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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.

Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.

But... Stochastic Parrots.

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Above: the larval form of Fulgoraecia exigua

Caterpillars of the family Epipyropidae, commonly known as planthopper parasite moths, are ectoparasites that feed on the haemolymph (i.e. "blood") of planthoppers and cicadas. This family contains at least 40 described species, all of which are parasites or parasitoids.

Above: planthopper parasite caterpillars tucked beneath the wings of their hosts

This is one of the few known examples of a caterpillar that actually engages in parasitic, carnivorous and/or predatory behavior.

Above: Fulgoraecia exigua

The caterpillar has hooked claws that allow it to cling to the host's body; it uses its mandibles to penetrate the cuticle around the abdomen, then inserts a proboscis-like structure into the planthopper's body and begins to feed on the fluids within.

Each caterpillar spends about 4-6 weeks feeding on its host, with its body often tucked beneath the larger insect's wings.

Above: a Fulgoraecia exigua caterpillar can be seen feeding beneath the wings of this planthopper

Young planthopper nymphs that are parasitized by these caterpillars rarely survive the process. The survival rate for older nymphs and adult hemipterans is also quite low.

Above: the photo at the top shows an Epipomponia nawai caterpillar feeding on a cicada, while the photo on the bottom shows Fulgoraecia exigua feeding on a leafhopper

Planthopper parasite caterpillars are often tiny, with their bodies measuring just 3-7mm long, and they're covered in waxy white filaments that make them look like little cottonballs. These features seem to mimic the "fluffy" appearance of many fulgoroid planthopper nymphs, which may enable the caterpillar to sneak up on its host.

Above: planthopper parasite caterpillars

When the caterpillar reaches maturity, it finally detaches from its host and then uses a thin strand of silk to abseil down to a leaf or a branch, where it can spin a cocoon around its body and enter pupation.

Above: the cocoons of Fulgoraecia exigua

The caterpillars of this family create very distinctive cocoons. As delicate layers of silk are folded together around the pupal case, they often form ridges, cone-like structures, or wider, flatter folds that look almost like rose petals.

Above: a cocoon made by an unidentified moth from family Epipyropidae

The fully-developed moth may emerge weeks or even months later, depending on the species. The adults of this family typically have a blackish-gray appearance.

Above: the adult form of Epipomponia nawai

Other examples of predatory, carnivorous and/or parasitic moths can be found in my earlier post about meat-eating caterpillars.

Sources & More Info:

Journal of the Lepidopterist's Society: Predatory and Parasitic Lepidoptera

The Lepidoptera: Form, Function, and Diversity: Epipyropidae

Moths of North Carolina: Fulgoraecia exigua

Bug Guide: Family Epipyropidae

Bombay Natural History Society: The Biology and Morphology of Epipyrops eurybrachydis

Egyptian Journal of Biological Pest Control: Parasitism by Fulgoraecia melanoleuca

Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology: Behavioural and Phylogeographic Observations on Epipomponia nawai

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

I come across these webbed-up fungi occasionally. They look quite like the tent-webs of some moth and sawfly larvae, but differ in occurring later in the year; enclosing a fungus instead of a food-plant; not being full of specks of caterpillar dung; you also rarely see any living (or dead) creatures, eggs or pupae in them.

The cleanness of the webs and the way they are restricted to a particular fungus might make you think you are looking at a grey, fuzzy mould.

To find out what was making these, I took a piece home and kept it in a vivarium. Checking on the vivarium in the middle of the night I spotted a small mealworm-like creature moving through the web, leaving a slime trail behind it. I caught it and put it in an empty enclosure where it soon started fervently weaving by bobbing its head back and forth at an impressive rate, extruding silk from spinnerets on its snout. In the morning, the new enclosure was full of webs, and the larva resting in the middle.

I believe these larvae are fungus gnats of the family Mycetophilidae - a large family of small, rather plain flies with thousands of described species, most of which lay their eggs on fungi. I haven't found much witten about the function of the webs: maintaining a humid atmosphere; excluding other small creatures; catching spores for consumption have all been mooted. The larvae also seem to be able to move smoothly and rapidly through their silk network.

It explains why he clings to Vox so much, him having a man in power that also let him be in power as an equal. Someone who's safe without infantilizing or controlling him (Val being immune to hypnotism).

It explains why he acts the way he does with Angel, emphasizing control over his personhood and autonomy. If he's the abuser he cannot be the abused and the most upset he gets is when he's losing a significant amount of his control over what Angel does (Angel moving out).

It explains why he sexualizes himself just as much as he sexualizes others. It's a lifestyle that's always been a part of him and taking control of that has been a great way to reclaim himself after what he went through.

It sets up numerous ways for him to have fallen to sin, whether it was lashing out at his abusers like Angel did or resorting to things like stealing from his clients to get ahead.

It sets up the perfect cycle of abuse story between him and Angel, Val symbolizing a person Angel might become if he regresses his progress and serving as a manifestation of every element of his character that led him to ending up in Hell. Rejecting that, being better than that, will be what let's Angel ascend like Pentious did; confronting and changing the part of himself that led him to sin.

Hell- it explains why he's a moth specifically. "Moth" is a Victorian era slang term for a prostitute.

I don't quite understand why this is a hot take, but, uh, Loid definitely knows that he loves Yor and Anya. (Now, to be fair, he almost certainly doesn't realize how much Yor likes him. He is genuinely bad at reading the women in his life, which is partly bc because they're actually not great at expressing themselves, and partly because he assumes any time something goes wrong it's because he messed up)

The thing is, Loid's not willing to act on the love he has for them to turn the mission-family into a real-family. Which is partly bc of his personal experiences, yes! It's also partly bc he's still going to be a spy. How can he commit himself fully to Yor and Anya when he's still working for WISE? He believes he can't (and I suspect he's right), and he believes that the work he does with WISE is too important to walk away from.

I genuinely think he believes that loving them means not "turning this into a real family" -- because if he makes the marriage official, then Yor thinks the family is real and Twilight knows it still isn't. Which is making me think Athelas-and-Troika-City-Between thoughts, but that's for another time. (To those who haven't watched Spy x Family: Yor and Loid have entered a marriage of societal convenience; there is no sexual aspect to it).

Now, is he deliberately not thinking about how much he likes Yor and would like to genuinely marry her? Probably. But he's not avoiding the thought out of, what's the word, out of "oh that's too scary to think about," he's avoiding the thought because he can't act on it. There's no point fantasizing.

I was asked by a friend yesterday if I could offer basic tips about comic paneling. As it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter! I tried breaking down the art of paneling using the principles of art and design, and I hope it helps you out!

EDIT: uh uh there are a lot of people reblogging this, so i figure i may as well append this now while i can lol

This whole thing was very much cranked out in a few hours so I had a visual to talk about with a friend! If this gives you a base understanding of paneling, that's awesome! Continue to pull in studies from the comics you see and what other artists do well and don't do well! You can tell paneling is doing well when the action is flowing around in its intended reading format.

Here's the link to the globalcomix article from which I pulled the images about panel staggering! Someone sent in a reblog that it wasn't totally clear that the 7th slide mostly covers what NOT to do in regards to staggering, and that is my mistake!

I saw in a tag that someone was surprised I used MamaYuyu too, and I don't blame them lol. If I had given myself more than a couple hours maybe I would have added something else on, I just really admire MamaYuyu's paneling personally.