I’m a young-adult woman with the hopes of becoming a well-known writer. I’m a dreamer, a music lover and a chaotic human being, curious about what the future will bring but without any idea of what to do with it. As for this tumblr, we’ll see. I will make an attempt to make an interesting place but for now I still have to figure out what to do with it.
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Latest Posts by wolfspoot - Page 5
ADHD pro tip: Use psychological warfare on yourself.
For example, in order to do long tasks, like folding laundry, I put on the Mario Hat:
The main feature of the Mario hat is that my headset does not fit over it, so when The Bees™ try to put me back in front of the screen, the headset issue forces me to remember why I put the Mario hat on, and back to the task I go
As a bonus, the Mario hat is also a very clear indicator to my housemates that business is getting done, and they have learned not to distract me when I'm wearing the "goofy-ass cosplay hat"
It's not stupid if it works.
Mental Crop Rotation
When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.
To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”
So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.
Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.
During the 2008 recession, my aunt lost her job. Her, her partner, and my three cousins moved across the country to stay with us while they got back on their feet. My house turned from a family of four to a family of nine overnight, complete with three dogs and five cats between us.
It took a few years for them to get a place of their own, but after a few rentals and apartments, they now own a split level ranch in a town nearby. I’ve lost track of how many coworkers and friends have stayed with them when they were in a tight spot. A mother and son getting out of an abusive relationship, a divorcee trying to stay local for his kids while they work out a custody agreement, you name it. My aunt and uncle knew first hand what that kindness meant, and always find space for someone who needed it, the way my parents had for them.
That same aunt and uncle visited me in [redacted] city last year. They are prolific drinkers, so we spent most of the day bar hopping. As we wandered the city, any time we passed a homeless person, my uncle would pull out a fresh cigarette and ask them if they had a light. Regardless of if they had a lighter on hand or not, he offered them a few bucks in exchange, which he explained to me after was because he felt it would be easier for them to accept in exchange for a service, no matter how small.
I work for a company that produces a lot of fabric waste. Every few weeks, I bring two big black trash bags full of discarded material over to a woman who works down the hall. She distributes them to local churches, quilting clubs, and teachers who can use them for crafts. She’s currently in the process of working with our building to set up a recycling program for the smaller pieces of fabric that are harder to find use for.
One of my best friends gives monthly donations to four or five local organizations. She’s fortunate enough to have a tech job that gives her a good salary, and she knows that a recurring donation is more valuable to a non-profit because they can rely on that money month after month, and can plan ways to stretch that dollar for maximum impact. One of those organizations is a native plant trust, and once she’s out of her apartment complex and in a home with a yard, she has plans to convert it into a haven of local flora.
My partner works for a company that is working to help regulate crypto and hold the current bad actors in the space accountable for their actions. We unfortunately live in a time where technology develops far too fast for bureaucracy to keep up with, but just because people use a technology for ill gain doesn’t mean the technology itself is bad. The blockchain is something that she finds fascinating and powerful, and she is using her degree and her expertise to turn it into a tool for good.
I knew someone who always had a bag of treats in their purse, on the odd chance they came across a stray cat or dog, they had something to offer them.
I follow artists who post about every local election they know of, because they know their platform gives them more reach than the average person, and that they can leverage that platform to encourage people to vote in elections that get less attention, but in many ways have more impact on the direction our country is going to go.
All of this to say, there’s more than one way to do good in the world. Social media leads us to believe that the loudest, the most vocal, the most prolific poster is the most virtuous, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. (And if virtue for virtues sake is your end goal, you’ve already lost, but that’s a different post). Community is built of people leveraging their privileges to help those without them. We need people doing all of those things and more, because no individual can or should do all of it. You would be stretched too thin, your efforts valiant, but less effective in your ambition.
None of this is to encourage inaction. Identify your unique strengths, skills, and privileges, and put them to use. Determine what causes are important to you, and commit to doing what you can to help them. Collective action is how change is made, but don’t forget that we need diversity in actions taken.
Wait, so you said that you can learn to trust others by building friendships, but how does one go about doing that? Wouldn't someone I don't know be creeped out or annoyed if I suddenly walked up and started talking to them?
Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.
It takes a long time to make friends as an adult. People will probably think you're weird if you just walk up and start talking to them as though you are already their friend (people think it's weird when I do this, I try not to do this) but people won't think it's weird if you're someone they've seen a few times who says "hey" and then gradually has more conversations (consisting of more words) with them.
I cheat at forming adult friendships by joining groups where people meet regularly. If you're part of a radio club that meets once a week and you just join up to talk about radios, eventually those will be your radio friends.
If there's a hiking meetup near you and you go regularly, you will eventually have hiking friends.
Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction; if you go camping with your radio friend, that person is probably more friend than acquaintance. If you go to the movies with a hiking friend who likes the same horror movies as you do, that is deepening the friendship.
In, like 2011 Large Bastard decided he wanted more friends to do stuff with so he started a local radio meetup. These people started as strangers who shared an interest. Now they are people who give each other rides after surgery and help each other move and have started businesses together and have gone on many radio-based camping trips and have worked on each other's cars.
Finding a meetup or starting a meetup is genuinely the cheat-code for making friends.
This is also how making friendships at schools works - you're around a group of people very regularly and eventually you get to know them better and you start figuring out who you get along with and you start spending more time with those people.
If you want to do this in the most fast and dramatic way possible, join a band.
In 2020 I wrote something of a primer on how to turn low-stakes interactions with neighbors and acquaintances into more meaningful relationships; check the notes of this post over the next couple days, I'll dig up the link and share it in a reblog.
Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:
If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.
If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.
I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.
There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.
When a person with ADHD complains of severe anxiety, I recommend that the clinician not immediately accept the patient’s label for her emotional experience. A clinician should say, “Tell me more about your baseless, apprehensive fear,” which is the definition of anxiety. More times than not, a person with ADHD hyperarousal will give a quizzical look and respond, “I never said I was afraid.” If the patient can drop the label long enough to describe what the feeling is like, a clinician will likely hear, “I am always tense; I can’t relax enough to sit and watch a movie or TV program. I always feel like I have to go do something.” The patients are describing the inner experience of hyperactivity when it is not being expressed physically.
At the same time, people with ADHD also have fears that are based on real events in their lives. People with ADHD nervous systems are consistently inconsistent. The person is never sure that her abilities and intellect will show up when they are needed. Not being able to measure up at the job or at school, or in social circles is humiliating. It is understandable that people with ADHD live with persistent fear. These fears are real, so they do not indicate an anxiety disorder.
holy SHIT
Do y’all know where the phrase “eat the rich” comes from or do you just repeat it cause you heard it elsewhere?
It’s not a bad thing, I just saw someone say “we never said who would eat the rich” and realized a lot of y’all might not have heard the full quote
It’s from Rousseau and it’s “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich"
And, well, there’s a lot of people with nothing to eat…
they need to invent clubbing for boring sober people who don't like loud music or crowded group dancing. what's the "she should be at the club" for this hypothetical not-me demographic.
Fruit will last 3 weeks longer….
Why You Should Keep Fruit In Mason Jars Instead Of The Containers They Come In…….
When you get your fruit home from the grocery store, the first thing you should do is remove it from the plastic containers they’ve come in and recycle them. Next, clean out your sink and fill it with water (you could also use a large bowl). Then, toss in a few tablespoons of distilled vinegar. You’ll then want to submerge your fruit in the water and let it soak for about 10 to 15 minutes. The purpose of this is to get rid of any mold or bacteria on the fruit which is what causes them to go rotten more quickly.
Once the fruit has had a nice soak, remove it from the vinegar water, transfer to a strainer, and rinse with cool water. Leave the fruit out to dry on a tea towel or paper towel. Once dry, transfer the fruit to mason jars and seal up those lids. This is the best way to make your fruit last, particularly berries, which tend to be very prone to mold and bacteria buildup.
And that’s it! Incorporating these few extra steps into preparing and storing fruit can help you eliminate food waste, save money, and keep your fridge stocked with fresh produce for much longer.
I must not mock Gen Alpha. Mocking Gen Alpha is the mind killer. Mocking Gen Alpha is the little-death that brings total generational solidarity obliteration. I will engage with Gen Alpha lovingly. I will permit them to be cringe. And when they grow up I will turn my eye to their accomplishments. Where mocking has gone there will be nothing. Only generational solidarity remains
hate it when I'm doing things I really want to do and I encounter the tiniest speedbump in the process and my brain goes "I shan't!" and fucks off for a month at a time to avoid those speedbumps.
On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.
I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.
It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.
I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.
My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.
Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.
It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.
I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.
"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".
Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.
"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.
Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.
It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.
"Clothing tags, travel cards, hotel room key cards, parcel labels … a whole host of components in supply chains of everything from cars to clothes. What do they have in common? RFID tags.
Every RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag contains a microchip and a tiny metal strip of an antenna. A cool 18bn of these are made – and disposed of – each year. And with demands for product traceability increasing, ironically in part because of concerns for the social and environmental health of the supply chain, that’s set to soar.
And guess where most of these tags end up? Yup, landfill – adding to the burgeoning volumes of e-waste polluting our soils, rivers and skies. It’s a sorry tale, but it’s one in which two young graduates of Imperial College London and Royal College of Art are putting a great big green twist. Under the name of PulpaTronics, Chloe So and Barna Soma Biro reckon they’ve hit on a beguilingly simple sounding solution: make the tags out of paper. No plastic, no chips, no metal strips. Just paper, pure and … simple … ? Well, not quite, as we shall see.
The apparent simplicity is achieved by some pretty cutting-edge technical innovation, aimed at stripping away both the metal antennae and the chips. If you can get rid of those, as Biro explains, you solve the e-waste problem at a stroke. But getting rid of things isn’t the typical approach to technical solutions, he adds. “I read a paper in Nature that set out how humans have a bias for solving problems through addition – by adding something new, rather than removing complexity, even if that’s the best approach.”
And adding stuff to a world already stuffed, as it were, can create more problems than it solves. “So that became one of the guiding principles of PulpaTronics”, he says: stripping things down “to the bare minimum, where they are still functional, but have as low an environmental impact as possible”.
...how did they achieve this magical simplification? The answer lies in lasers: these turn the paper into a conductive material, Biro explains, printing a pattern on the surface that can be ‘read’ by a scanner, rather like a QR code. It sounds like frontier technology, but it works, and PulpaTronics have patents pending to protect it.
The resulting tag comes in two forms: in one, there is still a microchip, so that it can be read by existing scanners of the sort common within retailers, for example. The more advanced version does away with the chip altogether. This will need a different kind of scanner, currently in development, which PulpaTronics envisages issuing licences for others to manufacture.
Crucially, the cost of both versions is significantly cheaper than existing RFID kit – making this a highly viable proposition. Then there are the carbon savings: up to 70% for the chipless version – so a no-brainer from a sustainability viewpoint too. All the same, industry interest was slow to start with but when PulpaTronics won a coveted Dezeen magazine award in late 2023, it snowballed, says So. Big brands such as UPS, DHL, Marks & Spencer and Decathlon came calling. “We were just bombarded.” Brands were fascinated by the innovation, she says, but even more by the price point, “because, like any business, they knew that green products can’t come with a premium”."
-via Positive.News, April 29, 2024
--
Note: I know it's still in the very early stages, but this is such a relief to see in the context of the environmental and human rights bullshit associated with lithium mining, and the way that EVs and other green infrastructure are massively increasing the demand for rare metals.
I'll take a future with paper-based, more humane alternatives for sure! Fingers crossed this keeps developing and develops well (and quickly).
I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"
But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.
Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!
I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.
Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.
Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)
And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.
You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.
So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?
My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.
(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)
I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.
I gotta say, one of the greatest achievements of my 20s was that I learned (mostly) to differentiate between:
"I truly do not want to go" and
"I'm just feeling the Demand Avoidance, and I will like it once I get there."
Once a little boy went to school. One morning The teacher said: “Today we are going to make a picture.” “Good!” thought the little boy. He liked to make all kinds; Lions and tigers, Chickens and cows, Trains and boats; And he took out his box of crayons And began to draw.
But the teacher said, “Wait!” “It is not time to begin!” And she waited until everyone looked ready. “Now,” said the teacher, “We are going to make flowers.” “Good!” thought the little boy, He liked to make beautiful ones With his pink and orange and blue crayons. But the teacher said “Wait!” “And I will show you how.” And it was red, with a green stem. “There,” said the teacher, “Now you may begin.”
The little boy looked at his teacher’s flower Then he looked at his own flower. He liked his flower better than the teacher’s But he did not say this. He just turned his paper over, And made a flower like the teacher’s. It was red, with a green stem.
On another day The teacher said: “Today we are going to make something with clay.” “Good!” thought the little boy; He liked clay. He could make all kinds of things with clay: Snakes and snowmen, Elephants and mice, Cars and trucks And he began to pull and pinch His ball of clay.
But the teacher said, “Wait!” “It is not time to begin!” And she waited until everyone looked ready. “Now,” said the teacher, “We are going to make a dish.” “Good!” thought the little boy, He liked to make dishes. And he began to make some That were all shapes and sizes.
But the teacher said “Wait!” “And I will show you how.” And she showed everyone how to make One deep dish. “There,” said the teacher, “Now you may begin.”
The little boy looked at the teacher’s dish; Then he looked at his own. He liked his better than the teacher’s But he did not say this. He just rolled his clay into a big ball again And made a dish like the teacher’s. It was a deep dish.
And pretty soon The little boy learned to wait, And to watch And to make things just like the teacher. And pretty soon He didn’t make things of his own anymore.
Then it happened That the little boy and his family Moved to another house, In another city, And the little boy Had to go to another school.
The teacher said: “Today we are going to make a picture.” “Good!” thought the little boy. And he waited for the teacher To tell what to do. But the teacher didn’t say anything. She just walked around the room.
When she came to the little boy She asked, “Don’t you want to make a picture?” “Yes,” said the little boy. “What are we going to make?” “I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher. “How shall I make it?” asked the little boy. “Why, anyway you like,” said the teacher. “And any color?” asked the little boy. “Any color,” said the teacher. And he began to make a red flower with a green stem.
~Helen Buckley, The Little Boy
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ADHD reward system? Please tell me your secret!
My therapist has been helping me find a reward system that works for me, and as it turns out, gold star stickers are really helpful for making me feel like a tangible goal was met, and helps give me that sweet, sweet dopamine release that comes with completing a task, something which us ADHD’ers really struggle to achieve and are already coming at from a disadvantage with our brains regularly not producing enough “happy” hormones as it is.
It was supposed to be “a sticker for every time you finish a chapter”, but after some revision, my therapist said that was too tall of a goal, and that I should pick something smaller. So instead I now get a star every time I finish a 500-word milestone, placing the sticker in my writing calendar/journal thing that I use to keep track of my writing, and ironically, I have started to produce more work than when I was stiving for one chapter a day.
To give you an idea of how staggeringly effective this has been for me, I’ve written over 30k of original fiction in the last week. (75k total if you include my social media and blog stuff, which I currently do not but likely should.)
So this is what it looked like when I was attempting to do a chapter of edits and revisions a day during the month of December 2019 (note: I was supposed to start this in Nov, so you can see how well that worked out for me lol):
ID: A calendar showing days of the month with a shiny star sticker showing a completed task.
And this is what my writing journal looks like now that I’m doing a star for every 500 words:
ID: an image of a handwritten journal with the dates mapped out, followed by a shiny star sticker for every completed 500-word milestone. There are 65 stars in total for the month of January 2020. It’s also tinged by a green light cause I’m doing a chronic pain experiment, so far with positive results!
So as of today, January 8th, with ever star = 500 words, then 65*500 = 32500 words totalled in 7 days. This does not include, like I said, my social media output where I am far more productive, this is just my fiction and some editing work for friends.
(Which side note: this is not to flex, or to say that others should be able to achieve this level of output. I am a professional writer, this is my main job and only source of income. And also, I was forged in the fires of understaffed editing hell where we would be expected to churn out 100k+ a week in edits and revisions to keep on track. I have the time and a learned skillset I have spent years amassing to be able to do this and am working towards a rigid deadline. I simply have not been healthy enough in a long time to manage it, and am finally working my way back up to speed after years of illness. Don’t look at this and think, “I’m not achieving enough”, every victory no matter how small is worth celebrating. And I say that with the utmost sincerity, as someone who spent most of the last 2-3 years unable to get out of bed.)
I’ve also started using it to help keep track of bills and chores around the home. So every time something gets done/done on time, whoever completed the task gets a star on the calendar. This includes Oppy the Not-A-Roomba, who does a very good job of taking care of the house on a daily basis:
ID: an image of a chore calendar denoting various tasks that have been marked off with a holographic silver star sticker, including our robot vacuum who does an excellent job and deserves all the stars. (Our names got blurred out cause ETD doesn’t want his real name out there in the world, so that’s what is blurry.)
This system is useful for several reasons, the primary one being a sense of achievement and continued motivation, and the second, to allow you to review each month to see where you are doing well, and where you might otherwise be struggling.
For example, if I have a bad day for writing or decide to take a day off, I write that down in the calendar rather than leaving it blank, so that I have a record of what went wrong (or right, if I am electing to self care that day and take a day off) and how my overall progress is doing.
In terms of house stuff, this has been especially useful for ETD and myself, as it shows us where we are managing to do a good job with the house, and where our executive dysnfunction issues really trip us up and where we need to make improvements. And I don’t just mean in an “I should try harder way”, I mean you have to actively sit down and be like “hey! What is preventing me from completing this thing” and trying to figure out effective ways to either get around it or resolve a larger issue at hand.
So for us, the biggest thing we tend to miss is doing dishes after dinner, meaning we get left with a pile-up of dishes to deal with first thing in the morning, and my ADHD can’t handle that. It won’t let me eat until I’ve cleared all the mess, but I usually don’t have the energy to clean up if I haven’t eaten, so it’s this awful cycle of ineptitude. We’re doing better with the star reward system, cause it’s showing us our progress loud and clear on the fridge door, but we are both usually so fatigued and exhausted by the end of dinner that doing dishes is just one thing too many for our mutual disorders. So, the solution for this would, of course, be a dishwasher, cause if we had one of those, we could load stuff in, turn it on, and let those dishes get done while we go to bed then put them away in the morning. We can’t afford to do that right now, and we have other appliances we need to buy/replace before we can do that (still don’t have a tumble dryer, or a washer I can access, rip) but it does give us a tangible goal to work toward, and also, the motivation to keep on top of things because it goes from “an endless task with no end in sight” to “there’s a solution for this, we can manage a while longer.”
Now you could be saying, but Joy, I’m an adult! Surely I shouldn’t expect rewards for completing every day tasks that I should be able to do?!
To which I say, neurotypical people get rewards all the time and get an unconscious dose of dopamine/serotonin from their brains every time they complete a task. They’re playing the game of life on easy mode, the gold star is your achievement for completing it daily on Nintendo 99 hard mode. IF THE STICKER WORKS, TAKE THE STICKER
YOU’VE EARNED IT.
I’ve been in such a funk since the concert. I’m not even sure I enjoyed myself that much. maybe I did. I don’t know
Something that I think should be an important part of solarpunk aesthetics is screws.
Look at your smartphone. No screws. You've got to have specialized tools to get inside your phone to repair something. There are certain pieces of tech that are glued in place and glue can't be undone without permanently breaking the bond.
But screws!
You can take apart a broken old radio, repair what's broken, and, if you were careful in taking it apart, you can put it back together and have a fully functioning radio and all you need is a common screwdriver!
It's hard to build screws and other mechanical fasteners because it requires more planning than clamps and glues, but isn't that what solarpunk is all about‽ It's about care and sustainability and and a radio or a computer built carefully with repair in mind is a sustainable computer that stays out of landfills and in use.
In some parts of the range, basket makers began to observe a decline in the numbers of black ash. They worried that overharvesting might be to blame, a decline caused by too much attention for the baskets in the marketplace and too little for their sources in the woods. My graduate student Tom Touchet and I decided to investigate. We began by analyzing the population structure of black ashes around us in New York State, to understand where in the trees’ life cycle the difficulty might lie. In every swamp we visited, we counted all the black ash we could find and wrapped a tape around them to get their size. Tom cored a few in every site to check their ages. In stand after stand, Tom found that there were old trees and seedlings, but hardly any trees in between. There was a big hole in the demographic census. He found plenty of seeds, plenty of young seedlings, but most of the next age class—the saplings, the future of the forest—were dead or missing.
There were only two places where he found an abundance of adolescent trees. One was in gaps in the forest canopy, where disease or a windstorm had brought down a few old trees, letting light through. Curiously enough, he found that where Dutch elm disease had killed off elms, black ash was replacing them in a balance between loss of one species and gain of another. To make the transition from seedling to tree, the young black ash needed an opening. If they remained in full shade they would die.
The other place where saplings were thriving was near communities of basket makers. Where the tradition of black ash basketry was alive and well, so were the trees. We hypothesized that the apparent decline in ash trees might be due not to overharvesting but to underharvesting. When communities echoed with Doonk, doonk, doonk, there were plenty of basket makers in the woods, creating gaps where the light would reach the seedlings and the young trees could shoot to the canopy and become adults.
In places where the basket makers disappeared, or were few, the forest didn’t get opened up enough for black ash to flourish. Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked.
"Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A reminder that humans are, in fact, an important part of the ecosystems we inhabit. We *can* be a benefit to the ecosystems that support us, and that our absence *can* be detrimental to the other organisms that we evolved with and lived alongside for thousands of years.
i learned about Tim Wong who successfully and singlehandedly repopulated the rare California Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In the past few years, he’s cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (their only food source) and gives thousands of caterpillars to his local Botanical Garden (x)
To all my fellow poor bastards who just got the new twitter-style tumblr dashboard
You can fix it via:
Dashboard Unfucker
or
Old Tumblr Dashboard (July 2023) 1. Install the Stylus extension 2. then install the actual script for the fix