Evidence Of Bee

It’s about damn time!  I wish I could go back in time and meet Marsha and Sylvia  ❤️ ❤️    They gave so much to this world and community, we should all continue the work that would make them proud.

We often think of relationships as things we can - or even have to - earn. 

This causes two major problems:

believing we are entitled to a relationship because we’ve “earned” it

perceiving all rejection as a failure to “earn” someone’s love, attraction, etc.

While healthy relationships do require effort, a relationship is not founded on a list of Good Things You Have Done.

Sure, if you’re a jerk people are less likely to want to be around you, and sure, if you do nice things someone might appreciate them. But it’s not automatic. Do nice things because it’s nice to do nice things. Change hurtful behaviour because it’s good to avoid hurting people. Don’t do that stuff solely because you think it will earn you something.

Relationships are not simple transactions. Even when you are hiring someone, they have the right to decide at any point that the relationship or position you’re offering isn’t right for them - and they might, even if you’ve offered all you can, even if you’ve been nice.

It’s not cut-and dried, it’s not a vending machine. You don’t put good deeds (or money) in and get love (or sex, or friendship) out, and you don’t put bad deeds in and get rejection out. Those are a few ingredients of many; a relationship does not automatically occur or fail in their presence.

3. Believing that when we have a shot at a relationship, we must “earn” it by being totally self-sacrificing and being the “perfect” friend/partner/parent/child/etc.

Thinking that you don’t deserve relationships unless you do All The Right Things gets in the way of honest and loving communication between you and the people you care about - if the price of love is perfect interaction that doesn’t include conflict, you can’t really address problems - and problems are inevitable in any relationship.

Constantly thinking you’re going to lose a relationship unless you really Earn it keeps you from forming genuine connections when you try to project your image of Perfection instead of allowing yourself to be known and loved for who you actually are.

And treating a relationship like you’re constantly on probation and have to be on Best Behaviour or you’ll lose it - that also leaves you vulnerable to abusers, who encourage this mindset in order to maintain control.

Americans aren’t told this shit. 

The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.

Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.

She’s 60. She never heard of this.

As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.

He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods.  Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.

And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”

And she just looked floored.

“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”

“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “

She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.

“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.

And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”

She lived through it.

hello! I recently found this rad app called “CamScanner”, a mobile app for android and iOS

what does this app do? well, basically it imitates a scanner, so even if you don’t have one, you can take real cool pictures of your drawings!

for this to work, i suggest you take a picture of your entire paper / sketchbook / etc. The app will automatically crop your picture and come out with something like this:

(sometimes it wont be too accurate, but that can be easily fixed by moving the frame yourself)

once scanned, the app will make it so your drawing looks like this:

(the app will have some presets, so you might want to mess around with those. OR you can mess with the settings yourself to get a look you desire)

this can be really helpful if you plan to color your traditional piece on a computer, or something similar.

this can even work with colored drawing, if you’d like!

original:

edited with CamScanner:

if you mess with the settings yourself, i bet you could get the picture to look better, as i did this with the presets.

“I think it’s important to be able to be like, ‘Yes, your shoulders are broad, yes your hands are big and your voice is deep and you’re really tall and people notice you, and that makes you noticeably trans, but that doesn’t make you any less beautiful,’” [Laverne Cox] says. 

“You’re not beautiful despite those things, you’re beautiful because of those things, and [believing] that has to be an active conscious process.”

There are pencils that turn into plants when you’re done using them. 

The ‘Sprout Pencil’ is the first sustainable pencil in the world that can be planted after use.

“We have chosen the seeds for our pencils with great care, and they germinate quickly: i.e. within 1-3 weeks, depending on the seed variety. Most plants can be grown both indoors and outdoors.” 

It’s made of natural materials: the body is cedar wood, and the “lead” is a mixture of clay and graphite.

Sprout pencils are available in 22 varieties, including sunflower, mint, lavender, sage, forget-me-not, cherry tomato, sweet pea, cilantro, and wild strawberry.

What to do

“When the Sprout Pencil has become too short to write with, it is ready to be planted. Follow the simple instructions below and see your Sprout pencil sprout.”

They are also available in the colored pencil variety, which makes me oh-so-happy!