A guy running a local chapter reached out to me because of a comment I left on a YouTube video. We’re collaborating on how to organize more people and push the city council to take aggressive measures like zoning reform, repealing parking minimums, robust public transit, comfortable bike lanes, etc.
In EMS, there’s a saying: if you drop the baby, pick it up.
Dropping the baby is like the worst thing you can ever do, but for Christ’s sake, don’t just leave it on the ground, do something about it. I’ve gotten involved in local government. Local government is great because you can still affect change there, and you can affect change that can snowball into something bigger with other people in other local governments making those changes. I’m on the city’s bicycle commission, and I’m working with local organizations like the ‘Council for Leadership and Justice’ and ‘Strong Towns’ to try and make the world a better place than I found it. Is it futile? Sure feels like it sometimes, time will tell I guess, but the trying helps me feel better for a few reasons, not least of which because it puts me in contact with others who care enough to try too.
I logged in just to answer this:
Stellarium
When it comes to stargazing and learning more about the night sky, there is hands-down no better program. It’s available on PC (windows/Mac/Linux) as well as mobile platforms. I used it for months for free before I paid for the premium sub, and the premium sub actually feels additive rather than just gatekeeping essential features. Plus, it’s pretty cheap and you can choose to just buy a lifetime pass for $20 and skip the sub. It’s the only app I’ve ever been happy to subscribe to.
It’s definitely to do with work conditions. I’ve been a paramedic for fifteen years, and suffice it to say, I’ve seen (and smelled and heard) some shit. I’ve always felt that I had a harder time processing the stuff from when I worked in a busy metro system and we had to go from coding a kid who drowned just fifteen feet from a party full of adults to holding grandma’s hand and making her warm and comfy on our five minute jaunt to dialysis to “hey, there’s a car on fire and bystanders report hearing screaming from the vehicle”. I would regularly get three hours of sleep over a 72 hour period and have almost no time to process the horrible shit we saw while still having to be a functioning, caring professional for every patient along the way. The also horrible shit we saw in the slower rural area I worked in has haunted me a lot less. There’s probably more to the whole picture than that, but I’m confident that work conditions are a huge factor.