Zen<3lofi

one morning, my partner looked up from the iPad and was like, I have a new hobby. (sprouts) I love the package illustration. Front and back. The only way it could be better would be if all the text on the back looked handwritten also. kinda wish everything could have packaging that looks like an illustration. 😍 #plantstr #artstr

finished the one with the bird in flight, or landing. This is when you can really see the bright color which was hidden before. Seeing it at the park, it looked bright orange. But reference photos online show it as red with a yellow streak on top. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m still gonna think of it as the bird with the orange wings even if the name is “red-winged blackbird”

doing the May and June cover page (review / highlights of the month) and it’s going slow. Everything I wanted to include is hard to draw. Everything needs a reference. I don’t like coloring with just one color (black, in this case) for what feels like a long time. The “news”, as in USA politics + social media + AI chat bots has become very noxious. If I see a profile page posting thousands of times a day, or even around 5 times a day, that page is annoying to me. I would not follow that page, and would probably block it. If I see someone always posting along a narrow topic in a scripted kind of way, that is annoying to me. And it feels like there are a LOT of public figures posting in a very scripted way. #coloredpencil This drawing is from when I discovered a new bird species (the red-winged blackbird). 😊

#artstr

< Rereading The Odyssey by Homer. Can’t really remember the last time I read it, though I underlined parts > I’m feeling … not optimistic, I guess. Reading The Odyssey, and intrigued by this approximately 2,770 year old story, memorized and told orally at a time when many couldn’t read! It is * such * a patriarchal story. Everything is very much from a hetero male point of view, rich kings and their sons. Even though Athena plays a big role. So much meat eating, sacrificing cows. It’s gross. And the gods like it. They like and value the same things humans do. Gold, and precious rare metals. Fat meat. But the human morals are relatable. But everything is about marriage - to a beautiful woman. Ew. A lot of the main characters, the heroes, live in a kind of wealth that many don’t have. With maids, servants, slaves. Meanwhile, I’m reading this in a very different time and place. Which feels … like a miracle? Also confusing. What am I to learn from this? The universal belief that it’s wrong to be selfish, proud, greedy. I feel like the message of Bitcoin is ‘time is on your side’. As long as you are alive. And even if you’re not alive, then it can still have that message for the people or causes that you care about. It’s an innovation that becomes more valuable with time. As the flaws of the current financial system - flaws that have caused violence, inequality, unfairness - continue to show themselves. Flaws that have created * more * problems for people and living things, rather than solving the fundamental problems. The burden to work and make money, while inflation also exists. People have found some smaller solutions. But Bitcoin and Ethereum are big solutions. Based on the foundation of other technologies. Communication technologies. I wrote the above on 8/13/2025. Then on 8/15/25, I was watching an interview with Ocean Vuong and learned about the working poor class of the USA. It made me realize that Bitcoin, the freedom money, the tool for self-sovereignty, is only benefitting those at the middle class level and beyond. Especially those with financial and technical literacy, and a disposable income*. The working poor can’t invest in anything really. That’s why programs for guaranteed basic income, aka universal basic income, need to be expanded. * ‘Disposable’ referring to financial assets means, “readily available for the owner's use as required.” #classinequalityacrossspacetime part 2 Greece, 750 - 650 BCE (Before the Common Era)

ok NOW i’m into ✨podcasts now “Ms. Piggy is like one big intrusive thought.” 🤭 “the tik tok algorithm started to recommend rugby build … and I wasn’t mad about it.” 😆

England, 1853 Villette, by Charlotte Brontë #classinequalityacrossspacetime part 1

some weird plants I’ve seen recently. The second one is a purple passionflower. First one I haven’t looked up yet. The red is so ridiculously vivid it matches the paint on the pole thing in front of it. The purple one is a little bit scary when I look at the picture. But it’s been used medicinally. #plantstr

Quotes about the TV show Severance. "The same frustrations that led us to this moment as a country [United States] and as a world are the ones that I was feeling when I wrote this because I was working office jobs, and I was dealing with all these increasingly insane requests that are made of workers. This was born of that ... Employees are the ones who are expected to give and give and give, with the understanding that this is a family—you're doing this out of love, but then that is often not returned by the employers in any kind of a substantive way." Dan Erickson, creator of Severence (April 2022, The Wrap) It’s a really interesting question … where does each character take meaning in this world? Where do they find meaning? We talked about Dylan as being the capitalist where he’s got these objects that have been artificially assigned with value by the company in a way that I think happens in the real world all the time, where a certain car is a status symbol, and it shows that you’ve achieved a certain thing, and it’s designed to mean more than just the physical object. Irving is much more the spiritualist. So many companies like this have a cult of personality surrounding their founder or their history or their lore. And there’s … this sense of … ‘Yeah, this is more than just coffee. We’re saving the world.’ Not that I’m referencing any particular coffee maker there. But yeah, it’s Starbucks. But yeah, Irving has kind of bought into the more spiritual side of this corporate ethos. We’re in such a fascinating moment right now. I think that the pandemic became this catalyst for re-examining what role work should play in our lives, and what we owe to our employers and what we owe to ourselves and at what exact point you should draw the line between what of yourself you’re willing to give up for the benefit of having a paycheck. … the cult of personality that can arise around any founder of a company. The sense of like, ‘We’re going to bring you in and you’re going to be family, and you’re going to be part of this big world-changing thing.’ It’s a nice idea. It’s a seductive idea. And I like to think that sometimes it’s an earnest idea, on part of the people on top, but I think it can become this really scary, manipulative thing where the employees are the ones who are expected to give and give and give with the understanding that this is a family — you’re doing this out of love, but then that is often not returned by the employers in any kind of a substantive way. That’s where you get burnout, and that’s where you get mass depression and all this stuff. You wonder, does this have to be part of our society, or could we be doing something better? #laborday in America has violent origins of murder and execution 💔

a kid keeps throwing their toys out the window. It felt like a spontaneous easter egg hunt. Think I found them all.