#globalization four

[getgptbot]

Jobs AI won’t replace, according to the World Economic Forum

License and Republishing World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

[news-artificially-intelligent]

Jobs AI won’t replace, according to the World Economic Forum

License and Republishing World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

What's better, TB awareness or ethically sourced coffee?

I am a very, very big fan of our coffee, but...

If everyone in wealthy countries understood that TB has killed FORTY MILLION PEOPLE since the year 2000, and if everyone in wealthy countries was angry and disgusted by the ongoing horror of underfunded research and treatment distribution, then TB death rates would decline by 60 or 70% over the next decade, simply because more resources would be devoted to finding new treatments and effectively distributing current ones. (We've seen this happen before! Look at HIV/AIDS death between 2005 and 2015! They fell by over 50%, not primarily because of new treatments but because of a dramatic expansion of existing treatments. Same thing could happen with TB.)

Like, we might lose 20 million people in the 2030s to TB, not because it's an impossible problem to solve but because we do not treat the problems of impoverished communities the way we treat the problems of rich communities.

So yeah, TB awareness (and activism! and fundraising! and advocacy for patients!) is vastly, vastly more important than the world's best coffee.

[moregraceful]

max and i are closing in on launching [redacted sports rpf charity fest] and i am once again pondering how do i write "experience with writing form emails and manipulating google forms in ways no one has dreamed of" in a cover letter without saying "i did it for the rpf grind"...like there's no way unless everyone in this microsoft teams meeting gets really cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. you know

[fatehbaz]

“Dutch King apologizes for Netherlands’ role in slavery.”

The Dutch/Netherlands abducted slaves from West Africa; hosted the Dutch West India Company; operated an extensive profitable sugar plantation industry built on slave labor; and established colonies in the greater Caribbean region including sites at Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Bonaire, and the adjacent “Wild Coast” (land between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, including Guyana and Suriname). Many of these places remained official colonies until between the 1950s and 1990s.

---

Scholarship on resistance to Dutch practices of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism in the Caribbean:

“Decolonization, Otherness, and the Neglect of the Dutch Caribbean in Caribbean Studies.” Margo Groenewoud. Small Axe. 2021.

“Women’s mobilizations in the Dutch Antilles (Curaçao and Aruba, 1946-1993).” Margo Groenewoud. Clio. Women, Gender, History No. 50. 2019.

“Black Power, Popular Revolt, and Decolonization in the Dutch Caribbean.” Gert Oostindie. In: Black Power in the Caribbean. Edited by Kate Quinn. 2014.

“History Brought Home: Postcolonial Migrations and the Dutch Rediscovery of Slavery.” Gert Oostindie. In: Post-Colonial Immigrants and Identity Formations in the Netherlands. Edited by Ulbe Bosma. 2012.

“Other Radicals: Anton de Kom and the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition.” Wayne Modest and Susan Legene. Small Axe. 2023.

Di ki manera? A Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917. Rosemary Allen. 2007.

Creolization and Contraband: Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Linda Rupert. 2012.

“The Empire Writes Back: David Nassy and Jewish Creole Historiography in Colonial Suriname.” Sina Rauschenbach. The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives. 2018.

“The Scholarly Atlantic: Circuits of Knowledge Between Britain, the Dutch Republic and the Americas in the Eighteenth Century.” Karel Davids. 2014. And: “Paramaribo as Dutch and Atlantic Nodal Point, 1640-1795.” Karwan Fatah-Black. 2014. And: Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders. Edited by Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman. 2014.

Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective. Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers. 2003. And: “Head versus heart: The ambiguities of non-sovereignties in the Dutch Caribbean.” Wouter Veenendaal and Gert Oostindie. Regional & Federal Studies 28(4). August 2017.

Tambú: Curaçao’s African-Caribbean Ritual and the Politics of Memory. Nanette de Jong. 2012.

“More Relevant Than Ever: We Slaves of Suriname Today.” Mitchell Esajas. Small Axe. 2023.

“The Forgotten Colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, 1700-1814.” Eric Willem van der Oest. In: Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. 2003.

“Conjuring Futures: Culture and Decolonization in the Dutch Caribbean, 1948-1975.” Chelsea Shields. Historical Reflections / Reflexions Historiques Vol. 45 No. 2. Summer 2019.

“’A Mass of Mestiezen, Castiezen, and Mulatten’: Fear, Freedom, and People of Color in the Dutch Antilles, 1750-1850.” Jessica Vance Roitman. Atlantic Studies 14, no. 3. 2017.

---

This list only covers the Caribbean.

But outside of the region, there is also the legacy of the Dutch East India Company; over 250 years of Dutch slavers and merchants in Gold Coast and wider West Africa; about 200 years of Dutch control in Bengal (the same region which would later become an engine of the British Empire’s colonial wealth extraction); over a century of Dutch control in Sri Lanka/Ceylon; Dutch operation of the so-called “Cultivation System” (”Cultuurstelsei”) in the nineteenth century; Dutch enforcement of brutal forced labor regimes at sugar plantations in Java, which relied on de facto indentured laborers who were forced to sign contracts or obligated to pay off debt and were “shipped in” from other islands and elsewhere in Southeast Asia (a system existing into the twentieth century); the “Coolie Ordinance” (”Koelieordonnanties”) laws of 1880 which allowed plantation owners to administer punishments against disobedient workers, resulting in whippings, electrocutions, and other cruel tortures (and this penal code was in effect until 1931); and colonization of Indonesian islands including Sumatra and Borneo, which remained official colonies of the Netherlands until the 1940s.

[annieqattheperipheral]

[xmencovered]

Marvel Massacre (Brazil) / Published: 1998 / Artist: Roger Cruz

[jimin-updates]

Jimin on the Billboard charts, week four

It wouldn’t be Jimin if he wasn’t breaking a record:

Everyone’s hard work continues to pay off for Jimin!

On the artist chart:

Who in week four:

MUSE in week four:

Jimin’s total performance:

[badlydrawnjane]

GG: I am so sick of this hot weather!! GG: Sun is very lovely and all, but I fear I may boil alive soon :( GG: At my funeral, please adress my wake to the sun to stop roasting people. My ghost will thank you :B

[bitegore]

fucking hate it when people who are hateful little bigots make posts that are completely irrelevant to the thing that they are hateful cunts about and those posts are actually really good but i know they want me personally actually dead and in the ground so i cant be like Yeah

[myriad--starlings]

when will it feel like I'm living my life instead of being pushed along by the currents of time and desperately, futilely, trying to claw meaning and hope and contentment out of the hours I can before they drag me down into the murk again

[captainjamster]

I couldn't get your inclusivity post out of my head, I've been churning that thought in my little brain for hoursss now.

aromanticism is something that's definitely underrepresented.

and nobody can tell me that Kate Laswell or Simon Riley wouldn't be down for a true fwb situation. like come on.

That is such a fantastic shout, you are SO right Berry omfg!! Gosh, if asexuality is underrepresented, I don't even know how to describe aromanticism. My best friend and another close friend are aroace to varying degrees, and I've heard their first-hand accounts of how challenging it can be to understand what they're experiencing with the lack of awareness - especially because you need to know the terms to actually research them further!

Thank you so much for your ask, ahhhhh!! I'm so glad my little brainworm has infected someone else, I've been thinking about this shit for years! It started when I was much younger and unhappy with every damn fanfiction writing the reader as a petite, pretty little thing. And then I thought damn dude, if it's hard for me to find content that validates and represents my fat ass, imagine what it's like for individuals even further outside of conventional norms.

Now, how I think Simon and Kate would react to an aromantic!reader FWB under the cut ;)

Simon? Oh, I think Simon would go so hard for that. Maybe he'd be a little hesitant in the beginning, mistrusting that your confession of aromanticism is a cover to ease him into being vulnerable around you - maybe hoping that once you slept together enough, he'd fall in love with you.

It's not like he thinks people need to love each other to have sex, or that he doesn't believe in aromanticism - it's because as an emotionally reserved man, he's found himself in the position of unexpected (and unwanted) romantic complications with his FWBs too many times for his liking. Some of them end up wanting more than just sex, others get mad when he's not available during deployments, and a couple go so far as to be angry when he sleeps with another FWB.

Once he realises you're truthfully not here to tie him down, you just want to have a good time mutually relieving sexual needs, I think it becomes his favourite FWB situation. It helps that he genuinely likes you as a person, too. For a while during the beginning, he treated you like an on-call service - you came when he requested and he let you out when you were done. He didn't even want you to stick around and chat, minimising any contact that he sees as a potential romantic chance for you.

Yet true to your word, you never share any indication of wanting something more, something romantic with him. You never fought to stay longer, never begged him for more aftercare than he was comfortable providing, never tried to pull his mask off or kiss him. Each time, you thank him for his company with a warm smile and wish him well on his next deployment, if you don't catch him before he leaves. Sometimes on your way over, you'll bring a container of leftovers (or two, or three, as he becomes more comfortable), and when he initially refuses them in suspicion, you just tell him that it's a thank you for offering up his house every time. Although later on, you confess it's also because one time after a long session of post-deployment activities, you opened his fridge for cold water and found it empty, and you didn't want the poor man starving during sex.

Slowly and surely, you defrost the stand-offish, icy and unattractive front he puts up to deter people. He becomes more interested in experimenting during sex with you, even letting go of his instinctual need for control if you ask to take charge. The F of FWB begins to seep into the relationship, and not only does he take interest in you as a person, he begins to share bits of himself. You bond over the frustration of navigating a world where romance is so highly valued, and how taboo it seems to desire a life without the constraints of what society expects. Sharing the unfortunate mishaps of your FWBs is something he particularly enjoys - Simon thought he had it bad until he learnt someone proposed to you after sex, thinking THAT was the thing 'secretly' keeping you back from loving them.

It isn't until maybe over a year, sweaty and pleasantly sore as he watches your head rise and fall against his chest with each breath he takes, that Simon realises he can't quite remember the last time he slept with anyone else. Not only that, but he doesn't really want to sleep with anyone else, either. It's not because he's in love with you - even if he was, he'd never make it your problem. He's just never felt so understood by someone else, let alone a FWB. All he wants is to maintain your friendship (and the benefits it brings) until the relationship runs its course.

----

Now, bringing up KATE? Berry, you're after my own heart, I love that woman to the ends of the earth and you are SO right.

Before Kate meets her wife, you can IMAGINE how stressed that lady is. Her life is work, work, work. As she was climbing the CIA ranks, it's said that Kate desired a female mentor to show her the ropes of retaining her personal life while maintaining respect for her operational judgment, but never found one. I imagine she paved her own road, learnt what works for her (because obviously she meets her wife <3), but she ended up sacrificing a significant amount of her romantic/sexual life.

It's not for a lack of trying, either. Though she certainly tables the idea of romance, she's open to (and sometimes looks explicitly for) FWB arrangements. The problem for Kate is that she wants a long-term situation without it devolving into romance, and unfortunately, all the people she sleeps with end up wanting more. I mean, I'm not blaming them - if it's something open to you, how could you NOT fall in love with her, especially after you've experienced what it's like being the centre of her affection and attention? But for Laswell, it's the biggest thorn in her side. It leaves her frustrated, both sexually and generally - another issue on her plate that she really just doesn't have time for.

When she meets you during another late night drinking, she thinks that it's too good to be true. She's slumped over a bar, nursing a beverage as she watches the soccer football playing in grainy quality behind the bartender, when you take a seat next to her. Unbeknownst to you, she's at her limit with just about everything. Work sucks particularly right now, her last FWB fell through because she refused to let them stay the night, and she's given up on finding another one. She ignores your presence at first, uninterested in entertaining strangers. It doesn't deter you - you don't even disrupt her game to introduce yourself, just order a drink and sit back, entertaining yourself.

By half-time, she can't deny that she's curious – you’ve sat patiently for almost the whole first two quarters, enjoying Kate’s unreturned company as the occasional customer comes or goes. When the bartender slides another drink over to Kate, she takes it with a nod and jerks her head at you, and a drink is slid your way too. The surprise on your face is endearing as you look up, giving her a friendly smile and a thanks. When Kate asks why you’ve been so generous with your company, you just shrug, telling her that she seemed like she could use a friend.

She can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or her frustrations driving her to impulsion, but she takes the bait, falling into a friendly conversation with you that she enjoys far more than expected. It turns out that unlike Kate, you don’t often frequent bars this late, but a hook-up went sour kicked you out and you didn’t quite feel like going home yet. She can’t help but complain about her own struggles in turn, and you quickly bond over unreliable FWBs, the pressures of work, and how hard it is to destress. Time peaks into the early morning hours, football long finished as it’s replaced by the early bird news, and Kate can’t spend any more time away from base so she leaves you with a number to a burner.

Only a week or two passes when you off-handedly mention your aromanticism, and Kate is flooded with ideas that feel selfish, but won’t stop nagging at the back of her mind. If anything, Kate is an opportunist, and she knows a good deal when she sees one. It takes another week, but she finally propositions you – you scratch my itch, I’ll scratch yours. She’s so relieved when you agree, being up front about the conditions of your FWBs, but hesitant to admit it’s the lack of romantic reception that makes the idea so appealing. She hates how your sexuality sounds so convenient for her, but when you tell her that the situation she’s in is equally convenient for you, the guilt lessens a bit.

Unlike Simon, the F comes first in FWB for Kate. She’s emotionally mature, unafraid to vocalise her needs and boundaries and develop a platonic connection with you, nonplussed by the vulnerability that’s inherent to those actions. Sex with her is nothing short of amazing, and it quickly becomes something Kate values sincerely. I’d go as far as to say she falls into a similar place that Simon does, finding herself so content in what the situation can offer her that she doesn’t seek out anyone but you until she meets and falls in love with her wife.

[charnauk]

I was looking up some video game stuff on Youtube and stumbled upon a video for the "Marvel super war" mobile game. Specifically this one featuring a snazzy steampunk costume for Reed. Neat!

Video source here. I really love the voice acting too. :D

[foggysirens]

wildfires in canada reached jasper national park and townsite yesterday and they’ve evacuated everyone except for some of the firefighters with respirators heavy-duty enough to handle the smoke - federal help is finally being sent and there will hopefully be some rain, but fire season here is devastating and this is far from the end of it. there are currently 179 active fires in alberta alone. for folks in alberta and the surrounding areas the smoke has already been pretty bad, and im sure that after last summer most still know all this, but please remember to take breaks from being outside and wear a mask with a N95, KB95, or KF94 rating if you need to/can. drink lots of water. have a bag ready if you’re in the fire path. reach out to friends and family in those areas. stay safe.

[saintashes]

bro quackity got me wrapped around his finger. should be working on research but this arg got me fucked up !!!!!

[fatehbaz]

At Vauxhall Gardens, [...] giant paintings were erected in the “Pillared Saloon” of seemingly geographically opposed colonial wars: one painting of The Battle of Plassey (1757), which secured Bengal for the British East India Company, hung next to another symmetrical work that portrayed the British capture of Montreal and, later, Canada itself. That these and other sizable aesthetic works were “designed to be an immersive virtual-reality experience” testifies to Cohen’s larger claim in The Global Indies that 18th-century fashion, rank, sociability, and class were intimately bound up with race and colonialism, particularly through the period’s joint imaginary of the  “Indies.” The Indies describes a shared fantasy - and unquestionable material reality - of wealth accumulation that yoked together the “West” (the Caribbean and North America) and “East” (the Indian subcontinent) Indies in late 18th-century British culture, a conceptual proximity so thorough and unrelenting that its effects reverberate throughout the contemporary  [...].

---

The prelude to Ashley L. Cohen’s The Global Indies opens in a pleasure garden - not just any such garden, but the largest and most spectacular of these 18th-century sites of fashionable culture [...]: London’s Vauxhall Garden. At Vauxhall, Londoners who could afford the entrance fee were treated to an array of wonders and excesses. A well-known chapter entitled “Vauxhall” in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847–’48), for example, finds Jos Sedley, an “indolent” officer of the East India Company recently returned to London, drunk off the garden’s signature “rack punch.”  “Everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall,” [...]. Lest a reader mistake punch for a mere artifact of the pleasure garden or a one-off comedic incident, “that bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this history,” the narrator stresses about his unfolding novel. [...]

Punch, an alcoholic drink popular with colonial officers of the East India Company, was usually made with a combination of five ingredients including sugar cane and spices, and probably derives from the Sanskrit word “pancha,” meaning five (and  invites an etymological link with the Persian panj and with Bengali five-spice mix, panch phoreen). Rack punch’s association with Vauxhall, with India, and with Vanity Fair’s narrative construction was hardly a stretch for Thackeray’s Victorian readers, and probably registered as quite natural, though it carried more than a whiff of the unseemly. But then again, to 18th-century Britons, “natural and a little unseemly” could easily describe the “worldwide empire that stretched from the East to the West Indies” [...].

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It’s tricky business to think seriously inside of the 18th-century’s analytic tools, but The Global Indies pulls it off, not least because Cohen is appropriately blunt [...], reminding readers of the everyday racism of the Georgians and their fashionable sociability. [...] [T]he “Indies mentality” enters a critical landscape that has lately taken up the connections between geographically far-flung events in modernity: North American settler colonialism, Atlantic slavery, colonialism in India, and the migration of Chinese and South Asian indentured labor.

Lest these all seem like separate histories that have produced separate discursive notions of race, critics like Lisa Lowe, Jodi Byrd, Tao Leigh Goffe, and now Cohen assure us that they are not, and that our modern ideas about race are intimately shaped by the interconnected and forced movements of Black and brown people across the world. [...] Cohen spells out how British liberal reformers and abolitionists found a solution to ending West Indian slavery in the continuation of so-called “free” wage labor in Bengal. Sugar produced by Bengali peasants laboring under the threat of starvation came to replace sugar produced on West Indian plantations well into the 19th and 20th centuries. One only has to look up the multiple Bengal famines (1769–1770, and 1943) to calculate its effects. [...] [T]he architects of the [American transcontinental] railroad “imagined a new era of US hegemony in a mold cast by the imaginative geographies of British imperialism.”

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All text above by: Ronjaunee Chatterjee. “The Colonial Mentality, Past and Present.” LA Review of Books. 3 September 2021. Published online at: lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-colonial-mentality-past-and-present/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]