i feel like i’m going insane, sustainability does not equal minimalism. neither does buying a bunch of overpriced shit that claims it’s “ethically sourced”. you know what’s sustainable? fixing shit around your house. thrifting. patching clothes and handing them down. a community garden. potluck dinner parties. farmer’s markets. a barter system among friends and neighbors. kindness. love among community members. capitalism is not sustainable, both in the environmental sense and the longevity sense.

like. buying from small businesses is a good place to start. as is larger businesses being as close to carbon neutral as possible. but materialism is what’s driving us as a planet into an early grave

Caring For The Elderly

Reading an article by Vox about the crisis regarding care for older adults, and while I knew a lot of this, there's information I think more people should know.

(Article: "Baby boomers are aging. Their kids aren’t ready.")

A lot of Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z are having to care for their parents. Our country isn't set up in the same way that it was when the Baby Boomers were born, and it's affecting their care as well as the entire family structure.

"By 2030, the US will for the first time have more residents over 65 than children. Someone turning 65 today has a 70 percent chance of needing long-term care at some point, and 20 percent will need it for more than five years."

"Medicare doesn’t cover most long-term care, and seniors only become eligible for care through Medicaid when they have almost no assets left. [...] the median annual cost of a full-time home health aide was nearly $60,000 in 2021, while a semi-private room in a nursing home ran $94,000 per year or more."

"To remedy the financial, mental, and physical health crisis facing boomers and their children, experts say improved paid leave is crucial. Caregivers can take unpaid time off under the Family Medical Leave Act, but without a salary, many can’t afford to."

The article also talks about the substantial gaps in Medicaid coverage, especially in regards to long-term care.

There are a lot of stories shared from the perspective of caregivers who are completely at a loss due to how little help the world offers. Mental and emotional strains due to working full-time jobs, combined with caring for one or more elderly parent, is increasing the stress levels in the younger populations. It's leading to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and heart disease.

If you're caring for an older family member, please remember that there is support out there in your community. If you aren't, please fight for better care for the elderly in these situations.

If you know someone who is a caregiver, please offer them whatever support you can.

And also, please remember to treat the elderly as the people they are. They're humans too, and they aren't some sort of monolith of pure evil rhetoric or something. They're people. And the forgetting of that information is half of why we have this crisis today.

IT IS OKAY TO BE A BURDEN! YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BE A BURDEN! IT IS NOT A REFLECTION OF YOUR MORALITY!

if upon being told about someones illness/condition, your first thought is to say “have you tried X?” i want you to step back for a moment and think to yourself “if i thought of X after hearing about this condition for the very first time, the person who has this condition very likely has thought of this and possibly tried it already”

we are tired of constantly being told to try the same things by people who didnt know our condition existed five minutes ago.

you dont need to offer any solutions or try to fix us. i know it might seem like a polite thing to do or that it shows you care, there are other ways to show us you care.

DpxDc AU - If his parents are going to treat him like a punk, he might as well lean into it. 

Danny is getting seriously worn down by his parents constantly asking him to explain why he’s gone all the time and why his grades have slipped so far. I mean, sure, it took them months to notice, but now that they have, they’re alluding to the fact that he’s turned into some kind of punk and that he’s not taking life as seriously as he should be. This is what makes Danny kind of snap. 

He cuts his hair, gets Sam to pierce his ears in a few places (which sucked but was nice to catch up with her since Team Phantom didn’t get out much anymore), learns how to skateboard and gets Tuck to help him mask his identity on the internet as he begins online protesting the unethical treatment of ghosts. He makes picket signs that he leaves outside of Fentonworks and it takes days before his parents see them because they’re down in the lab. They go back up immediately after his parents take them down, and he begins tagging buildings with protest sayings and art all over amity park.

No matter how they ground him, the Drs Fenton are at a loss as to what to do to control Danny. Jazz says it’s not her place to interfere and is cheering her little brother on for being passionate about a new hobby. 

Danny’s honestly really vibing with the changes. He always understood why Sam wanted control over her own look, but he’s really leaning into the whole shebang. Ember and Johnny13 have never bonded over anything more than they have the punk transformation of their King. He’s really representing them fr fr- she taught him how to play the bass. 

With enough protests about the Anti-Ecto acts, the JL step in and begin their efforts to lobby change within the US government. Constantine is up to date on the new King being from Earth and thinks they might be able to weasel out a non-apocalyptic scenario if they reach out sooner than later. A letter gets sent through the infinite realms (No way in fuck was John going to try and summon a fucking King excuse you Bats)- Danny gets the letter and decides to let them sweat a bit, sending back his own letter that just says “K.” cause he’s learned that adults/authority figures all suck ass until proven otherwise. After a few days, a portal opens up in the middle of their meeting. 

Ghost King Phantom is rolling in on a skateboard, with the Ring of rage dangling from one of his ear piercings and ice crown floating above his head. He’s drinking an off brand smoothie, wearing a leather jacket that has medieval chainmail on it over his now distressed hazmat suit and his boots steel toed.

“...Sup. Y’all want to do something about this whole situation? I’m an all or nothing kind of guy.” Danny greets them. He means that he’s willing to be diligent in his efforts to disbar the Acts. It gets interpreted as him threatening to end the world, ofc, but that’s an issue he has to deal with later. 

“King Phantom we have been working daily to-” 

“Uh huh. Look, didn’t you guys have like a teenage group? I want to work with them, they’ll probably actually help me get shit done while you fuck around with paper work.” 

My two favorite anarchists 🥰🥰

i think in the hamster wheel of my mind a big part of where people go wrong with eddie and his shitty garage band as an extension is that they for some bizarre reason think he's gene simmons metal when he's jack black metal. heavy metal. he's tenacious d metal. he's school of rock. he's stoner lord of the rings metal he nearly wore blue jeans and plaid. jack black literally in real life once said eddie was the best character bc he's heavy metal like him. LOOK AT THIS

joking about ritsu liking emo music is funny and all but it will never be as funny to me as the canon truth, which is that he doesn't listen to music. him liking mcr or whatever is too ordinary, him not listening to music at all is so out of left field and hilarious to me. ritsu is the funniest character because he tries so hard to seem normal and then he says shit that makes you go "wait. what the fuck" as soon as you think about it for more than three seconds

Pride month vest project, a patch a day #17: I Love Being Kind

to be a hobie brown enthusiast you have to have at the very least an understanding of the politics that define punk btw

i don’t understand the mentality online of “anyone who says they have a rare disability/disorder/etc is faking” because like. even if it’s rare, there still has to be people who have it??

punk spot and goth sarah stuff 🫰

i also made playlists of the kind of music i think they'd listen to :') you can listen to spot's here. most tracks fall under the hardcore subgenre, but there's also a good amount of ska and pop. generally has a chaotic, garage, and/or dated kind of sound, really wanted the kind of stuff that scratches my brain in a specific, rough way

there's also sarah's playlist, which i'm less confident about because i'm wayyy more immersed in punk subculture and music. but. i tried! some gothic rock, mostly punkabilly and gothabilly. i feel like she'd be into music that has that campy slasher feel, so that's the overall mood i was gunning for

cody really has the entire male roster lookin at him like..

looking for feedback on this duskwight i'm making because i don't know how i feel about her

I feel like it's a little cringey to say "Yeah Good Omens helped me figure out my gender identity" but like. It gave me the concept of being able to look like *gender* and use that gender's pronouns and be mostly cool with being perceived as that gender, but not actually be that gender.

Like occasionally I might feel a little bit like a girl (but never like a woman) but most of the time I'm agender, and I think there's a lot of pressure in the queer community to present a certain way or use different pronouns if you're anywhere on that spectrum. And it's totally awesome that that works for a lot of people. But I always kind of felt like if I'm cool looking like a girl and using she/her then I couldn't claim any kind of gender fuckery.

But Crowley and Aziraphale both (usually) look like men and use male pronouns but aren't actually men? Oh cool, I can do that? Good to know.

remembering how careful luke was with substances back when they first started out, it is actually heartbreaking that he did end up struggling with addiction. (I feel like we can often stereotype and box artists in, find excuses why they may end up using like it's their fault and if they happen to overdose and die then well, they should've not gotten into it in the first place. i can't shake that moment, in the 10yr podcast i think (don't quote me) he mentions he wasn't even into weed in 2015. just another 19yo aussie getting drunk and pretending to be tough like every other 19yo aussie, way more conservative and cautious in terms of substances than he probably would ever have admitted at the time.) how well he's always seemed to look after himself physically vs how much he'd given up on himself for so long. the fact he's always loved food and yet struggled with eating. actually I think diamonds should break our hearts. so should bloodline and heck, even baby blue. I think we should listen to starting line and be like hey, maybe we should treat our celebrities better. our artists. we all enjoy what they create, tear themselves apart so we don't feel alone in whatever we're experiencing and yet did we ever stop to think, how can we make this system work for everyone? how can we make fame be less deadly?

I think we should look at songs like motion and repeat when we're thinking of, hey, how should we approach this conversation about mental health? especially in the workplace with pressure to perform and take every opportunity lest we miss out on a big break and that's not only in creative industries. STEM can be like that too. and don't get me started on business/finance. we should look at the way we interact with each other--are we creating a space that's safe to feel and be honest with ourselves and each other and breathe enough to do that? or is it 'r u ok' and it's all about feelings and if you feel to numb to even know what you're feeling, then you're probably fine? we're hopefully beyond blaming parents for everything their children go through by now, but if ever we're not, we can listen to mum and see that you can have this beautiful relationship with your parents and still struggle, still blame yourself and be drowning in it and have the best morals around personal responsibility and still in a bad season be able to weaponise them against ourselves sometimes and only see our mistakes. still put on a farce for the world. still fear that people will leave whenever we take that off. are we creating a world where we're free to be ourselves, and I mean all of us? slip away and place in me should break our hearts even more when listened to in context.

and maybe these insights seem obvious to you but how are we really going at living as if this is what we need to be doing as humans? do we really live like we believe none of us are that invincible but at the same time are so, so capable and should be given the chances and accommodations every person, no matter their unique needs, need to really fulfil that (of course without being blamed for their perceived failures)? or are we still being ableist? are we still deciding we have a bar of perceived success for people we see to be 'like us' and feel like everyone else is somehow doomed and unable to succeed and so we don't need to worry about caring for them too? they either have to pretend to live up to our standards or slip into oblivion and shame? don't you see how this, something we often don't realise we're perpetuating, simply causes even more harm?

and maybe this is a lot to be dragging out from one (expertly done) album. or maybe we have someone who's told their story and we'd be foolish not to listen to it, not to think twice about the connotations of what we're seeing. maybe part of beholding this masterpiece is to use a bit of that same overthinking that went into creating it and do something productive with it. because luke's okay. things did get better for him, and he's coping, just like the rest of us. but what about the next young artist who is thrust into stardom from oblivion, who, clinging to music as a lifeline in a chaotic, unpredictable and lonely world, basks in it and chases it so hard without a thought to its dangers. what if they don't have a loving home away from the chaos to return to, and a close knit, unshakeable group of friends going through it with them? I don't get how you can listen to wfttwtaf and not think of this. also, luke didn't need to share any of these things with us. but I bet, in a world of facades and roles to play that others create for us, simplistic and superficial and suffocating, it's a relief to simply be honest. maybe it's just me. maybe he shared it just to get some money from his art, or to help others feel less alone. but either way he did share it. and he did give incredibly vulnerable descriptions of each song (to apple music i believe it was) which he didn't have to do either. but he did and so let's heed the protest intrinsic in it and cultivate that sense of empathy, be respectful and encouraging to him and the band, yes, but also think. if we have a case study on how to protect and better care for young artists and creatives, are we just going to let it entertain us and then do nothing about what we hear? wfttwtaf is a protest album. it might not mean to be. it might be the saddest and least angry one we've heard. it might be pure in that it pulls at our heartstrings and demands nothing from us. so let your impact be that pure and free of demands too and just. be kind. not only to the people you see in person, but everyone who might be impacted by your individual and collective actions--not only kind but smart about what is actually helpful, actually encouraging. it's pretty simple isn't it? or is it just the wild ideas of my intuition?