just a little frog

🏳️‍🌈 | mushrooms and shitposts | she/her

[your-did-it-official]

Every Saturday is coelacanth Saturday

[savagedefectives]

‘previously undreamed-of’

[mx-chievous]

this just gave me a glimpse into an alternate reality where human society functions the way carpenter ant society does

[malgudinights]

We actually have something similar in India. It’s done for the festival of Janmashtami which celebrates the birth of Krishna. The story goes that when he was a baby, Krishna was always getting into pots of yogurt and white butter and just eating it by the handfuls. So his parents and village took to hanging the pots from the ceiling to keep it from him. But he and his friends would get long sticks and climb on each other’s shoulders and steal the pots anyway. So on Janmashtami now, people attempt to recreate his heist and it’s just the most adorable thing.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Castellers from Catalonia found out about this tradition in India, and they thought it was amazing that we had such a similar tradition so far away. So they went to India to meet them. They filmed it all and released it as a documentary on YouTube (called Dahi Handi - Documental viatge a l’India, you can find it easily).

Then in 2006, they invited a team of govindas from India to perform in Vilafranca’s square during their festivities. Vilafranca’s central square, especially during the Sant Fèlix festivities, is the place for castells. It’s the most important center for this tradition (people from Tarragona please don’t kill me for saying this but you know it’s true). And the Vilafranca colla (casteller group) is one of the best and most important ones in all Catalonia, they’re like superstars in the world of castells. So this is a huge honour to be invited by the castellers of Vilafranca. The govindas also received an official welcome in the city hall, and invited to a rehearsal of the Vilafranca castellers. They rehearsed together and then made a tower all together in Vilafranca’s central square, where the Vilafranca castellers were at the base to make the govindas’ structure stronger and higher:

(The ones with white shirt and black trousers are Indian govindas, the ones with white trousers and green shirts are the Catalan castellers from Vilafranca)

Everybody was very happy and the govindas and castellers got along together very well so, in 2019, 200 castellers from Vilafranca (including the mayor, who is a member) went to India to visit them again for the Janmashtami festivity (that @thepivanquisher​ explained) in Mumbai.

The day they arrived in India, the Vilafranca castellers did some castells in front of the Gateway of India monument, ending with two pilars where the anxenetes (the kids on top) unfolded a flag of India and a flag of Catalonia.

The castellers and govindas also rehearsed together in Mumbai. I’ve seen a video and it’s so lovely, it was in a square of a working class neighbourhood and it was full of people waiting to meet them.

The castellers were also invited to take part in the ritual before Janmashtami, and they were also received by the Islamic community of a neighbourhood of the city. They were very happy to be so well received.

And then the day came:

(That’s govindas doing their tower and behind you can see the Vilafranca castellers, in their usual clothes, cheering for the govindas).

(And that’s the castellers doing their castell after!)

The castellers also performed in a school in the Mumbai and used their rest of the time there to give support to the NGO Mumbai Smiles which helps fight against poverty in the slums.

(The castellers in a school)

Again, they got along very well and were happy to celebrate together their shared passion. They have also learnt from each other: the Catalans showed their method to the Indians so they now can build higher towers, and by looking at how Indians climb they learned how to be faster. That’s why they have invited each other to their countries more times after that.

I think it’s wonderful and I hope to see more of such exchanges 😄

(By the way, we don’t call them “human towers”. In Catalan, “castell” means “castle”. They are human castles, and “castellers”, the people who do it, means “castle-ers” or “castle builders”.)

[necromanticowboy]

I love this

I love it I love it!!!

[jenniferrpovey]

Now THAT is wonderful cultural sharing!

[blackshvck]

the idea that every summer will be as hot if not hotter than this for the rest of my life is unbearable i need to (remembers suicide jokes are bad for my mental health) murder an oil executive

[whaile]

late summer / early fall thoughts

[cheaphalloweencostume]

“everyone is mad at me and they just won’t tell me” —> “no one has said anything about being mad at me and i haven’t done anything to warrant being mad at so if someone is silently fuming about me and not saying anything that’s their problem and actually quite weird of them and i can effortlessly move on with my life”

[cheaphalloweencostume]

this took SUCH a huge deal of unlearning because, like so many of you, i came out of a home where being quietly in trouble WAS the default state, and i DID grow up not just with the assumption but borderline religious conviction that Everyone Is Mad At Me, I Am Bad, I Must Exist In A Constant State of Attempting to Pacify The Natural Rage I Inspire In Everyone. and no it actually turns out that my family are the freaks . and yours are too

[cheaphalloweencostume]

“this isn’t true because i DEFINITELY silently fume at people in the hopes they’ll figure out what they did and apologize” that’s not good. you shouldn’t do that

“this isn’t true because the ex-friendship that traumatized me ended explosively after they were mad at me and never told me why” that’s not good. they shouldn’t be doing that

“i don’t think this is true because my current friend group is constantly icing me out until i figure out what ive done to upset them and properly apologized without being told” hey thats not good. they should not be doing that

if the peacefulness of your relationship with someone (familial, romantic, friendly, anything) can be destroyed by effective communication/asking them for effective communication, you have got to get out of there. if you can’t get out of there, you’ve got to throw away any ideas about what that person thinks of you because they have their own shit to figure out before they can accurately read anyone else

[orpheuslament]

no one talks about how straight up painful it is to be the bigger person when deep in your soul you just want to be a huge bitch about it

[officialgaryoak]

the fact that walls get dusty is ridiculous. you're vertical. act like it.

[toroimage]

[glowcowboy]

i am full of love and also fatigue

[tall]

[thecollectibles]

Virgo by Artem Chebokha

[femalegothic]

men just love to run their fucking mouth about what women do or do not want without even once considering consulting any actual women on the matter

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[marzipanandminutiae]

also this is part of a disturbing but sadly not uncommon attitude that progress = women (specifically women most of the time) showing more skin. because not showing skin is "following irrational religious modesty mandates" like the man on twitter says

somehow being progressive and secular automatically means putting women's bodies on display (although of course these people would shame women showing that much skin because they chose to). gee, I wonder why...

(to be clear, religious concealing clothing should also be respected as long as it's voluntary!)

[nmri]

i heard being friends forever is the new trend

[qcharlie]

i wish we were able to talk about women's rights without someone mentioning how much they do or don't want to have sex with them. i don't care if you're a lesbian Stop finding worth in women purely from their perceived attractiveness

[qcharlie]

"I think women should not be expected to shave for societal respect / to avoid discrimination" "yeah🤤 i love bush" ok well that's not what we're talking about is it.

[qcharlie]

i hate how many posts about trans women deserving respect always devolve into "I love girldick" or "trans rights but I don't want to date a trans person" because that's entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. you should not respond to feminism with "YESSS I loveeee you because I see you as nothing but a sex object" you people sound like other men I get stuck talking with that end up saying "free the nipple so I can see boobies in public" and thinking they're feminists. why can't we just respect women regardless of your attraction to them or not. why does it need to be brought up in every conversation regarding their rights

[dysphoria-things]

if eating three balanced meals a day at regular times makes you gain weight then maybe you were meant to gain weight

[tragicburnout]

i feel like there is a sleep in me that needs to be slept but each time i sleep i don't sleep that sleep

[ink-the-artist]

[ink-the-artist]

the long awaited sequel

[ink-the-artist]

[miiilowo]

having feelings that contradict your morals is soooo fucking annnoooooyyyiiingggggg. can the emotions and logic department get on the same page im tired of having to like strangle myself into being a tolerable person

[trans4trains]

[boba-t-butch]

i think this is something @demonprincex has written about? there's also an important distinction between what i believe the structures and systems of our society should do (ie no death penalty) and what i as an individual person want. the example i remember for dr price's writing was when a trans youth was killed by her classmates. me as a trans person feeling rage and hurt and personally wishing death upon those students is not structurally the same and me wanting to implement the death penalty on those students.

i've noticed a lot of leftists struggle with the distinction between individual action and structural systems. people accused me of "replicating the punitive systems we're seeking to dismantle" because i didn't want an ex to have access to my apartment...

it also goes with the conversation that if we want to be abolitionists we can't be conflict avoidant. rather than relying on calling law enforcement and building systems and governments that punish and police, i need to be able to assert my own boundaries and maybe punch a bitch sometimes. those actions are not the same scale.