Teddy

They/them, 25 Free Palestine, Fuck Ice

[kawaichihiro]

[creatingblackcharacters]

"I've never heard of Megan Thee Stallion before" if you've ever said any variation of "Hot Girl Summer" then congratulations you've benefitted from an internationally popular Black female artist's creativity

[creatingblackcharacters]

"I thought those were just memes" yeah y'all tend to do this to a lot of things Black people create and/or do, while conveniently cutting them out in the process. You should really consider how easy it was and why that is. I do have a suggestion.

[createcore]

text edits but it’s just zac oyama quotes ദ്ദി •⩊• )

[monstrousfrogbuttocks]

Madelaine is my favourite character so far.

[joyfullyagnostic]

me updating my resume

[not-available-for-comment]

So. Storytime for guerilla gardeners and solarpunk enthusiasts. This story comes to me 3rd hand but I believe the basic shape of it is true, even if details may be off.

So there’s this guy who lives in my parents’ town. Wanted to have a pocket farm but lives on an urban lot in a small city instead because y’know jobs and stuff. He could definitely get a few raised beds in the backyard but nothing all that impressive and the front yard is on a very busy road with the expectation that it’ll look reasonably traditional (plus planting food by busy roads isn’t always a good idea).

However

After he’s lived there for a while, he realizes his neighbors are all older people who maybe have more challenges taking care of their yards than they used to. So he goes to his next door neighbor and offers a deal: I’ll mow and maintain your front yard for free if you let me knock down the fences between our backyards and plant them both with food. And you’ll get a cut of the produce.

Presumably the neighbor already knew and trusted this guy because he said yes. So he starts mowing and maintaining his and his neighbor’s front yards and planting food in their now-shared backyards. After a season or two this goes well enough that the next neighbor down the street asks if he can be in on this too.

So now there’s 3 front yards to mow and three backyards full of produce. And it keeps going from there. Dude gets a rider lawnmower and does everyone’s front yards, and meanwhile he’s maintaining an entire block’s worth of produce in the back. His yields got so high that he was able to start offering boxes of produce outside of the block’s residents too. This is how I heard of him: my parents’ next door neighbors were picking up a regular box of produce from him.

I love a couple of things about this story:

Offering to maintain people’s front yards for them allows baby boomers to feed their thirst for keeping up appearances while still getting food production into the neighborhood

As homeowners age offering services like this is legitimately good community building

BLOCK-LONG POCKET FARM

These exact circumstances might not be replicable everywhere, but I love thinking about how these principles could be applied.

[foxehrobot]

You Have More Power Than You Think You Do: A Case Study In Getting Shit Done

I don't live in a walkable city.

I live in a mid-sized Texas town that only realizes that there are people who don't drive when TXDoT gives them money for active transportation infrastructure.

People constantly tell me that you just cannot walk or ride a bike in this city. It's impossible!

I do it anyway, because I firmly believe that solarpunk is a useless aesthetic if you aren't living it as best you can. We don't need technology to solve our problems we need will.

Also I do volunteer work on the political side of the local animal shelter and so I find myself at city hall several times a year and there's no bike rack.

Or rather there wasn't a bike rack.

I complained to someone, politely, informing them that I am doing this volunteer work and I don't have any safe place to lock my bike and that locking it to a handrail is inconvenient for everyone and also hideous.

A few months later a single staple-style bike rack was installed at city hall. It's not much, but I got sent a photo of someone else who got to use it before I did, clearly there was a need, if small.

Then I turned my gaze to the local grocery store, which had a bike rack, but the bike rack was terrible. It was too short for modern tire sizes, it was placed too close to the wall so one side was useless, and it was generally pretty cramped.

It took some time, but an advocate friend told me to contact the property owner instead of banging my head against the wall contacting HEB itself, and so I sent another polite complaint with a photo, explaining why it wasn't a very good bike rack and it would be really cool if we had a different one with better placement.

And about two months later, we have new staple-style racks at the grocery store, properly placed for maximum parking.

It's not a new bike lane. It's not a removal of parking minimums. It's not infill development or an active transportation advisory board.

They're just bike racks.

But that's the beauty of it. I, a person with an email address, some basic "how to be firm but polite while making an argument" skills, and a willingness to work out who to contact, fixed two problems for the local community. Trust me, I have had people wait on me to unlock my bike so they could have the "good spot." I was not the only person annoyed at the old rack.

It can be done. You're not powerless. Solarpunk doesn't have to be a wishful aesthetic.

Technology will not save us.

We have to save us.

[bumblebeeappletree]

Because I absolutely love joan_de_art’s sustainable city series I’mma share it in one post since I see the art scattered about.

[joyfullyagnostic]

anyone know of a place to live where people don't suck and the sky isn't GREY and the ground isn't GREY and people don't suck?

[edgebug]

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

@joe-spookyy Ben and Socrates

@gooseontheinternet Chamomile and Beefy

@runawayy-rat Bartholomäus and Emo

@theunholystromboli Macrogryphosaurus, Xenoceratops, and Graciliraptor

@techlecticwtch Solas and Dorian

@merlyn-bane Roslyn and Rizzoli

@logictoinsanity Luna and Buttercup

@hagsthehag Orphie, Psyche, Calypso, Ariadne, and Eury

my sweet ladies Bonnie, Mira, An, and Tula

and of course, the irreplaceable

Neil,

who banged out the tunes

[rat-detector]

[dropoutvocalstims]

Wimples ON, Tiddies OUT!

(from new season trailer)

God idk how many times I've watched it

[itsapmseymour]

They got new photos of the moon,

I knew she had colors hiding in there 🥹

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

one thing I respect the hell out of is little kids lying down on the floor in public. they have had ENOUGH and are ready to go HOME and are willing to be a HUGE INCONVENIENCE about it. we can learn so much from them

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

still thinking about how much WORSE running errands is for kids. they aren't even your errands! sure it sucks for adults, but kids are 1) forced to tag along, 2) no personal investment in the outcome, 3) get no say on location, duration, timing. a kid stuck in a grocery store aisle while their parent gossips with an acquaintance is a Hostage Situation. at the bare minimum hostages should be allowed to lie down and get some rest

[penpaladinjules]

My oldest kid was especially intolerant of extra bullshit during errands. He wanted a list of where we were going, and would get irate about new ones being added to the list after we started. He called this rule “No Secret Trips,” with special contempt reserved for the bank.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i think your kid should be put in charge of a major government agency. i want him ruling the FDIC with an iron fist. i want him usurping total control over the Department Of Motor Vehicles

[joyfullyagnostic]

My new therapist also watches Dimension 20, so she knows what the hell I'm talking about, and so far this has been a great help in having to explain myself less laboriously.

This week she said it would be good for me to consider the question "what would Brennan Lee Mulligan do?"

This thread shall document the times I employ that.

So far, I think WWBLEEMD goes in tandem with "how hard can it be? boys do it" and "change is made by the people who show up"

[hellenhighwater]

Look if there is absolutely nothing else you take away from the nonsense I am posting, it's this: Make Art.

Make art, with whatever you have. Use scrap cardboard and tape and build something; doodle in your notebooks, make a beautiful dinner, grow a plant, write, paint your nails. Learn to whittle, to knit, to cut straight lines, to sew, to cook, to run at a problem and not solve it the first time. Learn to try again.

Make things the wrong way.

If it works, do it again, better. If it doesn't, do it again, different. Draw badly. Look at the way the light hits something and try to figure out the colors it makes. Watch the way strangers walk and how the weight of them shifts in motion.

Creating art--beautiful things, ugly things, silly things--is not something that you should be leaving to people who are better at it or can afford the expensive materials or have a deep message or whatever. Do it anyway. Do it worse, do it cheaply, do it just for the joy of doing it. The work itself has merit. The work itself is rewarding. Make art.

And pet your cat.

[joyfullyagnostic]

Watching Neverafter, episode The Last Wish

Emily does an excellent prolonged bit and the camera shows everyone grinning except Murph, who is head in hand, shoulders shaking the ENTIRE time. They are soulmates.

and then Brennan drops "the problem is not that it is difficult, but that it is hard" like ok mr philosophy I'mma have to let that one change my life I think

[forfuckssakejim]

Yeah quiet quitting is great and all but have you tried chaotic working?

Like. I remember back in my grocery store cashier days I did so much crazy shit.

When WIC (Women, infants, and children voucher program to help low income mothers/families with children) people were in my line I would pretty much know who they were. Before the cards they had to tell us upfront they were WIC and show us their vouchers for what they were allowed to get (it was awful some times. Like. 2 gallons of milk. $4 worth of vegetables etc etc). They’d always have items hanging back, waiting to see what the total was and if they would have to take it off the belt.

I began to place the fruits/vegetables a certain way on the register scale so that like 1/2lbs of grapes read as like .28lbs or something. Then act shocked when I said that they still had X amount of lbs left. They got all their fruit and vegetables.

I think it started to kinda? Catch on to the women? Because I would have the same moms in my line month after month. And even after they switched to the cards (they worked like food stamp cards?) I’d still do the same thing. They were able to get more produce for whatever shitty max amount Indiana gave them.

Anyways. Be chaotic. It’s more fun that way.

[bshmatthews]

[joyfullyagnostic]

WIMPLES ON, TITTIES OUT