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Sade Olutola
taylor price
Noah Kahan
occasionally subtle
Not today Justin
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
d e v o n
Today's Document
sheepfilms
The Stonewall Inn
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
will byers stan first human second
Aqua Utopiaļ½ęµ·ć®åŗć§čØę¶ćē“”ć
cherry valley forever
tannertan36
seen from Malaysia
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@grotesque-altar
Quick About:
Counterpart to my witch blog, grotesque-grimoire. See more about my practice there.
Just a digital altar of sorts; mostly aesthetic stuff relating to my work and deities and spirits I work with.
Deity/Spirit Tags Below the Cut:
Fox stimboard because they're silly little guys
(x)(x)(x) (x)(x)(x) (x)(x)(x)
Nine Lokean Virtues:
1. Truth: Be real. Be true to yourself and allow others follow their own truth.
2. Humor: Learn to find the humor in things, especially yourself.
3. Humility: If you need to tie your balls to a goat to accomplish your goals, suck it up buttercup.
4. Cunning: Try to think outside the box. Don't make a mess so big that you can't figure your way out of it.
5. Transformation: Don't be afraid of change, because that's how we grow. Don't be afraid of self-examination and listen to constructive criticism.
6. Creativity: Create awesome stuff. Try new things out. If you don't like it, blow it up and try again.
7. Accountability: You are the only one in charge of your own destiny, your own life, and your own actions.
8. Empathy: Try to see things from more than one perspective. Shape-shift into someone else's shoes before you pass judgement.
9. Experimentation: A mistake is only a mistake if you do it twice. Until then, everything is an experiment.
Fernando Ortega,Ā N. Clavipes Meets S. Erard, Mov. 1, 2008
The spider Nephila clavipes is now named Trichonephila clavipes, the golden silk spider. You can see her on top of the right side of the harp, but they look like this up close:
Photo by william_deml
A pair of corvids are observed perched silently atop a street light during a misty morning in coastal California. ā”
A deity having a domain over something commonly seen as bad or scary does not mean that deity is evil. Thanatos having a domain over peaceful death, for example, does not make him an evil, bad, or scary deity. Essentially, don't judge a book by its cover.
Deer and jackdaws.
The birds feed on ticks from the deer, and also assist in removing velvet from growing antlers.
While entomology is trending: a legit list of bug projects worth donating to/participating in.
Did not have "frozen bug man asking to borrow an outlet is a potentially fraudulent misogynist" on my entomology bingo card for this year, so trying to do something good with the fact that entomology is currently trending, here's a list of what SHOULD BE (I am no longer confident) good bug projects to donate to/participate in if you feel so inclined! Please also add good bug projects if you know any! Click the names of the institutions to find ways to donate.
The Frost Entomology Museum - Part of Penn State University, which has started up its public insect fair again this year! The museum has a "Hexapod Haiku Challenge," and I'm screaming.
The Lost Ladybug Project - Fair warning that the main webpage for it looks mildly sketch, but I can find it in multiple places that it's a real project of Cornell. It has a citizen science component where you can photograph specimens for them (no killing bugs)!
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum Department of Entomology
The Big Bug Hunt - An international project that appears to have the backing of multiple universities. It's a citizen science project to track the movements of bugs that are both detrimental and beneficial to crops. I am honestly not sure how this will affect the bugs though because the point is to protect home gardeners' crops from them.
University of California Riverside Department of Entomology
Cornell University Department of Entomology Giving Page - There's a tab at the right with three different projects of theirs: The Cornell University Insect Collection Fund, the Lost Ladybug Project Fund, and the Pollinator Health Research Fund
Michigan State University Department of Entomology - They have A BUNCH of named entomology funds you can donate to, or you can give them money that they can use flexibly.
Entomological Society of America
The Xerces Society and Pollinator Partnership are both good conservation groups.
BugGuide.Net looks very "old school internet" but is a legit site and probably my #1 online resource when trying to ID bugs.
Not bug-related but still cool, if you want to help with scientific research check out Foldit and Phylo.
MS Bug Blues - An invasive insect education program from the Mississippi State University Outreach program
Monarch Butterfly and Pollinators Conservation Fund - administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, it's a public-private partnership to conserve Monarch Butterflies and at-risk polinator species.
If youāre along the front range of Colorado, look into Native Bee Watch! We monitor urban planted spaces for native bees and log both frequency of flower visits and which flowers are visited most during different parts of the growing season. Itās an extremely fun, empowering, and meaningful community science project that has years of data already collected and a wonderful training program.
important psa
Awh, I always thought they were so pretty and had no idea they could be harmful
Can someone transcribe this? The water is really loud.
āHey everybody! Here we are in the southern Appalachian mountains. We have a pristine Montane stream ecosystem, as you can see all around us here. I thought Iād make an educational video this morning. It involves this practice right here [gestures to rock pile]. As our national parks and national forests fall victim to human pressure, more than ever, this is something weāre seeing more and more of. Hopefully we can make this video go viral. This stream, as you can see around us right here, is a breeding ground for North Americaās largest salamander, the Eastern hellbender. They can get up to 2.5-3 feet long. Itās part of our natural heritage in the eastern United States. When people do this right here - what they consider to be art - theyāre actually destroying the breeding ground for the Eastern hellbender salamander. The Eastern hellbender will use flat rocks such as these to make nesting sites in these streams. So hereās what I would like everybody to do. If you care about our Montane stream freshwater ecosystems like this one around us here, when you see something like this, this is what I recommend doing: [kicks down rock pile]. Take the rocks, throw them back into the stream. The Eastern hellbender utilizes rocks like this. It actually feels pretty good to do this! [walks to other pile] This is not actually art, okay? This is destruction of our freshwater ecosystems. So I would like to encourage everyone: when you see this [gestures to second rock pile], do this! [kicks pile] Iād like to return our streams to their natural state for the organisms that live here. Thanks, and have a good day.ā
PSA from a forest ranger who is instructed to knock these down:
Not only are they harmful for river/stream habits, they can cause hikers to get lost! Cairns are meant to represent the correct path for a trail. Weāve had hikers get lost by following incorrect paths marked by cairns people set up āfor fun/art.ā Not only do we want hikers to get lost, we want them to stay on the correct path for erosion control and ecosystem protection. Cairn-building āfor fun/artā has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, so we keep finding more and more to knock over.
If you want to set up a cairn āfor fun/art,ā do it in a dry, very rocky area. Donāt take rocks from rivers or streams! But when itās a bedrock site and thereās lots of rocks sitting around? Sure, fine, whatever. But please please PLEASE knock them down after! Donāt be the reason we have to deploy Search & Rescue for a lost hiker!
Bro, you ok? Bro, humans arenāt separate from the ecosystems around us. Weāre a part of them, bro. Bro, weāre never going to have absolutely zero effect on ecosystems, because we live here, bro. Bro, I never said it had to be a bad effect. We donāt have to immediately be perfect either, bro, sometimes doing what you can is what you can, and its way better than nothing. Bro what do you mean humans are a plague. Youāre starting to sound a bit like an ecofascist, broā¦ Bro?
Vultures are holy creatures.
Tending the dead.
Bowing low.
Bared head.
Whispers to cold flesh,
āYour old name is not your king.
I rename you āEverything.āā
fun fact!
Vultures are also responsible for keeping diseases at bay.
Vulture stomach acid is so powerful that it can kill anthrax and many other deadly diseases.
So when they consume the carcass of a creature that has died of disease, they actually destroy the disease within it too!
So yes vultures are 100% holy creatures because they not only eat the dead, but protect the living from death.
This is meā”ā”
Please do this for your cats.
Dispite their reputation, cats are very very socal creatures. Cats do the equivalent of this for you when they sit in front of your laptop and put their arms on the keyboard or put their paw on your phone while you're using it. This is their love language, it's how they show that they like you and care about what you care about. They don't understand why you care about it but they're trying.
If you turn around and do the same for them they'll be absolutely delighted. Sometimes when our youngest cat goes to the scratching post I scratch it with him too and he loves it. He'll gets so into the scratching that he ends up climbing it cuz he wants to scratch with his back paws too. If they're chirping at the window I'll sometimes go over to see what they see and they usually scoot over so I have room beside them to see the offending bird or insect and they'll purr like crazy cuz they're so happy I'm helping them
I love doing this with our cat! And he loves it too. Because he thinks we share his interest, he'll share them with us too. One time I walked into the bedroom and he was sitting on top of the shelf by the door. I asked him "what's up?" and he started chirping and meowing to me and looking up at the ceiling. I followed his eyes and there was a fly up there. This little dude saw me walk into the room and immediately told me his exciting news about what he was up to. I love him so much.
Female Great Horned Owl outside her nest cavity
Chicago, Illinois, taken February 2024
Hot take, I really donāt think we should assign human morals onto animals and call them bad or evil. Fishblr has internalised this idea really well with sharks, and I think thatās good! Sharks donāt deserve all the fearmongering they suffer from in media. Butā¦ can we please remember to extend this to other animals too? Even to intelligent animals like dolphins (most commonly bottlenose dolphins) and orcas. It seems to be a counter to pop cultureās tendency to show dolphins as complete angels when they partake in some messed up things, but likeā¦. Dolphins are still animals? They may be able to recognize themselves in mirrors and they may have language and culture and know how to use tools but their intelligence is still on the level of a human child (and how empathetic are those!!??). I see people talk about how evil dolphins are but I never see people talking about other animals the same way, like, why arenāt sea otters and their āevilnessā the topic of discussion? :/
And to clarify:
Bottlenose dolphins are the only sexually aggressive dolphin, and those sexually aggressive males are outcasts from their pods. Their behavior is not considered normal to most of their species. Amazon river dolphins are also weirdly horny but many animals are so yeah. Also marine biologist Dr. Maddalena Bearzi debunked the dolphin rape people and other animals myths btw, she has a PhD in marine biology with 25+ years of experience studying dolphins, she knows what she's talking about.
And regarding orcas. Orca teeth are not serrated like a shark's so they can't cause heavy blood loss. They ram or smack around their prey because it's simply more effective with their anatomy to do so. Also they "play" with prey as a way to teach calves how to hunt. They aren't malicious in any way. It's just survival.
The rare behaviors of 1-3 species of dolphins is not a valid judgement on a family of animals with roughly 50 members. And animals are animals, they shouldn't be held to human morals and ideologies that they have no concept of. Doing so just demonizes them and makes people not care about their conservation and future on this planet. It's scary, I've heard people seriously wish for the extinction of dolphins and orcas because of misinformation and plain ignorance.
Witchy tip:
Washi tape!
Are you in a dorm or other place where you canāt burn candles, but the healing spell asks for a blue candle? Use washi tape to turn your electric candle into a blue one! Do you want to burn a rose candle on your Aphrodite altar but youāre not allowed an open flame? Well, it doesnāt smell like roses but itās pretty and has pink flowers!
Do you want the tealight in forest-themed travel altar to match the rest of the aesthetic? Washi tape!
Washi tape is removable, so you can keep changing the colour to whatever you need. And you can write on it, so instead of carving candles, you can draw your sigils or runes on the tape!
Happy Crafting!
