Geography of Halloween Puns

The rest, as they say, is History.

He said "Crimea River."

I graduated with a minor in Geography, but I mostly focused on GIS and health geography. I'm currently in a grad program for public health. My overarching goal is to better understand the political economic roots of unequal development in cities and then be able to link that to health outcomes. Then with that understanding of the mechanisms of place-based oppression (rather than just the measurable outcomes) work to overcome through community engagement.

I've read Harvey's Rebel Cities and Cuthbert's The Forms of Cities. Both are great but more theory heavy than method heavy. I'm planning on reading Cuthbert's methods book "Understanding Cities", but flipping through it I don't think it will answer all my questions.

The two books I know that touch this area are Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place and Economic Geography: A Critical Introduction. I've heard mixed reviews of Urban Fortunes. The Economic Geography book includes more than just urban political economy, but I figure it would be a good intro considering I have no background on Economic Geography.

Have you heard of or read these books? And/or do you have any other recommendations?

Studying as in either formal or informally.

I can't be the only one, can I? I am older (in my 40's) and have returned to school to finish an undergrad degree I started years ago (before I had kids). I'm majoring in Geography with an emphasis on Urban/Human.

Before learning anything, I was totally on board with capitalism. Now I see how capitalism is eating away at the social benefits of living in an urban environment, and I don't much like it. I guess you could say I'm now somewhat woke and feel like an idiot for ever being completely pro-capitalism.

The only point to my post is to find out who else changed their opinion from being totally 100% for capitalism to being (completely, or somewhat or almost completely) against it?

EDIT: thanks to everyone who has replied, it's really great information for me. Being so new to studies, its now clear I am using words out of context, at least somewhat. I likely meant something different than pure capitalism, but not sure what the proper term is.

What's the big idea here? Yes, things like coding are important, but surely we don't just want a bunch of highly skilled ignoramuses. Knowledge of earth science, geopolitics and history are so important for society.

When we first read the Book of Mormon, it seemed clear that the land northward was North America, the land southward was South America, and the narrow neck of land was Panama. Lehi’s family landed somewhere on the west coast of South America after sailing across the Pacific Ocean. The people spread throughout the whole land and the last battle between Lamanites and Nephites occurred in New York on the Hill Cumorah, where Moroni buried the gold plates. We now call this the hemispheric model. Many assume that the Polynesians descended from Hagoth, the Nephite builder of ships, and his company, who left the land southward and sailed into the west sea around 50 BC.

For various reasons, the hemispheric model lost favor to a more limited geography model, with many scholars concluding that the Book of Mormon took place primarily in Central America and Mexico, with the narrow neck of land being the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Lehi’s family landed on the west coast of Guatemala. The river Sidon is the Grijalva River in Mexico. The Maya were the Nephites. The hill where the last battle occurred was somewhere in Mexico and Moroni later traveled to New York to bury the plates in the Hill Cumorah.

Another limited geography model, known as the Heartland model, has the Book of Mormon taking place primarily in the eastern United States. Lehi’s family landed either on the east coast or on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, after sailing around Africa and across the Atlantic Ocean. The river Sidon was the Mississippi River. The narrow neck of land is between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The people of the Hopewell culture were the Nephites. The last battle occurred at the Hill Cumorah in New York, where the plates were buried.

The Church itself has no official position on this matter, leaving individual Latter-day Saints to decide for themselves which theory they prefer to follow.

Which model do you think is more accurate and why?

I saw this claim on a Youtube video, but I have no idea if this is true. I know he came from NI, however.

I know there's plenty of discontent about the last episode on this sub right now and so I was hesitant to post this, but it's important to me and frustrating that few are picking up on it.

Arya and Sandor should have arrived in King's Landing weeks ago. In the first book, it took Robert's entourage a month to travel from KL to Winterfell. Seems reasonable that the Northern host as portrayed as almost all foot, along with their baggage train would take similar time.

In season 7 Jon says that the Dothraki could reach King's Landing in about a week if they traveled fast enough. Seems reasonable that Arya and Sandor on horse, and with a mission could make similar time. Keep in mind that Arya and Sandor left Winterfell before Jon or Daenerys.

Instead we see that Arya and Sandor must make their way through the Northern lines on reaching King's Landing.

This is important because myself and others were debating how the show writers were going to nerf Arya after Episodes 3 and 4. There was no good reason why she didn't just ride directly to King's Landing (as it seemed she was doing) and anti-climatically kill Cersei with everything we know about her abilities. I even speculated that Jaqen H'ghar would show back up and somehow stop Arya from stealing from the Many Faced God again.

Instead the show runners just bend geography and travel time again to make the duo show up, like a spaghetti western, just a tiny bit too late to kill the bad guy (or woman). I know that this isn't as obvious or dramatic as Euron's teleporting fleet, Vary's regional airfare across the Narrow Sea, or Gendry's marathon, but it had huge implications for dumbing down of the plot and world building, and I thought it just need added to the list of inconsistencies. It also is the first example (that I know of) where we have a control example of another party taking the same route about the same time. The defense of "well they just traveled off screen" doesn't work here.

Some of you warned me after episode 3. I should have known better to speculate, rationalize and theorize about plot implications. Nothing seems worth spending too much time thinking about now.

There is no such thing as a "violent" or "peaceful" race. Humans are humans and will behave alarmingly similar no matter what color skin you have. All sorts of people have been colonizing other civilizations for millennia. The results are similar. The colonizers are at the top of society, while the natives are second-class citizens.

There are examples of particularly nasty invasions and occupations. On the flip side, there are some distinctively enlightened and peaceful ones. These are distributed evenly across people of all races capable of conquest at a given time.

The reason that certain continents have overwhelmingly been conquered is a function of geographic challenges and advantages.

Kenya please stop!

tl;dr: this meme I made inspired by /u/J_Fulls

We've had 24 hours to mull over the Gen 8 reveal now, and undoubtedly if you've ventured onto Youtube, you'll have seen hundreds of speculators discussing the region and its relation to the UK. The majority of these commentators are American, and have made various assumptions about the region that, to me, seem very disconnected from their actual inspirations. As a Brit, I'm going to try to unpack some of the locations seen in the trailer and the map, and try to make sense of the geography of the region.

The first thing to say is environmentally this looks spot on. The countryside, with its rolling hills and abundant greenery, couldn't look more British. There's also some crazy attention to detail that will delight British people and no one else; the signpost to the left of this image is a perfect mirror of the classic British blue design. But while the details and imagery are identical, the geography plays fast and loose. After all, the map doesn't immediately look like anything like Britain, does it? Here's a great high res image of the map that will come in useful.

Well, the first thing to note is that for the first time since Generation III, the map is not north-oriented. With Hoenn east was up, and this time it's a full 180 degree rotation. You can see the Cornwall peninsula to the top right, as well as Kent and East Anglia at the top left. Indeed, even geographical features like The Wash and the Ribble estuary fall into place when the map is rotated. Here's the rotated map for reference.

Now let's unpack each region of the map specifically, starting with, of course, the starting area - at the bottom of the real map and at the top of our rotated one. We can see farms, mountains and forests,

I wish to speak of this in relation to the Netflix series and their casting choices, out of most arguments I see people regurgitating in needless flame wars, I cannot comprehend why more folks do not think of this rather straightforward one.

My main criticism is the inconsistency resulted by the casting choices of Triss and Fringilla, to give a very simple analogy this would be like casting King Arthur as a black man, this could be a really amazing actor who does a great job in every aspect, however this cannot solve the inherent issue at hand. That issue is that even though Arthur is a legendary figure, and that one may argue taking liberties in their imagination, those liberties must have logical boundaries, I do not believe it would be possible for you to find anyone of dark complexion in dark age Britain, in fact, if a Breton would see a black person they would probably be fascinated and think they were seeing a new species (even the Romans were perplexed at the sight of many Celts, who had things such as very pale skin, blonde and red hair, things the Romans did not possess, nor had they seen any humans possessing them before!), why? Because there was simply little if any links/communication between these two locations (Britain and Africa).

In fantasy settings, authors tend to mirror the correlation between geography and ethnicity in their world building. This is clearly seen in The Witcher but also in other major works such as LotR (e.g. Haradrim being men of the south who hail from deserts and have swarthy complexions). We even see this in the game TW3 itself, if you play Hearts of Stone you will encounter the Ofiri, men of the far south who hail from tropical climates and have dark skin, this seems quite in line with how humans in the real world are! We also have the Zerrikanians as well, perhaps most easily paralleled to the aforementioned Haradrim, people who are south of the Northern Realms (but not as south as the Ofiri) and so, they are swarthy/tanned and even the visual aspects that we know of, associated with their culture, resemble the Middle East.

In conclusion, I refer back to the Arthur example, making any Northerner like Triss black is essentially the same as casting an 8th Century woman from Scandinavia as black, it is simply not feasible. In the case of Fringilla being a Nilfgaardian, heck it would've been an attempt to favour accuracy if they cast an actress of Italian/Spanish/Greek ethnicity, as Nilfgaard (again referring to the

From the feared hordes of the Scythians and the Huns, to the powerful and cosmopolitan Mongol Empire. From the Russian Tsardom and Soviet Union, or the rule of the Qing Dynasty, to the modern day. The people and land of Central Asia has left a profound and fascinating impact on our human history and in worldbuilding. Whether it's often seen devastating hordes like the Dothraki of Game of Thrones, or the full breadth seen in works like Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky.

So, how have you incorporated or been inspired by this part of the world?

• Do you work with classic hordes, what are your thoughts on this trope and how does that affect how you use it?

• Do you take inspiration from the Pax Mongolica, or the conflict between remaining nomads or becoming sedentary imperialists?

• Do you work with influences from Tengriism, or the unique forms of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism of the Steppe?

• Do you utilise icons such as Horse Archery, or the Silver Tree? How do you make them yours?

• Do you work with 20th century history, from civil wars to communism, or perhaps to the modern day and beyond?

I am particularly interested in closer cultural inspiration, and I'd love to see you discuss not just straight lore but also the way you've utilised this inspiration. This is a good way to make it easy for others to respond. If you're only writing lore please try be more brief, focus on the most interesting parts and allow people to respond for more. I am particularly interested in writers from the Steppe and you work with your own culture and history, as we of course primarily only see writers from the West.

If you comment please do upvote the thread (it gets you more attention!) and seek out other comments where you can compare and contrast your work. The best way I find to get feedback on my writing is always to go to others and compare my work to theirs, rather than hoping someone comes to me.

I have a BS in computer science and currently working as a software developer but I am fed up with this job. I love geography so I want to start a career in geography.