#whither

[nemfrog]

Title page.

Man--where, whence, and whither? 1868.

Internet Archive

[cultofarfri]

whither03

[exercise-of-trust]

yeah so i may have meeting-on-the-turret-stairs'd aegnor and andreth. sorry

[evansbby]

What would daddy ari do if you had a fight before he went to work and he came home to find you sleeping in the guest bedroom instead of your shared room?

He’d be like “baby girl I’m sorry” but you would just sniffle and ignore him and pretend to sleep and then he’d try to cuddle you and kiss you like “cmon baby, you know we both don’t like sleeping alone. I’m sorry, let’s not go to bed upset with each other, okay sweetie? you know daddy loves you so much” and you know you’re being petty but you’re like hmph (while still pretending to be half asleep) all like, “no you don’t love me anymore, so I’ll just get out of your way completely 🥲🥲”

and Ari cuddles you even more, half lifting you up so you’re in his lap so he can carry you back to your shared bedroom, and he’s like “baby you know that’s not true, daddy loves you so much.” And then you push it even further and you’re like: “no you don’t, and I’ll probably move out tomorrow so bye in advance 🤧🤧” and Ari’s literally like 💀💀💀 bc he knows the lil drama queen that you are and he’s like “well, okay fine then. but at least spend your last night with me” but he doesn’t wait for an answer, he just slings you over his back and carries you back to the bedroom while you squeal and punch and protest.

and then he throws you down on your shared bed and attacks you with kissies and tickles until you finally start giggling. “There’s my girl,” Ari says, chucking you under the chin, “I love your smile, baby. And I love you.” And finally you’re content with his apology so you forgive him (begrudgingly) and allow him to cuddle you while you both fall asleep and he lets you suck his thumb bc he knows it relaxes you and you’re his baby and everything is perfect again 🥹🫶🏼

[backpackevil]

Sufferriiiiiiiinnnnnnnggggggg

[valejojo]

GO!GO!GO!

[bertram-double-u]

Since joining “tumblr” it has come to my attention that Jeeves and I are being shipped by my audience.

I say, what?

I say, I don’t much like it, to be perfectly honest. As much as Jeeves walks among us mortals like a Greek god, and as much as I revere his intellect, I shan’t want to have another bally ocean cruise so soon! He can bring me brochures of the Galapagos with the morning tea all he wants, the y.m. shall remain firm!

[fatehbaz]

Tallying every single tree in the kingdom. Endangered South Asian sandalwood. British war to control the forests. Failure of the plantation. Until the twentieth century, the Empire couldn't figure out how to cultivate sandalwood because they didn't understand that the plant is actually a partial root parasite, so their plantation monoculture approach of eliminating companion species was self-defeating.

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Selling at about $147,000 per metric ton, the aromatic heartwood of Indian sandalwood (S. album) is arguably [among] the most expensive wood in the world. Globally, 90 per cent of the world’s S. album comes from India [...]. And within India, around 70 per cent of S. album comes from the state of Karnataka [...] [and] the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore. [...] [T]he species came to the brink of extinction. [...] [O]verexploitation led to the sandal tree's critical endangerment in 1974. [...]

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Francis Buchanan’s 1807 A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar is one of the few European sources to offer insight into pre-colonial forest utilisation in the region. [...] Buchanan records [...] [the] tradition of only harvesting sandalwood once every dozen years may have been an effective local pre-colonial conservation measure. [...] Starting in 1786, Tipu Sultan [ruler of Mysore] stopped trading pepper, sandalwood and cardamom with the British. As a result, trade prospects for the company [East India Company] were looking so bleak that by November 1788, Lord Cornwallis suggested abandoning Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast and reducing Bombay’s status from a presidency to a factory. [...] One way to understand these wars is [...] [that] [t]hey were about economic conquest as much as any other kind of expansion, and sandalwood was one of Mysore’s most prized commodities. In 1799, at the Battle of Srirangapatna, Tipu Sultan was defeated. The kingdom of Mysore became a princely state within British India [...]. [T]he East India Company also immediately started paying the [new rulers] for the right to trade sandalwood.

British control over South Asia’s natural resources was reaching its peak and a sophisticated new imperial forest administration was being developed that sought to solidify state control of the sandalwood trade. In 1864, the extraction and disposal of sandalwood came under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department. [...] Colonial anxiety to maximise profits from sandalwood meant that a government agency was established specifically to oversee the sandalwood trade [...] and so began the government sandalwood depot or koti system. [...]

From the 1860s the [British] government briefly experimented with a survey tallying every sandal tree standing in Mysore [...].

Instead, an intricate system of classification was developed in an effort to maximise profits. By 1898, an 18-tiered sandalwood classification system was instituted, up from a 10-tier system a decade earlier; it seems this led to much confusion and was eventually reduced back to 12 tiers [...].

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Meanwhile, private European companies also made significant inroads into Mysore territory at this time. By convincing the government to classify forests as ‘wastelands’, and arguing that Europeans would improves these tracts from their ‘semi-savage state’, starting in the 1860s vast areas were taken from local inhabitants and converted into private plantations for the ‘production of cardamom, pepper, coffee and sandalwood’.

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Yet attempts to cultivate sandalwood on both forest department and privately owned plantations proved to be a dismal failure. There were [...] major problems facing sandalwood supply in the period before the twentieth century besides overexploitation and European monopoly. [...] Before the first quarter of the twentieth century European foresters simply could not figure out how to grow sandalwood trees effectively.

The main reason for this is that sandal is what is now known as a semi-parasite or root parasite; besides a main taproot that absorbs nutrients from the earth, the sandal tree grows parasitical roots (or haustoria) that derive sustenance from neighbouring brush and trees. [...] Dietrich Brandis, the man often regaled as the father of Indian forestry, reported being unaware of the [sole significant English-language scientific paper on sandalwood root parasitism] when he worked at Kew Gardens in London on South Asian ‘forest flora’ in 1872–73. Thus it was not until 1902 that the issue started to receive attention in the scientific community, when C.A. Barber, a government botanist in Madras [...] himself pointed out, 'no one seems to be at all sure whether the sandalwood is or is not a true parasite'.

Well into the early decades of twentieth century, silviculture of sandal proved a complete failure. The problem was the typical monoculture approach of tree farming in which all other species were removed and so the tree could not survive. [...]

The long wait time until maturity of the tree must also be considered. Only sandal heartwood and roots develop fragrance, and trees only begin developing fragrance in significant quantities after about thirty years. Not only did traders, who were typically just sailing through, not have the botanical know-how to replant the tree, but they almost certainly would not be there to see a return on their investments if they did. [...]

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The main problem facing the sustainable harvest and continued survival of sandalwood in India [...] came from the advent of the sandalwood oil industry at the beginning of the twentieth century. During World War I, vast amounts of sandal were stockpiled in Mysore because perfumeries in France had stopped production and it had become illegal to export to German perfumeries. In 1915, a Government Sandalwood Oil Factory was built in Mysore. In 1917, it began distilling. [...] [S]andalwood production now ramped up immensely. It was at this time that Mysore came to be known as ‘the Sandalwood City’.

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Text above by: Ezra Rashkow. "Perfumed the axe that laid it low: The endangerment of sandalwood in southern India." The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Volume 51 (2014), Issue 1, pages 41-70. First published online 10 March 2014. DOI: 10.1177/0019464613515533 [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Italicized first paragraph/heading in this post added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[proud-spaniard]

Isaías 40, 8

[isaacsapphire]

Ok, so people who’s approach to race is “My race should be privileged, favored, and given power and funding” are very explicable; they want that for themselves and their families and maybe even sincerely for members of their race they don’t know personally. Self-interest and love for one’s family and tribe is understandable. Might be a problem for others, but their motives aren’t occulted.

People who’s approach to race is, “My race is inferior/bad/evil and should be disfavored/genocided” are a lot more confusing. Like, either you are mentally ill and hate yourself, actually mixed race and hate the parent/side of the family you most resemble, a masochist (sexually or otherwise), or the step 3: profit is achieved by a hidden step 2. In some cases the step 2 is pretty obviously achieved by being the lapdog of some people of another race who are doing explicable pro-themselves actions and are supporting a few [insert appropriate race-traitor term here] of the race they are in conflict with to boost their own race.

But… it’s become increasingly required for people who appear White to formally decry their own race as a condition of being middle class/white collar (college and company required classes and trainings) and not interact with or engage professionally with foods/clothing/stories/etc associated with other races. This makes the step 3: profit extremely explicable: the profit is being white collar and middle class.

The obvious next question is how the heck that happened; why would a majority race…

Wait a second, that happened almost at the exact moment when “White ethnics/hyphenated Americans” stopped being part of the American political discourse. “The Italian-American vote” used to be a topic of discussion and political attention, and mean jokes about people of Slavic heritage used to be an entire genre of humor. Institutions like Yale went almost instantly from discriminating against Italians in hiring to making White students write essays about their crime of being born White.

Is part of the driving force for DEI sublimated elite resentment towards the White ethnics? “Ok you can be a starbellied sneech White but now that’s a bad thing, lols.” Considering how transparent the pairing of resentment and assignment of Whiteness is in relation to how DEI sees Indian and Asian tech workers, there could be something there.

[kidokear]

"Your kind know nothing but hunger; purged all life on the upper layers, and yet they remain unsatiated... As do you."

I might be reading too much into this (literally), but I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how Gabriel singled out V1 in that statement, like V1 is different from the rest machines, like they're on a whole other level, which, I think, is the case in his eyes.

I think it's a neat glimpse into how Gabriel sees V1, regardless of how he feels about them.

[exercise-of-trust]

very very last minute art requests: your choice of andreth or post-angband maedhros? i know it's been a while since i was a tolkien main but. i do still love them so dearly... (valid if this is too last minute btw) (also! hi!)

HIIIII DEARLY BELOVED FRIEND!! thanks for your patience while i worked through all the rest of the request backlog; i thought about it and i couldn't choose between them so have both :D a maedhros who really should not be up and moving yet, “seriously maitimo the bags under your eyes are deep enough to store half our grain supplies for the year,” but if he sits still too long he gets antsy — and a small andreth, in a more peaceful time in ladros

also, while i was working on these i was possessed with the horrid idea of "the athrabeth but for mumblemumble reasons it's maedhros instead of finrod," allow me to share the vision:

Everyone Is Traumatized And No One Is Having A Good Time, Is The Idea. idk! it made me laugh anyway! hope you like them, thanks for stopping by!

(not currently taking requests; check back in like 3-6 months maybe)

[exasperatedoctopus]

I gotta say, having Jake and Nog blundering through classic video game side quests in a desperate attempt to make money in the background of Kira coming to the horrible, crushing realization that she is the government sure was a choice.

I’m watching a tragic old black and white film that should by all rights have me in tears, but some unhinged person has set it to the Yakety Sax soundtrack.

[urlocalmcflurry]

Chat this is so them

Mission doomed belongs to @overanalystwastaken

[dangdoona]

withered WIP

[confused-spood]

Fucking hate romance. My friend fucking stole my best friend from me and now she's never available to hang out cuz she already used up all of her permissions to leave the house with time spent with him, like what the hell?? I mean, I get that you guys are special or something, being romance and all, but girl, we've been planning to hang out for ages and it's like I suddenly don't exist?? Wtf????