#pearl of the indian ocean

[khaleesiofalicante]

What's ur nationality? :)

(if u don't mind sharing (if you do just ignore this ask))

I'm Sri Lankan :)

[tangerine-dream-machine]

do you wanna see the west with me?

Notes below!

This is not a realistic road trip at all, but here are the places/activities shown:

Yorktown Battlefield, Virginia: the site where General Cornwallis surrendered in 1781, bringing the end of the Revolutionary War

Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: the famous bell with the message "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof", and later a symbol of liberty for abolitionists and suffragists

Drive-in theater: outdoor cinemas that reached their peak in popularity in the 1950s to 60s; the film is The Searchers (1956)

Kayaking: a fun lake/ocean activity

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail: this trail crosses nine states and follows the forced displacement of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles due to the Indian Removal Act in 1830

Traffic (and billboards): a bane to many and common in car-dependent cities

Cedar Hill Cemetery, Vicksburg, Mississippi: one of the oldest cemeteries in the US still being used; predates the Civil War and includes a Confederate burial site

Devil's Tower, Wyoming: a majestic (and sacred) butte and the first US national monument

Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah: a flat, empty salt pan estimated to hold 147 million tons of salt and a popular racing site

Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: a geyser in the world's first national park known for its reliable eruptions

Gas station, Nowhere, USA

Horseback riding, Montana: no comment, just a fun time

Las Vegas, Nevada: the world renowned Sin City, a place that caters to many vices

Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, North Dakota: group of missile defense facilities including missile silos and the pyramid-shaped radar system; built in 1975 and decommissioned after one day of operation, a "monument to man's fear and ignorance"

Hoover Dam, Nevada and Arizona: hydroelectric power plant on the Colorado River; the highest dam in the world at the time of its completion in 1935

Space Needle, Seattle, Washington: an observation tower with a revolving restaurant built for the 1962 World Fair "Living in the Space Age", a theme chosen to show the US was not lagging behind the USSR in the Space Race

Sequoia National Park, California: home of the world's largest tree by volume (General Sherman) and the highest point in the contiguous US (Mount Whitney)

Muir Beach Overlook, California: a former base station overlook with dugouts that gained importance immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as a means to watch for attacks on nearby San Francisco

@usukweek

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

so 96% of you wanted to see me do a redesign of mermista. and while i can draw, i've been stuck in an art block so i opted to just draw over her current design. i don't hate all of it so i'm not changing everything.

let me go through the complaints i do have about her design.

first off, she does not look like royalty in the slightest. she just looks like some girl who likes the color blue. even the gold accents don't really help. i'm not saying she has to walk around in a gown and tiara but at least add something to her design to indicate that she's a princess?

secondly, those clown shoes are NOT IT. who even thought of that? they look uncomfortable and ridiculous, and doesn't make sense for her character design.

those sleeves/armor (??? i honestly don't know what those are) and gold gauntlets also do not look practical in the slightest. they look like they'd be a hindrance for a swimmer. and guess what, she still has them in her mermaid form.

the OG mermista design wasn't the greatest but at least it looked like she could swim comfortably.

so my objectives were:

give her outfit a more streamlined look so it would make sense for her powers

make her look like actual royalty and not some girl with a cool color palette

expand more on the indian-inspired design and reflect that in her usual outfit, instead of putting her in a saree-inspired dress for one episode and calling it a day (i say saree-inspired because it's not really a traditional saree, but more like a modern and slightly western rendition)

i made two versions of her redesign - one with a dupatta and one without. the dupatta, i understand, could be a hindrance in certain situations but i just wanted to give an example of how to take inspiration from a culture instead of just using it for brownie points. a dupatta is something indians would wear with their casual attire, mostly with salwars, unlike sarees which are generally reserved for special occasions (there are sarees that are casual wear, but they're still not the most convenient).

secondly, i gave her a headwear inspired from desi wedding attire and older indian tiaras. mind you, indian tiaras themselves are a lot more complex and beautifully crafted, but 1. it would take me ages to draw all the details and 2. i figured mermista would go for a simpler look, especially when she's not at her palace. also, while indian headwears are usually made with gold and jewels, i gave mermista's headwear pearls because.. pearls, oysters, ocean. mermaid vibes.

i changed the shoes and gave her a pair that are inspired by water shoes. i know that she would transform into a mermaid while swimming anyway, but these still look more comfortable without serving clowncore.

i replaced her gold accents with silver because the gold doesn't really mesh well with the teal, in my opinion. while indians are known for their love of gold, a lot of people nowadays opt for silver, because it is less expensive and more compatible with casual wear.

i highlighted the fishscale pattern in her outfit since you could barely see them in the original.

i gave her a bindi and the necklace that 80s mermista wore, as a tribute to the OG show, and the design is complete. i know that some of these may not be the easiest to animate but if they could animate perfuma's cape thing, entrapta's hair and a hundred different outfits for catra; this design is just child's play.

let me know what you think of the redesign and if you want me to do the same for the other characters!

[death-mothblog]

Plerogyra sinuosa is a jelly-like species of the phylum Cnidaria. It is commonly called "bubble coral" due to its bubbly appearance. The "bubbles" are grape-sized which increase their surface area according to the amount of light available: they are larger during the day, but smaller during the night, when tentacles reach out to capture food. This species requires low light and a gentle water flow. Common names for Plerogyra sinuosa include "grape coral", bladder coral, and pearl coral. According to the IUCN, Plerogyra sinuosa ranges from the Red Sea and Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean to Okinawa and the Line Islands in the Pacific.

Colonies of Plerogyra sinuosa are in the form of an inverted cone that may be as much as a metre (yard) across. The corallites in small colonies are monocentric and trochoid, but become flabellomeandroiid (arranged in valleys, the neighbouring valleys having separate walls) in larger colonies. The septa have smooth margins and are irregularly arranged. The costae on young colonies sometimes form lobes which develop spines. These spines then elongate and a new polyp develops, this budding method being an unusual occurrence among corals.

In the living coral, Plerogyra sinuosa has vesicles resembling bubbles up to 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter. These enlarge during the day but retract to a certain extent during the night to expose the polyps and their tentacles.

Plerogyra sinuosa is a zooxanthellate species of coral. It obtains most of its nutritional needs from the symbiotic dinoflagellates that live inside its soft tissues including the walls of the vesicles. These photosynthetic organisms provide the coral with organic carbon and nitrogen, sometimes providing up to 90% of their host's energy needs for metabolism and growth. Its remaining needs are met by the planktonic organisms caught by the polyps.

[arkipelagic]

A lot of those who insist that Filipinos are Pacific Islander instead of (or, in addition to) Asian often rely on loose interpretations of the term Pacific Islander and the fact that the Philippines was used as a stepping stone in the Austronesian expansion to the east. What they ignore or may not know is that (1) the superficial similarities between Pacific Islanders and Filipinos are not unique to Pacific Islanders and Filipinos but with Austronesian-speaking peoples in general, including Austronesian-speaking Southeast Asians and (2) we Filipinos simply did not have as regular and as vigorous a contact with the Pacific Islands - if any - compared to the Asian continent. We still don’t.

Think about it: the earliest known trade network in the Philippines included what is now Taiwan and Southeast Asia, i.e., the Philippine jade culture which dates as far back as 2000 BC and lasted for 3,000 years. Nephrite jade from Taiwan was manufactured in the Philippines and distributed elsewhere in the nearby region. After that were the Sa Huỳnh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere from 500 BC through AD 100 and of course the so-called Maritime Silk Road during historical times. What followed was then the very familiar colonial era of Iberian, Dutch, and British presence in Asia.

The earliest Filipino artifact with a given calendar date is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription which was written in the year AD 900 using a Brahmic script in a combination of Sanskrit, Old Malay, Old Tagalog and/or Javanese. Upon the arrival of Magellan six hundred years later in 1521, it was a man titled rajah who greeted him in Cebu. Half a century later, the aged grandson of the sultan of Brunei was ruling Manila. To this day, among the lesser Hispanicized and Americanized ethnic groups across the Philippines, the Ivatan of Batanes speak a family of languages shared with the Tao of Orchid Island, Taiwan and the people of Bangsamoro have more in common with Bruneians, Indonesians, and Malaysians than they do with the Māori, Kanaka Maoli, or Fijians. Indigenous Borneans are closely related to Filipinos.

As for myself, I was raised in Davao where you’ll find Cebuano, Ilonggo, Kagan, Maguindanaon, Maranao, Mansaka, Mandaya, Manobo, Bagobo, Chinese Hoklo, Japanese, and Indian people live; no one local I’ve ever met has identified as Pacific Islander and there was never a question as to whether I was Asian or not because I was surrounded by fellow Asians. It’s certainly hard to deny it when your country of origin is one of the founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, attempted to make a Malaysian-Filipino-Indonesian confederation happen, and contains the title “Pearl of the Orient” as a lyric in the national anthem.

Does this look like an archipelago that kept close touch with polities and cultures across the Pacific Ocean for thousands of years? Does this look like a society that is more Pacific Islander than Asian?

[dougdimmadodo]

Chambered Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius)

Family: Nautilus Family (Nautilidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

The fossil record shows that hard external shells were common among early cephalopods, but today the six living species of nautilus are the last cephalopods to retain the external shells of their ancestors, limiting their agility and flexibility but providing them with a highly effective defence against predators (primarily octopuses and large fish) and granting them a high degree of control over their buoyancy: within the shell of a nautilus there are several chambers with a tube-like structure across which gas and water can be transferred, known as a siphuncle, running between them - by filling a chamber with gas the nautilus can increase its buoyancy, by filling a chamber with water it can decrease its buoyancy, and by balancing the number of gas-filled chambers and water-filled chambers it can maintain neutral buoyancy. The Chambered Nautilus is the largest living nautilus (with exceptionally large individuals having a shell diameter of up to 25cm/10 inches, although smaller sizes are more typical), and can be found in the Indian and western Pacific oceans where it typically inhabits shallow coastal waters and coral reefs. It swims by forcing water out of a flexible tube-like structure near its head called a siphon (which can be aimed to alter its direction of movement), and feeds largely on carrion and detritus which it locates using a pair of chemical-sensitive structures that protrude from above its eyes, known as rhinophores. Although they lack true tentacles, Chambered Nautiluses possess as many as 90 small limbs beneath their eyes (called cirri), which lack the strength and adhesive suction cups of the limbs of squids and octopuses but are capable of grasping carrion (as well as the occasional live animal, such as small crabs) and transporting it to the small, parrot-like beak hidden beneath them. When food is abundant Chambered Nautiluses often gorge themselves, storing excess food in a muscular pouch-like organ called a crop where it can be slowly released into the stomach when it is needed. Chambered Nautiluses reproduce by laying eggs (which are typically hidden in cracks in rocks or between lobes of coral, and hatch after about a year into small but fully-developed young instead of the larvae seen in most cephalopods), and while most cephalopods reach maturity, mate and die within just a few years nautiluses are relatively long-lived, reaching maturity at around 5 years old and potentially living for 15-20 years. The interior of a Chambered Nautilus’ shell is lined with a beautiful silvery substance known as nacre or mother-of-pearl which helps to protect the internal organs if the outer shell is damaged, and the demand for nacre (as well as full nautilus shells) for use in decorations and jewellery has led to a high rate of both legal and illegal hunting of this species, resulting in the Chambered Nautilus being classified as a CITES Appendix II species in 2016 (essentially meaning that they are not currently threatened with extinction, but are now legally protected so as to prevent them from being put at risk of extinction in the future.)

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

Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/123467-Nautilus-pompilius

[sonofrose]

I've thought about how the Japanese names of the idols imply they're each a specific species of cephalopod, and everyone kind of just accepted that, but since Deep Cut's JP names are not cephalopods, we're stumped on their species.

So I thought to go over each plus what I believe are Deep Cut's.

Callie's name in japanese is Aori, so she is a Bigfin reef squid or aori-ika.

Marie's japanese name is Hotaru, so she a Firefly squid or hotaru-ika.

Pearl's japanese name is Hime, making her a hime-ika a.k.a. a Northern pygmy squid.

And for those who know, yes her last name Houzuki is in reference to the daiōhōzukīka, better known as the Colossal squid.

Marina as we know is Ida in japan, which comes from īdako, the webfoot octopus.

Now for Deep Cut.

Shiver's JP name, Hohojiro Fūka, is all in reference to sharks. Fūka just means shark and Hohojiro is the great white.

But did you know octopuses eat sharks?

Or at least the Giant Pacific octopus does.

Frye's name in japan is Onaga Utsuho, with her first name referencing utsubo the japanese name for the Moray eel.

There was a lot of talk of Frye being a Vampire squid, but that might not be the case, so I went for an admittedly safe option with the Indian Ocean squid or just the Indian squid.

Not much to talk about Big Man, his japanese name is the rather impressive Manda Tarō Kizaemon Munekiyo or just Mantarō for short.

He is a manta obviously.

But I think he is specifically a Giant oceanic manta ray

[amethystpearl222]

i’m a pacific mermaid and i love u freshwater mermaids … swamp mermaids lagoon mermaids . lake mermaids <3 atlantic mermaids <3 indian ocean mermaids <3 arctic mermaids <3 southern ocean mermaids <3 deep sea mermaids <3 pearl born mermaids <3 selkies <3 kelpies <3 undines <3 sirens <3

[bloomoonv]

What if Ariel was the mermaid princess of the Indian Ocean and the keeper of the orange pearl?🧡

I think they have many things in common. First of all, they would give everything for the one they love.

Ariel sacrifices her voice and tail to be with Prince Eric, showing her willingness to give up a significant part of herself for love. Similarly, Sara makes sacrifices in her life, driven by her deep emotions and connections with others. Ariel and Sara are both known for their singing. Ariel's voice is central to her character, and Sara, as a mermaid princess, uses her singing to protect and communicate.

Let me know what do you think c:

My instagram for more: https://www.instagram.com/blum.oons?igsh=enJzb24xbXM2ZXZx&utm_source=qr

[fatehbaz]

In 1678, a Chaldean priest from Baghdad reached the Imperial Villa of Potosí, the world’s richest silver-mining camp and at the time the world’s highest city at more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level. A regional capital in the heart of the Bolivian Andes, Potosí remains – more than three and a half centuries later – a mining city today. [...] The great red Cerro Rico or ‘Rich Hill’ towered over the city of Potosí. It had been mined since 1545 [...]. When Don Elias arrived [...], the great boom of 1575-1635 – when Potosí alone produced nearly half the world’s silver – was over, but the mines were still yielding the precious metal. [...]

On Potosí’s main market plaza, indigenous and African women served up maize beer, hot soup and yerba mate. Shops displayed the world’s finest silk and linen fabrics, Chinese porcelain, Venetian glassware, Russian leather goods, Japanese lacquerware, Flemish paintings and bestselling books in a dozen languages. [...]

Pious or otherwise, wealthy women clicked Potosí’s cobbled streets in silver-heeled platform shoes, their gold earrings, chokers and bracelets studded with Indian diamonds and Burmese rubies. Colombian emeralds and Caribbean pearls were almost too common. Peninsular Spanish ‘foodies’ could savour imported almonds, capers, olives, arborio rice, saffron, and sweet and dry Castilian wines. Black pepper arrived from Sumatra and southwest India, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cloves from Maluku and nutmeg from the Banda Islands. Jamaica provided allspice. Overloaded galleons spent months transporting these luxuries across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Plodding mule and llama trains carried them up to the lofty Imperial Villa.

---

Potosi supplied the world with silver, the lifeblood of trade and sinews of war [...]. In turn, the city consumed the world’s top commodities and manufactures. [...] The city’s dozen-plus notaries worked non-stop inventorying silver bars and sacks of pesos [...]. Mule trains returning from the Pacific brought merchandise and mercury, the essential ingredient for silver refining. [...] From Buenos Aires came slavers with captive Africans from Congo and Angola, transshipped via Rio de Janeiro. Many of the enslaved were children branded with marks mirroring those, including the royal crown, inscribed on silver bars.

Soon after its 1545 discovery, Potosí gained world renown [...]. Mexico’s many mining camps [...] peaked only after 1690. [...] Even in the Andes of South America there were other silver cities [...]. But no silver deposit in the world matched the Cerro Rico, and no other mining-refining conglomeration grew so large. Potosí was unique: a mining metropolis.

Thus Don Elias, like others, made the pilgrimage to the silver mountain. It was a divine prodigy, a hierophany. In 1580, Ottoman artists depicted Potosí as a slice of earthly paradise, the Cerro Rico lush and green, the city surrounded by crenellated walls. Potosí, as Don Quixote proclaimed, was the stuff of dreams. Another alms seeker, in 1600, declared the Cerro Rico the Eighth Wonder of the World. A [...] visitor in 1615 gushed: ‘Thanks to its mines, Castile is Castile, Rome is Rome, the pope is the pope, and the king is monarch of the world.’ [...]

---

For all its glory, Potosí was also the stuff of nightmares [...].

Almost a century before Don Elias visited Potosí, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo revolutionised world silver production. Toledo was a hard-driving bureaucrat of the Spanish empire [...]. Toledo reached Potosí in 1572, anxious to flip it into the empire’s motor of commerce and war. By 1575, the viceroy had organised a sweeping labour draft, launched a ‘high-tech’ mill-building campaign, and overseen construction of a web of dams and canals to supply the Imperial Villa with year-round hydraulic power, all in the high Andes at the nadir of the Little Ice Age. Toledo also oversaw construction of the Potosí mint, staffed full-time with enslaved Africans. [...] Toledo’s successes came with a steep price. Thanks to the viceroy’s ‘reforms’, hundreds of thousands of Andeans became virtual refugees (those who survived) and, in the search for timber and fuel, colonists denuded hundreds of miles of fragile, high-altitude land. [...] The city’s smelteries belched lead and zinc-rich smoke [...].

The Habsburg kings of Spain cared little about Potosí’s social and environmental horrors. [...] For more than a century, the Cerro Rico fuelled the world’s first global military-industrial complex, granting Spain the means to prosecute decades-long wars on a dozen fronts – on land and at sea. No one else could do all this and still afford to lose. [...]

By [...] 1909 [...], mineral rushes had helped to produce cities such as San Francisco and Johannesburg, but nothing quite compared for sheer audacity with the Imperial Villa of Potosí, a neo-medieval mining metropolis perched in the Andes of South America.

---

Text by: Kris Lane. “Potosi: the mountain of silver that was the first global city.” Aeon. 30 July 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[deathmoth-blog]

Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides is found in coral-rich parts of clear lagoons and on seaward reefs. The adults are solitary fish, living in the vicinity of and sheltering beneath ledges or caves during the day. The juveniles are found sheltering in corals. It is a carnivorous species which preys on benthic invertebrates such as crustaceans and molluscs, as well as fishes, which it forages for during the night. The juveniles typically swim in a head down posture wildly undulating their fins as they swim, a behaviour which may mimic toxic or distasteful platyhelminths or nudibranchs and so provide some protection from predation.

Plerogyra sinuosa is a jelly-like species of the phylum Cnidaria. It is commonly called "bubble coral" due to its bubbly appearance. The "bubbles" are grape-sized which increase their surface area according to the amount of light available: they are larger during the day, but smaller during the night, when tentacles reach out to capture food. This species requires low light and a gentle water flow. Common names for Plerogyra sinuosa include "grape coral", bladder coral, and pearl coral. According to the IUCN, Plerogyra sinuosa ranges from the Red Sea and Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean to Okinawa and the Line Islands in the Pacific.

Colonies of Plerogyra sinuosa are in the form of an inverted cone that may be as much as a metre (yard) across. The corallites in small colonies are monocentric and trochoid, but become flabellomeandroiid (arranged in valleys, the neighbouring valleys having separate walls) in larger colonies. The septa have smooth margins and are irregularly arranged. The costae on young colonies sometimes form lobes which develop spines. These spines then elongate and a new polyp develops, this budding method being an unusual occurrence among corals.

In the living coral, Plerogyra sinuosa has vesicles resembling bubbles up to 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter. These enlarge during the day but retract to a certain extent during the night to expose the polyps and their tentacles.

Plerogyra sinuosa is a zooxanthellate species of coral. It obtains most of its nutritional needs from the symbiotic dinoflagellates that live inside its soft tissues including the walls of the vesicles. These photosynthetic organisms provide the coral with organic carbon and nitrogen, sometimes providing up to 90% of their host's energy needs for metabolism and growth. Its remaining needs are met by the planktonic organisms caught by the polyps.

[zvaigzdelasas]

WaPo - In China’s shadow, U.S. rushes back to neglected Indian Ocean island (3 Sep 23)

[WaPo is Private US Media]

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force tracking station that monitored Soviet satellites from this island’s soaring tropical forests was a focus of Seychelles life.[...] Then, the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union collapsed and in 1996 the Americans left, dismantling the tracking station and shutting down their embassy — citing budgetary reasons for abandoning what had seemingly become an irrelevant corner of the world.

Today, the compound where Americans and Seychellois partied is home to the Seychelles Tourism Academy, where young islanders training to be tour guides, hoteliers and masseuses take classes, among other subjects, in Chinese[...] In June, Seychelles became the latest in a string of small nations around the world in which the United States has established, restored or is planning to open an embassy[...]

Seychelles offers an example of the ways America’s absence opened the door to Chinese influence. In the 27 years since the United States pulled out, China has built schools, hospitals, houses for low-income families and public amenities, winning sympathy among Seychellois who felt abandoned by the U.S. departure. “They do the little things that America doesn’t do. This is where the Americans are weak. There is nothing we can say America built,” said Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan in an interview. “This is why countries like China have come in, because there was a vacuum.”

Seychelles officials say they are delighted to have the Americans back but also recognize that China is likely the main reason for the return, potentially pulling Seychelles into the big power rivalry.

“We cannot say we are naive. We do understand the competition going on. In the Cold War we had the United States and the Soviet Union and now it is the United States and China,” Seychelles Foreign Minister Sylvestre Radegonde said in an interview. “Someone woke up and realized how important it is to counter the Chinese influence.” The United States now has ground to make up, he said. “When you are late at a party, the party starts without you, so you have to make up time. It’s a fact that China has been a long time here. They have a lot of sympathy.”[...]

China is also the only country to have maintained diplomatic missions in all six of the Indian Ocean island nations that until recently were represented by three U.S. embassies, noted Darshana Baruah, who heads Carnegie’s Indian Ocean Initiative.[...]

Top Chinese officials regularly visit — China’s President Hu Jintao called Seychelles “a shining pearl” during a stop in 2007, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi was here in 2021, describing Seychelles as “an important member of the big family of China-Africa solidarity and cooperation.” When the new U.S. Embassy in Seychelles was launched in June, Richard Verma, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, became the most senior U.S. government official to visit the nation since the 1990s.[...]

“Our foreign policy is to treat every country, big or small, as an equal,” said Mu Jianfeng, China’s charge d’affaires in Seychelles. “I don’t know why they closed and I don’t know why they opened,” he said of the Americans. “But if they think Seychelles is important they will have an embassy here.”[...]

Seychelles does not count China among its top trading partners. Most of its goods are imported from the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and the European Union.[...]

China built the stately white-pillared National Assembly building where the democratically elected parliament meets, and the adjoining Supreme Court, both important symbols of the country’s identity as a nation. It’s in the process of completing a new headquarters for the state broadcasting company, which will more than double the network’s space. Thousands of Seychellois live in housing built by China and made available at subsidized prices — a shortage of housing for the least well-off is identified by Seychelles officials as one of the country’s biggest social needs.

The Chinese [sic] have invited hundreds of Seychellois on visits and scholarships to China, and China’s Confucius Institute teaches Chinese classes in primary schools, the university, which China built in the 1980s, an adult education center in the capital and at the Seychelles Tourism Academy.[...]

U.S. officials say that countering China’s presence is not the only reason for the return.[...] Although Seychelles has been a multiparty democracy for the past two decades, elections in 2020 brought an opposition party to power for the first time[...]

the U.S. Embassy in Mauritius has been responsible for Seychelles diplomacy since the pullout in 1996.[...]

Radegonde, the [Seychellois] foreign minister, said there is little doubt China is a key motive. “The U.S. coming back cannot be because we are lovely people,” he said, adding “we are.”[...]

In 2011, the United States established a secret drone base at Seychelles airport to assist with counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen. [...]

The abrupt departure in 1996 once the nation no longer served U.S. interests left Seychellois feeling they had been used, and their return now, at a time of heightened competition with a different rival, gives rise to suspicions they are being used again, many Seychellois say.[...]

“The sole reason the Americans are here is because it’s seen as an opportunity to outmaneuver the Chinese,” said Ralph Volcere, who publishes the Seychelles Independent newsletter and says he’s glad the Americans are coming back. But he’s wary too, and suspicious of American motives. Closing the embassy damaged perceptions of the United States, and Washington will have to work hard to convince Seychellois that their motives are genuine, he said. “The Chinese came to build schools and houses, and the Americans are coming for naval operations,” he said. “The Americans can’t just come here and put warships in the port and people will be happy.”[...]

And what will happen if the rivalry with China is resolved? Will the Americans leave again? wondered Danny Faure, the former president who lost the 2020 elections to Ramkalawan. “With the United States it’s always based on how they respond to geopolitical concerns,” he said. “This shouldn’t be a flash in the pan. If you do value the relationship, the cost shouldn’t matter.” His government had good relations with the Chinese, and he visited Beijing in 2018. He says China never asked anything in return for its largesse or sought to extract any concessions from Seychelles. “Genuinely over 40 years we have become great friends,” he said. “This won’t change whether the United States comes or goes.”

[santmat]

We Are Heavenly Swans (Hansas) Journeying Back to the Beloved

"He, who carries on the practice of the true Sound, Beholds the Truth from the beginning to the end within his body. By realizing the true Sound with rapt attention, He attains the status of a pure swan. Such a devotee reaches the Immortal Abode, And there he sees mysterious and wondrous sights." (Sant Dariya Sahib)

My Commentary: The image of the swan is used in poetry and hymns of Sants to represent the soul, a heavenly being of Light, a hamsa. In Sant Mat Mysticism the hamsa or hansa is a soul that has been baptised in the Lake of Nectar and finds Its Original Nature restored — then it continues it’s upward ascent eventually reaching the Fifth Plane or Sat Lok. The Sants (souls have that reached the Fifth Plane or Above and are in Union with God) have composed, and continue to compose, descriptions of the Inner Regions, usually in the form of hymns (kirtans, banis, bhajans) and mystic-poems, including about hansas in Sat Lok or Sach Khand (True Eternal Realm of Timeless Pure Spirit). We are all hansas or hansas-to-be as we journey back to the Beloved, the Ocean of Love and Oneness.

We are destined to become Hansas — Birds of Heaven

A Hansa is…

Hansa: A white swan; esoterically, a soul purified by Shabd [the Holy Stream of Light and Sound]. In Indian spiritual literature, a hansa is symbolic of grace and purity; it is believed that the natural drink of a swan is milk or nectar (amrit), and its natural food is pearls, diamonds and rubies, which signify Shabd. It is further believed that the beak of a swan has the unique ability to drink milk (nectar) after filtering out the dirty water or poison of maya with which it is mixed. As long as a soul is conditioned by karma and dominated by mind and matter, it is an ugly crow. Its transformation into a swan begins in Daswan Dwar, where, in the process of its spiritual enlightenment, it sheds its gross coverings. The process culminates in Sach Khand, the region of immortality. Soami Ji generally refers to all souls in Daswan Dwar and beyond as hansas, but he has also occasionally used the term for devoted disciples who are on their way to becoming swans.

O Swan-Soul, Where Are You Going?

Swan, I’d like you to tell me your whole story! Where you first appeared, and what dark sand you are going toward, and where you sleep at night, and what you are looking for…

It’s morning, swan, wake up, climb in the air, follow me! I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control, — nor constant depression, and those alive are not afraid to die. There, wildflowers come up through the leafy floor, and the fragrance of “I am He” floats on the wind.

There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flower, and cares for no other thing.

-- Version by Robert Bly, The Kabir Book, Beacon Press

[dozydawn]

Seaman Schepps mother of pearl turbo shell jewelry worn by Carroll Petrie, 1990. Photographed by Ron Galella.

“... a well known client brought him a necklace of beautiful turbo shells from the Indian Ocean, to be fashioned into earrings. Schepps immediately envisioned them with cabochon turquoise and coral set on the points and mounted with gold wire. In delighting his client, Schepps created one of the most popular trends in twentieth century jewelry.”

[aboheadcannonsandmore]

Have any omega/beta headcanons?

Do I?? This is a joke right?

Allow me to elaborate.

Historical!AU: Omega/Beta couples have become more common as the world became more global. With more cultures in contact, it became easier to see new ways of life. For A and B, it was eye opening. They had been friends for years, partners at the reading club, and maids of honor at their unfortunate weddings. For a while after B’s partner passed, it felt taboo to be seen away from each other. And then they meet C and D, a couple from (insert random ass country name here). They had never met people as happy and joyous as C and D. And the key to that happiness? A friendship that was kindled into something more.

CoffeeShop!AU: A worked at the cutest coffee shop in (insert college town here). And while most of the clientele were looking for a quiet place to study, occasionally an ill-advised Alpha would come in. They would smell that calm atmosphere and something would snap into place in their brain; there needed to be something more aggressive in this place, something more wild. And while A would think the massive string of pearls hanging in the back would show how wild this place could be, they could fend if the Alphas that spoke to loudly or asked to harshly where extra tables were (all the tables are visible from the counter, there are no extras). A was quite good at this and only had one encounter that they couldn’t handle. But that one encounter was entirely handled by a regular omega client, B. And boy to B have some words to say to the poor, sorry soul that walked in, needing to be humbled.

Fantasy!AU: When fire lights up the sky, A knows to run under ground. They were born with the Omegan ability for empathy, something this cruel battered world had no need for. A had lived long enough to know they needed to hide those abilities, it would help their life last longer. And they were successful, until B fell from the sky, right next to their slain dragan. B shouldn’t have been able to fly a dragan, only those with an Alpha’s authority could ever be equals to the wild beasts of the sky. But here B was, a Beta with mild intentions and deadly eyes ready to take on this godforsaken world.

Space!AU: Floating through zero-G could give you a headache after a while, that’s what B always told A. When they were kids, B always joked that A liked the old stories of space travel too much, the stories of the first moon landing, the first expansion of the ISS which now sat at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. A always dreamed of the wonder space used to have, the mystery. B was the only person they know that traveled further than Satan and they did on a dare. A may have been the one to produce the flight plan but B was the one able to do it. B, the only Omega this side of the Atlantic Ocean, was blue to fly to Neptune and back. A was going to make sure they both got to stay in the stars.

((I’m running on like three hours of sleep, these probably don’t make any sense but oh fukin well))

[gardenofshadcws]

Voyage of the Nautilus Day 44

A Pearl Worth Ten Million

Nemo comes up with the best date ideas. Shame about Pierre’s fear of sharks

“Here fight a shark with a knife, you don’t need weapons to fight your greatest fear right?”

Fish! Fish fish fish!

Ned stuffing oysters into a bag because he only thinks with his stomach is a mood

Yeah, Nemo’s checking on the giant oyster for practical purposes but let’s be real, he’s also showing off for his boyfriend

Oh hey it’s an underserved impoverished Indian man in servitude to colonialism. I’m sure this is in no way thematically related to the story being told.

BUT THE REAL STAR OF THIS CHAPTER!!!

Reasons Nemo is the Hottest Man in Victorian Literature: He fights a shark to save a human life like an absolute badass😍 Your man could never

Unless your man is Ned Land who is also awesome here

And the cherry on top is giving the wealth of the oceans to a victim of oppression. This man puts his money where his mouth is to fight imperialism and that is very sexy of him

Aronnax agrees with me. He’s absolutely writing this journal entry on his bed with his feet kicking in the air. “Oh he’s so BRAVE and so KIND and GENEROUS and so BRAVE!!!! ❤️ 💖 😍 💕”