Truth, Politics, Artwork.

If we’re going to go the Planets! route we need better ways to get into space.

Actually we need better ways to get into space, period.

Modern rockets aren’t all that bad in terms of cost (making more than one at a time helps a lot), but they’re like aircraft of space. Important blues and their support teams use aircraft. Average oranges or purples or whatever don’t, they take the train. Same thing with rockets. They’re all operated the government or big-budget corporations.

I want a space train. Something anyone can buy a ticket for and get on and ride with no fuss and no special arrangements. I want everyone to be able to take vacation trips on the LAO (Low Amentan Orbit) express to orbit and back, to be able to travel to space for business and open a cafe at L1.

And the only way to get a space equivalent to our (really quite excellent) train systems is with some kind of giant infrastructure project. No way around it. There’s a few options rolling around. Space elevators are the most popular one - too bad they’re actually pretty much impossible unless material science greens manage a few dozen miracles.

My personal favorite is the launch loop. I don’t actually have the engineering chops to even begin to design one but I’ve read the designs of someone who did and at least I can give the concept some exposure.

The key concept is that the launch loop is an ‘actively supported rail’. You know how you can float a piece of paper over an air vent? If you have really good aim, you can scale that up to a garden hose holding up a metal pan. If you have a lot of dedicated yellows and greens and purples and blues and a huge budget, you can scale that up to a stream of semi-solid iron being propelled up a giant looping tube thousands of kilometers long by giant power plants at either end, all supporting a magnetic-levitation train track at the top edge of the atmosphere. 

Trains can just accelerate along the track constantly until they’re at orbital speeds. Carriages can go up the loop every few minutes like clockwork. No need for special clearance and checking flight lanes. No need for huge, expensive rocket engines bigger than my parents’ house, or fuel tanks bigger than banks’ headquarters.

Space train.

Here’s a video that explains the concept pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1MAg0UAAHg

Here’s a legitimate technical document proposing a well-researched actual plan to build such a thing: http://slides.launchloop.com//launchloop.pdf

PC CASTES: Blue, Green

some of those people are of the mind so it makes sense that they’d say that since when have they ever had trouble understanding what the law was

some of those people are of the body and are just a lot smarter than me and have no problem either

but everyone else i think should think twice before they insist that memorizing the entire legal history of your country should be a prerequisite for existing

i know everyone thinks now that those laws are just there to protect rich well connected blues but try and remember what we all knew before this voa food shit started up: blues don’t need laws to protect them.  nothing would have gone differently if voa had different laws because influence mongering and wheeling and dealing work the same no matter what the law actually says

those laws are here to protect us

we’re the ones who work 16 hour shifts and don’t have time to read every word demopol puts out or hire a yellow to explain it to us

we’re the ones who need to be protected from the state when it tries to destroy us because no matter what we do something is always technically illegal and all they have to do is examine your actions closely enough to find something wrong that fits the penalty they have in mind

we’ve all heard the story of the king who wrote the laws so high nobody could read them but in actuality it should have been the king who covered every goddamn physical surface with laws and then told you that it was all there in black and white and if you hadn’t mastered it by now it was your own fault because you’d been given every opportunity to succeed

demanding that every person be intimately familiar with every law that could potentially apply to them or suffer the consequences doesn’t get you justice

I mean, aside from the fact that there are usually actual legally-defined ways in which law and sentencing just straight-up applies differently by caste, the law only consistently applies to like the middle 90-95% of people (at best, some countries are worse). 

At the top, breaking the law isn’t enough to actually get prosecuted.

At the bottom, following the law isn’t enough to not get prosecuted.

If what happens to you isn’t all that correlated with whether you actually follow the rules, what is your motivation to follow the rules?

As an example, lots of people are altering their online activity in accordance with their country’s rules during wartime.

I won’t be telling anyone where I am, so I can’t confirm whether or not I’m somewhere where any such rules apply. But if I was, I would not alter my online activities whatsoever in accordance with those rules.

Why? Because if someone with the motivation to do so were to find out who I am IRL, I’d already expect to be in enough danger that the wartime-communication-rules thing just wouldn’t make any real difference to me. 

Being a red with outspoken and controversial political opinions that you talk about online isn’t actually illegal in my country. But because the law does not in practice protect reds or prosecute people who hurt us, what is dangerous to do as a red has no logical relation to what is and isn’t legal. There’s also no motivation to follow the law purely for the benefit of society or out of patriotism - what loyalty can you have to a society of people who hate you? What loyalty can you have to leaders you can’t vote for?

As such, there is no motivation to follow the law.

When you’ll get away with it no matter what, rather than be punished no matter what, the same applies - there is no motivation to follow the law.

(Note: This does not imply that reds generally run around breaking the law in ways you will care about. The rules we do have a motivation to follow are ‘what is least likely to get you beaten or killed’ - and in practice, the category of ‘crimes a red can commit that you’d care about’ is almost wholly contained in the much, much wider category of ‘things that will get a red beaten possibly to death’, along with things like ‘looked at me funny’ and ‘was there when a cop was having a bad day.’

(We also have laws regarding red use of the internet to prevent 'this is the law in theory but it's applied inconsistently in practice' situations, which mostly consist of 'someone can file a formal complaint against a *particular* red and then that red gets it's home internet disconnected and their pocket everything gets a virus preventing them from using most social media.')

Our laws don't properly apply to everyone in the sense that we have caste inequalities explicitly built into them, but they don't have caste inequalities in the sense that they're unequally enforced and arbitrary in practice, though of course they're still a bit unequally enforced and arbitrary in practice.

allocator savo/oc. but not the kind of / where it means kissing. just like they are both in the story and they hang out.

684 words. rpf. reds but i dont warn for reds. dont like dont read!

I woke up in my bed because it was morning. I got up and looked in the mirror. I have red hair. [A/N i dont really but in this story i do!] I frowned because my blue roots were showing. The mirror showed the frown on my three-year-old face.

“AMINA! ” My mom yelled. [A/N thats not my real name so dont bother looking it up!!] I sighed. My mom is always yelling “AMINA!”! She is a very yelly person.

I sighed. “WHAT!” I yelled. “COME DOWNSTAIRS!” My mom yelled. “WHY!” I yelled. “ALLOCATOR SAVO IS HERE TO SEE YOU!” My mom yelled. Oh boy!

I put on my t-shirt with a salamander on it and my dark blue blue jeans with a flower embroidered on one back pocket and my leather sandals with thongs between the toes that buckle at the side. “COMING!!” I yelled.

I ran downstairs. Allocator Savo was there!! He smiled at me like a happy person. “Are you Amina”? He asked. “Yes. “ I said excitedly.

“I’ve heard about you from your friends.” He said. “My friends?” I asked excitedly. “Your friends.” He said. “My RED friends?” I asked nervously. “Your red friends.” He said. He looked happy, because he was smiling.

“Are they okay?” I asked. Yes Amina they are okay.” He said.

“But I want you to come help us take over Voa” He said.

“Okay.” I said excitedly. “NO AMINA YOU CAN’T!” My mom yelled. “I’m sorry Amina’s mom but there is a secret law that if you are unclean on purpose and you say yes when an Allocator asks you a question you can’t take it back.” Allocator Savo said. My mom looked very angry.Allocator Savo looked angry too but not at me at her.

Allocator Savo and me took over Voa. Allocator Savo made me princess of Voa. I made one of my friends in charge of  research in Voa and one of my friends in charge of inviting all of the reds in the world to a big party in Voa and one of my friends in charge of other government stuff. We had a big party and there was cake and ice cream and popcorn and those rolls with the sticky topping you know the ones I mean.

- * . * -  - ONE SEASON LATER - - * . * -

One day my friend said “Guess what Amina.”

“What.” I said. I was happy because I was a princess.

“I’ve discovered a new kind o f space travel that will take us to planets there are no seasons.” She said. She was happy too because she had discovered a thing. She likes discovering things.

“Oh boy.” I said. It was very exciting. The space travel works by having a rocket and then exploding a lot of things behind it very fast. She likes exploding things too.

“Who should we take.” Allocator Savo said. He was my friend too. He always asked me important questions.

“We should take all the reds and all the kids who haven’t sprung yet but NO CLEAN GROWN-UPS.” I said. “Good plan Amina.” Savo said. My friends all agreed.

All the reds and all the kids got on the spaceship and I got to light the explosive. While the fuse was burning down everyone waved goodbye sadly. I wasn’t sad though. Allocator Savo was sad though. “Wait!” I said. “Allocator Savo YOU’RE a grown-up!”

“I know.” Allocator Savo said sadly. “Amina this is a voyage yuo must go on with out me. “

“But who will be in charge.” I said. I was a little bit sad now because Allocator Savo is my friend too.

“Dont you know Amina.” He said. “It was always supposed to be you.”

The rule of law must continue to be applied in even the most extreme situations, and are deeply disappointed that the governments of other countries we had believed to be civilised members of the global community are so eager to overturn this vital principle for short term political gain.

The rule of law is a fine thing, really, I’m perfectly fond of it- but there are prices and then there are prices, and the rule of law is bent so routinely in most countries I can hardly take the claim that you take it seriously at all seriously in the first place! To make one exception is a price- to slay hundred-thousands is a price. The rule of law is a screen, not a basket- one hole does not send the entire thing to ruin, it makes it a might easier to peer through.

Voa had a choice. Bend something ephemeral, abstract, idealized- just a little, the sort of bending that occurs there every day. Or provoke war, and senselessly end the lives of hundreds of thousands, and aid the starving of millions more. How noble one’s soul may seem, when one is merely provocateur and not murderer- but that seeming is semblance alone!

And, out of curiosity, do your laws consider other nations killing your greys in combat legal? Would you rather have one extrajudicial killing, or hundreds of thousands?

you’re assuming that killing Savo would have stopped the war

The rule of law must continue to be applied in even the most extreme situations, and are deeply disappointed that the governments of other countries we had believed to be civilised members of the global community are so eager to overturn this vital principle for short term political gain.

The rule of law is a fine thing, really, I'm perfectly fond of it- but there are prices and then there are prices, and the rule of law is bent so routinely in most countries I can hardly take the claim that you take it seriously at all seriously in the first place! To make one exception is a price- to slay hundred-thousands is a price. The rule of law is a screen, not a basket- one hole does not send the entire thing to ruin, it makes it a might easier to peer through.

Voa had a choice. Bend something ephemeral, abstract, idealized- just a little, the sort of bending that occurs there every day. Or provoke war, and senselessly end the lives of hundreds of thousands, and aid the starving of millions more. How noble one's soul may seem, when one is merely provocateur and not murderer- but that seeming is semblance alone!

And, out of curiosity, do your laws consider other nations killing your greys in combat legal? Would you rather have one extrajudicial killing, or hundreds of thousands?

Governor Avalor’s office released this statement:

Despite our endeavors to audit and assure the safety of our food supply as quickly as possible, our efforts to find a peaceful solution to Allocator Savo’s orchestration of disaster have failed.  Tapa has indicated that they will not settle for a restoration of the status quo, even if Allocator Savo were to be extrajudicially put to death or extradited.

Internal debate among the governors about whether to execute Allocator Savo regardless are ongoing.  But Tapa and their allies in this matter have made it known that their intended war of aggression is not about retaliation against the instigator of the hysteria.  It is about their belief that a war and, should they take territory, their own auditing process, will be a better path towards clean food for all than permitting Voa to internally address a problem which has hit our people harder than anyone.

You should consider what it means for you that he hit you, though. He blatantly ignored a safeguard against potentially harmful interactions that the two of you had agreed on, and that’s not something he gets a pass on because he’s grey. Greys are more physical than most people, but they’re as capable of respecting established boundaries as anyone.

If I told my family that we broke up and I wanted to security to screen him out now they’d draw the connection between the whole ‘face is bruised’ thing and the break-up- and then he’d die and that is not an acceptable outcome- so I could go to a friend’s place- except most of my real life friends are also blues and also likely to react to this information by having him shot- except for Marek, he’s green and almost completely incapable of having people who annoy him assassinated- I can go over to his place for a while and invent some excuse for my family about why- ‘Oh, I just want to learn about ceramic work in a casual setting from a professional artist my age, mom, and also I tripped on the stairs and landed on my face so I want to be away from this devil house for a while’- that could work- all of his food is clean I gave him money to buy stuff-

You should consider what it means for you that he hit you, though. He blatantly ignored a safeguard against potentially harmful interactions that the two of you had agreed on, and that’s not something he gets a pass on because he’s grey. Greys are more physical than most people, but they’re as capable of respecting established boundaries as anyone.

If I told my family that we broke up and I wanted to security to screen him out now they'd draw the connection between the whole 'face is bruised' thing and the break-up- and then he'd die and that is not an acceptable outcome- so I could go to a friend's place- except most of my real life friends are also blues and also likely to react to this information by having him shot- except for Marek, he's green and almost completely incapable of having people who annoy him assassinated- I can go over to his place for a while and invent some excuse for my family about why- 'Oh, I just want to learn about ceramic work in a casual setting from a professional artist my age, mom, and also I tripped on the stairs and landed on my face so I want to be away from this devil house for a while'- that could work- all of his food is clean I gave him money to buy stuff-