#defense modernization

[indianexpalert]

Space warfare, AI solutions to defence highlight of DefSat 2025 next month

Strategists and business leaders from the defence and space sectors will converge here next month to share experiences and deliberate on new opportunities in the area that has emerged as a critical link in securing the country’s borders. The third DefSat Conference and Expo, scheduled to be held at the Manekshaw Centre here from January 8-10, is expected to provide a platform to explore the…

[bloodwards]

bene gesserit costuming + occult and religious imagery

[temeyes]

to this day, they still don't believe him

[rotzaprachim]

I think one of the most uncomfortable aspects of the “absolutely no imprisonment or incarceration for crimes but also rapists deserve to die or be killed and if you think otherwise you’re a rape supporter” logic that’s proliferated among the left for some reason has a lot of terrible implications - plenty of people who are against incarceration in any circumstances also seem to have ideologies that involve forming “community brigades” or something which in Their minds aren’t just … extrajudicial militias - but one of the fallouts is less recognition and support of rape victims, not more. Because most people actually don’t want people to die, and the idea that all rapists deserve to die necesitates another idea that rapists are some closed off Other group that they will have no attachment to or contact with or will matter to no one or be some oppressor class they can just guillotine and move on with. They can’t accept that killing rapists would mean killing their brothers or comrades or friends or that killing rapists would mean killing other oppressed people or marginalized people, so it’s easier to believe that all those people couldn’t POSSIBLY have raped someone, rather that they did, and don’t deserve to die for it.

[cod-dump]

Graves: Am I imagining things, or does Nik have a big tattoo of a bear on his chest?

Price: It's a bearskin rug, actually. Time was he used to shave around it for a laugh.

Graves: Shave?? *turns to Nik*

Graves: Nik. Promise me you'll say something if you ever hurt yourself like that again.

Price: *wheezing laughter*

Nik: I...had no idea you were so concerned with it?

Graves: VERY.

[canisalbus]

The detail about Vasco getting ear infections is so on brand for his breed, I love that little detail. I’m a dog groomer, and hounds are my absolute faves, but when people think they have soft velvety bunny ears I have to laugh. They are *thick* slabs of flesh that smell like ear wax. I hope Machete doesn’t mind 😂

.

[mactavishenjoyer]

(overheard while shopping.)

Ghost:"I don't know what size I am."

Soap:"well you look like a-"

Ghost:"no, I mean I'm delusional and think I'm still the size I was when I was a teenager and I can't fathom that I'm not that weak anymore and that I actually have muscles."

Soap:"oh shit I can't help with that."

Soap:"at least you are self aware though."

Soap:"wanna get boba or something?"

Ghost:"yeah."

[marzipanandminutiae]

me: I've made many garments for myself! cutting and fitting and stitching singlehandedly!

a potential employer: can you finish these seams by machine?

me: I have never sewed anything ever in mine entire Life

[hayatheauthor]

"people ask hijabis if they were forced to wear that but not nuns because (Christian) clothing was never forced upon women" how many history classes have you skipped?! (considering your country's heavy censorship of actual history that doesn't depict them as great heroes I'd be surprised if your classes even covered it).

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.

[saturnniidae]

Modern AU Astrid would like rollerderby I think. She'd be on a team with Ruff and Heather. She'd be a blocker, along with Heather (you get to shove people) and I feel like Ruff would be a good jammer. The rest of their friends come to cheer them on at matches and even practice sometimes

Another great part of rollerderby is you get to pick a cool name for yourself! Heather literally already has the perfect one, "Heather the Unhinged" goes so unbelievably hard

Astrid would also do kickboxing. On the side. Also for their first date Hiccup takes her axe throwing in an attempt to woo her with something she enjoys. (Totally not so he can stare at her biceps while she throws.. what Totally Not. He's so unbelievably intimidated by her strength; he is head over heels) He thinks it's worth it even if he looks pathetic in comparison (it's okay tho she helps him out)

[shalomniscient]

im feixiao dad brainrotting and methinks modern feixiao would work in the military, maybe she adopts a kid too who like her also grew up in an active warzone and lost their parents. maybe she rescues this kid and the kid is now attached to her and vice versa.

she's definitely making that kid get into boxing when they are old enough

omg this could be an expansion to modern!au feixiao lore… feixiao who goes into the military after college maybe for family reasons to honor yueyu or to become like her. she climbs up the ranks with remarkable speed, known in the barracks for her strength, resilience and courage. she makes a point to always call you when she can, even when she’s on deployment. knowing you’re back home waiting for her is always motivation for her to push through.

borisin territory is always a model of hell, though. she slogs through it, gunblades at the ready, her finger always on the trigger. jets shriek over her head, and in the distance she can hear the xianzhou LUX cannons powering up. it hums in the back of her mind, a low vibration in her ears, and she thinks it’s the worst part about the whole job. but she presses ever onward, like a bullet, cutting down borisin slavers and breaking the chains of any slaves under her heel. each one both breaks her heart and drives her forward, but one particular one has her stilling.

a child, with a shock of pure white hair, kneeling in the bloodstained mud, looking up at her with a look feixiao recognises—a look she remembers.

she swallows, then casts her gaze again back to the battlefield. the borisin are retreating, fleeing with their tails between their legs. the lux arrow sings overhead, then detonates the routing borisin with a dull, distant final note. she moves without thinking, crouching down and shielding the child with her body from the harsh winds produced in the fallout.

she feels tiny hands fist in the front of her uniform, wetness in the crook of her neck, and something in feixiao’s heart breaks.

she takes the child back to the xianzhou base, and they refuse to part from her. even when it came to getting the child a medical check-up, they nearly wept themselves unconscious at having to be separated from feixiao. feixiao had to be the one to bathe them; or at least, pass a wet rag over their skin and face for now since she physically couldn’t get them to let her go to properly bathe them. as the child dozes off in her arms that first night, still clinging tight to her, she leans her head back and sighs softly.

what is she even going to tell you?

she prepares for the worst, but you take it… remarkably in stride. you’re surprised, certainly, but she thinks you can see the bond that’s formed between the two, from the way the child holds onto feixiao when she walks through the airport terminal to you. she told you about it in advance over the phone, of course, she wouldn’t spring something so huge as a child on you out of nowhere. but still, it makes her knees nearly give out in relief when she sees you offer the child a small smile and a gentle greeting. you make a point to not get too close to the child when you give her a quick welcome back kiss, ensuring they get to have their personal space, and it warms her heart.

it takes some time for the kid to open up to you, but it happens faster than feixiao expects. or maybe she does expect it somewhat; you’ve always been good with her. in any case, progress is steady—for the first few months the child only ever speaks to feixiao since she knows firsthand how to handle such a child, but soon they start asking you for little things with one word questions, then full sentences, and then they start really talking to you, pointing out things they notice or asking how things work. her heart feels like it might burst the first time she sees the child take your hand in a crowded mall, and she quickly leans over the tiny tears of joy that gather in your lashes.

sometimes she’s so full of love for the both of you she feels dizzy with it. the first time she comes home to see you snuggled on the couch with the child in your arms, both sleeping soundly, she nearly weeps. instead she grabs a blanket from the wardrobe then cuddles right up next to you both, wrapping you in her arms. this is her family now—hers. and there’s nothing in the world she wouldn’t do for you both.

[herve-ramboz-photographie]

[bijoumikhawal]

hello! i hope it's alright to ask you this but i was wondering if you have any recommendations for books to read or media in general about the history of judaism and jewish communities in egypt, particularly in ottoman and modern egypt?

have a nice day!

it's fine to ask me this! Unfortunately I have to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of books on Egyptian Jewish history have a Zionist bias. There are antizionist Egyptian Jews, and at the very least ones who have enough national pride that AFAIK they do not publicly hold Zionist beliefs, like those who spoke in the documentary the Jews of Egypt (avaliable on YouTube for free with English subtitles). Others have an anti Egyptian bias- there is a geopolitical tension with Egypt from Antiquity that unfortunately some Jewish people have carried through history even when it was completely irrelevant, so in trying to research interactions between "ancient" Egyptian Jews and Native Egyptians (from the Ptolemaic era into the proto-Coptic and fully Coptic eras) I've unfortunately come across stuff that for me, as an Egyptian, reads like anti miscegenationist ideology, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a view of history being pushed on the past or not. The phrase "Erev Rav" (meaning mixed multitude), which in part refers to Egyptians who left Egypt with Moses and converted to Judaism, is even used as an insult by some.

Since I mentioned that documentary, I'll start by going over more modern sources. Mapping Jewish San Francisco has a playlist of videos of interviews with Egyptian Jews, including both Karaites and Rabbinic Jews iirc (I reblogged some of these awhile ago in my "actually Egyptian tag" tag). This book, the Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, is avaliable for free online, it promises to be a more indepth look at Egyptian Jews in the lead up to modern explusion. I have only read a few sections of it, so I cannot give a full judgment on it. There's this video I watched about preserving Karaite historical sites in Egypt that I remember being interesting. "On the Mediterranian and the Nile edited by Harvey E. Goldman and Matthis Lehmann" is a collection of memiors iirc, as is "the Man in the Sharkskin Suit" (which I've started but not completed), both moreso from a Rabbinic perspective. Karaites also have a few websites discussing themselves in their terms, such as this one.

For the pre-modern but post-Islamic era, the Cairo Geniza is a great resource but in my opinion as a hobby researcher, hard to navigate. It is a large cache of documents from a Cairo synagogue mostly from around the Fatimid era. A significant portion of it is digitized and they occasionally crowd source translation help on their Twitter, and a lot of books and papers use it as a primary source. "The Jews in Medieval Egypt, edited by: Miriam Frenkel" is one in my to read pile. "Benjamin H. Hary - Multiglossia in Judeio-Arabic. With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll" is a paper I've read discussing the Jewish record of the events commemorated by the Cairo Purim, I got it off either Anna's Archive or libgen. "Mamluks of Jewish Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate by Koby Yosef" is a paper in my to read pile. "Jewish pietism of the Sufi type A particular trend of mysticisme in Medieval Egypt by Mireille Loubet" and "Paul B Fenton- Judaism and Sufism" both discuss the medieval Egyptian Jewish pietist movement.

For "ancient" Egyptian Jews, I find the first chapter of "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD” by Simon Schama, which covers Elephantine, very interesting (it also flies in the face of claims that Jews did not marry Native Egyptians, though it is from centuries before the era researchers often cover). If you'd like to read don't click this link to a Google doc, that would be VERY naughty. There's very little on the Therapeutae, but for the paper theorizing they may have been influenced by Buddhism (possibly making them an example of Judeo-Buddhist syncretism) look here (their Wikipedia page also has some sources that could be interesting but are not specifically about them). "Taylor, Joan E. - Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae reconsidered" is also a to read.

I haven't found much on the temple of Onias/Tell el Yahudia/Leontopolis in depth, but I have the paper "Meron M. Piotrkowski - Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period" in my to be read pile (which I got off Anna's Archive). I also have some supplemental info from a lecture I attended that I'm willing to privately share.

I also have a document compiling links about the Exodus of Jews from Egypt in the modern era, but I'm cautious about sharing it now because I made it in high school and I've realized it needs better fact checking, because it had some misinfo in it from Zionist publications (specifically about the names of Nazis who fled to Egypt- that did happen, but a bunch of names I saw reported had no evidence of that being the case, and one name was the name of a murdered resistance fighter???)

[kay9leo]

Breaking In - Modern AU

Sebastain: We have to be quiet in order to successfully break into the restricted section

MC: *Nod head* Got it

Also MC: *Hums Mission Impossible Theme while sneaking around*: dun dun dun-dun dun dun dun-dun

Sebastain: What are you doing? We're supposed to be quiet! What are you even humming? >=(

MC: *blinks* Wow. I know my friends tell me I'm behind on movies, but you seriously never seen Mission Impossible or heard it's theme song? 0.0

Sebastain: *A pureblood who's never been to the muggle world before* What's a movie?🤨

MC: *muggleborn or halfblood MC whose right eye is twitching*😶😐🫤

[noxexistant]

woe. modern crutchie be upon ye

pushing the wheelchair user modern crutchie agenda for no personal reasons at all *draws him in my wheelchair*