[clever title here]

UH WHAT

This might have been the bit that hit me hardest, actually:

it would be easy to misinterpret the following scenario as a standoff between two partners: Imagine that your partner asks you to pay the electric bill, and you say to yourself, “OK, I have time to do that today.” But when you sit down to do it, you keep getting distracted. The ADHD brain needs higher stimulation in order to complete this rote task with minimal payoff. Your ADHD brain says, “That task is way too boring, and I refuse to focus on it. Find something that interests me more, which offers me a bigger dopamine reward, and I’ll work with you.” It doesn’t matter that you know you should pay the bill as promised; if your brain won’t engage, it’s an ugly standoff. Perhaps, after a day of procrastination — when your partner will be home in 20 minutes and the bill is still unpaid — there may be enough of an adrenaline rush from a sense of crisis that your brain will engage and you pay the bill.

The ADHD brain and its owner are at odds with one another. It’s difficult to compel a disengaged brain to engage by force of will. In fact, much of the treatment for ADHD involves learning to psych out the brain, so that it will attend to necessary, low-stimulation tasks.

Appreciating the tug-of-war within that pits intellect against neurobiology increases compassion and acceptance for one’s hidden struggle.

I feel SEEN. OTZ

I can't believe this 🥺 so cute!

in 2020, when everyone was isolated at home, fossil co2 emissions in the US only dropped by 11%. think about how insane it is that when almost every person living in the second largest GEG emitter was at home for months, the effect they had was a reduction of barely 11%. and yet that fucking carbon footprint calculator is shoved down our throat all day long. a whole 4 years ago when that article came out saying only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, everybody just blinked and went “no, thank you. now have you bought enough metal straws?”

Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies 

Arborists often claim that all-male plants are “litter-free” because they shed no messy seeds, fruits or pods. In the 1949 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, which focused on trees and forests, this advice was given to readers: “When used for street plantings, only male trees should be selected, to avoid the nuisance from the seed.”  In the years following, the USDA produced and released into the market almost 100 new red maple and hybrid-maple-named clones (cultivars), and every single one of them was male.

It took a number of years for these new trees to mature enough to start to bloom, but eventually they did and with them came more city pollen and the “epidemic of allergy and asthma.” Many of these same trees are still alive and well and getting even larger, and the bigger they get, the more pollen they shed.

Allergies are rarely triggered by small amounts of an allergen; they are initiated by an overdose. Small amounts of pollen exposure are actually good for us, but if we have highly allergenic trees or shrubs in our own yards or lining our streets, we will soon enough be over-exposed. In order to put the brakes on America’s allergy epidemic, we need to reverse the trend toward male-dominated landscapes and stop selling and planting any more of the most allergenic trees, shrubs and grasses in our cities.

and the kicker: