@helsinki / helsinki.tumblr.com
White privilege is your history being taught as a core class and mine being taught as an elective.
please let them know.
white privilege is your history being taught as a core class, and mine being banned because it would promote “the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, and advocate ethnic solidarity.”
Last month, the National Film Board of Canada launched Indigenous cinema, an extensive online library of over 200 films by Indigenous directors — part of a three-year Indigenous Action Plan to “redefine” the NFB’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
— Franz Kafka
The teeth arrangement of the lamprea marina sea creature follow the fibonacci growth sequence with overlapping spirals.
We don’t know how much the epic flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey in Texas has been influenced by human pollution of the atmosphere, but the storm has likely been worse than it would’ve been generations ago, before we started pumping massive amounts of carbon into the air.
“Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused [global] warming,” writes leading atmospheric scientist Michael Mann, of Penn State University.
14 girls have been reported as missing in the last 24 hours in DC.
This is alarming. What is not surprising me is that I cannot find any articles by major news media about this.
Please reblog and let’s get these girls home.
My thoughts are with the innocent victims in #Aleppo who are currently enduring a full blown genocidal war. I’m extremely angry to see the media blackout that’s happening with the utter lack of coverage of this situation. Imagine if this were your home ?
When the Paris attacks happened, the Western world had a social media meltdown. Where is the outcry for Aleppo ? Genocide is happening as we speak… where’s the corny Facebook flag filters ? Where is the call to arms ? If this were happening in a Eurocentric city it would be all we would be seeing on the news… all we’d be reading about in our feeds. It would be impossible to ignore.
This type of media blackout/selective coverage is its own form of terrorism & it’s up to us to call it out when we see it. Think about this media blackout we’re inside of, and how much other information we are being shielded from without even knowing it. If the media isn’t going to cover these stories, it’s up to us to shed light on the darkness.
Bernhard Leitner, Soundcube, 1969
- gay parents - female masturbation - guys showing emotion - they/them pronouns
-periods -women in positions of power -gender neutrality -adoption
-breast feeding
-men supporting each other emotionally
-Body hair
Extrasensory perception
Debbie Millman’s wonderful interview with legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser.
Also see Glaser on art, technology, and the secret of life, then revisit William Faulkner on the purpose of art.
(via explore-blog)
Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing (via whats-out-there)
New comic: climate change protest.
The past is always relevant and so much of what is happening today directly stems from this continent’s extremely violent, colonial post (not that colonialism isn’t still a problem today though).
Stanford chemistry graduate student Aanindeeta Banerjee and Assistant Professor Matthew Kanan with co-workers have discovered a novel way to make plastic from carbon dioxide (CO2) and inedible plant material, such as agricultural waste and grasses. The new technology could provide a low-carbon alternative to plastic bottles and other items currently made from petroleum.
“Our goal is to replace petroleum-derived products with plastic made from CO2,” said Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford. “If you could do that without using a lot of non-renewable energy, you could dramatically lower the carbon footprint of the plastics industry.”
Changing the plastic formula
Many plastic products today are made from a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), also known as polyester. Worldwide, about 50 million tons of PET are produced each year for items such as fabrics, electronics, recyclable beverage containers and personal-care products.
PET is made from two components, terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, which are derived from refined petroleum and natural gas. Manufacturing PET produces significant amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
The team focused on a promising alternative to PET called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF). PEF is made from ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA).
“PEF is an attractive replacement for PET, because FDCA can be sourced from biomass instead of petroleum,” Kanan said.
The plastics industry has yet to find a low-cost way to manufacture PEF at scale. The bottleneck has been figuring out a commercially viable way to produce FDCA sustainably.
One approach is to convert fructose from corn syrup into FDCA. The Dutch firm, Avantium, has been developing that technology, but growing crops for industry requires lots of land, energy, fertilizer and water.
Turning plant waste into plastic
The Stanford team solved the problem using a far more benign compound: carbonate. Graduate student Aanindeeta Banerjee, lead author of the study, combined carbonate with CO2 and furoic acid, a derivative of furfural. She then heated the mixture to about 290 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) to form a molten salt.
The results were dramatic. After five hours, 89 percent of the molten-salt mixture had been converted to FDCA. The next step, transforming FDCA into PEF plastic, is a straightforward process that has been worked out by other researchers, Kanan said.
Read more here
