#National Taiwan Normal University

[eyeontw]

Government, Industry and Academia Join Hands to Advance Sports Technology:The 2024 TaiSPO Showcases Taiwan’s Innovative Sports Tech

“Expanding Sports Science Research Capacity and Results” Eye On Taiwan Media Special Report: In 2022, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) launched a program to expand sports technology. The program applies current research on sports science and technology to popularize public fitness, promote international cooperation, cultivate…

[abstracteddistractions]

Shi Jin-hua (1964 – 28 June 2024)

Shi was a leading figure in Taiwan’s contemporary art scene for nearly four decades. His art practice was rooted in painful illnesses he experienced as a child that made him hyper aware of the fleeting nature of physical life.

His most illustrious series is called Pen walking. For each work in the series, Shi used up one or more pencils then left the pencil shavings on the paper as a symbol of a body used up by life.

Shi earned his BFA from the National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, and his MFA from the University of California at Irvine, USA.

He received multiple awards, including the Taipei Arts Award, the Li Chun-Shan Foundation Visual Arts Award, the Taiwan Kaohsiung Award and the Hsiung-Shih New Artists Prize.

His works are included in the collections of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, among others.

Rest In Power !

Pan Walking #74, 2009,

Pencil, paper, glass tube and document, 130.2 x 189.5 cm

[mariacallous]

What will happen to China’s long-term ideological direction once President Xi Jinping eventually leaves the scene? This is unlikely anytime soon. But for a septuagenarian, the possibility is real enough to force us to start seriously thinking this through. Indeed, it goes to the core question of whether the deep structural and cultural changes that Xi has wrought will endure under the next generation of Chinese leaders. Could his particular brand of “Marxist nationalism”—marked by left turns in politics and economics, while moving foreign policy to the nationalist right—become more extreme as a younger generation of Xi political loyalists carry his banner forward? Or will “Xi Jinping Thought” fade, gradually at first, as happened with Maoism between 1976 and 1978, before it was finally repudiated by Deng Xiaoping and his successors?

Post-Xi China will be shaped by a number of factors, the most important of which will be timing. Xi will want to stay in office until he is confident that the generation to succeed him in the party’s most senior leadership positions will share his ideological direction and zeal. This presents a problem. Xi constantly rails against his own generation and the one immediately below him for having allowed corruption, careerism, and ideological confusion to reign supreme. That’s why his party rectification campaigns have been designed to instill personal and political fear and rigor.

Xi will likely remain cautious about trusting anyone to replace him who entered a significant position of political authority under his predecessors. He would also be dubious as to whether they have sufficient personal commitment to continue his ideological and political program into the future. His instinct would be to remain in power until a critical mass of younger party officials, who began their university education under him, have reached higher political office. Xi’s constant invocation to “dare to struggle” (ganyu douzheng) has been delivered through the country’s party school networks and has been particularly focused on younger cadres. In doing so, Xi has appealed to their youthful idealism, as yet uncorrupted by the rampant materialism and bourgeois influences of the recent past.

However, this effort to purify the future ranks of the party’s leadership would mean relying primarily on cadres born after 1995, who were children when Xi first came to power. By the 22nd Party Congress in 2032, however, “Xi’s generation” would be at most 37, barely old enough in normal circumstances to be appointed as alternate Central Committee members. At the two subsequent congresses in 2037 and 2042, when Xi would be in his 85th and 90th years, they would be in their mid-40s—the optimum age for placing this rising generation of young Chinese nationalists into positions of real authority, even possibly the Politburo. In other words, it would take a long time to appoint large numbers of this post-“reform and opening” generation to the highest positions in the party.

While there will be other ideological conservatives and personal loyalists in the senior ranks of the party whom Xi would trust, this younger generation presents his greatest hope and political bulwark against ideological revisionism once he leaves the scene. They would provide the ballast of political support across the central party leadership that his designated successor would need to avoid being ousted from power. Therefore, the longer Xi remains in office, the more likely his succession plan will be able to deliver long-term ideological continuity.

Chinese politics after Xi will also be affected by the unfolding geopolitics and geoeconomics of the decade ahead. By far, the most important external strategic development will be the future of Taiwan. If U.S. deterrence fails—either through insufficient U.S., Taiwanese, and allied military capability or a failure of U.S. political will—and Xi swiftly and (relatively) bloodlessly takes Taiwan by force, his position within Chinese domestic politics would become unassailable. Xi would have achieved what Mao had failed to achieve by reuniting the motherland. Xi would then, most likely, launch what would be framed as a new age of Pax Sinica as U.S. geopolitical decline set in across Asia and, in time, the world. Taiwan would be seen within China and the wider region as a profound geopolitical tipping point.

Domestically, this would afford Xi a maximally advantageous set of circumstances to secure both his desired political succession and the continuation of his ideological legacy. If, by contrast, Xi sought to resolve Taiwan by force and was defeated militarily, there is little doubt he would be forced from office. Such a defeat, coming after more than a decade of official propaganda that only Xi had made China powerful, would count as national humiliation of the highest order. It would, therefore, demand the highest political price be paid. Indeed, the legitimacy of the regime itself would come under direct challenge.

However, the third—and, at this stage, most likely—scenario is that deterrence continues to hold through the 2020s and war is avoided. In this case, Taiwan would mean little for Xi’s longer-term internal succession planning.

Equally important, if the famously assertive and status quo-challenging Xi ultimately judged that the risks were still too great to take Taiwan by force, it is highly unlikely that his successors would then be prepared to do so. Alternative diplomatic frameworks for long-term national unity may, under these circumstances, become possible in a new generation of negotiations between Beijing and Taipei. For these reasons, given his desire to surpass Mao’s achievements on national reunification, and to do so before the People’s Republic of China’s centenary in 2049, Xi’s time in office likely represents the period of peak danger regarding the possibility of war over Taiwan. Navigating the Taiwan question through effective deterrence during the Xi period remains the single most critical strategic task for supporters of the status quo—the focus of my previous book, The Avoidable War.

The dominant internal political dynamic within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after Xi ultimately leaves the stage will, most likely, be part of the long-standing processes of natural self-correction that lie within the party itself. Throughout its history, the CCP has oscillated between left and right, conservatives and reformers, isolationists and internationalists—a phenomenon of “control and release” (fangzhou). In the post-1949 period, for example, Mao’s leftism dominated with an emphasis on class struggle, the anti-landlord movement, collectivized agriculture, and nationalized industry. This was until the 8th Party Congress in 1956, when pragmatists sought to readjust the party’s center of economic gravity to promote steady economic development, trade, and commerce. Mao retaliated with the Great Leap Forward in 1958, resulting in widespread famine as he sought to accelerate industrialization at the expense of normal agricultural production. The economic pragmatists, then led by Deng, went on the offensive in the early 1960s, and Mao pushed back with the Cultural Revolution, purging his “rightist” political opponents and doubling down on both agricultural and industrial collectivization. This ended with Mao’s death in 1976, the formal repudiation of Mao’s leftist errors, and Deng’s initiation of what would become a 35-year era of reform and opening, which reembraced the private sector for the first time in decades.

Xi is likely to have seen this long series of historical debates within the CCP as the inevitable product of internal dialectical confrontation, contradiction, and struggle to establish the “correct” party line. Hence his efforts since 2012, and particularly after 2017, to correct the economic and social imbalances left over from the Deng era. The political and economic momentum already building against Xi’s leftist ideological project is formidable. But as with Mao, it is unlikely to be strong enough to force any fundamental political correction until the leader has formally departed the scene. Xi is undoubtedly aware of the danger of self-correcting forces in whatever interim leadership may replace him, fueling his recruitment of younger, more idealistic, and nationalistic cadres into the leadership echelons of the party as early as possible.

Xi’s problem, however, is that he may not have enough time. He would probably have to maintain power well into his 90s to appoint enough ideologically reliable younger cadres to enable his political strategy to take root. Pitted against this strategy will be the underlying forces of political inertia, bureaucratic entropy, and a party historically predisposed to return to the political mean. Even for a formidable politician like Xi, prevailing in such a long-term struggle against the political, economic, and social forces arrayed against him will be a tall order indeed.

The irony, therefore, is that Xi, the master dialectician, could well be defeated by dialectical forces of his own making—a direct reaction to decades of his own ideological overreach. Unless Xi can hold on for another 20 years or more, China is less likely to become more ideologically extreme once he goes. The country after Xi, as in previous eras in modern Chinese history, will probably welcome a correction toward the center, given how much of Xi’s ideological project has grated against so many individual aspirations, societal norms, and deep economic interests in modern China—as well as giving rise to concern, at least among elites, as to how isolated China has become from much of the world.

For these reasons, the challenge for the wider world is to effectively navigate the Xi era through a combination of deterrence and diplomacy, without recourse to crisis, conflict, and war. War, whatever its outcome, would generate death and destruction at an unimaginable scale. It would also redefine Chinese, American, and global politics and geopolitics in deeply unpredictable ways. And the world would never be the same again.

[ani-antiquities]

Trajectories and Movements of Filipino People: Diasporic Objects and Possibilities for Rematriation, Marian Pastor Roces (Alliance Français Manila, September 7, 2024)

(Photos from Tara Illenberger, Facebook. We attended the same talk, though I was not able to take much photos as much, since I was not seated at the front. 😅)

Would like to start this post by saying that it was such an honor to have met Marian Pastor Roces again. For my would-be followers who are yet to read my blog posts, especially those who are situated abroad, I would like to introduce Marian Pastor Roces to you. MPR is an art critic, museum curator (and creator, in a comical sense), writer, political analyst, and cultural critic. She has hosted the establishments of numerous cultural initiatives that concern cultural heritage of ethnic groups in the Philippines. She is also a writer of essays and books, and an editor for Mapping Philippine Material Culture — a global archive of the different diasporic Filipino art and antiquities.

I met her the first time when I hosted a talk for her at my university. Terrific woman. I wish I had learned about her way sooner, from when I was a kid. Then, I would not have been so indecisive of what I wanted to be when I grew up and knew that I wanted to be a cultural heritage lawyer from the start, haha!

Something this talk proved further was the very principle that

cultural objects have memory too,

much like how much of the movements of Filipino people are reflected in the movements of its cultural objects.

Click read more to read the notes I got from the talk! ⬇️

There were three events that mark as significant events and turning points in the movements of the Filipino people.

Austronesian Migration: Wherein a seaborne migration set sail from the island of Taiwan to Batanes, in Northernmost Philippines. Objects traced and left behind by our Austronesian ancestors revealed marks of cultural connections along their trail.

1887 Madrid Exposition: Wherein maltreatment from the colonial Spaniards sought to display people of the Igorots in Human Zoos. The Filipino people have become an object themselves according to the colonizer.

Philippine Diaspora and Globalization: Wherein Filipino artifacts are now dispersed in cultural and archival institutions globally. Now, the material culture heritage of the Philippines is in large measure overseas. Filipinos do not have access to much of the material evidence of our heritage. Among the outcomes of this unknowing is an abyssmal loss of measures of quality that Philippine Peoples enjoyed until about a century ago.

The substantial collection of the National Museum of the Philippines was nearly totally destroyed during the Second World War, the same event which led to the adopted of the 1954 Hague Convention, briefly discussed in the previous post.

Material Culture Studies were not a significant area of work for Philippine Studies during the Post-War Period.

Philippine Material Culture collections started to be an activity in the 1970's.

What is lost to the Filipinos, as diasporic objects are detached from them?

Key pieces that embody the most ✨ sublime ✨ levels of cultural expression in material form by specific Philippine Peoples. Here, Marian does not refer to these pieces by the quantity of cultural objects being produced, but by the quality of it. You can get traditional, authentic fabric anywhere in the region where the community resides — but all the ones that were made special, limited, and ceremonious are all stored in museums abroad.

Key pieces for which no equivalent exists.

The full range of variations of certain traditions, as expressed by the artists of specific community.

The opportunities to study continuities or commonalities between and among parts of the Philippine experiences that are normally separated.

Accurate analysis of what is Philippine — and thus to inform policy.

WHO DO YOU RETURN THE OBJECTS TO? Repatriation vs. Rematriation

Repatriation:

Nation-state as destination of return.

The loss of legitimacy or ethical high ground of holdings of powerful entities.

Rematriation:

Not return to the state — but the people who made them.

Though legal processes are able to create a process for repatriation, you cannot template rematriation.

You need to built trust with the community you are rematriating to.

The Legal Practice and Rematriation:

Cultural Heritage law centers more on private/institutional ownership (i.e. cultural property). However, Cultural Heritage is inherently collective. Hence, what we need is a legal basis for cultural custodianship as well — in collaboration in both the communal (discourses among the ethnic group), and international (UNESCO).

Enumeration of Investigative Directions that will have useful impact on Policy, Governance, Philantrophy, Grassroots Work, and International Relations, with regard to Philippine Material Culture

The celebration of global peak achievements in material culture.

The acknowledgement of Philippine Material Culture as rooted in village cosmologies that are shared across island Southeast Asia.

The establishments of living links between past and future art.

The metamorphosis from village to supra village ethos.

The fullsome recognition of a different way of being human in this part of the world.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Team develops transistors with sliding ferroelectricity based on polarity-switchable molybdenum disulfide

Over the past few years, engineers have been trying to devise alternative hardware designs that would allow a single device to both perform computations and store data. These emerging electronics, known as computing-in-memory devices, could have numerous advantages, including faster speeds and enhanced data analysis capabilities. To store data safely and retain a low power consumption, these devices should be based on ferroelectric materials with advantageous properties and that can be scaled down in terms of thickness. Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors that exhibit a property known as sliding ferroelectricity have been found to be promising candidates for realizing computing-in-memory, yet attaining the necessary switchable electric polarization in these materials can prove difficult. Researchers at National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and National Cheng Kung University recently devised an effective strategy to achieve a switchable electric polarization in molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). Using this method, outlined in a Nature Electronics paper, they ultimately developed new promising ferroelectric transistors for computing-in-memory applications.

Read more.

[jacob-in-taiwan]

August 5 - Calligraphy Lesson and Ten Drum Cultural Village

After what felt like no time at all, today was the day we left Kaohsiung. I was a bit sad to go too. Maybe it’s because we were able to spend a bit more time here than in other cities, but I really loved the city. I had a great time there and it overall just had an atmosphere that I really enjoyed. Despite how sad I was to go, I was still excited to check out what Tainan had to offer. We only have a few more days left in Taiwan, so I want to really appreciate every second I have left. 

The first activity for today was a mystery. We knew we had some sort of guest lecture at the National University of Tainan, but we didn’t know exactly what that meant. It turned out to be another calligraphy lesson, although this time was much different than the one at Fo Guang Shan. Last time, we basically just traced over pre-written characters with a pen. This time however, we were using a proper brush and doing them from scratch. We were taught how to hold the brush, proper stroke order, and the meaning of the characters. After some warm up exercises we were all free to practice the words we wanted to do and then free to just go for it. I decided to go with eternity on one side and luck on the other. The characters for luck were actually in cursive, which I didn’t even know was possible in Chinese, so that was really interesting. I actually found it easier to write the one in cursive too. I think since all the characters are so unfamiliar with me the motion and flow of writing in cursive was easier to understand than the concentrated process of normal characters. 

After having some more fun and a bento lunch at the university we left to go to the Ten Drum Cultural Village. I was personally really excited to go here because I love music and playing instruments. It ended up being not exactly what I expected but I still had a good time. I thought I would be able to just go off and play drums for the entire time there, and while there was a class I could’ve joined to play, that wasn’t what happened. We ended up getting tickets for a performance, which I admittedly wasn’t too excited about at first. I was in the mood to just walk around and explore, but after the show started I completely flipped. I was not expecting a performance like the one we got. The band that performed, Cross Metal, were genuinely really incredible, which caught me so off guard because I was expecting some traditional percussion-only performance. I ended up having a really good time watching them perform, and we all even got a group picture with the band after. 

I’m really grateful for the calligraphy lesson that we got to experience today. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the last one we did at the monastery as well, but this one was so much more informative and educational. I mentioned it earlier, but at the monastery we really just traced over the characters that made the poem, so I was just really focused on making sure I stayed within the lines. Furthermore the actual pen when used had a rigid point. When I think of calligraphy, I always picture the distinct style that using a brush provides. That being said, the fact that we used a brush was a big reason why I liked today’s lesson. I also really appreciated that we drew freely. We did have guides, which for someone like me was absolutely necessary, but we still had the freedom to write the characters in our own style. What I think the best part about the whole experience though was we had the choice to write whatever we wanted. I personally just used the examples provided to us, but I loved getting to see what other things people came up with to put on theirs. 

[dertaglichedan]

China crafts weapons to alter brain function; report says tech meant to influence government leaders

China‘s People’s Liberation Army is developing high-technology weapons designed to disrupt brain functions and influence government leaders or entire populations, according to a report by three open-source intelligence analysts.

The weapons can be used to directly attack or control brains using microwave or other directed energy weapons in handheld guns or larger weapons firing electromagnetic beams, adding that the danger of China‘s brain warfare weapons prior to or during a conflict is no longer theoretical.

“Unknown to many, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have established themselves as world leaders in the development of neurostrike weapons,” according to the 12-page report, “Enumerating, Targeting and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party’s Neurostrike Program.” The Washington Times obtained a copy of the study.

The U.S. Commerce Department in December 2021 imposed sanctions on China‘s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 related entities the department said were using “biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end-uses and end-users, to include purported brain-control weaponry.”

Few public studies or discussions, however, have been held regarding the new advanced military capability.

Neurostrike is a military term defined as the engineered targeting of the brains of military personnel or civilians using nonkinetic technology. The goal is to impair thinking, reduce situational awareness, inflict long-term neurological damage and cloud normal cognitive functions.

The study was written by Ryan Clarke, a senior fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore; Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former Army microbiologist now with Feitan College; and L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence officer and current specialist in artificial intelligence for the U.S. intelligence community. The three authors write that China‘s leadership “views neurostrike and psychological warfare as a core component of its asymmetric warfare strategy against the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific.”

According to the report, neurostrike capabilities are part of standard military capabilities and should not be viewed as an unconventional weapon limited to use in extreme circumstances.

Likely areas of use for the weapons included Taiwan, the South China Sea, East China Sea and the disputed Sino-Indian border.

The threat is not limited to the use of microwave weapons: “[China‘s] new landscape of neurostrike development includes using massively distributed human-computer interfaces to control entire populations as well as a range of weapons designed to cause cognitive damage,” the report said.

Research is focused on using brain warfare weapons in the near term, and possibly during a Chinese military assault on Taiwan — a target for future Chinese military operations that U.S. military leaders have said could be carried out in the next four years.

“Any breakthrough in this research would provide unprecedented tools for the CCP to forcibly establish a new world order, which has been [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s lifelong goal,” the report said.

Militarily, brain warfare can be used in what the Pentagon has called China‘s “anti-access, area-denial” military strategy for the Indo-Pacific.

“Imagine (at least partially) immunized PLA troops being inserted into a geography where a specific weaponized bacterial strain has been released prior to their entry to prepare the ground and eliminate points of resistance,” the report states. “Any remaining sources of resistance on the ground are then dealt with through [Chinese] neurostrike weaponry that instill intense fear and/or other forms of cognitive incoherence resulting in inaction.”

That scenario would allow the PLA to establish absolute control over a nation like Taiwan, while at the same time blunting any American strategic options to intervene and send troops in to support Taiwan. The PLA could thus negate U.S. conventional military superiority with few near-term remedies for the United States, the report said.

FULL STORY

[4eternal-life]

Liu Kuo Sung (Chinese/ Taiwanese, born 1932) has been dubbed the 'Father of Contemporary Ink Painting' for his contributions to the modernisation of Chinese traditional ink painting.

There have been a few moments in Liu Kuo-sung's life when his artistic direction took a decisive turn. Among them was his arrival at the fine arts department at National Taiwan Normal University, following his studentship at the Nanjing National Revolutionary Army Orphan School, which relocated to Taiwan in 1949.

Studying Chinese painting under Pu Hsin-Yu and Huang Junbi and Western painting under Liao Chi-Chun, who encouraged Liu's artistic tenacity, and Chu Teh-Chun, who was renowned for merging Eastern and Western techniques, Liu soon established himself as a rebel with a cause.

In his second year, he abandoned Chinese painting, believing Western painting—and Abstract Expressionism, in particular—to be more representative of life than the rote forms of repetition he encountered in his ink-and-brush training.

In 1956, the year he graduated, Liu co-founded the Fifth Moon Group to create a space for modernism that was untethered to the traditionalist demands of state-sponsored nationalism in Taiwan, and engaged with artistic developments in the Western world.

As Liu began exploring the synergies between East and West, concluding that artists strove for freedom no matter where they came from, he realised that he need only look to Chinese art history to seek out the radicalism he admired in the Western avantgarde.

He learned that some of Abstract Expressionism's leading figures—Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Antoni Tapies, and Cy Twombly—had been deeply influenced by the calligraphic lines of ink art, with Mark Tobey in particular studying Chinese calligraphy in the 1930s.

https://ocula.com/magazine/features/liu-kuo-sung-a-modern-master/

Liu Guosong moved to Taiwan from mainland China in 1949. In 1956, Liu graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the National Taiwan Normal University, in which he studied both traditional brush-and-ink and western-style painting techniques. As one of the co-founders of the Taiwan’s Wuyue Huahui 五月畫會 (Fifth Moon Group) in 1957, Liu Kuo-sung sought a new approach to art, which was inspired by both traditional Chinese painting—especially the monumental landscape painting style of the Northern Song period (960–1126) and the xieyi 寫意 style of the Southern Song period (1129–1279)—as well as modern styles and techniques, such as Abstract Expressionism. Before turning to ink painting in 1961, Liu experimented with abstract oil painting. By the mid-1960s, Liu gradually developed his own personal pictorial formulae, in which he combines ink painting with collage and applies ink and color on special paper.

https://www.asiaartcenter.org/asia/portfolio/liu-kuosung/?lang=en

Liu Kuo-Sung (刘国松) — Composition of Distance XX  (ink & colour on paper, 1972)

[tcw-studio]

FANTASTIC, May 2016, Degree Show, BACC, Thailand

In 2016, I graduated from National Kaohsiung Normal University with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Design. I was responsible for curating our degree shows and photography, both on campus (Taiwan) and oversea (BACC, Thailand).

The oversea show was a group exhibition consisting of three different departments (Fine Arts, Visual Design, and Industrial Design) in NKNU and Vision Get Wild Award, an award show held by Taiwanese government.

Exhibition Poster designed by VIS team

[thenotsosecretdiaryofbiyu]

Independent Excursion 2: Service and Bathrooms

For this independent excursion, I once again went to a variety of different places. This time however, my goal was to pick out specific differences in the service provided in Taiwan and the service provided in the United States. I also chose to more specifically focus on bathrooms– the service that is provided for them and how easy (or not easy) they are to find– because I have used the bathroom many, many times and at as many places as possible.

What I also found interesting is that in certain buildings, there were more women’s bathrooms than men’s. Specifically, if I remember correctly, there was a noticeably higher number of women’s bathrooms at the National University of Tainan than men’s (I remember because one of my male classmates made a comment on it, and it got everyone talking about equity and the importance of taking different needs into account). I did some research, and according to an article titled “Women and Public Facilities in Taiwan: Revising Policies on Public Spaces” [link], there was legislation in 1996 to raise the required amount of toilets to 1 toilet for every 15 females, a large increase from the previous minimum of 1 toilet for every 35 women. In comparison, the legislation for men is 1 toilet for every 50 males and 1 urinal for every 30 males. However, older buildings do not adhere to this rule because existing buildings are exempt; it is only buildings built after the 1996 legislation that must adhere.

However, there must be a legal exemption somewhere for smaller establishments that allows them to not have a single bathroom at all, because since coming to Tainan, I have had trouble finding bathrooms at many of the Seven Elevens I have visited (although I also came across a few without bathrooms in Taipei and Kaohsiung as well). Smaller stores in general also often do not have bathrooms. Comparing this to the United States, where every gas station no matter how big or small has a bathroom, it was jarring (and more than a little stressful) to discover how hard it can be to come across a bathroom. But in the bathrooms that I could find, I noticed many were nicer and often more accommodating than the ones I usually see in the United States. I found an article detailing Taipei specifically, “Taipei to require basic amenities, safety measures in public restroom draft bill” that describes the legislation Taipei has drafted regarding bathrooms. The legislation actually forces establishments to provide certain things to its users such as toilet paper, a hook and shelf for personal items, labels for the type of toilet provided, etc. I’ve noticed that many bathrooms, even if they’re not in Taipei, seem to have almost every one of the requirements mentioned in the article. If it is not similar legislation that is creating these nicer bathroom environments, it might be an indication of a cultural preference/demand for higher quality bathroom experiences.

The article also discussed the need to encourage women to “use male bathrooms” when the women’s bathroom is fully occupied, which I found interesting. During my time here in Taiwan, I have noticed that the social boundaries separating genders in the bathroom are much less harsh than in the United States. For example, one of the most surprising differences I have noticed is the fact that male service workers are able to come into the women’s bathroom to clean it without warning, even when women are in the room. I witnessed this a few times, but the most recent time was while I was using the bathroom at the hotel we were staying at in Kaohsiung. I was washing my hands, and there was a little girl a sink or two away who was also washing her hands. Then a male service worker comes in, and because of how nonchalant and unbothered he seemed, I didn’t react. Sure enough, the girl next to me also didn’t react (likely because to her this kind of behavior is normal), and the man simply continued to do his job. In the United States however, the story would have ended in an entirely different manner, with screaming and probably a slap.

On a different note, I also have noticed some key differences about my hotel experiences in Taiwan when compared to the experiences I have had in the United States. The main thing was that there were no disposable shampoo, conditioner, or soap bars provided for us in our rooms (at the hotel we stayed at in Tainan, you had to grab a soap bar yourself from a self-serve table, but there was no disposable/travel-size shampoo or conditioners). Instead, every hotel has had large, usually wall-mounted bottles of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, and hand soap in the bathroom of each room. Every hotel was like this, even the not-so-great one we stayed at in Taitung. Other single-use items such as razors, Q-tips, shower caps, etc. were often provided, but the cleaning gels and soaps were not. Turns out, this was not merely a cultural difference, but it was something forced by legislation just recently. An article from Taipei Times titled “EPA to restrict single-use toiletries in hotel rooms” explains the situation in detail. Apparently, starting in 2025 all hotels in Taiwan will be forbidden from providing single-use toiletries (including the razors and other useful things like shower caps) in hotel rooms. Hotel guests should still be able to get them upon request though. This legislation was a move from Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency in their efforts to reduce plastic waste. Hotels have until January 1, 2025 to make all the necessary changes to comply with the new regulations, and it seems to me like most hotels have already made the most important changes already (the shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel). In typical Taiwan fashion, if hotels do not comply, they will be charged a fine.

Overall, key differences between bathrooms and hotel experiences in the United States and Taiwan appear to be largely due to legislative differences. Recent Taiwanese legislation has made it so that hotels will no longer be able to provide disposable toiletries in hotel room bathrooms by 2025. And in general, bathroom experiences seem to be increasingly regulated to prioritize user comfort, as seen with Taipei legislation.

[panicinthestudio]

'You are the big problem of this region': Ukraine, China, US trade barbs, June 2, 2024

Defense leaders from around the world have been in Singapore this weekend for an international security conference. The Shangri-La Dialogue is Asia's foremost defense forum. This year's attendees included representatives from China, the United States, Australia, and Indonesia. The forum focused on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region, including tensions between China and Taiwan. There was also a suprise appearance from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It is only the second time Zelenskyy has travelled to Asia since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Zelenskyy accused China and Russia of trying to disrupt an upcoming peace summit on the war in Ukraine. He said Bejing was pressuring other nations not to attend. Zelenskyy said more than 100 countries and organisations had signed up to the peace summit taking place in Switzerland this month, and urged Asia-Pacific nations to join them. Deutsche Welle

What struck me about the discussion regarding the reestablishing Cold War polarization and spheres of influence is that it's just accepted that we are already in proxy wars, and the UN is unwilling to actively achieve resolution alongside a Security Council paralyzed by veto power.

Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel's egregiously disproportionate attacks on Gaza and Palestinians are reflected in the rising tensions of Russia funneling its political and economic resources outside the West, North Korea just stirring the pot as enabled by China and Russia, and China being its own universe of institutional and systematic subversion whether on Taiwan or territorial revisionism, nationalism, or its foreign policy that amounts to dogmatic gaslighting of other nations. The States and the West are certainly complicit in Israel's belligerence against Palestine, and our larger part in maintaining a status quo that is profitable and comfortable for ourselves.

This dialogue in Singapore is meant to be a forum to discuss defense in the Asia-Pacific region. As the commentators pointed out, there's quite a bit of history of skepticism towards the colonialism and interests of the major powers, especially in the current instances of conflict in Ukraine and Palestine pointing out a double standard of attention and support. If Russia and/or China indicate no intention to go to the Switzerland summit in good faith, it's a clear sign as any of their stance of continuing to let things burn.

In a parallel, Taiwan as a key part in the PRC's broader stance about national sovereignty and security in the Asia Pacific, is simply not able to participate or represent itself at all on its own terms or directly have normal diplomatic relationships with most countries which is a double standard in itself.

[rhk111sblog]

Here are Excerpts from another Article that the Chinese News Organization “Global Times” made recently about the Philippines, the United States (US) and Taiwan:

“The establishment of a Coast Guard Station so close to the Taiwan Island is clearly a move by the Philippines to cooperate with the US in monitoring the Taiwan Straits and to threaten the Chinese Mainland. The US uses the Philippines to monitor and provoke China. The establishment of the Coast Guard Station can be seen as a Substantive Step, Chen Hong, executive director of the Asia Pacific Studies Center at East China Normal University, told the Global Times. It is a preparation for creating tension in the Taiwan Straits, Chen added.”

“The South China Sea and the Taiwan question are Affairs related to China's National Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity, which are Red Lines that cannot be crossed by any Country. The Philippines holds Fantasies of attempting to pressure China by interfering when it comes to the Taiwan question, forcing China to retreat or make Concessions on Matters related to Territorial Security. The Philippines still does not realize China's Firm Stance on Red-Line Questions and continues to hold onto its Naive Decisions. The Actions taken by the Philippines will only lead to a Crisis in the Luzon Strait."

“The US, which appears to protect the Philippines behind the Scenes, only sees the Manila as a Tool to confront China in the South China Sea, pretending to be an all-powerful Mastermind, manipulating the Philippines to provoke China and disrupt the Region, said Ding Duo, a Deputy Director from the Institute of Maritime Law and Policy at the China Institute for South China Sea Studies.”

Here is the Link to the Article at the GT Website: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202405/1313002.shtml

[linguistlist-blog]

Summer Schools: 2024 Linguistic Summer Institute of Taiwan / Taiwan

Organized by the Linguistic Society of Taiwan and the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal University, the event is sponsored by the Yushan Fellow Program, funded by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. The instructors include (in alphabetic order): Henry Y. Chang (Academia Sinica) Victoria Chen (Victoria University of Wellington) One-Soon Her (Tunghai University) I-Ta Chris Hsieh (National Tsing Hua University) C.-T. James Huang (Harvard University) Dalina Kallulli (University of Vien http://dlvr.it/T5vWXd

[spacenutspod]

For decades, astronomers have been puzzled by the detection of random, mysterious radio bursts that seemingly originate from deep space. Recently, a team announced the detection of another one of these puzzling radio bursts, which was observed by two NASA X-ray telescopes — the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) telescopes, which both operate from low-Earth orbit. The radio burst observed by NICER and NuSTAR is called a “fast radio burst” and was detected by both telescopes just minutes before and minutes after the event occurred. The detection of the burst by both telescopes at the same time has provided scientists with unprecedented amounts of data, allowing them to zoom into the radio burst and gain a better understanding of the extreme nature of the phenomenon. Even though these radio bursts are thought to occur in deep space, these events release extremely high amounts of energy, with fast radio bursts specifically releasing as much energy as the Sun does in an entire year in the span of just a fraction of a second. However, the quick nature of the bursts makes their origin very difficult to pinpoint for scientists. Throughout the last few decades, all detected bursts were traced to some location outside of the Milky Way, meaning that whatever created the bursts was too far away for astronomers to decipher. However, a fast radio burst that occurred on April 28, 2020, was found to have occurred within the Milky Way. Astronomers eventually traced the burst’s origin to an extraordinarily dense object called a magnetar, which is a type of neutron star. Neutron stars are the left-over remnants of exploded stars and represent the collapsed core of the exploded star. Following the 2020 burst, scientists were able to learn more about the nature of radio bursts and magnetars, which allowed them to further characterize radio bursts that originated from outside the Milky Way. See AlsoAstronomy SectionSpace Science SectionNSF StoreClick here to Join L2 Interestingly, in October 2022, the same magnetar — named SGR 1935+2154 — emitted another fast radio burst. At the moment of the burst, NASA’s NICER and NuSTAR happened to be observing SGR 1935+2154 at the same time, with both telescopes having already observed the magnetar for several hours. Following the detection of the burst, the telescopes continued to collect data on SGR 1935+2154 in order to catch a glimpse of what happens within and around a magnetar when a radio burst is emitted, as well as what happens just before and just after a burst has been emitted. The 2022 SGR 1935+2154 burst occurred between two periods of time wherein the magnetar’s rotational rate began to rapidly increase. Magnetars are small cosmic objects that rotate extremely fast, with SGR 1935+2154 measuring just 20 kilometers in diameter and rotating approximately 3.2 times per second — meaning that the surface of SGR 1935+2154 rotates at approximately 11,000 kilometers per hour. To slow or speed up such a rapidly rotating object would require an immense amount of energy — but SGR 1935+2154 didn’t act this way. The team of researchers analyzing the data from the event noted that the magnetar slowed down between the two periods of increased rotation (called “glitches”), decreasing its rotational speed in just nine hours. This observation surprised the scientists, as the sudden decrease in rotational speed occurred around 100 times faster than has ever been recorded. “Typically, when glitches happen, it takes the magnetar weeks or months to get back to its normal speed. So clearly, things are happening with these objects on much shorter time scales than we previously thought, and that might be related to how fast radio bursts are generated,” said lead author and astrophysicist Chin-Ping Hu of the National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan. Artist’s concept of a radio burst erupting from a magnetar. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)) While the glitches may explain the production of radio bursts from magnetars, understanding exactly how magnetars produce radio bursts is difficult, and scientists have to consider tens or hundreds of different variables to confirm a hypothesis. One such variable is gravity. Neutron stars and magnetars are among the most dense cosmic objects known to exist in the universe, with a teaspoon of their surface material massing about a billion tons on Earth. Given that the gravitational force of a cosmic object is directly related to that object’s density, the gravitational field of a neutron star and magnetar is extraordinarily strong. For example, a marshmallow falling onto the surface of a neutron star would create the same force as an atomic bomb upon impact with the surface. This extreme gravitational force means that the surface of a magnetar is very volatile, as it regularly releases large bursts of X-rays and other forms of high-energy light. The NICER and NuSTAR data from the 2022 SGR 1935+2154 burst showed that there was an increase in the amount of X-ray and high-energy light eruptions from the magnetar in the time leading up to the radio burst. This increase in high-energy light around SGR 1935+2154 is actually what led NICER and NuSTAR teams to orient their spacecraft in the direction of the magnetar. Rendering of NuSTAR. (Credit: NASA) “All those X-ray bursts that happened before this glitch would have had, in principle, enough energy to create a fast radio burst, but they didn’t. So it seems like something changed during the slowdown period, creating the right set of conditions,” said co-author and research scientist of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. However, what else could explain the 2022 burst from SGR 1935+2154 and the emissions of high-energy light before the burst? One potential explanation could be that since the exterior of a magnetar is solid, the extreme density of the magnetar would for the interior of the star to become a superfluid. If this is the case, then the exterior and interior of SGR 1935+2154 would live in a delicate balance, wherein the internal superfluid can deliver immense eruptions of energy to the surface of the magnetar — eventually creating fast radio bursts. Hu et al. believe that this is what likely created both of the glitches that occurred before and after the radio burst. If the first of the two glitches, occurring before the eruption of the burst, created a sharp crack in the surface of the magnetar due to the immense forces of its fluctuating rotational rate, then SGR 1935+2154 likely would’ve released material from the interior of the star into space — creating a radio burst. In physics, when a spinning object loses mass, then its rotational rate will slow down. Thus, scientists believe that the eruption of internal material into space — the fast radio burst — may have been what caused the rapid decrease in rotational rate between the two glitches. What’s causing mysterious bursts of radio waves from deep space? Astronomers may be a step closer to an answer after using two X-ray telescopes to zoom in on a dead star’s erratic behavior. Learn how we're breaking down the data. https://t.co/b2E5EWebie — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) February 14, 2024 Nonetheless, the teams have only been able to observe one of these events in real time. As such, Hu et al. still can’t fully determine with confidence which of the aforementioned factors (as well as others like a magnetar’s complex magnetic field) specifically leads to the creation of fast radio bursts. Some of these factors may have absolutely nothing to do with radio bursts and their creation. “We’ve unquestionably observed something important for our understanding of fast radio bursts. But I think we still need a lot more data to complete the mystery,” said researcher George Younes at Goddard and a member of a NICER team that specializes in magnetars. Hu et al.’s results were published on Feb. 14 in the journal Nature. (Credit: Artist’s depiction of a radio burst erupting from a magnetar. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The post NuSTAR and NICER observe same radio burst, provide hints into nature of phenomenon appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.

[xtruss]

Anti-China Institutions Spin ‘Forced Labor’ Lies to Undermine China’s Competitiveness in Renewables

— James Smith | December 04, 2023

Slandering Xinjiang! The New Normal of the Empire of Lies. Illustration: Vitaly Podvitski

Over the weekend, an article in the BBC accused the British Army of using firms linked to "Uygur Forced Labor" in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to invest in over £200 million of solar panels in order to meet its renewable energy targets. The article, citing a report from Sheffield Hallam University's "Helena Kennedy Centre," argued in favor of supply chain diversification by cutting reliance on China, which dominates the global Solar Panel supply chain.

The report didn't substantiate its findings, only using the term "'very high' exposure" in an ambiguous fashion, yet the article repeated its claims as though they're facts. The British government at large has avoided confronting China on solar panels, recognizing that the UK has limited industrial capacity and is under tremendous pressure to meet its net zero targets. On the other hand, such documentation was used readily to ban their import in the United States under a blanket assumption of guilt, which speaks volumes about the true motivations of this research.

The "Uygur forced labor" issue is a ruse, exclusively driven by the US government. It's designed to promote anti-China supply chain diversifications and commercially motivated protectionism, targeting goods which the US deems "strategic." Starting in 2021, the Biden administration U-turned on the Trump administration's neglect of environmentalism and declared that its fundamental policy goal was to dominate the "technologies of the future," which in turn constitutes renewable energy goods - solar panels, electric batteries, cars and similar technologies.

In doing so, a number of "Studies" quickly materialized from US-funded and linked institutions which, lacking direct evidence, accused China of utilizing forced labor from the Uygur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region in order to make solar panels. This has never been proven, yet the allegations were repeated by the mainstream media and quickly led up to several US policy decisions including a ban on Chinese made solar panels, as well as all goods from the Xinjiang region, all of which were meted on a "guilty until proven innocent" premise which asked companies to "prove a negative," all of which were in deliberate bad faith.

Beyond Santa’s Ability! Global Times, December 06, 2023, Illustration: Liu Rui

The Helena Kennedy Centre in the United Kingdom is but one particular example of how such "Research" institutes are used to co-opt and market America's commercial, economic and strategic goals. The head of the center, Baroness Helena Kennedy, is a hardline anti-China figure who is the founder of the Sinophobic "Interparliamentary Alliance on China" (IPAC) organization. IPAC is, by its own public admission, funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and also the Taiwan island authorities. Similarly, the primary researcher in the Helena Kennedy Centre who created this solar panel "Forced Labor" report, Laura Murphy, is an employee of the US Department of Homeland Security.

What becomes visible is a "web" of anti-China institutions which works to create this content, which is then amplified by the media with its claims taken at face value, and whose aim is to undermine China's commercial competitiveness. The real problem is that China is a world leader in solar panel manufacturing and renewable energy goods, and the United States seeks to undermine this for its own economic gain. Thus, to do this, it resorts to bad faith tactics designed at promoting market exclusion that weaponizes the rhetoric of human rights. The real US policy thinking is explicitly reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act which seeks to weaponize tariffs on a wide range of Chinese renewable goods, irrespectively, without any façade of intention.

It becomes even more telling in this respect that minimal resources, media attention or interest are given towards legitimate reports of real human slavery or forced labor practices around the world, especially those committed in countries allied to the United States. Instead, it is used as a ruse to discredit products they disapprove of or seek to sanction. For instance, if it is not feasible to accuse products of being made with "forced labor," it usually instead emerges in the form of baseless accusations of "espionage" or being a "national security threat" such as the attacks on Huawei or Hikvision.

All in all, it is evident that to try and forcibly exclude China from the global solar panel supply chain, who provides 80 percent of the world's total, will be economically, commercially, and thus environmentally devastating. Such bans would forcibly narrow the market, drive up prices and set the world back decades. Given this, the UK is really not in any capacity to actually act on the propaganda which is being laundered, hence the government only says it will keep an eye and audit its suppliers accordingly.

— The author is a Political and Hstorical Relations Analyst.

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