bageled

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.

And then I went to the USAmerican Midwest

Rains frequently, but the worst is like standing under a bathroom shower. Genuinely inhospitable rainstorms are uncommon.

Along the coast, it's pretty easy in most areas to walk to at least one store, or else there's usually a bus or shuttle available. There are sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere.

It's a temperate boreal rainforest, so while there are many freshwater lakes and rivers, they're usually pretty cold. The biggest danger is typically getting caught in a strong current, and the most dangerous animals in swimming distance are on land.

Earthquakes happen almost every day, but the vast majority go unnoticed. Buildings are designed to withstand bigger seismic activity, so unless it's a 5 or higher it just kind of feels like having low blood sugar for a second. There are no tornados

Rural Illinois, USA:

One minute it's sunny, then ten minutes later that distant smudge on the horizon has swallowed the entire sky in black clouds and the water is coming down like waterfall and you literally CANNOT SEE. Then there's a crash like cymbals and you need to get indoors because the thunder and lightening are on TOP of you

No sidewalks until you are in the smack dab center of town, which is a three hour walk or twenty minute drive from wherever you are.

There aren't many natural bodies of water other than small ponds and creeks, and because the environment is so much warmer, those are filled with snapping turtles that can grow bigger than a nine year old child and water snakes that are incredibly venomous. These are paired with leeches and mosquitos for that sweet umami flavor.

part of my role is going to people and gently saying "hey please stop taking photos of people without their consent. that can be dangerous for the people in the photos and you were asked not to at the start of the rally/march" and I have had people threaten to punch me over it so........

just stop taking photos. I don't care if they're "just for you" or if you "plan to redact them" you have no idea what situation someone is in and your photos will never be secure. if you want to take a photo just ask people in it first.

and of course they're always like "well what about those people taking photos" and I explain that "those people are known to our community and know who does and doesn't want a photo. people have already consented or not consented at past events to that person's photos and they know this" or "thanks for pointing that out I will talk to them too because they also should not be taking photos." this also, of course, does not solve the conflict and they continue taking photos anyways.

I have my own tactics for stopping photos when someone refuses that don't involve smashing cameras but they tend to escalate things anyways.

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

Grace is not a robot. Grace is not a child. Grace is not the youngest of a group. Grace is not naive and innocent.

The corporate wing of the Democratic Party is looking to fight back after three insurgent progressive candidates knocked off establishment favorites in primary elections in New York this week. Axios reported on Thursday that centrist Democrats are gearing up to organize against progressives and democratic socialists, who have been racking up victories over the last two years by presenting themselves as an alternative to a failed status quo that lost the 2024 election to President Donald Trump. One anonymous centrist Democrat predicted to Axios that “there’s going to be a war” between factions in the party, referring to democratic socialists as “bomb-throwers, not problem solvers.” “Clearly there has to be organization,” another centrist Democrat explained to Axios of their faction’s plans. “You can’t just wring your hands on this stuff.” To push back against recent victories by democratic socialists, 15 centrist Democrats on Thursday announced their support for the “Promise to America” manifesto in which they emphasize their support for capitalism, law enforcement, and “fiscal discipline.”

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

"A marriage ending isn't a failure at all. I spent eleven years with her. We were so in love that we couldn't image life apart from each other. We got our own place, adopted a dog, and supported each other through school. I thought if tow people loved each other enough the rest would fall into place, except... love isn't everything.

And I didn't want to believe that, but we were sitting in counseling one day, talking about our future and I realized we were describing two completely different lives. Where we'd live, what kind of life we wanted, what made us happy. And it hit me that- I love this woman and this woman loved me. And after eleven years of loss, grief, career changes, we were so deeply in love... but we weren't aligned. And I kept thinking 'We just need to try harder. We can find some compromise to make this work,' because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone, right?

But the reality was, we had just become different people. Her trade school took her in one direction, my graduate degree in another and trying to force us back into who we were five years ago wasn't coming from a place of love. It was coming from a place of fear. Fear that, if this ended, it meant we wasted eleven years. But sitting there across from her, I realized: That's not how love works.

Those eleven years happened. They were real. The dog, our home, showing up for each other through grad school and trade school. I wouldn't change a single thing because loving someone doesn't mean you're meant to stay with them forever. And letting go doesn't erase what you had. We measure marriage by whether it lasts forever or not, but what if we measured it by whether it mattered?

What if we measured it by the love we gave, the life we built, and the people we became? Because love's job isn't to last forever, it's to help you become fully completely yourself, and sometimes the most loving thing you can do is give each other permission to be yourselves, separately. But the dog doesn't know were' divorced. He just gets two Christmases now."