So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
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.
So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i do think the negative interpretations of "im probably nonbinary but i have a job right now" are kind of reaching. it's obviously a waste of time to theorize the op's intended meaning, so instead i think it's better to recognize how the phrase can be a useful framing device to criticize how much of a fucking hassle it is to get gendered correctly. "but i have a job" e.g. will face discrimination that could threaten livelihood; e.g. don't have the mental bandwidth to explain gender to others; e.g. don't have the time and energy for the soul-searching necessary to confirm. all three of these are labor issues. yes you could interpret it as "but being nonbinary isn't important enough to worry about", despite that being a blatantly bad-faith read. it's more useful to interpret it as "but being publicly nonbinary requires a lot of social effort that, in many cultural contexts, will create more problems that you can't afford to deal with". like cmon it's a really good jumping off point for productive conversations about queer labor rights
If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.
Like. You don't need to blow it into some huge thing. Just. Make sure all your bits and peices still work the way you think they do.
Can you turn your head to look behind you without twisting your shoulders? What about standing on your toes? If you sit down on the floor can you get back up without using your hands?
If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.
Just saying, bodies are a use it or lose it kinda thing.
okay so every time I see this post crop back up in queues and notifications I end up thinking about it. Because I made the post and even I'm still doing the thing where I read the post about maintaining range of motion in my delicate meatsuit and I nod and hmm and think yeah that's a good idea and then dont move from where I'm curled up shrimp style staring at the nightmare rectangle.
So like. Thinking real hard about moving doesn't count as moving. Major bummer. Anyways. Joints.
This stunning gypsum selenite baclava/lasagna belongs to Phillip Rendina, it was shared on Facebook, and boy aren't we jealous! We thought you needed to see it too.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The assholes openly admit it. The whole point of college is to enforce the hierarchy. When those who were supposed to be low on the hierarchy started going to college, the assholes get angry and want to make them suffer for challenging the hierarchy.
Yet another reason this is insanely revisionist is that it pretends the whole reason millennials felt so much pressure to go to college wasn't that conservative politicians had spent the eighties and nineties wrecking the shit out of labor unions to the point that by the time millennials turned eighteen, it was suddenly a lot harder to count on being able to work at a working-class job all your life and still have a good living.
College, all of a sudden, went from "something I'd like to do if I can get in" to "a lifeline in an economy where blue collar jobs are going to shit."
The wheel's turned long enough that now college students are being treated the way union workers and union-adjacent workers were treated in the eighties and nineties, so now college grads are the ones that it's fashionable to shit on, and the new fix-all solution is supposed to be "go into the trades!" Which means that by the 2050s at the latest, we'll be coming up with some new lie to blame people in the trades for the fact that now they're in trouble. And we'll have some new job that everyone should have been doing instead.
“But Tumblr user severalowls, that’s just an Ocelot!”
No, you fool! You Buffoon! The Margay has mastered something generations of cats have only dreamed of! Getting down out of trees:
The Margay has reversible ankles, and uses them to do some pretty sweet tricks (And also hunt down monkeys, birds and other tree-dwelling critters in their otherwise safe treetop homes.)
Even for apps where they don’t have a publicly stated minimum, their algorithms will bury you.
4 stars does not mean 4 stars. It means 1.4 stars.
If you give a person a 4 star rating, to these companies, you are not saying “I was mostly satisfied with the service, but there’s always room for improvement”—which is what 4 stars should mean—you are voting for them to be fired.
Genuinely, do not ever give people 4 star ratings on gig service apps for any reason that is not a safety issue where their continuation on the app could seriously hurt people.
If someone gives you “just OK” service where you don’t want to give them 5 stars, but you don’t actively hate their existence and hope they die, just don’t rate them.
yeah i drive the truck that isekais all those lonely 20yo NEETs and bored salarymen. it’s a really hard job. they keep sending me to workplace counselling after each hit. “it’s normal to feel guilt at ending someone’s life,” they say. how do i tell them that’s not what makes me feel guilty? “but it’s okay. he’ll live a better life in another world.” yeah, with 100 girls who could have lived normal lives but got drafted into being in these boring dudes’ harems. how many women’s lives have i ruined. and they don’t even know. they don’t even know
Sounds like you need "His Soul is Marching On to Another World; or, the John Brown Isekai" by CabbagePreacher, an actual fic on AO3 about famed abolitionist martyr John Brown getting isekaied to such a world and going on a rampage abolishing harems.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Going to see children and adolescents dance badly, play ball badly, sing badly, play recorder badly because they are young: YES! YOU ARE LEARNING! INCREDIBLE!
People are so rude about going to watch the children in their lives do stuff shittily. “Ugh toddler dance recital,” “ugh tee-ball weekend again,” “ugh nativity play.”
That guy learned what skipping is this year and now he’s playing the piano the worst I’ve ever seen but the best he’s ever done! AREN’T YOU CAPTIVATED BY THEIR ABILITY TO DO A LITTLE BIT WHEN PREVIOUSLY THEY COULD DO NOTHING? Be filled with wonder and joy!
It's very cute how everyone tagging their niche fandoms here and/or expressing their love for my art. I will remember this when I post the specific completed work that inspired this post that I am finishing up and it becomes your problem instead of mine.
shocked and appalled at the lack of bisexuality merch that uses hydrangeas
look at this thing
it already has the right colors and everything! this should be everywhere! we already have the lesbian violets and the gay green carnations, so why not the bisexual hydrangea?
so far I have scoured etsy and found one pair of socks with a nice hydrangea gradient (and it has bees, 10/10), an enamel pin with hydrangeas and a bi flag (not terribly subtle, 7/10) and a sticker that says "bi-drangea" (I am SO MAD that I didn't think of that pun myself, 11/10) AND THAT'S IT.
I REQUEST, NAY, DEMAND MORE BI-DRANGEA MERCH. COME ON, PEOPLE.
Kegare, Shinto Buddhism and how it gets reflected in Japanese video game writing. (Fire Emblem and Zelda Botw/Totk centric)
Gonna blab on a very specific aspect of Japanese Shinto :D. This is not talked about often despite the sheer amount of stuff out there so here's me talking about it.
So. It often goes something like this. The Hero gets a powerful magical weapon at some point. They fight through the Big Bad's army of mooks while they may journey throughout the land. Eventually, they, or the weapon mcguffin gets powered up by a higher power, and at the climax, the Hero/es comes through to take down the evil big bad Demon King-esque malevolent monster/dragon/non-human out, thereby succeeding in saving the world.
Any of that sound familiar? It should, for anyone who has engaged with just about any Nintendo media from Mario to Fire Emblem to Breath of The Wild.
This big bad character archetype is also known as Maou, or the Demon King. 魔王 can also be translated into Sorcerer/Magic King, but the negative evilness associated with it is more apt. TvTropes even lists this as a trope (link)!
The why they are often times taken down this way though, kiiiind of lies within Shinto Buddhism. (And by extension many of other culture/religion's concept of 'ritual cleanliness', but for this post I'm ignoring them! Sorry!)
I'll switch gears a bit to culture/religious stuff and talk about Kegare under the cut.
I think everyone who has ever touched any Nintendo or Japanese related media has ran into the concept of 'kegare', or 'spiritual uncleanliness' multiple times without realizing it.
Kegare (穢れ or 汚れ) is the concept of 'spiritual dirtiness'.
Translated as 'pollution' or 'defilement', to be kegare'd is to be dirtied in some form, often times through action. Generally speaking, kegare is a negative energy typically generated upon contact with death, childbirth, disease and menstruation. But it can also come into state through particularly powerful, negative state of emotions such as hate, jealousy, guilt and anger as well. Note that Kegare isn't by itself a moral or judgemental concept, but rather a force of nature. Kegare is not sin, and therefore cannot be seen as such!
You can think of kegare as bad vibes, bad juju, or even miasma. They're very similar concepts.
With enough bad vibes (basically), a place, object, or a person can be polluted so hard that evil spirits might manifest and cause harm to both them and their surroundings. Hence why Japanese media loves depicting places with bad vibes like the hospitals to be full of yokais or ghosts looking to cause harm.
This is why characters who harbor ambitions of taking over the world are seen as Maous. It's why characters like Hegemon Husk!Edelgard, Grima, Ganon, Mr. Grizz all fit into this evil, ambitious, resentful, almost force-of-nature-like beings who brings with them death to the world. Because they aren't just bringing death with them, they're about to unleash the largest tsunami of bad vibes they can into the world too!
But, the state of kegare can be purified away. There are 2 main ways to do so. Misogi, and Harae.
Misogi (禊)
By standing under a waterfall or washing the body with water, kegare can purified. Notably though, one must be dressed in white during this ritual cleansing. This specific concept is known as Misogi, and you might have come across it in botw already:
In BoTW, Zelda attempts to purify herself in order to unlock the power of the Goddess. By visiting important spiritual places and washing herself in its water in white, she's performing Misogi.
In Fire Emblem Heroes, Naga will suggest this to Kiran, the Player Character:
But misogi isn't exactly why big bads get the holy weapon whacking treatment. If you have noticed, misogi affects only the willing individual taking part in ritual cleansing. The real reason is actually...
Harae (祓)
Harae can mean 2 things. To drive out, or, exorcise. Consenting or not, harae essentially drives out or purifies kegare in another person, place, or object through rituals.
Harae can involve ceremonies, song and dance, using a ritual cleansing tool(!) such as the onusha.
As an example of the former, Azura in Fire Emblem Fates essentially embodies the power of misogi through her association with waters and purification. Here, she tries to exorcise the evil inside of Garon. She is actually performing harae!
As an example of the latter, the cleansing tools.... Why, it should be sounding familiar now.
Be it the Falchion, Yato, Fire Emblem, Breidablik, The Creator Sword, the Master Sword, Ocarina of Time, The Twilight Bow, they all share 2 very similar traits:
Be powered up by the good juju power/light
Whack the big bad maou with it, sometimes unleashing light in the process
In this context that I'm presenting, they are all tools of purification/exorcism. Sit down and think about this. Think about all the Japanese JRPGs you've played so far and see how much this clicks.
The Hero gains a weapon/tool/relic, powers it up in some way or is inherently already powered, and then uses that to smack the big bad and win. Sometimes the tools can be the heroes themselves, but it is often the very similar song and dance (heh). Hell, you can even extend this beyond Fire Emblem and Zelda. Maybe even extend it to anime and manga, and you might find the same themes in places you don't expect.
It's kind of neat to think about. Essentially, the hero not just defeats the big bad, but kind of purifies them as well.
But! There's another reason why weapons are often the divine relics needed to deliver the finishing blow in video games, and why they are almost always associated with characters of authority.
The Imperial Regalia of Japan/ The Three Sacred Treasures
There exists 3 treasures which represents 3 primary virtues and are part of the enthronement ceremony in Japan. They have never been shown to the public to symbolize authority, so no one but the authority knows what they look like. The above image is just an artist's impression of what they might resemble. They exist, supposedly.
The Sword is known as Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the mirror as Yata no Kagami, and the jewel as Yasakani no Magatama. They represent Valour, Wisdom and Benevolence respectively. They are said to be brought into this world by Japanese gods, passed to the first emperor of Japan, Emperor Jimmu, who said to be a descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.
Yep, this is also why Fire Emblem is always about noble blooded people with divine weapons.
Yep, these are also the original inspiration for the triforce in The Legend of Zelda.
I won't get into the details behind the Regalia's story in this post, it's too long! Linfamy has done a video about the Regalia if you're interested.
Hopefully this was interesting. Again, feel free to take the ideas here and read up on it externally. So many, many videos and posts and I've not seen people talk at all about this. Sadge.
But before I close off this post, there is a negative side to this kegare concept, in which real people are discriminated against in Japan. ...Remember the association with death for kegare? Yeah... Uhm, someone needs to take care of the dead in any society and butcher livestocks for food, so what happens to those people? ...Messed up things, actually. If you are interested to learn about this, feel free to check this video out (link). Warning: it's a huge downer of a video.
And I think I've spent enough time writing this! Ty for reading this far if you did! ❤️
Coworkers were talking about the Lilo and Stitch live action film and they said Gantu wasn't in the film then asked if i knew who that was and i was like "the hot alien guy yeah" without thinking and everyone just kept saying "what what do you mean" and asking me to clarify and i just shrugged and wouldnt elaborate
see the problem here is I'm on the monsterfucking website where I've made a legacy for myself as being a top 10 monster/furry fucker and this feels like "yeah wereralph would say that" but i can not stress i litterally can not stress enough
how
normal
and
lowkey
i am irl
and i seem like. so fucking normal. like im a fucking square irl no one knows about my online legacy. no one knows i've drawn bowser with his dick out. I'm so normal other coworkers think i'm a baseline for normalcy. they come to me with their weird stories that are actually tame.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
To my 25 - 35 year olds, you've reached the age where people around you are starting to give up on themselves because they think it's too late. Don't let that energy rub off on you. It's not too late.