Art exhibition at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, a small liberal arts college. The exhibition shows modern Chinese life.
To say that there is little open discussion on certain aspects of life within China is an understatement. China is and has always been heavily censored. Even online, the rebuttals are censored. It is as if the discussion did not ever take place. This is very unfortunate.
No country has a perfect past. History is made in the context of the times, where decisions at the time are justified. Today we can look back and disagree, but we should hold our tongues and think about their context.
I do love this thing and would love to see it live. We should all accept the imperfect and obviously different. This has hot air balloon ten large breasts that act like wings! Brilliant! Designed in Australia, made in Britain.
Skywhale balloon, designed by artist Patricia Piccinini , Australia. Controversial but strikingly beautiful.
Xi Jingping New Modern China Socialist Characteristics Thought Study Guide 习近平新时代中国特色会主义思想学习导读
Xi Jingping New Modern China Socialist Characteristics Thought Study Guide 习近平新时代中国特色会主义思想学习导读
This mind map originally came from the People’s Daily WeChat account, but I could not find the source. Here is a larger image source.
Mind Maps are usually much simpler, more clearly outlining the writer’s thought. This one is so complex as to lose the reasoning for using a mind map. It will take me some time to read this monstrosity. There are 30 main points.
Housing in China is a really hot market. Prices are skyrocketing. Yet there are some very curious trends. More farmland is being converted to tall apartment buildings, but when finished are hardly occupied. In fact at night there are few lights on, and few people live there. What is the point of all these empty apartment buildings? Meanwhile housing prices continue to rise, becoming more out of reach to the average Chinese family. Speculation abounds.
China’s leader Xi Jinping, has asked Chinese people for total and utter loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP above all else. He has pushed this philosophy in all aspects of Chinese life.
Government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west – the Party leads them all 党政军民学，东西南北中，党是领导一切的 2017 Oct source
The implications of this philosophy on all and including international companies is that the CCP is part of the board and an integral part of the company. A Chinese company that does not follow the lead of the CCP cannot continue to do business and will eventually fail due to government policies or an outright bad on business.Therefore when it comes to resisting CCP pressures, companies really have no choice in the matter.
Meng Hongwei, Interpol Chief’s final text to his wife, a knife. The meaning is clear that he is in terrible trouble. The Chinese says to wait for his phone call.
There are few international posts that China has taken. One of the most controversial ones is assigning a Chinese person to lead Interpol. Meng Hongwei 孟宏伟, Interpol Chief, is now missing in China, whereabouts and reason for his disappearance, unknown. China is well known to have a terrible human rights record towards both Chinese and foreign people within China. There is no openness for free speech, nor is the rule of law universally applied.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is leading this privacy issue. He is trying to decentralize content so that users house the content separate from commercial apps. Links are provided to the owner’s content so the commercial app can be displayed. Content is controlled by the content owner, a marked change from today.
Today I signed up for a POD from inrupt. There is not much documentation on it, making it difficult to use. I thought that I would write what I have discovered through trial and error.
This Imperial sewing machine Model 171 is complex machine, but pretty versatile. It uses 20 different plastic cams that lets the sewing machine do 20 different sewing patterns. The front also has a button hole option.
As usual, this Imperial looks like it weights a ton, so please be careful when lifting. Fortunately this model version is built into a small cabinet and therefore only needs to rotate up and into place.
The NoScript plugin allows me to degrade sites such as PopSugar down to what I wish to connect, and not what they wish for me to connect. Look at all those sites that I did not ask for?
Social butterfly I am not, but on the web I can be a bit promiscuous, not sexually but the willingness browse near anything. I figured I needed some protection. NoScript, a browser plugin, offers this protection for me by blocking errant scripts from contacting a huge number of web sites that do not ask me for permission and that I do not provide permission.
Chongqing, China, 重庆，Shapingba District, 沙坪坝区 Google Maps in Chinese
A Chinese friend randomly sent me her GPS coordinates. She was on a highway, deep within Sichuan province, just outside of Chongqing. Because Chongqing, with a population greater than the whole population of Canada, 30.1M people (2015), is so huge, this meant that she was just on the outskirts of the city. Mapping her GPS coordinates, between Google and Baidu maps, was, as usual, confusing. Here is the exercise.
The original coordinates sent to me were 29.656019,106.444153, or 29°39’21.7″N 106°26’39.0″E, 7PX8MC4V+CM. 沙坪坝区 Shapingba My Windows PC returned this URL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/29°39’21.7″N+106°26’39.0″E/@29.650779,106.3959376,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d29.656019!4d106.444153?hl=zh-CN
