Some Closeups Of The Best Graffiti I've Ever Seen

Tips for Defying the End of the World.

i will say this as a person who is not white: i think being called racist as a white person is like way lower stakes than anyone makes it out to be. and like, the reality is that white people have an inflated sense of anxiety about what being called Racist Means when like. let's be fucking real for a second. it does not meaningfully often result in Material Violence to a person for being "called racist." and I think being racist is just a thing that happens. and like if we are going to say that being accidentally racist from time to time is something that like, is relatively low stakes, that has to go hand in hand with being like. ok well I guess i should take some time to think about why someone might think I'm racist and like Do something about that.

like I think the paranoia and anxiety about how Being Called Racist is something that Does Violence to People is rooted in a white guilt racialized anxiety and if I am going to be real with you I do not think it is based in material reality. you can be a little uncomfortable it's not the end of the world. i think it's frustrating as a racialized person to see so many white people more frantically hand-wringing over the prospect of being called "racist" than over the prospect of Being Racist. it's annoying to say the least.

Coyote | Sheryl Hester

I just really really love this post, y'all. Like, so much. <3

Wait, so you said that you can learn to trust others by building friendships, but how does one go about doing that? Wouldn't someone I don't know be creeped out or annoyed if I suddenly walked up and started talking to them?

Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.

It takes a long time to make friends as an adult. People will probably think you're weird if you just walk up and start talking to them as though you are already their friend (people think it's weird when I do this, I try not to do this) but people won't think it's weird if you're someone they've seen a few times who says "hey" and then gradually has more conversations (consisting of more words) with them.

I cheat at forming adult friendships by joining groups where people meet regularly. If you're part of a radio club that meets once a week and you just join up to talk about radios, eventually those will be your radio friends.

If there's a hiking meetup near you and you go regularly, you will eventually have hiking friends.

Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction; if you go camping with your radio friend, that person is probably more friend than acquaintance. If you go to the movies with a hiking friend who likes the same horror movies as you do, that is deepening the friendship.

In, like 2011 Large Bastard decided he wanted more friends to do stuff with so he started a local radio meetup. These people started as strangers who shared an interest. Now they are people who give each other rides after surgery and help each other move and have started businesses together and have gone on many radio-based camping trips and have worked on each other's cars.

Finding a meetup or starting a meetup is genuinely the cheat-code for making friends.

This is also how making friendships at schools works - you're around a group of people very regularly and eventually you get to know them better and you start figuring out who you get along with and you start spending more time with those people.

If you want to do this in the most fast and dramatic way possible, join a band.

In 2020 I wrote something of a primer on how to turn low-stakes interactions with neighbors and acquaintances into more meaningful relationships; check the notes of this post over the next couple days, I'll dig up the link and share it in a reblog.

Helmut Moik: Dalmatian Pelican in the Danube Delta, Romania, 2003

“Pen and inkwell”

“I'm lucky enough to live close to the Camargue, a perfect place to photograph pink flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus). This image shows a flamingo searching for prey in a muddy pond. The photograph was taken late in the day, with light cloud cover. Positive exposure compensation produced the high-key effect. The result reminded me of a paintbrush covered in ink.”

by Jonathan Lhoir (Belgium).

2023 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Jenny Morgan (American, 1982) - Study for Seeing (2024)

how to not be a perfectionist by Molly Brodak