Vesperlf - Vesper

“Perfection”

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unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

Real talk why does social interaction feel like you’re trying to get a good grade in being a person

the problem i have with the whole "humans and nature as opposed and mutually exclusive forces" style of environmentalism is that it discourages people from a sustainable, mutualistic relationship with the ecosystems around them, because getting resources from an ecosystem is Bad. Therefore it requires you to think that parts of Earth that provide resources are not ecosystems.

this is where you get unbelievably stupid crap like the "half earth" project that proposes "protecting" half of Earth's land mass as nature preserves, never mind how we choose what half or what happens to the other half.

this type of environmentalism literally encourages people to think of their own presence as excluding or cancelling out "Nature."

And so people think of their lawns as Not Ecosystems, as Not Nature, so they cannot think "How do i live in right relationship with my ecosystem, as its caretaker?" This is death to ecological thinking.

The lawn was consciously created by intention and design, with heavy machinery that was manufactured, sold, and operated, it is not spontaneously created by fumes that the human body gives off.

You act upon the land, now time to learn what you are doing, and who you are doing it to.

okay, you know what? Running away shouldn’t be a crime. It shouldn’t be dangerous, either. Any kid should be able to leave their parents if they want, for any reason. No I’m not kidding.

“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”

of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)

“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”

First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)

“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”

Then the kid doesn’t have a good reason. It doesn’t change anything. If someone wants to break up with their partner because of something stupid, you wouldn’t say they legally shouldn’t be able to. (And if you would, then you’re just a bad person.) No one should have to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, that they don’t want to be in.

Why are fascists so much better at imagining left-wing utopias than we are?

Yeah I’m a white American I don’t really think there’s anything I can have for culture

You're so brave for saying this

I have realized that the perfect form of media must have a delicate balance between absolutely heart wrenching pure emotional devastation and the most ridiculous nonsense you have ever seen in your whole life

Dezeen

RISD researchers create floating mycelium pods to cleanse waterways

A team of RISD students and researchers have created floating planting beds made of a mycelium to cleanse waterways of pollutants

A team of Rhode Island School of Design students and researchers have created tesselated, floating planting beds made of a mycelium biomaterial to cleanse waterways of pollutants and restore wetland habitat.

The floating Biopods act to introduce native plants back to degraded wetland systems while cleansing the water through bioremediation, or the re-introduction of microorganisms that naturally decontaminate their environment.

"Because of the urbanization of the Providence River itself, a lot of the wetland that acts to actively remediate pollution had been removed. So the project is really about reintroducing this new biology to kick start these ecosystems again so that the river might repair itself."

"It's interesting, the relationships that we have to biomaterials and the way that we are connected to systems that have the potential to remediate in a way that isn't electricity intensive or chemically intensive," said Banerjee.

I can't do a more deep opinion on this orca thing because yeah one can say "go orcas!", it feels good, doesn't it?...

but in fact those must be very scattered cases that won't change the fact that the current situation is that ocean transport is noisy, it's everywhere, and it must be driving these very, very sensitive animals crazy. Before motors, a whale could listen to what was happening in South Africa from the Argentine coast. Now their range of communication must have dropped to only a few kilometers: moreover, all the noise must be insane. There have been studies saying that even things like lawnmowers can make permanent ear damage to small rodents, and birds have had to adapt to city noises (their songs changed to a more "natural" pattern during the pandemic lockdowns) So I can't imagine what such things must be doing to the minds of orcas, one of the animals with the most complex and intelligent behavior registered outside of primates, and extremely sensitive to sound. Can we even understand what they're going through right now.

And this is not to mention the widespread whale (baleen whales, not orcas) hunting that decimated their populations to an absurd degree. All the world is currently going through a beyond worrying trend of defaunation, but whales were particulary hurt. There were 250.000 (estimated) blue whales before whaling, and they were decimated to less than 2000. Even today, with strict conservation measures, there's around 10-25k blue whales, and that's one species. Let that sink in.

Is there a solution to this, besides returning to the age of sail and banning ocean explotation? I don't know, there might be. I hope there is.

When I read about orcas, about their behavior, about their pods with their own almost cultural quirks and even dialects, so much we don't know about them, I only remember Arthur C. Clarke, when he spoke about blue whales: “We do not know the true nature of the entities we are destroying”