LeavesSingLullabies

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.

Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.

The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.

Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson is so intricately plotted, I really enjoyed the world building in it, the back of book blurb says "The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways — farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends."

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland is a YA alternative historical fiction zombie novel in which the American Civil War is interrupted by a zombie apocalypse, and a young Black woman must find her way in a world where the living may be more dangerous than the undead. (it's the first of a duology)

Everfair by Nisi Shawl is a steampunk alternative history, which explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had adopted steam technology as their own. (also part of a series)

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline is a great ya dystopian book about a world where people have lost the ability to dream and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors.

The Getaway by Lamar Giles is a very intense YA dystopian horror that takes place in the future, in which a teen boy and his family work and live at a Disney-esque resort, which provides safety from the upheaval in the outside world.... until the trouble in the outside world gets worse and the most rich members of the board and up moving in and locking the resort down, leaving the families who live & work on the resort at the mercy of the wealthy board owners who control it.

Not a book and not exactly scifi (although some of the stories are scifi) and not always anti-colonial (but a lot of the stories have anti-colonial themes) , I really love the Nightlight Podcast hosted by Tonia Ransom, which is a podcast of horror stories by Black writers and performed by Black actors

Other stuff I've read this year:

The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa (transl. Ranya Abdelrahman, Sawad Hussain) - old-school SF dystopia from a Kuwaiti writer

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed - a fairytale of the old-fashioned grim sort; the protag is middle-aged and so done with having blood-chilling adventures

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar - an unsettling exploration of slavery and exploitation in a SF context, and an elegy to the tenacity and beauty of the human spirit in face of adversity (not an easy book to read but totally worth it)

Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram - surrealistic horror (I'm still not sure if I understood it properly, and too unsettled to reread for a while...)

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez - “--this is indeed a love story. Down to the blade-dented bone.” Completely different in every respect (incl genre and style) from The Vanished Birds (personally, I liked this one better), fabulous worldbuilding, very skillfully built tension, a clever - but not too clever - construction... I can't wait what this author comes up with next!

Red Sword by Bora Chung (transl. Anton Hur) - a chilling, ruthless tale of identity, memory, and fighting other people's wars

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar - a fairytale, in the purest sense, but it's not going to go the way you think

Vampyres by C. R. Kane - riffs off Dracula and other classic vampire lit in an absolutely delightful way; I want more of this yesterday!

how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem

what common file types are

some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)

how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private

how to understand terms of service (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)

what a cookie actually is

internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl

basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)

common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)

how to not get a virus while pirating something

what a temporary email is and when to use one

red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)

an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous

a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps

a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)

Heaven-Earth-Hell Tea Service

Also bonus: dance party mug

Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx), juvenile, family Felidae, northern Europe

I got this job because Ive already spent 7 years in similar institutes training for this fulltime and 6 years before that acquiring the languages to be able to do those 7 years.

aka for comparison that's the same way a chef has years of training, specialisations in national or foreign cuisines, as well as many different types of cooking has then worked his way up in the business being mentored by other chefs from cook to sous chef to chef to chef of michelin restaurants while constantly checked by customers health inspection and food critics and helped by a team of cooks and staff and food suppliers and expensive equipment.

and just like tastes differ but food can be objectively good, knowledge (especially in the humanities) is actually a bunch of consensuses or even just arguments in a trenchcoat but the research has objectively higher truth value. because it's backed up by professional methods and resources and colleagues. that's how we create knowledge.

The ~5-9 years of university training that people go through to work in historical professions are maybe 80% about learning the required skills and only 20% about content (= learning sequences of events or "about" certain phenomena, i.e. what history is in school). If you "study history" for fun in your free time, you're likely reading lots of what other people have written to get to the "content", but may run into issues with stuff like:

1) reliably discerning what factors [historiographical era, school, position in debate] influenced the historian that wrote the piece and hence its usefulness as an account

2) reliably discerning who wrote it in the first place (amateur or pro?) and whether they were using good practices with their sources and methodology. This is important because there are a lot of bad faith and just otherwise poor quality historical interpretations that may be written in an authoritative tone that likely "makes sense" to you if you don't dig deeper into it!

3) if doing original research: evaluating whether something is a primary/secondary source, what circumstances it was created in, whether it's authentic, whether you're missing context, where to find context...

4) Just accessing sufficient information in general (institutional databases but also archives and libraries - for many topics you have to physically go to a specific place!) to be able to make a well-rounded argument

5) like op mentioned, accessing and processing information in multiple languages - you can't really properly study most topics without being able to read sources in the language of that area

6) making sure that what you're researching hasn't actually already been done before

Can we all please not gatekeep the love and study of history, regardless of your academic background. Obvious disclaimers should be noted, when it comes to the sharing and discussion of factual information and truth, especially regarding sources.

FYI, this is not be discounting those who have gone through rigorous training in the humanities and history fields (I myself am currently pursuing by History BA, hopefully a historical archiving MA), but I tell you the things I've studied and learned can easily be explained through Youtube and other (free) sources, such as Yale's Open Courses, edX, etc.

Of course nothing will beat an actual mentor/first-hand critique from a live professor, but, it's a start. At the very least, it also never hurts to personally reach out to educators - there's plenty of them on LinkedIn - if you'd like someone to take the time to read anything you've written. I guarantee you there are educators and intellectuals alike that will love to read someone's work, if it means encouraging intellectualism and the study of history.

Also shout-out to one of my favorite educators, Dr. Adam Walker, a professor from Harvard, who's actually gotten me interested in close readings (literature though, not poetry, lol) and the study of Rhetoric.

There's also the added fact that while someone may have the credentials to be considered a "Historian", they can still use that background for less than savory influences, or have even knowledge to cherry-pick information to support whatever narrative they want to promote/claim.

For this reason we have the term popular historian. Someone who's not directly involved in academia but practices history nonetheless. Who does not have the exact resources and quality control as academic historians but practices it nonetheless. and can contribute OFTEN and WELL.

as to resources, yes, academic resources are becoming more and more accessible for free/outside of universities, which is DOPE, and yes, academics are more and moreso able and willing to reach out to wider publics. but, as fitzrove rightfully pointed out, those historians are in the business of creating knowledge, and have the experience to do so, which we can then consume. the creation of knowledge (and thus history) is largely academic and professional because it has to go through a rigorous process of peer review/criticism/assessment. yes, this process is largely gatekept within academia, but that's because such processes cost money, labour, etc. Essentialy, history is a team sport and as a historian you need a team to play with, or there's no game (= creating history). So even if you access university resources and acquire the skills of a historian, then you need to contribute to that process to be a historian. you're not refuting my point here.

and yes, lots and lots of those historians are bad, or produce bad work! just like every other professional field. but until such a person is fired or removed from their position they are not less of a historian. just a bad one. i don't appreciate the true scotsmanning of what is essentially a profession, no more and no less.