I mainly reblog with the occasional original thought™️here and there. Amalgamation of fandom, sociopolitical, art, and anything else I want on my blog.
Common tags are:
#ramblings - these are my thoughts! Things that come from my brain. Random stuff that happen in my life, sometimes vent-y.
#tips - for things I find useful. see also #resource
#save - things that I want to revisit later
#links - useful links
#mirth tag - things that make me laugh/I want to save and share with people because I think they’re funny
#nice things - my feel good tag
#slug draws - things that I drew!
If you’re passing by and see any of the same interests please don’t hesitate to talk to/tag me in/send me things <3
Feeling loser like! So many mistakes made in these past few months. Wow. I am glad to have made this account once again a space that is made for and by me. It’s like the one place I can share unfiltered thoughts besides my journal.
Ate an edible a little bit ago and I was thinking about the fact that my ex opened this pack and the last time they were touched was the last time he came over. Arghhh. The day that ended everything. Made me realize how emotionally immature I am and how wrong it was for me to have entered a romantic relationship. Lowkey what if I’m aromantic and asexual now. I know sexuality is fluid and changes over time!!!! It’s been so long actually since I’ve felt genuine raw sexual desire for a person. It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything genuine and intense. I feel alien and creature like and I enjoyed that he shared that with me. I hate that I became less comfortable around him after we started dating. I remember starting to feel so open and grateful we were friends maybe two hangouts before he confessed having feelings for me. I hate my need to rationalize and justify things. I wish I was more solid in my understanding of myself. For the sake of knowing me and how I operate and also to avoid hurting others in the future. I really do feel like a human adjacent creature thing. Nothing that’s supposed to be natural for people feels natural to me
When I was in college, my Stage Craft teacher showed us this. Basically the machine heats up a sheet of plastic, and once it’s malleable enough it’ll be blown up to make room for whatever you want to imprint in the plastic. Once it’s in place, the air reverses and the plastic vacuum-sucks all around the object.
He demonstrated it on a baby doll and it was like a baby had been frozen in carbonite. I got to take it home and I still have frozen-carbonite-baby to this day (his name is Franklin XD)
H. I rushed to the train to make it to an event that I spent a whole like two weeks thinking was tomorrow. Thankfully I made the earlier one so I won’t be super late Yayyy. Choosing not to think about the fact that my plans for chores tonight will be postponed until Tomorrow… possibly Tonight if I feel so inclined. Tonight I will enjoy live music and being surrounded by queers 👍🏼
[ID: Text from Nancy Andrews’ book Family: a Portrait of Gay and Lesbian America (1994)
Lorelei Holness, who was open about her sexual orientation in high school at the expense of taunts and being beaten up, never went to her senior prom. At the age of twenty-seven, she was crowned the queen of a very different prom, one for gays and lesbians of any age, the 1991 Prince William (Virginia) Gay and Lesbian Alliance Prom.
Lorelei and her date, Deborah Rowett, twenty-nine, were photographed at the dance. Lorelei is a student and banker. Deborah is a chemist. They live in New Jersey.
Lorelei: It was the prom that I never went to in high school. Everyone got dressed up. You put on your dress, you do your makeup. And my lover dressed up in her tuxedo and bought me a corsage. It was exactly like a prom night—you get all dressed up and you're very excited: "Oh, wow, it's tonight." The energy was incredible, and other people too, they were that excited. This is our prom, the prom we never had. It felt like you were making up for time that was taken away from you. That night, when I was crowned I was on cloud nine. To me it was even more special, because at this prom I was allowed to be myself and I was with the woman I loved.
The sale was part of a movement called Land Back, which sees ownership of lands return to tribes for the sake of effective stewardship.
"In Northern California, a Native American tribe is celebrating the return of ancestral lands in one of the largest such transfers in the nation’s history.
Through a Dept. of the Interior initiative aiming to bring indigenous knowledge back into land management, 76 square miles east of the central stretch of the Klamath River has been returned to the Yurok tribe.
Sandwiched between the newly-freed Klamath and forested hillsides of evergreens, redwoods, and cottonwoods, Blue Creek is considered the crown jewel of these lands, though if it were a jewel it wouldn’t be blue, it would be a giant colorless diamond, such is the clarity of the water.
Pictured: Blue Creek
It’s the most important cold-water tributary of the Klamath River, and critical habitat for coho and Chinook salmon. Fished and hunted on since time immemorial by the Yurok and their ancestors, the land was taken from them during the gold rush before eventually being bought by timber companies.
Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, remembers slipping past gates and dodging security along Blue Creek just to fish up a steelhead, one of three game fish that populate the river and need it to spawn.
Profiled along with the efforts of his tribe to secure the land for themselves and their posterity, he spoke to AP about the experience of seeing plans, made a decade ago, come to fruition, and returning to the creek on which he formerly trespassed as a land and fisheries manager.
“To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,” he said.
Part of the agreement is that the Yurok Tribe would manage the land to a state of maximum health and resilience, and for that the tribe has big plans, including restoring native prairie, using fire to control understory growth, removing invasive species, restoring native fish habitat, and undoing decades of land-use changes from the logging industry in the form of culverts and logging roads.
“And maybe all that’s not going to be done in my lifetime,” said McCovey. “But that’s fine, because I’m not doing this for myself.”
The Yurok Tribe were recently at the center of the nation’s largest dam removal, a two decades-long campaign to remove a series of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River. Once the West Coast’s third-largest salmon run, the Klamath dams substantially reduced salmon activity.
Completed last September, the before and after photographs are stunning to witness. By late November, salmon had already returned far upriver to spawn, proving that instinctual information had remained intact even after a century of disconnect.
Pictured; Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California
“Seeing salmon spawning above the former dams fills my heart,” said Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, the leaders of the dam removal campaign along with the Karuk and Klamath tribes.
“Our salmon are coming home. Klamath Basin tribes fought for decades to make this day a reality because our future generations deserve to inherit a healthier river from the headwaters to the sea.”
Last March, GNN reported that the Yurok Tribe had also become the first of America’s tribal nations to co-manage land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding involving Redwoods National Park.
The nonprofit Save the Redwoods bought a piece of land adjacent to the park, which receives 1 million visitors annually and is a UNESCO Natural Heritage Site, and handed it over to the Yurok for stewardship.
The piece of land, which contained giant redwoods, recovered to such an extent that the NPS has incorporated it into the Redwoods trail network, and the two agencies will cooperate in ensuring mutual flourishing between two properties and one ecosystem.
Back at Blue Creek, AP reports that work has already begun clearing non-native conifer trees planted for lumber. The trunks will be used to create log jams in the creek for wildlife habitat.
Costing $56 million, the land was bought from the loggers by Western Rivers Conservancy, using a mixture of fundraising efforts including private capital, low interest loans, tax credits, public grants and carbon credit sales.
The sale was part of a movement called Land Back, which involves returning ownership of once-native lands of great importance to tribes for the sake of effective stewardship. [Note: This is a weirdly limited definition of Land Back. Land Back means RETURN STOLEN LAND, PERIOD.] Studies have shown around the tropics that indigenous-owned lands in protected areas have higher forest integrity and biodiversity than those owned by national governments.
Land Back has seen 4,700 square miles—equivalent to one and a half-times the size of Yellowstone National Park—returned to tribes through land buy-back agreements in 15 states." [Note: Since land buyback agreements aren't the only form of Land Back, the total is probably (hopefully) more than that.]
ای کاش آدمی وطناش را همچون بنفشهها میشد با خود ببرد هر کجا که خواست
(ay kāsh ādami vatanash ra hamchon banafshehha mishod bā khod bebarad har kojā ke khāst)
if only a person could take their homeland, wherever they wanted, like violets
as winter winds down to an end i always find myself listening to “kooche banafsheha” by farhad. he sings about the last days of esfand, the final month in the iranian calendar, when violets, with their leaves and roots, are picked and placed into boxes. his song laments the people unable take their homeland with them wherever they’d like, like the violets. with nowruz, the new year that starts tomorrow, i think of these boxes, which are sold as decorations during this time, and of the palestinians.
listening to this song, i realized how similar the symbol of violets in this song are to palestinian keys. after the 1948 nakba, many palestinians kept the keys to their homes with the hope that they may one day return. similarly, the violets symbolize the pain of being separated from your homeland, while also serving as a reminder of where someone comes from. and despite the pain they may cause, these violets are a beautiful reminder of spring and the coming new year.
the woman in this illustration is wearing a thobe with gazan tatreez, one of the symbols of palestine. her pose, with her hands behind her back, mirrors handala’s, another symbol of palestinian identity. however, unlike handala, she faces the viewer, almost confronting them. in her hands she holds a violet and a key. surrounding her is an olive tree, a symbol of palestinian’s connection to their land.
it has now been 529 days since isr*el’s war on gaza and 77 years since the nakba first began. in 2024 alone, up to 1.9 million palestinians were displaced according to the unrwa. this nowruz i hope for a future where no one has to mourn the loss of their home. free palestine forever ✌️🗝
learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy. you start seeing it everywhere. ill see a random pic of characters or people or whatever and be like "these are all white people. why"
all the babies in those baby youtube video memes. humanized character posts. like. its the little innocent shit. and like, the people making those baby memes probably arent seeking out white babies. maybe theyre just easier to find. but why are they easier to find? a complicated question, surely... but you know what it probably comes down to. someone, somewhere, maybe a lot of someones in a lot of places, made a choice. maybe knowingly, maybe not. but they made a choice. it starts to make you feel like a conspiracy theorist!!
its really funny that after 2 months this post is still making racists come into my askbox treating me like im a horrible person for pointing out that sometimes people of color are excluded from things in visible and offputting ways. cry about it
august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good august will be good
