Oathwyrm

what is a Dragon's oath?

[ksfoxwald]

When Diane Duane said "What's loved, lives" and Tamsyn Muir said "You can't take loved away" and I forget where I was going with this I just have a lot of feelings about cosmic space wizards and the nature of love

[thelightfluxtastic]

I am the wind that troubles the water, I am the water, and the waves; I am the shore where the waves break in rainbows; I am the sunlight that shines in the spray— I am the trees that drink the light; I am the air of the green things’ breathing; I am the stone that the trees break asunder; I am the molten heart of the world— Where will you go? To what place will you wander? In vale or on hilltop, still I am there Will you sound the sea’s depth, or climb the mountain? In air or in water, still I am there; Will the earth cover you? Will the night hide you? In deep or in darkness, still I am there; Will you kindle the nova, or kill the starlight? In fire or in death-cold, still I am there—

-Life's affirmation to the Lone Power, So You Want to Be a Wizard, Diane Duane

[oathwyrm]

fury

The temper of wizards is so commonly known as to be quotable even in the vernacular, yet little attention is paid to its implications.

"Subtle and quick to anger," a scholar once said. The subtlety of wizards is debatable and varies by individual, but the quickness and intensity of anger is an insightful point.

To the hot-tempered wizard, the great dance of cosmic decay is not some detached intellectual structure, something removed and remote from their person and their pride. Quite the opposite. An emotional practitioner is so attuned to the universe, so closely tied to the world and ecosystem they call their own, that any threat to Life and harmony, however abstract, however distant, is not some academic exercise, but rather grounds for an immediate, passionate, and highly personal retaliation.

I lay claim to my corner of the cosmos. As wizard, is it not my calling and my quest to defend all worlds, all Life, as equally and ferociously as I would guard my own? There is no border to what lands and communities I set beneath that guiding web.

Wizards are subtle and quick to anger, because we are quick to grasp the truth of the world. All Life is connected, more alike than different. We are all responsible for one another, not in the abstract, but in the most personal possible way. The wrath of a wizard is the brilliant flare of Life itself, the struggle for survival.

You cannot, after all, say "I am furious" without invoking Life's I Am.

[oathwyrm]

An unspoken corollary, less widely taught; the simple magic of speech, lowercase S, or symbols.

Text, tales, symbolic representation and speech (small S version) transcend time and space even when they are not Speech (capital S).

What's loved, lives. And in words, what's loved can persist for a very long time--far beyond the life of the writer who did the first work of loving.

Think of how some human cultures preserve their loved ones in image or text after death. Consider how much we can know about someone who was loved by a poet ten thousand years before, or how much we can feel the reality of a country and biome that were dear to a writer from another place and time. Words and symbols are Timeheart--a part of it, at any rate--that remains free to all living things, a face of the unconquerable nature of love.

[depsidase]

[theaceofwords]

It's called the Global Justice Report, it is here. This is an actionable plan which can be sent to legislators and demanded of political parties. We could save the world within our lifetimes.

It has always been possible. It is still possible.

[inkloom]

I started thinking about that one post about how from dogs POV humans are beings that live like 500+ years (because I was petting my dog and I was looking at her like “thirty thousand years of cooperation have led to this. our species have spent 30k years building up to the point where you, child of wolf, descendant of noble hunters and wild things,  would come all the way out of the office and come sit with me in the hopes of letting a souped up monkey rub its paws on you”)

and then I thought about what it must have been like for the first humans to let a fucking wolf, maybe only a few generations from the wild, behold their infant child. Like man can u believe that? Maybe this alliance is only a few years old and sure you’ve seen the wolf’s kids but now you’ve got one of your own. And even though you’ve seen this wolf tear out the throats of creatures that could kill you, this wolf is your family. This wolf is your friend, you love them and they love you and you gotta show ‘em the new kid, look, friend, I had a child. I know you are wild and dangerous, but look at this, my most precious thing, sniff him, give him a lil lick, his children and your children will be bound together for thirty thousand fucking years because I love you

There’s a set of  preserved footprints from 30k years ago that is a young child and a wolf standing side by side can you fucking imagine? Maybe the kid’s mom was like “hey go get some water from the stream, but take the wolf with you. I trust him, he will protect you.”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

as a younger person I'd sometimes get overwhelmed with the violence of the world, not just human violence but the violence done to animals and by animals, the innate violence of being an animal. because an animal is, by definition, an organism that must consume other organisms to live. and this would lodge in my spiraling young adult mind, the tragedy that to live, to be a creature, is to cause harm. that life is sustained by consuming life.

eventually I got older (and medicated), but in the meantime spending time in woodland really helped. it comforted me to be around plantlife, which feeds not on life but on sunlight, and therefore causes no harm.

anyway now I'm reading The Hidden Life Of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (incredible book) and it turns out that was a big fat LIE. forests are violent as FUCK

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

life as a tree is fucking BRUTAL. ok no they don't actually eat each other (well, not until they've been broken down and digested by microorganisms first) but competition is FIERCE. sunlight and water are finite resources. survival rates are dismal. a tree can release a million seeds in a lifetime and have only one offspring live to maturity. some species evolved ways of stealing sunlight from trees who got there first, bidding their time as a sapling then shooting out from under older canopies to hog as as much light as possible. next-door neighbors? fuck em, let em starve.

then you get shit like epiphytes that decided to just grow on top of other plants. strangler fig vines, for instance, which decided well fuck, im just gonna cling to this tree trunk and let it do the support work. maybe entangle our roots and envelope my host completely over time. oopsie my host died? that's ok I'll just cling to its corpse for eternity

equally horrifying is the honeysuckle, which preys on young trees boa-constrictor style, squeezing the life out of saplings, which grow with permanent deformities before dying prematurely (makes for a neat walking stick though)

then you get out and proud parasites like mistletoe who are happy to attach themselves to tree canopies and suck their blood extract water and nutrients. so yeah some plants do eat each other actually. gives ya some perspective on the old christmas tradition of hunting mistletoe with guns (yes that's a thing, shooting them down out of trees like squirrels. yes, unlike squirrels they deserve it). as for the romance angle, who doesn't want to kiss a lover beneath the dying corpse of a parasitic trophy kill? sexy as heck.

in conclusion, PLANTS ARE VIOLENT AS FUCK, and that's not even getting into the eternal chemical warfare they are forced to wage against insects, fungi, microbes and other enemies.

one day soon the forests will turn on us, and when that day comes I'm cheerfully betraying humanity and skipping away to cross enemy lines 🫡

kofi

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

to those who thought this post was heading in a heartwarming direction, i do NOT apologize and i DO hope the forest and its creeping mycelium tendrils crawl their way into your nightmares

[oathwyrm]

NASA's Hubble Sees Aftermath of Galaxy's Scrape with Milky Way - NASA Science

A story of survival is unfolding at the outer reaches of our galaxy, and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is witnessing the saga.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The Guts of Predatory Cats Can Destroy CWD Prions

The prions that cause chronic wasting disease in deer are nearly indestructible. So it's good news to learn cat guts are their mortal enemy.

Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?

We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.

So to find that these wild cats can safely eat CWD-infected animals AND significantly reduce the chances that the prions will be spread to other deer is a pretty big deal, especially since some other animals like coyotes and crows do pass prions undamaged through their digestive systems. And it's just one more example of why an ecosystem needs all of the species that have evolved in it over thousands of years, not just those are convenient for humans to have around. The spread of CWD is directly related to the overpopulation of deer, and it's likely that continuing to reintroduce large predatory mammals to their native range will help quell this awful prion disease.

[elbiotipo]

Also I am asking all of you, once again, to learn about ecosystem conservation and restoration instead of wallowing in "we are already past the point of no return" or that it will take "millennia" to restore ecosystems.

You have to understand that nature does not work in the same timeframe as ours. Protecting and restoring ecosystems is RIDICULOUSLY inexpensive and requires very little industrial technology; shovels and saplings are not exactly high-tech. But it takes time and long-term projects with people determined to do it. Maybe we are too focused in our "we want it now" thinking, but what you see today is not what you may see in 10, 20, 50, even 80 years if you live that long.

But it works. It's working right now, and when capitalism is replaced by socialism and we stop thinking on short-term gain, when our societies are focused into the common welfare instead of accumulation, it will even work better. Again I could point out to individual examples but instead, I encourage you to learn about ecology. We are well past from the catastrophic "Earth will die and there's nothing we can do" predictions from the 80s. We know what to do, we know it can work.

[elbiotipo]

First-of-its-kind study definitively shows that conservation actions are effective at halting and reversing biodiversity loss

A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nat

This article talks about this very much in the "see? ecology can help the economy too!" tone that unfortunately is sort of necessary to convince people in the current capitalist system. But I don't want you to focus on this right now.

I want you to KNOW how doable this is. How inexpensive this is, how POSSIBLE THIS IS. That people working and loving the land and nature they live in is possible. That these projects WORK, THEY DO restore and preserve ecosystems. That humanity is neither a plague that destroys everything or a passive bystander on its own destruction but that these are actual things that can be, are, and will be implemented, backed by actual science and results. This is not empty #hopecore #hopepunk feel good stuff, these are things you can learn about, even work towards, and you can most certainly demand they are part of our society.

Are you listening to me?

[solarpunkcast]

"I'm just losing hope." Then get some fucking conviction. Millions of people around the globe are working their asses off and seeing results. What they are doing IS WORKING.

This orange peel story was huge years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-fruitful-experiment-in-land-conservation/

Beavers reintroduced to historic wetlands improve them at such a level that we can see the improvements from space: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/nasa-satellites-reveal-restoration-power-of-beavers/

Africa is successfully slowing desertification and restoring historic farming soil with their Green Wall project: https://welcomeafrica.org/en/africa-combats-desertification-with-a-belt-of-life/

There has even been success at regrowing coral reefs--something which I am old enough to be told was impossible. But people have been hard at work for decades since then, and this is one of the results: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.htm

REPAIRING THE DAMAGE IS ENTIRELY WITHIN THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY.

THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE IF YOU HAVE THE CONVICTION TO BACK IT UP.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

It's freaky how the brain will just plasticly learn novel motor output interfaces on the fly. It's almost like instead of hard coding a control scheme for anatomy that changes every few million years the strat that brains went for was to be openly reconfigurable to fit around whatever its nerves seem to be hooked up to via observed feedback.

I think they've done tests on this by getting people to pilot novel bodies in VR. But you don't tend to notice it day to day until something weird happens like just now. I was reading a paper book and it had a line of text blacked out as if redacted. Instinctively I go to move my cursor over the black line to see if I can read any text if I highlight it.

Except it's a book and not my computer screen, so the cursor my brain thinks it's moving across my field of vision in front of me doesn't exist. At the same time, my right hand is making a bunch of small involuntary movements next to me. I didn't intend to move it and didn't even notice it was moving until I saw it with my eyes. What I intended to move was my Cursor, something that my brain had learned to understand that it has, and the way it moves this is by actuating the muscles in my right arm, an action that is entirely disconnected from any intent to move my arm, which is a different thing.

I love being a pattern atop this eldritch mess of neurons, it's great

[oathwyrm]

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body

Thoroughly revised estimates show that the typical adult human body consists of about 30 trillion human cells and about 38 trillion bacteria

[the-reconciliation-of-all-things]

how terrifying metamorphosis must be for the caterpillar has no concept of what it is doing, or what a butterfly is, or what will happen to it as it spins itself the cocoon. we r more alike than different

[importantandunavoidable]

there are parts of your future self in you waiting emerge but you have to become unrecognizable slime first

[peanutworm]

These tags are poetry to me

[fossilporn]

An opalized jaw of a Cretaceous aged freshwater from Lightning Ridge, Australia.  Lightning Ridge is the main source of the world’s black opals and is also home to some of the world’s only opalised fossils.  From the article, Jenni Brammall on opals, fossils and living in Lightning Ridge

[tsalala]

The beautiful Birmingham white female subadult - three months after her injury. Her left canines are now permanently exposed.

Kruger National Park, South Africa Photographed by Karolina Norée

[junegoose]

I think about this tweet all the time

[alivehouse]

monoculture forests are deeply unsettling in a way that is hard to explain to people who do not spend a lot of time looking at forests

[alivehouse]

this thing is alive in an undead hivemind kind of way and it wants to fucking kill me

[fakeharmless]

i briefly lived in florida and saw one of these and it fucking haunts me to this day. the ROWS.