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lathal · 2 years

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10. does your muse get sick often? what’s their go-to remedies?

11. is your muse quick thinking? are they able to focus when stressed?

12. what is your muse’s most helpful coping skill, healthy or unhealthy?

13. what is the strangest / least comfortable place your muse has slept?

14. where does your muse’s strength lie? physical strength? mental? emotional?

15. if your muse had the option, would they prefer to go to space or explore the ocean?

16. how skilled is your muse in the kitchen? what is the most complicated dish they know how to make?

actually you know what? Answer all the questions. I dare you

Random Headcanon Questions

1. Does your muse enjoy watching the stars?

Already answered here!

2. Does your muse have any long term life plans?

Vaguely. She always intended to dissolve the Inquisition when its work was done. At that time, she intended to return home to her clan. Once she did, she was going to talk to her keeper about having a marriage arranged with someone from a different clan. Hers is very small and the only other young, single person is her ex. She wants to get married and have a family, and she's fine with it if the only way to do that is an arranged marriage. Once married, she'd want her family to be large: between 4 and 8 children, ideally, but she'd be happy with up to 12 children and she'd compromise down to 3 for the right person.

Solas intending to tear down the veil does throw a wrench in her plan, however, and it was always subject to change if she happened to fall in love with someone.

3. How does your muse manage strong emotions?

Already answered here!

4. How many blankets does your muse sleep with?

Probably only one and a sheet when she's at Skyhold. From my understanding, textiles were very expensive to produce in our world prior to the industrial revolution, and I'd imagine that Thedas would be similar. Iveani would feel bad spending a fortune on her bedding when she knows that there are people out there suffering because they don't have enough money. Don't get me wrong, she certainly has areas where she allows herself to splurge, either for practicality or as a treat for herself, and whatever she does have is probably very high quality, but she wouldn't be using a million blankets. She uses a normal bed roll when traveling.

5. Has your muse ever experienced sleep paralysis?

No. Lots of nightmares and a rare night terror, but no sleep paralysis.

6. What style of music does your muse like the most?

Anything that reminds her of her clan. In her modern verse, she likes pop, both modern and some older stuff. I think she'd like Abba.

7. What's the furthest from home your muse has traveled?

The Forbidden Oasis.

8. Does your muse have any unusual fears? What are they?

Lizards. Not dragons, only the little one.

9. Is your muse/would your muse be active on social media?

Yes! Quick tip for Corypheus: invent TikTok (and everything required to get to that point). She will never get off of it.

10. Does your muse get sick often? What are their go-to remedies?

She has a pretty average immune system. She usually gets the flu sometime in the winter, and probably a common cold somewhere in there, too, but it isn't anything particularly unusual in any way. She has some remedies she knows how to make from herbs common in the areas her clan would roam.

11. Is your muse quick thinking? Are they able to focus when stressed?

Yes to both. It's one of the only times she can focus, actually. ADHD brains tend to focus better during times of crisis than others. As an example of her being quick thinking, I have a thread on Discord where she uses a fire extinguisher as a weapon against rage demons in her modern verse while trying to escape the US government.

12. What's your muse's most helpful coping skill, healthy or unhealthy?

Depends on her problem! Usually, it's talking to others about her problems. If it's related to her PTSD, then it's using some kind of strong sensory stimuli (often harmful, tbh) to try to snap herself out of it.

13. What's the strangest/least comfortable place your muse has slept?

Probably that one camp in the Hinterlands that's right next to the dragon. It doesn't seem very safe.

14. Where does your muse's strength lie? Physical strength? Mental? Emotional?

Mental! She's a lot more resilient than she gives herself credit for. Sure, she does have PTSD from her childhood, and she does start experiencing similar symptoms from the attack on Haven, but she can maintain her composure in public, she's confident in what she does and isn't afraid to ask for help when necessary, she's not afraid to take measured risks, and she acts with her greater goals in mind.

15. If your muse had the option, would they prefer to go to space or explore the ocean?

The ocean, unless she knew she'd meet aliens in space. She likes living things. Plus, she also likes history, and there are probably some really cool ship wrecks underwater she'd enjoy exploring.

16. How skilled is your muse in the kitchen? What's the most complicated dish they know how to make?

She isn't, really. She knows a few simple dishes and they're definitely edible, but it isn't one of her strong suits at all and she doesn't really enjoy it at all. She's better at hunting and then preparing the meat to be cooked afterwards. It isn't such a big deal in her clan. They do a lot of stuff communally and don't worry about what belongs to one person versus another nearly as much (aside from things like clothing or sentimental items), so they tend to have a few people who are good at it take turns cooking very large meals that everyone shares. So it's easy for her to just contribute in other ways.

#headcanons;;

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patpatpat · 3 years

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Vocab List

Trauma, subconscious, deconstruction, the shadow, meta physics, quantum physics, consciousness, addiction, apophenia, insecurity, meaning, ego, psychosis, post-truth, paranoia, activism

Belief, death, change, love, compassion, faith, fate, free will, skepticism, fear, connection, future

III

Synchronicity, magic, numerology, the hero, vibrations, energy, auras, myth, spirituality, channelers, psychics, astrology, psychedelics, brain chess, new age, reality co-creation, duality, entities, demons, aliens, prophecy, omens, god, occult, higher dimensions, awakening

nationalism, social media, Qanon, christianity, psy-op, internet, cults, pseudo-science, the bible, cultural programming, freedom of speech, white supremacy, anti semitism, racism, group think, manipulation, capitalism, manifest destiny, messiah complex, us vs. them, pedophilia, Bill Gates, lizard people, anti-vax, the “bad” guy, dehumanization, revolution, conspiracy, shadow government, neo-shamanism, covid

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melonoverlord · 6 years

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You made such a good ask meme! flor

What convenience store food would be their go-to at a 7-11 (Fantasy or otherwise)?

Takis, especially the ones that set your mouth on fire. She is all about that spicy snack food.

Who is their drinking buddy? If they don’t drink, which drunk friend would they watch over?

It has always been Percy, though most of the time she’s the one who’s asking him to drink with her. She also has “wine and whine” nights with Val where they get drunk on wine and complain about things over communicators.

Who would be their go-to character in Clue?

Mrs. Peacock or Miss White. She likes Mrs. Peacock for her fanciness and Miss White because she reminds her of Marigold.

If they ever had to go to college, what major would they pick?

Criminal Justice and Law double major. She wants to be the FBI woman behind your laptop camera.

Do they have a signature color(s)?

Teal and Red. She’s a package deal with her brother.

What would be their favorite vine?

“He doesn’t deserve you. If he doesn’t treat you right by now, I’m gone.”

“I’m gone.”

“Now chop his dick off.”

She sends it a lot to Percy when Castor’s being an asshole.

If they had a social media account, what would it be about?

On tumblr, she has an entire tag for just slamming Castor and the rest of it is either “Shit Val/Percy Says” or selfies of her that get 100k notes. Her instagram is primarily selfies and she joins the creep shot war with Val and Percy.

Who would they invite to be their best man/maid of honor at their wedding?

She’d probably only marry for tax benefits (probably Val if Val never found anyone), but it would never be any question that it would be Percy.

Alternatively, who’s best man/maid of honor would they be?

Percy’s, no doubt about it. Though she’d commit the cardinal sin of weddings in that she’s the best dressed there.

What would be the title of their sex tape/mixtape?

Her mixtape would be “I Probably Already Killed You by Song 3″

If there was no prejudice, what time period/place would they love to visit?

If there was no sexism or racism, Flor would fit right into the 1960s youth culture. All full of spunk and life and ready to dismantle the system. She’d also look fly as fuck in those round sunglasses.

What three words would they use to describe themself?

Closed-off, clever, protective

What three words would their friends/family use to describe them?

Stunning, ass-kicking, witty, fashionable, protective, intelligent, salty, loyal, and “I’d let her step on me and thank her for it”. Icio would look at her style and say “join our club”. Percy would first shrug and say “not that cool” but immediately back peddle and say “The greatest sister”

What nicknames do they have? Any particular stories behind them?

Flor is her nickname from her full name Florina, but Val calls her “The Scary Percy” (despite the fact she met Flor first) or “My wife from another dimension”

Do they consider themself a good person? Why or why not?

No. She knows she’s done shady things in the name of the Wings of Freedom, but there’s a particular event that she knows there was no going back from.

If they were a cryptid, what would they be?

Lizard Person: Extroverted, a partier, and has no hard times making friends.

What is the one thing they wish they could’ve said to a loved one, but never did?

She wishes she could have told her mentor she’s sorry.

What would they tell their ten year old self?

‘Keep Percy out of the revolution. Don’t let him become someone you could potentially lose’

Who would be on their team in an all out prank war? Who would they be against?

Percy, Val, eventually Leda and probably Icio (though she is still a little salty at them because she heard that they insulted their moms on Dryas and doesn’t know that Percy’s their boi now), and for the time being against Castor but after that she’ll just be against whoever’s being a cunt that day.

Can they drive a car? Are they good at it? (If cars don’t exist, would they be able to drive if they existed?)

She drives a convertible on Helios. It’s pink and she rocks that windblown hairstyle.

Tell the story behind their most stupid injury/scar.

She has a small scar on her shoulder after she and Percy were four and playing “Genesians vs Helians” with butterknives and Percy accidentally stabbed her in the shoulder. They were not allowed to play that game anymore.

What word(s) would they freeze up at if someone said it to them?

“Selfish”, “Emotionless bitch” (which she’s been called at 18 and the perpetrator was promptly never seen again by order of Ursula), and “Bianca”

Who is someone that they don’t talk to much, but would probably get along with?

Once she’s done being mad at Castor, they would be best friends. They both love Percy over everyone else and have a similar sense of humor. She’d also be great friends with the other fashionistas of the ship, Icio and Venus.

Have they ever done something they think is unforgivable?

Yes, as a spy she’s had to do several things immoral, but there’s one that stands out above the rest that she can’t shake.

What type of soda would be their favorite?

Sierra Mist. She likes the lemon-lime flavors her brother doesn’t.

What do they want more than anything?

For this war to be over so she can go back to her family without worrying which one of her or Percy will have to tell her moms that the other is dead.

What is their fatal flaw?

Girl’s got that Helian pride in her. She will never forgive, and she will never forget.

What Greek God would they be most like?

Artemis, goddess of the hunt, maidenhood, and the moon. Ace girls for life.

Who do they looks the most up to?

Her mom, Juno. It was her that left everything behind on Helios to escape with her wife Marigold and come to Therion to start a new life.

If they had to pick between their best friend or significant other, who would they pick?

She’s aroace so she doesn’t have a significant other, but if it was between Percy and anyone else, it would be Percy. Even if it was someone like Val, who she loves the second most.

#liminoidal #my characters #genesis campaign #florina wright

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storetshirtonline-blog · 5 years

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The Lizard King Sammy Watkins Rotoworld Shirt

Discourse on feminism The Lizard King Sammy Watkins Rotoworld Shirt . is fundamentally different in China than in Australia and Europe; both share the goal of gender equality. but, in recent years, the Chinese Women’s Rights Movement has faced rigid government repression. In its early days, China’s Communist Party enforced state feminism as part of its ideology, with equal labor fueling the country’s economic resilience—so much so that during the ‘50s and ‘60s, the nation boasted the highest female labor force participation in the world.Market reforms over the last few decades, however, led to a disproportionate number of women losing jobs compared to men, and since 2007, the Chinese government has peddled propaganda encouraging young, educated women to get married, have children, and realign themselves with traditional gender roles. The Lizard King Sammy Watkins Rotoworld Shirt, hoodie, sweater, longsleeve and ladies t-shirt

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liveyviviendo · 7 years

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el primer día

Hello folks! Welcome to my study abroad travel blog, a weekly (or so) update about my shenanigans and learnings from Nicaragua and Cuba. If you speak a little bit of Spanglish, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the title of this blog is probably the worst pseudo-pun I could have made: Livey Living. I hope you won’t hold it against me.

I’m making this blog for my friends and family at home, but also as a souvenir for myself, and a manifesto for those wanting to stretch their comfort zone. Today, on my 22nd birthday, I left the United States for the first time in my life, and will now be spending four months traveling around a country where I am only mildly proficient in the language. For many, this is no feat at all, but even two years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that I could or would ever be writing to you from Managua, Nicaragua. I fully anticipate this semester to be one of challenge and growth and want to document it all.

However, I didn’t get here alone, and, I would like to take this time to thank my wonder-woman mom, my grandparents, the professors at USC Dornsife and Annenberg, my best friends (y’all know who you are), the Warren Bennis Scholars Program, as well as my scholarship benefactors at the Society for Trojan Women, the USC Alumni Club of Seattle, and Philip and Colleen Kirst Scholarship fund. Can confirm it takes a village to get a girl from tiny Spanaway, Washington to Central America, and the amount of gratitude I have for each of you is almost ineffable.

Today I arrived in Managua, and will be staying in Casa San Juan for the next four days with my nine classmates. Casa San Juan is a beautiful little hotel with a couple friendly lizards and my last breaths of air-conditioned air prior to spending the rest of my days here cuddled in 84% humidity. It’s rainy season here, and so far, the three downpours and consistent thunders have put Seattle to shame.

We’ve spent the day hanging out and eating pupusas, taking a travel rest-day before beginning orientation tomorrow. We’ll then meet our host families on Sunday, and start classes Monday. Our program through the School of International Training is called “Media, Youth Culture, and Literacy”, where we will be studying the history of Nicaraguan government and social programs.

Little did I know, my learnings already started today when the lovely program coordinator, Adela, drove me through downtown Managua from Sandino International Airport to Casa San Juan. She dropped a few “surprise history lessons” as she calls them, and with her help (plus a few of my own research finds), here are ten interesting (and judgement-free, so far) things you might like to know about Nicaragua and its capital, Managua.

1. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Americas after Haiti. 2. If you like House of Cards, you might find it pretty interesting to know that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is married to his Vice President Rosario Murillo. There are billboards with their faces all over Managua. I’m not going to lie, the thought of Trump’s face on billboards is overly bizarre. 3. The public transit system in Managua uses buses donated by the United States and Russia. Russia donated metro buses, the U.S. donated old school buses, and some of the school district names have never been removed. 4. Before 1852, the capital of Nicaragua alternated between León and Granada (depending on who held political power), but to end the disagreement, they chose to build a city geographically in the middle of the two cities. 5. Fun fact #4 turned out to be an unfortunate decision, because there are four major fault lines running through Managua (sounds a bit like some other cities my Angelinos might be familiar with?). The city has dealt with several major earthquakes, including the infamous 1972 shake which destroyed a large part of the city. 6. There are almost no street names in Managua; everything is labelled by quadrants, general areas, and direction of travel. The only exception being one of Managua’s main thoroughfares, “avenida Simón Bolívar”, named after El Libertador himself. 7. Nicaragua’s number one export is covfefe…I mean, coffee. 8. Thirty minutes outside of Managua, there is an active caldera volcano known as Masaya. It last erupted in 2008. Bonus fun fact: During the Sandinistan revolution, the dictator Somoza would order his political enemies dropped into Masaya’s open magma. 9. There is a giant yellow picture of Hugo Chávez in the largest roundabout in Managua. Chávez donated it to the Nicaraguan government himself. 10. Throughout Managua, there are 200 árboles de vida, or “Trees of Life”. Inspired by the work of Gustav Klimt, these giant, Seussian, metal trees became a symbol for the current administration after they began building them to replace Christmas trees which had been left standing throughout the 2011 calendar year. Expect a “livey living under the life tree” photo sometime in the near future.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, here’s some pics of Casa San Juan!

With love, Livey

#travel #nicaragua #nicaraguense #photo #managua #studyabroad #hotel

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moonstalker24 · 7 years

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Fic Rec Meme

Rules: List 10 of your favourite fics that you would rec to other people. Each fic has to be from a different fandom. Then tag 10 people.

So, @cywscross tagged me forever ago. I feel bad about it. I’m only just getting back into the groove, so I am very sorry! Here are the fics.

1. By a Thread, By a String, By a Rope by @thrillingest - Magnificent 7, Faraday/Vasquez

“Shut up, Clay,” Faraday muttered. He let his gaze linger on the red mark for a long second, the hard white buzz of shock rattling his thoughts to pieces and sending them spinning.

His stomach twisted as he recognized the peculiar tugging sensation that had been plaguing him all night for what it really was – a magnetic pull toward whatever poor bastard was on the other end of this tie, some mystical accident of biology trying like hell to draw Faraday into the distant promise of a soul-mate.

2. Have You Heard by @peradii - Star Wars: Force Awakens, hints of Finn/Poe/Rey

"I heard FN-2187 was a Stormtrooper."

Finn sparks a revolution.

3. Out of the East, Never See the Sun Rise by @ladypigswagon - Teen Wolf, Steter

In the beginning, there are three absolutes.

One. Stiles is a god, forged of starlight and collapsing galaxies and he is eternal.

Two. Peter is human, fragile bone and viscous blood and he is temporary.

Three. Stiles and Peter are in love; love that claws its way inside one’s heart like fish hooks; all encompassing love that is beautiful but dangerous.

Stiles is a god. Peter is human. They love each other.

Three absolutes.

4. The Long Game by thedevilchicken - Blade, Drake/Hannibal King

"He's thousands of years old, King," Abby said. "If anyone knows about playing the long game, it's him."

Or: The Nightstalkers take Drake captive. Hannibal's not sure he didn't let them do it.

5. Ordinary Life by @astolat and @cesperanza - Stargate Atlantis, McShep

"So, uh," Wharton said, with a little nervous cough. "You're not so much his mathematician as you are his—mathematician."

6. Tony Stark: Appliance Whisperer by Alex51324 - MCU, Tony Stark

After Tony over-reacts to some SHIELD agents breaking a microwave oven, Steve begins to wonder if there's something the team should know.

7. Rock the Cradle by @itsclydebitches - Jupiter Ascending, deaged!fic

"One of the Abrasax gets de-aged as a 4-6 year old or whatever and mentally as well. That person then ends up screaming that 'they want their Mother. NOW!!'

Once they see Jupiter it's all 'Mama/Mother!' and wanting to be with her all the time, wanting cudddles, Mother, play time, Mother, naps and did I mention Mother? Basically baby duckling Abrasax, following her everywhere and being the sweetest thing (in their way) and Jupiter thinking that they are the most adorable person ever.

The De-ageing is only temporary and they remember everything when they 'grow up'."

8. Broad-Shouldered Beasts by @bigbeewolf - Jurassic World, Claire/Owen

Claire Dearing has successfully run Jurassic World for seven years without a major incident.

Trust Owen Grady to fuck that up.

(Or, three months prior to the Indominus Event, Vic Hoskins makes a bad decision, Owen Grady goes missing, and four six-foot, three hundred pound murder lizards escape into Claire's park. She can hear Alan Grant shouting, "I told you so!" from Montana.)

9. #BringHimHome by @hogwartshiddenswimmingpool - The Martian

Mark Watney will need to buy a lot of people beers.

A collection of in-world oneshots cataloging the world's reactions. From the news to social media and from regular people to NASA rover techs.

1: Fox vs. an 80 year old Bill Nye 2: John and Hank Green, Crash Course Mars 3: A NASA rover tech at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station 4: The WatneyWatch app and how to tell your child their hero is going to die in an invisible dust storm on Mars 5: Tattoos, music, and what is likely to amount to the largest simultaneous worldwide traffic jam 6. 78 hours of vlogs are released, the Ares 3 crew returns home, and Mark goes on The Tonight Show

10. Coffee Grounds for Complaint by @molespeep - Spy, Susan/Ford

CIA analyst Susan Cooper just has one goal. Stay caffeinated, keep her agent, Bradley Fine, alive.

She makes the mistake of walking into Ford's "coffee shop".

Honorable Mention to @thedenofcaseywolfe because I couldn’t pick one. I love Casey’s writing so much I’m just reccing all of her works. All of them. Read Them Here.

Tagging: @thedenofcaseywolfe, @moonlightcalls, @bxdcubes, @mysenia, @mysnarkyself, @codenamescream, @rebakitt3n, @feelingsdusk, @wordsformurder and @missaristocrat

#the magnificent seven #force awakens #teen wolf #steter #faraquez #blade #drake/hannibal king #stargate atlantis #mcshep #mcu #tony stark #jupiter ascending #deaged!fic #jurassic world #spy #susan cooper/ford #fic rec meme #cywscross

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untoadoption · 5 years

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Multicultural Children's Book Day, Part 2

New Post has been published on https://untoadoption.org/multicultural-childrens-book-day-part-2/

Multicultural Children's Book Day, Part 2

It’s here, it’s here! Multicultural Children’s Book Day is today!

I was grateful to participate in this movement again this year, as in past years. The mission behind the movement is to reflect a broader spectrum of cultures and heritages within the pages of children’s literature and libraries– something I can get on board with!

I already reviewed one great book for the event this year, but was gifted a second in exchange for my honest review…. Heung Bu and Nol Bu is F. B. Smit’s modernized retelling of a popular Korean folktale.

My son again loved the Asian characters in this book, as well as the Asian characters… that is, the writing. The story was penned in both English and Korean script! It follows two brothers and the choices they make that expose their varying heart conditions.

In addition to a timeless tale of morality that leaves young readers pondering principals of right versus wrong long after they close the spine, the vivid illustrations bring the pages to life with fun details throughout.

We loved this great book!

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2019 (1/25/19) is in its 6th year and was founded by Valarie Budayr from Jump Into A Book and Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom. Our mission is to raise awareness of the ongoing need to include kids’ books that celebrate diversity in homes and school bookshelves while also working diligently to get more of these types of books into the hands of young readers, parents, and educators.

MCBD 2019 is honored to have the following Medallion Sponsors on board

Medallion Level Sponsors

Honorary: Children’s Book Council, The Junior Library Guild, TheConsciousKid.org.

Super Platinum: Make A Way Media

GOLD: Bharat Babies, Candlewick Press, Chickasaw Press, Juan Guerra and The Little Doctor / El doctorcito, KidLitTV, Lerner Publishing Group, Plum Street Press,

SILVER: Capstone Publishing, Carole P. Roman, Author Charlotte Riggle, Huda Essa, The Pack-n-Go Girls,

BRONZE: Charlesbridge Publishing, Judy Dodge Cummings, Author Gwen Jackson, Kitaab World, Language Lizard – Bilingual & Multicultural Resources in 50+ Languages, Lee & Low Books, Miranda Paul and Baptiste Paul, Redfin, Author Gayle H. Swift, T.A. Debonis-Monkey King’s Daughter, TimTimTom Books, Lin Thomas, Sleeping Bear Press/Dow Phumiruk, Vivian Kirkfield,

MCBD 2019 is honored to have the following Author Sponsors on board

Honorary: Julie Flett, Mehrdokht Amini,

Author Janet Balletta, Author Kathleen Burkinshaw, Author Josh Funk, Chitra Soundar, One Globe Kids – Friendship Stories, Sociosights Press and Almost a Minyan, Karen Leggett, Author Eugenia Chu, CultureGroove Books, Phelicia Lang and Me On The Page, L.L. Walters, Author Sarah Stevenson, Author Kimberly Gordon Biddle, Hayley Barrett, Sonia Panigrah, Author Carolyn Wilhelm, Alva Sachs and Dancing Dreidels, Author Susan Bernardo, Milind Makwana and A Day in the Life of a Hindu Kid, Tara Williams, Veronica Appleton, Author Crystal Bowe, Dr. Claudia May, Author/Illustrator Aram Kim, Author Sandra L. Richards, Erin Dealey, Author Sanya Whittaker Gragg, Author Elsa Takaoka, Evelyn Sanchez-Toledo, Anita Badhwar, Author Sylvia Liu, Feyi Fay Adventures, Author Ann Morris, Author Jacqueline Jules, CeCe & Roxy Books, Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace, LEUYEN PHAM, Padma Venkatraman, Patricia Newman and Lightswitch Learning, Shoumi Sen, Valerie Williams-Sanchez and Valorena Publishing, Traci Sorell, Shereen Rahming, Blythe Stanfel, Christina Matula, Julie Rubini, Paula Chase, Erin Twamley, Afsaneh Moradian, Claudia Schwam, Lori DeMonia, Terri Birnbaum/ RealGirls Revolution, Soulful Sydney, Queen Girls Publications, LLC

We’d like to also give a shout-out to MCBD’s impressive CoHost Team who not only hosts the book review link-up on celebration day, but who also works tirelessly to spread the word of this event. View our CoHosts HERE.

Co-Hosts and Global Co-Hosts

A Crafty Arab, Agatha Rodi Books, All Done Monkey, Barefoot Mommy, Biracial Bookworms, Books My Kids Read, Crafty Moms Share, Colours of Us, Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes, Descendant of Poseidon Reads, Educators Spin on it, Growing Book by Book, Here Wee Read, Joy Sun Bear/ Shearin Lee, Jump Into a Book, Imagination Soup, Jenny Ward’s Class, Kid World Citizen, Kristi’s Book Nook, The Logonauts, Mama Smiles, Miss Panda Chinese, Multicultural Kid Blogs, Raising Race Conscious Children, Shoumi Sen, Spanish Playground

TWITTER PARTY Sponsored by Make A Way Media!

MCBD’s super-popular (and crazy-fun) annual Twitter Party will be held 1/25/19 at 9:00pm.E.S.T. TONS of prizes and book bundles will be given away during the party. GO HERE for more details.

We will be giving away Book Bundles every 5 minutes!

Twitter Party Details:

When: Friday, January 25th

Time: 9 pm to 10 pm EST

Where: On Twitter! Follow McChildsBookDay to participate

Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld

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marshallhawkins666 · 6 years

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Sexism; or My Attempt to Score Feminist Points with the Ladies; or Getting Distracted and Ranting About Corporate America Without Any Research!

(Disclaimer, if it seems like I’m being sarcastic I probably am.)

It seems like we’re all posting all over social media and all over our lives about how good we are as people. Anytime we’re posting shit on these platforms it’s usually some form of bragging. Fine. I get it. Check me out. Karen likes this. Oooo Ted comments ‘this is problematic racist because you called that guy black’. And so on whatever. We’re all posting all this shit about how fucked up it is that police brutalize these people and rich white guys are raping these people or how this chick keeps lying about being raped and this Mom is a terrible parent cuz her kid is pissing on a picture of Obama. So we gotta get the Republicans cuz they’re all heartless ghouls. Or gotta get those Libtards trying to take my guns and spreading Gay Communism to my children! Not great examples but you get it.

It’s not fucking brave to be like ‘I, the straight white male think women are equal!’ or ‘I think black people are just as good as white people! Cops shouldn’t shoot unarmed black males!’. How fucking bold. Wow. Good job. You’re a real hero. Or heroine. See I’m not sexist.

And we walk around going he’s a sexist because he said cunt! He’s a racist because he said the n-word! We’re acting like three year olds telling on each other for cursing. And then we keep walking like we have this imaginary sash and a crown that says ‘Not-racist, not-sexist, see? because i can tell who somebody is based on a word they used! And i never use those words! Can i buy you a drink? I’m pure! ooo weee women are greeeeaaat’ Like if i just write the word nigger right here that means i’m racist right? I must really hate black people. That word is magic. It transforms you into a slave owner mentality monster. That’s silly. It’s never one word. It’s the context. It’s the meaning and intent behind the word. Censorship is fucking dumb. Censoring art is even worse. There was a communist revolution once and they destroyed all religious art. That’s dumb. That’s so misguided.

The truth is sometimes we’re all sexist, racist, homophobic. Sometimes on accident! Admit it! That’s not even the point. The point is to recognize it and learn from it and grow as a person and don’t act on these made up stereotypes society and media put in your brain. Also admit when you’re racist! One time I called one of my black friends, one of my other black friends name. That was racist of me. I fucked up. I didn’t mean to. I was an idiot and racist in that moment probably. And then evaluate yourself! Have empathy!! Sheesh.

It seems to me we’re all seeing horrible things happening and we instantly make them about ourselves. We instantly put ourselves in a position of hostility because we react so emotionally now because the news told us when you hear the word ‘cops’ or ‘woman’ you get fucking ANGRY. The news says it’s an all out culture war. Which side are you on? Huh bro? Which side? We don’t even care what’s right. We care who’s right. We want to be right more than we want shit to change. Does anybody talk to each other? Or are we all reacting to the reactions of shit. We’re in an echo chamber and we don’t remember what the original sound even was. We’re just sitting on the edge of the ocean dipping our toes in the very, VERY edge of the water and judging and yelling about every wave even though we don’t talk about what’s causing it. We’re just cars covered in bumper stickers and if you cut me off in traffic with a Trump sticker I’m gonna fucking rear end the hell out of you cuz you’re obviously a rapist nazi. Or you’ve got a Hilary sticker and obviously you’re a Communistic trust fund college kid going through a hippie phase and constantly refers to Marx despite never reading a word of the ‘Communist Manifesto’.

The Kavanaugh (sp?) trial thing was so ugly. Obviously we have no culture and no grace or dignity. Because fuck that. Grace doesn’t get views. Dignity doesn’t get hits, baby. Where’s the juice?! Is he a pedophile rapist or is he a Saint? There’s no fucking nuance at all. We just want to crucify. It’s sad. We wanna get on TV and yell at each other and name call and tell people ‘here’s the news, two unqualified idiots yell at each other for a half hour. Okay! Here’s some weird prejudice way of looking at it! Which fucking side are you on? Satan or Jesus? Pepsi or Coke? Don’t worry! Tune in after the commercial and we’ll keep justifying your prejudices!’

I remember hearing on a radio station in Grand Theft Auto five, the DJ goes ‘tune in to WXYZ News, justifying your prejudices since 1992′ or whatever. It’s so outrageously true it hurts. Turn on any news station. We live in a capitalist society. Shit is run on money no matter what. So giant corporations pay people to tell you what’s going on. That’s so inherently insidious, right? They’re gonna pay people to tell you to keep voting a certain way and to keep buying iPhones and Nabisco. This is what freedom looks like! You get to pick what kind of Nabisco cookies you want! You have the freedom to be in debt to one of five banks! Ah how beautiful this country is! Look at the breathtaking skyline of Walmart, American Express, and McDonalds! How beautiful the homogeneity of capitalism all over this concrete nation and slowly but surely all over this planet! You get to choose which of these twelve (and ever decreasing towards a monopoly!) corporations you can work for! With the promise of a trophy wife and some kids you half-resent! Ugh, I hate it. I hate myself for getting caught up in this kind of angsty teenage energy.

I believe we’re arguing about the wrong things. I don’t think humans are the enemy. I think the enemy is the same as it has always been. It’s the inhuman systems we create. These inhuman systems that put people in charge whether they’re qualified or not. Because it allows for the wrong people to attain to much power. And these people transform into something inhuman. Because it’s never one person. We like to put faces to it. We like to say Hitler did all that! Well, he did. But also a giant army of people did too. That system that was created to persecute and we fell in line. This is a we problem (please reference the Michael Jackson song ‘Man in the Mirror’).

We’re fighting among ourselves while system continue to allow for evil to exist. The thing to destroy is the systems. Not us. Not your neighbor. Not that kind of racist guy you see at the gym. Not that weird girl telling you all white men are rapists. They’re scared. What I mean is we’re scared. And it’s because of the systems we created. It’s not the individuals. Even the weird lizard people news anchors aren’t the problem. They are a symptom of a much, much bigger problem. But it’s so easy to confuse us because we’re so tired and busy and our dad’s are dying and your uncle’s sick and your cousin’s in jail and you’re not getting enough hours at work and your boyfriend keeps texting Erica from work. So we get mad at these faces that some corporation props up on a screen to get money and ratings. And then we get mad at each other for not hating the same faces we do.

I don’t know anything I’m talking about really but my guess is that the evil or rather the shit that is planned to keep us docile as a masses is hidden from us. Obviously that sounds conspiracy-ish. And it is i guess.

But my point being stop hating your Dad because he thinks building a wall is a good idea. Stop hating your sister because she said maybe we shouldn’t punch Nazis in the face. Stop hating your neighbor because he’s afraid of Islam. Becuase we all feel a certain type a way because of the one of two news channels we choose to subscribe to. And the news has been telling us to hate each other since news was invented. Talk to your dad. Talk to your sister. Talk to your neighbor. Or don’t but understand that they’re just scared and don’t know what to do. We are all scared and exhausted and don’t know what to do. Maybe as a rule of thumb we should always try to find the humanity in what’s happening. Not try to find what problematic alliance you should join and then claim the other side is aligning themselves with Darth Vader. We don’t know what’s going on. We just create villains or heroes because of a headline a corporation paid to put in your brain. That’s gross. Let’s discuss what’s right not who’s right. Not this made up left vs. right, pepsi vs. coke, Red Sox vs. Yankees. We need to grow up and talk like adults. Me included.

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schraubd · 4 years

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If You're One in a Million...

Many of you are familiar with the saying "If you're one in a million, there are a thousand people just like you in China alone." It helps illustrate that while one in a million is certainly very rare, on another way of looking it at it's also quite common. A thousand people! You could fill a high school gymnasium with that! Push the proportion down a bit and things get even more stark. Imagine a political view held by only 1% of the population. That's pretty fringe, right (for reference, 33% of Americans believe that alien UFOs have visited Earth)? But it's also one in a hundred -- in America, that translates to well over three million people. That's a lot! (We explored this dynamic previously in my "how to tokenize with proportions" post.) One thing I often think about is how modernity and modern technology, in conjunction with our decidedly pre-modern lizard-brains, don't always mesh well. We know, for example, that fat tastes delicious because in the primordial environment it was rare and vital, and thus highly desirable to consume -- unfortunately, this doesn't translate well to a contemporary context where calories and fat are plentiful and we can easily over-saturate ourselves. I suspect there's something similar going on with political opinions. One of the oft-proclaimed virtues of the internet is it allows you to find communities of like-minded persons no matter how obscure or random the interest. Obsessed with underwater basketweaving? You can find dozens of people who share that passion with minimal effort! What does it mean when the same is true for political opinions? I suspect our brains have a rough heuristic at the ready that correlates how difficult it is to find holders of a given opinion with how uncommon it is in society. If one struggles to come across individuals who believe ideology X, one assumes that X is rarely believed in a given society. If one comes across X-believers without too much trouble, one infers that X is a common ideology. If 1% of Americans hold a particular political stance, that may be three million people -- but (at least until recently) they're not going to be easy to find via the normal modes of political engagement. If you just read newspaper columns, chatted with your neighbors, watched TV pundits, and so forth, you'd probably come across it rarely, if ever. If one really wanted to find a sizable chunk of Americans who believe this 1% view, one would have to expend considerably more effort. Now to be clear: what I'm describing is only a heuristic, which means it's imperfect -- there are all sorts of reasons why, for example, a rare opinion might nonetheless be easy to spot "in the wild" (it's favored among extroverts or celebrities, e.g.) or a common one might be rarely seen (it's embarrassing). But it has some logic as a rough-and-ready way of telling us which views are common in our social circle and which aren't. It's not quite the same as the availability heuristic, but it is similar. Call it the search heuristic. Something easy to find upon commencing a search for it is common; something hard to find even when searching for it is rare. The problem is that if modern technology makes pretty much any opinion with even a speck of public salience "easy to find", that hijacks our heuristic circuitry to make all of these opinions register in our minds as "commonplace". What is the result of that? One potentially positive result is that it might offset some mechanisms that serve to silence dissident views via the so-called "spiral of silence" -- they learn that they're not alone, and so they're more willing to air their dissident views knowing that there are peers who share their perspective. But there are also some potential upshots that I'm more ambivalent about. One thing that we might experience is the erosion of perceived consensus -- a sense of widespread opinion balkanization and a corresponding vertiginous inability to tell when there is an opinion that carries significant social agreement. There's a push/pull on this -- sometimes, a feeling of "consensus" is dependent on wrongly not perceiving the existence of dissent, and so the elevation of dissident voices corrects a widespread social misperception. But, assuming "consensus" does not require universal agreement, sometimes, a feeling of dissensus is falsely inspired by the presence of high-profile but ultimately negligible dissenters. To the extent that modern technology makes very small ideological minorities loom larger, we might believe ourselves to be far more disunited than we actually are. And if the search heuristic causes a wide range of opinions (many mutually incompatible with one another) to register as "common", we may have trouble grasping onto distinctions between actually common versus fringe outlooks. In a similar vein, it is at least plausible that in a democracy there is a prima facie obligation to consider and give airing to certain viewpoints simply by virtue of the fact that they're common. This wouldn't necessarily mean that uncommon views can be automatically rejected, only that they must "earn" their space on the democratic agenda by means other than "because many people believe it". If this is so, then the perception that more views are "common" mean that more views can claim access to this prima facie obligation of consideration. Perhaps that doesn't strike you as a bad thing -- but consider it in the case of, say, openly avowed racism or extremism -- views which might objectively be as rare as ever, but perhaps feel more common than they've been in recent memory. There are also risks latent even for the holders of the dissident opinions themselves, for they as much as anyone might be mislead into thinking their views are more widely shared than they are. If someone holds a view they know is rare but wish was widely shared, they must endeavor to persuade others to adopt it. If they then, say, run for office on its platform whose tenets are held by only 10% of the population, if (or when) they lose they probably won't be happy but they at least probably won't be confused. Unpopular opinions don't win elections. But things are different if the search heuristic misfires and makes the dissident believe they are actually expressing a very common view. If they nonetheless persistently lose in the democratic arena, they might suspect bias, corruption, institutional barriers, or other forms of foul play are obstructing them. To be clear: there are many cases where such things are at work; I'm not saying that everyone who believes their views are not carrying the democratic day because of various social biases is simply misleading themselves. But sometimes a democratic spade really is just a spade; and there is at least the potential for this sort of self-deception to accelerate -- the result being greater mistrust and resentment of social institutions. It's worth noting that there isn't an "objective" way of declaring whether a view is "rare" or not. Much of it already lies in framing: "held by 1% of the population" sounds uncommon, "held by three million Americans" sounds reasonably common. So we can't quite say that, even if the search heuristic is misfiring, it is objectively causing us to label "uncommon opinions" as "common". But I do suspect that our wider net of appraisals around how we relate to an opinion based on its perceived "commonality" are tied to the same set of assumptions under which the search heuristic should function at least roughly well -- meaning that if we no longer exist in that social world, the whole edifice comes under serious strain (if it doesn't collapse outright). These are preliminary thoughts; they are not wholly hashed out in my mind yet, and I'm curious to hear others' views. Here's the tl;dr

The search heuristic tells us that, roughly speaking, a view that is hard to find upon searching for it is rare, and a view that is easy to find upon searching for it is commonplace.

The social media revolution has drastically reduced the search costs required to find large absolute numbers of persons who hold any particular view, even when they are actually relatively uncommon.

Together, (1) & (2) cause us to mentally code many viewpoints which we'd perceive as uncommon as quite common (since we are able to find examples of them with little effort).

The effects of this are unclear, but may include (a) increased willingness to air dissident views; (b) decreased sense of social consensus; (c) decreased ability to distinguish relatively common versus uncommon views; (d) decreased trust that formal mechanisms for measuring public opinion reliably track actual public viewpoints (even when they are in fact doing so reasonably well).

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#discourse #math #polls

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: The Turbulent History of Global Chinese Art

Wang Guangyi, “Mao Zedong: Red Grid No. 2” (1988), oil on canvas, 59 x 51.18 inches (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

A specter is haunting the Guggenheim — the lingering spirit of a wave of protest and provocation, expressed through avant-garde art forms, that in recent decades dared to address and sometimes defy the heavy totalitarian hand that has ruled China since the triumph of its communist revolution and remains uniquely oppressive and invincible today.

Manifestations of that politically charged impulse, as it emerged in contemporary art from the last decade of the previous century through the first decade of the 21st, and the conditions that nurtured it, are the subjects of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s large, new exhibition, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, which its organizers have positioned primarily as a documentary survey of a particular kind of art produced during one recent period of Chinese cultural history.

In its catalogue, Alexandra Munroe, the Guggenheim’s senior curator of Asian art and senior advisor for global arts, writes that the big show “presents a history of contemporary art from China and the rise of global art discourse” from 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, and the Cold War supposedly ended, through 2008, the year China hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

That event “seemed to announce China’s superpower status to its people and to the world,” Munroe observes. She adds, “No nation in modern history underwent such a total transformation as did China during these two decades, and few shifts have had global impact of this magnitude.” (Munroe organized the exhibition along with two guest co-curators: Philip Tinari, an American resident of China since 2001 who founded the bilingual magazine LEAP and is the director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, and the Chinese-born Hou Hanru, who is based in Rome, where he serves as artistic director of MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts.)

For China, it was a tumultuous era. In 1978, two years after People’s Republic of China founder Mao Zedong died, Deng Xiaoping, who had outmaneuvered his Communist Party rivals to become the country’s paramount leader, announced a bold plan for nationwide economic reform. Its goal: to modernize China at breakneck speed. Virtually overnight, the government ditched Mao’s militant egalitarianism for “building socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Suddenly, Mao’s “Never forget class struggle!” was out; once-reviled “private property” was in. Beijing granted more authority to managers of state-owned companies and set out to blend a measure of unabashed — if disguised, through ideological doublespeak — capitalism with a centralized economy. As the longtime China-watcher Orville Schell wrote in 1984, Deng recognized that his policy had put “a capitalist fox into a socialist henhouse.” Of that hard-to-square ideological discrepancy, the wily politician quipped, “Black cat, white cat — it’s a good cat if it catches mice.” It is in response to the whiplash-inducing political, social, and economic changes such developments fostered that the artists featured in Art and China after 1989 created many of the works on view.

The show starts by looking back to February 1989, when the exhibition China/Avant-Garde opened at the National Art Gallery in Beijing; a few months later, the government brutally crushed the burgeoning pro-democracy movement’s demonstrations in that city’s Tiananmen Square.

The exhibition “China/Avant-Garde” opened in February 1989 at the National Art Gallery in Beijing, marking a moment in China’s modern-art history from which there would be no turning back; its symbol became a no-U-turn road sign (archival photo courtesy of Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; digital projection)

Munroe writes that China/Avant-Garde was “an unprecedented and rambunctious outpouring of experimental practices, including performance art, installation, and abstract ink painting,” in which artist Xiao Lu fired a gun at her own work, two life-size telephone booths; Wu Shanzhuan sold raw shrimp; Wang Guangyi showed painted portraits of Mao with superimposed grids; and, as the current show’s catalogue recalls, Huang Yong Ping “offered a diagrammatic collage, ‘Towing Away the National Art Gallery,’ showing instructions for tearing down the building and all its academic officialdom.”

Also in the catalogue, co-curator Tinari notes that the 1989 exhibition “proclaimed a moment” in Chinese art history “from which there could, and would, be no turning back.” Its symbol became a no-U-turn sign. In retrospect, some Chinese artists and activists regard Xiao Lu’s gunfire as “the first shot” signaling what would become the pro-democracy movement. Its last shots were the government’s, when it massacred hundreds of protesters in June 1989.

The current show focuses on conceptual art that developed in and emerged from China during the period under review. It was mostly such art forms, turning up in biennials and other high-profile, international festivals from the latter 1990s through 2008, that gave the broader cultural world a sense of what Chinese contemporary artists were up to during that time. Thus, the show is big on emphasizing the overseas-exhibition credentials of the artists represented, arguing that, largely through the presentation of such artworks in foreign settings, Chinese contemporary artists broke through and entered the discourse of “global contemporary art.”

In doing so, they gained the attention of Western cultural institutions and media, thereby validating or legitimizing their efforts in the eyes and annals of “global contemporary art,” which, Art and China after 1989 proposes, those same Western forces effectively control. From some vantage points, such acceptance into the “global” art club might seem like a somewhat dubious achievement; after all, “global contemporary art” may be seen as synonymous primarily with a certain, dominant sector of the international art market. Is there something to be said for standing apart?

Some of the current exhibition’s more interesting works are the earliest among them: the self-taught artist Gu Dexin’s “Plastic Pieces — 287” (1983-85), first shown in China/Avant-Garde, consisting of 287 pieces of burned, colored plastic, and evoking a tenuous sense of mortality and decay; Geng Jianyi’s “Forms and Certificates” (1988), a conceptual-art practical joke, in which 32 artists, critics, and scholars, some of whom, Geng felt, had been taking themselves too seriously, filled in a mock application form to participate in an exhibition, a document that asked for their heights, favorite plants, and other goofy data; and, from 1990, Huang Rui’s books by and about Mao, covered in black ink, which symbolically buried the remnants of once-dominant, ideologically strident Mao Zedong Thought.

Other artists also examined different aspects of a bewildering, shape-shifting zeitgeist and its discontents. In Zhang Peili’s “Water: Standard Version from the ‘Cihai’ Dictionary,” a 1991 video, the female news anchor Xing Zhibin of state-owned China Central Television reads a dictionary entry for “water” in the same dispassionate tone she would later use to read the government’s report about the end of the pro-democracy movement — without a word about its violent crackdown. (To make this piece, Zhang paid a contact at CCTV to record Xing; she never knew the tape would become a work of art.) If Zhang Peili’s video is all soulless detachment, “Young Zhang,” a 1992 oil-on-canvas portrait by Zhao Bandi of his friend, another man named Zhang, strives for naturalism in its depiction of a post-Tiananmen, ordinary guy. “[P]ainting on a straight canvas seemed too serious, so I tilted it,” Zhao later stated.

With and without live animals: Huang Yong Ping, “Theater of the World” (1993), wood-and-metal structure, warming lamps, electric cables, insects, lizards, toads, snakes, 59 X 106.3 x 63 inches (photo, left, of past installation ©Huang Yong Ping; photo, right, of current Guggenheim Museum installation by the author for Hyperallergic)

The exhibition takes its title from Huang Yong Ping’s mixed-media “Theater of the World” (1993), a screen-enclosed, tortoise-shaped cage that normally contains crickets, scorpions, cockroaches, lizards, snakes and, other creepy-crawlers that simply devour each other. Due to protests about real or depicted cruelty to animals and what the Guggenheim described as “threats of violence in reaction to the incorporation of live animals” in this work, “Theater of the World” is being shown without them. Similarly, two videos have been withdrawn. One is Xu Bing’s “A Case Study of Transference” (1994), in which two pigs are seen copulating; one is covered with Xu’s made-up Chinese characters, the other with Roman letters, in a symbolic meeting/mating of East and West — get it? — or what a wall label refers to as Xu’s “visceral critique of Chinese artists’ desire for enlightenment for Western cultural transference.”

The other video is Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s “Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other” (2003), in which pit bulls tied to treadmills, face to face and poised to attack, pant and growl desperately, but remain restrained. Concerns about cruelty to animals in such artworks is one thing, but so is their banality. Apparently, these artists never received the memo from modern art’s central committee — the one pointing out that using animals as metaphors for any kind of struggle long ago became a tired, spent, exhausted cliché.

And then there is Ai Weiwei, the sometime political dissident and most internationally famous of any of the “global contemporary artists” to have emerged from China. There was a time when some of his actions were interesting, but more recently his antics have been marked by insufferable bombast and bloated ego, a lethal mix that found its apotheosis in a tasteless, staged photo in early 2016 on the Greek island of Lesbos, in which Ai assumed the same position as the body of a dead, Syrian refugee boy which had been found in Turkey months earlier, washed up on a beach. A shocking news photo of that three-year-old child’s corpse was seen around the world, calling attention to the horrific effects of Syria’s civil war. In his imitation of that indelible image, however, Ai looked more like a beached whale. Nevertheless, the refugee crisis appears to be Ai’s issue of the moment, as evidenced by his new film, Human Flow.

Ai Weiwei, “Fairytale” (2007), mixed media; wallpaper photos of participants in a trip to Documenta funded by the artist, along with suitcases his studio designed for them

In Art and China after 1989, there is a big stack of thousands of Ai’s transcribed Twitter posts (are you listening, posterity?), photos of big Ai dropping and smashing to bits a Han Dynasty urn (supposedly a Duchamp-inspired gesture), and photos, lining one display area’s walls like wallpaper, of the 1001 “ordinary Chinese citizens” the would-be provocateur paid to send, in a “temporary migration,” to view the Documenta art expo in Germany in 2007, along with the suitcases his studio designed for them. By turning them, literally, into wallpaper, Ai strips the participants in his costly — and maybe a little bit cynical? — caper of their humanity. In such trite spectacles — this one was titled “Fairytale” — the subject is always Ai.

By contrast, some of the most humanistic works here were made with very limited resources. They include “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain” (1995), an outdoor performance realized and captured on video by a group of artists from what was then known as Beijing’s “East Village” district of young, poor art-makers who used their bodies as their raw material. In “To Add One Meter,” they lie on top of each other’s nude bodies to create a human hill. In “Kan Xuan! Ai!” (1999), a one-minute video, a young, female artist, Kan Xuan, walks through a Beijing subway-station tunnel calling out her name like some kind of human-feral creature as if to declare — and claim — her existence in a city of unknown millions.

Cang Xin, Duan Yingmei, Gao Yang, Ma Liuming, Ma Zhongren, Wang Shihua, Zhang Binbin, Zhang Huan, Zhu Ming, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain” (1995) performance (video projection)

Xu Tan, a member of the Big Tail Elephant Working Group, which was active in Guangzhou in the 1990s, offers a kooky-eloquent critique of the whole disparity-producing, mammon-chasing, ideologically twisted, counter-counterrevolutionary orgy of newfangled “socialist” capitalism that erupted in China with the launch of Deng’s reforms. In his installation, “Made in China” (1997-98), languid stuffed animals view mindless images of a dispiriting age in slide shows and on TV while surrounded by a sea of consumerist crap — bottles of cooking sauces, plastic toys and dolls, jigsaw puzzles, balloons, computer parts, a bathtub lined with silver fabric. In the midst of this inundation, a video monitor shows a man holding a microphone and begging as passersby dart around him. “I am sad,” he says. “I am blind. It is fortune in misfortune. […] I am okay to be a fallen soul.”

If Xu’s blind beggar is some kind of metaphor for what the soul of Chinese society and culture has become, despite the nation’s new superpower status, it’s a potent one. Perhaps, not unsurprisingly, the exhibition ends with part of the last work Gu Dexin ever made before retiring from the art world in 2009. First shown in that year, evoking the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, it is a group of white panels inscribed with large, red characters that declare:

We have killed people we have killed men we have killed women we have killed old people we have killed children we have eaten people we have eaten hearts we have eaten human brains we have beaten people we have beaten people blind we have beaten open people’s faces

Making the long march up the Guggenheim’s ramps, it becomes clear that a certain kind of art from China may have become more “global” than ever before, but as this complex exhibition demonstrates, for many of the artists who created it, as they wrestled with their homeland’s turbulent recent history, they were unwilling — or perhaps unable — to easily give up its ghosts.

Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World continues at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through January 7, 2018.

The post The Turbulent History of Global Chinese Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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newsexplored · 7 years

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Remoaner Clegg SCOLDED for claiming Brexit-backers will be ISOLATED after French election

New Post has been published on https://newsexplored.co.uk/remoaner-clegg-scolded-for-claiming-brexit-backers-will-be-isolated-after-french-election/

Remoaner Clegg SCOLDED for claiming Brexit-backers will be ISOLATED after French election

GETTY/ TWITTER

Nick Clegg gloated on Twitter that Marine Le Pen didn't win the first round of voting

The former Liberal Democrat leader took to Twitter to gloat that centrist Macron had pipped the Front National chief to first place and justify his vote to remain in the Brussels bloc.

The Sheffield Hallam MP’s latest social media activity took aim at Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks for allegedly claiming populist sentiment would sweep throughout the globe and provide shockwaves for establishment figureheads.

GETTY

Clegg took aim at Donald Trump and Nigel Farage in his tweets

Clegg tweeted: “Err, Trump, Farage, Banks et al told us the revolution was unstoppable. First NL (the Netherlands), now France, not obeying.”

The pro-EU fanatic also made his own predictions for upcoming European elections while providing a damning critique of the vote to leave the crumbling superstate.

He later tweeted: “German elections will return pro EU gov. Eurozone growth set to outstrip UK By end of year UK Brexit leadership will be isolated.”

French election goes to the farm Fri, April 21, 2017

Ahead of the French presidential election, the candidates visit farms and food fairs in a bid to court the powerful agriculture sector

REUTERS 1 of 10

Marine Le Pen eats banana as she visits the International Agricultural Show in Paris, France

Enjoy being unemployed on June 9

Clegg, who has promised to fight for another Brexit referendum, was berated for his remarks on Twitter.

The Right Revolution told the former deputy Prime Minister: “Mr Clegg. You really do detest this great country, totally do not understand Democracy. Enjoy being unemployed on June 9th.”

Greg Bartlem said: “Although I don't want Brexit, I want it to succeed rather than saying I told you do if we are all in abject poverty.”

GETTY

Clegg tweeted shortly after Marine Le Pen finished second in the French presidential election

John Smith added: “Hi Nick. Just quick note to remind you that Project Fear has been cancelled. Didn't you get the memo?”

Barry White tweeted: “Crazy how much you want your country to fail, you should do one into Europe you tuition fee lying lizard.”

Clegg has yet to respond to the vast swathes of criticism he has received via social media.

0 notes

untoadoption · 5 years

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Multicultural Children's Book Day

New Post has been published on https://untoadoption.org/multicultural-childrens-book-day/

Multicultural Children's Book Day

Guess what day is right around the corner? Multicultural Children’s Book Day! I was thrilled to be selected to participate again this year, ever eager to expand our home library and our perspective via quality, diverse reading material from all corners of the globe.

This year I’m reviewing Bonnie West & Diane Carter’s new book, “Hideki and Kenji Save the Day.” It’s a playful tale of two brothers who encounter a magical mystery and a new, special friend in their hometown in the countryside of Japan.

The story fascinated my son, who was sucked in by the whimsy and requested a second reading. He eagerly pointed out how the characters share his handsome Asian features. The illustrations are a lovely watercolor and each vivid page shows the text in both English and Kanji. This is a lovely tale ideal for inquisitive, thoughtful young readers.

MCBD 2019 is honored to have the following Medallion Sponsors on board

Medallion Level Sponsors

Honorary: Children’s Book Council, The Junior Library Guild, TheConsciousKid.org.

Super Platinum: Make A Way Media

GOLD: Bharat Babies, Candlewick Press, Chickasaw Press, Juan Guerra and The Little Doctor / El doctorcito, KidLitTV, Lerner Publishing Group, Plum Street Press,

SILVER: Capstone Publishing, Carole P. Roman, Author Charlotte Riggle, Huda Essa, The Pack-n-Go Girls,

MCBD 2019 is honored to have the following Author Sponsors on board

Honorary: Julie Flett, Mehrdokht Amini,

Co-Hosts and Global Co-Hosts

TWITTER PARTY Sponsored by Make A Way Media!

MCBD’s super-popular (and crazy-fun) annual Twitter Party will be held 1/25/19 at 9:00pm.E.S.T. TONS of prizes and book bundles will be given away during the party. GO HERE for more details.

We will be giving away Book Bundles every 5 minutes!

Twitter Party Details:

When: Friday, January 25th

Time: 9 pm to 10 pm EST

Where: On Twitter! Follow McChildsBookDay to participate

Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld