Bowl Drips

are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?

okay, then bring it up to a librarian

seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen

While this isn't news to anyone who works in this space, it is useful to have this water-is-wet research to affirm that Indigenous knowledge and land management are extremely effective at storing carbon and protecting biodiversity.

I want to draw special attention to this part of the article:

We dressed up as pirates and went bowling.

We dressed as vikings and went to the grocery store. The security guard told us we had to move our longship because it was illegally parked.

We dressed as Romans and went to Blockbuster. The staff chanted, "toga! Toga! Toga!" at us.

They said Cass Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich. That lie spread around the world, and the truth couldn’t catch up for decades.

On July 29, 1974, in London, Cass Elliot—"Mama Cass" to millions—was found dead in a borrowed flat. She was only 32 years old. She had just finished two weeks of sold-out shows at the London Palladium, a career milestone most singers only dream of. A friend found her in bed, looking peaceful. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a nearby nightstand.

By the next morning, the rumor was everywhere. But it wasn't true. The coroner confirmed the cause immediately: heart failure. There was no choking and no food involved. The sandwich was irrelevant, but the story was too "perfect" for a cruel world to let go. It became a punchline that a woman of her size wasn't allowed to escape, even in death. For forty years, late-night comedians made jokes and newspapers repeated the myth without checking. It became "common knowledge" because, apparently, if you are a woman who doesn't fit the mold, the world will find a way to make you the joke.

Before the lie and the tragedy, Ellen Naomi Cohen was a force of nature. Born in Baltimore, she was smart, magnetic, and gifted. By the 1960s, she was the anchor of The Mamas & The Papas. Think of "California Dreamin'." That warm, iconic harmony wraps around you like summer, but Cass’s voice is what holds it together. It was rich, pure, and unmistakable. Musicians knew that when Cass sang, you stopped to listen.

Yet, the industry didn’t know how to handle her. She was brilliant, but she wasn't thin. Executives told her to lose weight to be a star; TV producers worried her appearance would be a "distraction." While male rock stars could be disheveled or overweight and be called "authentic," Cass was constantly scrutinized. She faced fat jokes on talk shows and was expected to laugh along.

Cass did what many women feel forced to do: she tried to "fix" herself. She endured years of crash diets and extreme weight loss cycles. She would lose 50 pounds, then gain it back, caught in a loop because the industry’s hunger for thinness was bottomless. Offstage, she was a dedicated single mother to her daughter, Owen, and a famously generous friend. She was "Mama Cass" because she took care of everyone. But the world still wouldn't let her be great without an asterisk. Even at the height of her solo success with "Dream a Little Dream of Me," reviews prioritized her dress size over her talent.

When her heart finally stopped at 32, the autopsy revealed heart muscle damage (myocardial degeneration). This is often linked to the physical strain of extreme yo-yo dieting and malnutrition—the very "solutions" the world demanded of her. The industry that told her she needed to change is likely what killed her. And when she died, the world turned that tragedy into a joke about a sandwich.

Her daughter, Owen, now 57, has spent her life defending her mother’s memory. She once noted that perhaps if the world had just let her mother be, her heart wouldn't have been under such impossible strain. We are still doing this today—reducing women to their measurements and making thinness a prerequisite for respect. But Cass Elliot’s voice is still here. It’s in the coffee shops, the movies, and the airwaves.

Called the Data Heat Island Effect, the study showed that temperatures are rising an average of 3.6 degrees fahrenheit (2 degrees C) in areas immediately surrounding the " locations of the main AI hyperscaler centres", while as much as a 16.4 (9.1 degrees C) degree increase was shown in the most extreme cases. Its findings also provided insight into how widely felt the thermal effects are, claiming the centres and associated heat islands could impact a total of over 340 million people worldwide.

[...]

Each of the 6,733 data centres that constituted the research group were located away from largely dense metropolitan areas. The study claimed that heat island effects were being carried by a distance of up to 6 miles (10 kilometres) from the facilities.

[...]

"The prevailing logic has been one of acceleration, the infamous 'move fast and break things', which translates into building capacity first and perhaps mitigating later," Harvard researcher and architect Marina Otero Verzier told Dezeen. "If development continues at this pace, we will see a significant increase in emissions, the intensification of thermal effect." "These impacts extend well beyond the data centers themselves, shaping entire territories, although those living next to them usually bear the burden." "In a context of ecological fragility and energy instability, a moratorium is needed, followed by a much stricter regulatory framework that would involve public oversight."

the way you frame your conversations is important! People with dementia are often, particularly at the earlier stages, very much aware that their memory is getting worse. This can make them very anxious, which isn't fun for anyone, least of all them. One of the most common things that people say to people with dementia is "do you remember ___?" as a way to try and prompt their memory. This feels helpful, but it's not. Because hey, in all likelihood, that person does not remember ___, and being confronted with this fact is not going to make them feel great. Remember that they literally have a degenerative brain disease; they're not going to suddenly regain their memories because you tested them. Instead, try talking about your own memories. Tell them what you remember. Tell it like a story. If they remember, then they can join in. If not, then hey, it's a nice story.

don't correct them if they say something wrong. Their version of reality is not going to be the same as yours. That's just a given. My grandma is often convinced that she's just on a very long holiday in a nice hotel, and that her dad is waiting outside in the car. I'm not going to tell her "uh, actually, you're in a care home and your dad died 50 years ago," because who's that going to help? Quite literally no-one. It'll just confuse her more, and she's already confused enough. Even if the person is saying something that's making them anxious - a common one is believing that people are stealing from them, or that someone is being unkind to them - then it's easier to try and distract them by trying to talk about something that you know makes them happy, rather than to outright tell them that they're wrong. Being consistently told that they're wrong can make them react defensively; they're not children, and they (usually) know it. It's just easier not to get into a confrontation.

get used to repetition. Don't get frustrated when you have the same conversation 25 times in two minutes. It's going to happen. For them, it's the first time you've had that conversation; they won't understand why you're angry at them for asking a question. It's completely normal to feel frustrated, but the onus is on you not to make it their problem. My grandma's short term memory is, charitably, about 3 seconds long. A conversation with her at this point is like rehearsing for a play; I know her lines, and I know mine. That's just how it is. She gets just as much joy out of telling me that she likes my cardigan for the 86th time as she did the first time she said it. People with dementia are not able to retain the information or the memory of that previous conversation; reminding them that you've already answered their question is just going to confuse and upset them.

don't take things personally. They might say things that are unkind. They might say completely inappropriate things. Again: their brain is deteriorating. It is a medical condition. They're not becoming bad people, or showing their 'true selves' to be evil and rage-fuelled. It's a combination of the fact that they're living in a perpetual state of confusion, which can lead to frustration and anger, and the fact that their ability to process and respond to information is affected by the dementia itself. If they say something cruel to you, you just have to take it on the chin and recognise it as a symptom of a disease that they're not able to control. Step out of the room for a moment if it gets too much. I've been fortunate in that my grandma has never experienced this symptom, but it's very common, and it's no reflection of you, or them.

don't treat them like children. My grandmother is 92 years old and she will look at you like you're the bane of her life if you try and tell her what to do, or use baby talk. Keep your sentences short and clear to avoid confusion, but don't ask them if they need you to clean their wittle fingies.

try and avoid open-ended questions, especially ones that involve memory recall, like "what did you do on the weekend?". My grandma was an absolute queen at making shit up when people asked her that, because she couldn't remember a damn thing, and she never liked to admit that she couldn't remember, because it made her stressed and anxious. "I picked up leaves" was her personal favourite, for some reason. I used to just tell her about my weekend instead, and sometimes she would joyfully tell me (completely falsely) that she also went to the shops, and that was much less stressful for her; she wasn't actively trying to come up with an answer to cover for her own lack of memory, and instead felt like she was part of the conversation on her own, equal terms.

most importantly: don't try and pull them back to reality. The best way I've learnt to communicate with anyone with dementia is to enter theirs instead. Sometimes, this is referred to as 'validation therapy'. It's about acknowledging that the reality of someone with dementia is as real to them as your reality is to you, and you're not going to be able to 'reorient' them to your version of reality, because they don't have the short term memory or ability to retain information that would enable that. Put simply: if my grandma asks when my uncle is going to come home, I gain nothing from (correctly) informing her that he's dead. This just upsets her, because every time she hears it, she's receiving the news of his death for the first time. That sends her into a spiral of grief and anxiety that remains even after the memory of his death has vanished again. Instead, I just tell her that he'll be home after lunch. She nods, accepts it, and we're both happy. My uncle is still dead, but in her world, he's going to come home soon. It's a way of having empathy for the person with dementia, and acknowledging that your reality, or objective 'truth', is not more important than their wellbeing.

Credits: @foxes-in-love