i was ranting abt this w my wife last nite like. i think people have forgotten the whole “dont assume stuff about people based on their appearence” thing and that it also applies to people who are “straight-looking” “cis-looking” “normal-looking” etc. ultimately you dont know anything about how someone identifies or what their life is like unless they tell you, especially not at a glance. dont project your ideas onto strangers, its weird.
and like examine what the traits that mark people out as “straight and cis” to you are. is it a physical feature they have no control over? their voice? how old they are? or is the way they present? are they wearing a work uniform that leaves little room for self expression? or are they just wearing casual clothes you wouldnt consider “gay-coded”? why do you get to choose what certain clothes mean? those clothes could mean something completely different to them. assume that you know nothing.
The wildfires in Maui aren’t natural disasters, they are colonial disasters and a direct result of both the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex.
Realtors preying on property in Lahaina- while Kānaka Maoli who resided there for generations are now houseless- is a result of greed and disaster capitalism.
Citizen journalists on the ground are reporting on the devastating cost these fires have on their communities and the untold stories in the media about the tourists still actively extracting land and from already limited resources.
I didn’t want to disrupt the post about hostile architecture I saw because it’s true that the main target is homeless people but I did want to mention that this architecture also hurts people who aren’t skinny. I want to preface this all by saying I am in no way trying to minimize how this impacts people experiencing homelessness I am just trying to add on to the discussion of how these are bad.
You think that someone who can’t fit into those weird little yellow seats is going to feel comfortable? No. It will only make them feel bad or excluded.
Look at this shit. It’s not good or nice.
It only adds to the ways fat people are made feel unwelcome and though we already needed to tear this shit down because it makes life a million times worse for people experiencing homelessness and so this isn’t saying this is why you should tear it down. It is saying that our society is fatphobic and that sucks.
This isn’t a side effect, hostile architecture is designed to drive EVERYONE who’s “undesirable” from public spaces. Homeless people are the biggest targets but also disabled people, fat people, elderly people, etc. Other things, like anti-“loitering” measures and increased presence of police and security, drive out even more people, especially people of color and teenagers.
You aren’t disrupting or derailing discussions by talking about your experiences, we NEED to talk about the ways that different kinds of people are declared “unwanted” and pushed out of society.
Yeah, we no longer have “ugly laws” on paper, but in practice and architecture, we still absolutely do. If anything, we’ve gotten worse and more hostile towards “ugly” (unhoused, disabled, fat, etc) people in the past ten years- and this is exacerbated in the USA especially by the way communities are built to be car-dependent and segregated by class and race.
Can I tell y’all about the longleaf pine? Aka Pinus Palustris :D
Ranging from southern virginia down the east coast to florida and as far east as texas, the longleaf pine may have dominated as much as 90,000,000 acres.
Tough and fire-resistant, these massive trees can grow to be 500 years old. Spanning miles- these pine barrens were a major part of the southeastern ecosystem.
Today, less than 3% of those forests remain.
The longleaf pine is a evergreen conifer, growing to be 80-100 tall and a diameter of 3 feet. These pines get their name from their needles, having the longest of the eastern pines species.
The life cycle of longleaf pines is a unique one- rather than spending their first years growing in height, they instead start as a grass. This is essential to their development- they instead focus on growing their taproot- a long central root that can grow to be 12 feet long.
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This root stabilizes the trees, anchoring them down through hurricanes and helping them reach groundwater throughout droughts.
After going through the grass stage, the pines begin to grow in height- entering the bottlebrush stage. At this stage they are resistant to fire, severe windstorms, pests and drought. It is these characteristics that make longleaf pines highly resistant to the effects of climate change.
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And it’s for this reason that conservation and restoration is highly important.
Beginning during colonization, forests began being cleared to make way for agriculture and development- and the exceptional lumber was used to build ships, railroads, turpentine and tar.
These forests were replaced by commercial forests full of loblolly and slash pine.
With their tall sturdy trunks and higher canopy coverage (when compared to other pine species), I consider longleaf pines to be an excellent overstory tree in a food forest system. With the litter dropped (pine cones, pine needles, bark, branches) they are excellent for compost or mulch material. There are medicinal uses for the tree, but I’m not an herbalist so I won’t get into that. Pine resin from the tree also makes a great incense, just make sure you collect it when it’s dry.
If there was a way to run SUPER MEGA AD BLOCKER on this website I fucking would
“Please oh please open up your computer to a porn virus! If you don’t you’re evil!”
Freeloader Comin’ through!
We didn’t start this war internet users have with ads - We might have moaned about banner ads, but it was only when they started making noises when we might be listening to music or a podcast or whatever, causing two sound sorces at once, that we started trying to block ads universally rather than just a specific type of ad (pop ups).
And since then ads have gotten worse - Actual malware rather than merely breaking one of the fundamental sins of web design - though shalt not autoplay anything with sound. And the more aggressive a website is with ‘please turn off adblock’ the less I trust it to bother to vet ads and advertisers to make sure they’re not installing malware.
Not to mention that the idea that avoiding ads is “freeloading” is hilariously backward. Advertisement is a transaction between the platform and the advertiser, the user has no obligation to provide the views/clicks the platform has promised. Using an adblocker isn’t freeloading in the same way that leaving the room to get a snack during a commercial break isn’t cheating the tv network.
Ok y’all, I work as a web developer and I’m here to tell you that you are 100% right and that it’s shit. SO I’m going to tell you how to get around websites that block you from using their website if you’re using an adblocker.
Every website uses a language called JavaScript; long story short it’s a website language that allows developers to do the crazy shit you see on websites. Now the easiest thing to do is to disable JavaScript to stop them from knowing you have an adblocker:
Oh no! I’m blocked from viewing the website. It would be a terrible shame if I were able to right click and select the “inspect” feature
Click the three dots in the top right and open the “Settings” Menu
And then scrolled down to “Debugger” and checked the “Disable Javascript Option”
oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre
Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh
honestly Shakespeare would be so pleased to know his plays were nearly starting brawls centuries into the future
I played Claudio once and I fully support this
“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”
For reals, it doesn’t even have to be a whole cat.
…That sounded wrong.
Anyway, I have a neighbor who rescued a frostbitten, bedraggled little kitten with a badly injured leg, he had to have some amputations done at the vet’s and though Admiral Nelson has some battle scars, he’s the dearest, cuddliest tri-paw’d, one-eyed, half-tailed thing ever, and sure enough, the judges considered him Best in Class for his personality and demeanor. He didn’t just get a ribbon, but a little medal and he did so well at the cat show, that’s how come my neighbor decided to get him formally certified as a therapy cat. Now he has a little vest, and alternately a sort of navy uniform one with a pinned-up sleeve, and when humans are dealing with orthopedic surgery, amputations, even just being unwell in general at a rehabilitation facility where my neighbor works, they sometimes get to spend time with him and often feel quite a bit better.
There was an awkwardness when a nurse had a tuna salad sandwich at the charge desk, the Admiral decided to leave his sleeping patient and go inquire if a deserving cat might have a quick bite between watches, a different patient spotted him in his naval uniform and was worried her medication was causing hallucinations, but apart from that, the little guy does awfully good work and is a popular fellow.
On Saturday I hung out with my 84-year-old ecologist great uncle and he stopped in mid-conversation (abt the return of the whooping crane) and very seriously told me that “you can go one of two ways, as a naturalist”; either you keep sight of the hopeful possibilities, or you don’t. I’m one of nature’s wretched little pessimists but when an old ecologist literally holds your hands in his and tells you, “don’t despair,” you have to try, I feel.
I’m immune to a lot of the “hopepunk” narratives about ecology but…
The Karner Blue butterfly was extirpated from Canada the year before I was born. He donated to one of the projects to bring it back for years, and even though the project he was working on fizzled out, I told him about the branch in Toronto, still going strong. They save every lupine seed they can harvest and germinate them carefully so that in 20, 30, 40 years we might have enough habitat to bring the Blues back. He was part of the first wave of that effort.
Fuck!!!! What do you do with that kind of care? You have to at least try to believe that better things are possible!
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