velereth

[velereth]

Sorry for the silence, I've been elsewhere and also out of it.

I'm pretty sure at this point I've got some form of long COVID. I've got a cough that won't go away, I'm constantly tired in a 'I lack the energy to get out of bed' way, last night I couldn't manage standing long enough to make dinner.

Worst though is the brain fog. The emptiness where usually I have a million thoughts. Forgetting things the instant I finish reading them and having to read them again. Watching the same part of a YouTube video five times because my brain just didn't work the first four. I can't concentrate. I can't focus.

Sometimes it clears a bit and I'll get a few hours I can actually accomplish something in and that's helpful.

But mostly it's just soul-crushing terror that this isn't going to get better. I want to cry about it and rant to someone but I don't want to be a burden.

I feel so isolated and alone and useless and I'm falling apart.

I'm sorry I'm so boring lately

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I support Emet in bringing back his baby boo Hythlodaeus.

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→ I’m sorry. I’m not ready for you to die

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The Jellybean Juice lore continues!

Read Part 1 (Tumblr) / (Webtoon)

Read Part 2 (Tumblr) / (Webtoon)

Read Part 3 (Tumblr) / (Webtoon)

This is part 4!

Support my work on Patreon!

[velereth]

So this happened at work today.

I

don’t know what to say

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Other allegations of sexual misconduct are slowly coming out.

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the post celebrating waffaa's fundraiser completing has more notes than the posts boosting waffaa's (and now her family's) campaign. expected and unsurprising

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When I was in elementary school, the last one I went to before high school had a little educational farm on the property where they grew vegetables and raised livestock and the students of various classes would go over and help out a bit and then be left to our own devices once we finished our tasks.

I wound up with the rabbits, checking their food and water and cages and dumping the trays of droppings and taking some(of matching sex) out to run around the outside pen for exercise. There was one rabbit I ended up bonding with, a dutch named Lucky Boy, that I knew from when he was born. When I was done with the feeding and cleaning I'd take him out of his pen and put him in this purple wicker purse I had, and I'd go out to the back side of the farm where there was a huge old weeping willow over a shallow pond, and I'd climb up in the tree and hang out there with him and let him climb on me and pet him.

My high school was near that elementary school and sometimes I'd walk over there and go visit the rabbits again.

This was back in the 90s and he's long, long since dead by now, but I still think about him, and Orange Blossom, and all the other rabbits I loved there.

Anyway rabbits are cool and I love them this has been a 'Vel gets nostalgic for the few good parts of his youth' moment.

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You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

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ITS FUCKING LOAD BEARING?!

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I know this sounds like the deranged ramblings of a senile old man but I swear it used to be possible to look up information on the internet

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hello! i would like to bring attention to a fundraiser campaign. i have been talking with leena who is stuck in gaza with her family. she's over 2/3 through her goal (11,202/15, 000€) and we only need a little more! she's asked me to share for a final push, and i believe we can reach her goal quickly together.

this campaign is verified by @90-ghost. donate if you can and share it widely!

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Roseline Lawrence by Virginia Kluiters for Schon Magazine October 2022

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Hello 👋 This is Shaima and his family from Gaza. Please help us evacuate to safety, complete schooling for our children and find a source of income after the destruction of what we own. We live in difficult circumstances and a difficult life 🙏🏼 ❤️ Please share and spread the campaign because I urgently need help and the matter is urgent. Because the campaign is going slowly, there is no water and little food. It is very difficult for us to get a little food. Please donate and please share. Shaima, Diaa and their four children. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-shymaas-family-reunite-in-egypt?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

this is a verified campaign (number 141 on the vetted gaza evacuation fundraiser list), please share this post, shymaa's pinned and donate if possible to help!

i pray you and your children are safely reunited with your husband in egypt. i pray your daughter amal receives her needed treatment. i pray for your family's well-being and hope, more than anything else, that support towards your targeted goal comes quickly ❤️🖤🤍💚

( as of july 27th, $8,625/$50,000 has been raised )