#West Coast Coal Mine

[georgebbwbush]

the fact that the area southeast of seattle actually used to be coal country is a fun little fact that most people around here probably don't know

[gnomebud]

a large part of that is like. being southern is very important to me especially having gone to college in the northeast and realizing just how quickly people will invalidate that as being important to you. obviously having an accent comes with its own preconceived notions but it is also a signifier of who you are!!!!! and also i think it sounds soooo comforting and i wish i sounded like all of my dad’s cousins. sadly my parents were cursed to be californians

i do wish i had more of a southern accent. a lot of my extended family has the kentucky accent and then my more local extended family has another kind i can’t really identify and they are sooo comforting and familiar to me…

[mapping-elysium]

Coast Orb: Snow Shivers

WEST

More coast with abandoned buildings and piers

Pre-revolution effort to gentrify the coast

Coal city

Boom town from when revachol was powered mostly by coal

“in the shadow of Saint-Martin”

Supplanted by offshore petroleum and hydropower from Esperance

Infrastructure crumbled. Now a poor area “only the weakest remain”

Below the mines: L'Ossuaire Municipal, Revachol's underground cemetery

Les Petits rats attempt to to find Le Royaume (royal burial chambers)

EAST

Canal and Martinaise

[see PLAZA ORB] whitest part of town

Run-off point of a long forgotten canal

NORTH

Church

1 of 2 remaining stave churches

Originally of a set of 8 called Les Sept Souers “other six sisters were destroyed during the revolutions”

World’s end

Islets

Sea Fortress: The 114th Anti-Aircraft Division of the 4th Army of the Commune of Revachol

Résurrection: Popular spa for  Ozonne residents

A couple of other islets scattered and uninhabited

Martinaise Inlet

Bay of Revachol

1200 m depth

Ozonne

SOUTH

8/81 - raised motorway

Separates Martinaise from Jamrock

Buildings under the motorway (Labyrinthine alleyways)

The Pox

Once a park for the Old Military Hospital

In the 20s was a quarantine center during measles outbreak

Abandoned after the outbreak

Completely wild now, overrun by feral dogs and wolves

Police keep deepest corners cordoned off

Precinct 41

Line of motor garages 

Repurposed silk mill

Central Jamrock

Utility district - Library, florist, saramisizian restaurant

Brothels, drug dens and Zemlyaki(gang) chopshops

Built around lake formed by meteorite strike [Ship in the middle]

Below

sand poisoned with industrial run-off. The storm drainage. Hidden bunkers

NOTES: This is unfortunately the last of the notes I had written ahead of time so things may move slower. Hopefully I've made enough posts that you all can understand the format I'm going for. Joyce's Reality Lowdown is going to take a long time to work through

Shivers - Winter, slow to let go of Revachol, flecks some more wet snow from above...

You - Look around you.

Shivers - The snow falls lazily, making the beach sand paler still, mixing with the rust-coloured sewage run-off.

Shivers - And to think -- it seemed as though it were already spring.

You - How does it feel?

Shivers - Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. To distract yourself, you look around...

Replaced with "Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. The toes of your one bare foot are growing numb. To distract yourself, you look around..." if HasShoes() == false and (CheckEquipped("shoes_snakeskin_left") or CheckEquipped("shoes_snakeskin_right"))

Replaced with "Your teeth chatter as the snow melts on your exposed skin, running down your chest and your back in icy rivulets. Your bare feet are growing numb. To distract yourself, you look around..." if HasShoes() == false

You - What's in the west?

Shivers - More winding coastline lined with abandoned buildings. Crumbling piers, salt water lapping at their dark piles. Grey and red, forgotten city blocks. What remains of the pre-revolutionary effort to gentrify the coast.

You - And beyond that?

Shivers - The waters turn black. Coal City in the shadow of Saint-Martin, a boom town, back when coal extracted from countless shafts near the city was needed to power Revachol.

Shivers - No more. The coal was supplanted by petroleum from the ocean floor and hydropower from the Esperance. Everything crumbled. These days, only the weakest remain in Coal City. Their hopes of getting rich linger in the defunct shafts under their feet.

You - What is there?

Shivers - Below the old mines -- L'Ossuaire Municipal, Revachol's underground cemetery. *Les petits rats* brave the underground passageways, trying to get to Le Royaume...

You - Le Royaume...

Shivers - ...where the Filippian kings were interred, with their doctors and their admirals. Mausoleums, burial chambers, leaf gold still remains on the Double Door of the Morning.

You - That's where Cuno said he's gonna go...

Shivers - Yes. To peel the gold off with his fingernails.

You - Les *petits rats*...

Shivers - Children under 14. They go underground, looking for artefacts to sell to foreign museums -- and for fabled relics. Their parents let them. They go deeper...

You - Deeper...

Shivers - ...after rubies, melchiorite, lapis lazuli plundered from Safre and Seol during the time of the Suzerain. In the burial chambers of the kings: Grand Old Filippe, Guillaume II, and even in the mausoleum of Filippe the Opulent.

Shivers - Two kilometres underground, in a winding shaft along whose walls mirrors have been placed so that daylight may eternally fall upon the richest of all the kings.

Shivers - The mausoleum contains untold quantities of gold -- and that special, purest-of-the-pure magenta cocaine favoured by Revacholian royalty.

Electrochemistry - Did someone say *untold quantities of cocaine*? Drop everything immediately and go looking for this hoard!

Logic - How can it be pure if it's magenta?

You - Wipe the snow from your shoulder.

Shivers - Few *petits rats* return from the shafts -- and even fewer find what they're looking for. A small child steps out of a black tunnel, with silver trinkets in her pockets.

Shivers - All around her, white snow on the extinguished coke furnaces, and on the weather-worn shacks, where fathers beat their sons after drinking. The snow melts on your fingers, turning to water.

You - What's in the east?

Shivers - The canal you crossed to get here, and beyond it -- Martinaise proper, the district the police forgot to police. There is laughter, lights, attempts at entrepreneurial activity, cynicism.

Shivers - Someone is scraping snow off their windshield. At the roundabout, in the midst of which a statue of Filippe the III serves as a destination for grade-school field trips and a fine perch for winter birds.

You - And further...

Shivers - A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood.

Replaced with "A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. You've seen it. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood." if Variable["jam.dlc_truck_shivers_orb_done"]

Replaced with "A fenced-off yard. There's a truck belonging to a logistics company parked next to the gate. You've heard about it. Bright light from a building behind the fence reflects off its hood." if Variable["village.idiot_cocaine_dlc"]

Conceptualization - Clean white light, coming from the windows of a clean cube-shaped office building hidden amidst ruins. A secret...

You - What's in the north?

Shivers - The abandoned church. One of two remaining stave churches which were collectively called les Sept Soeurs. The other six sisters were destroyed during the Revolution.

You - And further north?

Shivers - A serpentine strip of land weaving its way into the Martinaise inlet. Unfortunates on the run -- from the law, from themselves -- sometimes hide out on nearby islets. Little dots in the ocean that are occasionally submerged when the tide is high and the weather foul.

You - And on the islets?

Shivers - The remains of a camp on a jagged piece of rock -- a tent, old dishes and cutlery. Long since abandoned. A hermit crab scuttles among the debris, looking for a new shell.

Shivers - Further out, the lights burn bright on Résurrection; way beyond Martinaise -- a popular spa destination for ample-bodied Ozonne kids with equally ample pockets.

You - And on the other side of the inlet?

Shivers - Then there's Ozonne... but the snow falls too thick. You cannot see that far.

You - Before that? Before the curtains are drawn...

Shivers - The Bay of Revachol, vastness, great depth -- over 1200 m at its deepest. Water, air brinier than here. It is crisscrossed by huge cargo ships bearing company logos: Wild Pines, ZAMM, Moriyn.

Shivers - And, at the farthest reaches of the Bay of Revachol -- the shadow of Coalition Warship Archer, on perpetual patrol duty, ready to unleash artillery fire if you were to rise up against the market. You shudder.

You - What's in the south?

Shivers - The raised motorway, 8/81, separating Martinaise from Jamrock. Vehicles whoosh past one another day and night, while those who reside in the labyrinthine alleyways beneath the motorway attempt to carry on with their lives in the snow and the slush. And south of the 8/81 is the Pox.

You - The Pox...

Shivers - ...was once a park, a place for reflection and recuperation for the patients of the Old Military Hospital. In the Twenties, it was used as a quarantine centre during a measles outbreak that killed many children. Most everyone has avoided the hospital and surrounding park ever since.

Shivers - The Pox is completely wild now. Evergreen thickets covered in snow and industrial dust. Feral dogs and even wolves roaming in packs. The police try to keep the deepest corners cordoned off.

You - But still...

Shivers - ...heavy drug users do slip through and hole up in the Old Military Hospital, hoping to find something to get high on among the hastily abandoned supplies. Or just to overdose in peace.

You - Further south...

Shivers - A line of motor garages with armoured carapaces, hunched in the cold. A mechanic is hard at work, patching up bullet holes in the side of a Coupris 40. These are the garages of Precinct 41. Snow settles on the roof of the re-purposed silk mill that serves as your station. Shivering RCM personnel hurry in and out of the main entrance.

Mack Torson - "Wonder if Vic's found his hetero-sexual life partner yet." The man in the fishnet wifebeater looks over at Chester McLaine.

Chester McLaine - "Damn, I don't know. Even a real *bröderbund* like that can't survive everything..."

Shivers - Around you, the snow continues to fall. To the west, the ocean swells.

You - No, it was home. I want more.

Shivers - The stairs descend -- to Central Jamrock. A man named Kuklov has a snow-covered stall there, in the market across the bridge. He sells kebab infested with fly larvae to your colleagues who believe eating it will make them immune to food poisoning.

Shivers - Snow falls on the utility district: the library, the florist, the Saramirizian restaurant that offers homemade wine. And also on the brothels and drug dens, and the chop shops of the zemlyaki.

Shivers - All of this built around a lake that formed in a meteorite strike. At the centre of this lake, there is a little ship. There are lights at the bottom of its hull. They are lights directed toward the sea floor, looking for something, like whiskers...

You - For what?

Shivers - A chill comes over you, crawling down your back. The sand under your feet is wet. Somewhere in the south, tarpaulin flap in the wind.

You - What's below me?

Shivers - Layer upon layer of sand poisoned with industrial run-off. The storm drainage. Hidden bunkers. Rats scuttle...

You - Tell me a secret of the sands, wind.

Shivers - Someone's stuffed a big old polar anorak into a concrete pipe under the boardwalk. It would keep you warm. You will probably never happen across it, but who knows.

You - Stomp your feet for warmth, brushing off the snow. [Finish thought.]

Kim Kitsuragi - "We should keep moving. Who knows when this snow will let up?"

[greeenchrysanthemums]

Hi yes I'm very normal about this au and was wondering in terms of the world, let's say for a hypothetical map that I want to hypothetically draw, are there any major biomes, important towns or landmarks, things of that nature?

Oooo, fun! I know this is a fairly simple question, but I will be giving you another long-winded answer, so bear with me.

For your hypothetical map there are three major kingdoms to take note of.

In the upper right portion of the map is Coral Crest. It is very well known for its booming economy, which they have their rich glass, fish, salt, and pearl trades to thank for. It is the largest and wealthiest of the three major kingdoms, and the castle is grand and luxurious where it sits on the crest of a large sea cliff. Beneath and above the capital would be many small fishing towns along the coast, and two or three more small villages in-land. It is important to the plot, as this is the kingdom they are/were at war with.

in the bottom center would be another kingdom, Floweret. This kingdom has little in ways of trees or other defining landmarks, it is mostly just low hills and grass lands. The land there would be rich in nutrients, though, and it is perfect for farming, which is where this land would get most of its trade from. It is the smallest out of the three and therefore has a very small, modest castle. This kingdom is pretty new compared to the others, being only around 30 years old. This place is not important to the plot outside of it being mentioned that they turned down an alliance with Grian, and that Jimmy lived there before moving to live with Tango.

South-east of this would be a small town called Sahara that is part of Floweret and borders a desert biome. This is where Grian and Mumbo met Scar for the first time. They are known for their grain alcohol.

The third kingdom, Wintertide, is the one our story takes place in. It is in the top left corner, a bit more north than Coral Crest and in a colder climate. There is a pretty big amount of distance between Wintertide and Coral Crest; it would take someone nearly a whole month to travel to or from either of them on foot, a few weeks by horse. Most of this kingdom is surrounded by dense forest and backed by a large, snowy mountain (Crystaline Mountain). Wintertide mostly relies on the gemstones and coal mined from their mountains for their livelihood, but they also bring in money with their decent livestock and farming trade.

On top of Crystaline Mountain is a village of the same name, Gem and Etho's home village. This is a mostly independent village, though they do pay taxes to Wintertide and rely on it for protection.

South-west, in between Floweret and Wintertide, is a decently sized trading town that is on neutral ground, where merchants from any land are welcome to go and do business. This area is thin in trees, but not as lacking as Floweret. The town is lively, eclectic, and colourful, with people from all over living in its borders. It doesn't really have a name, as it is not official to any of the kingdoms, but it is has acquired the nickname "The Monopoly" because of how easy it is to, well, set up a monopoly there.

There are other, smaller towns and villages scattered across the map between all three kingdoms, but they aren't important, and I have not thought of names for them. (feel free to suggest some!)

There are also other, far-off kingdoms, including some across the sea from Coral Crest, but they are never mentioned, and they are so far away from our main kingdoms that they don't even matter.

Disclaimer: most of these names are up for change, as I have honestly put very little thought into the map since most of the story takes place in the one kingdom. This is all bare minimum brainstorming that I have done over the past few days.

Anyway, if/when you hypothetically finish this map, please tag me or send it to me; I would love to see it! And if you have any further questions about the world, please feel free to send another ask. Or, if you would prefer, you can dm me!

[grandmagbignaturals]

Green party are really not doing themselves any favours....

Got an email arguing against the fast track projects (reasonable. Lefty consensus) specifically because of the west coast (Oof).

For non-kiwis the West coast (where I live) is mining country and also a temperate rainforest. Due to mine disasters and ecological concerns our mines have been mostly closed. Now we have no industry, poverty is rampant and everyone is struggling.

Even lefties here kind of want to see some mining come back, and the greens are often painted here as just sort of... wishing nobody lived here. That it was wilderness.

Which yknow. It isn't. People do live here, and we are overwhelmingly poor, and disproportionately disadvantaged in other ways (disability, queerness, neurodivergence). Our local mental health crisis team is one of the biggest in the country when taking the overall population into account.

So sending out an email that's like "oh won't you think of the poor West coast how dare the government try to do more mining there"

To a local it is just. Yikes. Maybe. Hm. Not a good political move in this specific location.

Unfortunately the entire population of the region fits into a suburb of Auckland so I'm sure the city greenies will love this email.

Ps. When coal is not mined here coal is shipped from Asia before it is burned. Is that. Better? It sure changes some equations.

[rjzimmerman]

“Spring in the Coal Regions,” 1944 by Hubert Davis. Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. John Lambert Fund, 1945.2

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

In a 2018 photograph taken by the Philadelphia artist Andrea Walls, a ghost floats toward the viewer. Draped in a white shroud and framed by power lines and splintered tree branches, the faceless figure is following train tracks that fall off the edge of the page.

Walls’ eerie portrait, called “Railroaded,” appears in the final section of a new exhibit about Appalachian art now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Placed alongside paintings of coal miners and graying manufacturing towns, its presence in “Layers of Liberty: Philadelphia and the Appalachian Environment” suggests something haunted about the city’s connections to Appalachia, which includes 70 percent of Pennsylvania, stretching from the northeastern corner of the state to Pittsburgh and the western border.

Curated by West Virginia native Ali Printz, an artist and curatorial fellow at the academy, the exhibit illustrates the ties between Philadelphia and the natural resource extraction—of Appalachian timber, coal, oil and gas—that fueled its growth for centuries. In Walls’ work, those ties are literal, the march of wooden slats visible beneath the phantom’s feet. They are also historical: In the 19th century, railroads made it possible to transport coal faster and farther, driving the expansion of mining in Appalachian Pennsylvania and making Philadelphia a manufacturing hub so mighty that it was known as “The Workshop of the World.” 

With this exhibit, Printz draws attention to that history of environmental abuse and its relationship to the silencing of Appalachian voices. “There’s a very close tie between this systemic erasure of positive contributions of Appalachia to American culture and outsider interests coming in for coal and timber and gas and all of the resources that they took from the region,” she said. That pattern of degradation and exploitation continues in the 21st century. For Americans who live outside Appalachia, “it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind, but for the people that are living in the region, it’s like a constant battle.” 

“Layers of Liberty” begins with pastoral depictions of a Pennsylvania wilderness untouched by industrialization. In these 19th-century images of sunsets and towering trees, European settlers and their descendants confront an awe-inspiring landscape. But as Printz points out, that landscape was already under assault and had been since colonization began. Deforestation was well under way, and the rivers were being used to move coal toward the coast. 

[irradiate-space]

1632 but instead of a West Virginia coal-mining town from 2000 being sent to Germany during the 30 Years' War it's The Will To Battle.

It's Romanova on September 6, 2454, and J.E.D.D. Mason and the Censor open the doors to the Temple of Janus in Romanova, sealed with stone garlands these last two hundred years, and at that moment Romanova is swapped from the west coast of Sardinia to a cozy spot on the Egyptian shore just west of Gaza, on 8 October 2023, with the initial Hamas offensive already completed, and Israel's response in full swing.

I held my breath. Leaves stirred in the dust as the wind blew through the open temple. I let one breath out and took another as the seconds of hush ticked by. The world hadn't ended yet. Mycroft looked at me. We were all ready to react, not to act. Whispers started, and craning of necks. Somehow it didn't occur to me until then to wonder what was in the temple. The ancient one would've had a statue of Janus with their double face looking both ways. I couldn't see from where I stood, but Su-Hyeon was clearly peering in at something. Except now there was a murmur, and a voice which pierced the murmur. "Nineveh?" It was a cutting voice, worried. A second voice: "Luna? Luna City, can you hear me? Hello?" Third: "Atlantis? Come in, Atlantis?" "Alexandria? What's going on? Alexandria? Exaudi me! Alexandria!" There was a rumble on the horizon, unlike thunder.

[therearelightningonthetatra]

The Kingdom of Prussia is a German survivor nation located in northern Germany along the coast of the Baltic Sea.

Doomsday and World War III Due to its unique circumstances being split between Allied and Soviet forces, Berlin managed to survive better than most major cities. During World War III, both the Soviet and Allied leadership believed the city could be captured, and with significant resources invested by both sides, it was not struck by nukes.

-100kt strikes- •Altenburg •Chemnitz •Damgarten •Dranske •Dresden •Fürstenberg/Havel •Groß Dölln •Halle •Leipzig •Magdeburg •Parchim •Peenemünde •Rechlin •Rostock •Strausberg •Wünsdorf •Zerbst •Zwickau •Zossen

-10kt strikes- -Bitterfeld chemical industry complex -Goitzsche brown-coal open cast mine -Görlitz brown-coal open cast mine -Nochten brown-coal open cast mine -Cottbus Air Base\Flugplatz Cottbus-Nord Airport -Jüterbog's Soviet army base -Soviet Jüterbog Airfield\Altes Lager airfield -Soviet Altenburg Airfield.

--The aftermath-- By the time the situation was fully realized, the leadership of the Soviets and the Allies had been destroyed and a nuclear attack could not be authorized for the city. With East German military leadership crippled by strikes on Moscow and Strausberg, East Berlin soon fell into chaos. After several days of rioting and fighting in the streets between citizens and Soviet/East German troops, the citizens eventually gained the upper hand and the troops surrendered. Before the the imprisoned Soviet troops could be executed, the allied forces in West Berlin intervened with the Berlin Wall border stations unmanned. Knowing the coming situation would require as many trained troops as possible, many of the East German and Soviet troops were distributed amongst allied units.

Christian-Sigismund, member of the former royal family of Prussia and last surviving heir of the house of Hohenzollern, after fallout in Potsdam killed his father Louis Ferdinand and nephew Georg Fredrich, was imprisoned in East Berlin at the time. Although reasons for this remain unknown it was likely due to his heritage and high status. He became a rallying figure for many of the German people, a symbol of their old greatness before Nazism destroyed the country, and was forced into a leadership role he likely would rather not have had. He was instrumental in unifying the people of East and West Berlin in the days afterward and organizing civilian salvage teams for food and resources. Some people claims Königsberg and the Kaliningrad Oblast

(Map based on: www.deviantart.com/mdc01957/ar…)

-Saxony- The Nationalist People's Republic of Saxony (Nationalistische Volksrepublik Sachsen) is a survivor nation based around Annaberg-Buchholz, a city in the south of former East Germany. It has declared itself the successor to the pre-DDR state of Saxony.

The southern region of East Germany was severely affected by the Doomsday attacks. Targets included Saxony's four largest cities, Chemnitz, Dresden, Leipzig, and Zwickau, along with the Soviet air base at Altenburg.

-Weimar- Weimar is a city-state in former East Germany controling most of the OTL German state of Thuringia.

[chaoswithkaycee]

A Farewell to Papaw

He was born in 1946, two days after Christmas, the third son of an Appalachian coal miner and his bitch wife. You may think I’m being too harsh on my great grandmother - but trust me, if you’d known her, you’d agree. West Virginia was a beautiful place to grow up, poor as they were, and Papaw told me stories all the time of his upbringing. He got into making moonshine shortly before he married my Gramma in 1964, when he was 17 and she was 16. I saw the picture once, of them on their wedding day. She was wearing a tea length, cream-colored dress, her curly brown hair pinned back and swept off her neck, and little lace gloves. He was wearing gray slacks and a mismatched jacket. At 17, he already had calluses on his hands and dirt in every pore, no matter how hard he scrubbed, from working in the mines with his daddy. He told me, when he showed me the picture, that right after they’d gotten married, he’d gone right back to work that day. He worked everyday to give “Annie” (my Gramma) everything she deserved. 

At some point, West Virginia lost its luster and they moved to Texas before their first child, my aunt, was born. Not too much later, their second child, my father, came around too. Around that time, Papaw gave up moonshining and got sober himself. Once he left rehab, he never touched alcohol again. Coal mines aren’t a thing here on the gulf coast, so he moved into the next most common working poor job we have here - a refinery plant. He worked at the same plant until he retired, some 40-ish years later. That job paid for him to buy a little three bedroom house with a shed, paid for the tools he used to maintain that house and yard, paid to keep his sweet wife at home to raise their kids and grow her rose garden and plant a pear tree in the middle of the backyard. That job paid for his kids school clothes and shoes, for all the food that filled their bellies - and they never went hungry, that was a rule he had from his own time as a poor child in the Appalachian region - paid for Annie to go and get her hair done at the salon down the road every other week, paid for the small donations they could muster at church. And when Annie got sick, it paid for her treatment and surgery, and eventually, her funeral. He taught himself how to make rosaries, and made her one every day from the time he retired to the time she passed away. 

Of course, all of that happened long before I came around (Except her death. She passed when I was 13). He was still working when I was born, though. I grew up in the same house that he raised my daddy and aunt in. He helped my mama put my bedroom together, bought a swingset for the backyard, and built a playroom add-on next to the laundry room, attached to what would become my bedroom. He and Gramma helped to baby proof the house, bought toys and books and clothes, and talked my terrified parents down a hundred times over. 

When my aunt announced the birth of her second child, mama was devastated to find out it was a girl. Now my aunt, daddy’s older sister, had given birth to both the first grandson and the first granddaughter, a month before I would be born (well, really, it was three months before I was supposed to be born, but I surprised them two months early). Mama said she sat on the swingset out in the backyard and cried. Papaw came out to talk to her, and asked her what was wrong. She said she was scared that I wouldn’t be special to him, since I wouldn’t be the first granddaughter. Papaw looked her dead in the eye and told her every baby that came into his life was special, and I was no different. He would love me just as much as the first two, and he’d love every one that came after just as much as the ones before. Years later, when I told this story back to him (as mama had told it to me), he told me a little bit more. “She was my special girl, your mama,” he said, adjusting his cannula and stopping to catch his breath. “Annie liked her well enough, but I loved that girl. Day she married your dad, she became my daughter, and I loved her just as much as my own baby girl. She’s still my special girl, tell her that next time you see her.” I did tell her, and she cried.

I was born two months too soon, and he was there at the hospital as soon as his shift was over. He sat and prayed with my mama, he gave money to my daddy so he could call off work to be with me and mama. When the doctor predicted I’d die, he told me I wasn’t allowed to. I don’t remember it, but he’s told the story back to me so many times that I feel like I can. I was in an incubator, in a diaper so small he said it couldn’t have been any bigger than a tissue (according to him), and I wasn’t crying or anything. Just fighting for every breath. And he said he told me I wasn’t allowed to die, because he hadn’t been allowed to hold me yet, and I would break his heart if I died before he could hold me.

I’m sure my survival is far more likely because of the dedicated team of nurses and doctors that took care of me around the clock for the next month, but my Papaw believes it’s because he told me to stay. Maybe both are true. I have so many memories of sitting in his lap while he learned how to use a computer, watching tv with him, laying on his chest and listening to his heartbeat. He always smelled like gasoline and tobacco, which are both considered extremely acrid smells, but they smelt like home and comfort to me. I remember how he used to hand me a comb and some oil and let me comb his beard and mustache, and even when I got snagged on knots he never yelled or gave any sign of discomfort. I remember the silver watch he wore, an anniversary gift from my gramma to celebrate their first year together. His hair was already thinning when I came around, but it still had a little curl to it, and he let me comb that too. 

I remember how he used to take me to the park in his pick up truck when the fair was in town, how he’d buy me a caramel apple even though I would just eat the caramel part. He always ate the apple for me. When he went to the grocery store, he’d go to the candy section and pick out all the banana Runts to bring home to me in a little bag. To this day, I can’t eat banana Runts without thinking of him. Even when he moved up to Tennessee and I only saw him once every few years, he made it a point to go down to the store and buy me all the banana Runts he could find, enough for me to snack on for the next week.

When I came out of the closet, I expected him to stop loving me. To tell me that it was wrong, that God would be angry, that he was angry. I was so scared of his reaction that I hid it from him for almost ten years after I told everyone else. He found out when my dad accidentally mentioned my girlfriend at the time, and he called me to talk about it. “Monkey,” he said, because that was his nickname for me, “tell me about this girl.” And I did. I told him about how her smile made my insides feel like melted butter, how she smelled like chocolate dipped strawberries and laughed at all my jokes. “Sounds like she makes you feel like Annie made me feel.” He told me. Gramma had already been gone for awhile at this point, and he sounded sad when he said it, but I knew what he meant. “Don’t be afraid to tell me something ever again, baby girl. You’re always my Monkey, and I love you no matter what.”

Last time I saw him was in 2018, a few months after that phone call. He was already pretty sick then, and a little confused. He told me probably a hundred times that I was his Monkey and he loved me so much. I thought it was because he forgot he already told me, but now I wonder if he knew I wouldn’t see him again and he wanted to make sure he said it enough times to fill up my life when he was gone. He wouldn’t let me comb his beard this time, but he sat and played checkers with me for awhile, then candyland with me, my sister, and my dad.

Papaw wasn’t perfect. But he loved me, and I loved him. He helped shape who I am, taught me kindness and steadiness to counteract my chaos. I got the news yesterday that he isn’t expected to make it another week, and I’m a wreck. He always told me that as long as you love someone, as long as you remember them, they’re not gone. So I thought I’d tell y’all about him, and maybe y’all could love him and remember him too. Thanks for letting me ramble.

[theseventhoffrostfall]

(Fallout Anon)

The End Times had come in the time of the Last Century, or as the textbooks of times refer to the 21st Century, during one of the final months of the liturgical year 2077. The fires- known now in secular texts as the Deluge of Flame, or the Second End in the Original Scriptures- had started from the East Lands at a place known as the Capital and rolled towards the Western Lands consuming all the Lands Between. Only when the Great Fire touched the sea did it finally die, its many-tongued mouths still full of the charred remains of all of God’s creations, be they man, animal, or tree.  

It was recorded by the few survivors that had found dwellings in the great structures those before had called the Vaults or in the caves in the once prosperous mountains of Medicine Bow, Beartooth and St. Helens (now known to us as the colonies of Medicine Men, the Bearteeth Tribes, and the Confederation of the Helenian Tribes respectively) that the flames and the explosions were so great that several new faults had opened in the Earth, in which the rivers that had not been boiled by the great heat had now flowed through. Several of these faults have also created miniature ranges along the Southwestern territory. One such range bisects what was once the Pre-End state of Montana and now runs into the territories of Washington, forming what is now called the William-Cascadian Shift (named after the first explorer of the range Davis Williams and the city of Cascadia in Washington). It is here that many survivors of the End Times settled here, and established mining towns along the fault, establishing a mining empire of coal and clay materials which is sent out along the USW (United Southwest) Railroad to places in the West, and to some places in the Southeastern cities. Although it seems there may be a large human presence in the mountains, it had been estimated that roughly seventy-five percent of the area has not been explored or settled for a variety of reasons- either poor yield of materials or general inaccessibility.  

That was what we had previously thought, until the liturgical year 2249 following the Great Tremors of 2248, in which a new pathway had been opened into the deepest parts of the range. It was believed, by rough estimates of the New Billings Expedition Company, roughly fifty miles long, passed away from what is known as the Clark Fork River, and connected at the state of Idaho (or more accurately, thirty miles away from the Boise Confederacy).  

Man, this is good stuff. I like the sort of folkloric/mythical start that captures the lost-in-time aspects of the death of the old world and birth of the new, that stuff is written nicely. I also like the details with the survivors building nations, exploring, building railroads and extracting resources. Particularly considering Interplay and Bethesda seem to consider anything away from the coasts to be flyover country and not really care about what's happened to them post-war (and consider the notion that they could've built their own nations and governments independent of the much-more-heavily-targeted coasts to be ridiculous)

I'd love a game or even book series that follows this frontier/explorer theme in a hostile but rich mountain Wasteland

[kitty-pelosi]

actually a bit of lesser known history:

Appalachians have a particular reputation for militancy among their deeply proud communities (often mixed indigenous, black, and white) and it’s because of labor actions staged at the beginning of the 20th century which are referred to as the West Virginia Coal Wars which included the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)- the largest labor action and insurrection against the U.S. government to date.

essentially, Appalachian coal miners lived and worked in company coal towns where everything from the food you ate, the house you had - the furniture in the house, the tools of your trade, and your income were owned by the coal company in a true geographic monopoly. Miners were not paid in USD, but rather company credit which could be used to buy food from company owned stores and pay rent on your company owned house and tools. This was a terrible situation which rendered Appalachian miners effective serfs - they could not move, as they were paid in a currency which was useless anywhere but the company town. With resentment against mining management growing, the workers began to organize with the help of socialists.

It wasn’t getting anywhere. Socialist party activists would go on to supply rifles and ammunition to the miners, which prompted the mining companies to hire the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to guard their mines. Don’t be fooled by the name, the BFD was a private for-hire army. Baldwin-Felts mercenaries began confiscating weapons and evicting miners who were associated with the Socialist party from the towns, rendering them homeless in the middle of the mountains with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs, if that. This is what Baldwin-Felts did, they were known Union busters who favored violence in their methods against organizing workers. They had a reputation for this (see: the Ludlow Massacre). The first family they evicted was a woman with her kids, very visibly in the public eye. It was a threat to the workers.

obviously, the miners fought back.

There were a lot of company towns with ensnared Appalachian miners working on them dotted all throughout Appalachia - from Pennsylvania to Kentucky (a very very large region, with many people larger than many countries). As these strikes escalated, the President and the United States Army, along with the West Virginia State Police, would cooperate with Baldwin-Felts mercenaries to put down the strikes - lethally. The most infamous event was the Battle of Blair Mountain, in which a confrontation between Felts agents and the striking miners turned into open warfare. For over a week skirmishes took place between state police, Felts agents, and striking miners, with millions of rounds fired. But eventually the US Army arrived, and many of the miners were unwilling to kill veterans, having been soldiers in WWI themselves. Unfortunately, this would lead to the defeat of the strike, with many miners fleeing. It became a habit of theirs to stash their socialist-given weapons in the woods and underneath houses in hidden compartments or tunnels (your reblogged photo).

This was an immense victory for capitalists and the government, as miner union membership plummeted following the battle. And sadly, victors write the history, and I don’t doubt that it is east coast writers and the government which have had a hand in mislabeling Appalachians as a bunch of white toothless gun-toting brother-fucking hicks. Ask most Americans what a Melungeon is and they’ll look at you like you’ve sprouted a third eye - but this is a rich ethnic group in Appalachia with a multi-racial history. And they were the strikers who lost.

Coal miner's child using a hole in the door to enter a bedroom with a smoking pipe in one hand and a gun in the other in Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. 1938

[ffsmnrk1989]

"Qullissat" as performed on Alternativfestivalen 1975

While watching The Joy of ABBA on YouTube, I heard that there was this growing protest to ABBA's win of Eurovision. This protest culminated, in 1975, in a festival called Alternativfestivalen (Swedish for "Alternative Festival"; precursor to this year's Falastinvision, in a way) to protest not just ABBA's win, but also the commercialisation of music; it ran on what is now the present-day SVT2 (opposite Eurovision itself -- hosted by Sweden that year, '75 -- on the sibling channel, SVT1). I'd already heard "Doin' the Omoralisk Schlagerfestival"; but the festival itself also introduced me to acts I'd not heard, chief among them being Fungus (with "Kaap'ren Vaaren" ), and the subject of this post, Greenlandic rock group Sumé -- which I'd actually heard several years back, believe it or not, on Progressadelic. The song here is "Qullissat", which protested the closing of the mining town on the Greenlandic island of Disko 3 years earlier (the previous year it'd appeared on their album Inuit Nunaat, when the incident was still raw and fresh in Greenlanders' minds). ORIGINAL INTRO: PER BERTHELSEN: Pillugu pisut erinaarsut "Qullissat" oqaluttuarpoq Malik Høegh-om. MALIK HØEGH: I 1920-erne blev oprettede en kulmineby på ø Disko for Grønland. Men i 1972 bestemte de danske myndigheder at lukkede den byen - fordi at den regeringen mente, at den gik med underskud. Arbejderne mente at mindet til, at minen kunne klare sig selv, men regeringens beslutning var stærkere. Arbejderne blev forflyttet ned langs den Grønlandske vestkysten hvor der hverken var arbejde eller bolig til; arbejderne blev forflyttet til ulykke. "Qullissat". THE SONG: Aningaasat naalagaapput Naalakkersuisunut Aqqutaapput perlunnut Ha iar! Piumasaapput Pissutaapput Iluanaapilunnernut! Suunngivippusi sulisusi Suunngivippullu isummasi! Qullisat matuneqarput Sulisut tununneqarput Nuuttitaapput perlunnut Ha iar! Ajagaasut Isigaasi Isummasi suniikkamik? Suunngivippusi nipaatsusi Suunngivippullu isummasi! Qullissat Qullissat Qullissat Qullissat TRANS:ATION: PER BERTHELSEN (in Greenlandic): Here to tell the events of the song "Qullissat" is Malik Høegh. MALIK HØEGH (in Danish): In the 1920s, a coal mining town was established on the island of Disko in Greenland. But in 1972, the Danish authorities decided to close the town - because the government believed it was running at a loss. The workers believed that the mine could support itself, but the government's decision was stronger. The workers were moved down the west coast of Greenland where there was neither work nor housing; the workers were forced away to ruin. This is "Qullissat". Money is in power It controls the authorities It is the road to ruin Alas! People lust for it And it is the reason For the goddamn profiteering!

You workers count for nothing Your opinions count for nothing!

Qullissat was shut down The workers let down Forced away to ruin Alas! You saw how they were pushed away Where were your voices?

You who stay silent, you count for nothing Your opinions count for nothing!

Qullissat Qullissat Qullissat Qullissat

[beckleysbooks]

The Glass Ceiling

Thirty days have passed, which has given me time for reflection and consideration of the adjustments that lie before us in our new reality. 

Here in America, I seem to always make more progress with my research and writing during the winter months. Weather and the lack of garden to attend to probably account for this additional “author time”. I’m currently drafting the chapter in my upcoming historical fiction sequel, The Gilded Age, that relates to the Irish immigrant's entry into this country during the 19th century. The more fortunate and entrepreneurial Irish settlers arrived in this country during the 1820-1830's. This is the group that my ancestors belong to. However, from the 1840-1870's, a potato famine occurred in the Emerald Isle causing hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation. Still, no fewer than 1.5 million Irish were able to escape and arrive on our eastern seaboard.  

The Irish immigrants were not welcomed due to their willingness to work for lower wages. They displaced many of the African Americans on the east coast of their jobs. There were other Irish who moved inland, mostly through Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and were put to work in coal mines. The story is told of how mine workers back then were mainly divided into two groups, “Miners” and “Mine Workers”. “Miners” were mainly those from England and Wales and men who had been working the coal fields for some time before the arrival of the Irish. A caste system was carried over from the old days in Europe whereby the Irish immigrants became “mine workers”. Both miners and mine workers reported to work by 7am, the miners entering the shaft to free the coal from the seam face, and they were usually finished by lunch time, leaving of course, the mine workers to pile up the lumps, sometimes filling three to four cars, before the end of their shift at 6pm. It was not uncommon for the mine workers to spend most of their day working in waist-deep water and for their troubles, receive only one third of the pay for their labor. 

Irish immigrants were also used to fill up the factories that were burgeoning at that time in history. They also were instrumental in laying the railroad track for the Union Pacific Railway, which opened up the entire country in 1869. Needless to say, Irish lives were expendable and these immigrants were surely underappreciated for their hard labor. Matter of fact, they were despised and maligned. Most were condescendingly called “Bridget” and worse. The Irish labor activists, otherwise known as “Molly Maguires”, who were petitioning management within these large companies for better working conditions, were tracked down, prosecuted, and sentenced to death. The Irish mine workers who were either crushed by collapsing shafts or suffocated by leaking gases within the earth, were subject to a more excruciating death. And yet, it was the public’s prejudice against them as immigrants that affected all of the Irish. They were referred to as “damned drunken, ignorant papist”. At least the immigrants from this period of our history weren’t castigated as murderers and rapists who eat cats and dogs, which is the malarky we’ve just been witness to recently. 

In H.W. Brand’s book, “American Colossus”, he addresses another late 19th century prejudice in the chapter, “Meet Jim Crow”. Brand highlights the story of Ida Wells who was born into a slave family, eventually goes to live with her aunt in Tennessee, and becomes a school teacher. One day while traveling on the Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern train, the conductor had her physically removed from her first-class seat and placed in the smoking car against her will. A court case followed in which Ida was awarded $500 compensation for her troubles, only to have the Tennessee Supreme Court reverse the lower court’s order. Ida had to return the $500 award and ended up paying $200 in court costs. The famed Booker Washington weighed in on this incident, but in the end admitted that conscience might motivate some folks, but conscience is fickle. Brand writes, “Democracy was even less reliable than conscience ... (and) that democracy sooner or later expressed the will of the majority, whatever courts or constitutional amendments might declare. ... Blacks were a minority in America and always would be; for them to demand what the majority wasn’t ready to give was to spit into the wind.”  

Chief Justice John Marshall Harlan had his own thoughts on the subject. He would write the majority opinion (7-1) in the Plessy v Ferguson case stating that segregation did not perpetuate race prejudice. Quoting, “This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law mandating separate railcars for the two races.” Justice Harlan alluded to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case in his remarks, "To assert separateness is not to declare inferiority ... It is simply to say that following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these widely separated races to intermix.” Thus, began the “Separate but Equal” policy that became the law of the land in the United States. The Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s officially struck down this notion that a separate section on public transport or restroom facility or even a drinking fountain could be passed off as equal. However, legislation didn’t change the prejudices that lie deep-seeded in the minds of many Americans. I attended a school in a small, almost entirely Caucasian community. I can attest that our schools were very much different than the mostly black community’s ones not too far down the road. A full decade after acknowledging separate is not equal, nothing much has changed the minds of the people.  

I have a confession to make. I was one of them. Back in 1980 I was attending university and was loosely aware that women had finally been granted their right to vote. The 19th Amendment to our Constitution was inserted on August 18, 1920. What I didn’t know was that many other countries around the world had already made this mental leap, that women should be considered “equal” enough to have the right to vote. By the way, New Zealand was the first self-governing country in the world in which the women had the right to vote. With Lord Glasgow’s signing off the “New Electoral Act” on September 19, 1893, the proverbial glass ceiling had been busted open. It just took Americans twenty-seven years to come to grips with this concept. It wasn’t for the lack of trying, as I write in my upcoming sequel how Susan B. Anthony crashed the Independence Day ceremony at the Centennial Fair in Philadelphia. She and two friends read their own version of the declaration of independence whilst the officials looked on in disbelief and a cannonade was exploding in the background in celebration of the moment. 

Back to my confession. I was fortunate to be an official attendee of the 1980 Republican Convention in Detroit. That was the one which first nominated Ronald Reagan. The evening events were concluded late and I was traveling by public transport back to my vehicle miles away. It was well past midnight. The bus was full of Republicans and I recall one lady turning to me and asking why I was wearing a button against the proposed ERA Amendment being added to the party’s platform? I knew the “party line” by heart and began the recitation I had been taught. She wasn’t buying the argument that women weren’t equal. Here’s a synopsis of what she and a few others refused to buy in to: “That the ERA conflicted with the God-given differences between men and women and disregarded traditional family and gender roles embedded in their religious beliefs.” Phyllis Schlafly was the most outspoken anti-ERA proponent. Her claim was that God’s mission for women was to give their families spiritual and emotional guidance and the Equal Rights Amendment threatened this mission and would also force women to question their value. Who else was pushing this appeal to men’s natural disposition to prejudice? - any number of religious groups including that of the fundamentalist Christians and the Catholic Church. 

Neither this pro-ERA woman nor I officially won over each other in our late-night debate, but I certainly could not have been considered a winner when I realized after she got off at her stop, that my car was in a lot two stops back! Yes, I was dropped off at some obscure Detroit neighborhood and had to find my way back at 12:30am. That was some penitence that I deserved and may elaborate on in a future blog, but I can vouch that people even today will hold on to their prejudice that women should not be treated equally in society, within the family, nor the workplace. I will never live down the shame I carry from that awful bus ride. 

So, reflecting back on the election result some thirty days ago. What chance did a daughter of a mix-raced immigrant family have of becoming the President of the United States? All good children are schooled up that anyone can become president in this land of opportunities, but what is the reality? How or when will these glass ceilings that hang over our nation’s immigrants, our citizens who aren’t Caucasian, and in general, women? If the rumblings coming out of our post-election/pre-inauguration are any indication, this current seemingly impenetrable glass ceiling is going to get double-paned. I sincerely hope that this isn’t the case, but we’re working with long-held, deep-seeded prejudices becoming once again du jour. I guess only time will tell.  

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.20 (before 1970)

284 – Diocletian is chosen as Roman emperor. 762 – During the An Shi Rebellion, the Tang dynasty, with the help of Huihe tribe, recaptures Luoyang from the rebels. 1194 – Palermo is conquered by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. 1407 – John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans, agree to a truce, but Burgundy would kill Orléans three days later. 1441 – The Peace of Cremona ends the war between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan, after the victorious Venetian enterprise of military engineering of the Galeas per montes. 1695 – Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed by the forces of Portuguese bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho. 1739 – Start of the Battle of Porto Bello between British and Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins' Ear. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British forces land at the Palisades and then attack Fort Lee. The Continental Army starts to retreat across New Jersey. 1789 – New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights. 1805 – Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, premieres in Vienna. 1815 – The Second Treaty of Paris is signed, returning the French frontiers to their 1790 extent, imposing large indemnities, and prolonging the occupation by troops of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia for several more years. 1820 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi) from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this incident.) 1845 – Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado. 1861 – American Civil War: A secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate government. 1873 – Garnier Expedition: French forces under Lieutenant Francis Garnier captured Hanoi from the Vietnamese. 1900 – The French actress Sarah Bernhardt receives the press at the Savoy Hotel in New York at the outset of her first visit since 1896. She talked about her impending tour with a troupe of more than 50 performers and her plans to play the title role in Hamlet. 1910 – Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosí, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution. 1917 – World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins: British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back. 1936 – José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, is killed by a republican execution squad. 1940 – World War II: Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers. 1943 – World War II: Battle of Tarawa (Operation Galvanic) begins: United States Marines land on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore guns and machine guns. 1945 – Nuremberg trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg. 1947 – The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, who becomes the Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey in London. 1959 – The Declaration of the Rights of the Child is adopted by the United Nations. 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation. 1968 – A total of 78 miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company's No. 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia in the Farmington Mine disaster. 1969 – Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. 1969 – Occupation of Alcatraz: Native American activists seize control of Alcatraz Island until being ousted by the U.S. Government on June 11, 1971.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow (NYT) At New York University, the police swept in to arrest protesting students on Monday night, ending a standoff with the school’s administration. At Yale, the police placed protesters’ wrists into zip ties on Monday morning and escorted them onto campus shuttles to receive summonses for trespassing. Columbia kept its classroom doors closed on Monday, moving lectures online and urging students to stay home. Harvard Yard was shut to the public. Nearby, at campuses like Tufts and Emerson, administrators weighed how to handle encampments that looked much like the one that the police dismantled at Columbia last week—which protesters quickly resurrected. And on the West Coast, a new encampment bubbled at the University of California, Berkeley. Less than a week after the arrests of more than 100 protesters at Columbia, administrators at some of the country’s most influential universities were struggling, and largely failing, to calm campuses torn by the conflict in Gaza and Israel.

Haiti health system nears collapse as medicine dwindles, gangs attack hospitals and ports stay shut (AP) On a recent morning at a hospital in the heart of gang territory in Haiti’s capital, a woman began convulsing before her body went limp as a doctor and two nurses raced to save her. But the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the Cite Soleil slum was running low on key medicine to treat convulsions. “The medication she really needs, we barely have,” said Dr. Rachel Lavigne, a physician with the medical aid group. It’s a familiar scene repeated daily at hospitals and clinics across Port-au-Prince, where life-saving medication and equipment is dwindling or altogether absent as brutal gangs tighten their grip on the capital and beyond. They have blocked roads, forced the closure of the main international airport in early March and paralyzed operations at the country’s largest seaport, where containers filled with key supplies remain stuck. “Everything is crashing,” Lavigne said. Haiti’s health system has long been fragile, but it’s now nearing total collapse.

UK passes law to send asylum seekers to Rwanda (BBC) After months of wrangling, the British Parliament has passed a controversial bill, paving the way for asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda. It’s a flagship immigration policy for the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, who said it would make clear “if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay". About 52,000 asylum seekers could be sent to the East African country. Yvette Cooper, who oversees interior policies for the Labour opposition, called the plan an "extortionately expensive gimmick". And charities describe it as a "breach of international law". In a statement, Mr Sunak said: "We introduced the Rwanda bill to deter vulnerable migrants from making perilous crossings." On Tuesday morning, after the passing of the bill, my colleagues witnessed about 30 migrants boarding a small boat on a beach in northern France. Five other people, including a child, died as they attempted to cross the Channel.

Russian Attacks Crush Factories and Way of Life in Ukrainian Villages (NYT) Its towering smokestacks once puffed out clouds of steam. In gigantic machine rooms, turbines whirled around the clock. Furnaces burned trainloads of coal. In the Soviet era, the Kurakhove Heating and Power Plant gave rise to the town around it in Ukraine’s east, driving the local economy and sustaining the community with wages and heating for homes. “Our plant is the heart of our city,” said Halyna Liubchenko, a retiree whose husband worked his entire career in nearby coal mines that fed the facility. That heart is barely beating now, partly destroyed by artillery. The plant is among the last still operating in Ukraine’s Donbas region, once the country’s center of heavy industry and now a focal point of Russian ground offensives that are ravaging towns and cities along the front line. War in eastern Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of people, reduced cities to ruins and displaced millions of people. It has also all but destroyed the factories and plants that were for years an important driver of Ukraine’s economy.

Modi Calls Muslims ‘Infiltrators’ Who Would Take India’s Wealth (NYT) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday called Muslims “infiltrators” who would take India’s wealth if his opponents gained power—unusually direct and divisive language from a leader who normally lets others do the dirtiest work of polarizing Hindus against Muslims. Mr. Modi, addressing voters in the state of Rajasthan, aimed his emotional appeal at women, addressing “my mothers and sisters” to say that his Congress opponents would take their gold and give it to Muslims. Implications that Muslims have too many babies, that they are coming for Hindus’ wives and daughters, that their nationality as Indian is itself in doubt are often made by representatives of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Mr. Modi’s use of such language himself, as he campaigns for a third term in office, raised alarm that it could inflame right-wing vigilantes who target Muslims.

Asia’s Heat Wave Scorches Hundreds of Millions (NYT) Hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia were suffering on Monday from a punishing heat wave that has forced schools to close, disrupted agriculture, and raised the risk of heat strokes and other health complications. The weather across the region in April is generally hot, and comes before Asia’s annual summer monsoon, which dumps rain on parched soil. But this April’s temperatures have so far been unusually high. In Bangladesh, where schools and universities are closed this week, temperatures in some areas have soared above 107 degrees Fahrenheit, or 42 degrees Celsius. Those numbers don’t quite capture how extreme humidity makes the heat feel even worse. The heat wave could lead to more cases of certain diseases, including cholera and diarrhea, said Be-Nazir Ahmed, a public health expert in Bangladesh. Mr. Ahmed said that people should ideally try to work earlier in the morning and later at night, when temperatures are lower. But that is easier said than done in a country where many people work outdoors.

Mama’s boys and marital strife are no joke in today’s China (Washington Post) Tales about evil mothers-in-law and marital bust-ups have landed China’s wildly popular ultrashort dramas in trouble with official censors. Beijing is cracking down on the format’s allegedly “inappropriate” plots about marital strife for fear they will hurt the government’s campaign encouraging families to stay together and have more children. Huang Zhongjun, a scholar at Zhejiang Normal University who has studied micro-dramas, says the format has proven harmful to society in part because viewers are fed unrealistic plots that “vilify people and amplify conflicts” within families. Young people, who spend more time with their screens than real people, are becoming “emotionally deficient” and “unwilling to get married or have children,” he added. Censors this month called out mother-in-law dramas for straying from “mainstream values” approved by the Chinese Communist Party. Since China’s population began to shrink in 2022, officials have stepped up controls on “unhealthy” portrayals of love and marriage in popular culture. At the same time, they have dialed up propaganda to encourage young couples to settle down and get busy having children.

Taiwan rattled by more than 200 quakes, but no major damage (Reuters) Taiwan’s quake-hit eastern county of Hualien was rattled by more than 200 aftershocks late on Monday and early on Tuesday, but only minor damage was reported and no casualties and major chipmaker TSMC said it saw no impact on operations. Largely rural and sparsely populated Hualien was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on April 3 that killed at least 17 people, and there have been more than 1,000 aftershocks since. Buildings across large parts of northern, eastern and western Taiwan, including in the capital, Taipei, swayed throughout the night, with the largest quake measuring a 6.3 magnitude. All were very shallow.

Iran’s Israel strike coincided with crackdown on dissent at home, activists say (Reuters) The same day Iran launched its first ever direct attack on Israel it embarked on a less-noticed confrontation at home, ordering police in several cities to take to the streets to arrest women accused of flouting its strict Islamic dress code. Iranian authorities insist that their so-called Nour (Light) campaign targets businesses and individuals who defy the hijab law, aiming to respond to demands from devout citizens who are angry about the growing number of unveiled women in public. But activists and some politicians say the campaign appears aimed not only at enforcing mandatory hijab-wearing, but also at discouraging any wider dissent at a vulnerable moment for the clerical rulers. Under Iran’s sharia, or Islamic law, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Offenders face public rebuke, fines or arrest. The laws have become a political flashpoint since protests over the death of a young woman in the custody of the country’s “morality police” in 2022 spiralled into the worst political turmoil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Israelis Prepare to Mark Passover, a Festival of Freedom, With Hostages Still in Gaza (NYT) Many Israelis were in a somber mood on Monday as they prepared to usher in Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, saying they would mark the holiday rather than celebrate it, with more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza. The number of hostages believed to be alive is unclear, and with negotiations with Hamas captors at an impasse, there is little prospect of their imminent release. The holiday is to start after sundown on Monday with the traditional Seder meal. By tradition, this is a joyful gathering of family and friends who follow a ritual order of blessings over symbolic foods as they retell the biblical story of the bondage and suffering of the ancient Israelites in Egypt and their exodus and liberation.

Report says Israel has not provided evidence of widespread militancy among UNRWA staff (Washington Post) Israel has not provided evidence that significant numbers of workers with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees are tied to militant groups, but the agency must implement more robust vetting of staff members to ensure neutrality and work to reestablish trust with donors, a highly anticipated report said Monday. Former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, who led the group, called the agency “indispensable and irreplaceable” in a news conference Monday. “As we speak, at this critical time, UNRWA has a vital role in the humanitarian response in Gaza,” she added. The findings released Monday will largely come as a relief to the embattled agency—pitched into an existential crisis in January after Israel alleged that a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks and that more than 10 percent had ties to militant groups. Sixteen major donors, including the United States, promptly suspended funding worth about $450 million, nearly half of UNRWA’s budget for the year.

74 is the new 71 (Yahoo) New research suggests that 74 is the new 71. Our perception of when “old age” begins is shifting, with most people believing this phase of life begins later than they used to, according to a new study published in the journal Psychology and Aging. While the study didn’t look at why this shift has occurred, experts say it makes sense—and is probably a good thing; humans on average are living longer than ever, and examples of people living full lives well beyond retirement age abound. Experts on aging—some of whom are in their 70s and 80s themselves—aren’t surprised, and say it’s part of a promising shift away from negative stereotypes about what getting older means. “Now, in most people’s daily lives, they know somebody who is 100,” Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who researches mindset and aging, tells Yahoo Life. In the past, “you didn’t know anybody who lived to 100.”

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