Are you too completely broke after spending all your money on Urban Outfitters, your Spotify subscription, that new MacBook for the (overpriced) Studyblr Aesthetic ™?
I recently graduated high school, and now, as a student, I can finally get my account at UNiDAYS. It’s a platform with discounts on basically everything – from the Financial Times to a cute little French Lifestyle Subscription Box I found recently. (Apparently the one for September is focused on weekly planning and stationery!!) It’s helped me to save money immensely – for example with the 50% student Spotify discount. I’ve also planned to get a new tablet soon – both Apple and Microsoft offer discounts as well. All you need to do is register here with your university email. If you’re not in university yet – or already done – please share so other studyblrs can benefit from it!
idk about other countries but in the U.K. definitely you don’t even need to be a uni student! you only need to be 16 or older so if you’re in sixth form / college and you have a school email address you can sign up!
James Rhodes, a pianist, performed a Bach composition for his Youtube channel, but it didn’t stay up – Youtube’s Content ID system pulled it down and accused him of copyright infringement
because Sony Music Global had claimed that they owned 47 seconds’ worth
of his personal performance of a song whose composer has been dead for
300 years.
Just last week, German music professor Ulrich Kaiser posted his research
on automated censorship of classical music, in which he found that it
was nearly impossible to post anything by composers like Bartok,
Schubert, Puccini and Wagner, because companies large and small have
fraudulently laid claim to their whole catalogs.
Europeans have one week to contact their MEPs to head off this catastrophe.
Stop what you’re doing and contact two friends in the EU right now and send them to Save Your Internet – before it’s too late.
im going on the record to state that stories which position seelie-unseelie/summer-winter/etc court dynamics as inherently oppositional forces of good and evil are all written by COWARDS
face it!! you want to confine the fae to your narrow human narratives of heroes and villains to make yourself feel more secure in the face of the unknowable! its an understandable impulse but its a tired portrayal and one that doesnt do neither the writer or reader any favors!!!!
coming back to this because im in that kinda mood
summer courts being always bright and lively and symbolized by happy sunny shiny flowery things only and winter courts being dark and attached to symbols of evil/death is so so Weak
winter is a season of cold and dark but it can also be associated with the clean beauty of fresh snow, the brightness of a full winter moon on a cloudless night, preservation, sleep/restfulness, peaceful quiet, winter festivities and the coziness of coming in from the cold
summer is a light and warmth but there’s also summer storms, heatwaves/wildfires/drought as symbols of ferocity and mercilessness, the eeriness of heat mirages, abundance of insects, the sun as not only a symbol of warmth and nourishment but one of harsh unrelenting conditions
a well-made court dichotomy should allow both sides to have “good” and “bad” traits by human standards (and tbh im more in favor of both courts being equally sinister to human perception because thats how i see fae in general) and opposition between the two should never stem from the idea that one side is just “Evil”
also like can’t we just be done with light = good and dark = bad imagery in fantasy. like come on.
And don’t just flip them! Summer is ‘pretty but eeeevil’ with winter as ‘ugly but goood’ is Also Bad!
All Fae Are Unknowably Sinister And Occasionally Surprisingly Benevolent 2018
simultaneously wishing i were a woodland fairy, a maiden in the scottish highlands who is actually a selkie, a victorian naturalist who scandalously wears pants, a 1960s schoolgirl by the sea, a friendly forest witch, a reef-dwelling mermaid, a ghostly gothic heroine, or maybe a cat
You know, tumblr. You know what I’m getting out of this?
Neopagans threw SUCH A FIT, not allowing for the company to produce any response, and now they’re pulling the box.
A box that was putting money in the hands of Natives, and was using free to use art.
Great work.
I feel that instead of pulling the box, they should have just explained this and used this as a response?
I’m certain that had they done this and made this information available to the public firsst hand, people would have reacted accordingly.
A lot of people’s concenrs, at least on my side, was cultural appropriation and misuse of the white sage especially.
Especially consisdering it was paired with sephora.
I feel like they really should have responded to criticism with this message and explain where the white sage came from, instead of just pulling it?
After three days of this consistently being plastered over Insta, tumblr, and FB, it was clear that most complaints were about the commodification of “sacred ancient witch practices” and “cultural appropriation” (as in, the appropriation of witch culture) — not to mention how racist it was to ruin this critically endangered plant (it’s not; although, frankly, I don’t think it should be used like it’s Tylonol the way it is, either).
Ultimately, Sephora was doing what Sephora was going to do: cash in on a holiday with something cute and kitschy. (I genuinely think it was good that they were going to promote a smaller business like Pinrose.) The social media scandal has now ruined this eight-woman run business because not a single triumphant complainant thought to contact the company and ask those questions before it got to this point. “I feel like they should have responded to this criticism…”? As a small business, they were probably trying to hurriedly fix up their ruined reputation, especially if it affected any shareholders’ opinions about continuing business with them — they were too busy, in short, to make a public statement. And frankly? The attack dogs were already on the loose, and still won’t be satisfied even after this. Why should they be? Even the person above me isn’t, as if releasing a public statement without pulling the item would have resulted in a better outcome.
Each one of you reacted from your guts, and now I’m seeing a lot of guilt. Don’t bother sending messages telling them to put the products back on the shelves (I’ve seen more than one of you suggest it); it’s trite and insulting and — after this media uproar — impossible. Each person who took this to be a personal affront has damaged what you claim to support most: small, women-owned businesses that collaborate with Native-owned business and pay artists to gain permission instead of stealing.
Maybe sitting with your guilt will convince you to do better next time. If you want to support the company, buying a product from them would do a lot better than any patronizing letter.
So i guess to hell with the letter then??? Im not proud of what i did, but lets be real, this was very much on them for withholding vital information.
People didn’t know they were hurting Native Americans, and considering that some of the bloggers calling it out on the basis of CA were Native American, its just a shoddy thing to say. Had that information been released, as it should have, then half the discourse wouldnt exist.
The item was marketed crappy, and if they honestly cared about Native American farmers being supported they would have mentioned it to begin with. They’re sorry they got caught.
It just doesn’t sit well with me that youre going after bloggers who were rightful upset because they believed parts of their culture was being appropriated because the company failed to make vital info public. If you wanna get mad at anyone get mad at the company and blame them. But Native American culture is already appropriated in neo paganism to the extreme, that its understandable why folks reacted the way they did.
And you came after my letter? Excuse me for trying to make things right and owning up to my mistakes. Like lmao they took the danm product off, what the hell am i supposed to buy to support them? I’m doing what i can.
A reminder that I am a native person and I made the dang post.
They should have put the information out first and foremost but no one would have been satisfied if they hadn’t removed the box. Because, on the by and large, it wasn’t about the sage or art. It was about how the box was “taking witch culture” or some dumb shit.
That’s why we’re upset with social media as a whole. There was no TRUE way to avoid this. No one gives a fucking flip about us native people unless we can be used. And this was proved JUST THIS WEEK when my wife and I said something about it and got SLURS sent to us in our inbox.
Back in 2012 someone posted a photo of an offering they made to Loki and it was a little premade spongecake. And polytheist Tumblr was in an uproar about it because ‘that’s not an adequate offering to Loki’ and some other bullshit. But it sparked a discussion about gatekeeping in the polytheist communities, how canon lore goes deeper than the gakekeepers think it does, and fuck it- they’re your gods, honor them how YOU want to!
So some people use the day to honor Loki, but I use the day to honor my deities in ways that are completely appropriate, but to an outside perspective may look silly or amateurish.
Such as:
Or bumming a cigarette off a co-worker to make this in the parking lot of a Baby’s R Us to make this:
It’s gonna be a little harder now that I work in a place that has significant security, but I am not above making offerings to the gods by the dumpster behind Hallmark.
Something I’ve noticed is that some people who have no knowledge of witchcraft whatsoever have their own small rituals (whether consciously or not) and I’m so in love with it.
– A young boy I know tells me he wears a necklace to help him run faster, and whenever he looks at it he gets a boost of self-assurance and luck. And I couldn’t help but smile when he told me this – it’s his self-created talisman, whether he knows it or not.
– A woman I met recently told me that writing a letter to someone and then burning it is extremely cathartic. It reminds me of spells performed to release negative emotions.
– My mother has a cup of tea around the same time daily, using her favourite mug and sitting in her favourite chair as a way to reduce stress. A calming self-care ritual.
– Even before I discovered witchcraft, I did things as a child like projecting my anger and negative emotions into a stone and throwing it into a body of water so it would leave me alone. I felt better after that, even without knowing it was basically a spell.
I see it everywhere, all kinds of people doing relatively mundane things to achieve better outcomes for themselves: strength, calmness, healing and more. They have their own, personally-developed rituals and magicks – not necessarily of huge proportion or complexity, but effective nonetheless – and I find it so beautiful.
Candlelight-magick 