@All The Northerners Making Fun Of Texans Rn:

@All the northerners making fun of Texans rn:

Our houses are not built for temperatures below 30°F. They’re also designed to shed heat. Good design for when it regularly gets to 100°F in the summer and winters are mild.

Homes here generally do not have furnaces. We rely on heat pumps and resistance coils, the former of which is not effective below 25°F, and the latter of which use lots of electricity

The electrical infrastructure is designed to meet demand in the afternoons in the heat of the summer, not frigid winter nights. Also, while we have a shit ton of wind and solar capacity, it’s currently crippled by frozen turbines and snowfall.

Combine all of the above and the electrical grid usage is astronomical, even when people are barely reaching 50°F indoors. The stress on the system and reduced generating capacity has caused ERCOT to start rolling blackouts as a way of preventing a mass uncontrolled blackout ala the Northeast in 2003. So that means no heat in houses that naturally shed heat, when it’s 7°F out.

Since we live in a warm place, many people don’t have clothing for this level of cold. Means a lot of people are really, really cold, and their houses are already losing heat fast.

Speaking of homes shedding heat, this also means pipes are not heavily insulated, and without proper measures taken (which many people are unaware of) that means no water.

We don’t generally keep equipment like ice scrapers and snow shovels handy. Most hardware stores don’t stock rock salt for ice. Meaning we can’t leave our homes and go anywhere if the car and roads are covered with ice. The cities don’t have snow plows. Nobody here has chains or snow tires to be able to drive safely either.

As if all of this is not already bad enough, the local plants are not evolved for this kind of freeze, including snow. So many trees are breaking under the weight and causing damage.

We’re not wimps. We’re simply not built for it, don’t have the gear for it, and don’t have instinctual level response of what to do in these situations. It’s like how the Northeast had a lot of issues after Hurricane Sandy.

It’s the Dose that Makes the Poison: Lucifer Thoughts and Speculation

I’m going to throw the entirety of this under a cut because spoilers. I’ve been rearranging the pieces on the table and I have some meta and a plausible(?) theory about how things might shake out.

…this is almost four thousand words long, and frankly? I feel I’ve barely grazed the surface.

Also, I put it on AO3 for ease of reading and/or in case anyone wants to have, idk, threaded conversations ;D

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Hello, I love your lucifer thoughts, and if you want to write it I would love to now your thoughts on lucifer using names/nicknames

I’ve thought about this a lot. I even touched on my personal headcanon about it in the last chapter of Taking the Fall :)

Obviously, Lucifer uses nicknames or alternative names a lot. I think he says the word “Chloe” less than a dozen times across three seasons, while he uses “Detective” or “the Detective” hundreds. She’s even saved as “the Detective” in his phone. 

So, let’s start at the beginning. (In the beginning…) The show has drawn from many sources to construct Lucifer Morningstar as we know him. Obviously, we’ve got the comics. Personally, I see a bit more of Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer than Mike Carey’s (and, to be completely honest, I feel like a bit of Gaiman’s Crowley may be mixed in there as well). In Carey’s comics, Lucifer is much more able to think in the Very Long Term, for example, and is essentially always acting on a Plan of his own (which creates a neat parallel between God and Lucifer, but I digress). Gaiman’s Lucifer is the one who is Done with Hell and basically hands over the keys; he’s also the one who cuts off his wings; he’s the one who speaks the great lines the show used to such effect–about not being responsible for humanity’s sins and disliking that he’s blamed for things he’s not responsible for. He’s also the one who retires to LA, starts a nightclub called Lux, and really has a thing for sunsets. Gaiman was also the one who established that Lucifer was once called Samael. Gaiman’s Lucifer is heavily influenced by Milton’s Paradise Lost iteration of Lucifer (he of “It’s better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” fame; Milton’s Lucifer gets all the best lines). He’s not distinctly (or solely) comprised of Christian or Jewish mythologies, though both influence the character.

In his short story, “Murder Mysteries,” (which features the same Lucifer he incorporated into the Sandman comics) Gaiman establishes at length how angels are named. First, they include “el”, which means, “of God.” The other part of their name indicates their purpose. Samael, depending on the translation, can mean venom, poison, or blindness of God. I don’t know about you, but if my name was Poison, I’d probably feel like I got the short end of the naming stick. This is contrasted, of course, by the same angel carrying the name (or perhaps title), Lucifer. When Gaiman introduces him, it’s by another character saying, “He was the Creator’s finest creation: the angel Samael, called Lucifer. It means ‘the bringer of light.’ Of all the angels he was the wisest, the most beautiful, the most powerful. Saving only his Creator, he is, perhaps, the most powerful being there is.”

When Lucifer Fell, he abandoned the name Samael. He rejected it. Poison or not, he was no longer “of God.” Whether out of spite or anger or truth, Lucifer rejects the name his Father gave him in favor of the title. He identifies himself as Bringer of Light; this is the name he chooses. In the show, we witness Lucifer’s reaction to Samael when Linda speaks it. It angers him. Upsets him. After all this time, he is not indifferent to it. And though he claims not to care about many things related to his past, the name is very obviously a match to very dry tinder.

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vegans who refuse to even eat backyard eggs….why

In defense of Chloe Decker

Chloe is a detective. She’s used to looking for evidence. When she sees the hard evidence of Lucifer’s face, she goes to find more evidence to help explain what she saw because finding evidence of things is how she distances herself from emotional turmoil. How many times has something upsetting or emotionally devastating happened to Chloe where her immediate response is “Let’s get back to work” or “I just want to focus on work.” Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it realistic? Um, hell yes it is.

She’s tormented by the idea that all the evidence she has of Lucifer being a fundamentally good person has been a lie. A lie she told herself because she has feelings for him. Not only have the men in Chloe previous romantic relationships lied to and betrayed her–she has lied to herself to excuse them. Think about it: she has evidence that Pierce is a dick (the things he says, the things he does, giving Dan that washed-up cops union rep position). She doesn’t like him at all in the beginning. She must deceive herself about some of that initial reaction later to make a relationship even possible. This completely echoes her relationship with Lucifer. Going from “I find you repulsive” to “I love you” is a pretty freaking huge leap, you know?

Remember, Chloe sees Lucifer’s face like right after she realizes she had been about to marry a freaking crime lord who convinced her utterly that he loved her. Like. 24 hours later. Her terror and confusion are justified. 

And what’s a crime lord to the Devil? Talk about freaking escalation. Dan was a dirty cop who lied to and gaslighted her; Pierce was a dirty cop … who was also a crime lord and also the world’s first murderer who lied to and gaslighted her; Lucifer is the goddamned Devil, societal embodiment of all things evil. Chloe, like a real person, has huge insecurities. Hers center around being loved/being lovable/being left/being used. If you can’t take a step back and imagine the last few years of Chloe’s life from her perspective, I don’t know what to tell you. She might not handle things as well as Linda (debatable), but Jesus, she’s trying, and she’s doing a lot better than, oh, most reasonable people would in her position.

Father Kinley plays on this. Remember, he’s been researching Lucifer for a long time. He knows exactly what to say to convince her. He knows exactly which books to show her. His voice is a slow-dripping poison in her ear, and everything he says trickles right down into the broken heart of a woman who has spent her entire adult life being lied to and left by the men she’s chosen. The evidence says she cannot trust her choices.

The things Kinley says are absolutely devious and absolutely devastating. Lucifer is funny and charming and kind–but it’s a lie. Lucifer will adjust his ploys to ensnare you more completely–and the first thing he says when she arrives boils down to “I adjusted the over-the-top date from last time to grilled cheese, the kind you like. I made you a playlist of music I think is silly because you like it.” He only bleeds around her to make her pity him.

Chloe is not weak or stupid or cruel or mean. If she hadn’t questioned and hadn’t walked this path, she could never have gotten to the point she gets to with Lucifer by the end of the season. And it all refers back to that first conversation she has with Ella about faith. In this case, Chloe’s faith–not in God, but in her own objectivity–has been rocked really damn hard. 

ALSO, and I think this is super important and I’m not sure I’ve seen it mentioned yet–when Chloe does almost pour the contents of the vial into Lucifer’s glass but knocks the glass over instead, she goes over the freaking top with her apologies. How many times has she seen Lucifer’s bar and Lucifer’s club in various states of destruction? Her apology is not for spilling the wine or breaking the glass. She is apologizing so profusely because she almost did something she considers reprehensible to someone she cares about. She has so so so many conflicting feelings. It’s tearing her apart just as much as the later events of the season nearly tear Lucifer apart.

Chloe’s journey this season precisely mirrors Ella’s story from that first conversation about God. Ella said, “My aunt was a nun, okay? And she always taught me that doubt was really important. Right? I mean, if you don’t question something, then what’s the point of believing it? Mm-hmm. I doubt so that I can believe.”

Chloe’s not doubting the existence of the Devil so she can believe in the Devil or God or celestials or Big Stuff beyond her comprehension. She’s doubting her love for the Devil so she can believe her love for the Devil is real. Even the painful steps are steps forward and steps that were necessary for her to take to make sure the love she feels going forward is, as Lucifer and Chloe have both raised concerns about in the past, real.

Simple explanation of the bills that farmers in India are protesting - in TikTok form!