#Chinese Americans stripped of land rights

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-story-of-wicked/

The Story Of Wicked

We know how it feels…to be a non-being, confined in a cage..to always be known by the name of our father, brother or husband, and have no identity of our own.  This lament from an Afghan girl could be chiseled on the gravestones of most women throughout human history.  Female oppression is so pervasive, it seems normal in many societies. When prejudice is common, it becomes invisible even to the oppressed. Some women may see the evil yet defend the practice. Low status is better than no status. India’s attempt to rid itself of child marriages illustrates the dilemma. Mothers living in poverty see the reform as threatening. How are they and their offspring to survive if their daughters are no longer assets but additional mouths to satisfy? There is no one to feed us. I don’t know if my family can survive, one mother wailed despite her knowledge that child brides die in greater numbers than older women.  Treating women like cattle takes a subtler form in western cultures.  In this country, state legislators think nothing of proposing bills that intrude upon a woman’s privacy. Abortion bans are common, but in one state, women not only must carry a fetus to a term like a dairy cow but their menstrual cycles are subject to public record. Few women, rich or poor, educated or uneducated escape the patriarchy. When a Fox news reporter fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that Arizona’s voting machines had “rigged” the election in 2020, she exposed his statement as a lie. To her surprise, her male colleagues took umbrage and demanded that she be fired. Management listened. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said the reporter had a serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up viewers are going to be disgusted.  In the end, the reporter withdrew her statement and gave the truth to a lie.    Another case concerns CNN newscaster Don Lemmon’s recent comment about Nikki Haley. When she announced her decision to seek the presidential nomination of her party, his reaction gave women of all persuasions a reason to blanch.  Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry.  A woman is considered to be in their prime in 20s and 30s and maybe 40s  When he linked a woman’s worth to her reproductive years, he sounded like a member of the  Taliban.  Recently two female heads of state resigned from their high office. Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon gave her reason.  …the brutality of life as a politician had taken a toll on her  New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden’s made a similar confession. She hadn’t enough in the tank to carry on.  Helen Clark, Arden’s New Zealand predecessor understood.   … in this era of social media, clickbait. And 24/7 media cycles, Jacinda has faced a level of hatred and vitriol which in my experience is unprecedented in our country. Were these women of weak character? Their circumstances weren’t amiss. Neither faced strong opposition in an upcoming primary or were touched by scandal.  Yet, they turned their back on power and took a stand against the growing meanness in the world. Perhaps these women are outliers of a feminine way, one that rejects the will to power and the shibboleth that might is right. If we listen, we can hear those savage drums, too. To protect the young in a crumbling economy, one Yale professor proposes to euthanize Japan’s elderly. Texas, legislators plan to strip Chinese American citizens of their right to own land, even a home. The wickedness leveled against women over the centuries has taken its toll. Discrimination, once it’s legitimized, seeps into every corner of society.   A civilization that draws strength from this form of hate and fear lacks cohesion and will implode. That’s what Scotland’s Sturgeon and New Zealand’s Arden want us to see. Power for the sake of power corrupts.  Power used for the common good heals.     One day, should this truth find a wider audience, women will find themselves at the forefront of change.  Having freed themselves, their instinct will be to achieve that freedom for others.   What will it be like, this world with no aliens?  Without wars of conquest, insurrections, or mass shootings, what might we witness? I suspect what we will see is children laughing in the rain.  

[songmingisthighs]

Oh I have been seeing that! Anti-semitism is for sure increasing in some areas, and I can't say that Jewish people are not justified for that fear given their history of oppression and hatred against them, I'm pretty sure everyone has seen people inside the pro Palestinian movement, making antisemitic comments, disguised as support for the victims of isrl... (calling not the IOF soldiers, but the Jewish people as a whole, descendants of the devil and what not, is unnerving) but that is also not a common stance between the movement.

Those feelings and doubts from Jewish people are obviously valid, although, they are NOT more urgent or important that the suffering and urgency of the Palestinian people (and that goes especially to those who use their fear as an argument in every discussion, as a way of adverting the attention from the genocide in palestine, or to avoid recognizing the lies and crimes of the state or Israel and its allies)

It can and will sound bad, but they are not the victims in this conflict, empathy and understanding can be given for sure, but not as a way of ignoring or minimizing the ongoing tragedy in and out of gaza/the west bank, where people are suffering a genocide and are being stripped off of their identity and culture. An example of that is the 'from the river to the sea' chant, just as you mentioned (and keeping in mind the infinity of claims the media in your country can be saying about it) it has been tainted by politicians and general citizens as an antisemitic chant, an attack against jews, a call for violence, and so much more, but ever since the Palestinian liberation forces created it in the 1960's it hasn't, not even by Israeli people who were well aware of its existence and meaning, been interpreted as a genocidal chant, not until now that they are losing the media credibility and support.

For different parts of the movement and outside of it, the chant advocates for the libertarian of Palestine, not as an attack against jews, but the apartheid state they suffer in Israel, and it's creation in itself, which caused the massive displacement and murdering of a great part of their population, and for those who could remain in their land, the inability to vote, have basic human rights, the freedom to cross certain parts of the territory, the uncertainty of someone else just evicting them from their homes, and consistent violence against them, having as the primary example the current genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the west bank

I'm sure you already know most of this, but I'm just saying it to assure you that using and standing with the chant 'from the river to the see' does not make you or anyone else antisemitic, not as long as people have the ability to recognize jews and zionism apart

Also sorry if any part of this ask felt rude, or feels confusing, I would love to keep discussing about this if it's something you're up to

no no it's not rude. i'm actually glad we can have a discussion like this rather than misunderstanding and ended up accusing each other of smth

tw : controversial topic

i totally get it though like the original intention and from my side, i hate how the situation became due to extremist or uneducated "supporters" who in support of palestine and palestinian ended up being antisemitic like i saw blue haired libs outrightly telling jews in general that they don't deserve their freedom even jewish americans who had nothing to do with the situation in the middle east

and coming back to the issue of brand boycott, i think it's ridiculous that people can't differentiate between not being able to make a political standing and supporting genocide. "bEiNG SiLEnT = SupPORtiNg gEnOCiDe" is a ridiculous precedent because people who support this idea are not putting things into context. I don't see this backlash towards japanese or chinese idols, only korean idols. why ? because western fans (esp americans) put KOREAN idols in the same category as them. i think kpop should be separated from politics bc it's just gross. if you don't like what they're doing, you're welcome to have an opinion but you're not entitled to demand anything. you can even leave the fandom and stop supporting the artists, it's entirely your decision.(the you is not you, anon, it's just people in general ig) like who are you to control how people act or behave because you don't agree with it ?

the way people act, demanding kq to release a statement and demanding certain photos be taken down is kind of facistic cencorship adjacent. "I don't like the message i assume you're supporting and because of that and because the rest of us agree on an idea, you must adhere to it and do what we want" like it's so gross how entitled these people are

and again, it seem like they're erasing hongjoong's philantropical activities just because he posed with a starbucks cup (it's not even a sponsorship), calling him a sellout and acting as if he's leading charge in an anti palestinian campaign which is so not the case. literally people are using this situation to cancel and boycott idols, they don't really care about what the boycott stands for, they just want to hate and that's more disgusting than posing with a starbucks cup

[agentoffangirling]

Yes, Palestinians have a right to be on that land. But so do Jews.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Jewish history (that wasn't meant to be condescending, sorry if it is), but the Levant wasn't chosen because the early Zionists rolled a dice to choose between Argentina, Canada, or Israel/Palestine. It's because Judaism is so heavily based in this land. The Western Wall, for example, is a pilgrimage site with deep religious significance and has literally been there since BCE. Diaspora Jews close the seder (another tradition) with "Next year in Jerusalem" because it's our wish to return home. We don't say "next year in Los Angeles" because it's a place we want to go to. We say Jerusalem because it IS our religious ancestral home.

After the Jews were expelled, The 'Dome of the Rock' was built ON TOP of it by Arabs who colonized the land. Sure, Palestinians are indigenous because they've lived there for 2000+ years, but your choice of wording to refer to Jews as "the people who never once stepped foot in the Middle East" is strange considering we didn't exactly choose to leave. We were EXILED. At what point does someone become not Indigenous to a place? An American with Palestinian parents is from Palestine obviously, right? How many generations does it take? Why are Jews different?

Zionists didn't choose Senegal or Uganda to be the Holy Land for a reason. They didn't even 'choose' Israel/Palestine. But our homeland simply is ZION, aka Jerusalem so it's a no-brainer where our homeland is and should be.

Do Israelis like what is happening in the Gaza strip? Absolutely not. Ask any Israeli and you'll find them appalled at the actions of their government. The overwhelming majority of them (extremists don't represent them, obviously) want to live side by side their neighbors. But that also means they don't want to be driven out from their homes.

Almost all Israelis today are living on former Palestinian land, in a former Palestinian home. The Nakba displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians so that Israel could claim "their land". And it is a continuous process, it is what they're doing right now to the current population. Is that not similar to how the Jewish people were forced out? Why would a population that says "never again" would perpetuate the same towards others? Why would they burn aid trucks and stop vital resources from reaching so many starving? Palestinians just want their land back, they want their livelihoods back

I'm not one to judge on what makes someone indigenous, but how exactly is a specific place someone's homeland if they haven't lived there for thousands of years? Maybe once, yes, it could be considered a homeland, but after years and years and years and generations of generations of generations living in an entirely separate place, just how much connection is left? Just look at the rates of skin cancer among Israeli citizens-- it is very high. Compare that to the rates of Palestinians and it makes it clear one of these groups is not used to the climate. Their body is not built for it

If a Chinese-American family has been living in the United States since the 1800s, does that give that family the right to go back to China, straight back into the home they left, disregard the new family that is there just because "well we were here a while ago!"? No one is saying they aren't Chinese and that they can't live there or make a new home, but they just can't climb back into their old place from 1863 (unless they still owned it, then by all means, disregard this), kick out whoever's living there because that's their "ancestral home"

If you've lived in the US your whole life, your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and so on in places like Germany and Spain, how are you able to walk about in Israel and say you're home? You haven't been there until then in your life and neither have your ancestors for thousands of years. How is it still considered your home?

[zooterchet]

The Failures of the Pashas (The Three Swords)

Joe Chill: Joseph Chilton, was a successful Macedonian mercenary, for generations, during the Punic Wars; the wars against Carthage, over the control of the white bloodline, held as sport and rape by "blacks", those of Sub-Saharan blood. A "Chinee", a Chinese prostitute incapable of Islam, a true Sunni, held bed to Joseph Chilton, and birthed Joseph Chill, a "junior"; the opposite of his father, a Rosecrucian, the order of Centurions. Mithras, the seizure of women as prostitutes, for a night, a guaranteed orgasm, and a child and lands and pastures, to make them women off of the street, having lost their fathers through war. An inclusion into Rome. Jesus, tucked in his right thumb, called an "imami", the slur for a homosexual, and broke rules, within law non-legalized, the code of the Gauls. You called him "Jesus"; prizefights, police badges, and wine bets, the origin of the athletics leagues, breeding the constable. The origin of the military tribunal, to kill him.

Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler, was the son of a military engineer, having outed a Catholic Cardinal for pederasty, the conversion of one of the Hitlers to Rabbinical order; however, the Rabbinical having Romalian blood, an "Azaz", angels, having jumped and bounded, in a living agony, despite having all the attributes of the Stasi, the Huns and Uighurs and Boers and Amish and Americans and Germans, the sacred points against Napoleon Bonaparte. A "Sheriff", the term for a political deacon, hired by any international actor, a politician, under Realpolitik's rules, out of embassy, those of Bismarck. Fire marshal, the mark of the Swastika, on the left pectoral or breast, breast if a woman, the father of Adolf having slain one, his son gay, under Calvinist code, not replied in type print of law, but in fact of transvestite observation. A homosexual dominatrix. Adolf, tucked his in his elbow at court's oath, called a "Jewish doctor", under code of testimony, and created a movement of beer swillers, killing Ernst Rohm, the "Boelyn", an innocent panda fighter, the creator of all of German culture and ales. You called him "Fuhrer"; creator of film arts, cinema, and psychiatric film, the creation of the movie part to determine medicine, a cop's drama. The origin of the castration clinic, having been stolen of semen by prostitute.

Ted Bundy: Theodore Charlebois, was removed from the Bombardiers, Philip J. Morris, and born through the McMahons, the World Wrestling Federation, the sales of cigarettes and Atavan, for pilots and from cats, a High House of Enver Pasha; that of the Harpoon brewing fortune, microbrews and state universities, all of the State Police, the Reserve Officers Training Corps, and the COBRA cop and teacher funds and court date appraisals, at his fingertips. He was CIA from birth, a child soldier, as marked on his DMV license, but was a whaling expert; spotting his market declined, he wrote nautical penmanship as "Buddy", the blood of Booth, the actor's stage wright, hunted by Israeli intelligence services, "Meir", since birth, "Fillmore Lodge"; the Rotary Association associated with strip malls, malls, and prison labor, a proper cop among the households of United States Presidencies, the intelligence adjuncts of the United States. The criminal guilds, this one being CRASH. He supborned a book on Spider-Man, early in the publication's run, teaching writers how to write backwards, a past news edifice, instead of forwards, and intended pattern of treaty, and therefore, to create a predictable pattern, a procedure drama. This was a pedophile, by judgement of his family, the Charleboises, and he was expelled, hunted by MI-6 assassin Alice O'Neill, Army intelligence Jeffrey Dahmer, Catholic friar Steven Charlebois, and Los Angeles police detective Richard Ramirez. Ted Bundy mastered print, and with it, the Grand Ol' Party turned to pederasty, with international scandal breaking out at dozens of murderers running through prostitutes circuits at the writer's duels, luring them into his realm, the written pen. In the end, he was seized, having killed a child for NAMBLA, and was put to death, by his conjugal liaison, a beautiful temptress in his mind, however the sex unsatisfying. It was his first, and last sex, having refused to see a hooker. His mark was the "Spider", a Hopkins, the middle and ring fingers tucked in, but he wasn't a Ludlow; he was a Charlebois, the name meaning "Cain"; the first murderer, the Inquistor's Oath.

[cryingoflot49]

Book Review

Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson

by Richard J. Grace

Imagine some people in a neighboring country, like Mexico for instance, decide that a certain drug, maybe crystal meth or fentanyl, has a potentially giant market in another country like the U.S.A. So they decide to start businesses that manufacture and traffic these drugs. Of course these narcotics are dangerous, wrecking people’s health and causing addiction as well as draining people of their money and landing them in prison; therefore the American government classifies these drugs as illegal, criminalizes their sales and distribution, and labels the businessmen as purveyors of organized crime, drug syndicates, and cartels. But from the Mexican traffickers’ point of view, they aren’t doing anything wrong. They provide work for poor people and make money in a country that isn’t rich. Furthermore, the drug sales provide a steady income whereas other business ventures tend to be less predictable and unstable. Farmers who want to grow produce, like avocados for example, grow some banned substances to keep their finances steady while the market for vegetables fluctuates. This benefits trucking companies too who smuggle drugs in boxes of cucumbers and cilantro across the border, providing work for truck drivers who need to pay rent and feed their families. Of course, a lot of Americans, especially the government and police, think this whole situation is rotten so they fight back hard. Now imagine the Mexican cartels decide to start a war with America to force them into legalizing their drugs so the gangsters south of the border can make even more money than they already do. Eventually they convince the US government to give them the entire city of San Diego so they can have a convenient base for the distribution of their goods. All praise be to Santa Muerte.

This is roughly what happened when the Jardine-Matheson trading company began selling opium on the black market in China at about the same time the Napoleonic Wars began. Richard J. Grace, in his Opium and Empire, tells the story of this nefarious corporation and concludes that they weren’t such bad people and were, in fact, just ordinary businessmen who just happened to do trade in a vice that ruined people’s lives.

You could just as well argue that good things Mexican drug cartels do outweigh the bad. It isn’t fair that dangerous narcotics are illegal in El Norteno and they are really just ordinary gentlemen who provide a service that is in demand anyways. They work hard to earn their money and there’s nothing a red-blooded American capitalist loves more than people who get rich by working hard. Hell, you might even say that the cartels are nothing more than heroes of free market capitalism, letting the invisible hand of the marketplace decide what people buy and sell. Right?

Right?

The story of William Jardine and James Matheson begins in Scotland more innocently than one might expect. Jardine came from a poor farming family and got employed as a surgeon for the East India Company, Great Britain’s colonial trading and shipping monopoly. The younger Matheson came from an upper class family in Edinburgh and eventually went on to work for the East India Company too. He met up with Jardine in India, the two paired up, and went to work as speculators, trading in silk, rice, tea, and, most importantly, opium which they purchased in India and shipped to China.

The kingdom of China at that time was closed to foreigners. They would not allow outsiders to enter their lands for business so they sectioned off a strip of the river bank running along the outskirts of Canton, or what is now known as Guangdong. There they were allowed to build a tiny village of warehouses, factories, and living quarters. Chinese merchants came to the riverfront to do business, buying and selling all commodities except opium which was illegal in China. But Jardine-Matheson insisted on peddling opium since the addiction it caused guaranteed a steady flow of wealth which helped to supplement their more volatile trading goods whose prices fluctuated unpredictably. The Jardine-Matheson company therefore sold opium offshore in international waters to smugglers who brought it onto the mainland. If Jardine-Matheson couldn’t sell opium the legal way, they had no qualms about breaking Chinese laws to make their fortune.

A large portion of this book describes the backgrounds of these two businessmen and the running on their company. It also details how they grew to such prominence as the East India Comany monopoly ended, making room for other companies to enter the competitive colonial markets. Most of this is ordinary business history explaining the methods and functions of Jardine-Matheson. If that is within the scope of your interest, it might be exciting, but actually the writing is often dry and boring. The several passages about finance and banking are especially dull. There is nothing more boring then people talking about money, especially when it gets a bit technical. It is even worse than watching golf on TV.

The story gets more exciting in the run-up to the Opium Wars. After the Chinese government seized and destroyed the entire inventory of opium, Jardine and Matheson pressured the British government to invade China in retaliation and to demand compensation for the lost products. The second Opium War happened when the British colonial government decided to force China to legalize opium for the benefit of British businesses and the extension of British colonial power. Talk about a sense of entitlement. And yes, large numbers of people died over this. Along the way, China gave the mostly uninhabited island of Kowloon, Hong Kong to the British for the sake of allowing them to have a base for business-dealings in the region. So selling illegal drugs on the black market in China was the primary source of finance for building up the British Empire. Maybe in the future, Latin American drug cartels will rule the world.

The end of the book has a long chapter about the lives of Jardine and Matheson after retirement. It isn’t especially interesting. Then, in the epilogue, the author evaluates the Jardine-Matheson company from a moral and historical standpoint. He acknowledges that selling illegal drugs on the black market and starting two wars with China was kind of a crappy thing to do, but he lets them off with a slap on the hand, figuratively speaking, because they were really just a couple of ordinary businessmen who did a lot of good things for their communities back in the British Isles. More importantly, they belonged to some prominent social clubs back home and were considered respectable men by other members of the upper class. Richard Grace goes so far as to say that they were historically important, as if that could even be denied, and their amorality was of little consequence because they were pioneers of free market capitalism. Well, that is actually a weak argument for those of us who are not especially enthusiastic about capitalism to begin with.

And about those Mexican cartels...well they may be harming and endangering a lot of lives, but they are putting people to work and financially enriching their local communities, so it isn’t all that bad, is it? Besides those guys are fun to hang out with wow do they ever throw some fantastic parties and that’s really what’s important. Who cares about all those clucks who buy their drugs on the streets. It’s their own fault they’re losers because they didn’t choose to get a job and work like the rest of us. Right? Yeah right.

I don’t know anything about the author Richard J. Grace, but I can say for sure that we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to values. Opium and Empire tells the story of the Jardine-Matheson company, saying what it needs to say to accomplish that. It is a boring book, however, written by an author with questionable morals. He claims that Jardine and Matheson were not merelya couple of sleazy drug dealers. But just because they hid behind a facade of respectability and a Protestant work ethic, doesn’t mean they weren’t a couple of slimeballs at heart. I don’t think Grace is necessarily immoral, but I get the impression his ethics are in the wrong order. This book does serve a historical purpose, but there has to be an account of this company that is more engaging and a little more balanced. The Chinese perspective on this history is barely even mentioned.

If you visit Hong Kong now, you will find a skyscraper in the center of Kowloon with a unique architectural feature. It is a slender rectangle with its cladding entirely permeated with round windows like portholes. This is the Jardine House, world headquarters of the Jardine-Matheson company which still exists to this day. Because of its unique appearance, the local citizens of Hong Kong have nicknamed it the House of 1000 Assholes. Sometimes I wonder if the people of Hong Kong think back over the times when Chinese peasants became emaciated from lounging in opium dens while their families starved to death because all their income went to feeding their addictions. Maybe that name doesn’t actually indicate how they feel about the Jardine House’s appearance but actually signifies how they feel about all the company’s employees that got rich and powerful by enslaving Chinese people to narcotics. Richard Matheson justified the opium trade by saying he had never seen a Chinaman “beastialized” by opium use. I’m not sure what he meant by “beastialized”, but one thing is certain: while he was running his smuggling business and throwing dinner parties in his mansion, he wasn’t spending time in the opium dens of China, observing how his drug was ruining people’s lives. Just an ordinary businessman? No I don’t think so, but then again take a look at the businessmen of the 21st century. I’m not sure they any better.

[sterlingcooper111]

CHINA CONTROLS COBALT FOR EV VEHICLES MANUFACTURING

Hapless Joe Biden’s secret plan is, most folks won’t own a car in the future, they’ll ride in autonomous EV cars.

As California hits its predictably summer temperatures, Democrats citing Climate Change are pushing universally electric cars and the demise of the combustion engine even though electric companies are now begging folks to reduce their energy consumption by not charging their EV cars. But electricity may be the least of our worries with the prospect of universally electric cars. Cobalt is a critical element in the production of lithium batteries used in Electric cars.

Mined by mostly Chinese Companies, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada or Morocco, cobalt-containing batteries are critical to companies from Samsung Electronics Co. to Volkswagen AG.

China now controls essentially 100% of the Cobalt world market. As noted in this report in Bloomberg back in 2018, China was gobbling up Cobalt mines and the companies that process it. If America were to go all EV, China would be the sole source of Cobalt today.

Democrat leaders who push electric cars have no answer for this and other related supply chain issues for the development and production of electric cars. To say the Democrats are in the back pocket of the Communist Chinese Government is an understatement.

Democrats like Sisolak, Biden and Newsom are essentially Chinese assets clearly doing their bidding. They know these facts yet they continue to push China’s policies of electric cars intentionally.

The Biden Pentagon is even pursuing electric tanks and planes.

China wants the U.S. to replace its gas and diesel.

1. To put us at a competitive disadvantage and

2. They’ll have a strangle hold on the U.S. economy.

Sisolak has allowed China to buy up Nevada mining interests along with Nevada farm land and water rights. China now owns over 44k single family homes in Nevada, making the Chinese the largest landlord in Nevada. They now own, through Blackrock, many MGM casino hotels on the strip. Sisolak bought 588K PPE gear from the Chinese instead of from American companies.

CV19 and the war in Ukraine have proven the failure of globalism creating massive disruptions in supply chains. America must be energy independent to be truly free, which means oil and gas, not Chinese Cobalt EV cars for the few.

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!!!!

For more information visit https://www.sterlingcooper.info/

[dailynoods]

A J Alexander

Born: Tuesday 16th of September 1980

Birthplace: Evansville, Indiana, United States

Nationality: American

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Profession: Glamour Model

Hair color: Auburn

Eye color: Blue

Height: 5'7" (or 170 cm)

Weight: 113 lbs (or 51 kg)

Body type: Slim

Measurements: 32-24-35

Bra/cup size: 32C (70C)

Boobs: Fake/Enhanced

Years active: 2008 - 2011 (started around 27 years old; 3 years in the business)

Tattoos: On her right wrist is the Chinese character for "love"; lower back tattoo of a butterfly just above her right butt cheek.

AJ Alexander (Amanda Jane Herrmann) is an American glamour model and was Playboy Playmate of the Month in May 2008. She first appeared in the 2007 issue of 'Hot Housewives' Special Edition, posing nude in a kitchen covered in milk. Her perfect "coin slot" pussy was completely bare in this shoot, however she groomed an arrow-shaped 'landing strip' for her PMOM pictorial. She returned to being completely bare for her Playmate Xtra pictorials.

[euthym1as]

hi sorry I don't know if this has been asked/covered before, but I was wondering about more alien! god reader au headcanons?

In particular, I'm interested in how language would work/be translated. Words/sayings that are translated oddly or not quite right.

For example, there's a concept of "face" in Thai (my mother tongue) and I think also in other Asian countries. It's basically like your reputation or how people perceive/think of you. If you were to use in English it doesn't really make sense, ex. "I need to get better marks in school to save face for the family". Or ex. "Laura showed her true face when she snapped at her boyfriend yesterday."

This could apply for any culture really, even North America. I'm just curious as to your take on it :)

OOOH LINGUISTICS BEING FUNKY IS MY JAM OKAY LETS GET INTO IT

- some earth languages, like arabic and vietnamese, are incredibly tonal! which means a reader from any of those countries would often repeat the same phrase over and over again, but get frustrated when in mondstat (based on germanic languages) nobody understands the nuance between both sentences.

- a reader that speaks chinese will have an easy time adapting to liyue's style of writing (bc. based on the same place) BUT liyue's tiny character distinctions may LOOK like a chinese character and,,, not mean it. zhongli is trying to hide the shock on his face because you asked for a shoe sole instead of a steak strip.

- i pity the american that winds up in inazuma. they'll be on the shoguns watchlist before sundown. (this is as an american) the amount of meaning each word has in inazuma, and the history each word holds would befuddle a reader that's grown up around bastardized indigenous languages like cherokee and sioux.

- sumeru has the same etymological root as sumerian tablets, which makes me think the writing style will more resemble hieroglyphics/ mathematical symbols. not to be a nerd on main but maybe sumeru's sentences look like gallifreyan, and you have to take the whole sentence in instead of the sum of its parts. rip to any romance languages based on latin because none of that is helping you here.

- when reader deals with these things, they're well connected enough to have people help them, so here are my designated Language Helpers from each region

Mondstat would have you listen to Fischl's lengthy diatribes to understand the lengthy word structure of Mondstatian sentences. Much like German, Mondstatians often string smaller word roots together to make one word mean a cohesive topic.

Eula would help you with the (quintessentially English) metaphors and turns of phrase that might befuddle an outsider- or even just a commonfolk!

Liyue would have the adeptal lawyer Yanfei explain the ins and outs of Liyuen language (and how it can be used in your favor) because so much of law relies on language! She would make sure that the contractual and thorough nature of Liyuen cultural touchstones would be understood by anyone unfamiliar with the language. The language the land of contracts uses to make their contracts is treasured, and she would guide you through it.

Inazuma would have you guided by two people- Kamisato Ayaka, a native to the Kamisato Estate and all of its history, would personally guide you to all of the places Inazuman regional dialect originated from. She loves this land, and the people she sees, and she values the culture of Inazuma so deeply the two of you sit on the shores of Amakane Island and practice calligraphy of the most important Inazuman values- and maybe the Kamisato crest, too.

The second person to help in Inazuma would be Sangonomiya Kokomi, and she would whisper to you the secrets of a land long gone behind the roar of a waterfall. Something stirs in you when the names of old Greek mythological figures, and you wonder if Time/Kronos is a constant througout universes.

[joshualunacreations]

The reason America hates wearing a mask is because it prefers showing its true face. For some, this spike in anti-Asian racism comes as a surprise, or seems like it's the first time it's happening. But that's because the Model Minority Myth—created by white people—has tricked both white people and POC into thinking Asianness is a privilege. (For more info, see my comic “Asian American Monomyth” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1107709119992119297) But history shows what America really thinks. The Page Act of 1875 legally codified Asian women as immoral, disease-carrying prostitutes in order to ban them from the US and extended that ban to Asian men with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. These sentiments have never left. This is why Asian Americans are always portrayed as the perpetual foreigner—we "don't belong here" and can be removed on a whim via ongoing deportations or mob violence, such as the 1930 lynching of Filipino men in Watsonville and the 1871 lynching of Chinese in L.A., and the current COVID-inspired attacks. Trump calling COVID "the Chinese virus" has the same intent—to distract from his violent negligence, stump for war with China, and put a target on Asians so we'll bear the brunt of COVID frustrations instead of him. Over 2,500 anti-Asian incidents have been reported since March. As if anti-Asian violence weren't enough, structural racism means COVID is more deadly to POC. For example, Filipinx nurses comprise 4% of nurses in the U.S., but make up 31.5% of all nurse deaths. Also, many Fil-Ams live in multi-generational households—which increases risk. Trump and his supporters know COVID is deadly, but sabotage efforts to stop its spread because their goal is eugenics—the same way the U.S. infected Native Americans with smallpox, or how the Reagan administration ignored HIV since it disproportionately killed LGBTQ and Black communities. But right-wingers aren't the only racists. If you’re wondering how a man who wants to “Free Hong Kong" hates Asians, it’s the same reason why racists claim to support Uyghurs yet don’t care about Trump’s Muslim ban, U.S. atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, or oppression of Palestinians. It's the same reason the U.S. "supports" Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Hawai'i, and Japan, and why U.S. soldiers took Asian wives via the 1945 War Brides Act (a loophole to anti-immigration laws). It's not because they like Asians and Pacific Islanders—they see us/our lands as strategic assets or spoils of war. This shows how diasporic Asian lives are always inextricably linked to the fate of Asians abroad & vice versa. US imperialism has murdered millions of Asians via war in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos & left a multi-generational impact. (For more info, see my comic “Detonasian” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1181638490120957952)

So it isn't enough to stop the spread of COVID—we have to stop the spread of anti-Asian racism too. That means rejecting the lies of the Model Minority, speaking out against anti-Asian COVID attacks, and acknowledging just how pervasive and deeply embedded anti-Asian racism is. (Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.) If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304 https://patreon.com/joshualuna https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics

[canmom]

Animation Night 80 - Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix series

Damn, Animation Night 80. That is a whole lot of Animation Nights all right.

In about twelve hours I’ll be boarding a plane to America to land in the arms of my beloved @mogsk​​ - but before I go, I need to stay up to align my sleep cycle and make damn sure I don’t miss the plane, so let’s spend this long night watching a few animated films~

Tonight we’ll be rolling the clock way way back, to the one of the foundational mangakas and the absolute dawn of ‘anime’ as a tradition with its own distinctive look and terrible working conditions. That’s right - it’s time we told the story of the ‘Godfather of Manga’ [マンガの教父], Osamu Tezuka [手塚 治虫]!

...who is oddly camera-shy, with this picture from 1951 being one of the very few I can find.

Tezuka’s story is, of course, very long - and if you want to read about it there is (what else) a manga telling it, though I don’t seem to be able to find a good source for scans. Alternatively, you can turn to the excellent writing of Matteo Watzky, who’s kind of eclipsed even kVin as my go-to guy for sakuga writing lol.

Long before he got established in anime - in the days when Toei was basically the only game in town - Tezuka became established as one of the most popular creators of the new format of manga. He started drawing comics very young, even before the second world war, later citing influences like the Takarazuka revue, Disney films, and the Chinese animated film Princess Iron Fan (see: Animation Night 27), and continued through the war while working in a factory; afterwards, he received medical training but also started to find an audience for his comics.

There’s a great deal of argument among professional weebs historians of manga about whether the form is mostly based on older Japanese traditions like picture scrolls and kamishibai street theatre, or if its origins come from the broader tradition of comics internationally; I don’t really have any idea who has the right of that one and it’s perhaps ultimately unanswerable. By Tezuka’s time, certain formats, like the yonkoma [4-panel comedy strip], were already established; Tezuka’s first serialised work Diary of Mā-chan (1946) was a yonkoma.

At the encouragement of his friend Sakai Shichima, Tezuka started on a more narrative work called Shin Takarajima [New Treasure Island], loosely adapted from Treasure Island - and this became an enormous success, credited with beginning the manga boom. You can read a great deal about the background to this manga here on The Comics Journal.

But this would all soon be eclipsed by Tezuka’s most famous work, Tetsuwan Atom [Mighty Atom] (1952), better known in English as Astro Boy. (The character first appeared in a much less successful short story called Ambassador Atom (1951-2), but only the Atom character really caught anyone’s imaginations). There’s a cute little anecdote that comes up here:

One day, while working at a hospital, Tezuka was punched in the face by a frustrated American G.I. This encounter gave Tezuka the idea to include the theme of Atom's interaction with aliens.[19]

Astro Boy featured a childlike robot and soon became a flagship manga alongside

Not long after, he made a first unsuccessful effort at beginning what would become his “life’s work”, the manga series Phoenix, which is the subject of tonight’s Animation Night. More on that shortly.

Of course, Tezuka isn’t known merely as a famous mangaka - he is the person who invented the TV anime. So how did that come about?

Tezuka’s first role in animation was actually at Toei, where he was hired - already a famous mangaka - to create storyboards for their films, starting with Saiyūki, an adaptation of the Journey to the West. The result was mixed, as Watzky recounts in this article on the origins Tokyo Movie Shinsha:

In 1959, the famous mangaka signed a contract with Toei that stipulated that he would storyboard three Toei movies. In fact, he only storyboarded the first, Saiyûki, and only wrote the other two (Sinbad the Sailor and Wanwan Chûshingura). Tezuka was very slow and took an entire year to complete his storyboard, but took the opportunity to visit Toei often with two assistants, Shôtarô Ishinomori and Sadao Tsukioka [Clements, 2013, p.113]. According to Yasuo Otsuka’s memoirs, Tezuka’s storyboard was met in a contradictory manner. On one hand, the pacing was too irregular and the plot too complex – which meant that it had to be significantly re-written. But on the other hand, Otsuka recalls that “Tezuka’s drawings were modern to start with”, which made animating much easier [quoted in Clements, 2013, p.113].

Tezuka was very dissatisfied with the modifications to his original storyboard, which is why he only wrote the two other movies. But the production of Saiyûki was capital : Tezuka could see how an animated movie was produced and made a lot of contacts, but also discovered the already very difficult working conditions of animators. Indeed, the director of Saiyûki, Taiji Yabushita, was hospitalized at the end of production, and was probably the first victim of what Yasuji Mori called the “anime syndrome” [Quoted in Clements, 2013, p.103].

Before long, he left Toei, founding his own anime studio Mushi Productions in 1961 with only seven employees. But it was a good time to make a rival anime studio: as we discussed back on night 70, intense labour struggles at Toei were causing many animators to leave the company, and Tezuka was able to scoop them up. Among them were many future ‘big names’, such as Rintaro (Animation Night 53).

Back then we followed the strand which remained at Toei, particularly Miyazaki and Takahata - so now let’s head over to MushiPro. We can find the next bit of the story at Wikipedia:

In 1961, Tezuka entered the animation industry in Japan by founding the production company Mushi Productions as a rival of Toei Animation. His initial staff was composed of animators he had met while working on Saiyuki that he convinced to join by paying the animators more than double what Toei was paying them as well as paying for food. Their first film was Tales from a Certain Street Corner (Aru Machikado no Monogatari). An 'anti-Disney', experimental film. Just like on Saiyuki, Tezuka would often fall behind his own deadlines, and the staff would have to pick up the slack only for Tezuka to take credit for it later.

On Saiyuki, the animators had started experimenting with the techniques of limited animation - which refers to the suite of methods that animators use to save work compared to Disneyesque ‘full’ animation: low framerates, re-using drawings (e.g. in walk cycles), partial animation (only redrawing part of a drawing), ‘bank’ footage that could be reused in different contexts (e.g. transformation sequences). This became the signature of MushiPro, especially when Tezuka decided to try out the seemingly insane project of creating anime to air on television - an adaptation of his own manga Astro Boy.

Tezuka believed that he could only compete with animation by undercutting his competitors - which meant that, although he initially tempted animators away from Toei with doubled pay and free food, the rates he could pay his animators were ludicrously low, and the pace of work was intense. This, unfortunately, set a precedent which continues to this day with little improvement. MushiPro created a number of classic TV anime based on Tezuka’s manga in the 60s, such as Kimba the White Lion [ジャングル大帝 Jungle Emperor] (1965-66).

But the model was totally unsustainable, and it did not ultimately work out for MushiPro either. Despite the popularity of some of their TV anime, in particular in American localisation, the company gradually slid into insolvency. As a last ditch effort, Tezuka tried making adult films with the animerama trilogy, of which the best known is legendary arthouse film Belladonna of Sadness which we watched on Animation Night 69. It could not save MushiPro, which collapsed, only to rise again in the form of studios like Madhouse and Sunrise.

Tezuka on the other hand left the wreckage just fine, founding a new company called Tezuka Productions, there creating a variety of very experimental animation. But he also returned to manga, pivoting hard from his previous hyper-childlike character designs to a more realistic style inspired by the rise of adult-oriented gekiga manga. And in this context, he returned to Pheonix [火の鳥 hi no tori (Bird of Fire)] in 1967, serialised in his own magazine COM.

The manga is split into a series of chapters, each set in a different historical period, linked by the character of an immortal phoenix. The first two chapters are set in feudal Japan and a distant apocalyptic future; the later chapters gradually converged towards the present day, but the manga remained unfinished at the time of Tezuka’s death in 1989.

Many of those chapters ended up adapted into movies. These movies were largely not directed by Tezuka himself, but by a variety of his colleagues. We have:

Hi no Tori (1978), a long live-action jidaigeki film directed by Kon Ichikawa, based on the first chapter

Phoenix 2772 [Hi no Tori 2772] (1980), an animated film dir. Taku Sugiyama, based on the Future chapter but also mixing in various other bits of Phoenix. More on that shortly!

Phoenix: Karma Chapter [Hi no Tori: Hō-ō Hen] (1986), a 60-minute animated film dir. Rintaro

Phoenix: Yamato/Space Chapter (1987), a two-part OVA dir. Toshio Hirata (Yamato) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Space)

Hi no Tori (2004), a 13-episode TV series dir. Ryōsuke Takahashi (best known for Armored Trooper VOTOMS)

Of these the most notable is probably 2772, which caught my attention when I saw a tweet with an astonishingly elaborate bit of hand-animated 3D camerawork. The story behind it turns out to be pretty fascinating: key animator Junji Kobayashi created an elaborate 3D structure in a hallway to use as animation reference. Tezuka’s extreme ambitions for this film led him to hire a lot more staff at Tezuka Productions and “implement a 24-hour schedule”, which I sure hope doesn’t mean the animators were pulling 24-hour shifts but you never know in this industry.

So, tonight what I have for you is... the four Phoenix animated films from the 80s, that is, 2772, Karma Chapter, Yamato Chapter and Space Chapter.

But in addition to that... I also have a collection of Tezuka’s experimental short animated films largely from the 60s and 80s, for which I can thank @mogsk​ and her BakaBT access <3 I’m sure not all these films will hit, but there’s definitely some gems in there, like Jumping (1984) which includes some equally ludicrous perspective work to portray a child’s imagination leaping between different countries. So I’m looking forward to digging in there.

I know this is a much later start than usual, but I hope you’ll join me in https://twitch.tv/canmom for the one very horny man who got the ball rolling on this whole ‘anime’ thing! Animation Night 80 will be starting almost immediately~

[fapangel]

What is your counterargument to "Americans have no culture"? Serious long-form answer, no imageposts.

As a Greek-American, I have a unique perspective on this; because I can compare American culture to my ancestral culture; the culture; the culture that gave the world mathematics, natural science, medicine and works of literature that are still mandatory courses of study for high school students world-wide. A culture so vibrant that the Romans themselves just Romanized the names of our Gods and eagerly adopted them as their own; not so much adopting our culture as merging our enlightened ideas of intellectual pursuit with their pragmatic, down-to-earth engineer’s mindset to build works of architecture still revered today for their beauty, functionality and longevity. 

And all that glorious, beautiful culture has done Greece diddly squat. 

Look at it. Look at Greece; a nation impoverished, mocked and maligned; a nation that’s become the Mexico of Europe. That’s not a joke; back in the 70s the rail line between Greece and Germany was called the “Athens express” for how many Greek migrant workers rode it. The EU’s One Currency To Rule Them All guaranteed that someone in the bloc, unable to devalue their currency to manage changes in the global market, would emerge the loser, and once again it was Greece. The Greeks only participated in the 1930s Olympics because wealthy Greeks in America took up a collection and sent it over to them, and Greeks in America are still better off than they are in the homeland. Greece, the nation that invented democracy, soon forgot how to use it; they were ruled by a military dictatorship from 67 to 74 in a tragicomic reversion to the spasms of tyranny that sometimes gripped Athens in Classical Antiquity. Their civil government denies them many important rights; such as firearms ownership, and is only held in check by a combination of Greek’s inborn anarchist spirit and a woefully incompetent civil government that makes Italy’s civil service look like the fucking Swiss. Building a house in Greece is sometimes tantamount to filing a lawsuit due to this. And that’s to say nothing of the “anarchists,” i.e. the fucking communists who still firebomb the occasional building and contribute to a constant, low-level civil unrest significantly worse than anything antifa has managed stateside. 

So tell me, if you can - what has Greece’s vaunted “culture” done for it? What has it done for Greece, with its worm-riddled civil government, its impoverished people, with hoards of Middle Eastern refugees that Europe refuses to deal with? What has it done for Greece, having married into the globalists wet dream of a Unified European State, only to find that it was the designated loser? What has it done for Greece, which, having forfeited its economic independence to the globalist agenda, then finds itself left to defend itself with what little GDP it has left for military expenditures, now that Germany has gutted its own army, France still doesn’t give a single begotten fuck about alliances that don’t immediately impact their own interests, and the UK is worried about scraping the cash together just to defend themselves? Pray tell, what, exactly, does Greece have that America does not? 

America has media empires that resound across the world; the reach of Hollywood is vast. Donald Duck, Porky Pigs, Bugs Bunny are recognized from the Mongolian steppes to the savanna of sub-Saharan Africa. Our cultural influence on the globe is so mighty that Buick is still a big fucking deal in China, despite the globalists having willingly given away our role as world manufacturer to China itself, for the Chinese remember the impoverished days when the Party big-wigs all rolled around in American-built Buicks. American culture is a unique cultural attitude towards violence where a finger-poke counts as assault in many jurisdictions, but lays the necessary groundwork for the only country of its size on Earth where most people have the right to carry a loaded weapon on their person for the purpose of self defense. American culture is a strain of individualism matched only by its innate suspicion of government; a frontiersman attitude, not an inability to work together, as alt-right collectivists allege, but a pragmatic mindset that says nobody is coming to help you, or even nobody is going to help you in time, and thus frees people to help themselves. 

Even the comforts of our modern age cannot dull this; as it is written too deeply in the structure of our laws and the stories of our national mythos; the default reruns on daytime broadcast TV around here are old Westerns like Bat Masterson or Rawhide. One of the most incisive observations of Japanese culture I’ve ever seen I found in The Atlantic of all places; the commentary on how Japanese TV is always played in the background, a passive venue for programming responses that people then execute, word for word, at social events, as the author grouses towards the end. The American version is nowhere near as deliberate, of course; just our culture’s older mythos being churned up like a cow chewing her cud, but it’s there - and it’s all cowboy western ass-kicking or, at night, 80s action-movie asskicking. We mine it because that’s all there is to mine, from the bottom up. 

And what are the effects on Americans? If you strip away innate advantages of provenance and wealth? If you deny him his technology and money and pit him against enemies of homogeneous ethnicity and Strong Ancient Cultures, rifle to rifle, bayonet to bayonet, hand to hand? What emerges then? 

You find the men who took the Omaha and Utah beacheads with only rifles and grenades, after half their armored support floundered in the channel, preparatory bombardments missed their mark, and American faith in technology and firepower overall failed, and miserably. 

You find the Marines who held Edson’s Ridge against the Japanese, emerging victorious from brutal hand-to-hand combat in the dark. 

You find dead men walking who refuse to stop fighting until their last round and their last breath. 

In short, you find victors. Of the governments who’ve opposed us, many no longer exist - and yet we are still here. 

So where, exactly, am I supposed to detect America’s alleged lack of “culture?” The performance of our society in total war has been superlative; even our most astounding fuck-ups demonstrate just how bad an idea it is to piss us off. We have a national mythos of our own, complete with great heroes and their noble quests. We have icons and monuments built by our own hand, often to venerate those heroes. We have our own land; one we had to fight for, bleed for, and tame, one that is ancient and filled with natural wonders of staggering scope and beauty. And we have the same collectivists and fifth-columnists and globalists that Europe has, except they hold less sway here, despite the much-vaunted Culture of Europe’s ancient nations and peoples. 

So where is the tell-tale? Where is the casual link between America’s fortunes and her alleged “lack of culture?” For that matter, where is the casual link between Europe’s cultures and their fortunes? Where is the evidence? What even is the point of that phrase, “America has no culture?” 

The truth is that there is none; it is empty sloganeering of the “just asking questions” kind; trading entirely on trolling witless neoliberals incapable of defending the inconsistencies in their own platforms due to their inability to acknowledge reality. The alt-right never has to defend their platform as a coherent theory, because their only detractors are either fellow collectivists who share their basic premises and care nothing for critique, as they are of the out-group to them - a different collective - and thus not even human. With the lolbertarians trivially easy to keep on the defensive, that leaves nobody, nobody at all, as the actual constituency of the GOP, that have rallied behind Trump would’ve been called centrists thirty years ago and want nothing to do with collectivism, no matter what collective it claims to defend. 

The vast majority of them are full of shit, and it is not hard to prove it. 

[newstfionline]

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Public service in the US: Increasingly thankless, exhausting (AP) Historically, jobs like teaching, firefighting, policing, government and social work have offered opportunities to give back to communities while earning solid benefits, maybe even a pension. Surveys still show public admiration for nurses and teachers and, after the terror attacks of 9/11, firefighters. But many public servants no longer feel the love. They’re battered and burnt out. They’re stretched by systems where shortages are common—for teachers in Michigan and several other states, for instance, and for police in many cities, from New York and Cincinnati to Seattle. Colleagues are retiring early or resigning. There are mental breakdowns, substance abuse and even suicide, especially among first responders. Even before the coronavirus arrived, researchers have found in 2018 that about half of American public servants said they were burnt out, compared with 20% over workers overall. Some wonder who will pick up the slack, as more young people avoid public service careers. In the federal government, just 6% of the workforce is younger than age 30, while about 45% is older than 50, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

Gas stations report shortages as pipeline shutdown drags on (AP) More than 1,000 gas stations in the Southeast reported running out of fuel, primarily because of what analysts say is unwarranted panic-buying among drivers, as the shutdown of a major pipeline by a gang of hackers entered its fifth day Tuesday. The Colonial Pipeline, the biggest fuel pipeline in the U.S., delivering about 45% of what is consumed on the East Coast, was hit on Friday with a cyberattack by hackers who lock up computer systems and demand a ransom to release them. A large part of the pipeline resumed operations manually late Monday, and Colonial anticipates restarting most of its operations by the end of the week, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

Colombia protests likely to continue (NBC News) With no agreement between Colombia’s government and protest leaders, demonstrations are likely to continue as major cities brace for a third peak in Covid-19 cases. Since April 28, thousands have protested throughout the country against the government. The violence has resulted in the death of 26 people, including one police officer, according to government figures. Rights groups say the death toll is higher; Human Rights Watch says it has credible reports of 38 deaths. What began as demonstrations over proposed tax increases, that have since been scrapped, has morphed into broader demands for the government to address poverty and inequality. The protests have grown as reports of police violence, deaths, and disappearances have emerged.

More policing in France (AP) France saw its second national homage to a police officer in less than two weeks following the daytime shooting of Eric Masson, who was killed last week during a routine inspection of a street corner. “It’s a reality that there is violence in our society and it’s swelling, and that each day the role of our police is made more difficult by this violence,” said President Emmanuel Macron following a memorial for the slain officer. Experts, however, have noted that more French police were being killed in past decades than today, but that police tactics have hardened in recent years, leading to increased distrust amidst claims of systemic racism within the police, racial profiling, and videos showing apparent abuse and sometimes deadly violence. In contrast to the United States’ recent efforts to curb police powers, France has opted to strengthen them instead. Macron has promised 10,000 more officers in the streets by the end of his term and increased the police budget. The prime minister has also laid out a series of measures to ensure courts get tough on anyone dishonoring the uniform and a guarantee of 30 years in prison for the killing of a police officer, the same punishment as for terrorists.

A sweeping coronavirus lockdown in Turkey sets off arguments and economic anxiety (Washington Post) Shopkeepers pulled their steel shutters down last week in a warren of tool shops near the Bosporus, to comply with a nationwide lockdown. But every third shutter or so was left open a crack, to allow the furtive flow of continued commerce. Hardly anyone in Turkey these days can afford to be locked down. Not small business owners, who were aching from the flailing economy and rocketing inflation even before coronavirus restrictions were imposed last week. And not even the government, which permitted a glaring exception when it said foreign tourists, a critical source of foreign currency, would be allowed to travel the country freely, while telling Turkish citizens to stay home. In the 12 days since the lockdown began, the restrictions have set off soaring economic anxiety, arguments and public irritation. With infections and deaths surging to new highs, few disputed the measures were necessary. Rather, complaints have centered on the way they were imposed, with official edicts viewed as capricious or baffling that critics say have failed to insulate the country from further economic harm. The lockdown has undermined repeated official assurances that Turkey was faring better than many countries in the world. And the rules, from the well-intentioned to the bizarre, have landed on a public that is in no mood for more restrictions, especially this late in the pandemic.

India’s COVID-19 deaths cross quarter million as virus ravages countryside (Reuters) India’s coronavirus deaths crossed a quarter million on Wednesday in the deadliest 24 hours since the pandemic began, as the disease rampaged through the countryside, overloading a fragile rural healthcare system. Boosted by highly infectious variants, the second wave erupted in February to inundate hospitals and medical staff, as well as crematoriums and mortuaries. Experts are still unable to say with certainty when the figures will peak.

Chinese Population Growing At Glacial Pace (Guardian) Despite efforts to increase birthrates in the past half a decade, China is currently seeing its slowest population growth since the 1960s. On Tuesday, the government released the results of its once-a-decade census, saying the overall population of China grew to 1.41178 billion in the 10 years leading up to 2020, a slowdown that was expected, but still worrisome for the future of the country. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there were officially 12 million babies born in 2020, 2.65 million fewer than were born in 2019. China ended its one-child policy in 2015 to encourage more births, but the annual growth rate of 0.53% is the lowest since the early 1960s when China was dealing with the aftermath of tens of millions killed by famine. Replacing the one-child with the two-child policy has done little to stimulate population growth over the past few years. According to Dr. Ye Liu, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, “the government had to address the intersecting factors behind the low birthrate, which include rampant workplace discrimination against women of childbearing age and ‘scandalously low’ public childcare funding.”

Amcham finds 42% of members surveyed are planning or considering leaving Hong Kong (CNBC) A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong found that 42% of respondents are considering or planning to leave Hong Kong, with more than half citing their discomfort with the controversial national security law imposed by China. Various media outlets have reported anecdotes of people or businesses leaving Hong Kong following the clampdown by Beijing. And the Amcham survey offers a glimpse of the sentiment among the expatriate community in Hong Kong. “Previously, I never had a worry about what I said or wrote when I was in Hong Kong,” said an anonymous respondent to the Amcham survey. “With the NSL, that has changed. The red lines are vague and seem to be arbitrary. I don’t want to continue to fear saying or writing something that could unknowingly cause me to be arrested,” the person said.

Hamas launches more rockets, Israeli jets strike Gaza as casualties mount (Washington Post) Violence between Israelis and Palestinians entered its fourth day as rocket attacks on Israeli cities and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip continued early Thursday and casualties climbed on both sides. Sirens blared through the night across Israel as the militant group Hamas fired 130 rockets from Gaza, with at least one striking a suburb of Tel Aviv, causing injuries and significant damage, according to Israeli officials. In Gaza, residents awoke on the normally joyous Eid al-Fitr holiday to pillars of smoke rising from sites bombed by Israeli forces, which said they had conducted overnight operations against Hamas, which controls Gaza. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll rose to 69 Palestinians, including 16 children, the Associated Press reported. Seven Israelis, including six civilians and one soldier, have been killed, the Israeli army said Thursday morning. The Israeli army has struck 600 targets in Gaza since the conflict began, according to spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, who raised the possibility of a ground assault on Gaza. Clashes also continued overnight on the streets of Israeli cities between Jewish and Arab Israelis, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce he would deploy the military to quell the “anarchy.” Some 400 people were arrested overnight following riots throughout the country, the Times of Israel reported early Thursday, citing police. It added that 36 officers were injured.

[theculturedmarxist]

Chances are that by the time you get to the end of this article, there will be news of another information operation targeting Donald Trump. There’s one a day now—each trumpeting a new mortal threat to the republic or some dastardly revelation based on sources that are usually anonymous. Whatever it is, it will serve the same purpose as the hundreds of similar sallies launched over the last four years—namely, to preserve and protect the position and privileges of America’s ruling elite.

Trump stories are rarely about Trump. The same stories, or versions of them, would have targeted anyone who threatened to sever the American political, corporate, and cultural elite’s economic lifeline to the Chinese Communist Party. It is largely because Trump sought to decouple the United States from the CCP that America’s China Class, which owns the platforms on which Americans communicate, has waged a relentless campaign of information warfare against him through its social media and prestige media brands.

Consider the last two anti-Trump info ops: He gratuitously denigrated the historical suffering of African Americans, and he expressed contempt for America’s war dead. These are the sort of false allegations that political operatives are tasked to manufacture and disseminate during election season. Their purpose is to reinforce a negative impression of the opposing party among whatever cohort is being addressed, and make the target spend resources—time and money and sometimes blood—on defense. That’s politics 101, since the time of the Romans.

What’s new is that this is now journalism too. Since the internet defunded the press at the end of the 20th century and social media became the dominant player in America’s information space, journalism has abandoned the traditional standards and practices that once defined reporting. For instance, the smear holding that Trump is contemptuous of the military was supposedly based on four anonymous sources recalling exchanges from three years ago, which have been contradicted by dozens of named sources, some of whom were physically present when the comments were supposedly made—and some of whom have been public Trump opponents. In traditional journalistic terms, that’s not a news story—that’s a failed attack line.

The press that existed in America from the end of the 19th century until the turn of this one was designed to inform, influence, and sometimes inspire or inflame fellow citizens. But for people under 30, the only kind of “journalism” they’ve ever known is more like Pravda in the old Soviet Union or the kinds of party media found throughout the Third World. Journalism is an insider’s game, in which the stories are often outlandish, but rarely true; their actual news value is the hints they may offer about shadowy maneuverings that affect people’s lives but take place out of public view, like the rise or fall of a particular colonel who is pictured standing closer to or farther away from El Caudillo or Al Rais. Stories aren’t about the realities they purport to depict; the real stories are always the stories about the story.

American journalists, who now draw their paychecks directly and indirectly from the country’s largest economic interest—technopolies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook—are now turning the public sphere into a phantasmagoria of conspiracy theories and hysteria to cement the politburo’s position and privilege.

Accordingly, the debate in Washington, D.C., over which great power is feeding more disinformation into the 2020 election cycle isn’t real—it’s not Russia, as collusion impresario and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff claims, nor, as Attorney General William Barr says, is it China, though he’s closer to the truth. The source of the purposeful disinformation pouring into the American public sphere like untreated sewage is the American elite, led by its tech oligarchs, who own the platforms on which information campaigns are staged and laundered to protect their core interests—foremost among them being cheap Chinese labor and access to Chinese markets.

Let’s return to the two smears from above: Trump scoffs at Black suffering and Trump says military service is for suckers and losers. The former comes from the Washington Post’s famous Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s new anti-Trump book, and the latter was posted on the website of the Atlantic. Strip away the decorative paraphernalia that dresses them up to look like news articles, and both of these pieces of “journalism” are actually just tweets. The stories they’re attached to are hollow vessels festooned with brand names to ensure their reach and reception as they circulate through the information ecosystem of social media and cable news platforms.

Of course, when Jeff Bezos bought the Post and Woodward brands in 2013, he had no more idea than Vladimir Putin did that the host of “Celebrity Apprentice” would one day sit in the Oval Office. Bezos acquired them for the same reason the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs picked up the Atlantic—to defend the industry, tech, and political arrangements with China’s manufacturing base that drive their profits from “political interference.”

A little historical background may help explain how America’s information supply has become so badly poisoned. The Atlantic magazine was founded in the mid-19th century in Boston, where it published some of the founding figures of the American nationalist movement in literature like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 2005, its owner moved the Atlantic to Washington, D.C., where it accomplished the rare feat of turning a profit in the contemporary publishing industry—not by selling magazines or ad space, which had been turned into cheap commodities by the rise of the internet, but by billing Beltway lobbyists and tech and defense executives for the opportunity to influence well-known thought leaders at conferences, luncheons, and parties hosted under the Atlantic label in Washington, Aspen, and elsewhere. Laurene Powell Jobs bought a majority share in 2017.

The big message her property sent with its anti-Trump blog post was that Trump is contemptuous of a significant part of his base. What many Trump supporters saw was something else, though: Another proof of the elite’s determination to replay the 2016 election cycle.

Four years ago, few normal Americans imagined that their political class was capable of manufacturing a conspiracy theory out of whole cloth and laundering it through the nation’s spy agencies and the press in the hope of overturning the result of a democratic election. But after four years of Russiagate, and subsequent operations (the Mueller investigation, Ukrainegate, the razing and looting of American cities disguised as “peaceful protests,” etc.), no one is unaware that such coordinated campaigns are possible. In fact, they have become normal.

This time around, the role played by spies in the 2016 election is being filled by former senior Pentagon officials, including James Mattis, Trump’s one-time defense secretary. In June, Mattis wrote an article—in the Atlantic—likening Trump to the Nazis for wanting to dispatch the military to protect the lives, homes, and businesses of American voters.

Gen. Mattis is no stranger to Silicon Valley or its scandals. As head of U.S. Central Command, the four-star Marine general pushed for the products of one Silicon Valley startup to be used on wounded Americans in uniform, and after retiring he won a lucrative seat on the board of the same company, Theranos, which turned out to be the biggest fraud in the history of biotech.

Then there’s Stanley McChrystal, a retired four-star Army general who is reportedly advising a Democratic PAC called “Defeat Disinfo” on how to use Pentagon software to wage information warfare operations against the Trump campaign. McChrystal resigned his post in 2010 after a magazine reporter documented how he and his aides savagely mocked then-Vice President Biden, the man his information warfare campaign is now supposed to install in the White House.

McChrystal’s beef with Trump is something more than just greed or ego. He has been openly critical of Trump for wanting to get American forces out of the Middle East. He ripped the president when Mattis left his Pentagon post because the Marine wanted to keep more troops in Syria. McChrystal was head of operations in Afghanistan and thinks Trump should stay there, too. The problem is, he’s not sure why. As he told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he thinks the best option is to stay in Afghanistan and “muddle along.” And now he’s getting paid by Silicon Valley, too.

Trump is right that top military brass has it out for him and probably for the reasons he states—because pointless engagements like Afghanistan advance them personally and land them lucrative seats on the boards of defense and technology companies. But the personal ambitions of Pentagon officials are finally no more relevant here than those of the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Department bureaucrats who played a role in the first installment of the Russiagate franchise. They’re walk-on parts, as are the various media operatives and outlets like Bob Woodward and the Atlantic, in a much larger corruption of our politics.

The central pillar of the corrupt new order is the American elite’s relationship with China. To be clear, the issue is not that former media organizations like the Post and the Atlantic are pro-China. Both publish articles about the Chinese military, intelligence services, propaganda campaigns, human rights abuses, etc.—at the same time as the Post runs a regular insert produced by the Chinese Communist Party called China Daily. The point is that terms like pro- or anti-Red China are from a different era, when publications like Henry Luce’s Time Magazine were partisan and had points of view.

What matters now are platforms. And for the purposes of information warfare, what’s important is not the content but rather the availability and reach of the platforms, whose job is to protect the American ruling elite’s wealth and preferences by spreading whatever propaganda the elite sees as beneficial. By threatening to split the United States from China, Trump earned the enmity of America’s China Class, which is working hard to remove him from office, and replace him with someone more pliant.

Trump was not the first presidential candidate who noticed there was a tremendous political opportunity in picking up the support of a middle class undone by the ruling class’s foreign trade practices. Democratic Congressman Richard Gephardt made the same case during the 1988 election cycle. Gephardt lost. He lost again in 1992.

By the time the Clinton White House granted China most favored nation trade status in 2000, all of Washington knew that America was running a vast trade deficit that was destined to increase with accession to the World Trade Organization. The price for lifting tens of millions of rural Chinese peasants out of poverty through favorable trade arrangements would be tens of millions of American lives ruined, even as large American companies like Apple and Nike and bankers like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs got richer. The elite reasoned that they had no choice: The rise of China was inevitable. Why fight it?

American political and corporate elites didn’t choose decline. They chose to get rich. By shipping America’s manufacturing base off to China, they seized a business opportunity the likes of which had never been seen before—an enormous captive labor force controlled by an authoritarian regime that guaranteed the steady production of goods at a fraction of what it would cost at home. American cultural elites (Hollywood, sports, art, etc.) who exploited the increasingly large Chinese market for their products provided cover for the China Class cohort with messaging that dovetailed with CCP propaganda.

Who were Americans to judge a great and ancient civilization like China’s for jailing dissidents and enslaving the Uighur minority? Doesn’t America have its own history of slavery and political prisoners? It’s racist to protect American jobs. Those jobs aren’t coming back and there is nothing to be done about it, as Barack Obama famously said—unless you have a magic wand …

Calling out the American elite for betraying American interests in the service of their own personal and corporate bottom lines helped Donald Trump win the presidency. But it’s not clear that he truly understood how deeply entwined Beijing’s interests were with America’s China Class—and that trying to decouple the two would lead to an attempt at a permanent coup by the new techno-elite, targeting not just him and his supporters but the foundations of the republic, from our military to the media, and from our justice system to the institution of the presidency itself.

The American elite’s financial relationship with China is the key to understanding what’s been happening in America the past four years. Any president, Democrat or Republican, who took on China would have been targeted by the China Class. Because it was Trump flying the Republican banner who sided with America’s working men and women, the Democrats resorted to alliances with powers that now threaten the stability and security of the country.

[runswith]

Travel notes: Italy (Rome). Entry 8 - March 6, 2003

Back in Madrid, on a beautiful springlike Thursday. Processing this last trip.

Parting snapshots from Rome:

– Two evenings ago: walking down a narrow backstreet, a couple passed, going into a restaurant. Him: completely done up in black, from his extravagant pompador, to his fringed, silver-studded black leather jacket, to his baggy black vinyl pants, to his standard-issue black footwear.

– Yesterday a.m:. Sitting at a table on the sunny side of Piazza Barberini, watching the constant stream of pedestrians flowing by. In sitting there, I broke my own rule about never patronizing a bar/restaurant that advertises itself as American. But it was the only place around the entire goddamn piazza with tables/chairs. If I wanted to spend time enjoying sun and spring-like temperatures, I had to bite the bullet. In so doing, I bought the single most expensive cup of cappucino I've ever sipped. Which reinforced my theory about bars/restaurants of that ilk: they're tourist traps. Avoid ‘em.

– I sat watching people, reminded all over again about certain crimes being currently committed in the name of fashion. In this case, I refer to the faux cowboy-boot look that's in here this winter/spring. They're all over the place and they're mighty silly. Using the basic cowboy-boot template, then exaggerating the look in one way or another -- huge, high heels or pointy boot-toe that goes on and on and on (as if the footwear originally belonged to a cowboy clown) or wildly exaggerated angles, flaring outward from the heel to the balls of the foot, then sharply inward toward the toe. You get the idea. Many, many women in Rome and Florence wore ‘em, as do many women & men in Madrid. Not many Italian men, that I saw. For what that's worth.

– Took a bus route I'd never been on before to Rome's train station, doing it during the morning as a dry run, a rehearsal for later in the day when I'd be weighted down with luggage and not wanting to encounter any unexpected surprises. On the way back, the driver, perhaps post-one-too-many-espressos, went as fast as possible -- stopping and starting sharply, rattling around sharp corners at serious velocity, showing no quarter to other traffic. As he neared Piazza Barbieri, threading his way down a narrow street, he clipped a truck, his side mirror coming off with a loud noise, flying up into the air, landing hard on the sidewalk, everyone in the bus watching with eyes large as dinner plates. He pulled over at the next bus stop, sat there for a few moments before finally getting out and heading back to retrieve the pieces. Many passengers (including me) took the opportunity to exit the vehicle and slink quickly away.

– Thirty or forty minutes later, sitting at my little table in Piazza Barberini, the noise of a collision directly in front of where I sat announced another mishap, this one between a bus and a small blue car. The bus stopped where it was (traffic behind it honking indignantly), the car pulled over in front of the bus. The larger vehicle probably suffered little damage. The car's right rear corner, on the other hand, had been drastically altered. Both drivers got out, conferred. The woman studied her little blue buggy, apparently decided the damage had been her fault, got back in the car, drove off. All the passersby who had stopped to watch moved on, some looking a bit disappointed.

– Four Brits sat down at the table to my right, immediately stripping down to t-shirt and milk-white skin. Most of the locals who walked by kept their winter togs on and zipped up, looking as if the idea of removing them would be an act of lunacy.

– Went trawling for a likely lunch joint. Not a trattoria this time as my flight schedule didn't allow for the time that would involve. Looked around my hotel's neighborhood, found a hole-in-the-wall that dispensed cafeteria-style lunch food, took a chance. Ordered a sandwich, then asked about the pasta. The counterman conducted me to the other end of the shop where he shoveled a mountain of linguini in cream sauce and lemon onto a plate for me. Pretty close to bliss.

– On the nearly-empty train out to the airport, two 20-something Chinese women carried on loud, animated conversation, punctuated by near-constant laughter. One received a phone call, talking enthusiastically to whoever called, the other finding most everything she said hilarious.

– Leaving the city, the train passed apartment buildings whose roofs bristled with concentrations of television antennas, all sitting atop long, high masts. Also, bridges covered in colorful graffiti and patches of dense greenery, including stands of urban lemon trees.

– Checking in at the airport, the counter person told me the flight was already delayed by an hour. We found out why when we were finally in the air, nearing Madrid: major storms had swept through the area, were moving on east as we began to descend so that we moved between enormous, rolling white mountains of clouds, passing through vast airborne canyons.  An amazing display. As we rounded one towering bank of thunderheads, I saw long trailing streamers extended down toward the shadowed land below from the bottom of a cluster of dark clouds

To the west, Madrid glistened in evening sunlight, streets and sidewalks drying out.

On the Metro ride into town from the airport in Madrid: a young woman sat reading a translation of "I, Claudius." The title in Spanish? "Yo, Claudio."

Yo! Claudio!

[thegravecartel]

Character Interview (Repost Not Reblog)

NAME:  Kyung Hee Jee

AGE:  24

FAMILY:  Feng Ippuki (Adoptive Grandfather), Shinju Ippuki (Adoptive Mother), Tamara Marquis (Godmother), Lee Nickel Woolf (Adoptive Older Sibling), Luka Woolf (Adoptive Father).  Kyung also tends to be very inclined to seeing her close friends/allies/friends of her family as family in general, and addresses them as such if they allow it.  She also used to be a foster child to an American family, and throughout her childhood, was allowed to take trips to visit them even after being adopted into the Ippuki/Woolf family.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER:  Since she is a multi-shippable muse on this blog, it depends on what continuity/AU/Crossover we’re going off of.

Kyung x Harpreet [@made-out-of-magic] [Mainverse alt. TL] ship where she is happily married to a Tulpa that was manifested from Great Tiger [@the-great-tiger-of-mumbai] that has a very long history!  

Kyung x Steward [@thelastresidents] [Mainverse alt. TL] that doubles as a Crossover into the Luigi’s Mansion 3 universe where Kyung found herself as a spectral guest at The Last Resort, and after spending a good amount of time there, became coupled with the head bellhop, Steward.  There are also other ships that vary in development that have been RP’d on, and off-blog that are in the other AUs;

Kyung was paired with a fictional Ringo Starr [the blog has been deactivated] in the 1960′s AU 

She was paired with a Slig [Garfunkle the Slig] in the Oddworld AU where she isn’t a human, but a made-up species of alien(?).

There’s a good bit of development in a ship that takes place in the Ornaments!AU where Kyung, as a gnome in this verse, gets an attachment to a maid doll, Beth [@flowermist7432​].

𝙿𝙴𝚁𝚂𝙾𝙽𝙰𝙻.

RELIGIOUS BELIEF:  Polytheist, most likely.  She doesn’t really associate herself with any religion, but fully acknowledges the existence of deities in her world because she’s literally died, rejected ascending into the Heavens/Cosmos, and cannon-ball’d into the inferno just so she could fight her way back to the Land of the Living.  Naturally, she’s going to be more open to the possibility of other religious figures existing in the universe.  Of course, she found herself becoming more curious about the deities in Voodoo, and Hinduism over time.

SINS:  greed  /  gluttony  /  sloth  / lust  /  pride  /  envy  /  wrath 

VIRTUES:  chastity  / charity  /  diligence  /  humility /  kindness /  patience  /  justice 

PRIMARY GOALS IN LIFE:  To make her family proud (she’s achieved that already, but always feels that she needs to continue pursuing it); and to help people who are stuck in horrible life-situations (primarily domestic violence/abuse, abandonment, severe grief/mourning, and human trafficking), and get them on-track to making a better life for themselves.

KNOWN LANGUAGES:  English (her first and primary language), Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese.

SECRETS:  

She’s a vigilante who targets predators, other serial killers who go after innocent people/”easy prey”, and the unredeemable malicious folk.  

She takes on “clean-up crew” jobs for the more crime-savvy side of her family for the right price/reward.

She’s technically a madam(pimp) in the Las Vegas Strip district, but that’s mainly because she has devoted her strip club, The Velvet Rose Cabaret, to being an undercover sanctuary for prostitutes on the run from their abusive pimps, and has since expanded her operation into wiping out said pimps when she finds them.

Even though she isn’t necessarily in a gang, or a gang leader, Kyung has strong ties to various gangs that consider her as one of their own.

She doesn’t exactly know if it’s just a false-memory, or if it was real, but she may have tried to cannibalize her former assistant and close friend’s murderer in a blind rage.

SAVVIES:  Martial Arts, mortuary science, taxidermy, gardening, cooking and baking, and herbalism are main points of interest for her.  However, Kyung is quite fond of certain video games (Don’t Starve, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Subnautica, Dead By Daylight, and Left 4 Dead), loves to sing, dance (belly-dancing, pole dancing, free-form), and enjoys doing gymnastics (even if her balance is a bit off sometimes).

𝙿𝙷𝚈𝚂𝙸𝙲𝙰𝙻.

BUILD:  scrawny  /  bony  /  slender  /  fit  /  athletic  /  curvy  /  herculean  /  pudgy  /  average 

HEIGHT:  5′ 4″

SCARS / MARKS:  Kyung has two beauty marks on her face (one under her left eye, and one that’s constantly hidden under her hair on the corner of her right eye), and wears her scars proudly (unless she has to cover them up with makeup for special occasions/events).  Her scars are mostly stitches from when she’s been stabbed/cut, or where she’s been shot (two out of three of her deaths have been by getting shot).  Naturally, as a fighter, she typically nurses a few nasty bruises, and bloodied knuckles.

ABILITIES / POWERS:  Heightened levels of physical strength, flexibility, speed, durability, pain-tolerance, and stamina.  Fully trained in using firearms, blade-throwing, and is a master of various fighting styles.  As a ghost [LM3 universe], she maintains these abilities with the addition of having access to using her soul-bound scythe, and having the default abilities a ghost has.  On the off-chance her assistance is needed by her godmother, Kyung willingly allows herself to become a sort of magical conduit/vessel for Tamara to possess.

RESTRICTIONS:  She tends to take on more damage due to preferring to block certain attacks, instead of dodging.  Being a left-handed person, Kyung takes on a Southpaw fighting stance, which leaves her more open to attack from an opponent if she’s boxing.  Even as a High Functioning Autistic person, Kyung still has the occasional issues with timing her movements, short bursts of memory loss, and delayed reflexes. 

𝙵𝙰𝚅𝙾𝚁𝙸𝚃𝙴𝚂.

FOOD:  Kyung loves sweets, and various types of comfort food (spaghetti and meatballs, mac ‘n’ cheese, salmon, etc.).  While she prefers soups, stews, Asian and Western cuisine, Kyung tends to get very interested in different foods from other parts of the World.  This is especially the case if it looks good, and has certain ingredients that she knows that she loves.

DRINK:  She prefers coffee (generously sweetened), but loves tinkering around with floral/herbal teas, bubble tea, mocktails, milkshakes, and fruit juice.  If it’s sweet, she’ll very likely drink it, yet doesn’t care too much for sodas or energy drinks.

PIZZA TOPPING:  Pizza isn’t something she eats that often, but when she does, Kyung either gets extra cheese and black olives, or will branch out with less traditional toppings such as broccoli, carrots, sliced meatballs, and spinach.

COLOUR:  Red-Orange #ff3700

MUSIC GENRE:  No real preference for genre, and just loves a little bit of almost everything (for some reason, she’s not the biggest fan of Country, and it makes her sad that she can’t listen to it properly).

BOOK GENRE:  She reads a lot of anatomy and physiology books (especially the ones that are more “explicit”), hobbies/crafts, and various skin-leather bound books from her journey through Hell (she can’t really read them, but she likes the pictures).

MOVIE GENRE:  Horror, typically old ones with the exception of contemporary/modern flicks that catch her interest.  She also loves the more adult-comedies, and animated movies/cartoons that are for all ages.

SEASON:  Fall, and Spring.

CURSE WORD:  F-bombs for days, along with a lot of the S-word, and frequently uses the Christian lord’s name in vain out of habit.

SCENT(S):  Sugary sweet desserts (she especially loves vanilla), and sweet-floral (rose, sweetpea, passion flower, lily of the valley).

𝚁𝙰𝙽𝙳𝙾𝙼.

BOTTOM OR TOP:  Bottom bunk, unless the top bunk has safety railing.  Otherwise, she’s a versatile top depending on her partner.

SINGS IN THE SHOWER:  Surprisingly, no.

LIKES BAD PUNS:  Absolutely!  She finds puns hilarious in general, and probably laughs harder at them than necessary.

[needsmoresarcasm]

Favorite Books of 2019

I read a bunch of books in 2019. I loved a lot of them. Here are my ten favorites.

10. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, Gretchen McCulloch

Most books about internet culture are garbage because they are written from the perspective of someone who is outside internet culture. Gretchen McCulloch, I am positive, is a part of internet culture. She was on fandom mailing lists and had a LiveJournal, I’m sure. She had to be to write Because Internet, which is an incredibly well written book about how language has evolved to fit online discourse. Because Internet is so fascinating, as it is able to explain thoughtfully (and compellingly) many things that internet people understand inherently. It parses through the evolution of a keysmash or an emoji. And it really helps show how language on the internet is not somehow the deterioration of language, but just another natural step forward.  9. HHhH, Laurent Binet

Originally written in French, HHhH deals with the entire genre of historical fiction. The narrator in HHhH is writing a novel about the murder of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking Nazi official. That novel-within-the-novel is the bulk of the actual HHhH. But the narrator, who has spent years researching the actual facts, struggles with how much history and how much fiction he should be putting into the book. And so the book explicitly plays with the reader’s expectations, and comments at times on paths the story could take. The book works without the metatextual commentary, it’s propulsive and a little wry. But the added layer really just adds to the intrigue: what’s historical fiction supposed to do? And does any of it even matter? 8. Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer, John Glynn

Out East is a coming out memoir that deals with entirely internal struggles and not external hardships. Of course, there is an incredible amount of privilege at play for a coming out to be devoid of external hardships. And yes, the memoir, about a group of (mostly white) friends who rent a beach house in Montauk for a summer, is steeped in privilege, which John Glynn is acutely aware of. But John Glynn is not asking for your sympathy, he is instead telling a deeply personal story about self discovery and sexuality in the 2010s. He captures the world-shattering confusion and fear of learning that you don’t know yourself in a visceral way that still somehow maintains perspective. I cannot say that this book is for everyone, but man, was it for me.

7. Red, White & Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston The year was 2019, and everything was awful. Enter Red, White & Royal Blue, a wildly escapist fantasy that dared to dream: what if the world wasn’t on fire? So Red, White & Royal Blue is truly the most escapist novel out there, a fun romp of a romantic comedy that is entirely unconcerned with the disasters of reality. No, we’re just going to take the biracial son of the first female President of the United States and the charming, responsible prince of England and let them fall in love. Let hijinks ensue. Let this wonderful, bubblegum, fizzy drink of a novel enter your brain and wipe away all your worries. God, I had a blast reading this novel. Make everything gay 2020.

6. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Ruin and/or Improve Everything, Kelly & Zach Weinersmith

Soonish is the exact kind of nonfiction that I want. It made me feel smarter and also made me laugh. Soonish takes on exactly what its subhead describes: ten emerging technologies (robotics, fusion power, asteroid mining, bioprinting!) that may or may not prove disastrous. It walks through the current science and then the possibilities, and how far off those possibilities are. And then it walks through the potential benefits and consequences. It’s an incredibly accessible read, written with the right balance of information and levity, striking that xkcd Randall Munroe balance. And it also has very funny comics and illustrations interspersed throughout, which will just bring your life so much joy.

5. Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson

Too real. Just Mercy is too real. This is not the right space to get into all that this book says about racial injustice and the flaws of the American justice system. It says a lot, and it says it extremely powerfully. But Just Mercy is Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, too. And it’s equally powerful for what it reveals about Stevenson. It’s so incredibly intimate, and Stevenson really lets the reader into his mind. And I think that openness really makes the whole thing land. Because Stevenson is hopeful and dedicated, and being that close to his inner thoughts ends up turning his story into something inspiring, not enervating. There’s an anecdote about an old woman on a bench outside the courthouse that Stevenson describes, and Stevenson’s retelling is so sure of the overwhelming, indomitable potential goodness of the human spirit that I may have shed a tear. Or two. Or a hundred.

4. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

I’m not usually one for deeply tragic stories, but The Song of Achilles I guess is the exception that proves the rule. Locked into the Iliad’s telling of Achilles and Patroclus’ fate, The Song of Achilles feels tragic from the first line. But every sentence builds their relationship and makes you invested, even as tragedy looms. The writing is gorgeous and almost musical; the passion swells and crashes like an orchestra. The book smartly focuses on Patroclus’s humanity to ground Achilles. It’s through Patroclus that we see and understand Achilles, which makes the sharp turns, where we see through Achilles, cut even deeper. In any event, the whole affair is horrifyingly romantic, and I loved it.

3. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

Everything about Homegoing is spectacularly audacious. It is an economical 300 page book with the weight, scope, and ambition of a thousand page page epic fantasy series. Homegoing begins by telling the story of two sisters who, by the whims of circumstance or luck or fate, end up on wildly divergent paths. In Ghana in the 18th century, one is sold into slavery and the other marries an Englishman. Homegoing then follows the parallel paths of their descendants through eight generations. Though Homegoing only devotes a single chapter to each character, it manages to develop those characters and their specific settings in more detail than some entire books can. And these chapters are great not only because of what they say about the larger themes of racism and colonialism and family and history, but because of the nuanced, particularized stories they’re able to tell about the individuals.

2. Picture Us in the Light, Kelly Loy Gilbert

Contemporary Young Adult books can feel hit or miss for me. Many of them end up feeling a little shallow or juvenile. And this isn’t a criticism of the books, but a necessary side effect of the fact that I’m not the intended audience. But Picture Us in the Light knocked me over with more force than any “adult” book I read.

Picture Us in the Light, at first blush, is a typical story about Danny Cheng, a Chinese American high school student worrying about getting into college, swirls with weighty plot elements--suicide, citizenship, poverty, familial sacrifice--but never resorts to melodrama. Each issue is treated with a deft, steady hand. But more than anything, it is just the story of Danny Cheng trying to figure out his life. His voice is specifically crafted to reflect everything he is: an aspiring artist, the child of immigrants, Asian American, maybe queer, a Californian, and, maybe most importantly, a teenager. Because Picture Us in the Light turns the youth of its genre, its audience, and its main character into an asset; it channels that unformed teenage energy of wonder, uncertainty, and anxiety to heighten every emotional beat. And mostly, it brims with empathy and optimism for Danny and, really, for everyone.

1. The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

The Starless Sea is the reason I read books. As a kid, I fell in love with reading by devouring entire series, getting lost in a fictional world for days or weeks or months at a time. What made reading so addicting was the feeling of being entirely immersed in the currents of a story. It’s a feeling I don’t get from books much any more. I read too fast, I think too much, and, mostly, I’m too easily distracted. But The Starless Sea brought that feeling of having just spent two weeks reading every Redwall or Lord of the Rings or Ender’s Game book and no longer being able to discern reality from fiction. And for that blissful literary hangover, it was the best book I read in 2019.

The Starless Sea is about Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a video game design graduate student, who comes across an old, unmarked book in his school library. In that book, he comes across a story that impossibly contains a moment from his past, and the book proceeds to unravel that mystery. However, this plot summary is misleading in its linearity; The Starless Sea is structured as books within a book, chapters will switch from the story of Zachary to the story Zachary is reading to maybe a different story altogether. And in this way, it unfolds as a puzzle box, or maybe as nesting dolls, or maybe a Mobius strip (or maybe all three), where figuring out exactly what stories are being told only adds to the experience. 

You won’t find a review of this book that doesn’t call Erin Morgenstern’s writing beautiful or atmospheric or dreamlike, which is appropriate because Erin Morgenstern’s writing is beautiful and atmospheric and dreamlike. Between the whimsical descriptive flourishes and the outward spiraling fantastical plot, the book is always on the verge of floating away or spinning out. But Zachary Ezra Rawlins grounds the story; he’s real and genuine and good, and never have I rooted more for a character. He believes in the power of a great story, and that’s ultimately what this book is about: the ways in which a story can sweep you away. And, truly, The Starless Sea just washed over me, lifted me up, and swept me away.