but I’m on Substack, too, and here it is in full:
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions you can take right now which probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Trump but that are still wildly important by Garrett Bucks
Why? Because others will see you do them, and it will make it easier for them to take their own (slightly less lonely but equally beautiful) action by your side Read on Substack
A preface: I wrote this for people who, like me, have spent much of the past few weeks hoping that somebody else would do something bolder in this political movement. We are downtrodden because we’re full of rage and heartbreak, but the polls tell us that our neighbors don’t share those feelings. We realize we’re seeing something that so many aren’t, but we’re not sure how to bridge the gap. We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.
I don’t pretend that all it takes for a social movement to succeed is a bunch of individuals throwing the activist equivalent of spaghetti at so many isolated walls. Nothing I offer here will be enough. And yet, so many of us are waiting for something we can join, which presents a true opportunity to be the first person in your circle welcoming fellow travelers into halting, shaky, earnest action.
Finally, I’m certain that not all of these ideas are applicable to your situation. You’re tired. You’re busy. You’re sick. You don’t have a robust social network. You have anxiety about putting yourself out there. Those are all real. And also, my hope isn’t that every one of these is for you, but that a few might be. And if none fit the bill, what an opportunity: I’d love to hear your idea for what you and others could do.
Enough scene-setting. Here are some ideas. In list form, but there’s a narrative if you’re looking for it. They’re all offered with love:
| February 17, 1958 The first meeting of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was held. CND developed the peace symbol which became its logo.  CND history |
| February 17, 1975 Several hundred residents of Wyhl, Germany, occupied the site of a nuclear power plant with the intent of halting construction. The contractor had begun building despite a court order to suspend doing so. Police responded to the protesters with dogs, water cannon, and arrests. By the following week, however, over 25,000 had joined the occupation, and police withdrew for eight months. This is believed to have been the first such nuclear plant site takeover in the world. The occupation was nonviolent, and a sort of village sprang up with a “Friendship House” and a “popular university.” Local farmers supported the occupiers with food.  Stand-off between anti-nuclear activists and police at Wyhl, Germany Following the negotiated withdrawal of the occupiers, a panel of judges permanently banned construction of the plant, and the land is now a nature preserve. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february17
| February 16, 1936 A coalition known as the Popular Front (Frente Popular), comprised of socialists, communists, republicans, and labor groups, narrowly won a majority in the Cortes, Spain’s parliament, defeating the National Front. |
| February 16, 1959 Fidel Castro was sworn in as Cuba’s youngest prime minister after leading a years-long guerrilla campaign that forced right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.  Fidel Castro Castro, who had become commander-in-chief of Cuba’s armed forces after Batista was ousted on January 1, replaced the more moderate Jose Miro Cardona as head of the country’s new provisional government.  Fulgencio Batista More background on Fidel As reported at the time, including a filmed interview with Castro in English |
| February 16, 1982 Citizens’ Action for Safe Energy (CASE) succeeded in stopping construction of Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant near Inola, Oklahoma. Public Service of Oklahoma announced the cancellation, the first of its kind solely due to citizen protest.  CASE’s founder, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson, known as Aunt Carrie, and her husband, Robert, spent nearly a decade and all their financial assets organizing folks around Tulsa and the state. The Dickersons’ principal concern was the potential damage to health near the plant, and elsewhere through uranium mining and processing. Aunt Carrie, her allies and their success watch video (2011) |
| February 16, 1996 Seven activists were arrested for blocking the road to the ceremony commissioning the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Greeneville at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Base.  |
| February 16, 1996 The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), representing Mexico’s southern indigenous peoples, and the Mexican federal government signed the San Andrés Accords. Begun in 1994 in Chiapas state, the EZLN had pushed the government for: • Basic respect for the diversity of the indigenous population of Chiapas; • The conservation of the the natural resources within the territories used and occupied by indigenous peoples;  Subcommandate Marcos, leader of the Zapatistas, and two of his officers • A greater participation of indigenous communities in the decisions and control of public expenditures; • The participation of indigenous communities in determining their own development plans, as well as having control over their own administrative and judicial affairs; • The autonomy of indigenous communities and their right of free determination in the framework of the State. |
| February 16, 2005 The Kyoto Protocol went into effect after countries responsible for 55% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions had ratified the treaty, following Russia’s agreement to its terms. The agreement’s purpose was to reduce such gases to 12% below their levels in 1990 by 2012 and, thus, slow global warming.  180 countries had agreed (except for the United States and Australia, two of the world’s top emitters of GHG per capita) to rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol on July 29, 2001, in Bonn, Germany. President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the process shortly after he took office that same year. His reasoning was that, since India and China had not signed on, they would gain a competitive advantage. The U.S. is now responsible for 15.6% of the earth’s GHG (with 5% of its population). History, background on the Kyoto Protocol |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february16
Fully recyclable solar cells – just add water
February 14, 2025 Richard Musgrove
Swedish researchers have invented a fully-recyclable perovskite solar cell that may provide a solution to the growing problem of solar panel waste.
All renewable technologies have a life span — with solar panels it’s 25 to 30 years — which means our solar waste pile is rapidly becoming mountainous. Just 17 % of solar panel components were recycled in Australia in 2023, specifically the aluminium frames and junction boxes. The remaining 83% (glass, silicon and polymer back sheeting) was shuttled out to landfill. Other countries do better; France’s ROSI was an early starter in what could be a $2b market by 2050.
Linköping University researchersmay have a solution — fully recyclable perovskite solar cells.
These cells are also flexible, transparent and inexpensive — who needs aluminium frames when your PVs are stuck to your windows?
“There is currently no efficient technology to deal with the waste of silicon panels. That’s why old solar panels end up in the landfill,” says coauthor, Xun Xiao, at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University (LiU).
“Huge mountains of electronic waste that you can’t do anything with.”
Perovskites used in photovoltaic solar cells are ‘metal-halide perovskites’ — made from organic ions, metals and halogens. Such cells’ active layers are much thinner and cheaper than those of conventional silicon PV and show efficiencies of more than 26%, comparable with silicon PVs (20% – 22%).
But perovskite PVs are not yet produced at scale.
Recyclability is the key.
“We need to take recycling into consideration when developing emerging solar cell technologies,” says Professor Feng Gao, also at IFM at LiU and a co-author. “If we don’t know how to recycle them, maybe we shouldn’t put them on the market at all.”
(Snip-MORE, and they can recycle them!)
Pressing pause: how a unique insect survives Antarctica
February 14, 2025 Ariel Marcy
The inhospitable Antarctic Peninsula hosts only one native insect, and scientists from Japan have just identified an unprecedented combination of adaptations that allow it to thrive in the extreme cold.
The Antarctic midge is a tiny, flightless insect that lives most of its two-year life as a larva, the grub-like stage that follows the egg stage. (Complete metamorphosis in insects includes egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages).
How these larvae overwinter in Antarctica could have implications for cryopreservation technology but, perhaps more pressingly, better understanding of the species’ response to climate change. Previous researchers have suggested that the Antarctic midge be developed as a model organism for survival in extreme and fluctuating temperatures.
The Japanese research team led by Shin Goto of Osaka Metropolitan University studied the unique midge after developing a specialised rearing method, which took them six years to establish.
The team then tracked the growth and physiology of the midge larvae through their natural lifecycle. In a first for science, they documented two distinct forms of dormancy used as seasonal survival adaptations.
In general, dormancy is a state of inactivity, suspended development and reduced metabolism, but insect scientists distinguish between two types: quiescence and diapause.
In the first winter, the Antarctic midge larvae adapted via quiescence, a form of dormancy triggered by external conditions, such as cold temperatures. This means all the midge larvae go dormant at the same time. Quiescence ends when the temperature rises.
(Snip-MORE; it’s fascinating and worth the click. Also not long.)
(However, it’s not well-known, it’s chilling, and it could be upsetting, so take only what you can take. It’s like Rosewood+Greenwood, plus yet more. -A)
By Lawrence Ware Published Monday 12:02AM
Most Black Americans have never heard of the Red Summer of 1919…but it is an element of Black history that we need to pay attention to. This country specializes in committing monstrous atrocities and then ignoring the consequences of their actions. It happened with Native Americans and the Trail of Tears. And, of course, it happened with Black folks. This truth is best captured when we consider what happened in the year 1919.
When Austrian Archduke Franz was assassinated on 28 June 1914, it set off a chain of events that led to what we now call World War 1. Working age white men were drafted and sent to fight, so that left many job vacancies in northern cities that Black men were happy to fill. See, Black folks were feeing the racist South hoping to find less racism in northern cites. The population of Black Chicagoans increased by more than 100% while the number of Black folks in Philadelphia grew by 500%.
While that was happening, 367,000 Black Americans either enlisted or were drafted into service to fight in the war that had just popped off. Black men were eager to prove to white America that Black people deserved dignity. They hoped they would see that by fighting in what white folks were calling ‘The Great War.’ But once the war ended, Black soldiers returned to an ungrateful nation. Thinking about these men, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote on May of 1919 in the NAACP’s Crisis newsletter, “We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.”
Du Bois had no idea how prophetic his words would be. From May of that year to December, over 25 race massacres took place on American soil. More than 250 Black men, women and children’s lives were violently cut short. Black folks discovered that the racial violence they thought they escaped when they left places like Alabama and Mississippi was not a feature of Southern living. Instead, it was part of being Black in America.
Those white soldiers who came home and discovered that scores of Black people had moved to the north. They also found Black soldiers who felt that they had earned their place in American life by serving their country. An official put it like this: “one of the principle elements causing concern is the returned negro soldier who is not readily fitting back into his prior status of pre-war times.” Therefore, white soldiers became white terrorists to put these soldiers and anyone who looked like them back in their place. There were race massacres in Washington D.C., Omaha, Knoxville, and a massive race riot in Chicago where 38 people were killed and 537 injured. Few white people were arrested for these crimes, fewer were prosecuted. Two years later was the Tulsa race riot where the Greenwood district, what we now call Black Wallstreet, was burned to the ground.
As we celebrate Black History Month, we need to tell the entire truth of our history. Not just the accomplishments of men and women who embody Black excellence, but also the way that America has wronged us. The Red Summer of 1919 is one of those stories that we would like to forget. Yet don’t our accomplishments shine even more brightly considering the darkness we had to endure? No doubt we have endured days when hope unborn had died. But, somehow, against all odds, we came to the place for which our fathers sighed.
So today I started out by posting a bunch of memes because I couldn’t sleep. Good and great. Then I went for a nap in the morning totally worn out. However my husband had determined to keep going with the sink pipe break under the house repair. However when I got up and seen how far he had come to removing the stuff in the room with the idea to redo the flooring / put in a new toilet. I had to hit him with my idea of remodeling the bathroom.
See that hallway bathroom was added as first as a toilet and sink, and had its access from the kitchen. But we needed the kitchen access door space for cupboards in our new kitchen so we moved the doorway to the hallway. But when James moved in he needed a place to shower and as he worked nights and coming in late in the evening to shower often got awkward. He would interrupt Ron and I being romantic … is a nice way to put it. I did not care, I had been in the US Army where if there were three people in a room it was understood that guys were going to have sex and we just pretended not to see or hear. James said he was OK with that. But my husband was freaking out. The third time it happened while we were in the throes of passion nude on our bed and James knocked on the door … Ron had enough.
He carved a large portion of our own bedroom master bathroom we had planned to use for a large shower to put a shower in the hallway bathroom. He then built our own much smaller bathroom shower in the space left. Now that James has been gone for years Ron simply has been too tired to deal with changing anything. The leak of the sink gave me the opportunity.
Ron has been in the middle stage of finishing the Florida Room I am moving out to so we can have a spare bedroom where my pink palace office is. Due to the kitchen sink leak I still plan to post on but it is not yet finished as you can see. See that one I really wanted to do a video on with the new program I spent so much money buying. It will show if it really was worth the money to buy and use. However I have to say even without using it I had an issue and the company stepped in and solved it along with a decade’s old one. So they seem a rock solid company.
So remember that Ron is now this year 70 and I am very disabled but I am willing to help him all I can. But during the attempt to fix the sink leak Ron struggled to get his legs to bed around the pipes and to get himself around the tight spaces. Turns out he has not got the flexibility he once had. Well damn it I knew that from our bedtime and the rest of our life. His is a muscle bound 70 year old man who has lost all flexibility.
So while we had everything removed except the shower I spend a lot of time convincing him that hey, if we shifted this there and that here and did this … we could have the bathroom of our dreams we originally planned on. Took a while. About two hours until he came back to me and said enthusiastically … YES, that is a great idea. But Scottie the work and effort. He told me he remembered how it was so hard for him and I to force that current shower into the room and twist it to the point it would fall into where it needed to be. I was not so disabled then and he was much younger.
I said yes I remember but also this is different. See it is only us living here, no one needs to access the bathroom or shower yet. Plus we don’t have to use any existing spaces. We can remove the walls around the current shower and just work on it as we move forward. We can even cut this shower into pieces and get a new one to put in there as it was a simple cheap 36 by 36 shower anyway. Once he realized that he was all for it. He even was online looking at extra tall elongated bowl toilets. I may regret this, I created a monster. LOL. So below are the pictures of the bathroom and I am going to bed. Love everyone and thanks for following the blog. This saga of remodeling is only beginnings. Hugs
Now all that need to be done is plan out where to put each item and run the needed piping. Hugs
So today I have been having a very full day. I have been helping Ron with the bathroom stuff as well as I could. Did our morning walk. I talked to Ron a bought evening meals. I have been watching videos. I have been answering comments which always makes me happy even though I am getting tired. I am working on a post right now on the blogging computer how Ron and I redesigned the hallway bathroom. But even during all that old issues come up. I am so tired of it, and I am sorry to again hit you with it. But two videos showed up in my YouTube feed and I clicked on them. I have to say I shouldn’t have clicked on them, my own damn fault. Ok I admit that. But like a moth to a flame sometimes. What do I say? I should run, and keep running. But far too often I click. And I watch. And I hurt. But each of them tried to send me into the void. Luckily I have strong friends who keep that void from me. Here are the two videos below. I am not opening any more YouTube links for now except for those from those I know and respect. Hugs.
Unlike the story of the teen above I was shared willingly by my older hell spawn female siblings with their boyfriends / future husband. I was way to please the boyfriend without them having to do the work. When the oldest one’s second husband moved into our home and started raping me and her really young kids she laughed to my adopting mother saying it was so cute her soon to be husband thought he was sleeping with a girl. A year later her soon to be 8 years old son came to me saying he wished he had been born a girl so he could be a better girlfriend. I was so entrapped in my own abuse I couldn’t help him. Hell at that time I couldn’t even understand what he was saying, none of my abusers had told me I needed to be the girl, I just was. I regret that to this day. All I could do then was hold him and say please be glad of your man parts and don’t let anyone take them from you. I don’t know if that helped him or if he is angry because he told someone like I did, and they did not help. Sadly he told me who was being abused by the very people abusing him.
Both of these boys were me. Sadly in the first I had no one to go to, the teachers I told only abused me freely and the only time I pulled a gun on one of my abusers … something, maybe a higher power, maybe just a future me, or a better part of me, convinced me not to and to lower the gun, remove my hand from the trigger and to replace everything to the places they belonged. Of all the events in my life that once scares me the most. The idea if I had pulled that trigger that night. What might I have become. Horrible to think of. I was only 9 or so that night. How I might have destroyed the Scotty that was to be. But I had just been violently raped by one of my main hell spawn sibling abusers who had made me do unspeakable things before while growing up. Yet with the gun pressed to his passed out temple, my finger on the trigger, something held me back. I have never understood why. Surly I would have been let off by any court. Blood still tricked down my leg from his sexual assault. But really that was not the point. Something more was. At this point in my life at 62, I doubt I will ever know or understand. Love to all. Best wishes to those that don’t want hugs. Hugs.
Delegitimization: To remove the authority, the very veracity of a thing, an idea, a process or a person.
We saw it become more and more used as a word in the 1990’s, raising to a regularly seen word in the modern era.
The idea of a politician lying to the people is as axiomatic and expected as to be enfolded within the very image of the word “politician”. The sad part is not the lie, it is the full purchase of the lie by those who prefer the lie to the reality that they might be wrong.
Nonetheless, the very invention of the modern internet created an unexpected leveling of information sources where the respected scientists and journalists somehow were delegitimized to become equal footing with the internet troll and conspiracy theorist.
My grandfather used the term “talking out both sides of your mouth”. Certain “news” pundits used the politicization of reality to unashamedly become very rich. They sold themselves and whatever morals they once held for this idea that the public doesn’t have the right nor the need for the actual truth.
From a very good 2018 article in the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320 In the future, the term “fake news” might come to be seen as a relic of febrile 2017 (if we’re lucky). But the fight against misinformation won’t go away. Companies and governments are now starting to take concrete action… Google and Facebook have both said that they are going to be hiring a lot of people to review content and enforce their terms of service…” we have instead seen Zuckerberg first accused by the republicans of violation of the 1st Amendment only to then bend the knee to Trump, and the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk to remove such standards and accuracy oversights. We witnessed live the overthrow of journalistic integrity by the very people journalists are meant to hold accountable.
Musk went on to purchase both president trump outright and the “mandate” to purge the government similar to his destruction of Twitter all the while publicly declaring fascism alive and well.
In the midst of this, we have seen the republicans refuse to allow evidence that trump attempted to bribe a desperate foreign head of state to implicate Joe Biden in a conspiracy of fraud, only to then fire and oust the people who did their job in reporting that problem to the government.
The very same republicans who were once cowering under their chairs as the Jan.6th insurrectionists smashed their way in an attempt to keep trump in power and hang Mike Pence, again – if a bit late – for doing his job. They later called it a “tour”, then cheered when the very person responsible for their crimes came back into power and pardoned each and every one of them.
And refused to do their jobs when it was found that trump had stolen boxes upon boxes of national secrets.
Trump violated the law and was – shockingly – expected to account for his actions, garnering sexual abuse convictions, fraud convictions, rico election fraud accusations… and they were ignored. The government employees charged with the thankless task of holding a president to the very laws of the country he once headed were fired, ostracized, threatened. The supreme court was packed with the questionable… yeah, we’ll leave it at that. The Justice Department was put into the hands of his former personal attorney, the one who was refusing to allow him to be held accountable for his crimes, foregoing the very notion that the Justice Department is the “People’s Attorney”.
I’m absolutely out of breath! I’m no where near a complete description and I’m out of breath. I can only wonder if there will ever be a history book describing this, or if we are witnessing the final acts in the decimation of the education of our youth and the idea of facts, reality, justice. What will be left that made America what it is? The Constitution? Already disrespected. The People? They are cowed into hysterical sycophantic abasement on the one hand and bewildered incredulity on the other. I just don’t know what is left and I seriously question what will we become now.
Scottie's Playtime 