Something That Literally Changed My Life Was Working With A Friend On A Coding Thing. He Was Helping

in the future, Braiding Sweetgrass will be assigned to all students to read in school, and mostly they will hate it, because it seems to them like poorly structured rambling about nature and vignettes from the author's life. Soooooooo boring!

We will struggle to explain to them: no, no, this book was actually completely revolutionary for its time. When Kimmerer talks about the honorable harvest, learning to listen to the teachings of the plants, understanding nature as animate and alive, and the relationship of reciprocity and mutual dependence between humans and other life forms, these are ideas that were genuinely new and mind-blowing to us when we were young.

It wasn't just those in power that saw nature as "Resources" or some kind of mechanical system that would be better off without human interference—almost no one else knew another way to think. Yes, yes, we knew about symbiosis, but we hardly ever applied it to ourselves. Kimmerer is serious when she says her cultural perspective was almost wiped out; the culture we inherited as children literally didn't have the concepts she is talking about, and that's why the book was so important!

We will tell the students that it would have been weird even among "environmentalists" of the time to think of trees and insects as your family. I mean, well, yes, we knew that everything was related, but we thought Charles Darwin was the first to come up with that. You don't understand, we will say, most of these ideas about living in right relationship with nature would have been thought of as extra-scientific, sentimental or spiritual crap.

"Did you just not know where food and clothes came from?" they will ask, with eyebrows raised. Yes, but back then, food was mostly grown in enormous fields of only one crop where everything else had been killed with chemicals. We didn't really think of agricultural environments as "ecosystems"—"nature" was a separate thing—I mean yeah, we harvested logs from forests, but that was different. No, we basically thought Earth was divided into "human uses" and "nature," and that people shouldn't be in the "nature" parts. No, really!

The students will be fascinated and ask things like "But what about parks?" "Would a hay field be nature or human uses?" "How about pollinator gardens?" "What about the ocean?" and we will try to explain to them that we really just didn't think that hard about it

One day you think: I want to die. And then you think, very quietly, actually I want a coffee. I want a nap. A sandwich. A book. And I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friends, I want to sit in the sun. I want a cleaner room, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else, I want to live.

Bionicle sketches

(Only have two more left to draw)

choosing to allocate spoons to hanging out and having a good time at the cost of perfectly completing all your work is not a failing it is in fact an act of survival. “too sick to work = too sick to play” is in fact ableist bullshit that you don’t have to buy into. and the fact that leisure time is treated like a privilege is a fucking travesty

THE MADNESS OF TURAGA

“Where are your Matoran, Bahtu? I’ve seen no one on the hike up here.”

The Turaga fiddled idly with his stick. His eyes wandered around the empty village.

“They are…they are gone, old friend.”

“Gone?”

“Yes.”

“Gone where? And why? What happened?”

“They were…broken.”

“Explain! Who did this?”

“Now calm yourself, my friend. My nerves are not what they used to be.”

The Toa stepped forward, lowering his voice.

“Tell me what happened, Bahtu. Was it Zygl–”

The Turaga began to speak gravely:

“It started with small things, you see. Day by day. Small changes. Small…deviations. A lost minute here or there. A construction made slightly different from the Standard. A repair completed with…I don’t have the word…”  The Turaga gestured limply, “…a ‘flourish’, maybe, as the Great Beings might have said. Maybe that.”

“I don’t underst–”

“–All still workable, to be sure,” the Turaga continued unbothered. “Still workable, but…but deviant, you see. Not according to the Great Standard. The Saa Nui is very demanding if us, as you know. And to stray would be disastrous.”

“So you say. And what then?”

“Oh, what then…let me see. Well, then came other strange things. The Matoran would…would talk to each other. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Not simply transmitting information, I mean, but…but talking for its own sake. I would catch them sometimes, coming around a corner, speaking about something or other that was clearly beyond the scope of that moment’s Duty. And though I corrected them, still they persisted. Even worse: they whispered instead. So many whispers. The village was full of whispering, day and night. I could not stop them all.”

“Go on.”

“Oh yes, yes, and then there were questions.”

“Questions are not out of the ordinary.”

“Of course not, no…but these questions were different. They began to ask all manner of things, inane things, like ‘Why do the sky-stars burn out at night?’ or ‘Where does the Great Spirit live?’ Once, one even asked me ‘Why should we work to fulfill our Duty?’”

The Turaga shook his head, “I was aghast, as you may imagine. I did not know what to say! I sent that Matoran away to work on the mountainside, away from the others, for a time, lest they…lest they ‘talk’ about it.”

“I still do not see what–”

“–And that’s not even the worst of it! Oh, my friend, one day…One day, they asked me for names. New names. Can you imagine it? Each and every one of them I named when they were brought forth from the eles raliska–gave them the embodiment of their Duty, their place in our world, and they thought they knew better! I could not bear it then. So…I sent them…away.”

“Where? To work on the mountainside?” The Toa looked up, scanning the hills in the distance, “Where did you send them?”

“No…to be mended.”

A light breeze made the thorn-trees rattle on the edge of the village. The shadows of the crumbling huts crept longer. The Turaga stopped fidgeting.

“You sent them to–”

“–To Him, yes! It was the only thing to be done.”

The Turaga began to gesture agitatedly, his words pouring out faster: “I put forth the summons, you see, and the Great Crabs came up from the sea, and–”

The Toa stepped closer, cutting him off:

“You know that few have ever returned from His Land. You know this.”

“Oh…I know. But it was right. They were too far gone. It would have been a disaster if I hadn’t. And if they do not return, then…well, more can be called up, if Mata wills it, and I will give them their names, and…”

“How long ago.”

“I…oh…perhaps some days–”

“–all of them?–”

“–…or years?” the Turaga mused. “My timing is all off now, you see, without the rhythm of their work. But it will soon be put right. Soon. Do not worry.”

“Years…” The Toa shook his head, “So you have been here alone, all this time. Doing nothing.”

“Waiting! Preparing! It will all be put right soon. Soon! You’ll see.”

“I cannot see that. The village is…”

The Toa looked around at the ruins of the village once more, lapsing into silence.

“They were broken, old friend. I could not let them suffer in that way. It was not right.”

“Did they fail in their work?”

“They deviated. It was necessary.”

A long silence followed.

“I see now,” the Toa said at last, in a quiet voice.

“Ah, that is good. You are a Toa, after all! Of all beings, you would understand. It had to be done, to keep the order of the world. It is what we are made for, you and I.”

Lesovikk’s hands closed slowly, slowly into fists, clenching until the armor of his gauntlets creaked. His gaze narrowed to a point, fixed upon the small, pathetic being before him. The wind died.

“I am not a Toa anymore.”

I have realized that the perfect form of media must have a delicate balance between absolutely heart wrenching pure emotional devastation and the most ridiculous nonsense you have ever seen in your whole life

the way people are taught programming today continues to drive me insane insane insane

"you don't owe anybody anything" has done irreparable damage to the minds of the youth

lightning

There exist another dimension called The Empty World. It's very much like ours, in fact it seems to have been identical up until a few weeks ago, but it always seems that way. If you go there today, it was identical in late february, and if you go there this october, it'll have been identical until september.

It's empty, as you might guess. There's no humans, and no animals bigger than a cockroach. The sky is grey, and it slowly rains ash. It's colder than our world by a bit, enough to require a jacket even in summer. The streets are empty, the cars parked neatly in their garages or in lots, but they're all empty and abandoned, their doors locked like they expect their owners to return any minute now.

The newspapers left on stands don't mention any oncoming disaster. We have no idea what the TV or internet would have said: the power is out. The power is very, very out. Not just the grid, but batteries are drained. The cars won't start, the emergency lights are out, and anything with solar panels seems to be getting less energy than you'd expect, even with the perpetually overcast sky.

It's a very silent world, like the calm after a snowstorm. Sounds don't seem to echo as much as they should, nor does sound seem to travel as far. The radio spectrum is empty except for static, there's no one transmitting on any frequency.

There's fewer fires than you'd expect. Even places you'd expect to soon catch fire without human intervention are still standing, undamaged. Campfires can be lit but with difficulty: something is keeping them from burning as they should. Even if you pour kerosene on a campfire it'll barely grow, it's like something sucked the energy out of everything.

All the locked buildings are still locked. Alarms don't sound if you break in (understandable, given the power situation), and of course no one comes to investigate. So The Empty World is your oyster: you can break in wherever you want (provided you can physically do it: some doors are pretty hard to pry open even with tools), take whatever you want, and bring it back here.

Everything resets when you leave. You always enter The Empty World like it's your first time there, like this just happened and you're late to the party... but the party keeps getting rescheduled. You can even take something multiple times if you want.

When you enter The Empty World you get there at the same relative position as you are on this world. If you're in New York, you show up in the empty New York. If you're in Topeka, you show up in empty Topeka. So you have to travel around this world to get to where you want, and you can't just appear in the middle of a bank vault... unless you break into the vault from this world. (So it's great if you work at a bank and want to steal from your employer without repercussions, but not so useful otherwise).

You don't just have to take things, you know. You can take computers and files and books and diaries. You will have to deal with recharging laptops and breaking through any security when you get back, but it's doable.

So, imagine you've just gotten access to The Empty World. What are you going to do with it? What will you take, and where will you go?