Elsewhere, almost 600,000 Victorians have lodged pandemic rebate claims for pottery classes, museum exhibitions, winery lunches and other events in the month since they were offered.

Elsewhere, almost 600,000 Victorians have lodged pandemic rebate claims for pottery classes, museum exhibitions, winery lunches and other events in the month since they were offered.

Scientists in Beijing have announced the discovery of an almost 3,000-year-old skeleton of a young woman whose foot had been amputated. The finding, say researchers, is rare evidence for the practice of yue, an ancient practice in which a person’s foot was amputated as punishment for a crime. It is, they say, the earliest archeological evidence for the practice.

The discovery, first reported by the South China Morning Post, was unearthed in a tomb at Zhouyuan site in Shaanxi province, northwest China. Extensive osteoarcheological examination estimated that the woman lived five years after the amputation and was about 30-35 years old when she died. Biomedical analysis further revealed that there was no evidence of disease that might have caused the woman’s limb to have been amputated on medical grounds. The cut to the bone, said the researchers, was roughly made and, thus, does not seem suggestive of medical amputation.

Li Nan, an archaeologist at Peking University in China, told Tom Metcalf of Live Science that the team of archeologists eliminated “other possibilities and agreed that punitive amputation is the best interpretation” of the remains. Though the woman seems to have been poor, she lived for about five years after the amputation.

In the absence of evidence for disease, scientists have concluded that the woman was punished under the “Five Punishments” (wuxing) system, a set of punitive measures that were in place until the second century B.C. According to legend, the five punishments were originally created by the Miao tribes after Chiyou, one of the three legendary founders of China, inaugurated a period of chaos. The fourth century B.C. Confucian text Shangshu or the Book of Documents writes, “[The Miao] made the five punishments engines of oppression, calling them the laws. They slaughtered the innocent and were the first also to go to excess in cutting off the nose, cutting off the ears, castration, and branding.”

The Xia dynasty also allegedly used the system, and yue in particular, to controlled enslaved people. During the Zhou Dynasty (1045-221 B.C.) the Five Punishments were refined to include amputation of the nose [yi], facial tattooing [mo], the removal of one or both legs [yue], castration [gōng], and the death penalty [da pi]. Ancient Chinese artwork also shows numerous depictions of people whose foot, feet, or leg had been amputated.

While the practice was implemented for a lengthy period of time, it was also controversial. Not only was bodily mutilation something that scarred and disabled people for life, but it also had religious consequences. Confucian beliefs stated that a person’s body is received from their ancestors and parents and must be returned to them at death. Mutilation made this obligation impossible to fulfill, as Brian McKnight puts it, since a mutilated body was indicative of a mutilated spirit.

A ninth-century A.D. essay by Tang poet Bai Juyi connects the tyrannical abuse of mutilation to the downfall of various dynasties. A translation of Bai’s essay by Norman Ho reads: “the Miao people started to abuse them; because of this, heaven brought down suffering [on them] to punish them. The Qin [third-century B.C.] Dynasty also violently and brutally used them…and the Qin fell.” Qin dynasty tombs from Longgang site in Hubei contain the remains of those whose feet were amputated in the third century B.C.

The practice was abolished by Emperor Wen, of the Han dynasty, in 167 B.C. A 2019 review of the practice by Norman Ho revealed that centuries earlier there were numerous offenses that were punishable by amputation. Li Nan told Livescience that at the time as many as 500 different offenses were punishable with amputation. Up until that point, as Dr. Jesse Chapman has argued, these punishments served as advertisements of power and permanently associated victims with criminality. Those who suffered under the Five Punishments, writes Chapman, were placed on display: those who were tattooed were sent to guard the gates. Those whose feet were amputated had to guard the gardens.

The use of bodily mutilation (including amputation) as a punishment for crimes is hardly unique to ancient China. In the Roman period, for example, facial tattoos were used to mark enslaved people who tried to self-emancipate (or in Roman terms “run away”). Nasal amputation was employed in ancient Iraq, Egypt, India, and Israel. It continued in the Byzantine and Medieval periods. In 695 A.D. Emperor Justinian II was usurped and disfigured by having his nose sliced off. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of Sicily (1194-1250) inflicted rhinotomies upon those who committed adultery; Pope Sixtus V punished highway bandits with the same treatment in the 16th century; and those who spread libel about the King in 17th-century England risked having their nose or ears amputated. Daniel Defoe, the author of the beloved novel Robinson Crusoe, narrowly escaped this very fate.

The most common context for disfiguring others is wartime. This wasn’t because people got caught up in the moment, it was a ritualistic act that deliberately degraded people. As Dr. Tracy Lemos, a professor of theology at Huron University, has written in a series of important studies on ancient Israel, forcible bodily mutilation in war was a way of dehumanizing people, of displaying one group’s dominance over another, and subordinating those who dare to resist.

The association of criminality and the amputation of body parts is most well-known from the Hebrew Bible axiom “an eye for an eye” but it is present in the New Testament as well. In Mark 9 Jesus tells his followers that if a part of your body causes you to “stumble,” then you should cut it off: “For it would be better to enter eternal life impaired than to be thrown intact into Gehenna, into an unquenchable fire where the worm never dies.” Jesus may well have seen this practice of auto-amputation as therapeutic, but it created a legacy in which blinding and amputation were used as punishment for theft in medieval Europe.

Bodily mutilation is not only about the formal or official exercise of power. The lynching of Black and Mexican men in the American South regularly involved castration, ocular excision, and the amputation of hands and feet. Even today, forcible bodily modification can be a means of violently and illegally asserting power and dominance; as a CNN report revealed in 2017, young women who are trafficked and forced into sex work in the U.S. are regularly branded or tattooed.

In his 1919 short story “In the Penal Colony,” Franz Kafka told the story of a traveler who witnessed the execution of a condemned man. The condemned had insulted his superior officer by falling asleep on duty and failing to stand and salute on the hour. His execution was administered by a machine that inscribed the nature of the crime on the man’s body over the course of 12 hours. (The machine seems to have been the inspiration for Dolores Umbridge’s Black Quill in Harry Potter.) The story makes explicit, Chapman notes, what is implicit in the historical practices of bodily mutilation: it inscribes the body of the victim in a culturally legible way. You can read their punishment, corresponding crimes, and moral failings from their bodies. Mutilation renders a person less than human. But, from our vantage point, these kinds of inscriptions work only to damn the inscriber, not the condemned.

JK Rowling’s tweet tweet found favour with fans who lauded her hard work and determination.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has often shared the difficulties she had faced while trying to become a published author. As a single mother who was unemployed for some time, Rowling recently revealed that she would write after 2 am after doing the dishes and once her baby was asleep.

The 56-year-old was responding to a question by Twitter user Janet Emson who asked authors how they fit writing into their everyday schedule when they first started.

Rowling also revealed that to ensure that she writes everyday even when she secured a job, she would write during lunch hours and at the end of the day after marking assignments.

When working in an office never met anyone else for lunch because I was using the hour to write, when an unemployed single mother did the washing up at 2am (only once all plates were dirty) and waited for baby to fall asleep, when teaching never watched TV wrote after marking. https://t.co/Z7SuvCGPB7

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 1, 2022

After graduation, JK Rowling had taken up a translating job at the research desk for Amnesty International. Although she found the work important, it did not suit her. “I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them,” she had said in an interview. Later, she took up teaching English in Portugal.

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Meanwhile, her recent tweet found favour with fans who lauded her hard work and determination.

“And that’s how you wrote one of the best series of books to ever exist and made million of children be interested in books. Dreams do come true in ways you can’t even imagine by purely hard work and never giving up,” tweeted Thiare who goes by @ravenclawfem. Ravenclaw was one of the school houses in the Harry Potter universe.

German politician Milena Schiller Ninô commented, “Don’t forget she is also a mother and wife, a woman, a human with all the problems that come with being human. She is incredible and she created a wonderful world.”

Rowling has been mired in controversy because of her “women’s rights” comments which were perceived as transphobic by many in the community. She, however, has not backed away from a dialogue and continues to make herself heard, even through Twitter.

So when a Twitter user commented on this tweet: “Which bit of this is about trans people?” another clapped back by saying, “Not everything is about trans people. Sometimes it’s answering questions.”

Download your money calendar for 2022-23 here and keep your dates with your moneybox, investments, taxes

• Warning: Spoilers ahead “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.”
• A plot point involving Newt’s briefcase feels ripped from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
• The slightly altered plot device feels like lazy writing, recycling old material for new audiences. 

“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” is definitely better than the last film, but fans will undoubtedly groan over some derivative writing that feels plucked straight from the final “Harry Potter” book in the seven-book saga.

In “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” in theaters now, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) rallies together a ragtag group of witches, wizards, and one non-magical muggle to thwart Gellert Grindelwald’s (Mads Mikkelsen, replacing Johnny Depp) plans to start a wizarding war.

The convoluted plan to take down Grindelwald involves Newt’s assistant, Bunty Broadacre (Victoria Yeates), taking Newt’s magical suitcase to get duplicates of it made.

If you’re a big Potter fan, this scene may have given you pause. 

Surely, “Fantastic Beasts” wasn’t about to replicate the famous scene from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in which the Order of the Phoenix (a group of Dumbledore loyalists consisting of Harry, Hermione, Ron, and several others) drink Polyjuice potion, which allows a person to morph into another, in order to disguise themselves as decoy versions of Harry to cause confusion for the franchise’s villain, Voldemort. 

But that’s exactly what they do. 

Late in “Secrets of Dumbledore,” another group of Dumbledore loyalists — the first iteration of Dumbledore’s Army — gathers together in Hogwarts’ Room of Requirements (the famous room where Harry and Dumbledore’s second army to defeat Voldemort would gather years later). Several copycat briefcases fill the room alongside Newt’s real one. 

No one knows which is the real one, containing a “fantastic beast” Grindelwald desires to capture.

Similar to “Deathly Hallows,” Newt’s group disperses and hopes to cause confusion among Grindelwald and his allies. The only difference between the scene in “Fantastic Beasts” and the original “Harry Potter” books and film is that no one knows who holds Newt’s real case. In “Deathly Hallows,” everyone knew which Harry Potter was the real one.

Still, for those who grew up with “Harry Potter,” this reused plot device feels lazy. 

If you’re a Potterhead, the reveal is so painfully predictable early on that it’s frustrating.

It will probably make fans wonder whether or not franchise creator J.K. Rowling herself wrote the material. And it’s a fair question. According to the film’s credits, “Secrets of Dumbledore” is based on a screenplay by Rowling that was then cowritten by Rowling and producer Steve Kloves, who wrote every film in the “Harry Potter” franchise.

That’s in contrast to the past two “Fantastic Beasts” films, which have solely been written by Rowling. 

The briefcase scene would be almost forgivable if another scene soon afterward didn’t feel like a lesser replication of one of the franchise’s most iconic scenes, also from “Deathly Hallows.” 

An emotional moment between Credence (Ezra Miller) and a family member (we won’t spoil that reveal but go ahead and click the link if you want to know) is an obvious nod to Snape’s death scene in the earlier film. 

No one dies in the “Secrets of Dumbledore” sequence, but the exchange of dialogue, ending with the word “always,” feels like such a forced reference to “Harry Potter” that the words ring hollow here instead of acting as a sweet nod to the former franchise.

Both moments may make fans wonder why Rowling and Warner Bros. ever thought they could stretch the thin source material of a “Harry Potter” dictionary (yes, “Fantastic Beasts” is a glossary) into a five-film franchise if they’re simply going to recycle old material and try to pass it off as new to fans if Rowling is out of fresh ideas.

Perhaps its best that WB is reportedly waiting to see how “Secrets of Dumbledore” performs before carrying on with the saga.

News from the wizarding world is a little hard to come by for common muggles, but [Deep Tronix] has brought us one step closer to our magical counterparts with their electronic replica of the Daily Prophet newspaper.

Those familiar with the Harry Potter series will no doubt be familiar with the Daily Prophet. In the films, the newspaper is especially eye-catching with its spooky animated images, a reflection of the magic present throughout the wizarding world. This was achieved with post-production special effects for the films, but this fan-made front page of the Prophet brings the concept to life using e-paper technology and a few other interesting gadgets, all hidden away in a picture frame.

As mentioned, the heart of this project is the e-paper display and a Teensy microcontroller. While e-paper displays are excellent for displaying static text and simple graphics, they are usually not suitable for moving images due to suffering from a form of ‘burn in’, which can leave errant pixels on the screen. This means that e-paper technology typically has a relatively low frame rate for video. [Deep Tronix] has used a custom dithering library to somewhat mitigate this issue, and the results are impressive. Moving images are loaded from an external SD card, processed, and then displayed on the e-paper display, which is almost indistinguishable from the newspaper print that surrounds it.

The seemingly magical newspaper also has a face detection feature, which is enabled by a hidden camera and the venerable ESP32 microcontroller. This system integrates with the Teensy to record and then display the reader’s face on the e-paper display. A neat trick, which is made all the more eerie when these faces are later displayed at random.

We’ve seen Daily Prophet replicas before using more traditional display technology, however the move to an e-paper display goes a long way to improving the overall aesthetics, despite the lower frame rates. With Halloween just around the corner, you might just end up tricking a few people with this clever prop – check out all the build details here.

Ahead of the highly anticipated production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opens on May 31, the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto is undergoing a transformation to stage the unique show. 

CBC Toronto got a glimpse inside the theatre as the renovations continue. 

So you’ve got your Hogwarts acceptance letter. All you need next is a wand.. and a trunk. But not just any trunk! We’ve got a magical one. The good folks at Atome and The Brick Shop are giving away 3 sets of the LEGO 76399 Harry Potter Hogwarts Magical Trunk Set to 3 lucky readers in Singapore!

The Brick Shop is where you can get all your LEGO needs and desires and for a limited time only, they have a special promotion for LEGO lovers. Shoppers can buy now, pay later with Atome, and enjoy up to S$10 off, plus stand to win 1/3 of their purchase when they shop in-stores at The Brick Shop. All you need to do is to register in the Atome app and spend a minimum of S$100 to enjoy the voucher, which to be frank, isn’t that hard to meet now that the new Harry Potter sets are here!

The LEGO 76399 Harry Potter Hogwarts Magical Trunk Set (worth S$99.90) features a small suitcase trunk and corresponding minifigures that reflects the different Hogwarts Houses! Potterheads who identify as a Slytherin can pick up the green and white trunk, whereas fans who identify as a Hufflepuff have the option for a yellow and black trunk instead.

Each set comes enclosed within a trunk that can be opened with a key to reveal various settings like the Sorting Ceremony, Great Hall feast, and the Common Room. It also comes with a wide assortment of customisable furniture that folks can play with and then pack neatly in the trunk when the action’s over.

If you want to take Hogwarts magic wherever you go, and win a set for free, enter the giveaway below!

To stand a chance to win a LEGO 76399 Harry Potter Hogwarts Magical Trunk Set worth S$99.90 (out of three), simply complete these simple steps:

1. SHARE THIS POST and TAG a friend or more** who is a Potterhead too –
2. FOLLOW US on INSTAGRAM and/or TELEGRAM**.
3. FOLLOW ATOME.SG on INSTAGRAM**.
4. Fill in the form below and answer a couple of simple questions.

Give us a LIKE below if you haven’t done so yet, so you won’t miss out on future similar giveaways!

If you are unable to use the form below for some reason, head to the original article on GeekCulture.co here.

The giveaway is open to all residents of Singapore. The giveaway closes on 17 April 2022 @23:59hrs (GMT+8). 3 lucky winners with the correct answers will be picked at random. The winners will be contacted via email by 19 April 2022 Good luck!

**These steps are entirely optional, but we greatly appreciate if you choose to show some support to Geek Culture by sharing and tagging the post so that we may be able to bring more giveaways to you all in the future!

Don’t judge a book by its cover, for behind all this makeup, is a geek just like you. To simply put it, superheroes, Star Wars, Harry Potter and all things gore and creepy makes this girly girl swoon.

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China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, is currently on a diplomatic sweep of the Pacific, with China offering some 10 countries region-wide security and free trade agreements.

Albanese said Australia is paying a big price for cutting aid. But whatever points it might score against its predecessor, the Labor government has to put in place Australia’s response to this fresh Chinese assertiveness.

After the Quad, Foreign Minister Penny Wong flew to Fiji, addressing the Pacific Islands Forum. Her speech strongly focused on the climate issue. “I understand that – under past governments – Australia has neglected its responsibility to act on climate change,” she said. “This is a different Australian government and a different Australia.”

Before the election, Labor announced a range of extra assistance measures for the small Pacific nations. But some experts believe that to counter China’s Pacific push (if it can be effectively countered), Australia needs to do better than raise climate ambition, boost aid, improve diplomacy, and build on existing labour and visa access.

Following the extended gameplay demo of Hogwarts Legacy, Harry Potter fans believe they’ve found a connection between one of the game’s main villains and a major Harry Potter book villain.

During the demo, fans were introduced to Victor Rookwood, a dark wizard who has formed an alliance with the goblin Ranrok and his goblin rebellion.

While not much was shown off about the character, fans believe that Victor Rookwood may be connected to the Death Eaters, the group of dark wizards led by Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, which is set roughly 100 years after Hogwarts Legacy.

The connection comes from the character’s surname, Rookwood. That name may sound familiar to huge Harry Potter fans, but they might not immediately recognise where they’ve heard it, as it’s only referenced briefly in the film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Augustus Rookwood was an unspeakable (essentially a secret agent for the Ministry of Magic) during the first wizarding war, which took place in the 1980s in the Harry Potter canon.

He’s first referenced during a flashback in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when Igor Karkaroff, the headmaster of Durmstrang Institute is on trial for this role as a Death Eater.

Karkaroff named Augustus Rookwood as a Death Eater, revealing that he had been supplying information to Voldemort while working at the Ministry of Magic. He would later appear in Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Surnames are very rarely coincidences in Wizarding World canon, and considering that the game takes place only a few generations before Augustus was born, he’s very likely a descendant of this new villain.

While due to the time period, it’s unlikely that there will be many direct characters from the book series will appear, some ghosts, such as Nearly-Headless Nick have been shown off. The game takes place around 50 years before the events of the Fantastic Beasts films, so it’s technically possible that characters, or their ancestors, from that series, could appear.

Warner Bros. Games has confirmed plans to release Hogwarts Legacy during the 2022 holiday season. The game has also been announced for Nintendo Switch.