u/Brief-Basket-6630

anyway look at my fucking HAUL 😭 being perceived by men has finally yielded ✨material benefits✨ behold my fungal dowry 👑

alt text for the image: a large bag absolutely packed with assorted fresh mushrooms, including shiitake, oyster, king oyster & clusters of small beech/shimeji mushrooms

(my husband is actually the most excited about this arrangement ngl)

We can revere someone for their contributions and still acknowledge their flaws, not to “cancel” anybody, but to avoid repeating past mistakes. We can appreciate their contributions and at the same time hold space for what needs to be different moving forward. Complexity is not our enemy. ✨

just a lil collection of recent eats 🌱💖 some homemade, some eaten out, some made for me with lots of love. almost four years vegan & still somehow surviving the terrible burden of all this restriction 😔✊ turns out there are at least nine vegan foods, huge if true

alt text for the images:

1. bright green bao with a savoury veggie filling from london chinatown, served with chilli & soy dipping sauces
2. crispy pumpkin katsu (curry) over rice with spring onions & a side of green veggie dumplings
3. two vegan pizzas at a cuban place in dartford, topped with tomato & herbs, greens, chilli & vegan meatz
4. homemade vegan feast made by my adoptive london family, with red rice, dhal, bean stew, pickles, chilli & vegan raclette (plus - yes - homemade vegan bounty for dessert 👀)
5. glossy stir-fried noodles with tofu, bok choy, spring onions & red chilli
6. bowl of vegan yoghurt absolutely fucking TOPPED with berries, granola, pumpkin seeds, goji berries, cacao nibs & nut butter
7. half a baked caramelised apple (not red delicious) topped with a big ass scoop of vegan vanilla ice cream
8. creamy polenta porridge topped with sautéed mushrooms, spinach & crispy vegan bacon bits
9. bowl of homemade semolina dumpling soup with carrots & fresh parsley (best tummy ache food hands down)

this list formatting is kicking my ass 🥲 if it looks poopy on your side, i’m so sorry

this week marked nine years since negro matapacos passed away & i've been thinking about this lil guy a lot these past few days 🥹 negro was a scruffy black dog who lived with a woman named maria in santiago, chile, but spent much of his time wandering around the nearby universities & befriending students. when the huge student protests began in 2011, negro started going along too - maria said he'd scratch at the door wanting to be let out when a march was happening & she'd straighten the little scarf around his neck, give him a blessing & send him on his way. he became known around the world when he started showing up in photos from the protests, running alongside the students, barking at riot police & having a go at the jets from their water cannons, all of which eventually earned him the name negro matapacos (essentially, black the cop-killer 🫡)

he died in 2017 (accompanied by people who loved him & vet assistance), but when chile erupted in protests again in 2019, he was still there 🥲 painted on walls, carried on banners, made into huge fucking sculptures, always with his red little scarf. i love this lil guy & his story & it just fills me with optimism (particularly the revolutionary type ✊)

here's some interesting stuff to read / listen to about him if anyone's curious :)

• Working Class History podcast episode - "Riot dogs: Negro Matapacos" (from this year)
• academic paper (free via ResearchGate) - "Negro Matapacos: Street dog, hero or patron saint of protestors?"
• academic paper (free, in spanish) - "La construcción de una narrativa mítica multimodal del negro matapacos tras las protestas del 18-O en Chile"

alt text for the images in the carousel:

1. mural of negro matapacos towering over chilean protesters, wearing his red bandana
2. large black sculpture of negro matapacos wearing a red bandana in a public square
3. colourful street-art portrait of negro matapacos, with ‘el negro’ written beside him
4. street art of negro matapacos with a halo, red bandana & his name painted in red
5. giant negro matapacos sculpture being wheeled through a crowd of protesters
6. black, white & red mural of negro matapacos wearing his red bandana
7. protest sign depicting negro matapacos as a saint, surrounded by flowers & the words ‘adopta, no compres’
8. mural of negro matapacos in a red bandana beneath the words ‘¡arriba lxs que luchan!’
9. illustration of negro matapacos in a red bandana leaping over metro barriers marked ‘evade’
10. photo of negro matapacos looking upwards, wearing his trusty red bandana

solar eclipse from my garden today 😌🌞🌑 (my phone has unfortunately declined to perceive what my eyeballs can very clearly see through the eclipse glasses)

also using this as an excuse to plug one of my favourite bits of romanian lore: in old romanian folklore, eclipses were sometimes blamed on vârcolaci - wolfish demons / werewolf-adjacent creatures - who would quite literally eat the sun or moon. so scientifically speaking there is currently a large celestial doggy having dinner up there xx

also when romania got the total solar eclipse in 1999 we commemorated it with this absolutely cunty banknote

anyway happy eclipse everyone. may this hungry hungry vârcolac spit her back out x

(it’s also a new moon & the perseids peak today, so the sky has apparently booked the entire venue tonight 😌)

mine is this fucking guy. lego bunny keychain i won at easter last year, the first time i ever played bingo 😭 it contributes nothing to society but its little feets light up so obviously i would die for him 🫡 💖

i’ve been vegan for 4 years (tomorrow!) 🤘 when i moved to the uk i found a really cool flatshare in london with a vegan family & i told them i was vegan too because i really wanted to live there & i don’t like lying so i had to commit

so here are some random memes & some of the scran i’ve cooked lately 🌸

1. hiei from yu yu hakusho pursuing strength & adequate protein & fibre intake

2. pineapple curry with avo, rice & various other treasures

3. me: becoming emotionally compromised by literally any fucking expression of tenderness like a lil bitch

4. noodles with whatever green veggies were languishing in the fridge & a crunchy peanut butter sauce because smooth is for cowards (no offence cowards, i respect ur dietary choices 🙏)

5. kuwabara from yu yu hakusho, confirmed ally since the 90s

6. miso glazed aubergine, tofu curry, rice & spinach because the pms demon demands feeding

7. another tofu curry, this time with pak choi, broccoli, peas & a frankly concerning quantity of lil radish slices

peace ✌️ xx

i also wanna take nature walks 🥺

colleague: did anything fun this weekend?
me, knowing i spent 3.5h on the train this saturday during a heatwave to eat at my favourite place, like i do every first saturday of every month: sure

my spouse says i need to branch out but he’s never known a love like this so it’s easy for him to say

photos 1-4 my dog muna every morning making sure she breathes in & out right in front of my nose until it gets uncomfortable enough that i stop pretending i’m asleep xx and then clocking out immediately after ensuring everyone else is awake (she’s asleep again ffs) 🫡 🤝

i am annoyed with my job this week xx

1. gru presentation meme. the flawless research process: “ask people what they want” to “people tell us what they want” to “client: thanks (we will never do anything with this information)”. gru looks back at the final slide. ah

2. pam from the office confirms concept A and concept B are “the same picture”. beside her, ebichu sobs violently. caption: “client who spent £400k developing them”

3. girl explaining something to visibly bored guy; caption: “me explaining to some media agency guyTM why ‘only 12 people said it’ is not necessarily a devastating rebuttal to qualitative research”. he yearns for freedom

4. top: rainbow dolphin meme with caption “me at 14: when i grow up i want to understand people & the mysteries of human consciousness”. bottom: corporate stock photo of woman presenting with caption “if mayonnaise was a person, what kind of person would mayonnaise be?”

5. pawn stars meme. research findings: “more bespoke tailored support is required to feasibly address a broader variety of accessibility needs”. client: “best i can do is move everything online”

my hand was chosen to be sat on by this gorgeous little critter for a brief 10 seconds. once the first 5 seconds passed, she was courteous enough to wait for me to take a photo, and then promptly fucked off 🫡

if anyone wants to be my guinea pig, drop your chart below! preferably tropical + placidus (the usual astro-seek.com settings) so i’m comparing like with like. example in second image ☺️ if u don’t know your exact time of birth (within 15 mins), don’t add one at all pretty pls 🙏 degrees can make things real specific real quick

i’ll pick something in your chart that i find interesting & attempt to interpret it & in return you can tell me whether i’m onto something or talking bull lmao 👀

disclaimer: i am very much learning!! this is for fun & practice, not me pretending to be an astrologer lol 💖🤟

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1. rewatching samurai jack at 30 & naturally I have thoughts
2. jack trains his whole life to defeat 1 (one) evil guy
3. and then he literally gets flung into the future & finds out the one evil guy has become an entire fucking system
4. police state, surveillance, propaganda, awful urban planning
5. so now he’s basically a samurai from the past (tho i’d argue being alone in the future makes him essentially a ronin) & he needs to adapt
6. anyway, he keeps finding other people who are also sick of aku’s shit, little pockets of good surviving inside the dystopia
7. they have different skills, different lives, different reasons to fight, but they all have in common one extremely annoying enemy
8. aaanyway, it’s always the right time to learn useful things from each other & become more difficult to oppress
9. especially now <3 ta, much love xx

alt text:

1. looking up at the old dreamland cinema in margate, its brick tower & gold lettering against a huge cloudy blue sky

2. close-up of a wild bramble covered in blackberries at every stage of ripening, from green to pink to glossy black

3. blurry photo of a tower of old tvs, radios & walkie-talkies at tate modern

4. close-up of a hulking brutalist block of flats

5. looking straight up from inside the shell grotto in margate, where thousands of shells form patterns around a bright circular opening overhead, with little ferns growing between them

6. selfie! 🌀👄🌀

alt text:

1. meme about my brain being equally occupied by feminist theory, matriarchal history, orcas & hot men lifting heavy things

2. meme about seeing a person be competent & a lil slutty & climbing them like a trelis

3. meme about my husband being a lil freak 💖👹

4. meme about the strange intimacy & loneliness of being the only person who can ever fully know yourself

please accept an illustrated taxonomy of (some more of) the shit currently occupying my brain & moments i’ve been witnessing 🙏✨

alt text for accessibility:

1. distracted boyfriend meme about me abandoning my 47 existing interests the second a shiny new one appears

2. photo looking down at my legs on a train, wearing extremely colourful trousers featuring what can only be described as a pop art boobs variety show

3. meme about my preferred daily activity of pottering about & looking at things

4. diving geometry accidentally installed in the sitting room at 6am this morning. photo of morning sunlight reflecting across the corner of a room, forming two long, curved golden lines that travel across the ceiling & down the wall

5. meme about the god complex i develop after completing one admin task. it’s intoxicating

6. slightly blurry photo of a flock of sheep grazing in the Apuseni mountains in that strange purple light just before sunrise, taken while wild camping with my spouse 🌄

7. meme of bernie sanders requesting whimsy, financial security & a lil forehead kiss from the universe on my behalf xx

8. photo through a window at sunrise, with pink, orange & blue clouds glowing above silhouetted rooftops, with everyday tchotchkes sillhouetted along the windowsill

i don’t know what kind of job you need so you can hang out in a botanical garden all day, but im hunting for it

1. Photo of a greenhouse pond covered in lily pads, with huge bright green palm leaves hanging over the water & the glass roof reflected on its surface

2. Photo of an old botanical garden building almost hidden behind overgrown trees & plants, with warm wooden windows & a narrow path leading through the greenery

3. Close-up photo of small white flowers growing inside a lush greenhouse, with lots more white flowers & greenery blurred in the background

4. Photo of a weathered pale blue wooden door set into an old, crumbling cream wall, surrounded by potted plants & climbing greenery

5. Close-up photo of a colourful tropical plant with tiny orange, pink & purple berries/flowers, growing in a sunny greenhouse

6. Photo of a huge bright pink flowering tree against a clear blue summer sky, with an old greenhouse & botanical garden buildings behind it

7. Photo looking up through huge dark green tropical leaves inside a greenhouse, backlit by the sun through the glass roof

more photos of lil things that spiked my serotonin while on holiday ☁️✨

1. Photo looking out over the red-tiled rooftops & church towers of Brașov, surrounded by green, forested hills under a bright blue sky

2. Photo of several shelves tightly packed with worn, colourful vintage paperback books in an antique shop

3. Close-up photo of an old Romanian magazine page about Dracula, printed in black, white & red, with the title „În căutarea contesei Dracula” (Looking for Countess Dracula 🧛‍♀️)

4. Mirror selfie in an antique shop, wearing a colourful oversized jacket, surrounded by framed botanical & animal prints & little trinkets

5. Photo through the window of a closed, abandoned pet shop, showing an old portrait of a shaggy dog behind a rusty decorative metal grille

6. Abstract-looking photo of sunlit green grass distorted through the plastic mesh of a fishing chair’s cup holder

7. Photo of a flea-market table covered in old DVDs, including Romanian conspiracy documentaries about secret societies, spies & arrests

8. Photo of a vintage painted portrait of a smiling young person smoking a pipe, in an elaborate gold frame at a flea market

9. Photo of a flea-market table piled with old CDs, VHS tapes & DVDs — none of it’s explicit in the photo per se, but yes, it’s all old spicy films collected from Romanian Penthouse & FHM magazines 🤟

1. Photo looking down a tree-lined river, with an old footbridge crossing it & buildings visible through the trees in the distance

2. Photo looking down a long covered walkway in an old building, with high vaulted ceilings, decorative arches & patterned tiled floors

3. Close-up photo of an overgrown glass phone box covered in scribbles (graffiti?), with green vines growing all around and inside it

4. Close-up photo of a large tree trunk covered in bright green moss, with a small millipede near the bottom

5. Close-up photo of a pale orange, hairy caterpillar crawling across bright green moss

6. Close-up photo of a red & black millipede crawling along the mossy bark of a tree

7. Close-up photo of clusters of small brown shelf fungi growing across a moss-covered tree trunk

8. Photo of a large, dark painting depicting a shadowy greenhouse filled with dense, curling plants, with warm reddish light coming through an arched glass doorway at the back