Catherynne M. Valente Profile picture
Nov 20, 2024 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Hey, fun story!

I live on a small island in Maine. Post-election, a writer-friend & I decided to start a little islander group to share emotional support, info & resources. She posted about the 1st meeting on NextDoor.

Easy peasy.

There was nothing in the ad beyond "hey, things might get tough, let's get through this together."

IMMEDIATELY, MAGAs sailed in to scream, mock, & threaten us. For a support group.
I can't stress enough how this was just a potluck support group with an autumn bonfire & snacks, for islanders. To talk about our feelings & share some hope & logistical ideas for the future.

Yet all these conservatives, 98% of whom *don't even live on the island* started shrieking SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP & WE WON DEAL WITH IT.

I mean...yeah, man. We're dealing with it. By starting a group you don't need to come to because you don't even live here?
Now, I should probably say that I wrote the support group ad, but my friend had to post it, & I couldn't help with the replies. Due to having posted twice about an election night get-together & once about selling a treadmill within 72 hours, I'm apparently "spamming" & on a temporary suspension from NextDoor for two weeks.

This will be important in a minute. It's also extremely stupid.
At first, my friend with my support, felt fine about keeping it up. Assholes gonna be assholes.

But the threads of abuse got so intense & scary that she took it down for all our safety. We have kids & our addresses are on ND.

And most people don't have 25 years of dealing with goblin behavior online like I do. It's REALLY frightening when that suddenly happens & you've never experienced it before.
The streams of utterly untethered, red-faced, spittle-flinging fury on a post about a post-election SUPPORT GROUP on a TINY ISLAND in a BLUE STATE got so weird my EX, who lives in the city, called me on the PHONE to make sure we were okay & taking precautions.

Because NextDoor's algorithm, like everyone else's, prioritizes high-engagement posts & puts them on EVERYONE even remotely nearby's feed.

(Were any of the abusive shitjackals on that post suspended from NextDoor? Of course not.)
So after winning an election, these winners are so happy & at peace, so relieved & confident they're right, that their man's gonna benefit everyone's lives everywhere, that...they're compelled to screech fire & acid at two middle-aged writer ladies on an island *they do not live on* for the high treason of...*checks notes* having a potluck to support each other.
The next four years are gonna be SPECTACULAR.

These are just randos in PWM suburbs, sitting around their computers scrolling NextDoor for cheap furniture or roof repair. Not DC operatives or weirdo militia bros or high-investment GOPers or cackling Machiavellian millionaires. Just regular people.

LOVE THIS JOURNEY FOR US.

(Spoiler: I fucking hate this journey for us. But this is where it starts: the most innocuous private activist groups getting burnt down before they can share a casserole.)
By the way, this is the group I talked about in my Patreon essay about the election, and on the Discord for said Patreon last week.

You know, the thing I felt I could do that gave me a little hope. The thing I had just enough energy to try for.

YEP. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED. FANTASTIC.
What amazes me isn't that they wanted to win & rub it in people's faces a bit--let's be real, we wanted that too--but that they simultaneously want to "own the libs" and *never have to see or hear a blue voter talk about it*.

How can you own the libs & taste their tears if you lose your mind, act like a gibbon with the rickets, & demand they be silent every time you see one upset about the thing you wanted them to be visibly upset about?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @catvalente

Oct 4, 2024
So to recap, 1.7 billion years ago, when life was basically just Spicy Algae, there was an open bleeding wound spreading for miles in Gabon that ooze-ploded every three hours for several hundred thousand years, hurking out radiation, intense heat, & all kinds of xenon, iodine, caesium, & barium into the air, groundwater, soil, & early photosynthetic organisms.
Now, I'm not remotely a scientist, but on reading about all this I immediately wondered if the Oklo reactors, and others, if they occurred elsewhere & we just haven't found them yet, could be a pretty significant factor in Spicy Algae mutating into Spicy Amoeba & so on all the way up to us, a Primeval Splash Park of radioctive slag interacting with a few Floaty Cell Bois, slouching toward sentience, their hour come, well, maybe, someday, if we're lucky.

So I googled it, & that was in fact the very next hypothesis made by actual smart scientists, & a very real theory about the origin of the vast biodiversity of our Mutation-Happy Planet.
Turns out the type of depletion found in the Oklo uranium isotopes 234-36 (234 & 236 completely gone with Overachiever 235 still present but down over 40%) is exactly what happens to material left over from nuclear reactors.

So that was that, they announced their findings, and over the next many years, other sites near Oklo showed the same markers.

And here's where it gets interesting.
Read 8 tweets
Oct 4, 2024
OMG I want to tell you about the coolest thing I've learned about in a hot minute! (Maybe everyone already knows about this, but it's new to me AND I LIKE LEARNING STUFF LET'S GO ON A JOURNEY OF EXPLOSIVE DISCOVERY TOGETHER)

SO. Under the precise right (or very wrong) conditions, natural deposits of uranium can develop spontaneous nuclear fission chain reactions identical to the kind we make on purpose in modern nuclear reactors.

*This has already happened at least once.* About 1.7 billion years ago in Oklo, Gabon.
How do we know a spontaneous natural nuclear fission reactor formed in Africa 1.7 billion years ago?

Well, in 1972, a bunch of French chemists were quality-testing reactor-bound ore from Gabon, and it turned out a LOT of the local uranium was already markedly depleted.

This being the Cold War, people were pretty uptight about accounting for all fissionable isotopes in any given civilian facility because big boom bad, so they needed to figure out how this could possibly have happened in a fairly new mine.
Turns out the type of depletion found in the Oklo uranium isotopes 234-36 (234 & 236 completely gone with Overachiever 235 still present but down over 40%) is exactly what happens to material left over from nuclear reactors.

So that was that, they announced their findings, and over the next many years, other sites near Oklo showed the same markers.

And here's where it gets interesting.
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(