I just had this hyper-realistic dream and like. I don’t even know what to make of this lmao
I was sitting in this park, on a bench, looking up at the night sky and all the stars and stuff, and I blinked and suddenly the entire sky was different. I’m talking different constellations, the sky absolutely packed with billions more stars, some so close they’re massive. I’m like wtf and suddenly I realise there’s an old man sitting next to me, dressed in like 1940s clothing, also looking up at the sky.
before I can ask him if he’s you know, noticed, he speaks, without looking away from the sky.
“this is what the universe really looks like,” he tells me.
“oh,” I say. a pause. “…can you put it back?”
he smiles and nods. I look up. the sky has gone back to normal.
“what do I do with this information?” I ask, looking at him again.
he turns his head and, smiling, looks me dead in the face. "be careful.“
How on earth would you feed a city of over 200,000 people when the land around you was a swampy lake? Seems like an impossible task, but the Aztec managed it by creating floating gardens known as chinampas, then they farmed them intensively.
These ingenious creations were built up from the lake bed by piling layers of mud, decaying vegetation and reeds. This was a great way of recycling waste from the capital city Tenochtitlan. Each garden was framed and held together by wooden poles bound by reeds and then anchored to the lake floor with finely pruned willow trees. The Aztecs also dredged mud from the base of the canals which both kept the waterways clear and rejuvenate the nutrient levels in the gardens.
A variety of crops were grown, most commonly maize or corn, beans, chillies, squash, tomatoes, edible greens such as quelite and amaranth. Colourful flowers were also grown, essential produce for religious festivals and ceremonies. Each plot was systematically planned, the effective use of seedbeds allowed continuous planting and harvesting of crops.
Between each garden was a canal which enabled canoe transport. Fish and birds populated the water and were an additional source of food. [x]
This is literally so cool. Not only does it contribute to spacial efficiency, but the canals would easily keep pests, weeds, and possibly even diseases out of the respective plots. Companion planting and bio-intensive planting would be so much easier. Water-wise systems would be inherently present. Plus it looks so super neat aesthetically. I am just all about this.
Indigenous civilizations invented sustainable development way before there was a term for it.
Sooooo I really hate making posts like these (I mean, who doesn’t), but the truth is that life has kind of been kicking my ass. I work two jobs at the moment (in addition to being a full-time student AND an unpaid intern), but sadly they are both only part-time and don’t pay nearly enough of what I need. The good news is that my sister just got okay’d to start work this week, but unfortunately she won’t be able to help me pay our rent again. Which means it’s all up to me… again.
If you’re able to donate a few dollars to me on my Ko-Fi, that’d be absolutely super. If you’d prefer my paypal info instead, you can feel free to DM me. Either way, just make sure to leave a little note with your tumblr url so that I can thank you in some way (hopefully in the form of a little doodle or drabble, though I can’t make any promises due to the aforementioned ass-kicking I am getting from life at the moment). And if you can’t do either of those, that’s cool. Even a simple reblog helps. There’s no pressure ofc, just know that any and all help is very much appreciated.
Thursday, September 27th – Hi everyone, I’m Gemma your local burden back with another of these dumb posts as I still desperately need help.
As many of you may or may not know, I’ve been struggling a lot these past few months with my government, benefits and trying to keep my home and it is thanks to so many wonderful and caring individuals (one in particular) that I was able to pay my rent on time and avoid the prospect of homelessness, as well as pay a vast majority of my overdue bills, which have continuously built up in arrears over the past few months due to myself having no income.
However, a few of my bills such as my Gas (pictured) and Electricity have remained unpaid and I desperately need help to keep them on until I am due a full U.C payment at the end of October. I know that I have asked this a lot these past few months and all the help I have previously received has literally helped me from spiraling into more debt and helped me to eat and stay warm so far and I absolutely hate to ask for more help but I have no one else to turn to or any belonging to sell and due to a PayPal charge-back (pictured), I’m now back in the red and can’t even afford to buy more groceries/supplies.
If anyone could spare any amount to help me, even if it’s just £1/$1/€1, it would literally save my life and, sharing definitely helps just as much as donations. Nobody has to donate if they can’t or don’t want to, I know we’re all struggling. Thank you for your help 💖
Report his ass to the dean of the department and possibly the president of the college. They are legally required to provide any reasonable accommodation. If the college takes his side… media loves stories like this and if you don’t mind being in the spotlight a bit can be very effective in ensuring he has his own logic applied to him. No one is special in the eyes of the law either.
This is extremely illegal and needs to be reported!
The steps above arenot wrong, but speaking as someone who works in academia (grad student, I teach and TA a lot and have a lot of experience with this kind of thing), you probably want your first step to be the department head and/or the director of undergraduate studies in the department. (Unless the professor *is* that person, then go straight to the dean.) Department heads typically give a quicker response. Expediency is key here- this guy needs to shape up before midterm grade times. Also, if this is a class in your major, tell the director of undergraduate studies that Professor X’s hostility is making you reconsider. Part of the DUGS’s job is to retain majors, and if they’re any good at their job, they’ll be willing to help you.
You also might want to approach the dean of students rather than the academic dean; the dean of students’ job within the US university system is to make sure that students are represented and taken care of. They tend to act more swiftly than academic deans and have more resources.
In this case, I would suggest not asking your disability resources center (or whatever your college calls it) to step in, as unfortunately, he probably won’t take them seriously. For professors who bungle accommodations, they’re an excellent first step, but for professors who try that “nobody’s special” bullshit, it’s unlikely he’ll respect their authority.
Because… he knows what he’s doing is illegal. He knows. There’s no way your college’s human resources and ethics departments don’t make every single one of their faculty members go through an annual compliance training. Title IX, responsibilities under the ADA, and the university’s own ethics code of conduct- there’s no way he hasn’t been made to sign off on knowing the rules. The likely situation here is that he just doesn’t care because he’s ableist and (wrongly) thinks his class is soooo important that he can circumvent the law.
First off, this is not a political post. This is a scam awareness post. Hopefully people help spread the message, considering this is US Voter Registration Day according to today’s Google doodle. You also don’t have to spread this entire post to be helpful, just the two links at the end. I apologize it’s long, it could be as short as “don’t use TurboVote, they give your information to multiple partners who bolster their company value with it, FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, IGNORE THE TWITTER NOTIFICATION YOU WILL RECEIVE.”
But I also don’t want it to appear as some low-effort grab for attention. This is the kind of thing that needs lots of proof and explanation. People are exploiting the current political environment to scam young Internet users into giving away swathes of personal information to access services that shouldn’t require anything more than a ZIP code.
This one is particularly bad.
Because it will affect millions.
This evening, I got an odd sponsored post on my Twitter feed. It appeared as so:
I’ve seen sponsored links like this before. A large corporation like Twitter would create expedited guides to help their users participate in their national elections, but would also collect this information for figuring out voter behavior and trends. These would then be offered to the political parties so they know where to focus their efforts better. It’s a pretty basic business.
But the thing that caught my attention was that upon following the link, I was immediately asked to fill out personal information.
The landing page takes you here:
“After all, we’re going to be friends.”
Somebody actually approved that copy. Because that’s not creepy or anything.
Already, they are asking for your first and last name. Note that online registration for voting is legal in 39 states, so the first check should be to confirm if the user is even able to utilize the service. Also, to help direct me to a verified site that would be able to process my voting application, it wouldn’t need to know my first or last name, it would just need to know what State I resided in.
The next page gets worse.
I cropped out a lot of text in between, but basically, the next page doesn’t waste any time asking for even more personal direct methods of contacting me. Probably for “special offers” and “updates” from sponsored candidates and action committees buying their way into my inbox.
They’ll surely ask for my State to get the actual process underway, yes?
Nope. Next page is just me confirming that I am a live and active recipient of their “services.” Note they already have my name and Email/phone number, so selecting “Yes” would automatically put me on their recipient list to be pestered. But what’s interesting is if you select “No/I’m Not Sure”…
Hey, there’s the State pull-down menu! But it’s with…ehh, a lot of very personal information that’s definitely not needed to verify if I’m eligible to vote, or to redirect me to an official government source to actually register.
Let’s put in some fake credentials. Note I’ve been using a browser with cleared cache and incognito mode, so it can’t siphon off my browsing history to circumvent my trickery. I am also using a VPN, so they can’t figure out my location either.
Now I’m very concerned.
So I’m not filling in an application at all. As speculated. I’m just giving a whole bunch of extraneous information, and after giving them my name, my phone number, my Email, my street address, and my current voting status, I’m simply provided with links to the actual government resources and registration page.
I’ll register online.
I get kicked back to the landing page. The link does not work. Everything I sent in just returns me to a “null” subdomain.
Alright so this is very suspicious. Who the heck even are these guys? Let’s check the privacy policy.
Confirmation that they do store all the information you sent them. However, they assure that it’s not sold.
They also claim that their partners do not sell the information either, and they are only given that information simply to perform the services they use.
Unfortunately…
What curious findings have we here?
Basically, the company is not going to delete its databases of user information if they’re purchased by another entity. Not even the entire company, just a “division or subsidiary” of the company, like the “database of their collected addresses and user names” division.
Don’t be fooled.
TurboVote is exploiting National Voter Registration Day to data mine you. They claim neither they nor their partners sell user information, but they do collect it, store it, and they will hand it over if an interested party decides to purchase it. Not TurboVote directly, but their “partners” will. They accumulate it, all the while saying they aren’t selling it, and what’s deceptive is they’re telling the truth, it’s not being sold. That is…until they put themselves up for sale, and use that gigantic address book to bolster their company value through the roof.
You don’t have to do this. They do not need your home address to relay you to your registration form. They don’t need to keep your information stored on file. They don’t need your name, your voting eligibility, your party affiliation…any of that information. DO NOT give your personal information to third-party “voter assistance” scams like this. It’s absolutely abhorrent that Twitter is sending mass notifications to people to use this data mining service, when there are plenty of simple non-committal websites already in existence to provide you the services you need.
And remember. Please vote. If you’re confused about ballot measures and local election information without the hyperbolic nonsense blasting out of the TV ads, and wish there was some sort of Ballot-type Wikipedia site out there, Ballotopedia is a fantastic source that lays out all the information you need for every ballot out there. Even you, Mr. Ezekiel Zebadiah Abraham of Muttonbutt County, Kentuckabama, they’ll even have comprehensive guides to help justify re-electing Officer Fuzzwhistle The Cat for his fifth term as mayor.
Again, I’m fully aware this is such a long post. Hopefully this helps you guys figure out how to get involved in the legislative process, and moreso, provides you the links necessary to give actual help to others without compromising their security. You don’t have to send them this post (please don’t, it’s gigantic), just the alternate site suggested at the end.
Thanks.
Hey, Twitter, this is how the Russians get their info.
Kelston Boys’ High School perform a massive haka in honour of the new Maori carving on campus
I live for this
This is the first recording of a Haka I’ve seen that manages to capture even a fraction of the true energy of it. And it’s because there’s so many of them that those boys would have been shaking the ground.
Seeing these boys in their modern uniforms and jackets and backpacks that say NIKE, participating in this ancient ritual, really just drives home what people mean when they say “I am not a costume.” The clothes here are not important. The energy and participation are important.
willowfoot 