bad end horror enthusiast.

To 2025:

Hell, they even cover the devastating heaviness of MASS SHOOTINGS without censoring or watering anything down.

They've been doing this for YEARS, and it's ALWAYS handled with dignity, respect, seriousness, understanding, and love.

Or how about when someone is put into the foster care system because their home isn't safe anymore and their needs aren't being met?

Maybe some discussions about group therapy/getting help and support?

Hey look! Here's a segment about gender expression vs taught expectation, including unlearning harmful biases and what to do when you hurt someone on accident because you didn't know it was wrong!

Look! The topic of race and diversity! The importance of unity and equity!

They even also have a more allegorical take on discrimination and being looked down on for who you are, featuring Big Bird. The conflict is about how he's not being let into a club because the one bird running the club personally decided he didn't want someone like Big Bird there.

Big Bird goes out of his way to keep changing parts of himself in order to "prove" he can fit into this club if he just changed enough. The truth comes out though, and there's nothing he can do to gain the approval of that bird. He will never be good enough in his eyes, and Big Bird starts to hate himself. His real friends see this finally put their feet down, emphasizing that you should never change yourself just to fit into one singular narrow idea someone else has.

There's A LOT of different situations this can be an allegory for. Racism, sexism, homophobia, basically ANY form of exclusion is put on full blast in this 15 minute clip. Sesame Street can be both blunt and allegorical when approaching difficult topics, and it NEVER misses or looses the point.

It does an exceptional job in both styles of representation WITHOUT watering anything down. The more sanitized everything gets, the more radical Sesame Street is suddenly considered, hence why so many "particular groups" want it gone. Hmmm! I can only imagine why that could be, in this current political climate! (I'm being sarcastic)

When Sesame Street is suddenly labeled as "questionable" or "politically/agenda motivated" content...it says A LOT about where we currently are and who gets to decide what's "best" for kids or not. Don't fall for the censorship and topic-dodging excuses that are covered by the "But think of the children!!!" movement. Never fall for it, because you know which side you're on if you do.

Sesame Street proves kids can be taught and trusted with learning about these topics when it's handled with the right amount of understanding and care. It shows what all this "controversy" is all really about. What it's always been about, actually.

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

Well folks I've been sitting on this little script for ages and finally decided to just go ahead and publish it. What does it do?

you can enter any ao3 link - for example, to your bookmarks or an author's works page - and automatically download all the works and series that are linked from that page in the format of your choice. if there are multiple pages, the script will page through results for you until there are no more fics to download

you can check your fanfic-savin' folder for unfinished fics and automatically update them if there are new chapters. you can also check for new fics in series!

if you're a dinosaur who uses Pinboard, you can back up all the Pinboard bookmarks you have that link to ao3

don't worry about crashing ao3 with this! this baby takes forever to run, guaranteed. anyway ao3 won't let me download stuff too fast even if I wanted to so it's quite safe

I've been working on this for about two years and it's finally in a state where it does everything I want and isn't breaking every two seconds, so I thought it was time to share! I hope y'all get some use out of it.

note: this is a standalone desktop app that DOES NOT DO ANYTHING aside from automate clicking on buttons on the ao3 website. Everything this script does, can be done by hand using ao3's regular features. It is just a utility to facilitate personal backups for offline reading - there's no website or server, I have no access to or indeed interest in the fics other people download using this. No plagiarism is happening here, please don't come after me.

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2024 update

This is now a fairly mature project that I've been maintaining for quite a while (3 years?? omg), so let's do an FAQ

Question 1: Wait, a python script? That's scary! I don't know anything about running python scripts!

Answer: You don't need to! When I published this program I knew that there would be people who would want to use it that did not know anything about running python scripts. To that end I have provided extremely detailed instructions (accessible at the link above), which have been fine-tuned over the last three years to make them as absolutely easy to follow as possible. Not only do you not need to know anything about python scripts to use this program, you don't even need to know anything about computers at all. Try it and see! ;)

You can find a variety of studies on this topic, I'm going to link some here.

This study addresses the argument: "democracies are more environmentally friendly". "Democracy" in this context is referring to primarily wealthy liberal democracies. Although I have problems with essentially every mainstream method of calculating democracy (lol...) the study still proves the issue of pollution outsourcing:

We hypothesize that democracies can improve their record and become “greener” not only through genuinely domestic environmental protection, but also through outsourcing environmental impacts of their consumption to other countries. Analyzing data on greenhouse gas emissions, pollution offshoring, and democracy for more than 160 countries since the 1990s, we report evidence that the offshoring of environmental pollution contributes to the superior environmental record of democracies. The main policy implication is that democracies, per se, may not have a better environmental record than autocracies when considering global environmental impacts. This implies that democratic countries, in particular, should re-orient their environmental protection efforts from merely domestic to global environmental consequences of local economic activity.

For the record, the above study uses the V-Dem dataset for "democracy". If you choose to look that up, it looks about how you'd expect: US, UK, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan are perpetually in the freedom democracy zone for the most part each year.

The New York Times posted an article on pollution outsourcing in 2018 that includes some studies:

The United States, for its part, remains the world’s leading importer of what the researchers call “embodied carbon.” If the United States were held responsible for all the pollution worldwide that resulted from manufacturing the cars, clothing and other goods that Americans use, the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions would be 14 percent bigger than its domestic-only numbers suggest.

Between 1995 and 2015, the report found, as wealthier countries like Japan and Germany were cutting their own emissions, they were also doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide they outsourced to China.

But when I say "pollution outsourcing" I am not exclusively referring to carbon emissions. I mean literally all forms of pollution are being outsourced. From Waste Colonialism: A Brief History:

Exporting trash involves more than just environmental harm; it reflects systemic inequality and a historical pattern of exploitation. The term draws a direct line between historical colonialism, where natural resources and labor were stripped from colonized regions, and the current waste trade, where the burden of environmental damage is once again pushed onto those least responsible for it.

The logic is elementary: when consumption – primarily of plastic – continues to rise, there are only two solutions to eliminate the waste: incineration or dumping. Incineration becomes the only plausible alternative if a country does not allow large-scale dumping within its borders. The problem? Incinerating plastic carries a significant carbon footprint, which most countries responsible for plastic waste are trying to reduce. As a result, some choose to avoid both options and instead export their waste elsewhere, preferably to a country with weaker waste regulations.

For years, high-income countries, especially across Europe, in the US, Japan, and Australia, have been exporting plastic waste abroad under the claim that it will be recycled, but the reality is far more complex. A report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) published last year revealed that in 2023, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Belgium, France, Italy, the US, Japan, and Australia were among the top waste exporters to non-OECD countries.

For over 20 years, China was the world’s biggest importer of plastic and other waste. Since it lacked local resources, starting in the 1980s–90s, the country accepted trash from richer countries to use as raw materials for its industries. However, this mechanism led to serious pollution, health risks and illegal dumping in the country. In 2018 China banned the import of plastic waste with its National Sword Policy. Since then, Western countries have been redirecting their exports to other parts of Asia and Africa. Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines have taken up much of the imports, many arriving illegally or misdeclared. As for Africa, Ghana is slowly becoming a dumping ground, and Mexico and Peru in Latin America are following its steps.