and how extensive was this practice

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT NINA!! anything you want to share about her, i want to collect

OOH OKAY ALRIGJT. (btw sorry this took a while i wrote up most of it days ago but The Tasks. you know how it is. here's a sketch for now)

so the thing about nina is that she is a really really old oc that i decided to revive over the summer to see what i could do with my current understanding of science and techmology so she doesn't really have an actual storyline. but here's some tidbits (under the cut because I have a lot to talk about). also warning for discussion of some unethical biomedical practices

- she's from kind of a cyberpunk dystopia where extreme human genetic alteration is possible (in embryos only ofc) but very very expensive because of not only the procedures needed to make an altered zygote but the resources required to incubate it for a full gestation period and because only some will end up viable the lab will have to create and incubate a carefully calculated number of embryos often with slight differences to ensure at least one will fully develop (this will be relevant i swear)

- so the technology is basically only available to the ultra rich

- nina was intended to have superficial birdlike features (think feathers instead of hair, high visual acuity, some minor skeletal alterations) but the lab done fucked up and she's much more bird than intended. im not an expert on emerging gene editing technology maybe the targeting sequences they used were a little off due to a glitch but you can see how she turned out

- the person who commissioned her didn't accept her and culling a fully developed altered human is well. murder. so she ended up in a care facility for rejected lab kids like herself

- she took way longer than a typical human child to start actually communicating when she talked but she was able to mimic words and phrases very very early. kind of creeped a lot of her caretakers out to greet her and hear their own slightly distorted voice repeat the greeting back from the mouth of a like two month old

- she eventually settled into her own voice but you could potentially identify the person who taught her some phrases if you knew them already. she's still a great mimic since she basically has a syrinx in there

- she struggles with verbal and written communication in general, a little better with body language at least for interpreting intentions/tone but different people can have very different body language ofc

- she also tends to be hyperactive (partly due to extremely high metabolism) and sort of impulsive

- incredible vision and spatial reasoning (those big bird eyes)

- technically with how large she is (about 4'3" if she could stand up straight without falling over and 70-80 lbs?) she shouldn't be able to fly but i ignore that

- remember how i said the duplicate embryos would be relevant well she has a secret not-quite twin another survivor from the same batch. idk how they got separated (remember i came up with the bones of this when i was like 10) but her twin had a messier life

- nina herself ended up as some kind of specialized government operative (cue booing) no she gets out of it in the end i swear

- the twin is a major figure in the conflict around rights for altered humans

- at some point the two of them meet and eventually join forces idk like i said there isn't a real story to this

- she has 2 fingers and the thumb free to move on each hand but they aren't very dextrous so she mainly uses her feet for fine motor tasks

- she also has difficulty emoting in a way that most humans can interpret due to the beak

- i have also made nina as a dnd character (her human parents gave her up to a monastery as an infant having frankly no idea what to do with her which she left as a teenager and became a highwayman as her appearance leads most potential benefactors to believe she's cursed) she has +5 dex and -1 con

and here's a little portrait for anyone who read this far. my beautiful daughter who i love so much <3

Incubation Guide

Brought to you by Equinox Giants Farm

I am currently waiting for my latest hatch to finish, so I figured I’d write up a little incubation guide for anyone curious. I’ve only been hatching my own chicks since 2018, but have used both locally purchased eggs, shipped eggs, and eggs from my own flock and have learned a thing or two so far.

I’ll add more illustrations later!

This guide is specifically about artificial incubation, not natural incubation using a broody hen. 

While broody hens seem to be the very best at hatching eggs successfully, there are several reasons why we instead use artificial incubators:

Cleanliness

No worrying about the hen/bedding passing any parasites or disease to the chicks as they hatch

Quantity

Hens are very limited in how many eggs they can set at a time, incubators can hold anywhere from 3 to 400, depending on the size/style.

More Eggs

When a hen is allowed to go broody she will stop laying. By collecting her eggs, we discourage her going broody which means she produces more, and doesn’t go through the labor of brooding.

Chick Safety

Not all hens that go broody will be good mothers. I’ve seen my fair share of very, very bad broodies who were inconsistent in their setting, or plain out killed their own chicks.

However, we’re not terribly good at replicating nature’s incubator even with all of our modern technology. A hen doesn’t need a thermometer, hydrometer, or turning rack because she has the necessary heat, humidity, and movement built-in already. So when we’re incubating artificially, we need these tools in order to attempt to mimic a broody hen as well as possible.

We know now that there are certain parameters that seem to be the best for encouraging good development and hatching:

Temperature: 99.5°F / 37.5°C Humidity: 40-55% for days 1-18 | 65-75% for days 19-21 (until everyone has hatched)

Temperature is simply warmth, without it the eggs fail to develop and the embryo dies. Too much heat will also kill the embryo. There’s a little wiggle room either way, but trying to maintain right around 99.5°F, only deviating around 0.5°F either way is important. A little too cool, and chicks will be slow to hatch and be mistakenly presumed dead. A little too hot, and chicks may hatch early and not have fully absorbed their yolk, often resulting in death.

Incubators achieve the proper temperature typically via a built-in thermostat set to 99.5°F, though some allow you to adjust this as some species of birds need slightly different temperatures. The heating element itself is hotter than that, because it needs to fill the entire space of the incubator with air warmed to 99.5°F. There are two different styles of heating in an incubator:

Still Air

Still air, as most cheap/older incubators are, simply heats. The heating element needs to get fairly hot to maintain the temperature in the incubator, and there are usually hot and cold spots throughout it.

Circulated Air

This is undoubtedly the superior incubator style. A fan is built in, which pushes the hot air from the heater around the entire incubator. This means it all stays one, consistent temperature.

When looking for an incubator, always try to go with one that circulates the air, as you’ll have more consistent, and better results than a still-air incubator.

Humidity is the relative, ambient humidity inside of the incubator- the amount of moisture in the air. Humidity is extremely important, as it needs to be low enough that moisture evaporates from within the egg. This allows the air-space in the egg to grow and fill with oxygen, so that when the chick is ready to hatch but not yet out of the egg, they have something to breath. If the humidity is too high, then the chick will drown before hatching. It also cannot be too low, as the chick needs plenty of room to move and grow in the egg, and it needs to have enough moisture to keep the membrane inside the egg from drying out and suffocating the chick.

When a hen is brooding, she periodically gets off of her nest to go eat and drink, maybe take a nice dirt bath, and this allows moisture to rapidly escape from the eggs before she gets back on. In an incubator we do things differently, and instead maintain a constant relative humidity until “lock down.” 

The goal is for the egg to lose about 12% of its weight between day 0 and day 18. If you don’t have a hydrometer, then you can weigh the eggs once a week to make sure they’re losing weight (moisture!) appropriately. I also highly advise you buy a hydrometer, even if your incubator has one built in, to make sure it is correct.

Generally 40-50% humidity from day one until day 18 is right what the eggs need to lose the correct amount of moisture without losing too much.

After day 18 you need to raise the humidity to 65-75% humidity. This is important to allow chicks to hatch, it keeps the membranes in the egg wet enough that it’s flexible and easy for the chick to tear through. Too dry and they can’t tear it and end up “shrink-wrapped,” too wet and the chick can drown.

In incubators we control humidity via water. Most incubators have trays of some sort built in that you fill with water to increase humidity. It’s much easier to raise humidity in the incubator than lower it, generally. Lowering it involves opening pre-installed vents to allow more moisture to escape, or even siphoning water out of the incubator.

If the humidity won’t go high enough, then you may need to cover some vent holes, or add an additional cup of water/sponge to the incubator to increase it.

Some models make this easier than others, naturally. The higher-end incubators even have a built in water-pump that adds or removes water as needed to manage the humidity you set it to. 

Some folks have success with a method they call dry incubating. This means they don’t add any water to the incubator, and instead just rely on the room’s ambient humidity, only increasing once it’s time for lock-down. Success with this method is highly variable based on your own environment. I had extremely poor luck with it, but it’s worth trying if you’re having issues.

Turning of the eggs is something that is, oddly, debated among poultry fanciers. Turning eggs keeps the embryo from sticking to the side of the egg, which could result in poor or failed development. It is also said to “exercise” the fetus, encouraging movement. Hens turn eggs whenever they adjust their position and wiggle. The fact that hens do this naturally is generally a good indication that it’s good and necessary for healthy embryo development. 

Most modern incubators now come equipped with an automatic turner. I have one that turns every 6 hours, and the other turns every 2 hours. I haven’t noticed that either does better than the other in terms of how frequently eggs should be turned. Generally eggs that have been shipped does best with limited turning (4 times a day or so.) 

If your incubator does not have a turner, then you’ll have to hand turn the eggs. This gets tedious fast, so I really advise going with an automatic turner. Last June I had to hand-turn a batch of turkey eggs for 26 days, and it was honestly annoying as heck, haha. When hand-turning you’ll want to write an “X” on one side so you can tell which eggs need to be turned. Try to turn them at least 4 times a day if you can. 

The turning system, other than floor-space, is the main contributor to how many eggs an incubator can hold. Some have individual slots that one egg goes into, others have a row/rack that you line the eggs up in. Some rotate via tilting, some rotate the more natural way by rolling them. Companies claim that rolling is more natural and therefore a more successful method. I haven’t actually heard a difference in hatch rate or chick health with either method of turning.

On day 18 for chicks, or 25 for turkeys (etc), stop turning the eggs. Remove the turner if applicable. This is lock-down.

Lock-down is the term we use for the time period during which the fetuses are getting into position to hatch. This is when you can see the eggs wiggling on their own as the chick moves itself to prepare. Once in position, they usually stop moving, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t notice the eggs moving. We stop turning here so that the chicks can stay in the right position.

Once the chicks are in the right position, they will pierce the inner membrane in the egg, where the air-cell is. They will start breathing in this air, and you may start hearing very quiet peeping. This is called internal pipping. That little air cell is not very big, so they must rapidly start working to put a hole in the shell itself, called external pipping. This is a ridiculous amount of work for the tiny things, they have very limited space, and must pierce through a thick calcium structure while trying not to run out of air. Chicks are actually equipped with two important tools to do this: an egg tooth, which is an extra horny growth on the end of the beak that’s for breaking through the egg, and an extra neck muscle that allows them to use more force and rotate their neck in order to pip and unzip (hatch.)

Once pipped, the chick will take a long break. They have just used up a lot of energy in making that opening, and now they need to rest. They have not finished developing to hatch yet, so do NOT try to assist in hatching unless it’s been 48 hours since they initially pipped with no progress.

The egg yolk has not yet been fully absorbed by this point. See, the egg white provides most of the growing nutrients for young chicks, while the yolk gets absorbed into them later on when they need those nutrients to hatch and emerge, then be safe and wait for their siblings to finish hatching. If the yolk has not finished absorbing, they risk rupturing it and dying. 

Anywhere from 10 minutes to 24+ hours after pipping the chick will begin to hatch. This process is called unzipping by many. They’ll move around the edge of the air-cell within the egg, going from the pip, around the egg, and back to the pip. Then they give a mighty push, and spring free of the egg.

Upon freshly hatching the chick will be pretty useless. They’ve never used legs before, are breathing air, seeing things, smelling things- it’s all very overwhelming! They’ll flail and flop around quite a bit, moving their legs and working blood into their limbs while they work on coordinating. They will likely roll onto their backs a few times, but don’t be alarmed by this, it’s all part of the process. You’ll probably notice a few things:

There is often a fresh poop in the egg, baby’s first poop, in fact!

There is a red spot that looks like a wound on the rump under the vent. This is the naval, where the yolk has been absorbed. Keep an eye on this area to make sure it doesn’t get pecked, and that it heals up cleanly in a few days. 

The chick’s head may look a little lumpy and weird initially. Birth is weird. It should normalize in a few hours.

The chick will take several hours to fluff up. By the time they’re dry, they are usually running around a bit (mostly stumbling) and talking quite a bit, but mostly sleeping. 

Wait until all of the chicks have hatched and are dried before opening the incubator. Opening it early can rapidly rob the incubator of moisture, and result in chicks trying to hatch getting stuck in their shells. 

When everyone who is going to hatch has hatched and they are all dry, it’s time to move them into the pre-prepared brooder. 

While day 21 is usually when chicks hatch, that’s the average and not the rule. Leave eggs until day 25 to be safe. After that you can toss them, though I suggest performing an egg necropsy first to see if you can identify what caused the problem. 

After hatching is complete, you must clean the incubator. Use a chlorine/bleach solution and let it air dry, then rinse with clean water and dry. Cleaning is extremely important in preventing bacterial infections in future hatches. In fact it is required by the NPIP Program in the USA.

This post is real long now, so I will end it here, but I’ll make a follow up about incubator errors, hatching errors, and so on! If you have any questions or additions, feel free to ask!

Here’s something for Sicktember! Maybe Alan + Fever? (I think it was number 1)

Double Trouble

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: John, Scott, Alan, EOS

When Alan collapses on the way home from a rescue, they're understandably worried - but Alan might not be the only brother affected. @sicktember prompt 1: Fever

As you can see, I got two requests for this prompt, so I merged them together! Good old fever; the virus used here is an actual one, but I sped its incubation period up by... a lot. Because I could.

Sicktember 2021 Prompts - I only plan on writing prompts if I get a request for them, so request away :D Doesn’t have to be TAG - characters from any fandom can be requested (although I can only guarantee I’ll work with ones I know)

John shouldn’t have been surprised at how things ended up, but somehow he hadn’t seen it coming.

A rescue in the thick rainforests of the Amazon, complete with biting insects and various other hazards to health, had demanded the duo of Scott and Alan to tear onto the scene in Thunderbird One while Thunderbird Two was occupied in England. The situation itself had been simple enough – a couple of explorers in over their head and in need of extraction. Nothing that should have taken much time, and certainly nothing that should bring any complications.

It was always the simple-seeming ones that caused the problems. John really should have known better.

“Alan!”

Scott’s sudden cry yanked his attention back to Thunderbird One, halfway home after a successful rescue and theoretically no longer in need of Thunderbird Five’s attention, just in time for the system to recognise that his brother had thrown his ‘bird onto autopilot. Instantly, John pulled up the internal camera feed, and a projection of Scott scrambling out of his seat and darting for the slumped figure of Alan in the passenger seat appeared in front of him.

“What happened?” he demanded, drawing up his youngest brother’s suit telemetry and wincing at the figures that jumped out at him. High temperatures, concerningly so, offered an explanation for Scott’s distress, and Alan’s lack of a response. They did not, however, offer an explanation for what had happened to the teenager in the first place.

“I don’t know,” Scott replied, voice tight. “He was talking, then said his elbow was hurting, then he fainted.”

“Telemetry puts him up at one oh three,” John reported. “You need to get him home.”

“Working on it.” Scott grit his teeth, although it was painfully obvious that he didn’t want to leave Alan’s side even for the fifteen minutes or so it would take Thunderbird One at full speed to get home. John didn’t blame him.

“Strap in and I’ll pilot,” he offered, reaching out for the Thunderbird’s remote controls. Scott didn’t move for several moments, kneeling awkwardly in front of Alan with his hand on his forehead despite wearing temperature-resistant gloves that meant there was no way he could actually feel the fever for himself.

Then he shook his head, straightening back up to his full height and sparing a moment to fuss with the straps securing their younger brother in the seat. “No,” he said. “I’ll pilot. See if you can find out what’s causing this.”

“F.A.B.” John couldn’t disagree – Scott would always get more out of Thunderbird One than he could – although he wasn’t certain how much he could find out.

He toyed with the idea of alerting the rest of the family, but Thunderbird One would be home hours before Thunderbird Two, even if she left immediately. As Virgil and Gordon were snarled up in one of Lady Penelope’s events, with the added presence of both Kayo and Grandma, an immediate departure was also unlikely.

Besides, until they knew what had struck Alan down, it was best to keep him quarantined. John made a mental note to keep an eye on Scott, just in case.

Trekking back through Alan’s suit telemetry, it didn’t take long to pinpoint the initial temperature spike to only minutes before he’d passed out. Whatever it was, it had hit hard and fast.

It was also probably something from the rescue, so John set EOS to looking into every detail she could find about the area while he ran a programme looking for anomalies in the suit telemetry.

He ran the same checks on Scott’s, also bringing up his big brother’s current telemetry. There was no way Scott hadn’t also been exposed to the cause, considering the pair of them had been together all rescue; the question was whether or not Scott had also caught it.

It took EOS less than a minute to find the culprit. “John, comparing symptoms with the known lifeforms in the area, there is a ninety eight point three percent chance that Alan was bitten by Aedes albopictus and has subsequently been infected with the chikungunya virus.”

Ouch. John winced; that wasn’t going to be fun to deal with. On the plus side, however, Alan wouldn’t need a hospital. “Is it contagious?” he checked, glancing over at Scott’s telemetry again and frowning.

Scott’s temperature had climbed by half a degree.

“It cannot be transferred from human to human,” EOS confirmed. “As long as Scott was not also bitten, he is at no risk.”

John was not about to bet on that.

“Should we alert Thunderbird Two?” she continued. John thought for a moment before shaking his head, much like Scott had a few minutes prior.

“Wait until we know for sure if Scott’s clear,” he said. “There’s nothing they can do, either; let them have their fun in England.”

The virus didn’t have a cure; it was one of the many things that had to be left to run its course. Not fatal, but John was going to have an unhappy brother – potentially two – for the next week or so.

Another glance at the telemetry showed Scott’s temperature had crept up a little more.

John sighed. With the island devoid of anyone except Brains, who stood no chance against the face of Scott’s smother hen mode, it was clear that he was going to have to go home.

“EOS, get the space elevator ready,” he requested, pushing himself out of the comms sphere. “I’m going down.”

“Why?” she asked. “There is nothing that you can do, either.”

“Analyse Scott’s telemetry and tell me the chance that he’s also infected,” John said by way of answer as he passed through the gravity ring. To the AI’s credit, despite her disapproval the space elevator was clearly ready to descend.

She was silent for a moment. “From the rate of increase in Scott’s temperature in the past five minutes, there is a seventy three point nine percent chance he has also contracted chikungunya virus. But, John, there is nothing you can do for him, either.”

“He won’t rest unless he knows Alan’s in safe hands,” John reminded her. It was unlikely his big brother would even admit he was ill at all without intervention – or collapsing, much like Alan had. John wasn’t entirely sure why it was taking longer to hit Scott, but despite EOS’ calculations leaving over a twenty five percent chance that he was fine, he just knew he had it, too.

“Very well,” EOS accepted as he strapped himself into the seat. “When should I inform the rest of the family?”

The space elevator began its descent. “When they’re ready to leave England,” John decided. “They don’t need the worry ruining their day.”

“Understood.”

Thunderbird One arrived first. John had known she would, so it wasn’t a surprise when he left the space elevator to see her in her berth below. There was only one place his brothers would be, so he padded through the corridor from the main hangar until he reached the infirmary. Sure enough, Scott was standing by a bed, still in full uniform, fussing over their ill little brother.

“How’s he doing?” John asked, and narrowed his eyes when Scott jumped.

“John? What are you doing here?” Blue eyes widened, darting back to where Alan lay in the bed. “Is he-?”

“It’s not contagious,” John assured him, stepping closer and scrutinising his big brother closely. There was a bit more colour in his cheeks than he’d noticed through the hologram, and a tightness around his eyes suggested he was feeling some aches and pains himself.

“You found out what it is?” Scott leapt on the insinuation, and John nodded, coming to a stop close enough to his brother for their shoulders to brush.

“Chikungunya virus,” he said. “He must have been bitten by a mosquito while you were out.” He raised a hand and pressed it against the back of Scott’s neck, eliciting another jump from his brother. “And from the looks of things, he’s not the only one.”

“Wha-?” Scott started, ducking away from John’s touch. “John, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you, you idiot,” he said bluntly. “Your temperature’s been rising ever since you left the rainforest, too.”

“I’m fine.”

John rolled his eyes and grabbed his brother again, gripping him tightly enough to discourage escape as his hand found Scott’s forehead. His suit meant he couldn’t feel if he was broadcasting heat, but he didn’t have to feel it – his suit also had temperature sensors.

Scott wriggled free, only to waver where he stood.

“You’ve breached a hundred,” John said matter-of-factly, barely glancing at the number that appeared in favour of grabbing hold of Scott’s arms and keeping his brother upright. “Sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m fine,” Scott repeated, but despite John’s grip he was still clearly unsteady. “Alan-”

“Can wait a few more minutes while I get you into a bed,” John finished for him, dragging one arm across his shoulders and wrapping his own around Scott’s waist. “Come on, big brother. The faster you do as you’re told, the faster I can focus on Alan.”

Scott dug his heels in, because of course he did, but John had practice dealing with his stubbornness and pulled him along regardless, conscious that he was taking most of his brother’s weight across the last few steps. What was supposed to be a controlled sit ended up a chaotic collapse as the fever dug its claws in, leaving John sprawled on the bed with a brother half on top of him. He wriggled out with a groan, and then had to pin Scott down as he too tried to get back up.

“Let’s get you out of this,” he said, yanking at the zipper on the front of Scott’s uniform before unclasping the bracers and slipping the gloves off. Ineffective hands failed to bat him away as he relieved his brother of his baldric before the greaves and boots went the same way as the discarded bracers and gloves. “Are you still here enough to take your flightsuit off yourself, or do I need to do that, too?” he asked.

Scott, eyes bright and scowling, shoved at him. “Look after Alan,” he insisted, and John sighed.

“I’ll look after Alan if you get changed by yourself,” he bargained, taking the risk to leave his older brother long enough to retrieve the pyjamas that stayed in the room out of necessity, which he tossed onto his lap. Scott grumbled, and John chose to take that as agreement, no matter how clearly begrudging it was.

Scott was right that Alan seemed worse – the teenager was restless even in unconsciousness, tossing around and letting small whimpers out with each breath. There was an IV already inserted in his hand, which John quickly determined was a simple drip to keep him hydrated as the fever made him sweat.

Seeing his youngest brother in that state was deeply unpleasant, but there was little to be done about it while Alan fought off the virus. All John could do was fetch a lukewarm towel to siphon off the sweat with and card his fingers through tousled blond hair, the neoprene ridges catching stray strands.

A thud jerked his attention back to his other sick brother, who had apparently decided that getting into pyjamas did not necessitate then getting into bed, and had seemingly tried to return to Alan’s side. With a sigh and one last dab of the towel, John circled around Alan’s bed to pick his idiot big brother up from where he was trying and failing to get off of the floor.

“Bed,” he said firmly, steering him back towards it and pushing him down until he was laying flat. “I’ve got Alan, you stay put.”

“But-” Scott protested, getting up as far as his quivering elbows before John firmly settled him back down.

“Don’t make me sedate you,” he threatened, although in all honestly Scott was probably going to lose the rest of his strength sooner rather than later. Sedation wouldn’t be necessary at all, although John was prepared to deploy an IV if Scott ended up as bad as Alan. “I will tie you to that bed.”

That wasn’t an empty threat. He didn’t remember exactly why they had restraints in the infirmary, but they had been deemed necessary more than once – usually with Scott. John was pragmatic enough to use anything available in order to make sure his brothers were recovering as best they could, and Scott knew that.

His big brother caved with bad grace, and John set up a monitor on both of them in order to keep track of their temperatures. Alan was higher, but Scott’s was the wrong side of a hundred and still climbing, too.

Things were only going to get worse before they got better, but in a few hours he’d have reinforcement in the shape of the family medics. Until then, John just had to keep an eye on both brothers, and make sure Scott stayed in bed where he was supposed to be.

With Alan’s condition clearly the worse of the two, that was going to be a tall order.

Little Moon

Chapter: 1/?

Words: 1083

Summary: Jo knew from the moment she held Luna’s hand that she had to protect her from becoming the foster kid that she was. So Jo adopts Lina and this is their lives together as Mama and Little Moon.

Basically, this is a series of little moments with Jo and Luna.

Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy.

Characters: Jo Wilson, Luna Ashton, (Side: Cormac Hayes, and Amelia Shepherd.)

Rating: Gen. Audiences.

Additional Tags: Fluff, all the fluff, Parenting, Babies, NICU Baby, Foster Care, Jo being a Mom! Other characters to be added.

Read at AO3

Read at FFN

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Jo had been standing between the NICU incubators as she waited for Heyes to get out of surgery with Luna. She rubbed her hands together so hard that she had broken the gloves she was wearing and had to grab a new pair. The second she saw Hayes with the incubator Jo went to Luna’s side and watched her every move. The little bit of relief that she felt hearing that the surgery went well and that Luna was doing good, was overshadowed by the grief she felt for losing Val. 

Val's words replayed in her head. All she wanted was for her daughter to be held. It hit so close to home because Jo was Luna. She was the baby left in a stroller at a fire station with no mother to hold her. All babies need to be held, especially motherless babies. 

Jo stripped off her gloves and rubbed the hand sanitizer over her fingers before she opened the little window in the incubator. She pulled back the blanket that Luna was swaddled in. Her tiny arm was barely the size of Jo’s finger. She reached in to hold Luna’s tiny hand as it barely wraps around the tip of her finger. 

Most newborns have a grasp reflex. It’s a death grip where they just grab onto your finger and won't let go. Luna’s fingers touch Jo’s in the lightest grip she had ever seen in a preemie. Luna doesn't have the grasp reflex, she’s too young to have any reflexes, but Jo still held her hand because Val’s last wish was that her daughter be held and although Jo can't pick her up, she held her hand.

She sees Luna's eyes open, although she still squints at the bright lights of the NICU. Jo grabbed the blanket and put it over the warmer to shield her eyes. Luna had just reached 29 weeks gestation making her three weeks old and her awake periods were getting longer. Especially since she gained half a pound since she was born.

“Hi Luna,” Jo whispered to her as she watched Luna react to her voice.

Luna stretched out her arms and let go of Jo’s finger. She always reacted to Jo’s voice whenever Jo talked to her. She would kick or move her arms even turning her head towards her. Jo captured Luna’s finger again and gently hung on to her. 

“I've got you, Luna, I know your Mommy is gone, but I've got you.” 

Jo knew the protocol for NICU babies whose parents died or gave them up from her days on Peds as a resident. She knew that a CPS worker would come in soon, but because of the pandemic things had been slow and Luna's not going anywhere. Any CPS issues would be handled over the phone, but Luna would need a guardian immediately. Jo looked up to see Hayes at the nurse’s station on the phone and she could faintly hear him talking with the CPS worker. 

She knew that Luna would become a foster kid like she was. Maybe she would get adopted, maybe she would have a good life, but Jo knew from experience that that wasn't always the case. Luna could bounce around from home to home because nobody wanted a baby with health issues. Jo had to fight for Luna. She didn’t know how but Luna needed somebody and Jo was there. She could fight for Luna like she couldn't fight for Val. She could protect Val’s daughter, now that she was gone. Jo could be there for Luna and advocate for her like somebody should have for her, when Jo was a baby. 

Jo wasn’t sure how to protect Luna, but there were people close to her who would know what to do. She hated to have to leave Luna’s side, but luckily she didn't have to. Jo pulled out her phone and dialed Amelia's number. Amelia didn't pick up right away and the phone rang a few times before she picked up.

“Hey Jo, now's not really a good time can I call you back?” Amelia said, and Jo could hear the stress in her voice.

“Yeah, no problem I just have a couple of questions for you about your fostering process with Leo. I’m still at the hospital so no rush. Just call whenever you're available,” Jo said with a nod as she looked down at Luna again. 

“Thanks, you know, why don't you try Owen. He's the one who applied to foster Leo in the first place.”

“Okay, yeah, thank you,” Jo said before she and Amelia quickly hung up. 

Jo looked down at Luna again, she had calmed back down and closed her eyes. Jo called Owen, but unfortunately, he didn’t pick up. Jo put her phone away and figured she would try again later. She ran through a mental list of other people she thought she could call, there was Meredith, but she was on a vent. Bailey who although technically didn't foster Joey, she still had the experience. Yet, Jo didn't want to bother the chief. Especially as the last time Jo checked, she was still asleep and Meredith's room. 

The one thing Jo hated about the pandemic was how far away everyone seemed. The only person she took her mask off around was Levi or Jackson and because Scout was still a newborn she hadn’t even held him since before the shutdown. She hadn’t seen Link in weeks and even then it was with a mask and six feet apart. 

She wanted to get things moving as quickly as possible, but she knew from experience that this process would take time. Luckily for her, Luna would still need to be in the NICU for a number of weeks, so instead Jo looked down at her and held her hand.

“I've got you, Luna, okay. You're not going anywhere and neither am I. You're going to stay right here and everything's going to be okay, I promise.” 

Luna's eyes opened as she heard Jo's voice and Jo smiled down at her as the tears collected in her eyes again. She was going to stay there and hold Luna’s hand until  Hayes kicked her out at the NICU, but as she looked up and caught his eyes across the room she knew he wouldn't. Jo looked around and grabbed one of the extra stools before she sat down and stared at Luna still holding her hand. Jo wasn't going anywhere.

The Viral Theory

Well, while quarantine I was really nervy, so to calm myself down I figured out a theory about the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer. But I am warning you all, guys: it has plenty of holes like a piece of good French cheese.

Okay, look here. I don’t know how crazy I am, but I turned my attention to the fact the Mind Flayer can’t go and penetrate a living organism, he needs to contact jelly coats. Also it isn’t quite clear why the Mind Flayer waited the whole year before possessing Will in season 2. In season 3, the Mind Flayer broke free as the crack between the parallel universes just opened slightly and it possessed rats outright. And then it found a proper host.  

And I wondered if the Mind Flayer was a physical entity at all. And whether the Upside Down exists as a physical place, too. I mean, there is a place where Will and Nancy and Joyce and Hopper have been to. There is a place where lab scientists set up an electric generator. That place is certainly real. But what about the Upside Down Will and Billy found themselves in? If you watch the scene, where the Shadow Monster was possessing Will, very closely, you can notice something like a hold-off. At the Upside Down Will is shivering; his eyes open wide, his mouth gapes, but in our world, in our world he looks totally calm. He is standing very still in the middle of a football field. And both his eyes and his mouth are definitely closed. 

In season two, Dr.Owens describes Will’s case as a virus with a hive mind. And that virus binds its hosts up as a system of communicating vessels. As if they are a single organism.  

OK, let’s consider that thing as a virus. Apparently, it can’t survive in our world without a host, so as soon as that virus gets in a living organism it begins to convert that organism building a respective environment for itselfs. For example, the Upside Down vines sprouted through the gate between the universes and began to transform the soil. I don’t know how long it lasted. Perhaps, the process quickened as soon as the vines had reached fertilized fields. 

In fact, for most pathogens, there is a direct relation between the number of them getting into a living organism and the severity of the clinical progression. For that very reason, doctors, nurses and patients’ relatives fight that hard while recovering from COVID-19. Also, that’s why the chance of catching lots of it while using an elevator is a bit higher than next to none (we all differ in terms of immune reactions), but just a very little bit.  

So, let’s suppose that in season 1, not only a parasite got into Will’s body together with the vine (as we know, he threw the parasite up before the Christmas dinner), but a dose of pathogens did it, too. The dose was little enough, and thus the incubation period lasted almost two months before Will had had his first episode. The first of many.

Let’s make one more conjecture. Since Will is an intelligent being, unlike the soil and rats, there is some buffer space that has been forming around him. As his disease was progressing, that space became more real. It had become so real that a year later, the Shadow Monster could meet Will there and penetrate him in the material layer. Then the disease got to the acute stage.

By the way, maybe, thanks to Will, the Mind Flayer was able to build up something like an immunity so he could survive in our world for a short spell without a host. As for Billy, he was attacked by a quite material thing which poured a lot of plasma with pathogens into him. That’s the reason he found himself in the Upside Down about mere twenty minutes later after the attack. 

Oh, yeah! Based upon this theory, after walking through the tunnels Dastin and Hopper were infected too because both of them were attacked by Upside Down flowers there. Anyway, Hopper definitely spat out some black liquid when he was regaining consciousness after an Upside Down flower sprinkled him with spores. I know it would be more logical if the infection had revealed itself in season 3, but maybe it will do that in the next season. Something like sleeping hosts, I guess.

Anyway, I’m not pressing my point, just trying to make a system with those things we saw in the show. It’s calming.

re: thing in the garage: do you have those samples on any sort of medium? all i see is paper towels. what's the game plan here?

i have a few different sizes of containers in there: 1 large (2 inches across, 2 inches deep) one, 2 medium (two inches across, one inch deep) ones, and 8 small (one inch across, one inch deep) ones. the large one just has a wet paper towel in it, but with the medium containers i did one with just a paper towel and one with mulch from next to the garage in it along with a paper towel. for the small ones, i did 4 with just a paper towel and 4 with a paper towel and mulch. i didn’t have many containers left, but i tried to do controls by putting just paper towels in a 1.5 across, one inch deep container, and paper towels + mulch inside a medium container (no spores in either). unfortunately i dont have petri dishes with actual agar in them to provide for these dudes, or even like, sterile containers i know are sterile, but for the purposes of just seeing what grows through all of them, i don’t think it needs to be as sterile as it would be otherwise (this is like....way too many variables for an actual science experiment too lmao but i’m not really testing for anything inparticular). 

now, the general idea of this experiment comes from the book ‘Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds’ by Stephen L. Stephenson and Henry Stempen (side note: this is a cool slime mold book in general). they describe how to go about finding and collecting slime molds in the wild by just like, kinda getting a ton of bark from your local forest and shoving them in wet containers. because i directly put spores from the thing on the paper towels in each with q-tips, i didn’t follow this tutorial exactly, but here’s the full quote (pages 41-44, so putting it under a cut for those interested): 

“PREPARING MOIST CHAMBERS

The next step in setting up a moist chamber involves preparing the culture chamber itself. Petri dishes (Figure 3-2) have been widely used as culture chambers, but any similar container or shallow bowl that can be covered with a top or lid will work just as well. 

Many modern workers use plastic Petri dishes, which are simply discarded when no longer needed. Plastic containers have another major advantage over glass containers. In a moist chamber, the fruiting bodies of myxomycetes sometimes develop on the side of the container and on the lower surface of the top or lid. When this happens, the only way to harvest the fruiting bodies is to cut away the portion of the container upon which they developed. This is rather difficult to do with a glass container, but relatively easy with plastic. 

Once a suitable container has been selected, it should be fitted with a filter paper disk or a piece of absorbent paper towel trimmed to the appropriate size. For experiments designed to study the differences that exist in the species of myxomycetes obtained from bark samples from different tree species or trees growing in different habitats, care should be taken to prevent the potential contamination of one culture with spores from another by sterilizing all the equipment used in preparing moist chamber cultures, including all the paper used to cover the bottom of the culture chambers. If the only objective of preparing cultures is simply to obtain a variety of different myxomycetes, sterilization is not necessary. 

After the filter paper or paper towel is in place, it should be covered with samples of the organic debris (bark, leaves, twigs, or dung) to be cultured. The samples should not overlap with each other to any great extent, and bark samples should be placed in the container with their cut surfaces facing downward. Enough distilled water (tap water can be used if distilled water is not available) is then added to completely cover the samples. The container is covered and set aside to allow the sample to soak up the moisture overnight. 

Each container should be labeled, either with a piece of tape applied to the side so as not to obscure any portion of the bottom when the container is viewed from above or by writing directly on the lid with a wax pencil. If the latter method is used, it sometimes becomes necessary to rotate the lid of the dish when making observations of the samples to view portions of the bottom otherwise obscured by the writing. The next day, excess water in the container must be poured off and the cultures set aside and disturbed as little as possible. If Petri dishes are used, they may be stacked to save space. Cultures should be incubated at ordinary room temperatures under diffuse light. 

CHECKING THE CULTURES

Cultures should be observed a day or two after they have been established and thereafter on a regular basis (that is, at least once every few days) for at least two weeks. After this time, cultures may be checked at less frequent intervals for as long as they are maintained. It is possible to maintain cultures for several months or more. In fact, some species of myxomycetes which appear in moist chamber cultures typically require weeks or even months to develop. This is almost always the case for species associated with dung. In contrast, many of the species that produce very small fruiting bodies, such as species of Echinostelium (including the exceedingly common E. minutum), often appear rather quickly, sometimes within 24 to 48 hours. Since the cultures slowly dry out, it may be necessary to add more water from time to time to keep cultures moist throughout the incubation period. 

It is important that all cultures be checked as carefully as possible to detect all the fruiting bodies that may be present. Sometimes only one or a few fruiting bodies of a given species develop; in other cases hundreds of fruiting bodies are produced. Moreover, it is not unusual for a single culture to yield the fruiting bodies of several different species. 

Cultures are most easily checked using a dissecting microscope, but a good hand lens (at least x10) may be used if a microscope is not available. In some instances, fruiting bodies are clearly visible to the naked eye. Since removing the lid can interfere with the development of fruiting bodies not yet completely mature, a culture should be examined by viewing through the lid whenever possible. 

When fruiting bodies are detected in a culture, they should be harvested as soon as circumstances permit. If this is not done, the fruiting bodies soon become moldy. Cultures should be left covered until the fruiting bodies are completely mature, though often it is helpful to raise the lid on one side to allow gradual drying of the fruiting bodies. When dry, the fruiting bodies can be harvested by removing both the fruiting bodies and portions of the substrate upon which they developed. Once the fruiting bodies have been removed from the culture, they should be allowed to air-dry. Then each individual collection should be placed in a small box for permanent storage, as described earlier in this chapter. 

The question has been raised whether the species of myxomycetes appearing on various substrates placed in moist chamber cultures necessarily produce fruiting bodies on the same substrates in nature, since their appearance in such cultures may reflect nothing more than the presence of spores, microcysts, or sclerotia on these substrates (Brooks 1967; Keller and Brooks 1973; Blackwell and Gilbertson 1984). Although the data available on myxomycete distribution patterns are still too limited to permit a definitive answer to this question, there is mounting evidence that with diligent collecting many (and perhaps most) of the species obtained from moist chamber cultures prepared with material from a particular microhabitat occur as natural fruiting within the same microhabitat (Whitney 1982; Blackwell and Gilbertson 1984; Stephenson 1988, 1989). It does not always follow, however, that these species are necessarily restricted to the particular habitat, although this sometimes seems to be the case.”

Best 8 Water filter at cheap rate

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On the scope of the problem

Got to thinking, and doing some quick numbers. I should emphasize I am not not not not a doctor or an epidemiologist, and I am not running sophisticated projections here. I’m just a guy who’s thinking about this stuff.

While a lot of people are self-isolating, frankly just as many people are being juvenile contrarians and not, so it kinda events out at the moment.

I’m seeing projections of 50-70% of the population getting Covid19. And last I heard the mortality rate is somewhere around 1%. Guessing maybe 2% need to be in an ICU. Let’s roll with those numbers for a bit.

Now, given the current behaviors, that 50-70% is gonna happen pretty fast.

Figure, oh, we’re looking at people being idiots and maybe 10% of the population gets this bug at once.

That’s... 327 million people, so about 30 million people sick. 1% of those comes to 300,000 people in ICU just from Covid19.

There are only 500,000 critical care nurses in the USA. (Less than half are working in ICUs, but let’s pretend they all are.) See, critical care is a specialized skillset. There are over 2.5 million registered nurses in the USA, but they’re not all active, and of those that are, not all of them have the training to do ICU. You can’t throw any random nurse into the ICU.

Now, the thing about ICU is, it’s about, well, intensive support. You’re supposed to have, at any given time, 1 ICU nurse for every two patients. But that’s around-the-clock. So basically you’re supposed to have one ICU nurse per patient - 12 hours on, 12 hours off. That’s more hours than they should be working, but it happens. Too often, it happens.

That means, given current behaviors, we will need to have 300,000 critical care nurses devoted exclusively to taking care of Covid19 patients. To the exclusion of everything else. Which we don’t get to exclude, because heart attacks, cancer, accidents, etc., are not going to politely take a couple of months off.

Let me cut to the chase: we don’t have enough people. We don’t have nearly enough ICU nurses to meet the current projected demand.

I’m being pretty cautious with some numbers, and spitballing some others. We have no real idea of what percentage of Covid19 patients need to be in an ICU. But the one thing we can control is how many people get this disease at any one time. You’ll still very probably get the disease, mind. It’s infectious, it’s in the general population, it has an absurdly long latency, and its initial symptoms match basically everything else. But the longer you, personally, can go without getting it the better. This is what is being called “flattening the curve”. The total number of cases will be the same, but it’ll be over the course of months and our system can handle it. Ironically, to make this work we’ll have to treat what looks like a big fat nothing as if it’s the End Of The World. For seemingly waaaay too long.

How long?

Again, I’m not an epidemiologist. What I’m going to guess is, the minimum is 2-3 times the incubation period of 14 days... from when everyone takes this shit seriously. Please note - “not going out except getting your daily fix at Starbuck’s” is NOT the same as “not going out”. It’s better than, like, standing on the National Mall and shaking hands with people coming off the Metro, but it’s far less than we need.

Right now, many people are either not self-isolating at all, or they’re not taking it seriously. If what we’ve seen in Italy is any indication, in two weeks a whole lotta people who are like that will get sick. And in the interim they’ll have gotten a lot of other people sick, and... anyway.

I’m thinking, optimistically, six to eight weeks. Honestly? Longer. Because the USA is weird. We’ve got big population clusters which communicate with each other, and we’ve got much lower density areas, and not all the much communication between them. I betcha we’ll see some interesting dynamics as those lower-population areas act as reservoirs, reinfecting population centers which were preemptively trying to Go Back To Normal. That’s beyond my ability to project.

But for now, my big takeaway is - what we are doing is Not Enough and we really, seriously need to be staying at home all the damned time. Oh, and wash your hands.

For most of us, life as we know it took a turn on that sunday afternoon of March 15. In my case, that meant the two pending cats I had on Wednesday were cancelled. To be honest, for a minute, I was quite excited. For me it meant no more late nights trying to understand the classification of wetland hydrology. That was something. It's all fun and games until someone is hooked up to a ventilator...if you're lucky enough to get admitted to a hospital.

It's now been almost two weeks since.Unfortunatly,for most Kenyans it's still business as usual. I'm finally beginning to understand the term African timers. What do you get when you impose a curfew to a people who use the term ALUTA ( Portuguese for struggle)to describe their night life? I'll tell you what..you get what we witnessed last friyay. Sad really.

Anyway, being the law abiding citizen that I am☺, mother, daughter and sister, I've been self quarantined at home, with the people I love. I have to admit though, it's not been easy peasy lemon squeezy. I am a sucker for routine. Being home under the circumstances, I had to come up with a new routine or die of boredom elsewise. I've decided to share everything I'm learning during self quarantine.

So, the disease is COVID-19 short for Corona Virus Disease caused by Corona Virus 2 ( SARs- COV-2). It was discovered in 2019 in Wuhan, China.The period between contracting the virus and when the symptoms begin to show is called incubation period. For COVID-19, it's 1-14 days. It spreads through movement of people with no or mild symptoms, unaware they have the disease. It's symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath, breathing difficulties among others. It attacks the lungs could potentially lead to death with a mortality rate of 3.4%. That's 3 deaths in every 100 people. This is why social distancing is critical in stopping the spread of this disease. If you limit your social contact, you cut off a link in the chain of infection. Statistics show that 25% of Corona virus transmission occur in pre-symptomatic stages.

Staying at home could help save someone's life especially the vulnerable population, the elderly. Avoid gatherings, bars, stages, and handling paper money. Ask yourself, do I really need to....? If the answer is no, stay at home. Before leaving that house, take a good look at your kid, your partner, your brother, your mother and keep in mind that that may be the day you bring home the virus. Would you live with yourself? No? Good, STAY AT HOME!! Unless it's an emergency. A date is not an emergency people! The gym is not an emergency! You'll have all the time in the world to get married and have parties once all this is over. You literally only live once, I don't know about you but I want to graduate. Raise my son. See my mum cry on my graduation day and hold my dad's hand as he walks me down the isle, someday. STAY AT HOME.

In the event you do go out, wash your hands with running water and soap constantly for at least 20 seconds or use a sanitizer. Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue and dispose it properly. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects. Do not touch your face but most importantly, unless it's unavoidable, stay at home.

While we wait for all these to end, keep yourself busy. I love reading. I actually realized I do some time late last year. Since then read technically anything I get my hands on. Problem is I read up to four books simultaneously, and with school going on, I had several books to finish. I'm happy to say I'm almost done now. My point is when you do what you love, you'll hardly ever get bored. Figure out what it is and do that.

Perfect your art. We all have that thing we feel we can get really good at. You know you're good at it, but you always feel like you could be better. We'll, this is the perfect opportunity. Practice makes perfect. And you have all the time in the world being at home and all. Why don't you start painting again? Continue writing that story, learn that choreography. Prepare yourself, because the world is not ready for you. Literally

Finally, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. In every thing that you do, commit your plans to the Lord and they shall be established. Those who trust in the lord will never be disappointed. I know it's scary, it's crazy, but we who believe in God have something no one else in the world has, we are saved by God's grace through our faith. Be still and know that he is God😊

it’s ZOIDS HEADCANON TIME

this all took me way longer to assemble into something coherent than I initially thought :V  BUT HERE IS PART 1:

ZOID BIOLOGY: All Zoids start off as Cores.  These need to be "incubated" in pools of highly metallic/nutrient-rich water that are common on Zi, and if left long enough will grow a body around them that's capable of moving about on its own.  New Cores come about via Zoids periodically budding new Cores and dumping them into pools to mature.  Wild Zoids are much smaller than man-made ones and of course don't have cockpits/pilot interfaces, etc.

Domesticated Zoids are the product of "genetic engineering", in that their Cores have been tampered with so that, when immersed in tanks of synthetic fluid, they grow bodies with cockpits and such.  (They can also be grown to a certain point and then plucked out of their maturation tanks and stuck into a pre-built body.)  They've been tweaked so that their Cores are bigger and can support larger bodies with more advanced weaponry, etc. but they're less intelligent/capable than wild Zoids were.  Their Cores are also "charged" like batteries, so they have a finite lifespan, although this can still be a couple centuries (or more, if the Zoid is taken care of).  As with any lifeform, excessive strain (forcing it to use/carry ludicrous amounts or types of weaponry LEENA), abuse, neglect, etc. can reduce this span considerably.  By contrast, wild Zoids would prey on and eat each other's Cores (or munch on also-metallic foliage) to keep themselves going.  Domesticated Zoids no longer need to eat, although all Zoids are hella territorial and naturally inclined to fight, which is why they make good war machines.  

Wild Zoids were common in the time of the Ancient Zoidians but vanishingly rare by the time CC rolled around and all but extinct by the time of NC0. Blaming the Death Saurer seems like a good idea here, so yeah.

ZOID EVE: Whereas most Zoid Cores grow bodies and crawl out of their birthing pools to go on their merry way, sometimes Things Happen and Cores fuse together.  When this happens it usually results in a) dead, malformed Cores or b) shambling monstrosity Zoids that usually don't live very long.  

However, in one particular instance it resulted in c) an entity with a weird, alien intelligence that continued to bud Cores off of itself, producing Zoids that were smarter and generally "better" than other wild Zoids.  The Ancient Zoidians discovered this and were puzzled by the gross, lumpy Core-mass entity but were also impressed by the quality Zoids it produced, and eventually a city sprang up around it.  They started calling the thing "Zoid Eve" and built a big woman statue over it to symbolize this, strung up with a bunch of wires and shit to channel its power to the growing city.  They also went ahead and tampered with Eve's basic Core-programming so that it'd start producing pilotable Zoids, because Zoidians are stupid and can't resist fucking around with everything they find.

Zoid Eve was initially seen as a scientific curiosity, and then by turns as a status symbol, a good-luck charm, a bringer of prosperity and good fortune, and eventually as a deity.  People began flocking to Eveopolis to reap the social benefits of living right next to God and to claim the Zoids it produced.  Disputes sprang up among different groups as to who was getting all these Zoids, with some groups claiming they were being cheated or overlooked in favor of others; these disputes escalated into physical attacks and then all-out war, with different factions squabbling over the right to claim more of the Eve-born Zoids.

In response to this, some neutral parties collaborated to produce the Eve Saurer, designed to basically terrify everyone into calming their tits.  It was created from an Eve-spawned Core and placed in a body so fuckoff huge and powerful that none of the warring factions could really hope to stand against it; it was also deliberately created without a pilot interface or any way to control it so that it couldn't be hijacked by any particular faction and used to force everyone else into submission.

This kind of worked insofar as the various factions tried to attack the Eve Saurer and were immediately slapped down for their efforts, but the Saurer had the unfortunate side effect of being infectiously aggressive so that it triggered insanely violent urges in most of the Zoids that came near it.  Since it only knew to respond to aggression with more aggression, it set off a feedback loop of rage that culminated in lots of people dying really fast.  The Zoidians were at last united in finding a way to stop the Eve Saurer, and deduced that the only way to accomplish this was to do something to Eve itself.  Some people were like "FUCK IT, JUST KILL EVE" and other people were like "holy shit calm down", so while the first group worked on building something that could destroy Eve the second group came up with a pair of scorpion Zoids that, individually, were less powerful than the Eve Death Saurer but marginally more controllable. 

Team Kill Eve deployed its contender, a massive aerial type armed with gravity weapons that should have been able to crush the Core-construct forming Zoid Eve, but it rebelled violently at being forced to take action against Eve, bucked control of its pilot and escorts, and wrecked a bunch of shit before fucking off into the wilderness.  Team Calm Your Tits, probably giving team Kill Eve disgusted looks from across the room, sent out its scorpion Zoids, which succeeded in holding the Death Saurer at bay long enough for them to power down Eve (namely, the big statue thing which was a conduit for her power), thus enabling them to halt the Death Saurer without killing every other Zoid on the planet.  Unfortunately the damage had already been done and Zi was left all but uninhabitable, so the Zoidians stowed their surviving Zoids for safekeeping and placed themselves and their Organoids in stasis, in the hopes that they would eventually be able to resume life in a safer world.

...but before this was done, team Kill Eve was like "nah, that was totally a good idea that we just executed poorly" so they stuck some programming mojo into a girl and her Organoid that would enable her to shut down Eve if the need ever came up.

ORGANOIDS: Organoids and Zoids arose from a common ancestor, and lived together in the wild for thousands of years.  Organoids would "tend" groups of wild Zoids for whom they acted as guards, lookouts and pack leaders; in exchange they get first dibs on the Cores of prey the Zoids took down, or of old/injured Zoids in the group that were ready to die anyway.  They would also use the Zoids' Cores to reproduce, sticking their cables into a freshly-budded Core to leave their "DNA" all over it, which would start a new Organoid forming.

When the first wave of human colonists came to Zi, they were aware of organoids but considered them just another part of the landscape to be overcome as they sought to capture and tame wild Zoids.  Organoids were undoubtedly dangerous, particularly because of how intelligent they were, but humans have a marked tendency to give no fucks about things like danger when there are Cool Things to be poked at, such as big robot animals that could help out around a growing settlement.  The humans had superior weaponry to pretty much anything else organoids had ever encountered before, and were more effective than any wild predator on Zi at repelling the protective organoids while they captured Zoids.

The first organoid to live peaceably with humans was a young individual whose burgeoning herd of Zoids was in danger of being eradicated entirely by predators; while wary of humans, it also noted that the Zoids under the humans' care were healthy and well-protected, and figured that hanging around the settlement might be worth a shot.  Since the organoid and its herd weren't causing any harm, the humans kept an eye on it but otherwise left it alone.  Both species being naturally sociable and curious, the organoid and the humans eventually started trying to interact and established a tentative sort of bond.  When the organoid started producing offspring, they were even more inclined to hang around the humans, who discovered that having teleporting psychic mechanical dinosaurs accompanying you on expeditions or keeping an eye out for threats while you tended the fields was kind of useful.  

Meanwhile, other organoids started copying the first one's example and hanging around the settlement; although naturally territorial, the organoids all forged an uneasy truce knowing that it was in everyone's best interest to play nice and keep reaping the benefits of living near humans.  More and more organoids were born in close contact with humans, and the two species became so accustomed to each other that pretty soon it was no big deal for them to live and work together as partners.  Once Zoids started being engineered to be larger and more powerful, the "domesticated" organoids would sort of naturally be drawn to certain ones and found that it was more efficient to devote their attention to a single large Zoid than to a whole group of smaller ones, particularly since that Zoid could serve as an energy source and a place to rear young, zealously protected by its human caretaker.  

While wild organoids were fairly small and drab-colored, those that grew up around humans became larger and more powerful, and the humans also kind of unconsciously selected for organoids that had bright, pretty colors.  AND THAT'S HOW WE GOT SHOW ORGANOIDS

Roughly as intelligent as humans, organoids tend to choose their partners based on personality traits and how well they mesh as individuals.  These partnerships grow and deepen over time, and once a pair is bonded it's very hard to find anything that can drive them apart short of death itself.  Losing a partner can be deeply traumatizing, as it is for anyone who loses a loved one, but it is possible to recover and forge a new bond, given enough time.  (Most humans/Zoidians don't generally live long enough to reach this point, but it has happened a time or two.)

Organoids communicate with mental bursts of imagery + emotion.  They don't have speech that utilizes words, although they may visualize written words or mentally "repeat" things that are spoken to them in the voice of whoever said them.  This includes names; although their human/Zoidian partner may assign them a word-name that the organoid recognizes as its own, the names they choose for themselves are represented by more images-and-feelings: the moons reflected in a lake while one contemplates the universe; elation during a spring day surrounded by wildflowers; the peace of solitude atop a cold mountain peak.  It may take a while for the organoid to find something it likes enough to choose as a name, and this may change subtly over time - or very radically following severe trauma.  They also tend to assign organoid-style names to their partners and Zoids.

When an organoid Core-bonds with a Zoid, it's reading/altering the Zoid's data via all the little cables it plugs into the surface of the Core, lending its superior computational capabilities to the Zoid's raw power and its pilot's intelligence and strategic abilities.  When all three are in sync, this results in a Zoid that's faster, stronger, more resilient and more powerful than others, often to a devastating degree.  Organoids can heal and evolve Zoids by "overwriting" parts of the Zoid's data to jump-start the repair process that would otherwise occur much more slowly, triggering accelerated cell growth that can result in near-instant healing or, in the case of evolution, an entirely different chassis. 

MOAR TO FOLLOW

[Where My Twin Watches]: PMMM Rebellion - Part 6

Last time, we realized that Madokami was the brainwasher. So yeah.

Homura’s running off now, after shaking off the latest attempt to turn her into a Lotus Eater. (And I could go on and on about the pros and cons of Madokami’s actions here, but let’s try to finish this movie this year.) Labyrinth-Madoka’s left in the field, joined by the Incubator as she wonders what happened to Homura. So what’s the creature’s deal? It hasn’t said a word this entire movie, so I don’t know if it’s just a construct of the Labyrinth like Madoka or a ‘guard’ like Sayaka ACK sudden closeup of its eye yup it’s involved. Hey, it’s the arcade! Kyoko’s getting a phonecall, after what was clearly a necessary shot of her pockets, she answers her cell gaaaah the juxtaposition of the normal arcade and all these Labyrinth figures is so friggen creepy. Homura’s calling to ask if she remembers the Witches, doesn’t appear Food Girl’s completely woken up yet as she doesn’t. Also, “Dog Drug Reinforcement”? Is that supposed to be a pun on ooooooh DDR, I get it.

So yeah, Kyoko’s still in the system. Doesn’t remember the Witches, and she only knows this Labyrinth version of Madoka. It sounds crazy, but listen to the hair-flipping girl, Kyoko. Point: In order to make a world where Madoka exists, it would have to be someone who knows about Madoka. At the end of the show Kyoko and Mami had no memories of her, so out of the original Madokrew that leaves Homura (who lived with the memories), Sayaka (who went to work for Madokami), and Madoka-turned-Madokami herself. [Homura]: “Now I understand. I know who rewrote our memories-” ? Homura? Why did you just put your Soul Gem down? “-and then locked us in this false Mitakihara City.” Homura? What are you doing? Kyoko’s starting to freak out over what Homura is saying, asking where she is right now. She runs outside FLAMING BLIMPS FROM THE SKY! Ok, so it seems the Labyrinth is dropping pretenses now, with Homura waking up there’s no point with subtlety. Homura’s on the bus now. Where is she going? Why is the music getting louder? Why is she leaving her Soul Gem at the station? I mean, isn’t there a distance limit to control her body? What’s the poi Wait What Are you kidding me [Homura]: “There’s just one last thing I want to confirm.” But what how why is she how could WHAT “After that, I will end everything. And I will not trouble you.” … Ok, so this is confirmation is either going to be the equivalent of MG Suicide (purposefully separating herself from her Soul Gem, we’ve only seen a very short period where Sayaka was separated from hers and she didn’t seem to note anything odd, will Homura be conscious?), or… Homura apologizes to Kyoko for getting her involved. And hangs up, throws her phone away. The bus leaves, seats filled with clocks ticking. [Homura]: “The limit that my body can still move after separating from my Soul Gem should be 100 meters at most.” The bus stop has faded into the distance. Pretty sure she’s now past that mark. Bells are chiming. Owls are landing. The bus is on fire. And the truth is revealed. -Magical Girls cannot function beyond 100 meters from their Soul Gems -Homura is now over 100 meters from her Soul Gem -Homura is not a Magical Girl -Homura is… Creepy children chanting as the Flaming Blimps shatter the landscape. Because that Labyrinth was focused on Magical Girl Homura. This Labyrinth is focused on her true nature. As Witch-Homura. … WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE WHY HOW HOW HOW DID HOMURA BECOME A WITCH [Homura]: “In other words, this means I’m not even a magical girl anymore?” She pulls a pistol, destroys the proven-useless piece of jewelry. Kneeling, backed by flames, flanked by the creepy Goth Children. Her Familiars. “Why? Why? Why would I end up as…? When did it even happen? When did I become a Witch?!” WHY AND WHEN INDEED Ok, ok. Calm down, Ranubis. Deep breaths. Right, so somehow, at some point, Homura gave into despair, used up her power. Frustration at being the only one living with the memories? Anger at being left behind? Stubbed her toe? Whatever happened, happened. Madokami’s deal is that she goes around grabbing MGs before they give into despair, takes them into the MG Afterlife. So… is this that, then? Does she take the girls before they become Witches, and put them in Labyrinths designed to keep them happy? Their own little slice of heaven? It checks out, this is, or rather was a world where Homura was happy. But just as she kept her memories while alive, it seems she got them back in this new Labyrinth, in the worst possible fashion. Yikes, no black and white morality here, is there? On the one hand Homura really was happy in her designed Labyrinth. But on the other hand she wasn’t given all the details, and now that lack of communication is coming back to bite everyone. And now there’s some sort of arc over the flaming ruins of Fake Mitakihara City. And an image of Madokami’s picture begins to run. Some of the Familiars are kicking a spool of thread, they pass… the Incubator? ...wait, hold on. [Incubator]: “I’m sure you didn’t really want to know the truth.” The Incubator is talking. What...did… “And yet, you couldn’t bear not to search for it. It just goes to show how illogical human curiosity is.” So… you’re not taking any blame for letting things fall apart this badly then? [Incubator]: “Well, considering that it was you, I did think that you would find the answer eventually, Homura Akemi.” [Homura]: “Incubator. In the end, just as I thought, it’s your doing, isn’t it?” ...well, kinda. I mean it’s working for Madokami. But in general in the show, it was a sound practice to blame Bunnycat for anything going wrong. (After I spent nearly the entire show blaming you, sorry about that.) Huh. Gotta say, I like Homura’s outfit right here. Fancy. I’ve got a few more questions beyond the location of Homura’s life and soul, Incubator, but I’ll take those too. Thank you so kindly for deigning to answer them. Static? Homura sleeping, holding a staff? Ah, an image of outside the Labyrinth! But hold on, how is she outside the Labyrinth, is she projecting into it? WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT [Incubator]: “The Isolation Field we invented is completely enveloping your Soul Gem. We wanted to see what would happen when a Soul Gem that was already pushed to its limit was put in an environment that was isolated from all external influence.” An… experiment? But why would Madokami be experimenting on Soul Gems? Especially in such a creepy environment. She wouldn’t need to. The only one who benefits from such experiments Is The Incubator my Madokami I’m an idiot, did I learn nothing from the show, we’ve had close to a half-dozen closeups to “cute little Kyubey’s” mug in this movie, how could I just write off No. 1 on my List The Incubator isn’t working for Madokami after all. It’s doing what it was always doing, trying to maximize short-term gains from Soul Gems despite morals and sensible logic. The Incubator, or the rest of its race given the “we” comments, “wanted to know the results of a Soul Gem cut off from the Law of the Cycle”. I’m sorry, but I believe you were criticizing human curiosity barely a minute ago. Do… do you really realize how much of a hypocrite you are being right now. So yeah. This isn’t the work of a Cannibal!Witch, or an earnest attempt by Madokami to make Homura happy. This is, once again, Bunnycat being a Dick. Yep, either the Incubator’s using multiples of its body in this ‘experiment’, or we’re seeing multiple members of its race. Messing around with Labyrinths, working off of the descriptions of the Old World given by Homura. The results leave Homura as a semi-Witch, “like a chick that wasn’t able to break its shell and grew up within it instead.” That resulted in an Internal Labyrinth, one that she re-created an entire town inside of. All inside her Isolated Soul Gem. ...well THAT was a creepy shot, the Incubator backlit by a Flaming Blimp. brb taking screenshot.

Homura raises an argument: If the Laybrinth is Isolated, then it should be impossible for people to wander into it. But the Incubator, or rather Incubators, say they made an adjustment, making the isolation only work in one direction. So it’s not Isolated, but Semi-Permeable? Others pass through by means of an “invitation”. As the Witch of the Labyrinth, Homura unconsciously chose Mami, Kyoko, Hitomi and Kyosuke, pulling them in. And Madokami… could only enter as Madoka? Son of a bitch. This isn’t just an Incubator experiment to recreate Witches. It’s a trap for Madokami. The incubators have identified several people in the Labyrinth that don’t exist (anymore) in the Real World, but still participate. They have identified Madoka, someone who slipped into her world without causing any disturbance. But Wait hold on. So they now know Madoka is the Law of Cycles that’s keeping away their oh-so-”efficient” emergy gathering through Witches. But somehow, even though this is the Real Madoka in the Labyrinth she’s not displaying any power? What, did Madokami just send a portion to try and help out or what. Wait, WHAT?! You’re saying that when Witch-Homura pulls people in she rewrites their memories, and it affected Madoka as well? “She not only forgot that she had come to save you, but lost sight of who she really was and her power as well.” ...music is picking up and the Familiars are on the march. Something’s coming up, but I think I have to stop here for work. So. The real villain is the Incubators. They are experimenting with Witchification, captured Homura. Homura’s Labyrinth is pulling in people, wiping their memories. Madokami has tried to help her, but lost her memories and thus power entering? (What about Sayaka?) ...well how the hell are we gonna fix this?! Something’s gotta happen, but I can’t think of it. I mean, we’re back in Episode 11 territory here. Homura’s up against the combined power of the Incubator race, trapped in their twisted experiment to try and recreate Witches and to trap the Law of the Cycle. Such a trap even that when friggen Madokami tried to intervene she ended up mindwiped and depowered. So what the hell can we do now? I’m wracking my brain here, but can’t think of anything. Then again, I got out minmaxed by the pink-haired Middle Schooler last time, so here’s hoping there’s still a trick or two up her frilly sleeves.

01/07/2020 DAB Transcript

Genesis 16:1-18:15, Matthew 6:1-24, Psalms 7:1-17, Proverbs 2:1-5

Today is the 7th day of January, welcome to the daily Bible I’m Brian and it is a joy, every day it is a joy to come around this Global Campfire that…that we all share, where the fire is burning and no matter what time of day or night it is we can kinda come…come out of the cold, come out of the heat even and just come to this place, this space that overtime just kinda becomes an oasis. It’s like this one space, this once period of time a day that we kinda step out of all of the chaos that’s swirling around and just simply allow God's word to wash over us and then we go back out into it. It'll still be there, but we may go back out into it with some perspective and some transformation in our lives, And, so it’s a beautiful thing to be here with you today for the next step forward. And we have been reading from the New International Version this week. And we have, in the book of Genesis, been reading about this guy named Abram who has entered into a covenant with God and God has given him a promise for lots…like an innumerable amount of offspring, but he doesn't have any kids at all. And he has followed this God into a land that is not his homeland, a land that God has said will become his ancestral homeland, but that hasn't happened either and God has just told him yesterday that it’s gonna be like for centuries of mistreatment before that stuff starts to happen. And all of a sudden, we see, “oh… the stories in the Bible are full of ups…ups and downs just like my life is. There's no straight line to anywhere. It goes through all of the issues of life” and where we arrive is how we respond to those things. And, so, we continue with that journey. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 16 verse 1 through 18 verse 15.

Commentary:

Alright. There are a few things we should touch base on in our reading today. I’m trying to think of the fastest way to go about this. So, let’s go into Genesis. And we read within the last couple of days of Lot and Abram separating. Like, they’re close relatives, but their…their households have grown too big to sustain them in one place. So, they go in separate directions and subsequently Lot is captured in sort of a nine-king battle and Abram goes and reclaims Lot and retakes all of the things that have been stolen and those get divvied up and Abram takes nothing. He won't let anybody claim that they made him rich, it was only God. And then we have up person, like right after that battle a person kind of comes in and his name is Melchizedek. Okay. So, pause for a second. Some of the things that we’re doing in our time going to the Bible this year is to try to look below the surface, not to find hidden Bible codes or secret messages and stuff like that, but because we need to be below the surface at the level of our hearts to allow the Bible to begin to speak to us deeply. And, so, every time one of these little, strange kind of references show up, and it's happened several times in the book of Genesis so far, where we get a peek into the spiritual realm, most of time we just kinda move past, go like, “that's weird. That's something. That's something spiritual but it's weird. I don't understand it.” And we just kinda move on trying to find the things that would apply to our lives today, which is okay. But since we’re realizing that as we follow Jesus and as we look at Jesus in the Gospels we’re looking at a whole person who is their Spirit and their soul and their body integrated and they’re working through the world and realizing that we are spiritual beings and there is a spiritual realm. I guess we should look at that when it peaks up. So, Melchizedek shows up. This strange figure who is the first named priest of the most-high God. I’m gonna go into all kinds of things about Melchizedek right now because he will show back up for us later when we…when we wind our way into the book of Hebrews, but to connect it to the story that we’re in in Genesis, Melchizedek blesses Abram. And this incident that we witnessed at the Tower of Babel a couple of days ago where the…the earth's languages were confused and people went off into their language groups, that actually has significance because we’re moving one story to the next, to the next, to the next and it can seem like, “well, maybe that was a thousand years, or maybe…who knows how long that was” but there does seem to be a cohesive story being told underneath it all. And we are most definitely watching apparent spiritual beings communicating and being seen on the earth by humans. We see that in today's reading alone. So, we see that a flood happened on the earth because everyone on the earth had only evil in their hearts and the Bible talks about them essentially kind of a devolving into animals, which I guess is a really decent way of describing what happens to us when we are separated from God. And, so the flood goes away, but the evil in the hearts of people is still there. And then we move right into God calling Abram who has today become Abraham and has today entered into covenant with God and the outward representation of that covenant is circumcision. This idea of circumcision is gonna carry us because it's from a Hebrew perspective through the rest of the Bible, but now God’s saying, “okay. There is a mark, a very intimate mark, one that will be observed in the most private and intimate times of life, and for that matter, one that will constantly be a reminder of the covenant and who you belong to, and who you are submitted to.” And what God is doing with all of the language of Abram whose name is turned to Abraham is to tell him, “a new people will be raised up and they will be my people. There are lots of people that are in absolute rebellion and disobedience. These people I’m raising up through you, Abraham, my covenant partner to be my people.” And that's gonna become more and more important as we go on and that is actually gonna cause problems that need to be worked out when we get into the letters of the New Testament's early church era. Okay, so we know Hagar, you know, Sarai gave Hagar to Abram. And, of course, Abram agreed. And, so, a child was born. His name was Ishmael. And we read of the tension that happened between Sarai and Hagar and that's pretty understandable, but Hagar was mistreated to the point that she ran away and she had an encounter with a spiritual being upon the earth that she could see, the angel of the Lord. And often among biblical scholars, the angel of the Lord means the Lord. This is like a physical visible representation, but God. So anyway, after they have this conversation, she says something really, really profound. It's…it's fairly famous, but it's pretty profound, “you are, the God who sees me. I have now seen the one who sees me.” This is actually quite beautiful, because we will remember back in Genesis chapter 3, that as soon and Adam and he realized the separateness from God that rebellion had made them aware of this and even caused this, that they realized they could be seen, and they hid. And that has really been a fundamental reality of a fallen mankind existing until today. We still struggle. We don’t want to be exposed. We don’t even want to be exposed before God. The thing is, people, like when you’re in a relationship with somebody, they only know of you what you're willing to reveal to them. They can only know of you, what you will let them see. So, if we understand that we understand how much we are hiding and how pretty much nobody really sees us, no one really knows us. And here is Hagar in ultimate distress, a really difficult situation and what we’ll find in the Bible and what we’ll find in our lives is that this is where God dwells a lot of the time, when we…when we have unraveled ourselves to the point that we, in our own strength cannot move forward. So, she's in distress but she is also saying that she is seen. And if we could all just understand that the more we are willing to reveal…we could say, “well, God knows everything about me. I don’t…like…He sees it all” but that's different than opening your heart and revealing it all. We can be seen. We can be seen by one another. We can be seen by God. It's all really hinging on how vulnerable we’re willing to be.

And man, I feel like I…I…I should…I could stop there, but there's more and can't really skip this because Jesus gave us the Lord's prayer today. Maybe we even recited it as we were reading it. And, so, the Lord's prayer is certainly very, very famous. But Jesus kinda comments on portions of the Lord's prayer as soon as He ends the prayer, right? So, like, “forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.” This isn't just debt, like you owe somebody some money. Like this…this is a transgression against you or a transgression that like you are indebted to somebody because you've done them wrong and it needs to be made right. So, we get through the Lord's prayer and then immediately Jesus says, “if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Okay that is certainly a posture of heart. But if we’re looking at what Jesus says and we’re looking below the surface then we begin to realize that the underlying truth is that when you set someone free you are being set free. And when this is the way you live then…then you live in freedom.

Then we get into the Psalms today and we read, “whoever is pregnant with evil”, right? And I mean, let’s just like stop there. “Pregnant with the evil.” How do you get pregnant with evil? So, the language is out of the Bible, pregnant. Pregnant is that you're incubating something within you that has been put…put their very intimately. “Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment.” We can say a ton of stuff about it, but there is one of those sentences that we can ponder and invite God into as we meditate upon it.

Prayer:

Father there’s…like there’s plenty of other things that we could…we could maybe talk about just from today's reading alone, but it feels like this is…this is where we’ll land today. And, so we thank You for all the many facets in today alone that…that gives us pause and gives us a chance to reflect, gives us the opportunity to invite Your Holy Spirit, gives us an opportunity to…to just observe ourselves and the past that our lives are on, understanding now that it doesn't all have to be pure confusion, it doesn't all have to be a mystery. There is a way. There is a way that leads to life. And as we interact with Your word every day it is revealing that path. And, so, come Holy Spirit and lead us into all truth we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in the mission that we share that is to bring the spoken word of God to anybody who will listen anywhere on this planet any time of day or night, and to build community around that rhythm so that no one has to feel alone in this journey, if that is life-giving to you then thank you for your partnership. There's a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Wayne from the Chicago area. I’ve not called in quite a while. I need prayer. Please, just pray for me. Everything’s falling apart. Thank you for praying for me. Thank you so much.

Hi. Hello Brian and fellow Daily Audio Bible listeners my name is Brian Milikan and I’m in Anniston Alabama and I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible for most of 2019 and I will continue to do so in 2020. I am very thankful for what this program offers for listeners as far as the word and fellowship and prayer. It’s just…it’s incredible that were able to come together like this. But my call today is a praise report. First time I’ve ever called by the way, but it’s a praise report. I wanted to share what God spoke to me or how He spoke to me through today’s reading. Today’s December 29th and today’s reading focused on…well…it focused on a few books, but Proverbs 31 was one of the Scriptures. And after the reading Brian focused also on what Proverbs 31 was teaching us. But for the past month or so my wife and I and our little six-year-old daughter have been in the process of acquiring legal custody of my nephew whose name is Justus. He spells it JUSTUS but throughout this entire process we’ve been seeking God’s wisdom and God’s guidance from the first day that it became apparent that his home life in Indiana had gotten to a point where somebody needed to step in and…and rescue him to an extent and God put that on our hearts to do so. And he has spoken to us, God has spoken to us in numerous ways. And today as I was listening to Daily Audio Bible, of all the Scriptures, of all the teachings Brian could’ve focused on after reading today he focused on Proverbs 31 and the idea of justice and that is not just political…

Hey Daily Audio Bible my name is Isadore I’m from New York and this is my first __ year of ever using the Daily Audio Bible. And I didn’t really think I was actually going to call. One of my childhood best friends, one of my childhood friends passed away about two days ago. So, December 28th. He was shot and killed on the block that we grew up on. So, if you guys could just pray for his family, pray that we could sort out the funeral that we have and that we can hopefully catch the individual that shot him, that would be greatly appreciated. Also, pray for me. Trying to just figure out how to sort how I’m feeling, I guess. Pray for…that God would give me wisdom, understanding. I’m still kind of getting into this Christian lifestyle, trying to be a better person and all that. Just been a year be a married in June of this year and I just kinda need help. It’s kinda hard understanding how to grow together and things of that nature. So, pray for my marriage __ and lastly the New Year’s about to start and I’d like to ask for prayer because I’m currently training for the 2020 Olympics and, you know, going to school full-time and everything like that and just I could really use the support.

Hi this is Ben…Hi this is Bella and we live in Pennsylvania and wanted to wish everybody on the audio Bible…blah…the audio Bible a happy New Year’s and everybody on the Daily Audio Bible family a happy new year and a nice beginning of the new year and a fresh start. Goodbye.

Hi this is Bruce Pittman calling in for the first time from Northern Nevada and I discovered the Daily Audio Bible this past…toward the end of this summer and I really love it. I really love the idea of a community of people being able to join together and discover God’s word together. And, so, I just want to thank you Brian and your family for bringing such great value to the kingdom of God. And I will be…today is the last day of the year, December 31st…and I will be joining this community to embark on the journey of going through the entire Bible in 2020 and I made it a goal to not miss any days whatsoever. And just God bless this whole community. Thank you for…for being there. Let’s do this.

Hi, my name’s Cricket from Colorado. I called in the other day and left a message for Anonymous and told her I would be praying but I failed to introduce myself to the community and say hi. I was a first time caller then and I’m new to you guys since August but I spent this whole year, remaining of it, trying to catch up and finish the entire Bible with you and I plan to do it forever until I die, to listen to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m grateful because of this community and not because it’s a place where I can read the Bible every day, which I’ve never done until now, but because I have all of you that I can learn and grow from and you’ve all taught me so much in just the prayers alone. There’s so much value in this group and in this family. I thank you Brian, I thank you God, I thank you everyone who participates, and I encourage everyone who might be hearing this for the first time or deciding if they want to do this. Don’t just do this because you’ll hear the Bible in a year, do this because this is a family. I’ve finally found a church home. I love my church, but it doesn’t fill every desire that I have, but listening and connecting with everyone every day at 2 o’clock in the morning while I milk my cows is just amazing to me. It’s helped me so much. I thank you and I love you and I will be praying for you all in the new year.

Hi guys this is Michaela from Gloucester. It is Tuesday, the 31st of December 2019. I was thinking earlier today about the change of the decade and things to highlight of the decades that have gone before and then I realized that this last decade has been Daily Audio Bible. So, I found it in 2010 and, although I haven’t quite made it through the year yet, it has been a real blessing to me. So, I wanted to say a massive thank you to all those who were listening before me and left reviews which enabled me to find. A huge thank you to Brian and family and Mike and SarahJane and all of those people on the tech side who make this magic happen every day. And, so yeah. And, yeah, okay. Father God, thank You so much for the Daily Audio Bible. Thank You so much for the blessing that it has brought me, and I pray Lord that it will find its way to those who need it. Father God thank You for this journey we’ve been on in 2019 and I pray Lord that You would seal what we have learned in our hearts. And Lord we look ahead to 2020 and we look forward to what You’re going to do, and we’re expecting for what You gonna do. Please be blessing us greatly Lord. And Father God we do lift up the people of Australia and I pray Lord that You’d be giving people wisdom on how best to tackle these fires and how best to protect lives and property. Father God, please bring an end to these fires. Please be at work in the situation. Please be blessing Australia in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Welcome to the World my dearest son. Nadashi Siripatana, was born on Saturday February, 1st, 2020 Sydney, Australia. 

Let’s throwback a bit before it all began. I remember by the time we got here in early of May 2019, we were getting settled, adjusting new daily routines and managing our lives in all perspectives. From getting a cozy home to choosing the good-enough private health insurance. After we got all these and felt quite settled with our (financial) situation, I realize I was late. Before we did the test, we were pretty okay and not panicked if we were to expect another child. We were mentally ready and I was physically ready to deal with pregnancy again. Except, $$$ that we were quite worried. But Alhumdullilah, it was manageable. Of course, unlike in Saudi, we were insured. But here, a day after we got insurance, we knew we were expecting. I called my insurance company and unfortunately, they only cover birth & pregnancy after 12-month of waiting period. In Saudi we had BUPA insurance, in here they also got BUPA but the coverage is not the same as in Saudi. In Saudi, I got there less than 3 months and pregnancy & birth was fully covered. (How we missed Middle East lol) After that, I couldn’t wait to find out. So off we went to Royal Hospital for Women (10 mins walk from our house) and set appointment to meet with the midwife in my 14th week. If you have a normal pregnancy here, you will not meet your midwife and your GP (from any clinic of your choice). The OB-GYN doctors are for high risk pregnancy only, it makes sense. My whole pregnancy check-up, I managed to meet GP twice and 5 times with my midwife. 

After we been living here for almost a year, Australia work and life balance is at its best. Most people I know or talked to, works 3 days a week at office and the rest work from home or not working at all. This way, both parents got to spend time with kids not only on weekend but also on weekdays. No wonder when I first came here and brought Insha to the park, there are some dads who brought kids to playground and do all mom’s jobs. It’s a new normal for us. I was also surprised knowing that the nurses at the hospital works 3 days a week only and with total of 36 hours a week. Isn’t that great? 

Nadashi at 20th week ultrasound

With this pregnancy, I was craving for all the sweets and chocolate mousse in the first half of my human-incubation period. Until I had my sugar tested and surprise surprise! I had pregger diabetes (GDM;Gestational Diabetes Mellitus) and I had to stop all sweets, no white rice nor white bread, control my diet and lots of walk and prenatal yoga. My midwife appointed me to meet with the group for women with GDM and really, Australia has a very impressive health care system. You will feel that they really care about you. They don’t want you risking by having a too-large baby and ended up with C-section. Ahh, I don’t want it too. So I was extra careful with my diet though it was such a torture to not eat what I craved for when pregnant. 

12-hour before getting into labour!

Birth time! Insha was born right on her due date at 40 weeks, so I didn’t expect Nadashi to want to come out earlier than week 39th. A day before I was in labour, we went downtown Sydney and I was walking like I’m still far from baring child. But walking a lot also naturally induce the labour. 

At 6am in the morning next day (Feb, 1st), I was lying in bed after a constant trips to the toilet. I felt my water broke and then contraction started literally 3-5 minutes apart (already? I thought it’d start at every 20 minutes or 10 at first but 3-5 mins right away). I kid myself that ‘Nuhh, not yet. I’m too sleepy to be in labour now” I was sure that it wasn’t Braxton hicks because it was repeated and also hurt like hell. I decided to wait to see another 30 minutes and it was the same. Oh man! he’s coming, he’s really coming!

Then I called “Delivery Suit” at hospital and explained my situation. They asked me to take hot shower and have breakfast and then come to the hospital. So I did, but I couldn’t eat because the contraction got stronger and more painful that it hurts like my pelvis being crushed by a tractor. I woke Adil and Insha, “We need to go to hospital now. Nadashi is coming” .. my last-day-only-child then said “It’s February already?” Haha, yep, she knew Nadashi will come in February. We walked to hospital. It was 8am. when we were walking I had like 5-6 contractions along the way. Ain’t I crazy. 

Delivery Suit

Delivery Suit

At hospital (8am), Delivery Suit. One of the on-duty midwife (Kim) welcomed me right at the door. Everything felt so calm and quiet. Kim brought me straight to our delivery room. A spacious purple room, big windows that we could see UNSW, bathroom attached, birthing ball and fully quipped suit for delivery. I wasn’t ready to be honest with all the birth thing (again) but at the same time, I also couldn’t wait to meet my new lover.

    I had Kim and Nicole assisted me at the first stage of getting into labour. That time I was wondering how far along was my dilation because I needed the most magical thing in my life, Epidural. I asked Kim that I need an epidural and she checked I was 3cm. dilated. With Insha, I had epi at 5cm. which is good timing not too early and not too late. But with the 2nd birth, I figured it dilated quicker so I decided to have it asap. Of course, there’s lot of consent to be made due to the possible (1 in 10) side effects. I consent, I consent, I consent. I couldn’t stand any more pain from this. It crushed me. I thought I could do better this time round, but no, it’s such a trauma to feel it again. I cried few times to be honest. How can women, other women, handle this pain without any drugs? You really are super super human. 

 Delivery SuitI had Kim and Nicole assisted me at the first stage of getting into labour. That time I was wondering how far along was my dilation because I needed the most magical thing in my life, Epidural. I asked Kim that I need an epidural and she checked I was 3cm. dilated. With Insha, I had epi at 5cm. which is good timing not too early and not too late. But with the 2nd birth, I figured it dilated quicker so I decided to have it asap. Of course, there’s lot of consent to be made due to the possible (1 in 10) side effects. I consent, I consent, I consent. I couldn’t stand any more pain from this. It crushed me. I thought I could do better this time round, but no, it’s such a trauma to feel it again. I cried few times to be honest. How can women, other women, handle this pain without any drugs? You really are super super human. 

Finally! Epidural time

At around 10am, the anesthesiologist came. She brought papers with her and explained everything to me (exactly like in Saudi) and I consent to every words said. Only this time round, the procedure is quite different. And I must say, it is better than the Saudi one. The one I had in Saudi was all at once injection. The needle was 4 inches long and really thick one stuck into my spine. My lower body felt all numb after that in less than 2 minutes and I couldn’t even lift my legs. It was amazing to not feel any labour pain at all but I think it’s better to at least feel something without any pain.

Here, they connected the epidural tube on the built-in wall and attached some needle to my back. I don’t remember where exactly but there was something like a locket hanging on my shoulder which passed epidural into me every 20-40 minutes. Every time it kicked in, it felt chilly a bit. At first, I felt no contraction pain but a bit of pressure at my bottom (bearable) and then the other was feeling a bit like small menstrual cramp. Anyway, epidural delayed delivery time. So from 10am, I was scrolling my phone, chatting, netflixing, and was napping till around 3pm. then Kim came in and said that looking from heart rate and other things (from machine) I was almost 10cm dilated. We should get ready to have little bub come out around 3.45pm or so. How exciting! Adil and Insha went out to the playground and came back once I told them we’re so ready for Nadashi! 

“Okayy, you’re contracting now, PUSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” Kim asked me to have our first push. I did feel small cramp which without epidural, I would feeling being struck by a train and cut myself in 2, literally dying. We tried several times and I took so many deep breathes but Nadashi and my body did not cooperate well. We tried for like 20 mins or so and unsuccessful but baby was still happy not in distress. Then, we needed doctor to come and see the situation. He said that the baby’s head is down and he was curling to the side. His spine was on the side when it supposed to be against your tummy. So, he re-positioned the baby. (Imagine, putting all hand inside the move him from the inside. Oh lord. I felt nothing only pressure without pain while he changed his position. I was exhausted from all the pushing (many times) almost an hour later, doc said, okay, if it’s not coming out this time, we might need to cut lil’bit. I was thinking .. no way. okay, i’ll be pushing all my energy out now so I don’t need that cut just to let him out, nooooo!” This time, I did pushed really hard and I could feel the ball shape was coming out then deep breathe and that long push from the body and then deep breathe that last push till all body parts are out! Like I mentioned, my lower part wasn’t all numb it just no pain from contraction, so I could feel the baby human was coming out. It’s still a trauma. really big trauma. I can’t . I don’t want to do it anymore but maybe one more .. after I saw him for the first time and fell in love all over again. Alhumdullilah for everything. At 4.42pm. healthy baby boy, weight 3.2kg, 52cm in length. was finally out into the world. 

In Australia, normally if you have normal child delivery and there’s no complication, you can leave hospital after 6 hours of delivery. I had to stay at least 48 hours because during pregnancy I had GDM so they had to monitor baby’s sugar level. Me and Nadashi spent one night in the hospital and I asked the nurse if we could go home next day because after 24 hours checking his blood pricking test, it was all fine and if I have to,I can prick him at home. I also told the nurse frankly that we’re not covered by insurance so within the deposit limit, I’d prefer to stay one night only. Then she said, the Pediatrician will come check Nadashi and she’ll see if we could go home. Alhumdulillah, all is well so we all went home on the 2nd evening. 

   Alhumdulillah, all is well and it’s time to go home!

   Not only great service from Royal Hospital for Women, we also got NSW Baby Bundle full of baby essentials! (worth of $300); Baby playmat, first aid, room temperature indicator, baby Australian books, nappy cream, hand sanitizer, changing mat, baby swaddle, baby sleeping bag, baby milestones card, breast-pad, diaper bag.

Once we’re home, my personal midwife who I’ve visited during prenatal check-up come visit us at home. One day after deliver and the other 2 days during first week post-delivery. Overall, to check my health and baby’s. Checking baby’s weight, baby jaundice, checking on how he latch, checking my recovery etc.

   After few days home, hospital also contacted us to have a heading test for Nadashi. 

    I’m not sure if Nadashi is a good baby or it’s just my biological clock that got used to the wake up in middle of night. But he could sleep longer than Insha as far as I remember. Insha was every 2 hours and Nadashi sleeps 3-5 hours. I even had few dreams before I woke up and realized that I’m a newborn mom, I have to wake him up to feed now. He’s just a deep sleeper! 

   Thanks for reading about my first week of life. I hope you all have a blessing days ahead.

How much it cost for out-patient delivery cost (For temporary research activity visa 408); 

Midwife consulting A$147 (6 visits) 

GP visit A$90 and A$60 (twice) 

Ultrasound at week 20th A$270 

Blood test and glucose testing was covered by our private insurance 

Delivery package (A night stay) A$1,383 

GDM consult A$77

*The hospital required us to pay deposit of $6,000 2-month before month of admission. 

 You Are My Sonshine, Nadashi Welcome to the World my dearest son. Nadashi Siripatana, was born on Saturday February, 1st, 2020 Sydney, Australia. 

The Jonas Brothers Are Getting Used to Being Interviewed Again | VICE

We met the brothers in a deserted London bar, to talk about the past decade and how they finally care enough about pop music to return to it.

The Jonas Brothers don’t know where to sit. We’re standing in a cordoned-off area in the sort of central London bar that resembles the results of a greenhouse and fancy department store’s brief fling. The three siblings eye up four identical green, lip-shaped couches in each corner of the room. “Maybe we should take one each and just shout at each other,” Joe says with a grin.

I laugh nervously, hoping he’s not serious, before suggesting that he and his older brother, Kevin, plop themselves on one sofa, while Nick, wearing a very noisy jacket made of plastic, makes himself comfortable on a red stool. Kevin settles in first, but not before moving four slightly lukewarm coffees onto a low table.

Joe seems buoyant; the other two not so much. “I got some good rest last night, so I'm doing pretty good,” he says, picking up a cup and taking a sip. “I don't know if they got the most amount of sleep. But I had a massage at the hotel and it just put me in a deep, deep sleep.” When I glance at Nick, his face is blank. He doesn’t seem as impressed with his brother’s gentle gloating.

Still, six years ago you might’ve thought that the Jonas Brothers wouldn’t ever trade brotherly jibes with each other in front of a music journalist again. But here they are, promoting their first album in ten years, Happiness Begins. In the US, its lead single, “Sucker” became not only their first Billboard Hot 100 number 1, but the first from a boyband in the US since B2K's "Bump, Bump, Bump" in 2003 ("Sucker" peaked at 4 on the UK charts). They’ve also announced a world tour, done the requisite carpool karaoke – they’re back back.

A newer band might be climbing the walls with excitement at such success. The JoBros, however, have been through this rigmarole of travel, promo, album, tour before. Not that they’re fully jaded – they tell me how happy they are that people still give shit about them – but, rather, they’re reserved. And given what they’ve been through over the past decade, I get it. Happiness might now be beginning, but it’s been difficult to find. A little hesitation is natural.

Now, for the story every super-fan already knows. After starting small, as a teen pop punk act in 2005, the band signed to Disney’s Hollywood Records in 2006 and immediately blew up. In the US, they were the teen pop phenomenon of the late 00s, starring in sitcoms, movies and selling millions of records. But slogging it as poster boys for Disney purity for seven years can leave you in pop purgatory, unable to evolve. In 2013, when they released “Pom Poms”, it was clear that the band had failed to mature with their fans. The song stalled at number 60 on the Hot 100, while its follow up, “First Time”, failed to chart in the UK overall.

Not that they seemed that bothered by that commercial plummet. What they had was broken and when I ask if they were disappointed that the rest of that material never got released, Joe and Kevin both give off something between a huff and a grim laugh. “Truth is, we weren't really happy with the material and didn't feel like we were artistically in sync,” Nick says quickly, his jacket crinkling as he sits forward on his stool. “It’s one of the reasons the group ended. And we were isolating ourselves and limiting our creative potential because we didn't know if we could really progress.”

"I think we were all in such different places,” Joe adds. “Kevin was starting his life with [his wife] Danielle. Nick and I were in and out of relationships. We'd get in the studio and we couldn't land on anything lyrically. I wasn't as inspired to be in there. It kind of felt like I was just going through the motions and I knew that the music would be created” no matter what, with or without passion. “So I'd come in when I was needed. I just wasn't connecting with what we were creating.”

Why not get new writers, you might ask? Well, the Jonas Brothers’ involvement in the writing process felt, to them, fundamental. Sure, their breakthrough hit was a cover of a Busted song, but “Burning Up”, “SOS”, “Love Bug” and “A Little Bit Longer” were legitimately strong pop songs, and their own. Anyway, their lack of musical progression had incubated a fear of rejection. “Knowing that things were on the decline,” Nick says, “I was afraid that we would ask to work with someone and they would say no.” Panicked, he called a meeting and in 2013, mid-way through recording a new record, he broke up the band.

The next bit is well-trodden. Nick buffed up, posed in his underwear and released one of the greatest post-boyband pop songs of all time, “Jealous”. Joe joined dance pop group DNCE. Kevin retreated into family life. He had two children, Alena in 2014 and Valentina two years later. It wasn’t that simple, though. “I didn't even know if I wanted to do music again,” Joe says now. The air isn’t tense but sombre and Nick’s eyes are cast to the floor. “I had to find my own place. I went on and worked on different projects, but it took time to get inspired. Nick had that all figured out. I just didn’t.”

Meanwhile, Kevin says that he was hurt. Joe and Nick had performed as the Jonas Brothers at a final gig without him and, after the birth of his first child, he felt like he didn’t have his best friends. “It's not that I said that I didn't want to do music anymore, but I think, looking back at it, there was some pain there. So I wanted to look at some other passions of my own and see what else was out there.”

As they talk, each brother is careful to allow the other to share their piece. Nick especially is quiet, often faced away from his brothers examining something off in another corner of the room. They’re respectful, almost detached, as if they’ve plodded through that murky period with the wounds, scars and wariness to prove it. The last six years, the brothers tell me, was about rediscovering their relationships as a family. Once Kevin's kids brought them together, “We made time where we could just rebuild as friends," Joe says," not even bring up anything music-related. We didn't really dive into that stuff. We just said, 'Let's just move on.'” Moving on, in this case, involved making 90-minute documentary, Chasing Happiness.

“It seems like a jump,” Joe agrees when I put it to him, before Nick cuts him off for the first time.

“We were made aware of some offers that were coming in for a Jonas Brothers reunion,” he says, carefully. “There was one at that point which could have made sense. Kevin flew out to LA and we talked through it but not everyone was on board.” He eyes Joe. “But it opened up a dialogue about what we could do together, to touch on that period of our lives.” Nick and Kevin flew to go and meet Joe while he was acting as a coach on The Voice Australia. Aside from a dinner in London a year prior, that meeting was the first chunk of time the three brothers had together, just as a trio. Nick, though, hankered after a reunion. And so, like any responsible adults, they decided a play a game where they got drunk and aired out their grievances to figure out their shit. It worked.

After ironing out the details, the Jonas Brothers were soon recording music as a group again, pulling in pop producer and writer names with the weight of a few tonnes: Max Martin, Shellback, Justin Tranter, Greg Kurstin and Ryan Tedder (Tedder executive produced the album). For Kevin, though, it was a learning curve. In the six years he’d been out of the game, a lot had changed. Session writing, streaming and the way that digital communication has opened up the songwriting process has altered not only how people make music, but how they consume it. “There's been so many times where I've asked them, 'Is this a good metric to look at?'” he says, almost sheepishly, “Streaming wasn't really a thing. The way, dynamically, you work with your label, to pretty much all of it has changed.”

Thankfully, the music on Happiness Begins is really good. “I Believe”, which Nick wrote with Kurstin, sits between “Jealous” and the slick romance of “Hold On We’re Going Home”, while “Every Single Time”, a reggae-lite bop produced by Tedder, could easily have belonged to DNCE. And unlike a lot of current pop, you really can’t imagine anyone else singing a song like “Only Human”, a wonky horn-filled track that, when pushed, could be described as baby’s first foray into ska, or lead single “Sucker”, that grabs those Jonas power chords and drags them into 2019. It’s the Jonas Brothers on a molecular level.

I catch their publicist waving at me to wrap things up. The band have a photoshoot next and then they’re playing an intimate gig for fans. But as we all stand up and exchange pleasantries, I tell them I’m glad that they’ll finally be able to spend a holiday like Thanksgiving together as friends. They all pause and look at each other awkwardly. “We do have a day off and we'll be in the New Jersey area,” Kevin says. “We could go to your house?” Nick asks. I turn to Joe. “Oh, we have no idea,” he shrugs. “We're still bandmates at the end of the day. We're just trying to figure it all out.” And with that they file out of the room.

Source: VICE

Serendipity in Venture Capital is BS...(and other views on the seed VC landscape)

Disclaimer: I believe that unless you are one of a few firms, there is no possible claim that there is a “correct” way to do venture, only to treat people with respect along the way.

Venture capital started as a network heavy business and arguably still is to many. I don’t think that is dominant anymore.

The Early Days: VC was the ultimate network business

Venture capital started as the ultimate network business, with a tight-knit web of humans for decades. It looked like this:

After the web 1.0 bubble, there was not an abundance of capital, and thus power swung back towards VCs as the market cooled. Those VCs, based on 2008 data, were an average age of 46, 79% were men, 87% were white, and 53% had MBAs (of which 60% went to Harvard or Stanford). Based on demographics like that, it’d be pretty difficult to not be a tight-knit, network-driven industry.

Then, 2-7 years before the 2012 Facebook IPO, came the first wave of elite seed firms like Baseline, First Round Capital, Floodgate, Foundry Group, SV  Angel, True Ventures, SoftTech, and others.

As company formation costs fell due to a variety of technological drivers, paired with startups being “hot” again, we saw institutional capital want more exposure to private market technology risk. Partners spun out, founders started funds, and angels institutionalized.

The Birth of Seed & Verticalized Funds

“In angel investing, you don’t really have competitors. You go ahead and do your thing…I don’t look at Internet or Internet investing as competitive, generally.” — Ken Lerer, 2010

We all know this trend accelerated, with some seed funds graduating to series A+ firms, and quickly everyone (especially non-GPs who were stuck underneath partners unwilling to give up meaningful carry) wanted their own seed fund. The issue was, LPs had been hit up with the seed pitch now for the past 5+ years. And in the same time period, re-ups had come more and more often as fund deployment periods went from 5 years to 3 years. 

These newer seed firms needed to differentiate as the “seed” story was played out.

This led to a wave of vertical-centric seed firms. Lemnos (2012 incubation fund I) and Root Ventures (2015 Fund 1) became known for hardware, Forerunner (2012 fund I) became known for consumer, Lerer Hippeau become known for NYC/Web (2010 Fund 1) and on and on it went.

The Venture Capital Explosion

Between 2003 to 2010, an average of 58 seed funds were raised each year but in the past 7 years, that average spiked to 137 (or a 2.3x increase). - Eric Feng, 

And now it’s 2019. The deployment periods for some funds have collapsed to as short as 18 months, there is a seed fund for everything, and series A+ firms have grown into full-stack financing machines with $1B+ funds designed to take companies from A to IPO, and many with scout programs to build the top of the funnel.

This hyper-crowded market has swung the pendulum back to old times, with LPs being sold either more explicit networks, or similar economics as the 70s.

The former manifests itself as unicorn-mafia funds (ex-uber employee fund, ex-airbnb employee fund, etc.) built around the idea that people want to raise money from their ex-coworkers and/or access will be materially better because of this relationship. The latter manifests itself as startup studios that have outsized ownership economics.

So we’ve got a ton of seed funds, plenty of post-seed capital, and some moderate differentiation. We also have a 7x increase in $1B+ outcomes from a decade ago.

But when I look around at seed stage venture, where the universe of companies is truly unknown, I still believe firms are relying on serendipity. And there are many firms that are trying to engineer serendipity at a high rate by sending analysts (and the partners themselves) to events 3–4x/week, actively trying to setup deal flow catch up calls, or aggressively stalking demo day lists, all born out of the fear that they will miss the next Stripe/Uber/etc.

And how do they scale up these teams to chase these competitive deals in an ever-expanding seed stage funnel? They raise more money.

As their seed fund gets bigger, they now need to write a $1.5-$2M check to get the proper ownership to 3–4x their $100M+ seed fund. At the same time it’s become more likely that interesting deals don’t get sent to them because…well the math doesn’t work for other investors to hit their ownership targets. 

Or as Rob Go astutely points out, “firms that have built their models around aggressive deal trading will struggle.”

Now we have:

1) Larger seed funds, that are hyper-competitive (and often generalists due to fund size and scope creep).

2) Which means that seed funds need to tell founders that it is best for their business to only have them and no other meaningful checks in the round, so they can write $1.5M+ and get ~15%-20% ownership.

3) But unless you’re a top tier firm, your capital could be viewed as a commodity, and thus it’s clearly not dominant for a generalist firm to be the only investor (which is ok because...we’re humans, and we can’t be everything for everyone), and thus you are at massive risk of being pushed down in ownership and allocation.

4) And then in order to make the math work you’re reliant on multiple $1B+ outcomes, despite a large % of VC-backed M&A transactions happening below $300M.

5) So we now have some seed VCs telling investors that they will be able to increase ownership from seed to A/B or at worse do full pro-rata to maintain. The problem is that in reality, pro rata allocations from Series A+ remain increasingly difficult to maintain, as those $1B+ funds, that have infrastructure (and fees) to in theory actually be everything for everyone, need to put more money to work in their rounds. So you don’t get to defend ownership nearly as efficiently as even 5 years ago. And often any pre-empted offer for a pre-series A round could just turn into a pre-empted full series A process.

All of these things boil down to the core truth that most Seed stage firms today have to be small (either ridealong checks or non-hyper competitive leads), early, and/or different enough to be one top-priority thing for a subset of founders.

I recognize that I just doomsday scenario’d a bunch of components of seed stage venture capital, so I figured it’d only be fair for me to share my own (highly biased) view on what does work at some >1 firm scale at the seed stage.

First, forward looking macro-factors that I strongly believe in:

VC returns have been persistent, but with each new innovation cycle turn (infrastructure to personal computing to web to mobile and onward) new successful VCs have been birthed that have become part of the persistence. The power law of venture will remain, but will be slightly more distributed.

Private markets are going to continue to capture the returns in many sectors, and thus it will be attractive for LPs to be invested in a larger subset of tier 1, tier 2, and maybe even tier 3 VC firms from a returns perspective. This will be even more evident as we potentially enter tumultuous public market performance that shows lower yield over the next decade than the prior decade+ bull-run we’ve had.

The compounding effects of venture as an industry are unique vs. any other industry. Brand flywheels are strong absent of results due to opacity of quantitative measures (i.e. we both bury the dead slowly and quietly on failed startups, and cheer the good loudly on less-than-incredible fund exits/performance).

Brand signaling can create unfair advantages. I.e. If Sequoia invests in a company, statistically that company is more likely to raise money than if another investor does. Building a lasting brand matters.

More specifically the seed fund strategy that I believe in:

Keep fund size small — Leading a round today is rarer than we think, and just means conviction and ability to put down a term sheet (and large check), but not necessarily 60%+ of the round. There has never been more follow-along capital at the seed stage and rallying investors around your conviction and lead check is a powerful thing that solves for some disadvantages of smaller funds.

Remove noise and keep focused — Small fund size enables myself (and other similar funds) to not care about missing the next billion-dollar marketplace business. The funnel has widened (as seen above) , and only looking at a piece of the funnel is scalable/realistic. Yes, hit rate needs to be better, but I’d argue that while it’s gotten statistically harder to identify a fund returning company, it’s become exponentially harder to win meaningful allocation in that deal.

Build an informed view of the world - This allows investors to compete on the axis of both having a deeper understanding of a space versus the average investor, theoretically have an ability to know what they are looking for at a faster pace (and thus move faster), find/track things earlier due to focus, and meaningfully compete via outbound deal flow by using ammunition that they’ve built up in research.

These last two points specifically are the only way in which I feel I am able to advantageously do venture. However, as I said before, it’s not immediately clear to me that one strategy in seed stage venture is dominant. 

Small funds have dominant return profiles for today’s fundraising dynamics, high velocity funds have dominant statistics for today’s outcome distributions, full-stack funds have dominant funnel building for today’s growing prices, and concentrated funds have dominant return distributions if you can pick.

What is clear to me is that venture is changing rapidly and if you aren’t thinking about these things in real-time, you’re not doing your job.