Oscar de la Renta: 'Crafted like a mosaic, discover the making-of the #odlrfall2024 stained glass gown — ushering in a a new House-signature embroidery technique.'
Constructed from hundreds of polyamide panes, hand-sewn together in an Art Nouveau style reminiscent of Tiffany glass. Ready-to-wear: £36,546.
the gasp i gosped
Outset of the journey: there are only two genders
The struggle amidst the journey: there are a large number of genders
Return from the land of the dead, armed with newfound wisdom: there are exclusively three genders, none of which are "man" or "woman."
Diagram of the innovations in materialist feminism I've been cooking up in my head (I will not explain what the letters mean because this world is not ready for me to speak the truth)
^ This is the gender-class society we live in ^
I've decided to spill the beans. Compiled thoughts in the below article!
Cinderella concept art by Mary Blair.
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
--
I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.
It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.
I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.
It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.
(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)
Apps/Websites
In person
Also:
Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.
This stuff makes a huge difference.
Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.
But yeah, go do citizen science, please!!!
I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now
I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.
From their website:
In today's technology-filled world, we have access to vast amounts of information at our fingertips. This includes geospatial data, which helps us understand places and the “where?” of things - a vitally important piece of successful humanitarian programs. It is important for getting from point A to point B as well as for coordination, understanding needs, tracking impact, identifying gaps, and a multitude of other concerns. For responsible use by humanitarians, this information must be assessed, refreshed, and validated as populations, infrastructure, and the surrounding environments experience the inevitable changes that occur as time, conflicts, and disasters unfold... MapSwipe is a free open source mobile application available on iOS and Android that empowers anyone with a smartphone to make a meaningful impact contributing to global mapping efforts. MapSwipe crowdsources the review of satellite imagery to:
Another citizen science project to look into for those interested in wetlands and amphibians is FrogWatch USA.
It’s a little intensive as it requires you to know and learn the calls of your local frog species and actually go out to conduct the surveys, but it’s important work to track frog populations over time that anyone with a little bit of free time can do.
Also once you know how to do it it’s a nice routine to take a walk out to your chosen site and do your weekly survey. And returning to it year after year really allows you to connect with the changing patterns of frog species and how the weather, climate, and local habitat may affect the presence and absence of different species in your area.
September 22nd, 2024
Maggie Smith as the fairy queen Titania, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1977)
I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:
It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.
Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.
1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.
2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?
3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?
4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”
5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.
6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)
I have been in EMDR therapy recently to help with past trauma and like 90% of the appointments is just this post. Which I thought was silly at first bcs I was like "well I know how I'm feeling, I feel bad" but man you have no idea. Literally JUST talking through whatever stressful thing I have going on at the moment and whenever I feel a Big Emotion stopping and acknowledging, naming, and sitting with it. I've made more progress with my trauma and mental illnesses just doing this in a single year than I have in like 10+ years of therapy.
It might feel silly or pointless at first but stick with it, it really helps.
Robert Wun | Fall/Winter 2024 Couture
I thought this was a het couple and then she turned her head. Like really just gets better and better
"Fat Top/Switch" by Emilia Phillips
Image description: A poem from a book.
It reads: “When fucking you, my belly hangs over
“the harness, its scars and stretchmarks
“milk-blue, and wobbles — look away,
“I used to but missed the strap emerge
“slick and your lips draw in when I pushed
“but then you reached for my hips, thumbs
“shadow-deep, pulling me toward you. Closer,
“you whispered. Juntas — together.
“That's when I began to look, to see
“myself, to be my body, in my body,
“to claim it, my belly me, to feel
“strong, my thigh muscles hard
“as vulnerability. I confess: before our first
“time, I worried you’d somehow realize
“how fat I am once I took off my clothes,
“as if I was hiding behind my skinny
“tie printed with bluebonnets I wore to
“the hotel bar and that you used to pull me
“onto the bench in front of the window.
“I love how different your body is
“from mine, you told me, I love your body,
“unbuttoning every button then
“that ever held me back or in.”
End description.
this is the saddest fucking thing. wheres that post about when you cant even write a poem about it because its just there already
if you germinate cucumber seeds in the dark vs. in the light the ones grown in the light will look normal and the ones grown in the dark actually won’t be stunted in the way you might predict, these seedlings grow into pale yellow plants with smaller leaves because they expend every ounce of energy they have into growing as tall as they can possibly endure, in the dark they grow much faster and taller than they do in the light, because they don’t know they’re an experimental treatment kept in the dark, they think they’re buried alive in the soil or under some foliage and they’re growing upwards trying to break through into the light. its the most obvious thing in the world and also the most devastating
hi me too
Pierre Fouché. 1994.77 or Lebenslänglichen Explosionsglück, 2020.
Rayon chords from a World War II parachute.
PBY Blister Gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, 1944, photo by Horace Bristol
A skilled artisan is a joy to witness
Get out
