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mariacallous · 7 months

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It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.

On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.

Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.

“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.

“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.

She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.

“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”

As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.

It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.

But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.

“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.

“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”

The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.

That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.

But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.

For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.

And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.

Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.

At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.

And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.

Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.

“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.

“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.

Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.

“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.

“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”

Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?

Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.

“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.

“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”

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arminreindl · 22 days

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Pachycetinae: The Thick Whales

Oh look I'm way behind not only on my work with wikipedia but also in regards to summarizing it on tumblr. Good thing, three of the pages I've worked on these past few months can just be summed up in one post because they are all one family.

So Pachycetinae, at the most basic level, are basilosaurid archaeocetes, the group that famously includes Basilosaurus and Dorudon. Reason I've picked up the articles in addition to my usual croc work, basically a friend and I noticed how lacklustre many pages are and stupidly decided to start revising all of Cetacea (pray for me).

Currently theres two genera within the group. Pachycetus aka Platyosphys aka Basilotritus, which is a whole mess I will get into at the end for those interested, and Antaecetus, which I'll just call "the good one" for now. Among those are three species. Pachycetus paulsonii (or Basilotritus uheni) from continental Europe (Germany and Ukraine mostly), Pachycetus wardii (Eastern United Staates) and Antaecetus aithai (Morocco and Egypt)

Picture: Pachycetus and Antaecetus by Connor Ashbridge

So the hallmark of Pachycetines, as the name would suggest, is the fact that their skeletons are notably denser than that of other basilosaurids. The vertebrae, the most abundant material of these whales, are described as pachyostatic and osteosclerotic. The former effecitvely means that the dense cortical bone forms thickened layers, while the latter means that the cortical bone, already forming thickened layers, is furthermore denser than in other basilosaurids with less porosities. The densitiy is increased further by how the ribs attack to the vertebrae not through sinovial articulation but through cartilage, so adding even more weight to them. Overall this is at times compared to manatees, famous for their dense skeletons.

Pictured below, the currently best preserved pachycetine fossil, an individual of the genus Antaecetus from Morocco.

Now there are some interesting anatomical features to mention that either differ between species or just can't be compared. For example the American species of Pachycetus, P. wardii, shows a well developed innominate bone, basically the fused pelvic bones. This is curious as one would think of it as a more basal feature, with derived whales gradually reducing them. The skull is best preserved in Antaecetus and has a very narrow snout. One way to differentiate the two is by the teeth. Pachycetus has larger, more robust teeth while that of Antaecetus are way more gracile and is thought to have had a proportionally smaller skull (in addition to being smaller than Pachycetus in general).

All of this has some interesting implications for their ecology. For instance, why the hell are they so dense? Well its possible that they were shallow water animals using their weight as ballast, staying close to the ocean floor. This would definitely find some support in the types of environments they show up in, which tend to be shallow coastal waters. There are some Ukrainian localities that suggest deeper waters, but that has been interpreted as being the result of migration taking them out of their prefered habitat.

Now while pachycetines were probably powerful swimmers, their dense bones mean that they were pretty slow regardless. And to add insult to injury, they were anything but maneuverable. Remember those long transverse processes? Turns out having them extend over the majority of the vertebral body means theres very little space for muscles in between, which limits sideways movements.

From this one can guess that they weren't pursuit predators and needed to ambush their prey. What exactly that was has been inferred based on tooth wear. Basically, the teeth of Pachycetus show a lot of abrasion and wear, not dissimlar to what is seen in modern orcas that feed on sharks and rays. And low and behold, sharks are really common in the same strata that Pachycetus shows up in. Now since Antaecetus had way more gracile teeth, its thought that it probably fed on less well protected animals like squids and fish.

Below: Pachycetus/Basilotritus catching a fish by @knuppitalism-with-ue

The relationship between pachycetines and other basilosaurids is wonky, again no thanks due to Pachycetus itself being very poorly known. Some studies have suggested that they were a very early branching off-shoot, in part due to their prominent hip bones, but in the most recent study to include them, the description of Tutcetus, they surprisingly came out as not just the most derived basilosaurids but as the immediate sister group to Neoceti, which includes all modern whales. Regardless, in both instances they seem to clade closely with Supayacetus, a small basilosaurid from Peru.

And now for the part that is the most tedious. Taxonomy and history.

Remains of pachycetines have been known for a while and were first described as early as 1873 by Russian scientists. To put into perspective how old that is. The material's history in science predates both World Wars, the collapse of the Russian Empire and even the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Now initially the idea was to name the animal Zeuglodon rossicum, but the person doing the actual describing changed that to Zeuglodon paulsonii reasoning that it would eventually be found outside of Russia (something that aged beautifully given that Ukraine would eventually become independent).

And this is where the confusion starts to unfold. Because at the same time people unearthed pachycetine fossils in Germany too, which would come be given the name Pachycetus (thick whale) and be established as two species. Pachycetus robustus and Pachycetus humilis, both thought to be baleen whales.

Pictured below: Pierre-Joseph van Beneden who coined Pachycetus and Johann Friedrich Brandt who described Zeuglodon paulsonii. Beneden easily has the better beard.

These latter two names however were later rejected in 1935 by Kuhn and lumped into other species, whereas Zeuglodon paulsonii was elevated to a full on new genus by Remington Kellogg in 1936. For those curious, Platyosphys means "broad loin", in combination with the species "Paulson's broad loin" to the amusement of some friends of mine.

And then people stopped caring and we have a nearly 70 year research gap. Eventually Mark D. Uhen found fossil material in the United States, but interpreted those fossils as being part of the genus Eocetus, naming them Eocetus wardii, a move that many following researchers disagreed with.

Then in 2001 a new species of Platyosphys, P. einori, was named. It's bad, moving on. More importantly, we got the works of Gol'din and Zvonok, who attempted to bring some clarity into the whole thing. To do so they rejected the name Platyosphys on account of the holotype having been lost sometime in WW2 and picked out much better fossil material to coin the genus Basilotritus ("the third king" in allusion to Basilosaurus "king lizard" and Basiloterus "the other king", isn't etymology fun?). They erected the type species Basilotritus uheni and then proclaimed Eocetus wardii to also belong into this genus, making it Basilotritus wardii.

This move was however not followed by other researchers. Gingerich and Zhouri maintained that regardless of being lost, Platyosphys is still valid and can be sufficiently diagnosed by the original drawings from the 19th and early 20th century. And to take a step further they added a new species, Platyosphys aithai (weird, why does that name sound familiar).

Then Van Vliet came and connected all these dots I've set up so far, noting that the fossils of Platyosphys are nearly identical to those of Pachycetus. This lead to the fun little thing were "paulsonii", applied first to Zeuglodon in the 1870s, takes priority over "robustus", coined just a few years later, BUT, the genus name Pachycetus easily predates Platyosphys by a good 60 years. Subsequently, the two were combined. Platyosphys paulsonii and Pachycetus robustus became Pachycetus paulsonii (simplified*). Van Vliet then deemed humilis to be some other whale and carried over Basilotritus uheni, Basilotritus wardii and Platyosphys aithai into the genus Pachycetus. *Technically Pachycetus robustus was tentatively kept as distinct only because of how poorly preserved it was, making comparisson not really possible.

Then finally in the most recent paper explicitly dealing with this group, Gingerich and Zhouri came back, killed off P. robustus for good, sunk Pachycetus uheni into Pachycetus paulsonii for good measure and decided to elevate Pachycetus aithai to genus status after finding a much better second skeleton, coining Antaecetus (after the giant of Greek myth).

And that's were we are right now. Three species in two genera, but only one of them is actually any good. So perhaps at some point in the future we might see some further revisions on that whole mess and who knows, perhaps Basilotritus makes a glorious comeback.

To conclude, sorry about the lack of images, despite the ample history theres just not much good material aside from that one Antaecetus fossil and I didn't want to include 5 different drawings in lateral view. Obligatory Wikipedia links: Pachycetinae - Wikipedia Antaecetus - Wikipedia Pachycetus - Wikipedia

Ideally Supayacetus will be the next whale I tackle, distractions and other projects not withstanding (who knows maybe I'll finally finish Quinkana)

#pachycetinae #pachycetus #basilotritus #platyosphys #antaecetus #archaeocete #prehistory #paleontology #palaeoblr #basilosauridae #eocene #whale

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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So it looks like Sinema, having gotten her requisite pound of flesh for her billionaire hedge fund buddies (basically, they agreed to keep the carried-interest tax loophole and replace it with an excise tax on stock buybacks), has finally agreed to support the Inflation Reduction Act, otherwise known as the $740 billion "pretty much Build Back Better but we are calling it something different" bill that Manchin and Schumer came out with. If/when it passes, which could be as soon as this weekend, the Democrats will have achieved -- with a 50-50 Senate with two habitual Manchurian candidates, a four-seat House majority, a rampantly fascist opposing party, a Supreme Court openly bent on destroying democracy and personal liberty, and an active criminal investigation into the previous administration -- at least the following:

The American Rescue Plan, aka the first post-inauguration $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, which was the largest investment in the working class since the New Deal;

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is the first major structural and transportation modernization and systemic overhaul for the country since the 1970s;

The first significant gun safety legislation in 30 years and since at least the Clinton administration;

Multiple executive orders now signed on protecting abortion rights and access to reproductive care, including travel out of state if necessary;

A bill in the works to officially codify same-sex marriage and thus protect it from SCOTUS;

Reauthorization and improvement of the Violence Against Women Act, including strong new protections for LGBTQ+ and Native American victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault, including the ability for Native courts to prosecute non-Native offenders for sex crimes for the first time in history;

Finally (FINALLY) making lynching a federal hate crime;

The largest climate legislation ever passed in America (this bill), which also establishes a federal minimum 15% corporate tax rate and lowers healthcare costs, including for essential medications like insulin, by, like, a lot;

Passage of the PACT Act, aka expanding healthcare for disabled veterans exposed to burn pits, also the biggest expansion in this field for a generation despite Republicans briefly killing it in an outburst of pettiness;

Consistent big packages of support for Ukraine, rebuilding of foreign alliances, huge bipartisan support for including Sweden and Finland in NATO (hahahaha fuck you Josh Hawley);

The CHIPS act, which creates tech and manufacturing jobs in America and was made even sweeter by how thoroughly they fucked over McTurtle to do it (since oh boy does he deserve a taste of his own medicine);

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on SCOTUS, and not an awful white supremacist stand-in like Clarence Thomas, but a genuinely progressive and thoughtful jurist;

Cancellation of almost $6 billion in student loans for the poorest and most defrauded borrowers, such as those who attended scam for-profit "colleges";

And so on and so forth!!!

So like. Please tell me more about how the Democrats are incompetent, their leadership is bad, they are in Disarray TM, you are a terrible person if you support Biden or give them any credit at all, and you're just not excited to vote because they haven't done anything. Like yes! There is a lot more to do! Despite them suddenly deciding to play ball on this particular occasion, Manchin and Sinema still need to be made irrelevant as soon as possible! But as I said, this is happening with the thinnest of imaginable Congressional control, as the other party is literally trying to destroy democracy in real time before our faces. That is not irrelevant.

Also: ruby-red Kansas curb-stomped an attempt to outlaw abortion rights, and approximately 77% of the entire country supports this current bill. The generic Congressional ballots have all shown major movement toward Democrats, and frankly, I have a feeling that we have only just started to see the full impact of post-Roe fallout. So if you get off your asses, quit whining, and put the work in, we could actually win the midterms and then do EVEN MORE!

So yeah. Uh. Food for thought.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #'but biden didn't give me a pony!!!'#'sTudEnT lOaNs!!!'#oh like the ones you have not paid a single penny on since he took office #the legislative agenda enacted thus far represents progress in every single left wing issue #and in utterly terrible circumstances #so yeah if you are still saying this #please stfu forever

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dailyanarchistposts · 17 days

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A.1.5 Where does anarchism come from?

Where does anarchism come from? We can do no better than quote The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists produced by participants of the Makhnovist movement in the Russian Revolution (see Section A.5.4). They point out that:

“The class struggle created by the enslavement of workers and their aspirations to liberty gave birth, in the oppression, to the idea of anarchism: the idea of the total negation of a social system based on the principles of classes and the State, and its replacement by a free non-statist society of workers under self-management. “So anarchism does not derive from the abstract reflections of an intellectual or a philosopher, but from the direct struggle of workers against capitalism, from the needs and necessities of the workers, from their aspirations to liberty and equality, aspirations which become particularly alive in the best heroic period of the life and struggle of the working masses. “The outstanding anarchist thinkers, Bakunin, Kropotkin and others, did not invent the idea of anarchism, but, having discovered it in the masses, simply helped by the strength of their thought and knowledge to specify and spread it.” [pp. 15–16]

Like the anarchist movement in general, the Makhnovists were a mass movement of working class people resisting the forces of authority, both Red (Communist) and White (Tsarist/Capitalist) in the Ukraine from 1917 to 1921. As Peter Marshall notes “anarchism … has traditionally found its chief supporters amongst workers and peasants.” [Demanding the Impossible, p. 652]

Anarchism was created in, and by, the struggle of the oppressed for freedom. For Kropotkin, for example, “Anarchism … originated in everyday struggles” and “the Anarchist movement was renewed each time it received an impression from some great practical lesson: it derived its origin from the teachings of life itself.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 58 and p. 57] For Proudhon, “the proof” of his mutualist ideas lay in the “current practice, revolutionary practice” of “those labour associations … which have spontaneously … been formed in Paris and Lyon … [show that the] organisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same.” [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 59–60] Indeed, as one historian argues, there was “close similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon … and the program of the Lyon Mutualists” and that there was “a remarkable convergence [between the ideas], and it is likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers.” [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 164]

Thus anarchism comes from the fight for liberty and our desires to lead a fully human life, one in which we have time to live, to love and to play. It was not created by a few people divorced from life, in ivory towers looking down upon society and making judgements upon it based on their notions of what is right and wrong. Rather, it was a product of working class struggle and resistance to authority, oppression and exploitation. As Albert Meltzer put it:

“There were never theoreticians of Anarchism as such, though it produced a number of theoreticians who discussed aspects of its philosophy. Anarchism has remained a creed that has been worked out in action rather than as the putting into practice of an intellectual idea. Very often, a bourgeois writer comes along and writes down what has already been worked out in practice by workers and peasants; he [or she] is attributed by bourgeois historians as being a leader, and by successive bourgeois writers (citing the bourgeois historians) as being one more case that proves the working class relies on bourgeois leadership.” [Anarchism: Arguments for and against, p. 18]

In Kropotkin’s eyes, “Anarchism had its origins in the same creative, constructive activity of the masses which has worked out in times past all the social institutions of mankind — and in the revolts … against the representatives of force, external to these social institutions, who had laid their hands on these institutions and used them for their own advantage.” More recently, “Anarchy was brought forth by the same critical and revolutionary protest which gave birth to Socialism in general.” Anarchism, unlike other forms of socialism, “lifted its sacrilegious arm, not only against Capitalism, but also against these pillars of Capitalism: Law, Authority, and the State.” All anarchist writers did was to “work out a general expression of [anarchism’s] principles, and the theoretical and scientific basis of its teachings” derived from the experiences of working class people in struggle as well as analysing the evolutionary tendencies of society in general. [Op. Cit., p. 19 and p. 57]

However, anarchistic tendencies and organisations in society have existed long before Proudhon put pen to paper in 1840 and declared himself an anarchist. While anarchism, as a specific political theory, was born with the rise of capitalism (Anarchism “emerged at the end of the eighteenth century …[and] took up the dual challenge of overthrowing both Capital and the State.” [Peter Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 4]) anarchist writers have analysed history for libertarian tendencies. Kropotkin argued, for example, that “from all times there have been Anarchists and Statists.” [Op. Cit., p. 16] In Mutual Aid (and elsewhere) Kropotkin analysed the libertarian aspects of previous societies and noted those that successfully implemented (to some degree) anarchist organisation or aspects of anarchism. He recognised this tendency of actual examples of anarchistic ideas to predate the creation of the “official” anarchist movement and argued that:

“From the remotest, stone-age antiquity, men [and women] have realised the evils that resulted from letting some of them acquire personal authority… Consequently they developed in the primitive clan, the village community, the medieval guild … and finally in the free medieval city, such institutions as enabled them to resist the encroachments upon their life and fortunes both of those strangers who conquered them, and those clansmen of their own who endeavoured to establish their personal authority.” [Anarchism, pp. 158–9]

Kropotkin placed the struggle of working class people (from which modern anarchism sprung) on par with these older forms of popular organisation. He argued that “the labour combinations… were an outcome of the same popular resistance to the growing power of the few — the capitalists in this case” as were the clan, the village community and so on, as were “the strikingly independent, freely federated activity of the ‘Sections’ of Paris and all great cities and many small ‘Communes’ during the French Revolution” in 1793. [Op. Cit., p. 159]

Thus, while anarchism as a political theory is an expression of working class struggle and self-activity against capitalism and the modern state, the ideas of anarchism have continually expressed themselves in action throughout human existence. Many indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere, for example, practised anarchism for thousands of years before anarchism as a specific political theory existed. Similarly, anarchistic tendencies and organisations have existed in every major revolution — the New England Town Meetings during the American Revolution, the Parisian ‘Sections’ during the French Revolution, the workers’ councils and factory committees during the Russian Revolution to name just a few examples (see Murray Bookchin’s The Third Revolution for details). This is to be expected if anarchism is, as we argue, a product of resistance to authority then any society with authorities will provoke resistance to them and generate anarchistic tendencies (and, of course, any societies without authorities cannot help but being anarchistic).

In other words, anarchism is an expression of the struggle against oppression and exploitation, a generalisation of working people’s experiences and analyses of what is wrong with the current system and an expression of our hopes and dreams for a better future. This struggle existed before it was called anarchism, but the historic anarchist movement (i.e. groups of people calling their ideas anarchism and aiming for an anarchist society) is essentially a product of working class struggle against capitalism and the state, against oppression and exploitation, and for a free society of free and equal individuals.

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alpaca-clouds · 6 months

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Indigenous people of Europe

Let me talk about something that really is not talked and thought about in general: The indigenous people of Europe. Because, well, it is something that kinda tends to get ignored often enough, as we think of indigenous cultures as something that existed outside of Europe, before being settled by Europeans.

But it is a lot more complicated than that. Because there were indigenous people in Europe - and there still are to this day. The best known example are probably the Sami in northern Russia and the Scandinavian countries. And be it just because they got depicted in Frozen and in the Klaus Netflix movie.

To quote Wikipedia:

Some groups that claim indigenous minority status in Europe include the Uralic Nenets, Samoyed, and Komi peoples of northern Russia; Circassians of southern Russia and the North Caucasus; Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks and Crimean Karaites of Crimea (Ukraine); Sámi peoples of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland and northwestern Russia (in an area also referred to as Sápmi); Galicians of Galicia, Spain; Catalans of Catalonia, Spain and southern France; Basques of Basque Country, Spain and southern France; and the Sorbian people of Germany and Poland.

Indigineity in Europe is a complicated thing, because even the non-indigenous people here have been around in this area for a long while. It also is closely related to the artificiality of "whiteness" (I am gonna talk about that a bit more next week).

In the end the "western European culture" as we know it is mostly a result of colonialism through the Romans. Only that this happened 2000 years ago and in a process that was not quite comparable to how colonialism of the non-European regions went.

Though then again, there was a phase during which similar genocide happened within Europe, when it came to the indigenous cultures and religions: The heathen hunts in the 4th century, which did involve the killing of followers of older religions, destruction of temples and religious places of worship and the forceful conversion of the "heathens" to Christianity.

But, again, this happened a long, long time ago. Which is why it tends to not be remembered as such. (In fact, I doubt most people know about this happening.)

There were more indigenous people in Europe before that, but one by one most of those cultures just disappeared.

Still, those that remained often face often similar problems to non-European indigenous people. As minorities they tend to be discriminated against, at times even by law. The borders often do not allow them to move through what has originally been their territory. And many have had their land taken away from them - or still get their land taken.

And given that most people are not even aware that those groups exists, this topic tends to get ignored by a lot of people.

So, yeah, I just wanted to talk about this. Because we really need to be aware about what is happening everywhere. And how those things have happened over thousands of years.

#decolonize #decolonialism #indigenous #indigenous people #sami #europe #history #european history

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imfeelingbad · 1 month

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(As a ukrainian) I lost all hope in humanity forever ago and I'm pretty sure I won't change someone's opinion, but I just want to tell the truth that i cry about every time.

I didn't see my home for 2 years. When I was there all I heard was explosions, bombs and warplanes. I saw ruined houses. I saw my half-destroyed school near which a projectile fell. I saw fire, smoke, a lot of it. I was in there. I heard all this. I heard. I saw. with my own eyes and ears. And what did you see and heard in the west, saying "This is all just Ukrainian propaganda"?

I was in the metro and saw hundreds of my fellow citizens, that a few months ago were casually going in this metro to their jobs, schools, universities etc. Some were sitting on the floor, some on old crusty carpets, with no fresh air, no normal ability just to go pee, not even talking about washing. But they were there just to be safe. Just to not die. They didn't care about hygiene, warm food and bath, delicious drink in their favorite café, all they did care about was just surviving.

Then I heard about Bucha massacre (read about this, if you think "russian soldiers are just poor people who don't want war and against Putin!!"). I heard hundreds women, children, men being raped, killed, tortured and firstly I was shocked. Then I heard about Irpin, Mariupol', Izium, Bahmut, now Avdiivka and many other ukrainian cities, that were completely destroyed by russians. But the difference is now I'm not shocked or surprised. Because now I understand this is Russian world, Russian culture, whole Russia in general.

But no one cares. No one cares about genocide, if the victim is big country in the center of Europe (even though every country has many people of color, and the biggest country in the world terrorizes it).

I saw a girl in the tiktok that was telling about the film "20 days in Mariupol". I looked in the comments and started crying. Why am I, my family, my friends, all ukrainians supposed to suffer while some westerns and russians are just laughing and saying "slava russia"?

Many people were talking about Gaza and I agree, there is total hell in Gaza and I feel very sorry for Palestinian people. I know how it is. But what gives YOU, a person that is sitting in the safe place with all basical human needs and think a war is just some trend, the right to compare the DEATHS of people that DIED from GENOCIDE and say that one GENOCIDE is less bad than another.

I'm not saying that we are suffering more than Palestinians, I'm saying that it's just so cruel to normalize deaths of people.. any people. That DON'T HURT anybody. That just want to live in a free country.

If I say, boycott Israel, all people from Israel are terrorists, people will agree with me. But when I say Russia is the terrorist, people will say "No, you're just xenophobic!"... And the genocide of my people is NOT xenophobic?? And the hundreds of years of destruction of Ukrainian culture is not xenophobic??

"What about Gaza?"

Gaza needs help. Ukraine needs help. Congo needs help. Syria needs help. No one should suffer. THAT'S my point.

Did you hear something about Holodomor in Ukraine? About MILLIONS of Ukrainians that died because soviet government were taking LITERALLY EVERY FUCKING BREAD CRUMB?? around 3.9 million ukrainians died. And this is only according to official data. These are only people whose identities have been established. It does not take into account people who were missing, or who were just horribly maimed.

If you still think I'm an ukrainian propagandist and not some fucking random teen like you who's just sharing my thoughts, read about Holodomor in Kazakhstan, first Russian-Chechen war, SECOND Russian-Chechen war, Russian-Georgian war, Russia’s invasion of Syria, Illegal occupation of Crimea and Donbas or just anything that involves Russia and war crimes.

If you're still saying this is all propaganda, Photoshop, I'm not surprised. Of course, everything around is propaganda. But not your beautiful truthful swamp.

Sometimes I just wish I was in yours shoes. Not caring about anything.

I don't care what russia supporting bots will say, I don't care people will not believe me, I just want to feel alive again.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes

#war #genocide of ukrainians #russia is a terrorist state #ukraine #україна #palestine #free palestine #free ukraine #genocide #first post #last post #russia #ruzzia #israel #ussr

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miseryoforpheus · 2 months

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intro post <3

Hey there!

Im Jamie and my pronouns are They/She/he

Im a neurospicy minor (but I will swear and also am fine being moots with/talking to adults as long as no one is a creep to me it’s all good)

Uhhh welcome to my online diary :|

Happy to make friends if u want - feel free to DM me

online diary blog w lots of Neil Gaiman reblogs bc he’s my idol

Fun facts about me:

Umm ok (trying to think of fun facts now)

Im Italian but grew up in England, would love some more Italian moots <3

my favourite authors are Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (but it’s been like that since before I read good omens lmao) also Rick Riordan and Alice Oseman

certified gravity falls child

if u couldn’t tell by the URL I’m obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology

nostalgic for a time I wasn’t even alive - late 80s and early 90s mainly but also like 70s

nostalgic for a time I WAS alive (barely but it still counts bc I do remember it) - the late 2000s

I did a quiz to see what Beatles band member I’d be and got Paul Mcartney

damn u rlly don’t realise how boring u r till u try and do an about me huh

Music I like:

Hozier, Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, Harry Styles, YUNGBLUD, Beatles, Elton John, Queen, Renée Rapp, TV girl, bears in trees, Ricky Montgomery, NOAHFINNCE, MARINA, Fleetwood Mac

getting into:

Nirvana [used to love them a few years ago but then a mean girl made fun of me for it so I stopped listening to them but I’m starting again]

Dominic Fike Paramore

mother mother

MCR

the neighbourhood

The tags I will use:

Jamie answers asks - u guessed it this is for answering any asks

the most boring soap opera - my life stuff because my life is the most boring soap opera

MOTD - mood of the day which is just a lil thing I do

for the record:

I stand with Palestine 🇵🇸

please click here every day:

also free Ukraine 🇺🇦

aro and ace people are LGBTQ+ and this is an aro and ace and aroace safe blog

in general this is a COMPLETELY safe space

if u want anyone to talk to btw I’m always here to chat, can’t guarantee i’ll be able to help but I am always willing to listen literally any time we don’t even have to be moots or anything just DM me ok? Ily all take care of yourselves ok loves? <3

Also one last thing just for ppl that know me, I have no problem with u following this blog or anything but be warned that I’m not gonna filter my opinion at all on here bc I need a place to be myself and if u don’t want to see that i understand and idm just pls don’t take it as a personal attack or anything if u ever think something I post relates to you, I promise it’s not I just need to vent <3

My MOTD ratings:

0-2 > feeling really really really shitty

3-4 > shitty like I have too much sadness and anger and everything inside me and it feels horrible and yeah yk [reckless behaviour is strong here for me + pretty strong intrusive thoughts]

5 > normal. Numb. Yucky. Normal level of intrusive thoughts [for me at least, everyone is different]

6-7 > smol happy, probably was a bad day that got better

7-8 > :D

9-10 > fucking ecstatic

#intro post #personal #online diary

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brandtner · 7 months

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As an Eastern Euro yourself how would you make the entire East Euro? (Since you said Himaruya screwed the whole region up). As someone who’s not from the region, my current thought is that if it were up to me there would be less blonds lol. Also: specific opinions on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus?

Yes, yes :D Less blonde I agree.

Russia - for me as a person who lives among them he's just... Too nice? Too well-behaved? Something like that. He needs just a little bit of spice, not too much. I would've also incorporated his sense of humor in some way, because it's a thing that is absolutely unique and IMO Russians have the best sense of humor in the world. And cartoons. Also his lack of organisation and general incompetence in EVERY SPHERE, I never saw that in Hetalia. Only his brutality. Shallow really. It must be there, that's what the Russians are mostly known for. Their main stereotype. He lacks carelessness

Belarus - I do get it. She's cold because of political reasons, only country in Europe to have death penalty... But I wish that she could also be warm. For example, yes, cold in the international arena, but comically warm and jolly among her friends. Belorussians are INSANELY nice and good people, like, I never met anyone on the same level. I absolutely love them and I am forever grateful to God for putting so many in my life. It's a miracle. I don't deserve this lol Also maybe a bit more play with Lithuania and Belarus, how he used to rule her, how she stole his coat of arms (xD), they're just a lot alike (same national bird etc). More spice in their relationship, not just Lithuania having a crush on her, but maybe accusing her of things, etc. Conversing about their love for potatoes. You know, things from everyday life that happen there.

Ukraine - Terrible. First of all, never met a Ukrainian without a tan in my life. They're reasonably positioned in southern Europe, the black sea... They're pretty dark although not all of them but I think it would be awesome if Bel and Russia were so pale and white and Ukraine tan but maybe still with blonde hair. It would contrast nicely. Tits, agreed. Poor gal? I don't think so, Ukrainians are quite strong and DEFINITELY NOT pushovers. What her design lacks are main events of Ukrainian history: Issues with Poland, nazi collaboration. Some edginess to her character. They're a bit nationalistic, but you can't blame them for it since how Russians and Poles treated them. (albeit they weren't exactly goodies either)

Latvia - I wish someone just read latvian history at least once in their lives. Just, one person, please. Hahaha. So basically, making Latvia more weak than Lithuania is a CRIME. At least more morally weak. Latvia had COLONIES, a great fleet, they were influenced with Germans, hence the better the development of his than that of Lithuania who was influenced by Slavs, LATVIA was the ONLY baltic state who fought the Nazis, who defended their country when they occupied them. Lithuania just let them in. He's just incredibly underrated, you can't just base his entire design on how he looks in 21st century. I'm not saying he's supposed to be buff and strong, because he is weaker in terms of military and sovereignty, but making him a woman I think would be very cool? Since the Latvian girls are the tallest in Europe. So making her tough in medieval times then making her weak in modern times would be pretty easy. They're way better than Lithuanians morally and behavior wise. Latvia is more liberal and easy going when it comes to ethnical issues, they don't really care that they're getting assimilated into Russia when Lithuania is really mean about it.

Lithuania - His name doesn't exist. The national clothes he's wearing in his design are incorrect, they look Ukrainian. Hair colour is very on point. Other than that, he has no right to be as nice as portrayed. They're usually mean and very passive aggressive. Terrible sense of humor. They're called the Italians of the North so that would be cool to see, making him the most emotional or in-your-face attitude out of all northerners. It's not good that his love for singing, the entire basis of that country - singing, was never put into spot. I think it should be mainly based off that. More pagan stuff, they had remaining pagans up until the 19th century which is unbelievable, and that religion still exists now, people practice it. Also its a bit hard to speak of it as one country because there's like 5 regions there and people in each one of them differ a lot. Samogitians don't even consider themselves lithuanian.

Hungary is way too nice too. Their politics or history are not nice at all, they have an attitude of an oppressor. She looks too normal, there's not much hungarian about her, give her some special features. Should be made into a duo with Poland since they both call themselves brothers.

Slovakia - should never exist and should never deserve own design and appearance in the series. Die Slovakia

Poland - Gay weak inconsiderate irresponsible annoying and lame. So 100% accurate. Very nice, I agree, good job Hima.

Also it would be cool to see Königsberg in the series!

#hetalia #asks #I dont really see an issue with their hair except Ukraine and maybe Russia

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graveyard-party666 · 2 months

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Red

Name: [Redacted]

Callsign: Red, Thirteen (Laswell coined this nickname because Red was thirteenth on the list of candidates for the job)

Birthplace: Ukraine

Age: [Redacted]

Family: [Redacted]

Info:

Red is a psychologist, interrogation expert, and profiler for the CIA.

Kate Laswell encountered the psychologist by chance when the CIA was seeking a specialist in the interrogation field. Red was recommended by a professor of criminology because she already held master's degrees in psychology and law from her home country. She was the 13th candidate on the list.

Red was initially hesitant to accept the offer due to fears of herself and her family being targeted by terrorists and criminals. Laswell promised to keep all of Red's personal information secret while psychologist was at work.

Before joining Task Force 141, Red met with them. Laswell often invites Red to accompany them in case her abilities are needed.

The origin of her callsign is straightforward. Her hair is dyed ginger. Both Laswell and Red refused to disclose Red's real name, even to Task Force 141. Although the men found it confusing, they respected her privacy. The only lingering question was how to address her without using her name. Captain Price jokingly suggested giving her a callsign. The only one who nonchalantly uttered the first word that came to mind was Ghost. He called her Red, and the nickname stuck.

Personality:

Introverted but generally easygoing, Red feels uncomfortable being an enigma to the people she works with. She believes the lack of information about her creates a gap between her and Task Force 141. Although she trusts them, she isn't quite ready to divulge more. The men know she is Ukrainian, and she sometimes shares stories from her youth but nothing compromising. She is proud of her Ukrainian heritage and often swears in Ukrainian.

Red is very indecisive about small things but holds strong opinions on social issues. She is prone to crying but is not proud of it and always excuses herself if she needs to cry.

Red is one of the best interrogation experts and profilers. Soap once jokingly called her a dominatrix after witnessing her interrogate a terrorist.

Despite usually wearing her heart on her sleeve and being a deeply empathetic person, she tries her best not to show that she is scared most of the time.

After a particularly difficult mission for Task Force 141, she decided to reveal her real name and more personal information but requested that they continue using the nickname. She felt that if any of them were to die without knowing her real name, she would never forgive herself.

Skills:

Red has an amazing memory and remembers small details but doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable with the fact that she might remember the smallest facts about them. She often says that she's not vindictive but has a great memory and a slightly evil streak.

Her ability to break people, extract intel, and get into their heads is highly valued by her colleagues. She sometimes spends hours profiling to know which buttons to push during interrogations or for Task Force 141.

In addition to her work with Laswell, she conducts open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathering, which involves legally gathering information about individuals or organizations from free, public sources, typically found on the internet.

Red lacks combat skills and is skinny, pale, and somewhat sickly-looking. Gaz jokingly calls her "noodle legs." She almost cried when Price and Ghost suggested it was time for her to start working out and learning how to fight. She hates physical activities.

Facts:

Red always learns several languages and understands most Slavic languages.

She is decent at drawing and once drew Ghost's face from memory after seeing it once. She thought he wouldn't find out, but he did. She avoided him for the whole day. (He felt flattered by the drawing).

Red has published several sociological reviews on social issues as well as critiques of famous psychiatrists.

She publishes essays on various topics.

As a child, she wanted to become a fashion designer.

Red writes poetry.

She plays guitar and is a mediocre singer.

Red struggles with mental health issues, doesn't hide it, and often jokes about it.

Passionate about art and history.

#a bit of a self-insert #oc #self insert #oc:red #self insert: red #cod self insert #cod self insert (maybe)

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raviollies · 6 months

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i love how you portray theta!

1) the way her appearance is so bright and colourful, *almost* distracting you from her sinister nature as a hag. it’s kind of like those plants that lure insects in to eat them.

2) her other form as the cycle of life. the animal carcass as an avatar of death and decay and yet life still manages to find a way, in the form of moss and the blooms on her antlers. could she possibly also have mushrooms?

3) the cycle of abuse like you’ve mentioned in an older post when talking about her relationship with blythe, and the implications it has. given enough time, will blythe’s own sense of identity erode because of the power gifted to her? will she remember her old life, or will it also become a haze that she dismisses with a wave of her hand because why does it matter now, when she’s so *powerful*? will she eventually believe that theta was right in turning her? will she eventually do the same thing to another woman and perpetuate the cycle?

AAAA thank you thank you!!!! It's so nice to see people pick up on what I write and find it interesting, it warms my heart.

Long response below

1) Yes! I purposely tried to make her very bright, colourful as a contrast to Blythes dreary palette. I was unaware of plants having a similar thing but I was thinking of how "bright colours = danger" in a lot of wildlife. I also took inspiration from The Shimmer/Zone from Annihilation to emphasize the downright incomprehensible nature of Fae, unpredictable and bound to laws unknown to mortals.

2) She definitely has mushrooms!! I have always been entranced by the dichotomy of life and decay, and that cycle. I love love love the presentation in Princess mononoke, with plants blooming and rotting within the presence of the spirit

3) Yes, that is the worst ending for Blythe. To perpetuate the cycle and become a Hag uncaring for the feelings of others for her own whimsy. To eventually become intoxicated with the power she obtains and believes rules no longer apply to her.

However, she has people in her life to urge her to break that cycle, to keep her grounded. To put others over her own selfish desires. To break a cycle of abuse you often need help, we are a social species. Her companions and friends are meant to be a representation of that. A way to overcome the generational abuse - and maybe later. She can look back and realize Theta was a victim too. That she once was a woman, who did things she thought were loving but hurtful never the less.

I think acknowledging that the perpetrators are often victims themselves is important in your own healing. It helps you process and curb any negative behaviours in yourself, as well as see people as human.

I often struggle with the way I was raised juxtaposed with how much my parents sacrificed to give me a better life. How much they worked, how much they gave so that I can be in Canada instead of Ukraine, juxtaposed with the way I look back on my childhood and am filled with anger. Both of these things are true; and I feel as though it helps me move forward. I've treated some people badly in my life, lashing out because of my own treatment, and I feel ashamed for it, but it doesn't negate that fact. We're all human, we all have impacted someone's life negatively at one point, you just have to do better.

Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone's experiences, some abuse is much more heinous than others, but this is my experience as an elder daughter in an immigrant family.

#Theta #ask #anon #i have a lot to say im sorry NdjdmJSJS

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mariacallous · 10 months

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From the seventh floor at Kherson State University, Oleksandr Khodosovtsev and Ivan Moisienko had a clear view of the enemy. It was a cool December morning, and the Russian troops that had occupied the Ukrainian city of Kherson since the earliest days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion had recently retreated east across the Dnipro River. Mushroom clouds hung over the horizon as they gazed through the rattling floor-to-ceiling windows of the botany department. The explosions, they thought, were likely coming from the tanks less than 5 kilometers away from where they stood.

That morning, the pair—both professors of botany—had arrived on the train from Kyiv and made their way through the partially ruined streets of Kherson to reach the university. The city was still being shelled, and to access their laboratory meant scaling a spiraling stairwell lined with stained-glass windows looking out over the Dnipro River, towards the enemy.

Their mission was to rescue a piece of history: the Kherson herbarium, an irreplaceable collection of more than 32,000 plants, lichen, mosses, and fungi, amassed over a century by generations of scientists, some from thousand-kilometer-long treks across remote areas of Ukraine. “This is something like a piece of art,” says 52-year-old Moisienko. “It’s priceless.”

Herbaria like the one in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine, are about more than just taxonomy. They serve a vital role in the study of species extinction, invasive pests, and climate change. Though it's by no means the world’s largest—the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris has 9,500,000 specimens—Kherson’s herbarium is, Moisienko says, valuable because of its unique contribution to the field. Rare species found only in Ukraine, some of which are at risk of extinction, are documented on its shelves.

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, they threatened not only the thousands of dried, pressed, and preserved specimens stored at the university, but the land where those samples had been collected. In the more than 17 months since Vladimir Putin declared his “special military operation” in Ukraine, millions of acres of land—about 30 percent of the country’s protected areas—have been maimed by indiscriminate bombing, burning, and military maneuvers. Russian troops have scorched tens of thousands of hectares of forests and put more than 800 plants at risk of extinction, including 20 rare species that have mostly vanished from elsewhere, according to the non-profit Ukraine Nature Conservation Group (UNCG).

The Ukrainian government estimates that a third of the country’s land has been contaminated by mines or other unexploded ordnance. Large swathes of the countryside could remain inaccessible for decades to come. That means it could be a long time before scientists like Khodosovtsev and Moisienko can go back out to collect samples.

The pair weighed up these considerations last fall, as they contemplated returning to the hollowed-out city of Kherson. Russian forces had been pushed out of the city in November but continued to bombard it. Between May and November, at least 236 civilians were killed by shelling, according to regional officials. Regardless, Khodosovtsev and Moisienko decided to go in.

“There is no need to risk anyone's life to save some equipment or a building,” Moisienko says, noting with passing remorse how he’d been pained to leave behind one of his prized microscopes. “For this collection, when it's gone, it's gone. There is no way to get it back.”

As the pair began mapping out the evacuation, they determined that in order to mitigate risk on the ground they needed to limit both the number of people and time spent inside the besieged city. There would never be more than three team members—Khodosovtsev, Moisienko and one of their two colleagues—on a trip, and each venture would last no more than 72 hours. The power grid went down regularly, and there was a citywide curfew of 4 pm, meaning they had hard deadlines to get in and out of their lab. And there was bureaucracy. “During the wartime, even to get around the country, you need to have some substantiation, like documents,” said Khodosovtsev, 51.

That got even more complicated when, on their first trek back to the university that December, they discovered that Russian troops had taken up residence in four of the rooms storing part of the plant collection.

Besides the deep sense of violation the botanists felt, this also posed a procedural problem. The “sitters”—a common expression for enemy soldiers who have occupied a Ukrainian building—had changed the locks on all but one of the doors, and the spaces now needed to be documented; a mandatory procedure typically carried out by the local police. Thankfully, their logistics team pulled some strings and got the process expedited. In just a few weeks, the locks had been changed again, and the rooms had been photographed for the official records.

In video footage capturing that first, largely fruitless trip, Khodosovtsev can be seen celebrating the return of one of the 24 more valuable boxes with a kind of enthusiasm typically reserved for the football pitch. “Collemopsidium kostikovii is saved!” he cheers as he raises his fist over his head. “To the sound of explosions!” he adds, as the rumble of mortars interrupts his brief moment of self-congratulation.

Limited resources, another knock-on effect from the ongoing conflict, also threatened to upend the men’s carefully laid plans. While Moisienko drove around to dozens of Kyiv’s home hardware stores in search of plastic boxes to transport the collection’s vascular plants, Khodosovtsev returned to Kherson equipped with little more than a headlamp strapped across his brow and a backpack filled with the same household tools you might use to move apartments.

On this second trip, the magnitude of the task became clear to Khodosovtsev. He had 700 boxes to evacuate. On his first incursion, it had taken him 15 minutes—and way too much tape—to wrap, stack, and rope together half a dozen boxes of samples. At this rate, the botanist said, he’d be blowing past the three days earmarked for this section of the herbarium. Never one to be discouraged, the scientist settled into familiar territory and began doing what he does best: calculating.

“Just two wraps of sticky tape and one roll of rope,” he said, beaming as he reveled in how he’d managed to shave his box-stacking time to just “three and a half minutes.”

This kind of methodical precision proved to be a helpful distraction from the realities of what was going on just beyond the paned glass. A mere 24 hours before Moisienko returned for his third and final trip on January 2, he learned the building where he planned to scoop up the last portion of the herbarium was hit by shelling. Instead of this news derailing his mission, it only seemed to harden him. “We are focused on [the herbarium] so much that you just ignore everything, all these shellings that [are] going on around you,” he said.

Even so, as he worked methodically, packing plant after plant, he started to contemplate how the glass windows of the lab could become deadly projectiles if a shell went off nearby; and how far it was down to the ground floor. At eight stories tall, the academic building sticks out. “The chance the Russians would hit the university building [was] really high,” he says.

He tried to treat the nearby rumbling as white noise, though one day, a shell landed just outside the window as he was packing a sample.

By January 4, Moisienko had finished loading up the last boxes of the collection into the back of a truck. It traveled west for nearly two days, covering approximately 1,000 kilometers, before reaching Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University in Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine, the institution that has served as a university in exile for the staff and students of Kherson State University for more than a year.

It’s a kind of safety. But, as Moisienko points out, only as safe as anything or anyone can ever be in a country where missiles fall out of the sky on a near daily basis. “Nowhere in the country is 100 percent safe,” he says.

On January 11, Kherson State University was once again struck by shelling, this time only blocks away from where Moisienko had been working less than a week earlier. “That building remains [in] danger, and it's still dangerous to be in Kherson as it’s shelled still now on a daily basis,” Moisienko says. “We've done the right thing.”

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spghtrbry · 6 months

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i promised to make a post about THIS so... here you go

i present... the RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN FIGARO MUSICAL

"безумный день или женитьба фигаро"

generally it's just a movie based on the original beaumarchais play (more precisely: they just took the text of the play and didnt change almost anything. yeah it was their script), but uh. you can see how incredible it looks. it surely has that 2003 vibe

yeah and there's also a star cast. as almaviva we have philip kirkorov, lolita as the countess, andrey danilko (that's the funniest shit bc in ukraine he's famous for his drag roles... LIKE VERKA SERDUCHKA) as cherubino, etc. there also should've been a famous russian actor as figaro, but he just didn't come so they took a random noname guy for this role😭

the songs are uh... well... very 00s like. i think my fav one is marcelina's song where she sings about TREACHEROUS MEN © while leading some guy on a leash (4th screen tho). i think its on yt, the song is called коварные мужики. everyone has to hear it

also there's counts song where he's quoting figaro's monologue from the play..?, cherubino's romance, BASILIO'S SONG, countess's song (the chorus is like this: "men don't love us for many years, men don't love anyone for many years, men don't live long... and that is good". ©.) and uh. many other stuff.

but i think THIS song gives the most complete idea of the musical: https://youtu.be/HXimPPCP3DA?si=PA5exQJcRBgRHxBC

youtube

it's literally called "love-carrot". why? I DONT FUCKING KNOW. (yeah luybov-morkov is just a funny rhyme but still wtf)

you dont even need to understand the lyrics. they just DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE😭😭 it's like... a love song of susanna and figaro?? but it's just some random phrases in verses and they don't have anything to do with figaro??? and it's like the first song in the musical??? yeah.

the whole musical is available on youtube tho. (i just thought that it would be funny if i made eng subs someday but im not that crazy yet)

and. fun fact: there's even a BACKSTAGE VIDEO. and at one moment radiohead's NO SURPRISES starts playing there 😭😭 it's. it's just horrible. i don't know. everything is horrible

so yeah. this musical is so bad that i can't help but love it with all my heart. i love it so much my friends even bought me a fucking dvd of it as a gift.

#the marriage of figaro #le nozze di figaro #opera tag #<- not really.#i dont know what else to say.#actually i think its not THAT funny without uh cultural background or something but still. just the way it looks and sounds...#Youtube

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ohsalome · 2 years

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For the third time in this century, Ukraine is on the front pages of all the world's newspapers. Fortunately, the war does not go off the air, but it's getting boring to listen to the same thing every time. 2004, Orange Revolution: "Wow! How interesting! It turns out that Ukraine is not just a piece of Russia! How fierce these Ukrainians are! What a great discovery!" Everything ukrainian becomes in style. For half a year, all you do is refuse various interview invitations, because at every more or less notable international event, they need a Ukrainian "at the table". On this wave, the star of Maryna Levytska (a British writer of Ukrainian origin, author of the novel "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" - TU) raises, because her book turned out to be the one available on the English-language market that was able to satisfy the massive outburst of interest of the Western reader before a country hardly known to them.

This shows how much we were not ready for such attention, but neither was the world. And, after some time, as if under the eye of a basilisk, all eyes turn to the north again and the discourse continues to develop in this direction: if the Ukrainians were able to defend democracy, then the Russians will soon be able to too!

This was not done by Russian propaganda. This was done by Western liberal thought, absolutely sick in its Russocentrism, forged in the local universities by several generations of local Russian studies specialists. And so it turned out that with our Maidans, we did not so much "advertise" Ukraine to the West as paid for their hope for a "good Russia".

In early March, I listened to a conversation between Ann Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, and Yuval Harari. Applebaum enthusiastically spoke about the Ukrainian resistance in the context of all those expert forecasts about putin conquering us in three days. "What a surprise it turned out to be! And finally, the world has discovered Ukraine!" And I thought: this is the third time I've heard this during my lifetime! For the third time in this century, with the same words, without any changes, they "discover" us and are again surprised at what a wonderful country we are! Goddamnitfor how long is it going to continue?! 2004. 2014. 2022. But will you ever learn that we are not Russia? When will you finally go a step further?

- Oksana Zabuzhko, a renowed ukrainian author, in her interview to The Ukrainiers.

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theconstitutionisgayculture · 7 months

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What is the best way, in your opinion, that we could invest the billions of dollars spent on things like Ukraine and illegal immigrants into American communities? What do you think should be prioritized financially in a country? Do you think our defense budget is not enough, excessive, or just right? I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Finishing the border wall, for one. Hiring more border patrol agents to patrol the wall when it's finished. Maybe overhauling our infrastructure since we keep getting told that without taxes our roads would disappear. Other than that, the money could go towards paying off a fraction of our national debt, perhaps. Or it could be used to offset some much needed tax cuts.

Basically anything instead of being shipped off to a black hole of unaccountability.

As for defense spending, I don't know enough about what's being spent right now to comment. But protecting our borders is one of the few legit responsibilities the federal government has, so I'm generally not against defense spending provided it's actually being spent on, you know, defense and not dumbass diversity programs.

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summerlinenss · 25 days

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A celebrity known for his charity work who has set up a relief charity for Palestine posted about what happened the other day and his notes are full of people saying he's not talking about it correctly. He mentioned Ukraine relief, which he has a charity for, and was called racist. He did an ad he was contracted for before the strikes and his notes were full of people demanding he immediately give every penny he earned to Palestine. He then set up a cooperative direct relief charity for Palestine and was harassed for not doing it fast enough. According to fans he cannot say or do anything properly and needs to be "educated" about everything. He's an honors grad from a prestigious college who studied social issues and politics and runs a global charity. They still talk to him like that when he knows and does more than they ever will.

Taika is wise to keep it off his accounts. It would only invite more harassment, not less, no matter what he said. I don't blame any celebrity for keeping their thoughts to themselves these days. I also don't blame the man above for speaking about issues because using his platform to help others is why he wanted to be famous in the first place. But celebrities are, in general, not politicians or social activists. They should not be forced to speak on something they may or may not know enough about. Those who are activists and trying to use their fame to push forward issues are still harassed, belittled, and told they're not doing enough. There is no winning for anyone anymore.

There will always be some social media warrior who thinks harassing celebrities on twitter no matter what they say or do does anything for anyone but themselves.

it shouldn’t be this way but it legitimately has become a “damned if you, damned if you don’t” situation when it comes to online activism.

people will never be satisfied with celebrities’ attempts at advocating for different causes. there are famous people who have been vocal activists for palestine for years and i’ve still seen conspiracies that they’re “secretly zionists” or nitpicking that they could be doing more.

like you said, anon, i think it’s great if people are willing to still use their platforms to talk about the things that are important to them knowing that they’re going to endure harassment. i also don’t blame anyone for keeping their activism offline when they know that nothing they say is ever going to be good enough or change people’s negative opinions about them.

#asks #anon #taika waititi

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