Ashes to Ashes

edit: taking out some of the more personal things as a precaution in consideration of current events.

Things that Resonate with me: Spoon Theory, By Christine Miserandino: Fork Theory, By Sexistentialism:  --- My general feelings as an Ace Asexuallity using coffee as a metaphor by acesapphic

  Common tags: ( with the reminder the more tired I am or migraine addled the less likely tags will happen but I do try.)

⦁ Tag rant: should be pretty obvious. occasionally this is a triggered response. Very common tag on medical abuse posts. I am happy to wipe my reblog or clear the tags if the op does not want them on the post.

⦁ Tumblr Polls: so people can avoid them. Of all my tags this, politics and art are the ones I keep up on best.

⦁ Part A: Art, fanart, fanfiction ( rarely Tumblr Round Robbin)

Please! PLEASE please credit art that isnt yours or admit if you dont know who made it. We often find someone that can add credit to it. Google and reverse image search is hell right now but please make some effort.

tags cont.

⦁ Fanfiction  When it comes to fanfiction hosted elsewhere I try to reblog them the ones that have embedded cards with the location links. Along with the fandom. I have been seeing lately from the exchanges and challenges are very attractive and I love reblogging them. If you click on them, read them, and like the story please comment where you came from ( discord, tumblr ect) Makes peoples day to see people discovering them outside their home hosting.

⦁ [fandom] is usually abbreviations which uh I imagine can cause some confusion. assume anything with roman numerals is usually final fantasy in some form. Things like: FFXIV , FFXV , FFVII:R or FF7:R ,Mass Effect can be a little odd with the legendary edition being all 3. ME:1 , ME:2 ME:L ect BG3 ( baulder’s gate 3) FMA ( full metal alchemist) I wont usually tag specific characters from it unless I am really compelled. There are MANY I just copy from the original post because I dont know what the abrev is for. xD. When I use lol its not for league of legends.

⦁ Worldbuilding: I read so damn fast ( Frustration) half my searches in Ao3 have display by word count High-low first. The more world building the more I get into it. the more I will have to say about it. Meta posts get this a lot and fiction posts from people I read regularly get this added to my reblog of it.

⦁  reference or guide: this should be pretty self explaining.

⦁ [topic] Nonsense: catch all for a topic I dont have an interest in tagging past what it is because the post tends to be obvious or a trending topic. Twitter Nonsense, Holiday Nonsense, Fandom Nonsense, Gender nonsense ( usually in line of things like clothes having gender not people identity)

⦁ [topic] Bullshit: usually means I have Opinions( negative or disbelieving) on the situation. But not enough for the rant tag. USA politics often have a secondary tag along those lines. example: Politics  US politics USA Politics Vote suppression Bullshit. or Fandom  Fandom nonsense   gatekeeping bullshit.

I try to be aware when reblogging what country any politics or events the post applies to. Politics get tagged Politics and [country] politics. I dont always catch these so if I goof sorry.

I try to tag art. fanart, fanfiction by fandom. Not uncommon for me to be completely confused and not know the fandom so sometimes you just get the art and fanart tag.

---

Fundraisers in general:

⦁ I will reblog from mutuals I have had a while. esp if its someone they personally know. I am not really in a place to donate to everyone or often anyone in a meaningful way but I am happy to signal boost. I pay more attention to things that have a start/end date. 

I think Amazon wish lists are a good middle ground. I think they are neat and underutilized for people that need household supplies/food but understand why people would not want or be able to use them. I get Amazon is evil. I agree but it’s a good system.

⦁ I will reblog Fundraising requests that have commissions or other similar things. Be it art, music, or even just going out in your area and recording nature you do you. Makes it look less like a scam and much more easy to verify. Try to not look like the current scam donation templet.

I dont care about art style, genre, skill or age restriction. Your commissions your deal. just be mindful of not getting it struck down by the tumblr overlords with the Card art. No one wants to see more artists get nuked.

⦁ I like reblogging commissions in general honestly

⦁ Fundraising for those effected by bad Politics or hell situations requires links that I can vet or have been vet by people I trust to. Unfortunately a LOT of scammers are taking advantage of the chaos and crimes against humanity to make money.

⦁ I WILL NOT reblog Fundraising that is rude and attacks the reader for not caring enough, not talking enough or generally guilt trips people no matter the cause or how well worded the rest is. Pull the Trauma guilt nonsense- Get blocked. This is true of Awareness posts in general. knock off the Your a Bad Person if you Don’t game. Don’t do this garbage. ----

General things: I dont like ticktoc or instagram From a user standpoint. I will not join them. 

I love following artists!  most any medium.

I am especially partial to monochromatic, greyscale and color on dark backgrounds. 

Also uh I am one of those people that tend to fall in love with the fandom as its viewed through the community instead of the source material. Yeah I am that person. Still haven't seen Good Omens . but man do I got opinions and read fanfiction of it. That and there is amazing art and meta out there. I have a few fandoms I have done this with. So if you have a WTF moment over how CANON def didnt do something i believe it did. thats probably why. ( I will look up things if confused or for discussion. I dont think of it as a more important or replacement for canon. It usually leads to me going to see/play the source material eventually)

Do Commissions? Post them if I see it or if you @ me in the replies  I will do my best to reblog! Just please put an end date or commissions somewhere in it for my sanity.

I love tumblr’s habit of taking one persons story short and ( with respect) playing off of it until you get a post that is one long collaborative story. These are always wonderful show of love to the material and each other.

I love Tumblr stories in general.

Fandom Things: Things that are important to me ( fandom edition):

⦁ Squick is a nonjudgmental thing to say you really dont like something but you do you. It’s an excellent and fun word please help bring it back to life.

⦁ Purity Culture is how our spaces keep getting nuked. just dont.

⦁ Fictional characters do not have rights they are objects, cant commit crimes, or have consent. they are dolls. DO NOT confuse them with real people.

⦁ Ship and let Ship fucking please!

⦁ Gatekeeping is a form of hate.

⦁ My head cannon is not your headcannon and that’s great! Fanon is fanon good or bad.

⦁ Dont like it dont read. Didnt realize you didnt like it. Hit the Back BUTTON. READ THE DAMN TAGS IF THEY HAVE TAGS

⦁ Dont be afraid to start a discussion with authors/artists they are usually thrilled to talk more about what they love!

⦁ Dont be that asshole that nitpicks and criticizes grammer or spelling. this is for fun not for your ego.

⦁ Learn to love the back button.

⦁ Please feed your creators! ( comments, inspired by, questions ect) if its to stressful or off putting I get it <3 do what your comfortable with.  Your not a bad person if you decide not to.

⦁ Please do not harass or drag celebrities actors, studios or writers into fandom unless they expressly show interest. They dont need to read your porn that involves them. Just dont. As far as I am concerned that’s sexual harassment. If they express interest that’s different. Needs to be clear interest not just talking about knowing it exists.

Tumblr survives on reblogs. If you like reblog it. If its someones personal post and not really ment to reblog for the sake of respecting someones vent space. Hit the like button to give a hug.

Dont be afraid to block people. Block me for my bio if you like. Curate your spaces. Dont give a shit about how offended someone will be by you blocking them. It‘s your blog and space make it comfortable for you.

For once I'm not actually doing a bit; those "any resemblance to real persons living or dead" disclaimers genuinely exist because of Rasputin.

We're having our turn in the heat wave and reports from the National Mall are brutal already this week. That screenshot is today's forecast (courtesy of the Capital Weather Gang) and tomorrow and Saturday are confidently going to be worse than this is.

The national Mall has no shade on the grass and you will be exposed to the sun constantly while also experiencing extremely high humidity. You will not be allowed a bag over a certain size to enter the mall and it has to be clear. You cannot have an insulated water bottle, it has to be clear. Reports are that there are two entrances to the area so you'll have to wait in line to even get in. I cannot find a number on how many cooling stations there are, except that it's "few" to "none" depending on what accounts I read online. Vendors are allegedly charging more than the posted prices and seem to be unprepared for actual crowds - these are the official vendors not the scam food trucks that park all around the edges of the mall. And that's the extent of the planning done because it was not a priority to make sure attendees don't pass out.

My local friends and I have reached a consensus that tourists are going to get extremely sick and none of us know what the EMT response or planning is on the mall this year. People are going to die.

There is historically an assumption that attendees will have access to planned amenities. It's not in place this year of all years. There is a very real risk here and I'm trying to warn people, because people simply don't know how awful this is about to be.

and dc is a swamp, literally. when we hit a heat wave like this, the heat just settles; it doesn't break at night and there's just zero relief, especially without shade in places like the mall. and without cooling stations or literally any other planning or precautions, people will get sick. they will get hurt. they will die.

if you know anyone planning on going, please tell them to stay home or find something else to do. watch the fireworks from somewhere else.

in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.

in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."

what is a side-slip, you ask?

it's drifting.

the guy goddamn drifted his 767.

in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.

and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:

so you may be wondering: how the hell does a 737 (capacity of roughly 100-120 people) run out of fuel midair? the METRIC SYSTEM, that's how!

up until the early eighties, airplanes would have three people in the cockpit: the pilot, first officer, and flight engineer. generally speaking, the pilot's job is to fly the airplane; the first officer's job is to provide support, monitor instruments, and assist (the pilot and FO will swap roles periodically), and the flight engineer's job was to watch over all the fuel gauges, electrical systems, hydraulics, etc., to make sure they were all working properly, as well as taking charge of things like "setting engine power."

however, in the early 1980s -- when this story takes place -- the flight engineer role began to be made obsolete as computers and more advanced systems became capable of doing most of that work. the boeing 737 of this story was one such plane: actually, air canada 143 was quite a new airplane at the time of the accident, and had no flight engineer.

also in the early 1980s? canada was making the switch from the imperial system to metric.

neither of these things is bad in and of themselves. but put together? one of the flight engineer's jobs was to monitor fuel; it hadn't yet been made clear whose job it was now. canada, at the time, was doing refuelling in a convoluted "the fuel is weighed in pounds but put into the plane as liters" system that required Math and Conversion.

let's talk about AIRPLANE FUEL. unlike a car, you don't take your airplane to the station and fill 'er up: fuel has weight, and airplanes care a LOT about weight. way more than you'd imagine. it's the pilot's job to therefore calculate a) how much fuel they need to get from A to B b) how much extra/emergency fuel they need for safety and c) if and when they need to refuel and by how much. is there bad weather in the area? where's the nearest backup airport? if i need Ten Fuels to get to alberta and there's storms in alberta, i need another Two Fuels to circle around and kill time before landing safely, plus another Five Fuels to get to calgary in case alberta is impossible. my airplane is fully loaded, which means it's heavier than usual, so needs another One Fuel for takeoff power. so altogether i need Eighteen Fuels. except i'm in canada in the 1980s so now i need to figure out what that is in liters, and this used to be the flight engineer's job, and idk man. maybe it's 5 liters? that sounds right?

...you see the issue. it isn't that anyone was slacking off, but no one was quite sure what the conversion was, and so instead of giving the soon-to-be Gimli Glider 18 Fuels, they took off in that fucker with nowhere near enough fuel. to make things worse, the plane had a broken fuel gauge, which was a whole other thing and series of comical misunderstandings, but basically it meant that not only was there No Fuel, but the fuel gauges looked something like this:

the very-soon-to-be crashed airplane's day started off normally. they did a little hour long flight from one city to another with no issues. because they knew the fuel gauges were being silly, while on the ground they did a "stick test", which i'm imagining involved a tree branch, basically checking that yep, there was fuel in the tanks, we're good! (in actuality, what it was doing was measuring the weight of the fuel. except, again, they had their maths all backwards, so due to this convoluted conversion process they went "our fuel weighs 5 kilograms, which equals 20 pounds, which equals 18 fuels, which equals 900 liters." just. silly math. i don't want to make these guys out to be idiots: they would obviously have never flown the plane if they had realized their mistake. but the other problem was of course that the process was already convoluted and required multiple conversions; imagine how much worse it would be if, like these pilots, it was a new system you weren't used to!)

so they boarded their passengers and set off from montreal with the intention of flying to edmonton. and that's when things all went terribly wrong.

pictured: the intended and my interpretation of the actual flight.

all this set up leads to the actual flight, which is almost boring in summary: while high up in the sky, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. this is bad. we do not want this to happen. the pilots had no idea what was happening at first, but i mean: it was pretty obvious. there's no fuel. no engines. no power. you're 30,000 feet in the air in a 64 ton machine and gravity is going hey girllll heyyyy.

but the thing is, airplanes are really cool. like, this is what got me so interested in these plane crashes and accidents: airplanes are awesome. because first of all: just because you weigh as much as a building and are thousands and thousands of meters in the air? doesn't mean the airplane just falls. hell no! without power, an airplane will still stay in the air, losing altitude, sure, but gliding fairly safely and manageably. this doesn't mean you're safe, but: when air canada 143 lost all power, it still had time and options. it also had... the RAT.

the Ram Air Turbine, or the RAT, is an amazing fucking guy. if an airplane loses power? a hatch pops open, and a little propeller drops down automatically. he's wind powered, and he will provide just enough backup power to keep the most critical systems online, even without fuel or engines or god. we LOVE the rat. and the rat leapt into action here, providing the pilots with enough basic systems to keep going.

this doesn't mean that air canada is out of the woods. landing without power is not easy! the trick to landing an airplane is doing it at a nice shallow angle and low speed, which involves things like "doing nice steady turns to line up with a runway" (no time, we're falling steadily), "using engines to get our speed right" (what engines), "getting to the correct altitude and speed to touch down gently" (we have NO POWER we can't go "oopsie too low" and pull up and adjust). if a plane loses too much speed, it WILL fall out of the sky (a stall) because the aerodynamics stop working. if it's going too fast, you're not landing, you're diving cockpit first into the ground. without power, you can turn, but turns will reduce speed. you can't level off or go back up. you are Going In A Downward Direction. the trick is figuring out how fast and how far and aiming at a runway.

this is also where ATC comes in! we love air traffic controllers!! air canada called a mayday, and ATC leapt into action. their job becomes to Get Them What They Need. air canada wants to go anywhere in canada? atc will move everyone out of the way and get them any runway in the northern hemisphere. when this happened, air canada 143 was near winnipeg, which was their initial goal: this IS going to be a crash landing, and the nearer they can be to emergency services, the better. however, the first officer was doing Good Math, calculating their rate of decent vs distance flown, and soon realized that even though they could literally see winnipeg from the windows, they just weren't going to make it. they were falling too fast.

enter: GIMLI. the first officer had actually trained there during his air force days; it's a former base with two runways. it wasn't ideal, because ATC had no information on it and it lacked instruments and equipment (normally, for example, airports will have locator beams and so on to help an aircraft lock on to the runway at the Correct Safe Angle), but... better than a field or lake. one of the dangers of this type of no engine landing is actually being non-committal: waiting too long to make a decision, trying to maximize time in the air rather than land. this makes sense! it's probably pretty human instinct! prolong that crash as long as possible! but it's much, much better to simply Commit and Prepare and Go For It. and that's exactly what air canada now did.

they told ATC they're going to gimli and made the turn. the cabin crew was meanwhile preparing the passengers for a crash landing.

the crazy thing about plane crashes is, actually, that they are very survivable. don't get me wrong: they're bad. people die. but the number of worst case scenarios where dozens of people still, somehow, survive? shockingly high. of course, you don't want ANYONE to die. i would be terrified if it was me. but cabin crew had to know it would probably be... well, not okay. but that if they got everyone prepared and braced, people were going to make it out. people were going to survive this. possibly most of them. possibly all of them.

as the plane approached gimli, problem #87 came up: they were still too fucking fast. they're gliding down! they can't stop! normally, a plane would simply slow down with flaps, or maybe do a couple of big circles before reorienting themselves towards the runway to lose some speed and altitude, but they don't have time -- or altitude. and that's where the theme song KICKS IN

here are reasons you DO NOT DRIFT airplanes, by the way. it can fuck up your engines: engines work in part by taking IN air, so flying at a Drifting Angle means that's all wrong. the aerodynamics are wrong. you're losing speed VERY fast. you can get OUT of the drift, but now your engines are fucked. on the other hand, this plane effectively HAS no engines, but... there's a reason people don't drift planes, okay.

another plot twist: gimli air force base was no more. the runways were still there... but it had been turned into a drag strip, ironically enough. and it was family day! picture this. you're a nice canadian racing fan in 1983, at the strip with your family, cooking hotdogs and poutine on a grill. and a fucking 737 APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in front of you. because that is exactly what happened. there were KIDS. on BIKES. with a PLANE HEADING RIGHT TOWARDS THEM. in the mayday episode, the kids tried to outrace the plane in a panic: in the pilot's telling, the kids simply froze in fear.

by the time the pilots realized the runway was occupied, it was way too late to turn back. they landed. in a twist of bad luck that turned into good: without power, they had to manually release their landing gear.... and the nose gear didn't lock. this turned out to be a weirdly good thing: without nose gear, the plane's nose hit the runway and acted as one hell of a brake in ITSELF, grinding on the asphalt as the plane barreled down at high speed. the pilot also intentionally steered the plane into the rail in the middle of the runway, trying to slow the plane even more. and... it worked! the plane came to a stop. everyone was fine. even the kids on bikes.

all this friction caused a small fire in the nose, and so the pilots called for an immediate evacuation to be safe. this caused a bit of an issue: because the nose was on the ground, the butt of the plane was higher than usual, and the back slides were basically just vertical drops. a couple people got mildly hurt using them, as you'd expect.

meanwhile, the drag strip folks were rushing over with fire extinguishers and the like, and the small fire was easily contained (note: do not fuck with burning airplanes. this one had no fuel so COULD be contained). by the time ATC got emergency services to gimli, everyone was safe, ankles were being iced, and presumably everyone was eating hot dogs.

the airplane itself had some minor damage (from when the nose acted as a brake), but was largely intact: it was patched up, refuelled, and took off from gimli a while later, where it flew for another 20 years before retiring of old age.

and that is the story of the Gimli Glider: that time a pilot drifted his plane so hard that he saved the lives of everyone on his plane.

all 69 of them 😎

(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.