#We are creating our reality

[namastefamily]

Lundi

Happy ‘new’ year as we all open our eyes wide and build our own beautiful world and realise our thoughts are creating our reality- how liberated we are.

[wakkass]

Katara's Lightning: waterbending technique

Part 1

Book 3 provided some very good ideas for alternative uses of waterbending. Everyone knows bloodbending, one of the most powerful and conceptual techniques. In principle, I think the episode with Katara mastering this ability is the most interesting in the season.

But not only because of bloodbending, but also because of creative ways to obtain water. Get it out of the plants! Or even out of thin air! This opens up so many possibilities that, unfortunately, weren't explored during the season. Maybe this was considered in comics or LoK, but I would like to talk about my version of the development of the concept.

I was very interested in controlling water in the air. I thought that this was a very revolutionary approach, because you need to get water from essentially nothing, it’s difficult and at the same time convenient. A source of water is always at hand, great!

However, the question is: is this all? Is it really impossible to go further and develop the ability in some other way? Lately I have been very interested in this question, and my reflection has taken me in an unexpected direction.

I thought about storm clouds. We have already been shown how, together with an airbender, even an inexperienced waterbender can control clouds. However, in the future, when Katara develops her skills, she may well be able to cope with this task herself. Clouds are made of water, and thanks to Hama, she clearly learned to feel the element on a more subtle level and control it even in the air. Making water particles move in the sky might not be that difficult for her.

And imagine how cool it would look during the invasion of the Fire Nation. If Katara didn’t just fly on Appa and destroy airships one by one, but carried a thunderstorm across the sky, like Storm from the X-Men. Bad weather would prevent the air force from entering the battle, and rain would help the waterbenders on the ground and prevent the firebenders from fighting. This would not only be visually powerful, but also quite useful.

And then I thought about what happens in a thunderstorm. Lightning. The firebending technique can essentially be summoned by the opposite element! This idea amazed me…

Let's start with where lightning comes from in nature. In simple terms, when small water crystals of different sizes move very quickly inside a thundercloud and collide with each other, they form opposite charges in different parts of it. The result is natural lightning. That is, all that is needed is to be able to control the water particles in the air, and, as we know, Katara has learned this.

Imagine if, during the same invasion, she had gotten too caught up in creating a storm. The ice particles collided so quickly that at some point, lightning appeared in time with Katara's movements. Powerful, uncontrollable, dangerous. She and Appa were in the middle of a storm without any preparation or protection, it was scary. But at the same time exciting and intriguing. How does it feel to realize that you can create magic of the opposite element? This can't help but stun you.

But Katara would have to restrain herself. I don't think she liked it, but she didn't want to put Appa and herself in danger. As a result, the thunderstorm she created was not half as powerful as it could have been.

Why is it important? Because in my perception this is not just a technique. I feel like the storm, and in particular the lightning, in this case represents Katara herself in book 3. Remember her rage in the episode "Southern Raiders" when she expressed long-buried feelings about the loss of her mother. Remember how long and painfully she nursed Aang after his death, and subsequently experienced enormous stress in “The Puppetmaster” due to bloodbending. I think Katara needs some emotional release (which she got in "Southern Raiders", but more on that in part two). And lightning could personify that internal energy that strives outward.

Remember how Katara's anger manifested itself in book 1 through its effect on the water around her? What if it got bigger because Katara grew up as a master?

This time it is very dangerous to give in to feelings like this and turn them into the element, because Katara is not able to control the lightning itself, only create it. This can seriously hurt her herself, as well as those around her, just like words and deep resentments (for example, towards Sokka for not grieving the loss of their mother as much as she does). Therefore, there is nothing left to do but restrain the impulses of rage and irritation.

Perhaps she would even refuse to create new storms. Unfortunately, without someone who could control the direction of the lightning, she cannot guarantee the safety of herself and the people around her. But where can she find such a handyman?..

Part 2 >

[thesoupisburning]

right so you guys ever think about the spectre telling the narrator that hes more similar to her than to a person?

what "her" was she referring to? the fragment we call the spectre? the way he can only be perceived, not perceive himself? the ghost of him, the ghost of her? all of her?

im just. thinking. i always think about spectre. she has. a lot to say that i think is overlooked in favor of more common favorite routes like moment of clarity and the tower, but shes one of my favorites, and shes one of the only ones who SEES the narrator, save for wraith, who is. also her. or nightmare. and she says that hes not really a person. like her.

of course, that makes sense, we think shes a ghost and dead, so she is. but him. is the echo a ghost in the classical sense? is that what she meant? or are there layers?

she says he's not really like a person. what is a person to her? is she comparing the narrator to the "shards of broken glass on the floor" are her interactions with us and the voices the only "person" she knows?

i love love love when this game separates the narrator from us and our voices. i love it so much i think about it daily. props to tower for "layer of grime" that fucks so hard.

i don't have a thesis im just. thinking. how much of the narrator is left. really.

[ghost-biird]

Wow we just finished our Curse of Strahd campaign!! We actually played it all the way through to the end!! Amazing!!

[shibaincubus]

My favourite number is 24 because it's my birthday

The chance of being born as a human is 1 in 400 trillion

We all have different skill sets, lore, advantages, personalities..., and we're unique

Through our experiences, one gains a vision of ourselves

Your ideal o(=•ェ•=)m

Cherish your life and be who you truly want to be

Chase your vision

And be happy

With your achievements

Your future

Your life

That you'll create

[wheucto]

with that new revelation in ii2 e16, i feel like there's... a lot less to know about the world of ii. at least, not to know for sure.

because, before then, you could extract some information from passing comments. remember the french or whatever pizza delivery guy who tried to pass as italian, but spoke spanish instead? from that, you could determine that 1. france, spain, and italy are places that exist and 2. if those countries exist, why not all the countries in the world?

but. but, according to what cobs said at least, mephone4 seems to have made everything. he made the weird looking grass. if he made that, then why not anything else? did that guy exist before he came onto the show? probably not! and if he was made that day, was the concept of "france," "spain," and "italy" made that day too?

there's no way for us to know what the normal world of ii looks like. do they have parallel countries to us? well, we know their continents aren't parallel. it follows that their countries wouldn't be, either. who knows what their history is like? how the normal objects are like? will we know?

[dead-salmon]

thinking of it, the fact that lightlark advertised itself as "a poc hunger games" makes the entire thing even funnier – given how many characters, entire districts & especially story relevant characters aren't white

[symbologic]

Recently saw a discussion on Twitter about why Skypiea gets more hate in the West than in the East

The easy answer is: Blame dudebros and powerscalers who care more about fights than about story (to which they will argue arcs like Impel Down and Marineford were FULL of story), or privileged people feeling uncomfy about the anti-colonialist themes (even though, let's be real, those themes are probably lost on the average Western reader :/)

But Skypiea hate in the West wasn't always a thing. At the time it was being released, most English-speaking fans who were keeping up with OP scanlations and K-F fansubs genuinely enjoyed it.

I honestly think part of the Skypiea hate has to do with a trend we've seen over the past decade, where Western audiences are so, so quick to label certain story elements as "filler" without considering their thematic importance and how it ties into the story the author wants to tell.

Basically, Western audiences have become obsessed with hyper-optimized, fast-paced storytelling that leaves little room to breathe

If the people and politics of an arc are beyond the scope or interest of the story's main antagonists, it's suddenly dismissed as filler that detracts from "more important" things

This attitude is not limited to One Piece alone.

[ghostzzy]

i'm so glad i don't feel the urge to have to political post on the blog anymore.

[z00r0p4]

I kind of actually think the postmodern affinity for constructionism will be the downfall of society as we've known it and not in a good way.

[thegeekgene]

Someone at an old job asked why I wanted to write up the meeting minutes for our team and I said 'i wanna control the narrative' and they were like 'what' and I pointed out that no one was gonna remember what we said in six months and so my interpretation of the meeting would dictate the assumed reality of what happened

"none of you ever send corrections when I offer the draft so y'all have consented to my version"

"we don't read that shit"

"you must trust me implicitly to create our shared reality that's so sweet"

That's how several coworkers decided I was a supervillain and how I learned several coworkers didn't understand record keeping as like a CONCEPT

[areejfamil]

🌟 A Cry for Help: My Family’s Struggle to Survive in Gaza 🌟

Hello, my name is Areej Kassab. I’m a 27-year-old English teacher and writer from Gaza, and I’m reaching out to you with a heavy heart and a desperate plea for support. My family and I are enduring unimaginable hardships as relentless bombings devastate our home and our dreams.

We are a family of 15—10 adults and 5 children. Every day is a battle for survival. Food is scarce, humanitarian aid is not reaching us, and my little nieces and nephews go to bed hungry. Among them is my sister, who is deaf, and another sister who has a newborn baby. They, too, are suffering in this crisis, and I’m doing everything I can to protect and provide for them.

💔 A Life in Ruins The war has robbed us of everything: safety, peace, and even the hope of a future here. My family’s needs are basic yet critical—food, clean water, diapers for the babies, gas for cooking, and other essentials to make it through each day.

With rising prices and limited access to necessities, we are struggling to provide even the most basic items. My sister’s home has been destroyed, and we are working together to ensure everyone has shelter, food, and warmth.

✨ My Plea for Your Support ✨ I’m a writer, and I’ve been documenting the harsh realities faced by my community under siege. But words can only do so much. We need action, and we need help. Your kindness can save us.

🙏 How You Can Help

Donate: Every contribution, no matter how small, brings us closer to securing the essentials we desperately need.

Share Our Story: If you can’t donate, please share this post to help us reach others who can.

Your support will help provide food for the children, clean water for my family, and basic supplies to help us survive this unimaginable crisis.

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for standing in solidarity with us. Together, we can create a lifeline for my family—a chance to live, to dream, and to hope again.

With love and gratitude, Areej Kassab ❤️

[jonhlockedgirl]

THIS ^^^^^

The only reason we may find it "harder" to get what we want in their reality it's because of self limiting beliefs. If we believe scripting will work in our dr, it will work. We don't have any self limiting beliefs in our dr. We just assume it will follow the script and it does. While in our cr, we have doubts and beliefs imposed by society and that's why we may find it harder to archive everything we desisire.

Point is, work on your beliefs in THIS reality. You'll get everything you wish for here too. You'll shift by command on here too, if you truly believe that.

You create your own reality, whatever reality you wish.

YOUR CR IS NOT SPECIAL IT WORKS ON THE SAME RULES THAT ANY OF YOUR DRS DO.

Yes you can script your cr like your dr.

Yes you can manifest like you do in your dr.

Yes you can get anything and anyone like you do in your dr.

Yes you can safeword out of your cr like you do in your dr.

Yes yes yes yes yes!!!

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE EVEN HEREEE!!

When you start to see your cr as one of many that you exist in you'll detach so quickly istg.

You're just here as you are in your dr. There is no original reality. You're just aware of shifting in this one like and unlike many others.

When will you stop looking around and look within yourself?

[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

[ashraffamilynew]

Please help secure a future for an entire family - me, Ashraf, my wife Ghadeer, and our lovely innocent son Yamen 👶💙

Vetted by @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi , fundraisers list Number (#328)

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on their list ( #74 )

Vetted on X platform on this spreadsheet (#391)

Shared by @90-ghost | Shared by @a-shade-of-blue | Shared by @dlxxv-vetted-donations

Please bring us back to life without war, destruction, genocide or killing because this is what fills our memories after we forget what a life full of hope is like ‼️

I'm Ashraf from the war-torn Gaza. I've lived an entire life under siege in Gaza, facing relentless military actions and life-threatening conditions daily. In October 2023, the conflict escalated drastically, devastating my newly built house, my neighborhood,my workplace, and jeopardizing the lives of my family.

My wife, Ghadeer @ghadeerarqan , and I live in Gaza with our baby son Yamen. My wife gave birth to Yamen during the war, and it is all he has ever known. Yamen has spent the tenth months of his young life without a stable home, surviving a genocide.

I mourn the loss of our safe haven, but more urgently, I need to secure a future for my family away from the constant threat of bombings that have become our grim reality.

Meet Yamane, our precious tenth-months-old. Who was born during this war, We aspire to provide him with opportunities that surpass our own experiences, fostering a future filled with joy and prosperity.

This campaign is a call to arms for all who believe in the transformative power of community support. By contributing, you're not just donating; you're actively shaping Yamane's world, ensuring his journey is filled with the promise and potential every child deserves. Join us in making a profound impact on his life

Yamen... he's only a baby. He doesn't understand the fear that grips us, the darkness that engulfs our lives. He just smiles, his eyes bright with innocent wonder, oblivious to the terror that surrounds him. He reaches for me with tiny hands, his laughter a fragile melody in this symphony of destruction. 💔

can we shield him from the reality of this war ⁉️can we keep him safe ⁉️

Your generosity is a beacon of hope for my family, especially for my little baby boy Yaman👶🩷, who deserves a future free from fear and filled with opportunity.

Thank you for standing with us during this incredibly challenging time. Your support means the world to us, 🌺🩷🌿🕊

But we still need your help to reach our goal. Please continue to share our campaign and consider contributing if you can. Together, we can create a brighter future for Yamane and all children affected by this conflict.

Vetted by @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi , fundraisers list Number (#328)

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on their list ( #74 )

Vetted on X platform on this spreadsheet (#391)

Shared by /@90-ghost

Shared by @a-shade-of-blue

Shared by @dlxxv-vetted-donations

[galacticfluffle]

so chat does this mean people making fanfics abt p3do interactions and other downright atrocious crimes known to humanity is just… acceptable bc it’s “not what you’d do irl” how the fk did this get on my timeline bro. wtv just read the tags

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.