u/IndieJones0804

I don't know much about wicca in the way of details. All I know is that there are two gods, 5 elements, a focus on the year and cycles, witchs will usually have a personal alter that I don't quite know how it works, and they also have a "book of shadows" which as i understand is a personal notebook where you experiment and write down how to do different spells, and then of course there's spells, which aren't like turning stuff into frogs or whatever, but rather spells to try and bring about good outcomes in life.

Is most of what ive said here correct? And do you have anything to add for writing wicca and wiccans?

I know that Romani is divided into different dialects and I'm not sure how similar they are to each other. Plus google translate isn't the most reliable translator.

I was trying to find the translation for "New" and it gave me "Nevo", which to me sounds like a stereotype of a non-English way of saying new, but I don't know.

My understanding is that slavery in the United States was starting to phase out anyway during the founding period, but thanks to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was able to continue be a worthwhile industry for another century. And of course, you get the civil war and subsequent abolition of slavery.

But after the civil war and after reconstruction, as I understand, the former slaves of the south actually mostly continued living under similar working conditions, except this time they could actually get paid and had freedom of movement. This was the case because having just been slaves, they didn't really have much power to be able to change their own economic situation, so they basically just continued living and working the same jobs they had before.

But eventually, over a period of decades, black people were able to very slowly improve their own situations and the semi-slavery conditions largely phased out.

This makes me wonder if the civil war and abolition of slavery had not happened, would slavery have still been phased out by the turn of the century like the founding fathers assumed would happen around their time?

I was just thinking, as I understand, a communist society is a society where each city or town or whatever is an individual commune. (In a simplistic sense) Everyone works for the commune and the fruits of all our labor are put in a big pile in the middle of town, and everyone is free to take whatever they want from the pile.

And what I was trying to figure out is how would nomadic society fit into communism. And the thing I just realized is, I wonder, would the various nomadic tribes traveling together each be their own commune? but instead of being a set in stone town, the commune is mobile?

Is this an accurate idea of what communism and communes are?

The Harry Potter craze during the 2000s seemed to really elevate the popularity of magic and witch aesthetics, and I personally feel like the online MMO game Wizard 101 also helped increase the popularity of those aesthetics as well.

I curious, for those who have been wiccans for a long time, have you noticed an uptick in people becoming wiccans after things like harry potter came around? like maybe seeing more people in your coven or seeing more people in those witch stores ive seen?

I know that communism is both a political ideology and system. But I kind of just realized it may also be a philosophy. This is because as I understand, Communism relies on a few assumptions about people and society.

One of them is about currency. The reason we invented money was so that we could have something that allows people to trade things and labor value in ways that a relatively precise, "this thing costs $23.64, so i will need to contribute $23.64 worth of labor to society, or sell objects that make up a worth around $23.64". Under Communism however, because everyone freely decides to work and everything is free, the trade between things of value is a lot more abstract. Basically communist philosophy promotes moving away from trying to hyperspicifically determine value.

Theres also the assumption that people will freely decide to work with any specific reward. People today think that people are only ever willing to work if they know they will be given a specific reward for that work. Communist philosophy however believes that people would be willing to do work specifically because they think people like doing some work as a way to pass the time/not get bored, and also because they get the mental reward of helping society and people in general.

Then there's also the assumption that people won't excessively waste and of the collective fruits of society, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Under society today, you can Basically do as much as you want, consume as much as you want, etc, as long as you have enough money. Which is why rich people do often just waste a bunch of money and societal resources to do random entertaining stuff... *COUGH* mr.beast *COUGH*... But under communist philosophy, there's an assumption that everyone will be reasonable and not take a whole bunch of stuff that they don't need, simply for the sake of wasting resources for random reasons, even though technically everything is free, people are technically allowed to take as much want/need.

Under current societal culture, I don't think we would be able to instantly do communism because we don't have the right cultural beliefs to do it (as listed above), which is why I think Communism is not just a system and political ideology, but a philosophy.

Maybe all of this was obvious to you but I just kind of realized this.

Looking back at the covid era, I'm not quite sure if anarchism would have been able to effectively deal with the pandemic. A large part of the covid response was handled by state powers, like vaccine distribution, mask mandates, and quarantines. And while much of that same state power/functions could be simulated in an anarchist society, I feel like it wouldn't have been as effective since you couldn't force these things on people.

The main problem though that I see in hindsight is the anti-science group that simply made everything harder. Sure, a lot of that was motivated by Trump trying to constantly downplay the pandemic and making people thing the government was just using "the flu" to expand state power. And so if the state didn't exist then there likely wouldn't be a trump type cult leader who does all that.

But the Anti-Vaccine and Anti-Mask movements mostly predate the trump era, and are mostly a product of inherent human stupidity and suspicion. I feel like without the state there would still be that block of people who are conspiracy minded and would still cause a lot of people to get sick and die. which itself is an infringement on human freedom that anarchy promises.

In this sense specifically, I feel like a state that is able to handle a pandemic really well would be preferable for human freedom than anarchy, since anarchy wouldn't be able to suppress the segment of society that are anti-science and willing to screw everyone else over.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but from what I've heard Argentina is both culturally similar to Texas, and is also kind of libertarian leaning politically, similar to parts of Texas and southwest America.

From what I've seen online there seems to be a small independence movement for the mostly white region of Brazil in the south. However, unlike most separatist movements, there doesn't seem to be an official name for the country that they want to make.

On Wikipedia the primary advocacy group for independence is called "The South Is My Country". And the three states that would make up the country have very different names. So I'm wondering if anyone here knows more about it and if there is a name for such a hypothetical country.

I looked a post on this sub asking what are some good places/tools to make a dictionary for a conlang, and one of the people responded with Living dictionaries.

So I looked it up, but at face value it seems to be a website specifically made for preserving endangered real world languages.

Should I still use the website to build a dictionary for a conlang? or do you have other resource recommendations?

I just seemed to notice a pattern in various eras of history. Starting at the Punic wars, the Carthaginians lost and ended up having to sign an extremely unfair treaty with the romans. That ended up making the Carthaginians mad and eventually they got their own legendary figure in Hannible who was also incredibly mad at the romans. He then staged a legendary campaign through the alps and into the Italian peninsula, where he was able to do massive damage to the romans despite being the underdog. This was also partially due to the incompetence of the romans. However, eventually the romans were able to recover and ultimately win the war.

Next we have France after the 7 years war against England. France ended up in such a weak state that eventually the people had a revolution and killed the ruling class. This scared the rest of monarchist Europe, so they started seeing France as a threat. But then Napolean rises into power and is able to be massively successful in taking over large swaths of Europe, becoming a legendary figure himself. But then eventually after a long time the tables turn, and Napolean is defeated in the end.

And then there's Germany after WW1 where the treaty of Versailles puts extremely harsh terms on the Germans, and so a bad economy and instability follows. Until eventually Hitler rises to power as another legendary figure who takes Europe by surprise by going through the Ardennes forest and quickly taking France, unlike what they expected to happen which was another trench war stalemate. Germany then takes over massive swaths of Europe, but then the tables turn once again and Germany is ultimately defeated.

The pattern here I'm noticing seems to be that after a war weakens one country (in two of those cases it seems to be the result of an unequal treaty), a legendary war figure emerges who takes the enemy (who smugly seems to think they can't be beat after the last war) by surprise using unique tactics, and then seems to nearly defeat the enemy. But then after a period of time, the tables turn and they ultimately end up being defeated once again.

Under socialism its hard to say what social need or want could exist that wouldn't already be provided by society. but under anarchism i wonder if there would be a space for charitable organizations to exist. because as I understand, in a sense communes are themselves charitable communities where everything is free for everyone to use within reason. So if you live farther out from society maybe there would be charities for people who don't have readily accessible needs or wants?

In the story im writing there's a religion im trying to create that would basically combine the Abrahamic religions into one giant religion, primarily Christianity and Islam. And so im trying to make it so it would realistically appeal to the majority of Christians and Muslims.

What I want to know then is what are some similarities between Christianity and Islam that I could put into this religion to make them similar? So far I basically just know that both Christianity and Islam hold Jesus in incredibly high regard, and both religions also have the idea of the anti-christ in their texts. Also, and I don't know why this is, but religions in general, but primarily the Abrahamic religions seem to be pretty conservative for some reason, so that could be another thing they share.

If anyone knows more about both religions it would be greatly appreciated if I could hear some more intersections.

I've been doing a little bit of research on the topic of hair color to see what colors we could possibly give to humans (before they're born I mean), simply as a way to make human appearance more diverse and interesting.

And what I've learned so far is that for humans there's like two different chemicals that determine hair color, one of them makes your hair darker, the other makes your hair more blonde or reddish, and when both aren't really there your hair is more white or grey.

Now I'm not sure what would really need to be done to expand the color pallet, but that's why I'm asking here. It seems that Mammals broadly have a similar hair color system that we do, which generally limits their own fur colors to something similar to what we have.

However, there's one mammal I've noticed that seems to break pretty well from the color mold. The **Malabar Giant Squirrel**, which has the unique fur colors of Maroon, Dark Purple or Dark Blue, and a kind of "true" bright red, unlike the reds that mammals usually have which is closer to an orange.

What I'm wondering is if it would be possible to take whatever genes the Malabar Squirrel has that gives it those fur colors, and somehow use those to alter human hair without any major negative side effects.

Im specifically curious about what things were like for the type of person who went from being a peasant working in the fields under a fuedalist system, to then being one of the lucky few who were able to move to the city and work in a factory in order to make life a little bit better for their family (i understand it wasn't much better). Im wondering what that sort of transition was like.

So far from what i can tell, the only basic hair colors humans evolved to have are black, brown, blonde, and ginger, with solid variations in-between. And for eye color its only blue, green, violet, brown, and rarely red.

What i wonder is if there's a way to edit the genome of various groups of people (willingly of course) so that we can expand the color pallet to nearly the whole spectrum. So there can be blue, green, (true) red, purple, (non albino) white, pink, etc, hair colors for different groups of people with certain genetics. And the same for eye color, like orange, yellow, black, pink, etc.

Sure we could just go the designer baby route and have parents decide every visual feature of their kid. However, I feel like its socially and psychologically weird for every generation to have parents who specifically decided what you will look like. I think it would be more easier to have 1 to 3 generations where we edit the genes of fetuses so that we can unlock the entire color palette for humanity. And then we can simply spend the rest of our existence having a much wider diversity of looks than we did before.

Of course, if someone doesn't like their colors there's always the option of hair dye and colored contacts.

On a side note, similar to how some people have heterochromia, which makes it so they have multiple eye colors. Do you think we could do something similar with hair? Like how cats and dogs sometimes have different fur colors on different areas.

As I understand, Wicca is primarily popular in the English-speaking world and parts of Europe. though of course wicca isn't exclusively English.

I have noticed many words though that don't seem to be English in origin. I noticed today seems to be the wiccan holiday of Beltane, which maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't seem like an English word, or at least one ive heard before. And looking at the other holidays, they each seem to not be English but are Indo-European in some way.

If I had to guess, Wicca probably uses words from at least Latin and Sanskrit. But I wonder what other languages are used in Wiccan culture?

Just to clarify, I'm not a tankie, I don't think the soviets or any other country have been able to achieve socialism yet. And I'm not entirely sure what it was that made the USSR collapse other than I heard they had bad economic policy and the berlin wall falling kind of started a domino process.

So I don't quite know what exactly would've actually been able to make the USSR and Warsaw pact stay intact. But assuming they do, do you think Gorbachev could've changed the USSR project for the better?

Again, I might be completely off here. But as I understand, Gorbachev was a genuine socialist / believer in worker democracy and was a critic of Soviet authoritarianism. And during the time between when he was leader to when everything fell, he was working on trying to both keep everything intact and also introduce more democracy into the system.

So if Gorbachev was successful in keeping the USSR and Warsaw pact together through the 90s and at least 2000s, do you think the democratization efforts would've worked at bringing them closer to actual socialism? or would it have just failed anyway?