Seeleruhe

A writer who occasionally draws her characters. There will be much sharing of inspiration on this blog. I might even share the results now and then. My Writing blog can be found here: http://thewrittensailor.tumblr.com/

[batsandboba]

“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know

[seeleruhe]

Just try and shut me up.

[thegaymertrainer]

[ravioliet]

freak4freak is always so awesome but another character dynamic that i think is really great is freak vs freak. you're the only person who understands me and i'm the only person who understands you. unfortunately this also does not stop either of us from hating each other and in fact it might even make everything significantly worse for everyone involved

[pacificnorthwestcore]

Did you see the news about National Parks removing signage and information about the mistreatment of Native Americans by settlers, as well as about climate change and environmental protection? Read the article by Reuters for more information.

This is clear Native Erasure. We have a survey open to collect your observations:

https://forms.gle/SLoyCjLH4BBvx1rT6

Share photos, locations, and comments about signage you see that includes information about Native Americans and Tribal ancestral lands, or signs that do not. Documenting good examples is also a good idea as signs may be potentially removed. We continue to invite your observations that also highlight where signage is lacking this information on public lands. This info can be shared by the Tribe with staff from National Parks, National Forests, and other public land managers.

The Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement promotes education and awareness regarding the integration of land acknowledgment and respect for the Snoqualmie Tribe within recreational activities. Our initiative also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the ancestral lands of other Tribes when visiting public spaces.

Do you know whose ancestral lands you are visiting?

(Source: Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement facebook page)

[headspace-hotel]

So much of the uniformity and barrenness that people associate with human interaction with ecosystems results from very specific, intentional patterns of land use and management, not something inherent to human land use and management.

What I mean by that is: we observe "human-dominated" ecosystems having very flat, hostile characteristics, but we see this specific pattern because there are specific things we are doing in uniform ways across large areas.

The thing is, human interaction could create a virtually infinite amount of ecosystems.

Sites with unique, non-typical, or chaotic histories of human use and management often have extremely novel assemblages of species. This would be an interesting thing to formally research.

My best friend and I were exploring an area of land where there was a stone chimney and the remnants of a well, piles of rocks marking where the foundation of a small house had collapsed. It was close to a river, the slope was steep and there was a powerline cut through it.

It was easy to tell that approximately fifty or sixty years ago, the land had been bare and pretty much treeless, and most likely had been highly eroded, because the composition of trees was almost entirely eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) with a couple of impressive honeylocust (Gleditsia tricanthos). These trees typically grow on areas that are rocky and barren with too little soil for other species to survive.

The lower part of the forest was taken up with an enormous (by modern standards) canebrake, stretching hundreds of feet on each side, with canes that were almost 15 feet tall. This was immediately confusing because cane enjoys incredibly deep soil (sometimes growing roots 10 feet deep in the ground).

In the powerline cut, there were big patches of black raspberry. (Black raspberry is easily identified in wintertime because of the smooth pinkish-purple canes they have in winter, with a chalky-looking white bloom on them. They are delicious, and if you take really good care of a patch and pamper it, it can give you gallons of raspberries.) Bits of slag were eroding out of the steep slope, and my best friend found a railroad spike. There was a collapsed railroad bridge not too far from the location, so we guessed that a railroad might have passed through at some point in the past. Invasive species were prevalent, wintercreeper, honeysuckle, and some species of privet I was unfamiliar with, but they didn't completely overtake everything.

Red cedar and rivercane are very interesting to see together. Theoretically, they prefer opposite habitat types, and have opposite fire tolerances: rivercane LOVES fire, whereas redcedar hates it and easily dies to fire. They also have the strange distinction, in some areas of Kentucky, of being almost the only native evergreen woody plants.

Further up into the cedar-rivercane forest, away from the road, the forest floor was carpeted in an absolutely sumptuous layer of moss. There was moss coating the tree trunks and dripping off the branches.

There were even bits of moss growing from the joints of the rivercane, either snagged there somehow or growing there as epiphytes, which I had NEVER seen or heard of before (epiphytic moss on rivercane!!!!! imagine!!!!) but it seemed unlikely that moss would somehow get caught accidentally on the rivercanes. (Old rivercane stems are, anyway, theoretically a good habitat for epiphytes: the new twigs that grow each year slowly build up into thickety bundles that gather fallen leaves and debris. That's why birds love to nest in there.)

On the ground there were large patches of Climacium moss, which is known as tree-moss because it is very bushy and stands up a couple inches, rather than clinging to the surface it's on. This seemed extraordinary, because Climacium is a rather conservative moss, typically only found in very moist interiors of mature forests, and here it was growing in luxurious bounty in this crappy, marginal patch of land that had been abused and razed over in diverse ways over the past century.

The railroad, the slag, the powerline cut, the ruins of the old house, the rocky and eroded soil...a strange convergence of land use histories. Likewise, a strange convergence of species.

I'm intrigued by the possibility that humans could create novel ecosystems, because we seem to do it accidentally quite a lot.

But there seems to be very little formal academic interest in the bizarre, unique plant communities that emerge from the seethe of human activity as it uses, abandons, re-appropriates, and disturbs land.

[run-of-the-milf]

I highly recommend watching this testimony from Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car and kidnapped by ICE on her way to a doctor appointment in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.

Truly my worst nightmare.

[liitohauki]

Transcript of Aliya Rahman's speech:

Thank you members, for taking the time to be here today, and thank you staff for making this happen.

My name is Aliya Rahman, and I am a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a Bangladeshi American born in Northern Wisconsin. And I’m a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.

Not all autistic brains do this, but mine fixates on sounds, numbers, and patterns. And while what the world saw happen to me exactly three weeks ago today on video was a terrible violation it is still nothing compared to the horrific practices I saw inside the Whipple center.

So I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home, and I offer this data because these practices must end now.

On January 13th on the way to my 39th appointment at Hennepin County’s traumatic brain injury center, I encountered a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles and no signs indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted to pull in to a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed to do so and rolled down my window after an agent yelled, “Move! I will break your f-ing window!”

His first instruction.

Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.

Then, the glass of the passenger side window flew across my face.

I yelled, “I’m disabled!” at the hands grabbing at me and an agent said, “Too late.”

I felt immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Jenoah Donald, an autistic black man killed by the police during a traffic stop in 2021.

I remembered mister Silverio Villegas González, who was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.

An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt. Shooting pain went through my head, neck, and wrists when I hit the ground face first and people leaned on my back.

I felt the pattern, and I thought of mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.

I was carried face down through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.

I was never asked for ID.

Never told I was under arrest.

Never read my rights.

And never charged with a crime.

Approaching the Whipple center, I saw black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continued to hear the word “bodies”, because that is how agents referred to us:

“We’re bringing in a body.”

“They’re bringing in bodies 7, 8 at a time, where do I put ‘em?”

“We can’t use that room, there’s already a body in there.”

You have no reason to believe you will make it out alive if you’re already being called a body.

Agents repeatedly had to stop and ask how to do tasks. I received no medical screening, phone call, or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck. I asked for my cane and was told no, pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, “Walk! You can do it, walk.”

Agents did not know if the facility had a wheelchair.

When I was finally placed in one to be taken to interrogation an agent taunted, “You were driving, right? So your legs do work.”

I pleaded for emergency medical care for over an hour after my vision had become blurry, my heart rate went through the roof, and the pain in my neck and head became unbearable.

It was denied.

When I became unable to speak my cellmate pleaded for me.

The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic, and a voice outside saying, “We don’t wanna step on ICE’s toes.”

When I opened my eyes at Hennepin County’s emergency room, I learned I was brought there to be treated for assault.

The impacts of DHS detention on my physical, mental and financial well-being and safety have been very severe, but I do not deserve more humane treatment than anyone else, US citizen or not. And I am here today with a strong spirit and a duty to the many people who haven’t had the privilege to tell their stories or see their loved ones come home. I am extremely distressed by the pattern that violence from law enforcement has been happening to black and indigenous communities for centuries, and to DHS survivors for over 20 years.

We call ourselves a civilized nation, but we lack rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement is permitted to do to another human being.

I am not afraid, and I’m not afraid to keep working on this problem even after ICE is gone. Thank you for your time.

[mariacallous]

[flintandpyrite]

Here are the 2024 vaccine recommendation schedules. They’ve already been wiped from the cdc site. Save them and share widely, especially to your friends with kids.

[figuring-421]

🚨

HEADS UP: The U.S. Postal Service quietly changed how postmarks work.

Mail is no longer automatically postmarked with the date you drop it off. Instead, the postmark now reflects the date it’s first processed by an automated sorting facility — which can be days later.

If you mail something right at a deadline, the official postmark could be later than your drop-off date and may be considered late.

If mailing date matters to you, go inside the post office and request a hand-stamped postmark.

USPS postmark shake-up could cost you big — property tax payers warned of surprise late fees

A new USPS postmark rule may cause property tax payments to look late even when people mail them on time. The change can create surprise lat

This will invalidate votes too

[seymour-butz-stuff]

This will invalidate votes too

ding ding ding ding ding

[creativepromptsforwriting]

How to write liars

Liars make stories twist, characters clash, and readers question everything. But not all liars are created equal. If you're writing one, ask yourself: what kind of liar are they? Because there’s more than one way to deceive…

Many types of liars

the one where you know they are lying

the one where you never know that they are lying

the one who lies about everything

the one who lies to themself

Writing Tips:

Know why they lie

Every liar has a reason. Is it survival, manipulation, shame, love, power, or habit? Understanding their motive helps you shape their behavior and emotional responses.

Use subtext and contradictions

Liars rarely say "I'm lying." Instead, they contradict themselves, dodge questions, or over-explain. Let their words and actions subtly clash.

Let the lie shape the plot

A good lie should ripple through the story. It creates misunderstandings, false alliances, and dramatic irony. Use it to mislead characters and readers.

Use silence

Sometimes the most powerful lie is omission. What a character doesn’t say can be just as revealing as what they do.

Play with perspective

Use unreliable narrators or shifting POVs to blur the line between truth and fiction. This keeps readers guessing and deepens the mystery.

Show consequences

How are characters reacting to someone lying to them? What happens if people find out a character lied?

If you like my blog and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee or become a member! And check out my Instagram! 🥰

[luna-azzurra]

Emotional Walls Your Character Has Built (And What Might Finally Break Them)

(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.

✶ Sarcasm as armor. (Break it with someone who laughs gently, not mockingly.) ✶ Hyper-independence. (Break it with someone who shows up even when they’re told not to.) ✶ Stoicism. (Break it with a safe space to fall apart.) ✶ Flirting to avoid intimacy. (Break it with real vulnerability they didn’t see coming.) ✶ Ghosting everyone. (Break it with someone who won’t take silence as an answer.) ✶ Lying for convenience. (Break it with someone who sees through them but stays anyway.) ✶ Avoiding touch. (Break it with accidental, gentle contact that feels like home.) ✶ Oversharing meaningless things to hide real depth. (Break it with someone who asks the second question.) ✶ Overworking. (Break it with forced stillness and the terrifying sound of their own thoughts.) ✶ Pretending not to care. (Break it with a loss they can’t fake their way through.) ✶ Avoiding mirrors. (Break it with a quiet compliment that hits too hard.) ✶ Turning every conversation into a joke. (Break it with someone who doesn’t laugh.) ✶ Being everyone’s helper. (Break it when someone asks what they need, and waits for an answer.) ✶ Constantly saying “I’m fine.” (Break it when they finally scream that they’re not.) ✶ Running. Always running. (Break it with someone who doesn’t chase, but doesn’t leave, either.) ✶ Intellectualizing every feeling. (Break it with raw, messy emotion they can’t logic away.) ✶ Trying to be the strong one. (Break it when someone sees the weight they’re carrying, and offers to help.) ✶ Hiding behind success. (Break it when they succeed and still feel empty.) ✶ Avoiding conflict at all costs. (Break it when silence causes more pain than the truth.) ✶ Focusing on everyone else’s healing but their own. (Break it when they hit emotional burnout.)

[json-derulo]

having the Aviation Accident Investigations Autism™️ has actually done wonders for the way I process and respond to my own fuck-ups

[json-derulo]

And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening again—not to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.

It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

[json-derulo]

Because it’s never just one person’s fault. And even when it is, it still isn’t. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If it’s possible for one person’s mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the system—so how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?

[json-derulo]

oh yeah. The “modern commercial aviation is the safest form of transport” thing only applies to planes, btw. A helicopter is a beautiful metal horse that wants to break its legs and die so so so badly

[homunculus-argument]

A fantasy book that is a pseudotranslation of a mysterious found ancient text, but from context clues thorough the story it's clear that the translation isn't the first or only one, but that this current translator is a fearlessly controversial figure who has physically fought other scholars over what some specific passages mean, and will do it again. There is ocassionally a footnote where the translator explicitly clarifies which rival scholar they will fight over this particular word choice.

[homunculus-argument]

There is one character in the story who is clearly contextually nonbinary, and several explicitly homosexual romantic relationships. The mentions of these sometimes have footnotes like "fight me about it Greg, you bulldog-faced fuck. You know where I live."

[carys-the-ninth]

I don't think this is being widely covered by national news, but Western Alaska has been devastated by Typhoon Halong. Thousands of people are out of their homes, the coastal Yup'ik villages of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk had 6.6 feet of water above normal. Dozens of people were rescued swimming in icy waters, houses have been ripped off their foundations, one woman is dead, three people are still missing, and most people are sheltering in the community schools. This is a roadless, remote area where it's difficult to get supplies and help in, heading into winter. Consider giving towards the Native-coordinated disaster response sending food and other supplies if you can.

[lesser-flamingo]

a niche character trope i like is the person who is nice, a good person and acts well adjusted, then they do something where it’s like. oh you’re secretly a little bit insane actually

[nostalgicfun]

my dog came and got me while I was getting ready for work this morning, and she was signaling that it was Very Urgent. I followed her downstairs thinking something was wrong with my senior dog or my partner but the minute my foot hit the bottom step my partner loudly asked "Did she come get you, too?"

"She did, what's wrong?"

"She wants you to look at the frog."

"...The frog?"

"Yeah. The frog."

"There's a frog?"

"on the window, yeah"

so she was standing in the corner staring at me VERY expectantly and somewhat impatiently, so I walked over and she immediately turned her attention back to the window and sure enough. very high up. and very small. there was a frog.

keep in mind that bigfoot himself could be in the yard outside and this dog Would Not Care. but god forbid a frog catches a vibe on the window I guess. anyway. glad my dog deemed this worthy of my attention

[chronictranssexuality]

"you don't owe anyone anything" You are a tar pit. Speak for yourself. I personally owe the cafe employees my dishes put away and my friends a listening ear and small scared insects a cup and a gentle trip outside. Hyperindividualism is a rancid infection borne of capitalism and willfully misinterpreted therapyspeak and I will defy it by continuing to be kind regardless of whether or not it benefits me personally

[homunculus-argument]

A video game mechanic of "fucking say it", where you get a random dialogue button in random situations, when you're not even in a conversation or anything, and you have no idea what you're about to say. It's a quick time event, too, so you've got to choose fast whether you're going to say that shit that just popped into the character's head.

There's a 40% chance that the response you get is just mildly negative but doesn't really change anything. 25% chance that it's going to start a fight you're probably not prepared for. 34% of something wildly positive happening because the shit you just said was so funny and clever, or the NPC you just insulted was impressed by your audacity. 1% chance that whoever you said that to will just straight-up kill you.