karadin

[karadin]

Battle of Five Armies

There and Back Again

Tom Bombadil

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

Battle of the Hornburg

Battle of the Pelennor Fields

Battle of the Morannon

Evenstar

Red Book of Westmarch

Art by Wavesheep. Part I | Part II | Part III. 

[karadin]

This review photo was taken by a one voracious buyer on Etsy! Thank you very much for your purchase, May! I'm super thrilled that you like the stickers and your bookmark! Read on, my friend! :D

Supernatural goodies are on my shop!

[karadin]

Bumblebees can surprisingly withstand days underwater, according to a study published Wednesday, suggesting they could withstand increased floods brought on by climate change that threaten their winter hibernation burrows. The survival of these pollinators that are crucial to ecosystems is "encouraging" amid worrying global trends of their declining populations, the study's lead author Sabrina Rondeau told AFP. With global warming prompting more frequent and extreme floods in regions around the world, it poses "an unpredictable challenge for soil-dwelling species, particularly bees nesting or overwintering underground", co-author Nigel Raine of the University of Guelph said in a statement. Rondeau said she first discovered queen bumblebees could withstand drowning by accident. She had been studying the effect of pesticide residues in soil on queen bumblebees that burrow underground for the winter when water accidentally entered the tubes housing a few of the bees. "I freaked out," said Rondeau, who had been conducting the experiment for her doctoral studies. "It was only a small proportion… so it was not that big of a deal, but I didn't want to lose those bees." To her "shock", she said, they survived. "I've been studying bumblebees for a very long time. I've talked about it to a lot of people and no one knew that this was a possibility," she said.

Continue Reading.

[karadin]

[karadin]

This is Trump suffering the consequences of his own actions! He fucked around and found out 🤣🤣🤣

[karadin]

I would also like to say for the record that all of the sects in MDZS are not implied to be any ethnicity but Han Chinese and to be quite frank it is alarming when people try to say the text says otherwise.

Like, this is mildly related to the ask I just answered, and I know we've all seen the meta discussing how barbarianism and racism is (le gasp!) present in Chinese works. (Which, well, yeah. yeah it is.) BUT critically I think in trying to scrutinize and apply shit to MDZS/CQL where all the characters are very much Han, we're just turning up new ways of being racist towards minority ethnicities here.

Case in point: "the Nie are Mongolian"

I've seen this oft repeated everywhere in both meta and fic and...do we understand this??? is racist??? Like the most common justifications I see point to the fact that the Nie (in the live action)....ride horses...have braids in their hair...come from a butcher heritage...are "brutish" <- there's no canonical evidence of this last point btw.

Do we think this is the entirety of what being Mongolian means? Do we think these points add up to "they're subtextually Mongolian?" Why do we think that?

They're not depicted either 1) with Mongolian names 2) with Mongolian religious traditions 3) with Mongolian clothing or hairstyle trends 4) as being reacted to in text as anything other than Han Chinese by other Han Chinese characters. 5) They are depicted on screen by Han Chinese actors.

Like maybe if someone is subscribing to "The Nie are canonically Mongolian and written in a racist way by MXTX in text/depicted in a racist way by the CQL showwriters" they should. Examine what they think being Mongolian is irl.

Maybe the issue is not how sects are presented in CQL or MDZS but how exhausting it is to wade through this fandom where people will misconstrue shit into things that are somehow, more racist in an attempt to deconstruct racism in a system they do not fully understand.

[karadin]

[karadin]

Wall painting originally from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii,depicts a priest with a mask of Anubis.

Naples National Archaeological Museum

By: Amphipolis (CC BY-SA 2.0)

[karadin]

The saga of Zhang Wen's ma

Three videos have been compiled here. English added by me :)

[karadin]

A bit about Chuanqingren, one of the unofficial ethnic groups in China.

English added by me :)

Full video transcript below the cut:

Simply because these people are so rare, on cellphones and computers, there is no option to choose them. There’s no way to input them as an option.

As a result, often times when they go out, they will be questioned over having a fake ID. They’re not Miao, nor are they Han. And they’re certainly not any of the other 56 ethnic groups. In the 90s, they were designated as an unrecognised ethnic group (official designation). Their group is classified as Other. According to Ming Dynasty historical records, in earlier times, they were called “tu ren” (dirt people), “Li minzi” (～descendants of villagers), and also “xianmin”(羡） or “xianmin”（县） (~county people). Because their traditional clothing tends to be qing* colored (*may describe blue, green, or black), they’ve since been known as “chuanqing ren” (qing-wearing people). Early on, in the 1980s, there was already the write-in option of “qing group”. The first generation of resident IDs have “qingzu” printed on them.

Later, after many years of ethnic group discernment work, it was concluded that for the time being, they did not conform to China’s independent ethnic group determination standards. Therefore, they became recognised as “Chuanqingren”. Chuanqingren are mostly found in the northwest regions of Guizhou province. They use mandrills as their totem and their clothing tends to be qing. The qing color in question is a rather deep blue, one that near black.

There ware several explanations for the origins of Chuanqing people. One saying is that they are indigenous people of Guizhou. Another, more common explanation is that in the early Ming Dynasty, Yunnan’s king of Liang rebelled and Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu Emperor) dispatched 300k forces to consolidate the south. Then from south of the Changjiang, many immigrated to Guizhou and settled.

Historically it’s known as “transfer from the north, filling the south”, and Chuanqingren are simply the later generations of these soldiers and officers and immigrants to the south.

Now then the question comes: why are they only Chuanqing “people”, and not qing “ethnic group” or Chuanqing “ethnic group”?

Firstly, each ethnic group in our country has its own cultural/civilisation origins. For example, the Han ethnic group are the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and Flame Emperors. Therefore, they are also called “Yan Huang Zisun”(descendants of the Flame and Yellow Emperor).

Take for example the Miao ethnic group as well: The origins of the Miao ethnic group is that Chiyou led them in the alliance of the 9 Li tribes.

But Chuanqingren can’t find their origins. Most still simply say that they are a branch of the Han ethnic group. None of their special folk styles and customs have been completely preserved, including their language, which fewer and fewer of them are able to speak. Their clothing is even less common, which has led many to think that the clothing of the Tunpu people (another Han branch) of Anshun are that of Chuanqing people. As a result, many have taken Tunpu people as Chuanqing people.

In China, there are a lot of unique communities not within the 56 [official] ethnic groups. For example, the Mosuo people, the Kemu people, the Xia’erba people, the A’ke people, the Deng people, and more. The so-called “unrecognised” ethnic groups aren’t to say that their group’s identity can’t be distinguished. Rather, it’s that they still don’t meet our country’s criteria for judging independent ethnic groups. So, it’s only in order to reflect and affirm these unique communities that they are incorporated under the "not yet recognised” ethnic group.

In the multi-ethnic household of China, no matter which ethnic group, we all have a common name, and that is ”zhonghua minzu” (the people/nation of China). Do you identify with that? (Do you agree?)

[karadin]

[karadin]

[karadin]

what's so striking to me about younger queer generations rn isn't the lack of knowledge about queer history, but the complete unwillingness to engage with it, when confronted with an identity or history they haven't heard of before they react with disgust rather than curiosity. (for example) instead of asking where the leather pride flag came from and what the leather community is and represents they immediately question the need for something like that to exist, not even willing to listen and learn from both elders and peers. this is also more broadly a problem in leftist spaces in general, being reactionary is somehow the default now, and anything that's different or unknown must be an attack and bad. really hoping y'all manage to grow out of this deeply conservative way of interacting with the world.

[karadin]

bodypillow covers, just saying

Hou Minghao, Chen Duling, Tian Jiarui, Cheng Xiao, Lin Ziye, Xu Zhenxuan, Yan An & Lai Weiming for iQIYI’s Fangs of Fortune (formerly The Story of Mystics).

[karadin]

rat story. rat stuck in my wall for a week. it's between my bathroom and bedroom. his problem. skill issue. don't get stuck in walls. rats are supposed to be good at mazes. lame ass fail rat. two days. i have killed so many rats you aren't special. three days. everyone tells me to leave it. it's a rat. what are you gonna do, open the wall up and then have a rat to kill and a wall to repair and a bathroom to lysol? yet the guilt eats at me. i leave for a night. come back. the situation has not improved. five days. i can hear him when i shower. six days. this is an 80 year old house. the bathroom is the original art deco subway tile. i am not ruining it to get this rat out. i wake up this morning. squeek squeek please help me save me coming from behind my toilet as i do my morning business. agony. i get dressed. i get my elbow length industrial leather gloves, a box, and my least favorite steak knife. i cut a hole in my wall with the knife. open it up. rat peaks his nose out. he looks tired but fine. he will not be coaxed into coming out but i have ascended into a higher tier of dumbassery so i reach my gloved hand into the wall and gently pull him out. he is too weak to resist me, but still able to move. i tenderly tuck him away in the box with food and water. i tape up the box (with air holes) and set my rice cooker on top of it because it's the only thing i can think of and i haven't slept in two days because of daylight savings time and this rat. the struggle is over my trial is done. i lysol every inch of me and the gloves and remove everything. i sit down to finally drink my coffee with many hours of wall repair and bleach ahead of me. and then i hear this odd sound.

i look up and see my cat slowly following a second rat as it makes its way from the bathroom and into my bedroom and that's the end because the rat is still in my fucking bedroom and i can't catch it. so, rat: in a box under my rice cooker. second rat: in my bedroom with my cat. my idiocy? supreme.

[karadin]

Alan Rickman filmography >> Galaxy Quest (dir. Dean Parisot, 1999) as Sir Alexander "I would rather die than be here" Dane

[karadin]

meanwhile asian dramas cut down from 70 to 50

FOR ONE SEASON