#country humans colombia

[invaderfromhell]

Diseño de....

Colombia, Ecuador y Venezuela 🇨🇴🇪🇨🇻🇪 ❤️

Ahuevo que si!!

Gracias compita!! @thedoodlesonfire

Algunas de las solicitudes pedían a Venezuela y la neta ya teniamos ganas de hacerlo, y que mejor que con sus compitas el ecuador y el precioso Colombia!!!! ❤️❤️❤️

(Gracias a los que enviaron solicitud... Lo demás va en camino)

[bl4ck--wh1te]

No me aguantaba, es de mis favoritos💕

[yolivirus]

Color palette challenge :333

[weepingfireflies]

People & countries mentioned in the thread:

DR Congo - M23, Cobalt

Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan

Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)

the Sámi people - IWGIA, Euronews

Hawai'i - IWGIA

Syria - Amnesty International

Kashmir- Amnesty Summary (PDF), Wikipedia (Jammu and Kashmir), Human Rights Watch (2022)

Iran - Human Rights Watch, Morality Police (Mahsa/Jina Amini - Al Jazeera, Wikipedia)

Uyghurs - Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) Q&A, Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, UN Report

Tibetans - SaveTibet.org, United Nations

Yazidi people - Wikipedia, United Nations

West Papua - Free West Papua, Genocide Watch

Yemen - Human Rights Watch (Saudi border guards kill migrants), Carrd

Sri Lanka (Tamils) - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch

Afghans in Pakistan - Al Jazeera, NPR

Ongoing Edits: more from the notes / me

Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan (Artsakh) - Global Conflict Tracker ("Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"), Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch (Azerbaijan overview), Armenian Food Bank

Baháʼís in Iran - Bahá'í International Community, Amnesty, Wikipedia, Minority Rights Group International

Kafala System in the Middle East - Council on Foreign Relations, Migrant Rights

Rohingya - Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, Al Jazeera, UNICEF

Montagnards (Vietnam Highlands) - World Without Genocide, Montagnard Human Rights Organization (MHRO), VOA News

Ukraine - Human Rights Watch (April 2022), Support Ukraine Now (SUN), Ukraine Website, Schools & Education (HRW), Dnieper River advancement (Nov. 15, 2023 - Ap News)

Reblogs with Links / From Others

Indigenous Ppl of Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia

Libya

Armenia Reblog 1, Armenia Reblog 2

Armenia, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Indigenous Americans, Black ppl (US)

Rohingya (Myanmar)

More Hawai'i Links from @sageisnazty - Ka Lahui Hawaii, Nation of Hawai'i on Soverignty, Rejected Apology Resolution

From @rodeodeparis: Assyrian Policy Institute, Free Yezidi

From @is-this-a-cool-url: North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA)

From @dougielombax & compiled by @azhdakha: Assyrians & Yazidis

West Sahara conflict

Last Updated: Feb. 19th, 2024 (If I missed smth before this, feel free to @ me to add it)

[chaqru0]

[determinate-negation]

Washington, D.C., June 10, 2024 – Today, an eight-member jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, found Chiquita Brands International liable for funding a violent Colombian paramilitary organization, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that was responsible for major human rights atrocities during the 1990s and 2000s. The weeks-long trial featured testimony from the families of the nine victims in the case, the recollections of Colombian military officials and Chiquita executives, expert reports, and a summary of key documentary evidence produced by Michael Evans, director of the National Security Archive’s Colombia documentation project.

“This historic ruling marks the first time that an American jury has held a major U.S. corporation liable for complicity in serious human rights abuses in another country,” according to a press release from EarthRights International, which represents victims in the case.

[ale-yaocihuatl]

sorry, i forgot to translate the videos

[candela888]

Same-sex marriage in 2003 vs. 2013 vs. 2023

(20 years of change)

More info below:

----

2003:

Marriage : Netherlands, Belgium, British Columbia (CA), Ontario (CA)

Civil unions : France (including overseas territories), Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland, Rio Negro (AR), Ciudad de Buenos Aires (AR), California (US), New York (US), Hawaii (US), Vermont (US), Canary Islands (ES), Aragon (ES), Catalonia (ES), Andalusia (ES), Extremadura (ES), Castilla-La Mancha (ES), Castilla-Leon (ES), Madrid (ES), Valencia (ES), Asturias (ES), Basque Country (ES), Navarre (ES), Balearics (ES), Quebec (CA), Alberta (CA), Manitoba (CA), Nova Scotia (CA), Geneva (CH), Zurich (CH), Portugal.

----

2013:

Marriage : Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, France (including overseas territories), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, New Zealand, Washington (US), California (US), New Mexico (US), Minnesota (US), Iowa (US), Maryland (US), DC (US), New Jersey (US), Delaware (US), New York (US), Connecticut (US), Rhode Island (US), Vermont (US), Massachusetts (US), New Hampshire (US), Maine (US), Hawaii (US), Mexico City (MX), Quintana Roo (MX).

Civil unions : Greenland, Colombia, Ecuador, Merida (VZ), United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Australia

Recognizes marriages performed abroad : All 32 Mexican states and Israel

----

2023:

Marriage : Netherlands (including overseas territories), Belgium, United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, US Virgin Islands, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Malvinas/Falklands, France (including overseas territories), Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Guernsey, Jersey, United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Ireland, Gibraltar, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, St. Helena, Pitcairn Islands, Gibraltar.

Civil unions : Bolivia, Italy, Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Aruba, Curaçao, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia, Liechtenstein 

Recognizes marriages performed abroad : Namibia, Israel, Nepal, American Samoa

----

Future :

Same-sex marriage is under consideration by the legislature or the courts in Aruba, Curaçao, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, India, Japan, Liechtenstein, Namibia, the Navajo Nation, Nepal, Thailand, and Venezuela, and all countries bound by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which includes Barbados, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Suriname.

Civil unions are being considered in a number of countries, including Lithuania, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, Ukraine, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Panama, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Thailand, and Venezuela.

----

[invaderfromhell]

Empanadas xD

✨@thedoodlesonfire ✨

Aquí uno de los pedidos con los que más nos hemos divertido en hacer

[the-empress-7]

On choices

I have a feeling things will go south on this trip to Colombia, both by design (they are desperate for tax payer funded security and therefore most likely have a scare choreographed and ready to go) and as ordained by their karma (nothing ever goes according to their plan because they are awful humans)

Which means people are about to have selective memory when shit does hit the roof. Which means no one is going to stop and ask the Harkles why they CHOSE to accept an invitation to visit Colombia.

A country with which they have zero ties. The Harkles don't have a duty to visit Colombia. The Harkles don't have a single business obligation that compels them to visit Colombia. The Harkles don't have ties to any charity that even vaguely connects them to Colombia.

The IG connection is a stretch, so much so that they themselves are not relying on it to sell this trip (which also tells us that IG isn't funding this latest escapade).

Hey if the Colombian VP wants to waste tax payer money that's on her. My point is that when shit does blow up in all their faces, I'd like everyone to remember that the Harkles are the ones making this choice.

[reasonsforhope]

Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday [September 6], ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.

The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement.

Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.

Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality...

The Details

The court said on X that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in Mexican federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.” ...

-via AP News, September 6, 2023. Article continues below.

The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That ruling set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to drop criminal penalties.

Abortion-rights activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.

For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican women will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.

What it does do — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects...

Lifting Abortion Restrictions Across Latin America

Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave,” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.

The changes in Latin America stand in sharp contrast to increasing restrictions on abortion in parts of the United States. Some American women were already seeking help from Mexican abortion rights activists to obtain pills used to end pregnancies.

Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago.

After decades of work by activists across the region, the trend picked up speed in Argentina, which in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.

-via AP News, September 6, 2023. Headings added.

[creedslove]

Hello! Love your writing! Could I please request a Pedro x pregnant!reader fluff please?

Javier Peña x f!reader

A/N: I changed it again, in fact I changed the entire request because I'm a little shit and that's a stated fact. But I changed it for Javi, but not just any Javi, I changed it for asshole!Javi, married lying cheating!Javi

Javier had been married to Lorraine for years when he met you 

In the meantime, she'd gone to Colombia with him when he was first assigned by the DEA, but she quickly hated the country, the weather and the food and took a plane to Laredo 

Which caused him to be a single agent who slept around almost as often as he changed clothes 

He never really got into detail, but he was sure Lorraine also slept around back in town, she was no saint, and he knew that for a fact, after all they got married 

When he returned home, he was seen as a local hero, and it didn't take long for him to get the job of chief of police, which brought him even more status 

And with the status and the money he got from his DEA retirement and his job as a cop, she was more than willing to come back, flash her baby blues and beg Javi for another chance to get back together 

Javi had his fair share of women and he was getting old, besides, he didn't have any hopes of falling in love ever again, so he decided to give it a go 

But it got old fast, he didn't remember Lorraine being so cold in bed, she was all the time complaining of Javier's touches or finding excuses so she wouldn't have sex with him 

And he soon got bored 

So when the two of you met, he felt as if things had some meaning and the attraction was instantaneous 

And it didn't take you too long to be bouncing on Javi's cock, or sitting on his handsome face or being pounded by him from behind 

You kinda felt guilty at first for being with a married man, but anyone could tell Javier wasn't happy with that bitch, and watching the way she was always condescending and rude to everyone, walking into stores as if she owned the place, your guilt disappeared

You and Javi were in too deep to care about anything, your escapades were every time hotter and hotter and you couldn't get enough of each other 

Until you started to feel sick, throw up every morning, and your period was late 

You couldn't believe that possibility was becoming real 

So you went to the drugstore to buy a test, and even if the result came out positive, you still didn't believe it and you went to the doctor 

Who confirmed you were indeed pregnant 

You cried yourself to sleep that night, terrified to what would happen now you were expecting a baby from a married man, you had no idea how Javi would react or what he would think of it 

So you avoided him for a couple of days, until you couldn't escape when he came after you, demanding to know what the fuck was going on for you to be so weird with him 

And then you told Javi everything that had happened 

And oh boy, it felt like his world had imploded. He had never had kids with Lorraine, and he doubted they where would, and there you were, carrying his child 

He was at a loss of words and loss of actions, not knowing what to do as he stared at you with the dumbest expression a human being could display 

Your eyes began watering as you didn't get an answer from him, it all felt so overwhelming as he didn't say anything

"I can't do this, I'm sorry"

It was the first thing he told you. Javi was married and he did have a reputation to stick up to after all, he couldn't just leave his wife for his pregnant mistress 

He saw you walking away from you and panicked, grabbing you by the arm and hugging you 

Javier swore he didn't mean it that way, but he assured you he would pay for all the expenses you would have with your baby, but he just couldn't go public 

You told him to fuck off and never go after you again 

But still, the amounts of cash would appear in your house as the weeks turned into months and one day you got so pissed, you grabbed all the money and drove the police station, returning it all to him 

Though he was afraid of a scandal, he insisted for you to take it welcoming a baby into the world was something so expensive and he wanted to be a part of it, even if it was just financially

It took you a lot of convincing but eventually you agreed, after all it was only fair since he was hiding you and your beautiful baby like a dirty secret 

It killed Javi to see you from afar in the months that followed your pregnancy, he felt a mix of pride to know you were carrying his baby, but also pain, to know he was such a coward who couldn't step in and take care of his new family 

It pained him to see how beautiful pregnancy was treating you, whenever Lorraine talked about how one of her ugly pregnant friends was glowing he always scoffed, but when he saw you glowing, he knew exactly what people meant 

He always went pissed off when he overheard anyone make any comments on you being a single mom. They knew shit and they shouldn't be talking about other people at all 

When you went into labor, he pretended he had a call from the hospital, but couldn't identify who it was, just to pretend he was investigating whoever decided to pull a prank 

But he just paced the hallway worriedly and was only able to breathe relieved when he overheard the doctor say it both you and the baby were alright 

And he nearly died when he found out it was a little girl 

Javi went to your room after hours and watched as you and your baby slept. He wanted to hold her but he was afraid he was too clumsy for that 

You woke up startled at his presence and couldn't hold your tears, asking him to leave as soon as possible as you didn't want your daughter to be attached to a man who couldn't admit he was her daddy 

He asked her name and his heart broke to know her name was Analuz and if he weren't an asshole, she could be Analuz Peña 

Whenever Javi had a glimpse of you pushing down the stroller around town, he would make an excuse to be around you and Analuz 

His daughter was the most beautiful and adorable baby he'd ever seen, and he wanted nothing more than go home to the two of you, instead of going home to Lorraine 

You finally allowed him to hold Analuz, the two of you shocked to find out she would immediately stop crying whenever she was in his arms and he always thought his heart wasn't going to take those beautiful, bright little eyes 

He once got into a real serious fight with Lorraine when she was trying to gossip about people in town and mentioned something about you and your baby, and how people often said your daughter was beautiful but in reality she'd seen far more beautiful babies 

And Javier was pissed 

The two of them had a heated argument which ended up with Javi having to sleep on the couch 

But he refused it and drove to your house in the middle of the night 

You weren't happy to be awoken like that, but he begged you to see Analuz and you eventually gave in 

Javi spent the most comfortable night of his life, sitting in the armchair and dozing off with his beautiful baby sleeping peacefully on his chest, rethinking his life choices and how he wished he could make things right for the three of you 💔

_____

A/N: I'm not gonna lie, besties, I've been daydreaming about being married!javier peña's mistress, there's something so dirty and sexy about it it makes me WANT IT

[silicacid]

Dirty secret of Israel’s weapons exports: They’re tested on Palestinians

Weapons tested in each war Israel wages see a spike in global demand. The current Gaza war is the latest laboratory for its arms industry.

India – Israel’s largest military buyer, which operates more than 100 Israeli-made UAVs – purchased 34 Heron drones in this period, followed by France (24), Brazil (14) and Australia (10), according to a 2014 report by Drone Wars UK.

Colombia is one of an estimated 130 countries that have bought weapons, drones and cyberspying technology from Israel, the world’s 10th-largest weapons exporter.

A report from Amnesty International in 2019 noted that the whole process by which Israel sells arms is shrouded in secrecy “with no documentation of sales, one cannot know when [these arms] were sold, by which company, how many and so on”.

Amnesty found that “Israeli companies exported weapons which reached their destination after a series of transactions, thereby skirting international monitoring”.

Israel has not ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the sale of weapons at risk of being used in genocide and crimes against humanity. As such, its weapons exports have influenced the course of history for several nations, many led by controversial regimes.

[mariacallous]

Venezuela has been polarized almost since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, but last Sunday’s stolen presidential vote shows the rift has changed. Previously, it was between middle- and upper-class citizens who opposed Presidents Chávez and Nicolás Maduro and those leaders’ base, the poor. Now the rift is between a majority of citizens and Maduro’s discredited, autocratic government. Residents from the poor neighborhoods that ring Caracas are pouring into the capital to protest alongside the city’s better-off residents. To suppress them, Maduro and his government are unleashing their security apparatus, and as of Wednesday, government security and militia forces had arrested hundreds of protesters and killed more than a dozen people.

This is not a “civil war,” as Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab recently attempted to portray it—at least not in the traditional sense of citizens against fellow citizens. Instead, we are seeing the rising up of citizens against a government that, according to credible exit polls and opposition tallies of more than 80 percent of the ballots, stole an election from a popular presidential candidate, Edmundo González. There is no hard evidence to support the claim of the National Electoral Council (CNE)—packed with Maduro loyalists—that Maduro was reelected with 51 percent of the vote, to González’s 44 percent. And what’s certain is the division and turmoil revealed this week after the election are inimical to the social capital, stability, and predictability needed to rebuild the country’s battered economy.

Venezuelan citizens lined up for hours to cast their vote in Sunday’s presidential election. This demonstration of renewed faith in democracy followed decades of declining participation in voting, owing, in part, to the opposition’s abstentions. In preelection public opinion polls, more than 80 percent of registered voters said they wanted political change, and an almost equal number expressed an intent to vote. But Maduro never had any intention of allowing himself to be voted out of power.

Before and after, his government has displayed a refusal to adhere to standards of electoral transparency. Several months before the balloting, the CNE disinvited an election observation mission from the European Union. Days before the vote, Venezuelan authorities refused to allow ex-presidents from Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, and Panama to fly to the country observe the elections. And after governments from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay questioned the results, the Maduro government announced that it would shutter those countries’ embassies in Caracas. The willingness to break diplomatic practice has shocked the foreign-policy community, especially in Venezuela’s own neighborhood; solidarity and dialogue are firmly ingrained in the region’s diplomatic DNA.

Of course, fellow autocratic governments in China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and Russia immediately recognized Maduro’s win. For some of them, like China, the reasons are in part financial—Beijing wants to keep its access to Venezuela’s oil. For others, it is more out of solidarity in defying international scrutiny of human rights and elections. Meanwhile, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the EU, and the United States among others are calling on the government to release the paper ballots. But if the CNE never turns over the paper trail or if the evidence is demonstrated to be falsified, what those governments will or even can do is unclear. (A majority of governments denounced Maduro’s last election in 2018 as fraudulent with little effect, but since the opposition had boycotted the contest, the claims carried less import.)

Protests are likely to grow in the coming weeks, and the likelihood of broad international isolation—what one pro-government investor said at a recent conference in London would be just “some turbulence”—now looks more like a crash. Investors who bought distressed bonds after Venezuela defaulted on its debt are watching bond prices drop after rising in the weeks before the election. Energy companies in the United States and Europe that benefited from the U.S. liberalization of sanctions are now facing a possible return of those sanctions, and as Britain, the EU, and the United States discuss how to best punish the government and individuals within it for failing to meet Venezuela’s commitments under the 2023 Barbados Agreement to hold free and fair elections, there will likely be more targeted personal sanctions, too.

None of this bodes well for Maduro’s ability to maintain even his limited base of popular support, which includes corrupt businesses, politicians, and security officers. Further repression will likely follow. While China and Russia have pledged their support for the Maduro government, neither has the capacity to keep Venezuela’s battered economy afloat.

Whatever happens to Maduro’s government, the chaos and the economic pain it will inflict likely spell the end of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Bolivarian project that Chavez founded in 1998. There was a slim, perhaps unrealistic, hope among international diplomats and observers that more forward-thinking members of the government and party would consider their political future in a democratic Venezuela should a popular uproar follow a stolen election. That hope has vanished. For the majority of Venezuelans who supported González and had their hopes dashed, the PSUV will be associated with theft and cruelty, even more so than in the past. The legacy of Chavismo will be remembered for this.

The situation in Venezuela cries out for international mediation to restore order and defend the rights of Venezuelan citizens. The center-left governments of Colombia and Brazil could be well positioned to convene such a process.

But next steps are deeply unclear. Nor is it obvious after the Maduro government cut ties to neighboring governments that dared to question the results whether Brazil and Colombia would be able to maintain ties to the strategically thin-skinned PSUV regime should they criticize it.

The violence in recent days committed by state security forces and pro-government private militias—the colectivos—should preclude the government from staying in office, even if the opposition is declared victorious and is constitutionally sworn in on Jan. 10, 2025. Oddly, the Maduro government has called for a national dialogue. But an immediate change of government is necessary, if even a transitional government. That will first require understanding that instead of simple political polarization or even a civil war, a government has instead waged war on its own citizens and their popular will.

[aurora-daily]

AURORA in an interview for Ticketmaster via Amroth | April 6th, 2024

In April 2022, AURORA read a letter that changed her life. It was co-written by indigenous activists, titled ‘We Are the Earth’, and called for a revolution: a collective response to global warming – to “heal the land”. They described being connected to the land “through our hearts”, and the earth as “the heart that pulsates within us.”

The letter led AURORA to consider a question: what happened to the heart? “Everything we do is about greed, about money, about mass consumption, about capitalism,” she says, blue wide-eyed and flooded with feeling. “There’s war everywhere, countries under water, flowers in Antarctica. We are ruining our land, mistreating our animals, our clothing, and each other. We have stopped leading from the heart.”

And so 27-year-old Norwegian art-pop superstar AURORA began studying books on human anatomy. She wanted to understand when and why Western culture lost touch with the deeper purpose of our most vital organ.

“The ancient Greeks thought the heart was the portal to spiritual divinity, that it represented the interconnectedness of the world,” she says. “But then Aristotle comes along and says, ‘the heart is a pump’. Then Plato says, ‘the heart makes blood’. Then another guy says, ‘the heart filters the blood’. And so bit by bit, it became purely functional. We had misinterpreted its whole meaning.”

The letter also resonated with AURORA on a more personal level. In 2022, she released her chart-topping last album, The Gods We Can Touch, which saw her complete a sold out UK headline tour, including at BST Hyde Park alongside Adele. With over a million album sales and 2.6 billion streams, and her inaugural The Gods We Can Touch book selling 14,000 copies (while signed copies sold out in less than an hour), AURORA was at her professional peak. Yet at the same time she experienced something painful that split her in two. She sensed a disconnect between her mind and heart. “It made me understand women in a way I hadn’t before. It made me understand how evil hides behind the nicest of faces.”

AURORA’s fourth album, What Happened to the Heart?, is a journey from weakness to strength, from self-destruction to self-healing. Of reuniting a fractured self. “It’s actually the most personal and cathartic album I have ever written,” she says quietly, as if the realisation had only just come to her.

‘Some Type of Skin’, a dark slice of electro-pop, reveals the conflict at the album’s core. “When you’re vulnerable, anything that brushes up against you makes you bleed,” she says. “But you need to go into battle, you need to build some type of skin.” In the song, AURORA cries: “Hit me hard where I am soft… should my heart reveal itself to be more than a muscle? Or a fist covered in blood?”

To build her armour, AURORA decided to throw herself into chaos. “Usually I am very careful, very reasonable” she says. “But for once I wanted to experience what it felt to be unreasonable. I needed to be destructive.” So she gave herself a year, while she was touring ‘The Gods We Can Touch’, to throw herself into life hard and fast. “A lot of alcohol, very little sleep, a lot of fun,” she smiles, a little wistfully. She went ice swimming and hurled things in rage rooms. “It was painful, but I was building skin.”

The chaos extended to the writing process. “I had a rule: I could only write in unsafe spaces, I needed to be rootless.” That meant no forests, where AURORA had spent much of her childhood in Bergen, Norway – a solitary safe haven away from those who made her “feel alien”. These “unsafe spaces” were loud, full of people, “strange smells, noises…anywhere where I could feel observed”.

AURORA travelled all over the word, meeting with women she describes as modern day philosophers, “women with true knowledge”. In particular, three female tribe leaders in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. “There is wisdom in their indigenous values. These women live in the modern world just like us, but they still choose to live with kindness.”

She was inspired by their feminine power. “Men have been leading us for thousands of years and look where that has got us. We need change, and women have had everything figured out from the very beginning of time. We were the first timekeepers, we could track the seasons inside our own bodies.” She grins cheekily. “I would be scared of us too, if I were a man.”

Feminine strength inspired 'The Gods We Can Touch' – fighting against internal shame and societal judgement of the female body – and it is no less present here. Above the throbbing techno of 'Starvation', produced by German Nicolas Rebscher, who also worked on her debut EP 'Running With the Wolves', AURORA mourns the depletion of the human spirit as a result of technological invasion that is particularly threatening to women. “Our souls are starving, because AI is taking over; art is being replaced by computers,” she says, gravely. “And women, our consent, is being exploited, as it always has been, from porn to deep fakes.”

The act of mourning is integral to What Happened to the Heart? As AURORA says, “I’ve been thinking a lot about funerals, and in the music people used to deal with death”. She drew on buried grief for loved ones, as well mourning her former self.

“In Norway there is a culture of repression. I suppressed something for so long, and became infected by it,” she says, with a deep sigh. “So once I began to properly address my past, I realised that a lot of things I remembered were very different from how I imagined. And I had to accept that I have to change to move on. I am not the same as I was". She adds, firmly: "I have to learn how to work with this body, in this mind, as they are now.”

This mourning led to a kind of holy communion between AURORA's heart and mind for the first time. “I spent a lot of time drinking wine alone, speaking out loud, my heart and mind finally in conversation.” She would record these conversations and later transcribe them as fodder for her songs, such as ‘The Dark Dresses Lightly’, a haunting folkloric melody over an urgent drum pattern, which imagines the heart and the mind as two characters sitting at a table, drinking together – you can even hear the glasses clinking in the production.

AURORA leans forward conspiratorially. “So the heart says, ‘Okay, now, we've gone too long without communicating. Tonight, we're going to get drunk, go deep into this shit, and explode on each other’.” The song is the album’s turning point, AURORA adds, “when all the ugly has come out, and you can kind of hear me having an orgasm because getting everything out is so delicious, and the healing can truly begin.”

These imaginary exchanges felt so visceral to AURORA that she would sometimes paint them; the heart and mind in a sword duel, “splattering all over each other”, she says, her face lighting up with mischievous delight.

It’s a viscerality mirrored by the album’s production: a thrumming, primal force that confronts the almost ecclesiastical purity of AURORA’s own vocals. “It reflects this idea of the body falling apart, and being glued back together by something inhuman.” This discord is brought to life by “beautiful old synthesisers” that AURORA found all over the world, including with previous collaborator Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. “I got him to puke all over the song ‘My Body is Not Mine’ with his old modular synths” she says, which, fittingly, “had a mind of their own.”  

Despite the thematic and sonic darkness of the album, AURORA wanted to maintain a certain playfulness. “A very random, very intuitive,” way of producing. She collaborated with some of her favourite Norwegian artists and producers, from Ane Brun on ‘My Name’, to Matias Tellez on ‘Invisible Wounds’. On some tracks she plays the drums, a fiddle player and a traditional Chinese Pipa player were brought in, and some songs contain a “beautiful mandolin from the 60s”, she says, smiling, picking up an imaginary bow as she loses herself in the memory. There is even a disco song, ‘Do You Feel?’, produced by longtime collaborator Magnus Skylstad and sure to be a club-banger and chart hit. “It makes no sense, I have no idea why it’s on the album,” AURORA laughs, like a tinkling bell. “But my sister was born in the 80s and I was kind of thinking about her. And I liked the idea of having a song that made no sense.”

Not all these songs are a product of chaos, however. The first and the last songs of the album, ‘The Echo of My Shadow’ and ‘Invisible Wounds’, were written in the quiet. “In my living room, where it was safe. They came directly from my solitude.” And with this quiet comes hope: “We both need to/Tend to the invisible wounds,” AURORA sings, a call to action for herself, to the listener, and to the world, to rupture with this malignant state of inertia, to fight back, to heal. “We need to stop this sense of global denial. We need to blow up, because it’s important, sometimes, to explode. Explosion is vital for change, to put the heart back into politics.” She smiles, and says, in the softest tone: “I think what we need... is a small riot.”

[pinesfamilyguidetotheweird]

Stan Pines Headcanons Part 01

A Tight Squeeze

No doubt that he has some level of claustrophobia after being trapped in a trunk. I wanna say it was from an artsymeeshee post where a fic idea (a fic idea I still have and is still 95% finished…) that dives deeper into Stan’s quote of ‘chewing out of the trunk of a car’. When trapped in said trunk, the car it was attached to was pushed into a bog or something to sink (from I think Zeragii’s fic on AO3). With Stan in it.

Bi the Way

Because why the heck not? And, yes, I do think he dated Jimmy Snakes for a short while. Even so, Stan leans more towards women.

Hablo Español

I think it is canon that he knows some Spanish (The Last Mabelcorn). I do believe that he’s actually quite fluent in Spanish, something he picked up while in Colombian prison. Speaking of, it is said that he was imprisoned in three different countries. I’d take the guess that Colombia was one of them. As for the other two…still thinking on that, though I’d imagine the countries aren’t too far from the USA because I can’t imagine Stan being able to take a plane to, say, England. After some consideration, I think that the other two countries he was arrested in were Canada and Brazil. He knows some French and an exceptional bit of Portugal.

For Protection

Those ten guns he has? They’re for protecting himself (plus his family) from not only people from Stan’s past, but also from any aggressive anomalies that call Gravity Falls home. Or really anyone/anything else he deems as a threat to his family.

Love at First Sight

Stan claims that he’s not a fan of kids. He even wanted nothing to do with his nephew when he was born because he was all snotty and drooly. However, when Dipper and Mabel were born, it was like a switch was flipped and Stan adored the twin babies.

A Froggy Dream

Stan once had an occurring dream that he was the owner of some wax museum, which actually inspired him to get (steal) those cursed wax figures. The oddest part about the dream was that he was a frog instead of a human. And he swore that Soos was in it too.

Still Got It

He started going back to keeping in boxing shape some time after the twins were born.

Second Thoughts

There had been maaany times during those 30 years that Stan wondered if his brother was even still alive and if all this work was worth it.

Somewhat Sentimental

Similar to how Mabel has a section in her scrapbook of failed romance, Stan has a booklet that contains his own failed love life. Of the known partners he had, they were: Carla McCorkle, Jimmy Snakes, Marilyn Rosenstein, and Lazy Susan. There was probably more he tried to sweet talk over the years, but never panned out. Heck, Darlene the Spider Woman is probably in the book too. Also, I find it funny how three of the six known lovers are magical in some way (Jimmy is basically Ghost Rider, Marilyn Eda is a witch, and Darlene is...I guess a Jorogumo)

Former Biker

Pretty much a scrapped idea that is now in headcanon land, that Stan was part of a biker gang at one point, which was how he knew Jimmy Snakes, who was the biker leader. He still has his helmet and leather jacket. I wonder if he still knows how to drive a motorcycle.