farahmoans

My miscellaneous medium.

[farhaha]

I was in a weird place in 2018. Thanks for the existential relief, Derek Parfit.

[farhaha]

Hi friends :) it's been a while. Idk if anyone remembers me, but I'm dipping my toes back into the Tumblr pool. And I'm looking for some good mental health communities to follow. Any recommendations for blogs to follow on how to think about neurodivergencies without the stigma? Also, how have you been??? Love and compassion to each of you. Hugs and kisses.

[farhaha]

[farhaha]

‘Torture is torture’: Alarm bells at Trump’s new CIA nominee

Rights groups sounds alarm on CIA director nominee who was involved in agency's post-9/11 'enhanced interrogation techniques'

US law explicitly prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment". International law, including the Geneva Conventions, also bans torture.

Haspel is reported to have overseen a CIA "black site" in Thailand, where inmates were tortured.

Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Nashiri, Saudi al-Qaeda suspects, were harshly interrogated at the secret prison in what Amnesty International has called "crimes under international law".

A 2014 Senate report documented the case of Zubaydah to highlight the cruelty of post-9/11 CIA interrogation techniques and to demonstrate how the agency operated in a constitutionally grey area, after seeking legal assurances from Bush administration officials outside the court system.

President Barack Obama's Department of Justice did not prosecute CIA officials who potentially violated US law by authorising these techniques.

[farhaha]

The left’s hollow anti-imperialism over Syria

The inability of many leftists to see past outdated narratives on Syria has galvanised the rise of reactionary nativism in the West

An old article but helpful.

The heated exchange was not between anti-imperialists and pro-imperialists but between those who can’t see past one form of imperialism and those who are struggling against all imperialisms (or strive to). Crucially for our purposes, the former typically underestimates, or willingly ignores, Russian and Iranian imperialism in Syria and it does the same with regards to the regime’s daily atrocities. The latter sees it as its mission to remind the former of what countless Syrians have been repeating for nearly four years now, namely that it is utterly meaningless to speak of struggling for equality and justice when a fascist, neoliberal and imperialist-friendly dictatorship is overpowering anyone who wishes to fight against it. As long as this balance of powers remains unchanged, the rest is wishful thinking, with very serious repercussions on the ground.

I call the former “essentialist anti-imperialists” and I’ve even attempted to provide some definition of what it means: “essentialist anti-imperialism is defined solely in relation to one’s own government rather than on the basis of a universal opposition to all forms of imperialism”. This anti-imperialism does not stop imperialism, quite the contrary: it pits imperialist powers against one another and sometimes even cheers on the one that just happens to not be its own. In other words, it prioritises identity politics and can only survive in a grotesquely Western-centric view of the world.

[farhaha]

Saying "thinking" is an interesting point in the meditation practice. It's the point at which we can consciously train in gentleness and in developing a nonjudgemental attitude. Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness. So each time you say to yourself "thinking," you  are cultivating unconditional friendliness toward whatever arises in your mind. Since this kind of unconditional compassion is difficult to come by, such a simple and direct method for awakening it is exceedingly precious.

Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty

[farhaha]

But loving-kindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty

[farhaha]

Five Women - This American Life

A different kind of #MeToo story, about several women who worked for the same man.

"They brought up specific experiences from their past, things that happened years ago. Because for them, that stuff in the past feels related..."

[ex-depressed]

Why small talk is so excruciating

It's like patting your head while rubbing your belly.

In the 1970s, however, sociolinguistics became more attuned to the everyday forms of speech that, after all, constitute the bulk of our verbal communication. And feminist sociolinguistics in particular noted that a dismissive attitude toward speech that establishes and maintains relationships — as opposed to task-oriented or informational speech — was of a piece with patriarchal disrespect for traditionally female roles. Think of the derogatory implications of the term “gossip,” which is, after all, social talk about social dynamics.

But the implications of the feminist critique go beyond that. In her introduction to a 2010 collection of academic essays on small talk, scholar Justine Coupland writes:

What primarily emerges from feminist critiques is the fact that western societies have whole-heartedly accepted that communication is in fact value-gradable, on a scale from most-to-least authentic, or most-to-least valid. … Whether or not “real talk” has been held to be a man’s exclusive domain is, from this perspective, less significant than the fact that an evaluative public conception of communication itself is strongly in place. Real talk is talk that “gets stuff done,” where “stuff” does not include “relational stuff.”

[amateurlanguager]

Every speech act is an act, meant not only to communicate something but to do something: reassure, acknowledge, nurture, enjoin, reject, dominate, encourage, or just fill awkward silence. We can think of this as the social function of a speech act. Unlike semantic content, social function cannot be understood in isolation, just by examining the words. Social function depends entirely on context, on tone and body language, on the interpersonal roles being played, on historical and environmental cues. It only makes sense relative to context.

[farhaha]

148. How does one tell that human beings see three-dimensionally? — I ask someone about the lie of the land (over there) of which he has a view. "Is it like this?" (I show him with my hand) — "Yes." — "How do you know?" — "It's not misty, I see it very clearly." — No reasons are given for the presumption. It is altogether natural to us to represent what we see three-dimensionally, whereas special practice and instruction are needed for two-dimensional representation, whether in drawing or in words. (The oddity of children's drawings.)

Wittgenstein, ‘Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment’

[farhaha]

Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller?

The journalist’s war on the Russia investigation.

The Trump election — because it upended countless political norms, because polls failed to predict it — was a psychologically destabilizing development. “When events happen that are so fucking out of the ordinary, people look for unifying events,” Greenwald tells me. “It becomes like a religion.” But Greenwald didn’t view the election as an aberration that needed to be explained. “Every time Trump says or does something that is xenophobic, or bigoted, or militaristic, or threatening, people always say, ‘This is not what America is about,’ ” he told the crowd in Sante Fe. “I always react to that by saying, ‘It’s not?’ ”

Rather than see Trump as a product of a rotten power structure, as Greenwald does, and the 2016 election as a wild reaction against that power structure, as Greenwald also does, it was easier for most American liberals to frame his victory as an accident. And rather than look within to eradicate the conditions that wrought Trump, it was more comforting to pin his rise on an external foe.

[farhaha]

143. I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to recognize him. Suddenly I recognize him, I see his former face in the altered one. I believe that I would portray him differently now if I could paint. 144. Now, when I recognize my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while — is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? Or a fusion of the two — as I would almost like to say? The question is: why does one want to say this? 145. The very expression which is also a report of what is seen is here a cry of recognition.

Wittgenstein, 'Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment'

[learninglinguist]

Do you have any advice on starting to learn about linguistics? My university doesn't have any courses but as an anthro major I know some of the core basics/concepts. My classes are focused on the other aspects of anthro though so we never spend more than a lecture or two on it. I really want to get an in depth understanding but there's so much information I don't know where to start.

Here are a few general resources

Here’s a list of cool linguistics books

Here’s a list of resources categorized by subfield

Here’s someone’s entire linguistics resources folder

Here’s a list of linguistics and language podcasts

I’m so happy that you’re interested in learning more about linguistics!!  I suggest reading a lot.  Read Wikipedia, read blogs, read articles, read books, listen to podcasts.  Learn about languages and learn about diversity.  I’m tempted to upload my own notes from some interesting lectures or chapters of my studies so I’ll tell you if I do, but for now there are so many of amazing resources available online and at your local library.  If you want suggestions for more linguistics blogs to follow on tumblr, scroll through my list of blogs to follow here.  Good luck with your studies!!   Anthropology and linguistics mesh so well together.  

[farhaha]

Literally Everything You'll Ever Need To Know About Semantic Bleaching

A very special article about 'very' (& 'actually', 'really', 'ultimately'...)

Sometimes it seems as though literally is held to an adverbial double standard that makes many people question the validity of its use as an intensifier, whereas other words with similar patterns of usage seem to pass without criticism.

[flower-punk-princess-deactivate]

english: this user liked your post french: :) english: oh boy french: this user added your post to their blows to the heart

[languageoclock]

english: this user liked your post german: :) english: uh oh german: this user licked your post

[themathomhouse]

my naym is Blog and wen is nyte i wryte about linguistic shite the polyglot in me must boast i mayk the joke

i lik the post

[farhaha]

An atomic threat made in America

How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide —and failed to get it back. First of two parts.

From 2007

[farhaha]

The U.S. bought this anti-tank weapon. Within 59 days, ISIS had it.

Weapons bought by the U.S. military ended up in the hands of ISIS fighters within two months, according to a report published by Conflict Armament Research.

The findings, by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an independent arms-tracking organization, are based on three years of meticulous documentation of weapons recovered from ISIS on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria.

CAR used serial numbers or key markings on the weapons to trace them back to their origin and try to piece together how they were obtained by the militants.