Climate Change

Jul. 13th, 2025 12:28 am
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Melting glaciers are awakening Earth's most dangerous volcanoes

As glaciers melt around the world, long-dormant volcanoes may be waking up beneath the ice. New research reveals that massive ice sheets have suppressed eruptions for thousands of years, building up underground pressure. But as that icy weight disappears, it may trigger a wave of explosive eruptions—especially in places like Antarctica. This unexpected volcanic threat not only poses regional risks but could also accelerate climate change in a dangerous feedback loop. The Earth’s hidden fire may be closer to the surface than we thought.


Somehow OH SHIT just doesn't seem like enough. O_O  I have noticed that the volcanoes seem more restless than they used to, and now wonder if this could be a contributing factor.

I'm Gonna Chow Down My Vegetables

Jul. 13th, 2025 12:10 am
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

I mentioned it being exceptional (and barely plausible) that a roller coaster might last seven minutes. We did nevertheless get on some rides that went on seven minutes or more; one even lasted at least a half-hour. This was the miniature train ride around the park, which unlike some modest amusement parks we could name (Michigan's Adventure, Cedar Point) makes a whole four stops at points along the park. This didn't give us as many views as we'd have liked of stuff from the wrong side, but it's always a pleasant kind of thing, and the sort of ride we want to get on when we have time.

Also we got on a dark ride, a boat ride this time. We'd tried to go early in the day but I think the ride was temporarily closed. Later on we saw it open again and didn't know what to expect from Het Bos van Plop, other than that the ``Bos'' thing sure sounded woods-y. And the ``Plop'' suggested something core to Plopsaland's identity. Sure enough, at the station, we saw a TV showing clips(?) from a TV show(?) with people dressed as gnomes and doing funny shenanigans that well, you can see pictures, and I'll suppose the show is what you expect from that. The ride was a fine one, a tunnel-of-love style ride in boats on the water through a lot of scenes, showing models and automata for fun effect. One point I know they had a couple figures on a carousel where the mounts were squirrels and bunnies, just in case they needed to appeal to [personal profile] bunnyhugger the more.

As you can tell I've given up writing a chronological progression of the day. No point to it, and we did a lot of walking back and forth across the park, which isn't that large. Bigger than Michigan's Adventure, probably, but better-connected so it's easier to get to different areas and different-themed areas. We would close out the day --- at only about 6 pm; European parks close crazy early --- with some rides on Heidi and then The Ride to Happiness.

I think we could have got some more rides in, but we weren't sure whether the gift shops would close when the park did at 6 pm, and we hoped for some souvenirs. Turns out they left the shops open after the closing hour, but we've been burned before. Sadly they didn't have much in T-shirts, although I was able to find something at least saying The Ride To Happiness. And we got some magnets and little things like that, including park maps.

As we left a most strange thing unfolded: outside the gate park workers gave us two small bags of baby carrots. Not just us, everybody got them. There were empty bags and partially eaten bags along the sidewalk and abandoned at the tram station. Why does the amusement park give out bags of baby carrots to people leaving for the day? I have not the faintest idea.

We used the tram to get back to our hotel and, after a while, went out looking for dinner, as our plan to eat all our meals at the amusement park didn't pan out. I had seen another kebab place that I thought might be easier to get to on our walks and suggested we try that. That place, too, wanted cash only payment so I had to backtrack a fair bit to get two €20 notes. [personal profile] bunnyhugger worried about having the excess foreign currency when we were flying home the morning after next, but I figured we were planning to spend Sunday riding the interurban up and down the Belgian coast, we'd find somewhere to spend it or most of it. (We talked a bit about going back to the amusement park for a second day, but we weren't sure there would be enough more stuff to do to justify the ticket price.)

After eating [personal profile] bunnyhugger napped for a couple hours. When she woke up she confirmed some horrible news, news comparable in badness to Nigloland's being closed.


It's time now for a pleasant discovery, a couple more Michigan's Adventure pictures.

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For some reason I was taking a lot of pictures of operators and their stations as the day went on. Here's the Zach's Zoomer operator.


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And here's ... uh ... the daily inspection card, I guess.


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Couple folks enjoying the ride. You don't think it's this fast coming out the station!


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Ride operator working the buttons of the control panel.


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Little stage set up for the Halloween event. We would actually see it in use this year!


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And here's just some unused landscape at the edge of the park being let go feral. The parking lot is behind the wooden fense there.


Trivia: A February 1797 appearance of three French frigates in the harbor of Fishguard, Wales, a small fishing village, set off a demand for hard currency and account-holders withdrawing enough gold that the Bank of England had to suspend convertibility. Source: Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, Peter L Bernstein.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

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[personal profile] vik_thor
 The Week 3 Vote / Poll is now open, for LJ Idol / Wheel of Chaos.

I am not currently in the vote, since I lost the Week 1 Vote, but one of the random Twists that Gary has this season, is to bring everyone back who has been eliminated / lost the votes...

I am playing the home game (i.e. linking my entries in the WheelHouse (greenroom) posts, rather than the actual Prompt post, where Gary pulls the entries for the Polls from...

This vote is not open to just people participating in LJ Idol. You do not need a Dreamwidth account, as you can use an OpenID to log in and vote and comment.

I am going to be posting a link to this post around.



Also, Defy the MAGAt / Fakes 'news' blabberers, who are Russian mouthpieces.


Go see the Superman (2025) movie.
The #rethuglican blabbers want it to bomb (I don't think it will)
I am going to try to see it tomorrow or sometime next week...

Today's Smoothie

Jul. 12th, 2025 10:49 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup almond milk
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
3 tablespoons Bettergoods pistachio butter
a dash of cardamom

The result is off-white and on the thin side.  It tastes okay, but does not have much pistachio flavor at this stage.

The pistachio butter does have a strong pistachio flavor, but it is quite sweet; sugar is the second ingredient.  So we skipped the honey that we usually put into a nut butter smoothie.

Birdfeeding

Jul. 12th, 2025 03:27 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy, mild, and wet.  It rained earlier.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a male cardinal.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/12/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

It started drizzling again.

EDIT 7/12/25 -- I potted up 2 apricot seeds.

I picked the first ripe cucumber.  :D






.
 

Philosophical Questions: Poverty

Jul. 12th, 2025 02:36 am
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Is poverty in society inevitable?

Read more... )

Extinct Birds

Jul. 11th, 2025 11:31 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
'The Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson is on a mission to revive the world’s tallest bird, 600 years after it went extinct

Inspired by their debut project, Jackson is now working with Colossal to bring the ancient moa back to life through subfossil sourcing and genetic engineering.

On July 8, Jackson and his partner donated $15 million to the project
.


The moa is an excellent choice for de-extinction, as it died out relatively recently and due to human misbehavior.

Read more... )
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

After Heidi and all that we did get back around to K3 Roller Skater, a cute little roller coaster with the theme of ... well, I guess you're in a train of roller skates going through the clutter of a teenager's room. I don't know why ``train of roller skates'' is a model of roller coaster but it is and it's cute if odd. The high point of this particular instance is that it dives through a giant stereo speaker prop. Anything where you get nice and close to props like that does well. It's apparently themed to the Flemish girl band K3 and a tv series K3 Roller Disco so you see how this all makes sense.

Anubis: The Ride is another of their launch coasters, ones that accelerate horizontally rather than using a chain-driven lift hill for energy. It's got a pretty fancy station, one made to look like an English stately home, to fit its theme of 1910s-or-so Anglo Egyptologist who's brought back something he maybe shouldn't. Pleasant ride. What sticks out in my mind is that I made a mistake going into it dumb enough you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bit, although I think [personal profile] bunnyhugger just took me for saying something weirdly wrong in a way not worth challenging.

Outside the building was a ride sign with information about it and I pointed to one of the little squares and said this was a seven-minute ride. Which is extraordinarily long; your average roller coaster ride is two minutes, with the longest ones you'll encounter about three minutes. A seven minute ride would be something with a weird circumstance, like for some reason they have to put all the track two miles over from the station. Or they stop partway through for a show. Well, what happened is I saw the square reading '7+ min' and took it for seven minutes. If I'd paid attention to the text underneath, 'jaar/ans', I'd have correctly understood it as the minimum age requirement. But [personal profile] bunnyhugger didn't correct me, or even acknowledge this, and when I looked at other ride signs I figured out my mistake, and I confess to it here just to be honest about it.

Any attempt to count roller coasters will encounter things you're not sure should count. One that we kept looking at and ultimately rode was SuperSplash, which looked like a water roller coaster, something that starts out on a track and then splashes down to sail the rest of the way. We've ridden some like that, notably at d'Efteling. This one, we decided after seeing other people weren't getting very wet, we'd ride.

It proved to be less of a roller coaster than we imagined. We got on the train on a segment of track that proved to be on an elevator, and that rose up to the top of a tower and rode a hill down, into the water. It's gravity-driven and on a track and all, but it feels a little like a Freefall ride in terms of not quite being roller-coaster-y. The Roller Coaster Database doesn't list it, although Coaster-Count.com does. Who's correct? You have to make your decision and hope nobody demands you give a rigorous defense.


Would you like to see pictures of things at Michigan's Adventure that inspire no disagreement about whether they're roller coasters? Look on, friends.

SAM_1356.jpeg

The Corkscrew station. We invariably head for the back as the most comfortable ride; the over-the-shoulder restraints will bonk your head and from the back you get warning about which way to lean.


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The station had this penant. What the Battle Royale 2024 was we have no idea but they achieved something for it.


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Giant skeletons being prepped for their Halloween work season.


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Person on the left: 'So which way is Zach's Zoomer?'


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Ordinary picture looking up the Zach's Zoomer queue, but I like how dramatic it is. If I'd got the roofline of the building perfectly vertical I'd call this an art.


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No explanation for why those two seats were unavailable, although almost always the issue is that the restraints aren't opening right. Since Zach's Zoomer has only the one train they can't swap the train out and you wouldn't want to take the ride out of operation if you don't have to.


Trivia: The Lumière brothers' films were first shown to American audiences at the Eden Musée theater in Manhattan, located on 23rd street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. The theater closed in summer 1915.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

Today's Adventures

Jul. 11th, 2025 09:34 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we went to the Marshall Farmer's Market. It's an evening market from 6-8 PM, followed by a band concert, which is way better than a morning one.

Read more... )
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Take Us North is down to the last day or so of its campaign. If you want to participate, now is the time.

$50,976 pledged of $30,000 goal
509 backers
26 hours to go

Art

Jul. 11th, 2025 03:35 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This art workshop made a "landscape" out of loose parts for the artists to use as inspiration.  Every art room should have a generous collection of objects to mix and match like this.

Birdfeeding

Jul. 11th, 2025 02:53 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is sunny and sweltering.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a house wren.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/11/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a fox squirrel.

EDIT 7/11/25 -- Yesterday I collected 5 little pink crabapples while out and about. These are almost marble size, much more useful than the pea-sized ones. So I potted up those today to see if they'll sprout.

Bonus Fishbowl

Jul. 11th, 2025 12:38 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
There will be a bonus fishbowl on Tuesday, July 15. The theme will be "anything goes." If you want a continuation of an earlier piece, or something totally new, that doesn't fit the usual themes, then now's your chance. Brainstorm in advance and jot down ideas for later. You can also request any favorite series, character, setting, etc.

Note that our internet connection has been bad for well over a month. Sometimes it's down completely, other times things like Dreamwidth and searches won't run. So I'm losing a lot of work time and may only have access for half a day or less. Given this limitation, there's a higher chance of actually getting things written for prompts that use characters, settings, etc. that are already established.

Follow Friday 7-11-25: History

Jul. 11th, 2025 12:05 pm
ysabetwordsmith: A blue sheep holding a quill dreams of Dreamwidth (Dreamsheep)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today's theme is History.

Read more... )

Communities

Jul. 11th, 2025 04:15 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Here's a cool Dreamwidth tool: take the URL of any community and add /read to the end. It will show you posts by all the members. So for instance:

https://birdfeeding.dreamwidth.org/read

Focus

Jul. 11th, 2025 03:58 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This is why some people hate interruptions and find it hard to switch from one activity to another. It includes people with ADHD, autism, executive function disorder, post-concussion-syndrome, other cognitive issues; many introverts; and most people who spend a lot of time doing things they are bad at (e.g. a linguistically inclined person doing math, or an athletic person forced to write text). Discuss with the people in your life what kinds of interruptions are okay or not, when, and how.

Focus is broken by interruption.

Climate Change

Jul. 11th, 2025 01:00 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Bigger crops, fewer nutrients: The hidden cost of climate change

Climate change is silently sapping the nutrients from our food. A pioneering study finds that rising CO2 and higher temperatures are not only reshaping how crops grow but are also degrading their nutritional value especially in vital leafy greens like kale and spinach. This shift could spell trouble for global health, particularly in communities already facing nutritional stress. Researchers warn that while crops may grow faster, they may also become less nourishing, with fewer minerals, proteins, and antioxidants raising concerns about obesity, weakened immunity, and chronic diseases.

Read more... )
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

It's time to review my humor blog for the past week. Which, if you've seen on your Reading page or followed by whatever your RSS reader is, you know saw the end of this intense block of Robert Benchley posting. Why did it end? For one, because our very busy time from the end of May to the start of July has passed. But also? Read on and you'll see the hint I got.


And now please enjoy returning to Michigan's Adventure and the end of a regular season on another impeccably lovely day.

SAM_1333.jpeg

As always, we rode the carousel, little suspecting that the next time we rode it the ride would go ... backwards?!


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Here's [personal profile] bunnyhugger riding the fiberglass white rabbit.


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[personal profile] bunnyhugger pointed out the nice work done on painting the trappings and so I stopped and noticed that, like, yeah, that's a nice picture to put on the zebra's saddle blanket there.


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The cat, again with a bunch of nice decorations. Also a fish in its mouth because classic carvers never thought about how it was showing the mount as having killed another creature.


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Here's the tiger, and the blanket there is quite well done despite being part of the fiberglass body.


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Of course we always like seeing the sea horse. This time I paid attention to the orca on its saddle.


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Now over to Thunderhawk. There was a longer line than usual, giving me time to take a picture of the train coming out of the station and beginning the ascent of the lift hill.


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View from the station back to Wolverine Wildcat, which you'd think you could just cut across to walk to and can't. There must be something unstable about the soil that direction.


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Photograph of some of the controls of Thunderhawk, revealing that the roller coaster is a big 10CC fan! I'm surprised the station isn't playing ``I'm Not In Love''.


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Arty picture of local trees and spiderweb against the blurry background of Wolverine Wildcat. You can see the train going by in the upper right corner.


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The swan boats are an attraction on this side of the park, past the entrance to the water park, and I liked how the light came here.


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I have to assume this promises some Snoopy meet-and-greet but we never saw it.


Trivia: Otis Elevator demonstrated the world's first working escalator at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. Norton Otis, representing the company, was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. Source: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

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