mastodon 4.7.3I'm a graduate student pursuing an M.Div. in Theology and Religious History at Cherry Hill Seminary, the Pagan Studies Unit Chair for the American Academy of Religion Western Region, and a Gardnerian High Priestess. I'm also an author working on a biography, and a composer, performer, and improviser, and a visual artist.
"If humanity hadn’t overheated the planet by burning coal, oil and gas, the scientists determined, such extreme fire conditions would occur less than once every 40 years."
#climate #climatechange #climatecrisis
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/06/canada-wildfires-climate-crisis
Solitary Lammas.
#pagan
“They are close to her. It’s not just her with her dead calf. There’s a recognition on the part of the whole pod that there is something going on here.”
#dolphins #marinelife #grief
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/science/dolphin-mother-dead-calf.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3FA.xk2w.8E79bkdtDP5r&smid=url-share
Erin Maus gets a shout-out in this article!
#pagan #ai
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/28/progressives-religion-civil-liberties-social-justice
"History is not just a set of facts and events. It is the study of how and why societies change. Why do people act in certain ways? Are there patterns in human behavior? What makes a society successful? What makes one fail?"
#uspol #history #smithsonian
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-27-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society."
#uspol
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/may-9-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"By focusing entirely on one human being and by calling him all sorts of names, including ‘evil’, and by calling for him to be jailed, it abdicates Republicans’ own responsibility in the US response to the pandemic, which was under President Trump."
#health #fauci #covid #uspol
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/anthony-fauci-republicans-harm-public-health
"Confirming Blanche, who clearly works for Trump alone, carries with it the fact that Blanche appears to have been the person most responsible for ignoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act."
#uspol #epstein
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-3-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"These objects were created with a purpose other than simple enjoyment,...They might have helped early humans to hold onto memories or express group affiliation."
#bird #birds #pagan
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02312-y
"A society that prizes warriors above all else eventually begins to treat every disagreement as a battle, every compromise as surrender, and every act of care as weakness. Modern Paganism offers a useful contrast."
#pagan #uspol
https://wildhunt.org/2026/07/editorial-the-opposite-of-the-warrior.html
"Trump’s overall approval rating in the new CNN poll matches his rating just after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol—his lowest ever—at 34%. The number of those who strongly disapprove of him is 50%, a new high, while only 15% strongly support him, a record low."
#uspol #iran #fauci
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-29-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"There is a corruptive mental contagion at work, but it’s not “woke.” It’s a spirit… documented in indigenous folklore, the same demonic presence that has plagued humankind for eons: the corruptive quality of power-over, of demonizing the other. This is the spirit of the powerful preying on the powerless. "
#uspol #pagan
https://wildhunt.org/2026/07/opinion-will-the-real-mind-virus-please-stand-up.html
"Worldwide, three-quarters of people could face drought impacts by 2050 all while datacenters use 9.3 trillion liters of water in the coming decade, enough to meet the drinking water needs of the planet’s human population for over a year, the United Nations has estimated."
#climate #climatechange #climatecrisis #ai #uspol
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water
"The study shows that storms do not merely pass over forests; they may briefly electrify them, making treetops glow in ultraviolet pulses that human eyes will never see. It may not be a mystical force, but it is magical nonetheless."
#pagan #trees
https://wildhunt.org/2026/03/the-purple-glow-of-forests-researchers-observe-electrical-discharges-from-trees-for-the-first-time.html
“After a point, even they stop playing,” Shahida says, looking towards Jannat and the other children sitting quietly. “Sometimes they just sit silently and stare around. Seeing them like that worries us even more.”
#climate #climatechange #climatecrisis
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/30/delhi-homeless-family-endures-extreme-heat
"On March 31, 2026, a rarely convened federal panel with the authority to override endangered species protections voted to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, a move drawing sharp criticism from environmental groups and raising concerns about already imperiled marine life."
#climate #climatechange #climatecrisis #climate
https://wildhunt.org/2026/04/god-squad-waives-species-protections-for-gulf-drilling-amid-broader-policy-shift.html
“The water has pests, the water has a bad taste, [you] open the water tubs and they have mosquito larvae." Another detainee said the water was “stinky and rotten”, and that he saw mosquitoes emerging from a substance contained within it."
#uspol #ice #florida
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/alligator-alcatraz-detainees-denied-food-water
The five-sided Fistagon was never our friend.
#pagan #uspol
"Faiths and belief systems reportedly excluded from the revised list include Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick practitioners, New Age churches, Pagans, Rosicrucians, Shamans, Spiritualists, members of The Troth, Unitarian Universalists, and various Wiccan traditions."
https://wildhunt.org/2026/06/pentagon-cuts-religious-affiliation-codes-dropping-pagan-wiccan-druid-and-asatru-designations-among-others.html
"Working Americans whose savings are held in Nasdaq 100 index funds will be made to invest in SpaceX...people who are merely hoping to save for retirement will be on the hook if SpaceX crashes. By no choice of their own, those same people will also be made to further enrich the wealthiest man in the world."
#musk #spacex
https://oligarchwatch.substack.com/?utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web
"Canadian authorities accused her boyfriend of being a gangster trying to traffic her, chiefly because of his tattoos, it seemed. Nothing she said convinced them otherwise, she recalled. They arrested and held him, while they sent her back to the US, straight to ICE – and the nightmare began."
#uspol #ice #canada
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/30/ice-detention-immigration-journey
Mastodon, Mastodon, show me a #bird .
Gladden my heart. I am a nerd.
"Many experts speculate that Tsitakakantsa suffered a fungal infection during prolonged periods of heavy rains or tropical storms, which have become stronger because of climate change."
#pagan #climate #climatechange #climatecrisis
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/world/africa/baobab-tree-dying-madagascar-africa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.llA.Et_l.A_gyZtBSVVgM&smid=url-share
"Despite his administration’s insistence that he doesn’t need congressional approval for his war on Iran because it’s not a war, Trump repeatedly referred to it as a war."
#uspol #iran
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-7-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"It offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health."
#climate #climate #climatecrisis
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/world-inequality-lab-equality-academics-planetary-survival
"As the countdown to November’s midterms begins, what could be Trump’s political demise has become a subject of obsessive speculation in Tehran. Iranian media track the US president’s waning ratings, attributing the decline to the war’s unpopularity and high oil prices. The changing politics of the Democrats is minutely examined."
#uspol #iran
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/07/iran-war-trump-midterm-ballot
"From the time he took office in January 2025, Trump and his cronies have not simply challenged laws or constitutional provisions. They have acted as if the Constitution doesn’t exist."
#uspol #law
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-26-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"The growing public backlash to the tech industry’s rapid rollout of artificial intelligence has taken many, mostly-non violent forms such as local communities organizing against datacenters and political candidates promising increased oversight. Yet at the fringes, researchers say grievances against the AI industry and its leaders are animating old violent extremist movements and fomenting new ones."
#uspol #ai
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/07/anti-ai-tech-extremism-violence
"Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep-ocean observation system along the Pacific Coast that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments, and the ocean currents that affect climate change."
#uspol #climate #climatechange #climatecrisis
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-3-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I wish the nonprofit sector could hire every single one of them.
#uspol
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/03/federal-workers-ptsd-like-symptoms-trump-firings
Lawmaker-church-state crap no bueno.
#uspol #pagan
https://wildhunt.org/2026/06/pastors-say-house-speaker-urged-churches-to-mobilize-for-upcoming-midterm-elections.html
"In size and ambition, this moment compares to the building of the railroads in the 1800s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, and the Manhattan Project to create an atomic weapon in the 1940s, technologists said."
#ai #doom
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/29/technology/ai-chips-data-center-boom.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1VA.o55Z.wibyH3Y8EZ11&smid=url-share
"The process is called “cellular transdifferentiation. The jellyfish looks like it’s dying and sinks to the bottom. Then – like a butterfly returning to a caterpillar – it shrinks into a ball, and within 24 to 48 hours, buds off a new polyp with the same identical genome, she says."
#pagan #marinelife
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/04/when-you-kill-it-it-doesnt-die-the-jellyfish-that-has-cracked-the-secret-of-immortality
"For the unaccompanied children at the San Benito facility, there is the added stress and confusion of being pregnant and alone. The facility has housed pregnant children as young as 13; about half of the pregnancies are the result of rape."
#uspol #ice #orr
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/01/pregnant-minors-texas-ice-facility
"Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not appear to have a strategy for their war on Iran. Instead, they had an ideology."
#uspol #iran
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-31-2026?r=191e2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"We’re all adults here, and we can approach biblical mythology with the same attitude that we take with Greek or Norse mythology. Even if we don’t worship the raging deity of Exodus, we can understand the symbolism of the golden calf."
#pagan #uspol
https://wildhunt.org/2026/05/the-golden-calf-and-american-idols.html
"The DHS and ICE have conducted these procedures throughout the years, regardless of which presidential administration is in power. In 2024, under Joe Biden, the Guardian found that the DHS attempted to subject at least 10 hunger strikers in ICE detention to forced medical treatment."
#uspol #ice #torture #law
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/trump-dhs-hunger-strikes-force-feeding-ice-detention
