#IT’S A TWO-EXTRACT DAY

[theholmwoodfoundation]

RECORDING TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDING MADE BY HENRIETTA MARTIN, 05/02/2024, HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION RESEARCH FACILITY, SURREY.

(SOFT CLICK AS RECORDING BEGINS) HENRI: Hello recorder! This is Henrietta Martin, LIMB Researcher at Holmwood Surrey. It issss… 11:38am on Tuesday, March 5th, twenty-twenty-four, and I am about to record a visual assessment of the hand. (BEAT) This is Assessment Record No. 5279H, by the way, for when this reaches Whitby. (FOOTSTEPS AS HENRI WALKS. BUBBLING LIQUID SOUNDS GROW LOUDER IN THE DISTANCE) So old Handy hasn’t done much since his last assessment. We’ve been keeping him submerged in the usual silver allium blend, but there’s no visible reaction yet. Might try upping the silver component, but my professional opinion is that we need to branch out; try acid again, like the 70’s, or liquid helium. Go old school with it, because nothing so far seems to make a dent (BEAT) Anyway… Asset is the severed left hand of a human adult. 7.9 inches from tip of index finger to just below the palm, slightly longer than average. Nails are long and healthy in appearance. Skin is pale and wrinkled, both from exposure to liquid and what we assume to be old age. Our last test placed the hand’s age at approximately 65 years when it was severed, although the tissue samples seem to continuously regenerate, so we know most dating methods are extremely unreliable. (BEAT) No visible signs of trauma, except for the point of dismemberment, which seems to be the only thing that sticks. All marks made during assessment No.5278h seem to have healed, which tracks with our previous findings. (BEAT) All in all, the hand looks exactly as it usually does. No immediate changes. I’ll make another visual assessment in a week’s time, and we’ll make our monthly examination on the 20th. So…look out for that, Whitby! (BEAT) Recording over. (SOFT CLICK) (RECORDING ENDS)

[martyryo]

Yaoi blast!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jynmelshian]

so cool that in between cassian coming back from kafrene and melshi breaking jyn out of prison there's a whole unspecified time period that rogue one doesn't cover so we can come up with our own ideas about what might have happened and how the alliance might have found jyn despite her alias! wow! what a neat facet of fiction that not everything is shown, so some things are left up to the viewer's imagination!

[two-entire-bits]

I just saw a lady on instagram talking about controversial things in books she likes, and one of them was long chapters. I didn't know that was controversial but sure but the thing is. The book she used as an example. For a book with long chapters. Was les mis.

If you don't know, here's a list of the average number of pages per chapter in different English translations of les mis + their respective page dimensions in centimeters (the average also depends on font size but it wouldn't change anything TOO drastically):

Charles E. Wilbour (20x14): 3.3

Norman Denny (20x13): 3.4

Florence Hapgood (23x15): 2.5

Wilbour revised by Fahnstock and MacAfee (17.5x10.8): 4

Julie Rose (23x15): 3.3

Christine Donougher (21x14): 3.6

[orangedogsquad]

What it feels like trying to schedule the next few months

[sleepiestoken]

-

[iamthepulta]

The Twelve Principles of Circular Hydrometallurgy, (Binneman & Jones, 2023) are:

The goal is, essentially, that if you have an "ore" of a laptop, you'd be able to 'extract' and separate the gold, cobalt, copper, thallium, zinc, etc by exploiting their physical and chemical properties, with minimal waste products and minimal harm. The process is continuous, and most of the reagents in the vats can be reused, or don't harm the system.

For copper, we separate sulfides from unwanted minerals by exploiting their hydrophobic surface. Then they're converted into a CuSO4 solution that is purified, and then we're able to add electricity to the system to get copper to drop out of solution in a usable form (native copper).

So I think for this essay/location, I'm going to pick Reduce Chemical Diversity, because according to the diagram here, they actually did a pretty good job of only using hydroxide additives? It looks very simple and interesting. I'll also do Use Benign Chemicals because the mill is right next to the Great Lakes and I'm curious if there are problems there. I'll also do Maximize Mass/Energy etc because that's easy fucking fruit. I don't know why that's in this circle. It bugs me.

Preventing Waste is also easy fruit, and combine circular hydrometallurgy with Zero Waste Mining which is an interesting topic, but I hate how the authors of this paper discussed it.

[quicksilversquared]

I need the rest of the week to calm down because it's only Tuesday and I am already tired enough to just want to walk straight into a wall and give up for the week.

[dirtyfumes]

Myrrhe Impérial is a couture fragrance that pays tribute to Myrrh, one of the gifts borne by the Three Mages, whose captivating notes of incense evoke spices, citrus fruits, and smoke all at once.

I try to refrain from saying things like 'WOW [NOTE X] SMELLS LIKE [NOTE X]' in my reviews because if you aren't familiar with [NOTE X] the comparison is meaningless.

I want perfume - from buying to sampling to reviewing - to feel accessible to everyone. I especially want perfume to feel accessible to those who might not be very experienced but have had their interest piqued.

But sometimes when a personal favorite (or nemesis) makes an entrance it's like getting hit by a very specific 2x4 and all your brain can do is confirm that you've just been whacked by a very specific 2x4.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[autumnoakes]

me: i don't think i have seasonal depression, at least not for winter. i enjoy the colder weather and i don't understand why people are bemoaning the shorter days. i like the nighttime???

me: *has a random and unexplained 6 month depressive period, starts craving summer weather, and then starts to perk up once the sun comes out and the days start getting longer*

me: hm. okay.

[gallifreywhere]

Doom's Day - Extraction Point, by M.G. Harris

[review-anon]

"But the thing is.. We can't leave Hero here, he could hurt a lot of people very fast.. But I don't know wht he'd do to me if he finds me, and now the ring is closed.."

"Oh I know!"

*He removes a ring from his gloves*

"I-I can give you one of mine! Then all you need to do is get Hero to come after you and open it right then and there so he falls in! Close it and after a bit i can go back using my other one when it's safe."

"I-If you wanna help me, of course.."

Tails: I'm sorry...but I can't come with you.

Huh why?

Tails: Its just...Hero is a time bomb. It won't take much to set him off, and when he gets mad...people will get hurt or even killed, and that's not even getting what would happen if he finds me.

So what do you want to do?

Tails: Hmm...AH!

*Tails then takes a ring off his arm*

Tails: You see these rings on my arms? They're Warp Rings, if I give you one of them, then you could get Hero to chase after you...then just toss it at him and think of a location, and that location will appear and Hero will be through before he even knows it! J-just remember to close it afterwards.

So...to use these warp rings...we just have to toss it, think of a place, then it opens up to a portal of said place, and then to close it we just touch the base?

Tails: More or less. And then after some time passes, just let me know and I'll use my other Warp Ring to get back home. Then you don't have to worry about him anymore!

Seems simple enough. And besides the medbay has already had enough drama already, heard rumours from a variant of mine something with some sentient purple goo went down there in December.

Exactly! We will not allow any more misfortune to befall Medbay! So sure Prowler we will help out.

Tails: R-really? Thank you! I-I'll give you the Warp Ring and you can get Hero out of Medbay and back into my world.

*Tails holds out his spare Warp Ring and Taka takes it*

As the more responsible one of the two, I'll take the ring for now, and since we know where Medbay is, we will be over there soon.

So...what are you planning on doing until we and how would we know if we succeed in getting Hero back?

If you stand in one place its fine but if you go off exploring the Voidship and don't blame you, we need some way of contacting you...unless you want some communicator on you that we can contact with in Medbay since that also has a communciator.

[dear-ao3]

so. as you may know it’s christmas eve. as you probably don’t know i am eastern european. and probably the only real tradition anyone holds onto is christmas eve. normally my great aunt does all the food and very begrudgingly sometimes lets everyone help make like. one thing.

well.

this year. the year of our lord two thousand and twenty four. she decided she was done cooking and it was up to everyone else.

so i got a phone call from my mom a few weeks ago being like hey so. you’re making the cake. got it? good.

the cake in question is a walnut cake. i was entrusted with my great aunts recipe about seven years ago. i’ve made it twice. the first time i fucked up the frosting quantity. the second time i fucked up the eggs. both times were passable at best and notably! my great aunt did not taste either of them.

and i have to make this cake. on christmas eve. it is dessert. for everyone. my extended family will all be eating the cake. the walnut cake. on christmas eve. even my great aunt.

so yesterday, december 23 if you are counting, i went on the annual Last Minute Christmas Food Shopping Trip with my father, watched him climb into the case to get his half and half like he does every year, and stressed about my cake as i made sure i had all of the ingredients.

then. we went to my great aunts house. where i was met with Trial Number 1: The Cognac

this cake has cognac in the frosting. not a big deal really. except for the fact that my mom hates that there is cognac in the frosting. (my mom is hell bent on making christmas eve dinner vaguely healthier. no one else agrees.) and i was to be making the cake in my moms house.

also important to note: we (as in my parents) do not own cognac. mostly because none of us drink.

so my great aunt is like oh i have to give you the cognac. cause she knows. i am baking the cake. the walnut cake. (my dad told her. he is a traitor). and i say okay. sure. this won’t be a problem at all.

so she gives me. a shot of cognac. and when i say a shot. i mean an Entirely Full Shot Glass of Three Hundred Dollar Cognac. in a jar. for the cake. the walnut cake. that i have to make.

upon bringing the cognac home my mom says no we’re not putting that in. the cognac sits on the counter in its jar. no one touches it.

then i was met with Trial Number 2: The Frosting.

this recipe requires a pound of chopped walnuts. first. i couldn’t even find the walnuts. my sister and i searched high and low and in every cabinet we could find but no nuts. i called my mom. and said mom where are the walnuts? and she said. “they’re in the nut bag behind the basement door.”

oh of course. how could i have missed the nut bag? a holiday bag full of bags of nuts that was half hidden by wrapping paper and also behind a door?

in any case. could i have used a food processor? absolutely. did i? no. half because i forgot and half because i didn’t want to accidentally grind the walnuts into a paste. so i enlisted the help of my younger sister to chop the walnuts By Hand while i embarked on the real devil: the frosting.

which remember. is supposed to have cognac.

so i cream my butter. i add my sugar. i’m careful not to over sugar. i taste it a million times. i add my coffee and my vanilla extract (instead of cognac. which is still sitting on the counter) and it was all going so well until. the butter rebelled.

now remember. one time when i made this. seven years ago. i made too little frosting. so i made more this time. and i thought i had all my conversions right but evidently i did not because suddenly there was too much liquid in my frosting and it split.

the frosting for the walnut cake that everyone was going to eat. on christmas eve. the very next day.

i felt like a contestant on great british bake-off getting smited by the tent.

so i did the logical thing and shoved the whole mess into the fridge hoping that it would sort itself out overnight.

then it was time to face Trial Number Three: The Cake Itself.

as i have said this cake is a walnut cake. the christmas eve walnut cake that has been at christmas eve longer than i have been alive. and it requires no less than ten egg whites. which i whipped and i added to my walnuts and shoved the whole thing into the oven in my two baking dishes.

only to discover no less than 40 minutes later that the batter in the pans was Not Even (despite my best efforts). so i cooked one longer than the other and hoped that i hadn’t monumentally fucked up the walnut cake. like i had the frosting. which was in the fridge. and i was ignoring.

which leads to Trial Number Four: The Egg Yolk Cake

see i had ten egg yolks. i didn’t know what to do with them. my mom said flush them. my dad said make a custard. i proposed making egg nog. my mom said she didn’t want it in the house cause it was too fattening (a blatantly incorrect statement. please, if you are reading this, go drink a glass of eggnog. or some other fun festive drink. food is for the soul.) so i produced a recipe for an egg yolk pound cake. i made it. i still don’t know if it came out good cause i haven’t tasted it. i hope it did. but that was not the point. the point is the walnut cake. the christmas eve walnut cake.

and the following morning i was met with Trial Number Five: The Frosting Part 2

first i threw my failed frosting back in the mixer and it immediately secreted a brackish combination of vanilla extract and coffee so i did the only thing i could. facetimed my dad and said “father there are problems abound.” and he gave me the fatherly advice of “make it again.”

and so i did.

with more correct measurements. still scared it would split at any second.

though it didn’t.

and i didn’t add the cognac.

maybe no one will be able to tell???

my mom said that if anyone asks the first batch of frosting failed and i had to toss it. this is technically true.

but i had frosting. i had two uneven cakes. and it was time for Trial Number Six: Decorating

decorating cakes is easily in my top ten least favorite activities. decorating the christmas eve walnut cake is easily in my top three least favorite activities. because i am terrible at decorating cakes. and also because it has a filling.

the filling is jam. and i once again made the wrong choice because i put the jam on first before the frosting. which to be fair is what the directions say. but as everyone knows, the directions in recipes you get from your eastern european great aunt are not the real directions. so now i had to smear butter cream. on top of jam. for the filling of the walnut cake. for christmas eve. that we would be eating in a few hours.

and we didn’t have a cake plate. we had a large dish.

i had to use my fingers. i had to use three spatulas. i got jam everywhere. but i did it. and as soon as i set the top cake on top of the filling i realized my monumental mistake: i was supposed to trim down the cakes.

so now they were uneven. and lopsided. and there was nothing i, a mere mortal tasked with the impossible task of making christmas eve walnut cake, could do about it.

so i continued to spread my frosting. which i had enough of. and tried and failed to not get jam everywhere.

in the end it was almost presentable. not great. slightly lopsided. and definitely not as nice as any of my great aunts cakes.

which left me with Trial Number 7: Chilling It

our fridge was being taken up by other important christmas eve things (though not as important as my cake. the walnut cake) so i had to put it in the car. which was fine because there is snow on the ground.

i covered my cake. the walnut cake. in tin foil and hoped i wouldn’t accidentally squish it. and then i went outside. i tried to steal my moms shoes to walk outside. she was not impressed.

“you know, saph,” she said. “some of the time you’re pretty great. the other half of the time you’re really weird.”

i could not agree more.

i put my cake on the trunk. prayed to the cake gods and went inside.

on the one hand if the cake is good, i will be stuck making walnut cake for christmas eve for the rest of my life. on the other hand, if it sucks i will never have to make another one.

Trial Number Eight: The Tasting still waits.

[reasonsforhope]

When self-described “ocean custodian” Boyan Slat took the stage at TED 2025 in Vancouver this week, he showed viewers a reality many of us are already heartbreakingly familiar with: There is a lot of trash in the ocean.

“If we allow current trends to continue, the amount of plastic that’s entering the ocean is actually set to double by 2060,” Slat said in his TED Talk, which will be published online at a later date. 

Plus, once plastic is in the ocean, it accumulates in “giant circular currents” called gyres, which Slat said operate a lot like the drain of the bathtub, meaning that plastic can enter these currents but cannot leave.

That’s how we get enormous build-ups like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant collection of plastic pollution in the ocean that is roughly twice the size of Texas.

As the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, Slat’s goal is to return our oceans to their original, clean state before 2040. To accomplish this, two things must be done.

First: Stop more plastic from entering the ocean. Second: Clean up the “legacy” pollution that is already out there and doesn’t go away by itself.

And Slat is well on his way.

Pictured: Kingston Harbour in Jamaica. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup Project

When Slat’s first TEDx Talk went viral in 2012, he was able to organize research teams to create the first-ever map of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From there, they created a technology to collect plastic from the most garbage-heavy areas in the ocean.

“We imagined a very long, u-shaped barrier … that would be pushed by wind and waves,” Slat explained in his Talk. 

This barrier would act as a funnel to collect garbage and be emptied out for recycling. 

But there was a problem.

“We took it out in the ocean, and deployed it, and it didn’t collect plastic,” Slat said, “which is a pretty important requirement for an ocean cleanup system.”

Soon after, this first system broke into two. But a few days later, his team was already back to the drawing board. 

From here, they added vessels that would tow the system forward, allowing it to sweep a larger area and move more methodically through the water. Mesh attached to the barrier would gather plastic and guide it to a retention area, where it would be extracted and loaded onto a ship for sorting, processing, and recycling. 

It worked. 

“For 60 years, humanity had been putting plastic into the ocean, but from that day onwards, we were also taking it back out again,” Slat said, with a video of the technology in action playing on screen behind him.

To applause, he said: “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, honestly.”

Over the years, Ocean Cleanup has scaled up this cleanup barrier, now measuring almost 2.5 kilometers — or about 1.5 miles — in length. And it cleans up an area of the ocean the size of a football field every five seconds.

Pictured: The Ocean Cleanup's System 002 deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup

The system is designed to be safe for marine life, and once plastic is brought to land, it is recycled into new products, like sunglasses, accessories for electric vehicles, and even Coldplay’s latest vinyl record, according to Slat. 

These products fund the continuation of the cleanup. The next step of the project is to use drones to target areas of the ocean that have the highest plastic concentration. 

In September 2024, Ocean Cleanup predicted the Patch would be cleaned up within 10 years. 

However, on April 8, Slat estimated “that this fleet of systems can clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in as little as five years’ time.”

With ongoing support from MCS, a Netherlands-based Nokia company, Ocean Cleanup can quickly scale its reliable, real-time data and video communication to best target the problem. 

It’s the largest ocean cleanup in history.

But what about the plastic pollution coming into the ocean through rivers across the world? Ocean Cleanup is working on that, too. 

To study plastic pollution in other waterways, Ocean Cleanup attached AI cameras to bridges, measuring the flow of trash in dozens of rivers around the world, creating the first global model to predict where plastic is entering oceans.

“We discovered: Just 1% of the world’s rivers are responsible for about 80% of the plastic entering our oceans,” Slat said.

His team found that coastal cities in middle-income countries were primarily responsible, as people living in these areas have enough wealth to buy things packaged in plastic, but governments can’t afford robust waste management infrastructure. 

Ocean Cleanup now tackles those 1% of rivers to capture the plastic before it reaches oceans.

Pictured: Interceptor 007 in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup

“It’s not a replacement for the slow but important work that’s being done to fix a broken system upstream,” Slat said. “But we believe that tackling this 1% of rivers provides us with the only way to rapidly close the gap.”

To clean up plastic waste in rivers, Ocean Cleanup has implemented technology called “interceptors,” which include solar-powered trash collectors and mobile systems in eight countries worldwide.

In Guatemala, an interceptor captured 1.4 million kilograms (or over 3 million pounds) of trash in under two hours. Now, this kind of collection happens up to three times a week.

“All of that would have ended up in the sea,” Slat said.

Now, interceptors are being brought to 30 cities around the world, targeting waterways that bring the most trash into our oceans. GPS trackers also mimic the flow of the plastic to help strategically deploy the systems for the most impact.

“We can already stop up to one-third of all the plastic entering our oceans once these are deployed,” Slat said.

And as soon as he finished his Talk on the TED stage, Slat was told that TED’s Audacious Project would be funding the deployment of Ocean Cleanup’s efforts in those 30 cities as part of the organization’s next cohort of grantees. 

While it is unclear how much support Ocean Cleanup will receive from the Audacious Project, Head of TED Chris Anderson told Slat: “We’re inspired. We’re determined in this community to raise the money you need to make that 30-city project happen.”

And Slat himself is determined to clean the oceans for good.

“For humanity to thrive, we need to be optimistic about the future,” Slat said, closing out his Talk.

“Once the oceans are clean again, it can be this example of how, through hard work and ingenuity, we can solve the big problems of our time.”

-via GoodGoodGood, April 9, 2025

[hoodwinkeddotcom]

also again: there should not have been four event toons

[shytulipghost]

Extracts of Chapter 2, 3 and 4:

I shared these extracts on my writing blog, so I'm sharing them here too (just the translation so as to not make this post too long):

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Translator's note for Chapter 2: Fourth to sixth year ("cuarto a sexto año" in the original text) would be 10th to 12th grade (most of Tumblr's userbase is American, so I'm using that system for comparison).

T. N. for Chapter 3: One thing that got lost in translation was the knight's way of speaking. In the original text, while all the characters spoke in Argentinian Spanish, he and the wizard were the only ones who spoke in standard/neutral Spanish (if you've ever watched a Latin American dub of a movie or a series, that's the Spanish I'm referring to).

For the translation, I thought about writing the knight's dialogue in Old English, but I couldn't find a good website to convert his lines to that version of English, so I just wrote his dialogue normally. It's not the official translation, so it's not a big deal.

-------------------------End of notes----------------------

For context, most of the chapters are parodies of certain tropes (however, all the chapters are connected in one way or another). Chapter 3 parodies the chosen one trope and Chapter 4, the cursed doll trope.