#it’s not resilience

[sayruq]

[flango87]

FUCK YEAH COLUMBIA UNI STUDENTS!!!!!!

[reasonsforhope]

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

[itsnotresilience]

If you don’t get it, you will and I hope we are friends when you do

I stupidly add another song to my running playlist as if I’ll be listening to it while running anytime soon because I don’t want to start another playlist. I can’t seem to go about stringing together this blog post and yes, I think it’s actually ok for me to call that out in the post itself. I’ve noticed I’ve also been struggling with grammar and editing. My blog, this blog, is meant to be messy and raw, almost like you’re reading straight from my journal which I never edited any journal I ever wrote or will write.

Yesterday a bunch of things helped me work through old “scars” left over from my cancer battle but I also learned new things about myself and life. I also broke down crying because I feel like nothing has changed and I’ve learned nothing and my life has amounted to nothing. I am trapped in my house, typically on one floor of my house, laying down almost all the time. When people ask me to be positive, keep good spirits, or other advice, I know it is well meant- but I’m realistic. I don’t believe “positive” is a personality trait and I don’t think wearing rose-colored glasses cures cancer. It takes a lot of energy to just be because I’m struggling to breathe all the time. So, no, I’m just gonna be Meghan and I’ll have whatever outlook or feeling I have right now. That doesn’t mean I’m licensed to be an asshole. It just means I do not have to spend energy making other people feel comfortable.

In a season that I’m hearing my friends doing fun things, it’s hard not to feel envious and my insecurity tells me even if I was well, I’d still be chasing people. My next entries may or may not deal with abandonment, medical trauma and insecurity but I’ve been struggling to write these posts. I’ve been going to therapy while not working and for those who think I should spend all my time being sick if I’m sick and not doing therapy- I’m still sick in therapy, I’m just also working on my brain that needs a lot of healing too. And honestly people this fucking shit is hard. My life completely dead stopped and I still don’t know completely know why or for how long.

We will all get sick in our lives, so sick that our lives will alter permanently or temporarily. Some of us will do it only once, some of us multiple times. I’m this person because my life was altered already permanently by illness. I will be that person, hopefully, at the end of this, with more to share with those willing to read it.

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

[magnetothemagnificent]

People hate Jewish resilience. They hate us in general, but they *especially* hate our resilience.

[lilybug-02]

New Goal Acquired!

Bug Fact: The scarlet lily beetle (or better yet the lily bug ;P) is a leaf beetle that eats the leaves, stem, buds, and flowers of lilies.

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[ups3tti]

Sometimes I think about how Kai made his way out of an inferno by accepting that being the green ninja wasn't meant for him but that didn't make him any lesser while Morro died in an inferno because he couldn't let go of the idea of being the green ninja and viewed it as his only source of worth. And then I lose it a little

[headspace-hotel]

"Disaster Taxon," poem assembled using text from Wikipedia articles

[friesucker]

This chapter broke me. The fact that the wife turned out to be a good person, the fact that after loosing everything in the war, Martha has managed to continue with her life has resound in me. It wasn't easy of course, maybe it was the hardest thing she had to overcome in her life (and this woman has been in two wars), but we are discovering this through her flashbacks, she is telling this as a storytime to Becky at teatime. So what does that mean? She already got over it, she survived. And you may think 'well of course, its been years' but i wouldn't judge her, i would even consider other reactions normal, like staying stuck in the past, because loosing the things and people you loved most to an absurd war simply is not fair.

Martha, you're so strong, i love you so much. I chose the picture of her breaking down after her performance because I understand how her dancing, having the chance to have a little of what she really deserved to live, could have reminded her of what it felt like to be alive.

[ladychlo]

"Oh, a homeland in which I lived, and on which I relied... and my soul breathed its love... You are my homeland..

Blessed your day on your birthday."

Wael El Dahdouh, the journalist from gaza, wishes his wife a happy birthday, she was killed along with his children and family members by an Israeli airstrike.

[sayruq]

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

“We did what we could, remember us.”

- Doctors of Gaza

[mirkobloom77]

🇵🇸💚 In North Gaza, a citizen begins to clear up the streets: “We will rebuild our neighbourhood and make it even better than it was before, God willing”

🔸 Source: Eye.On.Palestine (post), hasan_almoghani0 (footage) & translating_falasteen (translation)

[itsnotresilience]

Diagnosis,schmiagnosis

I hear the crackling on inhale, I describe it like having pop rocks stuck at the bottom your throat, popping away every time you breathe. Inhaling hurts though, as does exhaling. My entire chest cavity feels like I went through a boxing match or the equivalent 2 months of mostly hard coughing.

Whatever it was first, no one seems to talk about it now. Some don’t care, some don’t have the time, some seem unwilling to make a diagnosis once they know a specific specialist has been assigned to my case. These mostly bed-ridden weeks have been spent either having doctors wildly disregard me or tweak my meds just a bit. Barely any, save one, asked what I’m normally like, as a healthy person.

It’s is terrifying to again be faced with not knowing what’s ahead of me but this time it’s more serious. I’m physically changed. I’m struggling to breathe. My chest hurts a lot. Our lives have been changed at the worst time of the year, impacting the person who loves to celebrate the season and would normally be doing all the holiday things.

I am really sad, I am really scared. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know when it will be better. I do know it’s ok for me to feel scared, sad, lonely, angry. I also know I need my people in all the different spaces they are able. Or not. Being not able to be here when someone is sick and scared is ok, but I’d rather you would tell me that. I’ve already heard it.

A diagnosis doesn’t matter. I’m still sick, in that life is gonna be different for awhile and maybe in a forever sort of way.

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]