canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana
a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.
an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.
fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.
these are all different words with different meanings.
Also, for an interpretation to be valid it needs to be based on the text. It cannot just be a vibe. One can disagree on readings of the text, but if someone comes with quotes and/or historical context and you just have vibes, then sorry, your interpretation is inferior and may in fact just be a headcanon.
Scientists hope the sturgeon known as the Yangtze’s last giant and other rare species may return to their breeding grounds as a result.
"China has demolished 300 dams and shut down most of the small hydropower stations on a major tributary of the upper Yangtze River to safeguard fish populations as part of an effort to restore the ecology of Asia’s longest waterway.
According to a report by the state news agency Xinhua on Monday, 300 of the 357 dams on Chishui He – also known as the Red River – had been dismantled by the end of December 2024.
In addition, 342 out of 373 small hydropower stations have been decommissioned, enabling many rare fish species to resume their natural reproductive cycles, the Xinhua report said.
The Red River flows for more than 400km (249 miles) through the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. It is regarded by ecologists as the last refuge for rare and endemic fish species in the Yangtze’s upper reaches.
Over the decades, water flows have been increasingly blocked by the dense network of hydropower stations and dams, restricting water volumes downstream and occasionally even causing some sections to dry up entirely.
This has drastically reduced the amount of suitable habitat and spawning grounds. The stations also blocked the routes of migratory fish species between breeding grounds and non-breeding areas.
Zhou Jianjun, a professor of hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua University, said that the decommissioning of hydropower stations usually referred to the cessation of electricity generation.
“The key is not whether the facilities still exist, but that, after power generation stops, the method of water control can be changed to meet ecological needs,” he said.
According to the Xinhua report, the large-scale rectification work that began in 2020 has meant that aquatic wildlife species, including the Yangtze sturgeon, have regained their habitat and vitality.
Along with the Chinese paddlefish, the freshwater sturgeon species – known as the last giant of the Yangtze – was declared extinct in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2022.
The natural population of the sturgeon has declined sharply since the 1970s, largely as a result of dam construction and the development of a shipping industry in the Yangtze River.
No naturally bred young sturgeon had been found in the entire Yangtze River since 2000, but a team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Hydrobiology has reported promising signs of recovery, according to Xinhua.
The team, led by Liu Fei, a researcher at the institute in Wuhan, released two batches of Yangtze sturgeon into the Red River in 2023 and 2024, which have successfully adapted to the wild environment and are thriving.
This year, the researchers decided to take it a step further and examine whether the fish could migrate naturally for reproduction. In April, they released 20 adult Yangtze sturgeon into a section of the river in Guizhou.
By mid-April, they observed the fish displaying natural spawning behaviour and successfully hatching fry, the researchers said.
“This achievement indicates that the current ecological environment of the Red River can now meet the habitat and reproductive needs of Yangtze sturgeon,” Liu told the news agency.
According to the institute’s latest monitoring results, the Red River’s aquatic biodiversity is steadily improving, with a significant increase in the number of fish species collected in various sections of the river.
China has launched a series of policy measures to protect the Yangtze’s critical role as an aquatic habitat, all centred on a 10-year fishing ban imposed in 2020 and the regulation of the small hydropower stations that have affected its biodiversity.
For example, by the end of 2021, Sichuan had essentially finished rectifying its 5,131 small hydropower stations, which included shutting down 1,223 of them, according to a local official report the following year.
The local government has also strictly prohibited sand mining in the rivers in a bid to create a more favourable environment for aquatic animals to breed and reproduce.
In a communique released in August last year, Beijing announced that aquatic biodiversity had steadily improved since the fishing ban and other measures were introduced.
Fish, invertebrates and amphibians continued to recover, while the overall water quality of the Yangtze and its tributaries was rated as “excellent”, it said. The intensity of sand mining and other projects affecting fisheries had also decreased.
-via South China Morning Post, July 11, 2025. Paywall-free link.
OP: The carp leaping over the dragon gate 鲤鱼跃龙门 is a classic Chinese folk symbol. It stands for people overcoming hardships to achieve success. We often use it to wish others a bright future and smooth progress. If you spot a carp leaping over the Dragon Gate, good luck will come your way.
A few weeks ago one of my historical pet peeves was activated when I heard about a new Robin Hood movie that takes the groundbreaking, unprecedented, bold and visionary step of suggesting that the Middle Ages were a time of brutality, cynicism, and lawlessness.
Sarcasm alert. Everything I've heard about this movie sounds like it was created specifically to annoy me, so I'm going to try to ignore it and just talk about my pet peeve, which is this pop culture myth that the medieval period was particularly filthy, brutal, misogynistic and lawless.
Which is simply not the truth, and here's a true story from 1348 that shows the real Middle Ages.
We know this story because it's a very important moment in the development of common law - that is, the facts and the conclusion of the story were written down and became the basis for how similar cases would be decided long into the future. This 1348 judicial decision (citation: I de S et Uxor v W de S (1348) yb 22 edw iii f 99) is still read by law students today when studying the tort (or wrong) of assault. That's nearly seven hundred years of judges and lawyers looking back at a medieval judicial decision and saying, "Yes! That was a good and just decision!"
To set the stage, it's the 1300s - a century famous for the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Peasants' Revolt, and the Babylonian Captivity of the Church that saw the papacy moved to the French town of Avignon as puppets of the French monarchcy. But that's not the only thing that happens in the 1300s. This century also sees the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy; the Clockwork Revolution in which intricately designed clocks tracked everything from the hours of the day (which were measured in variable lengths) to the phases of the moon and the Sun's path through the zodiac; the creation of gorgeous books of hours and tapestries; the career of Christine de Pizan, the first woman known to have made a living from her pen; the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer and the radical social and religious reforms proposed by John Wyclif and his followers.
About the middle of this century a man known to history as W de S came in the night to the house of I de S and M, his wife, looking to buy some wine. The door to the taven was closed, so W pounded on the door with a hatchet, which he had in his hand. At this, M, the tavern-keeper's wife, put her head out the window and told him to stop. W responded by throwing the hatchet at M, narrowly missing her.
The tavern-keeper and his wife, contrary to what pop culture will tell you, responded exactly the way a couple of pub owners might respond today: they took the offender to court and argued that W had made an assault on M. W argued, in response, that he had committed no crime because the hatchet had not in fact struck M.
You might now be thinking that of course W would have won the case, since no actual physical harm was done to the woman he'd attacked. But you would be wrong! The judge in the case declared that the assault itself was harmful, and that W was liable to pay compensation for the fright he had caused M.
"Ever since then," states my old Torts textbook, "the tort of assault has extended protection to a person's right to be free of emotional disturbance brought about by intentional threats of physical violence."
Law did exist in the middle ages. Women, as well as men, could expect to be protected by the law from assault. And not only physical, but even emotional damages could be awarded for assault...all the way back in 1348.
It wasn't a perfect time, but it was far from the callous brutality depicted on our movie screens.
cats always step precisely on your most sensitive areas when theyre crawling on you lovingly for cuddles. bladder dick ovaries boobs stomach bruise it doesnt matter. they have homing devices on their paws for the exact area you’re most tender at the moment and they put their full weight into that step. and sometimes they might keep their stance midstride so theyre just standing there forever forcing you to endure the pain. because they are simply too cute to get mad at
In 3807 BC, the Neolithic Britons of the Brue Valley came together to construct an elevated, single-plank walkway over a reed swamp. Stretching nearly two kilometres, it would have provided a vital link for communities on the Somerset Levels, and is the second-oldest timber trackway discovered in the British Isles.
The track was a walkway consisting mainly of planks of oak laid end-to-end, supported by crossed pegs of ash, oak, and lime, driven into the underlying peat; the length, straightness, and lack of forks or branches in the pegs suggest that they were taken from coppiced woodland—one that they appear to have been managing for at least 120 years.
The total timber used in the track’s construction weighed approximately 200,000 kilograms, yet estimates suggest just ten men could have assembled it in just one day. The track was operational for only about ten years before rising water levels likely submerged and rendered it unusable.
I'd love to make like, an animated nature documentary about fantasy monsters and their hunting tactics
Like it's 100% nature documentary, detailing diets, genealogy, nesting rituals, ect. but any time it's time to show a carnivorous monster actively hunting its picking off a member of a steadily dwindling adventuring party every time
Bro, we are cooked. The knight that dogs the prince's shadow like a dark and silent wraith just knelt to press his forehead to the prince's hand. Yeah, now he's uttering a prayer whose recipient is ostensibly God but in reality is the deified version of the prince that exists only in his mind. Aaand the prince just caressed his cheek to preemptively grant him absolution. I gotta... I gotta get out of here.
i just got a friendly visit from a local mp making sure i was registered to vote because apparently some change in the rules might drop a few people off who are eligible.
so... might be an idea to check you're still enrolled, yeah?
Just saw Supergirl 2026 for the second time and the relative (to a point of realism) lack of toxic masculinity stands out so beautifully. Yes some sort of large blob person propositions Kara, but she turns him down without it being a big deal (rather than implying he was gross, casual sex itself gross, or some combination of the above). Lobo calls her “the ditz from the bar” and she turns it back on him and he takes the insult with a cheerful “touché” (no “manly” offense taken at the “girly” insult he himself made). Ruthye is not chastised for making emotional decisions, even when those actions cause a ripple down effect (the family on Bilquis being killed), even when she lashes out at Kara and blames her for the same thing.
My son gave me a card that said, "You are the best mom ever" so I asked him if he collected empirical evidence to back up that claim. He admitted to doing no research at all; therefore it's purely anecdotal and cannot be trusted. I have hung this sentimental atrocity on my office wall.
#Point of order: “best mom ever” is basically unfalsifiable even if he did do research#“Not the worst mom ever” or “in the top 5% of moms locally based on these metrics” <- now we would be cooking#We can safely state what was presented is an entirely unscientific statement- possibly a folkloric belief- and let it through unscathed#Laugh rule (thank you for these excellent tags @loreofcardigan)
Okay I don’t know when this post is from (I came across it stalking multiple blogs). But in case this might help, here is a brief science/wine lesson.
To start off, some facts:
-White wine is made from sweet pulp inside of the grape (minus the seeds).
-Red wine is made from both the skin and the grape (and the seeds and stems…sometimes? Can’t remember).
-Tannin is the substance found in red wines, coffee, dark chocolate. Tannins are responsible for the bitter taste in those foods.
-Tannins are found in the skin of the grape, as well as the seeds and the stems. Therefore, most red wines will have tannins, versus most whites will not have tannins.
-Red wines vary in level of tannins, depending on variety of grape, climate, and fermentation process. Pinot noir tends to be very low tannin. Shiraz/Syrah, choice of poison for our beloved brunette surgeon, is very heavy on the tannins.
-Some white wines (most commonly Chardonnay) are aged in oak barrels instead of metal containers. Oak barrels have tannins, which seeps into the wine during the fermentation process. That’s why Chardonnays tend to be “drier” aka it has tannins.
-White wines like Sauvingnon Blancs are usually fermented in steel barrels (aka no tannins. Aka usually very fruity and light and sweet).
Your ability to taste tannins is genetic.
There is a genetic marker determining whether your taste cells are sensitive to tannins.
Basically two people can drink the exact same wine and have wildly different reactions because:
1. Person A can’t taste tannins, so they taste the actual wine flavor.
2. Person B can taste tannins, and that tends to overpower ALL the other flavors in the wine. Basically all they taste is tannins and none of the wine.
I am super tannin sensitive, so if I drink a wine like Cabernet Sauvignon (very tannin heavy, aka “very dry”, it tastes like bitter ethanol alcohol to me, whereas my best friend can’t taste tannins so the same wine is maybe a little bitter but they can actually taste the grape and different flavors. To her, a wine like Sauv Blanc is too sweet, tastes like sugar water. But to me it tastes good.
So unless it’s the taste of the alcohol or all wines you hate, chances are you might hate the taste of red wine, especially the heavier red wines, because taste the tannin overpowers everything else. And all you taste is bitter bitter ethanol bitter more ethanol.
More tannin info:
-Tannins bind to fat.
-This is why tannin heavy wines are recommended with fatty foods (Shiraz and steak). Whenever you eat food with high fat content, the fat builds up on your tongue. A sip of red wine will bind with the fat on your tongue and clear it away. That’s why the sip of wine between bites of fat heavy foods is considered a palate cleanser.
-By that logic, this is why white wines are recommended with low fat foods, like fish. Salmon is fattier than most fish, which is why Chardonnay (tannin heavy white wine) or Pinot Noir (low tannin red wine) is recommended with salmon.
-People who are sensitive to tannins can drink tannin heavy red wines with fatty food and generally the wine won’t taste gross. The fat on your tongue (from that steak) will bind with the tannin and neutralize the tannin taste. Aka the only time I ever drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz is with a steak or heavy, creamy pasta. Aka never bc I don’t often eat either.
-The reason dairy helps coffee taste better is because the fat in milk/creams binds with the tannins in coffee and neutralizes the bitter taste. This is why people who can’t taste tannins can generally drink coffee black without milk (sugar is a different story). It’s also why almond milk in coffee is the worst idea (almond milk is already bitter and has no fat).
More wine facts:
-90% of the “aromas” of wine are marketing BS
-You know the labels that say like “cherry with a hint of blackberry?” There’s no real way to infuse cherry or blackberry into grape wine without screwing with the fermentation process. It’s all created by the wine marketing industry to sell you win. Sometimes if you smell cherry before you drink the wine, you might taste it in the wine (because majority of flavor comes from smell). Or if you think there is cherry flavor in the wine, your brain can trick your taste buds into tasting it.
-The only true flavors found in real grape wine are grapes (obviously), oak/earthy flavor (the barrels), vanilla (barrels, oak sticks), tannins. (There are a few others but can’t remember. I think maybe cinnamon?).
-People’s perception of wine often affect how good it tastes to them. Social psychology studies show that people will rate the exact same wine differently if they’re told the wines are different in price. (They rated the more expensive wine as tastier).
tl;dr
Whether you can taste tannins is genetic. Exact same wines taste different for different people depending on your genetic makeup. If you’re sensitive to tannins, red wines won’t taste like anything other than bitter alcohol. Genetics/tannins are why people generally have preferences for red or whites.
this is extremely informative and i have learned a thing about myself, which is that i CLEARLY inherited the tannin-tasting genes from my teatotaling mother and not from my dad who subsists entirely on espresso and cabernet sauvignon.
Black tea also has tannins, so if you - like me - need to drink it with cream and don’t brew it nearly as long as tea aficionados say in scandalized tones you ought to, because otherwise it’s too bitter, you uh. might be sensitive to tannins.
I think that dark roast coffee has more tannins than light roast; I know for certain it requires a good deal more cream/milk to balance out the bitter/burnt taste.
