Opal, elder millennial, she/her I write jellyfish fic on ao3 under Oparu (header by aleksandrachaev) Ask me and I will happily tag. Agents of SHIELD, Star Trek (Disco, TNG SNW PGY and VOY), Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, the Expanse. baby fic specialist - "what if this... but someone was giving birth in unpredictable conditions."
[image description: the epic handshake meme. one arm is labelled gay people and the other is labelled lesbians. in the middle it says "fuck yeah bro". end id]
hey guys, quick reminder! this post is about uplifting other people!!! tags like 'ugh, but men are gross lol' or 'op has never met a man' are not welcome and will recieve an insta block! men are cool! women are cool! thank you for coming to my fucking ted talk! :-)
[The artist, putting a simple cake next to a much fancier one: âAw man, that guyâs cake is way better than mine.â The Audience, gleefully holding up a knife and fork âHOLY SHIT! TWO CAKES!â]
"Creatives deserve to be paid" and "We desperately need community spaces for creatives that aren't focused on trying to make money or advance careers where we're allowed to make connections and experiment" are two statements that can and should coexist.
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, theyâve 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.
âUtilizing these plant-based extracts in water treatment will remove microplastics and other pollutants without introducing additional toxic substances to the treated water,â said Srinivasan in a media release, âthus reducing long-term health risks to the population.â
She had previously studied the use of food-grade plant extracts as non-toxic flocculants to remove textile-based pollutants from wastewater and thought, âWhy not try microplastics?â"
You should read PERSOPOLIS. You should, quite frankly, go visit a country with actual Iranians, Arabs, Muslims and other Middle Eastern people living there.
You should actually humanize these people, not pedestalize them.
Like, nothing will expand your brain quite like visiting Dubai. Not just good things, although there are SO manyâŚbut the neutral and bad things too. Because the world is actually complicated, and itâs not possible to divide it into âgood countries/peopleâ and âbad countries/peopleâ.
Dubai is beautiful. It was built with whatâs basically slave labor. Hearing the call to prayer played over loud speakers all over the city was incredible. The city is able to afford desalination of ocean water to supply drinking water because oil is cheaper than fresh water. Dubai operates under Sharia law. I saw women in everything from âwesternâ clothes to full burqa in a Sephora buying makeup, and even the women in burqa had cool shoes. The women in burqa were accompanied by male family members and didnât shop alone. There are amazing sights to see. There are prayer rooms in malls and mosques all around.
Itâs COMPLICATED. They are people just like you. Some of them are kind. Some are cruel. Most are a mix of both, just like you and me.
I love the randomness of the kudos email. Itâs the fic I wrote this week. The one thatâs 13 years old. The one that I donât remember what itâs about or even what fandom it is.
Thanks lovely readers. <3 your taste is mysterious and wonderful.
"I'm bad at commenting on fics" okay, but you know you can get better at it though, right? You know you can start with something as simple as "thanks, I like this!" and you'll still probably make a fic writer's day? You do know that it's in your power to "get better" about it, right? If you want to?
Also "but I want to write a GOOD comment" is a block that you are placing in front of yourself. You are creating that pressure.
The amount of writers I talk to that are happy for anything genuinely positive in this current day and age of AI slop and varying levels of awful bot comments.
Are you going to actually write that long "perfect" comment or would it help to instead focus on sending a small bright spark of happiness to a writer? To start there and build up to a longer comment later if you can? What I think I'm trying to say is that commenting can be a muscle that you train, if you feel like it. Or a habit you can form, if you feel like it. You can do better, if you want to. You can start small, too.
I see so many posts on here that are writers seeking community and/or mourning the shift in fandom from leaving feedback to passive consumption. And I really don't think it has to be like this.
This post is getting a decent amount of notes and I hope folks don't misunderstand my intentions here -- I meant for this to be encouraging to readers who want to leave comments on fics.
I've heard people say things like "I'm sorry I'm bad at commenting" or "I want to comment, but..." and I just want to respond with this: please recognize that even a small comment like a string of heart emojis or "I like this a lot" is precious these days when writers are enduring either silence/lack of responses to their work and/or an influx in bot comments that say awful things or are commissions scams. I see so many posts on my dash about the difference in fandom responsiveness to fic over the past few years. A lot of writers wish for feedback. Readers, you do contribute to fandom communities. You can help fandom grow if you participate in it. And comments do not need to be huge or detailed to make a difference.
#comments are awesome to receive #and unlike kudos you can give as many comments as you want (via @encyclopika)
Hi, just want to pull these specific tags forward because I think they make a really great point, especially when it comes to longer, multi-chapter fics! You can only leave one (1) kudos on a whole fic, regardless of if it has multiple chapters -- and since more writers are locking their fics to only be seen by folks with AO3 accounts, that rules out any additional guest kudos.
I've seen posts about leaving "second kudos" comments or even "why can't I leave more kudos, AO3!!!" and those kind of comments are a delight to receive, speaking personally, because they tell me that readers are STILL HERE enjoying my chapter fics. It can be hard to know that anyone is reading new chapters, if I don't get new comments and if a reader left their allotted kudos when an earlier chapter was released and read.
TL;DR, receiving kudos is lovely, but limited!!!! And I think a nice, easy comment to leave on a fic you enjoy is "second kudos"
I hope everyone who is liking and/or reblogging this series of posts goes out and comments on fics. I saw a post today about a newer ugly AO3 commenting bot out there and I really strongly feel, now more than ever, that it is important that we support fic writers by leaving positive feedback. We can encourage each other to keep creating. I'm tired of the world too, man, but we can give each other some light.
do i always leave brilliant comments, like I want to? Fuck no, my most common comment is "I love this so much!" Was it hard to remember to start leaving that on every fic i read that I was happy to have spent time reading? Yes, but every one of those authors spent more time writing that fic and worrying about posting it than i ever did on a simple comment. There have been a few that I have gone back to, a few that I have hunted down again, and yes I have left second comments there telling them how important their work was to me. Yes, that's valuable. But what's dramatically undervalued is fandom coming to their creators and simply saying "thank you for creating this" or "I liked this" or just "!! <3"
Our creators are out there leaving pieces of themselves open for casual consumption. We need to be less casual about it. And that's a learned skill you can start at any time.
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pixelskylines
stormborns
areudirty
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
