Methuselah a gnarled bristlecone pine from California between the Sierra Madre mountain range and Death Valley desert wasteland
But a tree named Alerce Milenario (Gran Abuelo, "Great Grandfather") was recently discovered in Chile, South America, that may be centuries older, according to tree experts attempting to date it
Coastal redwood Hyperionof California (over 370 feet) is the tallest tree in the world, discovered in 2006, next to other very tall trees.
The largest (not tallest, not widest, but overall biggest, assuming someone has compared it to those massive Tree of Life trees in Africa, the baobab) is General Sherman, who lives in California's Sequoia National Park
Today, August 25, the focus shifts from commercial deals to celebrating and supporting America’s natural wonders. Many parks, like Yellowstone, Yosemit, and Grand Canyon, often offer free admission on this special day [though everyone can get into national parks around the country free for the rest of the year due to a special dispensation that is not widely advertised if one were to look it up], encouraging visitors to experience their beauty firsthand. Organizations like the National Park Foundation and Friends of the National Parks groups host fundraising drives and volunteer events, often partnering with brands like REI and Patagonia for donation matching. Local businesses near park entrances may offer special discounts to park rangers and staff as a token of appreciation. More
The intentions and prayers for the Earth were embedded here then covered with gold leaf.
Altadena Fire Mural Project, 2026, with golden prayers and us circled in red (Ekaterina Sky)
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Channeled inspiration for artful beauty
Six months after the Los Angeles fires, we built an art wall in Altadena. There were not many walls left to paint on, so we built one on the empty lot where the vegan cafe Oh Happy Days used to be.
Over four days the foothill neighborhood came and wrote their prayers and intentions to be sealed into the golden sphere at the center of the mural, some in English, some in Spanish, some in many other languages. One was a single name. One asked for the soil to become clean again. Then we sealed every one of those prayers under gold leaf.
A gold embedded Prayer for the Earth
They are still under there, and nobody can read them.
On the final Sunday of our public art project, a woman came over to tell me about her friend: Her friend had lost her home in the Eaton Fire and had not smiled once in the six months since.
Her friend was at the wall right then, with a glistening brush in her hand. She was smiling. She had just said, “I think I should start making art again.”
I did not go over to her. That moment was hers.
I thought, “She has every fact about what she lost. The facts do nothing for her. A wall, a brush, and her neighbors gave her somewhere to put it, and she picked the brush back up.” That is what I've been trying to say for 20 years! To put it plainly:
“Data hands us the truth.
Beauty is what lets us carry it.”
Knowing is not the hard part. Holding it is. Beauty is what makes the weight bearable enough to keep holding and acting on.
Vote for this talk at SXSW 2027
Save the forest, save the animals
I want to argue for that position in front of a room full of people who build things rather than a room of those who already agree with me. So I proposed a talk at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, next March (2027) I am calling, “Why Beauty Moves Us When Data Doesn’t.”
DESCRIPTION: Two decades of painting murals converges on one idea: Shared beauty can hold what words cannot yet reach, a shift that decides what people go on to protect.
After the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena, survivors gathered at a community mural to write their intentions and prayers into the paint. A woman who had not smiled since losing her home picked up a brush. This talk lays out the method behind the shift and how to build it into a strategy that moves people.
SESSION TAKEAWAYS:
Art show LA Climate Week '26
Why aesthetic experience shifts emotional orientation faster than data or logical arguments, and what that means for building a movement or campaign.
A repeatable method for designing beauty and participation into engagement strategy, instead of attaching them as decoration afterward.
Real, working examples, a reforestation partnership, a global soil movement, a wildfire recovery mural, proof the method produces outcomes. More
It is about how that Sunday afternoon of the art project actually worked.
Read it HERE. It is accompanied on the page by a two-minute film of me speaking at the UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil.
Send me your stories!
REQUEST: If a moment like that has ever happened to you, I would love to hear it. I am collecting them to inspire others.
The Shipibo-Conibo are an indigenous (Native American) people along the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest of Peru.
Formerly two groups, they eventually became one tribe through intermarriage and communal rituals and are currently known as the Shipibo-Conibo people [2, 3].
The Shipibo-Conibo have lived in the Amazonian rainforest for millennia. Many of their traditions are still practiced, such as ayahuasca medicine work.
Medicine songs have inspired artistic tradition and decorative designs found in their clothing, pottery, tools, and textiles. Some of the urbanized people live around Pucallpa in the Ucayali region, an extensive indigenous zone. Most others live in scattered villages over a large area of jungle forest extending from Brazil to Ecuador. More
NOTE: While we agree the environment and climate need saving, we oppose the nonsense capitalist pseudo-solutions that make it obvious that the reason "climate change" is promoted is to sneak in more of the same: Pollution credits, blaming consumers while exempting the corporations that are profiting from polluting, incentivizing bad (biased) science that finds results its looking for (the promote the mainstream narrative) and dismissing results that contradict it. Stop polluters -- national and multinational actors actively promoting toxins (pesticides), deforestation, unsustainable practices...
Democracy Now! speaks with Indigenous leaders at U.N. climate summit in Belém for climate negotiations, in greater numbers than ever before, taking center stage at COP30.
These Indigenous leaders are calling “to end the persecution of our land defenders,” says Diana Chávez, member of the Pastaza Kichwa Nation, with Pakkiru, an Indigenous organization based in Ecuador’s Amazon. “We’re fighting to keep our territories.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
HOST AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Belém, Brazil, the gateway to the Amazon, where the U.N. climate summit is taking place.
“The answer is us.” That was the slogan as hundreds of Indigenous leaders from the Amazon and across the region gathered in the streets of Belém Monday (Nov. 17) outside the U.N. climate summit venue, where delegates from over 190 countries continue negotiations. These are some of the voices from the streets of Belém.
INDIGENOUS LEADER 1: [Translated] We are here fighting for our land, for our wildlife, for our birds that are facing extinction. We are here at this COP for results. We ask that Brazilian President Lula come and demarcate the land so that the illegal miners don’t enter our land and our river.
INDIGENOUS LEADER 2: [Translated] We are here claiming our rights, defending our forests, defending our animals, where we have survived all these years. We need to be recognized by the world as great guardians of the forest.
AMY GOODMAN: As Indigenous protests continue here in Belém, the government of Brazil has announced the creation of 10 new Indigenous territories in response to demands from protesters. There are more than 900 Indigenous delegates accredited here at [COP30], the highest number at any U.N. climate summit.
We’re joined now by Diana Chávez. She is a member of the Pastaza Kichwa Nation, head of international affairs and organizations for Pakkiru, which is based in Ecuador’s Amazon, arrived in Belém three weeks ago. Can you talk about where you’re from in Ecuador? More
Following an incredible performance of an unreleased Decessus track on national TV, Ignacia Fernandez stunned the judges and audience, bringing death metal to one of the world’s most traditional beauty pageant stages.
Decessus performs "Deliverance" with Ignatia Fernandez on vocals
In a heartfelt Instagram post, she shared that metal has always been “a refuge, a source of strength and purpose,” adding that the experience gave her a chance to “break down barriers, inspire, and show that you don’t have to fear the prejudices of others.”
Decessus covers Carcass' grindcore classic “This Mortal Coil” in 2021
Following that viral moment, Fernandez went on to win Miss World Chile and will now represent Chile and the global metal community at Miss World 2026.
Check out her band Decessus [Diseases?], who’ve toured and performed alongside Epica, Jinjer, and Insomnium, and listen to their track “Dark Flames” linked below.
Miss World Chile (Spanish Miss Mundo Chile) is a national beauty pageant that selects Chile's official representative to Miss World—one of the Big Four beauty pageants. The previous titleholder was Francisca Lavandero [1] of Los Ángeles (Chile), who represented Chile at the Miss World 2025 pageant on May 31, 2025, in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. It is now Ignacia Fernandez. More
(Rock Feed) Latin American (Chilean) beauty pageant crowd stunned by death metal performance
Latina Rosalia can sing, too
What about me? I can sing (Rosalia)
Rosalia Vila Tobella (born Sept. 25, 1992), is known mononymously as "Rosalía." She is a Spanish singer, polyglot, and songwriter. She has been described as an "atypical pop star" due to her genre-bending musical styles [4]. After being enthralled by Spanish folk music at age 14, she studied musicology at the Catalonia College of Music while also performing at musical bars and weddings. More
(MSN) In a remote region of Brazil, archeologists have unearthed rock art dating back approximately 9,000 years, which intriguingly depicts scenes that seem to reference dinosaurs. Found alongside ancient dinosaur footprints, this discovery challenges our [current, scientific and therefore very slow-to-change] understanding of early human awareness of now presumed-to-be-] extinct megafauna and suggests that these prehistoric humans may have interacted with or observed dinosaurs or dinosaur remnants [individuals or whole unknown species of descendants], incorporating them into their cultural expressions. More
The history of Buddhism in Cambodia spans a number of successive kingdoms and empires. Buddhism entered Cambodia via two different streams. The earliest forms of Buddhism, along with Hindu influences, entered the Kingdom of Funan with Hindu merchants. In later history, a second stream of Buddhism entered Khmer culture during the Angkor empire when Cambodia absorbed the various Buddhist traditions of the Mon kingdoms of Dvaravati and Haripunchai. For the first thousand years of Khmer history, Cambodia was ruled by a series of Hindu kings with an occasional Buddhist king, such as Jayavarman I of Funan, Jayavarman VII, who became a Mahayanist, and Suryavarman I. A variety of Buddhist traditions co-existed peacefully throughout Cambodian lands, under the tolerant auspices of Hindu kings and the neighboring Mon-Theravada kingdoms.
On the walls of the famous Khmer rock art of Buddhist Cambodia, with strong Hindu and Jain syncretism, there are stone depictions of a very famous dinosaur that was only "discovered" and made popular by the West in the last century or so: the stegosaurus.
Moreover, a German expat bought land in Mexico which, when he surveyed it on horseback, yielded a series of ceramic figures, more than 30,000 of them. This is the Acambaro Figures Collection. Some showed cryptids, while others showed humans on the back of dinosaurs, playfully riding them. This entire collection was deemed a hoax, as if Mexican farm hands had built a ceramic workshop and fabricated the priceless works of art. Even if that's the case, HOW could Mexican farmers possibly know what dinosaur fossils -- which had not been discovered yet and had certainly not been brought into the popular imagination like they are now with cartoons like The Flintstones (pre-Mandela Effect)?
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