Hey, happy Earth Day! Who wants to talk about climate change?

Yeah, okay, fair, I kinda figured the answer to that would be "ugh do we have to?" What if I told you I have good news though? Good news with caveats, but still good news.

What if I told you that since the Paris Agreement in 2015, we've avoided a whole degree celsius of global warming by 2100, or maybe more?

Current projections are 2.7C, which is way better than the 3-5C (with a median of 3.7C) we were expecting in 2015. It's not where we want to be - 1.5C - but it is big, noticeable progress!

And it's not like we either hit 1.5C and avoid all the big scary consequences or fail to hit 1.5C and get all of them - every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid is going to prevent more severe problems like extreme weather, sea level rise, etc.

This means that climate change mitigation efforts are having a noticeable impact! This means a dramatically better, safer future - and if we keep pushing, we could lower the amount of global warming we end up with even further. This is huge progress, and we need to celebrate it, even though the fight isn't over.

It's working. Keep going.

"every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid is going to prevent more severe problems"

I'm not usually a quote-exactly-what-they-said-for-emphasis person, but that point is worth emphasizing!

People with low laughing points

English added by me :)

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

This and that tweet that's like

"Do you have trouble wearing socks?"

"No, because I have a System."

should be best friends.

Also on topic of Consent: whenever somebody says "Kids should have bodily autonomy!" some guy always is like "You are too unrealistic. What will you do when a kid is seeing the doctor and doesn't want to get a shot? Would you just let them refuse the shot?"

Yeah I probably would. You're straight up asking the wrong person if you want the nice normal answer here. Doctors and nurses forcibly doing (relatively routine) things to my body against my protests when I was a small kid fucked me up so bad that as an adult anything medical related is a huge trigger for me, I've had persistent intrusive thoughts and recurring nightmares about medical procedures, and I can't have even the most basic tests and health checks done on top of it.

I hate talking about it because I can't get comfortable calling it "trauma" and I don't have any other words that are useful, but it's made my life so much harder and really scary since if I start having a weird symptom, there's nothing I can move myself to do about it.

I figured out a loophole where going to a pharmacy instead of a doctor's office for vaccines reduces some of the stress, but I was still in stress and misery for days before I went to get my tetanus shot. The repulsion is so intense it feels like I literally don't have control over myself, it feels like I can't make appointments or plans about such things out of my own free will, and so every year I have guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt about how I should get the flu shot, and it does nothing but ineffectually hurt me.

Vaccines save lives and all that, but when it comes right down to it, I don't think it's actually a net benefit to public health to give any percentage of kids lifelong psychological scars so deep and painful they're almost completely barred from accessing health care as adults.

I know I'm not the only one, far from it.

Also it's probably actually small portion of kids that would still refuse the shot after having it sensitively and calmly explained why it's important, it might hurt a little but not a lot, it only takes two or three seconds, and being asked what would make them feel better about it or what could be done to make it better

A lot of nurses are demons that see that a kid is a little nervous and just go straight to fucking pinning them down and ignoring their screams of terror.

YOU ARE CORRECT!

foster dad is a pediatrician and I worked in his clinic for a year! when the kiddos had shots scheduled, I was the person who would patiently explain it before they went in. and yes it makes a huge impact, no the kids don’t usually have a problem with it or start freaking out, and if they do, it’s mostly because of their parents. parents being impatient, parents manhandling and demanding, parents escalating the situation by attempting to impose their will upon the child rather than take their fears seriously.

i had a few different ways of explaining it. one of the most effective was The Big Bowl Of Bad Vegetables. ask the kid what their least favorite vegetable is and then make them think of how long and awful and unpleasant it would be to eat a whole bowl of it he size of some very large object in the room. “well a shot is like that. it kind of hurts because it’s like all the broccoli going in at once but that also means it’s over way faster. like less than 30 seconds. and then you don’t have to do it again for a whole year. I don’t know about you but I would take 30 seconds once a year over a bowl of broccoli the size of large object in view.”

if they’re still terrified, give them a hand to hold and a toy for buddy and tell them to chant “only 30 seconds” while looking away. literally cater to the terrified child. terrified children get hugs and kisses and comfort, not physical violence enacted upon their bodies as punishment for refusal to comply.

yes. kids have a right to understand and agree to what is going to happen to their own bodies that they live in. that would be true even if it was hard to provide and took an insane amount of effort and you had to bring the kid back over and over and over again to get the vaccine done. good doctors and nurses will absolutely refuse to vaccinate kids in a severe enough state of panic to require physical restraint to avoid the medical trauma. that is literally how you create adults afraid of doctors and medical treatment.

so yes. bodily autonomy for everyone is not option and it is especially not optional for kids undergoing medical treatment.

My child had to have a non-optional blood test, and they resisted slightly, which resulted in them being pinned down in their wheelchair by 4 nurses. In a calming fucking sensory room filled with stuff specifically to keep kids calm and cooperative during procedures, none of which was used for them. It could have been handled well, instead my child was traumatised, and the real panic only started when they were pinned down. As said above, parents are usually the ones causing the issue, though I will say it is whichever stressed and hurried adult is present that causes the problem.

Their next blood test was at a different hospital and they immediately went into a panic. The staff were patient and lovely and walked them through it, did a pin prick blood test instead and let my child take as much time as they needed.

Just that one blood test being treated well has undone so much damage. My child was so traumatised I was looking in to training to do it myself because they could not so much as be around a medical proffesional without panicking. But now they have another blood test coming up, a normal one, and they are scared of course, but willing to do it. Because 2 nurses took some time to treat them like a person and make sure they felt safe.

Ultimately one day your child will be responsible for their own medical care. And if you let them be traumatised, they simply will not get the care they need when you can no longer force it on them. If you do not respect their autonomy, you are setting them up for failure.

The same actions can have a very different effect depending on how the professionals handle it. When I was very small, I had a major needle phobia. I understood the need for my shots. I wanted my shots, so I wouldn't get sick. I hated being sick. I didn't want to avoid my shots. But my first fear response is hardwired for fight, and my phobia was severe.

So, in order to get me my shots without hurting myself or another person, we talked about it with my doctor, and we got some nurses in to hold me down. It required multiple nurses to hold me still for shots, because a panicking small child full of adrenaline is surprisingly strong, and they didn't want to hurt me. I think it was three the first time, and then I kicked someone, and it was four after that until I could regulate myself well enough to... not do that.

This could have easily been extremely traumatic, if it had been done differently. But because I was involved, consenting, and in fact very strongly in favor, it was not remotely a traumatic experience. It actually helped with my phobia, because nothing bad happened during the shots from my perspective, so the terror eased.

It was a wildly different experience than if I had been pinned without being asked about it, or if they'd tried to give me a shot without properly restraining me, both of which would probably have caused physical and psychological harm. I could have just not gotten my shots, of course- but I wanted them, and we figured out a way for me to have them. The key is that my wants and needs were both respected.

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i feel like counter-trolling is an essential skill that kids online aren’t learning and it’s kinda worrying

like back in my day, the day of online forums, learning how to trick someone in to getting themselves banned was an essential skill. if you could tell someone was a chud, you would ask them short, leading questions and watch them get frustrated and post longer and longer rants until they said something that would catch a mod’s attention and get them banned and/or at least publicly humiliated. 

and guess what? that’s the exact same tactics the alt-right use now. these people are exclusively acting in bad faith. every interaction these people post online is done with the intention of getting someone to respond to them so they can screenshot the massive paragraphs of text and laugh

so, what’s the solution?

dare ‘em to post dick pics.

don’t acknowledge the content of the stuff they post. if you see someone trying to engage you in bad faith just dare them to post pictures of their penis until they either get frustrated and leave or get frustrated and do it. either way they lose. 

this is the tactic used by the fans of a podcast (that i haven’t listened to) called the Chapo Trap House, and 4chan’s /pol/ users fucking HATE them. they hate Chapo Trap House and think they’re crazy because Chapo Trap House fans refuse to engage in meaningful debate and repeatedly demand dick pics. they get frustrated and leave. it works. 

Some of you never used your position as a mod on an a series of unfortunate events forum to get a racist troll to post evidence of their tax fraud and it shows

…that second comment is oddly specific and I’m a little scared

I watched someone get a bunch of cops banned on twitter by repeatedly replying to them saying that all cops have small dicks and that’s why they went into the police force.

Eventually the enraged pigs posted their hogs and got instantly banned

It's like this all the time

There are two pools of water. One is called "Thinking", and the other is called "Doing".

The Thinking pool is full of wriggling, live fish. And if you want to do anything, you have to carry that live fish over and release it into the Doing pool.

All you have is your cupped hands to carry that fish - a fish that does not want to be scooped up. A fish that resits, wriggles, and jumps while you try to carry it live and whole to the other pool. Every task you want to complete, every idea for inspiration, every action is one of those fish.

If you don't catch the fish, it doesn't get done.

If you drop the fish, it doesn't get done.

If you accidentally smother the fish, it doesn't get done. And then you feel terrible.

Some days, the pools are near each other. Some days, the fish aren't as hard to catch. But some days, the pools are so far apart and the fish are fighting so much and it takes everything you have. But you do it, because you have to. It takes all your concentration to hold, carry, and anticipate the movement of that fish, and after you release that fish you're so tired.

They only count how many fish are in your Doing pool at the end of the day. "You caught enough fish! You don't need help! You're doing fine!", and you cry but they don't understand why.

Everyone else has buckets and nets. They don't understand why you think it's so hard.

Wait no, I have to share this again because I finally figured out how to say what I wanted to add.

I have, for my entire life, always managed to get enough fish to survive. I'm really damn good at that.

And so I always believed them when they said I was fine. That not getting any extra fish, especially the pretty ones, meant that I just didn't want to. After all, if I could catch enough fish, I could catch extra. If I really wanted to.

But god fucking damn it, doesn't anyone understand that I'm so tired I can't? Doesn't anyone see that the koi, and the lump fish (very beautiful, very powerful), and those little blue ones that shimmer in the sun are as important as the trout and tuna that I'm catching for food?

I'm stretching the metaphor here, I know. But this little post was the first time I've ever seen someone else actually articulate this, and it matters so much.

Sidenote, "Und der Sinn dahinter?" is such a satisfying way of saying "... Why?"

(Edited because my German was terrible)

The (overly) literal translation of "und der Sinn dahinter?" would be "And the sense behind this?"

A commonly overlooked symptom of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel joy or pleasure. The reason that it's easy to overlook is that it's easier to miss the absence of something that's not around all the time than it is to miss a symptom that causes active distress, such as feeling tired and miserable all the time.

Anhedonia is good at being a persistent undercurrent to your life. My aunt, who has major depressive disorder, related to me that she figured out that something was wrong when she looked at the daffodils she had planted blooming, and couldn't recognize the emotion that she felt when she looked at them. It had been long enough since she had felt happy that she lost the ability to recognize the emotion.

It's a particularly dangerous depressive symptom, because it robs you of the ability to feel those little spots of joy that keep a lot of people going, while not doing anything to impair your ability to function. If you don't know that this is a treatable symptom of depression, it's easy to assume that your ability to feel good is permanently broken, and decide to commit suicide because you don't want to live like that. It's not an irrational conclusion, but it is an uninformed one, and everyone deserves to have all the information when making a major decision.

This is what a lot of questionnaires are trying to look for when they ask about "loss of enjoyment". If you can't remember a loss of enjoyment because you can't remember enjoyment, then you probably have anhedonia. If you struggle to define how it is to feel "happy", "content", or "good", or how it feels when you feel those emotions, you probably have anhedonia. If you can't remember feeling any of those emotions for a week or more, you probably have anhedonia.

Symptoms commonly co-occurring with anhedonia are fatigue (often the cause), clear and thoughtful consideration of suicide, loss of desire to socialize or do activities that used to make you happy, and weight loss (due to lack of enjoyment of food).

This section is anecdotal. In what I have observed, anhedonia due to fatigue rarely responds well to depression treatment unless depression was causing the fatigue. If fatigue and anhedonia are co-occurring and are not both alleviated by depression treatment, consider other causes for the fatigue.

A couple notes that I forgot when I originally posted this:

It's also a common symptom of schizophrenia and schizoid personality disorder, but often doesn't respond to antipsychotics. In addition, in schizophrenia and schizoid personality disorder, anhedonia generally tends to "come and go", as opposed to depressive disorders, where when untreated, it often doesn't let up for months or years. This can make it more difficult to spot and treat than in depressive disorders.

ADHD can also have "come and go" anhedonia as a symptom, and ADHD medication has mixed results with alleviating it.

An early warning sign is if you've tried the "enrichment in your enclosure" by rolling out something new and fun or something you rarely do that generally brings you joy, and the result is an emotional reaction you can describe as "null".

*sigh*

So if you're in LA County or the IE and you want kittens, please let me know.

These little fuzzbeans were in a box in my garage, we think mom got stuck in there a few days ago, she ran off as soon as we opened the door. The ferals here have a bad habit of hiding in buildings we don't open for weeks at a time.

We can't keep them and the rescues in the area are full

Heads up, the tag "feral cat saga" is my warning tag for stories about the ferals in my yard. It's got a lot of instances of animal death, animal injury, and animal neglect in it so feel free to read through it but please take care of yourself.

My neighbor feeds the local ferals but doesn't do any work to socialize them and provides no medical care, spay/neuter, or vaccination for the cats so every spring we end up with dozens of kittens in the yard, most of which are dead by summer.

My spouse is immune compromised and I am very badly allergic to cats so we can't take them in; LA county shelters are no-kill, which functionally means that they are always very full and that they generally won't take in healthy cats. We've been trying to do any kind of TNR with the cats but most of them are extremely trap shy.

This neighborhood is on a very busy street; it's not uncommon for us to have coyotes in the yard, and there are hawks and owls that live locally. The feral cats in the area are at risk from cars, from predators, and from disease. I've seen several kittens die horribly in the last few years and in spite of many warnings the neighbors continue to feed them and refuse to get them any kind of vet care. It's a bad, unfortunate situation and at the moment what we're trying to do is simply make our yard unappealing to cats by knocking down structures they might want to stay in and covering up any dirt they might use as a litterbox.

I adore cats and the entire situation makes me really mad and sad and tired. My best case scenario would be getting all the cats fixed and vaccinated at least, and letting the colony slowly dwindle as it lost reproductive capacity.

I am a very strong advocate of indoor only cats because this is a terrible thing to have to watch and I hate it; it's bad for the cats, it's bad for the wildlife, and it's dangerous for my dog and my spouse.

Please spay and neuter your pets, please vaccinate your pets, and please please please for the love of fuck keep your cats indoors.

there’s absolutely nothing better than reading a 100k word fanfic, that is until you remember you have a body that is starving, thirsty and incredibly sleep deprived and hasn’t used the bathroom since the sun set 8 hours ago

me cross eyed and seeing double:

I saw this discourse in the comments a thousand times and I just cannot commit to the entire work I have to click next chapter, it's like a reward

I read fic on my phone, entire work. and I like having the little scrolly bar to show me how far through I am. Though I'm intimidated by 200k+ fics and find myself avoiding them bc of the commitment. So maybe chapter by chapter would be useful in overcoming that.

i read chapter by chapter in order to have a "chance" to "stop" at the end of each chapter. i do not stop

okay. im a little desperate because very few of my friends are a comparable size to me and the ones that are dont wear the type of garment im looking for. so:

does anybody have recs for a smooth fitting unpadded sports bra with chest compression? not a binder. not a longline bra. not tomboyx because no matter the intent the bras end up being longline on me because im short and not large chested. ideally id like it to come in beige. racerback preferred.

Goblin.Tools

So, yesterday a friend told me about Goblin.Tools, which uses AI to break down tasks (intended for neurodivergent folks whose executives like to dysfunction). (Admittedly, right now it does use OpenAI's models, but the About page expresses an intention to eventually move to more ethical options.)

ANYWAY, I wanted to play around with it and the first thing that popped into my head was "break kneecaps." I expected it to give a snarky "I can't tell you how to do that" response, but... well, here are some of the breakdowns it gave me:

Does it have any useful advice regarding late-stage capitalism?

What if I want to multitask?

I can't decide which of these is funnier:

I'm supposed to be doing an assignment about AI right now, but this is my serotonin for the foreseeable future.

i wish i were rich because that way i could comtinue being Insane & Useless and it would be fine like not even a problem

Not everybody gets to be Elon Musk

i said useless not actively detrimental to society

This is the Alarm Chicken. Her job is to break into the courtyard every morning and knock on the door and yell at me until I go out to feed the flock. If I ignore her for too long, a second Alarm Chicken will appear.

hi i'd also like to suggest, as a troubleshooting thing, that one reason you might be blocked on writing is that you've gotten into a punishment loop. you're scared to write, not for trivial or pathetic reasons, but because any time you approach writing, some guy starts screaming at you that you're a worthless piece of shit and that you could die without accomplishing anything meaningful. this guy continues screaming at you the entire time you're approaching this activity, and continues screaming at you for running away from it, too, until you find something else to do that's distracting enough that you can ignore him again. if you ever turn back around and approach writing again, there this guy is, screaming at you.

like, fuck, man, if i could only eat ice cream while some sadistic drill sergeant motherfucker gave me an existential crisis, i don't think it would take very many days before i was too scared to even open the fridge. after another week i probably wouldn't go into the kitchen. if he followed me around berating me for my piss-poor ice cream eating skills and told me all my teachers died ashamed of my pathetic inability to eat an ice cream, a skill even babies master, i would probably slip out my bedroom window in the night and move to the sahara desert.

so like, whether or not you ever write another word, you need to get rid of that drill sergeant in your head before he squeezes you out the window of your own skull. you're a valuable human being with worth and dignity, and you still would be even if you were the most illiterate motherfucker in the world. writing is not confirmation that you matter, that your education meant anything, that you finally have value to the world, that you're validating other people's investment in you. teachers taught you because they love to teach. your parents raised you because they loved their kid. you don't have to spend your whole life trying to pay back the debt of being born, being raised, being taught. you weren't a waste of anyone's time and effort in the first place.

and your gifts--whatever they were--were gifts, not debts you signed up for at birth and are now honor-bound to repay. a gift is something YOU get, for FREE, and it's for YOU. or else it's not a gift.

your gift for writing was so that you could enjoy this thing that came to you easily and enjoyably. you don't owe the world anything more than loving what it gave you--and you don't owe yourself anything less.

tell that miserable, sadistic, joy-killing drill sergeant in your head to get fucked. once he's gone, check the freezer and see what's in there for you.

You won't be able to hate yourself into productivity.