Elizabeth. She/They. High school English teacher. Psudo-Paleo eater by force. Here there be: jokes/puns/memes, literary analysis, current events, and random shit.
when a government bans young people from using social media, and then categorises messenger apps like Signal and WhatsApp as "social media", they are pushing those young people toward using text messages, a fundamentally insecure form of communication. texts are not encrypted in transit and can be read by both the sender's mobile carrier and the recipient's. that also means they can be leaked in data breaches, subpoenaed, or just handed over willingly to law enforcement at the carriers' discretion.
this is not JUST about destroying kids' privacy by the way, although that is bad on its own! but think about it: if you can push everyone to spend their formative social years communicating through an insecure protocol, most of them are not going to do the work of moving to a secure one the moment they're legally allowed! banning everyone under 16 from Signal and WhatsApp creates a whole population of people more likely to continue, for the rest of their lives, to communicate using a tool the government can access at the drop of a hat
azune having the craziest 36 hours ever like investigate the site of a massacre, watch a partial resurrection, get lightly flirted with by the heavily grief-stricken guy you do not like after lightly blackmailing him, go to work, watch like 70% of your coworkers get fired, accidentally make your new fascist boss interested in you, tell your friend said fascist boss might know your history as a child soldier and so you might die, before you can even process also find out the man who you followed into battle that was kind of your father figure may have intentionally not tried to escape at his public execution, realize it’s a non-zero he did that to spare your life, try to hold it together, get called out by all your clearly worried allies for looking 2 seconds away from a mental breakdown, see something you should not be able to see but can due to your magical powers, manipulate a religious fascist into liking you, have a sobbing emotional breakdown about your father figure’s death in the home you once stayed in because he sent you there, start building the beginnings of a mercenary spy network, go back to work, find out you have to investigate that same massacre but this time it’s because your new fascist boss is asking you to, realize you have built your entire life around the fires set by your father figure and he’s now dead, start getting the kindling to set some fires of your own.
i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.
I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.
#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)
Okay but imagine being the team of Eridian scientists tasked with keeping Erid's Only Human alive for as long as possible while the whole planet's environment is literally trying to kill him. And then Rocky shows up and is like:
“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”
“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”
Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”
“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”
“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”
To celebrate Erid getting their sun back on track, Grace asks for some alcohol. There's a small amount left from the Hail Mary and Rocky offers to take it to the science Eridians to see if they can synthesise more.
“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”
“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”
“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”
This is the first time I’ve lived somewhere that I do not have any type of covered parking.
Like 1-2 weeks before we moved up here, they had a horrible hail storm. Not quite record-breaking, but wide-spread and large enough to cause pretty significant damage. And since then we’ve had tiny hail maybe twice? And we’re approaching two years of living here.
It’s extremely unsettling to have to just sit here in my 3rd floor apartment and pray the hail does not actually reach the up to 2” mentioned in the warning. There’s nothing I can do! There is not one single thing I could do rn to protect my car or any of these windows.
Also, another important purpose of this mission was to test new spaceflight technologies. They sent some people up and around before bringing them back down to prove that certain new technologies work/are safe before future, longer Artemis missions.
Just like it wasn’t until Apollo 11 that we actually landed on the moon— this was only Artemis 2. There was 10 other Apollo missions before the “big important one that everyone remembers/still talks about”, and there were 6 more after (Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo missions).
Artemis 2 was only a stepping stone mission to test out new technologies and baby-step our way back into crewed missions to the moon. There is much more to come out of the Artemis missions!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Hippie church moms donating quinoa chips to my local food bank have done more for me materially than any internet idealist ever has.
People get pissed at me for being a pragmatist in my political ideals but I’ve been in the position where I was out of food right now.
And who helped me with that? Not people calling for some nebulous revolution. Not people telling me that the system was useless. Not people preaching at me to grow my own food. It was a church food bank partially funded by the state of Texas that some southern hippies donated a bunch of Whole Foods nonsense to.
And you know what? I’m sick and tired of defeatism. What can we get done right now, huh? Are you gonna accept something a bit better to help people right now or are you waiting for your perfect utopia to come to you?
Yeah, UBI is better than the quinoa chips. Sure. But right now the quinoa chips are stopping people from going hungry and if all we can do is get the food bank quinoa chips to more people, then I say so be it. That’s something. I’ll almost always take baby steps over nothing.
The slimy strings from okra and the gel from fenugreek seeds can trap microplastics better than the slightly-toxic synthetic polymer in use.
"The substances behind the slimy strings from okra and the gel from fenugreek seeds could trap microplastics better than a commonly used synthetic polymer.
Texas researchers proposed in 2022 using these sticky natural polymers to clean up water. Now, they’ve found that okra and/or fenugreek extracts attracted and removed up to 90% of microplastics from ocean water, freshwater, and groundwater.
With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Rajani Srinivasan and colleagues at Tarleton State University found that the plant-based polymers from okra, fenugreek, and tamarind stick to microplastics, clumping together and sinking for easy separation from water.
In this next stage of the research, they have optimized the process for okra and fenugreek extracts and tested results in a variety of types of water.
To extract the sticky plant polymers, the team soaked sliced okra pods and blended fenugreek seeds in separate containers of water overnight. Then, researchers removed the dissolved extracts from each solution and dried them into powders.
Analyses published in the American Chemical Society journal showed that the powdered extracts contained polysaccharides, which are natural polymers. Initial tests in pure water spiked with microplastics showed that:
One gram of either powder in a quart (one liter) of water trapped microplastics the most effectively.
Dried okra and fenugreek extracts removed 67% and 93%, respectively, of the plastic in an hour.
A mixture of equal parts okra and fenugreek powder reached maximum removal efficiency (70%) within 30 minutes.
The natural polymers performed significantly better than the synthetic, commercially available polyacrylamide polymer used in wastewater treatment.
Then the researchers tested the plant extracts on real microplastic-polluted water. They collected samples from waterbodies around Texas and brought them to the lab. The plant extract removal efficiency changed depending on the original water source.
Okra worked best in ocean water (80%), fenugreek in groundwater (80-90%), and the 1:1 combination of okra and fenugreek in freshwater (77%).
The researchers hypothesize that the natural polymers had different efficiencies because each water sample had different types, sizes and shapes of microplastics.
Polyacrylamide, which is currently used to remove contaminants during wastewater treatment, has low toxicity, but its precursor acrylamide is considered toxic. Okra and fenugreek extracts could serve as biodegradable and nontoxic alternatives.
“Utilizing these plant-based extracts in water treatment will remove microplastics and other pollutants without introducing additional toxic substances to the treated water,” said Srinivasan in a media release, “thus reducing long-term health risks to the population.”
She had previously studied the use of food-grade plant extracts as non-toxic flocculants to remove textile-based pollutants from wastewater and thought, ‘Why not try microplastics?’"
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it
tyranny announcing “everyone, wicander has something to share with the new people, and you better be nice to him about it, okay?” and wick saying “thank you, tyranny.” and tyranny telling wick “go ahead.” and wick telling everyone “briefly, the photarch has been distilling celestial blood from a trapped and tortured angel in my basement for decades. also, the celestial blood of the angel has been tattooed on my face and inserted into my body.” and tyranny demanding “now, be nice!” (bonus: bolaire saying in a strangled voice “wick, that was very helpful.”) 😂
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