Corner of Bourbon & Division

Someone on Facebook posted earlier today that the wealthy (the post said billionaires, but I'm willing to bet other ultra-wealthy people whose net work is "only" in the tens or hundreds of millions also profit this way) profit off of stock market volatility, and honestly, that tracks as the youths are saying these days. (Actually, I'm not sure the youths are using that expression either, I might be a few years out of date on that one too). Trump declares tariffs, the markets tank, wealthy people buy up stock at low prices. The next day Trump declares no more tariffs, the markets pick up, the wealthy have now made a tidy profit.

Barf.

The weather also doesn't know what to do with itself, which is fairly typical for the beginning of March. We've had snow, freezing rain, rain, clear blue skies, warm weather and freezing weather all within less than 26 hours. It's been changing its mind more than Trump has, and that's saying something! Today when I tried to go to work for the early shift my entire car was frozen shut, and the windshield cover I use on my car had actually frozen closed over the side mirrors (it has drawstrings that close around the side mirrors that are great 99% of the time because it keeps the cover from blowing around), and it took forever to get it off as well as chip away enough ice to actually get in my car in order to get my scraper out. What a shitshow. Luckily this is a fairly rare weather coincidence, so hopefully I won't have to deal with it anymore this year, or at least only a handful of times before spring sets in.

In politics-adjacent news, I've been having conflicting feelings about continuing to post on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. LJ is, of course, owned by Russians, and DW has all its information hosted in the USA, which makes me worry a little about what's going to happen to all of the posts and data if more draconian laws come into play. I'm trying to divest as much from anything US-related as possible, and that is probably going to include a lot of my online activities.

I'm still trying to figure out how to divest from social media companies that are overwhelmingly American without sacrificing my connections with friends (my family is mostly not online) and my connection to alternative news sources and help networks. I know so many people online who are wonderful and amazing whom I consider close friends even though I've never met a lot of them in person, and I have a lot of IRL friends who now live far away from me and with whom I basically only have contact online. I don't think Canada HAS a social media platform to speak of. Right now I have accounts on a number of platforms: Discord (not social media exactly, but close), Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok. All but the latter are owned by the US, and the latter is great in some ways and problematic AF in others.

Not for the first time I kind of wish I had learned how to program beyond the basic html shit I learned specifically for LJ back in 2002. ;) I'd be fine with trying to create my own social media platform, even if it was kind of small and janky if it means I could keep all my friends in my pocket like before but without supporting US corporations or sacrificing my data to shitty actors. I suppose I could always try to learn to program an app in my copious amounts of spare time. To be fair, I do have spare time, I am just bad at using it efficiently.

I have always wanted to be one of those highly organized, highly efficient people to whom others look and say "My God, I don't know how she manages it all!" However, I have to be content with people side-eyeing me and probably saying things like "It's honestly amazing she manages to tie her shoes on a regular basis." (Joke's on them, 3/4 of my shoes are slip-ons!) I have a fair number of "extra" hours in the week, but those usually get frittered away either in decision paralysis or general task initiation paralysis, or just because I can't force myself out of bed early on the weekends anymore because I'm never not tired. (My sleep test is in eight days and I am way too excited about it!)

In related news, I've started reading a new book which looks super promising. It's called Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), and so far it has done an excellent job of defining mutual aid, what is is and what it isn't. The next part of the book is meant to have practical advice on how to start mutual aid or at least get involved, and I am excited to get into it. As usual, my brain isn't letting me read particularly quickly, so I may run out of time before the book has to go back to the library. That being said, if I like the book enough, I may buy myself a copy for future reference.

Okay, time to put this disjointed post out of its misery. Tomorrow I am off to visit my parents and I don't know how late I'll be back home, but hopefully I will be home in time to not break my posting streak. See you on the flip side, friends!

As most of you no doubt know, Dr. George Tiller was murdered yesterdaywhile attending his church.

Now, I don't usually care what people's politics are. As I've said before, I'm anti-abortion, but pro-choice. I don't like the fact that abortions are necessary, but I firmly believe that it's every woman's choice to make.

This killing? This was murder. This was the murder of a good man, who not only stood up for his convictions, but lived by them, every single day. He went out of his way to perform a service for women that many others could not, and would not perform. Calling him a mass-murderer is, as lightcastle put it, a particular flavour of viciousness. It's not subtle to encourage people to invade people's sanctuaries, no matter how you try to couch your threats in terms of "peaceful" protest.

I don't know if it makes it somehow more heinous that someone violated holy ground in order to perpetrate the murder. The act itself was so heinous that I am hard-put to see how it could be made more so, but whoever the suspect is, he certainly gave it the good old college try.

Every time I think we might be going forward, something like this happens.

:::ETA:::

Here are a few posts by friends of mine, both of which offer particular insight into the matter:

Meallanmouse's perspective, as the daughter of an ob-gyn, with useful links too.

Lisa Small's entry, complete with links.

I have been doing far more thinking than is probably good for me in the past month or two. Some of this has revolved around the spiritual aspect of my life, and a lot of it has revolved around my sense of personal and civic responsibility: namely, what kind of responsibility should I take upon myself in the face of the problems I can see facing both myself and society as I know it.

Allow me to ramble a bit about the environmental and social crises which have me the most concerned. This is not meant to be an exhaustive essay, so there will be no documentation to back up what I'm saying. Nor is this meant to be a politcal post, so even if you think I'm spouting a bunch of liberal rhetorical garbage, while you are welcome to your opinion, bear in mind that I'm not going to engage in debate with you on the topic. Just sayin'.

The environment is in crisis. In fact, the earth is in crisis. The whole planet is warming up at an alarming rate, the weather has gone batshit crazy, the icebergs are melting faster than a snow cone in Arizona in July, there are smog alerts everywhere you turn, oil slicks on the oceans hundreds of kilometers wide, and every day hundreds of species of animals and insects of which we've never even heard go exinct.

If I say the words "peak oil," I know that a good number of the people on my flist will roll their eyes heavenwords and call me an alarmist freak. I don't think I am, though. We're running out of our main source of fuel and energy production, and when I think of all the things we have and do that are directly dependent on petroleum products, my mind boggles: food, water, transportation, everyday household appliances, computers, telephones, hell, even our clothes, all either contain some sort of petroleum product, or are produced using petroleum.

Factor in that, with the arrival of China on the car market, we're adding about half a billion extra cars to the world, which will require oil to make, maintain, and to run, and we've got ourselves one hell of an interesting product.

In another few years, we'll be 7.5 billion people on this planet. The words "carrying capacity" are also the words of alarmist freaks, but I'm not so sure the concept can be so easily dismissed. Our current mode of production, complete with waste and overconsumption in industrialized countries, is going to get us into trouble sooner rather than later.


Which brings me back to, well, me. Here I am, puttering along, only now truly starting to be ecologically responsible, trying to reduce my ecological footprint, etc. So far, so good. I'm still driving a car many days of the week, and I daresay that most of my lifestyle is probably hell on the environment, in spite of my efforts to recycle, to compost, to whatever.

Apart from personally becoming a hippy freak (and I mean that in the kindest way possible), I'm worried that I'm really not doing enough. In essence, I'm not doing my part at all. It won't matter in two years that I've been recycling and walking and composting. Not if the entire world carries on as it has been up until now. Leading through example is great, but it's not enough.

As someone said the other day, it would take internation cooperation at the same level as that seen during World War II to make sure we don't destroy ourselves. Whether it's in two years or ten or even twenty, I am pretty sure that we're seeing the end of the world as we know it (not in an Armaggedon sense, but in a society-can't-carry-on-this-way sense). In our lifetime, society is going to change irrevocably, and right now our chances of surviving that change don't look good.

A few of my friends share this opinion. A few are putting together a contingency plan, to make sure we get through the bad times. I wonder, though, if it's not somewhat selfish of me not to try to raise the alarms elsewhere: to send letters and make phone calls to all the Candian political parties, to ring the bells and at least *try* to make things better. To participate in grassroots movements. To do something, anything, that might work. I can't and don't want to bury my head in the sand, and hope that the political leaders of Canada will somehow fix it. For all of Dion's pretty speeches, it's going to take consensus from all the parties, and all the provinces, that we need to make drastic changes to how this country is run, if we (and the rest of the world) are to have a fighting chance.

The problem is figuring out where to start.