@gatheringviolets / gatheringviolets.tumblr.com
I've been taking an inventory of my life. Clearing up rubble. Marking the land mines. Discarding the things that keep me looking back.
This tumblr is one of them. I have laid an immense amount of resentment and anger here over time, and it exhausts me to encounter it.
Three years seems a short run, but looking back, it was maybe a year too long all the same.
This is the end.
Time for something new.
He was crying
Damn you
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun (via larmoyante)
'Fierce minimalism'
On the one hand, Obama has shown a deep reluctance to use military force to try to solve Middle Eastern problems that don’t directly threaten American lives. He’s proved more open to a diplomatic compromise over Iran’s nuclear program than many on Capitol Hill because he’s more reticent about going to war with Tehran. He’s been reluctant to arm Syria’s rebels or bomb Basher al-Assad because he doesn’t want to get sucked into that country’s civil war. After initially giving David Petraeus and company the yellow light to pursue an expanded counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, he’s wound down America’s ground war against the Taliban. Even on Libya, he proved more reluctant to intervene than the leaders of Britain and France.
On the other hand, he’s proven ferocious about using military force to kill suspected terrorists. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, he’s basically adopted the policy Joe Biden proposed at the start of his administration: Don’t focus on fighting the Taliban on the ground, since they don’t really threaten the United States. Just bomb the hell out al-Qaeda from the air. Compared with George W. Bush, he’s dramatically expanded drone strikes, even though they’re unilateral, legally dubious, and morally disturbing. And, as promised, he sent special forces to kill Osama bin Laden without Pakistan’s permission, even though his vice president and secretary of defense feared the risks were too high.
...
When it comes to the Middle East, in other words, Obama is neither a dove nor a hawk. He’s a fierce minimalist.
There are smart critiques of Obama’s tunnel vision, and they come not only from Republicans but from former Obama administration officials. By focusing too narrowly on jihadist terrorism, the Obama administration ignores the sectarianism and state collapse that ultimately fuels jihadist terrorism [Iraq, Syria].
President Obama’s Mideast strategy is not grand. It’s not inspiring. It’s not idealistic. But it’s what the American people want and what their government knows how to do. And Barack Obama didn’t become president by tilting at windmills.
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http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/chinese-drop-off-in-us-graduate-schools-triggers-false-alarm/
Of the 2.64 million Chinese students who have studied abroad since 2003, only 1.09 million have returned to China. The percentage of those returning each year has increased since 2008, but Chinese officials have noted that while MBAs might return, many of the foreign-trained engineering and science Ph.D.’s Beijing so desperately desires do not. To address the problem, in 2008, the Party launched the Thousand Talents program to entice the best and brightest of the Chinese scholars who had stayed abroad after receiving their advanced education to return to China, offering significant packages of financial and career benefits. Yet the program has had mixed success. While more than 3,000 Chinese scholars have returned, many of them have not relinquished their positions abroad, splitting their time, their reputation, and perhaps their loyalties.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130524153852829
According to data from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, 92% of Chinese who received a science or technology PhD in the US in 2002 were still in the US in 2007. For India the figure was 81% and for Canada 55%.
...
“The problem was that the Thousand Talents was really targeting the very best and the very best aren't the ones coming back.”
Le Mec Dans Un Train - Jun Miyake - Stolen From Stangers (2008)
Alviverde - Jun Miyake - Stolen From Strangers (2008)
Awesome, this album is just awesome.
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Fernando Pessoa (via tierradentro)
The Here and After - Jun Miyake - Stolen from Strangers (2008)
My mom (who is clearly the best) in an email this morning. <3 (via slodwick)
Heart surgery is an extremely difficult procedure. Even more so when the tiny anatomy of a small child is involved. When 14-month old Roland Lian Cung Bawi’s heart was failing him, his surgeon Erle Austin knew that he had to prepare meticulously for an intricate operation. Initially he consulted other surgeons, but this yielded conflicting advice. So Austin turned to 3D printing for help.
Using the facilities at the University of Louisville’s engineering school, Austin and his medical team produced a three dimensional model of little Ronald’s heart. Pediatric operations are difficult because the interior structures of a child’s organs are small and hard to see clearly. This model allowed the surgical team to come up with a precise plan to limit the amount of exploratory incisions, reduce operating time and prevent the need for follow-up operations.
Read more | Follow policymic
From up on 11
I leaned out my window and said a fond farewell.
1.24.14
Who even sleeps anymore? You and everyone you know are probably loading yourselves up with coffee or whatever your stimulant of choice is so you can plod through your day as some semblance of an upright human being. Then you get home and you don’t go to bed early enough because this is the only me-time you get, damn it, and if you want to watch three hours of Netflix, then you will.
Maybe the Most Orwellian Text Message a Government’s Ever Sent | Vice
“Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
That’s a text message that thousands of Ukrainian protesters spontaneously received on their cell phones today, as a new law prohibiting public demonstrations went into effect. It was the regime’s police force, sending protesters the perfectly dystopian text message to accompany the newly minted, perfectly dystopian legislation. In fact, it’s downright Orwellian (and I hate that adjective, and only use it when absolutely necessary, I swear).
But that’s what this is: it’s technology employed to detect noncompliance, to hone in on dissent. The NY Times reports that the “Ukrainian government used telephone technology to pinpoint the locations of cell phones in use near clashes between riot police officers and protesters early on Tuesday.” Near. Using a cell phone near a clash lands you on the regime’s hit list.
See, Kiev is tearing itself to shreds right now, but since we’re kind of burned out on protests, riots, and revolutions at the moment, it’s being treated below-the-fold news. Somehow, the fact that over a million people are marching, camping out, and battling with Ukraine’s increasingly authoritarian government is barely making a ripple behind such blockbuster news bits as bridge closures and polar vortexes. Yes, even though protesters are literally building catapaults and wearing medieval armor and manning flaming dump trucks.
Hopefully news of the nascent techno-security state will turn some heads—it’s right out of1984, or, more recently, Elysium: technology deployed to “detect” dissent. Again, this tech appears to be highly arbitrary; anyone near the protest is liable to be labeled a “participant,” as if targeting protesters directly and so broadly wasn’t bad enough in the first place.
It’s further reminder that authoritarian regimes are exploiting the very technology once celebrated as a vehicle for liberation; last year, in Turkey, you’ll recall, the state rounded up dissident Twitter users. Now, Ukraine is tracing the phone signal directly. Dictators have already proved plenty adept at pulling the plug on the internet altogether.
All of this puts lie to the lately-popular mythology that technology is inherently a liberating force—with the right hack, it can oppress just as easily.
(Reach this writer at brian.merchant(at)vice.com and on Twitter, at @bcmerchant | Photo Credit: Wikimedia)
Emphasis (the bolded) mine.
Nicholas Confessorejan, The New York Times
you flared like a match struck in a dead-of-night gloom leaving me blind
Mission Street. Reservoirs. Goodnight New York.
There's something about the city that tickles my soul. It's so vibrant, so bustling, so very alive. It's also sometimes so very lonely. So much is happening, and there are so many people and perspectives that it can be very easy to lose yourself in the crowds or the chaos. But it is a wondrous place, filled with bright-lit dreams and strange impossibilities, where love dances on stage and hides itself away in secret nooks and rooftop gardens.
There are times I hate myself so much I can barely stand it. Being angry with you distracts me.
I blame you for my issues, and part of that is because you are responsible for... well, a lot of them, but it's mainly a coping mechanism. Whatever keeps me from sinking into that seething morass of self-hatred lurking under my skin.
