✡︎ עם ישראל חי ✡︎

Ahhhhh so I have two nodding beggarticks (bidens cernua), they’re growing right next to each other so the soil, nutrition, and moisture they’re receiving is exactly the same. One of them is absolutely lousy with bugs while the other only has a few leaves damaged from them.

Youtube advertises me pesticide, the notion of going back to school for a nursing degree, and a special razor for my pubic hair.

I'm constantly getting ads for random Jesus-y things, AI video games, and politicians in Florida

Thinking about how when you get to the title drop in Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark, you realize she's referring to "the dark" in the sense of less showy, slow moving acts that build in the background to make bigger changes possible and changes you literally can't see because you can't know what the world without you making those efforts looks like rather than "the dark" referring to, like, terror. That it's about putting your hope in the "dark" (as in unseen/uncelebrated) processes and keeping going even when it doesn't look like it's doing anything, because it often is and you just aren't equipped to see the full effects.

Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back. The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act. For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body. The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser. Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology. Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.

Does anybody have a favorite scientific name?

hey jsyk while hellofresh is dummy expensive and i wouldn’t reccomend it if you already know how to cook (if you’re a beginner like i was when i had it for 3 months, then it’s worth it), you should know that ALL OF THEIR RECIPES are free on their website and they all fuck hard

I am a person who uses Hello Fresh for realsies because it is a bit cheaper than groceries here and definitely cheaper than takeout, but we also remake the recipes when we want a specific one and don't want to wait for it to come around in the rotation again, and therefore I know The Secret Translations of Proprietary Ingredients:

Would like to add on about the estrogen for transmascs; if you get dysphoric of the feeling of your vagina getting wet, there isultra-low doses of estrogen suppositories. I take a 10 microgram suppository of estrogen twice a week. It’s enough to make it easier for me to pee, but not enough to cause me to get wet. ✌️

I also originally didn't like doing the estrogen cream because, at the dose I was taking, it made me feel like I was on my period all the time (it didn't trigger a period, just made me feel crampy and sick), but then I used a non-hormonal alternative vaginal moisturizer for awhile which worked really well, but I just so happened to be using a small amount of the estrogen for dryness stone my urethra and that small dose also worked for my vaginal atrophy as well with none of the side effects.