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Late autumn evening moon

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Jokes about mixing up Star Wars and Star Trek have always rung false to me because the basic premises are pretty easy to keep separate even when you don't give a shit.

Star Wars is about wizards with laser swords fighting Space Nazis.

Star Trek is about a bunch of nerds in a spaceship flying around Doing Science at things and learning Very Important Lessons.

Not a lot of overlap there!

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Exclusive: Homes are heating up as summers get hotter but least well-off are shouldering greatest risk, study finds

Why UK housing is dangerously unprepared for impact of climate crisis

From shutters to reflective paint: how to prevent UK homes overheating

Lower-income householders, minority ethnic people and those with young children are more likely to live in homes at risk from dangerous overheating, research has found.

The UK has baked in multiple heatwaves this summer, with many people sweltering in dangerously hot homes that were not designed to withstand extreme temperatures. June was the hottest on record and in general this summer England was an average of 1.58C above average temperatures.

Hot homes are dangerous for health; cardiovascular and respiratory issues, sleep disturbance, mental health problems and heat exhaustion all correlate with high temperatures in the home. Health risks spike when temperatures inside are above 25C, and there is a link between overheating homes and the risk of death, particularly for elderly people.

An analysis of housing stock by the Resolution Foundation has found nearly half (48%) of the poorest fifth of English households have homes liable to get too hot – three times as many as among the richest fifth (17%).

Owning your own home reduces the risk of overheating; two-thirds of socially renting households face the highest risk of their homes getting too hot compared with 55% of private rented homes and 17% of those that are owner occupied.

Additionally, six in 10 of those with young children, and almost half of minority ethnic households also face the highest risk of their homes getting too hot.

Overall, the research found a fifth of homes in England overheat in current summer temperatures, while one-third (32%) have attributes that put them at high risk of overheating in the future.

Small flats, small homes and those that are overcrowded are all at risk of getting too hot, as are those in areas such as London that suffer from an urban heat island effect. More than half (53%) of homes in London are at risk of overheating, compared with 31% of those outside the capital.

Experts have called for the government to update its upcoming future homes standard to include provisions for overheating homes. The regulations are due to be published this autumn, to come into force from 2027, but the focus has been mainly on how to keep draughty homes warm in winter, rather than to keep them cool in summer.

“The way we are building new housing is not adequate to the climate change we are already seeing, never mind the even hotter weather that’s coming,” said Simon McWhirter, the chief executive of the UK Green Building Council.

Zachary Leather, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “With the sweltering temperatures parts of the UK have seen recently set to become more common, we face a greater risk of overheating at home. But this risk is not spread equally – lower-income families, social renters, those with children and ethnic-minority households are more likely to live in homes at risk of overheating.”

The thinktank used data from a government study that placed hundreds of sensors in people’s homes to determine which types of houses were most at risk of overheating. The figures were then combined with the latest data on who lives in these homes – small flats, small homes and overcrowded properties – to identify those at the highest risk of overheating as the UK’s temperature rises.

It also analysed the dangers people face at work from extreme heat. One in four UK workers work in occupations where they are at risk of heat stress. There is an inequality aspect to this, too; those in the top third income bracket have a lower than average risk.

Older workers are more likely to face heat stress at work; 31% of those in jobs liable to cause heat stress are aged over 50. The research also found that office workers in more deprived areas were less likely to have air conditioning in their workplaces.

The researchers suggested “learning from countries that have long had higher temperatures, including legal rights for maximum workplace temperatures, and better adapted buildings”.

Measures that can keep homes cooler in summer include good ventilation to create through airflow that cools rooms, with well-designed windows and external shutters, and reflective paint on roofs or outside surfaces.

Street trees are a simple and cost effective way to keep homes cool, the UK Green Building Council has said. It advocates a 3:30:300 approach: you should be able to see three trees from your dwelling; you should have 30% tree canopy cover within your neighbourhood; and you should be no more than 300 metres from a biodiverse green space or park.

A government spokesperson said: “We know the importance of keeping homes cool in hot weather. That’s why building regulations require new homes to be built to reduce the risk of overheating and through the future homes standard consultation we are exploring how to further improve protections. This is alongside considering the use of air-air heat pumps to keep existing homes cool under the boiler upgrade scheme.”

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ads targeted to women: omg you are thirtyyyy. kill yourself

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it’s actually wild how terrified of the general public most usamericans are. like you don’t realize it if you’re someone who mostly walks and takes transit and spends a lot of time in populous public spaces but then you talk to one of the thousands of people that seemingly never set foot in any public space besides a parking garage or a starbucks and you suddenly understand why it’s so easy for fascist rhetoric about the dangerous alien to take root. this country’s median voter pretty much never interacts with strangers who aren’t their coworkers or people they met on dating apps

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not allowed to say Harry Potter, but what was your book series obsession as a teen

mine was definitely Eragon

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MAYONNAISE MISTAKE

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Prima Ballerina Fountain in Poddębice, Poland by Małgorzata Chodakowska

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"The meaning of life" is a nonsense phrase. It's like saying "The ethics of sunsets" or "The legality of gravity"

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A woman made a TikTok video after stepping into her boyfriend’s garage to get some air during a panic attack and finding all the doors were padlocked shut from the inside, barricaded with the windows blacked out with cardboard. She was like “Is this a red flag? Is this weird? I can’t trust my instincts because I have C-PTSD.” and all of the men in the comments were ripping her to shreds and saying she’s just insecure. Like, no girl. If I stepped into someone’s garage and they had it locked up like the Hope Diamond , I’d also start spiraling. I don’t care how valuable your motorcycle is or how bad the neighborhood is, the totally blocked off chained up no light room IS creepy.

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As I gaze at the structural column in Copley Station, cracked nearly in two and held together with zip ties that have been carefully painted over to match the column underneath, I feel my soul intertwined with that of a small Italian boy of days gone by, who also stopped to look up at a large, groaning, newly painted tank full of molasses

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Mega Flygon has always been that golden goose of the fandom, spurring countless designs and iterations on the idea that while spectacular, I never felt quite hit the mark.

Flygon finds success in its simplicity: just the right amount of color and just the right amount of shape balance. Adding too much paradoxically takes more and more away from what made Flygon such a stand out.

To do the Mega justice, I feel like it needs to be bold and surprising, even derailing the english name "Fly"gon as it brings back a part of itself long forgotten. Something reminiscent of the fact that the pre-evolution Trapinch has the exact same base attack total as its final stage with a whopping 100, and in need of more power it calls back to that stage of its life once more.

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welp! I can’t believe it happened, but apparently, ao3 did a mass deletion of a ship tag. Idk if it’s the supposed 1 person, but seeing how the community is reacting, it’s looking like more than 1 author got their fics deleted with no warning. I’m so disappointed it happened in ao3 and I’m just waiting for response about it because the jump of fic numbers was too extreme to not be noticed. 8k to 5k man. Ship war might be a reason for it, but again, I’m just waiting to see if my support ticket gets response. Also has this happened before? Like on ao3 in particular?

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What ship tag?

AO3 periodically puts its foot down with serial offenders who refuse to stop using AO3 to funnel people to their kofis, and non-fanwork spam gets deleted. It's unlikely that they just deleted a bunch of fanworks for no reason though.

ETA: Oh for fuck sake. Is this fucking Genshin wank?

Stop spamming the archive just so your shitty ship can "win" some war.

And/or stop believing the people who cry that PAC came after them ~out of nowhere~ when they know perfectly well what they did.

Because people still think that worthless methodology on the Top 100 Ships means something, some fuckface posted three thousand spam works just to force their ship on there. No, not the AI fics of the show for toddlers. Machine translated repeat upload drabbles for one of the ten kajillion Genshin ships. Then they orphaned half of them or made them anon or something to try to pretend that the lurkers support them in e-mail other authors posted this flood too.

Now that AO3 has gotten around to deleting their spam, they're apparently wailing about it somewhere on social media and trying to paint AO3 as censors. This is resulting in a flood of lackeys whining to AO3 about how Concerned™ they are.

You're a sucker, anon.

Either that, or you're trying to use my tumblr to spread panic.

You can tell AO3 doesn't actually believe in deletions because Genshin Impact fandom hasn't been booted off the archive for being fucking annoying.

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@importantcatpics

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I'm about to have a hot take and I would say it shouldn't be controversial but this is Tumblr so who knows.

A few weeks ago, I saw Jurassic Park for the first time, and there is a scene in there I think every aspiring filmwriter should be forced to watch and dissect. You may be thinking it's a Big Moment, like the timing on getting the power back on, or whatsisface IT guy shutting down the system to go steal embryos. You may think it's the kids and whatsisface who kinda looks like but isn't Harrison Ford* seeing the brontosauruses for the first time. Or the moment the first T-rex crashes the fence. But it's not any of those.

No, it's when Ellie finds Hammond in the dining room and he's eating whatever was supposed to be served for dessert and he's like "it was melting. I didn't want it to go to waste."

Because there is so much humanity in that line. It's not some big, grand theme statement. But I guarantee each and every one of us has been in a situation where life is going to hell in a handbasket for whatever reason, and we sit down and we may not be crying outwardly but we're screaming inside, and we wash the dishes. Or fold the laundry. Or eat the leftover Chinese so it won't be thrown away. We have exactly one point of control over one tiny little thing that seems (and often is) absolutely futile, and fuck it all, we need that control. Just for a moment. Just to feel something that isn't black screaming despair.

Hammond's guests and grandchildren are in grave danger. There is nothing he can do about it. Ellie's fiance is one of those guests. There's nothing she can do about it. They're in a severe thunderstorm in a place with mostly dirt roads in the middle of the night and all of the power is out and there are animals that dwarf skyscrapers outside. They. Can. Do. Nothing.

So they sit down and they eat the ice cream.

And then when Ellie says "it is good," Hammond just very quietly says "spared no expense."

His entire dream is in ruins. I know in the book he's more morally dubious, but in the movie I think he really genuinely believed he was doing something that could be wonderful and got stars in his eyes. In this moment he's grieving the potential loss of his grandchildren. The knowledge that even if (if!!) they survive, they will likely never see him the same way again--nor will his children. He's grieving because his beautiful dream has killed multiple people and he's realized he created a nightmare. He's grieving because he's in a hell of his own making and there's nothing he can do about any of this.

The animatronics are amazing, the CGI is top-notch (especially for its era), the story is solid, the cinematography is ace, but the moment that made that movie to me was that scene in the dining room lit only by the lightning, where two terrified human beings eat a dessert they almost certainly aren't really tasting, and say "it was melting" and "it is good" because if either of them says what they're really thinking, even breathes so much as a "do you think--", they will both scream until they go insane.

We've none of us faced dinosaurs run amok but we've all of us eaten the ice cream. And I think every prospective filmwriter out there, and a whole lot of shitty execs who wouldn't know a real emotion if it danced naked in front of a neon sign, need to see that scene and be forced to really sit with it.

I think movies would be the better for it.

*I would apologize for only learning half of these characters' and/or actors' names but frankly my facial recognition was already bad and has gotten worse in the last couple of years so you'll just have to deal with that.