#listened to lecture

[tchaikovskym]

today feels like two days so i might be incomprehensible to you. i understand myself though so it's all good

[great-and-small]

Turdus aficionados of Costa Rica please know I love your national bird but this is objectively hilarious

[lotus-pear]

soukoku as one of my dearest renaissance paintings

[feluka]

"How many of you have ever been to Jerusalem? Raise your hand if you have ever been to Jerusalem. We have 60 students here, and we have one... two, probably three... That's that's very few of you! I've never been to Jerusalem. We're Palestinians; we live in Gaza; we can't go to Jerusalem because of the Israeli occupation.

But we love Jerusalem, right? [A chorus of students saying "yes".] We love Jerusalem because of what it means to us. We've never been there, but believe me, when you go there you will feel that you've been there hundreds of times. Because you read about Jerusalem in literature, in stories. Of course it doesn't mean that that's it, that we should take the Jerusalem that's in the stories and that's it, no.

But in literature, Jerusalem comes back to us. It's true that there is suffering; there is pain; there is occupation, and that's why Tamim Al-Barghouti, as a young Palestinian poet, I think is doing a great service to the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian struggle.

When you listen to him reciting his poem from Al-Quds, or other poems, he takes you to Jerusalem. You live in Jerusalem. He takes you back to it. You liberate it for just a little bit of time.

And if there is hope; if you can imagine a free Palestine, a free Jerusalem, probably you will work towards that, and the same thing applies to occupied Palestine. We've never been to other parts of Palestine because of the Israeli occupation, but we've been told so many times by our parents and our grandparents, especially our mothers, they've been telling us stories about Palestine in the past, the good old days, when Palestine was all beautiful, unoccupied, unraped.

Therefore, I say in in this case how our homeland turns into a story. In reality, we can't have it; we don't have it, but it can turn into poems, into literature, into stories, so our homeland turns into a story. We love our homeland because of the story. We love our homeland because of the story, and we love the story because it's about our homeland, and this connection is significant.

Israel wants to sever this relationship, for example between Palestinians and the land; Palestinians and Jerusalem, and other places and cities, and literature attaches us back - connects us strongly to Palestine, so in my thinking, this is a very significant thing that literature contributes to. Creating realities; making the impossible sound possible.

In real life, again because we are here in Palestine and Gaza, I'll be giving you examples from Palestinian and Arab literature so we can compare and make things clearer. We all know Fadwa Tuqan, the Palestinian poet - and please do not introduce her as Ibrahim Tuqan's sister, let's talk about her as Fadwa Tuqan and then somewhere else mention that, "by the way, Ibrahim Tuqan was her brother". Let's not throw her under the shadow of a man, even if it's her brother, who was a great poet, we can't deny that.

So this is Fadwa Tuqan, a Palestinian poet, 40 years ago or 50 years ago, writing poetry... Of course, we always fall into this trap of saying "she was arrested for just writing poetry!" We do this, even us believers in literature, "Why would Israel arrest somebody or put somebody under house arrest if she only wrote a poem?!"

So we contradict ourselves sometimes. We believe in the power of literature, changing life as a means of resistance, a means of fighting back and in the end we say, "She just wrote a poem!" We shouldn't be saying that.

Moshe Daya, an Israeli general, said that the poems of Fadwa Tuqan were like facing 20 enemy fighters. Wow.

She didn't throw stones; she didn't shoot at the invading Israeli military jeeps. She just wrote poetry. And I'm falling for that again, I'm saying "she just wrote poetry".

So this is what how Israel's dealing with Palestinian poets, and the same thing happened to Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour. She wrote poetry celebrating Palestinian struggle; encouraging Palestinians to resist, not to give up, to fight back. She was put under house arrest. She was sent to prison for years.

And therefore I end here with a very significant point. Don't forget that Palestine was first and foremost occupied in Zionist literature and Zionist poetry.

Palestine was presented as these things, I'll be mentioning some of them, but there's a contradiction here, there's a paradox always. "Palestine is a land without a people to our people without a land", "Palestine flows with milk and honey", "there's no one there, so let's go". We'll see how later on, how many even Jewish people were disappointed when they came to Palestine. Number one, there was no milk and honey, because "flowing with milk and honey" sounds like you're just going to be groping around, and milk and honey will be thrown at you - and there were people! There have always been people in Palestine.

The fact that Israel worked hard to ethnically cleanse Palestine, to kick Palestinians out, first and foremost in literature - yes, in politics and everything - shows how significant poetry is.

To sum up, Palestine was occupied metaphorically in the poem long before it was physically and militarily occupied in your life, so let's do the same. Let's fight back; let's restore Palestine in in our writings; in our poetry; in our stories."

-Professor Refaat Alareer explaining to his students the power of poetry as a means of resistance, and why the occupation targets poets, during one of his lectures at IUG.

[syoddeye]

flashing john from the window while you make the bed. he’s outside in the middle of choring, and you assume he’s just gonna laugh and continue working. but you look up a moment later and see that the yard's empty. whatever he was doing, it's abandoned. you nearly jump out of your skin when the back door slams open. 

[exfil]

every time i think about the dynamic between ghost and soap in the ghost team mission i loose my mind.

ghost, a man with a well established ego problem (pay attention and you just might learn something), after managing to save a subordinate from an impossible situation in las almas through guidance alone (welcome to guerilla warfare), a subordinate that clearly looks up to him (i want to be like you when i grow up), that feeds said ego problem (fucking beautiful sir), that trusted him with his life despite just being betrayed (las almas can corrupt anyone - not us), who he watched grow under his command from a liability (keep up soap) to a cherished asset (a man after my own heart), a man that he literally told to jump (we stay here we're dead, now jump!) and who did so without asking how high, that got shot and looked for him first (fuck ghost where are you), that always makes clear that his allegiance is to him first (don't call me johnny, only ghost can pull that off),

he watched that man, his seargant, wearing a mask of his face, gearing up to kill graves like ghost asked him to (this happened on my watch and I'll need help to fix it), hesitate for just a moment.

because he wanted to make sure ghost was there with him (you coming, ghost?).

how do you think that made him feel?

[licollisa]

Casper (1995)

[cor-lapis]

big day for short men

[appystruda]

izutsumi

[dathen]

I think if you put Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes in the same room they’d actually kill each other.

[lumiilys]

Hey guys. Hey. Can we all just look at this photo again and remember that it exists? I think we deserve to remember that this photo exists!

[horsechestnut]

Anyway, if you're a fan of Bruce and Steph having a father/daughter relationship you should probably go read about Oliver and Mia.

[starcurtain]

One thing I wish I'd see more of among Ratio fans is some thought about how he views himself as a teacher.

Like yes, of course he refuses to compromise on the quality and rigor of the education he imparts, and he would find it unforgivably unethical to lower his standards in order to pass more students who had not genuinely learned the material. This is core to his character.

However, as someone who is a teacher IRL, I know the absolutely miserable feeling setting that kind of standard can cause. There's the obvious disheartening sense of disappointment ("Are students these days really not capable of doing the work correctly? Is our future in danger, if this is the highest level of understanding our current generation of students can achieve?"), but even worse than that is the self-doubt.

"Is this somehow my fault? Am I not teaching this material in the right ways for the students to learn? Is there something I could have done differently to get through to these students? Would a better teacher have a higher passing rate?"

We know that Ratio does (or at least did) struggle with feeling inferior to the Genius Society, so I think it is also likely, as much as he absolutely will not budge on his academic standards, that he has doubts about his teaching ability as well.

This is the man who wants to educate the entire world to cure the disease of ignorance, and yet only 3% of his actual students are able to get there. How can someone who gets so few of his direct students to a state of enlightenment hope to enlighten the whole universe? If so few students are successfully learning the material of a given class, doesn't that mean the teacher is doing something wrong?Would a better teacher--would a genius, maybe--not be able to impart their knowledge more efficiently and educate even the most challenging of students?

As someone constantly struggling with that balance between keeping academic standards high while also meeting the needs of today's students, I think the passing rates of his courses must affect Dr. Ratio much more deeply than I've seen fans discuss. I think he would question himself harshly over his class success rates, and I think he must be constantly trying to push himself to become the best teacher he possibly can be.

tl;dr: I hope one day the HSR fandom will stop sleeping on the fact that Ratio is an actual practicing professor who probably has astronomical levels of teacher angst. 😂

[anyne-r]

don't get too lonely out there, 'kay?

[applestruda]

In class notebook doodle of skelew's lamp light au

(Specifically part 5: Incident at the Sleeping Hound)

[dunmeshistash]

Tbh I think we still have a long time to go before saying a character is autistic is met normally by general public I think. At work sometimes they make some autism awareness talks but every time it's only about how you can cope with it as a parent/family member, it's as if as soon as you're not a child anymore you're neurotypical? lmao

I stopped listening to those lectures cause I'd just have to hear parents talking about how hard it was for them and how grateful they are for the help of professionals and awareness, which is great! But I can't help but be bothered the focus is on the family rather than the individual