The breakers gulf shores

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

Talk about a clubhouse guy. He's a grinder at the plate, and that's rubbing off on other players in the lineup. He takes such a great approach at the plate, and it's catching.
This team hasn't hit its offensive peak this season. They have another level to go, but the team is just grinding starting pitching right now. They may not do much the first time through the lineup, but you can tell conversations are happening in the dugout, and the second time around, the plate appearances are much more disciplined. You can see them wearing on starting pitching.
I love Belt as a player, so I'm crediting him. I think it's Bo and others who are also involved. They talk to each other, assess what the pitcher is doing, and do everything they can to go long into counts.
I look at someone like Varsho, who I thought was hopeless at the beginning of the season. Over the last month, his plate appearances have been much more steady and deliberate.
While the team isn't necessarily lighting the world on fire at the plate, they're all playing a part in getting to pitchers the second and third time. Valdez is a good pitcher and pitched well, but he was FRUSTRATED at the end of his outing. This is what good teams do. Shore up that 5th starter, and these guys will make some noise in the dog days.
This was not a post about Belt, but his mentality at the plate is infectious.

Just bought my first house, it was my wife's great grandfather's house from 1965-2020 before he passed at 101. We are planning on putting in a modern breaker panel. We have been given one quote from one electrician before we bought the house and plan to get a couple more estimates. What should a general price range should be? Location Oklahoma.

I've started therapy. I see her on zoom once every two weeks. I don't feel like getting into specific stuff but I'm sure old posts can be found by searching my username. I always delete my posts once I get the advice I feel like I need. He doesn't like me using Reddit at all, but until he becomes an emotion support like I need him to be, that won't be happening. It's not healthy for me to have zero outlet besides a therapist every two weeks. We don't agree with discussing our issues with friends/family (and I agree with that). I suppose most of my stuff is tame compared to others and the main issue were dozens of lies and contact with exes/inappropriate conversation with a coworker. Onlyfans as well (I see it as cheating and understand others don't).
I've had three therapy sessions and I just don't see how this is going to help bc I don't feel like my boyfriend is working with me to actually fix this. He gets very angry if I want to ever talk about it bc he's tired of hearing about it. Apologizing and pretending it never happened isn't working for me. He's aware I look at his phone on occasion - and I've still found things that are not ok with me during this time. His phone was just a vault of lies and so many things that hurt me (both phones actually bc he has a work phone as well). Him not letting me near his phone is an automatic deal breaker and I will immediately end the relationship. I one hundred percent mean that and he knows it.
My anxiety is through the roof, I'm irritable and angry all the time. I've lost weight, which I guess is the only "good thing" to come of this. But it's been unintentional and due to being stressed out 24/7. I don't know what to do. I don't think he's cheating on me but I still don't trust that he won't do things behind my back that are still not ok in the relationship and break boundaries. I can't figure out a resolution to this especially bc I feel like the only one trying to do anything about it.

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

I'm on Pokémon Yellow and not sure if I'm doing the glitch correctly. Go to Safar Zone Area 2 for Kangaskhan/ScythePinsir, time out, exit building, fly to Cinnabar Island, Surf on the east shore tiles. I've been going up and down for multiple minutes and nothing. What's the problem?
Also planning to do the Mew 8F but not sure if I should follow the Red/Blue guide like Austin John released couple months ago or if its even possible on the Yellow version the exact same way or if there is another way specifically for Yellow. Would LOVE to know ASAP :)

What does this mean.
MCA 18.5 & Max fuse 25
Use 12 gauge wire and a 25 amp breaker at the panel?

Due to responses I’ve gotten in the past, I want to be completely clear about who I’m looking for.

1. I’m looking for someone who is able to communicate and can hold a conversation. That’s a big deal for me.
   
2. I’m only interested in biological females. I’m not looking for men, trans or people who don’t know what gender they are.
   
3. I’m looking for single women so if you’re married or in another long term relationship that’s a deal breaker.
   
4. I’m physically in good shape and active so I want someone who can keep up and is in good health. If you weigh more than I can lift we’re not going to be a good fit.
   

A lot of my posts on here have more to do with kink heavy relationships but I’m at a point, while I still like and want those things, I want something more committed and worthwhile than that. I’m looking for someone who’s the total package; someone smart, strong, caring, has a sense of adventure and who I could commit to long term. I want the kind of relationship where both of us would support and help each other grow into better people.
I’m a 43 year old guy who enjoys things like bad horror movies, hiking, camping, going to concerts and has a pretty dark sense of humor. I’m financially stable and own my own place. I have a full time job that pays my bills and a second job that I do because I genuinely like the work. I’m in good shape and put a good amount of work into my physical and mental health which is something that I also want in a partner. I like to consider myself very supportive and am strong enough to be there during those difficult times we all face. Sexually, I’m very dominant and kinky so if you want someone that can see you as the beautiful woman you are while we do some dirty things we’re a good fit.
If you’re looking for someone special, a ruggedly handsome guy or see anything in my post you like I’d love to talk with you. I’m looking forward to a good conversation.

I've been wanting a erig for awhile just so I don't have to use a torch and dab easily. I also smoke outside so it would be more conspicuous(I'm 22 i just decide not to smoke in the house). I've heard great things about Dr dabber and saw the xs that came half a year ago and the decent price point it comes at. Would this be a nice rig for mostly at home but also some going out like riding my bike around and camping. Or should I get something bigger? I've also heard there's a part of the glass on xs that builds reclaim that blocks the airflow and is impossible to clean and that water gets into the bowl too, are these true and if so is it a deal breaker problem for y'all?

So I recently purchased a 2021 Elantra N-Line. Now I haven’t picked the vehicle up, and in no way is this a deal breaker for me as I wouldn’t usually mash the gas as soon as the light turns green but I have read that there can be quite a bit of wheel hop, I understand that’s typical in FWD vehicles but does anyone have some tips to decrease/fix wheel hop? Thanks!!!

So I recently purchased a 2021 Elantra N-Line. Now I haven’t picked the vehicle up, and in no way is this a deal breaker for me as I wouldn’t usually mash the gas as soon as the light turns green but I have read that there can be quite a bit of wheel hop, I understand that’s typical in FWD vehicles but does anyone have some tips to decrease/fix wheel hop? Thanks!!!

I’ve been to the shore tons of times and the horizon looks familiar but I can’t tell

SpaceX Starship page

FAQ

1. When (first) orbital flight? First integrated flight test occurred April 20, 2023. "The vehicle cleared the pad and beach as Starship climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico – the highest of any Starship to-date. The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship."
2. Where can I find streams of the launch? SpaceX Full Livestream. NASASpaceFlight Channel. Lab Padre Channel. Everyday Astronaut Channel.
3. What's happening next? SpaceX has assessed damage to Stage 0 and is implementing fixes and changes including a water deluge/pad protection/"shower head" system. No major repairs to key structures appear to be necessary.
4. When is the next flight test? Just after flight, Elon stated they "Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months." On April 29, he reiterated this estimate in a Twitter Spaces Q&A (summarized here), saying "I'm glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small," should "be repaired quickly," and "From a pad standpoint, we are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks." Requalifying the flight termination system (FTS) and the FAA post-incident review will likely require the longest time to complete. Musk reiterated the timeline on May 26, stating "Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship."
5. Why no flame diverteflame trench below the OLM? Musk tweeted on April 21: "3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount. Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch." Regarding a trench, note that the Starship on the OLM sits 2.5x higher off the ground than the Saturn V sat above the base of its flame trench, and the OLM has 6 exits vs. 2 on the Saturn V trench.

​

Quick Links

^{RAPTOR ROOST LAB CAM SAPPHIRE CAM SENTINEL CAM ROVER CAM ROVER 2.0 CAM PLEX CAM NSF STARBASE}
Starship Dev 44 Starship Dev 43 Starship Dev 42 Starship Thread List
Official Starship Update SpaceX Update Thread

Status

Road Closures

Road & Beach Closure

Type	Start (UTC)	End (UTC)	Status
Primary	2023-06-12 14:00:00	2023-06-13 02:00:00	Possible
Alternative	2023-06-13 14:00:00	2023-06-14 02:00:00	Possible
Alternative	2023-06-14 14:00:00	2023-06-15 02:00:00	Possible

No transportation delays currently scheduled
Up to date as of 2023-06-09

Vehicle Status

As of June 8th 2023
Follow Ring Watchers on Twitter and Discord for more.

Ship	Location	Status	Comment
Pre-S24		Scrapped or Retired	SN15 and S20 are in the Rocket Garden, the rest are scrapped.
S24	In pieces in the ocean	Destroyed	April 20th: Destroyed when booster MECO and ship stage separation from booster failed three minutes and 59 seconds after successful launch, so FTS was activated. This was the second launch attempt.
S25	Launch Site	Testing	On Feb 23rd moved back to build site, then on the 25th taken to the Massey's test site. March 21st: Cryo test. May 5th: Another cryo test. May 18th: Moved to the Launch Site and in the afternoon lifted onto Suborbital Test Stand B.
S26	Rocket Garden	Resting	No fins or heat shield, plus other changes. March 25th: Lifted onto the new higher stand in Rocket Garden. March 28th: First RVac installed (number 205). March 29th: RVac number 212 taken over to S26 and later in the day the third RVac (number 202) was taken over to S26 for installation. March 31st: First Raptor Center installed (note that S26 is the first Ship with electric Thrust Vector Control). April 1st: Two more Raptor Centers moved over to S26.
S27	Rocket Garden	Completed but no Raptors yet	Like S26, no fins or heat shield. April 24th: Moved to the Rocket Garden.
S28	High Bay 1	Under construction	February 7th Assorted parts spotted. March 24th: Mid LOX barrel taken into High Bay 1. March 28th: Existing stack placed onto Mid LOX barrel. March 31st: Almost completed stack lifted off turntable. April 5th: Aft/Thrust section taken into High Bay 1. April 6th: the already stacked main body of the ship has been placed onto the thrust section, giving a fully stacked ship. April 25th: Lifted off the welding turntable, then the 'squid' detached - it was then connected up to a new type of lifting attachment which connects to the two lifting points below the forward flaps that are used by the chopsticks. May 25th: Installation of the first Aft Flap (interesting note: the Aft Flaps for S28 are from the scrapped S22).
S29	High Bay 1	Under construction	April 28th: Nosecone and Payload Bay taken inside High Bay 1 (interesting note: the Forward Flaps are from the scrapped S22). May 1st: nosecone stacked onto payload bay (note that S29 is being stacked on the new welding turntable to the left of center inside High Bay 1, this means that LabPadre's Sentinel Cam can't see it and so NSF's cam looking at the build site is the only one with a view when it's on the turntable). May 4th: Sleeved Forward Dome moved into High Bay 1 and placed on the welding turntable. May 5th: Nosecone+Payload Bay stack placed onto Sleeved Forward Dome and welded. May 10th: Nosecone stack hooked up to new lifting rig instead of the 'Squid' (the new rig attaches to the Chopstick's lifting points and the leeward Squid hooks). May 11th: Sleeved Common Dome moved into High Bay 1. May 16th: Nosecone stack placed onto Sleeved Common Dome and welded. May 18th: Mid LOX section moved inside High Bay 1. May 19th: Current stack placed onto Mid LOX section for welding. June 2nd: Aft/Thrust section moved into High Bay 1. June 6th: The already stacked main body of the ship has been placed onto the thrust section, giving a fully stacked ship.
S30+	Build Site	Parts under construction	Assorted parts spotted through S34.

 

Booster	Location	Status	Comment
Pre-B7 & B8		Scrapped or Retired	B4 is in the Rocket Garden, the rest are scrapped.
B7	In pieces in the ocean	Destroyed	April 20th: Destroyed when MECO and stage separation of ship from booster failed three minutes and 59 seconds after successful launch, so FTS was activated. This was the second launch attempt.
B9	High Bay 2	Raptor Install	Cryo testing (methane and oxygen) on Dec. 21 and Dec. 29. Rollback on Jan. 10. On March 7th Raptors started to be taken into High Bay 2 for B9.
B10	Rocket Garden	Resting	20-ring LOX tank inside High Bay 2 and Methane tank (with grid fins installed) in the ring yard. March 18th: Methane tank moved from the ring yard and into High Bay 2 for final stacking onto the LOX tank. March 22nd: Methane tank stacked onto LOX tank, resulting in a fully stacked booster. May 27th: Moved to the Rocket Garden. Note: even though it appears to be complete it currently has no Raptors.
B11	High Bay 2	Under construction	March 24th: 'A3' barrel had the current 8-ring LOX tank stacked onto it. March 30th: 'A4' 4-ring LOX tank barrel taken inside High Bay 2 and stacked. April 2nd: 'A5' 4-ring barrel taken inside High Bay 2. April 4th: First methane tank 3-ring barrel parked outside High Bay 2 - this is probably F2. April 7th: downcomer installed in LOX tank (which is almost fully stacked except for the thrust section). April 28th: Aft section finally taken inside High Bay 2 to have the rest of the LOX tank welded to it (which will complete the LOX tank stack). May 11th: Methane tank Forward section and the next barrel down taken into High Bay 2 and stacked. May 18th: Methane tank stacked onto another 3 ring next barrel, making it 9 rings tall out of 13. May 20th: Methane tank section stacked onto the final barrel, meaning that the Methane tank is now fully stacked. May 23rd: Started to install the grid fins. June 3rd: Methane Tank stacked onto LOX Tank, meaning that B11 is now fully stacked. Once welded still more work to be done such as the remaining plumbing and wiring.
B12	High Bay 2 (LOX Tank)	Under construction	June 3rd: LOX tank commences construction: Common Dome (CX:4) and a 4-ring barrel (A2:4) taken inside High Bay 2 where CX:4 was stacked onto A2:4 on the right side welding turntable. June 7th: A 4-ring barrel (A3:4) was taken inside High Bay 2. June 8th: Barrel section A3:4 was lifted onto the welding turntable and the existing stack placed on it for welding.
B13+	Build Site	Parts under construction	Assorted parts spotted through B17.

​
If this page needs a correction please consider pitching in. Update this thread via this wiki page. If you would like to make an update but don't see an edit button on the wiki page, message the mods via modmail or contact u/strawwalker.

Resources

• LabPadre Channel NASASpaceFlight.com Channel
• NSF: Booster 7 + Ship X (likely 24) Updates Thread Most Recent
• NSF: Boca Chica Production Updates Thread Most recent
• NSF: Elon Starship tweet compilation Most Recent
• SpaceX: Website Starship page Starship Users Guide (2020, PDF)
• FAA: SpaceX Starship Project at the Boca Chica Launch Site
• FAA: Temporary Flight Restrictions NOTAM list
• FCC: Starship Orbital Demo detailed Exhibit - 0748-EX-ST-2021 application June 20 through December 20
• NASA: Starship Reentry Observation (Technical Report)
• Hwy 4 & Boca Chica Beach Closures (May not be available outside US)
• Production Progress Infographics by @RingWatchers
• Raptor 2 Tracker by @SpaceRhin0
• Acronym definitions by Decronym
• Everyday Astronaut: Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
• Everyday Astronaut: 2022 Elon Musk Interviews, Starbase/Ship Updates Launch Tower Merlin Engine Raptor Engine

SpaceX Discuss Thread for discussion of subjects other than Starship development.

Rules

We will attempt to keep this self-post current with links and major updates, but for the most part, we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss Starship development, ask Starship-specific questions, and track the progress of the production and test campaigns. Starship Development Threads are not party threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

Hi all, straightforward question. I'm looking into image segmentation and I'd either like a base model, with the goal of fine-tuning down the track, or a method of producing a model that can achieve competent results on small datasets with the eventual goal of weakly supervised training.
I'm ideally looking for:

• Trainable
• No hard-to-implement deviations from existing technology (CNN, Transformer, etc)
• Can run on consumer hardware (A100 at most)
• Quantizable (Not a deal breaker)
• Diverse data set (e.g. not a base model tasked with sidewalk or clothing segmentation)

Last I heard SAM wasn't trainable, is this still true? Can I get something like SegFormer to achieve what I need? Any suggestions are much appreciated.

So I recently purchased a 2021 Elantra N-Line. Now I haven’t picked the vehicle up, and in no way is this a deal breaker for me as I wouldn’t usually mash the gas as soon as the light turns green but I have read that there can be quite a bit of wheel hop, I understand that’s typical in FWD vehicles but does anyone have some tips to decrease/fix wheel hop? Thanks!!!

I think opiate addicts have a niche taste in music and i’d just absolutely love some sonf recommendations from you! My current songs on repeat are painkiller by ruby rose fox, marceline by vista kicks and washed away by eyes on the shore! 🫠 currently on vaca with my family enduring very mild withdrawals but cant stop listening to music that makes me emotional and was wondering if you guys could add some of your favorites 💕

I want to start this post by saying that I love my wife. I truly, truly do. The companionship that we enjoy and the way we we share our time together as friends is so rewarding. She fits me well in that capacity. In the friendship part of our relationship, we are well-paired. We have both proven that we are reliable, faithful in word and deed, and both trying in our partnership. She says the same about me.
Recently, I asked her for a hug and it felt kind of empty. I asked her if everything was okay between us and she did not reply at first. We kept talking and after a lengthy and tearful conversation we came to recognize that neither of us were currently happy in our marriage. She was telling me that she felt I was distant, not interested in her and not really putting effort into meeting the expectations that she had about little things that showed her I cared and thought about her. She is right. The conduct on my end has been changed in the past few weeks since we talked. I recognize that a few weeks of improved behavior doesn't fix a marriage but she does indicate that the changes she sees are what she wants, that she feels loved and feels the loving affection and connection she has been missing and I know that by sheer force of will, I can continue to deliver what she has been missing. But when we talked, I came to realize that my focus on my partner had faded due to a few things: our long-time flagging sex life, our lack of common interests and a few other contrasts I outline below.
Our sex life has never been a raging fire. Prior to meeting my wife, I had many partners (all female) and was dating several women off-and-on before we met. I can confidently say that I've never found my wife to be an enthusiastic lover. With a few scant exceptions, I have always initiated sex. Like, literally less than twenty times in our relationship of 17 years has she brought sex to me. For her to come to me for sex is vanishingly rare. Part of it is that I am large and so vaginal sex makes her uncomfortable. But part of it is just a general lack of interest on her part, honestly. In addition to that, if I try to kiss her anywhere that is not her neck or mouth, she shields her body from me with her hands. She places her hands between her body and myself almost reflexively, even though I have carefully expressed disappointment during less passionate moments. Having someone act like something as simple as kissing her breasts or stomach warrants treating me like an unwelcome attacker is an absolute mood killer. It seems like a trauma response but she insists that she has never been sexually assaulted and I believe her. I love to give oral sex and she does not want me doing that. I have held out hope that things would get better but we will be married 12 years this year and there has been no change. For someone who has always been vigorously sexually active prior to being with her, this is a big loss for me. I have discussed with my father what his sex drive is like at 80+ years old and he assures me that that interest has not flagged for him; my mother died in 2012 but her zest for intercourse was also apparent in her taste in jokes and a few drunken conversations over the years. So I don't anticipate that my interest in having a prolific and passionate sex life will just go away. In one episode in our sexual history, I had started a new medication that affected my ability to reach orgasm in the short term. During this session, we ended up focusing more on me than normal and I gave her suggestions for some approaches that were new for us (using toys on me, not something we had done before). I did eventually reach climax but she later informed me that the episode had been like work for her, not an episode of pleasure and rather than rising to the challenge of finding some creative approaches, she made it clear that that entire session was not something she was interested in repeating. That was discouraging, to say the least. We have tried talking about why our interest has dwindled and the last time it was specifically discussed, she told me that she had simply forgotten how to initiate the act. That pretty much just abandoned me with all responsibility for our sex life. If there is something I am doing that drives her away from our sex, she is not sharing that. I know her well and I truly believe that I'm getting all of the sexual attantion she can muster. She doesn't talk openly and well about our sex life. When I try to talk to her about things involving our sex life, the conversation is halting and stalls out. She just doesn't seem comfortable talking about the details and intimate components of our sex life so talking it out has never really been successful. She doesn't really leave the house and works from home so I don't even see how infidelity is possibly involved. I don't think that the problem is that she doesn't want sex with me so much as that she just isn't interested in sex with anyone. This realization is the most disheartening: I think she is perfectly content to not have sex in our marriage, and obviously that's not what I want. I've been holding out hope that things would improve for a long long time but they have not, and to improve things, she would have to show an interest in sex that she has heretofore never shown.
Like many people in my industry (software engineering), I love games. Tabletop games, video games, all sorts of games. I'm actually designing a modular deck builder game that is nearly completed. Gaming is my passion. It's very obviously and clearly at the top of my list of activities that give me enjoyment. My wife hates playing games. She sees it as a task to be completed, not an activity to be enjoyed. She will concede to play games with me probably like five or six times a year. And honestly, when we play, she is good at these games. One game we enjoy (Splendor). . .I can't remember that last time I won against her. And understand I would never let someone win just for some other reason. . .if someone takes the time to play a game with me, I give them a worthy opponent if I can. As for game projects I have done over the years, I would describe her as tolerant of my activities there. She will talk about these efforts with cool regard but has never truly been supportive or enthusiatic about my projects. She may have played the game I'm developing now once. In contrast, she has no real interests that I can discern. It's strange to me. . .but she has no real hobbies or interests. She listens to murdetrue crime podcasts, scrolls endlessly on her phone, shops for stuff online. . .not much else. She has a little chihuahua mix that she fawns over constantly and I participate in that as much as I can. I love the little dog and I'm actually watching that dog now while she is out of town on business. The dog is super-affectionate toward me so there is no point of contention there. Everyone loves everyone. . .but it is not really an interest, per se. She has developed a few short-term interests (acrylic painting, photography) but she has always held me away, at arm's length. Never have I been invited to participate or join her when she has done these things. I don't know if she fears scrutiny or just wants solitude for these few creative facets of her self but I am clearly not supposed to be a part of these things. There are no activities that she savors that I can enjoy with her, and I feel that absence. The activities I love are things she is aware of, but she doesn't do those things very often, and I feel that absence as well. We end up streaming shows that we can both enjoy and sitting in a cuddly fashion on the loveseat with the dog. That and going out to eat pretty much encompasses the activities we share, and its pretty bland.
Another huge gulf between us is just a contrast in our natures. I am a solid extrovert and she is a pronounced introvert. Once a month, I host a group of friends to play tabletop games, enjoy some adult beverages and such, listen to music. . .very chill. She shuts herself into the master bedroom and does not participate. I play the role of host for a gaming meetup at the local game store; she has never once come to join us. Her friends invite her to do things and she participates very sporadically. Her introverted nature has sometimes put a wet blanket on plans I might want to have. My monthly gaming sessions at one point involved a friend of many years driving from two hours away and for a while, she wouldn't let him sleep over and instead expected him to stay in an AirBnB situation. Her sensitivity to social contact is pronounced enough that recently, when she had to have brunch on Saturday morning, a graduation party on Saturday afternoon and then a family gathering with my people on Sunday afternoon, this was too much for her to cope with and she took the following Monday off. In typing this up, it occurs to me that her social aversion may have become more pronounced over the years.
Finally, there is the ways that she holds me away in some contexts. In every home we have shared, I have been encouraged to use another bathroom that is not the master, leaving the master for her exclusive use. She seems to want to have her own spaces for things. She has always had a sanctuary room that she can retreat to that I do not have any influence on, which is fine. I have also generally had a space for my computing and gaming hobbies, however those were shared spaces in the past when we couldn't afford a big enough space for everyone. There is a portion of our kitchen that she expects to be for her exclusive use. In talking to her about this part of our lives, I have recently discovered that her feeling is that in places in the house where our clutter is mixed, even if her things are there, she doesn't feel welcome there. She appears to only feel comfortable using spaces that are "safe" and exclusive for her use. We have stopped sharing a bed, which really bothers me but, to be fair, I have restless leg syndrome and a CPAP device so my nocturnal situation is not truly accomodating. However, along with the other ways she holds me away, it just adds to that feeling.
I'm going to be fifty in January. To be clear: there is no other person in the picture on my end. I really don't want to be looking for a new partner at fifty. But I also really don't want to stay in a sexless marriage with someone who holds me at arm's length and shares so little with me. Again, and I can't stress this enough, for companionship and friendship, we are 100% aces. When it is just the two of us, we communicate openly and well about almost everything (except sex, obviously). But I want someone who wants me, passionately and openly. I want someone who can share the things I truly love willingly and draw pleasure from them, as well as invite me into their own emotional and meaningful episodes that we can share. As I have said, I can keep her satsified in our marriage just by trying and I'm certain I can do it indefinitely. But there will be broad categories that I will be unsatisfied in and I find myself having to decide if I want to keep myself in a marriage that is missing so much, or make the change and find myself adrift as I approach my later years. It's a shit choice, really. I think that if she started delivering passion and enthusiasm for our sex life and shared some interests with me, I could maybe get around the rest of it.
Am I being unreasonable in thinking these things that I feel are missing are important?
Are these absences meaningful enough that I should seek a new partner at my age?
How much does it suck to date at 50?

https://old.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/140k3q7/corncobsammys_igs_rep_page/
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Dear Inquirant,
Thank you for your interest in the Michigan tinnitus device. We appreciate your eagerness to find relief from tinnitus.
We are excited to share our progress with you. Our recently published second human trial, featured in the JAMA Open Network and a University of Michigan press release, has shown very encouraging results. We are actively working to obtain FDA clearance through Auricle, Inc., a privately held company.
While we cannot provide specific timelines for regulatory clearance or commercial availability at this time, please be assured that we are fully committed to achieving these goals.
We understand the impact tinnitus can have on your quality of life, and we are optimistic about the positive outcomes our device can offer. We greatly appreciate your patience and support during this process. Importantly, despite my retirement from the University of Michigan, I remain an active emerita professor and will continue in my role as Chief Scientific Officer of Auricle, Inc.
To stay up to date on our progress, please enroll for updates by sending an email to [email protected].
Thank you for your understanding and unwavering interest in our work.
Warm regards,
Susan E. Shore, PhD
Professor Emerita, University of Michigan
Chief Scientific Officer, Auricle, Inc.

Dr. Shore sent out a report reassuring us of her progress!
Dear Inquirant, Thank you for your interest in the Michigan tinnitus device. We appreciate your eagerness to find relief from tinnitus. We are excited to share our progress with you. Our recently published second human trial, featured in the JAMA Open Network (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2805515) and a University of Michigan press release (https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/study-shows-promising-treatment-tinnitus), has shown very encouraging results. We are actively working to obtain FDA clearance through Auricle, Inc., a privately held company. While we cannot provide specific timelines for regulatory clearance or commercial availability at this time, please be assured that we are fully committed to achieving these goals. We understand the impact tinnitus can have on your quality of life, and we are optimistic about the positive outcomes our device can offer. We greatly appreciate your patience and support during this process. Importantly, despite my retirement from the University of Michigan, I remain an active emerita professor and will continue in my role as Chief Scientific Officer of Auricle, Inc. To stay up to date on our progress, please enroll for updates by sending an email to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]). T hank you for your understanding and unwavering interest in our work. Warm regards, Susan E. Shore, PhD Professor Emerita, University of Michigan Chief Scientific Officer, Auricle, Inc.