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jessicalprice · 2 years

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there’s nothing wrong with newness

(reposted, with additions, from Twitter)

I think a lot of neo-paganism would be a lot healthier (and a lot less vulnerable to white supremacist influences) if everyone got more comfortable with the "neo" part of it. There's nothing wrong with creating new traditions, and even being inspired by past ones.

Before I get into what I’m talking about, I want to quote some of a brilliant thread by Dr. Sarah Taber:

looking back through europe's pre/history is really interesting, it's just population replacement after population replacement. there's a REASON we have no idea what the Lascaux cave art is about, for example. The cultures who made that p much disappeared 3+ invasions ago.

some places have very old oral histories: Aboriginal Australians have place-names that clearly refer to different sea levels, Haudenosaunee accounts tell of receding glaciers, etc. Most of Europe doesn't have that! Indo-European traditions are really, really recent.

The oldest oral tradition we got is fairy tales. The oldest one (the smith & the devil) goes back ~4K years. Sounds super old! Until you contrast it to Haudenosaunee receding-glacier histories (10-15K yrs) or Aboriginal Australian place names (up to 20-40K years old).

We're still learning a lot about what Indo-European society was all about & it's really hard to do w/out running face-first into a lot of Race Science but it's the base layer for the vast majority of Europe's "traditional cultures." 1 single invasion, relatively recent.

It's why Europe has way less linguistic diversity than p much anywhere else in the world! Very recent cultural resurfacing on most of the continent! And the folks who did it were militarized, hierarchical, & focused on male-owned property. That's what we're working with lol...

Europe's past has cool stuff like Stonehenge, Cucuteni-Trypillia longhouse culture, cave art, etc! And it's very important to remember they have basically nothing to do w the people who live there now. : / We have just some of their genes & ~none of their stories.

We can't "reclaim" those cultures bc they aren't our ancestors in any sense of a continuing tradition. Could we try? Sure! But at that point we're just making shit up & appropriating someone else's culture. And they're not even there to correct you when you get it wrong.

There’s a reason that there’s so much overlap between people interested in “reclaiming” pre-Christian European traditions and white supremacists/neo-Nazis.

anyway this has been a super long text wall but tl;dr there's a REASON fascination with pre-medieval Europe is associated with militant dudes who wanna wipe out other people. that's what our ancestors were up to going WAY back.

Once you start "reconnecting" that's the first thing you learn. : / It ain't all maypoles & herbs & shit. so like, associating pre-christian Europe with cultures of invasion & genocide is an accurate understanding of the situation. I shan't make fun of ppl for seeing it lol

I’ll reiterate again: there’s nothing wrong with your neopaganism leaning into the neo part.

A note about appropriation

It’s really trendy right now to claim that European Christians “appropriated” pre-Christian European traditions, and wow, no.

It really trivializes actual appropriation by colonizing cultures from the cultures that they occupy, oppress, and even genocide to equate the two.

The stuff that usually gets cited as “appropriation” of European pagan ritual is stuff like Christmas trees, Saturnalia -> Christmas, etc.

The thing is, it was not appropriation for European peoples to continue to practice their own traditions after converting to Christianity. A pagan Roman continuing to engage in Roman Saturnalia rituals after becoming a Christian is not appropriating anything. A Germanic pagan continuing to engage in winter traditions around decorating trees after becoming a Germanic Christian (which, incidentally, is first really documented in the 16th century, long after Europe was thoroughly Christianized, but for the sake of argument...) is not appropriating anything. You can’t appropriate from yourself.

(And no, most non-European Christians also aren’t “appropriating” European traditions by practicing them as Christian traditions--when you’ve been colonized, you are not “appropriating” anything by assimilating into the colonizing culture. Power relations matter.)

That is very much not the same as white people of European Christian descent practicing elements of Native, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Hindu, Jewish, etc. traditions when the people from those cultures A) have not invited them to do so, B) are often penalized for practicing their own traditions, and C) practice those traditions within the context of an entire culture, unlike the outsiders picking and choosing elements like they’re digging through a toybox.

Moreover, as Dr. Taber notes, there’s no direct link to those cultures to use to “reclaim” their traditions...

...except, for “newer” (as in pre-medieval) traditions that are preserved through Christianity. Where elements of those pre-Christian European traditions were preserved, they were almost always preserved by Christian Europeans. I’m no fan of Christianity, but European Christians actually have as much--if not more--of a claim to legitimacy in practicing those traditions than neo-pagans.

And not facing up to this leads a lot of neo-pagans (and even non-neo-pagan atheists from Christian backgrounds who like complaining about how Christians appropriated all kinds of European pagan traditions) very close to some white supremacist/Nazi narratives.

Because it usually turns on a characterization of Christianity as a foreign religion forced on innocent European pagans. (Never mind that the Christianization of Europe wasn’t anywhere near universally violent or coercive--Christians tended to save their swordpoint conversions for other continents. That, however, is a whole different post.)

So at that point, you have to ask “foreign to where?” Christianity as we know it developed into an actual religion in Roman-controlled areas. So it wasn’t exactly “foreign” to Europe. It was home-grown.

And the idea of Christianity as a religion “foreign” to Europe, forced upon Europeans by... whom? Other Europeans, actually, but that doesn’t fit the foreigner narrative.

Well, the very easy place to go is that it’s a corrupt, foreign Middle Eastern religion that was forced upon Europeans. And from there, it’s another easy step to This Is The Jews’ Fault. There’s a reason there’s a lot of antisemitic heathenry out there.

(We, for the record, are a non-evangelizing culture with closed practices. We aren’t trying to get you to convert to Judaism. In fact, we traditionally make it hard to convert to Judaism, because we believe y’all can have your own relationship to the Absolute.)

Some ugly history we should talk about

So back to the beginning of this post:

There's nothing wrong with creating new traditions, and even being inspired by past ones.

Like, I think that for the most part, the impetus behind most attempts to create neopagan practices, traditions, communities, etc. are really positive, especially when they're earth-focused. We're killing the planet, and if more people worshiping it helps turn that around, A+.

But like many people with a lot more expertise than me have pointed out (especially Indigenous people), a lot of neopaganism is suuuuuuper appropriative, and a lot of times the appropriation gets hand-waved away or justified by either claiming it's done respectfully or claiming that it's not harmful because, as opposed to Christianity, neopaganism is small and well-intentioned and all that.

Gd hippies, again

Generally, we're not talking about how much of this stuff was started by hippies--whom most contemporary Americans tend to think of as perhaps a bit silly, but not harmful--and the hippies were like POSTER CHILDREN for "the cool things in other cultures should belong to us." Like, they wrapped it up in a lot of Love And Universal Brotherhood language, and I guess since Christianity does the same with its colonialism, everyone was largely like "yup, that must be their motivation, love and peace, yo."

But if you have ever seen a hippie get called on appropriating Native stuff, for example, most of the time the Love And Universal Brotherhood shit goes right out the window and you end up with the Kareniest Karen you ever did see because there's a LOT of colonialism in there.

And also, fuck the Victorians

And what we also don't generally talk about is how much Victorian occultism got filtered through hippie New Age stuff into many forms of modern neopaganism. Like Gardner was inspired by the Rosicrucians and influenced by Crowley. (This might get boring, but I spent a lot of time flirting with neopaganism in college, especially Dianic and Celtic Wicca, and as is my wont with almost everything I get passionately interested in, I rabbitholed HARD on "how did this come to be the way it is?")

Any time I start following a thread through the labyrinth of history and I end up in Victorian occultism, I start to get really, really nervous. Most of the underlying assumptions there are ugly as hell, and the number of things in contemporary society it influenced are myriad and that influence is, often, unacknowledged.

So the Victorians got Very Into Archaeology, and were fascinated by ancient civilizations like those in Egypt (modern writers refer to Victorian "Egyptomania"), the Near East, China, and India. And on one hand, they loved the aesthetics and the sheer ancientness and believed that these cultures had a treasure trove of good things waiting to be "discovered" by white people. On the other hand, they got really insecure, because none of these sophisticated ancient societies were in Europe. (I go into a lot more detail about this in a series of posts about bad archaeology and the Minoans.)

So they became obsessed with discovering some sort of ancient European society, first to rival these civilizations and then to have taught/inspired/built them, and you get things like basically making up a sophisticated Minoan society that "predates" Near Eastern ones. You also get things like Atlantis as the progenitor civilization of every major world civilization, and a lot of similar theories. The descendants of these theories are things like Ancient Aliens conspiracy theories.

They all boil down to "there's no way brown people could have come up with all this tech/civilization/literature/etc. before white people so the explanation is either Ancient White Superpeople or aliens." And at the root of this is trying to prove that if other cultures have stuff white people like, it must rightfully belong to white people now because it must have originally belonged to white people.

And one of the ways that this interacted with Victorian Christianity--that it was made acceptable in a strongly Christian society--was to posit that all ancient civilizations were actually monotheistic. They just worshiped different "faces" of God. So you could be into occultism and invoke Isis and all that shit and still go to your Christian gentlemen’s club.

Fuck the Romantics, too

And I'm not going to go into it here because I already did in the Minoan posts, but parallel to the interaction with Christianity and the assumption of monotheism was interaction with the Romanticism of the time, which resulted in positing some sort of ur-Goddess worship.

None of this, incidentally, was based on actual evidence. The idea that all of Europe once followed one universal, matriarchal goddess religion was a theory that a random judge was like, "hey, this feels like it makes sense to me" and everyone was like "yup, let's run with it." And so they "reconstructed" a lot of pre-Christian religion based mostly on Romanticism and insecurity about advances in European civilization coming from the Near East.

And I could do a whole thread about how this stuff prepped a lot of Victorian Europeans and Americans to listen to the Nazis.

If you're grappling with your feelings of inferiority about how what you consider Civilization mostly came out of the Near East, not Europe, at some point you have to grapple with the role of Christianity in all that.

And the thing is, Christianity is actually NOT a Near Eastern religion (as noted above). It may have gotten started by Jewish followers of a Jewish teacher, but as soon as it actually started becoming a separate religion, it was centered in Rome (both the city and the empire). But if you're attempting to reconstruct European paganism to which you have no direct links (other than, perhaps, some traditions filtered through Christianity) because it was wiped out by Christianity, and you want to feel superior to Middle Easterners, well, the obvious move is to Blame The Jews. So Christianity becomes a Jewish religion forced on Europeans and I guess we'll just be vague about who was doing the forcing so we don't have to treat it as Europeans continuing to beat each other up. From there, it’s a direct line to the Nazis’ “Positive Christianity.”

The “neo-” part is great, actually

To get back to the original point, most neo-pagans are lovely people and I consider them more likely to be fellow travelers than I do most Christians. HOWEVER, insistence that they're continuing ancient European traditions is A) not true, and B) based in some bad shit.

And downplaying the "neo" part of neo-paganism can help create a hospitable environment for white supremacist attitudes and ideas. Again: there's nothing wrong, inferior, or illegitimate about creating new traditions, and being *inspired* by whatever you can learn of older ones.

But even among neo-pagans who don't get seduced by (organized) white supremacist thinking, I do see a lot of attitudes that are kind of similar to those of New Atheists in regard to "organized religion," and Judaism and Islam (generally under the heading of "Abrahamic religion").

(I've done whole threads about how the term "Judeo-Christian" exists almost solely to let Christians erase/co-opt Judaism and be Islamophobic, and I should do one about how "Abrahamic religions" often serves as a cover for displacing anger at Christianity onto Judaism and Islam.)

And here's the thing: adherents of pretty much every belief system in America that is mostly made up of white people have a LOT of deconstruction to do.

Christians need to deconstruct the ways Christianity has animated and benefited from colonialism, white supremacy, antisemitism.

People who've left Christianity need to deconstruct how they still benefit from Christian hegemony and those things.

White Jews need to deconstruct how Jewish whiteness was built on anti-Blackness, and how we often use the conditional nature of Jewish whiteness as a shield against having to grapple with our own internalized white supremacy or acknowledge our white privilege.

I want to return to that "people who leave Christianity" and the deconstruction that needs to happen there, because I think it explains a lot of the parallel attitudes (and vulnerability to white supremacy) in neopagan and New Atheist circles.

Just ceasing to believe in the tenets of Christianity doesn't automatically deconstruct the attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, worldview, etc. instilled by growing up in Christian hegemony.

People who convert to religions like Islam or Judaism or even who marry a Hindu or otherwise join communities of people who are actively engaged with non-Christian traditions that have existed for a long time can get a big boost, I think, in that deconstruction because they're interacting with people who have never been Christian, whose parents were never Christian, whose grandparents were never Christian, and whose practices may have been *influenced* by Christianity but weren't instituted by Christians (or ex-Christians).

If you're leaving Christianity--or at least, a culturally Christian upbringing--and you're not becoming part of an established counter-tradition, I think, it's a lot harder to notice those assumptions and deconstruct them because you aren't getting that in-your-face contrast.

So you get a lot of ex-Christians who very much want to not be Christian anymore but are having to figure out what that means without living in a community that provides established counterexamples, and a lot of times have a lot of anger at Christianity and end up keeping a lot of the supremacist assumptions of Western Christianity and end up displacing some of that anger onto other traditions, advocating for a secularism that hasn't disentangled itself from white Christian norms, etc.

A lot of neopagan communities with which I've interacted are in this weird middle space, where most of the members are ex-Christian and are attempting to construct a counter-tradition, but they're doing it without the framework of an established counter-tradition.

And that's really fucking hard work because you don't have the benefit of a community with hundreds or thousands of years of its own non-Christian thought to counteract normative Christian-based attitudes and assumptions. The danger, I think, is in not recognizing that "reconstructed" traditions that are actually still based on stuff coming out of a Christian, white supremacist society don't actually provide the counter to Christian normativity that you might hope.

Again: Actually building a non-Christian tradition more or less from scratch, deconstructing white supremacist Christian assumptions so you're building on foundation that doesn't contain a lot of timbers that are just Christianity with the serial numbers filed off is really fucking hard work, and mad respect to the people actually doing it. It's much easier to just use what's already been packaged up for you.

I think the good news there is that if you do that deconstruction, and the communities you found and the traditions you start do that work, it's not going to take hundreds or thousands of years to have communities that provide strong, genuine alternatives to Christian hegemony. I know some kids raised in neopagan families that very intentionally do that work (although to be fair, both of those families have one parent who was raised in a non-Christian religion, so maybe they have a head start) who seem to have really internalized it.

But they are really clear on the whole "we're creating something new here" element of it. And I think that's incredibly, incredibly key to their authenticity, their sense of purpose, and their ethics.

And in general, I look at Christians and cultural Christians who aren't practicing, as a Jew, and think "man, you have it easy." But looking at neo-pagans who are actually Doing The Work to build something that's authentic and resistant to fascism, I think "man, I have it easy." (Incidentally, as much as Unitarianism often gets a bad rap for being bland, they've created some beautiful and moving rituals as well and are down with new ritual and I love them for it.)

Anyway, to wrap this up:

Creating new rituals and religious traditions is good, actually

You don't need some sort of unbroken religious history to be legitimate or authentic

It's cool to be inspired by ancient cultures without claiming to be them

Oh, and also:

For members of older non-Christian traditions: it's really really easy to fall into the default of rolling our eyes at the new and I do it a lot intentionally at Christians, because being reminded that there was plenty of Civilization in the world before Jesus is good for them, I think.

But it behooves us to make sure we're careful about when we deploy that.

Like, ESPECIALLY if you have the background of being raised in an old, non-Christian tradition with a strong community, I think being a sounding board to friends who are trying to deconstruct their own internalized Christian hegemony is a way to be an ally. Obviously, it doesn't automatically make anyone an expert on this stuff, but just the sniff-test of "that assumption seems weird to me" can, I think, be helpful.

Make new ritual.

It’s awesome.

(Image credit: Cottonbro Studio)

#neo-paganism #tradition #ritual #deconstructing Christian hegemony #paganism

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myveryownfanfiction · 2 years

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18+ MINORS AND THOSE WITHOUT AGE IN BIO DNI

warnings: MacMurphy, swearing, “break out”, boats, some jealousy

AN: I added macMurphy and then decided against it but now I’m a little stuck with him so we’re just going to skip around with him. We’re also going to rewrite what happens a little bit.

chapter 10

Billy and I sat on the bus, curled up together against the cold. Taber was behind us, trying to come up with an idea about where we were actually going.

“Wherever it is I just hope it’s inside.” I grumbled as I laid my head on Billy’s shoulder. A commotion at the front of the bus made us all snap to attention.

“Hello boys and germs. Today we’re going on a field trip of my choosing.” MacMurphy had clambered into the drivers seat and was smiling back at all of us. He closed the doors and took off. We took off out of the parking lot and billy turned so his back hit the window and I hit him.

“Wh-what the hell?” Billy muttered. I looked at him and shrugged.

“We just better not get into any trouble over this.” I muttered back. Taber nodded and we all braced ourselves for what happened. We pulled up in front of a trailer park and MacMurphy climbed out. “What’s he doing now? This can’t be our destination.”

“Everyone this is candy. Candy, this is everyone.” I raised an eyebrow at the lady that had been brought on.

“Hi.” Taber called out. Billy took one look at her and turned back to me, his nose scrunched up. Candy kept shooting glances at him but he wasn’t looking. Instead he kissed my head and pulled me tighter against him.

“Th-This is g-g-going to be hell.” I nodded against him. “D-do we c-call R-r-ratched?” I shrugged and watched the two would be captors.

“I have no idea. But wherever we’re going, I don’t think I’m going to participate.” I looked back at Taber and he shrugged. It wasn’t long before we pulled up at a dock. “Oh hell no.” I muttered as Mac started to rush us off the bus. I got off and leaned against the bus. Billy stood off to the side and taber trailed after Candy.

“Are y-you g-g-going?” I shook my head and watched the small expedition head towards a boat. “Wh-what are we g-g-going to do?”

“What do you want to do?” I cocked my head at him, finally looking over at him. He shrugged and smiled at me.

“I’m n-not sure.” Walking over he hugged me. We stayed like that for a bit as we watched the boat head out.

“Didn’t you want to get on the boat with candy?” I asked. Billy laughed and kissed my temple.

“N-no. Sh-sh-she’s not my t-type.” He assured me. “You have n-no reason to be jealous.” I closed my eyes as I leaned against him.

“Sorry. It’s just…” I sighed and pulled back to look up at him. “The way everyone was looking at her.” Billy chuckled and kissed me.

“I wasn’t l-looking at h-her.” He admitted. I tilted my head at him. “Why w-would I when I have y-you?” I blushed as he kissed me again.

“Stop it you.” I chuckled. Before long, we saw a car pull up with Nurse Ratched and some of the other members of the day staff. “Nurse Ratched?” She turned to look at me and billy when she got out of the car.

“Where did MacMurphy and the others go?” She walked over.

“On a b-b-boat.” Billy pointed out to the dock where we could see the boat returning.

“MacMurphy also has a girl with him ma’am.” I said as she started walking away. “I hate to tattle but…” she nodded and cut me off.

“Thank you mx. (Y/L/N).” She started walking away from the bus and billy started after her. I followed one of the day staff back to the car and got in. Billy joined me a few minutes after.

“N-nurse R-Ratched is riding back on th-the bus.” He said. We waited until the bus was loaded and off before following. Hell was going to break loose on the ward.

#billy bibbit imagine #billy bibbit #billy bibbit x reader #billy bibbit fanfic #billy bibbit fanfiction #brad dourif #brad dourif imagine #brad dourif fanfic #brad dourif fanfiction #brad dourif x reader #stuttering anxiety #stuttering anxiety series

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ousama · 11 months

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im not very good at oc questions and all i can really put into words is that i wanna squish them like marshmallows. also i am very interested in the whole dating sim thing!! wheres it taking place, whats the overarching story, are there any silly little things that the cast gets into??

UM GOOD QUESTIONS HAHA some like. vaguely fantasy universe equivalent of like eastern europe ig? idk it pulls from a lot of different places. each characters story is disconnected the only thing that ties them together is the player character. whos like his own character his names suen hes not a player self insert hes the protag hes just sick of where he is in life and decides to venture out a bit more and be bolder and meets. a lot of not very sane people. unfortunately the characters do not have fun times theyre all lunatics LOL each one has a good and bad route w the good routes sorta helping them overcome their personal traumas and their bad ends being. well if you've played any shitty bl game you know what youre in for. tho taber specifically doesnt have any good endings and isnt dateable in a first run he functions as a shopkeeper in most routes

#suen and the very Try Not To Die romantic escapades truly #ocs

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baekhvuns · 2 years

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ough yes i love plants i got a cute shower curtain w cacti & succulents and also put up a lego heart wreath w flowers! i'm still lookin at pinterest for ideas too 😌 also some of the houses were hella fancy, they had stairs leading up to their door which is something we don't usually have out here!

-🍄

omg you’re goING FULL IN, cacti shower curtain??? that’s so cute STOP !!! manifesting u do a gallery wall for a pop of colour,,, if ur looking thru pinterest add aesthetic at the end of every search and it just ✨✨✨ stairs leADING UP TO DOORS??? ARE U SURE U SAW HOUSES AND NOT PALACES

im vv interested in interior design so i will unapologetically rec u some people bc u NEED to have the prettiest place in town 🤚🏻 lone fox, the sorry girls, alexandra gater (esp that maximalist living room makeover 🤌🏻 but she’s got every type of interior room) + elena taber (her apartment tours) !!!

#✉️ : ask #🍄 anon

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sunkentreasurecove · 7 years

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#I. W. Taber #Church of our Lady Angels the oldest building in Los Angeles #art #photo #history #archives

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quaxorascal · 3 years

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So here’s the completed fic that I teased a couple of weeks ago of Taber killing the big bad of her backstory, bc this is probably as edited as I can possibly make it and I’m really happy w it

“How Do You Want to Do This?”, ~600 words

Taber’s head snaps up at the sound of snapping dogs a moment before Felix shouts “Backup’s coming!” Sabina is the one who acts first though: she’s off like the shots Felix fires from his pistol, ready to lend her knives to help fight off the Martarelli war hounds and guards he had warned them about.

Good. He’ll be safe.

That just leaves the Broker.

Aracelli had brought the Broker to his knees, and together Taber and Belasco were doing everything they could to keep him on the ground. In the time it had taken for Taber to look in Felix’s direction, Belasco had taken his opportunity to drive a dagger deep into the man’s back; poetic justice for a backstabber himself, as far as Taber is concerned.

He doesn’t cry out in pain, or even acknowledge that Belasco did anything to him at all. The sound he makes, instead, is low laughter. She looks him in the face and finds he’s already looking up at her, the fire of madness glowing behind his eyes.

“You think this changes anything?” he taunts. “You think this will stop anything? I’ve created a hunger in this world, a hunger that will consume it. If I burn” —he looks her directly in the eye— “the world will burn with me!”

“Belasco!” she cries as she turns her head to break eye contact with the Broker. Her companion doesn’t hesitate, producing another dagger and stabbing it into the base of the Broker’s neck. The blow makes the man’s body go limp and sag forward, as if bowing to Taber.

Against all odds, the Broker laughs once again, cackling like everything is still going in his favour. “And I promise, you will kneel one last time before you—“

She sucks in a breath through her nose, her vision tunneling on the Broker as she raises her axe—it blazes twofold with holy white light, from Ilmater’s blessing and from her own—high above her head. With a deep bellow, she swings the weapon back down—

The Broker’s face is hidden from her view, neck completely exposed, and yet still he talks, still he laughs—

This ends now! —

—and she cuts with the grim precision of an executioner’s blade first through the air, then through flesh. There is a dull thump against the ground as her axe embeds itself in the manicured lawn; then, a second thump right after the first, when the severed head hits the ground; finally, a third, with the impact of his body.

The head rolls across the grass after landing, revealing the maniacal glee contorting the Broker’s features in his final moment. Those wide-open eyes can’t see anything, that wide-open mouth can’t make any sound, she knows they can’t; and yet she can feel his gaze turning to Belasco first, then burning into her own soul in turn, before it finally moves on, and the head comes to a stop with one cheek against the ground. The leader of an empire of pain and suffering is dead.

After everything the Broker had done, every person he manipulated, every life he ruined for his own gain, he is finally no more than a dead body in two pieces.

She pants as if she’d just exerted herself a great deal, though her chest feels tight with the fear the Broker’s last promise instilled in her. He’s still laughing triumphantly, she swears, long after his head stops rolling.

#DnD talk #Taber party #Taber Lamburn #This was probably the Best hdywtdt that I have ever gotten and it was sooo satisfying #Fun fact we had talked as a party beforehand and we agreed that either Taber or Belasco should get to off the Broker but we all hoped -#- that it would be Taber; and then she Got It #QR Quickwrites #decapitation /#death /#Yes I could edit this further to make more sense for someone who isn't plugged into this campaign #But this is For Me first and foremost

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anoriathdunadan · 3 years

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10/17/2021 - Dr. Sarah Taber

PSA for anyone who might be dealing with robot gun dogs, from a farm robot specialist who wasn't really looking at robot wrangling from the public safety standpoint but here we are.

I haven't worked w police/military robotics so I can't speak to exactly how these are built. But I can tell you, IME roboticists can be really naive about environmental conditions: making robots sturdy enough to handle rain, dirt, & other outdoor realities.

For example! I've worked w a couple startups that do fruit picking robots. They build the thing, *then* call me in to figure out how to clean it. And half the time you can't. Bc the picking arm has all these delicate cameras & servos that can't get wet.

Folks who build robots at this time tend to be focused on making it do cool things like see, jump, run, & somersault. So they can release teaser videos that make everybody go "wow what a fancy robot" They tend to be less focused on actual service performance: DURABILITY.

What's this mean? The joints, motors, cameras, & other sensors are more exposed than they should be. It's easy for water, road salt, grit, etc to get in there and cripple the robot.

I mean look at this thing. That housing's got more nooks & crannies than a dang English muffin. You think that's watertight?

For robots that work outside, not even watertight is good enough. Farms add surfactants (like dish soap) to sprays. They make the sprays stick to leaves & get into all the nooks & crannies of the plant. So farm robots need surfactant-proof seals. Not just waterproof.

Otherwise after a few hours in the field, you have a mix of dew, mud, soil & grit, and whatever surfactants you put in your last pesticide mixing together & working their way into all the robot's delicate parts. Scratching up the cameras. Jamming up the joints & motor.

If there's any salt or acid in the mix, it's even worse! Some soils have a lil salt in them, or an acidic pH. It's actually pretty common! The salts or H+ ions work their way into the machine & corrode the shit out of EVERYTHING. Bye-bye expensive farm robot!

Now let's apply this to street settings. Water. Dirt & grit. Road salt. Just a little salt destroys metal! Even faster if it's mixed with water, acids, surfactants, &/or grit.

And again, dirt & grit destroy joints. They scratch up camera lenses & otherwise interfere with sensors. They also scratch up any corrosion-proof coatings the engineers may have put on there, & expose the metals to water, salt, & acid.

These robots look super-vulnerable to normal wear & tear. They look even more vulnerable to a super-soaker filled with common household items like salt, vinegar, & just a lil dish soap. Maybe with a lil diatomaceous earth to bump up the scrubbing power.

If they don't go belly-up from short circuits immediately, they're still looking at either an expensive tear-town, clean, & rebuild (takes the robot off the street for a few days) or it'll go belly-up within a week or two. Both options are REALLY expensive & frustrating for own

Especially if they get hit with water/salt/acid/grit/soaps ASAP the moment they hit the street again. Then the robots wind up spending more time in the shop on life support than actually doing their job.

hat's actually a pretty common outcome for automation! Everyone gets excited about this fancy new machine that's going to replace people. Then in real life it turns out to be broken all the time, can't do shit, it's a giant money pit, & eventually the sponsors give up.

idk just some thoughts on outdoor automation from someone who buries the corpses of failed robots for a living

it's just really funny to me that these are supposed to be scary but probably can't stand up to a water balloon full of pickle juice

#robot dog #dubbed the SPUR or “special purpose unmanned rifle”#As the marketing copy on Sword’s website boasts: “The SWORD Defense Systems SPUR is the future of unmanned weapon systems #and that future is now.”

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thefugitivesaint · 5 years

Photo

Isaiah West Taber (1830-1912), 'The Duel' & ‘End of the Duel’, ''The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls'', Vol. 9, 1912 Source

#isaiah west taber #i. w. taber #illustrators #illustrations #the bookshelf for boys and girls #vintage art #vintage illustration #american artists

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myveryownfanfiction · 3 years

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18+ MINORS AND THOSE WITHOUT AGE IN BIO DNI YOU WILL BE BLOCKED

Chapter 8

Warnings: none

AN: I'm sorry I forgot about Billy for a bit. Sometimes I just leave him because I feel like the story needs to be perfect because he deserves it and then I just can't get the right story idea. Anyhoo he's back. This might be a two part section. It just sounds so cute.

The next couple of weeks were uneventful. It was about time for another day trip and somehow we had all convinced Nurse Ratched to let us go to a carnival that was in town.

"How did you all hear about this?" she asked one day during our group session. All eyes snapped over to Harding. He grew visibly nervous as we all waited for him to answer her.

"My wife mentioned it in a letter." He mumbled out.

"I see." There was a tense pause as we waited with baited breath for her answer. "I don't suppose it would do any harm. We can arrange it." I locked eyes with Billy before giving him a grin. He looked as excited as I felt. Later, as we were standing by the window he pulled me back against his chest.

"When was the last time you were at a carnival?" I shrugged as I leaned back against him.

"Probably when I was a teen." I tilted my head back to look at him. "What about you?"

"Maybe when I was a little kid. B-b-but I don't remember it much." He rested his chin on my shoulder and pressed a kiss to my cheek. "It sh-should be exciting." Nodding, I relaxed into his hold, knowing we would be counting the days until the trip.

It came fairly quickly, for once making me glad Nurse Ratched was so efficient. Pulling Billy's sweater over my head, I didn't miss the small smile that he sent my way. We were both too excited to do much talking on the bus ride over and once we arrived everyone took off in different directions before the chaperons could finish their little speech. Taber hung back awkwardly as Billy and I finished listening. We didn't want to cause a scene when it came time to go back to the ward.

"Did you two want to be alone on this trip?" Taber asked quietly. Billy looked at me before turning slightly red. "I know it's your first trip as a couple and it is hard to have any dates at the ward." Taking a breath Taber relaxed a little. "What I'm trying to say is I get it if you tell me to scram." I noticed him looking over at the row of games that lined the midway. Trying not to laugh I nodded up at Billy.

"It's fine Tabs. Go. Have fun." I waved him off. Flashing us a bright smile, Taber ran off to spend what little pocket money he had. "So it's just us." Realization set in. Taber was right. It was very hard to have dates on the ward. Someone was always butting in or trying to join. This would officially count as our first date. Billy had seemed to realize the same thing because next thing I knew, he was gripping my hand and leading me off towards the games as well.

"D-do you th-think Nurse Ratched w-would let you k-keep s-something from here?" I shrugged as Billy wandered up and down the midway, tugging me along gently. He had to be nervous. His stutter was getting worse. "I'm s-s-sure sh-she would. If not, my m-m-mother could p-probably p-persuade her." He seemed to be muttering to himself now. Finally something caught his eye. Pointing up, he smiled at me. It was shy smile. Just like the ones he gave me not long after we had met. "Th-that one." I followed his finger and couldn't help but smile at the abnormally large teddy bear. "I'm g-going to w-win you th-that one." I laughed as I nodded. Billy pulled out the money he had from his wallet and let go of my hand. I didn't even know what game he was playing but he did look good doing it. It took him two tries to win the bear but when he did, I had never seen him so happy. He handed the bear over to me and took my hand again.

"Maybe we should have waited until after we had gone on the rides." I laughed, adjusting my hold on the bear.

"Maybe w-we sh-should have asked T-taber to stick around." Billy joked. "Th-think he'd hold it for us?" We spotted Taber two games down.

"Worth a shot." I shrugged. "Hey Taber!" He turned at the sound of my voice and raised an eyebrow.

"You two following me or something?" A cocky grin spread over his face. "Can't stay away or something?" Shaking my head, I adjusted the bear again.

"We were wondering if you could hold onto this for us as we go on the rides. We didn't exactly think this one through." He nodded and held out a hand for the bear. I passed it over and Billy led me back to where the rides were. He stood in shock for a second before taking off for the tilt-a-whirl. I followed along, having no choice as our hands were still clasped together. Once we were seating and waiting for the ride to start Billy leaned over to give me a kiss.

"You know th-that if w-we had w-waited, the bear w-would have been gone." He whispered, eyes shining brightly. I nodded.

"I know." He gave me another kiss before the ride started. It was already the perfect start to the day.

#billy bibbit #billy bibbit imagine #billy bibbit fanfic #billy bibbit fanfiction #billy bibbit x reader #brad dourif #brad dourif fanfic #brad dourif fanfiction #brad dourif imagine #brad dourif x reader #one flew over the cuckoo's nest #one flew over the cuckoo's nest imagine #one flew over the #one flew over the cuckoo's nest fanfiction #the one who flew over the cuckoo's nest #stuttering anxiety #stuttering anxiety series

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tanadrin · 5 years

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A couple of other disconnected thoughts on immigration and racism generally:

1) You know how every generation of immigrants in American history gets stereotyped as lazy and ignorant and brutish? Compare those with similar stereotypes of the European poor. There’s a reason for the similarity: the US has often drawn on immigration from specifically rural regions to build up its population, starting with the rural parts of Britain in the 1600s and 1700s. But this isn’t either a happenstance feature, or something that the US has succeeded in despite of: the US economy has been (less so now, because it’s less agrarian, but its rural economy still is) structured around needing vast amounts of poor immigrant labor, preferably with limited options so as to restrain their economic and social mobility once they arrive.

This is something that Sarah Taber has, citing the work of historians on the subject, explicated at length on her podcast; it was this need that drove the US portion of the slave trade (similar mechanics even more annihilatory of human life and joy were at work on Caribbean sugar plantations), and in the US as in so many other places in history, the creation of an us-them divide between poor rural whites and slaves--later sharecroppers and poor rural blacks--served to keep this system metastable despite the frequent outbreaks of violence and, before the civil war, the fear of a slave rebellion.

The US has always needed huge amounts of immigrant labor, because it has tended to rely on terribly inefficient farming methods ill-suited to the terrain; it has always despised that immigrant labor, treated it as fearful and destructive to the social order, and, when those fears don’t come to pass, and the sources of immigration shift, rearranged the social hierarchy to put new immigrants at the bottom. I think it’s hard to argue that this is a premeditated process; I don’t think the agrarian elite of the country ever met in smoky rooms and said, “Hey, let’s vilify the Mexicans next.” I think it’s an opportunistic combination of antipatterns and perverse economic incentives and failure modes common to the human race, but, crucially, it doesn’t have to be this way. Even more crucially, not just morally and politically, but economically this is a bad system. It’s stable, sort of, because transitioning away from it requires a combination of social, political, and economic changes that are in few of the politically powerful class’s short-term interests, but in the long term it could make the country a much nicer place to live.

2) An assumption that a lot of anti-immigrant arguments of the form “they’ll change the culture/vote in policies you don’t like/implement sharia law” make is that politics and economic circumstance flows from culture, rather than the reverse. Poor countries with bad social arrangements are the result of culture, or are kept that way as a result of culture, and not vice-versa; this has to be true, or you’d expect that once immigrants came to the US (or a similar country) you wouldn’t have to worry about them assimilating to the local white majority’s liberal and democratic values.

(you might, looking at a Trump rally, conclude that a rural supporter of an antidemocratic authoritarian would be just as at home in the US as in Eritrea or w/e, but let’s set that aside for the moment)

Aside from the fact that’s not borne out at all by the data (all the data, in fact, points to economic circumstances shaping culture!), it’s such a weird idea to advance in this day and age, especially if you claim to be an empiricist! It’s the inheritance not of social science but of romantic nationalism, 19th century ideas about national spirit and the historic destiny of races, where politics and economics and history were seen as extensions of metaphysics, not as areas of inquiry tractable to scientific study! Oh, sure, there were some ill-fated attempts like phrenology to try to ex post facto tack on a scientific justification to some of the more modest claims, but even beyond the fact they were scientifically bankrupt endeavors, full of confirmation bias and shifting goalposts, they were trying to formalize and scientize the study of values, not to study human behavior in the abstract. And modern studies of “““human biodiversity” never manage anything better: they try to make intelligence sound like a bloodless and empirical concept (and maybe it can be!), but by starting with the hypothesis that dysfunctional societies might arise due to innate biological differences (& choosing intelligence as your measure of those differences) you’re already hopelessly muddling ethical/moral action with intelligence with political organization. It’s an epistemological mess.

For example: why might there not be humans that are less smart than average, but also significantly more prosocial, a la (the popular conception of) bonobos? Humans that are smarter, but less sociable and less likely to form urban societies? All the correlates are tied together--intelligence, prosociality, economic success--in a way they certainly very often are not in individuals, and the result is hypothesis that, in good evo-psych fashion, pretend to be carefully dispassionate and rigorous while actually smuggling in a whole cartload of assumptions for the unwary reader, and which conveniently permit the political scientist to ignore the last few thousand years or so of history, as though even if these hypotheses were true the magnitude of the effect of these differences is so vast as to swamp every other material circumstance of human life.

3) Following on from that: any attempt to biologically theorize about intelligence must account at minimum for the fact that traits which are highly adaptive (like intelligence) are extremely constrained (if intelligence is a big advantage for humans, which it seems to be, you shouldn’t get human populations that vary much in intelligence! They should get outcompeted well before the historical era); and, much more importantly, there are subregions of Africa more genetically diverse than the rest of the planet put together--so there should be massive differences in outcomes depending on which population you’re looking at just within one continent. Yet I never seem to encounter race science types who even manage to, like, try to form a basic genetic taxonomy to work with. It’s all “east Asians this” and “sub saharan Africans that.”

#super loose #and non-rigorous #more a list of pet peeves than anything

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blognews · 3 years

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Premier Alberty Jason Kenney:Blokada granicy musi się zakończyć natychmiast!

31.01.2022r/Dodano 01.02.2022r

Jason Kenney apeluje o zakończenie blokady dojazdu do kanadyjsko-amerykańskiej granicy i powtarza, że to poważne utrudnienie “dla praworządnych kierowców”. Dodaje, że pojazdy ustawione na autostradzie mogą uniemożliwić przejazd służbom ratunkowym. “Blokada musi się zakończyć natychmiast!”, mówił Kenney w niedzielę po południu.

Blokada jest ideowo związana z konwojem ciężarówek, który pojechał do Ottawy. Znajduje się na autostradzie numer 4 na południe od Lethbridge przed przygranicznym miasteczkiem Coutts. W wielkim korku stoją zarówno ciężarówki, jak i samochody osobowe. Trwa to od soboty po południu. Do granicy i od granicy praktycznie nic nie jest w stanie przejechać.

RCMP przekazało w niedzielę, że próbuje pomagać kierowcom ciężarówek, którzy chcieliby wyjechać z zablokowanej okolicy. Zapewniło, że ambulans do Coutts może dojechać droga szutrową. Może być jednak problem ze strażą pożarną. W Coutts działa ochotnicza straż pożarna, które obsługuje też Sweet Grass w Montanie po amerykańskiej stronie. Gdy granica jest zablokowana, straż nie da rady przejechać, gdyby doszło do pożaru.

Kierowca David May, który jeździ od 15 lat i jest zaszczepiony, uważa, że protest nie ma sensu. Ma przewieźć mięso z Brooks w Albercie do Portland w Oregonie. Utknął w Milk River, Alta., gdzie zaparkował i czeka. Mówi, że czeka tu wielu kierowców, którzy są zaszczepieni i mogliby przekroczyć granicę, ale nie są w stanie do niej dojechać.

Służby graniczne w niedzielę poinformowały, że monitorują sytuację. Jeśli zajdzie potrzeba, mogą wezwać na pomoc miejscową policję. Od strony USA nie ma żadnej blokady, dojazd do granicy odbywa się normalnie. Rzecznik CBSA dodał, że zgodnie z Customs Act uniemożliwianie służbom granicznym wykonywania ich pracy jest przestępstwem.

Przejście w Coutts jest jedynym czynnym przez całą dobę siedem dni w tygodniu przejściem między Albertą i Montaną. Tędy przebiega szlak handlowy między Kanadą, Stanami Zjednoczonymi i Meksykiem. Prowincyjne prawo o ochronie infrastruktury krytycznej uchwalone w 2020 roku pozwala na nakładanie kar m.in. za uniemożliwianie funkcjonowania infrastruktury, w tym autostrad. Osobom indywidualnym grozi kara do 10 000 dol. za pierwszym razem i do 25 000 dol. za każdym kolejnym. Możliwa jest tez kara pozbawienia wolności do pół roku. Premeir Kenney przypomniał, że prowincja może być zmuszona do egzekwowania tego prawa.

Jeden z członków United Conservative Party, poseł z Taber-Warner, Grant Hunter, przyjechał z rodziną, by okazać wsparcie protestującym. Zamieścił na fejsbuku zdjęcia przy ciężarówkach.

Liderka NDP, Rachel Notley, oświadczyła, że jej partia potępia blokowanie dojazdu do granicy, a także akty wandalizmu i używanie nienawistnych symboli, które można było obserwować przez weekend.

G.net

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demospectator · 3 years

Photo

The Fook Sang Tong herbalist shop, c. 1890 (from the collection of the San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library). Fook Sang Tong or 福生堂藥材 (canto: “Fook Sang Tong yeuk choy”) was located at 744 Sacramento Street.

The Herbalists: Old Chinatown’s Pioneer Healthcare Providers During The Era Of Exclusion And Segregation

“When more than 100,000 Chinese were put largely upon their own to minister to their sick or injured, how did they handle the problem? Specifically, what medications and methods were utilized in the 19th century?” -- Historian Thomas W. Chinn.

When Thomas Chinn (a co-founder of the Chinese Historical Society of America), posed the above question in the publication “ History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, he implicitly asserted that in the era of exclusion and segregation, San Francisco’s Chinese community essentially had no access to the US health care system for the first 75 years of its existence.

The herbalist shop depicted in the first photograph of this series, Fook Sang Tong, appears in the earliest directory for Chinese businesses as the “Fook Chang Hong, druggist and chemist” on Chinatown’s first main street at 744 Sacramento as of 1875.

The listing for “Fook Sing Tong, Drugs” from the Wells Fargo Chinese business directory of 1878. The listing reads 福生堂各省地道藥材鋪 (lit. “Fook Sang Tong various provinces authentic herbal medicine shop ”; canto: “Fook Saang Tong gok saang deih douh yeuk choi poh”; pinyin: Fúshēng táng gèshěng dìdào yàocái pù)

The herbalists at Fook Sang Tong would continue to do business at the northeast corner of Sacramento and Dupont Streets for the rest of the 19th century before probably moving to 827 Washington Street, according to the 1904 telephone directory (with an exchange number of “China 607”). The shop apparently survived to reestablish itself after the Great Earthquake and Fire at 901 Grant Avenue.

Chinn wrote about Chinatown’s traditional medicine sector as follows:

“In the beginning, few Chinese were willing to consult an American doctor in a strange country. The language barrier, the higher fees, and strange medications and methods were too much to assimilate, particularly when one's life was frequently at stake. So the great majority relied upon their old-world, familiar remedies.

“The first Chinese to reach these shores undoubtedly had amongst his belongings, a package of assorted herbs and other old-world "cures." As more Chinese arrived, the first herb stores and herb dispensers appeared in San Francisco. Then, as other Chinese communities sprang up, the herb dispensers followed with their wares.

“3721 Chinese Apothecary, Chinatown, S.F. Cal.” c. 1885. Photograph by I.W. Taber (from the Marilyn Blaisdell Collection). Collector and researcher Wong Yuen-Ming observes that this photo captures the interior of the Quong Sang Tong apothecary, the same subject as Taber’s photo “B 5397.” According to Wong, “the picture … has many additional components: the large embroidery on top (which covers most of the 廣生堂 [canto: “Gwong Sang Tong”] banner that remain visible very partially on bottom), the calligraphy pair that looks like it is just placed on the sides to take the photo but especially the clock inside the door. Both embroidery and calligraphy might have been temporarily hung, maybe specifically to take that … photo, but I think it is reasonable to believe that the clock is a later addition ‘to stay’ which means the … photo should be [dated] later”

“An herb dispenser acts in a like capacity to that of the pharmacist: upon prescription of the herb doctor. If the ailment is minor, a person went directly to the herb shop and asks the dispenser to "pick up a prescription of herbal tea," after first describing his ailment to the dispenser. If the ailment is of long standing, or serious, the sick man hurries to the herb doctor.

Chinatown medical clinic. c. 1890 Photographer unknown

“Nearly all patients receive a "pulse diagnosis," which consists of the patient's resting each wrist in turn upon a small cushion on the table. The doctor places three of his fingers lightly upon the wrist and notes the pulse-beat for several minutes. His concentration is deep. He may ask the patient's age, and his marital status; once in awhile, a very few, seemingly irrelevant questions. lf the doctor were asked, he would say that the Chinese herb doctors believe that the condition of each of the vital organ is indicated by the pulse; that they define at least twelve different pulses, and claim to be able to distinguish them by the wrist-beat. Without further ado, the herb doctor renders his opinion on the nature of the illness, and the requirements necessary to effect a cure. He prescribes an herb tea.

“The prescription is then taken to the herb shop (sometimes within the same suite of rooms). There, the herb shop has on its shelves literally a hundred or more small drawers. They contain his more popular merchandise. A complete herb shop in China may have more than three thousand items classified and used as medicine, but generally only five to six hundred are in popular use. One prescription may contain from ten to fifteen varieties of herbs, barks, roots, gums, nuts, flowers, and other medically-used-for-centuries items. All of these are put in a pot with water, and brewed for the required length of time. Invariably, it is a bitter tea.

“150 Chinese Drug Store, San Francisco, California – Destroyed by earthquake and fire Apr. 18, 1906” c. 1905. Photographer unknown (postcard from the collection of Wong Yuen-Ming).

A Chinese drugstore in Chinatown. Photographer unknown

“The patient returns each day for further pulse examinations. The prescription may be repeated, or varied to a stronger or weaker tea, or a different tea. The results generally are good, and the patient would return to work praising his doctor's skill. Nor were herbs or consultations with herb doctors limited to the Chinese. Other nationalities used the herb doctors and his prescriptions also. Toward the latter part of the 1880's and continuing to the present time, goodly numbers of Caucasians began to consult the herbalist and to be treated by him.

“In the beginning herbs were all imported from China, and with the exception of a certain species of deer, few animal substances were used. This horn was ground into powder and sometimes given with the herbs (the Chinese believing that it gave one greater strength).

“B 5397. Chinese Apothecary. Chinatown, S.F., Cal.” – photo by Isaiah West Taber c. 1890 (from the Marilyn Blaisdell collection). The bold signage above the group photo of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners proclaims the firm name of 廣生堂 (canto: Gwong Sang Tong). Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the year 1895 provides a clue as to where I.W. Taber took this photograph. The directory shows under “Opium (Importers and Dealers)” a “Quong Sang Tong & Co.” located at 900 Dupont Street (at the northeast corner of the intersection with Washington Street).

“Early in the twentieth century, herb shops and herb doctors were the subjects of close scrutiny for possible violations of California medical laws and practice, but successfully survived the ordeal. A once moderately flourishing trade had nearly disappeared when federal laws prohibited the importation of herbs from China's Communist held mainland. The climate has changed in 1973-74, and the flow of herbs has once again assured the importation of herbs for sale.”

The intersection of Sacramento and Dupont Streets, c. 1893. Photographer unknown (from the Marilyn Blaisdell Collection). The buildings located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Dupont and Sacramento streets housed several Chinese medicine establishments.

“Apricot Spring Orchard” c. 1900. Photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the Library of Congress)

Among the better-known herbal dispensaries was Apricot Spring Orchard or 杏春玲 ( canto: “hahng chuen ling”; pinyin: xìng chūnlíng), which located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Dupont and Sacramento Streets, probably at 706a Dupont (where the 1904 phone directory listed it as “Hong Chun Lum, Drugs”).

According to historian Jack Tchen, “The name derives from a folktale about a benevolent doctor from Lushan who refused monetary payment for curing his patients, but accepted remuneration in the form of apricot trees for his property.”

“Apricot Spring Orchard” c. 1900. Detail of a photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the Library of Congress)

View of a crowd of men near the southeast corner of Dupont and Washington streets, c. 1882-1895 (confirmed years of the herbalist store’s operation based on directory references). The long, vertical sign of the Tie Wo Hong drugstore can be seen at the right of the frame. The Langley directory of 1895 listed Tie Wo Hong Drugs (太和堂各省地道藥材; canto: “Tai Wo Tong gok saang deih douh yeuk choi”) at 842 Dupont Street (and 745 Washington Street). In 1883 (and moving right to left down the hill in the photo), the storefront at 743 Washington Street (seen left of center) was occupied by the Ly Chin jewelry store. The address of 739 Washington Street (at left) was occupied by the Sung Wah barbershop and the Yee Chong & Co. store specializing in ladies' underwear.

“All Peace Hall” (drugstore) c. 1900. Photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the Library of Congress) The “Tóng'ān táng” drugstore was located near the northeast corner of its intersection with Jackson Street. The 1904 phone directory lists a “Hong On Tong, Drugs” (indicating the Toisanese pronunciation of 同安堂; canto: “tuhng on tong”) at 1002 Dupont (with a phone number of “China 115”).

“The Drug Store Sign” c. 1900. Photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the Library of Congress). Unfortunately, Genthe’s shot cut off the top portion of the sign. The partial signage advertises a common claim that the shop sells: 各省地道藥材 (lit.: “authentic medicinal herbs of various provinces”; canto: “gok saang deih douh yeuk choi”)

The 800-block of Dupont Street hosted a cluster of herbal medicine establishments prior to 1906.

“Street Scene in Chinatown” c. 1892-1905. Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Bancroft Library). Partial signage for the Hong Yan Tong drugstore (China 559 in the Chinese telephone book of 1905) can be seen at 810 Dupont Street in the center of the frame as follows: “同仁堂各 . . .” This herbalist business had established itself at least as early as 1892, and it would also reestablish itself at 916 Grant Avenue after the earthquake and fire of 1906.

New Year’s flower shoppers gather at a curbside stall in front of the business premises of the Dan Sang Tong drugstore at 822 Dupont Street, c. 1905 (from the collection of the Bancroft Library). The white vertical sign reads: 贊生堂各省地道藥材 (lit. “Daan Saang Tong authentic herbal medicine of various provinces”; canto: “Daan SaangTong gok saang deih douh yeuk choi”). The Dan Sang Tong drugstore would reestablish itself at 842 Grant Avenue during Chinatown’s post-1906 reconstruction.

After the disaster in 1906, the practitioners of traditional Chinese herbal medicine would reestablish themselves in the rebuilt Chinatown.

“Chinese Drug Store, San Francisco, California” c. 1907-1913. Photographer unknown (from the collection of Wong Yuen-Ming).. The postcard depicts the post-1906 drugstore, Choy Tee Tong 采芝堂藥材 (canto: “Choy Tee Tong yeuk choy”) located at 804 Grant Avenue.

However, historian Jack Tchen observes, “the Chinese were generally barred from access to San Francisco's hospitals and unfairly blamed for many of the plagues that affected the city. Racist policies eventually forced Chinese businessmen to build their own clinic.”

The “Oriental Dispensary” ( 東華醫局; canto: “Duhng Wah yee kuk”) on Sacramento Street in 1899. (Photograph courtesy of Chinese Hospital).

The first, partially-western medical dispensary (Tung Wah) had been established in 1899. Another quarter-century would pass before the great institution of Chinese Hospital would open its doors in Chinatown on April 18, 1925 (but that’s a story for another day).

Photograph courtesy of Chinese Hospital

[updated 2024-4-5]

#Herbalists of Chinatown #Fook Sang Tong #Quong Sang Tong & Co.#San Francisco Chinatown #Hong Yan Tong #Dan Sang Tong drugs #Chinese herbal medicine #Tie Wo Hong drugstore #Choy Tee Tong #Chinese Hospital #Oriental Dispensary #Tung Wah #All Peace Hall #Apricot Spring Orchard #Chinese apothecary #Thomas W. Chinn #各省地道藥材

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