no, i will not shut up about yuri

They created this weird mass hysteria about a natural disaster being created to attack republicans and… republicans left them out in the cold.

(Obligatory ‘no one deserves this based on who they voted for & also the margin was pretty thin.) These rural communities are overwhelmingly republican, with urban NC being where most of those dem votes are… and still the republicans can’t even pretend to care about their core constituents. Unfortunately, we’ve seen time and time again that no matter how hard rural America gets fucked by republicans, they see it as ‘the government’, while anything that benefits anyone but them is a crime by ‘the liberals’… and even the things they do benefit from are a crime by ‘the liberals’.

Not the "(((they))) are controlling the weather to wipe out Christian Republicans" and all of the other conspiracy shit, no. What I've been waiting for is the storm that would wipe out coastal homes in North Carolina, and I've been waiting since 2012.

Why 2012?

Because in 2012, the North Carolina General Assembly passed Replacement House Bill 819, which, being blunt and sarcastic, tried to outlaw sea level rise.

More technically, in order to keep the high valuation of beachside developments and properties from crashing due to the accurate fact-based assessment that they'd be worthless in a few decades due to climate change, as "beachfront property" is worth a lot, but "underwater property" is not...

Well, to keep those properties and investments from having to face that reality of their future residents being shellfish and tidal pools, the General Assembly made it illegal to use science-based models to predict how high sea level change would go over the next century. Instead, they mandated that a simple linear increase based on historical data would be used--saying that the sea level would change by only 8 inches (20 cm) by 2100... instead of the 3 feet (1 meter) that climate science was predicting. That way, all of those pricy developments on the Outer Banks and beachfronts would maintain their high assessed worth... at least until the sea and storms showed up and said to the General Assembly, "What, are you going to arrest the ocean?"

Which has now happened.

And, just as predicted back in 2012, the insurance companies are taking one look at this and going, "Nuh uh".

As that article I linked up above notes at the close...

In short, HB819 proposes a number of potentially far-reaching changes that may result in unintended consequences for coastal property owners, local governments, insurers, emergency managers and other organizations and agencies.

Except they don't do it anymore. And it is in large part because of Helene. The rhetoric around it was so violent, and the rumors that FEMA was going to steal people's houses were so pervasive, the door-knockers were threatened over and over, even had guns pulled on them. How true this is doesn't particularly matter, it may have just been more rumors, but either way it resulted in door-knocking being stopped for Helene and eventually stopped entirely. It is not a thing FEMA does anymore.

Now, to get individual post-disaster assistance if you don't have a way to access the internet or a working phone, you will have to go to dedicated facilities. Can't get there due to disability or injury? Don't have a way to access news about where those facilities even are and how they work? All the roads washed out or impassible due to debris? Too bad, you're on your own now.

So not only is the aid being delayed if not fully withheld for the Helene survivors, many of them may not have even had help in the initial application process the way they should have, and now in every disaster going forward, other people are going to face the exact same thing.

If you live in a disaster-prone part of the USA, it might be worthwhile to download and fill out the Emergency Financial First Aid Kit, especially if FEMA isn't going to be helping you work through that anymore. We initially got ours from the FEMA site, but it looks like there are a few other places out there.

If/when you need to evacuate your home, take it with you.

It'll give you a head start on all the paperwork mess you're going to have to fill out and you'll have all the information you need with you already.

Kuro Games Flagship Store Merchandise Comic Illustration

X/Twitter might have actually hit the final nail in the coffin this time. It's no longer a safe space for artists to post art.

I know the reason a lot of artists use twitter over tumblr is because of tumblr's NSFW ban, something twitter didn't have, and i wanted to make it known that there actually ARE ways around this on tumblr, where you can still share NSFW art without being flagged for it (or at least, not as much lmao)

my friend found this tutorial by @anonbea which details one way to get around this that doesn't rely on using another social media account :3