Posts by wbtd@ex.tending.to
(DIR) Post #9oHrSvM5C2fDQQU2Ns by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2019-10-25T14:13:55.151022Z
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@fitheach thank you! I will listen. Yes, I study all sorts of fun things (biodiversity, sacred sites, protected areas, Indigenous/local ecological knowledge) but it often comes back to old texts in Asian languages.
(DIR) Post #9oI56ZJlqTnq46dVtA by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2019-10-25T15:36:40.089764Z
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@fitheach I agree --- it is a thoroughly nasty publication.But everything in Aberdeen seems reactionary, I fear; the overt hostility to cyclists, green politics, religious diversity and so on is astonishing. "Everybody works in oil and gas" -- and we, who are an immigrant family with diverse roots (and don't work in oil and gas), can see clearly that Aberdeen may well collapse in on itself as the very greedy and powerful oil barons and their coat-tail politicians try to hang on to their power when Aberdeen desperately needs to move away from oil and gas very quickly indeed. <sigh/>. Beautiful place with wonderful folk, though. Aberdeen was clearly a very different sort of community before the oil arrived!
(DIR) Post #9pcVWCKhSVHzV4Jaam by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2019-12-04T11:35:46.696102Z
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Extremely interesting article on scavenger guilds (including humans) around urban waste in developing country megacities: https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/47/review-urban-affairs/urban-waste--human-animal-interface-delhi.html
(DIR) Post #9peRTTox0KOFb2kn1k by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2019-12-05T09:58:06.291491Z
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@fitheach From their perspective, that means that they see a link between rejecting Brexit and staying in the UK. What changed?
(DIR) Post #9qcfaZb3lD7E3E3iC0 by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-01-03T11:25:55.634865Z
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The European Union was founded by countries who were determined to prevent another war. It is a hugely successful peacebuilding project. The UK is deliberately abandoning this peaceful collective just as its usual buddy in war, the USA, is provoking a totally pointless war that the EU has been trying to avert. What tools do we have to resist this?
(DIR) Post #9qsDSF1hvboyru5QrA by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-01-09T08:12:14.522296Z
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@gautamghosh @musafir @hackiechan @sanjayuvacha "Low dependence on religion" is a misperception. Religious norms from Europe look like common sense but are colonial impositions. See Chakrabarty, _Provincialising Europe_
(DIR) Post #9r9j7nxDnsjpjpyFqy by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-01-19T08:05:38.528566Z
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@mareeswj @sanjayuvacha @5minsaloneok @noorul There is a long history of Asian empires using these tools. The PRC uses whatever tools it needs to create national unity and suppress dissent. The Gorkhali state -- Nepal -- was made by slaughtering Indigenous people, destroying regional cultures, and imposing one particular kind of Hindutva. Yes, the Raj was evil, but if you are looking for precursors and exemplars, it was Nepal that was declared an 'asal Hindustan' back in the 18th century. It is the PRC that is using concentration camps and Islamophobia to control the Uighurs. Colonial powers don't come in one colour.
(DIR) Post #9rTX813xkiwg6cemtE by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-01-28T23:12:35.844209Z
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I love Wuhan. It's a beautiful city, as cities go, and I have many friends and colleagues there. All over China, people are treating folks from Wuhan with suspicion. We're starting to see racist warnings ("Asian students") about the new coronavirus here in Scotland. Compared to many other infectious diseases, this is not a dangerous disease. Don't be racist. Besides, Wuhan has 热干面 and if you are horrid about Wuhan folks, you'll never get to have any.
(DIR) Post #9rwVIxgMxxBQYzt10a by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-11T22:30:07.062097Z
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Any #Minetest folk out there? I just installed a local server for the family, and the mods are *much* better since the last time I tried this.
(DIR) Post #9rwVyYnzqegHZUI1S4 by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-11T23:03:31.208286Z
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@rubenwardy @Minetest Delighted to be here. The MacOS homebrew build doesn't include Postgresql backend support so I will be compiling my own server sometime this month — should I be looking out for the 5.2.x release soon?
(DIR) Post #9sAZE75UpjL5RabXfM by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-18T09:22:03.020034Z
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@Shufei @publius @snowdusk_ Mao (and Maoism) was, in a convoluted way, very much a product of the intolerant and inflexible European enlightenment. Adam Chau has done good work on shared shrines in Republican China. He and I both contributed to a volume edited by Glenn Bowman where all of us were trying, in different ways, to theorise normal human plurality outside the modernist cage of hyperindividualism.
(DIR) Post #9sAtOxv1GIatH99jtI by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-18T19:15:16.516305Z
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@publius @Shufei @snowdusk_ (last) I would argue "folk religion" is one of many "genuinely Chinese" (*not* Han) points of resistance to what, sadly, was yet another example of ideological colonialism. That's why he hated it. For example, a genuinely Chinese (ecccch! bad terminology again, but hard to find a succinct improvement) revolutionary ideology would not, as Mao and Maoism did, treat the ecosystem itself as an enemy to be subjugated.
(DIR) Post #9scuYmpxAQI893NdGi by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-03T09:45:09.902600Z
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@strypey @kravietz As an anthropologist I have big problems with this article. There are several unsupported generalisations (Western cultures? as a coherent class? and they are "looser"? That was comprehensively rejected by folks who actually study culture back in the 1960's!) and mistaken inferences (social structures-->urbanisation-->diseases is a more plausible causal explanation for the correlation he notes).
(DIR) Post #9shS4wOpTJM0pMG3A8 by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-03T08:04:53.746284Z
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@syndikalista It's the same greenwashing that led to hideous phrases like "the Apple ecosystem". Just remember, the word "brand" refers to burning private ownership marks into the flesh of an awake and screaming animal who will later be killed for food.
(DIR) Post #9t02rKGQXEj9729UWG by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-14T12:46:53.806847Z
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#herdimmunity Anyone remember Lysenko? Who thought ideology could determine biology? Good thing that couldn't possibly happen under capitalism.
(DIR) Post #9t21PAXlN1lhDdBstU by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-15T08:34:39.220399Z
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@kravietz If your model of research funding is competitive rather than co-operative, and your model of research production is extractive—UK universities now manages themselves explicitly as factories to extract research knowledge and teaching income from lecturers and professors—then yes, actually, you have already made huge decisions about what society is, who are valid persons, what kinds of knowledge can be allowed into public discussion, and how humans should be treated. Those invisible assumptions create specific "research outcomes" that validate the initial assumptions, like this rubbish #herdimmunity claim.Read anything in the past 40 years of STS studies. Scientific research is not politically neutral, but to claim that it is neutral is a cornerstone of extractive capitalism. That does *not*, by the way, mean that scientific research is paralysed and unable to produce good research; see Sarah Harding's _Objectivity and Diversity_ for a good exposition of one model for how plural socially embedded scientifc research programmes that acknowledge differences of power, entitlement, culture, gender and so forth produce *better* science.
(DIR) Post #9t237m5HFyWqLQhTBw by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-15T12:52:26.610812Z
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@kravietz I'm trying to learn more about the Flying University in Poland. There's very little history in English but it seems to me an extraordinary innovation. Do you know any sources?
(DIR) Post #9t23J5Km1gRjEULFAW by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-15T12:56:31.329095Z
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@kravietz I'm an anthropologist -- in terms of cultural comparison, this just isn't true. Our model of "the individual" is actually specific to one (colonial, dominant) culture but it's not a human universal.
(DIR) Post #9t24NN0gLiStAMYESm by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-15T13:13:41.939721Z
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@kravietz Joy Hendry's introduction to social anthropology is a great foundation. The way in which anthropologists write, especially about potentially reflexive questions like the nature of personhood, can be offputting. However a good article on differing models of personhood, none of which look like Euro-American selves, is an article by Celia Busby called "Permeable and Partible Persons" ( I think). If you can't grab it easily off Google Scholar let me know.
(DIR) Post #9tC5eEC051GRQXc76G by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-03-20T08:34:50.711645Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
Folks, is there a #fedi tool to support local buying and delivery networks? If we had a good tool that allowed for LETS/barter as well as f2f purchasing, and that knew about geolocation (and OSM tools for cyclists) so cargo bikes or walking delivery were enabled, it would be much easier to build Transition-style local economies. If we are going to resist Amazon &c we will need such tools.