nothing Soup

I cannot believe I have to say this but you HAVE to learn about plants on a scientific level if you use herbs in spell crafting. It’s for SAFETY reasons. You CANNOT BURN CERTAIN HERBS and you cannot touch or consume certain herbs. You NEED to know this for every herb you use- it’s not a pick and choose thing you guys it’s SAFETY. ESPECIALLY to my chronically ill witches and practitioners like myself.

Please stop throwing herbs into a fire bc you saw some tiktok witch do it. PLEASE.

Seriously. Once I saw a tiktok that with a cute little New Moon Spell™ which involved dressing a candle with HEMLOCK.

Y'know, that very witchy #aesthetic sounding plant to create the mood, which can easily kill you just from handling it with your bare hands let alone BURNING it INDOORS to release highly toxic gas into your home. Fortunately on Tumblr, people jumped onto that post and shut it down almost immediately, but someone new without a lot of plant knowledge could reasonably have just seen the spell, thought hemlock really captures the feel of witchcraft they're looking for (if they've heard its toxic, it's fine as long as they don't consume it, right? Right?) and later caused SERIOUS injury.

Thats an extreme example, but it's a real one. Know your dang plants.

The problem is these prepper folks don't want communes, with resource sharing and democratic decision making. They want independent fiefdoms where they can be absolute dictators over their immediate families.

Important anti-cult sentiments in the tags

Honestly, abruptly transitioning from 90% of the population being directly involved in food production on some level to less than 10% has had really devastating results

Before anyone decides on the wildest possible interpretation of this, I'm not saying everyone has to be a subsistence farmer—technology has advanced to the point that this just isn't necessary—but it's the small farmers that are innovating and implementing new ideas to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss, large scale industrialization of farming causes so much pollution and carbon emissions, and the disconnection between "producers of the food" and "consumers of the food" has caused some absolutely grotesque inefficiencies to enter the system

Like, supposedly 40% of food waste happens on the consumer side. Meanwhile crops are being fed to pigs and chickens.

The whole point of keeping a pig is that they can eat your food waste. The food waste problem and the animals eating human edible crops problem have the same solution

I'm rabidly pro-locally-produced-food even though I know it's not automatically less carbon-producing (locally produced beef still has an outsized impact in terms of carbon emissions and resources) because That's Not The Point

Okay, the point ultimately is communities transitioning toward feeding themselves as much as possible instead of depending on massive companies that don't give a shit if you live or die

But the point re: sustainability is that food systems are so horribly inefficient on a gigantic scale, and our problems mostly come from 1) trying to maximize profit and efficiency on a gigantic scale and 2) consumers and producers of food being so separate that it's not a cycle anymore. Instead of a reciprocal relationship that feeds itself, it's now just horrendous amounts of waste spewing at both ends

e.g. leaves being bagged up and sent to landfill in suburbs while in agricultural areas topsoil is severely depleted and we have to pollute the hell out of waterways to fertilize the agricultural fields

i was about to joke about how my political stance is “end lawnmower culture” but then it occurred to me that i actually Am against lawns as suburban status symbols and wastes of land that Could be used to sustain native flora & fauna and grow food for people, but no, instead they are these huge useless swaths of land that need Constant maintenance, the process of which is not only destructive, but Incredibly Loud

You know that actually is the purpose of a lawn? They started as a trend of the French monarchy - the ones revolutionaries beheaded for being self indulgent assholes.

It exists purely as a status symbol that says, “I have land but I don’t have to use it for anything productive. I can invest time, money and resources in maintaining an entirely useless crop on land I’m not farming just because it looks pretty.”

Lawns offend me.

Why have that stunted golf course in front of your suburban house if you can’t even water it? Get one of these instead.

Unite Against the Lawn

Pro tiny house, anti grass lawn. Prioritize practicality.

This is actually really interesting because back in the 1950s and 60s in Australia when we started getting large waves of Southern European migrants one thing the Italians and others would often so is buy a little suburban home, then tear out the ornamental flower beds and lawn and useless trees and plant fruits, vegetables, grapes and even olives. It was considered completely scandalous by their Anglo-Saxon neighbours because lawn was considered an aspirational thing and the ideal was to go from not needing a kitchen garden and having an ornamental garden to show how well you were doing.

#WE HAVE TO OVERTHROW THE HOA FIRST THO#BC YOU’LL GET FINED OUTTA UR HOUSE FOR LAWNS LIKE THAT (via @cutiegoraptor)

I have always wondered why on earth people in poor neighbourhoods in the US don’t grow vegetables in their “garden”… They have nothing there, there are no places nearby to buy good vegetables and in most of the US the weather would make it very easy to maintain. 

Any family in Russia has a vegetable garden to have good quality vegetables during winter and here in Spain and other places in Europe it is now fashionable to grow vegetables in your terrace or with some neighbours… If I had a house like that, I would grow the hell of a vegetable garden!

Many do in rural areas where poor people actually own land, outside city limits where you can’t be fined or punished for it.

But gardening has a reputation for being very difficult, and l suspect the reason is this: a turfgrass lawn is incredibly destructive to the soil. It creates compacted, concrete-like dirt with a dusty mineral odor instead of the lush, alive smell of real topsoil.

Raking and landfilling leaves is additionally destructive; it steals away nutrients that would be returned to the soil and causes the ground to starve over time.

People try to till up a patch of grass that’s been lawn for decades and when they can’t grow anything, they blame gardening as a concept.

Permaculture memes for all the permies out there

You weren’t at that protest. Neither were your friends and allies. You weren’t seen there because neither you nor your friends were filmed. You couldn’t be seen because you dressed exactly the same as all your allies, and you sure as hell didn’t let the cameras see your face. You practice digital hygiene. You go above and beyond the security you assessed the situation requires. You knew your cause was about more than clout, and you fought right because you knew that. When people asked you questions, you say you weren’t there. Hell, you didn’t even know there was a protest that day. You don’t use your real name. You know the state isn’t on your side, and you know it can’t ever be. You know your rights and you make sure your arrestors know you know them. You stay on your feet. You know your exits. You know their tactics and you know how to counter them. You trust your marshals and you read the situation. You defer to those with more experience. You protest right, and you keep fighting until you secure the rights that keep you alive and able to fight for someone else, another day.

“Most of the people who do this are Christian. But their approach to Christianity is very animist.”

“They believed that their ability to use plants and prayers to heal the sick was a gift from the Divine.“ 

this is a really cool ethnobotany thing like…..amazing

@white pagans especially those from the south east you should be trying to keep this practice alive cause it is in very real danger of dying out instead of trying to snatch other people’s work.

Go to your roots.

My number one top recommendation for people interested in hoodoo when it’s closed to you is to check out other American folk magic traditions! This is a perfect example of a beautiful tradition that has many commonalities with hoodoo but is completely open for anyone to learn and study (:

imagine if you were like thinking about going to college and then some genius alien just abducted you and gave you the most confusing but luxurious lifestyle your little brain could imagine and then you weren't released until you were a brilliant killing machine

*gives you a foxglove* *gives you a nightshade* *gives you a devil’s trumpet* *gives you a moonflower* *gives you an oleander* *gives you a lily of the valley* *gives you a hydrangea* *gives you wisteria* *gives you a buttercup* *gives you a daffodil* *gives you an iris* *gives you elder berries* *gives you a

please slow down I can only eat so fast

From this nutritional guide for Inuit mothers, it’s pretty cool that such a guide was written specifically for their traditional food sources but now I definitely want to eat a seal a lot more than I previously ever considered

I want to make people see how much has been taken away from them.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Welcome to the Earth! It's beautiful! It's full of life! More things are real and beautiful and alive than a single person could imagine!!!

Look, I'm going to tell you some flowers native to the United States that you didn't know about

Ovate False Fiddleleaf, Rosy Twisted-Stalk

Cross-Leaf Milkwort, Blue Flowered Coyote Thistle

Gaywings, Michaux's Bluet

Redtwig Doghobble, Brook Saxifrage

Swollen Bladderwort, Two-Leaf Miterwort

I will happily keep going

Come get your healthy dose of Kelloggs asthma cigarettes

Oh, worm?

Look at what they’ve taken from us

#imagine smoking one of those right after having a good old original coca cola

Thats... Actually not a bad idea? Like obviously not everyone owns a tent but it isn't terribly hard to get your hands on a cheap one (atleast in the us). The weather rating on tents has more to do with how they withstand the elements (how wet can they get) than how insulated they are. You probably wouldn't want one that's mostly mesh, but otherwise just about any tent will sleep really warm, especially with several people in it. Might be cold when you go to bed. But it should warm up fast.

Many of these climate change crazy weather tips seem to be pretty ineffective or of limited use, but this one seems like an actual good idea to me.

Beyond Walmart, google maps outdoor or sport gear. Most of those will have some sort of cheap tent, though I would avoid REI as they really only carry more expensive options.

This is actually largely the original idea behind four-poster beds. Castles are a bugger to heat, especially stone ones. But if your bed has its own roof and tapestries that hang down on all four sides, you basically have a tiny room with woolen walls.

Yeah, I was gonna say, canopied beds actually work like this.

Other options, if you don’t want to buy a tent, include tarps, emergency blankets, or quilts suspended over the bed from the ceiling like a tent - you want something that will keep your heat in a smaller area, rather than out in the whole room. if you’re only one person, sleeping in your closet or potentially a bathtub with a blanket over it will help (but only if your bathtub is well-insulated or you put down lots of insulation inside - otherwise you’ll lose heat through the bathtub). Put your pillowfort construction skills to use.

The idea is to reduce the amount of space that your body heat is trying to fill, and then trap that heat in that smaller space. More people produce more heat, so getting everyone in the fam into that smaller space is even better - include pets if possible (pets, small children, and the elderly produce less heat on their own, and will be really vulnerable to the cold if left alone).

Depending on how permeable your bed-tent is, you might want to leave an air-space at the bottom of the walls - carbon monoxide is heavier than air, so it will sink, and the gap will let it escape (along with some heat, but better than suffocating). Not a concern in a tent, which has mesh for a reason, but if you’re using something more air-tight like plastic sheeting or an emergency blanket, it could be a concern.

I’ve been thinking about cyberpunk’s fixation on the Ship of Theseus “how much of a human can you replace until they stop being human” and it all comes down to ableist bullshit, I hate it so much

We are done with examining the ship of Theseus, it’s finished now.

Trans people: having the ability to modify my body would drastically improve my quality of life.

Disabled people: having the ability to modify my body would drastically improve my quality of life.

Lots of other people: having the ability to modify my body would drastically improve my quality of life.

Ignorant fucks who don’t deserve cyberpunk: but what if… we shamed that? 🤔

Writers of the original Cyberpunk RPG where this trope first came up: We have to give body mods some kind of drawback for game-balance purposes, so why don’t we do something interesting with it and explore the question of how drastically an individual can modify themselves before bodily dysphoria starts to mess with their head? And let’s read up a bit on depersonalisation-derealisation disorder and use it as an example of what end-stage cyberpsychosis might be like to experience. A depressing number of cyberpunk writers since: Nah, too complicated, let’s just make them weird and freaky and not really human anymore and leave it at that.

Also, original cyberpunk writers: You should be careful about injecting technology into your body because corproations WILL use it to spy on you or manipulate you for their own benefit. -Admin

which is happening now

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

Now I know preppers and prepping has strong ties to rightwing ideology. I am sure there are great resources on this. (doomsday preppers by We're In Hell comes to mind. It might be a good introduction if you want to watch something)

However, prepping, homesteading, gardening, fiber arts and survival skills and more things in these category are things I am interested in as I think a solarpunk future will include more of these things and will ask for a more simplified existence in some aspects. (And I would love to grow food in a solarpunk future.)

It is hard to find this content and making sure it is not rightwing adjacent. And while I try to alway be critical of the content I consume, it is unrealistic to think I can totally avoid it all.

However I was watching some other doc on prepping. (DW Documentary / preppers: Sweden bracing for the worst) and I think it has one of the nicest things I heard on disaster preparedness I have heard in a while.

"When something goes wrong, I want to be in a position to be able to help."

So if like me you get a bit tired of all the individualistic ideas in your favourite homesteading videos, I hope you like this phrase as much as I did.