Random Things I Like

bad first family, find a good chosen family: it makes sense this is the one overwhelmingly found in fiction. tragic back story, moving on to something better. queer people are very attached to these narratives and that makes sense too, it's a common experience to be rejected to some extent by your first family, so we like the idea we can go out and find people who understand and accept you. many do irl.

bad first family, bad chosen family: lack of love drives you into the arms of a cult. the way your first family treated you left you vulnerable to people who do the same things because it's all you know ( I can'tremenber the ending but I think white oleander was like this). or! people who truly care for you, but they're not good people and they're gonna get you into bad trouble. or the dynamics are toxic despite the love and care.

good first family, good chosen family: super lucky! you had a charmed childhood and maintain strong ties with your first family but you also found some people who get you on a different level. boring to write about but probably not that uncommon irl.

-Immediately starts putting her on every treatment known to man

-Walks over to Wilson’s office, which is the only part of the entire ship that just looks the same as it does in the show

-Homoerotically complains about how stupid Jedi are, then makes a bet with Wilson on whether Obi Wan is gay or the father of Padme’s twins (Wilson wants House to believe people can be faithful)

-Padme almost dies again. Turns out the treatment’s not working

-“if the dark side nearly killed her, maybe it can save her”

-House uses force lightning to restart Padme’s heart

-Gets brought into Cuddy’s office and told off for using an experimental treatment, and the power of the dark side, in her hospital

-House is taken off the case and foreman is put in charge of the case

-Padme is unexpectedly doing better, but Cuddy refuses to tell House or else he’ll be using the dark side to save all his patients

-House watches on as Wilson tries seducing a relieved Obi Wan while he paces in the lobby. Doesn’t seem to work

-House interrogates Obi Wan about his relationship with Padme, insinuates it’s Obi Wans Fault. Gets in a struggle and once theyre seperated it’s revealed he ripped out some beard hair

-Padme is getting released from the hospital but crashes again with obvious signs of infection. Everyone blames the dark side of the force

-is put in intensive care again, everyone thinks she’s going to die, House is brooding.

-House meets Bail Organa and talks to him, Bail mentions how he was so worried about her the last time she was in a hospital, and this seems much more hopeless

-“what time she was in the hospital?”

-House marches in as they’re about to pull the plug, rolling Padme’s unconcious body over to point at dark spot on the back of her neck

-Foreman looks disapointed, “it’s a bruise house, her husband nearly snapped her neck.”

-“Our princess’ boyfriend here failed to mentioned she was scratched by a Nexu on Genosis years ago. Nexu claws are known as a vicious poison.”

-“it would have killed her years ago”

-“unless a small chunk of claw stuck in her back, working into the muscles near the nape of her neck for years. The little prince of Darkness chokes her, pressure and muscles spasming lets it work into a blood vessel. It’s why the force lightning only was a bandaid, it vaporized what was in her bloodstream but broke up the rest of the claw and let it enter in her bloodstream. Start her on dialysis, she’ll be fine by tomorrow afternoon.”

-Next day Padme’s wheeled out of the hospital with her two children, bittersweetness. House watches from balcony before going back to his office

-Wilson enters with his shirt unbuttoned and a few bruises on his neck, declaring, “the Jedi is gay. I win.”

These have been in schools since 1995:

They're dumb as a brick, all they can do is type and send text over usb (some can spellcheck but that can be turned off) and they run for hundreds of hours on a couple of AA batteries.

But then you get the benefits of: no struggle to read handwriting, teaching kids to actually type, and kids who need keyboards for accessibility reasons still get them.

They should bring these back.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

End of 2025, we should have 10x the offshore wind as we did at end of 2024, due to one project that broke the bottleneck for building.

The bottleneck was lack of a specific type of ship operating within US. It's currently working off Virginia. The prep work for similar project off Connecticut is currently underway, and as soon as Virginia is done, that ship switches up here. And is likely fully booked through 2030 with similar items.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Intiative has been operating for 15 years, reducing co2 power plant emissions in new England and midatlantic. They did such a good job they hit their 2020 goals in 2018... and set new more aggressive ones for 2030, at least some members shooting for zero power plant emissions by 2030.

Thats 10 members, plus Virginia just joined so just starting that process Pennsylvania and North Carolina may join with next year or two, once legal challenges solved.

RGGI used model of taxing CO2 emmission via permit and permit auction money goes to direct utility assistance for low income folks, weatherization & energy efficiency to reduce demand, and green power projects.

Those green projects are all small, but lots of em. So no one big solar farm, it's 20 warehouses with solar panels. So invisible infill you don't SEE happening. But that's been chugging along for 15+ years and will keep going because it's a state, not federal, program.

Justice40 under the Biden administration prioritized historically undeserved and economically depressed areas for funding for climate resiliancy projects and green projects. It's been in place since 2017 so a lot of money assigned to it that's still working through system and all those will complete in next few years.

Trump could reprioritize how money for those programs is allocated, but it is a lot of very rural areas so he will get push back. Noooo, we need that money! And they do.

Since they're very poor and undeserved areas, it means you get a much bigger improvement vs better off areas. Swapping out a coal plant from 1940 vs one that upgraded in 1990 is a way bigger potential improvement!

The US military has been putting lots in alternate energy for last few years entirely due to security of being reliant on oil they have to get places, leaves supply lines vulnerable. So they will continue adding capacity for foreseeable future. And anybody complaining about it being "woke nonsense" can get told off about how many fuel convoys get struck in conflicts and how much better on-site solar and wind is than generator use.

So there's good things in process that likely can't be stopped. So even if us fed stopped new project funding entirely (unlikely), there's lots in process that will complete in next few years and continue building capacity.