Manako Kitano

1. The Wens ransack the Cloud Recesses and this is particularly devastating for that sect because they are not an economic centre of their own, but rely on drawing in nighthunting jobs and students to 'pay the bills'. Without their centuries of collected knowledge and natural cultivation-enhancing spaces, they don't have a practical method of day-to-day sect survival available. Caiyi town, their lifeline (waterways are EVERYTHING in economics it does not matter that they can fly) is crippled before the story even starts. While the Lans aren't outright killed as the Jiang are, the Wens clearly intended to starve them out.

2. This strategy WOULD NOT work in Yunmeng, which is not geographically or economically isolated, and in which the cultivation clan is shown to participate in agriculture and acts as a trade interface. Because of its position, it also makes an excellent hub for the further control of surrounding regions (again, WATERWAYS.) So of course it has to be physically 'taken over', necessitating the extermination of the entire clan + anyone else unlucky enough to have been at Lotus Pier that day. With YMJ under their control, none of the minor sects can do much, so they're 'left alone' (have their weapons stolen but not exterminated). The Wens now control the region's trade. Even cultivators need to eat, to repair clothing and armor, to get access to medicine. This is also why Wen Qing running a supervisory office *is not morally neutral* even if she isn't actively fighting non-Wens. Her presence and oversight are part of ensuring an economic chokehold on a region that directly supplies and bolsters the Wens efforts elsewhere.

3. The fact that the Jiang sect was even 'allowed' to rebuild after the war instead of being forcefully taken over/administrated by another clan (the Jin, it would have been the Jin. They had marriage ties to justify it socially and legally, and the manpower from their late entry into the war to enforce it) reads to me as a combination of a couple interesting factors:

3.1 The fear of Wei Wuxian/demonic cultivation - which further contextualises WWX's exit as him not just abandoning JC as an individual but jeopardizing his clan as well. Which I think is obvious but people do forget at times.

3.2 The degree to which the Jin are committed to their benevolent self-image and how much political sway that lends them.

3.3 The continued capitulation and overtures from the Jiang sect towards their nearby allies and the great sects who stand to benefit from having such an economically-rich region well-managed without having to sacrifice their own manpower, but still be something they greatly benefit from. This is JYL's marriage, the grace of having one of YZY's greatest friends as the mother-in-law; unfavourable trade deals, giving up salvaged artifacts and stretching their people thin attempting to both regain wealth and trust from citizenry through nighthunting.

3.4 Nie Mingjue (and SL Yao) - really the only sect leaders who consider honor foremost in their political decisions, and therefore the most likely to support the continuation of YMJ ideologically, as the rightful recapturing of stolen land/act of rightful revenge. This remains contingent on YMJ's continued adherence *to that regime of revenge*.

4. The rebuilding of Cloud Recesses is similarly rife with complicated politics, chief of which is Lan Xichen's need to please Jin Guangyao, through which the Jin offer financial aid to help physically rebuild infrastructure. (Not that they aren't genuine friends, but their political relationship is very much part of things). Recall also that, in order to draw in students, Gusu Lan has to present themselves as righteous as per the societal definition of righteousness, internal moral reasoning aside.

5. The Wens' destructive/disruptive path through cultivator society was so widespread and thorough and well-planned, that it's little wonder literally no one has any goodwill towards people surnamed Wen in the post-war. Consider this: there were servants/merchants/visiting families/fishermen/ordinary folk who were killed or had their livelihoods ruined by the Wens during their regional takeovers. Does the blood of only the cultivator Wens make up for these lives too? Were they not themselves innocents who just so happened to be around Yunmeng/Caiyi Town/the Cloud Recesses/delivering food to the Clan hubs/weaving cloth to sell to the cultivators/picking their herbs/excitedly showing their children the cultivators flying by? Just think about this, and come to your own conclusions, on the difficulty of assigning blame and innocence.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

[image credit]

That's right - it's glacier mice. One of my favorite things maybe on the entire planet. Let's talk about these freaky fuzzy little rats!!

Glacier mice are balls of moss that live in large herds like this in a few select glaciers. They are moss all the way through, with a center consisting of dead moss matter, implying that they begin as small growths of moss and simply accumulate over time, like snowballs. However, their outside surface is alive and well on all sides. Glacier mice have been observed, through tagging and tracking, to roll across the glacier like a majestic herd of wildebeest, exposing all of their sides to the sunlight. They trundle along at a pace of about 2.5 cm per day. That's 30 feet in a year! They're really schmovin'! Certainly further than most mosses can claim to travel.

What's really exciting, though, is that they all move in the same direction, and we're not sure why or how. Scientists experimented to try and attribute their coordinated behavior to wind, sunlight, and the direction that their grazing ground slopes, but to no avail. They speed up, slow down, and change direction in unison, based on some mysterious moss code that we haven't cracked yet.

Cross-section of a glacier mouse. Note the dead moss matter inside, and the short gametophytes on the outside, adapted to harsh winds and sunlight. [image credit]

We have figured out how they roll, though - while the moss ball sits on the ice, it insulates the ice directly underneath it, protecting it from melting. This forms a little pillar of ice that the moss eventually rolls off of. The insulating power of glacier mice also gives it the wonderful ability to host all kinds of microorganisms that otherwise wouldn't survive the glacier's harsh conditions, and their ability to move makes it possible for microorganisms to spread from one habitable spot to another. They're like a bunch of little tardigrade passenger ships, braving the dangerous glacier to go where no water bear has gone before!!

Glacier mice have been found to consist of several moss species, most of which must reproduce asexually in order to survive in the dry climate. They've been observed to live for at least six years, but are projected to live much, much longer. I love them. So much. I hope they know that I love them!! I LOVE THEM!!!!

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

Because lets recap: He was tricked, and used, and hungry, and beaten repeatedly, and treated as worthless and disposable, all by a man fully capable of paying him for his work. He was sent alone to deliver a taunt to a dangerous man. He was seven. He accepting the beating he received without complaint, and was further beaten for asking for the payment he'd been promised. He was whipped, and knocked in front of an ox cart.

Chang Ci'an didn't AIM the cart at his finger.

Chang Ci'an deliberately knocked a seven year old orphan child to the ground in front of an ox cart and ordered the driver to drive over the child.

And the driver did.

He manage to escape with ONLY one crushed finger (and, we can assume, many less permanent injuries). Crushing injuries are incredibly serious, and even one so small can be deadly. An orphaned child can't afford decent medical care. Adult Xue Yang has a SEVERED finger, which means that at best he managed to find a doctor who would amputate it for him, and at worst he cut it off himself. At age seven. Xue Yang is INSANELY lucky to have survived to age 8 after this incident.

This is why Xiao Xingchen's suggestion that Xue Yang should have merely cut off Chang Ci'an's finger, or hand, or arm, is so upsetting to Xue Yang. Yes, the revenge he did take was abhorrent and excessive, but Xingchen totally misses the point of the story (understandable in the moment, everything is happening SO MUCH at that point).

Xue Yang, at age seven, had done nothing wrong. He was a child, he was innocent, and he didn't deserve to be treated like his life was worthless by Chang Ci'an, or the cart driver, or the message recipient, or the restaurant owner, or every observer on the street who did nothing to help. And every person who tells him it's "just a finger" further treats the very real devaluing of and threat to his life as normal and fine.

If he, any time after age 7, had been able to exact revenge by cutting off Chang Ci'an's arm, there is nothing equivalent about that revenge. A severed arm is not a crushing injury, and is less likely to produce life-long chronic pain. Chang Ci'an would have good medical care-- a doctor, medicine, pain killers. His life would not meaningfully be in danger. Chang Ci'an had family (and money) to help him with whatever tasks being one-handed made difficult. Chang Ci'an was an adult, who's already lived a life without pain and disability, and who's prospects will not be impacted. Chang Ci'an was an ADULT and therefore better able to understand what was happening and why. And beyond all of that, Chang Ci'an would DESERVE IT.

To say that Xue Yang did everything he did to the Chang Clan in revenge over "losing his finger" is to betray an utter lack of willingness to empathize with Xue Yang. Even the 7yo version of him.

Devotion

so after Nie Mingjue is taken prisoner and incapacitated in Scorching Sun Palace, Wen Ruohan is content to just sit back, rest his eyes, and let Meng Yao taunt him a bit, even after the two of them start exchanging blows.

UNTIL THIS MOMENT, where Nie Mingjue (who has regained his strength) knocks Meng Yao to the floor and goes to strike him while he's down

and Meng Yao is genuinely terrified.

It cuts from Meng Yao's expression to Wen Ruohan opening his eyes

and drawing on the Yin Iron

in order to pull Nie Mingjue away from Meng Yao.

1.) Lan Xichen and Su Minshan would both hate that he’s in that club with them even more than they hate being in that club with each other!