#not a universal experience and also most of them are european??? like three are from the US but whatever it's my tumblr post i make the rul | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onegirlatelier · 7 days

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April, 2024 | Shetland lace shawl

Hi there! It’s been a while. I’ve been kept busy by all my university work…and this shawl.

The shawl is knitted to celebrate the wedding of my friend (now friends, I should say). A wedding is really the perfect excuse for all the heritage crafts and heirloom projects that might seem too serious to gift in other occasions. I did ask the recipient beforehand if she would like it, though, and I was so, so honoured that I got an enthusiastic ‘yes’. I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many makers, whatever gift they are making.

Shetland fine openwork, a knitted lace, seems to have emerged with the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, who championed and popularised the craft. It was probably spread from the Isle of Unst to other parts of Shetland. What surprised me the most when I first read about it was that Shetland shawls and other lace pieces were largely exported as luxury items and rarely worn by islanders themselves. Women bought yarn from spinners and knitted mostly in their homes. They then took them to local merchants and exchange the finished objects for goods or (commonly after the 1880s) money to supplement the household income. The ‘supplement’ nature of this work probably means it was not compensated as much as a job outside the home would be for the same hours and skills. Besides, it was not always easy to spin an even 1-ply yarn at 1600 metres per 100 grams. For a piece of knitting with a large ‘plain’ area (i.e. only knit stitches), the unevenness was impossible to hide but could only be discovered after the area was worked. Then the maker had to either frog (unravel) the area or continue with the risk of the whole piece not being able to sell.

Whilst it is very reasonable to point out that Shetland ladies did not usually wear this type of lace (I’ve been to the Scottish Highlands once, in summer, and it was not fine lace weather), I imagine that at least for some, it wasn’t just about making money. Some sort of fulfilment must have been from the satisfaction of having a piece ‘properly done’ by continuing and adapting a traditional pattern, technique or material. I think this sort of satisfaction is also why many modern knitters are willing to spend hundreds of hours on lacework.

Intricate handknitted lace items can still be bought today (a quick search on Etsy would show many are form eastern European countries with a long and prominent craft tradition), but many are knitted for friends or family members. It always makes me so happy to see people share the gifts they have made, whether big or small, simple or complex. I joke with my online craft friends that no handmade fibre project can claim to be so unless they have a hair or two woven into it. It is the proof of existence for the maker, who tries to go against the irregular nature of handicrafts and, at the same time, accepts it. It is about wrapping up hours, weeks or months in one’s life, along with the songs they have listened to and the perfume they have worn and the memories they have made, and putting it squarely in someone else’s hands and saying: ‘All this, for you.’

A Wedding Shawl

I have not read anything about there being a standard form of ‘wedding shawl’ in the Shetland tradition. However, there is definitely a category of square shawls with similar sizes and a few construction methods. The samples I’ve seen mostly measure 1.5-2m on one side and have three parts: a central panel, four borders and a strip of edging. It is worked flat in garter lace from centre out.

Neither is there a standardised yarn weight. A widely available yarn is the Shetland Supreme Lace Weight 1-ply by Jamieson and Smith, which weighs at 400m/25g. The Queen Ring Shawl examined by Sharon Miller used a yarn at 700m/25g. From my experience, if you want the shawl to be a true ring shawl (i.e. you want to be able to pull the shawl through a ring) at the size of the Queen Ring Shawl (210cm on the side), go for 700m/25g or finer.

I chose a rectangular shawl because I had very limited time, but I did enlarge it because for me, an abundance of fabric does mean an abundance of cozy happiness.

Pattern

Shell Grid and Spider Webs Puzzle, pattern No.19 in the book Shetland Knitting Lace by Toshiyuki Shimada.

The names of the motifs are confusing. One motif (or two highly similar motifs) might just have two different names if they are produced in two different regions. Names do not mean everything, but I’ve had fun trying to match the motifs with names according to this article by Carol Christiansen at the Shetland Museum.

The double yarnovers (YO's) in the diamonds were called Cat's Eye, but perhaps the 'Spider Web' in the pattern name is referring to the three rows of double YO's in the centre panel. It has a really simple but effective edging.

Yarn

Mermaid Lace, in colourway #naturel, sold by Great British Wool in the Netherlands. This yarn is 75% merino and 25% sea algae silk. ‘Sea algae silk’ seems to be a semi-synthetic plant fibre like viscose, with algae involved as part of the raw material. (At this price point I don’t think it has anything to do with sea silk, which is fibre produced by actual shells.) The brand name for the most popular product of its type is probably Seacell.

I bought the yarn, because I had never worked with this fibre before and was curious. What I like: it was a little cheaper than a wool/silk blend and has blocked very well. The whole skein was continuous so I didn’t have to deal with a single yarn joint. What I do not like: it lacks the sheen and smoothness of real silk and doesn’t feel as strong, although it doesn’t shed. In conclusion, I’d rather use a traditional Shetland 1-ply or another natural fibre yarn.

It's also worth mentioning that whilst I prefer to support small businesses, it was disappointing to have received a 93-gram skein when I had ordered 100 grams. It was one of those days between Christmas and the New Year and I somehow did not contact the customer service, but I really should have.

Needle

2.5mm 80cm circular needles. See modification below.

Modification

This Japanese knitting book follows Japanese sizing for knitting needles. The suggested size was no. 1=2.4mm. I figured that I could use a 2.5mm since I knitted on the tighter side, and in any case it was probably okay to make the lacework a little more open by going up a needle size.

I am not going to give out the pattern, but it is probably necessary to explain the structure of this shawl. The centre is knitted first, and then an edging is knitted onto it by picking up either live stitches or the vertical edge of the centre as you go (see schematic below). The four ‘corners’ of the edging have short-row shaping to help it lay flat. I know that traditionally people can achieve this by other methods, but I haven’t tried any of those yet.

I enlarged the pattern by increasing both the width and the length. I casted on 133 stitches instead of 101 for the centre panel and knitted Part B 8.5 times instead of 5.5. The spider web pattern in Part B requires the stitch count to be (something dividable by four) plus two, so I made one central increase before the spider web to get 134 and a central decrease after it to get it back to 133. Due to the openness of the lace, the change of one stitch is not visible.

The enlargement meant I had to recalculate the edging as well, because the number of stitches available for pick-up changed. Originally, at each corner you do two repeats with four short-row shaping each. I did 1.5 repeats following the original placement of short-row shaping in order to make the total number of repeats fit the number of edge stitches on the centre panel.

The pattern says to Kitchener-stitch the last row of the edging to the provisional cast-on. It just didn’t make sense because that would be two rows too much (the Kitchener stitch row plus the provisional cast-on row). To make the number perfectly fit, I knitted only ten rows of the last repeat (there were usually twelve in each repeat). Then I Kitchener-stitched the end to the provisional cast-on, following the lace pattern. I am quite proud of this solution because it is completely invisible.

Somewhere in the pattern it said to purl (looking from the right side). It seemed strange because the rest of the lace was entirely garter. I knitted those stitches and so far I haven’t sensed a ‘mistake’.

The pattern originally calls for 45 grams of yarn. I estimated (based on the increase of stitches in the centre panel) to need about 80 grams. I ended up using 86 grams. Besides the inaccuracies in my estimation, it was probably also because I knitted much more loosely than expected as it was difficult to tension the yarn tightly at such a weight. Like I've point out in the Yarn section above, I was lucky not to have needed more than 93 grams.

The original finished size is 53*118cm. I ended up with approximately 70*170cm.

Conclusion

This shawl took about three months of my craft time i.e. one full day every week for three months and many mornings before I had to leave for university. Knitting outside my room just didn’t work because I was a) engaged in some other activities that made it difficult to steady my hands, and b) worried about putting a white shawl on any public surface.

The pattern itself is relatively straightforward. The first difficulty was, of course, to understand the instruction written in Japanese. Google translate was horrible so I had to rely on my knitting experience. Fortunately, much of the text description was also found in graphs and charts. Then I had to get my hands used to the tiny yarn. After that, it was only fiddly when I did the edging, because I had to turn about every twelve stitches, and by that time I was handling a giant cloud of stitches on my lap. It did give me a lot of time to go over my favourite documentaries and films, and the last bit of edging was surprisingly quick!

Traditionally, Shetland shawls could be sent back to the maker for maintenance. I think it only fair for me to offer that too because I don’t want a gift to become a trouble (same as how you do not use non-machine-washable yarn for baby knits).

In general, I am very pleased with this shawl. It does pass the ring test, despite not being a traditional wedding shawl size or thickness. I do have a whole lot of actual Shetland 1-ply in my stash, so I am really looking forward to taking my Queen Ring Shawl project out of hibernation in the near future.

Reference list for Introduction

Christiansen, Carol. Shetland fine lace knitting: Recreating patterns from the past. Marlborough: Crowood, 2024.

Mann, Joanna. 'Knitting the Archive: Shetland Lace and Ecologies of Skilled Practice'. Cultural Geographies 25, no. 1 (January 28, 2017): 91–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474016688911.

#knitting #knitblr #shetland lace #lace knitting #gift-knitting #stories

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 9 months

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Hubble sees boulders escaping from asteroid Dimorphos

Wayward asteroids present a real collision hazard to Earth. Scientists estimate that an asteroid measuring several miles across smashed into Earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, among other forms of life, in a mass extinction. Unlike the dinosaurs, humanity can avoid this fate if we begin practicing how to knock an Earth-approaching asteroid off course.

This is trickier than how it has been depicted in science fiction movies like Deep Impact. Planetary scientists first need to know how asteroids were assembled. Are they flying rubble piles of loosely agglomerated rocks, or something more substantial? This information would help provide strategies on how to successfully deflect a menacing asteroid.

As a first step, NASA did an experiment to smash into an asteroid to see how it is perturbed. The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft impact on asteroid Dimorphos happened on September 26, 2022. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope continue following the aftermath of the cosmic collision.

A surprise is the discovery of several dozen boulders lifted off the asteroid after the smashup. In Hubble pictures they look like a swarm of bees very slowly moving away from the asteroid. This might mean that smacking an Earth-approaching asteroid might result in a cluster of threatening boulders heading in our direction.

The popular 1954 rock song "Shake, Rattle and Roll," could be the theme music for the Hubble Space Telescope's latest discovery about what is happening to the asteroid Dimorphos in the aftermath of NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) experiment. DART intentionally impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos.

Astronomers using Hubble's extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into Dimorphos at approximately 14,000 miles per hour.

The 37 free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at little more than a half-mile per hour—roughly the walking speed of a giant tortoise. The total mass in these detected boulders is about 0.1% the mass of Dimorphos.

"This is a spectacular observation—much better than I expected. We see a cloud of boulders carrying mass and energy away from the impact target. The numbers, sizes, and shapes of the boulders are consistent with them having been knocked off the surface of Dimorphos by the impact," said David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, a planetary scientist who has been using Hubble to track changes in the asteroid during and after the DART impact.

"This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes. The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system."

Jewitt says that this opens up a new dimension for studying the aftermath of the DART experiment using the European Space Agency's upcoming Hera spacecraft, which will arrive at the binary asteroid in late 2026. Hera will perform a detailed post-impact survey of the targeted asteroid.

"The boulder cloud will still be dispersing when Hera arrives," said Jewitt. "It's like a very slowly expanding swarm of bees that eventually will spread along the binary pair's orbit around the sun."

The boulders are most likely not shattered pieces of the diminutive asteroid caused by the impact. They were already scattered across the asteroid's surface, as evident in the last close-up picture taken by the DART spacecraft just two seconds before collision, when it was only seven miles above the surface.

Jewitt estimates that the impact shook off two percent of the boulders on the asteroid's surface. He says the boulder observations by Hubble also give an estimate for the size of the DART impact crater. "The boulders could have been excavated from a circle of about 160 feet across (the width of a football field) on the surface of Dimorphos," he said. Hera will eventually determine the actual crater size.

Long ago, Dimorphos may have formed from material shed into space by the larger asteroid Didymos. The parent body may have spun up too quickly or could have lost material from a glancing collision with another object, among other scenarios. The ejected material formed a ring that gravitationally coalesced to form Dimorphos. This would make it a flying rubble pile of rocky debris loosely held together by a relatively weak pull of gravity. Therefore, the interior is probably not solid, but has a structure more like a bunch of grapes.

It's not clear how the boulders were lifted off the asteroid's surface. They could be part of an ejecta plume that was photographed by Hubble and other observatories. Or a seismic wave from the impact may have rattled through the asteroid—like hitting a bell with a hammer—shaking lose the surface rubble.

"If we follow the boulders in future Hubble observations, then we may have enough data to pin down the boulders' precise trajectories. And then we'll see in which directions they were launched from the surface," said Jewitt.

The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

IMAGE....Image of the asteroid Dimorphos, with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above). The bright white object at lower left is Dimorphos. It has a bluish dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots (marked by white circles) surrounds the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid when, on September 26, 2022, NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into the asteroid as a test of what it would take to deflect some future asteroid from hitting Earth. Hubble photographed the slow-moving boulders using the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2022. The color results from assigning a blue hue to the monochromatic (grayscale) image. Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA), Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics #nasa #esa #dart

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence | Grist

On a 1919 trip to the United States, King Albert I of Belgium visited three of the country’s national parks: Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the newly established Grand Canyon. The parks represented a model developed by the U.S. of creating protected national parks, where visitors and scientists could come to admire spectacular, unchanging natural beauty and wildlife. Impressed by the parks, King Albert created his own just a few years later: Albert National Park in the Belgian Congo, established in 1925.

Widely seen as the first national park in Africa, Albert National Park (now called Virunga National Park), was designed to be a place for scientific exploration and discovery, particularly around mountain gorillas. It also set the tone for decades of colonial protected parks in Africa. Although Belgian authorities claimed that the park was home to only a small group of Indigenous people — “300 or so, whom we like to preserve” — they violently expelled thousands of other Indigenous people from the area. The few hundred selected to remain in the park were seen as a valuable addition to the park’s wildlife rather than as actual people.

And so modern conservation in Africa began by separating nature from the people who lived in it. Since then, as the model has spread across the globe, inhabited protected areas have routinely led to the eviction of Indigenous peoples. Today, these conservation projects are led not by colonial governments but by nonprofit executives, large corporations, academics, and world leaders.

For much of human history, most people lived in rural areas, surrounded by nature and farmland. That all changed with the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, European forests were vanishing, cities were growing, and Europeans felt increasingly disconnected from the natural world.

“With industrialization, the link with the natural cycle of things got lost — and that also led to a certain type of romanticization of nature, and a longing for a particular type of nature,” said Bram Büscher, a sociologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

In Africa, Europeans could experience that pure, untouched nature, even if it meant expelling the people living on it.

“The idea that land is best preserved when it’s protected away from humans is an imperialist ideology that has been imposed on Africans and other Indigenous people,” said Aby Sène-Harper, an environmental social scientist at Clemson University in South Carolina.

For Europeans, creating protected parks in Africa allowed them to expand their dominion over the continent and quench their thirst for “undisturbed” nature, all without threatening their ongoing expansion of industrialization and capitalism in their own countries. With each new national park came more evictions of Indigenous people, paving the way for trophy hunting, resource extraction, and anything else they wanted to do.

In the mid-19th century, European colonization of Africa was limited, largely confined to coastal regions. But by 1925, when King Albert created his park, Europeans controlled roughly 90 percent of the continent.

At the time, these parks were playgrounds for wealthy Europeans and part of a massive imperial campaign to control African land and resources. Today, there are thousands of protected national parks around the world covering millions of acres, ranging from small enclosures like Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis to sprawling landmarks like Death Valley in California and Kruger National Park in South Africa. And the world wants more.

Scientists, politicians, and conservationists are championing the protected-areas model, developed in the U.S. and perfected in Africa. In late 2022, at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, nearly 200 countries signed an international pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and waters by 2030, an effort known as 30×30 that would amount to the greatest expansion of protected areas in history.

So how did protected parks move from an imperial tool to an international solution for accelerating climate and biodiversity crises?

In the early part of the 20th century, the expansion of colonial conservation areas was humming along. From South Africa to Kenya and India, colonial governments were creating protected national parks. These parks provided a host of benefits to their creators. There were economic benefits, including extraction of resources on park land and tourism income from increasingly popular safaris and hunting expeditions. But most of all, the rapidly developing network of parks was a form of control.

“If you can sweep a lot of peasants and Indigenous peoples away from the lands, then it’s easier to colonize the land,” Büscher said.

This approach was enshrined by the 1933 International Conference for the Protection of the Fauna and Flora of Africa, which created one of the first international treaties, known as the London Convention, to protect wildlife. The convention was led by prominent trophy hunters, but it recommended that colonies restrict traditional African hunting practices.

“Conservation is an ideology. And this ideology is based on the idea that other human beings’ ways of life are wrong and are harming nature, that nature needs no human beings in order to be saved,” said Fiore Longo, a researcher and campaigner at Survival international, a nonprofit that advocates for Indigenous rights globally.

The London Convention also suggested national parks as a primary solution to preserve nature in Africa — and as many African countries saw the creation of their first national parks in the first half of the 20th century, the removal of Indigenous peoples continued. The convention was also an early sign that conservation was becoming a global task, rather than a collection of individual projects and parks.

This sense of collective responsibility only grew in the aftermath of World War II, when many international organizations and mechanisms, like the United Nations, were created, ushering in a new period of global cooperation. In 1948, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, the world’s first international organization devoted to nature conservation, was established. This would help pave the way for a new phase of international conservation trends.

By the middle of the 20th century, many countries in Africa were beginning to decolonize, becoming independent from the European powers that had controlled them for decades. Even as they lost their colonies, the imperial powers were not willing to let go of their protected parks. But at the same time, the IUCN was proving ineffective and underfunded. So in 1961, the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, an international nonprofit, was founded by European conservationists to help fund global efforts to protect wildlife.

Sène-Harper said that although the newly independent African countries nominally controlled their national parks, many of them were run or supported by Western nonprofits like WWF.

“They’re trying to find more crafty ways to be able to extract without seeming so colonial about it, but it’s still an imperialist form of invasion,” she said.

Although these nonprofits have done important work in raising awareness of the extinction crisis, and have had some successes, experts say that the model of colonial conservation has not changed and has only made the problem worse.

Over the years, WWF and other nonprofits have helped fund violent campaigns against Indigenous peoples, from Nepal to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And amid it all, climate change continues to worsen and species continue to suffer.

In 2019, in response to allegations about murders and other human rights abuses, WWF conducted an independent review that found “no evidence that WWF staff directed, participated in, or encouraged any abuses.” The organization also said in a statement that “We feel deep and unreserved sorrow for those who have suffered. We are determined to do more to make communities’ voices heard, to have their rights respected, and to consistently advocate for governments to uphold their human rights obligations.”

“I think most of [the big NGOs] have become part of the problem rather than the solution, unfortunately,” Büscher said. “The extinction crisis is very real and urgent. But, nonetheless, the history of these organizations and their policies are incredibly contradictory.”

To Indigenous people who had already suffered from decades of colonial conservation policies, little changed with decolonization.

“When we got independence, we kept on the same policies and regulations,” said Mathew Bukhi Mabele, a conservation social scientist at the University of Dodoma in central Tanzania.

In 1992, representatives from around the world gathered in Rio De Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The Earth Summit, as it has come to be known, led to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity, two international treaties that committed to tackling climate change, biodiversity, and sustainable development.

Biodiversity is the umbrella term for all forms of life on Earth including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.

Although the Earth Summit was a pivotal moment in the global fight to protect the environment, some have criticized the decision to split climate change and biodiversity into separate conferences.

“It doesn’t make sense, actually, to separate out the two because when you get to the ground, these are going to be the same activities, the same approaches, the same programs, the same life plans for Indigenous people,” said Jennifer Tauli Corpuz, who is Kankana-ey Igorot from the Northern Philippines and one of the lead negotiators of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

From left: The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit, brought together political leaders, diplomats, scientists, representatives of the media, and non-governmental organizations from 179 countries. Indigenous environmentalist Raoni Metuktire, a chief of the Kayapo people in Brazil, talks with an Earth Summit attendee.

In the years following the Earth Summit, biodiversity efforts began to lag behind climate action, Corpuz said.

Protecting animals was trendy during the early days of WWF, when images of pandas and elephants were key fundraising tactics. But as the impacts of climate change intensified, including more devastating storms, higher sea levels, and rising temperatures, biodiversity was struggling to gain as much attention.

“There were 100 times more resources being poured into climate change. It was more sexy, more charismatic, as an issue,” Corpuz said. “And now biodiversity wants a piece of the pie.”

But to get that, proponents of biodiversity needed to develop initiatives similar to the big goals coming out of climate conferences. For many conservation groups and scientists, the obvious solution was to fall back on what they had always done: create protected areas.

This time, however, they needed a global plan, so scientists were trying to calculate how much of the world they needed to protect. In 2010, nations set a goal of conserving 17 percent of the world’s land by 2020. Some scientists have supported protecting half the earth. Meanwhile, Indigenous groups have proposed protecting 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025.

How the world arrived at the 30×30 conservation model

Explore key moments in conservation’s global legacy, from the United States’ first national park in the 19th century to the expansion of colonial conservation areas in the early 20th century and the current push to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

1872: Yellowstone becomes the first national park in the U.S.

1919: King Albert I of Belgium tours Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon

1925: Albert National Park is established in the Belgian Congo

1933: One of the first international treaties to protect wildlife, known as the London Convention, is created by European conservationists

1948: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is established

1961: The World Wildlife Fund, a non-governmental organization, is founded by European conservationist

1992: The Earth Summit in Brazil creates the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

2010: CBD sets a goal of conserving 17% of the world’s land by 2020

2022: At the UN Biodiversity Conference, nearly 200 countries set 30×30 as an international goal

In 2019, Eric Dinerstein, formerly the chief scientist at WWF, and others wrote the Global Deal for Nature, a paper that proposed formally protecting 30 percent of the world by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050, calling it a “companion pact to the Paris Agreement.” Their 30×30 plan has since gained widespread international support.

But other experts, including some Indigenous leaders, say the idea ignores generations of effective Indigenous land management. At the time, there was limited scientific attention paid to Indigenous stewardship. Because of that, Indigenous leaders say they were largely ignored in the early years of international biodiversity negotiations.

“At the moment, we did not have a lot of evidence,” said Viviana Figueroa, who is Omaguaca-Kolla from Argentina and a member of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

Some experts see the push for global protected areas as a direct response to community-based conservation, which grew in popularity in the 1980s, and saw local communities and Indigenous peoples take control of conservation projects in their area, rather than the centralized approach that had dominated during colonial times.

Some of the chief proponents of 30×30 bristle at the suggestion that they do not support Indigenous rights and say that Indigenous land management is at the heart of the initiative.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson from WWF pointed to its website, which outlines the organization’s approach to area-based conservation and its position on 30×30: “WWF supports the inclusion of a ‘30×30’ target in CBD’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) only if certain conditions are met. For example, such a target must ensure social equity, good governance, and an inclusive approach that secures the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities to their land, freshwater, and seas.”

“People have cherry-picked a few examples of where the rights of locals have been tread upon. But by and large, in the vast majority of situations, what’s going on is support of local communities, really, rather than anything to do with violation,” said Dinerstein, who now works at Resolve, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on environmental, social, and health issues.

But Indigenous advocates say if that were true, they would not keep pushing a model that has already led to countless human rights violations.

“Despite having this knowledge and knowing that people who are not contributing to the destruction of the environment are going to pay for these protected areas, they decided to keep on pushing the target,” Survival International’s Longo said.

The new 30×30 framework agreed to by nearly 200 countries at the UN Biodiversity Conference in December came after years of delay and fierce negotiation. The challenge is now implementing the agreement around the world, a massive task that will require buy-in from individual countries and their governments.

“What was adopted in Montreal is hugely ambitious. And it can only be achieved by a lot of hard work on the ground. And it’s a great document, but it is only a document,” said David Cooper, acting executive secretary of the UN’s Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Part of that work is figuring out what land to protect. And although Indigenous negotiators and advocates did manage to get language that enshrines Indigenous rights into the final agreement, they are still concerned. Over a century of colonial conservation has shown that it only serves the powerful at the expense of Indigenous peoples.

“European countries are not going to evict white people from their lands,” said Longo. “That is for sure. This is where you see all the racism around this. Because they know how these targets will be applied in Africa and Asia. That’s what’s going on, they are evicting the people.”

Dinerstein, however, would argue that European countries have less natural resources to preserve, but more financial resources to help other countries.

“There’s a lot that can be done in Europe,” he said. “So we shouldn’t overlook that as well. I’m just making the point that there’s the opportunity to be able to do much more in other countries that have much less resources.”

Cooper said that in addition to implementation, monitoring and ensuring that rights are upheld will be a crucial task over the next seven years. “There will need to be a lot of work on monitoring. There’s always a justified nervousness that any global process cannot really see what’s happening at the local level and can end up with supporting measures that are perhaps not beneficial at the local level,” he said.

Although Indigenous leaders are going to keep fighting to ensure that the expansion of protected areas does not lead to continued violation of their rights, they are worried that the model itself is flawed. “It’s inevitable that the burden is going to fall again on developing countries,” Corpuz said.

#colonial violence #languages #How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence #colonialism #brazil #indigenous populations #Yanomami #bolsanaro #the amazon #amazon rainforest #natural resources #ecology

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thatsonemorbidcorvid · 1 year

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“Though a growing body of data suggests women in sport are more likely to sustain a concussion, have more severe symptoms, and to take longer to recover, most sports-related concussions protocols are based on data from men.

In a review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers looked at 171 concussion studies written since 1967 which are used to inform the most influential consensus and position statements in treating sports-related concussions.

Clinicians rely on these documents to guide their medical practice when treating athletes -- but most of the studies are focused on men. Only 1% of them was looking exclusively at concussions in women and 40% of them didn't have any women in a sample of participants at all.”

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Kelly Catlin and Ellie Soutter never met, but they had a lot in common.

Both were commanding athletes: Catlin, a US track cyclist, was a three-times world champion and Olympic silver medalist, and Soutter, a snowboarder, was tipped to be one of Team Great Britain's strongest contenders for the 2022 Winter Olympics, having already won a bronze medal at the 2017 European Youth Olympic Festival.

Both were incredibly smart -- Catlin was studying for a master's degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University, while Soutter learned to speak French in about six months, according to her father.

At times they almost seemed superhuman. In 2013, after only three weeks of formal training and having broken her wrist, Soutter became British Champion with her arm in a cast. Meanwhile, Catlin, who had a tenderness for children, once rode 80 miles through sleet and snow to speak to a grade school about her Olympic experience.

Yet these two women's lives were tragically cut short after they sustained serious head injuries in their pursuit of sporting greatness and then took their own lives. Catlin was 23, while Soutter died by suicide on her 18th birthday.

Females may be more susceptible to concussion, and they also have worse and prolonged symptoms after their injury than men, according to a review of 25 studies of sport-related concussion published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine.

However, women remain significantly underrepresented within sport and exercise science research. This, leading experts warn, means they often do not get the treatment or aftercare they need following a head injury.

Women's sports have historically not received the same attention or funding as men's sports, Dr. Ann McKee, Director of the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center told CNN.

"It's been shown that women athletes are more likely to get a concussion, they tend to have longer recovery periods," McKee added.

"We do not have enough information about what happens in the female brain. We don't know if women are biologically more susceptible to these injuries," she said, adding that some research suggests the size and musculature of women's necks could play a part.

Before becoming a track cyclist, Catlin, a triplet, was a national champion road cyclist and time trial national champion, her father Mark, told CNN. After winning a Canadian international race at 17 she was invited to an Olympic training camp for a try out, where, impressed by her performance numbers, coaches immediately offered her a position on the track pursuit team.

Catlin's father, Mark, told CNN, that his daughter was "intense" and "ambitious," attributes she channeled into her sporting life.

Her life changed irrevocably in January 2019. Practicing fast downhill descents in the hills near Los Angeles, she crashed and went skidding down the road. Despite suffering road rash, Catlin got back on her bike, and finished the ride. It wasn't her first crash -- she had experienced 4 or 5 hard crashes before this, her father said, and after the latest, she didn't have any symptoms at the time.

But soon after, at a World Cup track event in Berlin, Catlin was gripped by a sudden and severe headache.

"She couldn't compete," her father said. "Kelly is kind of this stoical individual. And if she's rolling around on the ground, clutching her head, it has to be a severe thing."

On closer inspection, Catlin's helmet from LA had dents in it. Her father told CNN that this, coupled with her symptoms, caused her family to become aware she had suffered a concussion, which was later confirmed with a diagnosis from Stanford's Health Centre.

A concussion is a brain injury which happens after a hit to the head or body causes the brain to move back and forth inside the skull, according to the CDC.

When Catlin returned to the US, her father says she was examined by the track training center in Colorado, whose work-up didn't find anything.

"There wasn't any follow-up from Colorado after this. I believe they assumed she would seek care at Stanford," he told CNN.

Catlin's symptoms didn't improve, and in weekly phone calls with her parents, she admitted she was struggling with schoolwork and was unable to concentrate.

Stanford Health Center, having diagnosed Catlin with concussion with ongoing symptoms, recommended that she decrease her training for 2 weeks and then gradually build back up and start sessions with an athletic trainer, medical documents sent to CNN by her father show. She was referred to a concussion specialist, the document adds.

She tried to train, but "she would have to stop because she got a severe headache just from walking," according to her father. Her heart rate would also accelerate rapidly from even the smallest exertion, leaving her with "no exercise tolerance whatsoever," he added.

Wherever she turned she could not find help."

Mark Catlin

Her injury had other consequences.

"As far as we knew she was never a person that suffered from depression. She had an interesting sense of humor. She was always upbeat and bubbly about things," her father told CNN.

"She basically thought her life was over. She was no longer able to be the athlete that she was, she was failing her teammates. And she wasn't able to succeed in school now. And I think ultimately, that's why she took her life, because she thought her life was over," he added.

At the end of January, Catlin made a serious but unsuccessful suicide attempt, and was involuntarily admitted to the locked psychiatric ward at Stanford, her father told CNN.

A month after that attempt, she took her own life.

Soutter's father Tony said there were many dimensions to his young daughter -- not only was she an "adrenaline junkie," but she was "very conscientious" and excelled in school, even after moving from England to France.

Aged 12, Soutter took up snowboarding at school -- and just months later, she was spotted in her hometown resort of Les Gets and trialed by Team Great Britain in February 2013.

"It was quite obvious why she kept winning competitions because she just made it easy," her father said. "She just made it look graceful and beautiful."

But training took its toll -- Soutter told CNN that his daughter suffered seven major concussions in five years, between 2013 and 2018.

"I was being advised by doctors "Oh, don't worry, she's young enough she'll bounce back. As she progressed, becoming an elite athlete starting on the World Cup circuit, every time she had another concussion, they got worse, and they took longer to recover from," he told CNN.

"With every concussion, with the exception of a few minor knocks, Ellie saw a doctor in person," he added. "I was always told that she was young enough to bounce back to full health after each case and therefore never consulted with the doctors that I met, about any previous concussions."

But Soutter's final concussion was so "huge" that she spent two nights in the hospital.

"When I got there, she didn't even know who I was or where she was," her father said.

Soutter was then selected for the Junior Snowboard World Championships in New Zealand August 2018. But a month before the competition, she died by suicide.

I truly believe today that my daughter would be alive had I had...even the smallest bit of information."

Her father said a neurologist conducted a CT scan of her brain and reaction tests three months after her final concussion, but said she was "absolutely fine" and could continue competing.

Like Catlin, Soutter had issues with studying and concentrating, becoming more insular as she suffered from crippling headaches. She also started suffering from insomnia.

"She would literally sit with the tutor a good month after a concussion, and suddenly, she'd go blind. She'd not be able to see -- everything would go black and dark," her father said.

After missing a flight to snowboard training, Soutter died by suicide on her 18th birthday.

Team GB referred CNN to GB Snowsport when approached for comment, adding that Ellie only competed for Team GB at one event.

In order to represent Britain in international competitions, GB Snowsport says athletes or their coaches are required to demonstrate that the athlete has reached established performance criteria, is of the relevant technical ability to compete, and has appropriate medical clearance to compete. A large number of athletes can represent Britain at different levels of international competition but are not part of a programme delivered and overseen by GB Snowsport.

"As Ellie was not part of the GB Snowsport programme, we were unable to implement a personalised recovery and management programme for Ellie," a spokesperson for GB Snowsport told CNN in an email.

"She was, however, covered by national policies and protocols around fitness to compete, and would not have been cleared for any activity -- training or competition -- overseen by GB Snowsport without being able to demonstrate appropriate medical sign-off," they added.

The spokesperson for GB Snowsport told CNN: "We take concussions and head injuries incredibly seriously, and in reviewing contemporaneous records from the time that Ellie was involved in snowsport we are confident that GB Snowsport staff applied and followed every appropriate process."

Catlin and Soutter aren't the only young sporting women whose lives have been cut short in this way.

After 29-year-old Australian rules football player Jacinda Barclay took her life in 2020, post-mortem research by scientists found that she had degradation to her cerebral white matter unusual for someone her age.

"For someone her age, you would expect to see lovely pristine white matter, and hers looked like she was an old woman in that it was basically degraded," Michael Buckland, founder and Executive Director of the Australian Sports Brain Bank, who studied Barclay's brain, told CNN.

"We haven't gone back and done specific white matter studies on our donors," he told CNN, adding that the bank hasn't done peer reviewed research on this. "But what struck me, just as someone that sees a lot of brains -- this is not normal for someone of that age."

Damage to white matter has been associated with dementia, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Opportunities missed

Suicide after concussion is rare. However patients diagnosed with concussion or mild traumatic brain injury had double the risk of suicide and a higher risk of suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts than people without brain injuries, a 2018 study from researchers at the University of Harvard published in JAMA Neurology found.

Dr. Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurology at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine told CNN that there are several theories as to why incidence of suicide is higher in people who have suffered concussion.

One theory, he explained, is that those suffering from persistent post-concussion symptoms may have structural or functional brain damage and could be experiencing "behavioral dysregulation: short fuse, irritability, [and] can't suppress impulses the way you normally could."

With these emotional problems, "they would be more prone to perhaps do something impulsive, like commit suicide," Cantu told CNN.

A second theory, Cantu noted, is that post-concussive symptoms prevent people from getting back into their sport and stop them "from being the person that they were before their injury."

Neither theory is proven to the exclusion of the other, Cantu said, adding he thinks increased suicidality was "a combined factor involving both in many, if not most cases."

There are also differences in the way brain injuries affect women.

A study of female soccer players across US high schools found they are nearly twice as likely to suffer concussion as their male counterparts, according to research that looked at over 80,000 adolescent athletes, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Women remain significantly underrepresented within sport and exercise science research: a 2021 study examining papers from some of the most influential sports medical journals found that only 6% of the studies were solely focused on women, compared with 31% of studies that included just men.

Other researchers have pointed to female sex hormones, with risk of concussion changing with hormone levels during a menstrual cycle.

McKee said all athletes can also experience "non-concussive" injuries: "hits to the head that can be of the same magnitude as concussion, but they don't rise to the level of symptoms for whatever reason, so a player tends to play right through it."

Cumulative exposure to repetitive head impacts -- including concussion and non- concussive injuries -- increases the risk for the neurodegenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, McKee said.

The disease, which can only be formally diagnosed with an autopsy, has mostly been seen in either veterans or people who played contact sports, particularly American football, say researchers. The disease occurs when the brain starts to degenerate likely due to repeated head traumas, according to the Mayo Clinic, which notes CTE is "associated with recurrent concussions."

But scientists aren't only concerned about concussions.

Previous studies have shown subconcussive head impacts -- repetitive hits to the head and body that do not cause symptoms -- can still result in long-term neurological disease.

According to The Concussion Legacy Foundation, "the best available evidence suggests that subconcussive impacts, not concussions, are the driving force behind CTE."

There have been cases of CTE discovered in athletes who have never been diagnosed with a concussion, according to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

And other changes in the brain after repetitive head impacts aside from CTE are likely "equally important," McKee said.

"We also see damage to the white matter. And that appears to be mostly in the frontal lobe, but also in the temporal lobes," she said.

"We're trying to understand the relationship of those white matter changes to behavioral and mood symptoms, perhaps even suicidality," she said.

McKee stressed that concussion management is important, but physicians and athletes should also be aware of other injuries.

"The problem is the subclinical hits -- the non-concussive injuries that aren't detected, you don't pull the player off the field -- and they can be in the hundreds or even the 1000s in a single season," she explained.

Lack of research

Though a growing body of data suggests women in sport are more likely to sustain a concussion, have more severe symptoms, and to take longer to recover, most sports-related concussions protocols are based on data from men.

There is another risk factor for women in sport when they sustain head injuries, Katherine Snedaker, founder and executive director of PINK Concussions, a non-profit dedicated to women's health and brain injury, told CNN.

There is a gulf of millions of dollars separating women and men when it comes to average annual salaries in most professional sports.

Outside of elite sport, Snedaker says, female athletes often don't have access to the same medical care as men, meaning head injuries aren't spotted as routinely.

"They tend to push really hard through the injury," she said.

And many women can't afford to take time out to recover: even professional athletes will supplement their sports income with other jobs, she added, and many are caregivers.

"When they really crater, it's a couple of days or weeks later."

Snedaker said female athletes often weren't aware they had suffered a head injury.

If they were, she said, there were no appropriate medical or sporting staff to inform.

Not enough support

The families of Catlin and Soutter feel the young women didn't get enough support after their injuries.

After Catlin's first suicide attempt, she was released from an involuntary admission to the psychiatric ward after threatening legal action, and a conference between psychiatrists, her coach and her parents.

She attended therapy sessions, which she agreed to attend during the conference, but found "they were geared toward suicidal freshman with a whole set of different issues than an elite Olympic athlete," her father told CNN.

She got a referral to a sports psychologist that worked with the Stanford athletic department, but the department forbade the psychologist from seeing Catlin because she was not a varsity athlete, her father added.

She contacted the office of a sports psychologist with whom she had developed a rapport while in the hospital -- but, his appointment secretary said he had no openings for six months, her father told CNN.

"Wherever she turned she could not find help," he said, adding that his daughter tried a suicide hotline several times: she was once put on hold and once received no answer.

Catlin described his daughter as a "stoic, female warrior type person that isn't going to admit that she's struggling."

"She needed a sports psychiatrist that really could understand what she was going through and understand the rigors of her life in terms of preparation for competitions and the athletic side of it and what it could potentially do to you."

Her father said a major factor in his daughter's death was "a lack of communication between the facilities that were involved in Kelly's care. No one was in charge and they assumed the other institutions were following up when they weren't," he added.

In a statement sent to CNN, Luisa Rapport, director of emergency communications and media relations at Stanford University did not address any of the specific allegations made by Catlin's family. She said while the university does not discuss in the media the details of individual students' experiences, "supporting the mental and emotional health of students is a critical priority for Stanford."

"Students in need of mental health crisis assistance -- including students having suicidal thoughts -- and those who are concerned about students in need of assistance, can contact the University's Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week," she added.

Rapport said that in addition to this, "there are multiple places where psychological services may be provided for students depending on individualized need and treatment recommendations, including, for example, affiliated hospital services and clinics through Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and mental health programs and clinicians in the community."

In a statement sent to CNN, USA Cycling said it was "devastated" by Catlin's death, adding: "She brought focus and determination to everything she did, and served as an inspiration to everyone who knew her.

"As the National Governing Body for the sport of cycling, USA Cycling prioritizes the holistic wellbeing of the riders on the U.S. National Team and has a longstanding commitment to providing both physical and mental health resources to members of the team," a representative for USA Cycling added.

After his daughter Ellie's death, Soutter was contacted by the UNITE Brain Bank, who wanted to study her brain as part of their research into CTE.

But even in that facility -- the biggest of its kind in the world -- of some 12,190 brains, only 3% belonged to women, Ann McKee, Director of the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center told CNN.

"When I actually started looking into CTE -- all of the work that they've done with the footballers in America, she had every single symptom and more," Soutter told CNN.

"It was quite obvious to me that there was a definite link in her starting to get into dark places and feeling bad and anxious and not sleeping properly. All of those symptoms ... Every one that's involved in CTE was part of Ellie's life," he added.

"I truly believe today that my daughter would be alive had I had any inkling, you know, even the smallest bit of information."

Editor's Note: If you are in the US and you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

For support outside of the US, a worldwide directory of resources and international hotlines is provided by the International Association for Suicide Prevention. You can also turn to Befrienders Worldwide.

#medical misogyny

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mariacallous · 4 months

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In 2000, 17-year-old activist Marta Manojlovic was severely beaten by police outside Belgrade city hall. Twenty-three years later, she saw history repeat itself as security forces again used batons against demonstrators.

Manojlovic was a member of "Otpor" -- a student-led movement instrumental in toppling strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who headed Serbia during its 1990s wars against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

She was peacefully carrying a flag with a clenched fist, the symbol of resistance against Milosevic's authoritarian regime, when the police rounded her up.

"One of the policemen hit me with a baton on my shoulder, I fell down and I think some seven of them had beaten me," Manojlovic told AFP.

She lost consciousness and sustained 12 stitches on her head, bruised ribs and haematomas all over her body. Manojlovic took 10 days to recover -- but to this day has not let go of the flag.

- On the streets again -

After parliamentary and local elections on December 17, she took to the streets again to protest what she believes is a fraudulent poll orchestrated by President Aleksandar Vucic, a former Milosevic ally.

Vucic's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party won roughly 46 percent of votes in the parliamentary elections, while the leading opposition coalition secured 23.5 percent, according to official results.

Vucic -- a former nationalist turned pro-European Union populist -- has been criticised his alleged autocratic grip on Serbia.

On Sunday evening, Manojlovic was among thousands of protesters in front of Belgrade city hall demanding the vote be annulled.

Some tried to storm the building and broke windows with flagpoles and rocks, while the police responded with pepper spray and dispersed the crowd using batons.

"History repeats itself in the worst way possible," Manojlovic told AFP.

"My experience told me that conflict was inevitable... so I left just before the clashes started."

Afterwards, she saw images of police beating up young people.

"I felt terrible. This country continues the devour the best people it has, ones that love it the most," Manojlovic said.

"We again, unfortunately, live in an autocracy."

International observers -- including representatives from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) -- reported "irregularities" in the election, including "vote buying" and "ballot box stuffing".

Several Western countries have also expressed concern.

Vucic has denounced the protests, saying there was evidence the violence had been planned in advance and suggested that foreign actors were trying to stir up unrest.

- Student movements -

Manojlovic's generation grew up taking to the streets to demand democracy.

Her parents protested against Milosevic's autocratic regime when she was just a child. "Otpor" (Resistance) quickly became very popular with Serbian youths and mobilised them for a final showdown that toppled Milosevic.

The current protests are also led by university and high school students united under the "Borba" (Fight) movement which also uses a stylised clenched fist as its symbol.

The movement was formed after the elections from an informal group, "Students Against Violence", that echoed the name of the country's main opposition camp, "Serbia Against Violence".

The movement underscores it is not linked to political parties.

Some of Borba's members are proud to wear their parents' protest memorabilia, like Otpor pins, flags and banners.

"I was born in 2002, and I regret that a democratic transition did not take place then," Emilija Milenkovic, a politics student, said.

- 'Tolerating stabilocracy' -

During the 1990s, Milosevic's Serbia became a pariah state over its role in bloody wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. His regime was roundly condemned and isolated by the international community.

Vucic however enjoys external political support and and several EU leaders congratulated him personally for the election win despite the fraud allegations.

Political analyst Aleksandar Popov said protests against Vucic cannot succeed without the support of democratic countries.

"They are still tolerating stabilocracy... and this is where you can see the hypocrisy of the West, especially when they speak about human rights and rule of law," Popov told AFP.

"They don't care about... sky-high corruption, collapsed institutions, suppressed human rights and stolen elections."

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overthinkingtaleblr · 10 months

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My Taleblr Werewolf Headcanon Masterlist

While not the most present aspect throughout the entirety of Taleblr, the small and infrequent appearances made by lycanthropy has found its way into the hearts of the fandom. Of course, this may be largely because PIE is so beloved and just about every werewolf was involved in a PIE video. Not a bad thing, but it does also call into question How werewolves work, who has been one, and why we don't see them more often. Werewolves are a popular movie monster even outside of Taleblr, but every series has it's own rules. I think that defining what makes the werewolves that are encountered during the videos similar or different to other popular werewolves to be important in its own rights.

Whether it be Ghost being cured preemptively by eating fresh berries, or the Wyomingwolf getting her own unique title, I'm going to explore what it breadly means to be a werewolf in the Taleblr Universe.

While I would love to start by deconstructing the mod that was used for Toast's transformation and continue with a fandom exploration of the idea, I do want to open with determining what is meant by Werewolf here.

What are Lycanthropes?

General Mythology

The idea of people turning into wolves exists back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first written story in the world.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "The word lycanthropy comes from the Greek words lykos, meaning “wolf,” and anthrōpos, meaning “human being.”"

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "Though some doubts about the word's etymology still remain, werewolf probably comes from a prehistoric West Germanic compound whose constituent parts gave Old English wer ("man") and wulf ("wolf")."

Werewolves as we know them likely comes from European Folklore. However, the first werewolf story is said to be the Greek Myth of Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf with his sons.

Additionally from the previous source, a lot of British serial killers were thought to be werewolves devouring their prey. Kind of messed up.

Okay, no more links.

The general consensus is that Werewolves are people who are, in some way, also wolves, likely done through a transformation of some kind. In history, we see the transformation to be permanent, but when the legend came home it became something one could turn back from.

Scientifically, the full moon doesn't do anything to creatures, whether it be wolves or humans (no hate to people who's spiritual beliefs include the moon <3). However, the idea of humans turning into wolves on the full moon likely came from previous ideas that wolves howl Only at full moons... and then from there the idea that humans act weird on full moons followed.

While I'm not sure where it came from, most interpretations of werewolves has them as humanoid wolves, others as basically humans as rabies, and others still as sentient wolves. It seems like it doesn't matter where on the scale between human and wolf a werewolf falls, so long as it is a human who is turned into a wolf, whether temporary or permanent.

Apparently a full moon in January is called a wolf moon.

In Taleblr

There were about two to three videos about werewolves and the werewolf arc, which is about curing lycanthrope. Unfortunately, I'm struggling to find out how many videos are counted for that arc, and apparently Toast was cured off-screen and we never got proper closure until a livestream years later.

The werewolves most known for Taleblr are the ones from Toast's time as a werewolf. These werewolves use this player model and this mod on Gmod, for anyone wanting to experiment with it themselves ^^

Just about every example of a werewolf in Taleblr is a human-shaped creature with wolf claws and a wolfish face covered in fur. They can infect others through bites-- though whether this is only in wolf form or also in human form I'm not sure.

Based on the transformation mod's description, they are stronger than people, they are faster than people, they regenerate themselves when hurt, the infection can be spread incredibly quickly and begin affects on the same full moon they were bit.

Johnny Ghost says that Lycanthropes can be cured with a specific berry, because he was able to prevent his own transformation by eating them in advance... I think he may be partially wrong, though.

If Johnny was right about the berries, the arc wouldn't exist. They already had leftover berries and knew where several bushes are. No, I think the distinction is that Ghost was infected by Toast, who was not fully infected and was still switching between wolf and human.

Either that, or the cure only worked because Ghost ate so many BEFORE the infection settled, and Toast was too late.

Fun Fact; the June full moon is apparently named after strawberries... I think we found the berries? (I was totally going to say it was blueberries before this)

Werewolves sneak when hunting and may be color blind like dogs.

According to Toast, they love jelly and can be cured by berries, though I do think that may be him craving berries mid-transformation. Funnily enough, a British version of the word Jelly is Jell-o, cuz british people only call jelly jam.

According to Ghost, they can be killed with silver bullets, but according to other videos, they can be killed with normal weapons too.

The Werewolves

Johnny Toast

We don't know who infected Johnny Toast, so there isn't much to say about how the infection spreads aside from what we see between Toast and Ghost. What wee see between them is Toast lashing out and attacking Ghost and Ghost being only infected temporarily while Toast oscillated between forms. Unlike what Ghost thinks, there are a variety of reasons as to why the infection may not have taken to Ghost while solidifying on Toast. This includes:

Ghost just has a better immune system at fighting supernatural threats.

Toast was infected longer before he started taking measures to cure it.

Ghost's berry theory is real and Ghost just ate all of them in the area like a dick.

Whether or not the infection takes depends on entirely chance and Ghost got lucky

Because Toast killed someone while in the form of a wolf, it solidified the transformation.

Because Ghost died soon after being infected, it purged the infection before it could take root.

Since serial killers used to be considered werewolves, the infection vanished because Ghost is technically Already Infected.

However there's no confirmation as to what the real case is. I am not taking Ghost at face value because. The man just for infected and uninflected with lycanthropy in an hour, an infection process that caused actual delirium in Toast.

While Toast can't remember anything while a wolf, he has reacted to things that Ghost told him to do while infected, implying that the wolf either recognizes Ghost or has some basic dog training. People taking quirks of Toast and applying it to the wolf? Amazing. People making stories about Toast trying to hide his infection only for people to end up hurt? Chef’s kiss. People who depict the werewolf as a lumbering shadow intimidating others? love it. People who depict the werewolf as a little guy a little boyyy? Cute as fuck. Whatever the case, the fandom is incredibly creative and I love everything y’all do with him.

I think that the fandom choosing to not acknowledge Toast's cure is for the best. Toast being a werewolf allows for sooo much character and is another threat to consider from inside the house. What isn't to love about a consistent problem that can't be solved with banishment or stabbing? I'm a fan of the posts that ask if Toast is worried about being a danger to his friends and associates, and I'm a fan of the fluffier posts that allow for Toast to just be a massive dog. I’d draw stuff for it if i could draw dogs.

For Toast I'm going to say that he was a British Columbian wolf because they were apparently notably Large. They also notably have the darker colors of brown and black that Johnny Toast was while infected. Also, they can be found in America despite being British.

The Wolfman of Wyoming

The Wolfman, also known as Alberto Guppy's sister (who I'm gonna call Amelia Wulf) was apparently an anomaly in Wyoming based on how she got her own title by existing freely. We don't know if she can turn back, or if her transformation is permanent. Both she and Alberto are genetic experiments done by who Alberto thought were their parents, and she especially got the short end of the stick. When they escaped the lab, we know that Alberto got his memory erased, and with no memories or experiences in the world, he began living on the streets around the same time that people would've started to notice his sister in the area.

Unlike Johnny Toast, the Wolfman definitely wasn't infected the same way. Because she was created by what I can only assume was gene-splicing in an attempt to recreate certain animal-based monsters from mythology. While Alberto seems to have either been an attempt at sirens or mermaids, it's obvious that Amelia was a at least partially-successful attempt at making a werewolf. While she is terrorizing a state now that she’s free, my guess is that she’s looking for her brother, since we don’t know when they got separated, and is fucking shit up in the meantime. I think that Amelia’s “parents” were working to re-capture her before the authorities, or in this case PIE, could find her and find out what they were doing.

Since gray wolves are native to the area, it's likely that's what type of wolf Amelia was genetically fused with. More specifically, the northern Rocky Mountain subspecies of gray wolf.

Unwolf Werewolves

And now, a list of character who apply for the label of werewolf if they only turned into specifically a wolf.

- Officer Maloney, turns into a bird at will

- Gregory Gregory. Gregory, turns into a bird at will

- Sally Acachalla, turns into a “demon” when frustrated

- All Gingarians have two forms that they somewhat alternate between.

- Johnny Ghost/Jimmy Casket, turns into a serial killer at random

- Princeton Quagmire/Jimmy Casket, ditto

- Light Zeron, ditto

- Billy Acachalla, kinda turns into a bird.

- Papa Acachalla, TURNS INTO ANOTHER PERSON (JOSE JOSE JOSE JOSE) ON MONDAY MIDNIGHTS BECAUSE OF A CURSE.

Some of these are more werewolf-y than others. If any of these were wolves, it would qualify. Except maybe billy.

#taleblr #Johnny Toast #Amelia Guppy #Alberto Guppy #taleblr headcanons #taleblr werewolf #werewolf arc #taleblr werewolf arc

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loser-female · 8 months

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do you have any advice for finding an entry level compsci job? I'm still working on my BS and my non- job related experience hasn't been enough 😕

(not picky about any specific area)

Hi!

So I assume the US, right? (I'm European and our market is different here).

If I were a student here is how I would do it:

Create a resume and really pump your soft skills like team work and project management;

If your university offers them I'd join a club of an area of your interest such as coding, robotics, hacking... I know it feels like a waste of time, but it's still experience, regardless of the result (you don't have to win any competition to show your skills, counterintuitive I know), you will be able to show that you successfully dealt with a complicated project. That's a thing that when I was doing my rounds of interview were highly considered. You can always learn this or that language of programming but they already want a team player and one that's not afraid to take the reins when needed. If your university doesn't offer them there are online teams (or you can set up one by yourself) that do the same thing. For example I do a lot of "capture the flags", hacking challenges. They are a fun, challenging way to learn something, network with others and show how good you are.

A lot of companies (at least mine and few others in Europe did!) have these paid internships where they will teach you a job. This is a good way to get a foot in the door in cybersecurity since a lot of time even a compsci degree won't teach you anything about the subject. And training an analyst from scratch is extremely expensive, so you also have leverage for negotiating once your internship is over;

Consider taking a comptia certification! I recommend them for beginners because they are relatively cheap and are widely recognised. Comptia A+ is a good addition to a student's resume. The "three basics" comptia certifications are: A+ (for general IT), network+ and security+. They are ~300$/each.

I think I've covered most of it. You could also do a portfolio if coding is your thing, but I don't know anything about it.

Also I always suggest sending a resume if you hit 70% of what's requested, not 100%.

Plus! There are few professional associations that can help you locally! In Europe we have the Women4Cyber initiative. They will give you training, consultations etc about your career. I unfortunately don't know if there is an American one.

I hope this helps!

#ada.txt #cybersecurity

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tuttocenere · 4 months

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I guess this is a weird question to phrase but what languages do you know? Know isn’t really the right word, but like what languages do you have any experience in, maybe

(Asking because I saw something about knowing lots of languages in some tags and got curious)

I will tell the story of me and the foreign languages I have known. Putting a cut because it's a bit long.

So when I was a little kid, maybe three or four, my mom got me my first English book. It was a picture book with cute orange cats showing various words like jobs, numbers and so on.

As a European I was naturally also exposed to a lot of other languages, Italian, Ukrainian, Turkish and such, in the street, on vacation, on the radio, in church. But I didn't actively try to learn any of them.

When I was maybe eight I found some old university books on Russian that my mom had. Alas that language remains my white whale. I can't really say anything beyond "I like music" and "Larisa is the best traktorist in Odessa" (the book was old). Reading anything takes very long. My accent is atrocious.

From age ten or so, in school, I learned English (easy), Latin (meh) and French (argh) one after the other. I was and am pretty good at all of them although I'm only really fluent in English.

Then as a teenager I liked Mangas and so I started to learn Japanese. I really liked the Chinese characters they use, so I decided to learn Chinese as well. In university I put a massive amount of effort into that, spent a year in China and all that, and I'm pretty good at it now although it's rusty because I rarely speak it. But I can read fluently.

I'm also kind of OK at understanding Japanese but not to the point where I could just read a book or anything.

Throughout school and uni I took a lot of one semester electives on various languages like Esperanto, Arabic, Turkish, Cantonese and so on. None of them really stuck, but at least I have a basic idea of how they work and know a word or two.

Through knowing Latin and French, and through listening to a lot of opera, and through spending some time traveling in Italy, I can understand Italian. I can only say the most basic things actively and I can't really even write down things I hear because I'm unsure about spelling and grammar, but I can read anything.

Through knowing Latin, French, and Italian, I can basically understand Spanish and especially Catalan. I have started actively trying to learn it this year for reasons I have stated elsewhere.

I tried to pull a similar gambit on the Slavic languages by learning Polish, but while that is actually a very interesting language that is kind of halfway between German and Russian, I mildly gave up on it a while ago because I didn't have enough time.

I've also dipped a toe in some duolingo courses on various languages like Gaelic, Danish, and so on, but I don't remember anything.

It's all a bit ironic because I'm not very outgoing, so usually I'm too shy to speak at all, never mind in a foreign language. But I can read poems and stuff and that's really what I wanted.

#about me #languages tag #ask me things

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acaemia · 1 year

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Heyooo! I was lurking around studyblr as I am planning to create one once I start collegeㅡ(I'm in my last year as a SHS student !) as an attempt to romanticize college life lmao and I came across your blog and noticed you are a Filo + an IS student T^T I'm planning to take IS as well so I came here to ask you for some advices and tips because Idk what to expect 'cause Idk anyone who majors in International Studies around me :< and some of them (have the audacity to) tell me to change my course kasi they think I will just end up jobless (tf). Thank you so much!!

hello!! thanks for ur patience, its almost finals so I’m not online as much :)) but anyway, hello future IS student ~ :D ✈️✈️

The jobless concern or “ano yun” is definitely a common thing IS students encounter LOL. Here’s the kicker tho: Anyone can be jobless! People like to poke at stuff they don’t understand so I hope hearing those comments will eventually get boring on your end. IS is a course that feels specialized but is actually (imo) pretty broad.

[What to Expect]

I think it’s a given na I’ll talk about my own experience LOL. The other schools that offer IS probably have a different curriculum so take that into account :)

For IS in DLSU, you have to choose a focus/major. There’s American Studies, European Studies, Japanese Studies, Chinese Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies.

SUBJECTS

There are major subjects ALL IS students have to take, and then there are majors na focus-specific.

Ex. All IS students have International Law, but only European Studies students will have EU Economics.

Unlike other courses, you don’t have majors kaagad so there’s plenty of time to ease into the course if you’re still new or unfamiliar with the vibe (or if u want to jump ship and shift).

There’s a GE (General) Course/“Floating” subject (aka a course everyone has to take hehe) that feels like a baby IS class. It’s called GEWORLD. Most of us took this GE first term or second term since our flowchart was built like that. Double check yours nalang to be sure! Anyway, that class can give you a little taste of what IS is like if you’re entirely unfamiliar. In short, the transition from SHS to IS student won’t feel that abrupt!

You also have a foreign language class. American + European Studies students can choose between French and Spanish. Japanese studies…that’s a given na :) You’ll have seven terms worth of classes, which is basically three levels of foreign language class per year for two years. It’s fun and completely doable.

COURSE CONTENT

What’s IS?

International Studies isn’t the same as Diplomacy and International Affairs (This is offered in CSB). Think of the former as a course which tells you everything you need to know about the kpop industry. You’ll learn the history, what it is, how to look at it through different perspectives. You’ll look into cases. Look into different fandoms, etc. The latter also teaches that, but on top of that you also learn how to be a kpop idol (aka Diplomat/Ambassador).

But on a more concrete note, you’ll learn about theories. Liberalism, Realism, Neoliberalism...These are used to analyze situations. For my final paper in one of my majors, I used neoliberalism to explain Avengers: Civil War.

You’ll learn about foreign policy, what it is and how it’s used. You’ll learn about political economy, soft power/hard power, etc. Lots of very serious words you can use to make sense of situations!

TLDR: IS in DLSU is a lot more broad compared to other universities. (If anyone from CSB or ADMU is reading this you may confirm or deny because this is just what I heard LOL. I can confirm the broad bit though as a green school student.)

How are the classes?

For the majors mismo, there are lots of assigned readings. Don’t feel intimidated though! Profs tend to flavor their classes differently but readings will always be present. Prepare to write a lot rin. You can get away with not reading too. Idk how but you can totally do that.

Groupworks are a thing. Hindi yan mawawala so choose wisely ~

Recitation is a thing. I had a prof that randomly calls talaga every class. It depends on the prof though. It could be terrifying, but preparation is key!

[Advice]

As for advice, read! Read reputable news articles to get a feel of what good flow is. Read stories to be a better narrator. It’ll help a lot when it comes to essay writing.

Note: IS papers are mostly reports or synthesis papers. I suggest casually reading news articles or even magazine articles. This is an entirely different conversation though and I can go on for hours so lmk if u want me to elaborate here. (Writing tips/IS writing in general). :)

Tune into current events. A prof might ask if anyone is updated and u can recite for pogi points if ever.

You’re all students! You’re all there to learn so don’t feel intimidated by the course or even ur own peers. u got this!!

It’s okay to be unsure. Not sure what you want to do post IS? What job to take? Etc? Don’t worry, most of us have no clue. Some of my IS batchmates are in law school, some are working office jobs while others are language teachers.

I don’t plan on pursuing an IS related career myself. But I don’t feel like “sayang” ang inaral ko because this course gave me a lot of skills and clarity. Skills = writing, listening, collaborating/working with other people. cramming. research. public speaking! all very important and can be used in different industries. Clarity = it’s a personal thing, but going through this course made it clear what I really wanted/I got a clue of what I want to tolerate in a career LMFAO.

Not IS related pero lumandi ka/make friends/have a hobby. It’s very important for your personal growth!! Join orgs if you want to. The skills u can pick up sa org could potentially help you sa acads rin. But aside from the gains, its really nice to have something fun to do on the side!

That’s all for now! :) That’s all I can think of IDK IM mush better siguro if you have exact questions? :)

Do you have a tumblr? If you have specific questions maybe we can chat so I can answer u better. Other than that, I really hope this helps! :)

I can add to this later since im sleepy rn and idk if ur gonna see this agad but ill indicate if i add hehe. Thanks for reaching out and good luck 💗💗💗

#ask pia #senior sophizen

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jennymanrique · 2 years

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James Webb is Just the Tip of the Iceberg in Space Exploration

The successful launch of the James Webb telescope in December reinvigorated excitement over the seemingly endless opportunities to expand our understanding of the universe. According to scientists, the next great endeavor is building a base on the moon.

That goal is part of the mission behind the Artemis 1 moon rocket, whose launch was again delayed due to Hurricane Ida now battering Florida’s coast.

“The mission is to make sure that traveling to the moon for humans for many days is safe,” said Alexandra de Castro, science and technology communicator at PASQAL, which designs quantum computing programs.

When it does launch Artemis 1 will carry human-size dummies fixed with detectors to determine the amount of radiation humans might be exposed to over longer periods of time on the moon. According to de Castro, Artemis Two’s launch — scheduled for May 2024 — will take four astronauts including possibly the first female astronaut to walk on the moon.

Castro spoke during a briefing organized by Ethnic Media Services looking at what lies ahead in space exploration.

“China and Russia are also collaborating on a lunar base,” noted de Castro, hinting at the potential for a new space race like the one that defined much of the Cold War following the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik rocket in 1957.

In more recent years Russia had been collaborating with NASA on the International Space Station and was working with both NASA and the European Space Agency on the Gateway project, which aims to establish an orbital station around the moon. Food and other supplies were to be transported to the station using Russian-made modules that would ferry back and forth from Earth.

But Russia severed all cooperation immediately following its invasion of Ukraine, and has since turned to its ally in Beijing, de Castro stressed.

The last manned mission to the moon was Apollo 17 in 1972. The journey back then took 12 days and was fraught with potential danger given how little scientists understood about the risks of space travel.

“We now have a lot of information from the 20 years of experience with the International Space Station,” de Castro said, adding this next phase in humanity’s reach for the stars holds tremendous possibility in fields that extend well beyond space: from health care to communications, transportation, and climate change.

And then there is the question of extraterrestrial life.

Marcio Melendez is with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci) in Baltimore, Maryland and was part of the team that worked on Webb’s mirrors. “Three years ago, we only knew of one exoplanet,” planets orbiting stars outside our own solar system. “Now we have 5,000 exoplanets and many of them are earth-like.”

American astronomer Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the Andromeda Galaxy in 1924 dramatically reshaped our understanding of the universe, proving its expanse far beyond our own Milky Way. NASA has since placed over 90 telescopes into orbit hoping to further deepen our view of the cosmos.

That effort has led to the discovery of billions of stars and galaxies and has brought humanity closer than at any other point in history to answer some of our most perplexing and profound questions: where do we come from, how was the universe formed, and is there life outside our solar system?

“We need to think big and there is nothing bigger than the James Webb,” said Melendez. “Think about a telescope that is so sensitive that you can see the heat signature of a bumblebee on the moon.”

That sensitivity is due in part to Webb’s infrared optical technology, which must remain at an otherworldly temperature of below 7 kelvin, or roughly negative 500° Fahrenheit. Maintaining such frigid conditions — even in the vacuum of deep space — requires a massive, origami like sun visor that shields the telescope from the warming rays of the sun.

“Virtually every single image that we take with James Webb is a deep field,” meaning an image that peers into the blackness of space, explained Melendez. Each image, he adds, contains “hundreds of galaxies in the background,” making Webb something akin to a “time machine,” able to see light that has traveled billions of years stretching to the origins of the universe.

The telescope is also able to detect how planets and stars form and how galaxies interact.

“Webb is able to characterize the abundance of different molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets,” which can help determine the presence of life, said STSci’s Nicole Arulanantham. “Now whether that life is intelligent, we don’t know.”

Arulanantham’s main area of research is the formation of stars and planets. With the Hubble Space Telescope, she and her team have been looking at how young stars use ultraviolet light in the process of planet formation. “This tells us how quickly the stars are growing,” she said.

With Webb, she and her team will now be able to determine the role that water plays in that process, explaining that molecules like hydrogen cyanide, an important carrier of hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, essential to forming life on earth, can be seen with the telescope.

For de Castro, one of the greatest achievements in space exploration is right here on earth. The Artemis Accords are a series of bi-lateral agreements between nations participating in the Artemis program, bringing together scientists from around the globe as part of an effort to return humans to the moon.

“This is how science is done today,” she said. “It teaches us how to deal with one another.”

Originally published here

Want to read this piece in Spanish? Click here

#English #space exploration #moon landing #Artemis Accords #Hubble Telescope #james webb telescope #intelligent life #NASA #Moon Rocket #China #Russia #Andromeda Galaxy

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ahz-associates · 2 years

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Best Universities for UK Master’s Degree

A student is interested in learning about the best UK universities for master's degrees when considering studying there. Before limiting their options and starting the application process, students must conduct extensive study.

Students from all over the world must weigh their selections because the UK is home to more than 100 universities. There are numerous undergraduate and graduate degree possibilities. For instance, some students may check for rankings of UK universities for MBA and base their decision on them if they are considering UK universities for a master's degree.

Top UK Universities for Masters Degrees

It can be challenging to evaluate institutions based just on their rankings if you're seeking for the best master's degree in the UK. Rankings are one of the first factors students take into consideration while weighing their selections. It should be noted that while the institution's overall ranking is important, it is also important to consider the ranking of each individual department.

The University of Manchester

The university offers one of the most practical Masters in Business Administration programmes in Europe and the rest of the globe and is home to the Alliance Manchester Business School, the top-ranked post-graduate institution in the UK.

Engagement with clients is a component of the programme. Additionally, centres in Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore offer elective module study.

The course can also be finished in twelve months, though it may occasionally be extended to 15 or 18 months.

The University of Manchester is ranked number 36 globally by the Financial Times, while QS has it at number 55. In any case, it is one of the top choices that qualified students should consider.

Durham University

Durham is a viable alternative in the rankings of UK universities for MBAs. Three specialised subjects—entrepreneurship, consulting, or technology—can be focused on by students.

Additionally, students who enrol in the 15-month programme can take advantage of business possibilities, participate in an internship, and even start their own company! The finest university in the UK for masters, Durham University's MBA also gives students the ability to travel to foreign firms, take language training, and engage in a consulting exercise.

Additionally, Durham University and the German European Business School offer an executive master's degree in business administration online. Last but not least, Durham is rated 67th overall and 64th (Financial Times) (QS).

London Business School (LBS)

Without taking London Business School into consideration, rankings of UK universities for MBA programmes are impossible. One of the greatest MBA programmes in the world is taught at LBS. They provide academic education, for instance, as well as a Global Business Experience, which entails a week-long international trip, workshops, and interaction with guest speakers.

In addition to two different EMBAs, London Business School also offers an Executive MBA. the EMBA Global Europe, the EMBA Global Americas, and the EMBA Global Asia. In instance, the former gives students the chance to study abroad in places like Shanghai, Hong Kong, and New York.

Finally, LBS is ranked higher than most countries and universities in the UK. The Financial Times rates it as the fourth-best in the world, while QS ranks it as the fifth-best globally.

Contact AHZ Associates for information on master's degree admissions to top-ranked UK universities.

University of Glasgow

For master's degrees, they offer more than 300 courses. They offered a wide range of postgraduate programmes; by earning a postgraduate degree in a new direction, you can improve your chances of success in the future.

You can pick between a master's degree (MSc, MA, MEng, or MRes), which is a one-year full-time programme, a postgraduate diploma (PgD), which is a qualification level above a bachelor's degree, and a postgraduate certificate (PgC).

You will benefit from top-notch facilities, cutting-edge instruction using standard tools, and award-winning student assistance while you are studying. They primarily provide a top-notch education at a reasonable cost.

University of Southampton

Their popular master’s degree programs are-

Acoustical Engineering

Aeronautics and Astronautics

Audiology

Biomedical Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Civil Engineering

Energy

Mechanical Engineering

Maritime Engineering

It is listed among the top 100 institutions in the world and boasts academics of international reputation (QS World University Rankings 2019). They promote innovative thinking and imaginative mindsets.

With more than 21,000 students from more than 130 nations, the University has five campuses in Southampton, one in Winchester, and another in Malaysia.

It is the ideal setting for realising your potential, putting a concept into action, changing the world, discovering new passions, and figuring out what to do next.

University of York

North Yorkshire has a strong connection to the university. They serve as a centre for knowledge exchange and life improvement. Having over 25 years of experience and 252 master's degrees

They are primarily a vibrant, research-focused institution that belongs to the Russell Group. Even though moving across borders can be challenging, the university offers its own housing options close to the campus. For financial savings, international students can room together.

You can visit the libraries to use their first-rate library system to borrow and return books. Doctors, the NHS urgent care centre at York District Hospital, as well as numerous pharmacies, dentists, and opticians in York, offer medical services.

Graduate students at the University of York are automatically members of an independent, student-run organisation that is dedicated to postgraduate students. A standard swimming pool, a 3G football field, an outdoor cycle track, a 250m Velodrome, a spin studio, and other sporting facilities are all available at the University of York.

The UK is one of the most well-liked study locations in the world, and you can find the top master's degree UK thanks to the high standard of education and academic achievement.

Be careful when applying because some Scottish universities offer an undergraduate degree called "Masters of Arts" to foreign students. This programme is not the same as a master's degree.

#studyinukukexpo

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 1 year

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Galaxy clusters yield new evidence for standard model of cosmology Cosmologists have found new evidence for the standard model of cosmology—this time, using data on the structure of galaxy clusters. In a recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team led by physicists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University made detailed measurements of the X-ray emission from galaxy clusters, which revealed the distribution of matter within them. In turn, the data helped the scientists test the prevailing theory of the structure and evolution of the universe, known as Lambda-CDM. Getting there wasn't an easy task, however. Here's the trouble: Inferring the mass distributions of galaxy clusters from their X-ray emission is most reliable when the energy in the gas within clusters is balanced by the pull of gravity, which holds the whole system together. Measurements of the mass distributions in real clusters therefore focus on those that have settled down to a "relaxed" state. When comparing to theoretical predictions, it is therefore essential to take this selection of relaxed clusters into account. Keeping this in mind, Stanford physics graduate student Elise Darragh-Ford and her colleagues examined computer-simulated clusters produced by the The Three Hundred Project. First, they computed what the X-ray emission for each simulated cluster should look like. Then, they applied the same observational criteria used to identify relaxed galaxy clusters from real data to the simulated images to winnow the set down. The researchers next measured the relationships among three properties—the cluster mass, how centrally concentrated this mass was, and the redshift of the clusters, which reflects how old the universe was when the light we observe was emitted—for both the simulated Three Hundred Project clusters and 44 real clusters observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The team found consistent results from both data sets: Overall, clusters have become more centrally concentrated over time, while at any given time, less massive clusters are more centrally concentrated than more massive ones. "The measured relationships agree extremely well between observation and theory, providing strong support for the Lambda-CDM paradigm," said Darragh-Ford. In the future, the scientists hope to be able to expand the size of both the observed and simulated galaxy cluster data sets in their analysis. SLAC-supported projects coming online in the next few years, including the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time and the fourth-generation cosmic microwave background experiment (CMB-S4), will help identify a much larger number of galaxy clusters, while planned space missions, such as the European Space Agency's ATHENA satellite, can follow up with X-ray measurements. SLAC cosmologists are also working to expand the size and accuracy of computer simulations of the cosmos, making it possible to study galaxy clusters in greater detail and place stringent limits on alternative cosmological scenarios.

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #galactic evolution

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nebris · 6 months

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Note: This is an extremely rough first draft.

~From a legal and an epistemological stand point, The Pentavalence is a Religion as it emanates from Revealed, and not Empirical, Knowledge, and it is meant to operate in a religious manner. However, we in The Temple of The Pentavalence view it as a Metaphysical Operating System and, in part, this is why.

The entire concept of Religion has itself has become problematic. Religion almost always implies Dogma, a fixed ideology that says, “The world is this way. Period!” and for a modern technological civilization, that is really a non-starter. Very few things ever stay 'this way' for long in such a civilization. And the Religions that now dominate our world clash with that paradigm more and more every day and with steadily increasing violence.

The problems the JudeoChristLamic Father/God Cults have with our modern technological civilization are fairly obvious. All three are the 'metaphysical operating systems' of Bronze Age desert nomads ruled by tribal Patriarchs. Their world view is narrow and provincial and their God is a Small God, one confined, at the very least, to this world alone.

Confronted with the modern scientific reality of The Universe, He is positively Lilliputian. For His faithful, such a situation evokes Fear, then Hate, and finally, Rejection.

There are a growing number who consider Atheism to be the ideal replacement for Religion, but it too says, “The world is this way.”, though the “Period!” usually goes unspoken. Plus Atheism has two major failings, both fatal from my point of view.

First, as presently constituted, Atheism is essentially reactive, specifically a rejection of the JudeoChristLamic Father/God Cults, and every one of its tenants seem couched as a direct rebuke of said. That tends to allow the Father/God Cultists to frame all the debates and every time.

Second, Atheism also does not in any way, shape, or form, address the existential questions of Human Purpose and Existence in a vast and seemingly indifferent universe. It is utterly cold and denies the need for Spiritual solutions that Humans have sought ever since we could form the concept.

Hinduism and Buddhism contain many useful concepts, but each has its own crucial limitations.

Hinduism is really a 'cultural religion', that of India and of its people. It 'exports' poorly. Her Prophet have watched Westerners practice Hinduism and, to him at least, it always seemed a bit embarrassing, while the experience of Indian practice is usually very moving. That latter gives him an understanding of why some non-Indians would be drawn to Hinduism, but that is akin to white folks wanting to be 'black'.

True Buddhism is essentially Nihilist, its real practice requiring a total rejection of The Material and as such it must be a rejection of any modern technological civilization, which is by its very nature is ferociously materialist. Buddhism can suit individual practitioners quite well, but is basically unsuited for a civilization. We do not include the types of Buddhism where The Buddha has been remade as a 'god'. We consider them 'apostate'.

Modern Paganism is rather a mish mash and barely any kind of an 'ism' at all and that in and of itself makes it unsuited as the Spiritual Path of an entire civilization. Plus, it too is deeply provincial.

Pagans - at least those that I know - are humans, so their Paganism is anthropocentric. They are generally born of two genders, so their Paganism is dualistic. They live on Earth, so their Paganism is geocentric. And the large majority of them here in the United States are culturally - and often racially - European, so their Paganism is Eurocentric.

But, as with Hinduism and Buddhism, Paganism contains a number of useful concepts and, like those, we of The Temple have incorporated many of them.

So, in barely five hundred words, I have just dismissed the world's five major religions and two of the most significant contemporary philo-religious movements. Such is the nature of this work.

While reading the above, some of you may have asked, 'why does an entire civilization need a single Spiritual Path?'

That answer is quite simple; we, The Temple of The Pentavalence, were created with the goal of utterly transforming human civilization as it presently stands and we were created is this form because history has shown over and over and over again that a Spiritual Path is the single most effective and long lasting method of achieving such a total transformation.

What is outlined in the following pages is the nature of the Spiritual Path we propose. Consider this our Liturgy, Manifesto, and Blueprint for the civilization we are going to create…

#the sisterhood

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yourunsentletter · 9 months

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How I got to fencing

Hi,

I actually promised myself to write about my experience of participating in Asian and World Championship as an athlete. But somehow I havent got the mood to sit down and write.

So today, I am kind of forcing myself to write. Because the longer I am holding back, the more I will forget the emotion and detail I was feeling and seeing during the event.

You might know that I like to watch football games, because we were talking about football in countless occassion. But I do like watching other sports too. As kid and even now, I always enjoyed watching multi-sport events such as Olympics in the television.

And because I watched Olympics in the television, I came to know about a sport called fencing. When I first watched fencing, I was fascinated with the uniform. Unlike other sport that tends to wear less clothes, the fencing athletes need full body gear to fence. I got curious and do my research.

As sport fencing has long history and was one of the five original sports contested in modern olympics. Fencing was derived from middle age sword duell, which is why the fencing piste is relatively small and only 14 m long. Because it resembled the length and width of the ballroom in an european middle-age castle. As sport the origin was debated whether France or Italian practiced it first, but nevertheless the modern fencing commands are in french.

As sport, fencing has three weapons discipline. The first one is Epee. It is the thrust weapon and the heaviest weapon among those three. The target area is the whole body and when fence this weapon, you dont need to think about right of way.

The second one is Foil. Like Epee, Foil is also thrust weapon and the lightest among three in term of weight. Before evolving as a separated discipline, Foil was actually developed as a practice weapon. The target area for this weapon is only the torso and the fencer need to think about right of way. In the history of fencing competition, decades ago women were allowed only to compete in this discipline before the highest governing body allowed women also to participate in two other disciplines.

The last weapon is Sabre. Unlike other two, Sabre is both thrust and cutting weapon. It means you can stab and also slash your opponent to get a point. The target area for this weapon is the whole upper body and like Foil, you need to think about right of way.

Right of way in fencing is kind of complicated. I am aware of the right of way, but I am not familiar with it, especially when I have to fence with the right of way method.

To simply explain about it, the right of way is the way the point is given. So, when you initiate the attack and your attack is successfull and the light is on, you got your point. But when your attack is failed, the opponent has the right of way and you need to do the successfull parry followed by a riposte to get the right of way back.

Complicated right? I also feel the same. 😉

But I am fencing epee, so I dont have to think about those concept much when fencing. However, some people are complaining that Epee is the most boring weapon to watch. Because it is so slow and the action does not happen immediately like sabre. 🫠

If you are asking how I got into fencing, I will eagerly elaborate it more.

In Indonesia, fencing never got as half as popular as badminton. It is understandable, because the sport itself is complicated and to think about the equipment is even more complicated and expensive.

Before I went to Germany for the first time, I made a mental list of things I wanted to try. One of them is to try fencing. Because Germany used to be the frontier in fencing. They produced so many Olympic medallist in this sport.

When I got accepted in Heidelberg, I even read in Wikipedia that Heidelberg university is famous for fencing. Later I knew that the 'fencing' that was mentioned in wikipedia is not the actual sport, but the sword duell in the Studentenverbindung.

Trying fencing was always in my to-do-list of activity to try while I am in Germany. I was aware that the University sport has fencing course for beginner for the people whose curious about this sport like me. But the courses that I had to take for the first year were already overwhelming. I did not dare to add another course on top of that.

When the load of my study lessened a bit in the second year because I failed one exam and could not take several advanced course, the fencing course for beginner was fully booked. I could not enter, so I settled for learning french instead.

In the third year I was able to enter the fencing course for beginner, but again the practical course that I had to take, prevented me from taking the course to the fullest.

Then, one night in the middle of writing report and learning for the exam, I typed in the google search box about world-class event which to be held in Germany. At some point, one of my friend told me that she has doing many volunteering activities and feel very good about doing that. She adviced me to try volunteering, to broaden my horizon.

And that night, Fencing world championship 2017 was one of the world-class event to be held and they are looking for volunteer.

The registration period was already over, but I decided to give it a try. I emailed the person in charge and immediately went to sleep.

The next morning, I got a reply from the person in charge. She was happy that I wrote to her and was glad that I can join the volunteer team.

I re-checked my schedule and wrote back that I could not be there the whole event period because I need to sit for my exam, nevertheless I was excited to join.

I went back to Leipzig, city that I used to live in.

My first experience as a volunteer was great. I got to know some people stories of why they chose to volunteer for the event. Most of them were fencers or family of fencers. Meanwhile, I was only watching fencing from the television. At that time, I did not even know that fencing has three different weapons nor did I know that fencing equipment and protective clothes were all complicated.

Because I had no idea of fencing or what need to be checked, they put me into ticketing and security team. My tasks were diverse, but basically I was told to help checking people, whether they have valid ticket or accreditation.

During the first day, I told one of volunteer who had the same shift with me, that I come from Indonesia and currently studying in Heidelberg. In the second day, he met the indonesian athletes who just came straight from the airport. These athletes could not get in because they haven't got their accreditation and their english was limited. He looked for me and ask me to help the indonesian contingent to get their accreditation.

I helped them to get their accreditation and sorted some problem that arise due to their late-show to the event.

One of the athlete, I remember to read the post about her somewhere in the newspaper. She was the only Indonesian representative in fencing at London Olympics 2012.

In my eyes at that time, she was cool, very kind and down to earth. Maybe the vibe of national athlete and fencing in the most prestigious tournament of the year helped her to look dazzling. Because I know not anyone can participate in such an event.

I got to know the indonesian contingent, heard their stories and watched the event together. They were so kind to explain me the movement and points which were happening so fast. It helped me to follow the match a little bit.

They asked me whether I fence myself and I said no. They encouraged me to try and we promised to meet next time I come back to Indonesia. I wanted to see them fencing in Asian Games 2018 and I promised I wanted to go back during that time.

In that world championship, I learned for the first time how a very big, world class event organized. I also saw how hard each athlete work to get into the final podium. I could feel that sporting event is a melting pot of emotions. You know, you can feel the emotions while watching sporting event from the television, but seeing it live, these emotions could be amplified several times more and you can feel it not only from the athletes but also from the officials, the audiences and the organizers.

Coming back to Heidelberg after participating in the World Championship as a volunteer, I became more interested into fencing.

I followed the competition via livestream and was glad that asian countries such as Korea, China and Japan took the medal home with them.

Then on one night at the end of August, I finally found courage to write an email for a free trial in Heidelberg Fencing Club. One of my biggest motivation beside wanting to learn fencing properly was the fear that I might lost my german speaking skill, because I might not speak it as often if I decided to stay in Heidelberg for my master.

At first, I was afraid of joining. But I immediately made friends with some other girls in the beginner level course.

I decided not only to try for the beginner level, but also visited the other day when the advanced and highly-skilled people also train.

I immediately felt welcome and accepted. Moreover, fencing was also fun to learn. Sure, as combat sport, I might come home with some bruise here and there. But the more I learn, the more I fell to the charm of fencing.

If you told me at the end of 2017, that I will fence in world championship in 6 years, I would laugh and told you are crazy straight in your face. 😉

And six years after me picked up courage to start fencing, I coming back to the world championship, not as a volunteer but as an athlete.

This story will not end here, but as an introduction it should be enough. 😉

Heidelberg. August 10th 2023, 6:43pm

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