I Need The Thing

I am sorry. I have done you evil, and I cannot undo it. No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy, save one. And I thank you for that part, too.

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

A lot of Substack readers have told me this one landed in a tender spot. It's for people waking up to consequences they thought had someone else's name on them. Sharing the full piece here for those who don't go on Substack. It's honest, but I hope it's also pastoral. Read it if you need to.

It’ll only hurt the right people” is the sentence that unravels democracy.

Friends,

Christmas is over now.

The music has faded, the manger scenes are being boxed up, and the country is stumbling back into ordinary time with a hangover nobody planned for. For some of you, that hangover isn't just emotional. It's the price of utilities. It's the cost of medication your insurance no longer covers. It's the neighbor who didn't come home from work last week because ICE got there first. It's the small business bleeding out because tariffs turned your supply chain into a hostage situation.

You're waking up to consequences you didn't think had your name on them.

You were told this would hurt “those” people. You know, the immigrants. The "illegals." The queer kids who needed to be put back in their place. The women who wanted too much. The professors and librarians and "elites" who supposedly looked down on you. The cities. The coasts. The people who didn't go to your church or vote like your family.

They told you the damage would be targeted, efficient, deserved.

You believed the suffering would be contained to people who had it coming.

And now you're realizing it isn’t contained at all … unless, of course, you’ve got a couple billion you dropped in the couch cushions.

I want to say this carefully.

I’m not interested in gloating. Schadenfreude is cheap, and it rots the soul. I’m not going to mock your fear or dismiss your anger or tell you that you deserve everything you're facing. Pain is pain. Fear is fear. Losing your footing in a system you trusted is genuinely destabilizing, regardless of who you are and whose team colors you’re wearing.

But I'm also not going to lie to you.

This. All this stuff unleashed on the world, it didn't come out of nowhere.

But you’re in good company. The ground you're standing on now is the same ground others have been standing on for a long time. Immigrant families have been holding their breath at every traffic stop for years. Queer teenagers have been calculating which parts of themselves to hide since middle school. Black parents have been having "the talk" about police encounters for generations. Disabled people have been fighting for scraps of a healthcare system that treats them like a budget problem. Women have been watching their bodies become legislative territory long before you noticed the court was stacked.

People told you what would happen. They tried to warn you. Some of you called them hysterical. Some of you called them divisive, said they were exaggerating, playing victim, making everything political.

Now you know, they weren’t just pushing leftover liberal talking points.

Here's the hard truth most people never want to hear: cruelty never stays loyal. It doesn't honor its contracts or keep its promises about who it will and won't harm. It always widens its focus, looking for new bodies. So, eventually, it always finds its way home.

That's not me being punitive. That’s me describing social/political/economic gravity.

The prophet Amos saw it clearly. "Let justice roll down like waters," he thundered. But he also warned about what happens when it doesn't. When we deny justice to the poor at the gate, when we trample the needy and push aside the afflicted, the whole vineyard withers. Not just their part of the vineyard. The whole damn vineyard. Because injustice isn't a precision instrument. It's poison dumped in the water table.

I get that some of you are angry right now. You feel betrayed by folks you thought cared about people like you, when it turns out they didn’t. And it makes sense. You were promised protection, told that their accumulation of strength meant someone else would absorb the pain. They sold you a story where order could be restored by sacrificing the right people.

But here's the part of the story left out: once you decide some lives are expendable, you've already agreed that all lives are conditional. Including you, your kids, and your sweet aunt Mable, who never did anything wrong to anybody. Nobody’s safe.

I need to say something else, and I’m going to say it in as gentle a way as I know how:

Your pain doesn't erase your participation.

You don't get to pretend you were merely an observer because the outcome wound up surprising you. Advocacy for cruelty still counts, even if the blast radius expanded farther than you anticipated.

The ballot you cast, the policy you defended (or ignored), the joke you laughed at, the cruelty you explained away because it was pointed at someone you'd been taught doesn’t require your respect: all of it still happened. And me saying that isn't an attack. It's the beginning of honesty.

And honesty is the only place repentance can actually start.

The biblical word for repentance is metanoia. It doesn't mean feeling really bad. It doesn't mean groveling or self-flagellation. It means a complete reorientation, a turning around so thorough that you end up walking in the opposite direction. It means telling the truth about what you were willing to tolerate as long as it didn't cost you too much. It means resisting the urge to rewrite your own history now that that history’s become a sore spot.

Repentance also means this: none of us gets to skip to the reconciliation scene without passing through accountability first. You don't get to show up in the communities where your people lit a match and expect a hero's welcome for finally noticing the fire. The people who've been burning this whole time don't owe you cookies for showing up with a bucket.

But here's the good news, if you're still here and you’re still willing to hear it.

This moment doesn't have to harden you.

It can either calcify into resentment, a new grievance that finds new scapegoats, or it can crack open into something braver: solidarity that isn't transactional. A refusal to build safety on somebody else's suffering. A recognition that none of us gets to choose whose dignity counts without eventually paying for that choice.

If you want a bridge forward, it won't be built out of denial. It will be built out of shared vulnerability and changed allegiance—not to a man or a party. And certainly not to the illusion that we can manage cruelty without becoming its collateral damage.

So what does that look like, practically?

I think it looks like showing up at a school board meeting to defend the teacher you once side-eyed for having a Pride flag in her classroom.

It looks like calling your congressman about ICE enforcement in your community, even though your family doesn’t have to worry about that … yet.

It looks like telling your uncle at the next holiday dinner that you were wrong, actually, and you're not going to laugh at those jokes anymore.

It looks like giving money to the bail fund, the immigrant legal defense organization, and the clinic that's still open.

It looks like saying out loud, in rooms where it costs you something: "I helped make this. And I'm done."

After Christmas, the story Christians tell is no longer about cherubic angels and shepherds in bathrobes, but about a child who grows up under military occupation, who tells the truth about power until power does him to death, and who even on the cross refuses to call down the legions that could save him. The God we meet in Jesus doesn't secure safety through domination. That God absorbs the violence of empire and breaks its power by refusing to return it.

That story is still on the table.

But it asks something of us.

It asks us to stop calculating who deserves protection and start practicing it as if everyone does… because they do.

This story challenges us to stop confusing our anger with innocence. To let this moment teach us what it's been trying to teach us all along: that the only future worth having is one where nobody’s disposable.

I know it’s difficult. But if you're willing to begin there, you won't be alone. There are communities already doing this work, already practicing the politics of the Beatitudes instead of the culture war. And they've been at this for a while. They'll make room for you. But you'll need to come ready to listen more than you speak. Ready to follow instead of lead. Ready to sit with the discomfort of being the newcomer in a struggle others have been waging for years.

That will cost you something.

That's how you'll know it's real.

Be gentle and brave,

So following Lily’s train of logic here, that means she would also think America was validated with its anti-Japanese stance during WW2 (you know, when we shoved whole families into internment camps), as well as its anti-Islamic rhetoric after 9/11.

Yeah, no.

That was racist and intolerant then, and it’s racist and intolerant now.

Just because some country’s government is fucked, or some assholes share a religion with others, doesn’t mean you suddenly get a free pass to be racist—and if you do, chances are you’re just using current events as an excuse to vent prejudices you’ve always had.

Japan didn't slaughter children for looking at them funny, but America and Israel did. In fact, I directly compared them to Germany.

First off, idk how you can compare the US's reaction to Pearl Harbor to the backdoor wars Bush started after 9/11. Not unless you literally think a few random Japanese guys bombed a military base, while the rest of the Japanese government was oblivious to it, and then the US immediately threw 2 nukes at them?

Japan was literally an imperial power. It had invaded and conquered most of the pacific island nations, and was also actively taking over vast areas of China and Korea.

Japan didn't slaughter children for looking at them funny, but America and Israel did. In fact, I directly compared them to Germany

What do you mean Japan didn't slaughter children for looking at them funny? Have you never heard of the Massacre/ Rape of Nanjing? The Japanese army killed somewhere between 100,000 to 300,000 civilians and POW's (some of which were just men who were simply of military age) and did somewhere between 4,000 and 80,000 rapes. It's considered one of the worst wartime atrocities ever committed.

Have you never heard of Unit 731? This is an excerpt from Wikipedia about it:

"Unit 731 was responsible for large-scale biological and chemical warfare research, as well as lethal human experimentation. The facility was led by General Shirō Ishii and received strong support from the Japanese military. Its activities included infecting prisoners with deadly diseases, conducting vivisection, performing organ harvesting, testing hypobaric chambers, amputating limbs, and exposing victims to chemical agents and explosives. Prisoners—often referred to as "logs" by the staff—were mainly Chinese civilians, but also included Russians, Koreans, and others, including children and pregnant women. No documented survivors are known."

Maybe you didn't know these things happened, but you should have at least thought twice before comparing 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, simply because it is absolutely impossible to not have known Japan was allies with Nazi Germany (you know the people you were comparing the US and Israel too). They were not a non-militarized nation, that the US simply decided to pick on because a few of their ships were bombed. They were a well organized and powerful military nation, who chose to start a military campaign against a country who at that time had not joined the war.

You can debate if the nuclear bombs were necessary, and I won't pretend the US went to war with Japan or even Nazi Germany out of the goodness of their hearts. But that doesn't negate the fact that after Pearl Harbor, the US went to war with the nations responsible for the bombing and that it was a genuine military attack on them. Both were of relatively equal power when the war first started. Unlike 9/11 which was a terror attack that was done by a terror cell that wasn't a governing body of a country at the time (ironically they are now). Nor did the US even go to war with those responsible, instead political leaders used the attack to justify wars with countries not connected to said terror attack what-so-ever.

Idk if OP is aware of these things either, but what they said still stands, and is actually more relevant with this information. Knowing the Japanese government was killing, torturing and raping thousands of people across Asia (with a kill count higher than Israel's), does that justify the US interment camps of its own Japanese American citizens? According to what you said previously, your answer is yes. That the racism that Japanese Americans received was a-ok because Japan--a country they no longer lived in or even openly disagreed with, was 'slaughtering children en masse' (and worse) as you said yourself.

And the only way you can plausibly deny that was what you implied, is to admit you didn't actually read the ask you got. The ask is:

How do you handle the fact that anti-Israel sentiments have resulted in persecution against jews to the point many don't feel safe in the diaspora, and are not allowed in the middle east outside of Israel?

Your answer was to say Anti-Israeli sentiment was fake and Israels fault. That any discrimination they faced was understandable because Israel was evil. Then you bring up how anti-German sentiment was also high during WW 2 because of Nazis. You end by saying it's not your problem because you didn't gleefully bomb children.

There are only 2 options; either you didn't read what the asker said, simply saw 'anti-Israel sentiment' and went off on a tangent about how it's okay to hate everyone from a country whose government's done enough evil things to justify it (which ironically justifies the 2 nukes dropped on Japan). Or you see all Jews as Israelis, and therefore deserving of equal hate as Israelis (which in turn makes the Japanese internment camps a reasonable response due to diaspora Japanese=actual Japanese citizen).

You could not be trying harder to twist everything I say. Go outside you stupid sack of shit and stop simping for Nazis.

Your words were not twisted. You answered an ask specifically about Jews facing persecution due to anti-Israel hate by saying "It's something they have to face because they kill kids" Your answer, intended or not, lumped all Jewish people in with Israelis. OP is not wrong for following that train of logic to its reasonable conclusion, which is that anyone tangentially connected to a country doing horrible things is fair game for discrimination and persecution.

If that isn't what you meant, you could have clarified that you misread the original question and that, no, you do not find how people are lumping diaspora Jews in with Israelis or Israel in general as fair. That you made a mistake/misspoke.

Instead, you doubled down. Your entire reply is an attempt to justify your stance, whether you meant it or not. By deflecting what OP pointed out--that by your own logic Japanese internment was justified, with, "Well, Japan wasn't on the same level as bad as Israel/US/Nazi Germany, so of course Japanese racism bad" it's more than apparent that, yes, you do in fact think racism/discrimination can be justified under certain circumstances. That because of Israeli's bad actions, all Jews should just shrug their shoulders and quietly except being hate-crimed. It's understandable after all, because, as you said, "Israel gleefully kills children".

That is why I pointed out Japan's atrocities, that they killed far more civilians during WW 2, than Israel has--because, by your own words, that makes the Japanese interment an unfortunate outcome of Japan's own actions. Japan killed children, they experimented on pregnant women, they raped thousands of women (and probably children too), therefore the diaspora Japanese should have expected to be persecuted and shoved into camps. They should have accepted it because they were passively connected to a country gleefully killing children. When they were called racist names, or beaten, they shouldn't have blamed the racists--no they couldn't help but be racist because Japan did horrific things--they should have cursed Japan instead because all anti-Japanese racism was their fault.

"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"

"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."

"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."

"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.

"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."

"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."

"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.

"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.

"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."

"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."

Last year I finally had an excuse to illustrate this simple little Tumblr story I've had bookmarked forever for class.

One of the AO3 translation volunteers (Min) created a Google Docs script to handle issues when copying from a doc into AO3. It’s really easy to use

create a copy of this google doc. It contains the script that will do all of the HTML formatting for you.

Delete all of the text from the document.

Write or paste your fic/chapter into the document.

Go up to the top menu and click the new menu option Post to AO3, then choose Prepare for posting into the HTML editor

Note: because this is an apps script, you’ll need to give it permission to run the first time. 

The script will automatically mark up your document with the required HTML that you can then paste into the AO3 composition window. \o/

To revert your text back to normal, just go back up to that menu and choose Remove HTML. It will look like regular text again. 

Once you have the doc, you can make a new copy of it for each new fic you write and that way you’ll always have that script available when you need it :)

I’ve always used ffn’s document management to retain formatting because for some reason if I upload there and then copy paste, it’s fine, but now FFN isn’t letting me upload shit.

https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:

Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.

He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms

His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.

Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore

Last week at my volunteer work we had a DoorDash driver who was hard of hearing. My ASL is limited to about a dozen words, and all of them come from “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong (because once upon a time we did actually teach some ASL in schools, and then fucking Shrub got elected), but I managed to tell her I liked her shirt.

The program leader immediately deferred to me and asked if I could explain directions. Between my extremely limited vocabulary, a little bit of pantomime, and text notes, we got it together, and the driver was thrilled I knew any sign at all, but I was embarrassed by how little of her language I actually knew, and I decided I needed to find some ASL classes, because I’ve seen her car before and I suspect we’ll meet doing this job again.

Breathe

draw, expire, heave, inhale, puff, suffocate

Catch

intercept, tackle

Climb

arise, ascension, mount, scale, surface

Cut

amputate, ax/axe, bisect, chisel, cleave, crop, cut up, dent, dissect, engrave, etch, fell, hack, lacerate, mangle, molt, mutilate, notch, peel, scar, scratch, shave, shred, slash, slit, trim, whittle

Dispose

boot, chuck, disposal, dispose of, do away with, elimination, kick out, rejection, scrap, throw away, void

Drop

alight, crash, decline, descent, dive, droop, duck, fall, flop, fumble, go under, keel over, light, percolate, plumb, plunge, sag, settle, sink, slump, stoop, submerge, suspend, thud/thump, tumble, wilt

Hide

ambush, bury, camouflage, conceal, cover, cover-up, cringe, disguise, dissimulate, embed, ensconce, envelop, isolation, lurk, masquerade, palliate, screen, seclusion, sequester, shrink, shut off/shut out, sneak, withhold

Hit

applaud, bang, baste, batter, beat, blindside, boot, buffet, bunt, chip, clash, clip, clout, collide, concussion, crash, cuff, deflect, drive, flail, glance, hammer, jab, jostle, knock, lick, nail, peck, plaudits, pound, punch, rap, scourge, slap, smack, sock, strike, swipe, tap, thud/thump, tip, whack, whip

Hold forcefully

apprehend, cage, clasp, clinch, confinement, constriction, cramp, detain, embrace, enslave, fetters, grasp, gripe, hold, incarcerate, overpower, press, shackle, snatch, strangle, throttle, wrestle

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary.

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

eBird (birds

Merlin (birds)

citizenscience.gov (big project database, US-based)

iNaturalist (nature)

MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data) Smithsonian archives (transcriptions, many subjects)

Cornell Bird Lab (birds)

FoldIt (folding proteins)

Fathomverse (sea animals)

Project Monarch (butterflies)

In person

Bioblitz (nature) Species watch (species) Audobon Society (birds)

Also:

There is no god that strides this world that I worship more than I worship your heart.

BONUS: