#country comparison

[karmaalwayswins]

Gozhda "Largest Economies in the World 1600-2022: Top 15 Countries by GDP" (2022)

[cupiidzbow]

finally made a official ref sheet for my sona after cutting my hair 😭 (did not feel like lining the art 🧡)

[perplexingly]

lowkey getting a whiplash from how digitalised everything in Poland is after living in Germany for the past too many years lol

[rebellum]

Full on saying "sex based oppression isn't real, that's a radfem talking point" seems like way too much to me. Like, it IS real. Every single person who was assigned female at birth, or who is considered to be female bodied in any way (so, including eg trans fems who may be considered female bodied due to surgery, intersex people who were maybe assigned as female later on in life), is oppressed because of that. That's an inarguable fact.

But that doesn't mean every single person who was assigned male at birth oppresses every single person assigned female at birth through the axis of sex. Like, obviously trans people who were amab don't have more social privilege as a group than cis gender conforming women.

Both things can be true at once.

[gillianthecat]

I feel like Japanese BLs use place and space and landscape differently. Perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that Japanese architecture and plant life looks different from Thai, Korean or Taiwanese architecture and plant life. Perhaps it’s just that the Japanese industry generally has higher budgets and more experienced/skilled people behind the camera, which creates a certain look. But there’s something about the use of space, either expansive and wide open, or closed-in and intimate that’s… I don’t know what it is, but it feels like it’s something.

This was brought on in part by watching Eternal Yesterday and then watching @iguessitsjustme’s HiraKoyoi video (which almost made me cry this time, now that I’m primed to). And they got thinking about the way there’s a certain… almost desolate emptiness? that’s not the right feeling. perhaps just… openness, realness, slight wildness… to the landscape in this trio of small town high school BL I’ve watched recently, the two above plus Takara-kun to Amagi-kun. Even Kabe Koji somehow felt that way when they returned to their hometown. Is that just what all small towns look like in Japan? (Are they even set in small towns?) Or are these locations deliberate choices.

And even in city settings there’s a certain way that buildings and spaces are shot, inside and out. But I don’t know enough about filmmaking techniques to say what it is.

If anyone else has any thoughts on this I’d love to hear them. I’ve never been to any of these countries and haven’t watched all that much other media from there, outside of BLs, so I have little context, just vague feelings.

[texaschainsawmascara]

God’s Country - Ethel Cain / Gleipnir - Walton Ford / Dog Teeth - Nicole Dollanganger

[astalkerof28]

seriously, pre-amnesia crystal and show crystal feel like two entirely different people to me. like, sure they look alike, maybe they could be twins even, but to me that's it?

as edwin said : it's not what she did, it's what she does that matters.

[wonder-worker]

something I find especially entertaining about Edward IV's reign is how Scandalous™ it was lol

he married a woman “whose origins broke all established conventions for English queenship” in a secret ceremony without consulting any of his lords and then made it everyone else's problem. he committed regicide, he committed fratricide; he was accused of bastardry, he was accused of bigamy and a 19-year-long sham marriage, he was accused of using necromancy against his subjects, he was accused of being enchanted by witchcraft by both his wife and his mother-in-law (multiple times). his own mother was said to "rule the king as she pleased" in the early years of his reign. he knew he was hot and actively milked it for money. he was vain as fuck: “he was wont to show himself to those who wished to watch him, and he seized any opportunity that the occasion offered of revealing his fine stature to onlookers”. he knew everything about everyone. "he was more favourable than other princes to foreigners". he was “fond of boon companionship, vanities, debauchery, extravagance and sensual enjoyments”; he was "thought to have indulged in his passions and desires too intemperately”; "it was ever feared he was not chaste”. his subjects publicly gossiped about his sex life, his doctors thought he was insane. NOBODY understood how he was still competent despite all this.

honestly, who was doing it like him?

[weedle-testaburger]

i always find it deeply irritating when people are criticising something i agree sucks and raise something i also think sucks as an example of 'how to do it right'. like i think you missed what i hated about it

[rachelclowny]

hc that baiheng had just the biggest older sister vibes. like, yingxing was her baby. she teased the hell out of him over everything and they got lunch together several times a week when she was on the luofu, her dragging him out of the forge blabbering about the latest intergalatic gossip and how he needs to get out more and eat his meals. she was endlessly endeared by jing yuan, always indulging him in seemingly unrealistic ambitions and telling him equally fantastical stories of her journeys across the stars and narrow escapes from peril and despite dan feng technically being older than her, she wasn't ever intimidated by him nor his title. instead she looked at him and saw a kind of humanity he never let himself see in himself. she would've tried to shouldered so many of his burdens if he ever let her in.

[treba-neco-napise]

i hate having four fucking ads on a 20-minute podcast episode.

(it's a rant, enjoy.)

no, i don't want to get your shitting plus subscription, i don't even pay for 95% of the films and shows i watch online. stop fucking begging for patrons, it's not our problem you want to do this full-time. good for you if you do it but it's not somehow our duty to get you there just because you're a creator. not everyone can afford 60 fucking subscriptions. instead of people getting the minimum to at least get by as a basic human right, i bet like 85% of creatives online are making elite clubs on patreon and shit for those who have spare money. i get that you need it, but so many people (especially PDA neurodivergents) are extremely put off by being asked to pay and won't do it (like me) just because of that. i've encountered art that had the option to pay without requiring it, and I did. because they deserved it anyway, and they understood the classism and capitalism ingrained in the internet creative culture and that a lot of people don't have the means to become members of the club. i'm planning on starting a podcast, been wanting to publish fiction in paper since i was a kid, and i still want to make all that 100% free with the option of payment, because i believe that knowledge, stories and art should be accessible to anyone, regardless of financial situation (what do you think libraries are for, hm?????). when it's not, that's when elitism starts to rise and i'm just too tired for that shit. the empty snobbery culture around modern art alone is driving me insane.

Starkid has been recording their performances for years and guess what - they're massive, they sell out, people attend their live plays for the experience, but those who can't are still able to be a part of the fandom (as opposed to broadway musicals that get shared through bootlegs, hm) and they don't expect their fans to be responsible for their means of living. people who want to see a live performance, to buy your book in a bookshop professionally bound and keep it, to thank you for making your day by buying you a coffee will do so of their own free will. don't beg them to pay for your groceries if you made the choice to put your art out there. it's the system that is responsible for taking care of your basic needs, not your fans.

[sunshine-gremlin]

new england has hiking trails in the same way pigeons build nests

[tombama]

If you Don't Get the Picture read the instructions:

The Direct Comparison test is a simple, common-sense rule: If you've got a series that's smaller than a convergent benchmark series, then your series must also converge.

[dirt-str1der]

I still get scared when i remember kiryu is canonically quite lean and not a fatty at all

[dontforgetukraine]

To understand Ukraine better, think about Ireland

What analogy would help American Catholics understand the situation in Ukraine?

Perhaps we should think about Ireland.

Like Ukraine, Ireland was dominated for more than 200 years by a huge imperial neighbor. Britain in Ireland. Russia in Ukraine. Both nations disappeared from political maps for more than two centuries.

Ireland got its independence from Britain in 1921 after 230 years of domination. Ukraine was finally free of Russian (Soviet) domination in 1991, after more than nearly 300 years of domination. Ukraine had the added problem of more than one colonial ruler, with Poland and Lithuania and Austria in the west, the Ottoman Turks in the south, and the Russians in the east.

Ukraine is a huge country, with relatively level topography, in the middle of Europe. It has been overrun with invaders since the Mongols invaded in the 13th century from the east. Poland and Lithuania dominated Ukraine in the west. In 1686, the Treaty of Eternal Peace between the Polish/Lithuanian confederation and tsarist Russia divided Ukraine in two, with everything east of the Dnieper River and Kyiv going to the Russians. So, beginning in the 1690s Russia dominated eastern Ukraine. They did their best to eclipse Ukrainian culture and referred condescendingly to Ukrainians and "Little Russians." Even the name "Ukraine" is from the Russian perspective. It means "borderland" — and the border is from Moscow's perspective. 

Language is an important part of identity. The indigenous languages of Ireland and Ukraine were both suppressed and supplanted by their colonial rulers. Ireland's educated elite spoke English and were sent to England to study. Ukraine's educated elite spoke the languages of their cultural masters: Polish in the west, Russian in the east. Under the tsars and the Soviets, the elites from Ukraine were sent to Russia to study and were expected to become cultural Russians. Today the Ukrainian language is making a comeback, even in the east. In Ukraine, I've met several Russian-speaking Ukrainians who now refuse to speak the Russian language. And Ukrainian is not a dialect of Russian, any more than Spanish is a dialect of Italian. They are distinct.

Both Irish and Ukrainian cultures were preserved in the rural areas. In the countryside, people spoke their native languages at home, in church and among themselves. But in business and in cities they spoke the language of their colonizers, English and Russian. That seems to have been especially true in Ukraine.

While neither Ireland nor Ukraine governed themselves for more than 200 years, their sons were drafted to fight the wars of their colonizers. The people of both nations generally remained poor, while the agriculture of both nations fed their rulers.

Both nations were visited by unnecessary starvation, despite their rich land and agriculture. Ireland had the Great Hunger of the 19th century, brought on by the potato blight and land rents. It killed a million people and sent another million into exile.

In Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, at least 4 million Ukrainians starved to death in the 1930s under Joseph Stalin during the Holodomor ("death by hunger"). It was totally unnecessary, brought on by Stalin's policy of  "collectivization" of farming and persecution of Ukraine's Culak farmers, who were perceived as anti-Bolshevik. Russian police entered Ukrainian homes and literally took the food from families.

Eastern Ukraine was severely depopulated by starvation, war and political purges by the end of World War II. Russian speakers were brought in to repopulate eastern Ukraine. (That's similar to what the English did in Northern Ireland when they brought in Scots.) This "Russification" changed the ethnic makeup of eastern Ukraine. 

World War II was especially cruel in Ukraine. Between 7 and 8 million Ukrainians died in the war; at least 5 million were civilians. The population of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was 41 million in 1940 and 36 million people in 1950. 

Millions of people have emigrated from both Ireland and Ukraine. After World War II, many Ukrainians came to the U.S. and Canada. The Ukrainian Catholic churches that dot our landscape today are testament to their presence here. A new exodus took place from Ukraine in 2022, when about 6 million people left the country as refugees in just a few months. They settled mostly in western Europe. The population of Ukraine had been 41 million before Russia's full-scale invasion began Feb. 25, 2022. Now it is estimated at about 36 million. (No one is sure because a census is impossible to do in wartime.)

Both Ireland and Ukraine have seen severe religious persecution. In Ireland, the British crown banned Roman Catholicism under Irish penal laws. In Ukraine, under the Soviets, all religion — except Orthodox Christianity under the Moscow patriarch — was banned. The state was officially atheist during the Soviet era, 1921 to 1991. Today, as a result of Russia's invasion, the number of followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is  declining and the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is growing. Whole parishes are leaving the Moscow patriarch. A July 2022 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found only 1 of 25 of Ukrainians (4%) identified with Moscow Patriarchate, a considerable drop from nearly 1 of 5 (18%) in June 2021.

Catholics, of both Eastern and Western rites, saw their churches, seminaries, monasteries, convents, schools and universities seized and closed during the Soviet period. Many church leaders had to go into exile. We visited one formerly Latin Rite church in Lviv, built by Polish Jesuits in the 1700s, which had been a book warehouse under the Soviet regime.

The war seems to have promoted the growth and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It was recognized as a self-governing (autocephalous) church only in 2018, by the Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul). That resulted in the patriarch of Moscow excommunicating the patriarch of Constantinople. 

Why is this important for American Catholics? Because I have heard a fair amount of Russian disinformation from American Catholics after our two visits to Ukraine in the last two years.

People ask: Isn't Ukraine really just part of Russia? Answer: No. Not willingly.

Isn't the Ukrainian language just a dialect of Russian? No. It is a distinct Slavic language.

Wasn't Crimea always Russian? No. Catherine the Great seized it from the Ottoman Turks in 1783. Stalin deported most of the local Tatars to concentration camps in the 1930s.

History matters. It helps us to understand the past and deal with the present.

In 1991 Ukrainians took their rightful place among the peoples of the world. It has been a centuries-long struggle to be free of domination by their imperial neighbors. From what I have seen, they are absolutely determined that they will not again disappear from the maps of the world.