Source: The Art of Nausicaä of the valley of the wind

by Hayao Miyazaki

Link to the full Artbook

You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.

you guys know you can get USB connectable CD, dvd, and blu-ray players right. and you can buy external hard drives with crazy amounts of space for an amount of money that would make the average person from 2009’s head explode bc of how cheap it is. and if you do this and get ripping software such as handbrake for CDs and DVDs and makeMKV for blurays you can both own a physical copy of whatever media you want and make it accessible to yourself no matter where you are. do you guys know this

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

AOC is at the Columbia encampment. The students need to wise up fast and kick her ass out.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again on Sunday, saying that Israel’s actions in Gaza are “ethnic cleansing.”

Sanders reiterated his familiar call on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday to hold Netanyahu responsible for Israel’s actions in Gaza, pointing to the staggering death toll and the displacement of Palestinians in the region. He was asked to respond to the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests that have broken out on college campuses across the country and to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) remarks last week when visiting Columbia University.

“What I think the essential point that Ilhan made is that we do not want to see antisemitism in this country. And I think the word ‘genocide’ is something that is being determined by the International Court of Justice,” he said.

“But just as what I will say: I don’t think there’s any doubt that what Netanyahu is doing now — displacing 80% of the population in Gaza — is ethnic cleansing. That’s what it is. Pushing out huge numbers of people,” he added.

Omar visited Columbia’s campus last week, where the national spotlight has focused on the hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered there. CNN played a clip of her comments Sunday on the ongoing protests on “State of the Union.”

“I think it is really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe and that we should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide,” she said.

Sanders has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu for the ongoing war in Gaza and has opposed more U.S. funding to Israel. He also reiterated his calls for an end to U.S. funding to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“And now we’re looking at the possibility of an attack on Rafah, where people have gone to as a so-called safety zone. So, what’s going on there, again, to my mind, is outrageous. And as you’ve indicated, I strongly oppose U.S. funding for Netanyahu’s war machine,” he added.

POINT AND LAUGH

Howard Zinn nailed it.

Universities and righteous students are targets of the fascist conservative industrial complex.

Foxes were once humans’ best friends, study says

An artist’s reconstruction depicts the extinct fox species Dusicyon avus, which scientists believe may have been domesticated 1,500 years ago by hunter-gatherers in what’s now Patagonia in Argentina.

In an ancient grave in what’s now northwestern Argentina, a person was buried with a canine companion — but this animal friend wasn’t a dog, according to new research. The burial held the skeleton of a type of canid that may have once competed with dogs for human affection: a fox. Humans and dogs have a long history. The relationship between the two species is tens of thousands of years old. However, a fresh analysis of evidence from a Patagonian burial dating back about 1,500 years hints at a similar close connection between a hunter-gatherer in southern South America and the large extinct fox species Dusicyon avus...

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/11/americas/fox-pets-hunter-gatherer-burial-scn

I love animals that are, like, the opposite of cryptids: we know for a fact they exist and have a clear idea of what they look like because we have photographs and individual specimens, but we haven’t the faintest idea where they’re coming from - they just keep showing up out of nowhere, and the locations of their actual population centres are a complete mystery.

Congo: The Genocide that implicates us all

Heavy fighting erupted in 2023 between the Congolese Army and several armed groups, most notably the M23 militia, escalating an already disastrous situation. Thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. At present, there are 7.1 million displaced people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Violence of this scale is not without precedent, with the conflict in Eastern DRC leading to an approximate 6 million deaths since 1996.

In November 2023, an unidentified man in the capital Kinshasa set himself on fire while holding a sign reading “Stop the Genocide in Congo.” Another man, Cedrick Nianza, did the same in 2011 while shouting Congo na nga, Congo na nga (my Congo, my Congo).

Violence and conflict inflicted on the people in the Congo is not new. Over a century ago, one of the worst atrocities in recorded history occurred with King Leopold II’s genocide of 10 million African people to control the rubber trade during his colonial rule over Congo from 1885 to 1908.

The modern conflict includes ethnically motivated killings, which have been a frequent reality in Congo since the spillover from the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi people occurring in their neighbor country Rwanda. Thirty years later, the M23 claims to defend the Tutsi from further acts of genocide.

Along with the ethnic divisions, the modern conflicts are fueled by a diverse constellation of internal, regional, and international actors with the essential factor driving the violence being control over resources.

Almost all new technology, especially what is described as ‘green tech,’ requires materials such as lithium, cobalt, copper, and tin. The Eastern regions of the DRC are rich in these materials – as well as in diamonds and petroleum – and are thus subject to fierce contestations by local militias, backed by foreign governments (such as Rwanda in the case of the M23 militia), and international capital. Those that mine for these materials experience horrible conditions, with many accounts of slave labor and child labor. These same minerals are bought by international companies and create technologies such as smart phones, laptops, electric vehicles, solar panels, ear pods, speakers – basically anything with a battery.

Many activists are calling for a boycott of new tech and insist that the transition to green technology – a phrase used to indicate a switch to more ecological forms of energy production – cannot be built with the blood of Congolese men, women, and children.

This is the third in a series visualizing genocides across the globe created by Hisham Rifai and Ayman Makarem. See the first two specials, Resisting Starvation in Gaza and ‘Zaghrouda’ in the Midst of the Sudan War below.

The artistic duo has also created the Revolution in Every Country comic series on revolutionary movement events and ideas in the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region.

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL 1975 | dirs. Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Quiet Quitting is when you're not doing anything wrong but the vibes are off

I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."

"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.

"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?

"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.

If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.

You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.

I need to be taken to the seaside for hysteria