Two athletes who agreed to share gold medals in the Olympics men’s high jump competition, in what is likely to be remembered as one of the most heartwarming moments of the Tokyo Games, have been flooded with praise.
Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi and Mutaz Barshim of Qatar were locked in first place after a tough few hours of competing on Sunday. The two athletes, who are also good friends, were then given the option to settle matters with a jump-off.
Barshim had a better idea: how about two golds?
The official said that was possible. Barshim nodded and footage from Tokyo showed Tamberi instantly accepting, slapping Barshim’s hand and jumping into his arms. Tamberi then belly-flopped hard onto the track, rolled around a few times and screamed.
“I still can’t believe it happened,” he said. “Sharing with a friend is even more beautiful … It was just magical.”
The charismatic Italian continued to celebrate, delivering hugs and kisses to people as he jumped around the track.
Barshim, while not quite as effusive as his rival, agreed the Olympic victory needed to be shared.
“For me, coming here, I know for a fact that for the performance I did, I deserve that gold,” Barshim said. “He did the same thing, so I know he deserved that gold.”
It was a display of sportsmanship that delighted Olympics spectators around the world. The reaction on social media was swift, with some describing it as the best moment of the Games. …
Reusing and repairing household goods, from washing machines to phones, and recycling throwaway consumer items such as plastic bottles, could create hundreds of thousands of green jobs across the UK, a thinktank has found.
The UK creates thousands of tonnes of unnecessary waste each year, some of which is still exported, because of a failure to value resources and invest in the infrastructure needed to re-purpose manufactured goods.
The Green Alliance thinktank found that prioritising the repair and reuse of manufactured goods instead could create more than 450,000 jobs in the next 15 years, many of them in areas where traditional manufacturing has declined. …
A team of investigators used enhanced carbon dating methods to examine human remains from the site in Peru
A scientific discovery about Machu Picchu has cast doubt on the reliability of colonial records for modern western historians trying to piece together an understanding of the Inca people who built the site.
For more than 75 years, many historians and scientists have worked on the assumption that the famous site in Peru was built some time after AD1438. This was based primarily on 16th-century Spanish accounts from their conquest of the region. However, enhanced radiocarbon dating techniques carried out on remains have now found it could be at least two decades older.
“The results suggest that the discussion of the development of the Inca empire based primarily on colonial records requires revision,” said the lead author of the research, Prof Richard Burger from Yale University.
“Modern radiocarbon methods provide a better foundation for understanding Inca chronology than the contradictory historical records.”
The historical site is one of the most well-known in the world, yet its past and the people who used it remain among the more mysterious to western historians.
The ancient citadel would typically attract more than a million visitors each year. Yet developing an understanding of its detailed history has been made more difficult by huge cultural differences, such as a lack of contemporary historical records inscribed in a way that would have been recognisable to Europeans.
To tackle this, Burger led a team of US investigators in carrying out accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of human remains from Machu Picchu.
They examined the remains of 26 individuals and the results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity, strongly suggested continuous use of the site from 1420 at the latest – and probably earlier – until 1530. The latter date would roughly coincide with the start of the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire.
“This is the first study based on scientific evidence to provide an estimate for the founding of Machu Picchu and the length of its occupation,” said Burger, adding that earlier such attempts did not produce sufficiently reliable results.
There is some debate among academics about the relative values of historical and archeological records in developing historical narratives. “Inca chronology is a matter of debate among archaeologists and historians,” Dr Gabriela Ramos of Cambridge University said.
“Dating Inca sites is subject to speculation because written accounts and archaeological evidence do not always correspond. For decades, historians and anthropologists have relied mostly on written accounts and it is rather recent that archaeological findings, use of radiocarbon dating, and other techniques are contributing to, add to or change our understanding of pre-Columbian societies.
“The fact that very few Inca tombs have survived – because of looting – and, overall within Andean archaeological research, the fact that the Inca period is the least studied [mean that] we still don’t know as much about the Incas as we do about their predecessors.”
Dr Trish Biers, an osteologist at the same institution, said colonial records are important to our understanding of what was witnessed by the Spanish at the time. But that they were “heavily influenced by political propaganda, religious superiority, and the overall subversive voice of the Spanish Empire, which had its own glittering agenda”.
She said: “Scientific methods, particularly on human remains, can give us insight into what the people were experiencing – for example, diet, disease and labour – on both an individual level and population level. Which is pretty cool.” …
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya expected to head to Poland amid fears she would be punished if she returned home
The Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has left Japan on a Vienna-bound plane after refusing to return to Belarus because she feared she would face punishment for publicly criticising her coaches for their “negligence”.
Tsimanouskaya has received a humanitarian visa from Poland after she said Belarus officials attempted to bundle her on a plane. She requested police protection at Haneda airport and later took refuge at the Polish embassy in Tokyo in a scandal that has rocked the games.
Tsimanouskaya was expected to take a direct flight to Warsaw but switched at the last minute, apparently as a security precaution. The Austrian government has saidshe will travel to Poland after she lands in Vienna on Wednesday.
“As we have indicated many times, for safety reasons we do not provide details of the flight route,” the Polish deputy foreign minister, Marcin Przydacz, said in a post on Twitter. He wrote that Tsimanouskaya was “being taken care of by the Polish diplomatic service”.
Other prominent Belarusian athletes have said they feel unsafe to return to the country, where the leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has launched a harsh crackdown on opposition that has also seen athletes suspended for political opposition and even jailed.
The Belarusian heptathlete Yana Maksimava, who competed in the Olympic Games in 2008 and 2012, wrote that after the incident with Tsimanouskaya, she and her husband would remain in Germany and not return to Belarus because of the pressure on the opposition.
“Unfortunately you can lose not just your freedom but also your life there,” she wrote in a post on Instagram, adding in public remarks that she felt unsafe returning to the country with her young daughter. “Here you can breathe easily and be one of those who fights for free speech of one’s friends, relatives, and those you are close to. We absolutely will win,” she said.
Her husband, Andrei Krauchanka, who medaled in the Beijing games in 2008 and has openly supported the protests against Lukashenko, was among those detained and beaten during protests last year.
Tsimanouskaya said in an interview with the Associated Press that officials from her team had “made it clear” she would face punishment if she returned home to an autocratic government that has relentlessly stifled any criticism.
Her refusal to return home has refocused attention on human rights violations in Belarus, where Lukashenko has hounded opposition members at home and even grounded a plane flying from Greece to Lithuania to arrest a dissident journalist on board. …
while coronavirus plays into anti-China ideas worldwide, it’s also difficult to explain what’s so great about democracy when you’re being absolutely ravaged by a virus that China and Vietnam have already handled.
The great thing about democracy is that you don’t have religious dissidents being harvested for their organs. The great thing about democracy is that you don’t have over a million citizens tossed into gulags for the crime of not being born as ethnic Hans and revering God over the Party. The great thing about democracy is that you have independent entities that can keep you honest and prevent the government from lying to the WHO about human-to-human transmission, thereby exponentially worsening the pandemic.
Stop worshipping Xi pal-he’d still disappear you if you actually lived in his hellhole of a country.
that’s the thing, when it comes to accusing innocent Muslims of being terrorists and imprisoning them in camps that ship has already sailed to Guantanamo some time ago, the War on Terror provides a perfect justification for anything that can be framed as taming Islamic radicalism, and China can reasonably claim that (forced) Mandarin lessons are surely less egregious crimes against humanity than Apache helicopters firing at Iraqi civilians.
if we go a little further back to French Algeria we see an example of a notionally democratic republic committing the most appalling abuses against a breakaway province populated by an ethnic minority, so it’s clear that system of governance alone can’t guarantee humane outcomes.
the strength of the US is that it can elect a president as unfit for the office as Trump without collapsing into civil war (yet), the weakness of course is that he was nominated in the first place, a nation of three hundred million people choosing a bankrupt casino developer to head the executive branch.
when America sends in the national guard to enforce curfew and the cops are delivering beat downs and rubber bullets against journalists the rest of the world sees that and says huh, guess those precious freedoms are fake then, your democracy is just fancy words around the authoritarian fist like everybody else.
there might be a difference, but it’s subtle! your financial assets are probably more secure in America, so it’s the destination of choice if you’re rich (don’t carry cash in your car though, the cops can steal it without repercussions).
I’d hate to be railroaded by a secretive court and end up in a Chinese prison, but then I don’t think the American justice system is particularly good at delivering justice either, and the reputation of American prisons is not great.
now personally I believe in the strength of democracy and rule of law, but maintaining it in practice is difficult, and trying to paint China and the US as polar opposites isn’t very convincing.
rather than wanting China to be more like the US, I think I would rather that China and the US be more like a country should be, and that’s something we’re still dimly fumbling towards after all these years.
China is objectively worse than the US, you’re defending re-education camps run by China by saying America did some other stuff that was worse(because that’s how judging guilt and impact of crimes works), the national guard and police are paraplegic kittens compared to the PLA and MSS, and the difference is so vast that it’s almost too obvious to say. Guantanmo Bay holding a few dozen terrorists, of whom some maybe didn’t massacre civilians, is not the same thing as the Uighyr gulags. Guantanamo is also not on the level of the government re-writing of the Quran to reflect socialist values, which is also being done to the Bible. Clashes between protesters and cops are not the same as a complete repression of democratic ideas Hong-Kong style and the use of dissidents as organ farms.
You are so impossibly ignorant of this situation that I can’t possibly imagine what combination of drugs and MotherJones articles you had to endure in order to have this warped a perception of reality. China should be more like the US, because China is a tyrannical Orwellian nightmare, and the US isn’t. No amount of anti-American hatebonering can change that.
Golly I sure am glad I don’t live in a tyrannical Orwellian nightmare like China.
yeah, I’m not here to defend China, one country committing war crimes and torturing prisoners doesn’t justify another country committing genocide, that isn’t how justice works.
but if you’re trying to convince Chinese people that democracy is a superior system, which I believe it is, it certainly doesn’t help to have democracies running around committing war crimes and torturing prisoners!
imagine if Chelsea Manning was imprisoned for seven years for releasing evidence of Chinese war crimes, she’d be an American national hero.
the Hong Kong cops are acting in defense of tyranny and yet somehow still manage to be more professional and restrained in doing so than American cops who are apparently upholding rule of law and yet can murder people and steal shit with impunity; people see this! people know this! so when you tell them that they should be more like the US they demur and go well I don’t want to be shot by a cop for no reason, and it’s tough to argue with that.
we have to recognise Chinese government crimes, but not at the cost of ignoring US government crimes, or French government crimes, or Australian government crimes (turns out Australian troops have been executing civilians in Afghanistan, one more thing that the PLA hasn’t been doing).
painting the Chinese government as uniquely flawed isn’t just inaccurate, it’s also unhelpful, as it plays into narrative of America talking up the crimes of others as a partisan ploy to distract from its own misdeeds.
Xi Jinping was roasted for staying silent on the coronavirus for two weeks, but compare that with the utter clowning of Boris Johnson or Trump or Bolsonaro and naturally you might start to wonder exactly what benefit democracy has conferred on these countries.
if China is that bad and you still can’t outperform it, that’s appalling!
The US imprisons more people, gross and per capita, than anywhere in the world. It requires a certain kind of propaganda poisoning to point to Chinese prison camps as a point in an argument for how the US is superior, and not recognize the irony.
No, it requires the intelligence to realize that China lies about the amount of people it imprisons, while in the US it’s usually public record. And also many countries straight up execute people for minor offenses, or they’re never accused at all.
I have never seen a single person explain the connective logic between “the US has more prisoners” and “the US is tyrannical and worse than other countries”.
I’m also fairly certain people have been murdered in Hong Kong. Cherry picking bad things the US supposedly does to downplay China’s misdeeds is defending China, argumate.
First, im pretty sure those unidentified officers turned out to actually have identification.
Second, even if they weren’t the fact you can read that article revealing the shaddy shit the gov is doing is not a.luxury you have in China.
IIRC, they were wearing vests that said “police”, and the people they nabbed were all processed and released in proper form, as far as anyone knows.
Okay so I’m going to make a point now, because I think it deserves to be stated.
Argumate is, publicly and openly, shilling for totalitarian governments that rob you of your freedoms, but ONLY when Argumate considers those governments to be ‘effective’ in some things.
The position is quite literally 'At least the trains ran on time!’
I’m not saying Argumate IS a fascist, but they do seem quite eager to sell everyone out to fascism, if that’s what it takes for them to not have to worry about things.
Quick someone recite the Tiananmen square copypasta and see if he keeps responding.
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
Abu Ghraib Kent State Tricky Dick Watergate Donald Trump Cheapskate George Bush Deep State Bay of Pigs Invasion Castro keeps on sailin’ JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say etc.
gotta say, it’s very satisfying seeing one of the most consistently anti-communist libs on this site get burned at the stake by libertarian cretins for Tankie Crimes, namely committing the deadly sin of nuance.
listen argumate, you can grovel at the feet of the anti-communist narrative and repeat it’s talking points like sacred mantras all your life- indeed, you’ve done exactly this- but at the end of the day nothing will ever satisfy the hungry maw of anti-communism, it’s bloodlust is insatiable, it’s belly always screaming out for more flesh. no matter what you do to appease them, no matter how absurd the anti-communist lies you repeat- “kim jong-un made it illegal to not eat your own children!”- it will never be enough, and the anti-communist mob will eventually come for you.
are you really so confident you’ve chosen the right side, argumate?
oh and finally, it’s actually not hard at all to explain what’s so great about democracy, since both vietnam and china are democracies. hope that helps.
now now, don’t be jealous just because they’ve crowned me Supreme Smug Communist of Tumblr instead of you.
I appreciate your recognition of nuance, but you blow it immediately afterwards by implying I’ve “chosen a side” and “grovel at the feet of the anti-communist narrative” and “repeat talking points like sacred mantras” etc. etc. honestly that doesn’t sound nuanced at all! am I frantically repeating lies to appease the insatiable bloodlust maw that threatens to consume me or am I just making fairly banal points that you agree with yourself but are compelled to tack on three paragraphs of guff to make sure nobody mistakes you for the wrong kind of person?
anyway I’ve been accused of being a fascist by you and a communist by your alter ego who cannot be named for years now, as you well know.
anyway I’ve been accused of being a fascist by you
post a link to any post i have ever made calling you a fascist or admit you’re lying. i’ve consistently called you a liberal and you know it.
sorry you’re right, you’ve always called me obnoxious and insufferable but never fascist, so definitely points for accuracy there.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
