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Whisp • 30 • he/they ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ Star Wars Blog: @astheforcewhillsit

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

@sashayed these tags feeling pretty materially knifey for me

yes I DO live under a rock and her name is the Moon and she is always smiling but she teaches me nothing

But she does! Like how to breathe in and out with the tides. Or that life has phases, and it's okay to come back to things. Or that you should always look for light in the darkness, and that even if you can't see it, doesn't mean that it isn't there. Or that sometimes your purpose is not to be the light, but to reflect the light of others.

star trek explores these strange seemingly inconsequential extremes because it wants you to consider the possibility that your concept of ethics doesnt and could never possibly account for every scenario. It wants you to consider the ethical ramifications of just wiping out the little nanites taking over your ships computer even though eventually this will kill you all becuase

-What if they’re alive?

-What if they’re sentient?

-What if they don’t realize they’re hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, “these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we’ll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but…what if they’re like us?” because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

without examining ourselves this way, through these made up seemingly inane situations, we will never be able to understand ourselves and what we’re truly capable of, what levels of understanding can be achieved. without the ability to place ourselves in a difficult situation and reach beyond our first instinct of fight or flight and self-preservation, we will never be evolve as a global community

this is unequivocally true. the rabbi at my childhood temple made it a point to bring a Star Trek scenario into every single d'var, and there was always something relevant!

'Just switch to linux', 'Just switch to firefox', 'Just switch to ellipsus', 'Just buy a VPN and pirate it' okay, or- hear me out- tech companies can stop making their products worse, because I shouldn't have to change my entire workflow and spend time and money learning new programs and tools just to have a bearable online experience

but have you ever even heard of the fynbos biome ?!!?!?!?!

a biome so unique in south africa that it's earned an entirely new biome classification for itself. so many plants are endemic to this area, and ofc it's under threat of extinction.

It's a wonderful place! I had the privilege of visiting the fynbos last year and it was as amazing as these photos show and more!

"Other than that, I can't say if the flowers would still hold their bloom for me" Emmrich Volkarin surrounded by his cherished flowers, inspired by a scene from Bright Star.

btw if youre young and scared of doing adult things without your parents ive learned that like 90% of the time you can just tell the doctors office or the dmv "haha sorry ive never done this without help before... can you show me how to do this?" the employee will not care. if that means anything to you

As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.

Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids. 

He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country's northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.

"During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out," he said.

"I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.

"Everyone would surround me and beat me."

Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.

More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people. 

But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.

But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost. 

An Ainu woman named Chiri Yukie wrote down some of her people's oral traditions into Japanese because, as a child, her people were being displaced by Japanese settlers in Hokkaido. Her language was disappearing, so she (ironically) saw translating the stories into Japanese as a way to preserve them. She died at age 19.

Some of the objects from the Ainu exhibition at Japan House in London this year, showcasing traditional Ainu skills and culture. There is a campaign to get Ainu recognised as an official language, at least in Hokkaido, and small steps are happening, for example, bilingual bus stops. It reminds me of the struggle for Welsh to be revived after suppression for centuries.

second image ID: the cover of The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie, Translated into English by Benjamin Peterson. end ID

Also, this is a good short ~25 minute documentary that shows Ainu people fighting to recover their ancestral bones and bodies from Hokkaido University that's worth a watch.

strongly encourage everyone who has access to it to check out Ainu activist and politician Kayano Shigeru’s Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir — you can get a preview with the first chapter here, and it is findable Elsewhere online.

Can’t believe this was from 2024 and it is now … 2026. That’s how long this outfit has been haunting me. On a medieval kick rn!

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