⛵🚫🧭

@CorvidCrone so real. I'm in my 40's and will never own a home. The cultural expectation that someone my age is "self-sufficient," and the psychological boost of being in control (more or less) of one's own living situation, are things I will always fall short of, and I think we don't talk enough about that as part of this culture's lack of meaningful ways to transition from youth to adulthood - a marker that is actually very important for a human being's development and sense of broader belonging.

@passenger sometimes the folks with no reading skills and no "critical theory" know what a bad thing looks like a lot better than some people who are extremely well-read.

@vapaad@wandering.shop @idzie@kolektiva.social if you ever want recommendations of places to go in the NE Utah corner of it, I used to live there 💙 The whole Flaming Gorge area is amazing for geology and scenery and wildlife. Something like 400 million years of geologic time represented in the roadside rocks as you drive from the Gorge up into the Uintahs. Some of N. America's oldest fossils! Gotta shut up now before I gush too much 😆

@vapaad@wandering.shop @idzie@kolektiva.social I was actually thinking the Uncomphagre! 😁 just a little hazy on where exactly Grand Mesa was in relation to it. The Uinta Basin is a place very near & dear to my heart so that whole (much) greater area is of interest to me. 💙💙💙

@transform I took a co-counseling course back in 2015 and it was amazing! It was hard to keep the practice going with so many people leaving my area, and myself being gone so much for work, as well, but I have never forgotten some of the lessons it taught me about somatic regulation and how to get past the "thinking brain" when helping others hold space for their trauma.

@vapaad@wandering.shop well the Flaming Gorge Reservoir is actually a fun place in and of itself to do some kayaking or water recreation of your choice (YMMV on dealing with the usual summer boating crowds...)! The Sheep Creek Geologic Loop is an *amazing* driveable (most of the time) loop through some really scenic areas and of course, fascinating geology (plus bighorn sheep 💙). Going south of the Gorge towards Vernal there are a few cool dinosaur trackways that are also cool back-canyon drive/hikes. I can't remember the specific names but one of them is just across the road from the huge evil Simplot Mining project unfortunately. Mostly just as a landmark of where to find it. Also close to Vernal is Steinaker State Park, which is part of the national Dark Sky park registry, and also trails & stuff. Vernal itself has a really decent Field History Museum for more dinosaurs and geology (plus a tiny bit of indigenous history) and the Museum of Uinta County has some more in-depth indigenous historical content. But for me, the best part of just getting up into the Uinta Mountains in the Ashley National Forest! There are so many places to hike, camp, ride horses, (Red Canyon Lodge is another place to look for more info on those activities – I'd give the Flaming Gorge Lodge itself a miss cuz when I was up there last year they had an employee with a fuckin White Power tattoo). Also in July/Aug there's this sweet old ex-Park Ranger guy who does talks around the area on stuff like the drought ecology of the Green River and the Night Sky and the Mustang Ridge Fire. Last year I was his audience of one for two of those talks and it was really fun. He's pretty rad. Red Canyon and the surrounding area itself is also awesome, both land and water (the Reservoir and the Green River). Beautiful mixed ecology high arid grassland plus subalpine ponderosa/aspen and juniper/sagebrush. Probably quite similar to where you're at, but I always love the huge diversity of those ecosystems 💙 Also also, since I've been an adult I've never been there at the right time for it but the Ute Reservation has an annual powwow around July 4th, I've always wanted to go! (https://utetribe.com/) Haha sorry, I could go on. I spend time there every summer if I can and there's always more I discover every time, even after all these decades. I hope you do get to go and you find something to fall in love with there! I'd love to make it further down your way one of these times, too, I haven't been around the greater region there much since I was a kid!

@emsenn@kolektiva.social we are going to quickly be facing the same thing here (data centers), so I'm both watching these conversations with interest and also asking a lot of the same questions. (Not that it's datacenters alone which require us to ask these questions obviously). Unlike yourself & many folks on here I am very tech-stupid, so my thoughts tend to run to low-tech concepts, which may or may not really be adequate to address what's happening. I think in some ways and in some places, small towns are more set up to meet the challenge of low-tech communication than larger towns or cities are. But I think about (and have seen it tried, sometimes successfully) adapting structures like the town hall, the flyering, even the door-knocking (depending on the neighborhood). When I think about de-growth, part of what I think about is just the scaling-down of communication, in the sense that the old, "one mouthy person gets on a soapbox and yells at a crowd" method, in all its iterations, seems played out. I'm sure you have way more insight into the actual science of communication than I do, and would love to hear more about communication + degrowth, but in this immediate sense, the thought of treating communication outside of tech as a challenge of mycelial spread, so to speak, instead of how to reach mass numbers all at once, is kind of where my mind is going. With that, I wonder about looking at things like what other kinds of orgs exist who could be called upon to raise the issue with their members, and what orgs they partner with, etc. Library boards, or even hobbyist groups, parent groups, anything where a quick n dirty (but not too dirty LOL) informative zine could make the rounds and then those folks be tasked with raising the issue to their other orgs, be they knitting circles or neighborhood associations. Iirc (and I may be wrong), it was more this kind of branching info-spreading that built mass participation in the Atlanta Forest movement than big platforms like Instagram or google. These methods definitely come with their own challenges, and as as they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but I think the dual purpose of getting the info out there and at the same time bolstering people's neural pathways to different forms of communication than big tech, is important and hopefully some of these low-tech old-school options can still be revived. Anyway, hopefully I haven't just missed the whole point of what you were asking in your original post, and ultimately I don't really have any concrete answers to add, but this is a continent-wide issue (at least) and I'm very interested in these discussions. They are happening here as well.

@MissConstrue i'm just kinda mad that this is the first I've ever heard of bean clubs

@CorvidCrone yes. True, and thank you. It *can* be unlearned. And we all have to do our part in not only unlearning it, but passing on that unlearning. ❤️🖤

@CorvidCrone it very much gives "the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears," only also to reject the evidence of your most intrinsic human responses. The last time I was arrested at a protest (ages ago now, I admit) it was because the cops were beating the shit outta this homeless teenage girl, and let me tell you that someone screaming "please help me" has such an indescribable way of bypassing all logic, all self-preservation instinct, especially in a crowd. I can admit I don't know what I would have done if I had been totally alone, but as it was, there was absolutely zero thought process between her screaming for help and me throwing myself into a pile of cops. Was it effective? Ehhhhhhh....not exactly. It probably distracted them as they now had someone else to beat on, is all I can say, but it was the most basic of human instincts. I can't describe it any other way. It sure wasn't me being a "hero" or a "good person," it was just automatic. So that so many people can be at a place where that instinct, even in a warehouse full of other people, has been so terrifyingly mutilated that it can be completely interrupted by the presence of a tiny number of fake authorities, just...makes me feel a kind of panicky despair.

@CorvidCrone it very much gives "the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears," only also to reject the evidence of your most intrinsic human responses. The last time I was arrested at a protest (ages ago now, I admit) it was because the cops were beating the shit outta this homeless teenage girl, and let me tell you that someone screaming "please help me" has such an indescribable way of bypassing all logic, all self-preservation instinct, especially in a crowd. I can admit I don't know what I would have done if I had been totally alone, but as it was, there was absolutely zero thought process between her screaming for help and me throwing myself into a pile of cops. Was it effective? Ehhhhhhh....not exactly. It probably distracted them as they now had someone else to beat on, is all I can say, but it was the most basic of human instincts. I can't describe it any other way. It sure wasn't me being a "hero" or a "good person," it was just automatic. So that so many people can be at a place where that instinct, even in a warehouse full of other people, has been so terrifyingly mutilated that it can be completely interrupted by the presence of a tiny number of fake authorities, just...makes me feel a kind of panicky despair.

@transform I took a co-counseling course back in 2015 and it was amazing! It was hard to keep the practice going with so many people leaving my area, and myself being gone so much for work, as well, but I have never forgotten some of the lessons it taught me about somatic regulation and how to get past the "thinking brain" when helping others hold space for their trauma.

@skeletor@mas.to story. of. my. life. 🤣