#I also taught anthropology if you didn't know

[elbiotipo]

Would be fun to have a very strict, very realistic ancient human (neolithic) survival videogame. No, you don't get to build furnaces or a city or an industry at the end like in every goddamn survival game. There's not even an inventory, you got two hands and a skin bag that can carry a couple stones at most (and only because I'm feeling merciful). No HP, you get lacerations, broken bones, hemorrages, disease, and there's practically no medicine (no 'medicinal' herbs either, at best some cleaning and some soothing). You don't build, you just survive. AGAIN, NO FUCKING BUILDINGS. YOU DON'T BUILD SHIT. YOU DON'T HAVE A MAGICAL INVENTORY. TWO HANDS. THAT'S FUCKING IT.

Perhaps the most fun part would be interacting with the rest of your tribe. Try to impress your fellow tribe girl by hunting a goddamn smilodon, do a cave painting for the next initiation ritual, or figure out what those neanderthals are up to.

[tweedlebat]

So It's come to my attention that Phrenology and Physiognomy have made a comeback under the name of "Face Reading"

So my half conscious self has been dragged out of the abyss because I need you to understand why this is EXTREMELY BAD on so many levels. I'm gonna try and give you resources so you can educate yourself on the topic, but my brain isn't wording right today, so I'm sorry. If you're younger, this is a part of the past you need to know because it's repeating itself now due to ignorance. Phrenology and Physiognomy became super popular after Darwin's theory of evolution came out and bigots essentially used it to prove that they were "superior". People would do it for "fun" back then also, and the manuals that taught how to do it, or talked about it in depth can be kind of unsettling to look at due to the blatantly racist and antisemitic caricatures that you find in them. And we're not even going into how awful the texts can be. I don't have enough brainpower at the moment to poke at that, but suffice to say, it's bad enough that the Nazis used physiognomy to push their agenda and murder millions during the holocaust. As well as take measurements of people during "Racial Examinations." These tests were used to supposedly determine if someone was Jewish or not, just take a look at these photos and keep in mind that if you didn't align to their "pure aryan" standards, you'd wind up persecuted and/or killed.:

There's more photos out there than this, it's been heavily documented. Anyways Face Reading/Physiognomy and Phrenology have always been used as racist propaganda. Don't do this or buy into it, please. It seems cute and harmless but it's not, not in the slightest, and just pushes more awful stereotypes out there. This video talks more in depth about it than I can.:

I'm also posting more articles for further reading so as to educate yourselves on the topic. Keep in mind you will be seeing racist white supremacist propaganda and it can be unsettling. Wikipedia Article on Physiognomy History.com Article on the way Face Reading and Phrenology was used to basically assume some people were criminals.

Genome.gov article on Eugenics and Scientific Racism. Penn Museum Article on Craniology in Race Science and Physical Anthropology The United States Holocaust Museum article on Eugenics. Scientific Racism Entry on Wikipedia Nazi Eugenics Entry on Wikipedia

University of Missouri articles on the Origins of Eugenics.

A final word. Judging people based on their appearances never ends well, and in extreme situations leads to innocent people getting killed far more often than many of you realize due to racism, ableism, transphobia, and so on.

I'm no history expert, so these articles are all I can give you. If this can motivate you to start your journey to learning history so we don't repeat it, I've done my job. Now I'm going back into the void, it's sleep time.

[jmenvs3000f23]

Madagascar, Lemurs, OneHealth.......a Masters? 🏝️🐒🔭🎓(U9)

Hey friends, its been a while and I’m glad you’re here!

This weeks’ prompt encourages us to share something about nature that gets us excited and ooooooooooooooooh am I excited! Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m a 4th year zoology student which 1) means I know a lot of cool animal stuff (ask me questions!), and 2) it’s almost time for me to graduate!

So today I’d like to talk about my current Masters application and the really cool OneHealth conservation research I have done (and hope to do again) in Madagascar!

Over the summer I got the opportunity to take the One Health Approach to Conservation Field school where we were taught zoological, ecological, and anthropological approaches to conservation issues in Madagascar’s rainforest and unique dry deciduous forest within Ankarafantsika National Park (Picture a rainforest but take away the rain, the biggest animal is the same kind of lemur as Zoboomafoo, and also the soil is like sand!!). While I won’t go into too much detail about most of the field work we practiced, like tree identification, phrenology, and size measurements, participant-observation sessions in tree-planting, rice harvesting, and a local village classroom, and of course-tent living and consistent rice and beans eating, I willllllllllll go into detail about the lemurs, cause oh so much do I love those little guys.

(1. Male with eye tumor/injury, 2. me with two mothers (if you look close you can see 2 baby heads!), 3. me taking leaf samples to make a dry-season Tree ID sketch, 4. my luxurious living quarters for the month.)

Our instructions were to do both focal and scan sampling, but my absolute favourite part of the trip was following the lemur groups and trying to identify the specific individuals while they were either chilling in our camp or being extremely chaotic in the forest.

During these observations, not once but twice did I witness 2 separate groups have lemurs literally try to kill an individual from the other group... and so when asking about this to my professor, the general conclusion we came to after he told me he’s never seen such violence despite coming to the park for years, was that the increased forest fragmentation (deforestation making the forest into sections rather than one continuous space) might be forcing groups that should be far apart into sharing the same spaces, causing fights for space, food, etc.

This species of lemur (Coquerel’s sifaka) is critically endangered and is  a huge sense of pride for the indigenous people of Madagascar. Many of the parks residents follow taboos that forbid lemur hunting and consumption to protect these creatures. Unfortunately, its possible that either the  past or current farming practices of some of them are negatively affecting lemurs, potentially without realizing. Not only does this become an anthropological issue, but if true, is a logistical problem best answered with knowledge of the lemurs behaviour, spatial and abundance knowledge on the plants used for food and shelter by both lemurs and people, and of course interviewing, participating in, and  potentially educating and being educated by  the residents to get a proper understanding of how to tackle this problem.

And so that’s the general gist of what I’ll be diving deeper into for my Masters, wish me luck!

[My friends video of one of the violent interactions (I know it looks like they are hugging but they have giant teeth with a strong bite force, are the size of toddlers, and it didn't give up until it thought the other was practically dead), the lemur that didn't run away was left with a bleeding head and injured arm but we think she survived!]

[dickarchivist]

Hi there!

I'm going to be greedy and ask a few of your OC questions about Grave Squad. I don't even care which clone/clones you choose. I want to get to know them all!

3.) Do they have any hobbies?

17.) What did they want to be when they were little?

20.) Do they believe in the supernatural? (ghosts, aliens, magic, etc.)

Thanks! 💀

🚨ATTENTION SHOPPERS, REDLIGHT DEAL!!! FIVE CLONE ANSWERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!!!🚨

I'm gonna answer these for everyone hehe

3.) Do they have any hobbies?

Ghost: He loves to cook~ When they have down time, or get to interact with civilians on any planet, Ghost asks about their food and culture. Anthropology, as it were. He loves understanding different cultures. His brothers are happy about it, Ghost cooks for them mainly. It's a good way for him to de-stress when they have access to fresh food.

Phantom: Poetry! He will never, ever admit that, tho. Phantom really enjoys writing poetry, reading it too. Specter found his book once, and Tom panicked and said it was Wraith's. Specter said he bought it, but he's probably the only one who knows Tom wrote it.

Specter: photography is his biggest hobby, but Specs also paints! He's very artistically inclined, has an eye for it, and enjoys the self expression. He's painted most of The Crypt's walls. He especially loves this hobby when Athena joins him, he taught her how to paint and draw.

Banshee: Ban loves books. Absolutely 100% loves books. Most of his personal credits go into books. His not to secret hobby, tho, the one he doesn't show outwardly, is that he composes music. Most of the music he listens to 24/7 is stuff that he made himself.

Wraith: Ray collects flowers from the places the visit. He'll press them in a book Master Dax made for him, adding their place of origin, the date of collection, and any relevant information such as environmental requirements, edible or toxic, and aroma when fresh. His other favorite hobby is doing his brothers' hair, as well as Athena's. The man knows a mean braid.

17.) What did they want to be when they were little?

Ghost: Ghost wanted to be a dad. When he was little, he asked one of his teachers what their lab was like where they were made, and when he was told they were born, Ghost became obsessed with the idea of having a home. A family. When he learned that people can be raised, they can make other people not in tubes, all he wanted was to be a dad. He still hopes for that, deep down.

Phantom: Tom wanted to be a jedi. He spent a lot of his limited free time practicing saber techniques "for when my powers come in!" Because he assumed, like any child would, that he simply had to grow into them. Sometimes, he still tries to move things with the force.

Specter: Specs wanted to be a teacher. Aside from his brothers, his favorite person was a teacher on Kamino. Not combat, the basics. Reading, writing, code, math, etc. She taught him to love art by encouraging the doodles in the margins. Today, Specs thinks she was his first love, and silently dedicates every piece of artwork he does to her. He hopes, once the war is over, that he might be an art teacher specifically, because art was what made him realize he's a person.

Banshee: Ban didn't want anything else when he was little. He thought being a soldier was all there was, so it was all he wanted. Until he blew up the first time. When he woke up and saw Master Dax above him, it was the first time he wanted anything for himself, "I want to go home." Now, he dreams of being a musician, or a house husband, for the right person.

Wraith: Ray has always wanted to be a doctor. Even before he started his official medic training, he was constantly trying to improve the health and lives of his brothers. He does however, sometimes, have a little day dream about being a florist.

20.) Do they believe in the Supernatural?

Grave Squad: they've seen people die and come back when they shouldn't. They've seen magic first hand in the jedi. They've been told stories about the witches of Dathomir and how General Valka got the spikes on his back.

Yes. Emphatically, Grave Squad believes in the Supernatural.

[sapphire-weapon]

Can we get some Ashley Headcanons pls

i only have a few and they're not that interesting 8(

+ ashley's mom committed suicide when ashley was 13; she simply lost her battle with depression. her dad never remarried. he played on the sympathy for this to help him get elected, like a jackass.

+ her mom was a college professor of anthropology and a concert pianist who taught ashley how to play piano, and ashley stayed in practice with it and still plays to this day. this is also a huge reason why music is so important to her in general

+ her relationship with her dad isn't super great, but they both know that they're all they have

+ she's had the same group of friends since grade school, and though she's made new friends at college, she doesn't expect them to become lifelong friendships like the ones she already had

+ other than her mom's death and her dad eventually being president, her life was so routine that it's actually kind of painful

+ because of her routine life, she was also pretty sheltered, so she has a lot of well-meaning ignorance about her. like ashley's the kind of person who didn't understand what being bisexual actually is until she met someone who was for the first time (cough leon), because her brain just went "if you're a guy and you suck dick you're gay" and never thought about it any further than that because she never had to. but once she learns she feels like such an ass. but the truth was that she just didn't know any better.

+ despite her thing with the wrecking ball, ashley does not have a diver's license and does not know how to drive a car, just because the timing of her dad's presidency precluded her from learning at a normal age. she learns after he's out of office lmao

+ the only real big negative impact that the events of RE4 had on her is that she no longer knows what she wants to do with her life. she was pretty dead set on following in her mother's footsteps, but now that she knows about bioterrorism, she's not so sure anymore... but, at the same time, she knows how leon felt about her getting involved, so. she's just kind of stuck in limbo now.

[jojotier]

so for your spy au you have Rose adopting both Dirk and Roxy, but later on you say that Dave is taking care of Dirk? how does Dirk end up with Dave?

yeah!! so basically Rose adopts both Roxy and Dirk bc for her spy mission she needs kids to send to a prestigious school so she can slide in and make connections with the parents, but later on Dirk ends up kinda moving more in with Dave, though he officially still lives with Rose, and the crux of that comes down to

Dirk cannot function in a traditional school.

He's a smart kid, but traditional schooling kinda eats him alive- it's both incredibly understimulating and overstimulating for a 7-yr-old, and he's not particularly good at playing with other kids or socializing the way Roxy does.

Compounding it all, though, is his telepathy. He can't turn it off. So every day he's in a classroom with about 30 or so other voices loudly talking in his brain over the teacher, who has two monologues going simultaneously, and he's got his own internal monologue- it's a Mess. eventually comes the moment where he kinda breaks and, with the special ed resources lacking, Rose agrees to pull him from the school.

but that leaves Rose in a Predicament. Because Dirk still needs an education, but she can't stay with him during the day, because she has spywork to attend to. There's the option of hiring private tutors, but that also adds unnecessary risk to the mission, since anyone onto her could try to slide in as a tutor to counteract her spying.

And Rose absolutely cannot send Dirk back to the orphanage (because she loves him) because with Roxy being her only in with this prestigious school, the mission rests on Roxy's mental health being intact, and sending Dirk away would cause unnecessary stress.

So Rose tries to get a few of her civilian friends' help. Kanaya turns her down (because as Auxiliatrix, Kanaya has to hunt down Agent Arachnid and her house is just full of weapons), as does Ms Vris (because as Agent Arachnid, there's this fucking terminator esque character trying to murder her???). Karkat just flatly tells her that she doesn't want any of his connections teaching her kid shit. Jade agrees to help a bit, since she homeschools Jake, but she's fairly STEM-heavy and tends to get lost in her (nuclear research) florist work fairly easily, so it's not a long-term solution. June is still likely in the enemy camp, to Rose's knowledge, so that's a no-go.

So finally in comes Dave for weekend babysitting duty and finally he sighs real big and goes hey Rose? I can take it from here. And Rose is a bit... dubious, about having Dave be in charge of teaching any children, and Dave's just like you do realize I have a master's, right, I know how school works, and Rose is like I didn't realize you went to school, and it just kind of goes unsaid that 'maybe you'd know if you didn't disappear for 15 years and make me think you were dead'. But they both silently know it's there.

and lo and behold- Dave's actually probably the most well-suited for teaching Dirk. He's got a working knowledge of politics, philosophy, economics, history, anthropology, archaeology, art history, literature, art and more, and even if he doesn't quite know science or the real advanced mathematics, he can usually outsource to Jade and teach himself first before passing it on to Dirk. (And hey- if that knowledge just so happens to make the wheels of the propaganda machine he runs turn to trying to turn the Prospitian public against nuclear power, that's just a coincidence)

so at first Dirk bounces between being taught at Dave's apartment during the day and then going home to Rose at night, but as the months go on and he starts being able to stomach not being in the buddy system he and Roxy have been in since they broke out the lab, he starts asking to stay over with his Bro more.

It suits Rose fine. In fact, it makes things easier in the long-term- when the mission is finally over, and when she is asked to shed this identity and become someone else once more, kill this persona and burn the name Rose from her memory- when she has to leave this pretend family behind- she won't have to send the kids back to foster care. Dave will take good care of them. She doesn't trust anyone in the world more than her twin.

[nientedal]

god that post made me mad. "humans just CAN'T be persistence hunters, because persistence hunting doesn't make any sense to me personally! no i'm not going to cite any sources, just trust me, i read about it in school!"

okay, mmhm, sure...except it does work. it does work, and we know it does because it was still in practice by modern humans in the central Kalahari until AT LEAST 1990. some of those people have even explained some of the challenges and nuances of the practice as well as the knowledge they use to make it easier. it's not the only method of hunting humans have used over the years, but it is definitely one of the methods in our repertoire.

"humans can't run for multiple days without food and water (which is how i assume persistence hunting works, for some reason)! and they're not fast enough to chase an antelope without losing it! and tracking is a stupid concept that doesn't work, and i'm going to scoff and ignore it!"

you don't have to run for days. you don't have to be super fast. you just have to be fast enough to not let your quarry rest long enough to recover, and you do have to be able to track-- which is absolutely a real thing that people can and do learn how to do.

(i suspect the OP ignored tracking as a possibility for the same reason they tried to discredit any information about the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari as basically being (1) all noble savage bullshit from the 60s or (2) irrelevant because it's not what their forefathers were doing-- their anthropology course probably taught them about the challenges these bands are facing with colonialism, and probably also taught about the rampant misinformation about them, but it did not teach any actual respect for their cultures or knowledge. or for them as, you know, people. whose grandparents remember the way their grandparents hunted, and can talk about it, even if they are no longer able to continue the practice.)

(knowing the noble savage stereotype is bad doesn't make it less racist when you still talk about people from a stance of "but my modern ways are better than their hungry primitive ways and i'm going to talk as if they're already extinct and have no expertise worth discussing.")

"there's no POINT to it! we have tools! and weapons!" the point is not getting gored and kicked to death by a wounded animal four times your size that didn't die when you hit it the first time. the point is that an exhausted kill is an easy kill where you don't die. it's a decent point. it's fucking reasonable. also, afaik there's decent odds we learned hunting before we learned tools.

and yeah, i get that the OP was just upset and yelling in the initial post. i do understand that. and I understand their frustration at hearing a theory misrepresented as fact. but their subsequent reblogs and responses are equally thoughtless pseudointellectual posturing, and i'm sorry, it's garbage. someone pointed out modern pursuit hunters exist, and they basically went "mmmmyeah, all of that is just outdated, cherry-picked misinformation and you're very stupid and i'm very smart, look at me i know lots of tribe names and i'm going to link some articles about why these people no longer matter, isn't that sad and TOTALLY relevant to this conversation." someone else mentioned tracking, and they ONCE AGAIN basically said if you lose your line of sight, that's it, you're done, you've lost your quarry. tracking isn't real, don't even bring it up. hoofprints in wet ground in the rainy season? those are fake. doesn't happen. broken brush where a panicking animal has run? lol, that's not real. you can invent tools, but learning to follow an animal? bullshit. total malarkey. it's all just guesswork. you can GUESS where the antelope went but that's the best you can do.

🙄

anyway, i don't know enough about human evolution to guess why we're shaped the way we are, and i'm not going to speculate on it today. but what i DO know is that i am willing to believe the G/wi and the !Xo when they say, hey, if you drink a lot of water and then chase a large ungulate through the hottest part of the day in the fucking Kalahari at a steady jog, it will probably overheat and collapse before you will. because one, i kinda figure they know what they're talking about, and two, it does actually make sense when you stop and think for thirty fucking seconds. sure, you need to be physically conditioned to run distances in extreme heat, and you need to be able to find your quarry again if you lose sight of it. but conditioning and tracking are both things you can learn, no matter how badly certain clowns wish it wasn't because it doesn't support their bias. 🙃

[relatablemormonmoments]

I feel like a good amount of complaints about Mormon theology and mormon history can be explained away when you remember that in 1830: [this post is particularly about the suggestion that peoples in the Book of Mormon are Native and Indigenous American Ancestors despite being Jewish (Middle Eastern). It is also about the suggestion that Indigenous Peoples came over on boats, which stems from a racist theory purporting that Natives are actually Early europeans who traveled to the Americas on boats. Several antimormons use this to claim that Mormonism is inherently and intentionally racist.]

We didn't know about Tectonic Plates until 1915

We didn't really know about Land Bridges (or the rise and fall of the ocean due to climate change) [there were some very early theorists who were rejected by their contemporaries / didnt have enough "proof" for the bering land bridge until the 1940s and later] [the average person certainly wasn't aware of what academics at the time thought and were exploring. They were more aware of what politicians and theologians taught.]

Father of American Anthropology and really the first white Native American sympathiser, Franz Boas, is not born for another thirty years.

There was a common belief that humanity was only a few thousand years old (and didn't have much longer to live)

Darwin hadn't come up with the theory of evolution yet, and won't publish it for another 30 years.

Andrew Jackson has just started his 8 year reign of terror. Andrew Jackson pedals anti-native propaganda that becomes increasingly popular. "Manifest Destiny" and the White Man's Burden are increasingly common ideas.

Slavery in New York had just been outlawed. (1827). Some communities in New York still held slaves post outlaw [particularly non-English-American communities. If you look into Sojourner Truth's Autobiography you can see that many New York families continued to hold slaves after the law had changed.] Most white americans are still at least moderately racist.

DNA evidence was not a thing. We can't test to see how different groups are related, and a lot of [WASPs] at this time believe that people who don't share their "superior" background aren't even or are barely human.

There are many elements of early mormonism and even mormon theology that are definitely misguided, but the religion itself is not inherently or intentionally racist. It unfortunately falls into the pitfalls of many American Tenets from the same time period, particularly those relating to American Imperialism and the issue of Slavery. [There's also the pitfall that Brigham Young was a horrible person, ethically speaking] So do most other American Religions, including Adventists and Baptists.

That being said, we can't explain away modern mormon racism or how many mormon racists use symbolism in the scriptures to excuse their interpersonal racism. If you are mormon or postmormon, please fight against these ideas! Don't let your community abuse others! Speak up when the Church won't. Speak up especially when Church Leadership spreads harmful ideology. Speak. Up. Fight Now.

[luna-sheep]

autism rambling

sometimes i think about the post someone made about how when autistic people meet each other, they often either get along super well or can't stand each other for reasons unrelated to their character

not sure how true it is, BUT it makes me think back to college when i was trying to be friendly with this girl in my class who was neurodivergent (don't know what genre)

i wasn't sold on the idea of me being autistic yet. But i wanted to befriend her, she made her own clothes and liked history.

i was internally like "ok, what do we know? when we wanna be friends with someone, we smile, initiate conversations, and opening with a personalized compliment is good. Talk about her clothes. that can lead to more talking!"

so using all my hard-learned social skills i opened a script, only to hit a total wall. she was scowling, wouldn't look at me or talk much. from my end, this all indicated she was upset with me or irritated. So i backed off, dismayed.

i kept thinking "ahhh what did i mess up? did i insult her somehow? what buttons can i press to make the situation work right?"

she may not have meant anything by her behavior, could just be how she was! but i couldn't figure out how to work with her.

looking back, it's funny to see how strategic and scripted i was being! i didn't even think of it that way, they were "tactics" i had learned only after years of trial and error.

can't fault the girl, i myself only learned i should smile when I greet people well into high school.

I doubted i was autistic for a looong time bc i was like "i don't use scripts tho!!! no one taught me scripts! (like what you learn in class)

yeah girl, no one taught you. you taught yourself after a long, lonely childhood. lmao.

in high school, i also considered "studying" and taking notes on the behaviors and social rituals of my peers to write an anthropology book of some sort. I often spoke of humans as an outsider, because the people i knew felt so foreign and unrelatable to me.

[cybermoonmoon]

Life and times. My family at Smalls Paradise Nightclub Harlem. I think about 1949. I just like looking at it. We have all lived so many lives in so many worlds.

From left my mother Carmen she was going to NY City College. Majored in anthropology. Then two friends of the family…I remember them but not their names. …that happens. Someone may know and comment. Center is my Aunt Sybil. Strong wise patient. I remember she explained what living and dying was. I’d gone to a funeral and was confused at the quiet drama of it. I couldn’t understand leaving and never coming back.

Then Grand-Uncle Louie. Uncle had done what boys long ago dreamed of doing. He ran away with a small traveling rural circus. These once common. Uncle was also a WW2 Merchant Marine. Did convoy duty. Was torpedoed rescued...went back. Later worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

In them days before the security state stuff. Ya could bring ya kids around. I had the run of the place. I wandered destroyers and aircraft carriers as they were being repaired.

Next Uncle Owen. Lifelong career military. A guys guy. Didn't put up with bleep. He taught me how to fight bullies. Wait choose ya time get them down and keep'em down. Worked. Next to him my Aunt Bertha whom I remember as very kind with amazing stories. These worlds still live. They exist within my cousins my sister me the kids their kids and now you. They live in those that hear the tales.

[asian-fiction]

Cultural sensitivity will help you understand dramas better

People get sensitive over the idea that one should try cultural sensitivity because often it means self-reflection. Humans processing difference, is definitely still a problem today. But here we go. Honestly, this type of behavior is why I stopped doing cultural notes so often. It's always rounds of people jumping in to defend the outsider and telling me to be nice to their cultural insensitivity and let them track mud into my house, and then telling me that me calling them out for tracking mud into my house is a terrible idea and I shouldn't do that. Friends don't let friends drive drunk. Friends also shouldn't let friends be culturally insensitive and beat up the person trying to extend learning either.

First of all, I've been trained in Cultural Anthropology--I have a degree in it. I also taught classes for a big media company in cultural media sensitivity. And 101 class in Anthropology says the first thing you need to do is pause judgement--which is what I said. Pause judgement.

I mean, if Cultural Anthropology didn't teach about how to get over yourself and culture shock, more Anthropologists would be tossed out of the communities they've been studying. Which is to say I know what I'm doing when I'm pushing against things like imperialism and ethnocentricism. I had the same challenges presented to me. I have no need to be nice about it, but I will be kind. And yes, most of the time this it is white women socialization to ask people to be nice (which isn't wrong, but different, but can be problematic in some contexts--which my white women friends also like to make fun of because they know it so well and are so self-aware, but they also learned how to use it for good, not evil), but understand the context and if it really is helpful to let people walk around with ideas that might harm them later down the road. Which is the greater harmony? That's the difference between kindness and niceness. It is more kind to try to challenge people to self-reflect on their prejudices, than let them walk around with them for the rest of their lives. I did the recently for my cousin's son, too. He got judgy about what other cultures eat, and I worked hard to walk him through it with another family member, and then he came to understand the how and why.

I get your discomfort is why you're asking an entire population to change--I mean Anthropology used to do this sort of thing too. This was their first reaction was to judge, but Anthropology, as a field grew up and realized that demanding that a country change without understanding why things are that way in the first place can do a TON of damage to the communities. This is pretty much the whole history of imperialism. And honestly, most people of color hate imperialism in the first place. (Someone is going to chime in, but, but don't you mean only Asians, no, I mean the majority of the world has been imperialized by Europe and we've been beat up over it. Look up your nearest politics. Name a country outside of Europe, and I'll honestly give you a run down--yes, even Thailand *cough British anyone? Granted a month, but British Museum says a lot….)

The same discomfort that straight people have over queer people demands that queer people act more like straight people. The same discomfort white people have around Black people demands that Black people act more like white people and not talk in their own, very understandable Black English dialects (why else subtitle PoC english speakers?). The same discomfort is the type where people demand that they don't have to see or engage with people who are disabled. It's the same human behavior. And usually, people from the out groups chime in and say, how could that be wrong? Of course they have to bend to us. Of course the wheelchair user has to cope with a 2 foot drop from the curb. Of course we should never have to change our rules on hiring practices for Black people. But the thing is when a group is oppressed for so long, at which point are you punching down? This is what I'm asking. And it's likely you have a difference that's also been picked on and people have also asked you to change it when you couldn't. There is a high likelihood this is a case of this in the majority of the posters. Think about it, and self-reflect for a while-- would you want to bend to such demands when the person hasn't even come to try to understand who you are? And this is how I was taught to stop and think about it in my classes on Anthropology. You, outsider, understand nothing. You are approaching a different time, a different people, but you need to make them human to you first before you can judge them and say they are wrong. It would be like a stranger coming up to you and punching you for wearing a cultural costume. Or that Atlanta shooter for shooting massage parlor people (who to be clear weren't sex workers, though there is nothing wrong with that) shooting Asians because he was angry over covid.

Also, when you're absolutely used to everyone bending to you and your ways, it can be a huge shock to be asked to bend to a totally different way.

To me, asking a country to change, is like trying to grow cacao beans in a desert and then demanding the people live off of that. It simply doesn't work because cacao is tropical. The desert is not. You don't know the conditions that they work under. There have been "rescue" groups that go to Africa (the continent, yes) where they try to force the locals to grow crops that simply don't work, and then the people come there all mighty and ignorant, and then tada~~ a storm blows in or the river floods just like they thought, and those "rescue" organizations have their tails between their legs and then have to start from scratch, learn from the people about what is and isn't working and why and how the system can work better.

So processing your culture shock--100% it takes practice. But it's never, ever OK, to use your discomfort to demand a country should change without understanding how and why the system works like that and how and why your own contexts might also be flawed.

100% I've gone through culture shock and stared at things where I go, this makes absolutely no sense to me. 100%… but what I've been taught through my anthropology classes, is to travel through my discomfort, reflect on if my systems at home are really that much better, and if it's really that dire of a change needed. Am I going to literally die if Japanese chocolate doesn't taste like Belgium chocolate like I'm used to (c'mon, US chocolate is worse than Japanese… most of the time--opinion here)? Or can I reflect on that difference and go, ah, cool, that's why. I may not agree, but I understand. I won't always agree with the difference, but in understanding why, my judgements become less divisive, more cool, and I understand that this system is working (or not quite working) for them.

I really do get that self-reflection makes people feel icky, but if you want to engage with people unlike you, you have to travel through this sort of discomfort. You get better at it as you experience more of it, like anything in life.

Also, this is probably why more Koreans wish I would quit making these comments, because there is always that one person that can't stand culture shock, and think their discomfort is more important than learning.

When I didn't bend to the people of the country, they treated me colder, and I think I would have missed out on a lot of good experiences if I had doubled down on my discomfort. What I want is a bit of that magic that I experienced for you. This is why I write these comments. It's not to get judged as a Korean person trying to extend an olive branch on everything you dislike about Korea. I am not everyone Korean. I am not a symbol. Let people travel through their discomfort--if it makes you feel uncomfortable seeing that they are being asked to travel through it, maybe you also could work on that. Because I promise you something better is on the other side.

Ah, I'd have missed out on the Geta obaasan if I was that uptight. And I swear thinking back onto that moment, makes me still tear up because I could really appreciate her humanity because I learned to let go. I'd trade the entire trip to Japan for that one moment, it was that special.

[arzooooo]

aww @napworthysunbeam ty for tagging me 💗

nickname: so many people call me so many things! childhood friends call me gayu which is why I get a very warm nostalgic feeling when anyone calls me that, my parents call me choti si, babyloo, yoli, latta tendel (small coconut in tullu cause as a child I wanted to be an astronaut but couldn't pronounce it so I said I wanna be a coconut) all random sorts of variations, my best friend calls me gayuumi, etcetc. I love the concept of special nicknames special people call you

sign: Gemini

height: 5"4

lucky number: 7

last google search: painting kit cause my bf and I wanna paint my new tote bag

number of followers: I actually don't know cause I've never checked it or been curious

song stuck in head: a shitty love song by jye, my bf introduced me to it in the valentines playlist he made

amount of sleep: oscillates wildly depending on the day, if I've been out a lot of if I'm feeling low I sleep more

what are you wearing: I have such a watpad bad boy look rn... I didn't realize. It's black boots, black jeans, black leather jacket, white t back top

fav media: star trek, gilmore girls, the good place, everything ghibli, love jab we met, watch zindagi na milegi dobara like 6 times a year

fav song: changes constantly, but rn I'd say Somewhere a Judge by Hop Along, Curls by Bibio, White Morning by Seoul (can't pick!), also love Gulzar's lyrics about life (Dil Dhundta Hai, Tujse Naraz Nahi Zindagi)

fav instrument: hmm... I love classical Indian instruments... sitar.. veena.. sarod...

fav author: oh I love love ursula le guin I've almost finished earthsea but I love her scifi stuff more like the dispossessed and left hand of darkness, I love ted chiangs short stories also, in non fiction I like reading anthropology I've been reading David graeber

aesthetic: I love pastels, especially pink and green. I love heart shaped objects. Basically I love wholesome happy things, the sun shower streaming down between the leaves, cats lazing around, sparrows eating grains, pastel maxi dresses, windchimes, artworks by Agnes Martin and Kurt solmssen, for love and lemons, cinnamon rolls, I love anything that emphasizes the wonderful euphoria of daily living and the mundane aspects of life, japenese haiku from masters like Basho and Yosa Buson, japenese woodblock art

fav animal noise: we keep rice grains on our window for sparrows, so I guess sparrows chirping!

random: this one and a half year I've had free of academic and professional pressure because I've been placed have taught me so much about myself. I've had the chance to do things I wouldn't have otherwise. I colored my hair pink. I learned pottery. I traveled. I wrote a short story. I know better now who I am and what I enjoy. My ideal morning is exactly this: wake up early, have breakfast with my mom, take a shower while listening to my favorite indie mellow songs, do pottery, cook lunch, settle on the couch to watch gilmore girls while having lunch, go on a post lunch walk with dad to look at the building cats. All this puts me in such a good mood. But I know soon it's all going to go away. I'm going to enter the drudgery of corporate law firms. How will I feel my sense of individuality intact? How will I remain soft and sweet? How much of myself am I giving up to ensure I have a secure future?

[meichenxi]

3 and 25 for the book asks!

Heyyy :D

3 - What were your top five books of the year?

I'm going to talk about these one by one, because what I am if not verbose :D These are NOT in any order!! To be honest I have probably forgotten some incredible ones, but I didn’t keep a list. So. 

1) The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

EMPIRE. WLW. HARD FANTASY. GENDERRR (so much gender). I cannot describe how much like a breath of fresh air this book felt in adult fantasy in every way: the world is immersive, but saying 'immersive' doesn't do justice to how well built it is. I learnt more about colonialism and trade dynamics than school has ever taught me. The battlefields are meticulous; the supply lines well-drawn. Women, sapphic women, but with a gaze that feels startlingly not male, so much so that when my friend pointed out it was written by a man I didn't believe her at first. Comparisons to the anthropological sci-fi of Ursula le Guin are well-merited, especially (or so I've heard) later books. Baru is an engaging protagonist who reminds me STRONGLY of Mei Changsu who has all the strengths of your average Schemey Politicky prodigy, but this is one of the first times (another exception below) where I actually believe it: her strengths become her weaknesses, and she fails time and time again because, as she phrases it, she forgets about 'the other players' - that is, that other people have autonomy and the autonomy to make stupid, noble choices. What I love most is how her distance and slight bewilderment at the emotion-driven goings-on of other people when she herself has relatively low empathy and is fairly callous both enable her to succeed and also, inevitably, create her downfall. It creates a three dimensional character out of the Cold Plotting Schemer that is so often a caricature. I am very excited to see where this story goes.

2) Nirvana in Fire by Hai Yan

Need I say more? Anyone who follows anyone in the cdrama or cnovel fandoms knows about this. There's an excellent series (and the second is also good), and there's a translation of the book available online - very much a good translation. I've read it before, but reading it whilst self-isolating and having limited social contact and having close relationships with chronically ill people and contemplating mortality constantly as we have had to do during the pandemic - it felt different this time. If I had to give one cnovel to someone to read, it would be this one. Brotherhood, identity, betrayal, lying as an act of love and withholding the truth as an act of kindness - there are not many books I have read well into adulthood that can compete with books like LOTR in their formative power, but this is one of them. I've had more thoughts about who I want to be, what kind of life I want to live, what it means to care for someone and what it is to be known about this than any book since Tolkien. I have written posts about this, I'm sure, but here's an entreaty again: if you don't learn Chinese, if you have never read a cnovel, if you think you have no interest in politics or the machinations behind the throne or ancient court drama - just read it. Please.

3) City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer

Heard of Annihilation? Jeff Vandermeer is the guy who wrote that, and it's by far his most normal work lmaaaao. City of Saints and Madmen is a very typical romp through the New Weird - which doesn't mean it's any worse or predictable, but that expected themes of place and history and depth and environment and contagion and religion and madness come up again and again. It's one of the most cleverly put together books I've ever read, made up of a series of stories, fake in-universe academic articles and other paraphernalia (one section is a bibliography that lasts over 50 pages) about the city Ambergris. If you like House of Leaves or similar books, you'll enjoy this. Favourite parts of it include the two contradictory in-universe academic articles about the founding of the city and the legend of the giant squid, as well as one short story in which Jeff Vandermeer himself features as a character. I love the New Weird because it's exactly as batshit as quote-unquote 'regular' surreal / literary fiction....except there is often actually a plot and these things are really happening. I also read Dead Astronauts, which I adored, but despite the insanity of City of Saints and Madmen it's a much more accessible book for an introduction to Vandermeer's writing, which is why I have given it here. I'm also. Not entirely sure I understand more than 10% of Dead Astronauts so.

4) Tibet is my Country by Thubten Norbu, as told to Heinrich Harrer

Now for something a bit different. THIS BOOK you guys. This book is one of those that you find randomly in a charity shop and it changes everything. To give you some context on how unexpected this book is: my copy is the 1961 English translation of the book originally written in German by an Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer who spent much of his adult life in Tibet and took years crossing the Himalayas - but the German book is a translation of a story told to him in Tibetan by Thubten Norbu, the BROTHER of the then Dalai Lama, which was then recorded on tapes and meticulously transcribed, then translated (Harrer conducted the interviews in Tibetan and translated it to German later). It's the story of Thubten Norbu's upbringing in Tibet in the 20s and 30s, his travels in India and China, the Chinese communist forces invading the Amdo region of Tibet (which is now in modern Qinghai and Sichuan province, and not much is officially in the autonomous region - I somewhat coincidentally actually went there five or so years ago), his flight to the US, his eventual return and various pilgrimages thereafter. The book took years to record, write, and translate, and the effort can be seen throughout the whole thing. Thubten is an extraordinarily clear and vivid narrator, and I very much appreciated the time he spends on the day-to-day details of his childhood and early adulthood as well as the larger events of the latter half of the book. I don't know if you can get ahold of a copy - if I look online briefly it looks a little difficult - but it's been the most unexpected and wonderful bonus of my charity shop plundering this year.

5) In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent

I read this for my undergraduate dissertation on constructed languages, and think it's just...yeah, it's just a great introduction to the topic for anyone who wants to know the history of constructed languages. I don't just mean Esperanto and Elvish, but setting the whole idea of making your own language in its historical context, tracing the earliest conlangers and different types of languages throughout the Enlightenment, birth and development of formal logic, the search for a 'perfect' language, its eventual abandonment, and the endeavour was picked up again by those looking to create a 'common' language instead a few centuries later. It also traces the development of 'artlangs', conlangs that are created solely for the purposes of art. It's not particularly heavy, pretty short, and a great overview for anyone who is interested in linguistics, the history of linguistics, why Esperanto 'succeeded' when other languages like Volapük arguably have not, what Tolkien was doing, and so on. Yeah. Generally recommend!!

Thanks! I'll do the rest tomorrow :D

[sourdoughserenity]

10 Facts You Now Know About Me

Rules: Post ten facts about yourself and tag ten people you want to get to know better

Thanks @reylo-ology for tagging me! I really enjoy being a part of this community here and get excited every time I do something more interactive 😁

1. I fell into Reylo after TLJ - I didn't see it AT ALL in TFA and when my husband bought some Kylo Ren plates for our kids I was like, Ew, he's the mean bad guy, why would we want our kids to eat off plates with him on them? And now I look back and laugh at myself and the irony of it all. So anyway, I wound up looking at pictures on Pinterest, and saw some more NSFW type stuff and was like... Oh. Oh. Uh huh. Yeah. MOAR PLEAZ!!!! aaand here I am in the depths of the Reylo Tumblr trash bin. I was not previously acquainted with the words 'fandom' or 'ship' in any kind of meaningful way, and had no idea what I was getting into. But I'm very glad to be here!

2. I speak German as a second language, well enough to teach German 1 (like A1 in Europe). I started learning it in 6th grade and went on exchange in 10th grade to a little town in southern Germany where I lived with a Dutch family and actually learned German. I traveled a lot in Europe and the whole experience really shaped the direction of my life in some importsnt ways. I kept studying in college, but I never managed to do an exchange again. Kind of funny, but when you say 'fic' out loud in English it's basically like saying 'fuck' in German. Stuff like that makes me laugh inside.

2. My husband just told me to include the fact that I'm dead inside. Lol. There are some things, like cute puppies, that I just don't care about. I seriously don't. But watching some things, or seeing people cry in real life, can make me bust out crying too, like nobody's business. So I'm a mixed bag, I guess. But it is true that I'm kind of dead inside.

4. I studied linguistics in college, and can speak conversational Spanish (Caribbean/Latin American Spanish)in addition to German, a bit of Portuguese and Turkish, and some random other things. I know a lot of random facts about random languages. I find the grammatical structures of agglutinative languages really interesting, and I also love phonetics. But I never went on to get a Ph.D because the paperwork scared me. I also couldn't pick one thing that interested me, at the time when I should have been applying. If I went back to school now, I'd focus on phonetics, or linguistic anthropology. I'm a big fan of Daniel Everett.

5. I like to knit and crochet a lot, although I have trouble finishing projects. My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 5-6, and I learned to knit when I was 6-7 in school. Right now where I'm living I don't have any of my supplies, and I've really missed creating things with yarn this year.

6. I'm obsessed with baking sourdough bread using a wild yeast sourdough starter. The starter is like my pet 😊 again where I live right now it's hard to bake properly, and I didn't bring all my baking supplies with me, but I LOVE making real sourdough. Lol my Tumblr account name. Once I'm back in the US I am so looking forward to baking regularly again.

Some fairly crappy bread I baked here:

7. My parents are both converts to Islam and I grew up going to a mosque in the suburbs of NYC. It was a Sufi mosque and very much not a mainstream kind of experience, from both an American and a Muslim perspective. When I left the little bubble I grew up in it was pretty weird. I didn't feel equipped to deal with mainstream American culture and mainstream Muslim culture, and it's taken me, well, it's still taking me, time to figure out my place in all of this... Lol I walked right into that Rey quote. I love Star Wars.

8. Another part of my bubble was the Waldorf School I attended. Rudolf Steiner, anyone? Anthroposophy and gnomes? It was an interesting, and it some ways great experience going to a Waldorf School. I got to study German and go on exchange, knit in class all the time, make a hammered dulcimer in woodshop, and read and analyze loads of good books and poetry. And learn about homeopathy in my chemistry class lol. It only contributed to my bubble that popped when I went to college, but I'm glad I had the experience I had in school there.

9. Back to Reylo... I am so honored to be working with @shaara-2 in helping her translate the fan fiction she is writing from Italian into English! I love editing, and I understand a bit of Italian (romance languages generally speaking) so that along with Google I'm able to translate the story. I'm her translator/beta I guess you could say. It's been really exciting to work with someone else on creating and contributing to the community here. Shaara is very patient with me when life takes over and I can't work as much as I'd like to (which is a lot of the time).

10. I didn't start a real career until after my kids were born and I was forced to go back to work for financial reasons. I worked as a hostess/server in a bunch of restaurants, including a Korean place, which is where I truly fell in love with Korean food (kimchi is THE BEST), I tutored, and I was a stay-at-home mom for a few years but it was all kind of random till I had to go back and actually help support my family. I became an English-ELA and German teacher, and it's been great. Or at least teaching German has. I don't really like English, haha. But I have enjoyed becoming a professional educator and plan on teaching for a while before I try anything else.

Soo, anyway, I feel like that's my life story. Summed up in 10 facts. I love you all!

I'm tagging @kasiopea-star-wars , @mrsvioletwrites, @darth-ej, @commandercait, @joudoodles, @myreylolifestyle, @pride-and-prejudice-in-space, @my-name-is-jazzy-x, @boomdafunk, @psy-kylo-gy