This is real. I’ve had folks in my cab that clearly were trying to probe my boundaries to see if I’m an easy target who immediately switched gears the moment I showed my personality. Just because someone is desperate doesn’t mean they want to fuck over someone who’s cool with them and is real. The way you carry yourself makes a difference.

It’s pretty obvious if you meet me in person that I’m a broke artist who cares about real people and detests fake corporate bullshit. That’s not really an appealing target and I have fuck all to give them anyway.

But if some fuck shoots me for being on their street while being trans, or literally just someone they don’t recognize, I don’t get the chance to show how I carry myself.

As a late night cab driver, if you’re ever wondering why I’m on the street rather than the driveway in your sketchy, pickup truck filled suburban neighborhood, this is why.

Give me a shady looking industrial district or run down residential neighborhood over semi-rural suburbia any day of the week. I feel much safer.

I love reading, but the moment an author tries to guilt me into reading their particular viewpoint as though I’m just a slave of the system if I don’t, I check out. I have better things to do, and this person doesn’t have any right to my time.

How are your tube grubs?

Does this still happen? The last time this happened to me I think I was about 9 and they couldn’t have been much older. I think I was wearing a 311 shirt. And that was in like 1993 when ‘poser’ was just about the meanest thing you could call someone.

So one time I was homeless during the winter and it was below zero while I was stuck outside. I stuffed my jacket full of newspaper and hid out in a breezeway, but I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through the night. It was really, really cold.

The first business that opened was a bagel shop, and it was still subzero when it did. I went in, sat down, and refused to leave. They threatened to call the cops, I told them to go ahead and threatened suicide so they’d PC me and bring me to the hospital. That happened. The ER gave me a warm bed for a few hours and fed me; probably saved my life, certainly my sanity.

I hope the last part of that story isn’t a complete fluke. Getting warm shouldn’t require a morbidly clever exploitation of the emergency medical system for the sake of survival. I certainly would have welcomed someone showing up hours earlier and offering me a warm bed.

Also the cop who kicked me out of the ATM I’d taken shelter in could have just, you know… not.

I’ve lived on the sidewalk and dealt with the dehumanization involved in that. It’s certainly ugly. But I’ve also seen people who are legitimately terrifying for good reason. Like, randomly pulling a knife in a Starbucks while arguing with someone who isn’t there terrifying. Both of those situations require empathy, but the latter maybe also requires someone with a taser in case guy decides to get stabby. Personally, I’d rather that someone not be a cop, but the options are kind of slim in that department.

It’s not all one or the other.

Pointing fingers at one another in outrage on the internet probably won’t be the thing that helps though. Go buy somebody lunch.

I mean, obviously birth control is cheaper and easier for everyone, but that aside there should be as many as there needs to be. No one should have to carry a pregnancy to term against their will, and that shouldn’t be anyone else’s business or a political bargaining chip.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think the stronger argument to sway those on the fence is to emphasize that better access to birth control decreases abortions and banning abortion doesn’t actually reduce the abortion rate, it just makes it more dangerous. But like, that’s not why I take that position. Personal bodily autonomy is plenty of reason in my book, and I don’t feel a particular need to try to bring the number of abortions down.

But yeah, I’m sure it’s not a particularly fun medical procedure either.

A fifteen year old version of myself somewhere inside just screamed in iptscrae induced frustration.

You know, there’s a discordian game that seems pretty appropriate right now.

I honestly can’t stand slowly scrolling and waiting for the text to appear. What a terrible design choice.

Can we start archiving stuff somewhere that doesn’t block firefox?

Have you ever experienced actual snow? Like, four feet deep with a frozen crust on top? You’re not plowing that with your feet.

They won’t if you get rid of cars. Good luck plowing with a bike.

Skis would probably be more reasonable at certain times of year, but the terrain between cities isn’t exactly designed for skiing.

I know you want American infrastructure to not necessitate some sort of vehicle bigger than a bike, but it literally just does. Wanting it won’t make the change, and making unrealistic suggestions will remain just as ineffective as making no suggestions at all.

Accessibility is also more or less non-existent with these proposed solutions.

If you tried to bike in heavy snow here your entire tire would literally be buried. Especially if there were no plows.

There are, in fact, places that get real snow.

There’s some good information in this article, but I would have appreciated it being a little less of an ad for a podcast.

The title implies that we’re going to hear from scientists about their opinions, but all we actually get in its body is a single quote from one scientist as the literal tagline. Talk about clickbait.

In some places. But if you’re in a non-metropolitan area somewhere that it gets cold and snowy, you’re going to need a vehicle to bring you directly to your house unless maybe you’re downtown, and it’s going to need to have four wheel drive or at least enough weight to grip the snow.

I just want to, for a moment, shed some light on the mental disconnect here for Ms. Clifford.

This is a person who literally ran CNBC’s climate change desk. She is, then, ostensibly aware of all the same information any of the rest of us have about climate change.

And yet, she seems to think we can somehow have a world where everybody can casually fly to Istanbul or some other place they’ve never been every single year, and that’ll be sustainable. Or if she doesn’t think it’s sustainable, she’s still totally fine using her own financial position to do it anyway.

If this is how people who actually focus their careers on climate change think, we’re pretty fucked.

Have you not seen like, housing projects? High rises? Run down old apartments? Everybody who doesn’t have the kind of money you do doesn’t live like they do anyway. Like, in terms of transportation, I spend my whole work day driving people around who don’t really have the money to spend on a cab but have the money to spend on a car even less.

That doesn’t mean they manage to pretend they’re rich anyway, it means they make sacrifices you’ve probably never once in your life had to think about.

When they do splurge to make themselves briefly comfortable, it’s at the cost of more sacrifices that you don’t have to deal with anymore if you ever did. And then they get to deal with people rolling their eyes about how financially irresponsible they are.

Meanwhile the same people who make six figures are literally relying on people who make minimum wage in order to make their own lives convenient. And yet somehow that’s supposed to end up with everyone magically living like you?

You live in a fantasy world. Not everybody has the time or the money to prioritize spending several hours cooking. Not everybody is left with enough energy by the end of their minimum wage no benefit grind of a day that you expect them to tolerate in order to sustain your hunger for little conveniences like places to go buy fresh food to cook for your family.