thewolfofthestars - Tumblr blog

[thewolfofthestars]

I'm throwing an edging party and no you are not allowed to come.

[thewolfofthestars]

Y’know what…

Yeah. I want my tax dollars to pay for the healthcare of the person who started smoking and kept smoking because they think it looks cool and doesn’t give a shit about all the warnings. I want my tax dollars to pay for the healthcare of the person who destroyed their liver because they just love drinking and didn’t stop even if they weren’t addicted. I want my tax dollars to pay for the healthcare of the person who never drinks water, only regular cola. I want my tax dollars to pay for the healthcare of the person who missed the trampoline when they jumped off the roof to impress their friends. I want my tax dollars to pay for the healthcare of every single person who had to have a surgeon remove something without a flared base from their assholes. I want my tax dollars to pay for all the kinds healthcare needed by all the kinds of people who decided to have sex without any kind of barrier. I want my tax dollars to help fix the teeth of meth users. I want my tax dollars to help everyone who’s been noncompliant with the doctor’s recommendations, everyone who’s been a hypochondriac in the ER, everyone who let things get bad before getting help.

Everyone is deserving. 

[thewolfofthestars]

do you have, among your many guides, anything for How To Do Taxes without paying some shithead company $200?

I do not because taxes are a nightmare; i looked into trying to create a guide and realized I could cause people for-realsies problems because the system is set up to change regularly and trip you up.

I do know that as of 2024 if you make under $79k a year there is a free file option with the IRS: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free

I want to be clear: doing taxes is a fucking nightmare and I hate it, filling out the forms is confusing and upsetting and seems to be worded in the hardest to understand way possible. But I also just sit down and fill out the forms and do the math with no other software; I do not generally pay people to do my taxes because I sit down and do the paperwork myself (or ask Large Bastard to do it because he's better at reading numbers correctly; emotionally I'm more likely to cry and he's more likely to rage-quit so it's a wash on that end).

The IRS website has a step-by-step guide: https://www.irs.gov/how-to-file-your-taxes-step-by-step

The way that I do ANYTHING that I don't know how to do is:

Look up a step by step set of instructions

Search anything that I don't understand in those instructions and research until I've got a handle on it then rewrite that information in a way that I understand it

Read through the instructions from beginning to end, double-checking that I know what each term means

Make sure that I've got everything that the instructions call for in front of me

Follow the instructions step by step; if I get stopped or have a problem I will search the problem using combinations of key terms until I figure out an approach and will try various approaches until that works and I get to the next step

IF I CAN'T GET PAST THAT STEP I call for help from someone who knows this better than I do.

Continue following steps miserably until I am done and can wash my hands of the mess and/or test results.

This is how I learn to cook things and fix cars and thread sewing machines and put trim line in weed whackers and do taxes. Find instructions, make sure I understand instructions, make sure I have everything required for the project, follow instructions, make sure I've got a phone-a-friend handy, and check my work after.

It's not very specific advice for taxes, but it's how I do new stuff (or stuff that isn't new but that I find confusing every time, like taxes).

[thewolfofthestars]

[thewolfofthestars]

A Constant Hum (found in a derelict factory)

[thewolfofthestars]

i think rice with things on it & also some sort of sauce is like basically the best food genre tbh

[thewolfofthestars]

you know how people say soup is round and so it's messed up to put it in a square tupperware? that's how I feel every time I see a square watch

[thewolfofthestars]

one frustrating element of the new content bans on gumroad and patreon is that they're doing it to stay in line with their payment processors' policies, which themselves are in place to stay in line with FOSTA-SESTA.

which is a law passed in the united states, a country of which i am not a citizen and in which i do not live. i was legally prohibited from voting for or against FOSTA-SESTA, but because the platforms and payment providers i use are based there, i am expected to comply with it anyway.

and the tiktok situation shows us that any platform based outside the US can and will be either blocked from operating within it or forcibly divested from its foreign owners.

this is just another facet of american empire, by the way. it's more than bombs and guns and client states: it's that the US leverages its dominance over technology and finance to set policy for, effectively, the entire world.

[thewolfofthestars]

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024

[thewolfofthestars]

This is.....niche. Do period-appropriate chickens even still exist? Idk anything about chickens. I like the fancy ones.

[thewolfofthestars]

[thewolfofthestars]

Absurdist time loop where a guy gets stuck in a time loop for absolutely no apparent reason and tries all this crazy shit and dies a bunch of times and completely reforms his life and then suddenly gets spat out the other side on a completely average loop with no idea what he did that finally fixed it and the answer is like. There was this one (1) ant that he kept stepping on every cycle without even noticing and he doesn’t notice on the last one either he just stopped for an extra three seconds bc he dropped something or whatever. And then didn’t step on the ant. Either the ant is a wizard or a wizard enchanted it to live forever just to see what would happen. The point is the man never knows about it. As far as this guy is aware time just stopped working for six months and then just as randomly started again. He can speak Portuguese and play the viola now.

[thewolfofthestars]

[thewolfofthestars]

oopsie! You got a bit too manic about a creative project too close to bedtime and now your brain is too awake to sleep. One million dead 10 morbillion injured

[thewolfofthestars]

Hey fanfic writers, if you find yourself getting a bit worked up about stats on your works on ao3 and things like kudos and hits, I recommend writing fanfic for the most obscure thing you can think of. Just - something gloriously obscure. A movie made in 1982 you can’t even stream anymore. A poem. A painting. Two of the rarest pairs in an already tiny fandom. The three way marriage between Snap, Crackle, and Pop. It’s freeing, knowing no one is going to read or care. Truly.