I just got back from a J. Cole concert. N Had a friend that was flying in that couldn’t make it and so he offered me the ticket for free, and I was super happy to say yes. I had a feeling during the show of how high school me would’ve gone crazy to have this experience. The fact that I was able to see J. Cole live and in honestly pretty good seats. I’m really grateful.

By Roxy Music

I could feel at the time There was no way of knowing Fallen leaves in the night Who can say where they're blowing? As free as the wind Hopefully learning Why the sea on the tide Has no way of turning

More than this You know there's nothing More than this Tell me one thing More than this Ooh, there's nothing

It was fun for a while There was no way of knowing Like a dream in the night Who can say where we're going? No care in the world Maybe I'm learning Why the sea on the tide Has no way of turning

More than this You know there's nothing More than this Tell me one thing More than this No, there's nothing

More than this Nothing More than this More than this Nothing

---

#music

excerpt from Charlie Kaufman’s 2011 BAFTA speach. Absolutely worth a read.

Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It’s done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it. It has profound importance in my life. Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.

This is from E. E. Cummings: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.’ The world needs you. It doesn’t need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they’re tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and being kind.

13.

Il y avait de la place dans cette maison qu’on appelait « Le château » pour une ribambelle de cousins, (j’avais 6 oncles et tantes), mais tous et toutes étaient nettement plus âgés. Mais je me faisais très bien, tout seul, un monde auquel ma copine participait gaiement. J’explorais aussi les combles de la maison, dans les odeurs de pommes et de vieux papiers, les archives familiales y dormaient. Je crains d’y avoir mis un certain désordre. On mangeait des noisettes. Une fois toute la bande des cousins fut emmenée à quelques kilomètres dans un village, je me souviens de la place bordée de grands arbres, le sol était en partie en terre, ou recouvert de terre. Au fond il y avait une vaste maison toute en pierre grise. On entrait dans une large pièce qui sentait bon le feu de bois, le sol était en terre battue. Tout autour des armoires cloutées de cuivre, je découvris les lits-clos. C’était la maison de notre arrière-grand-père.

#ngolai

Hodiaŭ en la sportejo, mi unuafoje uzis la longan halteron, kiu pezas 20 kilogramojn mem, por ekzerci dum mi puŝadis mian kokson supren (angle tiu ekzerco nomiĝas hip thrust kaj ĝi bonegas por akiri belan pugon). Mi aldonis ankaŭ du 20-kilogramajn diskojn. Sume, mi levis 60 kilogramojn.

Mi tre fieras, ĉar antaŭ 6 monatoj, mi povis levi nur 18 kilogramojn dum tiu ekzerco.

Mi ne scias, kiu estas la limo, sed mi esperas, ke mi iam povos levi pli ol 100 kilogramojn!

Toluca, Meksiko

#gyushuaabo22yl

Mengendap-endap merintangi kegelapan malam yang dihiasi temaram cahaya lampu gas dari berbagai kedai dan bar adalah salah satu keahlian tersembunyi Choi Yido. Ia sering melakukannya—sudah melakukannya semenjak ia resmi menjadi Alpha. Berbaur bersama masyarakat biasa dalam samaran baju sederhana dan sedikit improvisasi—corengan debu maupun arang di pipi, sengaja berlari sejenak agar tampilannya penuh peluh dan lusuh seakan ia telah bekerja keras seharian—merupakan cara yang ia pilih untuk mengenal kerajaannya sendiri dari dalam. Wajahnya yang sungguh mirip Yang Mulia Pendamping Raja membuatnya harus agak kreatif bila tak ingin dikenali, namun toh sampai detik ini tidak ada panggilan ke ruang singgasana maupun Dewan Tetua untuk mempertanyakan 'kegiatan ekstra'-nya. Ia akan sedikit egois dan menganggap hal tersebut sebagai kemenangan kecil.

Setelah meloncati tembok istana, Alpha muda itu tidak langsung menuju kediaman keluarga Kim. Ia menyempatkan diri ke kedai kenalannya untuk bercakap-cakap sejenak sambil menikmati ikan halibut dibalur tepung dan digoreng garing, lengkap dengan saus tartar dan kentang goreng buatan sendiri. Hidangannya panas dan lezat, membuat sang Alpha mendesah puas kekenyangan. Setelah menghabiskan hampir dua jam di sana, ia pun pamit undur diri, sudah tidak sabar ingin menemui sang Omega kekasih hati.

(Tidak tahu diri, padahal status kalian juga belum resmi.)

(Diamlah.)

Terkadang, Alpha di dalam dirinya senang mengundang perselisihan, bahkan terhadap manusianya sendiri. Benar-benar menyusahkan.

Karena telah hafal di luar kepala, jejak-jejak kakinya menuju kediaman keluarga Kim tertinggal mulus sepanjang jalanan tanpa keraguan. Terletak cukup jauh dari keramaian jalan raya, di antara rumah-rumah megah kaum elit lainnya, berdiri mansion besar yang dihadiahkan ayahnya pada Paman Mingyu sebagai hadiah pernikahannya dahulu kala. Mansion yang awalnya milik Tuan Raja pribadi, kini menjadi milik adik sepupu satu-satunya itu. Dihuni tiga orang anggota keluarga Kim, seorang kepala pelayan, dua orang penjaga istal kuda, seorang supir pribadi, dan belasan pelayan serta tukang kebun, rumah tersebut tak pernah berhenti hidup, bahkan lebih aktif dari istana kerajaan dengan penghuni yang jauh lebih banyak lagi. Rumah yang selalu dirindukan Choi Yido, baik ketika masih kecil dulu maupun saat ini.

Bel yang menggantung di sisi pintu depan sengaja ia tarik. Gemanya menyadarkan setiap penghuni akan kehadiran seorang tamu, namun hanya satu orang yang bertugas membukakan pintu: Tuan Jung, kepala pelayan mereka. Setelah Tuan Park pensiun dan pulang ke kampung halamannya, Tuan Jung lah yang menggantikan tugasnya mengatur rumah tangga keluarga Kim, termasuk menyortir tamu-tamu tak diinginkan sebelum ujung sepatu mereka sempat menapak di ambang pintu. Karena itu lah, Tuan Jung mengenal siapa gerangan pemuda yang membunyikan bel malam itu.

“Yang Mulia,” buru-buru ditundukkannya kepala dan dibungkukkannya badan, tetapi Yido segera memegang bahunya untuk menghentikan.

“Tuan Jung, saya mohon,” seringai lemah ditariknya menghiasi wajah. “Bukankah sudah saya bilang? Di sini, saya hanya keponakan Paman Mingyu dan teman sejak kecil Ri. Saya akan sangat berterima kasih kalau saya diperlakukan tiada berbeda.”

“Ah...maaf, saya refleks saja...,” agak tersipu malu, Tuan Jung mengangguk beberapa kali. “Maafkan saya, Tuan Choi. Saya...tidak akan mengulanginya lagi.”

Mendengar itu, seringai Yido berubah menjadi senyuman lega. “Nah, nah, anggap saja tidak terjadi apapun. Apakah Ri ada di rumah, Tuan Jung? Jika ya, saya ingin bertamu.”

Tuan Jung mempersilakan tamunya masuk dengan membuka pintu lebih lebar. Yido menerima undangan tersebut dengan anggukan sopan, sebelum mulai melepas mantel yang ia kenakan sebagai kamuflase. Warnanya gelap dan bahannya kasar—barang murahan yang ia beli dari toko pakaian bekas di kota bagian Timur. Topi pet berwarna serupa pun ia lepas, membiarkan Tuan Jung dengan sigap menerima dan menyampirkan artikel pakaian tersebut di tiang gantungan dekat pintu masuk. “Nona ada di rumah, tapi Tuan Kim dan Tuan Hong sepertinya hendak pergi,” jawab sang kepala pelayan, membuat Yido membeku di tempat.

“Paman akan pergi? Berarti rumah akan kosong?” tentunya bukan kosong 'kosong', tetapi Tuan Jung menangkap maksudnya. Tidak baik bila seorang Alpha bertamu ke rumah seorang Omega tanpa kehadiran orangtuanya.

“Benar, Tuan.”

“Jika begitu, apa lebih baik saya kembali lain waktu—”

“Yido?”

Ah. Terlambat.

Tumit sepatunya berputar. Paman Joshua sudah bergegas mendekatinya dengan lengan terbuka lebar dan senyuman tulus di wajahnya. “Kenapa nggak bilang mau dateng? Kamu udah makan?” Yido membiarkan dirinya dipeluk erat. Wangi kue jahe dan mentega hangat merasuki indra penciumannya, membuat hatinya seketika nyaman. Seperti wangi ibunya, wangi Paman Joshua secara ajaib selalu mampu menentramkan perasaan, meski baginya tak ada Omega yang wanginya sememikat Kim Gyuri.

“Sudah, Paman, barusan saja,” ucapnya setelah pelukan terlepas. “Maaf saya datang tanpa pemberitahuan. Saya hanya...eh...” Kemudian, Alpha muda itu menunduk malu-malu. “...tiba-tiba saja ingin bertemu Gyuri...” Setengah hati Joshua menjerit gemas, setengahnya mau ketawa pakai hidung melihat muka Yoon Jeonghan bertingkah bak remaja kasmaran (bagaimanapun, rasanya tetap aneh ketika anak sahabat baikmu memiliki wajah persis sama dengannya).

“Ah, sebenernya kita mau keluar makan malam sih...,” diangkatnya kepala saat menyadari kedatangan seseorang dari balik tembok. “Oh. Mingyu.”

Deg.

Jantung Yido melonjak dari rongga dada. Mendengar nama pamannya disebut, pemuda itu pun teringat kembali akan alasan sesungguhnya ia bertolak menuju rumah ini: untuk mencari tahu mengapa Paman Mingyu belum juga menjawab pinangannya pada sang putri. Diam-diam diteguknya ludah. Jakunnya naik-turun perlahan.

”...Yido?” Mingyu memanggilnya.

“Gyu, Yido mau ketemu Ri,” Joshua mendekati suaminya, otomatis mengalungkan lengan ke sekeliling pinggang sang Alpha. “Tapi kita mau pergi makan. Apa kita batalin aja rencana nge-date kita?”

“S-saya akan datang lagi lain kali!” segera, Yido menyergah ucapan Paman Joshua. Ia tidak ingin merusak rencana milik siapapun atas keegoisannya. Bertemu Gyuri masih bisa lain kali. Bertanya dan meminta kejelasan pada Paman Mingyu pun masih bisa ditangguhkan. Toh, selama tak ada Alpha atau Beta lain yang meminta tangan Gyuri, maka Yido aman.

“Yido,” tapi Mingyu memanggil namanya sekali lagi, dalam nada lembut kali ini. Alpha muda itu pun mengangkat wajah untuk menatap pamannya tepat di mata. “Duduklah, Nak. Tuan Jung, tolong bawakan teh dan kue-kue.” Sang kepala pelayan segera membungkuk hormat sebelum undur diri. Gestur sang Alpha tua mengajak mereka untuk berpindah ke ruang keluarga yang lebih nyaman, lengkap dengan perapian yang telah dinyalakan. Fokus Mingyu kemudian berpindah pada suaminya. “Kamu tidak apa-apa rencana kita batal, Sayang? Kamu tidak lapar?” tanyanya.

Joshua tersenyum kecil, lalu mengecup lembut pipi kekasihnya. “Aku minta makanan ke dapur aja, nggak pa-pa kok. Palingan dicemberutin dikit,” kekehnya ringan. Juru masak keluarga Kim terkenal akan kelezatan hidangannya dan sifat suka mengomelnya (walau, menurut Joshua, mirip ibu yang suka khawatiran akan anaknya). “Nanti aku balik lagi. Jangan sok galak kamu ya. Anak kakak kamu tuh. Anak sahabat aku juga.”

“Sayang! Aku tidak—” belum sempat Mingyu protes sambil terbata, Joshua sudah berlalu, meninggalkan suara tawanya yang bagaikan musik di telinga sang Alpha. Buru-buru Mingyu berdeham, berusaha mengembalikan wibawanya sebagai kepala keluarga, dan mengajak Yido, keponakan serta calon pemimpin negara ini, ke ruang keluarga.

The Nth Day of Christmas

I've always thought the Twelve Days of Christmas seemed kind of arbitrary. Why not more or less days? So I thought, let's extend the song as far as we can with real examples of numbers that match the particular day. So enjoy the... N days of Christmas (I petered out at 106...):

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

1) One Moon orbiting planet Earth 2) Two geographic poles, the North and the South 3) Three germ layers in a developing human embryo 4) Four canonical bases that spell out DNA 5) Five Great Lakes along the U.S.-Canadian border 6) Six flavors of quark in the Standard Model 7) Seven base units in the SI system 8) Eight planets orbiting around our Sun 9) Nine Muses of ancient Greek tradition 10) Ten digits in our decimal number system 11) Eleven players on a full soccer team 12) Twelve months in the Gregorian calendar 13) Thirteen cards in each suit of a standard deck 14) Fourteen lines in a traditional sonnet 15) Fifteen object balls in a game of eight-ball pool 16) Sixteen ounces in an avoirdupois pound 17) Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 18) Eighteen holes in a standard round of golf 19) Nineteen years in the Metonic cycle 20) Twenty canonical amino acids used to build proteins 21) Twenty-one guns in the traditional highest military salute 22) Twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet 23) Twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell 24) Twenty-four hours in a solar day 25) Twenty-five spaces on an American bingo card 26) Twenty-six letters in the English alphabet 27) Twenty-seven books in the New Testament 28) Twenty-eight tiles in a double-six domino set 29) Twenty-nine days in February in a leap year 30) Thirty days in April, June, September, and November 31) Thirty-one days in each of the year's longest months 32) Thirty-two permanent teeth in a typical adult human mouth 33) Thirty-three letters in the modern Russian alphabet 34) Thirty-four inches, the classic long-scale length of a bass guitar 35) Thirty-five member states in the Organization of American States 36) Thirty-six Hanukkah candles lit across all eight nights, not counting the shamash 37) Thirty-seven pockets on a European roulette wheel 38) Thirty-eight stars on the U.S. flag from 1877 through 1890 39) Thirty-nine books in the Protestant Old Testament 40) Forty thieves facing Ali Baba in the famous tale 41) Forty-one home games in a traditional 82-game NBA regular season 42) Forty-two gallons in a U.S. barrel of oil 43) Forty-three quintillion possible configurations of a standard Rubik's Cube, approximately 44) Forty-four permanent teeth in a full adult pig dentition 45) Forty-five revolutions per minute for a classic 45-rpm record 46) Forty-six chromosomes in a typical human somatic cell 47) Forty-seven strings on a full-size concert pedal harp 48) Forty-eight constellations catalogued by Ptolemy in antiquity 49) Forty-nine days counted between Passover and Shavuot in the Counting of the Omer 50) Fifty states in the United States of America 51) Fifty-one original member states of the United Nations 52) Fifty-two cards in a standard playing-card deck 53) Fifty-three players on an NFL regular-season roster 54) Fifty-four African countries belonging to the United Nations 55) Fifty-five delegates who attended the U.S. Constitutional Convention 56) Fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence 57) Fifty-seven participating states in the OSCE 58) Fifty-eight protons in the nucleus of every atom of cerium 59) Fifty-nine beads on a traditional five-decade Catholic rosary 60) Sixty seconds in a minute 61) Sixty-one sense codons in the standard genetic code 62) Sixty-two home runs hit by Aaron Judge in his record-setting 2022 American League season 63) Sixty-three chromosomes in a typical mule 64) Sixty-four squares on a chessboard 65) Sixty-five years old, the standard age of Medicare eligibility for most Americans 66) Sixty-six books in the Protestant Bible 67) Sixty-seven counties in the state of Florida 68) Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, exactly twenty degrees Celsius 69) Sixty-nine love songs on the Magnetic Fields album 69 Love Songs 70) Seventy miles per hour, the national speed limit for cars on British motorways 71) Seventy-one percent of Earth's surface covered by water, approximately 72) Seventy-two typographic points in one inch 73) Seventy-three books in the Catholic Bible 74) Seventy-four guns on the classic “seventy-four” ship of the line 75) Seventy-five balls in traditional American bingo 76) Seventy-six trombones leading the big parade in The Music Man 77) Seventy-seven founding countries that gave the Group of 77 its name 78) Seventy-eight cards in a standard tarot deck 79) Seventy-nine protons in the nucleus of every atom of gold 80) Eighty days allotted for Phileas Fogg to travel around the world 81) Eighty-one cells in a standard Sudoku grid 82) Eighty-two games in a traditional NBA regular season 83) Eighty-three counties in the state of Michigan 84) Eighty-four Earth years, approximately, for Uranus to orbit the Sun 85) Eighty-five essays comprising The Federalist Papers 86) Eighty-six episodes in the original run of The Sopranos 87) Eighty-seven octane, the usual rating of regular gasoline in the United States 88) Eighty-eight keys on a standard modern piano 89) Eighty-nine protons in the nucleus of an atom of actinium 90) Ninety degrees in a right angle 91) Ninety-one tiles in a complete double-twelve domino set 92) Ninety-two clubs in the top four divisions of English football 93) Ninety-three million miles, approximately, from Earth to the Sun 94) Ninety-four federal judicial districts in the United States 95) Ninety-five theses traditionally associated with Martin Luther's challenge to the Church 96) Ninety-six wells in the classic laboratory microplate 97) Ninety-seven percent of Earth's water contained in the oceans, approximately 98) Ninety-eight episodes in the original run of Gilligan's Island 99) Ninety-nine Names of Allah in the well-known Islamic tradition of the Asma al-Husna 100) One hundred senators in the United States Senate 101) One hundred and one Dalmatians in Dodie Smith's famous story and its Disney adaptation 102) One hundred and two stories in the Empire State Building 103) One hundred and three articles in the Constitution of Japan 104) One hundred and four days of summer vacation in the world of Phineas and Ferb 105) One hundred and five counties in the state of Kansas 106) One hundred and six bones in your two hands and two feet combined

Inbetweeners Part 16- Cervi's Death

Cervi was one of the original Inbetweeners when the campaign first started out. Currently the campaign has Domilia, Rotlog, Uzo, Bruce and Zemus. Rotlog and Uzo are the only characters from the original group, while Zemus is one of the OG players under a different character. He was a human monk who was in the circus with Thogg, the Goblin Ranger. His character demonstrated pretty remarkable growth, starting out unsure of their place in the world after being brought back by the Interloper, but finding his courage and purpose after facing the Bone Devil in the Desecrated Temple. Ironically, he was killed by a plant, a shambling mound to be specific, in the Secret Garden room of the Lady of Pain branch. I never intended for this room to be particularly dangerous, but a shambling mounds slam attacks and engulf ability can be a lot to handle for a low level player. I believe the group was already hurt from previous encounters, and was overpowered by the shambling mound. With its high hitpoints, it was able to kill Cervi before they could put it down. They fished his body out of the... mulch of the shambling mound and brought him back to the Interloper.

The Interloper attempted to resurrect Cervi but was blocked by Torm. Cervi's acts of clearing the desecrated temple and defeating the masquerade Vrock had earned him Torm's attention and a place in the heavens for his afterlife. I kind of envisioned it like that scene from Constantine (the Keanu Reeves movie adaptation) where he's ascending to heaven and flips off the devil as he floats towards the light. I wanted ressurecting Cervi to be a full blown questline, where the players needed to figure out a way to get him back from the heavens. Here were my rough notes of potential plot points:

“If the group seeks to resurrect Cervi they will run into the following obstacles:

-Torm blocked the interloper from snatching his soul

-The Interloper cannot retrieve Cervi’s soul without pissing off the Gods, the type of heat he’d like to avoid so in the meantime he can grant the group guidance and also an alternative partner.

-The group can appeal to the Shadow Templar of Torm. They will agree to smuggle Cervi’s soul back if the group can defeat a powerful fiend potentially- it is open to negotiation.

-If the group tries to pray to Torm directly they will get a vague directive to continue their good works

-Zariel has backchannels to get a soul back from heaven, if she has sufficient motivation

-Mobius could arrange it for the safe return of Celeste Whitewind

-Other means are possible…”

It ended up being a moot point because the Cervi's player had a work schedule change and could no longer make the sessions. Still, there were a few sessions where he was present and Cervi was dead, so I had to give him an alternate character. Enter: Ambrosius Addercap

He was a professor of alien research at a prominent wizarding school, but became obsessed with his work. The institution let him go, but he continued his work in a private lab which he funded with dangerous spells and items he acquired. He was focused on penetrating the veil of the plains to harness the secrets of the Far Realm. There, he thought, he could discover the meaning of everything and untold power. Instead, insanity took over and the realm consumed him. The Interloper was able to rescue his soul, but his body literally turned into space worms. The Interloper crafted this body instead:

Ambrosius has been given a second chance to study the planes and learn about secrets to manipulating the fabric between them. He has been instructed to help the group and study them, which he will dutifully try to accomplish… but he is utterly insane.

His body is that of a flightless, colorful, four-legged bird; it stands about 15 feet tall and weighs around 750 pounds. It’s talons are wickedly sharp and appears designed to brutally dismember prey larger than itself.

STATS:

Armor Class: 15 (natural armor) Hitpoints: 90 (12d10 + 24) Speed: 50 ft Str: 19 (+4) Dex: 13 (+1) Con: 14 (+2) Int: 20 (+5) Wis: 3 (-4) Cha: 7 (-2)

Skills: Acrobatics +4, Investigation +10, Knowledge +10 Senses: Darkvision 60 ft, passive perception 12

Attacks: Bite + 2 Claws Bite: +7 to hit, 4d6 + 4 piercing damage Claws: +7 to hit, 2d6+4 x 2

Multicolored Toxic Gas (recharge 5) Instead of attacking, it may release a cloud of multicolored gas in a 20 foot radius around itself. Everything caught in the cloud except for the bird itself rolls 1d6 and takes the following effects if it fails a Con Save DC 15. Doesn’t work on undead, constructs or elementals. Each effect lasts 1 minute unless otherwise noted:

1- If under 100 hitpoints, the creature falls into a deep sleep 2- The creature is blind 3- The creature becomes horribly nauseous, getting disadvantage on everything 4- The creature glows brightly, giving all other attackers that can see advantage against it 5- The creature is enraged, gaining an extra melee attack per round, +3 dmg (STR), ignores ½ physical damage and attacks anything around it indiscriminately. 6- Creature takes 2d6 + 3 (10) dmg per turn, continuing to roll Con save until it passes or dies.

In his life, Ambrosius knew many spells, however the damage he took to his mind in his encounter with the Far Realm is… irreparable. Ambrosius may attempt to cast any spell he knew in life, but the risk of something going wrong is very high.

-Take the level of the spell, and add 1 and multiply by 2. Roll 1d20, if you get or exceed that number, the spell works. If not… something else happens.

So, Ambrosius was more powerful than the other players at this point in the campaign, they were all still relatively low level. Fortunately, his player was a champ and made sure to role play Ambrosius appropriately for a professor who had been driven mad by the Far Realm. He would wander off during combat, engage NPCs in inane conversation about the Far Realm, and essentially inject entropy and chaos into each interaction. Sometimes, however, he would come in clutch and help the players defeat a particularly challenging foe. He didn't get to use the multicolored gas much, if at all, which is too bad because the chaos it could have instilled in an encounter would have been fun. We also didn't get to play around much with the spell malfunctioning mechanic. Soon after Ambrosius joined the campaign his player had to leave. I think the players were probably between levels 5 and 7 at this time. Another player, Melrakki, who wasn't with the campaign very long, had to leave as well, so I had to write in their exits.

At the start of a session, the Interloper warned the players that Ambrosius had gone rogue. The Far Realm influence had eaten away at what little bit of control and sanity he had left and he was on a rampage, last seen in the Throne Room. Melrakki had gone after him. The players perused to find this:

“The throne room is torn apart with blood, gore, carnage and destruction. Several guards lay slain, some from being eviscerated by claws, others from magic spells. Melraki lays in the corner, cut open and not moving in a pool of her own blood. In the center of the room, a wild eyed, crazed Ambrosius speaks rapidly in an unidentifiable language, scrawling symbology on the walls in blood. He is injured from battle, with a sword still sticking out of him and a few arrows but seems utterly unphased. Battle immediately ensues. “

Once Ambrosius had been defeated, a Star Spawned Larva Mage emerged from his body. This is a CR 16 powerful mage made up of Far Realm worms and parasites that had a number of nasty features. Normally, an encounter that would be near impossible for the players at that level to handle. However, I wanted them to fight this creature without nerfing it for the sake of the narrative, so the Interloper cast Foresight on them ahead of the battle and I gave them one full round of attacks/actions during the transformation from Ambrosius to Star Spawned Larva Mage. Also, Royal Guard showed up during the fight to help tank some of the damage.

Uzo was absent this session, and he was the heavy hitter of the group. Fortunately, a new player joined this session, Bruce Disdain, an Aarakocra Barbarian, so they had the muscle they needed. It was an intense fight, but the Interloper's buffs really pushed the group over the edge. This was the first instance of the group beating encounters 9-10 CR points above their level, and the campaign starting to power scale out of control and the characters leveling rapidly. I was okay with this shift in dynamics though because the players were supposed to have been untethered from causality, and the gifts from the Interloper should lead to them being impossibly powerful compared to normal players at that level. My philosophy from here on out was don't nerf the players, buff the enemies. And this led to the campaign becoming more and more gothic/steampunk/body horror anime as time went on...

But I digress. Cervi. He stayed in heaven and would occasionally communicate with the players as an NPC when it served the plot. He was quite happy farming in Arborea. I still hope he will make it back before the campaign ends, but we will see. With all the horrors the faced— undead, fiends, Far Realm abominations, it was an untended to garden that did him in. Oh, and I forgot one of the most interesting coincidences. Thogg was Cervi's best friend, and Thogg's chosen enemy as a ranger were plants. He was a vegetarian not because he disliked meat but because he wanted to kill as many plants as possible. This only intensified his hatred of plants, as he inherited the halfing gardener's trowel and made it his mission to kill any sentient plants going forward.

So yeah, rest in piece Cervi, and Melrakki! I'm not going to do a post about Melrakki because she wasn't really in the campaign long enough to build out much lore. She did get a funny sword from the Interloper though that dealt double damage but had disadvantage on all attacks. It ended up being comical because it rarely hit. The sword would essentially bend around targets, sometimes be floppy, and sometimes bend in 4 spatial dimensions to avoid hitting something. However, when it did hit, it hit hard. Melrakki had transformed into a white fox when she was killed by Ambrosius. Uzo took the foxes pelt and moved on... hobgoblins aren't exactly... sentimental.

little genius

This wanna be a better brain gag cracks me up of course, it’s a nod to As Good As IT Gets. And it reminds me of a moment some time ago when I told my wife something similar to Helen Hunts demand for a compliment.

‘Dear, I need a compliment. Please give me a complement.’

She thought for an uncomfortably long time and said, “I like that your carry my luggage for me.”

Okay.

Not what I was expecting. But I’ll take it.

——

Billy Joel didn't write “hurry up, you're falling behind” Instead, he wrote... “SLOW DOWN, YOU'RE DOING FINE. YOU CAN'T BE EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE BEFORE YOUR TIME”

Be who you are. Do not waste time trying to be what the world expects of you. Genuine people tend to attract genuine people.

in a world obsessed with being extraordinary, there is a deep peace in just being a good human.

The world around you is beautiful when the world within you is peaceful.

“never tell a person to be strong when they come to you to be weak.”

we stress too much for a life that can end at any time. make sure to live.

we don't see things as they are. we see them as we are.

bad days are also part of a very good life.

I can respect a busy man, but i also recognize when a man simply doesn't care enough to make time. learn the difference

We do not talk, we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

The Goal: https://vimeo.com/1225475435/f30303a0f1?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Lovely: https://vimeo.com/1225475438/de0b67a376?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Chapter 1: When One Problem Fills the Room

There are nights when the room is quiet but your mind is not. You put the phone down, turn off the light, and suddenly one unfinished problem starts filling the whole space. An unanswered message feels like rejection. A bill on the counter feels like proof that you will never catch up. One mistake from years ago comes back with enough force to make you wonder whether you have really changed at all. In moments like that, this YouTube message about changing your perspective through faith in Jesus can help because the real battle is often not only what happened, but what your mind has decided that it means.

I have had to learn that I can look at the same circumstance in two very different ways. One way makes the problem the center of the story. The other way leaves room for God to still be present, still be working, and still be leading me somewhere I cannot see yet. That is why a related reflection on trusting Jesus when fear takes over belongs beside this conversation. Sometimes the situation has not changed at all, but the meaning we give it has changed everything inside us.

Peter learned that lesson in a way none of us would forget. He was in a boat with the other disciples while the wind pushed against them and the water became rough. Then Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. Peter asked Jesus to call him out onto the water, and Jesus said, “Come.” Peter stepped out and actually walked toward Him. The wind was still there. The waves were still there. The danger had not disappeared. Yet for a moment, Peter was moving through the very thing that should have overwhelmed him because his attention was fixed on Jesus.

I think about how easily that happens in ordinary life. You can wake up already worried about work, drive in thinking about the conversation you are afraid to have, and spend the entire morning treating the worst possible outcome as if it has already happened. Nothing has actually gone wrong yet, but your body is tense, your thoughts are racing, and you are living inside a future that has not arrived. The problem is no longer just the meeting, the decision, or the uncertainty. The problem has become the picture you are carrying of what all of it means.

That is what changed for Peter. Matthew tells us that when Peter noticed the wind, he became afraid and began to sink. The wind was not new. The waves were not new. What changed was the place where Peter put his attention.

That does not mean fear is imaginary. It does not mean financial pressure is fake, grief is easy, or disappointment can be solved by thinking happy thoughts. Jesus never asked Peter to pretend the storm was calm. He asked Peter to come toward Him while the storm was still real.

That matters because faith is not denial. Faith is refusing to let one frightening piece of reality become the whole picture.

You may be looking at a closed door and calling it the end. It may only be a turn you did not expect. You may be looking at a slow season and calling yourself forgotten. God may be doing work in you that cannot be rushed. You may be looking at another person’s life and deciding you are behind, while Jesus is asking you to pay attention to the step directly in front of you.

The quiet change begins when you stop asking only, “What is going wrong?” and start asking, “Where is Jesus in this?” That question does not erase the problem. It keeps the problem from becoming your god.

Peter did not walk because the water became safer. He walked because Jesus became larger in his view than the water beneath his feet. That is the first shift I want you to hold onto: before the outside of your life changes, Jesus may begin by changing what has been taking up all the room inside you.

Chapter 2: The Meaning You Give the Moment

You can feel this most clearly when something small happens and your mind immediately gives it a much larger meaning. Maybe someone you care about reads your message and does not answer. At first, all you really know is that there is no reply. But within a few minutes, your thoughts begin filling in the blanks. Maybe they are upset with me. Maybe I said too much. Maybe they are pulling away. By the time an hour has passed, you are no longer reacting to silence. You are reacting to a story your fear wrote for you.

That is one reason the way we look at things matters so much. We do not just experience events. We interpret them. We attach meaning to them, and that meaning can either deepen our fear or make room for faith.

Jesus often challenged the meaning people had already assigned to a situation. When His disciples saw a man who had been blind from birth, they immediately wanted to know who had sinned. Their first instinct was to explain the suffering by blame. Jesus refused to accept that narrow frame. He redirected their attention toward what God could do in the middle of the man's life.

That same kind of correction can happen inside us.

You may look at a delay and decide God has said no, when the answer may simply be not yet. You may look at a failure and decide you are a failure, when what happened may be one hard chapter in a much larger story. You may look at loneliness and conclude that you are unwanted, even though loneliness and worth are not the same thing.

I remember how easy it is to let one difficult day become evidence about your whole life. You come home tired, stand in the kitchen, look at the dishes in the sink, the unopened mail, and the calendar filled with things you still have to handle. In that moment, it is easy to think, “I cannot keep doing this.” Sometimes what you really mean is, “I am exhausted tonight.” Those are not the same statement.

Faith helps us tell the truth more carefully.

Instead of saying, “Everything is falling apart,” you can say, “This part is hard right now.”

Instead of saying, “God is not doing anything,” you can say, “I cannot see what God is doing yet.”

Instead of saying, “I will always feel like this,” you can say, “This is what I feel today.”

That is not positive thinking. It is refusing to turn a temporary moment into a permanent verdict.

Jesus did this constantly. He saw people beyond their worst moment. He saw Peter beyond his sinking. He saw Thomas beyond his doubt. He saw the woman caught in adultery beyond the accusation surrounding her. He saw people as they really were, but He also saw what grace could still do.

You need that same mercy in the way you look at your own life.

There are moments when the most faithful thing you can do is question the conclusion you have drawn. Not the facts. The conclusion.

Yes, the door closed. Does that mean your future is closed?

Yes, someone disappointed you. Does that mean everyone will?

Yes, you made a mistake. Does that mean you are beyond growth?

Yes, you are tired. Does that mean you are finished?

Jesus invites you to look again.

Not with denial. Not with fantasy. With trust.

You may not be able to change what happened today. You may not be able to control what another person decides, what your employer does, how quickly the answer comes, or what tomorrow brings. But you can bring the meaning you have attached to those things before Christ and ask Him to help you see them truthfully.

Sometimes that is where peace begins. Not when every question is answered, but when fear is no longer allowed to answer all of them for you.

Chapter 3: Look Again Before You Decide What It Means

There may be a morning when you wake up before the alarm and the first thing you feel is pressure. Your body is still tired, the room is still dark, and before your feet touch the floor your mind has already returned to the problem you carried to bed. Nothing new has happened, but the weight feels new because you are meeting it again.

That is a good moment to practice what Peter had to learn on the water. Before fear tells you what the day means, look toward Jesus again.

You may still have the same bill to pay, the same person to forgive, the same decision to make, or the same uncertainty waiting for you. Faith does not require you to pretend otherwise. It simply asks you to leave room for a truth fear usually ignores: Jesus is present before you know how the story turns out.

Sometimes that changes the way you move through the next hour. You make the phone call instead of avoiding it. You pray before answering the message. You take care of the task in front of you instead of trying to solve the next six months in your head. You admit that you are worried without letting worry become your guide.

That is a quieter kind of courage than people usually talk about, but it is real courage.

The life of faith is often built in moments like these. Not dramatic moments when everything suddenly makes sense, but ordinary moments when you choose not to let fear interpret your whole life for you.

Jesus never promised Peter that following Him would mean calm water every time. What He gave Peter was His presence, His voice, and His hand when Peter began to sink. That is still enough to change the way you face what is in front of you.

So when something goes wrong, resist the urge to decide too quickly what it means. When someone leaves, do not immediately decide you were worthless. When a plan fails, do not decide your future failed with it. When you are tired, do not decide you have nothing left to give. When God seems quiet, do not decide He has disappeared.

Look again.

There may be more happening than you can see from where you are standing.

The storm may still be real, but it is not the only thing that is real. Jesus is real too. His grace is real. His presence is real. His ability to lead you through what you do not understand is real.

And sometimes the greatest change begins there. The situation may not move first. The people around you may not change first. The answer may not come first.

But your eyes can lift.

Your fear can loosen its grip.

Your next step can become clear enough to take.

You do not need to see the whole road. You only need to stop letting the hardest thing in front of you become the only thing you can see.

Look again, and make room for Jesus in the picture.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Still. No. Update.

Overall it was a better day than the past couple of ones. I completed most on my list, but not all. I missed breakfast and coffee outside – I ended up doing it on the go. I forgot to answer emails – will prioritize for tomorrow. Lastly, I did not put my laundry away – I washed it and dried it but I am way too tired to fold and put away.

I felt I had more energy and mental capacity than the last few days, so I did feel pretty productive. I hope I can keep this up because I would hate for this time off to be spent on stupid things.

I believe this is the plan for tomorrow:

• Wake up and go for a run. Sure, why not… I haven’t run in a while and it does help me emotionally regulate.
• Breakfast and coffee
• Answer some emails
• Pottery for 1-2 hours
• Haircut appointment
• Returns errand
• Kickball game
• Put laundry away
• Walk my dog

I think it helps to make a list. At least, today it did. I hope tomorrow goes well…

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.

On 27 August 2026, Latrobe Council in north-west Tasmania released a development application it had been sitting on while it waited for the applicant to answer questions. The document described a 52-megawatt artificial intelligence data centre on the site of the old paper mill at Wesley Vale, in an industrial estate called Mill Park. A data hall of 2,689 square metres. Twenty adiabatic cooling units and twenty chillers. Forty diesel backup generators. Seventy jobs during construction, twenty once the thing was running.

Residents were given fourteen days to respond. Submissions close on 9 September.

Four days after that application became public, on 31 August, a parliamentary e-petition closed on the Tasmanian House of Assembly website. It had been open since 22 June, sponsored by Cecily Rosol, the Greens member for Bass. It asked Parliament to direct the government to impose an immediate moratorium on all non-complete AI and data facilities in the state. When it closed, it carried 10,035 signatures. It was tabled in the House on 2 September, one of the largest e-petitions in the history of Tasmanian parliamentary democracy.

Set those two numbers next to each other and you have the entire problem in miniature. Ten thousand and thirty-five people spent ten weeks assembling a demand to be consulted. The people who live within earshot of the actual proposal got a fortnight to write a letter about it. The petition is not a planning instrument. It has no legal force. It cannot stop a single generator being installed. It is, in the most literal sense, a request for permission to have an opinion that counts.

What Ten Thousand Names Actually Asked For

The petition text is worth reading closely, because it is not the blunt refusal that the word moratorium implies. It asks for five specific things, and every one of them is a piece of ordinary regulatory plumbing that most industrialised jurisdictions already possess for facilities of comparable scale.

It asks for planning legislation that addresses the environmental and social impacts of AI facilities. It asks for a public register tracking the energy and water these operations consume. It asks for parliamentary oversight of any facility drawing more than 50 megawatts. It asks for guarantees of lasting local employment. And it asks that ordinary electricity customers be shielded from price rises caused by connecting AI facilities to the grid.

The moratorium is the lever, not the goal. The petition proposes a pause that ends when those five instruments exist. That is a substantively different proposition from a permanent veto, and the distinction matters enormously for how you judge what the signatories were doing.

Tabatha Badger, the Greens member for Lyons and the party's spokesperson for science and information technology, framed the demand in terms of parliamentary process rather than opposition to computing. Speaking after the petition was tabled, she called for a moratorium on new AI and data facilities until there is proper regulation and until Parliament has oversight of the energy and water that will be committed to them. Rosol, tabling it, made the point that the community had been clear about its concerns and that the government had proceeded without consulting them or putting guardrails in place.

Behind the language is an observation about sequence. The facilities are arriving first. The rules, if they arrive at all, will arrive second, and will apply to whatever has not yet been built.

The Arithmetic of a Small State

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures put Tasmania's estimated resident population at 579,110 at the end of December 2025. Against that denominator, 10,035 signatures is roughly 1.7 per cent of every man, woman and child in the state.

Proportion is the only honest way to read a petition from a small jurisdiction, and it is the reading that almost never happens when these numbers travel. Scaled to the United Kingdom, 1.7 per cent would be something over a million signatures. Scaled to the United States, close to six million. Scaled to New South Wales, around 145,000. Petitions of that magnitude do not get filed away. They generate select committees.

The comparison inside Tasmania is equally instructive. The largest e-petition the House of Assembly had previously seen came in 2020, supporting the End of Life Choices Bill, and gathered 11,699 electronic signatures alongside 1,383 on paper. That was a petition about assisted dying, an issue with decades of organised advocacy behind it, deep personal stakes for thousands of families and sustained media attention across the entire state.

The AI data centre petition got to 10,035 in ten weeks, on a subject that barely existed in Tasmanian public conversation eighteen months earlier, driven by a minor party. It drew more than 4,200 signatures in its first week. Whatever else that tells you, it tells you the concern is not confined to the handful of postcodes that would host the buildings.

Four Hundred and Forty Megawatts in a Hydro State

The proposals that triggered all this belong to Firmus Technologies, a Singapore-headquartered company run by co-chief executives Tim Rosenfield and Oliver Curtis. It has three Tasmanian sites in play, representing a stated investment of around 2.1 billion dollars.

The first, at St Leonards outside Launceston, is 104 megawatts and already under construction, with power contracted from Aurora Energy and an expected start in early 2027. The second, at Bell Bay on the site of the former pulp mill, is 288 megawatts and was approved with conditions by George Town Council on 25 August 2026. The third is Wesley Vale, at 52 megawatts, the one Latrobe residents were given a fortnight to comment on.

Together that is around 440 megawatts of continuous industrial load in a state whose electricity system was built for aluminium smelting, zinc refining and a few hundred thousand households. An energy consultant told the ABC in June that the three sites combined would represent roughly 20 per cent of Tasmania's total energy consumption, more than the combined demand of every household in the state. Firmus would become, comfortably, Tasmania's largest single power user.

Those are the numbers attached to the buildings. The number attached to the grid arrived on 4 September, when the ABC reported that Hydro Tasmania is assessing a request from Firmus for a long-term contract to supply 450 megawatts across the three sites. The company currently runs on a three-year contract for the 104 megawatts that powers St Leonards. What it has asked for now is different in kind: a standing commitment rather than a short one, at a volume Hydro puts at up to 30 per cent of Tasmania's current electricity consumption, comfortably ahead of Bell Bay Aluminium, the state's present largest user, at 355 megawatts. The two percentages describe different things and are not in conflict. The June estimate of roughly 20 per cent was a consultant's read of what the three sites would be likely to consume. The 30 per cent figure is Hydro's read of the contract now sitting on its desk.

Hydro says it expects an outcome by the end of 2026, and it has set out the four questions it is weighing: whether Firmus is financially stable, what new renewable generation would have to be built to serve the load, whether the arrangement is profitable for Tasmania, and whether it is consistent with Hydro's responsibilities to Tasmanians. Alongside those it said something more consequential than any of them. Tasmania's energy system is currently in balance, generating about what the state consumes, and a request of this size can only be met by building new wind and solar. Hydro would not build or fund it. Firmus would contract directly with third-party developers, or contract with Hydro and have Hydro firm the intermittent output.

That is a decision the planning system neither makes nor reviews. Two councils assess two buildings against two planning schemes, while a state-owned company decides, on commercial terms and to its own timetable, whether there is 450 megawatts to sell.

Tasmania is not a bad place to put a data centre, and it is important to say so plainly. The grid is dominated by hydroelectricity, the climate is cool enough that mechanical cooling runs less often, industrial land at decommissioned mill sites is available and serviced, and the state government has actively marketed itself into exactly this business. The Office of the Coordinator-General, the arm of the Department of State Growth responsible for attracting major investment, lists data centres as an emerging sector opportunity and offers case management to any project involving at least five million dollars of private investment or twenty-five full-time jobs. Australia's National AI Plan, published on 2 December 2025, identifies sovereign digital infrastructure as a strategic priority and sets an explicit objective of attracting hyperscale capacity onshore.

None of that is secret. What is not public is which other proponents the Office of the Coordinator-General is currently talking to, at what scale, on what sites, or how far those conversations have progressed. That is the specific complaint the Greens raised alongside the petition: that while Wesley Vale goes through a council assessment with a fourteen-day comment period, other proposals are being developed in a process with no comment period at all, because there is nothing yet to comment on.

Two Degrees on the Ground

The environmental case the petitioners are making rests partly on a body of research that is very new, and it deserves to be represented accurately rather than inflated.

A preprint posted to arXiv in March 2026 by a group of researchers including Andrea Marinoni, Erik Cambria, Weisi Lin, Mauro Dalla Mura, Jocelyn Chanussot and Benjamin Horton examined satellite-derived land surface temperature data across multiple decades for regions surrounding AI data centres worldwide. Their finding, stated in those terms, is that land surface temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius on average after the start of operations of an AI data centre, producing what they call the data heat island effect. They estimate that more than 340 million people could be exposed to these localised increases.

Two qualifications matter. Land surface temperature is not air temperature, and the two diverge substantially, particularly over hard surfaces on sunny days. And a satellite study of this design establishes an association between the commencement of operations and a measured warming signal; it cannot fully isolate the data centre from the industrial estate, road network and land clearing that typically arrive with it. This is a preprint, not yet through peer review.

What it does establish is that the warming signal is measurable, consistent across sites and large enough to matter. For a facility at Wesley Vale sitting in an agricultural district, and for a facility at Bell Bay less than two kilometres from the small community of Rowella, that is a question worth an answer before approval rather than after. Tasmania's planning scheme does not currently require anyone to ask it.

The Water Nobody Had Agreed to Supply

The water question in Tasmania produced the single most revealing document in this entire episode, and it was published by accident.

In July 2026, the ABC reported that Firmus had inadvertently published internal notes on the frequently asked questions page for its Wesley Vale facility. Among them was a line explaining why the company had not yet disclosed where its cooling water would come from. It planned to draw on Tasmanian Irrigation, the state-owned agricultural water scheme, and the note read: “We do not want to highlight this yet, as they are yet to agree to supply us.” The content was deleted after the ABC made enquiries. Firmus described it as internal information that was inadvertently published.

Tasmanian Irrigation responded that its legislative framework is set up to enable the supply of water for agriculture and hydrogen production. Neil Grose, chief operating officer of TasFarmers, put it more directly: irrigation water is for irrigating farmland. By the time the development application was released in August, the irrigation plan had gone. The company now proposes rainwater capture supplemented by trucked water in extreme dry periods, with evaporative cooling engaged only when ambient temperature exceeds 26 degrees. Firmus has said the Wesley Vale facility at full capacity would use about as much water annually as a restaurant.

That may well be true of the site. It is not the only relevant question, and a preprint posted to arXiv in June 2026 by Basit Akinade, Amobichukwu Amanambu, Jonathan Frame and Shaolei Ren explains why. The paper formalises what the authors call the Water and AI Feedback Loop and introduces a Water Consumption Impact index designed to measure burden at the level of the community utility rather than the facility. Applied across ten United States locations, the index produced results ranging from 0.2 per cent to 134 per cent of host capacity.

That range is the finding. A data centre's water demand is not meaningfully described by its absolute volume. It is described by the volume relative to the system that has to supply it, and in the worst case in the sample, a single facility's requirement exceeded the entire capacity of its host utility. A restaurant's worth of water is a trivial number in Hobart and a considerably less trivial one in a rural scheme during a dry February.

The aggregate picture comes from a third preprint, posted to arXiv in January 2026 by Aadi Patel, Nikhil Mahalingam and Rusheen Patel. Drawing on International Energy Agency projections that global data centre electricity demand may rise from roughly 415 terawatt hours in 2024 to nearly 945 by 2030, the authors project that United States AI servers alone will consume an additional 200 to 300 billion gallons of water annually and generate 24 to 44 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030. These are projections built on demand forecasts, with all the fragility that implies, and the authors are explicit that cooling design and siting are the dominant variables. Advanced cooling can cut cooling energy by up to half, they find, and locating in low-carbon, water-secure regions can nearly halve the combined footprint.

Which is, read fairly, an argument for putting these facilities in Tasmania. It is also an argument for deciding deliberately how many, where, and on what terms.

A Planning Act Written in 1993

The instrument George Town Council used to assess a 288-megawatt AI facility was the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993. It was drafted before the commercial web existed.

Mayor Greg Keiser, announcing the approval, said the council could not see any other grounds to do anything more than approve it. That is not evasion. It is a precise description of how a discretionary planning decision works. A council assesses an application against the criteria in the scheme. If the application satisfies them, refusal is not lawfully available, regardless of how many residents object or how novel the use is. Cumulative regional impact, statewide water allocation, grid economics and social licence are simply not criteria in the scheme.

Peter Freshney, mayor of neighbouring Latrobe, said the same thing about the legislation from the other side of the argument: the current scheme is not fit for purpose for evaluating projects of this scale. Two mayors from two councils assessing two facilities for the same company reached the same conclusion about the tool they were given.

Tasmania does have larger instruments. A Major Project declaration by the Minister for Planning triggers assessment by a panel of the independent Tasmanian Planning Commission alongside subject-matter experts, taking in matters a single council cannot reach. A Project of State Significance declaration under the State Policies and Projects Act 1993 goes further still, requiring an order approved by both Houses of Parliament. Latrobe Council has discussed asking for the Wesley Vale proposal to be declared a major project. Neither pathway has been triggered for any of the three Firmus sites.

There is now a layer above all of it, and the timing of that layer is the point. On 15 July 2026 the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced that the federal government would legislate mandatory Australian Standards for artificial intelligence, and established an Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. New large AI data centres would be required to underwrite or supply their own power and to minimise their water use, with the stated expectation that facilities of that scale be net generators in energy terms rather than net consumers. On 26 August 2026 National Cabinet endorsed the Commonwealth's plan to legislate national AI laws and mandatory standards for large data centres. It was the first time all nine Australian governments, the Commonwealth and the eight states and territories, had committed to a common set of mandatory standards. Tasmania is one of the nine. The endorsement came one day after George Town Council approved a 288-megawatt facility under an act written in 1993.

The standards, as outlined, run to three domains. On energy, large operators would act as net generators, adding at least as much to the grid as they draw, pay the full cost of transmission and distribution connection, adopt efficiency measures, and offer demand flexibility to support grid stability. On water, they would minimise consumption, maximise efficiency and fund the additional infrastructure their facilities require. On land use, they would be steered towards appropriate locations, made to protect competing uses such as housing, and required to engage the communities that host them. They are aimed at large-scale facilities, co-location sites, hyperscale operations and large-scale AI compute centres, not at small edge or on-site enterprise data centres. They would sit on top of state planning regimes rather than replace them, so a developer would have to satisfy both the national standards and the usual state and local approvals. And they are not law. The Commonwealth has said it intends to legislate in early 2027, and the detailed specifications are still being written.

Then there is the appeal window. Objectors to the Bell Bay approval have fourteen days from formal notification to lodge a challenge with the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, a window that, counted from the approval on 25 August, closes in the first week of September. No appeal has been confirmed as lodged. Anne-Marie Bastian, president of the Environmental Awareness Association, called it a ludicrous time frame, with estimated legal costs of 20,000 to 50,000 dollars. Fourteen days to raise the price of a small car and instruct counsel, against a company with 2.1 billion dollars of announced investment.

The asymmetry is not a conspiracy. It is what happens when a process designed for a service station is applied to a facility that will draw a fifth of a state's electricity.

The Room Where the Conversation Happens First

Every planning system has a stage before the planning system. In Tasmania it is called strategic project facilitation, and it is run out of the Office of the Coordinator-General.

There is nothing sinister in the concept. Investment attraction agencies exist everywhere, and companies do have legitimate commercial reasons to keep site selection confidential while they negotiate land and power. A proponent who announces a shortlist watches land prices triple. That is a real cost and a real justification.

But the confidentiality has a second effect that is rarely acknowledged. By the time a project surfaces as a development application, the proponent has typically secured land options, negotiated grid connection, engaged consultants, commissioned technical studies and, frequently, obtained government statements of support. The community's fourteen days begin at the point where the commitment is already substantially sunk. Consultation is technically available and practically vestigial.

International experience shows how far this can be pushed. In Pennsylvania, Spotlight PA obtained at least eight non-disclosure agreements signed by township supervisors, county commissioners and state cabinet officials with data centre developers including Amazon Web Services, Vantage, Quality Technology Services and Talen Energy. Most did not define what counted as confidential. Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, observed that any time a private company tries to limit what a public official can say about public business, that is a red flag. The reporting produced a legislative response, with a bill conditioning tax exemptions on a pledge not to use non-disclosure agreements passing the state House 171 to 31, and an executive order prohibiting such agreements for data centre projects.

There is no reporting that Tasmanian officials have signed non-disclosure agreements over these projects, and it would be wrong to imply otherwise. The point is structural. Where a state agency's function is to attract investment, and its method is confidential case management, the default setting is that the community learns last. Tasmania does not need American-style secrecy agreements to arrive at the American-style outcome, because the outcome falls out of the sequence rather than the paperwork.

What Happened in Zeewolde, Cerrillos and Prince William

Communities elsewhere have won these fights, and how they won is more instructive than that they won.

In the Netherlands, Meta proposed what would have been Europe's largest data centre at Zeewolde, having acquired roughly half of a 166-hectare site. Local opposition alone did not stop it. What stopped it was that part of the land belonged to the Dutch state, which meant the sale required parliamentary approval, and the Senate voted to block that sale pending a national spatial planning vision for data centres. Meta abandoned the project in 2022. The lever was a national land ownership question that happened to sit in the path of the project.

In Chile, Google's 200 million dollar data centre at Cerrillos in Santiago would have used 7.6 million litres of potable water a day drawn from the Central Santiago aquifer in a country fifteen years into drought. In February 2024 an environmental court partially reversed the permit, requiring the assessment to incorporate the effects of climate change on the water component and contemplating a possible modification of the server cooling system. Google switched its design to air cooling and restarted the process. The lever was a specialist environmental court with jurisdiction to review the adequacy of an assessment.

In Virginia, the Prince William Digital Gateway involved rezoning around 1,700 acres. In August 2025 Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving voided the rezoning, not on environmental grounds but because the county had failed to comply with statutory advertising requirements before the December 2023 hearings; the first of two required newspaper notices was never actually published. The Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed in March 2026, and the QTS affiliate behind the project subsequently withdrew, ending it. The lever was a procedural notice rule.

In Memphis, the Southern Environmental Law Center appealed the Shelby County Health Department's air permit for fifteen methane gas turbines at xAI's data centre on behalf of the NAACP's Memphis branch and Young, Gifted and Green, arguing that the department had wrongly treated the turbines as exempt non-road engines under the Clean Air Act and had thereby allowed installation without written approval, public notice or pollution controls. The lever was federal air quality law.

In Ireland, the constraint is grid physics translated into regulation. Central Statistics Office figures show data centres consumed 7,663 gigawatt hours in 2025, 23 per cent of all metered electricity in the state, up from 5 per cent in 2015. EirGrid has not been offering new data centre connections in the Dublin region, a position understood to run to at least 2028, while the Commission for Regulation of Utilities has reworked large energy user connection policy around location, on-site generation and demand flexibility. The lever was the transmission system operator's technical judgement.

Land title. Environmental courts. Newspaper advertisements. Air permits. Grid capacity. Not one of these communities won by objecting. Every one of them won because some pre-existing instrument, usually designed for something else entirely, happened to have teeth. Tasmania's petitioners are asking for an instrument that is actually designed for the purpose, in advance, rather than hoping one turns up.

The Case for Saying Yes

The strongest version of the argument against the petitioners is considerably better than its opponents usually allow, and it has four parts.

The fiscal part is the most concrete, and Loudoun County in Virginia is the demonstration. The county states that data centres generate almost half of its property tax revenues, that for every dollar in services the county provides to data centres it receives twenty-six dollars in tax revenue, and that without the industry its real property tax rate would likely exceed one dollar per hundred dollars of assessed value against a current rate of 80.5 cents. Data centres contributed 16 billion dollars to a 41 billion dollar real property portfolio in 2024, at assessed values per square foot roughly triple other commercial uses. That revenue funds schools. It is not a rounding error, and it is not hypothetical.

The strategic part is that compute is becoming infrastructure. If Australia processes its health records, its defence modelling and its financial system on servers in Virginia and Singapore, it has outsourced a category of national capability that it cannot readily repatriate. The National AI Plan's emphasis on sovereign digital infrastructure follows from that, and hosting in a jurisdiction with a hydro-dominated grid is a better climate outcome than hosting the same workload on a coal-heavy one.

The systems part is the least intuitive and the most serious. A data centre concentrates load that would otherwise be distributed across thousands of premises. A concentrated load is visible, meterable, and negotiable. It can be required to report consumption, to shift timing, to fund transmission, to sign firm renewable contracts. The same computation spread across a million individual devices is regulable by nobody. Concentration is what makes accountability technically possible. Firmus has pledged to build two megawatts of new renewable generation for every megawatt it consumes, which is a commitment no diffuse load could ever be asked to make.

The engineering part is that cooling design is genuinely improving. Closed-loop liquid cooling recirculates a fixed charge of coolant rather than evaporating water continuously. The Firmus design at Wesley Vale engages evaporative cooling only above 26 degrees ambient, which in north-west Tasmania is a small number of hours a year. Yesterday's water figures do not describe today's plant.

And the political part, which the petitioners should take most seriously, is that moratoria have a way of not ending. The Rockefeller Institute of Government has tracked a spreading pattern of local pauses across the United States, from Groton in Connecticut to Peculiar in Missouri to Bangor in Maine, and municipalities in New York including Lysander, which adopted a six-month moratorium in May 2026, and the Town of Perth, which passed a one-year pause in June. Around fourteen states have considered moratorium legislation, with thresholds ranging from one megawatt to a hundred. A pause pending regulation is only meaningful if the regulation actually gets written. Otherwise it is a veto wearing a deadline.

Where the Case for Yes Runs Out

Take them in order.

The Loudoun figures are real, and they are also a warning rather than a model. A county deriving half its property tax base from a single industry has not diversified its economy, it has concentrated its risk, and the concentration is in an industry whose capital cycle is measured in a few years and whose demand depends on a technology thesis that may not hold. More to the point, the Loudoun bargain is not on offer at Wesley Vale. Twenty ongoing jobs is the number in the application. Tasmania does not levy a personal property tax on computer equipment the way Virginia does. The revenue mechanism that produces the Loudoun outcome does not exist here, so citing Loudoun as a reason to approve a Tasmanian facility is citing a fiscal system the state has not got.

The sovereignty argument is sound and does not resolve anything. Sovereign compute capability is a national interest; where a specific building goes, how much water it draws in a dry summer and who pays for the transmission upgrade are local questions. Answering a local question with a national one is a category error, and it happens constantly. Firmus is a private company selling AI tokens on a commercial market. Its facilities may serve sovereign capability. That is a reason to have a national siting framework, not a reason for Latrobe Council to approve an application in fourteen days.

The concentration argument is the best one, and it is self-refuting in the current arrangement. Yes, concentrated load is regulable. That is exactly why the absence of regulation is the problem rather than an argument against pausing. The petition asks for a public register of energy and water consumption and parliamentary oversight above 50 megawatts. Those are precisely the instruments that make concentration an advantage. Without them, concentration delivers all the exposure and none of the leverage. A pledge to build two megawatts of generation for every one consumed is worth a great deal in a supply contract and considerably less in a press release, and the distance between those two documents is most of what the petition is about.

The cooling argument is true and incomplete. Closed-loop and adiabatic designs do reduce water use, and the 26 degree threshold is real. But water is only one vector. The data heat island preprint measured land surface temperature, which responds to waste heat rejection regardless of whether the heat is carried away by air or water. Forty diesel generators produce emissions and noise, with the acoustic assessment already recommending additional mitigation. And a facility's cooling design is a commitment made at approval, in a document, about equipment that will be replaced several times over the life of the building.

The permanent-veto risk is the one legitimate hit. It should be answered by writing a sunset into the moratorium, not by declining to have one. A pause that lapses automatically when the register, the threshold and the oversight mechanism are in force is a schedule, not a ban.

What Consent Would Have to Look Like

The Tasmanian government has rejected the moratorium. Felix Ellis, the minister responsible, has said a statement of expectations for AI data centres will be released within the government's current hundred-day period, with energy and water among its key features, and that it is intended to build on the Australian Government's expectations for data centres and AI infrastructure developers, published in March 2026. As of the first week of September it has not appeared. A parliamentary inquiry established at the Greens' instigation is taking submissions until 21 September, and its recommendations will be non-binding.

A statement of expectations is not a law. It is a document describing what a government would like companies to do. Ehsan Noroozinejad, a researcher at Western Sydney University, gave the ABC the framing that matters: the key issue is ensuring private investment does not transfer costs or environmental risks to communities. Nothing in a statement of expectations prevents that transfer, because nothing in it binds anyone.

The strongest answer to that is federal, and it should be stated at full strength. Three of the petition's five asks, the treatment of energy, the treatment of water and the transfer of costs to other customers, are addressed in substance by the mandatory standards National Cabinet endorsed on 26 August. A requirement to act as a net generator and to pay the full cost of connection is a more demanding instrument than anything the petition asked for, and it would apply nationally rather than resting on the goodwill of one state government. If those standards are legislated in the form described, a good part of the Tasmanian argument will have been settled somewhere else. The qualification is the calendar, and it is the Commonwealth's own: early 2027, specifications unwritten, applying to what has not yet been approved.

What would look different is not complicated, and it is mostly what the petition asks for. Publish consumption. A register of actual metered energy and water use per facility, reported quarterly, converts every subsequent argument from a contest of adjectives into a contest of numbers. Ireland's data centre debate is more grounded than Australia's for exactly one reason: the Central Statistics Office publishes the figure, so nobody can claim it is 5 per cent when it is 23.

Set a threshold that changes the pathway. Above 50 megawatts, a facility should not be assessed by a single council under an act from 1993 against criteria that do not include the thing everybody is worried about. The Major Project and Project of State Significance pathways already exist. Using them is a decision, not a reform.

Fix the clock. Fourteen days to comment on a document running to hundreds of pages, and fourteen days to fund an appeal, are not consultation periods. They are compliance artefacts. Thirty days minimum, sixty above a threshold, and some mechanism for funding community technical review, would change what a submission can contain.

And publish the pipeline. Not commercially sensitive terms, but the fact of a proposal: location, indicative scale, stage. A community that learns of a 288-megawatt facility when the application lands has been handed a fait accompli dressed as a consultation.

The Thing the Petition Measures

Here is what the gap actually consists of, in units of time.

Firmus went from public announcement of its Tasmanian expansion to a facility under construction at St Leonards inside the same reporting cycle that first brought the plans to statewide attention. A development application at Wesley Vale went from publication to close of submissions in fourteen days. An appeal against the Bell Bay approval must be lodged within fourteen days at a cost of up to 50,000 dollars. The petition took ten weeks to gather 10,035 signatures and will produce, at most, a debate. The inquiry it prompted is still taking submissions, and will report with non-binding recommendations.

The dates can now be laid end to end, which they could not be in June. Latrobe Council is expected to vote on Wesley Vale in October 2026. Hydro Tasmania expects to know by the end of 2026 whether it will sell Firmus 450 megawatts. The mandatory national standards that all nine Australian governments endorsed on 26 August are not expected to become law until early 2027, and their detailed specifications have not been written. The Tasmanian statement of expectations, promised inside a hundred days, has not been published. The council vote comes first. The power contract comes after it, and the binding standards after that.

Construction runs faster than consultation, which runs faster than legislation. Each stage of the response is slower than the thing it is responding to, and the compounding is the whole story. The rules are no longer hypothetical, and that strengthens the point rather than weakening it. They are agreed, they are national, and they arrive in the year after the concrete. By the time Australia has mandatory standards for AI data centres, Tasmania will have AI data centres, and the standards will apply to the next ones.

That is what 10,035 people were actually registering. Not a view about artificial intelligence, on which they will hold every possible opinion. Not even, for most of them, opposition to a specific building most will never see. What they registered is that the mechanisms available to them operate on a timescale that guarantees they arrive after the decision.

A petition is the oldest and weakest instrument in parliamentary democracy. It is what you use when you have nothing else. Ten thousand people in a state of 579,000 reaching for it, in ten weeks, about a class of infrastructure that did not exist in the public conversation two years ago, is not a measure of how much Tasmanians dislike data centres. It is a measure of how little else was on offer.

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Sources and References

1. Parliament of Tasmania, House of Assembly E-Petitions, “AI Data Facilities in Tasmania”, petition 147, sponsored by Cecily Rosol MP, open 22 June 2026 to 31 August 2026, 10,035 signatures. https://haepetitions.parliament.tas.gov.au/haepet/Home/PetitionDetails/147
2. Tasmanian Greens MPs, “Parliamentary Petition Calls for AI Data Centre Moratorium”, media release, 29 June 2026 (https://tasgreensmps.org/media-releases/parliamentary-petition-calls-for-ai-data-centre-moratorium/), and Tasmanian Times, “Greens Table Massive AI Data Centre Moratorium Petition”, September 2026 (https://tasmaniantimes.com/2026/09/greens-table-massive-ai-data-centre-moratorium-petition/).
3. ABC News, “Northern Tasmanians prepare to fight George Town Council AI data centre approval”, 30 August 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-30/ai-data-centre-tasmania-firmus-technology-george-town/107089468
4. ABC News, “Firmus plans to truck water in and use rainwater to cool proposed Wesley Vale AI data centre”, 27 August 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-27/firmus-truck-water-rainwater-cool-wesley-vale-ai-data-centre/107083230
5. ABC News, “'We do not want to highlight this yet': AI data centre's FAQ slip-up”, 22 July 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-22/tasmania-firmus-ai-data-centre-plan-to-use-irrigation-water/106935718
6. ABC News, “AI company Firmus to become Tasmania's biggest power user if three planned sites come to fruition”, 15 June 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-15/firmus-ai-company-tasmania-biggest-power-user-three-sites/106783142
7. ABC News, “Hydro Tasmania to decide by end of year on AI data centre company Firmus's request for 450MW”, 4 September 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-04/hydro-tasmania-assess-firmus-450-mw-energy-request/107116852
8. ABC News, “Data centre inquiry by Greens to examine 'what, if any,' benefits will come to Tasmania from rollout”, 19 August 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-19/ai-data-centre-inquiry-tasmanian-greens/107050792
9. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “National, state and territory population, December 2025”, estimated resident population of Tasmania. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/latest-release
10. Tasmanian Times, “Record-Breaking Voluntary Assisted Dying Petition Tabled”, August 2020, reporting 11,699 e-petition and 1,383 paper signatures. https://tasmaniantimes.com/2020/08/record-breaking-voluntary-assisted-dying-petition-tabled/
11. Planning in Tasmania, Department of Premier and Cabinet, “Major projects”, assessment pathway under the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993. https://www.stateplanning.tas.gov.au/planning-system/development/major-projects
12. Office of the Coordinator-General, Tasmanian Government, “Strategic project facilitation”, investment thresholds and case management. https://www.cg.tas.gov.au/project_facilitation/strategic_project_facilitation
13. Andrea Marinoni, Erik Cambria, Weisi Lin, Mauro Dalla Mura, Jocelyn Chanussot, Edoardo Ragusa, Chi Yan Tso, Yihao Zhu and Benjamin Horton, “The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI data centers in a warming world”, arXiv:2603.20897, 21 March 2026, revised 21 April 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20897
14. Basit A. Akinade, Amobichukwu C. Amanambu, Jonathan M. Frame and Shaolei Ren, “AI Data Centers and the Water Use Feedback Loop”, arXiv:2606.21760, 19 June 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21760
15. Aadi Patel, Nikhil Mahalingam and Rusheen Patel, “The Environmental Impact of AI Servers and Sustainable Solutions”, arXiv:2601.06063, submitted 24 December 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.06063
16. Central Statistics Office, Ireland, “Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2025”, published 2026 (https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2025/keyfindings/), and Data Center Dynamics, “EirGrid says no new applications for data centers in Dublin until 2028” (https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/eirgrid-says-no-new-applications-for-data-centers-in-dublin-till-2028/).
17. Data Center Dynamics, “Dutch Senate stymies huge Meta data center in Zeewolde by blocking Government land sale to Facebook”. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/dutch-senate-stymies-huge-meta-data-center-in-zeewolde-by-blocking-government-land-sale-to-facebook/
18. Data Center Dynamics, “Chile partially reverses Google data center permit over water use concerns”, February 2024. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/chile-partially-reverses-google-data-center-permit-over-water-use-concerns/
19. Virginia Business, “Prince William Digital Gateway data center project officially dies”, 2026. https://virginiabusiness.com/prince-william-digital-gateway-data-center-project-officially-dies/
20. Southern Environmental Law Center, “Groups appeal permit for xAI's South Memphis data center, decisions around unpermitted methane gas turbines”. https://www.selc.org/press-release/groups-appeal-permit-for-xais-south-memphis-data-center-decisions-around-unpermitted-methane-gas-turbines/
21. Spotlight PA, “Why PA data centers want public officials to sign NDAs”, August 2026. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/08/pennsylvania-data-center-nda-public-record-capitol/
22. Loudoun County, Virginia, “Data Centers, Tax Revenues and the County Budget”, official page on data centre tax contribution and real property tax rates. https://www.loudoun.gov/6409/Data-Centers-Tax-Revenues-County-Budget
23. Rockefeller Institute of Government, “Updates on the Cloud: More Moratoriums on Data Centers”, June 2026. https://www.rockinst.org/blog/updates-on-the-cloud-more-moratoriums-on-data-centers/
24. Clayton Utz, “Nine governments, one rulebook: National Cabinet backs mandatory AI and data centre standards”, August 2026. https://www.claytonutz.com/insights/2026/august/nine-governments-one-rulebook-national-cabinet-backs-mandatory-ai-and-data-centre-standards
25. Clifford Chance, “Australia's National AI Plan 2025: key takeaways”, January 2026. https://www.cliffordchance.com/briefings/2026/01/australia-national-ai-plan-2025-key-takeaways.html

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

The day is long. We have driven to DFW to claim Campervan Beethoven. After the dealer quoted us $10k for $1900 worth of work that I can do myself, it was an easy choice.

While we are there waiting for CVB to be pulled up, we poke in on a brand new 4x4 2500 sprinter Storyteller conversion. These are the top shelf camper van conversions. $190,000. I am pleased to be able to stand erect in it. CVB is a 'shorty' meaning that anyone over 5' 2” is going to hunch down. It's also the shorter wheelbase, meaning the behemouth Storyteller has 50” on our humble little ride.

But I glow when my wife says, 'Well, this is basically what we have, only the interior all matches.' I put a LOT of time and serious money into converting CVB to as premium a ride as i could afford. No doubt the Storeteller is a dream to drive. But my monthly payment is $0. The storyteller, with excellent credit and a 92 month lease is $1100. For normal humans like two artists, that is more like $1900 a month.

In. Sane.

I wanted to spend the day at the theater, lost in the dark watching the Star Trek 40th anniversary festival. They screened The Motion Picture, ST 2 – the Wrath of Kahn, ST-3, St4 and ST-5. it ran from 11am-11pm.

But, in my wisdom, I did the responsible thing and went to claim my vehicle I wish I had waited.

Coming home, Ng is struck by a motorcyclist.

I asked her to follow me, but I drive slow and cautiously. So she raced ahead and took a strange route home. Not indirect, but through a difficult neighborhood and over a dangerous railroad crossing.

When pulling into the intersection, she was concentrating on traffic coming from the east and so did not see the incoming motorcycle rider. From the west.

He was riding and older (1999) Honda with a dim incandescent bulb. When she looked back West, the bike was already on her. She stopped in the roadway, but he was already committed to hit her.

Slamming into the side of the Benz at about 10mph isn't enough to kill or do serious damage, but it is enough to scare the hell out of a 66y old driver.

And it's enough to leave a mark on a 27y old rider.

He limped away and the ambulance carried him to hospital.

His motorcycle was towed. He had highway bars, which likely saved him from more serious injury.

The Benz will suffer the loss of its running board finish and the lower door now has a snazzy ripple and rubber patter.

Very modern.

I insist she be a more careful driver. But lack of attention is so deep, admonition doesn't assuage it.

Scarred

She was terrified she had killed the man. Stating she was worried he may have decapitated him. She doesn't weep easily or lightly. Any time I tear up, she wants to know what I am sad about. Tonight I saw her crack from stress when she realized how serious this could have been.

The shock will take time.

In honesty, the accident wasn't serious enough to deliver that kind of blow. But any accident with a motorcycle is very serious.

She was up all night with worry and it will be some time before she drives glibly again. I feel bad for her. She has always been an on-the-edge driver. And not in the I-could-be-a-contender-at-le-Mans sort of way.

Takeaways

This was a combination of of poor attention and an inexperienced rider.

The lesson: keep your eyes peeled for motorcycles.

And if you ride: ALWAYS make eye contact or assume you are INVISIBLE. Even if you do make eye contact, you probably are.

Take the advice. I've been riding since 2007 and have managed to an avoid collision and laying the bike down on every ride.

I pray my next one wont be my last.

#Emotions

My nephew asked me if I was angry. Which surprised me. Why would I be angry? The only emotion when someone has an accident is concern. Are they okay. How can I help. Reassurance when they are at their most vulnerable. Care. Love.

Maybe I would have gotten angry when i was younger? Maybe I’ve been married so long I know that there is no solution but love.

I suppose at some point, I’ll need to do all the driving instead of the majority of it. We aren’t here yet.

Frankly I’m flabbergasted that I’m even in the ballpark of realizing we are entering serious old age.

Hell, I’m still waiting for my life to begin.

Collecting stories as I do. Observer. Artist. Writer.

At your service.

It's a quarter past eight and I am seated in an airport lounge, not by habit but by happenstance. To my right a man has spread his possessions across the table as though it were his home office. His bag stands open. His laptop — new, and expensive by the look of it — rests on the tabletop among a pair of headphones, an iPad, and other practical things arranged in plain sight. Then he rises, without ceremony, and casually walks away.

And I wonder: what is his relationship here that gives him the confidence that his possessions are safe from theft or abuse?

Trust is a mysterious and remarkable thing to me, akin to faith. I see it all the time when I travel. And travel is something I love and loathe simultaneously, making the whole equation that much more complicated and confounding.

I’m amazed at the number of people who will leave their belongings temporarily at cafes, lounges, airports, etc., with apparent ease. Perhaps to get a coffee. Perhaps to use the restroom. Perhaps for no obvious reason at all.

And I often contemplate, no matter wherever or how often I see this, what is the source of such trust? Is it that they feel their possessions valuable only to them and therefore no one would casually walk away with them? Is it that they the security cameras, real or imagined, serve as a strong enough deterrent or as evidence after the event of theft to keep their items safe? Is it a kind of ignorance, willful or otherwise, that makes them oblivious to the darker, more corrupt side of human nature?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines trust as a belief that someone or something is good, sincere, honest, safe, or dependable—and will not harm, deceive, or let you down.

Honest. Safe. Dependable.

These are priceless qualities. Some people seem to treat them with almost frivolous abandon. I hold them dear as they are very difficult to find and once found even rarer to remain stable over time and across environments and circumstances.

But I pretend neither omniscience nor wisdom. Perhaps those people possess some knowledge or foresight about the safety of their items that I do not. Perhaps good fortune has long been by their side so as not to diminish their confidence in their fellow humans. Perhaps I’m overly protective or paranoid, always assuming the presence of risk or danger when there is none.

Perhaps just I’m overthinking, which I’m prone to doing. A function that I can be guilty of at times of uncertainty or anxiety, though I’m unaware of such feelings at the moment.

The man returned to his seat. His items untouched.

Was it luck? Coincidence? Fate? Was it just random causality? Was it some unseen connection between things we cannot perceive or the absence of it?

I realize it is rather absurd or irrational to be thinking of these things when nothing harmful has happened. But that is why I pay attention to them. What is it that made this occasion safe when another might not have been? What is it that I read in this space as risk that he either didn’t recognize or ignored?

Add to this my fascination with the tedious and mundane, the subtleness of peoples decisions, actions, and body language are more about how I see the things that on the surface appear trivial but may or may not be. Small things I notice throughout my day that may or may not be of consequence in a world where interdependence strongly suggests that everything is significant, though we may not see the progression or perceive an event as an endless web of events.

The man closed his laptop, gathered his things, and left without looking back. Whatever his trust was built on, he didn’t seem to pay it any mind. I sat a while longer, keeping half an eye on my own bag, wondering what it would take for me to leave mine so completely to the trust of things both seen and unseen.

#Excultio

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By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.