ALT

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.

They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.

So its that easy huh

Of course it is

Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.

Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)

Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).

What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….

Nobody else has any excuse.

honestly, the sheer rage most other Americans experience when I tell them we used to have VASTLY more public transit in this country than we do now gives me hope for the future

like. hey. Nashvillians (where I grew up):

did you know you had STREETCARS from 1889 to 1941? this photo is from 1930

please channel the anger you are now feeling into letters to your representatives

thank you

Aren't you wondering why we got rid of them?

I, personally, don't wonder because I already know! auto lobbyists fucking everyone else over, especially working-class people (and/or people of color). as you said in your tag, racism! also classism. also corporate greed. also, it must be admitted, just a bit of People Getting Overly Excited About New Technologies as cars became more cheaply available in the mid-20th century

me as a mom

i feel like it needs to be said that this is a quote from carly rae jepsen

TIL The Double Empathy Problem theory suggests social difficulties experienced by autistic people when interacting with non-autistic people are due to reciprocal differences, not an inherent deficiency, most autistic people are able to display good social reciprocity with most other autistic people

via reddit.com

okay but the BEST part of the first study discussed (conducted by an autistic person!) Is that it shows that while easy, calm, mutual communication and social interaction is often more natural between two autistic people than it is between an autistic person and a non-autistic person, it is ALSO like this when an autistic person encounters a non-autistic person who imitates the autistic individual’s behaviours- neurotypical parents copying autistic children’s play, for example, apparently receive more positive engagement from their child- which is SERIOUSLY FUCKING IMPORTANT and VERY VERY GOOD because it is, once again, scientific evidence that bullshit like aversion therapy and enforced conformance and FUCKING “quiet hands” aren’t “”“”“solutions to the autism problem”“”“” and that “”“”“problems”“”“ with autism don’t stem from BEING autistic, but rather, from how NON AUSTISTIC PEOPLE TREAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

IE, once again, there is nothing bad or wrong about being autistic

As my mom put it when she got sick of listening to acquaintance “A” whine about how autistic person “B” they both knew ‘really lacks communication skills’ and ‘doesn’t really understand other people’ (B has excellent but specific communication skills, and merely refuses to engage in ‘polite’ but ultimately unhelpful social behavior), and how frustrating it was for A, as a ‘professional communications advisior’ and self-described empath, to work with B:

“Well if YOU’RE so goddamn good at communication and empathy, why don’t YOU learn to how to communicate and empathize with HER instead?”

#My theory is that the Non-autistic people who whine the most about autistic communication#Are ALSO people with terrible terrible communication skills in general#who rely heavily on a lot of the ‘polite’ behaviors of non-autists to carry the conversation like ‘making educated guesses on what you mean#and ‘ignoring rude offand comments in favor of finishing this conversation’#whether they’re aware of it or not#and when they meet an autistic person who doesn’t do those conversation-carrying behaviors in favor of conversational clarity#it’s really frustrating for the low-skills person to suddenly have to pick up the conversational slack#And you get people like A who project their communication insecurites onto the Autistic and ND people around them#Instead of like#actually adjusting their communication styles or learning new skills

nono youre right dont hide

Captions shouldn't be censored. If the video says fuck or cum or cunt the captions should say the fucking word.

Unless it's a slur! No one needs to see that.

If they say a slur in the video, the captions should reflect it. The disabled are not little babies who have to have life sanitized for them.

okay but I feel like ur forgetting that slurs don't just apply to the disabled... children don't need to be seeing the n-word or other racial slurs??

but children DO need to be hearing it? are you actually reading the post here?

Here's how it works when subtitles are done properly:

Audio: Let's BEEP go!
Subtitle: Let's (censor tone) go!

Audio: Let's fucking go!
Subtitle: Let's fucking go!

Removing swears and slurs from the subtitles without removing it from the audio is implying that deaf/HoH people need babying, unlike their hearing friends and family sitting right next to them. Which is frustrating.

The point of subtitles is to give the same experience to everyone watching, regardless of ability—not to be a more palatable version of what's being said.

The purpose of subtitles/captions is to be accurate, that's all.

this reminds me of the moral outrage around slurs in books. pretending slurs don’t exist doesn’t erase them

westley in the princess bride was so funny for being like ‘talk about this dead guy you loved lol’ and getting the tea about himself

oh he was ur true love? you thought he was hot n strong? rate him 1-10 and why

Community Season 2 Episode 15: Early 21st Century Romanticism 

*Sidenote: the librarian mentioning Nickolas Nickelby was a reference to how the main character in the book befriends a physically and mentally disabled person who is beat up by his colleagues and suffers as an outcast until he’s sheltered by the friendship of Nickelby.

ALT

WIN !

why win?

The original release date was 9 months after atsv which was a.) impossible to achieve b.) even trying to reach that date would be extremely traumatic for the workers

The "delayed indefinitely" just means it's delayed for an unknown amount of time, due to the strikes. Since the voice actors and other staff are incapable of working on the movie until the strikes are finished

passports…should not expire

actually i have decided that passports shouldn’t exist at all

ALT

ALT

i love it here

Me when I'm about to do a terrorism but I am stopped by a cop asking for my passport

Originally posted by r4cs0