#direct development

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 10, 2024 - Hundreds of radical environmentalists and anticapitalists have broken through police lines and fences and stormed the terrain of the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg. They are attempting to stop the planned expansion of the factory, which would mean the destruction of surrounding forest and farmland. The factory also uses immense amounts of water, and all to sell shitty electric cars to give people the idea that personal consumption choices can save the environment from destruction, and make fascist Elon Musk even richer than he already is. The actions in the past days have forced Tesla to temporarily shut down production at the factory. [video]

[brainrotcharacters]

the next time Logan does this, wade is going to keel over CACKLING

[independent-fics]

Now, you can take that as a gift, or you can take it as a curse. And that's up to you.

Eliot Spencer and Parker Doing the Things Others Won’t

Leverage (2008-2012)

04x01 The Long Way Down Job

05x09 The Rundown Job

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, I feel kind of bad for everyone that keeps expecting Silksong news at every game event just to be predictably disappointed. On the other hand, it is really, really, funny.

The part that baffles me is people expecting the release date to drop during a fucking Nintendo Direct.

[kizzer55555]

The Vampire Aesthetic

Ok so Danny knows two billionaires personally and they really couldn’t be more different. Yet they had one thing in common. A vampire aesthetic. Sam is fully into goth. Spiderwebs, bats, the color black. She enjoys fangs and fake blood and the darkness of her soul. Meanwhile, Vlad is Vlad. If his name wasn’t enough, the dark clothing, pale skin, and flying around with a cape and fangs with coffins in his mansion really sells it.

Danny doesn’t know many rich people so he thinks this might be some kind of trend. (If Paulina is rich, her family likes the chupacabra) So he just thinks that all rich people have some kind of vampire thing going on.

Cue Danny somehow ending in the Wayne household. Maybe he was brought over as a friend of one of the bats, maybe rescued from a field trip/vacation gone wrong, maybe some other situation. But he is there in civilian form with civilian Waynes and Danny just takes a good long look around the inside of the mansion.

“So where’s the vampire aesthetic?

Everyone freezes.

Danny just starts looking around, checking behind paintings and feeling the walls for secret levers. Used to secret passages with Vlad and possibly Sam. The Fentons definitely had them when they were temporarily rich.

“Come on, I know you guys are hiding it.”

Cue the entire batfamily thinking that this is another Tim and that he is fully aware that these people are the batfamily. Danny hangs around the mansion more and the bats just start dropping their disguises and not even bothering to hide stuff around Danny because they assume he already knows. (Possibly even trying to recruit him to be a new bat) Meanwhile, Danny, who does not know these people are batman and his birds, just does not pick up on any of it.

He grew up in a health violation with a giant ballon observatory lab above his head and a portal to the afterlife in his basement. He is a half dead teenager who has tea with the god of time and his godfather is the other parent to his clone child. He’s used to death lazers being scattered across his home and mysterious stains on clothing.

People are weird! He doesn’t judge!

[thirdwheelravi]

permission to be a little petty on main? it’s really hilarious that a good chunk of people basically talked themselves into believing bucktommy is THE MOST AMAZING LOVE STORY EVER simply because they didn’t think buddie would ever happen. and now that buddie is on the precipice of happening they refuse to believe it because that would mean they did All That for nothing

[wyvernity]

been thinking about the sinnohtrio lately......plus misc other stuff

also, casual ko-fi drop!! get something in this sketchy style starting at $10 woop woop

[16th-of-a-twigg]

❄️Suddenly realising that you’re in undoubtedly and irrevocably in love with your team mate and it's like whooooaa 🍊🫐 Redrew and animated this drawing from last year Ko-Fi

[ewwww-what]

hiiii can i request wheelchair user riz :)))) np ofc

-@transgenderfabianseacaster

YES PLEASE !!!!

[debbie-sketch]

The Lesson - Animatic || Art Direction

[cali]

when ur zone of duty spans wider than a hundred ears can ear...SIGH

[haifoct]

The one who couldn't be blinded, the one who helped Li Lun see.

[musicalmoritz]

“Killua only had one friend and they ruined it by making it romantic” do Ikalgo, Leorio, Kurapika, Zushi, and Alluka mean nothing to you???

[dilemmaed]

travnat come home the kids miss you

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I was reviewing s1 again and I think two major questions I had in regard to Yingdu/Bridon arc got answered. I can't remember if there were any other strange inconsistencies, but these two moments that I thought were inconsistent actually aren't.

Moment #1: The name change to Time Photo Studio

Yeah this one is a minor one and it's on me for not paying attention to the scene, but at first I was confused about when the name change occurred - it's obviously Time Photo Studio in season 1, but in Yingdu, it's Hero Photo Studio. The scene where Qiao Ling asks about the name change happens at the very end of Yingdu, but is a skip-forward to the end of season 2. Because they were fixing up the photo studio again, I got confused and thought he only changed the name after s2, which is weird because it was Time Photo Studio all throughout season 1. Anyways, that wasn't the case and I was mistaken. Qiao Ling was just asking - Cheng Xiaoshi changed the name after he came back from Bridon. She even outright says that.

QL: "By the way, why did you suddenly decide to change the name to "Time Photo Studio" after coming back from Bridon?"

Moment #2: Cheng Xiaoshi clapping his own hands to enter photos

This confused me immensely when I first watched Yingdu. If Cheng Xiaoshi discovered his ability by clapping his own hands together, then why did he seem to need to "rediscover" that in season 1? It's not like he would've forgotten.

Well, after going back through the scene, I realized that's not what was going on. The dialogue where Cheng Xiaoshi asks Lu Guang what would happen if he clapped his own hands together reads like this:

LG: "Our abilities complement each other. You can exist in the time and space of photos, but only under the premise of a high-five."

CXS: "Is there no other way?"

LG: "Unfortunately, that's the only way."

CXS: "Then, what if I high-five myself and enter the photo..."

LG: "You'll lose contact with me. If that happens, you won't know anything about what will happen in the photos."

If you look at the dialogue, you'll realize that Cheng Xiaoshi is not asking about whether he can dive into the photo by himself, but about what would happen if he did. When he sits in front of the security camera footage of Liu Min, he's not unsure about whether he can dive, he's weighing the consequences of having no guide (and decided it should be alright, since he'd be entering as himself and not another person).

Shouldn't he remember this from Yingdu arc though, with his first dive? Well, two points there. First, the experience was highly stressful and he had no idea what was going on - this makes the conversation above something of a clarification. Second, he's establishing whether or not the high-five is what's necessary for them to be connected, or whether it is the act of diving itself - he likely just wasn't totally sure, and wanted to confirm.

[reasonsforhope]

"When politicians unveil a new national park or wilderness area, it’s often accompanied by debates about what effect it will have on the livelihoods of people living nearby. In some places, it can be welcomed as a boon, attracting tourists and their dollars. In others, it’s booed as a job killer, squelching the chance for new mining, grazing, logging or other industries.

As nations promise to nearly double the amount of protected land on the planet, from 17% to 30% of the Earth’s surface, these debates are likely to happen more often. Now there is new evidence that it’s possible to have both land protections and a growing economy. But it’s not guaranteed. “Achieving both aims is more common than we previously expected,” said Binbin Li, an environmental scientist at Duke Kunshan University, a Chinese institution affiliated with Duke University. “But that balance depends on socioeconomic conditions near a protected area.”

It can be hard to tease out causal links between two things as complex as the changing condition of a landscape and the economy of a nearby city. Did a town flourish because of a nearby national park, or because an increase in remote work enabled people to move there? Did another town collapse because a forest reserve contributed to the demise of a sawmill, or was it part of a bigger downturn in the timber industry?

To try to clarify the effects, Li and colleagues at Duke University and Shandong University in China compared the fates of “twin” towns and cities, as well as comparable patches of land. They identified more than 10,000 protected areas in countries around the globe, then examined how economic activity changed in nearby settlements between 2013 and 2020, compared to similar settlements more than 20 kilometers from any protected land. They also matched the protected area to similar nearby unprotected areas, to see if they fared differently.

The scientists used satellite images to track changes on the landscape, such as forest turning to farmland. They also tracked changes in the amount of nighttime artificial light as a surrogate for economic activity.

The satellite images revealed that in many cases, more trees and grasslands stayed standing and the lights shown more brightly at the same time. In about half the protected areas, there was simultaneous progress in both conservation and economic development, the scientists reported on June 20 in Current Biology.

Land protection was broadly successful at reducing the loss of forest and grasslands – more than 90% of the protected areas either lost no natural land cover, or less than their unprotected twins, the researchers found. At the same time, 60% of neighboring communities had as much or more of an increase in nightlights than places further from protected land...

Land protection and economic growth went hand in hand most easily in wealthier countries, around smaller protected areas, and in places with some of the infrastructure critical for economic development, such as roads. In places without these features the ecological fate of the land and the economic fortune of nearby towns was more likely to diverge or decline together the researchers found.

“Conservation does not happen in a silo,” said co-author Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist. “We must consider local development alongside biodiversity conservation to know where and how to protect areas to benefit both the environment and humans.” ...

The results underscore the ways in which poverty and environmental degradation can be bound together. If poverty isn’t dealt with, creating protected areas could set the stage for both loss of biodiversity and economic development, the researchers warned. The flip side is that with careful planning, conservation could help set nearby towns on a path out of poverty. As an example, the scientists pointed to Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park, which has become a hub for ecotourism on the country’s Pacific coast.

“We need to get to a win-win outcome more often, especially in the most biodiverse regions that can ill-afford losing out on economic development or biodiversity,” said Li. “We cannot address biodiversity loss without addressing local development issues.”

-via Anthropocene Magazine, June 26, 2024