alwaystochocolate

[alwaystochocolate]

Perhaps it's just me. But right now, with the rapid global transition towards green energy, reforestation and conservation efforts, laws, genuinely crazy and huge innovations that can help us adapt to the changing world... it feels like we're on the right track.

Perhaps it's just me. But the geopolitical insanity that I see and learn from my peers all over the world, doesn't feel like the end. No, it... it feels like change. The last horrible and panicked gasps of the dying old, because it refuses to accept that it is not sustainable anymore, and the world is moving towards the better, through protests and unity and human goodness. I've seen this before - in stories from the older generation, and in history books.

But I also feel terribly guilty whenever I start thinking like that, for some odd reason? I feel guilty whenever I try and rationalize that despite it all, the world will continue existing, and even in the worst case scenario (which we already have avoided), there would be forests and oceans and species and biodiversity and ecosystems and people and cities and countries to see and love, because after all, nature is resilient and adaptable - just like our species are.

I feel guilty for feeling this cautious curiosity about what the future might hold for us, the bad and the good. Because I feel like I am obligated to be grieving and panicking and angry, like many people are - but that's just... so tiring.

Hi Anon,

This is going to be a long one because I think your ask gets at something difficult that I have a lot of thoughts about.

Your phrase “cautious curiosity” made me think of psychology researcher Jamil Zaki’s idea of “hopeful skepticism”. Which is not assuming that everything will inevitably get better, but open to the possibility that it could and curious to see the paths it might take to get us there.

Our society tends to view a cynical outlook as more intelligent or even more moral, but research shows that a cynical outlook actually makes people worse at predicting outcomes, worse at cognitive and problem-solving tasks, less likely to vote or protest, and even measurably harms their physical and mental wellbeing.

I think the guilt you describe is likely coming from the feeling that while we have been significantly improving conditions for humanity on this Earth and will likely continue to do so in the long run, in the present there are many real humans suffering--it can be hard and uncomfortable to hold these two truths together.

Even if this last dying breath is temporary and brief, it is destroying real people’s lives and many more live in fear that they will be next. The fact that child mortality has absolutely plummeted even just in my own lifetime is both a miracle of humanity and means little to the parent who has lost their child to a preventable death. To quote the philosopher Max Roser, “The world is much better; the world is still awful; the world can be much better.”.

You don't need to feel guilty for having hope for the future. Carrying feelings like hopelessness, grief, and fear all the time is entirely valid, but like you said it is also exhausting—and there is nothing inherently moral about emotionally suffering particularly if it’s harming your ability to live your life or take positive action.  

You are right that we are still making progress in the correct direction in many ways. You are right that history is rife of examples of forward momentum provoking a reactionary backtracking but that the forward momentum usually ultimately prevails.

The key here, is to understand that the future path you describe is possible—even likely more probable than a lot of people think—but it is not inevitable. We still have to take action to make it happen. The arc of history bends towards progress only because so many millions of mostly unnamed unknown people have put the work in to bend it in big and little ways.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from Rebecca Solnit is “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

Reminding others that progress is still happening and that there is hope for a brighter future is important work in getting members of your community to pick up their own axe and make that future happen. Hope in dark times is not just ok or reasonable--it is a precious, vital tool.

[alwaystochocolate]

i dont want this post to be like one of those "if you arent talking about this then you're evil" moral ocd posts but. i gotta talk about this.

i only just today heard about Kumanjayi White, a 24 year old disabled Warlpiri man who was killed by northern territory police on May 27th. He was handcuffed and forced to the ground, face down, with an officers knee on his neck. He was walking around a grocery store, by himself. A worker at the grocery store described him, saying, "One look and you can tell he's got special needs".

A poor and disabled Aboriginal man was killed in the northern territory and i can't help but notice the similarities to George Floyd. Murdered in a public place, knee on the back of his neck. Only difference is i havent heard a word about this anywhere, in the news or otherwise, since it occured 2 and a half fucking weeks ago. where's the anger? i dont like making political posts, i hope this doesnt break containment its just. god its fucking pissing me off right now.

[alwaystochocolate]

god cursed me into seeing this image so im making it everyone elses problem

[alwaystochocolate]

fake relationship but its a king and his concubine that was once an amazing soldier but he couldn’t go up the ranks for whatever reason so the king was like listen. hear me out. you can be my strategy dude. u just gotta be okay w walking around shirtless a lot. and soldier dude is like man that’s an UPSIDE and yknow they end up falling in love

[alwaystochocolate]

Summer Milky Way at Boddington, Western Australia

Nikon d810a - 35mm - ISO 3200 - f/1.8

Foreground: 3 x 20 seconds

Sky: 16 x 25 seconds

iOptron Skytracker

[alwaystochocolate]

These circles are stationary

[alwaystochocolate]

A circulating video of sisters who bought the same clothes for their husbands 😂❤️

[alwaystochocolate]

the morning after the pride parade

when the flags return to the wall and your head aches for water and the coffee can’t brew fast enough may the photos you’re tagged in show you in that good light the kind of light that lets you see yourself, really see yourself through the eyes of you at twelve years old, who (oh, if only you knew) would think “wow wow wow they are so cool. so them. so everything-i-wanna-be-but-don’t-know-if-i’m-allowed-yet” that good light that’s so damn allowed because you crowbarred the hinges off a closet that couldn’t contain it sort of light. 

remember. our ancestors didn’t just die for this. they lived for it:

this stained glass chapel to house our sacred hearts. this is the sort of beauty that’s bled for with broken glass and fist and brick. centuries of fight and flamboyance fierce and fab, a found ancestry of us and our friends between and through revolutions around the sun. 

even when pride comes to an end we never will. nico wilkinson

---

this poem was commissioned by CC Mobile Arts, who handed a letterpress print of the poem out to attendees of the Pikes Peak Pride parade.

[alwaystochocolate]

Love this strip

[alwaystochocolate]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[alwaystochocolate]

Robins with robins with robins or something like that

[alwaystochocolate]

Douglas Adams

[alwaystochocolate]

“Lilo and Stitch” 2002

Deleted Scene

Lilo plays a trick on the tourists.

[alwaystochocolate]

Mulan + Scenery

[alwaystochocolate]

The first rule of Fight Club is that fights can neither be created nor destroyed

[alwaystochocolate]

No tech CEO or NYT bestselling novelist will ever match the creativity of a humble French postman who decided on a whim to spend thirty-three years building a surreal, majestic palace with the bricks and mortar of his dreams.

[alwaystochocolate]

hi gang. reminder that we are some of the best sweaters in the animal kingdom (second only to equines) allowing us to stay cool and keep moving in hot weather. we have 10 times the density of sweat glands compared to other great apes.

we are ALSO insanely good at smelling rain (specifically geosmin, found in the soil and activated by rain) with the ability to smell 10 parts per trillion. this is speculated to have helped our ancestors survive!

we ALSO have absolutely batshit diets compared to most other animals. caffeine and chocolate are completely toxic to most animals but we can eat it without even feeling sick. even avocados are severely toxic to many animals to the point where it can be fatal to eat, but humans love it!!!

we are ALSO the best endurance runners ON EARTH out of ANY other species. we beat horses in endurance running. you know, the animals that gradually evolved away most of their toes in order to be the best runners?? yeahhh.

and to top it all off. our lifespan is unusually long for our species' weight/mass. typically, the bigger a species is, the longer its average lifespan (e.g. weasels live for 1-2 years, whales can live over 200) but we're very small for how long our average lifespan is. big cats like tigers live around 14-15 years, brown bears 25 years, yet here we are expected to live around 75-85 years. that is NUTS.

humans as a species are so extremely cool. it's not just our intellect that makes us amazing. we may not be the fastest or the strongest in the animal kingdom but we're super cool in many other ways. next time you sweat you can go wow!!! humans are so cool I'm able to keep moving because of my absolutely insane number of sweat glands! thank you evolution!