#tracking record of reduction

[skrllec]

[techdriveplay]

Sony Releases FE 24-50mm F2.8 G, a Compact, Large Aperture F2.8  G Lens™ with High Performance Optics  

Sony is pleased to announce the release of its new compact 35mm full-frame compatible ��™ (Alpha™) E-mount lens, FE 24-50mm F2.8  G (product name SEL2450G) standard zoom with F2.8 maximum aperture over the entire zoom range. Despite its small and lightweight body, it achieves the high-resolution performance and beautiful bokeh that can be expected from a large aperture G Lens with F2.8.  It covers…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Justin Horowitz at MMFA:

Project 2025 advisory board members have attacked or outright called for the end of no-fault divorce, the option to dissolve a marriage without having to prove wrongdoing by a partner. Research highlighted by CNN found “no-fault divorce correlates with a reduction in female suicides and a reduction in intimate partner violence,” including “an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws.” Project 2025 is backed by a nearly-900 page policy book called Mandate for Leadership, which extensively outlines potential approaches to governance for the next Republican administration, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, and contraception. The Heritage Foundation’s proposals have a track record of success — the first Trump administration implemented 64% of Mandate’s policy recommendations. Project 2025 is also supported by a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations, many of which have spent years promoting critiques of no-fault divorce as “destructive” for society — or even blaming it for enabling a “culture of death.” According to a Media Matters review, at least 22 Project 2025 advisory board members have made similar comments targeting, restricting, or eliminating no-fault divorce. Additionally, MAGA and far-right media figures have pushed for the removal of no-fault divorce laws across the country, and several local Republican parties in Texas, Nebraska, and Louisiana have called for the dissolution of no-fault divorce in some capacity.

Project 2025 partner organizations, including the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, and The Heritage Foundation, have called for significant restrictions or an outright ban on no-fault divorce.

[tanoraqui]

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Find your polling place | Register day-of | Ready your ID | Hassle your boss for legally required time off (varies by state) | Uber and Lyft are both offering discounted rides to your polling place (and some random restaurants are offering random deals, too, I guess?)

WHY VOTE?

The Bean will be disappointed in you if you don’t

Voting for the lesser of two evils DOES reduce the amount of evil. Voting for the lesser of two evils SAVES LIVES.

^ Bernie Sanders gave a really good breakdown of this, actually.

Voting is not a choice of your personal idol, it’s a choice of who you have the best chance of persuading around to your side. It’s public transit—you don’t get exactly where you want to go, but you get close enough to walk, or at least to somewhere you can catch the next bus.

Harris has a genuinely good track record of helping the people she serves, and genuinely good goals for doing it some more as President

Trump’s most repeatedly and explicitly stated goal is to order the armed forces to persecute protestors, immigrants, journalists and his political enemies. He’s even less grounded than last time, very likely suffering dementia, and anyone from his previous administration who once restrained him even slightly is warning people that he’s a fascist who explicitly admires Hitler. Their replacements will be vaccine deniers, climate change deniers and the authors of Project 2025.

Hope alone is an act of defiance. Defiance alone is an act of hope. You WILL feel better if you vote, no matter who wins, because you’ll know you did what you could.

Also for the love of god please vote for House and Senate races, too. The Biden-Harris administration only passed the Infrastructure Reduction Act, “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history” because they held both House and Senate AND VP Harris to break a Senate tie. Not a single Republican voted for it; all Democrats did.

And more local races, of course! They ALL have real effects!

Once you’ve voted, the Bean will be able to rest easy once more—AND so will Candi!

GO VOTE!

[femmehaljordan]

AU where jason never reveals his identity when he returns to Gotham. He also doesn't confront Bruce. He sneaks into Arkham, poisons the Joker (using all that poisons league knowledge) and covers his tracks impeccably. It looks like the clown died of a fucking heart attack.

He goes back to the Alley, builds his empire, keeps the more violent rogues in check and works with the reasonable ones. Gotham has never seen harm reduction and a drop in crime like when Red Hood takes its seedy underbelly by the throat and says "down boy".

The streets love him, he's their hero. In the decades that Batman has prowled the streets, Gotham has never seen such an uptick in volunteer programs and community outreach.

Bruce hates it. He seethes. The fact that Hood's identity and empire is airtight makes it worse. There's no route for infiltration and Hood's men refuse to betray him. Not even from fear, they seem so offended at the idea of double crossing Hood. Any civilian witnesses he asks for info ice him out, no matter how much he threatens them.

Dick is suspicious, and that only doubles when Damian seems to respect and admire Red Hood.

I want Jason to work the dirty drugs coming into Gotham back to Metropolis and talk to Superman about how he's gonna operate in Metropolis on a need to basis, just to make sure the drugs coming to Gotham are clean. Gives Kal the whole harm reduction, effective mitigation plan he has for Gotham.

I think Kal would be impressed. Gives the run down on this really intelligent, competent vigilante? from Gotham that has a really clear plan of what direction he wants for the people, and actually has their best interest at heart. He tells the JL, planning on recruiting him.

Bruce is very much against it, but cannot give a better reason than Red Hood kills people, which they all call bullshit on because some of them kill sometimes. And Red Hood's track record shows 0 civilians and 0 collateral damage.

I want Jason getting close to and being respected by members of the JL, and Bruce just being pissed as hell that he can't control the narrative about Red Hood absolutely toying with him and making more impactful change to Gotham than he ever had.

-🪼

YEAHHHHH

I don’t think Jason would join the JL fully. But the idea of him working with them on a fairly regular basis while Bruce just seethes in the background is so funny. 

[suzukiblu]

hi, question for you, have you ever experienced prolonged writer’s block before? do you happen to have any advice for getting a writing flow going again, that you’d be willing to share?

bc i don’t want to get too heavy in your asks, but between chronic illness/fatigue and longterm autistic burnout i haven’t been able to write a single word in several years now, and GOD am i tired of it. it’s like all the stories and words are stuck inside me and i can see it all in my head but the faucet is jammed and i just can’t get it OUT! i have been slowly feeling like the creative embers are maybe starting to spark again but it’s so hard not to get impatient with myself because it never seems to actually transfer to paper (or word document or notes app). any ideas or tips?

no pressure to answer this if you don’t want to of course, regardless i really enjoy your writing and i’m so glad that i can at least engage with fandom through other authors even when i can’t write my own stories! 💛

Oh god, yeah, I DEFINITELY have experienced that, hahasob. I have gone through at LEAST a year or two without, like, putting down a single word or even drawing anything, just total creative block/not there-ness. Like I feel u on that one, bud.

Good news: now if I write less than 2k in a day I think "oh that's kinda low, huh", so like . . . definitely "didn't write jack shit for [ INSERT TIME PERIOD HERE ]" has yet to sink me, and therefore fuck if it's gonna sink ANY of us. We persevere!!

So like, in my experience actually helpful writing advice is just SO wildly "you just gotta try shit 'til something works"-based that I'mma just give you a list made up of a bunch of, like, assorted tips and tricks that I use on myself to make my brain put words down when it's being stubborn about it, though different ones work at different times and obvi YMMV here anyway because for obvious reasons these are all approaches that I have tailored to my own needs, hah, and some of them are a bit facetious and some are also a bit heavy, but absolutely and unironically I reguarly use them all and they have all repeatedly worked for me.

Also, they're all gonna be goin' behind a cut because WOW there's actually a lot more of them than I realized I had, hahaha. The psychiatrist who recently used me as a case study told me I was very self-aware, so take from that what you will, friend.

Get up and do a chore/take a shower/eat a snack/literally just walk through a friggin' doorway, more often than not it'll at least make your brain reorient enough for you to realize you were just beating your head against a wall and need to do [ INSERT DAMAGE CONTROL/HARM REDUCTION BEHAVIOR HERE ].

Track your progress. Write to-do lists and cross shit off 'em. Keep track of your word count when you write; put it in a spreadsheet or a notebook or on a graph on your bulletin board.

Get a NEW way to track your progress. I currently use, like, three different "to-do list" apps to varying degrees in varying ways, not counting just my basic calendar app ( for the record: Finch, Structured, and just a generic notes app, but mostly Finch and Structured and seriously I CANNOT recommend Finch enough, go get yourself a bird buddy immediately. do you want a friend code, I will GIVE you a friend code, I think it gives you a bonus mini-pet or something if you use it. ), and also set myself MANY a phone alarm to remind myself of things that I need to do in case I space out or get distracted by somebody/something/the specific phase of the moon.

Did you take your meds? Take your fucking MEDS, self, good LORD.

Leave the house even if for literally, like, thirty seconds to just stand in some actual natural light. Or leave the house to go eat at a cafe or library or fast food place and just put yourself in a new environment for literally any length of time whatsoever.

Switch pens. Switch notebooks. Get a NEW notebook. Use your laptop instead. Use your PHONE instead. Get a nicer notebook. Get a shittier notebook. Use the scratch paper at work. Use the Procreate app on your friggin' iPad if you gotta, whatever, you do what you want!!

Don't write!!

Seriously just don't, go watch an actual scripted TV show or movie or read a book or a comic or some fic. Feed your brain something you didn't have to make up yourself.

Come up with a convoluted way to trick yourself into being accountable to someone else. Join a writing group. Make a Tumblr post about how you're gonna go write now. Ask Tumblr for their opinion on what you should write now. Ask Tumblr to spin this random wheel spinner game you generated and tell you what answer they got, and then write THAT.

HAVE you had a snack? Did you eat breakfast? Did you eat lunch? Did you remember to move around the house at any point whatsoever during the day? Maybe like, do that. Like, at least the snack part. Maybe a stretch or something wouldn't hurt either though.

Meal prep is so fucking useful and saves you SO much annoying time and also, like, makes you eat actual veggies and fruit and shit, genuinely actually works, the gym bros were not wrong, go figure. Also then you don't have to think about what you're gonna eat all the time and then cook it and then clean up and then--yeah anyway meal prep, god bless it. Once a week I make a batch of pasta salad and roast a pan of good-when-roasted veggies with like, garlic and salt and pepper and some olive oil and add bacon after, and then I portion it all into tupperware and in the morning I add spinach or crack an egg into that day's share of veggies for breakfast and maybe make some toast, and just grab one of the pasta salads whenever I want something lunch-like. It saves SO much time and distraction when you are hurting for free time/focus. So, SO much.

Unfortunately the gym bros were also correct about exercise, if that's doable for you. Exercise does in fact make you feel better and more energized and less depressed, fuck those guys for being right about that shit. Assuming you have enough iron in your blood to actually, like, do it, which admittedly I frequently do not, but the point stands.

Dude why are you even trying to write, you're so tired, go to bed and get up early, you write SO much better in the mornings anyway.

Hey, I know that's how you USED to write, but like, is that actually how you write right now? Is that actually even what works for you anymore? Actually maybe outlines COULD be helpful or maybe you don't need all those worldbuilding notes all at once; maybe your inner architect needs to let the building decay and go back to nature or maybe your inner gardener has developed a taste for trellises, metaphorically speaking and all.

Please eat something. Also please DRINK something. Like ideally water but we'll go for anything that involves a liquid, seriously.

Hey did you know actually if you ONLY eat instant ramen and microwave pizza you'll probably get scurvy and die instead of, like, writing your magnum opus? Like probably?? Put a fucking egg in that ramen, man! Slice up a scallion in that bitch!! EAT AN ACTUAL WHOLE FRUIT or at least, like, buy a smoothie with actual fruit involved somewhere in it on occasional. The whole fruit, unfortunately, is better. I like apples. Apples take a REAL long time to rot if I forget they exist for a couple weeks or whatever. But like, mango smoothies are also the shit, can't turn down a mango smoothie or a good strawberry-banana. Hey did you know the grocery store just, like, will let you just buy one single apple and they don't give a fuck? You're free! The cashier won't remember you in five minutes!! Buy your one single apple and work your way up to maybe two apples next time!! Also now I want an apple!!!!

Don't write. Don't write THAT. Write the other thing. No, the OTHER other thing. No, not THAT other other thing.

The rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Fuck it, we ball.

[ INSERT FULL-THROTTLE STIMMING BEHAVIOR HERE ]

Only God can judge me and I'm still technically agnostic.

God, that's the weirdest fucking idea you've ever had, literally NO ONE but you would read it. So you should write 180k of it and also make it even weirder and yes it will absolutely be the one fic that just about everyone in MCU fandom who knows you exist knows you for, don't even worry about it, this isn't based on a true story at all.

Actually you could probably storyboard this scene to figure out wtf is happening here. Or like just draw literally anything related to this story, a bit of that might work some kinks out of the whole process.

Did you get that snack yet?

Hey go pet your dog, she's very soft and wants attention and also her OWN snack. Pet your dog and eat an apple and idk watch some anime or a weird niche documentary or an even more niche reality show, have you seen Deep-Fried Dynasty yet, it's on Hulu and was surprisingly engrossing.

Why are you even following the rules, we've been over this, they are made up and the points do NOT matter, and also you're not even getting graded for this anyway.

Yeah okay that thing you wrote sucked, but it turns out that Dean Koontz somehow has a writing career and also Twilight happened to all of us, so actually even the suckiest thing you ever write is gonna be better than the perfect ideal of the scene in your head, because the suckiest thing you ever write is something OTHER people can READ. And again: Dean Koontz has a career. Colleen HOOVER has a career. And fucking good for them, they're killing it, they are fucking WRITING!! Who gives a damn anyway, fix it in editing if you're that worried about it, they call it a rough draft for a reason.

Hey if that thing doesn't work you can just, like, delete it. Or rewrite it. Or stick it in your back pocket and do something else for a while. The sunk-cost fallacy is bullshit and you don't have to listen to it.

Maybe drink some more caffeine, that'll calm you down. [ DISCLAIMER: THIS PIECE OF ADVICE TAILORED TO A PERSON WITH MORE ADHD THAN LITERALLY NINETY-FIVE PERCENT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD; THAT PERCENTAGE IS ON THE ACTUAL LEGITIMATE DIAGNOSTIC PAPERWORK ]

Seriously you can just write anything you want, nobody can stop you. Only God can judge me and I'm still technically agnostic enough that that's like, thirty-seventy odds at BEST.

God that idea is so niche and weird and niche, better tone it the fuck down to--oh wait no mass appeal means you're writing popcorn and literally no one will remember it in five minutes anyway, stop reflexively censoring yourself for some imaginary audience that will just chew straight through your one-size-fits-all story for The Content(tm) and then immediately move onto the next one without even bothering to hit "kudos" or remember anything about it later. I have written shit so weird that people still remember how weird I was TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, man, and that is why literally anyone will EVER remember that you exist or wanna read your stuff or follow you to a new fandom where they don't even know the source material, fuck it, they'll wiki some shit. And also who cares anyway, it's YOUR stuff and YOU wanna read it. Your agnostically-possible god did not make you this weird and niche for no reason, don't pussy out now!!

Actually you can just write in the bath/on the bus/while waiting for your roommate to finish up with the guy running this estate sale. You've got your phone, right? Fuck it, pack a notebook. Pack an extra notebook. Pack a smaller notebook. Pack a BIGGER notebook.

It's not stupid if it works. You don't have to do what literally ANYONE else is doing, you just have to do what works.

You can literally just skip to the good part and write that, actually. Nobody's gonna throw you in writer-jail. What are we, cops?? Actually do you even need this lead-up here or do you just need to write this one specific blorbo gettin' laid REAL enthusiastically kinkily and/or maybe having a nervous breakdown sobfest over their perception of their personal self-worth and everything else is kinda just window dressing??

I mentioned the snack thing, right? Also sugar rushes are fake but sugar CRASHES are real so maybe be a little careful on that one, maybe buy some trail mix/jerky/smoked salmon, smoked salmon is SO good, smoked salmon is just objectively delicious.

Go talk somebody's ear off about what you're trying to write about. Bonus points if you can find somebody who matches your freak enough that you write, uhhhhh /checks smudged writing on wrist/ a 60k Overwatch fic in two weeks and also like 280k of Witcher fic in less than a year specifically because they're just a real good cheerleader. Wow. Wow that was a lot more Witcher fic than I was aware I had written. THE POINT IS LOOK FOR A WRITING BUDDY, WRITING BUDDIES ARE THE SHIT.

If the writing buddy doesn't work out though the first time I won NaNoWriMo I did it directly out of spite because someone said they didn't think I actually would. So like, spite is always an option, you can always keep that one on tap if you gotta.

Stephen King did not write "On Writing" because he didn't want you to write. Francesca Lia Block did not introduce you to the weirdest and gayest shit teenage!you had ever read so you'd grow up and be a fucking NORMIE about this shit. SIR TERRY PRATCHETT DID NOT WRITE LIKE SIXTEEN OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME BECAUSE HE DID NOT WANT YOU TO WRITE WHAT YOU WERE ACTUALLY FRICKIN' INTO.

Clean your room. No, better than that. Okay fuck it just set a ten-minute timer and do what you can in that time, we work with the spoons we've got.

Random number generator. Random color generator. Random "hey followers here's a very oblique poll, don't even worry about what it's about, just click a button please and thank you".

Did you know the internet will just GIVE you free graphs/trackers/bullet journal page designs and you can just print 'em out and do whatever the heck you want with 'em?? Yes my new little "color in the squares every day you do the thing" tracker IS just six daily writing tasks and two daily "just go pick some stuff up in this specific room" tasks and that is MY BUSINESS, MS. SIR AND MR. MADAM AND MX. [ INSERT BUZZER SOUND ]. And also, like, has done much better at getting me to do chores than anything else has in a minute, go fig.

You can actually just do whatever you want forever.

Literally, like just forever.

Fuck, how many times HAVE you done this? You'll never get better for good, it'll always go bad again, you'll always get sick again, you'll always get SAD again, you'll always fucking forget how to even DO this again and have to start all over.

Well yes, obviously, because you'll always have done it again. So do it again. One more time.

( seriously though did you take your meds-- )

[elfwreck]

It's not over.

Put your support behind Kamala Harris and VOTE BLUE IN NOVEMBER.

Harris has a solid track record to point at - including a whole lot of connections with Congress.

Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor to congratulate Harris, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan and other key Biden administration achievements would not have passed Congress without her vote.

Trump's support hasn't grown. But he's going to be insufferably smug; he now believes he can coast into office, rewrite the entire US government, and never go to prison no matter how many crimes he commits.

Prove him wrong.

He believes that Democrats were behind Biden like his supporters are behind him - a cult of personality, not plans and ethics. He thinks Biden was the front-runner because people liked him personally, and if he could convince people not to like him, he'd lose.

Prove him wrong.

Watch out for propaganda; there's going to be heaping amount of it. Watch out for "don't vote nothing matters" apathy; there's going to be a lot of that, too. Watch out for "but her emails!!!!" or whatever stupid pointless drama they're going to claim about Harris.

Trump and his supporters think the US government is a popularity contest, not a matter of voting for the future you want.

Prove them wrong.

[usafphantom2]

Just some Records held by the SR-71

Altitude in Horizontal Flight: 85,068.997 feet

Speed Over a Straight Course – Average Speed: 2,193.167 mph

Speed Over a Recognized Course: New York to London: 1 hour, 54 minutes, 56.4 seconds

The SR-71’s speed was not limited by the power of its engines. It was limited by the heat its structure could withstand.

Titanium makes up 93% of the SR-71s structure. A material that had never been truly utilized to its full potential until the SR-71 came along.

Each SR 71 was handmade. That means everyone of the Blackbirds were ever so slightly different. The men that flew the SR’s had their favorites and then there were the hangar queens that no one liked to fly..

The reason why titanium was so expensive was the process to make it usable.

The first reliable process to produce chemically pure titanium was developed in the 1940s. This process made the SR-71 possible. It begins by first converting the titanium dioxide to titanium chloride.

How do we convert the Titanium?

To do this titanium dioxide is mixed with chlorine and pure carbon and heated. Any oxygen or nitrogen leaking in will ruin the process, so this has to be done in relatively small batches in a sealed vessel. Once this process is complete, we have Titanium Chloride.

We then need to purify the Titanium Chloride from any impurities in the titanium ore through distillation. Where we heat the product and separate titanium chloride using its lower boiling point.

This Titanium Chloride vapor is fed into a stainless steel vessel containing molten magnesium at 1300 kelvin. Titanium is highly reactive with oxygen at high temperatures, so the vessel also needs to be sealed and filled with argon. Here the Titanium Chloride reacts with the magnesium, which itself is an expensive metal, to form titanium and magnesium chloride.

At times the engineers were perplexed as to what was causing problems, but thankfully they documented and cataloged everything, which helped find trends in their failures.

They discovered that spot welded parts made in the summer were failing very early in their life, but those welded in winter were fine. They eventually tracked the problem to the fact that the Burbank water treatment facility was adding chlorine to the water they used to clean the parts to prevent algae blooms in summer, but took it out in winter. Chlorine as we saw earlier reacts with titanium, so they began using distilled water from this point on.

They discovered that their cadmium plated tools were leaving trace amounts of cadmium on bolts, which would cause galvanic corrosion and cause the bolts to fail. This discovery led to all cadmium tools to be removed from the workshop.

Converting Titanium for the SR-71 is really slow

This reduction reaction is extremely slow, between 2 and 4 days. It’s pretty clear that titanium is expensive and extremely difficult to work with. But without Titanium and the SR-71, we wouldn’t be where we are today, talking about the fastest, air, breathing airplane in the world. You can read the full article here. Linda Sheffield.

@Habubrats71 via X

[unsolicited-opinions]

While I agree with most of your posts, I do have to dispute the claim that gaza’s population has grown - that was from projected figures before the conflict. A large portion of gazans have fled, and a smaller portion have died - it would be nigh impossible to keep accurate track of population growth outside of the borders of gaza too. Current estimates put total population loss from death and/or evacuation at 6% since the start of the war.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-posts/has-gazas-population-grown-2-since-oct-7-2023-no-t/

Thanks for letting me know I may have gotten this wrong- I really appreciate it and I want to be intellectually honest.

Let's think this through: On 10/7/23, the population of Gaza was estimated to be 2.2 million. 6% of that would be 132,000 persons killed or departed. So that's the claim of the Politifact item, that 132,000 persons have left Gaza or been killed. That's the Hamas claim.

Gazans who have departed:

Hamas claims that about 100,000 Gazans have left Gaza.

Other sources say maybe 36,000 have departed, based on recorded exits through the Israel border and through the Egypt border. I'm not inclined to believe Hamas, which has lied repeatedly about everything.

Birth Rates:

Hamas has not provided any data on birth rates (and their data did not distinguish between combatants and civilians.)

UNICEF says that between 10/7/23 and January of 2024, 20,000 babies were born in Gaza. That's 6666.6 births/month.

Since babies were almost certainly being conceived at typical rates through at least 10/7/23, let us assume that the birth rate was, as noted by UNICEF, about 6666.6/month in the nine months following 10/7/23.

That would lowball the births in Gaza between 10/7/23 and July 2024 at about 60,000 births.

This assumes, incorrectly, that no Gazans conceived children after 10/7/23.

For the sake of argument, lets err on the side of the Hamas perspective and assume that the conception rate after 10/7/23 plummeted to a tenth of it's usual rate, a 90% reduction in the birth rate. That would be mean there were 666.66 births/month in the 10 months between July 2024 and May 2025. That's another 6666 births.

So we're looking at least 66,666 births since 10/7/23.

Gazan deaths since 10/7/23:

Hamas currently claims that 53,000 Gazans have been killed.

While I think Hamas is likely to be lying, niether the IDF nor the ISraeli government have revised their estimates since early 2024, so I'm inclined to accept Hamas' number here for the sake of argument.

So let's say that 36,000 Gazans have left Gaza and 53,000 Gazans have been killed. That would bring us to a population reduction of 89,000. Now subtract the at least 66,666 births since 10/7/23.

89,000 - 66,666 = 22,334

That's ~1% population reduction. Nowhere near 6%. The only way to reach that number is to take Hamas' word and and do no critical thinking.

_________________

Hamas wasn't good at administrative tasks like reporting before the war, and doesn't care at all about the people of Gaza....so their data is garbage. I think we'll agree it is hard to measure.

However, I'm convinced enough in the shitiness of the data that I will no longer claim the population of Gaza has increased since 10/7/23 because there isn't sufficient data to prove it.

The 6% reduction figure, though, smells strongly of bullshit.

Thanks for this, Anon- I appreciate it!

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil reduces burned areas by 70% in first quarter of 2025

In the first three months of 2025, fires affected a total of 912,900 hectares across the country. This represents a 70 percent reduction compared to the same period last year, when 2.1 million hectares were impacted.

Of the total burned areas, 78 percent were covered by native vegetation, while 43 percent of the burned land consisted of grasslands.

The figures, released on Wednesday (Apr. 16), come from the Fire Monitor, a MapBiomas tool that uses satellite imagery to track fire scars across the country.

"The rainy season has contributed to the decrease in fires. However, the Cerrado recorded the largest burned area in the first quarter compared to recent years, highlighting the need for tailored strategies to prevent and combat fires in each biome," warns Vera Arruda, a researcher at MapBiomas Fogo.

Continue reading.

[us3rnam3-r3dact3d]

Inspired by the latest Reductive Audio:

Lil useless facts about my fav boys/listeners. No hate if I didn’t include your fave, I was making my list off memory and am just now realizing I missed like… three entirely series worth of people.

Vincent

He prefers silver jewelry over gold, but doesn’t care if styles are meant for men or women. He likes what he likes and will wear it. He’s a particular fan of dainty necklaces and women’s wrist watches, but likes men’s rings better.

Sam

He smoked when he was human. Lucky Stripes, since they’re cheap. It was a bad habit he picked up when he was eight or so to cope with his home life. He lost the ability to be chemically addicted to nicotine when he was turned, but he still itches for a cigarette when he’s particularly stressed.

Alexis

She’s very jealous of Will’s attention. She gets twitchy when he’s paying attention to anybody else for too long. This results in spikes of her reckless and bad behavior. It started when Vincent was turned, then when he took in Porter, then when she turned Sam. The most recent was after the Inversion.

William

He cannot paint or draw to save his life. He’s followed five or six Bob Ross paintings, but they never turn out right. He can draw stick figures, but that’s about it. His penmanship is beautiful, though.

Porter

Will made him testify against his maker since Porter’s treatment was particularly brutal amongst Felix’s progeny. Porter didn’t want to, but he recounted every moment of Felix’s torture while being stared down by the man himself in front of the whole council. It was so damming that Felix invoked him to stop. That’s the moment that Porter still has nightmares about.

Lovely

Lovely is incredibly anxious around their human friends. They’re scared that they’ll lose control and hurt someone, even though they’re very well fed and haven’t shown any lack of control in the past. This results in a few months after the inversion that Freelancer thought they were dead, since they showed up on the casualty list.

Treasure

Their older brother is a humanborn freelancer. He’s an enforcer for the Department. They think that fits him well, since he was always sort of a bully growing up. Treasure themself is an investigative journalist who writes for an empowered newspaper. They were trying to get a table at the Monarchal Summit even before they met Porter, but that didn’t pan out.

Freddy

He played french horn in high school. He was pretty good, and was drum major in marching band his senior year. He threw up before every game because he was so nervous.

Bright Eyes

Singer/song writer. Y’all ever listened to the Mountain Goats??? That’s their shit. Slow moving acoustic guitar, songs about the most disturbing and distressing emotions humans are capable of surviving recorded on cassette. Singing at dead coffee shop open mics in the wee hours of the morning. Their voice is raspy and rough, but the texture just draws you into their even timber and perfect pitch. They’re a minor celebrity in Dahlia’s sad boy live music scene.

David

His hips and back hurt So Much all of the time. He figures out that it’s because he’s incredibly strong but not flexible in the slightest. An imbalance in those two factors can lead to a lot of pain. He starts doing yoga after the Inversion when it got really bad and it’s helped a ton. Plus, Angel does it with him, and he likes watching them bend into all of those poses in their tiny, skin tight shorts.

Asher

He keeps track of how much David weighs and makes sure he can comfortably lift and carry that much weight at the drop of a hat. At the end of every work out, he deadlifts David’s weight to make sure he can do it when already spent. He should have been carrying David after the Inversion, but he didn’t have the strength to do it even when not fucked up. He won’t let that happen again.

Milo

He needs reading glasses but refuses to wear them. He tried contacts but he can’t stand to put anything in his eye. So he just squints and struggles through. His phone’s text is blown up like a grandpa’s. David is so bothered that Milo won’t just… get glasses. He keeps passive aggressively offering to add Milo to their vision insurance plan.

Christian

He had a little crush on Asher in middle school that translated to teasing the shit out of him. Which, Asher being Asher, put him off and hurt his feelings. He’s well moved on but sometimes, when the sun catches Ash just right or he smiles that stupid, toothy smile, Christian mourns his own stupidity.

Arden

Desperately protective of Christian, especially after the Inversion. The first time Ash makes a light-hearted joke about Christian’s limp, Arden put his ass on the ground, despite Christian laughing at it.

Gabe

He drove a white Chevy Cameo with a red interior for most of his life. It was lovingly maintained, and since it’s such a rare model, he did all of the maintenance himself. After the crash, the truck was totaled. David still spent a few years trying to put it back together. He called it quits when he was working on the interior and found dried blood under the leather of the seats.

Angel

They have a small stuffed lamb that they’ve had since they were a baby. It’s beaten up, falling apart, and no longer the stark white it started out as. Lambie is kept in their bottom bedside drawer. They only pull him out when they can’t sleep. They were worried David would think it was weird, but he actually finds this more endearing than he can put into words.

Babe

They didn’t start talking until they were three. Their parents thought that they were nonverbal, and had started teaching them ASL as an alternative. Then one day at the breakfast table, they opened their mouth and started spouting full sentences. They taught Asher ASL and the two of them use it when they want a private moment in public/when Ash is overstimulated. (Side note; David also knows ASL, he took courses in high school. Very useful, he loves it. He does not love it when watching them flirt nastily in front of him.)

Sweetheart

They’ve had anxiety since they were a very young child, and it’s always been an internally-sourced thing rather than externally motivated. They recall the first time they ever got in trouble at school (first grade, for pushing a boy who had been tugging on their hair all through recess). They remember the first time they got a B (fifth grade, on a math test they studied for for hours). Their parents had high expectations, but Sweetheart was having panic attacks from the age of three. Definitely something ~chemical~ going on there.

Darlin

They feel pack bonds incredibly strongly. Their body reacts physically when someone in the pack is threatened or hurt, without them even having to think. They shiver when Sam calls them ‘mate.’ When David says something in his lovingly dubbed ‘alpha voice,’ they can’t help but listen. They knew Gabe was dead before they got the call. They thought Ash was dead during the Inversion because they felt David’s dread through the bond so strongly.

Avior

He’s unnerved by human’s tactile nature. Being in a body is strange for him, and he prefers Aria to Elegy (at least before meeting Starlight), so touch is an extreme sensation for him. Humans touch so much. He’s not opposed to it when it’s someone he knows, but handshakes are the bane of his existence.

Starlight

Halloween is their favorite holiday. They start decorating for it in August. They plan elaborate, complex costumes and parties. They desperately want to move into a house so that they can set up scary decorations and shit in their yard and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Avid lover of the Spirit Halloween animatronics. They go to Halloween Horror Nights every year.

Camelopardalis

He’s trained himself to use the human terms for things (ex: terra or earth instead of elegy) since some in the Department don’t like it when daemons use their terms. It means that he gets weird looks from other daemons when he talks to them. It’s an alienating feeling for sure.

Vega

He’s never tried human food. He never saw the appeal. What he doesn’t know is that he would absolutely Love dark chocolate if he tried it. He likely will never know.

Warden

Avid reader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics. Just the comics, though. They don’t have an apartment in Elegy, but they do have a small storage unit where they keep their comics. They coalesced a few years before the comics starting their run, and for some reason, they just fell in love. Vega thinks this is silly and that they should be embarrassed, but they refuse to be.

Hush

He loves Popeye’s fried chicken sandwiches. Doc fed him one once and it blew his fucking mind. He won’t make them with magic, either, he insists that they don’t taste the same. Doc has started just getting gift cards for him to keep so he can get one whenever and doesn’t have to wait for them to give him money. He’s ravenous for those things.

Doc

They’re actually a warder, not a healer. Hush’s presence has encouraged them to refresh their healing knowledge, however. Even if he himself is difficult to hurt, he sort of invites chaos.

Morgan

He uses his foresight to see what the owner of his favorite little bodega down the street is going to have for breakfast every morning. It’s his little morning ritual and practice for his magic. He feels weird all day if he doesn’t do it.

Seer listener

Their sight is more potent and more clear than Morgan’s. They can give stark details, see full landscapes, and turn 360 deg in their vision and see the whole space. They also can hear what’s happening consistently, something that goes in and out for Morgan. He figures that they’re just more powerful than he is, something that makes them just the slightest bit uncomfortable.

Damien

Gets incredibly stressed on election days, whether for local, state, or national elections. He forces everyone he knows to vote, volunteers to shuttle people without cars, and has at times volunteered to be a poll worker. But elections make him anxious. He cares so much about the results. Huxley has recently instated a post 9pm ban on watching the news on election nights so that Dames will actually sleep and not stay up all night stressing.

Huxley

Does not eat beef. Not for religious reasons, but because of the impact of beef consumption on the environment. He’s about one step away from a full vegetarian, he just likes chicken and is concerned for his protein and vitamin intake. This is difficult for Damien, who loves nothing quite so much as a rare steak.

Lasko

He was forced to take piano lessons as a child. He hated it, but took them up to the point he left home. He’s still very good, and did get peer pressured into showing off at a random guitar center once while out with the D.A.M.N. crew. He nearly died of embarrassment.

Gavin

He has a collection of very pretty rosaries that he uses as jewelry. He is not religious, and if asked, cannot describe what a Catholic is to you. He likes to wear them around his neck, dipping over his body since his shirts always cut down to his navel. It makes people gasp and blush, which is his favorite effect to have on somebody. His fav one has beads made of mother of pearl and a little, golden crucifix on the end.

Freelancer

They love cheap Chinese buffets. They claim that, the lower the health rating, the better the taste. Their desire for krab rangoons is strong enough to pull them from the comfort of their home at 2 in the morning if the fancy strikes. Damien in particular is horrified by this, and keeps offering to cook them some actual Chinese food.

Dear (Lasko’s listener)

An all star volleyball player in high school and college. They were a setter, and took their team to nationals all four years of high school. They are on the starting line up all through college. When it gets brought up in their trip that Damien plays casually, they said they did too. And then absolutely creamed him.

[whilereadingandwalking]

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts is heartbreaking, frustrating, and just plain high-quality nonfiction. From its early days as a mysterious form of ‘cancer’ to it finally being addressed as a public health disaster, Shilts tracks the story of AIDS and the incredible failure of the U.S. and state governments to respond to it appropriately, writing how bureaucracy, scientific competition, homophobia, sidelining of ‘anecdotal’ data in research, and failure of the media to investigate and ask questions, all came together to create an epidemic of a disease that was already a nasty killer, but that was allowed to run free thanks to a lack of funding and attention.

Where can I even begin? I grew up more aware than most kids about HIV and AIDS. My parents had participated in advocacy around the disease, and my uncle was HIV positive. But this book laid it all out, and shocked and hurt and twisted me through its pages. It outlined the story of AIDS in vivid, rich color. Shilts’s skill with foreshadowing is indicting on so many levels—the cowardice of too many people, the failure in vision. It at times reads like a political tragedy. At other times, it reads like pure, utter plague horror, suspenseful and so frustrating I had to put it down and take a walk or rant to my partner several times. Gaslighting, bureaucratic battles, mind-numbingly ridiculous hold-ups, mistakes, cover-ups, silences.

There is a lot of resonance with Covid. The desire not to ‘panic’ people, or to enforce normality, and how that allows disease to run rampant. Avoidance of harm reduction due to ‘civil rights’ arguments that too often turn out to be people wanting to continue to make money. People acting with utter denial, insisting they can’t spread it, saying they’re tired of being weighed down by warnings and fear. To how much of a role the media plays, and how necessary it is for reporters to question, follow leads, and ask tough questions to hold governments and institutions accountable.

But also hopeful notes. Out of the failure of just about everyone to help, a gay community was formed, a new one, rooted in harm reduction, safe sex, and social services run by and for queer people. I see clean air groups, mutual aid accounts, rising out of the ashes of the neglect and hate around us now. Shilts also highlights the heroes of the pandemic. Spoiler alert: they aren’t people who accepted easy answers or easy paths. They went rogue, leaked documents, went on the record when they weren’t supposed to, went around their universities’ backs for funds, forced funding through the back channels of Congress, heckled, demanded, threatened, and raged. It was a hopeful and bittersweet reminder that we will get nowhere by telling our friends what’s wrong, or journaling it after a day of minding your own business. Our heroes will be the non-compliant, and every hero will have a group of community members at their back.

Content warnings for suicide, suicidal ideation, medical trauma/dismissal, death/grief, homophobia.

[centrally-unplanned]

In news to no one, a lot of policy activism is done without considering the politics behind the policy. Take fracking bans in the US. Is there a coalition big enough to support some form of ban on fracking? Yes - or at least there was, it is something that happened after all, it must be viable in some form.

Why is a fracking ban political viable? Because 100% of that coalition is technocratic global warming advocates pushing for carbon taxes and mixed-energy grid transitions, comfortable with limited reductions in living standards in order to achieve the goal? Lol fuck no. That is some of them! Oil as an energy source is a carbon emission, it isn't great, it is a valid reason to pursue it. But they are a minority of the coalition. Some of them are "hard enviro-left" types who also oppose nuclear for example, and either aren't very coherent or are coherent-enough full stack degrowthers, fringe but real. But more, I bet the majority, are environmental NIMBYs - you can ban fracking because they don't like the idea of it happening here. They will support policies to restrict development in new areas of the US that might change the natural environment and cause issues for them close to home.

What they will not support is anything else that makes the policy viable.

They will also block solar installations on NIMBY grounds, or things like transmission lines. They won't actually support carbon taxes or radical changes in how they live to reduce environmental impacts. And most importantly, they will not actually support higher energy prices. LIke at all. The moment you try to "ban" oil or gas imports, this coalition is a ghost. Which means the only impact from a fracking ban is to shift production from the US to other countries - ones that, on average, have a worse track record of environmental enforcement to boot. It doesn't achieve anything at all for the goal of global emissions. The power has to come from somewhere after all! There is no coalition for lowering energy consumption.

This obviously isn't any issue for some random poster online, you aren't dictating policy, support your ideal approach! I support government deployment of exowombs and Kowloon Walled City 2: Immigrant Enclave Boogaloo, trust me I get it lol. But if you are an actual political operative, with influence in policy, understanding this dynamic is literally your job. Spending political capital on fight X, that only does anything if you also win fight Y & Z, and you have no hope of winning those, is deeply counterproductive. There is no substitute for smart strategy. (And it isn't like there aren't better ideas out there - permitting reform for green energy projects is like sitting on the table guys)

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

A growing group of Republicans and business leaders is rallying behind an unlikely cause. They want to protect Biden-era tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energy.

President Trump has made dismantling federal efforts to address climate change a signature part of his agenda, eliminating environmental regulations, withholding congressionally approved funding, firing workers, halting permitting for wind energy developments and fast-tracking fossil fuel projects.

But the clean energy tax credits, which were signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, have helped spur a boom in manufacturing investment in the United States, especially in Republican districts.

Now, as Mr. Trump pushes Congress to slash federal spending to pay for broad tax cuts, some House Republicans from districts that got billions of dollars in investment from the tax credits have begun a campaign to keep them.

The Republicans are making the case that supporting renewable energy is squarely in line with Mr. Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, despite the president’s rallying against what he calls the “green new scam.”

Last week, a group of 21 House Republicans wrote a letter to Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, asking him to preserve the credits. And in recent weeks, several groups of conservative environmentalists and business leaders have traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress on the issue.

“To meet President Trump’s campaign promises of bringing back manufacturing and taking energy production at home seriously, we need to look at an all-the-above approach to these things,” Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York, who organized the letter, said in an interview. “These credits have been helping do that.”

President Trump has not specifically said which if any of the credits he wants to eliminate, but he regularly talks about repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. The White House declined a request for comment.

The credits, which offer financial incentives to companies producing renewable power and sustainable aviation fuel, making components for clean technology and working to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, have helped push billions of dollars into domestic factory construction in recent years. The United States recorded more than $315 billion in clean energy investments last year, according to the International Energy Agency.

About 80 percent of the investments tied to the bill have gone to Republican congressional districts, according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy, a research firm. They include battery plants across the Southeast, a lithium mine in Nevada and wind farms in Texas.

[chamerionwrites]

I should log the fuck off but like. The tyranny, the violence that you’re so terrified of? I’ve seen some of it up close. I’ve lived in the aftermath of a right wing coup. I’ve attended five funerals in the space of a week, of much-too-young men (with much-too-young children) who were killed by US government policy in a very real and direct way.

And then I have returned home to an election between Hillary Clinton - who openly bragged in her memoir of helping to facilitate said right-wing coup - and Donald Trump, whose entire campaign revolved around demonizing my former neighbors and friends, and promising to wield the violence of the American state against them and people like them. I have held my nose and voted for Hillary fucking Clinton, because I know a would-be fascist dictator when I see one and I understand what harm reduction is.

And then I have gone to immigration protest after immigration protest after immigration protest. In fact it’s no exaggeration to say that basically all of my human contact during the entire pandemic year was weekly immigration protests. I’ve stood up and argued against off-brand Richard Spencer fuckheads in city hall meetings and stared them down when they showed up to counter protest and intimidate. I have cried more tears than I’ve probably cried during the entire rest of my adult life over murdered and brutalized immigrant children who could so so so terrifyingly easily have been children that I personally know and love.

I’ve voted for Biden and hoped that he might keep his promises and dreaded that he wouldn’t - because I know what the Democratic party’s track record is, because I’ve worked with immigration activists who are many decades older than me and who have been betrayed over and over and over. I’ve watched over four years, sickened but not shocked, as the Biden administration did exactly that. I’ve watched Harris’ unbelievably callous response to asylum seekers fleeing for their lives (“Do not come”). I’ve watched as the New York Times and other media that screamed condemnation from the rooftops about Trump’s immigration policies justified those exact same policies with the tiniest bit of airbrushing, and anytime I criticized those policies I’ve gotten the predictable crowd of DNC fans having hysterics at me about how I must want Trump to win again. To my own shame I’ve been quieter than I probably should have been in my criticisms because I was so sick of dealing with those people.

And then I’ve held my nose and voted for Harris and STILL gotten accused of being a vote-abstaining traitor who should be deported the moment I expressed the tiniest ounce of frustration with the Democratic party - because you needed somewhere to put your rage, and you either don’t understand or (even more ghoulishly) don’t care what the violence of deportation entails, and because apparently anything less than choking myself on the DNC’s dick makes Donald Trump my fault.

I do not wish any of this on you, because I’m not a fucking monster.

Instead I wish you enough moral and mental and emotional clarity to understand exactly what it is that you’ve said, and enough scraps of conscience to regret it as you ought.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Study puts understanding of long COVID and vaccination into question - Published Sept 4, 2024

This article highlights why I haven't been celebrating about recent findings that vaccination reduces long covid:

We still do not have a solid definition of what long covid is.

We still don't know how long it takes some people to develop long covid: Some people develop long covid symptoms months or even years after infection.

Many are undiagnosed with long covid because of a lack of understanding in the medical community.

The reduction stated in initial studies on vaccination and long covid cited about 30% reduction: That isn't enough for me to take off my mask.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly has been somewhat off his game in recent months, giving in to hope and showing signs of pandemic fatigue. His desire to be done with the pandemic may be tainting what he writes, in my opinion. As there is no cure for long covid (and we still don't know exactly what causes and perpetuates it), it seems silly to suggest that vaccination is a long covid silver bullet while cases continue to skyrocket worldwide.

I'm a non-medical observer, but I keep track of the latest studies and news, so I'm not totally uninformed, but take this blurb with a gain or two of salt. I could be wrong, but it doesn't look that way yet.

A new study from researchers at the Mayo Clinic suggests that being vaccinated against COVID-19 does little to prevent long COVID.

The findings contradict what has become conventional wisdom in the last 3 years—that vaccines offer a chance to significantly reduce the risk of long COVID, or new or persistent symptoms 3 months or more after infection, most likely by reducing the severity of infection.

Melanie Swift, MD, MPH, was the lead author of the study, which was published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. She said despite the current thinking that vaccines reduce the risk of developing long COVID, she wasn’t surprised she found no association.

"A lot of the early literature on long COVID was really defining long COVID through patient surveys," Swift told CIDRAP News. Swift’s study instead relied on participants having received a long COVID diagnosis from a physician after having a documented case of post-vaccination COVID-19 infection.

6.9% developed long COVID The study was based on the electronic records of 41,652 people aged 5 years or older with SARS-CoV-2–positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests between February 2021 and December 2022 and a diagnosis of long COVID 30 days to 6 months following infection.

The average age of patients was 41 years, 55.2% were female, and 90.7% were White. At the time of initial infection, 9,744 (23.4 %) were vaccinated with two doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and 7,658 (18.4 %) had received more than two mRNA doses.

A total of 8.2% of patients required hospitalization for COVID-19, and most infections occurred during the Delta and Omicron eras (39.8% and 47.1%, respectively).

In total, 6.9% of patients were diagnosed as having long COVID, with no observed difference between unvaccinated patients, those vaccinated with two doses of an mRNA vaccine, and those with more than two doses.

Long COVID was associated with older age, female sex, and hospitalization for the initial infection. It was inversely associated with infection during the Omicron period, the authors wrote.

Swift said that vaccines still play a role in preventing long COVID. “If you don’t get COVID, you don’t get long COVID," she said. "It remains the most important medical tools in our arsenal by virtue of not getting COVID and severe COVID, but we can’t stop there and say ‘if you were vaccinated, you don’t have to worry about long COVID.’”

Confounding factors and health behaviors Clifford Rosen, MD, a senior scientist at the MaineHealth Institute for Research, has reviewed studies on long COVID and vaccines. He said the current study may be skewed because of its sample size.

"It’s a small cohort that is relatively homogeneous and likely has different healthcare behavior than other EHR [electronic health record] studies," Rosen said. Instead, he said long COVID studies done based on Veterans Affairs (VA) data offer a more heterogenous cohort.

Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of research and development at the VA St Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University, has been behind most VA studies on long COVID.

He just published a review of evidence showing that vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID. While the effect size varies by 15% to 70%, there is an estimated average reduction of 40% to 50%, almost universally.

He said he found Swift’s study surprising and said it likely suffers from one main confounding factor: The type of patient who seeks out a long-COVID diagnosis likely uses healthcare and is vaccinated.

Al-Aly said vaccination may help reduce some clusters of long-COVID symptoms better than others. Fore maple, his work has shown a "profound effect in pulmonary symptoms of COVID, and less on metabolic effects on long COVID.”

Though more research needs be done on long COVID and vaccination, Al-Aly remains confident that vaccines play an important role in reducing the risk of long COVID.