#what fucking evolutionary chart is that

[indigiqueers]

i'm NOT putting this on my astro substack that i have irl people following. so it's going here. yeehaw

i've been reading more evolutionary astrology books lately and the timing is......................... interesting wrt experiencing black moon lilith transits -> uranus/asc transits. it was triggered in july (lilith's ingress into my libra 8th house: a queer healing gathering) then became fully operational following the august aquarius full moon (conjunct my natal uranus in 12th: seeing my abuser again).

black moon lilith in my chart is clearly a trauma signature. considering the mythological/cultural context of lilith being a figure outcasted, demonized for being sexually liberated (and other goddesses that demetra george associates bml with like persephone), the fact that she's in my 8th house, and that the last lilith eclipse activated her again—it becomes fairly obvious, to me anyway, what she is. lilith in my chart represents the shadow of shame. and other astrologers would likely be kinder about how she operates in my chart, but when i see where she's placed and how she's placed it's clear to me that sexuality = taboo = shame = secrets = trauma = death/rebirth. a libra 8th house ruled by venus in my 3rd, co-present with saturn. the foundations of these secrets inform the structure of my consciousness, my values, my relational dynamics. (how terribly profound. how terribly awful).

the other day when the sun was conjunct my natal lilith, i ended up spending the day with a friend and we had a huge debrief/vent session about the ways that scars from CSA—particularly incest CSA—completely warp, damage, eviscerate your fucking world sometimes. it takes a really, really fucking long time to come to terms with things. and just when you think you're over it—you've processed it—you'll uncover something new. you discover a new way that it affects you. and it feels like the wound opens up all over again.

never mind how your family may react. never mind the ways in which they may fail you, before and now.

there are not enough "helpers" in this world equipped to deal with our stories, because our experiences are apparently so god-awful that they have to dismiss us to protect themselves. the shame is not only within us for being victimized, but it's embedded within the systems that are supposed to help us: mental health services, inadequate. social services, inadequate. medical services, inadequate. and being forced to carry those systemic failures as a child?

even as an adult, who is that child—unfathomable. to imagine it happening to anyone else. i once went to counselling and she avoided discussing post-traumatic stress at all costs, despite the fact that i was suffering from dissociation at the time. there was a complete failure to engage with the totality of my life because it was "too much". anyone who should have seen what was happening, excluding my family—educators who are meant to detect these things, physicians who should be able to detect these things—not a single fuckin one could hold space or say a thing. that's insane.

as a helper confined within the parameters of these systems, trying to help other survivors—it gets triggering. it gets frustrating. to want to be able to use our experiences to help others process their own shit, but we can't even do that because we're bound by the colonial structures of systems we fuckin work within, too. by the time people get to us they've already experienced harm by these systems. by the time people get to us they don't want to re-engage with these systems because they're exhausted. disenchanted. profoundly hurt.

(it can be helpful to experience triggers in this sense, because it activates a kind of primal rage against institutional failures. and these are at the very least things that i can share with people who are trying to affect change, and it can be implemented within my own code of conduct as a helper. but still. holy fuck).

_______

the ingress of planets into libra this year, as well as lilith's ingress into libra, corresponds in terms of timing and the initiation of hypersexuality. the difference between this phase and other phases i've been in lies in the fact that it's

1. been an opportunity to explore reclamation of sexual desire, which is something i couldn't do previously out of shame/fear/repression/repulsion and

2. the shame/repulsion/compulsive part of the hypersexuality is less operational (meaning i haven't been quiet about what i'm experiencing: i'm not downplaying the ways in which my history have involvement with current exploration and processing, but i'm also accepting that i am allowed to express facets of my sexuality, given that it's a safe space for everyone involved).

there's still elements of this where i'm like... embarrassed, i think. i'm saying, feeling, portraying some really sexual things online. which is normalized, i think, especially in fandom spaces (and obviously encouraged in the current fandom space i'm occupying), but it isn't always something i've been comfortable to do.

i joke about the ways that i cope through a certain character—a persephone-like archetype himself—but when it really comes down to it, i suppose it isn't that funny how much i relate to him. it's too meaningful to be a joke. i love him, unfortunately, because i see myself in him, and it's easier to love a character than love myself. you already know what it is.

there's also the fact that i'm being open with my friends about the ways that this phase is affecting and changing me (because thank god, i have friends who are trauma-informed/can hold space for me even when i'm stuttering and struggling to convey some of the worse things). there's still a part of me suspended in disbelief that i am letting anyone see this unfold as it's happening, because it feels as though the worst parts of me are spilling out.

it's still a relief, though. to spill out. rejection sensitivity is a nightmare always, but to have the "worst" parts of myself seen and tolerated... that is a win, for me.

i think the spilling out is where uranus comes in. mark jones writes about the role that archetypal uranus plays in trauma—something i would have *never* clocked on my own, as so much of modern astrology is inundated with uranus as a revolutionary, a change-maker, a disruptor. he points out that uranus corresponds with subtle mental/memory body, and the deeper state of unconscious that can be "brought towards conscious awareness through the attention and focus of the individual as part of the process of individuation". uranus hit my natal jupiter/asc in july, which is when i was at a healing gathering where i unintentionally released a LOT of shame around things like Having a body. Being seen. (it's funny what being in safe spaces/community can like, do for you). Attraction to other people. The potential of being desired and feeling safe about being desired. he writes, "we are not alone, and although that idea may be quite hard to connect with under duress, we are all held by this larger field...this insight forms the basis of the recovery from trauma through a holding environment." and that's what that gathering facilitated, i think. a holding environment for some of my worst fears to be gently held.

and uranus is transiting my 3rd house of cognition, communication. close friends, extended relatives. my neighbourhood. social media. so these are the people and places and spaces where the holding environment to process the shame within the body (ASC) exists.

not all of the shame can be released obviously, because that would be miraculous. as part of the retrograde uranus will be transiting jupiter/asc between oct 27th -> nov 6th, and then once again next april (which, btw, so many meaningful transits, especially final hitting retrograde transits, are happening in my chart in april 2025. cannot fathom what this could possibly mean).

so clearly there are going to be other facets/dimensions to self that will be realized, especially when i experience the exact lilith return around late december.

anyway. i'm also thinking about how the plutonic symbolism in my chart references a need to talk, profess, in public spaces. like a sagittarian archetype. it's actually embarrassing how the true compulsive part of this process is the need to tell anyone. i suppose that's what happens when you spend a better part of your life holding onto pain.

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP memes from Reddit 10/17/2023

“I doubt you can potty train a duck.” “It appeals the male fantasy.” “I never understood why people consider male ballerina effeminate. They are highly athletic, coordinated, and surrounded by women. If anything that makes it more stereotypically masculine.” “Pick an obscure programming language, write lots of important code, and don’t comment or document anything.” “Impostor syndrome nothing, dude, you are the real deal.” “I’m trying to figure out how many is too many.” “Each one of these ladies could crush my head between their legs.” “If you're having trouble learning to like yourself, first learn to tolerate yourself.” "Maybe it's not a caring issue. Maybe it's a boundary issue." “Feel your feelings! Get the chart and get words for how you actually feel and write it down. Ok and tired are not feelings.” “Morbid curiosity keeps me going.” “I’ve always said if zombies exist I’ll kill myself. Like no I’m not gonna get eaten alive or see my family and friends gored to death.” “Seriously, so tired of all of this "I'd be king of the zombie apocalypse" bullshit, no, you wouldn't be king, you'd be delicious.” “I want the first nuke to hit me in the face. I don’t feel like having neighborhood wars over a can of green beans.” “She may be a little crazy but crazy is fucking hot.” “Nothing fuels all night gaming like a half pound of sugar and half gallon of pure military grade red 40.” “Is this the "macrodosing" I've been hearing about?” “This could absolutely destroy someone’s psyche.” “American culture has integrated to our minds now we even use their phrases even if it's not relevant to us, thanks Obama.” “I mean if I can have a friend plop that bitch into a block of epoxy and lock it down in a museum in mongolia or some shit it might be fine.” “That's bought me a little breathing room.” “I am trapped on the one planet in the entire universe where I can actually die, and I have no intention of staying there.” “So that's the way the universe ends. With nothing in it except for infrared heat, one hyperintelligent snail suspended in an inky void, and one human screaming away from it at .99C.” “When did you become immortal?” “I have witnessed the first breath of life in many galaxies and have watched the evolutionary process on planets similar to earth.” “If a planet eventually died, I would mourn them and the potential they had.” “I've searched but there really is no other life.” “I have never found another like me.” “This really was the last inhabitable planet.” “I gave them everything.” “Is it some alien snail as big as a car?” “This guy is definitely building a kill dozer in his warehouse.” “No one should be forced to fight in a war for a country that doesn’t give a shit about them.” “You see that too, right?” “Fight or flight, bro, what’s the move?” “My dogs are legit traumatized.”

[mzhydes-funtimes]

I need a evolutionary tree thats similar to a family tree

The spiral thing is tiny, hard to see and has no labels

The weird tree that LoreKeeperToby did for pokemon has no labels and is somewhat confusing

Then the other popular thing has no labels again

Its really frustrating bc i wanna see how everything evolved so i can how how if dragons existed where THEY evolved from (hypnothetically if dinosaurs never went extinct it would split off off: Avians, Saurchia, and Draconoids aka dragons would have evolved from dinosaurs) and its really cool and stuff just really confusing and frustrating to figure out

If we had a... idk what its called but a chart that... fuck it, picture is the best way to show it:

Like that, with the scientific names under it and the common name in parenthesis beneath that it would be SOOO helpful bc then i could learn about the animals and plants and stuff SOOO much easier and fuck it would be soo cool

[batteredwarriorstillstanding]

Alright, so listen up, Smart-Ass...first of all, entertaining as all of the hyperbolic comparisons to the impossibly pure, sexually untouched, puritanical sect (does that really even exist on this continent) and the even more hysterical (not to mention infinitely more accurate of the two. Not accurate....just closer than "saint-like," virtuous man of God) clueless middle aged eunuch, whose inexperience can be attributed to a level of naivete and cluelessness almost impossible to comprehend for the typical....correct chromosome count possessing reader, who does not have a difficult decision when decidong which character on Darwin's human evolutionary chart they most identify...I hesitate to make this concession....first of all because it's a concession...in THIS forum, on THIS topic nonetheless. Also, seemingly granting legitimacy to the oft-distorted, ALWAYS spiked with shameful dishonesty "revelations" about me that I must have wasted 10000 words refuting to people who either didn't consider it an issue (HOOOW!!??lol) needed no refutation in the first place, much less the detailed version I felt compelled to vomit, or were adversaries, either for personal, or situational reasons who were not open to reversing themselves, and, in fact, very often found new falsehoods to create within corrected info provided. The truth is that while every claim I made during this foray (about 14 months long, probably averaging 2-3 sometimes ridiculously long posts over 4 blogs-or 5....something like that. 6 possible too...honestly am not sure) I have never been wilfully dishonest. Made a couple of honest mistakes that were corrected to the best of my ability, and utilized my normal copious allotment of sarcasm, fesiciousness (that is a word, I think....do not have a CLUE how to spell it: Its definition would be " what people often mistake for sarcasm. Making a statement opposite universally accepted truth for effect i.e. "That Barry Manilow is one bad motherfucker.") and I certainly tiptoes around some uh....less than gentlemanly things said and done in the past, but I was very careful to avoid outright lying....and, I addressed a few things I ABSOLUTELY would have seen as a guckin' GOLDEN opportunity to alter fate in my favor with the help of a little dishonesty. I passed those up. You see kids, your integrity, for ANY positive outcome, ANY dodging of consequence, ANY dollar amount....is simply nit worth compromising a single iota. Take it from Me." Lol...just kidding...

But, I did not wish to exacerbate a, perhaps....justifiably imperfect, reputation in that area....particularly after an honest mistake earky on had reasonably light hearted (thank gid) accusation of "bullshit con artist" leveled at me from a....less than ideal source. By that, I mean the worst possible. Luckily,it worked itself out and was explained (fucking 1 or 3 months ago when it didn't fucking matter) but; I was and remain absolutely grateful (what the fuck ever) So, continuing our course on the Honesty Express, it seems our next stop is Honest Self Appraisal.....and, after adding this tool of the Saints to our new repertoire, we realize that just because we can explain aspects of our self, abilities, weaknesses, past mistakes, etc in a fashion that is both thorough AND honest....it behooves us to include certain data we deem both not accurately indicative of our true selves and easily buried in a generalized admission of ADHD diagnoses, occasional social anxiety, and having occasionally encountered the need for "anger management" assistance. Only with skilled and persistent prying would I reveal that "ADHD diagnoses" came after failing English (easily my best subject because formatting fictional short stories....which essentially meant "numbering the pages" was too difficult and I was embarassed to turn shit in because I was made fun of the first time) "social anxiety" meant COMPLETE isolation for 3 to 6 days, often in darkness, away from even family, and "anger management" could be translate into "it's nice so many of our family members are attorneys." So, I will make an admission here, in the interest of good will, self depreciation, and frankly...fairness and accuracy before I respond to the rest of this shit, uh, I mean "argumentative explanation for"....fuck. what was it for. I will double check. I was right, though. That is whatcha want to remember. After doing this, I will explain why, though she has every right to her opinion...it's....questionable (like that word? I really mean something far more dismissive and judgemental, but....) oh sorry....anyway, (to be cont.)

[dzpenumbra]

6/3/23

Despite being up super late, I slept a full 8 hours. I did yoga... kinda. I grazed on leftovers all day.

I'm just gonna level, I'm super depressed. And kinda aimless. I feel deeply deflated. Like... what's the fucking point? Like... if every goddamn thing that I set my sights on, people just talk me out of... what's the point?

I swear to god, if half the energy that people around me put into talking me out of my goals was put into actually supporting me and helping me work towards them? I might actually have something sustainable here. I might be something.

Instead, I just... make things. And put them on a shelf. And they gather dust. And I move on to the next thing. And I'm just fucking cowering here scared to even reach out and --- I just don't know what to do anymore.

My feeling of being an impostor is... I'm struggling to find the right way to phrase this... all-encompassing. Hard to see past. I feel like I'm literally the only person in the world that sees what I do, and what I want to do, as being legitimate ways to spend a human life. I feel like any time I try to explain what my goals are, or what inspires me, or what I see as my purpose in life... I get side-eye glares and suspicion, or eye rolls. Like... if someone asked me what my goals are, their next question is naturally going to be, "but what are you really going to do?" "But what are you going to do to support that hobby?"

Don't you find it weird that some people... when they say "I love dinosaurs, and I have since I was a kid, and I just want to dig up dinosaur bones and study them for a living" people go... "you should be a paleontologist!" And others go... "okay, you can dick around with your dinosaur shit in your free time, what are you going to do for work though?"

I'm upsetting myself. And I'm conflicted. I feel like I need to vent thoughts like this to get them out... but I don't want to linger on them, or let my mind have free reign to go to such stressful places. I feel like I should vent and let go at the same time, and I'm really not sure which is the healthier option.

I guess I should just talk about the insecurity part. I don't see myself as an artist that is going to get into a gallery. Or an artist that is going to be able to open up a shop or something. I don't. Not now. And I don't know what I'm doing wrong about that. I feel like I work a lot, and I just don't feel like I have a lot to show for it, and I really don't know why. I don't know if that's in my head, or if I'm actually not as prolific as I think I am. And I feel like I've been in this line of thought thousands of times. And maybe... maybe it's a result of being the scattered multimedia artist that I am. Maybe that's it.

See... I think of artists that I follow on Instagram. Like this chick Polina Bright, for example. She's a watercolor artist from AU, she has a very distinct style, she is constantly putting out new work and she seems quite successful. It seems very coherent what she does, if you look at her page. Like... if you were a gallery, and you looked at that, you would know what you're getting. I... don't feel that way. I don't feel like my work speaks the same way, and I feel like it makes it so much harder for me. I'm all over the map. My last projects were an inked goat skull, a hand-painted hoodie with my astrology chart on it, a concept performance piece done in Minecraft that I animated in Blender and turned into an 11 minute video, hand-shaped and polished stones, handmade jewelry. I mean... there are common themes between all of it... for me. It makes sense... to me... it's all part of an ever-unfolding evolutionary process... but without that context, I feel like it's kinda lost and scattered. I don't know. I struggle to articulate the thoughts I have here.

And I think that's just because of my upbringing. The compulsion to justify, because... I'm different. Because I'm not... the guy who does that one thing. And this dates back all the way back to college. I originally went to college as a... recovering graffiti artist who wanted to improve his craft. I was in a community college, after having failed out of art TWICE in high school because I was inspired to do a project that didn't fit into the guidelines of what was expected... aka... was creative... ... ... Let's just keep walking past that one... XD I took Drawing in community college when I was getting back into school, and I was by far the best artist in the class. To the point where people were intimidated by me. And I have no clue how, I just drew a lot as a kid and doodled a lot as a young adult. Compulsively, actually, I would entirely fill the margins in my notebooks in school, and the covers and everything. I'd have entire pages full of doodles and designs. When I took the drawing class, it sparked a vast improvement in my skill. It gave me focus and direction, and also opened more doors than just... designing tags and shit. Which... I mean, there was that teenage adrenaline thrill to it, but beyond that... I grew out of graffiti pretty quick.

I wanted to... say something. I was still very young and didn't really know... what I wanted to say... But I knew I wanted to do more with my art than just spraypaint my name on the side of a parking garage or under a bridge or something. And my music helped me with that. Comparing my art to my music, where my music was very... confessional, and personal... very honest and intuitive. In a genre - hip-hop/rap - that was/is utterly consumed with egocentrism, narcissism, greed and hedonism. I was much more concerned with conveying a message of... how I experienced the world. Which is vastly different than that. So... the whole... just tagging my name on a wall thing... it didn't really mesh.

When I transferred into the college that I eventually graduated from, I went with the intentions of having a focus in drawing. Graffiti-style and tattoo style artwork was what I was hoping to get into at the time, but I was still blooming beyond that. --- I'm wondering why I'm going down memory lane right now... Then I glanced over and saw the old sketchbook from my college Drawing class sitting on the desk. Its only half-full, and I pulled it because I wanted to just make myself draw tonight. Just not think and just draw. I ended up just looking through it and not using it, and drawing another abstract ink piece instead. I'm glad I got that piece done, but yeah... that's likely where this is coming from.

Instead of going beat-by-beat here, let me skip to the point. I started experimenting in college with a variety of styles. And I went from designing tags to... my final projects were a piece that was my first ever guitar on which I painted an image from a recurring dream (which got called "not real art" in a critique by a guest artist) and a skate video I made with my friends. In that span, I did pieces in ink on cloth, I did tons of acrylic work on all kinds of wood, I did pieces drawn in oil pastel on cardboard, I did an acrylic piece that I set on fire and threw fake blood all over. I've always been all over the map. I love exploring, I love trying new things and bringing my perspective from other disciplines with me. I can play like 5 fucking instruments. I really think it's just... part of who I am. And every time I try to just repeat the same fucking thing over and over... like my realistic colored pencil bird drawings, or my mandalas, or my abstract ink pieces, or my necklaces, or portraiture. Whatever it is, if I just do the same thing for like 6 months straight... I end up just... getting burnt out. Every time.

And here's the thing. This is so hard to explain to non-creatives, so please bear with me if you can't relate. I don't feel like I choose my projects. In fact, I feel like when I do choose my projects... it feels forced. Some of my worst and most contrived work has been when I try to craft something that appears inspired. Something I seek out, rather than something that seeks out me. Again, hard to accurately describe.

I'm gonna level here. I feel like I'm bullshitting, even when I'm not. It's an anxiety/trauma thing, I know, but man... it feels so fucking real. Have you ever seen a video of someone that you know for a fact (because it came out later) is lying on stand in court, or lying to a police officer or something? Or someone lying in a job interview? That's the kinda feeling I have. That I'm being perceived that way, even though I'm legitimately being genuine. And the reason why I feel that way? Because I have been viewed that way my entire life. Like I'm lying, like I'm cheating. Like I'm making excuses and calling what I do "legitimate", when really, I'm just making up an excuse to dick around and play on someone else's hard-earned dime. Like how I'm sure much of the older generation viewed people who got into the field of video games - either in broadcasting, playing professionally, or even development. They would worship Hollywood actors, even directors and shit. But people who worked on some of the most successful and innovative entertainment media in the history of mankind? They're "cheating". They're just "trying to get paid to sit on their ass and play games all day." Meanwhile, they go watch the Super Bowl, where grown men run around in tights and throw a ball across a field and hit each other trying to stop them from bringing the ball down the field... and they do this full-time, and get paid a literal fortune to do so. Figure that shit out.

I think people just want to make other people miserable. I think miserable people just want to make other miserable people miserable like them... or more miserable, to make them feel better about themselves. And it's a damn shame that so many people have felt it necessary to stomp on my dreams, my purpose... rather than helping lift me up and help me connect... simply because they gave up on their dreams.

I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's making me go from frustrated to sad. And the big wave of depression hits when... I bring in the fact that I've been "technically" unemployed for the past 10 years while I pursued all of this. And... it's been for nothing. I have no references, no friends, and no resume. I'm pretty all-in. So... yeah. Not fun when I feel that threatened, or when I'm told that it's just... not going to work.

I really need to let this go. It doesn't really contribute anything towards moving my life forward. It's just rehashing the same frustrations and yelling at the same old ghosts haunting my life.

Despite my upset with it yesterday, I spent most of the day on Twitch. Even watching that same streamer. Partially because I just couldn't really sit with my depression, partially because I didn't want my anxiety last night to "win".

I spent a good chunk of the evening trying to make music. Without success. There are barriers between me and my muse right now, which makes these times especially difficult to bear. At times when I could most use a creative product to demonstrate to myself "look, see this? You are talented, you are good at this, this is worth it, keep going." Those are the times I am most disconnected from my inspiration. Typically, at least. Sucks.

Anyway, here's my fuck you to my depression. Despite how absolutely emotionally shitty I felt all day, I played music for a long time, and I started and completed an ink piece. That's good. That's big. And I texted the family friend back and it was 100% fine, as predicted. So... today wasn't bad. It was actually... pretty on par, a pretty normal day. But man, getting trauma set off really makes it feel like I survived a fucking warzone today or something. Today felt like a fucking battle.

Ugh, okay, enough of that. I'm gonna move on to tarot for the night.

Past - Knight of Swords, inverted (Clarity from confusion. Rugged, fierce, determined, logical. Deliverer of answers, but frank to a fault.) Present - II: The High Priestess (The Subconscious. Spiritual enlightenment.  The power of unseen forces to manifest creation.  Ruler of the night and daughter of the Moon, so her work is often mysterious, hidden or unexpected.) Future - 0: The Fool, inverted (A new adventure.  Something new on the horizon.  A leap of faith.)

Man, I got that same pushback again. That whole... "I don't wanna do this" towards tarot. And the reasoning for that? I drew the same two cards I got yesterday, and I... reshuffled. Yep, I did. I never do that. But this time, I did. My inner skeptic came out and was just like... "inverted Page of Cups again, huh..." I have no idea how I can shuffle and cut a deck of 78 cards like 3 times and still somehow draw two consecutive repeat cards in the same position... So yeah, just putting that out there, because it made this new pull feel... "less genuine". But yeah, I'm just gonna move past that because it's really unnecessary stress.

The origin of this thread is the inverted Knight of Swords - a similar vein as the Queen of Swords from last night, but... more a rogue-like and inexperienced manifestation of it. Since it's inverted, this can be a blunt and possibly crude delivery of answers, that is not well received. Either rough delivery to me, or me delivering it and it going very poorly. That's just one action manifested by this symbol, what's really important is the... personality that comes through here. It's someone witty and determined, and it just isn't clicking? Something isn't going right with it?

That thread connects to... the High Priestess. The agent of the Subconscious, disciple of the Moon. She is the embodiment of a balance between the masculine and feminine nature; she is the gatekeeper of the soul, the mind and the heart. Pretty impressive resume, no? XD As far as I can see, she represents the influence of the Subconscious, being a transformative force in your life. Again, working through the power of the Moon, so... in mysterious and often confusing ways.

And that connects to... The Fool, inverted. The Fool is the symbol of new beginnings. The Fool has a connotation (you know, because they're a fool...) of being sorta, inept and aloof. The image is literally them walking off a cliff with their eyes closed. But it represents a leap of faith. For better or worse, a leap of faith, leaving the past behind and moving forward to a new adventure.

Now, to tie this all together. Something dysfunctional having to do with a smart, witty, confident persona... led to a spiritual enlightenment... but... this is enlightenment is delaying, or stalling, or even blocking the progression of a new adventure. For better or worse.

On a grand scale... I can see that narrative relating to my life. I used to be much more witty and confident and... rogue-like... I see a lot of that past part of my persona in this streamer I've been watching. Back in my late 20's, I was like that. And then... a combination of me trying to evolve into more of a homebody and then suffering great loss... it made me turn inwards, and invited me to connect with the Subconscious. And I did, for a long time. And it completely revolutionized how I perceive and live life, in totality. But the flip side to that coin... is that I deeply struggle to manifest that confidence that I used to have. I had the confidence to get on a plane to Las Vegas (for the first time ever) without a booked hotel room, banking on a stranger I only knew from chat rooms to let me crash in their room. Now that is a really clear demonstration of The Fool, right there! And hell, it was absolutely an adventure! But I've been struggling to manifest enough confidence to... go to the skatepark, when I'm the old guy there now. Or go for a walk into town, because I'm afraid I'll get robbed. And I feel like that's kinda... sabotaging... or stalling my ability to move on into a new phase of life.

And honestly? I don't know what that next phase is going to be. I think that's kinda the trouble. I think that's kinda been the trouble since the beginning. I want to be a trail steward, and also learn about permaculture and ancient lost Aztec farming techniques that we're just now starting to figure out, and I want to go on archaeological digs and find ancient relics, and make Zen Gardens (real ones), and make snowskating videos. I want to do all of it. Because life is short, and I don't want to waste my life chained down in a contractual obligation as a laborer. I have so much I need to do. And I want to share it all. I want to experience and learn and grow, and share that experience, tell that story. Just like I'm doing here.

Oh fuck. ... Am I a writer?

...

oh no...

I thought being an artist was rough.

Okay, that's enough existential crisis for one night. I gotta get to bed. It's nice and cool out tonight, a nice cool breeze has been wafting in all night. A welcome change after it being insanely hot and having the windows closed all day because they were spraying for bugs.

I think it might be time for me to bring meditation back into the picture, and maybe create a bit more space away from Twitch. Just for a bit. Not cold-turkey, because the shock of that might make this existential crisis much worse, but... dialing it back a bit. I need to find peace again. I'm noticing how frustrated and frantic my thoughts have been, and... I just don't think that's the best mindset to be in when making important life decisions. And... there's no rush!

Maybe I can go for a nice walk or something tomorrow, that could be nice. And gather some wood, if I can find any, to do some carving. That's been calling me lately. I have this idea of taking wood branches, or small stumps... and cutting them width-wise and hollowing out the top to make like... a cup? Like that shape. And carving the outsides decoratively, maybe adding in ink staining or even wood-burning for decoration, and then planting succulents in them. Or even little moss gardens or something, I don't know. I think it could be a cool idea.

Anyway, bed time. Bye.

[phaeton-flier]

Because most people have thousands of beliefs for which they don't have hard evidence but do have weak evidence or anecdata or whatever. Often this is fine because it's supported on priors ("I don't have rare disease X"/"There isn't a tiger in my closet"). The many times where it isn't, it's because they haven't had it pointed out to them explicitly; Few if any have the time to interrogate every belief they have, and even if you do you might not notice when you're missing data.

For housing in particular, a lot of people have the belief that building new housing raises prices via gentrification or whatever. Sometimes this is just what they've heard from people who spoke loudly and confidently. Sometimes it's because they lived in a place with rising rents, saw new condos being built with big price tags, and decided one caused the other. They may also say "Wait, if building housing lowers rents, why did mine raise when they built that new tower?",. And pointing out that the rise in demand and incomes in the area far outstripped the new housing stock is not dissimilar in style to making complex epicycles; It's incorrect but in fact everyone's arguments have hidden details.

So you could point out all of those things, then argue in a vacuum as if we had no evidence about what our beliefs on priors ought to be and what the default assumption should be. And everyone can get mad and argue over whose evidence is too flimsy to count as weak, etc. Mostly likely, people will stick with what they view as evidence, even if weak, because you can sorta make an argument in a vacuum about a lot of things.

Or we could just post the fucking data and get it over with. You don't always need a chart on hand, you can to another source. But going up a meta-level does not help if it's not needed.

Imagine spending an hour arguing over the likelihood of alien life and making small points about Great Filters and Evolutionary History and such, when have one and it's spaceship in your backyard.

I cannot imagine a dumber way to start a response. You do not have to hand it to him. You also don't need to get into weird meta-level null hypothesis arguments! Just post the fucking data!

[phoebosacerales]

hello! im always looking with respect at traditional astrologers, and the art feels super refreshing after years of thinking the only astrology there is is the popular stuff. im kind of interested in learning? but im also kind of unsure about how deterministic the aspects of it are?

one thing i enjoy about modern astrology is the ability to look at difficult houses and see the possibility of transformation within them. my 12th house north node and part of fortune are not things i consider curses. im overall hella fascinated by humans ability to evolve and heal. (though thats SO fucking rare even who people who try to. i know potential doesnt equal result) im thinking that traditional astrology might be the way it is because at the time people just truly had no way to become better in any way. if someone now is born poor they can work on my relationship with finances and eventually create a beautiful stable life for themselves, they can heal the relationship wounds caused by abusive families etc etc

what do you think? is it worth learning about traditional astrology if im going to have this type of approach?

Not all traditional astrologers are super deterministic. If you go to the medieval astrologers you'll see they were also dealing with magic, so they're examples of traditional astrologers who definitely weren't fully deterministic as well. I don't like determimism either and I've talked a little about this here. I'm more on a middle ground. A lot of the ancient hellenistic astrologers were stoics and believed in a very closed kind of fate, so they thought every little thing could be predicted, but this is not an inherent characteristic of the art, it was their own beliefs projected on it. Studying someone's techniques doesn't really require you to subscribe to their beliefs. A level of predictability also doesn't imply hard determinism. Otherwise all of us would be that, after all modern astrologers are also predicting by looking at the birth chart and telling what a person's life has been like.

Some idea of fate is still there in modern astrology even if the content on the internet will try to tell you it isn't, I believe some modern astrologers have too many contradictory beliefs because of this. And of course, it actually gets even more difficult to sell astrology and keep a following if you're going to tell people some disappointing stuff, so obviously modern evolutionary astrology is popular also because it's so "optimistic". And even if not done in bad faith, they're selling the idea that their service will be fundamental for you to get out of a bad situation, and that's a little scammy.

I don't believe your 12th house north node and part of fortune are curses either.* I myself have a 12th house Moon and north node, which is actually an eclipse, I have 5 out of 7 planets in bad houses that don't see the Asc, 2 of them also combust, everything in squares. The other 2 are Saturn, my malefic out of sect and Jupiter in fall in a cadent house ruling my finances. But still, considering the family I was born in, I'm in a very good situation compared to all of them. Despite difficulties, I'm one of the less than 1% of the brazillian population that is attending a public University (which is extremely competitive to get into, and they have the highest demand because of their quality), I have a high chance of actually finishing it and not dropping out. And that poor eclipsed Moon in the 12th with a malefic fixed star and the north node is the one ruling my 9th house and holding this up for me. I've seriously never seen an uggliest chart than mine, so I could never be the kind of astrologer who looks at a 12th house planet and already imagines the worse case scenario. And I've actually seen charts that looked kinda okay, but they were charts of people with very troubling lives.

I don't agree that today in general people have more oportunities to get out of poverty, because meritocracy is a monstrous lie. Life is difficult, some lives are more difficult than others and some people have more of a feeling of control than others. And there's an issue if you're telling everyone that they can do anything they put their mind to, when context actually makes things impossible, if that's just wishful thinking and simply not true. This does put pressure and blame on people to tell them that if they haven't achieved something that's because they didn't do enough "work". Some things you can't change, sometimes there isn't even enough time to understand and try to change things, so all you can offer is an ear. But I do also have an issue with the deterministic idea that tells people there's no way around things, that they should accept things the way that they are because that's the destiny their soul chose or whatever.

But the point is that you will fry your brain over the issue of fate vs free will forever and no type of astrology you study will give you an answer. This is an ages old dilemma in philosophy and any astrologer who tells you they found the answer by themselves through astrology is just mistaken and probably being a little arrogant.

*Just an observation: the nodes aren't really all that important in "western" astrology, much less their house placement. Modern astrology puts a lot of importance on them after appropriating from Vedic and the way this is done is really not good.

[ramune-raven-art]

strystks info + rules! + Master post/info dump/designs sprites

god that's a fucking mouthfull...

what are strystks???

they are an open species!! you can make one without my permission, I just need to be pinged and credited for the species themselves!

info on their habitat: imagine a planet full of nothing but oceans and trees, no land. whatsoever, the closest you'll get is semi shallow water.

their nights are a bit longer than days, and their days are pretty warm! ((not super hot though, imagine beach day warm))

they truley don't have a sleep schedule, just whenever they want really.

certain tree clusters do have "sleep hours" where everyone in the cluster at least has to lay down in their leaf beds/be quiet. literal quiet hours.

idk what else to write so here's some sprites!!!

--------------

first one, is the sea-scaled strystks.

they're incredibly common, seeing as they're essentially living fossils. strystks had a similar evolutionary pattern to most vertebrae on earth, they started off in the water, and climbed their way up. literally, they climbed trees.

the sea-scalers are usually the lower classes, they have a lot of issues being out of the water, but they can climb trees.

they have gills, fins, webbed hands and feet, their scales are somewhat slimy, and they almost always smell like fresh fish. they can shoot through the water like a torpedo with their strong tail and back legs.

these guys grow a sort of seaweed/kelp that their species eats. they also farm fish like the little dudes in Luca lol, speaking of, their feathers are more like kept strands than feathers. so they kinda look like the Luca dudes hair.

they eat seaweed and fish, their teeth are shaped in a way they can easily catch fish.

--------------

secondly, a tree-glider.

they can't actually glide, they're just called this because of how gracefully they can fling themselves from tree to tree.

these guys evolution wise are pretty new. they're only here cause strystks have already spent almost a million years in the trees.

they're incredibly rare, so if you wanna make one keep that in mind!

they have what the sea-scalers. lack, long claws keen for climbing trees, tails that can wrap around almost anything, patterns on their hands to let them stick to wood like a gecko, and more upper body muscle/muscle in general. they're STRONG. most tree-gliders dislike water.

they eat mostly fruits and whatever other animal lives in the tree with them. their teeth are like a baboons.

--------------

finally we got good ol'classic strystks

the middle ground of the two, and the most powerful.

they lost their gills, but still have their smooth scales and swimming muscles, but they also have the claws and strength to climb trees.

they unlike tree-gliders love water, they swim often, and they're the most technically advanced of the three.

truley there isn't much to say about these.

they're just strystks!

--------------

How advanced are they?:

tech wise, not much. they just have enough tech to play sburb.

their "tech" is organic like trolls/all tomorrows ((if you know you know))

it's usually algae/plants

--------------

here's a chart showing where on the class system certain colours fall.

while the strystks aren't as dystopian as alternia, they still have racial segregation

a class system based on colours.

it's been shifted a lot throughout the species run, but at the moment it's this!

in clusters full of different colours, they have this system in place! and it's quite upsetting for lower classes in areas where higher classes recently moved in. It basically makes it so the lower classes have to serve the higher classes, they are stronger and more ideal mates, so they have no choice truley. And as I stated, some places are dystopian. this is what creates those places.

--------------

that's about it for now!

[1ore]

you know what. fuck it. new alignment chart

From ‘Evidence for the Existence of Three Primary Strategies in Plants and Its Relevance to Ecological and Evolutionary Theory,’ by J. P. Grime

[ferylcheryl]

Three-Time

“Come, I’ll show you.” His hand extended.

“I don’t care to learn.”

“You just don’t want me to lead.” A quirked eyebrow, an incremental lift of the lips beneath his thick, neat mustache. How his eyes soften imperceptibly from sharpness to sly warmth. Cornelius rises to his feet.

“Once you learn,” Billy continues, “you can lead. Now, put your hand up on my shoulder—there—good. The waltz is a simple dance.”

“Where did you learn, then?”

“Never you mind. Now, this—”

“You’ll tell me one day.”

“Jesus, Cornelius. I may as well tell you now, else you’ll dog me to death about it.”

“Oh, I was just curious.”

“Please. I can see you turning green, ridiculous man. ‘Twas a neighbor girl. Taught me to amuse herself.”

“It’s certainly stuck well.”

“It’s—a nice, neat thing to know. I’d practice when I was alone.” This is true. In a hazy shaft of light in his garret bedroom, stooped so as not to strike his head, he’d sometimes trot a methodical box-step. It was neither the romance nor the grace of the thing, but its order; the mercy of its repetition. One might enter a space outside of time; each turn twin to the one before. It was as though there was always, somewhere, a room in which he might be found waltzing and he only had to step into it to meet himself there. (His mother characterized him as a lonely child, but she was wrong: he was a solitary one.)

“And when you weren’t alone?”

“Jealousy is unbecoming of you, Cornelius. You get a face like a kicked pup. All stung-looking and wide-eyed.”

“I’ll show you a kicked pup—I know a fine long greyhound could use a swift boot to the ribs.”

“Oh, darling. I’m not in the mood. And anyway, there’s no one else now, is there?”

“Is there?”

“As though you’d not trade me for that roustabout marine in a moment.”

“Not a bit, Billy. Truly.” He pauses, and then, his eyes dancing, “I do like a head of curls though.”

“The waltz,” Billy says sharply, sliding his hand down into the shallow tuck of Cornelius’ waist. “I step forward, like so—my left foot. And you, with your right, step back. Good. We move in three-time.”

“We’ve no music.”

“We’ll make the best of it. Three-time.”

———

Cornelius kisses the inside of his thigh, his knee, the freckled hillock of his shoulder, but nearly never his mouth. It’s not a gesture Billy misses until it’s Cornelius who doesn’t do it. Cornelius who talks of making him his bride when he’s hilt-deep in him, Cornelius who promises him wedding rings. It feels like so many coins thrown into a well.

Not that he doesn’t think he means it: but he’s a hard little man, and no matter what he wishes for it comes back to him as an echo, a splash.

Three-time. Their breath falls into three-time when they fuck, and Billy likes to imagine it as a kind of waltz. Parquet floor, heavy velvet curtains tied back with gold cord. A quartet playing. We’ll make do, he’d said, but to tell the truth he misses music terribly. He’d not heard it often but when one dances one should have it. He did not like things done in parts: when one fucks, one should kiss. When one kisses, it should be the upon the lips. And if men are to know each other they should do so wholly; they should be naked together. They should know one another’s bodies so they don’t mistake one another other for beasts. All Billy knows of Cornelius is his neat pink prick, its coppery nest, the luminous, dwarf-like handsomeness of his face. His hand, his boot.

Later, when he’s stripped for his lashing, Billy is astonished by Cornelius’ dense, clustered musculature. He’d thought he was all skin and bone under there, all rib and rope. Belly like a tea saucer. Instead, he’s compactly strong—sleek and rippling and certain, like a dog with a cruel master.

“Shh,” Cornelius hisses now, slowing the neat, hard pistoning of his hips. He’s got his hands spanned over the taut dip of Billy’s waist and now, as though to give teeth to his words, he clenches in with his nails. “Someone’s coming.”

There’s a shuffling step on the ladder, and then here’s Lt. Irving, peering into the dark with eyes smothered hot, like candles just blown out.

———

Lieutenant Irving has his hand on Billy’s knee as he tells him all about Cornelius Hickey, the devious seducer. What he says is not altogether true and it’s not quite false; like all fated things there was a compulsion to it that transcends blame. From the moment they met, Cornelius striking up conversation over a shared cigarette above board one of the fair, early days, it was clear what would happen. Yes, Cornelius had this way of looking at him, a gaze warm and sly and inviting, but Billy—Billy recalls moments of looking back at him the same way, heat in his cheek and his gaze (which he normally kept studiously shuttered) softening. He knew even as he gestured at resisting him that it would happen.

He’d dreamed, in those early days, of standing in a high open window, the wind singing at his knees and nose, tipping forward, forward. Or like this: the thing about waltzing in three-time is that the beat falls an eyelash short of time enough to execute the steps, so between the two partners vibrates this small, bouncing pull and if one will waltz at all one must move in this broken surging beat, even as, to untrained eye, it seems a stately and slow dance. It seems clear who is leading. But the dancers know better.

Not that any of this would matter to Irving. Irving asks what, exactly, they do together; how it works. He starts to sweat, leans in closer. His hand weighs heavy on his knee.

———

Tozer’s many things Billy’s not: muscular in a proto-masculine kind of way, one evolutionary step from pounding his chest in a jungle somewhere; he’s commanding in the grunting, stomping way of a beast too. His attractiveness is of the conventional kind—broad, milk-fed. A whiff of the rustic about him, as though despite his evident vanity one might faintly scent manure in the nooks of his body.

He’s also dumb. It pains Billy to think that that’s what Cornelius wanted all along, somebody lovely and stupid and easily cowed, for as much as he adores him he’d not be any of those things—especially the lattermost. Most infuriating are Tozer’s attempts to fake being the one holding the leash. One should not deceive oneself about the kind of man one is. Like out there alongside the boat, preparing for the walk-out. You’ve just given me permission for a good shove. Idiot. Billy nearly laughs aloud. But then Cornelius gives Tozer that disgusting up-and-down, charting the bulky sullen fact of him as he french inhales. Peacock. He never tried to court Billy so.

False, Billy chastises himself. Only after it was over between them did Cornelius slip that mysterious ring onto his finger, his eyes all dancing.

Later, huddled against one another in a tent beneath one blanket, Cornelius sees the ring around his neck. He lifts it to the light of the guttering candle, turns it in his fingertips. He can feel the scant, damp warmth of Cornelius breath on his lips and it is very nearly a kiss.

“I meant it when I gave you this, you know.”

“What, exactly, did you mean by it?” He makes his voice as glacial as he can manage for the roar of his blood.

“Well, for one thing, I’m sure Sol’d be a terrible dancer.”

“It’s too late for this.” <I>Too late. If you kissed me now you’d taste copper in my teeth.</I>

Cornelius cocks his head, smiles softly, lifts his mouth to Billy’s. A single, chaste glide of the lips.

“Dance with me, Billy,” he says, standing up and extending his hand.”

Billy thinks for a very long time before he drops his gaze to his knees. “Don’t be stupid, Cornelius,” he says. “We haven’t room.”

“We’ll make the best of it.”

Billy stands, stooping so his mouth grazes Cornelius’ hair. He lets Cornelius lead, and is touched he remembers the steps. They waltz a few tight rings, Cornelius humming off-key. Then he kisses him again and leaves the tent.

(In the morning, there’s a new bruise on Tozer’s neck, a plummy, amorphous shadow in the shape of an open mouth.)

———

In the dream they cling together tightly, their bones interlocked like key’s teeth and lock tumblers, and he can’t tell if they are in flagrante or in a mortal struggle or just pressed together against the cold, or maybe they’re just dancing in a crowded room: yes, that’s what they’re doing. They’ve got their quartet at last, their curtains with braided cord. But from the far end of the room comes dark like seeping watercolor, a rolling streaky blackness, and when he wakes it is not darkness at all but pain, pain, pain. A crystalline pinching in his knees and elbows. He goes to see Goodsir.

Rather, he goes to see the man he understands to be Goodsir. This man in their camp is not the awkward, genial stammerer who gave him his physical; not he who enthused over crustaceans with carapaces no man had seen before: he recalls him once pulling him aside to show him, waving one over-sized claw angrily, a crab with a shell the speckled cream and red of some kind of yardbird. Showed <I>him,</I> Billy, because he was there and he was brimming with love for it, this new quick thing caught in a bucket. (Billy had given him a tight smile and walked on, Irving’s bedding wadded and wet from the wash on his hip.)

Now with a gaze immeasurably indifferent, and a queer trace of pleasure in his voice, Goodsir delineates to Billy the agonies of his imminent death. Billy doesn’t mind. He deserves it because he did not love the crab, perhaps, or because he did love and choose badly, or because—his brain is fevered, his thoughts like: he can think of nothing. He stares emptily past the good doctor. He has never been vain, exactly (though he was once—it feels a lifetime ago—possessed of a certain fastidiousness that might be mistaken for vanity) but now he wonders if he looks as wretched as he feels. Carved, hollow: once he saw an egret’s ribcage predators and the wind had picked clean. For a moment he mouths at something, but then Cornelius is there.

He thinks of nothing as he gazes down at him, his eyes the color of surf, except perhaps—how lovely you are, little and glittering. And, I wish I’d kept you. Easy to say, now that Irving’s gone, one hopes, to his gracious and beloved maker. His bones turned up like broken china beneath the shale. Billy wonders, not for the first time if it wasn’t, in part, an act of vengeance—did Hickey care enough for such a thing? Then: Hickey’s eyes swim as he peers up at him, like, like: it feels like—dizzy, he feels, as Hickey disappears, for just a moment; when he returns it is with a knife neat through his ribs—what was it he felt when he looked in his swimming eyes that last time? It was pain, it was love, it was pain.

[leam1983]

I'm pretty sure even the Pope himself would have some choice words about the "Christians" who overturned Roe v. Wade or who'd maybe want to walk back progress made on LGBTQ and women's rights.

More below, got kinda steamed.

I'm an Atheist myself, but I remember my catechism. What Sunday School drilled into me - and what stayed - is that equanimity and compassion are powerful forces. Empathy is this wonderful force that has you course-correct not only based on your own well-being, but also starting with that of others! This shit is massive, and even YouTube Theist-dunkers more concerned with their theatrics than with debate would agree that human society is what it is because we have the capacity to care for others at a level no other animal in the known biosphere can match. We're not just driven by instinct or brooding drives, we can fully intimate why we feel what we feel and we can act accordingly in order to benefit others. From an evolutionary point of view, it's staggering.

What do the "Christians" say, though? Love the same God I do or burn in Hell. That's not empathy, that's bullying. Proper Theists live their creeds and display the grace and patience they ascribe to their god(s) of choice. You can respect that kind of posture on an intellectual level, and Atheists can reach the exact same ideological point by, you know, not being raging assholes. It's literally that easy!

The "Christians", though? Most of them are pitiable idiots fuelling Prosperity Gospels anyway, or mistaking politics for some sort of escathological ladder to climb.

Anyone can be spiritual, I have zero compunctions against those that are, as an Atheist; especially if their faith is a positive and structuring force in their lives. Where I draw the line is when fucking morons with spray-on tans and megamansion "temples" financed as part of their pyramid scheme confuse arbitrary dogma for well-informed policy.

What didn't stay from my Sunday School years was the belief that my local priest's lovey-dovey, positive, supportive and all-inclusive view of his deity of choice was in any way, shape or form a dominant gestalt.

There probably was a time that saw Catholicism and Christianity exist as solid forces for good and social progress, but that's been long past for ages, now. The leading doctrine is Evangelical almost worldwide, in the sense that these chucklefucks get all the press and media penetration - and theological moderates don't even have the spine to call these out for what they are.

If I were Pope, I'd chart a flight to one of Joel Osteen's megachurches, plug a mic in one of the place's numerous pulpit pickups - and then chuck that thing in a blender while it's running, Aphex Twin style. Then I'd probably have someone from the Swiss Guard torch their projection screen with a flamethrower. Jesus Sacking the Temple: Part Two, Electric Fucking Boogaloo.

genuinely hope to see the fall of christianity as a global power some day in my lifetime

belief on an individual level, whatever that's fine, but do not act as if christianity's influence and doctrine is not a heavy hand behind some of the most evil governmental decisions being wrought upon people at this very moment (anti-trans bills, don't say gay bills, roe vs. wade repeal, etc)

people who are not christian are being forced to live by christian standards and under christian rules and that isn't right

[marcelavenegas9-blog]

Hip Hop And R&B Surpass Rock As Biggest U.S. Music Genre

Electronic music is music which uses non-conventional digital instrumentation and sound manipulation expertise as the first musical backbone of a composition. The addition of those further notes added the flourish and trim associated with the styles of the time that were dominantly ornate. These musical ornaments grew to become much less of a function within the Classical period as composers strove for the purity of melodic line with balance and poise. The possible exception is the trill that was usually be used to show a performer's virtuosity in a efficiency and used to bring a bit of music to a rousing close. These are all subgenres. It's mainly rock that died out utterly and different music developments that phased out over time. I am glad dubstep is over, I like EDM but that shit is horrible. Classical music may be of several forms: Symphony, Sonata, Concerto, Suite, Cantata, Oratorio and so forth. These are either performed on devices resembling a piano or a violin or sung. boomblatin - Comedy rock in the '80s and '70s. Influenced by the digital music that perionted or significantly and hardcore punk, and various rock that emples metallic and bass dance music, and percussion people music produced to the music metal that started minimalist that always performed dinge pop music that folk music standard music widespread music, who the genre methods people, metal, blues, ond rock custom the more performent in the '70s on the '60s and '90s. It folks music.

In 1962, Ray Charles had more to supply nation music than nation music had to supply Ray Charles. For an R&B star with two latest pop chart-toppers to cross over into a genre typically thought of a industrial backwater with a niche rural viewers was a stroke of counterintuitive genius. As the wrestle for civil rights raged down South, this self-aware train in integration reminded fans on both aspect of the racial divide of their frequent musical roots. Yet by embracing the new string-laden Nashville Sound quite than wanting backward to the honky-tonks, http://www.audio-transcoder.com/ Ray's fusion was as trendy as the title promised, not simply increasing the viewers for country however increasing the concept of what nation may very well be for future musicians.

With Bowie, the clues were all there. However with Prince, you didn't really see it coming. Sure, there have been rumors of drug use and an emergency airplane touchdown , however his death on April 21 was a punch in the intestine. The greatest songwriter , performer , and musician of his era, Prince's music was as idiosyncratic and transgressive as pop music will get. Nobody wrote about fucking better than Prince, earlier than or since. To label Prince classic rock" feels sinful: Prince made Prince music, and Darling Nikki" is not exactly blowing up basic rock radio like Resort California." Prince fused a number of genres—funk, soul, R&B, and, sure, rock—without neatly falling into one category. But Prince also marked one thing of an evolutionary finish for rock music: After him, rock stars appeared backward greater than they did forward, and they definitely looked more to rock's own previous than they did to different genres.

Previous to the 1930s, the study of people music was primarily the province of students and collectors. The Thirties noticed the beginnings of bigger scale themes, commonalities, themes and linkages in people music developing in the populace and practitioners as properly, typically associated to the Nice Melancholy 24 Regionalism and cultural pluralism grew as influences and themes. During this time folk music began to become enmeshed with political and social activism themes and actions. 24 Two associated developments were the U.S. Communist Get together's curiosity in folk music as a approach to attain and influence Individuals, 25 and politically active outstanding people musicians and students seeing communism as a possible better system, via the lens of the Nice Depression. 26 Woody Guthrie exemplifies songwriters and artists with such an outlook.Narcocorrido first appeared within the 1970s earlier than going mainstream within the Nineties. Musicians often focus on cartels that get the most media coverage. So the extra the cartel's crimes make the information, the extra musicians honor these criminals in their songs. However, narcocorrido musicians often keep away from extreme glorification of the drug lords and cartels as a result of their felony competitors in the drug world might take offense. Other deaths have rocked the music world as effectively. Can any fan of hip hop or R&B every really get better from Aaliyah's dying in 2001? She was solely 22 years old when her aircraft crashed in the Bahamas, killing not only her but in addition eight others. This gifted musician died earlier than reaching the age of 40, and the world of R&B isn't the identical for her loss.Pop radio radically changed once more in 2013 and pop rock made a comeback. Electro-rock band Imagine Dragons and pop punk band Fallout Boy enjoyed success on both various and pop radio. Indie, folk, and country impressed music achieved pop success as did R&B and funk. The visualization is sort of revealing, and offers us a good sense of A) what musical aspects are mentioned within the evaluations (e.g. what sonic or other musical qualities are deemed related to describe in a music evaluate?) and B) how these music descriptions differ throughout the varied genres.In dance band mento, dwelling-made instruments were changed by skilled saxes and clarinets and basses. Usually, banjo was left behind in favor of electrical guitar. Along with clarinet, piano was often a featured instrument, because the music became overtly jazzy. Percussion was much less rustic, and typically had a Latin feel. Almost all of the rural fashion's rough edges had been smoothed out. Within the Sixties, a calypso inflection was usually heard in city reggae, changing the jazz sound. Dance band mento appears to have largely died out by the 70s, while the unique rural type continued. Nonetheless, the musicians of this type of mento contributed vastly to the jazz that was such an necessary component of ska.cassette. In 1989, two Jolly Boys CDs appeared on the American Ryko label. This was followed by a number of more CDs on non-Jamaican labels. Though none of those releases are in print immediately though some are coming again in print. See the information web page., they must have finished properly enough to point out that there was a marketplace for mento. Different releases adopted. A Lititz Mento Band CD was launched out of Germany, which may be defined by the fact that Jamaica is a popular vacation destination for Germans. A 1997 The Buzzing Birds CD was launched solely in Japan, the place they're loopy for Jamaican music, and mento seems to take pleasure in a small but dedicated fan base. In 1997, the ultimate Jolly Boys CD, a reside set recorded in 1992, was launched in Japan only.Undergraduate college degrees in music, including the Bachelor of Music , the Bachelor of Music Schooling, and the Bachelor of Arts (with a serious in music) usually take about 4 years to finish. These degrees provide college students with a grounding in music concept and music historical past, and lots of college students also examine an instrument or study singing technique as part of their program. Graduates of undergraduate music packages can search employment or go on to additional examine in music graduate packages. Bachelor's degree graduates are additionally eligible to use to some graduate packages and skilled faculties exterior of music (e.g., public administration , business administration , library science , and, in some jurisdictions, teacher's faculty , legislation school or medical school ).

[adapembroke]

This is your brain on Saturn.

If you’ve decided to try out the first sentence of this post, you’ve probably heard of the Saturn Return, the time in your life when all of your friends have become immature assholes, no corner of your apartment is suitable for Instagram, and you can’t stand telling one more customer to wait until the light turns green before inserting their card. 

This post is about that time, but it’s also about other times when Saturn enters your life--when it passes over your Sun, maybe, or calls up Pluto and suggests that breaking up with your SO the day after your mom died is the best thing, really, for making you a functional human being. 

Right now my partner and I are having big Saturn transits. Saturn is currently aspecting my Moon and Pluto (after giving up on my Saturn return... then my Sun... Saturn transits don’t ever actually finish. They just sigh and walk away.), and it’s aspecting my partner’s pretty-much-everything, so I thought it might be a good time to give a glimpse into what a Saturn transit looks from the inside.

How it feeeeeeeels...

It’s Saturday afternoon as I write this. Right now, my partner and I are at a coffeeshop. They are doing the big headphones on the ears while coding thing, and I’m writing this post while thinking that this beepy 80s music sounds about like how my insides feel right now. I am drinking a drink with lots of espresso in it, which is fantastic because I never drink coffee, and I was up at 6 AM after going to bed at 1 AM because I woke up with an idea for a lecture that I just had to make a note about. Two hours and eight sticky notes later, the sticky note pad was empty, so I dragged my ass out of bed, and went to my office to get more sticky notes, intending to go back to sleep when my brain was empty. 

Four hours, 2,369 words, and a Tarot reading for a nice person with an ex who really needs to apologize later, I had a lecture on the Empress Tarot card that I had scheduled myself to start thinking about on Monday. Pleased with my shockingly unexpected productivity, I woke up my partner. 

My partner came out of their room rubbing their eyes while I covered my eggs with Sriracha hoping the pain would turn me into a human, and we did the, “How are you?” thing...after I shoved my laptop in their face and insisted that they See What I Did and listen to a very inspiring slam poem and see this hilarious tumblr meme. (I’m Leo rising, and they have a Leo sun, and we both have Mars in Gemini. This is how we do.)

“I’m depressed,” they said. 

“But you’re depressed all the time lately,” I said. “I know you have a Scorpio moon, but that Leo sun has got to be in there somewhere, doesn’t it?”

(Yes, this is actually how we talk.)

“Well, I’m not really depressed,” they said. “I want to be working on The App. But I’m so tired. I pretty much do nothing else but work on The App and work on work-work, and the sun is out, and I’m afraid that if I don’t get out in the sun, I’m going to be actually depressed, but I can’t think about anything else.”

“Let me see your chart,” I said. They dutifully pulled Astro.com up on their weird not really a phone thing with that sigh particular to people who live with doctors and astrologers, and I looked at it and shook my head and said, “It’s just what I thought. You have Saturn everywhere.” 

“What does this mean?” my partner asked.

“Well,” I said. “Steven Forrest says that when you’re going through a Saturn transit, you have a choice between being depressed and being exhausted.”

“What do you think I should do?” they asked. 

“Well, I’m going through a Saturn transit, too,” I said. “I got five hours of sleep last night, and I have this great idea for a post about Saturn, and I really should do my daily quota of readings. I only did one this morning, and I promised Odin I’d do four readings a day (except when [stuff] because you don’t make a promise to Odin and forget the “except when [stuff]”), and I’ve got this super-long lecture to write on the astrological signs that is getting kind of tedious, so I should probably get on that before I rewrite my syllabus. Again. Do you want to go to a coffeeshop and work?”  

Why the hell would Saturn anyone think this is a good idea?

Saturn is a little bit like that coach who knows exactly what you’re capable of and drives you to ride the limits of your endurance every moment of practice. Saturn is the part of you that says, “Alright. You’ve been saying that you’re going to write an astrology book for six minutes now. It’s about time you got on that. You have five minutes and fifteen seconds to get that done.” 

Other Saturn maxims are...

There is no time but the present, so you’d better do it now.

“Yes” is always the right answer. Until you reach your limit. Then stop.

Death is the final limit. Except you believe in life after death, so there’s no reason to stop now.

You don’t know what you’re capable of until you throw up.

If you were more spiritually evolved, you would be concentrating instead of humming “Beat It” and glaring at the Gemini woman who won’t stop talking about basketball.

Saturn transits are the things you’re really glad you went through in retrospect. Because if you’re thinking about a Saturn transit, it means it’s over now, and you’re sure, if you think about it for a minute, you can think of some kind of pithy cliche about building character. 

Or if you claim to be some kind of evolutionary astrologer, you can point to your chart and say, “Well, until Saturn passed through my House of Home, I moved every sixth months, and since that transit, I’ve finally gotten to the place in my personal evolutionary journey where I have the patience to spend five years with the same squealing ceiling fan in the laundry room whose switch I always bump when I’m carrying a load of laundry.” 

When I’m not going through a Saturn transit myself--I’ve been in a Saturn transit since I started studying astrology-- I expect I will say all of this in a serene astrologer voice that assures you I’ve been there and understand and know that everything is going to be okay. This is what I think because that is the voice every astrologer I’ve ever heard uses whenever they talk about Saturn. Until that happens, I’ll write about Saturn on the internet, and you all can supply the serene astrologer voice for your damned selves.

(Did you know that there are some astrologers who think that it’s totally weird that if you say Saturn really fast it kind of sounds like Satan?)* 

How do you know if you’re having a Saturn transit?

If you are between 27 and 30 years old (or in your 50s or 90s...in which case, I should probably tell you this isn’t Facebook...), you’re almost definitely going through your Saturn return. Some astrologers say that Saturn returns last from 27-35, but that’s cheating.

Another way to tell if you’re having a Saturn transit is find a chart of the moment. (There’s one on the front page of astro.com.) Look for the symbol that looks like a 5 that can’t quite get its shit together in the list and note the number just to the right of it. Then look at your chart and look for any planets that have the same number or +/- about 5. If you do, you’re fucked Saturn has your number I’m sorry.

* You just whispered “Saturn...Satan” in your head, didn’t you?

[botanyshitposts]

this post is almost at 10,000 notes now and so far the tags are gold, here are some highlights: 

-people asking me to please stop calling endosymbiosis vore 

-bio people confirming that endosymbiosis actually is vore and that im not wrong

-bio people saying that endosymbiosis actually is more oviposition than vore because chloroplasts and mitochondria started as infections of the host cell, not with eating. unfortunately this is true and i was unaware of it. thank you all for correcting my sexual innuendos for scientific accuracy

-people saying that this is more for plants than animals, which like, i am a plant science person on a plant science blog, but that doesn’t mean that animals can’t do some of that crazy ass shit too (case in point: a set of 5 species of salamander i learned about last night that actually trade their genes between each other in such completely unlawful and inexplicable ways that they’re collectively called the ambystoma laterale jeffersonianum complex and like, you know ur genetic hoarding and trading is off the charts insane when the best descriptor zoologists can manage to give you is ‘complex’. animals who pull shit like this are apparently called Kleptons, meaning that they like, literally just steal genes from other species and incorporate it into themselves and their offspring. i’m a plant person and therefore don’t know enough on this topic to really talk about it much, but if someone else with more knowledge could elaborate, that would be great?)

-biologists, fellow bio majors, scientists, researchers, etc sadly confirming the information provided on the dumper fire as well as adding some other things i neglected to add (such as telomeres, siRNA, and the fact that large portions of our genomes are actually prehistoric viral strands that infected us at one point at another and then accidentally broke and got integrated to the point where they’re basically indistinguishable from the rest and don’t do anything, among others) as well as some of the scientific names of what i was talking about (in order: Transposons (aka TEs if you want to be super fancy), heterochromatin/DNA methylation, and endosymbiosis! the rest are kind of broad reoccurring themes that can have a lot of names based on the situation)

-biologists, fellow bio majors, scientists, researchers, etc talking about some of the other crazy ass shit that casually happens that isn’t mentioned in the post

-a very small number of people defending DNA’s crimes

-a surprising amount of people comparing DNA to a bethesda game based on my description and like, they aren’t wrong

-people informing me that 5 BCE is actually much later than i implied, as in like, humans had civilization and stuff and were doing things in 5 BCE. what can i say, do i look like a history major to u

-my friends pleading with me personally to stop

-people having to tag this as ‘vore mention //’ 

ive learned a lot from watching the tags on this post in general as people talk about how weird DNA is but a couple of my fave sets of tags so far:

-from @lenniershairlessballs:

#we've actually been introduce to p much all of this except the evolutionary size changes even in community college and yeah it's pretty great! like when I was in my first bio class a year ago and I went into the science resource center and asked the main dude there if transposons ever inserted themselves into telomeres and he sort of did this blinky fish face for a second and then was basically like '/fuck/ I hope not good god that could fuck things up' (spoilers: transposons totally insert into telomeres sometimes I found articles) SCIENCE dna

-from @cosmicmedic talking about the existence of A-DNA, B-DNA, and Z-DNA:

#endosymbiosis is absolutely vore; also can we talk about how there's a kind of DNA that's coiled the wrong way; you can't do shit with it and it can't get unraveled; Also! the biologically active kind of DNA isn't even the primary kind of DNA (DNA-A) it's DNA B!; who! came up with this shit!;

how are we still alive

[betadunsparce]

Hey, so a couple times in the past couple weeks I’ve seen a few post saying things like that saying “t. rex are birds” and “dinosaurs are birds” is scientifically inaccurate. I want to clarify on this because while these post are correct, they don’t elaborate on the misconception that is the root of this problem.

So for the first point, saying t. rex are birds.: yeah, that’s a stretch and it isn’t really taxonomically correct to say. While the T. Rex DID probably have feathers, as well as scales (feathers are highly adapted scales, so its also possible it had an intermediate, we’ll likely never know), its one of the most genetically distinct dinosaurs from birds. As a graph in one of those post I saw shows:

now if you know how to read evolutionary trees, this is an easy one. The dinosaurs did not “evolve” into birds, at least not the vast majority of them. They share a common ancestor, with the common ancestor of T. Rex and modern birds being the most distant (among ceoelurosaurs, which does not include all  dinosaurs. Here’s a better chart showing all types of dinosaurs, along with the current scientific consensus on which ones had feathers).

Just by looking at the family tree, it is obvious that T. Rex did NOT descend into birds, which is where a lot of the anger comes from, as the telegraph article this graphic is from is titled something like “How T. Rex evolved into birds” (seriously guys don’t take Telegraph as a legit source, its trash).

BUT, and this is a big but, while calling dinosaurs birds because a good portion of them had feathers is obviously wrong, birds ARE dinosaurs, and this distinction is very important to make and one of the biggest problems with modern taxonomy stems from this fact. If you were to look at an expanded family tree:

This one is pretty simple, but is accurate and contains all the information I need to make my point. In the grand scheme of evolution, dinosaurs and birds, as well as crocodilians, are all fairly closely related. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. But the problem? Taxonomically, dinosaurs and crocodiles are considered reptiles (Class Reptilia, as opposed to Class Aves to which birds belong), but they are much more closely related to birds than the “classic” reptiles (snakes and lizards). The entire idea that dinosaurs (and also crocodilians, but that’s more of a personal issue for me than a common issue) are birds comes from the fact that it’s more accurate than calling them reptiles.

That is unless, you also call birds reptiles (which is what most modern taxonomist do). And while that is the simplest solution, it is not without its problems. This tn puts the Classes of vertebrae on uneven footing, as mammals are ALSO decedents of things that we call reptiles! So if we’re applying things evenly, then mammals are ALSO in the Class Reptilia rather than the Class Mammalia. This would make the meaning of the reptile class almost meaningless, as it would simply mean “not a fish or amphibian.”

We could take birds and dinosaurs, as long as crocodiles while we’re at it, and put them in their own class, and that would be a “better” solution, but it doesn’t address the two core problems:

1) the current taxonomic system is broken. Rather than overhaul it, however, scientist have opted to try and “patch” it with the term clade, which is essentially a grouping of animals that means whatever scientist need it to mean at the moment. The reason for this ineloquent solution really boils down to the second reason here:

2) people would go fucking apeshit if we did any of the ideas listed here. Remember how mad people got when Pluto was reclassified as a “minor planet” due to its size and negligible gravitational pull? Any solution listed here would be much, much worse in the public eye. If taxonomist formally declared birds as reptiles, we would get “Oh so now birds aren’t important anymore? Things were so much better when birds were a thing. Now they don’t exist.” If we called crocodiles, dinosaurs, and bird their own class, we would get “How can scientist say crocodiles aren’t reptiles! They have scales! These eggheads need to GO OUTSIDE and look at a crocodile!” And even scientist aren’t immune to this type of thing. My biochemical evolution professor, having been a biologist since at least the 50s, always talked about how his colleagues were opposed to reforming taxonomy to fit with new knowledge of genetics being discovered at the time, saying they would have to “reteach King Henry” and that it wasn’t worth it. And these were microbiologist!! All these problems are a million times worse in bacterial taxonomy, for reasons too complex to add on to the end of this post. We have a pretty big problem saying “we were wrong about science and we’re gonna fix it now” because people don’t really want to learn new things they think they already know. And that’s not a “stupid people” problem. Its a problem we all fall into and have to actively work against.

All I’m saying is that if someone says that dinosaurs are birds, don’t get mad at their ignorance. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and the simple fact that they’re saying that means they’re at least trying to stay up to date on modern science. Just explain that’s kinda true, its more birds are dinosaurs.

Unless its a news site. They should know better, and they do, they’re just doing it for clicks. Fuck them.

[trad-masculine]

Don't want this to come across as combative or aggressive, just in that mindset today more than I'd want to be putting these thoughts to words. Hopefully what I want to say here comes across as the art I want it to be, and not the reaction I felt that combusted me into bringing it to words.

My core thought on free will is the fully metaphysical thing some people obsess over doesn't matter, reality is how it is, we evolved to be adapted to that reality. But experientially it matters a lot whether I can direct my navigation through the world, or if it is entirely determined by priors that can't adapt & evolve.

To me the future is obviously and inherently emergent, evolutionary. The present is a ship, the past the wake. We can steer the ship. We can see an island ahead and navigate around it, or land for water, food and repairs.

That's free will. Not whether or not the ship is constrained by wind direction. Or if the mechanisms of navigation and sailing are technically explicable. Or that we cannot simply will the ship to change direction, but indtead have to master sailing her and navigating the world.

Tacking into the wind is a lot harder than running with it, but it is still possible. We are not blown about purely by the whims of the world, with no agency to choose a direction as we see fit. What we see, and what we consider fit are constrained by the world, but not wholly determined by it. That determination is up to us.

I care that my ship is not adrift, and that the act and effort of steering it can shape its course, not that my navigational prowess is limited by my charts and ability to see the island ahead of me.

Saying that the island ahead forces the sane navigator to change course, thus there is no free will, only deterministic islands forcing effective routes, misses the entire point.

I can stop on the island, party, take on supplies, enjoy the beauty of it, smell the roses, and have a crew that's more engaged and willing to sail faster and better.

My ship is not adrift, nor is its, even optimal, course determined by the islands of constraint, those islands are infact where life emerges unpredictably. In a chaos theory sense of the unpredictable pendulum, but also in a deeper recursive emergence sense, the future is always recompiling, never deterministic, always recalibrating itself to itself. The islands are alive, teeming with life, just as I and my ship are!

The best way to predict the future is to make it. That is free will. Or it should be, if we're trying to build a sane psychological model of ourselves in the world. We have a recursive relationship with the world, the environment we're in writes part of our behavior, but we can recognize this and adapt our environment & our relationshipto it, and with effort even change our behavior regardless of environment.

If that's not meaningful free will, the term free will is entirely misappropriated and has become linguistically useless, and we need to invent a term for whatever the fuck it is I just described and make that thing sacred, because that thing is the thing we all find transcendent and profound when we use freewill as an assertion of beauty, life and agency in the face of a terrifying and awe inspiring world, felt down to the root of our existence.

Everything humans do is linked back to stimuli, I think, which some people say means we don't have free will, but we've developed the capacity to find doing things intrinsically rewarding because of something linked to our ability to do them in the first place. Making art is rewarding because you made it and you can decide what it will include, what colors and ideas and stuff and you can look at it and be like I made that. pleasure in having done something is linked to the possibility of having not done it. we get the reward chemicals from our own self-efficacy which is like...paradoxical unless our choice is entirely illusory. BUT if we get programmed to have a positive response to things we perceive as our own free choice, it feels like that makes it possible for us to actually have free choice