Ispahan. 29. Bi/Queer. Scottish.

feminist, left wing, pro choice, geek, part-time thinker.

elementary, the lizzie bennet diaries, doctor who, avatar: the last airbender, leverage, the avengers, formula 1, ayrton senna, all the fictional ladies, fashion, space, various pretty things.

amyelizabeth:

satanic2chainz:

knowledgeequalsblackpower:

nisuru:

thefemaletyrant:

According to the records, Australia was first discovered by Dutch explorers in the early 17th century. So how did 1,000-year-old copper coins from a former African sultanate end up on a remote Australian beach?

An Australian anthropologist, Ian McIntosh, is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, which began when five coins were found buried in sand by a soldier patrolling the Wessel Islands off the continent’s north coast in 1944, two years after Darwin was bombed by the Japanese.

Maurie Isenberg, who was manning a radar station on the uninhabited but strategically important islands, stored the coins in a tin, and on coming across them again in 1979, sent them to a museum.

They were identified as originating in the former sultanate of Kilwa, near present-day Tanzania, and dated to as far back as the 900s.

So far, so mysterious, for according to the history books the first outsider to set foot on Australian soil was a Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, who landed in present-day north Queensland in 1606 – more than 160 years before Captain James Cook arrived and claimed the continent for the British throne.

Dr McIntosh believes that the coins, which have apparently been gathering dust in the museum, could rewrite Australian history, indicating that the country was visited long before Europeans arrived.

[…]

Now a World Heritage ruin, Kilwa was once a flourishing trade port and in the 13th to 16th centuries had links to India. Its trade – in gold, silver, pearls, perfumes, Arabian stoneware, Persian ceramics and Chinese porcelain – made it one of the most influential towns in East Africa.

To those of us who are well familiar with African history, this comes as no surprise.

Yes this is news (this is my first time hearing about these coins) but considering how far and wide Africans travelled at the time Europeans were still in the backwaters, it is not strange that they (at least their coins) reached Australia.

What I detest is this insistence on “discovery”, the indigenous people of Australia have been there for a while, neither Africans or Europeans (or people from the Middle East who have played roles in East African history) “discovered” Australia.

Emphasis mine.

Another no duh for Western academia

Niggas went place: More at 11

The Indian Ocean Trade you fools!!! Gaaah. While western Europe was burning people as witches and being all stupid, Africa had its act together, trading with other regions and inventing stuff.

Why is this a shock?! Did you like, sleep through history? Ugh. Africa is so key to understanding global trade networks and just because Mrs. Thistlebottom didn’t teach it to you in seventh grade doesn’t make it wrong..

I can’t even.

(Source: mysimpsonsblogisgreaterthanyours)

(Source: miss-johansson)

(Source: fuckyeahihaveagazebo)

(Source: chelas)

tielan:

Well, it’s certainly a very distinctive safety talk!

(Source: ancelstierre)

This is how the world was exhumed.

(Source: rudeteen)

I’m saying I’m better. 

(Source: wednesdaydreams)

idris

(Source: equanimousicons)

asktoothless:

Hey guys remember when this took 8000000 years to scroll through?

(Source: t-jam3s)

desidere:

• My problem is not people trying to make money off of fanfic. A.) bc that already happens, and B.) because it should be happening more.
• That is to say, fanart is a widely accepted and respectable medium other fans will pay for and to me, it is no different from writing. Both include work, talent, effort, creativity, and skill to do. Fanartists can do work as gifts for friends just as much as they can take commissions from people for money. 
• A few years back Wired Magazine put out a special larger issue that I honestly wish I could re-purchase because the article in it was that good. It was an issue about Japan and how it (especially Manga and Anime) influences American culture and vice-versa. I went looking for the Article in question: Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex. 
  
  Let me just pull some quotes for you:
  
  

Fans and critics complain that manga — which emerged in the years after World War II as an edgy, uniquely Japanese art form — has become as homogenized and risk-averse as the limpest Hollywood blockbuster. Pervading the nation’s $4.2 billion-a-year industry is a sense that its best days have passed.

Which ought to make what’s happening here at Comic Ichi — a manga market the size of several airplane hangars that will attract some 25,000 buyers — so heartening. The place is pulsing with possibility, full of inspired creators, ravenous fans, and wads of yen changing hands. It represents a dynamic force that could reverse the industry’s decline.

There’s just one hitch, one teensy roadblock on the manga industry’s highway to rejuvenation: Nearly everybody here is breaking the law.

[…] 

The violations at Super Comic City were so brazen and the scale so huge — by day’s end, some 300,000 books sold in cash transactions totaling more than $1 million — that just about any US media company would have launched a full-metal lawsuit to shut the market for good.

[…]

“The dojinshi are creating a market base, and that market base is naturally drawn to the original work,” he said. Then, gesturing to the convention floor, he added, “This is where we’re finding the next generation of authors. The publishers understand the value of not destroying that.” And as the manga weeklies falter and decline, new talent is more important than ever. Meanwhile, Takeda said, the dojinshi creators honor their part of this silent pact. They tacitly agree not to go too far — to produce work only in limited editions and to avoid selling so many copies that they risk cannibalizing the market for original works.

- go read the whole thing, seriously

What this tells me is six years later in 2013, Corporate America is finally trying to figure out fan culture but blatantly has no idea what the fuck they’re doing because they’re largely clueless to the fact that it already happens, at least regarding art. 

Here’s what’s wrong with how Amazon is trying to do this:

• Corporate Hollywood is trying to foster a system that ensures anything highly popular in fanfiction can be immediately adapted from the author without compensation.This sucks for two reasons: It means they can undercut Hollywood writers with unions — in favor of stealing from fans with no unions, no money, and all their copyrights already signed over to the company in question. That’s bullshit for all writers, professional or otherwise. It does not foster the next generation of writers, it just screws them over. 
• As the article points out, the whole point of the remix culture with doujin is often to write scenes or scenarios that are sexual and/or would never happen between two characters otherwise. (Please, let me be amused for approximately forever that they used doujinshi that pair Roy Mustang and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist as an example of fans fantasizing sexual relationships that don’t exist into comics.) 
• Please keep in mind this is also cheap and free market research for Corporate America when you sign up. 
• The manga industry as of 2007 did not attempt to control the doujinshi industry by dictated what could and couldn’t be written according to whose copyright licenses are already paid for and whose aren’t.

And let’s be honest, the quote from this article:

The official versions and the remixed versions weren’t side by side. But they were for sale perhaps 10 yards away from each other. In the same store. Think about that in a US context. You walk in to Barnes & Noble and walk out with a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — as well as an unauthorized remix of a May-December romance between Hermione Granger and Professor Minerva McGonagall. Our American IP lawyer is starting to get woozy again.

Tells you how much has changed in the last few years, because nowadays, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series is sold in the same bookstores are Harry Potter, and Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are often placed side-by-side If you liked this, read this… 

and if you think Amazon isn’t trying to give publishers a way to make sure that the next 50 Shades is all going to be their money and profit and not yours you have another think coming. 

This isn’t the read/write/remix culture I asked for, this is just a corporation trying to make money off of me for free, for something I already do, for free at my expense. And that’s some kind of bullshit. 

paulbaileyart:

Seven trees
5 x 5 inches
2012 

(Source: breathingwithn0air)