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The Chemical Structure of Redstone

So I was curious about what the chemical structure of Redstone looks like, and Minecraft Education Edition, albeit unintentionally, gives us a canon look into what Redstone is made of:

In Minecraft Education Edition, putting a Redstone Block into a Material Reducer shows that it's composed of 31 Carbon, 31 Uranium, and 38 Unobtanium, which we can assume to be measured in grams

Dividing the Redstone Block into Redstone Dust, each Redstone Dust is then composed of approximately 3.4 Carbon, 3.4 Uranium, and 4.2 Unobtanium

Again assuming that's measured in grams, that's 0.17 cm³ of Uranium, 1.496 cm³ of Carbon, and ???³ of Unobtanium per Redstone Dust

So what does this tell us about the chemical structure of Redstone? Basing this on Redstone Dust's composition, we can estimate that each Redstone molecule is composed of 3 Carbon atoms, 3 Uranium atoms, 4 Unobtanium atoms, a little under half of the time it binds to an extra Uranium and/or Carbon, and 20% of the time it binds to an extra Unobtanium

This also has some horrifying implications for how Redstone works:

Redstone would be extremely volatile as the radioactive decay from Unobtanium and Uranium would occasionally release Helium ions through alpha radiation, sometimes breaking apart Carbon into two Beryllium atoms (as it absorbs the extra proton and neutron from the Uranium) or merging into Oxygen

So Redstone should, in theory, be extremely flammable and potentially explosive, which implies that cave static, or the player mining Redstone with an Iron Pickaxe, could lead to a spark that causes an explosive cave-in

As Unobtanium is just a placeholder for unobtainable elements (hence the name), I'm going to estimate Unobtanium in this case as Unbinilium, the placeholder name for element 120

Why?

I'm estimating the Unobtanium as Redstone as being larger than the largest man-made element, Oganesson, which holds an impressive 118 protons

Each valence electron shell, from innermost to outermost, can bind with 2, 8, 18, 32, 32, 18, and 8 shells respectively, so I'd like Unobtanium to be an element we haven't discovered yet, and consequently I'd like to jump up to the next shell

While I could estimate with element 119's placeholder, Ununennium, it would have one electron in the next shell, so Unbinilium allows for easier chemical binding

So what does this molecule look like then? Well, horrifyingly...

It looks like this. As Redstone forms in crystal lattices, and only two Carbon atoms are free to bind, I can absolutely see why it's so brittle that it breaks into powder.

This makes the structure of Redstone:

C3U3Uno4 (55% of molecules) C4U3Uno4 (13% of molecules) C3U4Uno4 (13% of molecules) C4U4Uno4 (7% of molecules) C3U3Uno5 (5% of molecules) C4U3Uno5 (3% of molecules) C3U4Uno5 (3% of molecules) C4U4Uno5 (1% of molecules)

An extremely radioactive, flammable, and explosive compound.

Random pieces of advice

The world is less scary and chaotic if you lie down on the floor

Noticing different kinds of light (stars, candles, sunshine or city lights) can bring back the feeling of wonder and hope

If you can’t shower, washing your hands and face will help you feel better and cleaner

If you can’t clean anything else, changing and/or washing your bedsheets can do wonders

Fresh air and being outside in general can help with depersonalisation

Spending time around animals can help you recognise what’s important and calm anxious thought cycles

Techniques for emotional regulation in children can really help adults too

Putting random asortment of food on a plate without creating an actual dish still counts as a meal

Drink something warm

Delete that app

Treat yourself as if you were a kid. Buy yourself a toy, play around, learn about cool new things

Fast paced life isn’t morally better and it’s not good for everyone

There is no good reason to keep yourself hungry

Singing to your full lung capacity can be a great way to let out built up emotion

Tension in the face can cause headaches. Try to massage your face regularly

Nothing is as important as your health

You are a whole person on your own, you don’t need someone else to be there to deserve love and attention. Your life can be full as long as you are present

You should cry things out whenever you feel like it

Slow walks are still movement and they do count

It’s never as bad as you imagine it

Try changing your toothpaste flavor if you hate brushing your teeth

Anything can be a stim toy - one of my favourites is a heavy dragon necklace that has a complicated surfice. It’s fun to touch and hold and it’s not even “actual” stim toy

Procrastinating and feeling bad about it is true waste of time. Learn to truly rest. It takes the same amount of time but it is useful

Sometimes you have to force yourself to do the things that make you feel better

Don’t trust the thoughts you have after not sleeping for a while

Friendships don’t have to be forever to mean something

that ocd compulsion where its like 

“i MUST trigger myself because if i’m not constantly thinking about every terrible possibility and outcome then i am being purposefully negligent and unprepared for the horrors of this world and when the Bad Thing Happens it will be MY FAULT” 

Check out my ongoing comic Crow Time. It has crows, and also neat pantheons of epic beasties.

How to begin a sustainable way of life

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

“People need to eat more plant-based foods.” ->Talk about your favorite recipes, give others recipes, cook for them, and grow vegetables and plants in your garden and give them away as gifts. 

“People need to repair their clothes.” -> Offer to repair others’ clothes, and teach people how to repair their clothes. 

“People need to buy less clothes.” -> Give them old clothes that you don’t want, help them repair their clothes

“People need to buy less plastic stuff.” -> Learn to make things that can serve the same purpose, such as baskets, and give them as gifts. Let people borrow things you own so they don’t have to buy their own. 

“People need to stop using leafblowers and other gas-guzzling machinery.” -> Offer to rake the leaves. You can use them as compost in your own garden. 

“People need to be more educated about nature.”-> Learn about nature yourself. Tell people about nature. Be open about your love of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and frogs. Do not show awareness that this could be strange. You are not obligated to quiet down your enthusiasm for creepy crawlies to demonstrate awareness that it is weird. Point out at every opportunity how these animals are beneficial. 

“People need to use cars less.” -> Offer rides to others whenever you must go somewhere. Whenever you are about to go to the store, ask your neighbor or your friend who lives along the way, “Is there anything you need from the store?” 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

Some of these ideas might be eccentric, strange, or even socially unacceptable, but there is no way to change what is normal except to move against it. Someone has to be weird. It might as well be you. 

girl realising they’re a lesbian call that 💡yurika  

How to Maintain Your Magic Accessories: an overview for novice mages

Many spellcasters-to-be imagine how exciting life will be once they've acquired some skills and a wand, but very few picture the everyday upkeep of said wand. That's why we at the Mage Guidance Department created this guide: to spread awareness so that prospective mages can know what to expect when choosing a life of magic. It's not all fun and mind games—it's a commitment to care!

(This is my piece for Dottolus' Dotnomicon: Grimoire of Wonders, a magic book zine organized by @dotzines. Below the cut are the static versions. It was fun to play with the idea of a book with magically shifting content!)

There's a few things you can do

1. Put it under a beanie or hoodie cover, jut out only some of the hair

2. Cut it yourself if you can, and you know it's safe to

3. Look at inspiration of men with ponytails and man buns to shift your dysphoria into euphoria, try men long hair hairstyles on youtube

hello!!! as a trans male i want some advice—

about a year ago my mom let me cut my hair to whatever length i wanted because i let her get me therapy or soemtjing and j got it to an awesome pixie cut!! but it’s grown out to my shoulders now and its givin me some major dysphoria and i’m too scared to convince my parents to get it cut again. and no, i haven’t come out to them. i’ve been giving them hints, though.

anyways, basically want i wanted to ask is should i cut it myself? or should i just like— suck it up??? putting it in ponytails doesn’t help with the dysphoria

I am so ready for therapy

Me, knowing I wont be ready to open up for therapy

🕊 A stimboard for angelkins 🕊