Yep. Its Me. Bye.

The thing is this. For all his friends teased him about a protection obsession, for all they poked at him for his constant inability to let things go without helping… he didn’t think that was it. Of course he would step up every time, but it wasn’t a pulling, consuming need, it was guilt, knowing the ghosts were his fault in the end.

If you asked Danny, he’d say his obsession was the stars, the world just past our planet’s atmosphere. A place so vast and so amazing that he couldn’t help but pause and stare sometimes. He’d say his obsession was his curiosity, his wonder, his desire to simply know.

But if he was honest with himself; truly, actually honest… that wasn’t it either.

They say your obsession forms by your last thought when you die. Your last thought in your mind, in your heart, the last thing you want before it ends. And if it’s powerful enough, if you want it enough, and there’s enough energy to power it…. You’ll become a ghost.

Danny’s last thought wasn’t about protecting.

It wasn’t even about his love of space.

When Danny had died, 14 and isolated in a machine of his parent’s making, his last thought had been not unlike that of the many others who are lost too young and too soon.

‘I just want to live.’

And when there’s enough energy, and the desire is strong enough… the last thought before death can be powerful enough to determine a ghost’s existence.

And all Danny wanted was to live.

So when he stumbled out of the machine, hair white and eyes glowing,

Math was my passion growing up. It was fun and exciting to me, like solving a puzzle, and I wanted to be an unspecified brand of Scientist™ someday; my mom wanted me to be a mechanical engineer like my grampa. She decided my natural aptitude for math wasn't fast enough for her liking, so she skipped me ahead from algebra straight to AP calculus without geometry or trigonometry. I was completely out of my element, miles behind every other student, so she made me take two year-long homeschool courses in one month to help me catch up before I flunked out. It didn't help, it just made my existing course load even harder. I was burned out and I barely coasted by with a C- and a newfound hatred of math.

I never managed to grok calculus, and promptly forgot everything about it the second I graduated. When I learned that the major my mom wanted me to take in college would require more calculus and physics, I said fuck that and settled for something easy. I bounced around for my first two years, got my AA, and finally chose to pursue English (the greatest mistake of my life) because I had vague ideas of becoming an author, but my university had a shitty English department that didn't teach me anything. All they offered were glorified high school courses, "read a book, write an essay, take a multiple choice test, repeat. Congratulations you're an English major." I never learned grammar or style, I still don't know how to punctuate certain clauses, I completely wasted my final two years taking the most bare bones credits I needed to get a degree with no real goal after graduating. I went to college because it was expected of me, but my plan evaporated in high school because my mom pushed me too hard and even though I passed all my classes I feel like I failed miserably.

I want to go back. I want to retake the high school math I missed in my own time then reapply to my alma mater for another bachelor's program. I want to go into astronomy/astrophysics because all the science classes I took as electives in school were as fun and exciting as I'd hoped they would be, and I remembered that I loved to learn. I want to go back and try again with a real goal this time, to major in astrophysics so I could get a job, a career, doing what I'm good at and enjoy. It's not going to be easy, but I've been taking it easy my entire adult life and I'm trapped in my home town working as a cashier at a side-of-the-highway tourist trap motel at 26. I need to apply myself. I need to live up to the potential I had in high school. I need to go to the moon in this d'cade and do the otha things, not because they are easy, but because they are hahd!

Astronomy and earth/space science were my favorite classes in college, but I never took any beyond the 1000 level, and the suggested semester plan for a BS in astrophysics requires advanced 3000 and 4000 level calc, physics, mechanics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, stats, and differential equations to name a few, so I have my work cut out for me. I need to buy some textbooks this summer and relearn prerequisite math before I can even hope to jump into this field. I'm not gonna enjoy it, it's not gonna be fun and exciting all the way, I'm gonna wanna give up, but I need to prove that I'm capable. I need to push myself to do what I don't want to do. I don't need to be a savant, I just need to pass. Cs get degrees. My little sisters are in college now, and both of them are taking a relaxed schedule, part time credits, only a couple classes per semester, however long it takes. The full astrophysics major requires 120 credits, but only 62 are critical, the other 58 are gen ed, and I already have my BA so I can skip those. 62 credits is 2 years of full time work (year and a half if I take a summer semester, though that's four months of work in half the time, so I'd once again risk burnout), but I could bang it out as a part-timer in 3 or 4 years. Hell, if I went back full time I could take a bunch of fun gen ed classes for a minor, or even a double major, but I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.

Start small.

I need to brush up on

Algebra 1

Geometry

Algebra 2

Trigonometry/Pre-Calc

Calculus

It's too late to apply for fall semester this year, and I wouldn't want to anyway because 5 high school math classes are a lot to get through in 3 months. They don't allow spring applications either, so the earliest I could start is fall 2024, 10 years after I started college in the first place. That gives me over a year to master the maths I missed. That's plenty of time! I'm fairly competent in algebra and geometry, so I'd only need to relearn trig and calc.

This is doable.

I HAVE TRANSPORTATION!!!

2007 Toyota Avalon, huge sedan, lots of leg room in the front and back, lots of cargo space, full size spare, all new tires, fresh oil change, sun roof, 22-25mpg, and it has a tape deck (I'll test it tomorrow)

Took me almost 2 years of saving and searching, but I finally have a car! My first car I ever bought. It's a 16 year old piece of shit, but it's MY 16 year old piece of shit. It has every disease, and I'm taking it in to get looked at on Thursday. Hopefully it's not a lost cause, because it has decent mileage for its age and I could get another 150k to 200k if I took really good care of it.

this girl

and mikey

SHIELD knows about Phantom but they give him a low level threat classification because they think he can't leave his haunt. 

This impression stems from a few curious Avengers coming to meet Danny and insinuating that he'd be a good addition to the team. Danny is thrilled at the idea but then thinks about how much Amity would suffer without him and has to reject their (unofficial) offer. He says

"That sounds amazing, but as much as I'd like to, I can't leave my haunt."

I'm gonna derail this post a bit, because the way we talk about conspiracy theories deserves a bit of discussion.

"favorite" feels like it could use some nuance here. I find these things interesting and valuable to study, but I don't have favorites in the sense that I have a favorite TV show or favorite movie. I have favorite conspiracy theories in the sense that people have favorite eras of history, or favorite battles from the Napoleonic wars.

Many conspiracy theories are objectively silly and entertaining to read about, but at the same time they can have very serious consequences in the real world. I want to discuss conspiracy theories in an accessible and entertaining way while also acknowledging the gravity of the subject.

--

I've always found the more wild flat earth theories to be captivating. So many of the people who get into Flat Earth theories suffer from what I'm gonna call "engineer brain." They're usually highly intelligent people who are experts at some specific thing. They think that because they're smart at one thing, that they are smart at all things. (With no shortage of believing that they are immune to propaganda.)

Flat Earthers, more than any other type of conspiracy theories, are driven by an overwhelming desire to be right, to be the smartest guy in the room. It's how you get things like Zetetic Astronomy and Vortex Math. It's not every day that a conspiracy theory has to invent it's own branch of pseudomathematics to continue existing. That's absolutely incredible to me.

Because, if you start from the assumption that the earth is flat, you're forced to explain increasingly complex astronomical phenomena. For example: "If the earth is flat, why is it day in New York but night in Canton?"

Their response? "The sun does not radiate light in a sphere. It actually shines down on the earth in a cone like a spotlight, and sweeps in a circle like it's tied to the blade of a ceiling fan."

Fantastic. All that does is introduce new questions. "So why doesn't the sun radiate heat like a sphere? Shouldn't it work like any other light producing body in the universe?"

Their response? "The sun is not actually a sphere either. It's a torus. A donut shape. At the center of the donut is a small black hole that is warping spacetime, causing the light of the sun to radiate as a cone to observers. It's also why the sun appears round."