fan thoughts at @pawpawholler
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! --Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886
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.
Sometimes I really want to take everyone under the age of 24 (as of 2026) by the shoulders and say:
"I'm really sorry that lockdown and the ongoing pandemic interrupted pivotal educational and social/emotional development moments for you. You have an uphill battle towards adjusting to a lot of community based efforts because you experienced a mass trauma during an incredibly important time in your life where you should have physically been around your peers learning to engage in shared community. There is no "but" here, I'm genuinely really sorry. Something many of us consider key points in our interpersonal growth as youths was taken from you, not without reason but without care for its impact on you. I hope you know we are eternally allies in our struggles and if that is something you struggle to know I hope you can learn it someday."
Because so many of the angriest, most disenfranchised people I see on this website are under 24 and I often try to put younger people's behavior in the context of where they might have been 2020. I've seen the impact on my siblings and their peers+friends first hand, all ages 18-24. We've talked about how its impacted them, the isolation, the attachment to the internet, the anxieties and phobias and fears it developed in them due to the pandemic, the political unrest, and the responses to both that we've seen since. I know they're not the only ones and I know how much being marginalized also influences that impact too.
It's terrifying. I know it must be terrifying for a lot of the young people on Tumblr too. I hope one day we're able to bridge all of those complex feelings into something collective and positive so we can do our best to prevent similar traumas from happening to future generations.
My kid is 15 and just finished 10th grade, he was in 4th grade during lockdown. He's in orchestra, and at a parent meeting we were asking her why she thought every incoming class (of orchestra students) is bigger than the last right now. And she said without hesitation that basically, Covid wiped out the orchestra for a few years and it's just now recovering to its previous size.
In our district you start orchestra/band in 5th grade. So basically any kids who were in 5th or 6th grade, and to some extent 7th and 8th, weren't very committed to it yet when suddenly they were all at home and orchestra was basically canceled for a few months, and a lot of them just dropped it.
And I wonder how many extracurriculars had the same problem, and how many kids basically just stopped doing any of that for a few years. Extracurriculars were central to my social life in high school, I have no idea how else I would've met people (especially bc I moved in 9th grade). Add to that helicopter parenting that probably only got worse with parents feeling paranoid about their kids' safety and you've absolutely got a cohort of kids who are massively undersocialized.
yeah yeah rainbow capitalism is bad and whatever but like. when I was a child, being pro gay was not the popular or lucrative choice. I'm happy that times have changed.
I miss rainbow capitalism. I do. I miss when it felt like public opinion was still pro gay. I understand it was always an empty gesture, but it mattered in a sense of knowing how socially acceptable being queer is. If that makes sense.
Where: region defined by the national government covering 13 states, defined by the geologic Appalachian mountains & areas of high poverty
Who: a sprinkling of local gentry, with a mixture of white trash (akin to a racial slur denoting Southern whites at the bottom of the social hierarchy, particularly Ulster Scots), runaway slaves (Melungeons), Native Americans (particularly Cherokee, Shawnee, and Creek), and others
When:
1780 - Battle of Kings Mountain - refused to disarm during Revolutionary War
1791 - Whiskey Rebellion - forced assimilation into the cash-based economy to fund national bank; resulted in widespread resentment against law enforcement
1830 - Trail of Tears - forced relocation of most of the Cherokee tribe, in part to seize newly discovered gold
1860s - Civil War - central Appalachia was pro-abolitionist including desegregated education (c.f. Berea College); resulted in splitting of Appalachian Virginia from wealthy lowland planter elite Virginia and post-Reconstruction enforcement of Jim Crow laws
1870s- 1880s - enclosure movement resulted in splitting of mineral rights from surface rights; wide-spread clearcutting of old growth forests resulted in wildfires that forced local families into wage work in flood zones and their land sold to large timber companies; whiskey tax enforcement created widespread resentment between whiskey makers and federal tax agents; desperate local gentry fought each other on behalf of external power brokers
1900s - new railroads made central Appalachia's coalfields accessible; when locals revolted against working conditions, mine owners created debt bondage system of Blacks, southern mountaineers, and eastern European immigrants in company towns
1920s - armed revolt by miners led to the Mine Wars (miners lost; coal companies bombed women and children); eugenics movement portrayed mountain peoples as subhuman and inbred and began forced sterilization
1930s - Weeks Act created national parks in Appalachia and forcibly removed locals; Tennessee Valley Authority forcibly displaced tens of thousands of people and flooded their homes for hydroelectric dams
1940s to 2000s - only ~25% population remaining by the end; federal policy encouraged locals to relocate outside of Appalachia; coal industry shrinks
2000s - present - poor environmental laws encourages ecologically damaging industries to provide electricity to Eastern Seaboard, particularly for data centers; most land (about 75%) owned by outside corporations that pay little or no taxes; highest rates of deaths of despair in the country
Why: One theoretical framework is that Appalachia functions as an internal colony from which resources can be extracted to benefit other parts of the country. Research shows that Southern and mountain accents are seen as belonging to less intelligent people. Stereotypes of "witchy" and "feral" Appalachians contribute to othering and continue racism against local Black and Native populations.
For the first time, Space Telescope Science Institute scientists observed a brightness gap in the population of red dwarf stars in an ancient, crowded globular star cluster. A similar gap was first identified in data from relatively nearby stars by the Gaia space observatory. However, it had never before been seen in a globular cluster. This gap provides clues to what’s happening deep within the stars’ interiors.
This finding would not have been possible without the software and techniques originally developed at STScI for the Hubble Space Telescope: https://news.stsci.edu/49x77d1
I know this is a silly question but I literally don't know anything about describing environments in writing as in weather or surroundings etc. When do you think it is most relevant to mention them?
I'm asking this as someone who has HARDLY EVER written anything before
HELLOOO!!! THIS ISNT A SILLY QUESTION AT ALL this actually one of the first things my lecturer taught us when i started my uni course!
Describing environments, weather and outfits is one of the trickiest things in a novel/fic because if done at the wrong moment it can take the reader out of the story and break the flow that a paragraph has, SO HERE ARE MY TIPS FOR WRITING SCENERY:
One of the most important things to think about when writing is that a reader is going to be entering a story with pre-conceived ideas and images of everything that will be mentioned inside it. E.g., if the author writes about a 'house' and its innards, the reader will often put in its place an image of a house from their own memories, because of this when an author goes out of their way to describe anything inside that house it will break the flow and immersion that the reader had.
To stop this, you want to describe as little as possible while retaining as much of your concept as you can. What this means, is you need to describe the "vibe" of a room and any important objects inside it.
Examples of this: "The room was cold, damp where rotten wallpaper sagged astray from each wall." Here, we know that the room has been abandoned/is in a state of disrepair, but the readers imagination is not hindered - they are still able to insert their own furniture and layout. The exception to this rule is as I mentioned previously, when an important object lies within the room.
Let's say that a messy room is important to a characters personality, or, that a character needs to pick up an item from a table, or interact with any kind of furniture (as most characters do.) Continue to use this rule, but add to it.
Example: "The room was cold, damp where rotten wallpaper sagged astray from each wall. It's contents, a sofa and a small coffee table, lay rotten with disuse; littered with scraps of old trash and food wrappings. 'Character-A' took a small, cautionary step forward and grabbed at a half melted piece of chocolate from atop of a couch cushion, a grimace settling across her face." Instead of bombarding the reader with a full paragraph description of the room at once, you are slowly feeding objects to them and telling them how they are supposed to feel about the environment. Without hindering the readers imagination too much, you guide them into seeing the version of the room that you want them to.
A key thing to note is that you should always mention how light or dark a room is, as it sets the tone for an entire scene.
When it comes to outdoor environments, there is a lot more freedom to describe and explore your surroundings. Since being outdoors means a character is going to be in a much larger space with less semantic connotations, a reader is going to have a harder time inserting their own images into this environment.
There are two approaches you can take to describing an outdoor environment: The worldbuilding approach or the pathetic fallacy approach:
Example of worldbuilding: "I took a sharp breath, a cloud of condensation forming before my face. A crisp chill filled the air, carried along by dry, orange leaves that rattled across the pavement and stuck to the wet concrete." This scene suggests the story takes place in late autumn/fall or perhaps early winter, it has no relation to the main characters emotion and merely serves as an environmental tool to help the reader understand the time and place in which the story takes place.
Example of pathetic fallacy: "My nostrils flared as I let out a sharp breath, the air before my face fanning out into a sodden cloud. A crisp chill filled the air and sunk itself deep into my bones, it bit at the swollen skin beneath my eyes; delicate from tears freshly shed, and carried along with it dry, brown leaves that rattled across the pavement and stuck to the wet concrete." By connecting the weather to the main character, there is an inherent connection between it and their emotions. Pathetic fallacy uses the weather as a tool to set the mood for the main character. E.g., if it is storming then the reader will understand the main character is upset, if it is sunny the reader will understand that the main character is happy.
SOME IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
It is always relevant to describe the characters surroundings. There should be a description every time they enter a new room; how in-depth this description is should be dependent on how important the room/environment is to the story - if the room only appears once, then it isn't necessary to give it too much thought, but if it is a room that the character will enter multiple times then you want to be as descriptive as possible so that they can remember it when the character returns.
With creative writing, there are no rules; what I've said in this post isn't definitive and does not need to be followed, if you believe that your work would be best understood if you offered your audience an in-depth description of the environment (something that should most commonly be done if the surroundings are not 'common', i.e., a fantasy world or something wildly specific) then you shouldn't stop yourself from doing that! Writing is all about experimenting and figuring out what works best for you.
Environments shift dependent on the perspective in which the fic is being written in, 1st POV often creates a biased narrative that follows the strict memories of the main character which allows an author to be more creative with the psychology of an environment (an example of this would be the 'Red Room' from Jane Eyre and how Jane's memories of the room paint it differently from how the room really is), while 3rd POV allows a more realistic and direct description.
I KNOW YOU ONLY ASKED about the relevance of describing environments but i lowk went off on one... I JUST LOVE TALKING ABOUT LITERARY TECHNIQUES i get excited, i hope this helps! if you plan on writing anything, you should share it with me i would love to read 👀
After school care pulled me aside about my child dropping an f-bomb “without remorse” and I put on my concerned face and nodded a bunch.
Apparently he was building something with a younger kid “who really looks up to him and is just starting to make friends” and said “Hey, you’re really fucking good at this.” which is, in my estimation, really a parenting victory.
You should be starting a recipe book. I don't give a shit if you're only 20-years-old. The modern web is rotting away bit by bit before our very eyes. You have no idea when that indie mom blog is going down or when Pinterest will remove that recipe. Copy it down in a notebook, physically or digitally. Save it somewhere only you can remove it. Trust me, looking for a recipe only to find out it's been wiped off the internet is so fucking sad. I've learned my lesson one too many times.
when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)
anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.
i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”
and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.
“What?” i say.
“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.
“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid
ok i just copied and pasted this from my first run through of thinking about hockey + bbb. i think i removed a bunch of stuff that wasnt relevant that first time, and maybe actually some of those could have been useful, but they're gone i'm sorry........... past me made a choice
i have also removed / pulled out some others for commentary. but overall this list is absolutely brutally unreadable bc i guess the grid actually is important.... if i separate each prompt onto its own line that's just way too long idk im sorry!!!! anyway feel free to copy paste smash up remix put next to your favourite guy or gyal or totally rework it whatever you just have fun!!!!!
BBB main board:
The Mythology:
capitalism induced found family, age vs talent hierarchies, believing the Myth, no idea what you'd rather be doing but it's not this anymore, mixed talent levels, keep expecting to encounter your limit on what you'll compromise on and not finding it, wholehearted fan of predecessor [hockey] acts, blatant management[/coaching] favouritism, "we were just coworkers" narrative readjustment, suspected stockholm syndrome, post [retirement/trade] identity crisis, chasing the high in "healthy" ways, chasing the high in unhealthy ways, was any of it ever real?, addicted to the [rink] and only ever feel alive while [playing], unjustified loyalty to [franchise],
Inside the Fishbowl:
exponentially increasing animosity towards press, constant threat of falling from heights of success, homesick but no idea where home is, openly despising your fans, mid-performance horniness (...surely?), post-performance horniness ("if i scored four goals i'd have my cock out, stroking it", etc), concerningly hysterical on[ice] crying, child labour (x1000000), exhibitionism is absolutely not subtext, ruining a normie's life by dating them, masochism is absolutely not subtext, will never ever ever escape this period of your life, speedwalk and avoid eyecontact, leaning into psuedo-intimacy with fans, [rink]sona is just an exaggeration of all your worst qualities (PEST PLAYERS!!!!),
Selfhood:
crushed by the weight of your own potential, relentless perfectionism that doesn't let you enjoy success, burdgeoning substance abuse/alcoholism as comedic fallback [/bonding activity], all motivation is from external sources, cant open up because of your leader[ship] responsibilities, desperately trying to recapture glory days, [ALWAYS] saying "we" in solo interviews (lol), high school drop out, taste stopped evolving at age 16, oblivious selfishness, body on the line taken to the extreme, no vocabulary for your existential crisis, tattoos are [hockey] themed, inflated ego due to being the smartest of the illiterates, tattoos to assert bodily autonomy, compulsive behaviours with obvious origins, desperate to recapture glory days
NoHomoZone:
intricate rituals to touch the skin of other men, weird threesomes (surely), codependency, x likes y and y loves x (the original hockey feature!), pseudo-dating your [teammates] without realising, clashing love languages, bedsharing as coping mechanism (I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE....?), irony, the 6th love language, resigned acceptance of knowing the team j/o schedule (screaming at it being "team" in the original ver and not "group"), giving up on asserting personal space boundaries,
The Dynamics:
struggling to define your intimacy to outsiders (USING "BROTHER" BUT IT IS NEVER SUFFICIENT? ), ominous mindreading abilities, casual nudity, stop smothering me- no wait come back keep smothering me, pigtail pulling, knowing exactly which buttons to push for maximum reaction (confirmed* *? what what i talking about here), exploit intimate knowledge to keep each other limping along and the product functioning (this being the MAIN thesis of How Sports Labour Extraction Works...!), fitting arguments around [play] schedule, family wealth disparities, inter-[team] power struggling, all eyes averted from trainwreck [teammate], trainwreck turns infectious, toxic rivalry, no time to acknowledge that particularly blatant cry for help!, picking up each other's mannerisms, resenting others for their emotional resiliency,
idk how i feel about re-contextualising the gg board for male athletes but it kinda bangs so.....
from GG board:
any attempts to [side or up]skill are thwarted, x and her backup dancers (lol.), mass hate from fickle [big market] fanbase, hurtling towards expiration date (always sooner rather than later), knowing management is pitting you against each other and walking right into their trap, doing everything right and still flopping, nation's little [sibling], aware of your interchangeability and disposability, consciously leaning on Gender Performance for [rink]sona, Am I Good at being a [hockey player] or being a [man]?, Arrested [boy]hood, moronsona leaks into everyday, gilded cage stockholm syndrome, no new friends/no friends at all, Sincere[brother]hoodBeliever, bff roleplay becomes real, shroedinger's [twink/european], [gay] cat amongst the pigeons, not wanting the [team] to end because then heterosexuality kicks in, body is your worth.
Like actually part of the fun of leaving the gg board as it was and then applying it to bgs was the genderful alchemy of it all... "arrested girlhood" slapped onto some dude. now we're cooking. "sincere sisterhood believer" means something DIFFERENT than brotherhood you know........ And also a lot of these are less meaningful or compelling applied to men bc its like well half of this idea is misogyny, i dont want stolen valor pathos! Maybe these just have to be reworked and rethought entirely w/ a different categorisation so i dont feel annoyed about it.
foreign member board:
not gonna lie this one is just like. the entire board bc its just like [this is what it's like to live and work overseas] lmao.
can't remember the last time you heard your name pronounced correctly, different language = different persona, being the most popular [player] in your home country, not being the most popular [player] in your home country, "if we were arguing in my native tongue i'd be winning", learning insults first, growing fluency and growing realisation you don't like these people, pervasive sense of being treated with suspicion, sunk cost fallacy x1000, dying without skinship roughhousing because you don't know how to communicate otherwise, no real choice in which local [player] adopts you, intense bond with countrymates despite clashing personalities, exploiting oblivious foreigner stereotype to do what you want, extra precarious employment status and knowing it
some things i would change/add:
Holy Shit We Are Flopping(/losing) - flopping is SO specific a phenomenon in kpop it's not just being unpopular or failing badly it's like there were High expectations and THEN you failed to meet them, and also you know that your existence is on the verge of being Under Threat / totally blown up. And tbh the kind of arbitrary unpredictability of popularity totally disconnected from actual skill is also really distinctly part of it too.... a team at the start of a rebuild cant "flop" but a team that has spent big at the deadline or had big (or even decent?) expectations coming into the season can definitely Holy Shit We Are Flopping (nux)
shipping ruins your relationship/s - honestly tbh i feel like this is still kinda real, even the way journos get shippy or pry into friendships and stuff... like people WANT you to be best friends but you just arent. or how like they want you to be good at playing with x linemate or dpair but actually you would rather play with y but sucked in you dont get to pick. idk it's kind of a weird not super useful one though
horny for honorifics -> horny for pet names? homophobic/misogynistic slurs but in a friendly way? (ok kind of an aside but it's soooo interesting to think about how cruel it is to make a homosocial hothouse environment WITHOUT a honorifics langauge system tbh. like maybe the slurs wouldnt be so common as an AFFECTIONATE language if they could call each other hyung)
feeling like an alien interloper in real life - i know many players talk about how weird it is trying to adjust to eg. offseason or spending time with family but really i feel like this is a bit of a *rolls eyes* bc of how glorified pro athletes are in every day environment lol
Short term gains at a long term cost (tbh this one still feels too obvious and overly simple but it's funnier now to think of it in terms of a Management Roster Building principle)
fanservice(?) as outlet of sublimated emotions - i dont even know what fanservice would be in this reworking but theres just way too much sublimation in sport for this not to be one? -> Cellys as outlet of sublimated emotions I Guess
big fan of your own modelling work -> big fan of your own highlight reels
members leaving and group continuing -> Blowing Up The Core
Beloved 4th Line Plug
Draft year jitters
Sophomore slump
Draft bust(tm)
Vibes guy veteran here to babysit the superstar
Glueguy Vs Stud Hierarchies
The Inherent Tradeability of Middle Six Scoring Wingers on Expiring Contracts
Rebuild goes haywire
on-ice effectiveness vs contract size ice-time balancing act
communally enforced moronsona
Yet another Trade For A Stick? Fan at warmies that you know is gonna hock it on ebay
Expected to understand american car culture
Golf
Cap Issues contained in one easily blameable guy
Linemate is just you but ten years younger
Emotional immaturity a workplace asset
kiss ass hours at season ticket holder events
sister is better at sport
DMs full of straight men who are psychosexually obsessed with you and dont seem to realise it
having to lay aside your well developed and hard earned adult identity yet again <- originally this was a GG board but i think there are certain players esp europeans who are like Having To Lay Aside My Well Developed and Hard Earned Adult Identity To Socialise With OHL Cultists Yet Again
"there are other gay ones and somehow they're dealing it infinitely better than you" <- idk about this one since it's so specific but also i'm kinda trying to work on it rn so LOL i'll just include it
closing notes
tbh i feel like overall there are some key gaps and missing elements and like.. fundamental incompatabilities bc kpop is by definition hyperaccelerationist camp & kind of farcical even if it is a huge socio-cultural Phenomena or whatever, and 80% of the ecosystem is flop nugu groups that arent breaking even. whereas ~50% of an nhl roster are Hot Shit Rich & wildly successful & it's a traditionally hegemonic sports environment so it's just like.... there's so much narcissism and entitlement that isn't covered by this and the intergroup/team dynamic is totally different because Going Solo is a thing that is possible to desire in a boyband/gg .
also atp i just feel like introducing empathetic interiority to these sorts of men is kind of doomed as an overarching project w/ major pitfalls no matter which way you swing it, but bbb also had to grapple with that and try and thread the needle. and kind of flopped and kind of suceeded but truly who even knows. i just hope someone enjoys this! sorry it took me so long to post!
janainaart
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
titsay
jbbartram-illu
izzy806
stormborns
