Not Very New Hyperfixation Rediscovered Write A Poem Abt It

ngl, schwa is actually kinda mid.

Found a new language practice app!

Polygloss has you describe an image in your target language so another player can guess it. It encourages creative answers. The game works for people of all levels — you can describe simple pictures or try your hand at wordplay.

It has plenty of options and will let you add any language you’d like — tho it’ll probably be more difficult to find people to play with.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

bebe

Cats outrank EVERYTHING and EVERYONE

hey uh so I haven't seen anyone talking about this here yet, but

the amazon river, like the biggest river in the fucking world, in the middle of the amazon fucking rainforest, is currently going through its worst drought since the records began 121 years ago

picture from Folha PE

there's a lot going on but I haven't seen much international buzz around this like there was when the forest was on fire (maybe because it's harder to shift the narrative to blame brazil exclusively as if the rest of the world didn't have fault in this) so I wanted to bring this to tumblr's attention

I don't know too many details as I live in the other side of the country and we are suffering from the exact opposite (at least three cyclones this year, honestly have stopped counting - it's unusual for us to get hit by even one - floods, landslides, we have a death toll, people are losing everything to the water), but like, I as a brazilian have literally never seen pictures of the river like this before. every single city in the amazonas state is in a state of emergency as of november 1st.

pictures by Adriano Liziero (ig: geopanoramas)

we are used to seeing images of rio negro and solimões, the two main amazon river affluents, in all their grandiose and beauty and seeing these pictures is really fucking chilling. some of our news outlets are saying the solimões has turned to a sand desert... can you imagine this watery sight turning into a desert in the span of a year?

while down south we are seeing amounts of rain and hailstorms the likes of which our infrastructure is simply not built to deal with, up north people who have built everything around the river are at a loss of what to do.

the houses there that are built to float are just on the ground, people who depend on fishing for a living have to walk kilometers to find any fish that are still alive at all, the biodiversity there is at risk, and on an economic level it's hard to grasp how people from the northern states are getting by at all - the main means of transport for ANYTHING in that region is via the river water. this will impact the region for months to come. it doesnt make a lot of sense to build a lot of roads bc it's just better to use the waterway system, everything is built around or floats on the river after all. and like, the water level is so incomprehensibly low the boats are just STUCK. people are having a hard time getting from one place to another - keep in mind the widest parts of the river are over 10 km apart!!

this shit is really serious and i am trying not to think about it because we have a different kind of problem to worry about down south but it's really terrifying when I stop to think about it. you already know the climate crisis is real and the effects are beyond preventable now (we're past global warming, get used to calling it "global boiling"). we'll be switching strategies to damage control from now on and like, this is what it's come to.

I don't like to be alarmist but it's hard not to be alarmed. I'm sorry that I can't end this post with very clear intructions on how people overseas can help, there really isn't much to do except hope the water level rises soon, maybe pray if you believe in something. in that regard we just have to keep pressing for change at a global level; local conditions only would not, COULD NOT be causing this - the amazon river is a CONTINENTAL body of water, it spans across multiple countries. so my advice is spread the word, let your representatives know that you're worried and you want change towards sustainability, degrowth and reduced carbon emissions, support your local NGOs, maybe join a cause, I don't know? I recommend reading on ecological and feminist economics though

however, I know you can help the affected riverine families by donating to organizations dedicated to helping the region. keep in mind a single US dollar, pound or euro is worth over 5x more in our currency so anything you donate at all will certainly help those affected.

FAS - Sustainable Amazon Fundation

Idesam - Sustainable Developent and Preservation Institute of Amazonas

Greenpeace Brasil - I know Greenpeace isn't the best but they're one of the few options I can think of that have a bridge to the international world and they are helping directly

There are a lot of other smaller/local NGOs but I'm not sure how you could donate to them from overseas, I'll leave some of them here anyway:

Projeto Gari

Caritás Brasileira

If you know any other organizations please link them, I'll be sure to reblog though my reach isn't a lot

thank you so much for reading this to the end, don't feel obligated to share but please do if you can! even if you just read up to here it means a lot to me that someone out there knows

also as an afterthought, I wanted to expand on why I think this hasn't made big news yet: because unlike the case of the 2020 forest fires, other countries have to hold themselves accountable when looking at this situation. while in 2020 it was easier to pretend the fires were all our fault and people were talking about taking the amazon away from us like they wouldn't do much worse. global superpowers have no more forests to speak of so I guess they've been eyeing what latin america still has. so like this bit of the post is just to say if you're thinking of saying anything of the sort, maybe think of what your own country has done to contribute to this instead of blaming brazil exclusively and saying the amazon should be protected by force or whatever

I agree. Scary creatures being kind just hits me deep, it's amazing.

Finally continuing on a book that i really really need to return to the uni library; and just skipped a chapter (they're independent essays) because it wasn't relevant/interesting to me; but this next chapter is coming through within the first paragraph:

"To know another's language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of yourself"

- attributed to Winston Brembeck

I just had the most finnish social interaction of my life.

For backstory, Finland has a bottle/beverage can recycling system where most drink containers have a return deposit of a few cents - from 10 to 40 cents depending on the size of the bottle or can. All grocery stores and most convenience kiosks have a bottle return machine (which english wikipedia apparenly refers to as "reverse vending machines", which amuses me) where you can return the empty containers and receive a receipt which the cash register trades for money. The return isn't much but they add up surprisingly quick, and it's pretty common for people who are in the need for such cash to seek for and collect bottles and cans for recycling money.

I was going on errands on foot today, and had gotten myself an energy drink as a little treat on my way. Once I had gone through it I naturally held onto the bottle instead of throwing it to the trash, because bottles are money and 20 cents is 20 cents. On my way I saw an old man with a long grey beard, in a dirty t-shirt, approaching slowly on a bicycle. As he got closer he looked at me, glanced at my bottle and then back to me, while I looked him in the eye, glanced at the scraggly plastic bag hanging from his bike handle, and then back to him. Had his bag been full of recycling cans like I had first assumed, I would have stopped him right there and asked him if he'd like to have my empty bottle as well.

However, he had other assorted stuff in the bag, and therefore it would have been rude of me to assume that he is gathering bottles, and in return it would have been rude of him to stop me on my way to ask me if the bottle is empty and whether I'd like to be rid of it. But I saw him glance at the bottle and he saw me glancing at his bag, so both had reason to assume that he had more use for it than I would. But stopping strangers to address them like that is rude, so we passed each other without saying a word.

However, I was a stride away from a bus stop (which he had just passed) and I paused for a second to put my empty bottle on top of the trash can attached to the bus shelter. Looking over my shoulder to look at the old man, I saw him turning to look over his shoulder at me. So I nodded at him and he nodded at me, turning his bike around to retrieve the bottle as I left it there and kept walking. Neither one had said a word, but with a few seconds of eye contact, two pointed glances and a few quick nods, we managed to communicate through mutual assumptions, context clues and vague gestures that we could both do each other a favour.