Sterrestel

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A Majority of Americans Now Support Seizing Wealth From AI Industry

The taco came with cilantro.

My beloved wife lovingly picked it off for me with their fingers even though they had a fork

When the server took the plate she noted the pile and asked if it had come with cilantro. I admitted it had and she apologized.

Then we ordered nachos, no cilantro.

The nachos did not have cilantro on top.

But they did have pico de gallo which was covered in cilantro.

We made the best of it, I focused on chips without the hateful herb.

When the server came to check on us I said, “Did you know the pico de gallo has cilantro…”

Her face fell and she said she knew it but most people just ordered it anyway that she stopped clarifying. She promised to drop the nachos off the bill in apology.

-> Phonics For Adults <-

Known today as the basis for adorable trinkets and collectables, Kewpie dolls and cartoons were a wholesome cultural phenomenon. Artist Rosie O'Neill described Kewpie as “a benevolent elf who did good deeds in a funny way" in her autobiography.

Wholesome though they were, O'Neill also used her Kewpie characters to promote women's suffrage, critique elitism, and advocate for marginalized communities. In particular, Kewpie lent celebrity to the suffragist cause and helped reshape feminism in the popular imagination.

The king's son, much more kindhearted than his father, has always had a hidden talent for turning things into gold. So when he hears that the king has brought a miller's daughter back to the castle to test her ability to spin straw into gold, threatening death if she fails, he jumps in to help. He disguises himself in strange clothes with a low hood, and hunches over, and offers to help the girl spin straw into gold. Turns out that she's very lovely to talk to - they have a wonderful time getting to know each other through the night as they work. But the prince knows he's in disguise and cannot act on his attraction, so he merely asks for her for something to remember the evening by, and she gives her necklace. He helps her the same way the next night, and she gives him a ring, without his even asking for it, and blushes prettily as she does so.

The third day, the king says that if she can spin the straw into gold a third night, she will marry his son. Though the prince has been falling in love with her, he of course protests that his father cannot force her to marry anyone. But he gets shut down. That night when he comes to help her, he plans to tell her his true identity, but this time guards are in the room, as the king suspects some trick. She weeps, for she has no more jewellery to give him - in fact her only hope at this point would be to barter away her first born child like in a fairy tale. He's aghast, and waves it away, saying he'll certainly help her, but she thinks that he understood it to mean she WAS promising her firstborn. But she's afraid to unsay it, fearing he won't help her. He keeps trying to find a moment to confess the truth, but something always happens to prevent it. They finish spinning the straw into gold with hardly a moment for the prince to slip away and change into his own clothes.

In the morning, the king arrives at the door of the room full of straw, with a priest to marry them on one hand, and an executioner with axe in hand on the other. He is delighted to see there is gold after all, even with the guards watching, and calls for the wedding. The girl is willing enough to wed a prince - I mean, he's a prince but there's also something gentle and kind, and almost as if she *knows* him, though she doesn't see how she could.

The wedding is rushed through, and it's not till the bride and groom are left alone that both of them try to burst out with a terrible confession to make. She manages to gasp hers out - that she's happy to marry the prince, and she'll be as faithful and true as he could wish, but there's something terrible she must tell him. She was helped in spinning the gold, by a strange man with a hooded face, and... she may have accidentally bargained their firstborn child for his help.

The prince pauses, and says something like, "But isn't it true that with these magical sorts, knowing their name frees you from their power? If you could guess his real name, perhaps it would solve everything!"

She despairs - with all the names in the world, how could she possibly guess it?

He smiles and encourages her to try to guess.

"But what's the good of guessing now? How am I to know if I guessed it or not until he comes back for what I owe him? And then it will be too late!"

"Are you sure you can't guess his name, my love?"

And he takes out the necklace and the ring.

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

Similar programs are working on restoring desert regions in India, too, plus China has been working hard on similar re-greening projects. It makes absolute sense that cities could benefit, since their materials raise temperatures, but green spaces decrease them.

New York City used to have some of the worst air in the world, before they focused hard on cutting back pollution. They already have a massive transit system, but still needed cars on the streets, so they turned to greening up the city with extensive micro-gardening efforts, plants in planter boxes, balconies on skyscrapers given plants, rooftop gardening being encouraged, and more. These efforts significantly reduced the air pollution in NYC, but they have also helped cool the city at least a little bit.

In contrast, Los Angeles still has quite a pollution problem, and quite an island heat problem as well. Some of it is simply due to the fact that the whole city sprawls. Because of their frequent threat of earthquakes, they cannot build vertically and so much spread out horizontally across the land. Unfortunately, that has meant taking down native plantings, and paving over the land that could otherwise benefit from local runoff collection.

However, city planners are starting to wise up to this, and have begun investing in micro-gardens and residential neighborhood water cachement systems that don't just funnel everything off to the ocean. The infamous "concrete riverbed" that you often see in movies and shows set in L.A. did see some use in the recent oceanic storms that have slammed into southern California, but ideally the water should be captured, stored, and sunk into the local water tables. Once the water is there, available for gardening with reduced need to pay for extra water to be brought in, a greater number of plantings can be made, and a greater drop in both temperature and air pollution will be achieved.

If you want to learn more about these projects, here's one on the "Great Green Wall" of Africa:

Andrew Millison is a professor of permaculture studies, which includes desert reclamation, and he has traveled extensively to both teach and learn from people leading these projects around the world.

As for urban farming in NYC, Kirsten Dirksen's channel on YouTube has covered a lot of microfarms and urban farming, including one particular group in the Big Apple:

She has also done a documentary on an unique building in Europe, where the building was deliberately designed to incorporate trees and bushes planted on various levels, providing shade and privacy while using roof-collected rainwater to water it all. It's a remarkably beautiful building:

But wait, there’s more!

Yes I did another yellow cat IN MY DEFENSE I started another cotl playthrough, playing as the goat, I skipped the beginning/tutorial and my first follower was a yellow cat! Usually I get cows, I wonder why this happened. Maybe because of the skip. AND SHE'S SCARED OF DEATH AND SACRIFICES too good not to draw fr fr

Mjorna likes to farm and refine materials. Maybe because she's the first one, and despite her being pathetic and annoying, Goat is attached to her. They try to do the murders out of her sight.