Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And unfortunately, human accomplishments tend to fall under "beliefs"

Which can change by whim.

I suppose that sort of flexibility is healthy, on an evolutionary basis.

"The watering hole is safe" is a fact until the tigers come and then no matter how much history you have with that watering hole, the fact that the tigers are there now means the water isn't safe anymore.

It might be worthwhile to revisit the watering hole again later to see if the danger is still present

If the tigers leave and don't come back, then it kinda feels like the watering hole was always safe... except that one time.

That flexibility becomes a problem, though, when it comes to stuff like Y2K and the ozone layer.

I still remember both of these as I actually lived through them. The ozone especially.

I remember thinking that I was going to see the end of humanity in my lifetime because we were gonna be too stupid to actually get our collective shit together and figure out how to fix the ozone layer

Some years back, I remembered and looked and figured out that like, yeah, we fixed it.

And now.... now it's climate change.

I actually got to have a hand in that one.

I helped electrify ships in Norway and saved one company $5.2 million just by fixing their communication equipment in a week. Then I went on to do at least 5x more over the next 10 months

Not just money. I stopped so much diesel from being used that the temperature over Norway that year went DOWN.

It's one of my biggest claims to fame. I altered the earth's climate. By myself.

My reward? My boss was a racist piece of shit to me and overworked and badgered and belittled me so hard that I got physically sick and had to leave the INDUSTRY.

So instead of this being the timeline where "that black trans girl showed the world how to save itself and all industrial businesses noticed that they could save the world AND save themselves money at the same time"

This is now "the timeline where there was a weird anomaly in the climate data exactly once and actually things went back to being just as bad as they were soon after"

We COULD fix the climate.

It literally wouldn't be hard.

The people in charge

Don't

it takes an average of 7 tries to leave an abusive relationship! 77% of domestic violence homicides occur upon separation

I don't mean you can't get good at things through repeated practice. You can do that, I have done that, but I don't trust it.

I was driving this morning and thinking about how I have never developed the blasé contempt for it most people seem to despite never having caused an accident in 20 years because my sense of time is such that I might as well have been driving for a week. I'm a good, safe driver, but I do not have a heap of confidence in my driving despite having regularly done it for two decades because my sense of time is such that those two decades may as well not have happened.

I finished editing a novel today. When I publish it, it will be the 64th novel I have published in the last 10 years, not counting ghostwritten work. You'd think after a decade and 63 novels I'd be confident that I was capable of writing, editing, and publishing a novel—even be confident about the timeline for this—but no. No, I feel like I'm doing it for the first time, every time, and I was surprised to have finished the editing at all, let alone on time. Because those other 63 novels were published in a past I have a vague at best concept of. I have a record that says it happened but I do not feel it.

I cannot trust my future behaviour because for me there is functionally no past. I know it occurred, I have records, but I don't feel it the way people without this kind of memory issue do. I feel inexperienced at everything I've ever done and I cannot accurately estimate my skill level at anything, particularly not on the fly.

What does Milk do with her wool when she shears it?

I'm not sure if it would be weird or cute if she wore her own wool as clothes.

Send money to this dorky fuckin dollgirl we love