Our Local Newspaper Ran A Story About The Legendary Graffiti Artist Who Recently Passed Away And. Literally

they should invent a cigarette that gives you vitamins and hrt and shit

i recently saw a tiktok where a woman asked "girlies: what are some things you do to be more whimsical? I love knowing cute little habbits"

and i've never loved a comment section more. some of my faves:

(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

i love it actually when nonnative speakers make mistakes that reveal how their native languages work.

lots of koreans online say they "eat" drinks which would assume they only have one word which covers the concept of consumption.

arabic immigrants in sweden (my mother included) have a hard time differentiating between "i think/i believe/my opinion is" which suggests that in arabic these different modalities of speaker agency is treated as one or at least interchangeable.

swedish speakers in english will use should/shall/have to/must with much higher nuance precision than native english speakers, to the point where they sound well awkward, because the distinction between these commands in swedish is much clearer than in english. i make mistakes between is/am/are and has/have constantly because swedish only has one pronoun covering all grammatical persons.

i've heard speakers of languages without gendered pronouns (finnish, the chinese dialects, and a tonne more) make he/she mistakes because it's hard(!!) to learn two or more gendered pronouns and when to use them correctly.

how neat is that?! it add a charm to international english usage in particular and make our appreciation of both our native languages and our learnt ones stronger...!!

CNN

James Harrison, blood donor whose rare plasma saved millions of babies, dead at 88 | CNN

James Harrison, a prolific Australian blood donor famed for having saved the lives of more than two million babies, has died at age 88.

It's worth noting that there are some extraordinary people in the world who have been quietly doing the work for decades, and they should be celebrated with all the fervor that we denounce the villains. I first read about Harrison twenty-odd years ago, when he'd already been doing this for about fifty years, and this is one of those guys whose life can, indeed, be summed up by his headline.

James Harrison saved millions of lives. Millions. Not with anything flashy or dramatic, not with profound speeches or brilliant strategy or any of the things we insist are the ways to impact the world. He simply kept himself as healthy as possible so that every few weeks he could go and sit quietly in a room and give away a fundamental part of himself — quite literally his lifeblood — to people he'd never meet, for no pay and no expectation of acknowledgement. (He was, it should be said, acknowledged quite a lot per this article, but that's beside the point.)

When we talk about the kind of people we want to elevate and celebrate in our societies, I often think of people like James Harrison. I hope we get more of him; not just for his blood, but for his heart.

No joke this vine has a better understanding of transmisogyny than 40% of this website

Witch Tip - Wild Weed Harvests

When looking around your yard or local biome for wild plants to harvest for your craft, there are several important things to keep in mind:

1 - Prepare for your trip ahead of time. Have some idea ahead of time where you're going, what the terrain and weather will be like, and what plants you want to look for and harvest. Make sure you wear appropriate clothing and footwear, and bring containers, supplies for labeling, and a travel-size resource for plant identification. (Pro-tip: Paper lunch bags are excellent receptacles for harvested plants.)

2 - Look for patches of plants well away from roadways and places which might be contaminated by chemical runoff or pesticides. When possible, select a large patch where your harvest won't wipe out the presence of the plant. (The exception to this is if you are removing invasive plants or weeding a prepared garden as part of your harvesting.)

3 - Make sure you properly identify plants before you harvest them, using a field guide for local plants or an identification app like Plantnet. This helps you avoid potentially harmful lookalikes. (And it couldn't hurt to look up what harmful plants exist in the area where you'll be looking.) Do not harvest endangered plants or plants growing on private property or in national parks. When in doubt, leave it alone.

4 - Take a modest amount of plant material for your stores, no more than you reasonably need, while disturbing the surrounding area as little as possible. Clearly label the container with the species and date of harvest. (Again, I'm recommending those paper lunch bags.) As an added courtesy, you can bring a bottle of water and hydrate the remaining plants to encourage regrowth.

5 - Clean and dry your plant material when you get home, if necessary. Just give them a quick rinse and gentle pat-dry with a clean kitchen towel before placing the plants into your preferred drying device. One simple solution is to cut the flaps off of wide, shallow cardboard shipping boxes and lay out the plant material in a flat layer so that most of it is touching the cardboard. (As opposed to leaving it in a big heap.) Label the sections or the side of the tray and leave your plants to dry.

6 - If you're not using an oven or a dehydrator, allow plant material to dry for at LEAST two or three weeks before breaking it up for storage in airtight jars or freezer bags. Make sure the plants are dry and brittle all the way through to avoid rot and mold in your storage containers and spoilage of the contents. Label and date the containers and store at room temperature out of direct sunlight. (If you discover mold or a bad smell in any of your containers, discard the contents and either throw away the container or sterilize it for reuse - this generally only works for glass jars.)

7 - Check back periodically! Give your wild plant patches time to regrow and you can then make additional small harvests on future visits. Also, look for different plants to emerge as the seasons change.

Familiarizing yourself with your local biome allows you to connect with the land where you live (and encourages you to care about it in the process). Also, it can garner you components for your workings for the cost of a few bags and an afternoon stroll.

But wait! What if your local wild weeds don't have magical correspondences? Not to worry - there's an exercise for that.

Good luck and Happy Witching! 🌿

picking up litter is worth it!!

individual environmentalism gets a lot of flak in the face of corporate pollution but picking up litter makes a significant, noticeable impact. I spend about an hour a week picking up litter from around my dorm complex and I'm literally outpacing my community's litter production. Just an hour a week from one person is enough to offset nearly 200 people's worth of littering.

it would take less than 100 man-hours of labor per week to keep my whole college campus entirely litter-free. If you got two classrooms' worth of people to spend two hours per week each picking up litter, the whole campus would end up spotless and they'd straight up fucking run out of things to pick up.

If you're looking for some way to make a noticeable and positive impact on the world around you, go pick up some litter.

You are enough. You are worthy. Someone else convinced you otherwise, and you decided to believe them. Someone other than you decided a quality you possess isn't what they like and tried to break you of it, like an animal being domesticated. Meanwhile, someone else is going to love those exact pieces of you.

Be exactly who you are; whatever that looks like and know you can have duality.

You can be stubborn yet still agreeable

You can be vulnerable and strong

You can be nurturing and warm while still being tough

You can be gentle and calm while still being assertive and bold

You can grow, you can refine yourself, but make sure you are staying true to you. Embrace and love all the qualities there is within yourself.

You are beautiful