#So its not just that its rural

[drumlincountry]

Connemara is a Different Place...I always feel like I should need a passport to get there....like no one should need a passport ever for anything, obviously....But if I need a passport to get to Wales, I should've needed a passport for this....

[koddlet]

personal rules for winter ❄

[twigsyy]

[icelogged]

[writterings]

honestly my state's pride was ultimately underwhelming this year for me, but i gotta say it's...somewhat nice that it can be boring? like im so accepted and validated by people in my life that pride no longer feels like (for me) an escape or outlet. i attended this specific event with my mom in 2018 and it was my first pride event. i was still in high school. i remember it literally brought me out of a deep depressive episode for a bit, because of how fun and affirming and safe it was. it was a celebration of me and people like me!

but now i kinda get that everyday in my life. so pride really only offers me a chance to hang with some friends, day drink, smoke weed in public, and pick up freebies at every tent. it's basically like any other holiday to me now. but isn't that amazing? that im so accepted and loved and celebrated as a whole queer person, that i can take something like pride for granted?

i'm super thankful for that. i'm still super thankful for pride.

and, i gotta say, it was really touching to see so many middle school and high school aged kids there, sometimes with their parents and sometimes by themselves. i hope they one day can find pride as "boring" as i do. i hope every queer person can.

[i-am-dulaman]

Why I hate Golf

This is the Takapuna Golf Course in Auckland, New Zealand.

It is in the middle of Auckland's north shore suburbs.

According to their website, they are one of the most popular golf courses in Aotearoa and have an annual visitor count of 60,000 people. They don't clarify if that is individual unique visitors or recounts, but lets be generous and say its unique visitors. 60,000, not bad.

This is Eden Park Stadium (the little square on the right) and oh look there's another golf course on the left there, ignore that one for now.

(the above two images are at the same scale)

Eden park has a capacity of 50,000 people. Ed Sheeran was here earlier this year and sold out the two nights he performed. That's 100,000 people in a weekend all in that little red square. 60,000 in a year no longer seems so great.

60,000 people per year is also only 160 people per day. 160 visitors to a golf course that is 470,000 square meters in area. Now the average property size in Auckland is 500 square meters. So the golf course takes up the area of 940 houses.

940 homes worth of land for 160 people.

And that is Auckland housing sizes. Auckland is horribly designed and very spread out. Let's instead look at Barcelona, considered one of the most well designed cities in the world.

This is Takapuna golf course side by side with Barcelona

(The scale is as close to being equal as I could get them, I don't have ArcGIS data for Barcelona so had to use google maps)

Each red square overlaid on Takapuna Golf Course is exactly 133m in height/width, the same size as each city block in Barcelona, road width included.

There are 23 Barcelona blocks worth of space in Takapuna Golf Course with room to spare. About 640 people live in each Barcelona block, that's 15000 people.

15000 peoples worth of homes and living spaces, sacrificed so 160 people can play golf in a day.

Now this is just one golf course in a big city, what's 15,000 people to a city of 1.6 million, who cares right?

Here is a wider shot of Auckland City.

Those red dots? They're golf courses.

There are 16 golf courses inside the metropolitan area of Auckland City (4 not pictured as Auckland is too spread out to get one clean screenshot). Keep in mind these are not rural golf courses out in the country, these are right beside housing developments and shopping malls. And for the record I could not find a single golf course in the Barcelona metropolitan area, you had to go out into the country before finding one.

So lets multiply that 15,000 people by 16 golf courses?

240,000 people.

With Auckland City's golf courses you could house 240,000 people comfortably with some good urban planning.

That is why I hate golf.

[angelpuns]

I promise I'm working on stuff btw its just going incredibly slowly

[the-crow-in-the-blooming-tree]

This little guy was grooming himself <3 - Botanical Garden (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

[bluestjayy]

Move complete 😭

[bizlybebo]

living somewhere where gambling is entirely illegal i oft forget that other people really can just. Go Gambling. buy a scratch off at the gas station etc . here you have to drive like 100+ miles to play poker or get alcohol over 5% at the store

[wolficake]

Me: I would love to live in the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons universe.

Person Who I Made Up For This Post: Oh yeah! Harvest Sprites and magic, right!?

Me: No, I want to have food that isn't controlled by my government because even if I grow my own food here in the real world and run a farm, the government can and will put their dirty paws in it and if it isn't the government it's Big Agriculture goons who bully smalltime farmers. Those issues aren't really a thing in Harvest Moon and when they are, they're really not. I wish for the fantasies of freedom.

[drumlincountry]

This is going to sound so stupid but I only today realised that a significant number of people like....look down on retail & service industry work.

[whaliiwatching]

cozy color..

[deepseacityunderground]

i think that veganism as a political movement has a lot of interesting things to say about how food agriculture has been shaped by consumerism and the way its alienated the average westerner from food production especially around meat. its a cruel cruel industry for everyone involved and it sucks.

unfortunately it also overwelmingly falls victim (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements lol) to a complete inability or perhaps a refusal to engage with rural indigenous communities especially in the global south. which is ironic because (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements) much of their theoretical framework for reforming society Depends on rural indigenous communities especially in the global south ^.^

[fleouriarts]

mini sketchbook dump. lowkey forgot this thing existed until last week

descriptions/refs and such below

1. based on one of the pics i took w hivemind, i told them to do cute poses and riley decided to just go O__O at the camera??? hes so silly <3

2. another livemind thing but this time it's from the video i took of them slow dancing. if i ever say no to a hivemind gay moment... call the cops my identity has been stolen for sure

3. finally drew one of my favorite little hivemind moments EVER oh my god they are so cute. literally me and who

4. this is just a cute pic of riley that i'd drawn literally right when i started doing hivemind fanart so i thought i'd redraw it. adding both the ref pic and my drawing from june 2023 so you can gawk at how much more angular my style has gotten

5. my dearest hex aka @gaydonweaver sent me this old pic of graydon (from a 2018 video i think) and i was enamored with his fluffy hair so i had to draw it

5. another one of my favorite cute hivemind moments... real compilationheads will recognize this as the thumbnail for 'hivemind juicy kissable boyfriend moments' which i remember riley being caught watching on stream 😭 im never gonna forget that i think its so fucking funny

also the section under the cut is a SAFE SPACE so here's some silly and kinda embarrassing sona doodles i did around these

[icewindandboringhorror]

It's always interesting to hear about people's weird/unexpected "alternate life paths". Like, something that you could have done with your life, a job you almost took, a school you almost went to, etc - that was still actually realistic enough that it could have happened, but NOW it seems to not suit your current personality.

Like for example, I currently hate advertising (how manipulative it is, brands trying to be 'relatable', social media amplifying it to an obnoxious extreme, etc.) so much that even seeing a little ad before a youtube video is grating to even witness, but there was a point in time where I was genuinely seriously considering going into marketing/making commercials as a career lol. Or like, I have a relative who was very inclined to be a pastor when they were younger, even though today they're a super strong atheist, etc. etc.