🪐Math, our language to describe the universe☄️

✨ Side blog. 🧬 Neurodivergent. 🚀 Agnostic. 🥄 📖 Advocate for global science literacy. Reading. Research. 📚

[a-typical]

You enter this room in a human shape and as the atmosphere we breathe.

You are the central pole through the nine levels connecting them and us to absolute absence.

So that we can have what we want, you give failure and frustration.

That man there, you suggest, might remove his head before entering the temple.

Then he could listen without ears to a voice that says My creature.

A month of walking the road, you make that distance in one day. Never mind gold and silver payments. When you feel generous, give your head.

— Rumi

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Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men — Lundy Bancroft

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Conversely, other social practices of certain native Americans in the pre-Columbian era—from methods of child rearing and codes of friendship and loyalty, to worshipping and caring for the natural environment—appear far more enlightened than do many of the dominant ideas that we ourselves live with today.

If these attitudes and behaviors varied in emphasis from one native group to another, one characteristic of America’s indigenous peoples that does seem almost universal, transcending the great diversity of other cultural traits, was an extraordinary capacity for hospitality. We have noted this in our discussion of the Iroquois and the Indians of California, but in fact, the native peoples’ affectionate and fearless cordiality in greeting strangers was mentioned by almost all the earliest European explorers, from Vespucci in South America in 1502, where the Indians “swam out to receive us . . . with as much confidence as if we had been friends for years,” to Cartier in Canada in 1535, where the Indians “as freely and familiarly came to our boats without any fear, as if we had ever been brought up together.”

— American Holocaust, David E. Stannard

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Indeed, Morgan later notes, “the Indians . . . could have done the English in simply by deserting them.” They did not desert them, however, and in that act they sealed their fate. The same was true throughout the Americas:

the cultural traits and the material achievements of the native people were turned against them once the European invasion began. Indian openness and generosity were met with European stealth and greed. Ritualized Indian warfare, in which few people died in battle, was met with the European belief in devastating holy war.

— American Holocaust, David E. Stannard

[a-typical]

A moth flying into the flames says with its wingfire, "Try this." The wick

with its knotted neck broken tells you the same. A candle as it diminishes

explains, "Gathering more and more is not the way. Burn, become light

and heat and help melt." The ocean sits in the sand letting its lap

fill with pearls and shells, then empty. The bitter salt taste hums, "This."

The phoenix gives up on good-and-bad, flies to nest on Mount Qaf, no more

burning and rising from ash. It sends out one message. The rose purifies

its face, drops the soft petals, shows its thorn, and points. Wine abandons

thousands of famous names, the vintage years and delightful bouquets, to run

wild and anonymous through your brain. Empty, the flute closes its eyes

to Hamza's nothing. Everything begs with the silent rocks for you to be

flung out like light over this plain, the presence of Shams-i Tabriz.

— Rumi, Hamza's Nothing

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A perfect glass filled with sunlight.

— Rumi

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Two people talk along a road

that's paved with words

— Rumi

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You’ve disappeared into the way? Leave even that behind. You’ve

given up everything. You live in absence. More is required.

— Rumi

[a-typical]

The people of these climate-blessed islands supported themselves with a highly developed level of agriculture—especially on Cuba and Hispaniola, which are among the largest islands on earth; Cuba, after all, is larger than South Korea (which today contains more than 42,000,000 people) and Hispaniola is nearly twice the size of Switzerland. In the infrequent areas where agricultural engineering was necessary, the people of the Indies created irrigation systems that were equal in sophistication to those existing in sixteenth-century Spain.⁹² Their staple food was cassava bread, made from the manioc plant yuca, which they cultivated in great abundance. But also, through so many long generations in the same benign tropical environment, the Arawaks had devised an array of unique methods for more than satisfying their subsistence needs—such as the following technique which they used to catch green sea turtles weighing hundreds of pounds, large fish, and other marine life, including manatees.

In addition to this technique, smaller fish were harvested by the use of plant derivatives that stupefied them, allowing the natives simply to scoop up large numbers as though gathering plants in a field. Water birds were taken by floating on the water’s surface large calabashes which concealed swimmers who would seize individual birds, one at a time, without disturbing the larger flock. And large aquaculture ponds were created and walled in to maintain and actually cultivate enormous stocks of fish and turtles for human consumption. A single one of these numerous marine corrals held as many as 1000 large sea turtles. This yielded a quantity of meat equal to that of 100 head of cattle, and a supply that was rapidly replenished: a fertile female turtle would lay about 500 eggs each season.

Still, the Arawaks were careful not to disturb the natural balance of these and other creatures; the evidence for this is that for millennia they sustained in perpetuity their long-term supply of such natural foodstuffs. It was only after the coming of the Spanish—and, in particular, their release of dogs and pigs that turned feral and ran wild—that the wildlife ecology of the islands found itself in serious trouble.⁹⁴

In sum, as Caribbean expert Carl Sauer once put it, “the tropical idyll of the accounts of Columbus and Peter Martyr was largely true” regarding the Arawak. “The people suffered no want. They took care of their plantings, were dextrous at fishing and were bold canoeists and swimmers. They designed attractive houses and kept them clean. They found aesthetic expression in woodworking. They had leisure to enjoy diversion in ball games, dances, and music. They lived in peace and amity.”⁹⁵

— American Holocaust, David E. Stannard

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birds nesting near the coast, earning their beauty, servants to the ocean

— Rumi

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Yesterday, you made a promise. Today, you broke it.

In pieces, and at the same time, a perfect glass filled with sunlight.

— Rumi

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We celebrate a birthday and a solstice every second.

Newborns, we need fresh bread! Life grows from the dead, as the living get

led into death. Dry branches to the fire: green limbs bend to the ground with

fruit; pleasure fills a mother's breast: put your mouth there and suck. You

must. I've made many elegant speeches to the assembly. Now it's time to

walk outside and be quiet. Shams draws me to words, then two days of silence.

— Rumi, Two Days of Silence

[a-typical]

You’ve disappeared into the way? Leave even that behind. You’ve

given up everything. You live in absence. More is required.

Love wants an arm and a leg.

— Rumi

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Inside you are sweet beyond telling, and the cathedral there, so deeply tall.

— Rumi

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You see clearly the glory of nothing and stand, inexplicably, there.

— Rumi

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Love is invisible, except here, in us. — Rumi

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The hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth, 134F/56.6C, was at Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park on July 10, 1913. During that same heat wave, the temperature reached at least 129 for five straight days. At these temperatures,you could only survive an estimated 10 to 20 minutes before your body could no longer cool itself. Even if you drank water continuously, you wouldn’t be able to keep from collapsing.

Medical emergencies often spike in the park during the summer, and car breakdowns can quickly become life-threatening. But when the air temperature is over 120, medical helicopters can’t fly (air becomes less dense in heat, and rotor blades struggle to generate enough lift), making Death Valley one of the most dangerous places on Earth.