DO NOT TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE AT THE POLLS.
DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY KIND OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE POLLS.
NO ELECTION IS EVER A SURE THING, EVEN IF YOU’RE IN THE BLUEST OR REDDEST OF STATES. IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.
‘In the center of Bebelplatz, a glass window showing rows and rows of empty bookshelves. The memorial commemorates the night in 1933 when 20,000 “anti-German” books were burned here under the instigation of Goebbels. There’s a plaque nearby that says something like “Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end.” ’
Interesting but rarely mentioned: most of the content burned that night came from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (institute for the science of sex) headed by Magnus Hirschfeld. The institute and Hirshfeld himself were some of the first to openly campaign for the right to have sex with someone of the same gender, the right to transition if you did not identify with your birth sex and for the general acceptance of queer people. The team had already performed the first SRS operations in Germany and in addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s emancipation. Photographs of the night of the book burning are plastered across history books world wide, but the queer movement that was destroyed that night often goes unmentioned.
Creative Writing Professor at a former college: Welcome to creative writing! By the way,
you will not write fantasy, ghost stories, pranormal, or science fiction
in this class, as this is a creative writing course.”
What the ever loving fuck is with “creative” writing professors who think that speculative fiction of any stripe ISN’T CREATIVE?
I still remember my own creative writing teacher telling me this because he saw the Terry Pratchett book on my desk and got this smug smirk on his face like “aha, gotcha”. He had the nerve to pick it up and call it “popularist fiction”, like somehow being popular and easily accessible made it less inherent in intellectual value.
I had it in my back pack because I did my final thesis on the evolution of mythology and folk tails into fantasy and sci-fi and the societal importance of telling stories (before anyone asks, no I don’t have it, I lost it when I moved continents), and I used Terry Pratchett because there wasn’t a single humanitarian issue the man did not touch on.
Which I told him. And then he kind of floundered and went “ah, well but, it’s…well I mean it’s not exactly high brow”, like neither the fuck was Shakespeare or Dickens you self-important turnip. Dickens was literally selling his stories by the chapter. He was the popular author of his time. Shakespeare was too, he fucking made up words and phrases all the time because the language he needed to express himself didn’t exist in the way he needed it too.
Intellectual elitism is nothing more than a hold over from class warfare and the belief that only certain people should get to be truly educated. And it needs to be smashed.
Both got very sick this last week with stomach problems- Mochi had a bad reaction to his food and Charlie got a bacterial infection- and while they’re better now, they both needed exams and medication and I’m looking at $500 in unexpected vet bills.
My Kofi and Paypal are here. Every little bit helps. Thank you.
Mongolians are cool because they’ve merged their traditional and modern ways of life so rather than having poverty due to losing all their important skills they just live in their yurts with their cows and 827474874mbs internet
sure their GDP in dollars is low but when you can survive like your anscestors did it doesn’t mean anything, nothing wrong with adding a motorcycle and wifi into the mix
Everyone should live like their ancestors did 1000 years ago but with the addition of wifi tbh
Adapt. Survive.
Mongolia will be the only functioning society after we descend into the Mad Max Era, they are already ready
Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but despite how legitimately cool the intersection of modern and traditional life is in Mongolia, there is actually a major societal and economic crisis happening there right now.
The environment, which Mongolia’s largely nomadic population relies on, is being absolutely wrecked by a combination of global warming and overgrazing. Mongolia is currently stuck in a cycle of dry summers and extreme winters called a dzud. The cycle is unique to Mongolia and has happened in the past, but every year since 2015 has had a dzud. The result has been a complete environmental disaster for Mongolia’s nomads. Dry summers mean less food for starving herds and extreme winters mean the weakened herds freeze to death in temperatures reaching -40 degrees Fahrenheit. According to an article from national geographic, over 9.7 million heads of livestock were killed in 2017. 700,000 heads of livestock were killed in the first two months of 2018 alone.
The effect on Mongolia’s nomadic people has been severe. Here are some excerpts from interviews with local residents:
“We used to have four seasons, but now we only have three,” Batjargal told Nicholson. “Before, June, July, and August were warm and with rain. Different types of grass would grow, and the animals would get fat. Now, we have no rain and the wind dries up the grass. It is not what it used to be.”
– from an interview with a local governor by national geographic in 2018
“We are trying so hard to keep them alive,” 50-year-old herder Bayankhand Myagmar says, talking about her dead sheep and goats. “But nothing we do is working.”
Dogoonoo lives with 13 others in three small gers in Uvs Province. The 72-year-old started this winter with 230 livestock but 210 of those have died since January. "Watching the animals die is breaking us apart,“ she said. “But even if I have only one animal left, I will do everything in my power to keep it alive.“
– from a bbc article in 2016
About one fifth of Mongolia’s population has abandoned the nomadic lifestyle and moved to Ulaanbaatar, the capitol, where they live in ger (yurt) districts which make up two-thirds of the city. The districts have no running water and since there is no electrical grid families have to burn coal and wood to stay warm. This has resulted in some of the worst air quality in the world, causing a wide variety of respiratory health issues, especially in children.
So people literally can’t live like their ancestors did 1000 years ago.
Oh, btw cus I haven’t seen any posts about it yet, the 2018 asexual census survey is up, and people should defiantly go take it so that we can continue to have up to date information on community demographics.
willowfoot 