This Happened To Me Today! Walking My Dog And There Was Something, Something In The Front Yard Of A Neighbour's

Love my raven child! Thank you!

A thank-you-Raven for @dragons-barb

Yes

Looking at the moon at night would feel completely different if the Apollo 11 crew couldn’t return home

How are these not getting flagged??? /end SaRcAsM font/

I think this is what I liked best about the movie... and grown-up Luke's sense of humor.

Gonna be stating some possible unpopular Star Wars opinions here, but here goes…

When I was watching The Last Jedi, I thought to myself, “is this the part that got the fans angry?” before and after every scene because all throughout the whole movie, I kept waiting for that anger inducing moment, but it never came.

In my point of view, the venom that these fans are spewing is for one core reason…they’re violently upset that the characters they worshipped and placed on a pedestal for all the years Star Wars has been around for have turned out to not be what they appear. They turned out to be human, flawed, and fallible, and the hardcore fanboys couldn’t handle it.

The biggest message this movie expressed was that transforming human beings into legends, worshiping them as gods, and turning people into symbols for incorruptible purity or irredeemable darkness will only lead to ruin. This movie drove home that human morality is a messy, complicated, chaotic force and shouldn’t be viewed in stark shades of black and white.

Feel free to disagree, but this is where I stand on the subject.

What Really Happens After the Apocalypse

Right now, the largest and most deadly wildfire in California history is burning. Last year, Hurricane Harvey drowned southeast Texas under punishing, endless rain; a month ago, Hurricane Florence …

The myth that panic, looting, and antisocial behavior increases during the apocalypse (or apocalyptic-like scenarios) is in fact a myth—and has been solidly disproved by multiple scientific studies. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, a research group within the United States Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), has produced research that shows over and over again that “disaster victims are assisted first by others in the immediate vicinity and surrounding area and only later by official public safety personnel […] The spontaneous provision of assistance is facilitated by the fact that when crises occur, they take place in the context of ongoing community life and daily routines—that is, they affect not isolated individuals but rather people who are embedded in networks of social relationships.” (Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions, National Academy of Sciences, 2006). Humans do not, under the pressure of an emergency, socially collapse. Rather, they seem to display higher levels of social cohesion, despite what media or government agents might expect…or portray on TV. Humans, after the apocalypse, band together in collectives to help one another—and they do this spontaneously. Disaster response workers call it ‘spontaneous prosocial helping behavior’, and it saves lives.

It’s COVID-19, not CORVID-19. A corvid is of the crow family.

19 crows are not gathering to kill you.

But if they are...it’s a murder.

At Irish Fest yesterday...

How the Demon Hunts

She took a long draw off the pipe and held the smoke in.  As he watched her, he found himself matching her breath… her draw… the long hold… until the edges of his vision began to fade.  She finally let it all out and he breathed again, too. 

“It snuck up on me” she said, snapping him back to reality.  “… kind of…  I mean, I knew it was coming but I couldn’t do anything about it…. you know what I mean?"  She hazarded a glance at him, hoping he’d show some sign that he did.  He didn’t - or maybe he just didn’t let on.  She didn’t want to have to explain it. 

It wasn’t that she couldn’t, but that she didn’t.  Pathetic… weak, she berated herself.  She sighed and passed the pipe to him, turning her attention to the cup of brandy he’d poured for her and shrugged, "I couldn’t do anything about it."  It was flat, but it would have to do.

He had asked - twice now - and she wanted to tell him, but this was not something she shared readily.  She would just have to push through it, remaining factual, detached, for as long as she could. She set her jaw and continued. "It came me from somewhere in the shadows. I heard it’s whispers… I could almost smell it…” her lip twitched in disgust.  “After a while, I almost got used to it tracking me.  I ignored it for a while.. I could handle it, right?” A crooked smile twitched on her face, but her eyes never left the rim of her cup. 

“It’s whispers were almost comforting; lies, of course, but familiar ones… ones I almost wanted to believe.  It would be easier that way. "  A sip from her cup; a steadying breath, and she could continue.  "It slowly edged closer - and I felt it coming - felt it wrap it’s tendrils around my throat and squeeze."  Her hand mimicked what she described as her eyes took on that far-away look they had when he roused her from the nightmares.

"They crawl up the back of my head, cover my eyes… fill my ears… and then it pulls me backward.  It pulls me where I am weakest, where I can’t fight… and all the whispers, all the lies… the lies I can’t deny…"  Tears welled in her eyes, despite her best efforts.  She took a swig of brandy and swallowed them back hard.

"Hey…"  he tried to interject, to break her narrative.  If she’d glanced at him in that moment, she’d see that he did know all too well what she was talking about; he’d seen it too, felt it’s pull, and was just as helpless against it.  He wanted to shake her back to this reality, to save her from this smothering presence.  Isn’t that what he’d always wished for himself when it pulled at his throat?  But all those useless words just hung thickly in his chest.  For the first time since he met her, he feared her.  No, not her, but her proximity to that demon that seemed to hunt them both. 

She stared intro nothingness for a moment longer, then drained her glass.  He opened another bottle of brandy.

This is one of my favorite parks. My grandmother used to have a house on the lake about a mile south of this park and we kids would hike or row up there, hike around the old quarry, have a cook-out, swim through the waves... ah, summer!

Harrington Beach State Park, United States | by Tevin Trinh

“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” - A. A. Milne

This time of year can be difficult for some people. We hope all of those feeling sorrow or loss will find the support and help they need. Take a walk in nature, open up to a trusted friend, spend time doing something worthwhile. You are not alone. Photo of a gray tree frog by Rick Hansen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.