The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials
Desalination is the process of generating freshwater from brackish or saltwater, usually through the process of reverse osmosis. While this can be a very useful tool in water shortages, it also has some pretty huge drawbacks--reverse osmosis requires a lot of energy, requires chemical treatment of the water, and produces concentrated brine as a waste product which can be harmful to aquatic ecosystems.
Researchers have recently discovered a new way to perform desalination using solar energy, which doesn't require chemical inputs and collects waste salt instead of producing brine. Concentrating the waste salt in a solid form instead of brine means that it can later be processed to extract valuable minerals like lithium.
…So once again it’s the time of year when I return to this piece of digital art in its most recent version, tweak it a little in the attempt to get closer to what I see in my head, and repost it for Pride. (ETA, 1 June 2026: this year's version of the image is rerendered with warmer interior colors and some other minor tweaks. In other news, I'm now convinced that I will continue tweaking this art once a year for the rest of my natural life, because I will not fucking rest until it's perfect, and that day... is not today.) 😅
...Meanwhile:
At the moment I’m looking yet again at These Two Idiots (because honestly, in some ways they are...) and considering, once again with the usual bemusement, how long I’ve been working with them. Of all the characters I’ve worked with in print, the only ones I’ve known longer would be the crew of NCC-1701—and (as of a couple of years back in 2024) for the first time in paid writing, a couple of gentlemen named Holmes and Watson.
I first “met” the two characters above in late 1970 in the form of two fellow college students on whom they’d be loosely based: a couple of gents—not gay, as it happens—who were friends to me when I badly needed some. They were a tall dark-haired guy and a short blond one with a mustache that came and went… so that, not even knowing the word “trope” at the time, I'd fallen sideways into at least one.
(Adding a break here, because (shrug) whatever. More story below. CAUTION: contains Star Trek, Tolkien, character backstory, tradpub book history, bedtime stories that were finally forced to become better than the originals, first-book trauma [it got better...], and yet another year of refusing to allow this early(-ish) version of queer representation in fantasy to be erased.)
...So. Less than a year after I met those guys, I changed schools and educational tracks, and we all drifted apart. But something about those two stuck with me. The nature and depth of their friendship was unusual. So was one way it manifested itself: in ruthless snark that had no meanness or cruelty about it whatsoever—just (sometimes slightly rueful and eye-rolling) affection.
In the late sixties I’d pivoted from the Star Trek fanfic I'd been writing practially since the series premiered, to start in on writing some very derivative epic-fantasy fic strongly influenced by Tolkien. Rather to my surprise, though, as I started nursing school in 1971, the nature of that fiction started to change, and began rearranging itself around two characters who had a friendship like that of my college friends. With them at its core, a rather different and subversive kind of medieval-flavored fantasy world started knitting itself together from various scraps of themes and imagery lying around in the back of my brain.
Even so early in the construction phases of this world, something the characters quickly made plain to me in the writing was that their relationships with one another were not what mainstream 1970s culture would consider conventional. They were unquestionably what we'd now think of as queer… but that was a background issue,* and not at all the most important thing in their lives. They had far more important business to deal with—as became clear as their personalities and priorities started filling themselves out in the foreground.
One of them turned out to be the deliberate, analytical, methodical son of a provincial nobleman, all too aware of the expectations of those around him: that he was eventually likely to wind up running that province himself. Yet at the same time he also became aware that he had other more serious problems—chief among them the discovery that he possessed a nascent power that would kill him young if he failed to master it. And in the last thousand years, no one of his gender ever had.
The other presented himself more and more clearly as a difficult case: someone who wanted very much to be good at the family business, but wasn’t… and knew it. Kind of a screw-up, full of romanticized and unrealistic takes on the world and his relationship with it: repeatedly doing the wrong things for what he was sure were the right reasons. Yet no matter how often he screwed up, he was also the kind of person who keeps picking himself up and trying again, because he’s been told over and over that that’s what people like him have to do: otherwise they’re no use to anybody.
Imagine my shock when I realized that these two men—initially canonically enemies in their adolescence, then best friends as they grew, and eventually much more—were the (incomplete) answer to the question I’d once asked my Mom at the end of the bedtime reading of some fairy tale or other: “Why can’t a prince rescue another prince?”§ Because one of them got himself more than once into situations where he really needed one kind or another of rescuing. The other one obliged him, while once or twice getting rescued (in different modes) himself. Those interlocking patterns started to solidify out of concept and into character detail and plot, while their world grew and proliferated into its own detail around them.
Then, without warning, in 1978 both world and characters decided they were ready to get real. I was abruptly dragged gasping and flailing under the surface of a novel that would begin the tale of what those two characters had yet to become. The period it took to produce that first draft was possibly the most interesting six weeks of my life… and that includes the six weeks during which I first scrubbed in on brain surgery. Day and night, for days at a time, I barely even existed except as something for a novel to come out of. When it was done with me, it just as abruptly dumped me back into my life and wandered away, leaving me staring around, blinking and wondering if anybody’d got the number of that truck. Nothing like it has ever happened to me since, which may be just as well. I’m none too sure that these days I could handle the strain.
The book—which sold within a couple of weeks of its manuscript landing on its first publisher’s desk—kicked off my career as novelist and screenwriter, and in its way proved that the world was at least slightly ready for epic fantasy in which the basic culture was pansexual, polyamorous, and inclusive in ways that hadn’t been attempted before.
So I owe them a debt, those two gentlemen up there: the tall dark curly-haired guy with the amateur strategist’s mind, the blacksmith’s shoulders, and the peculiar sword, his background thought always nibbling away at the question of how to heal the world’s wounds: and the short fair gent who if he could would stay at home, live quietly in town, and work in the local library… except for when saving the world (or his found family) requires him to subsume his work-in-progress kingship and his being into that of his ancestral demigod. Due to the success of the book in which they made their debut, these two became, in their way, the fairy† godfathers of the Young Wizards—and additionally enabled all that Star Trek fanfic I’d started writing a decade before to proceed to its logical conclusion.
More to the point, though, a lot of people in the 1980s and ‘90s who’d never seen queer representation in a fantasy novel, found it first (or at last) while following Herewiss and Freelorn down their shared road. It’s been my pleasure to hold that space for new readers, and to keep adding to it… because—if you ask me—it’s needed more now than ever.
So, to the readership of the Middle Kingdoms works (now pushing half a century old) and everybody else who (with me and Dusty and Lorn and [in other universes, Tom and Carl and the rest]) are celebrating the season: happy Pride!
ETA: Just noting here for those who might be interested that, as usual, the LGBTQ Pride Bundle at Ebooks Direct is discounted more deeply than usual for Pride Month. With the usual warning to UK readers: friends, our apologies, but due to Brexit we can no longer sell ebooks to you directly. However, most of these works are currently available to UK readers through Amazon.com.
*Not least because everybody else in their world is (at least potentially) some shade of queer, including God.
§ For certain values of "prince". See here for more detail.
If we both were born
In another place and time
This moment might be ending in a kiss
But there you are with yours
And here I am with mine
So I guess we'll just be leaving it at this
I love you
I honestly love you
I honestly love you
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
✨ good places to find art reference that are not full of AI trash 🌈
Migraines are literally the stupidest thing in human evolution. "Oh no, we're experiencing too much Thing! Better send a rail spike through the skull and blind ourselves about it" like c'mon, man
If you don't want LinkTree putting your imagery into AI... get out now
Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:
IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.
doubly funny that I saw a compilation of all the corporate accounts like "aw thanks elmo, we're doing well" meanwhile all the flesh and blood real human people are extremely not okay
...Sometimes you just shake your head at people, you know?
Tale the First: My Girlfriend Baked All My Beans
(Courtesy of Darach Ó Séaghdha over at Bluesky)
Noting this fabulous response from @permaconfused at Bluesky:
ETA: There's a second half to this story.
(sigh)
...But wait, there's more!
Tale the Second: My Girlfriend Buried All My Beans In The Woods And Won't Tell Me Where
I said why only bury the beans, why not bury our more valuable items? She said the canned food was most valuable for long-term means, and that since we get fresh food in our online grocery deliveries, it would make sense to continue to stockpile beans. She intends to go bury more beans in the woods every week.
This was too insane for me and I got very upset. I demanded to know where the beans were buried, and she refused to tell me. She said if I knew she was afraid I'd dig them up, I said damn right I would. She said "I will never jeopardize the beans." I crossed the line and said she was out of her mind, she stormed away. We have not talked since last night.
...Results Warning: Matters do not go well for this chap.
Meanwhile, in the "Baked All The Beans" dep't again: Couldn't help but think that, around here, matters would have gone differently.
@petermorwood: “Where’s all my beans?"
DD: "Baked 'em all."
PM: "Even the magic ones from selling the cow?"
DD: "Guess so, yeah, if they were in with the pintos."
PM: "Was it the recipe from the Three Village Inn, the one with the pork belly?"
DD: "Yeah."
PM: "Okay, I'll crack some rosé. Write "More Beans" up on the shopping list, yeah?"
DD: "Yeah. Light the BBQ? We've got steak in the freezer…"😏
...Just as info: I'd stayed at the TVI back in the earlyish-80s for a convention, and P. and I visited there around Christmas time before we were married. There was pheasant on the menu... but the baked beans were BETTER (in the great scheme of things) than the pheasant. Over some years of trying I arrived at a recipe that was similar to theirs (which they possibly correctly refused to give away). It remains, in memory, a high water mark of baked-beandom.
Sometimes simple things are the best. :)
ETA2: cc: @academicgangster: ...I've never written it down. Give me a little time to test current ingredients. :)
If you could have one Shakespeare play done by the Muppets what would it be?
obviously a Midsummer Night's Dream, can you imagine? Kermit as Oberon, Miss Piggy as Titania, the non-fae characters are played by the only humans, when Bottom is transformed he physically becomes a muppet, Puck is naturally Gonzo with bonus Rizzo
if you'd like to show support, here are some upcoming queer books:
When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story about two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.
This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.
and then here's a list of 26 queer books by Black authors set to publish this year, and a 10 upcoming books by trans authors. if you want to fight back against queer censorship, use your wallet! or (if that's not an option) you can contact your local library and ask them to stock a copy.
I had a fifteen minute long crying session yesternight over the fact that all I was 10 years ago, at the ripe old age of 14, is lost and lonely, and now, at 24, I am neither and that filled me with so much gratitude
reblog to tell a teenager that these aren’t actually the best years of your life and that things can and will get better when you have independance and maybe are away from your situation right now.
Same thing with young adults. It can still get better. Your thirties aren’t when you’re getting old, that’s 70s-80s and we all know old people can be cool as hell anyway.
It might take time. More than has already passed, but it will get better.
It gets better. It does, right? Yeah. Yeah it gets better.
There’s a Costco on the way home from the airstrip where we fly so I typically two-birds-one-stone a flight with stocking up on groceries, which means leaving my engine on the hitch rack in the Costco parking lot.
Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like the joy of pushing your cart outside to find a dad and his 6ish year old daughter examining your engine and when kiddo realizes that YOU are the owner of said car and YOU are the pilot of said aircraft, shouts at the top of her lungs DAD SHE’S A GIRL (as if her father cannot see you perfectly well himself).
And if later, after spending some time answering her questions and letting her hold the throttle, her dad says quietly, “I hope you know she’s going to be talking about you for weeks.” Well that’s fine. You don’t get emotional about that on the ride home. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.
This is a special one. It's a true story about the very good and somewhat eldritch dog who saved my life. You can read it for free, and I hope by the end, you'll love Bebop as much as I do.
Get more from OnBearFeet - Kat Beaufort on Patreon
No dogs are harmed in this essay, although because its events were part of my childhood, you can pretty much assume all dogs mentioned in it are no longer with us because that's how time works.
