Ruins of Gedi Kenya Mombasa
The ruins of Gedi in the depths of the great Arabuko Sokoke forest Kenya. Is a place of great mystery, an archaeological puzzle that continues to engender debate among historians. built during the 14th century AD, and later abandoned in the early 16th century.
From the 13th or 14th to 17th centuries, Gedi was a thriving community along the jungle coast of East Africa. Although no written record exists of this town, excavations between 1948 and 1958 revealed that the inhabitants traded with people from all over the world. Some of the findings included beads from Venice, coins and a Ming vase from China, an iron lamp from India, and scissors from Spain. The population was estimated to exceed at least 2500 people. These items can be found in the museum in the complex which was opened in 2000.
To this day, despite extensive research and exploration, nobody is really sure what happened to the town of Gedi and its peoples. This once great civilization was a powerful and complex Swahili settlement with a population of over 2500, built during the 13th century. The ruins of Gedi include many houses, mansions, mosques and elaborate tombs and cemeteries.
These houses were complex for their time, with bathrooms with drains and overhead basins to flush toilets. The city’s streets were laid out at right angles and had drainage gutters. There are also wells which supplied water to the community. The material used to construct the buildings was made from coral reef from the nearby ocean.
Despite the size and complexity of this large (at least 45 acre) settlement, it is never mentioned in any historic writings or local recorded history.
I wonder if thats what theyll say about places like Detroit or old abandoned factory towns in hundreds and hundreds of years when the world has been again reconfigured.
(via queerandpresentdanger)
BRAIN DISCLOSURE: Often when I am thinking of Lynda Barry, I accidentally picture Susan Feniger. I think this is not completely crazy though. I mean, LOOK.
It’s sad and frustrating to me to have blogs centered around ‘queer bodies’ that are all cis and male and thin and able bodied and have appropriate amounts of body hair (not too much and not too little) and the most redeeming thing is there are a few poc bodies but they just feel really tokenized
It’s not that I don’t think queer bodies and abrasive sexuality aren’t revolutionary but I don’t think there’s anything revolutionary about your hegemony
A bunch of M’s family members are visiting for her graduation and I spent a little time today with M’s sister, S, who is deaf. I took an intro to ASL class two times during college but functionally retain no sign language besides the alphabet, because I am kinda dumb with visual language and often I don’t make eye contact with people when we’re talking, which is important. Also I feel super-awkward around people I don’t know how to communicate with, but S was patient and spelled a lot of things and we went out to buy cigarettes and it was okay. These are some words I recovered/was taught:
mother
father
crazy
name signs for M and her sister
house
cute
pretty
bug
hard
work
lesbian
my/your
vegetables
sad
goodnight
like
want
Shit I just realized that this word I kept understanding as “dirty” did not mean that, and S was using it a lot so now I have no idea and I can’t find a backwards-indicating online ASL dictionary… obviously, I guess. Like I can’t type in “index and middle finger around nose, then pulled off of nose” exactly, now can I. Anyway, you can tell what kind of conversations we were having. Mostly about crazy lesbians we know, and how they’re cute.
‘i will show you fear in a handful of dust…’
You guys I love how Daphne Guinness posts all these photos on twitter that are LIKE SO EMO and no one ever calls her on it, because she is so rich or it’s okay to be emo now, I don’t know, tell me.
Did Paul Scheer and Tilda Swinton have a baby? Is that what I am seeing?
(Source: , via brbnightmares)
I am always loving Liza’s eye sculpting techniques.
(Source: everythingwasawesome, via neutralize)
I gotta figure out who is this Anna Karina someday; she seems like a classy broad.
(Source: lechampignonardent, via thegorgeoushussy)
Ask MP: Anonymous asked, "Were there any happy moments in your childhood at all?"
Sitting on my grandmother’s lap and eating rhubarb tarts.
Sewing my first dress with my mother.
Watching my father paint.
My first school dance. Eliza Middleton wore a very lovely dress and petticoat.
My mother singing around the house again after my father had passed.
My first kiss. With Beatrice Stuart.
The day I found out I would be studying in Paris.
I find it odd people are under the impression my childhood was so incredibley horrible. Certainly, there were some hardships I do not typically disscuss; however, despite my old age, I still possess very fond recollections.
-MP
Yesssss I am so excited that someone is writing some Devil Wears Prada slash fic up in here.
LIVEJOURNAL I MISSED YOU
The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.
—James Baldwin, “On Language, Race, and the Black Writer” (via ethiopienne)
(via queerandpresentdanger)
Oh my god this hair color, BEAUTIPERFECT.
(Source: audrey-mylittleponyhairinsp.buzznet.com, via jellyfish-dance)
So here’s the challenge to all you people who toss around “white” as a synonym… on the Internet: Suggest alternatives. Name a movie, a TV show, a book, a piece of music, or anything that meets your standards for non-“whiteness.” I’m not baiting you here; I’m asking sincerely. If you’re really interested in encouraging diversity, do so in a positive way, by calling attention to some valuable work that’s flying below the radar. Tell us to listen to Charles Bradley, or seek out the films of Ramin Bahrani, or read the comics of Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim, or appreciate the nuanced depiction of the black middle-class on the much-missed TNT drama Men Of A Certain Age. Light the way instead of huffily trying to snuff others’ enthusiasm. Unless of course you’re only race-baiting to score points and make yourself look cool. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? I mean, only a terrible human being would exploit centuries of struggle against oppression and marginalization just to get out of seeing a Wes Anderson movie.
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This essay by Noel Murray is very smart, well-reasoned and brave, at least in the sense that some people are bound to totally skip all the nuance in his argument and paint him as some kind of klansman for defending whiteness in any way.
(via perpetua)
NO
I’ve been seeing this column on my dashboards all morning with little notes like “finally!” “brave!” “smartly written!”
It’s not.
It’s a condescending… mess and a whole swathe of the internet that I usually enjoy reading and relating-to has just outed itself as fundamentally ignorant about racism or how white supremacy works.
(via aaronleaf)
Good morning, how nice to have woken up to one more steaming pile of white bullshit to be embarassed by.
Aaron’s right, this is a… mess posing as a thoughtful piece of criticism and the author exposes a profound ignorance of the real issue dismissing things as “white” points to. What sucks is a lot of people are going to take this seriously, and feel completely vindicated in their little… feefees. God I hope we don’t see a whole lot of linking to this article as a debate strategy in the future… but I fear we will.
(via becoming-wave)
COMMENTARY.
It’s so disappointing that Matthew Perpetua posted this. I really respect him as a music journalist.
(via heartdashbeats)
Why is anyone listening to someone who really just used “Hispanic” as an ethnic identifier? Why is so fucking offensive if we really JUST DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR WHITE BULLSHIT ALL THE FUCKING TIME??????? You’re goddamn right I’m being dismissive when I say shit is too white. What a bullshit sense of entitlement that we should have to pay attention to anything you fucking do just because you’re white. And fuck you, dude! Again, putting the onus of proof on POC. Seek your own shit out yourself! We shouldn’t (and don’t) have to prove to you that we make quality art for ingestion. If you want to stay wrapped in a white bubble—whatever—but don’t act like you’re doing it for mere quality or lack of better options not simply because you’re A WHITE SUPREMACIST ASSHOLE DICKHEAD
(But really though Gene Luen Yang’s comics are amazing and you should read them!)
(Also I edited the OP and comments for ableism and other less-than-sensitive stuff)
————————
patterntown:
That first comment, about being painted as “some kind of klansman for defending whiteness in any way.” Oh hey, what is defensible about whiteness? It’s cool to be into your Irish or Italian forebears or whatever, but the concept of Whiteness as a current identity thing? Not exciting, not valuable, not helping anybody. Certainly not something that needs valorizing. Anyway, these comments are smarty smarts. The part about how this essay puts the weight on POC to educate bored white people who feel inconvienced by being called out: never heard that one before!!!!
(via queerandpresentdanger)
