semua yang tidak hitam adalah bintang

arsip: yang terselamatkan dari api /// original posts are tagged #txt

[thelunatheory]

main tags:

#txt  (all original posts; expect earnest mediocrity)

#stories etc  (fictional & in prose or otherwise)

#not a shitpost (mostly underdeveloped opinions that i suprisingly want people to see)

#on stories (reblogged posts on the various aspect of storytelling)

full taglist can be found here 

(might not work on mobile, just click the tags below)

[thelunatheory]

[cancelingtheapocalypse]

[havingapoemwithyou]

Keeping Quiet by Robert Bly

[ashstfu]

warsan shire

[post-troy-stress-disorder]

to me the thing about deification is that something fundamental is lost in the process

[post-troy-stress-disorder]

people can’t be immortal. so in order to be immortal you can’t be a person anymore. you have to be distilled. stripped of everything. till you come out the other side as an abstract concept.

[mnafif]

Diajak Baik

Kalau Bernadya merasa beruntung karena bumi masih berputar dan tidak memilih menyerah, saya merasa beruntung karena masih diajak untuk resah.

Pagi ini sama kucing yang kayaknya belum siap jadi indukan, kemarin sama menkeu yang baru, beberapa hari lalu sama kebijakan yang tidak bijak, dan sampai sekarang masih gatel sama medsos yang sengaja shadow ban konten anti penjajahan khususnya dari negara biru putih.

Kalau resah, terus apa? Ya sesederhana lakukan apa yang bisa kita lakukan. Kalau bisa baik berisik ya bagus, kalaupun engga ya setidaknya kita masih memilih berusaha baik. Prinsipnya sederhana kok. Mulai aja dulu dari pribadi, kemudian keluarga, baru masyarakat, syukur-syukur bisa tembus negara atau bahkan mancanegara.

Coretan Sabtu pagi dari yang masih kerja sampai Sabtu dan masih sering diajak jadi orang bener, dan moga-moga akhir hidupnya termasuk orang bener.

[thelunatheory]

Sekarang saya rasa sekadar ikut resah pun sudah merupakan jalan menuju kebaikan. Sebagai usaha untuk mempertahankan rasa kemanusiaan dan rasa sayang sesama makhluk hidup, setidaknya dalam sukma sendiri.

Apalagi melihat ada orang-orang yang mengaku tidak resah (karena tidak mau dibilang fomo/taraf hidupnya sudah di awang-awang/adalah biang keladi keresahan itu sendiri dll.) I think to be well in a sick world is a sign of unwellness.

[official-kircheis]

Liebreich: 'Hydrogen is starting to look like an economic bubble — and here’s why' | Hydrogen news and intelligence

Potential uses of H2 are in direct competition with electric alternatives that tend to be cheaper and easier, analyst tells hydrogen confere

Just replacing this dirty hydrogen — used mainly in chemicals production and oil refining — with green H2 made from renewable energy would require 143% of all the wind and solar installed globally to date, Liebreich said.

Add in the other sectors that would probably require green hydrogen or its derivatives to fully decarbonise, such as shipping, steel and long-duration energy storage, and it would require five times all the existing wind and solar installations — and that is before decarbonising the electricity supply or hydrogen use in less hard-to-abate sectors such as heating and road transport.

“What I’m saying here is that the supply chain for renewables is not going to cope if we do anything other than the most essential [uses of hydrogen],” he explained.

“If we do the German steel industry [ie, replacing fossil fuel use with green hydrogen], that takes up 60% of current German wind and solar output.

“If we go to ammonia shipping, it’s 300% of China’s current renewables output. The numbers are staggering.”

[...]

For heating, heat pumps would require six times less renewable electricity compared to green-hydrogen-fired boilers, he said, pointing out that proponents of H2 for heating “don’t want to talk about the cost and difficulty… [the need to replace] every single [gas-fired] appliance, checking every single pipe...”

And then he told the audience that green hydrogen would never be imported to Europe at scale, even if the nearby Port of Rotterdam was planning to do so.

The volumetric energy density of hydrogen is so low that it would be “like shipping expanded polystyrene”, Liebreich said. “It’s not going to happen.

“You might import green ammonia, you almost certainly will, but it will be used in the chemicals industry. If you think any business, any value chain that goes from electricity to hydrogen to ammonia, to liquefying and shipping it, to expanding it, to then generating electricity — with 22% cycle efficiency, and then the people using that [power] are supposed to compete with the people using electricity at the source country, forget it.

“Sadly, it means Europe is going to lose its energy-intensive industries and we need to get to grips with that politically.”

@raginrayguns

[raginrayguns]

Nice to see someone stating the obvious on this:

You might import green ammonia, you almost certainly will, but it will be used in the chemicals industry.

The plans for "hydrogen" shipments as ammonia, as if they're going to undo the expensive ammonia-production process on the other side--well, if I'm missing something, this guy is too.

It's an interesting point that if you used green hydrogen for all the "ordinary" uses of hydrogen (like ammonia production), you'd have none left for all the "creative" ones (cars, heating):

Just replacing this dirty hydrogen — used mainly in chemicals production and oil refining — with green H2 made from renewable energy would require 143% of all the wind and solar installed globally to date, Liebreich said.

Apparently we make like 230 million metric tons of ammonia per year. So this requires like 2e13 moles of hydrogen. Splitting water... the bare minimum energy required is actually the free energy of formation of water, since we're turning it into elements. One mole of hydrogen from one mole of water. So multiplying 2e13 moles hydrogen needed to make the world's ammonia, by the molar free energy of formation of water... in terawatt hours that's over a thousand TWh? It was in the news recently that we hit 1 TW total installed solar capacity, so that's 15% of a year running at full capacity, which they don't. So yeah... making green hydrogen for just ammonia, with hypothetical futuristic catalysts that split water with perfect efficiency, is already on the order of magnitude of global solar production.

So... just from personal experience talking to people I meet, the green energy optimists tend to assume we're going into a future of unlimited solar electricity, and with some effort you can get them to acknowledge that storage would be a serious issue. But like, this really drives home how much more solar we're talking about. Like apparently all the solar already in the world is not much compared to what they expect.

OK so there's one thing I disagree with...

For heating, heat pumps would require six times less renewable electricity compared to green-hydrogen-fired boilers, he said, pointing out that proponents of H2 for heating “don’t want to talk about the cost and difficulty… [the need to replace] every single [gas-fired] appliance, checking every single pipe...”

alright agreed on the cost and difficulty of the infrastructure, everyone seems to underestimate how hard it is to move hydrogen. Agreed that this is not an efficient way to use electricity. HOWEVER. It seems to me that hydrogen heating could be important in a future Europe with much more solar energy, because their big problem is going to be storage. Electric heating is a better way to use present electricity production for winter heating, but hydrogen could use the summer's electricity production for winter heating. The 6x difference surprises me though... that's a big difference so maybe it's not worth it after all. I guess heat pumps are just really efficient?

[raginrayguns]

comments two years later.

Storage for solar isn't as big a deal as I thought. I wrote this at peak lithium price:

Since then people have just been installing lithium battery storage along with solar. So i say forget about using hydrogen for storage, and also forget about storage as a limitation on solar installation.

So we have a few big projects of electrification. Starting with the commonplace ones, progressing to the more speculative ones:

Electric trains (freight trains are still diesel in the US!). (I think the usual method of plugging them directly into the grid is superior to hydrogen trains, despite the expense)

Electric stoves (I think superior to trying to switch to hydrogen gas stoves)

Electric cars (I think superior to hydrogen cars)

Heat pumps rather than gas furnaces for home heating (I think superior to hydrogen home heating)

Electrolyzing water for hydrogen for steel production

Electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia production

By the way, just a reminder that "ammonia production" is also the first step of nitrogen fertilizer production, so we're not talking about the bit of ammonia in Windex, we're talking about one of the fundamental technologies of the green revolution and being able to eat.

So there's all these applications where hydrogen just doesn't seem like the right way to electrify it, but there's a few where hydrogen is the only way to electrify it, and it's already a challenge to get enough electricity for that, but I think it can be done because there doesn't seem to be any real near-term limit to installing more solar and battery storage.

[peach-pot]

I’m starting to think some of y’all haven’t actually felt the rain on your skin… which is crazy because no one else can feel it for you

[jennaflare]

So Disco Elysium is the only game you've ever really liked

I get it! It's a phenomenal game with superb art and writing, and its themes are consistent and deeply explored. It sets a high bar for video games. But there are other really, really fantastic games out there. This is a list that is 100% my own taste of things that aren't necessarily similar, other than the fact that they're really fucking good. (A lot of these are on sale for the Steam Summer Sale until July 11 2024!)

In Stars and Time

In Stars and Time is a time loop game where you play as Siffrin, the rogue of a party at the end of their quest to save the day by defeating the King, who is freezing everybody in time! But something is wrong: every time you die, you loop back to the day before you fight the King. You're the only one who remembers the loops, so it's up to you to figure out why it's happening, and how to break out.

In Stars and Time is a heart-wrenching dive into mental health, friendship, and love. It's about feeling alone, and how awful it is when the people who love you don't notice (and how awful it is when they do). It's about falling deeper and deeper into your worst self and your worst tendencies, and how to come back from it.

The creator also did one of my favorite Disco Elysium comics ever, which is only tangentially relevant but worth mentioning.

Roadwarden

In Roadwarden, you play as the titular Roadwarden for an undeveloped and "wild" part of the kingdom. Monsters roam the forests and roads, and it's your job to keep people safe. On paper, anyway. Your real mission is to find out what is of value in the area, and how to take it from its people. How well you perform this task is up to you. It's an oldschool text-based RPG, and I take a lot of notes by hand when I play.

Roadwarden explores exploitation and industrialization by making you look in the face of your potential victims. You can only learn what your bosses want you to report on by getting close to the residents, after all. There are mysteries to be solved, secrets to be gathered, and hearts to win.

The Longing

The Longing is an adventure-idle game where you play as the solitary servant of a sleeping king. Your task is to wait for him, for four hundred days. Time in the game passes in realtime (for the most part). There are caves to explore, books to be read, and drawings to make.

The Longing is about loneliness and depression. It's about whether or not you decide to stay in that hole, and if you do, what you do with yourself while you're there. Maybe you'll wander. Maybe you'll stare at a wall. Maybe you'll just sleep until it's all over.

Papers, Please

Papers, Please casts you as a newly hired customs officer in a country that is rapidly tightening its borders as its fascist government tightens its fist. This game is stressful. Sometimes you intend to help out the revolutionaries when they asked, but then you got so stressed out trying to make your quota so you can feed your family and pay your bills that you didn't notice the name of the person they were hoping to contact while going through their papers. Sometimes someone puts a bomb in front of you and expects you to defuse it. Sometimes someone suggests you steal people's passports so you can get your family out, and with the horror you see daily, the idea tempts you more than you'd like.

Papers, Please is all about hard choices and testing your moral fortitude. Everything you do has consequences. Being a good person in this game is hardly ever rewarded, but not in a way that feels overly cynical. Papers, Please asks you what kind of person you want to be and what you're willing to sacrifice to get there.

The Return of the Obra Dinn

From the creator of Papers, Please, The Return of the Obra Dinn is a game where you play as an insurance investigator for the East India Trading Company. The ship the Obra Dinn has just floated back into port, its entire crew missing or dead. It's your job to figure out what happened aboard the vessel. For insurance reasons.

I don't know how to go into the themes of this too deeply without giving away too much, but the mechanics of the game itself make the game worth playing. You have a magic stopwatch that allows you to go back to the moment of a person's death, allowing you to try and figure out who (or what) killed them, and how. And the soundtrack is extremely good.

Outer Wilds

In Outer Wilds you play as an unnamed alien, and it's your first day going to space! Your planet's space program is pretty new still, so there's still lots to explore and discover on the planets within your system. There are ancient ruins from a mysterious race that once lived in your system, long before your species began to record history. Why were they here? Where did they go? How are they connected to the weird thing that keeps happening to you?

The fun of Outer Wilds is in the discovery and answering your own questions. The game never tells you where to go, and it never outright tells you anything. There are clues scattered through the system, and it's up to you to put them together and figure out your next steps. It's about the way that life always goes on, no matter what, even when it seems like the end of everything, forever. I'd recommend NOT reading anything else about this game. Just go play it. Seriously, the less you know, the more fun this is.

If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers

In If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers, you explore the circumstances of the deaths of four individuals.

This is a short one that took me about two and a half hours to play. If for no other reason, play it for the stunning pixel art. The game explores sexism, racism, and homophobia in the Victorian era and leans heavily into horror themes. Best of all: it's completely free!

Pentiment

Pentiment takes you to the 16th century, where you take the role of Andreas Maler, a journeyman artist working on his masterwork in the scriptorium of an abbey. When someone is murdered, Andreas takes responsibility for finding the culprit.

The game is set over 20~ years and you get to watch how Andreas' actions affect the village in various ways (who's alive the next time you come by, have people gotten married and had children...). It's an exploration of how the past affects the future, and what parts of that past we choose to keep or discard. It has beautiful art, and fans of both Disco and Pentiment often compare them.

Other games you might wanna check out

Night in the Woods, Dredge, Oxenfree, A House of Many Doors, Inscryption, Slay the Princess, Citizen Sleeper, Chants of Sennar, Loop Hero, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, The Pale Beyond, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Elsinore, Her Story, Before Your Eyes, Pathologic (not delved into above because the venn diagram of Pathologic fans and Disco fans is basically a circle)

[archiveofyearning]

OPPOSITE SIDES OF WANTING TO BE GOOD 

Japanese Breakfast, Slide Tackle // Mary Oliver, Wild Geese // Patti Smith, Woolgathering // Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood // Saul Bellow, Herzog // Mitski, I Will // Florence Welch, Useless Magic // Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star // Mary Oliver, Dogfish // John Steinbeck, East of Eden. 

[max1461]

If you go on the mathematics genealogy project and go to Euler and just keep clicking, you can find a path that takes you all the way back to Avicenna. Although I think they are stretching the definition of "thesis advisor" somewhat the genealogies still seem correct in spirit. One of the guys has his university listed as "Ilkhan Court at Tabriz".

[max1461]

i want to study at Ilkhan Court at Tabriz university

i will spell color as رنگ and measure distance in parasang. i would watch buzkashi on the steppe all day while drinking ayrag with my yurt mates. i'll have khorkhog every day that's worth 5 dirham. i would go to naadam festivals every year. i am also more likely to meet tatars, Ibn al-Fuwati, Shams al-Din Juvayni and Hülegü Khan.

i wish i was perso-mongol :(

[cutemothman]

i loveeeeeee nonlinear storytelling. show me where we are. now show me how we got here. the end before the beginning. show me how it was inevitable or how many chances we had to change things(nothing was ever going to change). let's meet in the middle as all the puzzle pieces slide into place hell yeah that's the good shit.

[thewitchoftheweed]

We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.

[melodicwriter]

[valtsv]

favourite type of character/narrative i fear

[whump-it-like-its-hot]

So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?

“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”

And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.

[kazoosandfannypacks]

Saying "I'm not going to draw this thing because I don't know how to draw this thing" is really shooting yourself in the foot, because you've now cut yourself off from an opportunity to grow.

I had a friend in college who was an absolutely amazing artist. I loved seeing his work! One time I said something to the effect of "I could never do that."

He told me something that, as an artist, I resonate with. He said art isn't about natural talent; it's a learned skill. When you tell an artist their level of skill is impossible for you to reach, you're assuming their level of skill is a natural gifting they have, and it discredits the hundreds to thousands of hours of hard work they've put into getting where they are today, and you're cutting yourself off from trying to reach that point yourself.

[what-hos-there]

I don't remember where I heard this but I wish I could, because it stuck with me:

Talent is THE RATE at which you learn things, not whether or not you can learn certain skills at all.

And that suddenly clicked for me. I have been very talented with a lot of things in my life and once I realized that I had basically been getting XP multipliers on my normal life experiences, it suddenly felt so much less awful to realize that I did not have the same advantage with other skills I struggle with, and that's okay. I might even have some debuffs on those, and that's okay. It's still all gaining as long as I keep working on it!!