#Waste Disposal Experts

[disposalqueen]

Construction waste disposal is a critical aspect of any construction project, but it can be a hassle, especially when working with several tons of debris. That's where we come in. At Disposal Queen, we offer reliable, cost-effective construction dumpster rental services to help you manage your waste efficiently and affordably. We believe that cost should never be a barrier to efficient waste disposal. We offer affordable, flat-rate pricing on all container rentals with no hidden fees or long-term contracts. With our reliable, professional service, you can trust that your waste will be disposed of properly and comply with all local regulations.

[happypandajunkremoval]

Expert Garbage Collection Services

In today’s rapidly changing world, effective waste management is more important than ever. As urban areas grow and consumer behaviors shift, the challenges of garbage collection and disposal have become increasingly complex. Professional garbage collection services are stepping up to address these challenges, emphasizing efficiency, sustainability, and customer satisfaction. In this blog, we’ll explore the significance of expert waste management, key factors to consider when selecting a garbage collection service, and how these professionals can transform your perspective on waste disposal.

The Importance of Garbage Collection Services

Rising Demand for Efficient Waste Management

With the growth of urban populations and rising consumption rates, the need for effective waste management is critical. Each year, millions of tons of waste are generated globally, and improper management can lead to serious environmental issues, health risks, and decreased community appeal. Expert garbage collection services are essential for ensuring that waste is collected, transported, and disposed of responsibly.

Environmental Impact

Improper waste disposal can have severe consequences for the environment. Overcrowded landfills and unregulated waste can contaminate soil and water sources. Many professional garbage collection services prioritize eco-friendly practices such as recycling and composting to reduce landfill contributions. By choosing these services, you contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable planet.

Health and Safety

Mismanaged waste poses significant health risks, attracting pests and producing unpleasant odors. Timely and safe waste removal is crucial to minimizing these hazards. Expert garbage collection services are trained to handle waste properly, ensuring safety for both workers and the community.

How to Choose the Right Garbage Collection Service

When selecting a garbage collection service, consider the following important factors:

Experience and Expertise

Opt for a provider with a solid reputation and extensive experience in the industry. Seasoned professionals understand the complexities of waste management and can offer tailored solutions to meet your specific needs, whether residential or commercial.

Comprehensive Service Offerings

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Commitment to Sustainability

In an increasingly eco-conscious world, it’s essential to partner with garbage collection services that prioritize sustainability. This includes effective recycling programs and proper waste segregation. Companies focused on sustainable practices can help reduce your carbon footprint and promote responsible waste management.

Transparent Pricing

Clear and straightforward pricing is crucial. Make sure the garbage collection service you choose provides transparent information about their fees, including any additional costs. This transparency helps you avoid unexpected charges and allows for better budget management.

Quality Customer Service

Excellent customer service can greatly enhance your experience. Look for companies that respond promptly to inquiries and are willing to accommodate your specific needs. A customer-oriented approach indicates a commitment to building long-term relationships.

Benefits of Expert Garbage Collection Services

Investing in professional garbage collection offers numerous advantages beyond basic waste disposal. Here are some key benefits:

Time and Labor Savings

Managing waste on your own can be time-consuming and physically demanding. Expert garbage collection services alleviate this burden, allowing you to focus on more important tasks, whether in your personal life or business. With scheduled pickups, waste management becomes hassle-free.

Enhanced Safety

Handling waste, particularly hazardous materials, can pose safety risks. Professional garbage collection services are trained to manage waste safely, reducing the likelihood of accidents or injuries. Their expertise ensures compliance with safety regulations.

Improved Community Appearance

Regular garbage collection services help maintain the visual appeal of your community. Clean streets and well-kept public spaces contribute to a positive environment for both residents and visitors. By investing in expert services, you play a part in creating a cleaner, more inviting neighborhood.

Support for Recycling Initiatives

Many garbage collection services prioritize recycling and sustainability. By choosing a provider that emphasizes these practices, you support efforts to reduce landfill waste and promote a circular economy, where materials are reused rather than discarded.

Customized Solutions

Every community and business has unique waste management requirements. Expert garbage collection services offer tailored solutions that fit your specific needs, whether you require regular pickups, seasonal services, or special event cleanups.

Conclusion: Transforming Waste Management

In summary, garbage collection services are not just a convenience; they are a vital component of effective waste management. By focusing on expertise, sustainability, and customer satisfaction, professional waste management services are changing the way we approach garbage disposal. They ensure that your waste is managed responsibly, benefiting both the environment and the community.

As you explore your waste management options, remember that “Your Waste, Our Priority” reflects a commitment to excellence in garbage collection services. By choosing professionals in the field, you simplify your life while contributing to a cleaner, healthier world. Embrace the benefits of expert waste management and let the professionals handle your garbage, so you can focus on what truly matters

[hireskipbinadelaide-blog]

Critical Mistakes to Avoid during Skip bin Hire

Skip bins are helpful in different types, and in different areas, and particularly in the construction industry, they are nothing short of a boon. When you hire a skip bin, you invest in keeping the surrounding areas clean and managing the garbage better. But while hiring a skip bin, you need to be very careful and avoid several mistakes that can be costly in the long run. We have covered some top errors in this blog post.

Choosing The Wrong Size

When you hire a skip bin in Adelaide, you have to make sure that you choose the right size. This will be easy to do by determining the right level of debris or garbage that you will generate. A right-sized skip bin hired means you will not face the hassles of repeated pickups and drops. A careful estimation of the garbage volume is the key behind choosing the right size when you hire a skip in Adelaide and get the maximum out of every penny invested in this.

Disregarding Waste Types

Before going for skip bin hire, you must understand that there can be different types of garbage and for them, you need a completely different skip bin hire deal. This means for hazardous garbage, you will require a different skip bin, whereas for non-hazardous and general garbage, you will need a different skip bin hired completely. Not paying attention to this can result in hefty penalties and to avoid this situation, you must determine the garbage that your task will generate.

Ignoring Permit Requirements

When you hire a skip bin, you must understand that you just can't place it anywhere you want. Every city has different rules, regulations and permits for placing the skip bin hired by you in a public place. You must abide by these rules and regulations to immune yourself from penalties, fines, penalties, etc. This is easy when you have a reputable supplier of skip bins, as the team will be fully aware of the rules, and regulations and permits related to parking the skip bin.

Focusing Solely On The Cost

One more major mistake that people commit in terms of skip bin hire is that they focus entirely on cost. This is a wrong approach, and the fact is that opting for the most economically available services often has hidden costs and surely end up costing more in the long run. The low-cost availability of skip bin hire services comes with drawbacks like poor services, unreliable pickups, improper disposal methods and very unreliable customer care. Hence, it is essential to trust a reliable waste service provider offering competitive prices while having a successful track record of trustworthy and responsible waste management and skip bin hire services.

[hummingbirdinternational]

Green Your Electronics: Trust Hummingbird International, LLC for Responsible E-Waste Handling in New York

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Once you learn about the "collective action problem," you start seeing it everywhere. Democrats – including elected officials – all wanted Biden to step down, but none of them wanted to be the first one to take a firm stand, so for months, his campaign limped on: a collective action problem.

Patent trolls use bullshit patents to shake down small businesses, demanding "license fees" that are high, but much lower than the cost of challenging the patent and getting it revoked. Collectively, it would be much cheaper for all the victims to band together and hire a fancy law firm to invalidate the patent, but individually, it makes sense for them all to pay. A collective action problem:

https://locusmag.com/2013/11/cory-doctorow-collective-action/

Musicians get royally screwed by Spotify. Collectively, it would make sense for all of them to boycott the platform, which would bring it to its knees and either make it pay more or put it out of business. Individually, any musician who pulls out of Spotify disappears from the horizon of most music fans, so they all hang in – a collective action problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed

Same goes for the businesses that get fucked out of 30% of their app revenues by Apple and Google's mobile business. Without all those apps, Apple and Google wouldn't have a business, but any single app that pulls out commits commercial suicide, so they all hang in there, paying a 30% vig:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

That's also the case with Amazon sellers, who get rooked for 45-51 cents out of every dollar in platform junk fees, and whose prize for succeeding despite this is to have their product cloned by Amazon, which underprices them because it doesn't have to pay a 51% rake on every sale. Without third-party sellers there'd be no Amazon, but it's impossible to get millions of sellers to all pull out at once, so the Bezos crime family scoops up half of the ecommerce economy in bullshit fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

This is why one definition of "corruption" is a system with "concentrated gains and diffuse losses." The company that dumps toxic waste in your water supply reaps all the profits of externalizing its waste disposal costs. The people it poisons each bear a fraction of the cost of being poisoned. The environmental criminal has a fat warchest of ill-gotten gains to use to bribe officials and pay fancy lawyers to defend it in court. Its victims are each struggling with the health effects of the crimes, and even without that, they can't possibly match the polluter's resources. Eventually, the polluter spends enough money to convince the Supreme Court to overturn "Chevron deference" and makes it effectively impossible to win the right to clean water and air (or a planet that's not on fire):

https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/us-supreme-courts-chevron-deference-ruling-will-disrupt-climate-policy

Any time you encounter a shitty, outrageous racket that's stable over long timescales, chances are you're looking at a collective action problem. Certainly, that's the underlying pathology that preserves the scholarly publishing scam, which is one of the most grotesque, wasteful, disgusting frauds in our modern world (and that's saying something, because the field is crowded with many contenders).

Here's how the scholarly publishing scam works: academics do original scholarly research, funded by a mix of private grants, public funding, funding from their universities and other institutions, and private funds. These academics write up their funding and send it to a scholarly journal, usually one that's owned by a small number of firms that formed a scholarly publishing cartel by buying all the smaller publishers in a string of anticompetitive acquisitions. Then, other scholars review the submission, for free. More unpaid scholars do the work of editing the paper. The paper's author is sent a non-negotiable contract that requires them to permanently assign their copyright to the journal, again, for free. Finally, the paper is published, and the institution that paid the researcher to do the original research has to pay again – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per year! – for the journal in which it appears.

The academic publishing cartel insists that the millions it extracts from academic institutions and the billions it reaps in profit are all in service to serving as neutral, rigorous gatekeepers who ensure that only the best scholarship makes it into print. This is flatly untrue. The "editorial process" the academic publishers take credit for is virtually nonexistent: almost everything they publish is virtually unchanged from the final submission format. They're not even typesetting the paper:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1

The vetting process for peer-review is a joke. Literally: an Australian academic managed to get his dog appointed to the editorial boards of seven journals:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/olivia-doll-predatory-journals

Far from guarding scientific publishing from scams and nonsense, the major journal publishers have stood up entire divisions devoted to pay-to-publish junk science. Elsevier – the largest scholarly publisher – operated a business unit that offered to publish fake journals full of unreveiwed "advertorial" papers written by pharma companies, packaged to look like a real journal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090504075453/http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

Naturally, academics and their institutions hate this system. Not only is it purely parasitic on their labor, it also serves as a massive brake on scholarly progress, by excluding independent researchers, academics at small institutions, and scholars living in the global south from accessing the work of their peers. The publishers enforce this exclusion without mercy or proportion. Take Diego Gomez, a Colombian Masters candidate who faced eight years in prison for accessing a single paywalled academic paper:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison-charges-sharing-academic-article-online

And of course, there's Aaron Swartz, the young activist and Harvard-affiliated computer scientist who was hounded to death after he accessed – but did not publish – papers from MIT's JSTOR library. Aaron had permission to access these papers, but JSTOR, MIT, and the prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz argued that because he used a small computer program to access the papers (rather than clicking on each link by hand) he had committed 13 felonies. They threatened him with more than 30 years in prison, and drew out the proceedings until Aaron was out of funds. Aaron hanged himself in 2013:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Academics know all this terrible stuff is going on, but they are trapped in a collective action problem. For an academic to advance in their field, they have to publish, and they have to get their work cited. Academics all try to publish in the big prestige journals – which also come with the highest price-tag for their institutions – because those are the journals other academics read, which means that getting published is top journal increases the likelihood that another academic will find and cite your work.

If academics could all agree to prioritize other journals for reading, then they could also prioritize other journals for submissions. If they could all prioritize other journals for submissions, they could all prioritize other journals for reading. Instead, they all hold one another hostage, through a wicked collective action problem that holds back science, starves their institutions of funding, and puts their colleagues at risk of imprisonment.

Despite this structural barrier, academics have fought tirelessly to escape the event horizon of scholarly publishing's monopoly black hole. They avidly supported "open access" publishers (most notably PLoS), and while these publishers carved out pockets for free-to-access, high quality work, the scholarly publishing cartel struck back with package deals that bundled their predatory "open access" journals in with their traditional journals. Academics had to pay twice for these journals: first, their institutions paid for the package that included them, then the scholars had to pay open access submission fees meant to cover the costs of editing, formatting, etc – all that stuff that basically doesn't exist.

Academics started putting "preprints" of their work on the web, and for a while, it looked like the big preprint archive sites could mount a credible challenge to the scholarly publishing cartel. So the cartel members bought the preprint sites, as when Elsevier bought out SSRN:

https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/17/disappointing-elsevier-buys-open-access-academic-pre-publisher-ssrn/

Academics were elated in 2011, when Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub, a shadow library that aims to make the entire corpus of scholarly work available without barrier, fear or favor:

https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra

Sci-Hub neutralized much of the collective action trap: once an article was available on Sci-Hub, it became much easier for other scholars to locate and cite, which reduced the case for paying for, or publishing in, the cartel's journals:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.14979

The scholarly publishing cartel fought back viciously, suing Elbakyan and Sci-Hub for tens of millions of dollars. Elsevier targeted prepress sites like academia.edu with copyright threats, ordering them to remove scholarly papers that linked to Sci-Hub:

https://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/

This was extremely (if darkly) funny, because Elsevier's own publications are full of citations to Sci-Hub:

https://eve.gd/2019/08/03/elsevier-threatens-others-for-linking-to-sci-hub-but-does-it-itself/

Meanwhile, scholars kept the pressure up. Tens of thousands of scholars pledged to stop submitting their work to Elsevier:

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

Academics at the very tops of their fields publicly resigned from the editorial board of leading Elsevier journals, and published editorials calling the Elsevier model unethical:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/16/system-profit-access-research

And the New Scientist called the racket "indefensible," decrying the it as an industry that made restricting access to knowledge "more profitable than oil":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032052-900-time-to-break-academic-publishings-stranglehold-on-research/

But the real progress came when academics convinced their institutions, rather than one another, to do something about these predator publishers. First came funders, private and public, who announced that they would only fund open access work:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7

Winning over major funders cleared the way for open access advocates worked both the supply-side and the buy-side. In 2019, the entire University of California system announced it would be cutting all of its Elsevier subscriptions:

https://www.science.org/content/article/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open

Emboldened by the UC system's principled action, MIT followed suit in 2020, announcing that it would no longer send $2m every year to Elsevier:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#nerdfight

It's been four years since MIT's decision to boycott Elsevier, and things are going great. The open access consortium SPARC just published a stocktaking of MIT libraries without Elsevier:

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/

How are MIT's academics getting by without Elsevier in the stacks? Just fine. If someone at MIT needs access to an Elsevier paper, they can usually access it by asking the researchers to email it to them, or by downloading it from the researcher's site or a prepress archive. When that fails, there's interlibrary loan, whereby other libraries will send articles to MIT's libraries within a day or two. For more pressing needs, the library buys access to individual papers through an on-demand service.

This is how things were predicted to go. The libraries used their own circulation data and the webservice Unsub to figure out what they were likely to lose by dropping Elsevier – it wasn't much!

https://unsub.org/

The MIT story shows how to break a collective action problem – through collective action! Individual scholarly boycotts did little to hurt Elsevier. Large-scale organized boycotts raised awareness, but Elsevier trundled on. Sci-Hub scared the shit out of Elsevier and raised awareness even further, but Elsevier had untold millions to spend on a campaign of legal terror against Sci-Hub and Elbakyan. But all of that, combined with high-profile defections, made it impossible for the big institutions to ignore the issue, and the funders joined the fight. Once the funders were on-side, the academic institutions could be dragged into the fight, too.

Now, Elsevier – and the cartel – is in serious danger. Automated tools – like the Authors Alliance termination of transfer tool – lets academics get the copyright to their papers back from the big journals so they can make them open access:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Unimaginably vast indices of all scholarly publishing serve as important adjuncts to direct access shadow libraries like Sci-Hub:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#cornucopia-concordance

Collective action problems are never easy to solve, but they're impossible to address through atomized, individual action. It's only when we act as a collective that we can defeat the corruption – the concentrated gains and diffuse losses – that allow greedy, unscrupulous corporations to steal from us, wreck our lives and even imprison us.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

[coraniaid]

I wish that Professor Maggie Walsh had been the true Big Bad of Season 4. And I wish that she hadn't been unceremoniously killed off halfway through the season. And I wish that -- over the whole history of the show -- she wasn't one of only three human women aged over 25 who were allowed more speaking time than the creepy sex robot Warren Mears builds in Season 5 [and note, by the way, that neither of the other two are alive at the end of the show either].

But most of all I wish -- I really, really wish -- that I could persuade myself that Maggie Walsh was even the slightest bit interesting. Because I'm sorry, but she's just not.

Is there any villainous character on the show where the difference between how compelling they could have been and how boring they actually are in canon is this stark? The show has had some pretty underwhelming arc villains, sure, but Adam is about as interesting as a rejected Doctor Who villian with a floppy disk drive in his chest could ever have been and the First Evil was originally created to be a disposable monster of the week to begin with so it's hardly a surprise she doesn't manage to transcend this and Caleb very obviously only exists at all because the writers panicked when they realized the First coudn't offer any sort of personal physical threat.

But Professor Walsh should have been different! This was the start of the post-high school seasons; a start to establish the tone of the whole show going forward. She would have been the first antagonist fully grounded in the world of the real; not a vampire or an immortal man who sold his soul to become a big snake, but a fully human villain who never stops being human. She could have been written as a juxtaposition of Principal Snyder and the Mayor and Gwendolyn Post; or as a more explicit foil of Joyce Summers or Rupert Giles. She could have been a villain who could challenge Buffy in both the supernatural and regular worlds. She was a successful woman in her fifties in academia in the 1990s! Wouldn't a show whose "feminism" was anything but surface deep be even a little bit interested in exploring what that meant?

Professor Walsh could have related to Buffy and her friends in ways no previous villain ever did. What does it mean for Buffy -- who we've seen worry so much about her own future prospects, and her fear of ending up like her mother -- to have a possible role model who managed to combine a sucessful career with knowledge of the supernatural? What if Walsh's attempts to win Buffy over to her side lasted for more than half an episode? Or, failing that, what sort of threat could a smart and capable human who knew about Buffy's secret identity as a Slayer have posed her, given her own pronounced reluctance about hurting ordinary humans? What would it have meant for Buffy's fears of not being fully human if an expert in the supernatural had looked at her and seen a monster? And why is Willow suddenly interested in studying pyschology all of a sudden, and does it have anything to do with the fact her own parents are both succesful academics who work in this field?

The writers aren't interested in even pretending to address any of these questions. [Did they even remember what career they gave Willow's parents?]

Depressingly, the only reason Professor Walsh is actually here is to answer the question "what if your new boyfriend's stuck-up mom didn't like you because she was a jealous bitch and then she immediately got herself killed anticlimatically because she was also really fundamentally stupid about it?".

What a waste. And they hired Lindsay Crouse for this?

(Also: if they were going to make Professor Walsh a "world renowned" pyschologist the writers should maybe have bothered to look into how seriously the field took the ideas of Sigmund Freud in 1999. Although her character's second career of experimenting on and cutting up demonic creatures for fun and profit would have made a lot more sense if they'd set her up as some kind of biologist, right? Or just make her an English literature teacher, if her teaching career is meant to be a front anyway and you want her to deliver themtically relevant monologues about Freud and Jung. At least I'd believe Buffy and Willow wanting to go to her class then.)

[hollowed-theory-hall]

I think that during the first and second wars Death Eaters did attack Muggles, but nothing so extreme that it would make Muggle headlines. It seems like when it comes to attacking Muggles Voldemort kept the Death Eaters on a tighter leash than when they would attack their fellow wizards and witches.

Why do you think that is? I can imagine a fair few Death Eaters itching for the chance to really let loose and go on a rampage, to break the Statute and show the Muggles just how "inferior" they are. Why do you think Voldemort kept them mainly focused on the Wizarding World?

I think it might be because, growing up during the Second World War and especially during the Blitz, Voldemort knows just how dangerous Muggles really are, something that the Death Eaters truly don't get at all. Muggles have waged war on such a destructive scale that the Wizarding World never has, which Voldemort has seen first-hand.

I already talked about it here and here, and you're right. During the first war, Voldemort clearly kept more of a leash on his Death Eaters — both when attacking muggles and fellow wizards. The only wizards that seemed to be free reign for the Death Eaters to attack were those affiliated with the Order of the Phoenix, and even then he only allowed them to be killed really towards the end of the war from 1979.

And I think that's because he doesn't really want a lot of people dead. Like, he's not a good guy, he won't mind if some died, but Voldemort consistently tries to avoid what he considers unnecessary casualties, both magical and muggle.

In the second war, his patterns change somewhat since his goal is different. As I talked about here. He no longer just wants to distract the ministry with war while he does his thing, he wants to kill Harry Potter. Because that's his sole focus, he isn't nearly as involved (He is so uninvolved in his own government takeover Umbridge can walk around with Slytherin's locket and claim it as her family heirloom without dying a torturous death) and the first chapter in HBP shows how that effects the muggle casualties:

How on earth was his government supposed to have stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on bridges. The bridge was fewer than ten years old, and the best experts were at a loss to explain why it had snapped cleanly in two, sending a dozen cars into the watery depths of the river below. And how dare anyone suggest that it was lack of policemen that had resulted in those two very nasty and well-publicized murders? [The murders were Vance and Bones, both witches] Or that the government should have somehow foreseen the freak hurricane in the West Country that had caused so much damage to both people and property?

(HBP)

The Death Eaters clearly attack muggles in the second war when Voldy just isn't there to tell them no. Yes, the two outright murderers were of witches, but the bridge collapse and the hurricane clearly hurt and killed muggles.

So, in the first war, yeah, Voldy didn't want to cause unecessaariy death among both muggles and wizards. In the second war, he cared way less about keeping his Death Eaters in line, but, still, when given the chance, when he was on the scene, he did limit them:

You have fought,” said the high, cold voice, “valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. “Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. “Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. “You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

(DH)

Yes, he is ready to kill each and every one of them if it means he gets what he wants (killing Harry Potter) but Voldemort wishes to avoid unnecessary death, both magical and muggle:

He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face. Then the child turned and ran away. . . . Beneath the robe be fingered the hand of his wand. . . One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother. . . but unnecessary, quite unnecessary. . . .

(DH)

Voldemort lets muggle kids go after they saw him because their deaths aren't necessary. He thinks of himself as merciful. He doesn't kill without a reason and when he's around, he forces his followers to obay his own moral code.

But I don't think it has anything to do with him fearing muggles. I don't think he's too concerned with the well-being and secrecy of the wizarding population. Voldemort doesn't really care for ruling and would likely not lift a finger to help wizards if muggles found them out and decided to nuke them. I don't think he'd care enough to do something.

Like, he won't kill someone when he doesn't have a reason to, but he won't save someone if he doesn't have a reason to either.

Like, I think Voldemort is wary of muggles and would rather not reveal wizards to them, but I don't think that's his top concern in how he manages his Death Eaters. Because while he is wary, he does look down on muggles and thinks they would just never figure it out because they're too stupid (he thinks the same about most wizards, tbh). So, I don't think that's a big part of his motivation on why he avoids muggle casualties.

[leportraitducadavre]

Let's get something out of the way, the "Sasuke as a medic" AU has nothing to do with Tsunade being more "suited" to mentor him; there's nothing she can teach him that he'd find useful in his quest (why would he, who has an enormous amount of chakra at his disposal, need to learn to delicately control his energy as Sakura canonically needs to as her chakra pool is small?), nor helpful. Tsunade would never even consider taking him out of the front lines to use him as a medic either, as doing so would be a waste of his immense power and capabilities in the field.

No. This AU isn't about Sasuke, it's about Sakura and how her stans want to disguise their ultimate desire for her to have more jutsus at her disposal than what Tsunade taught her.

Hate to break it to you, but being the student of a powerful ninja doesn't mean copy-pasting the abilities of the mentor down to the disciple. What they learn has all to do with their personal capabilities, desires, and natural strength. Naruto, while he used mostly his teacher's jutsu, quickly outgrew his teachings by taking the Rasengan further than his father and Jiraiya, Sasuke surpassed both Orochimaru and Kakashi, as Kabuto did with the Sannin by the end of the series.

Orochimaru knowing kenjutsu doesn't translate to Sakura being able to be even remotely good at it. Her "agility" (which isn't even canon as there's no mention of medics being agile, rather them staying away from danger) has to do with her being a medic-nin, and I'll reiterate, Orochimaru isn't a medic in a similar manner Tsunade is, that one is Kabuto. Why would Orochimaru take Sakura with him when Kabuto, a 19-year-old, devised a technique like Tsunade's without even meeting her before fighting her?

Sakura copy-pasted the techniques taught to her, she improved them in no manner:

Do you see where I'm going with this? Kabuto even has a larger pool of chakra as he was able to learn Senjutsu mode which Sakura will never be able to do (Tsunade and Sakura having a small chakra pool is the whole reason why the Yin Seal -that actually uses Yang, as that's the only chakra nature Tsunade possesses even exists).

Kabuto knew medical ninjutsu outside of Orochimaru's teachings as those were the reasons Orochimaru sought him out, the Sannin even admitted to looking for extraordinarily talented people to take "under his wing", and at no moment he even looked in Sakura's direction (I implore you to read yourself the whole Orochimaru vs. Team 7 fight, from Chapter 46 to Chapter 49, and tell me how many times Orochimaru even glances at Sakura's direction. He knows both Naruto and Sasuke's names, yet never mentions Sakura's).

I don't even understand why "being an expert at Genjutsu" has her fandom in such a chokehold, normal genjutsu became almost obsolete when the Sharingan (Yin Release at its finest) was introduced and the more the story unfolded the fewer regular genjutsu experts, of the likes of Kurenai or Shee, were introduced, as the strongest characters either used kekkei genkai genjutsu (which can't be broken by a single person as the chakra needs to be disturbed by someone else) or ninjutsu/taijutsu skills. Regular genjutsu can be broken by the target if they realize a genjutsu has been casted, it's mostly used as a quick diversion for an attack or to escape, and most ninja have that tool at their disposal.

[And if you think Sakura would be able to pull off a Genjutsu like Shee does and attack with the speed at which A attacked Jügo you're out of your mind, she used not a single remarkable genjutsu in the whole manga, having Sasuke do that for her during FoD and dispersed a single basic one. She fell for Kakashi's genjutsu on the bell test, had to wait for Sasuke's reassurance that an illusion was in place in the chünin exams, fell for Orochimaru's own genjutsu in FoD, and was fooled by a henge twice in the same chapter and once by non-other than Naruto who pretended to be Sasuke. She had four encounters with the genjutsu technique, and three out of the four times she fell for it and still, some of you still hold Kakashi's words as "proof of her wasted potential" when he's the same man who couldn't care less if she dropped out of the exam.]

And as a quick addition, why is Mokuton!Sakura so insanely popular? Her having Earth and Water releases (Ino also has those nature releases, what's your point?) means nothing as she'll need a huge amount of chakra (which she doesn't possess) and few ninjas are even capable of mixing the two.

While any ninja can learn to transform their chakra’s nature, and even transform it into different natures consecutively (which Sakura was never even shown to do as she only used her medical skills to fight), it is impossible for them to transform two at the same time.

And he could perform such a special jutsu because he was of a kekkei genkai bearing clan

Only those with the genetic abilities of these kekkei genkai have a chakra system capable of double-nature transformation.

Canonically, no one but Hashirama could naturally have such nature release (for god's sake, Naruto and Sasuke both have water and earth nature and they can't even use Mokuton!). Let me remind you the reason why Hashirama having Mokuton is so important thematically:

Mokuton is the expression of Yang (Life) at its finest; Yang Release uses chakra that is two parts physical energy and one part spiritual energy. It governs vitality and manipulates the body, breathing life into form to animate that which lacks life of its own, which is in direct opposition to the Sharingan that expresses Yin (creating form from nothing); Yin Release uses chakra that is two parts spiritual energy and one part physical energy. It governs imagination and manipulates the spirit, creating form from nothingness to give shape to that which has none (which is why the Sharingan is the ultimate expression of Genjutsu).

[Used Sasuke's chart to exemplify, as Madara has both Yin and Yang Releases as he modified his body using Hashirama's cells].

Yamato was experimented on by Orochimaru by using Hashirama's cells, so the only way Sakura could have such power is if she is experimented on by Orochimaru, and why on earth would he do that? Furthermore, Hashirama's cells would eat her alive in seconds, she couldn't handle a scratch amount of Kyuubi's chakra, how would she handle Hashirama's? This is the same man whose chakra was so vast and potent he healed himself unconsciously!

Sakura having delicate chakra control isn't a wild card you can use as you see fit to fulfill your fantasies, it means nothing outside her medical work. This notion that "Sakura has precise control of her chakra! That means she can learn any jutsu she wants!" is completely false.

First of all, Kakashi outright claims this idea of "no Jutsu should ever be beyond you," is "in theory, anyway." At no point does he say you'll be capable of learning chakra-draining ninjutsu with this skill alone as not a page after he claims this:

If you think this looks hard, it's even more difficult to maintain your chakra when using ninjutsu

Delicate chakra control in a portion of one's body (like fists when using Sakura's Cherry Blossom Impact) used to enhance one's strength (chakra enhancement is a feat used by every shinobi ever, like Lee and Gai themselves, albeit with different levels of expertise) isn't as chakra depleting as using Ninjutsu, which is why Sakura and Tsunade use it as their main fighting technique since they don't have a vast chakra pool as Hashirama had.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Calling plastic pollution one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, the Biden administration on Friday said that the federal government, the biggest buyer of consumer goods in the world, would phase out purchases of single-use plastics.

The administration also said it planned tougher regulations on plastic manufacturing, which releases planet-warming greenhouse gases and other dangerous pollutants.

The efforts, which the White House called the first comprehensive strategy to tackle plastic use nationwide, aim to reduce demand for disposable plastic items while also helping to create a market for substitutes that are reusable, compostable or more easily recyclable.

Brenda Mallory, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the changes would “require unprecedented action at every stage of the plastic life cycle.” Because of its purchasing power, the White House added, “the federal government has the potential to significantly impact the supply of these products.”

The emphasis on curbing plastic use mirrors a growing recognition that the world can’t recycle or manage its way out of a deluge of plastic waste. Global plastic production rose nearly 230-fold between 1950 and 2019, to more than 400 million tons a year, and is expected to quadruple from current levels by 2050. An estimated 40 percent of that is single-use plastic, which makes up the bulk of the world’s plastic waste.

Around the world, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic enters the ocean every minute, experts estimate. And as those materials break down in the environment, microplastics are turning up in the stomachs of fish, birds and other animals, as well as in human blood and tissue.

[disposalqueen]

At Disposal Queen, we understand that the safety of your property is a top priority. That's why our waste disposal bin rentals are specially designed to be driveway safe and will not cause any harm or damage to your property. Knowing that your property is safe and secure, you can rent a bin with peace of mind. Once you choose the best bin size for you, you can fill it up with all your unwanted waste, and we'll take care of the rest. We'll pick up the bin when you're ready, and our team of waste disposal experts will ensure that your waste is disposed of responsibly and efficiently.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In 2012, Dutch teenager Boyan Slat presented a TED Talk on his concept for cleaning up the ocean with simple mechanisms to sweep up all the trash. While scientists and plastics experts cautioned that his ideas were ineffective, Slat’s non-profit the Ocean Cleanup, founded the year after his talk went viral, has gained millions of followers and big-name backers, including Salesforce, Maersk, KIA, and PayPal’s Peter Thiel. But the venture had one major problem: its first two designs didn’t work, despite the group burning through tens of millions of dollars over the course of a decade. The Ocean Cleanup has since pivoted to work with upstream river “interceptors” that are much more efficient at capturing garbage, but its website still prominently features its latest ocean debris “solution”—essentially a trawl fishing net dragged between two boats that has, to date, collected a comparatively miniscule amount of trash. Tech projects like these are more of a curse than a blessing. Even if the Ocean Cleanup one day somehow beats the insurmountable odds and removes all surface-level traces of plastic marine pollution, it’d still be missing the vast majority of waste that sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor, or breaks up into tiny microplastics. While companies like these bring increased attention to the plastics crisis, they’re ultimately flashy gimmicks that lull our public consciousness into thinking a clever gadget can solve a collective-action problem. These projects also allow consumer brands—like Coca-Cola, an official “Global Implementation Partner” of Slat’s group—to greenwash their continued massive plastic production, while lobbying behind-the-scenes against regulations that would actually help the world break its plastic addiction.  “We now know that we can’t start to reduce plastic pollution without a reduction of production,” environmental scientists Imari Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck write in the introduction to their forthcoming study, Plastics. To meaningfully address this crisis and others like it, we need to look upstream, invest in reuse infrastructure, and mandate biodegradable packaging and high material recyclability. At a minimum, we need to start making producers bear the cost for the collection and disposal of their poorly designed goods.

[hireskipbinadelaide-blog]

Types of Bulk Waste Collection and Ways to Manage Them

Waste management is currently one of the most haunting issues across the globe due to the ever-increasing population and the swiftly changing lifestyle. In this situation, bulk waste collection is nothing short of a challenge, and without involving a company offering waste collection services, it is impossible to tackle this challenge at all. These companies are needed because they are fully aware of the waste types and are in a better position to implement effective waste management strategies. Let us understand some common types of waste materials that we humans usually generate.

Municipal Solid Waste

Municipal solid waste collected by any company engaged in waste collection in Adelaide is a combination of waste materials generated from households, schools, offices, and other non-industrial sources. This can include non-biodegradable, biodegradable, and organic materials. Paper, plastic, glass, metals, cardboard, and kitchen waste are some of the most common names included in municipal solid waste. Experts of waste collection services recommend composting and recycling as the most effective strategies to handle this waste collection in Adelaide. Recycling reduces the amount of garbage sent to landfill sides, and composting transforms organic materials into nutrient-rich compost to enhance the quality of your property’s soil.

Hazardous Waste

Hazardous waste collection in Adelaide is performed very carefully by experts in waste collection services, as they understand the risk associated with this garbage. It is significantly dangerous to humans and the environment due to its toxic, flammable, corrosive and reactive nature. The most common examples of hazardous waste are chemicals, solvents, pesticides, and electronic waste, and everything requires proper management and safe disposal under strict government regulations. Experts in waste collection in Adelaide use specialised disposal methods while adhering to their storage, collection, transportation, and treatment-related guidelines.

Construction and Demolition Waste

This category of garbage belongs to the construction industry, and in the past couple of decades, it has generated a vast amount of waste. This includes concrete, wood, metal and other materials, and some are somewhat hazardous. C&D waste collection in Adelaide can be managed effectively using recycling and segregating practices. Proper segregation and timely recycling are the keys to handling and overseeing construction and demolition bulk waste collection.

Electronic Waste

This waste has become a significant challenge to humanity in the past few decades. This includes computers, smartphones, televisions, and hazardous products like lead, mercury, cadmium, etc. ERP, or electronic recycling program, and EPR or extended products responsibility are the two most effective initiatives related to e-waste management.

[natalieironside]

results from the internet are inconclusive so i'd like to ask resident soil expert natalie: would septic tanks in a post apocalyptic america become amazing fertilizer tanks that get cracked open by plant roots or just absolutely toxic soil killers?

I think it depends on where you are and what was being put in the tank. Hot human waste is a horrible biohazard under pretty much all circumstances, but manure never stays hot for very long, so assuming (1) the apocalypse has stopped the people who use the tank from using the potty and (2) they weren't flushing heavy metals or petrochemicals or other persistent contaminants, it'll eventually just become a mundane box of dirt.

If people are still trying to use it / were recently using it or if it was used for any kind of hazmat disposal, though, that throws a spanner in the works. Unless we're talking about, like, Fallout times, where all these residential properties have been sitting unused for a couple of centuries, I would probably just stay out of septic tanks.

[defectivevillain]

bound by blood

paring: Raphael Santiago/Reader

synopsis: As you’re recovering from top surgery, you realize you’re bored out of your mind. You decide to visit Raphael and an interesting conversation ensues.

The reader’s gender identity is unspecified, but they do undergo top surgery. [This is completely and unabashedly self-indulgent.]

ao3 version

warnings: blood, mentions of surgery

Raphael Santiago is far from the most friendly person you’ve ever met, but you’ve never considered him to be rude. He’s always gruff and blunt, but he never acts above anyone else and he makes an effort—albeit a miniscule one—to make conversation with you. The more you get to know him, the more you realize that he’s a good guy. So when you walk into the Hotel Dumort one day to visit Raphael, you certainly aren’t expecting him to react with profound disgust.

“What?” You ask self consciously, not sure what’s prompting him to display such a reaction. Raphael isn’t super expressive in the first place, so the thought of him reacting so viscerally is throwing you for a loop.

“You reek,” Raphael says through gritted teeth. His hands grip the counter with frightening strength and his head is tilted down to avoid your gaze. You blink at him a few times, trying to process his comment. When you finally do, it’s hard not to be offended. You manage to make your voice sound calm.

“Sorry, I’m not allowed to shower yet; that’s probably why,” you grimace, itching at the binder on your chest. It’s far from comfortable, but thankfully, the pain has been decreasing with time as you expected it would. You’re counting down the days until you return to the doctor and get the binder and bandages removed.

“No,” Raphael says with a shake of his head. It sounds as if it’s hard for him to speak. You give him a moment to evidently regain his composure. “It’s… blood.”

“Oh, yeah,” you remark casually. Raphael gives you an absolutely murderous glare at that. “What?” You ask. “I just had surgery, so… it’s kind of unavoidable.”

“It’s so strong,” Raphael says, placing a hand over his nose.

“Probably because of these,” you explain, bringing the drains out of the confines of your pockets. Raphael’s eyes go comically wide and you watch in confusion as he slaps a hand over his mouth and turns his head to the side.

“Why would you show me?!” Raphael hisses, his voice sounding slightly warbled from behind his palm.

“Because you asked?” You respond with furrowed brows. Raphael is steadily avoiding eye contact. There’s a bead of sweat trickling down his temple and he looks to be in pain. “What, do you want the blood?”

“...No.” He’s never sounded less convincing. You huff in amusement.

“You can have it,” you offer. Truthfully, the blood serves no purpose anymore. Once it’s expelled from your body, you’re supposed to dispose of it. However, you suppose you shouldn’t let it go to waste—not when your vampire companion so rarely gets to drink human blood. You know Raphael well enough to know that he’d never harm a human and drink their blood, so he’s likely been drinking rodent or animal blood for as long as he’s been a vampire. Perhaps human blood will increase his strength. You’re not entirely sure—you’re no expert on blood or vampirism.

“Are you sure?” Raphael mutteres, drawing you out of your thoughts. He’s still steadily avoiding eye contact, as if willing you to drop the conversation and forget the interaction. Unfortunately for him, you’re too stubborn to let it go.

“It’s of no use to me, now,” you shrug, looking at him expectantly. Despite the clear resistance he’s showing, Raphael’s eyes are blown wide and his pupils are dilated in evident hunger. You can’t imagine how much strength he must have to resist the blood that is right in front of him.

Raphael doesn’t speak for a few moments. You sigh, before taking a few steps towards the bathroom. You then realize that you don’t hear any footsteps and, when you turn back around, Raphael is frozen in the same position as before. “What?” You ask, gesturing impatiently for him to follow. “Come on; don’t back out now.”

“Right.” Raphael responds with frightening sincerity. He follows you at a rather unusual distance. You’re grateful that Raphael seems to be controlling his urges for your benefit, but you can only hope that he isn’t causing himself any physical pain. Although, when you think about it, Raphael is easily one of the most composed and practiced vampires you know. There’s no way he would lose control in such a manner, you reassure yourself internally.

Once you make it to the bathroom, you pull the first drain out of your pocket. Raphael watches from his position leaning against the doorway. There’s a complex expression on his face. You tear your gaze away from him and carefully line up the drain with the measuring instrument you were given, before squeezing and allowing the blood to fall into the capsule. Thankfully, the process is painless. When you’re finished, you squint at the tiny numbers on the side of the container—only for Raphael to take it from your hand and drink all the blood in one fell swoop.

“...I didn’t get to measure it,” you remark regretfully.

“Sorry.” The vampire grimaces. His fangs glimmer in the dim lighting of the bathroom. He has the grace to look mildly embarrassed and remorseful. You resist a well-intentioned laugh at the genuine concern and regret on his face.

“It’s fine; just… let me measure this one, okay?” Raphael nods. You feel a bit nervous when you notice his gaze burning into the side of your face, but you manage to replicate the process with the drain on your other side. This time, you get a measurement of the amount of blood. Raphael is clenching his fists so hard that it looks as if he could break a knuckle. You push the capsule towards him on the counter and he grabs it with unfathomable speed, before drinking it without hesitation. He doesn’t shotgun it in the same reckless manner he did before; rather, Raphael pauses and turns to look at you for a fleeting moment.

“This feels… intimate,” Raphael remarks vaguely. You freeze and stare at him, wondering if you misheard him. He’s avoiding eye contact with you again, which convinces you that you heard his statement correctly.

“Do you want it to be intimate?” You hum, surprised by how confident and unbothered you sound. Surely, your rapid heartbeat will betray your confident facade—your heart is jackhammering in your chest right now. Raphael finishes draining the blood before wiping a hand over his lips and leveling you with an incredulous gaze. You stare back at him without hesitation. The vampire seems to need a moment to process the implications of what you just said.

“Yes,” Raphael finally answers. You stare at him in surprise. He’s staring at some unknown point in the mirror. When you try to make eye contact with him, the vampire is quick to avert his gaze. “But… I’m not interested in sex.” Silence settles in the air. For a long moment, there is nothing but a strange tension. It takes you several moments to realize that Raphael is waiting for a response from you. You blink at him a few times.

“Okay,” you eventually say, wondering why the vampire looks so high-strung and defensive right now. Had he really expected you to react poorly? Perhaps he’s had bad experiences in the past. The thought makes your stomach turn.

“That’s it?” He asks, a hint of wariness in his voice.

“I don’t plan on forcing you to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” you say.  It seems as if there’s a physical relief that Raphael experiences after that admission. His shoulders relax and the grimace on his face softens. He had been clenching his fists at his sides, and he moves to loosen them. For a long moment, there is nothing but silence. You busy yourself with washing your hands and valiantly pretend not to notice Raphael staring at you the entire time. It isn’t until you move to leave the bathroom that he seems to snap out of his trance. The vampire places a hand on your shoulder.

“Next time,” Raphael breaks off, as if the effort of speaking is laborious. His hand slips from your shoulder and falls back to his side. Raphael looks uncharacteristically restless. “I can help you empty them.”

“The drains?” You ask for clarification. The vampire nods. “Okay. You have to give me time to make measurements, though.”

Raphael rolls his eyes, letting you know exactly what he thinks of that idea.