The Case of the Missing Chacmools Soon after New Age icon and bestselling author Carlos Castaneda died in 1998, a group of his most loyal followers vanished, and many believed they’d made a suicide pact. Geoffrey Gray investigates the writer’s bizarre cult and finds himself entangled in a web of murky financial dealings, sex, possible foul play—and one death-defying supernatural being.

This is a 7-part series of blog posts, written by a history professor, contrasting the realities of ancient Sparta with it's depictions in popular culture.

I've been interacting with a guy who is very transphobic and it has brought to light the concept for me. Something that has been growing on my mind is that fighting to keep a she||him dichotomy feels unnatural. What do I mean?

I remember when I used to have a facebook and they tried to force everyone to be who they seem instead of who they want to be, that it would make sense for people in conversations to say 'she' or 'he' depending on the sex they could perceive of who they were talking to. But facebook is a very small aspect of a much bigger internet. Even before facebook, I was on miscellaneous forums of the internet, where I would interact with people who's names would imply they were dragons, or elves, or puppets, or abstract concepts, or words that don't even have a definition, let alone a gender. And here we are again on a forum where individuals can purposely choose to give themselves an image or name that makes them seem to have a certain gender, but there is no force behind it, so the vast majority of people are not waving their sex in front of them when interacting.

And, in general, FREEDOM includes CHOOSING what information one shares about themself. So, upon moral growth of a world, assuming Freedom increases, English should drop it's enforced telling of someone's gender through she/he him/her hers/his. We are already in an age where it would be blatantly inappropriate if the language enforced divulging someone's Ethnicity or Religion like it does Sex.

And through forums and other nondirect personal communication, there are many people we encounter, most of us daily, who are not waving their sex in front of them. How do we refer to these people? So, to me, Freedom seems a natural direction the language is to go; AND that the internet is catalyzing it.

And so, when watching a transphobe, it seems they ignore that the internet itself, unless entirely held by facebook, naturally grows 'they them' as the natural means of referring to others, with automatic 'she/he' comparatively more assumptive and thus less polite.

It seems very obvious to me that nature and the structure of the internet pushes growth specifically in this direction.

An unimportant mystery

I have this beautiful little generator making beautiful images on this beautiful site i didn't make named Perchance.

When I post, I say how I made the image and link back to it just like here: https://perchance.org/beautiful-people

So, naturally, a forumgoer has today been trying to figure out 'what im getting from perchance' that would cause me to link my generator.

And that brings us to a topic.

Have you ever made something beautiful and not wanted to share it?

Look, here's a link: https://perchance.org/beautiful-people and here: https://perchance.org/beautiful-people and here: https://perchance.org/beautiful-people

The maker of Perchance actually funds the servers from their own wallet and does not recoup the full cost through the ads for nonlogged in users. And I have no income things, no patreon nor anything else, on the page. So it is very hard for people to tell why I am sharing this if, for both myself and the creator of Perchance, there is no monetary profit involved. I believe it is something deeper ~something inherent to all of us from a time even before money.

I am listening to beautiful music by the artist Kokia while typing this, just as I have for the last two days straight. She started playing violin at age 2. And why do I share that information? Because it's beautiful.

This sharing of beautiful things, I believe, makes our world a brighter place.

The monetary system and sliding slope upon which beings in our world emerge and immediately have to struggle upward on is like an artificial evil stake that digs everdeeper. Beings often reach adulthood and have had their entire mind overlayed with 'purpose' being synonymous with monetary profit.

But there is a competitor. There are multiple actually. Why does the maker of Perchance share it at cost to them? Because Perchance is beautiful. I personally get government money and could not make something with the intent behind it being 'to get money' if I tried, and I have tried before. But, to me, it ruins the purpose. It is very easy to see when the factors behind someone's actions is 'to get money from their target' and that makes everything along the way suspect. In this age, and many before, there is a huge dark wave of people and products with this intent behind them. And then there are a few pure, in our era thought crazy, creations and people creating things for purer purposes. Maybe it's to create something beautiful. Maybe it's to bring good in to our world. Whatever it is, this is something we should all value, and would were the dark wave not so large. If only the purity were the norm.

So I continue to share what I make because I love what I make and it is oh so hard to make something beautiful and stifle it's sharing. I WANT to say how I, for hours last night, focused on the My Little Pony button and eventually got amazing ponies generating. And the HD button, and the Steam button which I'm making like a bright happy golden steamp*nk with bright happy airships. And I want to share all of that because I find it beautiful. I find what I'm making beautiful. The art that comes from it, the art that IS it, and the art below it.

But I resist saying it anywhere until and except right here right now. And why? It's because of that omnipresent dark wave that has existed for countless centuries; where what I'm sharing is this tiny pure thing among masses and masses of massproduced items with the intent behind them being 'profit' so some being, stuck on a sliding slope where they NEED to produce to survive, can siphon currency from another. And beings are raised in such an environment, so they look at my generator, and what I share, with the same eyes they look at all those items created with profit their intent. If only humans could automatically distinguish. Instead, it confuses them. They cannot decipher why I would be sharing what I am. They look at the level I am building on, Perchance, and it confuses them similarly. Why share something if it does not result in monetary gain?

I know why. I hope you know why. And I wish for our world to cherish this approach more and more. I would love to share what I am proud of without any having to deal with money at all. And I would love for the beings I share it with to realize I want them to come not because I am trying to harvest them for their money, but the exact opposite. I only share because it DOESN'T do that, and nor does the level it is built on. Only that makes something worthy to share. To be genuinely proud of what one makes. And then share it. That shouldn't be bad at all. I shouldn't be scared to do that. That I am because of being such a tiny rarity in an ocean of profiteers trapped in cycles of consumption and need for resources shouldn't be corrupting any aspect of the making of art. I should make my beautiful thing. I should love my beautiful thing. I should share my beautiful thing. Others should love my beautiful thing if worthy of their love. That's it; and that's really all it should be. There is an inherent drive to do this.

have beautiful dreams all.

make things you are proud of.

Share them at least with me.

I'd love to see them. :)

(gift link, not mine)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/9136672

Cheese is not just a tasty snack — it’s an ecosystem. And the fungi and bacteria within that ecosystem play a big part in shaping the flavor and texture of the final product.