Edward Hirsch. A Poet's Glossary.

i guess i'm not as despairing as many people about the future of the planet simply because the fact that we're not in way worse shape today suggests the earth is crazy resilient

Reading anything about environmental history is like "and by 1956 the river was so full of uranium and bubonic plague that the only living organism found in it was an single amoeba which died immediately after being documented" and I'm like okay maybe today's problems aren't necessarily uniquely disastrous and unsolvable

This is only one example but apparently malaria was introduced to the USA by the slave trade but there was a program in the 50's to wipe it out and we did. by dusting thousands of tons of Paris green (an arsenic compound) as well as a shit ton of DDT all over our wetlands

@notpockets Where are you getting "accept mass death of humans" from this?!

I am very firmly arguing against the "we should not bother planning for the future because we're all going to die and so we should all sit on the internet and wait for the Glorious Day When Someone Murders All The Billionaires Which Magically Fixes All Problems" school of thought which I would argue is significantly more anti-human than anything else

@casspea I'm pulling this out of replies because I want to give a serious response to it, because this is very important to me. I will start by asking a question that will initially appear unrelated.

Do you know why it is so hard to leave an abusive relationship?

I didn't. I understood, like most people do, that people don't get into abusive relationships because they are stupid or made clearly avoidable stupid decisions, but I didn't *understand*—meaning that I couldn't really imagine myself getting into that situation. I had a strong sense of my own worth and I knew all the signs of an abusive relationship, so I just...innocently figured I would see that sort of thing coming.

[Narrator: She did not see it coming.]

What I didn't know was WHY smart people end up in abusive relationships—really, I was mistaken about the whole nature of wisdom and intelligence and knowledge. I saw those things as stable characteristics of myself or any person, facts, failing to realize that everything, everything, everything takes up energy.

Even knowing takes up energy.

Your body and mind evolved to account for this fact. Your body and mind evolved to allocate your energy based on your needs—in order to keep you alive. Have you ever had a panic attack? I have. That's your body pouring all your energy into preparing for whatever action is necessary to face the threat.

Certain things are necessary for a human to feel safe—to be safe. Steady access to food. Shelter. Privacy. Bodily integrity. Stability. Support from other humans. In terms of energy, it is incredibly costly to not be safe.

Hold onto that, because it's important. It is incredibly costly to not be safe.

You said in an earlier reply that my post sounded like I had never lived in an impoverished region. I find that offensive, and here's why: It is incredibly costly to not be safe. If you are just one accident, one mistake, one sickness, one stroke of bad luck away from losing your house, your health, your stability, your family's supper tomorrow, you are not safe and your body knows. And this is why poverty kills you. Slowly. Every day of your life.

So this is how a smart person gets into an abusive relationship: You live with this person, and it's okay right now. If things can just stay okay for a while...you can make it. You just need things to keep being okay, because you are not safe you're tired, and you need a little time to recharge after the last time you had to talk and set a boundary with them, because you are not safe that conversation was stressful and took a lot of energy.

You set a boundary. And it takes a lot of energy to explain to them what they did to hurt you and why, but you think they get it, finally.

And then they push that boundary. And you have the conversation again. And things are okay.

And then they push.

And the less privacy, the less security, the less you have—the more they encroach upon your basic needs—the costlier it becomes to set and enforce boundaries, because you have less and less energy left to change or interrogate your situation.

And they start raising the cost. Pricing you out of the boundaries you have already set. You can't afford to defend those boundaries anymore, so you back off, ceding more and more of your safety to them. And not being safe is incredibly costly.

You were a smart person. Now you're too tired to think. You don't have the energy to do anything, anything, anything except survive, and you can't even see your situation for what it is, because you are expending all your energy trying to stop it from getting worse.

Now, I guess the idea of people being terrified all the time about climate change and thinking about dying and other people dying and losing everything they value and love and not having a future for themselves or their children (if they were so bold as to have them) is really, fucking, gratifying in the sense that it means they feel the gravity and seriousness of the situation the appropriate amount. I guess. Awesome!

But terrified people are not very good at solving problems because being shitting-your-pants terrified all the time makes you stupid (for reasons that are not your fault)

And terrified people are incredibly resistant to change because adjusting to change takes energy and they don't HAVE energy because literally all their energy is going toward the fucking monumental task of staying fucking alive

And people that have KNOWN their whole goddamn lives, in the marrow of their bones, that they don't have a future, cannot imagine the future.

We have to imagine the future.

We have to.

Have you ever had a panic attack? Like a bad panic attack? Have you ever fully, truly, deeply believed you were going to die? I have. I was 10. Panic attacks are supposed to last 20-30 minutes max but I guess my body wants to live more than most because I have 2-3 hours of it in me. And yet there is a point at which you lie down and wait for it to kill you, because you can't hang on anymore. Because you can't DO anything.

And you can learn to be resilient! I sure fucking did! I learned to shove on through that shit like a zombie, indestructible, completely unable to locate or name my own discomfort screaming through my body like an air raid siren! I pushed through! Except I wasn't moving 'through' anything! I was just Dying Physically!

This is to say that the gut-wrenching certainty of facing a future ruled by unspeakable horrors is quite familiar to me thankyouverymuch, and it wasn't exactly fertile ground for developing a "solutions" mindset.

The idea that not being in despair about the earth means you must not love it? Well, that just about boils my blood.

Because I did love the Earth when I was a little kid, but all throughout my whole teenage years I never thought of doing any kind of volunteer work or getting involved in my local community or even LEARNING about it that much. Why?

Because I thought we were all fucked anyway, so why bother. Because I was already dealing with my own shit and I couldn't bear taking that grief upon my own shoulders. I HATED my hometown, hated it, never had the tiniest bit of love for it in my heart, and honestly in my mind it was worthless, because the old growth had been cut down and the wolves and bison were gone and housing developments were built, and I was convinced i would live to see it get worse, and worse, and worse, see more woods get destroyed and my beloved creek be bulldozed and polluted, and I couldn't just go out and pour my heart into something I knew was doomed to be fucking obliterated anyway. I was trying to fucking survive.

And that's what I saw everyone else doing. Mourning. Bemoaning how we were going to watch tigers go extinct and the forests burn. Nervously joking about the unlikely possibility that we would make it to 50.

I fucking grew up in the Bible Belt, surrounded by people who thought the Earth was nothing more than a piece of tissue to be crumpled up and thrown away! My parents grew up having nightmares about nuclear bombs raining down on their hometown and so did I! The only stories about the future I can think of have zombies, fascism and/or child death tournaments! We are not exactly encouraged to give ourselves gentle things in our dreams of what tomorrow may bring.

So i was a creative writing major for a while and as a result read a lot of literary poetry, and if you don't know what literary poetry is, it's poems by someone who has a MFA or PhD in poetry and are published in very fancy self-important journals.

Anyway once upon a time I read this poem

And I wasn't exactly shining rays of sunshine out the crack of my ass in those days but this shitty poem snapped me out of my pessimism. Oh God, I thought, I may write edgy and depressing shit sometimes but I'll never put a cold wet snot rag like this into the world.

Ants? Ants are going to go extinct? Fucking ants? I want to punt this writer out of the solar system for the hubris of that alone.

It's so...self centered, this mindset the poem shows. So self-pitying. Poor little me! Humans are the virus and I'm so sad that we're such a disease upon the earth! Boohoo!

And it seriously got me thinking: Do these projections and predictions actually motivate anyone to take action? Do they do anything except satisfy some self-indulgent urge to wallow in depression and misanthropy?

This poem doesn't emerge from love; that's what struck me at the time. The author doesn't love the Earth if she lacks the basic curiosity to learn what algae even is (photosynthetic! Not found in caves!) nor to learn of the wonders of the world of ants (definitely not going to go extinct). Her projected future is bizarre—why would humans live in caves? Why are cockroaches the only animal expected to survive? Is she confusing climate change with a nuclear war?

But it's the air of admonishment that gets me. The bold insinuation that people are "doing nothing" while the Earth dies non-specifically.

Lady, trees fucking died for the paper this sludge was printed upon.

People think instilling dread is doing something. It's not. People think cultivating despair is doing something. It's not. People think that fear, fear of a thousand horrible futures shown to us by every imagination on every screen and page, will be a goad to jab people toward some unclear but presumed-accessible "action," but this ongoing fear and grief and despair over our world DOES NOTHING except deplete what meager reserves of energy people have left after being alive in the world these days.

My generation is constantly desperate for numbness, rest, and escapism because living gets more and more untenable all the time. Have you noticed Fascism? What about the economy? Have you seen the people around you just constantly shutting themselves down to avoid thinking about a future that feels hopeless?

What is the expectation? That people feel terrified forever? Terror isn't fuel, it's the act of burning up all your fuel at once. After your energy runs out, something arrives to replace terror. For most people today, that something is apathy and despair, because it's easiest.

We need solutions to the climate crisis. We need community building. We need ideas, we need WORK, steady unsexy boring slow work, we need commitment to the work and to our communities, commitment that is only driven by love and genuine investment, and fear will not create these things.

Without hope, we have NOTHING.

I have hope because I believe there is hope, and I have hope because I fucking have to. I came to the place where I could no longer sustain being terrified, and I had to choose.

I can't exist in a world this scary, I thought. I can't do it. It's impossible. To accept this world as it is exceeds the tensile strength of the human soul.

And the answer was, Then don't exist, but I didn't like that answer, so the answer was, Then you must change it.

Once upon a time I could not imagine the future. All I saw was death. Fire. Extinction. I saw no hope for me or my planet. I only wished to experience some happiness before it all collapsed.

And then I rescued a tree.

Well. A lot of trees. It took me a while to learn to care for them. But I rescued a tiny sycamore tree from the edge of a parking lot and I took care of that tree and it grew and flourished under my care, and I marveled at my own power to make a difference to this one tiny tree...

...and I thought, this tree will grow taller than me. This tree will be big enough for birds to nest in its branches someday. Someday...

and I looked ahead, at that horizon many years in the future that had always been filled with nothing but ash and dust, and I saw something new.

I saw a tree.

I returned to Nature—to my Nature, the pavement and gravel and scrubby woods—and, just, holy fuck, I started to see. I observed the weeds—the dandelions, the amaranth, the tough little bastards that grow in pavement and concrete, and something clicked. They adapt. They survive. They are tough as nails, growing in places nothing else can grow in spite of all our attempts to eradicate them. And they help everything else survive and grow. They are healers.

I thought, can we learn from them? Can we ally with them?

Nature is our ally. Not as a princess in a tower waiting to be saved. Nature adapts, moves, changes. Nature is constantly, relentlessly fighting back.

I think Nature has a lot to teach us about adaptation, about collaborating and helping one another. About survival. I learned much more—I learned to see the symbiosis that connects all things, and saw how we fit into that symbiosis, when we are willing to participate in it.

This is what the dandelions showed me: When you heal, when you thrive, when you are happy and flourishing, you make the world more habitable for others. Dandelions pry open compacted soil with their taproots, provide pollen and nectar for survival of insects, keep the ground moist and encourage organic matter to collect. Dandelions are food and medicine, and they can sprout and grow at any temperature. This is how an ecosystem works: when one hardy weed takes hold and thrives, the others, more delicate, can then begin to arrive.

You are not separate from every other thing. You are part of humankind, part of a social community, part of your family and friends. This means that hope is powerful.

The more joy and love you cultivate in your relationship with the planet, the more she will replenish you, restore your hope. The more you share this joy, the more powerful the force for change becomes.

I have seen this in my own life, when I have healed and improved my own life, I have been able to give back so much more to the world than ever before. I try to enact this—as people flee my impoverished, deep red state for their safety, as Fascism tightens its grip, I dig my roots in deeper. I am relief in this wasteland. I will stand my ground. I will be visible, opinionated, uncompromising, because the more vulnerable cannot be.

Despair is poison. It will kill us dead. It will kill our planet. We need hope. And there is hope, both in us and the ecosystems around us.

I believe we, humans, hold the potential to be a weed species. Not only surviving, but facilitating, creating a path for the healing of Earth. We are caretakers. This role has been well recognized by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

In this wasteland, the beautiful flowers struggle to grow and the little trees do not dare reach for the sky. So I'm a fucking dandelion. Kudzu kicking ass on a lifeless abandoned copper mine. I'm Amaranth utterly refusing to die. I'm a sycamore tree patiently inching roots under asphalt. I'm a scrappy cedar grabbing hold amid the rocks. I'm crabgrass and spotted spurge and all the weeds that make the guys on r/lawncare weep and wail.

I got sprayed with despair and survived, and now I'm resistant. My seeds and pollen are everywhere now. Hehehehehehe.

My friend and I refer to this as the ‘full cup’ analogy of life.

If your mental or physical brain cup is already so damn full, you simply have No Space Left. There is no space left to think about change or positive things. There is only space for survival requirements. Nothing more.

Terror takes up a lot of cup space. Anxiety, that’s a lot of cup space.

So do things like ‘where is my next meal coming from’ or ‘where am I sleeping tonight’

If those are things that are pre-decided - there is food in the fridge for dinner, and your bed is safe, then those take up way less space.

So if you have spare space in the cup- you can think about things. You can make plans and work for change and focus on things that aren’t breathing and eating and sleeping and Not Dying Today.

I also have a degree in environmental studies. In fact, I have two of them.

The reason that change is hard and incremental? Has a hell of a lot to do with everything @headspace-hotel has said. There’s a hundred other factors, but they all come back to that. They come back to hope.

We have to be positive. We have to see the tiny, sparkle of light, the possibility of a future. There’s certainly a lot of bad shit happening in the world.

But there’s good too. There is always good too.

I won’t go on with some list of examples, because anyone can look them up if they’ve got the time.

Here’s one though. In 2017, my state (NSW) started a drink bottle /container recycling scheme.

In the first 12 months, over 1 billion bottles/containers were recycled. By 18 months, it was 2 billion. Today it’s 9.7 billion. The population of NSW? 8 million. Those 9.7 billion bottles? They’re made into new containers and bottles. Each bottle is returned for 10c. Basically nothing, right? But those bottles funded emergency feed for cattle in the floods, volunteer rescue squads, support for cancer patients and numerous other good works.

Every small step is still a step. If you can see the tiny crack where the light gets in, you can make it out of the cave. If you can see the light, you can show someone else. It’s dark in the cave, but the more of us that are looking for the tiny cracks with the light, the better the chance we all find the light. The better the chance we all make it out of the cave.

AND THAT'S HOPEPUNK, BAYBEEEEEE

(Hopepunk: https://festive.ninja/one-atom-of-justice-one-molecule-of-mercy-and-the-empire-of-unsheathed-knives-alexandra-rowland/ )

Probably, the most sober, sincere, dignified, informed, inspiring and kind thing I've ever read on this hellsite or, possibly, the internet as the whole.

For that, I can only say "thank you, OP" and reblog so more people could read this.

Towards a grand unified theory of what's going on with Ninety One right now.

Like all theories, this one can't be taken seriously until it's been scrutinized and tested. So I'll say the same thing I said about my Gap speculations: if you know I'm wrong or misinformed, please please please please tell me.

In the last couple days I've gotten access to three pieces of information I didn't have before, that have led me to say, okay, maybe this is what happened. The first was an Instagram reel from a fluffy entertainment site reporting on the original TikTok live, which quoted Ace directly (machine translation; I put this one through both Google Translate and Yandex Translate and they didn't differ much):

The second piece of information was another fluff piece, on TikTok's self-reported "sounds of the summer" in Kazakhstan. Irina Kairatovna made the list, as did Kalifarniya, and a couple non-Kazakh songs (a remix of "Makeba"; Teya Dora, who's Serbian, I believe), but Ninety One did not.

And the third piece, courtesy of the lovely @bbcblackjack, was that Kalifarniya was previously in a Q-pop group called Divine, but has since renounced Q-pop; while I can't quote his words directly, he apparently used the kind of homophobic language that Ninety One has never, in my knowledge, stooped to using.

So here's what I think happened, told chronologically.

The combination of the pandemic and the MadMen arrests devastated Q-pop as a whole; when Kazakhstan's music scene finally began to revive, in 2021, there weren't a lot of Q-pop groups with the resources to start making inroads on the scene again. Instead the momentum shifted to IK and other hip-hop artists. Which should have stood to benefit Ninety One once they went independent and started making up for lost ground in 2022. I think within Pop Almaty (my nickname for the indie-ish popular-music scene there) itself, Ninety One is respected and regarded as peers: hence the IK collaborations, ZaQ cutting a track with De Lacure, and Yenlik appearing in the Yeski Taspa series. (Also remember that the guys were awfully reluctant to condemn Shiza acting up onstage when asked about him during the Zamandas interview.)

I think they expected that respect to carry over into their public image. ("Bata" is their "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," but it's also a boomy, Future-influenced track: a hip-hop move as much as a pop one.) But it didn't: they were still "Q-pop." And that hurt them in three different ways:

(This is where Kalifarniya's new popularity comes into my argument. In the video for "Puerto Rico," he's dancing sensuously on a beach while wearing an oversized pink suit: in other words, using artsy idol imagery to his own advantage. Squint and you're watching a BTS solo video. But because he was willing to distance himself from Q-pop and the supposed Gay Cooties, the public's willing to accept the idol presentation on its own terms.)

#3 would explain why they had trouble with touring last year—the canceled gig in Turkestan, the canceled-and-rescheduled gig in Shymkent—and why they didn’t really have a tour this year. I find it very hard to believe that they didn’t plan to go to places like Kostanai and Semey and Oskemen to promote their second full album, and easier to believe that they planned to and ran into enough opposition that they eventually gave up in frustration and just settled for one Astana and one Almaty concert.

“But, Jessica,” you ask now, “they were able to go to Semey and Aqtobe and the like in 2017, 2018, 2019; what’s changed?” That’s a weakness of my theorizing. This is very speculative and you should take it with enormous amounts of salt, but here’s a possibility: one downstream consequence of Bloody January might be that local akimat now have a little more power relative to federal officials in Astana, and that new empowering might embolden said akimat to say, no we will not have these dyed-haired pooftahs coming in from Almaty to corrupt our innocent youth, thank you very much. Might, maybe, who knows, if you think I’m going too far out on a limb please do tell me. (Another possibility: the actual costs of booking the shows and traveling to them have gone up enough to make the trips no longer worth it.)

Meanwhile our dudes were spending the second half of 2022 and early 2023 refining the album and spending money. I don’t mean just getting the office (though given the hiatus plans, I am curious how long a lease they signed). But my understanding is that they were financing the Yeski Taspa series, and they also paid for the “Symbaim” music video, which was probably a decent outlay. This may have been financially risky; they may have been doing insufficient future-proofing, or putting more weight on Gap to save them then it turned out to be able to bear. (I don’t think they said specifically that they were financially as well as emotionally exhausted; I’m reading that factor into events, and may be wrong.) But it makes perfect sense. First of all, they are hardly the first startup whose first-year reach may have exceeded its grasp. Also, like I keep telling y’all, Pop Almaty is a small town, and Ninety One not only want to keep their own good reputations in this small town, but grow the town’s economic prospects if they can, for themselves and for the people they care about who also live and work in this small town—Veronika, Bibotta, Assiya and the other dancers, Nurs Bazarbay, their friends such as Ne1tron and Ray and Kyle Ruh, Ace’s brother. ZaQ in particular (and Boss Yerbolat before him) has been very consistent in arguing that they want to succeed not just for themselves but for a larger musical and artistic community.

But that meant they had to regain popularity with Gap. And they didn’t. I don’t know why they didn’t. Like I said, I think “pop goodness but also processing the helplessness and frustration they felt over Bloody January” might have been too loaded for their potential K-pop-adjacent fans but too pop for fans of IK and Shiza. They might have gotten away with it in 2019, when Q-pop didn’t look done and dusted, and they bet they could still get away with it in 2023, and lost. But like pretty much everything else here, that’s speculative.

The big, obvious risk, then, is that abandoning their “current image” will mean they finally go along with what seem to be prevailing expectations of public homophobia. (This is an aside, but the anthropologist Alice Evans recently wrote an interesting essay reporting on recent research suggesting that homophobia gained currency in parts of the former Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, after widespread first- and second-hand experience with prison rape during the gulag era.) I don’t know. I can’t guarantee you that they haven’t made homophobic statements already; I can only tell you that I’ve been bracing myself for such news for years now and it hasn’t reached me yet. It’s entirely possible that part of “each of us going our own way” will include divergence on this issue, too—that one or more of them, but not necessarily all four, will publicly run from the Gay Cooties. (To be entirely frank, I have my guesses as to which members would be more or less likely to take such a stance, but my predictions are almost always wrong—remember, I was the hotshot who thought “Su Asty” was going to be a ballad—and I’d rather not tar any of the dudes preemptively or wrongly, and especially not both.)

What I don’t think is going to happen (although see above re my prediction track record) is that they’ll completely abandon their commitments to Pop Almaty. Those commitments will vary in focus and scope; Alem’s are more likely to be in the contexts of his TV work and Veronika, for example, and ZaQ’s to the larger hip-hop scene. They have said in the past that they planned to release solo work; this hiatus would give them the chance to do so without Eaglez breathing down their necks for more group work.

I’m less sure about whether we’re going to continue to get OT4 hanging out for our amusement. Maybe cameos on each other’s Instagram or Ace’s TikTok, but the likes of Space may be part of the image package they want to get away from. We may run up against the paradox where the bro-dom looks weaker but is actually stronger, once they can just be close friends pursuing related but separate interests and don’t have to market their bro-dom to us so hard.

I’m feeling… well, still cranky. Gap is a good album! If my narrative is right then they took a risk, in insisting that they could be dyed-haired pop stars who dance onstage and still have something to say, and it didn’t pay off. And neither they nor Eaglez had any right to demand of the universe that it pay off, but still: arrrgh. And there’s no guarantee that what they come back with, if they ever come back as four again, who knows, will inspire me the way Gap does. Meanwhile, if it isn’t already obvious, I would really like them to stay away from the public homophobia, and it’s entirely possible that they won’t. In short: change means uncertainty; uncertainty is not fun.

But it’s also possible that all this will work out to their, and our, benefit: the guys get to support each other doing a wider variety of projects, and we get to listen and watch. Pessimism isn’t necessarily a virtue. So after this I’m going to quit trying to combat the uncertainty by speculating all over the place. Like I said, y’all tell me where I’ve gone off track.

Hmm, I think you might be overthinking this thing a bit.

For starters, Q-pop never really stuck tbh, it was something only a small fraction out of mainly K-pop obsessed fans were invested in because it was generally easy to parasitise on that part of the audience. And, well, that was the initial clever plan, wasn't it.

Q-pop never had the infrastructure in the first place (as if the other parts of the KZ showbiz had lol), hence 91 being the pioneers and the current sole representatives of the genre. Albeit, if we consider "Q-pop" to be that knock-off genre based on the said inventions of the South Korean entertainment machine.

If we are to consider Q-pop being "contemporary popular songs in the Kazakh language", however, as, I think, Yerbolat had mentioned a while ago, I would argue that Q-pop is actually prevailing - thriving even - since now the local music in Kazakh is a lot more popular than, say, Russian music from Russia as it used to be the case 5 years ago. I'd say nowadays people in KZ have as many Kazakh hits in their Apple Music/Spotify/Yandex Music playlists as whatever American/British/other Western international celebrities' concoctions.

Also, it's not really about their appearance - I don't think people on average actually care about this at this point. Don't get me wrong, Kazakhstan is still quite a homophobic country, but come on, this hair colour debate is so 2016. And no, I don't think the guys individually are homophobic, in that regard my general impression was that the Almaty creative hipster scene is rather liberal. Unless you're a new guy who just dropped out of conservative nowhere.

In either case, I would say the bad PR with the whole earrings/hair dye controversy in the group's early days played in their favour overall, as more people got to know them, including those who didn't even listen to K-pop.

I would also argue they sort of gave up on the whole "giving Asian pop boyband vibes to get the attention of impressionable 14 year olds" since around the album 91, because that one sounded extra trendy, not at all K-pop-ish, with all those sound effects and auto-tunes and such.

That's not even the point though.

The point is they sort of waited it out a bit too long, missed the window of opportunity, I suppose, with all that COVID break, and probably Yerbolat kind of mulling things over for a bit longer than needed. While they were off, all those other acts showed up and kept spitting out content after content. And all of a sudden we have the whole variety of the local music that basically allowed for the situation that I already illustrated: when you can legitimately have playlists packed with only songs made in KZ, at least 90% of them would be in the Kazakh language, and all of that is actually produced by, intended to and listened by the local youth. This fact alone is simply phenomenal to the point that if I was told this could be a thing a mere decade ago, I wouldn't have even believed it. And there I was trying to promote the Kazakh pop music to my Kazakh friends 5 years ago which mostly raised unamused eyebrows, eh. I was ahead of the time, I suppose, an early adopter of sorts (to the point of having an actual blog about it) as the same friends listen to the Kazakh music now, what a fucking surprise.

But where were we?

Ah, Ninety One slowed down and that didn't help the traction when competition started popping up.

And, well, the market proved to be more in favour of mostly hip-hop/rap single or double acts that are cruder/more authentic in delivery with less censorship, and not exactly polished boybands with elaborate choreography routines. Although, I must say, the guys still have the fanbase, it's just not as ardent as it used to be because, well, you know, life happened, the kids grew up, time flies, what can you do. It's been 8 years, after all, those 14 year olds are at least 22 now, and are probably collectively having their respective graduation ceremonies at their respective universities or something.

Come to think of it though, the 91 guys must have still contributed to these Zoomers' propensity to listen to the contemporary Kazakh music without the whole colonial brainwashing and the inferiority complex of the generations prior.

Anyway, the point of this long incoherent monologue: it's not about the earrings or hair dye, but the missed timeframe + changing tides of the market trends/tastes when it comes to the local music.

Also, I don't really think they can afford to actually split up - the local showbiz is poor af, it's not like anyone from the group had accumulated a fortune to secure a prosperous future with comfortable lifestyle. Just a reminder that we're not in the States where the music industry's contributions to the GDP is equivalent to the GDP of this entire country (no, seriously, Google it, the KZ GDP is only around 20 bils more.) I must point out they did live off those McDonald's/inDrive/Otbasy Bank commercials after the Juz split only thanks to the Ninety One™ brand that still holds some value.

If they do want to continue as solo acts though, it would require some serious marketing chops, and a bit of luck to catch that trend wave with whatever content they'll individually decide to produce.

They'll need to monetise their ventures somehow too, so I would expect more commercials - whether or not they'd be able to secure serious sponsorship contracts while not being under the Ninety One™ brand is one big question though.

All in all, can't say I know the answer to your question, I just know that times have changed, the K-pop rage had peaked in around 2017, Q-pop never took flight, and Ninety One are probably trying to reimagine themselves to stay relevant in the today's market.

@tomirida​ I hope it’s ok to ask (you are from Kazakhstan, yes? sorry if i got that wrong) but are the January 2022 protests and the following trials discussed in media and in people’s everyday lives? Are there very big differences in what the media says about them compared to what people generally think about them? I asked my aunt once last year but she is one of those people who completely shuts out everything political and couldn’t really answer.

Yes, we are still dealing with the aftermath of Bloody January. It was a national tragedy for us. In fact, quite recently two parents of killed victims were arrested for protesting outside the city hall, last month five activists accused of taking over the airport were jailed for four years for one and eight years for the rest, and the case of a 4-year-old girl's death, as far as I know, still hasn't been closed. Initially the Januarian victims were described as having deserved it, that they were terrorists or had provoked the authorities first, but people didn't buy it, and obviously families are still fighting to claim the victims' innocence. There's a lot of frustration over the injustice of the trials and the government's continuing lack of transparency and accountability for the whole thing.

The story of Bloody January is disputed, but I think there's a general agreement that it started out as peaceful protests against rising gas prices in Jañaözen which then escalated into violence in other cities due to public discontent. Toqaev initially talked of these people as "twenty thousand terrorists" attacking Almaty, claiming it was an attempt of a coup d'etat. He also, infamously, gave an order to "shoot without warning", and invited the CSTO to "settle" the conflict (they were called "peacekeepers"). I think that, even though there were definitely people who took advantage of the chaos, it was no excuse to use such excessive violence against civilians, and especially asking foreign powers to potentially spill your own people's blood. The "twenty thousand" story hasn't been repeated since then, AFAIK. As for foreign media, I've seen some insinuate that the protests were caused by Russian or Chinese meddling. I personally strongly disagree with those claims: Qazaqstanis had their own reasons to be angry, what with the same guy ruling the country for thirty years, worsening of living standards, having only aesthetic-level changes (e.g Nazarbaev hand-picking his successor), living under an authoritarian regime, etc. Blaming it all only on Russia or China fails to address Qazaqstan's own history.

These days Toqaev has been pushing for democratisation of the country ("Jaña Qazaqstan" — "New Qazaqstan"), like holding a referendum for new constitutional changes that would limit his powers as president, stripping Nazarbaev's presence and privileges in the country, holding elections with newly registered parties, but you'll see mixed feelings about it all. Some have hopes Qazaqstan's situation is gonna improve, others are more cynical and don't think there's anything "new" about current Qazaqstan.

I hope it's okay to tag you @qforqazaq @juregim since I think you would have a better perspective as people from Almaty, but don't feel pressured to reply.

Hmmm

The only thing I can say about the events of the Bloody January 2022, having stayed in the city where all the "fun" and action was happening - it was scary.

Admittedly, it was exciting at first, since that was the first time when anyone witnessed protests flaring up all over the country, people going out to the streets as one. It had never happened before, protests were always some very small isolated events by activists mostly in Almaty, maybe in Astana - super rare, never lasting and doing much.

Reading/watching how people in different cities gathered for protests one by one was nothing short invigorating. And it was all in social media, of course, mostly Instagram, or independent news channels, because the government wouldn't let the official channels to roll anything related to that.

Anyway, seeing on Instagram how that huge crowd in Almaty was moving towards the centre as one in a peaceful protest was inspiring, giving hope for some changes, for a brighter future. I think some of us were hoping for it to become a colour revolution of sorts.

I remember there was someone who was stuck in their office just next to the Republic Square and was streaming live on Instagram how the crowd reached the Square, and there was police with shields and helmets, or were those soldiers? Or whoever the fuck were those. Then they started throwing stun grenades at the crowd, and that was the moment when you kind of realised that well, this shit of a government wouldn't back down, would it?

The live video went on for some time, and it was alarming to watch: a lot of smoke, and noise of people shouting, and grenades going off. The people who were streaming this stopped the video, and I don't remember if that was when the internet went down, or was it afterwards, but one thing was clear: I could hear the stun grenades coming off in the distance despite living on the other side of the city.

I'm not sure I remember all the events in the correct order, but shortly after the crowd went into the city hall and someone started the fire, and I've read they've been beating up those soldiers who were basically 18 y.o. boys serving in an army or something. I think the violence has triggered violence, and, well, honestly, people were fed up with the management for far too long so the bitterness is understandable.

What is not understandable though is that there were reports of some group coming in and starting to distribute the guns which I have no idea where they got from (Kazakhstan is not the States, you can't just get guns anywhere). Which was already suspicious, and did look like a setup tbh. Many people believe it was a diversion from the government to create the chaos, and make it an excuse to call everyone terrorists and shoot without warning.

In either case, amidst the chaos marauders jumped into the opportunity to take whatever they could get their hands on. People were crashing and raiding shops, stores, restaurants, cafes and everything in between. Considering how much the general population got fucked socioeconomically in the past decade (I mean our currency alone was devaluated thrice, it is now worth 3 times less than it did in 2013), it is no wonder why so many people didn't mind start stealing shit while they could. And, well, people were angry, the pent up decades long frustration is never a good thing, what can I say.

Anyway, the internet was cut off, and we've been in the blackout for more than a week, I think. Those were the longest days that probably everyone had ever experienced.

While we've been in the communication lockdown, we've only received those laughable SMS messages from the government telling everyone to stay indoors, while they're having their anti-terrorist operation.

The news of Tokayev asking the CSTO for help with Russia at its helm was the most alarming thing I've heard. In all honesty, it really was a pretty fucking terrifying thought, because having Russian military forces on our ground where the country is destabilised only invoked stuff along the lines of "wait, hang on, are we going to be Ukraine 2.0?" Because we know what happened to Crimea. And in retrospect we now know what happened a month later.

Oh, also considering that right before the internet was shut down people have been ironizing over all those private jets that have been spotted on Flightradar24, leaving Almaty one by one, because, of course the fucking government elite and oligarchs would promptly flee on the first opportunity. They're the last people who would even care about country's wellbeing, obviously.

Knowing this + the news of the CSTO aka Russian and Belarusian military forces coming a few days later basically solidified this feeling of the country being majorly fucked. Yeah, because losing independence to Russia would be a fucking fiasco to say the least, who even in their right mind would want to live in the Soviet Union 2.0?

Honestly, my other thoughts were questions on how people actually apply for refugee status, because living under the Russian occupation was the last thing I wanted to do with my life, thank you very much. I might be biased, but I do think that was the sentiment and fear that majority of the people shared, learning about "receiving help" from the CSTO.

Oh, and a thought of "ok, how the fuck have I even found myself in this situation? I should've probably stayed in Canada, yeah, everything seems so clear in the retrospect, doesn't it. 'Let's go back to Kazakhstan', she said, 'Kazakhstan's got potential" she said, 'there's hope, look at so many creative people putting out cool things now!' she said. Potential my arse, this failure of a country wasn't worth shit after all."

Yeah, I know, I must be fun at parties. Honestly though, you can now see what might be another reason for the lack of any inspiration to write anything on this blog. But I digress, where were we?

Ah, so, yeah, such thoughts got very pronounced when a day or two later they restored the internet connection for an hour or so, and the first thing I've read on the news was - guess what? - that Novak Djokovic's Australian visa was revoked because he didn't want to be vaccinated, so won't be able to compete in the Australian Open. And there was a huge debate about it in every media outlet's comment section.

"Vaccinated?" I thought, "Ah, yeah, COVID is a thing, we are sort of in the middle of a pandemic right now, how could I forget. And people care so much huh. Btw, can I also have problems like these ,please? You know, the white people kind. When you're debating over getting an avocado toast or eggs Benedict on a brioche bun for breakfast, while discussing whether or not Djokovic should be allowed to play in Australia. Can I? Please?"

You know what I also found bloody hilarious? Not a single news source said anything about what is happening in Kazakhstan. Bloomberg, the Economist, New York Times, Reuter, BBC. Not a single one. Nada.

And then that was another one of those bittersweet thoughts bordering hysterical: "Haha, yeah, how could I forget: nobody, in fact, gives a flying fuck about this piece of shit of a country. Why would they? Nobody even knows where it is on the map, oh, the fucking irony. Novak Djokovic is infinitely more valuable to this world even as a news piece than Kazakhstan's possible ceasing to be a country at all! Talking of priorities, ha!"

Okay, all the news came rolling down eventually, because, of course, they did, but only towards the end of the whole ordeal. And still, the fact that the world at large is indifferent about what is happening in this particular country was quite strikingly evident.

If we are to steer back to the ordeal in question, I don't think anyone believes in that 20k terrorists attack. There are many speculations and theories, a very popular one being that:

Long story short: we still don't know shit about what actually happened. We all just know that we had a collective existential crisis and dread along with trauma and at least one thought about emigrating elsewhere.

Everyone, at least in Almaty, had come out of this scarred at least mentally, others physically, and some people did not live to tell the story at all - and that is the saddest part.

Two weeks after the events it was surreal to sit in a patio in the centre of city as if nothing happened. It feels surreal to recall all this now, as it feels like it happened in a different lifetime or a parallel reality. The time blurs the edges though, and it makes you realise that human brain and psyche learns to accept everything.

Political instability is a pain in the arse - I can tell you that much.

And my desire to only have white-people problems have crystallised and solidified back then, but one thing is clear: getting that comically caricature sense of privilege would be rendered impossible, having witnessed this "revolution-that-did-not-happen".

Thank you for sharing your story. To be honest, during the protests I also realised how irrelevant our country was in the world—I mean, I always knew that, but the events just solidified it for me. I remember how foreigners talked about "clans fighting for power", a staged revolution, possible civil war, they even managed to insert borat jokes in there somehow, and I remember feeling such rage inside that even in the midst of this tragedy Qazaqstanis weren't offered grace from such comments. I know it's the internet where the dumbest motherfuckers flock together naturally but it felt like a spit in the face. Like Aigerim Akhmetova said, a building burns down and everybody prays for Paris, but when actual people die in Qazaqstan nobody gives a fuck.

Well, there's no other way to talk about it, is there?

People need to write a news piece for views, and it's just another one of calamities happening everyday in different parts of the world - experts are not and never will be expected to actually sympathise with the subject matter. They absolutely don't have to, really. By the end of the day, it all becomes dry, depersonalised pages in history books.

What I appreciated though is to find many messages on Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp by many friends and acquaintances I've met over the years all over the world, even those whom I was never close with, asking about my wellbeing which truly was heartwarming.

Friends from London, Paris, LA, Dubai, Berlin, Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver, Hong Kong - there were even people whom I met only once in my life, and happened to remember I was from Kazakhstan, who cared enough to dig up my social media page in their followers list and write a line to make sure I was indeed okay. If that wouldn't make anyone feel anything but grateful, I don't know what could. Honestly, that was a sort of thing that can restore one's faith in humanity.

It did mine.

So, in the end, it didn't even matter whatever those news outlets were writing. Journalists and political scientists can theorise all they want - it is their job, after all.

Come to think of it, people are always going to care about stuff they've encountered personally anyway. And I'm glad I had people even in the outskirts of my social circle who cared, despite having no connections to the country whatsoever, only to me as a person, and that is more than enough tbh.

Other than that, having a grudge against the very evidently eurocentric world that didn't care enough about a country in the middle of socioeconomic nowhere also known as "Central Asia" sounds rather counterproductive imho. Might as well try to make it a "somewhere", at least by sharing the culture - popular and otherwise - in a silly little blog like mine, I suppose.

P. S. Btw, I've just learned that the construction of Notre Dame de París started in 1163 and was largely completed by 1345 that is exactly 120 years before the inception of the Kazakh Khanate. Isn't that an interesting thought?

Knowing that one (1) architectural masterpiece will always be more culturally significant than entire, well, cultures.

@tomirida​ I hope it’s ok to ask (you are from Kazakhstan, yes? sorry if i got that wrong) but are the January 2022 protests and the following trials discussed in media and in people’s everyday lives? Are there very big differences in what the media says about them compared to what people generally think about them? I asked my aunt once last year but she is one of those people who completely shuts out everything political and couldn’t really answer.

Yes, we are still dealing with the aftermath of Bloody January. It was a national tragedy for us. In fact, quite recently two parents of killed victims were arrested for protesting outside the city hall, last month five activists accused of taking over the airport were jailed for four years for one and eight years for the rest, and the case of a 4-year-old girl's death, as far as I know, still hasn't been closed. Initially the Januarian victims were described as having deserved it, that they were terrorists or had provoked the authorities first, but people didn't buy it, and obviously families are still fighting to claim the victims' innocence. There's a lot of frustration over the injustice of the trials and the government's continuing lack of transparency and accountability for the whole thing.

The story of Bloody January is disputed, but I think there's a general agreement that it started out as peaceful protests against rising gas prices in Jañaözen which then escalated into violence in other cities due to public discontent. Toqaev initially talked of these people as "twenty thousand terrorists" attacking Almaty, claiming it was an attempt of a coup d'etat. He also, infamously, gave an order to "shoot without warning", and invited the CSTO to "settle" the conflict (they were called "peacekeepers"). I think that, even though there were definitely people who took advantage of the chaos, it was no excuse to use such excessive violence against civilians, and especially asking foreign powers to potentially spill your own people's blood. The "twenty thousand" story hasn't been repeated since then, AFAIK. As for foreign media, I've seen some insinuate that the protests were caused by Russian or Chinese meddling. I personally strongly disagree with those claims: Qazaqstanis had their own reasons to be angry, what with the same guy ruling the country for thirty years, worsening of living standards, having only aesthetic-level changes (e.g Nazarbaev hand-picking his successor), living under an authoritarian regime, etc. Blaming it all only on Russia or China fails to address Qazaqstan's own history.

These days Toqaev has been pushing for democratisation of the country ("Jaña Qazaqstan" — "New Qazaqstan"), like holding a referendum for new constitutional changes that would limit his powers as president, stripping Nazarbaev's presence and privileges in the country, holding elections with newly registered parties, but you'll see mixed feelings about it all. Some have hopes Qazaqstan's situation is gonna improve, others are more cynical and don't think there's anything "new" about current Qazaqstan.

I hope it's okay to tag you @qforqazaq @juregim since I think you would have a better perspective as people from Almaty, but don't feel pressured to reply.

Hmmm

The only thing I can say about the events of the Bloody January 2022, having stayed in the city where all the "fun" and action was happening - it was scary.

Admittedly, it was exciting at first, since that was the first time when anyone witnessed protests flaring up all over the country, people going out to the streets as one. It had never happened before, protests were always some very small isolated events by activists mostly in Almaty, maybe in Astana - super rare, never lasting and doing much.

Reading/watching how people in different cities gathered for protests one by one was nothing short invigorating. And it was all in social media, of course, mostly Instagram, or independent news channels, because the government wouldn't let the official channels to roll anything related to that.

Anyway, seeing on Instagram how that huge crowd in Almaty was moving towards the centre as one in a peaceful protest was inspiring, giving hope for some changes, for a brighter future. I think some of us were hoping for it to become a colour revolution of sorts.

I remember there was someone who was stuck in their office just next to the Republic Square and was streaming live on Instagram how the crowd reached the Square, and there was police with shields and helmets, or were those soldiers? Or whoever the fuck were those. Then they started throwing stun grenades at the crowd, and that was the moment when you kind of realised that well, this shit of a government wouldn't back down, would it?

The live video went on for some time, and it was alarming to watch: a lot of smoke, and noise of people shouting, and grenades going off. The people who were streaming this stopped the video, and I don't remember if that was when the internet went down, or was it afterwards, but one thing was clear: I could hear the stun grenades coming off in the distance despite living on the other side of the city.

I'm not sure I remember all the events in the correct order, but shortly after the crowd went into the city hall and someone started the fire, and I've read they've been beating up those soldiers who were basically 18 y.o. boys serving in an army or something. I think the violence has triggered violence, and, well, honestly, people were fed up with the management for far too long so the bitterness is understandable.

What is not understandable though is that there were reports of some group coming in and starting to distribute the guns which I have no idea where they got from (Kazakhstan is not the States, you can't just get guns anywhere). Which was already suspicious, and did look like a setup tbh. Many people believe it was a diversion from the government to create the chaos, and make it an excuse to call everyone terrorists and shoot without warning.

In either case, amidst the chaos marauders jumped into the opportunity to take whatever they could get their hands on. People were crashing and raiding shops, stores, restaurants, cafes and everything in between. Considering how much the general population got fucked socioeconomically in the past decade (I mean our currency alone was devaluated thrice, it is now worth 3 times less than it did in 2013), it is no wonder why so many people didn't mind start stealing shit while they could. And, well, people were angry, the pent up decades long frustration is never a good thing, what can I say.

Anyway, the internet was cut off, and we've been in the blackout for more than a week, I think. Those were the longest days that probably everyone had ever experienced.

While we've been in the communication lockdown, we've only received those laughable SMS messages from the government telling everyone to stay indoors, while they're having their anti-terrorist operation.

The news of Tokayev asking the CSTO for help with Russia at its helm was the most alarming thing I've heard. In all honesty, it really was a pretty fucking terrifying thought, because having Russian military forces on our ground where the country is destabilised only invoked stuff along the lines of "wait, hang on, are we going to be Ukraine 2.0?" Because we know what happened to Crimea. And in retrospect we now know what happened a month later.

Oh, also considering that right before the internet was shut down people have been ironizing over all those private jets that have been spotted on Flightradar24, leaving Almaty one by one, because, of course the fucking government elite and oligarchs would promptly flee on the first opportunity. They're the last people who would even care about country's wellbeing, obviously.

Knowing this + the news of the CSTO aka Russian and Belarusian military forces coming a few days later basically solidified this feeling of the country being majorly fucked. Yeah, because losing independence to Russia would be a fucking fiasco to say the least, who even in their right mind would want to live in the Soviet Union 2.0?

Honestly, my other thoughts were questions on how people actually apply for refugee status, because living under the Russian occupation was the last thing I wanted to do with my life, thank you very much. I might be biased, but I do think that was the sentiment and fear that majority of the people shared, learning about "receiving help" from the CSTO.

Oh, and a thought of "ok, how the fuck have I even found myself in this situation? I should've probably stayed in Canada, yeah, everything seems so clear in the retrospect, doesn't it. 'Let's go back to Kazakhstan', she said, 'Kazakhstan's got potential" she said, 'there's hope, look at so many creative people putting out cool things now!' she said. Potential my arse, this failure of a country wasn't worth shit after all."

Yeah, I know, I must be fun at parties. Honestly though, you can now see what might be another reason for the lack of any inspiration to write anything on this blog. But I digress, where were we?

Ah, so, yeah, such thoughts got very pronounced when a day or two later they restored the internet connection for an hour or so, and the first thing I've read on the news was - guess what? - that Novak Djokovic's Australian visa was revoked because he didn't want to be vaccinated, so won't be able to compete in the Australian Open. And there was a huge debate about it in every media outlet's comment section.

"Vaccinated?" I thought, "Ah, yeah, COVID is a thing, we are sort of still in the middle of a pandemic right now, aren't we. And people care so much huh. Btw, can I also have problems like these, please? You know, the" white-people kind". When you're debating over getting an avocado toast or eggs Benedict on a brioche bun for breakfast, while discussing whether or not Djokovic should be allowed to play in Australia. Can I? Please?"

You know what I also found bloody hilarious? Not a single news source said anything about what is happening in Kazakhstan. Bloomberg, the Economist, New York Times, Reuter, BBC. Not a single one. Nada.

And then that was another one of those bittersweet thoughts bordering hysterical: "Haha, yeah, how could I forget: nobody, in fact, gives a flying fuck about this piece of shit of a country. Why would they? Nobody even knows where it is on the map, oh, the fucking irony. Novak Djokovic is infinitely more valuable to this world even as a news piece than Kazakhstan's possible ceasing to be a country at all! Talking of priorities, ha!"

Okay, all the news came rolling down eventually, because, of course, they did, but only towards the end of the whole ordeal. And still, the fact that the world at large is indifferent about what is happening in this particular country was quite strikingly evident.

If we are to steer back to the ordeal in question, I don't think anyone believes in that 20k terrorists attack. There are many speculations and theories, a very popular one being that:

Long story short: we still don't know shit about what actually happened. We all just know that we had a collective existential crisis and dread along with trauma and at least one thought about emigrating elsewhere.

Everyone, at least in Almaty, had come out of this scarred at least mentally, others physically, and some people did not live to tell the story at all - and that is the saddest part.

Two weeks after the events it was surreal to sit in a patio, casually sipping your latte at a hip coffee shop in the city centre as if nothing happened. It feels surreal to recall all this now, as it feels like it happened in a different lifetime or a parallel reality. The time blurs the edges though, and it makes you realise that human brain and psyche learns to accept everything.

Political instability is a pain in the arse - I can tell you that much.

And my desire to only have white-people problems have crystallised and solidified back then, but one thing is clear: getting that comically caricature sense of privilege would be rendered impossible, having witnessed this "revolution-that-did-not-happen".

Online Database of Qazaq Arts and Crafts

On August 1, the Union of Artisans of Qazaqstan launched a database of traditional Qazaq ornaments, which features extensive bibliography, symbolism and look of the ornaments by region. From the site:

Here is the link. The site is in Russian, but you can translate it in the browser.

Hi! I’m back! Pls take a look at my kazakh spider-girl 🕷️🇰🇿🕸️

Neat

I have a question for Kazakh people

I have a question for Kazakh people, i hope you answer it!!

I'm writing a Kazakh character. I found the name ''Arma'' years ago, which I think means ''dream'' or related to that. I found other meanings from other cultures too. But I always imagined the character as Kazakh. My question is, can you use Arma as a real name? or is it just a word?

And do you have any recommendations for how to write a more accurate Kazakh character? What would you want to see from a Kazakh character?

(the story is placed in a fictional country, that has people from different cultures from our world.)

Not sure if you've gotten private answers here yet, but I'll add my two cents anyway. I'll write the Qazaq words in the QazaqGrammar Latin alphabet, but I can give the Cyrillic spellings where needed.

Arman (stress on the last syllable) is a common masculine name and it does mean "dream". I haven't met any Armans who went by a nickname, but I don't think Arma as one would stand out too much.

As for cultural stuff:

• Qazaqs are more family oriented which includes the extended family, not just the nuclear one.

• Most Qazaqs can speak both Qazaq and Russian, but the distribution of these languages depend on the region and household situation. If the environment is mostly Russian-speaking, they speak Russian more, as is the case in Almatı, Astana, and northern regions. The South and West has more primarily Qazaq-speaking people. If a Qazaq has a Russophone family, their primary language is Russian and vice versa for Qazaq. Young adults and teens usually have a better grasp on English than other generations. You'll notice a lot of content is made in Russian though, mainly because it's the most spoken language in the country + it reaches a wider audience.

• Every Qazaq knows their jüz (horde), taypa (tribe), and ruw (clan). Historically there existed the three hordes: the Ulı jüz (Senior Horde) in the southeast, which is where the Qazaq khanate was born; the Orta jüz (Middle Horde) in the centre, north, and east; and the Kici jüz (Junior Horde) in the west. There is a map on Wikipedia which shows the area better. So it goes jüz -> tribe -> clan. Aqsüyek (lit. "white bone", aristocracy) aren't a part of the jüz, namely the Töre, royal descendants of Genghis Khan; and Qoja, descendants of Muhammad. There are other tribes that aren't included in the jüz either, such as the Töleñgit, descendants of a warrior class serving khans and sultans, and Noğay-Qazaq, but I don't know as much about them. This family system does not affect politics or anything of the sort in the modern age and Qazaqs do not suffer from tribalism; asking for someone's ruw is as usual as asking someone for their zodiac sign. Plus it's fun if you turn out to share the same clan. In family matters it's shameful to marry someone of the same clan as there is a chance you may be related. Speaking of relation...

• Every Qazaq knows, or ought to know, their "jeti ata" (seven grandfathers), i.e their ancestors at least seven generations back. The person starts from the closest male relation, like their father or brother, or if the person is male then they start the count with themselves and go on until they reach the seventh "ata". Incest is taboo in Qazaq society (yes, through all seven generations), but anything after that is considered fine.

• Most Qazaqs have a first name, patronymic, and surname. You've already picked a good first name, so I'll move on to the latter two: the patronymic is formed by inserting -ulı ("son of") or -qızı ("daughter of") at the end of the father's name. Qazaqs' surname is derived from their grandfather's or great-grandfather's name due to Soviet policy of adopting surnames, plus Russian ending (-ov/-ev for men, -ova/-eva for women) at the end, although since the Soviet Union collapsed it's become more common to leave the Russian endings out and leave the name as is, for example Eskendir Sätemirovich Moldabekov -> Eskendir Sätemirulı Moldabek. Some Qazaqs opt to adopt their patronymic as their surname, in which case the patronymic is legally listed as their surname, while the blank for the patronymic in the document remains empty.

• Qazaqs are very hospitable. One of the first things we do when a guest comes home is prepare tea, traditionally black. Qazaqs love black tea with milk. According to our etiquette, you must pour tea only halfway to show respect to the guest, so that they can keep asking you to refill their cup. Filling the cup fully means you can't wait for them to leave. The guest takes the tör, a place on the table reserved for guests and most respected people. If there are no guests, girls traditionally sit there, as daughters are considered guests of the house before they marry and move to their husband's household.

• Most Qazaqs are nominally Muslim. It works as a cultural marker of sorts, like Muslims=Central Asians, Christians=Slavs; obviously CAsians can be Christian and Slavs can be Muslim, but that's how generally things are here. We follow both Islamic and pagan traditions, f.ex. Qurban ayt (Eid) and Nawrız (Navruz); don't eat pork (not that it stops some), alcohol is fair game though. In general people are more lax with religion, so not a lot of people praying five days a day, going to mosques, strictly following doctrine etc.

• Qazaqs love to party! Any event is a good event to organise a toy, party celebration in Qazaq. Or at least a family gathering. Birth of a child, fortieth day after birth, first steps, weddings (we have several for one couple)—you can be sure we are planning them as we speak. Good news, such as getting a first job, can get a Qazaq körimdik, basically cash as a gift from relatives ;)

• Giving a toast is the staple of every important feast. Older people know how to give a good speech.

• Boys have traditionally worn a braid at the top of their head called aydar. It was supposed to protect against the evil eye and was cut off at age 13.

• Qazaqs in Qazaqstan are settled due to forced collectivisation in the 1930s. I can't speak for Qazaqs in other areas, but the diaspora in Western Mongolia are still nomadic and practice eagle hunting (we have some sportsmen like that here too, but it's much more common in Mongolia). There are some minor differences in language, but we still understand each other. Diaspora from non-Soviet countries don't speak Russian well, if at all, so they have to learn Russian when they come here because it's sadly a demanded language for work.

• I don't know where you are from, but a lot of Western media paints Central Asian countries as other unstable Middle Eastern-like countries, or just "leftovers" of the USSR. We are people with our own history and culture just like anyone else, we aren't defined solely by one era or our loose connection with another region.

• Qazaqs take off their shoes when they enter home.

• While Qazaqs are hospitable, in public we may seem cold compared to Americans. For example, we don't do small talk with strangers and we don't smile at them. Especially relevant in the north of the country.

• The Qazaq alphabet is still in a difficult place. Functionally we still use Cyrillic in our daily life even though the government spent six years 1) composing the new Latin alphabet (it's still shit), 2) applying it instead of Cyrillic. The Latin alphabets (plural!) I've seen... my eyes still haven't recovered. So don't sweat the Latin spellings too much.

• We dress in a modern or "Western" style, but lately it's become trendy to incorporate traditional elements in our clothes, be it traditional hats, jewellery, ornaments sewn on clothes, etc.

• While historical and mythical figures have always been important to our culture, after the USSR fell we got a new character: Altın adam, "golden man" (adam is gender-neutral "human" though). It's a reconstruction of a Saka warrior discovered in the Almaty region in the 1970s. He's become a symbol of our independence. So besides traditional Qazaq styles you may also get inspiration from Scythian motifs or jewellery, since they lived in Central Asian prior to Turkic arrival. Nurlan Kilibaev, a famous Qazaq artist, certainly makes use of them.

• There are several types of Qazaq ornaments (geometric, celestial, zoomorphic etc) and each ornament has its own meaning. This page has more information in Russian; machine translations are better trained with that language than Qazaq. Our flag includes an ornament called qocqar müyiz, "ram horns". It symbolises fortune and prosperity.

Unfortunately, there aren't many online English resources about Qazaq culture I know of (most stuff is written either in Qazaq or Russian), but I can vouch for @qforqazaq; they haven't been active in a while but their posts are informative. If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them.

Thanks for the reference @tomirida - good to know someone remembers my work although it's been 4 years

I second everything that's written except for a few comments:

I hope this addition helps in some way.

Fell free to throw some other questions, I'll try to answer if I'll have the time.

Cheers

Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I'll practise basic self care

Why 666k? Because it's funny and impossible so good fucking luck

Well, OP, I’m officially invested in this shit. Your whiny ass is doing self care if I have to drive to your goddamn house and do it for you.

By Talos this can't be happening

reblog this everyone i wanna see what happens when op’s reverse-hubris forces them to practice basic self care.

why? because it’s funny and completely possible actually so good fucking luck op

I figured out roughly how many notes it's been getting per day and multiplied that by the number of days left until the end of 2023

If we keep it going at this rate we'll be far past 666k

IMPORTANT

Okay so clearly I've underestimated y'all

So how about we make this more interesting?

I will practise self care if this post reaches 666k BY THE END OF 2022

Op you have fuckethed with the devil this post has gained 30,000 notes since I reblogged it last night

Reblog to throw a hedge apple in OP's driveway

What the fuck is this eldritch fruit? I'm in.

It's Maclura pomifera, commonly known as the osage orange or hedge apple. It is known to be native only to a small area of Texas and the edge of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Before the invention of barbed wire, it was pruned repeatedly and shaped to make dense impenetrable hedges to contain animals.

The fruits are inedible—not poison, they're just hard and taste bad.

The wood is super-strong, burns hotter than any other wood, and is ideal for making bows!

We should just fill this post with other interesting things as reasons to reblog it

Actually I like this idea, we should do that. Here's my fun fact contribution; actual old English, what one could call Anglo-Saxon (as opposed to, for example, Shakespearean English, which a lot of people call old English but is actually antiquated modern English), is a Germanic language, and modern English shares a lot of roots with German because of that. It was also, at one point, written with runes.

The hagfish is a deep-sea fish speculated to be related to lamprey. It exudes a strange goo that is believed to be used to clog the gills of attackers. This goo has been found to be a very good substitute for egg whites in cooking.

Blood can be substituted for egg in general in some recipes!

I have some very evil meringue ideas

Did you know that corsets actually aren’t as harmful as they’re advertised to be? Women wore cloth under their corsets so it wouldn’t imprint on their skin, and they don’t cause any bone fractures nor injury - in fact, corsets are highly beneficial for posture and support the breasts. They’re also tailored to the person so that they’re never too tight or loose. The idea that corsets were patriarchal tools to force women’s waists tighter is completely untrue. Arguably, one may even say that corsets were advertised as harmful simply because of sexism - women were gaining too much independence over the fashion industry and certain influential men weren’t very happy about it.

Take care of yourself, b/tch.

I've heard that corsets are actually better than bras for your back if you're well endowed.

Yep! For someone who's well-endowed, a regular bra puts all the heavy lifting on your shoulders, which can really get to be a burden. Supporting from underneath helps ease that strain a lot.

Just to add to the conversation, technically I believe wearing a corset for a long period of time can eventually lead to some weakening of the core/back muscles (since the corset is supporting your posture, you use those muscles less), but that's easily fixable with regular exercise.

Make up for it by riding a horse.

There were actually exercise routines specifically for strengthening the back and core muscles of people who wore corsets on a daily basis. A fair number of physical therapy routines are based off of these exercises.

fun fact :

there's a specific type of fungus that only ever grows in ants nests.

this fungus is in a symbiotic relationship with the ants because...

the ants eat the fungus and the fungus puts chemicals into the ants brains that makes them know what the fungus wants to eat

so the ants go and find the type of tree or plant that the fungus wants and brings it back to the nest

BUT some trees can detect that their being eaten and can put toxins into their leaves to kill what ever Is eating it.

BUT

THE FUNGUS KNOWS THIS AND WHEN IT GETS THE TOXIOUS LEAVES BACK IT TELLS THE ANTS AND THEY GO TO A DIFFEREBT TREE

NOW DO SELF CARE OP

A fun fact:

Apples, tulips, and, well, cannabis originated on the territory of modern-day Kazakhstan.

The said territory can also accommodate the entirety of Western Europe and there'll be some extra space left too.

Ah, and the very first satellite was launched from here too, as did the very first man in space - Yuri Gagarin!

And let me wrap it up with a popular jam by lovely Yenlik - probably, our only Kazakh female artist of this genre (wrapping it up with a rap, that is)

Have a listen if you will hehe

And OP, prepare for self-care or the internet will come after you

Apple picking near Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan), 1972