#it's hotter than usual (i know that's climate change)

[scienter]

What's with all the tornados in southern New England this summer? I was under a tornado warning yesterday with a storm that spawned FOUR tornados (including EF 2). Adding these 4 tornados to the previous 4 we've had in Massachusetts this summer put us at 8. This is bizarre. We usually get 2 tornados a year. And they're usually EF 0s. What is going on?

Although, now that I think about it the bizarre weather / natural disasters have occurred all over the US this summer. Vermont was hit with biblical flooding. Hawaii was hit with apocalyptic wildfires. The southwest is dealing with record-breaking heat. There's a Category 4 Hurricane/Tropical Storm heading toward southern California. Is this all just climate change? Probably.

[jadiealissia]

Worldbuilding Countries (Part 1)

I've lived in and visited a few countries in my life, which gave me a lot of inspiration for my fantasy novel. I'm not an expert, but I thought I'd share what I learned!

Climate

The climate will most likely come up at some point. Do you mention the cool breeze, or the orange leaves on the trees? All those nice weather descriptions will depend on the climate!

If you have a couple of different countries, it may be a little weird if they all have the same climate (especially if they are far away from each other), so there's a few things you can consider to make them a bit more specific.

Climate is of course a very complicated topic, so I will simplify it a bit.

Temperature

I like to pick a real country/city and look at its temperature graphs on Wikipedia. One important thing to note is that countries aren't simply colder/warmer than one another. I know a lot of people think that a country like Russia is cold all year round, but it is actually quite warm in summer. Some areas have a larger variation between temperature throughout the year than others (normally, the closer to the equator a country is, the less variation there is. They also tend to be warmer).

Look at Singapore:

The temperatures are basically stable all year round (the letters up top are the months). The numbers are the average minimum and maximum daily temperatures. You can see that on average the variation every day is less than 10°C.

Here is Moscow:

The temperature changes quite a lot throughout the year. Note that the maximum temperatures (summer) will occur at the opposite times of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.

You can see this demonstrated in Copiapo (Chile):

This city is in the Southern hemisphere, so their coldest months are June and July :)

One thing you may have noticed is that the bars here are taller, which means that the variation for the daily min and max are higher too. Why is that? I'm simplifying it a bit, but generally, the dryer a place is, the more variation you will get in daily temperature. Which brings us to the next thing to consider:

Humidity/Precipitation

There are a few things to consider:

Rainfall. This can vary month-by-month, and due to some complicated factors, some countries have more rain in their colder months, some have more rain in their warmer months. Some places don't follow a neat pattern or stay consistent throughout the year. Have a look at climate pages on Wikipedia to get some ideas! Even just this page on Chile has a lot of cool examples. Each city is quite different!

Although of course the "wetness" of a country related to rainfall (e.g. you'd expect greener grass somewhere with more rainfall, brownish dry grass or a desert somewhere with less rainfall), it's not that simple. UK is a wet country, right? And if you've heard of Gold Coast (Australia) it seems pretty dry, right? Well, actually the Gold Coast gets twice as much precipitation (rain) as London!

To demonstrate, I took a screenshot (randomly selected street in each city) from Google Streetview.

Why this difference? I suspect it's because the Gold Coast is much hotter. Living in Australia, puddles are normally gone by the next day (often the rain even evaporates as it hits the ground!), but in UK, the puddles would always stay around for a while.

The UK is always mossy, often the clouds hang in the sky for ages. It can look quite grey. When it rains in the Gold Coast in summer, the raindrops evaporate as soon as they hit the pavement, which makes the air feel very humid and smell strongly of rain. You can use these sorts of sensory details in your stories :)

Also, one thing I noticed, is that in hotter weather, rain can be much more heavy than in colder weather. In Australia we often get heavy rain that causes flooding. In UK the rain usually dribbles all day but doesn't get heavy. In a place like the Gold Coast you can get rain that last 10 minutes but soaks you all the way through and floods the street.

The rainfall may also vary year-by-year. Australia goes through periods of floods and droughts that last a couple of years. The mechanism is a bit complicated so I won't go through it now, but it gives you something to google!

Humidity: Deserts have low humidity, which means that you can cool off more easily in the shade and the nights are colder. The breeze feels more refreshing at low humidity as your sweat evaporates.

High humidity (like Singapore) will feel much hotter at the same temperatures and it is normally still quite hot in the shade. High humidity feels really muggy, the air feels thick. The sweat doesn't evaporate as much, so you are left all wet and sticky. The breeze can feel much less refreshing because of this.

When the temperature is below freezing, the humidity gets very low, so your skin may need more moisturiser or your lips may crack.

Those are just some things to consider while describing your weather!

Generally, closer to the sea will be wetter, further inland is dryer. Have a look at some climate maps on Wikipedia, you will learn a lot! Climate is quite complicated since there are so many factors, so there's a lot you can do with it.

UV: This is one thing that people often forget about when they think about weather. In the UK, even on a very hot and sunny day, you are unlikely to get sunburnt (unless you are very pale). In Australia, you can get sunburnt very easily in even Tasmania, which is our coldest state, even when the temperatures are chilly.

You can't actually feel being sunburnt, which I fully understood when I visited Tasmania. I was freezing, but the whole time I was being sunburnt.

Normally, UV index is higher closer to the equator, which is why people who live closer to the equator tend to have darker skin. The melanin acts as protection against the sun. Still, this protection isn't perfect, so in the real world people in Africa used different methods to protect their skin, such as using clay as a "sunscreen".

Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. This is partially because most people in Australia have pale skin (originally from the UK), but the UV index is high.

This is something to consider in your story, since it can play a bigger role in behaviour than you'd expect if you live in a cold climate. In Australia, they recommend staying indoors between certain hours of the day to avoid sunburn, and if you do go out you should wear clothes that cover your skin, a wide-brimmed hat and sunscreen. Someone with very pale skin can get sunburnt in minutes. Wide-brimmed hats are compulsory at schools in Australia - you are not allowed to play if you forget your hat.

In low-UV areas, there is the opposite issue. People with darker skin can have problems getting vitamin D. Same goes for people who cover their skin with clothing (e.g. for religious reasons). However, this is a bit simpler to fix with some vitamin D supplements.

How do I use this for worldbuilding?

If you have a map of your countries, you may want to keep their location in mind when deciding on the climate :)

I like to draw up some graphs with the temperatures throughout the year for each country and some quick notes on the humidity, rainfall and UV.

You can also add some other elements to your story. Is it a fantasy? Maybe magic affects the weather! Sci-fi? You can play with the distance of the planet from the sun, axial tilt, sun size etc. (I won't go into that since it's a whole another topic and really complicated as well)

You probably don't need to know the exact details of the climate for most stories, but having a general idea will allow you to consistently describe what sorts of clothing your characters wear, the weather etc. Those are the sorts of things that comes up in almost every story (if it's long enough).

If you read this and found this useful, please reblog so I know that it was helpful. If it seems like people enjoyed this post, I will make more (I was going to talk about so much more, but this is already too long).

[ferraris-gf]

explaining f1: tyres 🛞

first post in this series (will it be a series? we’ll see)

recently i think we’ve had some particularly interesting races in terms of tyre strategy and i readied in suzuka that i don’t totally understand it all, so this has been my little research project on tyres!

pirelli

pirelli are an italian tyre manufacturer who have been supplying f1 tyres since 2011. unlike some eras of f1, pirelli is currently the exclusive supplier in the sport.

in 2022, pirelli introduced a new 18-inch (the previous being 13-inch) tyre as part of sweeping changes to the technical regulations of the sport.

compounds

pirelli’s range is currently comprised of six ‘slick’ compounds (referred to as slick because they lack the grooves of normal road tyres - this is because these grooves exist to dispel water, something necessary for road tyres but that slows down an f1 car when not necessary) tyres, along with ‘intermediates’ and full ‘wets’ to account for weather conditions.

the six slick compounds (from hardest to softest) are referred to as follows: c0, c1, c2, c3, c4 and c5. from this range, pirelli pick three to be used at each grand prix, based on the track characteristics and climate.

the highest of the set is marked red and is known as the soft, the middle marked yellow and know as the medium, with the lowest marked white and known as the hard (intermediates are green and wets are blue).

theoretically, the softs have more grip over short periods of time, making them faster and better for qualifying runs. generally, the hard and medium compounds are more favourable on race day because they last longer.

rules

on most weekends, drivers are given 13 sets of slicks, 4 intermediates and 3 wets, with a set of softs reserved for drivers who reach q3 (the final round of qualifying). all drivers must return 2 sets after each of the 3 practise sessions, meaning only 7 sets are left for qualifying and the race. drivers must also use at least two different slick compounds during the race (provided the weather is dry).

on sprint weekends, the number of dry sets are reduced to 12. after the sprint, drivers must return the set they completed the most laps on.

tyre allocation is on a per-driver basis, teammates cannot share or swap tyres. in bahrain in 2020, mercedes mistakenly put bottas’ tyres on russell’s car when attempting a double stack. the team was fined €20,000 for this.

drivers must run the same compound on all four wheels at all times.

strategy

tyre plan for the weekend is the decision of the team, generally based on information from pirelli, observed degradation over practise, the circuit and the weather forecast.

if rain is expected, teams can draw from their wet weather allocation, and so they don’t need to be as cautious with their dry weather tyres. if it’s hot, teams have to make sure they can cover plenty of tyre changes.

if track layout means overtaking is tough, teams may want a higher number of pitstops to stop drivers getting stuck behind rivals. also, if the track is walled (and so safety cars are more likely) teams may plan for more stops.

terminology

scrubbed: teams often ‘scrub in’ a set of tyres by running them briefly during practise, this means that when they are later used in the race, they warm up much faster than brand new tyres.

blistering: when the inner part of tyre heats more than the outer, creating minor explosions which damage the surface of the tyre.

graining: when the outer surface is hotter than the inside of the tyre, leading to the outside rubber flexing, breaking and sticking to the tyre.

flat spot: a patch where the surface of the tyre looses its curve. this is usually caused by a driving locking up by breaking too late, meaning the tyre scrapes along the ground.

deg or degradation: refers to a steady loss of tyre performance due to general wear.

[turtlesandfrogs]

So I was scrolling and saw this image in an article about the European heat wave,

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

"While the planet broke multiple records for average worldwide temperatures last week, a heat wave gripped northern Africa.

The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

North Africa, the Sahara desert and the Sahel, a semi-arid belt north of the Sudanian savanna, are some of the most vulnerable areas because they have larger land masses relative to the rest of the continent, meaning they tend to heat up faster. Scientists have attributed the unprecedented temperatures to a combination of human-induced climate change and the return of El Niño, a natural phenomenon that alters weather patterns.

The Sahel, for instance, has been heating at a faster pace than the global average despite being hot already. Burkina Faso and Mali, both in West Africa’s Sahel, are among countries that are set to become almost uninhabitable by 2080, if the world continues on its current trajectory, a UK university study found. Its people are especially vulnerable due to shrinking resources, such as water, and poor amenities, and a dearth of trees and parks means there are few options for places to cool off.

“People talk of climate change as if it’s a thing of the future,” said Gaye. “Climate change is already here and we see its implications in people, livelihoods, economies and even in cultures.”

While studies on heat impacts on health are limited in Africa, research published last year found that children younger than 5 years old are particularly vulnerable to the hotter weather as they are less able that adults to self-regulate their bodies’ temperatures. The authors estimated that heat-related child mortality was rising in sub-Saharan Africa due to climate change. Other researchers have named the elderly, pregnant women and people who work outdoors, as groups at risk of heat strokes or heat-related infectious diseases.

Elsewhere on the continent, the crisis is also being felt. In the Horn of Africa, at least 43,000 people died in Somalia alone last year as a result of the worst drought in four decades. A study found that global warming is changing rain patterns and bringing more heat to Somalia and some of its neighbors, for longer stretches of time. Further south, unusually destructive cyclones in 2019 claimed more than a thousand lives in Mozambique and Zimbabwe alone.

“If we continue business-as-usual, the heat is not just going to get worse, it will get much worse,” said Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla, research chair in climate change science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. “We are going to see more frequent, longer and more intense heat waves.”

Much of the continent, responsible for just 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fossil fuels, is ill-prepared for a hotter world. Meanwhile, Group of 20 nations, with air conditioning and access to functioning healthcare facilities, account for 80% of the world’s emissions.

Hundreds of millions of Africans lack electricity to even power a fan. One in three people in Africa is affected by water scarcity, according to the World Health Organization, so hydration can’t be taken for granted. Even shade is harder to come by due to widespread deforestation and land degradation. And only 40% of people on the continent are covered by early warning systems for extreme weather.

“More funds have to be allocated to climate adaptation and they need to be made more easily accessible to the most vulnerable countries,” Sylla said.

The UN climate talks later this year aspire to come up with a plan for richer nations to pay for loss and damages. But they’ve collectively fallen short of their commitment to spend $100 billion each year on projects in developing nations to cut emissions and to help them adapt.

“That’s where the issue of climate justice comes in,” said Gaye. “It’s not just that people are uncomfortable, climate change is killing them.”

[talshiargirlfriend]

Don’t mention it.

Here is an estrangement vignette that literally no one asked for.

Follows an Unnamed Disaster. Could be set between Home and Kir’Shara (or elsewhere per your imagination) Read it on ao3

Commander Tucker steps onto the bridge, the emergency lighting a glaring reminder of how much work remains to get the ship functional again. Travis Mayweather has a knitted cap pulled over his ears and a grim expression on his face as he sits in the center seat. He makes to stand, “Sir-”

Trip waves him off. “Just passing through, Travis. You hold onto the hot seat. So to speak,” he adds wryly.

Travis gives him a look. Damage across multiple systems has made maintaining any sort of climate control outside of Sickbay impossible for the time being. Engineering is hotter than the Forge while the bridge feels like Andorian spring.

“She in there?” Trip jerks his head toward the command centre.

“The Fortress of Solitude,” Travis nods with a show of his usual good humor, and Trip chuckles in appreciation.

T’Pol looks up from the array of damage and casualty reports, star charts, repair projections, and god only knows what else she’s poring over when he enters the room. Two mostly empty mugs lie neglected on one side of the table.

“Commander,” she greets him. The coral velour collar of her catsuit peeks out over the neck of her Starfleet jumpsuit. She also has a silver crew jacket layered over the top. Unlike most of the bridge crew she has chosen to forgo wearing a hat, leaving her flushed ear tips visible. The effect should be comical, but somehow she still looks compelling.

“Hey.”

“How is the captain?”

“Better,” Trip answers slowly. “Awake. And grumpy. I think Phlox might release him to quarters this afternoon just to get a bit of peace.”

They share an amused glance.

“How about you? When’s the last time you actually took a break?” He raises his eyebrows.

Her eyes dart away from his. “Ensign Sato brought me tea,” she deflects softly.

After a pause, T’Pol changes the subject, “It is warmer on this deck this morning.”

“Huh. Maybe a little.”

She looks at him sharply. “I wasn't aware Climate Control was back online.”

Trip laughs darkly, “Oh, it’s not… but I needed to vent some heat from the plasma relays on B Deck and gave it a little redirect. No sense in you freezing your ass- asses off up here. Win-win.”

T‘Pol stiffens, “I am perfectly capable of enduring–”

“I know that! I know. But it really was useful, and…” he sighs and runs a hand over his face. “Whatever we are - or aren't, I’m still gonna care about you. Maybe you shouldn't always have to endure things just because you can.”

She looks at him with those big sad eyes, and suddenly Trip is grateful for the space between them and the solid obstacle of the table to prevent him from doing something they might both regret. Or, possibly worse, might not regret.

He swallows and tries for a light tone, “Maybe it’s a human thing, but sometimes the best way to work out how to solve a problem is to think about something else for a while.”

T’Pol glances at the stacks of PADDS in front of her, then closes her eyes and nods, “I believe I understand.”

“Speaking of solving problems,” he says as he steps behind her to activate the wall screen. “I believe I've worked out how to get propulsion and sensors both back online ASAP.”

Trip talks her through his plan, having already anticipated most of her questions and objections. Arguing through all the details is second nature to them, the rhythm safe and familiar.

When she flicks back to a previous schematic, their fingers brush together.

Oxygen makes itself scarce.

Neither of them moves for a few heartbeats.

T’Pol recovers first and withdraws her hand to grasp its mate behind her back.

“Commander, this is incredibly impressive work.”

“‘Incredibly impressive’ eh? Careful, T’Pol, or people will start to think you like me,” Trip overshoots his teasing mark wildly, and it tastes like boot leather.

T’Pol wrings her hands - a gesture she has picked up from her human crewmates.

“Commander - Trip, everyone in this room already knows how I feel about you.” Her voice is as low as a whisper, weighed down by all she can’t say.

He clears his throat, but his voice still sounds hoarse, “Yeah.”

“I, uh - I should go get things moving.”

“Agreed.”

T’Pol removes her jacket and places it carefully on the back of her chair. “Trip … thank you.”

“Don't mention it.”

They don’t.

[oldguardleatherdog]

I think you're the coolest person on this website

D'awwww.. thank you for that! woofs + wags!

Today, though, I can't say that's the case - the past few days in San Francisco have been unusually warm, and today's been the worst yet: 84 degrees outside (15-20 degrees hotter than usual), and in our non-air conditioned top-floor apartment it's closer to 90. (I know this sounds like amateur night, but keep in mind that the San Francisco climate is temperate and typically cold AF in the summer due to the "marine layer" - fog, that is - rolling in each afternoon from the Pacific Ocean, but climate change has touched us even here.)

I have been reduced to a moist, mildewy, miserable melted mound of mutt meat, merely a pile of fur and random muscle and bone, howling pitifully and piteously to the skies, a helpless sled dog somehow mistakenly homed in the Equatorial jungles of the deepest Sahara, cooking and boiling faster than a Korean stray in a miou-miou stew pot in a Seoul-less kimchi joint, o how could this ever have happened, a helpless hopeless creature abandoned and left to suffer and die like a Malamute on the Amundsen sledge after the South Pole expedition, forlorn and forgotten, o woe is meeeeeee, owoo o o awoooooo....

(and ya know, sometimes my humans actually fall for my act!)

[Joe, the human part of me: they never fall for it]

Thanks again, my friend! AwrrrrRRUFFFFF!! 😎🐾🐕‍🦺🧡

[quaranmine]

losing my mind a little at these stupid people on twitter who are convinced that everybody is lying about the poor air quality in the us and canada being caused by wildfire smoke, and it is ACTUALLY some shadowy/govt conspiracy group trying to poison everybody

i feel like i am losing braincells as we speak

their main point for this being "actually poison and not smoke" is that the air does not "smell smoky." they're like "it smells like chemicals! it smells like burning plastic! it's so acrid! this cannot be smoke!"

first of all....fires can burn a lot of things besides just plain wood? if it has destroyed homes or human development, it has burned A LOT of different materials that may include plastics, rubber tires, chemically treated wood/materials, sealants, etc. other compounds can also be formed through combustion--heat can cause chemical reactions! this is one reason why smoke inhalation is a risk, because in addition to the ever-present risk of particular matter (PM2.5 especially) it can carry other gaseous pollutants. literally just google "why does wildfire smoke smell like chemicals" and the answer is: they also release volatile organic compounds. there's tons of gaseous compounds in smoke, it's been studied over and over.

like i understand the fear of "omg this doesnt smell like my campfire!" but it literally takes just one google search and the most basic understanding of things burning in large quantities to explain why it smells like chemicals. i dont expect people to be environmental scientists or experts in the subject or know this off the top of their head. it is completely normal and rational to get freaked out by this. but how conspiracy-brained do you have to be to IMMEDIATELY assume there is some Widespread Multi-National Secret Plot to poison american citizens instead of just...fires smell bad??????

like no, this isn't normal. the fire season is worse than usual this year. it IS normal to have a fire season (fire is a normal part of ecosystems) and for some years to be worse than others, but it IS being exacerabated by climage change. more frequent droughts, hotter temperatures, and drier weather can all increase the severity of fires. it sadly looks like this summer will be very bad. if you want to get "conspiratorial" about it, look no further than the usual suspects of climate change: industrial pollution, corporations, oil company lobbying, etc.

but as for the air quality in the US and Canada RIGHT NOW, no you are not being poisoned by a shadowy conspiracy organization that the media is lying to you about, you are just. experiencing pollution.

[diazevan]

I need people to understand that British heat is abnormal. Yes, I know it's not as hot as your country, and it must seem so ridiculous to you that we complain about this, but this country was never meant to be this warm. Our houses were built to retain heat, for me it is currently 28° celsius outside, 35° celsius inside. Even with a fan running 24/7.

We don't have air con. Some people do but it is incredibly rare. Some houses aren't big enough or are too old to have it installed. Also, it wouldn't be a good investment, because we usually only get like 2-3 weeks of extreme hot weather.

The climate here is incredibly humid, the heat doesn't feel nice. It feels sticky and heavy. Our public transports such as buses and trains are not built for this weather either, which has led to damage.

We are not yet climatised to this weather. If you have grown up in a country that is usually quite hot, then you'll more than likely be comfortable in that. The same goes for a country that is cold.

Sadly, this all comes down to climate change, as most things do. British summers are going to keep getting hotter and this country is simply not built for it.

[dem0nguy]

Christmas was in full swing at La Résistance headquarters; halls decked with garland, windows adorned with festive curtains, Christmas tree garnished with homemade ornaments.

And all eight of La Résistance’s members, finishing up the decor in the rec room.

Well, all eight of them were in the rec room, but not all eight were decorating.

It was really just Vegan-Su doing all the work, Apocalipsis helping to reach the high places whenever needed.

Brutux and Dr. White sat on the couch, in front of the fireplace/TV playing a video of a crackling fire, listening to Christmas music.

BP and Katani had taken mistletoe, stuck it to a stick with fishing line, and gone around holding it above peoples heads trying to get them to kiss.

Shooter would be lying if he said it wasn’t hilarious

Sheriff was goofing off, per usual. Wandering from person to person, cracking a joke, throwing an insult, getting punched in the face by Vegan-Su when the mistletoe made its way over to them, accidentally breaking an ornament, getting tangled in the Christmas lights—The list could go on.

But Shooter didn’t care about how long the list was, he just cared about the man behind it.

Sheriff, he loved him—

No he didn’t love him. He couldn’t love him. But god did he love him anyways.

Sheriff, and his bright orange hair like that of a fire; drifting out and up, sending scalding embers of his personality wherever he went. Sheriff, and his elegant teal-blue eyes that glow brighter than ice shining in the morning light. Put side by side you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two, their beauty unparalleled in the great expanse of winter.

But Shooter could tell the difference.

Shooter knew the deepness of Sheriff’s eyes, like the sky, infinite and beautiful. Full of possibility. He knew the gentle touch of his lightly tanned skin; from the few times Sheriff had sought comfort in Shooter’s arms.

He knew Sheriff’s cockiness, how much of an idiot he could be sometimes. How he could fuck up so badly, yet make it out fine. How he could be so dumb, yet have everything work for him.

But Shooter loved it. He loved everything about Sheriff, from his dumbassary to his sweet giddy smiles.

He only wishes he actually could love him.

Shooter sighs, staring out the window he placed his menorah in. The menorah that Sheriff, had gotten for him. (Alongside enough candles to last all of Hanukah, which makes Shooter doubt that Sheriff had actually found this all on his own.)

“Hey Shoooooooter!” The man in question saunters toward him. Ready to continue his antics.

“You look reallllllll lonely over here you know,” Sheriff teases, “Why don’t you stop being uh…” He thinks for a moment, “damn it, Brutux what was the word again?!”

Shooter can hear Brutux sigh from the other side of the room, “A Debbie Downer?” “What he said!” Sheriff smirks.

Shooter rolls his eyes. He’s such an idiot… “I ain’t bein’ a ‘Debbie Downer’ Sheriff. I’m just thinking.”

“Mhm, bout what?”

Shooter shrugs, red tinting the tips of his ears. You “Nothing much.”

They stare out the window together, barren desert wasteland surrounds the headquarters. It looked the same year round, no matter where you went.

And most of the time, it was hot. Hotter than you’d think it could ever get. The Big Fart sped up climate change, and it hadn’t snowed since then, but it still got fairly chilly this time of year.

Proof of that was last night, up on the roof, when Sheriff pressed into Shooter’s side for warmth against the bitter darkness.

It still made his heart flutter to think about…

“Lovely weather we’re having huh?” Sheriff interrupts his thoughts.

“Beautiful weather,” Shooter chuckles, “Should be expecting snow any day now!”

Sheriff laughs with him, “Man! I can’t remember the last time I saw snow.”

“Neither can I.”

“You lived in the city, didn’t you?”

Shooter nods, “Yeah, our snow weren’t as clean as what you’d get out in the rural parts.”

“You’d be surprised.” Sheriff shrugs, “I remember one time I was playing with the pigs out in the snow, and I swear not five minutes later, all of that snow became mud.” He chuckles, “Ryan came out after a while to play too, and made a point to tell me not to eat the muddy snow. But I think it was a little too late for that…”

Sheriff exhales a reminiscent sigh that begs for the past to come back to him. “I miss that farm, the pigs, and Ryan…”

“Hey, don’t be a Debbie Downer!” Shooter teases, eliciting a smirk from Sheriff.

“You’re right! It’s the season to be jolly after all!” He laughs, before frowning again. “I just wish he was still here…”

Shooter puts a gentle hand on Sheriff’s shoulder. He flinches at the sudden touch, before leaning into it. “You got us Sheriff,” Shooter tries to comfort him, “You got us.”

Sheriff nods, “Thanks Sho—“ mistletoe smacks him in the face.

“Whoops! Sorry!” Katani laughs, moving the mistletoe stick.

Sheriff and Shooter share a confused glance, before looking up.

SHIT—OH MY FUCKIN—SHHHHHHHIITT

Shooters face is what most accurately displays his reaction; bright red. And he knew it too.

“Come on guys, it ain’t gay to kiss your homies!” BP encourages, giggling with Katani.

Sheriff awkwardly laughs, “I mean, he’s right you know?” Shooter doesn’t dare look at him.

Looking at him would make Shooter want to kiss him.

“Come on Shooter, I’m not that bad of a kisser! Swear on it!” Him and his cocky personality, back at it again…

Shooter looks him in the eye, and fucking shit. That was a bad idea. He wanted to disappear into the teal universe that was Sheriff’s eyes, disappear forever in something so beautiful, that it made him a blushing, red, sweaty, shaky, mess.

Every time he dared to meet his gaze.

“Shooter?” Sheriff’s voice draws him out of his mind, prompting him to absentmindedly take a step forward. “Hey I mean, if you don’t wanna do this it’s cool you kn—“

He kissed him.

He actually kissed him.

Only for a split second before pulling back and awkwardly laughing, “You ain’t that bad of a kisser Sheriff, no worries!” He takes a step back, “Ima uh… head off now.”

He hastily walks out of the room, leaving Sheriff in shock, BP and Katani cackling to themselves, and not a single other soul bothered.

Except himself of course.

Because holy shit, he kissed him.

End

I did it yet again, I wrote us some SheriffxShooter content. I was originally gonna make it more fluffy, but I wanted romantic tension so that’s what we get :3

Happy Holidays!

[floralneonlights]

In my rewrite, I created new regions and described the regions that exist already.

This post is kinda long so I'm sorry

Ru’aun Region [ GODDESS - Irene ]

Geography - Water is the main form of travel with very little roads. The Yggdrasil Forest and Sacred Forest are both located in this region but are very different. While both are secretive locations and laced with magic, the Sacred Forest is known for the home of many mythical creatures while the Yggdrasil Forest is the home grounds for many elves. The Ru’aun region has many different regional climates, unlike the Gal’ruk Region.

No monarchy; O’Khasis is trying to change that though.

Gal’ruk Region [ GOD - Enki ]

Geography - The region of Gal’ruk is one of sea and ice. Despite this, there are many natural resources surrounding the place, previously a wondrous trading port until the Demon Warlock set his home there, turning the Gal’ruk region into one of danger. After the Demon Warlock fell, the Gal’ruk region opened up ports again and are slowly but surely getting travelers again.

No monarchy (divided up, never been a kingdom based region)

Tu’la Region [ GODDESS - Menphia ]

Geography - High resources in metals and magick. The best it can be described as is a steampunk region with many demon tribes located there, including Cat Yokai. Although, humans can be found there as well. Due to the opposing groups, they can never work together leaving the region in ruins. All of them are divided.

Run by a monarchy, under tyrannical rule.

Ivorian Region [ GODDESS - Drorit ]

Geography - Hotter than the other regions, is known for finding rare and precious gems in the waters, and rumored to be where the relics of the Divine Warriors were founded. The main system for the Ivorian Region is the gem/crystal/ore trading, as they have the highest amounts out of all the regions.

No monarchy, followed after what happened in Ru’aun

Umbre’en Region [ GOD/GODDESS - none; Shad is from this region ]

Geography - Usually cloudy and gloomy weather, but has great cropping grounds and leads to the crops never being overwatered. Known for great soil, rain and thus great crop production. Despite being the region where the embodiment of death to many comes from, it somehow has a faster production rate for growing crops. Rumor is that it was blessed by Enki when visiting.

Monarchy, normal rule. 

Aerania Region [ GOD - Fionn ]

Geography - Very small scattering of islands, presumed to previously had bigger and more islands surrounding it but had been flooded. Known for having merfolk and water spirits roaming the area while humans living on shore. Many water spirits and half-merfolk live on the land as well. Known for their marketplace: fish, wool, literature. Basically a place to stop to get basic needs, a merchant region.

Monarchy, somewhat chaotic rule due to the scattering of the islands, but not tyrants.

Rigguard Region [ GOD - Esmund ]

Geography - At one point, Rigguard was a luxurious place to live, massive mountains to hike, high wildlife rates, and warm weather. Until a curse was placed on it, turning it into an ice wasteland with very little parts left that keep the warmth that was originally all around. Struggling to make it by and the king and queen becoming MIA leaving the people with no guidance left. Seemingly forgotten by the other regions.

Monarchy, though as of recent, the king and queen have fallen into some sort of episode.

Some small notes - Fionn and Drorit are my new characters for the Divine Warriors, collectively replacing Kul'zak - If you want to add anything to the canon regions (Ru'aun, Gal'ruk, and Tu'la), it would be appreciated. - If you want a separate post on my version of the Divine Warriors, please let me know :] I'm going to post the main points of the rewritten characters once completed.

[safyresky]

Hello, it me.

I'm bothering you yet again so that I can hear you talk about your amazing characters >:)

This time specifically The Season Sisters! Spring is in FULL SWING where I'm at and I just wanna know more about them tbh. I'm craving fun facts about each of them, anything you can tell me I will gladly consume like the finest meal. Please and thank you.

Well THIS is gonna be fun!

As much as I WANT to start with Summer, I'll start with Spring since you're right! Spring IS in full swing! Everything is BLOOMING and my nose is so runny every morning on the way to work I hate it :)

And of course, obligatory read more bc this. got out of hand. OF COURSE.

Spring

Tries way too hard. WAY too hard. While her other sisters came to being outside of Mother Nature's Garden, Spring formed there!

Because of that, she had a front seat to all of Gaia and Tara's business leading up to the Call, and even though NEITHER of them EVER said anything like "EVERYTHING IS UP TO YOU" or "YOU MUST BE THE BEST AT EVERYTHING YOU DO" or "YOU'LL TAKE OVER FOR US ONE DAY SO MAKE SURE YOU'RE WORTHY OF IT", she fully believes sentiments like this and will go above and beyond to please Mother Nature and the other seasons

Despite all of them telling her to chill out for 5 seconds and Mother Nature never putting more weight on her shoulders than any of the other seasons.

She doesn't think she's good enough ): And doesn't think she should be the season to take over if Mother Nature ever retires ):

What she doesn't know is that all three sisters were ADAMANT that Tara pick her over them bc they felt she was best suited! Her sisters love her very much! Even Winter!

Spring gets a lot of shit from humans about allergies during her season, so she totally sympathizes with Winter's plight of runny nose complaints (unless it's March/April or August/September. then they're beefing. No room for compassion when ur FIGHTING TO THE DEATH FOR UR DAMN SEASON TO TAKE OVER FOR IT'S DESIGNATED TIME SLOT)

Is very intense, especially when it's someone she really loves (see: the invasion of PLANTS in Frost Manor)

She just cares a LOT and of course, goes way over the top to show it, disgruntling Winter and Summer a lot!

She and Summer bond over florals! Summer can also do a bit of floral work (some things bloom in summer, not spring, after all) and she and Spring have fun times hanging out making flowers and petals and such!

She is the smallest season at about 5"0-5"3 (152-161cm)

Hair is constantly shedding flower petals :\

She's very good at embroidery!

Her love language is DEFFS gifts (see: Winter's plant filled house, yet again)

We know she BEEFS with Winter when they switch seasons, but what about the season after her? Well, she and Summer do NOT beef as much, but Spring is always perplexed at how sudden Summer weather tends to creep in

"It's May, and it's 27 degrees," Spring says, low key annoyed.

"I know about as much as you do, sis," Summer says with a shrug, just as perplexed but not terribly upset about the heat

Summer

LOVES the heat lol, the hotter the better

Is very upset about climate change for all the obvious reasons AND bc it's giving heat a bad name and, as previously stated, she likes the heat

Is the tallest Season Sister, at about 6"0 ish, 6"1 ish

Is BUFF! Is NOT a gym buff tho, lol, she just does a LOT of sports. every sport. Loves sports. Plays all the sports. She is a VERY ACTIVE SEASON, always somewhere doing something, helping out somewhere, even on vacations she's pretty active!

Vacations every year with Winter! Usually in May! On occasion in October :)

Wishes she could have all of September but is fine with sharing it with Autumn, really, she swears (does not care as much for February. Thinks September is a Neat Month)

She swears, as an aside. Likes the F-Word a normal amount

Is everyone's favourite Aunt! She's just really laid back and chill and the most extroverted out of all 4 siblings!

Was the first of the seasons Mother Nature and Spring found post-Call! Spring did not need to be found bc Gaia and Tara knew she was floating around for the longest time lol

Summer found Winter post-call :)

MN really wanted to go check on the Princes bc she had NO IDEA if The Call took the King and Queen as well, but she needed to find the Seasons first, so Summer went let's divide and conquer, I'll go North, you go not North and North ended up being on the money

Summer is very good at compromise but rather leave it to Autumn who is very good at being level-headed. Not that Summer isn't level headed; she's just a little sassy and very blunt and is not afraid to speak her mind. And sometimes. Does not think before she speaks.

Or thinks and goes "fuck it, imma say this thing! if this person can't deal with it then that's their problem!"

Is TECHNICALLY, in body, the oldest season. When MN "adopted" (found) them, Summer was teen-sized. Spring and Autumn were kid-size. Winter was toddler-size.

Summer absolutely ADORES all her niblets, yes, even the (formerly) evil one, and is always happy to teach the what she knows! Blaise has got it, but Summer LOVES teaching and he knows and appreciates the help (both he and Winter do tbh)

Would always happily take the kids from Winter to give her and Blaise a break. She has the BEST sleepovers

More often than not, Spring and Autumn partake in these sleepovers too. Summer's FUN and has a great way of making you feel at ease and okay and carefree and not worried!

When Fiera goes to her upon turning 2000 to ask her to give her the full summer sprite curriculum she almost cries she's so happy

Taught Blaise the full Summer sprite curriculum since his parents didn't actually go that far and she thought it was a DAMN SHAME the only other summer sprite she knew of didn't know ALL the things!

(Blaise doesn't do the sunlight thing though as he doesn't want to cross into her domain :)

She can also make it rain! And THUNDER. She's great at thunder and lightning, makes Mother Nature proud lol

Has a green thumb for fruit trees and fruiting plants! Makes GREAT wine (has a personal preference for reds)

Is my favourite of the Season Sisters (don't tell Winter I said that)

Autumn!

She is very level headed, laid back but in the opposite way from Summer (Summer is extrovert laid back; Autumn is introvert laid back)

Except for one time of year: HALLOWEEN

October comes and she is on some next level of energy, my god. Scares the shit out of Summer by creeping up on her a LOT, usually with decor or costumes or weird shit in general

Summer takes it with a grain of salt lmao

Outside of Halloween, Autumn does have a bad habit of sneaking up on most people. Not on purpose, of course! It just happens!

She always kinda creeps into Summer like this meme:

Apples are her favourite fruit (all of them)

Makes a great cider!

She's got the veggie green thumb, but her pumpkins are AMAZING.

Is the most introverted out of all four siblings

She is also very wise; very inquisitive. She's like a quiet learner, and often will shock people with what she knows

And shocks people as well, sometimes she gets a little static-y

Can ALSO make it rain! Her rainstorms are weirdly calming sometimes?

Can ALSO do a bit of Frost! Winter had fun teaching her that :P

Would have silent competitions with Jack with frosty designs on grass, windows, etc. (he won more often than not, after all, it's his SPECIALTY and he does most of the Frost, Autumn only does a little bit :)

Her range of powers also includes the ability to make things decay. It was a hard one to get the hang of when she first formed, but she got the hang of it easy enough!

I'm not saying that she could touch someone and kill them dead, but I'm not...not saying that 😶

She's very good at puzzles!

Has too many books to read ):

Lives in cozy sweater dresses

Has offered to help Spring not shed petals everywhere (since she had the same problem with Autumn leaves), but Spring declined bc she actually likes raining petals and low key does it on purpose (the aesthetic!)

She's plump and is about average height (5"6-5"9, I'd say)

Loves farming! Her crops are BOUNTIFUL which checks out as one of the sprites responsible for her creation was known as Harvest :)

She, Spring, and Summer worked together closely to get farmlands/crops/food production to boom after the monarchy was disbanded, post Civil War

Like Spring, she is a planner! Instead of vacationing with her opposite season, the two of them get together weekly in the off season for hot chocolate and tea and such, and planning sessions for their next bout of season-ing!

Autumn works closely with the animals, anthropomorphic magibeans, and forest dwelling magibeans on the daily

May have a fling of sorts with a Faun 🤔

Likes astronomy a normal amount

Winter

Ha. Bet y'all thought I wouldn't go off about Winter Fucking Frost, eh?

Since she has the MOST content so far out of all her sisters?

gUESS THE FUCK AGAIN

Winter is the baby of the family so you can see why all three seasons were so. Hover-y after the Day of Darkness

She's also always been the most motherly out of all of them, weirdly enough! You'd think, you know, given being the embodiment of the coldest, most barren, HARDEST season, she'd be very cold herself, right? WRONG. Winter's always been very motherly.

Winter falling in love and getting married kind of shocked all of the Seasons AND Mother Nature? None of them had thought about any of the seasons "settling down" so this was a very brief moment of "oh, wait, that's a thing?" followed by "oh of COURSE that's a thing!"

After Winter got married and moved out, the other Seasons found/made their own places!

MN was sad to have the Garden empty but also, kinda enjoyed having the place to herself again, and found she quite liked when the kids or her son in law or her grandkids would pop in suddenly for visits!

Winter is the most chaotic out of her siblings. She mellowed with age, but it is still there. Brewing. She will do chaotic things if the need arises, and Blaise deffs does NOT discourage her unless it is not a workday

Summer joins in on the chaos. Spring activates it unintentionally and gets mad about it. Autumn diffuses the chaos.

Winter was lanky as a kid but filled out when she was older; is weirdly lanky and curvy at the same time. It is perplexing. Second shortest season clocking in at about 5"4.

Weirdly enough, she seems to have a penchant for growing evergreen trees. This confuses her quite a bit given that winter isn't really known for being a tree growing season, and yet!

She loves the sunrooms in her house because plants can bloom in it! One of the traits you pick up when your Mother is Mother Nature: appreciation for flowers and plants!!!

Her vibe check is always accurate. If someone is iffy, she knows

Knits!

And some fun facts about all the seasons:

Spring lives in a little cottage in a lovely meadow exploding with wildflowers on the edge of Quartz Forest, in the Western Province

Summer has a cliff side, beach side villa way up the hills in the Southern Province

Autumn has a nice chalet in the Eastern Province, surrounded by apple orchards and pumpkin patches and sunflowers and cornstalks and just on the edge of the Scar, aka, the Forsaken Forest, which got it's name bc Mother Gaia scorched the earth, cursing the land to never grow.

Autumn low key guards it

Spring, Summer, and Autumn's power domains overlap quite a bit; Autumn and Winter's overlap a tad as well.

They all kind of overlap given that seasons do overlap on occasion and they could all, in theory, become Mother Nature

When Blaise asked Winter to marry him, the other seasons worked together to make a beautiful ceremony THAT NIGHT since Blinter was so excited they committed crime just to get married right then and there

Spring planned a big wedding bash for them later in the year. Blinter was very relieved when they had to leave it ASAP bc baby #1 was upset about not being at the party and decided he was gonna come then and there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spring immediately attempted to plan a baby shower, despite Winter saying NO, and had to be tackled down and talked down by Summer and Autumn (in that order)

ANYWAY I hope these were some fun fun facts! If ever you want any deets or me to elaborate please don't hesitate to ask! (This goes for EVERYONE :D). I think the Season Sisters are some of my most underdeveloped characters, and asks like this really help me think about them and what they like, what they do, how they interact, etc :)

And of COURSE, as ALWAYS, ty for the ask Andie!!! I love and appreciate every one and will wallpaper a room with them if given a chance to do so 😍

[bnnywngs]

for once i'm not gonna talk about fanfic today, i just want to rant a bit, sorry it's going to be a big one

this year, 2023, we're having the worst summer of all times, every day it's the hottest day of the year, we're breaking so many records of temperature, water levels and etc, it's quite tough to be living

i live in manaus, in the state of amazonas in brazil, it's in the middle of the amazon rainforest, a big city of 2 million people and very few trees (yes.), we basically have 2 seasons (influenced by the equator line that runs above us) that is raining season (between december and may) and summer (june to november), the average temperature during these seasons are, i think, between 23°C and 29°C, and 35-40°C, besides high humidity

well, not anymore!!! because of el niño, climate change etc, things changed and now we're living through hell with little to no action from local government

the temperatures are high (39°C one of these days, and the feeling is way, way higher than that, like 47°C) and ok, we're kinda used to it, even if it's not healthy at all, BUT the humidity it's really really low (45% right at this moment, i'm used to more or less 70-80% on average), and the river are the lowest of all times since they began to record it

you can see how low it is here

the sun is so hot it's making the water hotter, and it's literally killing fish and our river dolphins! and some places the waters are so shallow, they can't breath and are dying too

not only that, but we're having to deal with forest fires, that are not natural, it's NOT normal. we don't have spontaneous fires. we don't. it's usually humans who puts it on fire either accidentally (very rare) because since i don't know when people burn their trash (it's actually against the law now, but...) and they throw cigarette butts through the car window etc, or it can be for capitalism purposes (owners of farms, illegal tree cutting, etc etc), and also, people have no sense of environmental protection, so they throw their garbage anywhere - river, side walk, forest, you name it - so we have stray pieces of glass that, with this damn heat and low humidity, it's starting fires.

and the smoke isn't going anywhere. it's here, around us, in the city (and we're not the only city going through it), we're breathing smoke. all i can see through my window right now is smoke. i can barely see. (here)

lol i just received a text from the government, it's the first since the smoke started a month or so ago

lit. translation: "civil defense: forest fire alert, with impacts on air quality in the metropolitan area of manaus. follow the instructions from the local defense."

btw this is from google few minutes ago:

36°C = 96,8°F

air quality of this morning, from local journalist, Mário Adolfo:

apparently, because of el niño, there's no wind, so the smoke isn't moving, that highly impacts quality of air and our health, i don't know how's to live a day without feeling like i'm either about to faint or throw up, my nose hurts, my throat hurts, my eyes are dry, my lips are cracking....

HOW CAN WE LIVE LIKE THIS FOR FUCKS SAKE

i want to cry, i really want to cry, or throw myself through the window. i can't, i just can't live like this anymore, my whole apartment smells like smoke and the windows are closed fUCK

btw, big national newspaper last week: how's the dry season of the amazon is going to impact your black friday shopping

what a joke

[lightdancer1]

See this is why I can't take 'climate change causes wildfires' analysis seriously:

I don't know about the ones in northern or eastern Louisiana but the big wildfires here in the western part have all, minus the Cameron Marsh fires, been shown to be the work of an arsonist piece of shit. Not necessarily one person setting each of these fires, given they arrested one person for one of the Vernon Parish fires who thought that a burn ban didn't apply to him because Jesus shaves and would keep his little ass out of the jail cell where it belongs.

Climate change is why Louisiana is so much hotter and drier than usual in the summer. Climate change is not, however, the direct cause of these fires. Lightning did not do it, the wild causes of wildfires did not do it. Arsonists and pieces of shit who thought 'burn ban? Not in my barbecue' did.

Unless you want to argue climate change is the scientific version of a Hollywood demon convincing people to act with malicious intent

[pulchrasilva]

Bestieeeee

I wanna know ab your ocs, give them up

Noooooo you can't have them theyre mine >:( /silly

Anyway have some fun facts about the gods:

The moon god's gender changes along with the cycle of the moon

The sun goddess' body produces a lot of heat (for obvious reasons). Sun burns are a sign of high status because it means you were invited into her personal space. Also darker skinned people are ones whose family has been very high status for a very long time, because they've live closer to the palace and so in a much hotter climate. Basically social power is all about how close you are to the sun goddess

The only exception is that magic users/priests have higher status than everyone, despite the temples usually being on the furthest edges of the kingdom, because their connection to the sun goddess is more profound than mere physical proximity. They have specific attire to demonstrate that status

The sun and moon gods are simultaneously toxic yuri and foundational fratricide, because they were like. "Married" but also theyre the two gods who existed at the dawn of time or whatever so they basically "grew up" with each other. Pseudo incest win!

The history that people are taught is that the moon god created the kingdom and humanity but needed to put their soul into humanity to bring them to life, so they basically died and the sun goddess took over ruling the kingdom to honour them

Im still working out the details of what really happened but it involves the sun putting the moon into a magic coma so that she could have total power over their kingdom

Where the kingdom meets the ocean, near the Palace of the sun goddess, are the Salt Wastes. These are a stretch of land where the tide washes in, but the heat from the sun goddess rapidly evaporates the water, leaving behind thick layers of salt and making the land toxic for vegetation. Because the tides are associated with the moon, this is symbolic of the push and pull for power between the two gods, and the devastation they leave in their wake

Theres gonna be some sort of climax where the sun and moon goddess have to fight. Or something. Idk but what I do know is that there'll be a solar eclipse when it happens

The sun goddess is kind of a cruel ruler so there's gonna be some kind of resistance once the moon wakes up, which is looking to usurp the sun and give the moon control of the kingdom. But like. While the moon is more benevolent than the sun, they're still ultimately a god and therefore divorced from human life and they have a lot of power to abuse, deliberately or not. The idea is to set them up as the perfect ruler to take over, and then to slowly reveal that this is far from the case

This is reflected in their relationships with the leading priestess, Sidera (my favourite character my babygirl my anguished lesbian). As a priestess of the sun goddess, she has a secret fucked up toxic devotion relationship with the sun goddess, which. Remember how people end up with sun burn in her presence? Yeah so Sidera gets very badly burned when they have sex, and the sun goddess often removes the burns immediately after just for extra mind fuckery. Sometimes Sidera's unsure whether they were even there in the first place. But Sidera eventually finds and wakes the moon goddess, and gets to know them in secret, and learns that she can have a better relationship with a god than what she and the sun goddess have. That's what shakes her loyalty and causes her to switch sides to help the revolution, becoming the first priestess of the moon instead

BUT thanks to the shitty relationships they both had with the sun, Sidera has ended up with an extreme need to devote herself to someone entirely (if you think that sounds similar to another character of mine shhhhh) and the moon has ended up with control issues so they kinda make each other worse, culminating with Sidera sacrificing herself to the moon in order to give them the power to defeat the sun. So like. The moon is better to Sidera than the sun was, but still not good

Also on that note, ultimately the story will show that neither the sun or the moon are good enough rulers, you need a secret third option: earth, as in humans. But Sidera's name was taken from the Latin for "stars", so she's always been associated with celestial bodies and although she's instrumental to defeating the sun she was never destined to live in the human-led world that results from it. She's too deep in the habit of worship for that

Also I'm considering whether I want there to be multiple nations, each with their own gods and maybe even their own magic systems but idk how to like. Handle that in the story lol. But it's inspired by misunderstanding an episode of jrwi apotheosis and briefly thinking there were loads of different pantheons each tied to different countries

[lunaicfantastic]

I was talking to someone much older than me about politics and the generational divide, and during the discussion they asked me what the young people who support trump are thinking, what they're discussing among themselves, and I told them the truth, which is that I don't know because I don't interact with any in my day to day life. This is true mostly because I go to a hwc and you'd be hard-pressed to find a conservative who'd be willing to admit it there, but also, I think, because I believe they are temporary.

What I mean by temporary is this: the support of trump and the Republican party by youths is a system of beliefs almost entirely dominated by people one to two decades their seniors, minimum, and i don't think that is a particularly good recipe for long-lasting political beliefs. More importantly, however, is that when I was in high school in the rural southern US, and surrounded by people who sided with the right out of habit or passive indoctrination, it did not take much to get most of them to agree with leftist ideals. Usually, only a single conversation. Most people I talked to almost immediately agreed with "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" once explained. And, to me, most importantly, very few people disagreed with Greta thunberg. We all saw what she was doing and most of us understood and agreed with what she was saying.

That, more than anything, makes me believe that any sprouting of republican support among usamerican youths will be shortlived and short-reaching. Because none of us want to die, and more of the world is catching on fire every summer. Climate change, more than any other issue, will be the thing that defines our generation's political beliefs and movements, and I don't think people will take a fantasy told to them by their elders seriously when it becomes more and more obvious by the day that it is fantastical. The weather is inescapable, and the summers are hotter and the storms are worse than they've ever been.

To me, "trumpism" and republican stranglehold on people younger than 30 is temporary because we've been told our whole lives that saving the world from climate apocalypse will fall to us and now that it is harder than ever to ignore that said apocalypse is at our doorstep, those right-wing movements aren't giving them anything but platitudes. I don't think a generation conditioned to battle climate change will listen to a party of people, most of whom will not live to experience the horrors their actions or lack thereof have caused, that tell them to cover their ears, close their eyes, and put the fight down all to make numbers on a screen go up while their futures burn.

I think it's not worthwhile to ponder at length about the future of the right in the us because the right is doggedly working to ensure there will be no future for anyone, and I think people's survival instincts are stronger than that.

[xtruss]

Photographs by Clark Hodgin for The New Yorker

Trying to Breathe in a City of Smoke

As the world warms and Canada burns, what once seemed unprecedented is becoming familiar.

— By Carolyn Kormann | June 7, 2023

When the smoke comes, you notice it in your body before you see it in the air. On Monday evening, I went for a run and then felt queasy and lethargic. Only on Tuesday did I notice the haze in Manhattan. By Tuesday night, the air smelled like barbecue. On the half-mile walk to my yoga studio, I saw a few people in N95 masks, and I wished I had worn mine. I started to get nauseated; my eyes felt itchy. A young man on the street cried out, “Those Canadian wildfires are sick, bro!” Online, someone tweeted about the “Blade Runner-ass weather.” I half expected the neighborly camaraderie that arises during intense storms and lunar eclipses, but mostly people just squinted and carried on. I worried about Frannie, my ninety-six-year-old landlady, who had walked four blocks to a neighborhood restaurant and back. She told me that she didn’t notice the smoke.

By Wednesday morning, ash was falling in northern New York. School trips and soccer games were cancelled. A friend texted, “Are you going to go outside and take a few drags off the sky?” I heard of a woman sitting on her front steps, struggling to breathe even with the help of oxygen. Friends of friends were reminded of places like Delhi, where daily exposure to severe air pollution can be deadly. New York City recorded the worst air pollution of any major city in the world, according to the company IQAir, and it was still getting worse. Just after noon, the magnolia and tulip trees outside my window shook violently in the wind. As weather forecasters had promised, a wall of smoke blew into Manhattan. At a Broadway matinée, the actress Jodie Comer said that she couldn’t breathe and left the stage.

The smoke was coming from Canada, where more than four hundred wildfires are currently burning. We do not know what caused many of them—a dropped cigarette, lightning, a downed electrical wire—but they are raging through the boreal forests of British Columbia, Alberta, and now Quebec. Wildfires are nothing new in these woodlands, but these are much earlier and larger than usual. And, like so many recent fires, they are directly linked to weeks of anomalous extreme heat. Climate change has created longer, hotter summers; worsened droughts; and fuelled vast bark-beetle infestations that have killed billions of trees.

We keep experiencing things that are unprecedented, worse than anything anyone can remember, even as we’re told that they will become common. “You’re likely to see events like this more often, where you have prolonged heat that dries out forests and makes these fires more likely,” Marshall Burke, a professor at Stanford University, and a leading expert on wildfire-smoke exposure and impacts, told me. Burke has plotted the levels of fine particles, which scientists call PM2.5 because they are 2.5 microns or smaller, in the past seventeen years of New York City air. The past two days, he said, have been off the charts. But even these levels didn’t reach what West Coast cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have experienced in the past few years.

“There is no safe exposure to PM2.5,” Burke told me. In the past decade, research has shown that these particles can penetrate deep into the lungs, enter the bloodstream, and even reach the brain. They are associated with heart attacks and dementia. Even among healthy people, Burke and his team have found that, with higher levels of air pollution, cognitive performance decreases, and workers are less productive. There is a very strong relationship between even just short-term smoke exposure and poor pregnancy outcomes—in particular, preterm birth. Research by Burke and his collaborators has concluded that, when there are fifty micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5 in the air, emergency-department visits for asthma tend to double. Burke checked New York’s numbers at that moment, around 1 p.m., and saw that they had reached about a hundred and fifty micrograms. “That’s just crazy,” Burke told me.

I told Burke that smoke had begun to seep into my office, like a deskside bonfire. “This is a really important point,” Burke said. “I mean, we can stay inside, but being inside is imperfect.” He pulled up a map of indoor air quality, which draws on data from citizen scientists who are publicly sharing measurements from their air monitors. “I’m just looking at Manhattan right now,” he told me. “I can see inside people’s homes, and they’re at sixty, or even above a hundred micrograms inside.” This is far above the threshold, outdoors, that would double emergency-room visits for asthma. In poorer communities, highways, power plants, and leaky buildings often make this problem persistent.

By one-thirty, the world through my window looked sepia. The sky turns orange because only longer wavelengths of light penetrate the smoke. Frannie, my elderly landlady, was now concerned. She has spent her life in New York and has never seen anything like this. She put on a mask inside; so did I. I worried about my sister, a teacher in Yonkers, who has bad asthma and felt light-headed and dizzy. “I’m feeling a little nervous and scared,” she told me in a voice mail. “I have students who are asthmatics, too. It’s really eerie to see how it’s bright yellow outside, and you can see the smoke sitting. Nothing that we’ve ever experienced here. Makes me feel more for those that experience this out West. Also, a good teaching opportunity.” She meant, quite literally, a science lesson about air-quality levels and their resulting health impacts. But what is it supposed to teach us? We know the story of the climate crisis, of how wealthy nations have burned fossil fuels at an astonishing rate, pushing our planet to the brink. Yet we live as though we do not, and we breathe the consequences. ♦