Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I haven’t seen one single post about this. None of the national news is covering it either. There is a complete media blackout.
In summary: There’s a huge oil pipeline being built in North Dakota, and it’s heading straight through sacred Native American land. Already, four thousand people are camped out there, arrests are being made, and they’ve had water taken from them in order to try and get them to disperse.
“Growing in number and spirit, the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline is swiftly gaining strength ahead of a federal hearing on the controversial project. Support has spreadacross the country, and thousands have descended on the peaceful “prayer camps” in recent days, prompting state officials on Monday to remove the demonstrators’ drinking water supply.
“People are getting overheated now already,” said Johnelle Leingang, the tribe’s emergency response coordinator, as temperatures hovered around 90º F on Monday.
“
North Dakota homeland security director Greg Wilz ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the protest encampment, despite the sweltering heat. This is because, according to law enforcement officers, the protestors were threatening them with firearms and pipe bombs.
Kirchmeier said the protest had become “unlawful” as his officers reported incidents of shots being fired, pipe bombs, vandalism and assaults on private security personnel. Construction on the pipeline near Cannon Ball has been “discontinued for the time being,” Kirchmeier said.
However, protesters denied those allegations. “Firearms and weapons are not allowed at the Sacred Stone Camp and our security has done an exemplary job at maintaining safety amongst the crowd,” according to a statement released by Sacred Stone Camp protesters with the groups Honor the Earth and the Indigenous Environmental Network. “As our camp was established on an act of prayer, we are committed to nonviolence.”
“The only thing we are armed with is with our prayers.”
The pipeline threat is real; there have been 11 pipeline accidents since 2000 on lines carrying oil or gasoline across the Dakotas. One of those pipeline accidents resulted in roughly 865,000 gallons of oil spilling beneath a farm in North Dakota in 2013.
The Dakota Access Pipeline’s planned route crosses the Missouri River which serves as the entire water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; the Army Corp of Engineers (ACOE) approved 200 water crossings by the pipeline in spite of requests by the Sioux to deny construction permits. The ACOE, however, reviewed and rejected an alternate pipeline route crossing the Missouri River near Bismarck as it was deemed a threat to the municipal water supply. This looks like outright racism on the face of it; the pipeline is a threat to 92% white Bismarck, but not a sovereign Native American tribe?
The Standing Rock Sioux are challenging Army Corps of Engineers permits issued for the pipeline that tribe members say violate the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.
The Army Corps of Engineers gave DAPL permission to build in late July, despite pending lawsuits and active local resistance.
An hour south of Bismarck, protesters have gathered since April near Cannon Ball, N.D., where Dakota Access plans to lay pipe under the Missouri River. In recent weeks, the ranks of protests swelled from several dozen to more than 800.
The heavily-policed scene has not been without incident. More than 20 people have been arrested in the last few weeks, and a roadblock guarded by state police established on Highway 1806, which leads to the protest site and the Standing Rock reservation. So not only can protestors not get things like a water supply to the protest site, but the four thousand people who are already there may be stuck.
The court hearing is on August 24, where it will be decided whether to halt the construction or not. This pipeline, if it breaks, could destroy so many people’s lives, as well as decimate the environment and wildlife around them.
A petition has been started by a youth member of the Standing Rock Sioux, you can sign it here. It already has over 200,000 signatures.
Barcelona-based fashion designer Alassie of El Costurero Real creates delicate cloaks, capes, and scarves that look like diaphanous moth and butterfly and wings for an instant fairy transformation. Each pair of vibrantly-colored insect wings is made of muslin that’s so light and delicate it looks like chiffon. The edges of the wings are wired to help them keep their shape and make them easy to use while dancing. Build a human-sized cocoon and you’ll be ready to entertain friends at parties or stage impromptu street performances.
Visit the El Costurero Real Etsy shop to check out more of Alassie’s wings as well as all sorts of other fantasy, Victorian, and steampunk garments and accessories.
Coconuts have only been in the Caribbean for 500 years. They just….floated on over from Asia and took root. That’s…hilarious.
Wait really? I always thought they were if not native at least brought over on purpose
Right??? I’m watching this nature doc and when the narrator said that I nearly spit my drink giggling. They’re remarkably buoyant and just bob their way to a new shore. So carefree. Truly a fruit destined to be in the Caribbean.
The way she is being treated is unspeakable. It makes me ache. I want to just look at how beautiful, talented, lovey, gorgeous, kind, funny, and genuine she is. So here is a Leslie Jones appreciation post.
We need to call the Leslie Jones hack what it is: an act of sexual violence, a hate crime in the form of revenge porn.
Revenge porn, which is criminalized in at least 34 states, is the publication of explicit material featuring someone who did not consent to having their likeness shared.
It’s crucial not to trivialize this attack as if it were a celebrity scandal. Jones doesn’t have any “leaked nudes,” as most headlines are saying. She is not a DJ who accidentally posted a new track before the album dropped. Her private photos are stolen property.
As a single black woman in the public eye, Jones’ sexuality was already highly scrutinized. In wielding intimate photos as a weapon against her, hackers undermined Jones’ bodily autonomy.
Furthermore, it’s important to recognize the racial dimensions of this crime. The Telegraph reported the hackers uploaded a video of Harambe, the internet-famous gorilla, onto Jones’ website — a blatantly racist symbol that attempted to mock and dehumanize Jones’ black body.
Jones is not the first celebrity to be the victim of hacking and revenge porn, but few have been victimized quite like this.
I just did a quick perusal of the Coptic resources on this site, and it has all the resources I’ve personally found worthwhile and then some. These are resources that took me months, if not years, to discover and compile. I am thoroughly impressed. The other languages featured on the site are:
Akkadian
Arabic
Aramaic
Church Slavonic
Egyptian (hieroglyphics and Demotic)
Elamite
Ethiopic (Ge’ez)
Etruscan
Gaulish
Georgian
Gothic
Greek
Hebrew
Hittite
Latin
Mayan (various related languages/dialects)
Old Chinese
Old English
Old French
Old Frisian
Old High German
Old Irish
Old Norse
Old Persian
Old Turkic
Sanskrit
Sumerian
Syriac
Ugaritic
For the love of all the gods, if you ever wanted to learn any of these languages, use this site.
Likely helpful for various recon-oriented polytheists.
I took a class about Ancient Egypt last semester and we had a whole lecture dedicated to talking about how gay Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were. Their tomb walls were decorated with scenes of them ignoring their wives in favor of embracing each other. In one scene, the couple is seated at a banquet table that is usually reserved for a husband and wife. There’s an entire motif of Khnumhotep holding lotus flowers which in ancient Egyptian tradition symbolizes femininity. Khnumhotep offers the lotus flower to Niankhkhnum, something that only wives were ever depicted as doing for their husbands. In fact, Khnumhotep is repeatedly depicted as uniquely feminine, being shown smaller and shorter than his partner Niankhkhnum and being placed in the role of a woman. Size is a big deal in Egyptian art, husbands are almost always shown as being larger and taller than their wives. So for two men of equal status to be shown in once again, a marital fashion, is pretty telling. Not to mention they were literally buried together which is the strongest bond two people could share in ancient Egypt, as it would mean sharing the journey to the afterlife together. And yet 90% of the academic text about these two talks about these clues in vague terms and analyze the great “brotherhood” they shared, and the enigma of Khnumhotep being depicted as feminine. Apparently it’s too hard for archaeologists to accept homosexuality in the ancient world, as well as the possibility of trans individuals.
On the last note, I was walking around the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and there is a mummy on exhibit. It caught my attention because the panel that was describing it was talking about how it was a woman’s body in a male coffin and wow, the Egyptian working that day really screwed that up. My summary, not actual words, sorry I can’t remember verbatim but it basically said that someone screwed up.
They claimed that the Egyptians screwed up a burial.
The Egyptians. Screwed up. A burial.
Now I’m not an expert in Ancient Egypt but from what I know, and what the exhibit was telling me, burials and the afterlife and all that jazz DEFINED the Egyptian religion and culture. They don’t just ‘screw up’. So instead of thinking outside the box for two seconds and wonder why else a genetically female body was in a male coffin, the ‘researchers’ blatantly disregard the rest of their research and decided to call it a screw up. Instead of, you know, admitting that maybe this mummy presented as male during his life and was therefore honorably buried as he was identified. But it would be too much of a stretch to admit that a transgender person could have existed back then.
(Sorry I can’t find any sources online and it’s been like 2 years but it stuck in my mind)
At noon on Friday, tanks from a 96-car train derailed, burst into flames and spilled crude oil into the Columbia River near Mosier, Oregon. What’s more, no one noticed until Saturday. Officials told the Guardian they had detected no damage to wildlife. But the Yakama tribe — whose reservation lies north of Mosier, across the river in southern Washington — said the spill poses a direct threat to their livelihood.
