this is tomfoolery

Purple Fade

Chicago, Illinois - Jan, 2026

Study Finds Rainforests Bounce Back Much Quicker than Expected

Text and image from this article in the New York Times:

Scientists once thought it would take a century or more for animals to return to deforested land in the tropics. Now, new research has found ecosystems can recover in mere decades. “It’s been a huge surprise for all of us,” said Timo Metz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and first author of the study, published in the journal Nature. “None of us expected it to be so impressive and so quick.” Rainforests have been disappearing at an alarming pace for at least a century, and millions of acres a year are still burned or cut down for logging, farming or ranching, or are lost to wildfires. In 2024, the rate of loss was as fast as 18 soccer fields per minute, adding up to an area nearly the size of Panama. At the same time, hundreds of millions of acres of formerly deforested land are thought to be regrowing. Scientists have generally found that it takes more than a century for trees and plants to fully resemble the old, original pristine forest. It was long assumed that animals would take just as long to return. The new study found that’s not necessarily the case. “The expectation was that the animals would need the forest to come first,” Dr. Metz said. “But surprisingly, many of the animals recover much more quickly than the trees.”

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

Coordinated Universal Time.

The system by which every computer in existence now keeps count of the passing seconds.

And I mean that literally. To a computer system "now" is a number that represents the total number ov seconds that have passed since midnight on the 1st of January, 1960.

1960/01/01 00:00:01 is literally the beginning of time as far as a computer is concerned.

You're not nomads relying on each other to hunt and gather anymore, you're talking about stocking shelves for fucking wal marts

https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281

you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.

which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to-

—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.

I will admit that my original post used an unintentionally exclusive "we". I was talking about how posts about the DRC really don't make numbers the way posts about, say, Palestine do, but obviously there are people (including Congolese people themselves) who are online and talking about it! I shouldn't have been the one to launch the current widespread discussion: you should put an effort into finding Congolese fundraisers and people speaking about this who are actually from there, like I have been doing.

Here are some fundraisers for Congolese people and organizations you can donate to / spread (thank you @ana-bananya for most of these!)

Agissons Ensembles / Let's Act Together for Congo, an organization made up of youth in Goma who are fundraising for relief - currently at 79%

Fundraiser for Barnabé, a student from Goma, to get kidney disease treatment - currently at 76%

Fundraiser for the Busimba family, refugees in Colorado, to pay their expenses amidst the parents not being able to work - currently at 57%

Team Congo, a Paris-based organization working with the AJPC from Kivu, runs monthly fundraisers to keep themselves afloat. While they've already reached their goal for the month, check in on them in November (I'll make a separate post with a link then - edit: here).

Goma Actif, a volunteer organization helping displaced people in North Kivu - currently at 88%

LineageOS (I use this one)

Graphene OS

Functionally they are virtually identical to stock Android. Android began as an open-source project, and these versions are built off of that.

This is a well to do store. It's busy, it's modern, tidy, and swanky. There's new wood and brushed steel shelving and display settings. There's digital payment infrastructure. But look at the kit - Those four industrial sewing machines are from multiple manufacturers, and generations. There's two old Black and Gold livery Singers, that are 80-120 years old, but well maintained, and two younger post war square casting industrials in a green (50's-60's era) and grey (60's to present) enamel finish. But all are set in white veneered new machine tabletops, but have older black cast metal sewing machine table legs. They are _maintained_ but updated. I wouldn't be surprised if they all have modern servo controlled step motors underneath.

There's modern data infrastructure and screen on the wall, but the value of hand finishing is held, because two people are sitting hand finishing the embroidery highlights to the saris. But the cleaning equipment is modern vacuum cleaners and steamers.

But the man with the iron is using a plain blackbody electric iron from the 1920s, but with renovated electrics (new cable out the back).

https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281

you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.

which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to-

—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.