Let me teach you something
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Speculative Flash Fiction By Thaddeus Howze
Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that…you are free. — Jim Morrison
She comes. Today is the day.
We will avenge our kin.
The morning fog lay over the forest, deadening all sounds even to ears such as his. But he was not using his ears today. Today, her scent told him she was coming. She smelled of her hearth, smoky and bitter, the smell of rushes clung to her feet. The clay dyes, used to color her cloak made her smell of the earth, cool and hard. She has had her winter bath. Water is hard to come by for the two legs, so they bathe sparingly.
We are grateful for this. We are able to recognize them long before they can see us.
It hasn’t helped us to survive.
When she entered the clearing she stopped. Her leather boots squished in the mud and her cloak was pulled over her head. It protected her from the torrent. She stood still and looked into the forest ahead of her. They waited for her. The last two. He told her they would be there. He went into the forest and did not return. He told her he would not. It was time for her to be on her own.
“I know you’re there. Come out.”
Why would we do that? We have eaten her father. We can just wait.
Why should we wait. I think we should devour her now. Her clan has all but killed ours. We can end this today.
You don’t understand.
What is there to understand? We killed her father. I thought it would be harder. You can wait if you like. I can wait no longer.
The large grey wolfen strode forth from the forest, twelve hands at the shoulder. He towered over the child.
“I am here. I am your Death child. Why did you call me forth? Do you plan to beg for your life?”
“Did my father?”
“Yes.”
“You lie. He would never beg for his life. You did not know him.”
How could she know?
“You are not from here. Your look, your color, your scent says you are from far away. You do not know my family at all.”
“You are but Men, the Other. Namers of beasts, growers of grass, makers of fire. Of the three, only the making of fire impresses me.”
The child looked at the wolfen, stared deeply into its eyes.
Why am I so afraid of her? What does she know that she can look at me and I quiver in fear? I have nothing to fear. I will consume her. NOW!
“So why don’t you? You’re thinking you should eat me now. I am just a little girl, after all?”
The wolfen hesitated. He bared his fangs but it was the baring of indecision not conquest, not domination. It was just shy of fear and submission.
“My father killed one hundred of your kind by the time he was twelve years old. Unlike your kind, we grow weaker with age. When he came to you today, he was relinquishing his power to me. In my current state, I could kill a thousand of you as easily as I breathe. I am only nine years old.”
It isn’t possible. It defies all that I know to be true. Age is power. Size is strength. The sharpest fang tears the deepest wound. She has none of those things.
“I will tell you one more thing. Then you leave or join me. Any other decision is death for you.”
“Look up.” The storm had subsided and the sky cleared showing the last stars before sunrise. “See that star right there. The dim one. My family and all like me came from that world. We were the last survivors of a world poisoned by our greed and filth. We were forced to change ourselves to survive there. Then we learned how to travel from our world to yours. But your people were stronger than mine then. We were forced to change ourselves one last time. Now your world will belong to us. The question is, will you be allies or blankets on cold nights.”
The wolfen bristled. His fur rose, spiky, hard as steel, he bared his fangs, his decision made. He never saw her move.
“Blanket.”
The cooling body of the wolfen lay at her feet. Wiping her hands on her blood red cloak, she approached the second wolfen who was too paralyzed to move.
No other words were spoken. She handed him a meatpie from her basket. He bent low allowing her to climb on. They would make better time to the next town.
Domestication of the Other © Thaddeus Howze, 2013; All Rights Reserved
Surreal Flash Fiction by Thaddeus Howze
Imagine a modern Universe, with an unremarkable galaxy, where we will highlight a, just under a meaningful-sized, sun. It's an insignificant thing just larger than the average dwarf star. If you blinked you might have flown right by it. There are eight or nine significant bodies in a tangential orbits, where one or two of those objects develops a rudimentary slime-biome which will, in millions of solar years have, said near-organic slime, develop life.
One of those planets loses its precious bio-slime and soon goes quiet. No rotating core. No radiation belt. Soon, no life. The other, warmer, brighter, it's nascent slime reaches higher, toward the light of the sun. Suddenly, the sky darkens, hot winds whip across the surface of the planet, the greatest sound ever heard included the fracture of the crust across the entire planet creating the most transformative moments ever.
Whoops. I mentioned the potential for life but I guess I was premature. Slime 1.0 is no more. What happened? There was some life forming and then out of nowhere, another planet rips into the third rock from the sun and all life on this budding planetoid was snuffed out.
Back to the drawing board.
When the third rock cooled and stabilized, the planet had a new moon and a few million cycles later, life restablished itself. Don't ask me how it happened. I am just an Idea waiting for his time to come.
We will admit when Slime 2.0 happened again, millions of cycles had passed again and the overall interest in this part of the galaxy was at an all time low. It was a general consensus that Slime 2.0 was as boring as its predecessor.
One fateful day, this primordial slime eventually realizes even it is bored with how long it has existed as slime. It strains and does something new. This explosion of new is unheard of in the slime's estimation having been the only significant life on the planet. But, the slime isn't saddened by the company. For the first time in existence it wasn't talking to itself.
Super-fecund Life Planet will enter, for the next few billion cycles a boom and bust, sometimes lots of life, other times barely two flash-frozen amoeba to rub together. But as we learned after a runaway planet rammed into the Earth, Life is a persistent infection.
I can feel my time drawing near.
The life on this planet continues to evolve and when another asteroid collides with the Earth, (that's what the inhabitants will call it one day) I knew I could happen at any time. I watched as those dullards who spent three hundred million years grazing and eating each other vanished overnight and what replaced them wasn't very impressive. At first. But as they grew, I knew there was possibility I could exist if the conditions were just right.
And they were. From shrew-like organisms, life exploded again and new life replace the old. Filling in every biome, something was born to fill it. Some existed in harmony, delicately transforming the living to the dead and back to the living in a breathless hum of existence, an explosion of exuberant life. No matter how long I waited I knew I would exist. There would be a need for me. Something my progenitors will have known would be transformative. Something they couldn't live without, a thing thought capable of binding the Universe, itself, in a time of need.
I fell in with the flow of Life waiting until I saw my moment. There was a long period of nothing until a small hominid stood up and looked skyward. It reaches for the stars. Enjoying the view, she strides upright, into the future. I could feel her primitive mind scouring Logos for an idea. She chooses a stick instead.
So close.
I salute the stick and zoom onward into the noosphere. Many other ideas soon start flowing and the realm of Logos is alive with Platonic fire, hurtling Earthward, jumping to a group of primitives discovering Fire, as it rode a lightning bolt to a tree and straight into the mind of a curious onlooker.
Fire was such a glory hound. A dynamic entrance, a positive, immediate, life-altering effect, and they were in love with it immediately. Worse, Fire would bring a whole lot of new ideas with it. This species would use Fire for everything. Can it burn? Can you cook it? Can you eat it if you cook it? Will it taste good? How good will it taste? When in doubt burn something and you will learn something.
Fire was going to be a superstar. Fire would get all the best questions and ideas for the next 20,000 years.
But I could feel it, deep within my metaphorical bones, I would never be related to any idea which had fire in it. Don't ask me how I know.
Fire was a destroyer.
I was a binder, a fixer of things, I was a way to bring something back to life for a time. I was a maker and Fire and I would never see Idea to Idea. The march of time continues, and I can feel my moment coming. It is clear to me now. I can see myself coming into form, my Platonic shape slowly congealing in the empyrean mists.
I am round. A platonic ideal. Several have come close to me. They wrap me around cables, strips of strong cloth, clumsily attempting to bring me to life. They were busy men and it was a hard time. Frustrated, I watch them clumsily try and bring me to life. I scream from the Aether, louder than I ever have before.
It would be another thirty years. Yelling didn't help. It was maddening after waiting all these years to watch them fumbling around. In 1925 as they reckon time, I can see my next dimension. My countdown timer is finally activated. A confirmation of my long held belief. I have watched so many other ideas come to fruition, I never thought I would see my own. I had gotten used to watching new ideas go into the world.
The Renaissance lit the sky above Logos day and night, a fireworks show of possibility. Today, Jazz is everywhere, so new, so varied, a new form was born every night. I see my birthplace. I thought it would be, I don't know, more momentous. I had hoped my arrival would be in a laboratory by a scientist on the edge of greatness. Instead, my place of birth is dark. Dirty. I can feel the danger in every breath. An ammunition factory. A woman working in the war effort.
A woman sees ammunition boxes that once closed, take too long to open. She tells her boss. Her invention will save lives. He laughs. Goes back to smoking. I can see the countdown timer saying at any second I could be born. But she can't figure out how to realize me. Not the kind of woman to accept no, she sends a letter to the War Department.
To the President. Roosevelt.
I was born through effrontery, through an unquenchable desire to protect and yet to serve.
I exist, roughly hewn, a nascent aspect of my Platonic ideal. From this moment onward, my creator's vision transformed the world. I knew I would be big.
It was so long in coming, I knew I could improve the lives of humble people everywhere. Plumbers prayers could be answered by my judicious application. Mechanics repaired things with the understanding constant vigilance would be required.
I would be used in planes, trains, automobiles, homes, kitchens, basements. I would become clothing. Car doors. Hammocks. Battlefield stretchers. I would be used in war and peace.
I've heard it said, I have been used to hold the hinges on the doors of Hell, and the halos to the heads of currently slumming and possibly falling angels.
Everyone knows me. Everyone uses me, I like to think they love me. I'm no Fire, but when you have a broken tool, She can't help you. I can.
I watch humanity as they ascend into space. Watching from within the world, no longer a Platonic ideal, now a reality, refined, expanded, casually utilitarian; I was made manifest more than a century ago, in a factory, packing ammunition. Now, I hold together part of an computer motherboard mounted inside of a ship headed to the stars minus a necessary screw. There are other places on the ship as well, but it might undermine your trust in the space program.
I have been likened to a fundamental force, used to hold everything together. No matter where you live, I am there. I hold all that we know and love together, and a whole lot of things we aren't nearly as fond of but need just the same.
I waited a long time to be here. I'm glad you love me. I am Duct Tape and I was an idea whose time had finally come.
No. I'm not as beloved as Fire, but even her sweet flames took a back seat to an idea who came just a few years after I got here.
They called it the Manhattan Project.
Fire is still pissed.
Fantasy Horror Flash Fiction By Thaddeus Howze
"You have to leave him." The matter of fact tone left nothing to the imagination. It wasn't a command, but it wasn't a request. It had all the finality of the grave.
The captain's black eyes gave no quarter among the remnant of twenty men, of which only five remained. If it meant all of their lives, this mission would be done.
He touched the small box for the hundredth time, again hidden inside his armor, an object worth more than all of their lives, twice. Its dark radiance burned into his chest and a phlegm-filled cough followed as he thought about it.
"But sir," Lon began, "he can still walk." The farm boy staggered a bit under his bigger companion's weight but he wanted to make a case which seemed reasonable.
Alirr, the giant of this group held up the other side of Sdi, the Quick, two of his best warriors saddled with the dead weight of a third.
"Captain. I understand. I would only endanger the mission. I will do my best to hold out here until you can secure passage," Sdi responded cuffing his friends in the process.
They knew they could not stay with him. The two eased him down next to an ironwood tree, a fortune behind his head, if he could survive to get it to the border of the forest. Without an army of men, nothing ever does. The Denetheian Forest, a place of mystery, despair and disappearances. Few who ever entered it, leave.
It was only the desperation of men with nothing but legend to fall upon, came to seek, her. Tylwyth Teg Esgyrn, in the old tongue, fools who lived on the edge of this dire wood, called her the Bone Fairy.
A being so fell, it is claimed to have destroyed an entire army which sought to claim this forest for their own. A fortune in ironwood, they would the most formidable armor and weapons anywhere.
They marched upon the forest, or so the legends went, with pomp and pageantry. The former kingdom of Deneth, for which this forest gained its name, and reputation. The elves and other creatures which lived in this forest became legends that night.
It was said by the few survivors, the battle between the Fey and Men was awe-inspiring, its like having been seen only a few times in recorded history. The Men who survived claimed they were within the reach of victory when their army began to fall.
It was a wind which swept through the ranks, and as it passed, armor rustled, weapons flickered and fell flat to the ground, surrounding skin and twitching organs, which spasmed pitifully, mewling like tortured beasts, before they bubbled and fell silent, moments later, rustling among the grass, until the twitching fell silent.
At first, the men didn't understand what they were seeing, the wind came from the trees, leaves rustling, a sudden burst of movement and wave after wave of the Human army fell, for all intents and purposes dead, boneless.
The army's morale broke in light of this unexpected magic, unlike anything they knew existed. They tried to flee. Only those who made it to the edge of the forest survived. Some were partially affected and lost limbs, with flesh that needed to be cut away, because the bones simply vanished as they were fleeing the forest.
Of ten thousand, less than two hundred returned home. As they fled, they were told to leave the valley and never return. Or the same thing would happen to everyone who remained in three days.
No Man has lived in this valley for a hundred years, and few dared to tread here except in the brightest of days with the boldest of Men. The lure of Ironwood was the one thing men would risk life and limb for. And often did.
Now with three men, The Captain Hathor was to return to this legendary slaughterhouse in search of this mythic horror.
As he turned back to his men setting up camp, he feels a cold wind coming from the direction they are headed. As he turns to his men, he watches them slump, flopping bonelessly to the ground, their moist gurgling their final warning.
Hathor turned back and saw it. A creature of bones and wings, twice the size of a man, a mouth filled with teeth who dreamed of being sharper teeth, the creature floated silently, whispering into and out of sight. Smaller lights fluttered around it.
One of the smaller lights flew to Hathor's face and it appeared to be a tiny woman with flickering wings. It would have been beautiful save its otherworldly aura, its sharp and toothy grin and the more horrifying and larger version which accompanied it.
A tiny voice rang out. "The Queen has accepted your tribute. Make your case and be quick about it, Human."
Reaching into his coat he pulls forth a black diamond, the size of a quail's egg. It shone with a nacreous inner light, and the smaller creatures shied away, vanishing into the forest.
"Are you this desperate you would try to geas me into service?"
"We are. We need your help, your terrible majesty." The captain squeezed the gem and he began to age, weaken and fell to his knees. "We would draft you into our service because what is coming is a thousand times worse than you. We would dare anything."
The Queen, flickered trying to escape the geas forming around her, its black tendrils holding on to her no matter where she shifted, no matter how hard she moved between worlds, the spell found her.
"Go west, your majesty. You will see it. You cannot help but. We geas you to help us, because when they are done with us, they will come for you."
The captain, now an old man, falls over, becoming dust as the spell, the magical compunction now delivered, the Queen had been bound and would go west, whether she wanted to or not.
She screamed, her howl heard across the forest. Then she considered the feast ahead as she sent her minions to blacken the sky before her. Wars were always such good eating.
The Bone Fairy © Thaddeus Howze, 2019
From the travelogue of Josephus Sumner
High Fantasy By Thaddeus Howze
On the edge of Mahatmalaya, the greatest realm, the cynosure of the shadow worlds, the nexus of all there is, was, and ever will be, stand the Leviathans of Brass.
When Mahatmalaya was young there were many such realms like it. Each spinning off its own shadows, its hidden realities from which life developed at their own pace, with creatures whose capacities varied widely. Those who developed quickly and mastered fundamental forces learned they could move between shadow realms, laying claim to new territories, mastering new creatures and magics. But sometimes they vanished without a trace. Their armies, machines, beasts, warriors, swallowed whole.
Such realms were marked and given wide berth. In that fashion of great systems, each stabilized in its own way and as they did, some entire realms fell to the control of alliances, confederacies, coalitions or federations which plumbed the depths of their core reality until they discovered the unthinkable.
They were not alone in the Multiverse. Some went mad discovering there were realities beyond their own. Having mastered shadow travel, they thought nothing was beyond their reach. Laying claim to millions of realms, mastering thousands of species, using every kind of technology imaginable, they were still unable to breach the walls between Multiverses.
For many, this destroyed their core reality, the notion they were not at the center of all there is left them unable to understand how the Universe could be so cruel to them, to create them, allow them mastery of their Universe and then leave something beyond their reach.
For others, for those cool intellects, driven to know, hungering for their next conquest, they persevered. A million years pass. Two million. Their intensity was gifted with success. They breached the wall between Multiverses.
They poured their armies through the splinters of Reality, great powers attempting to reshape the very stuff of this new place they found themselves in.
They blackened the skies with their machines, in numbers beyond counting they entered Mahatmalaya. To discover the Leviathans in waiting. Bound to this singular location, a place where the wall between Universes was weakest, the Leviathans were placed in expectation of visitors.
For you see, Mahatma was the greatest scientist/mystic of his era. He had pierced the wall between Multiverses millennia ago. His spiritual travels revealed the dangers, the fear, the greed beyond his own dimension and armed with this knowledge created these doomsday machines for just this purpose.
To deter visitors. To prevent unwanted invasion. To maintain the peace of Mahatma's realm. His Leviathans were his greatest and last creation.
Standing ten thousand meters high, powered by demonic magics, bound djinn, elementals whose energies were akin to stars drove these living machines, who wandered this region of the realm, engaged in intellectual debate, sending pieces of themselves across the Universe ever in exploration and study.
Waiting for the day such a visitation feared by their Maker would arrive. Formed of Brass from the Realm of Dis, hard as adamant, capable of holding in and protecting the powerful spirits contained within, each Leviathan held a space within it, an entire world-engine, a bound star whose powers would never die.
That day has come. The Leviathans continue their communing with one another as they destroy the nigh limitless invaders, lighting the skies with lightning chains whose thunder was heard in other nearby shadow realms, altering reality, transforming their ships into hunks of lead, which plummet lifelessly to the ground.
Their assault was the greatest thing the Leviathans had ever experienced. It was what they were designed for. They never knew it would be so glorious.
And so brief. A thousand years later, the Invaders ceased. Their great armies depleted, their war machine drained of vitality, entire worlds wrung dry of life, and the Leviathans stood unmarred, unbroken. Still engaged in philosophical debate as they deconstructed the alien ships, absorbed their crews into themselves, marveling at the psychoses of their new components, re-arming themselves in expectation of new visitation.
With their purpose revealed, with their explorations of Mahatma continuing, they realized the value of what they protected. They deemed it precious.
Worthy of being protected. There was debate, every century or so, as to consider the one thing Mahatma forbid. Whether they should resolve the threat of enemy visitation by traveling to other Multiverses, first.
They ponder it for a century or two, and decide if Mahatma had wanted this, he would have done it himself. It was not their place to go against his final wishes.
Resolved, for a time, the Leviathans conversed with a new visitor, someone from Mahatma whose aura was much like the Maker's. They hoped for something unexpected to discuss in the lull between visitors.
-- An excerpt from the Travelogue of Josephus Sumner, after a conversation with the Leviathans of Brass.
Flash Fiction by Thaddeus Howze
"Guess who?" her multi-tonal twittering revealed who she was instantly, but Godzilla played along.
"Who is it?"
"Your favorite butterfly friend."
"How many butterfly friends do I have?"
"I don't know. How many butterfly friends DO you have?"
"There's...hmm... so many. Are you Hedradon?"
"No. You ate Hedradon last week. Still got the stink all over you. Don't you ever wash?"
"Okay, are you Gamera?"
"Do I smell like an unwashed, spiky turtle with incontinence? Nothing but fresh air and sunshine here, I'll have you know."
"Wait. I need a hint."
"I can fly. That puts most of your friends right off the list, thank you very much. Who else has soft wings and a perfect singing voice that YOU know?"
"Ghidorah sings nice..."
"Really? Ghidorah. The flying space alien who couldn't hold a note with a bucket? That Ghidorah? You still have a thing for her, don't you?"
"I think Ghidorah identifies as they and I only like the Right Head. The other two are crazy jealous. Anyway, I know who you are now. You know too much about me. You must be my twin...Mecha-godzilla."
"How could you not know it was me? Do I smell like rust and leaky oil pans? I'm leaving."
"Wait. Of course I know it was you, Mothra You're my best and oldest friend. Let's go into town and have a skyscraper. I'll even let you pick."
"Now, you're talking. I want to go to Tokyo."
"Tokyo? That's a hundred miles from here. There is a perfectly good town ten minutes from here."
"You said I could have what I wanted. I want Tokyo."
"Tokyo it is." Godzilla turns away from Yokosuka and heads back toward Sagami Bay.
Mothra arcing artfully skyward, begins her flight to Tokyo, letting loose one last barb. "You better hurry up and swim, slowpoke. I will start without you..."
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| Dr. Peter Delfyett, Jr., National Society of Black Physicists |
Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Laser, Physics, Semiconductors
Dr. Peter Delfyett, former NSBP President and NSBP fellow, is the 2020 winner of the William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. The William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award was established to recognize an exceptional single scientific contribution which has had a significant impact in the field of lasers and electro-optics in the past ten years. Dr. Delfyett has been selected, "For pioneering contributions to semiconductor diode based ultrafast laser science and technology." The Award is endowed by Xerox Corp and Spectra Diode Labs. The Award consists of an honorarium of $2,500 and a medal. The presentation is made at the IEEE Photonics Conference.
Learn more about this award and its previous winners.
Peter Delfyett wins the 2020 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, NSBP
#P4TC links:
Reducing the Impact of Negative Stereotypes on the Careers of Minority and Women Scientists, November 25, 2010
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, COVID-19, Existentialism, Human Rights, LGBT Rights
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. Franklin D. Roosevelt
At 1 pm eastern, 12 noon in San Antonio, my wife's family laid her favorite uncle to rest, a U.S. veteran. He died due to health complications, non-COVID. Because of the pandemic, we had to say our tearful goodbyes over Facebook live, the participants' voices muffled by masks singing "It is Well." He lived a good life, into his eighties, longer than my own father, but his sons probably don't take solace in his longevity: their hero is gone for now.
Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr's book on James Baldwin downloaded on my Kindle about a week before Dr. Mary Trump's book about her uncle. They are my mental comfort food between writing a research proposal: a book written by an African American heterosexual professor about an LGBT Civil Rights icon, and a book about an unstable, reckless sociopath, written by his niece, a Lesbian, a notion now in a world with Ellen DeGeneres and Rachel Maddow is almost cliche. "Jimmy" was out and proud before it was relatively safe, or sane. He literally could have been killed for "the color of his skin, and the content of his character." But that did not stop or stifle his boldness.
“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” ― James Baldwin
We are "betwixt and between" the past and the future: one written and one yet-to-be written, first by John Lewis and now, Black Lives Matter et al. We are betwixt and between love and hate, democracy and fascism; working towards a more perfect union, and barreling towards totalitarianism. The philosophies of Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler are personified in Bannon, Gorka and Miller, fascist whisperers recycling hate in the 21st century: the ovens now microscopic, efficient, utterly malevolent, and unseen. We are seeing the NRA's "jackbooted thugs" deployed in American cities - Portland, Oregon, soon Chicago, Illinois; our nation's birthplace in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and any other blue-governed city, without a peep from them, as deafening a silence now as for the death-by-police of the licensed gun owner, Philando Castile. The second amendment might be outlawed to Melanin in a dictatorship.
The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear. Heinrich Himmler, commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and Gestapo.
*****
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
For Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., that fierce urgency is he, I and previously "Jimmy" living in these black bodies, witnessing the country careen from "hope and change" to this dark moment of running over civil rights demonstrators in Charlottesville, Nazis in polo shirts carrying tiki torches; or teargassing peaceful George Floyd demonstrators on the Washington Mall. Once we got over the "post-racial America" shtick, it didn't take long to see the new black president hung in effigy, called the n-word almost daily, burned at the stake, bone through the nose as witch doctor for the pejorative: Obamacare. They prayed Psalm 109:8-15, for his death and desolation. They are anti-Christians for an Antichrist. Their hatred of immigrants in chat rooms and over the pit of hell summoned eventually a demon, who recycled for them Hitler, the Klan and Reagan's slogan: make America great again. Exposed in Dr. Glaude's treatise was what Eddie and "Jimmy" referred to as the American lie, broadcast with the hubris of a birther foghorn.
For Dr. Mary Trump, that fierce urgency was living through a slow train wreck: watching her father, Freddy - Fred Trump's namesake - taken apart by her grandfather brick-by-brick until there was nothing left. She could still live in the comfort of privilege, station and American aristocracy: her bloodline leading directly to the seat of power almost infinite. All she had to do was keep her head low and flatter a narcissist. Her clinical training tells her there is no pleasing such a person. His needs are a bottomless pit next to a black hole. His loyalty is demanded of others and expendable to the same. Just as the senior sociopath dismantled her father, her training said a prolific lying, mentally disturbed, gaslighting and violent man could dismantle a nation.
Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
Perhaps she thought of Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
It is easy to fill in the blank now: African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Women, Homosexuals, Lesbians, Transgenders: if we do not speak for our fellow humans, we follow them into the COVID ovens. A pandemic as eugenics is far more efficient, less visible and more excusable than public crematoriums.
I still have hope. I have to. I have a granddaughter barely over a year old, and she DESERVES a future.
Politics in America especially is organized tribalism. The factions George Washington warned about in his farewell address express themselves as republicans and democrats, along with greens and independents.
We are all between yesterday and tomorrow, living out our hyphens. We are ever all in "the fierce urgency of NOW" for tomorrow. We all have children, or know children, and a world that looks like a dystopian novel is only appealing to sociopaths, mass murderers and death cult members. A world like that has few children, and the human species - Coronavirus, climate change, or nuclear exchange - is then in peril.
For this election, for humanity, we have to ALL be Americans, and heroes in the spirit of John Lewis: voting by mail, voting early, getting in "good trouble" for this fleeting, precious thing called democracy: made real by the struggles of the downtrodden and "the least of these." For "the fierce urgency of now," for a "better world beyond the horizon"... for tomorrow.
“never lose sight, as we finger the pain and disillusionment of our after times, of the possibility of a New Jerusalem.” ― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
You're my hero Dark Spider.
Art by Ramon Perèz
Relationship goals
Art by Ramon Perèz
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| The first direct image of two exoplanets orbiting a Sun-like star, seen here, was captured by the SPHERE instrument on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The system is called TYC 8998-760-1 and is located some 300 light-years from Earth. |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets
In another exoplanetary first, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile's Atacama Desert has captured an image of two worlds orbiting a younger version of the Sun. The system, called TYC 8998-760-1, is located roughly 300 light-years away in the southern constellation Musca. And although it hides two gas giants orbiting a Sun-like star, we don’t have anything quite like these worlds in our own solar system.
The inner planet lies about 160 astronomical units from its host star (where one astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance) and is some 14 times the mass of Jupiter. With that amount of heft, the gas giant skirts the border between planet and brown dwarf, which is a type of almost-star. The more distant planet is located about 320 AU from its star and weighs in at about six Jupiter masses.
Two exoplanets seen dancing around Sun-like star for the first time, Mark Zastrow, Astronomy.com
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| Image Source: Freedom Summer link below |
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, COVID-19, Existentialism, Human Rights, Politics
On June 21, 1964, three young men disappeared near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael (Mickey) Schwerner and James Chaney worked for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in nearby Meridian; Andrew Goodman was one of the hundreds of college students from across the country who volunteered to work on voter registration, education, and Civil Rights as part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. The three men believed their work was necessary, but also dangerous: Ku Klux Klan membership in Mississippi was soaring in 1964 -- with membership reaching more than 10,000. The Klan was prepared to use violence to fight the Civil Rights movement; on April 24 the group offered a demonstration of its power, staging 61 simultaneous cross burnings throughout the state.
The case was drawing national attention, in part because Schwerner and Goodman were both white Northerners. Mickey Schwerner's wife Rita, who was also a CORE worker, tried to convert that attention to the overlooked victims of racial violence. “The slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm has been sounded,” she told reporters during the search.
Throughout July, investigators combed the woods, fields, swamps, and rivers of Mississippi, ultimately finding the remains of eight African American men. Two were identified as Henry Dee and Charles Moore, college students who had been kidnapped, beaten, and murdered in May 1964. Another corpse was wearing a CORE t-shirt. Even less information was recorded about the five other bodies discovered.
Finally, after six weeks of searching, a tip from an informant -- later identified as Mississippi Highway Patrol officer Maynard King -- sent investigators to an earthen dam on the Old Jolly Farm outside Philadelphia. It was there that the FBI uncovered the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman on August 4.
Excerpt from Freedom Summer: Murder in Mississippi, American Experience, PBS
*****
Russian financial traffic got to the Taliban in Afghanistan: intelligence wouldn't use the word "bounty." The scandal is there was no reaction or retaliation from the Commander-in-Chief*. In schoolyard parlance, Putin knocked the board off Orange Satan's shoulder, and he slunk away to get into a Twitter spat with a pack of mean middle school students. Twitter saw hacks Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden (hopefully, the successor of Satan), and a lot of other prominent American accounts for a bitcoin scam. I can't imagine this wasn't Putin: he has no push back to any actions in the world he's taking. (Noticeably, Tangerine Nit Twit's account was fine.) Russians are also interested in our vaccine information, because a recovering America during a pandemic to them, is a threat.
Deafening silence (still) from a law-and-order president* and his politically compromised party complicit with a hostile foreign power.
* Putin's puppet, if you didn't already know.
Realize: This republic's unraveling has been an ongoing project. It was held together by spit, glue and duct tape. Every step forward by the marginalized has always experienced backlash. Corey Robin in "The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin" states: Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes, i.e. people get pissed off about getting pissed on, and the ones over them calling it rain. This spawns Civil Rights, Women's Rights, LGBT rights movements, because a few of us actually read The Constitution. Jimmy Carter was our first openly evangelical president, and supported by none other than types like Michelle Bachmann. However, he ran afoul when he tried to get Bob Jones University to follow the law, and not be so racist with miscegenation (a fancy word for no interracial dating). Hopping on the abortion bandwagon was an easy dodge that I don't think they ever meant to win, as Corey Robin noted, the war against an enemy was the most important thing. This led them to their first sale of a piece of their souls to a B-movie actor, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan knowingly started his campaign within meters of the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi. This was genteel wink-and-nod politics, giving plausible denial to moderate whites and black republicans that could then both deny the subtle racism directly before them. Since Charlottesville and before it when IT descended that escalator in Trump tower, it's been a foghorn, and only a blind/deaf/dumb man could miss his self-admittance the alt-right, Neo Nazis and KKK can recognize. Every tax cut, then and since Reagan, has been a damned lie of trickle down; pissing on us, and still telling us it's rain. Hell, why change the shtick if it's still working after forty years? It's not a huge stretch from a B-movie actor to a reality show nincompoop.
*****
I purchased Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Dr. Mary L. Trump, feeling better contributing to its rise on the New York Times Bestseller List than John Bolton's (I canceled it when I found out he influenced the disbanding of the pandemic response team). Not that there wasn't a cottage industry that's used their access to this criminal to like Bolton, cash-in. Dr. Trump is a clinical psychiatrist specializing in psychopathy and sociopathy. She is also, by her last name: his niece. She is similar (to me) Marilyn Munster - "plain" by Munster norms - but normal to everyone else viewing the sitcom. In it, the mansion that Fred Trump met out his sociopathic abuse that produced our current president* was simply referred to as "The House."
The "Fall of the House of Usher" is a classic Gothic short story by the master of the macabre, Edgar Allen Poe. In it, the unnamed narrator makes the dysfunction of the Usher family - only one heir per generation - and the house itself one in the same. There is a suggestion this genetic problem might be the result of incest, since they only manage to have one heir per generation.
The narrator's friend Roderick buries his twin sister, Madeline after suffering catalepsy, defined as the loss of control of one’s limbs. Dictionary.com says "a physical condition usually associated with catatonic schizophrenia, characterized by suspension of sensation, muscular rigidity, fixity of posture, and often by loss of contact with environment." Poe sure could pick the sickness!
Madeline "dies" (even before comics, there's a loophole), buried; only to emerge bloodied from the grave she escaped and attacks her brother (who wouldn't, buried alive?). She dies from her wounds, Roderick dies from apparent cardiac arrest and the house poetically collapses with the death of both heirs as the narrator sprints.
Brian Kemp is suing the city of Atlanta, its mayor and other municipalities to stop them from wearing masks, so...he can spread Coronavirus more efficiently? It's about as sensible as hocking Goya beans as refrigerator trucks and bodies are piling up.
I voted for the smart woman last time. I'm voting for the sane candidate this time as well: he models wearing a mask. I will crawl over broken glass, swim molten lava; wrestle man-eating crocodiles to end this dystopian nightmare. It's way past if we "love" Joe Biden: we need to overwhelm the cheating, voter suppression, the Russians hacking/disinformation and affect repairs to the framework of a crumbling republic.
However: If this house disintegrates, this narrator's passport is current.
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| A schematic representation of how the surface looks, and how the structure repels water. Courtesy: Aalto University |
Topics: Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Surface Engineering
A micron-scale “armor” that protects highly water-repellent nanostructures from damage has been developed by researchers in China and Finland. The new extra-durable coating could make it possible to employ these “superhydrophobic” surfaces on devices such as solar panels and vehicle windscreens that experience tough environmental conditions.
As their name suggests, superhydrophobic materials repel water extremely well. They owe this impressive ability to a thin layer of air that develops around nanometre-scale structures on their surface. By ensuring that droplets barely touch the solid part of the surface at all, the air layer effectively acts as a lubricant, allowing water droplets to roll off with near-zero friction.
These nanostructured surfaces are, however, mechanically fragile and can easily be wiped away. To address this drawback, a research team led by Xu Deng of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu and Robin Ras of Finland’s Aalto University created a superhydrophobic surface containing structures at two different length scales: a nanoscale structure that is water repellent and a microscale one that provides durability.
The microstructure consists of an interconnected frame containing “pockets” of tiny inverted pyramids. Within these pyramids are the highly water-repellent and mechanically fragile nanostructures. The frame thus acts as a shield, preventing the nanostructure coating from being removed by abradants larger than the frame. “A finger, screwdriver or even sandpaper glides over these microstructures, leaving the nanostructures untouched, thereby preserving the surface’s attractive water-repellent feature,” Ras says.
Superhydrophobic surfaces toughen up, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World
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| MGM/VICTOR TANGERMANN |
Topics: Biology, Computer Science, DNA
Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin? Dr. Richard P. Feynman, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," said to be the seminal talk that started the concept of atomic-level engineering, soon known as nanotechnology, (named by Professor Norio Taniguchi, 1974, of the Tokyo Science University).
The intricate arrangement of base pairs in our DNA encodes just about everything about us. Now, DNA contains the entirety of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as well.
A team of University of Texas Austin scientists just vastly improved the storage capacity of DNA and managed to encode the entire novel — translated into the geek-friendly language of Esperanto — in a double strand of DNA far more efficiently than has been done before. DNA storage isn’t new, but this work could help finally make it practical.
Big tech companies like Microsoft are already exploring DNA-storage technology, as the biomolecule can encode several orders of magnitude more information per unit volume than a hard drive. But DNA is particularly error-prone. It can easily be damaged and erase whatever’s stored on it.
“The key breakthrough is an encoding algorithm that allows accurate retrieval of the information even when the DNA strands are partially damaged during storage,” molecular biologist Ilya Finkelstein said in a UT Austin press release.
Scientists Stored "The Wizard of Oz" on a Strand of DNA, Dan Robitzgi, Futurism
We have to stop this jerk.
Art by Cloves Rodrigues.
Recall your nightmares
Art by Cloves Rodrigues.
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| Image Source: What a generational spaceship would actually look like, Rachel Feltman, Popular Science |
Topics: Evolution, Interstellar Travel, Science Fiction, Spaceflight
Mrs. Flynt played "telephone" with us, simply lining up the entire fifth grade class in one line, arranged with chairs to accent the exercise. She showed a note to the student at the beginning of the line. She then whispered the contents of the note to the student to her right. I heard it from my neighbor, and whispered it in kind. It followed down line until it got to the last: the note's contents had completely changed from the first student to the twentieth.
I do not recall the original contents of the note, but the exercise has been repeated here on Earth without the need for fusion reactors, rotating habitats to induce artificial gravity, space lasers or Klingons. Culture on a generation starship would change from its origin planet. A society would emerge diametrically different than its original, hopefully far better than our current one, inculcating survival principles that would allow it to finish the journey to its destination, and thrive once there.
In science fiction, there’s something called a generation ship: a spacecraft that ferries humankind on a multiple-generation-long journey to brand new star systems or even galaxies.
The idea has also been touted here in the real world by those hell-bent on traversing the stars. But there’s a major problem with the concept, and we’re not talking about the countless generations doomed to be born and die for the sake of a mission they never agreed to — that’s a whole other thing. Rather, Universe Today points out that, if past is prelude, the language spoken on the ship would eventually evolve to the point that it seems incoherent back on Earth.
On an Interstellar Flight, Language Itself Would Evolve, Dan Robitzski, Futurism
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| An artist's depiction of a rocket carrying humans to Mars. (Image: © NASA/John Frassanito and Associates) |
Topics: Mars, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight
The roads of human spaceflight all seem to lead to Mars. For decades now, it's been the logical next step after the moon.
But if you're an astronaut or a cosmonaut on your way to or from Mars, you might make a surprising pit stop along the way: Venus.
A flight to (or from) Mars can happen more quickly and cheaply if it "involves a Venus flyby on the way to or on the way home from Mars," Noam Izenberg, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University, told Space.com.
Izenberg is one of a number of scientists and engineers advocating that a crewed mission to Mars also visit Venus. This group of researchers has drafted a white paper on the subject, to be submitted for peer review at Acta Astronautica. According to that paper, using Venus as a stepping stone to Mars isn't just one option — it's an essential part of a crewed Mars mission.
Astronauts bound for Mars should swing by Venus first, scientists say, Rahul Rao, Space.com
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| Credit: Getty Images |
Topics: Computer Science, Modern Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics
In a world’s first, researchers in France and the U.S. have performed a pioneering experiment demonstrating “hybrid” quantum networking. The approach, which unites two distinct methods of encoding information in particles of light called photons, could eventually allow for more capable and robust communications and computing.
Similar to how classical electronics can represent information as digital or analog signals, quantum systems can encode information as either discrete variables (DVs) in particles or continuous variables (CVs) in waves. Researchers have historically used one approach or the other—but not both—in any given system.
“DV and CV encoding have distinct advantages and drawbacks,” says Hugues de Riedmatten of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, who was not a part of the research. CV systems encode information in the varying intensity, or phasing, of light waves. They tend to be more efficient than DV approaches but are also more delicate, exhibiting stronger sensitivity to signal losses. Systems using DVs, which transmit information by the counting of photons, are harder to pair with conventional information technologies than CV techniques. They are also less error-prone and more fault-tolerant, however. Combining the two, de Riedmatten says, could offer “the best of both worlds.”
‘Hybrid’ Quantum Networking Demonstrated for First Time, Dhananjay Khadilkar, Scientific American
