Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.
You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Her name is Gazal Dhaliwal and she’s a screenwriter. She talk about her life here and here.
She’s the writer for Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, an upcoming Indian coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama with a lesbian couple.
She was also the dialogue writer for Lipstick Under My Burkha, which depicts the secret world, including the sex lives, of four small-town Indian women.
She contributed to the screenplay for Wazir and Qarib Qarib Single.
You can support imprisoned people by sending them letters of support and money to use for the commisary and phone calls. Being in prison is expensive. Don't write anything that would get them in trouble. Prisoners' mail is read by guards.
Hey, we’re in line for some absurd temperatures here in the southwest this week. This is very important to know and keep in mind. Be safe, stay hydrated, stay out of the sun as much as you can.
Additional you can also put them on your palms, also, make sure to always use a light towel or kitchen paper and don’t put the ice bags directly onto your skin!
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fwiw my overall opinion on (intra/intercommunity drama about words + language du jour) is that people will absolutely misinterpret you no matter what.
my advice is to do good, like real meeting-needs-in-your-community good, and remember that debate is only meaningful insofar as it is useful. be careful: be full of care
yeah i know it's not, like, a qualification, but i did a lot of competitive debate (like with judges and scores and scholarships on the line) when i was young and here's the thing:
Official Debate simply doesn't really work to accomplish anything in the real world. "fallacies" that would be demolished in Official Debate can hold a shitton of emotional and ethical weight in actual conversations. Well-researched facts can be a fart in the wind.
Without agreed-upon, standardized, and enforced rules (and an arbitrator), arguments/'debates' are really mostly a pissing contest. They're animal noises we make at each other until at least one party stops making those noises.
But wrapping toys for poor children? feeding your community? participating in a clothing swap? picking up litter? establishing a community pantry? volunteering at a library? providing childcare? think about it
The thing is nobody at pride is evaluating you to determine if you’re queer enough to be there because they’re too busy thinking “it’s so hot out” and “why is this lemonade 12 dollars?”
As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000
As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.
Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.
The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.
With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.
Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”
Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”
Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...
To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.
During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.
On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.
As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”
LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.
So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.
Venezuela was hit by two earthquakes yesterday, a 7.2 and a 7.5. Many parts of the country have been reduced to rubble, and areas of Caracas have been flattened. Their infrastructure has already been under immense strain. Here's how you can help:
The World Central Kitchen has also opened donations to send assistance and resources to first responders.
Donate here.
It is a little difficult for me to format this information, as I am getting it through WhatsApp messages and Instagram reels, but I will be using this post to add collection centres outside of Venezuela. I will not be using this platform to spread information for those who are inside Venezuela as I know there are better platforms for that.
Most of the information I share will be in spanish and I also will not be doing any translation work. The addresses are clear and the items needed are universal in every catastrophe of this magnitude.
a funny thing about having conversations with people within institutions (academic in this case but also others) about gatekeeping, is that you end up having a conversation over and over in which you're like, "hey this alligator spike pit moat you have erected around your institution is keeping a lot of people out," and they're like, "well *I* navigated the alligator spike pit moat just fine," and you're like, "right. by dint of us having this conversation, you within the institution and me without, it is understood that you navigated the alligator spike pit moat. due to that being an inherent requirement of entering the institution," and they're like, "I don't think you understand the prestigious history of our alligator spike pit moat," and you're like, "is there a reason why there needs to be an alligator spike pit moat encircling the concept of higher education?" and they're like, "look, the alligator spike pit moat isn't for everyone. some people just aren't cut out for the alligator spike pit moat :)" and you're like, "right, yeah, like disabled people and people coming from poverty or unstable home environments or underserved communities or people dealing with difficult to navigate life events like pregnancy or abuse or prison or addiction or the death of a loved one, for example" and they're like, "how dare you imply that we are keeping those people out on purpose. it's their own problem if they can't wrestle the alligators and avoid the spikes while also disabled and/or poor and/or pregnant etc" and you're like, "well that seems evil," and they're like, "it sounds like maybe you're just bitter about the alligator spike pit moat because of your totally random individual experience with ONE bad alligator spike pit moat. have you considered therapy?" and you're like, "did you know that there's some patterns here in terms of how y'all are handling this stuff?" and they're like, "actually yes. we even have a department of alligator spike pit studies :)" and you're like, "that's great, how do I get access to and participate in those conversations?" and they're like, "well firstly you must cross the alligator spike pit moat"
if you can document that you have a medical condition that might make it challenging for you to navigate the alligator spike pit moat, they'll give you an extra 20 minutes to complete your navigation of the alligator spike pit moat
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What you need to understand about me- and what most of you all do understand about me, is that I will be aggressively enabling of living your weirdest, fullest truth, and I think it's bullshit that people act like it's detrimental to you to do so
I don't give a shit if me being a weird furry online loses me any job prospects or if people talk or whatever- maybe it's fucked up that we hold something as minor and meaningless as that over someone's head, that we give it weight it doesn't deserve, you ever thought of that? Maybe I see the culture of belittling a person as "cringe" for having interests counter to the norms as a failure of society, and I'm gonna throw myself onto the damn pyre and fight to my last breath against it, ever considered that?
I'm not just being cute and funny when I say "live your truth no matter how weird it is," because you know what?
If you're not hurting anyone in a real and tangible way, if you're respecting the rights and comfort of others, nobody- NOBODY has the moral grounds to stand against you, and to hell with them if they try.
I am grabbing every "normal" artist on this site, I am grabbing anyone with furry leanings and a hint of reach, I am grabbing everyone who is afraid of being judged for what they enjoy, and find that fear holding them back, I am holding you, dear reader, and I am looking all of you in the eyes, I am baring my soul-
Please get weirder. Please stop being afraid of being your truest self for the sake of judgemental dorks online.
it's beautiful over here, where I am. Join me. Join me in a world free of false shame, a world where you don't have to hide what you are. It's better, I promise you.
What you put into the world as a weirder, louder, more interesting person also enriches the people who read your work, see your art, take inspiration from your style or your courage, and from them it also enriches the people who reap THEIR increased and improved output.
More joyous weirdness makes the world a brighter place for everyone in it.
as a regular donor to Gaza Soup Kitchen I get their email updates, and they said today that while they've continued to be able to expand, donations are slowing down as Gaza gets less coverage. If you have a few dollars to spare, I encourage you to send them here to continue the amazing work that Hani and his team are doing.
when i was a kid i was so mad all the time bc i thought someday i'd have to be somebody's wife i didn't know it was optional. is everybody reminding the young girls in their lives that it's optional.
is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?
why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?
core concept: what is gender essentialism?
is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?
look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?
what trait are you perpetuating when you assume that women who do not want to be wives and mothers must be aroace or trans? is it gender essentialism?
In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.
for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.
This is legitimately brilliant. Bug burndown reports (the rate at which your software team can close bugs) is a major metric for most software houses.
It takes an extra step in our part, but this is part of what makes it effective. It's not one click, one reblog activism and it hits them where they care: their damn KPIs.
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"oh food now has so much added to it, past food was so pure and untainted" victorians used to cut bread with chalk and aluminum powder. romans put lead in the wine, which was made from dirty feet mushing unwashed grapes covered in horse shit and road dust. i think our species will survive a few additives in food. our food systems have never been cleaner and safer. it has room for improvement, but we're not putting fucking plaster of paris in the milk
in case you haven't heard, parts of venezuela were recently hit by a series of earthquakes, affecting communities across the country.
as venezuela is my home country, all of this hits especially close to home. thankfully, my family and loved ones are safe since they were in cities not as severely affected. however, many others have not been as fortunate and are now facing the aftermath of these events.
years of political and economic instability have left many communities with limited resources and infrastructure, making it even more difficult to respond to emergencies like this. there are reports of people who remain missing, and many families are still waiting for news about their loved ones. rescue efforts have been made even more difficult by shortages of equipment, ambulances, and other emergency resources needed to respond to a disaster of this scale.
if you're able to, please consider sharing information, supporting verified relief efforts, or simply helping spread awareness about what is happening.
here’s a link where you can donate if you can
Venezuela needs our help now.
After a devastating earthqu… I Love Venezuela Foundation ha bisogno del tuo sostegno per Emergency Relie
