Aftermath

Even if TWSA had finished without the world ending, KDJ would have been okay

i’m always like “i can’t wait to feel good and confident and grow into the best, healthiest version of me!!!!!” while doing horrible acts of self sabotage like girl it doesn’t work like that u are pressing the gas and break at the same time stop it

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

I am BEGGING younger drivers. drive carefully. give yourself room. for fuck's sake use your turn signals and don't fucking weave thru traffic. this is not a video game, this is real life and if you get into an accident, you could get killed or kill someone else VERY easily

who is telling men that having gray in their hair is ugly. why are they fucking lying

reposting bc the prolifers found my old post and i dont want them to have nice things

i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!

Despair is easy, hope is hard. And brother, I like to stay hard

and very, very often, self care is not plants and ice rollers and fluffy blankets of peace.

it’s standing over your kitchen sink and crying while doing the dishes because you just want to go back to bed but the dishes need done. and you don’t know why you’re crying but you're trusting you need it. and you aren’t listening to the music that pulls you into a spiral; you’re listening to some cheerful shit your friend sent you. it’s getting up and staring at your fridge and closing your eyes and then cooking yourself food even though you hate it and it’s miserable. because you know that you’d cook for your friend, and you are trying to befriend yourself. it’s dragging yourself into the shower because you know you’ll feel better afterwards. it’s doing mundane tasks with patience, cursing under your breath, trying desperately to give yourself grace. grace is the beginning of care. care is the beginning of love.

we think it’s supposed to be peace and yet the most powerful self care moments are when we hate everything but especially ourselves. and life does not feel worth the loving. to look into that pain and yet choose to care for yourself in however many pieces you are — that is care. love. grace. trust. belief. it hurts because it’s love where there was no love before. it heals because it believes there will be love, one day, soon.