For basic clothes, mil surplus might be a good port of call, for technology see an e-waste recycler or sometimes government auction (you just gotta know what to ask for; ThinkPads, Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Probook/Zbook). Otherwise try to thrift old, pre-enshitification items. The blanket I had as a kid is still going strong and has lived to bury multiple sets of newer bedding (which have worn thin and torn). Kitchen items, see if you can shop at a restaurant supplier.
TL;DR: if you need an item, think "which business needs these to function" and see where they 1) buy theirs (suppliers) or 2) sell their old ones (surplus) and buy that. If you can't do that, look at older, pre-enshitification things.
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