Ithmus Cryptikus

eventually I got older (and medicated), but in the meantime spending time in woodland really helped. it comforted me to be around plantlife, which feeds not on life but on sunlight, and therefore causes no harm.

then you get shit like epiphytes that decided to just grow on top of other plants. strangler fig vines, for instance, which decided well fuck, im just gonna cling to this tree trunk and let it do the support work. maybe entangle our roots and envelope my host completely over time. oopsie my host died? that's ok I'll just cling to its corpse for eternity

equally horrifying is the honeysuckle, which preys on young trees boa-constrictor style, squeezing the life out of saplings, which grow with permanent deformities before dying prematurely (makes for a neat walking stick though)

then you get out and proud parasites like mistletoe who are happy to attach themselves to tree canopies and suck their blood extract water and nutrients. so yeah some plants do eat each other actually. gives ya some perspective on the old christmas tradition of hunting mistletoe with guns (yes that's a thing, shooting them down out of trees like squirrels. yes, unlike squirrels they deserve it). as for the romance angle, who doesn't want to kiss a lover beneath the dying corpse of a parasitic trophy kill? sexy as heck.

in conclusion, PLANTS ARE VIOLENT AS FUCK, and that's not even getting into the eternal chemical warfare they are forced to wage against insects, fungi, microbes and other enemies.

one day soon the forests will turn on us, and when that day comes I'm cheerfully betraying humanity and skipping away to cross enemy lines 🫡

No one, *ever*, tried to persuade me to transition.

Sigh.

Anyway, fyi if you like me didn’t know about this

'“The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was 'done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said 'This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.'" "The morning after the tour, the Mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don't know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the Mayor of Ordruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought 'How is this my fault? I have no jurisdiction over this.' Maybe he would have said, 'This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?' But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”

Arizona Right Watch also posted a video of within the warehouse.

I recommend watching it.

This, this is the first time I've seen a concentration camp before it became a concentration camp.

This is the first time I've seen a place and known that people are going to be tortured there, that people are going to die horribly there. If it's not stopped.

We have to stop it. We just don't have any other choice.

You may have seen pictures of concentration camps after they were liberated, but this is the first time you've seen a concentration camp before it became one.

You saw photos of an atrocity you couldn't do anything about.

One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.

When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.

There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.

One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.

Angel opened a gofundme about a month ago, so if possible please consider donating to help fund her future projects :)