Halloween halloween halloween halloween halloween

"do you get ringing in your ears sometimes?" "y-yeah. sometimes." "yeah, i would have been surprised if you didn't. the [muscle i do not remember the name of] here is like touching a guitar string."

"have you ever experienced whiplash? not recently, but in the past?" me, forgot about it since it was literal years ago and thus didn't mention it on my intake form: "...yes?" "okay, i thought so."

"are you a side sleeper?" "yes, i am" "on your right side?" "yes" "you really curl up, too, huh?" "y-yes."

me beneath the relaxation the whole time:

Stanley is definitely the Black Queen on a chessboard.

Senku doesn't have a queen. He has loads of knights and bishops and rooks. But he doesn't have the kind of massively overpowered piece that can go anywhere and do most things with an absurd range the way Xeno does.

Xeno only has like one or two bishops/knights, really. He doesn't really have a rook. He's got people like Brody and Charlotte and Maya, who are great and all, but the most useful piece he's got is Stan. He just is.

And Senku does not have anyone comparably powerful and dangerous. And I mean, the series admits that; that's why they wake Stanley back up. Senku still wins the initial chess match because lots and lots of rooks and bishops and knights will still corner a king even with a queen still on the board.

In all other regards than chess, Stanley is certainly Xeno's knight.

But as far as that quick and dirty chess metaphor, it's honestly just rude.

Excerpt from this story by Earther/Gizmodo:

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its El Niño outlook, declaring a 90% chance of a “very strong” event. In fact, leading forecast models are predicting the strongest El Niño on record, and it could offer a preview of our future climate.

A new analysis by Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, shared with The Washington Post, found a 95% chance that the combined impact of this “super” El Niño and human-driven warming will make 2027 the hottest year on record. He reportedly estimates that the global temperature could range from 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) to 3.33 degrees F (1.85 degrees C) above the preindustrial average next year.

At the upper end of this range, 2027’s global temperature could resemble levels the planet might not otherwise reach until around 2040—temporarily fast-forwarding the current warming trend by about 13 years, according to The Washington Post. At the lower end, we’d see temperatures resembling what’s expected by the mid-2030s.

Even El Niños of ordinary strength can significantly boost Earth’s average temperature. That’s because the sharp rise of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean releases vast amounts of heat into the atmosphere. But this is no ordinary El Niño.

“No El Niño in the modern record has run this warm this early in its development: measured against each year’s own climatology, 2026 is now tracking above even the great 1997 and 2015 events at the same point in the year,” Hasufather and his Berkeley Earth colleague, chief scientist Robert Rohde, wrote in a July 2026 temperature update issued Thursday.