YES IT TOOK ME TWO YEARS TO WRITE THIS CHAPTER NO THE FIC ISN'T ABANDONED I'M GOING TO FINISH THIS ENORMOUS PROJECT COME HELL OR HIGHWATER BABEYYYYYYYYY
BBC Merlin really is the most show of all time, huh. Casting 4 almost completely unknown children to play the leads against absolute hotshots Anthony Head and John Hurt. John Hurt, who, plays the world's shittest dragon. Not to mention casting a Black woman to play the legendary Queen Guinevere in 2008. When they swapped "rests on the shoulders of a young boy" to "rests on the shoulders of a young man" at the start of S4. Magic as a very blatant metaphor for queerness which Katie McGrath all but confirmed in the DVD commentary for 5x13. Complete disregard for any historical accuracy. "Do you know how to walk on your knees?" Arthur's slutty little S1 necklaces and bracelets. His beautiful brown coat that they nerfed by S3. Bradley James as Arthur Pendragon. You get it.
Gotta say it is really annoying to try n critique romantasy books nowadays bcuz a lot of those are made by people who label romantasy smut as "degenerate filth" or whatever when most of my issues revolve around
1. Plots that make no sense
2. Characters that suck
3. The smut isnt even that good
and 4. The fact that a non-zero amount of these books try to push a "our mc is a total #feminist girlboss!" And that just means shes a dick, uses knives & can quip. Meanwhile the romance portion continues to push the male love interest as extremely overprotective and paternal, who is constantly swooping in and solving all the MCs problems for her. Also shes (small, tiny and Still Very Feminine) and hes (tall, large, the most masc dude to ever masc)
But if you ever try to point out that these books try to label themselves as feminist while still covert/overtly sending rather non-feminist messaging about relationships and gender, you just get told "you hate it when women like things"
âTwas brillig, and the slithy toves
A stately pleasure-dome decreed.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Lookâd up in perfect silence at the stars.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
If I should die, think only this of me,
Between what I see and what I say,
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
Shall I compare thee to a summerâs day?
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow?
Tie up the knocker, say Iâm sick, Iâm dead.
I learn by going where I have to go.
I just think "data center water usage should be federally regulated," while less catchy and less emotionally charged, is a stronger political stance than "fuck AI." Targets the systemic flaw rather than a product, you know?
Data centres shouldn't be allowed in areas that experience drought or are Koppen classification B category (arid and semi-arid).
They should have federally regulated water usage and be required to have heat and exhaust treatment ON SITE
They should have daily penalties for failing to meet zero emissions targets scaled to their profit margin (i.e. a percentage rather than a set amount) THAT ARE ACTUALLY ENFORCED.
NO DEFERRED PROSECUTION AGREEMENTS. EVER.
They must show provenance for EVERY piece of art and writing in their data sets, and show that they have made contracts to use EVERY SINGLE ONE before they are allowed to use them. Hold them to the same standards as every other form of media.
They must inform the end-user about data privacy and that chatbots are not a substitute for therapy, research, programming, work, school, and are not to be used for anything but novelty.
All of this would severely hobble them and expose how much of a turkey GenAI actually is. I doubt they can make money off it without theft and lies. It's a very expensive toy.
completely personal preference obviously but i hate when there's a time travel fix-it and everything goes smoothly and the protagonist is just cool and confident with all their knowledge of the ruined future. nooo shut up. what is even the point if they're not an emotionally traumatized mess frantically trying to fix things and fucking up as they do so, keeping secrets and alienating their loved ones, causing new and interesting problems and barely scraping through to an eventual better ending
Worldwide, an estimated 440 million people were exposed to a wildfire encroaching on their home at some point between 2002 and 2021, new res
If you've been at all paying attention to the news over the last 10-20 years you would reasonably think that the amount of wild habitat ravaged by wildfires has been drastically increasing. We've all been bombarded with news stories about the horrific fires in the Amazon rainforest, Australia, Canada, and the western US.
Yet something you likely won't see in the news is that the amount of land burned by fires has actually decreased by 26% in the last 19 years.
Since there are more people moving into fire-prone areas (wildland burns more easily than farmland or urban areas) and more people on Earth in general, the number of humans exposed to fire impacts has increased (by 40%) and we have the perception that more land is burning.
But even that doesn't tell the entire story. The vast majority of human exposure to wildfire--around 85%-- occurs in fire-prone regions of Africa. This is also where the vast majority of fires happen. In the past decades the amount of land burned in Africa's fire-prone countries has decreased significantly due to changes in development and agricultural practices.
Fire intensity has been increasing in North and South America, because of a combination of fire management practices and more "fire weather" due to climate change. But those intense, high profile fires in the news make up only around 5% of the burned land and less than 1% of the human fire exposure globally.
To be clear, it is obviously a bad thing that forest fires are impacting more people and we should work to mitigate that as much as possible. But it is also hopeful to know that some of the most disaster-prone regions have seen a dramatic drop in burned land even as climate change has increased fire risk. In most cases the increase in human impact is because we are moving closer to where fires happen, not because the fires themselves are burning more land.
These âliving roofsâ are already inspiring other North American cities.
From the article:
Itâs a simple concept: Use the roof of a no-frills bus station to offset the heat-island effect in urban areas devoid of trees, provide direct shade at bus shelters, help reduce flooding, improve biodiversity of native pollinators, and see something a little more beautiful on the daily commute.
Boston made history as the first city in the United States to adopt the green roof last year, sometimes called âliving roofs,â and have already made waves in other locations.
This year, according to the Washington Post, green shelters are planned in two Maryland towns, with proposals to install green roofs in Arlington, Virginia and New York.Â
While it seems like a small gesture to the bees of any given city, the initiative is no small feat.Â
In fact, if Boston installed living roofs on all 8,000 of its bus stops, the city estimates it would amount to 17 acres of green space, or about 13 football fields.
While this may seem like a little thing, it's a great proof of concept that could be expanded on. Green roofs do an amazing job of cooling environments while absorbing CO2 without the energy inputs and upkeep that would be required for fans or air conditioning. Especially in urban environments where there is little shade or green space.
These kind of shelters have already been implemented in several places in Europe, but Boston is the first US city to add green roofs to bus stops.
The rooves will have low-growing plants to absorb carbon dioxide and remove pollution from the air.
the pistachio food trend is soooo interesting because it's like. i've been following the californian pistachio water politics for years, as a californian with personal connections to agricultural workers but! basically there's been a big push in california agriculture over the last decade to pressure farmers to produce pistachios, because iran has dominated the global market in pistachios for decades, and the US government has been trying to weaken iran economically, so they want to make california pistachios a competitor. which is ridiculous, because california's agricultural infrastructure is suffering under a drought, and pistachios take insane amounts of water. so a ton of water is being redirected from the people in order to engage in a trade war with iran over fucking. pistachios.
anyway now that the US (i.e. california) is producing more pistachios than iran, the next step is to drive consumption of pistachios, so that the farmers who are producing these pistachios can continue to make money on them. ergo all the fancy pistachio coffees at starbucks and similar shit like suddenly being able to find pistachio butter in grocery stores when five years ago it was exclusively available at specialty stores and online, and the huge boom in pistachios foods in instagram and tiktok recipe content. like i watch a lot of instagram foodie reels (cooking/baking is one of my hobbies) and these get thrown onto everyone's feeds, to promote the purchasing of pistachios, so that the US can stick it to iran. it's. kind of incredible to watch this happen in real time, because it sounds like deranged conspiracy thought, but like. i've been watching this trend for the past decade and it's fucking real.
anyway one of the vegan recipe accounts i follow just posted like five pistachio-based recipes in a row and it makes me feel some kind of fucking way
it is extremely relevant that pistachios are so easy to acquire here, but acorns, which are an indigenous California food staple crop, are impossible to find even in the best stocked grocery stores, and knowing how to prepare them for consumption is a rarer skill than sourdough starter
Iâve noticed some posts around about how you canât romanticize your life during a fascist regime and while I deeply sympathize with this sentiment, I want you to try to understand thatâs what they want you to believe.
Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you donât fight back.
If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.
As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you wonât be surprised when they happen - itâs the hardest work that I have ever done. And Iâm not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because thatâs where I live.
But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.
There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and itâs almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.
I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.
Holy shit, first universal free childcare program in the United States just dropped
New Mexico's child care assistance program is set to expand and become the first universal program in the U.S., the governor announced Monda
"New Mexicoâs child care assistance program is set to expand and become the first universal program in the U.S., the governor announced Monday [September 8, 2025].
New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the state is eliminating the income eligibility requirements of its current child care assistance program to do this.
Currently, the program waives copayments for New Mexico families with incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level. That allows those families to pay little-to-no child care costs.
In November [2025], that will now apply to all families. The state estimates this expansion will save families an average of $12,000 per child [to clarify, that is PER YEAR. Families will save an average of $12,000 per child PER YEAR. x, x. That is a life-changing difference for so many fucking people.]
âItâs the difference between making it when inflation in this country remains too high. Particularly, in areas, like food, things that families have to have to raise their families,â the governor said.
With the expansion comes increased demand for care facilities. New Mexico estimates they will need an additional 5,000 early childhood professionals to achieve a universal system. They plan to increase reimbursement rates and give incentives to programs committing to pay entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour and offer 10 hours of care per day, five days a week.
The state also plans to do the following to improve the supply of care:
Establish a $12.7 million low-interest loan fund to construct, expand and renovate child care facilities
Additional $20 million requested in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.Â
Target growth to focus on care for infants, toddlers, low-income families and children with special needs.Â
Partner with employers and school districts to expand child care options for working families.Â
Launch a statewide campaign to recruit licensed and registered home providers.Â
âEarly childhood care and education is a public good,â said Elizabeth Groginsky, secretary of the New Mexicoâs Early Childhood Education and Care Department. âBy providing universal access and improving pay for our early childhood workforce, we are easing financial pressure on families, strengthening our economy and helping every child learn in safe, nurturing environments. This is the kind of investment that builds equity today and prosperity for the future.âÂ
More information on how to access universal child care benefits and more is available here: https://www.nmececd.org/universal...
So many families have to make the tough decision to raise their children or work to pay the bills. This will solve that problem for many hard working New Mexicans."
it's that time of year when countless people in countless schools and universities start thinking about running a d&d night, and I'm here to tell you: that's the devil talking. listen, I play a lot of games, D&D among them, and I run a LOT of events for college students. what you want is a game with dirt simple mechanics, character creation that can be completed in about a minute or less, and a contingency plan to split your attendees into groups if too many of them show up to reasonably play together. maybe something that doesn't even have dice idk. I'm not being a buzzkill I SWEAR I'm sincerely trying to save you from the horrors of a D&D night where 20 people show up and half of them have level 20 characters packing 16 magic items and a bad case of Main Character Syndrome and the other half are going to need to spend 45 minutes making their first character sheet ever. just play a different game man.
let me be so clear, for the folks for whom the context was insufficiently clear: this is for people workibg in various resource centers or student orgs on college campuses thinking about trying to host a (likely one-off) D&D night to spark student engagement without accounting for the logistical difficulties of a potentially large turnout of people who possess wildly varying levels of knowledge about how to actually play the game, all of whom need to be accommodated in a limited amount of time. I don't give a shit what you do in your homes games, I'm just looking out for my fellow programming coordinators.
source: the time my director finally found someone else to run a 5e one shot because I wouldn't do it, and an hour and fifteen minutes of the two hour session were spent on character creation
Love when Gringos, specially from north America approach the Bolsonaro trial with "I can't believe Brazil has more democracy than us" like we're a bunch of savages with no laws and it's somehow surprising to see Brazil jailing a man who attempted a coup.
It just shows you see Latinos like they're somehow less civilized than yourself, really and it's not the compliment you think it is
Did you know Brazil has set chairs for black people to study in college or get jobs in the public sphere? Did you know Brazil have the biggest universal healthcare system in the world? Did you know we have solid labor laws in place? Did you know gay marriage has been legalized since 2009, 5 years before it was legalized in USA? Did you know we have social name in place since 2016 so trans people can be called by their chosen names before they change it legally? Did you know we have free universities and colleges that are considered the best ones in the country? Of course not because all you guys think when you think about Brazil is gangs, drug smuggling and getting robbed because y'all think that all of Latino america is some kind of criminal paradise
Brazil went through a dictatorship backed by USA from 64 to 85. A lot of our problems nowadays happened because of that, and USAmericans have the gall to think were less civlized than then from a lack of our own instead of being systematically killed, oppressed and taken advantage of
you guys like rebuying games right? i mean, not like ACTUALLY re-buying them, cuz you dont actually get to KEEP the games but like. you'll give us more money for them again, right? you want super mario galaxy again right?
the worst console in our history is now playable with a subscription and a paid peripheral btw
please dont think about the fact that we still have legal slaves because of our demonic IP defending practices put people in so much debt that they will not pay it off to us in their lifetime
Gary Bowser, an old disabled man, was released from prison in 2023 following a 14 month stay after Nintendo imprisoned him for working with a third party company that made modification chips for consoles, during which Nintendo filed a civil suit against him, with the court deciding he owed $14m to Nintendo in damages. He will be paying it off monthly for the rest of his life.
here is how he describes being arrested:
âThe day that it happened, I was sleeping in my bed, it was four in the morning, Iâd been drinking all night,â Bowser says. âAnd suddenly I wake up and see three people surrounding my bed with rifles aimed at my head ⊠they dragged me out of the place, put me in the back of a pickup truck and drove me to the Interpol office.â
here is gary bowser's gofundme if you'd like to send some money his way to support him instead of the massive video game company he's indebted to for the rest of his life
Hello everyone, my name is Gary Bowser aka GaryOPA as many of you know I am now in the process⊠Gary Bowser needs your support for GaryOPA R
surprised at how many people are mad at me for bringing this up, and going out of their way to justify or dismiss Nintendo's violent state-backed abduction-at-gunpoint of a 50 year old man over some fuckin ROMs. i thought we were all already, like, on-the-level about how insane that is.
"god forbid we enjoy something for once" in response to criticism of Nintendo forcing someone into a lifelong debt after over a year in prison is crazy, when what youre so desperate to enjoy unbothered is a re-rerelease of a 17 year old game and a subscription service to play a console whose entire legacy is how terrible it was.
are you people actually anti-corporate, or are you just pretending to be until standing on it means getting toys taken away?
Haul Yourself from the Ocean Trenches and Smite A Bitch @scribbling-albatross - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
vaporwave
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
