The brothers lionheart is peak <3 did you know that Astrid got the idea for that book after reading a headstone for two dead brothers in a cemetery in Sweden? I think that is so sweet and heartbreaking.

For a number of years, in my town’s cemetery, there was a little headstone for a stillborn baby and on the headstone they had written “Vi ses i Nangijala” = see you in nangijala. The last words Karl speaks before he dies.

A Norwegian friend of mine found the headstone and dragged me over to it and we both started bawling our non-scandinavian classmates didn’t understand what was happening while all the other Scandinavians were immediately like 😢

I love the story behind your username, friend! That is both clever and nerdy af xD

Also, love Germany! 🤗 have visited several times and it’s a beautiful country and cool people. I think the only criticism my parents had on one of our visits back in the 2000s was that the Germans have more horrific wallpaper than the British. Personally, I disagree. The British are way worse xD

You are truly lost if you think America is anywhere close to the cruelty of China. Truly. You have had Dictator wannabe Trump in office for one year and you think this is in any way comparable to the decades of oppression that the Chinese have been subjected to?

Trump is terrible, no doubt, and I would be the first one to criticize the American welfare system, or lack thereof, but Americans have not experienced an ounce of what the Chinese people have. You can only say this if you are bad faith or entirely ignorant of the reality of the world.

You might even be a Russian troll at this point. Absolutely divorced from reality.

That is too adorable ❤️

Thank you! And you too! Even though I dunno how to pronounce î. You’re Scandinavian too?

The entire journey of mankind is bizarre. I remember a teacher drawing a line on the blackboard and then the last tiny snippet of that line was recorded human history. The rest was humanity’s entire existence on this planet in total. What was it that made us leap from clever apes to technologically advanced? How many amazing things did humans achieve before the recorded word. Did we achieve anything at all or did we just live in constant survival mode?

I mean, the obvious answer is the invention of agriculture, of which bread is a part of, but I’m still so incredibly fascinated by the insane speed we evolved as species from then on. I could read all the books about it and have all the answers and still be cemetery amazed and in awe at how we got to this point. It’s stuff like this that makes me understand why some people think there is a higher power out there that makes decisions for all of us. Because to have this type of stuff happen organically or by chance is just too weird. It feels better and more simple to just say that some god did it.

Friggin bread, man. I can be impressed with us genetically manipulating plants and animals to become part of our diet, but to pluck a fruit or kill an animal and then roast them or eat them raw or make a juice or something other, that is still nowhere close to the same wtf as the creation of bread. At least not for me haha.

I have enjoyed a soft murmur on days where I need to focus. A soft murmur is a neat little website where you can build your own soundscape. You can even subscribe to access the full sound library. I have used this site on off for at least a decade.

The free version is great already btw. For years I used singing bowl, birds, rain and waves as my soundscape. After I became a subscriber I got into crickets and frogs xD

As far as I know, this is an initiative by one guy so if you decide to subscribe, the money goes to him. He has a bio on the site that describes the story behind the website and his mission with it, but I don’t remember it super well. Haven’t used it since October because my life has been a hectic mess haha.

I once tried and failed to start a discussion with some colleagues about how insane it actually is that humans invented bread and they all looked at me like I was an idiot. But honestly, if you have no frame of reference, you have lived as a hunter gatherer and then suddenly one day you find a way through trial and error to come up with the concept of bread. Like how??? You just look at the withered grass and go: I bet I can eat that.

You eat the seeds for awhile and then you play around with a rock and start smashing the seeds, only after you have understood that they must be completely dry and tasteless. And you create flour. Maybe you use it for face paint or dry and eat it and it kinda sucks and maybe you start thinking "aye, when I eat it, it turns into clay sort of. I bet I can do something with it. Maybe you try using it for glue or painting the cave walls. Maybe it doesn’t really work like you want it to and then one day, because you have fire, you just try and see what happens when you throw the flour clay on the fire. Maybe several steps have come before this and the experiment is more calculated. Maybe it all happened by pure coincidence. But suddenly you have made the clay hard and inside it is either soft or it is flakey. Kinda tastes good. The burnt edges from the fire taste nice. The consistency of the bread is new and interesting. And from there, it is iteration upon iteration, learning to make bread.

I don’t know anything, I just think so many aspects of the crossover from hunter gatherer to the humans be are today is so incredibly interesting and weird. The most mundane things we take for granted now, are kind of amazing inventions that I find wild to think about. I dunno. I just think human creativity is cool and weird.

I agree with everything you say, but I still have to treat America as my enemy as long as they are run by lunatics. Nothing against normal everyday Americans, but it doesn’t help me any to know that they don’t want this to happen if it in fact ends up happening anyway. I’d like for all of this to be a bluff and trump is just being a retard as always, trying to force us to give him mining rights to Greenland…. Which he already kinda had but whatever. Problem is, you just can’t trust anything this monster does and when he has all the power of the US nation, I just can’t sit here and be like murica isn’t my enemy, it’s just trump. Well, trump is using murica to potentially start a war with my country so…

But America is still not as bad as China. People are terrifyingly ignorant about China in this comment section. Are they all Hasanabi fans, or what? 😆

If you have to ask, then it is time to read up on some basic history. Key words to use:

Mao

Tiananem square

Xinjiang internment camps

The one child policy, it’s immediate consequences and current day consequences.

Human trafficking, sex trafficking, abductions and illegal adoptions

Women’s rights in China

Gay rights in China. Specifically the banning and censorship of apps like grinder and erasure of “effeminate men” in media

China during Covid

China human rights violations

China freedom of speech

Maybe some of these will give you a head start.

Anyone who claims that China is better than the US even in the current Trump-version has even less of an understanding of China. My point was that it is scary to me, as someone who hasn’t studied Chinese history and politics in-depth, to see people who clearly know nothing about China, call it better than the US. At least I can admit my lack of knowledge.

But let me ask you this: do you think that a country that is heavily censoring its people, to the point that a Taiwanese video game was erased off the market, because it made a joke about Xi Jinping, a country that has systematically suppressed and erased entire ethnic groups’ cultures and history and throwing some of them in concentration camps where they still are to this day, struggling with a horrific human trafficking epidemic both in terms of sexual slaves but also children being kidnapped and sold in illegal adoptions, subjected their populations to inhumane and unspeakable treatment during Covid, lies about the death toll of Chinese citizens during Covid, has insane poverty and oppression of its people to this day and has yet to acknowledge what happened on tiananmen square - which, need I remind you - was a horrific slaughter of innocent youths - do you think such a country is less evil and dangerous than current day America? I am not saying American is in a great place right now, and I do not think for a second that Trump is doing the country any long term favours, but China has one of the most bloody and disturbing histiories of any current super power and the shadows have carried over from that time into current day where maybe some things have gotten a bit better relative to the horror years of peaches like Mao, but the effects of these past regimes and the social indoctrination and oppression is nothing any American or any westerner, really, can fully understand nor appreciate. I have read a few books and briefly talked to classmates of Chinese descent. One of them wrote a book about how her mom escaped China and fled to Europe. She’s not that old. It wasn’t a nice holiday, let me tell you.

But please continue with your smug insinuations and tell me how fucking educated you are about this subject. I would love to hear you convince me how America is worse than China. I heard some ding dong in this thread say that China was better because at least they only terrorize their own population and not the world. It is hard to somment on something so stupid.

The word is in fact cheese, good sir. Curd, even.

Good thing we canceled our Netflix subscription last year when Trump threatened to invade our country the first time.

Even greater that now that he is threatening to do it again, and seemingly is more serious about it, we are one year into being back on physical media and we fucking love it. Dvds and blurays are so much better than shitflix.

If I were in charge, I would tell America that after this stunt, they can forget about mining deals or anything close to it, because this is what he really wants and the inuit don’t want their beautiful country to be hollowed out by greedy companies that will pay them Jack shit for it.

The true test is when/if trump decides to drop all this threatening talk and instead says he wants the minerals, like he did with Ukriane.

If we bow to that request, we are a joke.

You don’t reward a screaming, destructive child with one cookie after he demanded the whole tin.

I think it is a great mistake for anyone in the comments to start being China apologists just because Trump is acting like a retard.

I think you’re all severely underestimating the shit China does. Trumps America isn’t anywhere close to being as fucked up as China is, and I say this as a Dane who is currently dealing with the severe hatred and feelings of betrayal towards our former allies.

Let’s not start simping for China because America sucks. Let’s not do that. I only have a surface level understanding of what goes on in China, and that is still enough for me to say with confidence that current day America is still less of a hell hole by comparison.

I wpuld rather focus the energy in Europe to make us stronger over time so that we can be our own super power and not have to lean on the other trash bin super powers out there.

It won’t happen over night and might not even happen in my lifetime, but if we can work toward that goal, I would be happy. We have survived worse.

Yep. Now barf with me, my friend 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮❤️

I can relate whenever there are scenes in movies where characters are supposed to make art. Either the actor movies the pen or brush in a way that betrays that they have zero understanding of what they’re doing or the art itself is hilariously mediocre despite being supposedly magnificent and beautiful according to other characters in the movie.

Makes me think about that Truth or Dare movie.

Username, lol

🤮

Tbh, I think that it is time for all fans to accept that Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring will never come out. We will never get an ending. The only way this will be done is if George accepts defeat and recruits trusted ghost writers to finish his story for him while he steps into an editor role. Problem is that he will never allow this because it’s both an ego thing and an emotional thing. It is exceptionally hard for some artists to allow anyone else to come in and influence their vision. Especially if they have been used to having full control over their work for years. It is sad, though, because it is such a relief to allow yourself to lean on someone else and hand over control to them when you’re stuck. It is fertilizer for the creative process if you manage to find the right people. And when you’re in George’s position, it should be relatively easy to find people who can not only write in his voice, but add to the work. He already has those two OG fans (I forget their names) who knows his world better than he does, whom he’s used for coherence in his own story.

As for Tyrion, I think he had some really, really, really cool plans for him. I believe he would link up with Dany and whisper poison into her ear and influence the snap of her mind, that would make her arrive in Kings Landing as an annhilator. That’s what I believe. All Tyrion wants when we leave him in the books, is to destroy his family and all of Kings Landing and it is said many many times in the books that he’s a small man who will cast a large shadow. To me that translates into him using Dany as a weapon. They just did it in the single most retarded way possible in the show and part of why is was so retarded was because of them editing out Tysha and erasing Tyrion’s villain arc.