Alyx Woodward (obsolete) @Alyx@computerfairi.es

what was _really_ going on? Lord never bothered to find out, never bothered to check

*spits*

I'm kinda tired of people who just watch from a distance, and do nothing. aren't you?

after "Titanic" went down and the full scale of the disaster became broadly known the captain of "Californian", Stanley Lord, tried hard to muddy the issue, spreading stories that maybe he'd really seen some *other* ship or whatever

none of the stories matter. what matters is what Lord did, which was 100% of nothing

I suppose that must have galled him, to the end of his days

the memory of the strange ship on the horizon, the skyrockets going up

I don't remember all the details, but "Californian" was a few miles away and they saw the lights of a ship that was firing off skyrockets

and they did nothing

they convinced themselves it was just "company signals" or people having a party, and they did nothing

never even bothered to check. it wouldn't have taken long but it was just too much effort for them, for reasons unknown to us

"Titanic" was merely the biggest artifact of human society's positive _addiction_ to easily burnable carbon. white civilization, "Western civilization", just MAINLINED that shit, and it's almost killed us all

well

that's to one side. I wanna talk a little about a side-effect of "Titanic" going down, and that's the "Californian"

I bet a lot of "Titanic" nerds still talk endlessly about the design of the ship, as if this or that technical fix could have made the idea work

forgetting that the only reason "Titanic" floated at all was because of a huge number of human beings shackled to _coal_. digging coal out of the ground, turning coal into coke, shoveling the coke into a boiler, over and over and over

so of course it went to the bottom and because the society that built "Titanic" was awful and dysfunctional, the failure of the dream killed a thousand people or so

everything about "Titanic" was gross, in both senses of the word. both just BIG, and "gross" in the sense of disgusting. it was a vessel built to float not on water but on the stratification of humanity into a rarefied upper class and a solid dense mass of lower class humanity

I admit it, I've had an interest in disasters. I feel bad about it, but I feel also like I've learned something about how human beings break down under pressure

and I find myself thinking about "Titanic" right now, and the role played by a nearby ship, the "Californian"

"Titanic" should never have existed in the first place. it was a crime, that it even existed. human technology and society couldn't support it properly

it's no good. Lomax is paralyzed. their eyes swim with tears as Rodgers shouts uselessly and one of the cube-headed creatures looms over them. the last frame shows the creature's reflection in Lomax's staring eye

page thirty-seven

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-37

Lomax lies face-up on the ground. they can't move their body. they're crying, fear has a tight grip on them

some distance away they see one of the cube-headed creatures giving a loud call, as it seems. "I'm going to die," thinks Lomax

Prof. Rodgers keeps shouting "encouragement". "you're wearing the raiment! you can do this!" (FUCK OFF Rodgers why is this even _happening_)

@melaninpony bleh. good luck

it's bad. page thirty-six

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-36

whatever creature has managed to hurt Lomax has drawn blood. Prof. Rodgers watches impotently from a distance, able only to say Lomax's name

the creature backhands Lomax away from themself, flinging Lomax's body hard into a tree

Lomax falls limp to the ground. some bone is broken

Rodgers shouts desperately "you can do this!" DO WHAT

there's hints of "digitization" in the way the creature is drawn, like maybe we're in a simulation, or the creature is not completely in Lomax's world, or something. impossible to tell

Prof. Rodgers shouts a warning to Lomax from behind a tree

Lomax tries to outrun the creature but it manages to get a good one in--or possibly a different creature gets the jump on them

we see cloth tear across Lomax's abdomen, and Lomax grits their teeth in pain

bleh. let's keep playing this ridiculous game, what else is there to do

(if all this ends up being even remotely close to what I think it's really all about, there's a whole lot of RL people I'm gonna wanna kick in the fucking 'nads...*sighs* I shouldn't talk that way but goddamn I don't like being jerked around.)

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-35

one of the cube-headed creatures gets a bead on Lomax and starts charging for them

@swordgays gnite

page thirty-four

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-34

Lomax looks up to see one of the cube-headed figures looming very tall over them. they dash away just as the creature aims a blow

Lomax sprints away through the forest in desperation. from an unknown distance away Prof. Rodgers shouts, "good! get some distance and--"

"then what!" retorts Lomax

hrm, what's next is difficult easily to describe. Lomax appears to have fallen among a population of some vaguely humanoid creatures, taller than Lomax by far, and bearing dark cubes for heads and other cubes incorporated into their bodies in other places. there seem to be a number of them about

a frame shows us, slightly surprisingly, Prof. Rodgers. he's shouting: "Lomax, you gotta move! LOMAX!"

Lomax seems not to hear. they look sweaty and sick

oh, THIS is page thirty-three. the previous page doesn't count as having a page number I guess

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-33

unknown distance later in time and space. it's outdoors, it looks like anyway, and we're in some forested place. the crescent Moon is in the sky in a manner that's either highly stylized or meant to be alien *shrugs*

Lomax has fallen to the forest floor amid the pine cones. they're bleeding superficially.

TEMPO and its relatives are generally used catalytically, in small quantity. this catalytic quantity of the nitroxyl radical get oxidized _in situ_ to the active oxidizing agent, an N-oxammonium ion, by a co-oxidant present in excess. here? the auxiliary oxidant is simply air. copper(I) trifluoromethanesulfonate, 2,2'-bipyridyl, and N-methylimidazole in acetonitrile form some kind of system here that must bind molecular oxygen usefully so that it can oxidize the TEMPO

well, that's a fun one

the benzyl alcohol in question, 2-amino-5-bromobenzyl alcohol, is obtained from the corresponding benzoic acid via lithium aluminium hydride reduction in tetrahydrofuran. bleah! LAH isn't fun stuff. reacts explosively with water, and in fact the moisture from air is capable of setting the stuff on fire

but the TEMPO oxidation is straightforward. other oxidizing reagents might be expected to attack the aniline ring (aminobenzenes or anilines are notoriously sensitive to oxidation)