(ꈍᴗꈍ )

Leah | She/They | 21 | plant enthusiast | Not Straight | I am growing a lot as a person

[xtec]

This is what the average YouTube thumbnail looks like now

[noneuclideangarf]

spent too long on this

[nohoperadio]

just saw a pigeon doing the puffed up courtship dance thing to another pigeon, and as he was strutting around he suddenly stopped for a split second to do a very brief preen-peck at his own side, then returned to the strutting around. and i surprised myself by instantly losing respect for the male pigeon in that moment, like come on man i appreciate you had an itch or whatever but how is she supposed to feel special when you're getting distracted by bullshit like that? which on reflection i don't endorse, i mean those are pretty harsh dating norms i'm imposing on these pigeons, from a total outsider perspective, for no reason. probably not all girl pigeons are as uptight about that sort of thing as i would apparently be if i was a girl pigeon, maybe she even found it endearing who knows, i don't know her. it's none of my business really. sorry pigeons.

[headspace-hotel]

How to begin a sustainable way of life

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

“People need to eat more plant-based foods.” ->Talk about your favorite recipes, give others recipes, cook for them, and grow vegetables and plants in your garden and give them away as gifts. 

“People need to repair their clothes.” -> Offer to repair others’ clothes, and teach people how to repair their clothes. 

“People need to buy less clothes.” -> Give them old clothes that you don’t want, help them repair their clothes

“People need to buy less plastic stuff.” -> Learn to make things that can serve the same purpose, such as baskets, and give them as gifts. Let people borrow things you own so they don’t have to buy their own. 

“People need to stop using leafblowers and other gas-guzzling machinery.” -> Offer to rake the leaves. You can use them as compost in your own garden. 

“People need to be more educated about nature.”-> Learn about nature yourself. Tell people about nature. Be open about your love of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and frogs. Do not show awareness that this could be strange. You are not obligated to quiet down your enthusiasm for creepy crawlies to demonstrate awareness that it is weird. Point out at every opportunity how these animals are beneficial. 

“People need to use cars less.” -> Offer rides to others whenever you must go somewhere. Whenever you are about to go to the store, ask your neighbor or your friend who lives along the way, “Is there anything you need from the store?” 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

Some of these ideas might be eccentric, strange, or even socially unacceptable, but there is no way to change what is normal except to move against it. Someone has to be weird. It might as well be you. 

[percytheshark]

If possible, please take the time to read this! It’s wonderful

[image-plus-official]

The Rocks, Oil on Canvas, Vincent van Gogh, 1888. [1300 x 1111]

[sustainable-solarpunk]

My thoughts on the ‘Solarpunk is just aesthetics! Y’all can’t do anything!’ Statement

Every movement has some kind of visual identity. Every. Single. One. Now, those identities often evolve after the politics, but that’s not a rule.

Solarpunk was created as a way to directly oppose the grim, late stage capitalistic future we’ve been sold my cyberpunk for decades.

People saw this aesthetic and were able to look within it to see real change and action that could be made to get there.

Aesthetics give people something to identify with. But more importantly in this instance, they give us a collective vision to move towards.

Yes Solarpunk was an aesthetic, but no one said it ever had to stay that way. It is simultaneously our foundation and what we’re striving for.

So go take your stolen yogurt ad and fuck some shit up <3

[the-habitat-ring]

“Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. i suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.”

Everyone should read Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

Visualizing an end result is the first step to undertaking any project. We can’t work towards something we can’t imagine

[petaltexturedskies]

Sylvia Plath, from "Letter in November" in The Collected Poems

[lazer-exe]

I'm gonna say it, I do think that even the laziest person imaginable should have a roof over their head, food in their stomach, and access to healthcare

[fangs4faggots]

i think we should start openly mocking male creatives who can't figure out how to write women. like actually i think it's embarrassing that it took elliot page transitioning for christopher nolan to give him a good role. why did it take like ten years to get the first female lead in a marvel movie? why is it a Known Fact that stephen king can't write women? why is 50% of the population omitted from large ensemble works? i asked my friend to name a movie directed by a man with a majority female cast and he said ghostbusters 2016. ghostbusters. ghostbusters. g

[fairycosmos]

clicking not interested on something used to mean they stopped showing it to you

[troublepunk-ldn]

me as a teenager: man it sucks to have no privacy or autonomy but i guess its for a good reason. when i turn 18 i will realise how young i was and understand why they did all that.

me as an adult: teenagers are an oppressed class, their abuse is normalised and systemic and they need to start killing people

[averagefairy]

I still love this website so much because it feels like the last connection we have to an internet that doesn’t exist anymore like I can come on here and scroll through posts that are literally just funny or beautiful or interesting with no intention to sell me something or influence me we are all just here for a laugh. Nothing is just for laughs anymore EXCEPT tumblr dot com

[whyenn-reader]

you are not immune to inventing an arbitrary set of rules that only you have to adhere to

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

hey, I was just at "things got better" island and everyone there is talking about how excited they are to meet you

[anglaised]

it is so annoying being so self aware about all my issues like okay what now girl

[xanaxfarts]

‘Jade Bowl’ + ‘The Shah Jahan Cup’ + ‘Leaf-Shaped Cup’ (17th/18th century)

[redstonedust]

i appreciate when websites have a spectrum of blocking options. i hate when the only choice is to hard block op like sometimes you need the option to mute or block a specific post. absolutely no beef with the person who made the post you just put an image of a large spider on my dash 400 times and i dont want to see that please thank you.

[redstonedust]

the whole "insulting someone based on their appearance is bad because it could indirectly hurt people you like who share that feature" is a good start for unlearning body shaming but i do think we need to go further and remind people that even if there was some physical trait that was magically 10000% exclusive to conservatives and creeps and nobody else ever had it, we still shouldnt be insulting them based on that. because the problem with them is not their appearance its their ideology and actions. by insulting their appearance you arent just indirectly insulting others who look like that, youre literally not making the correct point. stay on topic ya know.