Love This. Not Anon But Helpful Advice!

Incredibly important, and incredibly informative. This pandemic is not over, it’s just been brushed under the rug.

WHY WE MASK: It's Not "Just A Cold": A Handy Scientific Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Together

Here, have a free science zine with a ridiculously long title! Endless thanks to my partner and fellow disabled artist, Kimball Anderson aka @earnestattempts, who helped through the entire year-long process with art edits and image descriptions (located in the alt text). Additional thanks to my friends Dupe and Caitlin, who gave me thorough copy-edits, and every friend who read drafts or listened to me rant about COVID-19.

Feel free to spread it far and wide! And hit me up if you're interested in printing &/or distributing free copies :D

Read WHY WE MASK with Endnotes - includes working URLS so you can read the scientific papers I cited for yourself. Plus links for all the other resources, and a full transcript.

Download WHY WE MASK - Free PDFs to read, print, and share! Any donations go towards print copies &/or local mask blocs.

Can't get enough free printable COVID zines? Check out @newlevant's excellent What's Up With COVID & How To Protect Yourself: 2024 Ed! It was a huge inspiration in the final stretch.

Extra pages under the cut:

Beginner Witch Tips - Kitchen Witch Edition

The oven can be your hearth. If a spell or ritual requires a hearth, your stove is just that. That being said, do not set anything on fire in your oven. Bad! No!

You don't need separate kitchen and altar herbs, although it is handy.

Some crystals can be used in kitchen magic, but I don't recommend putting them in or on anything other than a crystal on top of firm dough as it rests/rises. Secure crystals onto mixing equipment or spoons, or forgo using them at all.

Listen to witchy music as you cook or bake. I promise atmosphere is almost everything! It helps me focus. I recommend Peter Gundry.

While pets are cute and certainly carry spiritual energy with them, try to keep them out of the kitchen while you cook, especially if you have a certain intention you're trying to carry into your food. Their presence can distract you, throw off the energy you have accumulated, or otherwise disrupt the process. Once you're more confident with your kitchen witchery, their presence won't be such a big deal.

Take your time. It's okay. Sometimes it takes a while to truly clock into your spiritual energy while you're actively moving about and busy working, especially if you're used to practicing while sitting or standing in one spot. Remember - energy flows with you, not just around you.

Start small. Start with something simple like pancakes. For example: add a dash of vanilla to your pre-made batter mix to invoke self-love.

Write down things as you continue to work. Document what you're comfortable with, what you feel like you're good at, your project, and everything you feel you might want to. As you continue to work on that journal, you can go back and see how you've progressed!

Happy baking! Remember, your mood affects your project; negative emotions = negative influence.

As always, blessed be <3

Support your local witch on Ko-Fi!

U ever start smth and ur like haha this is such a cute SKETCH and then it turns into a 10hr painting. Anyway heres astral plane viktor as ponyo's mother

Folklore - Changelings

Warning - This post will briefly discuss infanticide, discrimination against people with physical and mental disabilities, and the physical abuse of children. Reader discretion is advised.

Please note that this is not the be all and end all account of Changelings. This is a vast and complex feature, one that I'd be naive to think I could fit into a single tumblr post.

What this will be is an introduction to the topic, heavily leaning on Dr Katharine Brigg's 'A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures', a wonderful book you can find here on the Internet Archives:

A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures

The other two main sources of information will be 'A Dictionary of English Folklore' by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, and 'Changling' by J. A. MacCulloch.

That all out of the way, let's explore the being known as the Changeling.

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An important concept to come to terms with when dealing with folk belief is this; It is far easier to believe there is a reason behind tragedy than that nature is without reason. Folklore gives an explanation for the unexplainable.

This does not mean our forefathers or contemporaries are or were less intelligent than we are today. We in the 21st century are not the peak of human development, one brief trip around any social media platform will show you we are not above fabrication for the sake of comfort.

For those already familiar with the concept of a Changeling, you may have found it odd that I use the word comfort here. Is it not comforting, though? To have something to blame for what was often seen as a misfortune?

Many of us live today in societies where assistance and support is given for the care and wellbeing of children and adults with disabilities. As a neurodivergent woman in the UK, I am afforded certain aids and accommodations in order to support my place in society. This did not exist in the past.

While not as wholly absent as is often portrayed in popular media, medicine as we understand it was a very different field, even just a little over 100 years ago.

The first x-ray under clinical conditions took place in Birmingham on the 11th of January 1896. The first neuroimaging technique used to look at the ventricular system in the brain was in America in 1918 where filtered air was injected into the lateral ventricles of the brain. The first use of neuroimaging to look at blood vessels within the brain was in Portugal in 1927. The first commercial ultrasound machine was not produced until 1963. The first not invasive CAT scan did not come about until 1973.

Dissection of deceased persons could be used to examine the body, but while the patient was living, medicine was almost entirely blind.

What does all this talk of medicine have to do with Changelings?

"In societies where the belief in fairies was strong, it was held that they could steal human babies and substitute one of their own race; the latter would never thrive, remaining small, wizened, mentally abnormal, and ill-tempered. A baby whose defects were not obvious at birth but appeared in the first year or two could thus be explained as not truly human."

Wilson and Round. A Dictionary of English Folklore. 2016

A Changeling was an individual, more often a child but not always, who was though to be an imposter, a fairy sneaked in and swapped for the human. While often associated with Gaelic regions today due to their strong tradition of fairy folklore, stories of Changelings can be found right across Europe, though their exact supposed parentage shifts from region to region.

A Changeling child (or adult) would be sickly, weak, often paralysed, fuss and cry incessantly, display erratic emotions, either refuse food or never cease from eating, be 'mentally and (or) physically deformed'.

The method for dealing with this 'imposter' individual is often to torment them into fleeing and returning the 'stolen' human. The recorded incidents of this range from the purely cruel to the absolutely horrific.

Warning the extracts below are not pleasant reading, you have been warned.

Briggs. A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins... 1976

Exposing in the above circumstance means to leave the child outside alone, either overnight, or for longer stretches of time until they perished, or in this circumstance the human baby was returned.

MacCulloch. Changling. 1908.

I hope I am stating the obvious here when I say that these children were not in any way shape or form anything but human children.

Some may have been suffering from infantile diseases and conditions such as infantile paralysis, some might have had Down's Syndrome, or been on the non-verbal part of the Autism Spectrum, or Epileptic, or suffered from a hearing impairment. The list of conditions and causes of what might have been seen as 'Changeling' behaviour could fill pages upon pages of text.

I believe at this point it is important to restate my initial point:

It is far easier to believe there is a reason behind tragedy than that nature is without reason. Folklore gives an explanation for the unexplainable.

These children were supposedly born 'normal' before 'changing'. When you remove all ability to examine what is happening within the human body, when you also remove the ability for individuals to communicate and share information quickly and easily over great distances, when you live in a time and place where there is no support at all for children and adults with additional needs, you are confronted with a set of pressures and desperations utterly unfamiliar to a large proportion of the readership of this post.

I am not in any way shape or form condoning what was done to these children. I aim only to give context, and describe circumstances surrounding these practices.

For more information I would like to direct you to the three sources mentioned above, as well as 'A History Of Intelligence And Intellectual Disability The Shaping Of Psychology In Early Modern Europe' by C.F. Goodey which can also be found on the Internet Archive here:

A History Of Intelligence And Intellectual Disability The Shaping Of Psychology In Early Modern Europe

I hope that proved informative, if not overly pleasant.

I’ve never heard of this place before, but it is gorgeous!!

Far too many pics of the Palais Garnier (Part Two!)

In October of 2022, I had the extraordinary experience of getting to complete an 15+ year old dream of mine to visit the Palais Garnier. I took a metric fuckton of pictures and now I want to share them with you all, the PotO community!

Before I start dumping, a few things:

Please reblog this post. I usually don’t post a lot, therefore I don’t have a big following. I’d really appreciate people sharing these as much as they can. When I was a dumb kid in ye olden days of the internet, finding a post like this was the sort of thing I would have been hyped up on for weeks. Help spread that kind of joy!

Feel free to use these photos for any sorts of graphics, artistic reference or any other fandom related projects, as long as it’s not for profit. Please just credit me in some way. In fact, I'd love to be tagged to see whatever creations come from sharing all this!

This is part two, which will be photos of the interior. While there, I also took a tour, Mysteries of the Palais Garnier. I'll share a lot of the things I learned throughout the post and try to provide as much context as I can.

Part one, the exterior images can be found HERE.

Upon leaving the designated tour office area, we entered this large, circular room where our tour began. Giant mirrors lined the walls and one of my companions immediately remarked that she felt as though someone was watching her from behind them.

On the ceiling there was this intricate pattern. We learned that this was Charles Garnier's "signature". He was concerned that at some point in time, his name would be forgotten and he would no longer be remembered as the architect of the Opera. If you look closely, his name is intertwined in the design, as well as the years of the building's construction.

There are salamanders hidden throughout the building as they were said to ward off devastating fires. It was very common for theaters to burn down, then. In fact, the construction of the Garnier was somewhat rushed in the last few years because the company's previous theater, Salle le Peletier burned to the ground in 1873. The Garnier opened in 1875.

We learned in our tour that these cracks on the steps were the result of a great tragedy. A group of ballerinas had been exploring the roof when the glass on the large window above cracked. One ballerina fell through the window and met her demise on the steps below.

With all these pictures of doors to the private boxes, you're probably wondering, "Hey Lotus, what about the most important one?" I got you, boo.

PART 1 (exterior) | PART 2 (here!) | PART 3 (foyer) | PART 4 (soon!)

Might actually write this, ngl

i'm rewatching s1 of Arcane, and i'm sure people have already written fics about this, but the soulmate au where you have your soulmate's first words to you tattooed on your skin is so funny for jayvik because

Jayce's first words to Viktor are "Science, I guess?" and i love that for them both

(deciduous) tree leaves change color in the fall because they are tiny little factories being shutdown and scraped for parts. the tree has made an evolutionary bet that the amount of energy required to maintain its food factories (leaves) through the (freezing, increasingly dark) winter is just not worth the investment--better to shut it down and hibernate instead.

but before a tree can shed its leaves, it needs to break down and reabsorb that valuable valuable chlorophyll, to reuse in the spring. this removes the green pigmentation, allowing the yellow/orange pigments (carotenoids) that are usually hidden to shine through!

so next time you see a majestic sight like this:

please know these trees are cannibalizing their own extremities ♥

It's kind of telling to see some of the exact same people who've cheerfully been making and/or circulating those "political action is supposed to be disruptive – if it was easy to ignore it wouldn't work!" posts turn around and jump on the "these Palestine fundraising requests making it mildly inconvenient to curate my Tumblr inbox must be part of some nefarious scheme" bandwagon. Like, disruption is good right up until the point it affects you personally, eh?

Yum, butter

i am about to bestow upon you the secret butter technique. i am sorry, but it is french. i am sorry again, this only works with cow butter. i am certain plant based butters wouldn’t work, and alternative animal butters may or may not work

has this ever been you: you have a nicely steamed vegetable, or maybe you want to make the best butter noodles, but you know that if you put butter on those it’ll just melt and you end with kind of greasy noodles or vegetables? don’t you wish it was instead a luscious buttery glaze?

introducing: beurre monté

you will take a small sauce pan, and begin heating it with 1-2 tablespoons of water (use very little water) and bring it to a hard simmer or boil

turn the heat down slightly, and add Butter. how much? however much you dare. (start with 3-4 tablespoons and go from there)

you are going to either whisk Aggressively or you can pick up the saucepan, still holding it over the heat, and swirl aggressively so the butter is skating around the sides of the pan

done correctly, you will have liquid butter that is still emulsified. you have made Butter Sauce. season it with a little salt, and toss whatever you want in it.

if you’re butter splits, i’m sorry. you didn’t agitate it enough to maintain the emulsion, and now you have melted butter.

you can use this knowledge to make other sauces by swapping out the water for another liquid. white wine becomes beurre blanc. red wine is beurre rogue.

you want to CUM? sweat minced shallot in a tiny bit of butter, add white wine and cook it out until it’s reduced by about half. then whisk butter in hard. a few flecks of minced thyme or fennel frond stirred thru, and you eat that with a nice seared fish? or scallop? or even shrimp? wow. you will Nut

your boxed mac and cheese game can also be elevated by cooking your pasta and making a beurre monté first, tossing your pasta in that and adding the cheese packet. wow. hey; you’ll cum

go forth now with this butter secret