It is stupidly hot here, and I’m finding my energy being sapped even faster than usual. Taking the trash out to the dumpster yesterday felt like walking into a furnace. We often joke that our uniform smocks are like sweat jackets, but right now…

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I grew up cisgender, so I don’t understand what it feels like to be trans.

My experience as an asexual woman gave me a good idea of what it feels like to be an ‘other,’ as did growing up autistic. Disability and a largely unknown sexuality — one I didn’t even understand myself — made me an outsider to a lot of ‘normal’ adolescent life.

I know what it feels like to sit outside of a conversation and be turned into the butt of the joke, even when the speakers didn’t realize I was the person they were talking about.

It hurts.

Kids and teenagers already have to deal with discomfort with their bodies and their sense of self; a lot of it is in the midst of severe changes as they grow and learn and experiment. But most kids don’t have to contend with the feeling that their body quite literally does not fit their brain.

Trans kids have it so, so much harder. At least I didn’t have to convince anyone to respect my gender. Apart from one kid who was confused by the presence of a slight moustache on my lip, I’ve always been comfortably assumed to be the woman I am on sight.

I had a friend growing up who was different in many of the same ways I was different.

They were what we thought of as a ‘tomboy,’ much like I was as a child. They were the daring one, who could kick off their shoes and climb the basketball hoops like a monkey. They got in trouble when the teacher caught them, sitting high above us enjoying the view of the playground.

They were awkward in social situations, like I was. Shy, anxious when the center of attention. There were times I stepped in to help finish a presentation for them because they froze up in panic and hid under the teacher’s desk, fighting tears.

They were, by far, the most incredibly creative artist I’ve ever seen, with a talent that could not be contained. They got an image in their head and had to build it with whatever they had on hand, and it was always amazing in the end.

We became friends when I tried to stand up to bullies in their defense. I got my butt kicked, but I tried.

Anyhow, years later, long after we lost touch, I met their mother at the school I was attending. She was a teacher. The ‘girl’ I thought I knew, it turned out, was now a young man.

At first I was shocked. Then I thought about it. A lot clicked into place.

The next time I saw him when he visited his mom at work, it threw me for a loop. The kid who was terrified to be looked at was wearing the most incredible hand-sewn, hand-embroidered waistcoat straight out of the 1800s.

He made it from scratch. The whole outfit. He looked like a Founding Father, striding down the hall with his head held high, utterly unbothered. It was like a switch flipped, and suddenly he was in his element. People stared, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

My shy old friend was now confident and proud. The only thing that changed was he was now recognized for who he actually was, and openly accepted by the people that loved him.

He got the care he needed to become who he knew he was, rather than bending to pressure to behave the way he was ‘supposed’ to.

That’s all it took. He was happy, and comfortable, and enjoying his life.

Even writing this out, I have some tears in my eyes, because the difference was so incredibly moving.

I have other trans friends and loved ones in my life, people I met after transition and people I knew before they came out, and their experiences of being accepted and exploring themselves mirror that old friend.

They are happier, more expressive, more eager to be themselves than ever before.

I can’t fathom how anyone could want to deny them that.

Solidarity wins.

I’ve spoken before about Climate Tipping Points.

See, there are systems in our global climate that feed into each other and influence each other to the degree that if one falls, it starts a domino effect that disrupts everything around it.

These are things like the polar ice caps melting, which raises sea water level and temperature and reduces the reflective surface area at the poles, which in turn increases warming because it’s no longer reflecting heat from the sun.

It’s a negative feedback loop that makes everything worse.

There are a lot of climate tipping points starting to wobble right now, and for those of us in the know, it’s making us very, very nervous.

These include:

• The polar ice caps melting, like I just talked about

• The Arctic Ice Sheet starting to thaw, which threatens to release a huge burst of carbon and methane into the atmosphere

• Coral Reef die-offs, which impacts the food cycle of marine life. This disrupts plankton, which is a prime source of the oxygen we breathe. Like, 50-80% of it

• The AMOC current is on the brink of collapse

And it’s that last one that I want to talk about right now, because I think this one is often overlooked. And I think it has something to do with what we discussed the other day.

AMOC stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It’s the global current that transports warm water from the tropics all the way up and around northern Europe. The water cools, sinks from the surface, and circulates back down south to warm up again.

It’s like the cooling system in an air conditioner. It regulates the Earth’s temperature in an endless loop. It’s absolutely vital. Any disruption of this current threatens to destabilize everything.

And unfortunately, it is showing signs of disruption.

Scientists have noticed patches of cooling in unusual places along the current’s route, indicating that the water circulation may not be flowing the way it used to, and warm water isn’t reaching places it should.

They’re calling it the Atlantic ‘cold blob.’

It could mean that the AMOC is in the process of slowing down, which indicates a future collapse within our lifetimes. The next couple of decades, if we’re extremely unlucky.

What would that mean? That’s harder to predict. Certainly it would mean highly unstable weather patterns, even moreso than we’ve had the past few years. It’d mean warm water remaining centered in the south, causing the global south’s temperature to rise significantly.

It would also mean, in the absence of warm water rising to the northern regions, that our northern countries would face even more brutal winters than usual.

Potentially catastrophic winters. Like, miniature ice-age winters.

So, this is all pretty bad. But why am I bringing Trump into this, per the title? Well, it’s because of those ocean monitoring projects that his regime is currently tearing apart.

Because that project was part of an initiative that tracks shit like this. Now that scientists have reported findings like this, and concern has been growing for the past few years, suddenly there’s a pressing need to defund and take these projects apart?

I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because Trump doesn’t want information like that spreading. He doesn’t like sharing news that makes him or his policies look bad — and he has a lot of policies that are poised to tear down environmental protections and worsen Climate Change.

He doesn’t want the media to pair those policies with catastrophic findings like these.

It’s the COVID-19 cruise ships all over again. If you stop testing, there won’t be any cases to report!

He’ll drag us all into a nightmarish hellscape, but he doesn’t want any of us to know he shares responsibility for it. Because he’s an egotistical piece of shit.

So, please, help me ruin his plans and share this post around if you can. He can’t distract us from this; our lives are on the line, and we have a right to the information provided by these studies.

We have to know what’s going on if we’re to prepare for our future and fight to make it better.

Please restack, share, link it to your friends and social media, and help raise awareness of this issue. Amidst all of the other shit Trump is doing, Climate Change needs to be top of mind.

For all of our sakes.

Solidarity wins.

In a time when the U.S. is dropping partnerships and damaging its own alliances left right and center, Trump has decided to make matters worse by starting to pull assistance back from his most powerful international card.

The U.S. is now stepping back from NATO. Not completely — just enough to withdraw troops and assistance and ‘force Europe and Canada to provide their own defence.’

Oh, we’re working on that, Donald.

We’re even partnering up to make you obsolete. There’s even some chatter about Canada joining the EU, alongside other strategic additions of several smaller countries that would allow the EU to force project in a way that used to be uniquely American.

You don’t want to be relied on? Fine. No soft power for you.

And that’s the issue, here. Trump doesn’t understand soft power. To him, ‘soft’ means ‘weak.’ But when it comes to international force and influence, soft power is anything but. It’s the strongest and most versatile tool in a country’s arsenal.

See, strong alliances, dependence and influence make a country like the U.S. invaluable. It makes other nations turn to you first when they have a problem, which gives you leverage and clout that you would otherwise lack.

Other nations didn’t just turn to the U.S. for defence, they turned to you for everything.

Entertainment, humanitarian aid, economic partnerships, diplomatic assistance — anything and everything. That is why you used to be a superpower, Donald. Because you were the name on everybody’s lips. You were the Mafia Don who held all the cards.

Now, for some reason, you’ve decided to give up half the deck and play on the only face card you have left — the military. And don’t get me wrong, that’s a strong card.

But it loses more than half of its strength without the cooperation of international allies.

You pull your troops out of bases in other countries and consolidate them at home, you can’t force project. Your prior ability to get anywhere at a moment’s notice and back up your words with force disappears overnight.

Without NATO, you’re not quite toothless, but you’ve lost your fangs.

Giving up soft power means giving up everything that you’ve built. No economic partnerships. No more diplomatic deals. No more sneaky pro-U.S. propaganda in the entertainment industry if you keep pissing everybody off like this.

The U.S. can’t completely drop NATO, at least not yet. But pulling back, on top of all of the anti-NATO rhetoric Trump’s been spewing for years, is a bad sign.

Especially now. Daddy Putin must be so proud.

Solidarity wins.

I don’t need to tell y’all how much I love the ocean.

It’s only the subject of some of my longest articles, and one of my most enduring and beloved memories of home. Standing on the beach, listening to the rushing waves and the cries of gulls overhead brings me a peace I can scarely describe.

I’ve tried. I don’t know that I do it justice.

I also don’t need to tell you that the ocean is under threat. It is being poisoned, filled with microplastics, over-salted and warming to an alarming degree — enough to kill off the many wondrous species that live in its depths.

Everything from the beautiful coral reefs to the algae and plankton that produce the oxygen we breathe is dying.

Being one of our most important ecosystems makes this mass die-off an existential threat to humanity.

As such, you would think that we would be able to take that threat seriously. Maybe the most powerful nation in the world would be taking steps to protect it, ensure the survival of our species at the very least, even if it didn’t care about any others.

You would think so. But no, you would be wrong.

By now, I think most of us are familiar with Project 2025 and the plans it outlined for Trump’s regime now that he’s in power. We’ve been watching them fulfil it, one line at a time, for a year and a half now.

And now we’re watching them come after science, as we knew they would. Including an attack on our oceanic observation network — more than an attack, a complete dismantling of the entire project.

See, there’s a worldwide ocean monitoring system that expands across multiple countries and pretty much all of our world’s oceans. It includes everything from temperature gauging to weather pattern prediction. It watches for seismic activity and helps scientists study Climate Change and its impacts.

Trump is now dismantling that system.

That means we’re going to have a harder time tracking weather patterns. It means we won’t get advanced warning when major storms are coming our way, or when the ocean’s temperature ratchets up again, putting us at risk of mass die-offs and worsening storms.

And this doesn’t just impact the United States. This system has global reach and cooperation.

Trump’s actions and his Project 2025 isn’t just presenting a threat to his own constituents, it’s a direct threat to the entire world’s population. All countries, all peoples, all ecosystems and wildlife.

He’s going to take us all down with him just because of his fucking ego.

This terrifies me to a degree I’m not sure most people are grasping. You know how bad a hurricane can be when it strikes landfall? Imagine how bad it’d be if most people don’t know it’s coming and that they need to take action and evacuate.

We already knew this year would be bad for our food supply, too. With the Strait of Hormuz closed, shipping costs go up with the cost of oil, fertilizer shipments are failing, and agriculture workers are already missing prime planting seasons.

We were looking down the barrel of smaller yields anyway, now we’re facing uncertain weather forecasts through the growing season as well.

If we were worried about mass famine before — and I was — then we have to be chewing our nails at this point.

I can’t overstate how bad this is. On top of everything else Trump is already doing, this is just as bad for human rights and safety as his fucking ICE Gestapo roaming the streets.

This will kill people. Human beings around the world will die because of this action. And because he ripped up USAID, there won’t even be humanitarian aid to stop the bleeding.

I’m sick to my stomach, y’all. This is so fucking bad.

Solidarity wins.

Have you ever had a Conservative family member shove statistics at you about how Conservatives tend to be happier and less depressed than Progressives?

I have. I actually laughed in their face, because it really isn’t the ‘got’cha’ that they thought it was.

They thought they were showing me that I was miserable because of my politics.

Instead, they showed me how easy and blissful it is to not care about anything.

They showed me their lack of compassion on a scientific paper.

That’s the bitch of having a well-developed sense of empathy; we get hurt everytime somebody else is shown to be struggling. We feel sad all the time because we know how badly other people have it. We feel anxious and depressed because we pay attention to the direction the world is headed.

To a Conservative who only cares about their immediate situation, life is only bad when they are personally wrestling with something. Or when Fox News tells them to be mad about it.

Otherwise, life is just dandy! It’s easy to be happy when you don’t pay attention to human suffering at all.

Ignorance is bliss, apparently.

I’m World-Weary because I can’t look away. I know you can’t, either. It makes life scarier, and harder, because we see the dystopia as it builds around us. It was always there, honestly, but now it’s front and center.

People are starving. Governments are no longer caring about image, throwing restraint away and even committing genocide and invading other nations just because they can, diplomacy and decency be damned.

The most prosperous and wealthy country with one of the most advanced militaries in the world is being run by a man who is not fit for his office, hardly even present in his own mind most days, and clearly suffering from some sort of personality disorder that renders him unable to care for anything but himself.

He has abdicated his responsibility to take care of his people. He’s squeezing money out of them and leaving them for dead. He’s the ugly side of unregulated capitalism personified.

He’s cutting protections and regulations, throwing the switch to cut the brakes on Climate Change, no longer offering help to other countries and greedily swallowing up everything he can.

The whole world is suffering because of one man’s ego. He just keeps licking other people’s plates clean while they go hungry at the table.

And then you have the wars. Russia and Ukraine. South Sudan in civil war. Israel bombing Lebanon and Iran alongside the U.S., and Gaza reduced to rubble and chaos as innocent people try to dig the remains of their children from under the rocks that used to be their homes.

Famine. Climate chaos. Disease outbreaks — the threat of more pandemics, which is terrifying, and which we know after Covid-19 will not be taken as seriously as they should be.

And my country has finally fallen into a technical recession as a result of Trump’s trade war bullshit, which has once again ignited his avarice and triggered more talk of making us the ‘51st State.’

Even the U.S. ambassador to Canada is advocating for it, the piece of shit. Frankly he has no place here. He should be thrown out.

I’m fortunate. I have a roof over my head. I have a full-time job, even if it isn’t a high paying one. I have a spouse and family who love me, and I have access to healthcare and food and water.

But, since I have compassion for others, I can’t sleep. I look at Cuba, at Venezuela and at my own nation and I feel fear. How long before Trump does to us what he’s done to others? What he keeps threatening to do to Greenland?

If he tried, the U.S. would combust in an instant. There would be revolt, war, NATO would fracture, our friends would turn up to take our side. America would take us over for a while, but they couldn’t hold us.

Their own people would tear their country apart. I take comfort in that.

Still, that doesn’t mean he won’t try. He’s not well.

Our world right now is a dystopian hellscape. We have good days and bad days. But the trend is heading in a very bad direction, and we’d be fools not to pay attention. We would be callous not to care, even if it didn’t threaten us directly.

We’re World-Weary because the world is freakin’ exhausting.

Solidarity wins.

Getting home at the end of my shift, I struggle to make it up the stairs. I’m sure everyone in the house can hear my grunts of pain as I haul my way up, step by agonizing step.

My feet feel like someone is stabbing the soles and heel with a knife. The muscles in my calves and the tendons have tightened up, my back pulls, and my knees… my knees don’t want to bend.

Every time I put weight on a foot to lever myself up, the joints of my knees scream.

Arthritis hit me early. I’ve been coping with it since my early 20s, and honestly, even before — that was just when I was finally diagnosed. It’s the result of childhood sports injuries, damaged ligaments causing joints to grind and rock unsteadily over time.

I’m only 32. If you saw me on the street, you might think I’m a little overweight, but you wouldn’t see physical disability. Not at a glance.

Autistic people like myself can react to pain in very different ways from neurotypical people. For me, I don’t express my pain outwardly until it’s extreme.

When people find out about my arthritis, people often express surprise. Less so now that I’m in my 30s, but in my 20s it was common for people to straight up call me a liar. How could I be arthritic? I’m way too young!

That’s not how it works, man. Disability can hit at any time. I wish I was lying; this shit isn’t fun!

The fact is, invisible disabilities exist. Just because someone looks young and healthy at a glance does not mean they are, and you should never, ever assume somebody is fine.

You don’t know what’s going on with them. Don’t make an ass out of yourself by judging someone parking in a disabled spot or sitting in a seat on the bus and refusing to give it up.

For all you know, there might be a prosthetic leg hiding under that pant leg. You don’t know, so shut up. The odd stigma against disability in young people makes it harder for us to access necessary accomodations and resources from our governments, let alone basic fucking respect and dignity from the people we see around town.

If I seem cranky today, that’s because I am. I work retail. I’m on my feet all day, five days a week, and my hours just got turbocharged because of another person dropping off the schedule.

I’m going to be pulling in more money, but I’m also going to be in a lot of pain.

I swore off retail a long time ago for this exact reason; it fucking hurts. But there are no other jobs where I am. I have no choice.

And the shitty part about that is, life outside of work doesn’t stop. I still have to function, I still have to be able to do things for myself while I’m in pain.

I have to ‘suck it up, buttercup’ as one of my coworkers loves to say.

I still have to clean. I still have to cook. I still have to walk the dog. I still have to do my laundry. And somewhere in all of the necessary chores and errands and work, I have to try and find a way to relax and sleep while my body locks up and turns to burning, painful stone.

Life with serious pain sucks, man. But there’s nothing I can do but push through it. It’s just how life is for me. Nothing special, nothing new.

I’ll tell you one thing for damn sure; I’m not weak, and I’m not fucking lazy.

You try doing this all goddamn day in this much pain and call me lazy. It’s my biggest pet peeve, honestly. The people who walk in the store to see me sitting on a footstool while fixing a lower shelf, saving my knees from crouching — so many of them make some kind of crack about me sitting on the job.

Goddamn right I am. Deal with it.If I were allowed a chair behind the counter I would use it!

There’s this weird idea that people who work retail are like robots who have an easy job and can’t possibly be struggling. But we’re as human as anyone else, with bodies that have limits and need a break now and then.

This is not a polished thought experiment today, just an angry vent while I try to relax. Soft pajamas aren’t always enough of a pick-me-up, and my spoons are all over the floor. I work an opening shift in the morning, so I’m typing this up the night before, after closing.

Does anyone else encounter this kind of callous disregard around your health? Let me know; if you do, I know I’m not the only one who needs to rage.

Solidarity wins.

Small acts of resistance are just as important as big movements that catch national attention.

Small acts are easier for everyone to take part in, they don’t necessarily require grand sacrifices and don’t usually cut in to the time you have to spend on securing basic needs for your own survival.

Take Canada’s boycott of American goods and tourism, for example. Our boycott has substantially impacted the U.S. economy in many states, to the point where several state governors have visited our country to essentially beg us to come back.

We said a polite ‘fuck off’ and sent them packing. Several industries and many small businesses in the U.S. are collapsing due to the lack of Canadian dollars rolling in, and we aren’t giving an inch.

Choosing not to travel to the U.S. or simply not purchasing American goods whenever possible has had a profound impact. That’s not a huge ask, it’s a small choice and a tiny act when you consider everything going on.

But when millions of people take part, it’s forceful. It makes waves. It makes headlines.

Grand acts of resistance are the ones that people think of. They think of mass protests and hunger strikes like what’s happening at Delaney Hall. They think of the Maidan Protests in 2013 in Ukraine.

They think of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

All of that is critical, absolutely. Revolution comes when people are fed up enough to fight for it. But the groundwork is laid by the millions of everyday folks who step up and say ‘no’ in whatever way they can.

Encrypting your data so the tech oligarchs have a harder time capturing it. Cancelling subscriptions to the services and media they own. Building community networks for mutual aid, like we’ve discussed before. Finding ways to spread the word and encourage others to take part.

One big act might be helpful, but it can also take you out of the fight. It can get you hurt and arrested, even killed in the case of Alex Pretti — and he’s rightly regarded as a hero, but he is no longer fighting.

The big acts need to happen, even when violence is the consequence, but so do the small ones. Sustainable resistance takes place over years, it builds and swells and becomes part of your every day choices. Everyone can do it, and everyone should.

There are a lot more of us everyday folks than there are of the guys in charge. They only keep their power because we passively let them.

But we don’t have to do that.

Your patience for tyranny can end. They want you tired and apathetic and desperate so you don’t bother trying to fight back. They want you stressing about where your next meal comes from so you don’t stop to think about the banquets they’re hosting in their ivory towers.

That fatigue will go away if they no longer have their boot on your neck.

Just something to think about.

Solidarity wins.

Celebration and joy is a potent weapon.

Pride emerged as a response to pain and outrage and injustice. It is celebrated in June as a remembrance of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. By 1970, one year later, it had become a national celebration and parade across the United States.

By ‘71, it came to Canada.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton declared that the entire month of June ought to be celebrated as Pride Month, and since then, that’s exactly what people have done.

There are people who think Pride is over and not necessary because gay rights have been largely accepted into the mainstream. First of all, there’s no reason to stop celebrating and partying and refusing to be shamed just because there’s public acceptance.

I’d say that’s more reason to celebrate, not less.

And secondly… honey, have you looked at what’s happening? Not only should we bump the music louder this year, but we need to go back to the roots of Pride.

This year, Pride is once again a protest as much as a parade.

Queer people are under assault. All around the world, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is rising, backed by a concerted effort by the people who own the largest media and social media corporations in the world.

A hateful meme shared on X can spread like wildfire, instigating hate from continent to continent. The shorter, quippier, and more memorable it is the more impactful it is as propaganda.

Propaganda works, unfortunately.

The best way to fight it is by being visible, vocal, and present. We defeat their control by proving that we do not fear them; we’re fucking pissed off.

LGBTQ+ people and their allies have fought hard to get to the level of lukewarm acceptance we achieved before we hit this stumbling block, and I for one am not going back.

I don’t care if you’re ace like me, trans, bi, gay, lesbian, pan, aro, non-binary or whatever identity feels the most authentic to you — you are valid, loved, and deserving of all of the happiness life brings.

So claim it. Don’t let them take that joy from you. Be loud, be out there, be angry and be a force for truth.

Celebrate right in the faces of the assholes who want us to be ashamed.

Been there, done that, never ever again.

Solidarity wins.

There’s a really weird idea in some people’s heads these days. They think that the minimum wage shouldn’t be a living wage. That minimum wage workers should be grateful to make any amount they’re given, and that if you want to survive on your work income, you need to make an effort to get a better job.

Raising the minimum wage is a non-starter to these people, even as the cost of living skyrockets and the average rate of debt is off the charts.

I’ll let you take a second to think about the mental gymnastics inherent in that.

Quick history lesson — the idea of a minimum wage first appeared in 1894 when New Zealand, or Aotearoa as we really ought to call it, realized that a staggering number of sweatshops and other forms of slavery were popping up all over the place in shoddy economic conditions.

They realized the best way to curb such exploitation of the desperate masses was to… y’know. Make the masses less desperate.

By instituting a legal minimum wage, they forced workplaces to pay their workers appropriately for the labour they were performing, and that helped reduce extreme poverty in the country. At least for some, it’s important to note that this was 1894, and so marginalized communities still got the short end of the stick concerning pay and workplace protections.

The author of the bill that introduced the minimum wage, William Pember Reeves, understood that protecting labour rights and unions was a surefire way to help reduce riots and cut down the chances of small-scale wars, such as were happening in the Appalachian regions of the U.S.

The Coal Wars lasted from 1890 to 1930, because it took that long for the U.S. government to realize that shooting striking workers is not an effective way to calm down angry working men who also had guns.

Fun fact, 1894 is also the year that both Canada and the U.S. signed Labour Day into law as a holiday. These events are all related, if you couldn’t tell.

See, the mistake some people make is to hear ‘minimum’ and assume that the minimum wage is the bare minimum that a company is required to pay.

The issue is, they misunderstand what that means. It is, in fact, the bare minimum a company is required by law to pay. Because if they could get away with it, the greedy fucks would pay you even less.

The federal minimum wage in the U.S. was put in place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938. That was part of a whole slate of protections against exploitation, including a cap on working hours and child labour protections.

Now, I’ve ranted about the wonderful things FDR did during his term concerning the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Hat’s off to him, he saved both of our countries with his overhauls.

He also did some seriously fucked up things, like introducing Redlining and the Japanese Internment Camps. But I digress.

His stated goal with the minimum wage was laid out in this direct quote from the man himself:

The purpose, therefore, is very clear. The minimum wage was, indeed, intended to be a living wage. More than the bare minimum to satisfy the law, but intended to provide a decent living to all workers regardless of class.

Do you think it lives up to that lofty ideal these days? Food for thought.

Solidarity wins.

I’m exhausted, folks. We’re doing major renovations at the store right now and I’m getting one heck of a daily workout re-doing all of the displays as we move shelves and shift product around to reflect a new configuration.

I’m going to be spending my 7-hour shift today going up and down a step ladder fo…

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I remember growing up in my grandmother’s old house.

I’d wake up every morning to the smell of old musty sheets and dust, the kind of scent that clings to an old house’s rarely-swept upstairs. Light would filter in through a faded, dirty old window pane that none of us could reach the outside of to clean.

Though, thinking back on it, I’m not sure any of us ever tried.

I’d lay in bed for a moment, listening to the sound of my mother’s steady breathing in the room next to mine, which was essentially a walk-in closet repurposed with a child sized bed.

Downstairs, I’d hear my grandmother’s radio, already spilling the morning news and weather reports for her while she enjoyed her morning tea. She was an early riser, my grandmother. She had health issues that required an early start to manage.

We had an easy morning routine. My mother had to work, as did my grandmother’s partner, so it was often just the two of us. I’d get up, get dressed with my mom, and go downstairs. By the time I was five or six, I knew the basics of making my own breakfast.

I was starting to learn to cook on my own, albeit under my grandma’s watchful eye as she sat in her favourite kitchen chair and gave me instructions. She more or less let me make whatever I wanted out of her rather sparse pantry.

As a result, we ate a lot of cake back in the day. Boxed cake mixes were relatively cheap. I was a kid, what do you want?

I remember what it was like to live in that small house in a small, impoverished town full of people scraping by as best we knew. It was all we knew. A tight-knit community where everybody knew everybody and people were getting by by the skin of their teeth.

I remember that. And then I try to imagine what it would be like to have bombs fall on our rooftop.

No more cozy mornings in the old rickety house. I try to picture it reduced to rubble.

It makes me sick. I think it would make us all sick. I don’t take the next step, imagining family trapped under the broken bricks. I can’t.

Many people in the Middle East don’t need to imagine it. That’s what’s happening to them right now.

Homes gone. Cozy mornings obliterated. Comfortable memories ripped apart, forever destroyed, tainted with the visceral sound of collapse and bombs and bullets striking concrete.

Some people wonder why I’m critical of Israel. It’s not anti-semitism on my part, I can assure you. Criticism of a country’s leadership is not an insult to the entire Jewish community abroad — in fact, I remember when assuming all Jewish people were connected to Israel was, itself, a damningly anti-semitic trope.

My critique stems from an inability to accept genocide as a rational or reasonable response to anything, even terrorism.

I just don’t think dropping bombs on innocent civillians who aren’t involved in a conflict is okay.

That’s really it.

It’s not just Gaza or the West Bank, either. It’s everywhere. How many times has Israel declared a ceasefire, and then immediately started shooting and bombing again just as soon as the other side lowered their weapons?

Netanyahu never met a ceasefire he couldn’t violate. It’s like he’s confused on what the word means. Granted, Hamas has also violated prior agreements, but there’s definitely a power imbalance with regards to destruction.

Hamas isn’t going to be able to do nearly as much damage to Israel as Israel does to the Palestinian people as a whole. The death toll is staggering.

But like I said, it’s not just Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon in the middle of a supposed ceasefire over the course of several months.

This, after the horrific terror attacks involving exploding pagers that killed dozens of people and injured thousands more all across Lebanon and Syria. Including children.

And even now, despite obvious crimes and destruction with seemingly no reasoning beyond mass murder, people still defend Israel. They support the country’s government and military, and are pleased that their country also backs them.

They’re mad when their governments criticise them.

I don’t get it.

Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal idiot — though I would be deeply insulted if you called me a liberal — but I just can’t stand for genocide.

I’ll let you guys be the judge of that. Am I crazy? Am I out of bounds? If you think so, I don’t know what you’re doing here.

Solidarity wins.

I’m almost done with my student loans. I have less than seven thousand left to pay off, and no interest owed.

I make my monthly payments automatically out of my account, and the numbers merrily tick on down. My parents help, but it’s not necessary; they’re being kind. I could pay it all off today if I wanted to.

I choose to keep my savings intact. Why bother? Like I said, no interest to worry about. My debt will keep going down no matter how much I put towards it every month. Within a couple of years, it’ll be done.

My spouse, who took out his loan for college in the United States when he was younger, is not so lucky. He has thirty thousand left to go, and an interest rate that keeps him on the back foot.

The system down there is so abominably predatory. I can’t believe y’all let them get away with it, just like I can’t believe you haven’t revolted over your gods-awful healthcare system.

It’s one of those consequences of unbridled capitalism that I can’t wrap my head around. Everything in the U.S. system seems to be designed to squeeze as much money as possible out of every human being, as though we’re nothing but money farms.

Livestock for their bottom lines.

A person can’t live with the enormous, crushing debt cycle on top of the rising cost of living and no healthcare? Squeeze them until they die in the street and move on to the next.

Society benefits from a strong educational system. The doctor shortage both of our countries are experiencing right now proves how disastrous it is to price ordinary people out of college.

How many people out there would love to be a doctor, a nurse, an oncologist, a paramedic? How many people would love to work in agriculture science, in big tech, or in fields related to space exploration?

How many of them can’t because they can’t afford it? How many balk at the insane interest rate on student loans that would keep them from ever getting out of debt?

There’s a vicious cycle in America today. Pay an insane amount for tuition that requires an impossible loan. Try desperately to pay off the interest while your debt keeps increasing.

Hunt for a job in your field. Find out nobody is hiring. Wind up in minimum wage work, which is unsteady at best and doesn’t pay enough for you to dig out of the hole — hell, it barely pays for your room and board!

If you’re a person from a marginalized community, it gets even worse. There’s discrimination everywhere, in hiring, in loans, in renting. Everywhere. And if you can’t pay your student loans, well, depending on the holder of the loan they can even garnish your already shitty wages.

As a kid, everyone tells you that you need college to get a good job and build a good life. You face incredible pressure to get a good post-secondary education. If you can’t afford it, just get a loan — everyone does. My parents pushed me to.

That works out better for us in Canada, though. My low-income status meant my tuition was totally covered at the government school I attended. I had a full bursary that didn’t need to be paid back.

The loans I took were totally voluntary, used to pay for the materials and equipment I needed to learn to be a jeweller. In the end I think I owed around $11,000 at the end of my schooling. I started paying it back while I was still in school, when I got a bit of income.

My parents helped later. I’m grateful for the assistance. Part way through my repayment period, my province announced that the government would no longer charge interest on student loans, which completely removed any interest I owed.

So, I don’t need to worry about rising debt. As long as I keep my payments running, my loan ticks down. I will soon be debt free, and then my spouse and I will be turning our attention to his debt instead.

That’ll be the pain in the ass, in truth. But we’ll manage.

Not everyone is as lucky as us. Frankly, we’re all suffering for it.

Solidarity wins.

When you hear the word ‘refugee’ a lot of people picture brown immigrants from so-called ‘third world’ countries.

That’s the image built in our minds after decades of propaganda and charitable ad campaigns online. Poverty Porn is a surprisingly handy tool at shaping our cultural expectations and beliefs. When you scratch the surface and actually look into the imagery that it presents, you find out that it rarely ever shows the full picture.

By the same token, the constant depiction of refugees as being from ‘other’ places in the world completely ignores reality as well. For example — what if I told you that one of the largest refugee crises in modern American history wasn’t due to immigrants coming in from other countries?

Rather, it was desperate white Americans fleeing unlivable conditions in their own home states. It took place during the Dust Bowl, when huge swathes of the U.S. and Canada became completely uninhabitable and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and migrate across the country.

There was another refugee crisis here in Canada only a few years ago, when British Columbia dealt with severe wildfires that quite literally wiped entire towns off of the landscape.

We weren’t equipped for either of those calamities. Resettlement and rebuilding is hard, and takes a lot of time and money. The poor and marginalized always get the worst of it.

I was inspired to talk about this today by what’s happening in California right now. Over the past few days, around 50,000 people were rapidly evacuated from an area surrounding a chemical plant that was in danger of exploding.

Today, the danger has significantly reduced and so has the size of the evacuation zone. Still, this is just one example of a very real refugee situation from our own proverbial backyard.

It just isn’t talked about as a refugee situation, because it’s Americans staying within America. We define refugee as a person who has fled their home country, typically for fear of persecution and oppression.

But recently, a new term has become more and more common. ‘Climate Refugee.’

It’s exactly what it says on the tin.

Climate Refugees have always existed; fleeing your home due to violence has exactly the same impact as fleeing your home due to a natural disaster, we just think of it differently when it’s a so-called ‘act of God’ versus an act of human cruelty.

But now that man-caused Climate Change is creating unlivable conditions worldwide, how can we continue to define Climate Refugees as victims of nature?

Isn’t it now clear that this is also a form of human cruelty? We could have prevented a lot of this, and we chose not to because the profit potential in the short term was too high to pass up.

I think ‘Climate Refugee’ is a bit redundant. I think if you’re fleeing your home because the situation is completely untenable and you simply can’t stay, you count as a refugee. I think we need to tweak our definition and our cultural imagery to match this.

Until we make it real and personal, I think people who have the power to take action on these issues will keep on pretending it isn’t a problem.

As long as it’s happening to other people somewhere else, then they don’t have to care.

But we should all care. It’s only a matter of time before we become refugees ourselves in this crazy, fucked-up world we live in. The more we prepare to provide aid when needed, the better off we’ll all be.

No matter where we come from, we’re all equally human and deserve compassion.

Solidarity wins.

My trip was a nice escape.

Like I said, we didn’t go far; I still had a couple of shifts at work while my spouse was in town, so we didn’t go running far afield. We relaxed in a nice hotel room in town — since I share my home with family, and we wanted privacy for at least a few days.

We took turns taking each other out for dinner. We saw movies at the theater. We lazed around watching shows and generally behaving like a married couple.

It was nice to see him for a little while. Hopefully it won’t be long before he gets the green light to move up here permanently and this becomes our normal, everyday routine.

We even visited a coworker of mine at her new apartment, and we asked a ton of questions about the place and the cost and how good the landlord was.

It’s a nice building, and the rooms are cozy. Worth looking in to for the future.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the news while we were in town. I haven’t spent a lot of time stressing or keeping up with the bad shit; I needed the break, and we wanted to enjoy our time together instead of ranting and raging about the state of the world and the country he’s trying to escape.

But now I’m back, so I get to dive back into the hell of it all. Wish me luck.

Good to see you all. Looking forward to going from rested to World-Weary all over again!

Solidarity wins.

I’m taking a small little trip. Not far; just the city neighbouring the small village I live in.

I have a hotel room booked, I’m packing my things, I’ve fixed things at work so I won’t have to stress about my shifts while I’m out, and I’m looking forward to having some time to relax.

My spouse is coming to town.

My new readers may or may not know by now, but my husband is currently in the process of immigrating to Canada from the United States. We are still currently long distance while our lawyers work with the government on our papers and get everything sorted out.

It’ll be months yet before he’s cleared to move here, and longer still before he gets permanent residency — assuming he does. I’ll be nervous until we have the proof in hand that he has been accepted and he’s safe.

He is arriving tonight and going home next weekend, so for this week, my activity level will dip somewhat. I’ll still publish a few things here and there, most likely, but I’m not going to stress about getting something out on schedule.

This is time to spend together and shut out the world for a little while.

I haven’t seen him in person since our wedding in October, so you can imagine how big a deal this short little visit is. Until we’re able to move in together, this is what we get.

I’m so looking forward to this. Wish us luck in this journey and I’ll see y’all when I see y’all!

Solidarity wins.

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Remember during the Pandemic when supply chain disruptions caused widespread shortages of food across most of the world? Yeah — expect that to be making a comeback soon.

Except worse. It’s going to be a lot worse.

See, oil isn’t the only thing to be shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Another major commodity traded through the shipping lane i…

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You know those viral videos online of some church gathering where the pastor calls someone up on stage and they confess some horrible sin? Or even the pastor himself — he confesses to abusing or ‘stumbling’ over a young woman, even a minor child, and begs forgiveness for the horrible thing he did.

And the congregation stands and claps, and they approach him and lay their hands on him and they pray for him to be forgiven. And then they all expect everything to just… move forward.

If the young woman is horrified and tells her community that she wants justice, they shun her. He asked for forgiveness. Why won’t she forgive? Why won’t she turn the other cheek? Why won’t she extend mercy to this poor sinner, and do what Christ would do?

What she suffered doesn’t matter to the congregation. There ought be no consequences. He asked forgiveness. He said the words. So it’s done.

This is not a hypothetical, by the way — this is a real case. It’s several real cases, in fact. This happens all the time.

In these fundamentalist spaces, forgiveness is something you get by asking for it. It is something you are entitled to, no matter what you do. You don’t need to earn it.

This is for those ex-MAGA folks out there expecting to be forgiven immediately and not face consequences.

The real world is not your church. What you do comes back to haunt you. You don’t get to act shocked when you aren’t forgiven just for ‘seeing the light.’

Get that out of your vocabulary, because that shit doesn’t fly here.

You voted to destroy human beings. To make them suffer. To kill children, and women, and trans people and gay people and people of colour. You voted for horror, you heard Trump preach Nazi-rhetoric and speak of war while claiming to be a man of peace, and you cheered for his lies.

Your vote is why people are dying in the streets at the hands of his thugs.

Now you turn around when you get hurt and expect that prayer circle of forgiveness and for the rest of your fellows to just accept you without any consequences at all?

This isn’t your church. This is our church.

In our church, you are held accountable. You face consequences. Forgiveness is earned through action, by proving every single day that you are not the same person you were before.

If you can consistently show that you truly understand and have changed, that now you will fight to undo the harm you caused and help people, you will be welcomed.

But you’ll have to take your lumps and walk through fire first.

You have to suck up that pain and hold it in yourself, understand it fully, before you’ll be taken for a changed person.

If you can’t do that, well. You’re not helping the fight anyway.

If that’s too hard, feel free to go back to your safe space, snowflake.

Solidarity wins.

I was trying to decide what I wanted to write about this morning after my shower.

I sat down with my breakfast and my coffee, wet hair hanging over my shoulder in my PJs — I don’t work until this afternoon, sue me — and I opened up the news to start scanning.

I was looking for inspiration. Something that would spark my brain into commentary. But all I saw was bad news. Too much bad news. Like, an overwhelming amount of bad news.

I caught myself doomscrolling before I even realized what was up. My blood pressure is probably through the roof right now, and the coffee really isn’t helping.

There are multiple major wars around the globe, many of them spilling out into neighbouring territories as the conflict deepens. Some of them aren’t even really in the news — I’ll point to South Sudan once again.

We have outbreaks of disease being ramped to the headlines again, with panic starting to set in about the possibility of a new pandemic, even deadlier than COVID.

Experts are once again trying to remind us that Hantavirus does not spread anywhere near as easily as COVID-19, but that isn’t stopping people from spiralling. Especially because those expert opinions aren’t making the front page.

As we talked about before, people are traumatised. I saw a healthcare professional online saying that if it happens again, he won’t be a ‘healthcare hero’ this time; he’ll just quit on the spot.

To him, it’s not worth the stress. Whether it’s the stress of risking his life and watching people die horribly, like during COVID, or the stress of being harassed by the anti-science, anti-vaxxer crowd for trying to save lives.

I don’t blame him. That shit is insane to me.

Regardless, there’s bad news literally everywhere right now, and my brain almost short-circuited in the ten minutes I spent scrolling while I munched on my leftover pasta salad.

This is part of the problem of our modern media ecosystem. Fear sells. Legitimate journalism is harder to come by for many reasons, not least of which is the profit motive.

Panic drives clicks, and clicks make money.

You’re not going to find many proper investigative journalists with integrity in major news organizations anymore, because they’re being edited and screened to hell and back over fear of putting a toe wrong and offending someone with the power to deny access.

You find them in independent news media. Some journalists, utterly fed up with the whole system, have flocked to blogs and newsletters like here on Substack, trying to do their jobs without the backing of editors and fact checkers.

They’re heroes, but that’s a hard job.

And for the record, I am not one of those people. I’ve had someone call me a journalist before, and I have to shut that shit down. I am not a journalist.

I am an opinion piece writer, a mouthy rando on the internet with a lot to say and a lot of anger at injustice. I’m not giving you journalism; I’m giving you my opinions based on the information journalists, scientists and politicians are providing.

It’s hard to know where to turn for that information with shit like this screed of negative headlines everywhere you turn.

And that is part of the point. A flooding of the zone, if you will. A firehose of bad news to keep us mired in despair serves authoritarian governments well, and if you’ll notice, a lot of these major news organizations have been bought up by that authoritarian’s friends.

So, be wary of where you get your news. Because there are people with a vested interest in keeping you restrained with hopelessness and depression, so you don’t fight back.

They want you tired, ignorant, hopeless and apathetic.

We may be World-Weary, but we can’t give in. Y’all with me on this?

Solidarity wins.

Locals are complaining about the price at the pumps.

Our price is currently sitting a little over $2.00 a litre in Canadian dollars. For reference, that’s about a third of a gallon by U.S. measure. With gas prices surging due to the closure of the Straight of Hormuz, both of our countries are getting absolutely smashed by rising costs.

Canada has oil reserves we can fall back on for a while, so our situation is not quite apocalyptic, but the rising cost of everything from transportation to import goods is going to hit us like a freight train.

Everything at the grocery store that is shipped by truck — that is to say, literally everything in there at any given time — is going to increase in price. I talked a bit about how companies price their goods back when I wrote about Trump’s tariff plans in 2024.

It was a marker of how badly the education system has failed in the U.S. that almost none of the people I spoke to back then had a clue how tariffs work. They just took Trump’s word.

It’s not a complicated thing. You don’t need to be an economist to understand it, for goodness sake!

But then again, a lot of Trump’s promises were outright lies that too few people believed. Like his ‘Peace President’ bullshit. And now here we are, with World War III a distinct possibility because of the deranged lunatic’s behaviour.

And of course, the cost of gas is shooting through the roof as the Strait through which 20% of the world’s oil supply moves is held closed.

There is now a major risk of shortage that’s going to slam smaller, less wealthy countries like a ton of bricks.

I find all of this especially frustrating because we are so fucking dependent on fossil fuels these days. It didn’t need to be like this.

Imagine if we’d taken even a fraction of the time and energy we’ve spent propping up the fossil fuel industry, and directed it at renewable energy infrastructure and sustainability measures.

We’d be a lot more robust right now, wouldn’t we? Our climate would certainly be in a better position.

I wouldn’t be terrified of wildfire season like I have been for the past two years. By the way — if there is a major shortage of gas coming down the pipe, what is my family supposed to do if we are caught in a major fire?

How are we driving away without gas in the car?

That’s just a snapshot of my concerns right now. Like, how the fuck am I getting to my barely-above-minimum-wage-job if we wind up not being able to afford to drive?

This is all fucking frustrating, and I just hope things get better soon.

Solidarity wins.