The Lilypad is where rich, smart people will live after we all drown. It’s basically a self-sufficient, artificial, floating island capable of supporting about 50,000 people. The point is that when water levels rise and everything’s drowning, these self-contained buoyant cities will float happily and peacefully until, I dunno, people start having babies and they have to kick the fat kids off.

What the hell? That’s actually a pretty mean-spirited take on a neat idea, I’m just in a bad mood. The “hills” are housing with plants growing on them, and the thing is apparently energy-negative- it actually creates more than it uses, so the non-flooded pockets of Road Warrior-esque humanity that remain could, like, still get cable. If Los Angeles weren’t underwater. Mostly I just can’t help but think that me and most of my friends would not be invited onto a Lilypad in the event of a major ecological disaster, and so I’m making mean jokes rather than explore its actual merits, in the hope that someone will read this and offer me an apartment on board out of guilt.

How about we look at something way more pleasant- tree drawing! These are paintings done by trees. It’s not like the elephant paintings, though. There are no pockets of sentient trees hanging out by Isengard sketching landscapes in their spare time. Instead there’s a British artist who affixed a huge number of pens to the branches of trees, placed a canvas in their path, and let wind and weather work with weeping willows to create art. Which is honestly kind of neater. Because I’m scared of sentient plants. There’s no way to know what they’re thinking, but it’s obvious from the necessity of the Lilypad that they’re pissed.

Anyway, it’s likely that they’re gonna make the artist, Tim Knowles, unfathomably rich. And maybe even so famous and revered, he gets offered a spot on the Lilypad. Which I’ve decided works just like the underground caves in Deep Impact, where people were selected to survive based on their qualifications.

Finally, Jean Grae is not retired. She’s just pissed. And who can blame her? Apparently the sort of treatment she’s been getting at her label has included them deciding that her song “My Story”, about the abortion she had when she was sixteen, needed a video. Which is fine, except that they sent her their treatment for the idea, in which they tagged on a happy ending, and she asked them to please not make it. Instead of considering her point, they decided to re-cast the protagonist and shoot an autobiographical song about her abortion called “My Story” without her. They also wrenched control of the “Love Thirst” video from her, and released it in a half-finished state with their own edits. Which also happens, yeah, but it does start to look like a pattern of disrespect to a female MC, and one that might not have happened to a dude.

For beef nerds, she neither defends nor blames Talib Kweli (who runs the Warner Brothers imprint she’s signed to) when pushed, but reading between the lines, she’s probably not all that pleased with him.