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terrantechnocrat · 4 months

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The Taynifi of Iiser are a race of spiny-backed, fat-bellied mammals that emerged from savage animality on the fertile plains of Iiser, a far-orbiting satellite of a gas giant. Taynifi worlds are among the most proactive Sympolity members in interstellar exploration and economic and cultural exchange, driven by their quiet, passionate precursor veneration, the blocks of whose immense cyclopean ruins—difficult for early taynifi to explore—always loomed large on their continent's coasts, sinking into the bogs and the sea. Wanderers of the plain first and foremost, nearly every taynifi retains a rich oral and osseous musical tradition, informing a notably symphonic mode of intellection and abstraction.

In the eons since the Seeding, the taynifi laid roads, erected small towns of turf and stone, or dug out from the hillsides and reinforced them with bone. Gradually, a simple yet comprehensive medieval civilization coalesced using only the wind that constantly blew through their treeless world to generate mechanical power. It spread out over the rocky hills and grassy plains of the supercontinent that emerged from Iiser's ocean, but, at the coasts, it stopped. They began to burn peat to smelt iron into tools, and brickwork replaced the turf of their communal buildings and temples. Beyond that, the continental period's patchwork of social structures, customs, and kin relations would have more closely resembled the intricacies of aboriginal Australia, with innumerable, complex spiritual traditions and the ritualization of most warfare.

Contact with the worlds of the early Sympolity brought tree plantations and shipbuilding, and coastal clans quickly explored and settled their world's two heavily forested subcontinents and peripheral islands, where only animals and the much-mystified Ancients had walked before. Taynifi mariners seized the opportunity to harvest their oceans' bounty for the benefit of the Yikarans and other off-world carnivorous races in return for machinery and, later, curvature-drive schematics. Taynifi cannot ingest fish without significant bloating, having evolved from grazing herbivores, but found that Iiser's previously invisible bounty gave them power. The new maritime economy nearly wrought social chaos upon Iiser, but Sympolity intervention helped mediate the forces that resulted from the new surplus.

From the coasts, the new mariner clans forged ties with the inlanders, gathering iron in exchange for refined materials and new technology. From exchanges organically emerged a continental confederacy with improvisational systems of arbitration; the ancient world was meeting the new, transforming both. Inevitable economic schisms that resulted from these modes of relations were met with Sympolity pressure to rationalize, computerize, and network the entire tribal system of patronage and distribution under a world council of representatives chosen from the various taynifi clan-communes.

In modern times, taynifi—neither natural foresters nor mariners yet passionate about both as a learned foundation for prosperity—maintain autonomous colonies across a score of worlds and several fleets of freighters, seeker scouts, and other fast, lightly armored craft. On their native Iiser, the spread of non-native plantation forests across the supercontinent proved to be a significant ecological disruption for the pattern of grazers and surviving predators and were thus deliberately reduced in area by taynifi stewards; shifting the cultivation and felling of trees to the offshore and outlying lands, where indigenous forest ecologies still flourish. Taynifi builders now primarily source lumber from other planets, and their sprawling cities of brick and bio-composites rise from the rolling hills of Iiser. Their walls and narrow streets are specially fortified, not against invaders, but against the battering winds, with some equatorial storms sustaining wind speeds as high as 200 kph.

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m42-fr · 3 years

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Here’s my Lore Post™ on various types of common currency around Sorneith! Note that this covers only major forms of currency that can be found broadly throughout their territories of origin, or are otherwise culturally relevant in some way. This post does not include forms of currency that may exist between individual clans. If you happen to find that any of this worldbuilding goes well with your lore, feel free to use it so long as you credit me somewhere for the idea!

And, of course, a mandatory disclaimer: the names and lore of these currencies comes from my own head (and a random name generator). Any resemblance to anything from the real world is unintentional.

Vahrani (vah-RAH-nee) are small bronze coins that originate from the Ashfall Waste. Thanks to the Flamecaller’s ceaseless forges, vahrani are the most common and well-established metal-based currency in the world - and, in fact, are the most well-established currency in the world, period. Trade with the neighboring Windswept Plateau, which exports the products of Fire’s industry to every technologically developing region on the continent, has spread Ashfall coinage far and wide.

Most vahrani have been in circulation for decades, their surfaces oxidized completely teal-black. Pristine, metallic vahrani, either newly-minted or freshly polished, are considered a status symbol by some, but certain dragons may refuse to accept them as payment for fear that they have been recently (and illegally) forged. Vahrani jewelry makes use of the holes at their corners, stringing them together into necklaces, earrings, and other forms of decoration. In a pinch, vahrani can even be tiled together to create makeshift armor.

Vahrani come in units of one, five, and ten. These coins bear an identical picture of the Flamecaller on one side and have a number inscribed on the other, which indicates their worth. The runoff copper from the creation of vahrani bronze is pulled into small lumps and stamped with the sigil of Fire while the metal is still hot, creating small, misshapen coins called vasi - or, in common slang, slag - each worth a tenth of a vahrani. Vasi are not nearly as widespread as vahrani, but they make up the majority of the payroll for poorer dragons within the Ashfall Waste.

Suuram (SOOH-ram) are long, paper-thin copper chits used as currency within the southwestern Shifting Expanse. The very first suuram were copper wires that had been pounded into rough rectangular shapes, but modern suuram are machine-punched from massive metal sheets, ensuring an incredibly consistent size and weight. The asymmetrical pattern of crescent holes at their edges is meant only to distinguish them from simple copper pieces. In practice, the holes are often used to hold chains of coins together with cord or metal clips.

There is only one value of a suuram piece. Rather than create different coins with higher values, dragons exploit the extreme thinness of suuram sheets by packing pieces into small containers; informal higher-value units consist of rectangular boxes holding a carefully-counted number of coins. Carrying around large blocks of copper sheets can become awfully inconvenient, so five-and-ten vahrani pieces have become a popular alternative currency in the Expanse. Suuram are used mostly as pocket change.

Due to the relative geographic isolation of the far coast of the Stormcatcher’s territory, suuram are not particularly popular outside of the Shifting Expanse, and lack traction everywhere past the Charged Barrens. However, suuram are acknowledged as a valid currency in every territory with flourishing trade and worldwide connections, including the Ashfall Waste, Windswept Plateau, Sunbeam Ruins, Tangled Wood, Starfall Isles, and Dragonhome.

The northeastern region of the Shifting Expanse is home to independent scavenger-clans who have little need for formalized currency. Rather than conducting trade with stand-ins like coins, they prefer to directly exchange goods and services, determining the value of each with every new trade. That being said, they do occasionally make use of a form of unregulated, low-value currency, colloquially known as scrap.

Scrap refers to any collection of relatively small, portable, usually worn-down and otherwise useless metal chunks - rusty nails, old gears that don’t fit anywhere, spare nuts and bolts found half-buried in the sand, weathered iron spring-coils and copper wires, and so on. While scrap has no immediate survival value, it serves much the same purpose of currency in that it acts as a metaphorical stand-in for something that is of value, and can be exchanged with others for goods and services. Scrap is considered a valid currency within the northern Expanse, although it is often looked down upon as a ‘primitive’ coin in the more technologically developed regions around Goldensparc and the Lightning Farm.

Paxa (PACKS-uh) are hand-carved wooden chits infused with sparks of magic that keep them pristine even under the worst of abuse. Native to the Sunbeam Ruins, paxa owe their remarkably high value to the painstaking process of crafting them. Each coin is hand-carved to impossible standards of consistency, stained a beautiful deep ebony, and protected from damage with ancient Light artefact-preservation magicks. Their magical ‘fingerprint’ is nearly impossible to fake, which guards them from forgeries. The secret to creating paxa is zealously guarded by a handful of dragons who have dedicated their lives to the craft.

Paxa are a universally recognized coin, spread throughout the world by Light’s investment in research as well as their inherent value. Future-minded dragons convert their retirement savings into paxa, knowing that unlike many other currencies, the tight control on paxa production ensures that their value remains constant. Paxa is also the coin of choice for most illegal operations in Sorneith thanks to their high value and their impossibility to falsify.

The average working-class dragon, even in the Ruins, will struggle to get their talons on any significant amount of paxa. Paxa are used to facilitate expensive transactions, and as such are favored by merchants, the wealthy, and the criminal; throughout most of the Sunbeam Ruins, workers are paid in vahrani, with the occasional handful of suuram thrown in for variety.

The origin of wek-ya, (WEK-yuh) Shadow’s mercurial coinage, is shrouded in mystery. Nobody knows when or where the first wek-ya were made - and, in fact, nobody knows how to make wek-ya at all. Ambitious blacksmiths who try their hand at smelting some are invariably struck with tides of bad luck that force them to close shop. And, moreover, the Tangled Wood can hardly be said to have an established government, so the presence of such a widespread and standardized currency is a curiosity in and of itself.

Wek-ya are crafted of pure silver, or something that resembles it. Each coin has two unique patterns - one to either side - that depict an incredibly broad array of subjects. The most common motifs are crescent moons, mushrooms, thorns, and dancing dragon figures, but there have been wek-ya known to picture oddly specific situations, such as trees being struck by lightning, rats climbing atop bookshelves, and draconic silhouettes that bear a strange resemblance to the viewer in the midst of suffering some catastrophe. Many dragons believe that wek-ya are infused with divination magic; coins are commonly drawn from bags to determine future events, and some individuals claim that their fortunes are told by the wek-ya they receive in trades.

While wek-ya are the most common form of money in the Tangled Wood, they’re incredibly rare elsewhere. Common superstition holds that removing a wek-ya from its homeland will curse the coin’s bearer until it has been returned. There appears to be some vague truth to the statement, as the coins are known to have a way of mysteriously disappearing when they’ve spent too much time away from the Shadowbinder’s influence.

Wek-ya are capable of emitting a dim glow for several hours after being exposed to moonlight. Conversely, they’ve also been known to spontaneously melt when placed in sunlight, permanently disfiguring their faces - such coins are considered overwhelmingly taboo by most residents of the Wood and are traditionally thrown into bogs, rivers, and liquid-shadow ponds, such that they may be forever forgotten.

Dazal (day-ZAHL) are large, chunky coins cut from smoky quartz. They come from Dragonhome, make for an uncommon sight in the northern Starfall Isles and Tangled Wood, and are rare elsewhere. No one institution governs the production of dazal, but most dragons don’t go out of their way to fake them - the coins are used predominantly within the handful of high-population regions of Dragonhome, particularly Terraclae and the Colonnades of Antiquity. Thanks to Light’s vested interest in archaeology, paxa are the most common currency in Dragonhome’s urbanized regions, followed by the eponymous vahrani.

Unlike suuram, which are largely shunned by Lightning’s more independent desert-dwelling clans, the value of dazal is respected by clans among even the most rural and harsh environments of Dragonhome. Most groups will carry at least a handful of them to use in trades - a few dazal will buy a weary traveler water and other goods. The nomadic routes of the Snappers often bring them to urban areas every now and again, which makes holding onto the currency useful, if occasionally burdensome.

The distribution of colors and patterns in a dazal is unique to every coin. Dazal have no varied values in a legal sense, but many individuals within Dragonhome will accept morion dazal - that is, those made of smoky quartz so uniformly dark as to be nearly black - as being worth twice as much as a singular dazal (or equivalent to one wek-ya). Some seek out dazal with unusual color schemes for collection purposes. Another commonly-sought variant is a coin without any scuffs; though crystalline, most older dazal are ridden with chips and cracks.

The Sea of a Thousand Currents has no legally recognized currency. The stinging seawater makes metal-based money impractical, and even the magical toughness of paxa and arcslivers will wear under the waves. Among the more isolated, aquatic clans, though, an informal coin known as vanes (VAIN) are used in some transactions. Vanes are seashells that have been chipped and polished into glistening, guitar-pick shaped chits.

The production, distribution, and value of vanes is entirely unregulated. Any dragon with strong hands and sandpaper can collect seashells and file them to the right shape and smoothness. As such, individual vanes vary widely in color, texture, and shape. The value of a vane is equally variable - no bank in the world accepts vanes as legal tender, although they are acknowledged as being incredibly low-value, presuming they have any worth at all.

Bags of vanes are often exchanged by coastal and reef-dwelling clans as stand-ins for the payment of debt. If an individual needs a good or service, but cannot pay for it at the time, they can hand over some vanes that serve as a sort of credit, later giving something of real value in return for their lent vanes.

Among the roughshod sailors of the Sea, bilgespray is a tawdry term used to refer to any collective mix of multiple types of currency. The wide variety of territories that they visit throughout their trading routes means that they inevitably collect a number of different types of coin. The term, ‘bilgespray,’ usually refers to a singular payout given in more than one type of currency, but used more broadly may account for any messy assortment of multiple types of money.

Popular within the urban areas of the central Starfall Isles, arcslivers (ARK-slih-vur) are tokens cut from the same magically-refined arcglass that makes up the shell of the Astrolodome. Their edges are inscribed with faintly-glowing runes that, like paxa, protect them from damage, although their enchantments are comparatively weaker. The appearance and value of an arcsliver is standardized; their production is controlled by banks within the Astrolodome and neighboring communities.

Well-wrought trading routes have established arcslivers as a valid currency throughout the entirety of the Isles. However, they have very little steading outside of Arcane’s territory. Similar to suuram, geographic isolation has kneecapped their spread, with traveling arcslivers found mostly in the neighboring regions of Dragonhome and the Windswept Plateau; a handful make their way to the Sea of a Thousand Currents and beyond from there. Though rare, they are legally acknowledged in institutions around Sorneith.

Given the extremely well-connected, trade-focused culture of the Windswept Plateau, every currency - even strange or worthless ones, like wek-ya and vanes - can be found in abundance among Windsinger’s children. Vahrani from the neighboring Ashfall Waste are the most common coin, followed by paxa and arcslivers. Wind does not have a traditional currency in the way that other territories do. Rather than use a standardized object to represent physical value, Wind’s unusual currency holds strictly social value. These objects are called kuo (KOO-oh). They are long, ribbonlike textiles, made from hundreds of tiny interwoven beads, and are as much art as they are money.

The length of an individual kuo can vary considerably. Most are long enough to be used as sashes and belts, or be hung up as colorful banners. The harvesting, sculpting, weaving, and painting of their miniscule beads takes a painstaking amount of time and skill. As a monetary system, they indicate debts, allegiances, and other forms of social ‘money,’ whether paid or owed. The perceived value of a kuo is usually based on its size and craftsmanship - the longer and prettier, the better.

While more rural and traditional clans will use kuo for their original purpose, younger generations - particularly those living in more urbanized areas - forgo the social value of kuo and create them for artistic purposes. The creation of an individual kuo ribbon is considered a long and meditative pastime. The patterns in every ribbon are unique, and the abundance of beads and paints mean that elaborate images can be threaded along the strings; given the extensive length of most kuo, many are used to depict the events of stories, be they mythical or factual. The longest kuo is rumored to be a ribbon that stretches the distance of the Cloudsong and depicts an embellished version of the Windswept Plateau’s entire history.

In recent times, dragons have begun to weave kuo as gifts and decorations. Many young lovers and best friends will create kuo for one another, its pictures personalized to the other’s interests and personality, and wear the bands that they themselves were given (usually as scarves, sashes, or bracelets) in an open declaration of their bond. Kuo are becoming an increasingly popular export of the Windswept Plateau. Eager to share their culture with the world, Wind dragons often sell and gift kuo to travelers, and some have even begun to export them to other territories.

The rough, lonesome barrens of the Southern Icefield makes the establishment of currency incredibly difficult. Like other harsh environments in Sorneith - the Shifting Expanse, Dragonhome, the Scarred Wasteland, and so on - coins are not particularly useful for immediate survival, and so trades are preferentially conducted with goods and services rather than coins. Northernmost or otherwise trade-savvy clans may occasionally cut deals with foreigners using vahrani, arcslivers, and even suuram.

The ancient institutions of the Gaolers, for all their fervence with law and order, never had reason to establish an expansive currency amongst themselves. The basic needs of all individuals are cared for free of charge; anything fancier is either owned communally, acquired by advancing in rank, or traded for without monetary stand-ins. Among a few circles, though - and particularly popular in teaching discipline to younger recruits - is a token system using units called snowcoins.

Snowcoins are very simple constructions. At their core is a singular link of a metal chain, which is encapsulated in magically-unmelting ice. The surface of a snowcoin is smooth and convex, forming an oblong shape not unlike a river stone, and they are remarkably translucent. Snowcoins, then, are a small reward earned through various services and good behavior, and can be traded in for small personal luxuries. The things snowcoins can buy consist mostly of curios and other decorative trinkets.

Given that snowcoins are used only by the Gaolers, their existence is almost completely unheard of throughout Sorneith, even in the neighboring Snowsquall Tundra. Only a tiny handful have ever made it out of the Icefield - and even then, most of those found away from the Icewarden are replicas, not genuine. Those who are in possession of snowcoins usually regard them as oddities and collectibles. They hold some mildly curious historic value, but little else.

For all their hatred for one another, the territories of the Scarred Wasteland and Viridian Labyrinth share a similar trait: neither has much in the way of currency. The Labyrinth prizes self-sufficiency and its clans want for little. Their isolationist nature has created a strict limitation on the influx of foreign currency - not even vahrani have made it past their coastal regions. Those from Nature who detest outside influence often use the derogatory term rootmuck to refer to any form of outside currency.

While Plague has a similar lack of established money, they don’t hold the same wariness of foreigners that the Gladekeeper’s children do. Most Plague clans see no reason in shunning something that may help them acquire useful things in the future. Various currencies are common at their respective borders - dazal in the north, wek-ya in the east, vahrani to the south, and arcslivers to the west.

That being said, their central clans, much like those of the northwestern Shifting Expanse, trade mostly survival supplies with one another. Guttergunk is an informal term from the Wasteland that applies to any assortment of individually worthless items that are bundled together to have some collective value. Guttergunk is not anything that could keep you alive; it’s made of things like small trophies - teeth, scales, horns -, the last of old food preserves, tattered pieces of canvas, balls of string, and so forth. Trade offers of guttergunk are considered trashy, greedy, or desperate; in other words, a sign of either arrogance or weakness, perhaps both.

Alternatively, the term may apply to anything considered gross and worthless: “Your efforts are guttergunk,” is an example of a common insult. The word has become popular in neighboring territories, particularly by residents of the Driftwood Drag and sailors of the Sea of a Thousand Currents, and among them it has much the same meaning.

#flight rising #my lore #my headcanons #my art #my worldbuilding #long post #the flamecaller #THREE. THOUSAND. WORDS.#this post KILLED me to write #but man did i have fun... the drawings were especially really neat #I'm very fond of how vahrani. paxa. and vanes came out in particular #rip vanes my worthless children but i love you anyways

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ertrunkenerwassergeist · 3 years

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Heraldic Post Part 2

Hello and welcome to the second part of this post! Which has been named the heraldic post, and well, they’re not wrong. XD

Clan Horwalt isn’t really a Clan, since it’s made out of only one person. Who is essentially an immortal witch, but it would be disrespectful to ignore her, so she is included in this list. She is associated with two animals: the crow and Naga’s kin. (Naga’s kin are two headed snakes I made up.) Her colour is white with a thin green line through it. The beads she wears in her Clan Braid are sapphire, obsidian and hematite.

The Utris Clan has the colours red and blue. Their animal is a jormungand. Their Clan Beads (they have three) are only made of tiger iron. The three beads stand for the grounding of energies, protection of the spirit and manifestation of will.

Clan Najad’s colours are dark blue and black. This combination doesn’t follow the traditional colour meanings and is instead supposed to symbolize the deep sea. Their sigil is a pearl oyster. As Clan Beads they wear Pearl, Moonstone and Coral.

Clan Patientia has the colours black and green. They don’t have an animal as a sigil, but rather a black rose. (It’s a rose growing on Galahd that is very poisonous - the smell alone can cause hallucinations - but, when handled right, is also used in medicine.) Their Clan Beads are made of quartz and Rainforest jasper, standing for purification, physical health, vitality and connection to nature.

The colours of Clan Dala are blue, green and brown. Their animal is a garula. Their Clan Beads are made of bone, and malachit for the animals they tend to, luck and confidence.

Clan Colophon has the colours green, red and brown. Their sigil is not an animal, but a bundle of ears of oats. (The most common grain on Galahd.) Their Clan Bead is made of moss agate, for nurturing, abundance and a deep connection to the earth.

Clan Pontos has the colours blue, red and white. They don’t have an animal. Their Clan Beads are made of moonstone for new beginnings and black tourmaline for empathy.

The colours of Clan Aliquantus are yellow and grey. They don’t have an animal. Their Clan Bead is a ruby, standing for adventure and courage.

Clan Gohlann has the colours orange, red and yellow. Their animal is a Galahdian firebird. They have two Clan Beads which are made of iron and silver, symbolizing protection agains evil (daemons), warding and enhancement of existing qualities.

Clan Pisca’s colours are green and blue. Their sigil is a mussel. They have Clan Beads made of coral and charoite for focus, clarity and purpose.

Clan Bog (their proper name is actually Horlach but no one ever uses it) has the colours brown and orange. They don’t have an animal. They have Clan beads made out of bogwood and smelted bog iron.

Clan Fossura has the colour brown. Their animal is a wingless jabberwock. Their Clan Bead is made of diamond. But they also have a second bead that shows direct family lines, so this one is of varying materials.

#ffxv #worldbuilding #galahd #galahdian culture #galahdian clans #uff #I'm done #holy damn this took ages #heraldic post #part 2

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mary-tudor · 5 years

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“Celts and Slavs in Poland.

Below, a map showing the approximate extent of the Przeworsk culture in Poland. Named after a modern town where discoveries were first made by archaeologists, ‘Przeworsk’ is the name given by them to trends in the material culture of southern and central Poland from 250 B.C. to c. AD 450

.The Przeworsk culture evolved from the previous Lusatian culture of Poland, which probably represents early Slavic or proto-Slavic peoples. The Lusatian culture had evolved locally starting around 1,300 B.C. and was heavily influenced by the Celtic Urnfield culture (1,300 to c. 750 B.C.) of Central Europe. Starting from around 350 B.C., intrusions by bands of Celts into southern Poland kickstarted a process by which the local Lusatian culture evolved into what we now know as the Przeworsk culture.

Celts first arrived in Poland around 350 B.C., arriving from the area of Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic (Gediga, pp. 86-91). These groups probably came as refugees from upheavals occurring in Central Europe among the Celts themselves. At around that time, a group from Switzerland appears to have invaded Bohemia, resulting in the destruction of the Celtic hill-fort of Zavist (Cunliffe, p. 79).

These first Celts settled to the south of Wroclaw and around Mount Šlęza, while another group settled in the Glubczyce highlands. These two groups remained settled there until about 120 B.C., when for unknown reasons, the Wroclaw settlement dispersed and the Glubczyce group migrated southward (Gediga, pp. 86-91).

Two more groups of Celts arrived in Poland at around 270 B.C. settling in the San river basin and around Krakow. This last group mingled with the locals of Lusatian culture derivation and began the development of what we call the Przeworsk culture. At around 60 B.C. more Celts arrived in the Krakow area from Slovakia, probably after having been displaced from their homeland by the Dacians, who, led by their king, Burebista, defeated the Celtic Boii and Taurisci kingdoms of Central Europe in a particularly violent war (Poleski, p. 13). Thus, in southeastern Poland a new polity began to form, which consisted of mixed populations of Celtic migrants and local Slavs.

The Przeworsk culture spread quickly westward, absorbing other Slavic and Germanic communities and eventually reaching Kujawy, farther to the north. By the 1st century AD, Przeworsk was the dominant culture of Poland and greatly influenced other neighboring peoples, such as the Oksywie culture of northern Poland (Godlowski, 1970 & Makiewicz, pp. 94-7), and the Zarubintsy culture in the Galicia region of Poland and west Ukraine.

Przeworsk culture settlements consisted of small, unfortified farming villages with square or rectangular wooden houses. The people of the Przeworsk culture practiced both agriculture and animal husbandry. Wheat, barley, millet, rye and oats were all grown and fields were alternated between cultivation and grazing. Cattle, pigs, sheep, horses and goats were also an integral part of the agrarian economy. Wells, a concept introduced into the region by the Celts, were also dug so that settlements no longer had to be built near rivers (Naglik, 2005). The people of the Przeworsk culture also mastered iron smelting and extraction from bog ores, working with techniques introduced by the Celts (Andrzejowski, 2010 & Gediga, pp. 86-91). Additionally, the Przeworsk culture people mined salt and benefited economically from the Baltic amber trade (Adamczyk, 2005 & Gediga, pp. 86-91).

Early burial practices followed the old Lusatian/Urnfield custom of cremation and burial in clay urns. This is in contrast to the Celts who had first migrated into Poland, who‘d been more inclined to inhumation burial (Gediga, pp. 86-91). Grave goods often included horse gear and Celtic-style (La Tène) weapons such as spears, swords and characteristic oblong shields.

Turning to the historical sources, the identity and historical role of the Przeworsk culture people can perhaps be further defined. Roman sources such as Tacitus, Strabo and Claudius Ptolemy, all wrote of a powerful tribal federation existing between the Oder and Vistula rivers, the area occupied by what we now call the Przeworsk culture. This tribal federation was referred to in the sources as “Lugii” or ‘Lugians’.

According to Tacitus’ treatise “Germania”, the Lugii consisted of five tribes: Helveconae, Nahanarvali, Manimi, Helisii and Harii (Tacitus, “Germania” XLIII). Of these tribal names, “Lugii” and “Helveconae” are unquestionably Celtic. “Lugii” derives almost certainly from the Celtic god of commerce and money, Lugus (identified by the Romans with Mercury), while “Helveconae” would appear to mean “prosperous hounds/wolves” (from Gaulish “elu” meaning “gain”, “prosperity” and “con”, meaning “dog/wolf”).

One need only to compare Helveconae to other known Celtic tribal names, such as that of the “Helvetii” of Switzerland, or of the “Helvii” of southern France, and the connection is clear. In like manner, “Helisii” has a Celtic ring to it, being similar to that of the Ligurian “Elysices” tribe of southern France, though a connection to Celtic languages is far less certain in this case.

Speculation abounds as to whether the modern place-name Kalisz, in central Poland, might be derived from the ancient Helisii tribal name. Other tribal names mentioned by Tacitus, such as “Harii” and “Nahanarvali” are clearly not Celtic. The former is Germanic, being connected to the word “here”, meaning army. As the Harii were described as a fierce group of warriors who fought at night with black shields and black painted skin, it is possible that this wasn’t so much a tribe as it was the military aristocracy of the Lugian tribal federation. Other than this terrifying bit of information about the “Harii”, the only other insight Tacitus gives us into the culture of the Lugii is his description of a cult to the Indo-European horse-twin gods, known locally as “Alcis”.

The sanctuary was located in a sacred grove of the Nahanarvali tribe. No images of the gods were kept there, and the worship was presided over by priests “appareled like women”. Worship of the horse-twin gods is more familiar as a Germanic tradition, reflected in later Anglo-Saxon lore about the brothers Hengist and Horsa. On the other hand, that the gods were attended by priests appareled like women is reflective of Scythian practice (Silk Road Foundation, 2000).

The mysterious Nahanarvali were almost certainly not of Celtic extraction.Tacitus’ tribal names are not repeated in other sources. Ptolemy for example, has the Lugii made up of three tribes: the Diduni in Silesia, the Buri to the east of them, and the Omani at an unspecified location (Ptolemy, II, X). In the area of Silesia, Ptolemy locates the settlement of “Lugidunum”, another clearly Celtic name, meaning “hill-fort of the Lugii”. “-Dunum” is a uniquely Celtic word to describe a fortified settlement and so here, once again, we find clear evidence that at least some of the Lugii were speakers of a Celtic language. The Buri on the other hand, were known to be Germanic, while the Omani have been speculated to be the same people as the Atmoni, a branch of the probably Slavic Bastarnae tribal federation.

The Bastarnae would appear to correspond to the neighboring Zarubintsy archaeological culture (250 B.C. to c. AD 50). Like the Lugii, they were probably of Celto-Slavic origin, with heavy influences from the neighboring Sarmatians as well.That the Lugii were a force to be reckoned with is evident from the historical record itself. According to Tacitus’ “Annals”, in the year 50 AD, Vannius, king of the Germanic Quadi and Marcomanni tribes (who inhabited what is now Czech Republic and Slovakia), was overthrown by his nephews, Vangio and Sido, with help from Vibilius, king if the neighboring Hermunduri tribe (Tacitus, “Annals”, XII, XXIX). Vannius had been appointed through Roman patronage and the Marcomanni-Quadi alliance he ruled over was the dominant political, military and economic force of Germany at that time.

During the coup, Vannius gathered a large force of Germanic foot-soldiers and allied Sarmatian horsemen. Being outnumbered, he retreated and shut himself up in a fortified settlement. A large force of Lugians had invaded the kingdom to take advantage of the chaos and plunder Vannius’ riches. Seeking to reverse his fortunes, Vannius sallied out with his army to deal with the Lugians and Hermundurians. The ensuing clash resulted in the destruction of the German-Sarmatian army, with Vannius himself escaping badly wounded to a Roman fleet, which lie waiting for him on the river Danube. Later, Cassius Dio’s “Roman History” records other events involving the Lugii in the years 91-92 AD. That year, the tribal federation was embroiled in a war with the Germanic Suebi and sought an alliance with the Roman empire (Dio, “Roman History”, LXVII). Emperor Domitian dispatched a small detachment of 100 horsemen to participate in the war on the side of the Lugians. Thus, it appears that like many other Celtic peoples in Central Europe, the Lugii opted for alliance with Rome, in order to counterbalance the formidable power of both the Germanic peoples and the Dacians. However, the alliance does not appear to have lasted long, for by 279 we find the Lugians (called “Longiones” by Zosimus’ “Nova Historia”) raiding deep into Roman territory and plundering the province of Rhaetia (part of modern Austria and Switzerland).

Here, the Roman Emperor Probus repelled their attack and captured their king, named as ‘Semno’ (Zosimus, “Nova Historia”, I:LXVII); Semno was released upon accepting terms from the Romans. This is the last known historical mention of the Lugian people. By the 5th century AD, the Przeworsk culture disappeared from Poland, probably as a result of the invasions of the Asiatic Huns.

As archaeology is unveiling more about Poland’s ancient past, lost bits of history come into the light. Not only does it appear that ancient Poles formed a formidable and highly successful polity in Central Europe, but also that Celt and Slav both coalesced to form a hybrid culture with a high degree of vitality.

Sources:

Adamczyk, Kazimierz. “The Archaeology of the Transit Gas Pipeline”, Living Archaeology, English edition. 2005

Andrzejowski, Jacek. “The Przeworsk Culture, A Brief History (for the Foreigners)”. Worlds Apart? Contacts Across the Baltic Sea in the Iron Age: Network Denmark-Poland 2005-2008. Copenhagen-Warsaw. 2010

Barry Cunliffe, “The Ancient Celts”. Oxford University Press, 1997

Cassius Dio, “Roman History”.

Claudius Ptolemy, “Geography”.

Cornelius Tacitus, “Annals”.Cornelius Tacitus, “Germania”.

Gediga, Boguslaw and Makiewicz, Tadeusz. “Foundations of Poland (until year 1,038)”. Wydawnictwo Dolnoślaskie. 2002

Godlowski, K. “The Chronology of Late Roman and Early Migration Periods in Central Europe”. Crakow. 1970

Naglik, Riszard. “Archaeological Motorway”, Living Archaeology, English Edition. 2005.

Poleski, Jacek. “Chronology of Polish History”. Wydawnictwo Dolnoślaskie. 1999

Silk Road Foundation. “The Scythians”, 2000. Link: http://silkroadfoundation.org/artl/scythian.shtml.oldZosimus,

“Nova Historia”.

Link from facebook page “Celtic Europe”: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2766737023343676&id=2158176407533077&__tn__=K-R

#celts

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sciencespies · 3 years

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Ask Ethan: How Can A Non-Expert Evaluate Conflicting Claims By Actual Experts?

https://sciencespies.com/news/ask-ethan-how-can-a-non-expert-evaluate-conflicting-claims-by-actual-experts/

Ask Ethan: How Can A Non-Expert Evaluate Conflicting Claims By Actual Experts?

If this past year has shown us anything, it’s how thoroughly we rely on high-quality expertise. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, it wasn’t the voice of science that stood out above the fracas, but rather the machinations of politicians, only a small fraction of whom followed the best scientific recommendation available at the time. It put into context a number of related issues — vaccines, climate change, and fluoridated drinking water among them — where society’s policies don’t align with what science indisputably indicates. Even worse, you can often find people with expert credentials who advocate for either sides of an issue, further muddying the waters. If you yourself aren’t an expert not only in a particular field but in the relevant sub-fields to the issue at play, how can you know whom to trust? That’s what Dr. Larry Moran wants to know, writing in to ask:

“I assume that you are not an expert on fluoridated drinking water, climate change, or COVID-19 and yet you feel confident that you can identify the correct scientific position on each of these topics. How do you do that and is it something that the average intelligent person can do as well? Isn’t that the real question?”

The answer to the second question is yes, but it takes a lot of hard work for each and every issue you want to evaluate. Here’s how we do it to the best of our ability.

While there are a number of science-and-society issues where the general populace and scientists … [+] have differing opinions, there are many such issues where their viewpoints align extremely closely. The hope is that, by better equipping the general public to make informed decisions, they’ll make decisions that better align with the best recommendations of science.

Pew Research Center

There’s some “pre-work” that goes into any sort of investigation like this, where you have to first identify what you think you know about the issue at play. What are the different things that you’ve heard various people say, and how credible do you think each of those statements are? Before you even begin to evaluate the credibility of the claims at play, you have to identify what the various claims are, as well as your preconceptions about them.

Are vaccines safe and effective? How safe, quantitatively, are they, and how effective are they? What are the side effects and who is at risk of them? Will they alter your DNA, and if so, in what way?

What about the science of wearing masks? How effective are they, and what is the role that surfaces, droplets, and aerosols play in the transmission of the novel coronavirus and its variants?

What about fluoridated drinking water? Or GMO crops? Or climate change?

Identifying the relevant issues — the ones that need to be addressed in order to reach an informed conclusion — has to be your starting point.

Plant Biotechnologist Dr. Swapan Datta inspects a genetically modified ‘Golden Rice’ plant at the … [+] International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is a genetically modified variant of rice that could end Vitamin A deficiency and protect hundreds of thousands of children from blindness annually, and many more from death.

David Greedy/Getty Images

Once you’ve identified the various facets of a complex but important issue, you’ll want to identify all the areas of universal agreement. Vaccines have, quite obviously, been a fantastic public health advance. Diseases that once ravaged populations across the world — measles, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, etc. — have been brought to the brink of eradication, largely due to vaccination efforts.

Vaccine side effects are rare, but they do exist, largely in the form of allergic reactions. However, a number of vaccine trials fail because of potentially deadly side effects; the blood clots associated with the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are prominent examples, while the CDC has catalogued a number of well-documented historical incidents.

If practically all legitimate professionals on all sides of an issue can agree on a set of facts, you can safely take those as a starting point where you’re unlikely to get anything wrong.

If you decide to argue against the scientific consensus, you’ll have a very large suite of evidence … [+] to overturn, explain, and supersede. If you yourself are not an expert in the specific sub-field of science that you’re seeking to overturn, the odds are very much against your success.

MacLeod / Union of Concerned Scientists

Then you come to the next step: identifying false claims that are either completely unsupported or directly contradicted by the science. This is a step that you must take, or you’ll forever be bogged down by disingenuous arguments that are designed to distract you from the actual hard work of figuring out what is true and what is false.

However, not every issue is as easy to resolve as “person #1 says the sky is green and the grass is blue, while person #2 says the sky is blue and the grass is green.” Some issues take a lot of research to unpack, particularly when there are a number of voices — especially if at least one of those voices comes from a source you generally respect and trust — that are actively working to spread misinformation.

And yet, a good non-expert can cut through a large amount of that misinformation simply by either talking to or listening to the conversations that a number of credible experts have had in various public forums.

A Somali boy receives a polio vaccination in 1993. Although there are many contrarians out there who … [+] deride the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the consensus position is that they are humanity’s greatest defense against preventable infectious diseases.

PV2 Andrew W. McGalliard, U.S. Military

For example, consider the following questions:

Do vaccines cause autism?

Is the Earth’s temperature warming?

Is fluoride a waste by-product of the aluminum industry?

Are organic, non-GMO crops healthier for you than non-organic, GMO crops?

Will an mRNA vaccine alter your DNA?

Of course, there are many other examples, but these are ones where the information should be particularly easy to obtain simply by sifting through the internet. Vaccines definitively do not cause autism, and there are no large-scale, non-fraudulent studies that show that. Earth’s temperature is not only warming, but the warming is accelerating and is now at the 5-sigma level: where there’s less than a 1-in-7,000,000 chance that this is a fluke of the data.

And we can go on.

The global surface average temperature for the years where such records reliably and directly exist: … [+] 1880-2019 (at present). The zero line represents the long-term average temperature for the whole planet; blue and red bars show the difference above or below average for each year. The warming, on average, is by 0.07 C per decade, but has accelerated, warming at an average of 0.18 C since 1981.

NOAA / climate.gov

Fluoride is used in the aluminum smelting process as a catalyst, and it is true that the aluminum industry is the largest consumer of fluoride compounds. Once upon a time, America’s largest aluminum company (ALCOA) did acquire a sodium fluoride production plant, and sold sodium fluoride. However, their last sale occurred back in 1952, because it became cheaper for ALCOA to buy fluoride compounds elsewhere than it was to manufacture it themselves. None of the fluoride in municipal water supplies has ever participated in the aluminum manufacturing process for the past 59 years.

While there may be environmental differences in the impacts between organic and non-organic farming, there is no nutritional difference, and that has been studied at length and in-depth. Fascinatingly, GMO crops are often far more nutritious than their non-GMO counterparts, with golden rice and vitamin A (and its ability to prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness annually) a stunning counterexample to the non-factual claim.

And when it comes to mRNA vaccines, they only instruct your cells to produce a protein, which your immune system then attacks; your DNA is never altered. In an ironic twist, contracting COVID-19 and suffering its ill effects can, and perhaps often does, alter your DNA.

The novel coronavirus COVID-19, as illustrated here against a backdrop of a DNA molecule, contains … [+] only approximately 30,000 base pairs in its entire sequence, yet is capable of infecting and killing millions of people across the globe. Our best defense, at this point in time, lies in our own behavior and compliance with vaccinations, physical distancing, mask wearing, not touching our faces, hand washing, and other similar interventions.

GETTY Images

But that’s simply the low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of issues where you yourself lack the necessary expertise to discern between various viewpoints, even after doing your homework and fact-finding to the best of your abilities.

In those instances — and this is where, in my personal experience, many science writers go wrong — it’s vital to find the correct, relevant experts. It’s very easy to find a number of scientists who support positions that, even if they haven’t quite reached full-blown crackpot territory, are certainly contrarian positions that are well out of the scientific mainstream.

Could the dinosaurs have been wiped out by a comet, instead of an asteroid?

Could today’s temperature increase on Earth be a temporary effect, to be followed by a cooling period?

Could masks actually increase the transmission of certain viruses, rather than reducing the spread?

A comet or asteroid that struck Earth because it wasn’t detected quickly enough is one of humanity’s … [+] greatest natural threats, and could potentially be even worse than the extinction event of 65 million years ago. Whether these extinction events are periodic or not has long been a point of contention. But new analysis may have finally laid this speculative area of science to rest: it is not, and it was an asteroid, not a comet.

NASA / Don Davis

Even though studies supporting each of these positions have been published by prominent scientists, passing peer review in the process, the answer is a resounding “no” in every one of these instances. The reason isn’t because I trust “expert B” and not “expert A,” nor is it because I myself know enough to evaluate the claims on their own merits for myself, even though I do, in fact, earnestly attempt to understand these issues as deeply as I can.

Instead, it’s because I know — and contact — a number of experts that I trust in a variety of general fields: physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, climate science, etc. When there’s a contentious issue I don’t fully understand, or a novel claim that appears to conflict with what I know, I:

ask them about it,

listen to what they say,

ask follow-up questions to better understand the claims and the different lines of evidence pointing towards the conclusions,

ask about errors, uncertainties, and conflicting interpretations of the data,

ask about different methodologies and what the drawback or omissions are in each case,

and to learn about where the boundary is between what’s established, what’s suggestive, what’s speculative, and what is untenable nonsense.

An unmasked individual doing something as simple as exhaling (top) can send droplet particles large … [+] distances, with a high potential for spreading the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Wearing a mask (bottom) significantly reduces the distance that droplets travel, offering some measure of protection to others as well as, to a lesser extent, the wearer.

MATTHEW E. STAYMATES / NIST

In all of these three aforementioned cases, the claim in question, despite a copious amount of reporting suggesting that it’s plausible, is robustly ruled out.

The combination of Chicxulub crater’s magnitude in size, the energy required to create it, and the high abundance of elements like iridium found in the ash layer that blankets the Earth from 65 million years ago thoroughly rule out a cometary nature for the ancient impactor.

The stadium wave hypothesis, which noted oscillations (rises and falls) in the temperature at various places, like in the Atlantic Ocean, hypothesized that these oscillations were driving the apparent temperature rises seen around the globe. By hypothesizing that temperatures would fall and sea ice would regrow throughout the 2010s, and with the data clearly showing that not only was the hypothesis itself ill-founded but that both global and oceanic temperatures rose and accelerated during the past decade, the claim has been definitively falsified.

And the idea that cloth masks could increase virus transmission was from a 2015 study that compared cloth masks with medical grade masks, not with an unmasked population. That claim never had any teeth to it, but you wouldn’t know it unless you had dug deep enough into the literature (and understood the context of the study) to pick that information out.

If you have the bright idea to explain how a certain specialized field works to an expert working in … [+] the field, follow this helpful flowchart to determine the proper course of action.

E. Siegel

The unfortunate fact of the matter is this: there are a lot of people — scientists, science writers, reporters, and laypersons alike — who think they’re doing a good job of separating fact from fiction, proving “the experts” wrong when, in fact, they are not. There are a number of reasons for this, and they include:

hubris, where they think they know more than they do,

succumbing to shortcuts, where they don’t do a sufficient amount of the necessary background research to put these new claims in their proper context,

falling for the fallacy of “telling both sides” to a story, even when the scientific weight of the evidence is firmly on one side and not the other,

or, to promote a favored conclusion, they simply lie.

There are red flags that you can look out for, of course. Someone who tells you to “do your own research” is almost always deliberately attempting to undermine established science. A claim that “evidence for [this new position] is increasing all the time” is almost always advocating for something that the weight of the evidence doesn’t, in fact, support. People who use a single, personal experience as a counterexample to a scientific consensus are following anecdotes, not data. And if someone has to appeal to a conspiracy theory, that “the truth is being suppressed,” you can fairly safely conclude that no amount of scientific data will convince them.

You may not ever be able to reason someone else out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, but you can reason yourself into a more accurate position anytime you choose simply by doing the necessary work. Hopefully, if you’re so inclined, you now have the necessary tools — and humility — to go and do so for yourself.

Send in your Ask Ethan questions to startswithabang at gmail dot com!

#News

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phsolomon · 3 years

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Viking Ulfberht Swords

When we think of Vikings, our minds don’t normally conjure a picture of a miner. So where did the Vikings (and others) get the iron ore to forge their tools and weapons? As Mats Andersson says on Quora, they literally fished it out of bogs. Bog Iron As Wikipedia explains, Europeans developed iron smelting from […]Viking Ulfberht Swords A mystery from history…

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paulhenkeapps · 4 years

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Minecraft Guides For Beginners

Minecraft is a sandbox video game revealed by Mojang. Minecraft was developed by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming and was published as a public alpha for individual computers in 2009 before formally releasing in November 2011

So, the beginner faces many problems in Minecraft as they are a newbie and don't know how this game. In our blog, we have cleared many things by writing our guides on Minecraft.

I am going to explain the following guides with you.

Minecraft Potions

Cool Minecraft Houses

Blast Furnace Minecraft

Minecraft Enchantments

Minecraft Shaders

how to make potions in Minecraft

Minecraft potions can simply be made by following our guide. If you’re fresh to Minecraft brewing and want to get to grasps with the basics – including whatever on earth you should do with your phantom membranes – we’ve created a simple model on how to make potions in Minecraft. Our guide includes how to use a brewing stand, key ingredients, equipment, plus some of the various potent mixtures you can concoct.

Minecraft brewing can be trained to build a vast array of consumable potions that will build many status effects, such as strength enhancers, healing buffs, moreover elemental cures for when you get on Minecraft mobs and monsters. All Minecraft potions produced from brewing want a base ingredient, which can then be adjusted and enhanced using a secondary component and modifier.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

Minecraft Houses Ideas

Developing a house in Minecraft is time-consuming, These Minecraft house ideas will save your time but also effort, so you can use more time experiencing your fresh pad and less time bogged down in growth.

Whether you’re a Minecraft building pro or improving this daunting venture for the initial period, we’ve included the kinds of Minecraft houses you can produce, including beach homes, wooden apartments, and medieval houses in Minecraft along with our popular designs plus tutorials out there.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

How to use a blast furnace in Minecraft?

Minecraft blast furnace is your demand for all your smelting conditions? you’ve come to the exact place. Designing a blast furnace in Minecraft is the initial step towards obtaining able to melt down your worthless gear into iron ingots, which you can practice to craft extra items, such as a Minecraft anvil.

Blast furnaces can be seen in Minecraft villages in armorer houses. If there isn’t a villager armorer using a blast furnace as their worksite slab, then any villager Minecraft mob can turn their business to armorer.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

HOW TO USE YOUR ENCHANTING TABLE

Minecraft enchantments can be made with an enchanting table to build magic weapons, armor, and gadgets in Minecraft. There is an unusual chance connected with enchantments in Minecraft, as there’s none way of understanding what the enchanting table will eject out when you’re done.

You could stop up losing a well great diamond sword, or you could explain it with the Fire Aspect enchantment so that it also trades burn damage with every strike.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

The best Minecraft shaders

Minecraft shaders can reduce up your whole game experience with the help of our Minecraft shaders list.

Minecraft‘s blocky form is excellent quite on its own, but if you’ve ever wanted the game could look moderately more reliable, PC players have countless options. Minecraft shaders are an effortless way to transform the way Minecraft renders its light and shadows to create the necessary effect.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

#minecraft potions #cool minecraft houses #Blast furnace Minecraft #minecraft enchantments #minecraft shaders

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hq-writes · 7 years

Note

Imagine for Haru & Kageyama confessing/asking out their crush. Please and thank you!

So, I almost messed this up! I saw Haru and thought ‘Hinata’, and almost died. But! I re-read the request one final time before I began writing, and finally understood what it actually said. I hope you enjoy!

Kageyama

He had been debating on whether he should do it formonths; what if you said no? He wasn’t sure if he could handle that. It wouldimmediately crush his soul, and make his life miserable. Especially because hesat next to you in class, and your smile alone made his insides go to mush. Heknew he needed to, though, and so he decided that he’d stop you after class tofinally get the deed done.

Kageyama had actually asked Suga on how to approach youproperly, which completely blindsided the other setter. Kageyama was interestedin something aside from volleyball and milk? Holy shit. He gave the best advicehe could, based on what he had learned about the object of Kageyama’saffection.

With a will of iron, and the advice from Sugawarabouncing around in his mind, Kageyama approached your desk. His cheeks wereflushed, which was the very first thing you noticed. He could feel himselftrembling, and his legs were itching for him to take off, but his heart forcedthem to stay put.

You slowly slid your writing utensil behind yourear, looking up at him with that bright smile that he loved so much. “Goodafternoon, Kageyama! What do you need?”

As you tilted your head to the side, Kageyama feltall of his courage dissapate into the air. He gulped, looking around the roomand trying not to imagine your pretty face.

“Um...I...I wanted to con-con-confess!” Tobio, afterbattling with the word for a good minute, finally allowed it to spew from hislips. Your mouth fell open in shock, and he felt his soul immediately becomedestroyed. This was it, you were going to reject him because of hispersonality, and he was going to die alone in a hole somewhere where no onecould ever find him.

Of course, he was completely caught off-guard whenyou reached up and kissed him on the cheek, your face exploding into a blush asyou smiled at him.

“I recuperate your feelings, and your confession,Tobio!”

Haru

Theidea of romance, according to most of his friends, was lost on Haru. Makoto wasthe only one who said otherwise, a special smile on his face as he thought ofhow Haru reacted whenever you entered a room. He wouldn’t exactly say that Haruwas showing off, but he definitelygot shirtless a whole lot faster, and for a lesser amount of water.

That’swhy, when Haru had mentioned casually that he was going to tell you of hisfeelings, Makoto was the only one on the team who didn’t react drastically. Gouwanted him to do something super romantic, while Nagisa thought that it shouldinvolve something cute, and Rei thought that it should appeal to your sense oflogic and beauty.

Harudidn’t even let these ideas bog him down, immediately turning to Makoto. “Whatshould I do?” He asked, without a single quiver in his body. Makoto admired hiscourage, honestly. If he tried totell his crush of his feelings for them, he’d probably have a heart attack.

Makotoonly gave a happy smile and one sentence of advice, which- at the time- hadcaused the rest of the team to freak out. That was alright with Haru, though,because he wasn’t confessing to them, and he knew that Makoto would be a betterhelp than anyone else.

So,here he stood, waiting outside of your class with nothing in his arms. Heplanned to bring you to the water and swim with you before admitting that heliked you, but Makoto had worried that he wouldn’t get around to confessing ifhe was swimming.

Just be yourself, Haru!

Himself?Haru wanted to debate on this topic more in his head, but wasn’t allowed thetime because you were exiting your classroom, laughing with a group of yourfellow classmates. One of them noticed Haru’s eyes on you and giggled beforepushing you towards him, urging you to ‘do what the two of you had practiced’.

Harudidn’t know what that meant, but helooked at you with an intense gaze as you moved towards him. “Y/n, I-”

“Ihave feelings for you, Haruka!” You blurted, cutting him off and completelysilencing him all in one blow. He stared at you, his mouth open a bit due toshock. You hung your head, “I understand if you don’t feel the same, however!But, I made you this!” Shoved into his hands was a small bento that, upon closesmelling, smelt of mackerel.

Itwas official. Haruka Nanase was in lovewith you.

Harushuffled awkwardly, nervous for the first time since this whole ordeal began. “I...I feel the same. And, I like mackerel.”

(ay-ah, I got a bit carried away with describing things in Haru’s!)

9 notes · View notes

fantasyofpalace · 4 years

Text

Minecraft Beginner Guides

Minecraft is a sandbox video game revealed by Mojang. Minecraft was developed by Markus “Notch” Persson in the Java programming and was published as a public alpha for individual computers in 2009 before formally releasing in November 2011

So, the beginner faces many problems in Minecraft as they are a newbie and don’t know how this game. In our blog, we have cleared many things by writing our guides on Minecraft.

I am going to explain the following guides with you.

Minecraft Potions

Cool Minecraft Houses

Blast Furnace Minecraft

Minecraft Enchantments

Minecraft Shaders

how to make potions in Minecraft

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

Minecraft Houses Ideas

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

How to use a blast furnace in Minecraft?

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

HOW TO USE YOUR ENCHANTING TABLE

You could stop up losing a well great diamond sword, or you could explain it with the Fire Aspect enchantment so that it also trades burn damage with every strike.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

The best Minecraft shaders

Minecraft shaders can reduce up your whole game experience with the help of our Minecraft shaders list.

For the complete guide, you can visit our blog.

#minecraft potions #cool minecraft houses #blast furnace minecraft #minecraft enchantments #minecraft shaders

0 notes

stickyyouthstudent · 5 years

Text

cast iron, pig iron, pure iron.

hello everyone! ive scoured the internet looking everywhere and i couldnt find a single place that talks about this, so i thought ide ask in the only place i know seems to spark conversation. reddit!

as always correct me if im wrong on anything mentioned here

ive read alot online regarding how iron works, the biggest mind blow was learning that cast iron and pig iron are actual alloys that have higher content of carbon than steel.

ive been trying to wrap my mind around how one can (in a traditional, or for many people better said primitive method) make steel as well as pure iron from cast and pig iron. i know that in most instances one can acquire pure mined iron. but lets say for example that both that and bog iron are out of the question.

ive heard alot of talk about how the only way to remove carbon from iron is to "air blast" it at very high temperatures. but personally i find it hard to understand when back in the old times the only sources of fuel was carbon based, and with an open pot of liquid iron being able to draw carbon out of what i could only say is a carbon abundant location.

back to my point. i was wondering what the process of oxidation was for cast and pig iron, both of which having a fair amount of carbon in them, what happens to it? does the iron separate from the carbon and simply latch onto the oxygen instead?

and lastly, assuming my thought process is correct, would this be a feasible method of producing a far more pure iron? example, cast iron>rust>smelting process>iron/steel?

submitted by /u/Phyank0rd [link] [comments]

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edmondmoller · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Womans Health with Megan

New Post has been published on https://womanshealthwithmegan.com/primitive-technology-natural-draft-furnace

Primitive Technology: Natural Draft Furnace

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I built a natural draft furnace to test ideas about how hot a furnace could get without the use of bellows. Natural draft is the flow of air through a furnace due to rising hot air. The hot gasses in the fuel bed are more buoyant than the cold air outside the furnace causing them to rise. Fresh combustion air then enters the base of the furnace to replace the rising combustion gasses, keeping the fuel bed burning. This effect increases with: 1. the average temperature of the fuel bed relative to the outside air and 2. The height of the furnace. Two other important factors are the size of the tuyere (air entry pipe) and lump size of the fuel bed as these effect the resistance to airflow through the furnace. The furnace was tested with wood fuel and some ore was melted but produced no iron. High temperature were indeed produced (probably about 1200 c). These types of furnaces were once used for smelting copper and iron ores in around the world in ancient times, usually using charcoal as a fuel and in some cases wood too. I designed the furnace using a formula from the book “The mastery and uses of fire in antiquity” by J.E. Rehder. It was designed to have a space velocity (air speed within the furnace) of 6 m per minute which is recommended for iron smelting. The furnace was 175 cm in total height but with a height of only 150 cm above the tuyere. The height between the air entry and the top of the furnace is what determines the strength of the draft, the space beneath the air entry is not included in the formula. The internal furnace diameter was 25 cm. The walls were about 12.5 cm thick at the base but got thinner with height. The tuyere (air entry pipe) was 7.5 cm internal diameter and about 20 cm long. The tuyere was placed into an opening in the base of the furnace and sealed with mud. The whole thing took about a week to make due to the slow drying time that was assisted by keeping a fire burning in side it. The furnace was designed to use charcoal (which in this case should be 2.5 cm diameter lumps) but I used wood to test it instead as it was easier to acquire. To test its melting ability, bog ore was found further down the creek and roasted. The roasted ore was then crushed and stored in a pot. The furnace was filled with wood and lit from the top. The fire burnt down the furnace producing charcoal. On reaching the tuyere the fire then started burning the charcoal. Wood was also continually added from the top along with a few small handfuls of the roasted bog ore (not shown in the video). The temperature of hot objects can be visually estimated from their incandescence. After about an hour, the light coming out of the tuyere was high yellow to white hot indicating a temperature of at about 1200 c. Colour temperature charts vary but white hot is usually given to be at least 1200 c, examples of these charts can be found on the internet for reference. It was uncomfortable to stare into the tuyere and doing so left an after image when looking away, indicating the strength of its brightness. After about an hour and a half the furnace was left to burn out. When opened the next day the tuyere was covered in slag with bits of slag found on the furnace floor also. This experiment shows that high temperatures can be achieved without the use of bellows or charcoal, which might significantly reduce labour in the production of iron. The furnace was technically easy to build as it was a simple vertical cylinder. When running, the wood added to the top of the furnace converts to charcoal in the upper part of the stack and is consumed in the lower part. The ore I used was new to me, normally I use iron bacteria as an ore. This new ore produced no metallic iron so I’m inclined to use iron bacteria in future. Natural draft furnaces were once used to smelt copper and iron ores in the past, usually with charcoal fuel and less frequently with wood. The main benefit of these furnaces seems to have been the reduction in labour they provide and simplified infrastructure (fewer workers and no bellows required during operation).

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dailytechnologynews · 7 years

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What can I do with iron bacteria that grows in water?

I honestly thought for a long time that iron bacteria in water was animal shit... dumb I know.

I did a quick Google and apparently i can make bog iron? Can i smelt this?

There is an INSANE amount of this in my area so if I can actually make something with it then boys and girls I've hit the lottery. If not then I'm wondering if there is anything I can do?

#Primitive Technology #Technology #Tech #News #Discussions

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years

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Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 2: Bakemonogatari [Mayoi Snail]

Today in Bakemonogatari, we get an even better image of what this series is really about: people talking to each other a whole lot, Araragi getting owned by every other character in the story, and then things get depressing, and also really heartfelt. This series is pretty great, you guys.

More ramblings under the cut

-I still really like how they keep showing off increasingly frantic cut-ins of the LN text to increasingly frantic music at the start of each episode. It’s a really neat style that pretty immediately gets you engaged.

-The OP for this arc is probably one of my least favourites, to be blunt. It’s fun and cute, but it’s a little grating to actually listen to, especially when you’re like me and you’re binge-watching the whole arc at once. But I still appreciate it.

-I keep forgetting that Mother’s Day is a really important aspect of the story this time around. It was just Mother’s Day a few days ago, so that’s a neat coincidence. I can definitely relate to the discussions of familial/parental relationships in this arc, which I’ll talk about a bit more in a bit. But, for now, I totally feel for Araragi on the topic of feeling a little bit alienated and uncomfortable on that sort of a day, and then getting introspective and moody about the topic of his growth as a person and his future prospects and whatnot, and then getting annoyed at himself for being so petty and ‘small’ in the first place. I think everyone knows what that’s like, to some degree or another.

-I love that this entire arc, especially the first episode of it, really is mostly just about people talking to each other about stuff in a fun, back and forth sorta way. It really gets me back into the mood for watching this series. It’s like, ‘ah yes, this is it, the True Monogatari Experience[tm]’. It’s great.

-The different ways I’ve seen different subbers and translators try and translate the whole ‘moe/tore’ conversation are really interesting. It’s the sort of thing that’s gonna be kinda weird to an English-speaking audience no matter what. I think my favourite variation of it is the one that translates ‘tore’ as ‘fascination’. I don’t know if it’s the most accurate translation, but I’ve always liked it. I dunno why, exactly. Maybe just because it’s the first one I saw. Though I can at least say that Vertical’s whole ‘melting/smelting’ translation was kinda . . . strained. Severely. Mostly because nobody uses the word ‘melting’ in that way in the first place, so the entire conversation falls apart, since it’s meant to be about taking a common slang word and twisting it. It feels like they came up with ‘smelting’ first and then had to awkwardly go back and make up a translation of ‘moe’ that fit that, but the translation they went for missed the point. It just feels a little clumsy and backwards. But I don’t dislike it as much as some other people do. I’ve seen worse. And honestly I kinda like the ‘smelting’ translation, it’s just that the entire thing doesn’t work.

-I still have a huge soft spot for Senjougahara’s tsundere attitude. It’s pretty wonderful. “It’s not that I wanted to show you my new clothes. I wanted you to be the first to see them. The nuance is different”. Aww <3 I love how obvious it is that she’s mostly just a really awkward person who doesn’t have much experience with actually having solid relationships with people.

-In general this arc helps highlight some of her vulnerabilities in a really nice way. It’s really interesting to rewatch this arc while knowing that she can’t actually see Hachikuji, and that she’s just going along with the whole thing because she thinks that she’s the weird one for being out of the loop. Which is pretty sad, but also kinda relatable. In my own separate way, I have my own experience with “not seeing things that other people can see”, and “seeing things that other people can’t see”, and choosing to keep quiet about it, and go along with how other people act, while telling myself that I’m the one that’s wrong. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself since I’m trying to make these notes in a vaguely chronological sense, but this is also why I like the whole speech Senjougahara has [relayed from Oshino] about differing viewpoints, and how while you can’t simply dismiss another person as being wrong, it’s also wrong to dismiss yourself as being wrong. And, of course, the whole part near the very end where Araragi tells Senjougahara that she can be open with him, and that she doesn’t need to dismiss anything she thinks and feels as being wrong.

-Now onto the actual heroine of this arc, finally. I really like Hachikuji. She’s pretty great. It kinda saddens me how many scenes with her get kinda bogged down with some uncomfortable jokes that I’m not really gonna try and fully defend, but I still really like her. In general, she has a really neat dynamic with Araragi, though it’s the sorta thing that really grows and develops as time goes on. Things are slightly different between them in this arc, since they’ve just met. Also, after the infamous scene from Shinobu Time, it made me kinda sad to see the first iteration of her ‘Sorry, I stuttered’ line. Who would have thought that a silly running gag line would turn around and stab me right in my feelings about 40 episodes later.

-In general there’s all sorts of parts of this arc that make me flash back to later arcs in the series. It’s a weird experience, to see the seeds being sown for so many character arcs and so on. I didn’t really expect, the first time around, how much these characters would grow, and how much the story in general would expand. But then it did. The part I least expected to get reminded of was how I found myself remembering the Sodachi arc when Araragi gave a really vague summary of his younger years. It’s not really directly related, but it made me remember the whole point of ‘oh yeah he really doesn’t remember her, does he?’. There’s a bit of dramatic irony involved, knowing about it in advance. Araragi doesn’t know what’s about to hit him [in like . . . 60 episodes, hah]. Man, I can’t wait to rewatch the first half of Owari S1. That’s seriously one of my favourite parts of the entire franchise and I can’t wait to get a chance to talk about it and my undying love for Sodachi as a character. It makes me wonder if Nisioisin actually had that whole deal planned out in advance, since it really isn’t directly foreshadowed before Owari itself [I think], and the entire ‘oh yeah there’s this girl that Araragi forgot about because he’s a doof’ thing does feel like the perfect scenario for it being a retcon of sorts. Not like I mind any way.

-The other major thing that I got reminded of and got kinda sad about during this arc was the whole Hanekawa scene. It really hurts to see the topic of her family situation touched upon so lightly, after having seen it in more detail later in the story. Even the thing with her wearing her school uniform on a Sunday is depressing, and isn’t even really acknowledged [at least not directly in the anime]. On that vague note, it’s kinda interesting to see how Araragi is at least vaguely aware of Hanekawa’s whole situation, but doesn’t really know how to approach it, or how to help her. It’s pretty fitting for his character, and makes him seem more flawed and imperfect, in an everyday way. [This just reminds me, ironically enough, about how I just cannot, ever, for the life of me, remember what the hell happened in Neko:Kuro. I can never remember if anything I remember about the Hanekawa/Black Hanekawa/Cat Oddity storyline happened in that arc, or at the end of Bake, or even in Neko:Shiro. I don’t know why this is such a weird mental roadblock of mine, but it is]

-Also on the note of Hanekawa’s whole deal, the part where her glasses go all shiny and she says ‘if you’re going to spank a child, you should at least tell them why what they did was wrong’ while Araragi is just like ‘um . . . ok’ was also pretty uncomfortable to watch.

-I do love how comedic this arc is, even if it has a surprising amount of not so funny parts, especially in hindsight. I kinda suck at giving any sort of a comment on comedy, though. So if I don’t really talk about it much, it can be assumed that I really like the comedy in this show, because I really do. I can listen to these weirdos poke fun at each other and talk about random stuff for DAYS. I’ll at least probably talk about it if I don’t like certain parts of the comedy.

-It’s still pretty interesting to me how one of the major characters in the show is literally one of the oddities. I mean, I guess Shinobu is as well [and Yotsugi??? Sort of????], but you get what I mean. It makes for an interesting dynamic, and I’m really happy about how much Nisioisin does with the concept later in the story. I like how even if it’s mostly portrayed in a fairly light-hearted way early on, it has actual genuine consequences later on. So to say.

-I still always get kinda emotional over Hachikuji’s whole backstory. I admit it. I am the basic lame-o who gets sad over basically anything sad in media, especially when it’s to do with sad children, and dead children, and sad children who are also dead and have been dead for ten years. Sometimes I almost feel manipulated. Almost.

-I do genuinely relate to Hachikuji’s backstory, though. Even though it plays out differently to my own personal history, and we have different feelings toward our parents. Maybe it’s easier to say that I can just . . . see myself in parts of her story? I’m still trying to work out if it’s accurate to say that you can relate to someone who’s been through a similar situation as you even if they respond to it differently, or if you can relate to someone who goes through different situations than you, but responds to them in a way that’s similar to how you respond to certain parts of your life. I like to think that that still counts as ‘relating’. I don’t want to get into it too deeply here, but my own parents broke up shortly after I was born, before I can remember. It was my mother who retained custody of me, though, and not my father. And my feelings toward both of them aren’t the same as how Hachikuji feels toward her own parents. And I’m not a little Japanese girl who got hit by a car and has been sticking around as a ghost-cow-snail-thing for ten years. [OR AM I??? oooo spooky]

-I touched upon it before, but I really like the little moment between Senjougahara and Araragi at the end. It’s so sweet and earnest. I love how it’s all about the idea of emotional honesty and vulnerability, and how important those things are. I love how Senjougahara understands that maybe the most accurate thing she can say is that she just likes talking to Araragi, and that she wants to keep talking to him more and more. I love Araragi’s little line about ‘Senjougahara fascination’. Again, aww <3. I mean I can also totally understand how things end up really rocky between them in the long run, but still.

-Next time on Monogatari: Lesbians! Or should I say, lesbian, in singular form. It’s only when we get to Hanamonogatari that I can truly, justifiably, say ‘Lesbians!’ in plural form. Just you wait.

#murasaki rambles #monogatari series #bakemonogatari #for some reason I thought this would be shorter than the hitagi crab post #but it turned out to probably be even longer #WELP #part of me feels I should use my review tag for this but these are just my random immediate thoughts so nah I won't

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