Blessed art Thou, o Lord, teach me Thy statutes

I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.

Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.

The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.

Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.

Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.

Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.

The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.

Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.

"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.

For example, are intersex people with a mix of characteristics male or female? Anti-sex-transition people will be eager to sort them into one category, based on which sex the majority of their sex characteristics fit in, which (tagging @ray-moo who I first heard pointing this out) only makes sense if you think there's a Platonic Form of Womanhood or Form of Manhood which actually determines our sex, not our sex characteristics. The same thing could be said about post-surgery trans people.

Not sure what you want to do but you want to help? ACLU has actions you can take broken down into time intensity:

Got 15 minutes to call your representative, senators and governor? 5Calls has hundreds of scripts you can read off and will auto connect you! (It genuinely takes less than 15 mins for all of them and frequently you get a voicemail so you don’t even have to talk to them!)

Wanna get out and protest? Mobilize has thousands of events across the country listed at all times!

The day is won through thousands of individual acts of resistance hitting them on all sides! These resources are just a drop in the bucket, I guarantee there is something you can do to help!

And yet if I was to use this centuries long pattern of explicit law and social organization to say that white people were fundamentally untrustworthy, or even that the institution of the US government was inherently untrustworthy, Elon Musk and Stephen Miller and all the Trump acolytes would howl about how racist this is.

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2025, Nik Jovčić-Sas (nikjovcicsas)

Honoured to speak at the beautiful St Michael Within today as we remembered the trans lives lost to violence this year. At least 350 deaths reported globally—though we know the true number is far higher. It was heartbreaking to learn that the youngest trans person to lose their life in the UK this year was just 13. May their memory be eternal.

true crime has done irreparable fucking damage to middle class white women

every time i see some middle class white mom of two saying “girlies! you need to get a visible tattoo because then a rando won’t try to snatch you in broad daylight in the middle of the walmart checkout to put you into sex trafficking!” i get pissed off because you are NOT the primary target of trafficking! poor children of colour in underdeveloped countries, indigenous women, sex workers, these are the people in danger!

true crime podcasts always talk about the rare instance a middle class white woman is taken and so these true crime girlies only ever hear about it happening to women like them and start thinking they’re the main target, but if there were a true crime podcast for every poor non-white child who has been trafficked there wouldn’t be enough data centres in the entire world to hold them all! the fact that white women are the focus of these things is because society only gives a shit about white women, and turns a blind eye when women of colour are the ones being victimized!

Jerusalem Patriarchate: Silwan Land Grab Violates Church Rights and Jerusalem’s Historic Christian Presence [source]

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed grave concern over the Israeli raid and land grab targeting its Church property in Silwan on June 15, 2026. During the operation, the Patriarchate’s representative was forcibly removed, his equipment was confiscated, trees were uprooted, and the property was enclosed with fencing and gates. The Patriarchate said the incident constitutes an unlawful and illegitimate seizure of established Church property in the heart of Jerusalem.

Please keep the Christians in the area in your prayers. If you are able please do consider donating to The Holy Orthodox Order of Saint George the Great Martyr. The Order ensures that all donations go to supporting causes such as the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Christian Community in Gaza, Sacred Sites in the Holy Land, and lots of other causes. Under the readmore I will list other organisations that you can donate to in order to support those living in the area.

Please do consider supporting the work of mission priests in North America. A lot of them work secular roles alongside their duties as a Priest in order to make ends meet. They do a tremendous amount of sacrifice in order to share the Gospel and the love of God across North America. Please keep them in your prayers, and please consider donating if you are able.