Vultania

This whole situation makes no sense because it is a Catholic University where this is happening.

I wish I could do more for them besides support from afar, however, I just handed in my final assessment and I am no longer a student

Again, allow me to reiterate, this is a Catholic University.

This is what the club president has to say:

Thank you for your prayers!

🙏🏻

like have you talked to a kid, have you spent time with kids, do you remember BEING a kid? "playing outside" isn't about Throwing Ball 1000 times it's about squishing mud, using sticks as swords and guns, making potions from plants, catching bugs, climbing trees, and building forts from brush and branches.

A highly manicured lawn has nothing to offer the senses and brain of a developing child. If there are no "weeds," what are they supposed to gather to make into potions?? I'm not even joking, what do you, a child, DO in a yard without wildflowers and mud and dead branches. I feel like my brain wouldn't have developed correctly if my outdoor space growing up wasn't full of chicory and asters and dandelions.

I loved the recent photos of the stars you shared on your page! Was that what you were able to see with the naked eye as well? Were the photos taken in a spot with very little light pollution to get that level of clarity, or did the camera enhance the stars?

It's more than the naked eye could see. But there's no light pollution where I am right now, so you can walk outside and look up at the milky way.

What I see is this:

What the camera sees in a four minute exposure is this:

Tonight it was cloudy, and I thought there wouldn't be much chance of getting anything, and I was surprised when I discovered that the clouds were moving enough that the camera, taking a 4 minute long exposure, was able to find the stars. Here's a tiny film of a few seconds of what the camera saw...

blue jay

american kestrel

painted bunting

yellow-throated vireo

cerulean warbler

baltimore oriole

american goldfinch

northern cardinal

stylish accessory bird

loud and delicious bird

bird that will kung fu your face while you are grilling in your backyard

overly dramatic fishwizard bird

demonic creepy noise duck

assorted sky-cats

screaming inflatable doofus bird

stump

not technically native but it poops on my lawn

toasted marshmallow friend

the INDIGO BUNTING

the MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD

the REGULAR EASTERN BLUEBIRD

the BARN SWALLOW

and STELLAR’S JAY

to you by the color blue,

thank you and goodnight

- DON’T say to yourself “I need to take a shower”

-showering is a long multistage process that requires you to be vulnerable (naked, wet, blots out sound, what if someone calls/rings the doorbell, etc)

-INSTEAD say to yourself “I’m just gonna go turn on the water right quick”

-small one step task checked off your list

-your anxiety brain is a dumb motherfucker and it will be none the wiser that you have tricked it into BEGINNING the shower process

-once the water is running you are already there in the bathroom with the water running so you might as well finish the job

NOTE that this trick works for like. Fucking everything.

-Don’t “work on your WIP”– just open the document

-don’t “make the scary phone call” – just pull up the number in your contacts

-don’t “make lunch” – just pull out a loaf of bread

-don’t “do the dishes” – just open the dishwasher. Literally just open it

Remember ur anxiety brain is a dumb motherfucker and that you CAN therefore TRICK it into being functional

also bonus tip: for those times when u just need to lie on the floor and be a worthless lump of anxiety-ridden garbage for a few hours, download Duolingo and pick a language. Are you going to be fluent in a week? No. But it’s easy to focus on and that way when you’ve been down there for half a day and your shitty fukken brain is trying to convince you you’re garbage because it KEPT you there, you can counter with “excuse you I just spent the last four hours TEACHING MYSELF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE you punk ass bitch.”

My family likes to vacation in Topsail, North Carolina, which is a little barrier island mostly covered in vacation homes. We rent a huge house in their off season, when most people consider it too cold to be at the beach, and we, with our icewater blood, consider it quite pleasantly deserted.

I love going for walks at night, especially when there’s a clear sky, so I, age sixteen, would go a few miles up the beach around midnight most nights. One night, while still about a mile from our house, I saw something rolling in the surf. 

“That’s either a plastic bag caught on a log,” I thought, “Or a four foot shark.”

I jogged over. It was not a plastic bag caught on a log. 

The shark was moving and didn’t appear to be hurt, but was caught in water only an inch or so deep, being pushed higher with every wave. I was by myself, and didn’t own a cell phone, and couldn’t see a house with lights on in either direction. There was nobody around. Leaving to go get help would probably take long enough for him to suffocate. The best thing I could do for this shark, I figured, would be to get him back in the ocean. 

I have no idea how he wound up so high on the beach, because it was a very shallow slope. I’d have to carry him a good fifteen or so feet to get him into water deep enough to swim. It was nearly a full moon, so I could sort of see what I was doing. I got a grip on the shark, careful not to squeeze too hard, in case he was hurt, and picked him up. He didn’t like that at all. 

I started walking into the water. Here’s a thing I didn’t know about sharks: They’re pretty damn flexible. I got a couple steps with this shark, looked down, and realized there were a hell of a lot of teeth coming directly at my forearm. 

It occurred to me that I had not thought this through very well.

I’m not proud of what I did. It seemed like the best way to get this shark back in deep enough water and avoid dropping thirty pounds of very bitey animal directly on my own toes. So.

I yote the shark with as much force as I could muster. 

He curved through the air like a thing of beauty, all angry and toothsome in the moonlight, and splashed wonderfully into the deeper waters. I caught a glimpse of fin diving away shortly after. 

Jesus: "Hmm maybe someone sweet and gentle. Who wouldn't hurt a fly, y'know? A soft boy. Another fisherman, perhaps?"

Saul of Tarsus: "DIE you Christians!!!"

11/18/2022

The Rosary: like melatonin for your body and floss for your soul!

Those weren't all the Gonacharov asks. Those were about .5% of the Goncharov asks. I could post another couple of hundred. Everyone had the same idea and sent the same sort of asks in.