this week in I Am Very Smart: having enough money to go to the opera, museums and concerts correlates with having enough money for food, shelter and basic health needs
They controlled for socioeconomic factors though! The people who conducted this study knew that people with lots of money to attend the opera were also more likely to be able to afford basic necessities, so they controlled for it in their analysis. The fun thing about statistics is that you can control for different confounding factors so you can look at the effects of one independent variable (opera or whatever) on the dependent variable (mortality). Part of being critical of potential biases is actually reading the article and knowing what to look for.
In addition to that very good point about controlling for socioeconomic factors, the article says a single museum or concert per year makes a difference. Most cities have free community concerts (some even have free opera performances!) and museums that are either free, pay-what-you-want, or at least have specific days/times during which they are free or at a significantly reduced cost. Many libraries (which are free) provide free museum passes to card holders. In fact, the article quotes a museum worker who works at a free art museum in Baltimore.
If you actually read the article you would also read that educators are excited about this study because it provides evidence that the arts should be made more accessible financially - by restoring arts programs in the public schools, for example.
Amid the punk ethics of 1990’s politics, trans activists Leslie
Feinberg and Riki Anne Wilchins spearhead a movement to protest the
trans-exclusionary policy of a women’s music festival in CAMP TRANS.
I don’t know who Megan Kelly is but I wanna piss her off
dis bitch
“Verifiable fact” 😭😂
I’d PISS ON HER tbh
btw Saint Nicholas, whom Santa Claus is based on, was a black guy
and we don’t know exactly what jesus looked like, but here’s an artistic reconstruction of an average 20-something male from his ethnic group at the time
DOES THIS LOOK FUCKING WHITE TO YOU
I want this post everywhere
jesus was represented more or less accurately as an ethnically jewish arab man up until the reign of pope alexander vi, in the late 15th century. since he was viciously persecuting roman jews during this time, alexander wanted to make them less sympathetic to the public, and did so in part by ordering that portrayals of jesus be based off of his son, cesare borgia.
the reason “jesus is white” is because someone purposefully attempted to alter the perception of history to benefit his goal of persecuting a targeted ethnic group.
Ooh, interesting historical note.
I don’t usually share posts like this but I always want to piss off Megan Kelly
Canon Santa not fanon Santa
Hey you guys should join Socialist Alternative if u want to no pressure
🅱️ocialist 🅱️lternative is the North American section of the Committee For A Workers International, a socialist organization with ~10,000 active members on 6 continents. CWI comrades have been instrumental in the fight for affordable housing and a higher minimum wage here in the US, the abortion rights movement in Ireland, underground labor organizing in China and Nigeria, and the ongoing revolution in Sudan.
SAlt’s goal is to build a movement for social justice and workers’ rights in the United States independent from the two major parties and from corporate control.
From the website:
Socialist Alternative is the organization that
spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council
in 2013, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in
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Fighting for the 99%
Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, as a step toward a living wage for all.
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Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For
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should be regularly elected and receive the average wage of those they
represent.
No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership.
Break the power of Wall Street! For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.
Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits; share out the work with the unemployed and create new jobs.
Environmental Sustainability
Fight climate change. Massive public investment in
renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to rapidly replace
fossil fuels.
A major expansion of public transportation to provide low fare, high-speed, and accessible transit.
Democratic public ownership of the big energy companies,
retooling them for socially necessary green production. A “Just
Transition” for all workers in polluting industries with guaranteed
re-training and new living-wage jobs.
Equal Rights for All
Fight discrimination based on race, nationality, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, and all
other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work.
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brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system.
Invest in rehabilitation, job-training, and living-wage jobs, not
prisons! Abolish the death penalty.
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Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.
Defend a woman’s right to choose whether and when to
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with free reproductive services, including all forms of birth control
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Money for Jobs and Education, Not War
End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bring all the troops home now!
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For a mass workers party drawing together workers, young
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Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental
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Solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples internationally: An injury to one is an injury to all.
Take into public ownership the top 500 corporations and
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A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the
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For a socialist United States and a socialist world.
“But conrad,” you say, “how am I get involved with this very good and nice organization??” Well, that’s easy!
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When Victoria Gray was just 3 months old, her family discovered something was terribly wrong.
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It was Gray’s first sickle cell crisis. These episodes are one of the worst things about sickle cell disease, a common and often devastating genetic blood disorder. People with the condition regularly suffer sudden, excruciating bouts of pain.
Gray is now 34 and lives in Forest, Miss. She volunteered to become the first patient in the United States with a genetic disease to get treated with the revolutionary gene-editing technique known as CRISPR.
NPR got exclusive access to chronicle Gray’s journey through this medical experiment, which is being watched closely for some of the first hints that changing a person’s genes with CRISPR could provide a powerful new way to treat many diseases.
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“To be able to take this new technology and give people a chance for a new life is a dream come true,” Collins says. “And here we are.”
Photo: Meredith Rizzo/NPR Caption: Victoria Gray, who has sickle cell disease, volunteered for one of the most anticipated medical experiments in decades: the first attempt to use the gene-editing technique CRISPR to treat a genetic disorder in the United States.
hi! do you mind explaining the tradition behind Mari Lywd?
I love this ask because it’s such a polite way of going EXPLAIN THAT POST ELANOR
EXPLAIN YOURSELF
EXPLAIN YOUR PEOPLE
I’m not sure if you’re after the history of the thing, or the actual practice of it, since ‘tradition’ could cover either - so, I’ll give you both, and hopefully your answer will be in here somewhere. I will also include more Frightening Images of the Mari Lwyd because you can never have too many horrifying photos of ornery skull-masked winter horse demons to scare the tits off you.
Okay, so. The Mari Lwyd.
Now, the first concrete recorded incidences of the Mari are from the late 1700s/early 1800s, but as with a lot of Welsh history, that’s misleading. We didn’t write a lot of our own shit like this down for much the same reason that Egypt never mentioned where to find Punt, and the English didn’t generally travel into Wales much if they could help it. Given that it seems to fold into a lot of other older traditions, though (the Hooded Animal, the Mast Beast, etc), and those have pre-Christian roots,
I believe there’s a theory that it might have its roots in worshipping Rhiannon, the Welsh version of Epona, the pan-Celtic horse goddess. But there’s no way to be sure.
The meaning of the name is disputed. It’s generally accepted to mean “Grey Mare”. For a while some people thought it meant “Holy/Blessed Mary”, as in, y’know, the Virgin Mary, but this is no longer accepted because
“Llwyd” means grey, not white, and “gwen” is the colour normally used to also mean pure or holy; grey would be more likely to mean venerable/wise, which the Mari Lwyd ain’t;
I think there’s reference to ‘Mari’ being used for ‘Mary’ (instead of ‘Mair’) in the Black Book of Carmarthen, so at least since the 14th century, but that was likely only by poets - there’s no record of common folk using it before the Protestants came and reformed everything, so it seems unlikely that it could have been the original name; and
As far as I am aware there is no record of the religio-historical figure of the Virgin Mary mounting the donkey’s head on a stick and hammering down the door to the inn with a half-empty bottle of gin in one hand while scream-singing insults at the innkeeper so he’d give her cheese.
So, it’s generally accepted now that the connotations with Christian Marian symbolism are part coincidence and part encouraged among the clergy post-Reformation so that everyone could keep getting blind drunk with a horse’s skull and calling each other a willy. Plus, both Ireland and the Isle of Mann have very old hooded horse traditions too, called the Láir Bhán and the Laare Vane in Irish and Manx respectively. Both meaning, surprise surprise, the “white/grey mare”. Given that Wales and Ireland had a lot of historical interaction, this seems like more than coincidence.
Plus, you know, it is kind of a grey mare. Bones are white.
It did have other names in some places, mind - I think Carmarthenshire had some weird name for it, like Y March or y Gynfas-Farch, but you mustn’t ever listen to people from West Wales because then there would we be? Calling woodlice ‘pennysawls’ and claiming the word “Wi’n” is an acceptable variation of the verb “to be”, that’s where.
Anyway. Once upon a time, this was seemingly a mid-winter celebration in Wales, which then became a Christmas celebration until the Church went “You’re doing WHAT” and it became New Year instead. But, it did vary when different villages would do it. Some would do it on New Year, some at Christmas, some in that weird week in between when you don’t know if the bins are going out or not… You get the idea. These days, it’s New Year, as a rule.
Now, Europe does have a lot of varying traditions of doing this shit - google ‘mast beast’ for exciting photos. But usually, the beast is made by someone bending over beneath the sheet to make it look, you know, like the beast they’re mimicking. The Mari Lwyd stands out because, alone of all of them, she stands up straight, and is seven feet tall. She is the tallest of all the mast beasts. In a country where the average female height is 5'4", and men not much taller, that makes her fuck-damned enormous.
So, with that out of the way, let me tell you how it goes!
Traditionally, making the Mari is an important part of the whole thing - most villages would have a set skull they’d use, like, but the decoration was a week-long community affair, because as we all know, it would be creepy if you just stuck a skull on a pole oh my god. You have to put ribbons and glass eyes on it! That stops it being creepy! Obviously!
(Also, as a side note, battery-powered fairy lights have been a gift to the Mari Lwyd.)
The skulls, incidentally, were almost always from a beloved village horse who had at some point died at a ripe old age, and then whose skull was taken to live on as the Mari. Most villages knew their names, decades later. Down the Gower peninsula I think there was one account, mind, that they used to bury the skull for the rest of the year, and just dig it up in time for the Mari. But most kept it in a cupboard, like. Next to the sugar. I dunno. An important point, though - the skulls are also rigged so the person inside can snap the jaw, and incidentally, few things in this infinite and wondrous existence are as creepy and low-key primally unnerving as hearing ten of these things around you snapping in the dark, just btw, just fyi.
Anyway; you’ve spent a week decorating! (Although these days they’re kept pre-decorated.) What now?
The Mari party gathers at about midday. That’s the Mari herself, plus others - it varies who, but classically, I think they dressed up as Punch and Judy characters, those being the mischievous comedy extravaganza of the day. Then they start at one end of the village and go to the first house, where they sing Cân y Fari. That’s a bit like yelling ‘Trick or treat’, except rather than asking for sweets, they’re after delicious alcohol and cheese (side note: Wales’ relationship with cheese goes beyond Peak White Person and out the other side into What Is Wrong With You People. We have myths and folklore about it. It is Very Important.)
Now, the house holders do not want to give away their delicious alcohol and cheese, and so at this point, they begin something called the Pwnco (the ‘w’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’, while the ‘o’ is short like in ‘hot’.) The Pwnco is, like… sort of like a rap battle? But sung. But that’s the idea. It’s beautifully poetic, and almost always opens with the same very nice verse, to whit:
Wel dyma ni'n diwad (Well here we come) Gyfeillion diniwad (Innocent friends) I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave) I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave) I ofyn am gennad i ganu (To ask leave to sing)
which you can hear a bit of here; I filmed that in Llangynnwyd. But, it’s very much a “So’s your FACE” type of thing. The householders tell the Mari to get straight to fuck, and then the Mari responds in kind. And they go back and forth until one side loses.
Now, if the Mari loses, she goes to the next house. But if the householders lose, they have to let her in and give her their delicious alcohol and cheese. IMPORTANT STEP, HOWEVER: if they have a bare ounce of sense between them, they first make her promise to behave before letting her past the door. Because if they don’t, HA HA all hell breaks loose, and the party do as much mischief as they can, like smearing ash on your walls and stealing your goats and mixing your white laundry in with your colours and hiding your drawing tablet pens. It is a Riot.
Anyway, once done, they leave the tattered ruins of your former house, go to the next house, and start again. More delicious alcohol and cheese!
It all got banned by the Welsh Non-Conformist Church of No Fun ever, because rival Mari parties would get blind drunk and then fight each other in the streets. It started to die out in the 50s, though some smaller villages kept it going - Llangynnwyd never even stopped. And in the last two decades it’s started making a resurgence in places like Brecon, Llantrisant, etc - tonnes of places in the belt between Vale and mountains, really, which makes me think it’s because the Folk Museum is in St Ffagans.
But Chepstow do a modern twist - the town is right on the border with England, so they do a festival of Welsh Mari Lwyd and English morris dancing combined in mid-January each year. Turns out, every goddamn Mari in the country comes to it, too, which is why this year I got to see 24 Mari Lwyds. I had NO IDEA. So, so many Maris…
It also used to sometimes get mixed in with other festive cheese-begging traditions like Calennig, but it is pretty much separate. As a final question: why do it? Well… we dunno. The purpose of the uppity skeletal horse beast is unknown at this point. Like I say, it may well have been a Rhiannon thing; given the way it got folded into some Christian things post-Reformation, it may have absorbed some form of fleeing-on-a-donkey-to-give-birth stuff. It’s hard to even nail down distribution patterns. But, something I find interesting about its distribution is that it was predominantly done in areas that either mined, smelted or sold minerals a lot. Make of that what you will.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
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