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@mula-luzon

Plant Biochemist🍵Coffee/Tea Enthusiast🍃 23 and Anxious

Just the other day I was chatting with an older woman about this exact thing. She's retired so she enjoys going on almost-daily walks around her neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods. Well she told me that it was really weird that in the newer constructions where the younger families live, EVERYONE has their blinds closed all the time. In fact she can tell a younger family lives in a house based on the simple fact of whether or not their blinds are closed in the middle of a sunny day. It's to the point where she can't even tell if they're even HOME and available for a visit to welcome them to the neighborhood!

When she said that, I realized that I do that too when I live in a more publicly visible apartment. I told her that I think it's because of the internet. Younger people feel like we're constantly being watched, observed, and JUDGED for merely existing. So when we're home, we just want to be alone, unbothered, and unobserved because it's the one place we can control that. She was very surprised to hear that I felt like that and she was VERY concerned for us young folk (and to be honest after talking with her I became pretty concerned too...)

People from her generation will have their blinds open all day, hang out on their front porch, and randomly visit/enjoy random visits from neighbors and strangers. If a stranger knocks on my door it's scary and if they want to stay and chat? It's a huge inconvenience and it feels super awkward and weird and I'm stuck wondering why exactly they're talking to me, when just a few decades ago welcoming someone new to the neighborhood was just what you did! In fact to not do so was rude!

It made me really worried that as the Panopticon sinks its teeth deeper into our psyches, we are losing the very essence of what makes us human and got us this far as a species: community. I find that being on the internet for hours a day tends to almost trick my brain into thinking "I've been social all day, my social need is full" when in reality I've only talked to one, maybe two people I know from my real life all day, and only for short bursts, not REAL conversation.

I find it hard to have the energy to invite friends to hang out, and when I want to I feel like I'm a big inconvenience for asking them to take a break from their busy lives for me (not that they would ever say that's the case, but it's this nagging feeling internally). I feel like while we used to be a series of large islands of local community, our islands splintered apart and started drifting away from each other. Now your island is just you, your immediate family, and maybe a couple close friends. Those living physically closest to you feel like they're miles away and unreachable, to the point where you might as well not even bother.

I guess I just have one question for you: Do you know the names of your next door neighbors?

That makes me think about how the rate of paranoia of being watched must be so much higher now than it used to be and must only be increasing, which is very concerning,,

So this Leia standing up which is adorable and I would have posted on Reddit to /r/catsstandingup but I haven’t really figured out Tumblr yet so is there a #catsstandingup is that what I do someone help I’m an old man

I hope it’s cool that I drew your cat

i gotta say i agree that exposing children to algorithmic content feeds is going to make them grow up with one billion new kinds of mental illnesses and it's a serious societal problem that urgently needs addressing but it makes me v. v. v. uneasy when i see posts going around that identify this issue and come to the conclusion 'this is why it's important for parents to know what their kid is doing online' and uh girls there are a lot of kids out there who would be dead if their parents knew what they were doing online

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Artist removes 1 inch off the peak of England’s highest mountain; Brits want their inch back.

It is still England’s highest mountain, but Scafell Pike is ever so slightly smaller now after an artist stole the top inch of the summit to display in a gallery.
Oscar Santillan, 34, was accused of vandalism after removing the stone pinnacle of the 3,209ft Lake District peak for an exhibition in London.
Ian Stephens, managing director of Cumbria Tourism, said: “This is taking the mickey and we want the top of our mountain back.”

I love art

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Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

Remember when NYT mocked India for this very thing and an TOI (a major indian newspaper) responded with this? :)

They were being racist asf and we were till respectful literally fuck you if you think ‘third world counties’ can’t be better than you

white people can and should reblog this

and shout out to the women engineers integral to the launch

“Indian staff from the Indian Space Research Organisation celebrate after the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft entered Mars’s orbit.

On November 5, 2013, a rocket launched toward Mars. It was India’s first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan, and a terrific gamble. Only 40 percent of missions sent to Mars by major space organizations—NASA, Russia’s, Japan’s, or China’s—had ever been a success. No space organization had succeeded on its first attempt. What’s more, India’s space organization, ISRO, had very little funding: while NASA’s Mars probe, Maven, cost $651 million, the budget for this mission was $74 million. 

This was not the only success of the mission. An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room went viral. Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees and tie flowers in their hair, and send rockets into space.”