A Characterization Of Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein''

if you're black, reblog this

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if you’re black, reblog this

if you’re black, reblog this

if you’re black, reblog this

if you’re black, reblog this

if you’re black, reblog this

Cool book

Currently reading this charmingly illustrated debut novel by Will Ottley. Mountain Garden is an inspiring fable crafted with care and the beauty of nature in mind. So far it’s a refreshing read featuring the themes of love, bravery, and intuition.

Sometimes you’re just an introverted loser who sits alone in your room with a cup of tea and a book, has fantasies about morally grey fictional characters, is severely touch starved with a completely fucked up sleep schedule and slowly declining mental health.

I can understand not wanting to get pregnant or have kids but y'all do not need to take that out on pregnant people themselves

The History of Riots

Riots. Small or massive, can induce major anxiety especially if you’re introverted like me. Riots are usually caused by people getting infuriated, by things like politics, economy, or for the end to tyranny and oppression. You see it when people rise up against their government, like the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the American Revolution. More recently, the race riots of 1965 were a violent and historical recording of how damaging people can act when things start to change, or where there is simply no change. That is the crux of riots.

‘‘What determines a country’s political institutions, and in particular, the extent to which they are democratic? An important set of explanations has focused on the idea that conflict, or the possibility of conflict, induces leaders to promote institutional change? Tilly (1990), Besley and Persson (2008, 2009), and Dincesco and Prado (2012) argue that conflict, and in particular wars between countries, created the setting for Western European nations to build institutions that would enable the enforcement of contracts and collection of taxes. Conflict also plays an important role in Acemoglu and Robinsons’ (2000, 2001, 2006) theory of democratization; they emphasize how the threat of conflict, in the form of a revolution, induces autocrats to make democratic concessions in an attempt to defuse that threat. In their theory, revolution is more likely in times of economic hardship, so negative economic shocked pen a ‘‘window of opportunity’’ that can lead to a peaceful transition towards democracy.’’

Riots are a backlash against the government, explosive and in you’re face. Riots transform regular people into citizens who want to show off their freedom, by expressing the rights that they have. Rioting certainly doesn’t start out that way. It starts off as protesting against either a corporation, a government, society itself, or a certain person. Unfortunately, anger starts to lead the way within the protest and drives violence as a way to get even more attention. ‘‘The main difficulty in testing whether conflict opens a ‘‘window of opportunity’’ is that riots are rarely exogenous: there might be problems of reverse causality because the expectation of political change might itself lead to riots, and there might be unobservable omitted variables that cause both riots and political change.’’

This was one crazy sociopath but I loved it!

Teachers lead a music lesson for agricultural workers’ children at a nursery at Okeechobee migratory labor camp in Belle Glade, Florida (1941).

Ra, the Sun Deity

There are many versions of Ra. ‘Ra’ is the Egyptian word for the sun, and since we are talking of the Egyptian pantheon of gods, he was the oldest of them all and later merged with others such as Horus, becoming Ra-Horakhty (the morning sun), Amun (as noonday sun), and Atum (the evening sun) associated with primal life-giving energy. As a solar deity, he was the sun riding in his ship during the day and descending into the underworld come night.

In Egyptian mythology, it is said he battles the giant serpent Apophis every time he goes to the underworld to start the end of the world and prevent the sun from ever-rising and destroying life on Earth forever. Ra was the most important god of Egypt and the most popular one, as he emphasized 'life-giving/bearing.' Worship of Ra was established in the Old Kingdom with the development of funerary rituals dedicated to the god. His image appeared on all royal monuments since the First Dynasty. Later emperors adopted the name “Ramses” as a religious title after the king's grandfather, who was also known as Ramesses I.

The most famous representations of Ra are is found on the Narmer Palette, a ‘‘hieroglyph of King Menes, which established Egypt’s first state religion around 3100 BC. The earliest known depiction of the god appears on one of the oldest surviving mummy masks, dating to the Middle Kingdom. This mask portrays the King wearing the headdress and chest ornaments that were worn by high priests of the temple of Ra during the Middle Kingdom period. Over time, the ram’s head symbol of Ra became widespread in Egypt, including appearing on the King’s banners and on temples as well as royal palaces.’’

Ra is a solar deity that is associated with light and rebirth. Throughout the history of mankind, the Sun has been considered the source of life for humanity, and therefore it has been used as a symbol by many religions to signify divinity. The Sun is associated with Ra because it is at his temple that the rays of sunlight would be most intense, shining on the statue of the god as if inviting him to shine on mankind. The ancient Egyptians believed that their civilization was founded by the gods of the sun. They associated the rising Sun with life and creation and used it to represent the passage of time – between each day and each month, the Egyptians measured the passing of time by counting the hours and minutes until the rising of the Sun again.

A 3,000-year-old canoe has been discovered in a Wisconsin lake: "Truly incredible"

A diver unexpectedly spotted the canoe in the lakebed and it was carefully excavated by hand.

“A 3,000-year-old canoe has been discovered in a Wisconsin lake, the Wisconsin Historical Society announced Thursday. The canoe dates back to 1000 B.C., making it the oldest ever discovered in the Great Lakes region by about 1,000 years.

The discovery in Madison’s Lake Mendota comes less than a year after a 1,200-year-old canoe was found, the historical society said in a press release. Both of the canoes are now being preserved with help from Wisconsin’s Native Nations.

The 3,000-year-old dugout canoe was found by a maritime archaeologist during a recreational dive in May. Tamara Thomsen found the canoe in the same area where the first was discovered. It was excavated by hand on Thursday and will now be cleaned and cared for by tribal members and the historical society.

The canoe will then be hand-lowered into a large preservation vat, which also contains the 1,200-year-old canoe. The preservation process will take two years, and the canoes will be freeze-dried to remove any remaining water.

The 3,000-year-old canoe is carved from a single piece of white oak and is about 14.5 feet long. The first canoe was fully intact when found. It dates back to 800 A.D. and is the oldest fully intact vessel ever to be extracted from Wisconsin waters. That boat also had net sinkers on board used for fishing. “

…

“Finding an additional historically significant canoe in Lake Mendota is truly incredible and unlocks invaluable research and educational opportunities to explore the technological, cultural, and stylistic changes that occurred in dugout canoe design over 3,000 years,” Skibo said.

The canoes will also help provide more details about how the Ho-Chunk and other Native Americans lived in the area thousands of years ago, the society said.

The Ho-Chunk Nation is a federally-recognized tribal nation based in Wisconsin, previously known as the Wisconsin Winnebago Tribe. The Ho-Chunk, which means “People of the Big Voice,” are not located on a single reservation but own land throughout Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota.

“The recovery of this canoe built by our ancestors gives further physical proof that Native people have occupied Teejop (Four Lakes) for millennia, that our ancestral lands are here and we had a developed society of transportation, trade and commerce,” said Ho-Chunk President Marlon WhiteEagle. 

“Every person that harvested and constructed this caašgegu (white oak) into a canoe put a piece of themselves into it. By preserving this canoe, we are honoring those that came before us. We appreciate our partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society, working together to preserve part of not only our ancestors’ history but our state’s history.”

The Origins of the date of Christmas

Yesterday was Christmas, so Merry Christmas everyone! This is the holiday to be surrounded by family and friends and to look back on how far you’ve come, especially in this hellish year. Every year we celebrate this festive holiday on the 25th of December, but I’m curious, where did the celebration of Christmas originate? How did it become decided that this was when we would celebrate Christmas?

It’s a valid question! It is a fact that liturgical tradition, no matter how lauded, is no longer seen in a reliable manner any longer. The skepticism comes from the sixteenth-century Reformation, which inspired Protestant and particular Calvinist scholars to attack the ecclesiastical calendar. ‘‘As recent research has shown, it is the context of these early modern inquiries into the history of the liturgical year, which were often permeated by inter-confessional polemic, that the two basic approaches to understanding Christmas’ origins that continue to characterize the twenty-first-century debate on the subject first germinated. For lack of more appropriate labels, these two approaches may be referred to as ‘History of Religions Theory’ (henceforth: HRT) and the ‘Calculation Theory’ (CT). Roughly speaking, proponents of HRT interpret Christmas as a Christianized version or substitute for pagan celebrations that took place on the same date as the Roman Calendar, the most widely cited example being the birthday of Sol Invictus on December 25. By contrast, adherents to CT find evidence that the birth of Christ was determined independently, by resource to certain types of chronological speculation.’’

It is well known that a lot of Christianity is used to subvert or covert most of the old world’s celebrations. The holidays, like Halloween, Easter, Spring, and Christmas were all re-used from pagan traditions. German philologist Herman Usener (1834-1905) was one of the pioneers in the modern academic study of religion. ‘‘According to his view, the celebration of Christ’s birth in midwinter was essentially the heritage of a syncretistic sun cult, which already bore traces of an incipient ‘pagan’ monotheism. The central turning point in this story comes from the year 274 CE when the emperor Aurelian allegedly elevated the original sun god Sol Invictus to the supreme deity of the Roman empire and established his cult on December 25. Threatened by the persistent popularity of these rituals among newly baptized Christians, the early Church was moved to incorporate traces of the cult into its own liturgy and thus re-interpreted the annual ‘birth’ of the sun at the winter solstice as the birth festival of Christ.’’