i keep a small deck of cards hidden on my person at all times so that in the event someone attempts to rob me i can quickly gamble myself into destitution before they take my money
You gotta be really publicly passionate about things if you want your friends to text you. Bc people will forget to text you because they’re human. But if you’re really openly the friend who loves identifying ants your friends will think of you when they see ants. And they’ll text you “what ant is this [blurry photo]”. And then they’ll ask you how you’ve been and we should get coffee sometime. But if they don’t know what you love they’ll never know what you like
And then when the ant convention is in town they’ll be like dude… we should go to the ant convention. But they would never think to go if they didn’t know u loved ants
My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.
Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.
Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.
And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.
What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.
Supporting your local food bank doesn’t just help your community — it helps the planet.
From the article:
Their metrics showed that — in addition to providing over 1.7 billion meals to 40 million people in need globally — food banks also diverted an estimated 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
By intercepting unspoiled food destined for the landfill, and redistributing food from local farms and wholesale produce markets, the 2023 report offered evidence that community-led solutions to addressing global hunger can also help protect the globe itself.
“Nearly a third of the world’s food is lost or wasted at the post-harvest, retail, and consumer levels, never reaching the people who need it,” the GFN team wrote in the report.
“Food loss and waste proves costly for producers, takes up space in landfills, and emits harmful greenhouse gases, intensifying climate change.”
Reading this was one of those "oh duh!" moments for me. Despite being aware that food systems and food waste are major sources of emissions, I had mentally placed food banks in a "addressing non environmental problems" category. But of course, food banks make our food system more efficient and less wasteful by making the most out of the food we have already produced.
This is just another example of so many of our problems being connected. Donating to a food bank doesn't just address food insecurity, it's also a powerful force for reducing food waste and carbon emissions.
🚨Note to USAmericans!🚨 the food waste diversion and associated emission reductions described in this article come from the Global Foodbanking Network, which does NOT include the USA. Here's a screenshot from the referenced FY2024 Annual report:
If you are a USAmerican, keep reading to learn how donating food or money to your local food bank may NOT necessarily result in food waste diversion and GHG emission reductions:
Firstly, the GFN 2024 annual report attributes the 1.8 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions avoided to the recovery of partially-harvested or unharvested produce directly from farms and agricultural sites. The emissions can happen when farmers don't fully harvest a crop due to inefficient or insufficient harvesting techniques, or when food wholesale prices are so low that it would be more expensive to harvest and sell than to simply leave it to rot. Here's another screenshot from the GFN report:
In the US, the practice of rural community members going out and collecting what was left behind is known as gleaning, and is just one of many acquisition methods that US food banks and other charitable food assistance agencies use today.
Secondly, let's talk real quick about the food bank model and the evolution of emergency food networks in the US. Food stamps, or essentially government-issued waivers to US citizens to purchase groceries from retail settings, were introduced during the Great Depression as a means to alleviate systemic hunger and economically support farmers and grocers through hard times.
In the 80's, Reagan said fuck that, slashed the food stamps program and shifted the social responsibility for addressing food security onto charitable giving organizations. The notable thing about this shift is that non-profits are under no legal obligation to equitably reach all members of their service areas. In this way, Reagan appeased a lot of racists following the Civil Rights movement in limiting the pathways by which US taxpayer dollars could ever conceivably reach Black Americans, not just those receiving food stamps but also those who would accept the food stamps, like Black farmers and grocers who served primarily Black communities.
The food bank model thus arose from this ugly mapping of the trickle-down economic model onto food-focused charity. Like all big non-profits, US food banks become businesses of their own, and use their entrenchment to outcompete other food-focused non-profits and programming. You can read this link below for more details:
Charitable emergency food programs, like food banks and soup kitchens are essential — but are they the best way to address food security?
Personally, I know my local food bank to be a bully and a funding and donation hog that other food rescue and food assistance changemakers in the region have found to be downright combative. A guy in Northern California anecdotally told me that his local food bank lobbied strongly against farm-to-school proposals brought to his city, arguing that the city would get more bang for their buck simply donating more to them.
Here is the distribution offered in the last annual report of my local food bank. Let's start from the largest to smallest sourcing methods.
"Donated" can mean a lot of things. It can be the misordered food that a grocery donates because they cannot sell what they didn't order, or it can mean food drives by community members who purchase those donations right off the shelves of that same grocery store. Only the former could considered an emission-avoiding rescue, as grocery stores typically throw out what they can't sell. In the case of my food bank, donated produce grown from the bank's garden project would probably fall within the "donated" category. While locally grown produce doesn't necessarily have a lower carbon footprint, it can be logistically simpler than conventional agriculture to deliver and therefore reduce the emissions associated with the transportation of donated foods from farm to table.
Purchasing agreements between food banks, the USDA, and farmers can also be extremely beneficial to small-scale, urban, and underrepresented farmers and provide some much-needed revenue to those farmers dedicated to paying fair wages and implementing less intensive and ecologically disruptive cultivation practices. This is the wisdom behind my state's Local Food Purchasing Assistance (LFPA) program, which got axed this year due to federal budget cuts to the USDA. Indeed, Trump's USDA has been pretty committed to only serving large-scale farmers and conventional commercial farms, which are predominantly owned and operated by white Americans. Oh yeah, and food banks in my state are getting fucked under USDA budget cuts, so that green portion of the chart above is basically going to be reduced to a sliver this year.
So that leaves purchasing from cheap food retailers. You know that post that sometimes goes around about how food banks would much rather you donate money than food? That is because they can purchase cheap food in bulk! Food banks are customers, not opponents, of the same industry that forces produce wholesale prices so low that poor farmers around the world sometimes cannot afford to harvest, the same market where grocery stores engage in wasteful business models that cannot accommodate misordered or misshapen foods.
Finally, I regret to inform you that the bulk of emissions associated with food waste in the US come from landfills, not farm waste left on-site. Food banks at best have nothing to do with this end-of-life stage of food stuffs, and at worst contribute to consumer and household food waste. Again, this is anecdotal, but I've seen a lot of discarded food bank donations because the homeless and housing insecure communities I work with don't want that shit. This was again the advantage that food stamps has over food banks: people have a choice in what they get to eat. SNAP-Ed was also created specifically to invest USDA funding into educating people on how to prepare meals from commonly donated items, but oops! Wouldn't you know it, SNAP-Ed is shutting down this year. Food banks impose fewer options, which I suspect dooms a lot of the food they distribute to the landfill, and bully out alternative food assistance programming that may focus on supporting farmers or empowering affected communities with more choices in how they feed themselves.
TL;DR, your local food bank probably has the most experience and reach in your community, and can probably get the most bang for your donated buck. But they want to maintain this relationship that offers no way out for anyone to the dysfunctional, inequitable reality of the US industrial food complex. You want my advice? Donate to Food Rescue US branch or donate your time to your local Food Rescue branch. Don't have one? Make one! It's actually kinda easy to start a branch, provided you can find enough retired ladies with SUVs in your area. If you don't want to license the software, you can just steal from their model and go have conversations with local food chains and retailers yourself to schedule deliveries to local shelters, low-income housing complexes, community-run pantries, schools, and anywhere else you can find an agency serving a food-insecure population. Start a facebook or signal group for small-scale food rescues. You can look those up local pantries and donation-accepting entities near you using Ample Harvest:
AmpleHarvest.org enables backyard gardeners like you to donate your surplus harvest to a nearby food pantry to help end hunger and food wast
Also, join a CSA, or go to farmers markets more. I know they've kinda got a millennial yuppy reputation, but I promise you, it's money well spent to invest in local growers and grocers, and without a doubt reduces the carbon footprint of your diet by shortening the distance that produce has to travel to get to you.
the mercedes clr incident at le mans is one of the only racing crashes i feel comfortable laughing at because a) nobody was seriously injured and b) it is a little funny that mercedes watched their car do That and were like "okay. uh. you know what we're just never doing le mans ever again"
for anyone wondering why this happened the short answer is that the driver was using a racing technique called drafting where you drive directly behind a car. the car pushes air around you and creates a slipstream enabling you to go faster. unfortunately this also gets rid of your front downforce which doesn't usually result in the car doing THAT, but the way the CLR's body was constructed, with its dramatic overhangs and short wheelbase, made it very unstable and extremely sensitive to aerodynamic changes
the idea that predators and abusers are an ontological category of person, rather than everyone having the capacity to be predatory and abusive, leads to people having no regard for boundaries because they think that predation only comes from evil people ™
Mayor Mamdani Announces "OPEN for Small Business," Over 50 Reforms to Slash Red Tape and Increase Support for Small Businesses
notably, this is about removing a second superfluous permit specific to ice cream and related foods—vendors are still beholden to the usual requirements and permits for food service, so there's not a food safety risk being introduced here
This is what “cutting red tape” *should* mean. Getting rid of or updating superfluous laws, working with impacting communities, and making changes with a clear goal in mind (other than “rich people get richer”)
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
jimmyeatworldofficial
titsay
