speedrunning is playing video games as quickly as possible. sounds simple right? but speedrunning as a whole has turned into an ENORMOUS source of charity money. speedrunning events are some of the largest charity events in the world, raising tens of millions of dollars for charities like the prevent cancer foundation and doctors without borders.
So, there’s apparently research coming out now about microplastics being found in people’s bloodstreams and the possible negative effects of that and I feel the need to get out ahead of the wave of corporate sponsored “be sure to recycle your bottles!” or “ban glitter!” campaigns and remind everyone:
It’s fishing nets. It’s fishing nets. It is overwhelming fishing nets It always has been fishing nets. Unless regulations are changed, it will continue to be fishing nets.
The plastic in the ocean in largely discarded nets from industrial fishing. The microplastics are the result of these nets breaking down. The “trash islands” are also, you guessed it. Mostly fishing nets and other discarded fishing industry equipment.
Do not allow them to continue to twist the story. Do not come after disabled people who require single use plastics. Do not come after people using glitter in art projects and makeup. These things make up a negligible amount of the issue compared to corporate waste, specifically in the fishing industry. Do not let them shift the blame to the individual so they can continue to destroy the planet and our bodies without regulation.
Industries are incredibly resistant to taking responsibility for their own waste, to the point where “consumers are responsible for industrial waste” is somehow considered a sensible, ethical, worthy sentence.
It is actually perfectly reasonable to say that “industries are responsible for industrial waste” and “the effects of industry can, should and must be fixed by industry” and “Industry can, should and must be held responsible for its impacts on the commons, such as air, water, oceans and land.”
Do you know how much ocean plastic waste is straws?
Something like 0.0007%.
IT’S NOT EVEN ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF A PERCENT.
But they want you to hate the disabled people who need safe and bendable and sanitary plastic straws in order to be able to drink. So you won’t notice the 70+% that’s fishing nets.
i hate seeing people now making fun of those who care about privacy online. i’ve seen people saying things like “well they already have your data. what are companies going to do with it” and it’s like, that’s not the point. it’s that companies /shouldn’t/ be able to have my data and sell it. am i aware they probably already have my data? yes, absolutely. but i’m still going to try and keep them from monetizing it any further, why are we defending companies selling data they shouldn’t have to begin with though?
adding this to the post because, 100%, just there’s a fire doesn’t mean you should pour gasoline on it
The Very Hungry Rust Monster is a mini-comic I made a few years back. I’ve seen it floating around Tumblr without attribution recently, so I’ve uploaded a higher-resolution version, properly credited.
Fandom Wikia runs off a FREE open-source software known as MediaWiki, it’s the same thing Wikipedia, Bulbapedia, and many others use.
This means that you can host your own wiki, or use any other wiki farm such as Miraheze, which is what the wiki I help run uses.
The best part about WikiMedia is that something made on one wiki can be cross-compatible with another. We often use and base our templates off of other wikis, and it makes it somewhat easier to transfer from FANDOM if necessary.
Stop FANDOM’s monopoly over wikis, they’ll stab you in the back as soon as it’s a choice between the user or profits.
I was going to just leave this in the tags but no, I’ve seen too many people misunderstand this and it’s very simple and easy to explain so I don’t know why anyone who shares this fun fact doesn’t use this analogy.
so if you took a few leaves and threw them into a blender and pulverize them to as fine a paste that you could they would still be green. this is because chlorophyll has a green PIGMENT in it. now I can’t speak to the base color of blue jay feathers so we’re just going to talk about blue macaws for this example. If you went and put a Blue macaw feather in a blender and pulverized it to the finest powder that you could you would get black powder. this is because blue macaw feathers have black pigment in them, but they reflect blue light because of a microscopic bubble texture on the surface.
to explain it further, have you ever seen one of those little rainbow hologram things? like how they’ll put a holographic Crystal or sparkle pattern on like a Pokemon card?
yeah that motherfucker, if you tried to scrape the top layer of this card off to get the hologram “pigment”, you wouldn’t get bubkis. in fact if you scrape the top of this card very lightly, the yellow part would still stay yellow because it’s yellow because it is PIGMENTED, but the hologram where you scratch it will stop being holographic. now it will still have the pigment underneath it because that is pigmented but the rainbow effect comes from a TEXTURE on the top.
you could even put these kind of holograms on chocolate, are you following? it’s a texture!
it’s the same reason that bubbles are rainbow colored despite being too thin to see pigment in them.
IT’S A TEXTUREEEEEEE!!!
blue pigment will always be blue, you can crush up a Rose and use the Rose goop to color something else the color of that Rose! leaves, bones, clay, rocks!! that’s pigment! disturbing its structure will not change the color because its a PIGMENT!!!
but a blue macaw? a pigeon’s neck? a raven’s feathers? and a blue jay apparently? that’s a texture.
“yeah that’s how color works” NO!! bubbles are clear!!! they just happen to have a broad spectrum iridescent TEXTURE, and some bird feathers have a short spectrum of iridescence.
