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BRIDGERTON (2020–) 3.03 "Forces of Nature"

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DOCTOR WHO (2023 - ) I Joy to the World

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The Eras Tour surprise songs parallels

July 27, 2024—Munich, Germany: Fresh Out The Slammer / You Are In Love (mashup)

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Bad Girls Club by Xin Yingzong

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your vaguely awkward and socially inept vibe has captivated me

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On 15th March 1814 the large scale Sutherland Clearances began.

There are still those out there who push the narrative that the Clearances were natural occurrence, that thousands of families willingly gave up the crofts en masse, leaving crofting settlements that their families had worked and lived in for generations. Ask yourself this, is it likely that the numbers naturally dwindled from a third of Scotland’s population who lived north of the Highland Line; would just fall to the numbers it is today of just five percent? This was a systematic attempt to rid the country of troublesome Highlanders after the Jacobite Uprisings that continued for decades.

In 1811 there were 250,000 sheep there; by the 1840s there were almost a million. Within that period sheep replaced people driven from their homes by direct eviction or through hunger and destitution. After the sheep and overgrazing came deer and the creation of hunting grounds for the elite. By 1884 a tenth of Scotland’s land was given over to deer forests, greater than the size of Wales, and taking up the great majority of the land in the crofting counties (crofts were the small plots of land available to the remaining population)

The eviction of whole communities from Sutherland was done a scale not seen before, or again, during the Highland Clearances.

Families were moved off land to make way for large-scale sheep farming.

Starting in the late 18th Century and running into the 19th Century, the Highland Clearances saw townships occupied by generations of families cleared to make way for large-scale sheep farming and the rearing of deer.

Landowners were seeking to "improve" their estates in line with the industrial revolution.

In some cases people who had lived on the land for generations left voluntarily, while others were forcibly evicted and their homes burned and demolished.

Highlanders did try and fight the movement that saw their ancestral lands given over to sheep farming, 26 years previously and sheep were targeted in 1792 - which became known asBiadna nan Caorach (The Year of the Sheep) - following clearances in Sutherland and Easter Ross.

Four hundred men from families that had been evicted, or were facing eviction, drove thousands of the animals from the hills.

By early August, they had rounded up 6,000 sheep and had reached Beauly, near Inverness, where they were intercepted by soldiers.

Some of the men were tried in court and one man received an order banishing him from Scotland for life.

In the final decades of the 18th century some 200,000 were cleared to make way for sheep.

It wasn't only English landlords that were against the Highlanders, Scots in the Lowlands, perhaps spoon-fed on propaganda about the Uprisings were as much part of the rhetoric that something had to be done about this quarrelsome people.

A young journalist sent by the “Scotsman” to the Highlands exhibited the this while, writing in 1847 he said, that the Highlanders were “an inferior race to the Lowland Saxon.” Robert Knox, the Edinburgh surgeon who bought the bodies from the West Port murderers Burke and Hare believed in the superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon race” and wrote that the Highlanders “must be forced from the soil.”

Then there were the landlords factors, the most hated of whom was another Lowlander called Patrick Sellar , he regarded the Highlanders as racial degenerates. In his racist view they were, “the aborigines of Britain shut out from any general stream of knowledge… ”

Sellar was charged with murder for burning down an old woman’s house, a hand-picked jury of landowners found him not-guilty, but he had brought bad publicity to the Sutherland Estate and lost his job.

James Loch was an Edinburgh lawyer who for 40 years, from 1812, was commissioner for the Marquis of Stafford. He would write an apology for his employers but his racism towards their tenants was never far from the surface, with him complaining:

“… [their] habits and ideas, quite incompatible with the customs of regular society, and civilised life, adding greatly to those defects which characterise persons living in a loose and unformed state of society.” His concern was to provide wool for the “staple manufactory of England” and to convert the people to “the habits of regular and continued industry.

In 1846 matters became desperate as the potato blight brought the likelihood of famine to the Highlands. In response Charles Trevelyan, Under Secretary at the Treasury, wrote: “The people cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to starve.” Two years later he did the opposite in Ireland, letting hundreds of thousands die. Arguing the famine there was “a mechanism for reducing surplus population.

Yet, as starvation became apparent the British government did intervene to feed the population: just two deaths from starvation are recorded, both on the hard hit population of the Isle of Barra (whose people were largely cleared in 1853 and sent to Quebec). This contrasts with Ireland, where the Great Famine killed thousands. While Ireland was nominally part of the UK it was in reality a colony and seen as separate. The Highlands were regarded by the British government as part of the UK, and starvation could not be permitted there (although emigration was encouraged)

The clearances speak volumes about how capitalism came into being, dripping with blood and at the expense of common people.

There were about 7 million sheep in Scotland nowadays, thats over one for each and every one of us,and estimated to be worth £165m to the economy, according to Scottish Government figures.

Brian McNeil wrote, in his song No Gods and precious few Heroes;

So farewell to the heather and the glen They cleared us off once and they'd do it all again For they still prefer sheep to thinking men Ah, but men who think like sheep are even better There's nothing much to choose between the old vain and the new They still don't give a damn for the likes of me and you Just mind you pay your rent to the factor when it's due And mind your bloody manners when you pay.....

Pics are various former settlements from around Scotland

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shoutout to whoever stole my amazon package containing nothing but a single pair of shoelaces.

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captain kirk was allowed out of his enclosure today for some much needed enrichment!!! look at him go!

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Great DS9 episode Second Skin w/ the amazing Nana Visitor in Cardassian makeup - check out the updated/finished version below! 🎨😁💚🦎 (see links in bio. )

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request: the wave at the end of i, mudd for @tigereyes45

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the way these two god damn idiots and everyone they know behave like they are a couple without actually being a couple is going to drive me insane

Ms. Taylor to Audrey: "I'll have him put [the goose] aside under 'Farnon.'

Audrey: "Sounds like our house."

Siegfried: "Where did you find him?" Audrey: "Curled up in the shed." Siegfried: "Our shed?"

Audrey: "Jimmy's birthday tea!" Siegfried: "They understood. We can wish him Happy Birthday tomorrow."

Audrey: "He's injured, but he's alright" Siegfried: *literal tears of relief in his eyes for her*

JUST GET TOGETHER I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS

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Fun little details about Cardassian culture:

The computers on board Deep Space Nine initially caused O'Brien a lot of trouble because Cardassian computers will straight up ignore a command if the order violates a safety protocol.

On the other hand, Federation computers will warn you the thing you want to do is dangerous, but they'll let you do it anyway.

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“For decades, Israeli leaders have ignored American objections and done what they wanted to do as U.S. presidents fumed privately, issuing occasional public warnings before ultimately deciding to go along. That’s why Israel now occupies so large a chunk of the West Bank with so many hundreds of thousands of settlers that the creation of a viable Palestinian state is now likely foreclosed (by the way, Netanyahu announced the biggest expansion in about three decades just three weeks ago). It’s why Israel can plan unimpeded to occupy as much of Gaza as it wishes for as long as it wishes, as it has done since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. It’s why, since Israel’s 1948 creation, more than half of the 89 U.S. vetoes in the U.N. Security Council have been taken in support of the Jewish state.”

—

Exactly Why Is It that All American Presidents Dance to Bibi’s Tune?

Netanyahu is a war criminal and a murderer. The unwavering fealty my government gives to that loathsome monster is sickening.