#its being doing those things that we learn to live together on the planet

[nieves-de-sugui]

I need to put my thoughts somewhere so here goes.

I'm currently watching this show on netflix and I have thoughts. I am super intrigued with it so spoilers ahead for the people who might happen to be watching it.

Ok so, I just watched the most recent episode and I am a little sad they decided to have Kang Ho get back his memories like this. One of the things that I liked about this show is that despite having the typical corruption storyline they seemed to be going/exploring a different outcome when they had Kang Ho's mom burn all the evidence. Which I was intrigued by. The kdramas are all about vengeance and justice, however this show is about good intentioned people making bad choices in the name of revenge or pursuing justice. Kang Ho's mom wanting to save Kang Ho from this revenge plot he's put himself into (that has cost him his life and happiness). Trying to correct the mistake she made when she forced him on the path of becoming a prosecutor.

It seemed to me like they might explore another way out, by letting the past be in the past and learning to move on with Kang Ho's current condition. There's enough to unpack there, and also the whole exploration of living with someone with a disability. How much Kang Ho and his mother have hurt each other, how much they love each other, and how to find happiness in such a complex family situation.

I would have loved for Kang Ho to get his memories slowly. I still hope he does, and doesn't revert back to being who he was a 100%. Hopefully he gets them back gradually and, combined with his most recent memories he can learn from his past mistakes and learn to understand his mother more. I hope they end up having a few heart to hearts by the end of the show.

I really love how they show how even with the best intention mother can be bad. We see it in how Mi-joo doesn't tell the truth to her kids about their dad. In Mijoo's mom who wants to save her from a fate similar to hers, but doesn't listen to her daughters wishes. In Samsik's mom too.

Anyway, all this to say that for me this show is about healing. And Kang Ho getting his memories back implies we're gonna spend more time with the revenge/corruption plot line. Which is intriguing and all but I hope it doesn't eclipse the main part of the story. Which is about learning from our past mistakes, stop thinking we know better than others (and hurt them I the process) and enjoying the present in whichever shape it comes.

I hope this show sticks the landing because it could easily become one of my faves. So fingers crossed! 🤞

[donascozylivingroom]

LET GO OF THE STRESS AND HUSTLE TO 'GET THERE'

I was scrolling through tiktok and i found a post by someone who told me if i am comfortable in my life i shouldn't be, because i am not working on my next level. i got annoyed and skipped, two videos later: "if u want to be more comfortable..." ... skip!

i'm tired of society convincing us where we are is not ok. i either must want to be more or less comfortable, never accept my life and improve upon the life i have right now with as tiny steps as i feel i can right now.

guess what - I AM COMFORTABLE! And I love it.

I used to be a master at hustling, doing everything i can to get my million dollars and NYC Penthouse. Manifesting didn t work for me until i learned to robotically affirm and persist, and since then i am getting everything i want. And yeah I still have resistance to 2 of my only big desires, everything else i'm getting affirming 1-3 times because i assume i only need to affirm once and i get it, i repeated that for a while and ever since manifestation has been so easy.

And yeah just because i didn t get my 2 main desires yet, I AM COMFORTABLE. I understand that those things I want so much are part of my soul lessons and why my soul came here. God/Source/myself before this life decided to make some things harder than others, and that's okay.

My whole life i was either uncomfortable because i didn t get something external, or worried - why am I so comfortable?

I learned to never do anything that is not easy because my plan for this life is to FLOW, but still i was fed by the media that i am not perfect as i am, or where i am. It's not true.

Wherever you are, it's your starting place, your zero point. And if you are experiencing it, you are probably meant to be there. I mean look around u in the present moment, not to your mind. Are you okay? You're meant to be here, boo.

How can you make your life more beautiful where you are? How can you be more grateful for what is around you? What you already have.

There s no rush, you don't have to get there tomorrow. I know when you are young it seems like you have to do everything very fast, and the speed of manifestation on this planet has improved since i was a kid, everything seems to be more light and fast, BUT...

There will probably be a few more years until the speed of manifestation will be instant, especially for every single thing.

You are part of a collective, a collective consciousness, and everyone must be on board until they push the START button from above 🤭😁

We are literally on this mission together, it's not just about you, it is about the ascension of Earth and its citizens.

Don't stress! Make it your job to relax whatever happens and you will see small improvement after small improvement which will lead to an easy, chilled life that is financially supported by the Universe enough that u have time to do your affirmations, your journaling, your shadow work, etc. Make it a habit to not stress, because stress is always misaligned since it doesn t feel good.

My life currently: affirming, journaling and pinteresting most of the day while in bed...earlier i did groceries and got a lot of things i love to eat and would be considered expensive where i live. Spent 120 euro today and i am in europe. I don't work. I only manifest haha. I'm yet to be at the financial level i want (one of my two desires i'm working on) but i still live a comfortable life, a life that energetically i wish i will have once i have lots and lots of money, because the vibes are amazing. I'd rather have this warm house and bed, friendships and good vibes than a view from the last floor in NYC from my bed, while ridden with anxiety and loneliness.

Ya know.. Everything will be ok, if you struggle to affirm meditate and try your affirmations just once to check how it feels with eyes closed within your inner being..and then check more affirmations one at a time... and ask yourself, your inner being: what do i really need? what do i really want? and when you are clear, then start repeating and manifesting.

good luck!

[livwritesstuff]

This universe literally lives in my head rent free. I had another thought. How do the girls handle their relationships? I know as one of three daughters those dynamics change a LOT over the years, so I’m wondering how they manage their age differences and relationships over time? And how Eddie and Steve referee them?

ok so for reference:

Moe is born in july ‘01

Robbie is born november ‘03

Hazel is born september ‘06

(yes, i picked their star signs before i picked their birthdays - they are, respectively, a leo, a scorpio, and a libra)

So the age difference between Moe and Robbie is about 2 years, with ~3 years between Robbie and Hazel, and ~5 years between Moe and Hazel.

I think the general vibe of their collective dynamic really is the epitome of my sister is my best friend but also she’s the worst and I hate her. That doesn't change over time, but what does change is the way it gets expressed.

Moe was obsessed with Robbie when she was first born, and once Robbie was old enough to have her own opinions, she's equally obsessed with Moe. Robbie is definitely Moe's shadow for the first few years, and that only starts to shift when they're both in elementary school together, at which point they start to take on that quintessential love-hate-always bickering-with a tiny sprinkling of rivalry type of sibling relationship. The ebb and flow of this is one part of parenting three kids that only-children Steve and Eddie have a hard time keeping up with. There would be days when the girls were non-stop fighting, and then Steve would be like, “Moe, wanna go on a drive with me,” to, y’know, separate them for a bit, but then Moe would hit him with some major ‘tude like, “Just me? …why would we do that.”

There’s also definitely a psychological aspect to the sibling warfare that Steve and Eddie sometimes feel like they're two steps behind, so refereeing really just looks like keeping an eye on the metaphorical scoreboard (so to speak) and making sure it’s staying as even as possible (and breaking things up when it gets a bit too brutal).

Moe and Robbie circle back around to being buddies when they’re both in college – I have very very vaguely referred to how Moe and Robbie end up going to the same school, which is messy at first but it ends up being really good for them.

As for Hazel, when Steve and Eddie first introduced her as a newborn to her older sisters, Moe is basically like, “Thank you for the child. You may go,” whereas Robbie is definitely side-eying her like, “Uhhh I did not agree to this.”

That 5 year age gap between Moe and Hazel is enormous when Hazel was first born, and it continues to feel like a lot for a long time. Like, when Moe is learning how to drive, Hazel is still in elementary school, and she’s only twelve when Moe graduates high school. They spend their entire childhoods in completely different developmental brackets, and Hazel is definitely the baby to Moe while Hazel basically worships Moe and thinks she’s the coolest person on the planet. Then Hazel hits her high school years, and Moe, who's wrapping up college, is suddenly like, wait is Hazel cool? omg she’s *so* cool. That’s around when they stop feeling like they occupy totally different planets.

Because Robbie and Hazel are closer in age, their relationship looks a bit more like Robbie and Moe's. Hazel is basically just an avenue for Robbie to exert her own power in a way that Moe would never let her get away with. She’s definitely always pestering Hazel and teasing her and trying to push her buttons (and Hazel is so laid back that it really doesn’t bother her that much, which drives Robbie crazy in its own way). She’s super protective over Hazel though – both Robbie and Moe are very aware that Hazel is basically an angel, so the standard is very much *we’re* the only ones who get to mess with her.

I think Moe and Robbie might have a tendency to force Hazel to be a tie-breaker in their arguments, which is another facet of raising siblings that Steve and Eddie actually get involved in (to make sure she's not being completely steamrolled by her big sisters). Other than that, they mostly stay out of it. They've seen their kids go to battle *for* each other enough times to feel pretty confident that they'll make it through the times they're battling against each other.

[esoteriamaya]

ASTRO OBSERVATIONS PT 2.

If you want to know about your gifts, talents and skills you should check out your sidereal chart as each planet holds a lot of detail on the mind-spirit-body connection. It shows a lot of your personal power from each planet and sign and how they all fully come together to make you, you.

Capricorns are naturals at the occult. They hold a lot of deep knowledge about how this world works and they express the duality of it very well. Most think that capricorns are built on just the law and while they are, they know that their are rules that can be broken. Capricorns are an interesting bunch, they know just how to be successful in anything that they do. Getting closer to the higher ups because they just that 'it' factor of being the boss. They dont 'kiss ass' per say, they just know how to play the game. And another thing about the game, capricorns know thats what we live in. So to play the game, they learn to become the chess master.

5th house scorpios can make anything interesting in this house. Games with them can be slightly taboo. Could have a lot of sex partners. hidden secrets around children, their love life and the type of games they like to play. An observation ive seen with scorpio 5th housers is that BDSM and weird kinks/cosplay could be a thing.

5th house uranus will have some pretty interesting kids. Will Smith has this placement for example. People with this placement are gonna have to understand that their children are going to be a totally different version of them and thats okay. Unique individuals, they can create fun and new games for people. You could be the next person to make a new board game or something a long those lines. Video games? New toys? Theres a business mindset here that needs to be touched on with these placement holders. You guys can really create new, whimsical worlds for people to enjoy!

Neptune in the 8th, spiritual realms open up to these individuals. They do not sleep. No I mean literally, their dreams take them to new dimensions all the time and they come back finding out new information from these worlds. Even their waking life is like a dream, connecting it all together. May be prone to getting psychosis due to the consistent stimulation to their third eye. Its a wild ride for these kids, if you have a friend with this placement gon' head and check on them.

10th house Saturns & Jupiter placements have self mastery written all in their chart. Whatever it is they came out to do its been done before in many other lives. If you believe in past lives, then im talking to you.

10 house jupiter individuals are natural geniuses finding their way through life. They focus heavy on community and love to learn more about how they can help them, what they can bring to the table etc.

Mars in the 8th house is a strong placement for jealousy to occur. These individuals know what they want when they want it. Highly passionate in nature, they most create a routine where their energy can be tapped into on a daily or they'll suffer burn out. Or worse, become a sex maniac. All your energy can not go to sex, it has to go to something that sustain you. Whats your purpose? goals? get into it. thats where most of it HAS to go to.

Venus 6th house need routine to be in order. Some chaos here and there but not too much in your day to day. Your minds needs to follow your passions and purpose in order to feel stable. Focus on something that makes you pay close attention to detail. Something that forces you to take your time.

People with this placement normally have the cutest pets :) and they get the most compliments all of the time.

[raihanijulie]

[ LEMNISCUS GUIDE BLOG!!! ]

☆Reading until end of blog will be much appreciated!!! (Psst, theres a discord server link i slipped in btw....)

You may be wondering... "What is Lemniscus? Why do you keep mentioning it in your posts?"

TO BEGIN WITH, Lemniscus is one of the planets in this universe with Ribbaniuns the living beings in it! The population of Lemniscus consist the various anthropomorphic animals.

And thats where we begin sharing the story and contents of these characters by the name LEMNISCUS! You could say Lemniscus is a series/project my friends and i worked on together!!! (We took Lemniscus bc we literally only focus on this planet... No else.)

Ah... So then, "Who are the characters? Why do they look like the characters from Sonic series?"

THIS. is a good one to explain and i reallly want you guys to keep in mind with this!!!!

Yes! The Lemniscus cast does look like the characters from Sonic the hedgehog because they do take the design and traits inspiration from them! BUT! The personality, backstories, interractions, lores, all of those... We worked and develop on it ourselves!!! (Theres similiarities still, but its only SLIGHT!!! Theres some differences when compared)

Thats why this is NOT counted as Sonic au, instead, its their own universe and story! The Lemniscus cast are original characters/ocs based on existing character that later we develop so they wont look EXACTLY like the existing char they took inspiration of!

I could say that this universe's origins of making is basically 'based on Sonic'. Throughout time, there are improvisasion little by little as we worked on building chars and stories, making it their own thing :D!! So, again, Lemniscus and Sonic are two different thing...

The original characters belong to their respective owners <3 (Keep in mind we are 4 person putting our characters in ONE and worked together in this)

Alright!!! Now INTRODUCE THE CAST/CHARACTERS!

Here ill list out the characters name with their profile links AND respective owners too! Get to know each of them by clicking their names:

Hz Railstar, Alora Quinn, Victoria Opal, Ezra (JULIE/HANA!!! ME!!! :D HOIHOI!!! I link you guys to my chars' masterpost in tumblr hehe,,, its more detailed!!!)

Gausberto, Nova, Puffin, Xenophone (Hani! NOTE: She doesnt put much infos of her characters, i'll most likely be the one to share the infos through source from her she is my own sister after all Infos about Hani's chars are most likely in the discord server!)

Aero and Noire ( @m3tr0n0m333 )

Rambutan Stoneheart ( @cherriosblog )

OH!!! But thats not it!! Theres more infos i'd like to share....

Slowly but surely, we noticed our Lemniscus contents dragged people to start being curious about it, even interested with the series/project we worked! Of course, with a warm welcome, we opened a discord server, ☆LEMNISCUS (Hz Universe), for the little community we have :D!!!

The server is a great place for you to learn more about the characters (bc again, SOME of the Lemniscus cast here are explained alot more in the discord server instead!) and LORESSS obviously! Its even easier and you can keep on track whenever new things are shared by us :)

The characters arent only the ones shown here... In fact, there are more than you think. Yes! Im talkin bout the side characters! Theyre mostly explained and digged alot more in the server soo....

Hop in and join to get more familliar of Lemniscus!! ☆

.

This must conclude the blog. Thank you everyone for the consideration and supports of this little project we worked on! <3 I, the one to start all this fun chaotic universe is very grateful that i'd make it this far by sharing contents of these silli cast, not only me, but by you dedicated supporters and friends that worked alongside me ☆

Live, laugh, burn Hertz!🔥🔥🔥🔥

[fatehbaz]

A thing that I love to do is to intentionally unlearn English common names for plants and animals. Ascribing of strict formal names to living things for processing through institutionalized knowledge systems is an act of capture. And I am not interested in capturing, possessing, any creature.

What do some English common names teach us about a creature? Names are powerful. These are things that I often contemplate together in relation to each other: “folk” taxonomy, animal naming conventions, erasure of local environmental knowledge, the theft and extraction of Indigenous language and knowledge, and rare and endemic species with specific microhabitat preferences.

---

You might come to find that a creature, like a frog in the tropical Andes, is named for a museum curator in London who had never visited the Andes, or the frog is named after an eighteenth century plantation owner who contracted the European land surveyors to map the area.

There are so many creatures named after racists, eugenicists, violent colonizers. Of course, Linnaean taxonomic naming conventions were being established alongside the height of European maritime dominance, plantation slavery, and colonization of the American hemisphere, Australia, South Asia, the tropics.

A frog might be named after an imperial British adventurer who recorded the creature for audiences at European museums. They called “dibs” on the frog, despite the fact that local Indigenous communities may have had an ongoing relationship with the creature for centuries. So instead I’m interested in trying to learn a “folk” name for the creature, or instead I would apply a new name for an animal based on the geographic area, ecoregion, plant community, or ecocultural region that the creature was most closely associated with.

---

Here’s a situation:

There is a relatively little-known salamander species. It is superlative. The terrestrial adults are enormous, and can be purple-ish in color, marked with gold speckles that seem to glow like glitter. They’re one of the only salamanders on the planet that can vocalize. They live in habitat alongside grizzly bears, mountain lion, wolverine, moose, unique lichen-eating mountain caribou, land snails, big ferns. The aquatic larvae can reach lengths of over 30 centimeters (1 foot), and they live not in still water like ponds and lakes as most other salamander larvae, but instead they swim around in fast-flowing streams.

It’s an endemic species. It lives in just a few small rivers’ watersheds, mostly in small, fast-flowing, cold, clear mountain streams in temperate rainforest ecosystems in the Columbia Mountains of the Northern Rockies, almost entirely within the arbitrary political borders of the US state of “Idaho,” on the traditional land of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people and Schitsu’umsh (Skitswish/Coeur d’Alene) people.

And it’s official common name: “Idaho giant salamander.” Not cool. Does the salamander have a meaningful reciprocal relationship with a political entity less than 200 years old, or does the salamander have a relationship with the ancient cedars of the rainforest? Which has existed longer: the arbitrary political entity of Idaho, or the Nimiipuu people? What do some English common names teach us about a creature? Names are powerful. Is the salamander named after the streams, the source of its life? Is it named after the temperate rainforest ecoregion, this safe harbor of fertile vegetation? Does its name refer to the endemic tailed frogs or other aquatic creatures that it relies on for food? Does the name reference the Nimiipuu, who have known the amphibian for centuries? Even the region’s name (”Columbia Mountains”) is a reference to one of history’s most notorious celebrities.

---

Here’s something from Robin Wall Kimmerer:

In the English language, if we want to speak of that sugar maple or that salamander, the only grammar that we have to do so is to call those beings an “it.” [...] In Potawatomi, the cases that we have are animate and inanimate, and it is impossible in our language to speak of other living beings as “it”s. [...] [W]hen we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it […]. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously if we just think about them [solely] as physical elements of the ecosystem. […] This comes back to what I think of as the innocent or childlike way of knowing. Actually, that’s a terrible thing to call  it. We say it’s an innocent way of knowing, and, in fact, it’s a very worldly and wise way of knowing. That kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the  doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity.

Words of Robin Wall Kimmerer. Interviewed by Krista Tippett. “On Being with Krista   Tippett - Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life.”   February 2016.

---

It’s also important to me to clarify that, when referencing an Indigenous name or term for landmarks, places, plants, animals, etc. I only really feel comfortable doing so if the name is explicitly used by and/or confirmed to be accurate by speakers, researchers, knowledge-holders, etc. from that Indigenous community. And I also don’t want to use/share a name/term if the name/term was “collected” (appropriated, extracted) by a chauvinistic white academic or paternalistic Euro-American “ethnologist” or reproduced in a 1950s ethnobotany book or something. I especially don’t like relying on the testimony of, like, Euro-American missionaries or “traders’ who recorded terms in their personal journal in the 1750s or something.

How were those terms encountered?

How were they “extracted”?

Under duress?

Were these names, this environmental knowledge, willingly shared?

What ethical implications are there, of accepting secondhand information from an invading “pioneer”?

Many times, I’ll be reading a paper, maybe a “contempoary” paper from the past 10 years, and see references to a cool-sounding place-name or alternative name for a creature, and I’ve thought “wow, the connotations of the name sound really interesting, I wonder where this was learned,” and I’ll check the bibliography, and the “Indigenous name” was taken from a 1965 academic article, which itself was taken from a 1922 ethnology article sponsored by the F0rd Motor Company in pursuit of stealing local plant knowledge and land titles for rubber plantations or something, and that info itself was taken from an 1874 report from settler-colonial surveyors interviewing “locals” while traveling in company with an ex-government employee “cowboy” who had previously murdered at least 5 of the “locals.” So that, often in Euro-American “Knowledge” or “Science”, when trying to determine the Source Of A Fact, there is this blatant lineage of theft and violence and roundabout superficial self-referencing.

Even in relatively modern academic journals. Let’s say, in the 1990s, a European academic does “field research” in Amazonia. Maybe they record an “accurate” term, and I read about it in a paper. The academic says that they have a “profound respect” for “the culture”. Does this make it OK to “take” their terms? Does this make it more acceptable to “extract” a language as if it were a resource, a possession? Does it change the fact that the sponsoring academic institution or the publishing journal are both entangled with corporate extraction and ongoing (neo)colonial financialization, dispossession, debt, etc.?

So (1) you’re presented with names/terms which are probably inaccurate and which you have no way of confirming because of the convoluted way the term was passed down through settler-colonial knowledge-systematization institutions; and/or (2) more importantly, you’re presented with names/terms stolen, often at threat of violence; or (3) even in “good” scenarios with an accurate term and a so-called self-professed “respectful observer”, you’re presented with names/terms which have great power, connected to a specific culture and landscape, which should be treated with reverence and deep care, but which can easily be stolen and appropriated by popular media, wielding the power of the name in contexts where it doesn’t belong, a betrayal to the people, place, and/or creature.

---

Names imply or explicitly reveal the life of a creature or place, and also imply the connections between the creature/place being named, and the other worlds and relationships it influences and interacts with.

If i am not from the community that conceived the term/language, (1) it doesn’t feel honorable appropriating their language for myself, especially if I don’t have ongoing personal connection to people, places; (2) it doesn’t feel honorable, or all that reliable, to accept at face value the accuracy of a language/term if it’s being reported secondhand by a Euro-American academic intermediary, especially if that language was recorded during periods when Euro-American observers were actively engaged in colonization; and (3) it doesn’t feel honorable to use what might even be accurate Indigenous language/terminology if it was recorded/learned/stolen/promoted by Euro-American observers, unless there is explicit permission from native speakers to use the word, or unless native speakers actively encourage the acknowledgement of the words, maybe for purposes like language revitalization.

There is power and knowledge in a name. using a name involves serious responsibility. i feel that some names aren’t for me to invoke.

---

I think that maybe no name can do justice to the entire rich existence of a creature, but we can really do better than some English common names, especially in those cases when an animal is named after a lone individual human. And so, in naming, there might be a difficult decision to make. Do you name a creature for its behavior, its location, its appearance, its season of activity, its prefered habitat, its companion species? Maybe you have your own, personal, relationship with the creature. A living thing has so many interweaved relationships with others. Maybe its “meaning” changes with context or season or emotional state of the human observer. Maybe I will sometimes call the  “Idaho giant salamander” something more fitting. Maybe I’ll call it “the cedar salamander” or the “guardian of the waterfall pools” or “the giant of the stream” or “moss dragon” or whatever. Depends on the mood, context, whatever.

We are all of us, salamander and human, more rich and complex than associations with mere behavior, appearance, habitat preference, or the surveyors that try to capture and catalogue us. And sometimes, I’m uncomfortable enclosing us with a singular denomination, with a strict name. I don’t assume that I know enough about a living thing to possess it through formal naming conventions.

[mocacheezy]

TPP Season 5, Ep. 19: Juno Steel and the Terrible Waste (Part 2)

I knew catching up on this podcast was gonna be emotionally devastating bUT-

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE EPISODE ENDS LIKE THIS, RUBY, POOR RUBY IS TRYING SO HARD

AND JUNO!!!

JUNO!

AND FUCKING NUREYEV BEING EMOTIONAL AND OPENING UP AND THEN THAT FUCKING END8NG HOW FUCKING DARE-

AS IF HEARING WILKO IS PASSING ON IN SUCH A HARD WAY, AS IF HEARING MELEE HAVING TO KILL HER FATHER AFTER YEARS OF SLAVING AWAY TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN, AS IF IT HADN'T BEEN ENOUGH TO HEAR WHAT KIND OF HORRORS ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE GOING THROUGH,

We are now also left with the real possibilits, of Juno not making it out in the way he could all those years ago. All thanks to that Martian pill, and the culmination of other space miracle stuff he ingested and because of his mental link with Ruby and so, SO MANY other things the Takano group could find use for in such an impressively unique individual.

I don't have any idea what will happen, and if the Junoverse finale hold a happy ending for our lady and his homme fatale.

If Peter won't end up regreting pushing Juno away, in search and hope of Slip. If memory of Juno would be enough for him to keep living, REALLY, TRULLY living a life, without the regret and guilt of his love marching into death for him.

Since we first heard the way the Executives speak to eachotger, I've been thinking they might be Martians. Or some other alien lifeform, whose mind is interconnected in a similar way we learned the Martians had their minds and thoughts and feelings connected.

And if it turns out that Juno ceases to exist all together. I hope he gets a funeral.

But even more than that I hope

HE MAKES IT OUT OF THIS, HE IS JUNO FUCKING STEEL DAMNIT, DO NOT DIE ON US STEEL!!!

HE SURVIVED SO MUCH SHIT, HE BETTER SURVIVE SO PETER AND RITA CAN NAG HIM AND JOKE WITH HIM AND SO HE CAN LIVE AS PEACEFULL OF A LIFE AS SOMEONE LIKE HIM CAN!!!

MAY THE PENUMBRA NOT CLOSE ITS DOORS ON HIM WHEN THE STORY OF HIS LIFE COMES TO END!

LET US WITNESS JUNO STEEL KISS HIS LOVE AND THEN HOP ONTO SOME FAR OFF PLANET WHERE THEY LIVE TOGETHER UNTIL THEY DIE IN PEACE WHEN THEIR TIME COMES, TOGETHER IN SLEEP.

Please, this cannot be the end of Juno Steel.

[fluxedbuds]

apparently y'all Are desperate enough for my Lomadia Oc so uh. hope you're in the mood for [checks notes] ~13 paragraphs, half of which is just description!

allow me to introduce Villom!

She doesn't have an actual name or in-universe nickname, I just call her Villom. Because she was originally a Villain Version of Lomadia from a sci-fi world for some comic idea I totally scrapped bc it sucked. Except for Villom!

So basically what if we put Lomadia in space and gave her every problem and no normal coping mechanisms

The base universe is Completely Impossible sci-fi space stuff, involving solar systems being relatively close together and having tons of habitable planets, with star trek 'convergent evolution' making everybody a Weird Human Basically. Part of these choices is that I. Don't actually like sci-fi lol. I don't think its bad I just can't Get Into It, so I did the lazy version. HOWEVER I do also use the fact that its extremely artificial and story-focused as part of the plot so its FINE There IS also magic, but it’s generally less used, as tech is more accessible and less complicated from a user standpoint. That doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful, if you know what to look for. Thats foreshadowing!

Compared to base Lomadia, Villom is.. very immature. She has trouble identifying and controlling emotions, she's quick to anger and holds grudges. She's also more impulsive and tends towards insults and crude jokes. She's actually pretty fun to hang out with as a result, but responsibility is a role she's crushed into, and it never truly fits. She's trying her best ok

Villom starts out her story as a young adult, training to be a pilot. She does some hero shit, but breaks so many rules in the process and gets kicked out. She’s enraged by this betrayal of what was supposed to be her life, and steals a ship to go rogue and try to pursue her dreams anyways. She doesn’t exactly know what she’s doing, though, and eventually a chase causes her to crash on an unfamiliar planet, where she meets Rythian. He’s steampunk now, don’t question it

Anyways, they end up teaming up, and form the first of her crew. Later additions are Martyn, who is a mouse guy who has So Fucking Many People Who Want Him Dead, and Zoeya! Who ended up separated from Fionn following partially the plot of Mushbury, and works as the ship’s engineer. Their ship (that lasts long enough to get a name…) is called the Ask, and Villom occasionally (and jokingly) calls her crew the Answers. (Its called the Ask because originally I gave the characters nicknames based on Norse mythology for Pretentious Reasons, those might come back later)

So everything’s all fine and poggers for a while, with the Ask’s crew causing mischief and undercutting evil empires across the worlds- and then Villom’s home planet is destroyed. And she sees it happen.

See, one of the tropes of sci-fi that bugs me, is how understated the death of an entire planet tends to go. This is the first step of Villom realizing how truly fucked up the world they live in is- and the first step of her wondering why it has to be this way, and how to stop it.

It only gets worse from here.

No matter how many evil empires they topple, no matter how many massive threats they thwart, there’s always another one. And no matter how fast they are, they can’t stop every world-ending crisis. Villom starts learning magic, wondering if theres some kind of solution there. When she doesn’t find one, she just looks harder. Brushing so close with forces she’s alone in experiencing wears on her, compounding with their futile mission.

The breaking point is when Rythian dies. Raiding an enemy ship goes wrong, they’re outnumbered, they’re trying to retreat. Surrenders are not accepted, there.

It’s another thing she sees happen, another thing she was inches away from but unable to stop. And she can’t take it. She can’t take losing another part of her, another of the few things she could call home in this cold void.

She takes some of the things she learned looking where she shouldn’t- and kills the nearest member of the enemy team, trading a life for a life. And part of her soul as tax, of course. Just a small bit, this time. She never tells him. Pretends it was instead an incredibly close call. He probably knows she’s lying, on some level, but he never says it.

Villom is desperate, now. There’s more and more things she’s hiding from her crew, more and more boundaries of safety she’s pushing. She trades one of her eyes for the ability to see the functions of the world itself- maybe it’s a mistake, there’s some gear stuck, and if she fixes it this infinite loop of wars will stop.

There is no mistake. This is how the universe is intended to function.

She can’t give up. Because if she stops, she’s never going to get up again.

Maybe there’s other worlds where it’s better, where it’s safe. Maybe there’s a way to make this world like them.

Maybe there’s a way to leave.

She’s barely human anymore, even though she looks perfectly fine. Her hair is white, her eye replaced, but that’s all. She’s replaced the things she’s traded away. She’s barely even a part of the world, anymore. Unstuck from the threads of it, floating as a constant point, unchanging and undying, snapping back into place when moved.

A lot of universes are visited by a strange woman with white hair, who never stays. Sometimes she’s a savior, or a tyrant, or merely another passerby.

One of them, somewhere, has to have an answer. The way to break the cycle. And Villom will find it- even if she has to take every one of them apart.

[thegeminisage]

tng update time. last night we watched "datalore" together and this morning i caught "angel one" on my own

datalore: not terrible!! i felt really bad for data the entire time of course. kind of delighted to find out he is amnesiac-adjacent in this episode, at least as far as not knowing where he comes from or why. i've gotten used to thinking of him as friend-shaped but lore reminded me of just how creepy he actually does look because he was making the creepy faces

the planet and lab were cool though it was hilarious that one of the pieces was just an ass with the crotch faced away from us to protect data's modesty lol

i liked the bit about data having an off switch.it is ironically such a human vulnerability. we have those too! it's called head trauma.

ik what i said about picard not being a dick anymore but i noticed he IS still a dick sometimes and it's mostly to either wesley (valid) or data (may he DIE). i was glad data told him not to call lore "it" and that he APOLOGIZED. he should apologize to data more often

lore is literally just a data who is better at masking btw. like thats all it is. he thinks using contractions makes him allistic and he's like ha ha look at me i'm better than you meanwhile he has to use a little laser to remove his own facial tick and his special interest is murdering humans and good for him

one thing i HATED about this ep was once again wesley made a valid point and everyone told him to fuck off. meanwhile whenever hes fucking around they let him do whatever he wants. this is making me CRRRAZY. all this stuff about you would have listened to me if i was an adult!! i'll kill the little brat myself

however the episode was immediately rescued by the appearance of this meme:

which sent me immediately into screaming hysterics because i was NOT expecting to see it in its original format here. i quite literally had to pause the episode and explain this meme to catherine with tears running down my face

angel one: not as bad as the skip/watch lists led me to believe (i didnt have to play it on 2x speed for example) but still pretty fucking terrible. oh what if WOMEN were in charge wouldnt that be WEIRD AND SCARY? meanwhile the women are wearing what pretends to be "no makeup" in 1987 and theyre super fucking hot

i thought that blonde chick was rthe one from tos's backdoor pilot and even looked it up but no she just moves her face the same way

riker's slut outfit really was something. he was such a good sport about it that i thought it was kind of mean of deanna and tasha to laugh at him but considering how women are treated on this show they deserve to actually. tasha especially.

absolutely bonkers that he tried to turn the head woman down and she slept with him anyway. close encounters of the space babes riker version??? quite literally the man said i'm not an object to be seduced and then he got seduced. wild

anyway, the morals of this were all over the place. they cant remove these people bc theyre not bound by the prime directive but they literally are interfering with this planet's system of laws etc...also the fact that like everyone is arguing for gender equality when the genders are reversed is all well and good when they live in a utopian society where genders are equal but we live and star trek was made in the real world where the genders are NOT equal so it just comes out sounding like but what about the meeeeen?? i mean. what about them?? sorry.

i. HATED. the b-plot of this episode. everyone's like oh no i wonder how this virus spreads! and then they allow worf to stay on the bridge while he does those dad sneezes. maybe this episode should have been before the other to explain data's sudden hyperfixation on learning to sneeze lol. like ik all infectious disease media hits different post pandemic but jesus christ we had more sense than that even BEFORE the pandemic

tonight we do 11001001, and then i'm doing the next FOUR on my own...rough.

[madamlaydebug]

Currently the planet is going through an epic energetic shift in global consciousness and frequency upgrades, unlike anything we have seen before, and it is happening rapidly. People are quickly awakening and gaining access to their own light, their own power, their own information, their own truth.

With this level of change, comes great challenges (opportunities for learning and growth) and disruptions that may rock you to your core, as you release the old and make room for the new emerging energies to come into form. The old structures must fall; the limitations must be released; the castles of corruption must crumble to the ground. Essentially, we must empty out the garbage first, removing the layers of trash from our lives that are clogging the pipes and stopping the flow, before we can be filled with and hold, the high frequency light that is available to all of us, now more than ever before.

We are entering a new era of human understanding, a time where many of us are cracking open out of our old hardened shells, shedding limiting belief systems and toxic thought patterns, dismantling the false structures of control, unhooking from the planetary programming grids and busting through the illusions of fear and separation, that are designed to intentionally keep us small and stuck and complacent, dependent and enslaved; and we are instead gaining new levels of awareness and embracing the true essence of who we are at the core soul level of our being.

We must stop dimming our light and hiding in the shadows of fear!

Now is the time to fully step up into our creative manifestation power as a collective consciousness — as a unified sea of our unique individual voices, whose authentic expression, whose particular specific sparkle, when united in our bright shining light and connected empowerment, creates a tidal wave of healing alchemy, a shimmering ocean of infinite possibilities, weaving together a tapestry of high frequency crystalline light packets of information and sacred geometries, creating the golden grid of the new paradigm.

Why do we dim our light?

Simple. We are programmed and conditioned to from birth. It is bred into us from day one, woven into the very fabric of our society. We see this manifested as agreed upon social norms, via our corrupt political system, through standardized government funded public schooling (which among other things, inserts its own agenda of controlling what, and how, we learn) and in belief system constructs that are constantly hammered into us, designed to limit, constrict and abolish free expansive thought and expression; all under the guise of freedom of course. We are taught to stay in the box and follow the rules, color in the lines, dot your i’s and cross your t’s like a “good little boy or girl”, to be rewarded, to graduate up to the next level, which simply means moving up to the next little box with a new tight little lid, that is promptly set and sealed firmly in place.

We are controlled and manipulated through our food and water supply, not being told what we are really consuming, yet being told it is good for us when it is brimming with chemicals and hidden toxins that our bodies can’t possibly process, which results in dis-ease and a litany of illnesses on all levels (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, energetic). We are forced to vaccinate our children who become sick from the poisons and toxic substances they contain. We are told lies of fear through the news and media, as if they are truth; we are really only shown what fits the specific agenda of those with the power, the puppeteers who are installing, and then pulling our strings.

We are groomed to be muppets (aka: mindless puppets) and become hypnotized sheep, who follow blindly, sleepwalking our way through the world, after being led through enticing magical fields filled with beautiful scarlet poppies whose intoxicating aroma of manipulation and unconsciousness makes us check-out, and serves to lull us into eternal sleep. My god, we are even taught to count sheep as children to help us fall asleep at night.

We are constantly being fed fear and propaganda as truth, which conditions us to doubt our natural instincts; so we choose to stay in our separated boxes of imagined safety because we are so afraid of what we are told is “out there”, beyond the iron clad walls that are built around our hearts, to “keep out” and protect us from the boogeymen, and other things that go bump in the night.

Is it any wonder we are too petrified to even turn on the light switch to see if there is really a scary monster in our bedroom lurking in the shadows or hiding under our bed?

We are so traumatized we hide under the covers, paralyzed and trembling with fear, anchoring our feelings of powerlessness even deeper into our incredibly impressionable psyches.

We are pumped full of fear based, hyped-up, trumped-up scenarios (diversions and red herrings), designed specifically to distract us and keep us focused away from the real solutions, and even the real issues, whose discovery of does not serve the status quo, nor the hidden agenda, of keeping us numbed-out, dumbed-down and completely disconnected from the actual real conspiracies (not theories) that are going on, often being hidden right under our noses, in plain sight.

We are told to only believe what we can see, what is “proven” by mainstream Newtonian Physics, which does not address or even acknowledge the effect of consciousness on outcomes (The Observer Effect is a basic premise of Quantum Physics, which simply put says: the mere act of observing something, influences it, and changes it on a quantum level) which affects and changes everything, in a major way.

So we are taught to buy into an old outmoded system of Science that does not accurately reflect the forward movement, the upgraded consciousness (or even the role consciousness plays on matter for that matter) and ignores the new model of the world we are actually living in and experiencing today. It reflects instead a closed system that is now exploding from the pressure of the heightened creative consciousness bursts of the planet expressing itself as higher light frequency, in an entirely new expansive way.

We are taught this because mainstream acknowledgment and acceptance of the Quantum world, is a threat to the current dysfunctional systems run by the select few governing elite, in positions of high power, who financially benefit from the old models staying intact; they profit by keeping us sick and afraid. New thought and change frightens and threatens the old regimes, the corrupt elite groups, the old outmoded structures, that are now beginning to crack and crumble from the pressure, as we enter these new energetic times, where the rules and the rulers are changing.

When we live in a matrix of fear, we are anchored into the lower denser frequencies. The vibration at this level is thick and dense and heavy and dark. This is designed specifically to keep you hooked into the program of control, tethered to the hamster wheel at the bottom of the dark ocean, running endlessly through mazes of circular loops, going nowhere, while eternally drowning and gasping for air.

You really think anyone is thinking about enlightenment or spiritual evolution in that scenario?

Consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (pictured below). At the bottom of the pyramid, you have safety and survival. At the top, you find self-actualization and transcendence. To access these enlightened states of being in frequency, you must move up in vibration. And as long as you are strapped to the lower energies and denser frequencies scrambling to get your most basic needs met (and not die), you are trapped, hooked into the control matrix of fear, pain, unconsciousness, unworthiness.

In essence, you are suppressed, hypnotized by the very convincing illusion that says “you are unable (not powerful enough) to ever set yourself free”.

The programming and fear is so thick at this level, it is insidious, infused in everything and found everywhere; so we believe that it is normal and that it is “just the way things are”. We become a valley of complacent cows and submissive sheep waiting to be slaughtered by the very hand that fed us the lies to begin with that keep us enslaved and unaware, all the while oblivious that we are even enchained.

Yet we are the chained elephants conditioned to believe we are stuck and rendered powerless, by the tiny little stake in the ground tied to only one of our enormously powerful feet.

The distortions and corruption is layered and hidden (running very deep indeed). It is woven into the very fabric of what we are taught to trust. It is sprinkled into our “health” food, added to our “clean” water supply and laced into the “natural” supplements we are told will keep us healthy. All this is done with a big fake smile dripping with enticing false promises, that find and push on our pain points, inflicting scarcity and fear and lack consciousness, to convince us of an illusion designed specifically to keep us in struggle; to keep us separate; to keep us subdued; to keep us from questioning; to keep us from remembering how powerful we truly are.

Well this is not normal and it is not the only available option. Not by a long shot.

It’s time now for you all, especially the Light Workers and Way Showers, the Truth Seekers, the Earth Angels on this planet, the Empaths and Energy Healers, and everyone else who has a deep soul calling to help others awaken to their own light, to start shining your own light more brightly than you ever have before — on these illusions, on these distortions, on the garbage that the masses keep consuming as if it is caviar, guzzling down like it’s the finest bottle of Dom Pérignon, remaining drunk, wandering around in a constant dazed collective stupor, from the countless hypnotic bubbles of toxic corruption that are consistently coursing through their bodies on an automatic drip system.

It is time for a massive wake-up call to all of humanity — to remember and ignite your own inner light; to come together in the frequency of love, truth, and collective empowerment; to know that we are so much more powerful than we were ever taught to believe.

How do we share this message with those who are hypnotized and asleep?

We do this by being the light; by speaking our authentic truth; by releasing our own dark shadows that want to drag us into debate and separation and superiority, triggering our need to be right or better than others (or however this ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’, ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ separation power struggle out-pictures specifically in your life); we lead by example, sharing our messages of empowerment, worthiness, connection and love with the world, through our own unique authentic voices of truth.

By doing this we will reach a critical mass, a tipping point of awakening, where a new morphic field is created and becomes its own powerful force of light, whose unique signature stands tall, like a glowing lighthouse in the thick dark fog, shining brightly, guiding the way home to those vessels who are lost at sea, being tossed about in the crashing storm of monstrous waves. This is how we create the new paradigm; this is how the new way, the new energies on the planet, come into form; this is how a new world is born.

This is a call to all of you who came here to help awaken the planet.

Please get your own house (your own internal world) in order pronto, so that you can do and be what you came here for. Because the world is waiting for you: to stand tall; to shine brightly; to stop apologizing for who you are and be your true authentic self; and to play your specific role in the awakening of the planet and human consciousness to the absolute fullest now. It is time for what I call, The Alchemy of Awakening. And so it is.

About the Author: Diana Rose Kottle, MA, MFT is a Writer, Soul Alignment Coach™ & Psychotherapist — Inspiring Humanity to Awaken to who we truly are as Energetic Spiritual Beings through Being Authentic, Speaking Our Truth, Connecting to Our Inner Wisdom, and Attuning to Love.

[jeannahas]

And They Laughed

I still remember to this day, the most terrifying encounter I had ever had with the humans. 

they came from a fairly habitable world - suitable for a large range of lifeforms prone to being reliant on liquid water. Many of those who preferred hydrocarbons for their reactions had to avoid the planet- the high temperatures were not conducive to their existance. My species, however, came from a very similar world - there were, naturally, differences in our natural atmospheres, and so our ships had to be pumped with a sort of neutral mixture that wasn’t really comfortable for either species, but worked well enough, sometimes with limited supplies of our actual native gasses in our actual living spaces for heightened comfort. some needed rebreathers for a day or two, but that was a minor issue. 

Being so close to the humans, I came to know them fairly well. They had a wide range of emotions, as do we all, but their centralized nervous systems led them to strange quirks and behaviors- twitches, movements, their automatic and their voluntary systems being somewhat intermingled. Not like we Phylaxians - with our three Brain - structures, each with different purposes, and storing some extent of memory for redundancy. 

I ended up becoming particularly good friends with one Human in particular - James. 

He was hired on as part of our security detail. Being omnivores, they had become a cunning and aggressive species, and had hunted almost all of their natural predators- those few who remained on their planet remained purely for educational purposes, to understand and comprehend the past, and to understand how their ecosystem had developed. They had then replaced those predators in eating the local wildlife, flora and fauna. This led them to be surprising aggressive, and prone to being... abnormally competent, at warfare. 

My species was no stranger to conflict, of course - intelligence has its downsides, and difference of opinion leading to savage conflict appears to be a constant for intelligent species. However, they had fought amongst themselves since their inception. Their species arose, and their species fought itself. 

usually, This did not come up in my conversations with James. We had relatively similar bone structure, so he showed me a few things from some of the “Martial Arts” that he had learned ( Shudder) as if Military engagement and combat could be some kind of “Artform”. they even have a book written named “the Art of War.” 

Honestly, if the species weren't so friendly, I would be exceptionally alarmed. 

James and his friends - his fellow humans - smiled often, baring their teeth in that alarming way, which I learned to appreciate and take comfort in, and to laugh, a strange barking sound, not like our trilling of amusement. 

       My terror did not come from learning their past. 

       It came when our ship was called up to the front. 

The Ausvians had attacked our small alliance of four Sapient species, and the wide swath of space between our habitable worlds. It was panic. Madness. The Biru, small, furry, and overall devoid of natural defenses due to the millennia in which they had ruled their world, fell in nearly an instant. The Ausvians devoured their home system. 

      And so, we were there, at the front lines. 

      We wore combat suits, sophisticated armors of multiple materials meant to take impacts from energy and kinetic weaponry, and we loaded onto a boarding torpedo. James was there with two of his brothers - they had enlisted on the ship together, and they were speaking in their tongue, their strange steel knives - straight and razor edged, being sheathed as they pantomimed some kind of slicing motion of pattern, as they motioned breaking something. There was a grim determination in their eyes, and it took them a moment to realize that their inter-species translators were switched off. 

“Alright,” James said bluntly. “We’re boarding alongside seventeen other crews targeting key systems. Our job is perhaps the hardest, as our task is to cripple the sections of the ship that will allow the different areas identified as living quarters from accessing their key systems. that should prevent the Ausvian warriors from reaching us. They are predatory, and tend to hunt in squadrons following basic Pack Tactics, surround and pursue. The more escape routs we can cut off, the more likely we can anticipate the direction of their attack.”

James’ brother sheathed an even longer weapon, before lifting one of the railgun-rifles the humans were fond of. I handled my plasma cannon gingerly. Did not want to overload it and loose a limb. 

Fau’ud, you’ll take the other Phylaxians and will reenforce our rear- set up jamming systems and defenses. We’ll advance steadily, try to cripple their capitol ship and cut communications.”

I nodded, imitating the human gesture.

And we launched. 

It was madness. 

We tailed them, firing off shots, but it was indeed horrifying. the Ausvians were intimidating, fanged, with gnarled and bony limbs, but the humans...it was like watching machines. Helmeted masks grim, barking out simple, efficient orders. They mowed through their enemies, finding cover where there was none, ducking behind and under bodies, and somehow - they found endless uses for those knives. They had no natural weapons - not like us with our venomous spines in our tentacles, so they had made their own. 

By all the forgotten gods, they knew how to use them. 

Arteries, tendons, hearts, ligaments, they severed them with a mechanical precision, like a dance of death and bodily fluids once the hallway became too cramped for their weapons - precision based and not really made to be rapid fire- could no longer suffice. 

It was horrifying enough, but then I heard the sound being transmitted through the speakers of James’ helmet. The battle had intensified, and multiple packs of the Ausven surged down a corridor towards James and his brothers, firing and roaring. As fanged monstrosities bore down upon him in an atmosphere stinking of sulfur, and the faintest trace of hydrogen sulfide, as energy blasts tore through the air. 

A single, repeated, barking laugh. It quickly surged into a maliciously joyous roar of it’s own. 

It started small - when he dodged an attack. When he landed a particularly vicious strike. 

But then it spread. A roar, as he literally threw himself into the air, pulling the long blades from his back, and began tearing into the mass of alien bodies before him. A deep rumble, repeating and loud, broadcast relentlessly. His brothers soon started belowing in some strange bloodlust as well - the three of them not only holding - not only standing - but charging down the corridor now, blades drawn, roaring in the most brutal, most savage laughter I had ever heard. 

Limbs were severed, bodies were run through, and they chopped and hacked into the section of the back where the Ausven had been found to have their main cranial mass and nervous system, hacking into it with bones that shattered bone and broke flesh. 

The Ausvians began to flee, and the rifles rose again. Explicatives poured through the Vox channels as railgun round after round thudded into the reinforced backs of these creatures, clips being discarded and loaded into the weapons with that same horrifying efficiency that I had come to witness. 

And still, they laughed, and charged down the tight passage, their iron tipped boots thudding relentlessly into the decking. 

We followed, supporting our human warriors, taking down those who tried to rush us from behind as the humans had predicted. We were almost more scared of the humans than we were the feral Ausvens. 

Suddenly, one whipped around the corner, and sank a taloned hand deep into James’ gut. 

He grunted, and staggered back, before a backhand knocked his helmet loose. 

I didn’t know how long James would be able to fight in this atmosphere - neither of our species were well adapted to sulfur in the air, and if it was the most likely option of being hydrogen sulfide, then this air would probably be at least mildly acidic, and would begin rapidly eating at his lungs. 

James backed up, clutching the wound, getting some measure of distance between himself and his ambusher. His brothers were clearing two other hallways in the intersection where we found ourselves, and the other Phylaxians  were busy protecting and supporting them with covering fire-  I was the only witness to what came next. 

James bared his teeth. 

It looked like a smile. 

It was not comforting. 

He dropped the gun then, and pulled out the same long blade from a sheath at his side that I saw his brother sheath, before taking a strangely predatory stance. 

And then he laughed. 

He charged, blades - one long, the other short- whipping like a whirlwind of shining and savage steel. The repellants had to have closed his wound with the salvo-gel, or something, I thought, or else there would have been no way that the man could have continued fighting. 

He laughed, blood spattering his lips as he carved a limb from the Ausvian, as he roared in sheer rage and perverse joy at the combat. He ran the Ausvian through, and pointed his weapon at the squad behind that one, declaring loudly “You’re next!” ignoring their savage disintegrator cannons. He pulled some kind of tactical axe from his belt and hurled it. I didn’t know that it had an explosive inside it until it thudded into the back of an Ausvian, and detonated inside the lift, killing the squad inside. 

His brothers rushed past him. they had apparently cleared their passages.  I could hear their savage laughter as well.

Another human grabbed James, his eyes visibly red from being exposed in the hostile atmosphere, the man collapsing from the injuries, his laughter subsiding as he clutched his gut, clutching at his weapons, pain apparently rising as he found himself able to feel. He groped on the ground, until he found his railgun and his long and savage blade, as he fell into unconsciousness. 

We succeeded that day. the Humans fought. Savagely. The capitol ship was crippled, and strike crews on the other vessels reported mixed success rates. We managed to get James and one other wounded human off the ship. We had lost seven in our squad - three humans, four Phylaxians. I spoke with my superiors. They had not recorded the “laughing mania” that had possessed my squad mates. 

I asked James what horror had possessed him, after he had recovered. If it was a disease. 

He chuckled, and only said that his ancestors had been some breed called “Vikings” apparently his family had always been a little more prone to bloodlust and the furious rage. 

And apparently, when they were in the face of death - when the fight was upon them - They laughed. They celebrated. They fought like demons possessed. 

To this day, it haunts me. 

They tore an entire species limb from limb, in a savage firefight, blood raining down upon them - their own blood dripping from their bodies as their lungs burned - 

And They LAUGHED. 

[solarpunkcast]

i’ve got issues with perfectionism due to my ✨many neurodivergencies✨, which makes being a leftist tricky sometimes, because my brain is telling me that if i’m not the best at infosec in the world, i am a failure. do you know any quotes or anything that might be a nice thing to fall back on when being a leftist is tiring? like a “if the situation was hopeless they wouldn’t need propaganda” sorta deal?

okay well the first thing is that whether you're a leftist or not, whether you ignore it or not, capitalism is an ongoing class war. so this is as much of a state of becoming/being as it is learning; what that means is your awareness is as much of an asset as your knowledge is. like most things in life, there is not an endpoint--so you cannot frame this as a goal to cross off or even a checklist to follow. it is a part of you that you will carry around. because at its core, your leftism needs to come from kindness, empathy, and love. there is no justice without these things. there will be no true liberation without these things.

“if the situation was hopeless they wouldn’t need propaganda” is like the tip of that idea: while true, it ignores the underlying fact that that Propaganda requires billions on billions of dollars to even function. Every. Single Year. There is quite literally no limit to the amount of money that capitalists would spend on anticommunist and revisionist propaganda in order to stop us from agitating against them. Nothing they wouldn't do to prevent actual, lasting change from happening.

In a way, that's fucking pathetic! How shitty of an existence that must be. They even understand how precarious their position is... we don't really see coverage about this, but the aristocrats and capitalists have admitted they're scared--especially about a climate collapse that would unequivocally destroy their power structures for good. They've lived with this fear, passed it down through the generations even. How fucking pathetic is that? To curse your entire ancestry with this fear because you refuse to share? Reductive maybe, but down at the core that's what it really is right? An absolute refusal to commune with the rest of us human beings, to the detriment of our lives and everything else on this planet. That and their arbitrary system that tells themselves they're superior and special.

Living under it is fucking terrifying though, which is why leftists, revolutionaries, and other radicals have always come together through the arts and oratory, as well as celebrations of community, culture, and shared history.

There is no comprehensive list I could give you on quotes or speeches to read, nor music to listen to. I've been digging around for a couple hours now and I'm not even sure what examples to provide. There is a ton, like truly a TON of stuff out there to help. My suggestion would be to dig into your country's history of leftists, its revolutionary speeches and music, its folk music, its art and agitprop first. Then save those and come back to them whenever you need them.

If you live in the US, this would be figures like Angela Davis, Ursula K Le Guin, Eugene Debs, James Baldwin, Pete Seeger, Bill Haywood, Fred Hampton, the IWW, Murray Bookchin, David Graeber, Cesar Chavez...

Learn about the historical figures who had their leftism whitewashed like Martin Luther King Jr, Helen Keller, Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Jane Fonda, Albert Einstein...

Cultivating a love for humanity as a whole instead of fostering misanthrophy is also a big thing to help combat exhaustion and burnout. I have a #humans are good actually tag that I use to help with this myself. Even reading up on anthropology can help! Cases like Shanidar I teaches us that community support and care is what helped us survive, not the individualism that capitalism preaches.

This has already been pretty long so I'll leave you with my two favorite quotes on this subject, from Angela Davis and Ursula K Le Guin respectively:

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

"You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere."

[willknightauthor]

A.Z. Foreman is an amazing linguist who's not only an expert in reconstruction who can personally pronounce even dead languages like a native speaker, he's also a translator and poet in his own right. Even just this little bit is amazing, maybe the best translation of the Shahnameh I've yet seen.

Exordium

Now in the name of God all things extol, The Lord of wisdom and the human soul, Beyond which there does not exist a thing Our minds can ever compass, Sovereign King Of all that is, of every name and place, Guide and sustainer of the human race, The cosmic Lord who wheels the stars of night, Who gave the sun, the moon and Venus light, Above all name or thought or signifying, High artificer of the underlying. You can't make out your Maker with your eye However much you strain it. Do not try. Minds can't grasp Him. He is the overall Being unnameable, unplaceable. It would take more than sapience to attain Things so beyond this elemental plane. Our minds with every word in their command Have only words for what they understand, So none knows how to praise Him as He is. Just bind yourself in reverence. You are His. He measured out the intellect, defined The soul of man. How would a measured mind Contain Him? Could the implements of thought Or soul or language rightly praise what brought Them into being? You need but confess That He exists, and speak no idleness. Seek the right path. Have reverence and awe, And go about with care to heed His law. This is the fact: to know is to be strong. And knowing God will turn the old heart young. But words can never pierce the veil we see. Our mind will never touch His quiddity.

In Praise of Reason

Now that I see the chance for it arise Here let me talk of reason to the wise, For it is greater than God's other gifts. Better its praise than justice. It uplifts The heart. It is life's vanguard, guides the vexed. It is your aid in this world and the next, Your fount of grief and joy, the origin Of every moment that you lose or win. If it goes dark, even the brightest soul Will never live a day of feeling whole Or happy. So a man of eloquence Once said to nourish our intelligence: "Whoever does not pay his wisdom heed Will slice himself to shreds with every deed, Wise men deem him an idiot and a danger As his own people turn him out a stranger." In this world as the next, it keeps you free. The man whose reason breaks finds slavery. For reason is the sole eye of the soul. The eyeless in this world have no control. It was created first, before all else, To brace the soul and the three sentinels Called eye and ear and tongue. These are the three That bring about all ill and good you see. Who can praise soul and reason fitly here? Even if I were fit to, who could hear? Since we're unfit to speak about all this, Let's hear instead how God made all that is. You, authored by the Lord who willed the days, Don't know this world's overt or covert ways. Let those who know show you the way. Go on Throughout this world, and talk to everyone. And when you've heard all wise men have to say, Still don't stop learning for a single day. Then, when you reach the high word-branches, know That knowledge cannot reach the root below.

The Creation of the World

You need to know the truth, as we begin, Of this world's elemental origin, When out of nothing God created matter In order for His potency to matter. From it, the stuff of the four elements Came in no time and with no toil. Immense Fire arose shining, burning into birth, Then wind and water flowed upon dark earth. First, fire was blown to motion. Hot and high It blazed till there was such a thing as dry. Then it was stilled again as cold took hold, And the first moisture grew out of the cold. The elements existed now, and curled Together so to form our fleeting world. Combining and compounding genera Formed the high orders of phenomena. So came the skydome spinning black and blue With wonders at full tilt, forever new, Revealing stars and planets and their signs, Each in its place, befitting His designs. The spheres were shaped inside each other, cast In motion as the structure set. At last, With sea and desert, dale and mountain height, The earth shone like a colored lamp at night. The mountains loomed. The waters coalesced And every sprouting plant reared up its crest. But Earth itself received no place on high. It was the darkling axis. In the sky A starfield's wonders blazoned overhead Lighting the earth up with the sheen they shed. Fire surges up. Water pours down. The sun Goes round the earth to make its daily run. Grass sprouted up with the assorted trees Happily pressing their heads upward. These Just grow and do not move, for they lack all The animacy of an animal. Animals soon appeared. Those moving things Tamed growing plants beneath their legs and wings. They eat and sleep and rest, and so they thrive. Their satisfaction lies in being alive. No speaking tongue, no seeking mind, they're free To gratify themselves on grass and tree. They do not know if they do good or ill. The Lord asks nothing of them. Grants no will. He is almighty, all-knowing and fair, So nothing's hidden from Him anywhere, Yet none of His creations comprehend The way the workings of this world will end.

[thepete]

We Humans are in Trouble and it’s Not How You Think (or Maybe it is?)

If you think about the truly massive massiveness of the insanely vast universe we live in, it's pretty hard to make the argument that we are the only intelligent lifeforms in said universe. Stephen Hawking famously said that we shouldn't want aliens to visit Earth because they might think just like humans do and do what we did when we started "exploring" our universe (also known as "genocide"). But this assumes that all "intelligent" life is selfish, supremacist, and violent toward things they don't (bother) to understand.

I've often heard the reasoning that "intelligent" life learns how to manipulate their environment so that it better suits the needs of the "intelligent" life. Not long after I first learned that theory, I came up with my own: What if truly intelligent life is life that is smart enough to live its life without manipulating its environment? Dolphins, bonobos and octopuses are all very intelligent beings and even have somewhat human characteristics. The smarts to open a jar (octopuses), the social organization to travel in groups and work together on tasks (dolphins), or even negotiation skills that include homosexual behavior (bonobos). What if the aliens that are out there are just like dolphins or bonobos, or octopuses and might be floating by our planet right now? Maybe they've built a space ship in a way that didn't pollute their home world or strip mine it to its core? What if they didn't even do it by exploiting lesser beings or even members of their own species that were less fortunate? Perhaps they learned to live harmoniously with the other lifeforms and themselves and the natural systems on their planet and only wanted to explore space to see what was out there.

What do you think those aliens would think of us?

Would they be impressed with our thriving economy? Would they think our leaders in government and business were doing everything right? Would they marvel at the plastics and other miscellaneous chemicals that have found their way into every animal on the planet? Would their jaws (assuming they have them) drop at the sight of our incredible weapons of war in action? Would they pat us on the back for how we treat our people of color, our women, or less fortunate?

I suspect that they wouldn't feel very positively about us after gazing upon the humanity that we are.

They'd look at the centuries of war, slavery, and human exploitation, and wonder why it is still happening.

The homelessness, famine and poverty that humans still suffer in the 21st century would be equally challenging for them to understand.

The rich living in mansions would seem to them like their equivalent to medieval castles.

The destruction wrought on the physical bodies and culture of black and brown peoples that continues to this day would probably repulse them.

The way we ignore education and under value not just intelligent people, but the teachers who taught them (and the rest of us), would inspire deep shame and pity from these aliens.

We spend trillions of dollars on invading countries and waging war on those weaker than us, while health threats to all human life, like cancer, heart disease, failing water systems, and more are all but ignored.

They'd squint in disbelief when recognizing what we're afraid of: terrorists, gangs, trans people, homosexual people, people using the wrong gender bathroom, discussion of history, discussion of truth, discussion of the clitoris, discussions of rape, guns, financial/gender/racial inequality, infrastructure, hell, there was a President of the United States who banned broccoli from the White House. It's highly probable that they would find us a petty, shallow, base species.

They'd shake their head (if they have something like a head) at the fact that after 200,000 years of humanity existing in its current biological form and this is still where we are at?

These aliens would likely conclude that not only should they not visit us, but they should stay the hell away from us and make sure we don't ever leave our planet. Of course, they know we're too shallow, and fearful to actually leave our planet without a really, really good reason. We're too focused on our own petty squabbles, truly ancient rules, absurd biases and fears, and overly adaptive bigotry (we'll find any reason to hate or discriminate) to actually make a serious attempt to explore space.

And if they're aliens like Stephen Hawking predicted? They'll kill us anyway, so why not at least try to not seem like shitty space neighbors?

[thatmcgwords]

Nothing is a single whole. Everything is part of something else, creating a never-ending cycle of evolution. ~ Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber believes that our reality is made up of a series of what he calls “holons.” A holon is something that seems independent as its own entity, but it’s actually part of another so-called whole. Everything is connected, even if you can’t see it.

When you look back throughout history to the earliest settlements, you see that both men and women played a part. Men were often seen as the hunters, going out to find food and cultivate the land. Women cooked the food and provided sustenance for the family. At this point, more focus was placed on the female role. However, as large-scale agriculture came to fruition, the male role took precedence. This power shift formed the basis of the patriarchy that women battle today.

Our perception of divinity and religion is dependent on the evolution of civilization. ~ Ken Wilber

“Ken Wilber believes that humans fit into two thought schools:

• Ascending

• Descending

A person who belongs to the ascending group believes in heaven and hell, a divine that is totally separate from our physical plane. There is belief in one supreme being, i.e., God. The ascending strive to achieve a purpose in life, something which is beyond their inner reaches.

In comparison, the descending school of thought believes in the physical and celebrates the human body, senses, and sexuality. Both the ascending and descending view each other as opposites; one is seen as “evil” and the other “right.””

Non-duality will create harmony throughout the human race and bring everyone together in peace. ~ Ken Wilber

“No culture in the world is worth more than another. They are all equal, yet some are seen as lacking. It’s essential to recognize the rich tapestry of every culture and how they’re all relevant and equal in worth.

This view is essential for the continued evolution of our planet and our society. By creating barriers between cultures, we’re living in fear. We don’t truly understand other cultures, so we see them as something to be cautious of. The truth is that there is nothing to be cautious of and plenty to learn from”

Cultures are developed throughout centuries and passed down through generations. We assume that our way is the right way, but how can we be sure? ~ Ken Wilber

However, Ken Wilber points out that humans are very good at discriminating and assuming one thing is better. All of this comes down to cultural ignorance. If everyone chose a path of togetherness, the world would see less conflict, less crime, less racism, and less general discrimination.

“When we look after nature, nature looks after us”

“Climate change is a vast subject. For many years, humans have been abusing the planet we live on, destroying landscapes and wildlife. If we’re going to try and live in harmony with different religions and cultures, we should also do our best to live in harmony with Mother Nature.”

“Climate change is a vast subject. For many years, humans have been abusing the planet we live on, destroying landscapes and wildlife. If we’re going to try and live in harmony with different religions and cultures, we should also do our best to live in harmony with Mother Nature.

We often become preoccupied with advancing technology and trying to get on with those around us, but we forget to think about the environment. Ken Wilber wants to push home the message that we need to do our best to look after the planet and help it heal from the damage done so far.

We spend so much time attempting to fix human relations but have no consideration for the earth we inhabit. Environmentalism is an idea that Ken Wilber seeks to introduce to readers. It is increasingly important to care for the health of the earth in general.

It’s also true that our own physical health depends heavily upon the environment. By loading the air with toxins, we’re also allowing those same toxins to clog up our lungs, wreak havoc on our bodies and cause enormous damage to wildlife, flora, fauna, and carefully balanced ecological systems. So to correct all of this, we need to focus on environmentalism.”

“To turn back the clock on the damage already done will take years, but every small step in the right direction brings benefits. Start recycling, look to lower your carbon emissions and become more environmentally friendly in every element of your life. If we all do these things, the benefits will be far-reaching.”

“The Internet has brought us many benefits, but it has also given an outlet for hate, division, and negativity. When misused, the Internet divides. That’s quite an ironic thought when you consider that the online realm is supposed to make the world a smaller place and bring people together.”

The Internet is a powerful force for good when used in the right way. Cyberbullying and other discriminatory tactics have been made easier to indulge in. ~ Ken Wilber

Evolution is a subject that countless people debate and often disagree on. Your religious views, stance on multiculturalism, and how you view those around you affect how you see the world you live in and the more expansive universe.

Ken Wilber speaks at length about the fact that everything is connected. No whole stands alone, and everything links into the next thing, like an invisible string pulling everything together in synchronicity. You can look at the world around you and see separate entities doing their own thing, but you see that everything weaves together when you examine closer. How you teach your child to see the world affects what they do when they get older. What you believe affects how you interact with those around you. How you treat the environment affects its ability to provide a sustainable living environment for generations to come.

Perhaps we all need to be a lot more careful with our decisions and actions to ensure that the continued evolution of the human race is a positive development and not a wholly negative one. For too many years, divisions have appeared due to religious choice, gender, sexuality, race, and cultural views. It’s far better to adopt Ken Wilber’s theory that we’re all connected. Then, you don’t see people around you as different from you; you see them as valid and worthy in their own right. Surely that’s a better way to live.

It’s easy to overcomplicate everything, especially in a complicated world. However, when you break life down into the basics, you see that it really comes down to how we treat one another, how we treat the planet we call home, and how we interact and build on the bonds we already have. Society will continue to evolve negatively if we don’t understand the need for positive change and take action now.

Try this

• Do you recycle your plastic and household waste? Start taking steps to protect the environment by becoming a recycling household.

• Help educate your children on the positive sides of the Internet by adding child filters to your Internet connection. This stops them from being able to access harmful content.

• Question whether you’re closed-minded to new cultural ideas or whether you’re wholly accepting. Learn to see differences as an opportunity to learn rather than something to be feared.

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[fatehbaz]

In other words, the planetary evokes what we call in French le vivant, which in English is something like “the living world.”

Le vivant is, for me, the planetary in its multiplicity [...]. It is true that a key driver of the process of planetarization is capitalism. [...] To some extent, the market has become a totality, or in any case our core moral experience. [...] Can we rely on infrastructures that have, to some extent, contributed to turning the world into a burning house? [...]

We need to begin by agreeing on what is at stake. From an African perspective, the core of the problem is the precariousness of life. [...] When I look at cosmologies of existence among the Dogon in Mali, or among the Yoruba in Nigeria or other communities in the Congo Basin, what strikes me is the central place these cultures give to the principle of animation — with the sharing of vital breath. Breath is a right that is universal, in the sense that we all breathe [...]. We also share the vital breath. [...] In that sense, we have here cosmogonies that are not at all convinced that there is a fundamental difference between the human subject and the world around it [...]. Everything is an effect of power, an agency that is shaped by all. [...]

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[W]e are increasingly surrounded by multiple and expanding forms of calculation [...] . The integration of algorithms and big data analysis in the biological sphere is not only bringing with it a greater belief in techno-positivism, in modes of statistical thought, it’s also paving the way for regimes of assessment of the natural world, modes of prediction and analysis that are treating life itself as a computable object. This is [...] affecting not only our political imagination, but also the ways in which we understand what knowledge stands for, and what is it is all about. [...]

[W]e are experiencing a clash of temporalities: geological time, the deep time of those processes that fashioned our terrestrial home; historical time; and experiential time. All these times now fold in on one another. We are not used to thinking of time as simultaneous. We think of time as linear: past, present, future. So how do we begin to think about time in a way that takes these concatenations seriously? [...]

[T]hat’s what the Anthropocene shows us. As the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, there’s no longer a social history separate from natural history. That is over. Human history and Earth history are now indivisible. The epoch we have entered into is one of indivisibility, of entanglement, of concatenations. [...]

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And also, speaking for the planet and listening to the planet are not exactly the same things. Maybe the first step is to listen. The question then becomes, how do we listen to the planet? Does the planet speak for itself? [...] [W]e have to get out of a certain epistemology that has been premised on the fact that humans are the only speaking entity, that what distinguishes us is that we mastered language and the others didn’t. But we now have studies showing that plants speak, that forests speak: a de-monopolization of the faculty of speech, of language.

When we look into the archives of the whole world, not just the archives of the West, broadly speaking we find knowledges of how other-than-humans speak — and how humans, or some humans, have learned to listen to those languages. This requires a radical decentering, premised on the capacity to know together, to generate knowledge together.

The French term for knowledge is connaissance, a word that literally means “being born together.”

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Text by: Achille Mbembe. As interviewed by Nils Gilman. “How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness.” Noema (Noema Magazine). 11 January 2022. [Some paragraph breaks added by me.]