Paxwingscale - Focken Screamin, Mates

At the barricades of freedom *vague sizzling of cooked meats*

i hate the "meta glasses" with their invisible cameras i hate when people record strangers just-living-their-lives i hate the culture of "it's not illegal so it's fine". people deserve to walk around the city without some nameless freak recording their faces and putting them up on the internet. like dude you don't show your own face how's that for irony huh.

i hate those "testing strangers to see if they're friendly and kind! kindness wins! kindness pays!" clickbait recordings where overwhelmingly it is young, attractive people (largely women) who are being scouted for views and free advertising . they're making you model for them and they reap the benefits. they profit now off of testing you while you fucking exist. i do not want to be fucking tested. i hate the commodification of "kindness" like dude just give random people the money, not because they fucking smiled for it. none of the people recording has any idea about the origin of the term "emotional labor" and none of us could get them to even think about it. i did not apply for this job! and you know what! i actually super am a nice person! i still don't want to be fucking recorded!

& it's so normalized that the comments are always so fucking ignorant like wow the brunette is so evil so mean so twisted just because she didn't smile at a random guy in an intersection. god forbid any person is in hiding due to an abusive situation. no, we need to see if they'll say good morning to a stranger approaching them. i am trying to walk towards my job i am not "unkind" just because i didn't notice your fucked up "social experiment". you fucking weirdo. stop doing this.

So I have been pondering this post and I'm the one who misunderstood.

Because when I first read the phrase "overgrown balconies" I immediately thought of the suburbs of cities in Thailand or Indonesia. And I thought of this:

Not this:

And I immediately went "Hey, what the fuck is wrong with plants on a balcony???" because, I won't lie, some of the plant arrays I've seen in front of houses/apartments are, as they say, goals.

The (very valid!) critique comes in for the fantasy "forest city" up there (which is also AI, for the record) and not "plants in pots on the sidewalk." So the misunderstanding is wholly on me. I think I got concerned (for lack of a better term) because I happen to really love plants on balconies and in front of buildings like the top two pictures.

Here's another picture of plants on sidewalks and balconies in the Bangkok suburbs:

And this one is from Phnom Penh, Cambodia:

The plants aren't huge, they're mostly potted, they're genuinely aesthetic (as in, they look nice, they break up the view), and growing them is feasible in the local climate. They can shade your balcony, they can provide some privacy screening, and they're just kind of neat.

Sometimes there's something planted right in the ground by a house/apartments, though not always. Sometimes someone has a fuck ton of plants but not everyone has sidewalk plants either. There are also parks and public areas and vacant lots that have plants (that's the city ecosystem), and people with larger yards plant things there, to say nothing of "weeds" and volunteer plants that just find a place and grow.

Do I think the fantasy forest city looks cool? Sure. But it's fantasy. It's sci fi. It can look as cool as it wants in an illustration or in a movie but, yeah, it's not feasible for many different reasons. And that's the difference.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NEANDERTHAL CHILD WITH DOWN'S SYNDROME? Because they're all I've been thinking about when I'm sad for the past few days. Their existence makes me less sad.