#more for us

[bizarrebazaar13]

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

[wishfulsketching]

Silco and his terror of a daughter

[rafeandonlyrafe]

well 🧍‍♀️ as a reminder this blog is NOT a safe space for trump supporters but it IS a safe place for women, queers, trans ppl, people of color, undocumented people, and any marginalized group.

[some-pers0n]

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[atinymexicanbird]

Ark siblings in all universes 🪐

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[guiiay]

jinx and isha visit a walmart

[nathaniacolver]

arcane ships be like

i love a show that teaches equality (😭😭😭)

[fly-chicken]

A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[crystaltoa]

And now for something completely different.

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

This post is the cup I filled instead of cleaning my house btw.

[potofsoup]

Oh look, it seems like there's a Republican-led movement to purge voter rolls in the lead-up to the election! It's almost as if your vote matters and they don't want you to vote! Anyway, I whipped up a quick map (based on this) that shows when the voter registration deadline is in each state. There are a few deadlines coming up in the next week or so.

If you live in a state that regularly purges voter rolls for infrequent voters (the orange ones in the first map), or if you moved recently, it's good to check if you're still registered to vote.

Vote.org makes it super easy to check your registration: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Just put in your address and DOB and they'll tell you whether you're registered. (And they give you a quick link to register online if it turns out that you're not! Only the 9 states in white on my map don't have online registration, and for those they provide instructions on how to do it via mail or in person.) If you want an extra verification, find your state's election website and double-check there.

So yeah, give yourself peace of mind -- do a quick check. :)

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[pokeberry5]

late night/early morning stakeout

[asgardian--angels]

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.

**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **

We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.

You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.

At the national level, please support:

The Nature Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)

National Audubon Society

Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)

These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!

THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.

Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...

At the regional level:

These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.

PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS

DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)

PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)

UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)

NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')

WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)

LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.

INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)

HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)

OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)

A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.

At the state and local level:

You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!

Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!

Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!

Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society

Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.

Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding

Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)

Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted

MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.

On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:

Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center

Pollinator Pathway

Audubon Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)

Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)

MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)

Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)

Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)

Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)

There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.

Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).

In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.

Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.