worsethankonstantinlevin

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Die Mimik der Tethys (The Expressions of Tethys) is a high sea buoy (last was in Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, 2024), that is suspended in space and moves synchronously to another buoy in the Atlantic Ocean near Nantes. Continuously transmitting motion data via satellite to its relocated double, the information guides eight electric motors and cable winches, which precisely reproduce the buoy's movement in the ocean. The buoy functions as a hypnotising machine that inevitably leads to the idea of waves lapping around inside the exhibition space, creating an ocean in the minds of people.

Video source

Idea sent by @macfanatic, thanks for it <3

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Pros of gummy vitamins: delicious; the only vitamins I remember to take every day without fail

Cons of gummy vitamins: too fucking tasty. I want to eat the whole damn bottle. i think about these little bastards all day long. and I hear what you're saying, i KNOW you're thinking, "Charlie, gummy bears exist?" im telling you, it's not the fucking SAME. i need the salty tang of the electrolytes... The umami of B12... the siren song of forbidden fruit. It's about the longing, ok? The tension. The wait-vs-reward. The will-they-won't they. of me and the bears

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Evening dress, Horder & Son, c.1893

Made in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. Silk brocade with a pattern of pink and green anemones and large white cone devices; lace

via collections.vam.ac.uk

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

in conversations about sex education for children many people fall back on teaching children to recognize and, hopefully, report predatory behavior as the primary reason why this education is good, and obviously I don't disagree with that! when I educate my 4th-6th students, we spend a significant amount of time talking about boundaries and consent and drilling in to the kids' brains that they do NOT need to tolerate inappropriate touching or other behavior from anyone, not even adults who might try to pressure them into thinking otherwise.

BUT! but but but! I think it's also really important to remember that preparing for the worst case scenario isn't the only reason to educate kids about sexuality and their bodies! kids deserve to enter puberty understanding all of the changes they'll experience, and not just the growing and sweating. it's good for kids to understand the new desires they might start experiencing! it's good to know about intense new crushes and erections and wet dreams and sexual fantasies and masturbation! those things can be really, really scary and confusing for young people who don't have any framework to understand them, and it's really easy to feel like you're doing something dirty and inappropriate if no one has told you that sexual pleasure and curiosity is normal, healthy, and good.

good sex ed should help students feel comfortable and safe expressing their sexuality! that's crucial!

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

No tech CEO or NYT bestselling novelist will ever match the creativity of a humble French postman who decided on a whim to spend thirty-three years building a surreal, majestic palace with the bricks and mortar of his dreams.

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

God what i wouldn't give to have the sheer stamina and work ethic of my next door neighbor. Every morning, 8am, the hammers and drills come out. he's putting up shelves. he's feeding cables through walls 6 inches from my pillow. He's putting together furniture. He's making smoothies. He's 74 years old. Does it piss me off? of course. But i have to admit that he is clearly also the superior being. I need The Substance but to turn me (anemic 20-something with the constitution of a consumptive Victorian child) into this absolute beast of a man

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

egg prime directive is obviously stupid and it should be kept in mind that most of this discourse is specifically about people's refusal to encourage, love, and support trans femmes. That said, I think people have sometimes arrived at a reaction against the egg prime directive position that is oversimplified for rhetorical purposes but not helpful.

Not every form of egg cracking behavior is beneficial, I think we can all agree on that. some people genuinely are pushy and invasive about it, and make your theoretical transition about them and their regret over having not started sooner, and having a bit of that energy directed toward me early in transition was genuinely upsetting and made transitioning harder! I was in far too raw & uncertain a spot to have yet another person telling me what to do, especially with urgency. You don't try and push a person to transition for the same reason you don't push a domestic violence victim to leave their abuser: because their primary problem is the complete lack of agency that they have experienced, and you don't get someone to develop more confidence in themselves and agency in how they move about the world by telling them what to do. You get there by supporting them in expressing themselves, honoring boundaries that nobody else has respected, building trust, not getting inappropriately emotionally involved, and giving them resources.

And like, are the majority of egg cracking experiences more of something like that than anything the egg prime directive scolds are talking about? Probably, yeah! But let's be honest here, we have all met someone who prides themselves on the number of people they have cracked to a weird and badly boundaried degree and whose tactics include a lot of pushing and disbelieving a person's defense mechanisms. Having a transition that is not fully your own because another person has made it their project really sucks the joy and personal victory out of what should be an empowering journey! Sometimes people genuinely do put out incorrect, far too prescriptive information and don't allow the newly budding trans person to find themselves, and that is real ugly behavior. That's not a fake problem, a lot of us are traumatized and filled with regrets and don't know how to form respectful relationships at first and it shows sometimes in how we treat other trans people, esp the vulnerable, which includes eggs and the newly exploring and out.

It's not that egg cracking is bad or to be avoided; if you're just out and friendly to other gender variant people you're bound to crack several eggs. I certainly have. But none of that removes our obligation to think about how we are doing it, and whether we are treating people who are in a really scary period in life with adequate respect. We want their early transitions to go well, better than ours ever did. Having a supportive mentor can be a huge part of that! And a supportive mentor knows how to offer help without pressure, creates a space of safe reflection and sharing, and celebrates the transitioning person's wins as a victory for the transitioning person, not themselves. It is not all that difficult to do egg cracking right, an emotionally mature person with enough social supports in their own life should be able to do it.

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

all the trans bathroom bans have this awful tendency to push the overton window of even trans advocacy by trans people to the right

so many trans people now are focused on pleading to let trans women use women's restrooms and to let trans men use men's restrooms that I feel like the demand that was much more prominent even 5 years ago to construct non-segregated accessible bathrooms for everyone is almost nonexistent

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Communication has been lost with the Madleen, the last posting from activists aboard indicated they were being surrounded and boarded by the Israeli army in international waters.

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Dress

c. 1900

Grand Rapids Public Museum

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Dress

c. 1900

Grand Rapids Public Museum

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

Edmund C. Tarbell.

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

from this paper censored and removed from the cdc website by the trump administration

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

from this paper censored and removed from the cdc website by the trump administration

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

A New Resin is Able to Recycle Wind Turbine Blades Into Products Like Countertops and Diapers

From this article in Anthropocene Magazine:

Some companies are finding ways to recycle blades by shredding them and reusing the fiberglass and plastic resin to make cement and plastics. But the world will produce over 40 million metric tons of turbine blade waste by 2050, according to one study. That scale highlights an urgent need to make recycling blades easier. To address the issue, chemical engineering and materials science professor John Dorgan and colleagues developed a new resin made of a synthetic polymer and the plant-based polymer polylactide, or PLA, which is used to make biodegradable packaging. Fiberglass panels that the team made with the new resin were strong and durable enough for wind turbines and boat hulls. To recycle the panels, the researchers dissolved them in a solution and removed the glass fibers. The resin could then be used to make new panels or mixed with different minerals to make cultured stone for kitchen countertops. What’s more, the researchers could also treat the recovered resin in an alkaline solution to make an acrylic material for car lights or the absorbent material used in diapers. With some more chemical processing, they made a food preservative called potassium lactate, with which Dorgan’s team made gummy bears.

[worsethankonstantinlevin]

sometimes people think I’m really pedantic about word choice but it’s really important to be precise when talking about big structures and precise wording is the difference between “capitalism reinforces patriarchy,” a statement which is true, and “capitalism created patriarchy,” a statement which implies that misogyny didn’t exist until the 1600s