Tristan S. Rapp @Hieraaetus Twitter profile

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

I have just learned that the name "Dennis" is a variant of "Dionysius", and this information has shaken me

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

For really no particular reason, I'd like to talk a little bit about this place

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

Predators tend not to eat other predators because, occupying the highest trophic levels in an ecosystem, they accumulate higher levels of toxic compounds and parasites. This is true of many species, but manifests in humans as a reflex of revulsion.

John Oberg

@JohnOberg

4 months

Can any meat-eaters PLEASE explain their logic? 🤔

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Abundance dies twice - in the field, and in memory. One of the greatest struggles facing all restoration-initiatives in conservation is the tyranny of low expectations. People begin complaining about beavers or wolves being overpopulated once their numbers reach over 1/80 km^2

lost in nature

@lostinnaturevid

1 year

This is what an elephant herd is supposed to look like. Tsavo, Kenya in 1976

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

I'm still really not clear on what exactly this character is supposed to be doing wrong in the movie

DiscussingFilm

@DiscussingFilm

7 months

First listen to Chris Pine’s villain song “This Is The Thanks I Get?!” from Disney’s ‘WISH’.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

It's funny how people will endlessly cheer on (and I don't disagree) these heavily-armed, militarised anti poaching teams in Africa, but if you proposed implementing anything similar in Europe they would call you a sociopath.

Artyox

@Artyoxent

2 months

And this is your yearly reminder that we support anti Poaching Rangers all around the world. 🫡

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 month

Scheduled reminder that there is a reason why houses in cold and rainy climates have gabled rooves while buildings in dry, sunny climates have flat ones - and that these reasons are still in effect even if modern architects have decided that gables are >so 1890<

Philip Oldfield

@SustainableTall

1 month

New architecture style just dropped … mass timber brutalism By Charlap, Hyman & Herrero, Montana

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

If, however, I told you that *these* photos are also from Oman, you might perhaps express some surprise. Enter the Khareef.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

Such micro-ecosystems are not unique to Oman, but few other places do they contrast so radically and obviously with the surrounding environment. In a sea of deserts and dryland, in a country bordering the nigh-uninhabitable Rub' al Khali, is this:

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

You cannot convince me the Spanish Dehesa is not the single most visually appealing ecosystem in Europe. A landscape both beautifully natural and artificial, and simultaneously one in which the ancient lost savannas of Europe seem at times almost reborn.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Reminder that Egyptian civilisation is older than the Sahara desert

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

You cannot have a revolution without a revolution, and you cannot have a living, breathing world without a world that lives and breathes, sometimes in your direction.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

10 months

THREAD - The Drowning of Doggerland (1) Cities may be burnt & forgotten, distant islands lost & found. It is rare that an entire landmass is erased, only to be rediscovered millennia later. This is the story of Europe's true Atlantis, of a Prehistoric world, lost to the sea.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

When you think "Oman", what sort of landscapes come to mind? If I were to guess - if you are anything like me - it is probably something along these lines. These are all pictures from Oman - it's not an inaccurate impression! It is, however, incomplete

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

It is a crazy fact to me that the descendants of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, emperor of the Aztecs at the time of Cortes, still exist as a noble family with the hereditary title of "duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo"... in Spain, not Mexico... since the latter abolished its aristocracy.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

In the very, very south of Arabia, just by the Indian Ocean seaboard, lie the Dhofar mountains. Not only are they in just the right place to catch the seasonal rains, but they are also, crucially, tall and wide enough. The result is a radically unique, isolated landscape.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

The Khareef is a term in southern Arabia for the southeasterly monsoons that periodically sweep the peninsula from the Indian Ocean. Of themselves, they do not significantly transform the Arabian landscape. The water is too dispersed, too periodic. But there is an exception.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Many would quite like to live near big animals, but they should be >over there<, out on the field, in convenient photography-distance. Not rummaging about one's vegetable-garden, or blocking traffic, or making startling appearances on afternoon hikes. Seen, not felt.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

GRRM is a decent writer, but his project is fundamentally self-contradicting, and the main reason he cannot finish his books (aside from the show reducing his motivation) is that he cannot find a way to resolve the story in a way that is both satisfying yet subversive.

DrAtavism

@AtavismDr

1 year

Post your Game of Thrones opinion that has everyone reacting like this:

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

Scythians had the craziest drip

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

Suriname is an exceedingly strange country. It is a nation on mainland South America whose largest ethnic component is (Asiatic) Indians who conduct Hindu ceremonies in Dutch.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

The city's name in English is Kiev, not Kyiv, lol. There is a class of people who enjoy nothing more than constantly altering their vocabulary to signal their conscientiousness and erudition. In truth, it's just age-old exoticism.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

It's the same reason why many ppl in the 1st-world have a seemingly hardened vendetta against gulls. They are some of the only semi-sizeable animals to still make themselves *felt* in the landscape. They are obtrusive, & so a nuisance. Hence countless BBC hit-pieces on a bird.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

Reading/watching some commentary & reviews of Eggers' The Northman again, & striking is how often reviewers label the film as "exaggerated", "polemical", "juiced up", as if it were some amped-up Viking fantasy. Well, no. It's actually the most realistic portrayal put to film.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

I wonder why

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

@CultureCrave He's gone from "any moment now!" to "just a few more years, just you wait!" to "5 years tops, I swear" to "yeah yeah I know, shut up."

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 month

"The year is 2050 A.D. Britain is entirely occupied by the grey squirrels. Well, not entirely..."

Epic Maps 🗺️

@Locati0ns

1 month

Distribution of red and grey squirrels in the UK

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

The Northman and Honour Cultures - a brief thread One of the most distinctive marks of Robert Eggers' latest film The Northman, much like his prior work, is the refusal to condescend to, censor, or otherwise alter the views of past people. This is also its greatest weakness.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

It remains profoundly hilarious to me that regarding the Anglo-Saxons, less than a year ago you still had historians confidently, even haughtily dismissing anyone antiquated enough to suggest the migrations really happened. And now genetics have proved beyond doubt they did.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

@wendelltalks Protestant moment.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

This image is a pretty good litmus test for politics: do you regard this man with respect, or disgust?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

@littleboomstick It's not pseudoscience lol and you can readily find places discussing this concept. And yes, they are viewed as pets in our culture, yet that is a very recent phenomenon, whilst our aversion to eating them, and other predators, is older - so whence did it arise?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

This was one of the best historical films of the last decade, and everyone just slept on it.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

Deep Time, if pondered, produces a profound sense of temporal vertigo unlike anything. When we speak of events 20, 30, 40.000 years ago, the numbers scarcely register. A man, gazing out from a hill 40kya, would have still *30.000 years* to go before even the end of the Ice Age.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

It always annoys me when books or television portray the Norse and Anglo-Saxons as somehow radically different from each other. Narratively I get it - playing up the difference makes for good visual and dramatic storytelling. But it just isn't true.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

If the movie's retort is "one person shouldn't have all the power to choose whose wishes come true", then surely the alternative "just grant them all lol" is equally bad. The only sensible resolution I can see is that the wish-granting power is just abolished altogether.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

7 months

I cannot believe the premise of the film is actually "why don't we just grant everyone's wishes? Dolling them out selectively is mean!" There has to be something I am missing here lol. Either way, the trailers are not explaining it well.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

"Please some colour, sir"

DiscussingFilm

@DiscussingFilm

6 months

First clip from Ridley Scott’s ‘NAPOLEON’. (Source: @Fandango )

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

3 months

>WW3, England is invaded by the Russoiranochinese >King Arthur awakens from beneath Glastonbury Tor >People cheering >Suddenly he starts indiscriminately hewing down random Englishmen and women >Screaming "Marw moch Seisnig, cofiwch yr Hen Ogledd!"

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

8 months

"I am once again reminding you that Pre-Columbian and Pre-Colonial are not the same thing, and that Comanche was not spoken in the South prior to 1500 AD"

Vintage Maps

@vintagemapstore

8 months

Pre-Columbian Linguistic Map of the United States

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

Predators will occasionally eat other predators in the wild, too - it's not an iron-clad rule, as few things in nature are. But it is a very clear one, and predators rarely actively predate on other carnivores, even ones much smaller, particularly if they're semi-closely related.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

"Huh, Saint Denis was also called Dionysius, I wonder wh-wait"

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

14 days

Regarding Dune and the reactions to it, it is weird how one of the most recurring comments seems to be that "obviously, an outsider shouldn't lead the Fremen", as if that was some sort of moral truism. But... why? As a matter of fact, the phenomenon of 'stranger kings' is age-old

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

France is, when one considers it, a very strange nation. There is something almost arrogant in its capricious desire to exemplify both extremes of every polarity: France contains the strongest symbols of monarchy, and the quintessence of republicanism. The Sun King and the…

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

Reading again some novels about Arthur and the sub-Roman period in Britain, and it is striking just how... disconnected the popular image of the period that has developed is from the actual history. The druids are an obvious example, but it's much more fundamental.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

In my opinion, The Witcher may well be the only mainstream fantasy franchise which captures properly the atmosphere and ambience of Medieval European life, both in the countryside and the towns. There is a certain "folk" quality permeating the books & games that's hard to place.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Rewatched the first Narnia movie, & is striking how the colour, pomp & heraldry on display, both in the camp, the army & the costumes of the Pevensies, are legitimately closer (if not in exact details, then in general ambience) to true Medieval dress than 90% of historical films

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Fascinating how many groups have been where they are now for far shorter than you'd think. The Maasai only came down from Sudan 5-600 years ago, the Zulu entered Zululand even more recently, the Tswana Botswana circa 3-400 years ago

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

Lawrence of Arabia (1962), quite apart from its sheer length, opens with several minutes of a blank, blue screen whilst the film's soundtrack plays over it, letting the audience soak in the overtures. It is quite startling to realise how much audience-patiences have declined.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

The fundamental confusion people make is that they think Christmas in Northern Europe is a Germanic holiday adapted to a Christian context, rather than an imported Christian holiday which adopted a few elements of a previous Germanic festive season in its local expression.

Stephen Hopkins

@phil_lol_ogist

5 months

Alright who did this?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

There's this particular genre of tweet or article where ppl post reconstructions of ancient individuals from statues or skeletons and are shocked to learn that people in the past looked like... people.

Simon Kuestenmacher

@simongerman600

5 months

This is what Julius Caesar would look like today. Just your run of the mill tech billionaire...

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 month

There's a substantial degree to which so much modern architecture is just a fairly infantile revolt against nature and the concept of constraints

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

Considering that the Inuit only arrived in the Americas circa 1000 AD, and therefore after the first Europeans (the Norse) made landfall on Greenland, idk to what degree they can really be called "Native Americans". They are, at least, a different group from "Amerindians proper"

OnlMaps

@onlmaps

5 months

Percentage of Native Americans

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

As a last point, because people keep bring up fish: parasites and diseases are always specific to a certain taxonomic range. The more evolutionarily distant two species are, the lower the chance their ailments can jump between them. This is why eating tuna is safer than wolves.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

It is entirely unclear to me how one African shooting another African to protect a leopard is great and praise-worthy, but one European shooting another European to protect a wolf is insane and psychotic. "That sort of stuff is for the third world."

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

What is the overly long, pretentious German compound word for "that keen awareness, when leaving a place, that you will never see it again"?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

21 days

Treading very carefully here, but on the topic of Australian archaeology it is *highly non-obvious* to me why modern-day Aboriginal tribes are presumed to have some inherent claim to the remains of extremely ancient people not at all evidently related to them.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

There's a particular fantasy-aesthetic which appeals to me deeply, and yet I am unaware of any particular term or codification of it. It is the setting dominated by vast, lush landscapes, vibrantly coloured & open, nearly empty - full of wide, sweeping vistas

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Valcárcel is the current Duke of Moctezuma If the world was a slightly more interesting place, there would be some obscure, Carlist-esque faction in Mexico pushing for a Third Mexican Empire under a Moctezumist restoration.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

My suggestion regarding humans and dogs would be that there have been two opposite pulls at work across cultures - the innate biological aversion to consuming carnivores, and the practicability of eating an easily accessible source of meat in the form of a common domestic.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

It's always interesting how people who talk about "grey morality" in fiction/storytelling almost never seem to actually know what this means. A Song of Ice and Fire, Memory, Sorrow & Thorn, The First Law - these are not stories with grey morality! They are black and white.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

Striking specialists in different cultures & regions ascribe radically different weight to oral traditions. Anthropologists studying Aboriginals will credit their legends as remembering post-glacial floods, whilst Anglo-Saxonists doubt 3-4 generations of transmission.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

@Indian_Bronson @littleboomstick Since when are horses a predator, lol? And regardless, whether there are underlying biological aversions encoded in our species is a separate question from whether or not cultural conventions are able to modulate or override these.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

So again, related to my tweets yesterday - Paul is *not* a false prophet. The prophecy itself is fake, planted the the Bene Gesserit, merely meant as a means of manipulation... and yet Paul makes it come true all the same, taking the BG by surprise.

Possum Reviews

@ReviewsPossum

11 months

I finished reading Dune yesterday and I just re-watched the 1984 movie. The most wrong thing the movie does is it completely misses the point that Paul is a false prophet in the book, and the prophecy was planted into Fremen culture by the Bene Gesserit for their own benefit.

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@Hieraaetus

2 months

One distinctly gets the impression that dying and shooting each other over endangered animals is something they do "over there", at a pleasingly abstracted remove where we can watch affirmative documentaries about all-female ranger squads with no implications for ourselves.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

17 days

"We clocked Aristotle at thirty-two miles per hour"

Tom Booth

@Boothicus

17 days

Seen some excitement over the location of Plato’s possible burial place in terms of digging him up and sequencing his DNA…but why?? Getting past the practicalities, what would it achieve? Are there some major outstanding questions about the life of Plato that DNA could answer?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

A very interesting phenomenon in the Norse-obsession of the last 10 years or so has been the trend of authors/screenwriters & many audiences identifying much more with the rapacious, invading Vikings than their victims the monks, with which 99% of moderns share far more in common

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

3 months

Whenever things like this come up, I am reminded of the fact that the British Union of the Crowns was formed when the Scottish king inherited the English throne, and the Acts of Union resulted largely due to Scotland bankrupting itself in a failed colonial venture.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

One of the strangest sorts of historical revisionism you sometimes see is attempts to portray extremely impactful, world-changing figures as bumbling incompetents. To paint Cortes, Napoleon or Columbus as vile, cruel or capricious I can at least see, but... incompetent?

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

I love this - I cannot explain or justify myself, but this is the best thing. It is humanity at its most flamboyantly and endearingly silly, often capped with a distinctly sinister undertone.

Mythical Africa

@MythoAfrique

2 months

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

Novels set in the Age of Sail are so packed with obscure nautical jargon that you legitimately cannot tell if they are just making it up on the go: "The forefane was athwaite the cunderdeck when the scuffleswain lit the mizzen-lights on the goon"

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

For some cultures, the matter of practicability ultimately won out - food-scarcity is a recurring issue, and dogs *were there*, so an obvious solution. In some cultures, it was even the very taboo nature of consuming a predator's meat that ultimately gave it a cultic importance.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

@Empty_America Yes, you see this even in a lot of conservation literature - reports on introduced populations of horses, asses, water buffalo etc will simply describe their face-value impacts (wallowing, vegetation-disturbance, etc) and then assume this equals destruction

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

3 months

11th cousins means your last common ancestor lived half a millennium ago. I reckon a not insubstantial percentage of the Anglophone population is 11th cousins with the royal family. Pip down.

DiscussingFilm

@DiscussingFilm

3 months

Bob Odenkirk has found out that he and King Charles are eleventh cousins. "I’m an American. I’m not a monarchist. I don’t believe in that. You know, I feel like it’s a little twisted.” (Source: )

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@Hieraaetus

27 days

Irish also has no word for "to have", but instead communicates possession by saying an object is near/at someone - "I have a house" is "tá teach agam" = lit: "house is by me" Does this indicate a uniquely detached, non-materialist approach to ownership on the Emerald Isle? No.

Sorcha Eastwood MLA

@SorchaEastwood

28 days

Our Irish language is beautiful and all around us 💛

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@Hieraaetus

7 months

The Celtic maritime tradition is something rarely discussed and often forgotten, because it reached both its height and fall in the dark years before the Viking Age. Today, nearly any search of "piracy and seafaring in the Medieval Irish Sea" will turn up only the Norse.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 month

@browndwarfdog

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@Hieraaetus

4 months

In others, however, a long-standing practice of keeping but not eating dogs ultimately produced a relationship different than with domestic livestock, more humanised and personalised, which eventually became a strongly reinforcing factor on top of the existing biological aversion

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

Original inhabitants of the Sahara back when it was still wet and fertile were a group of veritable giants (reaching 2 meters) who lived in complex, sedentary fisher-societies alongside the banks of the various lakes, among them Lake Megachad, then the size of the Caspian Sea.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

Dress for the job you want

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

There is a widespread practice in the Danish countryside of selling products - berries, potatoes, carrots - by simply leaving them in unattended booths by the roadside with a sign asking for payment. Speaks to a v high level of social trust.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

It's really quite remarkable how rapidly the Scandinavian world - especially Denmark & Norway - were transformed in the 11th century. The first decades saw Sweyn's conquest of England, then Stiklestad, Stamford Bridge. Yet by the last decades, that whole world was ending.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

I am not saying any of this is objectively morally good. I do not belong to Amleth's culture. I do not share his values. But one cannot expect him or anyone else in his day to conform to the morals of another age and another faith. Amleth, in the end, proved himself a lad.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

Welsh "history" >Prince Thwmbwfyll of Pwrgalys led the nine hosts of Urthflydd to fight the Saxon chief Gwbbo at Fthygwnnog Ford >Every man dead >Kingdom of Urthflydd collapses >Monk "Luphigius" (real name Llwfygmb) composes 600-page treatise blaming the re-dating of Easter

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

6 months

Characters in LATE Arthurian legend are all called things like Pelawain, Lograval and Gorwenad Characters in EARLY Arthurian legend are all named things like Bwlb, Gybfalych and Gwrlwfur

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

Juan José Marcilla elected as the Emperor of Mexico, revives the title of Tlatoani, Axolotl made national animal, half of Mexico City flooded in habitat-restoration initiative, Mesoamerican revival-architecture mandated for all future government works

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

I've said this before but North Africans are probably one of the most "erased" ethnic groups, since large numbers of particularly Americans have gotten it into their heads that Berbers and Bedouins should look West African, and will genuinely get offended at accurate portrayals.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

More specifically, the formation of archaic Egypt was essentially concurrent with the first stages of desertification, and almost certainly a direct consequence of it. Lake Megachad began to shrink circa 3200 BC, and Narmer's reign is usually placed a century later.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 years

The simple truth is that the Northman IS a moral tale, deeply so, & one full of people who are, within the norms of their culture, either perfectly decent or at least understandable. But it is their culture, not ours. It is an honor culture, like most in history, but not ours.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

I am legitimately floored by how startlingly poor your comprehension of Tolkien has to be to read Lord of the Rings and come out thinking *this* is the theme. How does that even happen lol?

Devon Eriksen

@Devon_Eriksen_

2 months

It's astonishing how few people understood Dune. It's as if they cannot reconcile the concepts of a good man and a bad outcome existing together. This is the whole point of Dune. It is a cautionary tale about the merging of church and state, about the dangers of cults of…

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

4 months

People spend so much time arguing over whether the witch-burnings were a Protestant or a Catholic thing, but my conclusion from this map is that they were, above all, a *Teutonic* thing

Xavi Ruiz

@xruiztru

4 months

People executed for Witchcraft in Europe, 1300-1850.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

28 days

Almost every Superman story nowadays or riff thereof is "what if Super Good Guy was actually evil, or brainwashed, or an arsehole?" because writers at present don't seem able to convincingly write characters who are just straightforwardly good people.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

1 year

Continuously surprised by the amount of people watching LotR who dead-faced think "pipe-weed" is meant to be marijuana. A solid 40% seem to lack any clear mental voice going "the author of this charming fantasy adventure probably didn't intend them huffing Pineapple Express"

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

2 months

To be clear, to my knowledge no African country has the death penalty for poaching an elephant. What we are talking about here is the creation and serious application of armed anti-poaching squads tasked with apprehending criminals, but equipped to act under duress as well.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

This is all quite similar to the rhetoric you hear about the Sámi here in the Nordics. I don't dislike the Sámi, at all in fact - their dress and languages are beautiful, their lifestyle fascinating, their history tragic - but the claim that they are "uniquely indigenous" is bunk

Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

5 months

Considering that the Inuit only arrived in the Americas circa 1000 AD, and therefore after the first Europeans (the Norse) made landfall on Greenland, idk to what degree they can really be called "Native Americans". They are, at least, a different group from "Amerindians proper"

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

9 months

Austronesians kick-starting the Indian Ocean trade, spreading coconuts around the world, introducing rice to Africa, turmeric to the Americas & sweet potatoes to Asia, bringing blowguns to the New World, spreading outriggers to India & East Africa, bringing dingos to Australia-

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

To critics and movie-goers I would simply say - the world was weird. IS weird, if you dare to travel beyond the confines of your provincial backyard or your Lonely Planet travel-guide. Things seeming strange, even "absurd" to you does NOT mean they were not done.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

10 months

Guinea pigs are actually a surprisingly interesting animal. Might be worth doing a whole thread on them. Did you know that they are domesticates that don't exist in the wild? Not only that, but unlike most domestic animals, guinea pigs are hybrids, with no single wild ancestor.

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Tristan S. Rapp

@Hieraaetus

11 months

The most telling judgement is that Eggers "played up the weirdness for shock-value" In reality, that very quality of weirdness is the clearest indicator that the film hewed closer to reality where nearly all other portrayals deviated for fear of alienation.

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