BenB~•

this would be a great time for It to happen.

Two years ago. Place is exuberant with new growth throughout now 🐉

I called this pattern "Adorable Axolotl' and this face-on view is why, as it peers out from the flowers of my orange tree.

A sideways view of the knitted axolotl showing the dorsal fin and legs. The axolotl is in punk/brown and white mottled colored yarn and the fin is in a mauve shade.

My knitted axolotl shown in it's native habitat - on a rocky bottom under water - though I suspect he'd probably prefer a muddy bottom.

The final version of my knitted axolotl is finished. Now it's up for testing on Ravelry (in JoansGarden's group, if you want to find it) 🧶🐸🐡

Ecotopia - Wikipedia

Might tap into some classic futurism/sci-fi rooted in the region, e.g. Le Guin (daughter of noted CA anthropologist Kroeber) or

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopi...

Skull season And some book news (No. 191)

"The aim of this new 📘 is to blend nature writing, tech criticism + memoir to explore the landscapes of 21st century capitalism through a natural history prism, seeking out pockets of biodiversity and adaptation at a moment when machine intelligence seems on the verge of taking over the world..."

Useful analogy; good to unpack and elaborate on the level of subjective experience and initiative, which I think diverges substantially from the nice clean OODA objective model shared here. Lots of journey over destination / vibes over tactics enjoyers!

Untitled https://www.wikiart.org/en/zdislav-beksinski/untitled-249

Delilah Lookout 1, Fresno County, CA
🗺36.8041, -119.1175 🧭348° ⛰5151 ft
https://ops.alertcalifornia.org/cam-console/1937

Went and laid down in the river yesterday, which helped. Nippy, but clarifying!

Comes down to some sort of north star though, yeah? A consensual coordinate system, at least?

Suspect if you asked most people to describe “sanity” it would sound a lot like “people I can easily/automatically trust” and that is a real problematic conflation beneath so much destructive incremental dehumanization across the board.

What is mental health without sociocultural wellbeing - delusion, or burden?

Mayor is motivated:

There's a great maze of tunnels, a Labyrinth. It's like a great dark city, under the hill. Full of gold, and the swords of old heroes, and old crowns, and bones, and years, and silence.

it's beautiful 🥲
Go watch the full thing

Boy that took some doing, and no shortage of endogenous hot air 🤪

Past time for new profile pic but I’m really going for just the right aspect and proportions of uncanny lidless eye, wreathed in flame. TBC!

The diminutive, 5 foot tall sharpshooter would become the second highest paid performer on The Wild West Show

The diminutive, 5 foot tall sharpshooter would become the second highest paid performer on The Wild West Show, only Bill Cody made more. During the tours, she became closest of friends with the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, who, seeing her shooting skills, felt she was gifted with

Ground squirrel climate check:

Also should add, almost every new segment also functions as a well positioned strategic fire break, which will save trees and other lives. Oh, and they’ll get most use by a factor of 10-100 from wildlife. Road is good, down is up 🙃

I’ve quite possibly built out more km of new roadway in the last year than anyone on here, but it’s all like 10’ wide and covered in native grass and forbes, with tactfully composed vistas and enviro art waysides! Whole other world 🤝🌀

*it gets a LOT easier to sense how this maybe works if you take large automobiles out of the picture, btw…

Frozen music, á la MySpace garage band

How much effort and attention should go toward modifying “natural” landscapes to invite people to be there in more reverent, mindful, cooperative and caring ways?

Big conundrum, this!

Flooding the zone with shit (laudatory)

Do things at ground level, and perhaps performatively. Bureaucratic wrangling, even when fairly consequential, doesn’t cut it.

Every political revolution/realignment is preceded by a period of epistemic crisis in which elites hear only what they want to hear as the satnav tells them to drive into the volcano's mouth.

The middle of the road is increasingly a crater.

multiparty system or bust (we gone bust)

One of my niche repeat search words on here is chautauqua, on the off chance that someone’s resolved to get that scene bussin again. Seems about time? Count me in!