If you care about activism and DON'T WANT TO USE YOUR GOVERNMENT ID TO ACCESS THE INTERNET please contact your representatives.

THEY WILL BLOCK CRITICISM OF ISNOTREAL, SEX ED, LGBTQIA+ TOPICS, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, HISTORY, NSFW CONTENT, ETC.

FOR REPUBLICAN REPS:

FOR DEMOCRAT REPS:

Stephanie Rew, Ebb and Flow II, 2024 Egg Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 50 x 60cm

1924 Illustration by Erte named "Blossom Umbrella". From Art Deco, FB.

I had to see this in sketch.

worst part about the Internet is knowing that there are finally people who both match and complement your freak. the nearest one is 2,318.4 miles away and your time zones are awkward

huge if true

Carl Kahler (1856-1906)

actually as long as we're talking about realistic expectations of ageing, the nature of social media decontextualising people's personal posts has absolutely given some of you guys a false and potentially dangerous view of how your body is expected to change over time. I semi frequently see people sharing or repackaging commentary on experiences with disability as if it's an inevitable part of getting older. and like, yes, as you get older you are likely to develop new conditions, injuries or disabilities, but you need to understand your body's baseline well enough to identify those changes and interrogate them.

e.g. if you are seriously having such bad joint or back pain in your 30s that it hampers your day to day activities, you need to take that seriously. that is not 'just ageing', that's potentially an indicator of an underlying condition, unaddressed injury (which is quite common but will get worse if you don't notice and take care of it) or daily habits (poor posture, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle) causing cumulative damage to your body.

I know plenty of 30+ and 40+ year olds who are not especially athletic but who can still climb up and down stairs with ease, sit on the floor and get up again without discomfort, have floor or shower sex, ride a bike, wrestle a dog or a kid, climb a tree, maybe even do a handstand. there is no shame at all in developing pain or mobility issues which limit the kinds of things you can do comfortably, but it doesn't serve anyone to pretend that those changes are bound up with reaching a certain age. even in your 60s and 70s and beyond you should notice if you start feeling a new kind of pain or physical limitation. don't dismiss this shit just because someone told you "yeah that happens when you pass 30"

How many people do you think have lezzed out in Antarctica

not enough

millions of penguins probably have

This is so true and such a good point

wow! your understanding of this character is so. . . Unique! just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

respectfully to everyone whos been like Well have you considered idc about the source media and im doing whatever i want with my little blorbos <3 like... you know thats allowed right. like thats fine. i am not condemning you. But you have to accept the fact that nobody has that context besides you unless you put that disclaimer on everything you make. and youre not gonna do that. so if i go into a character tag and see someone call the character, who is canonically a cat, a dog with no extra explanation with their whole chest, i am not going to go Ohhh haha theyre just playing dolls! i am going to go Just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

x

why this dog look like an nvidia tech demo

I really think that we need to be at peace with the idea of people posting online for attention. Literally every free piece of media from shitposts to art is being made for the very human need for attention and that's healthy and okay. It's not harmful behaviour to make funnyman shitposts for attention. I love my useless internet clout points actually

'You're just posting that for likes and reblogs"

That's the whole point dipshit

Do you guys think I make wizard themed shitposts to realign my chakras or something

“Why should rich people pay more” because fuck ‘em

“So you are okay for paying more when you have money” I am not excluded from ‘fuck ‘em’ when relevant

“I am not excluded from ‘fuck ‘‘em’ when relevant” is surprisingly powerful as both a statement and philosophy

not to be a killjoy but it's still crazy to me that it's considered mean to be like "maybe you should read / play / watch the source material before creating fanworks and diving into the fandom" bc every time i see somebody going "i havent played disco elysium or know anything about it tbh but uwu here's harry and kim kissing" idk maybe you should engage with it. maybe you should play the anti-capitalist surrealist game where you investigate the murder of a mercenary who led the gang rape of a foreign girl and process that for a bit? and then you can do cutesy mlm or whatever idc. but like at the absolute bare minimum you should understand what the source material involves otherwise we get the phenomenon of people joining a dragon age server and wanting content warnings for like, mage racism. like it's fine to ship and transform the genre into whatever but if you arent comfortable with discussions of the actual source content itself then maybe the fandom isnt for you and a different one is. peace and love.

actual peace and love would involve letting anyone who wants to do things do them, without judgment.

I don't think there is anything unreasonable about the idea that if someone isn't comfortable with actual discussions of the source material they should probably not insert themselves into the fandom. And I struggle to see how this has anything to do with ableism as per your tags.

Well, when you demand a certain amount of effort to be input before you consider someone's creative work valid, that's ableist.

The issue at hand isn't one of the validity of transformative works (and I agree with you there that art doesn't derive meaning or validity from the amount of "effort" poured into it) but of fandom social dynamics and the very simple fact that people involved in a fandom will find people who have not engaged with the source material yet insist on inserting themselves into the fandom annoying. This user articulated it well imo and I'm tired right now:

Unfortunately it's still gatekeeping and still ableist.

I genuinely think it's neither of those things.

i show up to the Planes Enjoyer Convention to talk about how pretty planes are. to my shock i learn planes fly which is awful because i'm scared of heights.

despite me being very passionate, nobody wants to hear about my novel where i imagine planes as types of burrowing creatures. instead people tell me i don't seem very interested in planes or the Planes Enjoyer Convention. this is very mean and judgemental.

eventually i strike up a conversation with someone and they reveal that planes are sometimes used for wars, and they actually like historical "war planes". my heart sinks.

they seem surprised and suggest that i read up about planes. that's just unacceptable. i call them an ableist gatekeeper and protest as i mime being forcibly escorted out of the convention by the security guards i made up in my head.

"In some cities, as many as one in four office spaces are vacant. Some start-ups are giving them a second life – as indoor farms growing crops as varied as kale, cucumber and herbs.

Since its 1967 construction, Canada's "Calgary Tower", a 190m (623ft) concrete-and-steel observation tower in Calgary, Alberta, has been home to an observation deck, panoramic restaurants and souvenir shops. Last year, it welcomed a different kind of business: a fully functioning indoor farm.

Sprawling across 6,000sq m (65,000 sq ft), the farm, which produces dozens of crops including strawberries, kale and cucumber, is a striking example of the search for city-grown food. But it's hardly alone. From Japan to Singapore to Dubai, vertical indoor farms – where crops can be grown in climate-controlled environments with hydroponics, aquaponics or aeroponics techniques – have been popping up around the world.

While indoor farming had been on the rise for years, a watershed moment came during the Covid-19 pandemic, when disruptions to the food supply chain underscored the need for local solutions. In 2021, $6bn (£4.8bn) in vertical farming deals were registered globally – the peak year for vertical farming investment. As the global economy entered its post-pandemic phase, some high-profile startups like Fifth Season went out of business, and others including Planted Detroit and AeroFarms running into a period of financial difficulty. Some commentators questioned whether a "vertical farming bubble" had popped.

But a new, post-pandemic trend may give the sector a boost. In countries including Canada and Australia, landlords are struggling to fill vacant office spaces as companies embrace remote and hybrid work. In the US, the office vacancy rate is more than 20%.

"Vertical farms may prove to be a cost-effective way to fill in vacant office buildings," says Warren Seay, Jr, a real estate finance partner in the Washington DC offices of US law firm ArentFox Schiff, who authored an article on urban farm reconversions. 

There are other reasons for the interest in urban farms, too. Though supply chains have largely recovered post-Covid-19, other global shocks, including climate change, geopolitical turmoil and farmers' strikes, mean that they continue to be vulnerable – driving more cities to look for local food production options...

Thanks to artificial light and controlled temperatures, offices are proving surprisingly good environments for indoor agriculture, spurring some companies to convert part of their facilities into small farms. Since 2022, Australia's start-up Greenspace has worked with clients like Deloitte and Commonwealth Bank to turn "dead zones", like the space between lifts and meeting rooms, into 2m (6ft) tall hydroponic cabinets growing leafy greens.

On top of being adaptable to indoor farm operations, vacant office buildings offer the advantage of proximity to final consumers.

In a former paper storage warehouse in Arlington, about a mile outside of Washington DC, Jacqueline Potter and the team at Area 2 Farms are growing over 180 organic varieties of lettuce, greens, root vegetables, herbs and micro-greens. By serving consumers 10 miles away or less, the company has driven down transport costs and associated greenhouse emissions.

This also frees the team up to grow other types of food that can be hard to find elsewhere – such as edible flower species like buzz buttons and nasturtium. "Most crops are now selected to be grown because of their ability to withstand a 1,500-mile journey," Potter says, referring to the average distance covered by crops in the US before reaching customers. "In our farm, we can select crops for other properties like their nutritional value or taste."

Overall, vertical farms have the potential to outperform regular farms on several environmental sustainability metrics like water usage, says Evan Fraser, professor of geography at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and the director of the Arell Food Institute, a research centre on sustainable food production. Most indoor farms report using a tiny fraction of the water that outdoor farms use. Indoor farms also report greater output per square mile than regular farms.

Energy use, however, is the "Achilles heel" of this sector, says Fraser: vertical farms need a lot of electricity to run lighting and ventilation systems, smart sensors and automated harvesting technologies. But if energy is sourced from renewable sources, they can outperform regular farms on this metric too, he says. 

Because of variations in operational setup, it is hard to make a general assessment of the environmental, social and economic sustainability of indoor farms, says Jiangxiao Qiu, a landscape ecologist at the University of Florida and author of a study on urban agriculture's role in sustainability. Still, he agrees with Fraser: in general, urban indoor farms have higher crop yield per square foot, greater water and nutrient-use efficiency, better resistance to pests and shorter distance to market. Downsides include high energy use due to lighting, ventilation and air conditioning.

They face other challenges, too. As Seay notes, zoning laws often do not allow for agricultural activity within urban areas (although some cities like Arlington, Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio, have recently updated zoning to allow indoor farms). And, for now, indoor farms have limited crop range. It is hard to produce staple crops like wheat, corn or rice indoors, says Fraser. Aside from leafy greens, most indoor facilities cannot yet produce other types of crops at scale.

But as long as the post-pandemic trends of remote work and corporate downsizing will last, indoor farms may keep popping up in cities around the world, Seay says. 

"One thing cities dislike more than anything is unused spaces that don't drive economic growth," he says. "If indoor farm conversions in cities like Arlington prove successful, others may follow suit.""

-via BBC, January 27, 2025