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Wholesome: my phone autogenerated a video of my dog remembering what it's like to have snow in winter
(www.youtube.com)
This is the warmest winter in 40 years, 50-60% snowpack, and we're the headwaters for a good chunk of US agriculture. All of the seasonal cycles are so off that nature thinks it's 2-3 months ahead or behind what it should be. The weather this month is normal for April. I was sipping my coffee this morning while looking at the drought-parched landscape and thinking about the impending catastrophic fire season. My phone sent me one of those stupid autogenerated photo collages. It's of how different winters were just a few years ago.
luv2liveinhell
shit is fucked and I'm expected not to bring it up in social situations
It's worse when you get someone that's happy winter is warmer now, but you're the bad guy for saying the words "climate change"
Thats why I say climate apocalypse now.
Climate apocalypse is my go-to term for gravitas, but I like polycrisis. You can't separate the environmental from the social or financial, so that term lets you link all of the intersectional issues into one collection of feedback loops.
Since 2020 but especially over the past year, I've entered this weird twilight zone where most strangers I talk to have a radical but nihilistic acceptance. Haircuts, tattoo sessions, random store clerks and clinicians- it's like 50/50 whether they'll preemptively bring up collapse as small talk.
I do that on purpose with most strangers I encounter. Your anecdote is similar to what I experience. Most people respond like this:
I use it as an exercise to point out how politics is in everything when I've already been told not to talk about them, fuck em.