Ex-neuroscientist & philosopher turned rural hermit gave in to spiritual awakenings and blogs about neuro & gender diversity.
Genderqueer/agender (they/them).
#AuDHD
Made in communist Poland, raised & lived across the European continent.
Blog
sensitivityisstrength.wordpress.com
If you are politically engaged it's very easy to only talk to other politically engaged people & waste a lot of energy trying to convince other informed people with complex political frameworks to change their mind.
This is the least effective way to win elections ever. If you find it fun and learn from it, great, but it's not doing anything.
I called an old HS friend and she knew NOTHING about what republicans were up to. Not the book banning, not the trans attacks. She will vote now.
I think about this graphic at least once a week. What vehicles do to our towns & cities…
Illustration by Swedish artist Karl Jilg.
#Transport #Climate #Health #PublicHealth #CarBrain #FuckCars
Last weekend, Transition IG3 and residents of Talbot Road in east London organised a ‘Play Street’.
Children with scooters, bikes, bubbles and chalk took over the street as the road was closed to cars for the day, and residents of all ages shared food and chat, pedal powered music and made a mural of what their street could be like in 2030.
One of the organisers, Rakesh, said: “was great to see so many kids enjoying playing on the road, and neighbours talking to each other.”
Ever wanted to try a #playstreet in your neighbourhood? Get more inspiration from Sustainable St Albans, a Transition group helping communities throughout their district organise Play Streets, and from get support and advice from national organisation Playing Out.
#playingout #transitiontown #communityaction #climateaction #carfree #street
#pedalpower #bike
What if... street weren't just for cars? Transition Liverpool is showing what more space for community, greenery and art could do for their city after unveiling their first city centre parklet.
With high rates of air pollution and pedestrian accidents in their city, they worked with local designers and materials to make the modular pop-up structure that can be adapted to many spaces and uses.
It includes seating, planters for pollinator-loving plants and space for events, art or workshops, all in the size of a parking space.
In other cities, parklets have boosted local businesses, air quality and sense of community, and the sPark It project hopes this will be the first of many, with businesses, the council, charities and communities getting involved, and sparking conversation about how street space could be used.
Local architect Ross Neal, who volunteered as a designer on the project, said: “sPark It is all about community. The Transition team wanted to find creative ways to combat climate change, and in Liverpool that means tackling air pollution, making our streets safer for walking, wheeling and cycling, supporting small businesses and finding ways to bring nature and community back into the city.”
Big congrats to the team at Transition Liverpool who’ve been working towards this for years, with funding from the public and a Transition Together seed funding grant.
#transitiontown #carfree #climateaction #activetravel #sparkit #parklet #liverpool #community
So I'd say, meaningful prep is more like grassroots organizing and learning solidarity and how to get along with different types of people, than like playing Indiana Jones alone in the jungle (though sure of course practical skills are good, but the point is to share and trade them!).
Totally anecdotal, literally a few days before the Ukraine invasion I read how the UA army was running prep workshops for small groups of civilians in Kiev that predicted it could happen and requested training. There was stuff on what to stock and what to have in your evacuation backpack. But the main point they hammered home was, get to know the neighbors in your apartment block, talk to them, find out who they are. Because you will have to share and trade resources, cooperate to organise them, coordinate neighborhood security wards, etc. Better chance if you know and trust each other.
(Source some article in a Polish leftist zine)
I think this is a pretty down to earth realistic approach. I think Naomi Klein or a similar figure said a phrase about the broader climate crisis that was memorable to me (vague paraphrase): as soon as you start thinking in terms of individual action, you are already losing. She meant preventing the crisis, but I'd think it applies to riding it out, too.
Strikes me how this whole discussion leaves out indigenous and other traditional communities that are living without most Western stuff because they've never had it. Who have lived that way through very hard conditions, stuff like colonization, and now the climate apocalypse that is already on in their regions.
Isn't that the natural place to look / learn / do basic research if you want to start spinning fantasies about what living "off the grid" (without present Western infrastructure) means? What survival and resilience without such infrastructure requires?
I don't know much about the matter, but I know that societies that survived for long in harsh conditions are not individualistic; they didn't and don't survive as nuclear families. Quite the opposite. And from all I know, a lot of energy goes into developing and continuously maintaining and caring for communal life / social relationships for it to be successful.
So I'd say, yeah the prep is emotional and that includes emotionally going beyond individualism, beyond "me myself & I (& perhaps my nuclear family) in a bunker". That latter vision is absurd given (pre)history, by which I mean evolutionary time spans. Some of us could only stop living in extended communities because of this recent increase in automatised infrastructures making more direct and basic cooperation unnecessary (for some!).
US friends:
I don't want to hear any of you ever say that African countries have corrupt elections again.
Ever!
You hear me? That's over for y'all now.
And this dude is still the GOP front runner! By a long shot! Like, it's not even close! A lot of y'all are like "This is fine!"
And I don't want to hear "Oh no! We're like a 3rd world country now!" That's that mess I often hear after the US has acted exactly like the US. We're not "like a 3rd world country." We're like ourselves.
A stark statistics that has gotten lost in all the talk about the wildfire is that 5% of the Canadian population is indigenous but indigenous communities account for more than 42% of fire evacuations this year.
myrmepropagandist
Dave Underwood
Transition Together
Widdershins Smith 🐘
mekka okereke 
deltatux 