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snarky-art · 3 years

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My enchantix redesigns that I’ve had laying around for a while. I’m going through my computer to try and clear up space and came across some winx stuff. I haven’t done the wings for them still to this day in any finalized way because they are very intimidating to me lmao. Some info here on how enchantix outfits and fairy outfits work as well as the inspirations for the clothes for each of the characters below! I’m going to include some more individual design notes from my sketchbook later too.

In my version of the winx redo, all fairy transformations have to do with a sense of self to an extent. The more sure and secure of oneself one is, the more likely certain parts of the outfits are to carry over to the other transformations. For example: I have multiple transformations for Daphne that I’ve done, but there are a lot of traits carried over in the designs (her tirar, her color scheme, cut of cloth, etc) since she was always very self assured in who she was. She was Marion and Oritel’s daughter, future queen of Domino, and the keeper of The Dragon Flame and she was going to become as strong as she could for her people and the universe so she could use The Dragon Flame as best as possible. (I swear I’ll upload her stuff at some point they’ve been collecting dust for literal years now sskdjkjfla).

The same can’t really be said of the girls here, and that’s fine too. Aisha is the one with the most confidence in who she is and that shows here in the carrying over of her metal accents (arm bands, a metal ring at her waist, albeit with a jewel in it this time) and the cloth that goes across her chest and wraps around her waist.

Another thing that can influence the appearance of a fairy transformation is closeness with another individual. Aisha at this point already knows she likes Musa (I’m going to upload a post after this going more in depth on their relationship in my version) and her double buns are influenced by that since that’s one of the main ways Musa likes to style her hair (she also helped Aisha really perfect how to do the hairstyle and as that was one of the first thigs Aisha ever really did with a friend after Anne left when she was young and not including the pixies, so it holds a lot of sentimental value to her. Musa was the one who went out of her way a LOT more than anyone else to try and get Aisha comfortable with everything. The other girls did too of course but Musa just kind of gets how it feels to be alone more than they do so they really understood each other.) Musa in turn also has armbands like Aisha and some cloth hanging from the tie around her waist in a way similar to the cloth trail around Aisha’s.

Bloom also has similar armor to Stella because of this, since Stella is Bloom’s closest friend out of the 6 and is the one who introduced her to magic and what it can mean to be a fairy.

Enchantix in itself works basically the same as it does in the show, and as the main focus of it is to save someone from your planet so you can become a guardian of it (there can be multiple guardians for a homeworld too. I always thought it was weird that it was implied there can only be one. The guardian fairies of a planet act as a protective council of sorts. They are expected to place the priority of protecting life on the planet above all else and sometimes align themselves with royalty as advisors for things if they it is requested of them by the royalty, but they are expected to be willing to break ties with any allegiance if the leader is doing things that upset the balance of the planet and enact cruelty, not that guardians have always done that in the past). As a result, it is tied closely to the culture of their homeworld, or the culture that the fairy is from if the planet doesn’t have a largely homogenous one.

Musa is based off of Chinese and Japanese culture, which is a really broad statement I know since there is so much that goes into those countries, but I tried my best to have it line up with the clothes she wears in the show and it seemed to be similar to that (and obviously her homeplanet is clearly inspired by Asia). Similar to what her original skirt seemed to be, the pants are inspired by paper lanterns, and the upper shirt part is inspired by the tops of dresses during the late tang dynasty. The design of the belt she has, although I didn’t really do a close up of it, is braided similarly to shimenawa (a rope used in ritual purification in the Shinto religion). She has an open lotus blossom that her hair is in the middle of that holds her buns in place and her makeup is based off of the Tang Dynasty and the little hair piece she has acting as her tiara thing (all the girls had one so I tried to carry that over) is based off of Quing dynasty hair styles specifically but like, similar hairstyles were used in other eras too I just liked those specifically.

Flora’s is based off of Mexican style clothes. The top part is based off of Folklorico dresses and the petal style I used for it is based off of marigold petals, which are used to lead deceased loved ones to the families shrine during Day of the Dead. Her makeup is also based off of designs seen on calaveras. Her head piece is a flower crown which is now a common staple seen in women’s fashion during festivals due to Freda Kahlo and her hair is divided into two parts. The upper part is pulled back into a braid that has a vine weaved in with it, which I took inspiration from hairstyles down there that thread ribbon into the braids.

Aisha’s was a trip to figure out. So her homeplanet really is,, something. There’s some middle eastern influence (her name is also Arabic), her mom and her when she was younger wore some 1500s style renaissance clothes, and also they have a shaman that seems to be based off of African medicine men, and then also there are mermaids wearing European style armor, so I had to do some looking around to figure out what I wanted to do here. In the end I went with Moroccan and Zulu style clothing overall with a few other influences as well and tried to mesh them together. The headpiece and the sash/hood are based off of women’s head dresses in Morocco and the facepaint, arm and leg bands are based off of traditional Zulu attire. Cowrie shells are on the bottom of the leg and arm bands as they are used in Zulu attire in the same place as well sometimes, but also because a lot of African cultures see cowries as being representative as gateways to the spirit world (a lot of cultures have the spirit world and afterlife tied to the ocean). Her stack of necklaces are based off of the necklaces worn by the people Ndebele people of South Africa. Her shorts and top are rimmed with silver and the shape of the attire itself is meant to be athletic and practical for her. It is covered in fish scales. Her ears are a different color here than they were in her winx transformation also. That isn’t an enchantix thing but a biology thing I have made up in my head for Androsian people. The fins start off a light shade and then over time settle into a darker color, which is what it will permanently be.

Tecna’s outfit is ready for the cold. For the longest time we didn’t know anything about her homeworld except that it was cold, so, anyway Russia and Siberia lmao. The green lines on her body suit have light moving through them also which I just thought was a neat idea because technology is a thing. Her glasses aren’t a permanent part of the outfit also. They come out if she wants to concentrate her magic to do something very technical and intense. I thought it would be a nice way to carry over that faceshield thing she sometimes used in her winx form. Her physical features btw are based off of the Nenets people of Siberia.

Stella’s outfit is Greek based because I’m not original and I don’t know why almost all of us collectively agreed Solaria is Greco-Roman but we sure did do it. Maybe it’s because of the word Sol being in it.

Bloom’s is just,, European lol. Domino is a Renaissance Era place it feels like (probably because of her mom’s ermine stoat cape). So there. There are some similarities of hers with Daphne’s inadvertently (family ties can influence things sometimes too, which can be seen in the Bloom and Daphne comparison sheet on my blog), but Bloom doesn’t know that. When Daphne eventually does see her in her enchantix outfit during the time of or before the movie (which does happen in my version but with a LOT of changes. Daphne still talks to Bloom though and helps out like in the movie) you bet your bottom she takes a second to collect herself (happy to see the bond is strong enough that it did manifest physically in a way, sad because she remembers what it was like to once have that transformation and the general bittersweet longing for the time before shit hit the fan. I have so much stuff about Daphne I need to upload some of it soon).

So yeah! Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk:)

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juukyu · 3 years

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Pact Coffee Project

Details About the Brand

Target Audience Pact has two main audiences; independent coffee shops the customers of those coffee shops. Coffee is a very broad market, but it is very popular with university students and working adults, typically around the 25 – 35 age range.

Initial Thoughts Most of the cafés that stock Pact coffee will advertise that they are doing so by putting bags of it in the window of their shop or having bags out on display within the shop. The bags themselves are very plain, just a brown bag with the details of the coffee on the front. I think that adding some artwork to the bags would catch people’s eyes and lead to more sales of the product. Based on the intended audience of the coffee, the designs should be playful and relaxed but still carry a sense of maturity; I don’t want them to come off as childish.

Market Research

Pact’s Current Packaging

Pact’s current packaging is plain and simple; the front tells you which blend it is and the back gives information on which farmers grew the coffee and various other coffee related info. The packaging is fine for returning customers who know that they like the taste, but I don’t think any first-time buyers would pick this instead of any other bag of coffee based on the packaging alone.

The Packaging of Other Coffee Brands I popped around to my local shops to have a look at other coffee brands packaging. I myself am not exactly a fan of coffee, so I feel this was a good exercise as I don’t know the difference between any of the coffee brands, or if some have better reputations than others, so I can only make my decision based off of the packaging. Here is what I found:

Taylors of Harrogate Coffee

Clippers Coffee

What drew me to these 2 brands was that they have something visually interesting on them, but without it feeling overwhelming. They stick out from the rest of the coffee brands, which normally use silver or brown colour palettes, and instead choose to be colourful and eye catching. They convey a calm mood with the imagery that they use, which I think is an important factor as coffee is often drunk in the morning, a time when not much is happening and people are getting ready for their day.

Concept Stage

Initial Concepts

Concept 1 The concept for this would be do have a clear ellipse in the middle of the bag, with a farmer’s face vectored over it, but with the skin tone being coffee beans.

Concept 2 When the coffee is grown in the fields, it tends to be planted in a wavy hedge formation. I would either have a clear section on a paper bag, or have a recyclable plastic bag, either of which would feature some of those hedges, either drawn or vectored, with the negative space in which the coffee beans would be shown acting as the colour of the ground.

Concept 3 Create some colourful standalone artwork related in both colour and theme to countries that Pact sources their coffee from. This artwork could then be used both on packaging and on POS items such as aprons, posters etc.

Concept Mock-ups:

Further Research

I decided to dive deeper into the roots of coffee and where Pact was getting it from. This turned out to be mainly Brazil and Columbia. I chose to focus on Brazil since it was the number one location that Pact is sourcing from. I’m a musician, and I believe that music is a great reflection of a country’s culture, so I looked to the Brazilian music scene for inspiration.

Concept 1: Unity

The first genre I looked into was Samba. It was the firs thting that came to my mind when I thought of music from Brazil. The genre is heavily focused on working in unison with others. Most of the melodies are made up of acapella choirs, and the drum beats are typically played by multiple people at the same time, creating a huge atmosphere from sound that wouldn’t be possible without such a large group of people. This concept would have a focus on community, and themes of dancing/happiness. This Samba style is associated with vivid colours, so I would play into that aspect of the aesthetic.

Concept 2: Bossa Nova

Bossa Nova was the next genre I looked to. The genre originated from Brazil and also was perfected there. It’s a mix of Samba and Jazz elements which make for a very pleasant, and slightly more grown-up/mature vibe. I think this vibe is suitable for Pact coffee, given that it’s an expensive brand that, realistically, only people with disposable income buy. A lot of people into coffee enough to spend big bucks on coffee beans will most likely also have expensive equipment to go along with it, so this concept would focus on creating a design that can look premium, expensive and elegant next to all that expensive coffee-ware. The main colour palette that comes to my mind is Gold/Black.

Concept 3: Bond

For this concept, I equired with my Brazilian friend about how much coffee is cosumed in Brazil. He asked his parents and they replied “as much as water”. This concept would focus on the fact that Pact is a link between the coffee lovers of Brazil and the coffee lovers of England. Pact would be visualised as the intermediary.

Development/Mock-Ups

I ended up developing the bossa nova concept. I chose to take inspiration from classical guitars, since they are the most commonly used instruments in the Bossa Nova genre, and contribute heavily to its signature sound. The sound holes typically have intricate patterns around them, which I wanted to emulate for my design. Here are some examples:

I used these as a visual reference when making my design. I wanted the design to look elegant and premium, so I used a gold colour scheme. Here’s what I came up with:

Here are some mockups using the design:

After taking in feeback for the design, I shrunk the logo in the middle and added colour the the pattern. I chose to use the colour palette of the Brazilian flag given that Brazil is the country that this graphic is representing. Here is the final Brazil design:

From this design I also made a pattern to be used on coffee cups:

Here’s some mockups of the designs:

Applying the Musical Theme to other Countries

I decided to take the theme of taking inspiration from a countries traditional music and apply it to another country, this time Columbia. Pact sources coffee from Columbia almost as much as Brazil, so I wanted to include the country as an example to show that the concept of this design process can be applied to more than just Brazil.

Research and Development/Mockups

One of Columbia’s most popular traditional music genres is Vallenato. The main instrument of the genre is the accordion, which I did attempt to make a design for, but it just wasn’t working, so I decided to look further into the genre. I found that almost every picture and video of the genre being played featured at least one person wearing a Vueltiao hat. These hats are an important part of Columbian culture and also synonymous with the Vallenato genre. Here are some examples of the hat:

Using these hats as inspiration, I made a piece of artwork in Photoshop as a proof of concept that this idea can be applied to multiple countries. Here is what I came up with:

I would’ve liked to have done more work to this idea but I ran out of time towards the end of the project. I still included it as a proof of concept as I mentioned above.

Summary

The final design overall for the whole project that I am most happy with is the refined guitar design:

I learnt a lot throughout this project; mainly ways to generate ideas that I hadn’t tried before. I found that throwing myself into the world of the source material of a project really helps me to come up with ideas I can say that I’m happy with. Fr this project, it was diving into the Bossanova genre, something I hadn’t really done before, and I ended up with a good design and also some songs from that genre that I’m still listening to now.

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christinaroberts · 3 years

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Appreciating the different Fashion Choices

Clothing is the first thing that anyone noticed in your personality. Though it's not right to judge a person by their dressing, our clothing always leaves an impression. The fashion industry is evolving at a rapid pace. Creating more choices, brand range, and options for us as the latest fashion trends made it a lot easier to shop your favorite attire by providing a vast range in every design type. When we start planning to buy, we have a wide variety of fashion trends, style options, and designs. Invited to the event and want to get a new dress, you will find an entire new collection in retails nowadays. You are getting dress as your love is not difficult nowadays. Every brand or local small business also offers a wide range of designs and sections.

We all know fashion differs all around the world, its trends that get popular and adopted in many regions. As a fashion lover and follower, we all should respect and appreciate the fashion of any region or country in the world. If the east has its western collection introduced in clothing, so does the west. Modest fashion is a live example. When we say fashion differs in the world, it differs from various factors. Let's have a look at what basis this difference comes from.

Choice of people

We all know every new trend and fashion cannot be followed; people adopt certain fashion or trend as per their comfort zone. When we talk about appreciating fashion choices, this is the main factor that comes to mind. Teens are into rock style clothing; arts filed person into the cool dressing, then comes high class with classic choices, because them high brands, fashion trends grow, and this list goes on. Respecting one choice of what to wear is an ethical job. Our freedom allows us to choose and wear what we feel is comfortable. Imposing certain rules on any person for what to wear in daily life is oppression. So, let's stay calm and progressive in choices.

Culture

Here comes another important point, culture. As culture varies from region to region or country to country, so do fashion and its trends. Gulf states are all about modest fashion; Africans have a different line like Ankara, Dashiki. Western wear comes from America. Asia has full diversity in fashion trends. Asian Countries China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, and so on. Saree, Qipao, Shalwar kameez, Baju kurung, Chut Thai, As these are their traditional dresses, fashion trends associated with these are broad. If you have a chance to follow or search travel bloggers, they wear the cultural dress of their respective country; that's the gesture of giving respect and appreciation.

Weather

Climate is also an important factor when we discuss fashion trends. You see, every well-known brand always launches a fall, winter, summer collection in a year. Some countries or regions experience a severe cold whole year or most of the year like Russia, USA, Canada, China, and Sweden, so mostly you see their new designs and outerwear trends. They do have a huge collection of western wear, denim, etc. Same with the case in summers, most Golf, African, Asian countries experience hot weather. So, these regions have more summer fashion updates. Either it's cold or hot weather, fashion has always been part of it, making it easy for most people to choose. Every weather comes with its glamorous collection every time.

Global Popularity

Fashion trends became globally popular over time. That is why every culture follows these trends and always presents something unique, stylish, and adorable for the audience. The strategy of reinvented and remarketed always becomes successful in promoting global popularity. As history told first fashion designer was Charles Frederick Worth, who put his label on clothing in 1858 and later set up his fashion house in Paris. So, the trend follows through generations and regions. Example of popular global trends is boat shoes, leather jacket, denim, the bikini, aviators' sunglasses, moccasins, cowboys' boats, pashmina.

You must be reading a lot about fashion, fashion trends in this article. Does the main question come why it is important to follow fashion? Let's have a look at some way out I thought are correct.

Make you feel Good

You cannot deny that following certain fashion or trend make you feel and look amazing and beautiful. The purpose of introducing fashion is to make you feel good.

Enhance your persona

You believe it or not, people often judge you because of your wearing. They quickly get impressed and influenced by your classic, attractive dressing. Same with they got bored, ignore you because of your mismatch dressing. You can say this a mindset is built n the human brain to judge one by clothes. So yeah, fashion is essential as it helps in enhancing your personality.

Don'ts of Fashion trends

As fashion is important; but it's not that important to follow blindly. When you say it makes you feel good, it should make you look good and eye-catching instead of making you joker, giving no fashion sense. For all that, you must know how to carry yourself. Find your style; trust me, you will always be the one to get inspired from.

Conclusion

Wearing or styling any fashion trend is about bringing the innermost beauty that makes you shine and confident. Wearing different fashion choices must be about truly you not just wearing clothes that's turn you someone else or other personality. Learn to feel confident and appreciate yourself; then others will surely do.

#fashion #fashion trends #trends #fashion in world #world of fashion #fashion for women #fashion sense #fashion for life #brand range #fashion in uae #fashion in dubai

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writingquestionsanswered · 5 years

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I want to write a fantasy story set in a world that is inspired by ancient china and touches upon the culture. I have some knowledge of the culture based from my heritage but I dont think it will be enough. I will have to do a lot of research, of course, but I was wondering if you had any tips or pointers that I should pay attention to while researching a different countrie's culture and customs?

Using an Existing Country as Inspiration; Research Tips

Here are some things to keep in mind when researching an inspiration country for a Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel:

1. No Country is a Monolith

Remember that every country encompasses a diverse array of geography and biomes, flora and fauna, climate and weather events, cultural and religious groups, cultural and political regions, customs and traditions, lifestyles and industries, architectural styles and fashion, food and drink, weapons and military, economy and political relationships. When incorporating elements from your inspiration country, don’t just zero in on the best known, stereotypical elements. Look for unusual, lesser known elements, too, but also include a diverse array of elements to reflect how diverse an entire country can be.

2. Inspiration vs Taking

All too often, writers choose an inspiration country and simply take the elements they like, without changing them at all, and incorporate them right into their stories. This is problematic for a lot of reasons, not the least of which because it’s frequently done by white writers taking elements from countries with a history of European colonization and oppression, and also because taking something and being inspired by something are two different things. If I’m a clothing designer and I’m inspired by Coco Chanel, I shouldn’t be re-creating her looks exactly, right down to giving my collections the same names as hers. Instead, I should be incorporating the feel of these looks into my own looks, but putting my own spin on them and adding my own personal elements. The same is true of using a real place as inspiration for a fictional one, especially in Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Your fictional place should be a mix of inspired elements and complimentary elements that you created from scratch.

3. Similar but Different

To elaborate further on putting your own twist on a thing… let’s say your inspiration country is India, and you’re choosing inspiration elements from across India’s very broad cultural, political, historical, and geographical existence. But you want your reader to say, “This setting reminds me of India.” Not, “This setting is India.” So, if you incorporate actual Indian elements into your story, with their name, appearance, and exact significance unchanged, not only are you taking, not borrowing, you’re also going to confuse your reader. Is this place somewhere in India? Is it an alternate version of India? Or is it a new, fantastical place from some other time that doesn’t exist on Earth? The latter is what you’re going for, and you won’t get there if you incorporate henna, saris, rajahs, and khandas into your story without altering them and making them your own. Don’t take henna and put it into your story. Be inspired by henna and create something like it of your very own. Maybe it’s a plant-based dye called leehna, and instead of being reddish-brown in color, it’s a deep purple or bright blue. Change the cultural significance of this dye, or when and how it’s used. Your readers are smart… they’ll recognize it as being something like henna, but it doesn’t have to actually be henna in order for it to serve the same function in your story.

4. Something of Yourself, Too

If you’re writing about a fictional place, not every element should be inspired by your inspiration country. Think up your own elements, too. Try to create elements that with both compliment and contrast with the elements that inspired you from the inspiration country. You want this fictional country to be a nice mix of inspired elements with your own twist, and totally new elements of your own creation.

5. Research Tips

(a) Once you’ve selected your inspiration country, start by finding a comprehensive historical timeline of the country and familiarize yourself with its historical eras, royal dynasties, political and religious shifts, important wars, cultural and political clashes, colonialism, and any other important history. By getting this general overview of your inspiration country, you’ll be better prepared to pick and chose inspirational elements.

(b) Google can be a tremendous resource when researching anything, but don’t limit yourself to encyclopedia entries and educational articles. Other things to try:

– YouTube may have educational videos and documentaries, both general and geared toward specific details, about and related to your inspiration country.

– YouTube may also have tours of different areas, regions, and historical sites

– Streaming sites and cable may also have interesting shows and documentaries that touch on your inspiration country

– Podcasts are another option for learning about your inspiration country. Do a search for [inspiration country] + podcast, or “podcasts about [inspiration country]

– Music from your inspiration country, both historical and contemporary, can be found on YouTube, Pandora, and other sites that offer music

– Google Maps and Google Earth may offer street level tours of your inspiration country

– Google Image Search can yield amazing results if you’re looking for visual inspiration from your inspiration country, or images of a particular element

– Writing forums may have members from your inspiration country. Try asking if there are any, and if so, see if there are elements from their country that they would love to see re-imagined in fantasy, or elements that they’re tired of seeing.

– Museums with world collections can be an amazing place to find inspiration from your source country. You can look for items in all different collections, from artifacts to fashion and everything in between.

– Books, both coffee table books and travel books, can be a great way to learn information about your inspiration country.

- Try keeping your research in three places: a notebook, for information you find out and about or in books, a desktop file folder for digital information and pictures you want to save, and a browser folder for web sites and other links you want to save. Use the same name for all three so that it’s easy to remember and fine. Keeping all your information together, and knowing where it all is, will help keep you organized during the research process.

Good luck!

#writing #writing tips #writing help #writing advice #wqaadvice #wqaworld

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readingthelastpage · 5 years

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Tay is still playing the game: it is too soon to do this yet

hate to be the bearer of bad news

warning: this is a looooong analysis of the Gaylor fandom, the Rep era and the new era.

so us Gaylors were kinda enamoured with the queer context of the beginning of the Rep era. she dropped a few tunes that had people who used to believe her man-crazy reputation googling Karlie Kloss, wrote a nice little declaration about how everyone looking for specific men in her new songs is wrong, changed from outfits designed for the male gaze into something more comfortable and had a British unknown with a wonky relationship timeline as the public muse of the album. All is well, we thought - she is literally burning her Reputation, she will let people come to their own conclusions, she will take the money, they will both ditch the boyfriends and come out.

And hey, maybe that was the planned narrative in the beginning. But both boyfriends are still here, and one has been updated into a husband (with two separate highly publicised wedding parties). Now the new narrative is that Taylor will let people figure out things more and more - which is inextricably linked to Karlie, whose boyfriend wanted the “het card” so bad that he has to marry Karlie twice before she is released. They all want to erase Kaylor so deeply that they have to spend years in these new golden cages, but at the same time, Karlie will not even block instagram comments that call out her marriage as fake and Taylor will not stop people from writing articles about her that keep referencing Karlie. Maybe their strategy really is to lay low in public for years while building full separate lives but still be linked even in places that they have full control over, but then I don’t think it really is a good strategy. I think the more likely thing is that we overestimated the honesty of the Rep era and the extent to which is was another performance.

Of course people acknowledge it was a performance. Everyone in this fandom acknowledges that it’s good business sense to stay in the closet and maximize your fanbase before you cut the cord. But then, I argue, Reputation was playing the game on hard mode, it was a bit of a flop (sorry!), she switched gears and started contemplating the next era very fast, and we are probably about to get another performance, another continuance of the game, with things being concealed from us just like they were in the previous era. Everyone always wants that candid, natural era from Taylor and we were so smug thinking we were the only ones getting it.

Let’s walk back a little. Taylor always, always responds to criticism. They doubted her songwriting credentials, so she wrote an album solo. They called her a sugary country princess so she lost the accent, wrote a few pop anthems for Red, just for kicks, and did highly glam performances of them with no guitar in sight. They called her conservative and unfeminist so for the next album she debuted a glam squad and her public narrative was about friendship, her against the world, her against the haters who don’t want her to write about her feelings. She wrote Blank Space as an indictment of her public image (and, as Gaylors have probably correctly read, the narrative she pulls transparently with all public boyfriends), and people freaking loved it, and part of the reason why she keeps referencing it even into the Lover era is because she has never been so loved and lauded. But make no mistake, I’ve been on Tumblr since 2010 and people wrote first posts about how they shouldn’t be called out for liking Taylor Swift long before Taylor Swift started writing about being called out for BEING Taylor Swift. She has always responded to what we want to hear. Yes, her art is for herself as well as for others but Taylor wants to be an iconic popstar. Art is just a part of being an iconic popstar.

Flash back to the Rep era. The media was bad, so they get nothing. People were mean and used things on her social media, boom, wiped. There is no explanation, just Reputation. The sound is dark and she’s an edgy princess and she admits her faults and candidly writes all about a broad-shouldered love that helps her hold on - but no juicy details and pap pics. Looks like an abject refusal to play the game. But if you look again, it just looks like a response to all the criticism. Taylor, stop calling all your friends and the paps every time you go out to get milk - fine, you get next to zero pics. Taylor, stop exploiting your dating life for fame and having pictures taken every time you fly a jet to a famous boyfriend to sit on his lap - fine, I’m dating an unknown, we only hold hands, and I have broken up with two boyfriends in the meantime but will only write one relationship narrative song for both of them. Taylor, don’t play the victim when we know you’re a powerful popstar who plays the feud game sometimes - Look At How You Made Me Do Something Bad. The old Taylor you hated is dead - the new Taylor is both edgy enough to kill her and conscious enough to write this line making fun of herself. And those are not the only lines where she’s sarcastic and high drama either.

She Did All Of That, created some iconic imagery, and pretty soon she was able to see that it wasn’t really landing the way 1989 did. She gambled everything on a carefully planned (but still abbreviated) tour, won the gamble, landed on her feet, pulled some other cool artistic and political moves, got bolder with the wlw messages... but she started conceptualizing the next era very early on, at least visually, and we keep getting visual proof of that. I think Taylor wanted to reframe who she was even back in 2018, as abbreviated as the era was it was a long time to keep playing the snake Taylor character. It was the last album she wouldn’t own full rights to. I also think that it was a long time to keep portraying a cohesive narrative that wasn’t really all that true anymore. I think Karlie and her broke up for good around the time of the release, and had some serious arguments probably around the time Taylor disappeared, but even if you don’t and think they are still together, one can argue that Rep didn’t have a lot of space for all the angst Taylor was feeling. People say there’s even too many songs about how she got cancelled - but they mostly focus on the media and the Kardashians, with some shoutouts to false friends, and all quickly erased by “I have a hot partner so F U”. There’s not a lot about the pain you feel when you get rejected like that, including by your own fans, not a lot about fears for her career, not a lot about other things we know she went through, like being stalked and her mom’s cancer. Rep conceals as much as it reveals, and she probably wanted to write about these emotions as soon as she processed them a little better - hence the “really sad songs” we will hear on Lover.

One of the reasons why Rep just didn’t land is because “pop is dead” and people look elsewhere but the big pure pop girls for popular music. Every big pop girls latest era is either years away in the past or her most recent phase is an experimental or edgy one. The new sounds flirt with rap and trap, productions are minimal. Taylor’s Rep phase is also a part of that. The big girls try to play the game, but no one wants to hear Katy or Taylor doing Lorde, people want to hear new artists. Even Ariana, an old school maximalist who only barely adapted to this new era by being close to r’n’b from the start, is wearing a cute minimal uniform, writing in low caps and putting out trap-inspired songs. But the pop press has been talking about being bored of it for a long time. I think Taylor is seeing this opportunity for the tide to turn, has seen it since 2018, wants to be ahead of the curve and will put out a colorful maxi pop album about unabashed positivity, being who you are and celebrating others being who they are (ME!, as a first single of this era, blatantly points in this direction, just like every other Taylor first single pointed at the rest of the era), fighting for what’s right, processing your unhealthy feelings.

But will she come out? I don’t know, because this is still playing the game - it’s just that the game and the cultural moment aligns with what Taylor wants to write right now. Listen, I’m an older millenial just like Taylor and I am tired of edgy characters, dark spaces and the color gray. Maybe she is too. Maybe this time we’re getting full radical honesty from her. But it is likely that it’s not, and that it’s too soon to unleash everything that Taylor is into the world. Get ready for that possibility as well. Maybe the rainbow messaging will only remain as what it is right now - activism for others, and a little wink.

#gaylor swift

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joanmjames · 5 years

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Before You Say I Do!

If you are planning to get married, Marriage is Under Fire, Don’t stop firing back! seeks to better prepare you for this life-long journey.

May I engage your thoughts for a moment? Isn’t it frustrating and even devastating if you enter into something that is life-long in nature and you were not properly informed nor equipped to deal with it? Wouldn’t that be catastrophic? Also, if you are enlisted in your country’s army and there is war going on, in which you are expected to fight to protect your country. However, you do not possess the necessary training and weaponry to do so. Wouldn’t that define serious casualties? It sure would! Therefore, if you are planning to enter into marriage or already in it, then get equipped to guard its gates and protect it against the attacks being launched against it.

STRUGGLES ENCOUNTERED DURING MY WRITING OF THIS MANUSCRIPT

As mentioned before, this manuscript , came as a result of an inspiration from God, at a time of a great battle in my life. I was dealing with various major psycho-social issues, simultaneously during the time of writing.

When I got the inspiration to write on this topic of “Marriage Is Under Fire – Don’t Stop Firing Back!” I questioned God so “why this topic,” He further impressed upon me again the fact that in actuality “Marriage Is Under Fire – Don’t Stop Firing Back!” it was then I surrendered my will to His and my reluctance turned into obedience. As a result of this, I am the humble writer of this manuscript.

My obedience did not come without many struggles. One of these was time constraint. Due to the fact that I wear so many hats, so to speak and in addition to the fact that I am gainfully employed full -time, I had to be deliberate in making time to spend on the writing of this book. I had to utilize every possible time which should have been used for rest and relaxation to complete this.

My health was another major struggle I had while writing. I got a medical diagnosis that was life-threatening and disheartening, it literally took the winds out of my sails. During that period I journeyed through the “valley of the shadow of death,” and as the Psalmist David said “I feared no evil.” Interestingly, it was during that time that I wrote most of the material in this manuscript. I had a near-death experience, but God is my healer and the restorer of my soul!

As human, I had to be cognizant of the fact that my experiences should make me better and not bitter. On this premise, I guarded my heart against bitterness and wrote as I was inspired. By no stretch of imagination was this one of the easiest things to do, but I was supernaturally enabled to produce this masterpiece.

I pride myself in having very high standards for excellence, quality, perfection and an inclination to be successful in whatever I do. I set deadlines for myself to complete different sections. Needless to say if these deadlines were not met, then I was left a bit disappointed with myself. I then had to extend grace and mercy to myself by reminding myself that incidentals happen along lifes journey. Although I did not fail to incorporate excellence and quality in my writing, I had to be mindful of that, so I re-strategized and picked up from where I left off and continued to the end.

MY TRIUMPHS

Despite the various incidentals and roadblocks along the way, I was determined to finish this manuscript, have it published and ultimately released on different platforms, namely Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and in print, just to name a few. My ultimate goal is to have this powerful life-changing information with the necessary tools into the hands of those who need it most.

Finally, I am very grateful to God first and extremely thankful to those who were quite instrumental in helping me to realize this dream. Also for bringing this manuscript to fruition. Again, I want to say thanks collectively. Many individuals and couples will greatly benefit from the information and tools contained in this manuscript. No one is exempted because it covers a broad spectrum of people across many cultures and ethnicity.

LESSONS LEARNT ALONG THE WAY

I have learnt many valuable lessons along this journey. Namely “never give up and never quit.” Always be persistent and persevere until purpose connects with destiny!

Another lesson is to always “complete whatever you have started and that which is in line with your destiny.” Despite the roadblocks and detours, just meander your way through them as well as hurdle over them. Always endeavour to work assiduously with excellence to accomplish your goals. Be focused! Never forget to be obedient to the voice of God, despite the odds which may be stacked up against you. Try to develop and maintain a winning attitude.

The writing of this manuscript has also given me a greater insight into the words of God. It also propels me to dig deeper into the scriptures, in order to gain more knowledge and to discover further biblical truth about this covenant relationship.

VERY IMPORTANT FOOD FOR THOUGHTS

Marriage is a covenant and not a contract. This statement might appear to be highly controversial to many, but there is in fact a considerable feature of marriage that is actually a contract. This can easily be mistaken for purely a contract only. In essence, a contract is deeply embedded into a covenant, but not all contracts can be considered a covenant.

Although the components of a contract namely, an offer, acceptance and the fact that it is enforceable in the Court of Law help to form the base of the marriage covenant; marriage cannot totally be considered as a contract. A covenant is ratified by a contract due to its contractual components.

Throughout the scriptures and especially in the Old Testament there are many different covenants mentioned. Some of these are the Mosaic Covenant in the book of Exodus, Noahic Covenant in Genesis, covenant made with Abraham also in the book of Genesis etc.

In the Old Testament a covenant was entered into by the sacrificial slaying of an animal. This was then ratified or validated over the body of the slain animal. The ratification was then done with a procurement and the terms of the covenant. in this procurement the curse(s) that will come upon the head of the person(s) who violates this covenant is also explained. This solemn process is typological of the curse that would be placed on the violators in like manner as the animal that was slain. This covenant must be sealed with blood.

In this book, the marriage covenant is our main area of concentration. This is in fact a “Bond” between a man and his wife. It is quite binding in nature and is intended by God to be entered into for life. This should NOT be broken, except in the case of sexual unfaithfulness.

This marriage covenant is divinely and uniquely designed by God Himself. It is indeed sovereign and transcends the lifetime of a man and his wife. The words of the vows states “until death.” This defines permanency. If broken, except under conditions stipulated in the scriptures, there are serious consequences.

The marriage covenant specifically, is the one of which I speak, do have an offer (i.e will you marry me?), an acceptance (in the form of “yes I will do”) and also for the fact that it is enforceable in court – in the event that there is a marital breakdown. Here the judge will make a ruling and legally formalize it into an Order. This explains what the conditions should be, after the breakdown. For example, if there are assets to be equalized, then this would be included in the Court Order. Also details regarding Custody and Access of children of the union, if they are minors. Ultimately there is a dissolution of the union or a finalized divorce.

However, this covenant relationship of marriage has a deeper spiritual meaning. In fact, it is indeed a mystery. The great mystery in this special type of relationship is that of “leaving and cleaving,” whereby a man leaves his parents and cleave to his wife and became one flesh. They became one spiritually, sexually and emotionally.

The Blood Covenant

The Bible speaks specifically of a blood covenant. Under this law a marriage was considered one such covenant and was ratified upon consummation. Both parties were expected to be virgins and on the wedding night the marriage was to be consummated. Upon entering the woman her hymen should be broken, thereby producing blood which flows over the mans part. This automatically forms a blood covenant. Therefore, to exit this marriage they would each need to be able to separate their blood cells which became intermingled upon consummation.

By law the newly wedded couple had to sleep on a white sheet on the wedding night. On the morning after this sheet was to be produced to the elders of the city for inspection. If there was no blood the woman would be stoned to death for having been sexually active prior to marriage.

Contrary to common and widely accepted sexual practices, God is still interested in the preservation of the glory of virginity!

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mickcollins · 3 years

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Bakers Against Racism Is Just the Beginning

Paola Velez, Willa Pelini, and Rob Rubba launched an international movement of anti-racist bake sales to empower communities and change their own industry

When Willa Pelini messaged Paola Velez about co-hosting a bake sale to benefit the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Velez took a day to think it through — and to do some baker’s math. Throughout April and May, Velez, a James Beard Award finalist in 2020 for her work at Washington, DC’s Kith/Kin (where she is currently furloughed), hosted a fundraising pop-up called Doña Dona featuring doughnuts inspired by her Dominican-American childhood. The pop-up raised a little over $1,000 for immigrant rights organization Ayuda, which Velez describes as both a lot of money and in the grand scheme of things, not nearly enough. If she and Pelini teamed up, that $1,000 could become $2,000. And what if she opened up the project to a wider array of people, and shared everything she knew about running a successful pop-up fundraiser?

Velez typed up a mission statement and several detailed documents about how to bake at scale and raise funds, and emailed them over to Pelini, who was most recently the pastry chef at the D.C. restaurant Emilie’s until she was laid off due to COVID-19. “We both speak the same language — pastry math,” Velez says. “So I said, ‘Willa, if we both participate and make 150 pieces of one dessert and price it out at $8, individually we’ll raise $1,200 dollars. If we ask everyone to participate virtually and decentralize it, we might be able to get 80 participants, and 1,200 times 80 is $96,000.’” The scale of the project seemed daunting, but the international movement for black lives in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer fueled a sense of urgency and ambition. “If we donate a little bit of money, we can make a little bit of change; with others, we can donate a lot of money that can make a lot of change.” They called their fundraiser Bakers Against Racism.

Eighty participants in Bakers Against Racism seemed like a huge reach to Velez and Pelini at the time. But the little bake sale bootstrapped by three DC chefs (a third collaborator, Rob Rubba, designed the graphics) has blown way, way past that to become a worldwide phenomenon. Participants in Bakers Against Racism, which opened its pre-sales on Monday (many bakers sold out far ahead of the Friday pick-ups), hail from 200 cities around the U.S.; hubs have formed in London, Berlin, and Paris, and Velez says the movement has reached five continents. Pastry chefs, professional bakers, and home cooks across the country are selling cookies and challah to support causes both national and essential to their communities. That’s by design — the whole process has been decentralized, with a broad list of suggested charities to support, so every baker has the chance to impact their own local causes.

According to foodtimeline.org, the phrase “bake sale” became popular in the early 20th century as a way to describe the age-old human practice of donating time, materials, and labor to raise money via baked goods. Since then, it’s become a uniquely American tradition, tied to women’s participation in charitable causes. Bake sales have played roles in political movements before — most notably in the case of George Gilmore’s Club from Nowhere, which sold peach pies, pound cakes, and hot meals to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and which Velez cites as an inspiration for her own baking activism. But since Donald Trump’s election spurred politically liberal women, especially white women, to become more involved in activism, the bake sale has become an increasingly large-scale and familiar tool, especially in the restaurant community. In New York, pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz is renowned for her Planned Parenthood bake sales, which began in 2016.

In Los Angeles, Gather for Good, an all-volunteer organization run by Sherry Mandell and Stephanie Chen and co-founded with Zoe Nathan of the Rustic Canyon group, launched in February 2017, and their bake sales have since raised nearly $100,000 for causes as varied as mental health advocacy to providing lawyers for families separated at the border. At the same time that Pelini and Velez brainstormed their bake sale, Mandell, who runs the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project, and Chen, who owns Sugarbear Bakes, decided, as Mandell put it, to “get the band back together” to support the movement for black lives (they have since folded under the Bakers Against Racism banner).

“We were already talking about doing this with COVID,” Mandell says. “Other events we’ve done have been very much about coming together. We had to think of a way we could come together but still be apart.” Their solution was to launch a Pies for Justice initiative with many of the city’s best-loved restaurants and chefs, offering pre-sales for pies this Friday, June 19, on their website, with pick-ups organized for the next day. Proceeds from the effort will be split between Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and Gathering for Justice, an (unaffiliated) organization fighting against racial injustice in the prison system.

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We love Chef Cattleya Asapahu for her beautiful pie that SAYS IT ALL!!! We are here because #blacklivesmatter and we demand justice! Head to the link in profile to pre-game your pies on sale tomorrow including this delicious Coconut Cream Pie from @providencela. #piesforjustice

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Roxana Jullapat, the baker and co-owner of the Los Angeles cafe Friends & Family, was unable to coordinate with the larger bake sales happening this week, and instead held her own bake sale Monday, splitting the proceeds between Black Lives Matter LA and a black-run hyper-local effort to feed the homeless, Brown Bag Lady. Bake sales were always meaningful to Jullapat, but now that meaning has completely changed. “Pre-COVID, [the bake sale] is a very studied, measurable tool to raise money and bring awareness. Post-COVID, it’s many other things — it’s a healing device, it’s a way to make a statement about where you stand.” Jullapat believes online donations are important, but picking up a baked good engages people in a different way — and offers a concrete action people struggling to save their businesses can take in the face of uncertainty. “There’s an underlying feeling of, The house is burning, might as well share while we still have it. In three months, we could all be going under, so might as well do it now.”

The bakers taking part in Bakers Against Racism around the world describe a similar sense of purpose, often despite the challenges they’ve been weathering during the pandemic. In Paris, Janae Lynch, an African-American expat and a pastry chef at the doughnut shop Boneshaker, says joining the bake sale was important to her both to support the cause in the U.S., and address France’s persistent racism and police brutality. “We thought that since food brings joy, we could support fighting for black lives, fighting against police brutality and systemic and institutionalized racism. It’s a global issue.”

In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Melanie Lino, who co-owns Lit Coffee Roastery and sells her baked goods under her company Made by Lino, is baking to support two organizations in the Lehigh Valley fighting systemic injustice. She first got involved with the bake sale because she’d formed an online friendship with Velez, who like Lino is Dominican-American. All of Lino’s baked goods have already sold out, and she raised over $2,400. “Everything’s been so heavy for awhile right now, and it was such an incredible feeling [to see] this many people show up in a short period of time, and this many people decide to volunteer their time to help,” she says. “We raised all this money, 100 percent of which can be used to better the lives of other people.”

Velez describes a similar sense of solidarity and uplift at the heart of the Bakers Against Racism, which she calls a “pure moment.” But she also does not want the restaurant industry to engage in a bake sale against racism and then do nothing to address the rampant racial discrimination in professional kitchens. On Instagram, she noted that some restaurants joining the bake sale have not addressed the racism in their own workplaces, even when employees have asked them to. “Don’t use another black life to make yourself look good,” she writes. To me, she added, “Now that you’re saying you’re open to fighting against racism, if you’ve been called out and told you’re racist in your establishment, what are you going to do to change the systems you’ve heavily relied on for profit?”

In the #bakersagainstracism Instagram hashtag, a surreal, very 2020 phenomenon emerged: white-run accounts previously dedicated to burnished sourdough or cookies with animal faces are now decorating their wares with revolutionary Black Power fists. Velez notes that the Google Drive, which goes out to every participant, includes a document of podcasts and videos for bakers to listen to while they work in order to educate themselves on, say, turning performative wokeness into genuine action. The bake sale isn’t just about raising funds, or awareness, outwardly; participants can take the time to deepen their own commitment to fighting for black lives, too.

As for Velez, she opted to bake a passionfruit strawberry buckle with a salty streusel, “something simple, not extravagant, though it’s gonna be tasty.” It sold out immediately. Right now, she is trying to keep up with her grassroots mega-success and watching hubs form organically, sometimes in places which would have once been unthinkable, like Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy. She hopes Bakers Against Racism is only the beginning of a larger cultural transformation. “It’s given people the confidence to say: You’re going to buy this cake and stop being racist. That’s it.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

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Paola Velez, Willa Pelini, and Rob Rubba launched an international movement of anti-racist bake sales to empower communities and change their own industry

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A post shared by &gatherforgood (@andgatherforgood) on Jun 18, 2020 at 10:23am PDT

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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China signals ‘new era’ for architecture with ban on supertall skyscrapers and copycat buildings

Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

An end to “copycat” buildings and a ban on skyscrapers taller than 500 meters (1,640 feet) are among the Chinese government’s new guidelines for architects, property developers and urban planners.

Outlining what it calls a “new era” for China’s cities, a circular issued by the country’s housing ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission earlier this year also proposes other sweeping measures to ensure buildings “embody the spirit” of their surroundings and “highlight Chinese characteristics.”

With height restrictions already being implemented in places like Beijing, and a 2016 government directive calling for the end to “oversized, xenocentric, weird” buildings, the guidelines appear to formalize changes that were already underway.

Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Center is currently the world’s fourth-tallest building. Credit: ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images

But according to Chinese architecture experts, some of the less eye-catching suggestions — such as an appeal for heritage protection, a credit system for designers and the appointment of chief architects — may signal a subtler evolution in the way China’s cities are planned.

“The document is really not just about height,” said Li Shiqiao, a professor of Asian architecture at the University of Virginia, in a phone interview. “It’s about Chinese culture, the urban context, the spirit of the city and the appearance of modernity.”

“This has been in the academic discussion a lot, but somehow not in a government document until now.”

Cut down to size

Of the 10 completed buildings measuring above 500 meters around the world, half are found in mainland China.

Among them are the planet’s second-tallest skyscraper, the twisting Shanghai Tower at 632 meters (2,073 feet) tall, and Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Center, which is 599 meters (1,965 feet) from base to tip.

In the last two years, they’ve been joined by Beijing’s Citic Tower and the Tianjin CTF Finance Center, the world’s seventh and ninth tallest buildings respectively. But the tide against soaring skyscrapers has been turning for some time.

Vessel-shaped ‘supertall’ skyscraper transforms Beijing’s skyline

The number of new buildings measuring 200 meters (656 feet) or above in China fell by almost 40% last year, according to construction data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). In Beijing’s downtown Central Business District, a height restriction was already being applied to new proposals — a cap of just 180 meters (591 feet) according to a 2018 report by property firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

Elsewhere in the country, the Wuhan Greenland Center had its projected height cut from 636 meters (2,087 feet) to under 500 — a decision made in 2018, after construction began, necessitating a significant redesign — with local media citing airspace regulations. The Suzhou Hungnam Center has since had its planned height cut from 729 meters (2,392 feet) to 499 meters (1,637 feet), with upcoming skyscrapers in the cities of Chengdu and Shenyang also “suffering the same fate,” according to state-run tabloid Global Times.

Fei Chen, a senior architecture professor at the UK’s Liverpool University, described the 500-meter limit as “quite arbitrary,” adding that skyscrapers measuring 499 meters are “still very, very tall buildings.” But the new document confirms growing intolerance for buildings that are “out of scale or out of context,” she said.

Chen also pointed to official concern around the “reckless” use of tall buildings, whereby expensive and unprofitable towers are used by real estate firms to brand their developments — or by local governments to put their cities on the map.

“(The guidelines) respond to the identity crisis that we’ve all noticed since the 1980s, when cities started to borrow standards and building types from international contexts,” she said in a phone interview. “And since the 1990s, cities have been promoted as being competitive in the market through the construction of landmarks and large public buildings.”

As such, the new restrictions are as much about economics as design. Above a certain height, the cost of constructing skyscrapers increases exponentially with each additional floor. China’s skylines are now littered with unfinished towers as economic growth slows and developers face a squeeze on credit.

Workers atop the Wuhan Greenland Center, which remains unfinished eight years after construction commenced. Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images

According to CTBUH data, around 70 Chinese buildings that were meant to stand above 200 meters are currently “on hold,” having already started construction. Three of them were expected to measure over 500 meters, including Tianjin’s soaring Goldin Finance 117, which broke ground over a decade ago. Wuhan’s aforementioned Greenland Center has stood unfinished and largely untouched since 2017, despite having its planned height reduced.

In Li’s view, the government’s new measures epitomize a “new paradigm” for Chinese cities — one less reliant on marketable skyscrapers and speculative financing. To illustrate the shift, he compares Shanghai’s Pudong district, the soaring financial quarter that rose from almost nothing in the last two decades, to Xiongan, a brand new city being built 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing. Unlike Pudong, the new 2.5-million person satellite city will be relatively low-rise, with its property market subjected to tight state controls.

“If you take Pudong as the paradigm for Chinese urbanization from 2000 to today, then you look at Xiongan — which is not dominated by real estate speculation or iconic buildings — as the new paradigm … then that’s quite an amazing change we’re witnessing.”

A new framework

Yet Li maintains that the 500-meter height restriction is, from an academic standpoint, “probably the least interesting” part of the new government guidelines.

Elsewhere, the circular contains a range of other measures, including the prohibition of “plagiarism, imitation and copycat behavior.” China’s very own Eiffel Tower and a London-inspired Thames Town outside Shanghai are two of the more extreme — and ridiculed — examples of how imitation architecture thrived in the 2000s.

A replica of the Eiffel Tower in Tianducheng, a luxury real estate development in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

This official shift, again, may simply reflect the changing design culture in China. But an explicit ban on plagiarism could nonetheless prove useful in a country where the “degree of quality is so diverse,” Chen said.

“There’s already an acknowledgment in the architecture industry that (copying) is not welcome,” she said. “But China is huge, and some cities are doing better than others.

“In east-coast cities, or more developed areas, architects have better design skills, so they produce better buildings. But in inland cities you still see buildings that copy others’ styles or architectural languages, and that doesn’t result in very good design.”

The government document also proposes a credit system — and, conversely, a blacklist — for architects, to encourage compliance with planning laws and regulations. It warns against demolishing historical buildings, traditional architecture or even old trees to make way for new developments, a move in keeping with the growing emphasis placed on heritage preservation in China. (Two Shanghai art museums, created from disused industrial oil tanks and an old power station, are among the recent high-profile renovation projects in a country once known for indiscriminately razing old structures).

But one of the government’s new suggestions proposes something entirely new in China: chief architects for each city.

Moscow and Barcelona are among cities that already appoint an individual to approve or veto new proposals. Li welcomed the idea as a way to ensure designs fit the overall urban context.

“The hesitation is whether ensuring uniformity means that a city becomes predictable and uninteresting, or whether you actually sustain some degree of creativity,” he added. “But we have a new generation (of Chinese designers) that is great at both maintaining the urban fabric and creating very interesting architecture. The key is instituting a system that guarantees that process.”

The skyline of Chongqing, in southwest China. Credit: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

How — or even whether — the government’s more exploratory suggestions come to fruition remains to be seen. The new guidelines provide a broad framework for cities, but finer details must be resolved at a local level, said Chen, whose research focuses on urban governance in China.

Characterizing the circular as a series of red lines not to be crossed (more “don’ts” than “dos”), she also suggested that work is still required to positively articulate what constitutes good design.

“There are policies and documents talking about what you shouldn’t do… which is a good thing, but they’ve never said what you should do,” she explained. “Architects and urban designers may benefit from quite specific guidance on what good design is.

“But this needs to be related to the local context, so I wouldn’t expect the national government to produce guidance like this. What works in one context may not work in another.”

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madstars-festival · 5 years

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TEAM LESS ORDINARY: MEET ANA MENDES

Last year, Ana Mendes teamed up with her colleague Monika Simeonova to form “Team Less Ordinary”, representing Bulgaria at the AD STARS New Stars competition.

Ana (Graphic Designer) and Monika (Account Director) met at NEXT-DC in Sofia, and last year they competed against 39 other teams.

New Stars is a competition to inspire young professionals to further their career in advertising by providing them with the opportunity to respond to a live brief, with just 24 hours to meet the deadline.

Now living in Lisbon, we asked Ana to reflect on her Busan adventures.

What was the hardest part of the New Stars challenge last year?

I believe it was keeping calm after my laptop charger died right at the end of the afternoon. So, after all the panic we actually managed to do everything needed on only one very-much-wanting-to-die MacBook.

Another part was understanding the brief itself. I remember it was too broad and misled us with regard to the goal of the competition.

What is your favourite memory of Busan?

The nighttime. We managed to gather such an amazing group of people and we really enjoyed our time together, spotting the differences of our cultures.

What did you learn from the New Stars competition? Were there any interesting workshops or guest lecturers?

I learned that it wasn’t about the competition. It was about the networking. Every single person you met had a different and valuable experience in their field that was really inspiring.

I really enjoyed the Panel Talk with insights from Latin America because they mentioned the importance of the social background of the country on the process of creating advertising – from the influence of politics to tips on how to manage a low budget and still do something meaningful.

I was also really touched by the presentation of Cinzia Crociani (SVP Group Creative Director at McCann Worldgroup) and how it was to be the advertising agency behind such a powerful project like the anti-opioid campaign, called ‘Prescribed to Death’.

Can you tell me about yourself: why do you want to have a career in advertising? Where do you work now? What is your dream job?

Before advertising I worked with several NGOs – I managed to recognize the problems within some of them and how they were failing to deliver their mission. It was in advertising and this modern purpose that goes beyond selling that I saw hope: brands are better message ambassadors than most NGOs, while interacting directly with people. I intend to make full use of it.

My dream job would be with something similar to Good Agency (London), determined to deliver proper advertising services, but keeping a people-centered focus.

What are you passionate about?

I am very passionate about people, talking with goals of social change envisioning human rights, or simply the happiness within the act of laughing.

Can you tell me about the city where you live: how does it inspire you creatively?

I just moved to Lisbon, and more than just the inspiration you get everywhere you look, covered with culture, it is the rhythm it gives you, which boosts your inner creative.

How did you first hear about AD STARS?

I heard about it at the previous agency I was working with, NEXT-DC.

As veterans of the 2018 contest, if you had to give one piece of advice to the contestants in the 2019 New Stars competition, what would it be?

Be true to what you believe in when competing. It’s the freedom of the competition that allows you to do what normally you could only dream of doing.

Interview by reporter Lee Patten.

#newstars

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matterprints · 7 years

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Connected Clothing: Jennifer Nini

Jennifer Nini is a writer, activist and the founding editor of Eco Warrior Princess - an online platform discussing all things concerning eco-fashion and a green lifestyle. Her journey to sustainable and ethical fashion is one where intention meets mindfulness. As action creates impact, Jennifer and her partner decided to move from city to farm to start an organic food venture while cultivating a permaculture farm and food forest. From what she wears to how she lives - Jennifer Nini makes a conscious decision to actively be a part of the solution.

What is your intention behind what you wear and what you buy?

Process and material are just as important as style. I seek first clothes that are well designed, and made sustainably and ethically. The main motivation is that I want the clothes I wear to be biodegradable, not just because it feels better on my skin but because of its impact. What this means for me is that I usually buy natural and organic fabrics, like organic cotton, lyocell, tencel, hemp, and bamboo - plant based materials that are built to last and transeasonal. Of course, bamboo isn’t as eco-friendly because of the way it’s spun but I trust that over time, it will be improved.

When I’m adding pieces, I know what my non-negotiables are. It has to be sustainable and ethical - from process to product. Living on an organic farm, I’m committed to wearing fabrics that are sustainable because I see first hand what the impact is from that - and so I’ll steer away from anything synthetically made and created with chemicals. Aside from sustainability, I’m also passionate about the ethical aspects of fashion - it’s important to me that the garment workers, farmers, and people involved in the supply chain and production are paid and treated fairly.

I tend not to buy very frequently, when I need an item I try instead to look for secondhand options first. Where a brand gets me is the story, if they practice what they preach and value their positive impact in the community and the environment - then I’m more inclined to support them.

When I say that it’s something I’m passionate about, it’s not just a superficial statement. This really is my life and purpose.

Tell us more about your journey to ethical fashion, was it a change that happened over time? How did this come about?

Like many modern women, I grew up in a time of fast fashion. This generation is the first where fast fashion has completely taken a hold of the industry, before that I would say that conscious fashion and respect of the garment and trade was more important. I did a Fashion Business course and in that time my business partner and I went to China in 2008 on a mission to start our own fashion brand. In our time there, we learned about the background of fashion - everything behind the scenes, beyond the glory and beauty of aesthetics and advertisements. We travelled around South China, in cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou to look at the different factories and got a glimpse of the industry that one rarely gets to see. We never did get the fashion brand off the ground, but it was still a significant trip for us. It was the key changing point for me where I really thought about my clothes, who made them, the factories involved, and the way the workers were treated - this was the catalyst to my journey with ethical fashion.

Growing up, I had always been politically active - my parents fled from the Philippines because they felt that the government was corrupted and the President ended up stealing millions of dollars. I learned from a young age that it was vital to stand for social justice. I had always been going to protest marches, but I never thought about fashion in that same light. To come back from that trip in China was an awakening for me, and I started talking to anyone who would listen. My partner encouraged me to start a blog and so I did - that’s how Eco Warrior Princess came to be.

The name Eco Warrior Princess is a tribute to the fact that I was living in cosmopolitan Melbourne and about to make my move to a rural area of 300 people where I would live in a tent for 4 months. I left Melbourne because I wanted to start producing my own organic foods. The farm runs 100% on solar power, it’s sustainable, self-sufficient, and we recently received our organic certification - our life has completely shifted to a more primitive sort of lifestyle but I love it because of its low impact. There’s 40 odd varieties of things that I grow - from mangoes to nuts. It’s a cross of two worlds, cocktail parties and organic farms. I moved to the country to live off the land and be one with nature, and it’s taken me several years after to learn more about what this lifestyle really means. When I say that it’s something I’m passionate about, it’s not just a superficial statement. This really is my life and purpose.

What are some of the items currently in your closet?

Actually, I don’t really have a closet - not in the conventional sense anyways. 3 years ago, my partner and I bought a farm and we’ve since yet to build one. What I use instead is just a tall boy - a set of drawers to hold my clothes. I figured since I don’t really have many clothes, I don’t exactly need a closet. I have a highly curated selection of clothes, it’s completely minimal with only the necessities. Most of them are pieces that I can wear easily with others, secondhand pieces, and gifts that I’ve received through Eco Warrior Princess.

What would your ideal wardrobe look like?

Most people might not agree, but I would say my ideal wardrobe is the one I have now. When I look at it, there’s nothing that I would consider adding. The only thing I can see myself needing would be a pair of gum boots for the farm. Every 6 months, I sort through what I own and make sure it’s curated properly so that I’m not holding onto anything that I don’t need.

Vintage pieces are my weakness when it comes to curating my closet - it’s like a collectible for me. I have high respect for the construction and uniqueness of the garment, they’re one of a kind treasures that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. I tend not to buy multiples of anything, I’m not looking to buy repeats - I prefer pieces that are unique in look and history.

What do my clothes say about me as a human being and the identity I created for myself today?

What statement do you want to make with the clothes you wear?

Clothes, for me, are a sense of expression and an artistic endeavor. Everything I own is highly functional and versatile - it’s an expression of who I am first and foremost, then what I stand for. Because of the industry I’m in and the values that I’m passionate about, what I choose to wear goes beyond the surface of how it looks on my body. That might be the first conversation shared, but the more important one to consider is - what do my clothes say about me as a human being and the identity I created for myself today?

If your house is on fire, what are the five pieces you would save - even if it meant running back into a burning house?

Definitely my vintage dress, it was an old 1960s style dress that I found in a shop in Melbourne. I brought it to a tailor to get the sleeves cut off and it’s one of my go to pieces. I’d also grab my leather skirt, a secondhand vintage piece I bought 10-15 years ago (before I made the decision to go vegan) and it still fits me perfectly. My engagement dress would be another to take along, the year I got engaged I didn’t want to buy anything new - even for my wedding, and so I found a vintage dress from the 1950s and got it secondhand. I was lucky to score it and till now, I still wear it on other occasions. There’s a pair of skinny jeans that I got as hand me downs from my niece, she was going to get rid of them but I saw it before she did and grabbed it. I was on the lookout for a pair of black skinny jeans and since then they’ve been a staple. The final thing I would grab is an old hoodie that I’ve had since I was 16, it was my first boyfriend’s basketball hoodie - it’s a sentimental piece to me because he’s since passed away and it’s something of his that I have to hold on to.

Sustainability isn’t just about consuming what’s there, it’s also making sure that you’re consuming someone else’s waste.

What advice do you have for those who want to build a more sustainable closet?

Sustainability is such a broad topic. I think the first step is to focus on what’s important to you. What is important to you - veganism, locally produced, natural fabrics, workers’ rights? What are the key factors and values that matter most to you? If you’re able to define what that is first, then it’ll be easier to break it down into something that’s easier to tackle later on.

Do your own research! Some people find it difficult, but there’s a lot of apps and platforms available like Project Just where you can check up on certain brands. Research before you make a purchase.

Always look for secondhand stuff before making a brand new purchase. Sustainability isn’t just about consuming what’s there, it’s also making sure that you’re consuming someone else’s waste. It’s a part of sustainable fashion to shop secondhand - to reduce waste that goes into the landfill. Try first to purchase something secondhand, and only when you can’t then buy something new.

All photos were taken by Ben McGuire.

We began with the intention to inspire consciousness in our everyday, to cultivate a culture that encourages others to uncover where and why something is made. The Connected Clothing series spotlights on different individuals in the fashion industry - why they wear what they wear and the significance behind their choices.

Read the rest of the series here.

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the-utmost-bound · 7 years

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The Happiness Hypothesis: Chapter 8, “The Felicity of Virtue”

This chapter was about virtue, and the claim that leading a virtuous life will lead us to happiness. Haidt points out that our idea of virtue has changed radically in the last few hundred years; he then evaluates this claim in light of both the old and new ideas of virtue.

Here’s the quotes he starts with:

Epicurus: It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly and justly, and it is impossible to live sensibly, nobly and justly without living pleasantly.

Buddha: Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him. And a good man may suffer until his goodness flowers.

Is this true, or is it just what authority figures want us to believe so that we’ll behave? But virtue does not necessarily mean doing what we’re told; sometimes it means ignoring what our parents say, and running off on grand adventures, and building character in the process.

Haidt tells the story of Ben Franklin, who runs away from his apprenticeship with his brother (an unvirtuous act according to the “do what you’re told” model of virtue), but who actively works to cultivate virtue, and ends up very successful at life. The story of Ben Franklin makes it sound like Haidt views virtue as an internal endeavor -- figuring out what’s important to you, and then cultivating your own virtues and living according to them -- rather than an external thing where you blindly follow whatever you’re told to do.

Haidt spends the beginning of the chapter explaining why our modern conception of virtue is weird.

In ancient Greece, people had a very different concept of virtue than we do today.

It was not all about selflessness, giving to charity, and repressing our sexuality.

Rather, Aristotle’s idea of virtue, called arete, was about excellence: about doing something well. “The arete of a knife is to cut well; the arete of an eye is to see well[.]”

“He was saying that a good life is one where you develop your strengths, realize your potential, and become what it is in your nature to become.”

The Virtues of the Ancients

The ancients wrote about morality in a different way than we do today.

(1) They wrote about virtues (e.g. “honesty, justice, courage, benevolence, self-restraint, and respect for authority”), and “specified actions that were good and bad with respect to those virtues”. The virtues were not just for helping others; they were supposed to “benefit the person who cultivates them.”

(2) They “rely heavily on maxims and role models rather than proofs and logic.” This form of moral instruction inspires the elephant instead of reasoning with the rider. This is good, because it’s ultimately the elephant that makes the decisions.

(3) The ancient texts “emphasize practice and habit rather than factual knowledge.” You can know all the moral rules that you want, but it takes practice to become a virtuous person. Practice is how you train the elephant. So the ancient texts give exercises and activities that you can use to cultivate virtue.

How the West Was Lost

Two principles led Western thought (especially during the enlightenment) away from this conception of ethics.

(1) Parsimony: science teaches us to “search for the smallest set of laws that can explain the enormous variety of events in the world”. People applied this thinking to morality, and started looking for a single moral principle from which all morality could be derived, instead of using these long lists of virtues.

(2) Rationality: reason was supposed to be the center of the human mind, the thing that separated us from animals, so naturally, reason should be in charge of morality as well.

Two enlightenment philosophers, Kant and Bentham, tried to propose a single moral principle from which all of ethics could be derived.

Kant suggested the “categorical imperative”: moral laws should apply universally to everyone at all times, so if you are trying to decide whether an action is moral, you need to ask whether it could be proposed as a universal law. For instance, Haidt says “If you are planning to break a promise that has become inconvenient, can you really propose a universal rule that states people ought to break promises that have become inconvenient?”

Bentham proposed utilitarianism: the principle of creating the most good for the most people. An action was moral if it increased global utility.

The followers of Kant (”deontologists”) still argue with the followers of Bentham (”consequentialists”).

But they agree on many important things:

(1) “Decisions should be based ultimately on one principle only, be it the categorical imperative or the maximization of utility.”

(2) “They both insist that only the rider can make such decisions because moral decision making requires logical reasoning and sometimes even mathematical calculation.”

(3) “They both distrust intuitions and gut feelings, which they see as obstacles to good reasoning.”

(4) “And they both shun the particular in favor of the abstract: You don’t need a rich, thick description of the people involved, or of their beliefs and cultural traditions. You just need a few facts and a ranked list of their likes and dislikes (if you are a utilitarian). It doesn’t matter what country of historical era you are in; it doesn’t matter whether the people involved are your friends, your enemies, or complete strangers. The moral law, like a law of physics, works the same for all people at all times.”

These two philosophies have changed the way western society thinks about morality.

“The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas. Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong.”

“This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning. If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving.”

Instead of teaching children specific moral facts, we teach them how to solve moral problems on their own.

Haidt has two problems with this.

(1) “It weakens morality and limits its scope.” Ideas of virtue used to infuse everything a person would do. Now we only think about morality when confronting specific moral dilemmas, which are usually “tradeoffs between self-interest and the interests of others”. Morality applies when we’re wondering whether to cheat on a partner, or whether to give to charity. We no longer use morality to think about things like working hard for our own long-term gain, or developing a skill.

(2) “[I]t relies on bad psychology.” We teach children moral principles, and show them examples of other people reasoning their way through moral quandaries. And children are supposed to take away from this the ability to reason morally. Which they do; when they sit down and think about it, people are able to apply the principles and come to a moral conclusion. But this doesn’t translate into action; it takes more than reason to persuade the elephant. Haidt gives an example of how he believed, rationally, in the virtue of vegetarianism, but never actually acted on that principle until he saw a slaughterhouse video that viscerally disgusted him.

The Virtues of Positive Psychology

There has been pushback against the modern idea of morality.

Some of it is from conservative Christians.

Some of it is from a philosopher named Alasdair MacIntyre who argues that “creating a universal, context-free morality was doomed from the beginning” and that we need specific virtues, grounded in a specific cultural tradition, in order to find meaning and purpose in life.

And some of it is from positive psychology.

Positive psychology was founded by Martin Seligman, who noticed that psychology was only focusing on the problems and pathologies we experience. We have a whole book (the DSM) designed for classifying problems, but no equivalent diagnostic manual for recognizing the specific ways that people can live a good life.

So Seligman and another psychologist named Peterson tried creating a diagnostic manual of strengths and virtues. Their goal was to make the list applicable to any human culture. So they looked through every list of virtues they could find, and wrote down six very broad classes of virtues that every culture considers important. Those virtues are: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Cultures may disagree on how to weight these virtues, but they all agree that they are, indeed, virtues.

For each one, Peterson and Seligman also made a list of “strengths of character”, which are specific ways of achieving each virtue. For wisdom, for instance, the list is curiosity, love of learning, judgment, ingenuity, emotional intelligence, and perspective.

One piece of research that’s come out of this list is: focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.

It’s easier and more rewarding to cultivate strengths rather than weaknesses.

And sufficient strength in one virtue can compensate for weakness in another.

People who try to fix weaknesses will often find themselves giving up in despair.

But people who work on their strengths will often find themselves improving as a human being.

Haidt spends the end of the chapter trying to answer the “virtue hypothesis”, the claim that living virtuously will make us happy.

Hard Questions, Easy Answers

For the ancient idea of virtue, it’s easy to answer the virtue hypothesis. If virtue just means cultivating personal excellence, and you focus on your strengths (things you find intrinsically rewarding), then of course living virtuously can bring you happiness.

But what about for “our restricted modern understanding of morality as altruism”? Does acting against our own self-interest make us happy, or benefit us in some way?

Religious leaders say yes: if you act virtuously, you will go to heaven, or be reincarnated in a better form during your next lifetime.

But this belief in divine punishment / reward can be traced to various psychological principles (whether or not god is real).

(1) Immanent justice: this is the belief that, if you do something bad, then something bad will happen to you in return. It’s very common among children at a certain stage of development but we see it in adults too, as people try to make sense of terrible things happening in their (or others’) lives. It’s part of the human instinct for reciprocity.

(2) The myth of pure evil (discussed in Chapter 4): we think people are purely good or purely evil, but really, they aren’t. “Moral motivations (justice, honor, loyalty, patriotism) enter into most acts of violence, including terrorism and war. Most people believe their actions are morally justified.” So Haidt’s argument is that, if heaven and hell existed, few people would qualify for either.

Science also gives us an easy answer: the virtues evolved because they are good for us, and help us to propagate our genes. Kindness and cooperation help us either through kin altruism (helping others who bear the same genes) or reciprocal altruism (you’re kind, so someone else is kind to you in return).

But just because something is evolutionarily beneficial doesn’t mean it makes us happy. Our genes also motivate us to seek status instead of happiness, and that definitely makes us less happy.

Also, what about practicing the virtues when they don’t lead to reciprocal altruism? What about performing acts of kindness that you know will never be repaid? Does that still make us happy?

So neither religion nor science’s easy answer is satisfying.

Hard Questions, Hard Answers

So does helping people really make us happy?

Studies have shown that altruism correlates with happiness, but this could just be because happier people are more likely to be altruistic. Indeed, when you make people happier, they are more likely to behave altruistically.

Is there any evidence that altruism makes people happy? Yes, but it depends on the life stage. For teenagers, studies have found that volunteering increases prosocial behavior but doesn’t increase happiness; for adults volunteering does increase happiness; and this is especially pronounced for the elderly.

This could partially be because of the social benefits -- teenagers already have good social lives and don’t need to find a community through volunteering, but as people get older (and especially once they’re elderly), volunteering provides a valuable source of community.

It could also be because of life narratives. Volunteering helps you build a good life narrative, so it matters more for adults who already have a solid life narrative to build on. Also, “in old age, generativity, relationship, and spiritual strivings come to matter more, but achievement strivings seem out of place,” so volunteer work is especially fitting for an elderly person’s life story.

The Future of Virtue

"Scientific research supports the virtue hypothesis, even when it is reduced to the claim that altruism is good for you.”

“When it is evaluated in the way that Ben Franklin meant it, as a claim about virtue more broadly, it becomes so profoundly true that it raises the question of whether cultural conservatives are correct in their critique of modern life and its restricted, permissive morality.”

As a society, we’ve lost a strong sense of shared cultural values, and this has led us into anomie.

We’ve gone from a society of producers, with values such as self-restraint, to a society of consumers, where people are encouraged to seek personal fulfillment.

Also, our society is increasingly diverse, and values inclusivity. This leads people to seek out a least common denominator of virtue, thereby ignoring some of the specific ones that give each culture its flavor and give people a strong grounding in their values.

So, as a society, we have undergone tradeoffs: we’ve chosen inclusivity, which makes life much better for immigrants, women, African Americans, gay people, etc., even if it erases our strong foundation of virtues.

Even if you don’t think the tradeoffs were worth it, there’s no way to go back to the 1950s, or to an ethnically homogeneous pre-consumer society.

“Diversity” has become a positive buzzword in liberal culture, but there are two kinds of diversity, demographic and moral. Demographic is good; it helps us include groups that were previously mistreated. But moral diversity is what causes anomie and conflict.

“Liberals are right to work for a society that is open to people of every demographic group, but conservatives might be right in believing that at the same time we should work much harder to create a common, shared identity.”

Haidt thinks there’s something to the conservative view that we ought to teach children morals and values, instead of leaving them to figure it out themselves.

It may be too late for this now, given the current state of the culture war. If this is going to happen, it will need to come from some sort of grassroots movement where a community joins together to educate children according to a particular set of virtues.

Maybe we won’t have as solid or cohesive of a culture as we would if we abandoned our commitment to diversity, but we will be a more just culture.

#books #jonathan haidt #the happiness hypothesis #history of ideas

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sociologyontherock · 3 years

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A Meandering Life in Politics

By Marilyn Porter

Stephen Riggins asked me to write an article for Sociology on the Rock about the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He knew I had once been a member. This is true. I had to be very quiet about this affiliation when I applied for immigration to Canada in the early 1980s. At the time, membership was an absolute bar to entry to the US, and while such a bar was not explicit in Canada, I chose not to mention it at my immigration interview. In any case, my sojourn in the CPGB was neither long nor very significant. I will come to why I joined a little later in this meandering saga of my political life.

My first memory of politics came when I was about eight. It may have been the 1950 election that kept Attlee and the Labour Party in power. More likely, it was the 1951 election that restored Winston Churchill and Tory rule. My mother was a die-hard Tory mostly, I think, because she saw conservative politics, like attending church, as some kind of class obligation. My father took no interest at all. The men who worked on our farm in Wales were devout working-class labour voters. The trigger issue in 1950 or 51 became what colour of ribbons to put on the farm’s cats and dogs. I forget how it was resolved but I do remember absorbing the remarkable tension around the issue.

Our Welsh constituency (Caernarvonshire at the time, later Gwynedd) had been Liberal under its most famous MP, David Lloyd George, but became a safe Labour seat until Plaed Cymru took over the seat in 1974 and they have retained it ever since. The MP when I was growing up was Goronwy Roberts. He had a long and fairly distinguished career as Minister for Foreign Affairs and later as Leader of the House of Lords. He was also a very good constituency MP. Even my mother had to admit that. In 1960, I became 18 and eligible to vote. Despite my blinkered education, I already knew that I was aligned with the progressive Left, although I had little notion of what that might mean. I did know that I would not vote Conservative. So I wrote to Goronwy Roberts and asked him why I should vote for him. He replied with a detailed and personal letter, which not only convinced me to vote for him but also instilled in me the importance of elected representatives taking a personal interest in every one of their constituents.

At this point, I was also starting my degree in history and political science at Trinity College Dublin. While Labour and socialism in Ireland have a distinguished record (think James Connolly), by the time I got there official party politics had been reduced to irrelevant squabbles between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. The real action was, and continued to be, the situation in the North.

The Trinity population was a strange mix. Literally in the middle of Catholic and radical Dublin, it had very few Irish Catholic students partly because John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, was an extreme conservative and expressly forbade Catholics from attending Trinity on pain of excommunication. And partly because University College Dublin had moved to a much bigger campus, Belfield, and was expanding rapidly with considerable government (and church) support. My two closest friends were both Anglo-Irish, one a daughter of a general in the British Army and one the daughter of a tea planter in India. Of my two closest classmates, one was a Protestant from Belfast and the other was an Ibo from Nigeria. For both of them “home” was fraught with danger and division. The Northern Irish fellow student survived at least a bout of violence, but the Nigerian became involved in the civil war and was killed the year after we graduated. I learned from both of them that politics was not a game to be taken lightly. My activism at the time tended to be short term and practical. I sat under Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin fasting for some cause in Africa and picketed to stop police “moving on” itinerants, meanwhile learning a radical version of Irish history and a sympathetic version of the nascent IRA movement in the North.

At this point – 1967 – I had another transformational experience and added another layer to both my analysis and action, although it did mean that I missed a good deal of the political action of 1968.

My husband and I went to Africa, to work as volunteers at a socialist run school in Botswana. Swaneng Hill School was specifically founded by Patrick van Rensburg to challenge the apartheid state of South Africa. It was designed on Nyrere-inspired socialist principles and staffed entirely by volunteer teachers. I have written elsewhere about some of the problems caused by enthusiastic but untrained volunteer staff trying to provide the only secondary schooling in the country, while at the same time trying to develop a socialist commune. (“My First Day at School,” Your Voice: Newsletter of the MUN Pensioners’ Association, December 2020. See also “The Edge of Experience” in Creating a University: The Newfoundland Experience, edited by Stephen Harold Riggins and Roberta Buchanan). However, while the practice may have been a little bumpy, theory was flourishing. A good proportion of the staff were American draft dodgers and many others had come from repressive regimes. We had study groups on radical theorists like Laclau’s Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory; Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man; Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness, and education pioneers like Paulo Freire. I actually read Marx’s Capital for the first time, or most of it. At the time there was scarcely anything written about Botswana apart from the anthropologically interesting Bushmen. However, trying to find something relevant to teach the students introduced me to a range of literature on development and social issues and set me on the path to sociology.

There was, however, no feminism and the structure of the school and the culture around it was downright sexist. My husband was a teacher; I was just “a wife.” Progressiveness only goes so far. I noticed this – how could I not, stuck teaching staff kids in the school-run primary school and hanging out with other “mothers.”

In the summer of 1969, we came back to the UK and settled in Bristol so that my then husband could get an education degree. With a two-year-old and pregnant, I risked boredom and frustration. That soon ended when I became simultaneously involved in the local women’s liberation movement and a PhD student in sociology at Bristol University. This marked my true birth into academia, politics, and feminism.

I will try to deal with the three strands separately although, obviously, they were not distinguishable in real time. Nor should they be as it was the mingling and interaction among the three that led to my individual, probably idiosyncratic version of them.

The PhD program, which took me 5 years to complete (1974-79) enabled me to acquire a full – and hitherto missing – education in the philosophy and theory of Marxism and socialism. I studied all the usual Marxist texts and learned about Maoism and forms of socialism emerging in Latin America. Most of all I studied Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and related writings. Like many of my generation, my introduction to Gramsci came through John Berger’s A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. In particular, Berger’s reading of the Gramscian distinction between “common sense” and “good sense” resonated with me. Reading Gramsci threw a whole new light on how to understand what “ordinary” people meant when they talked and how better to interpret it while leaving “ordinary” people with the dignity they deserve.

Meanwhile, my fellow feminists were educating me in contemporary left politics. This was particularly messy around the fracturing Trotskyist groups. While Leninism was attractive in its lean rigor, I could not handle the authority of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which obviously was not going to include me. The Maoist groups wore really drab clothes and always shouted everyone down at meetings, but supporting strikes and movements like the Night Cleaners and the Ford Seamstresses was becoming an important part of my life and the Women’s Movement on its own did not seem to provide all the tools I needed to become fully aware and involved. I had noticed for a while that many of my feminist friends were members of the CPGB, and that they exhibited a kind of discipline that was markedly lacking in the broad women’s movement. If they said they were going to be on the picket line at 6 AM, they were, and with coffee for the rest of us. So I joined, although in Bristol it made very little difference to my activities. The difference occurred when I moved to Lancaster 1978-84 to teach at the University of Manchester (sorry, complicated husband troubles).

In Lancaster, feminism was largely confined to the university and not many feminists got involved in local left-wing politics. However, the Communist Party in Lancaster was small but very active. We even had a band that marched with strikers and other labour demonstrators. Alas, the CP’s Women’s Band marked the lowest point of my musical career. I was demoted from the cymbals to the triangle. As a local branch, we were able to send delegates to the regional meetings held in Manchester. I remember them as smoke-filled and full of testy disagreements about tactics, but I did also meet and learn from older members who could remember times when the CPGB had been much larger and more influential than it was in its dying days. (The CPGB effectively vanished in 1991 when Nina Temple disbanded it in favour of a more European-focused organization.)

I was also gone by then, taking up a one-year position at Memorial in 1980, which I eventually transformed into a proper position in 1984, via a number of summer sessional appointments. I also began my Newfoundland-based research, mostly on women in the fishery, which led to my 1993 book Place and Persistence in the Lives of Newfoundland Women and introduced me to a network of women scholars working on rural and fishing issues in Scandinavia. It also led to two co-edited collections of writings, Their Lives and Times: Women in Newfoundland and Labrador: A Collage (with Carmelita McGrath and Barbara Neis, 1995) and Weather’s Edge: A Compendium of Women’s Lives in Newfoundland and Labrador (with Carmelita McGrath and Linda Cullum, 2005).

By this time, my attention had turned to women’s issues in international development, especially Indonesia and Pakistan. I learned countless lessons about both countries, especially Indonesia, and about doing fieldwork in such a different place and about conducting research with colleagues from different backgrounds.

In terms of politics, I learned a lot about how people, and especially feminists, put their ideas together in very different circumstances. I learned to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.

Meanwhile, back home I, along with Ken Kavanagh and Bill Hynd, established a successor to Oxfam, which had closed its St. John’s office, the Social Justice Co-operative of Newfoundland and Labrador. This is now in the hands of a new generation, as it should be. I remain a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador New Democratic Party, and have served on the executive several times. For me, the NDP fills one of the lowest common denominator roles for my political identity because I live here and feel a sense of duty to contribute to the best possible political party. However, most of my current concerns and activities are national or international, and mostly around peace and environmental movements such as being an active member of Oxfam and Inter Pares, a Canadian social justice organization.

So my political life dwindles, in step with the state of my hips and, indeed, the state of the world. But as we dwindle, the next generation steps up. My own family is an illustration that ideals and activism and political knowledge do pass down to the next generation. All is not lost. The world will turn again.

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raystart · 4 years

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Technology, Innovation, and Modern War – Class 1

We just had our first week of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Given the tech-centricity of Stanford and Silicon Valley, Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I thought it was natural to design a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy.

Our students, a mix between international policy and engineering, will be the ones in this fight. If the past is a prologue, they’ll go off to senior roles in defense, policy and to the companies building new disruptive technologies. Our goals are to help them understand the complexity and urgency of the issues, offer them a model to understand the obstacles and path forward, and to inspire them to help lead the transformation of the Department of Defense to meet 21st century challenges.

Our guest speaker this class was Ash Carter the 25th Secretary of Defense.

The pre-class reading included: Christian Brose, The Kill Chain, Michele Flournoy and Gabriele Chefitz: Sharpening the US Military’s Edge and the 2018 summary of the National Defense Strategy.

Lecture 1: This post describes our lecture slides below.

If you can’t see the slides click here. The text below refers to the slides.

The Big Picture Context is important. We started the class illustrating the sweep of the rise and fall of empires and nations over the last 500 years. (Slide 17) The takeaways were that:

National power is ephemeral

China is the only nation that declined in national power and eventually recovered it – though it took half a millennium

The rise of the United States as a national power was incredibly steep, however its trend over the last two decades is not heading in the right direction and is about to intersect with the rise of China

While the class is focused on how new technologies will shape new weapons and doctrine, the national power of a country (its influence and footprint on the world stage) is more than just its military strength. It’s the combination of a country’s diplomacy (soft power and alliances,) information/ intelligence and its military and economic strength. (This concept is known by its acronym, DIME.) (Slide 18)

It’s worth considering the reasons why nations decline — they lose allies, a decline in economic power (the UK in the 20th Century); they lose interest in global affairs (China in the 15th Century); internal/civil conflicts (Russia in the 20th Century.) We zeroed-in on one of the other reasons, and the purpose of this class – a nations military can miss disruptive technology transitions and new operational concepts (Slides 21-22).

And that has happened to us. For 25 years as the sole Superpower, the U.S. neglected strategic threats from China and a rearmed Russia. The country, our elected officials, and our military emotionally committed to a decades long battle to revenge 9/11. Meanwhile, our country’s legacy weapons systems had too many entrenched and interlocking interests (Congress, lobbyists, DOD/contractor revolving door, service promotion of executors versus innovators) that inhibited radical change. The 2018 National Defense Strategy changed that, becoming a wakeup call for our nation (Slide 25.)

All this was a prelude to introducing the class’s three parts (Slide 27):

The first part provides a broad overview of how new technology turns into weapons and doctrine.

Part two does a deep dive on AI, machine learning, autonomy, cyber and space (and will touch on biotech, microelectronics, quantum and hypersonics) and how each can be applied in the service of national security.

The third part of the class gives students hypothetical problems and asks them use 21st century technology to create operational concepts and doctrines that can solve them.

Technology to Weapons to Doctrine As we described how the U.S. specifies and buys weapons systems to students accustomed to Amazon and the “make it happen now” culture of Silicon Valley, we could hear the “you got to be kidding me,” even over zoom. We described the theory versus current practice of defense requirements, acquisition and budgeting in Slides 28-32. And we repeated the obvious (that the system is broken) and the not so obvious – the U.S. is still using a McNamara-era requirements and acquisition system designed by financial managers from Ford and imposed on the DOD in the early 1960s. One observation that often goes unnoticed is that the government audit agencies – GAO, DoDIG – are also part of the problem, as they work hard in assuring compliance with bad strategy. (Best comment from a student, “It strikes me that our acquisition system isn’t broken – it’s obsolete. Built for a world that no longer exists.” An even more sobering comment was, “Was this system designed by the Chinese to ensure we can’t innovate?”)

Having a new technology and weapon doesn’t describe how it’s used to fight or win a war. Each new generation of technology (spears, bows and arrows, guns, planes, etc.) inevitably created new types of military systems. Shooting a gun instead of a longbow didn’t win a conflict; it required the development of a new operational concept and doctrine to learn; who mans it, what other activities are needed to work with it, how to sustain it, and how to use it to win. (Operational Concepts are the Minimum Viable Products of the practical application of a doctrine against a specific enemy in a specific environment.) Slide 33

New adversaries like ISIS in Iraq created the need for a new doctrine i.e. the 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24.

New types of disruptive technologies/weapons (China/Russia A2/AD, China’s DF-21D and DF-26B) can create the need for new doctrine.

(Ironically, China building military bases on top of reefs in the South China Sea had nothing to do with new technology. It was simply a disruptive operational concept that used 20th-century dredging ships and a gamble that the U.S. wouldn’t interfere. That move alone negated 75 years of U.S. weapons and doctrine in the Pacific, and we’ll spend 10s of billions of dollars to solve the problem. The Marine Corps Force Design 2030 has revamped its operational concept to meet the new reality.)

Today, the Department of Defense can’t create doctrine, new operational concepts and new organizational structures against new technology and new types of warfare fast enough. Therefore, the purpose of this class – how to think about it systematically.

Incremental technology improvements in commercial companies and the Department of Defense tend to follow an S-curve – an initial systems capability is low as it undergoes shakedown and debugging, but climbs rapidly, then plateaus until it is replaced with another incremental improvement. However, unlike commercial systems, weapon systems are matched with a doctrine of how they are used. And incremental improvements in weapons typically result in incremental improvements in doctrine. And because of the complexity of the DOD requirements and acquisition system, the incumbent contractors are typically the same. New startups/companies rarely break into the system. (There’s something wrong when the cost of entry of Palantir, SpaceX and Anduril as new DOD contractors required billionaire founders.) Slides 35-37

Unlike incremental technology improvements. disruptive technology is on a completely different S-curve than existing technology and forces the creation of new doctrine and operational concepts. In theory, incumbent contractors of old technology/weapons should be at a disadvantage over the suppliers for new technology systems as disruption offers opportunities for a new generation of contractors and suppliers. However, as we’ll describe in later classes, the role of Congress, incumbent contractors, lobbyists, still favor the existing prime contractors. Slides 38-41

It’s sobering to consider what our existing legacy systems are versus where they need to be in the next two decades. It’s worth looking at the chart below for a while. Whether we want to or not this is where the new technologies are going to take us. Even if the chart is just directionally correct, each one of those transitions requires billions of dollars, new weapons and new doctrine. Slide 41

In both commerce and Defense, they are visionaries who can look at technology (that to others appears like a toy,) and they can imagine it fully formed a decade into the future with the new operating concepts against new threats/opportunities. Examples include the Blitzkrieg (Von Manstein), or the Nuclear Navy (Admiral Rickover,) or AirLand Battle (Creighton Abrams,) or Andrew Marshall at ONA, or Elon Musk at SpaceX. Executors (those focus on running existing organizations) often dismiss visionaries because, truth be told, most are hallucinating. But the few that are right, change the world or win wars. The biography of John Boyd (the author of the OODA loop) and his observations on “Be versus Do” in a military career is still a great read. Slide 42

The Impact of New Technology and How the DOD Will Acquire It As an introduction to this class session, one of the assignments was to watch the Slaughterbot video, a dystopian (but technically possible) future of autonomy and AI.

As a nation the U.S. invests large % of its GDP in research and development; however, the source of those dollars has shifted from government to private industry. (The large rise in federal R&D in the 1960s was the investment in NASA and the space program.) While federal R&D is focused on the national interest, a lack of a national industrial policy or incentives for commercial R&D has those R&D dollars optimizing the greatest financial return. Slide 45

“No bucks, no Buck Rogers” describes the role that Congress plays in providing funding for all military expenditures. In the last two decades a federal budget was passed on time just four times. This plays havoc with having a predictable way to pay for new things. Slides 49-51

A glimmer of hope is occurring across the DOD. An insurgency has arisen in the services and combatant commands that has essentially said, “We can’t wait until our acquisition system is fixed, so we’re going to bypass it.” All the services have incubators, Accelerator’s, and SBIR programs. And they’re even making an end-around to a broken acquisition system. First driven by the Army, and now rapidly being used by the other services, a new way to write contracts, called Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs,) has emerged to bypass the years of paperwork. (Time will tell whether the existing acquisition bureaucracy beats this down or if it truly can sustain a breakout from traditional contracting and gets embraced by visionary leadership.) Slides 47 and 52

Guest Speaker – Ash Carter – SecDef

youtube

If you can’t see the Ash Carter video, click here

In the beginning of every class we ask our students for their feedback and thoughts about our guest speakers. Our student take-aways from Secretary Carter’s talk is below:

Lessons Learned

Technology by itself doesn’t win wars. It has to be built into a weapons system.

Today, many of the advanced technologies that will be used in 21st weapons are being built by private companies not the department of defense

Weapons by themselves don’t win wars. To be effective they have to be integrated into an operational concept/doctrine

Operational concepts/Doctrine describes how a weapon is used, who uses it, what else/who else needs to be used with it, how it’s maintained, etc. And the expected results when used

They way we describe what weapons we need (the requirements) and the way we buy them (the acquisition process) is built on a mid-20th process designed by accountants

Today, there are 88 Major Defense Acquisition Programs (billion+$’s.) Almost all are legacy systems – designed to fight 20th century wars

For example, the F-35/B-21/KC-46 aircraft, Ford-Class Carriers, Columbia-class SSBN, Virginia-class SSN, M-1 tank upgrades, etc.

In its attempt to minimize financial risk it has metastasized into a process that cannot field a major weapon system in less than a decade

The process does not differentiate between programs that are incremental improvements, versus those that are disruptive

The pushback to do something different i.e. the Marine Corps Force Design 2030 illustrates the institutional inertia to change -even when clearly needed

Existing technologies – can be described with an S-Curve

These systems start out with teething problems, mature, and then are replaced by better systems solving the same problem

Unlike commercial products, military technology/weapon systems have an associated doctrine – how it is used

Doctrine gets incremental improvements

Most often incremental weapons systems are built by existing contractors

Disruptive technology also goes through their own S-Curves, but they solve different problems/create new capabilities

Disruptive technology create new doctrine and in a perfect world, new suppliers

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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Bakers Against Racism Is Just the Beginning added to Google Docs

Bakers Against Racism Is Just the Beginning

Paola Velez, Willa Pelini, and Rob Rubba launched an international movement of anti-racist bake sales to empower communities and change their own industry

Velez typed up a mission statement and several detailed documents about how to bake at scale and raise funds, and emailed them over to Pelini, a pastry chef at the D.C. restaurant Emilie’s. “We both speak the same language — pastry math,” Velez says. “So I said, ‘Willa, if we both participate and make 150 pieces of one dessert and price it out at $8, individually we’ll raise $1,200 dollars. If we ask everyone to participate virtually and decentralize it, we might be able to get 80 participants, and 1,200 times 80 is $96,000.’” The scale of the project seemed daunting, but the international movement for black lives in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer fueled a sense of urgency and ambition. “If we donate a little bit of money, we can make a little bit of change; with others, we can donate a lot of money that can make a lot of change.” They called their fundraiser Bakers Against Racism.

In Los Angeles, Gather for Good, an all-volunteer organization run by Sherry Mandell and Stephanie Chen and co-founded with Zoe Nathan of the Rustic Canyon group, launched in February 2017, and their bake sales have since raised over $100,000 for causes as varied as mental health advocacy to providing lawyers for families separated at the border. At the same time that Pelini and Velez brainstormed their bake sale, Mandell, who runs the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project, and Chen, who owns Sugarbear Bakes, decided, as Mandell put it, to “get the band back together” to support the movement for black lives (they have since folded under the Bakers Against Racism banner).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by &gatherforgood (@andgatherforgood) on Jun 18, 2020 at 10:23am PDT

Roxana Jullapat, the baker and co-owner of the Los Angeles cafe Friends & Family, was unable to coordinate with the larger bake sales happening this week, and instead held her own bake sale Monday to support a black-run hyper-local effort to feed the homeless, Brown Bag Lady. Bake sales were always meaningful to Jullapat, but now that meaning has completely changed. “Pre-COVID, [the bake sale] is a very studied, measurable tool to raise money and bring awareness. Post-COVID, it’s many other things — it’s a healing device, it’s a way to make a statement about where you stand.” Jullapat believes online donations are important, but picking up a baked good engages people in a different way — and offers a concrete action people struggling to save their businesses can take in the face of uncertainty. “There’s an underlying feeling of, The house is burning, might as well share while we still have it. In three months, we could all be going under, so might as well do it now.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/6/18/21295842/bakers-against-racism-bake-sale-instagram-movement-black-lives-matter

Created June 19, 2020 at 02:26AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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