yknow, when i started dabbling in gardening, I was like "what is the point of hostas? they are Boring. they are just Leaves. Who cares"
but now???? friend hosta. beloved friend hosta who can always be relied upon. they do not give a single fuck about how you treat them. I just propagated one of my hostas by walking up to it, ripping off a stalk close to the ground, shoving it in some potting soil, and dumping water on it every other day or so. that was two weeks ago. It's sprouting its first and second new leaf because it does not give a fuck.
Sun? Shade? the hosta does not give a fuck. Soil type? Does not care. Hardiness zone? fuckin MOST of them. Water needs? It won't flop over dramatically if it goes without for a while. And they come in all sorts of goddamn sizes and different colors and leaf shapes and some are stripy and some have frilly-edged leaves. You just stick them in the ground and forget about them and come back two weeks later to find them straight up vibing.
The UK is mostly on its way out of a heatwave. You probably heard about it, from Brits going "holy shit this is fucking awful" to non-Brits either living in or visiting Britain during the heatwave going "yeah they're not kidding this hits different and by different I mean it's fucking awful."
Bear that in mind as you look at this poll.
26% of respondents want to ride the fucking rollercoaster of sleeplessness, public infrastructure collapse and care home deaths again because they didn't get enough of it first time round, and 10% just don't know, maybe it would be nice to get first degree burns from thinking about going outside again.
This is how chronically shit at comprehending the concept of heat the UK is. Hotter = better, warm weather automatically better, news about heatwaves that FUCKING KILLED PEOPLE use images of people happily sunbathing on a beach.
The last person alive in this country will die staring up at the sun in a baked void of dust and ash, and the last words from their parched, cracked throat, falling on the dead ears of the dessicated bones of their compatriots, will be "Isn't it nice out?"
Book: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin, Edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin, AA Publications / Spiral House, London, 2025; Contributors: Federico Campagna, Theo Downes-Le Guin, Daniel Heath Justice, Bhanu Kapil, Canisia Lubrin, Una McCormack, David Naimon, Nisha Ramayya, Shoshone Collective, Standard Deviation, Marilyn Strathern
Exhibition: The Word for World, Curated by Sarah Shin, Designed by Standard Deviation, AA Gallery, London, October 10, 2025 – December 6, 2025, supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
The recent hot VS cold polls have made me realise that a lot of people have no idea how to cool down.
As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:
WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!
Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.
In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.
Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.
Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.
Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.
Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.
If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.
Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.
Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.
Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.
Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.
If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.
Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.
Also keep in mind that the skinnier you are, the faster these will work. More fat means more insulation, means more heat, so you may need to be more patient with some of these or use them in combination.
Close off rooms you don't need if your house is large and all the cool air is getting too spread around from where you actually live. No doors? Get insulating curtains and spring-loaded tension rods to hang up in doorways and keep the cool air where you need it.
Once your house is as cool as the outside, turn as many fans as you have inwards in the windows to pull in a ton of cooler air-- and then shut all the windows before the day starts getting hot again. Keep windows shut and shades/blinds closed-- don't open the windows again until it's hotter outside.
Instant cold packs. Keep a few in your bag when you are out and about, then crack & apply one to the back of your neck once you can sit and rest somewhere in the shade. A frozen bottle of water is a great and reuseable cold pack to carry with you and put on the back of your neck-- wrap it in a small towel and put it in a ziploc so it doesn't melt all over your other things.
An umbrella is a parasol. A parasol paras (stops) the sol (sun). Portable shade if you have to walk around in the heat.
Get a hat with a brim and wear it, who cares if you're a hat person, keep the sun from cooking your brain and your skin.
A lightweight long sleeved shirt is sunblock. Lightweight pants, too.
Electrolyte drinks too expensive? Hydrate homemade-style: 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. sugar or honey, a splash of bottled lemon juice or coder vinegar per 16 oz. water. Bananas and oranges and watermelon are also great options.
Big bandanas are both handkerchiefs for blotting sweat and makeshift hats and sunblock for your neck/head. You can get a dozen for cheap at an army/navy or uniforms/work clothes store and online at (ptooey) amazon. And you can wet them in sinks/at water bubblers to apply cold to your skin.
If you can afford it, Mission neck gaiters really work-- wet & twist them, then wear. If you have to work outside they really do cool you down for hours.
A sunburn will raise your body temperature significantly until it heals-- don't get sunburned. Wear sunscreen or long loose clothing and a hat when outside.
The recent hot VS cold polls have made me realise that a lot of people have no idea how to cool down.
As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:
WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!
Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.
In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.
Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.
Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.
Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.
Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.
If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.
Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.
Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.
Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.
Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.
If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.
Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.
Also keep in mind that the skinnier you are, the faster these will work. More fat means more insulation, means more heat, so you may need to be more patient with some of these or use them in combination.
Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid
I’m on tour with my new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. Catch me TONIGHT (Jun 23) in TORONTO at Osler Records, and TOMORROW (Jun 24) in NYC at The Strand. After that, it’s Philly and Chicago.
The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ype6c6DdHQY
It's a weird coalition of anti-Big Tech campaigners (who are rightly angry at the platforms' callous disregard for user welfare) and Heritage Foundation-backed culture warriors (who think that if their kids aren't exposed to LGBTQ content they won't come out as queer). While there's plenty these groups disagree about, they share one consensus: there should be a "minimum age" for certain kinds of internet use.
The problem is, there's no such thing as "age verification" for the internet. What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry's commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia:
"Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!
So it's not just a weird alliance of anti-Big Tech crusaders and the conspiratorial right that's pushing for age verification – they are unwitting allies of the very tech industry they think they're fighting. Those tech industry insiders are fully aware that an "age verification" mandate is really a way for the government to teach every child how to use a VPN. They're also fully aware that the next move is to ban VPNs:
Tech bosses are the ones sitting on our shoulders saying, "Go ahead, swallow that fly – it'll be fine. And if you do have to swallow a spider afterward, well, that'll surely be the end of it":
Behind them is a long line of caliper-wielding grifters who claim they can use your phone's camera to distinguish a child who is 17 years, 364 days old from an adult who's just turned 18:
It's beyond farce. After all, whatever harms you believe the internet is inflicting on kids – and there's absolutely some kids who are being harmed by their internet use – those harms all start with surveillance. Your kids can't be targeted by algorithms without the surveillance data that's being used to target them. They can't be funneled into pro-anorexia content or extreme misogyny forums without that funnel being primed by commercial spying.
Why do tech companies spy on your kids? The same reason your dog licks its balls: because they can, and no one stops them:
America hasn't updated its consumer privacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the disclosure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the country where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, because any tax haven inevitably becomes a crime haven:
Other countries have privacy laws to varying degrees, but are grossly outmatched by US tech giants, who have fused with the Trump regime, to the extent that Trump will impose penalties on your country if you attempt to regulate his tech companies – he'll even have your top officials cut off from the internet in retaliation:
Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that's the opposite of what we're doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass "age verification" laws that make privacy illegal:
The fact that these bills have the firm backing of the tech industry's most controlling, most spying companies tells you everything you need to know about them:
Kids are being harmed by online spying, and so are the rest of us. Whether you think that the algorithm made Grampy go Qanon or you're suspicious that online surveillance data was used to deny you a loan, a job, or a lease, you should want privacy:
You can't protect kids from online surveillance by spying on them. You just can't. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to get you to swallow a fly so they can sell you a spider, a bird, a cat, and an ICE chud in a gaiter, Oakleys and plate carrier (beneath which lurks a stick-and-poke Totenkopf tattoo).
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Maybe Facebook at all signing on to this legislation should be a huge red flag for anyone who actually cares.
also, this is a conflation turning “something needs to be done about social media harming children” and “let’s erect a ID verification wall around most of the internet”
Same thing with brexit conflating “something needs to be done or things will keep getting worse” with “let’s break with our coldest trade partners”
and then pundits are suprised that people are sick of whoever is in charge.
A world where you need ID to use the internet is a world where the government gets to deny certain people from using the internet, and that as a concept should be much more frightening than people are treating it as.
