[xhucanita]

I wasn't raised by my real parents, and while she was raising me, Coqui insisted that she was my biological mother. My father was just another one of the very many men of proud European ancestry that made his way into my matriarchal bloodline under nefarious circumstances, but no one ever believed Coqui was my mother, not when they really thought about.

My "surrogate mother" had been my tía Estella, not long enough after she had crossed the border to have learned English. "Se llama IVF," Coqui had told her, while tracking her ovulation. Estella, my mother, had never heard of of IUI; she still quite doesn't understand it. But, she tells, when I was a little girl she caught herself staring at me often and wondering if there could be any possibility.

When I was an adult, I took a DNA test to find family on my late father's side I had heard talk of. They said he had several biological sons with several different women while he was married to Coqui - while she could never conceive. All the boys were Named Raúl, after him. When he learned that I, his youngest, was to be a girl he wanted to name me Raúla. Thankfully, Coqui had snuck Ana onto my citizenship papers for Mexico, and Estella had a fondess for Tiffany.

The DNA test matched me to Estella and her family tree, and nothing has ever been such a huge shock that I somehow always knew was coming. While I was homeless in San Diego, while I lived in poverty in the lower valley of El Paso, while Coqui abandoned me to the Catholic orphanages of Cd. Juarez as a method of discipline- I always imagined myself as a Rapunzel - the ward of the wrong type of bruja with another destiny unfolding just beyond the horizon. And then I got the call from Delilah and we all met at our mother's house as sisters for the very first time.

Someday, I'll finish the book I've been writing for years about the journey of my life - and what it could have been, and what it is becoming. Today, I just want to reconnect with my family and community. There was a time when I enjoyed speaking about my journey in reconnection openly and in real-time, but as an educator, I've also learned that stories are sacred, and they shouldn't be put out into the world half-formed when it can be helped. Today, I can only gift snippets.

[lichen-thr0pe]

[xhucanita]

New mexican history still holds strong! #33333 #fyp #foryoupage #newmexico #newmexicocheck #newmexicotrue #newmexicohype #history #viral #so

On the anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt 🖤

[le-dreadmau5]

It’s literally that simple

Friend: “hey my son can’t concentrate on his homework. He chooses to do literally anything else everytime. He said his head doesn’t feel like it.”

Me: “Did you give him music?”

Friend: “No! No tech until he’s done! He doesn’t need more distracted.”

Me:

“k, bring me the child”

*Go to her house*

*points to the obviously ADHD boy struggling with his homework*

Me: “so your head doesn’t feel like doing homework?”

Son: “yeah. It would rather do ANYTHING else.”

Me: *unwrapping earbuds* here, listen to this for an hour while you do it.

French voice: 1hr later

Son: “k I’m done! :-)”

Friend: “wow, what’d you give him? Concentra, Adderall, Ritalin‽”

Me: “Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics” and some lo-fi.

[fckingowlnerd]

I-I’m gonna try this for myself

[le-dreadmau5]

Go for it! From what I’ve seen, everyone has a different genre but instrumental (no words) seems to be key. I guess Sweet Dreams words are so ethereal, ADHD just rolls with it????

For me, orchestral covers of songs I know work best since my ADHD is using the extra hyperfocus to remember and keep up with words. Have fun experimenting!!

[avatar-of-the-vast]

I have some arrangements of songs I did that I just loop. Mind you, these are, like, 1-3 minutes long, but the drone really helps with focus

[a-dumb-bitch-apparently]

Y'all I just listen to Lana Del Rey. Would recommend because with instrumentals I tend to focus on where actual words would be but with Lana’s stuff her vocals sound like music but it’s words

[mbrainspaz]

really wish I could’ve done this when I was spending 4 hours on every page of math homework in the 90′s. Fast forward to my last year of college when I finally figured out I could just listen to Blackmill and blaze through an entire semester of college math like it was nothing.  Find the study methods that work for you!!! Help kids find the study methods that work for them!  

[heywriters]

It takes me all day to do simple chores because i keep getting distracted. If i put in earbuds with upbeat music I’m done with everything in a couple hours AND i feel really good and probably danced a little i.e. exercised.

[abadbowlofsoup]

Try songs in another language - one you don’t speak. The idea is that since you don’t understand the words, your brain doesn’t go “Oh hey, someone is talking to me” and thus you can maintain your focus. Although, this is something probably  best suited to writing. But on the other hand, if it works, it works.  Personally, I like Opera. BUT, I advise against using Pandora’s Opera Station. At least in the free version, it either cycles through the same ten Singers/Albums or drifts off into instrumental covers.  On the other hand, it’s great for background noise when gaming. Just be sure you have an ad blocker running. You will also have to confirm that you are listening every hour or so. 

[abadbowlofsoup]

Followup on the lofi front: I recommend the following channels. Chillhop Music:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOxqgCwgOqC2lMqC5PYz_Dg

In particular, I recommend the relax/study livestream radio. Or just about any of their mixes. Fantasic Music:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZyyXrEF2WCZbI653PFNBbA Both the Chill and the Jazz playlists are excellent.  Jazzhop Cafe:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi8wqezBudeAiTdKOX571ug

Their ChillMix videos are the best.  Jazzhop Cafe Archive:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbD–QKXKosHmSXarqYUeg Name is self-evident.  I believe ChilledCow also has a livestream, but I honestly prefer Chillhop. YMMV https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow

EDIT: Oh, Pandora’s Vitamin String Quartet IS good, but it tends to drift off into New Age type stuff. Adblocker thing still applies though. 

[misfiterators]

I’ve seen is said elsewhere but I also highly recommend video game soudtracks! Especially if you don’t tend to enjoy the more orchestral music. They are usually engineered to make you focus better (ie. not want to stop playing the game)

“portal 2: songs to test by” got me through all my college math classes

[levymcgarden55]

[id: the Ben afflek smoking meme.]

[jaycee-speaks-now-deactivated20]

Ada Limón named the 24th U.S. poet laureate

NEW YORK (AP) — The country's next poet laureate, Ada Limón, has long thought of her work as a public art form. “I grew up with poetry being in the community,” says Limón, a native of Sonoma, California.

NEW YORK (AP) — The country’s next poet laureate, Ada Limón, has long thought of her work as a public art form.

“I grew up with poetry being in the community,” says Limón, a native of Sonoma, California. “It wasn’t supposed to just be something read on page; it was supposed be read out loud. I remember going to poetry readings at the bookstore where I worked when I was 16. It’s the oral tradition. That part of poetry has always remained true to me.”

On Tuesday, the Library of Congress announced that the 46-year-old Limón had been named the 24th U.S. poet laureate, officially called the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Her 1-year term begins Sept. 29 with the traditional reading at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium, one of the laureate’s few formal obligations. Limón, who succeeds Joy Harjo, is an award-winning and unusually popular poet, her acclaimed collection “Bright Dead Things” selling more than 40,000 copies. She has published six books of poetry, most recently “The Hurting Kind,” and also hosts the podcast “The Slowdown.”

“Ada Limón is a poet who connects,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. “Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.”

The position was established in 1985, with other laureates including Louise Glück, W.S. Merwin and Rita Dove. Laureates receive a $35,000 stipend, along with $5,000 for travel expenses, the funding originating not from the government, but from a private gift made decades ago by the philanthropist Archer M. Huntington.

While the job is officially based in Washington, D.C., the poets are not required to live there — Limón will mostly work from her home in Lexington, Kentucky — and are generally free to shape the position around their passions. “The Slowdown” podcast grew out of a project launched by Tracy K. Smith when she served as laureate from 2017-2019.

Limón is known in part for her poems about nature and hopes to give readings at parks and other settings that emphasize and celebrate our place in the world.

“Poetry is a way of to remember our relationship with the natural world is reciprocal,” she says. “It’s having a place to breathe and having a place to pay attention.”

[synesthetic-steppenwolf]

Prepping an acequia (canal) for the third watering of the irrigation season.

Spaniards and Tigua people began irrigating in this very area (Lower Valley El Paso, Texas) towards the end of the 17th century, with the establishment of Ysleta.

Surely the first irrigation of this kind in Texas (Spaniards originally learned it from the Moors), there is a claim yet to be debunked, that a plot of land next to the Ysleta Mission is the longest continuously cultivated plot of land in the United States. It has been confirmed that many of the canals originally built by the Tigua people, under the command of Spanish padres, were still in use as recently as the 1990s.

Keeping the tradition alive in 2022.

[xhucanita]

Lower Valley kids never die <3

[xhucanita]

Wolfhaley on TikTok

Part 2 coming soon 😍 #WeStickTogether #MickeyFriendsStayTrue #FilmTeyvatIslands #CVSPaperlessChallenge #fyp #foryoupage #newmexico #newmexic

[xhucanita]

Randi on TikTok

Replying to @thecamfraser2.0 Examples of Healthy Masculinity in the Media: Part 1 #fyp #popculture #movies #tv #film #masculinity #healthym

[writingmaz]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[neil-gaiman]

I knew about half of this when I started writing. It’s amazing the stuff they don’t teach you in school that you have to work out on your own. And look, all beautifully laid out for you.

[archaeologicalnews]

Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. “All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is,” Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science. Read more.

[xhucanita]

Tasha on TikTok

Did you know? #fyp #foryoupage #history #ghana #africa #africanamericans #nativeamericans #stories #folktales #fypシ

[3s-are-green]

How to Really Comprehend a Scientific Paper

**credit to my research advisor, she’s an amazing mentor and I aspire to be just like her someday :)

Read the abstract. Write down what the paper says it is going to be about.

Read the introduction. Write down what the paper says it is looking to accomplish and how.

Read the conclusion. Write down what the paper actually did accomplish.

Go through and find all the pictures, graphs, or diagrams. Write notes explaining these images to yourself.

Read the whole paper start to finish. Write a summary of the paper as though you are explaining it to a layperson, and then another summary as though you are explaining it to a colleague.

Throughout all of the above steps:

If there are words you don’t know google them and write down the definitions

If the paper defines a formula, law, variable, etc in a certain way write that down

If there are references to or recommendations of other literature write those down. After the last step if there’s anything you’re uncertain about or would like more information on look to that list for further reading

[poetryofmac]

Break it down, simple & easy.

[firminfollowing]

school, nvld

[xhucanita]

Fresh Air - How The Mexican Revolution Shaped The U.S.

Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández tells the story of the rebels who fled Mexico to the United States, and helped incite the 1910 Mexican Revol

[izukuwus]

Still reeling from the realization that bullet journaling was essentially created to be a disability aid and got legit fuckin gentrified

[izukuwus]

Like I'm at work and don't have the time to properly organize my thoughts atm but like.

-bullet journalling was invented by a man with a learning disability (99% sure it was ADHD but his website now just says learning disability so I can't be 100%) as a system for organizing his life/way to work WITH his learning disability

-the general concept is bullet point the important things you need to do and use a simple system of symbols to mark whether it's done, rescheduled, cancelled, etc. with very little fanfare, keeping it all in one notebook so you know where to easily find the information at a glance

-people pick it up and it starts getting popular

-bullet journaling becomes an aesthetic movement largely populated by white neurotypicals

-bullet journaling has turned into creating an extremely pretty notebook that has some function, but largely depends on complicated decoration and aesthetic function that takes more time to set up than is tenable for the people it was created for

-new entries to bullet journaling feel pressure to shop at particular stores, use particular brands, purchase lots of stationery purely for its aesthetic value, and prioritize the artistry of the pages rather than the information being stored on them

-people who would massively benefit from the original system can only really find information on it from members of the aesthetic movement. There is now a barrier to entry for ppl with ADHD and other similar conditions, as bullet journaling now requires a focus and motivation to start that these same people often lack or struggle to maintain consistently

-bullet journaling is no longer a disability aid and has become an aesthetic movement largely for middle class white neurotypicals, pushing out the people who the system was created for to begin with

[bibookmerm]

This is the original guide from the person who made bullet journalling. Super simple. Not at all high maintenance.

It was eye-opening to rewatch this after getting used to bullet journal meaning "work of highly decorative art you might journal in if it doesn't detract from the decoration" everywhere online.

[hillbillyoracle]

No, this is a terrible take and I am beyond tired of seeing it. 

It’s ultimately pretty classist, ableist, and also says a lot about what people think of artists. 

Seriously, we need to unpack this. This is how people wind up feeling guilty for anything that brings them joy. It cultivates the cultural idea that people with disabilities or who are poor don’t deserve and can’t create nice things. 

I have been Bullet Journaling on and off since 2014. I know because seeing the original video was memorable for me - I think it might have been a lifehacker article that linked me to the website he’d thrown up for it back then. Literally that night, I drove to an office supply store and bought a grid paper notebook because that’s all there really was for it in those days. It is a tool I’ve gone back to over and over because it really is just that damn good. 

I say all this to say that I’ve been in and around the bujo community for a long ass time. 

Naturally a lot of those original creators who were gracious enough to share their Bullet Journaling practice were also neurodivergent. A lot of them also happened to be women, often with creative practices (something neurodivergent folks are often good at and drawn to) that they managed through and later combined with their bullet journaling - because they enjoyed doing that work.

What OP has done is reinforced the idea that ADHD looks a certain way - like their specific tastes and limitations - and that people who are the least bit capable are assumed neurotypical. That’s ableist. Stop. 

If you look at a gorgeous bullet journal spread and think “that person is neurotypical” that says so much more about your internalized ableism than that person you’re judging. 

Fact is so many of the top bullet journal creators on YouTube and Instagram have openly talked about their struggles with trauma, ADHD, Autism, eating disorders, OCD, chronic fatigue, etc. Ryder Carroll’s own book on his method includes many of these more artistic examples and their stories to encourage people to find what works for them personally. On story shared talked about how including art in their bullet journaling made them want to journal more and that journaling helped them recover from a skin picking disorder. 

Art =/= gentrification

Art is healing. Art is something we all need. Whether you include it in your practice is optional. But including it in no way denotes class or disability holy shit.

Bullet journaling is at it’s heart a journaling system - a way to reflect and refine your thoughts and actions. Art journaling has been a long standing practice often used by neurodivergent people who aren’t always the best with words. It is fucking natural that many people wanted to both Bullet Journal and art journal in the same journal. Ryder Carroll has openly talked about it’s a flexible system that can incorporate a lot of different styles of reflection - art is one of those.

You know who tend to art journal - artists and art students. Two groups of people who are very often not middle class. Many are just as in debt any of the rest of us. Many work their art job and their making-ends meet job. They have access to the materials to do these things not because they are super comfortable but because their income relies on it. 

Would you tell a carpenter or an electrician they must not be disabled or poor if they build their own bookshelf from scraps or wire in a nicer lighting fixture they thrifted? And hell those trade actually pay more. So really this just seems to speak to the very weird ideas people have about art. 

You share responsibility for the ideas you formulate based on social media. How are we in 2022 and people are still not getting that social media is a curated snapshot and demanding anyone hey find to educated them fully about a topic they’ve not investigated. 

If you look at someone having a nice time drawing in their bullet journal and being proud of what they made and think I have to do that - that is a you issue, not a content creator issue.  

But seriously y’all - the funniest thing about this whole thing to me is just how many people are outing themselves for having formed passionate opinions on this and not just googling “bullet journaling”. Ryder Carroll’s work has consistently been on the front page for years. You not taking the time to read it is not the part of some woman with some fine liners drawing flowers on her cover page for the month. 

TL;DR - Poor people and neurodivergent folks deserve and can make beautiful things. Assuming that majority of creators making beautiful spreads are middle class and able bodied pretty much solely on the fact they’re taking the time to make something beautiful for themselves - is itself pretty classist and ableist. 

Creators sharing their personal practice do not have to educate you.

You are responsible for your assumptions. Google is right there. 

[striped-civet]

Malagasy civet (Fossa fossana) Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar

Despite its name, the Malagasy civet is not a civet, but actually belongs to the endemic Madagascan family Eupleridae. It is also known as the striped civet or the fanaloka.

Photograph © Chien Lee

[lost-carcosa]

[odysseusrex]

the muse said it’s my turn to tell the iliad