Earthseed Caligraphy @shapergrey - Tumblr Blog

For what it's worth, here's what I believe. It took a long time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right--just the way it has to be. In the past year, it's gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the tight one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to:

God is Power--

Infinite,

Irresistable,

Inexorable,

Indifferent.

And yet, God is Pliable--

Trickster,

Teacher,

Chaos,

Clay.

God exists to be shaped.

God is Change.

From Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

shapergrey

This verse is the first to appear in the text of a chapter, within Lauren Olamina's journals, surrounded by her commentary about the verse. Here we begin to see what this young prophet believes, and how she is working to articulate what she needs to say even though at that point in the book she has no one to talk to about these things.

I believe you can really hear Butler's voice in the character here. Authoring these verses was a careful process of many rewrites, many edits. Each word chosen and arranged with care. These verses are powerful and I believe them to be some of the most deeply true things ever written.

#caligraphy #earthseed #god is change #literary quotes #octavia butler #parable of the sower

raibura

gen ai relies on slavery?????

To label the training data

Social media content and AI training data are processed in outsource centres in the global south, where long hours, low pay and exposure to

Grok specifically is poisoning the people of Memphis with people claiming the air there smells Iike nail polish remover

In Boxtown — a historic Black community in South Memphis — residents are being forced to inhale pollution from Elon Musk's ai facility.

Did you know this

Yes

Voting ended onJun 10, 2025

#caligraphy #god is change #earthseed #octavia butler #parable of the sower

afriblaq

Octavia Butler discussing why she wrote her two books, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. She used the phrase "make America great again", in her books, back in 1995.

She saw it coming

makingqueerhistory

We Will Not Cancel Us

And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

Adrienne Maree Brown

Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It's time to think this through.

"Cancel" or "call-out" culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous "Harper's Letter," signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, call outs are seen by some as having gone too far. But what is "too far" when you're talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social justice movements direct their righteous anger inward at one another?

In We Will Not Cancel Us, movement mediator adrienne maree brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond this impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes even from from its targets. However, brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn't, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in ways that reflect our values?

(Affiliate link above)

hoothootmotherf-ckers

under-utilized concept: not stuck in the time loop. you can leave the time loop whenever you want. but maybe this time you can fix it. just one more try.

shapergrey

This is how I experience lucid dreaming.

samfodo

Its obvious to me when people who post about canaries in mines have never met a canary. Like yeah the miners had a special device to revive the canary because canaries are one of the most adorable creatures on the planet and they make adorable little chirping sounds and honestly probably loved the sounds of machinery and people talking so it was probably loud and friendly with the workers. Whatever though maybe meet a canary sometime and youd understand

samfodo

If you see this animal every day at work, and it sings to you during your hardest bouts of labor, you will be distraught if it dies. Even if you know this creature is meant to die in lieu of you, you still hear it when the labor is at its hardest and your muscles are struggling against the weight of your work. It is so small, smaller than your soot-stained hands and louder than the death that follows you. You dont want it to die. The same as a woman does not want her candle to run out ; she knows that is the point, its flame is meant to burn the wick and melt the wax ; but she is not indifferent to its wasting away. She may even save her favorite candle as not to burn it too quickly. Now imagine you are that woman, and there is a way to rebuild your favorite candle that you love the smell of and the way it flickers. Would she rather throw her candle out? Or would she rebuild it? That is a canary to these miners. Would you allow an animal to just die when it has been singing for you? It reminds you that it is alive, and you are too. Its stop of song signifies the lethal danger you are in. Why abandon it? Is the miners' love for a little bird really that surprising?

is-the-owl-video-cute-deactivat

Why does this read as though written by a coal miner of the era in which a canary was needed.

whatwwwwwww

Because time is an illusion and love is infinite

hylianengineer

This quote is so good I made art about it.

It's about human history and cave paintings and love across tens of thousands of years.

hylianengineer

I'm still insane about this quote and I made more art about it

Img description: caligraphy which reads

"Belief

Initiates and guides action--

Or it does nothing"

This is part of a series of verses from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

#caligraphy #earthseed #god is change #literary quotes #octavia butler #parable of the sower #philosophy #religeon

Img description: caligraphy which reads:

A victim of God may,

Through learning adaptation,

Become a partner of God,

A victim of God may,

Through forethought and planning,

Become a shaper of God.

Or a victim of God may,

Through shortsightedness and fear,

Remain God's victim,

God's plaything,

God's prey.

#caligraphy #earthseed #god is change #literary quotes #octavia butler #parable of the sower #philosophy #religeon

So even though I knew how bad it was gonna be, the first few months of drumpf's 2nd term knocked me for a loop. I'm comitting to posting twice a week until I am caught back up with the current date.

It's hard to watch real life get closer to some of the worst events in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, but that means that the advice in these books for surviving times like these is getting more relavent. Octavia Butler does not pull punches, and neither does reality.

I know I'm going to need these books to survive the coming decade. I hope that my art can help bring these teachings to others, and help them survive as well.

Img description: hand drawn caligraphy reading "Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying."

The verse is from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. This one is only dated 2025, and falls between chapters rather than at the opening of one.

#caligraphy #earthseed #god is change #literary quotes #octavia butler

covid-safer-hotties

aenslem

– You don't know what any of this is about, do you? You work here, you see these people every day, how they live, and you just don't get it. – What do you want me to say? That I feel for them? That they got a bad break? What good would it do? – It'd be a start.

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1993–1999) ⤷ Paste Tense (parts I & II)

+ bonus

For what it's worth, here's what I believe. It took a long time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right--just the way it has to be. In the past year, it's gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the right one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to: