"The happiest place on earth"

Get email updates of new posts:        (Delivered by FeedBurner)

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

Links - 2nd June 2021 (1)

Kuai Kuai culture - Wikipedia - "Kuai Kuai culture (or Guai Guai culture) is a phenomenon in Taiwan wherein workers put snacks of the brand Kuai Kuai (乖乖) brand next to or on top of machines. Workers who do this believe that, because the name of the snack - "Kuai Kuai" - stands for "obedient" or "well-behaved," it will make a device function without errors. As such, it can be commonly found in myriad places of work in Taiwanese society. A rigid set of best practices has arisen surrounding the proper use of Kuai Kuai snacks, such as using green bags only, and ensuring the snacks are not expired. "

Christopher Liberatos on Twitter - "Modernism is the single most colonizing architecture in the history of mankind. It has invaded every far corner of the Earth. Yet there are no calls to "decolonize" architecture or the 134 out of 135 architecture schools in the US that promote global Modernist colonization."

I,Hypocrite on Twitter - "Protesters build a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos’s house. Yesterday the Amazon billionaire was reported to become the first man worth $200 billion."
ChicagoTeachersUnion: "We are completely frightened by, completely impressed by and completely in support of wherever this is headed. #Solidarity"
"Had to check if this was a parody account. It's not."
Marxist indoctrination in schools is a myth!

Facebook - "Roo Barker:
Sweden has the second highest wealth inequality in the OECD. America is third highest. Yet the DSA thinks Sweden is the model for democratic socialism..."

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Civil Rights Movement | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "We think of Dr. King as this eloquent non violent spokesman, someone who was able to articulate the philosophy of non violence for fellow activists and, and the world. But Dr. King like many African Americans who grew up in Jim Crow South, initially kept guns to protect their homes and families because, you know, violence was a fact of life and endemic in the Jim Crow South. And so, you know, many African Americans, they're not, you know, sort of boasting the fact publicly… Rustin persuaded King to disarm and to embrace the Gandhian philosophy of non violence"

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Georgians | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘One of the kind of big styles of the Georgian period is really about kind of hair. So hair is really important. And for women hair just gets bigger and bigger and bigger over the Georgian period. And there's all sorts of sort of parodies and satire about this, the idea that kind of women are essentially kind of walking around with menageries in their hair as they get bigger and bigger. For men in the Georgian period, it's really important that they wear wigs, and this is a real sign of adulthood. So when we, in 18th century newspapers, often apprentices or servants might run away from their position, and they're employer, which would try and get them back by putting a little notice in the newspaper. And one of the things that they often mentioned for boys was whether or not they were wearing a wig. And holding onto a wig was important cuz it's a really valuable item, but it's also a sign of that boy’s adulthood, their manhood. And at the same time for men, breaches are really important. So there's quite close fitting trousers that finish just below the knee. And this means that actually men's calves become really important and being able to kind of show off your calf. And was a real sign of sort of virility and manliness in the 18th century. And if you think about Georgian society, you know, one of the things that people were keen on was dancing, and therefore, the calf is, and dancing and walking allowed the calf to kind of be shown off to its full potential. For women, one of the changes that we see in fashion over the Georgian period is that we see people become really engaged with wanting to dress in cotton’... Alongside the pleasure gardens, people also engaged with new cultural forms. So they went to the, they went to the new museums such as the British Museum, which was set up in 1753... we also see the opening of art galleries. So the Royal Academy of Art is set up in 1768. And it becomes increasingly common to have public displays of art. And when those kind of public displays of art begin, again, it's very much about going out in order to look at other people and be seen yourself rather than actually looking at the art. But over the late 18th century, it becomes more and more important to actually look at the art and look at the art in particular ways"

Singapore's public servants turned political leaders — the low down - "    6 out of the 15 Cabinet members were SAF Overseas Scholarship holders after GE2011
   Public servants and military officer representation in the Cabinet peaked after GE2011, where 53 per cent of the Cabinet possessed no private sector experience
   Public sector personnel have been making up at least 50 per cent of the PAP MPs entering the Parliament for GE2006, GE2011, GE2015
   After the promotion of four backbenchers with private sector experience in April 2018, 17 of the 36 political office-holders, including the Cabinet ministers have had some form of private-sector experience...
Before 1975, ex-civil servants were a minority in the Cabinet. The most prominent was Mr Goh Keng Swee, who served as the Minister for Finance in Singapore’s First Cabinet (1959 - 61).  Other ministers drawn from the British Colonial Public Service were: Minister for Labour and Law K. M. Byrne, Minister for Health Ahmad Ibrahim and Minister for National Development Tan Kia Gan... In The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence, author Michael Barr detailed how the Lee Kuan Yew-led PAP faced the challenge of recruiting people who fit Mr Lee’s idea of what a leader ought to be: English-educated, highly qualified academically and professionally experienced.  Noticing a lack of suitable existing candidates, Mr Lee sought to nurture prospective ones by implementing various measures, among them placing great emphasis on English-medium education and pioneering military study awards like the Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS, now known simply as the SAF Scholarship)... The President's Scholarship has its roots in the Queen's Scholarship, which was founded in 1885, when Singapore was still a Straits Settlement... Beyond the rarified confines of the Cabinet, what about the Members of Parliament? Looking at the slate of PAP candidates for GE2006, GE2011 and GE2015, public sector personnel have made up at least half of the PAP MPs entering Parliament"

The Case for Agnostic Christianity - "Although atheists and ex-Christians may not be sad to see Christian institutions fade away, churches play a vital role in smaller towns and rural communities, especially in the United States. According to Gallup, churches are some of the only venues available for large social gatherings in these communities, and are often the only institutions that provide counselling to the needy or distribute aid to the poor. In communities of all sizes, churches play host to day care centres, meals for the hungry, Montessori schools, voting stations, 12-step groups, community meetings, musical performances and much more.Without congregations to sustain churches, they die, and the community loses a vital resource. In a sense, the average Christian churchgoer is providing community support just by attending and putting money in the collection plate. That’s not counting the volunteer hours that many church members put in... To the Christians, the atheists are consumed with pride, lust and greed. To the atheists, the Christians are remnants of a backwards era when superstition ruled the world... The church has three major problems. First, it is struggling to retain the members it does have. Second, it is having a difficult time converting new members to the faith. Third, it struggles to maintain productive dialogues with critics and non-believers... this is true of almost all denominations... A significant minority of practicing clergy members identify as agnostic or atheist. A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one in six Dutch Protestant Church ministers lack a belief in a theistic god, and, following a controversy at the Canadian United Church involving a self-professed atheist minister, a survey of the clergy found that between five and twenty per cent of clergy members in that denomination were agnostics.As of yet, nobody has been defrocked or accused of heresy, which indicates that the churches assent, at the very least, to agnostics and atheists leading worship services. This opens the door to the concept of an agnostic Christian, an idea first proposed by theologian Leslie Weatherhead in 1965, to describe people who find deep meaning in the Bible’s teachings, and may even identify as Christian, but hesitate to profess belief in supernatural or miraculous matters... This attitude of intellectual engagement is perhaps best embodied by Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, who has renewed interest in the Christian faith by bridging the divide between Christianity and science. His lecture series on the psychological significance of the stories in Genesis was delivered to the kind of packed house that is just a memory in many church buildings, drawing the attention of church leaders around the world.Peterson, one of only a few professors at the University of Toronto rated as “life-changing,” has extensively studied the psychology of religion and presents the Biblical stories within the context of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, literary analysis and human psychology."

Palestine and the Will to Theorise Decolonial Queering - "This article posits a theorisation of decolonisation in relation to queer as it emerges from the settler-colonial context of Palestine, what I call decolonial queering. The first part provides a new reading of Zionist settler-colonialism, which I define as hetero-conquest. Its novelty lies in refocusing the question of colonialism in native grounded knowledge of queering, while showing the limitations of those existing studies whose frames emanate mainly from American and/or global north contexts of racism and homo-nationalism. By tracing the contemporary continuity of hetero-conquest in Palestine, the second part unpacks the need for a radical theory of liberation that weaves decolonization into queer. Bringing Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon into dialogue, such a theory emanates from the amalgam of histories, geographies and bodies, whose restoration beyond the strictures of hetero-conquest opens the way for a radical multi-scalar politics of liberation."
Amazing.

Facebook - "The Worst of Twitter: "a white woman spawned out of nowhere today and started being homophobic to me so I stole her purse and now miss thing's ID is resting in a target trashcan and her money is paying for my tacos and rent
if ur reading this martha go make out with the orangutan u married and tay out of people's business

*Lesbians can be very dangerous* this is causing pandemonium so allow me to introduce myself. im alyssa, the high priestess of gay twitter, mother of lesbians and protector of the queer folk. follow me & together we'll cleanse earth of heterosexuality"
Mental illness + heterophobia + racism + criminality combined!

Facebook - "Andrew Yang’s use of Asian stereotypes is reinforcing toxic tropes.His one-liners about “math” and “doctors” ultimately send a troubling message."
"The Worst of Twitter: “Asians making fun of themselves is problematic!” - Vox 2K19
Silencing minorities is good when they threaten the liberal agenda

In defense of Andrew Yang | Spectator USA - "The spark that lit the tinderbox was Yang’s call to action where he asks Asian Americans to ‘embrace their American-ness’ and to ‘step up, help your neighbors, donate, volunteer, wear red white and blue and put an end to this crisis.’Yang was summarily accused of victim-blaming for intimating that Asian Americans bore the responsibility of combating racism through displaying patriotism, and asking them to prove their loyalty by asserting their ‘American-ness’. In no way did he ever come close to making these claims. This is an ideological Rorschach test, one that even Rep. Ilhan Omar couldn’t resist weighing in on. Many of his critics ended up conflating ‘American-ness’ with ‘whiteness’ and making the erroneous assumption that leaning into ‘American-ness’ comes at the expense of their ‘Asian-ness.’... Perhaps one of the cardinal sins Yang made was to react with insufficient anger in an age of call-out culture. He would have been justified to tap into some anger, quite frankly. But instead of digging into self-pity, Yang chose to be a uniting figure... In his much-maligned piece, Yang underscores the reality that simply yelling ‘don’t be racist’ to someone who is actually being racist, is not effective. So, in lieu of adopting a posture of outrage and victimhood, Yang instead looks to rise above it. What can we as Asian Americans do, he asks, to show our solidarity with our nation in its time of need? And how can anyone not see shades of JFK’s ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ spiel in his impassioned call-to-arms as a member of this community? In a moving TED talk titled, ‘Why I love the country that once betrayed me,’ George Takei, the endearing cultural icon best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek, spoke about the depravity and humiliation of being thrown into Japanese internment camps during World War Two. He and his family, among thousands of other Japanese Americans, were denied their inalienable rights and robbed of their possessions and dignity. Yet, as Yang highlighted in his article, thousands of young Japanese American men and women volunteered for military duty to fight for the freedom of their own families languishing behind barbed-wire fences, as well as for the ideals of a country that had betrayed them. When they returned home, President Truman greeted them with the following words: ‘You fought not only the enemy, but prejudice. And you won.’ Takei relayed the wisdom of his father, who seemed to harbor no bitterness toward America despite having every reason, explaining that American democracy is ‘vitally dependent on good people who cherish the ideals of the system and actively engage in the process of making our democracy work.’"
Liberals thinking being American means being white explains why they hate the US (and by extension, why liberals hate their own countries if they live in Western countries)
Since Asians earn even more than Whites in the US, does that mean they're even more complicit in "white supremacy" than white people?
Comment elsewhere: "as a demographic, we Asians are the cheapest when it comes to donating to charity - Whites are the most generous at every income level.Asians earning over $100k+ give to charity at levels lower than White people who clear below $30k.It's goddamn embarrassing, to be blunt.If we, the highest-earning and most economically-advantaged demographic in America, aren't participating in the community by offering $500+ out of our 100k+ incomes every time there's a food drive/ fundraiser for a local library, is it any wonder that we as a people, may be viewed with skepticism by the broader community (who are statistically poorer than us)?"

I went on Celebrity Masterchef and I’m a Celebrity for the money. As the sole breadwinner there is no shame in that - "As someone who occasionally finds bank statements in her knicker drawer, I find managing money difficult. I don’t open letters in brown envelopes. It causes me anxiety. I’m a shambles.This is the one subject I never talk with my friends about.We talk about everything, my women friends and I. Love, affairs, love affairs, politics, haemorrhoids... few conversations are as varied and open as when female friends are catching up over almond croissants. But money, how we make it, when we worry about it, is rarely brought up as a chat."

blog comments powered by Disqus
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Latest posts (which you might not see on this page)

powered by Blogger | WordPress by Newwpthemes