The kang is a traditional heated platform, 2 metres or more long, used for general living, working, entertaining and sleeping in the northern part of China, where the winter climate is cold. It is made of bricks or other forms of fired clay and more recently of concrete in some locations.

Its interior cavity, leading to an often-convoluted flue system, channels the hot exhaust from a firewood/coal fireplace, usually the cooking fire from an adjacent room that serves as a kitchen, sometimes from a stove set below floor level. This allows a longer contact time between the exhaust (which still contains much heat from the combustion source) and (indirectly) the inside of the room, hence more heat transfer/recycling back into the room, effectively making it a ducted heating system similar to the Roman hypocaust. A separate stove may be used to control the amount of smoke circulating through the kang, maintaining comfort in warmer weather. Typically, a kang occupies one-third to one half of the floor space, and is used for sleeping at night and for other activities during the day. A kang which covers the entire floor is called a dikang. The heated bed and the heated floor are technically similar, but each developed in conjunction with a distinctive way of life, either sitting on the floor or sitting on furniture.

Like the European cocklestove, a massive block of masonry is used to retain heat. While it might take several hours of heating to reach the desired surface temperature, a properly designed bed raised to sufficient temperature should remain warm throughout the night without the need to maintain a fire.

Here is a link to a video demonstration of the kang itself and how it works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yI8Rf8DlNo

The one in the video is more representative of what a modern one looks like

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 💙‎Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
• 💙Resources for Palestine

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays
• ❤️Mega upload with theory for many tendencies

The Tucson City Council is moving forward with the effort to return the ancestral homelands near the base Sentinel Peak to the Tohono O’odham Nation for its continued preservation and reverence.

The city council unanimously approved the motion to transfer land ownership during a study session before their regular council meeting on April 18. The move comes after decades of conversations the City of Tucson has had surrounding what to do with the land.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said the piece of land near Sentinel Peak has more than 4,500 years of history and archeology that proves it is an ancestral Hohokam Village.

“This is where our city was born,” Romero said

The initiative to return the land to the Tohono O’odham “without any strings attached” has been led by Romero and Tucson Council Member Lane Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz said over the years, many different efforts and ideas have been introduced to the city on what to do with that land. But, in the end, returning the land was the best and most respectful option.

Santa Cruz said when they started having conversations with the tribe about returning the land, they were skeptical.

“Rightly so,” she added, “they’ve never had a good relationship with the city.”

Santa Cruz said it always seemed as if the city treated the tribe separately, as if they are over there and we are over here, even though many Indigenous people live in the city.

She said it took that ongoing conversation and meeting with tribal members, listening to their stories about the land and what it meant to them. She recalls how tribal members talked about how even if the city chose to acknowledge or not that the land rightfully belongs to the Tohono O’odham, they already know it is theirs.

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In a recent interview, Pedro Pascal, the actor currently at the top of his game, opened up about his younger sister, Lux, who is transgender. In a new interview, he praised her.

While speaking with Esquire, the 48-year-old actor discussed his admiration and respect for Lux, 30.

The actor spent most of his twenties and thirties struggling to make ends meet as most actors do, but Pascal has suddenly been propelled to an incredible level of fame in a short period. He’s the current ‘it’ daddy, some say.

Pascal had roles on HBO’s Game of Thrones and Netflix’s Narcos. However, now he's the star of a couple of highly-acclaimed, audience-loved series that have taken his stardom to new heights. As Joel in HBO’s runaway hit The Last of Us, he captivated viewers as an antihero survivor in a post-apocalyptic America.The Mandalorian’s third season saw him reprise his role as the title character who is navigating a post-Empire galaxy far, far away.

He's also become widely known as an LGBTQ+ ally. That's, in part, due to his relationship with his sister.

“[Lux] is and has always been one of the most powerful people and personalities I’ve ever known,” he told Esquire. "My protective side is lethal, but I need her more than she needs me.”

Originally from Chile, the Pascal family emigrated to the U.S. when he was nine months old. Besides his older sister, Javiera, he has a younger brother, Nicolás, and Lux, who is seventeen years his junior.

The magazine reports that Pascal sees Lux and Nicolás often between filming since they both returned to Chile when she was a baby.

Lux first shared her identity with the world at the beginning of 2021. Pedro shared a picture of a Chilean magazine cover with a caption about his sister stating, “Mi hermana, mi corazón, nuestra Lux,” or “my sister, my heart, our Lux.”

Recently, Pascal posted several Pride flags on his Instagram page with nearly 8 million followers.

Rome, Italy – Thousands across Italy have been protesting against the harsh conditions of Alfredo Cospito’s imprisonment, as fears for the 55-year-old anarchist’s health grow with his hunger strike extending 150 days.

Cospito was jailed for 10 years in 2012 for shooting the chief of a nuclear energy company in the leg, in his words “to punish one of the many sorcerers of the atomic industry”, and was later handed a life sentence for setting off two bombs in front of a police academy near Turin in 2006. Both attacks were non-fatal, and while no one was injured in the bombing, investigators concluded that the explosives were designed to kill.

In May, he was moved to 41-bis, a form of solitary confinement known colloquially as “hard prison” and usually reserved for hardened criminals, such as mafia bosses, becoming the first anarchist to be punished under the regime.

He began a hunger strike in October, and has pledged to protest against 41-bis “until his last breath”.

“Today I am ready to die to make the world understand what 41-bis really is,” he wrote from prison this month. “I am convinced that my death will be an obstacle to this regime.”

Cospito has reportedly lost more than 50kg (110 pounds) and has been in and out of the hospital, raising concerns that his health could be irreparably damaged.

The Italian government says Cospito will be force-fed when it becomes necessary, based on consultation with the National Bioethics Council.

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The Vietnamese Communist Party has nominated Vo Van Thuong as the country’s new president, two party sources told the Reuters news agency, following the forced resignation in January of his predecessor as part of a sweeping anti-corruption campaign in the country.

The government in a statement on Wednesday said the party’s Central Committee had agreed on a nomination for president but did not name the candidate.

...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints engaged in the scheme for more than 20 years.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a nonprofit entity that it controlled have been fined $5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission over accusations that the religious institution failed to properly disclose its investment holdings.

In an order released Tuesday, the SEC alleged that the church illicitly hid its investments and their management behind multiple shell companies from 1997 to 2019. In doing so, it failed to disclose the size of the church’s equity portfolio to the SEC and the public.

The church was concerned that disclosure of the assets in the name of the nonprofit entity, called Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the church's investments, would lead to negative consequences in light of the size of the church’s portfolio, the SEC said.

The allegations of the illicit shell company structure first emerged in 2018, when a group formerly called MormonLeaks – now known as the Truth and Transparency Foundation – claimed that year the extent of the church's investments had reached $32 billion.

The following year, a whistleblower filed a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a 2020 Wall Street Journal report; that year, the newspaper said the church's holdings had grown to $100 billion.

“For more than half a century, the Mormon Church quietly built one of the world’s largest investment funds,” the Journal said. “Almost no one outside the church knew about it.”

The SEC accused the church Tuesday of going to "great lengths" to avoid disclosing its investments and, in doing so, "depriving the commission and the investing public of accurate market information.”

“The requirement to file timely and accurate information on Forms 13F applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement.

...

Paris' defence minister on Sunday condemned the latest instalment of Marvel's Black Panther franchise, which depicts French troops caught trying to steal resources belonging to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.

:data-laughing: :data-laughing: :france-cool:

I guess I have to watch a marvel movie now

The water in Ogale, a rural community in Nigeria, is so toxic and polluted with oil that it comes out brown and stinks of sulphur. Children and families get sick just trying to bathe or stay hydrated. In Bille, a fishing community of around 45 islands surrounded entirely by water, there are no fish left. Oily water seeps into people’s homes, and, without a source of income, money is scarce. The signs that once warned people of the dangers of chronic pollution are covered in rust.

These Niger Delta communities have been facing pollution caused by Shell for decades, devastating their health and livelihoods. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that the threat to public health warranted “emergency action.” At the time, the cleanup process would have taken 30 years, if initiated immediately.

It never happened. Shell refused to cooperate, and the situation has only gotten worse, with 55 oil spills in the last 12 years. Amnesty International called the Niger Delta region “one of the most polluted places on earth.”

On January 27, over 11,300 residents from Ogale — which has a population of approximately 40,000 — and 17 local organizations, including churches and schools, filed individual claims at the High Court in London against Shell. With the existing claims from the Bille community, this brings the total number against the oil company to over 13,650.

The Ogale and Bille locals attribute environmental destruction, death, and diseases to the repeated spills. Infants in the Niger Delta, for instance, are twice as likely to die in their first month of life if their mothers live near an oil spill, according to a study published in 2017.

Local leaders are distraught and angry. “As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day, people are dying,” King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community, told The Intercept.

...

Obviously Catholic church does way more harm than good but better than not doing this for sure

Pope Francis has made what many are calling a historic statement against laws that criminalize homosexuality.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the pope says that God loves everyone and told Catholic bishops to welcome queer people.

“Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis told the news wire.

The pontiff still referred to homosexuality as “sin,” but criticized Catholic bishops and church leaders who were involved in pushing for the criminalization of homosexuality across the world.

He added that those sorts of sentiments stemmed from the leaders’ cultural backgrounds.

“These bishops have to have a process of conversion,” Francis told the AP, saying they needed to use “tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us.”

He said that these laws are “unjust” and that the Catholic Church should work to stop them.

“It must do this. It must do this,” Francis said. “We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity,” Francis added, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Transportation Security Administration’s No-Fly List is one of the most important ledgers in the United States, containing as it does the names of people who are perceived to be of such a threat to national security that they’re not allowed on airplanes. You’d have been forgiven then for thinking that list was a tightly-guarded state secret, but lol, nope.

A Swiss hacker known as “maia arson crimew” has got hold of a copy of the list—albeit a version from a few years ago—not by getting past fortress-like layers of cybersecurity, but by...finding a regional airline that had its data lying around in unprotected servers. They announced the discovery with the photo and screenshot above, in which the Pokémon Sprigatito is looking awfully pleased with themselves.

...

Dec. 13 (UPI) -- India's Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday accused China of initiating a conflict on the disputed border between the two countries in the Himalayan Mountain region.

Singh told Indian officials that Chinese People's Liberation Army troops of crossed the "Line of Actual Control," the de facto border between China and India in the region on Friday, in the most serious run-in since 2020.

"The Chinese attempt was contested by our troops in a firm and resolute manner," Singh told Indian officials. "The ensuing face-off led to a physical scuffle in which the Indian army bravely prevented the PLA from transgressing into our territory and compelled them to return to their posts."

Singh said 20 Indian soldiers were injured in the exchange but no deaths were reported.

...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday it supports proposed federal legislation to safeguard same-sex marriages. It's the church's latest show of support in the lead-up to an expected congressional vote Wednesday.

The 17-million member, Utah-based faith said in a statement that church doctrine would continue to consider same-sex relationships against God's commandments, yet would support rights for same-sex couples as long as they didn't infringe upon religious groups' right to believe as they choose.

“We believe this approach is the way forward. As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ individuals much can be accomplished to heal relationships and foster greater understanding,” an unnamed spokesperson for the church said.

Support for the Respect for Marriage Act under consideration in Congress is the church's latest step to stake out a more welcoming stance toward the LGBTQ community while holding firm to its belief that same-sex relationships are sinful.

Patrick Mason, a professor of religious studies at Utah State University, said the church's position was both a departure from and continuation of its past stances — respecting laws yet working to safeguard religious liberty and ensuring they won't be forced to perform same-sex marriages or grant them official church sanction.

“This is part of the church’s overall theology essentially sustaining the law of the land, recognizing that what they dictate and enforce for their members in terms of their behavior is different than what it means to be part of a pluralistic society,” he said.

The faith opposes same-sex marriage and sexual intimacy, but it has taken a more welcoming stance to LGBTQ people in recent years. In 2016, it declared that same-sex attraction is not a sin, while maintaining that acting on it was.