The Middens of History

“Chief Hakoda?” the Prince of the Kill It With Fire Nation repeats, like his brain is as stupid as his face. Or like he just realized he’s taken a high-value hostage, redeemable for one (1) ransom against an enemy leader.

“Did I say Chief Hakoda?” Sokka laughs, nervously. “I meant, ah—”

“Shut up, peasant,” the prince shouts. And then sort of… chokes on his own words, getting redder and redder.

---

“Perhaps a break, Prince Zuko?” says Uncle, like this is… like this is the tea-time social he’s set the table for. 

Zuko is in the hallway with the door slammed behind him before he can think. Thinking. Thinking is a thing he needs to do, and Uncle’s proverbs only ever leave his thoughts feeling twisted around, and—

And that is not a peasant that sacrificed himself, to give the Avatar a chance to flee. That’s a fellow prince, or whatever the Water Tribe would call him.

---

“So,” Sokka says, spinning the teacup between his cuffed hands contemplatively. “How much poison would you say is in here? And what kind?”

The old man is sputtering indignantly, but Sokka is very seriously considering taking his first sip. If it’s laced with something to loosen his tongue, well, can’t get much worse there. It’s not like he knows where his dad is. Or anything useful. Certainly not more useful than handing the Fire Nation the son of their fleet’s leader. And if it’s something deadly, well...

He doesn’t know what his dad would do or give to get him back. But it wouldn’t be good, for the war or the world or their tribe.

He figured he’d die, when he’d shouted at Katara to go, take him and go. He hadn’t realized how much worse this could get. Was getting. Because the son and heir of Fire Lord Burn Them All was out in the hallway, thinking. 

---

Zuko thinks. About what his own father would do, if he were to receive a ransom letter. The disappointment. The… repercussions. 

---

“You’re what?” Sokka asks. 

“I am releasing you,” His Shoutiness repeats, through clenched and grinding teeth.

“Huh,” Sokka says, and takes another sip from his cup, because oh, this is hallucinogenic tea. Good stuff. “Care to explain that?”

---

No, Zuko wants to shout. But this is the fellow son of a world leader. Zuko hasn’t had many friends, and he’s not looking to add the Water Prince to that atrophied number, but. 

But he could understand.

“You stood and fought when you could not win, for a cause you believed in,” Zuko said, and he didn’t know why Uncle suddenly looked so pained. “I will not demand trinkets from your father for your return. If he hears of this, it will not be from me. You will be released at the nearest neutral port.”

---

Like an undersized fish, Sokka did not say. 

#the nearest neutral port just so happens to be kyoshi island #why say aang and katara what are YOU doing here??

Zuko is grinding his teeth SO HARD he did not come here to start an international incident and he WON'T start one stop looking at him like that Uncle he is doing something Honorable the Southern Prince said so and so help him he is going to KEEP BEING HONORABLE while the other boy is watching even as the Avatar creeps closer and closer one little side step at a time looking all curious and hopeful

like an actual child

THE BENDING PRODIGY SISTER IS THANKING HIM REPEAT ZUKO IS IN THE SIGHTS OF THE BENDING PRODIGY SISTER

she is smiling at him and sounds incredibly sincere

(and also confused)

and he KNOWS what "sincere" smiles from sisters mean

abort abort abort

maybe he can get his ship away from here before she "accidentally" sinks it

(clearly her bending fumbling at his ship was a clever disguise, if she'd REALLY been that bad she'd have been CAPTURED, had she been MOCKING his crew? clearly that was the only--WHY IS THE AVATAR STANDING AT HIS ELBOW)

No really WHY is the unfathomably powerful (literal child) right next to his elbow and GRINNING up at him

And talking about how Zuko is a prince. And Sokka is a prince.

(the sister is laughing behind her hand REPEAT the sister is laughing abort abort abort--)

And since there's two princes and an Avatar here on this neutral island why don't they have

why don't they have

peace talks

"I will make tea!" Uncle beams and instead of using that as cover to retreat back to their ship goes to do so IN THE VILLAGE and Zuko

Zuko can't leave him alone with these people

So there he is. On Kyoshi Island. Incapable of admitting in front of Prince Sokka and Princess Katara and Avatar, The that he might

maybe

not have the ability to create legally binding agreements like a real prince should

which is about when Zhao shows up. And you know who doesn't have the legal right to INTERRUPT peace talks?

Motherturtleducking Zhao

which is to say

he is sincerely sorry, Father, for the overstep of his position

and rest assured no formal promises were made

but please see the enclosed First Draft treaty between the Fire Nation and the United Southern Water Tribes

(as well as a small request for reparations to Kyoshi Island, for peace talk hosting and minor fire damage)

And rest further assured that he has taken the joint advice of Avatar Aang and General Iroh

And will be traveling with the Avatar to facilitate communication with the Dragon Throne

Until such time as the Fire Lord commands him not to

Sincerely,

Your Most Loyal And Obedient Son

This tickled me!

when you are on a date, and someone has an interest you don't quite get, instead of saying lol lame, try saying hmm i don't quite get that, please explain that to me, and then listen as the other person talks about why that thing is something they are in to.

you might learn something which recontextualizes the matter, and you will definitely learn something more about your date, which is the entire point of dating.

you don't have to be a superfan by the end, but you will have shown you can be chill and take an interest in stuff, which is much more likely to result in a second date instead of being ditched in a coffee line.

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

[…]

One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

[…]

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

I personally have a specific phobia that, when triggered, used to make me spasm and hyperventilate and cry, and it was super embarrassing because I was fully aware that there was nothing really wrong. You can experience the effects of a phobia while objectively knowing you're safe! And STILL I would get people telling me to chill out cause I was fine.

I've gotten better at managing it. I can thing straight and control my breathing and not feel *emotional* fear, but my body still locks up and my heart still goes crazy and I still have to focus on breathing.

When IM experiencing the effects of an irrational fear, imagine putting whatever awful or dangerous or nasty thing disgusts you in your mouth. Imagine experiencing a RATIONAL fear. Because it doesn't matter what I know is true, the effects of rational fear and irrational fear make your body do the same things.

Nausea, locking up, inability to make yourself move, panic, denial, refusal, shaking, disgust, revulsion, anger, fear, outrage, humiliation, vulnerability.

If my phobia is, say, walking past a 2002 Toyota Prius, then making myself do that FEELS just as difficult and horrific to me as licking broken glass off a gas station bathroom floor does to YOU. The only difference is *I* might have to do the thing ANYWAYS, while people make fun of me an I know that I look ridiculous, whereas YOU would at least know that your feelings are normal and your experience will be taken seriously.

But anyhow, today I encountered one of my phobias and was able to react to it calmly and rationally while my brain screamed instead of physically locking up and doing the screaming out loud, so here's to gradual progress

Also, figured out a better analogy over the years:

If Fear is like disgust, think of a Phobia as an allergy

someone on reddit explained 😭