Blossom-raven - Raven

this is my favourite thing ever

江ノ電。

🎶🎵YOURE OUT OF TOUCH! IM OUT OF TIMEEEEE🎶🎵

my most controversial ship? heh...the Thomas W Lawson

Вот такая Элегантная леди отрисовалась у меня на первую комишку!! 🤲❤️🤍

А я спешу сообщить вам, что слоты еще остались! А я умею рисовать не только камнедевочек👁👁

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This is the Elegant Lady that I drew for my first commission!! 🤲❤️🤍

And I hasten to inform you that there are still slots left! And I can draw not only stone girls👁👁

The world islands in Dubai are a perfect example of that kind of pointless construction project bc they do, now, have a commercial resort operating. One commercial project. Open after fourteen years. Another remains in construction. Other than that there's a house...for display, to entice people to buy an island, and a house they gave away to someone

Here's a helpful Wikipedia map of everything on the islands

(tourism puff pieces about this place are fun bc they'll list EIGHT things you can do at the World Islands! And then in the text admit all eight are on one single island out of 200+ bc that's the only one with anything on it)

When they were announced people had a lot of knee-jerk criticism about the horrible environmental impact, and how they would inevitably sink/erode, and all of that shallow, immediate criticism was absolutely true.

The bigger miscalculation is that they were trying to cater to people with private island money. But people with private island money can afford to travel the actual world, and not have to build a fake one on a tiny island. People with private island money tend to like having islands that are actually private, and not islands that are packed in tightly in a dense thicket of identical private islands, not in the open seas but just in a city's bay.

Compare those Chinese theme parks that replicate world monuments. Window of the World etc. People mock those, but they're hugely popular, in part bc of the innate human love of kitschy bullshit, but also bc your average Chinese citizen is not ever going to be able to travel to every landmark in the world. Your average local in any country will never have the resources or time for that. By comparison the type of person being courted by those islands has summer houses at every landmark in the world

The websites for the World can't even make a clear sales pitch bc afaik they were all bought ages ago & the owners are sitting on them. They can't even go "hey, billionaire, come buy an island!" bc it's owned by some tourism company since 2007. One of the first stories about it I saw interviewed some Irish company that bought the Ireland island to turn into a Ireland-themed resort, held up as an example of what's possible, and a year later they gave up, and just held onto the Irish island forever while it eroded away as part of a multi-billion dollar chain of untouched eroding artificial ghost islands

These are the images they use to promote it. This is what they feel is the "good side" that will entice people

wip

one elf cigarette, husbanded carefully, can burn for 3 or 4 human generations. my boy your great grandpappy bummed this ciggie from the leaf-crowned prince of the splendid dales and it has burned on the mantle of our house ever since. on your 14th nameday, my son, you will puff it at last, and become a man