#nuclear waste bin

[killmordecai4352]

this is for my 5 davesport followers i love u guys ^.^

[knightotoc]

Thinking about the fact that Disco Elysium is about two bumbling cops named Harry and Kim, which are also the names of a Voyager character. So here are potential video games starring the names of the rest of the Voyager crew:

Tom and Paris = New Testament meets the Illiad = In a 50s-inspired alternate universe, wealthy American Paris' faux pas accidentally starts a nuclear war with the USSR. As Paris falls from grace, his best friend, scrappy politician Tom, rises to power, exploiting the violence for his own gain. But when his actions lead to Paris' assassination, Tom is destroyed by his own self-loathing. Gameplay is, like, if DEFCON somehow had operatic interpersonal drama. Title: "Incredulity"

Kate, Jane, and Way = On the grimy streets of Victorian London, two tough orphan girls eke out their lives by their wits and tiny fists, until a mysterious cat named Way leads them through a portal in a mushroom-covered waste bin to the magical world of the fairies. Do they trust the fae's promises and abandon their difficult lives, or do they fight these beautiful creatures to return to their real home? Gameplay is a side-scrolling puzzle where you often see both worlds onscreen and how actions in one world affect the other. Title: "The Way to the End"

Seven and Nine = Dr. Magnus has finally recreated his dead daughter as a perfect, obedient robot -- on his eleventh try. This is the story of his ten rejected robots, who were abandoned on a tiny island far off the California coast. Gameplay is a visual novel with branching paths. Title: "Seven Ate Nine"

Tu and Vok = Latin for "you" and almost Latin for "voice" (vox) = The bastard twin children of a Roman soldier and a Berber healer run away from home to explore the fantastical Empire of their father's stories. Gameplay is a semi-realistic open-world survival adventure. Title: "Pax Romana"

Bel, Anna, and Torres = After an acrimonious divorce, you've moved two thousand miles away from your glamorous East Coast home to the middle of nowhere in Arizona for some peace and quiet. Unfortunately (or, fortunately?) you are immediately smitten by your three gorgeous neighbors -- intellectual lumberjack Marta Bel, shy novelist Anna Mustard, and sarcastic thrift-shop owner Jen Torres. Gameplay is a lesbian dating sim with a car mechanic sim B-plot. Title: "The Astonishing Zonies"

I'm having a harder time making somewhat plausible names out of "Chakotay," "Neelix," and "Emergency Medical Hologram," but maybe something will come to me...

[dutchbarracuda]

This is not The End

It is entirely overwhelming, the state of the world. Climate Change, political corruption, corporate dystopia, hate and violence. It takes me by surprise how even knowing about a refugee on the other side of the world being sent back can affect me.

It is not The End. Even in an utterly worst case scenario, like nuclear war, it's not The End. There would be survivors, and those survivors would do everything they can to survive. But that's worst case, and we're far from that.

You've got a sense of powerlessness. You can't make Musk or Murdoch or The Koch's or a screaming orange colostomy bag stop what they're doing.

You know what you can do? You can put out the recycling for collection. You can compost your left overs in a tiny bin in your kitchen. You can feed that plant by your window that's by all accounts is already dead. You can sew a patch onto your torn trousers. You can give your friend, neighbour, or stranger, a potato. Or a joke. Or a bit of advice you learned to be effective. You can find an old book on carpentry, and learn how to fix that creaky step in your apartment.

But why do any of this while the world is burning? It is a complete waste of effort and energy, right? It may be. Maybe there will never be enough of us to turn the world around. So why even try?

Because you are a world. We see things from our own point of view, where we are at the center. At that may sound selfish or egotistical. Don't do the good things for the other world, do it for your own world, and how you build it. Do the things that make your world better, your mind, your body, your home.

Build the bridges to other worlds. To your friends, your family, your lovers, your children, even to strangers. When you've gotten your world stable, help them with theirs, and maybe they'll help you too.

Make the nice food for yourself. Maybe share it. Ask if anyone wants your old clothes, even just rags. They might have a use for them. Keep the empty bottle in your pocket till you find a bin, or even collect others. Pull out the weeds. Put on sunscreen. Fix your umbrella. Look at all the photos you've taken. Read. Learn. Try. And do not fear failure. Absolutely no one is immune to failure. No one. Embrace the mistakes you make. Make them again. And again. Get it right and make a mistake again. You are your own world that you can control and influence. And even if there aren't enough of us who try to make the world a better place, we'll have made our own better, and shown others they can too.

[lurkingshan]

Great Men Academy

Y’all this is such a good show (she says to everyone who already watched it years ago). It’s Nadao Bangkok (RIP) so I knew production values would be high and the cast would be excellent, which was of course true. Love was a compelling character and I came to really love her, especially as portrayed by James. It was also more of an ensemble show than I realized, which gave us the opportunity to dig into some interesting stuff with Love’s brother Good and Love’s friends in the academy (Love, Menn, and Nuclear are such a good squad).

And as I discussed with @bengiyo, I thought the show was doing some really interesting stuff with gender identity and the stifling oppression of being forced to conform to either feminine or masculine ideals. Especially in the early parts of the story, Love felt much freer and more herself when she was able to live as a boy without having to perform femininity. And we saw the boys all battling with the confines of masculinity in their own ways. I loved that both versions of Love felt authentic and real and that in the end, Love got the chance to reconcile these two sides of her we’d seen throughout the story, and be loved and accepted in any body.

I only have one real complaint: this show needed a lot more Tangmo (and significantly less Vier).

Tangmo is an excellent person. He is kind. He is playful. He is funny. He is generous. He is loyal. He is basically head over heels for Love almost immediately after meeting her. He has himself a little queer awakening about it, works through his feelings privately, and then gets back to being a good friend and mentor to her even when she has hurt his feelings and rejected him. And he sees her for who she is rather than what body she’s occupying. He’s a fantastic character.

But sadly, there were long stretches in the middle of this show where he disappeared from my screen, mostly so we could spend lots of time with Vier’s daddy issues and ex. And I gotta be honest, fam. I don’t care. I recognize that they made us spend all that time with Vier so we would have some empathy for him when he keeps fucking over his best friend for the sake of winning this competition, but for me at least, that was time mostly wasted. I didn’t much care about the details of his feelings for Rose (the best parts of that plot had to do with Sean, and I was honestly so glad to see them let go of Vier at the end), and I did not find his issues with his dad particularly compelling. None of it engendered enough sympathy in me to forgive him for intentionally using Tangmo’s feelings for Love against him. If I were Tangmo I’d be putting this “friend” in the trash bin.

I would have appreciated seeing some of that story time used to give a bit more depth to Love and Tangmo’s relationship. By the time Tangmo confessed properly, Love had clearly developed feelings for him and wanted to accept him. And she cared about him enough in the end to give up her wish to make sure he lived. But for me, it didn’t feel like we really saw the moment when Love’s feelings for Tangmo changed, because she and the narrative were too focused on Vier. As a result, while I thoroughly enjoyed the end of their romantic arc, it felt like some connective tissue was missing to make it really feel earned. If I could change one thing about this show, it would be that.

[mewintheflesh-2]

Mrithun is done!!!!!! He makes my eyes hurt and I love him for it

I had literally so much fun designing him, I think is my favourite character design I’ve ever made literally for anything.

He’s got chemical burns on his knees!! That’s actually the origin of his slipping stick-man patch. He accidentally slipped on some dangerous chemicals and got them on his knees. He thinks they look cool though.

Very autistic, special interest is any and all kinds of poisons.

Owns a garage-like lab, where the only light is the sunlight pouring in from his very high up windows. He’s got a lot of them, just in case he needs to vent out any dangerous aromas/vapours. It’s chilly in his lab, but he’s always at the very least room temperature. If he has anyone he has taken interest in in the lab, he would offer to help warm them up with his own body heat.

Loves loves loves collecting patches that he can even vaguely relate to poison. Has two patches (visible in this photo) that are in relation to nuclear waste sites andwarnings for future civilisations. He has a patch depicting large spikes jutting from the ground, and a patch that says “This is not a place of honour”.

He also has a patch of the Monkshood/Wolfsbane flower, which is one of my favourite flowers :)

If it were possible to dye your entire mouth a colour, he’d dye his silver like mercury.

ALWAYS has poisons on his person. Will never be able to get through customs unless literally bribed to take the poisons off. Even then he would NOT let the customs people take his poisons and just dump them out in some waste bin. If he plans on travelling, he’ll have to hide/stash his poisons somewhere in his lab before setting out to do so.

Pokémon Team:

Alolan Muk

Crobat

Scollipede

Roserade

Seviper

Garbodor

and an additional Grafaiai.

[zilodak]

Where do you get your facts about nuclear stuff from? Do you have other facts about it to share? It's so cool to hear about ^^

I just go down random rabbit holes when I research for Sim Spring. So all my sources are different and a lot of it is from journals or articles.

Mmmh here's one (related fo nuclear history but is more abt radioactivity): In the late 90s, the US Department of Energy noticed a weird breach in Washington when health monitors recorded radioactivity from a mobile trailer. They noticed that their Geiger counters picked up specks of of radiation throughout the air, light switches, a cutting board and pieces of silverware. It then started to breach out of the trailer, onto dirty laundry, tobacco and garbage bins miles away. The material had been spreading through flies. Flies who were hatched from eggs that sat on top of concrete containers of nuclear waste around Hanford. These irradiated flies would spread miles away from the Hanford site, into homes. There was a private clean up effort and in a Q&A sessions, management would strongly advice people to keep their food in closed containers. This incident raised some of the early concerns about how radioactivity knows no borders, and can easily breach containment.

[cowboybrunch]

The speed with which I ran to your askbox...

🫂- What was your inspiration for your WIP? (Whichever is loudest in your mind atm <3 ) 🫀- Do you have an abandoned project? Why did it get binned? 🥸- Which character is most like you?

hii!!!!! ty for the questions!! <3

botrd is on the brain so. what inspired it? good question.

it's hard to point to one specific thing or even a handful of things because i feel like it was in my brain for years before i actually started writing it. i've always had a funky relationship with death and grief and this story was initially just a way to make sense of that. and then while i was finishing up the first draft, my dad died. maybe that's oversharing. but writing about grief while experiencing it is a whole other beast that i wasn't really prepared for, and i think it's made this story so much more than i intended it to be.

so i guess the real inspiration is the need to affirm that even tho we're all gonna die, it matters that we lived. it'll end, of course it'll end, and we'll be nothing more than memories and then eventually, nothing at all. but we were here and it mattered.

woof that got heavy. sorry bout that. ANYWAYS...

i have many abandoned projects but i dont like to think of them as abandoned. more like… hibernating. but let's talk about one of them!

The Sites

inspired by nuclear semiotics and this fun little message that has been translated into every UN written language:

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages …pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location�� it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited

basically: nuclear waste site. how do we warn that it's dangerous? put giant spikes in the ground, make it look super ominous (think elephant graveyard in the lion king), start a religion around the sites warning people to never, EVER go there or else evil will be unleashed

and then in the far, far future, when language has evolved so drastically that they don't understand our warnings, the myth of the sites remains. the warning is embedded in the culture itself. do not go here

enter: curious children being curious children

why was it binned?

ack, ran out of steam, got sidetracked by other things, hit a wall and turned around, etc. im sure it'll come back round. they always do

what character is most like you?

all of my characters have bits and pieces of me packed into them. like looking in a shattered mirror and seeing hundreds of tiny reflections. BUT if i had to pick one, i would pick Amelia from my untitled vampire story (a beast or a bad dog)

I squeeze the hilt of the golden dagger like a child might hug a doll: for comfort, for safety, to quell the unrelenting fear that this is all there is, that I will only be what I am for the rest of my life. Always leaving a mess, Nicolai said. He doesn’t know how right he is.

i wouldn't say she's like me now, but i see a lot of my teenage self in her. angry, prideful, stubborn, frightened. trying to reconcile what she's learning about the world with what she's been taught. she's a good egg, deep down. she just needs a little patience.

[anonymusbosch]

Hello! The linked article has a lot of truth to it, and I’d like to add a little more context and nuance to that and to a couple of OP’s statements.

I don’t contest that major solar installations can and do destroy protected habitat and archaeological sites. I’m strongly in favor of continuing to incentivize rooftop solar; I’m also strongly in favor of building solar plants on sites that don’t have archaeological or religious significance and which minimally impact threatened species. I think construction should include dust abatement to protect nearby residents and include revegetation of topsoil to significantly reduce airborne dust.

I do want to address the question which the Guardian article leaves unanswered: “But a more fundamental question remains: why build in the desert, when thousands of acres of rooftops in urban areas lie empty across California?”

The short answer: It’s far more effective.

It strongly misrepresents the losses from transmitting power from remote areas to local ones. The total loss in transmission and distribution in the US is around 6%. Of that, only 2%age points are from high-voltage, long-distance transmission while the other ~4%age points are from local low-voltage distribution. Further reading here.  A 1000km line may lose ~2.5% of its energy; the last 10 km, double that.

There are also advantages to installing at utility scale in the desert: it’s brighter there – there is more solar energy – and you can capture that energy much more effectively with tracking systems.

(Image: A map of the United States showing Direct Normal Irradiance per unit area. DNI is a measure of incident solar energy. The Desert Southwest is in the top bin of the colormap.)

Tracking PV, or solar panels which rotate around a beam and follow the sun from east to west across the sky, delivers up to about 30% more energy with the same panels than fixed-mount panels, which don’t move. Importantly, they’re even more effective near sunrise and sunset – when fixed solar output drops close to zero. In California, the time right before and after sunset is the peak of energy consumption. Being able to capture additional energy close to sunset doesn’t just mean offsetting energy production from fossil fuels at that moment – it also decreases the amount of surge from natural gas plants which need to operate even when solar can supply more energy than is needed, because those plants need to stay operational to be able to rapidly increase power at night.

All told, a panel used in a utility-scale installation in the Mojave can provide almost double the power of the same panel on a south-facing rooftop, particularly when that energy is most valuable. It displaces much more greenhouse gas emissions there and produces cheaper power.

The other thing that the article leaves MASSIVELY unaddressed: The environmental costs of supplying energy any other way.

The outro positions batteries as the future. To a degree, they are – but there are massive environmental costs associated with lithium production and processing, either by mining or by salt-brine evaporation. Salt-brine production consumes and can contaminate massive quantities of water, particularly in desert areas where the evaporative potential of hot, dry air accelerates lithium concentration. It currently requires harsh chemicals or huge amounts of energy to process, even when mined with more traditional methods. You’ll find articles much like the Guardian’s on solar decrying the devastation wreaked by lithium mining. Almost all lithium production occurs outside the US, but the Mojave Desert holds the US’s main lithium reserves and its only current lithium processing facilities; it’s actively being explored for lithium extraction.

What of other energy generation methods? Nuclear? What of the massive environmental contamination in the Mojave from radioactive waste spillage? The disproportionate impact of radiation waste on Native communities? The biggest radioactive waste spill in US history which still affects the Navajo nation? Or natural gas, or coal – what about the environmental contamination of the Mojave when PG&E dumped over 350 million gallons of contaminated wastewater (a byproduct of natural gas compression for transmission) into the ground near Hinkley, leading to  over a thousand people becoming ill and leaving contamination to this day? What about natural gas plants leaking methane, spewing carbon dioxide and byproducts of combustion? And what about the hazards of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles? The disproportionate rates of asthma and lung cancer in areas of LA near the ports and highways, affecting over a million people in the city of LA alone?

Nothing is free. Any means of generating electricity and energy requires resource extraction. Any means of transmitting and storing energy has costs and risks. Everything causes harm – wind, hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels, battery storage, water-battery storage, chemical storage. The question is “how much” and “is it worth it” and “can we reduce that harm in any way.”

I am strongly in favor of reducing harm to the greatest extent possible. That requires acknowledging the harms of any kind of energy and mitigating them wherever possible. To an extent I’m glad that articles like the Guardian’s are circulating, because public pressure to choose less-impactful locations for solar fields and to mitigate the harm to local residents is a good thing. But it does no good to present alternatives as magical, harmless solutions without question.

 ----------

Last little sidebar – It’s just nowhere close to true that Joshua trees are on their way to extinction, or that solar installations are a major threat to the species.

The Red List/IUCN considers it a species of Least Concern. The NatureServe listing is G3/G4 – at risk to secure. Its main threats are increased fire frequency, drought, and climate change. Habitat loss from many causes – development, grazing, off-road vehicle use, and yes, renewable energy – is tertiary. The species is also  currently protected in California. The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone does not overlap with the habitat of the Joshua tree. If you want to advocate for the continued survival of the species, consider supporting the replanting effort in the Mojave National Preserve, after the 2020 Dome Fire killed over a million Joshua trees there (around a quarter of the park’s population).

The Joshua tree is on its way to extinction because so-called green energy companies want to keep the death machine of civilization going by installing large swaths of solar panels over the desert floor, a big metal blanket that will kill everything it covers: the desert tortoise, the sage grouse, the hawks and snakes and beautiful flowers that have flourished for thousands of years. Gone. Gone.

All so that we can keep the dead heart in the rotting corpse of industrial civilization beating into the next decade. These are the "good guys" btw, these are the "renewable" "carbon neutral" options: covering the desert in miles of metal and microchips until every living being without a bank account is dead.

[crristinaa-level6]

MJ: Research part 2

- According to Statista's ocean pollution by country report, in 2010, China was responsible for 8.8 million metric tons of mismanaged waste, with an estimated 3.53 million metric tons ending up in the oceans.

- Despite having the largest population globally, China aimed to recycle 35% of its plastic waste by 2020.

- Indonesia, with a population of 264 million, had 3.2 million tons of mismanaged waste, resulting in 1.29 million tons entering the oceans.

- The United States, with 327 million inhabitants, contributed 0.11 million metric tons of waste to ocean pollution.

- In 2010, both China and Indonesia accounted for over a third of the world's plastic waste, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

- The ocean pollution statistics by country report was conducted by a team of researchers from Australia and the United States, led by Jenna Jambeck, aiming to analyze global levels of plastic waste in the oceans.

What are the causes and what is marine pollution?

80% of pollution in our oceans comes from land-based sources.

Most developing countries dispose of 90% of water, and 70% of industrial waste gets discharged into our oceans without treatment.

We produce 100,000 chemicals commercially – all of which threaten the ocean through transport accidents and leaking into the soil or atmosphere to reach the sea.

1950-1998 over 100 nuclear blast tests occurred in our oceans.

50% of the world’s ship cargo is considered dangerous to the environment; 90% of the planets international trade is transported by ship.

6,000 offshore gas and oil installations provide 30% of the world's energy supply.

The gas and oil industry releases greenhouse gases and causes thousands of spills annually.

Oil spills are vastly dangerous to the oceans, but only 12% come from actual spills – the rest leaks in from drains and rivers.

3,000 different marine species are transported around the planet in 12 Billion tons of ballast waters, causing significant problems with invasive species entering marine ecosystems.

In the Baltic sea alone, over 100 alien species are impacting marine life.

80% of global marine pollution comes from agriculture runoff, untreated sewage, and discharge of nutrients and pesticides.

Coastal areas are significantly impacted by fertilizer runoff from lawns and farms. These nutrients cause algal blooms to flourish and dissolve the water's oxygen levels.

These harmful algal-based blooms have tripled since 1984, closing beaches and killing fish.

Annually, the Mississippi River flows 1.5 million tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. Navy uses a high-intensity sonar for training – this has been linked to whale strandings.

Marine pollution causes 1: discarding materials that can be recycled 

- Recyclable materials disposed of in regular bins instead of being recycled can end up in landfills.

- Some countries lack recycling programs, further contributing to this issue.

- When recyclable items are deposited in landfills, toxins can leach into the soil and eventually reach the ocean through rivers.

- Lightweight plastics, in particular, are prone to blowing away during transportation or from landfills, potentially ending up in drainage systems and rivers, ultimately polluting the oceans.

Marine pollution causes 2: everyday littering 

- When plastics and other potentially toxic materials are littered, drainage systems and rivers transport them to the sea.

- Rainwater or wind can facilitate the movement of litter into drainage routes leading to the ocean.

- Illegal dumping of waste exacerbates this issue on a larger scale than individual littering.

Marine pollution causes 3: products and chemicals that go into our drains

- Many people improperly discard everyday products like sanitary products, cotton buds, and wet wipes down the toilet.

- Additionally, people may not realize that washing clothes made from materials classified as plastics releases microfibers, which also find their way into our drainage systems and ultimately reach the sea.

Where does most of the ocean pollution come from?

90% of the global ocean debris comes from 10 rivers alone.

8 in Asia: Amur, Indus, Pearl, Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Hai He, Mekong;

2 in Africa: Niger and the Nile.

Tops 10 rivers 

1,469,481 tons - Chang Jiang (Yangtze River)

164,332 tons - Indus

124,249 tons - Huang He (Yellow River)

91,858 tons - Hai He

84,792 tons - Nile

72,845 tons - Meghna, Brahmaputra, Ganges

52,958 tons - Zhujiang (Pearl River)

38,267 tons - Amur 

35,196 tons - Niger

33,431 tons - Mekong

- Dr. Christian Schmidt and his team conducted research to identify the entry points of ocean pollution, particularly focusing on the sources of plastic pollution.

- Over the past decade, researchers analyzed waste in the water near 57 major rivers that flow into the oceans.

- Their study revealed that 10 rivers are responsible for 90% of the plastics entering the oceans.

- Schmidt and his team calculated waste quantities per cubic meter and compared them across the 57 rivers studied, identifying the top 10 rivers with the highest plastic pollution levels.

- Eight of these rivers are located in Asia: the Amur, Indus, Pearl, Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Hai He, and Mekong. The remaining two are the Niger and Nile rivers in Africa.

How does ocean pollution affect humans? 

Coastal water contamination is responsible for 250 million clinical cases of human diseases annually.

Only 1 in 20 adults bathing are at risk of becoming ill after a single bathing visit in waters considered ‘acceptable’ by microbial standards.

At the current rate, by the end of the century, our waters will be 150% more acidic than now.

80% of sewage discharged into the Mediterranean Sea is untreated.

Contaminated shellfish is the cause of 50,000-100,000 deaths annually due to damaged immune systems and cancer.

People who primarily eat seafood as their diet like indigenous people of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland are found to be contaminated by POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants).

100% of the population of East Greenland has blood contamination.

The direct medical and health costs of polluted waters are $16 Billion globally each year.

Economic losses due to non-indigenous species getting introduced into the ocean are in the 100’s of millions of dollars.

70% of the oxygen we and other land animals is directly from the sea.

- Man's survival hinges on a harmonious relationship with the planet's oceans, as over 70% of the oxygen we breathe is produced by marine plants.

- Activities on land directly impact offshore environments; for instance, 30% of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by oceans, while waste disposal affects the ecosystem and wildlife toxicity.

- Ocean pollution poses significant risks to humans, contaminating seafood and water supplies with plastics, metals, and chemicals.

- The bacteria in polluted water interact with disposed metals like mercury, converting them into highly toxic forms.

- Marine plant life absorbs these toxins, which then accumulate in fish, a staple of human diets, resulting in the transfer of toxic waste up the food chain.

- Exposure to methylmercury, a byproduct of polluted waters, has been linked to serious health issues such as heart disease, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease.

- Even swimming in polluted waters can lead to adverse effects like rashes, diarrhoea, and stomach aches.

[unhingedwomandiaries]

Want my old job back? Do I look like I've had a complete mental breakdown? What kind of absolute melon would willingly skip back into that beige purgatory of back-stabbing middle managers whose main talent seems to be pissing all over everyone else's parade?

My ex-"colleagues" (and yeah, those air quotes are doing heavy lifting) had all the moral fiber of a pound shop chocolate bar left in the sun. They're the sort who'd see you drowning and chuck you a concrete life ring, then toddle off to the break room to spread rumors about how Sharon from Accounts is definitely having it off with the coffee machine repair bloke.

And don't get me started on the managers – those brown-nosing berks in their TK Maxx suits hanging crooked like they got dressed in the dark. Just because they've memorized some LinkedIn posts about "maximizing human capital" doesn't give them license to treat us peasants like we're some forgotten Tamagotchi from the '90s. Have a word with yourself, mate.

But here's the kicker – apparently I'm the problem! According to my ex-mate (whose opinion I now value about as much as a broken kettle), I should've known my place. Sure, everyone who got promoted spent half their life having smoke breaks, but they had fancy degrees, didn't they? Meanwhile, there's me, stuck doing SAP programming like some digital house elf, because apparently my Bachelor's degree might as well have been printed on loo roll.

Oh, and get this – I'm "antisocial" because I didn't fancy spending my evenings in some grotty Wetherspoons, pretending to care about x from IT's latest DIY disaster. Sorry I didn't want to watch you lot get plastered on cheap pinot grigio while moaning about your kids! And apparently, my crime of actually caring about the clients and doing more than the bare minimum was some sort of cardinal sin. Heaven forbid someone actually takes pride in their work!

They reckon I was "overpaid" for my "mid-level work" – rich coming from a bunch who couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery without forming three committees and a focus group first. And now they've got some poor sod doing my job for peanuts, probably making them turn their camera off during Zoom calls so no one can see them crying into their Pot Noodle.

But here's the best bit – I'm "welcome to apply" for my old job back! Yeah, and I'm welcome to stick my head in a woodchipper, but surprisingly, neither option appeals. They suggested that next time (ha!) I should "have a better personality" and "be a team player outside of work." Because apparently, being good at your job means nothing if you're not down the pub every Thursday, participating in the office's unofficial drinking Olympics.

Stick in the mud, am I? Well, I'd rather be stuck in mud than floating in whatever cesspit of corporate backstabbing they're swimming in. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to write an angry letter to Walkers about their pathetic excuse for crisp packet sealing. At least that'll be more productive than another bloomin' team building exercise.

P.S. If anyone from my old work is reading this – yes, the "chit-chat area" of the work chat was still inappropriate, you absolute muppets. Just because you label the bin "optional toxic waste" doesn't make it okay to dump nuclear materials in it, does it?

P.P.S. Here's word for word what my old boss actually said about me in a work Whatsapp group, "She's so ugly. There’s some stuff that needs to be said.

She was valued in her position. However, what she always fails to mention is that everyone who got promoted NEEDED to be. Her role was purely programming and project management-based, she was the only person doing her job and had nothing really to do with the role of the other 17 members of the team. It didn’t make sense to promote her in the way those others were promoted. She didn't know half of what those employees do, but claims she did (a lie). Yes, those people smoked, but she was also entitled to breaks. It was brought up by her manager (me); and she just never took them. Also, 4 hours smoke break is an exaggeration, x. The MD of the company wouldn't allow employees to take the mick with smoke breaks—she knows that and you should too, x. They also were vastly more experienced in the job, had knowledge, and were able to communicate with everyone both in their team and the wider company. Those people who got promotions, yes, they weren't perfect people, but they knew their stuff and were approachable. They were my friends and they went to the pub every week with us as a team. They went above and beyond outside of work. She never went out once with us. She's not a team player. I don't even think she can drink more than one beer.

Yes, there were times where they'd have fun and have jokes because being part of a team includes getting along with the people you work with. Sorry if she thought those jokes were inappropriate. She needs to get a grip and loosen up. Uptight American is what she is. When work needed to get done, it got done. That's why the company that paid her wages approved the promotions. It wasn’t just an internal thing.

She was also overpaid for the job role she did, and the company that ultimately paid her wouldn't put out more money because they didn’t want to. That sucks, yes. No need to moan about it. Moaning insinuates that she is slating us. That's lawyer up time and she knows that so she should shut her mouth.

She's more than welcome to apply for your job back, or even any other role, but maybe next time be the bigger person."

[killmordecai4352]

colored his ass

T_T

[mi5019roishutton]

Green Hat - New possibilities, alternatives

I wanted my green hat to be a representation of where we are presently with atomic energy, with many of us having the first thought of nuclear waste and the devastation atomic energy-related accidents have caused e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima. I wanted to have flashes of what an ideal future could look like if atomic energy was harnessed as a green energy and used, in tandem with other green energies, to replace fossil fuels, almost as if the future was tearing through the current image.

I created these drawings in Photoshop to represent the growth of nature from this kind of energy and also atomic energy potentially being used on a large scale to produce electricity instead of fossil fuels. The leaves growing from the lightning strikes are what tie the natural aspect to the electric.

I created a 3D model of a toxic waste bin and damaged radioactive warning sign placed amid an idealistic patch of green grass against a sunny, blue sky. This was meant to be a 'perfect' version of what has been seen to happen at sights like Chernobyl, with animals returning to the area and Pripyat now looking like a forest that reclaimed the city.

The final video for now:

[sustainabilitybyarlette]

Lee County Waste-to-Energy Facility

The Lee County Waste-to-Energy Facility does exactly what its name implies — it takes the trash no one wants and turns it into something useful. All trash produced in Lee County and Hendry County is processed at the Waste-to-Energy Facility. Each person generates around 1 ton of trash; consider that the combined populations of these two counties are about 850,000, and that is a lot of trash! Population growth is becoming a concern - Lee County alone is predicted to have over a million residents by 2030 - because more people means more waste. 

Photo taken by me.

The cities of Cape Coral, Fort Myers, and Sanibel coordinate their own garbage collections. There are four trash pick-ups weekly: household garbage, yard waste, bulk items, and recyclables. Recyclable items include paper, metal, cardboard, plastic, and glass, all processed at the Material Recovery Facility (MRF). Unfortunately, 30% of the material processed at the MRF cannot be recycled due to contamination. Educating citizens on proper recycling methods can help reduce contamination and improve recycling efforts. On the bright side, Lee County surpassed Florida’s recycling goal of 75% by 2020 with an impressive 80% recycling rate.

Photo taken by me.

Four main fuels exist: natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewables. Natural gas is the most common, making up 43% of our fuel. Coal used to make up 75% of our fuel, but it has been reduced to 20%. Nuclear waste is the most controversial and expensive fuel type, making up only 9% of our fuel. The last 25% of the fuel we use comes from renewables, with hydroelectric power making up 9%, and solar and wind power making up the remaining 16%. Renewable energy sources are more sustainable because they do not burn fossil fuels or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The book “Sustainability Principles and Practice” states the following about renewable energy: “Solar and wind energy sources are intermittent. The sun does not shine at night, and the wind does not always blow. Hence, storage is a necessary element in most renewable energy systems. Possible storage media include batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage, compressed air, and flywheels.” (Robertson, 2021, p. 208). Thanks to energy storage, we can always enjoy the benefits of renewable energy.

The Lee County Waste-to-Energy Facility adheres to the principle of “cradle to cradle.” According to “Sustainability Principles and Practice,” “The standard approach to product life cycle is sometimes referred to as cradle to grave, with materials and resources following a one-way trip from production to disposal…architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart challenged the usual eco-efficiency approach to design thinking in their seminal book Cradle to Cradle…They proposed an alternative approach based on nature’s model in which waste equals food, with waste at one level becoming a nutrient at another level (McDonough and Braungart 2002)” (Robertson, 2021, pp. 342-343). Waste is not simply disposed of at the Waste-to-Energy Facility but turned into something valuable. Through the combustion of our waste, the facility generates 60 megawatts an hour, which is enough electricity to power its own campus as well as 30,000 homes! 

Photo taken by me.

As Mr. Mueller at the Waste-to-Energy facility says, “We are trashy people.” Luckily, there are many ways to reduce the amount of waste we produce: for example, you can use reusable bags when you go grocery shopping, buy items in bulk, take the time to sort items into the correct recycling bins, avoid unnecessary plastic packaging, use a reusable water bottle, and much more!

References:

Robertson, M. (2021). Sustainability Principles and Practice (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis Group.

[starsbegantofall]

One thing I have yet to be able to do is to replicate something from my wardrobe (normie or otherwise) even though I attempt to replicate cosplay costumes all the time. I suppose technically I did a copy of an AP jumperskirt just to see if I can do it and technically, sewing from commercial sewing patterns are making replicas of the example outfit or drawing on the front of the package. But I mean copying normal every day store-bought clothes that don’t come from commercially released patterns already. I think the biggest disadvantage to making your own clothes is finding good fabric. The ideal fabric was already bought by the company in mass quantities to make the item in the first place, and anything else of similar quality you can buy as the end consumer is so expensive, you might as well just buy the store bought item and save yourself the time.

But I have high hopes for making copies of whatever seems easy to recreate (probably not many with my middling sewing skills lol) with bedsheets. Previously I had looked down on this because bedsheets have that kinda homely look about them, like someone could tell it was a bedsheet before and if you’re not careful, looks pre-used and worn out and a waste of effort. Before I only used bedsheets as test muslin or mockups or for other uses besides being in the final garment. However, in a quest to whittle down the piles of fabric in my house causing me anxiety and guilt, I will revisit this prejudice. Example, I recently bought online a bedsheet set that is apparently not high enough threadcount to sleep in for my hoity toity skin, but maybe could be used as clothing or something else because I won’t be able to resell it, although donation bin is possible, if thrift stores accept used bedding. I guess the problem remains, if the fabric threadcount (stiffness, scratchiness, etc) bothers me, will it even be tolerable as a piece of clothing? It will most likely have to be lined with a better fabric, which will prevent me from wearing it that often in this nuclear waste hellhole that is global-warmed planet Earth.

[colloquium-journal]

Waste to energy field trip

Lee county resource facility

- one ton of trash per person per year, 800 pounds of that in generated in your home

- Monthly invoice shown to county provides money for facility

- Lee county population around 800,000

- Lee-Hendry counties have important relationship

- Single stream recycling is when you put all recyclables into the same bin

- MRF ( material recovery facility ) separates recyclables

- Construction and demolition facility takes dumpsters

- HCW facility sees paint, used motor oil, batteries, propane tanks and more

- Reuse centers divert useable household chemicals back to the community

- Covanta company name

- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover

- 4 main fuels are natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewables

- Sustainability is meeting todays needs without compromising the needs of tomorrow

- Fracking is injecting liquid into the earth to extract oil or gas

- The goal for Covanta is to create steam. Steam turns the turbine which turns the generator, creating electricity

- Ash takes up significantly less space than trash does

[xtruss]

Biden’s State Department Needs a Reset

The administration’s diplomacy has underperformed—except at time-wasting talk about democracy.

— By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. FP subscribers can now receive alerts when new stories written by this author are published.

— April 01, 2023 | Foreign Policy

Newly confirmed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a welcome ceremony at the State Department in Washington,DC on January 27, 2021. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP Via Getty Images

It is a truth universally acknowledged that America’s diplomatic institutions—and especially the State Department—are under-resourced. This truth is especially evident when you compare the State Department or Agency for International Development budgets with the money allocated to the Defense Department or the intelligence services. It’s even more obvious when you take America’s lofty global ambitions into account. It’s also a truism that the president’s time—and that of top cabinet officials such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken—is the scarcest resource of all.

If this is the case, then why-oh-why did the Biden administration devote any time at all to a second Summit for Democracy? It’s not just the time that U.S. President Joe Biden, Blinken, and other senior officials devoted to this talkfest. Putting something like this together also burned up hundreds of hours of staff time that might have been used to address other problems.

I raise this issue because the Biden administration took office vowing to put diplomacy at the center of U.S. foreign policy, yet it has relatively few diplomatic achievements to show for its first two-plus years. On the plus side, U.S. allies are far more comfortable with Biden and Blinken than they were with former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and they’ve been willing to forgive some of the administration’s early blunders (such as the unnecessary snub of the French during the AUKUS submarine deal in 2021). But apart from improved optics, the administration’s diplomatic record is unimpressive.

Part of the problem is the “democracy vs. autocracy” framing that Biden & Co. have embraced. I like democracy as much as anyone and more than some, but this dichotomy causes more problems for U.S. diplomacy than it solves. It doesn’t help the United States work more effectively with the autocratic governments that outnumber the world’s democracies and whose help may be more valuable as great power rivalries intensify. It leaves the United States exposed to accusations of hypocrisy, and it doesn’t seem to motivate Washington’s democratic allies very much. Case in point: European leaders keep traveling to Beijing to safeguard their economic interests with (autocratic) China, behavior sharply at odds with the democracy vs. autocracy template. Similarly, the president of (mostly) democratic India, Narendra Modi, just held talks with one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top national security advisors.

Meanwhile, other items on the administration’s agenda remain unfulfilled. Biden took office saying he’d rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran that his predecessor had foolishly left. But he dithered and delayed, Iran’s position hardened, and it is now clear that no new nuclear deal is forthcoming. The result? Iran is closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, raising the risk of a Middle East war that neither the U.S. administration nor the world needs right now.

Making matters worse, Biden and Blinken have been repeatedly humiliated by their various Middle East allies. The Egyptian government routinely ignores U.S. human rights concerns while continuing to pocket U.S. economic aid. Biden reversed his campaign vow to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a pariah for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but the fist bump “seen ‘round the world” didn’t convince the Saudis to help ease energy prices or persuade them to put any pressure on Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. More ominously, the Saudis keep moving closer to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Just this week, Saudi Aramco announced two new oil-related investment deals with China (including building a refinery there); and it was China—not the United States—that helped broker the recent détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I don’t blame either the Chinese or the Saudis for acting in their own interest, but it’s hard to see any of this as triumph of U.S. diplomacy.

Biden and Blinken aren’t directly responsible for the current crisis in U.S. relations with Israel—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “judicial reform” proposal deserves most of the blame for that—but their indulgent attitude toward Israel probably made Netanyahu think he could get away with it. Biden and Blinken have love-bombed Israel from the start: They didn’t reverse Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, failed to fulfill repeated promises to reopen a consulate for Palestinians, and offered only the usual mild expressions of “concern” at Israel’s continuing efforts to colonize the West Bank. Instead of distancing the United States from Israel’s increasingly worrisome conduct, Biden and Blinken kept repeating the usual cliches about the “ironclad” U.S. commitment and expressing their continued belief in a mythical creature: the two-state solution. No wonder Netanyahu thought he could move ahead with his controversial assault on Israeli democracy without jeopardizing U.S. support. And when Biden finally voiced some mild criticisms earlier this week, Netanyahu quickly responded by saying Israel would make its own decisions. That’s the kind of diplomatic influence that unconditional support buys you.

Meanwhile, the United States seems to be ceding its role as a global peacemaker. The country that once made arms control a top priority and brokered the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Good Friday Agreement, and an end to the Balkan Wars is less interested in ending conflicts than in helping its preferred side win, even when the end result is more death and destruction and a continued risk of escalation. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi noted last week, “America appears to have given up on the virtues of honest peacemaking. … Today, our leaders mediate to help ‘our’ side in a conflict advance our position rather than to establish a lasting peace.”

The Boak Bollocks of Fake Democracy Preacher will Preach About Democracy

U.S. diplomacy is falling short in dealing with China too. The administration’s mantra toward China, as expressed by Blinken in 2021, is that the United States “will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be.” But the first and third items have taken center stage, and efforts to find common ground and manage an increasingly intense security rivalry have been few and far between. Some of the blame rests with Beijing, of course, but one sees few signs of creative thinking about how this critical bilateral relationship could be managed or improved.

It’s not all bad news: U.S. efforts to strengthen relations with existing Asian partners such as Japan and Australia have gone well, aided in no small part by China’s ill-considered assertiveness. But the Biden administration’s broader effort to weaken China by imposing export controls on advanced chips and subsidizing U.S. digital industries has also imposed significant costs on these same partners, while heightening Asian concerns about a future clash in their neighborhood. Nor has the Biden team been able to formulate an effective counter to China’s growing economic influence in the Indo-Pacific. Biden’s not to blame for Trump’s ill-considered decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, but the administration’s substitute—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which it finally rolled out last year—is widely and correctly seen as small potatoes by most of Asia.

One of the administration’s early diplomatic successes was Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s effort to negotiate a multilateral agreement for a global minimum tax on multinational corporations (thereby preventing them from avoiding taxes by declaring profits in low-tax offshore locations). Kudos for Yellen, but the measure now lies moribund in Congress and may never come into force. And the administration’s more successful domestic initiatives, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act, have created serious frictions with U.S allies that regard these measures as promoting U.S. industries at their expense.

“Hold on a minute,” I hear you say. What about the critical role that U.S. diplomacy played in organizing the Western response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, not to mention those lopsided United Nations General Assembly votes condemning Moscow’s actions? Doesn’t that prove that America is back and its diplomats are doing their jobs with consummate skill?

Yes and no. On one hand, Biden and his team have led a coordinated Western response to the invasion, and this hasn’t always been easy. But it ain’t over till it’s over, and the ultimate result of this effort is uncertain. The cruel reality is that a protracted war that ends with Russia in control of some or all of the Donbass and Ukraine depopulated and heavily damaged will not look like a grand foreign-policy achievement. We all hope that does not happen, but it is certainly not an outcome one can rule out.

The sad fact is that the Biden administration has done an excellent job of responding to a problem that was at least partly of its own making. The roots of the Ukraine war predate Biden’s inauguration, but neither Biden nor Blinken saw the war coming soon enough. They did not recognize that Russia saw the trends in Ukraine as an existential threat, nor did they do everything they could have to head the war off. U.S. officials (both past and present) have gone to great lengths to deny that U.S. or Western policy played any role whatsoever in causing this tragedy, but a dispassionate look at the evidence—such as the recent account by British historian Geoffrey Roberts in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies—shows otherwise. As I’ve put it before, “Putin is directly responsible for the war, but the West is not blameless.”

We will probably never know if the war could have been avoided had the United States and its European allies made a more serious and creative attempt to address Russia’s security concerns, and dropped their stubborn insistence that Ukraine would one day join NATO. I’m not letting Russia off the hook for starting a preventive war (an illegal act under international law) or for the way it has waged it. But when one thinks about the consequences of the war for the world—and for Ukraine most of all—the United States’ failure to do everything within reason to head it off deserves more critical scrutiny than it has received to date.

To be fair, the disappointing performance of the United States’ diplomats isn’t entirely their fault. Because America’s global ambitions are so vast, many problems won’t receive adequate attention, let alone command the time, energy, and commitment of the people at the very top. And the bigger and broader Washington’s goals, the harder it is to reconcile tradeoffs between them and maintain a clear and consistent set of priorities. This is one of the (many) reasons why some of us keep arguing for greater foreign-policy restraint: U.S. foreign policy would be more successful if it did less but did the vital things well.

Which brings me back to that Summit for Democracy. Even if one overlooks the inconsistent criteria for attendance and the peculiar optics of some troubled democracies (France, Israel, Brazil, India, the United States, etc.) getting together to extol democracy’s virtues, it’s not clear what will be gained from this effort. The first summit didn’t reverse the downward trends that have been underway for almost two decades, which makes one wonder what a second gathering will achieve. Assembling a bunch of powerful officials makes sense when there is something immediate and tangible that they can do together, which is why the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the Madrid Conference of 1991, or the 2015 Paris Climate Conference were worth doing. Similarly, the Obama administration’s four nuclear summits produced some tangible results—such as various agreements to improve custody over nuclear materials world-wide and reduce existing stockpiles of nuclear material—even if they did not reach every one of the administration’s initial objectives.

As near as I can tell, the democracy summits will fall well short of even those modest achievements. Democracy’s future is not going to be helped by more talkfests; it will depend on whether the world’s democracies can deliver better results for their citizens at home and abroad. Success will take a lot of work, and even the wealthiest democracies do not have infinite time or resources—which is why I hope the second Summit for Democracy is also the last.