life as I know it

“But it’s confusing!” If you take the time to educate yourself it’ll no longer be confusing. Otherwise you’re just gonna have to learn to be ok with being confused.

“But it’s weird!” You probably do weird things all the time. Everyone does weird things sometimes. Life goes on.

“But it scares me!” Is it hurting you? No? You’ll be fine. Being scared and being harmed are not always the same thing. Learn to tell the difference and then act accordingly.

"But it makes me uncomfortable!" The world is an uncomfortable place and complete strangers are not required to fix that for you. Learning to endure harmless discomfort is a life skill for existing in public.

"But I don't like it!" There's plenty of things in the world and not all of them are fun or enjoyable or For You. This applies to everyone and we all have to deal with that in a mature fashion.

(I also <3 rats, and used to have pet rats, so admittedly I am super biased, but they're such sweet babies! Forget the anti-rat propaganda!)

You can adopt a baby yourself here ;)

ao3 doesn't have an app because for it to have an app, appstore will have to approve it first. and if, hypothetically, ao3 needs appstore to approve it, it will also have to abide by appstore's pro-censorship stance and start banning dark and taboo fics, which is against its own core principle of being completely against censorship.

ao3 doesn't need an app. it works more than fine without an app. the reason ao3 can allow dark and taboo fics, the reason it can allow the most disgusting and shockingly vile fics, and be completely against censorship is because it doesn't need appstore's approval. it stands on its own as a non-profit organization with functioning site and a team of lawyers protecting its platform, its users, and every single fanwork on its platform.

everybody say thank you ao3

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.

Just very clearly an attempt at saying, “my what?”