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Summer Colours

@yanwangdijunfensi / yanwangdijunfensi.tumblr.com

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One of the really key things to grasp from studying military/political theory is how counter-intuitive the perception of strength and weakness is.

When a military force takes its strongest unit out of reserve and dedicates it to a battle, it is demonstrating weakness and insecurity. It is losing initiative and being forced to act reactively, rather than remaining flexible - it is a fundamentally defensive behaviour to assault the enemy with a great force. Politically, to engage in strict repression of class enemies, to mercilessly destroy those who threaten your class dictatorship, is something done when your power is, in fact, threatened - when it is weak.

Conversely, it is a sign of great strength to show restraint. Fighting with desperation is done by the desparate, by those who are being forced to act a given way by their enemies. When overmatching the enemy, it is always better to take your time and act deliberately, to force them to battle only on your terms. Attacking the enemy piecemeal, defeating them slowly in detail, implies the ability to force the enemy to act and divide themselves at your will. If you are not seriously threatened, then there is no need to dedicate yourself entirely to a given battle, and you would do much better to avoid doing so.

This is, to the uninitiated, counter-intuitive. People see great shows of force and percieve them as strength. People see restraint and perceive it as a lack of will. People idolise times of great desperation because all they see is the immense action that resulted - and they spurn times of strength and security, because they see a lack of action. Through one means or another, they arrive at a common flaw: the fetishism of defeat.

utube now forcing us to all have history on :^) otherwise ur home page is just a blank screen :^) who made this stupid ass decision

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Anonymous asked:

Forgive me brother I forgot you are Armenian and already know of the joys of yoghurt. I simply feel compelled to spread the good word about savoury yoghurt dishes because Americans are sadly deluded into thinking yoghurt should be sweet and without fat instead of thick like a pawg and served with pasta.

"Americans are deluded into thinking yoghurt should be sweet and without fat instead of thick like a pawg" is going to be bouncing around in my brain until the day i die, thanks

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i took a philosophy class my first year at community college, and it was the funnest shit ever - prof gave us a powerpoint and told us to fight with him when we disagreed so we could have discussions, then gave us his steam username so we could play racing games together. one time, he told us this story about a prof he had in grad school - guy was tenured, and apparently a great teacher. but he had this time built into his schedule where other profs would be in labs, experimenting, doing research, where he stood in his empty classroom with a warm cup of tea and stared out the window. for these 1.5 hour schedule blocks. and the administration would come to him and be like “dude, we’re not paying you to stare out the window, why aren’t you working?” and he’d say, “i am working. i’m a philosopher, it’s my job to contemplate the world and life and that’s what I’m doing,” and they couldn’t do shit cause he was tenured. and then every handful of years he’d pop out a book that blew everybody’s tits off and they’d get a surge of new philosophy grads come to study with him and make the school a lot of money.

So yeah, i think that’s still what being a philosopher is like

like if people genuinely believe there are no benefits to living to the imperial core then please explain to me why these borders are the most militarized borders on earth! if there is no difference between living in the global south and the imperial core then why do thousands of people attempt to cross the mediterranean to europe and why is there an entire industry predicating on producing technology to kill those people?

The market price of an iPad in 2010–2011 was $499, with the factory price being $275. Of the factory price, barely $33 went to production wages in the South, while fully $150 of Apple’s gross profit margin went to high design, marketing, and administrative salaries, as well as research and development and operating costs sustained mainly in the global North [...] If the iPad were to be assembled in the United States, the wage cost of production would not be $45 but $442. And if we go one step deeper into the production structure of the iPad, into the sub-components and raw materials inputs, we learn that most of these material inputs are also produced in the South with an approximate wage-cost of $35 per iPad. If this production also took place in the United States, its wage cost would be approximately $210. The workers in Apple’s iPad production chain are not paid less because their productivity is lower than that of workers in the North. In fact, they are probably more productive. Apple’s suppliers are world leaders employing state-of-the-art technology. Their managerial personnel drive employees using Taylorist methods and longer work weeks not legally tolerated in the North. Suppliers organize schedules to intensify worker productivity, with daily shifts of twelve hours and tight speedup supervision being routine. Working weeks surpass sixty hours because workers are required to work overtime exceeding legal regulations. Thus it is not surprising that in 2011 when Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, was asked at a White House dinner by President Obama “What would it take for Apple to bring its manufacturing home?” Jobs replied: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

—Torkil Lauesen & Zak Cope, Imperialism and the Transformation of Values into Prices

you have got to be fucking kidding me

okay im not hawaiian im puerto rican but this is going to make me explode - the US colonizes your people, steals your land, pollutes and destroys your natural resources, remodels your entire society to serve the needs of its settlers, ensures those settlers are the least impacted during a time of crisis, continues to push tourism in waters the dead bodies of your people were just recovered from, and then has the audacity to hand you and your entire family a check for $700 while you stand in the ashes of your home in the midst of both a recession and unprecedented military spending that they’ve gleefully rubber stamped so they can continue to replicate your experience throughout the world….this is a country and a system beyond depravity

solidarity with the people of maui. all the wealth the US has mined from your people and your land and the best they can offer you is 700 fucking dollars

"The theme of Genshin is to put the people first, and this will be the focus throughout the story, Mondstadt replaced freedom of the gods with the freedom of the people, Liyue replaced the contracts of the gods with the contracts of the people, Inazuma replaced the eternity of the gods with the eternity of the people, and Sumeru replaced the wisdom of the gods with the wisdom of the people."

I agree with this, but I must add one more thing: this story is also about harmony between the gods and the people.

i think it’s p awesome that the first compasses invented in china were not magnetic, but in fact mechanical - the cart with the little wooden man pointing south was built in a way that no matter which way the cart turned, the little man would always point south

this is a model of what it looked like

how does this work? it’s so cool and confusing

the gears are aligned in a way to always turn the little man in the opposite direction as the cart at the same rate of rotation. so if the man points at you, and you turn the cart clockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned counterclockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you. if you turn the cart counterclockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned clockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you

as for how they got the cart to point south to begin with, that goes into fengshui and cardinal direction geomancy. but long story short, the workshops that built these carts would have their front doors facing south to begin with (using the sun and the stars to figure out which way is south), so all they would have to do is build the cart facing that direction, and the little man will always point south

thank you!

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Heres the wikipedia page for those curious

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50+ fundamental crime, suspense, & mystery Cdrama vocab words

I'm currently watching 《模仿犯》, so I was inspired to put together this list of essential vocab for 犯罪剧/悬疑剧/推理剧. I tend to gravitate towards dramas that fall into these genres.

I've sorted the words into categories. These were determined by vibes only. Definitions are adapted from MDBG, my loyal companion for nearly 10 years.

The Case

  • 案子 ànzi - case / law case / legal case / judicial case
  • 案件 ànjiàn - case / instance
  • 办案 bàn'àn - to handle a case
  • 破案 pò'àn - to solve a case
  • 报案 bào'àn - to report a case to the authorities
  • 命案 mìng'àn - homicide case / murder case
  • 作案 zuò'àn - to commit a crime
  • 现场 xiànchǎng - the scene (of a crime, accident etc) / (on) the spot / (at) the site
  • 证据 zhèngjù - evidence / proof / testimony
  • 真相 zhēnxiàng - the truth about sth / the actual facts

The Investigation

  • 厘清 líqīng - to clarify (the facts) / clarification
  • 线索 xiànsuǒ - trail / clues / thread (of a story)
  • 细节 xìjié - details / particulars
  • 痕迹 hénjì - vestige / mark / trace
  • 追踪 zhuīzōng - to follow a trail / to trace / to pursue
  • 追问 zhuīwèn - to question closely / to investigate in detail / to examine minutely / to get to the heart of the matter
  • 排除 páichú - to eliminate / to remove / to exclude / to rule out
  • 嫌疑 xiányí - suspicion / to have suspicions
  • 怀疑 huáiyí - to doubt (sth) / to be skeptical of / to have one's doubts / to harbor suspicions / to suspect that
  • 跟踪 gēnzōng - to follow sb's tracks / to tail / to shadow / tracking
  • 不对劲 búduìjìn - fishy / wrong / not right
  • 隐瞒 yǐnmán - to conceal / to hide (a taboo subject) / to cover up the truth

The Victim

  • 被害者 bèihàizhě - victim (of a wounding or murder)
  • 受害者 shòuhàizhě - casualty / victim / those injured and wounded
  • 幸存者 xìngcúnzhě - survivor
  • 失踪 shīzōng - to be missing / to disappear / unaccounted for
  • 消失 xiāoshī - to disappear / to fade away

The 80s was literally like the most depressing decade after WW2 I hate how obsessed we are with that shit still

What people think the 80s was: synthwave neon legwarmers fun movies D&D Stephen King cute boys with mullets kissing each other under the bleachers

What the 80s actually was: AIDS crisis, neoliberalism, Reagan and Thatcher, unquantifiable levels of homo/transphobia, racist/patriarchal backlash against the radical gains of the 60s and 70s, Satanic Panic, rise of the evangelical right, collapse of socialism, collapse of the union movement, nuclear proliferation, tough on crime bills, mass incarceration, and most movies still sucked ass