Lou

is/has been an active suicide risk

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (of course. also see her short stories set in the same setting: "Winter's King" and "Coming of Age in Karhide")

Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer (25th century science fiction where humanity has supposedly entered a post-gender era. gender in reality hasn't been *completely* stamped out however [though it does certainly seem to bear less influence than today]. and yet our narrator's attempts to assign genders to other characters, apparently in fitting with his emulation of the literature of the Enlightenment, themselves show an understanding of gender rather different from either those of that past or our present. fascinating world-building in general informed by Palmer's work as a historian! she once said in an interview that her aim was essentially a world as alien to us now as we would be to people of the 17th and 18th centuries. i think it's a rather successful attempt.)

The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum (incredibly underappreciated! creates a gender binary that feels self-consistent but doesn't map onto the binary of women and men. far-future, posthuman society with a culture of high mutual surveillance, multiple bodies per individual, interesting religious world-building, discussion of "stagnation" of a society, etc. very dense and rich worldbuilding packed, in a skilled, not-at-all info-dumping manner, into a single stand-alone novel. the title reflects the book's plot well in multiple respects)

Walking Practice by Dolki Min (centers an alien stranded on earth who kills humans in order to eat after luring them into sexual engagements. lots of meditation on the reliance on gender to construct personhood, and the depersonalization that goes hand-in-hand with unintelligibility / failure to perform gender correctly. predictably quite bloody. protagonist's body [when not carefully and with great effort held in human form] is vague but clearly not-at-all human. a disability reading is also very appropriate and enlightening for much of the work. translated from the Korean into English by Victoria Caudle, and judging by the translator's note Dolki Min seems to have done some quite interestingly experimental work with the original grammar to communicate the protagonist's alienness. in the English translation, this effect is instead accomplished chiefly through typography.)

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (rather dated - especially in that it falls into the trap that The Unraveling avoids in allowing its genders to be [I would say] too understandable through the lens of men and women, but its three gender alien society may still be of interest. very biologically non-human aliens. note however that they're chiefly only the focus of the middle [though probably longest] third. unrelatedly, i personally love the descriptions of lunar society in the last third.)

i haven't seen anything about this on my dashboard, so i wanted to share. ICE gestapo killed another human being on tuesday. he leaves behind three sons and his wife, who he has spent the last 35 years building a life with

there is a gofundme supported by the league of united latin american citizens set up to help with funeral costs, legal fees, and supporting his family moving forward.

Revenge: You're dead

The Black Parade: We're all dead

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.

I made this meme just now