Hats for Rats

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

And I remembered how when I was really into old movies as a teen and I religiously watched every piece with Audrey Hepburn in it and I got my flabbers completely gasted when such a breathtaking actress would be paired with the most ugly looking old dudes you could find on the planet earth.

It’s like women were never allowed ugliness even in the slightest and now, since we’re contributing to at least half of the movies’ and shows’ revenues men are outraged we want to see male characters who are at the very least not revolting - I would prefer not to see them at all, but that’s a completely different story. Like even now you see people thirst over this old pedro guy and the wonky chef from “the bear” but the moment a woman’s jaw is slightly too square or a nose not perfectly straight she’s labelled a 6/10.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

And I feel like an alien every time I encounter this sort of thing, because it's so antithetical to any kind of logic or self-consistent ethical framework I can wrap my brain around. It's taking the genuine virtues of mercy and valuing human life and blowing them out of proportion into grotesque parodies of themselves. The victim here is not the one responsible for the ultimate outcome.

Does that mean that we should approach everything with infinite escalation forever? Hell no! But that doesn't change that almost all 'disproportionate' escalation the victim performs is dwarfed by the act of trying to harm an innocent victim in the first place! If I take the 'total violence' of a situation from a 1 to a 3, I've tripled it, but if I take a previously non-violent situation and amp it up from 0.00000000001 to 1, I've scaled it by an insane degree that makes that factor of three look minuscule despite technically being a lesser net increase.

"There are more than 20 million fewer children in child labor today than in 2020...

This reduction is especially welcome news given that so many development trends, including child labor, stalled or reversed during the pandemic. Experts weren’t sure if or how quickly the world would get back on track.

Here is the even better news: since 2000, there are 108 million fewer children in child labor, even as more and more children were born during that same time period. 

To be clear, the child labor I am talking about isn’t your teenager pulling some shifts at the local ice cream shop. These are kids as young as five in poor countries who are out breaking rocks or working the fields when they should be in school.

Per a joint report by UNICEF and the International Labour Organization, since 2020, progress has occurred across all global regions and also included a substantial dip in hazardous work, defined as work that is likely to compromise a child’s health, safety, or morals.

The global goal was to end child labor by this year. With 138 million children still engaged in it worldwide, we are clearly far from success. But, the report says, “most regions could see the near or total elimination of child labor in the coming decades,” with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, where birth rates remain high, conflict rife, and economic growth slow...

If the current pace of progress continues, child labor in Asia and the Pacific will be eliminated by 2060 and near zero in Latin America and the Caribbean...

What is behind the downturn in child labor? One big factor is that old, familiar song of economic growth—parents who aren’t cash strapped don’t need an extra pair of hands. A second is better access to schooling, and a third, social protections for children like healthcare and cash transfers."

-via The Progress Network, July 3, 2025

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Note: Something that article, which is pretty short, doesn't get into is that progress WILL increase and speed up significantly in sub-Saharan Africa. A number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are undergoing huge revolutions in access to basic needs, economic development, and quality of life. Child labor rates in sub-Saharan Africa are NOT going to continue declining at the current rate, they are going to increasingly decline at a FASTER rate as access to clean water, plumbing, electricity, and sanitation will all drastically change the labor landscape of Africa and reduce child labor. These trends are already happening in a number of countries, as they have in the other regions of the world.

You will however, understand exactly what they’re saying from the context of the video

And you will get to hear this person’s wonderful laughter