#activated charcoal powder

[morethansalad]

Vegan Black Truffle Ravioli from Scratch

[lizhi-art]

Idk if this is something people discuss and I’m just not in those circles but I feel like the lack of public awareness about the usage and effects of activated charcoal, especially with all these new health and beauty “hacks” and such, is like—genuinely unethical?

Bc like, if you take any medications whatsoever then activated charcoal is going to Fuck You Up. Activated charcoal binds to toxins and drugs and prevents them from being absorbed by the stomach lining, allowing them to pass through the body less harmfully. It’s used when someone has ingested some poison or overdosed on a drug and they need to prevent it from being absorbed before they can start other steps to save someone. Other than that, it doesn’t really have any benefits.

So if you’re on any medication at all, activated charcoal will suck that up and prevent it from actually doing it’s job. And I think it’s so crazy that so many of these health products and recipes that advertise the “benefits” of activated charcoal never mention that it can be harmful.

[ucicarbons09]

UCI Carbons: A Commitment to Quality and Sustainability

UCI Carbons is dedicated to delivering activated carbon products of the highest quality while adhering to strict environmental and sustainability standards. Their products are known for their exceptional purity, adsorption capacity, and reliability. With a diverse portfolio that caters to industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to water treatment, UCI Carbons continues to be a trusted partner for businesses seeking top-quality activated carbon solutions. Whether it's ensuring safe drinking water, purifying pharmaceuticals, or mitigating environmental pollutants, UCI Carbons' products play a vital role in addressing critical challenges across various sectors.

[sodimateinc]

Uses of Activated Carbon

Activated carbon is an incredibly versatile material that finds application in numerous industries due to its exceptional properties. It exhibits a wide range of uses, such as water treatment, air purification, gas adsorption, and much more. Read on to discover the diverse uses of activated carbon

[hellenhighwater]

What are the pigments that you're using for the liquid in Narcissus' bowl? Also, are you adding them to water, or is the base something else?

The base liquid is mineral or baby oil--doesn't evaporate as quickly, suspends particles better, and is just a touch more viscous than water, in a way that is a little bit subtle but does register if you're paying attention. The colorants are mica and marbling powders--the mica powders sink and diffuse, and the marbling powders mostly stay on the surface.

I did tests with motor oil, canola oil, olive oil, water, and a couple other liquids, as well as oil, watercolor, and acrylic paint, powdered pigment, activated charcoal, ink, and food dyes. I eventually settled on the mica and marbling powders as the most interesting effect, but honestly none of it is quite the iridescent, oil-slick surface I would prefer if I could get it.

I also considered ferrofluid, but that's kind of expensive.

[galacticnikki]

100 Witchcraft Tips in 100 Days!

Day 3 - How to Turn Herbs into Loose Incense

Turning your herbs into a blend of loose incense is a wonderful way to connect with the energies in your plants. It not only can be used to make your home or living space smell nice, but can also be used for a variety of practices. Whether it's for smoke divination, cleansing, or spells there's a blend for every intention.

Gathering Ingredients

There are 3 types of ingredients used for loose incense; herbs, resins, and wood shavings. Herbs are the most versatile of the bunch. There are a plethora of different herbs each with their own correspondences. Some notable basic herbs that every witch should have laying around somewhere include basil, bay leaves, chives, cilantro, dill, oregano, mint, parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Resins are your tree saps, these include frankincense, myrrh, pine sap, and dragon's blood. Wood shavings are self explanatory, they're pieces of bark and wood from trees. Make sure before proceeding that you know the herbs, resins, and wood shavings are safe to burn. Some herbs, resins, and wood shavings can be toxic to humans and pets.

Preparation & Blending

To prepare your herbs to be blended into your loose incense you want to make sure they're 100% dried to ensure they don't grow mold and they burn well. You can dry your fresh herbs by hanging them upside down in a well ventilated room. Once the herbs are dried, use a mortar and pestle to grind dried herbs and resins into either a fine powder or coarse blend, depending on your preference. As you grind these herbs focus on what they do and how they contribute to your intention and blend them together. You may need to adjust the ratios depending on the strength of each ingredient, but you'll figure that out as you learn more.

Binding & Burning

Binding is an optional step when making loose incense, however, adding a small amount of powdered charcoal or gum arabic can help make your blend burn more evenly. When you're not actively burning your loose incense make sure to store it in an airtight container so it doesn't loose it's potency. There are multiple methods to burn loose incense, however, I like to create sigil shaped incense trails. There are multiple ways to make incense trails. One of such ways is to spoon the powder into a mold placed on a bed of ash, this method originates from China. The method I use includes pouring it out in the general shape of the sigil, then I pat it down with my fingers and fix any errors I may have made when compacting it. Once you've made your trail you simply light one end and let it burn.

Simple Blends by Intention

Protection Blend - Used for cleansing your space and creating a protective barrier against negativity

Rosemary (Protection, Purification) - Potent protector, often used to clear negative energy and set boundaries.

Bay Leaves (Protection, Strength) - Used in this blend to amplify the shielding energy.

Cedar (Grounding, Protection) - Provides grounding and strengthens the protection created by the rosemary and bay leaves.

Frankincense Resin (Spiritual Protection, Purification) - Used for protection and connection with your higher self.

Abundance and Prosperity Blend - Used to attract wealth and prosperity

Basil (Wealth, Abundance) - Used to draw wealth and secure success.

Cinnamon (Success, Prosperity) - Typically considered fast acting and bringing rapid results.

Mint (Financial Gain, Luck) - Commonly used to bring luck in financial matters.

Clove (Attraction, Manifestation) - Used to strengthen manifestation, helping to focus your intent on drawing in wealth and success.

Peace and Relaxation Blend - Used for meditation, relaxation, or healing after emotional stress

Chamomile (Calm, Relaxation, Healing) - Used to bring gentle healing, diffusing tension, and creating a peaceful atmosphere.

Lavender (Peace, Calming Energy) - Promotes peace, calm, and sleep.

Lemon Balm (Emotional Healing, Calm) - Aids in emotional healing and brings a gentle clarity to situations.

Mugwort (Dreamwork, Relaxation) - Used for enhancing intuition and calming the mind.

Spiritual Growth and Intuition Incense - Used for rituals focusing on spiritual growth, meditation, or divination

Sage (Cleansing, Spiritual Clarity) - Powerful cleansing herb that helps clear the mind and create a space for spiritual work. Please use common sage and not white sage.

Mugwort (Intuition, Psychic Development) - Enhances psychic abilities and helps to deepen your intuition.

Frankincense Resin (Spiritual Connection, Purification) - Aids in connecting with your higher self.

Cedar (Grounding, Spiritual Protection) - Provides grounding energy, ensuring that you will stay rooted and protected during rituals.

If you want to find more of these entries use the hashtag #100 Witchcraft Tips in 100 Days! If you want to join a group of witches feel free to join our 18+ coven on Discord.

[ad-caelestia]

black salt

black salt is used for cursing, protection, banishing, cleansing, breaking spells or hexes, and repelling negative energy. black salt is made by combining either activated charcoal or ashes from burned herbs or incense with sea salt. 

using activated charcoal will actually make your salt a dark black color, whereas using ashes will turn it into a lighter grey color. 

depending on what you plan to use black salt for, you can add different types of ash or other ingredients that correspond with your intent.

here's my disclaimer to tell you to use basic common sense and safety when dealing with plant matter that you aren't familiar with, don't burn toxic herbs to get ashes, and don't throw salt on your grass.

ashes from various herbs and incenses for black salt: 

basil - banishing, protection, spell-breaking

cedarwood - cleansing, protection

cypress - protection

dragon’s blood - cleansing, protection, cursing, banishing

frankincense - cleansing, protection, spell-breaking

mullein - protection (especially for acts of magic involving spirit work)

rosemary - cleansing, banishing

rue - banishing, cursing, protection, spell-breaking

sage - cleansing, protection, banishing

sandalwood - cleansing, protection

thyme - cleansing, banishing

tobacco - banishing, cursing

valerian - protection

wormwood - cursing, protection, spell-breaking

other ingredients you can add to black salt: 

black pepper - cleansing, banishing, cursing, protection

cayenne pepper - banishing, cursing, protection

chili powder - banishing, cursing, spell-breaking

garlic salt - banishing, cleansing, spell-breaking

iron shavings (like from the bottom of your cauldron or a cast-iron pot or pan) - protection

nutmeg - protection, spell-breaking

onion salt - banishing, spell-breaking

making black salt: 

combine the ingredients and grind together using a mortar and pestle, coffee grinder, or herb grinder

store in a glass jar or vial for later use

using black salt:

add to spell jars or sachets

sprinkle in areas around your home to create a barrier

create a circle of protection before performing spells

keep a container of black salt under your bed or pillow to prevent nightmares or bad dreams

add to a jar to create a negativity trap

if using skin-safe components and ingredients, make a facial scrub or mask for cleansing

anoint objects with black salt

add to a container of war water (especially if your black salt contains iron shavings)

sprinkle a small amount on a neighbor’s lawn to make them want to move

add some to a hollow pendant and wear to deflect negativity 

sprinkle on items that hold bad or negative memories to cleanse them

add a thin line of black salt in front of doorways and windows to keep out negative energy and spirits or entities 

add a pinch to homemade floor washes for cleansing

use to symbolize the waning, new, and dark moon; or saturn and pluto

© 2024 ad-caelestia

[morethansalad]

Bat Pop Tarts (Vegan)

recipe is in French btw

[kouhsuu]

EMO TREAT AU MASTERPOST

SPOILERS FOR ALTERNATE ENDING

Essentially... What if Treat was EMO?

Specifically, what if she had stayed with her pack instead of leaving?

That's pretty much what this AU is about! Me and some friends came up with it for fun and it just kept growing lol

It takes a couple of liberties to make some things work though so it can be a bit silly!! xP

How it goes

Rather than Tundra, Timber is the current pack leader and they are both much older. Treat's parents failed to seperate from their pack, Glaze, and Treat suffered the repercussions by Timber using her as an example to her parents.

Treat eventually grows up under Timber, as he teaches her his way of acquiring food for their pack, good food. She struggles, but is forced to swallow it down for the sake of the pack. She distances herself from most everyone, aside from Timber as he is her mentor, and only really bothers with others out of necessity. Lacking empathy and becoming emotionally stunted due to her childhood makes her a near 180 to regular Treat.

Here's how she looks like!!

The way I see it, she dyes her hair with charcoal from fires to represent her deep turmoil!!!! or something like that, I can't think of a reason why outside of "my heart is a deep and vast void"

How are other characters/the world affected?

Starting from the pack members...

Cotton & Candy: There's not much to say, but after getting caught trying to leave the pack they haven't had much to do with everyone. Treat only really comes over to sleep and avoids them, because she somewhat blames them for what happened to her.

Timber: Pack leader and mentor of Treat. He didn't want to have to hurt Treat, but her parents took it too far trying not only to take their daughter with her, but Powder & Fennel too. He took her under his wing so she wouldn't get influenced by her parents anymore and decided to take the opportunity to teach her to be the next generation pack leader... Though no one but his mother knows that yet.

Fennel: She still has a giant crush on Treat, and is the only one that actively goes out of her way to hang out with her! Treat thinks she's a nuisance, but slowly entertains Fennel as she grows curious as to why she keeps trying to get close to her.

Other characters such as Powder and Tundra aren't really all that developed, so feel free to think up something for them!!!

The pack members don't just end there either...

I made up some characters for the AU aswell!! woohoo!!!!

They're in a small little fic I made on Mochi meeting Treat in this AU, but I want to do more with them!! The descriptions will be short though since there's not much with them yet.

Cocoa: The oldest, and the only one in his human form. He's playful, carefree, loves poking fun whenever he can.

Mallow: The middle child. His fur is dark gray and he's the strongest out of the three. He's boisterous, a bit stubborn, and competitive.

Creme: The youngest child. Her fur is white and is sarcastic, confident, a bit self-absorbed. She's also very prissy which annoys her older brothers.

Stuff they all have in common are also sharing admiration for Treat, despite always getting caught causing trouble by her, and the three of them are very close knit.

Characters outside the pack

Moxie: Unlike in the canon, she has lost her confidence due to being forced back to be with her mother in ginseng, following the loss of the Foxy Den. She eventually ran away from her and now hopes to learn how to survive in the wilderness by stalking the wolves around, including Treat.

here's a little concept sketch of her!!

she's pretty dinged up :(

Mochi: Due to Treat never having left Glaze, she never arrived in Frosting to live in the cabin and save Mochi from Moxie. She ends up fearing predators a bit more due to this, and is usually escorted by Juju outside. However, she still wishes to slowly start being more independent again. Overall though, there isn't much changed with her! (including her design)

Trick: Treat's parents never got to form the other pack near their Master's house because they never got to leave. Due to being unable to find any wolf pack settlement nearby, their Master reluctantly brought Trick together into hiding with him. Even if it would cause problems along the way, he didn't want them out fending for themselves. Trick would slowly start the learn the truth behind their Master's identity.

Will Treat, Mochi, and Moxie still get together?

Yes!!!!!!! However, with the way it's going, Fennel will be included too!! I have it somewhat outlined how I want it to go, but you'll have to read my friend's fic on it!!!

Speaking of fics...

Here are ALL the current fics and side stories so far!!

MAIN FIC (collab between me and @blobsicle): LINK

Short Stories:

(these are by me :3)

Fennel x Treat

Treat and Mochi Meeting

HOW TO TAG THE AU

Use either '#Shifted Story' or just '#Emo Treat AU'!!!

that's all for the AU!!! I hope you guys like it so far :3>!! Feel free to add onto any of this, or add a spin!! i'd love to see any of it so feel free to tag me!!

I'll be scheduling some posts with art i've made :)

[skeleton-mischief]

Coffee Serrif

Does it really matter? No, but that doesn't mean that you're safe from his ever watching eyes

*FS!Gold Papyrus has said enough

- Official height is 6'4

- He/They

- Selectively mute

- Would play the Drums

- An artist, he has a box filled with old sketchbooks and still gets more even now. His favorite is using charcoal

- Consumes Whipped Cream

- Feels insecure in his friendships, since he doesn't only struggle socializing, but he isn't sure when someone actually is sincere with their interest

- Good friends with Rus, Stretch, and Cash

- Grows bashful from praise, he can't handle it

- Empathetic, kind, open minded, creative, timid, passive, intuitive, will avoid fights, pessimistic, impatient, reserved, and sensitive

- A cat person, he's a hub for them

- Video game expert genius. Would be excellent if you handed him a new game and controller

- Uses notes to communicate, if he talks he stutters and messes up frequently

- Curses rarely, only a handful of times

- A master sharpshooter who was taught by Wine

- Loves coffee drowned with whipped cream and caramel

- Likes chocolate, loves dark chocolate the most though or caramel chocolate

- Loves eating rye bread

- Once close with someone, he adores physical affection and is clingy

- Doesn't admit his frustration when Wine constantly tries to do everything for him, since he likes to do things on his own sometimes

- Grew to see Razz, Carmine, and Powder as role models overtime

- Knows sign language

- Wears gloves due to his sensitivity

- Stims with his hands

- Doesn't smoke often, but he uses matches when he does

- magic smells like hazelnut, magic tastes like toffee

- A soft romantic

- Prefers handshakes

- likes Hello Kitty, his favorite character is Choco

- Calls Chara "Kitty" because they're small and remind him of a cat (it's fucking cute bro)

- Cries vary in quality often, he cries a lot

- Would call his lover peaches

- He doesn't seem like it, but he's physically pretty agile and strong. He gets irritated when he's belittled

- Sometimes, when frustrated, he'll actively ignore someone or throw something to get them to shut up

- He can't be bothered with doing a lot of things, such as drinking or partying

- He loves any sort of video games and is an excellent gamer. The moment someone shows interest, he'd have to be reassured that he's not talking too much

- He's curious of humans, but he doesn't blindly trust them

- He doesn't judge others and often is a silent observer to figure out his opinion of them

- He has very acute senses, and he'll dodge drama as soon as it's present. He slips away with whoever he's spending time with easily

- When meeting Chara, he had a piece of paper with a smiling face as he was overly friendly as he joked how to greet another human despite his terrifying aura

- Very internet savvy, he's dangerous since he can hack into anything for information

- Like every swapfell variant of Papyri, he loves fast food

- He can be very mischievous, him and Rus are very slick with their pranks

- his hoodie changes what it says based off what he's feeling

- He has a black list which is to identify who is considered an enemy and who he watches. You do not want to be on that

- He visits multiple locations, but when he's in public he usually stalks around the corners without feeling the need to say something

- He's very well educated and can be seen reading up on mechanical engineering, he gave up working on the machine however

- He doesn't remember Gaster, except for faint sensations and memories in his dreams. They're never pleasant

- He doesn't actually like the Queen, but he works for her and knows how to behave in her presence

- He always has a hood or something on his head, he doesn't like it being bare

- His eyelights don't frequently light up unless he is surprised or feeling an intense emotion, such as crying or getting flustered. His magic is much smoother(?) in appearance and yet can feel more intense

Closing Notes: i honestly want to flesh him out more than what I have for him. He's fun and I love his character, this might be updated or something since he's just sooooooo- OURGH

[spiritofhyena]

Black salt / witches' salt

WARNING: do NOT mix it up with the edible black salt for kitchen use. They are both called “black salt” but one is salt with activated charcoal or salt from a volcanic area that can be used in cooking, the other is a mix of salt, ashes, and other non-edible things used as a protection or banishing spell. I personally use it as a halfway between warding/protection and banishing as I add things usually associated with banishing.

I tried to search up the origin of the “witches’ salt” but I didn’t find anything solid (but also I made only a couple of quick searches on google because I was crunching time as I did this either before/after work or sometimes during slow moments at work) so, my best guess would be that its origin might be derived from the use of salt in many folkloric traditions as a protection or to purify, mixed a bit with a concept similar to the "witches' bottle", but I digress.

Disclaimer again: I wrote most of this during work time and edited it afterwards so I can't guarantee the form and grammar used.

I first made black salt after a couple of quick searches for protection and banishing spells that could help me in my practice, as I first started I was a bit of an idiot (to quote Set) and didn't keep anything to protect myself around when doing divination and other things.

With time I noticed that it's a good all-around protection and also, with a couple of tweaks, could be perfect to also banish in a "bounce back to sender" way.

There are different recipes on the Internet and among witchy communities but they mostly differ for some ingredients added (or not added) and I believe all would work… but surely, IMHO, if you tailor them to your needs it would be more effective.

This is what I made for myself, and I'll also include the "return to sender" version.

Tools you’ll need:

a jar with a lid to store it

mortar & pestle (not mandatory: I don’t have one so I use a tiny ceramic casserole and one of those wooden pestles for cocktails bc that’s what I had at home… use whatever could do the job)

a candle in the colour you associate with protection and warding

Ingredients:

salt (duh-)

ashes (either incense ashes, firepit ashes/charcoal, soot or you could also use activated charcoal)

eggshells powder

black pepper

rosemary

bay leaves

sage (kitchen kind is perfect!)

whatever herb you associate with protection

Process:

Honestly, you should do this however it feels right for you. You could cast a circle, call the elements or whatever. I don’t do that because it’s not part of my practice. You don’t even need to cleanse or anything if you don’t feel it’s necessary: it’ll work anyway.

Light the candle (ofc if you think it’s needed) and put the ingredients in the mortar, a little bit at a time, to grind them a bit and most importantly mix all of them. Focus on your intention, if you feel you need to recite something to enchant it then do it. Mix all the ingredients, I usually start with salt, add eggshell powder, all the other ingredients and then another bit of salt at the end to “close” everything.

If you want to give it a little “boost” you could write on a bay leaf “I am protected” or the like and then burn it (do it in a fireproof container! bay leaves are nasty burners and like to pop a lot!) to “activate” it and mix it to the rest of the ingredients.

When everything is all mixed, then you can pour it into the jar and close it. It’s up to you if you want to seal the lid with some wax or not. I do not do it because if I decide to redo it I can open it and clean the jar more easily before preparing the new black salt.

Again, it’s up to you if you want to charge it under the moonlight/sunlight or in some other way: do what you feel that's right to do.

And that’s it! Congrats you made black salt that will protect your space!

For the return-to-sender version:

add more pepper

slap also some paprika or better some chilli pepper powder

also put there some garlic

you can add other ingredients you associate with banishing

add a bay leaf (or also a piece of paper) with the intention written on it like “the harm/malicious intent is returned to who cast it” or whatever you feel right

complete!

[ucicarbons09]

Activated Carbon Powder

Activated carbon powder is finely ground activated carbon with a high surface area, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. It is used in industries such as food and beverage, cosmetics, and environmental remediation. Activated carbon powder effectively removes impurities, colors, and odors from various substances.

[sodimateinc]

Activated Carbon

Activated carbon plays a vital role in multiple industries for its exceptional adsorption properties, removing impurities from air, water, and gas streams. At Sodimate, we specialize in customized systems for injecting powdered activated carbon. Our solutions optimize efficiency and performance, from initial stages to precise sorbent injection. Contact us today to enhance your activated carbon processes.

[moopsy-daisy]

Make Your Own Cosmetics, Get What You Actually Want

Once you've been in zero waste, eco friendly, solarpunk/lunarpunk circles for a while, it's easy to forget the steps you took when you started. There are lots of DIY projects I've been doing for 10+ years now, and I keep doing them because they work (for me). Yet, when I sit back and think "am I doing enough?" I always gloss over the myriad things that have become part of my everyday life.

Making these things won't save the environment, but you'll get products that meet your needs on your terms, will save you money, and you won't have to worry about a company discontinuing your favorites. Plus, it seems like a lot less packaging to just buy a brick of beeswax and toss in some kitchen stuff you already had to make makeup.

Henna

I got really lucky, I always wanted red hair and henna is a natural dye that only comes in red. Well, more of a coppery tone. But, here's the other cool thing: the henna process is anti-fungal and controls dandruff. Half the time, I remember to color my hair because my scalp starts getting itchy 6+ weeks later and I start to get flakes. Coloring my hair takes care of my scalp and I don't need dandruff shampoo to keep it healthy. It's cost-effective, buying high quality henna for a year's worth of color (for my length and thicc hair) is about $60 for 18-months' of materials. I mix it when I need it, and keep the powder in the freezer. Pro-tip, if you or your partner don't like the grassy, hay-like smell of henna, add cardamom or ginger powder to the mix. It doesn't change the color but it'll knock down the scent.

I learned everything I needed to know about Henna for Hair here: http://hennaforhair.com and buy through Catherine's store because I know I'm getting real, quality henna powder.

Oh and a cloth wrap for your hair will let you keep the henna covered without wasting plastic wrap every time you redo your roots. I've been using the same 'turbie twist' wraps for years now. I made them from old t-shirts and they're stained as fuck. Who cares? This is basically their only job.

Carmine Lip Color

No, it isn't vegan. Yes, it's made of bugs. It's also a spectacular color, the insects aren't abused in the process of gathering or raising. They're actually parasites on nopal cactus, they have a simple niche and serve it well. I learned this lip stain recipe from Humblee & Me, and have found that the anti-bacterial doesn't seem to be necessary, ymmv. A 2.5 gram sample pack of carmine from TKB has lasted me almost a year and I wear this almost daily. I find that the glycerin really helps keep my lips from drying out too badly, so I wear my lip stain even when I'm not planning on being seen by other people. I spend about $20 on lip color for a year and that's including the bottles I use to store it (tiny eyedroppers work best imo) and the glycerin. Not quite zero waste but darn close.

Note: I'm still trying to find a simple recipe for black goth lipstick that I like. So far, my attempts have had a nasty texture and aren't worth the trouble.

Eyebrow Fill

My favorite brand of eyebrow liner discontinued the best color I ever found, so I decided to make my own. Beeswax, cocoa powder, activated charcoal, and almond oil made a little pot of eyebrow fill that suits my needs beautifully. Go super light on the charcoal until you know you've got the color you want. My brows are pretty dark but not fully black, so I do a dark chocolate sort of shade. I think I made my last batch about 11 months ago and it's still half full. I use it daily, apply with an angled brush, and it's never given me breakouts or anything. I don't even wash it off, because I am lazy.

Body Powder/Dry shampoo

Growing up in California, I didn't need this stuff. Living in Oregon? Summer would be awful without body powder. It's also a nice way to have a fragrance on. Pour your favorite perfume (I love Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab oils) onto a cotton ball, put that ball in a jar with a bunch of corn starch. Shake. Leave it for a month. You now have scented body powder. It's a decent dry shampoo, too, I just brush it into my dark hair and it disappears.

Tooth Powder

There is NOTHING wrong with using conventional toothpaste if it meets your needs. I have particular reasons for using tooth powder. These include hating the taste of most toothpaste and needing to avoid fluoride because of my particular thyroid condition. (Fluoride isn't bad for everyone! It isn't ideal for everyone. Figure out what you need!) I make my own tooth powder, it works well enough for me and I don't hate brushing my teeth like I used to. 1 part baking soda, 1 part bentonite clay, some ground cloves. Mix it up, keep in a glass jar (metal will bond with the clay, bad things happen, this is why we use glass or plastic for storage). $20 of materials = LOADS of tooth powder.

Cutting Hair

It's way easier than you think. I cut my own hair and I do a graduated bob which is a little more complex than most at-home cuts. I taught myself. I use decent shears (don't use scissors) and a Wahl hair trimmer set. Learn this skill on yourself, and when people find out you can do hair, they'll come to you for their own needs. Great way to provide mutual aid (one of my parents is trans and getting haircuts in a salon would be extremely stressful for her, so I cut her hair and save her money and suffering). You could also do skill trades! I trade haircuts for massages from a massage therapist friend, for example.

Protip: Dust yourself with body powder before cutting hair, it makes the little shards of cut hair way less prone to sticking to you. You'll still want a shower but it'll just be less icky.

[shefu-choice]

🖤Frozen Black Magic Margarita 🖤

Get into the Halloween spirit with this dark, eerie twist on a classic margarita! 🕯️🎃

Ingredients:

1.5 oz Silver Tequila

1 oz Orange Liqueur (Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or Triple Sec)

0.75 oz Freshly-Squeezed Lime Juice

0.5 oz Agave Nectar (adjust to taste)

1/4 tsp Activated Charcoal Powder

1 cup Ice

Instructions:

Add tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice, agave nectar, activated charcoal, and ice to a blender.

Blend until smooth and slushy, creating a dark, spooky color. 🖤

Rim a glass with a lime wedge, dip it in coarse salt (or black salt for extra effect), and pour the frozen margarita in.

Garnish with a lime slice, and serve your eerie cocktail! 🕷️

Perfect for a spooky night in or your Halloween party! 🧛🍸 #SpookyCocktails #CharcoalMargarita #HalloweenDrinks

[mariacallous]

Kim Kardashian’s newest range of products, launched in late 2022—post SKIMS shapewear, post SKKN facewear—is a menacing set of raw concrete forms for storing bathroom products: a gray tissue box, Q-tip tin, wastebasket. Dry, brutal, and mysterious, the items look like you hired one of Gary Larson’s cavemen to decorate your vanity with found objects.

“Having the concrete material and monochromatic design are important for my mental wellness,” Kim said in a recent interview with Architectural Digest. Concrete … for wellness? I imagine her removing her shoes and socks and planting her feet on the gritty sidewalk, grounding herself on the concrete slab, gathering power from the sprawling gray. Kim abandoning her activated charcoal and turning to powdered concrete to treat her gut problems and ensure clearer skin. Jade egg? No, concrete egg. Wellness concrete!

Concrete does not, objectively, promote wellness. It is responsible for 8 percent of the world’s C02 emissions. Concrete dust ruins the lungs of those who inhale it regularly. Concrete cityscapes exacerbate flooding and degrade joggers’ joints. Thanks to a reliance on concrete for construction, the world is running out of certain types of sand. Other high-end brands have sold home products made of concrete, like Comme des Garçons’ concrete-clad perfume bottles, but these usually use the material for its brutal and rough-hewn qualities, not to promote wellness. Kim is an alchemist though. She has taken a material that is undeniably a product of industrial modernity, imbued with a century’s worth of architectural and ideological baggage, and reconfigured it as healthy, intimate, and integral to self-care.

Always ahead of the curve, Kim may have hit on something the rest of us are just coming around to. The idea that we might stop—stop producing plastic, stop building cement megastructures—seems out of the question. Decades of activism, policy work, and think tank-ery have done little to stem the tide of globalized capitalism and the torrents of plastic water bottles, polyester blend clothing, and Squishmallows that discharge from its perpetual motion machines. Blowing up a pipeline or fomenting revolution requires networks of solidarity and logistical capability that most people can’t imagine acquiring. Meanwhile, the microplastics are already in our blood.

What’s left is the alternative that Kim and her concrete line seem to offer: that we can learn how to metaphorically (or literally) digest the toxic brutality of the built environment and transform it into something else—or let it transform us. “I’m just putting little pieces of fibreglass into my cereal to get my body used to it,” tweets one nihilistic wiseass. We’re entering our metabolic era.

Nonhuman systems offer metaphors to help us comprehend and describe our own existence, and structures of behavior we might mimic to cope with intolerable conditions. Over the past decade, you may have noticed mushrooms and fungi embraced as the objects of this kind of attention. The fungal imaginary is powerful because it envisions a world where endless growth is possible, and might even be environmentally beneficial. We can build anything as long as we make it out of mushrooms. Houses, bridges, burgers, clamshell packages for said burgers. Fungi also offer a powerful, nonhuman other we can turn to for inspiration: Mushrooms can grow at the end of the world, form vast underground networks, and offer mystic insight.

More recently, though, metabolic metaphors and processes are emerging alongside, and sometimes overtaking, fungi’s place in the cultural ether. At the more practical end, digestive processes are cropping up as popular solutions to all kinds of crises: compost, vermiculture, bacteria to digest just about anything, biohacks for your gut microbiome. Elsewhere, the metaphor of metabolism is called on to describe the way people process emotions and build feedback loops, and the growth of cities.

Unlike the fungal model, the metabolic imaginary lets us envision a world in which we can get rid of anything. If the drive for endless growth has led to a world too full of bullshit and toxicity, perhaps we can chew it all up and digest it without harm, engineer bacteria to metabolize it, or transfigure it into something new and strange. There is no big other in metabolism, no consciousness to commune with or learn from. Where the fungal era has been about venerating unknowable nonhuman maybe-intelligence and believing that hope can be dredged from ruin, the metabolic era is about submission, subsumption by the great enzyme, the desire for transformative annihilation. Metabolism is an impulse that makes sense at the end of the usable world. If we’ve exhausted our current ways of being and the planet’s existing materials, we must embrace radical breakdown.

One version of creative, apocalyptic metabolism is on vivid display in David Cronenberg’s most recent film, Crimes of the Future. Set in a near future in which environmental degradation and unspecified climate events have led to generalized decay and deterioration, Crimes of the Future imagines what might happen to human digestion. In the film, a sector of the population is evolving to successfully digest and receive nourishment from plastic. At the beginning, we see a young boy crouched in a bathroom taking bites out of a plastic trash bin like he’s compelled by an insatiable craving. Later, we learn of a whole underground organization of plastic eaters who undergo surgery and other interventions in the hopes of spurring their bodies to better metabolize plastic and other pollutants.

In this world, it’s too late for a cleanup. Toxicity is endemic, and the plastic eaters consider the best path forward to be evolving human biology to flourish in the aftermath. The film captures something essential about our zeitgeist in its oscillation between anxiety about how to metabolize everything toxic we’ve created and desire to experience the bodily and social transformation that might accompany this perverse new digestion.

This scenario is only a half step away from our current reality. Efforts are well underway to metabolize the plastic that suffuses our environment. Scientists have found multiple strains of microbes and bacteria that have evolved to digest plastic. Comamonas testosteroni can metabolize complex waste from plants and plastics. Ideonella sakaiensis enzymatically breaks down polyethylene terephthalate (PET). With each new study of microbial plastic-phagy comes a spate of hopeful, if hyperbolic, news articles: “a potential breakthrough for recycling,” “This discovery … could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems.” People love the idea that we can digest our way out of this mess. The jury is still out on whether it’s possible to operationalize plastic-eating bacteria at scale. There is some movement on this front. Carbios, a well-funded French company developing enzymes that break down plastic, recently announced funding and investment for the world’s first PET “biorecycling” plant, for instance. But many scientists are skeptical about the idea that microbial digestion is a viable solution to the problem of oceanic or terrestrial pollution. For now, plastic digestion at scale remains a pipe dream.

The metabolic turn isn’t just about learning to digest toxicity. It also plays out in fantasies—both desirous and anxious—about being digested. In times of stress, it’s a relief to imagine being crushed and consumed by some other metabolic system. “Why Does Everyone Want Their Crush to Run Them Over?” asked The Cut a few years ago. Being pulverized by your crush is a dream of being relieved of your own agency, destroyed and reconfigured, freed from the pain of consciousness so that you can be reshaped for someone else’s uses. A version of this obliterating impulse is made more explicit in vore, the erotic desire to be swallowed or devoured whole (or, conversely, to swallow or devour another), which is often expressed in role-play or illustrations. In vore, the process of digestion is imagined as a relationship between devoured and devourer—a desire for the kind of intense intimacy only possible when one is literally consumed by another.

Only a short jump from vore is the transhumanist fantasy of having your brain uploaded into the cloud, outrunning death by being absorbed into another system and transformed into bits and bytes. Ray Kurzweil famously advocated for brain uploads to achieve technological immortality, estimating in The Singularity Is Near that “the end of the 2030s is a conservative projection for successful uploading.” Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov’s now mostly defunct 2045 Initiative aimed “to create technologies enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.” The desire to be consumed and immortalized by technology reveals a belief that your consciousness is uniquely important and your own creation is uniquely powerful. It’s no surprise technologists like Kurzweil lust to be dissolved by their own machines.

Similarly, some of the recent hype around generative AI reveals a conflicting set of responses to metabolic machinery. Large language models and image generators are enormous digestive systems that ingest and transform the raw materials of cultural output and behavioral data on behalf of voracious corporate interests. They suck down the sprawling detritus of human effort and swallow it into the great black box stomach of the AI system, which converts it into something uncanny and instant and profitable. As with transhumanism, some may find this extremely exciting, the emergent opportunity to create the world’s biggest digestive tract, and hence the world’s biggest (and most profitable) collective intelligence. For others, the idea that their labor and creativity is nothing but grist for the generative mill owned and controlled by unaccountable companies is a cause for great anxiety. It’s harder to be optimistic about the future of technological digestion if you’re forced to be an unwilling participant in a voracious process of corporate metabolism.

Kim’s wellness concrete and Crimes of the Future highlight the ambivalence of digestive politics. If the environment is inescapably suffused with pollutants emitted by the biggest and worst companies on earth, then learning to digest this toxicity is a sensible coping mechanism. Of course, there are creative and aesthetic possibilities within the process of toxic digestion—minimalist home goods in Kim’s case, strange new forms of sex and performance art in Cronenberg’s film. We can eke pleasure and art from all kinds of wretched situations—and we should. As Boots Riley put it in a recent interview, “Culture is what we do to make our survival normal.” Still, these visions of metabolism leave us stuck absorbing the excretions of a system that hates us. We have sprawling digestive capabilities. What might it look like to embrace our role as part of a massive and massively weird ecological and metabolic system, and to experiment with the creative and expressive potential of digestion?

Nothing is more natural or strange than metabolism. It happens on many scales, around us and within us, via processes that involve human bodies and microbes and other flora and fauna. I move through the world, digesting it as I go—material entering the mouth hole at one end, exiting the anus at the other—and in between my body does the work of processing, sorting, excreting. I am also here to be digested—built cell by cell inside another’s body and extruded into the world, only to exit back into the earth via a final hole (the grave, the furnace, the mouth of the bear) where I provide fodder for the next stomach. What a trip, what a pleasure.

Digesting with and on behalf of the earth’s ur-metabolic system means wanting more than to function as the unhappy stomach that processes capitalism’s excesses. Embracing digestion as a tool and a metaphor can help us to not only accommodate the horrors of the existing system, but to dissolve it and break it down until it no longer exists in its current form. Some ideas for earth-first digestion are already familiar, thanks to proponents of the circular economy: recapturing waste streams from one process to become inputs for another, designing to ensure reusability. However, ideally digestion wouldn’t just be mobilized to enable human industry and profit. I’m also interested in more creative and psychedelic experiences of metabolism, like collaboration with enzymes, embrace of rot, and joyful submission to the knowledge that humans are just one digestive node of the material world, rather than its apex.

Metabolism can be framed through the lens of mutual aid. While the mainstream medical industry is now catching up, biohackers and anarchist IBS sufferers alike have been experimenting with DIY fecal transplants for years, trading advice and healthy poop samples in the interests of helping each other digest better. It can also be seen as a kind of collective destruction, where communities decide a system or an infrastructure that causes them harm should no longer exist and work together to metabolize it, dissolve it, and perhaps transform its constituent matter into something entirely new. Outside of human-centered processes, composting and rot provide inspiration for rich and generative multispecies metabolism, like worms and microbes working with chemical heat and leafy greens to produce rich and unrecognizable loam. If we’re brave enough, we can even look forward to our own bodies being digested. It’s hard to know what that experience will be like, but let’s try to imagine. Space travel is uncertain, and the singularity is a mirage, so why not stay here, nestled into the cool damp ground. There is much to learn from becoming compost for the original stomach.