And actually, I believe there’s a study that even fake plants like plastic plants, like if you like houseplants, but you just really have a black thumb, you could maybe get some of the same stress relief from bringing in some faux greenery.
I actually remember hearing about that study. I always find it funny how easy the brain is to trick with some of this stuff.
which is to deliberately slow down the elevators.
Aaaand I spoke too soon. Oh well.
There are others as well.
This particular example about the stairs is also particularly nice in that it frees up the elevators for the people who need them.
it feels like we keep forgetting that we’re actually animals, and we have to keep learning that.
Love this quote. Speaks a lot to a potential false dichotomy we perceive between humanity and nature.
We know that improving ventilation can improve our cognitive performance, and could improve student learning in schools
This is really interesting. I wonder how the science works there? Is it a chemical thing in the air itself, or like more of a psychological mood thing? I wonder.
so cooking and cleaning are the big ones that are known to generate these big spikes in air pollution.
Huh, another thing I've never really stopped to consider. It makes sense, though, that all these chemical products could be changing the makeup of the air in our homes
so it seems to be this unique ecosystem.
I LOVE thinking of a dishwasher as its own tiny ecosystem. That's such a twist on how we typically think of ecosystems, but it totally makes sense that such a strange and 'unnatural' environment would give rise to equally unique species.
We spend roughly 90% of our time indoors,
Wonder what sample this statistic is coming from. I'd imagine this actually changes drastically across the world, depending on where you live, what your profession is, and how developed your area is.
An unmistakable irony creeps vinelike through Olmsted’s landscape theory: It takes a lot of artifice to create convincing “natural” scenery.
I totally called it in that earlier annotation. For the record.
But seriously, this concept is incredibly interesting to me; the effort that goes into feigned naturalness. It's perhaps a strange comparison, but it makes me think of how social media influencers will spend hours setting up the perfect picture in order to make it look perfectly natural and casual. Or one of my favorite Robert Pattinson quotes: "In this shot, I remember I had a piece of wire in the collar. So it could look rumpled however you want it. The most intense form of pretentious dishevelment I've ever seen in my life."
“be a ground which invites, encourages & facilitates movement.”
I love this quote. The way a space can encourage certain behaviors like that, in this case just by being a wide-open field with space to move. The park gives the citygoer permission to let loose and enjoy themself.
He developed a series of rules that he would follow in his subsequent projects,
Kind of ironic that he had to develop a set of regulations and guidelines for how to artificially create a natural-feeling setting...
This view began to change in the early 19th century when Alexander von Humboldt wrote about the natural world with a sense of wonder and delight
I didn't actually know that kind of pastoral, naturalist writing was so (relatively) recent. By now, the framing of nature as 'good' and manmade structure as 'bad' is practically mainstream.
century and a half ago, city dwellers in search of fresh air and rural pastures visited graveyards. It was a bad arrangement.
This opening paragraph is extremely funny to me because my parents LOVE to visit cemeteries for pleasure and tourism. Whenever we're on vacation, they always feel the need to stop by cemeteries and just look at all the graves. We even had a picnic in one once that I vividly remember, so part of me wonders if there isn't just some innate human desire to hang out in cemeteries. Also extremely possible that my parents are just very strange.
n undesirable encounter(a blacksmith, a woman carrying an empty leather bag, shouts or a quarrel,a deformed being
Even just this list of 'undesirable encounters' says a lot. What do they have against blacksmiths?
The dark, nocturnal, low.er part of the house, the place for things thata�e damp, green or raw - J ars of water placed on the benches on eithersIde of the stable entrance or next to the . wall of darkness, wood, greenfodder - and also the pl.a�e. for natural bemgs .- oxen and cows, donkeysand mules - .natural actIvItIes - sleep, sexual mtercourse, childbirth, andalso death - IS opP?sed to the lig.ht-filled, noble, upper part. This is thepl�ce for human bemgs and �speclally th� guest, for fire and things madewIth fir�, such as the lamp, kItchen utensIls, the nfle - the attribute of themale pomt of honour (nif) which protects female honour (h 'urma) - andthe loom, the symbol of all protection.
This notion of the separation of the house based on the relative dignity of the activities that happen there is a very interesting prospect to me. Makes me think of how many houses I've been in where the living room is utterly pristine and the garage is a total mess; different areas held to different standards and expectations on a level somewhat removed from pure functionality.
The homology between sleep and death is explicitly stated in theprecept that on going to bed one should first lie for a moment on one'sright side and then on one's left, because the first position is that of thedead in the tomb.
This is so grim. I can't even imagine living my life in such a way that I bother going to sleep in a position that would be easier to bury should I die in my sleep. It's an enlightening glimpse into the perspective of the people who live here
he master beam(asalas alemmas, a masculine term) which extends the protection of themale part of the house to the female part, is explicitly identified with themaster of the house, whereas the main pillar, a forked tree trunk (thigejdith,a feminine term), On which it rests, is identified with the wife (accordingto Maunier the Beni Khellili call it Masauda, a feminine fi rst name meaning'the happy one'), and their interlocking symbolizes sexual unionrepresented in the wall paintings, in the form of the union of the beamand the pillar, by two superimposed forked shapes (Devulder 1 95 1 ).
I'm sorry but this is the most heterosexual thing I have read in a very long time. What does this even mean. Well; I understand the conceit here, but the ascribing of masculinity and femininity to support beams is just such a strange derivation of the social construct of gender. It's incomprehensible for me to think of the world under that sort of absolute distinction between man and woman, where the two categories encompass so much more than mere gender.
Conversely, a number of ritual acts aimto ensure the 'filling' of the house, such as those that consist of castingthe remains of a marriage lamp (whose shape re p resents sexual union andwhich plays a part in most fertility rites) into the foundations, after firstsacrificing an animal; or of making the bride sit on a leather bag full ofgrain, on first entering the house.
This text never ceases to fascinate me with how it drops some of the most insane strings of words I've ever read like it's completely normal. Lamps represent sex and are used in fertility rituals. The 'remains' of these (after melting...? not sure) are infused into the foundation of the house after sacrificing an animal. Sure, okay. The bride squats on a bag of grain when she comes into the house. Why not? It's just...so utterly far removed from any sense of modern western living, it's very interesting.
In contrast to man'swork, which is performed outdoors, woman's work is ess,entially obscureand hidden ('God conceals it') : 'Inside the house, woman IS always on themove, she bustles like a fly in the whey ; outside the house, nothing ofher work is seen, ' Two very similar sayings define woman's estate as thatof one who can know no other abode than the tomb : 'Your house is yourtomb ' ; 'Woman has but two dwellings, the house and the tomb. '
There's a real dichotomy in how the woman's relationship to the home is talked about here: in one sense, the home is the world of the woman, where she holds power and control; and in the other sense, the home is the woman's prison, confining and limiting her. Obviously this is old hat in modern feminist discourse, but seeing it laid out so blatantly in this text is interesting.
“If you want to minimize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2070 you might want to accelerate the burning of coal in India today,”
This is a really interesting thought; even in our own county, we rely on less 'green' solutions in order to keep the lights on long enough to draw up the solar panel blueprints. Just a shame that under capitalism that ends up giving the fossil fuel industries a hell of a lot of power to lobby against that technology ever being implemented on a wide scale, even if it's totally ready to go.
But it’s not the case that “we’re putting our own survival in danger” through extinctions, as Elizabeth Kolbert claimed in her book, Sixth Extinction. As tragic as animal extinctions are, they do not threaten human civilization. If we want to save endangered species, we need to do so because we care about wildlife for spiritual, ethical, or aesthetic reasons, not survival ones.
This is something I've actually wondered about a lot with regard to wildlife preservation, and so it's piquing my interest seeing this here. I'm all for taking measures to prevent extinction—especially since abnormal population decline in one species can lead to further complications within an ecosystem—but I've always wondered if that would affect humanity itself very much, or if we're reached an epoch of technological development that separates our own longevity from that of the wildlife around us. We obviously need food, but it's not like we go out into the forest to hunt for wild boars; it's all done through farming, and cows living in a fenced-in pasture aren't going to be affected by changes in the local ecosystem out beyond the property lines. I don't know, it's interesting to think about, especially in a course like this where we look at the interplay between our own constructed environments and the natural environments around us.
What about “mass migration”? “The majority of resultant population movements tend to occur within the borders of affected countries," says IPCC.
I mostly agree that the XR spokesman's response to that question was, academically speaking, complete bullshit, but I think this paragraph is missing the point as well. What does it matter if the migration is international or intranational? Wouldn't either be demonstrative of certain areas of the globe becoming unihabitable? Obviously whether that can be attributed to climate change is a separate question, as stated in the previous paragraph, but I don't get the point of 'correcting' this bit in particular.
Clueless clime change believers keep telling me it’s a global change so that doesn’t mean anything, but I LIVE ON THE GLOBE,
The fact that I've actually heard this, though... this article is like, making me realize how HARD some people are to satirize, because they've already crossed the point of total comic absurdity.
What’s more likely; that human industrial activity actually does lead to climate change, or that it’s all a massive meticulous centuries-long ruse to convince people that leaving Earth is a good idea?
God, this is so real, though. The depths of conspiracy that people will go to in order to confirm their pre-held beliefs. Climate change deniers are really just the tip of the ice burg (ha), but once you get into flat earthers and QANON stuff it's really quite appalling what people are willing to believe, and how wrapped up they can get in these warped models of reality.
due to widespread agricultural collapse brought about by climate change
The fact that the 'counterexamples' and 'fake science' claims are backed up by links to actual non-satire articles are a nice touch. Really highlights the discrepancy in factual evidence and data between the two sides.
A “sheet”, of “ice”? What’s next; “garlic bread”?
I just love this bit of satire. The implication that this guy thinks garlic bread is a hyperbolic example of Stuff That Doesn't Exist. Maybe the climate change deniers are mad because they live a world without garlic bread.