Oakleifsblog

Luke Thompson: istg pronounced istiguh, aka Instagram 🤣🤣🤣

The Yerin and Luke duo needs to continue their world tour!

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

Anyway apparently Mr. Eclipse made 5000 years' worth of solar eclipse graphics, which you can find the simpler versions of here

He was chatting with me as he pulled out cash to pay, “You know, I always thought it would be so much easier to meet ladies. But then you meet a girl and you start chatting and they’re never as impressed that I know Captain Kirk’s middle name as I expected them to be.”

I took his payment with a grin and said, “I dunno, Tiberius is an amazing middle name, it was their loss.”

He looked at me with utter awe, radiating a disbelieving joy that I’d parried his quip so effortlessly with Trekkie lore. “If I were thirty years younger…” he’d said, absolutely delighted.

Where do you think we'd be if everyone went around making up their own steps?

Martha Stewart went to prison for $45,673 worth of insider trading.

Biden wasn't perfect as a president, but he was operating under attack from both the left and the right, with approximately half of Congress willing to burn the world down (kinda literally with climate change) to avoid giving "the libs" a victory, and a deeply conservative Court.

And despite that, and despite the constant denunciation of him, he managed to do so much. He didn't get us Medicare for All or anything, because he was working on undoing the damage of Trump I and the pandemic, and he did a decent job at it. Here are some of his accomplishments, and please remember he did this under regular attack from members of his own party post-October 2023 and while Republicans were trying to destroy what he was building:

the Inflation Reduction Act

Repealed DOMA (which banned federal recognition of gay marriage -- DOMA, that is, not the repeal) by signing the Respect for Marriage Act

Did so much to protect queer people, on every level.

Appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson

Re-entered the Paris Agreement and rejoined the WHO

Consistently supported Ukraine and ensured Finland and Sweden joined NATO to further defend against Russia

The American Rescue Plan Act

Actually enforced antitrust law and became the first president to join a picket line

Quietly reformed the process for certifying elections to make it harder to manipulate (e.g., by removing Vice-Presidential power, making rules on electors clearer, et cetera)

Provided huge numbers of COVID vaccines

Spent billions on climate change, protected millions of acres of ocean from drilling

Ended the Muslim travel ban and stopped building the border wall

Passed the first major gun-regulation law in thirty years

Tried to forgive much student loan debt

Beefed up the NLRB and workers' protections

Worked for major infrastructure funding

Reauthorized VAWA

I wonder how much of that was on the back of the industrial revolution. Maybe humanity had a similar "weird" moment in the Fertile Crescent when we figured out farming.

The baby will stop crying if I give it cocaine

My entire face is covered in arsenic

How Wonderful That I Can Buy Guns And Heroin At The Same Store! I Certainly Hope My Lead Poisoning Does Not Lead To Bouts Of Distemper And Irrational Thinking

There Are Bare Electrified Wires Running Through My House And My Technicolor Dress Is Highly Combustible, Which I Do Not Know Yet

My son, Lead Poisoning Georg,, shall someday inherit my gun powder and lead paint empire,,

NEW! Magical Miracle Substance! Asbestos! WILL NOT catch fire! CANNOT catch fire! YOU WILL NOT die! (From fire)

Impress Your Guests And In-Laws With The Tastiest Bright White Bread Chalk And Wood Shavings Can Produce

NEW! Baby feeding bottles! NEW! Glass baby feeding bottles! How do you clean them??? That isn't important stop asking questions. NEW!

Surely 500mg of caffeine will be good for me and help me function

The torment nexus glowing rectangle must be engaged with at all times

Look at all the profit to be made! This will surely grow forever.

Ignore the crowd begging for rational behavior, you dont want FOMO do you?

Money Georg, who has all the money in the world, is surely going to fix things

Wildly increased access to knowledge of things will not result in any cultural changes or upending of power structures

What do you mean there is a revolution in XYZ

Buy vapes! Use Ozempic! These novel things will have no negative health effects and will not be wildly popularized to the point of causing health crises

(I am aware I had a few historical points wrong there) but YES

I feel like that's *exactly* why new technology and ideas in younger generations always seems so scary while our present, boring technology seems so safe

we don't know the long term effects of ANY of it yet, but whatever bad things our parents raised US with, at the very least we aren't dead! Who KNOWS how this newfangled whatchamacallit might kill us.

had a few historical

points wrong there) but YES