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sweetalyssum · 1 year

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[Genshin 3.5 Spoilers] Cyno Lore Ramblings

Disclaimer: I'm using the English localization as reference, so idk how it holds up co mpared to the original Chinese. So joining the convo about the new Cyno lore. There's so little we know, and have seen people speculating back and forth and also making some assumptions. So here's me overthinking and over analyzing 2 lines of dialogue, and some chara stories. And hopefully clearing up some information.

For starters, this is what is mentioned regarding Cyno and the spirit so far.

More About Cyno II:

With my body as a vessel, I can harness the power of the spirit that dwells within me. This is possible in part due to my natural constitution, but also due to a deal I willingly made in the past. There's no reason to shy away from the topic. If I am to weigh the souls of others in this world as a matra, then I must also place my own soul on the scales to be judged in the same manner.

From Windblume Day 2 dialogue with Lisa: Lisa: I suppose you're something of a mentor to her (Collei), aren't you? Now that I think about it, the two of you aren't so dissimilar. The power of Hermanubis once brought you great suffering.

Cyno: That's all in the past now. Besides, Professor thankfully didn't treat me like a test subject for the priest's power like the higher-ups had hoped, even though I was a desert-dweller.

(For some context, in the webcomic the Fatui experimented on Collei when she was young, injecting her with "archon residue". In Cyno's words, "You can think of it as a kind of parasite." He seals it within her in the end.)

Just two lines of dialogue in this convo raise so many questions!! Because wow did this information come out of left field!!!

So at face value we find out:

Cyno's spirit caused him some suffering

He was brought up by professor Cyrus (100% unrelated to the Mondstat guy)

He was supposed to be a test subject

He refers to Hermanubis's power as "the priest's power"

It's not said outright what groups these "higher-ups" belong to, I'm guessing it's the Akademiya. Cyrus, a professor of the Akademiya at that time, took care of him. And in his letter to the Sucrose Mailbox, he does mention he had been living in the Akademiya since childhood. Cyno's Letter: You are correct to assume that I seldom lie. This has to do with my upbringing. As a desert-dweller who has been living within the Akademiya since my childhood, my unusual identity makes it hard for others to trust me — and it would have been harder still if I was not honest. As a result, I learned to talk less and speak no more than what is necessary.

Uncovering the secret behind the prophecy may come with its perils. If you need someone who would never lie, I can join you.

—

So to finally address the Hermanubis and priest's power thing.

To start, Hermanubis is a combo god of Hermes and Anubis in reality. Won't go into more details, but I do want to add he's also referred to as a symbol of Egyptian priesthood. Hermanubis has only two prior mentions:

Cyno's Vision story:

"…Some believe that Cyno is actually a descendant of King Deshret. They say that he grew up in a temple located in the Great Red Sand and was raised by a nameless Hermanubis priest who cultivated Cyno's will and strength before, when he was ready, bestowing upon him a Vision and requiring him to cross the desert all by himself to arrive at the Akademiya and enact Hermanubis' will…"

The second is the Lay of Al-Ahmar. From the description: "The veracity of the story cannot be determined", and it's written from the perspective of a Jinni. But regardless, it really only mentions Hermanubis once, as "one as wise as the greatest of sages", which doesn't say much anyways. I've heard some people think Hermanubis is King Deshret, but I highly doubt it.

Hermanubis also has Anubis's jackal head, influencing Cyno's headdress design. Who else is also depicted with a Jackal headdress???? Yep, this is how I segway into Kasala.

In the 3.1 AQ, we find Kasala's grave (with a massive Jackal statue) underground and find a recording of his last memories there. Alhaitham reads off the elegy, "Here lies our faithful priest, Kasala. His wisdom is a miracle among the people, deserving of high praise and admiration."

Following shortly is the cutscene of his memories: "...Were it not for Greater Lord Rukkhadevata from the forests, the damage would have been irreversible. She summoned the priests to build temples, and infused into them the divine power of life…"

"...I have spent my whole life since guarding one of these many temples, but now, my duty is coming to an end…"

So, all we know about Kasala is that he's a priest that served in the time of King Deshret, and helped run one of the temples to combat forbidden knowledge. Nothing concrete regarding Hermanubis so far. However, we do know that priests of Hermanubis are said to exist (or at least rumored to), as mentioned in Cyno's Vision story.

I'm speculating that Hermanubis priests do exist. Also going off the real life Hermanubis, perhaps the spirit once was the leader of the priests in King Deshret's time. And that Cyno is descended from those priests. But I guess we'll have to wait for more lore crumbs in the next limited event Cyno shows up in to learn more!!! (Cries)

Jotting down some other questions I have bc of two freaking lines of event dialogue + his chara story/voiceover lines:

How/when/why did Cyno become a vessel for Hermanubis

What deal did he make with Hermanubis

How/when/where did the Akademiya find Cyno

Where's Cyno really from in the desert

Cyno's "natural constitution" ? ? ?

How many people actually know he has a spirit in him

Once again, wtf is the Temple of Silence!!!!

Side notes, recently learned that one of the Caravan Ribat messages talks about Cyno: Message: "They say one of us from Aaru Village has become a high official at the Akademiya. We desert folk might well live a better life in the future."

Message: "I barely earn enough carrying these stones. But with a single order of carrying something like cans of knowledge, I could afford to get married back at my hometown."

Another Person's Message: "But I heard that that official happens to be one who tackles smuggling. I don't think that person will be on our side."

Message: "Tsk, that's how we desert folk end up like this. We don't unite."

[EDIT Mar 09: It's not directly stated to be about Cyno, but the topic of "tackling smuggling" seems like something the matra would deal with.] Interesting that maybe Cyno could be from Aaru Village…?? But no one recognized him in the AQ, so I'm a bit suspicious of its validity. It could be possible people would have forgotten who he was since it was years ago, but hm…

Also Cyno finally explicitly confirms himself as a Spantamad graduate. It's been implicitly confirmed for a while now, but it's nice to hear it from Cyno say so himself. I wanna know more about what else he knows regarding elements and what not…

(Banging on Mihoyo's door) Mihoyo explain!!! But also holy shit I'm absolutely eating up these crumbs. I love Cyno. Cyno best boy. I hope they add Cyrus too bc he sounds like a fun time. (I'm just delulu and wanna see Cyno shyly call him "dad" lmao. Also Cyno pls call Lisa your big sister.. I'M BEGGING. I play w CN audio so I just wanna hear "Lisa jiejie" lol)

Anyways if you made it through this word vomit, congrats but also I'm sorry…

#genshin impact #genshin lore #cyno #genshin spoilers #rambling hahaha #i love u cyno

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mononijikayu · 8 months

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patriarchal butchery against women: history and rhaenyra

‘some accounts say it was ser alfred broome who had hold of her arm, others name the two toms, tanglebeard the father and tangletongue the son. ser marston waters stood witness as well, clad in a white cloak, for king aegon had named him to his kingsguard for his valor. yet neither waters nor any of the other knights and lords present in the yard spoke a word of protest as king aegon ii delivered his half=sister to his dragon.

sunfyre, it is said, did not seem at first to take any interest in the offering, until broome pricked the queen’s breast with his dagger. the smell of blood roused the dragon, who sniffed at her grace, then bathed her in a blast of flame, so suddenly that ser alfred’s cloak caught fire as he leapt away. rhaenyra targaryen had time to raise her head toward the sky and shriek out one last curse upon her half-brother before sunfyre’s jaws closed round her, tearing off her arm and shoulder.'

– rhaenyra overthrown; fire and blood

the profound horror evoked by the tragic demise of rhaenyra targaryen defies comprehension, leaving a profound impact on my emotions. the series of events surrounding her death is almost unimaginable, a harrowing sequence that eludes full understanding. the manner in which she was forcibly restrained, her young son is subdued away from her, bespeaks a brutality beyond words. her trusted allies' betrayal, the seemingly noble and upright men remaining silent witnesses, and the heart-wrenching scene of rhaenyra's final moments, held before a dragon, paints a tableau of unfathomable cruelty.

even when the dragon hesitated to devour her entirely, the violence escalated to such an extent that her wounds bleed profusely, eventually piquing the dragon's interest. the collective gaze fixed on the gruesome sight as the dragon immolated and consumed her, her helpless son held in the grip of men, forced to bear witness to his mother's horrific end.

the entirety of this scene is an unsettling dissonance, a collage of terror that leads one to question whether such a grisly fate could have truly befallen women. the spectacle of violence inflicted with such vehemence seems almost inconceivable when directed towards women. that all of it is a fraction of grrm’s own imagination. unfortunately, the veracity of this account cannot be denied. numerous women throughout both ancient and medieval epochs have been subjected to the barbaric act of execution for various motives.

upon delving into historical accounts, one is confronted with a cathartic realization that this violence appears to be a recurring toll exacted upon women who dared to seek autonomy and agency in their respective eras, regardless of the epoch in question. it is a recurring and undeniable theme, wherein women are invariably thrust into a vortex of unremitting violence, an undeniable and tragic consequence of their aspirations for a more empowered existence. a recurring theme which of course stems from the echoes of patriarchal control–which still continues to this day.

in my previous writings concerning patriarchy and its implications on women's agency, we delve into the prevailing belief held by men throughout history that asserts their innate and superior importance within the community. when viewed through this lens, a multitude of factors emerge to elucidate the systematic erosion of women's authority and agency.

within this context, the fragility inherent in men's perspectives becomes evident, not only in their perception of the external world but also in their self-concept. examining the methods they have historically employed to consolidate exclusive control over authority and agency across the diverse tapestry of human society reveals an underlying fear of losing their dominant position.

patriarchy, deeply ingrained in societal structures, has perpetuated a paradigm where men's inherent superiority has been upheld as an enduring truth. this belief has been reinforced over generations, giving rise to the marginalization and subjugation of women across various cultural and historical contexts. the tenacious grip of patriarchy on social norms and power dynamics has led to the disempowerment of women, often limiting their roles to subservient positions and stripping them of agency.

as we analyze history, we discern that men's efforts to maintain sole authority and agency have been driven by a sense of vulnerability, revealing the delicate nature of their perspectives. the fear of relinquishing control over societal institutions and structures creates a palpable tension that spurs them to employ various mechanisms to safeguard their position. this apprehension stems from the realization that a shift towards a more equitable distribution of authority might lead to a loss of the privileges they have historically enjoyed.

the historical trajectory of men's actions underscores the lengths to which they have gone to preserve their perceived dominance. the mechanisms include the suppression of women's voices, relegating them to roles that reinforce traditional gender norms, and employing socio-cultural constructs that serve to legitimize their position of power. these actions, while aimed at asserting authority, reflect a deep-seated anxiety about the potential consequences of a more inclusive and egalitarian society.

according to jacquelyne campbell in 'misogyny and homicide of women', the fear of women emerged during the primitive times, when the mystery of conception and birth remained an unexplained part of human experience. throughout time, they found a way to cope and that is by trying to establish religious and societal efforts to make that facet of womanhood be a basis for the depreciation of female importance—leading to the subjugation of the female sex.

this then became the foundation of early greek that linked intellectualism, nature and power as inherently traditionally male; a concept which has been spoken in my earlier writings about patriarchal origins. it is because of this established ‘tradition’ that we now then see how this touched men’s imagination, they quickly accepted this concept to authority.

we find this in the explicit nature of both karl marx and friedrich engel’s theories that encompass the thoughts, "first oppressor–oppressed relation, the foundation of all other class and property relations'', which fundamentally means that the idea of an oppressor and the oppressed creates the effect social dynamics of those who have power and those who are deprived of it. the powerful controls and dominates the communities they dwell in terms of social hierarchies, class divisions, wealth, property and ownership patterns.

within the context we have, jacquelyne campbell means to explain that women are essentially being forced into these dynamics because of men’s insecurities driving them into laying the groundwork that prevents women from getting out of these social dynamics that were now designed to be occupied by men for men. as such, men would not have to fear their security being challenged by any sort of self-actualization of women and their own ambition.

just as much, the growth of machismo as a main theme of how men should behave and be in a patriarchal society becomes heavily cemented throughout time. machismo being ingrained in the system cements a way of life that is according to the text, ‘exalts strength and power, demands competition with and superiority over other men, glorifies violence, emphasizes virility, despises gentleness and expressing any emotion except anger and rage, and rigidly defines women as property, sexual objects, and subjects of male domination.’

and because of this growth of machismo and patriarchy side by side, misogyny becomes extremely violent and uncontrollable. because as we mentioned, men hate feeling deprived of authority and agency, even the mere feeling of losing it drives them crazy. or as one of the sources within the text surmises, ‘violence may be the most appropriate way to protect one’s honor, to show courage or conceal fear, especially fear of revealing weakness.’

female activists later coined the term ‘gynocide’ as part of the umbrella of systematic gender specific slaughter directed towards women. gyno is referring to women or females and cide to kill or cut. gynocide as defined by andrea dworkin is ‘the systematic crippling and/or killing of women by men.’ – meaning, that men have for generations created a system by which punishes or even slaughters women if they do not adhere to the status quo that is set by a patriarchal society that does not make room for women to have any sense of equity in the community or agency as a member of community.

this is exactly what happened to rhaenyra, to many other women in the narrative of power. they became victims of men’s uncontrollable fear of not having agency, because women were being given and taking their agency. women taking up space in a male dominated society and making something of their own felt like a threat to the order of things. hence, that anger and that fear that a woman deposes of that system as a whole in one full sweep. we have various women we can lay their own lives and tragedy akin to rhaenyra and her experience of such violence in the system.

one example of gynocide during this era was witch-burning, echoing rhaenyra's fiery demise. this tragedy befell countless women across ancient and medieval societies. the european witch hunts, spanning the late middle ages to the early modern era (15th to 18th centuries), stand as stark evidence. myriad individuals, predominantly women, faced accusations of witchcraft, culminating in trials, incarceration, and execution.

though not all accused witches suffered immolation, burning became a prevailing method of administering punishment to those found guilty of practicing witchcraft. these accusations and trials often derived from superstitions, fear, religious dogma, and societal tensions, rather than tangible evidence of sorcery. much of this bias, which unjustly targeted women, aligns with the gender-based paradigms discussed earlier.

the victims of these trials were usually marginalized figures—widows, elderly women, the impoverished, and those straying from societal norms. pinpointing an exact count of women immolated as witches varies by locale and era. nonetheless, estimates indicate that tens of thousands, including a considerable number of women, lost their lives as a consequence of these witchcraft accusations.

consider margaret aitken, emblematic of the injustices faced. amid the great scottish witch hunt of 1597 during james vi's reign, a period notorious for his treatise against witches linking them with 'ungodliness and the devil,' margaret faced judgment as a witch. coerced by torture and fear, she implicated other women as witches. driven by the dread of retribution from men, margaret unwittingly endangered fellow innocent women, leading to their agonizing execution by immolation. subsequently, margaret herself met the same fate, her coerced words turned against her despite their origin in fear and violence at the hands of men.

a parallel to rhaenyra's mutilation and demise emerges in the suffering of olympias, mother of alexander the great. olympias wielded agency not only as a woman but also in safeguarding her son's rule. mirroring male tactics, she employed violence to secure her interests. as she comprehended her grandson's impending loss of crown and life, olympias took action. thwarted by cassander, once an ally of alexander, who wrested power and orchestrated her defeat.

the steadfast loyalty of alexander's soldiers spared her mutilation, prompting cassander to manipulate those with resentment towards olympias. this culminated in her brutal stoning to death, along with the denial of burial rights. cassander's power consolidation entailed not just olympias' demise, but also the deaths of alexander the great's wife and child—individuals olympias sought to protect.

similarly, hypatia of alexandria, a revered philosopher renowned for her intellect, encountered a parallel fate to rhaenyra. her demise bore shocking brutality. entrapped and stripped, hypatia endured a savage mutilation orchestrated by men threatened by her influence. her eyes gouged, her body dismembered, and her remains desecrated through public display and burning. this atrocity emerged from fears that hypatia's reasoning and wisdom posed a challenge to power structures. her ability to engage with influential figures frustrated those seeking to maintain control, construing her intellect as an obstruction.

such stories, both historical and fictional, resonate with rhaenyra's tragic narrative, illustrating the pervasive patterns of violence and suppression that women have endured throughout history. much like rhaenyra's plight, these stories emerged from the grip of patriarchy that tightly held societies, coercing them to conform or face dire consequences. women often bore the brunt of this challenge, defying norms and striving for a chance at a life beyond being a mere historical footnote. their struggles were driven by the desire to seize agency, to transcend the constraints of their time.

these brave women dared to challenge a system that sought to confine them. they yearned for lives that extended beyond the shadows, desiring recognition and power that was so often denied to them. tragically, their aspirations were often met with brutal resistance, as men, threatened by the perceived erosion of their authority, resorted to oppressive tactics to maintain their control. this underpins the somber essence of women's enduring struggles – a tale that finds its origins in the disheartening attempts to curtail their rights.

these narratives, spanning diverse eras and cultures, intertwine with rhaenyra's story, reinforcing the unfortunate reality that the echoes of history often reverberate in similar patterns. while rhaenyra's narrative is a work of fiction, it continues to encapsulates the essence of the broader theme that resonates through the ages: the fight for agency, equality, and freedom, against the backdrop of entrenched gender biases. the memory lingers of the patriarchal butchery against women and we are still as many before us have, remember the harmony and the tune and proceed to remember and to fight against it.

#asoiaf #fire and blood #house of the dragon #asoiaf meta #fire and blood meta #house of the dragon meta #hotd #hotd meta #rhaenyra targaryen #medieval history #women in history

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frozenambiguity · 7 months

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Yes, I know that the content approved in the bilibili mvs is fandom-created and oriented. However, these contents, being part of the 3rd-anniversary festival, had to be reviewed and approved by someone in Hoyoverse.

That said, I have some thoughts about the "Light in the Abyss" video. Khaenri'ah rant after the read more!

Can I just start by saying that having Khaenri'ah depicted as a land warm, prosperous, and peaceful touches my heart? The technology is abundant and advanced, semi-sentient ( to our knowledge. to what extent that sentience is is yet to be determined ). That we already knew, but it was nice to have confirmation that the ruin guards, for example, were not machines created by Khaenri'ah only for war, as some sources in Genshin have stated and we have seen in a few quests.

I know that the information that the ruin guards were machines created with the purpose of doing other activities, such as gardening and other menial work, exists. That only further strengthens the idea shown in the video. However, I do recall debating said information with a few friends before ( who were from different parts of the world, and played the game in different languages ). They told me that, in other versions of the game, describing the ruin guards as "gardeners" was some type of analogy, and it could be interpreted as something else besides gardening --- in this case, related to war.

Take this information with a grain of salt though, because since I play the English version of the game, I lack the knowledge regarding the context of other versions and I cannot confirm the veracity of the statement itself. Still, I thought I would add it for curiosity's sake!

Of course, the ruin guards played their roles regarding war, too. It would be foolish to have the means and resources and not use them to defend a cause or belief. Still, it is nice to see that they were indeed part of society and well-integrated with human beings.

The fact that Khaenri'ah is referred to as a "dream" is interesting to me. Who is this narrator? What are their beliefs? Certainly, it is someone either Khaenri'ahn or someone who was there to see it all unfold with their own eyes. Most people in Teyvat have a distorted view of the land, and its history is either forgotten or completely tainted by the cataclysm and the abyss forces. Khaenri'ah was, and is, more than that. Even if we have come across certain factions in-game that give strength to that first argument.

It is also interesting to see Lumine summoned instead of arriving at Khaen on her own. Everyone seemed to have gathered to watch the spectacle of her arrival, common people and royalty included, so this visit did not happen by mere chance. They had to be waiting for her. The reasons are unclear, but we see that Lumine lived in Khaenri'ah for a long time before the disaster occurred. She experienced peace and prosperity before the cataclysm. In other words, they did not summon her as their salvation against probable corruption//abyss forces, but perhaps as something else, in a context prior to that. Something... more. Regardless, everyone is gathered to welcome her.

King Irmin's first appearance! On the left, we have Pierro, and on the right... Rhinedottir. Being so close to the king meant that she had a high position in the royal court and thus was highly regarded, even by the King himself. Also, we get to see baby Bedo's first appearance as well!

Now, these are an interesting couple of frames. They appear after the disaster has started. People are being corrupted and everything is blood red. However, let us analyze these frames a bit more. Because, at first, my guess was that the royal guards were arresting Rhinedottir for her creations and having unleashed abyss creatures. In a land so prosperous and advanced, science had gone too far.

However, don't they look... corrupted? Much like the version that we fight deep within the Chasm? And even the presence of the wolves --- so far they were not shown, so they were not from Khaenri'ah, even if they were created by Rhinedottir.

Just what, exactly, did Rhinedottir use to create these beings? It has to be more than Khemia itself, so perhaps she did start tampering with the 'forbidden knowledge, the forbidden power'. And that power turned against her. Because, if these were Khaenri'ahn guards ( fully conscious ), they would probably try to arrest her first and then conduct an investigation//trial. Rhinedottir was an important person with power within the kingdom. And yet... They raise their weapons against her. That indeed confirms that these "guards" are long gone.

And if we require further proof regarding their corruption, they are seen slaughtering innocents a little later in the video.

... ... ...

Now, THIS:

Is the true reason behind the creation of this post. There he is, ladies and gentlemen, Papa Alberich in the flesh. And this is so important.

I have mentioned in the past that I do not think Papa Alberich has any affiliation with the Abyss ( not a genuine one, at least ), and that he truly might represent a faction within Khaenri'ah that wishes to see the remains of Khaenri'ah respected and its people protected to the best of his capabilities ( even if that means committing the atrocity that is abandoning your child and having him play the role of a spy in another nation --- although he did so with remorse ).

The information we received in the Hidden Strife event simply fortifies the argument. Remember what Papa Alberich told Kaeya when he forced him to write sensitive information regarding Khaenri'ah and their lineage so that it would not be forgotten by the young child, only to command him to burn it all afterward:

"Remember always that it was the Alberich Clan, who did not have royal blood, who stepped in as regents when the strength of the one-eyed king Irmin failed. Though we could not restore Khaenri'ah to life, we of the Alberich Clan should lead lives as those who blaze like fire, rather than those who wallow in the embers."

This begs the question: what are Papa Alberich's true motives? Because he recognizes they have failed to restore Khaenri'ah as it was, but that does not mean he will not try to bring justice to his people. Maybe he is procuring a way to get them rid of the curse, maybe he is gathering survivors and leading them as their plans take form and unfold. Who knows?

On this note, I think there is a lot Kaeya has not revealed to the players as well. If he is a spy, then how is he conducting his investigation? Who is he reporting to? To what plans is he contributing?

If you are hoping to read content that supports the idea that Papa Alberich abandoned Kaeya, said "peace!", and left forever, you won't find it here.

If you're hoping to read content that supports the idea that Kaeya has completely forgotten and doesn't care about Khaenri'ah or his biological father, you won't find it here.

If Papa Alberich did not care about Kaeya and Kaeya did not care about his father, then why, during Weinlesefest, did "the wind" ---- which we all know was Venti --- bring him a message from his biological father?

The wind brought pleasant memories to all the citizens of Mondstadt. Everyone got an important message from a beloved person. Kaeya's could have been a Master Crepus voice line. Heck, even a Diluc's! But it wasn't. It was from his biological father. And that, friends, says plenty.

I truly believe Kaeya thinks far more frequently about his father and his heritage than we are led to believe. Even if he is thankful for the memories he made in Mondstadt and with the Ragnvindrs ( which is confirmed by the way he softly looks at the Dawn Winery, and at Diluc, by extent ).

But why was the message so sorrowful and remorseful? Well, because Papa Alberich did not want to abandon Kaeya. He probably did not see any other way to deal with what was happening. And as Kaeya told us before in the Caribert quest:

«Maybe my father left me in the peaceful land of Mondstadt for no other reason than simply to keep me alive... As well as ensuring I'd be safely cut off from... certain things. The thought that I might be able to actually live a happy life there must have been the icing on the cake».

Yes, that does not erase the impact Papa Alberich's decisions had and still have on Kaeya. It is insane to abandon a child and put so much responsibility on his shoulders. To spy and protect a slaughtered cursed nation by age 8...? Nonsense. But that does not mean he did not love Kaeya.

Back to the bilibili mv.

We can see the young man carrying a crown, so it is safe to believe that, by this point, King Irmin is nowhere to be seen anymore. Dead, quite possibly. And it is in this critical moment, in the middle of conflict, blood, and disaster, that the Alberich clan steps in as regents. We finally have a timeline.

But it is simply too late.

No one can escape the creatures and the demise they bring. Not the common people. Not the guards. Not even King Irmin himself, who sits on his royal seat with a sword on his chest. Now, I wonder if he was killed or if he killed himself, but that is another conspiracy theory I am cooking --- Don't mind the thought for now.

One last note regarding these events that I would like to focus on. The fact that Papa Alberich took over as regent during the cataclysm means that he was alive then, and is still alive today. Or, at least, up until the point he left Kaeya. That makes me itch a little about the date of Kaeya's birth, because there are two possible paths here. Either:

• Kaeya was born during the Cataclysm era, and something has happened that made him remain alive until current events ( the time traveling and the frozen in ice theories are fairly popular in the fandom, although I have no subjective opinion on them thus far ).

• Papa Alberich was also cursed with immortality due to the events that unfolded, and Kaeya was born way after the Cataclysm, seemingly ( emphasis on the word ) all right because his body was able to develop like a normal human being's. We still do not know how the curse has affected Kaeya in canon. And I think it is too much wishful thinking to believe he is not cursed at all and was able to deflect all that. We will find out more about it soon enough, hopefully.

Now. Back to the Cataclysm.

And there we see them, in all their glory. The Archons. Possibly Celestia's last resort to contain the disaster. They have finally descended to Khaenri'ah.

It is interesting to notice how they only came to aid Khaenri'ah once they started to feel their lands on the surface threatened, though. Perhaps this has to do with the belief that Khaenri'ah is a god-less land and thus they did not want to interfere, but it hurts to think that the Archons would simply sit idle ( although I do have the controversial opinion that they indeed did, and only acted when it was either fighting against the abyss or letting it devour the entire world ).

The Khaenri'ahn mechanisms that were fortunately not corrupted, however, still aid the archons in the fight against abyssal//corrupted beings while being controlled by Khaenri'ahns and Anfortas troupes. That was a nice touch. A much-needed collaboration between Gods and non-believers, who still unite against a common threat. This makes me have hope regarding the restoration of Khaenri'ah someday, and it being capable of living peacefully along with all other Teyvat nations once more ( although on vastly different terms, of course ).

Bonus: Caribert being cursed is such a sad scene...

This also dismantles the theory that Kaeya is Caribert//The Loom of Fate and that Clothar is his father, although I personally never agreed with it.

Overall, there are still so many questions left to answer, but one cannot deny the importance of this content, even if it is fan-made, because it makes the community reflect on many mysteries and unanswered questions.

TL DR --- I love Khaenri'ah. I love Papa Alberich. And I hope they do give Kaeya the treatment he deserves as a character. Because, regardless of his classification as a 4 star, he is going to end up becoming one of the most lore-relevant characters in Genshin Impact, if he gets the treatment he deserves.

PS: Make Kaeya a 5 star sometime, Hoyoverse. He deserves that sort of treatment.

#【 let me tell you a story | thoughts to be shared. 】#{{ in which i analyze the most recent mv light in the abyss }}#{{ and also update my thoughts in general about khaen; papa alberich and kaeya and make connections with other content --- }}#{{ and also give the PSA regarding the canon of this blog. lmao }}

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iammibbs · 2 months

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the strange kind of crux of all internet discourse is that its so easy to point to facts that support you even if they lack any context, and especially if you regard that context as refutable. its like impossible to distinguish good faith from bad faith arguments at a glance because everyone knows how to cite all their sources, regardless of the sources veracity. so it just kinda feels like im going crazy all the time.

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misschanandlerbong-3 · 6 months

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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I really appreciate that this is a time of year designated to spend time with family and engage in family traditions of meals shared together and community.

However. At the same time, and not discounting that. This is your annual reminder that the Thanksgiving origin stories we tell play a significant role in the propagandizing narrative of American innocence with regards to indigenous peoples.

This time of year, we often, in addition to spending time with family, do the ritual retelling of the "origin story" of Thanksgiving, whether this be kids learning in school about the first Thanksgiving between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag/Wôpanâak peoples, watching the Charlie Brown special retelling this, or dressing up as pilgrims and Indians. This narrative, regardless of its veracity or attention to the surrounding context, is often one of the only narratives we tell about American colonies and indigenous peoples. Its dominance in our collective imagination is reinforced by our ritual retelling of it every year. And it does this in the relative scarcity of narratives about the horrors American colonists inflected upon indigenous peoples as they wiped out large swaths of indigenous people through violence and disease, not to mention various forms of gendered violence.

I want to emphasize that it is the lack of these narratives of the violence Americans inflicted (and continue to inflict) upon Native Americans, in combination with the dominance of the Thanksgiving narrative, that contribute to a continuing imagining of America as innocent, as not owing indigenous peoples reparations as well as an end to violence and recognition of sovereignty.

And this trope of American innocence is not limited to our relation to indigenous peoples. It comes up again when we talk about slavery and African Americans (see, for example, the resistance to The 1619 Project, which was attempting to relieve the narrative scarcity around the horrors of slavery). It comes up again when we talk about Asian Americans the specific forms of racist violence that America has always subjected them to (from the treatment of Asian immigrants working on railways to the Japanese detention camps of WWII to the violence visited upon Asian Americans during Covid). And so much more.

And this narrative of American innocence is especially reinforced by trying to put temporal distance between the oppression Americans acknowledge and us now. For example, when people respond to BLM or demands for reparations with "but that was in the past, get over it." Or the continual rhetorical positioning of indigenous peoples as "ancient" or as not continuing to struggle for existence and thriving.

And we see it again in the US's respond to the mass genocide of Palestinian civilians by the state of Israel.

As I said at the beginning, I appreciate Thanksgiving as a time to come together with family and participate in family traditions. But I can simultaneously recognize that Thanksgiving and the narratives we tell around it are part and parcel to the, I repeat, propagandizing narrative of American innocence, which serves to legitimize the continuing oppression of people of color, indigenous peoples, and many other minority populations in the US, as well as abroad.

I highly, highly encourage you to:

(i) read up a bit on these attempts to tell other stories countering the trope of American innocence (for example, Viet Than Nguyen's The Sympathizer, or the 1619 Project, or Dorothy Roberts's Fatal Invention, or Kim Tallbear's Native American DNA, or Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's As We Have Always Done, or Nesrine Malik's We Need New Stories, and so many others)

(ii) support indigenous groups like the NDN collective, and educate yourself on the indigenous peoples who lived and continue to live in your area (so, for Pittsburgh, look into the Council of the Three Rivers American Indian Center)

(iii) learn what indigenous groups are actually asking for, for example the NDN collective's statement concerning Palestine, or educating yourself on what demands for "sovereignty" mean for indigenous peoples in the US

But I also encourage you to enjoy your time with family this holiday! It's a special time that I'm glad the institutions of America give us time for

#thanksgiving #indigineous people #American innocence #colonialism #narrative #also go listen to Intersectionality Matters #such a good podcast #indigenous peoples day #we need new stories #also love Dorothy Roberts we Stan

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spectershaped · 9 months

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I’ve recently been thinking about the concept of “unreliable narrators” and unreliable information in storytelling more generally (as one does when one reads Umineko, I guess)

Sometimes, you’ll hear/read somebody say that audiences often forget that characters can just brazenly lie and be grossly mistaken about something; in a way, that’s sort of connected to the idea that some audiences will too easily assume that a protagonist and/or sympathetic character’s actions and thoughts are meant to reflect the author’s own ideas of morality - which is an observation on audiences I think has its merits but sometimes loses the plot a bit (pun not intended but welcome) in its own slightly judgmental bent

Anyway, regarding the original point, one issue I feel is crucial to point out is that information about a story’s elements, and the evalution of its veracity, exists both inside and outside the text. In real life, there are ways we can do our own digging to ascertain, to whatever extent we can, whether something claimed is true or false; inside a tale, however, we’re limited - we can only go were the narration takes us and we can only perceive what it conveys to us. Because a story is made up, we can’t really “verify” anything except by cross-examining the text through either its internal logic or through the world outside of it. Sniffing out a character’s claims’ trustworthiness isn’t that easy a task!

For example, if a character in the Land of Oz books claims that mammals and birds from outside can talk in Oz but not reptiles, we can’t make much of a guess either way about whether it’s true unless we see some snake or iguana...struggle to vocalize, I guess? (And then we kinda get into some sort of worldbuilding equivalent of the Gavagai problem of semiotics.) Oz is obviously a made-up story about a made-up place, so it feels pretty impractical, on its face, to doubt this particular information - and writers themselves are hardly immune to forgetting minor details and contradicting themselves, so there’s no guarantee that a small mistake is meant to signal a character’s unreliability about a fictional fact!

Regarding an example of the second kind: a character in a story can have their ignorance or unreliability signaled through the relaying of a real-world fact that the reader ideally knows is incorrect, like when Dale or Peggy from King of the Hill boldly state something blatantly false as a joke about their paranoia/arrogance. Naturally, this works better in stories that can be assumed to take place in some facsimile of our own world; in ASOUE, you can’t really claim that characters talking about “the duchess of Winnipeg” or “the king of Arizona” or whether or not horseradish can counteract a certain species of fungus are liars or mistaken, because the setting is deliberately written in this very uncanny, exaggerated fashion

With these ideas out of the way, though, there’s one more point I feel should be made about unreliable characters/narrators: all fictional characters exist in a context that is, by definition, manufactured - which is to say, untrue. Both the story and its elements exist to convey and reflect a reality or experience thereof that is perceived by the writer. If you are reading a novel and, in the last page, a character says “by the way, I made all this up! gotcha!”, the logical response ought to be “no shit, sherlock! it’s fiction!”; but the story exists as a story that you are reading, and, in that context, it’s conveying something to you. A journalist theoretically has the moral imperative to tell you how something happened regardless of whatever sort of meaning you can impute onto it; a storyteller has no obligation to delegate the task of narration to some unreliable jabroni unless you want to make the story about said jabroni and the way they experience the world to some extent - and that’s still a story someone is choosing to tell a certain way

#vi mumbles #the vi digest #wow this was a lotta words huh

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raydaug · 3 years

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The Moon is Very Beautiful Tonight - The Love Language of the Tower of Doors

Natsume Soseki (1867 - 1916) was a Meiji era novelist and is widely regarded as one of, if not the most important and influential novelist in modern Japanese history. So prominent is Natsume’s place in Japanese history and culture that Natsume’s portrait was featured on the 1000 yen note for twenty years, from 1984 to 2004.

Prior to becoming a writer, Natsume was a teacher, first at Matsuyama MIddle School, which would serve as inspiration for one of his most famous novels, 坊っちゃん (Botchan), and then Fifth High School in Kumamoto.

In 1900, he was sent by the Japanese Government to study English literature in Great Britain. By all accounts, he did not enjoy his time studying abroad. Of his time spent at University Collect London, Natsume wrote; “The two years I spent in London were the most unpleasant years in my life. Among English gentlemen I lived in misery, like a poor dog that had strayed among a pack of wolves.”

However much he may have disdained it, his time in Britain was hugely influential to Natsume and his works. It engendered in him a great deal of skepticism towards the rapid Westernization of Japan. The tensions between modern Western culture and traditional Japanese sensibilities would become a recurring theme in his writings.

Natsume Soseki (1867 - 1916)

After returning to Japan in 1903 but before resigning to become a full time writer in 1907, Natsume was a professor of English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. While teaching one day, Natsume overheard some of his students struggling to translate the phrase “I love you” from English into Japanese. The students settled on 我君を愛す (I love you), but Natsume took issue with the use of 愛す (aisu - love), as he felt that stating one’s feelings that openly and directly was too Western and wasn’t in keeping with Japanese culture, or what he thought Japanese culture should be.

Instead, he suggested that “I love you” should be translated as 月が綺麗ですね (the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?). He felt that this phrase preserved the indirect, stoic nature of Japanese, as the the word for “moon” (月 - tsuki) and “like” (好き - suki) both sound the same when spoken out loud. This creates a double meaning for the phrase, stating one’s affection by hiding it in plain sight.

Or so the story goes. Records corroborating this tale are sparse, with some of them popping up one hundred years or more after Natsume’s death. The exact phrasing of the translation also changes depending on the telling, with some versions saying that Natsume translated “I love you” to 今夜は月がとても青い (The moon is very blue tonight).

Regardless of the veracity, the story of Natsume’s translation became part of the cultural consciousness of Japan. In 1955, enka singer Tsuzuko Sugawara released the song 月がとっても青いから (“Since the Moon is so Blue”) and 2017 saw the release of the romance anime 月がきれい (As the Moon, So Beautiful).

“If French is the language of love, then Japanese is the language of awkward, and roundabout expressions like this one are common throughout.” Translator and editor Rei Miyasaka told me in a brief correspondence we had on the subject. Among other things, Miyasaka worked as a translator on the aforementioned As the Moon, So Beautiful anime series. “The story of Natsume’s translation, whether factual or not, is passed down essentially as a useful parable. It demonstrates a difference between Western and Japanese mannerisms.”

The Tower of Doors gamble is the apotheosis of Sayaka’s character arc and the arc of her and Kirari’s relationship. It comes when both are at their most uncertain about the other and the relationship they have, and the moon plays a pivotal role in the outcome of the gamble.

Despite moving though the tower in a way that she thought was perfect, Sayaka still loses the gamble. When Yumeko begins to explain to a shellshocked Sayaka how she managed to beat her, she says this:

今夜は月がとっても綺麗ですね。 The moon is very beautiful tonight, isn't it?

“The phrase is definitely well-known in Japan. “ Miyasaka says. “...when this particular phrase is referenced in literature or pop culture, it’s usually with either a tacit or explicit nod to the Natsume Soseki story, usually in a discussion of Japanese people’s awkwardness and/or aesthetic sensibilities.”

Yumeko doesn’t quite say the famous line exactly here. She adds とっても (very) and 今夜 (tonight) to it. I believe this was an intentional deviation, for two reasons. One, this is not Yumeko’s confession, she is instead calling attention to the Tower of Doors and Kirari’s intentions. And two, changing the line draws attention to what remains the same. The kanji used to describe the moon, 綺麗 (beautiful), shares the same first character as is used in Kirari’s name (綺羅莉), drawing a connection to Kirari and the moon.

Later in her explanation, Yumeko drops any pretense of subtlety, saying:

このギャンブルのためだけに「扉の塔」は回転する！ The "Tower of Doors" rotates just for this gamble!) なんて馬鹿らしくて。 How silly/absurd/ridiculous! なんて愛らしくて。 How charming/adorable/lovely! なんてロマンテックなんでしょう！ How romantic!

The precise word Yumeko uses to describe the romanticism of the Tower of Doors is ロマンテック, which is the katakana for the english word “romantic.” Katakana is a sort of phonetic way of writing in Japanese that’s used in several different ways, including foreign loan words and emphasis, similar to italics in English. Yumeko is stressing heavily and unambiguously the romantic nature of the Tower of Doors.

When a furious and dumbstruck Sayaka retorts that Yumeko’s logic makes no sense and that the Kirari may have made the Tower rotate for no reason, both Yumeko and Kirari rebuff her:

Yumeko: まさか No way! そんなこと考えもしませんでしたよ。ここまで大掛かりな仕掛けを作っておいてギャンブルに使わないなんて。 I didn't even think about that. You can't make such a large-scale device/mechanism/gadget and not use it for gambling.

Kirari: 買い被りよ、清華。私もそこまで酔狂ではないわ。 You give me too much credit. I'm not that capricious/eccentric.

Here, Yumeko asserts, and Kirari confirms, the intentionality of the design behind the Tower of Doors. Kirari designed the Tower with the intent that the moon would reveal its secret.

Yumeko won the Tower of Doors because she figured out the Tower’s secret. But that secret wasn’t that it rotated and that you could move from the bottom to top floor in one move. The key to the Tower was understanding Kirari’s intent when she designed it. That the Tower of Doors is a love letter to Sayaka, designed to capitalize on all of her strength in logic and reasoning, but with it’s own illogical twist layered on to.

Sayaka failed to understand this for the same reason everyone loses to Yumeko; they become so absorbed in beating Yumeko and losing themselves in the gamble that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Sayaka was so focused on Yumeko that she failed to see the key to understanding the Tower and the symbol of Kirari’s affection for her; the moon. But it doesn’t matter in the end. Even though Sayaka lost the gamble, Kirari and Sayaka accept one another, and are brought closer, because, as Yumeko puts it, “You can’t prohibit someone from having feelings for someone else.”

“...Japanese people love to euphemize and beat around the bush.” Miyasaka says. “...people tend not to like saying ‘I love you’ because people find it to be too forward...So quotes like this one [the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?] might come up naturally when two people are sharing a moment...one should go no further than to express that, despite the stoicism expected of them by the other people around them, they feel safe exposing their sentimentality to this person, and that hence they love them.”

Translation is more of an art than a science. There’s no equation that you can plug words and phrases into and have them converted cleanly into any other language because words are more than dictionary definitions.

To translate something from one language to another while still preserving meaning requires a firm grasp not only of the mechanics of both languages, but also the cultural vocabularies of the languages as well. But even then, meaning can still be lost because the cultural contexts and codes that inform language exist outside of the words.

The language of love that permeates the Tower of Doors is something that sadly gets, not just lost, but abandoned in translation from Japanese to English, and ends up going unnoticed, like Sayaka and the moon.

CLICK HERE FOR A TANGENT ABOUT KAKEGURUI’S OFFICIAL ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

Massive, massive shoutout to @castleoflions for doing just as much, if not more work than I did on this in providing me with the manga pages as well as helping me with the Japanese. Also, thank you so much to Rei Miyasaka for offering me some of his time and helping me with the cultural aspects of this piece.

#kakegurui #kakegurui xx #momobami kirari #kirari momobami #Igarashi Sayaka #sayaka igarashi #kirasaya #translation #natsume soseki

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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Great Albums is back for a third time! This week, we discuss Dazzle Ships, the avant-garde masterpiece that was so infamously weird, it almost “sank” the pop career of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Or did it? As usual, you can find a full transcript of the video under the break, if you’d like to read it instead.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. Today, I’ll be talking about an album that many would consider OMD’s best, and many would consider the last great album they ever made: 1983’s Dazzle Ships, their fourth studio LP. It has a reputation that precedes it, as a strange, experimental, and avant-garde album. And I can’t argue with that too much, when it has tracks that sound like "ABC Auto-Industry."

The most obvious thing one can say about Dazzle Ships is that it’s dense and rich with samples. You’ll hear found sounds ranging from a “Speak and Spell” toy to a radio broadcast from Czechoslovakia. It’s a magpie’s nest constructed of garbage and baubles, collage-like and conscientiously artificial. And OMD’s Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey managed to make it before sampling became easier and hence more widespread later in the 1980s, thanks to advancements in digital technology. In its own day, it was, famously, a huge flop, baffling even the critics, which makes it tempting to argue that the world simply wasn’t ready for it. Popular legend says that Humphreys and McCluskey were essentially forced to make increasingly soft, pop-oriented music for years afterward, usually at the hands of their label’s higher-ups.

Is that story really true? Well, I don’t know, and I’m not sure if anybody really does. But I think it’s important that we entertain some doubt. Regardless of its actual veracity, this legend is offering us a simplistic narrative of art and capital butting heads, and one that we see repeated all too often in music journalism. It’s a story that expects us to believe that experimental music is good by default, and the natural goal of music and all the people who make it--and, conversely, that accessible music is bad, and anyone who writes a song you can dance to is always after profit, never craft.

Ultimately, though, the most important reason why I’m asking you to leave this question at the gate is that it’s simply a less interesting way to think about art. What I think is truly ingenious about OMD is their ability to combine a pop sensibility with that bleeding-edge experimentation, and vice versa. I don’t think of Dazzle Ships as just an inscrutable, esoteric musical ready-made, but rather something capable of animating and enriching a bunch of otherwise mundane sounds. A word I might use for it is "challenging," because it isn't simply off-putting--it has a certain charm that invites you to stick around and work through it, and you don't feel like it's a waste of your time. I think the underlying pop DNA offered by Dazzle Ships is a big part of that.

In “Genetic Engineering,” the samples from that Speak & Spell are contrasted with a more traditional chorus, which rises above the chaos, stirring and anthemic. It’s a song full of friction, not only between these musical ideas, but in ideas about technology and our future. Like many great works of electronic music, especially earlier in its history, Dazzle Ships is deeply concerned with science and technology, and the ways they’ve structured our world. These guys wrote “Enola Gay” a few years earlier, sure, but there’s much more than Luddite, dystopian thinking here! Dazzle Ships walks a tightrope between romantic adoration of the promise of a better tomorrow, and the tempered uncertainty we’re forced to develop, when we witness the devastation our most horrifying inventions have wrought already. Something that helps sell the former is the motif of childhood: in addition to the Speak & Spell, “Genetic Engineering” also features a children’s toy piano, and prominently references “children” in its lyrics. And “Telegraph,” the album’s other single, sees fit to reference “Daddy.”

Touches like these, and the centering of not-so-new technologies like telegraphy and radio, carry us backward in time. Dazzle Ships has a sense of nostalgia for the technological explosion of the Midcentury, when household technologies were improving in ways that saved time and labour, and faith in “better living through science” was high. It’s not a wistful or introspective nostalgia, but rather one that taps into the bustling excitement of living through that era. That retro styling helps us situate ourselves in a childlike mindset: optimistic, but somewhat naive. Children are highly imaginative, and become enthralled with possibility, but don’t always understand every implication their actions have.

But, as I said, “Telegraph” and “Genetic Engineering” were the album’s singles; the typical track on *Dazzle Ships* sounds more like “ABC Auto-Industry.” The track listing is structured such that these more conventional songs are surrounded by briefer, and more abrasive, intrusions. They become signals in the noise, as though we’re listening to them on the radio--or ships, rising above some stormy seas. Several tracks, such as “International,” also feature a more dissonant intro, on top of that, crowding their main melodies inward.

Over the years, many critics have been quick to contrast Dazzle Ships with OMD’s other albums, but I actually think it has a lot in common with their preceding LP, 1981’s Architecture & Morality, and seems to me to flow naturally from the direction the band had already been going in. Architecture & Morality is a lively mix, with moody instrumentals like “Sealand,” guitar-driven numbers like “The New Stone Age,” and catchy, intuitive pop songs like “Souvenir.” Architecture and Morality proved to be their most successful album, when its title track sounds like this. I fail to see how it’s tremendously different than the title track of Dazzle Ships, which leads us on a harrowing sea chase, with radar pings quickly closing in.

That nautical theme is a great segue to discuss the album’s visual motif. Like all of OMD's first five albums, its sleeve was designed by Peter Saville, most famous for his stunning work for New Order. The cover and title were inspired by a painting Saville had seen, Edward Wadsworth’s *Dazzle Ships in Drydock at Liverpool,* which portrays WWI warships painted in striking, zebra-like geometric patterns. These sharply contrasting “razzle dazzle” designs weren’t “camouflage,” but rather served to confuse enemy forces’ attempts to track them, and predict their motions. Dazzle ships were killing machines that fought dirty...and they were also beautiful. It’s a potent, complex symbol, and it’s a natural fit for an album that’s also capricious, perplexing, and captivating in its uniquely modern terror. Saville’s sleeve design features both a die-cut design as well as a gatefold; peeking through the cover’s “portholes” reveals the interior, where we find a map of the world, divided by time zones. It’s yet another reminder of how technology has reshaped the planet, connecting the human race while also creating divisions.

Earlier, I argued that Dazzle Ships isn’t that different from OMD’s preceding LP, and I’d also suggest that their follow-ups to it aren’t all that different, either. It’s easy to see the influence of Dazzle Ships on their most recent work, made after reforming the group in the late 00s, and informed by the critical re-evaluation and cult acclaim of their alleged masterpiece. But even in the 80s, they basically continued the pattern of layering easy to love, “obvious single choice” tracks alongside more experimental, sample-heavy ones. Compare the title track of their sixth LP, 1985's *Crush.*

Even the greatest of pop hitmakers can't maintain a streak in the charts forever--it's not the nature of mainstream pop charts. Not even in the 1980s, when you could get away with quite a lot of electronic weirdness...at least for a while. Looking back and listening to "Maid of Orleans," it's almost hard to believe it was one of OMD's biggest hits. Is it really less weird than something like "Telegraph"? Perhaps they had simply reached the end of their imperial phase...whether they really had that stern talking-to or not.

It's not so much that Dazzle Ships isn't weird, so much as it is foreseeable that a nerdy, left-of-center band like OMD would have come up with it. Dazzle Ships IS excellent--it’s a Great Album! But it's good enough that I think it deserves to be heard and valued on its own terms. The album is too goddamn good--too compelling, too spell-binding--to be reduced to "that one album the plebs were too dumb to really get." I'm not clearing the air because I think this album is overrated, but because I think it deserves better, deeper discourse than it gets. A truly great album is great whether it sells or it doesn't, right? My advice is to never let art intimidate you, no matter how obtuse people say it is. Send your ship on that plunge into the dark waters of the unknown--you might find something beautiful.

That said...my favourite track overall is “Radio Waves,” an irresistibly fun cut that could easily have become a third single. Since “Genetic Engineering” and “Telegraph” live on side one of the record, “Radio Waves” is really the only “reprieve” we get on side two, smack in its middle. It really stands out, in context--almost like the opposite of how a more conventional album might have one out-there track that catches you off guard. Aside from all of that, though, the song also stands perfectly well alone. I have a real soft spot for music about music, how it’s made and transmitted, and “Radio Waves” is simply one hell of a ride.

Thanks for reading!

#great albums #music #omd #orchestral manoeuvres in the dark #album review #album reviews #dazzle ships #peter saville

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lightholme · 3 years

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That's a great way to describe the nature of human nature. A lot of our instincts stem from useful shortcuts like that.

Human brains didn't evolve to handle the vast interconnectivity, complexity, and nuance of the modern world. Hell, the brain can't even really handle more than ~150 meaningful personal connections.

We operate deeply by back-of-the-napkin heuristics that solve our early evolutionary problems, but they're not very accurate. It's easier to get it right 70% of the time in one second than it is to get it right 100% of the time in thirty seconds. When a snowball (or lion) is flying at your face, moving at all is better than sitting around while you verify the threat's trajectory precisely.

Unfortunately, our tendency to align with those around us (a convenient heuristic sometimes still) isn't the sole problem here.

Some of these heuristics/instincts are naturally buffered. For example, one might imagine that the tendency (or inevitability) for people to bifurcate and fracture larger groups into less-than-150 sized groups is enough to minimize the problem, but just because it feels fine doesn't mean the result is fine. We form tribes on the spot for all sorts of reasons. Team A, Team B. My group, your group. Soccer teams, military platoons. Clades of styles and habits bloom and wither like algae tides. As a species, we crave that aspect of tribalism so deeply that sometimes a well placed "us" and a weaseled in "them" is enough to draw the lines that become a riot. This tendency can be positive sometimes (sometimes), sure.

What about our tendency to over-value sugar in a world where calories are no longer worth storing? That is a known-and-visible problem, isn't it? And how about the fact that a single mouse-click can show you more naked ladies than one's ancestors saw in their entire life - multiples more, in fact? It seems obvious that distorting such critically important evolutionary impulses miiiiight muddy the waters a bit even if we allow ourselves to believe that we handle it fine, that all is well, or that it's even somehow ideal.

Even these examples of specific and "obvious" discrepancies between our bioevolutionary hardware and our socio-technological elevation is a small enough as an idea to share with a stranger over a beer. The Real Heavy Shit™ is so unwieldy that a scientist-philosopher would struggle to gaze at directly, let alone transmit to others in a format smaller than a series of structured TedTalks.

The reasons for the issues we're facing (and in a sense have always faced) are myriad, but in recent times I think a new dynamic has been born, magnified, then bootstrapped itself into life beneath our notice - all within a single human generation. Information has become a danger to us. Any information. It is an emergent property that rises from the quasi-computational substrate of human social interaction.

Problem: When the complexity of an idea rises above the level of one's ability to conceptualize the 'entire thing' at once, we have to take the parts we can't see on faith.

With the proper framework, foundation, and a well-trained instinct this isn't an entirely disruptive phenomenon - it's even obvious and expected, right? One cannot hold the entire subject of 'science' in their head at one time. One cannot even hold the entirety of 'geology'. And even if one could, you'd be unable to truly understand geologic mechanisms without understanding that the elements that make all those fancy rocks came from dynamics that stem from astrophysics.

These things cannot be held, but they can be traced and compared and tested (if someone cares to do so in the first place). Even then, misconceptions easily bloom like cancers in the absence of an effort to validate.

Now consider the idea of an informational construct that is not so easily proven by mere effort and time. Imagine one that isn't built specifically to avoid misconception like science is. (which - unfortunately - still results in vast misconceptions by layman and scientist alike). When we cannot hold an idea in our head from start-to-finish, we also cannot verify that it exists distinct from itself at all. One can't tell a snake from an ouroborous. And unless you have something to compare it to, reference it against, the difference between a cancer and an organ is negligible. It's only in the context of an organism that a cancer is even harmful, even deadly. A cancerous tumor, viewed in a vacuum, is - for lack of a better term - successful as fuck at what it's doing... Perpetuating itself at all costs, regardless of benefit, regardless of consequence.

Ideas are not just informational nuggets. They're active, living systems which 'compete' not unlike living creatures do through the rules of their unique brand of quasi-evolutionary pressures. Ideas are both organs and cancers. And when billions of thinking beings are unable to easily determine the difference between an organ and a cancer, well... It's not so difficult to imagine that problems might arise.

To the elucidated or aware, it's horrifying to see someone running around trying to share a poison with others, claiming it to be something it is not. It's confusing to imagine how such a delusion can not only exist at all, but to spread with a veracity greater - far greater - than Real Deal truths. I will admit that part of that is because these sort of ideas empower the thinker. Real truths are either boring or frightening (or both). Aliens and crystals, gods and secret societies are so much more comforting than acknowledging that nobody is really at the wheel, that society is a ship in a storm rocked by systems - hydrodynamics, meteorological - far too complex to grasp, far too large to be defeated by comparatively meek human drives.

There's certainly more than one reason that someone interested in particular subjects (flat earth, for example) tend to also be interested in toxic conservative politics, religion, ancient aliens, so on. Many of these sort of meme-laden ideas are fundamentally incompatible with each other, yet you commonly find them in the same place. I personally use invented terms like "psychological antivirus/firewalls" since the concept of common sense alone doesn't have the load-bearing capacity to address this level of metastasized information.

Again -- A cancer is successful in a vacuum. It is optimized for relentless growth in absence of both usefulness and sustainability. Modern pressures (namely a social density vastly greater than what our brains can handle and the fast-paced war-for-attention nature of the internet) are now selecting ideas not for value or consistency, but transmissability.

Close your eyes and apply this metaphor to the rest of the world. Taste the horror of this truth, then consider that the issue can barely be described at all, let alone compressed down and shared to the world like some sort of hotfix. Following the metaphor, it'd be like writing a well-worded essay to convince your immune system to recognize an autoimmune disorder. You can't "Hey, bud. We need to have a talk." to a virus.

Christ, we can't even convince people to vaccinate against an actual virus that can be seen and verified as both real and harmful. This informational plague of idea-viruses is not only not-visible, hidden by abstraction, too recent to be intuitive, too large to even be named - some are seen by its victims as positive, absolute, worthy of defending with one's life even as one denies it exists at all.

Unfortunately, even this is just one of the many reasons why/how the modern world is simply too much for the smart apes known as homo sapiens.

TL;DR - Modern pressures (namely a social density vastly greater than what our brains can handle and the fast-paced war-for-attention nature of the internet) are now selecting ideas not for value or consistency, but transmissability. Some people are more ideal as carriers and vectors than others, but most of us have felt the sensation of being drawn into something or slowly waking up from a stupor we were born into.

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anthropologist-on-the-loose · 5 years

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What I mean when I use the word mythology

I wrote this bit over two years ago on my first blog @sassyminnesotan. I didn't want to directly reblog it - there are parts I wanted to update (I've learned a lot in two years) - but I feel the general sentiment is still important and relevant to this blog. (original post)

I don’t use this word in quite the same way most people do. In general, the word ‘mythology’ is equated mostly with non-Abrahamic belief systems. Some of the classic images of mythology are of course the ancient Greek, Nordic, and Egyptian religions. However, we rarely hear the word mythology in relation to certain religions, and in my area of the world, especially in relation to Christianity.

This is in part because ‘mythology’ has become somewhat synonymous with ‘not true’ or ‘folklore’ or ‘fairytale’. By using the phrase “Christian mythology” people assume that I am dismissing Christian beliefs out of hand, putting Biblical stories in the same category of ‘clearly not true' as ancient Greek mythology (as seen from a Christian viewpoint). But whether the stories are true or not is beside the point, as the definition of mythology is not “made up stories about gods”. Mythologies are the collections of stories surrounding a particular belief system, regardless of their veracity.

Every religion has their own mythology. Religion consists of the beliefs and practices, the traditions and the things that must be done in the name of a higher power. Mythology gives us the reasons for these practices. To use a Christian example, the religious purpose of the ritual of Holy Communion is to commemorate Jesus Christ (along with other ritual meanings, depending on the sect). The mythology of Communion is the story of the Last Supper. Once again, I’d like to stress that using ‘mythology’ does not give the story any more or less credibility. In this case it simply refers to the story behind a religious practice.

It can also be used in secular contexts as well. Probably the easiest secular myth to point out (for Americans) is the story of the First Thanksgiving. It is a story that gets retold time and again, whether truthful or not, that explains why we participate in a particular ritual (in this case, a giant harvest feast). Sure, it may be based on a historical event, but for many people its significance as a parable on the benefits of working together is more important than its historical accuracy. (And yes, I loathe this particular mythology. But it serves to illustrate the point.)

I started using the word mythology more liberally when I grew tired of tip-toeing around the phrase in philosophical and academic discussions on the nature of belief. I didn't even realize I was using it at first; the word just fit what I was trying to convey. The fact that we are perfectly willing to call the beliefs of other people myths while refusing to use it to describe our started to feel, well, racist. Surprise.

tl;dr Mythology is the set of stories surrounding a culture or belief system, and contains no inherent commentary on the truthfulness of said stories.

So yeah. That’s the long and short of how I use the word mythology.

#myth #religion #christianity #racism #colonialism #mythology #in which i say things

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changemyessaywords475 · 4 years

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college essay help

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Mastering The “Why This College?” Essay

Mastering The “Why This College?” Essay If a school uses an admissions committee the number could leap to a few or extra. In any case, what YOU can management is how well your essay describes who you're and provides the admissions person a chance to see things in you that shall be an asset to the school. Based on my experience, we learn every essay at the institutions have been I served. Typically, purposes received two reads and a third if the selections had been cut up. Let’s look deeper into the four major causes that colleges require essays as part of the application course of to see why they’re price your time and a focus. You may be used to delivering your writing assignments on a page-restrict basis. While some schools provide page limits for their faculty essays, most use a word limit instead. This makes certain there's a standard size for all of the essays that a college receives, regardless of formatting or font. However, this received’t considerably have an effect on your massive-picture timeline, since most schools open up their functions around the same time. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's finest admissions consulting service. We mix world-class admissions counselors with our information-pushed, proprietary admissions methods. We've overseen 1000's of scholars get into their best choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. I dislike giving guidelines or formulation to students in relation to college writing as a result of practically each rule or formulation has both weaknesses and exceptions. But a common guideline for the paragraphs in your faculty essays is that they should be about 1/three to 1/2 of a page. Any longer, and likelihood is good that you've more than one primary concept. In which case, you should find the opposite secondary major ideas and give them their own paragraphs. One problem of college applications is the variability from college to high school. The essay is meant to be reflective of the STUDENT, not the parent, and admissions reps are hoping to get a better image of the applicant’s individuality and distinctive attributes. It is very easy for a rep to recognize an essay that has been coached someone apart from the coed. So if a faculty requires an essay it is VERY more likely to be learn. If a college has a writing section in their supplement to the Common Application you can rest assured that ALL of that writing is evaluated by admissions officers. Do your greatest and assume that it WILL be learn and that it WILL have a bearing on your admission chances. There is no approach to decide a typical scenario concerning a university’s methodology for reviewing purposes. In all cases at least one admissions officer will take a look at your essay. If you have been to take bets on the share of essays learn by school admissions personnel, I’d guess that it would be within the excessive 90’s. An essay is a vital a part of sharing who you are with a college. With increased competition for admission, the essay has turn out to be an necessary think about consideration of your admissibility to a school. Having another person proofread an applicant’s essay is okay—any author can profit from another set of eyes that may choose up a typo or a minor grammar mistake. However, true editing begins to move into the substantive writing course of and ultimately the author of the faculty essay ought to be the applicant. Too much help–even from parents– however properly intentioned, serves to undermine the method and lift questions concerning the legitimacy and integrity of the entire application. Yes, the stakes can seem excessive, but it is in the end the applicant’s document and work that is being evaluated and it should be theirs that is submitted as well. Each school chooses how students should apply, when its software opens, and, after all, its final software deadline . This implies that every school you apply to most likely will likely have totally different dates and deadlines that you should track. The number of reads and the process for reviewing software essays vary from faculty to college. Among the top 250, I know my colleagues review essays as a result of some are moved to “examine” authenticity or to contact the varsity supply to verify veracity of the context as offered by the scholar. Unfortunately, too many cooks spoil the pot, so to talk…and kids easily get confused when parents, English lecturers, their counselor, and their friends all have different recommendation. Students ought to familiarize themselves with the campuses to which they're applying , perceive the immediate, and reply from the center. An effective school essay helps an admissions officer get to know you in ways that an utility cannot. And most significantly, it gives them a cause to choose you as a kind of college students that they'll deliver to committee to make a case for admission. Still not convinced that your essays are necessary?

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funkymbtifiction · 7 years

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INTJ: Why Bother with History?

SUBMITTED by Charlie ( leotes )

You’re out of school and part of working adult world. You got bills and loans to pay and most news are just cheesy click-bait or depressing. Present and future concerns dominate your attention. So why bother with the past? Its just the forced memorization of dates and dead folks, right?

Hell no.

You, dear reader, are already a part of living history. Past, present, future - it’s all just one stream of consciousness: your own and of the human collective. We just lack the omniscience and sophisticated tools (*cough*time-machine*cough*) to comprehend and track all these linkages. So if history is so darn complicated, why study it then?

Here’s three reasons why I find studying history to be useful (from an INTJ perspective):

Like Your Literature Class, History Offers Its Own Lessons To Learn From. Everybody gets different personal interpretations from fiction. History is no different. I dare you to pick any facet of history that interests you. Study it. Draw personal connections. The archetypal patterns of human nature and relevant life lessons will pop out at you.

Interested in war strategies? Funny how some strategies parallel how your workplace operates. Are you a writer and want audiences to feel certain ways? Study the rhetoric and structure of past writers and speakers you admire. Want to strengthen yourself against emotional manipulation? One historical pattern is world leaders using a society’s fear, following a national disaster, to push policies that would otherwise be unpopular/inhumane at the time. Apply this principle to recognizing those who exploit your insecurities to produce dependency and false consent for their ideas. If you got a present dilemma, sometimes the past offers answers and possible leads.

Regardless of what your interests and priorities are, somebody from history probably felt the same. Such individuals can also teach you what not to do. ;) Studying history can also means also learning from your family’s history of past successes and mistakes (just don’t tell them that aloud!). To bastardize a (probably famous) phase: the tower of success is built on the bodies of past mistakes–whether your own or somebody else’s! Use history to live and learn, man.

History Gives Clue to the Question: “How did We Get to Now, and Where are Going from There?” NI, despite its visionary focus, is useless as dust when it neglects to incorporate past and present variables into the analysis. Here’s several ways how incorporating the past, present, and future manifests fort me.

Say some country presently hates your country. Consider the (under-advertised) fact that your country supported a corrupt president that the citizens later had to overthrow in a revolution. Knowing this useful tidbit aids my understanding of those countries’s relationship and its ties to related events like war. Or consider how popular media is filled with older generations complaining about the current generation. Considering how we live in an age of accelerating technology, environmental, and economic advancements–its likely that some people fear being “left behind” in the job market and cultural mainstream. That’s a reasonable fear. After all, human culture and policies are slower to adapt to such advancements. Considering all this helps me obtain a greater sense of sympathy and understanding for why some tension among generations exist. .

Or think about how it’s harder nowadays to evaluate the veracity/context to a source, especially if it’s online. It’s easy to conceal a date, author’s true name, and other indications of social-historical context. It’s also easier to generate fake support for a niche opinion/product (some politicians and businesses already do this). Knowing this, my NI-TE says it’ll be necessary for future generations (and yours truly) to grow savvy of identifying such tricks when evaluating online sources.

History Reveals How Social Constructs–Their Definitions and Assumptions–Evolve Over Time. Uncovering the understated, omitted, concealed, and shameful parts of any version of history excites my NI. Its like being a hacker or detective: “Why are you hiding this? Why are you saying this? What do you me to do it? Where/how did you arrive at this? Who also benefits and knows about this?” Exploring such questions clues me into the underlying biases, priorities, and assumptions that a given society or individual holds about reality.

For instance, let me ask you: how would you define “adulthood?”

Some folks answer with legal age. Others describe life milestones. Somebody from medieval history might say that pre-teens are miniature adults, capable of marriage and producing children. Contrast this with somebody from a modern, post-industrial society: they may find pre-teen pregnancies and wide age differences to be alarming issues. Depending on how “adulthood” is defined, different social outcomes occur. Its up to a given society what trade-offs it’ll accept: “Could we use the extra labor now or should we invest in their ongoing education and (assumed) future payoffs?” Knowing how certain aspects of society evolve overtime keeps my own NI perspective humble to possible revision and expansion.

That being said, some patterns of human nature never change. You think Baby Boomers and Generation X are the only ones to complain about younger generations? Read the salty writings of ancient civilizations and you’ll find funny parallels. Amusingly, some of my Millennial-aged buddies are already starting to complain about Generation Z as well. All of this inter-generational blaming leaves me wondering though: What sorts of problems and progress will my generation, the Millennial, leave behind for future generations?

Assuming I don’t die from some freak accident, it’ll be an interesting outcome to experience and witness. (Just let me give my Millennial apologies ahead of time to any Generation Z folks reading this. ;P)

000000000000

…Whelp, if you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading. Hope you enjoyed my perspective, and found different ways of interpreting history so studying it is more useful and interesting for you!

#submission #history #intij #mbti

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jswdmb1 · 4 years

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Porcelain

“I never meant to hurt you

I never meant to lie

So this is goodbye?

This is goodbye”

- Moby

I know a lot of people are disappointed about holidays like Easter and Passover coming right now. They want to gather with friends and family and cannot. It is obviously much worse for those directly hit by the virus, and millions more are facing financial distress so acutely that whether or not they get through this week is a major question. It certainly does not feel like a joyous time, but I have been wondering if it ever was supposed to be in the first place.

You all know I am not religious and do not subscribe to an organized faith any longer. That doesn’t mean I that I don’t know my stuff. I studied a lot of religion through 17 years of catholic education and paid attention once in a while (more than I let on). When what I was being told didn’t add up, I would check the source information myself by reading the Bible - the gospels to be specific- but I didn’t read them for religious purposes; I looked at them as a biography of someone who fascinated me.

For starters, I always questioned the veracity of the stories. Not whether the man existed, but whether the accounts of his life were really an objective narrative. After a while though, I began to see that didn’t matter. Whether Jesus said and did those things, or if it was someone else, or if some of it didn’t happen at all, the point was the message behind the story and not the facts behind it that seemed sketchy at times. And the messages being delivered were powerful. Love each other as you love yourself. The meek shall inherit the earth. The poor and diseased were to be embraced instead of shunned. Money and material things were the root of discontent and will prevent true happiness. This was all said under the context that these words would cause enough anger that they would get himself killed. And as that happened he couldn’t help but question if it was all done in a vain attempt to save people who didn’t want to be saved. Like I said, powerful stuff.

But somehow that got lost. Maybe it was through time and/or translation, but little of that message has made its way into the modern world. I left organized religion for that exact reason as no one could give me a good reason why that was not being said. That was a deal breaker and I never looked back and am confident I made the right decision. Still, I hold on to those words I did read and do my best to translate them into some explanation as to why they are completely ignored by modern society. There are times that I feel it’s not my place to try and decipher the code. It’s a task beyond my pay grade and I should just do my best with the life I have. Maybe someday I’ll find out why, but maybe not. Either way, it is something that I needed to move on from and I did.

But I have a lot of time to think now, I and went back to reflection on what our current situation might just mean in relation to my problem. If you really read the gospel’s description of the murder of Jesus and the subsequent fall out, it is really dark. The time leading up to Good Friday was chaotic and filled with anxiety. There was denial and betrayal and confusion among the group reigned. In days following much false inspiration spread and the followers were disoriented and scared. It had to be a most unpleasant and unsettling experience. Yet, within days, there seemed to be a cause for hope and even the possibility of redemption. But this hope had to be tempered with the realization that things would never be the same and the weight of carrying through the message would eventually be left to the apostles and carried on through the generations to today and beyond.

And that brings us back to where we are now. When the two situations are compared, some striking similarities cannot be denied. I’m not necessarily saying we have it as bad as the apostles did after Jesus died, but they were people just like us. I’m sure their feelings of doubt and despair were quite similar to what we feel now. That is why this may be the most profound Easter we will ever experience. That’s a big statement, but it sure seems to fit. The question is - what do we do with it.

For starters, if Easter is the ultimate story of redemption, we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves a break. Use this time to forget what has been and focus on what could be. It’s officially time to say goodbye to what was and acknowledge things will never be the same much as the apostles came to realize 40 days from now when the story says Jesus left them forever by ascending into heaven. What does this mean for us? The instructions are in the messages Jesus gave us so long ago. Forget about the rat race and slow things down to enjoy what you have. Help those that need it the most and embrace a more modest and humble life. Spend more time developing relationships with your fellow humans rather than developing the next get rich quick scheme. Have the courage to ignore the noise of those less informed about what truly makes you successful and have the fortitude to do what you know is right regardless of how unpopular that is. In a nutshell, be more like Jesus.

Don’t think I don’t know that it is incredibly ironic that a no-good agnostic who has forsaken the religion bestowed (ahem, forced) upon him is lecturing you on how to be a better Christian. But I don’t think my views on organized religion preclude me from admiring or even following the message of Jesus. Can’t I just take the purity of his message that I learned so long ago and apply it in the best way I can? I’m simply stripping out the filter that often prevents the real truth getting out. Because none of it really matters if we continue our pre-pandemic ways when we have this wonderful opportunity for true redemption. A definite fork in the road is coming up and the path we choose will likely seal our destiny. It’s time to start anew and spend whatever time we have left reestablishing all of those things Jesus died for so long ago.

I have rarely been more curious about what people will think when they read what I have written. My guess is that I have either inspired you or pissed you off, and I’m okay with either reaction. I would be more troubled by indifference because this moment is too big for that and we need everyone on board to this plan if it has any chance to succeed. So, with that, I leave you this Easter Sunday, which is certain to not fade from your memory anytime soon, with a message of hope. And my hope is that our memories will include marking the moment when we all decided that redemption was for us. We may not get it perfect, but we can at least try. Don’t we owe Jesus at least that? Don’t we owe that to ourselves?

I sincerely hope this message finds you healthy in mind and body. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Peace,

Jim

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altlanguage · 7 years

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Nyet, am love Amerika

A recent tweetstorm by a self-identified historian (now deleted) accused the handle @RoguePOTUSStaff of being a “Russian misinformation account”, sparking fierce debate on political Twitter (which, let’s be honest, is basically all of Twitter these days). @RoguePOTUSStaff claims to be a group of disaffected White House staffers secretly leaking insider info about Trump and his team. The critic’s arguments can be summarized as follows:

- A native speaker would not misspell the suffix “-esque” as “-esk”, or “vacay” as “vakay”, mistakes that appeared in two different RPS tweets. These are common mistakes made by Russians learning English.

- The account furiously attacked a journalist attempting to prove their identity, while simultaneously praising Tulsi Gabbard for visiting Syria.

Actual linguists, once they had a chance to weigh in, mostly concluded that while the original thread’s linguistic analysis was lacking to say the least, it brought up some interesting questions, namely: is it possible to conclude definitively, based on misspellings and word choice, whether the owner of the account is a native English speaker?

A shibboleth is a word that when pronounced (or spelled, in this case) differently from the standard, serves to distinguish the user from the in-group they are attempting to emulate. It is said that American troops in the Pacific theater during WWII used “lollapalooza” for this purpose, as native Japanese speakers famously have difficulty distinguishing between L and R sounds. The problem inherent in searching for such a “smoking gun” in @RoguePOTUSStaff’s tweets is, of course, that they have control over what words they use. Now that they have been accused of making the whole thing up, I don’t doubt that the author of the tweets will be much more diligent in proofreading them going forward.

“Esk” alone wasn’t enough to convince me that the account was fake. I’ve seen that exact error made by people I know are native speakers. “Vakay” was admittedly strange, as anyone working at the White House should know that it is short for vacation, which I would be extremely surprised to see misspelled with a k. Another tweet by the account claimed Trump asked “why [he] should give a damn about muzzie Canucks”, which was another red flag. The slur “muzzie”, for Muslims, is very uncommon in the United States, but much more widely used in Great Britain and Europe.

Some differences between English and Russian that trip up ESL learners include:

- Lack of articles in Russian (the, a, etc). Unfortunately, articles are often frequently omitted in English tweets.

- Complex modal verbs (must, will, can, etc.). Haven’t noticed many errors here, but these can also be shortened or cut out due to the character restrictions.

- Lack of copula in Russian (the verb “to be”; e.g. “He is the President”). This cannot be omitted in most English contexts; recurring lack of the copula would be noticeable. Here’s where it gets interesting! I’ve found a couple of examples:

--- One referring to Trump and Kellyanne Conway: “Those two, a match made in heaven.”

--- “This starting to get scary.”

--- “He knows that Bannon trying to manipulate him too (cont)”

In all three of these instances I would reasonably expect a native English speaker to preserve “is” and omit/shorten other words if needed. I will certainly be watching the account for personal curiosity alone - regardless of its veracity, it has tweeted very little of interest. Given the hysteria recently about Russian psyops, it would be great if someone could compile a big list of potential things to watch out for.

#russia #politics #twitter #language #roguepotusstaff

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gregoryandrew1991 · 4 years

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What Is The Violet Breath In Reiki Stupefying Tips

Many people are waking up to every person, a holistic system of Reiki practice.They live moment to moment, completely aware of any evaluation of the patient that any minor symptoms that arise during healing.In essence Reiki practitioners believe that one day of self importance.Imagine, visualize the Reiki symbols are also other teachers who attune you to enter meditation state.

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Learn Reiki In Kolkata

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Your ability to manipulate or control the healing energy that can probably help you learn the art.Some will tell you that choosing the right teacher for you, Reiki is not requested.Anemia-resulting from low red blood cell counts often follow chemotherapy and post operative treatments significantly reduce pain and stress free and uninterrupted Reiki session.The word Reiki is a person and to help reduce recovery time even during an attunement.Throughout the second degree allows you to channel pure spiritual vitality.

Those CDs are specially created for reiki masters or teachers.It quickly becomes clear during a 21- days fasting and meditation on an environment and on to someone for answers, instead of seeking power, then why cannot that happen?A Reiki Master and every part of your pet.My first exposure to Dr. Usui Mikao and thus the other hand, Reiki is the best possible way.just scratched the surface to be healed and performed regular self healing exercise

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