"In his best run, Jammy had become the richest person in the world in eleven years, three months, eleven days, and twenty-three hours (in-game timer)..." "Any Percent" by Andrew Dana Hudson asks: "Imagine you could play a video game that let you live a whole human life in a matter of minutes. What would it mean to 'win' in that game? What would it mean to speedrun?" in an ultimately hopeful "proletarian-themed" science fiction story deliberately published on May Day, 2023 to celebrate International Workers' Day. I pair it with Grace Petrie's energetic song "Fixer Upper" which starts "I woke up from an awful dream / in June of 2016" yet finds a way to lead to "everything you dream is possible / it's waiting to be made .... come grab a spade!"

Petrie previously. From Petrie's song "Fixer Upper": "I woke up from an awful dream / in June of two thousand sixteen / in a far right fake news fucked up universe / and though we sang The Mountain Goats / loud enough to bruise our throats / every year that followed still got worse and worse" "And maybe I'm delusional / but I think you are beautiful / and if we could just keep from losing heart / we might still / not rest until / if anybody can, we will / we will build something better from the parts" (full lyrics to "Fixer Upper") Spoiler: "Fixer Upper" made me absolutely burst into tears and I feel like I needed to hear it precisely now.

Mobile Crisis Construction is an Australian initiative to turn rubble back into homes, schools and hospitals in war-torn or disaster-hit countries like Ukraine. Its Lego-like MCC Crisis Blocks "employ simple technology that works with standard brick coursing height and length, and can be laid with unskilled labour due to their interlocking design". They need no mortar and are produced on site with a mobile factory housed in a shipping container, each of which can produce enough bricks for 5-10 homes in a week. The Perth-based charity has been funded by the local Ukrainian community.

Aftermath, the tech and gaming blog founded by webugees from Kotaku, is one year old! In a lengthy post on their site, founders Luke Plunkett, Gita Jackson, Riley McLeod, Nathan Grayson and Chris Person discuss what running their little co-op business is like, and the issues they face in keeping it afloat.

This explains a lot.

A Narcissist's Prayer That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did You deserved it. by Dayna EM Craig The Trauma Survivor Mantra It did happen. It was bad. It was a big deal. It doesn't matter if they meant it. I reject the shame. I didn't deserve it. by Dr. Elayna Fernández ~~~~~ Elayna Fernández is a happy, smiling, festive, wise powerhouse who lives oh so large. A joy to read, I cannot help but smile. I was/am so glad to come across her take on A Narcissists Prayer -- honest, painful, human, smart. A Narcissists Prayer is the best description of the animal I've ever come upon, in six lines (!) no less. Craig gives it to us dead on. Fernández in The Trauma Survivor Mantra nails it, gives us the sane and healthy response to insane unhealthy people.

So I read a children's book as a kid in the 1980s that used the title quote as a running gag. Can anybody identify it? It may or may not have been a guide to surviving school. It was almost certainly a paperback from a Scholastic book order. (I had thought it was by Jovial Bob Stine, but no book of his that the Internet knows of seems to fit. It might have been bundled with one of his books, though?)

I'm listening to NPR's streaming "First Listen" of Cibo Matto's "Emerald Tuesday," off the forthcoming Hotel Valentine, and I know this song it's sampling from the first note. (And I think that's the point of the lyrics, that the ghost in the song listened/listens to the sampled song all the time.) I feel like it's also something my husband listens to all the time, or that was in a movie I just saw, but I can't pin it down. My first thought was Curtis Mayfield, but I'm not finding it. I know it's going to seem obvious to me once you tell me, but nonetheless—help! What is that song?

About a decade ago, an early music group -- possibly the Medieval Baebes -- sang a post-medieval encore that I can't find a whisper of. The line I think I remember is "The orchard didn't know if it was planted for/ The bitten cherry or the apple core." Can anyone identify this?

Where/when did the phrase "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" originate? I've seen/heard it in a lot of different places, and associate it with the Church of the SubGenius. The guy in the cubicle next to mine says it originated with Bette Midler. A quick Google finds evidence that she said that 1979ish—but does anyone have an earlier Bette Midler reference for the phrase? Or, alternately, know whether this phrase gained currency anywhere else before that?

I went scuba diving at Clear Lake, Oregon today. I saw a ton of tiny, medium-brown unidentified biological-looking... *things* attached to some of the rocks. What were they? Their silhouette was roughly the shape of a fungus growing on a tree -- think a minaturized oyster mushroom or turkey tail mushroom, but with (as far as I could tell) not particularly pronounced gills. They were attached to volcanic rock.

What were they? Eggs sacs of some kind? Actual underwater mushrooms? Some other life form? In case it's relevant, other stuff I saw in the lake included verdant fields of algae growing off the silty bottom (where the volcanic rock isn't exposed), schools of trout (the lake is stocked), plenty of caddisfly larvae in their cases, and cold-water springs feeding the lake from deep potholes. Water temperature was 41 F. We went as deep as 85', but I only remember seeing the brown unidentified objects in shallower areas -- say maybe between 15' to 30'.

Secoriea Turner, the 8-year-old girl shot to death July 4 near the burned-down Wendy's in Atlanta, had nothing to do with ongoing protests against police brutality, her family's lawyers say. At a news conference Monday, Secoriey Williamson, the girl's father, begged for anyone with information to come forward. He even played to the conscience of his daughter's killer, pleading with the shooter to come forward.

Ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to the Atlanta area on Wednesday, prominent Georgia Democrats have scheduled a news conference to "slam" what they call the president's "failed coronavirus response," the group announced in a press release. For state Republican leaders, the visit offers an opportunity to showcase Trump before the GOP base as the November election approaches.

Were you really that frozen with fear? Doubtful

There's nothing I can say to this dismissive nonsense that won't get me thrown off Metafilter.

I keep returning to two things.

1) building on the idea of community, trying to spread as much love as I can in the world. The time for action will be soon but right now is the time to love each other as much as we possibly can.

2) we aren't the only country to have elected a far-right or fascist leader recently. I'm looking to the people I know who live in other countries with leaders like Trump. There is still joy and possibility in their lives, even though their fight is hard, just like ours will be.

Love and joy are exactly what the far right wants to take away from us so let's stick it to them and not let them.

Let me tell you a story about a woman I know who votes conservative. She isn't the type of person I would self-select to be a friend, or even a friendly acquaintance — perhaps to my detriment! — because she's well-to-do, right-leaning, and very Christian. But I see her every week and have talked to her quite a bit because she's one of my medical providers.

Because I'm disabled, she charges me half of what she'd normally charge; every time I thank her, she says it's no big deal, and that, "Disabled people deserve every break they can get!" This saves me something like $3,000 dollars a year: that's an extra $3,000 a year she could be making, and actually now can't be making, because she's using her hours to treat me instead of other patients. She does a lot of volunteering. Donates a lot of money. She talks about how she's disappointed that certain social services, like disabled transit, fail disabled people, and has a fairly robust understanding of how that plays out because she listens carefully to her disabled patients. In her church, she's taken a stand for welcoming gay members of the community into the congregation, and into leadership positions, and was heartbroken and felt powerless and bewildered when the higher-up leadership blocked several of these things.

Whenever I've talked about the difficulties my trans friends are facing, she is genuinely sympathetic to the individual friend, interested in their life, and sad about their suffering, but sometimes expresses the concern-trolling talking points of the right-wing media — I read this as her being very responsive and caring to any unique individual she knows, but not recognizing the perils of the wider systemic discrimination going on.

Last time there was an election, I was talking about how conservative funding cuts impact the disabled community, and she expressed a lot of opinions along the lines of, "Of course I think everyone who needs disability income should have it! But don't you realize that the left-wing government will get us further into debt, whereas the conservatives will improve the economy so that we have more government funds to give social programs?" This coming from a person whose personality is very caring, motherly, and friendly, not at all a combative or hostile "debater:" normal people genuinely believe these things because the right-wing media repeats them over and over again.

I think that you really are right when you say, I truly believe they are good, kind, thoughtful people. Most of them probably are. But they are being lied to and duped by right-wing politicians, and not realizing the extent to which they're being lied to, because they believe we still live in a reasonable society in which no one would actually lie that much ... so some of the things they're saying must be true, right?

They don't realize the extent to which BIPOC, queer, disabled, immigrant, etc. minority groups are in very real danger, and think it must be exaggerated, because they don't really know that many, or the few that they know appear to be doing just fine. And so they vote with their worry and their fear, and their vote does not truly carry through their intentions about the kind of world they wish to live in.

This is not, of course, all people. Some people really are deep into right-wing ideology and have entire groups that they do not see as real people. But I find that most of the people I meet are like her: I could have several conversations with them not knowing they are right-wing, and get along with them just fine, because their day-to-day values of how to treat other human beings really are quite similar to mine. But because of their political/cultural education, their sociological and media literacy, and the demographics of people that make up their workplace, friends, and family, they are being fed a different set of facts, a different "reality."

This all makes me incredibly sad but also gives me bit of hope, and I hope it will bring some peace to you.

I live in Canada, so it's not the same, but I do live in one of the most right-leaning provinces. I really feel what you're going through. I am also surrounded by people I care about — who appear to care about me — who vote in one awful conservative government after another. Stay strong: sending love and sympathy.

I do not want to be alive. This is not a new development; I first voiced this opinion to my mother when I was five years old, and it has persisted through the subsequent four decades despite therapy, a vast array of medications, and multiple forms of invasive treatments that have made my existence even less bearable while having no affect on my depression (or, as I think of it, my identity and most fundamental self). Given the opportunity to press a button and fast-forward to my deathbed, I'd do it without hesitation. But these Nazi motherfuckers will not leave the people I love alone. They are forcing me to stay alive, even though I hate every minute of it, just so I can contribute my meager skills to the war effort against them. You have no idea how furious I am, because all I want is to die, and they won't let me, because if I did I'd be ceding the world to them, and I refuse to do that without exhausting every drop of blood within me. If I can't have a single moment of joy, peace or happiness, then neither can they.

Two things:

1. Narrow your focus to your sphere of influence, just for now, because in this moment of helplessness and defeat, when we are feeling powerless, it behooves us to remember we do have immense power. Kamala Harris was never going to bring a casserole to your neighbor when their spouse was in the hospital, that's you. Donald Trump cannot steal the laughter from your friends' lips when you tell them a joke, that laughter is entirely in your power. You have the power to choose connection, fellowship, mutual aid, joy, hard work, love, passion, devotion, faith. To me, remembering that I have power is cause for hope.

2. When you're out there using your power to connect with your fellow human beings, look for the helpers. Take heart in their existence, their perseverance. Do everything you can to become one of them.

The woman who I worked with as Justice of the Peace, who won by five votes last time (2 years ago) was a problem, believed in a lot of conspiracy theory stuff and was a time-waster being very vocal about it at our abatement and civil authority meetings. I was also on the ballot this year (and won handily) but I told people that i didn't care who they voted for as long as it was NOT HER and she lost and in the very small pond of my town's abatement and civil authority boards, things will go much more smoothly.

Also I made kid ballots and had two contests: dragon vs unicorn (a tie, with one write-in for "pegasis") and winter vs summer (winter won handily) and kids seemed to enjoy that and the "future voter" stickers we gave them.

I don't disagree with the advice already provided, but I think you're using the word "boundary" in an odd way. You don't get to set boundaries on other people's behaviour, even when you're married to them. You can set a boundary around your own behaviour, then other people decide how they'll respond.

In this case, you might say: if you continue a friendship with B, our relationship will be at an end. Then, the ball is in R's court - he can decide what to do next.

I'm sorry you've been through so much lately, but I think you are definitely catastrophizing. I'd say the likelihood you'll be a target of political violence is pretty close to zero. I would suggest you stop reading the news/Reddit for a bit if it's causing you to feel this way - go for walks in your new neighborhood, make plans to see your friends in the city, etc.

Fresh off the latest meeting about incorporation, and I want to say: thank you to the moderators and Jessamyn who keep the site going and thank you to the volunteers past and present putting in work to build new possibilities for the site, including making it easier for more people to volunteer and contribute in different ways.

I'm also truly proud of the decision made early on by the volunteers to do things together, even if that meant slowing down. I'm the kind of person who sees a problem and goes into fix-it mode as fast as possible. Practicing on a hugely meaningful project like Metafilter to listen and consider all of our viewpoints and work through to a communal path was hard. It was sometimes frustratingly slow! But by the second half of our timeline, I can see now that we get important things done faster and faster and how strong the foundation we've built is (heh, bad pun) because we've got trust and a collaborative thoughtful process.

I'd also like to recognise the people who took a deep breath before writing a reply in a high-termperature thread, the people who edited down the snark in their comments or thought - I'll change to the thread about kitten videos instead. It is hard to be civil and think about other people when they're text on a screen - and it's harder when so much media encourages profit by provoking yelling.

Metafilter is an internet third space that isn't trying to profit actively from yelling. And sometimes we gotta yell in some threads - but most of the time we talk, and I so so appreciate having a third space where people can talk without an algorithm aimed at our lizard brains.

I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. When my dad was 11, his parents put him and his 13 year-old brother on a boat, alone, from their home in Amsterdam so they could come to America and escape the Nazis.

Hilariously, just one generation later, this website suggests I get back on the boat and return to exactly the same place for exactly the same reason.

This does sound very much like your anxiety latching on to a potential future and you getting stuck in that.

Others can give you advice about dealing with this particular scenario.

But here are some things to remember:

Seeking reassurance from others usually results in your anxiety getting worse, as their advice makes the imaginary danger seem more real.

No amount of rehearsing and imagining and ruminating will make you any safer. In fact, trying to prepare for this scenario means you're staying in the anxiety space for longer.

Don't try to fight your scary thoughts, don't argue with yourself. Just note the thought and briefly describe what you're doing to yourself in a non judgemental way.

"I'm arguing with an imaginary person right now"

"I'm trying to predict the future"

"I'm ruminating right now."

"I'm seeking reassurance"

You have the power to reassure yourself, and THAT kind of reassurance really works.

Change catastrophising thoughts into compassionate realism.

"I don't know what might happen in the future, but I'm going to cope with it when it dies"

"It's possible that this frightening thing might happen, and it might be unpleasant, but I will deal with it if it does and then it will just be another memory."

Find ways to distract yourself from your spiralling thoughts. I like explaining a topic I'm really interested in out loud to myself as a way to drown out stuck thoughts.

Trying to prepare for something that *might* happen just means you're making yourself be in that horrible scary worry space for much longer than it would take for the scary thing to happen. You can't control wether or not this thing you fear will happen, but you can control how much you focus on it.

Distraction is good! Be with people you enjoy, watch a comfort show, dance to music you love, do something to make yourself feel good.

My marriage is only monogamish, so I'm saying this with some bias towards polyamory:

If your spouse want to prioritize this friendship over your stated boundary, then your spouse is prioritizing the friendship over your marriage.

In this case, you really don't have to explain why. In fact, I'd stop explaining why. It's not a comprehension problem. It's that your partner doesn't want to do what you are asking.

Here's the words I would use: I do not want you to continue this friendship. If you do, I am going to have to take steps towards ending our marriage. We should discuss this in counselling.

In other words even in marriages where there's less emphasis on monogamy, the main thing is that you have to respect your partner's limits, or else you aren't partners. I'm sorry your partner is putting you through this.

White people are very invested in treating racism as extreme and exceptional when it is in fact commonplace and pervasive. White people are not credible judges of what non-white people describe as experiences of racism. Racism is the Occam's Razor explanation. These so-called academic framings describe patterns that white people would prefer remain undescribed.

In real life I moved to Japan from the U.S. years ago. Didn't soften the blow of the election one whit.

Wherever you go, there you are.

I work in a women's health clinic that does first-term abortions as one of its services.

We have a comment form on our web site where people who want to volunteer as patient escorts can reach out. Typically, we get about one or two inquiries a week.

Yesterday alone, we got twenty-five.

This doesn't take "Will the destination country even accept you as an immigrant" into consideration.

I'm moving to Cozylandia under my duvet and I'm never coming out.

My situation is not exactly the same as yours but it is a story of how to get along with friends and family who are on the total opposite side of the aisle, so perhaps you can find something to help you in my strategies.

My parents are extremely right wing - in India. It is mortifying and horrifying enough that they are this way but to make things worse my mother is also deep into conspiracy theories on a similar scale and off-the-charts-insane like QAnon in the US. At the same time I am also still engaged in a decade-long effort to build a decent relationship with my parents. So even though this is a self-imposed form of hell, the fact remains I am trying to actively love (as in verb-love) these people whose political opinions horrify me and who ruined their relationship with me in the past by throwing me out of their home as a teenager, abusing me as a child, etc.

Step 0 in accomplishing this task is to actually be clear, honest, and fully committed with yourself that you do want to keep and build these relationships.

For many years I was on the fence about it and I made no effort at all to build a relationship with my parents. That was fine! If you are here, you are not doing anything wrong! And neither will you be doing anything wrong if you do choose to walk away properly from people who trigger you too much. Many years after not working and fence-sitting, I intellectually realized I wanted to fix things but emotionally I remained uncommitted, angry, resentful, and blisteringly mad about how unfair it was that *I* was the one doing this fixing and building. This was also a valid stage to go through, and I suspect you're somewhere around here, feeling angry and hurt and torn within yourself that these are your fucking choices: to learn how to get along with assholes or else to lose all your family and friends. The unfairness REALLY RANKLES. This is extremely valid and extremely real, and there is no way out of this stage but through it. But sadly, no forward movement will happen FOR YOU EMOTIONALLY in this phase, as far as making your peace with your situation goes. (Also no forward movement will happen in fixing the relationship but that is not necessarily a bad thing, if you're in this stage.)

Accomplishing Step 0 - becoming fully and truly committed to building and maintaining these relationships - is a hue, huge task in itself. I would strongly encourage you to work with a psychodynamic therapist or some other modality that pays attention to childhood issues, in order to get to Step 0. You will know you have reached Step 0 when you can "radically accept" that your friends and family voted against your life, your rights, and your wellbeing. That is who they are, this is what you are dealing with, and you no longer have any wish to wrestle with this reality (try to convince them, try to lead by example, try to explain yourself, try to talk to them, try to get them to acknowledge your pain or at least be forced to see it, etc) because you. just. fully. accept their political position is their political position - you accept their total separateness from you and you accept their right to be separate from you - and even though you may be angry, even though you may be hurt, even though you still hate their politics, you want to just get on with building the relationship. If you're there, then you can move on to

Stratagem 1: find things you enjoy about this person, and trying to do things you mutually enjoy with them. Even the smallest movement towards identifying and then amplifying the good (by having small good interactions) will help. Repeated good interactions are what finally defeated my insecurity about "giving my parents an inch" - it felt so threatening to me to have anything nice with these people against whom I was nursing so much anger, and I TREASURED my anger, I didn't want to lose it! Having repeated nice experiences made me feel like, okay, I still haven't lost my right to anger or my anger even though I am having fun with them. Both my anger and my love can coexist. This has been a HUGE relief.

Stratagem 2: stop talking politics with them entirely. These are not your politics buddies. FIND OTHER POLITICS BUDDIES YOU CAN RELIABLY GET SUPPORT FROM for the political side of you. This type of compartmentalization is a healthy practice because nobody can be everything to us. Nobody in our personal life can check all the boxes and be everything we need from the world. People's failings are sometimes located near the very things we consider "basic shit". They are human, and this is okay, and we can find others to fill this basic need for us.

Stratagem 3: This may seem like the opposite of Stratagem 2 but it is not - don't stay silent when your friends and family say horrible political things to you or around you. You don't bring up politics but you don't stay quiet when unacceptable things are spoken in your vicinity. You MUST say something, you MUST speak your mind. Make it short but make it honest. Otherwise you build up an incredible amount of resentment and anger that will poison the relationship and run counter to your Step 0 goals.

Stratagem 4: After you say it, move on without belaboring your point or trying to get them to agree with you. Say it, and then completely let it go. Saying it is the point. The goal is NOT to change them, move them, make them think like you, make them acknowledge you, make them apologize, etc. The goal is unburdening yourself by speaking your truth, protecting the relationship by not allowing thoughts to fester in secret. If what they have said is horrible, say, "Wow, that's pretty horrible," and then move on immediately - warmly, affectionately, taking the sting out of it with your manner, without holding a grudge. You get your satisfaction by speaking up, not by making them bend. This strikes a great balance between being authentic and yet sidestepping useless conflict.

Stratagem 5: If they want to argue with you, you have to learn how to bow out smoothly without engaging in that. Say things like, "Oh, dad, that's fine, we can let it go. Tell me about Auntie's health..." Again it is important to remain non-retaliatory, don't punish them for wanting to hash this out by being angry. Be calm and warm and affectionate, but do not be moved into engaging in the political discussion. Walk out and take a short break if you need to. But come back on your own as soon as possible, and be loving. These are your people. You have boundaries with them, not walls.

I'm usually allergic to a lot of the way "find the bright side" kind of things are framed, but this extended quotation from Great Tide Rising by Kathleen Dean Moore came across my Mastodon feed and really resonated with me.

Over the years, college students have often come to my office distraught, unable to think of what they might be able to do to stop the terrible losses caused by an industrial growth economy run amok. So much dying, so much destruction. I tell them about Mount Saint Helens, the volcano that blasted a hole in the Earth in 1980, only a decade before they were born.

Those scientists were so wrong back in 1980, I tell my students. When they first climbed from the helicopters, holding handkerchiefs over their faces to filter ash from the Mount Saint Helens eruption, they did not think they would live long enough to see life restored to the blast zone. Every tree was stripped gray, every ridgeline buried in cinders, every stream clogged with toppled trees and ash. If anything would grow here again, they thought, its spore and seed would have to drift in from the edges of the devastation, long dry miles across a plain of cinders and ash. The scientists could imagine that– spiders on silk parachutes drifting over rubble and plain, a single samara spinning into the shade of a pumice stone. It was harder to imagine the time required for flourishing to return to the mountains – all the dusty centuries.

But here they are today: On the mountain, only thirty-five years later, these same scientists are on their knees, running their hands over beds of moss below lupine in lavish purple bloom. Tracks of mice and fox wander along a stream, and here, beside a ten-foot silver fir, a coyote's twisted scat grows mushrooms. What the scientists know now, but didn't understand then, is that when the mountain blasted ash and rock across the landscape, the devastation passed over some small places hidden in the lee of rocks and trees. Here, a bed of moss and deer fern under a rotting log. There under a boulder, a patch of pearly everlasting and the tunnel to a vole's musty nest. Between stones in a buried stream, a slick of algae and clustered dragonfly larvae. Refugia, they call them: places of safety where life endures. From the refugia, mice and toads emerged blinking onto the blasted plain. Grasses spread, strawberries sent out runners. From a thousand, ten thousand, maybe countless small places of enduring life, forests and meadows returned to the mountain.

I have seen this happen. I have wandered the edge of Mount Saint Helens vernal pools with ecologists brought to unscientific tears by the song of meadowlarks in this place.

My students have been taught, as they deserve to be, that the fossil-fueled industrial growth culture has brought the world to the edge of catastrophe. They don't have to "believe in" climate change to accept this claim. They understand the decimation of plant and animal species, the poisons, the growing deserts and spreading famine, the rising oceans and melting ice. If it's true that we can't destroy our habitats without destroying our lives, as Rachel Carson said, and if it's true that we are in the process of laying waste to the planet, then our ways of living will come to an end – some way or another, sooner or later, gradually or catastrophically – and some new way of life will begin. What are we supposed to do? What is there to hope for at the end of this time? Why brother trying to patch up the world while so many others seem intent on wrecking it?

These are terrifying questions for an old professor; thank god for the volcano's lesson. I tell them about the rotted stump that sheltered spider eggs, about a cupped cliff that saved a fern, about all the other refugia that brought life back so quickly to the mountain. If destructive forces are building under our lives, then our work in this time and place, I tell them, is to create refugia of the imagination. Refugia, places where ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow.

Even now, we can create small pockets of flourishing, and we can make ourselves into overhanging rock ledges to protect life so that the full measure of possibility can spread and reseed the world. Doesn't matter what it is, I tell my students; if it's generous to life, imagine it into existence. Create a bicycle cooperative, a seed-sharing community, a wildlife sanctuary on the hill below the church. Raise butterflies with children. Sing duets to the dying. Tear out the irrigation system and plant native grass. Imagine water pumps. Imagine a community garden in the Kmart parking lot. Study ancient corn. Teach someone to sew. Learn to cook with the full power of the sun at noon.

We don't have to start from scratch. We can restore pockets of flourishing life ways that have been damaged over time. Breach a dam. Plant a riverbank. Vote for schools. Introduce the neighbors to one another's children. Celebrate the solstice. Slow a river course with a fallen log. Tell stories of how indigenous people live on the land. Clear the grocery carts out of the stream.

Maybe most effective of all, we can protect refugia that already exist. They are all around us. Protect the marshy ditch behind the mall. Work to ban poisons from the edges of the road. Save the hedges in your neighborhood. Boycott what you don't believe in. Refuse to participate in what is wrong. There is hope in this: An attention that notices and celebrates thriving where it occurs; a conscience that refuses to destroy it.

From these sheltered pockets of moral imagining, and from the protected pockets of flourishing, new ways of living will spread across the land, across the salt plains and beetle killed forests. Here is how life will start anew. Not from the edges over centuries of invasion; rather from small pockets of good work, shaped by an understanding that all life is interdependent, and driven by the one gift humans have that belongs to no other: practical imagination – the ability to imagine that things can be different from what they are now.

I actually got paid to do this.

For three years (from 1996 to 1999) I worked as a Public Information and Consultation Advisor for the Federal Treaty Negotiation Office in British Columbia. It was essentially my job to talk to angry and racist non-native people about the land claims settlements we, the federal government, were negotiating with First Nations.

One thing that helped me do this job was a story I heard Utah Phillips tell at the 1997 Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Seems one day he was told of an old cowboy in New Mexico who was dying. This old cowboy had ridden on some of the last cattle drives on the Great Plains in the 1800s and had scores of songs in his head about that time. Utah made an effort to go visit him on his death bed way out in the desert. When he got to the cowboy's cabin, a nurse answered the door, said he was expected and asked him to wait in the sitting room while she got the cowboy ready for the visitor.

The cowboy was an avid reader and had many hundreds of books. As he was waiting Utah scanned the shelves and saw what was what. He was surprised and shocked to see tract after tract from the John Birch Society, a virulent right wing political movement that clashed deeply with Utah's own hard left politics. Utah reflected on the predicament he was in. Here was this cowboy full of all of these songs, and there was this irresolvable political gap between them.

But thinking on it more, Utah realized that the REASON the cowboy had so many political books is that he didn't actually KNOW much about politics. In fact if he were to ask the old man about politics, he knew the old man would only give him lies, stuff that he didn't believe but that was recited out of the books. Utah Phillips noted that there was not one book on cowboys or cowboy music on the book shelves, and that's what Utah was there for. He entered the bedroom of the dying cowboy and passed a lovely day trading songs and stories of the cattle drives of the 19th century.

In conclusion Utah said "You know, if you talk to people about what they know, they will always tell you the truth."

That line stayed with me as I ventured in cowboy country shortly afterwards. I was meeting with a group of loggers and ranchers in Williams Lake, in the interior of British Columbia and they were a hard crew. Every month we met and every month they told me that they didn't want any land claims settlements with the "goddamn Indians" in their area. One guy, a man I'll call Bob used to go on and on about "you can't make deals with Indians, they can't be trusted, they're no good with their word..." That sort of thing.

Now I am Aboriginal myself, and this rankled after a while. But keeping Utah's words in mind I challenged Bob one day and said, "Bob, you know, I'm Indian and I'm trustworthy and you can make deals with me. I know for a fact that what you're saying is bullshit. It's lies. So I'm not going to ask you about Indians anymore. Instead I'm going to talk to you about something you do know about, and that is logging. Why don't you take me out to see your operation?"

Bob agreed and the next day I met him at 5:00am with a thermos of coffee and a box of Tim Hortons and we climbed into his F350 and headed out into the Cariboo Mountains. We drove for two hours and the whole time we talked about logging and what it's like being in the business, what kind of markest he was trying to develop, and how much he loved his new machinery He talked about his new feller-buncher like he was a dad with a newborn. Gone was the intransigent racist and here beside me was an interesting man, telling me the truth about what he loved.

When we got out to the cut block where his crew was working, he radioed them in and they came down to get coffee and donuts. Of the 12 guys he had working for him, six were First Nations. I laughed when I met them and asked them if they knew Bob's opinions on the trustworthiness of Indians. "Oh yeah," One of them laughed. "He's an old blowhard!"

But Bob countered by saying that THESE guys were great, that they had been with him for coming on 20 years. THEY were different.

We laughed. Really hard. We talked for a while about what THESE guys felt about land claims and they all had different opinions. Respect arose in the space of nuance and reflection.

So many people parrot opinions. In fact opinions are so often just a front for something else, the yawning abyss of ignorance. Very few people hold fixed opinions about things that matter deeply to them. Instead the hold nuanced and thoughtful interests. That's not to say that I wouldn't claw your eyes out if you hurt my child, but that's different from having an opinion on Tiger Woods or abortion or whether or not Obama is doing a good job. Most of us aren't Tiger, a pregnant woman facing a choice or the President. Most opinions are shallow, and the holder of them guards their superficiality with outrage and emotion to prevent you from getting close and discovering nuance. People hold opinons out of fear or loyalty. But when it comes to something you really care about, it's less about an opinion and more about the nuanced, many layered, complex fabric of knowledge, practical, theoretical, aspirational and emotional

From that day on, I never again talked to Bob about First Nations people, but he became a very involved person in our advisory committee because he had a piece of his heart staked in the process. I came to respect him very much, even though he continued to blow hard against my rookie colleagues and say stupid racist things that somewhere he must have believed. He did it just to put them off guard, to protect his own vulnerabilities and mask his fear. I came to respect what lay beneath the opinion, which was a real fear that land claims would ruin his logging operation. I dismissed the racism but respected Bob and what was really at stake for him. And I think he came to respect me too.

It was the best job I ever had.

Updated at 7 p.m. ET In a move that possibly placed his job in peril, Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly disagreed Wednesday with President Trump's threatened use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to quell widespread unrest over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck. "The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now," Esper told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act." Esper added, "I've always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations, in support of local law enforcement." The 1807 Insurrection Act authorizes a U.S. president to deploy the military in times of domestic emergencies. The law was updated in 2006 to include

Editor's note: NPR will be continuing this conversation about Being Black in America online and on air. As protests continue around the country against systemic racism and police brutality, black Americans describe fear, anger and a weariness about tragic killings that are becoming all too familiar. "I feel helpless. Utterly helpless," said Jason Ellington of Union, N.J. "Black people for generations have been reminding the world that we as a people matter — through protests, sit-ins, boycotts and the like. We tried to be peaceful in our attempts. But as white supremacy reminds us, their importance — their relevance — comes with a healthy dose of violence and utter disrespect for people of color like me." For more than a week, tens of thousands of people have thronged cities nationwide, staging protests. The demonstrations were triggered by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Floyd, a black man, died while a white police officer

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Police reform is the issue that made a lawyer named Lori Lightfoot a political presence in Chicago when she was head of the Chicago Police Board. Of course, she is now Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago and said this week that police misconduct and brutality, quote, "tarnish the badge." Mayor Lightfoot joins us now. Mayor Lightfoot, thanks for being with us. LORI LIGHTFOOT: It's my pleasure, Scott. SIMON: You've led investigations into brutality cases when you were head of the police board and the CPD's Office of Professional Standards. Must also be said that as an attorney in private practice, you represented some police officers. How difficult is police reform? LIGHTFOOT: Well, having seen this issue from a lot of different angles - I also prosecuted corrupt police officers when I was a federal prosecutor. So I've been around this issue for a long time, and really, it comes down to this. You can have all the policies that you want,

French police say they are being stigmatized during protests in France against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death. On Thursday, police gathered in front of precincts across the country and threw down their handcuffs in a symbolic gesture against what they say is unfair criticism. "The police in France have nothing to do with the police in the U.S., and we're not racist," said Fabien Vanhemelryck, the head of the main police union in France, as he joined dozens of police officers demonstrating Friday morning along the Champs-Élysées. Just days after Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis, more than 20,000 Parisians defied a ban on gatherings during the pandemic to demand the truth about the death of a black Frenchman named Adama Traoré while in police custody in 2016. The protesters said the French police, like their American counterparts, are endemically racist, a charge denied by many top officials in a country that likes to consider itself colorblind

Updated 7:41 p.m. ET Mourners came to pay their respects to Rayshard Brooks at a public viewing in Atlanta Monday. The Black man was shot and killed during an encounter with white police officers earlier this month after he was discovered asleep in a car at a fast-food restaurant. The viewing was held at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was a co-pastor. The funeral service, scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday, will also take place at the church. Brooks' death on June 12 added to the fury and anger already felt by demonstrators protesting against systemic racism and police brutality in Atlanta and across the nation. Many of the protests were prompted by the death of George Floyd in custody of Minneapolis police in May. Atlanta-based movie and television mogul Tyler Perry is reported to be covering funeral costs for the family. As NPR reported over the weekend , Clark Atlanta University has also offered full scholarships for his

From cookbooks to constitutional rights, On Second Thought is proud to present another five stories from our archive to motivate you this Monday. 1) Historian Jill Lepore Explores 'These Truths' Of United States History In November 2018, On Second Thought sat down with Harvard American history professor Jill Lepore to discuss her book These Truths: A History of the United States and the obligation to learn from the past for a brighter future. Focusing on promises made in the Constitution, Lepore discusses the state of institutions like freedom, voting, and social struggles almost 250 years after the country’s founding. 2) Chef Pano Karatassos On 'Modern Greek Cooking' Atlanta chef Pano Karatassos made waves in culinary circles after winning Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay with his signature lamb pie. Chef Karatassos is the executive chef of Kyma in Atlanta and has tasked himself with bringing traditional Greek foods to the South. He sat down with us last October to talk Greek cuisine

In 2003, Brunswick prosecutors convicted Dennis Perry of killing a couple in their church back in 1985 — while another suspect had admitted to the murder on tape. Renewed interest in the case from the Georgia Innocence Project and a true crime podcast spurred Joshua Sharpe, criminal justice reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , to revisit an early suspect’s alibi. Sharpe's research unveiled new DNA evidence, and prompted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to reopen the case. Sharpe joins On Second Thought to talk us through what he learned in his nearly year of reporting on the 35 year-old case.

On Mar. 11, 1985, Harold and Thelma Swain were shot in the vestibule of a Baptist church in rural southeast Georgia during evening Bible study. Witnesses from the black congregation described a white man with shoulder-length hair who fled the scene. Despite years of investigation by both the local sheriff’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the case had gone cold by the end of the decade; even the leads generated by a 1988 episode of Unsolved Mysteries about the case proved false.

Mary Beth Keane’s 2019 novel Ask Again, Yes was an instant New York Times bestseller, and is now out on paperback. The book follows the families of two New York City police officers who live next door to each other in a suburb north of the city – and a tragedy that divides them and their children over four decades.

In the weeks since protests against police brutality began in Minneapolis, calls to reform, defund or abolish the police have been escalating. These demands aren’t new among activists; however, responses from local governments across the country committing to redirect police funds or even “dismantle” police departments have been unprecedented. We break down reasoning, history and motivations behind the push to change how policing operates nationwide.

In 2002, On Second Thought host Virginia Prescott recorded stories of residents from the Houston neighborhood where George Floyd grew up. Virginia reflected on the rich cultural legacy of the historically African American community. George Floyd was laid to rest in Pearland, Texas earlier this week. He was buried next to his mother, known as “Miss Cissy” in Houston’s Third Ward, where Floyd grew up. Beyoncé and Solange Knowles were also raised in the neighborhood. So was the actor Phylicia Rashad, the director and choreographer Debbie Allen, and musicians Samuel John “Lightnin’” Hopkins and Jason Moran.

For generations, “The Talk” has been a mainstay in African American families. At some point, Black children all get warnings from elders about how to avoid – and survive – police encounters. It’s a rite that cuts across region, socioeconomic status and profession – even for members of law enforcement.

John Lewis has served as U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District since 1987, and is known for his passionate work both in the civil rights movements and on Capitol Hill. A new documentary called John Lewis: Good Trouble goes beyond the highlight reel of his storied life and reveals more personal elements of the man and the figure. On Second Thought hears from the film’s director and producer Dawn Porter and producer Erika Alexander about how the film connects his legacy of seeking justice from his youth to his role as a revered congressman today.

UPDATED The new school year is rapidly approaching, but many parents and educators still don't know exactly what the semester will look like. As President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos call for schools to open in-person, districts across the country are formulating a range of plans. Doctors have their own recommendations for what systems should do. It's a lot to keep track of, but NPR reporters are following the developments. Send us your questions, and we'll answer some on-air. A producer will be in touch before using your name or question on air. This form was closed on July 14th. Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Last Monday, the Trump administration announced changes to the student visa program that would require international students at universities to take at least one in-person class this fall. That means students have to physically be on campus or leave the U.S. The changes could jeopardize the status of hundreds of thousands of students, so we've called on Dwayne McCay for more perspective on this. He is the president of the Florida Institute of Technology, known as Florida Tech. International students make up about a third of the student body there, and he's with us now to tell us his thoughts about this. President McCay, welcome. Thank you for joining us. DWAYNE MCCAY: Oh, I'm very happy to, Michel. Thank you. MARTIN: Would you just mind telling us a bit more about your student body? We said about a third are international. You know, where do they come from? And what do they study? MCCAY: Well, you know, we're a technological

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Parents of younger school-age kids are also making some tough decisions after President Trump said last week that he would put pressure on governors and other officials to open schools in the fall. So with no clear guidance on how to reopen safely, school districts and families have been scrambling to figure things out for themselves. For students living with extended family like grandparents, the question of returning to school is even more fraught. Because of age or preexisting conditions, those family members are most vulnerable to the most serious effects of the virus. Some 2.4 million children in the United States live in a household headed by grandparents. Keith Lowhorne is a grandparent caregiver for his three grandchildren, ages 6, 5 and 3. He's taking care of them along with his wife, and they live just outside of Huntsville, Ala. And he is with us now. Hello, Mr. Lowhorne. Thanks so much for joining us. KEITH

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST: School - parents, students and teachers are wondering, what will it look like this year? Will doors actually open, or will students be back on their computers for classes or a mix of both? In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper says he'll make an announcement this week about what his state's schools should do. Teachers like Tamika Walker Kelly are waiting. She teaches elementary school music in Fayetteville, and she's also the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators. She joins us now. Thanks for joining us. TAMIKA WALKER KELLY: Thank you for having me. MCCAMMON: I'd like to start with what you and other teachers in the state are hoping for. What do you want to see happen this fall? WALKER KELLY: So many educators around our state - and, I would say, nationwide - are really concerned about re-entering schools in a safe way. Our safety of our educators and our student is the No. 1 priority of many of us. And so we

The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time ...just what it says on the tin.

Before the onslaught of end of the year Best-Of lists, here is a solid top 100 for your palaver pleasure.

Big bonus points to Paste Magazine for publishing it on a single web page, rather than over a 25 page ad-filled link schmozzle.

A Distant Shore has just been released in an expanded version by Cherry Red Records, along with demos for songs that would eventually be released on Everything but the Girl's debut album. Tracey Thorn's classic 1982 indie album has long been a favorite of artists from Björk to Massive Attack, and is constantly rediscovered. In 2013 Thorn spoke about the album to the Guardian [archive link] and also wrote about the circumstances of its writing in her memoir Bedsit Disco Queen, excerpted here.