in widening circles @swellerando - Tumblr Blog

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When I was at the park last night I saw a velvet ant irl for the first time! I didn’t get to take a picture, but I believe I either saw Klug’s velvet ant (Dasymutilla klugii) or the much rarer Dasymutilla clotho, which is highly local to one particular band of longitude through Central Texas and into Oklahoma.

Dasymutilla clotho, photo by Sam Kieschnick

They look like gigantic furry ants, but they’re actually the wingless females of solitary wasp species! The males of these species look much more like Normal Guys. Supposedly, their sting is incredibly painful. Anyway, I love bugs and this was my first time to see this bug and I got very excited

#I wish I could have gotten a photo for iNaturalist but it was too quick for me #I also heard a blue-gray gnatcatcher in the trees. also an ID first for me #it was a lovely night #bugs #this has been a post #velvet ants

makesomenoise

🌈

#dropout #brennan lee mulligan

maykitz

whenever christians pat themselves on the back for their charity i'm reminded of that clip i saw where a sobbing little boy spoke to pope francis and asked if his late father was in hell now for being atheist, and the pope addressed the crowd with some sort of non-answer ("does god abandon his children? no.") and half the comment section was so in awe at his benevolence. wow, after religious teachings traumatised this bereaved child, trampled his psyche and exacerbated his loss by making him believe that his father that he will have to grow up without went on to being made to suffer for all eternity and is being tortured as we speak, the pope had the unimagineable kindness in him to vaguely walk it back a little bit in the face of a little boy's tears. truly an awe inspiring source of drip-fed charity as long as nobody asks why so many recipients around the world came to be in need of charity in the first place. well, and the other half of the comment section was angrily attacking the pope as a false prophet for not telling the kid that yes your dad is being tormented in hellfire rn because the bible is pretty clear on that. and i mean, afaik, it is.

#was having a conversation a few months ago with my dear friend and neighbor who is still an evangelical christian #and I was talking about having left the faith and was saying #‘if you think I’m going to hell I don’t hold it against you and I understand and empathize with you’#and she was so quick to be like ‘I don’t!’#and I had to stop and be like okah but why not?#bc we were raised in the same faith system and I know that your beliefs tell you that anyone who has not accepted salvation #must be separated from god for eternity and that absence of god is hell #we have been drilled over and over again since childhood to know that ‘no one comes to the Father except through Me’#and here I am telling you that I reject Jesus and reject God. so how could your belief system still hold while allowing me into heaven?#frankly if you don’t think I’m going to hell you’re a bad christian! and that’s my hot take #christianity #fyi by same faith system I am talking specifically about charismatic evangelical Protestantism as it is practiced in the US South

roswellsoup

bonus/proof:

we tipped her well dw. best waitress ever 🍒

#the mortifying ordeal of being known #!!!!!!#one time at Olive Garden the waiter saw me get visibly excited about the Andes mint at the end of the meal #and when it was time to pay the bill he gave me a handful of like eight mints and I was SO happy

systlin

"Sys how is your decent into fiber arts hell going"

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

Anyway how are all of you doing.

systlin

I FAILED YOU ALL here is the site. You can also buy flax fiber from them. The PROPER shit, not the hot garbage ass tow fiber sold as flax top for handspinners.

systlin

'machine combing shortens the flax fibers by several inches'

This right here is part of why modern linen is a pale shadow of historical linen. Legitimately it cannot be properly replicated by machines. It HAS to be made by human hands if you want the best quality.

#I’m part of a Facebook group called Flax to Linen where people grow their own flax and document the whole process to make linen #it’s incredible. and I’m pretty bummed that I do not live in an ideal region for flax growing #history #fibercrafts

blondebrainpowered

Cat paw prints in the medieval floor tiles of the 12th century CE St Peter Church in Wormleighton, England

blondebrainpowered

@altocello / altocello.tumblr.com

#the best part#is that putting those tiny toe beans there was entirely intentional#the cat didn't step into soft clay right there#the cat put those prints into the soft clay of the tile before it was fired#the potter chose to fire it anyway#then the tile setter chose to cut it and place it#he didn't have to leave the prints#he could have used a different tile#but he must have liked them too#i just love thinking about the potter and the tile setter who both loved seeing that cat's toe bean prints too

bertie wooster: and what of the vibes? are the vibes any good, jeeves?

jeeves: upon my most recent inspection, the vibes were immaculate, sir

#lol somebody just dredged this up from the depths in my notes #I forgot. this was very good and i stand by it proudly #jeeves and wooster

urgetocreate

Jeffery T. Larsen (American b.1962), In the Light of Morning, 2003, Oil on linen

succubusboyfriend

practicing self care less out of self love and more for the sheer logical reasoning of it’d be kinda stupid of me to expect myself to be able to function without proper maintenance

succubusboyfriend

“oh i don’t deserve rest and relaxation, i haven’t done enough, i haven’t earned it” and my car’s breaks don’t deserve break fluid because they aren’t breaking well enough to earn it. that’s what you sound like!!!!!

reasonsforhope

If you do not schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you

#reminders

swellerando

I went to a large meeting today at my job at a public university and when we split up into breakout time, the director put on a Christian worship playlist as background music

swellerando

I also receive a “Daily WOE (Word of Encouragement)” email from a faculty member in our listserv who, coincidentally, also has a Doctorate in Divinity, and it does in fact bring me woe every morning

Today, talking about his love of the ocean, he wrote, “The amazing thing to me about the ocean is just how consistent it is and has been for thousands of years. […] since the dawn of time […]”

thousands of years, huh

thousands of years since the dawn of time, huh

hmmmmm

swellerando