#life restoring

[inthedarktrees]

Ballerinas standing on window sill in rehearsal room at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life, 1936

[leslieseveride]

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

[theanonymousninja247]

The Wild Robot

My Response After Watching it

Y’all. I believe in humanity again if THAT is what people can create. What a story. WHAT. A. Story.

Please. Please. PLEASE. Take the time to watch it. It is BEYOND worth it.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

should Age of Duskborn come to pass,

promise me you’ll be my Mother once more.

[thebibliosphere]

There’s a house near me that’s a beautiful old Queen Anne that I’d love to share with all of you but can’t because I don’t want to doxx myself, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say it's exterior is gorgeous. Just beautiful ornate gothic latticework. Think gingerbread Addams family house. There you go.

Anyway, I found out it went up for sale the first thing I did was look it up to catch a glimpse of the inside.

Now, this could just be the PMDD talking, but I think if you’re the type of person to gut an 1880 house of all its original features and replace them with faux white marble floors and beige farmhouse chic walls, I’m not saying you should be torn apart by ravenous wolves.

I’m just saying I should be allowed to eat your heart in the marketplace.

[hyunpic]

HYUNJIN for WKOREA & VERSACE

[reasonsforhope]

"Discarded shells from restaurants and hotels are being used to restore damaged oyster ecosystems, promote biodiversity and lower pollution in the city’s bays...

Nestled in between the South China Sea and the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong has been seen historically as an oyster hotspot. “They have been supporting our livelihood since ancient times,” says Anniqa Law Chung-kiu, a project manager at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Hong Kong. “Both oysters and their shells are treasures to humans.”

Over the past five decades, however, the city’s sprawling urban development, water pollution, as well as the over-harvesting and frequent seafloor dredging by the lime industry – which uses the crushed shells to make construction material – have destroyed Hong Kong’s oyster habitats and made the waters less hospitable for biodiversity.

The more oyster colonies falter, the worse the problem gets: oysters are filter feeders and purify water by gobbling up impurities. Just one Hong Kong oyster can filter up to 200 litres of water a day, more than any other known oyster species. But decades of rapid industrialisation have largely halted their water-purifying services.

The depletion of Hong Kong’s natural oyster reefs also affects the ability of local farmers to sustainably cultivate their oysters in a healthy environment, denting the reputation of the city’s 700-year oyster farming tradition, designated by Unesco as an “intangible cultural heritage”.

Inhabitants of the coast feel abandoned, says Ken Cheng Wai-kwan, the community leader of Ha Pak Nai on Hong Kong’s Deep Bay, facing the commercial city of Shenzhen in China. “This place is forgotten,” Cheng says. “Oysters have been rooted here for over 400 years. I ask the question: do we want to lose it, or not?”

A group of activists and scientists are taking up the challenge by collecting discarded oyster shells and recycling them to rebuild some of the reefs that have been destroyed and forgotten in the hope the oysters may make a comeback. They’ve selected locations around the island where data they’ve collected suggests ecosystems still have the potential to be rebooted, and there are still enough oyster larvae to recolonise and repopulate reefs. Ideally, this will have a positive effect on local biodiversity as a whole, and farming communities.

Farmers from Ha Pak Nai were among the first to hand over their discarded shells to the TNC team for recycling. Law’s team works with eight oyster farmers from Deep Bay to recycle up to 10 tonnes of shells every year [over 22,000 pounds]. They collect an average of 870kg every week [over 1,900 pounds] from 12 hotels, supermarkets, clubhouses and seafood restaurants in the city, including some of its most fashionable establishments. About 80 tonnes of shells [over 176,000 pounds] have been recycled since the project began in 2020.

Restaurants will soon be further incentivised to recycle the shells when Hong Kong introduces a new fee for waste removal – something that is routine in many countries, but only became law in Hong Kong in July and remains controversial...

Preliminary data shows some of the restored reefs have started to increase the levels of biodiversity, but more research is needed to determine to what extent they are contributing to the filtering of the water, says Law.

Scientists from the City University of Hong Kong are also looking to use oyster shells to increase biodiversity on the city’s concrete seawalls. They hope to provide tiny, wet shelter spots around the seawall in which organisms can find refuge during low tide.

“It’s a form of soft engineering, like a nature-based solution,” says Charlene Lai, a research assistant on the team."

-via The Guardian, December 22, 2023

[strangerathecinema]

one of my favorite things about bojack horseman is that the show will end with the most depressing, heartbreaking, gut wrenching, emotionally devastating scene you’ve ever seen in your entire life then it immediately cuts to the absolute banger that is back in the 90’s by grouplove

[fandom-geek]

btw, the violinist in tmp 4? he's probably james smithson, of "founder of the smithsonian institute" fame

so what do we know about our violinist? he grew up in alnwick abbey, he was illegitimate and had legitimate full siblings, a father "certain of his celestial significance", and he has a nephew to whom he leaves his violin

and smithson? well, his father restored alnwick abbey in the 1750s, which was in ruins up until then. smithson was the only illegitimate child of any of the dukes there in the 1700s, which is when the statement is set

smithson also left his estate to his nephew after his death, with the condition that his fortune would establish the smithsonian institute if his nephew died without any children.

here's a point of divergence, however. in our timeline, smithson was a chemist and mineralogist. in tmagp's timeline, he was a violinist. however, as u/New_Helicopter836 pointed out to me on reddit, when smithson's body was disinterred by andrew graham bell, his right little finger was such that it suggests he played "the harpsichord, the piano, or a stringed instrument such as a violin"

looking at smithson's life, he left for university in 1782, so it's likely that tmagp 4 is set around the same time. it might be a bit earlier since the royal court orchestra moved from mannheim to munich in 1778 (putting smithson at about 13), it might be another point of divergence, or smithson is describing it this way to call back to its earlier significance. i'm not sure, but it's weird either way.

all that said, i'm not terribly sure why smithson describes his father (sir hugh smithson/percy, duke of northumberland) as "certain of his celestial significance", especially when the only other time he says celestial is to describe the violin's music. the user i mentioned before found that sir hugh, a major patron of architectural projects, had an observatory built, but i find smithson's language too specific. is his father an avatar too? mannheim is only a bit north of schwartzwald, after all, and this is about thirty years before tmag 23 where albrecht writes to jonah magnus.

let's look a little at smithson's bequest to found the smithsonian institute in the first place. smithson asked for it to be "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men". the magnus institute, notably, is described in the arg as a place of education, and it was founded in 1818. although smithson died in 1829 and his nephew in 1835, the original smithsonian (the columbian institute) was granted a charter by the us government in 1818.

the letter is strangely absent of any names for the violinist or his family, and i can't help but wonder if this is why. and if it is because this is smithson - is this related to why the magnus institute exists instead of the magnus archives? the smithsonian, before it was renamed, was originally granted a charter by the us govt in 1818 - the same year that the magnus institute was founded in tmagp.

this is set 30 years before we know anything of jonah magnus, at least in tmag, so is it possible that he persuaded smithson to fund his educational institute focusing on the supernatural? the changed course of smithson's life from scientist to supernatural violinist would certainly be conducive for that, not least to mention the strange absence of his fortune from his letter to his nephew.

[cowboyjen68]

Stopped by this restored gas station in small town Iowa. Met the owner Dave and learned some local and Texaco history.

[waveoftheocean]

06.21.24 colored this lil doodle for hinata's bday!! ☀✨

[inthedarktrees]

Nina Leen, “Summer Underwear,” Life, May 1949  

[wowa-bublord]

the most evil thing i want for the next ff7 is that i want zack to have to sacrifice himself again for the universe or whatever but i want him to NOT want to die. like i want him to be crying and visibly desperate to survive but knowing theres no way for him to. in some life is strange save zack or save the universe choice I want him to have his price of freedom moment where he walks towards his death knowing that it'll kill him and i want him to hate it. is anyone with me here.

[squarecloud73]

Who's your favourite dungeon meshi character? (not to reduce you to your obsession atm) but i'm intrigued about why you like this character. is it their interactions with others? gay? how they view the world and how it's similar to you? ^#^ thanks

I like every character for different reasons but like, emotionally, Mithrun stood out to me in a way.

At first glance, he appeared to be the angsty pretty character sunken deep into tragedy and vengeance, but that changed when we saw more of him.

After his identity and basic abilities were stripped away, his body and mind betrayed him, but he survived. Just… look at him when he just left his dungeon, he was skin and bones, covered by wounds from self-destruction, barely functioning, but he managed to train himself up, physically and magically more powerful than ever, went back to Canaries and became a captain who is respected even by Cithis.

Kabru’s talk was his last one step to a new stage of life, still, without all the hard work and companionships he previously built with his teammates and families, he would vanish in a pit of despair long ago. When Milsiril found him in front of the broken mirror, when Kabru asked him to search deeper with him, when Senshi gave him that piece of advice, he allowed the sparkle of life to flow back within, eventually, his beauty came out of ashes like freaking Deadpool.

Mithrun proved that leftovers can still be brew into a nice warm soup.

[hyunpic]

[faygelehh]

CRINGETOBER 2023

DAY 2: SELF-INSERT

Ft. Bluey & Bingo! (or… Bingir? Bingo/Gir?)