Crimson

They came without warning. They had settled in practically overnight. Admittedly, in the beginning, they seemed nice enough. They even
managed to greatly expand the golden city, bringing it out of obscurity to the center of the world overnight. Even the much neglected sideways suddenly
proclaimed glamour.

Yet, the locals rested uneasy. Suddenly storms appeared, out of nowhere and with strength unheard of. They were unpredictable, would
come in waves. Sometimes they would level the city. Other times, somewhere, a dam would break, and the locals as well as the immigrants suffered a flood of
biblical proportions.

This time, something was different. There were few of them left, and everyone was happy, settling back in to obscurity.

This was when the ground itself opened up, without warning or the courtesy of allowing time to react. The red bowels of the Earth themselves seemingly emerged from the deepest pits of hell.
The city experienced a flood once more. But it was different. Silent. Without a storm preceding.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

At first he didn’t notice the crimson drops that started to decorate the desk.Drops turned to a trickle, impossible to ignore in its wet warmth running down to the lips.

A small shriek invoking curse words in various tongues, and the rush and fumble for a napkin to ebb the flow of blood. And right then and there he decides to joke about it to his friends online. Yep, he might be a junkie. Or just a little bit nuts.

2012
01/04
CATEGORY
Nutbits
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On the taste of Revenge

“Sweet revenge.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
“Revenge is sweeter far than flowing honey.”

Revenge has a long standing history. Many a bright person has partaken in it, for one wrongdoing or another. Everyone more likely than not, has entertained at least the thought of taking revenge – and, in many cases it is seen as something positive; See the initial phrase of ‘Sweet Revenge’.

Being human, thoughts of these are all but alien to me, admittedly, and as rarely as it might occur, at times the wrath of the just and righteous threatens to overwhelm me. There are trying situations, where a swift blow, a sharp word or the planting of a sublime plot to come to fruition later one is tempting, and in the whim of the moment it seems like the only viable alternative.

There are a few experiences I’ve gained over the last year that’ve proven thoroughly frustrating, and in a way, nurturing thoughts of taking revenge; Few ever learned the details, if at all, but not few souls suggested my course to action was to take revenge in one form or another. To directly destroy and humiliate the perpetrator in ways unimaginable to them.

I admit freely that I had entertained the thought, especially in dark and dreary hours. All that it managed to accomplish was for me to wallow in the misery of experiences past, dragging out the inevitable healing of my soul in ways unfathomable.

In the end, I finally realized that in agonizing over the decision, I spent more waking hours in a state of pointless anger than I’d care to admit. A dark and outright dangerous part of me still yearns for satisfaction of a perceived debt, and yet, however real that debt or the perception thereof may be, I failed and allowed it to dominate my thoughts for all too long.

I could not ignore what I had become, and what I yet would want to be. I had to realize, decisions had been made on either side – ultimately shaping who I would become, yet still with me retaining the power of influencing the path that I could take.

And so I chose.
Against all that spoke against it, I took revenge.

But in the sweetest and most gratifying way possible.

For the best revenge one can dream of is a life well lived, to go your own path and refuse to let the decisions others made control ones life. And with the destruction gone from intent and practice, it is revenge that I can wholeheartedly agree with.

2012
01/01
CATEGORY
Nutbits
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Carbon Memorablia

What we leave behind is not as important as the way we lived

I’m not entirely certain I can completely subscribe to this way of thinking. Andrew Canergie, for instance,
made his fortune as one of the steel magnates of the 19th century, and did so with partially pretty ruthless methods
and unscrupuluous bussiness sense. Yet, near the end of his life he turned a major philanthrope, and many museums
and libraries were funded by him until his death and beyond.

He may have been a rather despicable man for most of his life, but does that invalidate his legacy?

Everything, in a manner of speaking, leaves a legacy. Most just never have the impact to be noticed in the wider world – or universe.

Stars have it easy in that respect. Besides being freakingly large and massive, their remnants continue to have a profound influence on the universe (at least: in terms of local neighbourhood of a few dozen lightyears) even after they ‘pass’

Black Holes, Neutron Stars, Magnetars, Planetary Nebulae… the legacy products take many shapes, yet most of those mentioned here have one thing in common: They’re the legacy of very, very massive stars.

Massive, that only a handful of percent of stars actually are capable of producing those. The vast majority – 90 to 95% – are far smaller stars.
The greater part of those 95% are Red Dwarfs, relatively cool stars, that will live on far longer than the universe has existed so far – some say, up to a 100 billion years.

Then you have the slightly more massive stars like our sun. While not as brilliant or conspicious as stars producing black holes or neutron stars, we will produce a planetary nebula in a few billion years time. That alone is a beautiful reminder of the existence of our home, but what remains at the center of our solar system is what interests me more in this case.

As a result of the billions of years of ongoing fusion that powered our sun and all the other stars, eventually, the core, where the fusion had taken place, will be enriched in heavier elements. By the processes that lead to the stars demise, this is a majority of carbon and oxygen…

Now, we have a remnant star, maybe the size of Earth, almost purely composed of carbon and oxygen, which sit there, with a lot of heat remaining, and still being under massive pressure from the gravity of the remaining mass.

What happens on Earth when we combine carbon, heat and pressure?

Stars too big to burn eternally, Stars too small to go out in a blaze of glory… they will have a lasting memory, a monument to the strangeness of the universe – in form of an Earth-sized diamond.

2011
12/12
CATEGORY
Nutbits
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A crass autumn

A dark and starry night sky was opening up above them. Here, far from any city whose lights might have disturbed the gazes into the unending cosmos, total peace was as much reality as a theoretical construct could ever be. Somewhere, almost near the horizon, a faint cloudy blob reflected the suns light. If one looked closely the faint tail of dust and gas pointing away from the sun could be seen – a comet.

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2011
10/16
CATEGORY
short nuts
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Attempts of Clawing at Failure

Something I came up with rather recently. A single post-it with the message ‘What would you attempt to do, if you knew you could not fail? You’d be surprised.’ was enough to inspire me here.
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2011
07/08
CATEGORY
short nuts
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Change is coming to town…

Welp. Looks like I neglected this little corner of the Internet a bit too much lately. I’m going to change that soon, hopefully. Also.. we’ll be turning this into a proper page. Stay tuned!

2011
06/27
CATEGORY
Nutbits
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The universe in due time

Space is… big.
Mind-boggingly vast.
I mean, it is so terrifyingly, positively, megalomanically huge that you couldn’t start to comprehend it in its entireity.

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2011
04/30
CATEGORY
Laetitia
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Wear your high heels, girl, but they won’t make you grow up

“Amazing.”
“That hardly does this view justice.” he countered. “Aren’t you worried about all that radiation, though?”
Reiko hinted at a smile, continuing to stare at the anomaly outside the ship, far away. “We’ve got plenty of shields and distance between us and that.”
Marcus’ gaze wandered back to the window, where a bright disk illuminated all surroundings. It was gas, spiralling to its doom towards the center of this accretion disk, where, outshone by the superheated gas surrounding it, was the event horizon of a black hole.
“I bet you can’t wait to pour over the whole dataset once we’ve departed. Are you aiming for that Nobel prize yet?”

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2011
04/10
CATEGORY
Laetitia
Tears of the Stars
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I live out there in the night sky, watching you all pass by

The Blue Marble. It’s the name of a famous photograph taken by Apollo astronauts, taken from the vantage point of the moon. It is perhaps *the* image that drove home the fact, that we all share the same planet, and that it is finite and small in a vast sea of black.
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2011
04/03
CATEGORY
Laetitia
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Walking home.

What is stranger than night? The call for a way home in the midst of darkness, with just the neverchanging face of the moon hanging up there in the sky, accompanied by hundreds, thousands, millions specks of light.
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2011
03/27
CATEGORY
Laetitia
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