Tootfinder

*sees it start pouring rain while the cafe i'm in is about to close*
damn
*realizes this is a great excuse to browse at the legendary bookstore across the street*
hell yeah

These are the photos for my 2026 calendar. Got the proofs today. Should have the hard copies in 2 weeks. Always agonizing to pick 13 of my photos for the next one. The last few years I’ve had to use older ones too. I don’t get out to shoot as much anymore. I’m hoping that will improve. I’ve volunteered to be a photographer for the city park dept. I’ll take pics of people engaged in the parks and activities, and whatever else I see.

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles announced a flash flood warning for the region beginning on Tuesday
and is urging people to use caution while traveling for the upcoming holiday.
The city is also deploying staff with the Los Angeles homeless services authority (Lahsa) to get supplies and hotel vouchers to those living outside.

This bus is supposed to run every 20 min. Instead I’m walking home in the rain because there’s a missed run and more than half-hour wait.
Daniel Lurie would rather lower Marc Benioff’s taxes than raise enough money to fix this

Glass half full: Sunset Dunes is no longer the most controversial thing in the Sunset. And with the rain clearing, tomorrow should be a great day to visit!