u/According-Value-6227

In my alternate history universe, the following changes occurred.

• The USA won the war of 1812 and the territory of the USA circa 2026, encompasses all of what would be Canada, Greenland, Iceland and the Baja California Peninsula.
• Humanity's technological and scientific progress between 1942 and onwards is moderately accelerated.

With those two details in mind: In my timeline, the USA never built the Interstate Highway System, instead it kept using and maintaining the pre-1956 highway system which is longer in my timeline on account of the USA being much larger.

Instead of building the Interstate Highway System, the USA of my timeline built a high-speed rail system between 1956 and 1976 which would ultimately connect all the major cities with Maglev trains. By 2026, the Interstate Maglev Network allows citizens to cross the entire country in less than a day's time.

Anyway...

I'm wondering what airports and air-travel would be like in my alternate timeline?

From my perspective, I think there would be fewer airports and airlines because the IMN eliminates or reduces the need for air-travel between the states. Airports would only exist in major cities that receive a lot of international visitors and cargo and air travel would be primarily limited to overseas destinations. As a result, I think air travel would be more of a luxury for upper middle class persons and above.

What do you think?

When I say I love Beta's terrain generation, what I actually mean is that I love the impossible and floating mountains that Beta could generate + the Beta color palette. Beyond the impossible and floating mountains, I'd argue that the majority of Beta's terrain generation was pretty boring.

When it comes to modern terrain generation mods, I've always been fond of realistic terrain generators but I think it would be cool if someone could create a realistic terrain generator that incorporates some of Beta Minecraft's "spirit"? ie* Realistic mountains, rivers, valleys, continents, oceans and huge biomes but also with floating islands and impossibly complex arches, mesa's and massive sea-cliffs.

I'm not sure if this is possible because Beta terrain aesthetics conflict very heavily with realistic ones.

I just think it's important that Minecraft always feel like a fantasy world so I think it's best if and when the terrain is semi-realistic.

In my opinion, it's mediocre at best.

Yes, it's better than the old library but it feels like they barely modified the original bar and grill and the infrastructure of the club still dominates the building. There is awkward and/or poor use of space, the children's section is disproportionately large and there is absolutely no privacy.

I fear that the Hesperia Library will continue to reign supreme as the High Desert's best library.

What does everyone else think?

For a few years now, I've been paying $62 a month for my car insurance. Due to an extended period of un-employment and financial hardship, I've been late on my car insurance payments twice this year. The first time I was late by a month and recently, I was late by 3 days.

I received an email which informed me that starting next month, my insurance premium will be $88. I assume this is a penalty for being late on my payments twice but that only makes it more difficult for me.

Do I have any hope of negotiating a lower rate with USAA or is the increased price set in stone?

I live in a crappy 44 year old apartment building in Victorville and for as long as I've lived here, I've had bug problems every Spring and Summer.

Over the past few years, I have noticed that the bugs are now appearing in the Autumn and Winter as well and recently, the traps have simply stopped working. I've tried changing brands to no avail.

Roaches and Spiders in my unit seem to be actively avoiding the traps and this morning, I came across a wolf spider that started hopping towards me. According to Google, wolf spiders cannot hop but I know what I saw.

Is anyone else finding that bugs are becoming more aggressive and resilient ( possibly due to climate change ) or do I just have a mutant roach+spider problem in my apartment specifically?

https://preview.redd.it/9yfbhuzi340h1.png?width=3126&format=png&auto=webp&s=30ce7aa00dd49c954ecffee46d80934bd20e68b6

For the past week, I've been working on this insignia for a fictional country in an alternate history project. It is intended to be an eagle made from parts and done in the style of the PanAm Logo.

The current iteration of this insignia was made by me in Pages and although I like what I've done so far, I cannot finish the logo to my specifications as I limited by the tools at my disposal. I am looking for an artist who can remake and finish the insignia for me and add it onto a larger flag with a greater degree of skill and perfection.

I am hoping to spend $25 USD via Paypal. I think that is a reasonable price to request as I have arguably done half the work already. I just need someone who can refine it.

If anyone is interested in doing this, please comment with a quote, a portfolio link with any applicable work and an email address to contact you at. 

Per the advice of this this subreddit and my own standards, I will not respond to inquiries sent through PM's, please reply to me on this post.

Additional minor details such as color, scaling etc. will be provided over email to the artist I decide to go with.

For about 5 years now, I've been working with an artist from Brazil who I'll refer to as "Ricky".

Ricky used to do very good work for me. I told him what I wanted, paid him and he gave me a high quality art-piece within less than a months time.

Over the past few years though, his conduct has become very weird and it's pissing me off.

-

First three commissions went very well.

He did not finish my fourth commission with the claim that he had simply "lost interest" in it and refunded my money.

On my fifth commission, he stopped replying to my emails. After awhile, I reached out to him on social media to ask where he went. He told me that he stopped using email and expressed no concern with the fact that he effectively abandoned my commission. He ended up finishing it albeit late.

Sixth commission was a complete disaster, he promised me a wait time of two months and it took him TWO YEARS. He claimed that he was dealing with depression, that he was very sorry and that he would never make any of his clients wait that long again.

Seventh and current commission is also a doozy.

It started in June of 2025. Once more, he promised me a reasonable wait time but went radio silent. In October, he posted an announcement to his socials that he was cancelling all of his in-progress commissions due to depression and would issue refunds shortly thereafter ( I never got my refund ).

In January of this year, he returned to his socials and re-opened his commissions. I messaged him asking about my refund and he said that he "no longer had the ability to issue refunds" but would be willing to return to my last commission free of charge. Once more, he promised a wait time of one month.

A few weeks ago, he posted all of his finished commissions from his January slots and opened up new slots. He never gave me an update on my commission so I messaged him about it.

He replied to this morning with:

"Can you please be patient? I am very busy and have a lot to do. Don't rush me, I will get to your commission when I have the time".

Immediately afterwards, they posted a gif of a crying cat to their socials and one of their followers asked "what's wrong?" to which they replied "Mean Client". I know they were talking about me.

-

I have been a very respectful and patient client and at this point, I have decided that I have been too respectful and patient. I paid $50 for a commission and I want what I paid for within a reasonable time period.

I don't think he has any intention of working on my commission and it sucks because $50 is a lot of money for me and the subject matter of the art-piece is controversial. He's the only artist I know of who can do the art-piece but he's acting like I'm demanding the impossible.

-

I'm planning on writing a ST:P Fanfic that takes place immediately after the events of the series.

In order to figure out what to write and how, I need to ask; What exactly will the Prodigy crew be doing during their mission?

Basic exploration? Something else? How long will it last? I was thinking of giving them a 1-Year Mission.

As far as I can remember, the only real Nazi's who appear in the Wolfenstein games are Hitler and Himmler.

I personally think that this is a problem and I'd like to explain why.

I feel that Wolfenstein's preference for fictional Nazi's makes the in-game Third Reich feel a little detached from the real world Third Reich. To me, Wolfenstein Nazi's do not feel like a believable evolution of Nazi Germany but rather superficially Nazi-themed punching bags.

In essence, Wolfenstein Nazi's come off to me as completely fictional antagonists that someone just slapped a Hakenkreuz onto.

I get that the point of the Wolfenstein games is to kill Nazi's and do little to nothing else. That's fine but I think that the presence of more real world Nazi's would help communicate the fact that Nazism is a real ideology that was invented and espoused by real people who spread misery and despair around the whole world for 26 years whilst continuing to haunt the whole of civilization from beyond the grave.

Wilhelm Strasse / Deaths Head for example is a great antagonist but I think he should have been a fictionalized version of Josef Mengele. I see no reason to invent a fictional Nazi mad scientist when one or several already existed. Granted, Mengele+Da'at Yichud tech would probably be more Bioshock-esque since Mengele was an "anthropologist" but I think it could work.

Irene Engel should have been Ilse Koch. In reality, Ilse did not have a position in the Third Reich but it is not unreasonable that she could have been given one if the Nazi's won.

I also think that Goebbels should have appeared on at least one occasion since he was the master-mind of the Reich's propaganda and would be a highly desirable target for any resistance group.

I hope that the reasoning behind my opinion is understandable. I'm not demanding that the Nazi's be "humanized", rather I feel that they don't feel real enough.

The 1970s produced a lot of popular and not-so-popular dystopian films.

The in-universe lore of several 70's dystopian films often predicted that the '70s would end with an apocalyptic event of some kind. The apocalypse in the Mad Max universe started in the '70s, the world of Soylent Green was triggered by events in the '70s, the entertaining but very low budget "Death Race 2000" showcases a fascist America that came to power after the "World Crash of '79" and Escape from New York, although an 80s film, entertains a scenario of "What if NYC just kept getting worse in the '70s"?

Also, the recently released "Long Walk" does take place in an alternate '70s wherein America is under a fascist government.

Both the '80s and '70s seemed to produce more dystopian sci-fi films than utopian ones and to me, this suggests that quite a few people in those time period had a bleak vision of the future.

Now, I know that the '70s was mired with issues. The most prominent ones being the 1973 and 1979 Oil Crises.

I'm wondering; Could the various socio-economic problems of the '70s truly have become so bad that they caused a global apocalypse or were '70s sci-fi writers mis-informed and exaggerating how bad things were?

Please keep in mind, I am not trying to diminish anyone who lived through the '70s and had a negative living situation. As someone born in 2000, my knowledge on this decade is inherently limited and I'm just curious about the apocalyptic tropes of '70s dystopian sci-fi and whether or not it had any basis in reality.

Context

The information within this post is related to “Project Vigilant” / P.V, a short is an unofficially named, predominately fan-fiction and partially original world-building project that I have been working on at a “snails pace” since 2018 with no envisioned completion date. The project is an attempt at merging elements from no more than 125 of my favorite I.P’s and an assortment of original work in the genres of sci-fi, fantasy and alternate-history into a singular “patchwork universe” that I refer to as the Project Vigilant Universe or P.V.U for short.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The "Riordanverse" and more specifically, PJO and HoO ( Heroes of Olympus ) are one of the 125 I.P's that I have incorporated into P.V.

As weird as this might sound, my favorite character in the Riordanverse is Leo Valdez and my favorite ship is Leo x Calypso. While Leo is a fan favorite, "Caleo" is widely considered to be the most boring, unnecessary and problematic relationship in the entire series. I, however, think it is cute and has a lot of potential.

A few years ago, and for reasons that are now lost to me, I decided that my preferred direction for Caleo in P.V would be to give their relationship a greek tragedy theme that would be losely inspired by that of Anakin and Padme's tragic relationship in Star Wars. The story I ended up developing for Leo and Calypso was a little too grand for the canonical scale of the Riordanverse and this further inspired me to rewrite both PJO and HoO into a Star Wars inspired "Space Opera".

Currently, my Riordanverse Space Opera A.U is on the back burner because it conflicts with a few other I.P's in Project Vigilant. Recent experiences however, have inspired me to share what I came up with.

-

So the idea is that the Greek Gods/Olympians are a group of very powerful alien beings that are very similar to "The Eternals" from Marvel. The Olympians were created by The Titans, who are portrayed in P.V as being almost identical to Marvel's "Celestials".

The Olympians were created to guide and influence the population of a planet known as Olympus as Olympus was an egg of sorts for a future Titan whose growth would be fueled by the life force of Olympus's natives.

The Olympians, who derived their name from the planet, discovered that the Titans created a new batch of beings like them for every planet that fostered a new Titan and once the Titan of Olympus was born, they would be erased and replaced. Unwilling to succumb to this fate, the Olympians aborted the Titan of Olympus and stole it's accumulated life force to grant themselves power akin to The Titans who they battled and imprisoned in a dimension known as Tartarus.

All of the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus except for Kronos who was killed before his remains were flung into deep space and through space-time.

In P.V, Kronos's remains will be portrayed similarly to the \"Headless Celestial\" in Marvel rivals.

Note: Star Trek is another I.P that appears in Project Vigilant, I am considering the possibility of having the remains of Kronos and the Klingon home-world of Qo'NoS be the same place, wherein the Klingons, as a species, would be a living fragment of Kronos's consciousness that rapidly evolved on the dead Titan's remains. I think a warmongering species that spawned on the corpse of a dead god is metal as fuck.

-

Presenting themselves to the natives of Olympus as the planet's saviors, The Olympians became the God Kings of the planet and wielded strange and fantastical power over it similar to "The Tribunal" in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Sometime later, the native Olympians, having achieved interstellar travel via a proverbial Golden Age that was ushered in by the Gods discovered that one or more star systems close to Olympus were distant colonies of an interstellar superpower known as The Galactic Republic. Due to centuries of brutal and endless war with The Sith, these colonies had become cut off from the Republic and were on the brink of collapse from the resulting isolation.

The Olympians approached the colonies and used their power to save them from disaster before taking them over and combining the colonies Republic institutions with those of Olympus to form a new interstellar power known as The Celestial Republic, a semi-democratic theocracy made up of species that were "uplifted" by the Olympians.

In Earth time, The Celestial Republic was established at some point before 1500 BCE so all of the previously detailed lore occurred before that point.

For obvious reasons, Olympus was made the capital of the Celestial Republic.

The Celestial Republic uses the insignia of the Galactic Republic ( The Galactic Roundel ) but it's colors are different.

I envision the aesthetics of the Celestial Republic as being similar or identical to this concept for \"Greco-Futurism\" by Pablo Antonio. In P.V, Greek Architecture was developed as a crude attempt to mimic the aesthetics of the Celestial Republic

-

At some point before 1450 BCE, the Olympians discovered Earth. They took a liking to Earth's native humans but chose not to uplift them, instead they started treating Earth the same way rich Americans treat Thailand ( Sex Tourism ).

Initially, the Olympians limited their activity on Earth to ancient Greece where they would often but not always, assume human forms and become worshipped as Gods due to their fantastical power.

Humans were the first species encountered by the Olympians who the Olympians could produce viable offspring ( Demi-Gods ) with.

Mt. Olympus is named after planet Olympus and the summit of the mountain contained a space-bridge that connected Earth to Olympus.

For yet to be determined reasons, the Olympians retreated from Earth in around 281 B.C. This departure weakened ancient Greek civilization, eventually leading to it's fall and conquest by the Romans.

-

Like the previously mentioned Tribunal, the power of the Olympians is actually finite and fades with time. Unfortunately, the Olympians do not have a valid means of replenishing their power so they decided to use their power sparingly whilst relying on "mortals" and mortal ingenuity to do a lot of things for them.

At some point in the 1930s, the Olympians power over Tartarus became weak enough that the Titan's were able to exert power over space-time from beyond it and raise armies of monsters and recruit allies to assault the Celestial Republic. This prompted the Olympians to return to Earth where they began siring Demi-Gods again and training them in the then newly established Camp Half Blood to function as elite soldiers within the armies of the Celestial Republic against the Titans and their monster hordes + allies.

P.V's version of PJO would begin in 2005.

P.V's version of HoO would begin in the late 2010s or early 2020s. Leo would be something of a Padawan/squire/apprentice to Percy who is in his 20s by that point.

Calypso would be portrayed as an alien Queen, similar to Padme.

I was envisioning that the Celestial Republic's head of state is an older Demigod who is secretly in-league with The Titans after becoming disillusioned with the Olympians. This character would fill a role similar to Palpatine while being more morally grey by comparison.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway that's all I have for now.