bedlam

go to bed in the wilderness of entropy and have the thoughts you think you deserve. it is a mental hospital, you are not crazy, the sun will emerge - undisturbed.

[bed-lam]

What a mystery it is, that I feel more alive when I am in pain.

[existential-celestial]

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

— The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

[neondaeng]

“Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”

— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via weltenwellen)

[bed-lam]

China has often leveraged the size of its domestic market to impose trade restrictions on countries it wishes to punish, but in targeted and symbolic ways that minimize damage to its own economy. The Chinese government imposed sanctions on Norwegian salmon exports after the dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and it blocked Philippine banana exports after a flare-up in tensions in the South China Sea, in both cases on the supposed grounds of food safety. It has also taken advantage of its size by encouraging boycotts—urging Chinese consumers, for example, not to patronize a South Korean department store chain in an attempt to dissuade Seoul from deploying a U.S.-led missile defense system. Capitalizing on China’s position as a top foreign investor and technology producer, the Chinese government and Chinese firms have played active roles in international standard-setting bodies and promoted the export of Chinese equipment, particularly of emerging technologies—some with national security implications, such as 5G and artificial intelligence.

Aurdye Wong, How Not to Win Allies and Influence Geopolitics

[bed-lam]

Our foreign policy over the last 50 years has served us well. We became independent during the Cold War era. We chose to be non-aligned, but pro-West. In the post-Cold War period, like many countries, we had to adjust to the US hegemonic moment and to the Western triumphalist push for democracy and human rights.

You will recall our attempts to push back with Asian values. We welcomed the US security presence and economic presence, but saw the promotion of democracy as a new cultural imperialism. We worked through Asean and other countries in the region to ensure the US stayed in the region and that an emerging China would be integrated into the regional institutions, and, importantly, that the US and China would be able to engage with each other in one forum. I believe everyone in the region, including Australia, New Zealand and Japan, thought this was a good strategic move.

But in the last two decades, the world has changed.

Chan Heng Chee, Striking a balance between principle and pragmatism

[bed-lam]

How I feel these days

[miamaimania]

"Illustrated People" ☀ Thomas Mailaender — found negatives sunburned into skin

[cjsnaake]

I fuck with this

[fatmasc]

Hey i’m a fashion design student so i have tons and tons of pdfs and docs with basic sewing techniques, pattern how-tos, and resources for fabric and trims. I’ve compiled it all into a shareable folder for anyone who wants to look into sewing and making their own clothing. I’ll be adding to this folder whenever i come across new resources

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16uhmMb8kE4P_vOSycr6XSa9zpmDijZSd?usp=sharing

[fatmasc]

Updated just now with new hand sewing resources (mainly buttonholes) and textbook pdfs on fashion history, fashion illustration, and thinking through designs!

[bosstoaster]

OP I owe you my life

[whatchamacallitz]

OP you are the greatest person currently in my life. You beautiful, thoughtful creature.

[salantami]

Les Étoiles (“The Stars”) in Ivry-sur-Seine, France, is one of the most iconic examples of post-war experimental housing. Designed by architect Jean Renaudie in the 1970s, the complex rejects the monotony of uniform blocks — instead, it bursts into angular terraces, sharp geometries, and lush rooftop gardens.

Photograph: Robert Doisneau

[bemusedbibliophile]

I usually tell my students that “close reading” means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out. To give you some idea of what this means, I’ve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from complete—in fact, no complete list is possible—but the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when we’re doing close reading.

What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.

Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.

Jane Gallop, “The Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)

[bed-lam]

At the end of the 1980s, Philippine domestic politics and a natural disaster compelled U.S. forces to vacate Subic Bay and Clark Air Base. In 1990, Singapore, which had long backed a U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, concluded a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Washington that allowed some U.S. forces to use Singaporean facilities. At the time, several ASEAN members loudly and vehemently criticized the deal. But there was nary a whisper when Singapore signed an agreement regarding greater defense and security cooperation with the United States in 2005 or when the 1990 MOU was renewed in 2019.

Bilahari Kausikan, The Arena

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

“The desire to be loved is the last illusion: Give it up and you will be free.””

— Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986, ‘A Sunday Drive’ by Margaret Atwood

[bed-lam]

At a 2012 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Cambodia wielded its position as chair to block discussions of South China Sea disputes, and for the first time in ASEAN’s history, the organization was unable to issue a joint statement. At one point, the Cambodian foreign minister cut off delegates who tried to raise the issue, and at another, he stormed out of the room when they proposed even a watered-down statement. Government officials I’ve interviewed in the region have described Cambodia’s behavior at the summit as the result of a “straight-up monetary deal” in which Beijing paid off the Cambodian government in exchange for its support. In the months before the meeting, senior Chinese leaders visited Phnom Penh, offering additional grants and loans for infrastructure and development projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The investment has paid off handsomely: since 2012, ASEAN has become more divided and incoherent, allowing Beijing to consolidate its position, rhetorically and militarily, in the South China Sea.

Aurdye Wong, How Not to Win Allies and Influence Geopolitics

[existential-celestial]

“Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war […]. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we’ve learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

— The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

[bed-lam]

In my mind I'm turning over the things you sent me, like stones in my hand. You hadn't explained what they meant.

There is so much left unexplained between us. How do I explain that it took so little for me to want to do so much with you?

Is it possible for stones to grow into a tree?

[bed-lam]

In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that Dungy’s players watched him struggle.

Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people’s transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class and met a wonderful group. “It opened a Pandora’s box,” the woman told researchers. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had changed in my core.” Another man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities⏤sometimes of just one other person⏤who make change believable.

One woman told researchers her life transformed after a day spent cleaning toilets⏤and after weeks of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should leave her husband.

“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.”

The precise mechanisms of belief are little understood. No one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungy’s team came together after their coach’s son passed away. Plenty of people talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their spouse; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and never gel.

But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective⏤the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe⏤happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

⏤ The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg