I saw someone compare Katniss Everdeen and Din Djarin for main characters that have absolutely no idea what's going on at any given time. And I was trying to work out why I agree and yet somehow feel this is wrong at the same time, and I think I've finally solved it:
Neither of them know what's going on and decide just to go with it because they're not the main character, but only one of them is right.
Katniss is the main character who doesn't realise she's the main character and genuinely spends the first two books working on the assumption it's Peeta's story. Basically Katniss thinks that her story is an alternate POV fanfiction that can't seem to grasp one argument doesn't make a relationship enemies to lovers, while everyone else just thinks the main character, Katniss, is an idiot.
Din is the NPC who appears occasionally in random places at the same time as the main storylines to give the audience a 'hey I know that guy' moment, while having one simple motivation for everything he does, and no awareness for what is actually going on. Essentially the Mandolorian is ATLA if ATLA was told entirely from the perspective of the cabbage man.
Sorry, my blog is about to become about sexism, but the last week apparently radicalised me and now even my socially anxious oblivious ass has anecdotes that aren't just about the random guy who rolls his eyes every time a woman speaks.
Women are four times more likely to get anorexia than men
For privacy reasons, I'm going to be vague, but there is some context you need to know.
My sister is (or was, she's mostly given it up, but maintains her fitness because she loves hiking) an impressive athlete her sport. Earlier this year, she participated in a televised event millions watch (that isn't the Olympics). She trained the equivalent of most professional athletes, and recently came back from a trek that you can find by typing "hardest hikes in the world" into Google.
Eating disorders imapct an estimated 9% of the world's population
My sister started a new job last week. She went to the company gym, and for some reason had to be weighed. A man then spent half an hour telling her that she was overweight, desperately needed to lose 1.5kg in the next month, and if she started a rigorous training schedule might be able to climb Snowden (aka Yr Wyddfa, aka the easiest mountain to climb in the world) in a few months time. Despite the fact fat weighs less than the muscle she has, according to the chart he was waving around to prove his point, she was in the 'normal weight' range.
My sister is lucky. She knows exactly how healthy she is, and is not self-concious about her body. A lot women and girls, and men for that matter, are.
I don't know if anyone will read this. I don't know if you will just scroll past and ignore it. I don't know if this will even help anyone if they do. But if you have taken the time, please keep this story in mind if you have been or are ever told something similar. Remember that someone just coming out of the training regime of a professional athlete was told exactly the same.
I went looking for some of those weight charts. Every single one says a different thing. I personally managed to get anything from overweight to verging on underweight, and that's before you even start to consider there is ample evidence a "healthy weight" varies person to person for far more reasons than just height. Go outside. Run. Walk. Stand and breath. Sit and breath. Do that for 30 mins. 10 mins. 1 min. 15 seconds. Whatever you can manage today. Then go back inside and eat your favourite comfort food. You earned it.
Legolas’s pupil size isn’t the problem here, though. 5 leagues is 17.262 miles. The curvature of the Earth means that for a person of average height, the visual horizon is less than three miles away. Even if your vision is telescopic and the atmosphere is perfectly clear, you can’t see around the planet. If they were standing on a hill, it would have to be at LEAST 198 feet above sea level in order to see the horizon at 17.2 miles away, with nothing tall in between. Which, knowing Rohan, isn’t impossible.
Yeah there is. The Silmarillion states that the world was curved after the fall of Numenor (I believe), preventing access to Valinor. But Elves (among others) can travel the straight path across it.
So middle earth is round, but not for Elves because magic.
So wait, the reason he can see that far is because Elves just have the ability to ignore the curve of the earth? That’s awesome. It also means that no matter how good your optics got, you would always want elf eyes manning the spyglass because they can see arbitrarily far while everybody else is limited by this ‘horizon’ bullshit.
This post went from amusing to horrifying, to be brought back down to amusing, sprinkled in with some cannon explanation, and then you leave me here in fucking outrage
Seriously, search this up, because no one I've spoken to about this (including myself) believed it without the mighty Google's confirmation.
First World/Second World/Third World are not to do with development
The terms arose during the Cold War, believed to have been coined by Alfred Sauvy, where the world was divided politically in three: The US and their Western, capitalist allies became known as the 'First World', the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc and other USSR allies were referred to as the 'Second World', and neutral countries not allied with either (the non-aligned movement led by India, Yugoslavia, and other neutral countries) are the third world.
Obviously, with the cold war over, these lines are now static, historical remnants, yet the terms are still widely used.
Probably because the majority of third world countries were in Africa and South-East Asia, the term began to become synonymous in people's minds with poor, underdeveloped nations, ignoring neutral countries like Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Switzerland, and not helped by the Western push of the idea that communist countries were less developed than Western ones, this created the fallacy that these terms had something to do with anything but politics.
This is, however, the Western definition. Mao Zedong developed his own "three worlds theory", where the third world consisted of exploited nations, including China (second world under the western definition) and India, but not European neutral countries like Sweden or Finland.
Admittedly, the word has become so synonymous with development that everyone in Western countries will know what you mean, so the true origin doesn't really matter. But, if one day you feel like being pedantic, take a note out of the book of Inigo Montoya, and start a debate that will only end with the opening of Google (other search engines are available):
In the 2019 UK General Election just 47% of 18-24 yos voted, compared to 67.3% across the country, and over 80% of over-65's (House of Commons Library). The 2020 US Presidential election did slightly better, but still only 55% of 18-29 yos voted in comparison to 66% turnout. With just a few days until the General Election, where low expected turn outs mean every vote will count, and the Presidential and French Elections looming, I came up with a hypothesis why.
Long post so under the cut, the tldr is that young people are taught in schools to believe that right and wrong answers are the only answers that exist, and being wrong has a larger penalty than doing nothing, and that young people don't feel the direct affects of policies in the same way older people with families or mortgages or taxes do, partly because policies never target them because they don't vote.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE LOOKED PASSED THE HEADLINE SO ARE PROBABLY MORE INFORMED THAN THE AVERAGE VOTER. VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE POLICY. VOTE TACTICALLY. VOTE AGAINST A PARTY YOU DONT LIKE. VOTE FOR THE PERSON WITH THE LEAST STUPID HAIRSTYLR. VOTE.
(Also, if you are UK and voting on the 4th, remember to bring ID.)
Note: I do NOT study politics as anything more than an interest in current affairs. I am NOT aligned with any political party, and this is a hypothesis based on a very small sample size that has NOT been reviewed or tested in any way. This is simply me, speaking as a young person in the UK whose talked to other young people, both those interested in politics and not.
A lot of people theorise it's to do with dissatisfaction among younger voters, who feel their voices don't get heard, or they don't like any of the candidates so don't want to vote for any of them. But talking to my friends, of those I spoke to who said they didn't think they would vote, most said it was because they didn't know how politics works to an extent that made them feel informed enough to vote, rather than any kind of dissatisfaction with the system itself.
However, with young people in general having more access to social media, the Internet, and the wealth of resources both provide, it doesn't ring true that they would be generally less informed of politics to such a greater extent than the average informed voter (defined in British Parliamentary Debate as a person who reads the headlines) to skew the statistics this much.
So here are my two theories that together influence a young person to feel uninformed enough to not want to vote:
School and the education system teaches you not to vote. Work and adult life teaches you to.
When you are at school, you are taught there is a single right answer. It is correct in every aspect, and schools reward you for using the right methods, and finding it, while penalising you for not. You therefore begin to see the world in the same black and white way: every decision you make has a correct method, leading to a correct answer. A mistake can be penalised worse than not answering at all - either by losing marks in tests, or embarrassment in front of you peers for making a mistake out loud. The average person's first job, mostly part time with low experience requirement and lower pay, is the same, often having a list of rules or instructions with little free reign to get you used to a working environment while ensuring you don't make any blunders.
When you reach adulthood, and the world of work, this all but gets thrown out the window. For most people, their job isn't "i can't ever make a mistake". In a job you do get worse penalties for doing nothing than making mistakes, and decisions are no longer so black and white, often less 'what's the right way' as much as 'what's they way that will get me the answer my boss/customer/I will be happy with'.
Politics is the same way. It is making an, often fairly uninformed, desicion based on unkeepable promises and outright lies, where the decision isn't "who is right" or even "who do i agree with the most" so much as "who do I disagree with the least". It's doing exactly what you were always trained to never do in school: feeling uninformed or unsure or unhappy with an answer, but making it anyway, because this time, not making it will be worse.
The older generation sees short term effects more clearly, making them feel more 'informed'
Everyone is affected by politics and the policies the government make. I am not even trying to deny that. But individual policies, the shorter term changes the government makes in the interest of a longer term plan, are more keenly felt the older you are.
Mortgage and tax hikes, cuts to benefits, and other monetary effects are felt generally by over-35's, who are more likely to be homeowners, pay more tax, or are trying to raise a family on benefits, compared to younger people whose monetary problems tend to be less affected by government whims, (excluding cost of living crisises, of course). Meanwhile, longer term things, like investing in green infrastructure, or keeping hospitals running (sorry America), generally don't get noticed or felt on an individual basis unless you actively work in the public sector, so people in general feel less informed on, even of they have the interest in them.
This is also a failure on the part of candidates. Because young people don't feel like policies affect them so much, they are less likely to vote. Because they are less likely to vote, campaigners don't bother targeting them so don't make any policies that will really affect them, one way or another. So young people feel less 'informed' because politics doesn't seem to affect them, so they are less likely to vote....
What can you do as a young person?
Vote. Bring up the statistics and remind parties young people care, so they should care about young people too. Remember that there is no right answer. This isn't school. No one will ever know for certain who you voted for, nor why. Don't worry about reading all the 100-and-something page manifestos or watching all the debates or reading every news story if you don't want to. Your vote still matters. Pick a policy you care about and decide who says they'll solve it the best. Vote tactically if you are in the UK or another First Past the Post system and just don't like the current government (search tactical voting for more information). Decide who you like the least, and vote for the party most likely to beat them. If you really really can't bare to vote for any of them, spoil your ballot to make sure the statistic is recorded, so maybe next time, someone will have a policy you care about.
Most of all, remember that an election everyone thinks will be a landslide, is an election no one actually bothers to vote in. Your vote becomes all the more important.
[UK] FULL* coverage of the Leaders Debate for those who missed it
(or just found it too painful to finish (I feel you))
Starmer, who knows he will be Prime Minister in a month as long as he doesn't offend anyone too badly: the conservatives have been worse than useless for 14 years. Yes I have a plan. Sunak has done nothing he said he would. Yes my plan definitely exists. Vote for Labour, we are not the Conservatives.
Sunak, knowing whatever he will do he will almost certainly not be PM in a month: Lie. Lie. We don't need to look at the past. Lie. This is about the future! Lie. Probably a lie but my random Google searching can't prove it. Just ignore the last 14 years. Not exactly a lie but so grossly misrepresented it might as well be.
Actually answering a single question asked: *footage not found*
#gates of argonath #argonath #amon hen #middle earth landscapes #photographers of middle earth #travel #dark academia #lmao pls reblog this i almost fell out of my boat taking this photo
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🦢 elfposting Follow
my hungry ass could never travel with lembas
( 9,839 notes )
🐟 sojuicysweet Follow
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#the entitlement i see on this site sometimes is disgusting #y'all will just post about having easy access to lembas when we can't eats hobbit food??? #we must starve??? #vent #do not rb
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🗡 shieldmaiden Follow
CALLOUT FOR GRIMA WORMTONGUE
I've talked a lot about this already on this blog, but I want to have everything collected in one post so next time some dipshit with a white hand icon slides into my inbox to call me a liar I can just link to this post. tl;dr grima wormtongue has been poisoning my uncle and the land of rohan for the past few years, and here are the receipts:
Keep reading
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🧙♂️ bignaturals Follow
i stg if one more of you tells me I should've sent frodo on the eagles I'm asking iluvatar to take me back
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📖 booknerdofbree Follow
recent read: there and back again: a hobbit's tale by bilbo baggins
I thought this was SOOO fun and cute! I'm usually not into rpf but did anyone else think there was something between bilbo and thorin? 👀 I can't be the only one who saw it. but the ending made me cry my eyes out.
4.5/5 stars
#booklr #there and back again #bilbo baggins #recent read #dark academia #light academia #book review
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🌲 elvenking69 Follow
who up mirking they wood
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🐛 manofsirith Follow
wtf the new king of gondor just bowed to these four random short guys?? everyone else bowed too and I just went along with it lmao 😅 am I missing something????
#this is right after he sang a song and made out with some hot elf chick #truly the wildest coronation i've ever been to
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🥵 firstagebaddiebracket Follow
ULTIMATE HOTTEST FIRST AGE BADDIE TOURNAMENT FINALS!!!!
Galadriel VS Luthien
Galadriel
Luthien
Voting ended onDec 2, 2023
🔘 haldir-deactivated30190303
here y'all go again pitting two bad bitches against each other
🌀 aragornsbigtoe Follow
🌊 helcaraxebaby Follow
everyone who voted galadriel is a kinslayer apologist #luthiensweep
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🔥 beaconboi Follow
fuck my job so much. everyone manifest an attack on gondor so I can finally warm my fingers on this beacon fire.
sometimes i forget that i'm an adult and if i want to make random impulse purchases at 3am no one is going to find out or tell me thats a bad plan and then somtimes i remember and anyway does anyone have any suggestions on what to do with 50 rubber ducks?
Today I introduced my sister to “the problem of Susan” and I had to explain to her that Susan was left out of Narnia cuz she liked boys and lipstick now and without missing a beat she said but what about Peter? Does Peter not like girls? And I knew she was pointing out the inherent misogyny at the center of the “the problem of Susan” but the implications of that question are a source of much hilarity to meeee LMFAO like Does Peter not like girls? Does he like boys? Is he Gay? Is Narnia really just a homo-utopia where Lucy is also a lesbian and Edmund is a bisexual disaster and Susan was kicked out cuz she was too straight??? Can I make CS Lewis turn over in his grave with this new reading?
(imagining the back snug in the Bird and Baby, with the shades of some former patrons in place) …Just sit there, I’ll get some pints in. And who wants popcorn?) :)
(ETA: something of a shocker to discover that the Eagle and Child has been shut for three years [secondary to COVID], but has just recently been bought by the Oxford-based Ellison Institute of Technology, which intends to renovate and reopen it as a pub. Which is good.)
Okay, I was just going to reblog this without commentary, but I can't keep this to myself. I'm a PhD student in environmental science and this is my fucking highway.
The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.
Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.
Just in case anyone thought that climate change was a "recent fad" in research.
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