The Kaiju Protection Society: Ch 11-15

 Ch 11

theres a kaiju in trouble.  Its venting plasma at an alarming rate.  How much plasma venting is alarming?  Some kaijus that are overheating will vent once a few hours and theybtemd to be ok.  This one vents every two minutes.  So they're gonna go.  The kaiju blows up like an atomic bomb.  This is especially scary cause it has opened a portal to our world.  Luckily its remote, northern Canada.  But even so, they gotta make sure no kaijus try to get through.

ch 12

The thing about nuclear explosions and kaiju is that they're attracted to them.  This is super bad when the explosion is on our side.  Cause the kaijus want to go through the barrier to our world and the. Cause they're so big relatively to us they destroy things.  But when the explosion is on the kaiju side, it attracts a kaiju who's basically guarding the barrier at that point.  In this case it's the female that was involved in the pheromone induced mating from the previous chapter.  So it seems like disaster averted.

Ch 13

They are going to have tourists.  Rich people and politicians.   Narrator is going to be babysitting them.  He is doing jungle training to prepare for this.  He is attacked by giant crabs that spit venom.  But he's got a super suit on so he doesn't get murdered by them.  The point of this exercise is to make sure he's well aware of how dangerous the jungle is.

Ch 14

Fun stuff about kaiju birthing.  Also something about the kaiju birthing near the hole to our world is keeping it open.  The kaiju is not radioactive enough to open a hole, but it keeps the hole open if it stays there.

Narrator is doing weap9ns training.  The best weapons they have are pheromone shooters that will make whatever you're running from go after what you shoot.  Also they've got a shotgun that has pheromones in the buckshot so whatever you shoot will be attractive to other things that eat things.

A couple scientists are also getting grind training cause they're gonna go do ground stuff around the kaiju birthing site.

Ch 15

They gonto the kaiju egg sack and set up some cameras.  But then they're attacked by kaiju parasites.  They get emergency airlifted out.

Unworthy republic Sections two (Ch 3-4) and three (ch 5-6)

Chapter 3 the debate ch 53

There was a lot of literature coming out of the native lands in Georgia against the idea that natives were subhuman and if their expulsion would benefit whites then it should be done ASAP.  This literature was widely embraced in the north and basically called fake news in the south.  There were a number of pro expulsion politicians that saw how influential these writings could be and proposed they should be banned by all means necessary.   There was one law passed in Georgia making it a treasonous act to write literature that was meant for the benefit of non-whites.  They didn't state what the affect of these laws were.

When it came to trying to pass the expulsion act, There was a pretty significant divide between the south and north on the issue of native expulsion.   The act passed easily  in the senate as there were a lot of northern senators that had economic ties to the south.  But in the house it was far closer and in the end it passed when three congressmen from Pennsylvania flipped to the expulsion side.

There was also a lot of rhetoric from the south calling northerners hypocrites because of their past expulsion of natives and current anti native laws.  But that didn't really appear to be a factor.  To my knowledge no northerners swapped sides because they admitted to being antinative hypocrites.

Ch 4 forked tongue and shallow heart

The whole relocation of natives thong was built on lies so Andrew Jackson and his cronies just kept telling the natives they wanted to move west even more lies.  Mainly that they had staked out good land for the natives to live on West of the Mississippi.   Truth is there just isn't any good farming land that way til you get to the other side of the continental divide.  If you are an absolute imbecile you might claim that the racist assholes that we're getting rid of all the Indians just didn't know and were heading into this thing with the best intentions and being optimistic about the land in modern day Oklahoma and Kansas.  But by the time ⏲️ those dipshits were marching women and children and elderly a thousand miles west they knew what we know now, Oklahoma and Kansas are shitholes incapable of supporting human life.  

But the alternative was worse.  In Georgia and Mississippi native people had no rights.  Or rather they had similar rights to free blacks in that if you tried to live there you ended up a slave one way or another. 

https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8

Ch 5

The expulsion process was a horrifying and barbaric one.  Very little time or money was put into planning anything and the goal was to get the natives to Oklahoma by spring so they could plant crops so they marched hundreds of miles in the middle of winter to make their way west.  Making things worse, this was the worst winter in fifty years.  All the rivers froze over and part of the plan was to take steam boats on those frozen rivers so there ended up being even more forced marching than planned.  There was no real plan for taking care of the I'll or infirm or children.  Ten percent of the people on these marches died.  And when the rivers unfroze enough it was even worse as the steam boats were hives of disease and lots of people died that way.

Ch 6

While all this expulsion is going on the military is also going to war against other Indian tribes.  One such war was in northern Illinois and Abraham Lincoln at 23 participated in the murder of natives.  

The Kaiju Protection Society: Ch 1-10

Ch 1 

Narrator works at a place called fudmud.  But he gets laid off.  It's the beginning of the pandemic and things are bleak.  Narrator is jobless and his room mates are talking about moving back home.

Ch 2

Narrator is now working as a delivery person for fudmud.  He delivers to a guy he knows who offers him a job working with large animals cause he needs a last minute replacement for a guy that got covid.

Ch 3

Narrator goes to the job interview and just says yes to everything.   His situation in New York is fucked so anything seems preferable.  He will be some where far away and he will have no contact with the outside world for months.  He's given a train ticket to the Baltimore Airport.   Everywhere is Baltimore  

Ch 4

They are flying to Greenland.   Seven hours and some details later they are in a jungle with a giant flying lizard.  Welcome to the kaiju preservation society. 

Ch 5

The kaiju live on earth in an alternate universe.  They  are attracted to nuclear power.  nuclear explosions are what open up the path to.the other earth.  Nuclear testing in the fifties resulted in a Godzilla esque monster coming over to our world.  Ever since the KPS has been responsible for keeping Kaiju from coming over to our world and to stop.people from going over to the Kaiju world.

Ch 6

They go somewhere.  Their means of transportation is a durigible made of some fancy alternate universe wood and kaiju hide.  As they are trying to go somewhere they kinda get involved in a Kaiju fight.  one of the Kaiju picks up a chunk of dirt the size of a city block to throw at the.other one amd it hits the durigable and they're all amazed its still in one piece.

Ch 7

They get to somewhere and have to wear wierd gloves and hats to deal with the bugs.  But even so, they still bite your face.  They make it to the camp where the departing red team is partying.  Narrator is on the gold team.  The blue team is holding down the fort as red and gold can let their hair down.  They do a 6 month shift then they get 3 months off.  There's a brief intro cause the introer is a little drunk.  Work starts tomorrow at 9 am.  They go to their beds and the previous occupant has left a long letter ✉️ for Narrator. It's a good bye letter.  This is their last tour.  They wanna spend some significant time in the real world.

Ch 8

At orientation everyone gets HUGE binders documenting the difference between our world and this one and operational duties and what not.  Narrator finds it all fascinating.  Others are real hot to trot on making contact with a Kaiju.  Foreshadowing,  they do that tomorrow.

Ch 9

Thus far narrator's job has been described as lifting things.  There's an app that tells him where to go and who to ask what to lift.  Today we're lifting canisters of Kaiju pheromones to a helicopter 🚁.   The pilot tells them they're coming with.  There's two Kaiju they are trying to get to mate.  Kaiju are kinda like big dumb pandas and you gotta trick them into mating to save their species.  Scientist guy has to observe and narrator has to push the button to release the gas.

Ch 10

They get to the kaiju in question and it's  asleep.  They whack it in the "eye" a couple times to wake it up.  It works and they spray the pheromones on it.  This seems to work as due to eye dilation They can tell he's not trying to kill them.  They make their way to the female kaiju and spray them with pheromones and it is on.  This book is sexy.  

Unworthy republic Introduction and Section One (Ch1-2)

Introduction:

Internet Rockstar Johnathan Coulton has a song called the presidents.  It's a sentence or two for each president.   Andrew Jackson was president from 1829 to 1837.  His blurb in the song is Andrew Jackson got rid of all the Indians.  From reading this intro, that seems like all I need to know about Andrew Jackson.

Ch 1 aboriginia pg 3

There was this idea that everything east of the Mississippi was for white people so they would ship all the Indians west of the Mississippi. This is not a new idea.  This same thing of exporting a group of undesirables has been done a lot in Europe. 

Ch 2 white Georgia 

This exportation to the west was especially popular in Georgia. All the other 13 original colonies had already either gotten rid of or integrated their natives.  Georgia still had significant amount of land that native tribes were living on.  Georgia's governor was a big assailed repeatedly saying he's gonna get rid of all the Indians and If the feds interfered there would be civil war.  There was an interesting thing where they changed their laws so that the governor was now elected by popular vote.  Not sure how they figured it out before.  So they elected a guy that hated Indians even more and had experience killing them.  They tried to do some shady shit trying to negotiate treaties with people that weren't authorized to negotiate in good faith.

This policy of trying to negotiate with the natives abruptly switched when Andrew Jackson was elected president.   Cause he was a big fan of killing Indians. So now Georgia had full support of the feds 

tiamats wrath prolog to ch 17

Prologue: Holden

Avasarala is dead

Laconia us the true center of the human world now.  Duarte is burying Avasarala there.  Holden and drummer are prisoners there and it suckz.

Chapter One: Elvi 

Elvi has been issued a fNcy ship and sent to dead systems in the hopes of learning more about the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens.  But thus far they haven't learned anything.   They go to far off places, see interesting things and blow them up.  Also there's a lady that has been turned into a useful protomolecule monster and Elvi hates all of it.  In this spot yhey find a giant space diamond.

Chapter Two: Naomi 

Naomi is being smuggled and it works out and she makes her way to Bobbie and Alex on the storm.  They do some shots in remembrance of Avasarala.  They talk about what made her remarkable.  Bobbie says she was a fighter and Naomi says she was politically inclined.  This leads to the two of them arguing about what to do with the storm.  Bobbie wants to go fight, Naomi wants to try to use its existence as leverage.

Chapter Three: Alex 

Naomi and Bobbie are fighting. They are go8ng their separate ways.  Naomi has some other mission on her smuggle container.  Bobbie is waiting for orders from Saba on what their next target is.  

Chapter Four: Teresa 

Teresa is duartes daughter.  Shes 14 earth years old.  Hes the king 👑of Laconia and he makes her go to boring meetings to train her to be the queen of Laconia when he dies.

Chapter Five: Elvi 

They ate 8nvesitgat9ng the giant space diamond.  The protomolecule infected lady (though they refer to her as the catalyst and state shes not a person anymore) on the ship is there to see if proximity to these sorts of protomolecule aliens artifacts and see how they react.  This one is mirroring the protomolecule infected lady's brain activity in an area about the size of greenland.   It's also opening up ring gates within the giant diamond.  The theory is that this thing might be a giant hard drive that stores the collective knowledge of the protomolecule aliens. But the admiral that's in charge of this mission doesn't care.  We're wheels up in 89 minutes. Off to the next system to find something amazing that he doesn't care about.

Chapter Six: Alex 

They are gonna attack some laconian ships that are escorting a trade union freighter that's on the other s8de of Jupiter.   These aren't fancy new laconian ships so they're no match for the storm.  Problem is the plan is for Bobbie to take the freighter over.  The laconian ships seem to know this so they shoot at the freighter. The storm gets shot right in the radii, so while they're winning the fight, they have no means of communication so they don't know how Bobbie is doing on the freighter.

Chapter Seven: Bobbie 

Bobbie main target on the freighter is a laconian diplomat.  Secure that package and we have a treasure trove of intel.  The mission seems to be a success.  The freighter is just not prepared to be bored by six marines in power suits.  They seem to have achieved all their goals without any loses.  Super mega happy ending.  But then the getting shot at by the laconian ships discussed in Alex's chapter happens.  One of their people dies due to the missle that was shot at the freighter.   The diplomat and a couple resistance spies die due to lack of air.  It's super sad.  And they can't communicate with the storm.

Chapter Eight: Naomi 

Naomi has been stowed away her escape pod/mini cargo ahip doing intelligence work.  Helping the resistance infiltrate the new growing systems. It's isolating but it's also kinda fulfilling every  time she makes communications work with her limited resources. That said, “God damn, but I have to get out of this fucking box.”

Chapter Nine: Teresa 

Nothing interesting happened in this chapter.

Chapter Ten: Elvi 

They have found an empty system.  They have a plan for trying to "communications" with the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens.   They are gonna send ships through the ring gate until it goes Dutchman.  Then they're gonna send through a ship with a bomb 💣  and it'll blow up wherever the dutchman'd ships are.  Then they're gonna try it again and see if things are different.   We're trying to determine whether what I'm calling the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens 👽  is an actual intelligence of some kind or a force of nature. 

Chapter Eleven: Alex 

There's nothing in the news about their attack.  It's unsettling how Laconia controls that.  No free press in the laconian empire.   Alex is starting to think the revolution is a lost cause.  He gets a message from his son saying he's doing well in school.  he's got a girl and he's crazy about her.  His little boy didn't do too bad 

Chapter Twelve: Bobbie 

Bobbie is going through all the stuff they hijacked off the freighter. The funnest thing is some mysterious balls.  She calls and engineer to FaceTime and talk about it.  It's some sort of antimatter battery.  Cray cray.  Bobbie thinks she can use it to destroy the Tempest.  BTW, the Tempest is coming.

Chapter Thirteen: Naomi 

Naomi gets a message from Jim.  After that message, Duarte added a message of his own basically saying if she turned herself in she and Jim can live happily ever after.  A resistance lady shows up with a vac suit and tells her the gig is up.  A laconian destroyer is coming to search the ship soup to nuts.  They're gonna clean up Naomi's container to make it look like what the shipping manifest says it is and try to pass her off as one of the crew.

Chapter Fourteen: Teresa 

Theresa has a friend named Timothy that lives in a cave.  That's wierd. “Hey, Tiny. I wondered when you were coming back.” OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH SHIIIIIT!!!!!  you KNOW who that is 

She talks about how Holden said she should keep an eye on him.  Timmy says it's a guide idea.

She goes back to her room and can't sleep, so she watches Holden's servalence video.

Chapter Fifteen: Naomi

Naomi is working with Emma to cover their tracks.  They do some botoxy stuff and a haircut to make Naomi look different.  She slips into a two shift work crew.  When the laconians come to inspect everyone it looks like She might be caught cause she's not on the roster.  But the crew chief says she's an apprentice and we move on with life.  She follows the rest of the crew to the mess hall when their shift is over and just sorta hangs out looking inconspicuous.   Emma shows up and grabs them some chow.

The crew boss comes back around and gives Naomi a card that'll get her into a room and has some money on it.  Says it was a real honor to cover for her.  I teared up a bit at this.  Real emotional moment there for a guy that wasn't even alive book before last to recognize Naomi as the legend she was and do her a solid.

Chapter Sixteen: Elvi

They do the science of sending ships through the ring gate until it goes Dutchman and then send through the bomb ship.  The ring gate starts boiling.   The admiral is super psyched.  In his estimation this means the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens can be bargained with.  Elvi disagrees.  Fayez, you remember him from a few books back right?, notices it's not just energy coming out of the ring gates.  We've got some protons coming through.  Suddenly they remember how close to unstable the sun in this solar system is.  Maybe the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens are doing this on purpose to try to make the sun go supernova.  It is time to gtfo.

Chapter Seventeen: Alex

Alex talks to some young guy about how he's worried about him but really he's worried about his son.  Than he goes to Bobbie and she talks about her plan to blow up the Tempest with antimatter.   Alex thinks its a bad idea.  Bobbie says if he doesn't wanna do what might be necessary to win this fight maybe he shouldn't be on her ship when they leave where ever it is they are now.