#american globe makers

[devoutjunk]

“There have been real instances of antisemitism on campuses since the protests began; here and there we’ve seen real instances of malevolence and idiocy. But to believe, on the basis of anecdata, that hatred and ignorance have motivated the vast majority of students who’ve set up encampments and other pro-Palestinian protests over the last month ⁠– in their many thousands at well over 100 colleges and universities in all but four states ⁠– is to believe what can only be described as an extraordinary propaganda campaign, one pushed by critics in the press and in office who can’t seem to agree on what the protesters are like. These students, we’ve been told, are both popular and unpopular among their peers. They are both ugly and chic. They are fragile and cold-blooded, pathetically soft and remarkably violent. They hate Jews. They are Jews who hate themselves. They’ve exercised both too little message discipline and too much caution with the press at demonstrations that are both laughably chaotic and suspiciously organized. And whoever they are and whatever’s spurred them into action, the students are, clearly, in need of either a good sock to the mouth or a good lay ⁠– the better to focus their attention away from politics and on their studies, on political matters close to home rather than halfway across the world, or political matters halfway across the world more deserving of their attention, like the plight of the suffering in China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Iran or Azerbaijan.

No one with their eyes on Gaza denies that there are many bad things happening in the world at any given time. None of those who’ve troubled law- and opinion-makers so with their insistence that the Palestinians are people would argue that the Palestinians are the only suffering people on the globe. But they are suffering largely as a consequence of American foreign policy.”

—“US students, once again, have led the way. Now we must all stand up for Palestinians,” by Osita Nwanevu (The Guardian)

[fatehbaz]

By the dawn of a century christened as both the American and the geographic century, and on the eastern side of the Atlantic, European maps and globes overflowed with cartographic data [...]. By this time, European explorers and cartographers actively filled the last [apparently] remaining terrae incognitae with ever more dots, lines, and words [...]. [T]he vanishing of the terra incognita, of the antipodes, Africa, and elsewhere, meant that [...] ever so anxious [...] [European] cartographers now were about “mak[ing] sense of what the new replete mapping of the world means” [in the self-perception of European academics, who saw their own role as having changed from exploration to interpretation] [...]. As imagined by European colonizers and reflected in ambitious cartographic projects such as the “Millionth Map” [...] in 1891, this world was deemed a sufficiently homogeneous entity, to be neatly knit into a global network of inter-imperial exchanges. [...] [F]rom a Western point of view - at least among the white, free populations of various metropoles - [...] the world was assumed ready to be imagined as a market of overlapping spaces where the colonizers could pursue an assortment of projects toward the colonized: to dominate and exploit or to educate and elevate. [...] Europeans [...] established one single imaginary of the world, [...] which, from the perspective of the Western metropole, stood as a meticulously surveyed global environment.

---

On the Western side of the Atlantic, on the other hand, maps and globes heralded, braced, and promoted the expansionist projects of the final years of the century - a century of national coming of age for the United States, during which Americans had struggled to make sense of the nation’s [...] spatially unsettled, globalizing empire. [...] Americans viewed maps and globes [...] as “arbiters of power” [...] viewed as artifacts whose malleability [...] marked the hand-in-glove advancement of the cause of their modern empire [...]. Drawing a direct line between geography and wars of empire, President McKinley, for instance, told an audience of missionaries [...] that, once his prayers to God about the “Filipino question” had been answered, his first presidential order was for “the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker) to put the Philippines on the map of the United States” (Rusling 17). [...]

[T]he popularity of slated globes ["blank" globes on which students were invited to re-draw borders and labels] in American classrooms coincided with the United States, hoping to materialize the “global Monroe Doctrine,” was actively redefining its standing as an imperial power [...]. [S]panning the years between the “classically colonial wars of 1898” and the entry of the United States into World War I [...], Americans’ heightened interest in and engagement with the world at large coincided with a turn-of-the-century crisis of legitimacy among European empires [...]. This meant that American geographers, in and out of schoolrooms, needed to pay special attention both to the rapidly disappearing terra incognita and to those recently-made-cognita regions (such as the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico) [...]. Consequently, by the end of the century, even the most mundane aspects of Americans’ lives were mapped onto a cartographically known, commercially accessible, cognitively smaller world. [...]

---

On the whole, by 1900, excessive data and visual elements covering the surface of world maps and terrestrial globes cast a near total eclipse over them, a cartographic masquerade resulting from spatial omniscience (or the delusion thereof). [...] It is true that, during the final decades of the nineteenth century, data from discoveries and explorations in Africa and elsewhere had resulted in such excess of toponyms, routes, and borderlines that American geographers joined Europeans in celebrating the fact that there was no more need to “place elephants for want of towns” to fill the terra incognita on maps and globes (Swinton iv).

[But] [w]hat is more, [...], American cartographers reacted to the impending total loss of terra incognita in a manner fitting their role as agents of a rising empire: longing to assert their own reading of the world at large [...]. In other words, empires conduct their own surveying and develop their own mapping discourses and cartographic apparatus, regardless of (though heavily informed by and carefully positioned against) the maps they inherit from a former or neighboring empire or they seize from the native populations [...]. As citizens of a late-coming empire, Americans too were eager to draw their own maps of the world, inscribing it in their own “imperial vernacular” [...] and develop their own cartographic narratives of the world while distancing themselves from European cartographic precedents. [...] [Later] agents of the US Empire [...] experiment[ed] [...] with the spatial representation of such a world as a geographical expanse that was both desired and imagined to be blank, mappable, erasable, and pliant. [...]

[The United States] appropriated the terrestrial globe as a spatial palimpsest, invoking varying degrees of known and unknown as they erased, drew, and erased again: once put to proper use, the 1955 catalog of the [D.G.] Company insisted, “this globe becomes a living thing, made so by the interplay of minds, teachers’ and pupils’” [...]. In effect, if we agree with Wright that in late modernity we understand all terra to be an intermittent conglomeration of the cognita and the incognita, then the comparatively younger American colonizers could decide which terra to focus on in isolation, keeping the rest conveniently covered under the blanket of blankness.

---

All text above by: Mashid Mayar. "What on Earth! Slated Globes, School Geography and Imperial Pedagogy". European Journal of American Studies 15-2. Summer 2020. Online since 17 November 2020. doi dot org/10.4000/ejas.15703 [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Italicized text within brackets added by me for clarity and context. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[justforbooks]

Iris Apfel was finally recognised as a great, original fashion stylist in her 80s, when the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum in New York had a sudden gap in its 2005 exhibition schedule. Many curators knew Apfel, who has died aged 102, as a collector stashing away clothes, especially costume jewellery, both couture-high and street-market-low, so the institute asked to borrow some of her thousands of pieces.

When Apfel wore them herself, dozens at a time in ensembles collaged fresh daily, they had zingy pzazz, so she was invited to set up the displays. There was no publicity budget, and her name was modestly known only in the interior decor trade, yet the show, Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection, became a huge success after visitors promoted it online. It toured other American museums, changing exhibits en route because Apfel wanted her stuff back so she could wear it.

Apfel’s grandfather had been a master tailor in Russia; her father, Samuel Barrel, supplied mirrors to smart decorators; her chic mother, Sadye (nee Asofsky), had a fashion shop. They lived out in rural Astoria, in the Queens borough of New York, where Iris was born.

As a child, her treat was a weekly subway trip to Manhattan to explore its shops, her favourites the junk emporia of Greenwich Village. She was short, plain and, until her teen years, plump, but she had style; and the owner of a Brooklyn department store picked her out of a crowd to tell her so. During the Depression all her family could sew, drape, glue, paint and otherwise create the look of a room, or a person, on a budget of cents – the best of educations.

She studied art history at New York University, then qualified to teach and did so briefly in Wisconsin before fleeing back to New York to work on Women’s Wear Daily. Furniture and fabrics were in short supply during and after the second world war, and Iris began to earn by sourcing antiques and textiles; if she could not find it, she could make or fake it cheaply.

In 1948 she married Carl Apfel, and they became a decorating team: he had the head for business and she the eye. Unable to find cloth appropriate to a period decor, Iris adapted a design from an old piece and had it woven in a friend’s family mill; she and Carl then set up Old World Weavers in 1952, commissioning traditional makers around the globe.

Photographs and home-movie footage from the next four decades showed Apfel, adorned with elan, haggling for one-off items in souks, flea markets and bric-a-brac shops. She is the most decorative sight in each shot, her ensembles put together with complex cadenzas atop an underlying, tailored, structure– they are like jazz – not a statement, but a conversation.

Apfel was the last of those 20th-century fashion exotics who presented themselves as installations. Although she wore a priest’s warm tunic to the White House (President Richard Nixon underheated the place), plus armfuls of cheap African bracelets and thigh-high boots, she was not an exhibitionist like the Marchesa Casati, and, with her vaudevillian comic timing, was far funnier than the imperious Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.

Also, she never ever bought full-price: her many rails and under-the-bed suitcases of couture were sale-price samples, chosen for their cut, fabric, skilled craftwork and colour dazzle (“Colour can raise the dead”). She might wear them over thrift shop pyjamas, or under a Peking Opera costume, with hawsers of necklaces atop. Money could not buy personal style, she said, prettiness withered, beauty could corrode the soul. All that really mattered was “attitude, attitude, attitude”.

Old World Weavers discreetly refurbished the White House under nine presidents, as well as grand hotels and private houses, before the Apfels sold the company in 1992. They retired to a quiet life in their apartment on Park Avenue, New York, its decor an extension of Apfel’s outfits (bad garment choices were cut up for cushions), and in a Palm Beach holiday home where the Christmas decoration collection stayed up all year round, along with cuddly toys and museum-class folk art. Clothes shopping, and the improvisation of an outfit, became Apfel’s daily ritual, as cooking might be to a gourmet.

But after the Met show, and a book, Rare Bird of Fashion (2007), Apfel was back in as much full-time employment as she could manage in her 80s and 90s (she had a hip replacement because she fell after stepping on an Oscar de la Renta gown). She was cover girl of Dazed and Confused, among many other publications, window display artist at Bergdorf Goodman, designer and design consultant – superb on eye-glasses; she wore large, owl-like, frames to stylise her aged face into a witty, unchanging, cartoon.

She took seriously her responsibilities to fashion students on her course at the University of Texas, teaching them about imagination, craft and tangible pleasures in a world of images.

Her career lasted – nothing was ever too late: in 2018, Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon, a book of memoir and sound style advice; in 2019, a contract with the model agency IMG; and last year, a beauty campaign for makeup with Ciaté London. The documentarian Albert Maysles trailed her for Iris (2014), filming this “geriatric starlet” – her term – as she dealt drolly with new high-fashion friends, or laughed at an “Iris” Halloween costume (glasses, a ton of bangles).

She watched as a storage loft of her antique treasures was listed in lots for sale, and as white-gloved assistants from museums that had begged a bequest boxed up her garments; she still had, and wore, the shoes from her wedding. All things, she said, were only on loan in this world, even to collectors. The point was to enjoy them to the full before bidding them good-bye.

Carl died in 2015.

🔔 Iris Barrel Apfel, decorator and fashion stylist, born 29 August 1921; died 1 March 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Sociopaths across the globe finding posters of these kidnapped children. Babies, Holocaust survivors and tearing them down. I saw, they were all over the upper east side, the same posters of the 8-year-old girl, the 9-month-old baby, and someone had literally gone to the trouble of printing it out with the word "occupier" under it, if you would believe that.

And let me explain to you exactly why this is happening. These people have woke mind-virus.

In the woke mindset, there's no difference between right versus wrong. They see the world only through the lens of powerful versus powerless, and then they superimpose race onto that.

So, anybody who is a "person of color" has less power and thus is inherently virtuous, no matter what they do, and anybody who they perceive as a "white" person is inherently morally compromised and an oppressor and has no virtue and is evil.

And they code Jews and Israel as "white." And just like all white people, there's no such thing as an innocent white person or an innocent Jew to these woke people.

And so what they do is, when there's evidence of a Jewish victim, what could be more pure and innocent than a 9-month-old baby, they literally have to destroy the evidence because it destroys their mindset, their worldview.

And let me just tell you one more thing. You know, there's a lot of people walking around saying the Jewish people are shaking, the Jewish people are scared. We're not scared. We are livid. And if these sociopaths think we're going to cede this great nation to them, they're in for a big surprise.

--

"Another aspect of the construction of whiteness is the way certain groups have moved into or out of that race. For example, early in our history Irish, Jews, and Italians were considered nonwhite—that is, on a par with African Americans. Over time, they earned the prerogatives and social standing of whites by a process that included joining labor unions, swearing fealty to the Democratic Party, and acquiring wealth, sometimes by illegal or underground means. Whiteness, it turns out, is not only valuable; it is shifting and malleable." -- "Critical Race Theory, An Introduction" (Third Edition), by Delgado and Stefancic

-

The Role of the Moslem Woman: Article Seventeen: The Moslem woman has a role no less important than that of the Moslem man in the battle of liberation. She is the maker of men. Her role in guiding and educating the new generations is great. The enemies have realised the importance of her role. They consider that if they are able to direct and bring her up the way they wish, far from Islam, they would have won the battle. That is why you find them giving these attempts constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated. -- Hamas Covenant 1988

Critical Race Theory and Hamas both echo the same "Jews control the world" conspiracy theories as the far-right.

[anarchistin]

The Hindu Right is a dense network of organizations across the globe that promote Hindutva or Hindu nationalism, a political ideology that advocates for an ethnonationalist Hindu identity and to transform India into a Hindu state governed by majoritarian norms.

Hindutva ideology was first articulated in India in the 1920s, and Hindu Right groups began expanding overseas in the 1940s, coming to the United States in 1970. Collectively, the Hindu Right groups that stretch across dozens of nations in the 21st century are known as the Sangh Parivar (the family of Hindutva organizations).

From within the United States, Hindu Right groups exercise power within the global Hindutva movement and place pressure on American institutions and liberal values. The major interlinked Hindu Right groups in America focus on a variety of areas, especially politics, religion, outreach, and fundraising. Among other things, they attempt to control educational materials, influence policy makers, defend caste privilege, and whitewash Hindutva violence, a critical tool for many who espouse this exclusive political ideology.

The U.S.-based Hindu Right is properly understood within both a transnational context of the global Sangh Parivar and as part of the American landscape, a fertile home for more than fifty years.

Audrey Truschke

[protoslacker]

Metropolitan elites style themselves as grand protectors, even as they enact or enable calamitous violence. They deny the vast harms that their military-industrial behemoth unleashes upon millions, just as they exaggerate their capacity to deliver peace and prosperity: In the US support of Israel’s war in Gaza—a war purported to protect the Jewish people through the extermination or dispossession of their Palestinian neighbors—we see a twisted reflection of Hussein’s own prejudices and murderous delusions.

Lyle Jeremy Rubin in The Nation. The “Cascade of Errors” That Led to America’s War on Terror

Steve Coll’s new book looks at the hubris and delusions of American foreign-policy makers and counterparts in the Middle East that led to a war that still haunts the globe.

The Achilles Trap Written by: Steve CollI

ran-Iraq War Wikipedia

[vomitdodger]

The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.

The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.

But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company's devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.

The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project

👆In a sane world you’d think there would be severe repercussions and outrage across the globe. But since the media itself is owned by the CIA (Operation Mockingbird never ended) this likely won’t even be mentioned anywhere except the blogosphere. And since that article is from 2020…and you likely didn’t know this…you have your answer. And surely it’s way worse now in the police state.

Let’s not forget the NSA is doing it as well. The unconstitutional Patriot Act is still in effect. Article from last year:

And of course there’s this:

While this is likely fake:

This isn’t (from 2015):

Remember a year or so ago when it was revealed the intelligence links to Twitter and Fakebook? Updated tally from August:

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The Prominent & Upstanding Brunette American Actress 👩♥️in  SHOWTIME'S Most Watched Television Show Of 2005 & Broadway Since 1990

Born On August 2nd, 1964

She is an American actress. After making her Broadway debut as Rita in Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss in 1990 (for which she received a Tony Award nomination), Parker came to prominence for film roles in Grand Canyon (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Client (1994), Bullets over Broadway (1994), A Place for Annie (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and The Maker (1997). Among stage and independent film appearances thereafter, Parker received the 2001 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Catherine Llewellyn in David Auburn's Proof, among other accolades. Between 2001 and 2006, she recurred as Amy Gardner in the NBC television series The West Wing, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2002. She received both a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Harper Pitt in the acclaimed HBO television miniseries Angels in America in 2003.

Parker went on to enjoy large success as Nancy Botwin, the lead character in the television series Weeds, which ran from 2005 to 2012 and for which she received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series between 2007 and 2009 and received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2006.

Her later film appearances include roles in The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Red (2010), R.I.P.D. (2013), and Red 2 (2013). Parker returned to Broadway in 2019 to star in The Sound Inside, for which she won her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 2022, she reprised the role of Li'l Bit, which she had originated off-Broadway in 1997, in How I Learned to Drive on Broadway, a performance which earned Parker her fifth Tony nomination. Since 2007, Parker has contributed articles to Esquire magazine and published her memoir, Dear Mr. You, in 2015. In 2017, she starred as Roma Guy on the ABC television miniseries When We Rise.

Please Wish This Radiant & Prominent American Actress In Television,  Movies 🎥 & Broadway. A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

THE 1 & THE ONLY

MS. MARY-LOUISE PARKER👩 ♥

HAPPY BELATED 60TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MS. PARKER👩♥️ & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#MaryLouiseParker #Weeds #Red #Red2 #RIPD #NancyBotwin

[collectivecartomancy]

The Devil: The Expansionist

2023 was a year that saw the expansion of whiteness and attempts to expand whiteness.

We witnessed the fall of affirmative action. An activist court repealed Roe v. Wade. Genocide, war, tyranny, and violence hit every corner in the globe.

Fascism has risen and we should all be real about it. The threat is not somewhere in the far-flung future. It's here.

The Devil is an avatar for capitalism.

It individualizes our pleasures. It makes us beholden to the whims of the wealthy, even to meet our most basic needs.

Tarot's Devil card is an expansionist. To tarot's Devil, too much is never enough. It's a flame that's never completely fed. It always wants more.

The more tarot's Devil desires is never the more for which the people cry out. It's more for shareholders, business people, and bankers. Tarot's Devil's more more more means less for you and me.

There's been a push among tarot readers to neutralize the work of controversial cards. Archetypes like the Devil, Death, and the Tower get painted over and recast in a more hopeful light.

A political reading of tarot asks us to do two things at once.

It asks us to acknowledge the Catholic context in which tarot came to be. It asks us to wrestle with the lens that tarot presents.

It requires us to appreciate the Devil as a celebration of sex, the body, and pleasure at the same time. To do only one and not the other is incomplete.

The Devil is a card traditionally associated with Capricorn. It's connected to the entertainment industry. There's a focus on true artifice, not illusions like The Moon.

What's more artificial than capitalism?

What's more counterintuitive than paying for water, apples, and grapes, as Orlando Brown recently said, to great applause:

What can you say when you watch this video but “hell yeah!” He's right. It's evil to charge people for food, water, shelter, and the other things they need to live.

But capitalism isn’t just evil, it's contrived.

The laws of capitalism would rather lock baby formula behind plate glass than lower the price. It costs society less to feed an infant than make a criminal of a mother—but it costs shareholders more.

The corporate bottom line matters more to the government than its taxpayers. More than clean air, food that's not poison, and potable water.

They remind us of this every day.

Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other sovereign nations put their bodies and lives on the line to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, they were deemed terrorists. But to whom? By whom?

What's terroristic to other human beings about not wanting a pipeline to break all over you and your kin? What's terroristic to the land about wanting to keep it safe and healthy? No, they were deemed terrorists to the dollar, the corporation, and the "American way of life."

In the topsy-turvy world of The Devil, those who protect life at the expense of those who seek to end it are villains.

The Devil isn't an archetype to sanitize. It presents us with tricksy, misleading situations and doublespeak. It's treaties and contracts are bad news. We don't always have the power to refuse.

That's because The Devil speaks to things that take away our power. Things that bind us if we don't bind them.

Whiteness is one of those things.

After the 2016 election, we were told white women voted against their interests. This makes no sense. They simply voted on other interests--namely around whiteness.

The Devil is a contract maker and a contract breaker. So is whiteness.

As we've seen in stark relief for the past year or so, whiteness is a category that expands and contracts depending on the needs of the most white.

When fear rises that white people will be overtaken as the largest ethnic group, more white people can be made. One can go from proximity to whiteness into the real thing overnight.

You can literally go to bed classified as a person of color and wake up white.

The contracts The Devil and whiteness present are never settled. They're are always shifting. No one can be sure where they'll end up.

I rarely talk about it, but I wrote a kids book on contract almost a decade ago. It's called How Greek Immigrants Made America Home.

I learned a lot about how someone can go from non-white in the eyes of America, accepting only 70 immigrants a year to being solidly white.

It means selling other people out. It means leaving your culture behind. It means being used as a weapon against non-white people.

Whether through fighting a war, becoming a cop, or promising to vote republican, a near white can become white. It sounds impossible until it happens.

All that's needed is skin that's not brown, and a willingness to engage in violent anti-Blackness, imperialism, and piety.

In short, if you'll enter a devil's bargain, you can be white, depending on where you come from. This is because whiteness is a negotiation that never stops.

But that's not the end of what writing that book brought up. When I accepted the assignment, I was clear that I was a working writer taking on project not because I was Greek, but because rent was due and I had an interest.

I was clear that I was a Black person in the US due to chattel enslavement.

When it came time to promote and sell the book, my publisher decided to say I was Greek. What the everloving FUCK!?

I was livid and immediately got in touch to rectify the problem. They assured me they'd correct it at once, and they did.

But a few months later, when I checked in on their work, they had changed it back. To sell the book, they needed me to be dressed in digital whiteface.

While it pisses me off, I understand that whiteness reproduces itself through tricks, traps, and lies.

To whiteness and The Devil, the truth is unimportant, as our individual needs. All that matters is expansion, and profit.

Further Thoughts

The Tower Comes to Destroy

Justice: “Do You Want a Revolution?”

Five of Cups, Five of Swords: Two Sides of Shame

The Hierophant: The Gatekeeper

Justice: “White Man’s Paperwork”

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[regnigt]

That ask that you reblogged about that American being confused about Germany having states is making me face palm so hard. I can't even begin to just ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I swear we're not all this stupid. Then again, I grew up with a love for maps and so I'd study them passionately and ask, "Why is the US the only country on the globe with states filled in? What about the other countries? Where are their states? What are they called?" Teacher: "They do have states but the map maker was keeping it simple. Also, this is math class." ;)

Well actually a lot of countries are way more centralized than the US and while they have a number of administrative divisions/provinces/districts/whatever they're called, they don't have the independence of American states. Sweden is one of those countries, we are pretty centralized in our manner of government. However post-WWII Germany is very much NOT one of those countries! It's got "Federal" right in the name of the country and it's fundamental to its constitution that the states have a good amount of independent say towards the center. I have to admit I don't know all that much more about it but I do remember that much from school, it was made a point of repeatedly... I like the way your math teacher explained things! Didn't try to obfuscate anything.

[starmaniamania]

Starmania/Tycoon

I found some old articles about the Tycoon project that I thought you would appreciate, @wildishmazz! There's not really anything comprehensive but I think it shows a little bit of how it went down.

As soon as July 1990, the Daily Mail wrote : "Master song writer Tim Rice is behind a new £1.5m rock opera that will open in London in the spring. He has translated and adapted Starmania - sweeping score by Michel Berger and original lyrics by Luc Plamondon - based on a French show about a Donald Trump-type tycoon who wants his corporation to control the globe."

Back then it said he already had a producer (David Land) and director (Frank Dunlop) lined up, but obviously nothing came of it. Meanwhile Plamondon and Berger had moved on to "La légende de Jimmy."

Then in Nov 1992 a Globe & Mail profile of Plamondon explains that the songs had been shown at a showcase at Andrew Lloyd Webber's estate (I put a long segment under the cut.)

And then in 1994 Plamondon gives a press conference saying he's "close to selling the production rights" to Tycoon (again??)

The whole thing is pretty much a mess, but also it sounds to me like Rice basically single-handedly revised a bunch of the show to be what he thought would be palatable to an English-speaking audience, which meant sanitizing it a lot. (Also apparently he's a Thatcher-admiring pro-Brexit Conservative, which does sort of make sense when you see what kind of changes he made tbh.)

And then when the show didn't actually get made in the UK but came back to Paris as the once-a-week English version, they changed some of the songs again to fit them as-is into the Furey staging.

It's not fully clear of course, but that's what I think after reading about it!

-------------------

Image maker and breaker - Ron Conlogue - The Globe & Mail, Nov 7, 1992

ON the first weekend in September, theatre producers from around the world gathered in a converted church on composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's estate in Sydmonton, England, to hear runthroughs of promising new musicals. One was Webber's own forthcoming show, Sunset Boulevard. The other was a Canadian musical called Tycoon.

Its author, Luc Plamondon, sat nervously in the darkness and contemplated the English-speaking world he hopes to conquer. The denim- clad, 50-year-old Montreal lyricist is already a celebrity throughout the French-speaking world. His musical, Starmania (Tycoon in English) has played four times in Montreal and Paris, including one run in Paris that lasted for three years.

As a parolier, he has written important lyrics for Quebec stars like Diane Dufresne and French ones like Diane Tell. Composers who have set his songs to music include Claude-Michel Schoenberg, who wrote Les Miserables. Singers who have recorded him include Petula Clark and, improbably, actor Gerard Depardieu. And he has yet another musical, Sand et les romantiques, which opened at the Paris Opera last week.

But this resonant Quebec voice fades to silence wherever English is spoken. "The Americans won't listen if it's in French," he says with rare chagrin. "Their ears are stopped up." His words will have to be carried into the anglophone world by others.

These others won't be nobodies. Plamondon's first release in English, The World Is Stone, is sung by Cyndi Lauper and has already reached the top 10 in England. Tycoon has been translated by Tim Rice, the author of Evita and Jesus Christ, Superstar. Twelve of its songs were recently released as an album in England, sung by the likes of Tom Jones, Nina Hagen, Ronnie Spector and Peter Kingsbery. The potential rewards are great, but nonetheless it is a painful thing for a lyricist to entrust his words to others.

[...]

In this remarkable November, with Sand et les romantiques playingat the Paris Opera, La Legende de Jimmy set to open in Montreal, and negotiations continuing toward a possible production of Tycoon in London's West End next year, Plamondon can hardly keep his hands on everything.

Of all these projects, Tycoon seems to excite him the most. It's hard for English-speakers to grasp, but the dominance of English pop music is so total that writers in other languages feel that they are missing the party. Even if their own party includes 60 million French speakers. "If you don't sing in English," says Plamondon disconsolately, "you can only sing in your own country."

Enter Tim Rice.

It was in 1988 that Rice, on the advice of a friend, went to see Starmania, then the hit of Paris. "It's not easy to hear rock lyrics in another language," he recalls over the phone from London, "but I could look around and see what was happening to the audience. They were ecstatic."

Rice's hit shows, written before his rupture with Lloyd Webber, are in the past now. On his own he did Chess, which did not succeed. Suddenly, he found himself looking at "a dynamic show with an amazing number of strong songs."

Plamondon was, to put it mildly, flattered by Rice's proposal to translate the show. He hesitated when told that the title Starmania would sound banal in English, but acceded to the change to Tycoon. And as a lyricist, he understood that Rice could not translate word-for-word into English. Musically, it can't work. "Of course he re-conceived the songs and put his own mark on them," says Plamondon. "I was honoured by that." And he is tickled that the project has at least got Rice and Lloyd Webber having lunch together.

But there is one more problem. English-language pop, for a number of reasons which mostly read "American," is homogenized and timid beside French music. Plamondon, who once wrote a sardonic song called Disneyland, knows it. He has watched his friend Celine Dion agree to sing a monotonous range of songs ("love, love, love, it's all so standardized") as the price of breaking into the American market. By contrast, she recently recorded an album of Plamondon songs whose titanic display of voice and passion eclipses her English albums altogether. "I hope the people who like her in English once in a while will listen to her in French," he says wistfully.

He expresses no such reservations about Tycoon, of course. But listening to the album, I couldn't help but notice that Rice had deleted the bits he didn't think an English-speaking audience would listen to: the sex symbol doesn't talk about men masturbating on her photograph, for example; and the businessman who wants to be an artist seems to have lost his poetic edge.

And Rice is also concerned about the story being set in the future. "Our scene is not very kind to shows set in the future," he says nervously. "We've got to make sure we get it right."

Getting it right, making it work may mean losing what makes Plamondon Plamondon. The song of Monopolis, from Starmania, foreshadows a world where there is no room for different voices:

From New York to Tokyo / Same thing everywhere / We take the same metro / To the same empty square / Single file, right there / Who can think of the sun / When the neon flares / And the radio blares / And we all dance the same / Day is gray, night is blue

But in the end it will not really matter what happens to Plamondon in English. The essence of what he is and does happens in French.

[fatehbaz]

In September 1986, sixty scientists and policy makers convened for the “National Forum on BioDiversity” in Washington, DC. The conference, organized under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academies of Science, included some of the biggest names in the U.S. science and conservation communities [...]. [T]he conference organizers coined the term biodiversity, which quickly became the rallying cry [...]. As the forum was telecast and participants interviewed by news agencies nationwide, it even became a household word. [...] Significantly, Wilson and the other participants cast tropical diversity not only as threatened nature but also as a natural resource. The uncatalogued species of the world, the vast majority of which lay in the tropics, figured as humanity’s most irreplaceable and untapped asset. [...] With biologists’ expertise, the diversity of life could be recognized and valued as “a source of economic wealth,” [...].

The suddenness with which biodiversity landed on the lips of policymakers and “Save the Rainforest” appeared on bumper stickers belies a deeper intellectual and political history. Consciousness of tropical biodiversity exploded onto the scene in the mid-1980s, but it was not a new concept to biologists. U.S. scientists’ engagement with life in the tropics already stretched back a century. During this time, scientists had struggled with questions of the biological differences of the tropics -- especially its richness in species -- and at the same time entangled themselves in U.S. corporate and government efforts to exploit tropical resources. [...] From the era of the Spanish-­American War and the construction of the Panama Canal through the revolutionary 1960s and 1970s, U.S. biologists sought ongoing access to research sites in the tropics. [...] [T]he ideas, attitudes, and institutions forged at field sites in the colonies and neocolonies of the circum-­Caribbean are crucial for understanding the emergence of this new paradigm in biology and conservation at the end of the century. Long before the 1986 BioDiversity Forum extended such ideas to the globe, U.S. biologists had begun both to articulate fundamental biological questions raised by the diversity of tropical life and to argue for its potential as a resource. [...]

---

From the European voyages of exploration of the sixteenth century to the overland expeditions of nineteenth-­century naturalists [...]. [T]he equatorial regions have figured as an earthly paradise or a green hell. This discourse [...] has pictured the tropics as an exotic Other -- [...] a realm of unbounded abundance and riotous growth [...]. Like Orientalist discourses, this exoticized imaginary geography of the equatorial regions has functioned to justify the [...] exploitation of its people and environments. [...] In popular imaginings, the tropics were -- and largely remain -- a region of untapped potential. [...] The geography of ecological research in the tropics continues to reflect colonial legacies [...]. Especially at first, they tended to work within British colonies, such as Jamaica or Guiana [...]. Increasingly, however, U.S. biologists accessed land and funding through the growing avenues of their own country’s economic, political, and military hegemony. In 1898 Spain ceded Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the United States, and the United States annexed Hawaii. Following the U.S.-­backed secession of Panama from Colombia in 1903, the Panama Canal Zone was created [...]. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had thus acquired an “archipelago” of tropical colonies. In the decades that followed, American agribusinesses -- most notoriously the United Fruit Company -- became major tropical landholders, exerting influence on economies, politics, and landscapes well beyond the borders of these outright colonies. U.S. biologists could make inroads into tropical environments through these neocolonies [...].

---

In fact, this emphasis [on “basic” fields like ecology, rather than agricultural science] is intended to better illuminate the historical evolution of connections between basic biology and efforts to colonize and develop natural resources in the circum-Caribbean. The links between U.S. science and colonial and neocolonial ventures are certainly more obvious in the realm of tropical medicine and agriculture. The large numbers of entomologists, engineers, and medical doctors who worked to control disease-­bearing mosquitoes in Cuba and the Panama Canal Zone provided the foundations of U.S. territorial control, as well as humanitarian justifications for invasion. Scientific agriculture, chemistry, economic botany, and entomology also played key roles in enabling vast banana, sugar, and rubber monocultures, mitigating the effects of pests and disease that threatened the profits of corporations throughout the region. Such examples of science, medicine, and agriculture working in the service of empire are relatively well known [...].

Nevertheless, the rise of a self-­identified community of “pure” or “basic” tropical biologists was also deeply embedded in the expanding networks of U.S. corporate and government influence in the circum-­Caribbean.

Studies of butterfly mimicry, monkey behavior, or orchid taxonomy may seem rather esoteric, but they, too, depended on access to land, transportation, and patronage. Through much of the twentieth century, these came largely through government agencies and corporations -- organizations with strong interests in controlling lands and resources in the region. Proponents of basic research on the natural history and ecology of tropical species often struggled to gain support, but gradually they found a variety of ways to make the case for the relevance of basic tropical biology to regional colonial interests. [...]

[S]ignificant among these strategies was the development of the diversity-as-resource argument, which would become a key component of biodiversity discourse at the end of the century. [...]

---

The 1960s and 1970s saw a wave of highly influential publications on problems of [...] species diversity, which drew heavily on data from key tropical field sites. Yet, at this same moment U.S. scientists’ future in the tropics was thrown into question. Revolution swept Cuba and protests erupted in Panama against the U.S. occupation of the Canal Zone. U.S. tropical biologists [...] responded by realigning themselves, creating professional organizations, and taking new steps toward international collaboration. [...] Today, the institutions that are the most [...] heavily used by U.S. biologists [...] are located in independent republics: the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) in Costa Rica and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) [...] in Panama. Key players in the move to bring “biodiversity” to the public stage in the 1980s were tropical biologists who had deep connections to OTS and STRI during the previous two decades of transition. The emergence of the modern biodiversity discourse [...] is a direct product of the intellectual and political ferment of tropical biology during that revolutionary period. The significance of that moment, in turn, can be understood only in the context of the full twentieth century and its mixed legacies for tropical biology [...] and a long-­standing dependence on institutions supported by U.S. corporations and government agencies. Through the twentieth century, tropical biologists developed ways to cast problems of deforestation [...] and species loss as justifications for the support of basic research on tropical species and [...] the ecological relationships that sustain them. With the emergence of biodiversity, the problems of the tropics became the problems of the world.

---

All text above by: Megan Raby. “Introduction: From Tropicality to Biodiversity.” In: American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science. 2017. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[rabbitcruiser]

Ice Cream For Breakfast Day 

Eating ice cream for breakfast is basically every little kid’s dream! Well, that and being able to have pizza for dinner every single night. But even for those who are no longer 8 years old, it is worth admitting that there’s certainly something fun and enticing about the idea of having a big ol’ bowl of ice cream first thing in the morning.

Since it takes three gallons of milk to make one gallon of ice cream, perhaps it’s simply like getting the kids to eat a bunch of milk in the morning (with a bit of sugar and other flavors as well)! So why not celebrate Ice Cream for Breakfast Day this year?

History of Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

Ice Cream for Breakfast Day was created in the 1960s by housewife Florence Rappaport from New York. The exact year of the day’s creation is unknown, but it is suspected that it could have been 1966, as an enormous blizzard had hit that year in the New York area–and this delightful little story hinges around cold and snowy weather.

The idea behind the day was simply that Florence’s 6 children were exceptionally bored one cold and snowy February morning. As a mom and social worker, she felt she needed to come up with something to entertain them so they wouldn’t get restless and cranky. As she herself explained years later, “It was cold and snowy and the kids were complaining that it was too cold to do anything. So I just said, ‘Let’s have ice cream for breakfast.’”

The following year, Florence’s six children, who had obviously enjoyed the new little holiday their mother had created, reminded her of it. So they celebrated again, and the day became a tradition in their family from then onward.

The day really caught on, too, as time went on. Thanks to Florence’s grandchildren, who have traveled extensively, the idea has been shared with others and the news has spread around the globe. Over the past 60 years, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day has grown to be celebrated in countries all over the world, from Germany to Nepal to as far as Namibia.

These worldwide celebrations range from small, family-style gatherings to large parties. Some of the celebrations have even been featured in the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan magazine and local magazines or newspapers as well. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has done at least two pieces on Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, once in Hebrew, and once in English. And the day continues to be a popular one among English speakers in Jerusalem.

Ice Cream For Breakfast Day Timeline

500BC First ice cream-like food is eaten

Some sources trace the origins of ice cream back to Ancient Persia in the area that is known in modern times as Iran. This is probably more like a flavored ice where juice is poured over snow.

1649 Man is beheaded over ice cream recipe

The chef of Charles I of England makes an oath to never reveal the secret recipe for ice cream. Later, when King Charles finds out that his chef shared the recipe for ice cream with the public, he swiftly has the chef beheaded.

1843 Hand crank ice cream maker is patented

Nancy Johnson, an American from New York, invents and patents a much less labor intensive way to make ice cream using a hand crank and portable freezer that would keep the concoction cold for about 30 minutes.

1960s First Ice Cream for Breakfast Day is celebrated

Florence Rappaport from New York is stuck at home with her 6 children on a cold and snowy day. With a group of cranky children, it seems like something exciting should be in order to keep the kids happy. So Florence simply declares that it should be a day to have ice cream for breakfast!

2020 Huge Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day celebration in Israel

The people of Jerusalem have a particular fondness for this celebration and it is garnering support and attention over recent years. In 2020, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reports an expected celebration of more than 100,000 participants.

How to Celebrate Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

The celebration of Ice Cream for Breakfast Day has some pretty obvious instructions right in the title–simply enjoy ice cream for the morning meal! However, those who are looking for some other, more creative ideas, try out some of these for inspiration:

Enjoy Ice Cream for Breakfast with the Family

Seeing as how Ice Cream for Breakfast Day is the perfect day to not only enjoy a breakfast of cold sweetness but also to spend time with your family, what could possibly create a better atmosphere than the whole family sitting around the table together, talking, joking around and having a tasty bowl of ice cream?

Make Ice Cream Sundaes for Breakfast

To make the morning even more fun, why not make some special ice cream sundaes? Buy some Neapolitan ice cream, some real whipped cream, maraschino cherries and chocolate sauce, and arrange everything decoratively in some nice bowls. It might even be nice to buy some decorative wafers to make the sundaes even prettier.

Try an Ice Cream Alternative for Breakfast

However, for those who feel ice cream is a bit too high in fat or sugar for their family, don’t worry! There are plenty of alternatives, such as frozen yogurt, that many people enjoy making themselves and garnishing with fresh fruit.

This option will provide a family with the protein little bodies need to grow, as well as the kind of “good bacteria” the human bodies need in order for the digestive system to function properly. These bacteria are so good for the body, in fact, that they are often called “probiotics”, a word that literally means “for life”.

Try Making Ice Cream at Home

Of course, if ice cream is going to be used to eat for breakfast, then this project will need to be accomplished a day or two in advance! It’s a fun project for the family to make ice cream, and the results can be absolutely delicious. Plus, it might be a bit healthier too, since the list of ingredients is simple and includes no preservatives or artificial ingredients.

Ice cream recipes can vary wildly, but some of the best are super simple. Usually the list of ingredients will include heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, salt and a choice of flavoring. This is a fun time to get creative with flavors, whether sweet or savory, fruity or filled with chocolate.

Learn Fun Facts About Ice Cream

While enjoying the delicious flavors of Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, try out these ideas for trivia and facts that can help inspire interesting conversation:

The world record for the largest ice cream cone ever made was achieved in 2015 in Norway with a cone over three meters high. While it usually takes a whole 50 licks to get through one normal scoop of ice cream, this one would obviously require a much greater effort!

Ice cream headaches or “brain freezes” are the result of the nerve endings in the roof of your mouth sending a message to your brain regarding the very quick loss of heat!

In the UK, an individual on an average consumes 7 liters of ice cream in one year. However, Finland is ahead of the UK where a person consumes 14 liters of ice cream every year on average. But the country with the highest per capita consumption of ice cream is New Zealand with a whopping 28 liters per person per year.

According to NASA, ice cream is one of the three foods astronauts miss the most when they go on space missions. This is, of course, no surprise as it’s certainly one of the best foods on earth. The other two foods most missed by astronauts are pizza and soda.

Test Out Unique Flavors of Ice Cream for Breakfast

Perhaps some folks might feel that the idea of ice cream for breakfast seems a bit boring because eating yummy ice cream is something they tend to do each and every day! In this case, there are still opportunities to make the day just a bit more special by trying out some unique and interesting flavors of this delightful and delicious treat.

Skip over the regular chocolate or vanilla and check out some of the more unusual flavors that are out there, including avocado, garlic, azuki bean, jalapeno, and pumpkin. Or, for those who still want to channel that breakfast feeling, why not try out a variety of cereals as toppings for a bowl of ice cream and see how they taste? Try out Froot Loops, Cocoa Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms or some other favorite version.

Whatever way is decided upon to celebrate Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, don’t forget to spend this morning just enjoying the little things in life and appreciating the occasional day to do things a little differently.

But isn’t this the wrong date!?

There are actually two holidays that are very similar in name but they were founded for very different reasons. Today is not to be confused with Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day which takes place on the 18th of February in honor of the bright soul that was Malia Grace who passed away fighting cancer. That day was set up to honor all the children who have or are battling childhood cancer.

Ice Cream For Breakfast Day FAQs

Who invented Ice Cream for Breakfast Day?

Florence Rappaport was a mom and social worker from New York. In an effort to entertain her six children on a cold day in February, she announced that it should be “Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast” day.

Is ice cream good for breakfast?

While it does tend to have high sugar content, ice cream may still be good for breakfast. One study shows that the cold temperatures may help to have an awakening effect on the brain.

Does ice cream have calcium?

Depending on the brand eaten and the ingredients it is made from, ice cream usually contains some calcium naturally and may also be fortified with additional calcium. But if it is home made directly from milk, it is likely to have more

Where was the largest Ice Cream for Breakfast Day Celebration?

While it hasn’t been officially recorded, the biggest Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day celebration so far took place in Jerusalem in 2020 where it was reported that more than 100,000 people would participate.

When is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day?

This day that was formed as a holiday back in 1966 is celebrated on the first Saturday of February. A similar day, called “National Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day” was started in 2013 and is celebrated on February 18.

Source

[researchrealmblog]

North America Is Dominating Geothermal Power Market 

The value of the geothermal power market stood at USD 7,232.4 million in 2023, and this number is projected to reach USD 10,452.8 million by 2030, advancing at a CAGR of 5.6% during the projection period. This growth of the market can be credited to the strong backing from the government for geothermal power projects, and also the rising focus of countries on power security and power independence.

The generation of geothermal energy is progressively growing throughout the globe credited to the rising requirement for renewable power. Governments are launching green initiatives to control the release of greenhouse gases. Creating power with few or zero releases of GHG will significantly decrease air pollution and reduce the dependence on power produced using fossil fuels.

As geothermal power stays unused to a great level, there is a huge potential for the development of this sector. According to the World Bank, the earth grips a geothermic power potential of more than 80 GW, of which a mere 13 GW has been used so far. The increasing need for decreasing the releases of GHG will serve as a major opportunity for the geothermal power market development. Numerous countries have also framed rules to decrease their reliance on petroleum, which costs a fortune to import.

On the basis of technology, the binary cycle category, is a major contributor to the geothermal power sector, as this tech provides advanced performance and is less costly than others. At a binary-cycle plant, hot water kept inside the earth’s crust is sent to a heat exchanger, in which isobutene is heated. As isobutane has a lesser boiling point than water, it evaporates into steam, which is then utilized to propel the turbine-cum-generator.

The largest contributor to the geothermal energy sector will continue to be the industrial sector, based on the end user, throughout the decade. In particular, the growing use of geothermal energy for dairy pasteurization, food dehydration, and gold mining makes this possible. Furthermore, geothermal power is used by various industries like pulp & paper, wood products, and cement. Since industries are a substantial contributor to air contamination, they are now instructed to decrease their releases, which is pushing up their usage of clean electricity.

The North American region accounts for a substantial share of the market, primarily due to the rising pace of technical improvements to advance the productivity of geothermal energy making. Furthermore, industries are planning a capacity expansion of the existing energy plants. Furthermore, according to the EIA, the U.S. is the largest maker of geothermal power in the world, with a production of 17,002,000 MWh in 2022.

Source: P&S Intelligence

[chingleung]

3D printing environmentally friendly degradable materials Many people think that only large companies or high-tech enterprises can use 3D printing. In fact, it is not. 3D printing technology has long been integrated into our daily lives, and can even subvert the previous working methods to some extent. Dennis Quaid is keenly aware of this. The famous American actor is known for his outstanding performances in the movies "The Parent Trap", "The Rookie" and "A Dog's Purpose", and is also famous for starring in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award and won many film festival awards. In recent years, he has set his sights on the field of technology, and the TV show "Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid" he hosted has become an excellent platform for discussing technology and innovation. This time he will focus on 3D printing, and by telling about Chingleung's subversive application capabilities in many fields, he will reveal the quiet transformation of 3D printing "from digital technology to physical application".

The program was broadcast on public television stations almost all over the United States, and CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg also went online simultaneously. For a time, Chingleung became the latest Superstar in the United States.

We perceive the world with our eyes, but for the blind and visually impaired, touch is the first step for them to understand the world.

Chingleung cooperated with a school for the blind and visually impaired in the United States, donated materials and equipment such as and to help the school make classroom teaching aids so that students can touch and feel the world in person.

Imagination is not limited by visual impairment, and it is even more out of the world. The school encourages students to be imaginative and decided to change this place used to make auxiliary teaching tools into a "student maker space" - let them participate in CAD model design and 3D printing process, and even master post-processing techniques.

The most gratifying thing is that their thinking has also changed unconsciously: from the cautiousness of "I dare not touch" to the determination of "I can let the printer complete my creation". This change in thinking has cultivated students' hands-on ability, strengthened their self-confidence and stimulated their creativity. I believe that in the future, these students will also use the new way of thinking they have shaped in 3D printing to educate the next generation, making education more creative and humane.

According to this plan, the lampshades in the hands of customers are collected, and Chingleung is responsible for reprocessing these lampshades into filaments suitable for 3D printing, and then using these filaments to design and print new lampshades. The chain is perfectly closed. Let the materials be continuously remade and reused in the cycle, which can only be achieved by 3D printing. In this process, 3D printing is no longer a simple supporting technology. Chingleung has become the core promoter of this circular economy project with its excellent material research and development capabilities. By converting degradable lampshades into high-quality 3D printing filaments, Chingleung has achieved efficient reuse of materials and provided new ideas and solutions for traditional manufacturing.

In the fields of education and manufacturing, Chingleung is promoting a profound change through 3D printing technology. From helping blind and visually impaired students to understand the world again, to using environmentally friendly biodegradable materials to achieve a closed loop of circular economy, Chingleung has not only achieved a breakthrough in technology, but also led a new trend in thinking. As 3D printing technology continues to mature and become more popular, Chingleung is constantly challenging traditional boundaries and pushing society towards a more environmentally friendly and sustainable direction. Let us look forward to the fact that as this change deepens, more industries and fields will benefit from the innovative trend of 3D printing, opening a new chapter full of infinite possibilities.