Bevendre
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Solar energy that doesn’t block the view
A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface. And, according to Richard Lunt of MSU’s College of Engineering, the key word is “transparent.”
[read more at MSU] [paper] [picture credit: Yimu Zhao]
(via imagesc)
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you are not the only one
“No Timmy, there’s no such thing as monsters.”
*Dead of night*
“BRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH, TTIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” -
Sometimes I think I’d be a bad parent because I’d put a baby monitor in my child’s room, and make demonic noises in the dead of night. Then I think it would be funny.
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THIS MAN HAS ALS, AND HIS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH. THEN IT’LL MAKE YOU CRY
The video begins humorously as Anthony Carbajal, a photographer, dresses up in a neon bikini top and soaps up a car before being doused with ice water.
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wow. *slow clap* finally one of these I can get behind.
seriously guys, just donate and stop wasting water
it’s effecting the planet.
I also love deadmau5’s response to this
“Indeed, there are many ways to look at the math. If it’s 5 million gallons of water wasted so far in three weeks, that’s a tiny amount compared to the 320 gallons of water used by an American household per day. Then, given 117,538,000 households according to the last census, that’s 37,612,160,000 gallons used in one day. Five million out of more than 37.5 billion gallons equals about .01 percent.
That’s literally close to nothing.” -thewire
"While the monetary donations are absolutely incredible. The visibility that this disease is getting as a result of the challenge is truly invaluable. People who have never before heard of ALS are now engaged in the fight to find treatments and a cure for ALS.” -io9
“As of Thursday, August 21, The ALS Association has received $41.8 million in donations compared to $2.1 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 21). These donations have come from existing donors and 739,275 new donors to The Association. ” -alsa
Bolding the part of this post I agree with and pasting over my reaction to another thing saying the ice challenge is bad.
“I don’t see how ice negatively effects the environment. It puts water that would otherwise be digested and turned into waste into your backyards, clean where it can be evaporated into part of the water life cycle again. Unless you are in an area currently experiencing a drought I fail to see the negative side.I also don’t see how it negatively effects the charity? Most people are doing the ice part to call out their friends and family, while also donating money to the charity themselves. Ergo more people hear about the charity more money gets sent in and people use social media to continue what is essentially a free ad campaign for the charity.”
That’s kind of what’s been bugging me about the backlash to this challenge. From elementary school we are taught that water cannot be ‘wasted’ in the long run. It may be moved from a place where it is plentiful to a place where it is scarce, and vice versa, but it isn’t wasted. Conservation of mass, energy, and the water cycle kind of rules that out.
Meanwhile, the challenge is bringing a lot of attention, and a fair bit of money to a good cause. -
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Hello everyone who corrected me, now I can correct YOU
Sorry for correcting you before mime…
You win.
I respect your reality but substitute my own where gifs are not peanut butter.
If there is any one constant in linguistics, it’s that there will never be a single absolute pronunciation of any word in any language.
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A patreon request for fabuleuxosity of Queen Vaspira Fabulicious, and Princess Cicala.
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In regards to complaints I’ve seen regarding not only my own work, but those of others I can say only one thing: Trust the writer.
If a character’s actions seem out of place and shocking to the viewer, there is a reason for it, especially when the viewer is shown the story from a character’s perspective.
If a character’s actions seem out of nowhere and sudden to the viewer, there is a reason for it. A story does not have to be told from A->B->C and so on, and they rarely are. Just because something seems sudden doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been established, or won’t be expanded upon down the road.
Patience. Answers come in time for those willing to wait. For those who don’t wish to wait, that’s their choice. If they are insulted, or upset by the story, then that’s a consequence that the writer should have, or has anticipated. Writers weave words to guide readers into certain states, be it joy, anger, sorrow, shock, etc. Writers understand that people might not like where they’ve been led, and may leave. However, knowing that doesn’t make seeing it any easier. -
That's why my currently nonexistent request was meant to influence rather than compromise. It was a request for you to Understand how much it hurts to see the main character of a children's show get turned into the equivalent of Hitler. A request to feel empathy for the people you accused of being ignorant. The same people that unfollowed you because they had their buckets of respect for you and Celestia kicked to the curb for the purpose of story development. I wanted to prevent that!
And I didn’t. I wanted to expand the views of people, to offer a different perspective of a character that is portrayed very one dimensionally and shallowly. If someone loses respect for the decisions that a writer or artist employs in their work in regards to a single aspect to the point of no longer wishing to follow what they do, despite calling themselves fans, then they didn’t have a lot of respect to begin with.
I am sorry if I come off as blunt or cruel, but it’s the way things are. Some people want to see a favorite character in the same light over and over again. That’s fine for them. However, no character, real imagined contrived or historical should be seen only in one light. As Ruuqo and others have pointed out, that aspect is a cornerstone of the creative community: seeing characters in different lights. It is everywhere on tumblr and outside of tumblr. That it is such speaks to the depth of the characters involved, namely in that they are flexible and elastic enough to be taken differently without fully breaking character.
If a character cannot be taken out of their comfort zone and be portrayed in a different light from the established norm, then they are a flat character. Moreso, they are a bad character. I don’t like Celestia as a character because she is generally portrayed as ‘good’'just’ and 'kind’ no matter the circumstance, when that isn’t the case in canon. I have chosen to portray her, following aspects established in canon, as less than ideal for those she does not govern.You say that I have made her the equivalent of Hitler, and to a point you’re right. Both proved very apt leaders of their own subjects/people. Both were celebrated in their own lands and in the wider world (Hitler was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year at one point). Both believed that a particular group were inferior to them. Both held prejudices, and made dire mistakes based off of said prejudices. They are alike in many regards, good and bad. That is not a bad thing as it gives depth and variation to a character that is generally more plot device than character, and for those that don’t study history as much gives perspective to a person brushed aside as a monster (for good reason). The good doesn’t invalidate the bad, nor does the bad override the good. They both exist, and they should both be acknowledged, even if one doesn’t like it.
If I accuse someone of being ignorant, then it is not because they are stupid, or blind, but because they refuse to see things differently. Ignorance is not the lack of knowledge or insight, but the lack of desire to seek more than one has and knows. You are not ignorant because you do not know something, or don’t see something in such a way, but because you refuse to acknowledge that things are different from what you have known. It is not an insult, it is a recommendation and an invitation to expand your views.
Expecting one’s influence or recommendation to sway another’s work to be closer to what you want is ignorance. It ignores the creator’s desires, plans, efforts, etc. to relay their views and visions in preference of the audiences’. It prevents or discourages one’s views to be shared, for them to reinforce or change the views and minds of others, when that is the creator’s intent. Artists, writers, sculptors, musicians, etc. do not create for the sake of perpetuating the desires of the masses, but to add their desires and ideas to the cultural pool. Withholding the creator’s ability to do that by expecting them to follow what you want them to do with their work is ignorance, and I have no qualms about pointing that out.
I am very sorry if this went on too long, or came off as demeaning or insulting, but it’s something that needs to be said not just about my story or blog or anything that I do, but about the creative community as a whole. If you truly have respect for an artist of any medium, but you don’t like something that they did, you don’t tell them to change it or fix it; you wait and see how they finish it off. If you can’t do that, you don’t show respect, you show ignorance. -
I don’t see how portraying a different side of Celestia is any different to when people portray the mane 6 as murdering, psychotic lunatics. This is more canonically believable than cupcakes (for example) ever was.
“But Celestia iz teh perfect good pony princess!”
Granted, she shot first in the encounter with Chrysalis, justified though it was, and banished her sister to the moon for 1,000 years.
“Nightmare Moon deserved it!”
The conflict took place in a flashback that we have no reason to believe took longer than it was portrayed, so 5 minutes tops. Luna went from disgruntled sister, to angry alicorn, to moon marking in 5 minutes.Yes, she attacked first. Yes, she made a distinct threat. However, there was little to no attempt at negotiation, diplomacy or anything resembling reason or deterrence. It was ‘you shot at me and chased me around, you get 1,000 years moon-dungeon’ and that was the end of the story. Worse yet, that was the reaction to her own flesh and blood sister whom she had grown up with and shared, sort of, power.
It flumoxes me that people can think that Celestia will instantly sit down and calmly talk things out with a force that is clearly perceived as threatening or different when much of what we see in canon goes against that. Should she? Yes. Will she? Experience says no, unless they’re ponies and they pose no challenge to the established order.
All that aside, I agree. This is tumblr and a community of wildly different iterations and interpretations of canon characters, many of which are not supported at all by their canonical counterparts. That’s what makes things so fun in this community. You’ll see a lot of the same ideas repeated over and over again, but you’ll also see fresh new takes that challenge your perception of a character, or an idea. That’s what I try to do, and what many many others do very well. If people don’t like it, they can be happy in their own sheltered, secluded little pocket of the internet but even then they’ll eventually have to come to understand that if a character is only seen or understood one way, or from a single angle then they are boring. Safe, and boring.
