😇- What's their best trait?
👿- What's their worst trait?
for Tuesday and Chuu
“Miss Chuu’s best trait? Mmm… You said this is an interview for your retelling of the Warriors of Light and their journey, right? I’d say it’s her unshakeable resolve. She decides she’s going to do something, and she doesn’t give up until it’s done. Ah… I’m not allowed to speak more on Miss Chuu without her presence, my apologies, mister Levraut.”
“You broke into my house,”
“Your lovely wife let me in actually,”
“To wake me up from my nap and interrogate me on my assistant,”
“Interview, Mademoiselle, not interrogate. Though I am sorry for waking you, your eyes were open so I assumed-”
“Ah-ta-ta. You wanted to know Two’s best trait right? Adaptability. Any environment, any obstacle… he’s got brains enough to figure the way through most anything. And failing that? He knows a top notch engineer in Magitek to kit him with the right tools to overcome his few shortcomings. Hey wait did you fucking call me a mad gazelle, you lop-eared scab?!”
“Thank you for your time, both of you. I have just one more question before I consider this interview complete and I let you both go back to your.. erm, busy schedules. What would you say is each others weakest trait?”
“I knew it! This IS an interrogation! Two, don’t-”
“Ah, that would be Miss Chuu’s paranoia, mister Levraut. Most of her other traits net positive gain,”
“Watch your mouth, Two.”
“That is.. ah, her paranoid trait has served to pull her out of many situations she would have landed in had they not afforded her foresight and caution to approach most situations.”
“Two’s worst trait is how I just can’t seem to keep mad at him when he finds and exploits loopholes in whatever rules I’ve set for him. And last week I asked him to bring me lunch, and he was nowhere to be seen for nearly six bells.”
“… Miss Chuu, if I may, you were in Azys La, and you called me via Linkpearl to bring you specifically egg sandwiches from the Bismark, even utilizing the Aethernet it takes time… and when I arrived at your last marked location you were nowhere to be found.”
[Duo Oc Ask Meme !]
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"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.
In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.
Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.
“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”
Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.
The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.
These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.
Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.
“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”
At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.
“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.
The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”
And the urban planting continues to this day.
The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...
“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”
Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”
The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...
In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]
There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.
Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.
“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."
-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024
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probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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a non-comprehensive list of reasons why bruce has tried banning halloween in the manor
1. dick was overly trusting of clowns as a child. he still holds the family record for most kidnappings in a single night
2. jason tried wearing his robin uniform as a costume. every. year.
3. jason then graduated to dressing up as his corpse and haunting (traumatizing) his brothers
4. cass always manages to scare him. no clark he does not shriek.
5. tim, duke, and steph got ‘spooky scary skeletons’ stuck in his head and martian manhunter started laughing at him in a JL meeting because of it
6. damian was followed and subsequently kidnapped by what they assumed was a group of very tall trick or treaters, but were actually just the league
7. that time of year is when jerry the turkey gets a little self aware (re: defensive). there have been incidents.
8. he walked downstairs only to be greeted with every member of his family dressed like green lantern. even alfred.
9. young justice decided to throw a giant party and to get in you had to wear the shittiest batman costume possible for their contest
10. jason won said contest. he didn’t even stay for the party, he just wanted the excuse
11. gotham rogues are drama kids and are therefore sluts for good thematic irony, so half of them do special edition attacks on halloween
12. the kids all do a candy swap at the end of the night, they invite kate and not him
13. tim has an allergy to peppermint and never seems to be aware of this, so he has to keep multiple epi pens on standby
14. he’s expected to wear slutty costumes and that’s just not worth his playboy cover
15. alfred only confiscates the candy he gets
16. he was just really hungover one year
17. damian has made them all watch coraline so. many. times. he doesn’t even get nightmares anymore
18. tim goes on a sugar high and has to be put on tech lockdown or he might frame lex luthor for murder and extort 90% of gotham’s elite
19. when dick and jason were younger they left open pumpkins outside his door and he would accidentally step in them every morning
20. damian tried to convince them to bob for apples with lazarus water
21. tim fell asleep while bobbing for apples (in normal water) and almost drowned
22. dick and steph drew a glittery skeleton over the batsuit
23. when he complains they all call him the grinch. it’s not even christmas.
24. pumpkin carving always leads to them flinging the innards at eachother and making a mess even alfred refuses to clean
25. the validity of candy corn argument comes to blows. every. single. year.
26. duke lead a revolt one year against the tyranny of bruce’s “no slanderous costumes” policy (he wanted to be slutty batman)
27. the kids throw a rager in the cave and somehow never get caught. it’s the only time they’re all willing to clean and it pisses bruce off that he can’t prove it.
28. bruce got sick and clark walked around the watchtower in a batman costume pretending to be him for two days
29. steph and dick glued the lorax mustache to him while he was sleeping because he refused to pick a costume. it didn’t come off for a week, and lois posted an article speculating he was secretly a natural ginger.
30. all the kids stayed in once and watched ‘it’s the great pumpkin charlie brown’ instead of partying and he’s been trying to get them to do it again ever since
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