#ecological well-being

[wellhealthhub]

Unveiling the Culprits: Understanding What Bothers You and Why?

What bothers you and why? Title: The Enigmatic Connection: The Intricate Link Between Your Values and What Troubles You Prepare to embark on a bewildering journey into the depths of your psyche as we unravel the perplexing correlation between your values and the things that irk you. Explore the enigmatic world of personal growth and purpose by decoding how your values shape your deepest…

[revlushaun]

that one post about "dungeon meshi is good because it had time to be good!" (which was a lie about the timeline it was produced in being exceptional) completely misses that dungeon meshi is uniquely good because ryoko kui doesnt rely on tropes and archetypes to explain her world building or characters, and actively subverts what tropes and archetypes characters would be linked to based on their appearance or in-world race or status. the fight for good working conditions has no bearing on how often writers are lazy in their world building and characters relying on tropes, and the fight for good working conditions is irrelevant to how good a piece of media is. you can look to something like harry potter as an example, i dont exactly think harry potter was made in crunch culture but theres a hell of a lot of problems with that piece of media explained away by literal sorting of characters into the good house and the bad house and using racial stereotypes like with the goblins or the offensive naming schemes for non-white characters.

falin looks like damsel in distress at a first glance but it was her sacrifice to be eaten, shes extremely powerful, and shes a weird little kid who played in the dirt who not many people understand, not some delicate princess needed to be saved by her big brother in shining armor. marcille is extremely ditzy and makes stupid mistakes like pouring boiling water, and instead of being the prissy academic the entire time who plays by the book she uses banished magic to save her friends, and the entire reason shes on the journey is she questions the powers above her dictating what magic should and should not be used for, and her lack of out of book knowledge gets questioned by the others instead of relied on. senshi ran away from the typical dwarf role, not caring for gold over the livelihood of his party and being actively good mannered. instead of making the half foots cowardly because of size, for chilchuck its just a logical thing to not fight if you would be in the way and stick to what your body can and cannot do, except he constantly has to help in combat situations to the best of his ability and starts to learn to care about his friends (and also he looks young but is actually a middle-aged alcoholic dad). normally cat women get represented with some sort of sexual air to them for some reason? but izutsumi makes it very explicit she is a cat, she makes a comment about how no one would be interested in a beastman and strips openly (not realizing laios is a monster maniac and not a perv that would want a sexy cat lady), her mannerisms are catlike instead of stuff like catwoman or 80s catra from she-ra. the other characters also still kind of subvert tropes and it never feels these are characters that stick to some archetype out of comfort and familiarity. the dwarven women dont have dramatic size differences and dont feel like caricatures, shuro is meant to show the problems with a stoic, cant express, overly dedicated to the girl of his dreams character, and thistle isnt just some evil presence for the sake of being evil but instead wanting to keep everything perfect in his eyes. kabru's party being foils makes his group feel like the party you would see in mainstream media too, stuff like his people sense and chosen one past of his old village and raised by elves, or mickbell being the little kid of the group.

another thing i want to mention specifically is the orcs. instead of relying on racist pan-indigenous stereotypes she engages with how they were the victims of elven colonization and that their way of life was suddenly deemed not okay, but elves displacing their homes with violence is somehow socially acceptable. I also REALLY like that the orcs use terms like brutish and s*vage to describe the main party instead of the main party using those words against the orcs, it made me chuckle about the breath of fresh air that provided. i dont think it handles orcs perfectly but its far better than other media that rely on racial stereotypes without unique world building. it even shows marcille's bias as an elf, the "who was here first" dialogue reflects that whole "no one is really indigenous, the dinosaurs were here first!" but replace dinos with zombies. theres a film called "reel injun" that goes more into how indigenous peoples are constantly either these brutish characters or the "noble s*vage" that has some sort of otherworldly connection to nature, usually to prop up the main characters for being "typical" white cishet christian characters like a cowboys and indians or an evangelical kind of way.

im someone who doesnt watch a lot of mainstream popular media because in my head the characters and story feel predictable and reliant on tropes. im very aware im picky with media and i stick to my comfort zone, but it also kind of feels like if i were to watch some mainstream media like star wars or harry potter, it would go as i can predict it would with all the pop culture knowledge id gained before ever watching those things as a kid. the hero is some chosen one, the bad guys are bad because the plot says so, the characters are some version of some archetype... perhaps im wrong, and maybe it doesnt necessarily mean that a piece of media is bad or boring, but i find dungeon meshi so nice to watch because nothing feels super predictable and you have to learn people's characters and morals instead of: this is the studious prissy one, this is the main character guy, this is the pan-indigenous race that is inherently brutal to people or mystical with nature, this is the tiny coward who doesnt fight cause hes scared and a big softy, this is the big dwarf that wants gold and minerals and has no manners, this is the evil lord of the dungeon that wants to destroy everything, etc.

(i also think the subversion of archetypes in dungeon meshi is why ive seen so much of it even though most of what i follow on tumblr is for hot queer guys or cute nintendo stuff, because if your identity itself subverts what is assumed of your body's archetype in cishet white christian society, youre likely going to enjoy the stuff that doesnt follow that a little bit more.)

[becoming-with]

“Inspired by paradigms of wholeness and purity, our conception of psychological healing often comes to us heavy with metaphors of cleanliness and subtraction. Remove the trauma. Make a boundary. Identify the inciting incident. Disentangle it from your other parts. Separate, analyze, quantify, medicate. A patient is a fiction created by a conceptual framework with its foundation in capitalism and colonialism. A patient is a single self that can untie itself from the world and then granulate into a distinct pointillism of traumatic events, parental missteps, and pathologies. Analysis and diagnosis themselves are terms that, when we break them down to their roots, –imply just that - “breaking down”. Analysis comes from “analyein” meaning to “unfasten” “unmoor a ship”. A patient is isolated, unmoored, in a fictional idea of selfhood that is hardly seaworthy. Diagnosis, similarly, comes from the Greek roots “dia” and “gignoskein” meaning to obtain knowledge by separating it off from the rest of the world. Knowledge through separation, through rupture, through atomization. There is no better diagnosis for our culture’s ecocidal madness than the root of the word diagnosis itself. How do we possibly think we can understand any thing, being, ecosystem, pathology, uprooted, unmoored from its web of relationality? How do we treat a psychological breakdown with another break down? We are atomized out of community, out of our distributed bodies and intelligences that might have an easier time holding grief and pain too big for single selves. If we are always playing mental forensics with ourselves, increasingly stuck in a solipsistic feedback loop of self investigation, we often loose touch with the real knowledge.”

Sophie Strand, Texere-Diagnosis

[cross-border-communications]

The Magic of Street-Side Trees. Beauty, Coolness, and Urban Prosperity.

The beauty, coolness, and urban prosperity brought by street-side trees.

Trees lining urban streets are integral elements of the urban landscape, serving multiple ecological roles and socio-economic functions. In general, incorporating trees along the roads in urban areas can elevate the aesthetic appeal, regulate temperatures, and foster prosperity growth. And if our goal is to enhance the role of cities in driving economic growth and fully utilizing human resources, then we must prioritize making tangible improvements to urban environments.

Trees are crucial components for creating appealing and hospitable urban environments that enhance citizens' psychological and social well-being. They play a vital role in reducing air temperature and humidity, which helps alleviate the effects of heat waves and global warming. Trees bear witness to the history, culture, and identity of cities, which they preserve and pass on to future generations. In addition to their undeniable beauty, trees are valuable allies in the fight against climate change.

They provide a range of local benefits that are often ignored beyond the global role of absorbing carbon dioxide. This article aims to increase awareness among readers about the importance of trees for cities and the planet. It seeks to motivate all of us to value, preserve, and protect the urban tree heritage through a participatory and accountable manner that involves citizens and institutions.

Street-side trees are more than just beautiful to look at. They are an essential resource for cities, providing numerous benefits to residents' health, well-being, and quality of life. In their article on Monocolo, Paolo Massi and Giulia Papaleo highlight the main advantages of trees in urban areas. La magia degli alberi lungo le strade. Bellezza, frescura e prosperità urbana

Among the benefits that trees bring to the urban environment, we can mention:

Trees perform ecological, social, and economic functions that contribute to the well-being and development of cities. They help to reduce air pollution by capturing particles, filtering harmful gases, and producing oxygen. Trees also absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, making them beneficial for climate change mitigation. Additionally, trees create shade, cool the air, and reduce energy consumption for cooling buildings. They prevent flooding, improve water quality, and increase biodiversity by providing shelter and food for many species. Trees enhance the urban landscape, mitigate noise, and even increase the value of properties.

Moreover, they promote physical and mental health by stimulating physical activity, reducing stress, and improving mood and concentration.

Therefore, roadside trees are a valuable resource for cities and their inhabitants. It is critical to protect, care for, and increase them through various means, such as public policies, private actions, and guaranteed maintenance over time, recognizing their fundamental role in the quality of urban life so that maintenance, which develops jobs, in particular, is 'guaranteed' over time,

Urban forestation and eco-neighborhoods.

Urban forestation refers to designing and creating green spaces in urban and peri-urban areas to incorporate nature into the landscape. It is important to both develop new green spaces and enhance existing ones.

Eco-neighborhoods serve as an example of sustainable and livable urban environments. They are designed considering the environment and the health of their residents. Sustainability principles are followed to improve the landscape and economic assets of the urban context. The design of an environmentally sustainable neighborhood aims to reduce its environmental impact during construction, throughout its life cycle, and even during decommissioning while prioritizing the comfort of its residents. These neighborhoods are built to improve people's quality of life by emphasizing energy conservation, renewable energy, environmentally friendly materials, reducing water and waste consumption, and promoting sustainable mobility. They are tangible parts of the city that contribute to the well-being of its inhabitants.

In addition, urban forestation is another example of how urban environments can be made more livable and sustainable. We can seamlessly blend nature into the urban landscape by integrating street trees, gardens, and parks. They represent elements of nature that help purify the air we breathe, capturing pollutants, storing carbon, and mitigating the climate of cities.

In summary, street-side trees are not just a decorative element but a proper green infrastructure that improves the quality of urban life. Therefore, It is vital to encourage planting, caring for, and preserving trees in urban areas, with the participation of government institutions, businesses, and residents, in order to achieve a shared vision to promote sustainable progress.

🟠 Italiano

Intro

Gli alberi sono elementi essenziali per creare paesaggi urbani attraenti e accoglienti, che favoriscono il benessere psicologico e sociale dei cittadini. contribuiscono a ridurre la temperatura e l'umidità dell'aria, mitigando gli effetti delle ondate di calore e del riscaldamento globale. Essi sono testimoni della storia, della cultura e dell'identità delle città, che conservano e trasmettono alle generazioni future. Alleati nella lotta ai cambiamenti climatici, oltre alla loro innegabile bellezza offrono una serie di benefici locali che spesso tendiamo a trascurare (al di là dei benefici globali di assorbimento dell’anidride carbonica). Questo articolo quindi ha lo scopo di sensibilizzare i lettori sull'importanza degli alberi per le città e per il pianeta, invitandoli a conoscere, apprezzare e tutelare il patrimonio arboreo urbano coinvolgendo i cittadini e le istituzioni in un processo partecipativo e responsabile.

La magia degli alberi lungo le strade. Bellezza, frescura e prosperità urbana.

Gli alberi sono una risorsa preziosa per le città, non solo per il loro contributo alla mitigazione dei cambiamenti climatici, ma anche per i molteplici benefici che apportano alla salute, al benessere e alla qualità della vita dei cittadini. In questo articolo del Monocolo gli autori Paolo Massi e Giulia Papaleo, vogliono illustrare alcuni dei principali vantaggi che gli alberi offrono alle aree urbane e alle persone che le abitano. La magia degli alberi lungo le strade. Bellezza, frescura e prosperità urbana

La magia degli alberi lungo le strade dunque non si limita alla loro estetica. Gli alberi sono elementi essenziali per il benessere e lo sviluppo delle città, in quanto svolgono funzioni ecologiche, sociali ed economiche. Tra i vantaggi che gli alberi apportano all'ambiente urbano, possiamo citare:

Riduzione dell'inquinamento atmosferico: gli alberi catturano le particelle sospese nell'aria, filtrano i gas nocivi e producono ossigeno.

Mitigazione del cambiamento climatico: gli alberi assorbono il carbonio dall'atmosfera e lo immagazzinano nel loro legno, contribuendo a ridurre l'effetto serra.

Regolazione termica: gli alberi creano ombra e rinfrescano l'aria attraverso la traspirazione, diminuendo la temperatura e il consumo energetico per il raffreddamento degli edifici.

Conservazione del suolo e dell'acqua: gli alberi riducono l'erosione del suolo, aumentano la sua capacità di infiltrazione e ritardano il deflusso delle acque piovane, prevenendo le inondazioni e migliorando la qualità dell'acqua.

Incremento della biodiversità: gli alberi offrono rifugio e cibo a molte specie animali e vegetali, arricchendo la diversità biologica delle città.

Valorizzazione del paesaggio urbano: gli alberi creano scenari naturali, armonizzano l'architettura, attenuano il rumore e aumentano il valore immobiliare delle proprietà.

Promozione della salute e del benessere umano: gli alberi favoriscono la salute fisica e mentale delle persone, stimolando l'attività fisica, riducendo lo stress, migliorando l'umore e la concentrazione.

Gli alberi e le aiuole a verde lungo le strade sono quindi una risorsa preziosa per le città e i loro abitanti. Per questo motivo, è importante proteggerli, curarli e incrementarli, attraverso politiche pubbliche e azioni private che ne riconoscano il ruolo fondamentale per la qualità della vita urbana affinché la manutenzione, che sviluppa posti di lavoro, in particolare venga 'garantita' nel tempo.

La forestazione urbana e gli ecoquartieri

Con il termine forestazione urbana si intende la progettazione e lo sviluppo di aree verdi urbane e periurbane, facendo della natura un'importante protagonista di questo paesaggio. Chiaramente è importante non solo progettare e sviluppare nuove aree verdi, ma anche rivalorizzare e riappropriarsi di quelle esistenti.

Certo! Gli ecoquartieri sono un esempio di ambienti urbani sostenibili e vivibili. Sono quartieri costruiti nel rispetto dell’equilibrio ambientale e della salute delle persone che vi abitano. Sono conformi ai principi della sostenibilità e puntano alla valorizzazione del patrimonio paesaggistico ed economico del contesto urbano in cui sono inseriti. La progettazione di un quartiere ecosostenibile punta a ridurne l’impatto ambientale: dalla fase di costruzione, al ciclo di vita, fino alla sua dismissione, senza mai dimenticare il comfort di chi lo vive. Si tratta di vere e proprie porzioni di città edificate con l’obiettivo di innalzare il livello di qualità della vita e sono realizzate ponendo l’accento su: risparmio energetico; uso delle energie rinnovabili e di materiale ecologico; riduzione del consumo di acqua e di rifiuti; promozione della mobilità sostenibile.

Inoltre, la forestazione urbana è un altro esempio di come gli ambienti urbani possono essere resi più vivibili e sostenibili. Le alberature stradali, i giardini e i parchi urbani rappresentano degli elementi di natura che contribuiscono a purificare l’aria che respiriamo, catturando sostanze inquinanti, immagazzinando carbonio e mitigando il clima delle città.

Come si può notare, gli alberi lungo le strade non sono solo un elemento decorativo, ma una vera e propria infrastruttura verde che migliora la qualità della vita urbana. Per questo motivo, è importante promuovere la piantumazione, la manutenzione e la protezione degli alberi nelle città, coinvolgendo le amministrazioni pubbliche, le imprese e i cittadini in una visione condivisa di sviluppo sostenibile.

images created by The Board Behind © 2023

More related topics on this matter you might like:

Landscape Architecture: self-reflection on improving and enhancing our cities' run-down suburbs. English /Italian

Give color to the city to celebrate the joy of living.

I appreciate your kind presence and attention on this matter. Thank you for joining us today.

⏩ The Board Behind

[twistthesinews-writes]

First chapter of my Les Mis ecology grad school AU just posted! Come check out all the different ways I can shamelessly project on these characters.

Story-wise, featuring: Grantaire has a very shitty day followed by a very irritating morning. Enjolras acquires a cause.

Author's notes wise, featuring: opinions on French presses and strong opinions on ways to include code in a paper's supplemental materials.

[neverfeltthewinterquitesodead]

i imagine a world where people enjoy the beauty and uniqueness of their native plants instead of planting the same Approved plants everywhere one goes ....

[pansy-buttercups]

MUSHROOMS IN THE GARDEN BED🍄

(Garden Tips Tuesday #1)

🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙

Ft. This little guy in my starter tray <3

First off if you find a mushroom in your garden beds or containers, DONT FREAK OUT! No you didn't do anything wrong, and nothing bad is going on. I think a lot of gardeners that just started out panic at the sight of a capped stalk in their beds because they think it means their soil is messed up or that mushroom will make their plants ill. That was definitely my first reaction a couple years ago the first time a mushroom popped up in one of my containers. Mushrooms and Fungi however are actually a good sign (Normally)!!

What are mushrooms and what do they mean????

Mushrooms and Fungi while not being plants have a couple similar system. Fungi are often complex systems that can span for miles underground in a fine delicate networks called mycelium. These systems can go hundreds of years underground, but only sprout their fruiting bodies (which we call mushrooms) when conditions are right for them to emerge.

And these conditions that make it right for mushrooms to pop out also makes it the right condition for your plants usually. Mushrooms thrive on humidity, moisture, shade, but most importantly decaying organic matter in your soil. Mushrooms help break down the matter in your soil and help make it more accessible for your plants! They are also useful in remedying soil of contaminates, such as oil, heavy metals, pesticides and apparently even bits of radioactive waste. Here's an article that goes way more in depth on how mushrooms are used in land restoration projects:

The relationship between Fungi and Plants:

Finally this is less of a gardening thing and more of an environmental thing, however it still applies. Fungi and plants often share the same ecosystem, and beyond that some share resources too! Why? Simply because they both have something the other needs. Mycelium as previously mentioned breaks down organic matter using enzymes into usable nutrients for themselves. The kind that breaks down dead organic matter for their own use are called Saprophytic fungi and are responsible for recycling our dead organisms. There are however fungi called mycorrhizal fungi that do not live by this method and instead thrive on their symbiotic relationship with plants. Plants have one very important thing the fungi requires which is the sugars they produce through photosynthesis, and the plants require the complex nutrients that only fungi can give them. So the mycelium colonizes the tips of the plants roots and they pass resources back and forth, however mycelium sprawl and connect to other plants meaning these resources also get shared between plants. This also them help keep the balance between an ecosystem by sharing the nutrients of healthier plants to those that are struggling. The large network that communicates nutrients, moisture, and even chemical signals between plants and mycelium is referred to as a mycorrhizal network.

The dozen threats to the network:

The mycelium network however is very delicate often, and human activity often poses a threat to these important fragile systems. There is no short list of threats to mushrooms listing from the already harmful herbicides, fungicides, certain fertilizers, to logging which is a major detriment due to the compaction from both heavy machine and foot traffic and from the damage that comes with removing the stumps. There is however one thing a lot of gardeners do that often damage mycelium networks and that is tilling soil! Along with disrupting the network tilling already has a dozen problems it causes (Which ill probably be writing about as well in a later post). All of these things can lead to the rapidly decay of a proper mycelium network which can sudden cause harm to surrounding plants and trees that relied on them.

How to be a mutual friend to the Mycelium! :

There are however a lot of things you can also do to help promote your fungal friends! Try to avoiding disrupting the soil in your garden as much as much as possible, and looking into no-till alternatives! Leave out lots of organic matter such as fallen leaves, fallen logs, bark, straw, hay, woodchips, basically anything organic and dead. I believe the organic matter my mushroom in the starter tray liked was the coco coir which is also common mushroom cultivation substrate. Fungi also heavily appreciate humidity and shade so make sure to keep the soil around any mushrooms that pop up a fair bit damp. Lastly when you're not gardening and instead out hiking perhaps try to stay on the path to avoid compacting the earth over where precious mycelium is keeping the environment balanced and thriving!

So next time you see a mushroom pop out in your garden be sure to give it a little thank you for keeping the soil nice and helping your plants :)

[ocdhuacheng]

I love my mom but she’s such a fucking liberal

[macabrity]

absolutely delectable start to my morning: woke up before 8 and showered, then got to spend a beauteous hour of alone time in the kitchen getting it all cleaned for the day (while listening to Swedish folk music), and capped it off with chopping up my compost ingredients so they’re all ready to go once I bring home the composter today! :3

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[turtlesandfrogs]

What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn't have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.

The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.

The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.

The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we're just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.

The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn't being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.

So that's cool. If you want to read more, I suggest "Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America" by Nancy J. Turner

[ersatz-anomaly]

Imagine wanting large dangerous creatures around that make going outside to the bins 50/50 on if you’ll return home in one piece

[thrivingisthegoal]

Golf Courses ARE Being Converted

The Solarpunk "fantasy" that so many of us tout as a dream vision, converting golf courses into ecological wonderlands, is being implemented across the USA according to this NYT article!

The article covers courses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, and New York that are being bought and turned into habitat and hiking trails.

The article goes more into detail about how sand traps are being turned into sand boxes for kids, endangered local species are being planted, rocks for owl habitat are being installed, and that as these courses become wilder, they are creating more areas for biodiversity to thrive.

Most of the courses in transition are being bought by Local Land Trusts. Apparently the supply of golf courses in the USA is way over the demand, and many have been shut down since the early 2000s. While many are bought up and paved over, land Trusts have been able to buy several and turn them into what the communities want: public areas for people and wildlife. It does make a point to say that not every hold course location lends itself well to habitat for animals (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make great housing!)

So lets be excited by the fact that people we don't even know about are working on the solutions we love to see! Turning a private space that needs thousands of gallons of water and fertilizer into an ecologically oriented public space is the future I want to see! I can say when I used to work in water conservation, we were getting a lot of clients that were golf courses that were interested in cutting their resource input, and they ended up planting a lot of natives! So even the golf courses that still operate could be making an effort.

So what I'd encourage you to do is see if there's any land or community trusts in your area, and see if you can get involved! Maybe even look into how to start one in your community! Through land trusts it's not always golf course conversions, but community gardens, solar fields, disaster adaptation, or low cost housing! (Here's a link to the first locator I found, but that doesn't mean if something isn't on here it doesn't exist in your area, do some digging!)

[engineeringeconomicshub]

Embracing Degrowth: Pros and Cons of a Paradigm Shift in Economic Thinking.

In a world driven by the pursuit of constant economic growth, the concept of degrowth challenges the status quo, proposing an alternative framework that prioritizes sustainability, well-being, and ecological balance over perpetual expansion. This article explores the nuanced landscape of degrowth, examining its potential benefits and drawbacks in reshaping our approach to economic…

[bumblebeebobcat]

my blog is a year old today no wayyyy

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.