#from indoor spaces of conventions

[fly-sky-high-09]

If not for a good company I feel like I would have snapped and ripped someone's head off while out in public today

[reasonsforhope]

"Chicago’s 82-story Aqua Tower appears to flutter with the wind. Its unusual, undulating facade has made it one of the most unique features of Chicago’s skyline, distinct from the many right-angled glass towers that surround it.

In designing it, the architect Jeanne Gang thought not only about how humans would see it, dancing against the sky, but also how it would look to the birds who fly past. The irregularity of the building’s face allows birds to see it more clearly and avoid fatal collisions. “It’s kind of designed to work for both humans and birds,” she said.

As many as 1 billion birds in the US die in building collisions each year. And Chicago, which sits along the Mississippi Flyway, one of the four major north-south migration routes, is among the riskiest places for birds. This year, at least 1,000 birds died in one day from colliding with a single glass-covered building. In New York, which lies along the Atlantic Flyway, hundreds of species traverse the skyline and tens of thousands die each year.

As awareness grows of the dangers posed by glistening towers and bright lights, architects are starting to reimagine city skylines to design buildings that are both aesthetically daring and bird-safe.

Pictured: Chicago's Aqua Tower was designed with birds in mind.

Some are experimenting with new types of patterned or coated glass that birds can see. Others are rethinking glass towers entirely, experimenting with exteriors that use wood, concrete or steel rods. Blurring lines between the indoors and outdoors, some architects are creating green roofs and facades, inviting birds to nest within the building.

“Many people think about bird-friendly design as yet another limitation on buildings, yet another requirement,” said Dan Piselli, director of sustainability at the New York-based architecture firm FXCollaborative. “But there are so many design-forward buildings that perfectly exemplify that this doesn’t have to limit your design, your freedom.”

How modern buildings put birds in danger

For Deborah Laurel, principal in the firm Prendergast Laurel Architects, the realization came a couple of decades ago. She was up for an award for her firm’s renovation of the Staten Island Children’s Museum when the museum’s director mentioned to her that a number of birds had been crashing into the new addition. “I was horrified,” she said.

She embarked on a frenzy of research to learn more about bird collisions. After several years of investigation, she found there was little in the way of practical tips for architects, and she teamed up with the conservation group NYC Audubon, to develop a bird-safe building guide.

The issue, she discovered, was that technological and architectural advancements over the last half-century had in some ways transformed New York City – and most other US skylines and suburbs – into death traps for birds...

At certain times of day, tall glass towers almost blend into the sky. At other times, windows appear so pristinely clear that they are imperceptible to birds, who might try to fly though them. During the day, trees and greenery reflected on shiny building facades can trick birds, whereas at night, brightly lit buildings can confuse and bewilder them...

Pictured: A green roof on the Javits Convention Center serves as a sanctuary for birds.

The changes that could save avian lives

About a decade ago, Piselli’s firm worked on a half-billion-dollar renovation of New York’s Jacob K Javits Convention Center, a gleaming glass-clad space frame structure that was killing 4,000-5,000 birds a year. “The building was this black Death Star in the urban landscape,” Piselli said.

To make it more bird friendly, FXCollaborative (which was then called FXFowle) reduced the amount of glass and replaced the rest of it with fritted glass, which has a ceramic pattern baked into it. Tiny, textured dots on the glass are barely perceptible to people – but birds can see them. The fritted glass can also help reduce heat from the sun, keeping the building cooler and lowering air conditioning costs. “This became kind of the poster child for bird-friendly design in the last decade,” Piselli said.

The renovation also included a green roof, monitored by the NYC Audubon. The roof now serves as a sanctuary for several species of birds, including a colony of herring gulls. Living roofs have since become popular in New York and other major cities, in an inversion of the decades-long practice of fortifying buildings with anti-bird spikes. In the Netherlands, the facade of the World Wildlife Fund headquarters, a futuristic structure that looks like an undulating blob of mercury, contains nest boxes and spaces for birds and bats to live.

The use of fritted glass has also become more common as a way to save the birds and energy.

Earlier this year, Azadeh Omidfar Sawyer, an assistant professor in building technology in the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, working with student researchers, used open-source software to help designers create bespoke, bird-friendly glass patterns. A book of 50 patterns that Sawyer published recently includes intricate geometric lattices and abstract arrays of lines and blobs. “Any architect can pick up this book and choose a pattern they like, or they can customize it,” she said.

Pictured: The fritted glass used in Studio Gang’s expansion of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, depicts the animals in the local ecosystem.

Builders have also been experimenting with UV-printed patterns, which are invisible to humans but perceptible to most birds. At night, conservationists and architects are encouraging buildings turn off lights, especially during migration season, when the bright glow of a city skyline can disorient birds.

And architects are increasingly integrating screens or grates that provide shade as well as visibility for birds. The 52-floor New York Times building, for example, uses fritted glass clad with ceramic rods. The spacing between the rods increases toward the top of the building, to give the impression that the building is dissolving into the sky.

Gang’s work has incorporated structures that can also serve as blinds for birders, or perches from which to observe nature. A theater she designed in Glencoe, Illinois, for example, is surrounded by a walking path made of a wood lattice, where visitors can feel like they’re up in the canopy of trees.

Pictured: The Writers Theatre, designed by Studio Gang, includes a walking path encased in wood lattice.

Rejecting the idea of the iridescent, entirely mirrored-glass building, “where you can’t tell the difference between the habitat and the sky”, Gang aims for the opposite. “I always tried to make the buildings more visible with light and shadow and geometry, to have more of a solid presence,” she said.

Gang has been experimenting with adding bird feeders around her own home in an effort to reduce collisions with windows, and she encourages other homeowners to do the same.

“I’ve found that birds slow down and stop at feeders instead of trying to fly through the glass,” she said.

While high-rise buildings and massive urban projects receive the most attention, homes and low-rise buildings account for most bird collision deaths. “The huge challenge is that glass is everywhere.” said Christine Sheppard, who directs the glass collisions program at the American Bird Conservancy (ABC). “It’s hard to know what I know and not cringe when I look at it.”

Tips for improving your own home include using stained glass or patterned decals that can help birds see a window, she said. ABC has compiled a list of window treatments and materials, ranked by how bird-safe they are.

Whether they’re large or small, the challenge of designing buildings that are safe for birds can be “liberating”, said Gang, who has become an avid birdwatcher and now carries a pair of binoculars on her morning jogs. “It gives you another dimension to try to imagine.”"

-via The Guardian, December 27, 2023

[probablyasocialecologist]

As urban populations boom, urban agriculture is increasingly looked to as a local food source and a way to help combat inequitable food access. But little is known about how productive urban agriculture is compared to conventional, rural farming. A new study digs in, finding urban gardeners and hydroponics can meet and sometimes exceed the yields of rural farms. “Despite its growing popularity, there’s still quite a lot we don’t know about urban agriculture, like whether the yields are similar to conventional agriculture, or even what crops are commonly grown,” says Florian Payen, an environmental scientist at Lancaster University and lead author of the study, published today in AGU’s journal Earth’s Future. The new study compiles studies on urban agriculture from 53 countries to find out which crops grow well in cities, what growing methods are most effective, and what spaces can be utilized for growing. The researchers find that urban yields for some crops, like cucumbers, tubers and lettuces, are two to four times higher than conventional farming. Many other urban crops studied are produced at similar or higher rates than in rural settings. Cost efficiency remains an open but important question. Most studies on urban agriculture have focused on green spaces, such as private and community gardens, parks and field growing operations. Payen’s work includes “gray” spaces — places in cities that are already built but could be used for growing, such as rooftops and building facades. In both green and gray spaces, the study examines a suite of crops grown in soils versus hydroponics, horizontal versus vertical farming, and natural versus controlled conditions. “Surprisingly, there were few differences between overall yields in indoor spaces and outdoor green spaces, but there were clear differences in the suitability of crop types to different gray spaces,” Payen says. Certain crops like lettuces, kale and broccoli are more naturally suited to be grown vertically in indoor spaces than others. “You can’t exactly stack up apple trees in a five- or ten-layer high growth chamber,” he says, “though we did find one study that managed to grow wheat stacked up like that.” Other crops, like watery vegetables (e.g., tomatoes) and leafy greens, performed well in hydroponic environments. And crops grown in fully controlled environments can be grown throughout the year, allowing harvests to happen more times per year than in open-air environments, which leads to higher annual yields. But scientists will need to keep studying these systems to plan cost-effective agriculture solutions. The finding that urban agriculture can have similar or greater yields to conventional agriculture “is exactly what we have been waiting for in the urban agriculture research community,” says Erica Dorr, an environmental scientist at AgroParisTech who was not involved in the study.

[headspace-hotel]

a friend of mine said that the environment would be better if everyone lived in cities and basically left the rest of the natural world alone... i felt like there was something wrong with that argument but i really dont know enough about it to have a real point against it. i might be biased though cause i love being around nature and want to be able to live rural without killing the environment? idk im just wondering if she's right and how to live in a way that isnt negatively impacting the world

love your blog btw, it's been the thing that's helped me understand ecology for once

the idea that humans Are Bad for the ecosystem—not that particular activities or practices have particular negative effects, that just humans existing harms the environment—is in fact the worst idea ever

I mean, first of all, where does your friend think food comes from?

"Food" is one of the problems. It's one of a lot of problems. Some other problems include "all other natural resources besides food" and "human rights."

It's not just your friend, this kind of thing has been suggested in varying ways by self identified "leftists" a bunch of times, and I genuinely hope they're mostly random laypeople who can't really be expected to know more than they can learn from being terminally addicted to Twitter, because otherwise I will call them "dumber than a sack of hammers" in those exact words.

No offense to your friend. Your friend is a laypeople. And sadly, non-experts end up with ass-backwards ideas about how conserving the environment works, because of all this commonplace nonsense about humans being a cancer upon the planet. I'm not angry about those people, just sad.

But my serious answer is—The world's most intact and best managed ecosystems are found on land owned and managed by Indigenous people, who do what with the land?

LIVE ON IT.

And these groups of people learned to manage and care for the land how?

BY LIVING ON IT.

Conventional (white, Western) intuition holds that human management of an ecosystem should reduce biodiversity, but what science shows—I mean what study and observation and data and more study and more observation and more data shows—is that indigenous land management practices can do better than Nature can on her own.

I mean, for one thing, if you don't live in a place, you don't observe it every day. You don't see how the ecosystem and its inhabitants change over time. You can't learn about it, and therefore you don't know about it.

Disconnection from nature is ignorance about nature and ultimately apathy towards nature, and that's the worst and most disrespectful thing we can do.

And like I hope it's clear that even in the imaginary scenario where everyone lives in a city, even if this was possible (it's not), the city dwellers who are separate from nature are living a silly little lie. You're part of the ecosystem. Don't like it? Go become a rock in space.

The electrical signals moving through your brain right now are rays of sunlight that were soaked up by a plant that grew in dirt. Do you know fruit? Do you enjoy fruit? I enjoy fruit, I'm drinking a smoothie right now! That fruit y'all love so much was pollinated by a bug.

A bug did that for you! Because you're family! Because you're part of this world, because you belong to this intricate and ancient community of living things that need each other, that were shaped by evolution to need each other, and nature cannot abandon you.

But more on the cynical side of things, even if you don't know where the hell a berry grows or how, someone has to grow and harvest and ship that berry to you, someone who has to live somewhere, and you should care who is doing it and how they're being treated and paid, and ultimately you should want for them the same things you want for you.

Urban life is just rural life with extra steps my friend.

Like, @ all the "put everybody in cities" crowd, what is the plan here? Fancy ass indoor aquaponics systems notwithstanding, we're not technologically at a point where we can just, like, build giant multi-story factory buildings where we grow food under special lamps, and even being at that point wouldn't make it a good idea. With all the hype about solar power, you'd think people would look at plants (have been using solar power just fine for like a billion years) and think, "Neat how those things can just make food when you stick 'em in the sunshine."

I'm sorry, I'm never going to be psyched about technological innovations that are like "We took a plant and put it inside."

There is so much I could say here. The brainrot in the wake of "cottagecore" discourse where a bunch of well meaning white people got convinced that farming was racist. The idea that rural people are somehow more complicit in colonialism than urban people, and that rural land is, I don't know, landier than urban land, and the correct and moral thing to do if you live on stolen land is to....what? Live on land that has a protective layer of concrete in between it and your racist feet?

Land ownership is a whole fucked up beast, but you're not cultivating a non-exploitative relationship with land by living in a city. There's just extra steps in between you and the land.

"Homesteading" as seen on cottagecore boards on Pinterest has a lot of white supremacist wet dream mixed in, but listen: It is not only okay, but GOOD, to want to live in close relationship with the land, with the food you eat, with the trees and plants that fill your lungs when you inhale. It's IMPORTANT. It's VITAL.

What has to change is that this relationship can't be based on ownership and dominance. Ecosystem is community and that ain't it.

My ancestors were colonizers, the land I live on right now was violently stolen, the ecosystem that once was very carefully managed so that it flourished with life was ravaged, and I don't even know the names of most of the life-forms that ought to be here. What now?

You belong to the ecosystem that takes care of you. You can't wash your hands of this and run away.

I feel like I'm getting off topic, but it's very much on topic actually. What I hope for the future is that we would stop entertaining the silly little lies that imagine we can just...opt out of participation in something that is underneath our every footstep and in our every breath. It would make us feel pure, but it wouldn't be real.

I do think that forcing people off the land that is their home is bad, in general. I don't think those people have to be indigenous for this to be bad—and successfully claiming otherwise is a bit of conundrum, since as far as I know, the political and social phenomenon of indigenous identity has a lot to do with the being forced off your land thing.

Obviously people like me don't have the same deeply central cultural relationship to the land, but the "we should all just go live in cities and leave nature to itself" proposal implies that such relationships are unnecessary or even bad.

I've said this before but I find it weird when environmentalists accommodate indigenous ways of life in their visions of the ideal future as like...a special exception granted because it's like, the nice thing to do for a historically marginalized and violently oppressed group. Not because there is value or merit in those ways of life. Like "Oh I guess indigenous people should be allowed to hunt because it's part of their culture" ????? And it's part of their culture because...why?

Maybe because it's a sustainable way of doing things and has been for millennia???

Like don't listen to me, look at the research, indigenous folks participating in ecosystems and managing them worldwide know what they're doing and the rest of the world should be looking to them as examples. Key word here is participating, because you can't competently manage an ecosystem with your head all the way up your ass with the idea that you're somehow not part of it.

Humans aren't a cancer upon the planet. It's capitalism and colonialism. It's the practice of seeing the world as a disposable resource to be exploited.

Humans lived in the place I called home for 15,000 years. Within the past 200 years, almost every forest was razed to the ground, and almost every large animal extirpated or damn near to it.

"Humans" did that! These humans are so terrible!

But I have to remember.

There are descriptions of this place from before that, and they describe a lush, teeming heaven-like paradise that the adjectives provided by English trembled to capture, so perfect and bountiful that the observers assumed this land was never tainted by Adam's sin.

Humans did that, too.

[linxuelian]

Comic Fiesta 2023 Anime Convention Experience Log - With Photos!

Hey there! After posting my previous experience log on Anime Fest+ 2024, I realized I'd shared photos from Comic Fiesta 2023 on Twitter but never did on Tumblr. Since this happened way back in late December 2023, I've forgotten a good portion of my experience there (I have unfortunately the memory of a goldfish) - so it'll mostly be photos of the crowd and MXTX cosplayers, whom I have some loose commentary on based on what I remember from our very short and random interactions.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as an MDZS/TGCF fan as much as I do! I spent only a few hours there, but I did have a good time hunting down cosplays from the MXTX fandom during that time.

I'll begin with pictures of the crowd. If you don't already know, Comic Fiesta is an anime convention held in Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, Malaysia, and it's one of the oldest here too. As of 2023, it's opened its doors to roughly 70,000 attendees, which is rather big considering our country's quite small in size. I've heard from my friend that there are attendees from overseas too, namely Singapore and Indonesia, due to the famous people the organizers tend to invite, so it does make sense that it's grown this large over time.

While the convention itself is held indoors, there's a large park outside where cosplayers tend to hang around and take pictures. A number of people don't buy tickets and go into the convention hall either - and I get why; the last time I was in the hall, I was squashed like a sardine, and not the fancy kind, either. We're a sweaty bunch after a good whole morning of lining up.

Anyway, the park is very pretty, as well as mostly green and neatly trimmed:

It's at this park where you can get the best shots of cosplayers, and find some space to line up for photos of them.

It's got this giant Christmas tree up at around this time of year too, which is super wonderful:

With that aside, I'll get to the cosplays. Let's start off with my favorite best girl of all time, Jiang Yanli:

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/clairegsw/

I'll admit I was both surprised and stoked to see a Jiang Yanli cosplayer around! She seemed pretty surprised too to have someone ask her for a picture - she was taking one with two elaborate bride cosplays, but as I'm a fangirl with heaps of love for Yanli, I thought she shone like the brightest star at that event. You go, Claire!

Next up is our boy Xie Lian, who seems to get quite a number of cosplays done of him:

Credits: https://www.instagram.com/ayana_liyana/ and https://www.instagram.com/itsmeira_az/

These two came together and were looking for wild, lone San Lang cosplayers to catch in Pokemon battle-like sequences respectively. Sadly, as it goes in the BL cosplay world, there's always a shortage of gong/top/seme cosplayers in a con. Everyone wants to be the beauty, it seems, and quite understandably too.

That said, here's another beauteous Xie Lian cosplay:

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/jingzu518/

Cute, nice, and also decidedly not looking for wild semes to capture.

Anyway, no Xie Lian is complete without a Hua Cheng by his side in any event, so here's the obligatory couple cosplay I saw by the escalators when I got up to the entrance:

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/njq_03/

This particular Hua Cheng cosplayer's one of the first dudes I've seen doing TGCF cosplay, which is pretty interesting considering the reception of BL by male anime fans in my country hasn't been... the best - or the kindest, from personal experience. But I'm happy to see it and would like to take this as a positive sign of changing times where our BL fandom gets more mixed in demographics.

Speaking of HuaHuas, here's a particularly fun and cheerful one:

Credit: https://twitter.com/meechandes

When I told this HuaHua that there were Xie Lians looking to form a couple, I was told that they already have a Xie Lian of their own! Again, HuaHuas are in great shortage! You'll definitely get a lot of attention dressed as him as he's both very flashy and coveted in the danmei cosplay scene as a character.

Moving along, here's a pic of my favorite best boy Jin Ling, the snazziest and most golden young master in the universe:

Credit: https://twitter.com/koni_kn

This particular cosplayer was kind enough to humor me at a crowded, fast-paced subway. We managed to find a quieter spot to take a picture. Look at how pretty it looks, bless! 😍 I'm so glad Jin Ling got some representation as a side character. He's absolutely the best!

On cue are his uncles, the twin heroes of Yunmeng, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (whom Jin Ling will probably deny is his uncle, but hey, Mo Xuanyu's body will uncle him however he wants):

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/feza_yu/

The duo came with their own professional photographer, who also doubled as their translator (thank you, photographer man!). This Jiang Cheng's also the softest, gentlest and shyest Jiang Cheng I've ever met in my life. Legs are safe when he's around since he won't be breaking them anytime soon!

Next on the itinerary are our not-so-elusive, staple-of-any-con Wei Wuxians:

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/ken520.cos/

I dub this guy the Balenciaga Wei Wuxian, because, you know, I took his photo right in front of Balenciaga and he looked like the richest Wei Wuxian cosplayer there. No joke - his outfit even had pleather, and he'd spent about 270 bucks on it. I saw it up-close since he was pretty friendly. His arm bracers even had details sewn onto them instead of just being prints! Talk about luxury! I coughed up jealousy like blood from my mouth.

The outfit is from CQL, but he knows MDZS too. I'm familiar with the donghua but too lazy to finish it, so he's definitely put me to shame here as a fan as well, blast him!

Last but not least, we have kitty ears Wei Wuxian (a.k.a. Lan Wangji's Incense Burner Dream #965):

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/mikaecsr/

Now, I won't lie - I first thought they were wolf ears. But as Wei Wuxian does not like dogs of any kind, nature or breed, I'm going to assume that these are feline ears.

Whatever ears they are, though, Lan Wangji will be sure to get hot and toasty seeing them. Wei Ying, you devil you.

Anyway, this marks the end of my write-up! I hope you enjoyed the descriptions. As I don't have Instagram, feel free to hit up any of these cosplayers I've credited and link them here so that they can download pics of themselves and read what some random Internet weirdo had to say about their outfits.

Over and out!

[nettlewildfairy]

I think people should wear masks at big conferences and conventions and extremely crowded indoor places mostly because even without considering the whole COVID thing the odds of getting the flu or something at one of these things is like crazy high. Like shove a ton of people into a small space with mid to bad ventilation and you're practically guaranteed to be sharing pathogens. Every year back when I was at university in the 2010's during the first week of school like 50% of people would get sick cause a ton of people from different places with different pathogens mingled. Like maybe we don't have to live like that. Maybe we could get colds less often. Wouldn't that be nice?

[viktheviking1]

“I’m so f**king excited for this, Loony! Our first Daddy-Daughter date in ages and it’s at a horse race! You’re finally gonna see how sick they are and we can bond over being horse girls together!” Blitz was barely containing himself as he crossed 6 lanes of traffic on the freeway.

“Yeah, whatever. So, long as you give me the $50 at the end of this, like you said you would.” Loona lazily scrolled through Sinstagram on her phone, used to all the jerkiness of Blitz’s driving, “It is a little weird though. I’m not seeing anything about this event online. And wouldn’t an event like this more likely take place in the wrath ring? Why would it be happening in Pride?”

“Now, Sweetie, it’s not very nice to stereotype people like that. There are  horse lovers all over hell. And so what if they don’t have any social media accounts, a website, or even an email address? Youth nowadays clearly just doesn’t understand the classiness of a good letter.” Blitz swerved off the freeway.

“. . . wait, what?” Loona said, suspiciously. She had assumed he had found out about this online and she just wasn’t seeing it, or maybe a billboard or something. It wasn’t uncommon for them to get horse related junkmail, though, so she shrugged it off.

Fewer and fewer cars were around as they got closer to their destination. Blitz threw the car into a parking spot, taking up 2 spaces. They got out of the van to see a big convention center building, totally abandoned of people. No other cars were in the parking lot, and no other people were around save for one guy in a hoodie by the front door. 

“Wow, we’re the first people here!” Blitz said as he marched towards the hooded figure with the biggest grin on his face.

“Shouldn’t there be, I don’t know, at least a sign about the horse race here? And the building looks like it’s a hang out for local drug addicts. Half the windows are boarded up!” Loona was starting to get more and more unsettled by this whole thing.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear your pessimism over the sound of your soon to be equine related delight!” Blitz was happily in his own world. 

“Two tickets, my fellow horse enthusiast.” Blitz said, and began handing the hoodie guy a thick wad of cash.

Loona stopped him, by putting a hand on his shoulder, “Wait, Blitz. How much were the tickets?

“I will spare no expense for the opportunity to bond with my daughter over our soon to be mutual love of horses!” The guy accepted the cash, as Blitz placed his hands on his hips.

The hoodie guy’s face was in shadow and their hands were in gloves, completely hiding themselves. They were counting the money in their hands, when they felt the glare of a tall hellhound piercing daggers into them, “Uhh- student tickets are half off?” came a gravelly voice as they handed back some of the bills.

Blitz, unaware of the glare from behind him, “Yep! She’s a student. Totally a student in school, studying scholarly things at a totally real place. Have a nice day!”

Blitz grabbed Loona’s hand and skittered inside, “Haha! We totally scammed that guuuuuyy . . . woah.” Blitz stopped just beyond the threshold as both their mouths fell open, taking in the scene. Rose petals were scattered along the long walk way, muscular imp statues and giant flower pots lining the path. Pink chandeliers hung periodically from the ceiling, causing the room to be bathed in a fuschia light. All were pink save for the one in the center of the room which was three times the size of the others and sparkled silver. Beneath it was a round table, covered in an ornately laced tablecloth. A candelabra sat in the middle, and two cushion seats, their backs shaped like hearts, were across from each other.

“What ambiance! Come on Loony, let’s take our seats!” Blitz happily began marching over to the table.

“Wait, isn’t this, I don’t know, weird for a horse race event. I’ve never been to one, but for one thing we’re indoors, and there’s only one table in the center of the room that looks like it’s a tacky set up for an old married couple’s date night.” She followed behind him.

Loona’s ear twitched as she heard a muffled voice from far away start to shout, “Tacky-?!” She quickly turned in the direction of the sound but only saw a black tinted window, with big bushes on the other side.

“Nonsense! Plenty of horse events happen inside. Usually it’s a indoor horse arena, but I don’t think they have many of those in Pride, so they probably just had to make do. As for the decor, well, they’re obviously just setting the mood for watching muscular mares speed past us, dripping in sweat.” Blitz pulled out the seat for Loona, who sat down, reluctantly.

“Please don’t make this any weirder than it already is. . .” she trailed off as she peered around Blitz’s shoulder to see the bushes outside rustling, unnaturally. And was that a . . . tail sticking out?

“I’m gonna . . . find the bathroom. I won’t be long.” She said as Blitz looked up from the menu that was on the table.

“Oh, okay. But don’t blame me if they start while you're in there.” He went back to cheerily pursuing the short list of options.

Blitz didn’t seem to notice or that Loona went straight back out of the building; way too wrapped up in the prospect of watching horses. Loona heard loud whispering the moment she stepped outside. It sounded like two people arguing over each other, but she didn’t recognize them. She turned the corner and saw a seam down the middle of the now clearly fake enormous bush. Grabbing the seam, she tore the back half off and two people came tumbling out.

Find out who on The Pompous and the Prick:

[radioactivepeasant]

Surprise: Free Day Thursday Part Three!

Part One, Part Two

Yes, it's all out of order. But honestly that's kind of by design. See, I've got this idea of the story opening with Samos delivering a prologue, as he usually does. It's very much a statement by an unreliable narrator. And then you'd see what was happening in Spargus and think "wait, this doesn't match up". And then it would go back and forth between game stuff and how Jak got to the Wasteland.

So first Samos would provide a recap of Jak II. Then he'd say something like,

"But, sensing the weakness of our defenses, a ruthless warlord appeared from the Wastes. The dreaded Dune-Wolf, as efficient as he is deadly. He made only one demand: "Give up the Dark Warrior, or we will tear your city apart, beginning with this man we caught scouting around our camp."

But the man was the leader of the city militia, the right hand man of the governor herself. What choice did that leave us? With an innocent man's life in the balance -- to say nothing of the city -- Jak had no alternative but to accept the Dune-Wolf's terms. On the day of the exchange, the governor slipped a dagger into Jak's boot, where the Wastelanders would not find it, so that at least he would not be helpless. It has been many months now since that fateful day, but I have faith that Jak will gather his strength and escape that barren desert, to return to us once more."

And then it would cut to Spargus:

Daxter clung to the exterior of the tower, finding handholds no human would ever have been capable of. Swiftly and quietly, he scaled the rain-slick wall to slide through a window too narrow for most. Once inside, he shook water from his fur and beckoned to the figure crouched by the wall.

"Coast is clear, Jak." Daxter gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. "We'll have to climb down clockwise to avoid the guards, but then it's a straight shot to the elevator."

"Nice work." Jak held out a fist to bump against Daxter's.

He pulled his goggles down over his face and gripped the edges of the sill.

"This is it, Dax. We're getting out of here."

With a crackle, dark eco washed over his body, radiating from the lichtenberg patterns across his chest and arms. Jak's dark form didn't care about whether a space was "too small". He could fit anywhere as long as he could get his head through. With a scrape and a few very unsettling pops, he squeezed out of the window and dug his claws into the wall. Daxter slid out after him and dropped to his shoulder. Then the escape was underway.

Humans were not supposed to be able to cling to vertical surfaces like lizards. But then, Jak had never really been one for obeying conventional ideas of what humans were supposed to be able to do. He crept down the tower, following the clockwise path Daxter pointed out to him. After about two more levels, the walls would become sheer metal, and they would run out of handholds. They would have to switch to indoors then -- provided Jak's dark eco didn't run out and cause them to fall to their deaths.

The window in the pump room had been left open. This would have been suspiciously convenient in most cases, but the rain brought cooler air, and open windows were to be found all across the city to take advantage of it. Jak shimmied in through the foot-wide space and hopped lightly down over pipes and gears. They would have to be careful here: one wrong move could damage the water filtration system and cause problems for a lot of innocent people. Jak eased up beside the open doorway and craned his neck to check the hall.

Perfect.

Taking advantage of the pump room's noise to drown out his grunt of pain, Jak let the dark eco subside, drawing it back into his core.

"Alright Dax, which way?" he whispered.

"Left. Er, my left- not yours. Stick to the ceiling when we get to the hall with the monks. After that it's just two antechambers to the way out."

Moving from room to room in almost complete silence, they met no resistance. Of course, they'd long since learned to avoid the traps hidden under the engraved floor tiles, and Jak put the ease of their journey down to experience.

Daxter wasn't so sure. Something felt...off.

The elevator -- the only true exit from the fortified tower -- sat at the edge of a carefully maintained indoor oasis. It had the rare quality of being both beautiful and strangely threatening -- like Tess, Daxter sometimes joked. Much of this was due to the vast dais sitting opposite the lift. Two braziers fastened to rough stone pillars provided the only illumination that didn't come from the window behind the dais, and what natural light there was had to filter through dozens of small date palms. Between the trees and huge carving set behind the throne, there were far too many shadowy places for an enemy to hide.

Jak was going to take full advantage of that.

Hopping from rock to rock, he deftly avoided the streams to make it to the wooden frame of the simple moving platform. He would have to be quick: pulling back the lever to call the platform up was going to make a lot of noise. The second the bar around the lever locked into place with a loud clank, Jak grabbed Daxter and darted into the shadows between two palms to hide in case someone came to investigate.

He had scarcely turned around when he realized someone was already standing where he had just been. How had he missed them?!

Broad shoulders, heavy bracers, otherwise slight build. This wouldn't be an easy fight if it was who Jak suspected it was. But they were the last obstacle between Jak and freedom, and he'd come too far to back down now.

The person turned as Jak left the trees, and firelight caught on glimmering shards of Precursor metal, set into his skull.

Ah. Of course.

"Dune-Wolf," Jak greeted the warrior casually.

"Escapee," the Dune-Wolf returned.

"Can't keep me here forever, Dune-Wolf," Jak challenged, stepping in a careful circle around the man.

"It's the middle of the storm season, of course I can," the warlord scoffed.

Daxter shook out his arms and took a ready stance at Jak's side. "Better hope you locked the front gate, pal, because we're outta here!"

King Damas raised a brow, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. "Are you now? I wouldn't be so sure of that."

He shifted one foot back, and raised his staff. "You will not set one foot past me."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Jak retorted, and he charged.

The faint sting of old bruises reminded him to jump -- Damas liked sweeping his opponents' legs out from under them -- and he used his momentum to sail over the staff and land to the king's left. His feet had barely made contact with the floor before Damas’s own momentum caught up to him. Damas followed his swing through by pivoting and catching Jak across the midsection with the staff. Jak flew backwards into one of the streams with the wind knocked out of him.

Daxter ducked the staff with a screech and actually leaped up onto it. He clung for dear life while Damas paused in an attempt to shake him off before shrugging and picking him up by the scruff of the neck. Jak surged out of the water like a sea monster to grasp the staff and try to pull it from Damas’s hands. Forced to choose which opponent to focus on, Damas released Daxter just in time for Jak to finally wrest the staff from his fingers and toss it across the room.

"Nice try," Jak panted, and dug in his heels as the two matched grips.

For a moment, neither gave way, but ultimately, Damas had the advantage of size.

He shifted stance for one instant and swept Jak's feet out from under him. Jak landed hard, and before he could get his elbows under him, a hand came down on the back of his neck, anchoring him in place. Jak froze, well accustomed by now to the irritating consequences of failure. Damas crouched beside him, and when Jak strained his eyes to get a look at the king, he was smirking.

"Nice try," he echoed. He let go and stood back to let Jak sit up. "I told you, you can't get past me."

Jak bent slightly to catch his breath, begrudgingly admitting defeat. But then he grinned and pointed past Damas.

"Then who's in the elevator?"

Damas whirled to see Daxter, waving at him from inside. Going for the staff had been a ploy: Jak had never intended to win the fight.

"Got past you this time, Dune-Wolf. A deal's a deal," Daxter crowed.

Jak mirrored his cocky grin.

"We got past you, so you have to let me take my last Arena trial before winter."

Damas grumbled good-naturedly and shook his head. "Why did I ever let you talk me into that?"

He leaned down and pulled Jak to his feet in a single motion.

"I probably should have specified that you both had to get past me. That's on me."

"Buuut," Jak pointed out, "you didn't specify. C'mon, Dune-Wolf, pay up."

"Don't call me Dune-Wolf," Damas sighed -- for the umpteenth time -- "enemies call me Dune-Wolf. Soldiers call me Dune-Wolf. You don't."

Jak flashed a cheeky grin at him. "Sure, sure, Damas."

Daxter could have sworn the warlord's eye twitched just a little.

"Alright, now you're just being impudent." Damas tweaked Jak’s ear. "It's either father, or dad to you."

Jak batted his hand away and rolled his eyes. "Man, I haven't had a father in twelve years! I'm not used to being someone's kid!"

It was truly a mark of progress that Damas didn’t respond to statement with a dampening of his mood, or a wince. Instead, he wrestled Jak into a playful headlock and scrubbed his knuckles across the boy’s scalp.

"Yeah? Well you live here, so you better start getting used to it!"

Jak snorted and tried to break free, but admittedly he was at an awkward angle and Damas did still have a height advantage.

"Ack! Leggo!"

"What? Put you upside down, you said?" Damas teased.

It wasn't an idle threat, that was how the last spar had ended.

"Okay okay!" Jak laughed and smacked Damas’s arm. "I yield! Let up, Dad!"

Damas eased his grip immediately, slackening the hold into a loose arm around Jak’s shoulders. "You did good, cub," he said warmly, "You're ready for the last trial."

"Told you we were!" Daxter chirped. "C'mon Jak, the sooner you get your zoomies out on the Playground of Death, the sooner we get to vote!"

"Aht! Breakfast first!"

Damas shifted one heel, and the next thing Daxter knew a foot had come out of nowhere to scoop him out of the elevator and up into the air. Jak caught him with a truncated curse and fumbled to set him on his shoulders.

"But we already ate!" He protested.

"We ate six raisins and a roll," Daxter tattled, "Lead the way, Mr. The Dad."

[thecurioustale]

(Re)introducing the Author

I have two main series: a fantasy series called The Curious Tale and a sci-fi series called Galaxy Federal.

For those who are newer here, or wouldn't mind a refresher, here's a little about me and the kind of stories I write:

My name is Josh, pronouns they/he. (I am agender but I don't get upset if you gender me masculine; I do it myself sometimes out of force of habit.) I am 41 years old and live in Washington State not far from Seattle, in the beautiful but troubled United States. I am left-handed, hence my proudest epithet, The Sinistral, and I have been a writer for basically my entire life—even as a kid!

I published my first and so far only novel in 2015, Prelude to After The Hero, which you can currently buy as an e-book or read for free in HTML. Additionally, I have published countless worldbuilding articles and meta-discussions of my fiction over the years (see my previous post about Curious Tale Saturdays), and countless nonfiction essays and personal musings on my personal journal, which in more recent years I have updated much less frequently (but am still active on).

As an author I mostly write stories about "power" and "beauty." I'll have more to say about my specific stories over the next couple days when I do corresponding (re)introduction posts for The Curious Tale and Galaxy Federal, but the bottom line is that I am very interested in human potential, both at the individual and collective levels, and in the beauty of being alive and experiencing "the world," i.e. our material reality and our own headspaces within it. Other topics that interest me and frequently show up in my writing include justice, creation (both the acts and products of creating), civilization, Illumination (what many would call wisdom or "enlightenment"), ambition and desire, animism, and the poignance of the fleeting nature of all things.

I am fascinated by liminality and subliminality; boundaries; vast indoor spaces; megastructures; mysteriousness; "the magical"; surrealism; absurdism; nostalgia; pathos; journeys that do not involve backtracking; and other such things as generally might describe a vast world with hazy horizons lit in twilight. I also strive in my writing (less successfully, I fear) to convey a sense of mystery and wonder.

At the same time, I am also fascinated by human emotionality and subjective experience; personal relationships; the human condition and the human psyche; and narrative life arcs. Some who know me through my nonfiction or by talking to me in person have been surprised to see how passionate and emotional my fiction is.

My writing style tends to be long-winded and self-indulgent; deliberate and precise; esoteric and bespoke. I usually set a slow pace, and seldom indeed will I resort to cheap action or thrills. Most of my fiction is either long-form play-by-play scenes in high resolution, or Tolkienian epic narration far removed from the ground level.

With certain exceptions for key locations, I usually don't reuse a given location in a story; the locations are usually new from scene to scene, and thus there is a lot of environmental description throughout the whole length of my works and not just at the beginning. This creates a certain quality, where everything is always new, that I find engrossing.

In terms of the three most popular conventions, political intrigue, violence, and sex and romance: My writing mostly rejects the treacherous political intrigue genre conventions that are so prevalent in sci-fi and fantasy today, even though "politics" is definitely an integral part of my writing (and I am not shy about sharing my opinions, though I try to do so through specific characters rather than on narratorial authority). When it comes to violence, there is a lot of death and killing and suffering in my work, but I am not a big fan of writing extremely graphic violence and torture, mainly because I don't have the heart to dwell on it in great detail most of the time. (It's very draining for me.) And on the sex side of things, I eschew tacked-on romantic subplots and in general I would say that there's too much damned snogging in our contemporary storytelling, but I definitely do explore and depict matters of love and sex in my work in my own way—though not at a very high frequency, and, I would like to hope, never gratuitously. (Unless the gratuitousness is a tongue-in-cheek joke that we're all in on—which can be said of many other aspects of my writing as well.) I never write explicit, graphic sex scenes, although I do sometimes write sex scenes.

Which reminds me: My stories tend to have a lot of "competency porn" in them; my characters are usually intelligent, thoughtful, and logical. Ignorance and luck are not big plot story drivers for me, generally.

My favored characters tend to be some combination of fat, left-handed, and female; and, of them, my central protagonists additionally tend to be extremely powerful, demigodlike individuals who are able to operate within their respective domains virtually without limitation. In critical respects my characters are only vaguely-defined; I usually avoid character archetype trope reinforcement, so my characters are ideally as internally diverse as real-world humans are...which means you can't actually know them right away. And that opens the door for you to project your own personality ideas onto them. Which...I suppose is a feature?

I have a cinematic mind, and I think my stories are best appreciated with a strong visual imagination. I try not to smother readers with too many unnecessary details, though I confess I am only partially successful at this and often find myself hanging on every word of my lengthy environmental descriptions. I think some of my most satisfied readers are those who enjoy digesting these elaborate visuals as a reward unto itself.

I am a big believer in the idea that obvious story setups should have payoffs, that narrative arcs should eventually be resolved, and that plots and subplots should be be highly interconnected. I am chiefly theme-driven in my writing, as opposed to character-driven or plot-driven, and oftentimes the central purpose of a given scene will be to express one particular idea (or more than one)—either a conceptual idea, or a specific moment in the story. If you read the Prelude and remember Silence's introduction, I wrote that entire scene just to be able to describe the image of Silence in silhouette standing against the evening sky, and her powerful, predator-like movement as she turns around.

Add it all up, and my stories are definitely out of the norm for today's fashions and quite possibly for any fashion in history. They are slow and heavy and long. Their vastness belies their thrilling internal intricacies and shapes. The characters are highly realistic. The plots tend to feel emergent and organic. Or at least I think so. I am very much "writing the stories I want to see."

My stories tend to be incredibly long. Like...just know that going in. There are many sources for "tight," "fast" writing in the world. I am not one of them.

Oh, one more thing: There are various types of representation that are important to me and which I don't see the current state of sci-fi and fantasy storytelling doing a good job of delivering, so I explicitly lean into that, on top of my natural proclivity to write these kinds of characters anyway. So, if you're ever reading a scene and you find that the demographics of the people in it are noticeably unusual for contemporary American fiction, that's why.

More about me as a person: When not writing, I am a fan of sunsets, sunrises, and twilight; clouds and water; saying "Merciful McGillicuddy!" a lot while sighing loudly; solving Wordle; trying mostly in vain to gain weight; and being a curious information sponge.

[when-it-rains-it-snows]

I'm haunted by the person who said they didn't see archery posts on Tumblr other than mine - they're out there! Some of them make me insane but some are highly legit. Maybe I'm the only stuffy ass Olympic recurve archer.

anyway, show of hands - who thinks I'm hot and stupid enough to get in shape in like five weeks for NFAA indoor?

it's good to have a goal, right?

two pics from the last time I was at NFAA Indoor Nationals - ignore the thing that says Vegas, this is not Vegas. Vegas doesn't use this target face.

NFAA is something like 3000 archers in a big convention hall (these pics are from when it was in Cincinnati) and the air is alive with the hum and thump of arrows. In a big echoing space, it sounds somewhat like hard rain, four minutes at a time (you get four minutes to shoot five arrows. It's plenty of time! it's not enough time! Nuts, totally nuts, I miss this shit.)

[beardedmrbean]

The year is 1996: Britpop rules the airwaves, the National Lottery is must-see TV, and everyone knows the Macarena. Oh, and if you happen to be a kid, SegaWorld is the place to be.

Ensconced on the top floor of the London Trocadero, the indoor amusement arcade felt like a cola-soaked disco in the sky. Only here, the sounds of synths were replaced by space lasers, Formula 1 engines, and gunshots.

At the foot of this unfettered pleasuredome stood the statue of its beloved mascot: Sonic the Hedgehog. Instead of a disco ball, the blue speedster spun a globe on the tip of his finger. It was fitting because, if you were a kid in the Nineties, SegaWorld made you feel like you were on top of the world.

Now, more than 20 years after the indoor theme park’s closure, Sega is bringing back the original statue. The Japanese gaming giant has expertly restored the royal blue figure, which was at risk of being lost for good.

Sonic will make his glorious return at Sega’s booth at the Gamescom 2023 gaming convention. The three-day event kicks off this Wednesday, August 23, in Cologne, Germany.

In a timelapse video shared by Sega on Twitter, the recovered statue makes for a sorry sight. Caked in dirt, and missing part of his globe-spinning arm, Sonic looks like a neglected relic from a long-forgotten past. The clip then plays like a nerdier take on The Repair Shop, with a team of what we can only assume are restoration experts cleaning, buffing, and painting the statue and restoring it to its former glory.

With his glow-up complete, maybe Sega will take Sonic on the road. Here’s hoping he finds his way back to London at some point. The Trocadero may be an empty shell of its former self, but there are plenty of other venues that would make a good home for the fleet-footed hedgehog. The Science Museum’s permanent Power Up video game exhibition would be an ideal candidate.

[reasonsforhope]

"A new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that 5.6 billion people – 71% of the world’s population – are now protected with at least one best practice policy to help save lives from deadly tobacco – five times more than in 2007.

[Note: Going by the math, that means just (roughly) 14% of people were covered by tobacco control policies in 2007. Talk about a huge increase!]

In the last 15 years since WHO’s MPOWER tobacco control measures were introduced globally, smoking rates have fallen. Without this decline there would be an estimated 300 million more smokers in the world today.

This WHO Report on the global tobacco epidemic, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is focused on protecting the public from second-hand smoke, highlighting that almost 40% of countries now have completely smoke-free indoor public places.

The report rates country progress in tobacco control and shows that two more countries, Mauritius and the Netherlands, have achieved best-practice level in all MPOWER measures, a feat that only Brazil and Türkiye had accomplished until now.

[Note: In late 2021, the former Turkey changed official its name to Türkiye, shedding the English/Anglicized spelling.]

“These data show that slowly but surely, more and more people are being protected from the harms of tobacco by WHO’s evidence-based best-practice policies,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General...

Smoke-free public spaces is just one policy in the set of effective tobacco control measures, MPOWER, to help countries implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and curb the tobacco epidemic.

Smoke-free environments help people breathe clean air, shield the public from deadly second-hand smoke, motivate people to quit, denormalize smoking and help prevent young people from ever starting to smoke or use e-cigarettes.

“While smoking rates have been going down, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in the world – largely due to relentless marketing campaigns by the tobacco industry,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries...

Eight countries are just one MPOWER policy away from joining the leaders in tobacco control: Ethiopia, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain...

This report demonstrates that all countries irrespective of income levels can drive down the demand for deadly tobacco, achieve major wins for public health and save economies billions of dollars in health care and productivity costs."

-via World Health Organization, July 31, 2023

[crossingscon]

Getting to CrossingsCon: Covid-19 Requirements

Dai cousins! With the con only a few weeks away, now is a good time to make sure you’re prepared for all your travel needs, including Canada’s Covid-19 travel restrictions. The Government of Canada has full information on their website, but we’ve included a summary below for convenience.

Requirements to enter Canada

In order to enter Canada for purposes of tourism you need the following:

You must be fully vaccinated with one of the approved vaccines, meaning 2 doses in most cases (the main exception being the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine). Booster doses are not required

You must have received the 2nd vaccine dose at least 14 days before entering Canada

You must use the ArriveCAN app to upload proof of vaccination in English or French, as well as the travel documents you will be using to enter Canada (e.g. passport)

A negative Covid test is not required to enter Canada in general, though some travelers may be randomly selected to be tested. Travelers with partial or no Covid vaccination are strictly prohibited from entering Canada for tourism reasons. The above rules apply regardless of your method of entry to Canada, whether by air, rail, sea or land (car).

Masking requirements inside Canada

Face masks are currently not required in most indoor public spaces in Montreal, such as restaurants and public transit. Individual businesses may still require their patrons to be masked however. Masks are currently required at Montreal-Trudeau international airport.

Covid-19 rules at the convention

As a reminder, we will be requiring anyone inside the convention space to show proof of vaccination at the registration table and be wearing a mask at all times. Full text of the convention’s rules around Covid-19 are available on our website.

—————————————————–

CrossingsCon ‘22 will take place August 5th-7th, 2022 in Montreal, Canada featuring authors Diane Duane, Megan Whalen Turner and Ursula Vernon. Badges are on sale here!

[visit-new-york]

Chrysler building

Chrysler building and Summit in midtown Manhattan New York captured from Queens.

Architectural Mastery

Architectural Pinnacle: The Chrysler Building stands as one of William Van Alen's most outstanding achievements, representing the zenith of his illustrious architectural career.

Terraced Imagination: The concept of the Chrysler Building's terraced crown, once envisioned as an indoor observation deck, illustrates the dynamic and imaginative thinking of its creators.

Illuminating Nights: The Chrysler Building's crown isn't merely a static structure; it comes alive at night with vibrant lighting displays that mark special occasions and underscore its enduring role in New York City.

Engineering Triumph: The construction of the Chrysler Building serves as a testament to the fruitful collaboration between architects and engineers, highlighting the successful fusion of innovative design with structural stability.

Harmonious Design: The building's design elegantly blends sleek lines with ornate details, creating a visual harmony that encapsulates the essence of Art Deco elegance.

Artistry in Detail

Complex Crown: The intricate terraced crown of the Chrysler Building, adorned with decorative elements, represents the complexity and ambition of its era, transcending conventional architectural norms.

Elevator Grandeur: The lobby of the Chrysler Building boasts elevators with ornate doors and intricate detailing, contributing to the overall Art Deco magnificence of the space.

Ornate Elevators: Elevators in the Chrysler Building's lobby feature decorative doors and intricate detailing, contributing to the overall Art Deco splendor.

Preservation Endeavors: Efforts to preserve the Chrysler Building's intricate details and architectural integrity ensure that its legacy continues to shine, even amidst evolving times.

Terraced Vision: The original concept behind the terraced crown was to house an indoor observation deck, reflecting the dynamic and imaginative thinking of its creators.

Previous page Chrysler Building Next page

[swampgallows]

hello! ive been curious about going to a rave - some time in the nebulous future, as it's not something that's feasible for me rn + covid - but i do use a cane. do you have any thoughts about if that would impact a rave experience a lot? + if it's not too invasive, do you have any thoughts about raving while disabled/disability and the rave scene in general? thank you, and have a good day!!

this is long, but hopefully informative!

raving with mobility aids is definitely a thing!! one of the longtime DJs in the soCal scene, DJ Alexander, was the first cane user i thought of: he also throws events with Technostate in addition to playing at them. i also know some candy kids who are wheelchair and cane users, and i've seen occasional crutches and boot casts. i also know neurodiverse ravers who have sensory sensitivities, ravers with invisible illnesses that need accommodation, and ravers with mental illness such as myself. for any kind of disability i'd say it really depends on the venue. in my "going raving alone" post i mention gauging your own comfort level and preparing accordingly, and a lot of times that boils down to the location.

underground raves happen in cool but sometimes inaccessible areas. outdoor parties can happen in forests, open fields, mountains, beaches, deserts, and even on top of a dried up dam. indoor venues can be places intended for music events, like concert/banquet halls, elks lodges, galleries/studios, arenas, convention halls, and bars/clubs, but underground events can be in trickier places like airplane hangars, old warehouses/factories/stores (god i wish i had pics of the rave inside the abandoned mall), industrial district apartments, trainyards, or even under a freeway overpass.

i'm including my old posts partially as a trip down memory lane but also so you can see the variations in space, crowdedness, ventilation, lighting, etc. the following is a quick n dirty list of how things usually go, but are not necessarily guaranteed:

outdoor events -- pros: lots of space, (people won't trip over your cane or knock you over); open air ventilation; you can bring whatever you like (food, drinks, chairs, even a tent); the music is loud enough to hear from a good distance away, so you don't have to be crowded by the speakers; no rules for when you arrive or leave; earplugs always recommended but not required if far enough away. neutral: sometimes outdoor parties are multi-day events. plan beforehand for how long you will want to stay and what supplies you will need. cons: ground could be uneven; chance of wild animals/bugs; no bathrooms; VERY little lighting (sometimes none at all); subject to weather changes; anything you need you have to bring with you; car required.

indoor events -- pros: bar or access to drinks/water and snacks; atmospheric (but dependable) lighting; house sound; accessible via transit in the city; "repeat" venues lead to familiarity with the venue itself and the surrounding area so you know what to expect. neutral: there are bathrooms. sometimes they are indoors with running water, and sometimes they are port-o-potties. cons: stairs only; hundreds of people in a limited space can lead to crowding; "no ins-and-outs" = people tightly packed inside; amateur sound and/or lighting rigs might be overstimulating or painful; potentially very unsafe in general (e.g. abandoned warehouse); poor ventilation = smoky, humid, and hot; fog machines are the devil; NO seating/chairs; exposure to dirt, dust, mold, trash; spilled drinks + sweat + darkness + mobility aid = slipping hazard; EARPLUGS ALWAYS. to emphasize: indoor underground venues are dirty as hell. your toes and snot will be black with filth in the morning. [these cons are worst case scenario but i have experienced all of these things at one point or another. also sometimes there is violence and/or crime. it's rare, but it has happened.]

hybrid/corporate events (EDC, Ultra, and other arena-style events) -- pros: designated accessibility areas and amenities (elevators, escalators, etc.); medics on site; bathrooms with running water; access to food and water/drinks; seating; paved pathways; cleanup crews; professional sound; accepts both cards and cash; accessible via public transit and has ample parking. neutral: these tend to be multi-day events, sometimes with corresponding apps on your phone for a map, timeslots, digital ticket, etc. treat it more like a convention or music festival than a rave party. cons: THOUSANDS of people; extreme lighting rigs might be overstimulating; difficulty traversing the grounds due to sheer size of the event; a rave-adjacent experience but not necessarily the same vibe or community as an underground rave; corporate greed and poor management has infamously led to overcrowding and medical emergencies; expensive as hell (ticket, hotel, travel, etc.). (these are less disability-specific but I feel they're important to mention).

---

you can always scope the venue beforehand for accommodations, at least for public venues. underground events oftentimes will not release directions or an address until the night of the party to keep away undesirables. however, in my experience if you contact the crew (or even one of the local DJs) they'll be happy to give you the rundown (e.g. bathroom situation). also, i think most modern day events don't use map points anymore, so that eliminates a layer of complexity.

if you're not sure what your tolerance level might be, keep an eye out for day parties. these are usually at public parks or beaches, so there's plenty of parking, lots of space to spread out, and the sound isn't too amplified. they also rarely reach more than a few dozen people, as anything else requires a permit and risks being broken up by authorities. day parties are generally more chill and low-key, sometimes serving as an afterparty for a "real" rave the night before. this is a nice way to test the waters and to spend an afternoon meeting people, making kandi, or having a picnic, all while enjoying sets from local DJs.

there are also "raver day" meetups at places like amusement parks, zoos, aquariums, and other places that offer group discounts without strict dress codes. as part of "magic in the making" my buddy vince organizes biannual (summer and winter) raver days at disneyland, which i have loved and attended nearly every year (pre-pandemic) since 2004. we wear our favorite outfits, trade kandi made just for raver day, and meet new people. if you don't know anyone in the scene, doing a big group activity like a meetup is a great way to introduce yourself.

--

i do have many thoughts about disability and the rave scene, especially in this " "post"-covid era" (please imagine infinite quotation marks around "post"), but this answer is long enough already. all i can say is that some crews have done their due diligence in promoting the safest atmosphere possible, requiring proof of vax/negative covid tests (and actually checking them), masks while in indoor/crowded areas, and installing upgraded HEPA filter ventilation systems in their venue—but that was about a year ago. now, as we approach the end of 2022, many raves and their crews are not concerned with whether or not their events are accessible. in my opinion, that is a major detriment to the scene's unity, and it effectively prohibits me from attending any events for the foreseeable future. i miss raving more than anything, but i am currently not willing to risk lifelong disability or death to return to it prematurely, or to return to a scene that i, frankly, no longer recognize as the community that once loved me so much in return.

on a positive parting note, here is the late rave legend Keith Flint of the Prodigy greeting and embracing some disabled fans (0:45, warning for flashing lights from 0:00 - 0:50). He was the realest dude there ever was:

i can't wait for you to make your foray into the scene once it is safe for us both :)

[unimother]

Aquaponics Explained + Cost Analysis DIY Automated Home System

Are you searching for a sustainable way to replace overfishing and fish farms? Aquaponics can be the solution to polluted supermarket fish! It's a sustainable, eco-friendly approach for producing healthy food at home without hurting the environment. In this article, you'll find out what aquaponics is and how it works.

What is Aquaponics?

Aquaponics Fundamentals

Aquaponics is a sustainable and innovative way to cultivate fish and plants together. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, and the plants filter the water for the fish. This means no more traditional soil-based farming!

Basic of Aquaponics

Aquaponics consists of a few key elements: Fish Tank, Grow Bed, and Bacteria. Here's a breakdown:

3 Basics of Aquaponics: Fish Tank, Bacteria, and Grow Bed Explained

Unique Aquaponics Details

Aquaponics is great for the environment. It requires minimal water and can be done indoors or outdoors. It also creates a highly effective and productive system due to the symbiotic relationship between fish and plants.

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Learn how aquaponics can revolutionize food production while saving natural resources. Get involved in this revolutionary technique today and help reduce our global reliance on overfishing and conventional fish farms. Don't miss out on this chance to make a positive impact on the planet's future.

Overfishing - Global Crisis caused by Trawlers?

Overfishing is a global crisis caused by trawlers and it's causing serious damage. As most fishing companies only care about how much fish they can pull out, the consequences of their actions are overlooked. These vessels are depleting marine resources, disrupting ecosystems, compromising biodiversity, destroying ocean ground and undermining food security for fishing communities. Plus, they're pushing commercially valuable species to the brink of extinction. Trawling techniques also create massive amounts of bycatch, including juvenile fish and species crucial to the balance of the environment. This unsustainable approach jeopardizes fishermen's livelihoods.

An estimated 1 trillion fish are caught from the wild yearly and about 100 billion gets dumped back. 

Aquaponics offers a solution. It's a combination of aquaculture (cultivating fish) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil). This closed-loop system uses less water and increases food production efficiency.

In Singapore, the Sky Greens Farms has put this system into practice. By farming fish and growing plants in the same space, they are reducing reliance on conventional agriculture and minimizing pressure on marine resources. Aquaponics is a great way to find fish friends without threatening the ocean.

African Catfish is a very productive (up to 200 kg per year per 1000 Liter) and delicious-tasting aquaponics fish

Aquaculture Alternative to Ocean Caught Fish?

Aquaculture - Is it a Viable Solution to Overfishing and Fish Farms?

Aquaculture provides an eco-friendly option for getting fish, by using controlled environments to cultivate species. It reduces the environmental damage caused by overfishing and lowers the reliance on fish farms.

Production of Aquaculture and Wildcaught Table:

Production of Salmon and Pangasius per year

The table shows that aquaculture production of pangasius and salmon is almost ten times higher than ocean caught production. This means we can meet the demand for fish without harming the environment.

Aquaculture also prevents some of the potential water pollution and run-offs if good waste handling systems are in place. It also helps in monitoring fish health and controlling diseases.

Pro Tip: Aquaponics is a combination of fish farming and hydroponics, where the waste from fish provides nutrients for plants, and plants filter the water for fishes. Try this innovative approach for effective results.

Harm of Farmed Salmon Compared to Home Made Fish

Fish farmed salmon versus home made fish - what's the difference? Fish farming is often seen as a more sustainable option than wild-caught fish. However, it has several harmful impacts. Let's explore them.

The fish feed for farmed salmon consists of processed pellets with antibiotics, preservatives,  other chemicals and wild caught fish. While home made fish feed mostly on natural sources.

Farmed salmon cages can pollute the ocean floor, damaging the surrounding ecosystem. In contrast, home made fish have no impact on the ocean.

Farmed Norwegian Salmon World’s Most Toxic Food

Overcrowded fish farms create ideal conditions for disease. This leads to the use of more antibiotics. Homemade fish have a lower risk of disease spread due to their controlled environment and the sanitizing effect of the plants, worms and the grow bed.

Escaped farmed salmon can negatively affect native fish populations and become an invasive species. They also spread deadly diseases to wild populations. Home made fish pose no risk of disrupting natural ecosystems.

We must consider the harmful effects of fish farming on both the environment and our health. We can make informed choices about our seafood consumption by understanding these impacts.

Make a conscious decision when choosing farmed versus home made fish. Opt for sustainable alternatives that prioritize environmental conservation and personal well-being. Seafood choices you make can have a positive impact. Aquaponics proves that even fish prefer working from home!

Home Aquaponics System with Goldfish

Difference between Home Aquaponics and Fish Farms

Aquaponics is unlike fish farms, allowing decentralization and optimizing waste recycling. There's a comparison table showing the differences between home aquaponics and fish farms: transparency, chemical-free practices, leftover feeding system, and resource burden.

Comparison between Home Aquaponics and Fish Farms

Plus, home aquaponics systems don't need wild fish for breeding. Individuals can grow food in a controlled environment and still keep the natural balance of an ecosystem.

For better water quality and to reduce disease outbreaks aquaponics uses biofilter systems. Hydroponics completes the cycle of sustainable farming, proving that soil isn't needed to grow your own food.

Hydroponics Completing the Cycle

Aquaponics revolutionizes agriculture by combining hydroponics and aquaculture - creating a self-sustaining ecosystem. This integration brings improved water efficiency, with studies showing up to 90% less water consumption. Plus, it eliminates synthetic fertilizers - reducing pollution and costs for farmers.

Pro Tip: Aquaponics not only mitigates overfishing, but also enables sustainable food production with fewer impacts on the environment. Common failure? If your fish start doing the backstroke, it's time to check your water quality!

Common Failures and How to Prevent Them

Aquaponics: Achieving Success and Avoiding Common Pitfalls

To guarantee success with an aquaponics setup, you must be aware of and beat common challenges. Six major points to consider are:

Overfeeding: Always start off with feeding very little and adapt the amounts over time. Uneaten feed can rot very fast and pollute the water.

Stopping Pests: Regularly checking the health of plants and keeping it clean will help ward off pests.

Dealing with Diseases: Keeping good water quality, monitoring fish health, and being hygienic minimizes the risk of diseases.

Prevent Overcrowding: Maintaining a balanced fish-to-plant ratio ensures optimal growth and prevents overcrowding, which affects water quality and stresses organisms.

Establishing Stability: Slowly introducing fish and plants into the system enables them to settle in properly, grow steadily and give the bacteria enough time to adapt.

Monitoring Water Parameters: Regularly testing and adjusting temperature, pH levels, dissolved oxygen, and nutrient levels is a great way to ensure a stable environment for both fish and plants but not necessary.

Checking Nutrient Levels: Replenishing essential nutrients maintains the right balance and leads to healthy plant growth with micronutrient mix like rock dust.

Apart from these common pitfalls and their solutions, it's also important to remember that aquaponics systems require careful attention to detail. This means doing regular maintenance tasks like cleaning inlet filters, inspecting pumps, looking over plumbing connections, and maintaining system hygiene.

An example highlighting the significance of managing these aspects involves a small-scale aquaponics lover who initially failed to do regular water parameter testing. This led to uneven nutrient levels and stunted plant growth. By closely monitoring nutrient levels afterward, and tending to the system quickly, they were able to revive their plants and maintain a thriving aquaponics setup.

Plants Not Allowed

Plants you should exclude from aquaponics are either too large like many fruit trees and bushes, don't work with hydroponics like many root crops as they need deep grow beds, or disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. Such plants are called overdominant and unfit.

overdominant and unfit plants for aquaponics

Even though those plants usually don’t grow well in an aquaponics system, there are ways to make it work for almost any plants by playing with factors like grow medium, water timing, and nutrition composition for the plants.

Disadvantages of Aquaponics

Aquaponics may require a substantial upfront investment and limit the variety of fish that can be grown. Electricity is also needed for components such as heaters and lighting. Plus, certain crops are seasonal which reduces diversity and availability in certain regions.

In spite of its advantages, aquaponics can be difficult to set up and requires some basic knowledge to maintain. Prospective farmers must assess their resources, skills, and goals to see if it's suitable.

Don't miss out on this! Aquaponics can revolutionize farming while being eco-friendly and self-sustaining. Embrace the future of agriculture at your home now!

Ready to explore the cost of aquaponics? Get your calculator and fish jokes ready - make sustainability profitable!

Cost Analysis of Setting Up Aquaponics

We all love numbers so here you go. Conducting the cost analysis for an aquaponics system is key to understanding the investment necessary for long-term profits. Analyzing the expenses and their ROI allows one to gauge the financial feasibility of this sustainable farming method.

A table below shows the cost analysis of setting up aquaponics:

cost analysis of setting up aquaponics

This detailed breakdown lists the components and associated costs for aquaponics setup. It includes fish tanks, grow beds, plumbing, pumps, lighting, seeds, and fish. The initial investment for these items = $1,610.

Also, operational costs such as feed, electricity, water, maintenance, and labor must be taken into account. These regular expenses help maximize profits and ensure the system works well.

Pro Tip: When calculating aquaponics setup costs, assess the quality of the equipment carefully. High-quality components may cost more initially, but can lead to higher ROI in the long run because of less failure. If you are on a tight budget I would heavily advise you to buy second hand and give old items a new life. Especially fish tanks and fish can be bought for a fraction of the new price, sometimes even for free from places like facebook marketplaces or craigslist. 

Automated aquaponics system with multiple connected container one month later

Profitability Explained

By analyzing the financials, one can understand the profitability of aquaponics. This sustainable farming system combines aquaculture and hydroponics. Therefore, it uses resources efficiently, reducing costs and maximizing yields for you and the planet.

Investment Costs: $1,610 for initial setup.

Operating Costs: $500 per month for labor and maintenance equals $6000 per year. I have calculated very generously because fish feeders and automated filter beds do almost all the work and the main expense: fish feed can partially be replaced with feeding leftovers, upcycling organic waste with black soldier fly larvae and growing algae for omega 3.

Revenue Generation: $9,000 per year through chemical free produce.

The price you would pay for truly organic fish and plants can’t be measured but lets calculate with regular food prices.

So let's say you have an IBC Tank with 275 Gallon, want to maximize your profit and do everything right.

A german breeder gave me numbers ​​of 200 kg(440 pounds) of catfish per 1000 liters(264 gallon) per year.

440 pounds of catfish = $4400 at a price of $10 per pound

Calculating the plants is a little tricky. Depending on what you grow the amounts of harvest but also the price can vary massively.

For maximum profit growing cannabis can return your investment after the first harvest (but cannabis doesn’t work with catfish).

Herbs grow very well with catfish because the carnivore diet is rich in nitrogen which is great for leaf growth.

Per year you should be able to at least grow 50 pounds of different herbs. For simplicity let's calculate with mint.

0.5 oz of Mint cost $2.99. 

0.5 oz = 0.03125 lbs 

50 lbs / 0.03125 lbs = 1600 * $2.99 = $4784

Real World Math

Unfortunately the real world doesn’t work like that. Fish keeping and caring for plants is a journey that you and your fish go together hand in hand. As the fish grow and eat more, the bacteria that transform harmful ammonia into safe nitrate, grow with them as well as the plants. Once this complex ecosystem is established and you’ve gained more experience over time you can expect those numbers that I’ve calculated with. Nevertheless you can expect a return on investment in 1 to 2 years.

The closed-loop system reduces environmental impacts, conserves water and eliminates the need for fertilizers or pesticides. It supports local biodiversity and addresses the issue of overfishing.

The FAO conducted a study, which reveals 90% of marine fish stocks are either fully exploited or overexploited. This necessitates alternative solutions, such as aquaponics. Aquaponics is where fish and vegetables learn to coexist, forming a delicious ecosystem and we are part of it.

Benefits of Aquaponics

Aquaponics is an innovative circular system that offers many advantages. It eliminates water waste by using the nutrient-rich water from fish tanks to fertilize plants. This makes it more efficient and sustainable. It can be adapted to individual needs, reducing the need for chemicals, single use plastic and transportation costs. Plus, it allows for local production and year-round cultivation.

There's a success story of a small-scale farmer who established an aquaponic system in their backyard. This enabled them to grow their own food sustainably while generating a surplus to sell locally. Not only did they enjoy fresh produce, mental and physical wellbeing, but they also experienced economic and environmental benefits. Insects and birds started visiting their backyard more frequently. From bees to hummingbirds the sheer amount of variety made exploring nature fun again.

Safe or Not for My Children and Me?

Aquaponics: Secure & Healthy for You & Kids!

Be assured: aquaponics is a safe way to get fish and veg for you and your little ones. Its closed-loop system gives plants nutrients from fish poo, reducing contamination risks.

This mix of aquaculture & hydroponics ensures no harmful chemicals are used like antibiotics or pesticides, making it a healthy choice. The controlled environment also minimizes water contamination, keeping you & your family safe. Another factor is the health benefits of cleaning and humidifying the air by plants. This can be very important in air polluted cities. Smog, exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide are filtered and exchanged for life essential oxygen. Further they can replace electricity intensive air conditioning in places like India or Thailand year round just by turning the sunlight into food and releasing water vapor into the air. 

Plus, aquaponics promotes sustainable farming, eliminating overfishing worries. By cultivating fish in a controlled system, it reduces the need to capture fish from the wild with lots of unwanted bycatch like whales, dolphins or sea turtles, helping them survive in their natural habitats.

To make sure your aquaponic system is safe for your fam, there are a few tips. Regularly check water quality, like strange smell or fast breathing fish, to keep conditions optimal for plants & fish. Plus, maintain equipment & clean often to reduce any risks. 

By following these pointers, you can enjoy aquaponics' eco-friendly & safe food production, while nourishing your family with fresh & healthy fish & veg!

Health and Aquaponics at Home

Health and aquaponics go hand in hand. When you have an aquaponics system in your home, you can grow fresh produce without chemicals or pesticides.

Here are some of the health benefits associated with home aquaponic systems:

Fresh, Nutrient-Rich Produce: Aquaponics allows you to grow fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs year-round, providing a consistent source of nutrient-rich produce that is free from harmful pesticides and fertilizers.

Antibiotic-Free Fish: Raising fish in a controlled environment reduces the risk of disease, eliminating the need for antibiotics and other chemicals. This results in healthier, antibiotic-free fish for consumption.

Air Purification: Plants grown in aquaponic systems release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, contributing to cleaner and fresher indoor air. They also have the ability to filter and purify the air by removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other pollutants.

Increased Humidity: The evaporation of water from the aquaponic system can increase indoor humidity levels, which can be beneficial for respiratory health, skin hydration, and overall comfort, especially in dry climates or during winter months.

Reduced Risk of Contaminated Produce: Growing your own produce reduces the risk of exposure to contaminated fruits and vegetables, which can sometimes occur in commercially grown products due to pesticide residues or bacterial contamination.

Educational Value: Aquaponic systems offer educational opportunities for learning about ecosystems, plant growth, fish biology, and sustainable agriculture, fostering a greater understanding of food production and environmental stewardship.

Promotes Healthy Eating: Having access to fresh produce and fish at home encourages healthier eating habits, promoting a balanced and nutritious diet.

Sustainable and Eco-Friendly: Aquaponic systems use less water and land compared to traditional farming methods, contributing to sustainable food production and reducing the environmental footprint.

Mental Wellbeing: Engaging with aquaponic systems can have therapeutic effects, reducing stress, promoting relaxation, and improving mental wellbeing. The presence of water and greenery can create a calming environment.

Sustainability of aquaponics: Feeding fish with plants, then the plants may end up as sushi! Crazy, right?

Sustainability of Aquaponics

Aquaponics: A Sustainable Combination of Aquaculture and Hydroponics.

This method recycles water from fish tanks, utilizes grey water to nourish plants, minimizes food waste by refeeding leftovers, enables individuals to produce food at home sustainably, reduces the need for agricultural land and deforestation, and provides a cost-effective protein source.

Knowing that you actively fight climate change can give you great purpose:

Waste Repurposing: Aquaponic systems are excellent at turning waste into resources. Leftover food and organic kitchen waste can be introduced into the system as feed for fish and worms, contributing to a reduction in household waste and promoting a circular economy.

No Microplastic Contamination: By growing your own produce and fish, you avoid the risk of microplastic contamination that can occur with commercially grown products due to the prevalence of single-use plastics in packaging and agricultural processes.

Supporting Biodiversity at Home: Aquaponic systems create a balanced ecosystem within your home, supporting a variety of life including fish, plants, bacteria, and insects. This diversity contributes to the resilience and productivity of the system.

Contributing to Wild Biodiversity: By relying less on commercially farmed produce and overfished stocks, you help reduce the pressure on natural ecosystems and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity in the wild.

Reduced Use of Single-Use Plastics: Growing food at home reduces dependence on store-bought products that often come packaged in single-use plastics. This contributes to a reduction in plastic waste and helps prevent environmental contamination.

Reduced Food Miles: Growing food at home reduces the need for transportation, lowering carbon emissions and ensuring fresher and more flavorful produce.

No Synthetic Fertilizer and other Chemicals: Growing at home gives you a unique opportunity to have full transparency over your produce. This way you can ensure no harmful chemicals are used and no GMO is present. 

Originating from ancient cultures, such as the Aztecs and Chinese, modern aquaponics combines technology with nature. Due to its eco-friendly approach and ability to address overfishing and land scarcity it is one of the most promising steps to become sustainable as  individuals.

Do you want to start your own aquaponics system at home? Click on this step-by-step guide. 

Short Summary 

 Aquaponics is a sustainable method of raising both fish and vegetables. It's a form of agriculture that combines raising fish in tanks (aquaculture) with soilless plant culture (hydroponics). In aquaponics, the nutrient-rich water from the fish tanks provides a natural fertilizer for the plants, which in turn help to purify the water in which the fish live.

The core of an aquaponics system is the aquaponics fish tank. Common fish used in aquaponics include tilapia, trout, catfish, and salmon, with tilapia being one of the most popular due to its resilience. Some adventurous practitioners even raise crawfish and shrimp! The choice of fish can depend on the local climate, regulations, and the system's goals, whether for consumption or ornamental purposes.

Water from the fish tank is pumped into plant growing areas, where plants uptake the nutrients. The types of plants that thrive in these systems range widely. Lettuce, herbs, and other leafy greens are especially common, but with the right setup, you can grow a variety of vegetables and even fruits. Some enthusiasts also experiment with vertical aquaponics or deep water culture variations to maximize their yield in small spaces.

Aquaponics setups can range from small DIY aquaponics systems, like mason jar aquaponics or mini aquaponics, to large commercial operations. One popular DIY method involves using IBC totes. Larger setups might be housed in specialized aquaponics greenhouses.

Comparing aquaponics vs hydroponics, the primary difference is the presence of fish. Hydroponics relies on added nutrients without the presence of fish. Another variant, aeroponics, mists the roots of the plants with nutrient-rich water. Each method has its pros and cons, but all aim to optimize growth conditions for plants.

There are various components to consider in an aquaponics system, from the type of grow media used to the water pumps, filters, and bell siphons that help regulate water flow. Designing an efficient system is crucial, whether you're aiming for a backyard aquaponics setup or a commercial-scale operation.

For beginners looking to delve into aquaponics, several starter kits and courses, like the aquaponics design course, provide step-by-step instructions. There are also numerous resources, such as books and forums, where enthusiasts share their designs, like the media bed aquaponics or the NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) aquaponics.

In summary, aquaponics is a promising, sustainable farming method that combines aquaculture and hydroponics. It offers benefits like reduced water usage and eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers, making it an eco-friendly option for modern agriculture.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is aquaponics? Aquaponics is a sustainable agriculture system that combines traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment.

How to set up an aquaponics system / How to build an aquaponics system? Setting up an aquaponics system involves preparing a fish tank, connecting it to plant grow beds, ensuring proper water circulation, and establishing a beneficial bacterial colony to convert fish waste into plant nutrients.

How to build an aquaponics greenhouse? An aquaponics greenhouse is a controlled environment that houses the aquaponics system. It involves constructing a transparent structure, ensuring temperature control, and setting up the aquaponics system inside to benefit from the controlled conditions.

How aquaponics works / How does aquaponics work / How does an aquaponics system work? Fish produce waste, which contains ammonia. Beneficial bacteria convert this ammonia into nitrates, which plants use as nutrients. As plants absorb these nutrients, they also clean the water, which is then recirculated back to the fish tank.

Where to buy fish for aquaponics? / Where to buy fish for aquaponics system? / Where to buy fish for aquaponics near me? Fish for aquaponics can be purchased from local fish hatcheries, specialized aquaponics suppliers, or reputable online vendors.

What role do bacteria play in an aquaponics system? Beneficial bacteria are crucial in converting ammonia from fish waste into nitrates, which plants can absorb as nutrients.

What is the difference between hydroponics and aquaponics? Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in a nutrient-rich water solution without soil, while aquaponics combines aquaculture and hydroponics, using fish waste as a natural nutrient source for plants.

What can you grow with aquaponics? A variety of plants can be grown, from leafy greens like lettuce and herbs to larger plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, and even fruit trees, depending on the system's size.

What is the best fish for aquaponics / What fish are best for aquaponics / What are the best fish for aquaponics? Tilapia, catfish, and trout are commonly used because of their hardiness and growth rate. The choice often depends on local regulations and climate.

Why is aquaponics important? Aquaponics is a sustainable and efficient method of food production, using less water than traditional agriculture and eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers.

How to lower pH in aquaponics system / How to lower pH in aquaponics? pH can be lowered using natural methods like adding peat moss or certain organic acids. Monitoring and adjusting pH gradually is crucial.

How to make a bell siphon for aquaponics? A bell siphon is a self-regulating siphon mechanism for flood and drain systems. It involves an outer bell, an inner standpipe, and a media guard to ensure consistent water drainage.

How much does an aquaponics system cost? The cost varies depending on the system's size, materials used, and whether it's DIY or commercially purchased. Small DIY setups can start as low as $50, while larger commercial systems can run into thousands of dollars.

What to feed tilapia in aquaponics? Tilapia can be fed pellet fish food designed for them, supplemented with leafy greens or algae. Worms and black soldier fly larvae offer healthy protein and fats and can be bred at home.

Aquaponics how to build / How to start aquaponics / Aquaponics how to / How to do aquaponics / How to construct an aquaponics system pdf / How to set up aquaponics? Begin with understanding the space and resources available. Decide on the location, grow bed type, and what fish and plants you want to grow. Set up the fish tank, connect it to the grow beds, ensure proper water circulation, introduce fish, and then introduce plants.

How to make an aquaponics system / How to make a aquaponics system? Building an aquaponics system involves setting up a fish tank, creating grow beds (either floating or media-based), ensuring a water pump and filtration system, and establishing a healthy microbial community to aid in nutrient conversion.