so i knew this dude in high school, right, who invented a new kind of nuke and so naturally the government recruited him to work in Defense before he even finished college but then he went rogue about an ethics issue with refugee camps and became the most famous terrorist in living memory and died in a police shootout

so the invention that defines wwx here is a very special nuke because of the forbidden energies and iconic US crimes against humanity elements, and because the thing about bioweapons (top alt suggestion) that makes them so heinous is they can’t be tightly targeted, and keep operating on their own once unleashed and don’t need anyone to deliberately keep using them

which is a different kind of ethics problem than Wei Wuxian’s work has

also because the idea of terrorist yiling laozu walking around with a tiny Actual Nuke in his pocket making him too scary to confront has the best aesthetic

imagine him holding it up over his head and dismantling it, at the end, after he’s lung-shot but before they’ve finished him off. he could’ve taken them all with him.

jgy’s vice-president is Qin Su.

Lan Xichen is his Secretary of State.

Posthumously-five-star General Nie Mingjue was SecDef in a previous administration (and was in a leadership position in the Pentagon at the time of his death)

technically nhs’ appointment to a famously pathetic cabinet position has nothing to do with this, it’s just. normal nepotism.

Jiang Cheng is in a legislative role, i think, not the executive branch, because he’s a leader in jgy’s party/official power base but he’s not one of his, you know? they’re not close. they don’t like each other they just need each other as part of maintaining political stability.

So that would make him Senate Majority Leader of whichever party gave us President Jin (II), most likely.

how does jc have that kind of seniority in his thirties? don’t ask so many questions; jgy also shouldn’t be old enough to legally hold POTUS if everyone’s their canon ages. hush.

maybe the whole senate got blown up by agents of the confederated republic of west african nations or imperial poland or someplace during The War when our leads were teenagers so there are no old-timers, did you think about that

on that note yes this is a US where half the government being chinese-american isn’t remarkable; no i’m not developing that convoluted alt-history just for the bit. this is like firefly but the opposite.

having considered the suggestions I think probably Lan Wangji walked away from whatever his expected career path was, after wwx flamed out and he probably almost went to prison over it, only to be protected by his family’s influence and privately raked over the coals

(probably not physically maimed because this is not a martial sect. might have been severe medical abuse though.)

on paper he works for his family’s law firm, but he does like three cases for them a year (and some admin and mentoring) and the rest of his work is pro bono.

no one stops him because he could live quite comfortably on just his trust fund, which they can’t legally take away without getting him declared mentally incompetent, and any crackdown short of that + physical imprisonment

(which considering he’s not even Doing Anything Wrong would make them feel evil which they do not want to be)

would just result in his walking away to work for a nonprofit or something, so letting him do what he wants is less embarrassing than either of those, and better for everyone

he probably did adopt the kid found locked in a safe in wwx’s last known base of operations after the place had been shot up and firebombed, killing every other person in the building

i have no idea how wwx comes back to life in this scenario but considering modern US is a bit stricter than fantasy jianghu about ‘deciding someone is not a criminal anymore’ etc, him getting Good Ending with his guy after it all goes down may require nhs getting elected (or appointed as interim POTUS though that requires a hilarious number of extra deaths) and issuing him a Presidential Pardon for all of the treason and murders

(can’t be lwj per cql, because the appearance of corruption in that scenario is just excessive)

or alternately he was never convicted of anything due to being impossible to arrest alive and no one’s going to prosecute now

that’s a bit what happened in canon if you think about it

or he just adopts Mo Xuanyu’s identity and everyone officially pretends he isn’t That Famous Dead Guy

they can just be invalidated as candidates because they are convicted of The Crimes (this only happens because nie huaisang orchestrated it, of course; it is not realistic for the entire cabinet to get indicted)

i don’t want to convict Qin Su though, and i didn’t want to kill her

okay President Qin Su and VP nie huaisang; he’ll bag the next election cycle because she sure as heck isn’t running, after the experience of getting publicly outed as qualified to run the country on the super embarrassing basis of not having noticed her running mate and direct superior was super evil until after the Secretary of State stabbed him in self-defense on live TV

this is incidentally why Lan Xichen isn’t her vp instead of nhs. he isn’t being charged with anything, but we really gotta draw the line at tolerating Klingon Promotion in our representative democracy here. bad precedent.

This 1800 mill-turned-home in Camaiore, Lucca, Tuscany, Italy is absolutely incredible. 2bds, 1ba, 2,475.7sqft, €395k / $459,090 approx. USD. Below are photos of how it looks by day and by night. (It's so romantic at night.)

There's a walking path that runs parallel to a road I take to get to my dad's house. There are sculptures set up alongside the path. Some of them are kind of neat, some of them are abstract... and then there's This Fucker.

The Long Horse.

This thing is TALL. Like, I am 5'7" and I sincerely think it might be twice my height. Have a 9 year old for scale:

This thing is way more terrifying up close than it is from the car. The metal bands wrapping around like ligaments, the rust that hints at decaying flesh, the EYES. Imagine you're driving down a semi-secluded stretch of road at night and you see THIS looming at you from out of the darkness:

I have been passing by The Long Horse (actual title of the piece is Uplifted) for years, and every time I see it I think "I need to show this to someone," and every time I forget to stop to take pictures. BUT I DID TODAY. Truly, I feel like it's the spiritual cousin to that super muscular chonkster horse statue, related but opposite.

The rest of the sculptures are kind of neat. I like the motorcycle and the shark and the maple seeds.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

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Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

artistsuniversum: “Kathin Marchenko is a textile artist and designer known for her expressive embroidery on delicate tulle fabric.

Using a "painting with thread" technique, she creates portraits, anatomical forms, and ethereal figures that seem to float within wooden hoops, blending craft with fine art.”

Artist: @kathrin_marchenko

Starry Night Microsweater

She does, however, work even smaller.

This is honestly the most badass shield I’ve ever seen, beating out the lantern shield by virtue of being at least somewhat practical!

“Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days...”

For anyone who's confused today, I won't spoil/explain what the 25th of May is in the Discworld fandom, because I think a big part of what's special about it is the way the plot unfolds in the book.

What I will explain though is that it'll make sense when you reach a book called Night Watch, which is the 29th book in the overall series and the 6th book in the City Watch subseries. If you haven't got that far yet, just take your time and enjoy the series! If you want to start with the City Watch stories then the first book you should check out is Guards! Guards!

Physics - probably the nicest just on the grounds of how fast that's gonna be. Like if you're a goner before any of the other sciences can get to you, you probably don't even have time to feel anything.

Biology - the most standard default way of dying. Most of the time it sucks but not badly enough to warrant you its own wikipedia page.

Geology - one of the oldest OG classics. Rock hits Og. Og is gone.

Psychology - slow tigers are chasing you.

Zoology - fast tigers are chasing you.

Sociology - idk me and the rest of the angry mob agree that you had it coming.

Chemistry - this is a hard one to place because there's a lot of variation. But anyhow you're getting undone on a cellular level.

Mathematics - how the fuck did you even do that.

Cosmology - why the fuck did you even do that?