fireflies lighting up a rural Pennsylvania field at dusk
As a european i sometimes forget furefkied are actually real and not american folklore/cryptids. Like you’ve got friendly little bugs that glow in the dark….. b r uh
in case europeans were worried: we love them very much! even tho they’re clumsy and slow and sometimes bump into you, no one swats fireflies here, or takes them for granted. even grownups sometimes reach out in the summer and gently catch a firefly for a minute before letting it go.
By “reach out” that’s meant quite literally–you just kinda. Stick your hand in their flight path and they land on you and will sit on your hand for a bit. Sometimes if you’re just walking or standing outside while they’re active you have to shoo them off you because they’ll just. Sit on you.
They’re harmless and very pretty and it’s always a treat to see because they’re out for a relatively short time each year.
Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler when subjected to sunlight or other light sources. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80% to 90% of sunlight and can’t make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.
In comparison, the world’s whitest paint reflects 98.1% of solar heat away from its surface.
Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.
Using this formulation to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet could result in a cooling power of 10 kilowatts, more powerful than the air conditioners used by most houses. At SXSW, researchers demonstrated the effects of the difference with two model barns sitting under direct halogen lights: one painted in commercial paint and one in Purdue’s white paint. Judges were able to compare thermometers reading the barns’ internal temperatures and to feel the difference in the roofs. The barn painted in Purdue’s technology consistently held cooler internal temperatures by 8-10 degrees Fahrenheit. The “whitest white” barn roof was also much cooler to the touch, prompting many surprised responses from judges and viewers.
While Ruan’s original paint formula is massively efficient, it required a layer 0.4 millimeters thick to achieve subambient radiant cooling. The newer, thinner formulation can achieve similar cooling with a layer just 0.15 millimeters thick.
The new paint also incorporates voids of air, which make it highly porous. This lower density, together with the thinness, provides another huge benefit: reduced weight. The newer paint weighs 80% less than the original paint yet achieves nearly identical solar reflectance – 97.9%, compared to the original formula’s 98.1%.
This could be an important piece in fighting global warming. Imagine if the city of New York City repainted all the skyscraper roofs with a paint that cools down buildings.
London-based student Lewis Hornby is a grandson on a mission. When he noticed that his dementia-afflicted grandmother was having trouble staying hydrated, he came up with Jelly Drops—bite-sized pods of edible water that look just like tasty treats.
Each of these colorful “candies” is made up of mostly water, with gelling agents and electrolytes making up just 10% of their composition. Available in a rainbow of colors and presented in packaging reminiscent of a box of chocolates, Jelly Drops are an easy and engaging way to avoid dehydration—a common problem for those suffering from degenerative neurological diseases.
“It is very easy for people with dementia to become dehydrated,” he explains. “Many no longer feel thirst, don’t know how to quench thirst, or don’t have the dexterity to drink.” With this in mind, Hornby set out to find a solution. In addition to seeking advice from psychologists and doctors, he opted to “experience” life with dementia himself through the use of virtual reality tools and a week in a care home.
Once he was familiar with what dementia patients need, he brainstormed what they want. “From my observations, people with dementia find eating much easier than drinking. Even still, it can be difficult to engage and encourage them to eat. I found the best way to overcome this is to offer them a treat! This format excites people with dementia, they instantly recognize it and know how to interact with it.”
Case in point? Hornby’s own grandmother’s reaction: “When first offered, grandma ate seven Jelly Drops in 10 minutes, the equivalent to a cup full of water—something that would usually take hours and require much more assistance.”
Second of all, I’d like to remind everyone that Jell-o counts as a fluid.
That is, many doctors prescript Jell-o, and Gelatin treats to children and adults who, for whatever reason, have trouble keeping hydrated. Maybe they have jaw issues. Maybe dementia, or they are on a fluid-only diet and drinking broth for weeks is mind-boggling boring.
Jell-o brand in particular has a lot of sugar added to the packets, however it’s quite straightforward to buy plain gelatin and make low-sugar jelly blobs to snack on for that sweet fruit-pop of hydration.
Soo~ Here we goooo~
2 cups juice – Orange juice, grape juice, whatever you want.
Fuck, you could even use your favorite blend of tea, or coffee (though coffee,
in my experience, needs a little more gelatin to set properly)
Low heat until juice is hot, but before it starts to boil – once
you see a bit of bubbles rising, add 2 tablespoons gelatin, and stir gelatin into hot
juice until totally dissolved.
Turn off heat
Add another cup and a half of juice (or whatever), stir for
another minute or so, then pour into a mold.
You could pour it into ice cube trays, a Tupperware container,
or any sort of silicone candy mold.
Cover it, stick in the fridge overnight, and viola~
Bite-sized taste snacks, full of water.
Gelatin is broken down very easily and put to use once in
your gut, so it’s fine to eat loads of it, and otherwise you’re just taking mouthfuls of juice… or tea or
whatever.
If you want it a bit more sweet, feel free to add sugar or honey to your hot juice… or hot…whatever…
I was pondering about the guy’s electrolytes worked and now I’m paralyzed with the idea of turning Gatorade into jell-o.
Don’t use pineapple juice for this!!! The enzymes break down the gelatin and you’ll be left with soup.
Right on, forgot about that! Kiwi, Pineapple, Figs, Ginger, Guava, and Papaya have an enzyme that flips the bird to gelatin.
Apple, Grape, Strawberries, Orange, Cherries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Lemons, Peaches, Raspberries, and Cranberries all make great gelatin snacks, though.
i firmly believe that information like this needs to be shared, especially in any situation where the future is brought into question. as someone who’s grandfather had advanced dementia, i know first hand how difficult and devastating this can be.
seeing inventions like this come into existence is uplifting!
~ mod abalone ~
reblogging for both this amazing inventor’s story, and for the DIY alternative that anyone who struggles with hydration needs can utilize.
WHOA. Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the US, now credits BIDENOMICS for producing an “unexpected surge” in our economy & says this Bidenomics is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure.” Bidenomics is working. We must shout this from the rooftops.
One of the greatest cons the Republicans ever pulled on the American people is convincing them that their “pro-business,” anti-regulation, tax-cutting, trickle-down economic policies are better for the national economy than are Democratic policies.
It’s about time the financial sector acknowledged that the economy is almost ALWAYS better under Democratic administrations.
For instance, according to a Feb. 2, 2021 article by David Leonhardt in The New York Times:
A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones. It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. It’s true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a president’s policies affect the economy only after a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office. The gap “holds almost regardless of how you define success,” two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, write. They describe it as “startlingly large.”
Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades. If anything, that period (which is based on data availability) is too kind to Republicans, because it excludes the portion of the Great Depression that happened on Herbert Hoover’s watch.
After eliminating some possible explanations for this data, Leonhardt concludes:
That leaves one broad possibility with a good amount of supporting evidence: Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.
Duh! Like with nearly everything else in Democratic administrations, the Democrats pay attention to the conclusions of experts in various fields, rather than creating policies based on ideology.
Republican administrations tend to do the opposite. And with the ascension of Trump they in fact devalue (and often demonize) expert opinion and science and promote their own crackpot theories instead.
THIS is a very important message that Democrats have to get the American people to pay attention to.
Republican economic policies are evident in poor Southern red states.
Democratic economic policies are evident in wealthy Northeast and West Coast blue states.
If you use Google Docs for your writing, I highly encourage you to download your work, delete it from Google Docs, and transfer it to a different program/site, unless you want AI to start leeching off your hard work!!!
I personally have switched to Libre Office, but there are many different options. I recommend checking out r/degoogle for options.
Please reblog to spread the word!!
Crypt Pad can be an option too!
I don’t use Docs very much at all, but this looks like a good moment to take a sweep through my account and delete anything that’s in there.
not joking I would kind of like to brutally murder whoever thought it was a good idea to take away clicking on a person’s name to see their reblog and make it borderline impossible to get to the original version of a post without spending ten minutes scrolling with ctrl f
Helpful tip:
If you have the post date option turned on you can click the date and it will take it to the original post like before. It’s annoying, unintuitive, and harder to click but it should work on mobile or desktop
this is the most ridiculous possible workaround thank you SO much tumblr user suffusionofyellow for sharing
Hi there! I obsess over tv, books, and movies. I knit like a crazy knitting thing, and I used to do chemistry for a living. Don't be surprised to find all that - and more! - here.
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