Wikipedia Is Free. Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

The Depths of Ultra, part 1

This is the first 5ish pages to a short story I wrote in undergrad. I want to be an author, I am a writer, but I work doing other things to make ends meet. This specific story is my best and most polished work, but its too long to be submitted to any competition and too short to be a book. I have no idea what I am doing. -Enjoy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“ -and you’ll never be!” his father growled. Eorling cringed away from the disappointment in his father’s eyes. The burning stare followed him as he ran away through an endless corridor that stretched out to the horizon and up to the sky. Behind him, his father’s scolding rant followed him, growing louder and louder until  the nightmarish specter was upon him.

Eorling flinched and groaned as someone banged away in the hallway with a pair of wooden clackers. He rolled over, peering at the wall between him and his door, as if he would suddenly become clairvoyant. He pulled himself out of bed, and the clackers sounded again. This time, whoever was wielding them called aloud.

“Up! Up, you shiftless, lazy, long-eared louts! We’re digging today! Ankirat burn your slow bones! Get out here now!”

The voice belonged to one Foreman Ozglow. Experienced and effective, he was one of the most favored foremen in all of Ultra. The stout dwarf commanded respect and not a little awe, with an armored beard and arms covered in the scars of many battles. He could also bang clackers together loud enough to wake the dead.

Eorling hastily stuffed himself into his work clothes: a thick linen shirt and canvas overalls. He stomped his feet into sturdy, steel capped boots with thick soles and wax-sealed walls that kept out the water and damp. The hat he fit onto his head was also capped with steel, and the padding inside was brand new. Overall it was a snug, comfortable outfit that was built for hard work. Dressed, Eorling drained the dregs of last night's beer that he had left, tugged his beard, wiped his mustache, and was off.

The rest of the crew was out in the hallway, stretching and scratching themselves. The Foreman was counting heads and was already geared up. A spark of excitement flared in Eorling. Today’s the start of my shift. After putting in a full forty-eight hour shift, he would be a professional miner with all of the glory that came with it. He would also finally be considered an adult. Eorling hoped it would be enough to get the respect he so desperately desired from his father. Eorling’s father was a bitter dwarf. After a smithing accident took his arm, he had become rough and callous and often directed his misery at his only son. Eorling had battled for decades to earn his old man’s appreciation, but nothing seemed to work. Maybe, Eorling thought, this will turn the tide. A nice haul of loot and a good shift of work. He can’t ignore that.

The others were all there: Rikin, the foreman’s second, who had spent more time in the dark of the depths of Tera than in Ankirat’s daylight; Azik, who always carried his pick and shovel across his shoulders and bragged about his way with the lasses at the tavern; Krozlin, the only female dwarf on the crew, who was more than a match for any of them; and Eorling, the greenbeard. Foreman Ozglow turned, nodded as he counted Eorling, then spoke again.

“Right, lads! I’ve got a treat for the lot of you, and, if you don’t appreciate it, then you can sod off! Heading to Kron three. Gear up there.”

The rest turned to hustle that way. Eorling did too, but Ozglow stopped him with an outstretched hand. The foreman’s deep amber eyes studied him seriously. Previous apprehensions about his father’s lack of acceptance crept back into Eorling’s mind.

“Watch yourself down there, lad. I ain’t keeping firm eyes on you, and neither are the others.”

“Yes, foreman,” Eorling replied.

Ozglow’s stare was unblinking. “I mean it lad. You want to be a man? Act like one. Get moving.”

The hand was raised, and Eorling carried on. He trundled along through a maze of gray, stone tunnels, navigating in the dim light by reading the tunnel names at each intersection. The flickering lantern lights would not give enough light for humans or elves or immortals, but for the superior eyesight of the dwarves it was more than enough. After a short jog, he puffed his way up to a large, mostly empty room. Other than its entryway, it had three more portals, set into angled walls at one end. All three of these arches were numbered on their keystone, with the title for this section of the mine carved above them: “Kron.” 

The rest of his crew were pulling equipment from a set of battered old footlockers, and joking amongst themselves. Rikin did not speak much, and when he did, it was in a low, soft tone. Azik was loud and boisterous, always looking to get a snide jab in, whereas Krozlin was simply untouchable by the insults, always giving back as good as she got. Azik found no purchase today and turned to Eorling.

“Greenbeard! Glad you finally caught up.” With an easy smirk, the dwarf leaned back against a wall.  “I was worried I’d have to do all the mining my own damn self!”

Krozlin snorted and retorted with her North-Laker accent. “Oh give off, you blow-beard. You couldn’t work a stout into a froth with those arms of yours.”

Azik waved a hand as if he was swatting her words away. “I told you I’m not talking to you anymore, lass. No use in it.”

“Because you cannae stand a lady.”

Eorling kept his head down as he began to untangle a harness from one of the lockers. He knew joining in was a sure way to become the butt of the joke, and he had no want to embarrass himself on his first shift. Azik and Krozlin kept going.

“I love my ladies! And they love me! You’re just a curmudgeon what doesn’t know when to stop!”

“Hah!” She laughed, pausing in the act of pulling her harness up to her hips. “ Those skinny flits at the tavern, ladies? I’ve found human lads firmer than em! Those are sickly girls, and you should keep your hands off of em!”

Rikin made himself heard. “No, he should feed them. I agree, some of the younger ones have begun looking too thin for their own good.”

“Hear that Azik? Right from one who ought to know!”

Eorling continued getting his gear on. A shovel, a pickaxe, a small hammer and chisel, his harness and some protective plates, a cap spindle to hold a candle for light, a mine mug with a hinged lid on it, metal edging for his boots, and a few brass beard-studs to keep his facial hair firmly fixed in its braided pattern. This kept it from getting frizzy in the damp of the depths. He sat to dig out his gloves, as the rest of the crew were sitting by now.

Azik turned to him. “Well, what about you? You’re young, and you don’t look too thin, but your arms could do with a good double shift.”

“Ah,” he stuttered, “m-maybe, yeah.” Eorling had never known he was embarrassed about his lack of a love life. Until now.

“So shy! Kroz, you might like this lad, he’s all meek!”

Eorling felt a blush rising as the miner lady laughed. “Maybe! But no, I’m going steady still.”

“What, with that clerk lass–”

Ozglow marched into the room, hands full with rolled parchment and the specialized equipment of a foreman, such as a compass and loupe, pens and ink, and a set of acidic vials designed to detect metal purity. Each dwarf stopped talking and stood. Allowing your foreman or superior to stand alone was a grievous offense. He stayed silent and pulled to a stop, distracted by a few extra candle sticks that were refusing to sink into his pocket. He jiggled them a bit, and they finally fell into place. Then he turned to face his miners.

“You’re all suited and ready. Good. The last crew will be up soon, so hop to it! I need three barrels of beer, a box of rations–the ones with the good jerky, mind you–a box of flints and steels, a dozen torch points, some of that Drunder Good Bread, and three lengths of chain.”

He turned to each of them “Azik, you go get the beer–and none of that Sonder Suds swill. Krozlin, you get the jerky and the bread. Rikin you get the odds and ends, and Eorling,” he said as he turned to the new miner, “get the chains. They are two lefts and a right. Well? What in Judge’s hammers are you all standing about for? Go! Get me my equipment, you slow bones!”

Krozlin cackled a laugh and they each hustled off to their duties. Eorling saw that they did not need directions to get their materials, and felt slightly ashamed that he did. He followed the direction, leaving and turning left out of the door, then left again at the nearest intersection, and finally a right. The endless grays of the dusty tunnels could be confusing, but Eorling made sure not to stray from his given path. This led him into an alley full of heavy equipment, including the chains he needed. Each chain length was standardized, being twenty feet long.

The chains were an odd part of dwarven society. Some of them had existed for a long time, helping works for thousands of years. Though it was not difficult for the dwarves to make more, there was a certain love for old chains. Each chain had a history, a lineage. Each one was a chain to the works of their ancestors, both literally and metaphorically,  and some of the lengths here were thousands of years old. In the King’s Peak, there were a set of chains that were over ten thousand years old. They had aided in great constructions and even the killing of great foes, and were venerated by all dwarves.

Eorling selected three that seemed young enough for him to move. Touching or handling older chains was inappropriate for him. He slung one over each shoulder and swayed with their weight. They were heavy, and as he grabbed for the third, he pitched wildy off balance. With a clank-filled crash, he crumpled back against the wall, smothered by the chains. Eorling struggled to stand or wriggle out of the chains; he simply could not muster the strength.

Thankfully, he did not need to call out for help, which might’ve shamed him eternally. A soft voice spoke from the mouth of the alley.

“Hands full then, greenbeard?”

Former Minnesota Vikings punter, Chris Kluwe, who was blacklisted from the league for standing up for marriage equality, speaks at a city council meeting where he calls Trump a Nazi. He is subsequently arrested and carried out by police.

The Polk County Sheriff's Office deliberately misled people into believing that Briana Boston had been released without charges. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

I loved when Seth Myers went on his little "I've been calling them weird for years" rant (and he has). I was sad when after the first assassination attempt and the conventions the "weirdness" died out of the conversation. They ARE weird.

I am an autist who has been "weird" all my life (according to others and so myself), and who has proudly claimed "weird" as an okay state to be. I think how "weird" they are should be in the conversation.

Trump's folk are more than two standard deviations from the mean. For example, most of Trump's picks are billionaires. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, no one thinks "the average person" is a billionaire.

I know we expect politicians and public servants in highly placed elected positions to be more wealthy than the people we know. Many of us know someone who is a public servant, some of us might know some local and localish politicians socially, and others might know people whose personal assets exceed $30M, but that's not the same with billionaires. 95+% of us can never expect to meet a billionaire outside of a concert or special event.

According to Wikipedia, the 2024 Forbes list, there are 2,781 billionaires in the world. A small town is generally defined as a population center with less than 10,000 people. You would need almost 4 times the total world population of billionaires to fill one small town, they aren't real common. The current world population is 8,194,270,656 as of Wednesday, December 18, 2024 according to the most recent United Nations estimates via Worldometer.

A cabinet with 8 billionaires is not normal, it's "weird". A political party who has openly discussed how they're going to exploit being in government to make themselves more money, is "weird" (in a really bad way).

So excellent choice of political word of the year.

1 word

I gotta know, "WHAT’S YOUR POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR?" WEIRD This word entered the headlines in July and became a “brat”-like summer phenomenon. #politics #news #culture #social

The New Republic

Trump Wants Snitches to Report on DEI. There’s Just One Problem.

Donald Trump wants people to expose diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government. The idea is already flopping.

The threat was loud and clear: Report your so-called “DEI” employees or else. What exactly “DEIA or similar ideologies” means is up in the air, but the message was out there. And so was the email address of the DEIA snitching hotline. Fake emails quickly started to roll in. ‘I don’t care, fuck these McCarthyite bastards,” one BlueSky user said, with an screenshot attached of an email to the hotline where he ironically reported Donald Trump and JD Vance for being “put in their positions solely because of their race and/or gender despite the fact that they are wholly unqualified for their jobs and, in some cases, have criminal records.” “Anyone have a script to fire off a billion e-mails an hour??” another user asked in the replies. “Anyone can email anything of any size even if it crashes the site,” one X user noted. The scope and effectiveness of this latest phase of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade remains to be seen.

I think a lot about how, if the glorious violent revolution happens, every kid with significant medical needs in a hospital where power gets cut will die.

You can decide you're willing to sacrifice your own life, but you don't get to tell everybody else on the planet that they're acceptable collateral damage.

So I had a hysterectomy today (hooray!) and I brought along my stuffed orca, Shamu, as a comfort object. And everyone i interacted with during my pre-op was like "Oh! Who's this?" so I was telling them all about him, how he's been with me since I was 9 and gone on every single vacation and road trip, and they were telling me about their own stuffed buddies (one lady said she still has hers after 40 years!) and all of this while I was signing consent forms and providing a list of the things I'd brought with me, you know, small talk.

So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"

But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:

And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)

Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.

And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize

They gave my fucking orca a hysterectomy

When you see it, REBLOG IT.

Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696

Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433

LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743

Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438

Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673

Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272

Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000

Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253

If you ever want to talk: My Tumblr ask is always open.