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I saw a thing yesterday about how human beings are running 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than they did a hundred years ago.

And this is good information to know if you’re writing time-travel or transmigration stories.

Your character is like "Holy shit, they’re burning up! They’re all sick." And it’s like, "No, they’re not ‘sick’-sick. Not to the point where if you were triaging the situation you would drop everything and treat them as an immediate priority."

"They’re just existing in a near-permanent malaise. Every moment of their life is lowkey uncomfortable. To the point that if you suddenly exchanged bodies with one of them, the consciousness of their pain would shock you."

EXCERPT: It had been a lifetime since he’d felt pain.

Like, he understood emotional angst and that terrible sense of emptiness that can strike now and then. But physical pain had been a distant memory for a long time.

Darkstar looked at the blood welling up from his finger. The red pushing up through a slit in the skin. Almost beautiful in the sheer humanity of it.

And then the pain.

Oh. Shit.

The pain.

The human brain~ he thought. She is one tricky bitch.

Because the brain likes to lie to itself. Likes to take the pain memories and minimize them as small as possible. To the point that a person could have whole swatches of things they don’t remember.

So as he’d gotten more and more invincible, the memories of physical pain had disappeared. To the point, that staring at the cut on his finger, he couldn’t help wondering "Can I die from this?"

And it seemed ridiculous.

He’d seen people doing onsite first-aid before. (Though they usually cringed away from him, his aura overpowering in its nearness.) He’d watched some doctor shows on TV. (Like House-level of actual reality.) He knew how fragile the human body was. (They always came apart in his hands. One little squeeze too hard… It was good that he had Dr. Zee to fix things when he broke them. Otherwise he’d lose his fucking mind.) Humans were so delicate that a single cut could result in a deadly infection.

He stared at the cut and thoroughly recognized that he was a mortal being.

Something he’d missed for so long was returned to him in the most unexpected of ways.

He stared as the blood trickled and flowed and eventually dripped over the edge of his finger to speckle the kitchen floor.

/EXCERPT

Being afraid of infection and taking your or someone else’s temperature and finding out the baselines are completely different from expected.

We run cooler because our immune systems are not being overworked.

People before were exposed to different diseases without immunities or antibiotics, and as a result their brains would set their body’s regulatory settings to ones different from a species optimal baseline. So like, you’d fall into a pond, "catch a chill," and spend the rest of your life nearly dying every time you caught a cold.

Our brains decide the settings, then if you go swimming and you come out of the water, your body would have the whole time tried to maintain a certain temperature for your blood and organs and your extremities. You dry off with a towel and you "warm up" to your body’s preset temperature setting.

And if your body’s optimal settings haven’t been messed with, you’d run cooler like modern people.

And maybe I’m wrong, I imagine if your body temperature baseline is higher than the modern setting, you would be extra cold in winter. More likely to go hypothermic if you don’t wear warm enough clothes.

And like, the way the world is heading–into the New Dark Ages–there are going to be more and more people with dysregulated temperature settings. As medical care ceases to be accessible, more and more people will be exposed to the kind of viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms that leave permanent damage to the human brain.

It’s sad.

As kids, adults would have us drink out of the garden hose. We would watch kids movies where the kids would make and sell lemonade using water from the garden hose. It was both normalized and introduced to children as "something kids do."

Children learn from what they see. And if no one explains why something is problematic or criminal, a child might not ever consciously absorb that what they see is a wrong thing. They just don’t know any better.

Which means that there needs to be edutainment content. More correct examples people can point to.

At the very least, when a show has someone doing something dangerous, another character could point out how dangerous it was. So the character can have the realization that they could have hurt themself or even died.

I’m sure it would bring satisfaction to the viewer to be able to see some personal growth in the character’s they’re watching.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

So we have senators voting to go to war against a country they don’t know anything about.

And through all their bluffing and bloviating, is the reason they’re doing all this because of their religion? Like, they see themselves as "Soldiers of God," so they’re going to "go to the Middle East and kill all the infidels!" because they think a "Holy Crusade" will launch them straight into Heaven?

Ugh.

I’m super tired of apocalypse cultists. I really wish the mainstream Christians would step up and step on the poisonous offshoots that are turning the world against all Christianity.

I think one of the worst thing to ever happen to the human race and the world was the advent of televangelists. Because it allowed backwoods pseudo-Christians to share their cult with the world.

And yeah, I can speak badly about the actions committed by the followers of a religion. It’s my opinion that they are spreading great harm to everyone and everything around them. They are actively causing harm to the world, and if we’re not allowed to call them out for THEIR ACTIONS without being accused of religious intolerance, I really feel that the 90s mission of tolerance has been led askew.

Countries should not be going to wars that involve guns, missiles, drones, poison gas, and NUCLEAR WEAPONS because of someone’s religion-fueled life mission.

And that some of the people backing up all the craze are desperate alpha/beta/sigma/delta LARPers that masturbate to the idea of full-flexing on a group of enemies and dry humping their dead bodies? Double ugh.

I’m just like "You wanna show off your BIG alpha cock to the WORLD??? Then it’s time to break out the Robot Jox! We don’t need to turn the world into a post-apocalyptic hellscape where even rich people can only afford a single hotdog because meat is so expensive. We could just set up stadiums and stream the fights and each country and each country’s team can make a buttload of money. And nobody has to die."

Seriously, a real man/real woman that wants to protect their loved ones and have a safe haven home that’s basically a warm womb for their beloved children would be 100% anti-war.

You don’t want people busting into your home and robbing everything you own and/or hurting your family? Don’t create a hostile environment.

Dudes should not be dressing as cops and murdering people in their homes.

Cops should not be dressing as cops and kidnapping and murdering people.

Police officers and military personnel should wear clearly identifiable uniforms WITH uncovered badge numbers. I think there should also be some kind of easily remembered nickname/callsign on their uniform. That way if someone can’t remember the long badge number, they can still be like "Officer Mad Cheetoh Dog was the one that helped us out. We’re really grateful he was volunteering at Toys For Tots today. It was good that his utility vest had a fully stocked First Aid kit including Narcan and an epinephrine auto-injector he knew how to use."

We all want to feel safe and happy. It’s only the weirdos that are desperate for conflict and war. Everyone else just wants to live their life and not be bothered by creeps and bullies. The kind of people so horny to oppress others that they’re willing to be horrifically murdered to have just one opportunity to successfully force someone else against their will.

There’s a movie I saw that’s about the end of the world. There’s some cosmic event happening–giant sunflares?–that will result in the death of all life on Earth within a handful of hours. And the main character wants to spend his last bit of time alive at a big party rather than alone with his girlfriend. But on his way to the party, he ends up saving a little girl that’s been kidnapped by pedophiles and tries his best to get her back to her family before flaming death hits the planet.

It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it makes you think: What would you do if you knew you only had hours left to live? What would other people do?

It’s like The Outer Limits (1995-2002 version) episode where during the night a scientist realizes something has happened to the sun and the other side of the planet has already been burned of all life. And when the sun comes up in his hemisphere, he will die with everyone else.

He had to decide whether it was better to wake people up and let them know they will die at dawn, or if it is better to let people sleep through their deaths. Undisturbed and vaporized, or upset and horrified before being vaporized.

In the scenarios from that movie and The Outer Limits episode there is nothing anyone can do to stop their deaths. But right here and now?

Say No to war.

Stop all genocide.

Protect the environment.

Tax the rich.

If we want to keep the world from burning, we have to stop idiots from lighting the match.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

Proper aftercare is essential in all walks of life.

Sometimes I wish I’d take better care of myself. I wash my hands and forearms. I wash my face and neck. I have washcloths. I moisturize my skin when I remember, though I know I should take better care.

So it’s like, I should remember to rinse my mouth out and drink some water after smoking.

I should hydrate and remember to urinate regularly.

More yoga. More stretching. More deep breathing. More beneficial health things that I don’t commonly do for myself. But that I should.

Beforecare, aftercare, and during care are all necessary things.

Only water goes in the eyes. A lot of it.

Closed-toe shoes. Ones that are lightweight and you can run in, but with soles thick enough to step on broken glass.

I bought some lightweight robes. I may set up a little wardrobe near the front door. That way if someone gets called out of bed without time to dress, there’s a chance of putting on a robe. It gets chilly at night/in the early morning.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

I hate that everything is going to get so expensive.

Some people don’t understand. They’re like "It’s only $1 or $2." and I just want to scream "PER ITEM! It is an extra $1 or $2 or $20 PER ITEM."

I can’t afford to pay an extra dollar or two on EVERYTHING. And even the things whose price doesn’t go up will suddenly be a sacrifice to make because that "$1 or $2" has to come from somewhere. And it turns out that somewhere is a product a consumer otherwise would have bought.

But now they’re not buying those products. Those companies are losing money on unsold merchandise (that now costs more to produce because the parts come from overseas), and as a result employees have to be laid off.

There’s a reason we went into the Great Depression era at a horrifying 8% and a few years later it was like 36%. The only thing that saved us was the war.

We don’t like to draw attention to it, but we walked out of World War II with a lot of money. There were less people, the uber-rich had war profiteered their way out of debt and back into the heights of rich, and the country’s treasury was fat. A lot of the country’s problems were fixed due to war.

So there’s proof that war is very profitable for business. So I can understand how an ignorant amoral person would think that starting a bunch of wars would net them a ton of easy cash. I can understand, but I feel they should be treated with strict punishments. They should not live the rest of their life well.

There are some absolutely reprehensible things that simply cannot be forgiven. And starting a war so as to "enhance profit margins" is unforgivable. ESPECIALLY since we had a thriving stock market that was pumping out wealth.

Being told "Hey, don’t do this, it will cause a war" but still tromping forward to be a global-sized asshole… You can fuck right off with that. You’re a criminal and you need to be punished for the common good.

Other rich people need to see that their shenanigans will not be allowed to continue. And maybe they’ll sit their children down and actually teach their children. "Don’t do [terrible thing for the environment, dangerous drug party, MLM scheme, prank videos, bad landlord behavior]. This is not the time to be a fool, and honestly, there’s never a time to be a fool. You ruin the money when you enrage the public. Stop being a dangerous weirdo in public. You’re too rich not to have a staff of people to keep you from making a fool of yourself. Spend your money wiser."

If you have access to Netflix content, watch "The Fall of the House of Usher." If you can handle the gore, it is a horror story after all.

Prospero "Perry" Usher is the kind of rich idiot that doesn’t mean to kill a warehouse full of partygoers, but when he’s so stupid and ignores all the good advice he receives, the result is a writhing mass of melting death.

He didn’t mean to kill all those people. And he definitely didn’t mean to kill himself. But that’s the result that happened because he had way too much money, privilege, and access to stuff that it would be better if he’d never heard about.

And the idea that his father Roderick made Frederick take Perry to that meeting.

Knowing that his youngest son is fickle and flighty. That he is badly educated–to the point that he viewed that meeting about company properties that are so toxically hazardous that they’re poisoning the neighbors as a chance to pick out a place for a drug and sex party. And I mention "drug and sex party" because it was a bunch of nearly naked people wearing masks and having a great time. So when they all got melted into bones and goo… Identifying the bodies must have been near impossible.

I look at influencer-culture out there, and I feel like I’m seeing a scary number of people who remind me of Perry Usher.

They don’t mean to bankrupt their followers and thus disrupt their own cashflows, but their advice has resulted in some bankruptcies.

"Sorry, brah, I didn’t know what ‘tariff’ meant. My bad. Please don’t unlike, unfollow, unsubscribe, unlove me. You’re an essential part of my job as a grifter and ghoul."

So yeah. Things are going to get more expensive. Times are going to get harder. And there will be more desperate grifters pulling real life and Internet schemes.

Protect the old people and children. Keep in mind that MLMs are scams that will drain your money. And now is not the time to waste your entire family’s savings on a wedding spectacle extravaganza.

For reals: That $4000 bouquet of flowers was not worth the money you paid. Bride tax is real and you got snookered.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.