#// had emigrated in the first place y'know?

[c4rdsharp]

meechi. things I lowkey would love for Genshin Luck : a local Snezhnayan teaching more about Snezhnaya culture that isn't from the Fatui.

[adastra-sf]

The Maoi of Rapa Nui

Moai chieftain statues are the famous massive megaliths of Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia, carved about 1250-1650 CE by the original Polynesian colonizers of the island.

Many know them as "Easter Island heads," a misconception from having seen photos of statues in the volcano Rano Raraku partitially covered with soil. They all have full bodies with over-large heads - a 3:5 ratio between head and trunk, a sculptural trait consistent with the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chiefly head.

The island holds nearly 1000 statues, each weighing as much as 90 tons and standing up to 10 meters tall, though they average around half that. One unfinished sculpture would have stood 21 meters (69 feet!) tall and weighed 180 tons. More statues are still being discovered.

Almost all (95%) of the moais were carved from the volcano's stone tuff - compressed volcanic ash that's relatively easy to carve using only stone tools (toki).

Probably the biggest mystery is how tribes using Stone-Age tech could succeed in transporting 50-ton moai statues across kilometers of hilly terrain. Because the island was largely treeless by the time Europeans first arrived (by which time local culture and history had largely collapsed), the movement of the statues was a mystery for a long time.

Some transportation theories are more accepted than others:

The earliest accounts say a king named Tuu Ku Ihu moved them with the help of the god Makemake, while later stories tell of a woman who lived alone on the mountain ordering them about at her will. 

The longest-held European hypothesis was that the moai statues were dragged from the volcano to their destinations along log rollers, which also explained how the island became deforested. Pollen analysis has established that the island was almost totally forested until 1200 CE, and tree pollen disappears from the record by 1650.

However, Iceland demonstrates how simply using wood for construction and fire can quickly deforest an island.

According to oral tradition, the moai statues walked to their destination. A literal interpretation is that the statues were rocked from side to side while pulling them forward to "walk" them to their final sites, as demonstrated in this recent experiment. This theory holds the most scholarly support today.

A not-uncommon but highly unlikely (and, y'know, disrespectful) claim is that aliens placed the moai statues for the locals. Occam's razor suggests this probably isn't the answer. But everyone loves aliens. The debate continues.

The ancient period ended when the Rapa Nui people were devastated by Peruvian slave-raiding expeditions that reached the island in 1862. Within a year, the individuals who remained on the island were sick, injured, and lacking leadership. Survivors of the slave raids had to deal with Christian missionaries. By the time Europeans arrived in 1722, the island's population was estimated at less than 3,000. Foreign diseases and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.

Chile annexed the island in 1888, but it wasn't until 1966 that the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. The 2017 census registered 7750 people on the island, of whom 3512 (45%) consider themselves Rapa Nui.

The original inhabitants live on among their famous megaliths.

[bad-mood-goddess]

Fine Ass Parenting

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents and I know I should be grateful to have both of them watching after me. Still, there is this things that get a hold of me always and can't tell them bc I'm afraid to hurt them or their gaslight.

So, recently, to be precise like 30 minutes ago, I noticed that I have grown to resent my younger brother for a lot of things that aren't actually his fault, at least not at all.

I am an 18 years old college student and I have no hobbies. Always thought it was my fault for not being passionate enough to dive into something I love entirely.

To put some context, my younger brother is 1 year, 4 months younger than me, not too much, but he has Asperger's Syndrome, and he was diagnosed at a quite early age (7 y/o).

Having said that, it's not like I didn't like anything through my childhood, actually there was a lot of things that I wanted to do.

Starting with Ballet, as a 6 y/o girl I really wanted to practice ballet and always liked the shoes and hairstyles and costumes and all that. Silly me, my mom did ballet like 15 years of her life so she refused completely to sing me up for any dancing classes. I know the dancing world is really tough with the overweight, but still think it's too harsh to say to a 6 y/o that she was too fat to do ballet that it wouldn't work out. So even if I really wanted to do it I let it go on my mom's advise.

Then at 8 y/o I really was into singing (and I still like singing, but we will get there later) I enjoyed singing all day out with my best friend and begged my mom to no avail to sign me up with her on the school's singing class. She said no, my voice was too trembly to be good at singing and she would not be embarrassed in front of the school and the other moms. Harsh, but okay, maybe I wasn't good enough, after all if that was the opinion of my own mom I must have been terrible. I insisted over the years but wasn't too pushy about it.

Then I was told that I had to practice a sport for my overweight, was not consulted which I liked and she signed me and my brother up for swimming classes, 'kay, cool didn't like it, and I didn't even knew how to swim but I'll figure it out since it was what my mom wanted. I trained my ass off, I took every opportunity I had to prove me worth of being part of the team. I got selected for the State's Competition Team at age 10 all of this while still fighting my overweight and the bullying that came with it (plus my mom nagging me and saying I ate too much, I wasn't good enough, I wasn't skinny enough).

Age 12, 1.56m tall and weight 40kg, still not skinny enough I was training for regionals over 4h a day of swimming and 2.5km of running every day plus a bad relationship with food, I started skipping breakfast and supper and went all day with lunch and occasional snacks.

I didn't make it to the nationals, the rambling about me wasting the money and time she invested in get me to the regionals. I started gaining weight again, more and more weight, I stopped eating snacks but I kept gaining weight, my times got stuck and my team kicked out all the State's Selected. I got accepted into a open-waters competition team, but I kept gaining weight and didn't get my times down. I went through a episode of deep angst over thinking if I was really good enough to even be able to be a part of the team, with this in mind, I never really fit in.

Age 14 got to the doctor, turns out I had POS and Thyroid nodules, my hormones were a absolute-fucking mess and that's why I gained weight, I weighted 56kg. Maybe swimming wasn't my thing, after all I didn't even liked swimming y'know, what do I still love so much? Music, let's try to convince my mother again.

'Kay, to be fair she really did hear me this time and got me to try to get into the choir of one of the centers of the national orchestra... Now that I think it over, did she wanted me to fail? Well I got accepted on the advanced group, well shit I had to learn the basics for myself but didn't care cause I get to do what I really wanted... At the same place with my brother that suddenly want to get percussion classes (and still swimming).

That obviously didn't work out, for some reason my mom decided that swimming was more important (when convenient). She "corrected" me everyday, everytime that she had the opportunity even though she know nothing about singing, told me to shut up when practicing. Even so I obtained a Solo for my first concert ever over all the 50 kids that were there for 5 years or more. The day for the concert came in, I did the best I could, the teacher congratulate me, but not my mom, I had to hurry up, I had training that day, the day came off as any other. I skipped every concert since then, my brother had training. I skipped training regularly, my brother had percussion class. He got bored of music she stopped taking me to music, we drop out. I keep training, I got to keep athletic, I have to bare the tough competition training, I often got out of the pool to puke and came back to training, coach seemed concerned but didn't say anything, she started to say I was slacking. Coach emigrates to another country, ray of hope, I slipped through it when we had no coach at age 15 on my first trimester of my junior year.

Finally some liberty I got to put up my grades, that weren't really bad but weren't perfect so I studied hard, was considered honor student, I tutored my brother in all the subjects he needed help.

Senior year (16y/o), the school hires a singing professor, I got the chance to sing again, got singing classes and practice on my free hours to not stay after school for my mom not noticing. Finally tells her that I'm singing again. She tells me, why you didn't like singing, after all you quit, even so it wasn't true, we fought, I kept practicing for presentations at school, while preparing mother's day concert she said "If you're gonna sing like that tell me now so I don't go, it's enough that you are embarrassing yourself", I don't pay too much attention. Day of the concert came we got a sound system problem exactly on my turn, I proceeded to sing with an anxiety attack on stage after done I went backstage and cried my eyes out. After calming myself down went out with my eyes red and inflamed to see my mom with a serious look telling me that she told me that I didn't have to do that if I was going to end up crying for not being good enough, I kept practicing, I never went to a presentation. My singing professor offered me to work with him on his studio, maybe even record original songs, my mom said no, I was still underaged to be working (in my country you can't work until you're 18). He called me on my 18th birthday to offer me the work again, I had to decline, I applied to Med school and my mom obligated me to apply for physiotherapy, I got in both so I had to study both at the same time.

She always expected perfection, nothing less from me. Yet my brother got the liberty to got the grades he could, do the things he liked, drop off if he wanted, be able to not excell at everything he tried out. He didn't had half the expectations I had to comply. And I can't help but have the feeling that if he wasn't autistic I wouldn't have to compensate that all my life.