Jin and fellow researchers used two key materials: Cyanobacteria, which turns air and sunlight into food, and filamentous fungi, which produce minerals that seal the cracks.
The microbes survive on just air, light, and water, and when paired together, are able to grow and produce crack-filling minerals in concrete. At least, that’s what Jin’s latest research, published in Materials Today Communications, concluded.
I was recently in one of Chicago’s more historic neighborhoods and I happened to notice that one of the museum-homes had paving brick outside with the word “Purington” on it, so I gave it a search in an idle moment and found the strange and compelling world of brick fandom. Technically most of the sites are people who salvage and resell historic brick and paving stone, but there’s a certain whiff of hyperfixation within this particular commercial niche.
Imagine paying for ninety acres of land with bricks. Imagine accepting ninety acres of land’s worth of bricks. I mean it makes sense in the era, why bother with cash when bricks will do, but like. Damn.
Also:
ALT
There’s something insanely compelling about the idea of rocking up to a freight car to start unloading bricks for the day and they’re still faintly warm. I’m not sure if it’s compelling like fresh warm bread or compelling like some kind of weird eldritch horror.
An actual brick fandom? Where the hell have they been?
Wait don’t tell me, they’ll see that I’m full of shit
I just love the Tumblr user community so much.
There’s something insanely compelling about the idea of rocking up to a freight car to start unloading bricks for the day and they’re still faintly warm.
dragons
DRAGONS LOCATED
Now I want either a) a dragon with a hoard of unique bricks or b) a dragon MADE ENTIRELY OF BRICK.
Sir Gordon: Oh my god there’s dogs everywhere. These figs are rancid. This pheasant is so raw its going to fly away. That’s not right. Why the fuck are they serving me potatoes in medieval England.
And now there’s a giant green guy in the dining room. What’s the matter with this guy? Fucking hell his head’s off, that’ll put you off your meal. At least he doesn’t have to taste the food.
Just got out of acupuncture where I actually fell asleep on the table for a bit, and turned my phone back on to a notification from TikTok, of all places, that said “Bruce Wayne posted a new video.”
And my first thought was how hard did I fall asleep.
Dry needled my third eye so hard I opened a temporal dimensional rift.
The annoying thing is I can’t find the notification again so I guess I’ll never know what the TikTok algorithm was trying to show me.
Knowing my search history it was a superbat fan edit, but still!
Just got out of acupuncture where I actually fell asleep on the table for a bit, and turned my phone back on to a notification from TikTok, of all places, that said “Bruce Wayne posted a new video.”
And my first thought was how hard did I fall asleep.
Dry needled my third eye so hard I opened a temporal dimensional rift.
Just got out of acupuncture where I actually fell asleep on the table for a bit, and turned my phone back on to a notification from TikTok, of all places, that said “Bruce Wayne posted a new video.”
And my first thought was how hard did I fall asleep.
I interrupt my travel series to share some photos from the last months of birds. This barn swallow was caught almost by accident as it headed off, coming towards us in the parking lot.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen much activity yet.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I refilled the thistle feeder.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I planted 3 pots with 12 sweet cherry seeds.
It's been drizzling on and off.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I potted up a white peach seed.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I was going to go back out, but the drizzle has increased to light rain.
EDIT 7/21/25 -- I picked 3 red cherry tomatoes and 2 blackberries.
I saw a skunk out in the yard, not on the patio, and it scrammed when it saw me. That's what I'm aiming for: we stay out of each other's way. They're welcome to the farther parts the of the yard away from the house.
Amets (pronouns, any) hasn’t always made the best choices. Profitable, sure, the best? Not so much. It was time to lay low for a bit–at least until their last ‘venture’ forgot about them and the whole sordid affair. Luckily the perfect space to hide just fell in their lap.
They’d just have to get their hands a little dirty to manage it… like, literally dirty. It was a farm.
Around 8,200 years ago, the Earth experienced a sudden climatic crash now known as the 8.2k event. Triggered by the collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and a massive outburst from Lake Agassiz, it dumped freshwater into the North Atlantic, disrupting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Temperatures dropped 1–3°C globally for over a century. Monsoon systems weakened, rainfall declined sharply in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The result: failed crops, abandoned Neolithic settlements, and major cultural shifts across regions like Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Sahara.
This gives a stark look at how even robust, resilient systems can collapse under the pressures of an unpredictable environment. Modern civilization is fragile more than resilient. And the AMOC is faltering again.
The weather has been hot and wet here. It rained again yesterday. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a pair of cardinals, a mourning dove, and a fox squirrel. I've heard red-winged blackbirds, wrens, and a woodpecker without seeing them. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, wild strawberries, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, impatiens, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, anise hyssop, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, Asiatic lilies, cucumber, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, narrow-leaf mountain mint, black-eyed Susan, yellow coneflower, wild bergamot, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, gladioli, firewheel, orange butterfly weed. Tomatillo and pepper have green fruit. Wild strawberries, mulberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers are ripe. Peas are winding down. The first crop of blackberries is done.
Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my ‘gets distracted too easily’ disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula’s castle. 👍
(I’m telling you, I could have made the goatee work! lol)
In the replies put the letter of a backstory and a pronoun set! I’ll pick the most popular ones.
THERE IS ONLY ONE LETTER CHOICE! BACKSTORY MATCHES THE SAME LETTERED LOOK!
A) The farmer was a trader, traveling the lands with wonderful wares. An leg injury took the farmer off the road, but their connections did bring word of a new venture in a small town with big mysteries.
B) The farmer has always dreamed of something more. And sure, just moving to another farm in another town wasn’t much more, but at least it was a start, right?
C) The farmer hasn’t always made the best choices. Profitable, sure, the best? Not so much. Time to lay low for a bit until their last ‘venture’ forgets about them and the whole sordid affair.
I’ll let this one 'run’ until morning or I start playing tomorrow. (Eliminated some pronouns to make the pool smaller.)
Welcome to Radio Free Monday for the week of July 21, 2025. RFM posts links to peoples’ personal fundraisers asking for community assistance, on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and the Fediverse.
Tumblr user Databuffer (Rend) is raising funds to pay their monthly bills and stay afloat. Rend has been on necessary medical leave for the severe pain in their wrists due to a 3-year-old issue, which impacts Rend’s ability to contribute toward the household bills. Read more, share, and support the fundraiser here, or donate through Ko-Fi or Paypal.
Ruth is raising funds to get her various bills paid, including medical bills from when she was recently very ill. She is also trying to raise money to undergo spinal cord stimulator surgery. Contact her via email at r.emakinster@gmail.com.
Tumblr user Chingaderita is raising funds to buy groceries, use the laundromat, refill her medications, and buy vinegar to keep cleaning the house’s black mold that her family has been living with for quite some time. Read more, share, and support the fundraiser here.
Tumblr user alirhi and her sister are homeless, living in her sister’s dead car. Alirhi is raising funds to get the car repaired and to pay for their storage unit, which contains everything that they own. Read more, share, and support the fundraiser here.
The thing I want to talk about here is not the song or its lyrics, both of which I like (and boy, who among us has not that had that same feeling at one point or another), but the final few seconds of the video, in which Beihold, at lunch with the girls, including the one who is the focus of her envy (and not coincidentally, all the attention). After watching everyone else lavish their attention on this woman, Beihold, or more accurately the character she’s playing in the video, finally gets up, goes to the woman (played by Katya Abayss), whispers to her about her envy, and leaves. And during these couple of seconds and directly afterward, we get to see the play of emotions across the enviable woman’s face.
And what are the emotions? As I see it: First, distracted as her friend comes over to say something private, pulling her away from her conversation already in progress, then confusion at the message, and then, right at the end, being upset and sad. Because the woman knows that, in this moment, she’s just lost a friend. She has no idea how, even if the now-immediately-former friend has given her the reason why. The reasons are all internal to Beihold’s character and how she feels about the other woman’s successes, personally and (apparently) professionally. This other woman is the cause of Beihold’s envy, but it’s possible and even likely that the woman had no idea that Beihold had all that going on in her head. Envy is often quiet, until it’s not.
(The other thing about envy (in the real world, at least) is that it’s often predicated on a fantasy version of someone else’s life, the part with where the fruits of their talent and/or money are evident but not the part where the human in the life still has to be a human and still has human concerns. In a world where some of the richest people in the world are very clearly desperately unhappy because (among other things) they simply don’t know how to people — and that’s in public! Imagine what it’s like in private! — there is indeed the constant reminder that money/fame/talent may solve some problems, but not all of them, and opens up a whole new set of problems that one has to deal with. High class problems! Which maybe other people think they would rather have than their own! But still problems.)
In the song and in the video, which she co-directed, Beihold the actual creative person does a fun and lively job of getting into the head of someone who has let envy finally get the best of them and stops seeing a friend as a friend and now sees them simply as a (possibly unworthy) possessor of a life they covet. But I think it’s important — and smart! — that after watching an entire video of humorous scenarios of the envying smoldering unhappiness at the envied, there are those few seconds at the end where we get to see that envy isn’t actually funny, and that it actually can hurt, not just the subject of the envy, but the object of it. Two people lose a friend in the video. Only one of them saw it coming.
July 21st, 2025: I'm in LA today to see the premiere of the Fantastic Four movie! It is my first and probably last time on a red carpet, so be sure to look for a lot of photographers saying "uh who's this guy" as I strut out!!
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