Today is the anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York City, and people all over the world are grieving and bowing our heads in remembrance.

I still remember where I was when my mother told me about the attack. I was just a little girl, too young to really understand what she was saying, but recogni…

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Disabled people face a lot of barriers.

There’s nothing controversial about that statement, I hope; most of us here at World-Weary have some degree of understanding of the social systems and assistance available for disabled folks, and how hard they can be to navigate.

It’s a sore point for me personally, being disabled myself and having friends and loved ones who need to fight for the help they need. There are holes in the safety net, easily large enough for people to fall through.

There remains a heavy social stigma around certain forms of disability.

Disabled people are often infantilized, treated like we’re less capable of caring for ourselves — even in cases where that is demonstrably not true. We are often treated as though we require assistance from able bodied and neurotypical people just to go about our business.

They often don’t ask, they just step in with unwanted and unasked for advice or physical interference. It can be extremely frustrating, especially because we spend most of our lives learning how to adjust and work through our own limitations.

As shocking as this may be for some, a person in a wheelchair does not necessarily need you to step in and ‘help’ them get around unless they ask for it.

I have repeatedly heard from wheelchair users that they occasionally encounter people who simply step up and start pushing their chairs, trying to be ‘helpful,’ without asking permission.

It boggles my mind how anyone would think to do that, but it happens. Apparently the idea that the wheelchair user stopped where they meant to stop and they aren’t constantly trying to move is an alien one.

Sometimes you gotta read labels at the grocery store, Karen. Let go of the handles and let them shop in peace!

Part of the problem is that when there are discussions about disability assistance, it’s quite rare for disabled people to be consulted. A lot of assumptions are made, but few disabled voices are involved to correct misguided thoughts.

There are things that many of us need in order to make our lives easier, but it’s rarely assistance from an individual out in the wild. What we need is usually broader, accessibility provided to all, at all times, not just in one singular moment.

This is where systemic discrimination really hits home for most of us. Let me explain.

Most people take accessibility for granted. Able-bodied people don’t need to worry about walking up a set of stairs to enter a building, and you probably don’t even think twice about revolving doors or how wide an entranceway is.

For some disabled people, this lack of consideration gets in the way of their ability to function in society.

Accessibility goes beyond the simple act of entering and leaving a space. Some disabilities don’t cause issues with mobility but impact people’s ability to function in other ways.

As an autistic woman with sensory issues, some public spaces are so loud, busy, and chaotic that my brain shuts down and puts me into a daze. Places with dim lighting and a requirement to whisper and give people a wide berth are much more accessible to me than, say, a shopping mall.

I feel more physically comfortable and alert in a quiet library than in a grocery store, which can be an issue when you need food to survive. We haven’t figured out how to get around that yet.

It certainly makes my retail job a lot less fun. It’s a small store, so I can usually get by, but on very busy days with a lot of tasks I can very easily become overwhelmed and stressed out.

I’d wager that most younger, able-bodied neurotypical people don’t even think about things like this. Why would you? It’s entirely outside of your experience until somebody asks you the questions and gets you thinking.

So, let’s do that. Let me ask you some questions.

Firstly, how tall are your kitchen counters at home? What about your furniture? How is your bathtub constructed? Do you even have one, or is it just a narrow standing shower?

How far up on the wall are your light switches? The thermostat? Can you turn on a ceiling fan from the height of a wheelchair? What about if you were only a few feet tall due to a genetic condition that prevented your growth?

Where is your laundry machine located? If you’re in an apartment, is it on the ground floor? How do you transport your full laundry basket to its location?

Is it a front-loading or top-loading machine? Could a smaller person, or someone in a wheelchair even reach the buttons to turn it on?

Think about your workplace. Can a disabled person get around and complete basic tasks without needing the assistance of a coworker?

The abled population doesn’t have to think about basic daily chores and activities like this, and that can leave disabled people struggling to make do. It makes life ten times harder.

Two main barriers tend to block accessibility measures: a lack of funds and a lack of awareness.

Government subsidies can remedy a lack of funds, and frankly, they should. It’s the government’s job to ensure the safety and security of its citizenry, so ensuring the disabled population has accommodations should be part of its duties.

The real problem is a lack of awareness and public will. Fortunately, there are organizations working to improve general knowledge on these issues.

Here in Canada, the Rich Hansen Foundation is a great example. They work specifically to teach businesses about workplace accessibility for people in wheelchairs and certify them when they put proper measures in place.

This is a great help for their workers, ensuring that their employees can do their work successfully and also helping to cut down on in-house discrimination on the personal level.

For the home, it can be a little trickier. Of course, you can hire a contractor to come in and change things if you own the building, but what if you don’t have the money?

Take a look at this detailed breakdown of what one Canadian wheelchair user had to go through to find a place to live. Take note of the things she had to worry about, including the floor plan and the width of the doors and hallways.

It’s hard to find a home when you’re able-bodied and have the disposable income to make it happen.

Imagine having your field of potential homes narrowed even further by a lack of forethought during construction.

Disabled people are equally as valuable as everyone else. All human beings deserve to live free, open lives without being encumbered by a lack of compassion.

To be constrained by barriers that specifically bar you from access is frustrating and cruel, and as a society, we have a duty to do better.

Improving accessibility is a cause we should all be ready to fight for. We should fight for it every chance we get — most especially during election seasons, like the one approaching in the United States.

I wonder if any politicians are talking about this issue, or could be pressured to make it a part of their campaign platform? Particularly with the anti-DEI and discriminatory policies of the Trump regime currently under scrutiny.

Hint hint, nudge nudge. Contact your representatives. Talk to your boss at work, or to the owners of your local shops, or whomever you can think of. Ask what they’re doing to ensure accessibility, or if they might consider doing something in the future.

Nobody is perfect on this issue, and there’s always room for improvement. Hell, I work in a pharmacy where we sell medical braces and mobility aides, and even we have had to fight with our head office about accessibility before.

They wanted to put up spinning pretty lights in the back of the store. We had to fight them on the grounds of it being an epilepsy risk. They fought us on it, insisting it would be fine, but we won and the lights were taken down.

We’re a store that should be safe and accessible for everyone, and the last thing we want is to make it physically unsafe for some of our patients and customers. Putting our collective feet down brought victory, and it shows what’s possible if we only make an effort to stand up for one another.

A little community pressure can go a surprisingly long way.

Imagine what a lot of community pressure might accomplish.

Solidarity wins.

Scientists used to hope that we could cap the global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Even at that level, the potential consequences could be catastrophic. Even 1.5 C could lead to disastrous climate shifts, entire ecosystems collapsing, weather patterns twisting out of control and the mass death of many, many species.

Keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees was the goal for a while, but due to general apathy on the part of world leaders and a focus on profit rather than proactive and preventative measures, we’re on track to overshoot it by miles.

We’re already looking at 1.8 on the most optimistic scale. Some scientists, in the grips of despair, think we could hit 2.6 by the end of the century — particularly since global temperatures are rising faster than anticipated and we already sit at the precipice of several major climate tipping points.

And with certain leaders actively destroying environmental regulations aimed at curbing Climate Change and slowing the rate of destruction, it’s not looking good.

For an example of what this looks like in reality, don’t think of an overly hot summer day. Think of the killer heatwaves that left hundreds dead across Europe this summer.

Think of the flash flooding in Nepal right now, and the roughly 1,300 people who have been confirmed dead so far. Thousands more are still missing, and entire communities have been left cut off from outside help.

Think of the wildfires tearing through multiple countries, including my own, wiping communities off the map and killing people, pets, and wildlife.

That’s what Climate Change looks like right now. We haven’t even hit 1.5 consistently, yet.

We’re not talking about mild discomfort. We’re talking about mass death. We’re talking about famine, disease, resource wars, dehydration, natural disasters, and mass migration as entire regions of the world are left completely uninhabitable.

This is not me trying to paint a dystopian hellscape out of a non-issue. This is me telling you the facts in the hopes that people take this shit seriously.

Pressure your leaders. Talk to the experts, listen to what they say.

It’s not a matter of recycling and turning your house lights off when you leave for the day — although that last one doesn’t hurt. On the individual level, our efforts are a drop in the bucket. Enough drops might fill the bucket a quarter of the way if we all work together, sure, but that’s not enough.

Because the other three quarters of the bucket aren’t in our control. That’s the governments of the world, that’s the corporate industries running hog wild with emmissions and pollutions in the name of profit.

That’s an Externality that we all have to pay for.

There’s no amount of individual actions that will fix this, because even if we all change our ways overnight, the polluting industries will shoot us over the line all on their own.

We’re heading for disaster. We can’t stop it by making changes in our personal lives, so we have to target the most significant causes now.

We need more regulations, not less. We need our governments and leaders to make real, sustained efforts to break from fossil fuels and clean up our environment. We need real, enforceable laws that amount to more than a fine and a light slap on the wrist for the people poisoning us, and the world we live in.

We need real change.

Otherwise, we’re totally screwed.

Solidarity wins.

Part of my job here at World-Weary involves keeping a finger on the pulse of the public discourse.

Gotta keep watch on the Overton Window, y’know? Go on, I said the thing, take a shot.

For those who don’t know, the Overton Window is basically a fancy term for ‘what it’s okay to say in public.’ Things outside the Window are not okay. Things within the Window can be said out loud without the ladies at the local knitting circle clutching their pearls and fainting dead away.

It used to be that gay marriage was outside the Window. Now, it’s solidly centred inside the Overton Window, and there’s very little public stigma around being openly gay.

Apart from a few scattered assholes on the internet, but who cares about them? The MAGA cult can fuck off.

Then there came a new trendy topic that has everybody’s tongue wagging on the internet. A woman claiming serious psychiatric distress was left alone with her three kids. The unthinkable happened, and she allegedly took their lives before attempting to take her own.

Needless to say, this is a horrific crime. Needless to say, the murder of three little children is completely inexcusable.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Until mental healthcare catches up, it won’t be the last.

Many people with uteruses, especially people who have given birth, who have experienced the many outrageously catastrophic things that can go wrong with hormone imbalances, are expressing empathy and sadness over this.

Empathy for a person in the throes of intense mental illness who, at least going by the information we have right now, was not in her right state of mind. She did something utterly horrific and indefensible, but at a time when her brain was literally broken.

I want to be clear, I am not here to litigate guilt. I’m not on the jury, I’m not a judge, I have no part in this trial. Rather, I’d like to discuss the issues cropping up around this case.

The discussion of women’s rights and whether this single case, and the public response to it, is evidence that those rights should be taken away.

Since the Clancy trial started, I haven’t gone a single day without seeing some asshole claiming that women are all ‘defending child killers,’ that we have the intellectual level of children, and that we shouldn’t be trusted with responsibilities of any kind.

The discussion around women’s rights hasn’t been great lately, but even I was surprised by the level of misogynistic vitriol I’ve been seeing in right-wing spaces.

One woman is being used as a scapegoat to make all women out to be evil monsters. Anyone expressing sympathy for her illness is being painted as if they, too, pose a threat to children and show you ‘the state of women these days.’

I gotta say, guys. When’s the last time you got this up in arms over a male family annihilator? I’ll bet never, because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

The narrative that women are lesser, inferior beings who need to be controlled.

This is one of those subjects that a lot of people are going to be afraid to touch.

It’s like the old ‘Man vs Bear’ debate. I must be a glutton for punishment because I threw my hat in that ring, too. I stand by every single thing I said.

I’m not going to back down from it just because it’s a little controversial right now. Challenging these narratives and pushing back is how we shift the Overton Window back into line — there are people actively advocating for change in the wrong direction, and someone needs to be a door stopper.

When narratives are being constructed to normalize bigotry and misogyny, we can’t afford to ignore it. The consequences for those of us in the crosshairs can be severe.

Even just this morning I ran face first into several posts, ostensibly made by both men and women, stating that they support repealing the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution based on women’s reaction to this case.

Basically, they say that women expressing their concerns about the mental health aspect of this case and wondering if she was appropriately cared for means that women don’t have the emotional or mental maturity to vote.

There are people — and bots — on the internet saying that if men hear their wives or girlfriends expressing these concerns or their empathy for mental health struggles, that those men should leave or seek divorce because ‘their children aren’t safe.’

It mirrors the discussions of women and LGBTQ+ people early on in Trump’s term where people debated leaving their husbands if they voted for Trump.

Because a vote for Trump indicated a lack of respect for human rights and a serious difference in morality, not to mention the clear indication that misogyny was, at the very least, not a deal breaker for a President.

From that perspective, I see where this talking point is coming from.

But let’s be clear, this is not the same thing. A vote for the actual President of the United States is very, very different from an opinion around one woman’s criminal trial.

One impacts everything from the law to the price of groceries to human rights and human lives in and outside of the United States, and the other is just one criminal trial.

One criminal murder trial does not start wars with Iran or obliterate the economy.

And yet, the refrain is constant. If women can’t be logical about this one case, then they can’t be logical at all and they shouldn’t get to vote in elections moving forward.

They aren’t responsible enough.

That’s rich, lads. Extremely rich. Once again, I could point to millions of cases of male perpetrators found guilty of killing their entire families. I could point to cases of male rapists going to prison and being defended by millions of men online.

In the case of violent domestic abusers, they even find a way to blame women for that — they say she should have chosen better, or she should have left. Being beaten up, raped, or murdered is her own fault for being stupid.

But nobody ever talks about the percentages of violent crimes perpetrated by cisgender men and claims that men shouldn’t get the right to vote.

Because men are above that kind of deliberation. It’s only we lesser, feminine creatures who need to prove we deserve suffrage.

This is just one of many things being used to justify this potential stripping of the right to vote.

The discourse on women’s intellect has gotten vicious.

Everything from extolling the virtue of man as leader and woman as submissive helpmate, the stupidity of women ‘fighting nature’ by trying to break out of the patriarchal mode, the supposed ‘lack of accountability’ and so forth.

Women are being hated on publicly for everything from single motherhood — how dare she seek divorce when unhappy in a marriage — to how we dress. Modesty is becoming a byword again, and is being painted as self-respect.

The tradwife is becoming the ideal in some circles and bleeding out into the wider cultural view. I have my thoughts about that, as I’ve expressed in the past.

In effect, the idea of women having the agency to determine for ourselves how we want to live is being painted as a bad thing.

That if we can’t make good decisions, then we need to outsource our lives to the people who can. Namely, the men in our lives. Assuming there are any — these guys don’t think lesbians or aces are real, apparently.

Or they think their magic penises can ‘fix’ them.

These guys also have a lot in common with the whole ‘passport bro’ movement. Once again, we’ve talked about them. It’s toxic as hell, extremely predatory, and just another outgrowth of the manosphere that took on a life of its own.

It’s the idea that ‘western’ women are broken, no longer appropriately feminine and that in order to find a ‘good wife’, young men need to travel to more traditional and conservative countries.

They advocate going abroad to find a girl that they can marry, then take back to their home country and force to assimilate to the man’s culture. Apparently they have entire chat rooms and Reddit threads online dedicated to discussing where to go for submissive, traditional wives.

They also rate the hotness of various ethnic groups.

It’s exactly as gross as you think.

In short, there are several subcultures on the internet these days that are linked to the current American government, who wield substantial influence over the people in positions of power, and who spread those ideals online.

And when something is memed to death online, it spreads far and away outside of the country of its origin.

Social media does not respect boundaries on a map. Like a virus, posts jump from person to person based on shares, restacks, links and engagement.

Online, we have no nations. The internet has an Overton Window of its own that slides wildly based on the attention-grabbing headline of the day.

The cultural shifts follow.

Among those things being demonized right now by the American right-wing are no fault divorce, and of course, abortion.

Yes, we’re going there. We have to; these two arguments are heavily based on controlling women and the narratives being pushed right now will absolutely be used to push these cases.

In fact, they already are.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen abortion be brought up in connection to the Lindsay Clancy case, with people talking about how ‘Liberal women’ are defending a child killer because they want the right to kill their children, too.

How abortion is murder, and how we should have known this is where it would go.

They’re trying very hard to build a connection, and unfortunately, it’s gaining traction.

Likewise, this is coming at a time when many right-wing men are fighting hard to get the idea of no-fault divorce into the spotlight. They post memes and lengthy rants about how men sacrifice their happiness to provide for their families, but women will sacrifice their families to gain happiness for themselves.

As in, if your wife leaves you, it’s because she’s shallow and can’t see your true worth as a provider.

Fellas, listen — no-fault divorce is a literal life saver. Nobody should want it to go away. In the days before it was signed into law, the only way people had to escape an unhappy marriage was if the other person died.

We already have far too many cases of spousal murder, do we want to make that worse?

But to them, that doesn’t even enter the conversation. Because the reason they want to block no-fault divorce is the same reason they want to end reproductive rights. They want to be able to control their wives.

They want the power. They want to have authority over her, to dictate what she does with her body, where she can live, what her name is — oh, they hate that women don’t need to change our names anymore.

They equate total submission with respect, and a woman’s agency as a refusal to ‘take accountability.’

As far as I can tell, they mean that a woman should accept the negative consequences of her choices, such as abuse or an unhappy life, rather than trying to better her situation.

She shouldn’t seek to end an unwanted pregnancy, nor seek life-saving abortions when she’s in medical distress. If she didn’t want to get pregnant, she shouldn’t have had sex.

Take accountability and be a mother.

She shouldn’t seek to divorce her husband, even if he turned into a different person once he had a ring on her finger. She should have chosen better in the first place and never married him.

Take accountability and be a good wife.

They conflate a woman’s quiet obedience in the face of suffering with purity and goodness, and her desire to live well on her own terms as being overly independent and bad.

She’s not feminine if she isn’t willing to struggle to make things work.

I’m sorry, but as a cisgender woman, I do not accept their view.

I am an equal human being, and I rule my own life.

And I’m not alone — there’s a reason feminism exists, why women literally fought for the right to vote, the right to divorce, the right to abortion, the right to have our own bank and credit accounts, to own property and to not be property.

We are human, and we deserve that basic right to determine our own lives.

In closing, I want to take a moment to pay my respects for the dead.

We began this piece by talking about the discourse surrounding a murder trial, and in this case, the victims were three tiny children who died horribly, suffering strangulation, allegedly at the hands of their own mother.

Again, I am not here to litigate the case or discuss guilt or have a debate about criminal justice.

I am however going to say that nothing we discussed here takes away from the horror of what was done to these little ones, and my heart is broken for them and for their loved ones.

This is something that cannot be taken back, nor undone, nor is it a wound that will ever heal in the hearts of those left behind. Three lives ended in tragedy, without the chance to experience the wider world nor reach those achievements that so many of us dream up for ourselves.

Who knows what they would have gone on to do with their lives? We will never find out, and that’s heartbreaking.

I sincerely hope that their loved ones left behind can live long, happy lives and cherish their memories as they deserve.

In this storm of using her case to build this narrative against women as a whole, the lives of Cora, Dawson and Callan are being used as tokens. “Say their names,” the bots say, while they use their murder as a cudgel to try and strip the rights away from all women.

You don’t get to claim empathy for murdered children and then use their case for your political gain.

You don’t get to use their murder as a token to claim all women are evil, that we don’t deserve rights, and then turn around and say that our lack of love for these babies is the reason why.

If you want to respect them, then respect them. Don’t weaponize their suffering to win your screwed up battle.

They have suffered enough. And frankly, so have we all.

Solidarity wins.

I apologize if I sound a little tired in this episode. Workplace drama has exploded and I am beat. I need several naps and a lot of coffee.

Speaking of explosions and drama — get a load of what happened in the U.S.-Canada trade dispute! Ho boy, did things go poorly. Trump still wants us to act like a vassal s…

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I was at work when we got the news. Four women discussing workplace drama at the manager’s desk abruptly stopped talking at the sound of the announcement on our country music radio.

Four women dug in their smock pockets for their phones, frantically looking online to disprove what we just heard. As the sound of ‘Jolene’ played in our ears in tribute to the fallen star, we all sank in dismay.

It was true. Dolly Parton passed away.

While the other three pivoted to talking about her music, all I could think was, “Damn. The world just got a little bit darker.”

Dolly Parton was a beautiful human being in this world, with a deeply charitable and kindly soul.

She was known as a philanthropist, one who gave freely to the causes that touched her heart and brought her sadness. She wanted to ease pain wherever she could.

Her charitable efforts ranged from children’s literacy — her donations brought books to low-income schools worldwide, providing options for kids to learn reading and writing across multiple countries — to medical research.

Heck, her funding helped pave the way for research during the Pandemic, and provided money to develop Moderna’s vaccine. As someone from a high-risk household who thankfully didn’t lose anyone, we’re deeply grateful to her for that.

Dolly’s donations helped displaced families as they struggled to survive natural disastors, providing relief after floods and hurricanes and fires. She donated to pediatric care hospitals to help kids suffering from illness get the care they need.

She funded scholarships, helped all of her Dollywood Foundation employees go through college debt-free, and generally threw money at every single problem she could.

Throughout her whole 80-year life, Dolly Parton has given away tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to charities, both the ones she founded and also in direct donations to various humanitarian causes around the world.

She might have been a billionaire if she hadn’t. But she never stopped giving.

Dolly was a titan of the music world, the Queen of Country, and a genuinely kind person. She was a staunch and fearless ally of the LGBTQ+ community, spoke about sex work like any other job without judgement, and generally fought to keep an attitude of compassion towards the people around her.

She was a progressive icon. Her voice has been pushing people in a wholesome direction for decades.

She will be sorely, deeply missed, especially right now.

I just hope her legacy is treated with the respect she deserves.

Rest in peace, Dolly. I hope we manage to keep your work alive. I hope you and your husband are together again, and may you never be parted.

Solidarity wins.

I’ve been working on a longer form article about the anti-feminist backlash taking place on the American right-wing.

I’ve been doing a lot of digging into the discourse around the Lindsay Clancy trial because ho boy, are the comment sections revealing. Look forward to that essay a little later; I’m doing a lot of research for it and it isn’t going to be short.

But on top of how the right-wing is using this to push their anti-feminist narrative, what I’m seeing is a stunning lack of knowledge about mental health.

Now, bear in mind, this is a general lack of knowledge I’m talking about, not a debate about this case’s specifics. I’m not on the jury, and neither are you. We’re not lawyers here arguing one woman’s guilty.

I’m talking about the lack of understanding that’s on display.

People are making weird claims. First of all, that hormones have no impact on mental health and could not drive a woman to murder. Some people are claiming that Postpartum Depression is just ‘a case of the sads’ or that Postpartum Psychosis isn’t real.

People are claiming that if you’re in a psychotic episode, you still know right from wrong and what you do is a choice.

People are claiming that a person in a psychotic episode can’t appear normal at a glance. One man claimed that unless you’re not half undressed in the street screaming at a lamp post, you’re not mentally ill and you’re clearly faking it.

The claim that mental illness always looks exactly the same for everyone is wild, and obviously not true.

People are claiming that mental health issues have specific timelines that don’t vary, that mental illness isn’t a big deal, that people with a mental illness are ‘weak willed’ and lazy, or that it’s just an excuse.

It’s the same old stigma about disability and health that we see all the time.

There’s a tremendous amount of shame that gets lumped on people who have diagnosed mental illness. Everything from depression and anxiety and bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and psychosis.

I have experience with some of this myself. Either me, or people around me.

I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety. I’ve been crippled by it. I’ve been burnt out, I’ve had suicidal ideation when I was young. I’m here today, thank the gods, but others are not.

And it’s not because I’m ‘stronger’ than them, it’s because I got the help I needed and my situation improved. My cause happened to be something that could be mended by medication and therapy.

I’ve even struggled with disconnection from reality before. Did you know that insomnia and sleep deprivation can cause symptoms of psychosis? It’s not fun.

All of this to say, there’s a lot of misinformation being thrown around that displays how the general public really doesn’t know dick about mental health, and that education on the issue is sorely lacking.

We would be better served with more freely available information, greater public awareness, and more funding for mental health research. As it stands, there’s a massive disconnect between what is generally known and what is true.

People who struggle with their mental health are just that — people. People with an illness that requires help and treatment. It’s no more shameful than having cancer or diabetes.

There shouldn’t be stigma, there shouldn’t be shame, there shouldn’t be blame or disgust or propaganda. Being sick is not a moral judgement on anyone.

The real sickness is at the heart of a society that treats sick people like trash.

Solidarity wins.

There are people in the world who still call themselves ‘apolitical.’

They don’t want to hear about politics or discuss it, they find it boring or controversial and they don’t like when others bring it up. They want nothing to do with debates or the news, they want to pretend it isn’t a thing they need to care about.

That’s crazy to me, because politics is… well. Everything.

Are you human? Do you breathe air? Drink water? Eat food? You’re political.

Sorry, but them’s the facts. Political matters are everything; the cost of your groceries, of gas, of rent and tuition in college. Sanitation and garbage collection, recycling, medical care and costs.

Do you want to be drinking clean, filtered water, or sewage? Politics impacts that. Politics has something to do with your kids’ schools, food safety and pollution regulation.

If you want city parks to stay open and not be sold to private corporations for real estate, then you should care about politics.

And if you’re of a minority group like I am, you don’t get a choice. Not only do you need to care about politics, but you are political by just existing. People will treat your life and existence as a matter of public debate. It’s fucked up.

You can’t escape politics. Nobody is truly apolitical.

The people who would rather bury their heads in the sand are choosing to abdicate their civic responsibilities because they’d rather focus on their own individual wants and needs.

Understandable, but if they want their lives to get better, then it’s very weird to me that they’re actively refusing to have a say in that!

You aren’t apolitical. You can’t be. You’re just deciding whether or not you get to exercise your power or if you’d rather give it away to somebody else.

Solidarity wins.

P.S.

I know I’ve been a little absent lately, and I’m sorry. I have recovered from my illness just in time for work to get absolutely insane and dramatic and overwhelming.

But, I’m pleased to report that over the next few weeks my schedule is going to open up and become much less demanding; I will have more hours to devote to writing and recording again, and burnout will be pushed further away.

I’ll do a better job of keeping up!

You guys absolutely rock for bearing with me so long. Much love and well wishes to you all!

Gold.

I personally despise the stuff; I’m a jeweller, and I vastly prefer silver as far as precious metals go.

Reticulated silver, even. I don’t even like a high polish. I’m weird like that.

Trump, on the other hand, can’t get enough of gold. You leave that man alone in a room for five minutes, and he’ll have contractors in to scope out a full renovation complete with gold leaf and the tackiest relief moulding possible.

He is all about ostentatious displays of fictitious wealth. He’s addicted to his image.

Trump will gild just about anything if he can get away with it. Just look at what he’s done to the Oval Office in his quest to leave his mark on something permanent for his ‘legacy.’

He’s even doing his best to revive the old traditions of the so-called Gilded Age.

For those who don’t know, the Gilded Age was a period of around 20 years in the late 1800s, when a sudden burst of economic growth pulled immigrants from outside the United States to fill badly needed skilled labour jobs.

It was a time of rapid industrialization, and there weren’t enough homegrown workers to fill the void. Given the fact that American wages were also higher than elsewhere, the drive to come to America, work for a good wage, and then bring hefty savings home to their families was strong.

However, just because wages were high does not mean that purchasing power was equally elevated. Just like we see today, higher raw numbers in your earnings don’t mean much if everything around you is also more expensive.

The Gilded Age brought greater wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots, with urban slums rapidly spreading to accommodate people trapped in the endless cycle of brutal poverty, and the wealthy ignoring their plight to keep doing what they do best.

Get more money, however they could. This is where the Robber Baron thrived.

Leaders of industry at the time were all about exploitation. They lobbied politicians with good money to keep passing laws that favoured big business and screwed the little guy; they built monopolies and ruthlessly destroyed their competition, wrecked unions, and extended working hours to an obscene degree.

They used their workers like machines, running them ragged until they had nothing left, and paying them just enough to keep them desperate to maintain employment.

Is this sounding familiar? It should, because it’s the same state of affairs we see in modern America.

The Robber Barons of the past were people like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan. We still know their names today because of the incredible power they wielded back then.

In the modern day, we have new Robber Barons. We’ve got Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Tim Cook.

In the past, they were bankers and railroad barons and steel magnates. Now, it’s the big tech industries. It’s AI, computer and phone companies, and social media. It’s both technology, and also data and information.

The mechanisms of exploitation, however, have not changed. Minimal wages, as low as they can get away with. Long hours. Brutal exploitation in rough conditions — looking at you, Amazon workers having to pee in bottles and die on the job.

Now they even have the cudgel of health insurance to keep their workers desperate to keep their jobs.

I’m so grateful I don’t have that fear in Canada.

We’re still seeing corporate consolidation and monopolies, we’re still seeing massive lobbying on the part of monied interests to keep laws going their way. And Trump is more than happy to nurture this state of affairs.

Hell, some of the names I mentioned for today’s Robber Barons were at his fucking inauguration! Them and more people I hadn’t even listed!

Trump’s best buddies are the ultra-rich who hold the reigns of power. He wants their adulation and their praise, and he wants to surround himself with their presence.

He wants to gild his social circle just like he gilded the Lincoln Bedroom Bathroom in the White House.

He literally shits in golden toilets. The man is a walking political cartoon from the 1920s.

Now, as then, the rich are in it for themselves and their stunning lack of empathy for others leads them to treat their workers like cogs in the money-printing machine.

They’re not afraid of consequences. Who ever heard of the ultra-rich getting penalized for treating people poorly?

My point is, the situation has not truly changed. We’re watching the New Gilded Age rise in real time, alongside massive global instability caused by Trump’s insatiable need to be on top at all times.

Allies? Who needs those? He’s convinced he can subjugate everyone around him into doing what he wants. He doesn’t need friends, he needs servants.

It’s the same old story with the same old plot and the same old conclusion.

What ended the first Gilded Age, you ask?

Why, the people did. When they had enough, they got in the streets and they brought the system down, from the grassroots all the way up.

The same thing will happen this time. It’s just like I always say;

Solidarity wins.

I’m getting over my sickness at long last, and while my voice is still a bit fucky and my cough has not yet gone, I figure I’m well enough for a quick chat today.

I’ve been MIA too long. Gotta get back into it.

Today we’re going to be talking about something that needs to be in the news, but is…

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When your allies become your biggest threat, the world feels like it’s turned upside down.

I’m Canadian. I know that all too well. And our fellow Arctic comrades, the Greenlanders and the Danes, are learning it as well.

Trump’s crusade to expand the U.S. — and with it, his power base — remains strong. He has threatened and perpetrated military action abroad, and he’s been out there talking shit about a lot of people who the U.S. used to depend on as close neighbours and friends.

Comrades in arms. People who used to be counted on as allies.

But now Trump is posting memes, talking openly about conquering our nations and taking us under his flacid, frail-looking wing. And we all know what it’s about.

It’s his legacy he’s thinking of, but it’s also our resources. Our natural wealth: minerals, fresh water, lumber, metal ores — the travel possibilities through the oceans we patrol and protect.

He wants our oil. He’s already sniffing at the reserves in Greenland, which he thinks he can just… take. Without permission or clearance from the local government.

He wants what we have, and he plans to get his tiny little hands on it one way or another, whether we like it or not. As we know all too well from his convictions, his accusations, and the files he’s trying so hard to hide, he does not take ‘no’ for an answer.

Greenland is so worried they’ve been building up an expanded troop presence from Denmark, even to the point of importing blood to their military bases. That may not sound like much, but the soldiers and veterans in my audience know what that means.

It means they’re preparing for the possibility of their troops being shot in armed conflict and needing transfusions.

They’re actively readying for war with the United States.

A few years ago, that would have been unthinkable. Now it’s the norm. Tensions are rising as more and more authoritarian overreaches pour out of Trump’s White House and the norms of civility and democracy continue to break down.

If there’s one thing fascism needs to keep going, it’s an enemy for the people to focus their outrage on.

There must always be an ‘Other,’ always a war, and the day peace reigns is the day the regime falls apart. Once there’s no enemy, the people will look for someone else to blame for their troubles. Trump’s cronies know that if they can’t redirect people’s fear and anger, they’ll set their sights on their own government.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but here we are.

And while he’s out there doing all of this and pissing off all of his one-time friends, he’s ignoring the major problems he’s supposed to be dealing with at home. Drought. Potential food shortages and rising inflation. Loss of access to medical care, and home ownership out of reach.

Poverty, hunger, water, medicine. These ought to be the wheelhouse of any President, the main concerns he or she ought to have.

But Trump doesn’t worry about anything but himself, and his lackeys in the government are just singing his praises and extolling the virtues of war to keep people’s eyes on the wrong problems abroad.

Things won’t get better until he and his sycophantic bosom-buddies are gone.

Solidarity wins.

I’m back! Sort of. I’m starting to properly recover from this nasty bug, and I hope to be back on track shortly. I’m shaking out the cobwebs and working on some stuff to publish and/or record soon.

Bear with me, guys! I hate being sick as much as all y’all do.

My squeaky, coughy whimper is enough to answer customer questions but recording a full episode might be a bit too much for me. I’m drained, exhausted, achey …

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I’m sorry I’ve been quiet for a few days, guys. My whole family got bodyslammed by a nasty bug that’s rolling through my workplace and around the town.

I’ve been utterly exhausted and worn down and haven’t had the energy to spare for a research binge or even a little rant.

I plan to get back on track just as soon as I kick this thing; I’ve got fluids, pajamas, and sore throat lozenges. Also garlic. Just, a metric fuck ton of garlic.

Hopefully I’ll be back to full strength soon. Until then, wish me luck beating this thing.

Solidarity wins.

I love Cosmic Horror. I really, really do.

I own several collections of Lovecraft’s work, I’m fascinated by the occult, and the settings of the Call of Cthulhu games are an endless source of inspiration for me.

Anyone that’s read some of my early fiction writing on Medium probably picked up on some of that influence in my work. Atmosphere, ambiance, visual storytelling, and things ‘beyond understanding’ are all common elements.

Having said that, let me be clear: H.P. Lovecraft was an awful human being.

He was xenophobic to the extreme. Even for the time, his racism was remarkable and clearly based on some measure of agoraphobia and depression. He had a clear fear and loathing of anything unknown and unfamiliar, and to this day, it shows in his work.

It’s impossible to ignore the intensely problematic undertones of his writing.

Enter J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series. Once again, I grew up with Harry Potter. I learned to read with those books as a young girl, and I still own every single one. And all of the movies. Several of the old console games are gathering dust in my garage.

I remember my mother, stepfather and I all going to the midnight releases of each book, often with me dressed up in a handmade cloak that my mother lovingly helped me make. I still have that old cloak, though the stitching is worn through and it no longer fits.

We used to buy three copies of each book because we all had to read them as soon as we got them, and we knew we would be fighting over them otherwise.

I bought all of these things long before she announced her opinions on transgender people to the world. I simply refuse to buy anything new that’s connected to the author because of her transphobic rhetoric.

The same doesn’t hold true for Lovecraft; I will happily indulge in hours of watching people play Call of Cthulhu, I have Lovecraft Country on my watchlist for when I have time to binge a new show, and I’ll never let my love of Cosmic Horror die.

So… what’s the difference between the two? How can I, someone who refuses to feed money to Rowling because I disagree with her bigoted views, continue to fund Lovecraft’s work?

No, this is not a threat against Rowling. This is an observation of an obvious fact: H.P. Lovecraft died quite a while ago, back in 1937. As a consequence of this, his writings have ceased to profit him.

He’s not using the money for anything.

In point of fact, his writings have entered the common domain. Anyone can create anything set within the Cthulhu Mythos, using characters and iconic locations from Lovecraft’s work.

In a twist of fate which I quite enjoy, people of colour have been steadily reclaiming the Cthulhu Mythos to explore the topic of racism and appropriation. The aforementioned Lovecraft Country is all about that.

Lovecraft’s work has become the perfect vehicle to explore stigma, dehumanization, and the nature of how we ‘other’ and fear things that we don’t understand.

Every time I watch a gang of tabletop players settle in to play Call of Cthulhu, the setting and themes of each game tackle this subject in a raw and refreshing way. People are reimagining the genre with a modern eye, rejecting the author’s hatred and bringing new life and avenues of discussion.

And better yet, since as I say Lovecraft is long gone, the money spent on all things Cthulhu doesn’t go into his pockets.

Not so with J.K. Rowling.

Oh, J.K… Once upon a time, I had nothing but respect for her. I loved her books; I loved the message — an outcast kid learning how to stand up for himself and for others against the surge of evil and hate. Emphasizing love as the true source of strength, in opposition to prejudice and bigotry.

It was a primer that taught tiny Sam how to deal with the bullying she was experiencing, and even planted the seeds of anti-fascist thinking in my head when I was young.

I recognized the Death Eaters as analogous to the Third Reich. In learning the history of the Holocaust as a young girl, I found I understood the horrors better for having followed Harry Potter’s fight against Voldemort and his takeover of the Ministry for Magic. It made it clearer for me.

Imagine my horror at seeing J.K. turn her influence towards misgendering and fearmongering and transphobic misinformation. Imagine my shock at seeing her post pictures of herself at lunch with infamous transphobic people like Maya Forstater.

Pictures of her at dinner parties with out-and-proud Nazis, even.

It was a fall from grace I could not have predicted. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a while, thinking surely, she’ll realize it was a mistake.

She didn’t. In fact, she has doubled down. Over the years she has gotten steadily worse. So, I stopped giving money to her.

And before anyone goes after me for that — let me be clear, I have tremendous empathy for her as a survivor of abuse, having survived an abusive relationship myself.

I also commend the charity work she’s done for disabled children, and I absolutely condemn the death threats that she’s gotten. It’s never okay to threaten someone with harm.

That said, I also believe that her influence is doing active harm to the transgender community. She is not an ally for LGBTQ+ people, she is helping to inflame bigotry against us.

While I have empathy for her as an abuse survivor, I have no empathy for her fear of transgender people. No matter where your bigotry comes from, it is always invalid.

Always. No exceptions.

You lose all of your moral standing as a victim and survivor the very instant you use your platform to victimize others.

So, while I do not want to see her harassed and degraded, or threatened, I do want to see her publicly criticized. Hell, I have publicly criticized her myself, and quite harshly. Especially when she opened her mouth and shoved her foot down her own throat by claiming the Nazis didn’t go after trans people.

They did. History is my domain, Rowling, don’t start a fight without receipts.

I do want to see her learn, and grow, and realize that the people she’s helping to demonize are not the people that we should be afraid of.

Unfortunately, given how many times she has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down, I’ve pretty much given up hope of that. She’s a bully, a bigot, and at this point I feel quite comfortable calling her a horrible human being.

She uses her money to hurt people.

Now, I’m not delusional. My tiny stand against giving Rowling money will not in any way damage her pocketbook. The woman has more wealth than I will ever see in my entire life — she lives in a literal castle.

On top of that, there is simply no way to be completely ethical with your spending in a capitalist society. It’s impossible. No matter what you buy, the money you spend will find its way into contributing to some form of exploitation.

For that reason, I won’t waste time shaming other people for buying all things Harry Potter. If you bought the Wizarding game, fine. I hope you had fun playing it, I know several people — queer, cis, straight, and otherwise — who absolutely loved it.

I wish you wouldn’t do that, because whether you know it or not you’re giving her money to keep hurting people, but I can’t control what other people choose to do. I can only make the choices I believe are right and express my opinion on the subject when it comes up.

Especially when a fair number of the purchasers are people who do know they’re supporting her, and that’s why they do it. Harry Potter merchandise has become a dogwhistle for a reason.

Bigots are gonna bigot. We can call it out, but that just gives them the attention they crave.

I, respectfully, choose not to financially support Rowling. I choose not to give money to Tim Hortons, now that they’ve partnered with her for a Harry Potter promotional line.

I do not want my money to wind up in the pockets of someone who has been cited as an influence by lawmakers who vote against expanding protections for LGBTQ+ people.

I would much rather spend my time and money supporting artists from the LGBTQ+ community. I would rather spend my time highlighting their work and their tireless efforts to fight for equality and justice at a time when they are being maligned and dehumanized across the world.

I would rather highlight the work of activists like Erin Reed who throw themselves into raising awareness of the way that transgender people are demonized in the United States. She follows and writes about anti-trans legislation across the country to help her readers stay informed.

I would rather draw attention to Jessie Earl, a wonderful creator and Star Trek fanatic with a great sense of humor and a strong voice in the battle for human rights.

I’d rather elevate the voices of women like Janet Mock, a transgender activist and woman of colour who has written and campaigned in support of marginalized people.

And lest you think I’m only advocating for women, let me draw your eye to Kylar W. Broadus, an attorney fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, and a beloved transgender icon.

If I’m going to be throwing my money into the ring, I would rather it go to support equality, justice, and love — the way Harry Potter taught me to. And I would like to thank J.K. Rowling for teaching me that when I was a little girl.

I hope she learns that lesson herself someday, but at this point, I think she’s too far gone.

Solidarity wins.

In their quest to destroy everything good and green, Trump and his sycophants — as one commentor I saw put it, the ‘pack of unsharpened crayons’ — are tearing apart environmental regulations in the U.S.

The attacks range from assaults on the Endangered Species Act to giving the space industry carte blanche to do whatever they like regardless of regulatory guidelines for the environment.

They don’t care about anything but making a profit, and that includes the air we breathe, the land we stand on, and the animals we share the world with.

Don’t get me started on the water. Y’all know I have beef about that.

At this point, beyond just the usual profit motive, it’s starting to feel intentional.

These assholes took one look at dystopian novels like the Hunger Games and the Handmaid’s Tale and mistook them for fucking instruction manuals.

It’s no accident that all of our big, well-known dystopian fictions include extreme environmental destruction alongside the usual political upheavel and oppression. The ‘world that was’ before everything went to hell.

Yes, even the Hunger Games. Panem is the only country mentioned because it’s believed to be the only country left, following nuclear wars and out-of-control Climate Change. Handmaid’s Tale includes it as well, with the ‘unwomen’ being sent to clean up irradiated toxic wastelands that surround Gilead as a punishment.

It’s a consistent pattern. Ecological damage is part of the collapse.

Maybe these guys are just ignorant twatwaffles who believe that climate change is a hoax and that there are no consequences for what they do. Maybe they think their money gives them special powers of protection.

Maybe they think they’ll be dead before consequences touch them.

Who knows?

What I know is that I like being able to breathe. I love seeing green outside my window, having water to drink and good, healthy food to eat. I like hearing the birds singing outside and watching wildlife poking around my garden.

I love squirrels, even when they’re eating my lettuce.

Every regulation is written in blood. Someone did something stupid, bad things happened, and somebody decided to make a rule to stop it from happening again.

Taking away those regulations takes away the guardrails.

It just gets worse from here, unless they’re stopped.

Solidarity wins.

We have a bunch of new arrivals here at World-Weary!

Come on in, folks. Cookies and cinnamon rolls are on your left, tea, coffee and water are on the right. Pick your poison of choice and settle in.

Kick off your shoes, let your hair down, put your feet up and grab a comfy blanket of your choosing. It’s time for a little community check in.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a little meeting, hasn’t it? A lot has gone on in the world, a lot of problems exposed, a lot of daily life is getting worse, more expensive and more dangerous.

For some of us, mental health is lower than ever.

If that’s the case for you, I want to know. It’s time to vent.

I personally got news for my health that necessitated a complete lifestyle change, and I’m still fighting with immigration over my spouse. Hopefully that fight will be over soon, but I’ve been saying that for months.

I’m feeling very emotionally tired. I’m not going to let it tear me away from my work here.

That’s my bit of oversharing for the day; I’m weary.

How about you? What’s eating at you? What’s grinding you down? Let’s talk about it in the comments if you feel comfortable with it; I’d love to see this community step in to offer each other a virtual shoulder to lean on.

We’re all tired here at World-Weary. But we’re here because we care.

Solidarity wins.

Having a nice day? I hope so. I’m getting ready for work and being generally annoyed at having to leave my house today; I’m not feeling too well, but alas, the store needs somebody standing at the cash.

Retail is fun that way.

At least where I live the heat has faded somewhat, and for the moment our air is relatively clear. Not so where my spo…

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We’ve been talking a lot about the global water crisis lately.

Whether it be aridification in the western States in the U.S., the massive drought that hit my country last summer, rising ocean temperatures, or severe water scarcity on the African continent, everywhere you look there is a water issue.

Mexico struggles with freshwater; India’s drinking water crisis is well known, and most of us know all about the issues with obtaining clean water in Gaza while it’s under siege. It goes without saying that in warzones like Ukraine and South Sudan, access to safe water is outrageously difficult to find.

And then you bring in climate change, and it all gets worse.

Rivers are drying up, flooding is smashing records where it never happened before, and whole regions are having to completely revamp their local infrastructure to meet changing needs.

People are desperate for answers. I wish I could give easy, practical solutions to these issues that would be implemented quickly and painlessly, and solve our problems so that this all can stop.

People crave simplicity. They want to be able to brush these problems away and get back to living life in peace.

I wish I could give them that. But I can’t. Nobody can. Because the truth is, this is a complicated problem with many moving parts, and it’s going to take a monumental restructuring of our entire system to get caught up — let alone halt progress and reverse the damage.

There is no magic bullet solution to the climate crisis. No simple, easy answers, no one-stop-shop method of preserving our way of life.

The good news is, we know how to fix it.

The bad news is we aren’t doing it because profit and convenience are in the way.

Let me talk about the title of this piece for a second, because the topic of desalination is what inspired this whole rant.

Desalination is the process of pulling salt out of salt water — usually sourced from the ocean in some form or another. Desalination plants draw in the sea, filter out the salts, organic matter and toxic chemical contamination through reverse osmosis and filtration, and provide clean water that becomes available for people to use.

Now, in theory, this sounds awesome. I saw someone suggest it in the comments on one of my articles a while back as a possible solution to aridification in the American Midwest; desalinated seawater could be shipped in from the coast to help meet the shortfall.

It’s already heavily used in the Middle East to provide drinking water to millions of people in arid regions with little rainfall.

On paper, great. Desalination plants sound awesome. They provide clean water from a readily available source; after all, our planet’s surface is like 70% ocean!

But in practice, the process is absolutely not sustainable for the rest of the globe.

The thing with removing salt from seawater is that the salt does not disappear. It has to go somewhere. You have a ton of leftover heavily concentrated brine that needs to be disposed of.

Where does it go?

Well, unfortunately, it often goes right back into the ocean.

Salt levels in the ocean are not easily sorted out, as it turns out; heavy salt sinks, and it leads to the water near the sea floor being heavily contaminated and difficult for oxygen to penetrate.

This is bad news for the plants that depend on oxygenated water, and even worse news for the fish, which have adapted to a far lesser volume of salt. You screw up the balance, and you wind up poisoning the entire ecosystem.

The marine wildlife quite literally suffocates.

Now, depending on where the plant is situated, there might be strict environmental rules about dilution and distribution of that brine to help prevent an imbalance of salt in the ocean.

Might be. That depends on the laws and regulations where the plant was built. And it also depends on how legally conscious the owners and operators of the plants are.

After all, we’ve talked about the infamous Hanford Site before. The operators of the nuclear plant were well aware of the dangers of nuclear radiation, but they fell back on extremely unsafe practices and disposal methods anyway because it was cheaper and more convenient.

Their negligence not only cost workers the comfort of a long, healthy life, but they’ve rendered swathes of Washington state toxic and left the government scrambling with a cover-up.

If you think these plants are following all of the rules just because the rules are on paper, I have a lovely pond to sell you in the Sahara.

As long as the penalty for breaking the law is cheaper than the money you lose in following it, corporations will consider legal defence fees to be the smarter business decision.

In the eyes of the owner class, money is greener than ethics.

Desalination is not the only silver bullet proposal for the water crisis.

There’s also evaporation, solar capture, mist-harvesting and rain collection — all methods of what’s called atmospheric water harvesting.

These have their own problems. But the biggest one shared by all is that these are not solutions; they are stop-gap measures. Methods of providing water in the short term as the crisis continues to get worse.

There is no magic solution. The issue is climate change.

That’s our fight.

The thing with climate change is that we know exactly what’s causing it. We know the impact of fossil fuels and how they affect the atmosphere. We know about the tipping points that fuel global weather instability and warming. We know that it’s our overreliance on electricity use and convenience that causes this mess.

It’s the corporations pouring billions of tons of harmful gases into the air, pouring toxins into the water, and dumping oil into the oceans. It’s the millions of tons of plastic waste in landfills full of perfectly edible food left to rot, because it doesn’t look pretty enough for grocery market shelves.

It’s the industries that destroy forests, logging as if we have immeasurable abundance, clearing farmland for cattle and monocrop farms.

It’s the constant one-day shipping and never-ending stream of cars that clog the roads, necessitating more land used for tarmac and asphalt and parking lots.

And we know how that goes, don’t we?

We know how to fix climate change and start to reverse it. But it means that many of the conveniences and luxuries we’ve grown used to need to stop.

We need to drastically cut back on fossil fuels — eradicate them if necessary. We need to find methods of carbon capture, restoring forests and ecosystems and grasslands that effectively work as sinks.

We need to stop producing so much waste, stop putting corporate profits above the needs of citizens and quit throwing away perfectly usable foods to rot and contribute to landfills that don’t need to exist.

We need to go back to reusing instead of throwing away.

One-day shipping needs to stop. Public transportation needs to replace cars as much as possible. Our extravagant energy use needs to roll back to reasonable levels, not just at the individual level but at the level of industry.

We need to stop polluting and start working to solve the crisis. We need to take it as seriously as we took the Pandemic.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because we all know how that went.

Millions of people were told they needed to stay at home and mask up to save other people’s lives, and millions of people said ‘fuck no.’

It pricked their convenience. It pricked their personal enjoyment. They wanted haircuts, restaurants, to go see movies and be with their friends — no matter what it did to anyone else, they got theirs.

Imagine telling them they had to cut down on power consumption entirely. In a world where Netflix and computer games are the only source of enjoyment for so many people, can you imagine if regulations tried to cut back?

Can you imagine taking those gigantic trucks off the road and telling Joe Buddy he can’t drive his Hummer anymore?

Can you imagine telling these people that they can’t have plastic bags at the grocery store? We did that in Canada, and they still bitch about it years later. The fuss people make over plastic straws is insane.

Imagine telling them they can’t have same-day delivery anymore because there’s a limit to how much a corporation can pollute per day and they repeatedly hit their quotas too quickly, so they have to find an alternate method of shipping. They already scream about carbon taxes at the gas pump.

Trains would come back, but holy shit these people would lose their goddamn minds!

They won’t go backwards in lifestyle. And it’d cut into corporate profits to force them to, so they won’t.

So we’re left hunting for other solutions, ones that won’t affect people’s happiness or lives in measurable ways. It’s hard to find, and I don’t know if we’ll do it quickly enough.

There’s no magic bullet to solve the climate crisis. So here we are. And it only gets worse from here.

Solidarity wins.

It’s 2026, and Republicans still haven’t figured out how the weather works.

Last year during the worst of Canada’s fire season, when we were living in terror of shifting winds during a nightmarish drought that left us extremely vulnerable, the right-wing lawmakers in the U.S. were already whining.

“This smoke is ruining my vacation!”

“I can’t walk my dog without coughing!”

“Canada keeps lighting fires, they’re so mean to us!”

And this year, they’re back at it again.

They’re threatening to tariff us again. They’re complaining about their vacations being ruined. They’re sneering at us for being bad at ‘forest management’ and threatening to ‘take over’ our fire efforts.

As in, threatening to take over our country as if they’d be able to do any better.

They don’t even know how the wind works, how are they going to fight fires?

Meanwhile, Canadians are fighting for our lives. Building fire breaks around residential areas, beating back racing wildfires started by lightning in dry brush. Flying water bombers over distant forests to wet them down and try to control the spread.

And while we’re at it, helping Americans with their own fire problems. We just lost a firefighter pilot in the U.S. last week; he died helping over the border. We always show up to help you guys when needed. Always.

But your Republicans? Bitching and moaning and whining like babies, accusing us of arson and being irresponsible.

Fuck. You.

You know what? I hope they choke on that smoke. I hope it lingers. I wish it would leave ordinary citizens alone, of course, but those asshole Republicans deserve every cough that comes out of their lungs.

People are dying. People are losing everything. Parents are fleeing their homes as they’re consumed in flame, cradling their screaming children and pets and trying not to think of all the keepsakes and important items they’ve just lost.

Memories, documents, an entire life gone up in smoke.

Towns and reservations wiped off the fucking map, leaving refugees scrambling every which way.

That’s what life is like for us. You think we aren’t choking on the smoke? It’s literally changing the expected weather patterns across the country, fucking with our weather forecasts and filling the air with haze.

We’re constantly checking fire maps, praying that we don’t see anything near our homes, thinking about having to go to work at a time like this and hoping against hope that our houses will still be standing when we come back.

Fuck your vacation. I’m busy trying to keep my life.

Solidarity wins.

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Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is on the rise all around the world.

Every now and then though, we see a small bright spot in the mess of roiling darkness that is the march against progress. Today, that bright spot is Botswana.

On the African continent, there are few countries that grant protections to LGBTQ+ people. Due to colonial era laws and fundamentalist religious cultures, many people across the nations of Africa view gay and trans people with particular disgust.

It’s to the point where countries like Uganda even have the death penalty on the books for ‘repeat offenders.’ Many others are doubling down on legislative hate.

But Botswana is moving in the opposite direction. They’re increasing their protections for same-sex couples and intimacy, and the people impacted by this are pushing for one step futher.

There is now a fight in Botswana to legalize gay marriage.

Now, that fight has opponants. The same opponants found across the rest of the continent, and most other countries in the world — the religious fundies and the bigots who see gay rights as ‘an attack on the culture of our country.’

You know the type.

Still, this is a fight worth watching and spreading the word about. Public pressure works, and winning smaller battles helps weaken the enemy’s position.

So, please; help me spread this far and wide. Gay marriage advocates in Botswana need our support, and so do the activists across the rest of Africa. Those in Niger, Uganda and Ghana who are facing an uphill battle for acceptance in cultures rapidly deteriorating into mobs of loathing.

If you want to help more directly, there are numerous charities across Africa which provide support for LGBTQ+ people facing discrimination and oppression. I would suggest the African Human Rights Coalition is a good place to start if you’re looking to donate; they provide a lot of assistance for people displaced by hate.

But even making an effort to inform others about this is a good, helpful move. Spread the word on social media, tell your friends and family, and do your best to provide open support for gay marriage worldwide.

No matter where you live, that Overton Window needs a good stiff shove in the right direction. The internet makes borders a lot less meaningful when it comes to misinformation and hate.

But it also means the opposite; our voices spread a lot further than we think.

Solidarity wins.