Grace and Rocky, giving a tour of the Hail Mary to fascinated Eridian scientists and diplomats.
Pointing at things and explaining what they are and how the ship works, lots of awed and appreciative noises are made.
Until one of the visiting Eridians points out a specific item. “And that?”
It’s a strange, circular thing, a xenonite disk mounted upright on some sort of pivot so it can spin freely, but around the edges it has… spokes? Pegs? Sticking out of it, that hit against a stiff flap that would slow down the spinning.
It is also separated into sections decorated with crude etchings of a human and an Eridian.
“Ah,” Grace says.
“That,” Rocky says.
“That’s. Um.” Grace seems somewhat embarrassed. “That’s the sacrifice wheel.”
The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”
“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”
“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”
“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.
“Which made sense.”
“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”
“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”
Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”
“What about the wheel?”
Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.
It lands on Rocky again.
He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.
“Rocky!”
“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.
“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“
“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”
“But you WOULD have!”
“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”
“I would not! I would have done fine!”
(The Eridian scientists and diplomats are still here watching this btw. Slowly dawning on them that 1) these two are extremely not normal about each other 2) if Erid ever does another space mission they NEED to send a therapist aboard because this is what happens when they don’t)
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just watched an interview with james ortiz (rocky’s puppeteer) where he’s like “they were torturing ryan gosling for this movie. it was killing him. he was developing isolation sickness in real life from being the only actor on set for 6 months. i needed to be there for him even when rocky wasn’t in frame to serve as his guiding light and the sole thread tethering him to the concept of love. i was kneeling at the altar” and what
and then in ryan goslings interviews he’s like “i was struggling in the depths of hell. until a beautiful puppeteer angel lifted me up out of the darkness and saved me so completely and understood the character so well we had to make him play the role for real”
multiple people have commented “usually i consider rpf to be morally reprehensible. however in this case it is okay, because it is ryan gosling and a puppeteer, and that’s really fun.”
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Someone mentioned how they were having a hard time creating a world for their fantasy fiction geographically because they kept reinventing the island of Britain, which also happened to my good close enemy George R. R. Martin. I would like to suggest North Carolina. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous but North Carolina has an awesome geographic setup for a fantasy kingdom, I think. Inhospitable barrier islands, constantly shifting shoals in the sound, swamps with alligators, venomous snakes and carnivorous plants, lots of very flat and somewhat sparsely populated farmland, foothills, mines, mountains full of mysterious phenomenon that were originally very difficult to navigate and people still get lost in today. It kind of rocks.
There are actually 36 carnivorous plant species native to North Carolina, roughly half of all carnivorous plant species in the United States are found in North Carolina! I added the carnivorous plant detail because that’s something I love about the state. We have so many fucking bugs that the plants keep evolving to eat them.
I love that giant man eating Venus flytraps are worldbuilding staples in untamed tropical fantasy settings but they’re actually native to a small region in the Carolinas.
And I agree with the notes, the Chesapeake Bay + Great Dismal Swamp (partially in NC anyway) and the South Carolina Lowcountry would be good geographic additions to this.
As someone who collects a LOT of physical media but doesn’t make a lot of money, I want to share the rule that keeps my wallet from crying out in despair every time I enter a store. I don’t remember who I got this from, but thank you whoever you are because it has been a game-changer when it comes to building a large collection without breaking the bank.
The $1 per hour rule. It’s exactly what it says on the tin. If I’m purchasing physical media, I consider it good value if I can expect to get at least one hour of enjoyment for every dollar I spend on it.
I don’t remember what I spent on BG3, but I know it was a good deal because I’ve logged 600 hours in it. Hades II costs $30, and I was more than happy to pay that because I know I’ll play it for at least 30 hours. When I add books to my library, I almost exclusively buy used books that cost under $5 because 5 hours is a good average estimate for how long it takes me to finish a novel.
Will there be a treat you splurge on every now and then? Of course, but $1 per hour is a good standard to stick to if you want to responsibly build a dragon's hoard of physical media.
You 🫵 person in Europe who’s finding it unseasonably hot and you suddenly don’t know what to wear on, like, a hot train.
You’re going to go on Vinted or eBay and put in “made in Italy”, “moda Italia” or (translation of same.) add the search term “silk top.”
What you want are tops that consist of these really thin jersey vest tops with a floaty pure silk layer over them. You’re looking to spend £8-20. You might need to specify “floaty” or “lagenlook.”
There will usually be a healthy secondhand collection of these online. Try to get a pure silk overlayer if you can - some of them are silk blended with viscose.
You’ll probably find the designs kinda mid or old-lady-ish. Don’t worry too much about this. They’ll actually look pretty cool on, and everyone will be jealous of your freedom from suffering.
These tops will keep you much cooler than skimpier ones.
I find they don’t do the rumpled-commuter thing as badly as linen does. I like a linen trouser + these tops
Swishy silk layer is cooler than wearing nothing.
Keeps the sun off the arms/ chest.
I don’t know how to get these secondhand in the USA or other places, or if they’re prohibitively expensive, but if you’ve had luck doing so, do let me know.
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fictional characters can't consent because they aren't real.. but YOU can consent to reading heavy themes, and you can withdraw consent by clicking the back button and stopping any time, it is your choice to read stories that include or exclude consent 👍
smiling thinking about "Bubby meeting Additional Voices as a child or teen and taking him under his wing with just a bit of prickliness" scenarios. but also making nuanced faces to the other passengers on the bus so that they know i also fuck with addibubby scenarios and am not trying to infantilize an existing character for the sake of maintaining a ship with a more "palatable" age gap
All of the elemental lair scenes for Flight Rising, together!
This was a hell of a project, and you can really see where I learned as I went. There's a lot I'd go back and change if I could still but overall I'm super happy with these and so glad to get the opportunity
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Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):
Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click.
"Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said.
Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from.
"If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."
And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):
While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.
Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.
And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:
When Google first started implementing AI-assisted results, news publishers warned of “catastrophic” impacts on the industry, much of which relies on Google search to drive users to their websites.
Last year, news websites saw significant traffic declines as chatbots increasingly replaced Google search as the primary way to find sites and ask questions.
Small businesses also noted drops in traffic to their sites from Google, which has traditionally delivered customers.
Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy & research at Amsive, a digital marketing agency, warned as early as last year that Google’s planned changes to search are “going to have a devastating impact on the Internet.”
“It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.
So I saw this news last week and finally switched over to duckduckdo and the difference is STAGGERING. It's like...search from 20 years ago. The results I want are at the TOP. I can't believe I waited so long to switch.
agreed, switching to duckduckgo last year was the single best improvement in my life. just remember to change the search settings > manage ai and turn all the different toggles to Off (duck.ai), Never (search assist), and On (Hide ai images)
“It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.
So when the news sites go out of business, the content creators give up, the only places you can buy things from are the ones big enough to pay Google's going rate for being included in results, and the entire internet has been turned into an AI-generated ouroboros of shit... then what?
This is so validating because the respondents in this paper are saying some of the same things I've been feeling and thinking for years.
I'm asexual. I figured that out not long after I first came across the term in high school. But figuring out my gender took a lot longer. I didn't really think about my gender identity for years, it wasn't until I was in college that I started trying to figure out what my gender was. That process took years.
I didn't really feel attached to my assigned gender, but I also didn't feel the gender dysphoria that trans people described. I didn't particularly feel like I was neither of those either. For a long time, I honestly didn't feel like any of the gender descriptions and identities I was coming across really fit. I just didn't care that much about what my actual gender was. Eventually I decided upon the agender label as that seemed the most apt. As the paper says, it's really hard to be truly without gender in this highly gendered world. Agender is a way of defining myself in a way that people who experience gender might be able to understand when "I'm just me." isn't really an acceptable answer to the "what's your gender?" question.
I don't mind being perceived as a gender, none of them are offensive to me. While I do like when I am perceived as male or at least not female, I think that more has to do with growing up female and not wanting to be pushed into traditional female roles and values than a connection or repulsion to any gender. I'm impossible to misgender because I frankly don't care.
Honestly, the biggest problem I have with my gender, is trying to define it to people. There's been a large push in recent years for asking people for their pronouns, or including pronouns in things like email signatures and surveys. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a bad thing! This is very affirming for a lot of people. But it feels like I need to pick something that doesn't quite fit. At pride, for instance, there's always pronoun buttons. But they're all she/her, he/him, they/them, she/they, he/they, it/it, xe/xir, etc etc. And that's great. I'm always glad that there are a lot of options for people. But there's never any pins for any/all pronouns. I've never picked up a free pronoun pin at pride, despite always looking, because they all feel like picking what pronouns I don't want poeple to use and the answer is that I don't care. I fround an any/all pronoun pin once at a queer museum and I cried.
I really suggest you read the paper if you haven't. Not just the article, the whole paper. This is probably the most seen I've felt in a long time.
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