This thread repeats every month on a six hour rotating schedule.

Happy Lunar New Year's eve to all my readers who are celebrating and feasting! Some notes for clarity on today's post...
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Q: What is this story?
A: This is a spinoff that I have been dabbling around with for the last few months on and off, based on the events of a commission from last January: The First Juggernaut
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Q: Why haven't I seen this story before if the 4th chapter is releasing today?
A: This story falls under the category of "one shots", which is content made available, at least initially, only to certain subscribers of my patreon. I am making prior chapters available to everyone today both on my patreon and below.
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Q: I am a patron, where can I read the latest installment in the untitled goose snake saga?
A: I will be posting it to patreon shortly after finishing this post and I will link it at the bottom of this chapter.
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Q: I am a patron, why can't I read the latest chapter?
A: Latest installment is available to anyone supporting me to the tune of $10/month or greater. As with the prior chapters, chapter 4 will eventually be released to the public.
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Q: Is this considered canon for HEL Jumper purposes?
A: Yes, unless something explicitly conflicts with the HEL Jumper in which case I made an oopsie.
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Q: Who is Drake and what is this snake of which you speak?
A: Read on to find out!
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Chapter 1
September 17th 2035, Human Dreadnought HMV Resplendent Dawn, Shuttle Bay
“Mr. Thane! Good of you to join us here in Udanis. How was your journey? Uneventful I hope,” the incredibly tall, dark-skinned man called out across the cavernous metal room. Delta Division shuttles could be seen darting in and out of the space almost constantly, ferrying goods and personnel between the dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, and support ships that currently made up humanity’s presence in what was, effectively, a star-system wide DMZ declared by the Ghaelen and enforced by humans. Unable to stomach the reality of warfare in hostile conditions against even more hostile foes, the ‘space elk’ presence had long since fled the system. Taking his bearings, the stockier, tanned individual with unkempt black hair and a civilian’s uniform nodded to the approaching figure.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Rear Admiral. Until just now I didn’t even know the identity of my destination. Though I understand the need for secrecy now that I’m here. Drake Thane, it’s a pleasure.” The two men engaged in a firm handshake, the squeeze of the palm a tried and true test of such men. Beta Division did not have many Admirals, and Udanis did not have many civilians.
“You’ll have to forgive Admiral Freidrich, but our resident Juggernaut seems to be giving him the runaround again. Victory will go to a young woman’s head though, won’t it?” the taller man laughed. “I am Rear Admiral Natori Kaczynski, at your service. And yes, that is a Beta Division insignia. Though perhaps you might be able to appreciate such a thing? After all, Delta called you out here too, didn’t they?”
“With all due respect Rear Admiral, I don’t even know why I’m here,” Thane replied. “Only that the pay is better than the FBI was offering.”
“Mmm, significantly better I’d suspect. The HEL does have its means,” Natori agreed. “Right this way then, Mr. Thane. Perhaps you’ll understand better once you’re brought up to speed. Ah, how rude of me!” the Rear Admiral suddenly exclaimed as though set upon by a novel idea. “Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
“I indulged in a ‘final meal’ on the transport, sir. But thank you,” Drake replied. Natori cast a knowing smile his way.
“Very good then. I see you packed light so let’s head to the nearest briefing room then. Mary?”
‘How may I be of assistance, Rear Admiral Kaczynski?’ the ship’s VI requested.
“Has a briefing room been set aside for Mr. Thane’s arrival?”
‘Yes sir, forwarding the location to you now.’
“Useful little tool, isn’t she?” Natori asked as he turned on his heel and led Drake straight in the opposite direction down the corridor.
“I’m only familiar with the civilian models, sir. The US government hasn’t gotten around to upgrading its systems yet.”
“Surprising absolutely no one, but perhaps we should be thankful,” Kaczynski suggested as he turned a corner and carried on, saluting various soldiers and support personnel as they moved at a leisurely pace. “Were it not for the bureaucratic incompetence of Terran governments, who would want to join the HEL?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” Thane agreed. “And while it may not be my place Rear Admiral, isn’t playing escort below your station?”
Natori looked him over with an appraising eye. “How tactful, but such is to be expected from a crisis negotiator I suppose. Allow me to assure you, Mr. Thane, the current situation is very much the concern of men like me.”
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Over the next couple hours, seated across a polished wooden table from one another, Natori reviewed with Drake the timeline of the pacification of Udanis IV, from the discovery of life in the system in early 2035, to first contact, and eventual full blown war by the end of May of the same year. The conflict had ended on June 6th, with the first truly successful battlefield deployment of Beta and Delta division’s latest collaboration, the Juggernaut program.
“So you brought me here to deal with Lieutenant Lavinaga, sir? Was it something about the, what did you call it, Queen’s nest operation? How many of those… stimulants is she still on?”
“No and yes. Fortunately, Lieutenant Lavinaga is quite well,” Natori replied, reaching for the pitcher of water and glasses in the middle of the table. He unhurriedly poured for them both, and the two men paused to soothe their throats. “While it is true that you were brought here to negotiate with veterans of this conflict… perhaps it’s better that I show you. This way please,” the Rear Admiral proposed, leading Drake on a short walk that nevertheless felt like a mile. The Marines and other combat personnel he’d seen up to that point appeared to be in high spirits, already swapping stories about gallantry during the operation while reminiscing fondly about the fallen. Maybe years later they might need someone like him, but not then and not there.
Eventually they arrived at their destination, given away by the fact that Natori was required to provide biometric identification in two forms as well as enter a combination PIN to pass through a set of imposing steel bulkheads. Drake recognized the area immediately as an interrogation facility, with the Rear Admiral escorting him all the way to the back. It was a cell constructed for long term confinement, and the two men found themselves alone in front of what Drake was sure was a one way mirror. The only other humans in the area were the Marine guards stationed back at the entrance. It didn’t help his nerves that they were in full armor intended for combat in hazardous environments. “Who’s on the other side of that wall, Rear Admiral?”
“Not who, Mr. Thane,” Natori corrected with an unsettling fire in his eyes. “But what.”
With the flick of a switch light suddenly poured through the opening, allowing Thane to see the interior of the spacious but barren room. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he whispered. “Are you mad, Rear Admiral?”
“Quite, Mr. Thane. But so are most who labor for the advancement of humanity. I daresay if you accept this job you’ll be rather similar.”
“I speak Farsi and Arabic, Rear Admiral. I deal with veterans of the Middle Eastern conflicts. What in God’s good name do you expect me to do with a Gorgon?!”
“An excellent question!” Natori agreed. “For starters I’d like you to see if you could bring us to the point where she does not spit acid at anything that moves. The fact that they store them in the approximate location of human mammary glands lost its humor… rather quickly.”
Drake swallowed heavily and took a closer look at the alien. Its entire body screamed danger to him. Natural rock-like armor covered its entire, serpentine form, which took after the Nagas or Lamias of human mythology. Her yellowish-green skin was the same color as the acidic environments of her homeworld, and her whiplike tail seemed to be constantly searching for something to coil around, or perhaps lash out at like a flail. “How long has she been here?”
“Since June 7th, Mr. Thane.”
“It’s been more than three months? Rear Admiral, surely this is in violation of… something!”
Natori licked his lips and hung his head. “This is why we sent for you, Mr. Thane. We have tried everything, and I mean everything, to establish some sort of diplomatic relationship, or even communication. She eats heartily and tries to kill us whenever she can. She is one of the only survivors of the Queen’s nest, and we believe that such authority will be key in any sort of eventual alliance.”
“You really are mad,” Thane whispered as Natori placed his hands behind his back and looked at the Gorgon.
“Am I mad for seeking powerful allies for our species, Mr. Thane? The Ghaelen possess powerful technology, but the price of its acquisition was steep. We will only bring ruin to ourselves if ‘galactic policeman’ is to be our role. Let our own country’s history be an example on that matter. No, one day we will come across a challenge we cannot surmount alone. I would much prefer it if the acid spitting snake women were on our side in that event, Mr. Thane. After coming this far, I hope you’ll at least humor me.”
“And Admiral Freidrich, sir?”
Natori met Drake’s eyes. “Approved this operation personally, Mr. Thane.”
The crisis negotiator breathed deeply and ran a hand through his mop of hair. “Just… how many people have died before me?”
“None, Mr. Thane! And I have no intention of making you the first.” The civilian shot Natori a dubious look that obviously conveyed his opinion on that particular statement. “Yes well, there were a couple of men who needed emergency medical treatment and reconstructive surgery, but we have equipment that is rather resistant to Gorgon acid thanks to their sacrifices, among many others. Shall I fetch one for you?”
“With all due respect, Rear Admiral-”
“Ah, you know what they say about that little lead in,” Natori chuckled, the casual hand on his hip indicating he fully understood why Drake had afforded him his ‘due respect’.
“Then you’ll have to consider the month-long journey to be my gesture of good faith. I’d like to see everything you have on the Gorgons, ideally in printed form. And yes, that includes the classified bits. I’ll sign whatever NDA’s you deem reasonable. And a cup of coffee… maybe two. You can keep your acid-resistant suits for now. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”
After a moment of consideration, Natori offered Drake his hand again. They shook. “I appreciate your consideration, Mr. Thane. I will oversee the preparation of said documents, as well as the necessary security clearances. In the meantime you are free to observe our captive, though might I suggest taking a pitstop in your cabin first?”
“You’re the type to get mixed up in the affairs of his subordinates, aren’t you, Rear Admiral?” Thane ventured cautiously. Natori’s smile was different somehow that time, almost unsettlingly so.
“Perhaps your keen eye will succeed where I have failed, Mr. Thane? We will be in touch and Mary is, of course, at your disposal. Welcome to the Resplendent Dawn,” Kaczynski finished, turning quickly on his heel and departing, saluting the Marine door guards as he left.
“Apparently he’s also one to leave civilians alone with alien captives,” Drake muttered, looking down at the control panel for the one way glass. Left there was a post-it note, a vintage technology that still found itself in use even in the era of shield generators, FTL travel, and VI’s.
Don’t activate the two way functionality. We’re running low on materials to manufacture more polarized glass.
Thane chuckled in disbelief and ran a hand over his face, captivated momentarily by the holes he could see in the alien’s forearms, a natural biological gap between the Gorgon analogs of the radius and ulna. At least he assumed she had bones. “What have I gotten myself into?”
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As it turned out, the answer to that question was a bit more complex than one on one prisoner or hostage negotiation, something that became readily apparent after an hour or so of reading in front of the alien’s cell. The coffee was surprisingly adequate, as was the insulated mug that kept it warm as he labored. He would glance up on occasion to observe his subject, not wanting to fully depend on unreliable witness testimony, more reliable autopsy reports, combat records, and the gruesome video feeds from the suit of one Lieutenant Lanvinaga. If Kaczynski’s tale was true, and he had no grounds to assert it wasn’t, the alien before him had not only retained the will to live after more than three months in solitary, she also retained the desire to kill and fight. She was sane and hostile. That was more than could be said for some of the veterans he’d talked down in the past.
“Or failed to talk down,” Drake allowed with a mutter, shaking his head. Movement caught his eye and he refocused on the alien, watching as she curled up on herself only to adjust and re-adjust, picking at the rock-like armor that seemed to grow from her very body. Scratching his head, the human consulted several images that he would have rather not dealt with, various post-mortem shots of Gorgons that had been killed during the pacification. Very few sported natural armor to the level of his subject, but not because she was some sort of unique specimen. Near as he could tell the Gorgon before him was quite typical for her species, but her natural armor was jagged and reminded him of a volcanic rock field. Much of his reference material depicted Gorgons with relatively smooth plating that rested underneath manufactured metallic armor. “It’s worth a shot,” Than shrugged, noting that it was 21:00 shipboard time. “Mary, is Rear Admiral Kaczynski still awake?”
‘Good evening Mr. Drake Thane,’ came Mary’s synthesized but pleasant enough voice. ‘The Rear Admiral has retired for the evening. Are you experiencing an emergency?’
“No no, nothing like that,” Thane clarified quickly. “I’ll just leave him a message then.”
‘Very well, you may begin recording when ready.’
“Rear Admiral, this is Drake Thane. In the morning I’d appreciate it if you could track down a couple of rocks and an industrial sander for me. I have an idea.”
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“I believe I’ve waited long enough to sate my curiosity?” Natori stated as he watched Drake sanding down one surface of the chunks of Udanian crust he’d been given.
“Fair enough. How familiar are you with the anatomy of beavers, Rear Admiral?”
“How familiar are you with the anatomy of beavers?” Natori barked with laughter. “Oh I definitely picked the right man for this job.”
“Save that for when I actually get somewhere, sir. The answer, I suppose, is that I’m familiar enough to know that beavers don’t just cut down trees to build themselves shelter. Left alone long enough without anything to gnaw on their teeth will continue to grow and grow, injuring or even leading to the death of the animal. These Gorgon appear to possess the same quality when it comes to their natural armor,” Thane postulated. Natori’s eyes lit up.
“You propose a gift?”
“I hope you don’t mind the loss of a belt sander,” Drake said shortly.
“Let’s not wait then. Her first meal of the day is scheduled around this time.”
“Good enough for me. Where’s this suit, the one that will stop me from getting my face melted off?”
“Storage locker on the left. We haven’t personally delivered anything for some time, so be prepared for resistance,” Kaczynski warned. “She seems to consider eating her meal off the floor worth the chance at an attack.”
“Duly noted,” Drake replied in a tense voice, finding a heavily fortified hazardous environment suit that would have looked more at home on a space walk where the Admiral indicated. A short time later, sweat beading on his brow, he unlocked the door to the Gorgon’s cell. The moment he entered, the alien puffed out her chest and spat a stream of sickly green acid from her mouth. Though the attack was exemplary in its aim and velocity, that also made it relatively easy to dodge if one was willing to simply drop to the floor. Well protected as he was, Drake did just that, squashing whatever manufactured nutrient cubes had been intended for her. In return, he chucked the first rock at her, earning a momentary reprieve as the alien tried to process the fact that one of the legged beings keeping her hostage had thrown a rock at her. It was enough time for him to roll the second one to the base of her body, a couple feet below where her torso met her tail, which carried on behind her for a good six feet or so. The fact that the second rock was ‘presented’ instead of ‘chucked’ was not lost on the alien, but that didn’t prevent her from compressing the venom sacks in her chest again.
“Oh for the love of-” Thane cursed, retreating out the door as the second biological attack splattered onto the surface just behind him. To his amazement, Natori was applauding even as two Marines rushed at him with decontamination equipment.
“A magnificent swan dive if I’ve ever seen one, Mr. Thane! And before you believe I’m having a laugh at your expense, come look at what our guest is already up to.”
At Natori’s insistence Thane shucked the enviro-suit as quickly as he could and returned to the one-way mirror. There, he could see the Gorgon ignoring her smushed breakfast entirely. After a brief contemplation of the rocks that had been given to her, she began banging at her own body with one of them, chipping off pointy bits of rock that clearly agitated her. At least Drake considered it could be fully fledged rock; he had no idea if aliens producing natural rock armor atop their own dermis was reasonable. Whatever it was, it was certainly tougher than keratin. The Rear Admiral ran a hand over his short, close cropped hair. “I would certainly call this progress, Mr. Thane. What is your next step?”
“To see if I can get her to look at a human for longer than a second without trying to dissolve him,” he replied tersely. “Do you have more of those rocks?”
Natori cocked a brow his way. “Mr. Thane, this is a Delta Division Liberation-class dreadnought. We have plenty of rocks.”
Chapter 2
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Drake Thane cursed, hauling himself to his feet after another harrowing trip into the Gorgon’s cell. She had accepted his gift of rocks, but had not made any sort of connection between the smooth and jagged varieties, instead using both to chip away at and then grind down the excess armor growing from her skin. That was how she spent most of her days when not eating or attempting to fight anyone who entered her enclosure. He had only been aboard the Resplendent Dawn for forty eight hours, but he’d read more than enough to make it clear that the Gorgon’s were highly intelligent and capable of advanced battlefield tactics. Humanity’s swift victory was primarily a technological feat, not a tactical one.
“Which leaves pride, an absurd amount of pride,” he muttered, debating whether to remove the helmet from his head and return to study or attempt something new. Exactly what, he did not know. Not willing to throw his life away or test the durability of the hazardous environment suit further, he began removing it in a process that took several minutes and assistance from one of the Marine sentries on duty. “Thank you. Let’s leave it out for now. I might try again later today.”
“As you say, Mr. Thane,” the Marine replied. “Not sure what you could do though. Nothing gets through to them.”
“Something will,” Drake insisted. “But I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Shall I inform the Admiral of this morning’s result?” the soldier asked
“No need. It’s status quo for now,” he said, heading back to the table that had become his workstation and opening up a portable computer he’d been provided with to review the various multimedia files that humanity possessed on the Gorgons. Ongoing attempts at communicating with the planetside populace had borne no fruit, with the various kingdoms going to ground the moment anyone tried to make contact. He had already checked once, but he double checked to make sure there were no records of torture, starvation, or unusual punishment of his current subject. He doubted they would have actually been logged, but there was continuity in the timetable. That was enough for him.
“How long can you keep this up?” he wondered of his new adversary. It was practically against the code of his profession to consider an interlocutor an enemy, but given that she had attempted to dissolve him without fail every time he stuck his nose in the door, he was willing to make an exception. “Yeah, don’t remind me. The answer is at least a couple months. At least the coffee’s still hot.”
Caffeine in hand, Thane instead opened up various combat records. He did his best to avoid the more gruesome ones, but a few caught his interest. There were several instances where gear had been retrieved and the combat logs analyzed to discover that the deceased had been engaged in one on one combat by individual Gorons, sometimes in the presence of entire enemy units. “Dear Lord in heaven,” he muttered. “They’re going to make a movie out of this, if it’s even declassified.”
The ‘this’ in question was a helmet recording from a Marine private who had been surrounded by an enemy platoon. With no ammunition remaining, he had fixed his bayonet and stood to face his death with courage. Instead of immediately spitting acid at him or ganging up on him, one of the Gorgons had stepped, or was it slithered, forward. After a long moment that took Thane’s breath away, the Marine realized that the spear-wielding, armored alien was challenging him to something of a duel. Most remarkable was what happened when the Marine proved victorious, ramming his bayonet into a gap between the alien’s armor and bringing her down in a writhing mass of rock and flesh after several minutes of testing each other. The remaining enemies retreated, and the victorious Marine had survived the hostile environment of Udanis IV long enough to call for backup.
“Only problem is I doubt I could land a hit on her to save my life, even if she’s unarmed and unarmored… well, no extra armor,” he mused. The idea of asking another to fight in his stead was equally unpalatable, especially since he wasn’t sure the Gorgon would submit to anything short of death. “This is getting me nowhere.”
Recognizing his own limits, Drake sorted his affairs and left the interrogation bloc, wandering around the ship and letting his mind drift until he drifted right into an imposing blonde soldier whose rolled up sleeves revealed several mechanical interface points embedded in her arms. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Drake Thane, crisis negotiator. I’m here at the request of Admiral Freidrich and Rear Admiral Kaczynski. It’s an honor to meet you, Lieutenant Lavinaga.”
“Christ, is it that fucking obvious?” she asked, glancing down at her arms. “Guess it is. You lost, Thane?”
“Physically? No. But maybe you can help me? I’ve got a bit of a Gorgon problem,” he admitted.
“The survivor? Should just space her if you ask me,” Lavinaga said dismissively. “Assuming you want that thing alive I’m not your woman.”
“And what if I want someone to go in there and wear her down so I can actually attempt to communicate with her and not get a face full of acid?”
“And I thought I was insane,” she laughed.
“It’s my job at the moment,” he shrugged.
“Would I get to wear my armor?”
“Of course. Don’t see how else you’d survive. You're still mostly flesh and blood.”
“I’m going to let that insult pass cause it’s been way too long. She’s in the interrogation cells, right? Meet you there in a few.”
“I actually don’t have approval for this yet,” he admitted. “I just had the idea when I ran into you.”
“Well you don’t worry your little head about that, Drake,” she simpered, clapping a hand down on his shoulder so hard he thought his collarbone might fracture. “You let me handle those Admirals.”
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Drake didn’t want to know how Lavinaga had gotten permission, but true to her word she appeared in her full star spangled glory about an hour after leaving him in one of the Resplendent Dawn’s many corridors. The hum of the ship and overhead lighting was drowned out by the heavy footfalls and hissing hydraulics of her suit. When she reached his side, the visor of her helmet slid open.
“You have no idea how awful this feels,” she said affectionately. “So, what do you need me and Ares to do?”
“I don’t really know. Just wear her down enough that I can show her how this works without dying,” he suggested, holding up the portable belt sander he’d used to smooth over a few rocks that were now the sole possessions of the Gorgon. Lavinaga just shook her head.
“If that’s what you want. Should be fun. I wonder how long she can go,” Lavinaga said with a bit too much anticipation in her voice. “Well, enough standing around! Let’s go see if she remembers me.”
Drake readied himself at the observation port as Lavinaga hefted her enormous shield and casually threw open the door to the cell. “Sup bitch? Long time no see!”
Thane watched, horrified, as the Gorgon assaulted the Juggernaut with a zeal and fury that she had never shown him. Her venom sacs were depleted within seconds, only scratching the paint of the wall of metal that made up Lavinaga’s shield. She threw what rocks she had and slammed her tail against the hulking monstrosity to no avail, the borderline psychotic laughter of Lavinaga her only reward for her efforts. Sweat dripped from Drake’s brow as his thesis slowly proved itself correct and the Gorgon’s blows slowly weakened and became lethargic. The juggernaut drove the point home by casually pushing her to the ground after about half an hour. “Now why don’t you just get comfortable down there? You’re lucky someone other than me is running the shots or I’d be testing my boot against your skull,” she warned.
“Lieutenant please, we don't know how much of our language she understands,” Drake said over the intercom. “Thank you for your restraint. I’ll be right in.”
On account of the mobile metal wall that stood between him and the broken alien, Drake steadied himself and managed to summon enough courage to enter the area without any protection other than the jeans and shirt he was wearing. In his hands were two stones and the sander. The Gorgon watched his every move, her acid green eyes still alert even as her body failed her. With no acid left to spit, she bore witness to him demonstrating the ability of the sander to grind down and polish rock. He didn’t belabor the point. Instead setting the tool down a couple feet from her. “I want to talk,” he said before turning to leave with the juggernaut. “Lieutenant, whenever you’re ready.”
“You eggheads think up the craziest things,” Lavinaga shrugged. “Am I allowed to taunt it again?”
“Please don’t.”
“Fine, but only because you’re handsome,” she insisted when they were safely outside. “Oh, also you owe me a few beers on account of the time I’m about to spend in the armory. See ya, Thane.”
Drake was so struck by her antics he barely had time to rush back into the cell when he was the Gorgon lifting the tool he’d left her to the one place on her body she had no armor, her neck. “Stop!” he roared, snatching it from her grasp before leaping back several feet as his brain finally caught up with what his body had done. “Why? You’ve been trying to kill us all for months!”
The alien’s eyes were narrow and downcast, and bits of her natural armor littered the cell where they’d been broken against the unyielding armor of Lavinaga’s suit. Small areas of her body were discolored, a deeper green than the rest. He could only assume bruising. “Maybe I am fucking insane,” Drake admitted, walking forward and turning the sander back on. “I didn’t defeat you, so I’m not going to be the one who kills you.”
The Gorgon hissed violently at him, but was unable to physically harm or stop him from grinding down and polishing one of her shoulders. With no other recourse, she simply refused to look at him instead. When Drake left, he took the sander and every rock with him, not wanting to leave her anything that might be used as a tool for suicide. As soon as the door to the cell closed, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the floor, feeling only the racing of his heart and the damp cling of his sweat-soaked clothing to his body. He did not return to the interrogation blocks that day.
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“You wanted to see me, Rear Admiral?”
“Yes indeed, Mr. Thane. I daresay you did something, I’m just not sure that something was good,” Natori explained as Drake entered the interrogation wing the next day, having spent more time than necessary grooming and feeding himself. His mind weighed heavily with the pain he’d inflicted upon his charge. The language of the Gorgons remained an inscrutable mess of low pitched hissing and other sounds, but hopelessness was a universal concept. It seemed that their captive was finally allowing that darkness to permeate her mind and influence her actions. Per Kaczynski’s report, gone were the consistent attacks against those bringing her food as well as efforts to eat it. “I am not usually one for threats, Mr. Thane, and I don’t precisely intend this to be one but I know you’ll likely interpret it as such. We cannot afford to lose her. Her potential is too great.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll head in right away,” Thane replied, acknowledging the Admiral’s concern. Instead of stopping by the locker containing his protective gear, he instead grabbed his coffee and walked straight to the cell door. Natori held out a hand but remained silent.
“Well I suppose I did threaten him,” he mused, nevertheless ensuring his sidearm was loaded, a round chambered, and the safety off. Precautions in place, Kaczynski settled in to observe what he was sure, one way or another, would be an eventful ‘session’ with the prisoner. To his most welcome surprise, Drake Thane managed to enter the cell and stand just past the threshold for several moments without getting attacked, dissolved, or impaled. The man took a long draught of his coffee before jerking his head upward in a moment of recollection. The Gorgon watched him all the while, almost unblinkingly, as he left the drink on her untouched breakfast tray and retreated to retrieve the portable sanding device he’d used on her the prior afternoon. He paused to speak with the Rear Admiral.
“Well, I’d call that an improvement,” he insisted. “You ever notice what it smells like in there?”
Natori cocked an eyebrow his way. “I can’t say that I have. I assume you’re about to share?”
Drake shrugged and tilted his head. “Nearest I can describe it is the Devil’s perfume, like if fire and brimstone smelled appealing, or at least rather inoffensive.”
“How curious,” Natori replied, leaning slightly to the right so he could look around Drake. “Though perhaps we should ruminate on that once we secure your coffee?”
Drake spun around fast enough to tweak his neck, finding the Gorgon with his coffee in hand. Her long, thin, black, serpent-like tongue was extended several inches and lapping at the dark brown liquid. The two men stared. “Has she ever been given coffee before, sir?”
“Just water, Mr. Thane. Curious as I am, I would like you to go and stop her now.”
Thane needed no further encouragement, bolting back into the room to snatch back his drink. The Gorgon replaced the disposable lid and offered it to him. Her eyes were still as menacing as ever, but the telltale contractions of her chest muscles that foretold a gout of deadly acid were missing. He tentatively reached out and accepted it, earning a low, complex hiss in return. Glancing down, he pointed at her untouched meal and then the sander. The Gorgon cracked her whip-like tail against the ground in frustration but complied, taking the food to a far corner of the room and beginning to eat piece by piece. Her eyes never left him even during her retreat as she demonstrated a rather remarkable ability to slither backwards.
Drake figured that was good enough, sitting against the opposite wall and opening his coffee. While it didn’t seem any different, he wasn’t about to take the chance that an alien with venomous pseudo-breasts didn’t produce oral toxins. Instead he stood again and approached her, keeping both hands on the cup so as not to arouse suspicion. He deposited it next to her and then returned to his position. With a curious hiss the alien opened the lid and, instead of continuing to drink, dipped the tip of her tail into the still slightly steaming liquid before continuing with her meal.
“What in the world?” Thane whispered, watching as the greenish skin underneath the Gorgon’s natural rocky plating shifted to a yellower hue, starting from the tip of her tail and moving slowly upward towards her body. The color change didn’t get all the way there before stalling out, but she seemed pleased with it to the point that upon finishing her meal she actually pointed to him, then to the sanding tool in his hands, and finally to her other shoulder. Unheard by the two of them, Natori threw his head back in laughter, amazed at the transition from murderous adversary to an imperious giver of orders. Drake shrugged but saw no reason not to comply. He’d been planning to attempt such a maneuver anyway as a further showing of good faith following the Lavinaga incident.
When he stepped within arm’s reach of her, the Gorgon straightened her torso and held out a thin, armored hand and poked him in the sternum. Even her fingers had the potential for danger with their rocky nail-like tips. Her other hand rested on her chest as she hissed a particular pattern of sounds twice in a row; she then poked him again. He nodded. “My name is Drake Thane. Sorry I can’t understand you.”
Undeterred, the Gorgon simply lowered herself back onto her coiled tail and presented her shoulder. She hissed again in a softer tone as Drake activated the sander, taking another glance at his coffee which now seemed to be serving as a tail warmer.
“Might as well get started then. You clearly have quite a bit to teach me.”
Chapter 3
Available to the public on my patreon here due to reddit's post size limit.
Chapter 4
Available to select patrons here

This video attempts to explain why one should believe the things the christian bible says, specifically because:

it's a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses, during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophesies, and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

THESIS: The arguments and evidence presented in the video completely fail to support the above position.
It's a huge post: feel free to only tackle a specific section or 2, I think they're mostly self-contained.
In some cases I say that I suspect the speaker of being dishonest. If you don't like that, just know that he straight up calls people "ignorant, or evil, or both" [34:07] and "fools" [56:03] (stated as a fact, not merely his opinion) for using specific arguments or not accepting his conclusion. I think he opened up the Pandora's Box of guessing others' intent and so I've done it as well, though I've tried to be as responsible as possible. If you think I've been unfair, please let me know why.
TL;DR and conclusion next, for your convenience...

TL;DR & Conclusion

The speaker first presents the question: "why the bible?" (I've tried to phrase this more rigorously as: "why should anybody consider the bible authoritative on the truth of the Universe?") The speaker then presents his answer, and dissects it to address and support each claim within it.
However, his methodology for investigating the question actually rests on the premise that "there is no higher authority than the bible" (in his own words, 12:35-ish). This is a direct answer to the question he's investigating, and therefore any answer which rests on this premise is circular. I demonstrate that important portions of the speaker's argument do seem to rest on this premise and other lines of fallacious reasoning, and so his answer seems to be based on invalid reasoning and should not be trusted.
The speaker also fails to present compelling evidence for any of the claims which make up his answer, and often relies on fallacious arguments. His arguments include:

• Questionable interpretations of biblical passages: citing passages widely believed to be forgeries as if they are eyewitness testimony, and reading "between the lines" and other forms of motivated interpretation
• Unsound interpretations of the history of the bible: preferring a "very early" authorship of New Testament books, against the consensus of modern scholars and without giving any justification; and citing absence of evidence as evidence of absence (argument from silence), in a case where the old adage actually holds true
• Errors in analyzing probabilities: preferring less likely explanations over more likely ones, or not applying Occam's Razor where it would help
• Straw men, an appeal to consequences, an argument from popularity, affirming the consequent, and other fallacious arguments

Even ignoring the circularity of his methodology, the speaker fails to come close to proving his point. That's not to say he's wrong: the bible could be an authoritative source of information about the Universe, and he's just failed to piece together a valid argument which supports that position. I don't think that's the case (and I've done just a bit to rebut that position), but it's possible. However, after viewing this video and considering all the poor arguments it presents, I still think it's far more likely that christianity and its bible originated entirely due to mundane natural events, maybe akin to what's proposed here.
In my own experience, however flawed the arguments presented in this video are, I've seen them used a lot. I hope that some readers might see how to debunk an argument they consider sound, so that those folks can reconsider their position and build stronger arguments in the future.

Video Overview

First off, this video attempts to answer the question "why the bible?" In the context of the video it's pretty clear what he means, but it's vague out of context, so I'll rephrase it more rigorously:
"Why should anybody consider the bible authoritative on the truth of the Universe?"
For the most part the video is a systematic dissection of the speaker's position.

The "Egregious Flaw" in Methodology

At [12:35] the speaker says the following, to rebut the objection that 'proving the bible using the bible constitutes circular reasoning'. He's trying to get in front of this objection because most of his reasoning is, in fact, an attempt to prove the bible using the bible.

The question is "why I choose to believe the bible". ... The answer to that question for me resides in the bible itself. Now why would I appeal to the bible in this way? Because there is no higher authority than the bible. See, if I were to appeal to another authority, then I would be conceding that there is a higher authority than the bible. So this might be a problem in any other area, and any other field -- however, I'm making the argument that this is the higher authority, and therefore by definition I cannot appeal to another authority.

He asks the question "why do I consider the bible authoritative?", and he investigates it under the premise that "there is no higher authority than the bible". The main premise underlying his entire investigation is a direct answer to the question he's investigating: this is the definition of circular reasoning.
​
But doesn't he make a good point? Wouldn't any other premise corrupt his investigation and bar him from reaching the conclusion that "there is no higher authority than the bible"?
No, that's ridiculous, and here's why...
For one thing, when the speaker says that his question is different from any other question in any other field, and yet fails to give a sufficient explanation for how it's different -- that's special pleading. Sure, maybe it's impossible to investigate whether any given thing is the ultimate authority. But even if that's the case, it doesn't make circular arguments valid.
Including an answer as a premise forces one to interpret all the evidence in a manner consistent with the premise, or to only consider evidence that's consistent with the premise -- which of course forces the investigation to reach the conclusion stated in the premise. That's what a premise is: a foundational assumption which guides all subsequent reasoning. It is not constraining in any way to assume that a thing might not be authoritative, in order to investigate whether or not it is authoritative -- it's the only honest way to investigate any question.
The speaker should be more than willing to assume that he might be wrong, and then undertake a fair investigation from there. If he's right and the bible is the ultimate authority on the Universe, then he can only demonstrate that by comparing it to extrabiblical reality. And again, if he's right, everything in the Universe should agree with the bible -- and even the nay-sayers ought to accept that as proof!
Why is he unwilling to strike the killing blow to his opponents' arguments, if he's certain that he's right?
​
In the following sections I'll show how this circular reasoning appears to lead the speaker back to his assumed conclusion.

The Speaker's Answer

Presented at 11:05: see very top for quote.
I'll address it claim by claim, as done by the speaker...

Claim 1: "... it's a reliable collection of historical documents ..."

At 15:08, the speaker cites the following as evidence in for this claim:

• The bible was written on 3 different continents
• In 3 different languages
• By over 40 authors from multiple walks of life: kings, generals, fishermen, tax collectors, doctors, historians
• In 66 volumes, covering hundreds of subjects
• Over more than 1500 years

So what? In all these ways it's similar to the Hindu scriptures, but does the speaker give any credence to those? Though he does mention other religious texts [3:57] and even presents them as alternatives to the bible, he doesn't discuss these so-called "strengths" of the Hindu scriptures (or any others) in his lecture: I think either he's unaware of them, or his premise -- that the christian bible is the highest authority -- has caused him to exclude Hindu and other scriptures from his investigation, because analyzing them the same way he analyzed the bible would cast doubt on his assumed conclusion. So, "why the bible?" when the Hindu scriptures and perhaps others are so similar in the ways the speaker cares about? Who knows? He didn't address it, though he should have.
But even if there were nothing remotely comparable to the bible in these ways -- why should it matter? Does the number of languages used to compose something somehow affect is authority? For that matter, does composing one work on the corner of 3 continents somehow make it more authoritative than another one composed on the edge of the Indian subcontinent, or in the middle of North America? And why should we care how many people wrote it, or their backgrounds, or how many separate books it's composed of, or how long it took to write?
I know what he's getting at: he's trying to say, "how could this many people, over such a long time, across such large swathes of multiple societies, all be wrong in the same way?" Well, that's a fallacy called 'argumentum ad populum', an argument from popularity. Just because a bunch of people believe something, that doesn't make it true, or even likely to be true. All the bible authors were Jews and early christians living in Eastern Mediterranean societies; they were well aware of earlier Jewish oral and written traditions, and likely tried to constrain their work to enhance rather than refute the existing traditions; and the works which weren't popular or didn't agree with existing traditions were not included as canon! The bible's internal consistency (such as it is) doesn't indicate that its contents are true -- it indicates that its authors prioritized internal consistency.
The speaker has made an argumentum ad populum, derived from evidence heavily affected by sample selection bias and observer bias. It's a terrible argument, built on terrible evidence. After a bit of thought, anybody who isn't operating under the speaker's circular premise should be able to see the problems with this argument.
​
At 17:40, the speaker seems to claim that the author of Luke was a historian, and that we should trust them at their word when they make claims, because as a historian they researched the claims before publishing them:

Luke was not an eyewitness -- he doesn't claim to be an eyewitness. He's a historian who claims to have traced the information from the eyewitnesses. ... The fact that this man was not an eyewitness, but collected information from individuals who were eyewitnesses [...], and has followed everything closely for some time past, and he wanted to write an orderly account. ... Luke's goal is history and chronology.

Well, Luke probably wasn't a historian in any modern sense of the word, so "history and chronology" in any modern sense probably weren't his real goal. Modern historical research didn't really happen in ancient times, so I'm reluctant to accept that when the author of Luke says he has "followed all things closely for some time past", he actually means he's found enough objective evidence to support the claims he's heard. It's not what he explicitly says, and that was not the common practice at the time, so I find it hard to believe that's what he meant.
Also, I don't think Luke 1:1-4 (cited by the speaker) implies that Luke tried at all to investigate the claims he received from others. Instead, this passage can easily mean that the author of Luke was told some stuff by people who claimed to be eyewitnesses, and he's just writing those things down because he believes them based on the story alone. It's not even clear that the author talked to the eyewitnesses -- he could have just talked to the "ministers" in verse 2, who told him they got it from eyewitnesses.
The Lucan author could be recounting pure hearsay, 100 retellings deep, as if it's fact -- or he could have gone to the ends of the Earth to verify what he heard. But he doesn't describe his sources or methods, so we don't know, and it's hazardous to guess... Yet the speaker hazards a guess, and tries to pass off that guess as truth. In this case, I think he's forcing his interpretation of the passage to match his assumed conclusion, and to do so he's made a lot of seemingly unwarranted assumptions.
​
Then at 27:47 the speaker says this:

"There have been more than 25,000 archaeological digs related directly to the subject matter of the bible. ... Not one of them has contradicted anything that we have in the bible, and the overwhelming majority of them have confirmed and affirmed the things that we find in the bible."

First off, I don't accept this claim at face value -- I'd like to see some citations, but the speaker doesn't give any. Also, biblical claims like the Genesis flood have been thoroughly debunked (though I think archaeology only played a small part). I bet a lot of archaeology has proved parts of the bible wrong, and Wiki seems to agree with me so I think I'm right to doubt the speaker's claim. But that's irrelevant to the point I'm going to make, so I'll move on...
I accept that some places and events in the bible are factual. That's no problem. These were people writing about their society and their time, so it would be ridiculous if nothing in the bible were factual. But the fact that it contains some facts does not imply that all its contents are facts.
"My name is Andrew Joslin. I live in the United States. I have black hair. I love cats."
Those 4 statements are internally consistent, and 3 of them are true -- so does that mean they all are? No. One of them is false.
In just the same manner, some things in the bible can be true, and verified by archaeology and science, while other things in the bible might be false. Just because we verified the Babylonian Captivity with reasonable certainty (Jer 52), that doesn't at all support the claim that a deity had anything to do with it (Jer 52:2-3).

Claim 2: "... written by eyewitnesses ..."

First off, from 19:31 - 20:50, the speaker very strongly implies that he thinks the traditional authors -- the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, John -- are the real authors of the 4 gospels. Over and over he says "Matthew is writing...", "his favorite words are...", "that's why we have his gospel written the way it's written", and other phrases which make it very unlikely that he is personifying the books, and far more likely that he is talking about the authors themselves and believes they are the same as the tradition says. But those authors are merely the church tradition, and this tradition is very much doubted by modern scholars.
Additionally, multiple times in the video [13:54, 40:30] he cites 2 Peter as if it's authoritative on what Peter experienced and thought. But modern scholars believe this book to be a forgery and not written by Peter, so I don't know why anybody would consider 2 Peter authoritative on what Peter experienced or thought. If 2 Peter is a forgery then the reference at 51:20 is also problematic, because I suspect that a person who forges a book by Peter may also be so bold as to claim that all scripture is divine in origin, as an attempt to give more credence to their own forgery.
All this makes me wonder how much the speaker actually knows about how the bible was written -- and if he does know what modern scholarship says about these things, I wonder whether he might just be throwing out the modern scholarly consensus in favor of his personal, pet beliefs (his premise that the bible is the ultimate authority). Neither is a good option, and either way you cut it this lowers my trust in the speaker.
​
Finally, at 21:20 the speaker claims that John was an eyewitness to... something. He cites John 1:1-3 to support this:

1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

Okay, the author clearly says that he has both seen and heard certain, unnamed things, which have apparently convinced him of the truth of the message he is about to relay in the rest of his gospel.
I grant that the author is saying he "saw and heard" things -- but what? It seems like poetic language, and it doesn't make any distinction between the things the author has personally seen, and what he has heard second- or third- or nth-hand from others. True, the author may have personally experienced some stuff as an eyewitness, but it's unclear from these verses what that stuff was, and how much of the remainder of this gospel is hearsay versus eyewitness testimony. I'm not even sure that the author of John ever claims to have seen Jesus -- perhaps the rest of John proves me wrong, but from this passage it's entirely possible that the things the author experienced firsthand were more akin to what modern parishioners experience in church, than to personally witnessing the things Jesus said and did. People today say they are convinced by their own experiences without ever having seen Jesus in the flesh, so perhaps that's what the author of John is saying in this passage.
But even if the gospel of John were eyewitness testimony, that's still not great... Wiki says that "most scholars believe that John reached its final form around AD 90–110", so this would be eyewitness testimony that is, per most scholars, at least 57 years old at the time it was written down. We know for a fact that eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable. This study demonstrated the unreliability of eyewitness testimony for a somewhat mundane event. These are known cases where mistaken or perjured eyewitness testimony resulted in a wrongful conviction and death row sentence, and here's a study which indicates that high stress negatively impacts the quality of eyewitness testimony (specifically, it affects the eyewitness's ability to accurately recall the events).
If a crucifixion of a man named Jesus or Jeshua did indeed happen, then eyewitnesses to that event might have had some difficulty accurately retelling what they saw, even the first time they retold the story. This could be compounded with the eyewitnesses having heard rumors that he was a prophet, which might render their interpretation of what they saw vulnerable to suggestion. The long time period between the writing of this gospel and the events it describes is also problematic, because during that time it was passed on as an oral tradition, and continued retelling as a shared oral tradition can cause the recalled experiences to degrade in accuracy and become poisoned by later changes. That's how memory recall works: it's subject to errors and changes each time we do it. It happens to everybody, and to individuals as well as groups. It's not necessarily lying: errors can and do accumulate very quickly despite people's best intentions to be truthful.
So from the passages presented by the speaker, it's far from a certainty that the author of John was an eyewitness to the events described in the gospel of John. And even if he were, eyewitness testimony is extremely problematic, and frankly I'd consider it more likely that this eyewitness testimony has been corrupted by the factors described above, than the purported supernatural events in the story actually happened as described. Maybe there's more evidence to be found in John, but I find the speaker's use of this passage alone insufficient to support his argument: to call this evidence is wishful thinking or motivated interpretation at best.

Claim 3: "... during the lifetime of other witnesses ..."

At 23:22, in support of this claim the speaker says there's a huge problem "dating the problem late". I don't know what problem he's referring to, because he didn't explain it as far as I could tell. He then cites 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 as support for "... during the lifetime of other witnesses ..." -- however, in those verses Paul explicitly says that he's recounting a story he's been told. I've heard some speculation as to whether this may be some type of early christian creed, in which case it would have been meant as a statement of faith, rather than a discussion of facts in evidence (I find this plausible, but I can't back it up with evidence so I'm treating it as mere speculation).
But all speculation aside, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-7 Paul literally admits that he is not personally attesting to the veracity of what he's saying: he's repeating something he was told. Obviously he is personally attesting his own experience in verse 8, but all the rest is stuff that he was told and cannot attest to personally.
So Paul was told that "the 500" and a bunch of other people witnessed the resurrected Jesus, and that most of them are still alive. Therefore, when the speaker later [24:22] says this:

"If you do the math, there are at least 301 eyewitness to the resurrection who are alive when 1 Corinthians was written.

... I don't think the speaker has any justification to reach this conclusion. Even if Paul believed it was true, does that mean we should believe it? Again, Paul need not be lying here, nor do his sources need to be lying, in order for this passage to be a falsehood. Everybody in the chain from the eyewitness(es) to Paul could be doing their best to report the events accurately, and they could still have gotten it wrong.
Not knowing how long the chain from the eyewitness(es) to Paul actually was, again I'd say it's far less likely that the events described in the story are true, than that the message Paul delivers here was corrupted by false memories and erroneous retellings -- or even outright lies or exaggeration*** -- and therefore false. (***We don't know the pedigree of the story before it reached Paul, so we can't say that every middle-man retelling of it was honest. Even if you would die defending Paul's honesty, that still says nothing for all the people in the chain that passed this information to him.)
​
The speaker uses these verses again at 29:06, where he says this:

But what we find here in this text is, again, over 301 eyewitnesses to the resurrection who were still alive when 1 Corinthians was written. Why is this important? This is important because that means that the gospel message, that the message of the bible, is falsifiable. ... When you're testing the veracity of a claim, if somebody's making a claim and that claim can't be falsified, that means you can't test the claim. Not a very strong claim, if you can't test the claim -- that means I just gotta trust you, because there's nothing I can do to falsify your claim, I just gotta trust you. This claim is falsifiable. When Paul wrote it, it was a falsifiable claim, and yet it was never falsified. That's a piece of evidence that has to be weighed.

First off, even if the claim was falsifiable at the time it was made, it's not falsifiable now, and now is when we are being asked to believe the claim. People of Paul's time may have been able to interrogate these supposed eyewitnesses, but we can't -- and we can't even be sure they ever existed -- so their testimony can't falsify Paul's account for us. It's unfortunate that the evidence we need to falsify Paul's claims may be lost to time -- but that doesn't mean we should believe what he says, and as far as we can tell it actually renders his claims unfalsifiable to us. Per the speaker's own logic, this is a good reason to doubt what Paul says.
Second, as explained above, I don't accept that there were "over 301 eyewitnesses to the resurrection" still alive in time to read 1 Corinthians. Even if there were living eyewitnesses at that time, the following problems must be overcome before claiming this as evidence:

• Maybe 1 Corinthians wasn't published anywhere these eyewitnesses could have seen it, in time for them to falsify it. It's a letter to the church of Corinth (far from Judea, where we'd expect most eyewitnesses to remain), written in a language foreign to them (Greek), at a time when few people could read
• Maybe eyewitnesses saw it and didn't falsify it because it matched their (incorrect) understanding of what happened. It is possible for everybody to be wrong in roughly the same ways, that's how witness collusion and legends work
• Maybe eyewitnesses saw it and did falsify it -- but one of the following happened:
  • They chose to leave the area instead of risking voicing their objections to a popular belief
  • Their objections were overshadowed by the louder and more numerous voices which ended up informing the books of the bible
  • They voiced their objections verbally and never wrote them down
  • Their written objections were lost over the centuries (including the purposeful destruction of "heretical" texts by the church, rulers, and individuals)
  • We just haven't found the document yet

All of the above are perfectly reasonable explanations for why we don't have a specific, ancient document in our hands.
Also, for what it's worth, I'd like to mention that here the speaker is literally using absence of evidence as evidence of absence: this is an argument from silence, and it's fallacious here because it affirms the consequent by completely ignoring other very plausible explanations. Arguments from silence are perfectly fine when the absence of the thing necessarily implies the falsehood of the claim: for example, the claim "I have a green horn sticking out of my forehead" is falsified by the absence of a green horn sticking out of my forehead. Arguments from silence also be okay evidence (though not very conclusive) when there are good reasons to believe that if the claim were true we should likely have the evidence we lack. But here it is a no-no because what we know about the production, preservation, etc., of ancient documents gives us the most likely explanation for why we don't have the evidence.
So yeah, that's a horribly fallacious argument... And this one's obvious enough, and the speaker seems intelligent enough, that I'm going to just say it: of all the arguments the speaker makes, this is the one that most makes me suspect dishonesty. Maybe he's chosen to present this paper tiger in place of a good argument because he knows he has nothing better. It makes me suspect he's consciously chosen not to investigate his question, but instead seeks to prove his foregone conclusion by any means necessary.
Not that he's outright lying -- I think he really does believe his foregone conclusion. But I think he hasn't set out to honestly investigate it, and this awful argument is, in my opinion, a direct result of that flaw in his methodology.
​
At 30:44 the speaker states that the NT was written "very early", which I guess is supposed to support the "by eyewitnesses, in the lifetime of other eyewitnesses" prong of his answer. Yet he gives no evidence for this "very early" claim. I think these are the points where he tries to support the argument, but both seem to be non sequiturs (fallacies):

• At 31:30 the speaker argues against a straw man of the popular "telephone game" argument
  • It's a straw man because the telephone game argument is a description of how both transcription and translation errors accumulate in hand-copied texts over time -- however, the speaker presents it as if everybody who ever translated the bible had the same source material to translate or transcribe from. That's simply not true. It's been proven that differences exist in the earliest known copies of every book of the bible, and these differences grew over time. Medieval scribes didn't have the originals to copy or translate from: they were working from copies of copies of copies, etc. Indeed, Bart Ehrman says that the earliest scribes tended to make more errors than the later ones.
  • It's a non sequitur, because it was brought up in the context of trying to prove that the NT was authored "very early", and it actually has nothing to do with that, so it's probably a relevance fallacy of some type. The "telephone game" argument explains how copies of copies become less and less true to the originals. It does not comment on the date of the originals, yet that's what the speaker is trying to prove here.
• At 34:54 the speaker claims that we have over 6000 manuscripts or fragments of the NT, which is more than we have for other ancient texts of similar age
  • This is a non sequitur for a number of reasons, at least one of them a relevance fallacy. First, the books cited by the speaker are generally quite a bit older than the books of the NT -- by many hundreds of years, in some cases. Second, the number of fragments has nothing to do with when the books were written, which is the point the speaker is trying to prove.

I feel that these two arguments actually distract the audience rather than supporting the speaker's claim. I don't know whether this was his intent, or a mistake, or I'm just being dumb -- mainly because I have no idea how he thinks these points support his claim. At the very least they distracted me, and after re-watching them multiple times I still couldn't make any better sense of these arguments than as non sequiturs based on straw men.
If you think he's supported his "very early" NT authorship claim at all with these points, then please let me know how.
​
But regardless of my poor understanding of this section of the video, or the speaker's lack of evidence, or whatever happened here, I don't think it even matters. Even if the NT books were written "very early", it would not mean that the lack of contemporaneous objections to the NT's claims constitutes evidence in favor of the NT's claims. Again, arguments from silence are not appropriate here, and I really do suspect that the speaker is being intellectually dishonest here, as discussed toward the beginning of this section.

Claim 4: "They report supernatural events that took place ..."

At 40:30 the speaker cites 2 Peter in support of this claim. Aside from the problems I already mentioned with 2 Peter, and how (in my opinion) the speaker's usage of that book diminishes his credibility --
Why would it matter that the authors claim that supernatural events happened? Should we just... believe them? It's one thing to say "I saw X". It's another entirely to say "I saw X, and I know that Y caused it". The first is a statement of one's own experience, whereas the second is an experience plus an inference. Why should we believe that these peoples' inferences about the supernatural are reliable, and that the reported events (assuming they actually occurred) were actually supernatural?
Note that my objection isn't based on demeaning ancient peoples. I don't think this problem really gets any easier with more knowledge. Inferences about the supernatural should always be treated as speculation, until and unless we find some way to objectively investigate the supernatural. We don't have a way to do that now, so we should not believe the claims (yet).
More support for this claim is given at 41:33, but it suffers from the same problem.
The speaker should be treating these claims as what they are -- claims, which need to be substantiated before anybody should believe them. He's not doing that. I don't know if he just doesn't suspect that they could be wrong, or if he's turning a blind eye to a problem he's aware of. Either way, it's just very unsatisfying, and consciously or not I wonder whether his circular premise "there is no higher authority than the bible" has crept into this part of his analysis, too.

Claim 5: "... in fulfillment of specific prophesies ..."

The speaker supports this argument with Isaiah 53 at 43:02, and with Psalm 22 at 45:44.
I read Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12, and to me it's not that impressive. It's not a specific prophesy, because it doesn't tell when the thing will happens, and many people (and even whole nations) of that area and timeframe probably fit that description. Jesus is just the guy that got super popular (though he was not the only one).
​
I agree that Psalm 22 seems to describe somebody being crucified. Or it could be another method of torture that I don't know of, but let's just assume it's crucifixion for the sake of argument. However, it shares the same problems as Isaiah 53: it doesn't give any specifics, so it could be talking about literally anybody from that time and place who was crucified. Jesus quoting the first line while on the cross could easily have been a detail made up by the gospel authors (or the people who participated in the oral tradition), as a way to heighten the image of Jesus as the messiah. They wanted to tell a compelling story, and that would be a great way to make it more compelling to a Jewish audience.
Anyway, the speaker says that at the time of writing Psalm 22, crucifixion had not yet been invented -- but he didn't cite any sources so I don't know if he's right or wrong. I looked it up quickly, and Wiki says "The psalms making up the first two-thirds of the psalter are predominantly pre-exilic and the last third predominantly post-exilic", I think referring to the Babylonian Exile from 586-539 BCE. Since I can't read Wiki's reference I don't know if Psalm 22 is in that pre-exile group, but I'd guess so, and that's the most generous assumption I can make so let's work with that. That gives us an early 6th Century BCE date as the latest possible date for Psalm 22 being written down...
... And here's a reference saying the Persians were crucifying people "systematically" in the 6th Century BCE, and that they probably got the idea from the Assyrians and Babylonians, so those countries may have been doing it earlier than that. So contrary to the speaker's bald assertion, there's some plausible overlap (as far as I can tell) between when Psalm 22 was first written down, and when crucifixions were performed in the region. Yes, I'm working off of the manuscript date rather than the actual date it was composed, but I think that's fine: Psalm 22 began as an oral tradition, and perhaps the crucifixion details were added into it before it was written down, once people became aware of the practice. I think that's far more likely than Psalm 22 being a prophesy, and since we can't reconstruct the original oral tradition we'll just have to wonder.
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Also, prophesy in general has a few big problems:

1. People who know of the prophesy can work to fulfill it
2. People retelling a story can alter the details of the story to make it seem like the prophesy was fulfilled
3. It's sometimes not clear whether something is a prophesy at all, or what is being prophesied

Both "fulfilled prophesies" cited by the speaker suffer from all these problems.
The authors of the New Testament obviously knew the OT books well, and were motivated to make Jesus seem like the Hebrew messiah -- that's why they wrote the gospels in the first place. That would give them a strong incentive to either make up parts of the gospel stories wholesale to better match the prophesies, or to selectively interpret the things they heard or experienced in a way that makes the events fit the prophesy better.
And even if there wasn't much embellishment, couldn't it be that Jesus and the apostles actively worked to fulfill as much of those "prophesies" as possible? A great quote from Matt Dillahunty: "If I go to a restaurant and order a steak medium rare, and the server gives me exactly that, is he fulfilling prophesy?" In my opinion, nope, he's merely following instructions, just like Jesus and the apostles may have merely been following a script. I understand that some people might still call this "fulfilling prophesy", but given the other 2 problems I think this idea of "fulfilled prophesies" is still on super thin ice.
Finally, Isaiah 53 is often interpreted by Jews as a prophesy for the nation of Israel, not the messiah. And I think they believe Psalm 22 is just a poem or song, not a prophesy. You can claim they're prophesies, but it's not clear that they were intended to be, or what exactly they predict, so when they're "fulfilled" (especially as questionably as in this case) I'm not sure how much that really means.
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This isn't a great case for the "... in fulfillment of specific prophesies ..." claim. It looks like wishful thinking to me, again perhaps motivated by the speaker's premise that the bible is the ultimate authority. Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody here can do a better job supporting this position than the speaker did.

Claim 6: "... and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin."

At 51:20, the speaker cites 2 Peter 1 to support the claim that the bible authors claimed their writings are divine in origin. I've already noted my objections to using 2 Peter (a likely forgery) as evidence for anything that Peter the apostle experienced or thought --
But just as with claims for supernatural events, even if 2 Peter is not a forgery, why would it matter that the authors claim the bible is divine in origin? As discussed above I think it's very unlikely that Psalm 22 or Isaiah 52/53 are fulfilled prophesies, so now where are we?
We're left without any supporting evidence for the claim. They said it, so should we just believe it? As with claim 4, this is just very unsatisfying, and I wonder whether the speaker's circular premise had something to do with it.

Final Bones to Pick

I wish I could address his points at 52:12 and 53:15, even though they're not directly related to the rest of the talk -- but I'm out of space.
The first is an appeal to consequences built on an equivocation fallacy, and in the second he describes the questions one must ask in any historical investigation -- questions which he addressed poorly or not at all in this video.
These two attempts to twist logic into a shape that supports his point -- well, they disgust me.

Hi all,
I've been putting together info for how to recycle in Tucson while leveraging all the recycling options that are open to me: curbside, the city's upcoming glass drop-off, local and mail-in corporate-sponsored, and TerraCycle (a paid option). I aim to reuse or recycle every last bit of waste coming out of our house, no matter how crazy it may seem. Partly I just want to see how difficult it is; I recognize that my process isn't practical for most people.
Anyway, here's what I've gathered so far.

General principles

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1. COMPOST: If it can be composted, compost it! (More on this below.)
2. REUSE: If it can't be composted, reuse it! Reuse is always the most environmentally-friendly option.
3. DONATE: If it can't be reused by you, donate it if it's something worth donating that someone else could use. https://tucsoncleanandbeautiful.org/ has a great directory for places that will accept various materials. Cero is a Tucson store that also accepts lots of stuff for donation and reuse. Donation usually involves transportation and some kind of carbon emissions, but it's still better than recycling. Don't donate junk! Donations aren't a free trash can.
4. MUNICIPAL RECYCLING: If it can't be donated, recycle it locally using municipal recycling (curbside or drop-off). Recycle Coach has all the info you need on what municipal recycling can or can't recycle. ESGD's page on residential recycling also has some important guidelines. Recycling uses energy and involves carbon-emitting transport, plus not everything in a recycling waste stream actually gets recycled, so try to reuse first.
5. LOCAL STORE DROP-OFF: If it can't be recycled using municipal recycling, recycle it at a local store for free. Earth911 has a search page that finds these stores and breaks them down by type, and TerraCycle's corporate-sponsored programs page also has some local programs. These programs typically ship their waste to a recycling partner, often TerraCycle in New Jersey, which adds to the environmental footprint of the process, so try to recycle municipally first.
6. FREE MAIL-IN: If it can't be recycled at a local store, use one of TerraCycle's free corporate-sponsored mail-in programs. These programs end up sending waste TerraCycle, just like the local store drop-offs, but are arguably less efficient than sending a big communal batch of stuff, so try to use the local store drop-offs first.
7. TERRACYCLE (PAID): If it can't be recycled using a mail-in program, use a paid all-in-one box to have TerraCycle recycle it if it's small and light. This is effectively the same as using one of the mail-in options above except that you have to pay, so try to use a mail-in program first.
8. REGIONAL DROP-OFF: If it's a big bulky waste that can't be donated, see if it can be recycled outside of Tucson (e.g., save up Styrofoam for the next time I drive to Phoenix, where they do have the appropriate facilities). TerraCycle accepts almost anything, but their all-in-one boxes are pricey, so it may make more sense to save up big hard-to-recycle stuff like packaging for Phoenix or another big city, if you think you'll drive there at some point. Don't make unnecessary trips just to drop off waste!
9. TRASH: If it can't be composted, reused, donated or recycled, throw it away and make sure that you follow the guidelines for hazardous waste disposal.
10. GOLDEN RULE #1: Make sure that the material is clean. Clean waste streams are more valuable to recyclers, which helps keep costs down. Don't use too much water cleaning up stuff, but don't feel too guilty about using water, either! Dishwater usage is a tiny sliver of household water consumption, not to mention that industry and agriculture generally use much more water than homes.
11. GOLDEN RULE #2: The goal of recycling is to break down your waste into "primary materials" (e.g., plastic, metal, paper, glass) that can be used by industry to make new products. The more mixed your materials, the more you need to research how to recycle it. Knowing the basics goes a long way. For example, I know that metal cans get melted down, so a paper or plastic label attached to the can doesn't worry me because I know that it will get burned off. But what about a milk carton, which is paper fused with plastic? Or the circuitry inside the plastic base of a CFL bulb? If you can't intuitively explain how the thing is going to get broken down into its primary materials, that's your cue that you need to do some research.
12. GOLDEN RULE #3: Knowing the basics of how recycling centers work goes a long way. For example, if you know that you can't recycle plastic grocery bags curbside because they get stuck in the machines, that's a hint that you shouldn't try to recycle your plastic food wrap, either. Or if you know that plastic bottle caps fall through the holes of a separator, that's a hint that you need to research whether your beer bottle caps are recyclable (even though they're metal).

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Reuse and recycling guide for my home

This is not a comprehensive list of every recycling resource in Tucson, this is just for my house my household's needs. I've found that there's no one-size-fits-all solution if you want to reach close to 100% recycling/reuse, you end up having to come up with a list that's customized for your home, which requires research. I'm providing my list as a potential template as well as for inspiration.
Legend:

• Donation/reuse
  • Cero reuse = Cero's local donation and reuse program (see their guidelines)
  • Glass drop-off = Tucson's municipal glass reuse program, starting on 2/1/2020 (locations listed at the bottom of the page)
• Municipal recycling
  • Curbside = Tucson's municipal "blue barrel" curbside recycling
  • Shredding = Tucson's monthly free shredding program
• Local store drop-off
  • Subaru cups/lids/straws = drop off in the lobby of Tucson Subaru (page for Subaru's recycling program); don't mix with other Subaru recycling
  • Subaru wrappers = ditto
  • Target film = drop off near the front of Target (info I learned about recycling at the Target on Grant); don't mix with other Target recycling
  • Target electronics = ditto
  • Cero stationery = drop off at Cero (program page)
  • Batteries and Bulbs batteries = drop off at a local Batteries and Bulbs (program page); don't mix with other Batteries and Bulbs recycling
  • Batteries and Bulbs bulbs = ditto
  • Gillette = mail-in/drop-off program (there's a drop-off point at Bullets Barber Shop in midtown; note that the Beauty Republic listing on TerraCycle's program page is inaccurate. I spoke with Beauty Republic's owner and confirmed this.)
• Mail-in
  • Rubbermaid = mail-in program
  • TULA = mail-in program
• TerraCycle = all-in-one box (paid)
• Regional drop-off (save up and drop off next time you're in town)
  • The Perfect Block (Phoenix): Styrofoam (program page)

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• Glass
  • Jars (clean, labels removed): Cero reuse
  • Other: curbside until 2/1/2020, then glass drop-off
• Metal
  • Food and beverage cans (La Colombe coffee cans, soda cans, food cans, etc.; no plastic tops; don't crush): curbside
  • Little plastic top for La Colombe coffee: Subaru cups/lids/straws (see “plastic food containers and cutlery”)
  • Fully empty aerosol cans (whipped cream, etc.): curbside
  • Misc. small bits (nuts and bolts, small tools, etc.): TerraCycle
  • Pringles cans: TerraCycle
• General paper
  • Larger boxes (>6" length, in reusable condition): Cero reuse
  • Mailers (papeplastic/mixed, in reusable condition): Cero reuse
  • Packaging materials (e.g., packing paper): Cero reuse
  • Uncoated (copier paper, clean napkins, egg cartons, etc.; can have glue, tape, stables, envelope windows): curbside
  • Sensitive uncoated (bank statements, etc.): shredding
  • Cardboard: curbside
  • Coated (wax paper, plastic-y type spam mail): TerraCycle
  • Receipts (which are coated paper): TerraCycle
• Paper food containers
  • Milk cartons (w/ cap on, can be crushed): curbside
  • Disposable paper cups (e.g., Dutch Bros): Subaru cups/lids/straws
  • Clean takeout: TerraCycle
• Plastic food containers and cutlery
  • Tubs (yogurt, etc.): Rubbermaid
  • Take-out, rotisserie chicken (usually #5 plastic), ground turkey containers: Rubbermaid
  • Thin clear plastic (some take-out, berry containers from the store, usually #1 or #2 plastic): curbside
  • Single-use water and beverage (Gatorade, etc., w/ cap on; don't crush) bottles/jugs: curbside
  • Disposable cups, lids and straws (Dutch Bros, Solo, etc.): Subaru cups/lids/straws
  • Candy and snack wrappers: Subaru wrappers
  • Potato chip bags: Subaru wrappers
  • Unopened plastic cutlery packages (e.g., from McDonald's): Cero reuse
  • Loose plastic cutlery, used or unused: TerraCycle
• Plastic film and bags
  • Packaging materials (e.g., Amazon air bubble thingies): Cero reuse
  • Grocery and shopping bags: Target film
  • Clean food wrap: Target film
  • Ziplock: Target film
  • Plastic tape (packing, Scotch, etc., with or without bits attached or crumpled): TerraCycle
• Hygiene, health and beauty products
  • Pill bottles (clean, empty, labels removed): Cero reuse
  • Unused hygiene products (new, unopened): Cero reuse
  • TULA brand jars, tubes and blister packs: TULA
  • Razors and packaging: Gillette
  • Toothbrush heads and toothbrushes: TerraCycle
• Electronics, batteries, light bulbs, etc.
  • Small electronics: Target electronics
  • Rechargeable batteries and battery packs (e.g., lithium ion): Batteries and Bulbs batteries
  • Alkaline and other single-use batteries: TerraCycle
  • Bulbs: Batteries and Bulbs bulbs
• Cleaning supplies
  • Used wipes: TerraCycle
  • Non-tub, hard plastic containers (laundry, spray bottles, etc.): curbside
• Other
  • Fabric scraps: Cero reuse
  • Plastic mailers (e.g., those bubble wrap pouches that Amazon sometimes uses; as long as they're clean and in reusable condition): Cero reuse
  • Stationery (e.g., pens, glue sticks, paint sets, flexible packaging; NOT white out): Cero stationery
  • Styrofoam: small items go to TerraCycle, big bulky items (e.g., box packaging) go to The Perfect Block

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How do I sort all this?

Right now, I'm using a makeshift system of lots and lots of bags to keep everything separate. My idea is to do a monthly "recycling day" and drop off everything that needs to be dropped off as well as mail in everything that needs to be mailed in. I haven't had to do this yet since I started this project.
I hope to build a sorting station in my house once I understand my needs a bit better.
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Notes on TerraCycle and partner programs

A lot of the corporate-sponsored/mail-in/drop-off programs are done through TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based recycler that specializes in recycling hard-to-recycle things (e.g., potato chip bags, toothbrushes). They make lots of their money through large corporations, which essentially pay them to process unprofitable waste in order to burnish their environmental stewardship bona fides. They also offer paid recycling pouches and boxes to the general public. You mail in these pouches/boxes (they come with a shipping label) after filling them up with recyclable waste.
TerraCycle will recycle almost anything and everything. However, anything that gets recycled through them or one of their corporate programs is shipped to New Jersey for processing, so it's preferable to reuse or recycle locally. They're also not as transparent as I wish they would be. I'm not certain, for example, how much of each waste stream actually gets recycled. They have a customer support contact form that's been very good for getting my questions answered, but beware that they take about 2-3 days to get back to you per request.
I bought the large "all-in-one" box from their site and found a coupon code online to bring the cost down to around $350. I read a review elsewhere from someone who got a medium box (about 50% the size) who said that it lasted her six months. My idea is to use this box as "recycling of last resort" and rely on drop-off programs as much as possible to keep costs down. On the other hand, this makes my life more complicated in terms of sorting different waste streams, so you could simplify by putting waste destined for various drop-off points into a single TerraCycle all-in-one box.
You need to register for free on their website to use their mail-in programs. Many of their mail-in programs unfortunately have wait lists. Of the ~15 programs for which I signed up around two weeks ago, about 8 had wait lists, and I got off the wait list for about 5 of them. So they seem to go through the list pretty regularly. Once you're in, you can print off a free UPS label from the "my profile" section of the site after logging in.
If I had to take a wild guess, I would assume that TerraCycle has a higher rate of recycling than municipal programs, but this must be balanced against the financial and environmental cost of shipping waste to their facilities.
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Composting

The Achilles' heel in my recycling and reuse plan is organic matter. The City of Tucson has a composting program but it's only open to businesses.
There are a few volunteer-run programs here and there that accept compostable waste. I managed to sign up for one, UA's Compost Cats, and will be meeting them tomorrow to pick up my sealed composting bucket and go over the program rules. I know that they have limited capacity, so you have to email them. They took about a week to get back to me.
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Am I insane?

Maybe a little 🙃.
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Shout outs

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• Marissa at Beauty Republic, who told me about Cero, Desert Rose Collective and her husband's business, Bullets Barber Shop, which has a razors drop-off point.
• Alena at Desert Rose Collective, who makes beautiful household goods from reused local bottles, jars and other materials. (Btw, I emailed her and she explained that she's not currently accepting donations for reuse due to COVID-19, but that in the future she plans to accept glass jars or bottles with lids.)

This game concept is inspired by: Minecraft Super Mario Party (Don’t ask) Moonlighter Super Mario Odyssey New Super Mario Bros Wreck-it Ralph (Movie #1) Escape Room
Regular Game: The goal: The goal is to defeat Seth, who is in the eighth world.
The twist: There are separate paths you can take to reach Seth. This basically makes it a more speedrun able game.
The backstory to defeat Seth: Idk, you create one. Maybe a princess gets kidnapped?
Weapons: There are weapons in the game to help you to defeat more enemies in the game. You can also upgrade tiers to those weapons. Example: You can upgrade a bronze weapon to make it silver raising its stats.
The World Paths: As I mentioned there are separate paths you can take to reach the final boss, Seth. The paths do vary a lot however. There are a total of 29 worlds and 5040 paths to reach Seth (I’m not joking)
Tier 1 World (Very easy) Forest This is the tutorial world where you are introduced to the basics of the game. Once you defeated the boss, Rodney, you will be able to choose to go to the Sun World or the Moon World.
Target times for regular people (Target times mean how long it will take for them to beat it): 5 minutes
Target times for speedrunners: 3 minutes
Tier 2 worlds (Very easy): Sun Kingdom (This is just a bright forest not on an actual moon) Boss: Starlight Choice: Beach World or Cave World
Moon Kingdom (This is just a dark forest not on an actual moon) Boss: Ivan Choice: Cave World or Ice World
Target time for regular people: 15 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 7 minutes
The goal of Tier 2 worlds is not to be a tutorial, but to be easy enough for the player to get used to the controls by themselves.
Tier 3 worlds (Easy): Beach World Boss: Brody Choice: Island World or Desert World
Cave World Boss: Butch Choice: Desert World or Mountain World
Ice World Boss: Evan Choice: Mountain World or Sea World
Target time for regular people: 20 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 10 minutes
The goal of Tier 3 worlds are to be a bump up in difficulty from the Tier 2 worlds
Tier 4 Worlds (Medium): Island World Boss: Geoff Choice: Cruise-ship World or Heaven World
Desert World Boss: Skull Choice: Heaven World or Magical World
Mountain World Boss: Axel Choice: Magical World or Castle World
Sea World Boss: Terry Choice: Castle World or Hazardous World
Target time for regular players: 30 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 15 minutes
The goal for Tier 4 worlds is to start getting pretty difficult, as well as introducing cool game mechanics.
Tier 5 Worlds (Medium): Cruise-ship World Boss: Anita Choice: Prehistoric World or Cinema World Cool Mechanic: There are separate islands you can stop by to complete quests.
Heaven World Boss: Horus Choice: Cinema World or City World Cool Mechanic: Your speed an jump are multiplied by 2.
Magical World Boss: Buster Choice: City World or Electric World Cool Mechanic: There is another Magical World underneath so in case you fall down...
Castle World Boss: Penny Choice: Electric World or Age Z World Cool Mechanic: There are a ton of hidden rooms
Hazardous World Boss: Byron Choice: Age Z World or Warzone World Cool Mechanic: Sometimes the Hazardous Goo Raises
Target time for regular people: 30 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 15 minutes
The goal of tier 5 worlds is to have very cool mechanics without raising the difficulty
Tier 6 Worlds (Hard): Prehistoric World Boss: Wendy Choice: Space World or Futuristic World Cool Mechanic: You can travel through time to separate Prehistoric time periods.
Cinema World Boss: George Choice: Futuristic World or Candy World Cool Mechanic: You can enter through movies that are playing
City World Boss: Silas Choice: Candy World or Video Game World Cool Mechanic: There are way more shops
Electric World Boss: Diana Choice: Video Game World or Dungeon World Cool Mechanic: You can craft Crystal Weapons only in this world
Age Z World Boss: Matt Choice: Dungeon World or Bunker World Cool Mechanic: Every day there is a small Zombie Raid.
Warzone World Boss: Jack Choice: Bunker World or Ruins World Cool Mechanic: There are explosive mines all over the place
Target time for regular people: 45 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 20 minutes
The goal for Tier 6 worlds is to start raising the difficulty to the extreme
Tier 7 worlds (Hard): Space World Boss: Harley Cool Mechanic: You jump 3x higher and longer
Futuristic World Boss: Roy Cool Mechanic: There are so many modes of transportation. There is also anti gravity.
Candy World Boss: Fiona Cool Mechanic: Every candy is edible causing you to never lose energy
Video Game World Boss: Emma Cool Mechanic: While you are in the lobby you can go into any video game
Dungeon World Boss: Seth Cool Mechanic: It’s like an escape room!
Bunker World Boss: Kent Cool Mechanic: There is an elevator that brings you to whichever floor you want.
Ruins World Boss: Pierce Cool Mechanic: There are stones that if you piece together you unlock a new area of the runes.
Target time for regular players: 50 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 20 minutes
The goal for Tier 7 worlds is to be as hard as possible while still not being the hardest world
Tier 8 World Volcano World Note: NO MATTER which world you are in, you end up in this world. Boss: Seth
This is designed to be as hard as it can be!
Target time for regular players: 1 hour 30 minutes Target time for speedrunners: 45 minutes
Weapons When you defeat enemies (not just bosses) you get crafting materials to craft these weapons if you can: Sword Spear Pistols Cannon Orb Large Sword Fists Hammer Axe Chainsaw Ball and chain Nunchucks Staff Wand Machette Scythe Baton Bow Daggers Lance Trident Katana Sniper Energy Flamethrower Bombs Sledgehammer Slicer Blaster Minigun Drill Pickaxe Smoke gun Regular saw Assault gun Shotgun Whip Katars Gaunlets Razors Claws
I will probably add on more to this, but I wanted to leave some blank so if someone wants to code this, they don’t have to do it word for word.
Quests Mainly just campaign stuff like fix the engine, swipe a card, etc.
THIS CONCEPT IS COMPLETELY FREE TO USE (I would like to be credited but it’s fine if you don’t)
If you have any questions please comment below. Again, this is just a sketch rather than a painting.

BC.150
● Newly exposed and volatile material creates a geothermal cascade event throughout the Ring of Fire which leads to a global, cataclysmic tectonic superdisaster called “the Calamity”, a series of volcanic eruptions (most infamously including the Yellowstone Supervolcano) and devastating earthquakes. The subsequent, literally Earth-shattering and altering destruction dismantles the entire world order and effectively ends civilization as humanity knows it, and the only things left from this old era to document the catastrophe properly are sparse historical artifacts and records.
● Immediately following the Calamity, the volcanic winter spewed creates a new Ice Age called the “Long Cold”. By blotting the sun out, entire crops, natural fauna, and consequently ecosystem-dependent beings are utterly destroyed, and millions die worldwide from starvation, famine, and cascading environmental conditions. Numerous more survive by ironically huddling around the geothermal hotspots to provide warmth and soil.
BC.150-0
● The Mercenary Cabal is established from a band of warlords. Over the bigger part of following centuries, they would operate as the shadow organizer behind mercenary affairs, as well as pull the strings on criminal and military power balance-related activities and numerous historical events around the world through its mercenaries.
● During the Long Cold, infighting occurs between cities and territories in the North American continent. Right before the end of this period, the United Cascadian Republic (or simply Cascadia) is formed from those factions, on the former territories of Canada (British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and Yukon), Mexico (Sonora, most of Chihuahua, Baja California, and Baja California Sur), and the US (West Coast, New Mexico, most of Colorado, western Nebraska, and both Dakotas) on a demand to normalize relations across the Western Seaboard. Sandwiched between the Yellowstone Supervolcano and the Ring of Fire’s eastern edge, it is revered as the most powerful nation in the Northwestern Hemisphere, thanks to its sheer amount of geothermal and cordium deposits. Its capital is based in the land of the former area of San Francisco (now called the Golden Ocean) and called Presidia (45.41’33'' N, 121.33'7'' W), the largest city in the Northwestern Hemisphere. The capital derives its name from the former Presidio of San Francisco, now renovated and turned into the main governmental office of the country.
o With blood feuds between the old factions still persisting, the Cascadian National Guard, the country’s main defense force, is created, and among the first moves by the organization is to create facilities between highly contested factions in order to dissuade any final grievances from being carried out. One example is the Brite Fortress (41.10’13'' N, 124.2'53'' W), located in the Inertia region’s Audrerie Valley, which would gradually become a mere secondary logistics depot.
o The new country’s primary mainland is the detached “island” portion mid-continent and has a diverse hemisphere climate, with blistering deserts in its south/east (“the Dustlands”, formerly the North American Wilderness) and a snowy tundra to its north. It is also split by the Sea of the ScaScarred Sea, which is entirely made up of sunken US (all of Arizona and parts of five states; Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana) and Canadian (small southern portions of Saskatchewan and Alberta; central portions of British Columbia) states.
o Alongside Presidia, the second most powerful founding city of Cascadia is Solstitium (located in Twin Falls, Idaho) due to its overabundance of geothermal and cordium deposits and being ruled by the Solis family. The other founding member is Salt Lake City-based Prospero (40.51’44'' N, 115.43'23'' W), which would grow to become the main economic commerce hub in the hemisphere. Powered by an inactive volcano, the hub is also considered the world’s busiest airport due to enormous airship and naval traffic and a considerably large population supporting the city operations.
o Rumors persist for centuries that the Golden Ocean, before the Calamity, was built on gold, leading potential treasure hunters to dive underwater for such material wealth.
o Besides Christianity (and probably other religions), one of the newly created state religions is the Church of Dust, centered around the “Dust Mother” figure. One of the new religion’s holy books is the Book of Fire, and an example of a passage from there is the First Perdition, specifically positing about the figure creating and returning living beings to her through dust. The other sentence is about burial “in the ash of our forefathers” leading to “seeing us in flames”.
BC/AC.0
● The Long Cold officially ends on this year, leading to international communications being restored and the world’s surviving nations organizing a base zero year called the “After Calamity (or simply AC)” Era after determining the human race’s continuing, adaptive existence and advancement remains unaffected by the Calamity, mainly thanks to man’s general resourcefulness and tribalist survival instinct. Even as the world remains forever scarred and changed, the average citizen lives very comfortably and safely, from the rural to the metropolitan kind, and to most of the developed world, the Calamity is “ancient history”.
● The Ring of Fire’s activity, despite remaining active at a much more sustainable level, continues contributing to volcanoes and earthquakes that remain a constant presence to those who call the area home. Ironically, despite the zone’s devastating consequences, it has also provided a wealth of geothermal veins and deposits of a crystallized combination of dielectric materials, native metals, and still yet to be understood anomalous compositions called cordium. The new mineral has been churned up in the crucible of the Deep Earth Mantle, and stories are abounding in the immediate post-apocalypse about dangerous, reactive rock formations singlehandedly powering abandoned facilities that have survived the Calamity as if “haunted by powers beyond understanding”.
o The Yellowstone Supervolcano has an exclusion zone erected around it due to being the most massive eruption in the Calamity. Over the following centuries, however, its eruption remains would all but evaporate, with sprawling wilderness covering most of the continent east of the zone. Still, Cascadian legislation maintains a buffer zone around the area due to unmapped territory and the occasional, albeit dangerous geothermal flareups.
o With the rise of numerous micro-islands and landmasses around the world (and many more yet to be discovered in the AC Era), traversal over the Pacific Ocean is hazardous, given the absence of updated maps and the nascence of deep-water hazard research. Because of this, ships in the ocean oftentimes rely on courses chartered by geothermally evolved whales for safe passage in dangerous waters.
o Cordium has since become one of the most crucial energy resources in the AC Era after being properly studied once mankind returns to its pre-Calamity development level, which enables research and development that can take advantage of the easily available geothermal deposits. In fact, the first political relationships right before and after year zero are based around those with access to the energy veins.
o Research on cordium has led to three simple stages to power generation from it: The first step is placing/absorbing it into a secure engine, before a catalyst is put on the cordium, triggering a reaction cascade which is contained by said engine until it settles into safer and manageable levels. In this condition, cordium basically becomes a slow-burning power supply for machines magnitudes larger than itself. However, due to its volatile nature, the opposite (household/personnel use size) has proven to be difficult or impractical, and synthetic cordium supply creations along with weaponization of its more destructive resonant output has been unsuccessful.
o The nascent, volatile mineral, despite being difficult to mine for, becomes a necessary labor for world energy producers, with the most efficient methods being spinoffs of old deep-sea drilling, specifically great industrial rigs over magma and geothermal fields.
o Not every nation is dependent on geothermal energy or cordium, however; those of the example are designated as “the Periphery”, who may or may not be self-sufficient in their own right and probably even powerful. Most of them, however, still rely on modern technology and infrastructure which heavily favors the above two resources. One example is the backwater Creole Republic, which sustains itself as an Atlantic Ocean port of call. With a territory comprising the southern parts of the former US states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, as well as western parts of Florida, the majority of world governments share a similar size.
o The Periphery’s existential growth is helped by Cascadia, which makes its capital a connection between the wider world and the Periphery. Presidia, in turn, starts hosting commerce in ports from throughout the world, and from this point on, much of Cascadia’s geothermal output travels through Presidia. The Periphery is also helped by mercenaries, who have now become commonplace thanks to the Mercenary Cabal. The mercenaries usually serve as a stand-in for their own militaries, but also take on NGO gigs like territorial raiding or bounty hunting. Ranging from the common soldier to EW specialists, all mercenaries share a common goal of seeking the bottom line.
o One consequence of Cascadia’s vast riches and size, however, is a quality-of-life inequality. Specifically, while many have a sub/urban life along Cascadia’s more populated regions, several of the wilderness-based areas have tribal groups and lone families still living off the land. Additionally, the Dustlands’ inhabitants often clash against Cascadia’s border communities and National Guard, although the smaller in-continent nation states prop up support from time to time.
o In general, most modern nations opine that cordium has outweighed the cost of dealing with the Ring of Fire’s natural disasters. However, many experts warn that further endeavor into the fractures – basically the planet’s opened-up wounds – would be a dangerous, if not inevitable, catalyst into further disaster.

Tl;dr at the bottom
​
Mechanical Obsolescence
I think Breath of the Wild is an incredible game for a decently long time into the game, but when I get a certain distance into the game, I start to lose interest. For a while I’ve wondered why I just can’t maintain interest late into the game as much as I can on my 15th run through of the Great Plateau, and I think I’ve come to an idea of what I’ll call “Mechanical Obsolescence”. Which is to say, Breath of the Wild has a lot of really incredible mechanics that are really fun to play around with and engage with, but as you progress further and further into the game, it slowly eliminates the need or desire to interact with these mechanics in favor of more streamlined approaches that are less rewarding.
I think it’s helpful to think of situations in a game like BOTW as small puzzles that you need to solve. I want to kill the enemies in this camp. I want to cross this ravine. I want to go to the top of that snowy mountain. I want to kill this Hinox. All of these are things that you want to do, with obstacles of varying degrees keeping you from doing them. In the early game, your resources are very limited. When you go to fight a Bokoblin camp you may have only one or two weapons that will break very fast, so when your weapon breaks you suddenly need to think on your feet and go grab a new one, or figure something else out. When you want to climb a wall, you need to scope it out, find some resting areas, and then climb up and it really feels like you’re on a journey, setting out to find whatever is at the top of the mountain. These situations all require at least a little amount of thinking, or “puzzle solving” in order to find the right solution, or idea as to how you overcome the challenge.
This is great as well, as BOTW has incredible world interaction. You can chop trees to cross gaps (well, that one time), use chuchu jelly as bombs, catch your weapons on fire, use lightning to deal extra damage to metal, and so much more thanks to the chemistry engine. It really encourages dynamic gameplay and playing around with your environment to see what you can do.
Once you begin to get the runes, paraglider, armor sets, etc.. however, the game slowly gets more and more streamlined. These unique situations where you think on your feet in combat or have to scope out areas to climb effectively are diminished. Suddenly it just feels like you’re going through the motions rather than actually thinking about and engaging with the world around you. Why use chuchu jelly as a makeshift bomb when I have 20 Lynel swords. Why use a raft to cross a river when I have cryonis and paraglider. etc...
What made me realize this effect was Eventide Island, which a lot of people give critical appraisal to already. But I think diving deeper into the nature of Eventide Island gives light to where the real fun is in the game.
​
Eventide Island
For anyone unfamiliar, I’ll give a really brief rundown of Eventide Island. It’s an island that you can come across in Breath of the Wild that, when you step foot on it, removes all of your weapons, armor, items, etc… from your inventory (and returns them after you complete it). You are completely naked when you start out. This basically creates a small microcosm of the game that a lot of people have already talked about before, where you progress from tree branches as weapons, to actual weapons, to having a decent grasp on what’s going on. But the large idea is that you are having to scrounge around for what you need and engage heavily with the environment in order to get what you need from it.
I think this is the part that sheds the light on the real core fun of the game. On both Eventide Island and the Great Plateau, you are scrounging around for things that you need, with immediate danger surrounding you. As you gain materials and a footing, you can take on progressively more difficult challenges, which keep you expending resources, which in turn means you have to keep searching for more. This keeps the player’s engagement with their environment very high, and I feel, keeps the fun very high. Compare this to later in the game when you have access to a large variety of problem solving tools, and this environmental engagement takes a sharp dive.
Normally, if you were to complete Eventide Island without having your inventory wiped, it would be a cakewalk for many players as they are already pre-equipped with a lot of the armor and weapons needed to take on the threats of the island, but since it is wiped, the challenge can be tailored and dialed in to be just right, so that there is always more danger lurking around the corner due to the designers knowing the possibility space of what the player is capable of on the island. As you progress through the island you make use of environmental hazards, sneak up on enemies to get sneak attacks, and do other things that you may not have done in a while, as you haven’t really needed to.
​
Upgrades aren’t bad, they’re just complicated
This isn’t to say that upgrades are bad, meaningful upgrades are inherent to RPG design and are really great rewards for players. The issue however, is that these upgrades feel great at first, but are actually harming the underlying gameplay loop of the game, without the game introducing any new challenges or mechanics to overcome that require use of these new upgrades. They only let you overcome challenges that were more interesting to overcome before you had them.
I think the overall effect of all of these upgrades that you get is that you are never challenged in the game to really think about a situation and how to go about taking it on. As you gain more items, armor sets, and abilities, the world does not compensate by having more difficult areas. You get everywhere by paragliding; sailing over content, potential fights, potential hardships (such as crossing a freezing river or pit of lava). When you do get into fights, they are often very straightforward, unless you go out of your way to be more creative. You just rush in with your weapons, use them until they break, and then pause and select a new one, and then go back to just straight attacking until everything is dead. When you want to go to a more dangerous area such as an extremely cold or hot area, it’s largely a no brainer as to what you do, just equip whatever armor you need and carry on. These situations become more and more prevalent throughout the game the further you go on and it really feels like it’s wasted potential, as these mechanics create such great dynamism and interactivity between the player and the world in the early game or more limited areas such as Eventide Island, that are largely just diminished and nonexistent in the later game.
​
So what could we do about this?
I think there’s a few interesting ways that this kind of Mechanic Obsolescence could be avoided. One way of course is to just not engage with them / not have them in the game. This is the inherent problem with having upgrades in a game, as you want to have rewards for players that feel interesting and meaningful, but you also don’t want to undermine the content that you’ve created and water down the process of playing through it. Perhaps a kind of horizontal upgrade system, or one where you have tradeoffs for equipping certain armors and such.
One idea would be to limit the player’s inventory, or creatively clean it out when some criteria is triggered. Since the real core, fun part of the game is making use of what you can find around you for weapons, looking for insects and monster parts to make elixirs, scoping out ravines, cooking food for buffs, etc… if you could find some way to wipe or limit the player’s inventory without it feeling cheap, then you could consistently re-engage them with this core gameplay loop of interacting with the environment.
Take for example (a bit of an extreme example) of only limiting the player to 1 weapon, bow, and shield. Whatever weapon you have, that’s what you have. This could lead to situations such as finding a Hinox, determining that you aren’t powerful enough at the moment to fight it, and going out to search for a more damaging or more durable weapon. Maybe you would even want to make an attack elixir to ensure that you will kill the Hinox before your good weapons break. Regardless, once you end up killing the Hinox, your weapons will likely be very damaged and break fairly soon. This will put you back down to the level of having nothing again, which re-engages the player with the world as they once again search for decent weapons and such.
Taking this even further, what if you limited the amount of meals and elixirs the player could carry, so you can only eat meals on the spot, and can only carry one elixir with you. When you find a cooking pot it’d always be a good idea to cook a meal and buff up as you otherwise wouldn’t be able to carry one with you, and you can save elixirs for hard fights or tough environments.
Another idea would be special end game content that requires these upgrades in order for the player to even stand a chance at taking them on. An example could be an extremely cold area that requires both maxed cold resistance armor AND a buff from a meal or elixir. With this then, you would not only be giving real use to this equipment, but also be limiting the player in a way which allows you as a designer to dial in the difficulty of the area to present a meaningful challenge, as they know roughly what the player would bring equipped with them.
Diving deeper into this example of the incredibly cold areas, along with this limited inventory idea (1 weapon in each slot, can only eat meals at pots, can only bring 1 elixir with you), we have a few variables as to how the player could bring heat with them, and we know that they need 2 of them

• Cold resistance armor
• Cold resistance elixir / food effect
• Having fire (through a fire weapon or wizzrobe fire wand)

Knowing that they need to have 2 of these 3 things, we could give interesting challenges that we know that they would have to face.

• Option 1 : Armor and food buff, weapon is free. We know that they have less armor than they could normally have, and no helpful food effects as they need the cold resistance buff, but they do have an open weapon slot that can be anything.
• Option 2 : Food effect and fire weapon, but free armor buff. They would have a food buff taken up once again, but this time their weapon is limited to one that can keep them warm. In exchange they can use any armor they want, such as climbing gear, electricity immunity, higher defence, etc...
• Option 3 : Armor and Fire Weapon, but free food buff. Their armor and weapons would both be in use in order to keep them warm, limiting their defensive and offensive capabilities, but they could have any kind of food buff they want such as speed, sneak, etc...

All of these situations eliminate variables and give the designer more to work with in terms of creating interesting challenges for the player to overcome.
One example could be having frost wizzrobes as an enemy. For any of the options, bows are available, so if you bring fire arrows you could easily take them out. For Option 1, the player would have any weapon available to them to combat the wizzrobe, which could be a regular weapon or a fire weapon. The advantage to this is that they may not be able to fight a frost wizzrobe as easily as a player that brought a fire weapon, but they would make up for that by being able to fight other things without using up one of their heat sources. For Option 2 and 3, they would have an easier time fighting these frost enemies, but fighting others will use up one of their heat sources, which could cause a problem.
Having some kind of tough enemy that you would want to fight like a Hinox or Talus could give interesting variation to each of these. For Option 1, you would have any kind of weapon available, so the lacking firepower that you could get with armor or buffs could be made up for with a good weapon. For Option 2, you may lack damage in your weapon since you are bringing a specific type of weapon, but you can wear armor that can give you a damage buff to make up for it. And for Option 3, you could use a buff to get extra damage, while being more limited with armor defense and offence attack by your armor and weapon choices.
This could even give reason to come prepared differently based on what challenge you plan to take on. If you are going to be in an area with lots of frost wizzrobes, you may want to bring a fire weapon rather than a normal one, while if you are going to take on the Hinox, a better, more damaging weapon may be better. This could really create a feeling of gearing up for an adventure, and conquering harsh climates and areas that the game already does and promotes so well, while also building on it and allowing them to have these kinds of upgrades.
Tl;dr
Breath of the Wild has some amazing mechanics that really encourage player interactivity with the world and environment. As you progress through the game, you gain upgrades and abilities that severely diminish the problem solving required to circumvent these challenges, and the game becomes more streamlined and autopilot-y, as encounters require less and less thought put into them from having access to paraglider, armor sets, masses of healing, food buffs, and weapons at any time, runes, and champion powers.
​
I hope this makes some sort of sense and isn't just one massive ramble, and I would like to hear anyone else’s input on if they feel the same, or if you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about and love the late game of BOTW.

So we all know there are conspiracies that range from the illuminati, to lizards taking over the world, to mole people living underground making french fries for an upcoming Earth Party. I have a conspiracy that i recently dug into, and im not sure how much of it is actually impactful on our bodies or lives, but ill put on my tin foil hat and share the information ive found so a discussion can be started.
note to all: im not saying anything about anything, i just went through a few links i found interesting and came up with a crazy conclusion. i am not a doctor and im sure i got some information wrong.
Firstly, is there a powerful group of people who try to control the general population? probably, but maybe not. if there was though, they definitely would be trying to alter and shape us in multiple ways, for multiple reasons. what if one of these ways is through giving us excess estrogen?
Estrogen is possibly being put into our bodies via everyday items containing xenoestrogen.
first, a little background info.
what is estrogen? how does it effect the human body?

Estrogen, or oestrogen, is a category of sex hormone responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics.

It is basically the hormone that makes women, women.
okay, now regarding the conspiracy, recently i came across the rabbit hole of xenoestrogen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen . its basically a synthetic compound imitating estrogen. it can be found in common products that we use everyday. this is apparently everywhere. literally. xenoestrogen is found in BPA, phthalates, parabens, zeranol, insecticides, pesticides, and even the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. why is this important? we'll get back to that later.
well first, what is BPA? sinply put, BPA is used to make certain types of plastics. plastics we use every day.

"BPA-based plastic is clear and tough, and is made into a variety of common consumer goods, such as plastic bottles including water bottles, food storage containers (commonly called "Tupperware"), baby bottles,[3] sports equipment, CDs, and DVDs."
Epoxy resins derived from BPA are used to line water pipes, as coatings on the inside of many food and beverage cans, and in making thermal paper such as that used in sales receipts.[4] In 2015, an estimated 4 million tonnes of BPA-derived chemical were produced, making it one of the highest volume of chemicals produced worldwide.[5]
BPA is a xenoestrogen, exhibiting estrogen-mimicking, hormone-like properties.[6] Although the effect is very weak, the pervasiveness of BPA-containing materials raises concerns. Since 2008, several governments have investigated its safety, which prompted some retailers to withdraw polycarbonate products. Since then, BPA-free plastics have been manufactured using alternative bisphenols such as bisphenol S and bisphenol F, but there is controversy around whether these are actually safer.[7]

BPA Health Effects
>BPA's ability to mimic the effects of natural estrogen derive from the similarity of phenol groups on both BPA and estradiol, which enable this synthetic molecule to trigger estrogenic pathways in the body.[23] Typically phenol-containing molecules similar to BPA are known to exert weak estrogenic activities, thus it is also considered an endocrine disruptor (ED) and estrogenic chemical.[24] Xenoestrogens is another category the chemical BPA fits under because of its capability to interrupt the network that regulates the signals which control the reproductive development in humans and animals.[25]

BPA has been found to bind to both of the nuclear estrogen receptors (ERs), ERα and ERβ. It is 1000- to 2000-fold less potent than estradiol. BPA can both mimic the action of estrogen and antagonize estrogen, indicating that it is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) or partial agonist of the ER. At high concentrations, BPA also binds to and acts as an antagonist of the androgen receptor (AR).

In 1997, adverse effects of low-dose BPA exposure in laboratory animals were first proposed.[26] Modern studies began finding possible connections to health issues caused by exposure to BPA during pregnancy and during development. As of 2014, research and debates are ongoing as to whether BPA should be banned or not.
According to the European Food Safety Authority "BPA poses no health risk to consumers of any age group (including unborn children, infants and adolescents) at current exposure levels".[29] But in 2017 the European Chemicals Agency concluded that BPA should be listed as a substance of very high concern due to its properties as an endocrine disruptor.[30]
In 2012, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of BPA in baby bottles.[31]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also holds the position that BPA is not a health concern. In 2011, Andrew Wadge, the chief scientist of the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency, commented on a 2011 U.S. study on dietary exposure of adult humans to BPA,[32] saying, "This corroborates other independent studies and adds to the evidence that BPA is rapidly absorbed, detoxified, and eliminated from humans – therefore is not a health concern."[33]
The Endocrine Society said in 2015 that the results of ongoing laboratory research gave grounds for concern about the potential hazards of endocrine-disrupting chemicals – including BPA – in the environment, and that on the basis of the precautionary principle these substances should continue to be assessed and tightly regulated.[34] A 2016 review of the literature said that the potential harms caused by BPA were a topic of scientific debate and that further investigation was a priority because of the association between BPA exposure and adverse human health effects including reproductive and developmental effects and metabolic disease.[35]
In July 2019, the European Union upheld a decision by the European Chemicals Agency to list BPA as a substance of very high concern, the first step in the procedure for restrictions of its use. The decision is based on concerns about BPA's toxicity for human reproduction.[36]
what are phthalates?

They are mainly used as plasticizers, i.e., substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity. Phthalates are used in a large variety of products, from enteric coatings of pharmaceutical pills and nutritional supplements to viscosity control agents, gelling agents, film formers, stabilizers, dispersants, lubricants, binders, emulsifying agents, and suspending agents. End-applications include adhesives and glues, agricultural adjuvants, building materials, personal-care products, medical devices, detergents and surfactants, packaging, children's toys, modelling clay, waxes, paints, printing inks and coatings, pharmaceuticals, food products, and textiles. Phthalates are also frequently used in soft plastic fishing lures, caulk, paint pigments, and sex toys made of so-called "jelly rubber". Phthalates are used in a variety of household applications such as shower curtains, vinyl upholstery, adhesives, floor tiles, food wrap film, and cleaning materials. Personal-care items containing phthalates include perfume, eye shadow, moisturizer, nail polish, liquid soap, and hair spray.[11] "

what are parabens?
>Parabens are a class of widely used preservatives in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. Chemically, they are a series of parahydroxybenzoates or esters of parahydroxybenzoic acid (also known as 4-hydroxybenzoic acid). Parabens are effective preservatives in many types of formulas. These compounds, and their salts, are used primarily for their bactericidal and fungicidal properties. They are found in shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, personal lubricants, topical/parenteral pharmaceuticals, suntan products, makeup,[1] and toothpaste. They are also used as food preservatives.
health effects

Most of the available paraben toxicity data are from single-exposure studies, meaning one type of paraben in one type of product. According to paraben research this is relatively safe, posing only a negligible risk to the endocrine system. However, since many types of parabens in many types of products are used commonly, further assessment of the additive and cumulative risk of multiple paraben exposure from daily use of multiple cosmetic and/or personal care products is needed.[8] FDA states that they have no information that use of parabens in cosmetics has any effect on health. They continue to consider certain questions and evaluate data about parabens' possible health effects.[9]

estrogen effects

Animal experiments have shown that parabens have weak estrogenic activity, acting as xenoestrogens.[13]The estrogenic activity of parabens increases with the length of the alkyl group. It is believed that propylparaben is estrogenic to a certain degree as well,[15] though this is expected to be less than butylparaben by virtue of its less lipophilic nature. Since it can be concluded that the estrogenic activity of butylparaben is negligible under normal use, the same should be concluded for shorter analogs due to estrogenic activity of parabens increasing with the length of the alkyl group.

but like they stated earlier in the article, >However, since many types of parabens in many types of products are used commonly, further assessment of the additive and cumulative risk of multiple paraben exposure from daily use of multiple cosmetic and/or personal care products is needed
what is Zeranol?

Zeranol is currently used as an anabolic growth promoter for livestock in the US[76] and Canada.[77] It has been banned in the EU since 1985,[78] but is still present as a contaminant in food through meat products that were exposed to it.[12]

what is Altrazine?

Atrazine is widely used as an herbicide *to control broad-leaf weed species that grow in crops such as corn, sugarcane, hay and winter wheat. Atrazine is also applied to Christmas trees, residential lawns, golf courses, and other recreational areas. Atrazine is the second largest selling pesticide in the world and *estimated to be the most heavily used herbicide in the United States.[12]

there are other sources of xenoestrogen in our every day lives, but this is getting a little long. basically though, a bunch of now banned/restricted pesticides had it. sources confirm that there are still large traces of all of these compounds in the soil, air, and water, due to their inability to degrade easy.
tldr;
even though xenoestrogen is apparently "less potent" than for example, estradiol, a steroid hormone, we arent only being affected from one source. we are being bombarded from everywhere. with so many different sources of xenoestrogen in things we use every single day, multiple times per day, and with no/few studies being done on how all of these combine and how they effect our bodies, i find it hard to believe that we are not being affected. what do you think?
sources 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A 4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalates 5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraben

tl;dr first as this post kind of kept growing. Yes, you need a respirator to spray or airbush any kind of paint. I recommend it even for painting outside to avoid repeated exposure to the organic compounds in paint and thinners. Respirators are cheap. Dealing with cancer or asthma is not. Most commonly recommended respirator is 3M. Look for organic vapour protection when choosing one, and get it today if you plan to paint tomorrow.
 
Hi!
Now to the proper post. Some days ago I planned to make an extensive post about properties of most common paints and thinners, and the importance of using a respirator when spraying them. Due a death in my family, I did not have the time necessary to do a proper deep dive into the subject. But seeing the increase in posts from people who were gifted models or supplies for Christmas and want to start asap, I feel it is important to at least give you an airplane view on the subject. I hope this is useful to everyone, but my main goal is to clear the path for people who are new to this wonderful hobby - therefore the step-by-step explenations.
 
What is paint? Paint is a mixture of solid pigment particles, bonding agent (e.g. acrylic resin, latex) and thinner. Most paints are too thick in consistency to be sprayed, and required to de diluted with a thinner. Paint dries (solidifies) as its thinning agent evaporates into the air.

I divide paints into two categories - non-toxic (water based) and toxic (alcohol or petroleum-derivative based. This post focuses only on toxic paints. As u/IckyOutlaw pointed out, water based paints will have a 'non-toxic' mark on packaging, and only a dust mask to stop paint dust is appropriate protection to spray them.

 
What is thinner? Thinner is a volitile liquid used to dilute paint to desired consitency. Adding thinner to paint will increase its volume and make it less thick, thus more capable to flow out of airbrush nozzle evenly. Thinners will also increase paints drying time, making it spread on the painted surface more evenly. Basic job of a paint thinner is to evaporate completely into the air once sprayed onto the surface.
 
What are the most common thinners? From what I see, most commonly used brands for paints, paint cans and thinners are: Tamiya, Vallejo, AMMO MiG ,AK, MR Hobby.

As mentioned, I did not have time to scower the net for all possible MSDS for those products. Ended up finding mostly Tamiya and MR Hobby. This post is built around what I found in the MSDS Sheets listed below.

 
What are the most common thinner ingredients? Why is it not water? Sure, some paints like Revell aqua can be thinner with tap water. Most thinners however, definietly those listed above, use alcohol or petroleum-derived Volitaile Organic Compounds (VOCs) as paint thinning agents.

Idea behind using VOCs instead of water is that they evaporate into the air more readily than water, and interact better with paint bonding agents.

 
Most common ingreditents that I found on easily available MSDS sheets are:

• Isopropyl alcohol - known as rubbin alcohol. Used as solvent, cleaning agent. Irritates skin and lungs.
  
• Butanone - solvent, plastic bonding agent. Irritates skin, eyes and nose.
  
• Acetone - solvent, plastic bonding agent, cleaner. Irritates, eyes, skin. In large amounts impacts central nervous system.
  
• Dimethyl ether - solvent, refigerant
  
• 4-Methyl-2-pentanol - solvent, toxic with long exposure
  
• 2-Butoxyethanol - solvent, antibacterial. Cancerogenic to rodents.
  
• And obviously - Paint pigments - ranging from organic like indygo, rose red to artifical, heavy metals like chromium, lead, titanium.
  

 
What gets into the air when spraying paint? Simplest answer - everything. All that is in your spray can, or airbrush cup, will also get dispersed into the air as mist and dust. This includes VOCs, as well as paint bonding agents and pigment particles.
 
Why do I need to protect myself from all this stuff? Valid question. You will probably be fine spraying outside without a mask every so often. Keep in mind that noone really tested long term or repeated exposure of this stuff on humans. Testing was mainly done on animals, and negative effect on humans were discovered by accident, not by exposing people purposefully, in a controlled way and with a control group.
 
After a quick afternoon spray session you might get dizzy or get a headache and be fine after some minutes. After 10, 100 or 1000 such sessions, more complex and long lasting health problems can develop, ranging from asthma, nervous system dysfunctions and cancer. AU safety regulations for spray painting document health risks and carcinogens.
 
Here's and interesting study I found:

Hazardous chemical exposures were common experiences in United States of America in mid 1960s, and two years before OSHA (U.S.A) enactment of 1970, 14,000 workers died each year from work related hazards and another two million were disabled or harmed (Stender., 1970)

 
My general advice and reason behind this post - better safe than sorry. We've got the money to maintain a hobby. We must have the money to protect our health and wellbeing. We are working with chemical that have adverse effect on health, and it does not take much effort or money to have protection from them.
 
What kind of protection do I need?

• Primary safety goal is to stop VOCs from reaching your airways and penetrating into lungs and bloodstream. Respirator suited to work with those chemicals will absorb the VOCs, not letting them through.
  
• Secondary goal is stopping solid particles (paint pigment, bonding resins). It's therefore best to use VOC absorber as primary filtration for the face mask, and add dust filtration to it. This should extend the longevity of VOC absorber, as it will on need to be dealing with VOCs, not VOCs and paint dust.
  

 
Which face mask should I choose? When shopping for a mask, make sure it can absorb VOCs with boling temperature above 60°C / 140°F. Most of the compounds listed above boild at 60+ degrees. There is always more than one VOC in given thinner, and by interaction their boling temperature changes. Also, best if dust filtration is there or can be added.
 

Keep in mind that absorbers need to be replaced as they reach their longevity after some time.

 
Which faces maks and absorbers is the author using? I have invested into the 3M system, and I think majority of respirator owners here did as well. My setup is:

• 3M 6200 halfmask - covers nose and mouth
  
• 3M 6055i A2 absorber - VOCs absorber. A2 is their class indication. A1 filters up to 1ppm (part per milion), A2 up to 5 ppm. As we are generally up close to our work, it doesnt hurt to have better filtration. This absorber also has a neat trick - usage indicator. It changes colour when its time to replace, leaving guess work out of it.
  
• 3M 5911 and 3M-501 - dust filer and adapter - targeting secondary objective I talked about.
  

 

My advice on choosing the right respirator, if you don't want to get the 3M, is to find a local or online Health and Safety shop and browse their offer. Look for replacable absorber, organic gas filtration and dust protection.

 
Additional tips around safety

• Should be obvious - but keep your pets away from the room you are painting in.
  
• If you can, invest in a painting booth. It forces airflow away from you. If there is filtration built in, it should help to catch some of the paint dust.
  
• Vent your booth outside, if possible, buildup of VOCs will be much less in your room or workshop. If not possible, make sure to open a window.
  
• Have a spill plan. Everyone will knock over an open bottle of something, eventually. If it's X-20 - probably no big deal, some paper towels will do. Have them handy. If it's a bottle of acetone or levelling thinner, it could damage your carpet, flooring or desk. Keep it in mind when working with especially the more aggressive chemicals.
  
• Once finished paiting, store your absorbers away from the chemicals you used. Best stored in an airtight bag.
  
• Give the inside of your mask a wipe with alcohol tissue every so often. It gets damp in there really fast, and the mask stays on your face for some time. Keep it clean.
  
• Once in a while, check the integrity of the vales in your mask, replace them when worn out. Also stay on top of replacing absorbers.
  
• replace your absorbers according to user manual.
  

 
Final note Feel free to point out anything I missed or you feel I should cover. If my time allows it, I can continue to update this post.
 
Further MSDS Sources

• https://cdn.simba-dickie-group.de/downloads/300086531/MSDS_Spezial-Acryl-Harz-Spray_AS-1_-_AS-32_AS-Farben_ab_04-2019.pdf
  
• https://cdn.simba-dickie-group.de/downloads/300082110/300082110_MSDS_Tamiya_Lacquer_Paint_Verduenner_LP10_10ml_01-2018.pdf
  
• https://cdn.simba-dickie-group.de/downloads/300081030/300081030_MSDS_Tamiya_Color_X-20A_Thinner_46ml_ab_03-2019.pdf
  

+https://www.hajekhobby.cz/userelated_files/mc129_mr_cement_s.pdf

• https://manualzz.com/doc/8122791/gunze-mr-colour-thinner--t101--102--103--104-
  
• https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/safety/
  

 
From what I see, manufacturers are not keen to publish their Material Safety Data Sheets. MSDS tells everyone the exact chemical composition of each product, and based on my browsing some old forums, people have experimented to replicate for example MR Hobby leveling thinner at home, with reallly good results. So the links above are rather scarce and do not cover all the brands...