#global language

[intersectionalpraxis]

Trevonte Helton, a 29 year old Black man, "was found hanging from a tree at High Shoal Falls in North Georgia." This man was murdered, and their quick eagerness to call this an "isolated" incident is just horrifying.

[heritageposts]

During the recent “March for Israel” in Washington, DC, Al Jazeera interviewed a confident young man from Connecticut about the war in Gaza. Draped in an Israeli flag, Charlie appeared ready to answer any question. He made it clear from the outset that the ongoing war is not “Hamas vs Israel”, but “Hamas vs the whole world”. He said he regrets children’s deaths and prays for innocent lives lost. But he had no doubt about who is responsible for the death of civilians in Gaza. While Israel does everything to avoid civilian casualties, he said, Iran-backed Palestinian terrorists bomb their own hospitals, use civilians as human shields, and even place kids next to rocket launchers. Iran and its proxies are the source of all evil in Palestine and the region, he added. Charlie has clearly done his homework. He has studied the Israel Project’s “Global Language Dictionary [PDF]”, memorised its lines, and repeated them verbatim, not missing a beat. The playbook was created in 2009 after Israel’s first war on the besieged Gaza Strip, to guide Israel’s supporters on how best to speak to the media about the conflict. Inspired by Israel’s leading spin doctors, such as Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, it is directed at young activists, as well as politicians, pundits, journalists and more. It tells its readers what to say, and what not to say, alerting them to words that should be used and others that mustn’t. One of my favourite tidbits in the playbook, as I wrote back in 2014, goes like this: “Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel’s military history. Particularly on the left, this does you harm.” And when civilian casualties mount during wartime in Gaza, the playbook recommends talking empathetically along these lines of “All human life is precious”, but emphasising that “it is a tragedy that Iran-backed Hamas shoots rockets at our civilians while hiding in their own” and that this “causes tragic deaths on both sides”. Sounds familiar?

. . . continues on Al Jazeera (20 Nov 2023)

PDF of the Israel Project’s "Global Language Dictionary"

[ubuntu-village]

Will English Still Be the Global Language in 2040?

The world has seen many global languages come and go in the past, including Latin, Aramaic, Sanskrit, and Greek. Some of these languages are still used in parts of the world today, but none have enjoyed lasting global success comparable to modern English.

English has been the world’s global language of choice since the 16th century. Still, according to many experts, this will change in the coming decades as the rest of the world continues to learn English and countries like China and India grow their economies and influence worldwide. English will still be necessary for 2040, but it might not be the primary language spoken by most people on Earth…

[exquisite-peculiarity]

Options are the 10 most spoken languages, listed with their number of total speakers for comparison to final results (Source)

Please share for sample size, I think it would be really interesting to compare the tumblr data set to the global data set!!

[trans-androgyne]

To get a proper picture of modern trans oppression, you need to recognize the ways trans issues have varied across history and still vary heavily across places. I made a post the other day about how things have changed in my country for trans people over the past 50-100 years, but it was incredibly US-centric, a huge issue when trans discussions on here tend to be western-centric in general.

I feel most folks recognize that where things are bad for queer people generally, they're terrible for trans women and similar groups. It's illegal to be queer in one-third of all UN member countries, and in 13 cross-dressing is explicitly criminalized. Such laws have often targeted transfeminine expression specifically. And of course, Trans Rights as we know them (such as access to medical transition, ability to change gender markers, anti-discrimination laws) are a struggle in even relatively accepting countries; there are plenty of trans and other gender non-normative folks that don't have access to the most basic rights I do as a trans person in the United States. Problems trans folks face here, like trans women being forced into sex work, are even more prevalent and severe elsewhere in the world.

But fewer people seem to recognize that where things are bad for cis women, they're terrible for trans men and similar groups. There are so many places where those considered women are put under much heavier appearance and behavior restrictions than here and I can guess that trying to undergo any amount of masculine transition would not turn out well for them. Where I live, we may have gotten better than 50 years ago about not treating women as babymaking property, but there are 46 countries where marital rape is not a crime, while 40% of folks globally live under restrictive abortion laws. I know forced pregnancy as a form of controlling and detransitioning trans men and mascs happens enough where I live, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to live a transmasculine life under these conditions. I'm privileged by where I was born, and hope to find more stories of trans and gnc lives in other places. If anyone has any stories to share or somewhere to point folks towards to educate ourselves, it would be incredibly welcomed and appreciated.

[raapija]

C: "I'm going for a chocolate one..."

K: "Yeah, I know you like chocolate."

C: "Yep."

[ivelte]

Walter Bob didn't deserve this... T^T

[hauntingsofhouses]

i know I've mentioned my interpretation of mizu's gender a million times on here but i don't think i ever fully elaborated on it.

so on that note i just wanna ramble about that for a bit. basically, it's my reading of the show that mizu is nonbinary, so let me dig into that.

putting the rest under the cut because it ended up being pretty long lol. also here have a cute mizu pic of her being happy and most at ease with herself, symbolised by her letting her hair down. <3 ok let's proceed.

thus, when i refer to mizu as nonbinary, i am interpreting mizu as a woman, but not ONLY a woman. not strictly a woman. she is also a man. she is also neither of these things, she is something in between, while at the same time she is none of these at all. i've said as much many times, but i just don't want people to think that when i say nonbinary, it inherently means a "third androgynous gender" that essentially turns the gender binary into a gender trinary. not only is that going against what the term nonbinary was crafted for (to go against rigid boxes and categorisation of gender identities), but also, not all nonbinary people fall under that category or definition, and that's definitely not the way i interpret mizu.

okay before i go deeper i'd just like to address some important things. first of all, this post is an analysis of canon, and thus everything i am arguing for is about my own interpretation of the show, and not some baseless projected headcanon i am projecting onto the character. please remember there is a difference between an interpretation (subjective; interpretations will differ from viewer to viewer, but ultimately it is firmly rooted in evidence taken from the source material) VS a headcanon (unrelated and often even contrary to what is presented in canon; opinions wildly differ and they cannot be argued for because there is no canonical evidence to back it up).

ALSO please note that nonbinary is an umbrella term. this means that it applies to a vast range of gender identities. other identities that fall under the nonbinary umbrella include agender, bigender, genderfluid, and so on. however, it's my personal preference to use the term nonbinary as it is, simply because i'm not a fan of microlabels (more power to you if you do like them and find they suit you more though!).

also, before anyone fights me on this, let me clarify further that gender means something different to everyone. it's not your biological sex or physical characteristics. but at the same time, gender is not mere presentation. you can be a trans woman and still present masculine—either because you're closeted and forced to, or because you just want to—and either way, that doesn't take away from your identity as a woman. same goes for trans men. if you're a trans man but you wear skirts and don't bind or don't get top surgery, that doesn't make you any less of a man. because gender non-conformity exists, and does not only apply to cis people! some lesbians are nonbinary and prefer using he/him pronouns while dressing masculinely, but that doesn't mean they're a man, or that they're any less of a lesbian. neither does this mean that they're a cis woman.

the thing about queer identities in general is that, like i said, they mean something different to everyone, because how you identify—regardless of your biological attributes and fashion or pronouns—is an extremely personal experience. so a nonbinary person and a gnc cis woman's experiences might have plenty of overlap, but what distinguishes between the two is up to the individual. there's no set requirements to distinguish you as one or the other, but it's up to you to decide what you identify as, based on what you feel. either way, by simply identifying yourself as anything under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, you are already communicating to the world that you are not what a conservative, cisheteronormative society wants you to be.

which is why i find all this queer infighting on labels to be so ridiculous. because we're all fighting the same fight; the common enemy is a societal structure that divides us into set roles and expectations purely based on our biological parts. that's why biological essentialism in the queer community is a fucking disease. because by arguing that women are inherently weak and fragile and soft and gentle and must be protected from evil ugly men, while men are inherently strong and angry and violent and exploitative of women, these people are advocating for the same fucked up system that marginalises and abuses women as well as effeminate and/or gay men.

anyway. i'm going on a tangent. this was meant to be a blue eye samurai post. so yeah back to that— the point i'm trying to make is that there's no singular way to identify as anything, as everyone's views on gender, especially their own, is specific and personal to the individual.

so with that being said, yes you can definitely interpret mizu as a gnc cis woman and that's a totally valid reading of the text. however, interpreting her as nonbinary or transmasc also doesn't take away from her experiences with misogyny and female oppression, because nonbinary and transmasc folks also experience these things.

me, personally, i view her as nonbinary but not necessarily or not always transmasc because i still believe femininity and womanhood is a very inherent part of who mizu is. for example, from what we've seen, she does not like binding. it does not give her gender euphoria, but is instead very uncomfortable for her both physically and mentally, and represents her suppressing her true self. which is why when she "invites the whole" of herself, she stands completely bare in front of the fire, breasts unbound and hair untied. when she is on the ship heading to a new land in the ending scene, she is no longer hiding her neck and the lack of an adam's apple. we can thus infer that mizu does not have body dysmorphia. she is, in fact, comfortable in her body, and relies on it extremely, because her body is a weapon. instead, what mizu hates about herself is her face—her blue eyes. she hates herself for her hybridised racial identity, hates herself for being a racial Other. hates that she has no home in her homeland. thus it is important to note that these are not queer or feminist themes, but postcolonial ones.*

* and as a tiny aside on this subject, i really do wish more of the fandom discussion would talk about this more. it's just such an essential part to reading her character. like someone who's read homi k bhabha's location of culture and has watched this show, PLEASE talk to me so we can ramble all about how the show is all about home and alienation from community. please. okay anyway—

nevertheless, queer and feminist themes (which are not mutually exclusive by the way!) are still prevalent in her story, though they are not the main issue that she is struggling with. but she does struggle with it to some extent, and we see this especially during her marriage with mikio, where we see her struggle in women's domestic spaces.

on the other hand, though, she finds no trouble or discomfort in being a man or being around other men—even naked ones—and does not seem stifled by living as one, does not seem all that bothered or uncomfortable navigating through men's spaces. contrast this to something like disney's mulan (1998), where we do see mulan struggle in navigating through men's spaces, as she feels uncomfortable being around so many men, always feeling like she doesn't belong and that she's inherently different from them. mizu has no such experiences like this, as her very personality and approach to life is what can be categorised as typically "masculine". she is straightforward and blunt. her first meeting with mikio, she tells him straight to his face that he's old while frowning and raising a brow at him. she approaches problems with her muscles and fists (or swords), rather than with her words or mind. compare this with mulan, who, while well-trained by the end of the movie, still uses her sharp wits rather than brute strength. this is a typically "feminine" approach. it's also the approach akemi relies on throughout the show—through her intelligence and persuasive tongue, she navigates the brothel with ease. mizu, in contrast to someone like mulan and akemi, struggles with womanhood and femininity, and feels detached from it.

thus, in my opinion, mizu is not simply a man, nor is she simply a woman. she is both. man and woman. masculine and feminine. she has to accept both, rather than suppress one or the other. her name means water. fluid.

as a side note, while i do believe mizu is nonbinary, i also primarily use she/her pronouns for her, but this is a personal preference. i find it's easier to use in fanfic (singular they is confusing to write stories with, but again, that's just my feelings on it, and this is coming from someone who uses they/they pronouns). i also lean towards she/her because it's what the creators and all the official promotional copywriting of the show uses. and even though i am a "death to the author" enjoyer, i feel that when interpreting things that are left open-ended, it does help to look at the creators' take on things. also because, in general, being nonbinary simply doesn't necessitate the use of they/them pronouns. nonbinary is not just a third gender. it's about breaking the binary, in any which way, and that's exactly what mizu does, constantly.

also, i'd also like to mention that one of show's head of story even referred to her with the term "nonbinary", rather than simply "androgynous" (see pic below). and it's possible this could be a slip up on his part, in which he believes the terms are interchangeable (they're not btw), but regardless i find it a very interesting word choice, and one that supports my argument.

so anyway yeah that's my incredibly long rambling post.

TL;DR nonbinary mizu rights 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 congrats if you reached the end of this btw. also ily. unless you're a TERF in which case fuck off. ok i'm done.

[elbiotipo]

The reality of English becoming the world's lingua franca will mean that people who are not native English speakers will also have a say on how the language is spoken.

From Wikipedia in "World Englishes"

When the number of bilingual English speakers, as it will likely be the case in this century, equals or outnumbers the ones in the "homelands" of English like the UK and the USA, they will soon start adapting the English language to their own worldviews and uses, and in fact they are already doing so, but they will do it with full confidence. For sure, speakers of "proper English" will complain, but what are they gonna do about it?

We will see some interesting developments in our lifetime.

[kausijuoppo]

Hot Girl Summer

Another attempt at translating

[neosatsuma]

if so, feel free to say in the tags what those names were!! 👀

[ohno-the-sun]

Hmm wanted to try challenging myself to make an earth design for @oobbbear s celestial twins au (since they mentioned not really wanting to make one)

Not sure I’m happy with how they turned out, may do some tweaking

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Me: I really miss QSMP's translation feature, I can't watch a lot of my favorite streamers anymore without it. But hey, maybe Youtube's translation feature can at least give me a little bit of context for what's being said!

Youtube:

[bitegore]

fucking hate it when people who are hateful little bigots make posts that are completely irrelevant to the thing that they are hateful cunts about and those posts are actually really good but i know they want me personally actually dead and in the ground so i cant be like Yeah

[magz]

Post Banner Image: Magz art of a black angel. Icon image: art by zephyo, a dark skin girl with braids that look like the morning sky.

Introduction Post

Magz / Entropy. 👤

Mid-20s. Mixed Black. TME. Taken.

Mute / Non-Speaking / Non-Verbal*.

"Third World". Multiply Disabled. Pro-Palestine 🇵🇸.

About Page. | Links Page.

Support: Main Financial Stability Fund Post.

Status: [OFFLINE + QUEUE + ASKS OFF] Hiatus, login infrequent.

[hiatus] Art Livestreams, Wednesdays (sometimes) ~3:30pm AST - Youtube & Twitch.

For safety: Because of neuro-cognitive disability - will not spread personal donation posts from people we don't know / don't recognize / not vetted by others, anymore.

More Helpful Links And Resource Below.

Send Magz An Anonymous Doodle Here

Organizational Tags (for find posts on magz blog)

magzdpc - Magz 'daily' poems challenge (if want participate)

reminder for magz: tumblr user "kyra45", for identify scams

Useful Posts on Magz Blog:

(work in progress)

Palestine

Palestine Global Strike January 21 - 28 Masterpost

PaliPunk's Palestine MasterPost

Hussyknee's Palestine Masterpost

SulfurCosmos' "Preserving Gaza's Universities" - Archive Knowledge

LoveLetter2You's Learn Palestinian Arabic Masterpost - Language

DecolonizePalestine.com - Dedicated Debunk and Info Site

GazaESims.com - Donate E-Sims (connectivity)

ProtectPalestine.org - Palestine Activism Resources

#AltTextPalestine - Twitter hashtag for accessible Palestine posts

LetsTalkPalestine Instagram - Palestine Info Breakdown

"Eye On Palestine" LinkTree - Palestine News (can be graphic)

Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) - Official Global Boycott Info for Palestine

How To Archive For Palestine - Old Magz Guide (need update)

Samidoun.net's Calendar of Resistance - Pro-Palestine Protests

Palestine Film Index

Magz's "#Palestine" Tag

Customize, Backup, Fixes, QoL

Tumbr Backup Guide (Post 1) (Post 2)

Firefox Customization: Theme, Vertical Tab Sidebar, and Homepage

Fix Tumblr Dashboard Script (not Magz post)

ublock origin fix for youtube (not by magz) - Reddit post

general tumblr fixes - dashboard unfucker (not by magz)

navigate and find posts on tumblr (not by magz)

Digital Literacy, Digital Privacy, Tech

Computer and Technology Basics For Absolute Beginners

"The Art of Invisibility" - Stay Safe In Modern Age

General Digital Safety and Digital Literacy (not Magz post)

Free Curriculum for I.T., Programming, and Computer Science

Internet Privacy, Primer (need to be update)

DNS resolver: easy n free way boost privacy security

How to: Burning / writing DVDS, physical media

Web Dev

Neo-Cities Web Dev Primer (not by Magz. Gif Warning)

Web Dev Basics (not by Magz)

Web Dev Beginner (not by Magz)

Old Web Recreation (not by Magz)

Neo-Cities Accessibility Primer (not by Magz)

General Web Dev Accessibility (not by Magz)

basic web coding site (not by magz) https://progate.com

other than LinkTree for link page

Open Source, or Free Access / "Alternatives to"

Paywal Removal (not by Magz)

Mullvad Browser: Alternative To Incognito Mode

Magz Search Engine (Not Google. Temporarily unavailable/deleted. other public searxng instances until then)

Open Source Note Apps - Alternatives to "Notion"

Home Assistant - Open Source Alternative to Amazon Echo (not magz post)

Google Suite "Free" Alternatives

Free + Free Trial AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) Apps for Android Device

non-social media book tracking app / site: candlapp.com

alternatives to amazon book stuff (not by magz)

Alternative to pantone - amend

- Tips for Google Chrome users to Firefox n de-Google

Disability and Tips

Disabled Cooking and Eating (not by Magz)

Disabled Cooking Book (not by Magz)

Image Description Primer (not by Magz)

Psych Ward Alternatives: Peer Respite and Safer Hotlines List (not by Magz)

"Critical Thinking" Sheet - Transcribed (not by Magz)

Donate Your Voice For Disabled People - VocalID (Clarification Against Misinformation)

"The Long Covid Survival Guide" Book

"How to Adult" when no one taught you - Books

ADHD, Executive Dysfunction. "How to fix 'waiting mode'" (Transcribed)

"Pay the ADHD tax upfront" (not Magz post)

"The Half Year Reset: How to turn your year around" Guide (Transcribed)

Autism Terminology Masterpost (not by Magz)

The People's CDC - International Covid Information And Safety (not by Magz)

myalgic encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue, or ME/CFS. And "pacing" (not by Magz)

Grip toggle aid tool (not by Magz)

mental health - self-care assessment (not by magz)

Tip: easy general cleaner for metal and other material

Art & Crafts

Art References (not by Magz)

basics: draw mobility aids (not by Magz)

make plushie pattern from 3d model (not by magz) / site: https://plushify.net/

Leftism

"The War on everyone" - Identify Modern Fascism

U.S. and U.K: Join the IWW union

History & Culture

1800s jewish books GDrive (not by magz)

history: sephardic and mizrahi jewish (not by magz)

[hanzajesthanza]

i was looking up tips for formatting bilingual books (for example, a copy of idk the iliad with ancient greek on one side, english translation on the other), but i didn’t know the word describing this kind of format 🤔

so i was stringing together keywords like “book with two languages” and one of the results was a reddit post with someone trying to find a book that alternates between multiple languages, i.e., there are no translations, it’s it’s one text, but half of the story is in english, then the other half, or interwoven throughout, is in french or whatever

and it took strength to not suggest the hussite trilogy 🥴