Stronger Than You

anyway just a reminder for the myth lovers out there

king arthur was welsh. merlin was welsh. camelot was in wales. the lady and the lake she pops out of; welsh. excalibur; magic inanimate welsh object. etc.

on the way to see family, i drive past a lake that in which is welsh legend, is the last resting place of excalibur.

i’m just saying in my experience a lot of these legends had been so anglo-fied in the past and it’s like, all this cool shit is celtic welsh legend.

Arthur’s wife was called Gwenhwyfar first.

Like the kraken I emerge, summoned by the English theft of Arthur

Anyway it’s particularly irritating because traditional Welsh culture and beliefs have been so thoroughly stripped away and destroyed by England over the centuries, and Arthurian legend is one of the few surviving fragments we have left to preserve. And he’s specifically an anti-English figure. So the ubiquity of the boring and appropriative English Arthur across the whole fucking world is… Well, it’s not great.

can anyone find me that mesopotamian clay tablet telling you to marry a party girl because she'll bring you joy

It's from the "Maxims of Ptahhotep", purportedly written by a 96-year-old vizier to pass on his wisdom to his son:

yay ty. Between the above and the links in the mentions we have 3 translations total

Happy Wife Happy Life is 4.5k years old

recently learned that the "UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LOVE" sample from jet set radio future is legendary Black activist Kwame Ture denouncing the apartheid state of israel

hideki naganuma would later sample malcolm x in Wrapped in Black, the boss fight theme for sonic rush. in bomb rush cyberfunk he once again samples the same speech from concept of love, this time for his newest track DA PEOPLE.

Pendant

19th century

Germany

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is to Madame Justice that I dedicate this concerto, in honor of the holiday that she seems to have taken from these parts, and in recognition of the impostor that stands in her stead.

V FOR VENDETTA 2005 – James McTeigue

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. 

Everyone say thank you american indigenous people for cultivating corn, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cacao, pumpkin, squash, and anything i missed. Makes life more meaningful globally

i cant stop thinking this. two strategic very educated leaders with a clear materialist understanding of the world who were motivated by national liberation, not fanatic antisemitism. i cant help but feel like thats a huge part of why israel targeted them

When zionism was founded you can literally trace herzl and Ben gurion and his companions speaking about the "voluntary" and "involuntary" transfer of the "fellahin" or the Palestinians. They begin their "transfer" committees (because ethnic cleansing was not a term back then) to argue and talk in depth about whether to buy their movement to Iraq and send memos to the United States articulating that "voluntary" transfer plan. You can pinpoint when ben gurion gets frustrated and talks of forced transfer being the only way to make a jewish majority state. All this said about palestinians and our inferiority and that we must be "uprooted" from the land. We understand zionism as it is in action not your arbitrary conceptions of what it could be "despite its history"

You read this book and all the bullshit about "nakba was tragic but that was war and there was never a plan to intentionally force out palestinians" collapses. Ben Gurion and his crew endlessly planned our "transfer"

I'll never forget reading about one zionist leader who traipsed around the country side and found that it was all settled by palestinians and at the end of his observations he wrote "uproot them all" no differently than the "right wing" politicians like smotrich and Ben gvir that liberal zionists assure you is not the israel they know

o/ my family is from Tantura, one of the northern coastal towns which the zionist roving armed militias massacred in 1948 at what's often named the "start" of the Nakba. The alexondri brigade came, following the commands of Ben Gurion, and spontaneously massacred as much of our village as they could. There was not a fight or battle for the village. They simply came into our town, rounded up every man or boy they could get their hands on, lined them up on the beach, and began executing them. Others raped anybody they felt like as their friends shot anybody who tried to stop them. People tried to flee and they shot who they could too to try to ensure we didn't move elsewhere in Palestine. Out of the 1,250 person town, just one pile on the beach consisted of 250 dead. They forced us to stay and wait, at gunpoint.

Because, they had a plan to ensure we wouldn't stay in Palestine. They force-marched us, Trail of Tears style, to a distant zionist settler colony.

They had film crews from MGM, the American movie company, already on site. They had busses prepared at the ready. They recorded a stupid little media moment, "helping the refugees from the violence move to safety 😔", as they forced us to board their busses.

And without telling anybody anything, they drove those busses of captives as far as they could. Out of the Levant. And they dumped us in random distant cities.

My grandma & grandpa, both children at the time, were both dumped in Baghdad, Iraq. My father was born there.

My grandma, like many other survivors of it, refused to talk about what she experienced those few days. She took what she saw to the grave. It took serious investigation by my dad for us to find somebody else who was there and could talk about it. It took an Israeli settler doing interviews of those alexondri brigade brigands, decades later, for us to hear more of their plans. Turns out that media crew was brought back to our town for them to film a fake little fighting video, throwing grenades into & getting into gunfights with empty houses. Sound familiar? The settler who did that research was turned into a pariah and tortured to "confess" he made up all those interviews, which he recanted the instant he was no longer being tortured.

To this day it is hard to find Palestinian cultural heritage from the area we're from. Because they deliberately sent us as far as they could to random spaces, we weren't part of the same areas of super dense Palestinian refugees like in Jordan & Lebanon. So Much of what we do have preserved is from the southern & Central regions. For example, as I learn tatreez, I'm trying to get access to early pictures of my grandma, because that's the only way I'll be able to learn what tatreez motifs & thobe constructions were worn in Tantura.

The whole thing was very deliberate and premeditated. You kill a person, but you genocide a people-- and they came equipped with American and British support, and with the commands of their own leaders echoing in their ears, to commit a genocide.

socks used to cheat on civil service exams, Qing Dynasty China

lol i litereally stopped reading right before one of his most important quotes. including it with a lot of added context because i always see that quote on its own without the rest of the conversation which is really fascinating.

This didn’t start a year ago.

Vibrant silk brocade dress, c. 1850. © Philadelphia Museum of Art

My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:

Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.

I like this so much better than the idea that our ancestors would be embarrassed or ashamed of us for being “soft” or some crap like that.

My ancestors, watching me stuff my face with fried chicken while studying: She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar. WE MADE IT

She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar

My ancestors watching me use my stand mixer while living in a small apartment and attending university: Thou hast kneadeth bread in FOUR hail marys??? FOUR??? And thou ist poor as a churchmouse, yet liveth in a fine cottage with four pounds butter and fresh berries in thy larder!! And two featherbeds! And thou attendeth the King’s college, as a lord!!

My ancestors being like:

Look at this fine young lady! She can paint she can sew and embrody, she sings and read

And without a wealthy father to pay for that, plus she is florid in the body! She doesn’t know hunger!

We did it!

Me: /wearily studying/

My Ancestors: TRULY SH— what? They? A little unorthodox, but reasonable I suppose. TRULY THEY PROSPER, FOR THEY LIVE IN A DWELLING WITH MANY ROOMS AND ONLY THEIR SPOUSE TO SHARE IT WITH! THEY HAVE DOGS WHO DO NOT PERFORM A FUNCTION! THEY HAVE MANY BOOKS AND DO NOT HAVE TO SPIN THEIR OWN YARN! THEY BATHE AT A WHIM WITH GENTLE SOAP FREE OF LYE! OUR DESCENDANT BRINGS HONOR AND PRIDE TO OUR LINEAGE!

Me: /yawns and sips my coffee/

My Ancestors: /cheer wildly/

Me: *hunched over at my desk nursing a headache.*

My Ancestors: “Truly, we prosper; see here, our infirm descendant need not even work on her poor days, but has the luxury to rest as she sees need! A doctor attends to her illnesses; her clothes are warm and free of pests; she cares for exotic and dangerous animals within her own home! We have found the height of luxury!”

Me: *treats myself to a pineapple and a bunch of bananas*

My Georgian ancestors: ZOOTH SHE HAS BOUGHT A PINEAPPLE! NOT MERELY BORROWED ONE! TRULY SHE HAS ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WE COULD KNOW!

me: [puts on warm socks and a blanket, is now warm regardless of the weather outside]

My impoverished Russian Jewish ancestors:

Me: [learns to knit from youtube videos]

My ancestors: Our descendant, the heir to all our hopes and fears for a far-off future… She can buy fine clothes woven and knit by automatons, with but a fraction of a day’s earnings… and she does… she has so much free time to do as she pleases… and she uses some of that time to do what we did.

One woman from rural Poland, who died from smallpox in 1717 CE, a grandmother at 35: I knit roses and peonies into my and my children’s gloves… it wasn’t much extra work to dye the red, once I had already cleaned the wool and spun the yarn, and to knit in the designs… and I wasn’t a gifted knitter but I was a good knitter, and I thought, well, it might not make a difference to how warm the glove is, but it made the children happy and it made me happy. I liked to make things beautiful when I could.

Another woman, a peasant from what’s now France, who died from getting kicked by a mammoth in 8995 BCE: [Patting her on the back] I made my family’s clothes too. Every day my sister and I wove and wove and tended our children. We went out of our way to make the cloth lovely. Not a trace of it remains anywhere on earth now… But it mattered to us. And she might not know our names, or know it was us, but evidently, it matters to her too. She has so much beauty available to her, in every direction, and she wants to make it where we once made it.

[everyone sobbing and high-fiving each other.]

A man from Britain, 1104 CE, sitting at the trans-temporal telescope, reporting on my doings: She’s stopped knitting and now she’s playing minecraft.

The other ancestors: Ah, yes, the dream of building. We know this one well. What vision doth she design now?

Telescope man: Looks like… Some kind of floating temple?

Everyone: [Goes completely apeshit]

Me: studying Marine Biology, out in the middle of the Elkhorn slough absolutely fucking covered in the most foul-smelling mud and swamp scum you can imagine, deliriously happy as I spot a tell-tale bubbling in the mud. I jump off the small dock and drive my entire arm into the mud like a Mortal Kombat Character ripping someone’s heart out of their chest, and pull out a 4lb, two-foot long Geoduck Clam and hold it aloft, triumphant.

My Homminid ancestors, who were doing exactly this with much smaller clams 900,000 years ago: *going absolutely literally apeshit over my flawless technique and the marvelous size of my quarry* CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Gold ring, Roman Egypt, 1st century AD

from The Louvre

“Women are the roots of the Earth and the heartbeat of the Revolution.”

March 8th, International Working Women's Day.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 2023

its not about fuckin. problematic romance or whatever the myth isn’t ABOUT romance it’s about demeter and persephone’s separation. death took her child and her heart broke. The world withered from her grief. its okay if you all hate your moms and wanna run away with a guy with face tattoos or whatever the fuck but making demeter the antagonist to a forbidden romance plot means you’re illiterate sorry