Image is a snapshot taken from the recent Hezbollah video "Our Mountains, Our Treasures", showcasing their extensive underground fortifications, supply lines, and weaponry.

iran can't keep doing this to me, they've gotta respond soon, right? I'm gonna run out of analysis about countries soon, oh god

The COTW (Child of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific child every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied children. If you've wanted to talk about the child or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any child.

The Child of the Week is Hassan LargePenis! He is chad-and-cuck rater and general commenter @LargePenis@hexbear.net's son, born over a month ago. @Greenleaf@hexbear.net recommended I have him as the COTW for a week and I finally got around to it.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • carpoftruth [any, any]M
    ·
    3 months ago

    A couple of months ago I saw a translated copy of 'journey to the west', the chinese classic about monkey king, on the shelf in the library and picked it up on a whim. I had an idea about the character of monkey king or sun wukong because of other video games but had no idea that black myth was coming out soon. I read this recent translation by julia lovell. The specific translation I picked up was quite abridged compared to a word for word translation (about 350 pages compared to 2000). I really enjoyed it so I'll share some things I learned with the newsheads here. I'm doing my best here to be accurate but I'm not a chinese speaker or reader so I encourage others to correct me.

    Though the book was written about 500 years ago, the story of Journey to the West starts about 1500 years ago. A buddhist monk from the tang empire in China, xuanzang, went on a journey to the west to india to study buddhism, retrieve and translate buddhist writings, and generally be a diligent travelling scholar. He made a 15-20 year round trip, brought back a bunch of writings, and wrote a book called 'Records of the Western Regions' about his travels. His book RotWR covers all kinds of non-religious matters - geography, ethnography, local industry/agriculture, manner of government, etc. A little like Herotodus' history without making a bunch of shit up. Anyway, xuanzang brought all this scholarly work back, the Tang emperor offered him high civil honours but he declined, deciding to stay in the monastery, translating texts and doing effort posts about buddhism.

    Xuanzang was rightly lauded and his travels were remembered as folk tales over the next few hundred years. I get the impression that while Wu Cheng'en wrote down the 'definitive copy' of all the stories about Xuanzang, the stories had been floating around in the zeitgeist for the past thousand years. in that time, the figure of xuanzang grew larger than life and his stories became one of a traveling troupe of himself the monk and various monstrous companions on a path of redemption, monkey king among them, as well as a big river monster, a flying, gluttonous pig, and a disgraced failson who was turned into a horse.

    There's three main parts of the overall monkey king story - the first part is about monkey on earth doing shenanigans, getting in trouble with heaven, and then devouring/stealing all kinds of heavenly objects, effectively gaining him superpowers. The second part is about the monk xuanzang getting selected to go west by the tang emperor and the buddhist figure guanyin, and the third part is the majority, xuanzang getting together with monkey and the others and going on adventures across the land. There's a short epilogue where they eventually all make it back with buddhist teachings and are rewarded with appropriate roles in the heavenly court. Most of the story is the journey, taking the form of short, episodic adventures in different places, most of which involve demons trying to eat one or more of the characters and them escaping through monkey's wit and warrior wisdom.

    I enjoyed the book on a few levels. First, it's funny. There's a ton of satire of bureaucracy of all sorts, in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld. Monkey is irreverent and brash and shits on many people, often literally. Second, it's got endless fights and encounters with crazy monsters. It's easy to see the influence of the book on shows like dragonball Z or avatar the last airbender. I can see why it would be a fun concept to turn into a game. A bit deeper than that, the group of companions collectively are an allegory for different human feelings. Xuanzang the monk is morally upright but rigidly so, and often a coward. Monkey is selfish and arrogant but also has a heart. The pig is lazy and loves treats, while the river monster is pretty chill and goes along to get along. Together they remind me of how the cast of star trek TNG collectively represent different aspects of human personality and experience, navigating challenges as an integrated whole that is not without conflict.

    Anyway A++ would culturally enrich myself again