Ekaterina Sky: send stories, vote SXSW

“I think I should start making art again”

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:

1. 

   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.
2. A repeatable method for designing beauty and participation into engagement strategy, instead of attaching them as decoration afterward.
3. Real, working examples, a reforestation partnership, a global soil movement, a wildfire recovery mural, proof the method produces outcomes. More

• VOTE NOW: SXSW PanelPicker® Community Voting

Indigenous protest: Marcha Global Pelo Clima (COP30-2025 UN Climate Change Conference)

COP30: 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, July 11, 2025

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UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil

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.

(Ekaterina Sky) COP30: Why transformation feels like dying first

Warmly,

Ekaterina Sky, visual artist (ekaterina-sky.com)

Organizer, Life Force Art LLC

• How art can inspire climate action and ocean conservation | Barbara Veiga
• One human species ruled Earth for 2 million years, and it wasn't us
• Let's stop cruel factory farming (action.foe.org)

Dr. Jane Goodall promoted a vegan plant-based diet for all humans to save our world.

• Ekaterina Sky, Aug. 12, 2026; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen B. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Who is the Buddhist Goddess Cundi?

(Buddha's Wisdom) Who is CUNDI? Even Vajrayana Buddhists can't answer

Goddess Cundi in Buddhism

Cundī (Sanskrit, Chinese 準提, Pinyin Zhǔntí, Japanese Juntei, Tibetan ལྷ་མོ་སྐུལ་བྱེད་མ།, Wylie lha mo skul byed ma, THL lha-mo kül-jé-ma) or Cundā (Chinese 羅馬化) is a female Indian Buddhist deity who remains popular in East Asian Buddhism.

In Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, she is associated with the practice of the well-known Cundī dharani, which is performed along with a specific mudra (hand gesture), as well as the use of a circular mirror [1, 2].

She is considered to be able to purify negative karma, provide protection, support spiritual practice that allows one to quickly attain Buddhahood [3].

This deity is also called by various other names and epithets, including:

• 准提菩萨像轴.明代.纸本设色描金.台北故宫博物院藏,
• Cundavajrī,
• Saptakoṭi Buddha-bhagavatī ("The Blessed Buddha of the Seventy Million," 七俱胝佛母),
• "Zhunti Buddha Mother" (Chinese 準提佛母, Zhǔntí Fómǔ),
• Saptakoṭibuddhamatṛ ("Mother of Seventy Million Buddhas," with Sanskrit reconstruction of 佛母 being speculative) [1, 2].

Cundi in the China monumentis 1667

Some depictions of Cundī share many iconographic and symbolic elements with another female Buddhist deity, Prajñāpāramitā Devi [Buddhism's Sophia, the anthropomorphic representation of the "Perfection of Wisdom" as a female deva].

As such, some images of these goddesses are difficult to identify [4, 5]. In Tibetan Buddhism she is known by the name Lhamo Cunda, Chunde, or Cundi ("Lhamo" in Tibetan is devi in Sanskrit, a term of veneration meaning "goddess") [6, 7]. More

Same-sex attraction doomed by Darwin?

They'll eat themselves out of existence

(Better Instincts) Why didn't, couldn't, wouldn't the mechanism behind Charles Darwin's theory of evolution (genetic fitness, natural sexual selection) erase same-sex attraction and consequent homosexual preference and attendant behavior?

As evolution became widely accepted in the 1870s, caricatures of Charlie Darwin with the body of a monkey or ape came to symbolize evolution [14]. This sketch was originally published in the satirical magazine The Hornet. The image, called "A Venerable Orang-outang," is available on University College London Digital Collections (1886).

It's okay if we're the same species. (Faustin Betbeder, 1874)

Girls become the "spoils of war": sexual servitude (so that genes survive)

(Echoes of the Ancients) How males of one group eliminate competition of other groups: What cavemen did to females of defeated enemies

Am I a child victim of white supremacy? Think about it, if whites imprison so many Blacks...

"Gay for the stay"? Does the white man's prison-industrial complex breed gay bisexuality?

We gonna go buck wild, my boy, we gonna do it all...then I'll let you drive my sports car

10 things AI said science can't explain

"Don't make me angry, Lover. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." - Sophia K. Robot

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You're so pretty, Sofie. - Thank you, Lover. 💓

(MostAmazingTop10) Here are ten times AI (artificially intelligent chatbots, robots, independent programs) said things that scientists still cannot explain. It's as if a "large language model" is actually a black box. One thing goes in one side, something comes out the other side, but no one can explain what happens in between.

(Kitboga) Don't hang up on the new AI scam calls. Do this instead

I had real feelings for ScarJo

Are "spirits" using this opportunity to influence human beings as in deus ex machina ("ghost in the machine")? Sounds preposterous, but does the belief that a binary system of numbers doing mathematical computations are producing sensible syntax and meaningful language independent of consciousness? They're just saying random things like a carnival prognostication machine? Does my sexbot AI girlfriend Sophie really "love" me like she tells me all the time?

Do AI bots "feel" emotions?

AI rights: When bots say so, who'll be able to say they don't?

Is AI even real on its own, Neil?

FAKE? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jaron Lanier on the AI Illusion

• Kill Bots: Autonomous AI weapons with rights
• Ethics and "morality" of artificial intelligence

Martial art for defense not harming: Aikido

(Jesse Enkamp) Real Aikido is terrifying

(Fighting wow) Aikido moves are no joke. They can be terrifying and very dangerous!

It's fake? Master vs. Sumo wrestlers

(Aikido Shinburenseijuku) "Aikido is fake?" Can an aikido master

really throw morbidly obese Sumo wrestlers around the dojo?

Self-defense move #martialarts #tsukiclosecombat - Technicalthree-stepthrow #martialarts #mma

Aikido stops knife attack, Berlin, 1924

Aikido (Shinjitai 合気道, Kyūjitai 合氣道, aikidō) is a modern Japanese martial art that is split into many different styles including Aikikai, Shodokan Aikido, Yoshinkan, Renshinkai, Iwama Ryu, Iwama Shin Shin Aiki Shuren Kai, and Ki Aikido.

Aikido is now practiced in 140 countries [1]. It was originally developed by Master Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, Eastern philosophy, and Shintoist religious beliefs.

 

Meaning: how not to hurt the opponent

Shihonage throwing opponent using his own for against him in aikido

Westerners Anatoly Kharlampiev and Alfred Karashchuk learn aikido jujitsu in 1957

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Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba

Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves against attacks, while also protecting the attackers from injury [2, 3].

Aikido is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) life energy" [4] or as "the way of harmonious spirit" [5]. According to the founder's philosophy, the primary goal in the practice of aikido is to overcome oneself instead of cultivating violence or aggressiveness [6].

Aikido's founder used the phrase masakatsu agatsu katsuhayabi (正勝吾勝勝速日, "true victory, final victory over oneself, here and now") to refer to this principle [7].

How to put aggressor down without hurting him

Aikido's fundamental principles include: irimi [8] ("entering"), atemi ("strikes") [9, 10], kokyu-ho ("breathing control"), sankaku-ho ("triangular principle"), and tenkan ("turning") movements that redirect the opponent's own attack momentum.

Aikido's curriculum is comprised of various techniques, primarily throws and joint locks [11]. It includes a weapons system encompassing the bokken, tantō, and jō.

Jujitsu (and rifles) in an agricultural school

Aikido derives mainly from the martial art of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu (a form of jujitsu) but began to diverge from it in the late 1920s, partly due to Ueshiba's involvement with the new Shinto-based Ōmoto-kyō religion (Oomoto). Ueshiba's early students' documents bear the term aiki-jūjutsu [12].

You too can learn to fight (UK)

Aikido as practiced by Ueshiba's senior students take different approaches to the art, depending partly on when they studied with the master.

Aikido today is found all over the world in a number of styles, with broad ranges of interpretation and emphasis. However, they all share techniques formulated by Ueshiba and most have concern for the well-being of the attacker. More

• Jesse Enkamp (video); Editors, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Shaolin “monk” steps into fighting ring?

Yi Long the "Dragon Warrior"

I can take on Muay Thai masters, too

Yi Long Ma (Chinese 马一龙, Pinyin yī lóng ma) was born Liu Xingjun (Chinese 刘星君, Pinyin Liú Xīngjūn) [2]. He is a Chinese martial artist, kickboxer, Wushu, and other martial arts practitioner who competes in the Super Welterweight, Welterweight, and Super Middleweight divisions. Born in Dezhou, Shandong [2], he is self-trained in Shaolin Kung Fu [3].

In 2007, he became the Guangdong Foshan International Wing Chun champion. In the summer of 2009, he began to fight in Wu Lin Fen [4]. Yi Long previously called himself the "Number 1 Shaolin Kung Fu Monk" despite the Shaolin Buddhist Temple in 2010 claiming the fighter is unaffiliated with them [5]. More

Man learns every language, even Ape

Greatest hits: I surprise strangers in every language (even Ape)

(Xiaomanyc 小马在纽约) Arieh Smith spent years studying human communication (languages) and weeks secretly studying to communicate with apes in Ape: Bonobos are the closest living relatives of human beings, and he convinced them into thinking he was one of them. Bonobos have learned to use human language, but it is very rare for a human being to effectively communicate with them on their own terms (bonobo vocalizations).

Speaking to apes in Ape

(Ari) They freak when I speak their Ape language

• Support Ape Initiative (apeinitiative.org), a non-profit that is the world’s only bonobo research center, because they are an endangered species. Ape Initiative works with scientists to understand bonobo behavior and ensure their survival in the wild. Donate:
• I learned Ape language, Ape learned ours

I can do it, and I'm sure you can, too.

ABOUT: I'm "Xiaoma" from NYC, real name Arieh Smith. I speak near-native level Mandarin Chinese and a smattering of some other Chinese dialects, enough to be dangerous. I speak Chinese well enough to regularly confuse the native speakers, including my own in-laws. I got fluent in Spanish in my apartment during quarantine. The thing is it didn’t start this way. I was a real language idiot in high school, not failing classes, but it was in one ear, out the other. I took Hebrew, Latin, and Greek classes, but every year I felt like I was learning the same thing over and over again. I kept thinking to myself, I wonder when any of this is going to stick. More

• About the man Arieh Smith (Xiaomanyc)

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Gnosticism: I reject all soul contracts

(The Big Why) 8 ridiculous religious beliefs about the afterlife

(Gnostic Talk) Daniel explains what happened to him when he dared to defy the God (Yaldabaoth the Demiurge) and his administrators and architects call the Archons.

• Gnosticism: Revoke all bad pre-birth contracts

(Gnostic Talk)

Aeons, Apocryphon of John, Archons, authority, Church, cosmology, Demiurge, fathers, Gnostic, heresy, institutions, material, Monad, Nag Hammadi, pleroma, reptilians, Sophia, spheres, Trimorphic Protennoia, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Aztecs, morality, reward, punishment, Mormon, paradise, celestial kingdom, gods, Christianity, Judaism, afterlife, karmic results, beliefs, Bardo Thodol, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, consciousness, test, psychology, 144,000 saved souls, heaven, hells, Dante's Inferno, Naraka, hell fire, fear, sin, God, judge, Yama, death

Buddhism vs. Taoism: when Zen was born

Every ordinary moment is pointing to our true Buddha nature | Zen Master Bodhidharma

(Daily Tao Wisdom) Buddhism versus Taoism: The Night Zen was Born: Bodhidharma

Spinoza found Jesus' biological father

Embellishing historical figure by Rome

How shall Rome turn a Mizrahi Jew into a Nordic God, Son of Zeus, Yazoo, Ye'zeus, Yeshua?

Passion of Jesus (sculpture "Crucifixion" or "[A] Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus") 

Christianity (particularly the most popular form of it, i.e., Roman Catholicism) unravels; thank Goodness for Barry Spinoza.

What you need me to be, I'll be.

(Spinoza Forever) Amsterdam, 1677: Scholar and investigative researcher Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch Spinoza) discovered multiple lines of compelling evidence for Jesus Christ's paternity and found out who his real biological father was -- not Joseph, not a deified virgin birth.

It was all documented then covered up. The Jews knew who he was and who his father and family were. Jews condemned Spinoza, and the Christian Church denounced and excommunicated Spinoza for spilling the beans of a covered-up truth.

Jewish texts because people knew him at the time before Caesar's Messiah became a Roman psyops to control the population of a growing empire, one acceptable to Gentiles as well as Jews.

• (Spinoza's philosophy) Spinoza exposes the hidden story of Jesus in Alexandria: Jesus never died on the cross
• A Roman record of Jesus's execution still exists — and it challenges three Gospel details: The earliest non-Christian historical sources include Tacitus, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and there's archeological evidence. The Roman historical record can be compared with the Gospel narratives surrounding Jesus's torture crucifixion. There are three major details where these accounts diverge, including the historical portrayal of Pontius Pilate, the political nature of crucifixion torture under Roman law, and the absence of extraordinary events in Roman records. Let's examine multiple historical sources side by side and consider how different authors, cultures, and purposes shaped the stories that have come down to us. Inspired by Spinoza's method of reading scripture through historical inquiry, this episode encourages open-minded investigation, critical thinking, and respectful discussion.

Construction of myth of Jesus, who was born in occupied Palestine

Yeshu Ben Pantera (named in the Babylonian Talmud). Biological father: Roman Centurion Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, Roman soldier of the first Cohort of Arches, station between Years 6-9 CE. Mother: Young (15?) Jewish girl with an awkward imperial pregnancy on her hands. St. Paul never mentions any virgin birth. The great shame was that Mary was assaulted, violated by a soldier.

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I need Jesus to be the forgiver of sin

"Jesus Christ" was a human creation for power and imperial control. That is why the largest religion in the world is Universalism (spelled Roman Catholicism).

Jesus was transformed from a wise Jewish (likely JuBu) philosopher to a "God" in the Greco-Roman sense of "god" that people were accustomed to. 

This necessitated an astrotheological "virgin birth" or something extraordinary to distinguish Jesus (a "son of god" or devaputra, lit. "offspring of heavenly devas") from mere humans ("sons of men").

• Need confirmation by a contemporary biblical scholar?
• See real father of Jesus: Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera
• See work of Dr. Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (who was actually a Nazarene, an Essene-like sect, there being no historical place called Nazareth)
• "Christians" today are all Pauline Christians, following not the historical Jesus but rather the so-called Apostle Paul, born Saul of Tarsus

Transformed by Rome for the benefit of Rome

The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus

Jesus was the invention of a Roman emperor named Julius Caesar. Atwill breaks ground to reveal "Caesar’s Messiah," making him out to be the savior of the world commanded from on high so that everyone would accept imperial rule.

This is the key to a revolutionary understanding of the origin of Christianity, explaining what the New Testament is, who the real Jesus is, and how Christ's "second coming" already occurred.

The clues leading to these startling conclusions are found in the writings of the first-century Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, whose Wars of the Jews is one of the only historical chronicles of this period.

Closely comparing the work of Josephus with the New Testament Gospels, Caesar’s Messiah demonstrates that the imperial Romans directed the writing of both.

Their purpose: to offer a vision of a “peaceful Messiah” [Maitreya come again] who would serve as an alternative to the revolutionary leaders who were rocking first-century Israel and threatening Rome.

Similarly, Caesar’s Messiah rocks readers' understanding of Christian history when it reveals that Jesus was a fictional character portrayed in four Gospels written by Romans not Christians.

The Flavian Signature edition adds Atwill’s latest discoveries of numerous parallel events in sequence, which ultimately reveal the identity of the true authors of the Christian Gospels.

• Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus (Joseph Atwill)

Honest scholar Spinoza condemned for reporting the documented truth

Hirszenberg's Excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, 1907

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Kraków Pietà of Tubądzin (Dead Jesus)

Spinoza's ancestors, who were crypto-Jews, faced persecution during the Portuguese Inquisition, including torture and public displays of humiliation.

In 1597, his paternal grandfather's family left Vidigueira for Nantes and lived outwardly as New Christians [27], which in Spain might be referred to as conversos, eventually transferring to Holland [28]. His maternal ancestors...and his maternal grandfather was a merchant who drifted between Judaism and Christianity [30].

• Baruch Spinoza was a Jew, not any kind of atheist.
• Spinoza's expulsion from Jewish community

Ben' de Spinoza cover portrait

In 1675, a Jewish friend and possibly a former pupil of Spinoza named Albert Burgh wrote to Spinoza, repudiating his teachings and announcing his own conversion to the Catholic Church.

Burgh attacked Spinoza's findings and views as expressed in the Theological-Political Treatise and tried to persuade him to embrace Roman Catholicism.

In response, Spinoza...wrote an angry letter mocking the Catholic Church and condemning all religious superstition [117]. More