#things are different. things have changed.

[peaceandlove26]

my fursonas, which i use interchangeably based on how i’m feeling. a quick guide

[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.

[dedalvs]

I was a student at UC Berkeley during the 2000 presidential election. The propaganda at that time was that Al Gore and George W. Bush were exactly the same candidate wearing different ties. There was no difference between them, so you should vote for Ralph Nader.

In 2016 the propaganda was Bernie Bros—and going both ways ("Hillary is an establishment candidate! You're not a real liberal if you don't vote for Bernie!" and also "Bernie will never win! If you EVER supported Bernie you're not a real liberal!").

This time the propaganda was Gaza. "How can you vote for a candidate that is a part of an administration responsible for GENOCIDE?!"

The thing with propaganda is it's always true—kind of. You can go right down the list and see the truth in all of these things:

Both Al Gore and George W. Bush were establishment candidates. Al Gore was the sitting vice president and a career politician and George W. Bush was the son of former president and vice president George Bush, who himself was vice president to Ronald Reagan.

HIllary Clinton was an establishment politican, the wife of a former president, and the sitting secretary of state. Bernie Sanders didn't have the party support to become the Democratic Party candidate on account of his history of independence.

Biden and Harris were in office during the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the US government has offered continued support to Israel in its couteroffensive.

Those things are true. But the true things were being used to distract the distractible from other arguably more important true things, e.g. that Al Gore's actual policies were more liberal than George W. Bush's; Hillary Clinton's policies were more liberal than Donald Trump's; and a Kamala Harris-led government was going to be better for Palestine than a Donald Trump-led government.

The goal with the propaganda each time was exaclty the same. It wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate or change policy or help Gaza.

The goal was to get liberals not to vote.

And it worked. Every time.

It'll work again, too, if we don't teach voters how to recognize this. It's pretty obvious though. If it's near an election and it's a wedge issue between liberal voters and ultra-liberal voters, that's the propaganda.

And it is 100% active and alive here on Tumblr.

[kedreeva]

Today is going to be rough for so many people. It's going to be rough for you. There are things you can't change today.

But you can take care of yourself. Eat breakfast, drink water, take a long shower, put on clean clothes/favorite clothes. Checking in on the politics as needed, rather than wallowing in them all day. Put on a comfort movie or show, and watch that for a while. Focus on your job if you have to be there today. Reach out if you need help.

You can also check in on your friends- making sure they have eaten and had water and showered and have something comforting. Reach out if they might need help. The only way out of this is through, and we need each other to get there.

We will have a long fight ahead of us for the next 4 years. We would have had a long fight ahead of us regardless of who won; only the kind of fight would have been different. This is the fight we have: survival and damage control. Not the fight we wanted, but it is what it is, and we're still going to use tooth and nail.

Today is Day 1.

Today is checking with your clerk's office, if you mailed your ballot, to ensure your ballot got counted. Today is weathering the despair. Today is taking care of yourself and checking on your loved ones to make sure they have what they need to weather Day 1 with you.

Tomorrow is resolving to vote in the next local elections to aid in damage control, and planning the next steps.

Survival and damage control.

Hope is not a fragile flower, easily crushed beneath a fascist boot. Hope is a fighter with blood on her knuckles and dirt on her knees, and we are going to help her get back on her feet every time.

[leveragehunters]

CoPilot in MS Word

I opened Word yesterday to discover that it now contains CoPilot. It follows you as you type and if you have a personal Microsoft 365 account, you can't turn it off. You will be given 60 AI credits per month and you can't opt out of it.

The only way to banish it is to revert to an earlier version of Office. There is lot of conflicting information and overly complex guides out there, so I thought I'd share the simplest way I found.

How to revert back to an old version of Office that does not have CoPilot

This is fairly simple, thankfully, presuming everything is in the default locations. If not you'll need to adjust the below for where you have things saved.

Click the Windows Button and S to bring up the search box, then type cmd. It will bring up the command prompt as an option. Run it as an administrator.

Paste this into the box at the cursor: cd "\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun"

Hit Enter

Then paste this into the box at the cursor: officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17726.20160

Hit enter and wait while it downloads and installs.

VERY IMPORTANT. Once it's done, open Word, go to File, Account (bottom left), and you'll see a box on the right that says Microsoft 365 updates. Click the box and change the drop down to Disable Updates.

This will roll you back to build 17726.20160, from July 2024, which does not have CoPilot, and prevent it from being installed.

If you want a different build, you can see them all listed here. You will need to change the 17726.20160 at step 4 to whatever build number you want.

This is not a perfect fix, because while it removes CoPilot, it also stops you receiving security updates and bug fixes.

Switching from Office to LibreOffice

At this point, I'm giving up on Microsoft Office/Word. After trying a few different options, I've switched to LibreOffice.

You can download it here for free: https://www.libreoffice.org/

If you like the look of Word, these tutorials show you how to get that look:

www.howtogeek.com/788591/how-to-make-libreoffice-look-like-microsoft-office/

www.debugpoint.com/libreoffice-like-microsoft-office/

If you've been using Word for awhile, chances are you have a significant custom dictionary. You can add it to LibreOffice following these steps.

First, get your dictionary from Microsoft

Go to Manage your Microsoft 365 account: account.microsoft.com.

One you're logged in, scroll down to Privacy, click it and go to the Privacy dashboard.

Scroll down to Spelling and Text. Click into it and scroll past all the words to download your custom dictionary. It will save it as a CSV file.

Open the file you just downloaded and copy the words.

Open Notepad and paste in the words. Save it as a text file and give it a meaningful name (I went with FromWord).

Next, add it to LibreOffice

Open LibreOffice.

Go to Tools in the menu bar, then Options. It will open a new window.

Find Languages and Locales in the left menu, click it, then click on Writing aids.

You'll see User-defined dictionaries. Click New to the right of the box and give it a meaningful name (mine is FromWord).

Hit Apply, then Okay, then exit LibreOffice.

Open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\wordbook and you will see the new dictionary you created. (If you can't see the AppData folder, you will need to show hidden files by ticking the box in the View menu.)

Open it in Notepad by right clicking and choosing 'open with', then pick Notepad from the options.

Open the text file you created at step 5 in 'get your dictionary from Microsoft', copy the words and paste them into your new custom dictionary UNDER the dotted line.

Save and close.

Reopen LibreOffice. Go to Tools, Options, Languages and Locales, Writing aids and make sure the box next to the new dictionary is ticked.

If you use LIbreOffice on multiple machines, you'll need to do this for each machine.

Please note: this worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, check you've followed each step correctly, and try restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work, I can't provide tech support (sorry).

[reasonsforhope]

Given the misinformation that's been going around and will be going around, thought this might be helpful to some people

For a lot of reasons, I'm very good at this/at searching, to the point where I have worked as a professional fact-checker for two different publishers. So, here goes:

My Article Fact-Checking Protocol

Thorough Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

Go to the website's home page and read through the headlines. Look at what topics they cover/prioritize, sensationalist headlines, and whether they're framing anything in a way that feels odd/off to you

Do a search related to the topic. This can be keywords, a question, or even just copy-paste the article title (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo so the results don't change based on what Google thinks they can sell you)

If multiple highly credible sources that say the same thing pop up, and there's no major societal biases that might affect the coverage of the topic in those sources (e.g. anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict/Palestinian genocide, no matter which side), then I'm done!

If there are major societal biases, or I can't get a consensus of sufficiently credible sources, then I do some combination of:

(1) search the topic again + the words "controversy" and/or "fake"

(2) search the opposite of the topic, or do some sort of other filtered search

(3) look up a sufficiently credible news outlet with the opposite point of view of my source, and see what they have to say

(4) if it's a big enough topic, start by looking up 2 of the top national papers and 1 major paper for your region (I usually do the ones in the US, because that's where I am In the US: the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the NY Times)

Adjust "news" to "relevant type of source, e.g. tech, environmental" as relevant for all of the above options

If no red flags come up, and it's a topic I understand enough to smell huge bullshit,

Then I'm usually done!

If there are red flags, or I actually need a certain amount of detail/understanding, then it gets more complicated, but that would be a whole other thing to break down and such

or

tl;dr

Quick Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true.

If I don't know the website:

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

If I trust the source, but something else pinged my radar:

Do a quick web search to verify anything that sounds suspicious or too good/bad to be true (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo)

[maxv331]

✮ What happened to hello | Lando Norris ✮

Summary: Quick little drabbled based on all the speculation of Lando getting a bad haircut because he wore his hat so much at the Mexican GP

Warning: none :)

word count: 848

a/n: I haven't wrote in a long time so I'm pretty rusty, go easy on me! I also wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to wrap up the ending, so yeah, sorry for that!

✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮

“Take the hat off Lando” You playfully demand with a squint of your eyes as soon as Lando’s face appears on your laptop screen. 

You’re currently on day 14 of being apart since Lando left for the triple-header and it’s eating you both alive. You haven’t been apart for longer than seven days at a time, in almost a year. Everyone around you, even the fans, call you two codependent, but really, you were just in love and wanted to spend as much time together as possible. 

Between the time zone differences and you both working so much, you’ve found it difficult to spend much time together. You’ve found comfort in being able to keep up with Lando from all of the fan and official F1 content posted online. 

You’ve gotten a giggle out of all the speculation surrounding Lando’s hair. It started on the first media day in Mexico, when it appeared Lando had gotten a haircut, but his hat stayed on the entire day. 

The next day was when the rumors actually started, Lando hadn’t taken his hat off again and every fan you came across was freaking out and cracking jokes that Lando got a bad haircut and was embarrassed about it. 

Initially, aside from enjoying all the posts, you hadn’t given it much thought, assuming Lando was mostly wearing the hat because of the heat; but then you realized Lando hadn’t sent you any photos without the hat on, and the handful of late night facetimes you had, he was already in bed with his hoodie up and it was mostly dark. 

Whenever you and Lando are apart, you always made sure to keep each other still included in the day to day parts of your lives; you were always sending photos, videos and voice notes until you could facetime or be with each other again. 

Lando hadn’t changed your familiar routine, he just never had hair showing, which was a little odd, but nothing concerning. You admittingly missed the post shower selfies or the sweaty, messy haired, tired post race selfies. 

You’re instantly met with a giggle from Lando “What happened to hello baby.” Lando’s sat in his drivers room, he’d got a couple hours break between practice and qualifying and wanted to make the most of your shared free time to squeeze in a quick facetime with you.

“Hello baby” You grinned cheekily. “I’ve missed you so much, did you get a bad haircut?” You giggled 

Lando raised an eyebrow as another giggle slipped past his lips. “Did I get a bad haircut?” 

You nodded quickly “You haven’t taken your hat off the entire time you’ve been in Mexico, so show me”

“And how would you know that, hmm?” Lando asked with a smirk. Lando was initially confused, but now all he wanted was to play into the fun he was having. 

A bright rosy blush crept up your cheeks as you briefly glanced away from Lando on the screen. Lando’s now grinning mischievously, enjoying getting to tease you. “Do I need to talk to Osc or have you been creeping on me?” 

Before you even get a chance to answer, Lando starts giggling again and shaking his head. You pout and cross your arms. “A bad haircut is the only explanation for the hat and not getting my selfies”

“Your selfies?” Lando questions, once again raising an eyebrow. He knows exactly what selfies you’re talking about, but one thing about Lando Norris is that he loves to tease his girlfriend.

“I want my post race selfies back Lando” 

Lando smiles widely, taking a moment to take in all of your soft sweet features. Lando hadn’t intentionally been keeping anything from you, the few days he had been in Mexico had been busier than usual and it slipped his mind. “I’m sorry my love, I promise you’ll get one after quali”

“I better” You murmur, arms still crossed against your chest. You did miss the selfies, but you weren’t actually annoyed with him, in fact any feelings that even remotely resembled annoyance or hurt from the past few days all stem from a place of missing Lando. 

Lando knows you better than you know yourself, so he knows that if he doesn’t do something in the next few minutes, the call is going to take a sharp turn from playful and fun to somber and probably leave at least one of you in tears. Neither you or Lando were one to shy away from your emotions, but if Lando could hold off on it, until he could guarantee you his undivided love and attention, that's what he’s going to do. 

Lando winks at you, before taking off his hat and running his hand through his hair. “Is that better my love?”

A small gasp passes your lips, before you break out into the widest smile that Lando had seen in weeks. “Lando!” You squeal happily. “You look so handsome, why have you been hiding your hair?”

“I haven’t been hiding my hair, you doughnut,” Lando laughed. “It’s hot and I like my hat”

[andhumanslovedstories]

I am not closely following the election results tonight, but I am occasionally seeing flashes of them out of the corner of my eye. The most obvious sign that things aren’t going well right now is the complete lack of celebrating on my dash. I know what tumblr looks like when it’s happy. Maybe I’ll go to bed tonight and see something different in the morning. I hope to god that is the case. But I’m thinking about the way I’m thinking right now, and I want to get some stuff down before the future kicks in.

In 2016 I was in a period of my life I affectionately refer to as as my fuckup era. I wasn’t even fucking up really. More just chilling out and falling short of the vague expectations I’d had about what I was supposed to be doing after I graduated college. While my friends from college rented apartments in the city and got jobs that didn’t supply you with a uniform shirt, I lived at home and worked as a barista at a fancy movie theater. That’s a real job you can do for almost five years. I didn’t have a clue what the back half of my twenties should look like. The only long term plan I had in my life was moving out west with my best friend, and my plan for finding a job once I was out there was basically to cross my fingers and hope.

Those days weren’t bad on the whole, but it felt like I was not actually living a life so much as I was goofing off in the waiting room. Sometimes that felt embarrassing, sometimes it felt fun, and sometimes it felt like I was completely pointless to the world.

On 2016’s Election Day, I went to bed early. After watching the votes come in, I needed the night to be over. I woke in a world that felt different than it had been the night before—not just in the actuality of who would be president but down to its foundations. I realized for the first time how much hope I’d had in human nature because now I didn’t feel it anymore. It’s almost silly when I think about it—so many horrible things had already happened that year, people had done horrible things as long as there have been people, and I didn’t think I was naive to that—but something clicked into place that morning.

It felt the same way my world had changed a year earlier, in 2015 during my last semester of college. My college victory lap felt like a prolonged downward spiral. Very early in the morning on a Monday, after pulling an all-nighter and overwhelmed by self-loathing that I could not just motivate myself to work on a paper that had been my only thought all weekend, I self-harmed for the first time in a way that was impossible to pretend it was anything else. Earlier that weekend, I’d tried staving off the urges drawing or writing on my arm, something that did (and does) usually work. I’d written this quote in silver sharpie on my forearm: “Good is not a thing you are. It's a thing you do.”

I picked that quote from the Ms. Marvel comics and liked the words so much, I thought that I wouldn’t be willing to purposefully mess it up by hurting myself there. Didn’t work. They just made me feel more ashamed of myself as I did it.

That was the worst I had ever felt. Then, on the Friday of that week, a friend of mine was senselessly, brutally murdered.

It doesn’t feel now like there was ever a time before her death. My memoir class is now where I wrote about her. My favorite professor is now the one who held me as I cried. My final thesis, the culmination of my history degree, never got finished and certainly never got polished. I turned it what I had and got an A minus. Sometimes I think of rereading that paper to see if that’s the grade it actually deserved. We hadn’t been the closest friends, but my name was still on the email admin sent to professors, listing students who might be emotionally affected by this tragic event. Grace’s murder hangs over every memory I have with her and everything she ever touched. It feels like its own type of obliteration to leave her reduced to her death.

Grace wanted to be a lawyer because she believed in justice and also liked arguing. She could be rude when she wasn’t interested in what you were saying. When you caught her attention, you felt like the most fascinating person in the room. She was so proud of being Jewish. I watched her become proud of being gay. She was so universally friendly that it took me a year to realize that she actually liked specifically me. She had a somewhat silly laugh and an astonishingly luminous smile.

I thought less of the world and the people in it because of how she died. Trump’s election in 2016 felt like that.

After he won, I left stasis. From November through December, I thought harder about my future than I ever had before. Who did I want to be? What did I most value? What did I think was worth protecting? What work wouldn’t kill me to do? At one point, in presumably a fit of madness, I thought, “what if I got into politics.” Epiphany eventually hit me. By the time of Trump’s inauguration, I was already enrolled at community college, getting my pre-reqs for nursing school.

Now it’s election night again, eight years later. I live on the west coast with my best friend, in a house that we bought together. I work as a nurse in a hospital in a city where there are homeless encampments off every highway and someone begging for change on every corner. Meanwhile, there’s Palestine. Meanwhile there’s Sudan. Meanwhile refugees drown in the sea and border patrol shoots jugs of water. Even hurricanes have human cruelty now.

I don’t think people are inherently good or the universe inherently kind. But I am very good at tricking myself into thinking it for a little while, and when I do, I can remember the a specific feeling from Friday of my senior year, from that morning in November— how fucking hard the disappointment hit me because I had expected people to be better than this. It makes me want to be better than that.

I believe, and hope that I always will, that we can make a better world. I don’t know what it looks like, but I think I will see it in my lifetime. Those of us who can believe such things owe a bit of that naïveté to the world—not to excuse atrocities or think them impossible but to believe that we can stop them at all. You have to have a couple people sprinkled around who are genuinely shocked when people do bad things. It’s not that the pessimists are wrong, but you need the occasional counterbalance. I want to be a reasonable cynic’s pleasant surprise.

Every shift, I interact with people at their lowest and worst. I see the direct pipeline from pain to anger to violence, and how fragile that pipeline can be. So many situations can be changed by things as small as a warm blanket or a kind word. Violence can be quite easy to avert. Crises can be quite simply to resolve. Even when I know that whatever I do that shift will not change the circumstances of a person’s life, I think that what I do that shift still matters.

I’m lying in bed, writing this post instead of looking at the news. I wonder how tonight will change me. Been thinking about what I’ll do if Trump wins. Been thinking about how whatever I think I need to do under Trump will still need to be done if Harris clutches out a victory. I guess this is a pessimist’s optimism: to a degree the election doesn’t matter. Good is not a thing you are. It is a thing you do. Our better world will always take a lot of work.

But please god please, why can’t it be just a little easier to do it?

[wethotcrazy]

CAN'T CONTROL IT

pairing: Franco Colapinto x Fem! Driver! Reader

word count: 739

just something a little short and sweet for franco colapinto. also i think the can't control their mouth and can't control their face would suit him well?! idk bro

The F1 social media team had a new favorite hobby: catching YN's reactions to everything Franco Colapinto did.

It started during pre-season testing in Bahrain. Franco, fresh in his Williams racing suit, had spun on his installation lap – a rookie mistake that had the paddock chuckling. The TV director, whether by instinct or divine intervention, cut immediately to YN in the Alpine garage.

Her expression was poetry in motion: eyes rolling skyward, lips pressed together to suppress a smile, followed by a head shake that somehow conveyed both "I can't believe this" and "that's my idiot" in one fluid movement.

The clip went viral within hours.

"Have you seen this?" Franco bounded into the Alpine hospitality area, phone already extended. "'Every Time YN Dies Inside Watching Franco Colapinto: Testing Edition' – they even put sad violin music over your faces!"

YN didn't need to look. She'd already seen the compilation – a masterfully edited collection of her various reactions to Franco's testing adventures. Her personal favorite was the slow-motion zoom on her face when he'd described his first F1 car as "spicy."

"I'm starting to think you do these things on purpose," she muttered, but her treacherous face was already softening at his enthusiasm.

"Maybe I just like seeing your reactions," he winked, dropping into the seat beside her. "Remember in F3 when you said your face wasn't that expressive?"

"Remember in F2 when you said you'd learned to think before speaking?"

His laugh echoed through the hospitality area. "Some things never change, no?"

The Australian GP brought new material for the ever-growing collection of "YN Can't Control Her Face" content. As Alpine's reserve driver, she was in the garage when Franco scored his first F1 points – a remarkable P8 in a chaotic race.

His radio message was pure, unfiltered Franco: "P8! P8! YN, are you watching? Better than that time in F2 when you said I'd never score points because I was too busy talking!"

The cameras found her instantly: pride blooming across her features before she could school them into professional neutrality.

"Every time they show your face, the comments explode," Esteban teased later. "I think you've got more screen time than some of the actual drivers."

YN groaned. "Don't remind me. Someone made a TikTok trend out of my different 'Franco Reactions.'"

"At least you're not 'Can't Control His Mouth' Colapinto," Pierre chimed in. "Did you hear him in the press pen? He spent five minutes explaining how you once bet him he couldn't qualify top 10 without talking on team radio."

"Did he mention he lost that bet?"

"No, but your face when they asked you about it said everything."

Monaco was where things reached new heights. Franco, running in P6 during practice, had been providing commentary that somehow always circled back to YN:

"YN's watching, no? Tell her this is how you take the hairpin properly—" Franco spoke through team radio confidently before scraping through the hairpin.  "Ah. Maybe not like that."

The camera cuts to YN's perfect face-palm, followed by a head shake that somehow conveyed both "I knew it" and "why am I even surprised" in one swift motion.

The resulting clip went viral on Tiktok and became F1's most-watched social media post of the weekend.

"You know what I think?" Franco asked one evening, as they shared takeaway in the quiet of the paddock after everyone else had left. The cameras were finally off, but YN's face was as expressive as ever in the dim light.

"That's a dangerous start to any conversation with you."

He grinned, nudging her shoulder. "I think you like that I can't control my mouth."

"And what makes you say that?" she asked, trying and failing to keep her expression neutral.

"Because every time I talk about you, you make this face – like you're trying not to smile but can't help it. It's my favorite one."

"I do not have a special face for when you talk about me."

"Si, you do! You're making it right now!"

She threw a napkin at him, but her smile – soft and genuine and completely uncontrolled – gave her away.

The next day, during the drivers' briefing, Alex caught Franco staring at YN with an expression that mirrored all of hers – soft and fond and entirely unguarded.

The photo went viral with the caption: "Looks like neither of them can control anything anymore 💕"

[darkshrimpemotions]

The thing is, Guillermo being too kind and pure of heart to eat humans was always a fucking lie. Like??? Obviously, I think. And the Cannon Capital arc isn't really a departure for his character, it's us seeing all his worst traits highlighted in an environment that makes them MUCH less fun and sympathetic.

Guillermo has always been an intensely stubborn, self-serving character prone to tunnel vision who was willing to turn over pretty much every corner of his soul if it served his goals. Even if he did sometimes feel bad about it or force himself not to think about it so he wouldn't feel bad, he still did it.

He's still the guy who befriended people with the express purpose of luring them in to be killed. For years. He's still the guy who offered one of his oldest friends up to be murdered at an orgy, and only changed his mind at the very last second. He's still the guy whose version of trying to have a normal human life for once involved lying to pretty much every human in his life--his bio family and his boyfriend--about every aspect of his life but his name. He's still the guy who dismembered the corpses of his victims--yes they're still his victims even if he didn't strike the killing blows himself--in the front yard each morning with a dreamy smile on his face as he talked about the heart wanting what it wants.

Sacrificing Nandor to serve his goals at Cannon Capital is really not that different than sacrificing Jeremy to serve his goals as Nandor's familiar, except that in this case he had a lot more time to think about it and still did it, not via silence or omission but via a direct act of betrayal to Nandor's face. Perhaps it's because he never had to suffer any real consequences for his betrayal of Jeremy that no lessons were learned?

It's also really telling that when you reset Guillermo to his base state via sleep hypnosis, it's the sweetest, most wide-eyed and innocent version of him and STILL the first thing he does is offer himself up to be a vampire's familiar, all in a bid to have enough power that he can't ever be bullied again.

It's understandable. It's reprehensible. It's really ugly in a way that's harder to laugh off when you attach that to an extremely timely, familiar (heh) real-world scenario such as a venture capital firm that makes their money through shady real-estate deals that absolutely gut local livelihoods. But the Guillermo we're seeing right now is just as tunnel-visioned and stubborn and selfish as the Guillermo we've always known. We just very understandably like him less for it when it's real-world monsters we've all seen ruin real lives instead of fantasy monsters that are silly and fun to watch.

But this isn't out of character or off course or a step back. Guillermo is deep in denial and clinging to the Cannon Capital job because he can't face what he's lost as of the end of season 5. He's replaced Nandor with a master that's worse in every way, he's still clinging to the house while pretending he's separating himself, he's still sleeping on the remains of the makeshift coffin Nandor bought for him. He tells himself he is facing it and moving on, but I hope this time we all know that's a lie.

And I'm here for it when it all falls down around his ears, and he finally has to face himself. I'm really excited for it, actually!

[dedalvs]

With all due respect sir, and I know you've been through a hell of a lot of elections, the politics of this country have been shifting more right wing for a couple of years now and I doubt .4% of people voting for a third party would have made a fucking difference when no one in this country even listens to the popular vote

I expected that many would miss the point of the post I made—even though I literally said in the post "The point wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate"—screenshot in case you missed it:

It is voter suppression. It is always voter suppression. That was the point. It is to keep people home. The third party candidates, the fantasy candidates ("How can you vote for x candidate when theoretical y candidate who isn't in this election is so much more liberal?!"), that's the distraction. It is always about getting voters to stay home and not cast a vote. I don't know how I can make that any clearer.

Even in cases where a specific third party candidate's vote total might have made the difference (in 2000 Bush won Florida by 537 votes while Ralph Nader, many of whose voters were more allied with Gore than Bush, received 97,421 votes), the answer is never "Why did you vote for a third party candidate?", it's "Why didn't more Floridians come out to vote?" After all, with many of those third party voters, IF they were forced to choose between two candidates only, maybe they wouldn't have voted at all, so it wouldn't have made a difference. In this year's election, most third party votes went to candidates that leaned conservative, so if they weren't there, maybe Trump gets more votes in those states, not fewer.

No, listen, I don't know how to make this clearer: THE PROPAGANDA IS TO GET VOTERS NOT TO VOTE. It is ALWAYS to get voters not to vote. How they do it changes with the election, but the goal is always to get voters to stay home.

Also, in case you think I'm blaming Gen-Z, I was hoping referring to the history would set the concern aside (they weren't there in 2000). It's not a generation's fault. It is simply failing to recognize propaganda and what it is ultimately trying to get you to do. In this case, it's the same thing every time: to not vote. The liberals vs. ultra-liberals thing is a fiction to drive down liberal turnout.

I know it's been said many times, but if voting weren't important, Republicans wouldn't care about it. Truly, when they don't care about voting, that's the time to truly be frightened, because it means at that point voting is no longer relevant to the process.

(Btw I tried to tag this post and the last one with enough tags to let those who don't want to see it filter it out. I hope I've done enough of them.)

[frogmoisturethief]

ughhhhhhhhh I’m gonna fail my lab practical tomorrow

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

THIS

Because, how exactly is voting third party gona help people in Gazha?

Gore vs Bush resulted in Bush and all that followed (including the death of brown people)

BECAUSE PEOPLE VOTED THIRD PARTY

Hillary vs Trump resulted in Trump and all that followed (including the death of brown people)

BECAUSE PEOPLE VOTED THIRD PARTY

But this time it will be different?

Harris vs Trump will magically result in something good through a third party vote?

If you really honestly believe that voting third party is gonna improve ANYTHING for people in Ghaza or Libanon or Sudan or ... I have a nice bridge to sell

And if you don't really honestly believe that

STOP DOING THE REPUBLICANS JOB FOR THEM!

Instead change things for the better so eventually voting third party will be a viable option

[vinestaff]

sighs. another guy in my brain i guess

[oobbbear]

I want to post this here too because I’ve seen it happen a few times

Please understand that there are cultural differences and language differences, if you see this happening let the person clarify what they meant, that person might just not be familiar with words the western side of the internet use