Story concept of the day: a mad scientist has been turning the residents of their neighborhood into monsters… on request. The government tries to investigate and discovers the locals treat this as a body mod on par with a tattoo or piercing.
the comments on this post immediately confirm the premise that people would do this
Ancient village discovered in Canada is 10,000 years older than the pyramids.
The discovery of a 14,000-year-old ancient village in Canada could forever alter our understanding of early civilization in North America. Researchers estimate the settlement is way older than the Giza pyramids, and have found artifacts dating all the way back to the Ice Age. The village is one of the oldest human settlements we’ve ever uncovered in North America – and lines up with the oral history of the Heiltsuk Nation.
Researchers from the Hakai Institute and University of Victoria, with local First Nations members, unearthed revealing artifacts on Triquet Island, around 310 miles northwest of Victoria, Canada. They’ve found fish hooks, spears, and tools to ignite fires. Thanks to the discovery of the ancient village last year, researchers now think a massive human migration may have happened along British Columbia’s coastline.
Caveat: This is from my driving experience, from a DC metro area view. Also, some bits are vague-blogging about a thing that set me off specifically because the failure to check a map along routes I have driven several times has thrown me out of a story.
1. Most cars made in the last thirty years, and are available in the US, get between 300-400 miles per tank of gas. (Ok, fun fact. My mom’s civic – 2006 with a roughly 13 gallon tank, the RV – 2007 with a 50 gallon tank, and dad’s Soul – 2016 with I think a 10 gallon tank…. all go about 350 miles on a tank of gas. The RV gets 7-9 miles per gallon, the civic gets 20-25 highway depending on who’s driving, the soul gets 25-30 highway depending on who’s driving. Your fuel efficiency alone does not determine how many miles you go before you have to get gas.)
2. Check distances on a map. Please. Otherwise you risk making locals or well-traveled people twitch a lot. (Yes, I know that TV shows make this mistake a lot. Do you know how much I’ve yelled at every show that is made on the other side of the country and thinks that you can get from NOVA to Baltimore in an hour or less? 45 minutes around the Beltway, plus the time to get to the Beltway, plus another 30-60 minutes to get to the near side of Baltimore, depending on route and traffic. Minimum of an hour and fifteen, if you’re right on the Beltway and just going to, oh, the ballpark.)
3. It is a minimum 2 hour trip from the MD suburbs of DC to Richmond. Especially if I-95 is part of your driving route. If you’re driving in rush hour traffic, it’s closer to 3, and that’s only if you haven’t managed to have major slow downs at routes 4 and 5, at Dale City, the Occoquan, Fredricksburg, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (provided, of course, you’re taking 95, and not 301, which, if you’re anywhere south of 95 and it’s rush hour, 301 might be less hassle. Or faster).
4. I-95, NOT The 95. As seen above, sometimes just 95. (Seriously, West Coast TV writers, will you please fucking not. It’s REALLY uncommon for people in the DC area, at least, to call I-95 “The 95″.)
5. Maps. Are. Your. Friend. For love of fuck. So are calculators. Math is not evil.
6. Speed limits on the East Coast tend to be 60mph, sometimes 70mph, and often 55mph at best within city limits, on interstates. They’re higher once you get over the Appalachians and/or across the Mississippi. (It’s been a couple years since I’ve driven west, it’s a little fuzzy exactly where the demarcation is, and how it differs depending on how far north or south you are.)
7. Please do not have your characters be driving on an empty tank for a hundred or more miles because you did not take into account the distance most cars can go. Or, you know, get from DC to Atlanta in something less than 8 hours of driving and a minimum of two gas stops* while trying not to get pulled over for speeding in a car that someone is looking for.
*one if your car started with a full tank, and your characters are likely to be ditching the car in Atlanta or its greater metro area.
Seriously, if you’ve got other useful things for making travel times feel realistic, please reblog and add them. Especially little local things that can and/or will throw you out of a story which travels in or around where you know well.
For travel out West:
1. Distance is measured in TIME, not MILES. It’s 20 minutes to downtown from where I live (which makes the California part of my soul scream in WTF-ness every time Kidlet points it out) and it’s 4 hours or so to Seattle. We usually have NO clue how far apart things are, just how long it takes to get there.
2. States are generally bigger out here. So travel between them is going to take much longer. Take your estimate and add a good 6-8 hours. Then add another 4. When in doubt, add 2 more. Where freeway traffic doesn’t slow you down, mountains will.
3. When I say mountains, I mean MOUNTAINS. These are not the Appalachians, which are older and much more easily traversible. Out here you have the Bitterroots, the Rockies, and then once you get over those, the Sierra Nevadas. Basically, once you cross the plains, you hit one jagged, hostile set of mountain ranges after another. Most of them are winding roads that tend to be two lanes (near the big cities, you get two lanes for each direction!) but you CANNOT whip around the mountain doing 65-70 unless you have a death wish. Not to mention, there is snow in some places for a good 8-9 months of the year.
4. Gas and food stops are a necessary, even if you aren’t low on either. With large distances, the next stop may well be a good hour or more down the road, so ‘last chance for the bathroom’ calls are common on road trips. And you learn early that even if you don’t think you have to go, TRY.
5. Speed limits on the freeways out here are generally 65, but nobody really drives that. It’s pretty much 70-75, unless you’re absolutely sticking to the speed limit, in which case you should be in the far right lane. If you aren’t, expect there to be many dirty looks and much honking/gesturing.
6. Ahhhh, freeways. Californians have a love/hate affair with them that I don’t think the rest of the world understands. And yeah, we talk about them weird. ‘Take the 210 west to the 605, then head south to the 10 west, and that’ll take you straight into LA. If you hit the 101, you’ve gone too far.’ The Californians go ‘Thanks, man’ while the rest of the nation stares at us in horror. So, yeah. If writing in California/for a Californian, go ahead and use stuff like that. Otherwise, ditch all the freeway talk you’ve ever heard on TV/movies. (We also tend to take the freeway everywhere because we know it’s the most direct route – it’s taken my mom a good 20 years to train ‘take the freeway’ out of me as my automatic answer to ‘how do we get there?’)
Especially if you’re crossing the mountains in Washington/Northern Oregon, between April and September we don’t have summer, we have Construction Season. Nobody is going anywhere fast for six months!
*This is also true of the I-5 corridor starting in Tacoma and heading southwards, the Tacoma portion itself has been under construction for longer than I’ve been alive
more general and less about realistic travel times. Driver’s behaviour change from place to place. Offensive gestures change from place to place. and sometimes you don’t even have to go very far.
I twitched really hard when a french writer wrote about a Dutch person giving another driver the arm ( an equivalent of the finger in belgium, france and other southern countries). While the Hague (dutch capital) and Brussels ( belgian capital) are barely two hours away I have never seen a Dutch person use or even know what the arm meant. Something I have abused once in a while to insult annoying people without repercussions
Also the weather. unless they are very experienced or having a death-wish any sane person slows down when the weather is bad either consciously or unconsciously. Same goes for when it gets darker especially if there are few lights around.
This by the way can also differ sharply from place to place. The Netherlands are almost uniformly well lit except for the really lost corners of the north or south east. Belgium being less populated still has entire stretches of the country that show up nearly pitch black on the light maps.
Caveat: This is from my driving experience, from a DC metro area view. Also, some bits are vague-blogging about a thing that set me off specifically because the failure to check a map along routes I have driven several times has thrown me out of a story.
1. Most cars made in the last thirty years, and are available in the US, get between 300-400 miles per tank of gas. (Ok, fun fact. My mom’s civic – 2006 with a roughly 13 gallon tank, the RV – 2007 with a 50 gallon tank, and dad’s Soul – 2016 with I think a 10 gallon tank…. all go about 350 miles on a tank of gas. The RV gets 7-9 miles per gallon, the civic gets 20-25 highway depending on who’s driving, the soul gets 25-30 highway depending on who’s driving. Your fuel efficiency alone does not determine how many miles you go before you have to get gas.)
2. Check distances on a map. Please. Otherwise you risk making locals or well-traveled people twitch a lot. (Yes, I know that TV shows make this mistake a lot. Do you know how much I’ve yelled at every show that is made on the other side of the country and thinks that you can get from NOVA to Baltimore in an hour or less? 45 minutes around the Beltway, plus the time to get to the Beltway, plus another 30-60 minutes to get to the near side of Baltimore, depending on route and traffic. Minimum of an hour and fifteen, if you’re right on the Beltway and just going to, oh, the ballpark.)
3. It is a minimum 2 hour trip from the MD suburbs of DC to Richmond. Especially if I-95 is part of your driving route. If you’re driving in rush hour traffic, it’s closer to 3, and that’s only if you haven’t managed to have major slow downs at routes 4 and 5, at Dale City, the Occoquan, Fredricksburg, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (provided, of course, you’re taking 95, and not 301, which, if you’re anywhere south of 95 and it’s rush hour, 301 might be less hassle. Or faster).
4. I-95, NOT The 95. As seen above, sometimes just 95. (Seriously, West Coast TV writers, will you please fucking not. It’s REALLY uncommon for people in the DC area, at least, to call I-95 “The 95″.)
5. Maps. Are. Your. Friend. For love of fuck. So are calculators. Math is not evil.
6. Speed limits on the East Coast tend to be 60mph, sometimes 70mph, and often 55mph at best within city limits, on interstates. They’re higher once you get over the Appalachians and/or across the Mississippi. (It’s been a couple years since I’ve driven west, it’s a little fuzzy exactly where the demarcation is, and how it differs depending on how far north or south you are.)
7. Please do not have your characters be driving on an empty tank for a hundred or more miles because you did not take into account the distance most cars can go. Or, you know, get from DC to Atlanta in something less than 8 hours of driving and a minimum of two gas stops* while trying not to get pulled over for speeding in a car that someone is looking for.
*one if your car started with a full tank, and your characters are likely to be ditching the car in Atlanta or its greater metro area.
Seriously, if you’ve got other useful things for making travel times feel realistic, please reblog and add them. Especially little local things that can and/or will throw you out of a story which travels in or around where you know well.
For travel out West:
1. Distance is measured in TIME, not MILES. It’s 20 minutes to downtown from where I live (which makes the California part of my soul scream in WTF-ness every time Kidlet points it out) and it’s 4 hours or so to Seattle. We usually have NO clue how far apart things are, just how long it takes to get there.
2. States are generally bigger out here. So travel between them is going to take much longer. Take your estimate and add a good 6-8 hours. Then add another 4. When in doubt, add 2 more. Where freeway traffic doesn’t slow you down, mountains will.
3. When I say mountains, I mean MOUNTAINS. These are not the Appalachians, which are older and much more easily traversible. Out here you have the Bitterroots, the Rockies, and then once you get over those, the Sierra Nevadas. Basically, once you cross the plains, you hit one jagged, hostile set of mountain ranges after another. Most of them are winding roads that tend to be two lanes (near the big cities, you get two lanes for each direction!) but you CANNOT whip around the mountain doing 65-70 unless you have a death wish. Not to mention, there is snow in some places for a good 8-9 months of the year.
4. Gas and food stops are a necessary, even if you aren’t low on either. With large distances, the next stop may well be a good hour or more down the road, so ‘last chance for the bathroom’ calls are common on road trips. And you learn early that even if you don’t think you have to go, TRY.
5. Speed limits on the freeways out here are generally 65, but nobody really drives that. It’s pretty much 70-75, unless you’re absolutely sticking to the speed limit, in which case you should be in the far right lane. If you aren’t, expect there to be many dirty looks and much honking/gesturing.
6. Ahhhh, freeways. Californians have a love/hate affair with them that I don’t think the rest of the world understands. And yeah, we talk about them weird. ‘Take the 210 west to the 605, then head south to the 10 west, and that’ll take you straight into LA. If you hit the 101, you’ve gone too far.’ The Californians go ‘Thanks, man’ while the rest of the nation stares at us in horror. So, yeah. If writing in California/for a Californian, go ahead and use stuff like that. Otherwise, ditch all the freeway talk you’ve ever heard on TV/movies. (We also tend to take the freeway everywhere because we know it’s the most direct route – it’s taken my mom a good 20 years to train ‘take the freeway’ out of me as my automatic answer to ‘how do we get there?’)
Iron Man 3 – dir. Shane Black “Are you going completely mental?”
How do u fly into the vacuum of space and get swallowed by a space whale and have ur house blown up with u in it and almost drown and get shredded up by an aircraft propellor and still think u might not have ptsd
Denial is a hell of a drug.
If Tony admitted to having it then he’d have to do something about it, and doing something about it would interfere with all of his coping mechanisms for dealing with it. And Tony simply doesn’t have the time for a breakdown; not now, or any other day of the week. Maybe he can schedule one in for three years from next Tuesday…nope, that’s not a good time for it, either.
Also, facing his recent PTSD would probably involve, to some degree, facing the PTSD from his childhood, and I think he’d rather launch himself through another portal into outer space while carrying a thermonuclear device again than deal with the issues he has with his father / his father’s alcoholism.
Caveat: This is from my driving experience, from a DC metro area view. Also, some bits are vague-blogging about a thing that set me off specifically because the failure to check a map along routes I have driven several times has thrown me out of a story.
1. Most cars made in the last thirty years, and are available in the US, get between 300-400 miles per tank of gas. (Ok, fun fact. My mom’s civic – 2006 with a roughly 13 gallon tank, the RV – 2007 with a 50 gallon tank, and dad’s Soul – 2016 with I think a 10 gallon tank…. all go about 350 miles on a tank of gas. The RV gets 7-9 miles per gallon, the civic gets 20-25 highway depending on who’s driving, the soul gets 25-30 highway depending on who’s driving. Your fuel efficiency alone does not determine how many miles you go before you have to get gas.)
2. Check distances on a map. Please. Otherwise you risk making locals or well-traveled people twitch a lot. (Yes, I know that TV shows make this mistake a lot. Do you know how much I’ve yelled at every show that is made on the other side of the country and thinks that you can get from NOVA to Baltimore in an hour or less? 45 minutes around the Beltway, plus the time to get to the Beltway, plus another 30-60 minutes to get to the near side of Baltimore, depending on route and traffic. Minimum of an hour and fifteen, if you’re right on the Beltway and just going to, oh, the ballpark.)
3. It is a minimum 2 hour trip from the MD suburbs of DC to Richmond. Especially if I-95 is part of your driving route. If you’re driving in rush hour traffic, it’s closer to 3, and that’s only if you haven’t managed to have major slow downs at routes 4 and 5, at Dale City, the Occoquan, Fredricksburg, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (provided, of course, you’re taking 95, and not 301, which, if you’re anywhere south of 95 and it’s rush hour, 301 might be less hassle. Or faster).
4. I-95, NOT The 95. As seen above, sometimes just 95. (Seriously, West Coast TV writers, will you please fucking not. It’s REALLY uncommon for people in the DC area, at least, to call I-95 “The 95″.)
5. Maps. Are. Your. Friend. For love of fuck. So are calculators. Math is not evil.
6. Speed limits on the East Coast tend to be 60mph, sometimes 70mph, and often 55mph at best within city limits, on interstates. They’re higher once you get over the Appalachians and/or across the Mississippi. (It’s been a couple years since I’ve driven west, it’s a little fuzzy exactly where the demarcation is, and how it differs depending on how far north or south you are.)
7. Please do not have your characters be driving on an empty tank for a hundred or more miles because you did not take into account the distance most cars can go. Or, you know, get from DC to Atlanta in something less than 8 hours of driving and a minimum of two gas stops* while trying not to get pulled over for speeding in a car that someone is looking for.
*one if your car started with a full tank, and your characters are likely to be ditching the car in Atlanta or its greater metro area.
Seriously, if you’ve got other useful things for making travel times feel realistic, please reblog and add them. Especially little local things that can and/or will throw you out of a story which travels in or around where you know well.
@super-perspicacia commissioned a Halo sketch of Ferus Olin. I haven’t read a lot with him in it but I’ve always appreciated the character. And I love his design. I hope I did it justice! I gave him a shattered Jedi symbol for a halo
There's a Mirror on the Wall 