February 2012
20 posts
Suicide from pressure to repay microfinance loans... →
“Rajyam was unable to pay off $2,400 owed to eight different companies. Employees of microfinance companies, including SKS, urged other borrowers to seize the family’s chairs, utensils and wardrobe and pawn them to make loan payments, her family told investigators. Unable to bear the insults and pressure of the crowd of borrowers who sat outside her home for hours to shame her, Rajyam...
@kirstinc points out that Lin and Fields are... →
I stand corrected!
Infections as common conditions
A few times now, I’ve gotten this direct message on twitter: “i cant believe this but there are some real nasty things being said about you here <link omitted>,” in one case from a dear from India, and in another from a professor I respect and enjoy. I didn’t take the bait, figuring that it was a phishing or spam attack though my emotions swelled for the moment...
new writing strategy. Copy paste chunks of quotes, citations, and stuff I wrote and liked enough to remember in old class responses into vague outline sections. Refine later.
Facebook's abuse standards violations leaked →
Wow. Escalated: “Holocaust denial which focuses on hate speech…All attacks on Ataturk…Maps of Kurdistan…Crushed heads, limbs, etc are ok as long as no insides are showing”
Also, male nipple bulges under shirt okay but female nipple bulges under shirt not okay
It’s like the ISO standard mapping the politics of obscenity
“Dissertation advice from Sri Aurobindo: “A perfect working is easier to...”
– Reading parts of Aurobindo’s translation of Bhagavad Gita because it helps me understand my research better. The idea is that work is to be done for divine satisfaction rather than satisfaction of ego or worldly interests. This nicely reminds me, more generally, to “chill out and do good...
““I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement...”
– David Graeber responding to Chris Hedges’ claim that the black bloc is a “cancer” in Occupy Wall Street. I found insightful the argument that there are linguistic forms to violence. Reminded me of the ways that patriarchy, racism, and colonial sentiments go along with turns of...
"It was dark and my twin girls were asleep in the... →
I graduated and travelled out west, hopping on a bus with the so-called Rainbow Family, and on the ensuing ride, they gifted me peyote, a profound sense of life’s psychedelic possibilities and a tenacious case of the crabs. I came back to Minneapolis and took crummy jobs, including working at a hydraulic-tube assembly plant, where my boss took Dolly Parton’s breasts as his central...
Portland's Patented Public Potty →
“Whenever I have friends in the car and we pass by one, it’s like, ‘There’s the loo!’” she says. “It’s cold and really strange inside, and there’s a sense of, ‘Wow, I’m really close to the sidewalk and people can hear me peeing,’ but it’s really cool.”
So the Portland Loo includes a variety of bells and whistles meant to keep in check the most...
January 2012
24 posts
Do you like Ratatat okay but get annoyed at that...
I'm comic sans, jagoff! →
“Arranged marriages aren’t really arranged. It’s like a blind date that never ends!” from “Shit muslims say” video
Military videos showing US troops urinating on... →
Listening to Lana del Rey for first time. Her voice sounds like Tori Amos if she weren’t traumatized, a fairy, or from another planet. Instead, there’s creepily emotive female voice with conventional hetero-romance pop.
Lana del Rey is like Jessica Simpson particle board with a polished Tori Amos veneer.
Things that are unique and special about Brainwash...
#1: There are dryers named “Judith Butler” and “Blanche Devareux”
#2: They have BBQ sauce.
#3: Every time I’ve been here, there is this one couple loudly having a fight in the corner about the strangest things. Last time, the woman was telling the guy that he shouldn’t spend so long talking to someone who hit his girlfriend. This time, she was saying,...
I absolutely love the "shit girls say to" series
alicetiara:
The “gay guys” and “lesbian” and “black girls” ones were all super awesome and dead on and enlightening and made me cringe.
BUT: let’s turn a bit of this on the dudes, huh? I think these videos are great for making people check their privilege. Would be great to identify some of the microaggressions perpetrated by white dudes— god knows I can think of a few off the top of my head.
...
“In evolutionary terms, to consume is to aspire, and to waste is to stride forth in triumph.” from Chapman’s Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences, and Empathy in which our relationship with products is analogized to our relationship with people who also become obsolete as their meaningfulness to us fades (according to the book)
*skeptical eyebrow raise*
Why the social graph needs to die →
“Imagine the U.S. Census as conducted by direct marketers - that’s the social graph.”
Possibly the best thing I’ve read. Clear-minded, hilarious. No nonsense, speaks straight to computer science formalisms while dead on with the issues of sociality and performativity of language (making statements declaring things — like “I am your friend” changes the...
Eames: the architect and the painter - now... →
Chris and I enjoyed the documentary. For the Eames influence on early new media culture, see Colomina’s Grey Room article “Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture” (2001) (ask me if you need it)
SSI: Global Diseases, Local Needs →
A very gentle critique: development donors tend to go after diseases they can take credit for over diseases that are on-the-ground priorities, from the Stanford Social Innovation Review
I’m excited to see someone write about this as this seems to me a direct outcome of the idea of “impact investing” — investing in fights that you can definitively win and claim an impact...
December 2011
30 posts
A brief history of MSG; also, no repeatable... →
Chris gets MSG headaches but @thisischristina writes that there have been no repeatable studies that show a link between MSG and the symptoms reported as “Chinese-restaurant syndrome” in the 80s. Is it possible that only a small subset of the population has some sensitivity to MSG so widespread sampling would average those sufferers out as noise? I don’t know. But...
On charismatic misattributions
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
I’ve seen this quote in ads and webpage for NGOs all over the place — anywhere where structural power is lacking and individual energies is a currency that keeps the thing in motion. (Just google the quote and NGO and see all the places it...
I lived most of these Christmases this year [The... →
I acted like a 30-year old with kids, except substitute kids with home organization. Chris is a 30 year old with no kids. Chris’ 2 year old nephew definitely used his elaborate wooden groceries, shopping cart, and two sets of toy cooking implements as missiles and clubs. Not enough drunken office parties though. I missed our lab party.
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