#expert level cropping

[kinnbig]

✨ Simple Gif Colouring for Beginners ✨

I wrote up my basic gif colouring process for a friend recently, but a couple of people here mentioned they'd also find it helpful! so, as requested, this is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of the way I colour my gifs :) it's aimed at brand new gif makers with no prior experience with photoshop or photo editing.

when I first started gif making I found colouring and photoshop in general suuuper daunting, so I've tried to simplify everything here as much as possible. hopefully this will be relatively easy to follow and not too intimidating!

a couple of things to begin with:

I'm only talking about colouring here - this is not a full gif making tutorial. I've linked to some of my favourites of those here!

I personally like to make bright, 'clean' looking gifs with vibrant but natural colours, so that is the style of colouring this tutorial is geared towards. most of gif colouring is subjective and about personal taste - the only thing that I'd say is possible to get wrong is skin tones, which I talk about a lot in this guide.

as I mostly gif Thai dramas, most of the advice is geared towards colouring for East Asian/South East Asian skin tones - but the techniques should be fairly universally applicable (and here are some tutorials that talk about gif colouring for other skin tones).

I'm not an expert! I'm not claiming this is the best or the only way to colour gifs - it's just how I do it.

this post is very image-heavy. if the images aren't loading (or the gifs are running slowly or cutting/looping weirdly), then try viewing the post in its own tab (rather than on the your dash or someone's blog) and refreshing the page.

okay, full walkthrough beneath the cut!

contents:

1. intro a. natural gif colouring goals b. very very basic colour theory 2. super simple colouring (the essentials) a. curves b. selective colour (and skin tone correction) c. hue/saturation d. saving and reusing colouring e. another simple colouring example 3. other adjustment layers a. brightness/contrast b. levels c. vibrance d. colour balance e. channel mixer 4. troubleshooting a. curves b. saturation 5. fin!

1. intro

the colouring part of gif making can be super overwhelming, especially if (like me when I first started!) you're completely new to photoshop and/or have no experience with colour theory or photo/video editing.

if you're opening photoshop and making gifs for the first time, I highly recommend getting used to making a few basic, uncoloured gifs to begin with. just to practice, rather than post anywhere (though you can always come back and colour them later if you want) - but it'll make the rest of the process much easier if you're already beginning to get used to working in timeline mode of photoshop. give yourself a bit of time to practice and get a feel for things like how many frames you tend to like in a gif, where you like to crop them for the best loop, what kind of aspect ratio you like etc* - so that you're not trying to navigate all of that for the first time on top of everything else!

* frames: for me between 60-90 frames is ideal, but 40-120 frames is the absolute min-max I'd personally use in a normal gifset loops: for the smoothest loops, try to avoid cutting someone off mid-movement or mid-word if possible. aspect ratio: for full-size (540px) gifs, I tend to go for either 8:5 (slightly 'skinnier' gifs), 7:5, or 5:4 (particularly big, thick gifs lmao)

✨ natural gif colouring goals

part of what can be so daunting about starting gif making is not knowing where to start or what you want to achieve. this is definitely something that gets easier with practice - the more gifs you make, the more you'll get a feel for what kind of look you like and the more instinctively you'll know how to get there. it also helps to see if any gif makers you like have made "before and after colouring" posts - these can help with getting a sense of the kinds of changes made through gif colouring. here's one I made!

in general, I like to make my gifs bright and 'clean' looking, with vibrant but natural colours. these are the things I'm usually hoping to achieve with colouring:

brighten dark scenes

remove muddy, yellowish lighting or filters

saturate colours

correct any skin lightening filters or overexposure

make lighting and colours as consistent as possible between gifs within a single gifset, especially gifsets featuring gifs from multiple scenes/episodes/videos

this guide is focusing on natural colouring, but of course there are many cool ways to make stylised/unnaturally coloured gifs. imo you'll need to master these basics first, but if you want to learn how to do things like change the background colour of gifs or use gradients or other cool effects, then @usergif's resource directory has loads of super helpful tutorials!

✨ very very basic colour theory

[disclaimer! I don't know shit about fuck. I do not study light or art. this is just an explanation that makes sense to me exclusively for the purposes of gif making.]

the primary colours for light/digital screens are red, blue, and green. having all three colours in equal measures neutralises them (represented by the white section in the middle of the diagram).

so to neutralise a colour within a gif, you need to add more of the colour(s) that are lacking.

in practice this usually means: the scene you want to gif is very yellow! yellow is made of red and green light, so to neutralise it you need to add more blue into your gif.

it can also mean the reverse: if you desaturate the yellow tones in a gif, it will look much more blue.

looking at the colour balance sliders on photoshop can make it easier to visualise:

so making a gif more red also means making it less cyan.

removing green from a gif means adding magenta.

taking yellow out of a gif will make it more blue.

tl;dr:

neutralise yellows by adding blue (and vice versa)

neutralise reds by adding cyan (and vice versa)

neutralise green by adding magenta (and vice versa)

2. super simple colouring (the essentials)

starting with a nice sharpened gif in photoshop in timeline mode. (these are the sharpening settings I use!)

some scenes are much harder to colour than others - it helps to start out practising with scenes that are bright/well-lit and that don't have harsh unnaturally coloured lights/filters on. scenes with a lot of brown/orange also tend to be harder.

I usually save a base copy of my gif before I start colouring just in case I end up hating it, or find out later that it doesn't quite fit right into a set and need to redo it etc.

so here is my base gif!

it's an okay gif, but it has a bit of a yellow tint to it that I want to reduce.

colouring is easiest to do in adjustment layers, which can be found under layer -> new adjustment layer - or for me they are here:

there are lots of different types of adjustment layers that do lots of different things - but for me the absolute essentials for colouring are curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation.

I also use brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, vibrance, colour balance, and channel mixer sometimes, depending on the gif - but I use curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation on every single gif.

✨ curves layer

the first thing I always do is a curves layer. when you first open one it will look like this:

first I usually click the ‘auto’ button, just to see what happens. sometimes it makes a big difference (it usually brightens the gif a lot) - but on this gif it didn’t do much.

if it had made the gif look nicer then I would have kept it and added a second curves layer on top to do the rest of these steps.

the next step is selecting the white and black points with the little eyedropper tools.

the bottom eyedropper lets you pick a white point for the gif. click somewhere super light on the gif to see what happens - for this gif, I clicked on the lampshade on the left. if it looks weird, I just undo it and try somewhere else - it usually takes a few goes to find something that looks good.

here's what that did to the gif:

then I pick the top eyedropper and use it to pick a black point by clicking somewhere really dark, again playing around until I find a black point that looks good.

here's what the gif looks like after picking the white and black points:

this can take some experimenting, but you can make super easy drastic changes to your gif just with this. in this case, the curves layer took out a lot of that yellowy tint.

and this is what the curves graph looks like now:

you can click and drag those lines to make further changes if you want - I usually leave them alone though. the colours of the lines indicate which colours have been changed in the gif - for example, you can see from that steep blue line on the graph that blue has been added to neutralise those yellows.

next I usually do another curves layer and just press the ‘auto’ button again to see what happens. usually it brightens the gif a bit more, which I like.

‼️if nothing is working: usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :( the troubleshooting section at the end goes over some options, including starting with a levels layer instead.

✨ selective colour (and skin tone correction)

skin tones are made up of a mixture of yellow and red.

removing yellow (or adding blue or red) to a gif will make the skin-tones too red - and removing red (or adding cyan or yellow) to a gif will make the skin-tones too yellow.

adding blue to this gif with the curves layer took out the yellowy tint, which I wanted - but it also took the yellows out of Kim's skin tone, which I don’t want. so I need to put yellow back into the skin tones specifically - without putting it back into the rest of the gif.

selective colour layers let you select an individual colour and adjust the levels of other colours within that colour. you can change how yellow the green shades are, or how much cyan is in the blues, for example.

I need to add yellow back into the red tones to correct the skin tones on this gif. this is the case for most gifs in my experience - the vast majority of the time, unless a scene is very heavily tinted in another colour, a curves layer will add blue/remove yellow.

in the 'colors' dropdown, select the 'reds' section and drag the 'yellow' slider higher - this will add more yellow into just the red shades within the gif.

the amount of yellow you need to add back into the reds depends on how much yellow was taken out of the gif initially - I just play around with the slider until it looks right. if you're not sure, it helps to have some neutrally-coloured (not white-washed!) reference photos of the people in your gif to compare to.

here's the result. Kim's skin is a lot less pink toned and much more natural looking:

✨ hue/saturation

this adjustment layer lets you adjust the hue and saturation of the gif as a whole, and also of each colour individually.

I don't use the hue or lightness sliders unless I'm trying to do something more complicated with the colouring.

clicking the dropdown menu that says 'master' lets you edit the saturation of each colour individually. this is useful if your gif is still super tinted in one colour.

I thought the yellows on this gif were still slightly too bright, so I switched to the yellow channel and desaturated them slightly. (remember if you do this then you need to go back to selective colour and add more yellow into the red skin tones to balance out the desaturation!)

then I increased the 'master' saturation of all the colours to +5:

I usually find the right amount of saturation is somewhere between +5 and +12, but it depends on the gif.

‼️if the gif feels undersaturated, but the saturation slider isn't helping/is making the colours worse, try a vibrance layer instead.

done!

✨ saving and reusing colouring

you can copy and paste adjustment layers between gifs to make your colouring even across each of your gifs for one scene - so if you're making a set of multiple gifs of the same scene, or you think you might want to gif the same scene again in the future, you can save it as a psd so you can reuse the colouring again later.

each gif's colouring will then still need tweaking - different cameras/angles/shots of the same scene can still start out with slightly different colouring.

I recommend uploading the gifs as a draft post on tumblr so you can see what they all look like next to each other and catch any inconsistencies.

✨ another one! (speedrun!)

HI KEN!

the white point for the curves layer was in the window behind them.

the curves layer removes the muddy yellow tint, but again it makes their skin tones (especially Ken's) very red toned, which is adjusted by the selective colour layer.

3. other adjustment layers

imo many many gifs can be coloured really nicely with just those three adjustment layers, but some need different adjustments.

✨ brightness/contrast

pretty self explanatory!

I personally usually avoid using the 'brightness' slider because I rarely like the effect - I only tend to use the 'contrast' one. 

the 'auto' button is sometimes useful though, especially if you’re struggling with the curves layer.

✨ levels

levels alters the white and black points of the gif, like curves - but unlike curves it doesn't also alter other colours.

use the sliders beneath the graph to alter how dark/light the gif is. you can slide the black slider further to the right to make the blacks darker, and the white slider to the left to make the whites lighter.

levels is a good place to start if your curves layer isn't working.

(I'm going to hit the image limit for this post lol so here are some screenshots of a table I made to demonstrate this rather than actual gifs. sorry!)

on both sides, I dragged the sliders up to where the big jumps are on the graph - this is usually a good place to start!

✨ vibrance

vibrance... makes the colours more vibrant. it's more subtle than saturation.

it's really helpful for gifs that feel grey. sometimes adjusting saturation just makes the greys kind of weirdly tinted, but a vibrance layer can fix that.

vibrance is much more subtle!

✨ colour balance

colour balance affects the overall balance of colours within a gif.

it's good for scenes with heavy tints.

I tend to stick to the 'midtones' dropdown, but you can also alter the colour balance within the shadows and highlights if you want.

✨ channel mixer

I avoided channel mixer for such a long time because it scared me. but it's great for scenes that are very heavily tinted in one colour.

basically, it works with the levels of red, green, and blue within a gif. you select an output colour and then play around with the levels of the colour you selected within each other colour.

kind of the reverse of selective colour?

so in the 'blue' channel, the levels of blue are at 100%, and the levels of red and green are at 0% - but you can impact how much blue is in the reds and greens and blues.

this tutorial explains it well - but imo the best way to get to grips with channel mixer is just to play around with it a bit (sorry)

(when I made this guide for my friend, I also made a slightly more complicated gif colouring walk-through that included using channel mixer. there isn't space to include it within this post, but if anyone is interested I could always upload it as an 'intermediate' gif colouring tutorial - lmk!)

4. troubleshooting

‼️curves

usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :(

for example, with this base gif:

using many of the brightest points as a white point turn it wacky colours, like this:

yikes :(

some options for these cases:

try brightening the gif first with the 'auto' button on the curves layer or with a levels layer. having a brighter gif to start with can give you better options for picking a white point.

try finding an alternate, whiter/brighter white point. look for places the light reflects - on this gif, using the light on Porsche's cheekbone works well as the white point. it also helps to find places that would be white if the scene wasn't tinted - the lightest part of a white shirt is often a good place to start, for example.

skip the curves layer, and instead use a levels layer to alter your white/black points, and colour balance or channel mixer to balance the colours.

‼️over/undersaturation

if your gif (especially the skintones) is looking a little washed out or lifeless, it might be undersaturated. boost that saturation - or if that's not working, try a vibrance layer.

oversaturation is often easiest to spot in the mouths and ears of any people in a gif. if the mouths are looking unnaturally, vibrantly red, then you've gone too far with the saturation.

5. fin!

and done! I hope this was coherent helpful to somebody.

if there's anything that I've missed or that doesn't make sense pls feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to help! I've also collated a bunch of additional reading/resources below.

happy gifmaking 🥰

✨ some links!

photoshop basics by @selenapastel

gifmaking for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki

gifmaking guide for beginners by @saw-x

dreamy's gif tutorial by @scoupsy-remade (includes instructions on how to blur out burned-on subtitles or annoying video graphics)

beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza

how to fix orange-washed characters by aubrey-plaza

colour correcting and fixing dark scenes by @kylos

does resampling matter? by usergif

how to put multiple gifs on one canvas by @fictionalheroine

watermarking using actions by @wonwooridul

resource directory by @usergif

[mechaknight-98]

Instinctive Insight II (NSFW) FT Chaehyun

Authors note: back to our regularly scheduled programs. Enjoy more shenanigans between Dino and his favorite marshmallow

Part I

After my lunch with Marshmallow, I returned home. However, after about 40 minutes, a peculiar feeling of animosity towards her began to bubble up within me. What made it particularly unsettling was that alongside these negative emotions, I still felt the same positive, affectionate, and possessive feelings I experienced during our date. The longing for her presence gnawed at me, and every moment she wasn't beside me only fueled my frustration and anger, leaving me utterly perplexed.

In an attempt to distract myself from these conflicting emotions, I decided to call Pops (Old McDonald).

“What's on your mind, Dino? You rarely call after your shift,” Mr. McDonald inquired, sounding puzzled.

“It's about Marshmallow... I mean, Chaehyun,” I stumbled over my words.

Before I could elaborate, McDonald interjected, “Yeah, she's pretty cool, right? Did you know she also raised a female Magnamalo?”

“That never came up,” I replied curtly.

I found myself overwhelmed by disgust and frustration as I continued, “She was wearing this skimpy crop top that showed her midriff and one of the shortest skirts I've ever seen, flaunting her thighs. And then she wouldn't stop complaining about her university troubles at the steakhouse we went to. It was relentless.”

As I ranted, I couldn't help but notice how the very qualities I found attractive about her just hours ago now seemed unbearable.

“Well then, I suppose I'll let Zahir know he's free to pursue her since you clearly can't stand her,” McDonald suggested.

“No, she's mine!” I growled instinctively, the possessiveness surprising even myself.

“Hmm, that was possessive. Are you sure she feels the same?” McDonald questioned.

“I don't care. Marshmallow belongs to me,” I declared fiercely, my mind swimming with a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. It took me a moment to regain my composure, but even then, I found myself grappling with a multitude of unsettling feelings.

“Pops, what's wrong with me? Why do I feel so strange around her?” I finally confessed, seeking solace in his guidance.

“Well, I'm no expert on human psychology or biology, but based on everything I've heard, I'd say you're in love with Chaehyun, if that cute little nickname Marshmallow is referring to her,” McDonald stated, his words eliciting a mix of disgust and elation within me.

“Then why am I so angry with her?” I questioned.

“Well, I'd hate to say it, Dino, but you might be going through a transformation similar to Tony as well,” McDonald suggested.

“Wait, what makes you say that?” I asked concerned

“As you know, I'm a man of science. Over the last year, you've grown three inches in height, despite your growth plates being fused. You've also become noticeably stronger, lifting 1.5 times what you could three months ago, and your aggression levels have spiked recently. Not necessarily for bad reasons, but your responses to stimuli have shifted in the last three months.”

“So, you're saying I'm a Magnamalo hybrid?” I questioned, puzzled.

“No, I'm saying you're still mirroring Tony. Remember when you and Tony both fell exceptionally sick at that school in the middle of nowhere and recovered almost simultaneously? Same principle. Your body and biology are mirroring what you've surrounded yourself with” McDonald reminded me.

I pondered McDonald’s words before responding, “Yeah, I remember. But that can't explain something as significant as this, right?”

Old McDonald paused for a moment before replying, “Well, what happened between the two of you when you broke the touch barrier? Or did you just fight the entire time?”

Despite my discomfort, I admitted, “We kissed.”

“Then you and her are mirroring your bonded megafauna. I'm curious to see how that will play out, considering both of you are already bonded to another megafauna. It'll be interesting to see how it affects the two of you going forward,” Old McDonald said with a chuckle.

“Okay,” I groaned. “Oh, wait, before you go. Why did you sell the zoo to Chaehyun?”

“Well, partially because I thought the two of you would run it together. You know the ins and outs, the infrastructure, the people, while she has a worldwide network. Together, you could easily take what her father and I have built to the next level,” McDonald explained hopefully.

“What about your actual son?” I inquired.

“Marshall is too preoccupied with his novels to give the zoo the care it needs. He told me, ‘If you give me the zoo, I'm giving it to Dino. He earned it.’ So, I figured I should be more calculated in my approach,” McDonald replied, prompting a nod from me before our call was interrupted by Marshmallow.

“Guess who's calling now?” I muttered.

“Wish her well from me,” McDonald chuckled before hanging up.

“What do you want, Marshmallow?” I responded, annoyance evident in my tone.

“God, was I interrupting your precious alone time, Daddy? I don't even know why I called you,” Marshmallow retorted in a similar tone.

“Please, get to the point,” I demanded.

“The Malzeno is acting weird,” Marshmallow announced.

“How so?” My misattributed anger surged.

“He's turning silver and shedding his purple plumage and wing membrane.”

“What did you do to my son?” I snapped coldly.

“Oh, that got your attention. He's shedding, but something's wrong…” Marshmallow started, but I hung up and raced to my car.

“Hey, DJ, what's going on?” my mom asked as I hastily explained the situation.

“One of the zookeepers brought a Quirio, and it's causing Alucard to go primordial,” I explained as I rushed to the zoo. Upon arrival, I found Alucard in distress, clawing at his skin. Spotting the Quirio, I swiftly disposed of it and tended to Alucard, feeling his intense malice amplify.

“Dad, it hurts. What did they do to me?” Alucard's eyes pleaded for answers.

“It's okay, son, just growing pains. You'll be okay,” I reassured him, feeling his sadness pierce through me.

After calming Alucard down, I stepped out of the enclosure, only to be approached by the girl who had been with Marshmallow.

“Are you Mr. Dino?” she asked nervously.

I nodded hesitantly, and she apologized profusely. I refrained from scolding her and instead offered a gentle pat on her head, and reassurance that she'll learn it's part of the job.

As I finished up I heard screams and knew that things were about to be bad. I was right and like a cascading snowball, all of my other sons began transforming across the zoo. After I tended to the other megafauna going through transformations, exhaustion began to set in. By the time things settled down, I had fallen asleep on a very content Tony. I dreamed that Marshmallow and I were on a lovely brunch date. She had syrup on her mouth that I wiped off when I was jolted awake by my phone. When I finally woke up after drifting off on Tony, Marshmallow was waiting for me, her expression sour.

“You know we could have handled it?” she said, annoyance palpable in the air, igniting a storm of emotions between us.

“I guess a thank you would be too much to ask?” I groaned

“Please anybody can say nice things and calm down a megafauna.” Marshmallow retorted. I felt my body heat up familiarly as we moved closer to each other.

I scowled before we were inches away from each other. Our eyes were intense but displayed our true emotions. Marshmallow smirked before tying her hair up into a ponytail and getting on her knees. My head swam as she pulled down my sweats. My body reacted viscerally as my cock shot out to greet her.

“Oh did Daddy’s cock miss me?” She said in a teasing tone before kissing it. I was in agony as she teased me by giving these light pecks and kisses to my cock. I resisted the urge to face fuck her and let her take her time with this as she was a pro at working my body. It was as if we were almost made for each other.

“Did you know that when Magnamalos mate they pair up for life? Isn’t there something beautiful and innocent about that?” Marshmallow said as she took me in her mouth. Her first trip down my rod was slow as she got a feel for my size in her mouth. As she retreats and my cock is exposed to the cooled midnight air she looks up at me with eyes full of want, “I want that. I want one love, can you be that for me? My one love.” She begged. her eyes pierce into me and all I could feel for this amazing, talented, smart, and sexy gal was love and affection. I want her close by and never want her to leave. So I respond

“Yes, forever I’ll be yours but promise me you’ll be mine,” I say as Marshmallow’s hand warps around my length.

“Yes, I’ll be yours.” Marshmallow mirrored. I caress her face. She smiles as she goes in for another slow tortuous and euphoric stroke

“I love this cock. It’s perfect for me. The right length the right, girth, all attached to the right man.” Marshmallow said as she engorged herself on my length. She smiled and put her hands in mine before resting them on the side of her face. A silent encouragement to fuck her face follows. I start slowly thrusting in and out of her mouth. I hit her throat a few times but I try to take it easy on her until she tilts her head up during one of my thrusts causing it to go deep into her throat. She gags and involuntarily bites down a little. I give her time to catch her breath before I take a puff. The warm wet cavern is only matched by her pussy. I fall deeper in love with her and her body as I thrust into her faster and faster her eyes roll back as she takes me in and out like she is nothing more than a fleshlight. I feel her throat vibrate as she moans all over my cock.

“Ruin me Daddy” Marshmallow gags/ moans, and I sink my cock deep into her throat. Pushed by the sounds of her gags I just thrust relentlessly in and out of her mouth chasing my release. I watch as she gags and moans all over my cock as she takes it like it’s her favorite candy. I caress her pillowy cheeks as I ruin her until my cock throbs

“Gonna cum Marshmallow get ready,” I say before I paint her throat and mouth white with my cum. I groan as she continues sucking me long after my orgasm has ended. She continues sucking past the point of overstimulation and sensitivity to where I’m starting to get hard again, but before we can continue I lift her and smile at her. She smiles back. Overcome by the emotion of today I devour her as we fall into another kiss.

“You drive me crazy,” I say

“I can’t stop thinking about you, and every time we part I feel this anger of not being with you. It makes me angry and sick how needy I am for you but I don’t care” Marshmallow says

“I feel the same way,” I say gasping between kisses and breaths.

“Is this what love at first sight feels like?” Marshmallow asks.

“I don’t know but let’s find out,” I respond as we break our kiss. I catch my breath as she drags me to her car. We drive to where she’s staying at. A small two-bedroom apartment. After she opens the door she grabs me and leads me to her room we strip in front of each other for the first time and her body makes me feral.

She drags me to her bed as my hands run all over her nude form

I start by caressing her round face. I bring her in for another kiss in between kisses I compliment her, “I love how expressive your eyes and face are. Every time you look at me whether it be with disgust or desire, my heart races in my chest.” I say before diving back in. I squish her soft cheeks which elicits a cute giggle from her as she smiles at me, “my favorite smile from my favorite lady” I say proudly. Marshmallow smiles at me with such soft warmth that my heart melts. How could I ever have hated her? I wonder to myself. I kiss her again and again until I gasp. She gives me a sly look as I look down to see her stroking my cock.

I move my hands lower as I caress her bare chest for the first time. I salivate as I break another kiss. “Oh my god your tits are like the rest of you: Soft and warm. God I love it.” I paint before diving in and taking her left breast into my mouth. Marshmallow moans as I suck to my heart’s content before alternating between both breasts.

I lower myself to her pussy Marshmallow looks at me with overwhelming lust. I give an exploratory lick and she reacts violently. She spreads her legs and shoves my face into her warm cunt. I lap her labia trying my best to pleasure her despite my inexperience. Thankfully Marshmallow was extremely vocal about what she desired.

"Whoa, there cowboy slow down. Okay, a little to the left. a little higher. Right there." She instructed as I navigated her folds, my tongue darting in and out of her tart love box. her taste was pungent but also sweet like a cheesecake. I feel myself harden under he as she smiles at me with her seductive eyes. "Keep going Daddy right there." she moaned as I modified and alternated paces to keep her on her toes. it drove her wild her body writhed and screamed as she came over my face. I lapped up her juice with the widest smile. she looks at me with a look of frightening frenzy.

I’m shocked by her strength when she pushes me off her eyes narrow seductively as she whispers, “I’m going to drain you, and you’re going to beg me to keep going.” My dick hardens at her words even more.

We fucked all night and stopped at 2 am only because I had to go to the doctor for a check-up. When I woke up at 10 am with Marshmallow she smiled at me. “Can you help me with logistics later today?” Marshmallow asked. “I’m trying to move Amaterasu here.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.” I reply

“You know when you left yesterday after our lunch I felt this sadness that I couldn’t deal with. All it did was turn to anger. Like all I felt was this need for you did you feel something similar.”

“Yeah, my infatuation with you is fermented and spoiled. I didn’t like it.” I answer. Chaehyun smiles at me before caressing my face. I smile at her she smiles back

“Well, should we move in together then?” Marshmallow said. I consider her proposal. it would make the negative feelings go away, but it would drastically change who I was in the process I could feel myself changing while being with her and I was unsure whether it was good or bad, but I couldn't be without her my body had made that abundantly clear. So I took a chance.

"Screw it Sure, but can you drive me back to the Zoo I need to get my car and go to my doctor's appointment," I say to Marshmallow who is all smiles. She nods

"Sure anything for my Darling Daddy."

[brotherconstant]

GIFMAKING TUTORIAL: PHOTOPEA (for Windows)

Screencapping

Gif Width/Size Limit/Ezgif

Loading Frames

Cropping and Resizing

Rasterize/Make Frames

Sharpening

Coloring (not detailed. Links to other tutorials included)

Exporting

Obligatory Mentions: @photopeablr ; @miwtual ; @benoitblanc ; @ashleysolsen Definitely check out these blogs for tips, tutorials and resources, they're a gold mine. Finally I recommend browsing the PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL / PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL GIF tags. DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language and I'm not an expert on what I'm going to discuss, so if anything's unclear feel free to drop another ask.

1. SCREENCAPPING -> PotPlayer (the one I use) or MVP or KMPlayer

INSTALL PotPlayer (tutorial)

Play your movie/episode and press Ctrl + G. The Consecutive Image Capturer window will pop up. Click Start to capture consecutive frames, Stop when you got what you needed.

Where it says "Image Type -> Format" I recommend picking PNG, for higher quality screencaps.

To access the folder where the screencaps are stored, type %appdata% in windows search, open the PotPlayerMini64 folder (or 32, depending on your system) and then the Capture folder. That's where you'll find your screencaps.

Admittedly MVP is a lot faster but I prefer Potplayer because it generates (at least in my case) higher quality screencaps. MVP kind of alters the hue and it made it harder for me to color my gifs. Still, if you're interested in how to use it, I recommend this tutorial.

As for KMPlayer, every tutorial out there is outdated and I couldn't figure out the new version of the software.

2. GIF WIDTH/HEIGHT, SIZE LIMIT, EZGIF OPTMIZER

At this point you should already know how big your gifs are going to be. Remember the ideal gif width(s) on tumblr are 540 px / 268 px / 177 px. These specific numbers take into account the 4 px space between the gifs. No restrictions on height. Here are some examples:

You can play around with the height (177x400, 177x540, 268x200, 268x268, 268x350, 268x400, 540x440, 540x500, 540x540 etc) but if you go over the 10 MB limit you'll either have to make your gifs smaller/delete some frames.

OR you can go on ezgif and optimize your gif, which is usually what I do. The quality might suffer a little, but I'm not really (that) obsessed with how crispy my gifs look, or I'd download photoshop.

Depending on the gif size, you can decrease the compression level. I've never had to go over 35. It's better to start at 5 (minimum) and then go from there until you reach your desired ( <10mb) gif size. Now that I think about it I should have included this passage at the end of the tutorial, I guess I'll just mention it again.

3. LOAD YOUR FRAMES

File -> Open... -> Pick one of your screencaps. The first one, the last one, a random one. Doesn't matter. That's your Background.

File -> Open & Place -> Select all the frames (including the one you already loaded in the previous passage) you need for your gif and load them.

(I recommend creating a specific folder for the screencaps of each gif you're going to make.)

WARNING: When you Place your screencaps make sure the Crop tool is NOT selected, especially if you've already used it and the width/height values have been entered. It will mess things up - I don't know why, could be a bug.

You can either select them all with Ctrl+A or with the method I explained in the ask: "when you want to select more than one frame or all frames at once select the first one, then scroll to the bottom and, while pressing Shift, select the last one. this way ALL your frames will be selected".

WARNING: Depending on how fast your computer is / on your RAM, this process may take a while. My old computer was old and slow af, while my new one can load even a 100 frames relatively fast, all things considered. Even so, I recommend ALWAYS saving your work before loading new frames for a new gif, because photopea might crash unexpectedly. Just save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Now you can go ahead and delete the Background at the bottom, you won't need it anymore.

4. CROPPING AND RESIZING

Right now your screencaps are still smart objects. Before rasterizing and converting to frames, you need to crop your gif.

Technically you can rasterize/convert to frames and then crop, BUT if you do it in that order photopea will automatically delete the cropped pixels, even if you don't select the "Delete Cropped Pixels" Option. Might be another bug, unclear. Basically, if you crop your gif and then realize you cropped a little too much to the left or the right, you can go ahead, select the Move Tool (shortcut: V) and, after selecting ALL YOUR FRAMES, move them around on your canvas until you are satisfied. You won't be able to do this if you rasterize first and then crop, the excess pixels will be deleted. I don't know why, I found out by accident lol.

CROPPING

(Cropped pixels: the gray/opaque area outside of the selected area. That area disappears once you press enter and crop, but the pixels are retained, so you can move the frames around and reposition them as you like. In this case I could move the frames to the left and include Silver's figure [curly guy in the foreground] in the crop)

After deleting the Background, you will need to select all your frames (using the Shift key), use the C shortcut on your keyboard to choose the Crop tool. Or you can click on it, whatever's more convenient. Once you do that, a dropdown menu is going to appear. You need to select the "FIXED SIZE" option, as shown in the following screencap.

Once you do that, you can type in your desired width and height. Do not immediately press enter.

Your work area should now look like this. Now you can click on one of the white squares and enlarge the selected area until the edges are lined up. You can then move it around until it covers the area you wish to gif.

WARNING: to move the big rectangle around, you're gonna have to click on a random point of the work area, PREFERABLY not to close to the rectangle itself, or you might accidentally rotate it.

See? When your cursor is close to the selected area it turns into this rotating tool. Move it away until it reverts to your usual cursor, then you can start moving the rectangle. Press Enter when you're satisfied with the area you selected.

RESIZE

This isn't always necessary (pretty much never in my case) - and it's a passage I often forget myself - but it's mentioned in most of the tutorials I came across over the years, so I'd be remiss if I didn't include it in mine. After cropping, you'll want to resize your image.

IMAGE -> Image Size...

This window will pop up. Now, should the values in the Width and Height space be anything other than 540 and 400 (or the values you entered yourself, whatever they might be) you need to correct that. They've always been correct in my case, but again. Had to mention it.

5. RASTERIZE & MAKE FRAMES

Now that your screencaps are cropped, you can go ahead and convert them.

LAYER -> Rasterize (if you skip this passage you won't be able to Sharpen (or use any filter) on your frames at once. You'll have to Sharpen your frames one by one.

Photopea doesn't feature a timeline and it's not a video editor, which makes this passage crucial. When you select all your smart objects and try to apply a filter, the filter will only by applied to ONE frame. Once you rasterize your smart objects and make them into frames, you can select them all and sharpen them at once. Unfortunately this also means that you won't be able to - I don't know how to explain this properly so bear with me - use all smart filters/use them in the same way a photoshop user can. For example, you can sharpen / remove noise / add noise / unsharp mask... but you can't act on those filters in the same way a photoshop user can. When you work on smart objects you can change the blend mode - which is critical if you decide to use a filter like High Pass. If you simply apply a high pass filter on photopea you won't be able to change the blend mode and your gif will look like this (following screencaps). Or rather, you will be able to change the blend mode by clicking on the little wheel next to "High pass" (circled in green in the 2nd screencap), but you'll have to apply the filter to each frame manually, one by one.

Then you can rasterize/make into frames, but it's extremely time consuming. I did it once or twice when I first started making gifs and it got old pretty soon haha.

Layer -> Animation -> Make frames. This passage will add "_a_" at the beginning of all your frames and it's what allows you to make a (moving) gif. As I said in the ask, if you skip this passage your gif will not move.

6. SHARPENING

Some people prefer to color first and sharpen later, but I found that sharpening filters (more or less) dramatically alter the aspect of your gif and already brighten it a bit (depending on your settings) and you may end up with an excessively bright gif.

Now, sharpening settings are not necessarily set in stone. The most popular ones are 500/0.4 + 10/10, which I use sometimes. But you may also need to take into account the quality of the files you're working with + the specific tv show you're giffing. I've been using different settings for pretty much every tv show I gif, especially in the last couple months. Some examples:

followed by

OR

AMOUNT: 500% RADIUS 0.3px followed by AMOUNT: 20% (or 10%) RADIUS 10px

You'll just need to experiment and see what works best for your gifs.

Some gifmakers use the UNSHARP MASK filter as well (I think it's pretty popular among photopea users?) but it makes my gifs look extra grainy, makes the borders look super bright and it clashes with my coloring method(s), so I use it rarely and with very moderate settings. Something like this:

Again, depends on the gif and on what you like. I've seen it used with great results by other gifmakers!

REDUCE NOISE

Sometimes - and this is especially the case for dark scenes - your gif may look excessively grainy, depending on how bright you want to make it. Reducing noise can help. Keep it mind, it can also make it worse and mess up the quality. BUT it also reduces the size of your gif. Obviously, the higher the settings, the more quality will suffer.

These are my standard settings (either 2/70% or 2/80%). It's almost imperceptible, but it helps with some of the trickier scenes.

ADDING NOISE

Adding noise (1% or 2% max) can sometimes help with quality (or make it worse, just like reduce noise) but it will make your gif so so so much bigger, and occasionally damage the frames, which means you won't be able to load your gif on tumblr, so I rarely use it.

You'll also want to create ACTIONS which will allow you to sharpen your gifs much faster.

HOW TO CREATE AN ACTION ON PHOTOPEA

The Action Button (shaped like a Play button as you can see in the following screencaps) may not be there if you're using photopea for the first time. If that's the case click on the magnifiying glass next to "Account" (in red) and type "actions". Press Enter and the button should immediately show up.

Once you do that, click on the Folder (circled in yellow)

and rename it however you like.

now click on New Action (circled in red). now you can press the Recording button (circled in green)

Now

FILTERS -> Smart Sharpen

and you can enter your values. Then you repeat this passage (WITHOUT pressing rec, WITHOUT pressing new action or anything else, you just open the smart shapen window again) and, if you want, you can sharpen your gif some more (10%, 10px, or anything you want.)

Maybe, before creating an action, experiment with the settings first and see what works best.

When you're satisfied, you can PRESS STOP (it's the rec button, which is now a square) and you can DOWNLOAD your action (downwards facing arrow, the last button next to the bin. Sorry, forgot to circle it) .

You need to download your action and then upload it on your photopea. When you do, a window will pop up and photopea will ask you whether you wish to load the action every time you open the program. You choose "Okay" and the action will be loaded in the storage.

When you want to sharpen your gif, you select all your frames, then you click on the Play button, and select the Action, NOT the folder, or it won't work.

Actions can also be created to more rapidly crop and convert your frames, but it doesn't always work on photopea (for me at least). The process is exactly the same, except once you start recording you 1) crop your gif as explained in step 4, 2) convert into frames. Then you stop the recording and download the action and upload it. This won't work for the Rasterize step by the way. Just the Animation -> Make Frame step.

7. COLORING

Now you can color your gif. I won't include a coloring tutorial simply because I use a different method for every tv show I gif for. You normally want to begin with a brightness or a curve layer, but sometimes I start with a Channel Mixer layer to immediately get rid of yellow/green filters (there's a tutorial for this particular tool which you will find in the list I mention in the link below)

[Plus I'm not really an authority on this matter as my method is generally... fuck around and find out. Two years of coloring and I still have no idea what I'm doing. 70% of the time.]

Simple Gif Coloring for Beginners -> very detailed + it includes a pretty handy list of tutorials at the bottom.

8. EXPORTING

Now you can export your gif. Some gifmakers export their (sharpened) gifs BEFORE coloring and then load the gifs on photopea to color them. I'm not sure it makes any difference.

FILE -> EXPORT AS -> GIF

(not colored, just sharpened)

As you can see, unlike photoshop the exporting settings are pretty thread bare. The only option available is dither - it sometimes help with color banding - which, and I'm quoting from google for maximum clarity:

"refers to the method of simulating colors not available in the color display system of your computer. A higher dithering percentage creates the appearance of more colors and more detail in an image, but can also increase the file size."

SPEED

When you export your gif, it will play at a very decreased speed (100%). I usually set it at 180/190%, but as for every other tool, you might want to play around a little bit.

GIF SIZE/EZGIF OPTIMIZER (See Step 2)

And that's it.

P.S.: worth repeating

Save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization coined CSA in 2009 to describe practices aimed at increasing farm resilience and reducing the carbon footprint of a global food system responsible for up to 37 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, however, observers say that CSA has been usurped by the Gates-led corporate alliance, with programs like Water Efficient Maize for Africa serving as green-painted Trojan horses for industry. “CSA is an agribusiness-led vision of surveillance [and] data-driven farmerless farming, [which explains why] its biggest promoters include Bayer, McDonnell, and Walmart,” said Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biodiversity. “From a climate perspective, it entrenches the global inequalities of a corporate food regime. There’s no system shift at all.” Octavaio Sánchez, the grizzled director of Honduras’s National Association for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture, contends that policies that promote true resilience must focus on regenerating soils through the use of organic fertilizers, crop rotation, and the preservation of native seeds able to adapt to changing conditions. These are the cornerstones of a global agro-ecology movement that has emerged from the seed and food sovereignty coalitions of the past three decades. The peasant-led agro-ecology movement—with La Via Campesina and AFSA in front—rejects the familiar refrain from agribusiness promoters that it is condemning farmers to permanent poverty and stagnation. The movement’s position is supported by both a growing literature of case studies and the development of scientific agro-ecological practices. When Gates Foundation officers were preparing to launch AGRA in 2006, researchers at the University of Essex published a study showing that agro-ecological practices increased yields by an average of nearly 80 percent across 12.6 million farms in 57 poor countries. The authors concluded that “all crops showed water use efficiency gains,” which led to “improvements in food productivity.” The UN’s High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition recommended in 2019 that governments support agro-ecological projects and redirect “subsidies and incentives that at present benefit unsustainable practices,” a judgment based on similar studies undertaken around the world.

[fable-and-folly]

fic recs

Novel length fics I love and wish were real books :)

The Curse of Anteros -- @danpuff-ao3 -- Snarry, 52k, E

When Harry is cursed, he seeks out Severus Snape. They have a long history behind them, after all, and they've always had so much between them. Who else would he go to?

Kept in Cages -- @sweet-s0rr0w -- Drarry, 76k, E

Deep in the heart of the Ministry lies the Beast Division: a hidden room where ancient beasts roam, and winged creatures soar, and grumpy giant ferrets eat all your biscuits unless you keep them well hidden. Draco Malfoy would know – he’s been working there for five years now, after all. Meanwhile, on Level One, ex-Golden Boy Harry Potter is stuck in another interminable policy meeting, completely unaware of the mysterious comings and goings just three floors below. But when a giant snake emergency requires the assistance of a Parselmouth, Harry finds himself thrust, unprepared, into Draco’s weird and wonderful world – and naturally, he can’t keep away…

A Lick and a Promise -- @tackytigerfic -- Drarry, 55k, E

Something sinister stirs in Hogwarts! When magical creatures and students at the school are hit with a debilitating blood curse, Minerva McGonagall approaches the Ministry for help. Star Auror Harry Potter seems to be the obvious choice to go undercover—as DADA Professor, naturally. He’s going to need the help of the Ministry’s foremost expert in blood magic to get to the bottom of the mystery, though, and he’s not entirely convinced that going back to Hogwarts with Draco Malfoy is a good idea. Things are complicated between them—what’s new?—but they know they have to learn to work together (and keep their hands off each other in the corridors) in order to solve this case. Luckily for them, Hogwarts itself wants to lend a hand. A tale of love, lessons, and learning to really live.

The Beauty of Thestrals and Other Unseen Things -- @writcraft -- Drarry, 63k, E

Harry has terrific friends, an amazing girlfriend and his job as Head Auror enables him to work on challenging cases and Ministry reform. He just wishes he could work out why he’s been so out of sorts. When Draco Malfoy is arrested for gross indecency, Harry’s comfortable life begins to unravel. He’s forced to decide if it’s worth risking everything for love in a world where following his heart is a criminal offence.

Nocturne -- @necromanticnoir -- Snarry, E, 54k

A Gothic Snarry version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, inspired by the dark and sensual tale from the Czech film version, ‘Panna a Netvor’. I follow some of the plot, but then diverge and do my own thing. Got to make it even weirder, right? An eerie, erotic, brooding, bloody, batty, haunting fairytale. ‘Underneath my skin there’s a human. Buried deep within there’s a human. Despite everything, I’m still human.’ - ‘Human’ by Daughter

A Guide to the Morphology of Magic -- orphaned -- Drarry, 64k, E

When Draco Malfoy is hand picked to investigate a string of curses cropping up in Muggle communities in North America, the last person he wanted to be traveling with was Harry Potter. Still, duty calls, and the two set off on an adventure chasing down mysterious curses, sleeping in cramped hotel rooms, and trying to navigate their newly formed post-War selves as they make their way through small towns and long, dark stretches of highway.

Soup-pocalypse and the Great Curry Cataclysm -- SquadofCats -- Drarry, 104k, E

Eleven years after the war, Draco Malfoy leads a quiet, boring, and perfectly respectable life, thanks very much. Or, at least he does, until a sudden and very unexpected veela awakening causes him to throw soup all over Harry Potter in the middle of the Ministry cafeteria.

Star Quality -- who_la_hoop -- Drarry, 118k, E

Two years after the war, and Harry’s content with his life. OK, so it’s a little annoying that he keeps winning Witch Weekly’s Most Eligible Bachelor award, and he’s really not looking forward to the unveiling of an enormous gold statue of himself, but he loves his friends, and he loves being an Auror. And if he yearns for something more, something he can barely bring himself to think about, well, he’ll probably get over it. No one’s happy all the time, are they? But then everything changes, and Harry’s thrown into a new and dazzling world he’s not sure he can actually escape from. And as time goes on, he starts to wonder: does he actually want to?

By the Grace -- @letteredlettered -- Drarry, 139k, T

Harry is an Auror instructor. Malfoy wants to be an Auror.

On the Deficiency of Translation Spells -- @liladiurne -- Snarry, 41k, E

Divorced, single, and free, Harry lives a completely unapologetic life in Paris. Between casual hook-ups and an easy, comfortable job, he likes to think he is as close to happiness as he'll ever be. And when he gets offered a teaching job at the prestigious Académie Beauxbâtons, he thinks he may have found exactly what was missing. But Harry is thoroughly unprepared for what he finds there - a familiar face that's been haunting his dreams for six years.

Wild -- orphaned -- Drarry, 92k, E

“No,” Harry said, by way of greeting. Malfoy’s blonde head rose slowly, carelessly. “Get out.” “I feel as though we’ve already established this, Potter,” Malfoy responded. “And I feel that what we established was that you telling me to get out of places really doesn’t make me more likely to vacate them.”

Tapestry -- @kbrick -- Drarry, 91k, E

In 2017, Harry is on his way to Pansy and Luna's beach house. He’s a bit terrified of seeing Draco, to be honest. It’s been a while, and then there’s the little matter of Draco having married someone else in the interim. In 2001, Draco is drunk, wearing Pansy's mother's ermine coat, and afraid to walk into the Leaky because someone might throw a curse at him. So, of course, he runs into his ex-nemesis and hopeless crush, Harry Potter. This is a love story that isn't perfect, about two people whose timing is never quite right, and all the moments that come together to make something extraordinarily beautiful anyway.

The Secret of the Philosopher Stone -- @yletylyf -- Snoldemort, 115k, E

Voldemort gets the Philosopher's Stone, but finds himself trapped at Hogwarts and in need of rescue. Loyal Death Eater Severus Snape is on the job, but even he is not quite prepared for Lord Voldemort to return as Tom Riddle with a patched-up soul and no interest in war. And as for Tom? Well, it's not so easy to stop being a domestic terrorist.

The Left Words -- authoresswithoutwords -- Tomarrymort, 234k, E

Harry has some weird words on his left wrist. That must be one of those strange things that Aunt Petunia hates so much. But it's okay! He likes them. Then, it all turns even weirder. Hogwarts, magic, a Headmaster and a Dark Lord await Harry - he would prefer if they all just left him alone, thank you very much. But when has it ever mattered what Harry wants?

When the Rose and the Fire Are One -- @perverse-idyll -- Snarry, 81k, E

Harry's haunted by guilt. Snape's warded by roses. Each must free the other in order to free himself.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[RFE/RL is US state media]

Annual opium cultivation has dropped by as much as 80 percent compared to last year, according to new research by David Mansfield, a leading expert on Afghanistan's drugs trade who worked with Alcis, a British firm specializing in satellite analysis.

Mansfield said the Taliban had "exceeded expectations and reduced poppy cultivation to levels not seen since 2001," when the militant group was ousted from power by the U.S.-led invasion.[...]

After 2001, the United States spent some $8 billion in a bid to eradicate the opium trade in Afghanistan. Washington destroyed poppy fields, offered alternative crops to farmers, conducted air strikes, and raided suspected labs. But the strategy largely failed.[...]

Since regaining power, the Taliban appears to be succeeding where foreign powers have failed. In 2000, during its first stint in power, the Taliban implemented a similar ban.

9 Jun 23

[coochiequeens]

Ladies, vote for yourself and those denied the right

Dhurnal (Pakistan) (AFP) – Perched on her traditional charpai bed, Naeem Kausir says she would like to vote in Pakistan's upcoming election -- if only the men in her family would let her.

Issued on: 05/02/2024 - 08:41

In  the village of Dhurnal in Punjab, spread across crop fields and home to several thousand people, men profess myriad reasons why women should not be allowed to vote © Farooq NAEEM / AFP

Like all the women in her town, the 60-year-old former headmistress and her seven daughters -- six already university educated -- are forbidden from voting by their male elders.

"Whether by her husband, father, son or brother, a woman is forced. She lacks the autonomy to make decisions independently," said Kausir, covered in a veil in the courtyard of her home.

"These men lack the courage to grant women their rights," the widow told AFP.

Although voting is a constitutional right for all adults in Pakistan, some rural areas in the socially conservative country are still ruled by a patriarchal system of male village elders who wield significant influence in their communities.

In the village of Dhurnal in Punjab, spread across crop fields and home to several thousand people, men profess myriad reasons for the ban of more than 50 years.

"Several years ago, during a period of low literacy rates, a council chairman decreed that if men went out to vote, and women followed suit, who would manage the household and childcare responsibilities?" said Malik Muhammad, a member of the village council.

"This disruption, just for one vote, was deemed unnecessary," he concluded.

Robina Kausir, a healthcare worker, talks to AFP in Dhurnal of Punjab province, ahead of the upcoming general election © Farooq NAEEM / AFP

Muhammad Aslam, a shopkeeper, claims it is to protect women from "local hostilities" about politics, including a distant occasion that few seem to remember in the village when an argument broke out at a polling station.

Others told AFP it was simply down to "tradition".

First Muslim woman leader

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has stressed that it has the authority to declare the process null and void in any constituency where women are barred from participating.

In reality, progress has been slow outside of cities and in areas that operate under tribal norms, with millions of women still missing from the electoral rolls.

Muhammad Aslam, a shopkeeper, claims a ban on women voting is to protect them from "local hostilities" about politics © Farooq NAEEM / AFP

The elders in Dhurnal rely on neighbouring villages to fill a government-imposed quota which maintains that 10 percent of votes cast in every constituency must be by women.

Those who are allowed to vote are often pressured to pick a candidate of a male relative's choice.

In the mountainous region of Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province home to almost 800,000 people, religious clerics last month decreed it un-Islamic for women to take part in electoral campaigns.

Although voting is a constitutional right for all adults in Pakistan, some rural areas in the socially conservative country are still ruled by a patriarchal system of male village elders who wield significant influence in their communities © Farooq NAEEM / AFP

Fatima Tu Zara Butt, a legal expert and a women's rights activist, said women are allowed to vote in Islam, but that religion is often exploited or misunderstood in Pakistan.

"Regardless of their level of education or financial stability, women in Pakistan can only make decisions with the 'support' of the men around them," she said.

Pakistan famously elected the world's first Muslim woman leader in 1988 -- Benazir Bhutto, who introduced policies that boosted education and access to money for women, and fought against religious extremism after military dictator Zia ul-Haq had introduced a new era of Islamisation that rolled back women's rights.

However, more than 30 years later, only 355 women are competing for national assembly seats in Thursday's election, compared to 6,094 men, the election commission has said.

Pakistan reserves 60 of the 342 National Assembly seats for women and 10 for religious minorities in the Muslim-majority country, but political parties rarely allow women to contest outside of this quota.

Those who do stand often do so only with the backing of male relatives who are already established in local politics.

"I have never seen any independent candidates contesting elections on their own," Zara Butt added.

'Everyone's right'

Forty-year-old Robina Kausir, a healthcare worker, said a growing number of women in Dhurnal want to exercise their right to vote but they fear backlash from the community if they do -- particularly the looming threat of divorce, a matter of great shame in Pakistani culture.

She credits part of the shift to access to information as a result of the rising use of smartphones and social media.

"These men instil fear in their women – many threaten their wives," she told AFP.

Robina, backed by her husband, is one of the few prepared to take the risk.

When cricketing legend Imran Khan swept to power in the 2018 election, Robina arranged for a minibus to take women to the local polling station.

Only a handful joined her, but she still marked it as a success and will do the same on Thursday's election.

"I was abused but I do not care, I will keep fighting for everyone's right to vote," Robina said.

[wkemeup]

The Siren’s Revenge (SFoS bonus chapter)

chapter summary: You and Captain Barnes encounter old enemies and leave no prisoners. 

pairings: pirate!bucky x pirate/siren!reader

chapter word count: 4.1k

warnings: brief smut (18+), canon level violence, descriptions of blood, protective!bucky is a god tier!bucky, 

a/n: this is the final bonus chapter for my series Sky Full of Song so please make sure to read the main part of the series first :)

🏴‍☠️ series masterlist // series playlist

You woke to the soft brush of fingertips against your cheek. Gentle, delicate – tracing your outlines as if you were made of precious value to be worshipped and adored. Gold of the most coveted treasure.  

Drawn gingerly from your sleep, your eyes fluttered open to find your captain laid on his side, propped up on his elbow. The rising sun danced over his features – golden and beaming as a smile crept up along his cheeks.  

“She rises,” Bucky murmured, leaning down to replace the touch of his fingers with his lips. He kissed your cheek, allowing his lips to linger – to touch, to taste. Then slowly, he peppered kisses to your jawline; taking his time as he teased at the corner of your mouth. His smile pressed against your flushed skin as you groaned impatiently at him. Then finally, as if only to torture you, he landed upon your lips.  

“How long have you been watching me sleep?” you laughed, playfully shoving at his bare chest as he finally came up for air. Bucky captured your palm against his heart, holding you steady against him, though you made no move to pull away. You could feel every pulse within his chest – a comforting melody under the tips of your fingers. 

“I wanted to ensure your rest, my love,” he replied as though the answer had been obvious. Sunlight refracted off the blues of his eyes – shimmering as if the gods themselves had captured the crests of ocean waves within the shades of his gaze. “We have a long day ahead of us and I require the steadfast wit and skill of my second if we are to line gold in our pockets by the evening.” 

“Oh, is that all?” you teased, leaning into the crook of his neck. Bucky’s arms burrowed around you, tucking you tight to his chest. His warmth surrounded you until you could hear the soft thumping of his heartbeat against your ear.  

“It is true that with the last few sieges, our families at home have been well cared for,” Bucky began. You thought of the Navy ships you’d raided together and the hordes of gold meant to be delivered to the Queen. The first ship had enough to replenish the crops of the hurricane-stricken town. The second, enough to rebuild. The third provided the medical supplies and comfort the town had been lacking since the storm. The need was no longer urgent, and yet, your captain craved more.  

“But I must confess, it is not enough.” Bucky brushed his lips over your collar. “I wish to cover you in gemstones we’ve stolen from the Queen and grant you a crown of your own. I wish to forge you an unbreakable blade – one that will seek to protect its wielder as easily as it craves its vengeance. I will gladly line the walls of this ship in enough romance novels you will never be without if that is what you desire, my love. I seek endless gold to give you anything you can imagine.” 

You knew he could feel your heart racing with every word. The smooth tread of his voice was enough to be your undoing, but the smirk against your skin with every kiss told you he knew exactly what his promises were doing to you. You shivered as his lips trailed lower over your chest.  

“And what do you want?” you questioned breathily as you dragged your fingers through his unruly hair. “What would you do with all this excess gold?” 

He only shook his head, as if the answer was obvious. His hand slid along the curve of your hips – lower, lower, until he met the apex of your thighs. You gasped.  

“You mistake me.” His expert fingers drew a shuddered inhale from your lungs. “My pleasure is in yours, my love. I have no need for gold if I have you.”  

“You,” a whimper escaped as you shivered under his touch, “are dramatic.” 

Bucky chuckled and he sank a finger into your warmth, almost to taunt you in answer. His lips brushed your flushing cheeks. “And yet here we are... enjoying your pleasure.” 

You drew your captain’s lips to your own as the heal of his palm rubbed sinful pleasure where you needed him most. He did not relent, not as you parted his lips and licked at his tongue, not as you kissed him until you were whining and breathless against his open mouth. He took care of you – as he always did – until you reached your high and he swallowed back your moans.  

A comforting heaviness tied you to the cot, your body warm and flushed under Bucky’s knowing hands. As your body began to settle, he peppered kissed to your shoulder, unwilling or unable to stop himself from wanting more.  

When he finally withdrew his hand from between your legs, a prideful smirk coated much of his adoring features. “Do you still question what I desire?”  

You rolled onto your side, letting your hands explore his bare chest, feeling the frantic thunder of his heart under your fingertips. Then slowly, teasingly, you slid your hands lower. “Maybe you should ask me what I want, Captain.”  

He licked at his lips, the evidence of that very desire prominent under the thin sheets.  

Your hand trailed at the low cut of his abdomen, fingertips teasing with every stoke, when a sudden knocking startled you at the door.  

You could not help but laugh as Bucky threw his head back on the pillow and groaned. The crew knew better than to dare disturb the captain when the door was closed, but a few – and only a select few – were instructed to do so under necessary circumstances. Frustration boiled under Bucky’s skin as he untangled himself from your arms and threw on a pair of trousers. He cracked open the door only enough to peer outside in effort to shield you.  

“What is it?” he hissed, likely with more impatience than he would have preferred given who stood on the other side. But he was caught in a rather compromising state – one any pirate would be understanding of. 

Dugan’s voice was the one that followed. “Apologies, sir, but we’re preparing to dock.” 

“And I trust that you will see us through,” Bucky grumbled. “I am very busy attending to matters far more important than—” 

“There’s another ship at the shoreline.” 

Tension burned through Bucky’s back. You could see every muscle tightened under the skin as he straightened his spine and the annoyance drained from his features. Carefully, you slipped off the cot, gathering the bed sheets with you and covered yourself as you made your way to the door.  

The Commandos have been traveling in search of the trail of Bellamy’s treasure for the better part of four months. It was not simply infuriating that another crew had stumbled upon it first, it was inconceivable. You’d been followed.  

Dugan’s eyes drifted briefly toward you as you approached. Still blocked by much of the door and the adjoining wall, none of the lingering crew behind him would be able to see you. But you noticed the shift in Dugan’s stance – the sudden nervousness that was usual for him to carry. His gaze dropped to the deck. 

At your feet, a soft brush of fur nudged at your ankles. Alpine - the stray white cat that never quite left your side after Mayvelle’s Cove - purred as she rubbed her head against your shins. Insistent, almost demanding, and part of you wondered whether she sensed the tension in the air, if she noticed the anticipation lingering in the silence and the breath held tight in your chest at Dugan’s strange trepidation. 

Sensing the same, Bucky asked, “what is it? What do you know?” 

Dugan sighed and straightened his shoulders as if he were gathering courage. When he answered, he did not address his captain. 

“I recognized the banner,” he said, a heaviness hanging on the calm of his voice as he spoke directly to you. There was empathy there; sadness even. But he held your gaze. “It belongs to Red Skull.” 

Your grip on the sheets tightened as quickly as Bucky’s hand found its way to your hip. He inched himself in front of you as if there was a present danger ahead – always shielding you, always doing what he could to ensure you were safe and protected. You suspected it would take longer than some months' time for him to rid himself of the guilt of what happened under his watch as captain and the torment you’d endured at the hands of his own crew. His protectiveness was in his nature – as a man, and as a pirate.  

Alpine scurried safely away to her perch by the window. 

“You’re certain?” Bucky questioned. His voice was low. Deadly. 

Dugan only nodded.

“Give us a moment,” he ordered, and Dugan bowed his head and turned back to the deck.  

Bucky carefully closed the door behind him and turned to you. He didn’t speak for a moment, didn’t say a single word as he gathered you into his arms and held you. Gingered hands brushed over the scars on your open back – scars given to you by the very men who were now anchored upon shore. You shivered under his touch, and still, you sought more. Only after Bucky felt the rigidity begin to ease from your muscle, did he break his silence.  

“I will not ask you to join me on shore,” he said evenly. “You will not have to see those men again.” 

You swallowed though your throat was dry as sand. “I am not weak.” 

Bucky’s features slacked. “I know that. Of course, I know that, my love. I would dowse them in gasoline and hand you the match if that was what you wanted. But I...” He sighed something heavy and you knew without hesitation of the memory plaguing him. “I remember the tavern on Carnage. I know what they did to you. I do not want you to feel as though you must prove yourself to me or this crew. You do not have to face them. You should not have to, my love. You’ve endured enough.” 

Maybe you shouldn’t have been surprised to see the startling contrast of rage and grief in Bucky’s eyes, but it stunned you just the same.  

“But I will hold my promise to you,” he continued, his hands sweetly brushing over your skin though his voice seethed in venom. “They will pay for what they did.” 

His fingertips traced one of the long scars on your back. You shivered.  

“You’ll start a war,” you warned, attempting to argue the point though you knew it was useless. His mind was already decided.  

“There will be nothing left of them to wage war once I am through.” 

You stepped back, letting his hands drop from your skin. Shoulders squaring, breath steady in your chest, you found your strength. “Then you will allow me to join you.” 

A slow, deadly grin curved up the edges of his lips. This was the pirate captain of legend – one that children whispered ghost stories about and grown men quivered in fear at the very mention of his name. 

“It is amusing to me that you believe I have the power to allow you to do anything,” he chuckled. Though, when he looked at you again, wrapped in your shared bed sheets, skin still tingling from the touch of his hands, he softened. “But yes, my love. I would be honored to have you at my side. Always.” 

He crossed the room to you and pressed a kiss at the height of your shoulder, just over the tip of a long, jagged scar that crossed over your spine. Then, he handed you the clothes that had been hastily discarded the evening before. You dressed quickly as he took his time buttoning his shirt, stealing glances over in your direction as you dropped the sheet to the floor.  

When you were finished, you strapped each of your trusted weapons to your hips. Bucky was leaning against the desk, arms folded across his chest; eager for what laid ahead.  

“Come, my love,” he beckoned, his hand outstretched. “We have a ship to burn.” 

The strength he offered you against your darkest memories giving way to the smiling brimming over your features and your hand fit perfectly into his.  

*** 

Captain Schmidt was an arrogant man to a fault. He believed he’d outmaneuvered the course of the Commandos enough to leave his ship with little security while he and his crew pillaged the island in search of Bellamy’s treasure. With only two men standing guard, Bucky took out the pair of them with the quick swipe of a blade before they could so much as make a sound.  

He brushed the wet edge of his sword against his pant leg, cleaning it of the blood.  

And perhaps you might have made a cunning joke or teased him for the ruthlessness hidden under the layers of a man who adored you endlessly, but this ship sunk something heavy in your chest upon your first step to its deck. You paced along its floors, over memories and familiar nightmares, and took in the vessel you had once sailed upon.  

“Y/n?” Bucky’s voice was a distance from you as you traveled further into the ship. You could hear him following close behind you, his presence never far from your reach. And still – it felt as though a lifetime separated you from your Captain as you looked upon the mast at the center of the ship.  

You knew each splinter and crevice in the wood. You’d felt the sharp edge of a stray shard jab against your stomach. The skin on your forearms burned itself raw as your arms were tied around its width. Blood had speckled its wood in the aftermath of every lashing. You knew that mast as if it were a part of you.  

Bucky didn’t speak as he stepped in line beside you, his gaze centered upon the mast. He did not carry the same agonizing memories of the structure, nor the paralyzing shame you could not rid from your skin. Instead, his brows had pinched at the center, his jaw clenched tight, upper lip twitching as burning rage akin to flames consumed the blue of his eyes.  

“Captain Barnes!” a voice called behind you, craving stone to your entire body.  

Bucky jolted in front of you, turning to meet Red Skull himself as he stood only several paces away. At his left, wearing a sickening grin, was Jack Rollins. He waved at you, his fingers falling one by one, and you swallowed back the bitter taste of bile. 

“If my eyes do not deceive me,” Schmidt smirked, “you are still traveling with my sea witch.” 

“She is not yours,” Bucky hissed, a growl burning in the back of his throat. He moved to cover you entirely from the men who had done none but torture and abuse you, but you would not let him. Instead, you set a gentle warning hand at the center of his shoulder blades and stepped out beside him. He did not allow the concern to show upon his features – not in front of Red Skull and his lackey – but you could feel it exuding from him as if it were palpable in the air. But he did not challenge you, did not attempt to shield you again. He trusted you implicitly. 

And that was why you loved him so dearly. 

“Are you going to claim her then?” Rollins jeered at Bucky, his darkened gaze burning into you as if it might sear your skin, and still, you did not cower. He cracked his knuckles. “You really want to risk this curse on your ship? You have only survived out of luck, Captain Barnes! She will destroy you just as she nearly brought the skies down upon us!” 

Bucky gritted his teeth. “You’d be wise to shut your mouth.” 

But he did not listen. Rollins was rarely a man who knew when to stay silent.  

“And you’d be wise to keep that bitch in check! Punishment is all these women will respond to,” Rollins shot back. He crossed his arms over his chest as a smug grin warped his features. “Thirteen lashes worked well enough for us.” 

A gunshot rang out before you had a chance to react. Red Skull stumbled backwards out of its path, but Rollins took a bullet to his shoulder. Blood sprayed to the deck as he hollered out in pain.  

Bucky was on him in a second, taking advantage of the shock in Rollins’ system and dragged him to the mast. He shoved Rollins against the splintering wood and you winced as you heard a bone crack under the pressure. Blood poured down Rollins’ nose.  

Behind you, Red Skull moved to flee, but you raised your gun to him and released the safety. He stilled, raising his arms begrudgingly. You gestured for him to move to the center of the deck where you could keep a better eye on him and whatever chaos Bucky was about to unleash.  

“Are you insane!?” Rollins shouted, struggling against Bucky’s strength. But it only took the hard pressure of a closed fist to the exit wound on Rollins’ shoulder before he whined out in protest and quieted.  

“You want to talk about punishments?” Bucky hissed against Rollins’ ear. “I’ll whip you myself for what you did to her. How’s thirteen to start?” Rollins whimpered as Bucky dug his knuckles deeper to the bullet wound. “And I’ll add another for every year passed since you took a hand to my girl.” 

Rollins was shaking. It only worsened when Bucky started to tear at the fabric on Rollins’ shirt until it tore away in strips, exposing his back. A pit dropped in your stomach. Not for Rollins – the man could burn in hell for all you cared. But for your Captain. He did not torture without goal, did not maim unless it was required.  

You’d never known him to seek vengeance like this. To harm for the sake of retribution. 

Not until you.  

And it wasn’t that you didn’t wish to see these men harmed. Because you did. You’d gladly see them dead. But not at the price of Bucky’s soul.  

“Bucky...” you started, but Captain Schmidt’s voice drowned yours out.  

“Are you—” he swallowed, as if the words were bitter on his tongue. “You mean to say that you’re actually with this witch?” 

It was the disgust in his voice that made you flinch. But Bucky’s body went rigid at the taunt.  

Bucky dug the barrel of his gun into Rollins’ back to hold him still, then slowly, turned to face Red Skull without a trace of hesitation in his eyes.  

“You will not speak about her like again or I’ll—” 

“Let him,” you interrupted, surprised by your own voice. Bucky narrowed his gaze on you, confused, but you held your hand tighter to your weapon as steady as you held your ground. You swallowed, centering your gaze on your former Captain, on the man who sanction the myriad of scars upon your back. “You’re a fool, Schmidt.” 

Red Skull rolled his eyes, but you took another step towards him and he straightened. He didn’t trust that you would pull the trigger, not even knowing how skilled of a shot you are. He didn’t trust your ruthlessness in battle. He looked at you and saw weakness because he could not see beyond his preconceived notions based on little but your gender.   

But he would not dismiss you now.  

Not again. 

“You have no idea, do you?” you scoffed, a humorless laugh at the edge of your words. “All these years, you’ve called me a sea witch. You don’t have a goddamn clue how right you were.” 

A flash of confusion dared to cross Schmidt’s features. It only infuriated you.  

“I could have killed you any time I wanted,” you told him, emotion sinking heavy into your voice. “I could have drowned you and the entire crew with a fucking song if I wanted to!”  

Stunned silence followed. Only the soft crashing of the waves against the belly of the ship could be heard over your racing heartbeat.  

You did not miss the fear that widened his eyes, nor the desperate glance towards Bucky in search of mercy he would not find.  

“You’re a siren,” Schmidt choked out. It was not a question. 

“I only wanted a home!” you shouted, clenching your grip on the gun. “A—a family! Safe passage! And you tortured me to appease a god who wasn’t even listening!”  

Schmidt’d trembling hands came up in front of him, pleading. “Please, I—I didn’t know.” 

Rollins even had the decent sense to keep quiet.  

“Now you fear me?” you mocked, as if you hadn’t been holding him at gun point since he arrived, as if you weren’t the best marksman he’d ever encountered. This man, who had haunted your dreams, now cowered before you.  

A deadly calm washed over you as you watched him tremble, as you watched him try to bargain with Bucky who would not even offer his acknowledgement, your captain’s gaze planted solely on you. The distant call of seagulls dulled. The waves crashing to shore the only sound soothing through your mind as you drew in a breath.  

“I never needed the siren’s song to kill you, Captain.” 

And then, you pulled the trigger.  

Red Skull stumbled backwards until his body caught against the wall of the ship. And you fired again. The momentum swung his body over the edge until a heavy splash echoed below. You didn’t spare him the dignity of watching his body sink to the shallow shoreline.  

When you turned back to Bucky, Rollins was already on the floor in a pool of his own blood – dead. You raised a brow at Bucky, who only shrugged.  

“I’m not the marksman you are, my love,” he replied calmly. “Looks like I caught the artery.” 

It appeared Rollins only learned to hold his tongue in death after all.  

It was strange to see him like this – his features slacked of the vicious grin and pointed stares. He looked younger, you realized. Like perhaps he might carry an entirely different lifetime on his shoulders if he hadn’t learned to pick up a whip and use it as a means of power.  

“You did good, sweetheart,” Bucky said after some time, gently drawing your stare away from Rollins’ body. “Only one thing left to do.” 

Bucky crossed the deck and unhooked a lantern hung from the ship’s edge. From his pocket, he drew a single match and lit the flame. Without hesitation or remorse, he handed you the lamp.  

“What of the rest of his crew?” you asked, glancing out to the jungle beyond the shoreline. “And Bellamy’s treasure?” 

Bucky only smiled. “You underestimate me, my love. What do you think our crew has been doing in our absence?” 

Sure enough, as if in response to Bucky’s question, a group of men appeared at the tree line. First, Morita leading the way with a long sword in hand. Then, Dugan and Jones each carrying a side of large wooden chest. The rest of the crew followed – much of their clothes drenched in so much sweat, dirt, and blood, you almost missed the jewels and gold decorating their fingers and necks.  

You looked back to Bucky, stunned.  

“I told you there would be no one left to wage war, didn’t I?” Bucky said, his fingertips reaching out to brush a line along your jaw, his thumb tracing your lower lip. “And now you can have the gold and jewels you desire.” 

“If I recall, that was what you desired for me, Captain Barnes,” you retorted, only after pressing a kiss to the pad of his thumb. “Perhaps I only ever wanted the same as you.” 

Not even the legendary Captain Barnes could fight the smile tugging on his cheeks as he stepped forward. “Which is?” 

You leaned up to kiss him, forgetting for a moment of the deck you stood upon and the grip it held on you for years. Its power was lost on you, its claws retracted from their grip on your mind. Not with Bucky at your side, not with the lengths you knew he’d go to protect you.  

When you pulled back, you did so only with a smile brimming high into your cheeks.  

“And just so we’re clear, the object of your desire is...?” Bucky prompted cheekily. You shoved him in the side, which only made him laugh harder. It was the most beautiful sound you’d ever heard.  

“You, Bucky,” you laughed. “Always you.” 

Pride beamed upon his face. “Good. Now, light this ship ablaze so we can enjoy our spoils.” 

You tossed the lantern over your shoulder without so much as breaking eye contact with your captain. You did not watch as the glass broke, nor as the gas leaked from the barrel or the flames that followed. You didn’t turn to see the fire engulf the mast or Rollins’ decaying body. But you felt the warmth of it on your back.  

Bucky’s hand slid eagerly into yours, drawing your intertwined hands to his lips. He did not cower from the fire spreading slowly along the deck as he gingerly pulled you along with him. A laugh brimming in his chest, you followed him just as you always have. As you always will.  

Flames danced behind you in your wake.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 3. Economy

What about drought, famine, or other catastrophes?

Governments assert additional control through “emergency powers,” on the premise that greater centralization is necessary in emergencies. On the contrary, centralized structures are less agile in responding to chaotic situations. Studies show that after natural disasters most rescues are carried out by common people, not government experts or professional aid workers. More humanitarian aid is offered by people than by governments. Government aid often facilitates political agendas such as supporting political allies against their opponents, spreading genetically modified foods, and undermining local agriculture with huge shipments of free food that are quickly replaced by commercial imports monopolizing the upset market. For that matter, a significant portion of the international arms trade is disguised in government aid shipments.

It is possible that people would be better off in catastrophes without governments. We can also develop effective alternatives to government assistance based on the principle of solidarity. If one anarchist community is struck by a catastrophe, it can count on help from others. Whereas in a capitalist context catastrophe is an occasion for politically motivated forms of aid, if not outright opportunism, anarchists give assistance freely with the assurance that it will be reciprocated when the time comes.

Spain in 1936 again provides a good example. In Mas de las Matas, as in other parts, the Cantonal (district) Committee kept track of shortages and surpluses and made arrangements for even distribution. Part of its work was to make sure all collectives were taken care of in the event of natural disasters.

For example: this year the principal crops of Mas de las Matas, Seno, and La Ginebrosa were destroyed by hailstorms. In a capitalist regime, such natural disasters would have meant endless privations, heavy debts, foreclosures, and even emigration of some workers for several years. But in the regime of libertarian solidarity, these difficulties were overcome by the efforts of the whole district. Provisions, seeds, [...] everything needed to repair the damage, were furnished in the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity — without conditions, without contracting debts. The Revolution has created a new civilization![61]

Anarchism is one of the few revolutionary ideas that does not require modernization; anarchist societies are free to organize themselves at any sustainable level of technology. This means that societies currently existing as hunter-gatherers, or groups of people who choose to adopt such a lifestyle, can practice this most efficient and ecological form of subsistence, the most conducive to a resilient ecosystem that is less vulnerable to natural disasters.

[mariacallous]

Countries have spent decades building critical infrastructure that is now buckling under extreme heat, wildfires, and floods, laying bare just how unprepared the world’s energy and transportation systems are to withstand the volatility of climate change.

These vulnerabilities have been on full display in recent weeks as record-breaking temperatures broil the world, straining power grids, threatening water supplies, and warping roads. July was the hottest month ever recorded—according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service—with intense heat searing Europe, North Africa, Antarctica, and South America, where it is currently winter. Even the world’s oceans haven’t been spared, with all-time high surface temperatures in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic decimating coral reef systems and threatening marine life.

If regions aren’t being scorched, there’s a good chance that they are underwater. China was drenched by its heaviest downpours in 140 years, which triggered massive floods that killed dozens of people and destroyed crop fields. In Slovenia and Canada, surging floodwaters have battered communities and submerged villages; glacial flooding in Alaska has carried entire homes away. Cities in Spain have been flooded worse than Noah and his brood, while southern Sweden is grappling with its heaviest rains in more than 160 years.

“It’s just an unbelievable summer,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute. “It’s the kind of extreme weather that we climate scientists have been warning about for decades—it just now seems to be happening everywhere, all at once.”

Climate change, driven by human activity, makes extreme heat and precipitation more frequent and intense—fueling the floods, heat waves, and wildfires that have been wreaking havoc around the world. The fallout has spotlighted how the infrastructure systems underpinning global development weren’t constructed to withstand this increasingly extreme climate reality, and what investment has been carried out has been less than helpful.

China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure plan has built more coal plants across Eurasia, among other things. Germany shuttered its nuclear power stations, not its coal plants. Florida actually banned state officials from investing public money in green endeavors. The Biden administration’s big clean-energy package angered allies and sparked concerns of a trade war. Meanwhile, Ford sold an F-series pickup truck every minute of last year.

“We have entire cities and transportation hubs that were all built for climate that no longer exists,” said Katharine Hayhoe, the Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “That’s why we’re seeing terrible things happen.”

China’s most recent bout of flooding, for example, exposed key gaps in its drainage infrastructure. Across Europe, where home air-conditioning units aren’t the norm, extreme heat has throttled communities, strained power grids, and sparked government health warnings—particularly after the continent’s heat wave last year killed an estimated 61,000 people. In Phoenix, Arizona, one flight was canceled because the plane’s internal temperature became unbearably hot, prompting three passengers to faint from heat exhaustion.

Yet even as these threats become more pronounced, experts say countries are still struggling to turn away from fossil fuels and build resilience into their infrastructure systems. In March, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warned that the world was on track to barrel past a key threshold in the next decade—warming 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—unless industrial governments rapidly cut greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions. “Changes in climate are coming more rapidly than expected,” Jim Skea, the head of the IPCC, said this month.

“The real challenge is that so far, we’re nowhere near addressing climate change with the seriousness that is required to really move the needle,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “If we don’t actually do the hard work of deeply addressing this, then it will continue to get worse. We will see more years like this one, and then eventually years that are significantly worse than this one,” he added.

There are some bright spots: The Netherlands, for example, has spent the last few hundred years building dikes and is now spearheading efforts to build further resilience into its infrastructure amid rising sea levels. More than half of the country’s territory lies below sea level, and the Dutch government has worked to develop a robust water management scheme and implement novel flood control strategies.

“The Netherlands are incredibly vulnerable to sea level rise,” Hayhoe said. “Their water plan is very advanced because they understand the threat, and they’re taking action to ensure that as sea level rises, that they will still have their infrastructure, their homes, places to live, places to grow food.”

Like the Dutch, many governments are increasingly focusing on adapting their infrastructure systems, from incorporating climate modeling into water management to developing heat mitigation strategies. But unless countries take more concerted efforts to both slash carbon emissions and ramp up adaptation measures, experts warn that more suffering lies ahead.

Adaptation “efforts have not been anywhere near to the level to match the threat,” said Alice Hill, a former senior director for resilience policy under the Obama administration currently at the Council on Foreign Relations. “We just haven’t made the kind of necessary investments to protect ourselves and our communities from these extreme events—and with that kind of destruction comes a lot of grief, loss of life, and then economic loss.”

Part of the problem is that retrofitting decades-old infrastructure can come at a steep price. A 2013 study of the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, for instance, found that it would cost $350 million annually in each city to improve defenses against flooding fueled by climate change. While that number pales in comparison to the price of inaction—which by some estimates can run up to hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars—it can be a difficult economic and political tradeoff for many governments.

“We’re talking huge price tags, and we’re also talking something that has not been done systemically before,” Hayhoe said. “We’ve never had to cope with changes this fast in the entire history of human civilization, and so we’re asking people, cities, states, governments, organizations, businesses to do something they’ve never had to do before.”

Physical preparedness is also only one part of the adaptation equation, said Stéphane Hallegatte, a senior climate advisor at the World Bank who was one of the authors of the 2013 study. Beyond infrastructure, a robust response also means developing social systems to help vulnerable communities on the front lines of the climate crisis.

“Adaptation is not only infrastructure,” Hallegatte said. “Adaptation is also insurance, social protection systems—also helping people [have] access to financial tools to borrow when they’re affected.”

Hayhoe likened the urgency of combating climate change to a longtime smoker who needs to quit. Although they may have impaired breathing and spots on their lungs, she said, they are still alive—and every day matters.

“So when’s the best time to stop? As soon as possible. How much? As much as possible,” she said. “Why? Because the sooner we stop, the better off we will be.”

[kp777]

By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

Dec. 6, 2023

"Averting this crisis—and doing so equitably—must be the core goal of COP28 and ongoing global cooperation," one expert said.

Current levels of global heating from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature risk triggering five tipping points that could throw Earth's systems further out of balance, with three more at risk of toppling in the next decade.

The Global Tipping Points Report, released Wednesday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates, argues that policymakers have delayed climate action long enough that "linear incremental change" will no longer be enough to protect ecosystems and communities from the worst impacts of the climate crisis. However, world leaders can still choose to take advantage of positive tipping points to drive transformative change.

"The existence of tipping points means that 'business as usual' is now over," the report authors wrote. "Rapid changes to nature and society are occurring, and more are coming."

"Crossing these thresholds may trigger fundamental and sometimes abrupt changes that could irreversibly determine the fate of essential parts of our Earth system for the coming hundreds or thousands of years."

The report defines a "tipping point" as "occurring when change in part of a system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a threshold, leading to substantial, widespread, frequently abrupt and often irreversible impact." A group of more than 200 researchers assessed 26 different potential tipping points in Earth's systems that could be triggered by the climate crisis.

"Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity," report leader Tim Lenton of Exeter's Global Systems Institute said in a statement. "They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability, and financial collapse."

Because current emissions trajectories put the world on track for 1.5°C of warming, this is likely to trigger five tipping points, the report authors found. Those tipping points are the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the mass die-off of warm-water coral reefs, the thawing of Arctic permafrost, and the collapse of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation.

The melting of just the Antarctic ice sheet, for example, could raise global sea levels by 6.6 feet by 2100, Carbon Brief reported, meaning 480 million people would face yearly coastal flooding. Three more tipping points could be triggered in the 2030s if temperatures rise past 1.5°C. These include the mass death of seagrass meadows, mangroves, and boreal forests, according to The Guardian.

"Crossing these thresholds may trigger fundamental and sometimes abrupt changes that could irreversibly determine the fate of essential parts of our Earth system for the coming hundreds or thousands of years," co-author Sina Loriani of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told The Guardian.

Contributor Manjana Milkoreit of the University of Oslo said in a statement that "our global governance system is inadequate to deal with the coming threats and implement the solutions urgently required."

But that doesn't mean the report authors believe that hope is lost. Rather, they see it as a call to ambitious action at the current U.N. climate talks and beyond.

"Averting this crisis—and doing so equitably—must be the core goal of COP28 and ongoing global cooperation," Milkoreit said.

One way to do this is to take advantage of positive tipping points.

"Concerted actions can create the enabling conditions for triggering rapid and large-scale transformation," the report authors wrote. "Human history is flush with examples of abrupt social and technological change. Recent examples include the exponential increases in renewable electricity, the global reach of environmental justice movements, and the accelerating rollout of electric vehicles."

The report authors made six recommendations based on their findings:

Immediately phasing out fossil fuels and emissions from land use changes like deforestation;

Strengthening plans for adaptation and loss and damage in the face of inevitable tipping points;

Taking tipping points into account in Paris agreement mechanisms like the global stocktake and national climate pledges;

Collaborating to trigger positive tipping points;

Organizing a global summit on tipping points; and

Increasing research on tipping points, including through a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Now is the moment to unleash a cascade of positive tipping points to ensure a safe, just, and sustainable future for humanity," Lenton said.

An earlier version of this article said the sea levels could rise by 656 feet by 2100 if the Antarctic ice sheet started to melt. It has been corrected to reflect the fact that they would rise by 6.6 feet.

[rinusuarez]

Today we are going to start with a family that is loved by many. Is not my cup of tea but I have learned about them and they are indeed fascinating. The equines. Domestic Horse

The domestication of horses is believed to occurred around 4000 to 3500 BCE, possibly in what is today Kazakhstan. However, there is some debate among experts about the exact time and location of horse domestication, as evidence of early horse domestication is limited and sometimes difficult to interpret. It is generally agreed, however, that horses were first domesticated for their meat, milk, and hides, and that they were later used for transportation, agriculture, and warfare.

There are numerous breeds of domestic horses, which are classified into three categories: Hot Blood, Cold Blood, and Warm Blood. These majestic creatures have played a crucial role in human evolution. The horse was one of the first animals to be domesticated, and their partnership with humans has allowed us to travel greater distances, carry heavy loads, cultivate crops with greater efficiency, and conquer the world. In short, without the taming of horses, we would not have been able to achieve the level of progress and development that we have today. It is also a very recurrent animal in art as we have seen it in many paintings and sculptures throughout history. It is commonly connected with strength, power, speed, and freedom. It is clear that this animal awakened an ongoing fascination that has been represented on numerous occasions. _________________________________________ Photo Credits: www.freepik.es.

_________________________________________ Thank you guys for your support. Any love traduced in likes, comments, or reblogs is really appreciated. Have a look at my Instagram. See you next week or maybe before.

[exsqueezememacaroni]

Why Mike stopped taking his shirt off after 1991? ;-) It's a shame, really. They are two shows from 1995 when he did it, but unfortunately they're crappy quality.

Anon, are you ready for pure unfounded speculation? Are you prepared for armchair psychology at the expert level? Ok? Here we go!

I will be the first to admit that I haven't read/seen a lot of Mike articles/interviews from the 90s, and especially not from the early 90s, so he or a journalist may have covered this question in even a roundabout way and I wouldn't know...but....my guess is that it has a lot to do with both the shot to stardom Mike experienced with the release of TRT and the changes in his body from AD onward. I really don't think Mike knew what was coming when they started touring for TRT. I think the dude gets hot and sweaty easily and knows he looks pretty good with his shirt off, so he takes it off. And then he was 'hunk of the month,' and then the groupies showed up, and then really obsessive groupies show up, and then he sees what the guys in the other bands on tour are doing with those groupies, and he thinks to himself...'no...I don't want that.' And through all that, the TRT tour slogs on for like what...more than 2 fucking years??? By 1991 even, as far as I remember, he doesn't take off his shirt too often? With the Bungle tour, there weren't nearly the massive stadium crowds, and Mike was with his childhood buds, so he probably felt more comfortable to be his zany, sweaty, different levels of undressed self. By the time Day on the Green rolls around, Mike's in gas station attendant mode and he doesn't look back, for the most part. He still gets hot and sweaty though, and whenever you see him with like, an open shirt, or in a tank top, or maybe even shirtless from then on...it's probably like 100 degrees on stage and he'll die of heat exhaustion otherwise (or...he's fucking pissed off and needs to get back at RHCP).

So that's the big thing....the other thing is that I do think Mike is a little self conscious of his appearance (yes, even in his crazier getups), and, honestly probably from the stress of fame and touring, and just...not being in his early 20s anymore, his physique changes a lot at the end of the TRT tour through like...1998...maybe even early 1999? He loses a lot of muscle mass and gets really, really thin by 1996. So even if he might be feeling comfortable, say on the DV tour, he's got t-shirt on. After that...it's a little hit or miss, like I think he's a little more comfortable in his body, but I also think he's still carrying the memory of his big fame days and has to temper showing it off with little cute crop tops, or being at a Zorn performance.

So there you have it...we all think Mike is just gorgeous and that....kinda freaks him out....

[goldkirk]

Greetings!

1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 25, 29, 52, 60, 63, 76, 95, 97 and 99?

P.S.: I read your tags, so thanks for the compliment! :-D

oh my god this is so many, you're a riot hahaha! thank you for sending this in!

Most favorite activity?

This is so hard. I love so many things. I guess my best effort to sum a lot of things up would be "hoarding and organizing information in my notebooks), a beloved pastime from about age six to now lol.

2. Least favorite one?

Either brushing my teeth or touching wet dirty sink dishes while needing to hand wash them or load a dishwasher.

3. One activity you really hate?

I've been trying to think of one but I'm drawing a blank. I guess cleaning dog poop out of my shoes after someone has left dog poop on the sidewalk or another walkway.

6. Do you have any idols?

Nah I don't go in for that these days. I definitely have some people I admire or look up to. Not to any level I'd say idols though.

8. Favorite music genre?

Dance! I love all types of genres but I listen most often to dance music.

11. Which kind of animal are you most afraid of?

Hmm. AFRAID of...jellyfish.

14. Do you think there’s a higher species than us humans?

Nah, at least not on our planet. But I don't think we're particularly high among all species, I think we're just particularly unique.

15. Do you believe in ghosts?

As a weird subjective phenomenon some of us experience in our lives? For sure. As "ghosts are the unfinished-business spirits of human dead people", no.

25. Can you dance? Is there any dance you want to learn someday?

Not well anymore, but I'm working on it. I was in love with ballet and wanted to do it forever. I'd like to get back into ballet classes, for adults this time. It's still the way my body most wants to dance. I took a ballroom dancing course for a hot minute. We were allowed to do swing dances when I was homeschooled, so I got pretty good at swing dance and some swing dance tricks.

29. Good memory from your childhood you keep remembering?

The first time I saw a snake in real life and it was a woman in public wearing a snake while walking down the street and she didn't get mad I was interested, she totally treated me like a Small Human Being and answered my questions and LET ME HOLD AND PLAY WITH IT MYSELF. I was like 7 and this was a core memory for me, much to the horror of my poor family members who were with me at the time when I dead-stopped us all in a state we didn't live in in a city we didn't know to talk to a strange woman and bond with her over a huge larger-than-adult-size-feather-boa-scarves snake lmao.

52. Do you think there are some breathing beings on earth contained behind ceilings or walking amongst us somehow with special abilities or powers? (as in most sci-fi and fantasy books, comics, movies)

Man this would be cool but unfortunately no lol

60. If you would have the money to donate what would you donate for?

Oh god I literally have a list about this! I'd donate all over the place, but the first few donations would definitely be to a few grassroots charities I care about and the all the local food pantries and education nonprofits that I can.

63. On your opinion, what should people do about climate change?

Force industry regulations, despite all the kicking and screaming the firms and their political-system lobby groups will throw at all of us about it.

Create a fast-moving national campaign of interconnected state and local ecosystem experts that can partner with local landowners all over their area and any municipalities they can convince to help to rewild as much land as possible with the actually-native plants. MOST PRIMARILY IN THE BREAD BASKET. The soil has GOT to be replenished, and the native grasses store at minimum roughly two times as much carbon underground than any of the cash crops or hay or weed grasses do.

Seriously invest right now, immediately, right away, in any adaptations your area will need to make in order to cope better with the changing and intensifying storms, floods, water level rises, droughts, wildfires, deep freezes, heat waves, etc., anything and everything that your area will for certain have eventually impact it.

End unethical overseas labor systems and the cobalt mining/electronics burning/etc. markets that exist because of the inequity and greed at every level and continual corruption not being overthrown.

Drastically reduce all western meat culture and industrial farming to the normal, sustainable levels of meat eating human families averaged until the very recent past.

Actually stop the driving forces behind systemic mistrust, conspiracy rabbit holes, and succeptibility to misinformation.

And do anything possible to slow tropical deforestation and invest in antibiotic research as fast and effectively as possible. We're already far behind the enemy because it hasn't been profitable to research antibiotics in the eyes of the pharmaceutical companies. With the climate and ecosystem shifts, we're going to have a wild ride with both insect bugs and bacteria bugs, I'm sure.

76. What’s the most romantic thing you ever have done for someone?

Oh man, I can't answer this one, I'm sorry. It's not that I wouldn't like to, I just don't know if I've ever tried to do something truly romantic, because I'm still not sure I understand what romantic most accurately means, so I'll have to get back to you on this one.

95. What’s something you really want to do some day with your/a partner?

I never thought about this until you asked it just now. I guess...maybe...............go overseas and explore some part of another country? My brain keeps giving me blanks, I don't know if it knows how to think about this yet. I'll keep working on it. But it does sound fun to go with a partner on a sort of few-places trip of random interest events or something.

97. Worst catchy song you ever heard?

"Blurred Lines".

99. Does it matter to you there is no 100th question in here?

Hahahaha! It does kind of bug me, not gonna lie, but I chose to embrace it as a rounder, artistic, more organic experience of the concept of an "ask game 100 questions list", like an art exhibit

Thank you for the questions!! Hope you're doing well! <3

[glitchlight]

Viv be a worm cop tell me more about nematodes

At the risk of sounding like a moron to ecologists, ecology is one of the great black boxes of the natural sciences. Instead of studying any specific element of the natural world in isolation, such as botany, geology, hydrology, and the half dozen other major disciplines, you're studying systems and dynamics, which presents inherent challenges that monodisciplines don't suffer. Compounding this, portions of ecological systems can remain cryptic even in the face of rigorous study, due to limitations in study design, inherent complexity of ecosystems, and the sheer noise and destruction that exists at the interfaces of the natural and constructed worlds.

Soil ecology compounds many of these challenges to the next level. Very literally, ecosystems move from the macro scale and the obvious to the meso to micro scale and the obscure. Soil ecology remains cryptic except to experts or whenever its effects translate to the macro scale, generally as harmful or helpful effects as they relate to other ecosystems. When they impact crop health or have impacts on plant growth or the geochemical behavior of certain compounds.

Long story short is I can't tell you any fun things about nematodes in soil because I don't KNOW NOTHING FUCK 12

[dwellordream]

“By the 1750s a concern of farming families was the scarcity of good farmland. The fact that an entire continent lay before them gave little comfort to people then living on the eastern seaboard. Parents hoped that their children could settle near them rather than move to a frontier area. But land became more and more expensive, and most families could not afford to buy farms in settled areas for all their children. Some sons and daughters had to migrate. Initially, they moved to distant towns, and then, as the century progressed, to frontier areas such as Maine, western Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and even Ohio.

…The idea of the subsistence farm, on which a family raised everything it needed for a comfortable living, rarely was realized. Most people traded crops, goods, and services. Generally, this was accomplished locally, and many individuals never visited the thriving commercial centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. But they came to depend more and more on people who did, traveling peddlers or local merchants who went to large towns and cities to get goods to trade in rural areas.

…For women, life on an isolated farm was particularly difficult because of the nature of their work roles and health care needs. Men living in rural areas still traveled to town to conduct necessary business such as selling crops and trading goods produced on the farm. Their work in town gave them opportunities for social interaction, the chance to gossip or discuss the political questions of the day. But women generally stayed close to home, restricted by pregnancy, the needs of nursing infants and small children, and their daily work routines.

…Women skillful in the use of medicines and knowledgeable about the human body provided valuable services to their neighbors and communities as well as to their own families. They often were as successful as professional physicians in treating their patients. Like many crafts and trades, healing was learned through an apprenticeship. As a result, the daughters of healers and midwives frequently followed in their mothers’ footsteps, becoming local experts consulted for their special knowledge and skill. This pattern was just as common for African Americans and Indians as it was for whites.

…Literate women often kept medicinal recipes, called ‘receipts,’ in the same books in which they wrote down their cooking recipes. A receipt for cough syrup might be found between recipes for ginger cake and stuffed fowl. In addition, women grew standard ingredients for medicines in their gardens. Herbs such as vervain and Jerusalem oak were known to expel worms in children; caraway relieved colic; and marigold quickened the healing of cuts, bruises, and sprains.

Most women also had experience in attending births. Unlike Native American women, who generally gave birth alone or with one attendant in an isolated location, white women gathered relatives and friends together for births in their own homes. Labor and delivery generally were attended by several female relatives in addition to the midwife. …Husbands stayed at hand, but they were not crucial figures in the birth of their children unless it was not possible for women attendants to be there. (The modern turnabout is interesting: Today husbands generally are present at their children’s births, and female relatives and friends are excluded.)

…Births were almost public affairs in the community of women. During a normal labor, women visited, sewed, exchanged bawdy stories, and gave details of their own past deliveries. Their presence demonstrated women’s concern for each other, the importance of female bonding at this crucial time, and significance accorded a woman’s labor--her travail. Friends wanted to be at the scene, a part of the ritual of birth. They regarded attendance at a birth as both a duty and a privilege. On a more practical level, for the new mother the psychological benefits of having friends nearby was great.

…Like their white mistresses, African-American women preferred to have the company of relatives and friends during childbirth. The work routines of slaves often made this impossible, but women other than midwives sometimes were allowed to leave the fields to assist at births. Black and white women regularly attended each other in childbirth, especially when few women lived within easy traveling distance. White women valued the help of a skilled black midwife, and black women similarly relied on the aid of their white mistresses when their labor began. Childbirth was one occasion that called for the breakdown of racial barriers.

…In order to care for their families, neighbors, and relatives, women needed a broad education in both mundane tasks (such as whitewashing the house and raising vegetables) and activities requiring considerable skill (such as caring for the sick and spinning). Many women knew at least a little about healing, producing cloth. Dairying, and brewing, and they all performed the day-to-day, backbreaking labor of gardening; preparing and preserving food; raising and killing poultry; hauling water; and in between, of course, bearing, breastfeeding, and caring for young children.

…Women were most in need of household assistance when their children were young. One infant usually did not prevent a woman from fulfilling her household obligations, but when a second baby arrived, she needed help. The older child, now usually two to two-and-a-half years old, required constant supervision, and the infant needed much of its mother’s time for breast-feeding. (Bottle feeding was not practiced unless a mother was ill or had died. Lack of sterilization made it unhealthy, and bottle-fed babies rarely lived.)

…Even wealthy women had to labor very hard, and the help of slaves was essential when there were few relatives and neighbors nearby to share work. Enslaved women therefore assisted with both child care and housekeeping, just as white servants did. Acculturated African-American women generally received these jobs because they could speak the language of their owners and had grown accustomed to white customs and manners. As slaves, they were not paid wages, worked long hours, and often were forced to live apart from their own families.

…Inadequate household help was not only inconvenient or burdensome for a mother. It could actually prove to be dangerous for young children, who consequently went without adequate supervision. While a housewife tended the fire or milked her cows, a youngster might pull over a kettle of boiling water, pick up a knife carelessly left within reach, or wander away into the fields or the woods. …In the absence of adequate child care, mothers sometimes relied on physical restraints to control the movements of their very young children. A high chair or go-cart, the colonial equivalent of a modern baby’s walker, could keep a child from crawling underfoot or into an open fireplace. But such devices could not replace a mother’s watchful eye, and accidents still occurred.

…If a farm had enough laborers--and in the South this was more and more often the case as the 18th century progressed--an elderly woman might be placed in charge of caring for several very young children while their parents worked. On larger farms and plantations slave women might be allowed to return home to breast-feed their infants at certain times during the day, or a baby might be brought back to its mother for nursing. In either case, from a very early age black children had to learn to be independent of their mothers for most of the day. Only on Sundays were women allowed to spend all of their time with their children.

…Under the law any child born of a slave mother also was a slave, and therefore could be sold at any time. Slave marriages had no legal validity, which gave slaveowners the right separate slave spouses at will. As a result, enslaved women lived with the constant fear that they might be separated from their children and husbands. When an owner migrated to a new area, suffered financial setbacks, or died, black workers went up for sale. Most slave owners made no attempt to keep families together. As a rule, breast-feeding infants were sure to stay with their mothers, for otherwise the babies were likely to die. Their deaths would rob their white owners of valuable property.”

- Marylynn Salmon, “The Community of Women: Childrearing and the Sexual Division of Labor.” in The Limits of Independence: American Women, 1760-1800