Does anyone know what this instrument is called? Its like a Marimba but it is very large and made out of huge stones. Listen to that tone! haha Love it!
It’s a type of Vietnamese lithophone (literally rock sound instrument) called a đàn đá. Some ethnomusicologists think that these are likely the oldest type of man made instrument.
she looks like shes having fun lol this is bringing me joy
so you’re telling me that rock is actually the oldest genre
“I’m tired of simply trying to enjoy escapist stories in which people are tortured and experimented upon at black sites run by authoritarian governments, only to have the creators cram political messages down my throat,” said Land, 31, who added that Marvel’s recent additions of female, LGBTQ, and racially diverse characters to long-running story arcs about tyrannical regimes turning social outsiders into powerful killing machines felt like PC propaganda run amok. “Look, I get that politics is some people’s thing, but I just want to read good stories about people whose position outside society makes them easy prey for tests run by amoral government scientists—without a heavy-handed allegory for the Tuskegee Study thrown in. Why can’t comics be like they used to and just present worlds where superheroes and villains, who were clearly avatars for the values of capitalism, communism, or fascism, battle each other in narratives that explicitly mirrored the complex geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War?”
The Mayans had mastered water pressure and had fountains and toilets as early as 750 AD.
Aztecs had running water and sewage.
The Victorians In the mid-1800s were dying of cholera because they just dumped their raw shit in the river Thames. They wouldn’t shower for months at a time because they were afraid of the polluted water.
it is true that the mexica built very complex architecture and tenochtitlan was indeed an engineering marvel, and it’s a myth that 15th century europeans were significantly more “”advanced”” than other cultures they encountered…but this rather oversimplifies why victorian britain had a cholera problem and appears to subscribe to the fallacy that history is a linear progression of less advanced —> more advanced. britain was part of the roman empire, and the romans definitely had running water and toilets. roman londinium was possibly cleaner than london in 1858.
it’s useful to remember technological advances don’t necessarily increase the quality of life for everyone with no detriments (for example: just look at the invention of cars. now air pollution and respiratory illnesses from car exhaust are a huge problem in many cities). victorian britain was in some ways more “advanced” than rome. in the midst of the industrial revolution…but that meant many factories were producing chemical waste that ended up in the thames (far less a problem in roman london or tenochtitlan). it’s not that victorian london lacked toilets or that people literally hurled shit into the river without thinking ‘uh…we get our drinking water from there’. they did have a sense of hygiene, but that, combined with an imperfect understanding of what caused disease (miasma theory, anyone?) had very unfortunate consequences.
many sewers and cesspits were in fact built in 1800s london. the expansion of plumbing brought more water directly to the homes of londoners, which meant more and more people could install taps and flush toilets in their homes. naturally, this seemed more hygienic than using a chamber pot and having to keep your shit until the night soil collectors came around (especially if you subscribed to miasma theories). but because the city’s rapid population growth overburdened existing sewers, when they flushed their crap, a huge volume overflowed into the thames, where it mixed with all sorts of chemical waste coming from factories. perfect concoction for the great stink—and cholera.
on that note, cholera wasn’t a global pathogen until the last 200 years. it seems to have originated in south asia. so again; it would not have been a problem in the americas or in the time of the romans. another lesson to us about: 1) how many diseases are new and can cause a shitload more damage when people lack immunity, and yes, imperialism can bring disease. the british navy is likely responsible for spreading cholera out of south asia 2) how improvements in technology had other very negative consequences; rapid travel enabled by steamships allowed cholera to leapfrog across the globe, spread not just by british soldiers but ordinary people— instead of outbreaks burning out before they reached a new continent— which it’s been doing ever since. so, it’s significantly more complicated than just “more advanced technology = better quality of life”; many of our hunter gatherer ancestors were not plagued with quite so many infectious diseases—as many originated in animals but jumped to humans thanks to the domestication of animals and the rise of large, settled societies (you need a certain population size to keep epidemics going, after all).
becoming vegan because factory farming is unethical is like deciding that since walmart and amazon mistreat their employees you are now going to get everything you need out of dumpsters
in a nutshell, instead of reforming the bad parts of your society, you
try to opt out of it in a way that has really no effect, and wouldn’t
work at all if the majority of people weren’t still part of the industry
you dislike.
there was, for a while, a real movement of people who tried to get everything out of dumpsters, as a way of opting out of capitalism. but the problem was that you couldn’t get what you need when you need it, leading to you being kind of a drain on your community, and someone had to buy that stuff in the first place for it to end up in that dumpster anyway. it was Fundamentally Silly.
going vegan to opt out of farming practices has similar problems. for instance: you (hypothetical vegan you) won’t buy honey, but the bees are being used to fertilize the vegetables and fruit you eat, they’re making the honey anyway, all you’ve done is – well, nothing, because you’re not a big enough demographic to make an impact, but even if you were, honey sales are a much smaller part of beekeepers’ income than crop pollination. and beekeeping is not a big faceless corporate interest. it’s not monsanto. it’s a bunch of single-family or partnership business with a truck or two and a couple hundred hives. the bees make honey after a pollinating run, and the beekeepers sell it for a little extra income. if you made a dent in that, you’d be achieving nothing but making joe beekeeper buy his kids’ t-shirts at k-mart instead of target.
animal farming and plant farming are deeply interconnected. plant farmers grow animal feed; animal farmers sell manure for fertilizer. most non-corporate farmers raise both plants and animals. it’s more economic and gives them more resilience.
if you were a big enough demographic to hit ‘the farming industry’ in its wallet. you would be making things MUCH harder for small farmers than for factory farms. you would be making it easier and easier for factory farms to crowd family farmers out of business. so that’s pretty much achieving the opposite of what you want, right there.
and then there’s the fact that plant farming is just as rife with gruesome factory farm conditions as animal farming, but it’s humans who are exploited in those. i’m not going to level accusations of racism here, but it really is unfortunate how little the vocal internet vegan contingent seems to know or care about the exploitation of the mostly nonwhite workers in the industry. it makes y’all look racist, whether you are or not.
look, i keep saying this, even though folks never seem to hear me: i don’t hate vegans, i’m not trying to stop you being vegan, i do not care what you eat.
my problem is with defensive internet vegans trying to promote their dietary restriction lifestyle as a solution to problems in the real world. it is not. it may create more problems than it solves, or maybe it breaks even, i don’t know. it certainly doesn’t solve anything that can’t be solved just as well without it. it can only look reasonable from a perspective of deep ignorance about where food comes from and how the farm economy works. you basically have to be young, urban, and somewhat privileged to embrace it. and it is, fundamentally, very silly.
callanswall 