#so the best countries in europe :)

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

François Alfred Delobbe (French, 1835-1920) A Moment of Reflection, n.d.

[sisterdaniela]

it's literally 1 hour away from where i will move to at the end of August. it's so over

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

i made a map in geoguessr with only the PIGS countries in it <3

[comradecowplant]

so things are not going well with my new elderly socdem friend unfortunately.

[oldtvandcomics]

Happy Queer Media Monday!

Today: The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

Another highly personal one.

(My copy of The Lights of Prague, flanked by two of my bat plushies. Picture taken in Old Town Square, after dark.)

Prague, not long after the introduction of gaslights on the street. The guild of lamplighters doubles as elite monsterfighter squad, whose job is to keep the normal population safe from the numerous beings active at nighttime. Meanwhile, said monsters have their own hidden society. Both worlds get thrown in disarray by a series of experiments, that, if successful, would let the pijavice, vampire-like creatures, go out during the sunlight hours. Lamplighter Domek and pijavice Ora get sucked in the middle of the conflict, struggling to keep up with the conspiracies as well as their feelings for one another.

The reasons why this book is so special to me are personal more than anything else, but I still feel that it would serve as a good example for changes in the fantasy genre.

This was the first thing I bought when I arrived to Prague for my one year in film school. Then it took me almost two years to read it, because I was reading everything but this book. The thing is, this is the EXACT kind of story I would have LOVED as a teenager, but apparently, I grew out of it and kind of lost interest. The book itself is good, and I really regret not getting to it ten - fifteen years sooner. It is also, all in all, not really that special or different from the ones that I did read back then.

What did stand out for me was the casual queerness. I bought it because of the Prague connection, and was fully expecting it to be completely straight, like the books I used to read as a teenager. It wasn’t. Ora is bisexual, having had two major relationships with women, as well as multiple with men, and Domek’s friend Cord (as well as his mystery boyfriend) is gay. It is all treated very casually, but it is very visibly there.

As I said before, I know this exact kind of book. I used to devour them around 2009 - 2012 (ish). Back then, this kind of casual queerness just didn’t happen. It did not.

Following the progress of queer representation is often frustrating because of how slow it is. It feels like it should be so normalized by now, and yet we are still stagnating and waiting for crumbs to drop. However, the progress becomes very visible the moment you look at the bigger picture in history, and compare media we have today with the way things were even ten years ago. Once upon a time something comes along that hits you over the head with this progress, and I feel like it’s a good thing to stop for a second and appreciate it.

So yeah, that is what The Lights of Prague symbolises to me.

Here is Nicole Jarvis’ personal webpage. About the pijavice, I only found this entry on the Monster Wiki.

Queer Media Monday is an action I started to talk about some important and/or interesting parts of our queer heritage, that people, especially young people who are only just beginning to discover the wealth of stories out there, should be aware of. Please feel free to join in on the fun and make your own posts about things you personally find important!

[athleticbilbao]

i'm gonna murder every benfica dude who doesn't give two shits about women's football suddenly caring and saying they're awful just because the team lost their first game in a whole season 🔫

[mirrorofliterature]

when people complain about the un and international law being useless... look

I don't think (many) people fundamentally understand what the UN is, what international law is, and what they can and cannot do

the UN and international law in general are... quite imperfect and bureaucratic systems which are heavily politicised but it's like. a better world to be in where they do exist than one where there is not. I like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! I love the self-determination article in the subsequent human rights treaties and how decolonising countries in the 1940s-1970s played a crucial role in shaping the current system.

international law gives us benchmarks, lines in the sand to point out and articulate why someone something did was illegal without running into the issue of ex post facto law, which was an issue in the nuremberg trials, but I digress.

the UN is not a governing body. it has no independent political power.

international law, at the end of the day, is based on the consent of states. whether you like it or not, international law is a horizontal system.

most people are much more familiar with domestic law which is vertical and has clear enforcement mechanisms. international law, particularly international human rights law, has fucking shit enforcement mechanisms. it's all consent based, it's heavily politicised and it's woefully underfunded. sanctions are terrible. humanitarian interventions often go terribly wrong.

but they give structure, and guidelines, and things for civil society to point at and say: you have fucked up. you have breached xyz treaty article, as seen in abc treaty body decision or general comment.

I guess I'm real tired of people acting like international law and the UN are useless or a net negative. like. there are a lot of issues. but it's more complex than 'good' versus 'bad'.

the power imbalance between countries and the veto power of the security un council in particular are stupid but products of historical reality and compromise. international law is built on compromise.

anyway keep on holding the west accountable for the treaties they helped create and signed. unfortunately the united states is weak and has not ratified as many treaties as it should have but what state has ratified which treaty is publicly available information and so are the treaties.

[softquietsteadylove]

2nd part for amnesia trope

So for Gil's POV. So what I was thinking is he was a gangster and he is somehow to blame for Thena's memory loss, it was because his enemies targeted her and got involved in a car crash. He left her in the hospital (but of course he paid everything and sends flower everyday) because he thinks that she's no good and she's in danger everytime she's with him. But he still knows how Thena is doing and where she is so when he knew she was finally discharged he started and somehow pretended to be a shop owner (he bought Thena's favorite coffee shop) so he could see her everyday.

He can remember it clear as day: the worst day of his life.

Just like how Thena remembered it, he was in the car with her.

He ended up at the museum to get some information on a competitor. He didn't know who he was meeting or what they looked like--part of the whole confidentiality of being an informant.

So, he hadn't blinked twice when a gorgeous blonde walked up to him and asked if he was lost. He had stated he was looking for some information on the Trojan Horse.

He was looking for information on someone within his gang who he suspected was acting as a double agent, he meant. She thought he meant the literal Trojan Horse, which apparently was a specialty of her major in Greek History.

She had given him a full tour of their exhibit about ancient Greece. He never did catch his informant, instead letting himself be dragged around the museum by this blonde lady excitedly telling him about intricacies of Greek politics in war times. And he never interrupted to tell her about the misunderstanding.

She was so excited to tell him about everything, and he was excited to be around her when she was so cute, even if she was a nerdy bookworm.

She was Thena, they got to eventually. She had just started working at the museum. He asked if she was a tour guide and she outright laughed at the suggestion. She wasn't a people person, by her own declaration. She worked as a researcher, with a friend of hers. Her other friend was in charge of the tours. He thought she was plenty personable, but apparently he got the special treatment that day.

He hadn't meant to get attached. He hadn't meant to see her again at all. He couldn't afford such things. But he ran into her on her way home from work one night, stopping by a cafe he frequented for its pastries. He had a bit of a quiet love for baking and proper pattiseries. Thena also loved pastries, he came to learn.

She frequented the shop, having tried everything from their canales to their mont blancs, to their dacquoises--she knew even more than him. He asked if she baked at all for herself and she laughed at him again (he really wasn't used to people being brave enough to laugh around him, in his line of work). She said she was no baker at all, just an admirer.

An admirer--that was what he was becoming, much to his own dread.

He returned to the coffee shop. Not to see her, but because he wanted to try these amazing pastries Thena had raved about. And he just so happened to run into her there--a few times, actually. One saturday morning he ran into her without the time crunch of having to be at the museum.

Before he could stop himself, he ended up blurting out, "care to join me?"

She did. She sat down across from him, hands clasped around a cappuccino mug, eyeing the little gateau on his plate.

He handed her a fork, and they shared the few bites the tiny serving offered. Even now, he can barely remember what it tasted like; he was far too distracted by the beautiful smile on Thena's face.

They started running into each other more...strategically. They both knew exactly what they were doing, but also didn't bring it up. He had his own reasons for not wanting to get too involved with the beautiful blonde. She seemed to think he was being coy, or maybe even shy.

He was a ruthless gangster. He wasn't shy--isn't shy.

He asked her to dinner. And then dessert--he asked her if there were any other places in the city that had a dessert to compare to their usual place. She said that she wouldn't know, having not lived there as long as he had. So he invited her to find out.

He should have known better.

She was driving them, because then he could put the directions into her phone gps for her. They were talking about what place to try for dinner. And then a truck t-boned them, knocking them straight off the road.

Thena was barely conscious by the time they stopped rolling. Gil was able to rip his seat belt off of him, cutting through hers with his knife once he was free. She was in and out of consciousness the whole time, dead weight in his arms. But even as she started slipping away, he just held her tighter.

Gil pulled her from the wreck, carrying her away from it in case her car had been tampered with as insurance. It was a standard move in the business, and if she had been targeted because of him, he guessed that his enemies would stop at nothing. Surely they wouldn't draw the line at cutting her gas line after deciding to try and kill an innocent woman.

Thena was rushed to Eternal Mercy Hospital, found leaned against a tree after first responders were called to the scene. They were informed by a passing witness that he had seen the truck that came out of nowhere and wrecked her car--that he had seen the woman pull herself from the wreck and drag herself away as he called the ambulance.

The witness left no name.

But it was the same anonymous caller who made sure that any treatment Thena needed was paid for in full--that she had the very best care possible and that there were always fresh flowers by her bedside as she recovered.

The hospital had no obligation to ask further into it, and Gil was grateful. Supposedly they couldn't tell him how she was doing because he wasn't her family or emergency contact, but whatever. The bastards who had pulled her hit and run were long taken care of, he had made sure of it.

He also made sure that he would never be connected to Thena again.

It was for the best, he said. He couldn't be so selfish as to endanger her for his own happiness. They were lucky she wasn't seriously injured this time, but he wouldn't take the chance of her getting hurt again.

The closest he came was to let himself see her again--literally see, just witness from across the street. Just to say goodbye, in a sense, he told himself. Just for a little closure before he let go of the only woman he had ever loved.

He bought the coffee shop--their coffee shop. He bought it as it was, fired all the staff and just...sat there. He practised his own pastry recipes for his own entertainment, but he definitely wasn't operating a functional cafe. He just wanted to see her walking down the street, on the way to museum.

Just one last time, he kept telling himself.

Then she walked right in.

[kizuike]

Mmgh

[bavarianmillionaire]

julián extending until 2028 at city

[ladycatofwinterfell]

Ashamed of being a swedish handball fan rn that SUCKED

[just-an-enby-lemon]

While it is problematic to see events based only on our experiences even more the ones related to prejudice I'll admit that England prohibition of the Scottish gender affirmative laws scares me on way more than it's transphobia and opression towards the scotish people. It makes me think that if England isn't afraid of imposing their will on a country that on papper they consider their equal how do they react towards the people and countries they don't. That on my case means would England do an U.S similar move and help stabelish dictatorships on latin america if we did something that they considered against their values or that somehow affected their control? But on a general case it goes to ask about their relationship with India or how the goverment as whole treats imigrantes specially people of color and muslins (mostly muslins of color) and many more questions and fears related to racism and xenophonia.

This situation is of course about transphobia first as England doing all that to stop my fellow trans people from having measures that could drasticslly improve their life is a clear act of hate against us (and I don't know even how to conceptualize it, Brazil is if not the one of the countries with the higher rate of trans people being killed for our gender identity, we have few representation and transitioning while legal is quasi impossible even people who support trans rights outside the comunity are mostly either uninformed or do unintencional casual transphobia (for instance when I still identifield as nb and not trans a dear normally supportive friend wished me happy woman's day), the idea of having this bill is something out of a fairy tale to me and it likely was for older scottish trans people and to finally see this fairy tale becaming reality and by popular vote as well showing that your society is learning and caring only to have it took from you must be the worst feeling ever). I'm not trying to disminish this fact or put trans issues in second place. But there is no fight if we aren't all on it and it's important to understand how systemic those prejudices are. It's important that a trans white person understand what this implies to trans non white people and to cis non white people as well. Just as it is important that cis non white people understand how this impacts the trans comunity. We need to look at all angles and stand together.

[necronomeconomicism]

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְה Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn. [my best translation] Hear Israel (beginning of a prayer in Hebrew) I should outlive him long enough to bury him. (an old Yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

[grasshoppergeography]

Hey All,

I've been away for some time, as we've been working really hard on something quite exciting:

let me present to you the world's first ever global ocean drainage basin map that shows all permanent and temporary water flows on the planet.

This is quite big news, as far as I know this has never been done before. There are hundreds of hours of work in it (with the data + manual work as well) and it's quite a relief that they are all finished now.

But what is an ocean drainage basin map, I hear most of you asking? A couple of years ago I tried to find a map that shows which ocean does each of the world's rivers end up in. I was a bit surprised to see there is no map like that, so I just decided I'll make it myself - as usual :) Well, after realizing all the technical difficulties, I wasn't so surprised any more that it didn't exist. So yeah, it was quite a challenge but I am very happy with the result.

In addition to the global map I've created a set of 43 maps for different countries, states and continents, four versions for each: maps with white and black background, and a version for both with coloured oceans (aka polygons). Here's the global map with polygons:

I know from experience that maps can be great conversation starters, and I aim to make maps that are visually striking and can effectively deliver a message. With these ocean drainage basin maps the most important part was to make them easily understandable, so after you have seen one, the others all become effortless to interpret as well. Let me know how I did, I really appreciate any and all kinds of feedback.

Here are a few more from the set, I hope you too learn something new from them. I certainly did, and I am a geographer.

The greatest surprise with Europe is that its biggest river is all grey, as the Volga flows into the Caspian sea, therefore its basin counts as endorheic.

An endorheic basin is one which never reaches the ocean, mostly because it dries out in desert areas or ends up in lakes with no outflow. The biggest endorheic basin is the Caspian’s, but the area of the Great Basin in the US is also a good example of endorheic basins.

I love how the green of the Atlantic Ocean tangles together in the middle.

No, the dividing line is not at Cape Town, unfortunately.

I know these two colours weren’t the best choice for colourblind people and I sincerely apologize for that. I’ve been planning to make colourblind-friendly versions of my maps for ages now – still not sure when I get there, but I want you to know that it’s just moved up on my todo-list. A lot further up.

Minnesota is quite crazy with all that blue, right? Some other US states that are equally mind-blowing: North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming. You can check them all out here.

Yes, most of the Peruvian waters drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Here are the maps of Peru, if you want to take a closer look.

Asia is amazingly colourful with lots of endorheic basins in the middle areas: deserts, the Himalayas and the Caspian sea are to blame. Also note how the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra are divided.

I mentioned earlier that I also made white versions of all maps. Here’s Australia with its vast deserts. If you're wondering about the weird lines in the middle: that’s the Simpson desert with its famous parallel sand dunes.

North America with white background and colourful oceans looks pretty neat, I think.

Finally, I made the drainage basin maps of the individual oceans: The Atlantic, the Arctic, the Indian and the Pacific. The Arctic is my favourite one.

I really hope you like my new maps, and that they will become as popular as my river basin maps. Those have already helped dozens of environmental NGOs to illustrate their important messages all around the world. It would be nice if these maps too could find their purpose.

[reasonsforhope]

"Businesses like to talk about the concept of a closed loop or circular economy, but often they’re trying to close small loops. Releaf Paper takes dead leaves from city trees and turns them into paper for bags, office supplies, and more—which is to say they are striving to close one heck of a big loop.

How big? Six billion trees are cut down every year for paper products according to the WWF, producing everything from toilet paper to Amazon boxes to the latest best-selling novels. Meanwhile, the average city produces 8,000 metric tons of leaves every year which clog gutters and sewers, and have to be collected, composted, burned, or dumped in landfills.

In other words, huge supply and huge demand, but Releaf Paper is making cracking progress. They already produce 3 million paper carrier bags per year from 5,000 metric tons of leaves from their headquarters in Paris.

Joining forces with landscapers in sites across Europe, thousands of tonnes of leaves arrive at their facility where a low-water, zero-sulfur/chlorine production process sees the company create paper with much smaller water and carbon footprints...

“In a city, it’s a green waste that should be collected. Really, it’s a good solution because we are keeping the balance—we get fiber for making paper and return lignin as a semi-fertilizer for the cities to fertilize the gardens or the trees. So it’s like a win-win model,” [Valentyn] Frechka, co-founder and CTO of Releaf Paper, told Euronews.

Releaf is already selling products to LVMH, BNP Paribas, Logitech, Samsung, and various other big companies. In the coming years, Frechka and Sobolenka also plan to further increase their production capacity by opening more plants in other countries. If the process is cost-efficient, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a paper mill of this kind in every city.

“We want to expand this idea all around the world. At the end, our vision is that the technology of making paper from fallen leaves should be accessible on all continents,” Sobolenka notes, according to ZME Science."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[gremlinwithakeyboard]

Found this picture of one of the old slideshows from french class.

their faces aaa

i screenshotted this for a reason