this post is like 11 years old

hey

Christopher Thompson (British Artist, born 1969)

"The Surrealist's House (Night)", 2025.

Oil on Canvas, 20 × 16 inches.

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

Since 1990 extreme poverty has decreased worldwide by over HALF.

Part 2

Joan of Arc in prison (1833), Gillot Saint-Evre

Joan of Arc listening to the voices (1876), Eugène Thirion

Joan of Arc (1879), Jules Bastien-Lepage

Joan of Arc (1882), Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Joan of Arc listening for the first time to the voices that predict her prominent fate (1884), Pedro Américo

Sleeping Joan of Arc (1895), George W. Joy

Joan of Arc (19th century), anonymous

St. John of Arc as a child (19th century), Jules Lenepveu

Joan of Arc at siege of Paris (19th century), Jozef Van Lerius

Part 1

Venus preventing her son Aeneas from killing Helen of Troy (circa 1650), Luca Ferrari

Paris abducting Helen (1782-1784), Gavin Hamilton

Helen (between 1785 and 1795), Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

Helen, embroidering, sees Laodice approach (1800), Emilie Bournieu

Castor and Pollux rescuing Helen (1817), Jean-Bruno Gassies

Helen of Troy (1863), Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Helen On The Walls Of Troy (1865), Frederic Leighton

Helen of Troy (1867), Frederick Sandys

Helen of Troy (1895), Gaston Bussière

Part 1

Pandora (1676), Barend Graat

Pandora (17th century), Nicolas Régnier

Pandora (1865), James Smethan

Pandora (1873), Alexandre Cabanel

Pandora (1881), Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Pandora (1882), Jules Lefebvre

Pandora (1890), William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Pandora (1896), John William Waterhouse

Pandora's box (19th century), Charles Edward Perugini

That said, I've been getting a lot of questions from friends asking for advice on dealing with this bullshit, especially if you're somewhere where air-conditioning isn't widely available.

1. Electrolytes. Everyone tells you to hydrate, but if you're sweating balls and flushing yourself out with fluid, you're not just losing water, you're losing salt. You don't need to buy those fancy liquid IV packs if you don't want to; I literally just dump a little pack of salt in my water bottle every now and then because I stole a shit ton of them from my school's café last semester because they were free. This is to keep yourself from passing out. Sports drinks or salty foods work too.

2. Get yourself a fan. Any sort of handheld thing that can blow air on you. Don't use your own hand as a fan because you'll exert more energy than it's worth.

3. If you are immediately feeling hot, you are going to try and get ice, a damp cloth, or something vaguely cool, and you are going to press it to the inside of your wrists, the back of your neck, and behind/under your ears. The veins/arteries are really close to the skin here which I believe is most of why this works so well for cooling you down.

4. Pressure points aside, just pour water on yourself. If you need to regulate your body temp, do so. No one is judging you, I promise.

5. SUNSCREEN PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZY

6. Get yourself a UV / SPF shirt. Something lightweight that will shield you, in a material that will cool you down. You can also get it all the way wet and then wear it, if that's viable for you. You won't be walking around dripping—it'll just cool you down significantly.

7. I've seen some people talk about putting clothes, especially things like socks, underwear, and hijabs into the freezer overnight? Have never done this personally but fair enough. Same principle as above.

8. If you feel yourself getting hot, say something early. Heat stroke is no joke. "A cold baby dies, a hot baby dies" applies to adults too.

9. If it's dry heat, stay in the shade. If it's the humidity getting you, godspeed.

10. Don't open the windows when it's hot. This is a trap. You think the air flow will help. But the air is hot and not your friend. Windows stay closed unless you specifically want the outside air coming in.