#Survivor: South Pacific

[realitygifs]

[jeremycollinsstan]

what if it was 2023 and i was still making survivor south pacific edits 🤔

[aquarri]

hvv and pearl islands became my favorite seasons idc

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Hey, so I live on unceded Chinook land. The Chinook never formally gave up the land around the mouth of the Columbia or Willapa Bay. They began getting hit hard by European diseases in the late 1700s, before Lewis and Clark ever arrived, and eventually the survivors of those communities in what is now south Pacific County headed further north up Willapa Bay to relatives up there.

When European settlers showed up in larger numbers in the mid-1800s, they assumed the land wasn't being used, so they took over pretty much everything; you still have descendants of some of these settlers who have large parcels of land here, to say nothing of all the timber interests in the area that control thousands more acres throughout the Willapa Hills.

The Chinook Indian Nation received federal recognition in 2001, but it was rescinded a year and a half later due to complaints from the Quinault Indian Nation. Since then, the Chinook have been unable to access much-needed resources from the U.S. government such as health care, housing and utilities. Federally recognized tribes receive these benefits and more, and many also have reservations; it is absolutely not an ideal situation nor is it anywhere near making up for the violent removal of indigenous people from their ancestral lands. But even these resources would have helped the Chinook a great deal over the past two decades, to include during the COVID pandemic.

The above petition is to urge the state of Washington to turn the old Naselle Youth Camp over to the Chinook Indian Nation. It would be a much larger and more stable headquarters, particularly as their current one is at risk from sea level rise and a potential earthquake and tsunami in the Cascadia Subduction Zone (which is a when situation, not an if.) Again, the NYC wouldn't undo all of the injustices over the past couple centuries and more, but it would be a step in the right direction on the part of Washington's government.

Even if you are not a resident of Washington, please show your support by signing this petition. U.S. folks can also contact their elected officials asking them to support the recognition of the Chinook Indian Nation.

Finally, here's a really good article outlining the history of Chinook recognition. And you can learn more about the Chinook's work toward recognition and how to help at http://www.chinookjustice.org.

[lesbianchemicalplant]

But The Wind Rises declines to challenge mainstream Japanese society’s distortions and denials of its wartime atrocities. Worse, it echoes Japan’s morally dishonest stance that it was a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of a global war — a whitewashed version of history that the film now imports to every country where it plays. Consider the first scene. Jiro is a young boy; in his dreams, he heads for the skies in a wooden aircraft. A constellation of black dots appears above him, soon revealed to be a hangar’s worth of missiles and bombs. They dangle from a zeppelin embossed with the Iron Cross. The explosives fall on Jiro, reducing his plane to splinters. The rest of the film is suffused with this fear of German aggression, and it’s an ethically mendacious choice of a bogeyman on Miyazaki’s part. In The Wind Rises, the alliance between Germany and Japan — the original Axis of Evil — is conveniently forgotten, as scene after scene shows the Japanese bombarded by Teutonic suspicion, condescension, and hostility. Reframing the Japanese as the victims of Nazi racism deflects attention from the heinousness of the Japanese Imperial Army. But Miyazaki’s elevation of his own countrymen as morally loftier to the Nazis is only credible when the viewer forgets (or is unaware) that the Japanese military justified killing 30 million people across Asia with its own ideology of ethnic superiority. The Wind Rises continues this blame evasion throughout, evincing an ideal of pacifism while positioning Japan as the target of Chinese and American assault. We see Japanese planes downed by a Chinese foe in a mid-film reverie — a shockingly insensitive image given that Japan was invading China during this time, not the other way around. Later, an American bomber floats above a graveyard of burned-out aircraft over the defeated Japanese empire. In contrast, no Japanese pilot is ever seen shooting at an enemy, even though Jiro’s most famous invention, the Zero plane, was designed and used solely for military purposes. The consequences of his work — that is, corpses — are likewise absent. In the film, Jiro never expresses sympathy for the people his people killed. His grief is strictly reserved for the deaths of his planes. His preference to mourn his Zeros, rather than the planes’ victims, illustrates his soft-handed callousness. The bloodlessness of the film contributes to its whitewashing of an incredibly bloody history. No surprise, then, that The Wind Rises has already created an uproar among South Koreans (who haven't yet seen the film),  arguably the biggest recipients of Japan’s 40-year colonial cruelty (1905-1945). The Wind Rises’ specious pose of self-victimization will and should disgust the living survivors and their descendants in the myriad other countries Japan invaded during World War II: China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia; the list goes on. It’s hard to believe that, were The Wind Rises set in an interwar Germany and focused on an idealistic dreamer who just wanted to design the world’s most beautiful U-boat and didn’t care a whit about the concentration camps, it would receive a similarly adoring reception here in the U.S. (At the time of writing, the film enjoys a 82 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has appeared on several best-of-year lists.) One would hope that critics who aren’t suffering from Japan’s culture of mass delusion about its war crimes would take into consideration the warped version of history Miyazaki has to accommodate and, to a large extent, perpetuates.

(2013)

[writingquestionsanswered]

I was wondering, why does it feel like I can't write good original fiction or original characters, but my fanfiction is great (imo anyway, which I never feel for my original fiction)? In some senses, I get it, like I feel I really know the characters in other people's fiction after seeing them through their story, but like....ugh. It's really frustrating. Do I just not understand how to develop an original character? Am I overcomplicating things?

Fan-Fiction: Struggling with Writing Original Fiction Characters

All of the above... ♥

So, yes, you're probably overcomplicating things a bit, but also it actually is hard for a lot of writers to make the switch between writing canon characters and developing their own original characters. In other words, what you're experiencing isn't unusual and it's absolutely surmountable. :)

One of the things I love about fan-fiction for newer writers is it allows you to focus fully on the mechanics of writing without having to divert effort toward things like world building and character development. The problem with that, though, is once you make the switch from writing fan-fiction to writing original fiction, you might find that your world building and character development skills are lagging behind. It sounds like this might be the situation in your case.

This is why I think it's a great idea to experiment with writing OCs, or in other words "original characters" as part of your fan-fiction. You don't even have to post these stories if you don't want to--write them for yourself, for practice. But, creating an original character to join your favorite canon characters is a great way to get practice in character creation and development while still within the comfy zone of your fan-fiction. Just by virtue of having to exist in the canon world, you have a little bit of a template to follow as far as who this character can be and what they can do. But, you have some freedom with things like back story, internal conflict, and character arc. Writing OCs in fan-fiction helps you hone those skills and learn to create characters you love without tossing yourself into the deep end.

And, if you need practice with setting development/world building, you can do that within fan-fiction, too. Try moving the canon characters into a new time, world, or situation. For example, what if the characters of The Hunger Games were survivors of a modern day shipwreck in the South Pacific? Or, what if the characters from ACOTAR lived in a Dune-like world, with different planets and starships and great houses? In this scenario, you can focus more on world building and plot without having to worry as much about character design and development.

So... no matter what, the reality is you'll just have to be patient with yourself. Whether you choose to hone your character development skills through writing fan-fiction OCs, or whether you keep at it with original fiction characters, it's going to take some time for you to develop those skills. It will be frustrating because you'll know that these characters aren't hitting the mark you want them to, but that's also good, because knowing they're falling short means you can try to figure out why and what you can do to fix it.

And, if you need additional help, you can always visit my Character Development master list of posts.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[chimaerakitten]

so @darlingofdots's awesome Temeraire!universe historian post mentioned the wreck of the HMS Allegiance and I have been thinking about where it is literally all day.

Not just where as in "somewhere in the South Pacific" (because duh) but also, specifically, how deep, and therefore how the wreck would be studied.

Because a lot of archaeologically significant shipwrecks are pretty shallow, since they're the wrecks we can dive to, either on normal air scuba tanks or mixed gas. The Uluburun shipwreck off Turkey, for example, sits between 44 and 61 meters deep, which is right on the edge for air diving. The archaeologists could only be at the bottom for 20 ish minutes at a time, two times per day, with careful decompression timing as they went up to avoid the bends and not-insignificant amounts of nitrogen narcosis at the bottom. Mixed gas goes deeper, 100 meters or so for some of the more available ones. (there's a Phoenician shipwreck off the coast of Malta that's about 110 meters deep, and was excavated by technical divers) Beyond that it's just commercial divers laying oil pipelines with the super $$$ gas at depths of up to 500 meters or so. Anything deeper than that is the domain of submarines and robots.

and really, all of that ^ paragraph is just tangential set dressing that I added because I like shipwreck archaeology, because knowing the Allegiance went down in the middle of the South Pacific meant it was always going to a be a submarines-and-robots wreck. The middle of the Pacific Ocean is uh. deep. but I wanted to find out exactly how deep.

so the map from Crucible of Gold puts the sinking at a little under 50°S and a little over 121°W, which the NOAA bathymetric data viewer says is just about 3000 meters deep

Since that's an extremely boring screenshot, here's the CoG map overlayed on a bathymetric map:

It's actually on a bit of a ridge there! which is why it's at 3000 meters and not deeper.

We do find and investigate wrecks at that depth and deeper these days. The Titanic is at 3800 meters, and it has been investigated extensively (though we also have a recent pretty major news story about why thats still difficult and uh, very dangerous) The USS Samuel B Roberts was found at 6895 meters, and perhaps most relevantly, the search for Malaysa airlines flight MH370 turned up two 19th century shipwrecks at 3500+ meters deep, over 2000 kilometers off the coast of Australia.

One of those wrecks was a wooden ship from either the 1870s or 1880s, and though, being wood, it was pretty badly decayed, its cargo (coal) and metal features (anchor and water tanks) were still extant. On the Allegiance, that would also include her guns and her metal keel (which would probably be the identifying feature TBH, the keel marking her as definitely a dragon transport)

That wreck is probably the best parallel to the Allegiance in other ways, being a wooden sailing ship with a wreck not only very deep but also very remote. It also probably went down due to an explosion, just like the Allegiance. They were common on coal-carrying vessels, and the sonar images showed the cargo was scattered across the seafloor like something catastrophic happened.

The Allegiance would be more remote than its real-world parallel, but anyone looking for it would be hunting for it specifically and would be armed with probably a decent idea of where she was when she went down, seeing as there were survivors who would have been very keen to remember where they were so they could know how close they were to land. Plus, much like the Titanic (though not to the same extent) there'd probably be funding to investigate the Allegiance once found, as she had a part to play in major political turning points on at least three continents. People tend to be interested enough to throw money at that sort of thing.

So, there you have it. It would take a pretty serious effort to find her, though not an impossible one, and once found she'd be investigated by shipwreck robots, which would bring back pictures and samples of her metal remains, with organic matter being mostly absent by the time she was found.

[zhangyulian]

Guilt - Spider & Neteyam

Warning: Character death and survivors’s guilt

This is an idea I have in mind for a story I plan to write eventually. This would only serve as one part of it.

I love Spider and Neteyam being Team Older Siblings. That’s kinda where the following idea comes from. You’re welcome to share your thoughts. Enjoy!

…

The Sully family live hidden within the Amazon rain forest amongst indigenous human tribes in South America.

The RDA is a large global resource organization responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon to gather precious “resources” within the land. However it’s a cover up for something more sinister — the capture of Na’vi Pretenders (natural born Na’vi with Pretender (Cybertronian) mixed DNA and their human allies.

In the center of this war with the RDA is Jake Sully and Neytiri. Jake is a crippled marine who is recruited by the RDA after his brother’s untimely death and is given a second chance at life by becoming an “Avatar pilot” to his brother’s Na’vi Pretender-spliced-with-human-DNA Avatar body. He is tasked with infiltrating the Omaticaya clan and reporting intel so the RDA can take them down all in one fell swoop, led by Colonel Miles Quaritch. Jake gets close with Neytiri, a natural born Na’vi Pretender and she teaches him to see and activate his ability to take on different forms, such as transforming themselves from ten feet metal organic beings to six feet human version of themselves. (This ability helps them blend in with the indigenous tribes, who see them as guardians and blessed beings of Mother Earth, aka Eywa. Although they are of Cybertronian descent, they do not transform into vehicles, only other organics) Jake falls in love with Neytiri and betrays the RDA, the RDA attempts to wipe out Hometree village off the face of the Earth and every living being in its path, including the Tree of Souls. Quaritch betrays the RDA after learning what they had been doing to his unborn son while in the womb of his now deceased lover. Jake and the Omaticaya manage to fight back with his help and the RDA take a step back and leave. Upon Quaritch’s dying breath, he begs Jake and Neytiri to look after his son.

The couple end up adopting baby Spider. Spider is a product of an experiment to combine Na’vi Pretender and human DNA to create natural born human super species. As a side effect, he was born with underdeveloped lungs and can only breathe pure oxygen, rendering him to wear a mask at all times. Out of the many newborns created, he is the only one that ends up surviving after birth. He is the oldest Sully child and son.

Neteyam is born soon after, being close to Spider’s age. They become very close, the babies being over protective of each other and never seen a part from one another.

Kiri, Lo’ak, and Tuk come not long after, and the couple are outnumbered by five children. They’re all trained to be warriors and healers and are aware of their origins and are all loved by Jake and Neytiri. They take extra precaution towards Spider, much to the boy’s annoyance that he can handle himself and his siblings.

Him and Neteyam take turns keeping their siblings out of trouble, although sometimes they contribute too (more so Spider than Neteyam, but Spider’s very good at hiding the evidence 😂). Despite Neteyam being taller than Spider, he enjoys snuggling up against his older sibling and entrusting Spider with his own thoughts and worries. They are each other’s rocks. And Neteyam isn’t afraid to set anyone who sees Spider for anything less than the loving brother that he is ram-rod straight.

When word gets around that the RDA has returned to the Amazon, Jake and Neytiri get ready to battle them again, but do not want their children involved at all. They decide to send all the children and those unable to fight across the Pacific to the Polynesian islands of Awa’atlu to stay with their Metkayina allies. Spider refuses to go, wanting to stay with his parents but their answer is final. Right before they depart, Neteyam approaches Spider in secret and admits he will be staying behind to help fight the war. Spider is angry at his brother, demanding why he gets to do so. His taller yet younger brother reminds him that as a natural born Na’vi Pretender, his abilities are stronger and can be more useful in battle. Spider, despite some of his enhanced abilities, knows he can’t do the same things as Neteyam but it frustrates him to no end, especially since he’s the one who’s supposed to look after all of his siblings.

Neteyam makes Spider promise him that he’ll look after the others. That causes Spider to ask his baby brother if he knew who he was speaking to teasingly, but they sober up quickly, the gravity of the situation hanging heavily on their shoulders.

Spider then in turn tells Neteyam to look after mom and dad, knowing they were not going to be happy at all that Neteyam stayed behind, but his fighting skills will certainly help them. They share a tight embrace, not wanting to let the other go, and try to hold back the tears as they finally part ways.

In Awa’atlu the Sully kids and other Omaticaya settle in with the Metkayina and they learn their ways of life and adapt. Over the months of training and guidance under Tonowari, Ronal and their children, they undergo the Metkayina Iknimaya and fully integrate themselves into the clan. Relationships also begin to bloom: Lo’ak and Tsireya, and Spider and Rotxo. Spider and Rotxo’s courtship started off as mere friendship then developed into a deeper romance. They bonded over the love of their younger siblings and family, the love they have of Eywa’s creatures and love for the sea. He reminds him of Neteyam and Spider can’t help but think of his parents and brother back at home, not knowing if they were on their way here or not.

The Metkayina have shown them great hospitality upon accepting their uturu. Rotxo made sure Spider and his family and people were comfortable and attended to their needs. A year into their stay, Spider and Rotxo seal their relationship by mating before Eywa, connecting their queues together (Spider’s a smaller but that doesn’t hinder his ability to connect). They each earn a matching tattoo for their mating and another to mark the start of their new family.

All is well in paradise until Awa’atlu is decimated with missile bombs from approaching RDA ships. Blindsided by the attack, the Metkayina attempt to flee and fight back the attackers that breached their land. In the midst of the chaos, Spider and Rotxo are defending Spider’s siblings when Spider’s suddenly tased from behind and ripped from Rotxo’s grasp, unconscious and bleeding.

He wakes up not in Awa’atlu but somewhere else, gray and metal and confined with no escape. He’s questioned and tortured and beaten, and he doesn’t cooperate. He fights back. But it only worsens when he’s out through a machine that attempts to read his mind and he resists with all his power. He notices the black specs on the machine, and for a fleeting second thought it was dried blood. The days blur themselves mercilessly without pause - wake up, fight, machine, scream, thrown back in cell, sleep, repeat. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there but they move him one day to another cell and finds himself next to another prisoner he’s never seen before — a young girl, probably Lo’ak’s age, in the same condition he was in. She looked dead, unmoving in her slumped place on the floor. But the minute rise and fall of her chest indicates she was breathing and alive — and bleeding all over and in black. His mind clicks with the specks he saw in the machine before and he puts two and two together.

That was her blood. She must have fought too.

He finds out her name is Madi and she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She spoke of a world alien to him, and he comes to the conclusion she must be an alien from outer space, given she’d travelled on space ships and had been on other planets. How she ended up here was a total mystery, she didn’t remember herself.

Time passes — how much, they couldn’t keep track of. One time they tried to escape, only to be recaptured and bound. As punishment, Spider is forced to watch their captors tie down and drill into Madi’s bones to extract her marrow, ignoring her screams of pain. They don’t stop until she is in near critical condition and forcibly injects her marrow into him, stating that if she dies, they would at least still have him to work with.

Madi ends up living but isn’t faring well. They begin a new experiment with her, this time using a shard of metal they called an Allspark fragment. Something goes horribly wrong the moment they start. An explosion rocks the facility and unknown to everyone there, that explosion triggered the Autobots’ radar.

The Autobots launch a search and rescue mission to Mount Weather, the explosion leaking dangerous amounts of radiation across the mountain. The nearby towns are all evacuated. They excavate and find Spider and Madi unconscious, barely alive. They’re shocked to find them emitting weak newspark signatures despite the fact that they were humans.

Taken back to Diego Garcia, the pair recover slowly and painfully, hostile to their rescuers at first before slowly learning to trust them enough that they wouldn’t be harmed. Spider calls them demons, much to Madi and the Autobots confusion.

Spider and Madi venture the island after their recovery. Spider recognizes a specific plant that is used in signal fires and with the Autobots’ permission, light one up in hopes of making some type of contact. Unbeknownst to the Autobots and NEST soldiers stationed with them topside, there is movement in the water as shadows travel through the night.

The encounter that occurs between the newly arrived Metkayina Na’vi and the Autobots is tense, like a strung bow about to be shot. None of them attack, the Metayina especially given how tight Will’s grasp on Spider’s arm was, guns pointed at them.

Spider feels something flicker and twist inside him. Scanning the figures he searches, recognizing the two that approach — Kiri and Aonung — and attempts to call out something the Autobots nor NEST soldiers couldn’t understand. Everyone goes into a panic when suddenly he starts seizing and collapses, blacking out.

Spider manages to recover from the episode with the help of Ratchet and Kiri working together to save her brother. When he fully reawakens, he’s greeted by the sight of his sister Kiri and brothers Aonung and Lo’ak. And lastly, he gasps, Rotxo. They’re both speechless, full of tears, their bond broken for so long yet the moment they’re within one another’s presence, Spider feels it snap back into place. Ah, that’s what he felt earlier. He can’t stop crying as Rotxo holds him, gentle yet firm as if afraid he’s disappear.

They take their time healing and recuperating and rejoicing the founding of their brother, thanking Madi and the Autobots by safely harboring him. In the midst of catch up, he notices Kiri is wearing a familiar looking armband — one that Spider had made for Neteyam before they separated and asked if they heard anything from the Omaticaya. He learns that the situation has worsened, their people targeted and their homes destroyed. Word of Neteyam’s fate came with the arrival of Jake and Neytiri to Awa’atlu about a year ago. It was supposed to be Neteyam and Neytiri, but that didn’t go as planned. Neteyam took the shot meant for Jake and died bleeding in his parents arms, wanting to see his brothers and sisters again. They came by ikran, perhaps with a dozen others, a quarter of who they left behind to defend Hometree village.

Spider spent the next few days walking aimlessly on the beach of Diego Garcia while the others made talk for wartime negotiations. His baby brother lay with Eywa, dead. And it was all his fault.

Neteyam had followed Spider’s orders to the letter, like he did with everything in his life. He knew he would because Neteyam didn’t want to let anyone down, especially Spider.

Spider felt a dull ache and numbness in his chest. He couldn’t feel anything, half-alive, and wished he could take his words back, fought harder to stay, to protect his taller yet younger sibling who he confided everything to. His rock.

Spider promised he would protect all his younger siblings. Yet he failed to protect Neteyam.

He failed Neteyam. Tears slipped down his face, pooling at the bottom do his mask.

And he dared to asked Eywa why she took his baby brother away when it should be been him.

[wrc1905]

Review for Sea People by Christina Thompson

I've always been interested in Anthropology and human development around the world. This book made effort to point out that there is still significant gaps in our knowledge about how the people of Polynesia migrated across the Pacific Ocean. Many of the early tales from European explorers shows their utter bewilderment that such small canoes could travel such huge distances as European ships needed to be so much larger to travel the same distance.

Many of the theories of the early anthropologists were total shots in the dark, with some just guessing that Polynesians were migrants from South America whilst others believed they were survivors of a sunken continent. These theories were quickly disproven as carbon dating became more accurate allowing for a timeline of movement to be established throughout the various Pacific archipelagos. Two of the most important discoveries was the carbon dating of rat bones that were native to the islands (before the European Black Rat was brought to the region) and the discovery of pottery allowing for distinct periods of Polynesian culture to be placed in order.

The book also highlights the catastrophic damage that was done to the various Polynesian cultures by the colonising Europeans who brought with them disease, alcohol and far more dangerous weapons. The Polynesians who didn't die of illness watched as their religions were slowly replaced by Christianity as missionaries descended on the islands. However, by the 1960s and 70s the collective consciousness of many Polynesians was raised by the Black Power and Red Power movements in the United States. This led to further celebrations of culture.

In conclusion: Highly recommend this book if you want to understand more about Polynesian culture, and history.

[usafphantom2]

RUSSIA: With the only aircraft carrier stopped in reform, MiG-29K embarked fighters were sent to the war in Ukraine

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 23/01/2024 - 08:49in Military, War Zones

The Russian navy embarks its new Mikoyan MiG-29KR fighters aboard its only aircraft carrier. But the elderly - and unreliable - Admiral Kuznetsov has been under renovation since 2017. So the Russian Navy gave new use to the jets of the embarked squadron.

The 1980 vintage flattop aircraft carrier of 58,000 tons may never return to frontline service, effectively stranding its twin-engine supersonic MiGs.

The Navy may have found another use for some of the approximately 22 MiG-29KR survivors of the 24 that the fleet acquired from 2013: according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, it unfolded them to Crimea. From there, they supposedly hunt Ukrainian navy boats.

The new MiGs, which have multifunctional capability with modern air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons, were left out of the first 18 months of Russia's 23-month broader war against Ukraine. Perhaps already last fall, at least two MiG-29KR belonging to the 100º Independent Ship Fighter Aviation Regiment were flying from the Saky air base in Russia-occupied Crimea.

The medium-weight MiGs allegedly flew alongside Russian navy Sukhoi Su-30SM heavy fighters on patrols in search of Ukrainian navy boats operating in the western Black Sea.

After sinking the frigate Hetman Sahaydachniy, the Ukrainian navy no longer has large armed warships. What it has are many missiles, air and sea drones and small fast boats.

Manned boats carry Ukrainian commands in attacks on Russian-controlled territory. Robotic boats loaded with explosives infiltrate the ports to attack Russian warships.

A supersonic fighter versus a small boat may seem like an unfair fight, but the crews of Ukrainian boats usually carry ground-to-air missiles fired in the shoulder. In August, a Ukrainian crew hit a Russian Sukhoi fighter, apparently damaging it and forcing it to return to the base.

Despite the danger, do not be shocked to see more MiG-29KRs in the sky of Ukraine. Some of the Russian navy's MiG-29KR patrol the Russian Arctic, but most of the force - more than a dozen jets - may be available for wartime operations.

And it's not as if the MiGs need to board Kuznetsov anytime soon. Although the Kremlin optimistically projects that the aircraft carrier may return to the fleet this year, it is possible that the review will extend until 2025.

There is even a remote chance that Kuznetsov will never return to the fleet. The aircraft carrier has very little real combat power - perhaps too little to justify the risk that the crew must accept every time the geriatric ship sails.

The last time Kuznetsov unfolded off the coast of Syria to attack Syrian rebels in 2016, his air wing lost a MiG-29 and a Su-33 due to faulty detention equipment. The fleet leaders decided that Kuznetsov was not safe for flight operations before the planned overhaul and transferred its air wing - including the surviving MiGs - to an air base in Syria.

Source: Forbes

Tags: Military AviationMiG-29Kaircraft carrierWar Zones - Russia/Ukraine

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[ya-world-challenge]

Book Review: The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad (🇫🇯 Fiji + others)

[image 1: book cover: Amid violet coloring and flowers are 4 illustrated woman: a blue-eyed, brown-skinned girl with lavender hair, a dark-skinned girl with a jeweled braid, a light-skinned girl with long blue hair, and a dark-skinned girl with a tropical flower in an afro. Tagline says "Their magic will not be vanquished"; image 2: map showing Fiji; image 3: beautiful flower bouquets at a Fiji market; source: wikimedia)

The Wild Ones

Author: Nafiza Azad

YA World Challenge read for 🇫🇯 Fiji

While the author was born in Fiji and is a "self-identified island girl" according to her bio, only a couple chapters of this book took place in Fiji (plus one Fijian character). I didn't know that before reading, but that's okay and enough to count as my book for Fiji. 😘

Review

This was a uniquely written book and I liked it for that. The premise is a sort of magical-girl squad of sexual violence survivors. They are Paheli's "Wild Ones" - she has saved them all in some way and given them magic stars which instill powers. They are able to traverse the Between, a sort of magical hallway between cities, which is usually only accessible to non-humans. When Paheli is reunited with Taarana, the boy who first saved her and gave her the stars, the Wild Ones decide to protect him from the baddies hunting him down.

The book alternates between two points of view - one is Paheli's, and the other is a collective "we" voice of the other Wild Ones. The voice will also sometimes address the reader directly with comments on gender violence and society. This might seem heavy-handed to some readers, or cathartic to others, depending on the person. I found it refreshing to read a different style.

My favorite parts of the book:

The cities! The Between takes us to multiple cities, each one described as a character in itself, so that we are immersed in such diverse places as Marrakech, Morocco and Busan, South Korea.

I wasn't expecting to find such a cute romance. Seriously, they were so cute.

The diversity of the girls. From Africa to Iraq to the Pacific, the Wild Ones come from across the globe (and the LGBT spectrum). I also love that the author did not only choose Western-palatable names, and chose to show that the Widads and Gufrans of the world are just as beautiful (they are!)

I did want to know more about the character's backstories - each has her own poem, though cryptic - but at the same time I felt the message was "our trauma is not your entertainment" in leaving their stories intentionally vague. So, respect to that.

This was a unique book with a fun feminist theme that tackled themes of trauma and violence at the same time. Keep this in mind for the content warnings (there is also on-page suicide), but if you're okay with that this was worth the read.

Here's the beautiful full jacket cover that I didn't get in an ebook! ✨

Other reps: #lgbtq (various casual mentions) #straight

Genres: #magic #contemporary fantasy #social issues

★  ★  ★  ★   4.5 stars

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

“The Dark Pictures Anthology” where it’s the same, but the tone/feel of each game is flipped around:

Man of Medan

During the Iraq War, U.S. Navy SEALs Alex, Brad, and Conrad, along with their CIA handler Julia, are sent out on a top secret mission to infiltrate a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean. The ship, belonging to arms dealer Fliss, was supposedly carrying Saddam’s WMDs. The mission was simple; neutralize the ship’s crew, take control of the ship.

However, the mission goes south when the Navy SEALs and Fliss’ mercenaries come into contact with the long-lost ghost ship, the Ourang Medan. And to make matters worse…there are monsters onboard, seeking new victims.

Little Hope

Director James Clarke and his film crew consisting of his other family members Anthony, Anne, Dennis, and Tanya, run a ghost-hunters TV series in which they visit America’s most haunted areas. For their latest episode, they decide to visit the ghost town of Little Hope which, according to legend, was one of the towns that was terrorized by America’s first serial killer, H. H. Holmes.

What starts out as a typical episode turns into a night of terror when the Clarke family realizes that they are being stalked by a Holmes copycat killer. A copycat who is seeking to recreate his idol’s most infamous kills.

House of Ashes

Treasure hunting married couple Eric and Rachel King, along with fellow hunters Nick Kay (who Rachel is having an affair with) and Jason Kolchek, decide to visit Iraq as part of their quest to find the long-lost gold of Naram-Sin of the Akkadian Empire. Tagging along with them is their Iraqi guide Salim Othman, who warns the foolish hunters about disturbing the resting place of those inside the “house of ashes”.

Things go south when the group gets taken captive by mercenaries led by Dar Basri, who are also seeking the gold of Naram-Sin. Eventually, the two groups find the entrance into the supposed House of Ashes…but not everything is what it seems inside.

The Devil in Me

College professor Charlie and his students Kate, Mark, Erin, and Jamie are invited to the island mansion of Granthem Du’Met, a reclusive millionaire whose home is also considered a historical site. What should’ve been a simple visit turns into a night of terror when the group realizes that something about Du’Met and his island is off. They don’t know what it is, but something about the island feels familiar.

It’s later revealed that there was no actual field trip; Kate Wilder was hallucinating Charlie, Mark, Erin, and Jamie the whole time. It turns out, the island was actually a psychiatric hospital and Grantham Du’Met was her doctor/therapist helping her work through her traumatic memories. Charlie was her father, Mark was her husband, Erin was her sister, and Jamie was her sister-in-law. They all died in a house fire, with Kate being the sole survivor of that incident.

[thewhitedarknesstv]

David Grann is the first to say he isn’t a natural-born explorer. Thanks to a degenerative eye condition, the longtime New Yorker writer sees the world as though looking through a windshield during a rainstorm. He doesn’t hike or camp, and he has a tendency to take the wrong train when he rides the subway. While researching The Lost City of Z, his 2009 book about a Victorian-era adventurer who went missing in the Amazon and never returned, he briefly got lost in the Amazon himself. So it wasn’t all that surprising when, on a sunny morning in April, Grann showed up at the wrong location for our interview. When I found him on the sidewalk near the South Street Seaport Museum, where we were supposed to meet, he was grinning from ear to ear. “It’s just like me to get lost,” he said, laughing.

Grann, 56, may not have the strapping physical attributes of his subjects, but his meticulously researched stories, with their spare, simmering setups that almost always deliver stunning payoffs, have made him one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today. “We often think that reporters have to be super-capable in every way in order to get the best material, but sometimes if you have something like weak sight, you compensate in such a brilliant way that it’s better than if you have the best vision,” said Daniel Zalewski, Grann’s longtime editor at The New Yorker. In just over a decade, Grann has published The Lost City of Z; Killers of the Flower Moon, about the targeted assassinations of members of the Osage Nation; The White Darkness, about a polar explorer obsessed with crossing Antarctica alone; and two collections’ worth of magazine stories about murderers, master manipulators, and scientists on the hunt for the elusive giant squid.

His latest book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, traces the journey of the H.M.S. Wager, a British warship that ran aground on a Pacific island in 1742 while on a secret mission. Stranded, the crew members mutinied and spent months fighting for survival, testing not only their physical limits but those of military law and the social order. Multiple groups of survivors miraculously made it back to England only to offer different, sometimes conflicting, accounts of the ordeal. More than the adventure story, the Rashomon-like atmosphere is what gives The Wager the intellectual heft of a David Grann endeavor. “After all they had been through — scurvy, shipwrecks, typhoons, violence — these castaway voyagers are summoned to face court-martial, and they could be hanged. So hoping to save their lives, they released testimony or written accounts, which became quite a sensation, but they also sparked this furious war over the truth,” Grann said.

After spending two years poring over journals, court records, and logbooks, he still felt he could never fully understand the experience of the Wager’s crew unless he visited the island. That’s how this reluctant explorer found himself sitting in a small boat as it motored across a stretch of Pacific Ocean often referred to as the Gulf of Pain, while waves tossed the 50-foot vessel around like a soda can. “That journey was probably stupid, probably foolish, but in the end was really essential,” Grann said. As he walked around the island, the brutal conditions the sailors described — the windchill, the lack of food, the dense foliage that suffocated their movement — felt real. “I understood why this British officer had called Wager Island the kind of place where the soul of man dies. I’m like, Okay, my soul would have died here.”

Grann grew up in Westport, Connecticut, the middle child of the late Victor Grann, a cancer specialist and recreational sailor who occasionally exhibited some of the madman qualities his son would later explore in his subjects (“If a hurricane was coming he would not sail away from it,” Grann said), and Phyllis Grann, a powerhouse book editor and publisher who shared one piece of wisdom above all: Don’t become a writer.

Like any good child, he ignored his mother’s advice. After graduating from Connecticut College, he wrote a coming-of-age novel that he never published and briefly taught fiction while getting a master’s degree in creative writing at Boston University. Eventually, he gave up on fiction and committed himself to journalism, where he has mastered a streamlined, propulsive type of narrative that readers devour for its hide-and-seek reveals. The success of that form is indisputable — Killers of the Flower Moon has sold over a million copies — but it’s not without detractors. “If you taught the artificial brains of supercomputers at IBM Research to write nonfiction prose, and if they got very good at it, they might compose a book like David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon,” Dwight Garner wrote in his New York Times review. Grann, however, is diligent about removing stylistic flourishes from his writing. “You’re really only as good as the material you’re working with,” he said. “You might be able to improve it some, or you may not make it as good as it could have been, but at some level, if the material isn’t good, you’re kind of sunk.”

“David spends weeks and weeks and months and months sifting through possible stories,” said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. “I’d wander by his office and he’d be reading these archives and old letters and all kind of material, holding the paper close to his face like an ancient Talmudic scholar.”

Nowhere are the twists and turns of Grann’s stories more hotly anticipated than in Hollywood. According to one film scout, producers sometimes hear about Grann’s ideas before he has committed to pursuing them. Four of his stories have been adapted into movies, and at least four others are in development as either films or series. The bidding war for Killers of the Flower Moon was heated, with the winners paying a reported $5 million for the rights. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio ultimately signed on to make the film, which is scheduled to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Scorsese and DiCaprio acquired the rights for The Wager last July, nearly a year before its publication.

Inside the Seaport Museum — where Grann revels in the knowledge that its tall ship, the Wavertree, was once battered rounding Cape Horn, just like the Wager — he tells me he doesn’t think about his projects as movies. His interest in the Wager was stoked by an 18th-century account written in stilted English, hardly cinematic gold. This account was given by John Byron (who would one day be the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron), who was 16 when he left Portsmouth aboard the Wager. As Byron’s story was one of a handful given by survivors, “I tried to gather all the facts to determine what really happened,” Grann writes in an author’s note at the beginning of the book.

Where other writers might take liberties, Grann is obsessive about accuracy. “David’s stuff reads like literature, but every detail, every quote, every seemingly implausible glimpse into a subject’s mind is accounted for,” said David Kortava, who fact-checked both The White Darkness and The Wager. Grann verifies his own work before sending it to a fact-checker, and his devotion to the fact-checking process can seem comical. The first time he asked Kortava if he had checked the spellings of his kids’ names on The Wager’s dedication page, Kortava thought Grann was joking. The second time he asked, Kortava checked the spellings. “He doesn’t have an OCD diagnosis, as far as I know, but I do, and I definitely consider him one of the tribe,” Kortava said.

Grann didn’t always have the freedom to pursue his idiosyncratic interests. He was once a general-assignment magazine writer delivering stories about Barry Bonds, John McCain, and Newt Gingrich. A 2000 profile of the now-deceased Ohio congressman Jim Traficant that Grann wrote for The New Republic helped him discover the types of stories he wanted to tell and how to go about telling them. In an Ohio courthouse, Grann unearthed a 1980 recording of Traficant, then a candidate for sheriff, talking to two mobsters. “I hear Traficant dropping the F-bomb every other word, and I hear him talking about taking bribes, and then I hear about people coming up swimming in the Mahoning River. And it was a voice that was so different from the voice I heard on C-SPAN,” Grann said. “It was kind of the beginning where I was thinking, Oh! These are the voices of the stories I want to tell. It also showed me the power of archives for the first time. You can find things that are just kind of sitting there if you look, and they can peel back façades and get you closer to the hidden truth.”

I ask Grann if he misses reporting on contemporary figures. He holds up his hand and makes a zero with his fingers while letting out a sigh of relief. “The kind of reporting I really like to do is so immersive, and usually figures like that do not want you to be with them,” he said. Their ghosts, he has learned, have no choice.

[follow-up-news]

Authorities in Papua New Guinea were searching on Wednesday for safer ground to relocate thousands of survivors at risk from a potential second landslide in the South Pacific country’s highlands, while the arrival of heavy earth-moving equipment at the disaster site where hundreds are buried has been delayed, officials said. Emergency responders say that up to 8,000 people might need to be evacuated as the mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees that crushed the village of Yambali in the nation’s mountainous interior on Friday becomes increasingly unstable.

[clueless1995]

What are the best seasons of survivor? I’m watching pearl islands now

omg i love that im like a survivor blogger now sjdhsjdh ok i recommend watching them in order just so that you get introduced to any returning players in their original seasons!! however i have marked the seasons that have returning players so if you want to bounce around you know whats up !! so my favourite seasons are:

pearl islands (7)

cook islands (13)

china (15)

fans vs favs: micronesia (16) — half returning players

tocantines (18)

heroes vs villains (20) — all returning players

south pacific (23) — two returning players from seasons listed here

fans vs favs: caramoan (26) — half returning players

kaôh rōng (32)

millennials vs gen x (33)

game changers (34) — all returning players

david vs goliath (37)

[squidyyy23]

tagged by some budzos to do a little get to know you game @creepkinginc @mishervellous @thisdivorce @sleepyfacetoughguy @mmmichyyy

rules: tag people who you want to get to know better.

relationship status: married going on 897 years

favourite color: teal

three favourite foods: ice cream. cheesy garlic bread. potatoes in all forms.

top 3 tv shows: shameless, sons of anarchy, survivor (though third place could be a toss up between a ton of things, so let’s pick a fun one)

top 3 characters: mickey milkovich, opie winston, tommy shelby

what i’m currently reading: the invisible life of addie larue (and i’m loving it)

song stuck in my head: don’t even know the name. just this whistle-y background part i’ve been humming all morning.

last movie watched: toy story 3

last thing i googled: how to know if i was about to drill into a pipe in the bathroom wall. 

last song i listened to: spotify says...freakin’ out on the interstate by briston maroney

dream trip: south pacific island frenzy.

time: 10:53am

anything i really want right now: drill battery to finish charging so i can finish the project i started before i loss the moment’s burst of motivation and it ends up sitting half done for months.

tagging some more pals @whatwouldmickeydo @heymrspatel @gallawitchxx @auds-and-evens @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @gardenerian @crossmydna @shameless-notashamed @look-i-love-u @stocious @rereadanon @metalheadmickey @celestialmickey @too-schoolforcool