Latest Posts by redspex - Page 2

I FUCKING LIED SHIT IS NOT CHILLER IN GERMANY

will probably not be posting much for the next few days as I scramble to get all of my paperwork together - hopefully I can document some of my flight out but obviously I have to make a pretty crazy turn around lmao

All told I'm gonna be traveling for like 16 hours straight.

Okay I've slept off my edible and double-checked with 4CL. I am actually flying to Germany early July for work. God gives His silliest clowns His funniest battles.

WAIT I NEDD TO FIND SOKEONE TO TAKE CARE OF MY CAT S H I T

Okay I've slept off my edible and double-checked with 4CL. I am actually flying to Germany early July for work. God gives His silliest clowns His funniest battles.

Okay I've slept off my edible and double-checked with 4CL. I am actually flying to Germany early July for work. God gives His silliest clowns His funniest battles.

Just got notified that 4CL is sending me to Germany on assigment

HUH???

TAPS S.E. Disclosure - The Pink Desert

I got permission from Fourcast to disclose some of my experiences with TAPS, so here's some art I made after an S.E. (sleeping episode)! I lovingly call it the Pink Desert (for obvious reasons) - last time I checked 4CL hasn't been able to pin down when/where this is, so the Pink Desert will have to do. Being able to document and communicate what I experience during a TAPS episode is vital not only for my work at the Lab, but for other 4CL branches as well. I'm not the best at drawing or painting or anything like that, so I usually go with making collages that are as close to what I witnessed as I can get them, paired with some note-taking to get down as many details as possible. Some fun note excerpts from this S.E. are:

"-Despite the desert-like appearance of surroundings, climate was cold and dry with consistent, blustering winds" "-Probable that fine-particle terrain underfoot is garnet (or a similar mineral) that has been weathered by environmental factors - large deposits of garnet were seen scattered across the landscape, some with visibly scratched or otherwise eroded facades" "-Coloration of the atmosphere would suggest high chlorine gas content, yet wavering patterns like Earth's aurora borealis were also observed, which indicate electrons interacting with an oxygen-rich upper atmosphere. Chlorine is a poor conductor of heat and electricity; atmospheric content remain uncertain"

It's probably clear that Fourcast didn't hire me for my stellar environmental sciences knowledge (lmao), but even my rough guestimates can help the actual environmental science Fourcasters figure out what's going on. But yeah! First disclosure from my personal vault :). Overall it was a pretty calm episode, despite being a bit cold and waking up with a really dry mouth. Never know what you're gonna get with TAPS, thankfully this time around it was a beautiful, mysterious, pink desert.

Always open to answering any questions about my life with TAPS, feel free to drop a message in the ask box! The images I used to make this collage were sourced from Pinterest - the particular images I used can be found here!

Happy Pride Month btw :) I made these because I'm trans + queer + a TAPS researcher at Fourcast Lab and all of those things are pretty neat! It's therefore my professional opinion that the all pasts, presents, futures, and alternate realities are queer :).

I'm using these to write all my reports now.

⌛️TAPS FAQ⏳

What does TAPS mean? -> TAPS stands for Temporal Alignment Permeation Syndrome. It started popping up ~2019 when Fourcast began messing around with the SPORE device. Though I'm not the only one to have TAPS, I imagine it's pretty rare - I've yet to meet anyone else with it in-person. What does TAPS do? -> As the name suggests, my connection to the current time and reality my physical body exists in can be kind of tenuous, leading me to experience other realities and futures. Episodes are random and unpredictable, but thankfully mostly happen when I'm asleep (waking episodes can be pretty disruptive to my day, especially when the glimpses I get aren't the most cheerful :( ). How do you know you're not just dreaming? -> For one, I sometimes experience episodes while completely awake (I have no prior medical history of anything that would cause similar experiences to TAPS), and I can very clearly differentiate between the feeling of being in a dream and being in a TAPS episode. On top of that, Fourcast Lab has been researching TAPS since it started to affect people around 2019 and has confirmed its existence as a legitimate phenomena. How does TAPS affect you? -> It's very much a coin toss. Because it's random and I have no control over what I see, I can go a few weeks without experiencing any episodes, to having some pleasant/neutral experiences during an episode while asleep every couple of days, to dealing with some really harrowing visions during the day. There's good and bad in it, and I hope understanding more about TAPS will help me deal with day-to-day life with it.

How do you deal with TAPS? -> Therapy has been very helpful for me. TAPS can bring on some pretty heavy, existential questions, so having someone to talk to about it has been really important. In a way, interning at Fourcast Lab brings about its own sense of assurance; I know TAPS is taken seriously there and my experiences as someone who is both living with TAPS and trying to research it is unique and helpful when it comes to understanding it better. 4CL people get weird time stuff, so I've found a lot of support and understanding amongst my coworkers. My feelings about 4CL are kind of complicated as a whole, since, as far as theories go, their handling of SPORE is what led to people developing TAPS. I feel conflicted, in a way - as far as we know, developing TAPS is a freak accident, so I can't really be mad at 4CL because it's not like they were malicious, but at the same time...TAPS can be rough. Why do you want to research TAPS? -> Culmination of a few points from above: it's a relatively new and rare condition with little known about it, and I hope understanding TAPS better will help me, and other people living with TAPS, deal with it. Research into TAPS hasn't been that extensive, so I really want to help figure out the why/how/when of TAPS. What is one of your favorite experiences with TAPS? -> I've seen a lot of beautiful worlds through TAPS - in a lot of ways, I feel extremely, uniquely privileged to have these experiences. One that really sticks with me is having an episode while sleeping; I was at the highest point of a mountain range, a lavender sky stretched out overhead. The sun(s?) was just coming up, making pale, yellow streaks in the clouds above me. The sun reached down to the mountain faces around me, pitch black but shimmering in the light, like rippling waves of abalone. At my feet, the mountain I was on dropped off into a valley, overgrown with tree-like flora, leaves deep green and rustling. Curling through this alien forest, like a massive serpent on its belly, was a river of silver, ferocious in its perpetual voyage. The whole episode was so beautiful and serene, it's really stuck with me as an example of the beauty of possible futures and alternate realities, and made me feel really lucky to have TAPS. What is one of your worst experiences with TAPS? -> I was on the CTA during rush hour when I had an episode. Thankfully I was sitting down, but I was totally overcome with the vision of standing at the foot of a volcano as it erupted, a lightning storm battering the blazing peak and striking my surroundings. I heard a lot of commotion, but couldn't identify where it was coming from, and I couldn't move as the volcanic ash rained down upon me, dark and scorching, lava racing ever closer. It was viscerally terrifying, being at the complete mercy of extreme forces of nature. It took me a while to come out of the episode, and when I did I was a) very disorientated, tired, and still pretty scared, and b) had missed my stop by a pretty good margin. Needless to say that day's commute felt very, very long.

What if I have questions about TAPS -> Ask box is open! Feel free to drop me a message :).

HUGE proponent of selective stupidness btw. Quality of life through the roof.

☎️FAQ☎️

Who am I? -> Ryan! I use he/him/his pronouns, trans and queer. 22. General interests are powerlifting/gym-going, cats, reading, DnD, being in a hammock, Garfield. English native speaker, moderately okay at German. Chicago based.

What’s the purpose of this blog? -> I’ve been dealing with TAPS for a while now, so this page will partly be about documenting my experiences with it. At the moment my career goals pertain to researching TAPS (I would specify what in particular about the condition I want to research, but so much about TAPS is unknown that it can feel hard to identify a starting point 😵‍💫); I was recently brought on by Fourcast as an intern, so that’s a very exciting step for me and I want to document my time with them! Will also throw in some non-TAPS/4CL posts as well.

TAPS? -> Temporal Alignment Permeation Syndrome. I’ll probably make a whole info post about this, but in extremely simplified terms, I get glimpses into alternate realities and futures. Some good, some bad, mostly while sleeping. It’s really a can of worms so keep your eyes peeled for more in-depth info later :).

Fourcast Lab? -> Yeah...Love-hate relationship with the 4CL. Doing good, yes, but also TAPS started popping off when they started messing with SPORE, so my feelings are mixed, to say the least. Not many other paths to take for researching TAPS except to head into the belly of the beast, so here I am.

Can I send in asks? -> Yes!! Very open to answering questions (as long as they’re polite!). I’m pretty open about my life with TAPS, so feel free to ask. Ask box is preferred over DMs (can’t promise I’ll read the latter, especially if it’s from people I don’t know).

Anything else? -> Page rules: be nice :)