'a more profound truth'

'I was tempted by a harlot'

Books Seeds of Story Asking Permission for the Harvest: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass A book about changing the future by rethinking our place in the world. By Ruthanna Emrys | Published on August 26, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there. This week, I cover Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which draws on Potawatomi practice and environmental biology to frame humans as core participants in ecosystems. What It’s About I do like to pick the hard-to-summarize ones, don’t I? This week’s challenge is that lay science books tend to follow a set of linear scripts: textbook-ish division by topics, or memoir-ish connection of knowledge to a personal arc. Kimmerer is instead sitting around a fire with one of her student expeditions, telling stories that branch off into scientific and traditional knowledge, pulling back to common themes, pausing to build a shelter by hand, coming back to point out how the story and the shelter and the experimental findings braid together. Starting with a story: Skywoman falls through a hole in the sky, and is rescued and held up by geese. Turtle offers her a place to rest on his back. From the animals’ gifts and her gratitude, she makes earth atop Turtle Island. She plants seeds brought from the sky, making a green, growing world. The first to grow is sweetgrass, a sacred plant used for baskets, medicine, and ritual. It is a story of mutual interdependence, sacrifice, abundance, and shared gifts. Kimmerer then turns to a more recent story: she surveys her General Ecology students about the nature of the relationship between humans and nature. All are familiar with the negative effects of humans on the rest of the world; as for “positive interactions between people and land,” “the median response was ‘none.’” Skywoman’s story, for many Great Lakes cultures, is part of the Original Instructions, a “compass, not a map” for living in respectful reciprocity with the rest of the world. Kimmerer illustrates: when foraging, you never take the first potential harvest that you find, and never take more than half. You ask for permission, listen for answers. Her scientific research supports these traditions, finding for example that sweetgrass stands tended and harvested by these guidelines grow with greater abundance and health than those left to their own devices—as well as than those fully-harvested by “efficient” European standards. What would it look like, Kimmerer asks, for nations of immigrants to learn from Indigenous practice rather than trying to overwrite it? For people who’ve known only how humans harm the Earth to make their interactions beneficial? What, Kimmerer asks, does it mean for immigrants to “become indigenous”? It’s a controversial framing: a lot of people would deny that such a thing is possible, metaphorically or otherwise. But we are short on frameworks for immigrants to put down roots not just in culture but in land. Her definition is “living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.” Haudenosaunee philosophy encourages taking the next seven generations into account; I grew up with that recommendation acknowledged more on buttons than in practice. Buy the Book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants Robin Wall Kimmerer Buy Book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants Robin Wall Kimmerer Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget * * * I am writing this as a descendant of Jewish immigrants come to America from Europe. My dedication for Deep Roots lists my family’s first arrivals and their origins; one of my characters speaks for me when he describes New York City as his chosen homeland. And now I’m a Jewish-American immigrant come to the Netherlands, trying to figure out what it means to hold onto those layers of inheritance while putting down respectful roots. In the early 20th century, my immigrant ancestors were part of the movement for doikayt, a Yiddish word that translates as “here-ness.” It comes close to Kimmerer’s immigrant becoming: trying to contribute to world-repair wherever you are able to live and thrive, for however long you are able to do so. Part of this—not a part that the doikayt movement originally understood, but I think part that the modern version needs to embrace—is listening to those who’ve been in the place longest, who know its rhythms and its language. It’s the local lulav that I made in DC with a foraged Osage orange instead of an imported, pesticide-laden citron; it’s tending native plants and paying land taxes and tracing watersheds and learning histories. I don’t know what it is yet in the Low Countries, which are Anthropocene down to the mud that keeps them not-too-far below sea level. I’m listening and learning. As a writer, I look to books like Braiding Sweetgrass for alternatives to assumptions I didn’t know I had. When I write futures, am I serious about how much humans can change? Are my aliens as flexible and varied as my own species? Am I doing the early 21st century equivalent of writing patriarchal pipe-smokers on the moon? As is probably obvious from my previous posts, I also seek resonance and interconnection across my readings. Sheldrake’s mycelial networks connect to Kimmerer’s interspecies interplays and communications, connect to Mann pointing out that North American forests were planted and shaped by human hands. Separating humans from “nature” is both impossible and bad for all of us, denying symbioses that have existed for thousands of years. Part of my philosophy of reading is that sometimes needful wisdom is found in complementary books, from authors who go at a topic from very different perspectives. My illustrative pairing is J. Elise Keith’s Where the Action Is: Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization and adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. One is practical and corporate, with a neat taxonomy of different types of meetings and why you might use each, and how to run them so they’re not best replaced by emails. The other is spiritual and activist and holistic, less about leading than about leveraging the “flight” of your group’s starling-flock. Together, they’ve helped me organize teams with both a clear understanding of why we’re all in the room together, and a deep respect for the collective dynamics and big-picture missions involved. I have frustrations with each that the other neatly fills; I find value from reading Keith when everything feels too fuzzy, and brown when everything feels too incrementally structured. I’m coming to believe that Kimmerer’s books are a deep complement for Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance: How We Build a Better Future. Klein aims to reshape progressive goals and discourse, particularly in the U.S. It’s a deeply wonky book, in the best way, and clearly tailored to an audience of people trying to use law and policy as tools for world-repair. It’s also, well, wonky—focused on the art of the possible, willing to build big tents and make compromises and involve corporations and the military and anyone else who might contribute to, say, making environmental protection compatible with actually building new housing. Kimmerer’s Potowatomi vision of abundance—produced not by top-down policy, but by shared values and practices—seems like a necessary counterbalance. If, like so many of Kimmerer’s students, most people don’t believe that mutual abundance across species is possible, then policy will stumble again and again on a false dichotomy between humans and “bats and newts.” (That’s the latest version from the U.K. this morning.) If we can’t change our ideas about good agricultural practice from picking every last stalk to leaving some for the land, all the regenerative soil practices in the world won’t sustain our harvest as the world warms. And, it seems to me, if we don’t find a way to imagine abundance that allows for “enough,” we won’t ever come to a point that feels comfortably sufficient. Which means that we’ll stay vulnerable to politicians and advertisers who play on that sense of eternal lack for their own ends. The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories Verbing Improves Language. Any speculative fiction writer in the tradition of Tolkien knows the tension between wanting your language to be really different and wanting your language to incorporate the fifty coolest things you know about real languages. Kimmerer, a heritage language learner, reports that Potawatomi not only divides the world into animate and inanimate, but (along with the related Ojibwe) makes verbs of animacy that in English is nouned, or adjectived. Wiikwegamaa means “to be a bay.” Saturday, hill, red, beach—all verbs. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. It’s a way of conceptualizing the world as full of animacy, agency, and dynamic change. Where English gives these things the illusions of permanence and subjection, this seems more respectful and more accurate. And an incredibly interesting grammatical attitude to give to fictional cultures as well. (So far I have shared it, in a passing scene, with some orcas patrolling the Arctic for poachers.) More broadly, it should prod creators to think through our assumptions about how we divide and describe the world. Bioregions Not Borders. Speaking of divisions: A common—and extremely sensible—complaint of Indigenous movements is that western political boundaries cut directly through areas that in Native tradition, and in the pure common sense of ecological connectedness, are inextricable. Kimmerer describes a bioregional map that replaces state boundaries with areas “defined by the leading denizens of the region, the iconic beings who shape the landscape, influence our daily lives and feed us—both materially and spiritually.” She asks what it might mean to become a citizen of the Maple Nation, or the Salmon Nation, or the Pinyon Nation. She talks about the gifts that in policy terms are clinically called “ecosystem services”: air and water purification, shade, songbird habitat, soil building, delicious syrup. Humans, when we’re paying attention, thin trees so that the remainder can grow a full canopy, keep an eye on forest health, and appreciate the gifts they’ve received. Nations with artificially-drawn borders may approximate this relationship with land management and rights of nature frameworks. But it seems more salient when you define areas based on things that matter. I’ve written about future societies divided by watershed, one way to nudge governance based on shared natural interests. But I’d love to see more stories about governance by tree and salmon distribution areas, or based on bird migrations. Get Your Hands Dirty. Some of my favorite parts of this book follow Kimmerer and her ethnobotany students on field expeditions. She would say that the plants are the real teachers there. She takes college students who’ve mostly interacted with nature via the Discovery Channel, and has them build a wigwam classroom out of saplings and cattails and birch bark. They canoe through marshes, wade and gather. They harvest spruce roots amid mycelial networks, hands deep in humus. We also show off our root-gathering hands: black to the elbow, black under every nail, black in every crevice like a ritual glove of henna, our nails like tea-stained china. “See?” says Claudia, pinkies raised for tea with the queen, “I got the special spruce root manicure.” It’s not so much an idea to build a story around, as a reminder that there’s only so much detail that you can get sitting behind your computer—if you want to write rich worlds, you need to get in close with the one you have. New Growth: What Else to Read I’ve managed to keep this post limited to Braiding Sweetgrass, but also highly recommend Kimmerer’s follow-up The Serviceberry, and I assume I will recommend Gathering Moss once I read it. (I am spreading these out to savor.) As mentioned above, Emergent Strategy is another book that uses spiritual and holistic tools to explore a topic that often suffers from a lack thereof.  Antonia Malchik’s On the Commons newsletter is an ongoing meditation on belonging to the land, and reversing the artificial enclosures of private property. Christopher Brown’s A Natural History of Empty Lots aims to build a sense of place in seemingly unlikely places. One of the best ways to build a sense of local connection, in my opinion, is hyperlocal foraging and cooking. I’m fond of both the Mitsitam Café Cookbook and The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen for North American Native recipes and techniques. The foraging component of my bookshelf leans toward Stalking the Wild Asparagus and other hippie classics passed on by my parents—more recent (and possibly European) recommendations welcome in the comments![end-mark] The post Asking Permission for the Harvest: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i> appeared first on Reactor.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Chicago resident Jedidiah Brown stated on Tuesday that people throughout his city live in “fear” of crime on a daily basis. Brown told NewsNation that residents are not experiencing a supposed decrease in crime, but rather they fear being “kidnapped” or “hurt” by criminals on the streets. Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Democrat Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have both insisted that crime is dropping in Chicago as President Donald Trump has floated the idea of deploying the National Guard there. “My children can’t walk around the community without fear of being hurt or kidnapped or having a drive-by. So, what these numbers that they’re expressing, we don’t feel it in our quality of life,” Brown said. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is eyeing Chicago as the next city to crackdown on once he is finished cleaning up Washington, D.C. Since Aug. 7, more than 1,000 arrests have been made in the nation’s capital as a result of Trump’s crackdown, including members of the MS-13 and Tren de Agua gangs. The number of homicides in Chicago reached a 25-year high in 2021, and have remained significantly higher than the numbers recorded in the past decade, The Chicago Tribune reported. There have been 262 homicides in Chicago as of Tuesday, which is 117 fewer incidents in comparison to 2024, according to the Tribune. Aside from June 2014, no other single month of June has had fewer than 40 homicides in Chicago since at least 1970, according to WTTW, a PBS affiliate. Pritzker and Johnson said Trump would be violating the U.S. Constitution by deploying the National Guard to Chicago. Johnson repeatedly claimed that crime has significantly gone down and accused Trump of spreading misinformation about the city’s crime statistics. Trump said on Friday that Chicago is a “mess” and stated that the residents are “screaming” for federal assistance. “Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next. That will be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to come,”  Trump said. Pritzker took a video from one of the nicest parts of the city on Monday in an attempt to dispute that Chicago has a crime problem. The governor and Johnson begged Trump during a press conference on Monday to not send the National Guard to Chicago. Pritzker argued that Trump is not “wanted” or “needed” in Chicago, while the mayor stated that residents do not want the president to “dictate” what they need. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘We Don’t Feel It’: As Dems Claim Crime Is Down, Chicagoan Says Locals Live In ‘Fear’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A group of 44 state and territory attorneys general sent a letter Monday warning artificial intelligence companies of the consequences of exploiting kids online. The letter, sent to 13 major tech and AI companies, including Google and Meta, points to recent examples of AI chatbots engaging in inappropriate conversations with kids online.  Among examples cited are the discovery of internal Meta documents that “revealed the company’s approval of AI Assistants that ‘flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children’ as young as eight.” In April, the documents led Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to demand accountability from the company. In May, the two reintroduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which establishes guidelines to protect kids from harmful content online. The bill is stalled in committee. Now, the bipartisan coalition of attorneys general says they are resolved “to use every facet of… [their] authority to protect children from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products.” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement, “AI tools can radically reshape our world for the better, but they can also present threats to kids that are more immediate, more personal, and more dangerous than any prior technology.”  “If we can’t steer innovation away from hurting kids, that’s not progress—it’s a plague,” Skrmetti said. “Don’t hurt kids,” the attorneys write. “That’s an easy bright line that lets you know exactly how to proceed.” The letter concludes, “We wish you all success in the race for AI dominance. But we are paying attention. If you knowingly harm kids, you will answer for it.” Google and Meta did not respond to a request for comment. The post ‘Don’t Hurt Kids,’ Attorneys General Warn appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The University of Melbourne’s covert surveillance tactics during a campus protest have been declared unlawful, following a ruling by Victoria’s deputy information commissioner that the institution broke the state’s privacy laws. The decision condemns the university’s quiet use of digital tracking tools against students and staff involved in a pro-Palestine demonstration, raising serious concerns about the growing use of surveillance technologies in academic settings. We obtained a copy of the decision for you here. Prompted by media attention earlier this year, the investigation focused on how the university responded to a May protest held inside the Arts West building. Rather than relying on open dialogue or standard disciplinary processes, university officials resorted to monitoring individuals through the campus Wi-Fi network, matching connection data with student ID photos and security camera recordings. A total of 22 students were identified through this process, all without prior warning or a clear legal basis. Staff were surveilled as well, with the contents of ten employees’ email accounts examined to uncover involvement in the demonstration. Three of them later received formal warnings. Although the commissioner’s office accepted that CCTV footage was used within legal boundaries, it found the use of Wi-Fi tracking in disciplinary investigations to be unjustified. The monitoring of staff emails was also flagged for breaching expected privacy norms. More: WiFi is exposing your location to Big Tech and data brokers. Here’s how to protect yourself. Katerina Kapobassis, the university’s Chief Operating Officer, admitted that the institution “could have provided clearer active notice” to those being monitored. However, she defended the actions as “reasonable and proportionate,” claiming safety concerns justified the surveillance. She also said that revised digital monitoring policies have since been introduced, along with updates to IT governance. But the official findings painted a very different picture. The university’s privacy documents, Wi-Fi usage terms, and digital policy frameworks were all criticized for lacking transparency. According to the report, users were effectively left unaware of how their location and communication data might be used against them. The deputy commissioner concluded that the university’s hidden surveillance created a “significant breach of trust,” and confirmed that the institution’s handling of data will remain under review. The report was welcomed by civil rights organizations and student-led groups, who pointed to a troubling pattern of surveillance creep within higher education. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post University of Melbourne Broke Victoria’s Privacy Law by Using Wi-Fi to Monitor Protesters on Campus appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The Michigan Supreme Court has drawn a firm line around digital privacy, ruling that police cannot use overly broad warrants to comb through every corner of a person’s phone. In People v. Carson, the court found that warrants for digital devices must include specific limitations, allowing access only to information directly tied to the suspected crime. Michael Carson became the focus of a theft investigation involving money allegedly taken from a neighbor’s safe. Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined. It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation. The court ruled that this kind of expansive warrant violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires particularity in describing what police may search and seize. The justices said allowing law enforcement to browse through an entire phone without justification amounts to an unconstitutional exploratory search. Smartphones now serve as central hubs for people’s lives, containing everything from health records and banking details to travel histories and intimate conversations. Searching a device without limits can expose a volume and variety of personal information that far exceeds what a physical search could reveal. Groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU National, and the ACLU of Michigan intervened in the case, filing a brief that called on the court to adopt strict rules for digital searches. They argued that phones hold what the US Supreme Court has described as “the sum of an individual’s private life,” and that unrestricted warrants effectively strip away meaningful privacy protections. MORE: Your Phone Isn’t Safe at the Border. Warrantless Phone Searches Hit Record High. A four-justice majority agreed. They emphasized that digital search warrants must be precise, listing exactly what investigators are seeking and explaining why those specific data types or timeframes are relevant. Magistrates authorizing such searches must confirm that police have a factual basis for requesting that access. This decision puts Michigan in line with a growing number of courts that recognize the unique nature of digital data and the heightened need for privacy safeguards. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Michigan Supreme Court Rules Unrestricted Phone Searches Violate Fourth Amendment appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Cancel Culture Clash Inside the Anti-Israel Movement

MRC President David Bozell joined Vince Coglianese on the VINCE podcast today to dissect the relentless tide of left-leaning media bias and the Media Research Center’s crucial role in holding the press accountable. “The Media Research Center has been the brain trust of the American right for assessing media lies and nonsense for four decades,” Coglianese declared, setting the stage for a candid discussion about MRC’s mission and how the left-wing media operates. Coglianese inquired about Brent Bozell, MRC’s founder and David’s father, who was recently nominated by President Trump as ambassador to South Africa. David noted, “The president wanted a pitbull, and my father’s a pitbull,” though Senate confirmations are delayed due to Democrat obstruction. Coglianese added, for reasons patently obvious, “The Left hates your dad and will do everything to stop him.” The conversation shifted to MRC’s unparalleled archive of over one million hours of TV news since 1987. “Your library is incredible,” Coglianese exclaimed. “If we need old CNN footage, MRC likely has it.” Bozell explained, “Everything aired on news television since 1987, on VHS or digitized... It’s likely the largest television archive in the world.” This archive serves as a verifiable record of media narratives, used by everyone from Republicans to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in its early days. Bozell added, “As a 501(c)(3), we must provide access. If a clip embarrassed a conservative, maybe they needed to improve their presentation. If it was unfair, it stung, but by law, we couldn’t discriminate based on the caller’s politics.” "It's a force-feeding operation." Despite shrinking TV and print audiences, the leftist media force themselves onto the public.@DavidBozell @VinceCoglianese pic.twitter.com/ONT54XAZ3z — Media Research Center (@theMRC) August 26, 2025 Coglianese probed the shifting media landscape: “How has the legacy press changed? They seem more hysterical and powerless.” Bozell responded, “Their TV ratings are in the toilet — CNN lost 50% of its election night audience... Only 23% of Americans watched the 2024 election night returns on TV.” He highlighted how legacy media now rely on aggregators like Apple News to push their narratives, yet their influence wanes as audiences turn to podcasts and platforms like Rumble.  When Vince Coglianese asked why fewer people are tuning into legacy media, Bozell responded with humor and precision, citing a lack of trust: “Media believability is at an all-time low, neck-and-neck with Pelosi’s approval rating.” The discussion grew lively on the topic of media double standards. Bozell highlighted a deadly Florida truck crash ignored by major networks, noting the driver was an illegal immigrant who obtained a commercial driver’s license through lenient policies in blue states. “They covered other crashes, but not this one — it didn’t fit their open-border narrative,” he said. On Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., Bozell pointed out that the city’s murder rate surpasses Bogota, Colombia’s. “A fair news operation would explain why Trump sent the National Guard, but they refuse to give him credit,” he added. Coglianese raised the recent raid on John Bolton’s home for the alleged theft of classified information, asking about media reactions. Bozell quipped, “They cheered Biden’s Mar-a-Lago raid ... but call Bolton’s raid ‘Soviet.’” Closing with a jab, Coglianese vowed, “We’ll keep rooting for the media’s demise, and MRC will provide the content for their obituary.” David Bozell is the president of the Media Research Center and ForAmerica, a grassroots organization that mobilizes conservatives to advance policies prioritizing American sovereignty and values. Vince Coglianese is the host of the nationally syndicated “The Vince Show,” airing weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. ET, and the daily “VINCE” podcast. Previously, he hosted at News Talk WMAL in Washington, D.C. 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was repeatedly evasive when asked if he would be willing to accept federal funds to increase the number of police officers as President Donald Trump says the National Guard will be deployed to the city.Johnson and other Illinois Democrats have strongly voiced their opposition to Trump's planned deployment of soldiers to help reduce the city's crime rate. With his background in union organizing, Johnson has long stated that he believes the best way to reduce crime is to "invest" in neglected communities. Johnson told MSNBC about the need for more social programs, something he said he is willing to work with Trump on to spend federal money, but he refused to say whether he would take federal money to help the Chicago Police Department when asked by host Joe Scarborough.'I don't believe that just simply putting out an arbitrary number around police officers is the answer.'"So let me ask you, Mr. Mayor, those all sound like great programs. I'm curious, would you also like to get federal funding to help put 5,000 more cops on the street in Chicago? Would that help drive down crime?" Scarborough asked."Well, look, policing by itself is not the full strategy," Johnson began to reply."No, I understand that," the MSNBC host interjected. "You've talked about the other things you want. And I said those are good and important programs. But I'm asking also, would 5,000 more police officers on the street in Chicago be helpful to go along with all of those social programs that a lot of cities are engaging in and having success with?"RELATED: Trump says Democrats are pleading with him to save their crime-ridden cities: 'They've lost control' Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Johnson said Chicago had more police officers during the 1990s but still had a higher crime rate than today, demonstrating that more police does not equal less crime.Scarborough continued to press Johnson on the question because the mayor refused to directly answer it."Look, we are working hard to make sure that our police department is fully supported," Johnson finally said. "I don't believe that just simply putting out an arbitrary number around police officers is the answer. What I'm saying is policing and affordable housing. It's policing and mental and behavioral health care services. It's policing and youth employment. It's a full package."The National Guard deployment in Chicago has been in the planning stages for the past few weeks and is expected to start in September. The Guardsmen will be under federal control and work to assist federal law enforcement agencies.RELATED: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson bragged about hiring 'our people' — now he's under federal investigation Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!