Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

I'm an avid amateur astronomer, and I was born and raised in the Southern Hemisphere: and I'm a strong advocate for redoing the Southern Starmap entirely based on the constellations of native people's.

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

The first 14 Southern Hemisphere constellations were invented by French astronomer De La Caisle who named them after scientific instruments (so you have the microscopium and telescopium constellations for example). The rest followed similar paths.

And the reason was simply 19th century racism.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

Astronomers hate Astrology, but they use the astrological symbols of ancient astrologers to make it easy to navigate with a telescope.

We also have a set of starsigns in the Southern Hemisphere: but unlike their northern cousins, no indigenous culture's starlings were used in the official starmaps.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

And specifically in Astronomy there is ALREADY precedent for keeping pre-scientific names for objects. Hence why so many stars have names like "Aldebaran" (early Arab) or names in Indian.
It's also why the Northern Hemisphere skimp is based on the Greek star-signs.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

It's a general standard in science that the first to discover gets to name something, I'm just arguing that in the case of our sister galaxies, we should use that standard, but for the cultures who drew it on rocks and talked about it tens of thousands of years before any European saw it.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

And this is particularly egregious - because the Southern Hemisphere is the part of our planet that faces towards the centre of the Milky Way, there are far, far more celestial objects visible in the Southern than Northern hemisphere because of that.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

Well this name was given centuries ago, when Magellan became the first European to draw and document these celestial bodies.

Astronomy has actually made an active effort to respect other culture's views of the night sky in recent years, but far less in the Southern Hemisphere.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

Before we had electric lightning and the explosion of light pollution, these were two of the top three largest, and most visible sights in the entire night sky - only the moon was bigger !

But you have other be South of the equator to see them at all.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

Yes, that's my point.

I think it's not actually good to call those things the Magellanic Clouds because they were so well known to so many cultures long before Magellan. We should use one of their indigenous names for them.

2 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 14d

To be fair 'Arabs' didn't discover the Magellanic clouds, they are only visible from the Southern hemisphere.

But thousands of indigenous cultures saw them, named them, told stories about them for 200 000+ years before Magellan.

Just like Europeans did. Aborigines, Maoris, San and Khoi-Khoi etc

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

Okay, definitely not a human being, just a bot which ran out of talking points and is now spouting unhinged gibberish.

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

But they weren't European explorers so they didn't count, and their names for our sister galaxies aren't remembered or put in textbooks.

Apparently we can't even do astronomy without white some white supremacism.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

I mean Magellan had some achievements but I even have an issue with him, he gets one of the greatest scientific credits: having TWO celestial bodies named after him, the Magellanic clouds which he "discovered".

Only several million people saw, drew and knew about them before he ever did.

1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

He couldn't be bothered to read up on when we first figured out the earth was round ? Really ? Something that in Europe was known since Ancient Greece and probably other cultures knew it even earlier (but didn't leave such nice records).

1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

I don't really give a fuck about the rest of your unhinged rant, and I have no wish to EVER visit your country.

You dumb fucks did Brexit, that makes you a place no sane person would want to go. Dude, nobody will choose your shithole TERF island over the WHOLE OF THE EU !

2 1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

So why are you falsely claiming that AOC would ignore the statistics ? What she WON'T do is lie and pretend there is a problem with Islamic rape gangs, but you're outright full of shit if you are saying she CONDONED Epstein and Prince Andrew or were silent about that issue.

2 1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 15d

Is that anymore relevant than Epstein and Prince Andrew (the ACTUAL real life rape gang members) are to the Manchester bombings ?

Because when people keep jumping to different topics - that's a sign that they can't ACTUALLY defend their beliefs.

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 18d

You brought up the topic of rape gangs. So the statistics about who rape gangs actually ARE - fucking matters.

The only REAL Rape Gangs are the kind that Epstein ran, and there are plenty of that kind still active in the world, including in Britain.

2 1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 18d

This is utter and complete bullshit.

There is NO group that the law would not prosecute for fear of causing offense. It's a racist fucking lie that only a racist would believe, let alone spread.

The ONLY group that the law looks the other way for is: the fucking rich.

1 1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 18d

You fucking ASKED ! You ASKED who was responsible for the rape gangs, because you wanted to spread the bullshit lie that's it's Islamic refugees !

Then I gave you the ACTUAL facts and now you complain that people "trot out" this fact, when it's the RIGHT ANSWER to the question YOU ASKED !

2 1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 18d

Whether or not she "would touch it" has fuckall to do with whether it's relevant to this topic.

So, it's not relevant, bringing up irrelevant shit is called "being a fucking moron".

Bringing up irrelevant BIGOTTED shit is called "being a fucking moron fascist"

1 1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 18d

Okay; statistics show the overwhelming majority of British rape gangs are wealthy, elite, white men.

Islamic people from immigrant families are significantly UNDER represented among rapists relative to their proportion of the population.

And what the fuck does this have to do with the topic?

3 1 4

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 19d

Not perfect? Try utter fucking shit.

They did not roll back any austerity, they did add MORE austerity.
They were actually WORSE for trans rights than the conservatives!
They are actually trying to outdo the fascists on being shitty to refugees!

A lesser evil has to be less evil not more!

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · 27d

And it's inclination relative to the launch site. Though that one correlates during every cycle so would just influence the best days, not the month and year.

1

AJ Venter @aj.venterfamily.org · Sep 18

I wonder if the current clearly fascist American regime will one day end up tried at something akin to the Nuremberg tribunal ?

And while I feel this is what ought to happen, do the governments that would have to hold it have any legitimacy to do so ? After trying to loophole their way around Gaza?