#the border

[constantly-deactivated]

No explanation needed 🤔

[liminalspacesandplaces]

[moon-sky-sun-earth-ocean-stars]

Darys

So I started playing Dragon Prince: Xadia and I noticed there is someone named Darys in the game. Now I remembered there already is a Sunfire elf character named Darys who is a fighter. He was mentioned in Chasing Shadows. Now since Darys is working in the border in the game it means he is skilled in combat, so I think he's the same elf.

We can see the earrings in both of the pictures and from a different angle in the game we can I see Darys has a braid, so I'm thinking they use the same character on purpose and it's so cool! That's what I love to see using really random and minor characters no one remember few times to add more layers to them!

[reality-detective]

HOT 🔥FACTS 🤔

[alwaysbewoke]

these mf's always crumble under even the smallest pressure of logic smfh

[delor-art]

[gregdotorg]

In 1978 Chris Burden wanted to smuggle drugs in the funnest most conceptually advanced way possible, so he put two joins on a rubber band-powered plane and flew it across the chainlink fence at the US-Mexico border, and then called it a piece of performance art. And eventually he sold a relic of the performance, a vitrine with two spare planes and two spare joints, to a radiologist in Berkeley.

images: Chris Burden, Coals to Newcastle, 1978, in Calexico, CA; details of the relic vitrine via Christie's

[eretzyisrael]

by Daniel Greenfield

There are people on social media who spend their time claiming that American soldiers will fight and die for Israel.

Anyone who knows anything about the Biden administration also recognizes that for the joke that it is.

There are 6 Americans still held hostage in Gaza. After the Oct 7 attack, the administration was asked if it would send in a rescue force to get any of the Americans who were held hostage out then. The answer was no.

But Biden finally is sending in the troops. Not to save the hostages from Hamas, but to build a nice pier to supply aid to Hamas supporters in Gaza.

A floating pier and causeway that will be used to deliver critical humanitarian aid by sea to Gaza is expected to take at least one month or possibly as long as two for the US military to build and become fully operational, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Friday. Ryder also said the construction of the pier and causeway will likely require as many as 1,000 US military personnel to complete.

Are any of those personnel going to be in danger?

Official word from the administration is that there will be no ‘boots on the ground’, just in the water. That’s borderline meaningless. And it’s not just Hamas there. The Houthis and Hezbollah have taken to lobbying rockets around and the presence of a sizable contingent of vulnerable U.S. personnel will draw them like flies.

Two months is a whole lot of time in which to plan and execute an attack.

Biden has sent 0 troops to rescue the hostages from Hamas, but he’s sending 1,000 into a war zone to provide aid to Hamas supporters.

He’s also refused to use the military to secure our border by ending the flow of migrant invaders across it.

But once again, Biden has found a way to use the military to aid our enemies. He won’t use the military to protect America, but he’ll use it to send aid to Hamas.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fantasy Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries below:

The Dark Artifices series (Lady Midnight, Lord of Shadows, Queen of Air and Darkness) by Cassandra Clare

It’s been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses. Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions… Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters’ help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it? Glitz, glamours, and Shadowhunters abound in this heartrending opening to Cassandra Clare’s Dark Artifices series. Fantasy, young adult, paranormal, urban fantasy, series

The Knight and the Necromancer series (The Capital, The Border, The Sea) by A.H. Lee

It’s a classic fairytale: Knight meets necromancer. They argue. They fight. They…make out? Prince Roland comes home from the war to bury his father and see his sister on the throne. He sneaks out to his favorite tavern for nostalgia’s sake. It’s the place where he kissed a man for the first time, the place where he used to carouse with the lover he buried on a battlefield. Roland expects to enjoy some anonymity and perhaps flirt with a few strangers for old time’s sake. He does not expect to find a fascinating scholar from out of town—a lonely young man with beautiful eyes and an obvious longing to be touched, buried beneath a prickly demeanor. The man clearly has his secrets, but so does Roland, and their unexpected chemistry makes him feel alive for the first time in months. Roland exerts all his knightly charm and is rewarded by the promise of a second date. He figures he’ll need something to look forward to tomorrow, since he must spend the day in council with his family’s sworn enemy—a necromancer whom his sister has rashly invited to consult about the war. Sairis is a necromancer with a price on his head. He knows that he will have to bargain for his life tomorrow. He’s never been this far from his tower. He’s good with magic, not people. He’s frightened, although he doesn’t want to admit it. Sairis knows he’s doing something foolish by visiting a tavern the evening before his meeting with the royals—a tavern that caters to men of certain tastes. But Sairis wants things. Things a hunted outlaw can never have. He tells himself that he’ll just watch—see what ordinary people enjoy every day. Sairis is confident in his ability to intimidate anyone who comes too close. He’s shocked when a dazzling mountain of a man is not intimidated in the slightest. Sairis knows a knight when he sees one. He has killed plenty of knights. But this knight is funny and kind. Sairis finds his defenses melting in spite of his best efforts. Maybe he could go on a second date with this person. Of course, he’ll have to get through tomorrow first…when he must bargain with the hated royals who have persecuted him all his life. Fantasy, romance, secondary world, series

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rodney Crowell | The Border

[kodachrome-net]

Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, April 1992

[liminalspacesandplaces]

Courtesy of @heywhatsupfolks

[deadpresidents]

I've had these books sitting around for a couple of years now, but I finally picked up Erika Fatland's Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) yesterday and I am burning through it and didn't even want to put it down long enough to post this. It's a good bet that any book that starts with a chapter about endlessly fascinating Turkmenistan and its crazy post-Soviet dictators -- the late, utterly ridiculous "Turkmenbashi" and the horse-obsessed dentist now in power -- is going to immediately capture my attention. The bizarre personality cults built around the dictators of Turkmenistan might actually be the one thing to shame Donald Trump because he'd be so envious of their audacity.

While I don't want my journey with Sovietistan to end as quickly as it's going to, I'm glad I also have Erika Fatland's book The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage (BOOK | KINDLE) ready to immediately dive into afterwards. I'm also going to need to get her newest book High: A Journey Across the Himalaya Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and China (BOOK | KINDLE) to follow The Border. The author, Erika Fatland, is from Norway and speaks eight languages, so she's not completely lost in these wildly different and remote former Soviet satellite republics and her writing is vivid and funny (all three books are translated into English by Kari Dickson, so cheers to her, as well). I don't read a ton of books that fall in the genre of travel writing, but I might have to if there are more like this!

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

the way The Border has the same function as The Storm in lis1--this huge, horrifying, illogical thing that haunts everyone when it's not even there, echoing across space and time to fuel these seemingly random moments of suffering and terror. it's ugly, it demands blood sacrifice if you have a hope of facing it (Chloe getting shot so Max can stop The Storm, Daniel getting shot as penalty for defeating The Border) and the worst part that it's always just a symptom of something worse, a side effect of the sickness in Arcadia Bay or the sickness in America as a whole. the only difference is that The Storm is a monster from a story that can be dissipate if fed enough blood, and the Border is a monster from our world that eats and eats and ends worlds every day and is never fucking satisfied.

[unhonestlymirror]

@tierneyx @kurhanchyk @ohsalome what are your thoughts about this?

It's a 2020 book, "The Border" by Erika Fatland

[blueiscoool]

All Along the Watchtower

Ukrainian reconnaissance team from Sonechko Battalion of Ukrainian HUR MO at one of the border crossings.