#botswana special

[itsduckinghard]

James' sunglasses, then and now ❤

[the-wanderer]

[wizardyke]

i need to word this post carefully but i think theres some sort of connection between the over pathologising of completely normal things and american's seeming lack of innate curiosity about the world. who would EVER want to know about such a NICHE and OBSCURE topic!* you must be audhd!

*the topic in question will literally be like. the country of botswana.

[uncharismatic-fauna]

African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus)

Habitat & Distribution

Inhabits mainly savannahs and scrublands

Native to southern and eastern Africa, from Ethiopia to Botswana

Physical Description

Weight: 18 to 36 kg (40 to 79 lb)

Height at shoulder: 60 to 75 cm (24 to 30 in)

Painted wild dogs have a canine physic, with lean bodies, square faces, and large, round ears

The fur pattern is highly variable; a black base with with gold and yellow patches unique to each individual

Behaviour

African wild dogs live in permanent packs, consisting of up to 27 individuals; these packs are generally made up of family units, and led by a mated pair

They are specialized hunters, able to bring down kudu, gazelles, impala, bushbuck, and wildebeast

Although they have no natural predators, African wild dogs may be killed in encounters with lions

Key Advantages

Painted wild dogs have both speed and endurance; they're able to sustain speeds of up to 59 kph (37 mph) for nearly 5 kilometers (3 miles)

They have a strong bite, and large canines which can inflict major damage

Photo by Megan Shersby

[walterwhited]

TOP GEAR | BOTSWANA SPECIAL

[clemmiewemmie]

idc if its cringe or whatever to say to people but i legit ugly cried at the end of the final episode of the grand tour.

these men are the ones that showed me how absolutely beautiful the world is, how much fun travelling can be if you go to the right places with the right people, and that you dont have to be the first person ever to do something for it to be an adventure. cause i used to go "man it'd be fun to go on a real adventure out into the wilderness, having to battle the elements and have to pretty much fight my way through the world" but top gear (and by extension the grand tour) showed me it's still out there and it can be whatever you choose to make of it. these are they guys who motivated me to go on a week long 370 km cycling trip through my country a couple years back for my highschool graduation, and to get in shape for it as well. i attribute me losing 12 kgs of fat to these guys' tv shows. i attribute me continuing to stay in shape to these guys, as well as my current enjoyment of sports. i'm thinking of doing a damn week long ultra marathon on some desert island because of them, as well as climbing mont blanc.

their mongolia special i think fundamentally changed me as a person. their botswana special definitely fundamentally changed me as a person. and to then see the relics of that very special 22 years later, at the exact site where it happened... just made something in me break i think. i legitimately cried until snot ran out of my nose when i realised they were going to the lakebed because i remember thinking "god that looks fun" when i saw the original botswana special, and i got completely sidewinded by them going there on the final leg of their final journey together.

i definitely wouldnt have been the same person i am today as i would have been without james may, richard hammond and jeremy clarkson doing insane, stupid things with some of the most beautiful and exotic places in the world as a backdrop.

[candyfloss-kittens]

22 years….

I've known of the trio for… as long as I can remember, given my dad would watch them way back when they were still on Top Gear. I don't know when Top Gear first aired on TV in New Zealand, I guess when the show first started to get popular world wide? I don't know…. Though, I do have some very vague recollections of seeing news reports about Hammond's big crash back in 2006 when I was 8, but I really don't know. I might've just heard of it back then, not necessarily seen anything about it.

Now, while I had watched bits of Top Gear over the years, and back in primary school, I'd tend to hang more around boys at school rather than girls (I do recall at one point with the desk layouts I was the only girl in one group alongside five other boys), and if I recall correctly, a lot of them would talk about Top Gear. I think I might've even watched some of Top Gear with one of my closest childhood friends many years ago, we might've even watched the Botswana special together when it first aired in NZ, though I genuinely can't remember if that actually happened or not (my memory is… not great). But given me and him did do a lot of things together, and we were both interested in most of the same things, it's possible (I've not seen that old friend in years now, though. Last I heard, he's got three kids…).

I do remember back in 2015 hearing about Jeremy essentially being fired from the BBC, and James and Richard leaving alongside him. Though, I cannot remember what my thoughts on that while situation was, given I at the time I didn't care about them.

It wasn't until late 2021 that I actually started getting into Clarkson, Hammond, and May. I think right as the Grand Tour's Carnage A Trois released. Pretty sure it was a result of some YouTube compilation of the trio popping up on my YouTube feed. At like 1:30am in the morning after i had gotten home from working night shift at my previous job at a mussel factory (that has unfortunately, and frustratingly, now closed down). How, when I've never been interested in cars at all, I have no idea. Then I started mostly just watching YouTube compilation videos of them after work before getting to bed. Then, I had ended up finding a copy of one of the sampler DVDs that came with the Top Gear magazines, the Supercars one, at one of the op shops near me for $2. I kind of just… fell head first into the trio after that. Buying every book and DVD of theirs that I could find, which was a lot easier than I had thought. Found many of my TG books and DVDs at the op shops near me (still had to get a few online, though, because some weren't easy to find, like May's Cars of the People).

Then at one point, I got curious about if there was fanfic written about them. I'm no stranger to rpf fanfic, so while I was surprised to find that there is, I sort of expected there to be? Because if it exists, there's bound to be fanfic for it. What was a surprise though, is just how into writing fanfic of the trio I got. Especially considering at the time I was trying to move away from writing rpf. So, thanks for that, guys.

I still find myself curious whether or not the guys know that there's fanfic about them, and what their thoughts are on it, though. I'd like to think that they just don't give a fuck, because surely if they had a problem with it (if they're aware of it), then they would've said something about it by now.

So… yeah. Known of them since forever, but never really cared much for them until late 2021 at 23. And now in 2024, at 26, I'm still very much into them, despite not really caring about cars (with the exception of collecting die-cast cars, and putting together model kit cars). I don't even have my driver's license.

While I definitely got into the fandom late, it's been very fun. And in terms of my Ao3 fics for the trio, I still have many more ideas to come, so even though the Grand Tour has now ended, I'm not going to be stopping writing fic for them anytime soon. And definitely won't stop me from finishing off my collection of all their books and DVDs they've released over the years.

[topgearlusting]

NOBODY WARNED ME 😭

They spliced in some footage from the Top Gear Botswana special into the Grand Tour finale and I'm UNWELL 😭💔

[alexlacquemanne]

Top 12 Top Gear/The Grand Tour Trips

Thanks for all the memories guys, the laughs, the emotions. The most entertaining trio in history. It won't be the same without news from you. Thanks for everything.

Top Gear Series 21 Episode 6 & 7 : Burma Special (2014)

The Grand Tour Season 3 Episode 7 : Scotch Single Malt (2019)

Top Gear Series 19 Episode 6 & 7 : Africa Special (2013)

The Grand Tour Season 4 Episode 1 : Seamen (2019)

The Grand Tour Season 2 Episode 11 : Feed the World (2018)

The Grand Tour Season 3 Episode 2 & 3 : The Colombia Special (2019)

The Grand Tour Season 5 Episode 2 : Eurotrash (2023)

The Grand Tour Season 6 Episode 1 : The Final Lap/One for the road (2024)

Top Gear Series 10 Episode 4 : Botswana Special (2007)

Top Gear Series 22 : Patagonia Special (2014)

The Grand Tour Season 5 Episode 1 : A Scandi Flick (2022)

Top Gear Season 18 : India Special (2011)

Honourable mentions :

East Coast Road Trip (2010)

Middle East Special (2010)

Sand Job (2024)

Lochdown (2021)

Polar Special (2007)

Survival of the Fattest (2019)

Chinese Food for Thought (2019)

The Beach (Buggy) Boys (2016)

US Special (2007)

Next time : Top 12 Top Gear Episodes & Top 12 The Grand Tour Episodes

[spencer-arts]

Back in 2010, I discovered Top Gear by watching their first ever special, the Botswana Special. Initially, I started watching this show for the Ferraris and Lambos, but what made me stay watching it is Jeremy, Richard, and James with their dynamic. Fourteen years later, this trio has been a part of my life for almost 2/3 of my entire lifetime! So, to end The Grand Tour and their whole car show thing in the exact same place where I discovered them all those years ago, is such an undescribably beautiful poetry that ends the whole saga. Huge thanks to Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Hammond, Mr. May, Mr. Wilman, and the whole crew. You guys left an empty car-shaped hole in my heart. 🥹🫡

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and human rights expert.

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the Guardian that states failing to take meaningful climate action and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.

Boyd said: “I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”

The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment was finally recognised as a fundamental human right by the United Nations in 2021-22. Some countries, notably the US, the world’s worst historic polluter, argue that UN resolutions are legally influential but not binding. The right to a healthy environment is also enshrined into law by 161 countries with the UK, US and Russia among notable exceptions.

Boyd, a Canadian environmental law professor, said: “Human rights come with legally enforceable obligations on the side of states, so I believe that this absolutely should be a game-changer – and that’s why states have resisted it for so long.

Boyd said: "By bringing human rights into the equation, we now have institutions, processes and courts that can say to governments this isn’t an option for you to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and phase out fossil fuels. These are obligations which include regulating businesses, to make sure that businesses respect the climate, the environment and human rights."

Over the course of his six-year mandate, Boyd met thousands of people directly affected by rising sea levels, extreme heat, plastic waste, toxic air, and dwindling food and water supplies, while undertaking fact-finding missions to Fiji, Norway, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Portugal, Slovenia, Chile, Botswana and Maldives.

“Powerful interconnected business and political elites – the diesel mafia – are still becoming wealthy from the existing system. Dislodging this requires a huge grassroots movement using tools like human rights and public protest and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers.”

On his first trip as special rapporteur to Fiji, Boyd met with community members from Vunidogoloa, a coastal village left uninhabitable by rising sea water, who were forced to relocate to higher ground. Last year in Botswana, he met with Indigenous people from the Kalahari desert no longer able to handle the worsening heat and water scarcity.

Over the past 30 years, the world has pinned its hopes on international treaties - particularly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris accords – to curtail global heating. Yet they do not include mechanisms for holding states accountable to their commitments, and despite some progress, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to rise and climate breakdown is accelerating.

It’s not just taxpayer subsidies propping up polluting industries and delaying climate action. The same multinationals are involved in negotiating – or at least influencing – climate policy, with a record number of fossil-fuel lobbyists given access to the UN Cop28 climate talks last year.

Boyd said: “There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies. There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table.

“It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same.”

In his final interview before handing over the special rapporteur mandate, Boyd said he struggles to makes sense of the world’s collective indifference to the suffering being caused by preventable environmental harms.

[sareenademon]

More Lin Kuei Sareena

HCs

Context: This takes place a few years before MK1. Quan Chi tasks Sareena with infiltrating the Lin Kuei. With magic, she assumes a human guise in order to gain entry to the temple of elements and access the concealed power within. To achieve this goal, she becomes a initiate and effortlessly beats all other contestants. Her skills impress Kuai Liang and Bi Han’s father, Bi Han isn’t grandmaster yet. He tells her to come forward and when she takes off her mask, to reveal that she is a woman. She is accepted into the Lin Kuei.

Ships: Bi Han x Sareena, (hinted to) Sareena x Tomas

Being a demoness, she’s pretty talented at manipulating others.

She’s the tortured, flawed girl who just wants to be a good person and happy but she can’t seem to escape her past or stop making the same mistakes.

Sareena’s charm is supernatural because, she quickly became well liked and popular amongst her fellow other Lin Kuei members. Even though, she’d only been there a month or two.

Her fake backstory was that she was from Cloumbia and her father was a cartel crime lord. She escaped him and wished to serve Earthrealm. Some of her lies about her past is based heavily in truth, like her father and sisters being evil, her not knowing her mother, and that she’s been abused.

Her first trainer was Tomas. He was also her first friend. He showed her the way of the Lin Kuei. At first, she thought Tomas was a pure soul that could be easily manipulated.

Sareena thought Tomas was foolish for serving the same klan that murdered his family but she grew fond of him as they became close friends. She calls him Tommy.

Tomas quickly developed feelings for Sareena, but they remain mostly one sided. It hurt him when she and Bi Han became lovers but he was happy that she brought out a better side of Bi Han.

One mission when Tomas and Sareena were fighting the Tengu, they got separated during the fight and when Tomas found her, she was in her demon form devouring a Tengu. He. Was. Fucking. Horrified. He was so scared and caught of guard that he tried to run away but Sareena quickly found him (now back in her human form and covered in blood.) He thought she was going to kill him but she just knocked him out and when he woke up and saw her standing there with Kuai Liang and Bi Han, he freaked out.

Tomas: “SHE’S A DEMON! I SAW HER EATING A PERSON A-AND Y-YOU-”

Sareena: “A Demon? Tommy, that’s impossible,how could I eat a guy? I’m a vegan.”

When Tomas accused her of being a demon she quickly used humor and gaslighting to convince him and the others that he was drugged by the Tengu and he hallucinated what he saw.

Tomas was also the first to forgive her for betraying them when Ashrah saved her from Quan Chi and brought her back to Earthrealm. Kuai Liang still hasn’t forgiven her and neither has Bi Han. That’s why he still trains with her but he doesn’t fully trust her anymore.

Sareena also became close with another outsider named Cyrax. (Who if the leaks are correct is apparently a female in this timeline. So I’ll use she/her pronouns.)

Unlike most of the Lin Kuei who have ancient bloodlines rooted in China, Cyrax is from Botswana. Like Tomas, she made the effort to make Sareena feel welcomed in the Lin Kuei.

Also, female Lin Kuei fighters are few in number, so Cyrax was excited to have another female warrior.

The only one who seemed to not be a fan of the new girl, Sareena was Bi Han. He didn’t see what was so special about her. Sure she was hot, but she was annoying and an outsider.

They first really interacted when she and Cyrax were hanging out in the laboratory. Cyrax was showing her favorite music and this was the first time Sareena came across rock music. It was a blondie song.

Bi Han caught them dancing and wasn’t amused. When Sareena tried to introduce herself to him, he yelled at them to get back to work.

But when they became lovers, she was the only person to get him to dance other than his mother. (His mother taught him and Kuai Liang how to slow dance.)

Sareena and Bi Han are basically the ship of “dance with me” and “I don’t dance.”

When Sareena actually grew attached to Bi Han and the Lin Kuei, she started feeling guilt for deceiving them. She had an urge to protect them but a more selfish reason was, she didn’t want the lie to end. So, she tried stalling Quan Chi for as long as possible.

(Kinda like Oni Man with his family.)

She gained a bit of redemption when she jumped in front of Quan Chi’s killing spell to protect Bi Han. She turned to ash in his arms.

(Demons can’t really die, so her soul just returned to the NeatherRealm.)

After Sareena broke Bi Han’s heart, and “died” in his arms, he made himself resent her to avoid mourning her. He tried convincing himself that she was just a demon, it was all a lie, she never loved him. He became even more withdrawn, cold, and his beliefs of love being a weakness was reaffirmed.

Everyone in the Lin Kuei were concerned for him but only Kuai Liang had the guts to try to comfort him but Bi Han just brushed him off coldly.

Bi Han forced himself to hate everything that reminded him of Sareen. Including her favorite music.

When he became grandmaster, music, celebrations, and dancing was banned. He basically made the Lin Kuei into that town from Footloose. His reasoning was that such things were a unnecessary distraction.

Quan Chi tortured her terribly in the NeatherRealm for her betrayal.

So when she was brought to earthrealm again, she was shocked to learn that Bi Han had betrayed Earthrealm.

She tries to make amends with Kuai Liang and Tomas.

Sareena has the reputation as a deceitful and untrustworthy person, even with Ashrah vouching for her.

Shao Kahn referred to her as “a dog that has bitten the hand of every master she’s had.”

She’s is torn between Bi Han and the Order of Light. She has the urge to join and help Bi Han because she wants to make amends, but also she wants to do the right thing and not betray Ashrah.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[Monitor is Ugandan Private Media]

Joint South African, Malawian and Tanzanian troops are to lead a special Southern African Development Community (SAMIDRC) mission against militants in restive DR Congo, a regional body has said.

A statement issued by Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Thursday suggested they would work with the Congolese forces to fight armed groups, including M23 insurgents, in Eastern DR Congo.

“The deployment of the SAMIDRC is in accordance with the principle of collective self-defense and collective action outlined in the SADC Mutual Defence Pact (2003). The Pact emphasizes that any armed attack perpetrated against one of the state parties shall be considered a threat to regional peace and security and shall be met with immediate collective action,” the SADC statement reads.[...]

The deployment of the SAMIDRC was approved by the SADC heads of state on 08 May 2023.

However, this time Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and Angola haven’t contributed troops as in previous wars that emanated from Eastern DRC.[...]

In 2013, the SADC backed Congolese forces defeated the M23 rebels, who had captured Goma City.

4 Jan 24

[mariacallous]

While India’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi appear poised to return to power for a third consecutive term—a feat accomplished by a premier only once before in the country’s history—they are much diminished, having failed to secure a parliamentary majority on their own. In his 10 years in power, Modi has never had to rely on coalition partners. The election marks not only the end of single-party control in the Indian Parliament but also the BJP’s having peaked. Coalition governments—the natural order for India’s democracy since the late 1980s, except for the past decade—are back to stay.

The BJP’s supremacy over the past decade was the result of several factors. In Modi, the party had a once-in-a-generation leader whose charisma and communication abilities placed him head and shoulders above the competition in terms of popularity among voters. Religious appeals, welfare programs (especially those aimed at women and the poor), and organizational capabilities that gave the party a superior ground game all helped. So did a ruthlessness in deploying the dark arts of politics, a disunited and weak opposition, and access to oodles of campaign finance.

The BJP’s manifest hegemony appeared to presage its continued dominance of the Indian political landscape well into the future. But from the summit, the only way is down. Of course, the party may stay near its peak for a while and climb down slowly—but that is not a matter of if, but when.

Although robust political competition is a hallmark of democracies, a surprisingly large number have been dominated by a single political party for long periods of time. Examples include Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the Christian Democrats in Italy, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, and the Democratic Party in Botswana. India itself was dominated by the Indian National Congress party for many decades, and the communist Left Front ran the state of West Bengal unchallenged for three-and-half decades.

When in power, these dominant parties seemed unassailable—until they were not. In some cases, this happened when economic development and technological change altered the structure of the economy and the relative power of different social groups. The green revolution in India, for example, empowered farmers from middle castes who had long been excluded from the Congress party’s social coalition. Their economic ascendency translated into political power that pushed out the Congress in populous North Indian states. The shift from manufacturing to services and the concomitant decline of unions also undermined a major social base of the dominant left-of-center parties.

In many postcolonial states, the party that led the country to independence enjoyed a special legitimacy. But with each successive generation, societal memories of epochal historical events faded. It took seven decades with the PRI in Mexico and three decades with the African National Congress in South Africa (as last week’s election results demonstrate). India’s Congress party played a pivotal role in the nation’s freedom struggle, but while the halo effect persisted for decades, it inevitably dimmed.

Dominant parties can also fade because of national crises driven by international events—such as an economic shock or a defeat in wars. But for many of them, the longer that they are in power, the more that institutional sclerosis sets in. Call it the law of political entropy. As the French political scientist Maurice Duverger put it in the 1960s, the dominant party “wears itself out in office, it loses its vigor, its arteries harden. … Every domination bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.”

The longer that the BJP was in power, the more that those seeds sprouted within the party. The BJP’s singular strength has been its leader, Narendra Modi. The Congress party also had such a leader in Indira Gandhi, who—like Modi—towered above her contemporaries. The popularity of both leaders far outweighed that of their parties.

But that very strength became their Achilles’ heel as a personality-driven style of party and politics emerged. For the BJP, increasing centralization, declining intraparty democracy, and the cutting-to-size of regional leaders who were not subserviently loyal to national the leader all took their toll. Efforts to engineer defections from opposition parties (through both blandishments and coercion) meant that gradually, the party became a magnet for opportunists rather than those with deep ideological commitments.

Under Modi’s rule, such coercion often took the form of dropping corruption cases against opposition party members who defected to the BJP. But this did not mean that the defectors became less corrupt; a leopard doesn’t change its spots. There’s little wonder, then, that even though the BJP had ridden an anti-corruption wave to power in 2014, preelection polls published in April this year found that more than half of respondents (55 percent) believed that corruption had increased in the past five years. Committed party workers have begun to lose interest as party hoppers brought in for short-term gains crowd them out in coveted positions. A favorite goal of the BJP’s leadership was to create a Congress mukt Bharat (“An India free of the Congress”). Ironically, in attempting to do so, the BJP became the embodiment of that very Congress culture.

If the art of victory is learned in defeat, for the BJP, the opposite is proving true. Each new victory brought a validation of the party’s strategies, whether muzzling critics, coercing opponents, or marginalizing religious minorities. The premium on loyalty increased, and voices of dissent become more quiescent. The initial self-confidence that allowed for risk-taking became an overconfidence spilling over to reckless behavior—exemplified by allegations of India’s intelligence agencies seeking to silence overseas critics in Canada and the United States.

The arrogance meant that the party overlooked three countervailing forces.

First, the manifest reality that no party in India wins with a majority of the votes. For a party to win in India’s first-past-the-post system, it needs a plurality of votes—which requires a fragmented opposition. The more hegemonic that the BJP became, the more authoritarian that it became, putting pressure on opposition parties and their leaders. But instead of weakening them, it brought them together. Nothing concentrates the mind like a fight for survival, and, while imperfect and incomplete, the opposition’s decision to join forces in the so-called INDIA coalition limited vote fragmentation.

Second, while successful political parties embody a set of ideas and ideologies that are yoked to policies and programs, all ideas have their life cycles. Postwar Keynesianism had its day for a quarter-century, and neoliberalism subsequently had its own for about three decades. Both are passé today. Political Islam rode high for around three decades after the Iranian revolution, but its energies have since flagged. In India, the secular socialist idea had a run for nearly a half-century, but its increasing opportunism tripped it up, and it was gradually pushed out as the BJP tapped into the plentiful waters of the anxieties and resentments of the Hindu majority.

But the Hindutva ideology has its limits, too. Even though the BJP did deliver on its promise on constructing a Ram temple on the site of a historic mosque, the expected political payoffs did not materialize. In this election, the BJP failed to win even the constituency where the temple was built. Populism can—and does—secure votes for a while. But India’s complex social mosaic cannot be easily pigeonholed into binary categories.

Third, ideologies do not address the quotidian challenges facing voters. The wellsprings of voter discontent run deep, and addressing them is—and will be—difficult.

The foremost challenge is the economy, which has simply been unable to supply decent jobs in adequate numbers. More and more Indians have formal education credentials but meager skills, a sad testimony to the poor quality of the country’s education system. Rising aspirations are hitting the brick wall of precarious jobs as India continues to struggle to strengthen its manufacturing sector. At some point, the millions of disgruntled youths will find ways to voice their frustrations.

These challenges will be greater given the extraordinary technological changes that are upending labor markets—not just in manufacturing, but also the tech services that have been India’s one categorical success. Even robust growth is unlikely to produce the sort of labor demand that one might have expected in the past. And a febrile politics will be rocked even more in the future, as technological change in the form of artificial intelligence is poised to further political turmoil. Managing this will be hard in the best of circumstances. In a polity where polarization is actively encouraged, it’s hard to be sanguine about where this may lead.

India’s election was held under a searing heat wave, a vivid reminder of the inexorable impacts of climate change, whose afflictions are mounting. Indian agriculture is particularly vulnerable as temperatures climb and rainfall patterns change. A bedraggled urban India will face further pressures as the recent water shortages in India’s booming information technology capital, Bengaluru, illustrate. And this is just the beginning.

These are all exceedingly difficult challenges no matter which political party is in power in India. But for now, the one silver lining is that while commentators and experts have been deeply apprehensive about India’s democracy, its voters clearly seem to be less so. Just ask the BJP.

[keepthedelta]

what's your comfort movie/series/book? sorry it's random but i'm really looking for some recs

i'm not a big movie person in general but i really like the monty python films. also rafiki has a very special place in my heart. i'm a big murder mystery fan, i think it's a peak genre, so pretty much anything by agatha christie. i also think the british television series of poirot and miss marple are really really good, and they change enough from the books that you can read the book and watch the show and still have two completely different experiences. only murders in the building is a really fun modern murder mystery series that i really enjoy, and the no. 1 ladies detective agency book series by alexander mccall smith is one of my all time favourites. i think the writing is very accessible and some of the descriptions of botswana (where it's set) are just stunning. i would also recommend anything by daphne du maurier. she's an absolute master of her craft, my cousin rachel is one of the best books i've ever read. my most recent obsession is slow horses on apple tv+ (i am pirating it and so should you). it is amazing, i cannot recommend it enough, the books that they're based on are also very enjoyable