Friendly Neighborhood Witch

I mostly hord useful info @studypile, this blog is my dumping ground

[jmfenner91]

After what feels like forever, shirts are now up for preorder on my shop! The preorders close in 1 week & will immediately be off to print! 💗 I've wanted to do apparel for AGES & would love to do more if these do well! I'll be bringing some with me to Rose City Comic Con in September & to Lightbox Expo in October. So you can come pick one up there, too! 😁 Also, want to mention that I'm going to be temporarily closing my shop on the first of September to get ready for RCCC/Lightbox/traveling, so if you're wanting to snag a print - it would be a good time now, too! 💗

[windvexer]

Your friendly reminder that if you've traded parts of your Self to the otherworld in exchange for power you have to let your spirits dwell within your flesh from time to time, you feel that way because you are a dehydrated toad and you need to get moist in the river of power from whence you were born, hope this helps

[windvexer]

I'm sure this was added in good faith but in light of the recent "what is witchcraft" posts and my own recent rant on asking people not to mistake witchcraft for paganism, I'd like to make it clear that this post has nothing to do with paganism and is not a shitpost.

[creature-wizard]

I'm beginning to suspect that sufficiently advanced witchcraft is indistinguishable from shitposting.

[windvexer]

Maybe 12+ months ago I spent some time writing on how if you want to lead a magical life I think a lot of this stuff has to be framed as chores. And I did not know how serious I was.

It is chores. Sufficiently advanced witchcraft is chores.

[ahedderick]

This is the most beautiful scientific diagram I've ever seen.

Also a great example of why pink is a tint of red, but also a completely different color. Erbium? Neodymium? So beautiful.

[yume-fanfare]

i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book

[paperjoshi]

what the fuck is a time knife

[bramblepatch]

[strawberrylovely]

[undeadentropy]

Time knife is a form of time knife

[anarchistmemedistro]

[coffeecalliope]

A lot of companies that make things have two separate lines: consumer and enterprise. Consumer is for us poors that the company doesn't need to respect. You can buy more expensive, higher tier consumer items but it's just as fragile. You're paying for more bells and whistles. Enterprise grade is stuff that will actually last because it is often sold in a lot as part of a contract and the contract won't be renewed if the items suck. These things are often just not sold to consumers because why would you ever buy consumer-grade garbage if you could buy this?

For something like computers, this looks like how pricey "gAmiNG" laptops look all fancy but fall apart in about the same timeframe as the lower end laptops for students. But if you've ever handled the sort of laptops for banks or businesses, you'd wonder why laptops can't all be like this. People swear by Lenovo Thinkpads for a reason. Dell's Latitude (general productivity) and Precision (has the power of a gaming laptop but far less bs) lines, HP's probooks, all feel really nice and last for-fucking-ever. But you can't buy them in a store even if you wanted one.

So the trick is to buy what big organizations are buying, but you likely gotta get 'em secondhand when the orgs are done with them. For basic clothes, mil surplus might be a good port of call, for technology see an e-waste recycler or sometimes government auction (you just gotta know what to ask for; ThinkPads, Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Probook/Zbook). Otherwise try to thrift old, pre-enshitification items. The blanket I had as a kid is still going strong and has lived to bury multiple sets of newer bedding (which have worn thin and torn). Kitchen items, see if you can shop at a restaurant supplier.

TL;DR: if you need an item, think "which business needs these to function" and see where they 1) buy theirs (suppliers) or 2) sell their old ones (surplus) and buy that. If you can't do that, look at older, pre-enshitification things.

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[punissuer]

ID / TL;DW: young Black man explains the history of voodoo dolls: they originated in England, where Black people where prohibited from learning to read or write, to help witches keep track of what ailed their patients. Eg., person goes to witch and laments headache, they treat their headache and make a small doll (called "poppet"), trying to represent them as good as possible, stick a needle in its head and put it up a shelf. When they return next week, the witch takes their poppet and asks about their headache. If it's gone, they remove the needle, otherwise they know they have to treat a rather persistent headache.

[tartrazeen]

I'm just gonna freeze-frame this for everybody:

[because-im-hap-hap]

The full video is actually up on the Try Guys Youtube for anyone to watch! It is very educational about the history of Louisiana voodoo and Robi does a fantastic job educating the cast. Please give it a watch if you want to learn more.

[stagalactic]

Please watch the full video, it is much more informative!

The above TL;DW description is innacurate, the clip in the original post is cut in a weird way to where it does almost sound like they are talking about the same thing throughout, but two different depictions of using dolls are being described here.

I mean for start, we are talking about African slaves in the US who originated this version of voodoo practices, where it was illegal for slaves to read and write, so we are not talking about people in England.

The pagan witches in England using poppets to stab are a completely separate phenomenon from the voodoo practioners using needles in dolls as medical record keeping devices. It was cut from the clip but if you watch the full video, he ends the story about the English witches by saying that they were not stabbing these dolls to curse people they were doing it to relieve anger at people who wronged them.

[penumbraphantasm]

okay

[fafameow]

the strange greeting is really adorable so i tried to recreate it in pixels

[miikpal]

wing clipping

[m-malyar]

Bran

[layerafterdusk]

"Where you walk, my dearest friend, fate shall surely follow."

[littlewildmother]

Studies show that engaging in ritualized behavior significantly improves outcomes on measures of grief and feelings of control, even when the person participating in the ritual has little or no belief in the ritual’s power. Just a reminder for no one in particular.

[littlewildmother]

Research has revealed that, while rituals are universal across human cultures, the content and actions of those rituals vary widely even when they have the same intended purpose. This suggests that it is not the actions that matter, but that you are taking any action at all and naming it ritual. It can be an elaborate ritual with dozens of moving parts and participants, or it can be as simple as lighting a candle alone with the intent to remember someone.

The healing is in the doing.

[redstonedust]

wands are like the smartphone of the wizard world, a slimmed and streamlined spellcasting apparatus of the modern era that has many slightly older wizards going "ugh kids these days don't know what it's like to have the sturdy weight of a Staff in your hands at all times. sure its not as portable but at least i can still use it to beat a motherfucker when im out of mana."

[redstonedust]

there are gen Z spellcasters trying to lead a wizard staff revival but they're all made out of cheap wood and crystals they bought on tiktok live and at least one has splintered and exploded on their user. meanwhile grandpa is in the back like "in MY day we had to memorize all our runes and draw them out of thin air backwards in the pouring rain 5 times a day"

[thegodwhocums]

Bull-god, drunk god, god of women and transvestites, giver of ecstasy, master of dance, lord of the emotions—such were the various masks worn by the daimon whose lineage went back to ancient Minoan civilization. In his myths and rituals, Dionysos embodied both a feeling for the living continuities of nature and a concept of the human personality as an organism deeply rooted in the nonrational forces of the cosmos. Serving as the focus for the spiritual needs of Greece's underclasses, he became the god that the patriarchal establishment could neither accept nor eliminate. And so Dionysos represented the return of the repressed in several senses: return of the religious needs of the lower classes, return of the demands of the nonrational part of the self, and return of the Minoan feeling for the living unity of nature. And so in turn he threatened several repressors: the aristocracy of well-to-do male citizens, the domination of intellect over emotion, the alienated ethos of the city-state.

Arthur Evans, “The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysos,” 1988

[nyxshadowhawk]

Happy Dionysian Beltane, everybody!

[itsnotvesper]

Yeah, that's the guy I pray to.

[witchboxco]

[dreamsy990]

i saw someone say nobody needs to know what a .txt file is anymore. what the fuck is the world coming to

[dreamsy990]

unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school

[dreamsy990]

things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)

how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem

what common file types are

some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)

how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private

how to understand terms of service (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)

what a cookie actually is

internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl

basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)

common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)

how to not get a virus while pirating something

what a temporary email is and when to use one

red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)

what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls

[dreamsy990]

ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)

an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous

a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps

a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)

some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself

[bustedknucklesbrokenheart]