Monday, July 14, 2025

hi everyone

 hello friends

let me tell you all about my latest obsession in lieu of doing my desk job (technically i am on lunch break it's fine). it is related to tannu tuva. tuva is today a republic inside the russian federation, but for a brief moment in time was a country of its own bordering mongolia and the ussr. i think the republics of russia in siberia and central asia (and the caucuses too but that's besides the point) are super fascinating places. they are essentially their own countries with their own very long and distinct histories inside the modern country of russia. there are many different peoples that we basically never hear about in our parts of the world because they don't have their own nation states - tuvans, buryats, etc. the groups inside this part of the world have connections all over the place because all people are interconnected. there are many turkic groups distantly connected to the people of turkey and azerbaijan, there are groups of uralic peoples with distant ties to finland, estonia and hungary, and most cool there are the yeniseian people (today just the ket i think) who are demonstrably related to indigenous north americans!! they are today decently inland in siberia but their language is related to the languages of alaska, canada, california and arizona/texas. there's dna evidence backing up this connection too. that's crazy to me.

anyway sorry that's a tangent. the thing i am super into atm is the tannu tuva national anthem. it is called the tuvan internationale. i think i have heard every rendition of it on youtube so here's maybe the best one (imo):

 

how good is it!! not what you traditionally expect from a national anthem. the throat singing. the key change. the female choir in the second verse. the pacing of the drums. i legit cannot get it out of my head. i keep finding myself singing it to myself.

here is a version by huun huur tu, a famous ""world music"" band from tuva. the album is called 60 horses in my herd which i think is a really good name for an album. when i eventually get a record player i will seek out a vinyl copy of this album.

in general like every single tuvan song is a banger. there are no misses.but this one in particular just really gets my heart.

...but anyway yes we all fall down the central & north asia rabbit hole at some point in our lives right. you guys have felt the call of the steppe too right? daydreaming of sunsets and golden grass and mountainous horizons and taking pride in your herd of horses instead of sit at computer all day bullshit? (yes i am very aware that that lifestyle that i am imagining does not exist, probably never really existed, and is a very glorified propagandised image. nationalism produces embellished imagery. but the image is extremely alluring to dream about, real or not)

thank you for listening to my ted talk ig. i hope you also enjoyed the tuvan internationale

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Monday, January 8, 2024

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

did yuo know

 that spanish has two words for mountain ranges.

the word 'sierra' is for a smaller grouping of mountains, whereas 'cordillera' is for a large mountain range. groups of mountains inside a cordillera can be called a sierra. 

i just think it's neat that there's a geographical classification that exists in spanish and not english (or italian, which is strange because it's usually very similar to spanish). 

(and also that spanish has other distinctive geographical categorisations different from english that isn't "the americas is one continent")

thank you for reading my blog post.

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

thank you blogger

 for sending me an email saying that last post from 2011 was flagged as community-restricted and then 5 minutes later re-emailing me that the post has been re-instated, in the process changing the timestamp of the post so that it shows at the top of the feed


wth lol it's a 11 year old post whose body is "....."


is an intern at blogger training the post detection algorithm or something here what's going on like this is not the only time this stuff has come up recently

Trials.

...

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

song of the year 2022


not even kidding

Thursday, August 4, 2022

i unironically love skip-hop but like



but it's so hard to defend when like. big boys in the scene bliss n eso (remember the sea is rising) put out a music video where one of them unironically says the line 'catch these rats like pickle rick did' (2:50 in the video) while wearing joker makeup

i mean i dont heaps listen to bliss n eso. i am not the target demo of a white guy who smokes weed and watches basketball. but still

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

hey remember 2009


oh no rude they blocked it.please go through to youtube it's good i promise

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Great song

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

happy january

 it is january

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

happy october

 it is october

Sunday, March 7, 2021

we're living in the future


why is this so good tho this has no right to be this good

edit:uuuhhhhh hi umm. i see there is another post immediately before this with the same title. i thought i was safe because of the low posting frequency here. but it's when you think you are safe that you get caught out. anyway now we have to live two posts in a row called "living in the future" with meme versions of popular songs in them being on this blog like this forever