02/14/2025

Dumpster diving tip: What to do with more than you need

Well I’m at it again. From one dumpster diving haul from a single pet store I will be able to feed 4 dogs for a month.

Pictured above is 2 dog food containers, each with about 60 pounds of kibble, and another bag of dog food at 30 pounds. Yes, out of 1 haul I got 150 pounds of perfectly edible dog food. This waste is inherent to capitalism, especially the late capitalism we’re living in now, and even in the middle of a pandemic.

For 4 years now I have been feeding my dog for free, not just with freegan kibble but with meat, eggs, and veggies saved from being thrown away from households, restaurants, and retailers.

But more often than not I come across way more food than I need, and it’s not always shelf stable kibble. So what now? Take a portion and leave the rest to rot? Well, you don’t have to!

If you find yourself with the time and enthusiasm, a dumpster full of perfectly good potatoes can quickly become an empty dumpster, but how do you disperse this much food? First, try to find a Buy Nothing Project near you, see if your city has a free store, a food rescue project, or if you need to get your precious perishables to a fridge ASAP, donate to the closest homeless shelter (they’re usually open 24/7, but make sure to call ahead first). But if it can wait, food banks do take “expired” food, and are always in dire need of bulk donations.

Whichever method you choose, always make it a point to connect with people, dive and donate regularly if you can, and most importantly, get organized. Because when you donate what you don’t need, you’re taking direct action, and you are more powerful together.

Dumpster diving safety

Dumpster diving legalities

Go dumpster diving, y’all

This is an illustration I did for the August 2014 issue of Popular Science Magazine. The assignment was to show a scifi take on human aging in the future. I wanted to do something relatively positive, so I drew a lady whose life has been been prolonged through cybernetic enhancements and augmentation, so she gets to spend time with her great-great-great-great grandchildren. 

Thanks to AD Michelle Mruk!

How “Solitary Gardens” Help Envision a World Without Prisons

Volunteers team up with people currently held in solitary confinement to build empathy, compassion, and advocacy for a world without prisons.

In a small patch of green space on Andry Street in New Orleans’ lower ninth ward, nine garden beds lie next to one another, each 6 feet by 9 feet, each the size of one standard solitary-confinement cell. Each garden bed grows a mix of herbs and flowers, among them pansies, stinging nettles, onions, mugwort. They are a mix of plants with medicinal properties and some that just bring pleasure to the eyes, and their growth is limited to the parts of the tiny space where a person would be free to move in a solitary cell, with space blocked off for where the furniture—nothing more than a bed and a toilet—would be. The plants in each garden are chosen by someone in solitary confinement and planted by a volunteer gardener on the outside.

The result is both symbolic and produces plants with tangible uses, says jackie sumell (who does not capitalize her name), who conceived the project; plants with healing properties will be redistributed to people who need them through what sumell calls a “prisoner’s apothecary.” The solitary beds are eventually overrun with plant life, a visual representation of a world without prisons, an idea that forms the project’s core mission.

Typically, a volunteer gardener on the outside will send a list of plants to an incarcerated gardener. The list provides plenty of options but is limited to what will thrive in the climate and season. They collaborate on a gardening plan and a calendar, often with a small floor plan filled in by the incarcerated gardener laying out the positioning of plants.

HELL WORLD OH MY GOD

Our fridge broke, defrosted, and let a bunch of meat and dairy spoil. We are now looking at having to replace an entire fridge & freezer's worth of food on the same weekend we have to take one of our cats to the emergency vet.

It is, ah. It is not my day today.

Y'all know I fucking hate doing this, but we do NOT have the money to replace all the spoiled food AND take the cat to the vet, and we can't NOT take the cat to the vet. She needs care.

Please, send this around if you can, and donate if you have a couple spare bucks. I've got folks depending on me to replace the food, and e-begging is about my only option.

Venmo @ renniequeer Paypal @ renniqueer@gmail.com

A painting representing the surgical treatment of breast cancer - Richard Tennant Cooper

How to respond when someone tries to drag you into shipping or kink discourse when you don't want to

Copy and paste the following:

I understand. You found paradise in America, you had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: “Don Corleone, do you support this ship/kink?” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me to get involved in your discourse.

Vox

This animal is on the edge of extinction. Trump just fired the people trying to save it.

Job cuts and frozen funding could inch one of the world’s rarest species even closer to extinction.

DOGE just froze funding to vital Federal and Indigenous conservation programs devoted to supporting the very delicate and tenuous existence of the black-footed ferret.

I fell in love with these animals as a kid traveling to our National Parks. Their rarity and ferocity made me sharply aware, even as a child, of just how much of a responsibility we have toward our environment. I can't bear the thought of them being a fucking casualty of Trump and Musk.

Look at them! They do war dances.