warmth and rejuvenation

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

you are beautiful

you are strong

Read Fatale Game over K-manga to improve the sales numbers or buy the print manga if you can afford it or force other people to buy it for you

Clothing company Patagonia is currently suing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because suing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're suing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Ube (pronounced as ooh-beh), a purple yam native to the Philippines, has been the new “matcha craze” or so they call it online. It’s gotten popular for its bright purple color and natural sweet taste that leads to nice “aesthetic” desserts like these:

Foreign influencers are latching onto it, and so are many foreign companies, leading to a rising global demand for the root crop.

But the thing is, ube takes months to grow, and depending on the weather, it can sometimes take over a year. (The Philippines experiences over 20 typhoons in a year, so you can just imagine how difficult it is.) The amount produced has also always been just enough for Filipinos and maybe for export to some of our Southeast Asian neighbors. Government support for the cultivation and research of the crop has been rather low. So, although the global attention on ube brings pride, the increase in demand has also been a big problem over here because it drives up the prices of ube even for the locals. In other words, “gentrification” is happening:

a process in which a poor area (as of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents (Merriam-Webster)

This YouTube video explains it better.

Now, I’m not telling you to feel guilty about it and stop eating ube. Unlike some reactionary people on Twitter, I don’t think food should be gatekept at all. Food exists to be enjoyed and shared, so I’m totally fine with people from other countries consuming ube.

But there is one thing you can do to help us and that is to be respectful and to check your privilege—especially if you’re white.

The Philippines is a country that’s been colonized 3 times (Spain, USA, Japan) and is currently facing threats of further colonization (USA again, China, and now even fucking Israel). Filipino identity, so “polluted” by foreign influences, continues to be a point of contention over here. It’s worse when we’re also considered the “black sheep” of Southeast Asia because of how different our culture are from theirs (more Catholic, American, and Latino than typical SEAsian).

And so, Filipinos argue among themselves everyday on what it truly means to be Filipino. When we see other cultures trying to use ube without acknowledging its origins, the instinct is to get defensive. It can’t be helped. We just cling onto the things that have always been native to us because only with them can we be sure about our identity—our language, or pre-colonial past, and even our food. Ube is one of those things upon which Filipino identity has been ascribed on. Call it silly or stupid, but that’s the cruel reality of colonization. Many things we’re taken from us, so now we hold tightly onto the things that we still have.

So, seeing comments like this fill me with so much rage:

the fucking audacity 💀

There’s an ube war currently happening on Twitter, and it all started from this post:

OP has been under fire because the way it’s worded sounded like he invented ube ice cream, which outraged Filipinos because it’s a method that’s existed for years in their country:

*dirty ice cream refers to sorbetes, a traditional Filipino ice cream. The term started out as a pejorative in contrast to branded ice cream, but has now been reclaimed and adopted widely by the locals. It’s not actually dirty.

I admit, though, that some of my fellow Filipinos’ reactions were too much, blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But you have to understand that Filipinos are coming from a place of colonial trauma. Besides, Italians get to rant all the time about how other countries don’t do their food right and nobody calls them silly/unreasonable over it. So, how come when Filipinos call out others for doing the same with our food, we get called stupid and inferior?

Moreover, when you saw how OP first reacted to all the criticism, you’d understand that the Filipino rage was only right:

Instead of trying to understand where all the criticism is coming from and apologizing for his mistake, his instinct was to give a snarky reply.

Later, he started backtracking and gaslighting us:

The apology sounds more like an afterthought instead of coming from a place of genuine remorse. Comments under this put it to light better:

This post sums up the gaslighting well:

Worse of all, because of this whole discourse that seems “ridiculous” to others who don’t understand post-colonial trauma, non-Filipinos think it’s now only right to be aggressive and racist towards Filipinos:

White people, please explain to me why you think there’s ever a “justified” reason to be racist to anyone??? Are you out of your fucking minds???

that Julian guy may or may not have made that post from a place of malice, but it doesn’t matter anymore because his subsequent reactions have made it clear that he doesn’t actually care about the Filipinos or Asians in general whom he claim to champion in his original tweet. He was just being performative.

If the guy had just apologized right away or clarified what he actually meant instead of acting all snarky about it first, then Filipinos would’ve forgiven him and moved on. But nope, he felt the need to frame himself as a victim first and put the other group in a bad light, inadvertently gathering allies from his fellow Americans and making them feel the need to attack Filipinos in his “defense.” It’s fucking insidious.