#artificial rice

[karolinedgmachinery]

nutrional rice extrusion machine FRK fortified rice kernels plant artifi...

[pangeen]

“ Nutopia “ // Diego Castro

[hesitationss]

i tried horchata for the first time this year with cleo it was so delicious. thinking about it rn... like it's just on my mind it was so delicious, i need to learn how to make it!!

[outlying-hyppocrate]

positively despising how my consistent personality is leaving me and how i resort to such strange lies

[considerad]

green is the bean

[daniel-eats]

Ep. 59: Life Update #2! Ft. A Nomad’s Life! 🥾

Hey folks! Welcome to Episode 59! ⭐️ We are back in the past! Today we are taking a step back from Food & Reviews, and talking about Life. More specifically: my life. At 29 I consider myself a Nomad. That is, I have a very unique unattached lifestyle. Some of the things I am most thankful for: The amount of freedom: I don’t own a home, and will never “buy” one. I am happy renting and camping…

[sandersstudies]

I HATE when people treat staple crops like they’re artificial items.

“Plant-based cereal,” “plant-based noodles,” “plant-based tortillas.”

Hey quick question what is wheat to you? What is rice? What is corn? What are potatoes? Last I checked those bitches grow in the ground.

[againtodreaming]

THIS IS SO LATE BUT THANK YOU @vinylbiohazard !! <33

I think I changed careers every couple of years bc off the top of my head I can think of:

veterinary

chef

visual artist (favorite one)

doctor (went to the clinic a lot as a kid but ultimately decided that NO bc so many years of studying and the poor interns of the pediatrics branch who always followed my pediatrician around had to wake up so many times so early in the morning/late in the night, same as other doctors and too stressing with risks of death)

chef but for dogs (my family is big on health and nutrition and 11 year old me was so mad when she read the ingredients of the processed dog food and immediately proceeded to research about it and then made a ppt presentation to present my findings to my parents and convince them to change to better brands, or do homemade food for dogs) (homemade was a lot cheaper since there weren't many good brands available back then)

tags (no pressure): @nerrissadevampyre @winryrockbellwannabe @misfortvne @silmarusco + anyone who wants

if we lived in a world where u had to do the career u were first interested in as a child what would u be doing, id be a firefighter

[miss-floral-thief]

711 pizza isn’t as good as racetrac but it’s pre boxed as 2

For one lol

[exopelagic]

I’m kinda glad I spent so much time looking at crop science this term bc turns out it’s unbearable and I couldn’t actually do this like I was considering. Progress!!

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[chintzwife]

man not to betray the fandom party line but i do miss anne rice this morning, if there was ever anyone who would be able to pull off suing an AI company for training their AI on fanfiction of her IP, it's her

[sidhug]

Meeting the Demand for Innovative Food: The Role of Artificial Rice-Making Machines

Artificial rice, also known as rice analog or rice substitute, is a type of grain-based product that is designed to resemble and taste traditional rice. It is typically made from a combination of grains, such as wheat, corn, and potatoes, and is often fortified with vitamins and minerals to improve its nutritional value. In this blog, we will explore the benefits of artificial rice and how artificial rice-making machines are helping to meet the demand for this innovative food product.

The Need for Artificial Rice

Artificial rice is becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world as a cost-effective alternative to traditional rice. With the global population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, the demand for food is increasing rapidly, putting pressure on traditional food production systems. Artificial rice offers a viable solution to this problem by providing a high-quality, nutritious food product that can be produced on a large scale.

Benefits of Artificial Rice

Artificial rice offers several benefits over traditional rice. Firstly, it can be produced using a variety of grains, which makes it more resilient to climate change and other environmental factors. Secondly, it can be fortified with essential vitamins and minerals, which can help to address malnutrition and other health issues. Thirdly, it has a longer shelf life than the traditional rice, which reduces food waste and helps to improve food security.

Artificial rice making machine are designed to produce artificial rice on a large scale. These machines use a combination of extrusion and shaping technologies to produce rice-shaped grains that resemble traditional rice in appearance and texture.

Some of the key features of artificial rice-making machines include:

Extrusion systems for processing grains into a dough-like consistency

Shaping systems for forming the dough into rice-shaped grains

Drying systems for removing excess moisture from the grains

Cooling systems for reducing the temperature of the grains

Packaging systems for packaging artificial rice in various sizes

Conclusion

Artificial rice-making machines are playing a crucial role in meeting the growing demand for this innovative food product. By producing artificial rice on a large scale, these machines are helping to address food security and nutrition challenges, while also providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional rice. With continued investment in artificial rice technology, the potential for this food product to make a positive impact on global food systems is significant.

[reasonsforhope]

"In China, a landscape architect is reimagining cities across the vast country by working with nature to combat flooding through the ‘sponge city’ concept.

Through his architecture firm Turenscape, Yu has created hundreds of projects in dozens of cities using native plants, dirt, and clever planning to absorb excess rainwater and channel it away from densely populated areas.

Flooding, especially in the two Chinese heartlands of the commercial south and the agricultural north, is becoming increasingly common, but Yu says that concrete and pipe solutions can only go so far. They’re inflexible, expensive, and require constant maintenance. According to a 2021 World Bank report, 641 of China’s 654 largest cities face regular flooding.

“There’s a misconception that if we can build a flood wall higher and higher, or if we build the dams higher and stronger, we can protect a city from flooding,” Yu told CNN in a video call. “(We think) we can control the water… that is a mistake.”

Pictured: The Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok

Yu has been called the “Chinese Olmstead” referring to Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of NYC’s Central Park. He grew up in a little farming village of 500 people in Zhejiang Province, where 36 weirs channel the waters of a creek across terraced rice paddies.

Once a year, carp would migrate upstream and Yu always looked forward to seeing them leap over the weirs.

This synthesis of man and nature is something that Turenscape projects encapsulate. These include The Nanchang Fish Tail Park, in China’s Jiangxi province, Red Ribbon Park in Qinghuandao, Hebei province, the Sanya Mangrove Park in China’s island province of Hainan, and almost a thousand others. In all cases, Yu utilizes native plants that don’t need any care to develop extremely spongey ground that absorbs excess rainfall.

Pictured: The Dong’an Wetland Park, another Turescape project in Sanya.

He often builds sponge projects on top of polluted or abandoned areas, giving his work an aspect of reclamation. The Nanchang Fish Tail Park for example was built across a 124-acre polluted former fish farm and coal ash dump site. Small islands with dawn redwoods and two types of cypress attract local wildlife to the metropolis of 6 million people.

Sanya Mangrove Park was built over an old concrete sea wall, a barren fish farm, and a nearby brownfield site to create a ‘living’ sea wall.

One hectare (2.47 acres) of Turenscape sponge land can naturally clean 800 tons of polluted water to the point that it is safe enough to swim in, and as a result, many of the sponge projects have become extremely popular with locals.

One of the reasons Yu likes these ideas over grand infrastructure projects is that they are flexible and can be deployed as needed to specific areas, creating a web of rain sponges. If a large drainage, dam, seawall, or canal is built in the wrong place, it represents a huge waste of time and money.

Pictured: A walkway leads visitors through the Nanchang Fish Tail Park.

The sponge city projects in Wuhan created by Turenscape and others cost in total around half a billion dollars less than proposed concrete ideas. Now there are over 300 sponge projects in Wuhan, including urban gardens, parks, and green spaces, all of which divert water into artificial lakes and ponds or capture it in soil which is then released more slowly into the sewer system.

Last year, The Cultural Landscape Foundation awarded Yu the $100,000 Oberlander Prize for elevating the role of design in the process of creating nature-based solutions for the public’s enjoyment and benefit."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[ceilidho]

fear of god

prompt: There's someone outside the spacecraft. You don't remember them being part of the crew. Part 3 masterlist

-

You don’t know exactly what you’re waiting for, but it doesn’t happen.

The man doesn’t appear again. No one knocks on any windows or appears on any scans though you run another one not twelve hours later. It’s not enough to convince you that it was all in your head, but it’s enough for you to start the process of putting it out of mind. 

You just can’t shake the unease following you, a shadow extending out from your feet. Your skin feels tight against your face, clinging to the muscle and bone; months under artificial light will do that to a person, sap them of something essential that can’t be replenished with just vitamins capsules and supplement injections. The human body isn’t meant for space travel. It longs for the sun and the earth under its feet. 

And now you have something new to worry about. 

Much to your relief, Hadir doesn’t bring up your earlier encounter at dinner. Though part of you wonders whether he mentioned it to anyone else, he doesn’t outwardly treat you any differently. Amiable as ever. It goes a long way towards assuring you that he must have put your earlier encounter out of his mind already. You should too. 

It’s just that—

You’re the person the crew goes to when they need fixing. Abrasions, lesions, migraines, broken bones, aches and pains. Though your training is in emergency medicine and space physiology, years of clinical rotations and field research have equipped you with an extensive medical background. Not the least of which includes psychological and neurological health. You’re the de facto psychologist on board should any of the crew suffer a mental health crisis.

And if there’s something wrong with you, who’s going to fix it?

You sit with that thought for entirely too long, but then one day passes into the next and nothing happens. When you look out the window, you only see the throughline of the universe, its heart tipped over and the milk spilling out. The ambient light in the station keeps you from seeing it as clearly as you’d like, but it’s there when you look out the window, ever-present. 

Still, you can’t help thinking about an astronaut somewhere out there, slipping into the darkness like a cold lake dragging a body down into its depths and holding it tight to its breast. 

You shake off the thought. Scrub a hand down your face. 

When your stomach rumbles, you ping the crew to let them know you won’t be in the medbay should they need you and head out to grab a bite to eat. Nikolai is already eating at the counter in the galley when you come in to make yourself supper. 

No crew dinner tonight. Though you eat together for the most part, there are days where work tasks keep everyone’s schedules from lining up. You know from the morning briefing that Alex and Graves will be busy until well into the evening working on celestial navigation and dead reckoning.

He looks up from where he stands hunched over the steel tray of food in front of him, a mix of rehydrated rajma, rice, and raita, and waves his fork in a silent greeting. 

“Is that what’s on the menu tonight?” you ask.

The big man nods, pointing towards the pantry with his fork. “New week. No more Hamburger Helper,” he says with no small amount of derision towards the aforementioned meal. 

You smile. “Looks good.”

Though the new ownership thankfully didn’t skimp on food rations, most of the crew’s daily meals were determined months ago, long before the ship’s departure back on Earth. There’s a laminated week by week menu tucked away at the back of the pantry listing each day’s repast from departure until arrival, but you haven’t given it so much as a glance since you boarded. Better to have something to look forward to every day. 

The food packet from the pantry goes into the rehydrator for the requisite amount of time and then into the crisper to add the texture back to it. Space food is never quite as satisfying as the food back on Earth, but you’ve grown fond of it in recent years, even enough to crave it back home. No matter the dish, you can always taste the faint peppery, slightly bitter undertaste, like fresh watercress. 

You’d been planning on eating by yourself back in your quarters or at a table in the mess, but you feel weird just leaving Nikolai to his own devices after exchanging a few pleasant words, so you join him at the island counter. 

“Did you have a lot on your plate today?”

“My plate?” Nikolai asks, looking down at his food. “Нет, not so much—I had big lunch at around four o’clock.”

You bite your lip to suppress your smile. “No, I meant, did you have a lot of work?”

“Ah, why didn’t you just say that? Yes, lots done today, lots more to do tomorrow. Farah and I are still working on finding the root cause for the issue with the cruise control.”

“It’s a tricky fix?”

“Yes. Complex,” he grunts, talking around the food in his mouth. After weeks of eating with him and longer working around cut open bodies and exposed organs, you’ve long learned to suppress any sign of disgust on your face. “The pilot augmentation system isn’t controlled by this ship’s AI, so it’s not an easy software fix. We thought it was component degradation from the asteroid the other day at first, but Farah had a look at it today and all seems good, so not so sure now. Maybe gyroscope malfunction. Maybe GPS receiver is having issues. Hard to say. Lots of work still to do.”

You nod as if you understand. Most of it goes over your head apart from the obvious frustration in his voice. 

“Would be easier problem to fix if we had specialist, but—” Nikolai shrugs, a rueful look on his face “—little budget, small crew. Better we have doctor for wrist sprain than specialist to fix pilot augmentation system.”

Though his tone isn’t necessarily bitter, you can’t help but prickle at the light sarcasm. Your impulse is to go on the defense. It isn’t your fault medics are mandatory. Certainly not your fault that the original twelve crew member allowance was slashed to only six. 

“Farah and you make a good team,” you say instead, ever the diplomat. Magnanimous despite the way your teeth ache in your gums. 

“Smart girl, that one. Would clone her if I could.”

His praise makes you look away only because you wish it could be aimed at you. You crave it these days. Not necessarily from Nikolai, but from anyone. The downside of these longhaul missions is that you go months without interacting with family or friends; it’s why space crews bond so strongly with one another, the only reprieve from the claustrophobic sense of isolation out in space. It’s also why you’ve felt as lonely as you have these past few months, emotionally out of sync with this crew. 

“Let me know if there’s any way I can out,” you offer as he finishes up the last of his supper, putting his tray away into the dishwasher.

Nikolai nods. Hums. “Could do with another pair of hands.”

You smile, relieved.

He starts heading towards the door, throwing a hand up behind him to wave goodbye. “Will let you know when I find some way you can be useful.”

The smile slips off your face. The doors slide shut behind him, silence filling the room. 

You don’t have it in you to eat much more. Most of your meal goes straight into the compost, along with the empty packet, and then you leave the galley as well. The last couple of hours of your day are spent sitting aimlessly at your desk in the medical unit until it’s time to head back to your quarters to shower and sleep. 

And then to bed you go. 

In the middle of the night—though the meaning of ‘night’ seems boundless out in space, like a word without a cognate—a deep sense of unease throbs in your chest. 

Sleep sloughs off you gradually and then all at once. One minute you’re twisting in the web of a nightmare and the next, your eyes are open, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. 

You sit up in bed with the dull ache in your chest growing worse. The duvet slips off you and piles around your waist, the sheets under you damp with sweat. It hurts like heartburn. 

It’s too early for breakfast and you don’t have to pee. You’re not entirely sure what woke you up actually, your last dream already fading away, the threads of it unraveling when you reach out to try and pull it back in. It’s too far away to recall any of it. Propping yourself up on one arm, you twist to the side, hoping to let the sight of the stars guide you back to sleep. 

Out of your window, like a lone buoy in the middle of the ocean, an astronaut floats in the middle of space. 

For a moment, it doesn’t register. Likely just a dream that you haven’t woken up from yet. It’s remarkably vivid for a dream though. Your room is a cool dark blue, the band of dim artificial lights encircling the window beside your cot giving your quarters the distinct feel of a night back home on Earth. It’s only when you pinch your bare thigh and wince from the sharp, accompanying sting that you grasp that you’re awake. 

You are awake and there is a man floating away from the ship. 

The light from the ship glints off his suit, illuminating the shape of him. You stare out at him with increasing concern and dread. Not consciously grasping the gravity of the situation, but aware that you need to do something. He’s farther away this time, so distant that though his white spacesuit is stark against the dark field behind him, the visor of his helmet is impenetrable. Dark as obsidian. 

He drifts aimlessly in space, his body so still that you wonder if he’s even alive. With a jolt, you wonder if, in your haste to find help the other day, he did run out of oxygen and simply floated away. Occam's razor. You did not imagine a man speaking to you from outside the ship only for him to vanish from existence; he simply passed out while you were gone and drifted off before you could save him. 

“Oh shit,” you hiss, scrambling out of bed, nearly getting tangled in your sheets on the way out. You don’t even bother changing into more appropriate clothes, slamming the button to your door and squeezing through the gap between the door and the wall as soon as it opens for you. 

The corridor outside your room runs from stern to bridge, and is dimly lit at this time of night. The ship oscillates through Earth-tethered day and night cycles, the lights only at their brightest at a certain point aligning with morning back on Earth to simulate the distant sun. A slight chill to the air as well, to mirror night. Artificial photic and nonphotic zeitgebers to ensure the body maintains its circadian rhythm. Necessary to prevent sleep deprivation and keep the crew from going mad.

Now though, it makes you feel prey-like. Small. Darting from your room to the cockpit like a mouse scurrying across the savanna under the cloak of darkness and moonlight. 

Your bare feet smack against the metal floor as you run, the sound following you down the main corridor towards the cockpit. You pass another porthole but don’t bother glancing out of it, too intent on reaching the main viewing deck. You’ve got to—

Get the body help him save him I’m so sorry I left you out there—

Alex and Graves’s heads snap up as you barge into the cockpit panting and drenched in sweat. You don’t bother to explain yourself, heading straight for the flight deck window instead and leaning over the dashboard. The edge of the panel digs into your pelvis as you lean into the window. 

You crane your neck to look left and right, scanning as far as your eye can see. The astronaut you saw off in the distance from your bedroom window is gone. Only stars and dust shine from lightyears away. 

It doesn’t make sense. You saw him with your own two eyes drifting out there. You couldn’t have mistook him for anything else—not with the shape of his body, the helmet obelisk black. But there’s nothing out there. Nothing at all. 

“Doctor?” Alex asks tentatively from behind you, standing up from his chair. 

When you glance over your shoulder at him, wide-eyed, reality finally begins to seep back into you. The two of them stare at you from the other side of the cockpit, their concern and wariness evident in the tension in their shoulders. 

“Um—sorry. I…”

You don’t really know what to say. There’s no excuse that seems appropriate, no way of explaining the state of you, panicked and out of breath. For all intents and purposes, it’s the middle of the night. No reason for you to be out of your quarters and so disheveled. Panting like something chased you out of bed. 

You wonder what they would see if they cut you open; if they’d find your intercostal muscles bruised from the heavy beat of your heart. 

“Somethin’ you wanna share with us, doctor?” Graves asks. His tone is far less charitable, verging on suspicious.  

You swallow on a dry throat. “No, I’m—…it was nothing. I just…I had a bad dream.”

From the way they look at you, you can tell that neither of them believe you. It's flimsy, as far as excuses go. But there’s little else they can do but take you at your word. The rules are different out here, more tolerated than back on Earth. Everyone goes a little stir crazy; you just have to know how to manage it. 

“I should go back to my room,” you whisper when neither says anything. 

You move towards the door on cautious feet, suddenly aware of how cold it is in the cockpit. Goosebumps ripple down your arms and legs, nipples beading under your shirt. Alex politely averts his eyes when he notices. If you were less distressed, you’d be humiliated. 

“Get some sleep,” Graves says, eyes following you until the doors close behind you. 

You walk back to your quarters slowly, pausing to glance out one of the portholes just to confirm that you haven’t made a huge mistake. 

A minute or an hour goes by. You see nothing out in the distance.

Back in your room, you shut off the automatic light that comes on when you enter and collapse into bed. You avoid looking out the window for your own sanity, instead turning over onto your side. Wide awake now. Nothing to do but wait for sleep to sneak up on you again, if you haven’t scared it off entirely. All you can do is think about the look on Alex and Graves’ faces and cringe, pulling the blanket up over your head. 

Sleep almost finds you again when something knocks twice on the wall beside your head. 

Your breath catches in your throat. Fear scuttles across the floor beneath your bed. Just don’t look. Don’t look at it. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for it to go away. 

Whatever it is knocks again. The window this time. 

It takes an age to work up the nerve to roll back over. When you look up at the window, a face stares back at you, so close now that you can make out dimples and thick lips turned up at the corners. A close-shaved beard.

He smiles down at you, heedless of the horrified look on your face. “Hello again, love. Care to let me in now?”