avery ✧ 24 ✧ PhD student in environmental engineering ✧ posting mostly about science, grad school life, art, nature, and philosophy
468 posts
Cybercity-sunrise - It's A Beautiful Day At The End Of The World - Tumblr Blog
WAIT. Not to be controversial but. What if I just enjoy life for what it is right now instead of stressing about what I’ve yet to get out of it. What if I choose to enjoy this time……I know that once it goes, I won’t get it back from anywhere
hey! there's zero esims left for the connecting gaza campaign as of today. i remember you promoting them earlier. could you give them a much needed boost?
oh dang! unfamiliar with that particular campaign, as I always donate via crips for e-sims because it's super easy to do, but regardless let's go people!
“To speak of attention in this manner, as a patient waiting on the world to disclose itself, recalls how Simone Weil insisted that attention is a form of active passivity. “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them,” she insisted, “but by waiting for them.”3 This form of attention and the knowledge it yields not only elicits more of the world, it elicits more of us. In waiting on the world in this way, applying time and strategic patience in the spirit of invitation, we draw out and are drawn out in turn. As the Latin root of attention suggests, as we extend ourselves into the world by attending to it, we may also find that we ourselves are also extended, that is to say that our consciousness is stretched and deepened. And this form of knowledge is ultimately relational. It yields a more richly personal rather than clinical or transactional relation with the object known, particularly insofar as affection may be one of its consequences.4 After all, attention can also be understood simply as the name for the contact the mind makes with the world, and, if it is sufficiently attenuated, our capacity and inclination to care, desire, love, and act also suffer. This, too, is one of the concerns animating Bennett’s explorations of enchantment. “You have to love life before you can care about anything,” she writes. “One must be enamored with existence and occasionally even enchanted in the face of it,” she adds, “in order to be capable of donating some of one’s scarce mortal resources to the service of others.” In her view, the story we’ve been told about disenchantment already conditions us against the attention that we must necessarily bring to the world in order to perceive its enchanted quality. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think more than the story of disenchantment is at work here, but she is right to observe that we are trapped in a vicious circle. Habituated against attending to the world with patience and care, we are more likely to experience the world as a mute accumulation of inert things to be merely used or consumed as our needs dictate. And this experience in turn reinforces the disinclination to attend to the world with appropriate patience and care. Looking and failing to see, we mistakenly conclude there was nothing to see. What is there to do, then, except to look again, and with care, almost as a matter of faith, although a faith encouraged by each fleeting encounter with beauty we have been graced to experience. To stare awkwardly at things in the world until they cease to be mere things. To risk the appearance of foolishness by being prepared to believe that world might yet be enchanted. Or, better yet, to play with the notion that we might cast our attention into the world in the spirit of casting a spell. We may very well conjure up surprising depths of experience, awaken long dormant desires, and rekindle our wonder in the process. What that will avail, only time would tell.”
— If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You’re Not Paying Attention
23.08.24 i am currently enjoying my exam/term paper-free life by working too much, cleaning to de-stress and finally getting back into reading (bought piranesi by susanna clarke yesterday, very excited). my first master's semester is slowly approaching and the courses all look promising. also, looking forward to autumn!
🎧 - the wolf by siamés
Hello 🖐
I am aya living in North Gaza with my three children, and we are facing starvation in the northern region. We have moved more than 13 times trying to find a safe place, but there is no safety anywhere.
I am asking for your help to protect my children and get us out of this imminent danger😥.
Your donations and sharing of my story will greatly contribute to our survival.🙏🙏
https://gofund.me/7dc97966
I hope you find safety and peace soon. I'm so sorry for what you have endured.
Please share and donate to help this family get to safety.
Hello, Im Falestine from Gaza🍉🍉. . Im married and have son his name yousef , i born him in war.
Sorry if I am harassing you asking for help, I am extremely embarrassed and embarrassed of trying to ask for help.
I simply don’t want to die, I want to live I want to give Yousef a better life. Help me to escape Gaza
I lost apart of my family😭, my home, and everything I own. We are living in difficult circumstances. I hope you can help me by donating even a simple thing orو publishing 🙏🙏
My campaign was vetted by 90ghost🫂
https://gofund.me/7e05a237
Everyone, please help this family get the safety, food, and shelter they deserve by donating and sharing. I am so sorry for the hardships you have endured.
HUGE NEWS!!! The Rethinking Lawns project of @chicagobotanic @ChicagoParks @UMFlint just received the PACSP grant from @NSF & @PGAFamilyFdn to support our research into lawn enhancement & replacement with native plants. PIs:
@BeckSamBar @BeckyTonietto @lglyndal @chase_prairie (that's me!)
Turf lawns are omnipresent landscapes in urban settings. While they are more beneficial than impervious surfaces, our research project asks the question: what could our lawns become?
Coming from backgrounds in prairie restoration and urban native plants, we are proposing that incorporating short native plants into lawn greenspaces can produce concrete benefits for people and our more-than-human neighbors.
We are quantifying the benefits of our native plants in these settings, putting numbers to the theoretical benefits documented in the literature. We are measuring wildlife support, stormwater infiltration, cooling effect, and soil carbon storage.
To learn more, check out our website with official press releases and links and goodies!
It's not unsurprising imo due to the eroticism inherent to religious devotion. There's a rich tradition of nuns being horny for Jesus in a serious way. For people of a romantic persuasion, a relationship with god parallels and sometimes exceeds earthly relationships, and I think art about one kind can speak to either.
the lana del rey coquette girlies wanting to become nuns is the most incomprehensible thing to me. like what do they think being a nun means? you know the only sugar daddy most of them have is jesus right?
In an innovative shift towards sustainable transportation, solar-powered boats are making silent voyages through Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. This green initiative is spearheaded by Kara Solar, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the lives of the indigenous Achuar communities along the Wichimi River in eastern Ecuador.
Kara Solar’s initiative began under the vision of founder Oliver Utne, who recognized the potential for sustainable technology to preserve the Achuar’s territory and cultural heritage. After studying solar energy in the United States, Utne returned to Ecuador, partnering with academic institutions to develop effective electric propulsion systems for the Amazonian waterways.
The benefits of these solar boats are manifold. They travel at speeds up to 12 miles per hour and can cover distances up to 60 miles on a single charge, with the capability to recharge using onshore solar grids. These grids not only power the boats but also supply energy to local schools and community centers, fostering broader societal benefits.
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.
The Seven Storey Mountain
Thomas Merton
I love the wind. The sun is joy, the rain is sadness—but the wind: mystery. The tumultuous firs in TWIN PEAKS. Or the windswept park in BLOW-UP (1966). There’s a hint of menace.
Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) captured the sinister disquiet of a windy landscape well. In the second painting, we see a boy chasing a ball. He is surrounded by looming shadows. In the distance, two mysterious figures have a meeting. Is the boy about to stumble upon something he shouldn’t have seen?
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you think. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, difficult as it is...
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)