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The original was posted on /r/mapporn by /u/quindiassomigli on 2024-11-05 11:58:32+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/mapporn by /u/ezocmother on 2024-11-05 11:29:40+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/mapporn by /u/dave-mackoi on 2024-11-05 11:06:13+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/dataisbeautiful by /u/NaiE007 on 2024-11-04 21:40:24+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/dataisbeautiful by /u/dhashe on 2024-11-04 18:45:47+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/six_6u on 2024-11-05 09:11:52+00:00.

The war had been raging for nearly thirteen years when the first game-changing victory was had. We were ecstatic that it was a victory earned by us, the Federation. After over a decade of waxing and waning progress for both sides, we captured fifteen whole systems and changed nearly half of the frontlines.

The representatives of every species in the Federation gathered in a huge summit that was televised across the stars, so that every citizen could witness the celebrations.

Everyone was giving glorifying speeches sending out praise, gratitude, and encouragement; many had bottles of various intoxicating substances that they healthily consumed in celebration; more than a few of them handed out medals to the fleet admirals that commanded the most successful fleets; some even tried getting a leg in for the upcoming election season by announcing their intent to make the day of this groundbreaking victory a Federation holiday.

Every representative was celebrating healthily. Every single one, except the human representative.

One of the more influential representatives in the congress noticed this, and believed that it was some kind of scripted act to bolster enthusiasm for the war effort. And, being one of the more powerful representatives, decided that it was their place to take action on that. They asked,

“Our dearest human colleague! This victory has changed the tide of the war without question! And we’re getting reports on the frontlines that the Alliance’s morale is plummeting faster and faster, there’s no doubt that we’ll begin capturing Alliance territory soon! This war will be over within no more than a few years! And that is thanks to your species, above all! Your strategies granted us the power to dominate the Alliance!”

At this point, every representative at the summit had hushed, excited to hear humanity’s words that would surely twist into those of glorious celebration so that they may release bellows and cries of victory.

“Enlighten us! Why the long face? Did you hope for a greater victory? For greater spoils from the Alliances treasuries? Or are you awaiting the return to the joy of the fight? Tell us! Tell us why you seem so solemn!”

You could feel the anticipation across the galaxy. The summit was dead silent, everyone staring at the human representative. Everyone watching on their holo-screens at home, or at work, or on the frontlines like me, most certainly had the same feeling in their chests – waiting for the human to burst forth with the most extravagant speech at the summit, so that they may also erupt in cheers.

“We joined the Federation nearly two-hundred years ago. We saw how the Federation operated, how each species interacted with each other and collectively ran the Federation. It wasn’t without flaw, no system is, but we liked your system, so we joined forces with you. We trusted that we would enter an era of peace, of scientific revolution, of social development for every last sentient being that walked this universe.”

The human stepped away from their seat in the summit hall, walking into the middle and staring each representative in the eyes – then they looked at the recorder, fixing the trillions upon trillions of viewers with an expression I cannot describe – but it drew forth some deep, primal fear in all of us. I would know, because everyone in my squad, sheltered in our little bunker on the frontlines, was trapped in paralyzed silence.

“Yet here we are. Giving out medals and popping corks over a mere strategic victory. There’s no social development here. No scientific revolution. Certainly no peace. No, the only thing I can see here is zealous praise and people that can’t see past the crosshair.

“This war isn’t liberating, it isn’t clean, and it most definitely isn’t backed by what the Federation is supposed to stand for. This war is gruesome. It’s violent and honorless. And we’re here, showering ourselves in alcohol and giving grandiose speeches that praise atrocities, instead of tending to the victims of war and giving aid to those in distress.”

The human spat out every word like it was bitter, pacing around and looking at everyone with a sour expression. Even their hand gestures seemed outraged and appalled, despite many species not using gestures to convey meaning.

“Horrific acts are idolized, people you would usually deem irredeemably criminal are rewarded handsomely, you’ve even started to worship your warships. This will all come falling down on you. Maybe before the war is over, maybe long after it ends, but it will. You’ll see the husks of these… of these war gods, monuments of violence to which you will have thrown away everything to honor and maintain. You’ll look at them and see a hollow reflection in a broken mirror. You’ll rule the stars, no doubt. Stars surrounded by nothing but ash.

“Humanity joined the Federation because it stood for something. Now look at you. Praising genocide like fucking mongrels.”

The human stormed out of the summit room, leaving nothing but a silence that screamed volumes. Representatives all began making attempts at salvaging the summit, to undo what was already irreversibly done by the human’s monologue.

Shortly after, the war resumed. Rumors about humanity’s intent to withdraw from the Federation spread across the stars, and only a few months later they actually went through with it, returning to their home system. At first, we barely noticed a difference – humanity was a relatively small species, only a few billion in size, so their contributions to the armed forces weren’t high in number.

But as the war raged on, our progress began to stagnate – it became harder and harder to win battles, even with the same strategies the humans had shown us, and life for anyone not on the frontlines worsened as the Federation began conscripting people and laying out rations on materials and necessities. It was all for the war effort, of course; we had to repair and maintain our warships, and had to keep superior numbers on the frontlines.

It took another twenty years to end the war. We snuffed out the Alliance, that was certain. We subjugated the few civilian population centers wise enough to surrender to us, we dissolved their fleets, and we executed their government. We celebrated our success over the Alliance, and our newfound dominion over much of the galaxy.

Despite the toll the war took on us after humanity abandoned the Federation, we felt invincible as a result of our victory. We thought that everything would be able to return to normal, that we could lick our wounds and carry on doing what we did before the Alliance stirred up trouble.

We were wrong, of course. As we tried to ease back into our pre-war life, the true effects of war set in. Us soldiers returned to homes stripped of many valuable materials, to families that were scraping by on rations more pitiful than our meager MREs. A famine struck shortly after the war, dwindling the already small supply of food that many species needed to survive.

In the hopes of combating this and raising morale, the Federation commissioned expeditionary fleets to colonize former Alliance worlds so that we could establish new agricultural facilities – and those same fleets returned barely months after being sent away, all bearing the same grim news: of the Alliance worlds, only the ones that surrendered were even habitable; many of the planets had lost their atmospheres or were suffering severe nuclear winters as a result of the orbital bombardments we had subjected them to.

The thing is, it wasn’t like we could take the food supplies from the few surrendered Alliance worlds either. Not only was most of the Federation unable to eat the food they produced, but the Federation had too many mouths to feed. It didn’t help that those worlds sent out requests for food supplies, because they too had fallen under famine.

Our problems were, of course, not limited to food. There was talk of infighting between some of the Federation species, and even within species – the council denied this, thinking it would help with morale, but their denial of an increasingly obvious problem did the exact opposite. Our planets were becoming increasingly unsafe too, what with the pollution created by hyper-industrialization, caused by the need to manufacture and repair our warships.

As time passed, the Federation became increasingly divided, with disputes over who owned what, who needed what, and who was crossing lines that hadn’t ever been established. It didn’t take long for the first shot to be fired, only five years after the war against the Alliance ended. Nobody wanted to fight anymore, not after enduring years of famine and poverty right after a grueling thirty-year war. But the Federation council, now divided, thought the right way forward was to stomp out these traitors that were demanding unreasonable things.

Because a meal on the table was so unreasonable.

I had resigned from the military at this point, but I saw many of my friends forced to fight people demanding nothing more than a good government, people that had only months before been part of our Federation. It wasn’t a fair fight, the Federation’s fleet was far superior to the ragtag band of ships that the “traitors” had amassed, but the small fleet still dealt a blow not even the Alliance could. They blew up the Federation’s Horizon ship, the largest ship that we had ever built.

And though we didn’t know how they predicted it, that moment was when humanity’s words ...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/BuddhaTheGreat on 2024-11-05 05:57:16+00:00.

Find all the parts of my experience in this index on my dedicated subreddit.

Okay, I think this needs a bit more context. You wouldn’t know it if you saw me walk down the street, but my family owns a village. This village is somewhere in Bengal, but I won’t tell you where for reasons that will quickly become clear. My ancestors were given the zamindari, or feudal rights, over the settlement by the Pala kings all the way back in the 11th century. Yes, it’s been a heck of a long time. What did we do to deserve this honour, you ask?

Well, there isn’t a simple answer to that. Kings used to give away lands and villages for practically anything back in the day, from marrying the princess to curing the prince of an illness to bringing over the neighbouring king’s head. I haven’t had the time or the inclination to rifle through what little family chronicles have survived to find out which one we did. I live miles away from that place anyway, in Kolkata. My father left the ancestral manor in the care of my grandfather and his brothers and moved away with his family when I was barely learning to open my eyes. Since then, I have only visited Chhayagarh a total of five times. That’s the name of the village, by the way. Chhayagarh.

The last time I visited the village, I was ten years old. My father was still alive then. My memories are dim, given that it was more than a decade ago, but I remember the important details. I remember my grandfather’s glowing face as he sunned himself in his recliner, watching me play with the weeds in the courtyard. I remember his hefty walking stick, and enjoying the loud clacks it made as he walked around the corridors. I remember Ram Lal, the manservant, chasing me around the backyard to force me into taking a bath. I remember my grandmother’s delicious cooking on my tongue.

I remember other things too. The pale lady in a white sari, smiling at me from the parapet of the boundary wall. The unnaturally tall man whispering to my grandfather in his study, his broad-brimmed hat scraping the ceiling. He had turned briefly to smile at me; his face had nothing on it save the grinning mouth. I remember the shaggy thing I used to play fetch with near the family grove, built like a dog but not quite. I remember my father sending me back to my room with a harsh noise, old rifle in hand, before joining a small group of villagers with flaming torches and wooden staves at the front gate at midnight.

There is something off about Chhayagarh. I can’t find a better way to explain it. It is a normal village, with all the trappings you would expect: playing children, women with water pots, charming little trees and huts. But alongside that world, there is another world that lives there. A world many of us would rather not acknowledge. That world was somehow centred around us. Each time my father took us there, something was always happening: villagers filtering in and out to confer with the family, mounds of dusty books and manuscripts lying open on tables, weapons being brought out and maintained. Each of these buildups would inevitably have a climax: a loud struggle at midnight, gunshots in the forest, a massive ritual bonfire in the atrium, or something similar. I never saw these climaxes; everyone made sure to give me a wide berth whenever funny business was involved. After everything was over, my father would pack us up, and we would be back in Kolkata, none the worse for the wear.

The last time we went there, it was different. I was too young to ask questions, but something went wrong. That night, my father returned three hours later, his face white as a sheet. He was alone and without his gun. He said nothing, he did nothing. He merely went into a room with my mother and my grandfather, and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later, my mother came to put me to bed as usual. I am pretty sure she said nothing out of the ordinary, but there were streaks of tears running down her face. The next morning, we packed our bags and returned to Kolkata.

Two days later, there was an accident. Thirty cars piled up on the road. Only one casualty. Even at the cremation, my mother said nothing. She only cried silently as she handed me the torch and let me burn my father’s mangled corpse to ashes. We haven’t been back to Chhayagarh since. In fact, she has actively kept me away from visiting, despite more than a hundred letters from my grandparents (old-fashioned people; apparently, they never could figure the telephone out).

Not that I’m complaining. Without the rose-tinted glasses of childhood, it was kind of a shitty place anyway. The land was dry and hard, and the villagers struggled to farm in the best of weather. The water table was deep and stony, and the nearest well was over two miles from the manor; the servants had the near-constant duty of running pots of water to the house for cooking and cleaning. I’m pretty sure there still isn’t a mobile tower, bank, or post office in the entire block. In hindsight, the only thing that made it worth it was the pure joy on my grandfather’s face whenever he saw us. But that can only take you so far.

My life in Kolkata is good. I just finished my law degree, and a career in litigation looks to be on track, though my senior still insists that five thousand rupees is plenty of money to live on for a month. I’m not sure he has purchased anything since the fifties. My mother is running a successful interior decoration business, so that helps with the finances. My father also left behind a decent estate, and for all our neglect, my grandparents do not skimp on sending over the revenue from the property. I dimly knew that I was going to come into the zamindari eventually, given that my father was no longer in the picture, but it was not something I really thought about. In any case, I was planning to pawn the damn place off to the first feudal enthusiast I met with more money than sense. Chhayagarh did not feature in my top fifty priorities list.

Until yesterday. This time, the letter that came did not bear my grandfather’s characteristically elegant handwriting on the envelope. It was the harsh, angular script of a lawyer, just in case the starched brown envelope did not make the official nature of the communication clear enough. Apparently, our family has an estate manager.

He was writing to tell me that my grandfather was dead. There were no details as to how, just strict business: in accordance with ordinary rules of succession, the zamindari should devolve to one of my uncles, but my grandfather had made his wishes clear. The family customs had to be followed. The land and the village must pass to his firstborn son, my father, and through him to his firstborn son. Me.

He had also insisted that I come to the village immediately, and take charge of the manor and the surrounding properties. The estate lawyer would meet me there and hand over some articles he had bequeathed to me. I had sole and absolute ownership over the ancestral house, but he had requested that I allow my grandmother, my uncles, and their families to continue their residence on the premises and take care of their needs.

When I showed my mother the letter, I was expecting she would say what was already on my mind: toss the letter in the bin, surrender the property to some relative or, failing that, the government, and go on with my life in peace.

Instead, she sighed, put the letter face down on the table, and asked, “When are you leaving?”

“What?” was all I could say.

“Chhayagarh. When are you going over to take possession?”

“Mom. Are you serious? That place is a dump. I have no interest in roleplaying a medieval landlord in some godforsaken hamlet in the middle of nowhere. I have a career here. We have a business here!”

She sighed. “I wish I could have kept you here forever, but I can’t. You have to go. Our family must take up the mantle. It is our duty to Chhayagarh, to our ancestors, to ourselves. Go.”

I paused. “That place killed my father. I’m not going. I’m going to write to the lawyer, and—”

“Chhayagarh killed your father. And it killed your grandfather.”

“Grandfather? How can you be so sure?”

“It killed him, just as it has killed many of your ancestors before him. I know it, somewhere inside me. Just as your father knew, that day. He knew he was going to die. He could not keep winning. But he did his duty. Just as you will. Because if you don’t, Chhayagarh will kill many more.”

I leaned forward and grasper her hands in my own. “Mom… You’re not telling me something. What do you know?”

“Not enough. Only they can explain it to you. Those who have lived on the land, and worked with it. But I know this. There was a reason your family, our family, was given that land. No, a reason they were placed upon that land. It wasn’t wealth, or favour, or martial skill that won us Chhayagarh. It was something else. Something to do with… them. The others. You know of what I speak.” Her hands trembled in mine. “You must go.”

She would say no more after this, only insisting that I go, and that all will be clear once I reach the manor and take over affairs. I will be frank. After this conversation, my desire to go to Chhayagarh had only lessened. But right now, I am in a rattling bus, travelling through t...

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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2024-11-05 12:14:20+00:00.

Original Title: A new study links toxic PFAS “forever chemical” exposure in young adults to reduced gut health due to changes in gut bacteria and associated metabolites, which researchers suspect is responsible for up to 50% of a decrease in kidney function seen over a 4-year period.

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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/chrisdh79 on 2024-11-05 11:30:53+00:00.

Original Title: Berry-flavored vapes paralyze lung immune cells more than non-flavored | The study contributes to the increasing evidence that incorporating flavors into vaping solutions can heighten the associated risks.

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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2024-11-05 11:04:11+00:00.

Original Title: Fish oil supplements could help guard against overall risk of developing cancer. New study of more than 250,000 people found that higher levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids were associated with a lower risk of developing cancer.

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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/Wagamaga on 2024-11-05 10:07:45+00:00.

Original Title: New research shows sleeping less than seven hours was found to reduce the odds of successful aging. These findings were consistent across different groups, including weight classes, smoking and alcohol intake, sex, and age.

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The original was posted on /r/monero by /u/aaj094 on 2024-11-04 14:57:30+00:00.

I see Monero nodes stats mentioned here

How is this data obtained? Also, that map appears to have node locations pinned down to high accuracy. Are these locations really accurate and why is this not detrimental to privacy or censorship?