#counter social
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A precise map of a polar vortex / bomb cyclone (aka the forecast for this Friday)
Nikolai
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The Irregular Ascetic
In August, I briefly made a new friend on Tumblr.
His account has long since vanished for reasons I do not know. Maybe this place just didn't click for him. I've been here for years and always found it welcoming, but I know that, like everything, this site is not for everyone.
He'd send me a message, ask a question or two, and when I checked every week or so, I'd do my best to reply.
Then, one day, he was gone, but not before leaving me one last question:
"An ascetic heathen life? What does that look like to you? I want to see that visual."
And that's kind of the question, isn't it?
The thing about callings is that they aren't always clear-cut. I may feel drawn towards an ascetic heathen life, but it's not like my Gods sent me an Ikea flat-pack kit.
As seems to be the pattern with the Germanic deities, they tapped me on the shoulder and then said...
"Here ya go, figure it out."
And here we are. Forty-Two, with over ten years as a member of the Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), I haven't finished my dedicant path, nor started the clergy track.
I can't remember the last time I did a full ritual.
All in all, I seem like a pretty crappy monk, don't I?
Sister Snow Hare, indeed...
It seems that my vanishing friend pinned me to the wall. I've been chewing on this again, trying to work it out.
If you're reading this, buddy, know that you kicked off a lot of introspection about my path, and you inspired this long rambling Tumblr post.
The best place to start is the beginning. (A little free wisdom)
So, what exactly is monasticism?
Good ol’ Mr. Wikipedia defines it as "a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work."
No matter the faith, this is a feature of monastic life: asceticism, self-denial, and focus.
Have I mentioned I can't remember the last time I did a ritual yet?
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Nothing makes me feel guilty, like comparing myself to the standards and practices of others. Somewhere out there, a Buddhist is living on four grains of rice, meditating eighteen hours a day, stopping only to sleep. The five minutes a day he spends on Tumblr, he's laughing at me.
I just know it. >.>
You could say I've been feeling a little convicted about this.
Yet the calling is still there. My relationship with my Gods isn't just good; it's warm. While not formal or official, I have a fulfilling spiritual life that's not structured like anything in the faith org I faithfully send my twenty dollars a year to and then largely hide from.
So what's going on?
I've begun to realize slowly over the last year that my faith path will probably never be recognizable as anything routine, rote, or by the book, but what it will be is mine.
Where does my asceticism show?
Let me take you through a typical day.
Waking at 2300 (11 pm), I plank for three minutes, do about ten minutes of calisthenics, wash my face, and then meditate for twenty minutes to a half hour, offering that time to the Gods. Then, with that done, I recite my creed and head off to the gym.
I have a creed. I'm that fancy!
While I'm in the truck, I informally pray. Often, I'm talking to my Lady Eostre, but the other Gods definitely get included. Woden and I have always gotten along, and Thunor, I call big brother because he's always watching out for us and protecting us.
Now it's time for my hour minimum at the gym. Half an hour each of cardio and weight training. This is so I can be in good condition and proper shape.
Good health is important to me, but more on that in a moment.
When I get home, I clean for about an hour, something I call "service meditation." Scrubbing floors, cleaning counters, and sanitizing bathrooms is a gift I can give daily to my loved ones with whom I make a home. While I work, I reflect on them and consider all they give me.
After a much-needed shower, I'm in the office and might finally have breakfast. I eat, ascetically, often the same thing every day; I keep my calories low and usually take up a 16-hour fast between my last meal and first meal.
Everything gets weighed down to the gram and tracked on my calorie sheet.
Next comes editing, writing, often some informal online counseling, or time spent on networks like Counter Social, Telegram, and Discord trying to help people, even if it's only getting them to smile.
Hope is big for me because my Lady Eostre is the goddess of Spring and the Dawn. She is hope personified, a goddess of fresh chances and potential. Pointing back to her and her values is my purpose. It's what I was made for.
My day continues like that until I'm in bed at 1600 (4 PM), after an hour cool-down where I go through my creed and have one last conversation with the Gods. That's when I set out my fruit offerings if I happened to have any that day.
It's a hard and fast rule. The gods always get the best part of the banana and the strawberry.
This is the way.
My bed is a mat that rolls out on the floor. I started that in 2020, and I've never been happier or slept better, and when I travel, it comes with me.
And I travel a lot.
My family here calls it "missions." Every now and again, someone in my network will need help. They might be having surgery, a mental health crisis, or are moving cross town or cross country. Whatever the reason, the call goes out, and if I can make it work with money, I'll hop a plane, train, or bus and get out there.
Beyond the joy I get from being in shape and capable, this is why I work out. It's much easier to load and move boxes or help lift people when you're in decent physical condition.
I actually have training as a CNA, so I know how to do all the transfer stuff, and I have decent experience in post-surgical care.
I don't want to go into this part too much because it feels like bragging, but I've been all over the States and soon to be Canada just helping people. I ramble in, do what I can, then return home and take back up my discarded routine.
And this is my life, apart from writing my books. As I looked at it and began breaking it down, I realized that I am already living a disciplined ascetic life.
My gods and my faith are at the forefront of what I do, but what defines my faith isn't the regular application of ritual, but action. Indeed, one of the sayings I live by is actions show what words claim.
So I'm not on a mountaintop, meditating with the sun's rising and setting, or dwelling within a monastery, cloistered from the world, living to sing hymns. There is beauty in that kind of asceticism, but it's not my asceticism.
Yet, we do have things in common.
My life is one of service, with a focus on the divine and the advancement of their aims for the world. It is my hope (there's that word again) that I can show the wisdom and cunning of Woden, the strength of Thunor, the honor of Tyr, and most of all, embody the hope of the Dawn in all I do.
Of course, I'm not perfect, and Saturdays are often waffle day, but life is about growth, not static metrics.
It's dawning on me that I may never be fully recognized in my path. I don't seem to jive well with organizations and dogmatic structures. I may never have Reverend by my name or "Sister" formally. When it's time to go, I may not even leave much behind save my books and these Tumblr posts.
When I do cross that far horizon, and I am again before my Lady, I hope she will look back on all I did during this strange human odyssey and see that while I may have been taken from her for a time, I never stopped being her devoted one, her servant, and that is all the formal recognition I will ever need.
For me, an ascetic heathen life is one of actions, denial, and service, which I seek to live every day.
#otherkin#therian#kinfriday#tumblr#writing#heathenry#neopaganism#germanic paganism#heathen asceticism#wandering hare#counter social#monasticism#paganism#anglo saxon pagan#the way of the wandering hare
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The current social media landscape.
Hive is apparently the new hotness, but it's also mobile-only.
Mastodon was the hotness just before that, but its distributed and federated nature makes it a pain in the ass to navigate. Did you set up on an instance where people talk about things you're interested in? Or one with a sane moderator? No? Well, better move your account to a different instance. Just the account, not your posts. Sometimes cross-instance searching works, but not always.
Counter.social was in the buzz before that. It's a single Mastodon instance that doesn't connect to anyone else, so it's siloed off into its own space. Good luck finding people that share your interests there! That's assuming that it's reachable, because it's just one dude running everything and it tends to collapse under load from time to time.
Facebook has a critical mass of users, but good luck keeping up with anything or anyone, because it's been decided that all that matters is the algorithm and how it can serve up ads. Chronological order isn't allowed, and you're lucky if you actually see the posts from people you follow. It's nearly useless.
Instagram is Facebook for photos, with a lot of the same issues. Hope you post to your story regularly, because otherwise the algorithm has decided that no one will see you. Hashtags help, but only so much, and it's easy to get suppressed in the results if you use them incorrectly.
Twitter has critical mass, but after the narcissistic oligarch who bought it laid off or drove off over 80% of the employees, it's one bad day from collapsing. Also, he's letting the alt-right back in, so fuck that place.
Finally, Tumblr. Tumblr is mostly chronological, except when an old post gets reblogged and it's 2015 again for a brief moment. It's equal parts serious issues and serious shitposting. Hashtags are useful for finding other people with similar interests, but they're also a narrative artform here. It's one of the few public corners of the internet with its own culture due to incessant weird-ass meme generation. It's like the inmates took over the asylum and ran a social media site. I don't know if it functions as social media, but I don't know if it doesn't either. It's a glorious mess.
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If any writers on here are looking for Twitter alternatives, check out Counter Social. They’re pretty serious about not allowing disinformation and hate speech.
#fuck elon musk#Elon musk is a thin skinned son of a slaver#counter social#coso#Twitter alternatives#social media#writeblr#writeblr community#writing community
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Twitter is a nightmarescape so I’m trying Counter Social if anyone is on there already or curious! They actually moderate things like hate speech so that’s nice 😂
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So what's next after Twitter?
Just got to know there's some better alternative of Twitter doing rounds across. A microbloging platform called 'Koo', has come out to be the 2nd largest platform having multiple languages and has already become a rage in India and Brazil.
Koo is officially launched in USA also this week!
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#twitter#twitter alternatives#mastadon#hive social#counter social#post.news#spoutible#bluesky#elon musk#jack dorsey
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I have to say I'm liking it already
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This is actually long overdue, & would be worth renewing my subscription for @TwitterBlue (provided they offered an ad free tier—say for $15/month).
He went on to praise Signal, the encrypted chat app that is run as a non-profit. He said he had spoken with its creator, Moxie Marlinspike, who is now “potentially willing to help out” with encrypting Twitter DMs.
“Ironically, Moxie Marlinspike worked at Twitter and actually wanted to do encrypted DMs several years ago, [but] was denied that and then went and created Signal,” Musk said. […]
Musk went on to say that “we also want to have the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs.” He acknowledged that Signal requires the sharing of a phone number to start a thread and that, thanks to its account system, Twitter can facilitate secure calling “so that you don’t have to give someone your phone number.”
Believe it or not a defederated Mastodon based instance known as Counter Social already has this feature (I think it’s powered by Matrix‽). It’s good idea, but with limited support from employees it will be interesting to see if Elon can pull this off.
I am on Counter Social (if anyone wants to follow me there): Counter.Social/@darnell
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Social Media: Does It Have to Be a Cesspool?
Social Media: Does It Have to Be a Cesspool?
This won’t take long because, honestly, the subject doesn’t deserve it.
Social Media…I’ve always looked at this askance and I am far from alone. To many people, social media feels like a necessary evil and I admit that I was only on Twitter, to begin with, because readers of my website, The Pour Fool, kept urging me to do it. Not wanting to be a dick toward those kind enough to read my stuff, I…
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Liana Brooks Contact Card
Look, if you've stumbled onto my Tumblr after coming from any of my other social media channels, that was your first bad decision. I don't do publishing stuff and book stuff over here. This is where I indulge in fandoms like any other geek. This is not a work space, this is where I come to consume other media.
If you're already following my Tumblr because you like the endless reblogs of Kdrama GIFS and very sporadic other things, and you're wondering how this mad woman supports herself, the answer is I write and edit books for a living. Please go ahead and laugh, I know it's hilarious because I did actually get a royalty statement for $0.59 USD from an old publisher the other day. Anyways, long story short, I do have a life off Tumblr. If you want to dive into the madness, that's on you.
In light of life, the universe, and everything being what they are... here is where you can find me away from here. I may or may not be more active on them.
Website: lianabrooks.com
Insta: instagram.com/bylianabrooks/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LianaBrooks
Patreon: patreon.com/LianaBrooks
Newsletter: lianabrooks.com/new-release-ne…
Books: books2read.com/ap/nED5kR/Lian…
Mastodon: mastodon.online/@LianaBrooks
Counter Social: LianaBrooks
#Liana Brooks#Publishing#Am Writing#SciFi#SF#SFR#Romance#UF#superhero romance#PubTip#NaNoWriMo#social media#Mastodon#Twitter#Counter Social#Books to Read#Books#Reading#I love books#read more books
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Fri. Nov. 4, 2022: Prepping For a Pretty Weekend
Fri. Nov. 4, 2022: Prepping For a Pretty Weekend
(image courtesy of David Mark via pixabay.com)
Friday, November 4, 2022
Waxing Moon
Neptune, Chiron, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars Retrograde
Cloudy and mild
Yesterday felt kind of all over the place. No one came to look at the weird ceiling stain, but it stopped growing and doesn’t look wet. Fingers crossed.
Meditation was good, although I had a hard time settling.
I got some work done, did the…
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#cohost#Counter Social#grief#meditation#Ravelry#rituals#script coverage#social media#Staples#The Tactile Muse#THE TREES WHISPERED DEATH#Tribel#Twitter#weekend#work#WT.social
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based off an actual thing that happened to me
#my art#stardew#stardew valley#stardew sebastian#so the story is#i was in this antique store because I wanted to browse the place#and i eyed this jar of seashells that was labelled 1998#it looked cool#the lady at the counter saw me and said oh those were handpicked from#some beach on the east coast#and i#The idiot stick riddled with social illness#said oh haha nice#and then we had a painfully one sided conversation on said jar of shells#I was the only person in that store#so i felt stupidly obligated to buy them#and I did#now they sit on my desk and I don’t know what to do with them
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Okay but like, Roy and Jamie weren’t exactly subtle about loathing each other, were they? They fought each other on the pitch and badmouthed each other on TV, none of that keep it quiet for the sake of the team shit for these extra boys, yeah? My point is, anyone who knows anything about English football knows that Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt used to hate each other, right?
So obviously, at some point, during some press conference or post game interview, someone needs to bring this fact up. Maybe it’s as early as after the 2x06 match, because Ted might well have insisted Roy and Jamie be the ones to front that, both because it was them that won that game and because he figures it’ll promote ~their bond~ or some such. Could be later too, after the headbutt/hug thing, or later still, once the pictures of Jamie and Roy’s early morning excursions start doing the rounds on social media.
Doesn’t matter much when, really, only that someone – maybe from the tabloids because they’re a vicious lot – would ask: “Roy, just weeks before you joined the Richmond coaching staff you said, and I quote, ‘Jamie Tartt is a muppet and I hope he dies of the incurable condition of being a little bitch’. Today you described him as the most important player on the field. What has changed?”
And maybe the room goes a bit quiet at that, oooh he fucking went there, and what the hell is going to happen now, but Jamie only cocks his head to the side, making a face but looking at Roy all amused like. “You said that about me? That hurts me feelings, Coach.”
And Roy rolls his eyes, exasperated but in too good a mood after the win to be really annoyed. “Yeah, well, as it turns out the condition was only mostly incurable, wasn’t it?”
And Jamie goes aaaw and the press goes um okay and it doesn’t really explain anything, only adds to the ever-evolving legend of what the fuck is up with Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt.
#i feel slightly robbed for not getting a peek at all the weird press and social media this whole insanity must have inspired#'cause by rights it must have been everywhere sports related#‘roy kent is going to coach jamie tartt? i give it one week tops before one of them is in the hospital’#the whole headbutt/hug thing when they won against brentford#‘WHAT WAS THAT’#‘wasn’t surprised by the headbutt but a hug???’#the tumblr account ‘is jamie tartt and roy kent friends yet’#countered by the hornier ‘is jamie tartt and roy kent fucking yet’#that maybe was once called 'have jamie tartt and roy kent killed each other yet'#but they had to rebrand for obvious reasons#god help us all when the whole extracurricular training thing gets out#twitter flooded by candids#‘is kent training him or torturing him? real question’#I WANT ALL OF IT#roy kent#jamie tartt#roy & jamie#ted lasso#my stuff
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I just had the dumbest idea but I think it's funny: Do some centaurs grind down their teeth into different shapes as a body mod because they continually grow, like how humans dye and style hair? I imagine that would be wildly inefficient for eating but it could theoretically work if you were careful and I can definitely see it becoming a trend among teens to sharpen some of their teeth to look cool.
Eughhh...... maybe in the multi-clan cities with access to reliable, processed foods and utensils they're doin that.... If you get too wild with it, you would absolutely fuck up your ability to eat food, or risk dangerous abscesses...
Aesthetic teeth grinding I think would not be being teenage counterculture thing, but a social status signifier. Grinding down the teeth to be LESS pointy would ironically probably be the most common (and safest) version of this, particularly for social roles intended to be non-threatening, like mediators, entourage members, spiritual guides, and doctors.
Another person in the asks inquired about tooth engraving, which strikes me as more likely than grinding teeth into wild pointy shapes.
#teenage rebellion in centaurs would not necessarily involve counter-culture fashion and body mods...#particularly in cultures where body mods have significance as social symbols of clan hierarchy#jaytext#runaway to the stars#rtts centaurs
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