One of the side effects I did not anticipate of my nervous system being correctly calibrated by ADHD meds is seemingly years of unfelt feelings all now feeling safe enough to start purging out of me. ‘Intense’ barely covers it.
Also, the insufferable chronic pain I have felt for as long as I can remember (neck/shoulder AGONY) completely melts off me. I’ve spent years and years trying to figure it out, trying to medicate the pain, trying to out-think or out-yoga or out-eat it, I did not expect this to be what helps the most, I’d fully just resigned myself to having unexplained uncontrollable unrelievable pain forever.
Second pic is Blossom, Third pic is Harvey. :) my doggies. I wanted to have pics that showcases their unique little personalities LOL!
His name is ‘Zero’ and he’s a robot older than most civilisations and chooses to look like that. He chooses to be a weird anime vampire. Goal for this character was to channel my 16 year old self as deeply as humanly possible.
He has a snaggle tooth, and his ‘00’ model marks on his neck look a bit like vampire bites.
Can't be sincerely dark without being called edgy, can't be sincerely emotional without being called melodramatic, can't be sincerely silly without being called stupid. They're gonna hate every emotion you put in your art no matter what so make it anyway and be as sincere as you can be
I was in a car accident and the vehicle fully rolled onto the roof. I hit my head, and then endured a hellish 12 hours in the ER that broke my spirit and I still haven’t recovered. I’ve been making bracelets to stay sane.
No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.
I find it very interesting to note the times in which this post has a sudden resurgence. It often follows very stressful, upsetting events, where a lot of “REBLOG THIS OR YOU SUCK” posts start appearing on this site.
So I’ll say it again: it is okay if you come to tumblr to escape upsetting news. It is okay if you’re just here for fun and fandom. It is okay if you do not want to use your tumblr as a place to read about or spread the current events that are circulating. It is okay if you need a place to decompress and just relax. There are other ways to be involved in/support causes and you are allowed to set boundaries on social media platforms without it being indicative of your belief systems.
Your beliefs, values, ethics, and moral stances are not determined by whether or not you reblog something.
We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.
Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.
To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:
"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years...
The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse."
(New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)
So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.
The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.
Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:
-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.
How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?
I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.
(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)
Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)
Look, I'm not saying that the effects of warming aren't already bad, or won't get worse. I'm from California, I currently live in LA. My state's been on fire for half my life. Natural disasters starting amping up early here (and we're certainly in the middle of another historic number now).
But like I said, my state's been breaking horrible disaster records constantly for the past ten years. And you know what? Natural disasters have been getting more and more survivable for years, largely thanks to faster warnings and better mass communication (x).
Does it suck how many natural disasters there are now? Yeah. Are we going to need to organize and mobilize (both politically and especially community-wise) like never before to see as many people through these times as best as possible? Also yeah.
An unknown number of the most optimistic futures were foreclosed when Trump won the US election. That's painful but a reality.
But for twenty-ish of the past twenty-five years, the science said we weren't going to survive climate change at all.
For most of my life, we were worried that we had set Earth on a course to become like fucking Venus (which is, on average, well over 800 degrees Farenheit). Even if it didn't get that bad, we were so worried that global warming might wipe out all life on earth - except maybe the cockroaches. Literally, when I was a younger the kids at my church put on a play about that. It was like an adaptation of A Christmas Carol where the future only had talking cockroaches. I grew up so worried about this. (Yes it was very granola why do you ask.)
But starting a few years ago, studies have shown that there wasn't going to be a runaway greenhouse effect that could turn us into Venus; that earth is warming, yes, but we don't seem to be in danger of that.
Between that and the fact that the adoption of renewables globally is too fast to be stopped, and we do have the technology and environmental science knowledge to eventually re-lower global temperatures by getting to net negative carbon emissions (x), and most countries and at least 73% of people in all countries for which there is data (x) actually care very much about the climate, yeah, we have closed the door on the lava planet future.
And yeah, I do think that's worth celebrating.
That's a massive fucking victory.
Semi-relatedly, I also think that, given the loss of the US election, there's a really, really strong chance the developing world will be what saves us, and we'll just be lucky to be along for the ride.
Most people have no idea of the kinds of stories and statistics coming out of the developing world and Indigenous communities. The world is changing for the better on the environment, even as disasters (and the US) are getting worse. Solar power is going to revolutionize the fucking world, because it's going to grant humanity universal access to electricity, and that's going to revolutionize the world, especially the developing world (aka the global majority). And most people have no idea at all, much less how much it's going to change.
So, yeah, natural disasters are going to keep getting worse.
But there's a long, long long fucking way between "natural disasters are going to keep getting worse" and "the extinction of all of humanity and/or the vast majority of life on earth"
And yeah, I am going to celebrate that fucking difference.
Because for over twenty years, I was afraid I'd never get to.
even with new administration, there were a lot of things already approved and in the pipeline for this year.
End of 2025, we should have 10x the offshore wind as we did at end of 2024, due to one project that broke the bottleneck for building.
The bottleneck was lack of a specific type of ship operating within US. It's currently working off Virginia. The prep work for similar project off Connecticut is currently underway, and as soon as Virginia is done, that ship switches up here. And is likely fully booked through 2030 with similar items.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Intiative has been operating for 15 years, reducing co2 power plant emissions in new England and midatlantic. They did such a good job they hit their 2020 goals in 2018... and set new more aggressive ones for 2030, at least some members shooting for zero power plant emissions by 2030.
Thats 10 members, plus Virginia just joined so just starting that process Pennsylvania and North Carolina may join with next year or two, once legal challenges solved.
RGGI used model of taxing CO2 emmission via permit and permit auction money goes to direct utility assistance for low income folks, weatherization & energy efficiency to reduce demand, and green power projects.
Those green projects are all small, but lots of em. So no one big solar farm, it's 20 warehouses with solar panels. So invisible infill you don't SEE happening. But that's been chugging along for 15+ years and will keep going because it's a state, not federal, program.
Justice40 under the Biden administration prioritized historically undeserved and economically depressed areas for funding for climate resiliancy projects and green projects. It's been in place since 2017 so a lot of money assigned to it that's still working through system and all those will complete in next few years.
Trump could reprioritize how money for those programs is allocated, but it is a lot of very rural areas so he will get push back. Noooo, we need that money! And they do.
Since they're very poor and undeserved areas, it means you get a much bigger improvement vs better off areas. Swapping out a coal plant from 1940 vs one that upgraded in 1990 is a way bigger potential improvement!
The US military has been putting lots in alternate energy for last few years entirely due to security of being reliant on oil they have to get places, leaves supply lines vulnerable. So they will continue adding capacity for foreseeable future. And anybody complaining about it being "woke nonsense" can get told off about how many fuel convoys get struck in conflicts and how much better on-site solar and wind is than generator use.
So there's good things in process that likely can't be stopped. So even if us fed stopped new project funding entirely (unlikely), there's lots in process that will complete in next few years and continue building capacity.
Keep on your reps about it at the federal level, because msny will still go through. But don't forget to annoy state reps as well because they CAN keep on those smaller state projects and keep building capacity. And other states already did a lot of the work. These are proven technologies. Copy other states homework.
Thank you so much for the addition! It's super good to learn about some of these! And it's so true that there are SO MANY state and local projects underway, the vast majority of which the federal government cannot stop.
I am actually so serious I think it really messes with a childs creativity and joy to tell them to never make a mary sue OC. Like that unbridaled form of joy where you make a self insert OC who super cool and everyone loves them and they have every superpower in the world SHOULD be something a kid makes, it nourishes their ability to create things for fun and not be stifled by "oh but what if my character is too overpowered and cringey...". whatever
truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.
Admonishment to self loathing - nobody ever got better through self hate and suffering! Take the ibuprofen! Your brain is not a confessional where you are an eternal penitent! Forcing hardship upon yourself doesn't make you noble it makes you injured!
Black and red version and trans version both on my redbubble
[ID: a digital drawing of a wolf caught in a bear trap, stylized like a risograph print. There are two colourways - one in black and red, the other in pink and blue, both on a soft cream background. Text reads "Your suffering is not noble. no absolution will materialize from your pain. End ID]
from one chronically anxious person to another: the world is not going to go up in flames. What happens will be more slow, more bureaucratic, more boring. There is no catastrophe to end all catastrophes, no rapture, no sudden end. You can't give into the call of the void, because there is no void. So you just have to do the work to make tomorrow a better place, anyway. Because that's how it gets better.
#A lot of people want it to be too late#Because that means they can just throw their hands up and blame everyone else and not have to do the work anymore#But as long as there are people left it's never too late#Things will keep getting worse for a long time but if we keep working then it WILL turn around#We'll see some horrible days coming up but they will give way to a better future
