Brave Knights and Heroic Courage

I would also suggest that, as mask prices tend to fluctuate with demand, now is probably a very good time for many of us to restock. But if affording masks is a concern for you, here's a worldwide directory of local mask blocs providing free masks. You can also access COVID tests and other equipment this way: https://maskbloc.org/

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or

Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

—

PBS: Language as Prejudice - Myth #6: Women Talk Too Much (via misandry-mermaid)

Every EVERY women’s studies class I’ve been in has had this problem and failed to address it. 

these writers really hate their black women like i am sorry but i am not going to pretend that the writing choices and their treatment isn't racist. and it all started with laena velaryon. people just moved on from it because she isn't a very prominent character in the war but i haven't forgotten how she was rhaenyra's canonical love interest and daemon, laena and rhaenyra were basically a throuple. not to mention daemon marrying laena IS objectively romantic in the book. “Prince Daemon fell in love with Laena, the singers would have us believe.” he takes one look at her, challenges another man to a duel when he finds out she is betrothed to him and marries her after killing his rival. meanwhile the show had daemon treat her in such a way that she seems to have just heartbrokenly made peace with the fact that she was not the wife he had desired. rhaenyra was “fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena”. also why their children are betrothed during laena's lifetime. in the show they don't share a single scene whereas in the book, during her last hours, laena is at her home and very cared for with rhaenyra who immediately flies to driftmark when she hears about her condition and is present by her side the whole time, daemon rushes to get rhaenyra's more experienced and older maester. laena dies trying to get to her dragon but faints on the stairs and is carried away by daemon unlike the show where she is allowed none of this tenderness, she just dies alone and far from home, having denied her last wish by an uncaring and indifferent daemon.

ALL of that is cut from the show. any gesture or moment where it appears that our main characters gave a fuck about her, that she was important to them is completely erased. where it seems that she was valued and loved by both daemon and rhaenyra her show counterpart is an insignificant nobody to both of them. like maybe the show writers aren't racist as fuck but so much of these girls' mistreatment by their white relatives feels fucking pointless. "uhhh daemon married rhaenyra within less than a year after laena's passing he must not have cared about her" hmmm you know what? good point. this would open up an opportunity to explore his daughters' reaction to their sudden and secret marriage, especially, in the show where rhaenyra is practically a stranger to them who then waltzes into their lives so boldly. the natural resentment they'd feel for their father and rhaenyra but ... that never happens. they're just magically happy to be betrothed to rhaenyra's boys an arrangement made as a desperate political move. how convenient! i guess we only care about giving any storyline to either of them when we have to cut out another very very pivotal black female character from the story.

maybe i am overthinking this maybe i should let it go and i actually did but then the choices with baela and rhaena? especially rhaena is HIGH-KEY RACIST!!! i cannot look past this i am sorry.

both baela and rhaena are associated with privilege they're like the silver spoon princesses. and it's very pointedly mentioned that rhaena is the more delicate, soft and graceful one after having lived a gentle life of privilege and coddling in the Vale “Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor.” but her show counterpart is given mo such treatment in Vale, she is instead insulted, has to beg for asylum but is spurned, is running around alone in the mountains, hair burnt, covered in dirt, homeless and hungry, eating raw meat. WHAT THE FUCK? tell me how is this not an extremely racist choice? do you people honestly believe the show would've still treated her and nettles' storyline as interchangeable if rhaena was white? they had no reservations against adding ulf and hugh to the show.

AO3 SCAM

There's been a number of people reporting over on the AO3 subreddit that they're getting messages like this posted in the comments shortly after posting new fics.

The AO3 team are NEVER going to try and contact you about TOS violations via the comment section (or about anything else for that matter)

Don't click any links. Report the accounts involved (which might claim to be things like "LucySupport"), delete the message and move on.

website

GO OFF BESTIE

This one is targeting posts with ao3 links, and it’s creating AI-generated comments to pose as someone whos read your fic and totally wants to draw something for it

I went to this blog, and their actual blog is empty but their likes are public, and they’re leaving near-identical comments at break-neck speeds on any other posts with ao3 links where

~2 minutes between each of the comments above, and an endless slew of them, all extremely ChatGPT-intoned.

Y’all know that theory that devils are souls that have been used to fuel a resurrection? John saying Harrow’s parents committed a resurrection, Cytherea calling herself the vengeance of the ten billion, Teacher saying there are ten billion angry ghosts in the facility.

The devils attacking the Ninth are not the ten billion. They’re the two hundred. The children whose souls Priamhark and Pelleamena used to fuel Harrow's conception.

Now, you may have noticed Harrow’s parents committed their resurrection nineteen years ago, and as of yet nobody in the Ninth House has sprouted long black tongues and eyelids with teeth. So why now?

In Harrow the Ninth, as Varun approaches the Mithraeum, the River empties of ghosts. Augustine says that ghosts flee before a Resurrection Beast. “Poor bastards are terrified.” And the Ninth House has a Resurrection Beast in the basement.

But then she leaves.

Alecto leaves the Tomb, leaves her body behind, and rides her connection to Harrow into Harrow’s body. And now there’s no slumbering planetary revenant to ward off the devils, so back they come. The very next time some Ninth geezer keels over, the devils take the wheel and it begins.