Category: Media and Culture,

Is Nordic Humor Too Dark for Everyone Else?

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

“It’s very simple and humanistic but at the same time most people will [recognize] the themes. We have to make fun out of our own misery or we wouldn’t survive.”

BBC – Culture – Is Nordic humour too dark for the rest of the world?

Too dark…
It’s dark there a lot.
In an associative logic kind of way seems legit.

Singlish: the tension between the natural flow and evolution towards inclusion and convenience of communication and the less responsive formality of institutionalized language 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Southern Central Asia,Leave a comment

Most of Singapore’s population speak the unofficial language or dialect known as Singlish. But why would the government rather it went away? James Harbeck takes a look.

Source: BBC – Culture – The language the government tried to suppress

Slavery’s legacies | The Economist

On By peanutgallerynhIn Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

American ideas cannot simply be transplanted to Brazil. Differences in how the two countries were colonised, and how the slave economy operated, led to distinct ideas of what it means to be “black”—and different attitudes to compensatory policies and whom they should target.

In Brazil, unlike America, race has never been black and white. The Portuguese population—700,000 settlers had arrived at the start of the 19th century—was dwarfed by the number of slaves: a total of 4.9m arrived. Portuguese men were encouraged to consort with African women. Since most came without wives, such unions gained some legitimacy. Their offspring, referred to as mulatto, enjoyed a social status above that of pretos. They worked as overseers or artisans, but also doctors, accountants and lawyers. A mulatto, Machado de Assis, was regarded as Brazil’s greatest writer even during his lifetime in the 19th century. 

…Both black and white Brazilians have long considered “whiteness” something that can be striven towards. In 1912 João Baptista de Lacerda, a medic and advocate of “whitening” Brazil by encouraging European immigration, predicted that by 2012 the country would be 80% white, 3% mixed and 17% Amerindian; there would be no blacks. As Luciana Alves, who has researched race at the University of São Paulo, explains, an individual could “whiten his soul” by working hard or getting rich. Tomás Santa Rosa, a successful mid-20th-century painter, consoled a dark-skinned peer griping about discrimination, saying that he too “used to be black”.

Though only a few black and mixed-race Brazilians ever succeeded in “becoming white”, their existence, and the non-binary conception of race, allowed politicians to hold up Brazil as an exemplar of post-colonial harmony

Slavery’s legacies | The Economist

hmmmm

Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,Leave a comment

Some say we must condemn the unrest in Charlotte. As a pastor and as an organizer, I do not condone violence. I suspect that much of it has been instigated by provocateurs with their own agenda. But to condemn the uprising in Charlotte would be to condemn a man for thrashing when someone is trying to drown him.

Whatever righteous indignation the public can muster ought to be directed toward the systems that created a situation where a man can drive to the bus stop to pick up his son and end up dead before he gets there.

I am a pastor. I will not condemn grief. But I was trained as a lifeguard, and I learned a long time ago that when people are drowning, their instincts can kill them and anyone who tries to help them. If a lifeguard can get to a drowning person, the first thing the lifeguard says is, “Stop struggling. Let me hold you up in this water, and we can get to the shore together.”

The riots in Charlotte are the predictable response of human beings who are drowning in systemic injustice. We must all pray that no one else gets hurt. But we must understand why this is happening.

Ta-Nahisi Coates writes: “A society that protects some people through a system of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can only protect you with the club of criminal justice has either failed at enforcing its intentions or has succeeded at something much darker.” The unrest in Charlotte is not about black people hating police. It’s about black, white and brown people rising up against systems of injustice that shield officers who kill but leave millions defenseless.

Editorial: Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice – NBC News

Amen.

Mia Farrow’s adopted son Thaddeus’ friends share their heartbreak over his suicide 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Modern Parenting,, Race,Leave a comment

Mia Farrow’s adopted son Thaddeus’ friends share their heartbreak over his suicide | Daily Mail Online

Yes, Mia Farrow kind of made an a circus out of international adoption. (Grrrrrrrrrrrr!)  But can we just get one point right here? These are Mia’s “adopted children.” They are her “children.” Period. Adoption is the process through which these people became her children, it doesn’t make them any less her children. Can we, as a society, stop saying “adopted children” and start saying the more accurate (and not as fucking racist and ignorant) “children?”

Pretty please?

No racism before Obama? Top Trump volunteer resigns after that comment

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,Leave a comment

Mahoning County [Trump] campaign chair Kathy Miller [said that] racism didn’t exist before President Obama, and that African-Americans were to blame for the problems in their communities.

“I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this. …Now, with the people with the guns and shooting up neighborhoods and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America,” Miller said in the Guardian interview.

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault,” she added in the video, which was filmed outside of a county Republican picnic.

…Miller also said African Americans have “all the advantages” when it comes to education and said they only have themselves to blame if they haven’t achieved success in America.

She said African Americans aren’t finishing high school and are having children out of wedlock.

…“If people have jobs and go to work and do what they’re supposed to do, there is no racism,” she said.

Told by the reporter that African Americans might disagree with her, she replied “that’s because they’re not going to work.”

When asked whether she thought people might find her remarks offensive, she said, “I don’t care, it’s the truth.”

No racism before Obama? Top Trump volunteer resigns after that comment- Boston Globe

What an ignorant twat-waffle.

She deserves nothing but scorn for backwards, hateful, illogical and outright stupid remarks. I hope she is shunned from politics for life and it crushes her spirit and ultimately causes her early demise. Humanity doesn’t need any more mouth breathers.

Chibok girls: Nigeria’s Buhari calls for UN mediation 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Africa,, Chick Stuff,, Religion,Leave a comment

Nigeria’s president calls for the UN to mediate with militant Islamist group Boko Haram to secure the release of girls it is holding captive.

Chibok girls: Nigeria’s Buhari calls for UN mediation – BBC News

sigh….

Wouldn’t it have been nice if he was so intent on helping these girls and willing to collaborate and cooperate a fucking year ago?

Stanford Dean Says Parents are Ruining Their kids By…

On By peanutgallerynhIn Modern Parenting,, Schools,Leave a comment

She explained that, overall, this generation seems to lack the executive function necessary to make it on their own.  Many students don’t make eye contact, don’t interact with teachers, and when they’re lost or needed help, they text their mom before advocating for themselves.    Julie believes that this is directly correlated with another new development: The behavior of parents. Never in Stanford’s history have so many freshman parents called in to discuss things like:  their student’s roommate situations, teacher complications, opportunities for their student to perform research at the college, and even to discuss their child’s grades.  Now remember, this isn’t 3rd grade, or 8th grade, or even senior year of high school that she’s talking about.  This is COLLEGE and it’s STANFORD UNIVERSITY for crying out loud.  Could there possibly be a correlation between these over-parenters and their kids who seem to be floundering in the basic skills of life? Julie is certain of it.

Stanford Dean Says Parents are Ruining Their kids By…

hmmm

Questions about Hillary Clinton’s health are soaked in gender bias

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

The narratives surrounding Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis and her health this week have been filtered through the routine partisan lenses. Very little has been said about how her insistence on toughing it out until a sick day was unavoidable is not simply the American way, but an American woman’s way of navigating gendered health dynamics in the United States.

People’s capacity to take time away from work when they are sick is stratified by gender, ethnicity, immigration status and class dynamics in the United States. Clinton’s options are simultaneously specific to her and emblematic of larger struggles women across the United States face.

Questions about Hillary Clinton’s health are soaked in gender bias | TheHill

Hmmmm