Maggie

i don't blame the kids for making the rational decision to cheat when presented with obvious incentive, little (immediately obvious) downside, and inadequate resources for alternatives. i just don't know how higher ed instructors can realistically cope when they realize they're suddenly needing to essentially teach a different grade level than the one they were hired for, while still being expected to reach the original finish line.

Delusional Thomas was one of many “alter-egos"/aliases of Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller, known for his gruesome, explicit lyrics and his pitched-up voice.

Mac began developing Delusional Thomas into a character around 2012-13; although not yet named by Mac at the time, the high-pitched voice could be heard throughout Mac’s sophomore album Watching Movies with the Sound Off, meant to represent the voice inside of Mac’s head. Initially conceptualizing the voice as a “devil-on-your-shoulder” type, Mac ultimately used this concept to turn the voice into a demonic, evil character named Delusional Thomas who rapped about darker, more expletive content that may not appeal to some Mac fans. Doubling down on this concept, Mac would go on to release his horrorcore mixtape Delusional Thomas on Halloween of 2013, using the pitched-up moniker. Shortly after the development of the Delusional Thomas mixtape, the character could be found in anything Mac touched inside his Sanctuary studio, including vocal appearances throughout Mac’s magnum-opus mixtape Faces, Balloonerism, and even an official feature on Ab-Soul’s 2014 album These Days… (which was largely recorded at Mac’s Sanctuary). Although Mac had mostly steered away from officially using the Delusional Thomas moniker by 2015 when he signed to his first major label and ultimately moved away from the Sanctuary, fans have speculated whether Delusional Thomas' voice can still be heard in later works of his.

You have to understand that nature does not work in the same timeframe as ours. Protecting and restoring ecosystems is RIDICULOUSLY inexpensive and requires very little industrial technology; shovels and saplings are not exactly high-tech. But it takes time and long-term projects with people determined to do it. Maybe we are too focused in our "we want it now" thinking, but what you see today is not what you may see in 10, 20, 50, even 80 years if you live that long.

This article talks about this very much in the "see? ecology can help the economy too!" tone that unfortunately is sort of necessary to convince people in the current capitalist system. But I don't want you to focus on this right now.

I want you to KNOW how doable this is. How inexpensive this is, how POSSIBLE THIS IS. That people working and loving the land and nature they live in is possible. That these projects WORK, THEY DO restore and preserve ecosystems. That humanity is neither a plague that destroys everything or a passive bystander on its own destruction but that these are actual things that can be, are, and will be implemented, backed by actual science and results. This is not empty #hopecore #hopepunk feel good stuff, these are things you can learn about, even work towards, and you can most certainly demand they are part of our society.

And yet people kept doing it. And in 2025 North Atlantic right whales, possibly the most endangered whale in the world, saw 11 births—eight more births than deaths, slowly raising the population.

Eastern Australia humpback whales, hunted to near-extinction with possibly only 150 individuals in the 1960s, now number up to 50,000–even more than their pre-whaling numbers.

Obviously different whale species populations are doing different levels of well, but these efforts are not a waste! Dedicating time and resources to conservation works!

And it's not just whales, and doesn't even always take decades.

The removal of the dams on the Klamath River has seen water temperatures and oxygen levels stabilize and salmon return to spawn after just one year. A community in Finland turned an old peat mine into a wildlife sanctuary, restoring the wetland habitat and bringing wildlife back. More than 1,000 wildlife crossings have been built under and over busy roads in the US, and the data suggests this does work in connecting fragmented habitats and preventing wildlife deaths. Dedicated work on blue iguana conservation in the Cayman Islands brought the wild population up from 15 to more than 1,000 over the course of 20 years. Within the past 5 years, the Land Back movement has gotten increasing momentum and the Yurok, Siletz, Klamath, Onandoga, Prairie Band Potawatomi, Amah Mutsun, Lyackson First Nation and Cowichan Tribes, and Haida are among some of the Indigenous North American groups who got management control of ancestral lands - victories for both human rights and sustainable land stewardship. Large and small victories in ecosystem preservation and restoration are real!