most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes

climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”

yet so many people have jumped already to “it’s over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about it” and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it

you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you don’t know what to do because you thought you’d be dead by 25

That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale

A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that “be depressed and do nothing” isn’t necessarily the only response to climate change.

this, this, this, this, this, this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature

BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???

I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”

People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????

If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?

I don’t know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse

I keep recommending “The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh because it is a very unflinching look at how culpable we are - not for having families, or forgetting to use the right spoons - but for consistently choosing the luxurious delusions of apocalypses. People can lovingly envision a thousand apocalypses, lavishly decorated by the pop culture we’ve gobbled down; but the reverse is not true, and we lack the imagination that is quite literally needed for the future. To the point where planning for the future is actively undermined by people at all levels, stating that it’s unrealistic. We are at a turning point of human history where people are watching each other knock holes in a shared lifeboat, because “everyone knows that lifeboats are predestined to sink.”

It’s considered unrealistic to imagine the prosperous and equitable future of the next generation, because it doesn’t match pop culture. We have actively given up our responsibilities of stewardship - literally the purpose of human existence - because Hollywood made it look hard. We are forgoing our natural bonds and our collective power because we agreed that our neighbours will probably turn on us, and when we look at the self-fulfilling prophecies and natural consequences of our behavior (pandemic, natural disasters) we claim it’s evidence that we can’t improve, instead of addressing the poor behavior.

Ghosh argues that one of the most radical and revolutionary things that we can do (and in the West, the foremost ETHICAL thing to do) is to task ourselves with reprogramming our imaginations to something functional. In this scenario, everyone can participate in the work; writers can literally take readers by the hand and heal them, people can lead and teach each other on social media, unions can include it in discussions, parents can teach their children, children can teach their parents, and everyone can correct each other. Oh, and people who like boycotts and clout can start a movement demanding more imagination in media. I agree with this, and it has underpinned my work and activism ever since.

I tend towards the conviction the humanity will survive and people look at me like I’m nuts. But it’s easier to ge shit done with this belief and honesty humanity will likely be here even if we don’t like how it is. Why not work towards it being something we want?

My mother keeps telling people she’s so relieved I’m not having children (I’m asexual and also just not inclined toward the care of very small younglings), and sure, it’s personally less stressful for her to not worry about her blood-related grandkids.

But what about everyone else’s kids and grandkids.

My mother thinks she gets to opt out of caring because I’m not having kids. But the world is not going to end just because I’m not having kids. And while she finds it admirable that I’m thinking about the next seven generations after me, she just…doesn’t care.

It’s not just a lack of imagination — it’s fear and it’s apathy.

We’ve romanticized disaster to the point that we’re numb to it. We find it to be such an inevitable outcome we’re just sort of vaguely relieved to avoid anticipated disasters. Our escapist fictions are disasters and capitalist mega series about disasters, our realities are disasters upon disasters with leaders who profit from disasters.

We’ve tricked ourselves out of dreaming better realities.

I will say that not all of this is to do with apathy and is at least quite a bit to do with a) how climate change is presented and b) how impossibly huge in scale the effects of climate change are to actually imagine

for decades the technique for talking abt climate change is to attempt to terrify the public into taking action. it’s presented as this apocalypse, we see pictures of polar bears on tiny ice floats, cities underwater, the worst case scenario. ppl ask me all the time when we’re gonna see the effects of climate change and are shocked when I say right now, every single day. cities aren’t getting drowned under miles of water but ppl are already getting displaced from their homes bc of worse and worse flooding except it’s not the apocalyptic scenes we’ve been told to expect so even when we say ‘this is climate change’ it doesn’t quite click

but this is a problem of science communication. ppl don’t properly understand what climate change is or what they’re supposed to do abt it bc communication on this subject is led by environmental scientists who don’t understand the social/political/economic aspects and it’s not their fault like this is literally not their job in the same way I couldn’t tell u abt a lot of the more technical aspects. not to mention the millions of $ of funding fossil fuel companies put into encouraging this kind of education/communication/mindset (and not even to mention how capitalism pushes us towards apathy and destroys sense of community very much on purpose). this isn’t on individuals this is a massive systemic issue

and secondly yeah climate change is actually almost impossibly huge to conceptualise. all of the work we do right now to stop it? none of us will see those effects in our lifetimes, our kids or great grandkid’s lifetimes. we are literally charging forwards into a black void which is rlly difficult for humans to conceptualise, we don’t rlly have any ability to properly understand what 10,000 years into the future looks like. and now asking ppl to fundamentally change their entire societies for this? it’s a desperately impossible task that we all need to fight for

dawnf1re:
“Lackadaisy fanart!! Patreon monthly art for April. :) I’ve been a fan of the comic for so long, it was really exciting to see the short!
”

Lackadaisy fanart!! Patreon monthly art for April. :) I’ve been a fan of the comic for so long, it was really exciting to see the short!

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

I couldn't remember the word "doorknob" ten minutes ago.

ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website

image

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER'S LIFE

Me when I'm in a "give your child the worst name imaginable" competition and my competition is any millennial couple

image

In related news I met a kid with older sisters named Kelly and Molly today (normal, fine names) and I'd like my lovely followers to take a guess as to what the youngest's name was

image

Great guesses! Some were pretty close! Unfortunately,

image

Now that’s solidarity

not every trans person has to be transgressive and constantly pushing the boundaries of our norms- the simple act of transition is progressive enough, you are showing the world that other people are trans, and your way of being trans is just as important as those who constantly try to mix things up with their genders and identify as freaks. binary trans folks who conform to societal gender norms are good too, you are just as important in helping change perspectives on what bodies and genders 'look' like.

saw a tweet the other day that was like "outlawing diy hrt would kill trans people" which, yes, i agree. however it is already illegal for trans men. which is something i feel like people just ignore in discussions about diyhrt. i've also seen tweets along the lines of "it's easy to access and dose and it's not explicitly illegal so if you're concerned about us anti trans laws you're being stupid". which, the first part is completely untrue when it comes to testosterone, and the second part shows a mindblowingly uncompassionate view on anti trans legislation and is a genuinely bafflingly horrible thing to say to people who are scared for their lives and their futures

image

had to add these tags bc the last time i went to the doctor and tried to up my t dose so i could start stockpiling she said she couldn’t do it since my t is within normal range. sometimes stockpiling is literally not an option unless you just straight up skip doses, which is also not an option for a lot of us. i can’t even get more than a month’s supply of t at a time bc my insurance doesn’t allow it. and that insurance just got banned from covering my t as of august of this year. so like. it’s really not as simple as “just stockpile!” or “just get it from overseas!”

Pharmacy technician here and trans man.

Testosterone is a schedule III controlled substances. This is the same class as Ketamine, Codeine, and Suboxone, as well as injectable estradiol. That's one step below schedule II drugs, which only a pharmacist can dispense (Adderall, Oxycodone, Percocet ect.). Even then there are lots of restrictions on how many times a schedule to can be filled, the time between fills, and if/when it can be transferred between pharmacies.

It is reasonable for people to be scared. It is entirely unreasonable to dismiss those fear and tell people to just 'diy' or 'stockpile'

I diy my T.

First, I'm not in the USA, but I suppose if someone will try to do it there, it will look a lot with my situation.

I write this with two objectives: give perspective about how fucking hard it is to get my T, and show how I do it, in the case it can help.

Its almost fucking impossible.

I literally depend on finding a specific kind of drug dealer, that works with products for body builders, like steroids and anabolics . Every time I need to find a new one, because the last link/contact stopped working. Having somebody that is a body builder can help, because its something that someone knows a guy that knows a guy... But this is very different than get recreational drugs. Its much more slippery than that.

You need cash. Its expensive, and you need to have a way to do quick monetary transactions that dont left much trail. The last time, I "officially" expended 400 bucks on plant food and substrate, but actually it was T.

How much you want to take health risks is a thing. I decided to thread cautiously, so I don't use injectable - this male it less dangerous, but still dangerous. I got gel T, and if I'm lucky, the qsp is pentravan, that give you the best absorption. I just got the biggest dosage I can find, and pray for the better. Because when you get something from a fucking drug dealer, you dont have a "guarantee or your money back" . I got a batch that made my face more squared in a way that totally meant there was a bigger dose than it was was supposed to have, and a batch that was clearly a much lower dose than it should be that clearly slowed changes in my body hair. With luck at your side, you get a box of official androgel. Its more expensive than the manipulated, but you know exactly what you got.

Its all pretty fucked. And at least I have protections as an user, in my country. Its illegal, but only sell it is a punishable crime, not having it as an user.

Asking for the tests to measure your T levels is complicated too. I'm looking for a place where you can just go, ask a test, no questions, get your result and gtfo, since the one I used last time closed. I know that in USA this is not an option, because your health system is totally inhumane.


Getting testosterone is hard as fuck and difficult to measure, dose and control. And sometimes, it is just impossible. Doing it alone means dealing with a very unstable treatment. You risk not finding a dealer, having a bad batch, its absurd that we need to be subject to this. My dignity goes to hell. I feel dirty. Not because I'm doing something ilegal, since I've been forced to illegality. But because no one should need to submit to this conditions to get treatment for anything.



And I'm not doing this diy thing because my government is screwing with trans people. It's because I dont have money to pay for a specialist, and there's a queue very long to get them trough the public system.

This is caused because we don't have enough specialists that are not transphobes or jackasses that prefer to work only with weigh loss and cosmetics. The doctors that will work with hormone therapy are fewer than the need for them.

image

Insallah we all reach this paradise

I regret to report at least one of the milfs is french, rendering the island hostile to human life.

part of the universe's inherent cruelty that all the parts of being a grownup that you idolized as a kid are both the best and worst parts of adulthood

the meme of two men sitting on a bus. one man is excitedly looking out at a beautiful view and reads "I get to decide what I want for dinner every night." the second man is sadly looking out the other window at a rock wall and reads "I have to decide what to have for dinner every night"ALT

the meme of two men sitting on a bus. one man is excitedly looking out at a beautiful view and reads "I can drive to my friends' houses and hang out whenever I want." the second man is sadly looking out the other window at a rock wall and reads "I have to schedule my entire social life"ALT

balance in all things etc etc but this is mostly to say that whenever ur feeling rly down about how hard growing up and having responsibilities is, it's worth trying to remember that your 6 year old self would be so excited about this. you gotta let that optimistic little motherfucker have a voice in your head, even if that voice mostly tells you to buy gushers when you're in the middle of grocery shopping

image

this is camp idc

1 2 3 4 5 Next