#WHERE WERE THEIR MACHINES

[tonhalszendvics]

Someone please explain Avatar worldbuilding.

Fire Nation has machinery.

This allowed them to conquer half of the world, and wipe out most of the Southern Water Tribe – they had no comet power there, and we saw how is firebending at the poles.

The Mechanic is from the Earth Kingdom. His impact on the weapons is unquestionable. His knowledge has to come from somewhere, except a, he was self-taught, b, he received education after his capture. (I'm kind of sure it was actually a mix of the two.)

Ba Sing Se has trains. Actual, working train lines. Either they stole the technology or they came up with themselves, but they have to maintain it, which means they know shit about engines.

Conclusion: WHERE were the Earth Kingdom mechanized units??

Edit: I have the answer, thanks

[reasonsforhope]

"The world's coral reefs are close to 25 percent larger than we thought. By using satellite images, machine learning and on-ground knowledge from a global network of people living and working on coral reefs, we found an extra 64,000 square kilometers (24,700 square miles) of coral reefs – an area the size of Ireland.

That brings the total size of the planet's shallow reefs (meaning 0-20 meters deep) to 348,000 square kilometers – the size of Germany. This figure represents whole coral reef ecosystems, ranging from sandy-bottomed lagoons with a little coral, to coral rubble flats, to living walls of coral.

Within this 348,000 km² of coral is 80,000 km² where there's a hard bottom – rocks rather than sand. These areas are likely to be home to significant amounts of coral – the places snorkelers and scuba divers most like to visit.

You might wonder why we're finding this out now. Didn't we already know where the world's reefs are?

Previously, we've had to pull data from many different sources, which made it harder to pin down the extent of coral reefs with certainty. But now we have high resolution satellite data covering the entire world – and are able to see reefs as deep as 30 meters down.

Pictured: Geomorphic mapping (left) compared to new reef extent (red shading, right image) in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

[AKA: All the stuff in red on that map is coral reef we did not realize existed!! Coral reefs cover so much more territory than we thought! And that's just one example. (From northern Queensland)]

We coupled this with direct observations and records of coral reefs from over 400 individuals and organizations in countries with coral reefs from all regions, such as the Maldives, Cuba, and Australia.

To produce the maps, we used machine learning techniques to chew through 100 trillion pixels from the Sentinel-2 and Planet Dove CubeSat satellites to make accurate predictions about where coral is – and is not. The team worked with almost 500 researchers and collaborators to make the maps.

The result: the world's first comprehensive map of coral reefs extent, and their composition, produced through the Allen Coral Atlas. [You can see the interactive maps yourself at the link!]

The maps are already proving their worth. Reef management agencies around the world are using them to plan and assess conservation work and threats to reefs."

-via ScienceDirect, February 15, 2024

[suburbanbonfire]

me as an intermission sports reporter: hey so like what the fuck

[luck-of-the-drawings]

ANCIENT wip that i finally got around to splashin color onto. NO idea where this colorin style came from n it WONT happen again!! anyway i LOOOVE the general dynamic between arthur n emizel. both are so cool and so awesome and yet SO silly...

[ganonfan1995]

Burnt out

[silverskye13]

I had a dream last night that me and Docm77 were trapped in a warzone and he tackled me to the ground to save me from gunfire and then together we took out like ten guys.

I'm sure this says something about my psyche and that something is that if I ever met Docm77 in real life I think we would commit war crimes.

[uncanny-tranny]

If you mess with somebody's mobility/life-preserving aid and all you got was yelled at by the disabled person in question, just know you got off easy. Fucking with somebody's aid can easily become a matter of life-or-death, so you have to understand why somebody would "lash out" about that.

[crow-x3]

[markscherz]

I have question, do you have a least favorite frog?

Yeah, Pepe.

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

motorcycle sketch featuring cross!! >:)

[ante--meridiem]

Okay actually done for real for real aka thesis has been turned in and I cannot keep finetuning it even if I'd want to.

[samipekoe]

I was so close to pooling money W my friend to comm more touden sandwich bc im so so so very ill but then i rmbed you had tumblr...!! Thank you for being so brave in front of the girls.... thank you for marcille x toudens.. lacille.... YASHIDOLA LACILLE.... ?!?!?.... im literally nevwr ever recovering. kobayashi dragon maid ahh lacille. thank you so so much. Wow i just realised this is all word salad but i lit cant sit still right now your marcille is my favourite!! your sheer specs in portraying girlfailures.. and portraying body contact and proximity too, esp when physical proximity is something dunmesh draws attention to TT__TT really really huge fan. I hope you find a billion dollars in a drawer

thank you!!! every day I grow stronger against all odds... yashidola lacille was so incredibly niche I can't believe more than one person commented on it lol I am not alone in this WORLD!!!

[awkward-teabag]

I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.

Because I bet it's a lot.

I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?

There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.

Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.

But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.

Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.

But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.

[salty-software-engineer]

I will never get tired of people being mad that Rage Against the Machine is speaking about politics "now".

[cozylittleartblog]

these tags just made me feel fucking ancient

[lollytea]

thinking about your actor au ... thinking about Hunter not being allowed to be his natural healthy body weight. thinking about his scars getting covered with make-up. thinking about the gap in his teeth getting edited away whenever possible. thinking about Amity having to appear Perfect at all times. thinking about Luz and Willow probably getting their hair straightened before filming. thinking about all of them getting dressed a certain way for Marketability. THINKING. VERY HARD.

You are so me. I'm always thinking. Always.

Willow didn't even know Hunter had scars until after knowing him for MONTHS because whenever she saw him he was always caked in makeup. Nobody ever noticed when he got a new one.

Hunter wears a dental flipper. Which is basically just a set of false upper teeth that he clips in over his real ones.

Amity is under heaps of stress to perform well in school, to keep up with her acting classes, to stay on top of work, to never appear as tired or overwhelmed, to keep her reputation squeaky.

You read my mind about the hair!! They DO straighten it!! Luz isn't an actor but just like in canon, she fries it to fit in better. All the characters she admires on TV have straight hair.

And I'm so sorry to give this bit of info about Willow but...early on in this AU, she really does not like the way she looks. At all. She's very insecure about it. Tons of young girls fall victim to an inferiority complex from the conventional Hollywood beauty standard but also. It is so SO much worse if you're an actress. And you constantly feel out of place. So Willow allows her big poofy curly hair to be straightened. Braided. Tied back. Whatever they feel like they need to do to make her more palatable to their audience. She's such a doormat before she meets Luz.

They ARE dressed a certain way. Modest. Colourful. Flashy and child friendly. An insane amount of layers and chunky accessories.

But Willow is very aware that the people in wardrobe are way more enthusiastic to dress Amity than her. They dress the two girls distinctly differently. Both aren't allowed to show too much skin but she can't help but notice that sometimes Amity gets to wear tank tops. Or skirts without leggings. But never Willow. It seems like Willow always has to be covered.

She doesn't want to show her bare arms. Or bare legs. She really really really doesn't. So she should be relieved they don't make her, right?

Well....its complicated. Because even if she does not want to dress like Amity at all, it really does reinforce her inkling suspicion. There is something wrong with the way she looks and people want to keep her covered. It's hurts. It hurts quite a lot.

THINKING THINKING THINKING THINKING