Eruvadhril

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SERIES OF ALL TIME (it's not out yet)

Arts degrees teach the philosophical background of the subject, how to distinguish between sources, how to interpret data, how to analyze sources, how to properly cite your sources, and how to present a cohesive argument on something that's inherently at least somewhat subjective.

I do not work in academia but I use this skillset almost constantly, because one is never not exposed to ideas or data that one then has to form an opinion on.

See, I understand the utility of the split-attraction model. I even understand that “romantic attraction” feels like a meaningful category to many people separate from sexual attraction.

But in my personal experience of the world, romance is too much of a construct for “romantic attraction” to make any sense as a coherent thing that I consider myself as having or not having.

And look, everything is a construct, including sexual attraction. But sexual attraction is a construct in the way a brick is a construct; simple, definable, easy to say whether I have it or don’t have it. Romance, on the other hand, is even more obviously entirely culturally defined. It’s a construct in the way a house is a construct. What makes something a house? If I got ten people in a room we could probably cobble together a decent definition of a “brick” that we are all mutually satisfied with, even if it’s not perfect at including all things that are bricks and excluding all things that are not. There might be edge cases but we could do it.

But a house? What defines a house? Is a house that is not currently livable due to damage still a house? What about a house that doesn’t look like an American white picket fence stick built house? Something made of grass or mud or stone. Something for a climate where roofs or walls are a poor choice. What about house boats and RVs?

What defines romance? Is it sex? Non sexual physical intimacy? Emotional connections? Some odd cross sectional grid of the myriad possibilities for human interaction?

Every experience is an edge case when you drill down in it. I have a structure built out of bricks, and there’s a hole in the structure where the brick that is sexual attraction goes for other people. Is the structure a house or not? Could you even tell, without me describing a great deal more about it, its size, its shape? Would you and the person next to you agree, once I did?

And all this means that while I’ll call myself aro and aroace for the purposes of communicating with others, (the size and shape of the brick structure has no bearing on the fact that I do not plan to ever be in a monogamous partnership, and that’s the important thing to convey) the concepts actually have not much real impact on my subjective internality. Being aro or being aroace are not to me separate from my being ace. Or rather they are not to me a reified part of my identity the way being ace is.

So I find it SO WIERD that everyone assumes that they would be. That by default anyone who has an a- identity is going to have a complicated interaction with the split attraction model, that, as @specialagentartemis put it, “the canonical ace is alloromantic and the canonical aro is allosexual, and aroaces are a third thing.”

Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)

THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”

To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like

"But the creator was pressured into changing their vision for the worse!" Sometimes this is wishful thinking. Sometimes it is demonstrably true. Sometimes it's ambiguous. If there are documented issues affecting the production of a work of art, you can and should absolutely talk about those as part of your analysis! But 'the creator's vision' isn't real. The version that was actually made and actually exists is. Once I commented that I disliked how an asexual character had been handled in a book, and the person I was talking to said, "Oh, I bet it's their editor's fault." But even if that were true . . . the book is published. I was responding to the portrayal in the published book. I can't analyze a text based on what the other person in the conversation imagined the author's intent might have been. Even when we know for sure that a story would have been very different without certain pressures (an editor who nixed an author's original ending, an executive producer who vetoed all mentions of queer characters, a show that was cancelled prematurely and had to wrap up its plot in a couple of episodes instead of another full season), we can talk about those pressures and we can talk about things we know were cut and we can talk about how the bad pacing of those final episodes were significantly influenced by the circumstances under which they were made. But we can't talk about the platonic ideal of the piece of media, the version that would have existed if the circumstances were perfect, because it's not real. Every person is going to have their own idea on how it would have turned out and these will be wildly divergent from person to person. It's not helpful or productive to get mad at people for criticizing or otherwise engaging with the actual piece of art instead of the version you made up in your head.

"But I understand this character better than the author! They would never have done X!" Look, we've all been there. Do whatever you want with your own personal interpretation. But it's just that: an interpretation. The character isn't real, and there isn't a secret better version of the text waiting to be freed from the tyranny of the person who's actually writing it. You can write an AU, or talk about how, for example, a character in an episodic TV show with many different writers suffers from a lack of consistent characterization, or make a post about how you think X plot point was badly handled or poorly written. And you can absolutely give the character the storylines and development that you want them to have! In this case, you're creating your own text, and it exists, and it can be analyzed either on its own or in relation to the source material. But you can't expect everyone to agree with you, and you can't believe that your interpretation of a character is more real than anyone else's—and especially not that it's more real than how the character is actually written in the text. I see this very often with people who want their favorite characters to be more progressive than they are. Yes, maybe the author's sexism is part of why this character acted sexist. But if you are rejecting part of the text you are rejecting part of the text. Other people will choose not to do this, and you can't blame them for analyzing a character or society as they are actually presented.

the TL:DR:

Christmas special cancelled

Russell T Davies and his production company are leaving the show

RTD has confirmed on Instagram that there was never a script or proper plan for the Christmas special

The show is going out to competitive tender.

For anyone who is confused as to what 'competitive tender' means:

the best case scenario here is that the BBC find a new contractor who can make an acceptable version of Doctor Who for less money and in a few years time we get a whole new version of the show with a new Doctor etc.