#where is new zealand map

[crabussy]

MULTIPLE people thought I was australian on that poll.... head in hands

[lingthusiasm]

Episode 93: How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones

There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to also consider the fuller picture such as what they're wearing and who they're talking with.

In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how nonbinary people talk with Jacq Jones, who's a lecturer at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa / Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. We talk about their research on how nonbinary and binary people make choices about how to perform gender using their voices and other variables like clothing, and later collaborating with one of their research participants to reflect on how it feels to have your personal voice and gender expression plotted on a chart. We also talk about linguistic geography, Canadian and New Zealand Englishes, and the secret plurality of R sounds in English and how you can figure out which one you have by poking yourself (gently!) with a toothpick.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about three of our favourite kinds of linguistic mixups: spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns! We talk about William Spooner, the Oxford prof from the 1800s that many spoonerisms are (falsely) attributed to, Lauren's very Australian 90s picture book of spoonerisms, the Scottish song "The Bonny Earl of Moray" which gave rise to the term mondegreen, why there are so many more mondegreens in older pop songs and folk songs than there are now, and how eggcorn is a double eggcorn (a mis-parsing of acorn, which itself is an eggcorn of oak-corn for akern).

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds about your favourite linguistic mixups.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Jacq Jones' website

'Beyond a dot on a graph: A participant’s perspective on being quantified in variationist sociolinguistic research' presentation slides by Kaspar Middendorf and Jacq Jones

Lingthusiasm episode 'What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are'

Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'How we made vowel plots with Bethany Gardner'

Lingthusiasm episode 'The linguistic map is not the linguistic territory' (linguistics and geography)

Lal Zimman's website

'The Female-to-Male Transsexual Voice: Physiology vs. Performance in Production' by Viktória Papp

'Voice and Communication Change for Gender Nonconforming Individuals: Giving Voice to the Person Inside' by Shelagh Davies, Viktória Papp, and Christella Antoni

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[etakeh]

Guessing some bros never made it out of the '80s.

Do capitalists want to kill humanity … and themselves?

What mad ideas lie behind capitalism’s drive towards planetary catastrophe?

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Walled World consists of the U.S. and Canada (in North America); Japan and South Korea, plus Australia and New Zealand (in the Asia-Pacific region); plus basically the entire European Union (2); and also Israel. In 2009, that club of nations represented just 14 percent of the world’s population but earned 73 percent of its income. Conversely, the “gray areas” outside the walls were home to 86 percent of humanity, who scraped together just 27 percent of the world’s income. The average monthly income inside the wall is around €2,500. Outside, it’s just €150. Money may or may not buy happiness, but it does buy quality of life. The yellow dots, which represent the world’s top 50 cities in terms of quality of life, are almost all inside the wall — only Singapore is outside, and that relatively wealthy city-state should arguably be included inside the wall anyway. In other words: the poor are many, the rich are few. That’s not a new phenomenon of course, nor are the migratory pressures it causes. That’s where those barriers come in. The map lists some examples, the locations and the circumstances of which are all different — but which are all pieces of the same puzzle shown on this map.

[physics-of-one-piece]

Timezones in One Piece World

I am back with a physics post! Well, more meteorology/geography post!

I was inspired to create a timezone map after reading the newest chapter of Doflamingo's Marine by @moonbaby26 where a timezone difference was mentioned, which was a great detail! I remember thinking about timezones in OP world but never got around to it but I did now. So it made me wonder just what timezone is Dressrosa (my fav island 🤗) in, what timezone are the other islands in?

SO!

I pulled a grid of irl timezones, simplified it, and put it over the One Piece World Map! (You can see some parts where I was like, no keep it simple, simplify it).

HERE IT IS!

UTC is coordinated universal time, aka time in the center of the world. Anyway, here are the islands + locations and I'll put some ANs for some cus some are interesting.

Paradise:

Reverse Mountain [UTC -1]

Red Line Center [UTC -1]

Twin Cape [UTC 0] Greenwhich Mean Time,

📍Iceland

I find it PERFECT the exit from Reverse Mountain into Grand Line are the ones in the center of the One Piece World, not the Red Line Itself.

Cactus Island [UTC 0] Western European Time (WET)

📍irl ex: Reykyavik, Iceland

Little Garden [UTC +1] Central European Time (CET)

📍 Italy, Spain

Drum Island [UTC +2] Eastern European Summer Time (EEST)

Alabasta [UTC +3] irl ex:

📍

Jaya [UTC +4]

Skypiea [UTC +4]

Long Ring Rong Island [UTC +5]

Water 7 [UTC +6]

Amazon Lily [UTC +7]

Enies Lobby [UTC +6]

Florian Triangle [UTC +9] Japan Standard Time

Sabaody Archipelago [UTC +10]

Impel Down [UTC +8]

Marineford [UTC +9] Japan Standard Time (JST)

Holy Land of Mariejois [UTC +9] New Zealand Standard Time

Fishman Island [UTC +10]

New World

New Marineford [UTC -8] Baker Island Time (BIT)

Punk Hazard [UTC -8] Samoa Standard Time (SST)

Dressrosa [UTC -7] Pacific Daylight Time

📍 Los Angeles

It used to be in Hawaii, it fit so much, whyyyy 😭😭

Totto Land [UTC -5] Eastern Standard Time

📍irl ex: Florida, U.S.

Wano Country [UTC -4]

📍irl ex:

Uf, I think that's all the big locations. I recommend using just the UTC and then you go minus or plus just so you don't have to go converting everything. The One Piece world most likely just says "Universal Time + (number)" or sth.

So, for example, if it's 17:00 (5 pm) in Marineford (UTC +9) on a Monday, it will then be 1 am on Monday in Dressrosa.

17 - 9 (to get UTC 0) = 8 am Monday (UTC 0)

Then another -7 hours, you get Monday 1 am (UTC -7) in Dressrosa. So Dressrosa is 16 HOURS behind Original Marineford.

Interesting how Doflamingo settled in Dressrosa, which is the entire 22 hours behind Holy Land by time, symbolising how his family abandoned the privileges of Celestial Dragons. Nice.

Also, for the Blues, regarding seasons:

North Blue & East Blue = North Hemisphere such as Europe & U.S. (winter months - December, January, February)

West Blue & South Blue - South Hemisphere (like Australia & New Zealand) so the winter months are June, July, August.

The seasons are interchangable in the Grand Line depending on the islands!

Taglist: @fanaticsnail

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

What a fantastic example of what accredited zoological facilities can acheive for the welfare of their animals when they collaborate.

Monarto Safari Park is creating an amazing open plains elephant habitat, along with a state of the art elephant barn/shelter for quarantine and medical care.

They've just welcomed Burma, the last elephant housed in human care in New Zealand, to this facility with more elephants from around zoos in Australia set to join her.

A lot of the elephants set to arrive are now alone after herd members passed away. Since we know these are highly social animals that live in matriarchal societies, it's important that they have a herd. So instead of leaving them where they are, the zoos are working together to bring these lone elephants together so they can form a new herd.

I'm really excited to see this project come together and I can't think of a better team to pull this off than Monarto!

Check out the habitat map - it's going to be massive! But also have the means to provide care and allow visitors to see these gorgeous animals, so that's really exciting!

[calandrinon]

I'm honestly surprised not to see South Africa pop up in Perth! Also surprised to see Iraq and Philippines but not Greece - not bad surprised, just "well there you go, I need to adjust my thinking in this area". I grew up around a lot of migrant families (long story) so my thinking is already skewed.

And because I was confused and so was the person I reblogged this from: the data is by electorate, and Clark is Andrew Wilkie's electorate in Hobart. If you look closely you can see a white spot on Tasmania where Clark fits in. Solomon is basically Darwin (the rest of the NT is one electorate, which will probably make sense to you if you saw the Australian population density map), and Herbert is Townsville (on Queensland's shoulder). I don't know the provenance of the map but there's a blank on Wikipedia, which is probably why Perth is shown in detail despite not being very interesting :)

Top source of immigrants in each electoral division of Australia.

England remains #1, dominating most of the map

In major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, Asian countries like India, China, and Vietnam show up.

by @SidKhurana3607

[reasonsforhope]

"Two so-called “Celtic rainforests” in the UK are to be restored with a mixture of native planting and natural reforestation.

The hope is that they will provide rich habitats for dozens of species, improve groundwater quality and flood prevention, and allow residents and tourists to experience an exceptionally rare forest biome called temperate rainforest.

The most famous and largest temperate rainforests on Earth are found in the US states of Oregon and Washington, along Brazil’s Atlantic coast (known as the Atlantic Forest), and on New Zealand.

Pictured: Map of the global distribution of temperate rainforests. Source: Wikipedia

Britain, especially Wales, would have featured a certain amount of these Celtic rainforests in areas that experience high moisture content coming off the ocean, and low variations in annual temperatures.

One such place is Creg y Cowin on the Isle of Man, where 28 hectares (70 acres) of native Celtic rainforest will be planted by hand, and another 8 hectares (20 acres) left to regenerate naturally.

The Manx Wildlife Trust will be responsible for the project, and it anticipates “the return of oakwood dwellers such as wood warbler, pied flycatcher, and redstart, as well as raptors, owls, and woodland invertebrates.”

Historic agricultural dwellings called “tholtans” will be left on the landscape for their historical and cultural significance.

Elsewhere, in Gwynedd, North Wales, another 40 hectares (112 acres) of Celtic rainforest will be raised via a mixture of native planting and regeneration. The selected site is the peak and slopes of Bwlch Mawr, near the university town of Byrn Mawr.

“There’s real momentum now to restore and expand our amazing temperate rainforests, and it’s brilliant to see the Wildlife Trusts advancing their plans,” Guy Shrubsole, environmental campaigner and author of The Lost Rainforests of Britain, told the Guardian in the wake of the announcements."

-via Good News Network, 4/7/23

[reimenaashelyee]

Creator's Guide to Comics Devices: November 2023 Update

The first newsletter since launch came out a few days ago! It summarises all the updates I've made in November, which includes 2 (!) new devices, a sub-device, and other site changes.

Subscribe to the newsletter to get these updates direct to your email.

New Devices:

Aside

A short comment that sits outside of a balloon or character that is not perceived by anyone except the comment maker and the reader. An aside may come from the author, usually placed outside of the panel or near the edges. (Page with examples)

Topper

A secondary row of panels or single panel that goes 'on top' of the main comic. They are typically removable and non-essential, and usually contain the comic's title. (Page with examples)

Sub-device

Markers in Code Switch

Languages are assigned flags, pictographs or other iconographic symbols. (Page with examples)

News from the Curator and Site Changelog

I'm delighted over how well-received the library has been -- thank you to everyone who has shared, commented and provided feedback! I really appreciate the enthusiasm and generosity. <3 As a comics creator taking my first formal steps into the arena of comics studies, there is still a lot to do and to read for the library. Even with 63 devices catalogued, it's only still the beginning! 

From the Interwebs

‘The Creator’s Guide to Comics Devices’ Is the First of Its Kind, an Incredible Resource for Comics Creators & Readers Alike (The Mary Sue, Joan Zahra Dark) Lovely roundup from my fellow Cartoonist Cooperative co-founder Joan setting the historical context for Comics Devices and why an accessible resource is like this is due.  

Kibbles n Bits (Comics Beat, Heidi MacDonald) An enthusiastic feature of the library in Heidi's roundup.

Shout Outs

Thank you to Ritesh, Tan Juan Gee, Samantha Philipps, Blue Dellinquanti, Ted Anderson and Hannah Pallister for their contributions. (I really need to get that credits/curator's notes page set up. That's this month's to-do) Once again, thank you to the Sequential Artists Workshop Teaching Fellowship for supporting the development of the library this month.

Updates to the Site (Nov 2023)

Added the Store page and dedicated a subsection for it on the homepage, if only to direct people to the already-existing zine that’s currently distributed by Sequential Artists Workshop and myself. I might use that page to hold things like signing up for workshops and panels if they ever happen. Added the Newsletter page so it’s easier to link to across the site and elsewhere. Opened up the page that displays all the devices on one page. Added ‘Contribution’ ‘Newsletter’ ‘All Devices’ to the sidebar. Fixed the 404 page. It suggests the Site Map for advice. Finally opened the Links page! Check out all the resources in there! Thank you to folks who have submitted feedback/contribution! I have added new example pages for Harmonious Juxtaposition/Time & Space/Pictorial Lettering/Colour Coding and a longer definition for Map Panel. Added two new devices – Aside and Topper. Added ‘Markers’ and ‘Balloon Styles’ as a subdevice to Code Switch. Finally set up the Gallery page: this is where comics pages featuring the relevant device will be catalogued. Now for the slow work of filling up the galleries…..

New in Store: The Comics Devices Quick Reference Zine Before the website launched, I produced this zine as a promotional thing + quick reference. This is a 12-page zine showcasing the devices in this library as of 2023 (not including the Topper and Aside). Perfect for students, teachers and anyone who needs a quick, in-person reference if there's no wi-fi available. Sequential Artists Workshop is selling copies for North Americans in their online store. Folks in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia can directly contact me to get a copy. An ebook version is on the way. I will announce it via newsletter.

[nerdsbianhokie]

Reading the World

In 2023, I challenged myself to watch a movie from every country in the world during the year, which I more or less succeeded. At the start of this year I decided to read a book from every country in the world (without the time restraint) and got a map to track my progress along with a challenge on Story Graph.

List of countries and books below the cut

Current count: 46

Afghanistan:

Albania:

Algeria:

American Samoa:

Andorra: Andorra: a play in twelve scenes by Max Frisch

Angola: The Whistler by Ondjaki

Anguilla:

Antigua and Barbuda:

Argentina: Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enríquez

Armenia:

Aruba:

Australia: Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Alexis West

Austria:

Azerbaijan:

Bahamas:

Bahrain:

Bangladesh:

Barbados:

Belarus:

Belgium:

Belize:

Benin:

Bermuda:

Bhutan: Folktales of Bhutan by Kunzang Choden

Bolivia:

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Botswana:

Brazil:

British Virgin Islands:

Brunei:

Bulgaria:

Burkina Faso:

Burundi:

Cambodia:

Cameroon: The Impatient by Djaïli Amadou Amal

Canada: The Gift is in the making: Anishinaabeg Stories retold by Amanda Strong and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Canary Islands: Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu

Cape Verde:

Cayman Islands:

Central African Republic: Co-wives, Co-widows by Adrienne Yabouza

Chad:

Chile: The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández

China: The Secret Talker by Geling Yan

Christmas Islands:

Cocos Islands:

Colombia:

Comoros:

Cook Islands:

Costa Rica:

Croatia:

Cuba:

Curacao:

Cyprus:

Czech Republic:

Dem. Rep. of Congo:

Denmark:

Djibouti:

Dominica:

Dominican Republic:

Ecuador:

Egypt:

El Salvador:

Equatorial Guinea:

Eritrea:

Estonia:

Eswatini:

Ethiopia:

Falkland Islands:

Faroe Islands:

Fiji:

Finland:

France: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

French Guiana:

French Polynesia:

Gabon:

Gambia:

Georgia:

Germany: At the Edge of the Night by Friedo Lampe

Ghana: Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

Gibraltar:

Greece:

Greenland:

Grenada:

Guam:

Guatemala:

Guernsey:

Guinea:

Guinea-Bissau:

Guyana:

Haiti:

Honduras:

Hong Kong:

Hungary:

Iceland:

India: Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir Of Surviving India's Caste System by Yashica Dutt

Indonesia: Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan

Iran: Darius the Great is Not Okay by Abid Khorram

Iraq: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Ireland:

Isle of Man:

Israel:

Italy:

Ivory Coast:

Jamaica: When Life Gives You Mangos by Kereen Getten

Japan:

Jordan:

Kazakhstan:

Kenya:

Kiribati:

Kosovo:

Kuwait:

Kyrgyzstan:

Laos:

Latvia:

Lebanon: Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage

Lesotho:

Liberia:

Libya: Zodiac of Echoes by Khaled Mattawa

Liechtenstein:

Lithuania:

Luxembourg:

Macedonia:

Madagascar:

Malawi:

Malaysia:

Maldives:

Mali:

Malta:

Marshall Islands:

Mauritania:

Mauritius:

Mexico: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Morena-Garcia

Micronesia:

Moldova:

Monaco:

Mongolia:

Montenegro:

Montserrat:

Morocco:

Mozambique:

Myanmar: Smile as They Bow by Nu Nu Yi

Namibia:

Nauru:

Nepal:

Netherlands: We Had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets

New Caledonia:

New Zealand: Tahuri by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Nicaragua:

Niger:

Nigeria: Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Niue:

Norfolk Island:

North Korea: A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea by Eunsun Kim

Northern Mariana Islands:

Norway: Blind Goddess by Anne Holt

Oman:

Pakistan: Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

Palau:

Palestine: The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

Panama:

Papua New Guinea:

Paraguay:

Peru:

Philippines:

Pitcairn Islands:

Poland: Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem

Portugal: Pardalita by Joana Estrela

Puerto Rico:

Qatar:

Rep. of the Congo:

Romania:

Russia:

Rwanda: Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

Saint Barthelemy:

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha:

Saint Kitts and Nevis:

Saint Lucia:

Saint Martin:

Saint Pierre and Miquelon:

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines:

Samoa: Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel

San Marino:

Sao Tome and Principe:

Saudi Arabia:

Senegal:

Serbia:

Seychelles:

Sierra Leone:

Singapore:

Sint Maarten:

Slovakia:

Slovenia:

Solomon Islands:

Somalia:

South Africa:

South Korea: The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong -Mo

South Sudan:

Spain: Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

Sri Lanka: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Sudan: The Translator: A Memoir by Daoud Hari

Suriname:

Sweden: Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot

Switzerland:

Syria: The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui

Taiwan:

Tajikistan: The Sandalwood Box: Folk Tales from Tadzhikistan by Hans Baltzer

Tanzania:

Thailand:

Togo:

Tokelau:

Tonga:

Trinidad and Tobago:

Tunisia:

Turkey:

Turkmenistan:

Turks and Caicos Islands:

Tuvalu:

Uganda:

Ukraine:

United Arab Emirates:

United Kingdom: Poyums by Len Pennie

United States of America: Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers

United States Virgin Islands:

Uruguay:

Uzbekistan:

Vanuatu: Sista, Stanap Strong : A Vanuatu Women's Anthology edited by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen

Venezuela: Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos

Vietnam:

Wallis and Futuna:

Western Sahara:

Yemen:

Zambia:

Zimbabwe: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

[bangtanhoneys]

BTS MOMENTS: Jungkook & Grace - MUM!!

Jungkook didn’t want to admit it but he was lost. Lost inside a supermarket in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand, with his phone still inside the campervan and completely unsure of where the other members had gone. It wouldn’t have been too bad if everyone spoke Korean but he was in a country that spoke mainly English and he just about knew enough to get by. 

This wasn’t going to go well. 

He went up and down each aisle, trying to spot either a cameraman or even one of the members but no luck. He knew he was going to get a massive scolding from this but right now, he had to find everyone. 

Jungkook headed to a customer service desk and asked the lovely woman at the desk if she had seen a woman, matching Grace’s description but in his broken English, he was describing every woman in the store. 

Giving up, he left the actual store and if he had turned right and walked a bit further, he would have seen everyone enjoying the local coffee. He walked further away from the store and every person he came across, he asked if they had seen his mum. 

Of course, they hadn’t because his actual mother was in Korea, where he should be right now, but his second mother was in New Zealand with him. 

It wasn’t until someone tapped him on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of where the other members of BTS were gathered that Jungkook finally relaxed. After thanking the person in every way he knew how, Jungkook spun around and yelled, “Mum!!!”

There was only one person who Jungkook called that and that person in question jumped in her seat, glancing up from where she had been looking at the map with Jin. “What the heck?” she muttered, ignoring Jin’s laughter from beside her.

It was perfect timing - one camera catching Jungkook running up to Grace, yelling Mum, another camera capturing Grace’s reaction and it created the perfect moment as an elderly woman was coming past. She stopped for a moment, wondering what was with the camera crew but simply took one look at Jungkook then Grace. 

“He’s a good-looking boy, he clearly takes after his father,” she said nodding in Jin’s direction which caused him to stop laughing. “You both look good for your age with a young son like that.”

She then toddled off, not realising who she had actually spoken to. 

It became such a popular fan moment that it was clipped and posted to Twitter at every chance and with it, BigHit acknowledged Grace as Jungkook’s honorary mother.

[crabussy]

reblog with which of these things you already knew about aotearoa new zealand, no shame in not knowing all of them!! help me out for curiosity’s sake

1. the original māori name for new zealand is aotearoa

2. kiwi are not extinct, they still exist

3. plural of any native bird in māori is the same as the singular form (e.g. I saw three kiwi)

4. where it is on the map + its vague shape (without looking at a map)

5. the director of shrek is from nz (threw this one in for fun. I know the guy. small ass country)

6. the national anthem is half in māori, half in english

7. the only mammals in aotearoa prior to human settlement were several species of bats (+ some marine mammals)

8. the only species of alpine parrot in the world are found in aotearoa (kea!!)

9. the heaviest insect in the world is endemic to nz (giant wētā!!!)

10. the city of tamaki makaurau has over 50 volcanoes. I lived there. going back in 7 months yay yay yay

11. just. the existence of the waitomo glow worm caves. search them up.

12. often, regardless of nationality, māori words will be mixed into english sentences- I heard “puku” more than I heard “belly” growing up, despite nobody in my family being māori

13. instead of swimwear we say togs

I find it amusing how much people just seem to not know about aotearoa/new zealand despite it being pretty massive (bigger than britain, only a little smaller than japan) so I’m sharing some facts in hope that in return people will tell me whether they knew these things or not!!

[brigdh]

I was thinking more about how Stede doesn't really have an arc this season (see my previous criticism here), and I've decided that what I would have loved to see was Stede actively attempting to court Ed.

Now, we did get a little of this in the first few episodes: Stede's letters in 2x01 are great, I love his attempting to track Ed down via a crime-map in 2x02, and of course the "I'll never leave you. I'll never leave again" speech at the end of 2x03 is fantastic. But once Stede and Ed are both in the same location and conscious, there's really nothing. Stede just hangs around, waiting for Ed to figure himself out, or take the lead, or something, I don't know, but Stede's certainly doesn't take any action to progress their relationship himself. He's such a static character in the second half of S2.

But! Imagine instead the arc where Stede is actively trying to romance Ed! I don't need him to be good at it; it's probably a better character arc if he isn't, in fact. Maybe he comes on way too strong at first and this is why Ed asks him to slow down, until Ed can figure out what he's doing about his own guilt/violence/identity/daddy issues (maybe Ed can actually figure out something about his guilt/violence/identity/daddy issues). Maybe Stede's entire conception of romance comes from poetry and novels and it hits a hard skid when he tries it out in reality. Maybe there are cultural clashes between how pirates approach one another and how the landed upper class does it. The exact way Stede fails doesn't really matter, because the point is that Stede is trying something, and fucking it up, and trying again, and growing as he does so, learning more about what the relationship between him and Ed needs and who they are as people.

This also could have been a really interesting arc for Stede internally. Throw in a couple of flashbacks to Stede courting Mary, to make a parallel between how he acted then and how he's acting now with Ed. If it's beyond the budget to fly Claudia O'Doherty to New Zealand or she's busy or something, give Stede a random other lady or two he approached as a young man – ones who obviously refused to accept his hand. Excellent! Now there's even more weight to him getting it right this time with Ed, when he's never managed to get someone to like him before! Or give young Stede an intense friendship with another young man that went wrong, and back then he didn't understand, but now he can look back and be like, 'oh I guess that wasn't as platonic as I thought'. (Personally, this would be my favorite option, but I know Jenkins & co said they didn't want to write a coming-out story, so maybe they'd have been less interested in this one. Fine, but I want it! 🥳 ) I think you could do this without taking up a lot of screentime – I doubt all the scenes we got of Ed's childhood add up to five minutes in total, but we got plenty of information from those three glimpses.

It would also make sense for Stede to discuss the issue with the crew, which gives the show a chance to flesh out their role a little more, another thing the season could have used. If he asks Lucius, what Lucius responds and how he reacts could help to develop the Lucius/Pete relationship. Similarly, if Stede turned to Olu or Jim, we could have heard more about Jim/Archie or Olu/Zheng or any combination of the four. Or any of the crew! What kind of relationship advice does Frenchie give? Roach? This also could have intersected with Ed's redemption arc nicely: which are the crew are willing to put aside their anger at Ed to help Stede (and them doing so would give more credence to Izzy's speech about them being family and loving Ed at the end)? Who isn't willing, and tries to deliberately sabotage their relationship for revenge, and how do Stede and/or Ed react to that?

Overall, I think such an arc could have fit the show's themes of masculinity and toxicity really well. There's so much about dating and pick-up lines and romance that reflects on gender – there are expectations of who should be aggressive vs receptive, flowery vs crude, prudish vs too fast, gifts as a sign of love vs gifts as obligation... it's endless. Obviously the season wouldn't have time to explore all these angles, but I list them as a sign of how many directions they could have taken this topic in. Ultimately it all comes down to: Who does Stede want to be as a partner? And who does Ed want him to be? And that would be so strong as a direction to go in, even if we didn't get final answers to the questions! At least they would be asking them.

But instead we got a vision of a mermaid and never explored who Stede is in reality. :(

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

500 polls summary

And now our 500th poll is over.

A game that stayed at the top for...every precedent summaries has lost its throne.

Here is a Summary of these 500 polls results (with some comparaisons to the 400th poll summary):

The 10 Most Known Games :

1 Call of Cthlju (3% never heard of) NEW

2 Pathfinder 2e (3,20%)

3 Cyberpunk (3.60%)

4 Shadowrun (8.30%)

5 Mage The Awakening (9.20%) NEW

6 GURPS (10.5%) NEW

7 Warhammer fantasy roleplaying (10.90%)

8 Dungeon World (13%)

9 Fate Core (13.10%)

10 Thirsty sword lesbian (13.50 %)

3 new game in this top : Call of Cthulhu, Mage the awakening, GURPS.

This means Mage the Ascension,Apocalypse world and Exalted are out of the Top 10

The 10 Most Played Games

1 Call of Cthulhu 43.50% NEW

2 Pathfinder 2e 42%

3 Monster of the Week 36.40 %

4 Chronicles of Darkness 34.70%

5 Fate Core 33.20%

6 The Quiet Year 31.70%

Below this line, the played part was not the majority on the poll

7 Dungeon World 30.60%

8 Shadowrun 30.40%

9 Blades in the Dark 28.60 %

9 Star Wars Edge of the Empire 28.60 %

10 Lancer 26,10%

One new game in the top Most Played : Call of Cthulhu who dethroned Pathfinder

Mutant and Masterminds is out the Top 10

The 10 Most Voted on Polls

1 Dallas The Television RPG 8013 votes

2 I'm sorry did you say street magic ? 1593

3 Wanderhome 1187

4 One HONK Before Midnight 1163

5 Fight Truck 1044

6 Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine 1026

7 Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG 995 NEW

8 The Quiet Year 953

9 Dialect 893

10 Mork Borg 890

Only one new game on the most voted top : Buffy the vampire slayer

Pathfinder is out of the top 10

Percentage of Games per Decade

2020s: 270 polls (+ 58), 54% ↑

2010s : 121 polls (+ 21), 24.2% ↓

2000s : 55 polls (+ 14), 11% ↑

1990s : 28 polls (+ 3), 5.6% ↓

1980s : 23 polls (+ 4), 4.6% ↓

1970s : 3 polls (+0), 0.6% ↓

Most Known Game from each Decade

1970s : Traveller 29.30% Never Heard of

1980s : Call of Cthulhu 3% NEW

1990s : Mage The Ascension 14.80%

2000s : Pathfinder 3.20%

2010s : Dungeon World 13%

2020s : Thirsty Sword Lesbians 13.50%

Some games have been dethroned ! Call of Cthulhu has become the game of the 80s instead of Cyberpunk

Will someone dethroned Pathfinder for the 2000s decade ?

Which country do most games comes from ? ( the arrows apply to the percentage, not the position)

1 USA : 310 polls (+ 64), 62% ↑

2 UK : 55 polls(+14), 11 % ↑

3 France (+1 ↓) ; Canada (+6 ↑) : 19 polls, 3.8%

4 Australia 14 polls (+5 ), 2.8% ↑

5 Unknown 12 polls (+3) 2.4% ↑

6 Italy(+0 ↓), Japan (+ 2 ↑) : 9 polls, 1.8%

7 Sweden : 8 polls (+0), 1.6% ↓

8 New Zealand/Aotearoa : 7 polls (+2), 1.4% ↑

9 Finland (+0 ) 5 polls, 1% ↓

10 Germany (+1 ↑) Spain (+0 ↓) , Scotland ( +0 ↓) : 4 polls, 0.8%

11 Phillipines (+0 ↓), Ireland (+2 ↑) 3 polls, 0.6%

12 Brazil (+0 ↓), Denmark (+0 ↓) : 2 polls, 0.4%

13 Bandgladesh (+0 ↓), Malta (+0 ↓), Malaysia (+0 ↓), Mexico (+0 ↓), Netherlands (+0 ↓), Norway (+0 ↓) , Russia (+0 ↓), Singapore (+0 ↓), Slovenia(+0 ↓), South Africa (+0 ↓), Trinidad (+1) : 1 poll, 0.2%

We discovered a game from 1 new country : Trinidad

Please continue submitting games from other countries, and check the unknown ones to see if you know where they're from. Don't hesitate to submit non translated games

Most Known Game per Country

Australia : Mausritter 34.70% Never Heard of

Bandladesh : Midnight in a Perfect World 95.20%

Brasil : CBR+PNK 54.40%

Canada : Monsterhearts 16.90%

Denmark : Red Rook Revolt : 89.10%

Finland : Lamentations of the Flame Princess 44%

France : In Nomine 60.20%

Germany : The Dark Eye 62.40%

Ireland : TWarhammer 40k Wrath and Glory 30.50% NEW

Italy : Fabula Ultima 43.10%

Japan : Ryuutama 52.30%

Malaysia : Lumen Ryder Core 79.20%

Malta : Flabbergasted 78.80%

Mexico : Nahual 81%

Netherland : Foul Play 72.30%

New Zealand / Aotearoa : Monster of the Week 15.20 %

Norway : Itras By 85.30%

Phillipines : Gubat Banwa 36.80%

Russia : Horror Movie World 89.90%

Scotland : Delve A Solo Map Drawing Game 46%

Singapore : Hearts of Wulin 63.90%

Slovenia : Ultraviolet Grasslands 59.50%

South Africa : Nihilation 93.90%

Spain : Eyes on the Price 63.90%

Sweden : Tales from the Loop 18.70%

Trinidad : Nielsenauts 95.20% NEW

United Kingdom : Warhammer fantasy 10.90%

USA : Call of Cthulhu 3% NEW

Unknown : Fellowship 45%

All the results and the submitted games can be found here

To submit a game, go here

[ratherembarrassing]

2024: weeks 33 through 35

life hard, etc. here is an accumulation of things.

taskmaster new zealand, season 5. i'm enjoying this so much i had added it to my note for this list twice. there's also this weird element where jeremy taskmaster is the kiwi version of one of the partners i work for, and it's fucking weird.

am i ok? (2022, tig notaro and stephanie allynne). embarrassingly relatable, don't look at me.

the big lebowski (1998, the coen brothers). i am engaging in this vague task of watching things that i know i have seen but have no substantive memory of. sometimes: fun! this time: christ, what a trial.

smartypants episode 109. tao's charcuterie tier list was the worst tier list ever constructed and he should be proud of that.

'emotional blackmail' by joan didion (nov, 1962). savage. no one would write this in 2024, but they should.

random work related social activities. pasta making was involved, and it was both good and delicious? i think i'm a pasta chef now. also we spent half a weekend in lorne, which involved ocean sounds (good) and also google maps sent me in such a way home that i drove over both the westgate and the bolte bridge (bad) and during the second bridge crossing a truck with an evergreen shipping container on it drifted over in front of me and i did worry for my life for half a second.

dulce de leche pumpkin pie danish (falco). i think i should just marry the concept of pastries.

sportsball, always sportsball. tdff happened, the paralympics is happening and aflw has returned.

a very expensive haircutandcolour. that's a given, but while getting a post-haircutandcolour potato cake from the fish and chippie i also got a parking fine in the 3 minutes i was out of parking meter.

a friend had a baby! i am almost past baby-having age and it is still so shocking that this is a thing people do!

other things people do: people send me chappell roan memes now, but this one is by far the best, and also this one isn't a meme, it's just fucking good.

[fatehbaz]

For those who know how to read them, the signs have long been there. Like the towering mound of 20 million oyster shells all but obscured by the lush greenery of central Florida’s Gulf Coast. Or the arcing lines of wave-weathered stone walls strung along British Columbia’s shores like a necklace. Such features, hidden in the landscape, tell a rich and varied story of Indigenous stewardship. They reveal how humans carefully transformed the world’s coasts into gardens of the sea -- gardens that produced vibrant, varied communities of marine life [...]. And in certain places, like on the west coast of North America in what is now Washington state and where the Swinomish are building a new sea garden, these ancient practices are poised to sustain them once again.

“I see it as a way for our people to be reconnected to our place, to be reconnected to each other, and to have a purpose, to have a responsibility that goes beyond us,” says Alana Quintasket (siwəlcəʔ) of the Swinomish Tribal Senate.

---

Across the planet, Indigenous communities, from the Heiltsuk in British Columbia, to the Powhatan on the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ Atlantic Coast, to the Māori in New Zealand, have successfully stewarded the sea [...]. These communities avoided diminishing their productive sea gardens despite, in some cases, seeing harvests that rival modern commercial fisheries.

The scale of historical Indigenous oyster gardening, for instance, cannot be overstated. On America’s southeastern Atlantic coast, in the modern states of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, Indigenous peoples whose descendants include the Muscogee built gargantuan monuments out of oyster shells. These structures could reach 30 meters high or more. [...]

In 2004, scientists studying historical overfishing published a study showing how, starting around the 19th century, oyster stocks suffered a “moving wave of exploitation” that traveled down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America and the eastern coast of Australia. The capitalist commercial fisheries that arrived with European colonization and settlement, Rick says, undid thousands of years of sustainable prosperity. “Within 50 years, 100 years, maybe even less in some areas, they’ve depleted that stock.” But to Rick, that modern narrative of rampant decline is only part of the story. [...] To fill in the rest of the story, Rick assembled a diverse, multidisciplinary team of researchers to revisit the history of oyster fishing in the same places [...].

---

The work adds to scientists’ growing understanding of the diversity and value of Indigenous approaches to marine stewardship. Like the oyster gardens, similar systems show up again and again around the world, from Native Hawaiian loko i‘a (fishponds) and Haida Gwaii naw náaGalang (octopus houses) to the shi hu (stone fish traps) of Taiwan and corrales de pesca (fish traps) of Patagonia. These and other examples are being cataloged by a broad collaboration, known as the Pacific Sea Garden Collective, that is working to map this diversity of Indigenous sea gardening innovations across the Pacific Ocean.

In her own work studying historical Indigenous clam gardens on the North American west coast, which date back at least 3,500 years, Anne Salomon, an applied marine ecologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has noted some of the key techniques that led to these bountiful yet restrained returns. People would till the sediment, replenish shells in the water, and construct low intertidal rock terraces that flatten the shoreline and expand the farmable area. [...]

---

To Salomon, who is involved in the Pacific Sea Garden Collective, the intensive nature of some Indigenous sea gardens is fundamentally different from the maximum sustained yield mindset of today’s capitalist commercial fisheries. Archaeological evidence, paired with Indigenous oral histories, Salomon says, shows how by focusing on common reciprocal, relationship-based principles and governance practices — ones that sustain individuals, communities and their environments — Indigenous communities often made decisions that led to huge harvests while also putting some limits on the scale at which that intensification was happening.

These gardening efforts included a continuum of features, such as seasonal or size limits on harvest, that may be invisible to the eye, Salomon says. And as Marco Hatch, a member of the Samish Indian Nation and a marine ecologist at Western Washington University who was involved in Rick’s study of oyster gardens points out, “These features aren’t just physical features, they’re cultural features and spiritual features.” [...]

---

Inspired by sea garden restorations led by Indigenous communities in British Columbia, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has just received permits to start raking sediment and rolling rocks at a site on its traditional tidelands on Kiket Island, roughly 125 kilometers north of Seattle. For years, tribal members were chased away with guns and dogs and prevented from harvesting in the area, says Swinomish tribal member and shellfish community liaison Joe Williams (Squi qui). “It’s a very special time for us to be able to reacquaint with this particular location,” he says.

This sea garden should help address recent declines of butter clams, littleneck clams and Olympia oysters, and help those populations adapt to climate change. Historically, Indigenous peoples would shift the locations of clam garden rock walls as sea levels changed. Gardens also protect clams against ocean acidification and potentially against extreme temperatures.

---

Text by Ashley Braun. This story was originally produced for Hakai Magazine. Braun’s text here appears as published/re-published by Crosscut with the title “Indigenous sea gardens fed communities, preserved ecosystems.” 3 August 2022. [Bold emphasis added by me.]