#traditional style pool

[viirinsims]

Pool - Water Slide An illustration of a medium-sized transitional backyard with stamped concrete and a specially-designed lap water slide

[dreaming-of-brent]

DC Metro Traditional Pool Water slide: a medium-sized, classic backyard concrete paver and naturally-shaped water slide design idea

[professorplaid]

Transitional Pool - Water Slide

An illustration of a medium-sized transitional backyard with stamped concrete and a specially-designed lap water slide

[transgenderchild]

DC Metro Pool Water slide - mid-sized traditional backyard concrete paver and custom-shaped natural water slide idea

[jamesconcannonart]

DC Metro Pergolas Ideas for a mid-sized, classic backyard deck renovation featuring a pergola

[deathofapig]

Pool Natural DC Metro Inspiration for a mid-sized timeless backyard concrete paver and custom-shaped natural pool fountain remodel

[sentaco]

Outdoor Kitchen Los Angeles large image of a gazebo in a concrete patio kitchen in a Tuscan backyard.

[mayuiki-art]

Pool Natural DC Metro

Inspiration for a mid-sized timeless backyard concrete paver and custom-shaped natural pool fountain remodel

[bibliotecauditiva]

Pool - Traditional Pool Water slide: a medium-sized, classic backyard concrete paver and naturally-shaped water slide design idea

[toyastales]

I like the contemporary spin on traditional architecture. I also like the symmetrical design.

[ink-ling]

xx

[lilpuffyart]

Lil Halmanpoole doodle

That's today's post thumbs up emoji

[sleepy-spacetronaut]

Start note: Here’s a story idea I had , inspired by videos of people exploring abandoned houses and cities.

Inked sketches of the main cast

*notice: The placeholder title was Pools of Time & Stillwater , but it abbreviated to POTS , so I had it changed to Eternal Pools of Stillwater instead. ————

“But why would they abandon it like that?”, Nine wondered, passing a gloved hand over the spine of the dust covered books stacked on the desk in messy towers. 

The library was a mess of broken furniture, empty food containers and various manuscripts dating as far back as the early nineteenth century. 

Adem adjusted his spectacles and hummed as the machine in his grip began to beep. After scanning the tiny monitor, he frowned and clicked his tongue.

“Asbestos.” He pulled the scarf he wore around his neck over his nose and quickly moved to the entryway. “Let’s go now, still air can be deadly.”

————-

Summary

Adem had been a normal guy, truly! He never dreamt of living a ‘science fiction-worthy’ life.

He went trough high school, finished a technical degree in engineering and had gotten to work for one of the greatest tech companies of his country…up until it called for bankruptcy. 

As he lived in a very small town, with his job gone, Adem had to re-specialize. He worked both as a plumber and an electrician through his thirties, when one day, his team was asked to inspect a condemned factory site. 

The government planned to tear it down and have brand new infrastructures build over it,they sent a letter requesting an inspection and help to remove the water damage from the abandoned building. But, they omitted a crucial detail regarding the kind of factory it had been.

Upon investigation, the crew discovered massive water tanks which had been converted into pools of Stillwater with time. While on break, Adem had the unfortunate idea of inspecting said pools from up close taking pictures for their collective report. He took a wrong step on the slippery metal ladder and fell right into the murky, amoeba infested waters.

Once he resurfaced, however, he realized that the setting had changed entirely. He was now in a strange, post apocalyptic version of his world with half barren lands and abandoned cities.

Two ideas popped into his mind:

a) This is a dream, and he is in a coma while his brain is being devoured by predatory unicellular lifeform.

b) This is real, and he somehow ended up in an alternate dimension…or timeline?

Stuck in a place with no certain way out, Adem decides to explore, searching high and low for a clue about how to return home. That is how he ends up meeting Nine (NEE-nə), a lost teenager with inexplicably blue hair who claimed to have also fallen into the strange pools of water.

Together they brave the unknown, surviving in a broken version of what they knew as planet earth while seeking for the means to return to the right place in time.

Meanwhile, back ‘home’, Marwa and Indira, two brilliant sisters who studied in science fields, are working with the government on a project regarding the development of sustainable energy through nuclear power. When their branch was closed off and abandoned six years prior due to a ‘freak accident’, they had been relocated to a different facility…yet the memory of the dangerous waters remained, hanging like a cloud over their heads.

Story insights

-> The story begins centered around Adem Riddley, then it branches out as new characters are introduced into the plot. Out of the eight characters , Adem, Alec, Marwa, Nine and Indira may have the most attention in the plot.

-> It is mainly adventure, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic, with a touch of found family.

->Adem, Alec and Nine all have their names misspelled/mispronounced by other people(Nine especially).

->Nine is AroAce. 🧡💛🤍🩵💙

->Potential romantic and platonic pairings in the story among the adult protagonists.

End note: I haven’t found an ending sequence yet , but I will think of something if I am to ever make this into a short novel.

[bonefall]

Is there beef with the Holstein cows and you or what was that joke lol

It's kind of wild It's just never come up on this blog before, but I HATE holsteins. Bottom 10 cow breeds for me. I hate how they're so common they account for the majority of milk produced. I hate that they're the "default" cow to the point where some don't even know cattle HAVE other colors. I hate their tiny horns (IF THEY EVEN HAVE THAT. LOSER ASS HORNLESS COW) and their painfully massive udders.

Legit I'm trying so hard to not launch into a No Mouth Must Scream style AM speech-- shoot my hand slipped.

(AM speech about why i dont like holsteins below the cut)

For starters, I have to give a brief lesson on what these terms mean; the "Holstein" is the American strain of the "Frisian" breed. Frisians are an ancient breed from Frisia, in the north of what we now consider the Netherlands. Crosses between the breeds are "Holstein-Frisians."

(There’s even more to this but im keeping it as simple as possible. Also one of my friends is Frisian and she is probably going to kill me for describing it like that.)

Historically, livestock was adapted to the environment they lived in. Frisians were bred by the Frisii people for hundreds of years in extremely grass-rich, lush, flat environments. The "polders" of the northern parts of the Netherlands. They're huge and eat a LOT of food.

Traditional Frisians were developed to produce as much meat and milk from a single individual as possible, without compromising the health of the cattle with constant inbreeding to get quick gains. We are talking about a breed that is over 2000 years old. They had the perfect environment to make The Ultimate Food Cow and by god they did it. I can respect that.

So, take that, drag it across an ocean to a place that does NOT have polders, and add the rapid enshittification of capitalism to it. BAM you've got a fucking holstein.

There is ONE goal for "improving" the holstein. Make More Milk. As long as the black and white milkbag leaks enough, nothing else matters. Health? Fertility? Feed ratio? Ability to not die of infection? WHO CARES. MILK LINE GO UP.

Over 90% of holsteins are inbred to start with, because Milk Line Go Up. To the tune of having an average COI of 8%-- where extreme negative effects (think Hapsburgs) start to crop up around 10%

Holstein bulls are aggressive bastards (many dairy bulls are), so no one wants to keep intact males in their herds, meaning most cows are artificially inseminated

Not being limited by the natural lifespan of a living bull means that the same stud can keep having direct offspring for decades after his death

Toystory the bull had 500,000 calves before he died, and hit over 1 million offspring in 2015. That's ONE animal and to put this in perspective, there are 9 million holsteins in the US.

DON'T WORRY IT GETS WORSE

Not only can 99% of holsteins be traced back to just two bulls-- 99% of male holsteins share one of two exact Y chromosomes with those two bulls.

The gene pool is so small that it's equivalent to about 60 individuals. Warrior Cat allegiances are larger than that. That's barely bigger than modern ThunderClan.

"Massive lack of genetic diversity" does not begin to capture the existential dread of this situation. Mark my words, WATCH, when the Bird Flu finally mutates a strain that rips through a mammalian population, it's gonna be in the USA and it's going to be through our dairy cattle.

This is not prophecy or me laying a curse on the land, this is the natural consequence of basing the stability of US milk production on the equivalent of 9 million clones of two classrooms worth of individuals, and then packing them in close quarters

And we don't have to wait for doomsday for the impacts to be apparent on the cattle themelves

Holstein fertility has also dropped by half since the 1960s when the intensive inbreeding really kicked into high gear

Because their whole body is dedicating all of their resources to milk production, they have a notoriously "bony" frame.

Show judges, however, like this because they think that's a very "feminine" look for a 1600 pound ruminant. Very normal thing to think.

Like. I don't know if i can communicate this to people who don't look at cows a lot (it's not quite as obviously dramatic as a pug skull) but here is a comparison of an "ideal" show holstein and an "unselected" holstein from a herd that's been established as a sort of "control group" for what they looked like back in the 1960s;

The way that the artery on the "modern" cow's belly runs to the udder like a big pink worm freaks me out the most ngl

The udder also bulges out from between the back legs

The show cow is so thin

And then compare these both to a Holstein-Frisian cross who leans more on the Frisian side;

Proper weight, developed legs. Its biggest "problem" is actually just the udder shape-- deep udders, which "hang" low like that, aren't optimal for milk-focused breeds because the higher away from the ground the less chance there is of infection. In that department, the "unselected" holstein clearly outclasses the holstein-frisian.

But it probably won't be surprising to hear that the "show holstein," with its massive, swollen udder, is SUPER prone to infections such as mastitis.

But it is also just more prone to getting sick generally

And, to keep up with these insane demands, holsteins need a TON of food. You aren't going to just turn these things out into a pasture and be done with it. Even its ancestor the Frisian needed premium Dutch polder grass to be such a good cow-- crank that up to 11 with these Monuments to Humanity's Hubrice

The Texas Longhorn developed in semi-feral conditions and can eat a bush to become the best thing in a 10 mile radius. The Scottish Highland was iron-forged in upland moors with a steady diet of turf and rain.

Meanwhile if a Holstein has less than 5 homemade meals a day without poland spring bottled water it will die to death.

And the WORST part? You have to use these if you want to make money in dairy farming. It's WAAY too expensive to just run a suboptimal farm. Their milk isn't great, but they sure do make a lot of it.

...so Holsteins and Holstein-Frisians (and other "super efficient" breeds) have absolutely decimated heritage cattle. The American Milking Devon is a deep reddish brown with gorgeous horns and low maintenance; rare. Randall Linebacks are painted with lines of white speckles down the back and can be used for any purpose; critically endangered. The Niata was a pug-faced cow who could fight jaguars; extinct.

And THAT'S what makes me hate them most of all. I LOVE cows, but whenever I see a reference to one, it's a holstein. It's always boring black and white splotches with big pink udders. They're practically synonymous with "cow" when their homogeniety is actually hiding much cooler breeds from you.

Did you know cows can be tiger-striped?

And that England has its own type of longhorn?

Or that cow horns can twist upwards like an antelope?

And that they can have REALLY LONG ears?

And that they can be blue?

And that's not even getting into some of the cows that have gotten a small crumb of attention lately, such as Highlands, Ankole-Watusi, and Texas Longhorns. There's so many cool cows out there! And they're all really different from holsteins! MOST of them are also a lot healthier and produce tastier milk and meat!

TL;DR yeah i don't like holsteins and I like sniping at them. For reasons both legit and petty.

[strangenation]

Pool - Natural Example of a large classic backyard stone and custom-shaped natural hot tub design

[tourajdaryaee]

Lap Pool New Orleans An illustration of a medium-sized traditional backyard fountain with a rectangular lap pool in brick.