Happy Beanie Bday to: Millennium the bear!
May yr holidays be so lit, that it reduces the material conditions propping up their existence to ashes, leaving the social relations bare and unfettered: peace on earth and good will to all (05A) { wmv7 databending glitch, footage of a live Christmas tree burn by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.
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(Please don’t remove the credits)
museyumm-deactivated20211006
when someone opens their heart to you, it's a gift so honor it. respect it.
‘previously undreamed-of’
jamespwellington
this just gave me a glimpse into an alternate reality where human society functions the way carpenter ant society does
thepivanquisher
We actually have something similar in India. It’s done for the festival of Janmashtami which celebrates the birth of Krishna. The story goes that when he was a baby, Krishna was always getting into pots of yogurt and white butter and just eating it by the handfuls. So his parents and village took to hanging the pots from the ceiling to keep it from him. But he and his friends would get long sticks and climb on each other’s shoulders and steal the pots anyway. So on Janmashtami now, people attempt to recreate his heist and it’s just the most adorable thing.
Castellers from Catalonia found out about this tradition in India, and they thought it was amazing that we had such a similar tradition so far away. So they went to India to meet them. They filmed it all and released it as a documentary on YouTube (called Dahi Handi - Documental viatge a l’India, you can find it easily).
Then in 2006, they invited a team of govindas from India to perform in Vilafranca’s square during their festivities. Vilafranca’s central square, especially during the Sant Fèlix festivities, is the place for castells. It’s the most important center for this tradition (people from Tarragona please don’t kill me for saying this but you know it’s true). And the Vilafranca colla (casteller group) is one of the best and most important ones in all Catalonia, they’re like superstars in the world of castells. So this is a huge honour to be invited by the castellers of Vilafranca. The govindas also received an official welcome in the city hall, and invited to a rehearsal of the Vilafranca castellers. They rehearsed together and then made a tower all together in Vilafranca’s central square, where the Vilafranca castellers were at the base to make the govindas’ structure stronger and higher:
(The ones with white shirt and black trousers are Indian govindas, the ones with white trousers and green shirts are the Catalan castellers from Vilafranca)
Everybody was very happy and the govindas and castellers got along together very well so, in 2019, 200 castellers from Vilafranca (including the mayor, who is a member) went to India to visit them again for the Janmashtami festivity (that @thepivanquisher explained) in Mumbai.
The day they arrived in India, the Vilafranca castellers did some castells in front of the Gateway of India monument, ending with two pilars where the anxenetes (the kids on top) unfolded a flag of India and a flag of Catalonia.
The castellers and govindas also rehearsed together in Mumbai. I’ve seen a video and it’s so lovely, it was in a square of a working class neighbourhood and it was full of people waiting to meet them.
The castellers were also invited to take part in the ritual before Janmashtami, and they were also received by the Islamic community of a neighbourhood of the city. They were very happy to be so well received.
And then the day came:
(That’s govindas doing their tower and behind you can see the Vilafranca castellers, in their usual clothes, cheering for the govindas).
(And that’s the castellers doing their castell after!)
The castellers also performed in a school in the Mumbai and used their rest of the time there to give support to the NGO Mumbai Smiles which helps fight against poverty in the slums.
(The castellers in a school)
Again, they got along very well and were happy to celebrate together their shared passion. They have also learnt from each other: the Catalans showed their method to the Indians so they now can build higher towers, and by looking at how Indians climb they learned how to be faster. That’s why they have invited each other to their countries more times after that.
I think it’s wonderful and I hope to see more of such exchanges 😄
(By the way, we don’t call them “human towers”. In Catalan, “castell” means “castle”. They are human castles, and “castellers”, the people who do it, means “castle-ers” or “castle builders”.)
This. Sharing each others culture and traditions without being condescending or trying to erase the other. This is beautiful
"i wish bi ppl would stop calling themselves gay/lesbian, theyre erasing their own identity :/" oh my god please shut up... someone using multiple labels for themselves is not "erasing their own identity." just because YOU personally dont see certain words as umbrella labels, doesnt mean that others can not or do not see and use them that way.
i literally dont believe yall actually want to protect bi ppl when youre saying this, you just want to control what terminology they use and strictly divide the community so theres no overlap, despite the fact that many people fall specifically into those overlapping sections and prefer having the lines blurred since they themselves have a blurry and complex, perhaps even confusing, orientation and gender identity.
having the community be full of nothing but strictly separate boxes only helps those who can actually fit into them individually with no issues, which is not the whole community. stop ostracizing your fellow queers. were here to embrace the vast weirdness of identities that society doesnt accept, not to make the group of "acceptable" ones just a little bit bigger, and throwing the rest under the bus
If I see someone say I'm "erasing my own identity" one more time I stg. The only person erasing my identity is you, asshole
People be like oh you’re in your 20s you have a whole life to live but I already feel as if I’ve missed every opportunity and made all the wrong decisions and it’s just fucked now
Comic on having long-COVID as a young person. Sending love to others who may be similarly suffering.
(ID under the cut)
stormingtheivory
but…. but…. profit motive! infinite houses!! this doesnt fit in my narrow victorian framework for understanding human nature!!
Oh. Oh dang. I know several people who this could help.
starrbear
Link’s broken, so here’s the website: http://www.optikey.org/
[description of gif set. first gif: image of keyboard being controlled using only eye movements. second gif: man speaking “Optikey allows you full computer control and speech generation using only your eyes.” third gif: visual of a brain “it’s designed for people with motor and speech limitations.” fourth to sixth gifs: “Optikey is free. fully free, fully open-source. I decided very early on that this wasn’t going to be a profit making exercise. The solutions available to help people with degenerative diseases communicate are either in-sufficient or they’re very very expensive.” seventh gif: visual of sending an email “the tragic nature of these diseases is that you’re locked in your body, and solutions like this give you an outlet to the world, that you might not otherwise have.” eighth gif: “What I really like is that anyone with programming inclinations can go on Github, have a look at the source code, and contribute”.]