Today is Nakba day, please take the time to educate yourself - 

The Nakba, meaning catastrophe in arabic, is the event marking the mass murder and expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 during Israel’s creation as a deliberate and systemic act to create Jewish Majority state. 

By the numbers: between 750,000 and one million Palestinians were expelled and made refugees in 1948 by Zionist militias, more than 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed or repopulated by settlers, over 15,000 dead Palestinians, and 70 massacres committed against Palestinians, and approximately 4,244,776 acres of stolen land - when Palestinians say this state is built on our graves - we mean it in the most literal sense. 

On top of all of this, there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees today, which includes Nakba survivors, their descendants, and Palestinians who were expelled in events after the Nakba - who are denied their legal right of return (which is internationally recognized).

It is critical to understand the Nakba if you want to support Palestine, and how Palestinians, 74 years later, cannot reclaim their stolen land, homes, and belongings.  And not only that, but to many, the Nakba never ended. Palestinians are still having their homes stolen or demolished, still in refugee camps, still having to deal with settlers encroaching on their land and committing acts of violence against them, Palestinians are still being murdered and left under brutal settler military occupation. 

If you want to read and learn more about Palestinians from Palestinian voices please check out Decolonize Palestine. Al Jazeera has a database here on destroyed Palestinian villages as well you can look at. 

And I will leave my friend’s post here about more ways to amplify Palestinian voices. From river to sea, Palestine will be free, we will return. 

@historyinmemes

The Dublin Arm was invented in 1921, It was a significant advancement in artificial limb technology. It operated using a Bowden cable mechanism, where cables connected to the individuals residual limb enabled hand or hook movements. By contracting specific muscles, the user could control the cables, allowing them to grasp objects and perform various tasks with improved dexterity. This pioneering prosthetic limb set the foundation for future advancements in the field.

this appears to be the original source of the video, which above has been flipped in some places and edited/reorganized (presumably to avoid copyright, since this is from a film production and archive organization).

from the notes, they link to this

which is not called the dublin arm (it was created in belfast) and which does not operate the way described by the op. in the original video i linked, you can see the man tighten and loosen the grip of the artificial hand, himself, by cranking a lever.

it's less clear how the cigarette and glass of water are grasped in the video, but presumably the hand was pre-cranked, or there was some other way of achieving the grip in those positions.

another video about its creation

also this

includes a quote towards the bottom that mentions that the arm was heavy, expensive, and difficult to use/operate because it required a lot of strength

this is basically the consensus today among folks with missing arms, in particular. they're usually bulky and uncomfortable, difficult and non-intuitive to operate, and not preferred in general. they're also REALLY expensive and take forever to get used to, making it just not worth it.

there was a post going around on here (i can't find it right now, but if someone else can, please link it) about how scifi always has these bionic arms because they look cool--and because, similar to the p&k arm, it offers some variety of cool tool uses. the hammer, screw/crank, and other tool attachments are pretty cool and probably were very useful to those who were builders and had lost their arm in the war.

but it doesn't reflect the reality of prosthetic limbs, even today.

so this is a really cool piece of technology! the information included isn't quite right because it's one of those things that gets tossed around, sourceless and contextless, on various repost-heavy accounts on social media. so here^^ are the original video source with the correct name, attribution, and information about how it operates.

Dazbog | Domovoj | Basilisk | Rusalka | Simargl | Rarog

Last remaining pieces for my Slavic Deities and Bestiary series I've been working on past year and a half. Big thanks to my Patrons for making it possible! It was an honour to have the opportunity to create portrayals like these.

The exhibition is officially over but prints and postcards will remain available online. You can browse my gallery anywhere to find the rest of the project or join my Patreon to even find articles based on my research I wrote to each of the deities and demons.

💀 PATREON | X | IG | Prints

Image description of a tweet by alice avizandum: Just remembering that in Sderot, the city closest to Gaza and currently being attacked by Hamas, in 2014 Israelis used to bring seats and binoculars and popcorn to watch the air strikes.

Pictures of colonialists watching terrorism as entertainment accompany.

End description.

I just want to add that Sderot was built on top of a Palestinian village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed in 1948.

Tuira Kayapó brandished her machete in the face of a government official who was trying to convince indigenous leaders to accept a mega-dam project in the Amazon, 1989

also! she’s still alive! that sort of thing is always worth pointing out to show that we really aren’t too far removed from events like this! here’s a 2019 photo of her:

If you care about our gay male community please read.

You probably have seen this flag around if you're active in online queer spaces.

I've seen many people, especially gen z on Tik Tok/Instagram call it a "furry pride flag" or even worse, a "beastiality/zoophilia flag"

Please, STOP.

This is the BEAR BROTHERHOOD FLAG.

This flag was created in 1992. It's older than me, and older than most of you on this app. It represents bears, an identity that belongs to gay men and their community, just like butch and femme belong to lesbians. However gay men identifiers usually describe a body type more than a way of presenting.

Bear describes a gay male who is usually chubby with a strong build and very hairy.

It has nothing to do with being attracted to animals.

Those are the two otter flags.

Otter is also a gay male term that describes a body type.

It has also nothing to do with being attracted to animals.

Please learn your history.

This post is important, but if I may add onto the learn your history part, butch and femme aren't exclusively lesbian terms. They are most often used by lesbians, yes, and bi women, but if you ask some older gay men about their identity they might bring up being butch or femme, and that's literally okay!

So like, I guess, don't go after old gay guys who only date "femmes" or dress "butch".

This goes for bear and otter and twink too! While these terms are associated with people who want/prefer a same gender relationship, they were always inclusive of bi+ people.

don’t go after younger mlm that use butch/femme either. they aren’t words that need to be gatekept and historically they weren’t.

So peaceful Souvenir. A brother singing ancient Andalusian song in Al-hambra palace.

Unmute

The right amount of melancholy

This is one of my most favorite Andalusian muwashshahat (an Arabic poem that’s specifically written to be sung). It was written in the 3rd century by an Arab poet from Granada, so it’s not very far fetched that the song has been sung at some point in that very palace centuries ago. 

These are the lyrics in Arabic and English, in case anyone’s interested. 

When he appeared with a sway in his walk  My darling infatuated me with his beauty Oh, my fate and my confusion Who will have mercy when I complain Of anguish in love Except for the holder of beauty?

لما بدا يتثنى حبي جماله فتننا وعدي و يا حيرتي من لي رحيم شكوتي فى الحب من لوعتي إلا مليك الجمال

I looked her up.

It gets worse.

SHE DIED BECAUSE OF A MISFIRE THAT MAY NOT HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN A MISFIRE.

The actual target was the building behind her home. Two missiles of 24 missed, striking her home, killing her, her husband, and their housekeeper, and blinding their daughter.

This by itself would be tragic and inexcusable. But it goes a step further:

Her house was previously destroyed in American bombings in 1991. In protest, she used pieces of it to make a mosaic on the floor of the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. The mosaic was of George H.W. Bush (who would have ordered those bombings), and the intention was that nobody would be able to enter the hotel without stepping on his face, which is a massive insult in Iraq. (Anybody else remember the hero who threw his shoes at Bush II?) It was a piece of protest art. Something supposedly protected and enshrined in American values and law.

And there are rumors that the “misfire” was deliberate, and was retaliation for the mosaic.

George W. Bush, H.W.’s son, ordered the mosaic removed when American troops captured Baghdad in 2003.

By the way, if you want to say “FUCK the Bushes and also Clinton for this,” then don’t let the memory of this piece of art die:

Spread it like the wind through the trees.

“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.

For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the ‘Cemetery Angel’.”— by Ra-Ey Saley

She’s 60 now, she’s still doing activist and advocacy work, and working on a memoir.

She published her book November of 2020

even all the way in dallas, gay men in the late 80s/early 90s said her name with reverence.

In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.

In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.

Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.

Hair is not just hair in African diaspora cultures, and this is why the appropriation and stigma surrounding our hair is so harmful.

In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed a controversial theory about how the Earth’s land masses formed. He said the great continents had once formed a single landmass, which had broken up over time. The idea went against all conventional ideas, and was roundly dismissed.

It took the work of young cartographer Marie Tharp to prove him right.

In 1947, she worked on a team that were running expeditions around the world, mapping the ocean floors with echolocation. However, Marie wasn’t allowed on the missions because women were seen as ‘bad luck’…

But the work she did back at the university was invaluable. Converting endless data into detailed profiles, she realised that the ocean floor isn’t a flat, featureless plane, but a complex, varied landscape.

Most importantly, she spotted a long, V-shaped valley in each of her profiles: a rift valley that supported Wegener’s theory, formed by two land masses moving apart, splitting the ocean floor in two.

But even with this evidence, Tharp’s ideas were dismissed as ‘girl talk’.

She then realised that her profiles tied in with worldwide earthquake maps being developed by a colleague.

The mounting evidence started to convince some sceptics, but not all. Renowned explorer Jacques Cousteau was so unconvinced that he sent an expedition to film the ocean floor and clear things up once and for all. What did his footage show? Exactly what Tharp had predicted.

Tharp’s steadfast determination had paved the way for Wegener’s continental drift theory to gain traction. As the tide of opposition waned, it gave birth to our modern understanding of plate tectonics and secured Tharp’s position as one of the most outstanding cartographers of the 20th century.

Watch the full story on our YouTube channel.

Once again I am filled with awe for a brilliant woman and disgust that I’ve never heard her name before today.

i’ve been wanting to learn about alexander the great for ages, but unfortunately i hate military history :’( luckily this paper gave me the opportunity to read Alexander’s Tomb by Nicholas J. Saunders, and dear GOD did that man live a bananas life when he wasn’t busy conquering

thank you @diasparagmos for the mamma mia idea, i’ve been crying since you suggested it

| samurai |

Commission for SamuraiFromCzech over Artstation.

Archaeologists Excavate a Stunning Roman Mosaic That’s Untarnished From an Italian Vineyard

Wow!!

Wow great story!!

Holy shit

Eartha Kitt speaking truth to power at a 1968 luncheon at the White House hosted by Lady Bird Johnson which resulted in Kitt being blacklisted in the US for nearly a decade.

let it be known that on January 18th, 1968, Eartha Kitt stood in a room full of white women at The Women Doers Luncheon, GOT IN LADYBIRD JOHNSON’S FACE, and told her that the government was sending the best of the youth off to be shot and killed and, in not so many words, that THAT was the reason the youth were rebelling. She ALSO stopped President Johnson after he made a statement claiming that mothers should be responsible for stopping their kids from becoming criminals and asked about “the parents who have to go to work, for instance, who can’t spend time with their children as they should”. It was brushed off by LBJ who only mentioned the funding for day care centers put in place by the recently passed Social Security bill, and then more or less said that the women at that luncheon should figure it out for themselves.

She was blacklisted, but she defended every word she said that day. 

gifs via

SHERO

Respect Mother Sister

y'all better put some respect on her name

I STAN A FUCKING QUEEN

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

@petermorwood

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

i could not ask for a better addition to my meme post than blade education thank you so much

THIS IS ONE MOTHERFUCKER INSPAAAA!!!!!