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one of the best decisions i've ever made was to stop arguing.

i'd always been an arguer. i was defensive about everything and mindlessly contrary. it wasn't all my fault; i was (and still am) talked down to and patronized a lot, and when you live your life that way, you become kind of a raw nerve and dedicate a lot of energy to trying to prove yourself. someone even told me once, "it's just fun messing with you. you get so upset."

at 23, i was working in an environment where about a half dozen middle aged conservative men were always telling me what to do and explaining things to me. i either argued with them when they said heinous things or stewed about it for hours or even days. and so my new year's resolution one year was simply: no arguing.

it felt a little like defeat at first, like i was no longer standing up for what i believed in, even though no matter how right i was or how much proof i had for my claims, no one had ever been swayed by anything i told them. part of that was because they had no respect for me and didn't take me seriously; the other part was the simple truth that arguments are almost never productive. when someone says something and you immediately reply with, "you're wrong and here's why," a wall goes up and nothing can go over it.

i couldn't just let these men talk at me though, so i started asking questions. not leading questions, not with an intention to prove a point or walk them into a corner. i genuinely wanted to understand how they came to shape the opinions they held. i realized that understanding and agreeing are two different things, and just because i seek to understand doesn't mean i condone.

a truly fascinating thing happened: these men walked into corners all by themselves. it turns out nobody had ever actually tasked them with speaking their opinions aloud to a neutral audience. no one had ever been sincerely curious about them and their views. sure, their loved ones probably asked, "how are you doing?" all the time as a show of affection, but that's much different than, "what do you think?"

knowing what i know now, i think that's true of everyone. how many people ask you for your opinion and listen to what you have to say without speaking their opinion back to you? without judging you? how many people actively and intentionally try to understand you?

it's been over ten years since my resolution and i think i can count the arguments i've gotten into on one hand. one finger, even. it's amazing what happens when someone tries to rile you up, pick a fight with you, and your only response is, "can you elaborate on that?"

you can work someone into a very open and vulnerable state when you ask questions. they eventually run out of their usual talking points and move into the personal. when i do this, it's not like therapy; i'm not trying to help anyone. and it's not like teaching; i'm not trying to educate anyone. i just want to understand how people reach the conclusions they've come to. even after all these years of asking questions and not arguing, it still amazes me how few people in this world feel understood, and how easy it is to get them to open up when you say, "i want to know what you think."

Never doing one of those “if this post gets X amount of notes I’ll [insert task here] posts for myself.

Tumblr already Ratatouille’d me into becoming a professional author. I’m not giving you gremlins any more power.

Mwa ha ha! But that's because you had talent and we wanted it to SHINE!

Now go drink some water and make sure you've had some food before resting, silly.

Fully appreciate that as part of the Ratatouille process you’ve all learned that at any given moment I’m likely failing some critical self-care task and are trying to jaeger fight my executive dysfunction.

look, y'all. I'm speaking directly to that 2.3% of you.

Boycotting is for when your refusal to participate hurts the system/entity you are absent from. You boycott a company, a transit authority, etc.

That's not how voting works. There WILL be an election whether you participate or not. The results WILL be counted in the usual way & considered valid whether you participate or not.

so participate.

Go to a protest immediately before and after you cast your vote. If you don't have an election day protest near you, organize one. Call your elected representatives / the national party HQs every day of every week between now and the election to formally register your opinion on the candidates presented to you. THOSE are effective ways to protest the system. Better yet, get involved in your local municipality, where you can make change as a much bigger fish in a much smaller pond.

Not voting just means the people who believe differently from you will decide who governs, because they showed up.

One-third to half of the population won't vote. Your "protest absence" will be completely indistinguishable from their apathy.

"But the electoral college-"

Yes. So organize around its revamping or elimination. Vote anyway. It's meaningful that the popular vote has been so misaligned with the electoral college for so long. It's gonna be hard to reform the system no matter what, but it will be fucking impossible if we don't continue to show up and demonstrate the ways in which it's broken.

Voting as harm reduction is much more effective and meaningful than not voting at all.

contact your elected officials here

find your fucking polling place here

As always, waiting for my ballot to arrive... while watching events over thataway.

I am very happy with the 94.5% of us who are either doing our civic duty or unable to due to age or other factors.

For that 2.8% that isn't sure...get with the program, guys.

For the 2.2% who are determined not to vote, I sure hope that Trump doesn't get elected by 2.2% of the eligible electorate! Gosh, wouldn't that be shitty for vulnerable people in America like me! I hope if that happens you choke on your own spit!

Funny how that works

I am so pleased at how many notes are some version of “I don’t fear the science, I fear the corporations who control it” because that is EXACTLY the attitude you should have. GMOs can save us. Monsanto will kill us.

what people fear about GMO- ‘theyre gonna make frankencarrots that crave human flesh and cause diarrhea ’ what GMO actually is- ‘we made rice crop that is both drought resistant and flood resistant which will prevent about 20% of major famine disasters, also it now makes vitamin A because vitamin A deficiency in poverty stricken areas is a major killer of kids as most vitamin A rich foods dont grow there’ what people SHOULD be upset about- ‘i made all crops sterile so all farmers have to buy the seed from me in perpetuity and i will sue anyone who tries to go back to crops that produce their own seed’

I’m really looking forward to the day at work when the CEO comes online and says, “Congrats, that was everything we were gonna do. We’ve done all the work. That’s all the stuff we’ve planned to do. The products are all really good right now and we shouldn’t change them anymore. It’s just cashing checks from here on out.” And we all go outside and play in the river.

Trump is activly promising to undo any and all laws holding gas and oil companies to environmental regulations.

there's always time to let it go

the idea that dressed boring/plain means a person is boring is well... uh. ok. i'm going to be nice. some of us don't live in outfit world.

one day you’ll yearn for the person you are now, to tell them, "hey, look, it turned out to be okay" and "i’m so grateful you’ve held on" and "things just worked out somehow". you’ll want to hold their hand and give them the wisdom that the future is actually better, and you know it because you’re living it. but you can’t reach through time like that. the only way to bridge the gap between the you of today and the you who’s doing better, is to hold onto the hope that they exist. 

Please go watch Sex Explained on Netflix. Not only is it a great resource for the basic sex education that is sorely lacking in the U.S., but some of ya’ll need to take a deep breath and remember the difference between fantasy vs reality. This purity culture thing that we’re going through right now is directly harmful to responsible, healthy sexual expression. BTW this woman, Lisa Diamond, is a noted psychologist and has been pushing for greater understanding of womens sexuality as a whole.

!!!!!!!!!!!

So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.

Lemon boy.

Based on an outfit from ‘biosweet’ on TikTok.

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