thatdisasterauthor

[thatdisasterauthor]

Also, fun fact that I forgot to mention but remembered when someone laughed at the fact that they "deadnamed" Ted Cruz in this:

One of the people who is a driving force behind this is Bobbie Scopa, a trans wildland firefighter (though she's now retired)! She's awesome and has been in the field for decades. Haven't met her yet, but one of my bosses knows her well and was talking about having her come out at some point to give a talk. She has a biography, "Both Sides of the Fireline," that I can't recommend enough. Go check her out.

Easy Action Item! Help Wildland Firefighters from getting a 50% pay cut!

Hey everyone, I have a quick and easy action item that could make a HUGE difference going forward.

Wildland Firefighters are currently facing a MASSIVE pay cut, and by massive I mean up to 50%. Yes. Fifty. Percent.

WF pay has been an issue basically forever, but for awhile the government has been kicking the can down the road with various "retention bonuses," but those are set to expire soon and if a permanent solution isn't passed, firefighters are screwed, and so is every single person and business that exists in the wildland urban interface. We need our firefighters more than ever, and right now they need US to help get this passed.

You can read more about the issue, its history, and the proposed solutions here, on the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters page. They have been a major driving force to get this issue taken care of once and for all.

The GWF page has also put together a handy dandy tool to automatically send a letter to your senators asking them to pass the legislation necessary to permanently fix this issue. Please, please take a couple minutes to fill it out and send this letter in, and share this post so other people can do it too.

Contact your senators now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

All federal ones, anyway!

Easy Action Item! Help Wildland Firefighters from getting a 50% pay cut!

Hey everyone, I have a quick and easy action item that could make a HUGE difference going forward.

Wildland Firefighters are currently facing a MASSIVE pay cut, and by massive I mean up to 50%. Yes. Fifty. Percent.

WF pay has been an issue basically forever, but for awhile the government has been kicking the can down the road with various "retention bonuses," but those are set to expire soon and if a permanent solution isn't passed, firefighters are screwed, and so is every single person and business that exists in the wildland urban interface. We need our firefighters more than ever, and right now they need US to help get this passed.

You can read more about the issue, its history, and the proposed solutions here, on the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters page. They have been a major driving force to get this issue taken care of once and for all.

The GWF page has also put together a handy dandy tool to automatically send a letter to your senators asking them to pass the legislation necessary to permanently fix this issue. Please, please take a couple minutes to fill it out and send this letter in, and share this post so other people can do it too.

Contact your senators now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Easy Action Item! Help Wildland Firefighters from getting a 50% pay cut!

Hey everyone, I have a quick and easy action item that could make a HUGE difference going forward.

Wildland Firefighters are currently facing a MASSIVE pay cut, and by massive I mean up to 50%. Yes. Fifty. Percent.

WF pay has been an issue basically forever, but for awhile the government has been kicking the can down the road with various "retention bonuses," but those are set to expire soon and if a permanent solution isn't passed, firefighters are screwed, and so is every single person and business that exists in the wildland urban interface. We need our firefighters more than ever, and right now they need US to help get this passed.

You can read more about the issue, its history, and the proposed solutions here, on the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters page. They have been a major driving force to get this issue taken care of once and for all.

The GWF page has also put together a handy dandy tool to automatically send a letter to your senators asking them to pass the legislation necessary to permanently fix this issue. Please, please take a couple minutes to fill it out and send this letter in, and share this post so other people can do it too.

Contact your senators now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

The sale is almost over!

I've got plenty of goodies left at crazy low prices, and this will be your LAST CHANCE to get most of them as I shift what sort of stuff I carry in my shop going forward.

Also, the proceeds from this sale are helping me to get through a few months of unemployment until I start my year-round position early next year, so every sale real does help!

Shop Now.

Shop Now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Easy Action Item! Help Wildland Firefighters from getting a 50% pay cut!

Hey everyone, I have a quick and easy action item that could make a HUGE difference going forward.

Wildland Firefighters are currently facing a MASSIVE pay cut, and by massive I mean up to 50%. Yes. Fifty. Percent.

WF pay has been an issue basically forever, but for awhile the government has been kicking the can down the road with various "retention bonuses," but those are set to expire soon and if a permanent solution isn't passed, firefighters are screwed, and so is every single person and business that exists in the wildland urban interface. We need our firefighters more than ever, and right now they need US to help get this passed.

You can read more about the issue, its history, and the proposed solutions here, on the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters page. They have been a major driving force to get this issue taken care of once and for all.

The GWF page has also put together a handy dandy tool to automatically send a letter to your senators asking them to pass the legislation necessary to permanently fix this issue. Please, please take a couple minutes to fill it out and send this letter in, and share this post so other people can do it too.

Contact your senators now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I do indeed have much I can say on all of this! I don’t have time for a full breakdown, but let’s hit some key points.

🌪The Milton evacuation and changing the direction highways.

This is called “contraflow” and it is indeed a thing that is frequently used in evacuations. However, from what I understand, Florida might have laws against this? At least that’s what I’ve heard, or maybe just laws that do indeed make it very difficult. I haven’t had a chance to look into it too closely. And it is a tricky thing to do safely just off the cuff without a known procedure in place, which you wouldn’t have if it’s against the law in your area. You’ve gotta shut down all the exits/entrances accordingly so you don’t have issues with head-on traffic, you’ve gotta make sure you have effective alternate routes for emergency traffic, you’ve gotta have a space to reintegrate traffic into the proper lanes once the contraflow segment has ended, etc. etc.

You’re right that this isn’t a police problem, it’s a LAW problem. Maybe also a police problem in the sense of what trainings are available to them, what procedures they have in these situations, etc., but not an ACAB style police problem. Plenty of places DO use it, like I said. (Also, sometimes you’ll get spontaneous contraflow, where people just start doing on their own, but that’s a whole different can of worms.)

🚗 Over dependence on cars.

America is indeed super car dependent, but that’s not exactly the issue here, at least not in the way you’d think. First off, evacuations are just HARD. That’s a lot of people to move. Even if you took every large transport vehicle in a given area (so all the buses of any sort, any trains, any planes), you’re not going to get the entire population moved out in a timely manner, even if every seat is taken. It just isn’t feasible for so many reasons. People DO need to be able to evacuate via car. It’s also very dependent on the disaster in question. An evacuation for a hurricane is very different than most other evacuations due to the amount of time you, usually, have.

Now, one thing that happens and causes problems during evacuations is that people take ALL their cars instead of just one. Mom takes one car with the kids and as much stuff as possible stuffed in the back, and Dad takes his truck with the dogs and the bed piled high. A lot of evacuation planning doesn’t account for this. They see a four person family and think, “ah yes, the family sedan has six seats, they’ll just take that and go, we don’t need to plan for them to put both their cars on the road and at all the gas stations along the way.” But then they do take both cars, and so does every other family on the road, and suddenly you’ve got a shit ton more cars doing something that you expected a lot less cars to be doing. I have a lot more thoughts on this I can share later, if people are interested, but for now we shall move on.

(There’s also definitely an element of poor city planning and infrastructure in some places, but that’s very much a case by case thing.)

👩🏻‍🚒 We need a better emergency management system.

Yes! Though, actually, we already have a pretty good one as compared to other countries. Not great, by any means, but something like FEMA is pretty rare. Most countries just kind of ad hoc disaster response on a case by case basis, which is also what we did until we created FEMA in the 70s.

I have A LOT of thoughts about how we could improve the system as it currently stands, which is a big part of why I want to do a PhD in emergency management.

🔥 When to evacuate.

You mentioned this in relation to the Camp Fire, and that one is…yeah, that one was so bad. There’s a lot that goes into making evacuation decisions, and unfortunately studies have shown that a lot of emergency officials still believe the myth that people will panic if you give them too much information about a disaster. This leads to delays in evacuations, among other things. Also, evacuations are expensive, and that makes officials hold back. Plus, there’s the “cried wolf” effect where if it turns out the evacuation WASN’T needed, the next time it IS needed, people will be less likely to go, which again makes officials hold back.

With the Camp Fire, though, I don’t know if any of that specifically was what was at play. That thing just moved FAST. Also, this was a small mountain town. There were not a lot of ways out, just thin mountain roads. I guarantee those officials who made the evacuation call hesitated because they knew people WOULD get stuck on the few potential roads to safety. They weren’t making a choice about evacuation, they were making a choice on where they wanted people to be when the fire DID hit. Because it was going to hit. So do they concentrate people all in one spot, on a road that itself won’t burn but will be completely surrounded, or do they keep people spaced out all over town hoping that pockets of it might be safe? And they had to make that decision at the drop of a hat, knowing people were likely to die either way.

Fires are, in my opinion, the most terrifying thing to have to manage an evacuation for. They are both incredibly quick, but also potentially long lasting. They can shift direction at a moment’s notice. They can do things you never knew they could do. They can consume absolutely massive areas. They can die down and pop back up when you least expect it. And to be the person making the decision on how to handle that must be a very, very heavy weight.

👋🏻 People in positions of power just waving their hands.

Some do, some don’t. There are so, so many amazing people out there who care about this stuff and are doing their best to address these issues. But they need support. Taking over the department of transportation isn’t the answer, your local emergency management department is. Check out what their emergency plans look like, they should be on your county and state websites. Read through them, find the holes, go to meetings, contact your representatives. Be a nuisance to Congress RIGHT NOW.

🎓 Disaster education

Lastly, to @kyraneko’s point about needing better disaster education, yes! Yes we do! I think one of FEMA’s weakest points is its lack of addressing and helping individuals directly prior to a disaster, rather than in large groups. I’m working on it. Got a big project in the works that will, hopefully, start addressing this issue. And that’s not including the PhD.

Sooooooo….yeah! :D That ended up a lot longer than I thought, lol. Hope some of it was interesting to those of you who have made it to the end.

So I have a friend from high school who is a cop. (Yes, I KNOW.) I shared a photo on Facebook of a packed highway of people attempting to evacuate from Hurricane Milton, all while the lanes going in the opposite direction were open and empty. And my Facebook post was basically me screaming, “Open the other side of the highway and reverse it so that people can GET OUT.”

His response was essentially, “Yeah, that is *really* difficult for us to do.” Not in a condescending way, because he genuinely isn’t a huge asshole. (Yes, I KNOW.)

And then I may have vented in my response, in which I tried not to imply that the police were a problem. Because to be honest, I don’t see this as a police problem. I see this as how we have fucked ourselves as a nation by making ourselves so dependent on cars.

There is that poll on this site – or multiple polls, at this point – asking how long people can tolerate being in their cars. And the thing is, Americans (and Canadians as well, I am imagining) have almost no other options. We have to be used to spending a good 12 hours in a car without breaking a sweat. Everything in this country is built around being in a car. There’s a reason when you ask us how far away a place is from somewhere else, we normally give that distance in hours and not miles.

Air travel sucks. It sucks for a multitude of reasons – cost, the hassle of dealing with security, the time suck, etc. – and in an emergency, only a select few are going to be able to use it to get away from a hurricane. And that’s one of the few disasters where air travel is an optional escape.

Train travel sucks. Amtrak is not something you’re gonna be complaining about if you’re trying to get away from whatever disaster you need to evacuate from. But next to so many other countries, Amtrak looks like we’ve been receiving other countries’s leftover railway systems from the 70s. It also doesn’t go everywhere. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania near Scranton, which prides itself on its history in the train industry. We have a museum and everything. We have multiple things named after that museum, including the Steamtown marathon which is happening tomorrow.

Can you get on a passenger train in Scranton? Nope.

(The main argument against this always seems to be that people will come here from New York City and commit crimes, which is hilarious considering if somebody wanted to come here from New York City and commit crimes it’s only a 2.5-hour drive.)

Anyway, disasters.

If the only option you’re gonna give most people to get out of areas of Florida that are being targeted by hurricanes or areas of California that suffer from wildfires or places in the Midwest that face flooding are cars, then we need a better fucking emergency management system regarding transportation in this country. You can’t just sit there and mock people for not evacuating because they can’t or won’t when getting away from Milton meant sitting on highway for hours with absolutely no gas stations whatsoever nearby having any gas at all. (It just makes me think of those photos of people stranded on the highway in their cars in blizzards where people are like, “Now imagine imagine how bad it would be if all of those cars were electric!“ Well, all of those cars in that photo in that blizzard run on gas and they’re fucking stranded, sooooooo.)

Look, we can change the transportation system in this country. we did it before and we can do it again. We used to have more train options, fewer highways. My small hometown had a fucking trolley in the 40s. Now, if you don’t have a car here, you’re stuck. You can’t even get Uber here. if a wildfire started here and surrounded the town, it would be a clusterfuck.

Regardless of how you feel about the police, if police and fire departments in this country cannot organize an evacuation on a highway in a way that will reduce the backup so that tens of thousands of people aren’t sitting in their cars when a hurricane hits, that’s a problem – not just for those people, but for the police, and the fire department, and emergency management in general.

The people in charge of emergency management are just people, just human. I’m researching the Camp Fire in 2018 right now, and you had a bunch of people calling 911 saying, “I can see a huge fire off to the east. Are we safe? Should we evacuate?” The 911 operators could only work off the information they had. They could have told people to evacuate earlier, but Cal Fire didn’t anticipate the strength of the fire. Which is understandable. Nobody could anticipate the strength of that fire. But the 911 operators were sitting in an office with no windows, and they had no idea what was going on the east. They couldn’t look out and see exactly what was happening. If they could have, they probably would have told people to leave as soon as possible much sooner than they were told to. Instead, they waited for official confirmation, and when they did start telling people to evacuate, traffic managed to back up in a small town of 25,000 people until many of them were trapped in an unimaginable hellscape.

When people need to evacuate from a disaster, and they stay instead, far too many people - including those in positions of power – just kind of wave their hands and say, “Well, we tried.” No, we didn’t. This country made not trying its watchword, and now we’re at a point where unless you own a car, which is a luxury a lot of people cannot afford in this economy, escaping from disaster is impossible. So you can get in your car or somebody else’s car and go sit on a highway and hope your gas doesn’t run out, since none of the gas stations for 100 miles have any gas to give you, or you can stay in your house and hope you don’t die.

Sometimes, I really wish somebody would make me the head of the department of transportation. I would demand an absurd amount of money to build a better train system, to provide better transportation options for smaller towns, to provide extensive training for rescue personnel in managing evacuations like the clusterfuck in Florida this week. I would become an absolute fucking nuisance to Congress. I would be asking for money left and right to make it so that our only options as Americans weren’t to get into cars we can barely afford these days and attempt to organize our own evacuations from the growing number of natural disasters in this country.

Y’all keep posting these polls about how long you can tolerate being in a car at the same time that tens of thousands of Floridians were sitting on highways trying to get away from Tampa so they wouldn’t die in a hurricane.

We can tolerate being in a car all goddamn day. It’s because we don’t have a fucking choice, even when it’s life or death.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

[thatdisasterauthor]

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BLUESKY

Hiya! Curious about joining bluesky but intimidated by all the features? Already on bluesky but want to learn more? Then welcome to my quick guide on getting started and navigating bluesky!~

What is Bluesky?

it’s a social media site that’s owned by no single person or company. it's aim is to bring back the early days of twitter before bots, elon musk or algorithms took over. Personally I find the site really cozy, wholesome, and engaging. my Bluesky account for example

What’s unique about Bluesky?

→ CUSTOMIZATION: ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎your timeline is very easy to control. There’s tons of options, so be sure to go through each tab in your settings. some options include: turning off autoplay, changing the order in which threaded replies show, changing DM settings, content preferences and lots of visual app settings.

→ MODERATION LISTS: human made, mass blocklists. These are public lists of accounts that when you subscribe to you automatically block or mute everyone in that specific blocklist. A great way to avoid unwanted content, and interactions. ✦ Moderation lists I recommend will be below the cut

→ STARTER PACKS: recommendation lists on who to follow, made by users. You can even curate your own starter pack of recommendations! ✦ Starter pack recommendations will be below the cut

→ FEEDS: public timelines, basically. There are a lot of feeds you can join, or you can even create your own. I made a feed featuring just my pixel art so it doesn’t get cluttered with text posts or other photos in my media tab. ✦ I’ll post feeds I recommend below and link you to a tutorial on how to create your own feed

→ BLOCKING/MUTING: bluesky has a great blocking system. When you block someone they can no longer see, or interact with you. They also have a feature to make your blog inaccessible unless logged in. you can also mute specific people, delete post replies, and even detach your post from a reblog. You can also mute specific words, phrases, tags etc.

→ NSFW: bluesky allows NSFW content, including artwork, porn, lewds etc. They also have a great moderation page to avoid the content completely, censor the content, or show it if you’d wish. ✦ just go to settings > moderation > toggle on NSFW settings and it’ll let you heavily moderate.

→ LABELS: this is a really cool feature on the site, you can subscribe to certain pages that enable a lot of fun/useful labels that help you in different ways! (like pronoun tags, artist tags etc) ✦ Labels to browse will be posted below

→ COMMUNITIES: the vastly diverse communities really feel like the best parts of tumblr. since you can so heavily curate your experience, it can really feel like a calming oasis. Mine is mostly artists, and other creatives.

there’s also a large community of professional artists, art directors, authors, celebrities, and even the best shitposters from twitter. the app really is what you make of it but it’s thriving right now.

RECOMMENDATIONS & LINKS BELOW ⬎

→ MODERATION LISTS:

HATE SPEECH: NAZIS | MAGA | MAGAv2 | MAGAv3 | TRANSPHOBES & HOMOPHOBES | FAR RIGHT | FAR RIGHTv2 | FAR RIGHTv3 | ELON MUSK FANBOYS | ANTI-BLACK | ANTI-VAX

NFT/AI/CRYPTO: MASTERLIST | AI/NFT | AI/NFTv2 | AI FANBOYS | CRYPTO | NFTs

SPAM/SCAMMERS: SPAMBOTS | BOTS | CONTENT SCRAPERS | CONTENT FARMING

✦ to block or mute everyone in the blocklist at once, click subscribe in the top right corner:

→ STARTER PACKS:

ART: PIXEL ART | PIXEL ARTv2 | WOMEN OF PIXEL ART | BADASS DIGITAL ARTISTS | MAGIC THE GATHERING ARTIST | PAINTERS OF BLUESKY | INDIE COMIC CREATORS | LGBTQIA+ COMIC CREATORS

GENERAL: WOMEN OF BSKY | AUTHORS | LGBTQ NEWS

SHITPOSTERS: JUNIPER | JUNIPERv2 | MASTERLIST | SCIENCE SHITPOSTERS

✦ for more niche starter packs, use the search function. search your specific interest and ‘starter pack’ and you’ll find some!

→ FEEDS:

DISCOVER | WHATS TRENDING | MENTIONS | ART | TRENDING ART

THE GRAM: a timeline for exclusively image posts from those you follow. no textposts etc. ONLYPOST: similar to the gram, it shows a timeline of only those you follow. no reposts, just original posts. 📌: a way to bookmark posts. just reply with the pin emoji.

✦ there’s tons of others feeds as well! just use the feed tab and you can browse feeds or search for specific ones.

✦ TUTORIAL ON HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM FEED FOR YOUR ART/POSTS

→ LABELS:

SKYWATCH: most popular label. Lots of useful labels!

AI Labels: identifies AI users, can also enable hiding the posters.

Pronouns: self explanatory but useful. can add a badge with your pronouns!

✦ you can search for additional label bots on bluesky!

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

✦ EXPIRIENCE ENHANCING TOOLS RECS ✦ CLEARSKY: TRACK BLOCKS AND BLOCKLISTS ✦ SKYFEED: CREATE CUSTOM FEEDS EASILY ✦ use the block function often. do not entertain trolls or hate speech. ✦ as well as starter packs, there’s also lists! lists can be used in the same way to create curated lists of accounts. it’s a good way to keep track of specific genres of posters you’re interested in, and finding new ones! ✦ hashtags: use them! they’re beneficial in boosting your post. you can even link hashtags in your bio making you easier to find. another method of making you more visible is if you post an ‘interest’ post! basically just type things you’re interested in and it’ll help people find you / vice versa ! ✦ update your profile first thing, like bio avi etc. make a small post so people know you're real. interact and engage! the communities there are so welcoming!

I think that covers abt everything i wanted to cover! Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading lol

[thatdisasterauthor]

🔥🔥FLASH SALES PART TWO🔥🔥

We heard a couple of you when you said, "but I don't get paid until Friday!" & extended 25% off our new travel mugs until midnight tonight - PLUS our best enamel pin sale of the year! No code necessary!

Code BUY4PINS will let you buy 4 enamel or acrylic pins from the PHQ PINS & KEYCHAINS collection & get 3 free, and BUY6PINS gets 6 free items from that collection when you buy 6. 👀

Pins & keychains sale runs until midnight Sunday, 11/24!

[thatdisasterauthor]

Easy Action Item! Help Wildland Firefighters from getting a 50% pay cut!

Hey everyone, I have a quick and easy action item that could make a HUGE difference going forward.

Wildland Firefighters are currently facing a MASSIVE pay cut, and by massive I mean up to 50%. Yes. Fifty. Percent.

WF pay has been an issue basically forever, but for awhile the government has been kicking the can down the road with various "retention bonuses," but those are set to expire soon and if a permanent solution isn't passed, firefighters are screwed, and so is every single person and business that exists in the wildland urban interface. We need our firefighters more than ever, and right now they need US to help get this passed.

You can read more about the issue, its history, and the proposed solutions here, on the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters page. They have been a major driving force to get this issue taken care of once and for all.

The GWF page has also put together a handy dandy tool to automatically send a letter to your senators asking them to pass the legislation necessary to permanently fix this issue. Please, please take a couple minutes to fill it out and send this letter in, and share this post so other people can do it too.

Contact your senators now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Just watched the mid season finale and…what the fuck was that?

[thatdisasterauthor]

[thatdisasterauthor]

It's baaaaack!

Get ahead of shipping: Black Friday starts now.

[thatdisasterauthor]

you have entered.. the scary door

[thatdisasterauthor]

I hope Maddie finds comfort in the fact that both the kids she raised are so happy, thriving and in a safe & loving environment. I hope Maddie knows that she has been an incredible mom to them both. 🥹🩵

[thatdisasterauthor]

what he means: my first girlfriend sacrificed herself for the good of her people, and she didn't think twice about it. i saw firsthand what it meant to truly protect those you love, and in that moment i also experienced what it meant to be loved enough to be protected. but i wasn't ready. i didn't have enough time to say goodbye. she was gone before she fell back to me, and i knew it even before i looked for a pulse that wasn't there. she was heavy, until she wasn't, because i saw death happen in a way i never thought it could when her body vanished from my arms. i now know what it feels like to kiss a spirit, and it's the last touch i have of her. she sacrificed herself because she believed it was her duty, an expectation she felt she needed to face, and it should never have happened. but she got dragged into a war that we brought to her home. there was nothing i could do to protect her from its devastation, and i blame myself for her death.

what he says: my first girlfriend turned into the moon

[thatdisasterauthor]

if a character means enough to me i will truly never stop thinking about them. i just retire them into a little back room in my brain and periodically bring them out to stare at them under a little light