#living planet

[no7er]

Planet Kudzu Digital artwork by me, 2024

[tothesolarium]

One of the first planets our crew will be visiting is Alestera, which is inhabited with the Telva. Which are sentient flora. The trees have the closest semblance to humanoid limbs with their legs and hands, while the flowers have tendrils and roots. To each other they speak with body language and subtle vibration, but they learned to speak into visitors minds.

Visitors are allowed, but not if you are apart of any grand organization looking to establish contact. Or if you would try to take any of their resources. You must establish friendship before landing, or risk meeting their solar canons first hand

[urtopia]

Jake Foreman

[sylpheedz]

Super Celestion

[moonwatchuniverse]

May 8, Happy Birthday to Sir David Attenborough... turning 97 today ! Congratulations to British author, explorer & zoologist/biologist Sir David Attenborough on his 97th birthday. Last year he was so kind autographing a few 1962 photographs showing him wearing his Rolex Explorer 1016 wrist watch. A personal time piece he wore between 1962 and 1972 on different bracelets during a decade. (Photo: MoonwatchUniverse/BBC)  

[pluralzalpha]

Galactic Gazetteer: Zonama Sekot

Type: rogue planet/living planet

Location: variable

Origin: Yuuzhan Vong Ancestral Galaxy

Inhabitants: Yuuzhan Vong, Ferroans, Langhesi, humans

Affiliation: Yuuzhan Vong

First appearance: "Rogue Planet" by Greg Bear (2000)

Fun fact: a single sentient organism, the seed of the original Yuuzhan Vong homeworld Yuuzhantar.

Another fun fact: name means "World of Body and Mind" in Ferrian.

Fun fact 3: travelled to the main galaxy as part of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion in Legends continuity.

[wolfnowl]

As people debate the costs, timeline, difficulties and challenges of keeping our planet habitable, it helps to have a reminder of what our (realistic) alternatives are (we don't have any).

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

Even though the 11th Inspector claimed he was giving up his memories to the eldritch being Imhotep,

he really did it under duress, because the living planet had threatened to kill millions if he didn’t.

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Susan Sontag wrote that "Depression is melancholy minus its charms." For me, living with depression was at once utterly boring and absolutely excruciating.

John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed (Harvey)

[teaboot]

I feel like if you're using a lot of disposable plastic bags in your day to day life, you've gotta do something sustainable to make up for it. Like using bamboo toilet paper or eco friendly cat litter or something, yknow

Honestly I exaggerate for comedic effect, while I DO routinely use ziplock bags to hold spaghetti I cook maybe once a month and the bag itself is usually for freezer storage. I actually throw out maybe one bag a week? I DO hate washing plates and tupperware and junk but that usually just means I eat sandwiches without a plate.

I agree though that needless waste should be avoided, and I do avoid it- biodegradable bags and recyclables, empty butter tubs used to store leftovers, etc.

This said, though, not applicable necessarily for myself but for a lot of others- I feel that it's importat to remember that there are many people who legitimately NEED things like plastic straws, or catheters, or pre-packaged foods

And the idea that that's a moral failing that individuals need to personally make up for when a single billionaire blows out more CO2 in a long weekend than I will in my whole life on a superjet meet-cute in the Bolivian rainforest between humvee drag races funded by the river-polluting textiles plants they planted in a third world country to avoid EPA laws and give an entire village stillbirths and stomach cancer is an idea that those very same bigwigs have spent a LOT of time and money investing in planting in the public psyche.

Like- Glass bottles are infinitely recyclable, so why are so many drinks in plastic now? Loads of drinks manufacturers used to buy them back and clean them for re-use, so why did they stop? If they chose to make something out of a limited and environmentally irresponsible material, why is it my failing to track down a correct process of disposal for them? What if there are none in my area? Do I lobby for more recycling plants in my area? Do I set aside some of my limited time outside the pain factory of my job- which I have more than one of, thanks to rising costs of things just like that drink I just emptied- to properly dispose of this company's waste FOR them?

Say coca-cola just rolled up to your town and started dumping millions of empty plastic bottles in the street, going, "wow, you should really think about building and staffing a recycling depot, it would be really shameful of you to just put these in the trash." When companies purposefully use materials with limited lifespans- because yes, even plastic can only be reused so many times- and tell you it's your own fault if it harms the environment- that's essentially what they're doing, just with more steps.

Yes, its important to be as environmentally concious as we can in our day to day life, but responsible sustainability is not catholicism. We don't get good boy points from our lord and savior Captain Planet every time the average low-income household gathers together to hold hands and repent for a single-use plastic that allows them to access something they need.

Entire families could eat trees and shit dead lithium batteries for years and still not do as much damage to the planet as an average dye plant or braindead celebrity does in a week just for fun, and I'm mad about it

...this went on longer than intended.

TL/DR: DO recycle and minimize waste, but don't beat yourself up over the little waste you can't avoid, and follow the money.

EDIT: Part 2

[edgarejart]

Ayang's Queen has Arrived

I was watching a fellow artist's stream of her artwork "Living Planet." I was inspired by an image she was playing with before she settled on her final draft. I ended up taking that early draft image and turning it into this piece. Thanks @ayang_javier for being such a great artist.

Ayang's artwork can be viewed here; https://www.instagram.com/p/CbcotgqKazh/

Art timelapse video can be seen @ https://youtu.be/BbdZJL58i3Q

[handsomelyerin]

they're so tarzan and jane core

[sanguine-pigeon]

saying it's "anti-arab racism" to call out gofundme scams is like saying it's antiblack to be skeptical of emails from the prince of nigeria asking you to wire money so you can collect vast fortunes.

[bookishdaze]

Ok but Venus by Sleeping At Last immediately makes me think about Noa and Mae. It's a sweet love song, the title is a reference to the Roman goddess of love, but best of all, it has a telescope metaphor to describe the feeling of falling in love, so obviously I think about them!

At first, I thought you were a constellation I made a map of your stars, then I had a revelation You're as beautiful as endless You're the universe I'm helpless in An astronomer at my best When I throw away the measurements

Like a telescope I will pull you so close 'Til no space lies in between And suddenly, I see you Suddenly, I see you

[solhunder-new]

come to the blanket fort. nothing can hurt you in the blanket fort.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.