Ari ☀️

Two kinds of people frustrate me the most: close-minded people who react negatively to everything unfamiliar, & those who won’t believe facts new to them but will spout and fervently cling to whatever they’ve personally chosen to convince themselves is the truth. And they’re usually the same person.

Tokyo Mew Mew and Resident Alien!

It’s 2025, I’m so over seeing only 2 black people in these cast announcements that have more than 30 people in them

I have to say, I love me a good balsamic glaze

Illustration of a fairy sitting on a couch in the forest. The couch is surrounded by flowers and greenery. The fairy is wearing a white dress with a peacock feather shawl, white pearl earrings and three afro puffs. She is holding a sword steady with her palm. Drawn in paint tool sai, gdbee art 2025

[Patron of Spring]

Knitting, near Jupiter

Drink break (acrylics on paper)

Illustration of an astronaut standing in a red and orange flower field, holding an old fashioned phone. The phone has a speech bubble that says, "you are not alone." Drawn by gdbeeart, 2025, paint tool sai

you are not alone.

A quirky little fun thing I’ve learned about Italy is that they LOVE them some Donna Summer. I’ve heard songs of hers on car commercials, at restaurants, in grocery stores, and even on totally unrelated Carnevale floats. Always takes me back to my time performing in the 2022 US national tour 💃🏾

So I’m currently rewatching an anime from my childhood and also watching the second season of a relatively new series… and I think it’s wild yet fitting that they’re both about aliens coming to Earth, being appalled at how humans are treating the planet, and subsequently planning to take over

It took seeing adult bullies to understand that my childhood bullies didn’t even really want to hurt me, they just wanted to feel powerful and how I felt about it wasn’t even in the equation.

I can’t imagine someone not outgrowing that, but apparently it happens quite a lot!

A closed whiteish green orchid bud on a green stem. There are smaller green buds attached behind it. The flower is in front of a white lace curtain, framed on the bottom by a beige windowsill.

The same flower from the other photo, but the bud is about 60% open, revealing light pink and fuschia coloring on the inside of the white petals.

My orchid I got last July is coming back 🥹 The first picture is from yesterday afternoon, the second is from today around the same time.

This lil flower taught me a lot... Sometimes you don’t have to do so much to help something grow. If you just provide a safe space, it can rest and bloom again 💕

Million dollar idea: a coloring tool with the glide of a paintbrush, the color vibrance of a marker, the smell of a crayon, the precision of a colored pencil, won’t bleed through paper, doesn’t need sharpening, is washable and erasable, and has an ergonomic grip design. I’ll be your first customer

I just have to say that I’m really glad my education took place before AI took off because I just *know* my academic writing style would have had all of the AI detector sirens going off

TURN HIS TV OFF

Do birds like to people-watch?

Fondly remembering the best dental experience I ever had—their online intake form had a section where you could notify them of any dental traumas, fears, triggers, or accommodations needed. I let them know that I struggle with the bright overhead light, and when I arrived, they gave me sunglasses 🥹

that’s right.

40 ACRES AND A MULE, THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC 🗣️🗣️

I watched a fencing tournament this weekend and learned so many things about the sport; including the fact that I most definitely do not have what it takes to do what they do 🤺

I have never gone more feral over two fictional characters than I have over Mr. Will Herondale and Mr. Thomas Cresswell and I gleefully imagine the banter and rivalry that would blossom between them if they ever met

Can’t deny how satisfying it was to be asked (in Italian): “wait—are you Italian or not?” while I switched seamlessly between ordering food in Italian and speaking in English with my friends

Goat milk!

Tell me why the 3 other women in the public bathroom lined up behind me to use the sink I was fixing my hair in front of, instead of using one of the 5 other open sinks?

I guess I’m just a trendsetter ✨

Portrait illustration of a woman underwater with fishies. She's looking at the viewer. Her hair is made of seaweeds. She's wearing a white tanktop. There are multiple types of angelfish and other saltwater fish intermixed with the seaweed. Most of the fish are golden except for one fish in the middle, which is black and white striped. Painted in 2022 / gdbeeart/ photoshop

Shelter

Dorothy Porter in 1939, at her desk in the Carnegie Library at Howard University. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University

Dorothy B. Porter changed libraries 💜

The Dewey Decimal System used to only have two classifications for Black people: 325 (colonization) & 326 (slavery). Each book by a Black person was put into one of these classifications. A book of poetry? Classified as colonization.

Enter Dorothy B. Porter 🧵

Good morning
be the change
be the light
eat some chocolate

🔥

Sometimes I do get a tail wag in response!

Just did a grocery run of about 70€ and the amount of food I bought would have absolutely run me upwards of $150 in the US… pre-Jan 20th. Now and in the coming weeks? I don’t even know. My heart is hurting for fam, friends, and folks in the states 😔