#english article

[enibas22]

Game of Thrones fans are curious about Faceless Man Jaqen H’ghar

Game of Thrones fans still have questions about the series which ended in 2019.

What happened to Faceless Man Jaqen H’ghar in Game of Thrones?

Game of Thrones fans still have questions about the series which ended in 2019.

By NEELA DEBNATH 07:40, Tue, Jan 17, 2023

Game of Thrones might have finished but the show continues to intrigue and perplex audiences. One of the most mysterious characters across the entire drama was the Faceless Man Jaqen H’ghar (played by Tom Wlaschiha). He appeared as two different characters and his initial appearance came in season one when he met Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) while being held as a prisoner at Harrenhal.

The pair struck up a friendship after she helped him to escape and he asked her for the names of people to kill as thanks.

Both of them then escaped Harrenhal together with Jaqen H’ghar giving Arya a coin and telling her to seek him out in Braavos if ever she needed help.

Jaqen H’ghar went on to change his face to a completely different person and was never seen again.

However, later the actor cropped up again as a new character when Arya went to the House of Black and White in Braavos after fleeing Westeros and deciding to become an assassin.

Jaqen H'ghar in Game of Thrones (Image: SKY)

Arya Stark meets Jaqen H'ghar in Game of Thrones (Image: SKY)

She underwent rigorous tutelage under the man who some thought was still Jaqen H’ghar.

As part of her training, she was cleaning the bodies of the dead and taking lives for the Many-Faced God.

Arya later disobeyed Jaqen H’ghar and murdered a man outside of her remit.

The Waif (Faye Marsay) was sent after Arya to kill her with the pair locked in battle, but the fearsome Stark was eventually victorious and returned to the House of the Black and White to confront her mentor for sending The Waif after her.

Arya was left incensed and held him at knifepoint as he told her: “Finally is a girl is no one.”

She responded: “A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell and I’m going home.” Arya then went back to Winterfell to help end the Long Night.

As she left the House of Black and White, Jaqen H’ghar seemed to smile at her with her words implying she may have completed her training.

Instead of speaking in the first person, Arya now referred to herself in the third person - like the other assassins of the Many-Faced God.

What happened to Faceless Man Jaqen H’ghar in Game of Thrones?

In an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, actor Wlaschiha, 49, addressed the fate of his mysterious character.

He said about Jaqen H’ghar’s fate: “I wish I knew. My favourite answer to that is always, ‘Was Jaqen H’ghar ever alive?’

“For me, he could be dead - and who is Jaqen H’ghar? Jaqen H’ghar is just one face of many faces that the Many-Faced God take and it’s definitely the face of a dead person. Who is behind it? We don’t know.”

He went on to say: “Technically, I wouldn’t even need a twin brother to appear somewhere.

“I’m very much dead and I’m very much alive at the same time.”

This means Jaqen H’ghar could appear in any other spin-off shows such as prequel House of the Dragon as well as the upcoming Jon Snow (Kit Harington) series.

Wlaschiha also said he would seriously consider returning to the HBO fantasy franchise should the opportunity come up.

[autoreffyvas]

Festivals and Cultural Celebrations in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a country located in Central America, as many of the latin countries, it presents several important events or celebrations that reflect the culture and feelings of the Costa Rican people. Many of these celebrations also show the beliefs and ideologies of its populations, especially with the religious festivities.

Likewise, most of these festivals and festivities can portrait the different cultures that unite inside the country. Costa Rica, like the rest of Latin America, presents many cultures, from native to foreign ones, with that mix you can enjoy many different celebrations around the country and during the year.

During the year people in Costa Rica celebrate presenting traditions like music, food with an array of dishes and ingredients, interesting and beautiful clothes, processions or parades where we can observe the mingling of cultures, and even how important faith is for the population of this country.

With other celebrations it is normal to enjoy the use of mythical creatures for different costumes, or adults and children to use traditional and older clothes for a better representation of the identity of each town in the nation. Other festivals can show different games and activities to draw people, specially tourists, to a little piece of the tico culture. But these festivals and cultural celebrations are more than just an entertainment, these show the spirit, faith and patriotism of the Costa Rican people, no matter the social class, age, religion, gender or ethnicity of them.

Most Important Festivals and Culture Celebrations in Costa Rica

Public Festival of Palmares (Fiesta de Palmares): During the first two weeks of January you can find a whole celebration in Palmares. This is considered the largest and longest celebration in Costa Rica. There are tons of beer, a horseback riding parade, traditional bloodless bullfights, concerts, food booths, carnival rides and impressive fireworks.

Saint Days of Santa Cruz (Fiestas de Santa Cruz): this is a religious celebration for the patron saint of Santa Cruz, “Santo Cristo de Esquipulas”. The main day of the celebration is on January 15th, within the Santa Cruz town you can find two main locations for the celebrations: the Plaza de los Mangos where bloodless bull riding takes place, and the Parque Bernabela Ramos where the other cultural activities can be found.

Coffee Cup: this is a tennis tournament that has gained popularity through the years, the most important aspect of this tournament is that all the participants are under 18. It takes place in the Costa Rica Country Club in San Jose, during a week in mid-January.

Diablitos Party (Fiesta de los diablitos): this party is celebrated during the first weekend of February, in the Rey Curre Village near San Isidro de El General. This is a native celebration, where the Boruca people around the region pay homage to ancestral spirits as it commemorates the tribe’s victory over Spanish conquistadors. This is one of the oldest celebrations in the nation. Boruca Men dress up as Diablitos with colorful hand-carved wooden masks, while another person is supposed to be the bull that represents the Spanish conquerors. The main drink is known as Chicha, a fermented corn drink, people can visit the celebrations for free but there is a fee to pay for taking pictures.

Oxcarts Parade (Día del Boyero): this is a very interesting parade. During the second Sunday of March in San Antonio de Escazu, Oxcart drivers from all towns in Costa Rica come to be part of the parade and be blessed by the local priest.

San Isidro Labrador Day (Día de San Isidro Labrador): another religious celebration, this one is to honor the patron saint of peasants, harvest and animals. On March 15th, there are many festivities around different towns in the nation, where you can find markets, food, drinks, parades and blessings by the local priests.

National Orchid Exhibition (La Exhibición Nacional de Orquídeas): the date can change with every year, but it is an impressive show and competition to display more than 300 types of orchids around the world by the greatest growers.

The International festival of Arts (Festival Internacional de las Artes): in the last two weeks of March, the Department of Culture & Youth of Costa Rica setup this program since 1992. The best artists and performances from the nation and around the world reunite in San Jose to exchange and share arts, the metropolitan Park “La Sabana” is the preferred place for the festival.

Virgin of The Sea Day (Fiesta del Virgen del Mar): On July 16th the Virgin of Mt. Carmel is paraded in the coastline with decorated fishing boats, to honor the Puntarenas patron saint. Music, dance, masses, food, fireworks and sporting activities take place during the celebration.

Guanacaste Day (Día de la anexación de Guanacaste a Costa Rica): On July 25th in Liberia, Costa Rican celebrated the annexation of Guanacaste Province from Nicaragua in 1824. With this celebration there are the formal events from schools and public departments, after that you can find typical food, crafts and parades.

Virgin of Los Angeles Day (Dia de la Virgen de los Ángeles): on August 2nd Costa Rican celebrate and honor their holy patroness also known as “La Negrita”. They honor her with an annual pilgrimage and processions from San Jose to Cartago, former capital city of Costa Rica, where the Virgin’s Basilica is located.

Independence Day (Día de la Independencia): actually it is not just the Independence Day of Costa Rica, it is also Central America Independence Day. The celebration is in all countries from Central America, so a torch as a symbol of freedom will be brought from Nicaragua to Cartago by relay runners. In the afternoon at 6:15pm all the activities must be interrupted so Costa Ricans can sing the national anthem. During the Day there will be parades and festivities around the country.

Festival of Lights (Festival de la Luz): on the second Saturday of December, people take San Jose streets to officially start the holiday season. This is a lively festival with good music and food, and a major parade with cars decorated with lights to celebrate the Christmas season.

As you can see there are incredible and amazing festivals in Costa Rica, all of them a sight to behold. Of course these are just a little bit of all the traditions and experiences that you can observe in the Latin country.

[notoryart]

不图今年竹,但图来年笋。

Bù tú jīnnián zhú, dàn tú láinián sǔn.

Idiom: don't think of this year's bamboo, but rather think of next year's bamboo shoots

#idiom #chinese #proverbe #idioms

[peu-usage]

▪ English Language Term of Article ▪

A, an and the are called as articles. A/an is called indefinite article, the is called the definite article. 📓 Examples: ➡ Let's go and Watching a movie. ➡ I didn't like the horror movie.

[getty image]

[flapper-dai]

Figure skating: Former world champ Takahashi announces return to competition - The Mainichi

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Former world champion and men's Vancouver Olympic bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi on Sunday announced his return to competitive fig

[lovehebe330]

English Coverage] Hebe and Qing Feng performed 27 classic Chinese Pop songs at HITO Music Awards Section by: lovehebe330/S.H.ECloverupdates (both are by me) To celebrate the 20th anniversary of HITFM, Hebe Tien and Wu Qing Feng were invited to perform at the HITO Music Awards. Although Hebe did not release any new albums and wasn't nominated for an award, she joined her entertainment friend, Qing Feng -- the lead singer and member of popular Taiwanese indie band, Sodagreen. Qing Feng who is now a "newcomer" as a solo artist, joined Hebe Tien to collaborate on one of the most anticipated performances of this year's HITO Awards. In the past, Qing Feng has written a song for Hebe dedicated to Selina Jen, hence their good relationship. The duo was to perform 30 popular classic Chinese pop songs. During the actual performance, Hebe and Qing Feng performed a total of 27 songs. Each song and singers were chosen carefully. Due to the different style in each song, Hebe and Qing Feng had to adjust their voices. Both sang with their own style and the choruses of each song were rearranged. The performance lasted 12 minutes with the two doing cute and awkwardly "in love" interactions as they sang. They finished perfectly by Hebe singing Sodagreen's "小情歌" and Qing Feng singing Hebe's "小幸運".Hebe and Qing Feng revealed during the backstage interview that they felt pressured as this performance was challenging. During the interview, Hebe gave advices to the "newcomer"solo artist and joked that he must avoid a double chin look. When asked by the reporter, why there was no S.H.E songs, Qing Feng asked why the reporters didn't realize that the second song was an S.H.E song. He apologized and said that he was nervous and that the song 戀人未滿 gave him nightmares. Song list sung in this order: 《Di Da Di》、《簡單愛》、《戀人未滿》、《最熟悉的陌生人》、《分手快樂》、《志明與春嬌》、《怎樣》、《倒帶》、《紅豆》、《學不會》、《愛很簡單》、《說謊》、《淘汰》、《情非得已》、《Lydia》、《失落沙洲》、《曖昧》、《旅行的意義》、《克卜勒》、《無底洞》、《唯一》、《掉了》、《真的嗎》、《我愛你》、《王妃》、《小情歌》、《小幸運》 -source taken from EtToday News Highlight -May contain mistakes -Please credit to lovehebe330 or S.H.ECloverupdate (written English coverage)

[tulango]

[gacha-incels]

article from the english edition of the Hankyoreh, Sept 10 2024

archive link

plain text:

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the chat app Telegram, who has been indicted without arrest for aiding and abetting the proliferation of child sexual abuse material on his platform, is trying to calm the storm by announcing the removal of various controversial features from Telegram. However, his response is getting slammed for its shallowness, as such wishy-washy measures cannot stop the barrage of illegal pornography proliferating on the platform.

On Friday, Durov posted on his X (formerly known as Twitter) account to say that Telegram has “removed the People Nearby feature,” as well as disabled “new media uploads to Telegraph, [Telegram’s] standalone blogging tool.”

“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” Durov claimed.

While Telegram has agreed to delete two features that have been used for criminal purposes, these features are largely unrelated to the recent sex crimes involving deepfakes. The “people nearby” feature utilizes GPS technology to track your phone’s location and indicate other users in the area, allowing people to form chat rooms with people in their region.  

Telegram logo. (Reuters/Yonhap)

This feature shares a user’s location data without their consent and places users at risk of stalking. Critics pointed out that it has often been used by bot programs to indiscriminately target people for financial scams. The Telegraph feature allows users to anonymously upload blog posts, photos and videos. Scammers would use this feature to create fake websites, share the links to the fake sites, and lure unsuspecting users into phishing scams that harvested their personal data. Yet neither of these features is directly related to the production and distribution of illicit deepfakes. 

Experts say that simply removing one feature is not going to uproot digital sex crimes. Malicious users constantly create and discover ways to circumvent such controls or restrictions or simply migrate to more liberal platforms, where they can replicate their crimes.

Cho Gyeong-suk, an activist with IT feminist group Techfemi who identifies and reports bots that produce sexually exploitative deepfakes, explained the concept of bots sharing bots. 

“If Telegram shuts down a specific bot, malicious users rapidly create a similar bot. Then they use a bot for sharing a link to that bot to repeat their crimes,” she said. 

On Sept. 3, Cho discovered and reported a Telegram channel with 210,000 subscribers. Upon entering, the user is greeted with the message “We're always here. Come back to our new bot,” alongside a link to a new bot and instructions on how to use link-sharing bots in Korean, Japanese, German and French. 

A message in a Telegram chat room on Sept. 3, 2024, informing readers of the address of a new deepfake sexual abuse material bot with messages in multiple languages. (courtesy of Cho Gyeong-suk)

It’s urgent to send a message to these malicious users that if they commit a crime, they will get caught. 

“Telegram has agreed to cooperate with Korean authorities, but all they’ve done is share an email address,” said Park Ji-hyun, the former interim leader of the Democratic Party. Operating under a group codenamed Team Flame, Park helped expose the criminal activity of the notorious Nth Room channel. 

“If the police or the KCSC [Korea Communications Standards Commission] have to find every individual video and which channel it’s in and report them all to an email address with an erasure request, it’s going to take too long for them to delete them. During that time, the videos are distributed through other channels,” Park added. 

“When authorities receive a report about the distribution of illicit online sexual exploitation, an investigative body needs to be aggressively informed about the perpetrators’ IP addresses, online registration data and other identification data. We need to send a clear message to the perpetrators: You will get caught. That’s the only way they’ll stop,” she said. 

“Rather than simply deleting specific features, Telegram needs to monitor its platform to prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material or sexual content depicting minors and establish an ethical monitoring committee, like Google does. They need to discuss ways to find out what happens on their platform and to cooperate with the authorities,” said Won Eun-ji, the other half of Team Flame. 

“We also need technological measures such as the automated deletion of content that shows signs of being illicit or sexually exploitative. There could also be preventative tools that prevent such content from being uploaded in the first place,” she added.

By Chung In-seon, staff reporter