Nightside Melody

Vocalist, Ziarra's, recording of Heat Rises (FUCKING REALLY COOL) - tiktok

Brittany Harris, the cellist, is apparently more on tiktok but here's her youtube - her website that seems a little outdate but at least has links to some of her tracks on spotify

i don't know the etiquette for posting other peoples tiktoks but the delivery of this punchline hit me like a FUCKING TRUCK please

Okay, so you know that favorite pen brand you have? Whatever one that is. When I say "your favorite pen", there's that one that comes to mind. But have you ever bought one and found it to be unusually scratchy and unpleasant, or the ink blobs weirdly or it's more dry than usual? That's because a pen is only as good as its refill. Mass manufacturing pens is going to produce some inferior ones, and you'll run into them every once in a while. You might have the best pen ever, but then you use it up and buy another one or you buy a refill, and then it... sucks? Betrayal? Hello? Because maybe the tiny ball in the refill has a little imperfection on it, and now whenever it catches on the edge of the pen tip, your ink stutters. Now you're trying to write and its frustrating and you're not having a good time about it.

This is why I'm constantly recommending fountain pens even when we were talking about ballpoint or gel. A fountain pen, by nature of having a permanent pen nib, will write the same no matter how many times you fill it. You run out of ink, you fill it back up, and it's still the same pen. A gel or ballpoint pen refill replaces the entire writing mechanism along with the ink, and there's a good chance the writing mechanism will suck. Fountain pens don't do that.

Furthermore, fountain pens significantly reduce the amount of waste per pen refill. Yeah, I'm out here constantly like "you guys should totally stop buying a 17-cent pen and instead buy a $7 fountain pen with an $11 ink converter and a $17 bottle of ink." Which is very Vimes-Boot-Theory of me, I know. But in the end, if you can afford the upfront cost, all those things will last you much longer than a pack of cheap pens AND you'll have a better time writing AND you'll significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste that you produce. Ink comes in glass bottles that you can reuse or recycle IF you ever get to the end of them, but they can last for-fuckin’-ever.

Yeah. Anyway.

I guess in conclusion, here’s a relatively cheap but good quality and very long lasting fountain pen setup if you want:

Preppy fountain pen - $7

Noodler’s ink - $17 with the promise that you will never get to the bottom of this bottle

EITHER a converter for the fountain pen so you can fill it with the bottled ink - $11

OR a syringe that you can use to manually refill the Preppy’s included cartridge when it’s empty - $2.50

The ONLY thing of that setup you’d ever need to buy again is the ink, and that’s only if you manage to finish it in the first place.

eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun

You have Parker, who has been designated as bad and wrong since she was a very young child and who has let go of any expectation of being anything else, so that identifying and doing what she thinks is the right thing is consistently an overwhelming and scary experience for her;

Then there's Eliot, who can point to exactly when and how he became irredeemable in his own eyes and whose highest ambition now is to do the wrong thing for the right people this time at least;

Nate, who is clinging to all of these ideas about morality and legality and good and bad that are completely inconsistent both internally and with his behavior, because his very normative view of the world was shattered and he never put the pieces back together in any kind of coherent way;

Sophie, who sees right and wrong as primarily about relationships between people, like she does everything else: right and wrong is in how you engage and who you hurt interpersonally, anything more abstract is irrelevant. But within that, there's also this weight to how she engages, this sense of regret at how she's treated people in the past that we never really see the full scope of;

Home is Behind, the World Ahead

Home: Where you are now

The Path: How to choose which path to tread

Through Shadow: Challenges you may meet

Edge of Night: How to face those challenges

Stars Alight: What you’ll accomplish/learn

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.