#its been a million years since i last drew them

[orangehalfpeeled]

i miss them !!!

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — A German court has ruled that an 85-year-old woman and her son who live in a property sold under duress by its Jewish owners in 1939 must give up their home.

The ruling earlier this month capped a decade of legal wrangling over the home, located in Wandlitz, outside Berlin. For many paying attention to the twists and turns, the fight over the lakeside property came to symbolize the pain and turmoil of nearly a century of history — as well as the ways in which German families tell themselves complicated stories about their role during the Holocaust. It has also surfaced lingering resentments, some of them clearly antisemitic, about Germany’s efforts to repay Jews for its crimes against them.

The Wandlitz estate is likely one of the last property restitution cases to be adjudicated in Germany, as virtually all looted or “aryanized” property has already gone through the restitution process or been lost to history, with no one left to claim it. The deadline to file property claims passed decades ago.

The case centers on an estate, located in a bucolic area about 20 miles from central Berlin, that functioned in the 1930s as a summer retreat for an orphanage operated by two Jewish women, Alice Donat and Helene Lindenbaum. To comply with Nazi laws meant to expropriate Jewish wealth, they sold the land, complete with a structure in poor condition, to Felix Moegelin in 1939 for 21,100 Reichsmarks, a relative pittance.

Moegelin had to sign the statement “I am Aryan,” while the two women had to sign that they were Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

The original house was torn down and eventually replaced, and Moegelin and his family settled in on Wegener Street. Donat and Lindenbaum were deported from Berlin by the Nazis in 1943 and murdered.

Today, Moegelin’s granddaughter, Gabriele Lieske, 85, still lives in the house with her son, Thomas Lieske, 61. They dug in their heels after a lower court ruled last year that they must give up the property or pay for it. Located in the suburbs of Berlin, where real estate is hot, the property is worth about $1.6 million today.

Now, the property will be seized by the state and transferred to the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the legal successor to unclaimed Jewish property in the former East Germany. No living heirs to the murdered owners were ever identified.

“I spent my whole life in the house and looked after my parents,” Gabriele Lieske said after the ruling, according to local media. “We don’t know where to go.”

The case drew national attention earlier this year after it was profiled in the prominent German newsmagazine Spiegel just after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It vaulted back into public view this month when the Lieskes ran out of legal runway to appeal their case.

Seeking compensation, the Lieskes’ Munich-based lawyer, Raffael Nath, invoked a legal loophole that allows the German government to provide some payment to current owners who paid for rather than inherited the property from the original buyer who “Aryanized” the property. He argued that Gabriele Lieske actually did not inherit the property from her mother, Luise Moegelin. Instead, he asserted, Lieske purchased it in 1993 through an arrangement in which she would provide care for her aging parent and cover all the upkeep costs. Her mother died in 2012 at the age of 99.

The judge was not persuaded.

Gideon Taylor, the president of the Claims Conference, said media attention to the case was misplaced. “What the judge did was completely unremarkable,” he said, adding, “This is established principal in law that has been in place since the end of the war. A forced sale is not valid and that which was taken must be returned.”

Whether and when the Lieskes will move out is not clear. The Claims Conference has offered to let Gabriele Lieske remain as a tenant in her childhood home for the rest of her life.

Nath said in an interview earlier this year that Gabriele Lieske had turned down the offer because it would have come with an obligation to pay rent, and her son would not be allowed to live there after her death.

But no terms of a tenancy have been negotiated, Taylor said. “We are certainly willing to work out an arrangement with the family,” he emphasized.

Still, he noted that German law is clear about whether looted property can be inherited. “Where, as here, an Aryanizer took over Jewish property, it does not get passed to the heirs of the Aryanizer,” he said earlier this year.

The Wandlitz case is one of the last of its kind. Holocaust survivors, their heirs or the Claims Conference have received compensation or restitution for thousands of properties in Germany, starting in the west after the war, and in the east after unification.

A few cases are still pending, 79 years after the end of World War II. But some will never be heard, according to restitution lawyer Olaf Ossmann.

“So many families didn’t even start cases in the post-war period” because the legal hurdles and burdens of proof were so daunting, said Ossmann, who was born in Leipzig, Germany, and now lives in Winterthur, Switzerland, where he is president of the Jewish community. The task, he said, was “so depressing, in a way, that they stopped.”

In all, in the last 33 years, Ossmann estimates he has handled some 3,000 property cases — some for prominent German Jewish families, but mostly owners of smaller properties.

Ossmann, who today handles mostly looted art cases, still gets calls from people who found documents from their parents or grandparents and can’t make sense of them. “Fair and just” compensation is not really possible, he said. “The proper term I’m using normally is ‘the best you can get for the moment.’”

Very little is known about the two Jewish women who ran the children’s home. According to the Stolpersteine (Stumbling Block) memorial project, Alice Donat was born in 1898 in Vienna to Robert and Anna Donat, and had two sisters and a brother. She studied education in Berlin and later ran the private kindergarten and Jewish children’s home with Helene Lindenbaum. The two women purchased the property in 1932, according to the district court decision handed down in September 2023.

In his memoir, the late Emanuel Berger, an orphan who resided in the home and who survived the Holocaust, described Donat as loving and strict; she taught the children to sing and dance to her piano accompaniment.

Even less is known about Helene Lindenbaum, other than that she was born in 1888 in Berlin and was married.

When the women sold their property in 1939, about half the payment went to cover their mortgage. It is doubtful that they ever benefited from the rest, as the district court pointed out in its decision last year: A 1938 decree from the Reich and Prussian economics minister stressed the need to “secure Jewish assets” to prevent Jews from fleeing Germany with their money.

According to the Stolpersteine report, Lindenbaum and her husband, who is not named, were to be deported to Theresienstadt in 1943; they volunteered to go on the transport to Auschwitz with the two children from the orphanage, Emanuel Berger and his brother Erwin, but Alice Donat would not hear of it. Instead, Donat stayed with the two boys; they were deported together to Auschwitz in March 1943. Alice Donat and Erwin Berger were murdered in the gas chamber; Emanuel was selected for slave labor and survived.

Helene Lindenbaum, and presumably her husband, were deported from Berlin to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in March 1943, and from there to Auschwitz in October 1944, where Helene was murdered.

In the former East Germany, the process of restitution began after unification in 1990, when a two-year period of claims opened. Where no heirs came forward or were found, the Claims Conference submitted claims as successor at the end of 1992.

In 1998 the Claims Conference finally determined exactly which plot of land had belonged to Donat and Lindenbaum, according to Nath, the Lieskes’ lawyer.

That was when the German government could have informed the Lieskes of the claim, and barred them from selling, Nath said. He added, “Why it took another 17 or 18 years for them to inform the family, we don’t know.”

The Lieskes first learned from the government about the Claims Conference application in 2015, Nath said. They contested it. The court heard the case last September.

Gabriele Lieske told Spiegel magazine she’d rather die than leave the property. Her son felt the same. After all, they said, what happened was not their fault, but a twist of fate — one that ignored the family’s own history of having sheltered Jewish relatives during the war years.

Those relatives were Felix Moegelin’s niece, Margarete, and her daughter Irene, who was born in 1937. Margarete’s Jewish mother, Felix’s sister-in-law, was murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Yad Vashem database. Irene’s father was deported to Minsk and was likely murdered either in a mass shooting or by asphyxiation with motor exhaust fumes.

Meanwhile, as Gabriele Lieske recalls, her grandparents sheltered Margarete and Irene in Wandlitz. In an email to JTA, Lieske recalled that they “hid from the Nazis with us. Irene and I played together in the garden.” The extended family fled together when the Soviets took the area in the spring of 1945, but eventually returned, she said. Eventually, “Aunt Margarete and Irene moved back to Berlin.”

Documents at the Arolsen Archive indicate that Margarete and Irene both emigrated to the United States.

Gabriele Lieske only remembers her aunt and cousin visiting one more time, after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961: Margarete and Irene — then with a newborn child — visited Margarete’s sister Ella in Berlin. Irene’s husband also visited once, Gabriele Lieske said.

The Lieske family’s character, if this story proves it, was not relevant to the legal case, according to last year’s court ruling. “The fact put forward by the plaintiffs that the buyer hid a Jewish citizen on his property and thus saved her from the Nazis’ attacks has no connection with the purchase contract of February 8, 1939, and is therefore irrelevant here,” the court said.

Though no one has blamed the Lieske family for what their forefather did, several readers of the Spiegel article, at least, saw the legal process as unfair punishment.

“Can you still blame families if they live in such houses for the umpteenth generation?” asked one reader on the social media platform X. “Maybe without knowing how their ancestors got the house?”

Some have stood up for the Jewish victims. “If you accept an inheritance, you also accept the debts,” said one commenter on X, referring to German law, which transfers both assets and liabilities to heirs.

“Of course it’s bad for the current residents of the house, but in the end it doesn’t belong to them,” said another. “It never belonged to them. It was stolen — ripped from people’s cold, dead hands. Who wants to live in something like that anyway?”

(Another Wandlitz property burdened by the Holocaust, the opulent former estate of Third Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, is on the market now. The German government, which owns it, has been unable to find anyone to assume ownership even for free.)

Some Spiegel readers suggested that Jews were inappropriately profiting from the Holocaust. “That’s almost 90 years,” one wrote. “It has to end at some point.”

Ossmann said the tendency of the German public to portray those who benefitted from the looting as the victims had always been a problem. Roughly two decades ago, he recalled, German citizens physically attacked journalists who were reporting on a restitution case. The reporters barricaded themselves inside a supermarket “to avoid being beaten to death,” Ossmann said.

The anger and resentment felt by some descendants of “Aryanizers” doesn’t fade, he said. But “if you take the perspective of the [original] victim, you would easily understand that it didn’t make a difference what you lost first or last, if you lost it by sale or confiscation or by whatever means,” he said. “Because at the end you lost everything.”

The Claims Conference uses most proceeds from sales of unclaimed Jewish property to help Holocaust survivors in need with medicine, food and home care. It recently determined that there were 245,000 survivors still alive around the world.

One German commentator, the columnist Gunnar Schupelius, recently cited them in his assessment of the Wandlitz case.

“The Lieske family feels that the return is an injustice. It is really hard for them. But what happened is what happened,” he wrote. “We who are alive today are not to blame for the genocide of the Jews, but we should take care of the survivors and their descendants. That is only fair.”

Taylor urged an interpretation of the case that is divorced from broader debates about the lengths Germany goes to atone for the Holocaust.

“This is not about compensation from the German government and how much should be given to Holocaust survivors,” he said. “It’s about a fundamental principle of German law, never mind morality or justice. And nobody has challenged that.”

[desi2go]

First times - Lee Know

pairing: Minho x reader

warning: fluff

summary: How were your first times with him?

author's note: Happy birthday Minho! I hope you had such a wonderful day 🫶🏼💙

𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖒𝖊𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌

You never meant to be there. You were supposed to be on an airplane, returning back home to Seoul after a joyful week in Seattle. But instead, your flight has been delayed due to a technical problem. You didn't mind, actually liking this city in Washington. So, didn't waste any time after you had brought your luggage back into a hotel room that the airline provided for you and walked through the city, determined to spent the last evening where you could enjoy the last sunlight of the day.

As you leaned against the safety window of the sky view observatory, you watched the sky turn into various colours. Different shades of red, orange, yellow and pink painted the sky like a canvas. You loved the view over the city. Next to you, a boy group of eight watched the sunset, talking in korean.

It was funny to you that even here in America, you would meet people from home. Well, maybe they follow you. You chuckled as they joked around, filling the huge room with laughter and happiness. But you noticed that one of them seemed to hate the height, he didn't even try to look down and after some minutes, settled down to sit on a bench far away from the windows.

Sadly, a black mask covered his face but his eyes were focused, sharp like an eagle. His fluffy black hair was perfectly styled. You didn't know what drew you to him but you couldn't stop yourself from buying two muffins from the shop and sitting down right next to him. He looked startled at first, especially when you offered him one of the muffins.

"Not fond of heights, right?" you asked while smirking, placing the cupcake on his palm as he observed you confused.

"You're korean?" his soft voice was dripping with confusion. You laughed and nodded, taking a bite from your sweet treat. "I'm on vacation and you?" you added.

Carefully, he pulled the mask down to eat it as well. "That's nice. We're here for work" you nodded impressed, enjoying the sun that fell on your face.

His eyes never left your face as if he was still trying to make out your intention. "What's your name?" he asked curiously.

"Y/n"

"Well, nice to meet you, Y/n. I'm Minho" you loved the way how he pronounced your name, letting a chill down your spine.

It was crazy how you could talk to a stranger for only some minutes and still have the feeling like you knew eachother for years. you both kept talking and talking. You adored his humor and his from time to time cocky answers. Conversing with him seemed easy and flawless, the time passed so quickly and the staff had to shoo you away to close the observatory.

𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖉𝖆𝖙𝖊

After your first meeting in America, you exchanged numbers. Since then, your phone was constantly ringing with messages from him. Not that you hated it, no, you loved the attention he gave you. It made you feel special and adored like you hadn't in a long time. It was funny that both of you came from Seoul actually and never met each other there. Of course, the city was huge with millions of inhabitants but how high were the chances that you two would meet outside of Korea?

Your texting turned into late night calls nearly every evening. For hours you could talk and you were over the moon when he finally asked you if you would wanna go out with him. You loved how his cheeks changed their colour into a beautiful red and the sweetest, shy smile on his lips. How could you say no?

You were nervous when he wouldn't even say where you two would be going. "It's a surprise, dummy" he responded as you pouted and tried to coax him into telling you with your big puppy eyes. But he stayed strong, just telling you that you should wear something warm.

It was cold, the autumn on its peak and you actually loved this season. The spooky season where the nature would turn into the prettiest colours.

In the afternoon, he stood in front of your door, picking your up for your first date. He laughed when he saw how much layers you had on, put taking your hand in his as you pouted slightly. "You look like a marshmellow"

"That's not nice! I just get cold pretty easy" you grunted, looking down on you, your body completely drowning in the mass of fabric.

"But you know I love marshmellows" he whispered into your ear, making you red as you slapped his arm lightly.

After an hour of driving, you finally parked outside of Seoul in front of a farm. The whole area was filled with different types of pumpkins and you clapped your hands in excitement as you saw families and couples picking pumpkins from the patch and carving them.

You grabbed Minho's arm and headed straight to the pumpkins. Each one individual in their shape and colour.

"Do you want to carve one?" Minho asked you and you nodded fastly. He chuckled at how cute you were and helped picking out one for and one for him. He got the tools from one of the farm helpers and within the next two hours, both of you carved your own pumpkin into the desired shape.

You laughed as you watched Minho struggling with cutting the face into his, making his smile super big and funny. And when he showed you the final result, you couldn't help but laugh at how hilarious the face was.

"I think I have managed well. That's you by the way" he commented, a smirk present on his face. You pouted but grew red when he gave you a kiss on your cheek. "But I think in reality you are even more beautiful"

𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖌𝖎𝖗𝖑𝖋𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖉

Every meeting was a blast, you collected tons of memories together and it didn't took long before he asked you to be his girlfriend. It was predictable, well, to his members.

Seungmin called him a "tame kitty cat" whenever he caught Minho talking to you, earning a scowl. But even though he liked to tease his friend, he was the first who urged Minho to finally ask you to be his girlfriend.

You thought it was just a regular date when Minho texted you in the morning. When he stood in front of your door this evening and you saw the light blush on his cheeks, you guessed it was from the cold weather not from the fact that he was nervous. It was almost christmas, just two weeks until Santa clause would visit you.

Minho told you that you should dress up warm and when he parked with his car near the christmas market. The air was filled with laughter and the sweet smell of mulled wine. The darkness was lit up with hundreds of fairylights.

You were excited to see what the small booths sold. You grabbed Minho's hand and pulled him towards the entrance. His hand was warm in yours.

You two bought a cup of mulled wine and roasted almonds, your favourite.

When you two reached the central of the market, decorated by a huge christmas tree filled with fairylights and baubles in different shapes and colours. Minho's arm circled around you waist as you listened to the choir on the small platform in front of the tree.

Gently, he pressed a hot kiss on your cheek, everything else being covered by your scarf or your hat. He knew that it was time for the important question.

"Y/n, I wanted to give you something" Curious, you turned fully to him, observing him while he rummaged through his jacket's pocket, searching for the little velvety box. He didn't hesitante and presented you the box. You gasped and took it into your shaking hands.

As you opened it, a beautiful necklace was revealed. Its design so simple but even more breath taking. As you gently pulled it out of the small box, you noticed the small pendant, a sun with a small cristal in the middle.

"Thank you so much!" you squealed and leaned into him, brushing your scarf down to give him a tender kiss on the lips.

He laughed, taking the necklace from you to put it on. "I'm happy you like it. It should symbolise our first meeting in the observatory. When the sun went down, you shone even brighter" he admitted, cheeks red like a tomato.

"Aww. That's so sweet! I love it"

"And I love you, Y/n. So, I wanted to ask you if you want to be my girlfriend?"

Your eyes went wide and the prettiest smile he had ever seen decorated you face. "Of course! I love you too"

first night together

In the same night, you decided to let him sleep at your apartment. He was your boyfriend now, you couldn't believe it. Plus, it was far too late to drive home, you argued. And you just wanted to cuddle your love.

You two layed spread out on your bed, watching a romantic christmas film, pointing out the similarities between you and the film. Minho laughed about a lame pick up line the male protagonist said.

"I can't believe he said that! That's so embarassing!" he exclaimed, hiding in your hair. You giggled, playing with his fingers.

"I think it's cute" you answered.

"Cute? His behaviour is so predictable" he mumbled.

"Isn't every christmas movie like that?"

"Yeah, sadly. They are always the same." he admitted.

"But at least the men are hot" you explained with a smirk, munching on a burned almond you purchased at the market.

"Excuse you? You have a boyfriend!" he shrieked, pulling his head out of your hair.

"I know, I know. But even you can't deny that they are-" you couldn't even finish your sentence as he threw himself over you, crushing under his weight while he tickled you.

"Yah. I'm your boyfriend! You should find me hot!" You giggled and trying to wiggle out of his wrath. His face was just centimetres away from you, watching yours with a loving gaze.

"Who said that I didn't think you're hot?" you questioned when he finally stopped, circling his neck with your arms to pull him down more.

wedding

For him it was clear from the first moment that he laid eyes on you that you were the one. It was just a matter of time before Minho would ask you THE question.

He proposed to you on a shared vacation. You two had decided to go back to Seattle together after three years to remember the old times, especially the first time you met. On your last day, you visited the observatory again. While you jumped from one window to another, he was shaking with anxiety from his proposal and the height. He really wanted to propose to you here. And when the sun went down, he took a deep breath and walked with you to one of the windows even though his heart was going to kill him, and went down on one knee.

Of course you said yes and just some months later it was time for your wedding. You had decided to pick a date in autumn as a memory of your first date. In Addition, your venue was rustic and created such a beautiful atmosphere.

Before the actual wedding you two had decided to do a "first look" together without many other persons, just you and him. What he didn't know, it was actually Han who would surprise him there. Minho was lead to you with a scarf over his eyes, blind to what he would see in just a minute. In front of him stood Han, dressed in a wedding dress that he had burrowed, stuggling to hold his laugh in.

Gently, he took Minho's hand and caressed it while you died from laughing in the back, hiding from your husband-to-be's eyes.

"I can't wait to finally see you my love" Minho whispered before he pulled the scarf from his eyes. His face was instantly red and nearly dropped to the floor, laughing like hell.

"What do you think, my love? Am I not beautiful?" Jisung joked, swaying back and forth in his dress.

Minho cried tears of laughter. "Absolutely, bro. But where is my bride?"

You came out of your hiding place, giggling. "I'm here"

His eyes widened as he saw you in that beautiful dress (much more beautiful than hid best friend but he wouldn't dare to say that out loud).

first child

Minho and you had talked shortly after the wedding what you wanted for the future. It was important to you that both of you knew what the other wanted. Especially when it comes to children.

You both agreed that you would wait a few years. And when the time came, two years into marriage, you were open to becoming pregnant. You didn't want to force it. But fortunately, you didn't need to wait long to announce to your beloved that you were pregnant.

Minho was over the moon and the moment you revealed the big news, he was already up and baby proofing the house.

When you were eight months pregnant, you went into labour and Minho panicked, immediately driving you to the hospital. You were both anxious, fearing that something was wrong.

Labour was the most painful moment in your entire life but also the most beautiful. After ten hours of pain and contractions, your little son was born. He was premature and the doctors checked him several times to reassure that he could breathe on his own.

After that, all the tension broke off from you and you cried as you observed Minho cradling his baby in his arms to bring him over to you. Through the whole examination, after he was sure that you were fine, he watched the doctors and his son with eagle eyes. His protectiveness rising high.

"Look my love! We created such a beautiful boy"

[victusinveritas]

From Rebecca Solnit:

"My God. I was out all day today. Bashar Al Assad, the Butcher of Syria, has fled, his infamous prison/death camp/torture center has been freed, and rebels have taken Syria as far as I can tell. What a week. Insurrectionary Georgia. Coup-repelling South Korea. Now this.

The Guardian reports: When Islamist militants swept into her home town of Aleppo little over a week ago, Rama Alhalabi sheltered indoors as fear engulfed her. Forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, who had sought to reassure residents that nothing was happening, suddenly deserted the city. But as the insurgency pushed south, rapidly seizing control of the city of Hama on the road to Damascus, Alhalabi’s fears about life under militia rule have slowly ebbed. Instead they have been replaced by fears that her friends in the army will be abandoned by their commanding officers as Assad’s regime loses its grip.

“People in Aleppo are feeling more comfortable now we’re further from the areas under the regime’s control,” said the 29-year-old, while still using a pseudonym in fear Assad could retake the city.

“At the same time, I have many friends serving in the army and I don’t want them to get hurt. People with power inside the regime will protect themselves, and they will leave the poor fighters who were forced to join the army to face their awful fate alone.

“Things changed insanely fast,” she added. “We can barely believe what’s happening.”

As militants spearheaded by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) massed outside the city of Homs and rebel forces said they had entered the vast southern suburbs of the capital, rapid change swept across Syria. The Syrian army declared it had “redeployed,” its forces in two restive provinces south of Damascus in the latest thinly-veiled message of retreat, days after they withdrew from Hama. In under a week, five provincial capitals across the country were suddenly no longer under Assad’s control.

“We can hear the bombing nearby, and we are praying, hoping – and waiting,” said Um Ahmad, an elderly native of Homs, sheltering with her husband at home as the fighting drew close enough to be audible.

Assad loyalists fled the city, while people who stayed only have a couple of hours’ electricity each day and what goods are left in the shops are unaffordable. Those remaining in Homs waited to see if this might be the end of Assad’s rule, while an insurgent commander told his regime’s forces inside the city that this was their “last chance to defect before it’s too late”.

Um Ahmad was consumed by a single thought, that she might finally be able to see her sons again after a decade of separation and exile. “Most people are frightened but they fear the regime’s revenge more than anything else,” she said, as Russian and Syrian airstrikes pummelled the countryside around Homs and Hama.

When a popular uprising swept cities across Syria in 2011 calling for Assad to go, it initially looked as if demonstrations could topple another regional autocrat. But the Syrian leader swiftly turned the state’s weapons on his own people to crush dissent. As the uprising slowly morphed into a civil war, Assad freed jihadist prisoners from his fearsome detention system to alter the forces rising up against him, before relying heavily on his allies in Russia and Iran to provide the military muscle he used to reclaim control.

The civil war killed over 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting, with some estimates putting the true toll at twice that number. Tens of thousands remain in detention, including 100,000 believed missing or forcibly disappeared in Assad’s prisons since 2011, and subject to what United Nations monitors have described as systematic torture. Over 12 million people have been displaced.

Assad kept control of Syria’s major cities for years, as battle lines from the country’s years-long proxy war hardened. HTS ruled over a mountainous pocket in the northwest, cut off from the outside world. The group appeared a dim threat to Assad until they suddenly launched an offensive that saw them take control of Aleppo within days.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/07/syria-assad-damascus-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-insurgents

[rontra]

this year is the Vale Demolition Squad!! gratulerer med dagen!

it snuck up on me this year! ... i draw a goofy My Blorbos bunad image every year for may 17th. i think it's fun to have a Specific Thing i draw annually, since it's fun to compare them over time. so kind of to that end i wanted to draw two i've actually done before ... salem was in 2020 and summer was in 2023

as usual, outfit notes 👇

well, last year i attended a confirmation where i saw a lot of "non-standard" personal flair, and ever since then i've been kind of itching to incorporate elements like that. so drawing the same two base fits that i've drawn before but messing around with them a little was very fun

largely speaking the notes are the same as on their individual previous posts (ørskog / winter hardanger) including stuff like summer wearing a different belt than standard, and salem's 9 million MARRIED WOMAN tokens

now, the patch notes:

salem lost the chest piece that's supposed to go inside the jacket (bringeduk) for no reason other than "now the color blocks are reminiscent of the necklines and boob windows i otherwise draw her in" . for a second i contemplated dropping the shirt entirely but then i was like there are LIMITS.... so i settled for the mere illusion....

huge loss to hardanger's general identity so it looks much less decorated/finished at all (lol)

also there's no longer anywhere for the medallion (agnus dei) to hook on to, so she's holding it in her hand. she's discarding her Married Woman Things i hope summer is paying attention ����

also i let her keep her spike earrings instead of swapping to style-matched ones. because i think its coooool

one of her silver belt things (beltestøl) is actually from summer's set. as mentioned in previous posts these belt studs are often received 2 at a time as gifts by married women. they traded one for gay loyalty reasons (summer's isnt visible but it's on her belt for sure)

speaking of summer i don't think swaggy fingerless gloves are usually standard style but i thought it would look cool

rose print floral shirt. this was a big thing i saw--people wearing cool patterned shirts in fun colors (with bunads that traditionally have plain shirts). i really loved this so i wanted to draw it

she lost the silver in her collar and her cape

I ACTUALLY DREW HER EMBROIDERY THIS TIME AAAUGH

[plandthealguidebooktranslation]

Azran Legacy Guidebook: Page 37

Previous Page: Page 36

(continued from previous page)

II: The Three Legacies and their Connection to the Sanctuary

Sticky notes at the top of the page:

3 legacies

Misthallery’s Garden of Healing, Ambrosa’s City of Harmony, The Infinite Vault of Akbadain

All of them are in their control!

Having existed for at least 1 million years prior to modern society, the Azran were a vast, world-wide civilization, and many of the mysteries surrounding this civilization remain unsolved. How and why did such an advanced civilization built by the Azran vanish so abruptly from the forefront of of history? The key to unlocking the proof of this civilization lies in the Azran ruins mentioned by Donald Rutledge in “Ancient Histories”. Namely, three sites known as the known as the “legacies”.

These three legacies are of importance, as they are thought to embody the values of the Azran Civilization. During his worldwide search for Azran ruins, Dr Rutledge found three reoccurring words amongst the artefacts: “healing”, “harmony” and “infinity”, and identified the three sites – the “legacies” – which were constructed to be embodiments of these three concepts. In addition to these “legacies”, exists a “sanctuary” which could be called the centre of Azran society, indicating that… (page cuts off).. these three… Azran Civilization…

Figure B: Mishallery’s Garden of… Figure C:…

Sticky note: Should I refrain from mentioning Aurora’s existence in my paper?

Lined page: At the dawn Of time. the world was one big continent, and the Celestial King sheltered all the lands beneath his ample wings. All living things served him. The king had five children, the Great Riders of the Sky, but they were proud and coveted their father’s throne. The constant warring Of the Riders exhausted the people and tainted the land.

Roused at last to anger, the king drew his sword and made four strokes, slicing the land into ten continents. His children.. He banished them to live on Earth

Unable to sit back and watch, the King used his sword and made four slices, dividing the land into ten continents and banished his sons to the earth. The king sealed the sacred gates to the skies and scattered the five keys on earth, that his children might one day find them. -> Eggs?

Ever since that day. the king’s children have gazed up at the skies, longing to fly again one day.

On corner of lined page: Inscription on the wall of the gods

III: The Scattered Ruins as Azran Systems

The excavated ruins show that the concepts of “healing” “harmony” and “infinity” were highly revered by the ancient Azran people. According to “Ancient Histories”, each of these concepts encapsulates the knowledge and technology of the Azran Civilization. “Healing” controls the life of living organisms, and “harmony” controls the environment in which they live. The third, “infinity”, though difficult to believe, involves a device that supposedly generates infinite amounts of energy. By use of these technologies, the Azran are said to have built a civilization unparalleled by any other in human history. My own fieldwork, appears to support this. We have found, for example, sluices and wind-controlling devices which may have served as systems to regulate the “harmony” of the surrounding environment.

Figure G: Egg Figure H: Popoños

IV: Purpose of the Eggs

In “Ancient Histories” there are several references to mysterious egg relics, found scattered amongst Azran ruins. Based on Dr Rutledge’s research, it may be that that these Eggs function somehow as a key to the Azran’s central sanctuary. …(cut off)… because of the attention on this relic, worldwide…

For example, Hoogland is famous for its belief in the dragonlord, the folklore of which has been the subject of much research. Interestingly, this village also has a tradition tied to “egg” relics, with a related shrine that contained a wind-control mechanism, believed to belong to the Azran.

In addition to being a famous tourist trap, San Grio… (cut off) … objects called “popoños”…

3 つのレがシ ー ~ストハレリの応しの園、 プロシアの調和の町、 アンー ダインの無限回廊ア すべてやつらの

Ⅱ.神殿と 3 つの遺産の関連

現在の人類史より 100万年以上も前に存在した、世界をまたにかける巨大な文明、アスラント。この超古代文明には、いまだナゾの部分も数多く残されている。 それだけ高度な文明を築いたアスラントが、なせあるときを境に歴史の表舞台からこっ然と姿を消したのだろうか。 この超古代文明実在の証明の鍵となる、アスラントの-遺跡"の存在については、ド ー ン・ノ ーランの「古代史」にて、関連すると思われる言及がなされている。それは 3 つの遺産"(レガシ ー )と名付けられた、一連の遺跡群である。 これら 3 つの"遺産"は、アスラント文明の思想を体現する遺跡として存在しているとも考えられる重要なものた。

ノーラン博士は、世界各地に見られるアスラント文明の痕跡を求めるうち、それぞれの遺物に”癒し” “調和” “無限” という 3 つの言葉が散見され、これら 3 つの概念を体現する遺跡が、3 つの遺産として建設されたという記述を発見した。 これら"遺産"となる遺跡群には、アスラント文明の中心地とも言うべき、　“神殿"と、アスントのを指し示す、という…ており、この 3 つの ラント

アーリアの存在を論文で公表するのは控えるべきか？

世界はかってひとつの大陸だった… 空駆ける王は大いなる翼でせ界を覆い、生きとし生ける者すべてが王にかしずいた。 偉大なる王には 5 人の息子があり、それぞれが次の王位をめぐり、争っていた。 戦いは長年に渡り、 国と民とを混乱に陥れた。 見かねた王は剣を4振りし、地上を１０ の大陸に分けると息子たちを地上へと追放した。 やがて王は嘆き天の扉を閉ざし((5 つの鍵を))血の狭間に封印した。エッグか？ 自らの罪を悔い改める時、天に戻れるように。 閉ざされた扉を見上げ、王子たちは各地に散らばり、鍵を探 しなが ら 天へ戻るいを夢見て いる。

神々の壁の碑文よリ

III: 各地に点在する遺跡は、アスラントのシステムである可能性が

出土する遺物には、古代アスラント人が重きを置いた"癒し"調和""無限"という 3 つの概念が散見される。 「古代史」によれば、それぞれはアスラント文明の叡智テクノロジ ー を表すシンポルでもあるという。癒し"は生物の生命活動をコントロ ールし、調和"は生命の環境をコントロ ー ルする。 そして 3 つ目の、無限"は、にわかには信じがたいが、なんと無限のエネルギ ー を生み出す装置であるらしい。アスラント文明はこれらテクノロジ ー により、人類史上類を見ないほどに高度な文明を築き上げていたという。 だが、わたしはこの度のフィ ー ルドワ ー クで、それを裏付けるかのような、水門や風のコントロ ー ルのための施設など、-調和"に関わる環境を調整するためのシステムを担っていたと思われる遺物も、数多く発見することとなった。

Ⅳ: 工ッグという遺物の役割

「古代史」にはアスラントの遺物に散見される、ナゾのエッグ"という存在についての記述がいくつか見られる。ノー ラン博士の研究によれば、この、・エッグ"という存在こそが、アスラントの中心地である神殿"への何かしら鍵のような役割を果たすものだと推察している。 ….この遺物に注目し、世界各地の….

例えば、しばしばフォークロア研究対象としてその題材とされることの多い、龍神信仰で有名なマリードールだが、驚くべきことにこの村落にも"工ッグ"とおぼしき遺物の伝承が遣されており、またそれに関連する祠には、アスラント文明のものと思われる、風をコントロールする機構が存在した。

またそのほかにも、避暑地として有名なマル …物に「ポポンチョ」とい

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

reach for the stars

cw. olnf week 2024, pre!release, step 3-4 (step 1 flashback), established!relationship

pairing. sparkling leaves

notes. day 4 of @olnfweek2024. arguably the day i was looking forward to the most because i had a very creative interpretation of the stargazing prompt. i can't believe i've written consistently 4 days in a row for an event week, that's the power of olnf i guess

“Did you know I can hold stars in my hands?” 

“Really?” Tamarack perked up at Nyla’s sudden revelation, raspberry eyes wide in amazement.

“Uh huh!” Nyla grinned, scooting closer to her best friend on the leaf-dappled ground.

It was a good day in Golden Grove. First and foremost, it was Friday, the best of all weekdays. Mrs. Murray played The Nightmare Before Christmas for the last half-hour of class and even passed out cookies. The day was only made better when Mom didn’t mind if Tamarack spent the whole weekend at their place. Until the hour drew for dinner and bedtime near, though, the two girls were content to play in the forest they called a backyard.

It had only been a few months since Nyla and her mother moved to the mountainous town in Oregon but it felt like she’d known Tamarack Baumann her entire life.

“Show me,” Tamarack whispered in awed excitement. Tamarack believed in the magic of the world as easily as she breathed, both of them did. If Nyla could do something as magical as holding stars in her hand, she wanted to see it.

“Alright,” Nyla started coyly, shifting so that she sat in front of Tamarack. “But you have to close your eyes first.”

Tamarack squeezed her eyes shut fiercely, giggling all the while. 

Nyla had met a lot of people in her 10 ーalmost 11!ー years of living.

Some of them had black hair like her and her parents. Some of them had green. Some of the people she met even had hair that was red, pink, purple or peach! But none of them ever had hair that sparkled, Tamarack was the first and only. 

It was amazing.

Nyla had plenty of questions about it ーwhere the sparkles came from, how they never fell off when Tamarack’s grandma brushed themー but Tamarack never had any good answers about it. Her hair just sparkled, that’s all there was to it. It’s something simply Tamarack. Nyla thought that was the answer she liked the most.

“Tada!” Tamarack opened her eyes and excitement turned into surprise as she took in how close their faces were.

“Where are the stars?” Tamarack blinked up at the taller girl.

“I’m holding onto them already,” Nyla beamed, heart fluttering as she held gamboge waves in her hand. They sparkled like a million precious jewels. It’s hard to breathe as Tamarack’s berry-red eyes look up at her, just as shiny as the sparkling hair that frames them. Tamarack Baumann is the prettiest girl in the world, Nyla knew this was the truth in its purest form. No one came close, not even Brittany Taylor who kids like Adrian Woodward swore was the prettiest girl in school. Nyla wiggled her fingers, marveling at every individual speckle that glinted in the process. “I’m holding stars in my hands.”

“That’s my hair, Nyla,” Tamarack giggled, shaking her head gently so as to not snag her hair on Nyla’s fingers. In spite of her protest, Tamarack’s cheeks were flushed. “That’s not a star.”

“Nope,” Nyla emphasized the ‘p’ stubbornly but mirthfully, brushing her thumbs across Tamarack’s fluffy locks. She felt as pink as Tamarack’s cheeks, both of them smiling widely despite their differing views. “I’m holding stars.”

Nyla chuckles lightly at the memory as her thumb and index finger toy with a lock of her girlfriend’s hair. Sitting in the living room of Tamarack’s childhood home, watching the Cinderella movie Brandy and Whitney Houston with Tamarack is a far cry from the young girls they once were running amok through the forest. Back then, their responsibilities were few and far in between. Presently, they were simply housesitting for the Baumann elders as they went on a trip to Long Beach to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

I was obsessed with Tam’s hair back then. Watching the soft golden speckles glint in the dim glow of the television, Nyla’s lips curl into a lazy smile. They’re laying in a comfortable position on the convertible couch mattress, Tamarack resting her head on Nyla’s chest. Not much has changed, I guess.

One cool day in autumn, Nyla moved to Golden Grove and was struck with a paper airplane that changed the trajectory of her life forever.

But considering how we were neighbors, we would’ve met eventually. Plus we had school the next day too. Logic is pushed aside for the magic that was their first meeting. Fate had been at work that particular day Tamarack caught sight of a bright-eyed fellow new kid looking for something to throw herself into. Nyla wouldn’t have their first meeting go any other way.

Girls like Tamarack should be met in the forest.

Looking at the soft, sparkling crown that grows from her head, however, Nyla thinks girls like Tamarack can be met under the light of the moon too.

But with how she carries the stars with her wherever she goes, my girl can go wherever she wants. Nyla presses a firm kiss atop Tamarack’s head and her girlfriend giggles, arms squeezing just a firmer. She may have lost a portion of her enthusiastic squeeze but Tamarack still gives the best hugs Nyla’s ever received.

Tamarack shifts so that she is able to look at Nyla properly, a serene smile adorning her face. “Hey you,” she murmurs softly against the sound of Prince Christopher’s parents fussing over the party preparations for his birthday.

“Hey,” Nyla’s fingers run through Tamarack’s chin-length hair without shame.

Tamarack’s eyes squint with a gentle but playful gleam, “you’re not paying attention to the movie are you?”

Nyla doesn’t argue against the observation, “oops,” she says despite sounding not particularly bothered she’s been caught. “Looks like you caught me. Guilty as charged.” We’ve seen this movie a million times anyway. Nyla is sure she could quote it in her sleep. Could sing the songs in perfect harmony, mostly perfect. She only gets to look at Tamarack in this specific moment once and she is going to cherish each and every second.

“And what’s got your mind so preoccupied,” Tamarack inquires dreamily.

“Just stargazing,” Nyla murmurs before pressing their lips together.

not enough people wax poetic about the fact tamarack's hair sparkles, so i decided to go full throttle

[dougdimmadodo]

COOL ZOOLOGY STORIES OF 2023

Happy New Year! At the start of 2022 I put together a list of some cool zoology-related news stories from 2021, and after... kind of forgetting to put a list together for 2022, I wanted to do the same for 2023. Here are some of my favourite animal-related news stories from the past year (plus one plant-related story, as a treat.)

An elusive little mammal was spotted for the first time in nearly a century

Species Concerned: De Winton's Golden Mole (Cryptochloris wintoni)

Family: Golden Mole Family (Chrysochloridae)

Source(s): here and here

A small, superficially mole-like animal seemingly found only in the area around Port Nolloth, South Africa, De Winton’s Golden Mole has long been feared to be extinct due to a total lack of confirmed sightings since 1937. This changed in November of 2023, when (after years of extensive searching) a De Winton’s Golden Mole was found alive for the first time in 87 years, and was photographed for the first time ever.

Though similar to moles in both appearance and behaviour, golden moles are actually part of a separate and only distantly related group of mammals known as Afrosoricidans (alongside tenrecs and otter shrews) that have independently developed mole-like bodies to exploit a similar ecological niche – with massive, shovel-like front paws, short limbs, protective “shields” of toughened skin on their heads and non-functional eyes covered by skin to protect them from irritation, members of this family are adapted to burrowing, and in most cases will spend their entire lives underground unless disturbed. Due to the scarcity of sightings very little is known about the biology of De Winton’s Golden Mole, but based on its sandy coastal habitat and the behaviours of its closest relative, the Van Zyl’s Golden Mole (Cryptochloris zyli) it is likely that members of this species live solitary lives and use their digging abilities to “swim” through sand, preying on insects and small vertebrates which they detect using unique structures in their inner ears that are highly sensitive to vibration.

In addition to conventional habitat surveys within De Winton’s Golden Mole’s presumed range, the team responsible for this species’ rediscovery also utilized several newer or more unusual strategies to search for their focal missing mammal, including thermal imaging to detect underground body heat and the testing of soil and sand in the area for eDNA (tiny amounts of genetic material that organisms leave in water, soil and on other surfaces, giving insight into which species are found in an area without having to actually spot them.)

An "ancient plant" turned out to be a baby turtle

Species Concerned: "Turtwig" Cretaceous Turtle

Family: Unknown

Source(s): Here and Here

In 2003, a priest and fossil collector named Gustavo Huertas identified what he believed to be the fossilised remains of a tiny plant of the extinct genus Sphenophyllum in cretaceous-era rocks near Villa de Leyva, Columbia, and named the new species Sphenophyllum colombianum. Huertas' find was unusual in that it dated to the early Cretaceous period (making it over 100 million years younger than other Sphenophyllum species, the last of which are believed to have gone extinct in the late Triassic period,) and it was the fossil's unusual age that drew the attention of Fabiany Herrera, a curator of plant fossils at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA and Héctor Palma-Castro, his student. After taking an interest in the fossil the two travelled to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Columbia where the fossil was held in order to inspect it, and after realising that its features were unlike other Sphenophyllum species and consulting a vertebrate palaeontologist, Edwin-Alberto Cadena, they eventually came to realise that what Huertas had found was not a Sphenophyllum species, or event a plant - what had originally been interpreted as the stems and leaves of a plant were actually the ribs of a very small, and likely very young, prehistoric turtle.

The ribs of turtles are located on the upper surface of their shells, where they form a sort of "roof" that strengthens the shell's outer carapace. Newly hatched turtles have fragile bones and shells that are easily broken beyond recognition during fossilization, so finding the well-preserved remains of a young turtle (estimated to be less than 1 year old when its bones were buried) is very rare. The discovery of the true identity of "Sphenophyllum colombianum" was published (here) in early December 2023, and as such the newly discovered turtle fossil has yet to be given a new name. Instead, it has been affectionately dubbed "Turtwig", after the half-plant-half-turtle gen 4 starter Pokemon, until it can be formally reclassified.

The Indochinese Green Magpie became the Photo Ark's 14,000th species

Species Concerned: Indochinese Green Magpie (Cissa hypoleuca)

Family: Crow Family (Corvidae)

Source: Here

The National Geographic Photo Ark is an ambitious project led by Canadian photographer Joel Sartore which aims to photograph every species held in captivity worldwide, providing high-quality images of often relatively obscure species and raising awareness of each species involved. In 2021 the Arabian Cobra became the 12,000th species added to the ark, in 2022 the Spoon-Billed Sandpiper became the 13,000th, and as of May 2023 the Indochinese Green Magpie has become the 14,000th species Sartore and his team have photographed.

Unlike the vast majority of crow species, the 4 species in the genus Cissa, known collectively as green magpies, are brightly coloured, largely carnivorous birds with vivid green feathers and bright red beaks and feet which are thought to aid them in camouflaging against the leaves and bark of the dense, humid forests they typically inhabit. The Indochinese Green Magpie, which is found in densely forested areas from central China to southern Cambodia, is one of the most common green magpie species, but is still believed to be experiencing a decline in population size due to the intense demand for members of this species in the illegal wildlife trade, both for their feathers and to be kept as illegal pets. The model for Sartore's photo, a female named Jolie, was herself found in a suitcase that was intercepted while being smuggled through the Los Angeles International Airport, and is now kept Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens. The team behind the Photo Ark have expressed hopes that Jolie's picture and story will help to raise awareness of the harmful effects of the illegal exotic pet trade and its prominence within the USA. On a happier note, the photo also seems to show that Jolie is now doing well - green magpies kept in captivity have been known to sometimes take on a duller colouration due to a lack of carotenoids in their diet, so her natural green feathers are an indicator of good health.

A very rare, very weird plant was rediscovered after 30 years

Species Concerned: Thismia kobensis

Family: Burmannia Family (Burmanniaceae)

Source(s): Here, here and here

In 1992, a bizarre-looking plant was found growing near the city of Kobe in Japan; pale and partially transparent without any leaves or chlorophyll, it was a member of the genus Thismia and was notable for being found further north than any other Asian species in the genus to date. A single plant was collected and taken to the Museum of Nature and Human Activities in the nearby city of Sanda, and in 2018 extensive examination of this single preserved plant led to it being determined to be a previously undocumented species, Thismia kobensis. This discovery led to surveys being dispatched to the area where the species was originally discovered in hopes of gathering additional samples and learning more about T. kobensis in the wild, but after surveys of the area were unable to find any remaining individuals, and following the discovery that the site from which the original sample had been collected had been converted into an industrial complex since the 1990s, the species was feared to have gone extinct. In February of 2023, a team of researchers led by Kobe University's Professor Kenji Suetsugu announced the first documented sighting of Thismia kobensis in 31 years, having found a small population growing in Sanda, not far from the museum that holds what had long been the only known specimen of the species and roughly 30km (18.6 miles) from the site at which the species was originally discovered. Their publication can be read here.

Thismia species, also known as fairy lanterns, are almost alien-looking plants that, as mentioned previously, lack chlorophyll and do not carry out photosynthesis, instead gaining nutrients parasitically by connecting their roots to the hyphae of typically mutualistic fungi and extracting nutrients from both the fungus itself and from any other plants that it has connected to (making it a mycoheteroph, much like the slightly better-known ghost plant/ghost pipes.) This unusual lifestyle likely developed as an adaptation to allow members of this genus to survive in forests with dense canopies that block out sunlight, but also makes them highly sensitive to environmental change - in order for an area to support a healthy population of Thismia kobensis, it must also support healthy trees and healthy soil fungi. As the original preserved 1992 specimen of T. kobensis was long dead and slightly damaged, its rediscovery also allowed Suetsugu's team to further study the species, leading to a surprising conclusion - genetically and anatomically, Thismia kobensis seems to have more in common with Thismia americana (the only known North American species of Thismia, which was last sighted in 1916 and is similarly feared extinct) than to any other Asian Thismia, possibly suggesting that T. kobensis and T. americana are descended from common ancestors that spread either from Asia to the Americas or vice versa during a time when their ranges were connected by a land bridge.

Important progress was made in saving the Sumatran Rhinoceros

Species Concerned: Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

Family: Rhinoceros Family (Rhinocerotidae)

Sources: Here and here

Distinguished from the other 4 rhinoceros species by its relatively small size, 2 horns and short black fur (which is barely present in adults, but very prominent in calves) the Sumatran Rhinoceros is one of the rarest mammals on earth, with an estimated population size of roughly 30-80 individuals. Having had its numbers drastically reduced by poaching, habitat loss and extreme weather events, the species is now threatened by its own small population size - found only in tiny scattered populations across Sumatra and Borneo, it is now extremely difficult for wild members of this species to find mates, and where mating does occur such a small population size considerably limits genetic diversity, increasing the risk of calves being born with health complications. To combat this numerous efforts to breed Sumatran Rhinoceroses in captivity have been developed, and as of November of 2023 the results have been promising; last year saw the birth of 2 Sumatran Rhinoceros calves at the Way Kambas National Park in Lampung, Sumatra.

The youngest of 2023's calves, a male, is the son of a female named Delilah who was herself the second calf to have ever been born at the park's Sumatran Rhinoceros Sanctuary (a site where members of this species are cared for and protected from illegal poaching while breeding.) This marks the first-ever instance of a captive-born Sumatran Rhinoceros giving birth, and therefore represents a key step in establishing a healthy captive breeding population of Sumatran Rhinoceroses to help preserve and increase the genetic diversity of wild populations. The calf's father, named Harapan, was born in Cincinnati Zoo in the USA, and it is hoped that the careful incorporation of the handful of Sumatran Rhinoceroses held in zoos into wild breeding programs can further help to increase the species' genetic diversity in the future. While extensive action is still needed for the Sumatran Rhinoceros to be saved, the park's work this year represents a significant step towards the species' conservation.

--------------------------------------------

Have a great new year!

[helix-3]

Cant draw now because im going back home today

And i was scrolling through my own art and i was like. What the fuck was i drawing. Kinda feel like theyre just a bunch of nonsense.

Idk why. Maybe because theyre a bit... Childish? But i do remember i wanna see them during the time of drawing...

Maybe i draw comics because im not good enough to draw good single illustration. Just look at that last kayo i drew. Completely fucked up his torso's perspective and it feels more like a very flat cylinder instead of, you know, a torso

Yeah... Its almost lunar new year now and we do have holidays for that in my country. I just... dont know how much i will draw during this this. Like, i know every artist probably went through this, but i just feel sad and defeated when i know i wont be satisfy with the thing i draw. I just know they would be... not up to anyones standard. I dont know what to draw anymore.

Sigh. I really dont know how to handle this situation. Is this an art block? I feel like ive been through this a million times since the time i started drawing.

[ausetkmt]

The chained hand of Archer Alexander, who was the last slave captured under the fugitive slave law, is depicted in a statue commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation. A bill to study reparations for slavery advanced through a House committee this year but hasn't gotten a floor vote.

Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

Seven months ago, a House committee advanced a bill to study reparations for slavery, after more than three decades of efforts to build support for the idea.

But the bill has not been taken up for consideration by the full House of Representatives even though it has the backing of some of the country's most prominent Democrats.

"Since April there has been very little movement on the bill by the leadership in Congress," said Kamm Howard, a national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.

Advocates for reparations are frustrated despite the fact that the proposal faces steep odds of fully passing the closely divided Congress even if the House did take it up.

The bill is H.R. 40, and it gets its name from the unmet promise that former slaves would be given "40 acres and a mule" as the Civil War drew to a close. It would establish a 13-person commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination in the United States, from before the country's finding to present day.

The commission would hold hearings, submit its findings to Congress and recommend "appropriate remedies." It would also consider a "national apology" for the harm caused by slavery.

The bill's original sponsor, the late Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, first proposed the bill in 1989, and did so year after year for nearly three decades, until he retired in 2017. After that, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas began sponsoring the bill.

"I don't think anyone could argue against the fact that the trajectory of slavery has gone through the centuries, the decades and is in the DNA of descendants of enslaved Africans," Jackson Lee, a Democrat, said in an interview with NPR. "America would do well to try to bring healing and repair, in this time and in this century."

The bill finally gained political traction among Democrats as the country grappled with race and systemic racism and protests sparked by the killings of Black Americans by police flowed through the streets of U.S. cities large and small over the last two years.

Republicans oppose reparations. Democrats say even studying them has value

The bill has nearly 200 co-sponsors in the House, including members of House Democratic leadership. But it is widely opposed by Republicans and was advanced by the House Judiciary Committee in April with only Democratic votes.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, argued that because the committee's members would be appointed by the president, the House speaker and the Senate pro tempore, who are currently all Democrats, the commission would obviously come to a conclusion in support of reparations.

"Spend $20 million for a commission that's already decided to take money from people who were never involved in the evil of slavery and give it to people who were never subject to the evil of slavery," Jordan said during the hearing on the bill. "That's what Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are doing."

Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah, one of two Black Republicans currently serving in the House, said that the concept of reparations is "divisive."

"Reparation where you take people's money that they've earned — it's punishment, it's theft, it's judgement," he said in the hearing. "It's saying that because of your skin color, you owe me. That is not the American way. We're not racist people. This American country is based on meritocracy."

Jackson Lee says arguments like this miss the point. The bill does not prescribe what form reparations should take, a question that is a point of debate among supporters of reparations for slavery.

"It is not the study of getting a check. It is not giving you a check. It is not the bill on a check," Jackson Lee said. "It is to study slavery and develop reparations proposals, which would create, first of all, the platform for understanding."

Rep. Jamaal Bowman talked about reparations frequently when he campaigned for his New York congressional seat.

"We haven't taken a moment to stop and pause and reflect and look ourselves in the mirror as a country and really be honest with ourselves about how those harms continue to persist," Bowman said.

A group of advocates has been pushing Democrats to bring the bill up for a vote, arguing that it is deeply popular.

"We are working diligently to basically get them all in a room with us and tell us directly how we can move this bill forward," said Nicole Austin-Hillery of Human Rights Watch, one of the advocates calling for a meeting with House leaders. "They have the power to do it, and we're imploring them to do so."

Some argue that House leadership has yet to bring the bill up for a vote because they fear a backlash among voters. Democrats are coming off of a series of bruising off-year elections that featured fresh Republican attacks on race and culture. In next year's midterms, Democrats will be defending incredibly slim majorities.

"The Democratic leaders are saying that they are scared if they move this legislation today, that it will hurt their chances of keeping control of the Congress," said Howard.

Advocates are urging Biden to act without Congress

A senior Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the status of pending legislation, said that conversations about the legislation are ongoing, and that Democratic leadership and the White House are working together on the path forward. The aide said that equity is a central priority of the party.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a co-sponsor of the bill, told reporters earlier this year that he hopes that President Biden considers establishing a commission similar to the one called for in H.R. 40 using executive authority, noting that the chances of the bill passing the Senate "are pretty dim." In the evenly divided Senate, legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. A Senate companion bill, sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, has just 22 co-sponsors, with no Republicans.

The idea of Biden establishing a commission on his own has also won the support of some activists, including the Rev. Mark Thompson.

"What sets H.R. 40 apart from all of those other pieces of legislation that 'Manchinema' are blocking, is this" he said — using a compound reference to moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. "H.R 40 is the only one ... that Biden can sign and enact by executive order."

The White House hasn't said whether Biden would consider creating a commission on his own.

"He supports a number of components of the bill, including the funding and the proposal for a study, which he feels would be the next important step forward and something that he feels would be absolutely correct in addressing ... these moments in history," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in June.

Jackson Lee said she's focused on the legislative process and still hopes to get a "successful result" in the House, but said that there's a "great deal of power in the White House and in the presidency."

"I think there is certainly a sufficient body of people that would give President Biden a standing ovation if that was the direction that we needed to take," she said.

[fay-run]

It was late, much too late for Sindyrdra to still be avoiding her trance. She wasn’t on watch, nor did she have any good reason for not allowing herself to meditate. Instead, she lay with her eyes open, watching as the githyanki beside her slept peacefully. Lae’zel, her Lae’zel. Sindyrdra smiled, reaching a hand up to brush a rogue braid off of her lover's face. Almost as soon as it came, the smile fell and her stomach tightened. She was no stranger to fear. Powerful a sorcerer as she may be, she feared for her life on more than one occasion in recent months. But the fear of losing someone, of having to live without someone she loved? It hadn’t been long since that kind of fear had last held her in its clutches. It was horrifying. 

Her memory flashed back to the morning prior, the sunbeams rising around the surrounding buildings as they sat on the balcony. Lae’zel next to her, holding her with a gentleness Sindyrdra never in a million years would have guessed she could possess. Her fingers drew comforting motions along her back as they spoke of their travels, the future. Their future. Lae’zel’s voice became small and quiet, timid, and her words came out almost pleading.

When all this is over, will you stay with me? For good?

Hearing the subtle, silent hope in Lae’zel’s words had jarred her. It had already been well established they had become more than what they had originally agreed to, just a way to let off steam in the midst of the mess they’d been thrust into. They’d grown to trust each other enough to tell one another the details of their pasts, the thing each member of their group kept under heavily guarded lock and key. They’d bonded over the similarities of the life they’d grown up in; Lae’zel in Creche K’liir and Sindyrdra in Menzoberranzan. They’d forgiven one another for their past transgressions, for the things they were forced to do in the unforgiving societies they’d inhabited. Even after all this, the idea of looking to the future, whatever future they might have after dealing with The Absolute, wanted to send her into survival mode. There was a possibility they wouldn’t even have a future. That they be killed, or turned into mindflayers. How could she even consider what comes next? 

Then Sindyrdra looked into Lae’zel’s wide, expectant eyes, and she just melted. Vulnerability didn’t come naturally to Lae’zel, she knew how hard this was for her. Sindyrdra allowed herself a moment to think about what if. What if they defied all odds? What if they could destroy The Absolute? What if their parasites would be gone? 

And she’d realized quickly enough that she could not imagine anything else but being by Lae’zel’s side, wherever it took them. She didn’t care if it meant having Vlaakith loyalists coming for them for the rest of eternity. She didn’t care if it meant fighting alongside her in the astral plane, if she’d even be allowed to do so. 

As her response, Sindyrdra kissed her. Sweetly, deliberately, the type of kiss meant for long-term lovers. Tenderness was something so foreign to the both of them, but they were learning. Together.

“I admit this ‘trance’ of yours is foreign to me, though I believe your eyes are meant to be closed.”

Lae’zel’s voice was groggy, and when Sindyrdra turned to look at her she was attempting to blink away the sleep from her eyes. This stubborn woman wouldn’t just go back to sleep when woken, of course. She probably knew Sindyrdra was still awake while in the clutches of sleep and willed herself awake just to fuss at her. 

“I still have plenty of time,” she responded, waving away Lae’zel’s encroaching concern. “Go back to sleep. You need it.”

“And you do not?”

“I don’t sleep,” she said, grinning while she eyed Lae’zel. “Remember?”

Lae’zel made her little ‘chk’, a mannerism Sindyrdra found utterly adorable. 

“Yes, I remember. I find it unfair that your kind should have this advantage,” she sat up, holding herself up by the palms of her hands, and blew her messied hair out of her face. “And I find it odd that you opt to stare mindlessly at the ceiling rather than do something proactive with your extra freetime.”

There was a time when Sindyrdra may have been offended by Lae’zel’s bluntness, but she now knew that her words didn’t come from malice. She had been forced to spend every waking moment training, or studying, or doing something that her kin would deem as ‘worthwhile’. It was all she knew, to be militant during all hours. In her mind, she did not understand why Sindyrdra would take the extra time her lack of a need to sleep granted her to simply sit and reflect, rather than do anything productive.

“Sometimes it's nice to have time to yourself,” she replied, turning her gaze back up to the ceiling. “To think. I guess I might have thought like you, once. Before I left home.”

She’d been such a different person back then. Anything to please her mother, anything to please her House, anything to please Lloth. And all of it had come back to bite her. If any good came of it, it was that she had the wisdom to guide Lae’zel through the very same plight. 

Lae’zel was wide awake now, clearly not allowing for Sindyrdra to stay up without her. Sindyrdra shook her thoughts out of her head and turned her body so she was facing Lae’zel, taking one of her hands in her own. The gith looked down at their interlaced fingers between them and frowned. A gentle touch was more startling to Lae’zel than a slap to the face. Yet she did not yank her hand away as she once might have. Instead, she allowed Sindyrdra to pull them both to their feet, and began guiding them out of their room in the Elfsong Tavern. 

“Where are we going?” asked Lae’zel, eyeing Sindyrdra suspiciously but giving no resistance to her lead. “This bears a frightening similarity to the night you forced me to wade through the river with you. I will not be pleased if I see us approach any body of water.”

“I did not force you,” Sindyrdra insisted, turning around for only a moment to shoot Lae’zel a look. “You know, most water in the Underdark is too cold to swim in. I wasn’t used to it either and I still had fun.”

“You pushed me in before I was ready.”

Sindyrdra was certain if she turned around again, she would be met with the most adorable Lae’zel pout she’d ever seen, but she resisted. “And if I hadn’t you never would have gone in. Now, hush. It is my turn to show you something.”

Lae’zel acquiesced and fell silent. While she couldn’t see her, Sindyrdra furrowed her brow and worried at her lip. The decision to show this to her was a last-minute one, thought of only when she woke just now. Now, she worried it would upset her. Or worse, anger her. But there was no turning back now, of course. Lae’zel would never allow it. 

The cool night air nipped at their skin when they opened the hatch to the roof of the tavern. Selune was full and bright, and her light lit up the rooftop gardens enough for them to find their way to the stone bench in the middle. Sindyrdra sat Lae’zel down and took a seat next to her. Lae’zel’s expression had grown increasingly concerned, and shoulders were tense when she turned to her. 

“Why have we come here, Sindyrdra?” she looked around. “If there is something we must speak about, surely–”

“There is nothing we need to talk about, Lae’zel,” she assured her, placing a hand on her arm, then pointing to the sky. “Look up.”

Lae’zel looked up. For a moment her face was blank, searching for whatever it was her lover was trying to show her. Then, her mouth opened slightly, and her eyes widened. “The Tears…” she breathed, reaching to the sky as if she could touch them. “K’liir… They are so bright.”

Sindyrdra swallowed, still nervous the gith would only grow bitter at the sight of her home. “It happens when the moon is full. Gale pointed it out to me, one of the first nights we camped together. I thought you might like to see.”

When Lae’zel didn’t immediately answer, her stomach twisted in regret. This was stupid. She deserved whatever scolding she was going to get for this. 

But Lae’zel’s expression did not turn sour. Instead, it illuminated; shining brighter than The Tears themselves. She took the hand laying on her shoulder and brought it to her lips, then looked up from it with a smile. 

“Your thoughts were correct,” she said, looking at Sindyrdra as if all the stars in the Realms could compete with her beauty. But they could not, because to Lae’zel, Sindyrdra would win against each one. “This is just another wonder of this world you have shown to me. One I will cherish greatly; for I will think of you each time I see it. It is magnificent.”

Sometimes when she looked at her, Sindyrdra couldn’t believe Lae’zel was real, and tonight was no different. The woman beside her was the most incredible woman she’d ever known; more fearsome than any drider, more depth to her than any abyss. She was truly something to behold. Sindyrdra kissed her, and when they detached, she placed her forehead against hers for just a blissful moment, before pulling back again. “Yesterday, when you brought me to the sunrise I… I was quiet. I couldn’t use my words. I fear for the future and I fear losing you, which makes it hard to say, but you deserve to hear it out loud,” She licked her lips timidly. “I will stay with you, Lae’zel. After we defeat the Absolute, and for eternity. No matter what you choose when you are faced with the choice we both know you will have, I will be by your side. Whether physically, or if it must be some other way. I will be here for you to come to, always.”

It is a terrifying thing, to show all of your heart and soul to another, especially when it goes against everything you were ever taught. The two of them seemed to be doing it often as of late, however. And each time, it got a little easier.

Lae’zel’s big, emotive eyes were looking at her with what could only be described as awe. And this time, she was the one left speechless. So Sindyrdra kissed her once again, because they’d said more than enough the past two nights. After the brain was defeated there would be more time for flowery confessions of love, without ever truly saying the word love.

It wasn’t needed. They stayed under the Tears of Selune as they finished their journey over the night sky, as close to one another as the material plane would possibly allow, and each of them knew what the other felt.

[newstfionline]

Monday, October 7, 2024

Still Searching for Their Loved Ones, a Week After Hurricane Helene (NYT) The last time Drew McLean’s parents saw him, he was marveling at the power of Tropical Storm Helene as it washed over their home in the mountains of North Carolina. He and his mother found that a large tree had split in the front yard and another had been pushed by surging water into Mr. McLean’s car, tipping it on its side. Amid the chaos, Mr. McLean, 45, offered his mother a comforting thought: “God is still on his throne,” he said. Mr. McLean has been missing for a week now, ever since he apparently walked off into the storm last Friday. Sitting on the back porch of their secluded home in the hills of Black Mountain on Thursday, his parents were holding out hope that he would be found, even as they wiped tears from their eyes and increasingly feared the worst. The McLeans are in a fraught and fragile state shared by many across western North Carolina and other regions crushed by Hurricane Helene. The vastness of the devastation, coupled with a lack of phone and internet service after the storm, has left families unsure of what happened to their loved ones. The storm’s death toll has climbed past 225, but many people remain unaccounted for and searching for them is complicated. Their families are desperate for answers.

U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack (WSJ) A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter, which amounts to a major national security risk.

Brazil drought sinks Amazon rainforest port river level to 122-year low (Reuters) The river port in the Amazon rainforest’s largest city of Manaus on Friday hit its lowest level since 1902, as a drought drains waterways and snarls transport of grain exports and essential supplies that are the region’s lifeline. Below-average rainfall—even through the rainy season—has plagued the Amazon and much of South America since last year, also feeding the worst wildfires in more than a decade in Brazil and Bolivia. Scientists predict the Amazon region may not fully recover moisture levels until 2026. Last year, the drought became a humanitarian crisis, as people reliant on rivers were stranded without food, water or medicine. This year authorities are already on alert. In hard-hit Amazonas state, at least 62 municipalities are under states of emergency with more than half a million people affected, according to the state’s civil defense corps.

Is Europe Becoming Ungovernable? (WSJ) At a recent debate, a German voter had some pointed criticism for Chancellor Olaf Scholz: The German government is unable to govern and its ministers are bickering like children. Instead of pushing back, Scholz conceded the point. “The truth is: You are right,” he said. “But what would be your solution? I mean, I’m asking for a friend.” The exchange triggered little controversy in Europe’s largest economy, once considered a paragon of good governance. It is now all but taken for granted that politicians can agree on little here, and implement even less. France, which for decades has been the engine of the European Union along with Germany, has found itself in a similar state of political paralysis after elections in June left Parliament divided between a multitude of parties. Political fragmentation and polarization have tied the hands of political leaders, who can govern only in unwieldy coalitions between left- and right-leaning parties. Governments have struggled to find common ground on even basic issues, much less some of their most acute problems, such as handling growing numbers of immigrants, the war in Ukraine and stagnant economies. As a result, the EU and its governments have been failing to fulfill their commitments to voters and risk falling further behind competitors such as the U.S. and China.

Macron urges countries to ‘stop delivering weapons’ to Israel for war in Gaza (Washington Post) French President Emmanuel Macron urged countries to stop providing weapons to Israel for its war in the Gaza Strip and expressed concern that the civilians of Lebanon could face a similar fate as those in Gaza. “The priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to carry out fighting in Gaza,” Macron said in an interview with France Inter, a public radio station, that aired Saturday. France itself, Macron said, was not delivering any weapons. Macron’s call comes amid mounting public scrutiny of the high death toll in Gaza and the widening regional conflict to Lebanon. At a summit for francophone leaders in Paris on Saturday, Macron appeared to take a jab at the United States, by far Israel’s largest supplier of weapons: “If we call for a cease-fire, consistency is to not provide weapons of war,” he said. “And I think that those who provide them cannot every day call for a cease-fire alongside us and continue to supply them.”

Russia retrains ex-soldiers heading back to the battlefield (Reuters) Nearly 20 years after he last served in Russia’s army, “Mara” is back in uniform. The bearded ex-driver and foundry worker, who identified himself only by his call sign, signed up with the army on Monday. By Friday, he was going through his paces at a training ground in Russia’s southern Rostov region, practising firing from an automatic rifle and simulating the storming of a building. Two and a half years into its war with Ukraine, Russia is offering one-off bonuses of up to 1.9 million roubles ($20,000)—22 times the average monthly wage—to men prepared to sign volunteer contracts as professional soldiers. Being able to attract people like Mara is crucial to Moscow’s ability to replenish its forces and avoid resorting to another round of compulsory mobilisation. The drafting of 300,000 reserves in October 2022 proved hugely unpopular and prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country.

International rescue teams arrive in Bosnia after devastating floods and landslides (AP) Rescue teams from Bosnia’s neighbors and European Union countries on Sunday were joining efforts to clear the rubble and find people still missing from floods and landslides that devastated parts of the Balkan country. Bosnia sought EU help after a heavy rainstorm overnight on Friday left entire areas under water and debris destroyed roads and bridges, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens. Officials said that at least 10 people are still unaccounted for.

Ukraine in security limbo (Washington Post) More than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented his “victory plan” for how to end the war with Russia to top U.S. officials, details of the strategy and how it was received remain hazy. The trip, which was viewed as a key opportunity by Ukrainian officials for Zelensky to sell the United States on how to support Ukraine going forward, failed to resonate in Washington. Biden held his stance on prohibiting U.S.-provided longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia and Zelensky found himself caught in a political crossfire as influential Republicans largely criticized or snubbed him. Zelensky’s U.S. swing reinforced the sort of unsettling limbo Ukraine now finds itself in going forward—reliant on the United States as its main ally to arm it against Russia yet unsure how long that support will continue as attention on the war fades in its third year and with the new escalation in the Middle East.

‘My dreams are about bombs’ (NYT) The Israeli airstrikes are worst at night. By day, residents walk the city with haggard faces, trying their best to fight fatigue and calm their nerves. Empty cigarette packets pile up in handbags and in the footwells of cars. Anti-anxiety medication is shared among friends. “When will this end?” the 7-year-old daughter of Farah Choucair, an economist who spent 14 years working for the United Nations, asked her mother last week. For the child, the pounding Israeli strikes are a flashback to the deadly Beirut port blast, which ripped through the Lebanese capital just over four years ago and destroyed entire neighborhoods. Ms. Choucair, who now works for a media technology company, said it took years of psychological support for her to process the trauma, but her daughter never did. For many in Beirut, the continuing conflict is just one in a long line of human catastrophes. The city’s bullet-ridden apartment buildings serve as a daily reminder of Lebanon’s bloody 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. A crippling economic collapse that struck decades later has left much of the country in poverty, and residents are still grappling with chronic power cuts even as the capital is bombarded. Many residents say they loathe the stereotype that the Lebanese are resilient. “I wish sometimes that we could just sit and cry our eyes out and not know what to do, but we always know what to do—what to pack, what we need,” said Ms. Choucair. “It has nothing to do with resilience or any positive trait. It’s a natural survival mode that we have been trained to automate.” She added: “This is how it is living in Beirut. It will never change. I am 41. It has been like this for as long as I remember.” “All my dreams are about bombs,” said Heba Jundi, 36, who was staying at a friend’s house in the mountains above Beirut with her cat, Benji.

Health workers in Lebanon describe deadly Israeli attacks on colleagues and fear more (AP) Israel’s military struck outside the gates of a hospital in southern Lebanon without warning on Friday, killing seven paramedics and forcing the facility to close, the hospital director told The Associated Press a day after one of the most deadly attacks on health workers in the weeks since fighting escalated between Israel and Hezbollah. The account of the Friday airstrikes that flung hospital doors off their hinges and shattered glass was the latest to detail attacks that Lebanon’s health ministry says have killed dozens of health workers. Marjayoun hospital director Mounes Kalakesh said that even before Friday’s attack, ambulance crews in the area were so reluctant to operate that the facility had not received anyone wounded for days. Friday’s attack came hours before Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman accused the Hezbollah militant group, based in southern Lebanon, of using ambulances to transport weapons and fighters, and warned medical teams to stay clear of the group. The spokesman provided no evidence.

A year of fleeing across Gaza (AP) Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming the walls of his tent. For the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forces wreaked destruction around them. It’s a far cry from their house in northern Gaza—a place of comforting routine, of love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers. The Abu Jarad family lost that stability when Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the devastating weeks and months of war that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls. They moved where the military told them to move. Seven times they fled, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them, crowding with strangers in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street. Israel’s campaign has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza—1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians—and killed more than 41,600 people. Like the Abu Jarads, most families have been uprooted multiple times. For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — To steer the university through an unexpected leadership change induced by debate over antisemitism, the board of the University of Pennsylvania turned to their vice chair — who is also one of the most prominent Jewish communal leaders in the country.

Julie Beren Platt, a 1979 Penn graduate, has been on the Penn board of trustees since 2006 and recently started her second stint as vice chair, making her a natural fit to step up when chair Scott Bok resigned from the management body on Saturday, following the resignation of the university’s president, Liz Magill.

Platt is also the chair of Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella of 146 local Jewish communal bodies that has collected more than $700 million — and allocated more than $240 million — to drive the American Jewish philanthropic response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Platt cited that commitment in emphasizing that her leadership of Penn’s board would last for a short period: She said she will step down in January when a permanent chair is selected.

Platt’s dual roles mean that she has been on the front lines in two of the most prominent organizations reshaped by the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath. It also suggests, as she acknowledged in a statement, that even the presence of a seasoned Jewish leader in a senior university board position is not sufficient to address antisemitism on college campuses right now.

“I have worked hard from the inside to address the rising issues of antisemitism on campus. Unfortunately, we have not made all the progress that we should have and intend to accomplish,” Platt said in a statement issued by JFNA, adding, “I will continue as a board member of the university to use my knowledge and experience of Jewish life in North America and at Penn to accelerate this critical work.”

A JFNA spokesperson declined to elaborate on how she will balance the two roles.

Platt, 66, is the daughter of Joan Schiff Beren, a philanthropist who died in 2016, and Robert Beren, the Wichita, Kansas, oil magnate and Jewish philanthropist who died in August at 97. She is also the mother of five children — four of them Penn graduates — including the Broadway actor Ben Platt and Jonah Platt, a musician who also sits on the board of 70 Faces Media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company.

Previously the chair of the Los Angeles federation and the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Platt also chairs a foundation named for her and her husband, Hollywood producer Marc Platt, and has been involved in an array of Jewish educational initiatives.

She became the second woman to helm JFNA’s board last year, assuming leadership of the fundraising organization at a crucial time. The organization has distributed hundreds of millions to groups providing emergency aid in Israel since Oct. 7. The group has also supported local Jewish communities in the United States in strengthening their own response to antisemitism through an initiative, LiveSecure, created in 2021, that Platt was instrumental in launching.

“We are leading the largest mobilization in our history in support of Israel’s right to protect its citizens and against the rise of antisemitism in North America, including staging the largest Jewish rally in American history on the National Mall,” Platt said in her statement. “We will continue this fight with all our energy.”

Penn was already grappling with a crisis related to antisemitism in the weeks prior to Oct. 7, as a festival featuring Palestinian writers drew criticism. Platt and Bok had issued a statement of confidence in Liz Magill, Penn’s president, in the wake of that crisis and in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, even as some criticized the school’s initially response as tepid.

But last week, Magill was one of three college presidents who declined during a congressional hearing to say that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct. Her testimony drew criticism from Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, and even the White House.

Platt said in a statement that she believed Magill had fallen short in the hearing. “In my view, given the opportunity to choose between right and wrong, the three university presidents testifying in the United States House of Representatives failed,” she said. “The leadership change at the university was therefore necessary and appropriate.”

[jordanianroyals]

12 September 2023: Queen Rania called for a new model of leadership that aims to cultivate common ground and inject humanity into decision-making, highlighting the need to come together on shared challenges, such as the migrant, refugee, and climate crises.

Speaking in London at the CogX Global Leadership Summit, she recalled the sinking of a crowded migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea last June, leaving more than 600 people dead as they attempted to reach Europe.

She noted how each side of the migration debate saw the shipwreck as proof of their version of the truth, with some blaming Europe’s tough migration policies for the disaster, while others charged that Europe’s leniency had led the migrants to risk their lives in the first place.

“When we can’t tolerate ideas that challenge our own, we hold their proponents in contempt,” Her Majesty said. Rather than “retreating into bunkers of ‘us vs. them,’ she called for an openness to doubt, explaining that unchecked certainty can lead us to “fight each other instead of fighting our problems.”

“You may think certainty is a mark of moral integrity – but is it?” Queen Rania asked. “Certainty can lead to moral fracture – a code of ethics that registers a sinking ship first as evidence of being right, and only second as tragedy.” (Source: Petra)

Her Majesty also called for increased global support to refugee host nations such as Jordan, where one in eight people is a Syrian refugee. She also drew attention to the growing needs of African nations receiving refugees from Sudan, where more than 4 million people have been displaced since April.

“Getting things right means doing the right thing. And for that, we must think with our hearts,” she said, citing the example of His Majesty King Abdullah II, who, following the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, made the decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees to Jordan.

“His Majesty knew what mattered most. His heart led his actions. As he put it, ‘There is a hungry child and a desperate mother at our border. How could we not let them in?’” Queen Rania said.

Her Majesty commended the generosity of the people of Jordan, as well as that of host nations currently welcoming refugees fleeing violence in Sudan. However, she stressed that countries that are neighbors to conflict cannot shoulder the burden of refugee hosting alone.

“Since July, the World Food Program has been cutting support for Syrian refugees in Jordan—not because the need has passed, but because new emergencies are breaking out, while donor support has lagged,” she said, adding that 74 percent of the world’s displaced are hosted by low- and middle-income countries.

The Queen also highlighted the unequal global approach to refugee crises, stating that, four months into the war in Sudan, less than 30 percent of donor appeals had been met, while the Ukraine emergency appeal was 70 percent funded within its first month.

“I don’t think we need a supercomputer to explain such discrimination,” Her Majesty said.

“When we demonize people for seeking a better life for their families, we normalize their suffering. We normalize 11 children on average drowning each week in dangerous Mediterranean crossings,” she said. “We normalize people going hungry in a world of plenty—not because we cannot help them, but because we’ve chosen not to.”

During her speech, Queen Rania explained that, in an age where “where AI churns out content and code, and where we’re connected to everything, everywhere, all at once,” it is easy to be distracted and lose focus. However, she stressed that, “progress is not inevitable. It is not automatic. We are the ones who chart the course and hold the wheel.”

“What good is artificial intelligence if we cannot summon authentic empathy with it?” Queen Rania asked.

Drawing on her almost 25 years of experience as Queen of Jordan, Her Majesty shared that, after spending time with some of the world’s most influential leaders as well as some of its most vulnerable communities, her view of leadership has not just shifted, but inverted.

“In refugee camps from Jordan to Greece to Bangladesh, I’ve met people with nothing who still manage to share everything. People brutalized by a selfish world, who still put others’ lives before their own,” she said. “If the world’s most powerless can act with such strength, what does that say about the rest of us?”

Queen Rania also highlighted the role that “learning how to follow” plays in leadership and how it can fuel progress in areas such as climate change, which she described as “an existential challenge that demands a global movement.”

The CogX Global Leadership Summit launched in 2020 under the banner of the CogX Festival, and has since hosted over 3,500 expert speakers from business, government, academia, philanthropy, and other fields. Launched in 2014, the CogX Festival convenes global leaders, the tech industry, and the public for wide-ranging discussions on the implications of Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies.

[dontpetmeibite]

Have you ever felt disgusted with Megatron? Or any of your partners. Bad things happened in the War.

I think that in most relationships, even where people haven't committed any war crimes, there might be moments of disgust. (Also, war--any war--involves bad things.)

I was absolutely disgusted with Megatron when the Lost Light and its alternate counterpart came into the same space and the ship started disappearing around us, and he allowed us to be locked in a storeroom together, and we had the first real talk that we'd had since the end of the war.

I actually attacked him, you know, and he let me. I drew blood when I slapped his face, and all he did was take my wrist in his hand and hold it until I calmed down.

I've never felt more like a fraud in my entire life. See, Megatron and I used to argue a lot about things, but he was almost always able to convince me to go along with things that I wasn't really comfortable with, because the mech has charisma, and a way with words, and because we have known one another almost all of our lives. I used the arguments on him that he had always used on me--and also on Deadlock, except Deadlock snapped and I didn't. "Everyone wobbles." "This is just part of being a Decepticon." "You'll see what I meant on the other side of this." And so on.

But none of them worked when I used them on him.

And for him to turn to the Autobots for decency, when Soundwave had been standing there right next to him for four million years, and we had made it clear so many times that we didn't like the new versions of the infiltration protocols, and that we'd rather have administered the populations of our client worlds than obliterated them, and I'd even asked him once why, if it didn't matter what shape or size or form people were, it should matter what kinds of chemicals we were made of. We were community organisers back in Rodion. We never used violence then except as a last resort. I was never a freaking pacifist because I knew we were going to have to kill off most of the Senate just to fucking survive, let alone do any good, but I didn't use violence against people who had less power than I did except as needed for self-defence.

And because Megatron loved us, he didn't have us taken out and shot. But he did remove us from any and all decision making and authority over subject worlds. Soundwave was particularly upset about all of the time he had spent setting up class warfare on worlds so that we could drive people like the Senate out of power and arrange for badly needed revolutions...only for Megatron to decide after a few million years that after that, he'd send in Phase Sixers instead of a planetary governor.

So yeah. I was furious. Angry. Disgusted.

I can't tell you why I didn't stop loving him then. Why I never have, even though we are not together like that anymore. I will say that I was very relieved when I found out exactly how much damage Trepan did to him before Rung stopped him, and why, and that Sunder had pulled out all the staples and stitches and threads without touching him on the Lost Light. I won't say that it excuses everything or even anything he did that was wrong. But it was very enlightening to discover that the original plan of the Senate had been to break his mind and turn him loose only to have him destroy his own revolution, and that it had actually worked, except it had taken four million years and they all died at our hands not knowing that it had succeeded.

Megatron and I have always had a very tangled, enmeshed relationship and I wouldn't say it was ever a 'healthy' one--whatever the fuck that actually means. I've come to feel, especially after meeting the jackrod, that Terminus to some degree groomed Megatron, and that he passed some of that on down to me. I used to laugh about the fact that people would misread some of his old poetry and come to the conclusion that he was Parvilla's parent/mentor rather than her lover. (Parvilla was my pseudonym as a poet and also the name that he gave me as one of his muses.) But it's actually a little creepy, and we've both acknowledged that in recent years.

That said, he was one of the first people I ever met who cared how much I was being hurt back then. We are still amicae, but we are no longer sexually involved.

The worst moment in my relationship life, though, was with Soundwave, who is also the person I love and have loved the most. After Megatron's public and embarrassing abdication and betrayal of the cause and of his people, Soundwave (after a lot of goading from Galvatron) ordered me to go after Megatron, and find out if he was serious about this Autobot business, and kill him if that was the case. I was furious with Soundwave and angry that he wouldn't step up to the leadership himself when he's a better person in every way than Galvatron, and I was also really angry that he thought it was acceptable to set me on my amica. I knew it was a sort of test and a cruel one--because I hadn't fully recovered from cassettification, and I couldn't really properly refuse the order.

But I also knew he was out of his mind with grief at the time, mourning the illusion he'd had of who Megatron was, and the damage that Megatron had done to us together and separately, and to our relationship, and the way in which he'd manipulated us both to get us to cooperate with him. I knew that Megatron had hurt him deeply, and more importantly, I knew that there had been times when Megatron and I (together) had caused him a lot of pain; and on the Lost Light, it became apparent that between him and Megatron, he was the one who actually loved me the most.

Riptide asked me once whether I'd choose Soundwave over Megatron and I told him to stop trying to commit suicide-by-cat in the heat of the moment but later I told him that the choice I had made was to choose myself. I let both of them know that they couldn't manipulate me anymore and that I wouldn't put up with it from either of them.

Megatron pulled one last stunt that cost him the benefica part of 'amica benefica' after that. But shortly before I left the Lost Light, Soundwave rescinded the order, and while I had had all the cassette protocols overwritten by Ratchet, I also forgave him for giving it, because I understood the stress that he had been undergoing at the time, and because I knew he knew why it was wrong and regretted it.

I love Soundwave more than anyone and Megatron more than most, but I've been disgusted with things that they did. What matters to me is that they, too, became disgusted with those things. You know, we were all horrifically mistreated in our early youth. We knew what we knew. We knew the way we were being treated was wrong, but we had to figure out how and why on our own. At the time, every moral authority we were aware of was telling us that we were in the wrong because we refused to submit to our superiors in caste and obey the orders we were given. And Cybertronians committed genocides before the Decepticons did, and if you don't think the Autobots committed atrocities, I will be happy to introduce you to my sister, who survived Garrus-9, or to point out to you that the MTO programme was nothing we would ever have come up with on our own if we hadn't had to fight an enemy who was already using it. We were enslaved by the Quintessons, and the Iaconian culture which led the rebellion overtook and attempted to eradicate most other Cybertronian cultures, and out from the centre it spread, like a plague.

I don't believe there's a single living Cybertronian over the age of one hundred (years, not vorns or millennia) who has managed to avoid becoming complicit in some atrocity or other. But I also don't believe that executions solve problems. All execution does is make a few people (not all of them) who got harmed feel a little better emotionally, at the expense of the mental health of the person who is ordered to kill a helpless prisoner, and at the expense of every possible act of atonement or expiation that person could ever commit in an attempt to repair the universe. Revenge shouldn't be outsourced.

I've had a lot of conversations about imperialism and colonialism and conquest with people in recent years, especially Marissa Faireborn, and Charlie Watson. And I'm sorry that the evolution of our culture came at the cost of so many other peoples and worlds, but at some point you just have to stop what you're doing and do better. Letting yourself be stuck in a singularity till the heat death of the universe, or letting yourself be murdered in public, doesn't fix anything.

And in the end, Optimus Prime's solution to the problem of Earth was to try to become a coloniser himself, and Soundwave and I are proud that we helped Earth's inhabitants stop and resist and apply to the Council of Worlds on their own, with Sanctuary providing encouragement and assistance but not attempting to trespass their sovereignty.

I've rambled a lot. Thanks for your patience. I do that.

[theperfectread]

Short story I'm writing, please give feedback!!!

“Ow!” Rain squealed.

“Oh hush, it’s just a little prick.” Mrs. Drew, Rain’s seamstress, scolded. 

Rain Maussant stood on a stool in the middle of her room while Mrs. Drew worked on stitching up her dress, and this was the fifth time she got poked by the needle. She looked out the window and watched the yellow leaves fall from the old trees surrounding her yard. The gardener raked, he had been cleaning the vast lawn since early that morning. He gathered all the leaves into a large pile by one of the trees and walked off in a hurry, wiping sweat off his brow. Rain’s gaze drifted to the giant mountains, far in the distance, and imagined all that could be there. They were majestic, huge, and dotted with millions of pine trees. Snow gave the mountains an iridescent quality. The mountains formed a wall between her town and the world beyond. It was difficult to pass them, and not everyone who made the trip came back alive. 

She was dreaming of all the adventures she could have when her eyes focused back on the yard, and that pile of leaves. Specifically, the tree it was by. Was it shaking? She leaned slightly closer to the window and was promptly jabbed with the needle. Straightening, Rain watched her younger sister, Holly, climb down the tree and hover on the branch right above the leaf pile. This couldn’t be ending well, Rain rolled her eyes. Holly dropped into the pile, scattering the leaves, that had taken the morning to collect, everywhere. 

“Well, that’s about it, miss.” Mrs. Drew set about gathering her supplies, “I just don’t know how you manage to tear every dress I make for you, at 15 years you should be more careful.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be careful. Thank you so much.” Rain twirled in front of the mirror, watching the light blue dress spin. Her long red-orange hair swished around her hips, and the dress brought out the bright blue of her eyes. She thought she looked pretty, if a little overdone. 

Mrs. Drew smiled, assuring her it was nothing at all, and walked off to put away her sewing things.

Rain picked up her dress and rushed down the stairs. Holly was still kicking around the leaves, and Rain whisked her up into her arms. They ran around, chasing each other for a bit before strolling down a well-trodden trail in their woods.

“You’re in so much trouble,” Rain laughed, sidestepping a small snail in the middle of the trail. 

Holly skipped ahead, “Not as much as you, though. Mother will kill you if you ruin another dress.” 

“Is it really my fault they won’t let me wear pants? They should know better by now.” Rain said, but she took care to make sure her dress stayed clean and above the ground, “Now hurry, it’s almost time for tea.”

The girls circled back and made their way to the house. They stopped a couple of times for an adorable fawn and a tiny squirrel but made good time. The house came into view and Rain admired its grand beauty. It was two stories tall, made of gray brick and cobblestone. It had black shutters, and each window had a white curtain and candles on the windowsill. It was a large property, surrounded by woods. Far enough from town for privacy, but not too far to be considered outcasts. 

Walking inside the colossal doors, Rain looked back wistfully at the mountains, just for a moment, then continued into the hall. The walls were hung with countless paintings of past ancestors, great-grandfathers, and great-grandmothers that she never knew. Toward the end of the hall, the last painting was of her own family. Her parents, brother, her and her sister. The Maussants.

Down the corridor she and Holly picked up the pace, finally bursting through the doors into the dining room. All heads turned to look at them. Her father sat at the head of the table, stern-looking and serious. His broad shoulders gave him a strong demeanor, and his hair, despite graying, was still thick and full. But then he smiled, and his eyes softened. He motioned for them to sit. 

Rain took her spot next to her brother, who sat at her father’s left, and Holly sat next to her mother, at her father’s right. Fidgeting with her napkin, Rain waited for the cook to bring out lunch and tea. 

“So, Hawke.” Her mother eyed her brother, “Tomorrow, you should be leaving the house at dawn if you want to make it in time.”

Hawke stretched and grinned, “Of course, mother. But what about…?”

“What? What’s happening tomorrow?” Rain asked, her mind running through possibilities. Was her idiotic older brother leaving to find work?