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[sticky entry] Sticky: introduction!

Sep. 17th, 2024 05:15 pm
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mads // 22 // they

hi! welcome to my blog.. or i guess it's called a journal here! 
 a 3x3 grid of nine bears investigating trail cams so it looks like they’re saying hello

things to expect here:
✎: journal entries
☆: current events
♪: music i like
♛: art i like
☼: poetry
✑: interesting info! biographies, topics i'm learning about, etc
❀: plant posts
𓋼: fungus and slime mold posts
𓃦: animal posts (bears will be tagged bear, birds will be tagged bird, seals will be tagged seal, bugs will be tagged bug)
◈: rocks and minerals
❖: fossils!
♣: archaeology & artifacts
☾: space

if you're interested, stick around! and say hi :) i don't bite

[sticky entry] Sticky:

Jun. 2nd, 2025 12:23 pm
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🇵🇸 PALESTINE AID 🇵🇸

ON THE GROUND IN GAZA: FOOD, WATER, & SHELTER

- Taawon: a nonprofit running a campaign providing food parcels, water, shopping vouchers, and tents in Gaza: https://www.taawon.org/en/content/gaza-needs-us-now
- World Food Programme: UN branch providing food in shelters and camps: https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/palestine-emergency
- Life for Gaza: Gaza municipality’s fund to rebuild vital infrastructure such as roads, waste collection, and water projects: https://gaza-city.ensany.com/campaign/6737?lang=en
- Arab Group for the Protection of Nature’s Revive Gaza Farmlands Project: APN’s project to replant farmlands to reestablish a source of food: https://www.apnature.org/en/donate-now
- Care for Gaza: organization working to provide displaced families in Gaza with food parcels and cash: https://x.com/careforgaza
- Palestine Children’s Relief Fund’s Gaza Relief and Recovery Plan: PCRF’s campaign to provide food, water, and essential medical supplies and treatment: https://pcrf1.app.neoncrm.com/forms/gaza-recovery
- Mutual Aid for the People of Gaza: Mona Abu Hamda uses the money from this fund to purchase and distribute food parcels and other basic supplies: https://www.gofundme.com/f/helping-the-people-of-gaza-mutual-aid-fund
The Sameer Project: a Palestinian-led initiative that raises funds to provide tents, cash aid, and medical care in South Gaza:  https://chuffed.org/project/113222-tent-campaign-the-sameer-project
Islamic Relief Worldwide: UK-based international aid organization providing hot meals, water, and hygiene supplies: https://www.islamic-relief.sg/palestine-emergency-appeal/
- UNRWA: UN organization providing assistance to Palestinian refugees: https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page/en_EN

ON THE GROUND IN GAZA: MEDICAL AID
Doctors Without Borders: international organization running field hospitals and providing access to sanitation and medical treatment: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
- Medical Aid for Palestine: provides medical aid and supports healthcare services in Gaza: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=emergency&gad_source=1
- Children Not Numbers: a non-governmental organization focused on providing medical aid and medical evacuation for children: https://childrennotnumbers.org/

ON THE GROUND IN GAZA: EDUCATION
- The Isnad Foundation: covers the cost of school materials and provides access to online learning in the absence of necessary infrastructure: chuffed.org/project/126947-isnad-supporting-students-in-gaza

ESIMS
- Connecting Humanity provides a guide and links for buying eSims and will connect your purchase to someone in need: https://gazaesims.com/

PERSONAL FUNDRAISERS
- Funds for Gaza: a rotating collection, pick a fundraiser from a vetted list: https://linktr.ee/fundsforgaza
- Gaza Funds: picks a vetted fundraiser for you based on urgency and how close it is to the goal: https://gazafunds.com/all (there's also Sudan Funds, which does the same thing with Sudanese fundraisers:https://www.sudanfunds.com/)
- @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi on Tumblr’s vetted fundraiser list allows you to confirm a fundraiser is legitimate: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yYkNp5U3ANwILl2MknJi9G7ArY4uVTEEQ1CVfzR8Ioo/edit
- @/gazavetters on Tumblr’s vetted fundraiser list does the same with another set of fundraisers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YGgkXoyam7tnbXb-vqWsHFs3Puyf_xYeXY2dPrZQY1M/edit?usp=drivesdk
- @/bilal-sala7’s vetted fundraiser list is relatively new and provides another source for verification: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u6X8Q_e3igu9w_60P5vVyqE47ZIRnncMRYrW7x0oTuk/edit?usp=drivesdk

SPOTLIGHT FUNDRAISERS (all vetted)
- Hyam Shehab’s family: gofund.me/792af867
- Kareman Dohan’s family: gofund.me/0a3e7e6a
- Osama el-Haj’s family: gofund.me/0bd30e53
- Ahmed Hammad’s family: gofund.me/0bd52d63

FOR EVACUATED PALESTINIANS
- Network For Palestine is a volunteer organization in Cairo that helps evacuated Palestinians in Egypt build new lives via multiple fundraisers that can be found in their linktree: https://linktr.ee/networkforpalestine

MISC
- Operation Olive Branch is a project working to compile personal fundraisers and mutual aid funds; many of the organizations in this post can also be found on their spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vtMLLOzuc6GpkFySyVtKQOY2j-Vvg0UsChMCFst_WLA/edit
- @/palipunk on Tumblr's masterlist has places to donate but also a lot of resources for learning more about Palestine: https://www.tumblr.com/palipunk/698216767541133313/

Jun. 15th, 2025 11:35 pm
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the album cover of The Age of Men is Over by Feminzagul
To the Throat // The Age of Men is Over (2018) // Feminazgul
https://feminazgul.bandcamp.com/album/the-age-of-men-is-over?t=1

Jun. 15th, 2025 11:33 pm
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i’ve been thinking about songs that take me straight back to when i first heard them lately, especially songs that got me into new genres. top three i can think of off the top of my head are prunes by faetooth, sugar by made out of babies, and to the throat by feminazgul. also all of teens of denial rockets me back to fall 2021 and bury me at makeout creek puts me back into spring 2022. that period of my life was so weird and sticks out so strongly in my memory that songs from it had a disproportionate lingering impact, i think

Jun. 14th, 2025 07:04 pm
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The Man-Moth
by Elizabeth Bishop
—Man-Moth: a newspaper misprint for “mammoth”

Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.
          But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
          Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.
          Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the trains starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.
          Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
          If you catch him,
hold a flashlight up to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention
he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Jun. 14th, 2025 06:36 pm
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current mood: happy!
current music: glacial lobe advances and retreats from the river valley, scraping land like knife on whetstone by pinko fibers
current beverage: crisp and cold water!
current activity: tidying up, decorating, and cleaning the downstairs part of our apartment
goal for today: vacuum downstairs!! the situation is dire
i’m looking forward to… a clean and organized (half an) apartment
i’m feeling grateful for… my friends’ music! i’ve been listening to the stuff the people in my life have made a lot recently.. i have really talented friends
notes: i think i’m entering a manic episode, which is strange.. the depressive episodes tend to be longer. i’m directing the energy it’s giving me into getting things done, which helps keep the anxiety aspect from flaring up too badly and also means i finally started tackling some of the things i’ve been putting off. i haven’t done homework for a day or two but i’ve made sure to stay busy so i don’t lose the momentum i’ve been running on since the last week of the spring semester. i’m reading a lot lately, which is nice! 

Jun. 14th, 2025 04:22 pm
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a fan coral with its holdfast still attached mounted on my wall above a wooden-framed illustration of a nautilus
our new wall art :) 

Jun. 13th, 2025 04:17 pm
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Archaic Torso of Apollo // We cannot know his legendary head / with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso / is still suffused with brilliance from inside, / like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, // gleams in all its power. Otherwise / the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could / a smile run through the placid hips and thighs / to that dark center where procreation flared. // Otherwise this stone would seem defaced / beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders / and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: // would not, from all the borders of itself, / burst like a star: for here there is no place / that does not see you. You must change your life. 
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”, from the collection Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
This is one of my all-time favorite poems from my all-time favorite poet. It’s uncertain what statue Rilke wrote of specifically, but the one I chose to draw is a likely candidate. I’ve read and reread this poem probably a hundred times.

Jun. 13th, 2025 01:48 pm
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GOLGATHA IN MY FATHER’S GARAGE
by Blaike Marshall
I dreamt I crucified my father in the garage.
Galvanized flesh to oak, a nail for the bottle
of pills taken all at once. Another for the son
she decided to keep, the rest for the days
we don’t discuss. The twin beams
conjoined at the torso, taller than I would ever
remember him, sang psalms that flipped
the flow of the Nile; waters running
red as always, with blood or wine, outlining
the delta in his palms. The air felt like the coast
before the hurricane, or an air after streets
have burned. And if a veil was torn, I didn’t hear it.
Resting in the plunging lump of his narrow neck—
an apology to me or himself, something we have
never shared. Between his outstretched arms hung
an air that felt like the only air I would breathe
from there on, an air that was always his.

Jun. 13th, 2025 01:39 pm
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current mood: tired but happy
current music: trophy by made out of babies
current beverage: coffee!
current activity: getting ready to go to the library
goal for today: get my financial aid stuff sorted out
i’m looking forward to… the library! i’ve been rereading the haunting of hill house on my phone and i’m excited to have a paper copy instead
i’m feeling grateful for… the library… you mean these books are free as long as i give them back? wow!
notes: i worked almost a full 20 hours the past two weeks (which is the most i can work in a two-week period) so i finally finally FINALLY will have an income! i think i get paid monday :) i’ve finally kind of taken charge of our finances and even though we’re broke it’s much less stressful when i feel informed and like i’m making progress toward a better situation. i’ve been really productive lately and i’m proud of myself for it!

Jun. 12th, 2025 02:15 pm
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i started smoking regularly in 2022 and as of 28 May this year i decided to stop (it had been a few days since i’d smoked, so idk how long it’s actually been). i was meditating and just had this burst of an idea of “oh, i’m not getting anything out of this anymore”. my lungs are fightingggg to clear out the mucus but honestly all the little coughs are just reminders that my lungs are working to repair themselves… only really 2.5 years, and i happened to need an echogram of my lungs about a year ago and they looked fine, so i think i quit before things got bad. it’s been just over two weeks (plus however many days—i wish i knew when the actual last time was!) and i already just feel better about myself, more of a mental shift than anything. i’m making an effort to get good exercise in every day even if that’s just having to go up and down three flights of stairs at work, but walks and bike rides have also been nice when it’s not too hot. i just feel like i’m finally taking care of my body!

Jun. 11th, 2025 10:17 pm
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current mood: okay!
current music: …an invocation by faetooth
current beverage: junmai sake and sapporo
current activity: about to watch an episode of twin peaks!
goal for today: make progress on my bryozoan lab ✓
i’m looking forward to… a nice night with alison :)
i’m feeling grateful for… the katmai bears! i’m so excited for the cameras to go online
notes: had to really fight to have a good day today but i managed it!

Jun. 11th, 2025 12:39 pm
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i’m still getting the hang of financial literacy (to give you an idea of the preparation with which i went into owning a credit card, my high school’s financial literacy class curriculum consisted mostly of shark tank episodes) and i didn’t realize that you can’t pay off the monthly charge ahead of time or you’re just paying on the principle… now my checking account’s overdrawn ;-; i get paid next week so it’ll be fine but i feel silly for not knowing that. my card had 0% interest for the first year as part of a new customer deal so this is a recent change and i did not know about the logistics LOL

Jun. 11th, 2025 12:34 pm
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rapakivi: alkali feldspar (pink) rimmed by plagioclase feldspar (grey). this example is about 2 cm in diameter antirapakivi: plagioclase feldspar (grey) rimmed by alkali feldspar (pink). this example is about 3.5 cm in diameter
rapakivi (left) and antirapakivi (right) in polished granite. the right picture actually has three large examples (and at least one smaller one); this granite has more antirapakivi than rapakivi. the alkali feldspar in this case is orthoclase!

Jun. 9th, 2025 06:20 pm
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closeups of the corallites of eight colonial corals 
some colonial corals’ corallites! clockwise from top left:
1.) Class Anthozoa, Order Scleractinia, Genus unknown
2.) Class Anthozoa, Order Tabulata, Genus Syringopora
3.) Class Anthozoa, Order Tabulata, Genus Halysites
4.) Class Anthozoa, Order Tabulata, Genus Favosites
5.) Class Anthozoa, Order Scleractinia, Genus Thecia
6.) Class Anthozoa, Order Rugosa, Genus Hexagonaria
7.) Class Anthozoa, Order Tabulata, Genus Aulopora
8.) Class Anthozoa, Order Scleractinia, Genus unknown

Jun. 8th, 2025 09:43 am
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the album cover of En Todas Partes by PETSSS 
my friend victor asked me to make cover art for his new EP and it’s finally out so i can tell you guys about it! also LISTEN TO ITTTTTT if you’re at ALL into techno, he’s amazingggg (plus deception features glial cells)—it’s on spotify, bandcamp, and soundcloud. you can follow victor on insta @/victor_trumpets ^_^ now see me talk about my art
about the cover art: i took a nepheline syenite thin section and put it in XPL to bring out its interference colors, then overlayed the albite twinning from a labradorite slide (so my thanks to my school’s mineral collection!)—this was all done by tracing and editing pictures taken with a leica xpl microscope in procreate. i played around with color and orientation for a while with a lot of input from victor until we landed on this! i’m happy with it and the part i think is cool and the reason i was so excited to tell you guys about it is that i basically made a frankenstein mineral—this is something beautiful, made up of two real minerals, that couldn’t occur in nature. it’s taking the art of the rocks i’m looking at and creating my own!
side note: i knowwwww the text isn’t lined up perfectly and it’s driving me CRAZY i sent a second file with it fixed but it’s off by a single pixel so i don’t think he spotted the difference T_T i’m still really happy with how it turned out though!!

Jun. 8th, 2025 09:41 am
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the album cover of En Todas Partes by PETSSS 
Te Veo En Todas Partes // En Todas Partes, 2025 // PETSSS
https://open.spotify.com/track/6fS73Qo6fG6k2v7JVKCktL?si=iD6v6RHuTsuBwTVp4l4txw

Jun. 7th, 2025 10:54 pm
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one of the talks today was about the end-Permian extinction (the biggest mass extinction by FAR) and while the extinction itself is super interesting it made me curious about the stages of reef recovery in the Triassic. here’s a paper i’m reading (not finished with yet) about it: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/51/11/1011/627616/Prolonged-and-gradual-recovery-of-metazoan-algal

Jun. 7th, 2025 10:29 pm
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a diagram of a crinoid's anatomy. on the left a full crinoid is pictured with the root, stem, theca (head), and arms labeled. on the left the plates of the theca are drawn out as though seen from above to illustrate the organization of the infrabasal (bottom), basal (middle), radial (upper), and oral (mouth) plates. the central plate has a bump to indicate the stem attachment. every aspect of the crinoid has 5-fold symmetry. image from the 1911 Enclyclopdia Britannica, Vol. 8 
anatomy of a crinoid (note the five-fold symmetry throughout the body!)

from the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part T:

Morphologically the crinoid organism is divisible into several major parts: the stalk or column (here labeled “stem”), the theca which may be divided into the aboral cup or calyx, and an oral membrane or tegmen, and pinnule-bearing arms or brachia. The crinoid organism consists of a very voluminous body wall and only a relatively small body cavity. By far the largest part of the body cavity is lodged in the theca and only extensions of it consisting of small canals penetrate the stalk, arms, and pinnules. The bulk of the volume of the several internal organs systems is found in the central body cavity of the theca. The crinoid body wall is supported by a voluminous mesodermal endoskeleton, the form of which determines the total shape of the organism. Describing the crinoid form is practically the same as describing the form of the skeleton. …
The infrabasals of crinoids normally form a circlet of five small plates at the aboral¹ pole of the theca. They are disposed in radial position and rest upon the topmost columnal². …
The basals are primarily five in number, forming a circlet near the aboral pole of the theca between the circlet of infrabasals and the circlet of radials, with both of which they alternate, being interradial in position. The basals have synostosial sutural contacts with both infrabasals and radials³. …
Regularly crinoids have five radials arranged in a circle in the cup. The radial circlet may be interrupted by primary interradials and by an anal plate…The radials alternate with the basals and are connected to them with sutural contacts of synostosial type. Each radial is followed by a series of brachial plates⁴, with the first of which it has a muscular articulation⁵. 

¹ opposite the mouth
² stalk segment
³ fancy way of saying that they’re fused together
⁴ plates connecting arms (brachia) to the theca
⁵ these muscles allow it to move its arms around to grab at food and pull it toward the mouth!

→ Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part T (Echinodermata 2: Crinoidea): https://journals.ku.edu/InvertebratePaleo/article/view/5642/5116
→ figure from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 8: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Echinoderma

Jun. 7th, 2025 05:29 pm
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the paleo event was super fun! i’m not going back for the third day since lectures were only yesterday and today. i learned a lot, filled out gaps in things i already knew some about, and got to practice the art of interpreting others’ research (not so simple as you’d think!). i also got to hang out with some other members of the geoscience department at the department’s booth in the vendor tent, which meant getting super sweaty but also a lot of fun conversations and asserting the supremacy of invertebrate paleo over vertebrate paleo (the event was very cretaceous-vertebrate-heavy). really good two days but now i’m super tired!

Jun. 6th, 2025 10:38 pm
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the album cover of The Man Who Died in His Boat by Grouper
Clouds in Places // The Man Who Died in His Boat (2013) // Grouper
https://open.spotify.com/track/0diPy4X3fZ253nxtUXXitO?si=NVMMjvivR1a2bqgfcXMMag

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