Drowningworms - Drowning Worms

None of this stuff is serious or complete and it all comes with a huge helping of "perhaps" and a grain of salt.

Nothing here should be taken as the final word on anything. No matter how sure of myself and arrogant I may sound. I know most of this stuff I write is silly or off-kilter or flawed in major ways.

So don't look for the flaws. You will no doubt find them. Look for what is new, different, insightful, creative, revolutionary, outrageous, or true. Try to understand the ideas and test those. Maybe each blog entry, as a whole, is a wreck for you. But there will parts that are treasures for you.

It ain't all that earth-shattering or revelatory to the world either, just to me at the time.

We are all becoming and we all figure things out or learn things at different times in our lives and often independently of others. Sometimes we really are the first person to think of an idea. Usually not. There are over 5000 years of recorded human thought and at this very moment there are around 8 billion other people. There is going to be a lot of convergent thinking going on. And a whole lot more of me hearing things sometime somewhere but forgetting where I heard it from (because I am a very curious and highly educated person who's been around and thinking for a longish time and it's hard to keep track of where all the shit in my head came from and which I created) from others or getting bits and pieces others worked on first and I had heard/read and then put a few things together in my head thinking it was all me.

So I don't promise they will all be new ideas. But they will all be new ways of looking at them. And I do think you'll find a few real originals in there as I transfer stuff from my gmail drafts over to this.

If I have a weird-ass idea or loving take on things that changes the world for the better, God bless it. But mostly I'm just here to share what my brain spit out for our mutual shits and giggles.

Even if I think there might be some really good stuff buried in there for anyone to find if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to understand.

if you have a long beak it must feel sooo good to hold a little red fruit in it

bell hooks mentioned going through a time in her life where she was severely depressed and suicidal and how the only way she got through it was through changing her environment: She surrounded her home with buddhas of all colors, Audre Lorde’s A Litany for Survival facing her as she wakes up, and filling the space she saw everyday with reinforcing objects and meaningful books. She asks herself each day, “What are you going to do today to resist domination?” I also really liked it when she said that in order to move from pain to power, it is crucial to engage in “an active rewriting of our lives.”

does anyone know what i came in here to post

Followers of the mother goddess Cybele were famous for whipping themselves into religious ecstasies. Modern historians love to use the word “orgiastic” to describe her worshippers and their rituals.

One of the stories associated with Cybele is that of Attis, a shepherd whose love for Cybele was so great that he castrated himself under a pine tree in a fit of religious enthusiasm and died. Many of the rituals associated with Cybele attempted to recapture both the intensity of Attis’ devotion and the bloodiness of his act.

All this struck the normally staid Romans as a bit too, well, eastern. They tended to look down on the Persians, Egyptians, and so forth as too emotional, too effeminate, and too undisciplined.

Powerful Romans worked to mainstream Cybele, turning her from a wild mother of nature into a placid Roman matriarch. Cybele was incorporated into less intense new rituals — games, animal sacrifices, that sort of thing — orchestrated by powerful Romans; her priests were not invited to these events. The wild rites associated with her seem to have faded away over time.

Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, was especially interested in using Cybele. Though he had overthrown the Roman Republic, he positioned himself as a traditionalist, someone who would bring back “traditional” Roman values. In doing so, he promoted a vision of Cybele as the “Magna Mater” — the great mother of Rome. She was now portrayed as a virtuous Roman matriarch, often without her lions:

Here’s another Roman depiction from around the same time, which attempts to incorporate all of the symbolism associated with Cybele. We have the lion, which signifies her power over nature; a cornucopia, symbolizing her role in providing abundant harvests; and her crown, representing her role in protecting Rome’s cities.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

Medium

The Strange Journey of a Blood-Soaked Mother Goddess

Cybele’s transformation from wild mountain mother to Roman matriarch

The two best reasons to get into fossils are booping trilobites and getting to say the word "fossiliferous" a lot.

Fossil [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball is holding two pieces of rock in a paleontological site. Megan, Ponytail and White Hat are in the background.] Cueball: It's weird to pry open a rock and see an animal that no one has laid eyes on for 400 million years.

[Zoom in on Cueball looking at the fossil he is holding.]

[Cueball pokes the fossil.] Cueball: Boop! Off-panel voice: Hey! Don't boop the trilobites!

Recognizing propaganda and reminding yourself why it is BS does a huge amount to reduce the effectiveness of propaganda.

But, let the reader be aware, this does not make propaganda ineffective. It still works. It just takes longer. Some people fight it better than others. But for the average [White] American, the time we are 40 or so, we internalize too much of it find ourselves falling asleep into the American Dream and identifying with White upper middle class suburbia, status quo, the cops, American Empire, Capitalism, and billionaires.

shoutout to my best buddy in highschool who once told me "you speak like how tumblr users write their textposts" and i was mortified for a second but then realization hit me and i rebutted with "wait how do YOU know how tumblr users write their textposts???" and we were both like