#the full article

[why-the-heck-not]

me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))

[akajustmerry]

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Can’t Escape Its Own White Gaze by Merryana Salem / Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023). Dir. Martin Scorsese

[nonbinary-vents]

This has been an absolutely horrible couple weeks for the Jewish and Israeli community, so I want to throw in at least a tiny bit of hope in here. Amina Hassouna, the Bedouin girl who was severely hurt in Iran’s missile attacks, has been recovering well and seems to be in good condition! She is described as being ‘fully conscious’ and ‘communicating and smiling’. Two bomb shelters have been placed in Al-Fura, the town that she and her family are from, as well.

[ink-the-artist]

Paleolithic humans

Been meaning to make art of early humans for a while and these in particular were greatly inspired by this article:

[reasonsforhope]

"The world's coral reefs are close to 25 percent larger than we thought. By using satellite images, machine learning and on-ground knowledge from a global network of people living and working on coral reefs, we found an extra 64,000 square kilometers (24,700 square miles) of coral reefs – an area the size of Ireland.

That brings the total size of the planet's shallow reefs (meaning 0-20 meters deep) to 348,000 square kilometers – the size of Germany. This figure represents whole coral reef ecosystems, ranging from sandy-bottomed lagoons with a little coral, to coral rubble flats, to living walls of coral.

Within this 348,000 km² of coral is 80,000 km² where there's a hard bottom – rocks rather than sand. These areas are likely to be home to significant amounts of coral – the places snorkelers and scuba divers most like to visit.

You might wonder why we're finding this out now. Didn't we already know where the world's reefs are?

Previously, we've had to pull data from many different sources, which made it harder to pin down the extent of coral reefs with certainty. But now we have high resolution satellite data covering the entire world – and are able to see reefs as deep as 30 meters down.

Pictured: Geomorphic mapping (left) compared to new reef extent (red shading, right image) in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

[AKA: All the stuff in red on that map is coral reef we did not realize existed!! Coral reefs cover so much more territory than we thought! And that's just one example. (From northern Queensland)]

We coupled this with direct observations and records of coral reefs from over 400 individuals and organizations in countries with coral reefs from all regions, such as the Maldives, Cuba, and Australia.

To produce the maps, we used machine learning techniques to chew through 100 trillion pixels from the Sentinel-2 and Planet Dove CubeSat satellites to make accurate predictions about where coral is – and is not. The team worked with almost 500 researchers and collaborators to make the maps.

The result: the world's first comprehensive map of coral reefs extent, and their composition, produced through the Allen Coral Atlas. [You can see the interactive maps yourself at the link!]

The maps are already proving their worth. Reef management agencies around the world are using them to plan and assess conservation work and threats to reefs."

-via ScienceDirect, February 15, 2024

[hotvampireadjacent]

Police kill another black man via suffocation.

[louisupdates]

INTERVIEW: Lottie Tomlinson: we lost our mum and sister. Louis saved me

At the age of 20, the sister of One Direction singer Louis had already lost her mother, Johannah, and sister Félicité. Now 25, the social media star has written a book about how they coped

Alice Thomson | Tuesday July 23 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times

Losing Mum was so hard. I was only a teenager but at least I knew that her death was a possibility, even though she didn’t accept it. She was 47 and had cancer. But when my sister died three years later, I was on this hotel balcony in Bali and I was screaming, ‘No, my baby sister, no.’ The pain was indescribable. I kept thinking, ‘Why me? This can’t be happening again. When is this going to end?’ ”

We are sitting on Lottie Tomlinson’s immaculate white sofa in her pristine white house in Chislehurst, southeast London, where she is curled up in tiny shorts with a perfect tan and impeccably applied make-up. But her French manicured nails are digging so hard into the sofa I think they might snap, the heart tattoo on her minuscule wrist is throbbing and her eyelashes are clogged with tears.

Her life sounds blessed. The influencer has 4.8 million Instagram followers waiting for her to dispense advice on how to apply mascara; the fake tan brand, Tanologist, that she launched at 19 has gone global; and she has a devoted fiancé, Lewis Burton, who runs a luxury concierge business and whose former girlfriend was the late Caroline Flack. They have an adorable son called Lucky, who is dripping ice cream on her marble counters. Her new book is also called Lucky Girl; her older brother is Louis Tomlinson of One Direction and she was touring the world with the band as a make-up artist at 16.

But after her mother died when she was 18, Tomlinson was left looking after her younger sister and two sets of twin siblings, aged eight and two, while creating her businesses, and trying to process her grief. Her father had left their home in Doncaster years before after a battle with alcohol. “Dad had a drinking problem. We’d see glimpses of his good side but he let us down,” she says. “I ended up trying to take care of him rather than the other way round.”

When her mother died, life felt bleak, “I lost the one person who loved me unconditionally, and then when my sister Fizz [Félicité] died of an accidental overdose, I thought I could never be happy again,” she says. “I found the lead-up to Mother’s Day devastating without my sister as well. It was a constant reminder that I was now different from my friends. In my dreams, my mum was still there; she was alive. I woke up feeling comforted, only to realise that she’d gone.”

Tomlinson, who is now 25 and a patron of the bereavement charity Sue Ryder, moves easily between telling you how to apply the best tan and how to talk about death. She cares passionately about both subjects and takes them equally seriously, worried that I’ve never tried a bronzer or used foundation before asking how I coped when my mother died during the pandemic. Her soft Yorkshire accent is both reassuring and no-nonsense.

Born near Doncaster, she was only two when Fizz was born and six when the first twins arrived. “I’ve always been the big sister — Fizz and I each got one and then more twins six years later.” While Louis had his own space, the girls all shared one room with bunk beds. “It was chaos, but my mum, Johannah, was a midwife and loved being pregnant and having so many babies,” she explains. “I used to be in awe of the way she could feed the twins at once, one on each hip. She would do the night shifts, while I held the fort at home.”

Within a few years, Tomlinson would be touring America, Asia and Europe, flying first class with Louis, part of the biggest boy band in the world, but until she was 15, the family had only ever gone to France once a year all packed into a seven-seater car, with her mother’s new partner, snacks laid out in the middle. They stayed in a caravan park. On a Sunday, a treat was to go to their mother’s hospital to see the babies.

While Louis just wanted to sing, play the guitar and listen to Oasis, the girls were obsessed with make-up. “From the age of 12, I struggled academically, but I loved cropped clothes and my mum’s highlighters and mascaras.” She learnt how to apply everything from YouTube tutorials, rather than doing algebra. “We didn’t have much money — we sometimes couldn’t afford to top up the electricity meter so used candles — but everything my mum earned she spent on us. We all looked immaculate — I remember her being horrified when I dyed my hair orange. So it was lovely later when we could treat her.”

Saturday nights were spent watching The X Factor. “My mother and brother kept applying; in 2010, he got in and the whole family went for the audition. We believed in him, but we never thought it would go that far.” One day the family were going to the live shows, the next the boy band was formed with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. “He was 18. For my mum it was a big shock. It was all so sudden. The press and fans were in our front garden every day.”

The older twins had already made their first TV appearances — they sound like Doncaster’s Von Trapps. “My mother was gently pushy,” Tomlinson says, smiling at the thought. “When I didn’t get good enough GCSEs to stay at school, she sent me off to join Louis on tour as work experience. I was so scared. I remember her ringing up Lou [Teasdale], their hair and make-up artist, and saying, ‘Lottie has not got through to sixth form; she’s going to come and assist you.’ I was in the car going, ‘No, please don’t.’ But it ended up being the best thing that happened to me. I went for a week and stayed two years. Lou and I are still so close.”

Suddenly, the two eldest Tomlinson children were circling the world, eating room service and ducking the paparazzi hanging out of helicopters taking snaps. “At first Louis didn’t really want his little sister gate crashing his new rock-star life, but now it feels like the best time of our lives — we experienced that craziness together,” she says.

The teenage Tomlinson found it harder to cope with being photographed wherever she went. “I had some puppy fat which made me very self-aware, and the filler culture was coming in and I felt I had to look perfect.” She had her lips done first at 17. “Then I became addicted: cheek filler, jaw filler, more make-up, blonder hair, slimmer and more tanned. My mum thought I looked perfect, but I was always searching.”

Five years later, when she became pregnant with Lucky and her lips started to swell and crack, she realised she didn’t need the enhancements any more. “I had everything removed, the false eyelashes too. It was liberating.” She kept her boob job, however. “That was just enhancement,” she says laughing. “The rest radically changed the way I looked. My breasts also got huge when I was pregnant and it was a bit painful. But I still breastfed. I loved carrying my child. I felt fantastic even when I was sick and exhausted.”

She leans forward, wraps her bronzed arms around her stomach and whispers, “I am pregnant again. We don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl. It’s only 13 weeks, so this is the first time I’ve said it publicly. I think I want a big family. I loved having Lucky but after a year I wanted to give him siblings.”

Tomlinson’s influencer career began once she established herself on tour. Soon everything she did, even dying her roots rainbow-coloured, went viral and fashion companies from Asos to Dior wanted in on it. “I was just going for it. I couldn’t believe the money I was making and spending — money I didn’t know existed as a child.”

Then suddenly her mum came home from holiday with flu. “She didn’t want to get out of bed. The doctors quite quickly told her she had leukaemia and she went straight to London for treatment. It all happened so fast. I remember being in London at work and getting a call from her partner — she couldn’t say the words herself, it was too hard for her.” The family were told it was treatable. “We kept so much hope.”

Her mother asked the family to keep her illness secret. “It was hard because you feel so isolated, but I understood. Louis was in the public eye and she didn’t want him questioned. She was determined to fight it and didn’t want everyone pitying her. My friends noticed I was acting differently for a few months. But I wanted to respect her wishes. It was her one request.”

She also dropped everything to go back to Doncaster to help her grandparents with the twins. “The younger ones were two and I wanted to keep everything as normal as possible. I can’t imagine what my mum was feeling leaving her kids to go to hospital.

“I would take them down and treasure seeing her — we tried to keep it light, no serious conversation. The only way Mum could cope was to keep it normal. Then, when the doctors said the transfusions hadn’t worked, she came home to die.”

Tomlinson tries to sound matter-of-fact. “We went to see her in hospital in Sheffield and the next morning we woke up and were told she had died. We felt numb. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Now I am involved with the Sue Ryder charity, I am surprised we were offered no support or counselling at all, from the GP, the teachers, the professionals. They all kept away.” Her nan and grandad picked up the pieces.

It’s not surprising she can’t remember the funeral. “I just remember getting really drunk to numb the pain. I couldn’t come to terms with it. I can’t even remember how we organised it. My instinct was to take over as the eldest girl and step into my mum’s shoes so that is what I did.” Meanwhile, her older brother, who was launching his solo career, ensured there was enough money. “He’s incredibly generous. We looked after each other.”

Tomlinson returned to London months later, after her grandmother said she needed to become a role model for her siblings. Her younger sister Fizz worried her most. “She was very academic — she got straight A’s without trying — but she always said she felt different. She was bottling her grief for so long; it was too much and made her turn to other things. I think Mum’s death destroyed her. Only my mum seemed to understand her. If she had been offered some help at the start, things might have been different.”

Meanwhile, Tomlinson’s self-tanning brand was soon being sold in Los Angeles, New York and Australia, while her own fanbase grew; she hardly ever needed to pay for drinks, meals or holidays. However, she finds the term influencer obnoxious. “I don’t want to act like I tell people what to do. I am more of a content creator,” she explains. “I get paid by brands to create content for their clothes or beauty products and promote that to my followers. I also wanted my own business. I was quite aware that, at the end of the day, I was just working with an app. That’s why I started Tanologist with my business partner. I was always using tanning treatments that would end up turning my sheets orange and my face would break out in spots — this is more natural.”

Louis was also forging his career as a solo artist, eventually creating the song Two of Us about his mother’s death. “We were always so proud of Louis and what he was doing. We were not going to match up to being a global superstar, but we didn’t want to — ‘successful’ looks different for everyone,” she says.

But her sister Fizz was slipping and struggling. “She was old enough to do what she wanted at 19; she was partying and taking stuff to numb everything. She did go into rehab but to me it didn’t feel like an addiction problem, but a way to blank out her grief.” When Tomlinson was invited to Bali, she asked Fizz whether she wanted her to stay behind. “She said she was OK, and then it happened while I was away,” she says. (Fizz accidentally overdosed on cocaine, an anxiety drug and painkillers, her inquest found.) “Louis called me…” She stops talking.

The shock of a second death must have been devastating. She doesn’t speak for a minute while she twists her huge diamond engagement ring. “We weren’t mentally prepared,” she eventually says. “I can’t even remember if the two funerals were in the same church. I think grief has affected my memory a lot and that’s quite common. Grief is such a powerful emotion; it takes up a lot of your brain.”

Five years later, she now knows how to remain positive. “I had an amazing mum for 18 years. I have the most amazing family, my little boy and my career, and that is because of her. The same with Fizz — I had an amazing sister. It’s heartbreaking they aren’t with us any more, but they are together and they are looking out for me,” she says, sounding as though she is repeating a mantra.

Having a baby made her feel closer to them both. “He was a boy — it’s funny, he actually looks a lot like Louis did — and I thought, this is what my mother must have felt. But then I had so many questions I couldn’t ask, even more because she was a midwife.”

Her biggest problem was her terror that something terrible would happen to her son. “I became fixated [on the idea that] something bad would happen to him, so I couldn’t sleep. You go to the worst-case scenario, because that’s happened to you twice, to two of the closest people in your life. I couldn’t turn the lights off at night; I needed to see him all the time. Luckily, it calmed down quite quickly.”

We are still flitting between her story and advice on make-up, exercise and clothes.

“I like sharing advice. If a child lost their mother, I would say there is no magic answer. But the point of this book is to show that you can have tragic things happen and still keep going.”

What would the 25-year-old now say to her younger self, struggling at her second funeral at the age of 20? “I would say, ‘You are going to be OK; you will live a nice life.’ I didn’t think I could. I thought this will be a really sad, lonely life without my mum and sister. I wouldn’t have believed then that I could be happy again. But it would have been nice to hear.”

Lucky Girl by Lottie Tomlinson (Bonnier, £22). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

[tenthsfreezeout]

[hisui-dreamer]

imagine being a stay-at-home spouse with jade, and every time you're bored and want to surprise your husband, you embroider tiny, different mushrooms into different articles of clothing. a little mushroom at the end of his sleeve, a mushroom on his pockets on his jeans, a mushroom over his heart of his cardigan...

by the time he comes home, you shower him in affection, staying still and letting him lean his weight on you as he recharges. and when he asks you what you've been up to for the day, you giddily pull out the article of clothing and show him your artwork, and the gentle smile that curls his lips is more than enough for you to believe all the accidental needle pricks weren't in vain.

he wears that article of clothing as often as possible, showing off to his friends and colleagues about what an endearing and talented his spouse is, and from the way his eyes sparkle when he's talking about you, every one knows how devoted and down bad he is for you

[hamyilton]

"probably, Paul and me will work together"

"indestructible bond of warm friendship between Paul and 24 year old John Lennon"

why am I crying

Source: KRLA Beat 3/24/65

[fraudulent-cheese]

...So i promised myself i'd try to assign responses to the second Super Mario Game survey Jan Misali made to Total Drama characters. Here's the first couple!

[adobe-outdesign]

was reading this article on ToughPigs about a trans puppeteer/performer and honestly shoutout both to Morgana Ignis for being brave enough to ask for her name to be changed and Brian Henson for insta-killing her deadname

bonus comment from the author:

[deadboyagency]

“Edwin and Charles have died, but in a lot of ways they’ve never had to face that they’re dead,” creator Steve Yockey explains of the show’s ghostly duo. “And here comes this living teenage girl [Crystal] that upsets the applecart. All of a sudden everyone’s having to learn how to grieve for these experiences that happened a long time ago or face things about their lives they’ve put behind them but never really processed.”

[beirarowling]

Beira’s Place: Thousands helped by Edinburgh rape centre set up by JK Rowling

A year on from the opening of JK Rowling’s women-only rape centre, thousands of victims have reached out for help.

A veteran of more than four ­decades protecting and sheltering women suffering sexual violence and domestic abuse, Isabelle Kerr was so passionate about supporting JK Rowling’s decision to fund a women-only centre that she came out of retirement to help set it up.

Speaking for the first time since Beira’s Place opened, Isabelle, 67, said: “The whole ethos of the place took me back to the grassroots of the women’s movement in Scotland, when women helped other women stay safe in an act of basic feminism.

“It was how women dealt with the practicalities brought about by the age-old problem of domestic abuse and sexual violence. I’m saddened to say very little has changed through the decades, which is why Beira’s Place has been busy from the moment we opened our doors.”

Isabelle said: “Men’s violence towards women continues unabated around the world. Justice systems continue to fail women with sentencing that rarely reflects the damage and trauma inflicted, despite these crimes carrying the possibility of a life sentence.

“We still have a culture where ­victims are blamed because of what they wear, where they went or what they did rather than holding the perpetrator to blame. It’s soul destroying.”

“Our phones started ringing the day we opened. They haven’t stopped. We’ve helped almost 2,000 callers looking for support. Over 250 survivors have used our safe space. Many told us they would not want to use the service if men were on the premises, either because they have been so traumatised or for cultural reasons.

Isabelle warns that much more needs to be done about identifying the escalating cycle of violence towards women. She said: “We don’t live in the kind of society where women and girls are safe from predators, stalkers, rapists and men who use coercive control to trap the vulnerable. We live in a society where women and girls have lost so much trust and hope in our criminal justice system that only 10% of violence and sex crimes are ever reported.

“Until we take these crimes more seriously, very little will change.”

[sunshineandlyrics]

8 July 2024.

[fernsproutxx]

GR96

@fusionspruntcityjournal

So how do you produce electricity with living plants? Simply by using the natural processes that already occur. In short: the plant produces organic matter via photosynthesis. Only part of this organic matter is then used for its own growth. The rest is excreted via the roots. Around the roots, bacteria feed on the organic matter and they release electrons. If you’re able to harvest the electrons into an electrode, you can couple the first electrode to a counter-electrode and build an electrical circuit, like in a battery. The electrons flow back into the natural system via the counter-electrode, so it’s completely circular. Because we use the natural processes around the plant, nature is not harmed. It works day and night, summer and winter. It only stops when the plant and its surroundings completely dry up or freeze over.

Sedum Oviferum

Sedum pachyphyllum is a ground-hugging succulent that spreads by rooting fallen stems and leaves. The succulent also goes by the names “Cerise Moonstones” or “Mauve Pebbles”. The short and stumpy round leaves have a light silvery-purple color; positioned at a right angles to the stem and curve upward, which in the wintertime, the tips of said leaves will turn into a notorious red.

Sedum Oviferum is a succulent that is very easy to grow and maintain. It is a resilient plant that can tolerate drought, moist and dry soils, and when given adequate exposure to sunlight and sufficient water, Cerise Moonstones will thrive outdoors. The Sedum Oviferum succulent grows at its best with regular exposure to sunlight. If Mauve Pebbles are planted in an area in a garden that gets plenty of sunlight per day, you will be rewarded with bright coloured leaves and flowers. In winter and early spring, Cerise Moonstones actively grow and produce blooms featuring red-orange petals and sepals that have the same pigmentation as the leaves. The flowers produced by Cerise Moonstones have a bell shape and a sugary fragrance.

Subterranean Clover

Trifolium subterraneum is also known as the subterranean clover (often shortened to sub clover), or subterranean trefoil. The plant's name comes from its underground seed development, a characteristic not possessed by other clovers. It can thrive in poor-quality soil where other clovers cannot survive.

This species is self-fertilizing, unlike most legume forage crops such as alfalfa and other clovers, which are pollinated by insects, especially honeybees. It is also grown in places where the extreme ranges of soil type and quality, rainfall, and temperature make the variable tolerances of sub clover especially useful.

Functionality

GR96 are powered by any plant of choosing on their back pod (the one we are going to discuss has a giant Sedum Oviferum and multiple sub clovers to operate) which is held in place by five strong suction cups. They’re manufactured for community gardens (strictly only one per garden), but they can also be bought by high class citizens for private properties, though at a way bigger cost since they’re financed by the city.

They can use their hands as scissors, shovels, and for watering (hence the big forearms, for storing the water), the latter which they do by dipping their hands in a bucket, opening the valve on their forearms so they can fill them up and releasing the water from the pinholes on their palms. Their “eyes” are actually a screen that can show plenty expressions, but the two circles above that peripheral screen are the real environmental sensors. They also have the same sensors on their ankles for inspecting the lower plants and ground without the need of kneeling, and their feet are shaped in a way so that weight is evenly distributed, lowering the chances of damaging a plant if they were to step on it. The ear like protrusions are small solar panels, used as backup energy (they don’t have any communication properties). Their speaker aka their “voice” is the mohawk-like structure on the top (which also has their series barcode 128 on the lower back), but when they speak there are these strips at the sides of the face mask that light up with the volume. The mask (non removable) has a set of pipes that are used for analyzing the air quality and humidity of the area surrounding them.