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algorithmic me

Mon Jun 28th 2021 by abagond

I am going to start at the Red Bathroom (pictured above) at a ball in 1921 in the Gold Room of the Overlook Hotel, the hotel in the Stanley Kubrick film “The Shining” (1980). But I am going to do it on YouTube in 2021. From there I will pick the top recommended video and so on. Seeing not only where that leads but also seeing what ads YouTube shows me. To discover the algorithmic me, the me the algorithms at YouTube think I am.

Let’s go!

Click on pictures to enlarge; click on links to watch the video (and see what ads you get).

1. You’re in The Red Bathroom at a ball in 1921 in The Gold Room (Overlook Hotel ambience) 3 HOURS ASMR (2021) by Nemo’s Dreamscapes. 3 hours.

This is a video I have played in the past. I play videos like this for ambient noise. I do not like this one so much, though: at least one of the songs is from the 1930s! It is 3 hours, so I am just going to jump to the next video:

  • Ad: AARP, though this ad is aimed at those who are not retired: “The younger you are, the more you need AARP.”
  • Ad: Hill’s pet food. I do not have a cat or dog.

2. VICTORIAN ERA AMBIENCE: Soft Rain Sounds, Horses, Crows, Bell Sounds (2020) by Autumn Cozy. 3 hours.

This was the top recommended video. This one is even further back in time. With crows! Also 3 hours, so jumping to the next top-recommended video:

  • Ad: Monogram range – a stove/oven, a “luxury appliance”.
  • Ad: Monistat Maintain Feminine Cleanser. I do not have a vagina.

3. Blizzard Sounds for Relaxation and Deep Sleep in a Cozy Living Room with Fireplace Crackling Sounds (2021) by Nature and Relaxation. 4 hours.

I used to listen to videos like this all the time. You would not believe how comforting blizzard sounds and crackling fireplaces can be! Maybe it comes from having lived through blizzards. Or from the pink noise of being in the womb.

  • Ad: BMW cars, in particular the iX and i4. I do not even have a driver’s licence.
  • Ad: TD Bank Double Up Credit Card. TD Banks are in Canada and down the US East Coast. I do in fact live near one.

4. Blizzard Sounds for Sleep In a Cozy Living Room – Snowstorm And Crackling Fireplace Sounds (2021) by Nature and Relaxation. 4 hours.

  • Ad: PSA about bystander intervention to help Asian Americans subjected to racial harrassment.
  • Ad: MGM film “Respect” (2021) starring Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin.

5. Fireplace and Blizzard Sounds in a Rustic Living Room on the top of the Mountain for Deep Sleep (2021) by Nature and Relaxation. 4 hours.

So it looks like I have now entered Blizzard Sound hell. One time it was Chet Baker hell.

  • Ad: Infiniti car ad. Voice-over: “We are defined by algorithms, but is their version of you really you? The all-new Infiniti QX55. Introduce yourself.”

The main difference compared to television is that the people in these ads are way more likely to be Black.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

521

 

 

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Kenny Nolan: I Like Dreamin’

Sun Jun 27th 2021 by abagond

Remarks:

This song came out in 1976, going to #3 on the US pop chart. I remembered this song years later when I was at an actual St Thomas beach (in the Virgin Islands).

Nolan has appeared in this space twice before: not only did he co-write “Lady Marmalade” (1974) by Labelle and “Get Dancin'” (1975) by Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, but he was the main Sex-O-Lette you hear (but never see) singing that song!

See also:

Lyrics:

I like dreamin’ cause dreamin’ can make you mine.
I like dreamin’, closing my eyes and feeling fine.
When the lights go down, I’m holding you so tight.
Got you in my arms and it’s paradise ’til the morning light.

I see us on the shore beneath the bright sunshine.
We’ve walked along St. Thomas beach a million times.
Hand in hand, two barefoot lovers kissing in the sand.
Side by side, the tide rolls in.
I’m touching you, you’re touching me.
If only it could be.

I like dreamin’ cause dreamin’ can make you mine.
I like dreamin’, closing my eyes and feeling fine.
When the lights go down, I’m holding you so tight.
Got you in my arms and it’s paradise ’til the morning light.

Through each dream how our love has grown.
I see us with our children and our happy home.
Little smiles, so warm and tender looking up at us.
Blessed by love, the world we share
Until I wake and reach for you
And you’re just not there.

I like dreamin’ ’cause dreaming can make you mine.
I like holding you close and touching your skin
Even if it’s in my mind.
Oh, sweet dream baby, I love you.
Oh, my sweet dream baby, you’re in my dreams every night.

Source: Songfacts.

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Transatlantic novels

Sat Jun 26th 2021 by abagond

Here are the novels that made the top 100 in both the US and UK as determined by their public broadcasters: the BBC’s Big Read of 2003 and PBS’s Great American Read of 2018. The BBC polled over 750,000 people in Britain, PBS polled 7,200 in the US.

In order of publication:

  • 1800:
    • 1800s
    • 1810s
    • 1820s
    • 1830s
    • 1840s
      • 1844: Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo
      • 1847 Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
      • 1847 Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
    • 1850s
    • 1860s
      • 1861 Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
      • 1865 Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
      • 1866 Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
      • 1869 Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
      • 1869 Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
    • 1870s
    • 1880s
    • 1890s
  • 1900:
    • 1900s
      • 1908 Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables
    • 1910s
    • 1920s
      • 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
    • 1930s
      • 1936 Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
      • 1938 Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
      • 1939 John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
    • 1940s
    • 1950s
    • 1960s
      • 1960 Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
      • 1961 Joseph Heller – Catch-22
      • 1965 Frank Herbert – Dune
      • 1967 Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
      • 1969 Mario Puzo – The Godfather
    • 1970s
      • 1978 Stephen King – The Stand
      • 1979 Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
    • 1980s
      • 1980 Jean M. Auel – The Clan of the Cave Bear
      • 1988 Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
      • 1989 Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth
      • 1989 John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
    • 1990s
      • 1997 Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha
      • 1997 J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter (series)
  • 2000:
    • 2000s

Note: PBS counts a series as one book. I list those with at least one book in the UK top 100.

I have read half of these, all of them excellent – except for “Great Expectations”! But the list is still very White.

UK-only: Philip Pullman (Dark Materials), Winnie-the-Pooh, “The Wind in the Willows”, Thomas Hardy, Jacqueline Wilson, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl, “Treasure Island”, “Watership Down”, Evelyn Waugh, “The Secret Garden”, “Black Beauty”, “Artemis Fowl”, “Noughts and Crosses” (!!!), “Thorn Birds”, Enid Blyton (who wrote of golliwogs), “Lord of the Flies”, “Bridget Jones’s Diary”, “The Secret History”, James Joyce, “Brave New World”, Kerouac, Rushdie, etc. The UK top 100 had three Jane Austen books and five by Charles Dickens.

US-only:

  • British: Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, “Frankenstein”, “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Joseph Conrad, Zadie Smith, etc – made the US top 100 but not the UK’s, despite being British.
  • Black American: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Jason Reynolds, Sister Souljah, Colson Whitehead, etc.
  • White American: Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, Game of Thrones, “Tom Sawyer”, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, “A Separate Peace”, “Jurassic Park”, “Moby-Dick”, the Left Behind series, S.E. Hinton, Jack London, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, V.C. Andrews, Isaac  Asimov, etc.
  • Asian American: “The Joy Luck Club”, etc.
  • Other: Chinua Achebe, “The Little Prince”, “Siddhartha”, Cervantes, Rómulo Gallegos, etc.

Too new to make the UK list: Hunger Games, Twilight series, “The Book Thief”. “The Help” (I saw the movie), “The Da Vinci Code”, “The Martian”, “Fifty Shades of Grey”, “Americanah”, John Green, Junot Diaz, etc.

– Abagond, 2021.

Sources: BBC, PBS.

See also:

575

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Frederick Douglass’s library

Thu Jun 24th 2021 by abagond

Frederick Douglass lived in Anacostia in Washington, DC the last 20 years of his life. His house still stands, though it has been closed to tourists due to the pandemic. It has thousands of his books, among them (listed by year of publication):

  • -800s: Homer: Iliad (Pope translation), Odyssey
  • -700s:
  • -600s: Hesiod
  • -500s: Theognis
  • -400s:
  • -300s:
  • -200s:
  • -100s:
  • -000s: Cicero: Orations
  • 000s:
  • 100s: Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
  • 200s:
  • 300s: Bible *
  • 400s:
  • 500s:
  • 600s:
  • 700s:
  • 800s:
  • 900s:
  • 1000s:
  • 1100s:
  • 1200s:
  • 1300s:
  • 1400s:
  • 1500s:
  • 1600s:
    • 1616: Shakespeare: Complete Works *
    • 1680: Morgan Godwyn: Negro and Indians Advocate, Suing for Their Admission Into the Church
  • 1700s:
    • 1747: John Gast: History of Greece
    • 1751: Voltaire: The Age of Louis XIV
    • 1766: Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield
    • 1774: Goethe: Sorrows of Young Werther
    • 1789: Edward Gibbon: Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire
    • 1789: Rousseau: Confessions
    • 1789: US Constitution
    • 1791: Jeremy Bentham: Panopticon
    • 1792: T. Wilkins: History of Jane Grey, Queen of England
    • 1793: John Whitehead: The Life of Rev. John Wesley
  • 1800s:
    • 1817: Caleb Bingham: Columbian Orator *
    • 1817: US Government: State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States in Ten Volumes
    • 1824: Byron: Don Juan
    • 1832: N.H. Keene: History of the United States from the 1st Settlement As Colonies to the Close of the War With Great Britain in 1815
    • 1837: Benjamin Disraeli: Henrietta Temple
    • 1838: John Greenleaf Whittier: Poems
    • 1840: Dionysius Lardner: The Steam Engine Explained & Illustrated
    • 1840: Thomas Fowell Buxton: The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy
    • 1841: John Keats: Poetical Works
    • 1841: Feuerbach: Essence of Christianity
    • 1842: Robert Burns: Complete Poetical Works *
    • 1843: Samuel Davidson: Introduction to the New Testament, Volume I: the Gospels
    • 1845: Alexander Humboldt: Kosmos
    • 1846: Alexandre Dumas: Count of Monte Cristo
    • 1846: Tennyson: Poems
    • 1847: William Wells Brown: Narrative of a Fugitive Slave
    • 1850: Sojourner Truth: Narrative
    • 1850: Hawthorne: Scarlet Letter
    • 1852: William Lloyd Garrison: Speeches
    • 1853: Charles Dickens: Bleak House *
    • 1853: Solomon Northup: Twelve Years a Slave
    • 1856: J. Leighton Wilson: Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects
    • 1857: David Livingstone: Missionary Travelers
    • 1857: David Christy: Ethiopia: Her Gloom and Glory As Illustrated in the History of the Slave Trade and Slavery; the Rise of the Republic of Liberia and the Progress of African Mission
    • 1858: Jonas Hartzel: Bible Vindicated a Series of Essays on American Slavery
    • 1861: Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
    • 1861: Frederick Law Olmstead: A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy
    • 1862: Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
    • 1863: Frances Anne Kemble: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39
    • 1865: Lydia Maria Child: The Freedmen’s Book
    • 1866: Henry Thomas Buckle: History of Civilization in England
    • 1866: Horace Greeley: The American Conflict
    • 1869: M.B. Bird: The Black Man; or Haytian Independence
    • 1869: Edward A. Pollard: Secret History of the Confederacy
    • 1873: John Gamgee: Yellow Fever a Nautical Disease
    • 1875: Georg Ebers: An Egyptian Princess; an Historical Novel
    • 1879: Martin Delany: Principal of Ethnology: the Origin of Races and Color, with an Archeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization
    • 1886: Cunard Steamship Company: Official Guide and Album
    • 1886: Charles Eyre Pascoe: London of to- Day
    • 1891: Encyclopaedia Britannica
    • 1893: Jose Freire: The State of Ceara
    • 1893: Monroe Alphus Majors: Noted Negro Women Their Triumphs and Activities

* = among his favourites.

– Abagond, 2021.

Sources: Lapham’s Quarterly (2019), The Art of Manliness (2014), National Park Service (see the full list).

See also:

530

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Des’ree: You Gotta Be

Sun Jun 20th 2021 by abagond

Remarks:

This came out in 1994, going gold in the US, UK and New Zealand. It is made from her mother’s sayings. Des’ree is a one-hit wonder in the US, but in her native UK she has six songs that hit the top 20, including three versions of this one! The final 1999 version is shown above, released in the UK but not the US.

See  also:

Lyrics:

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky
Lovers, they may ’cause you tears
Go ahead release your fears
Stand up and be counted
Don’t be ashamed to cry

You gotta be
You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day

Herald what your mother said
Read the books your father read
Try to solve the puzzles in your own sweet time
Some may have more cash than you
Others take a different view
My oh my, yea, eh, eh

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day

Time ask no questions, it goes on without you
Leaving you behind if you can’t stand the pace
The world keeps on spinning
Can’t stop it, if you tried to
This best part is danger staring you in the face

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky
Lovers, they may cause you tears
Go ahead release your fears
My oh my, eh, eh, eh

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day
Yeah, yeah, yeah

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day
Yeah, yeah

Got to be bold
Got to be bad
Got to be wise
Do what others say
Got to be hard
Not too too hard
All I know is love will save the day

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together

Source: Songfacts.

Posted in stuff | 3 Comments »

Books my father read

Sat Jun 19th 2021 by abagond

Here are some books my father had, those I can remember seeing or still have in my possession. He was an avid reader, so he probably read most of the non-reference ones.

  • 1500s:
    • 1543: Vesalius: De humani corporis fabrica
    • 1599: Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
  • 1600s:
    • 1616: Shakespeare: Complete Works – I still have this one!
  • 1700s:
  • 1800s:
  • 1900s:
    • 1930s
      • 1933: George Morey Miller, editor: English Literature (6 volumes, up to the Victorians)
      • 1939: L. Sprague de Camp: Lest Darkness Fall (pictured)
    • 1940s
    • 1950s
      • book of logarithms and other mathematical tables
      • books on dinosaurs and geology
      • 1953: Winston Churchill: The Second World War – not sure if he had all 6 volumes.
      • 1953: L. Sprague de Camp: The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens
      • 1957: Lands and Peoples – 7 volumes, one on each part of the world.
      • 1958: Encyclopedia Americana and their yearbooks from at least 1965 to 1973.
      • 1958: Winnie ille Pu – Winnie the Pooh in Latin
      • 1958: A. Wolf: A History of Science, Technology, & Philosophy in the 18th Century – I have this one. There is no other way I would remember it.
    • 1960s
      • Russian-English dictionary – olive and white cover, it was falling apart!
      • a book on calculus
      • a medical dictionary
      • a book about Archimedes
      • Catholic missal – but I do not remember him having a Bible, though.
      • 1961: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary – in three huge volumes.
      • 1962: Thomas B. Costain: The Last Plantagenets
      • 1964: The Flammarion Book of Astronomy – I adored this book, with its tantalizingly fuzzy pictures of the planets.
      • 1964: Patrick Moore: The Sky at Night
      • 1965: Fowler’s Modern American Usage
      • 1965: Isaac Asimov: Of Time and Space and Other Things
      • 1966: Random House Dictionary
      • 1966: James T. deKay: The Left-Handed Book
      • 1967: Desmond Morris: Naked Ape
      • 1968: Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia
      • 1968: Nancy Kennedy: Ford Times Cookbook
      • 1968: Brian Moore: I am Mary Dunne
      • 1968: Louis Auchincloss: A World of Profit
      • 1969: Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain – I am pretty sure read this.
      • 1969: Dr Laurence J. Peter: The Peter Principle
    • 1970s
      • Poul Anderson paperback novels – inhaled.
      • 1970: Lewis Mumford: The Pentagon of Power
      • 1970: Nancy Milford: Zelda – my sister said he read this.
      • 1971: Michael Moorcock: The Warlord of the Air – I read this in 2020
      • 1973: Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions
      • 1974: Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
      • 1974: Michael Shaara: The Killer Angels – about the Battle of Gettysburg. I know he read this.
      • 1974: Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: The Mote in God’s Eye – I know he read this one too.
      • 1975: E.L. Doctorow: Ragtime
      • 1979: William Shawcross: Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia
    • 1980s:
      • 1984: Larry Niven: Integral Trees
      • 1988: Isaac Asimov: Prelude to Foundation

Magazines: Science, Scientific American, National Geographic, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Byte.

Books that seem out of place are probably my mother’s or were book club selections they did not send back in time. My mother, though, was more a magazine reader.

Because I liked science, science fiction and reference books, I was more likely to notice and remember those. He had over 500 books, so I would not draw any cosmic conclusions about what does not appear in this list! He had more books than anyone I knew before I went to university.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

528

Posted in stuff | 3 Comments »

Barry Jenkins: If Beale Street Could Talk

Fri Jun 18th 2021 by abagond

“If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018), directed by Barry Jenkins, is based on the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name. Jenkins is best known as the director of “Moonlight” (2016). Teyonah Parris and Regina King play supporting characters.

Our Story: Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (KiKi Layne), two picture-perfect lovebirds in Harlem, are so happy that you know their life together is about to be disfigured by senseless tragedy. And so it is: Fonny is accused of raping a woman he has never met. It appears he was framed by Officer Bell, a White police officer. Tish hires a lawyer who, you know, Can Only Do So Much. Her father and father-in-law-to-be commit actual crimes (stealing more than just paperclips from work) to raise money to defend Fonny against a crime he did not commit. Oh, and now with Fonny in jail, Tish discovers she is pregnant!

This is James Baldwin, so do not expect a Hollywood ending.

This is also Barry Jenkins, so expect a Suffering Hero (Tish), beautifully filmed, who is a victim of societal ills. His films are kind of hard to take, bordering on Black trauma porn, but they are meant to be uplifting:

Tish’s mother (Regina King):

“If you trusted love this far, trust it all the way.”

Tish talking to Fonny in jail.

The book was better, way better. The part that is burned into my brain is Fonny’s first run-in with Officer Bell. Tish is there and looks into the policeman’s eyes:

“his eyes were as blank as George Washington’s eyes. But I was beginning to learn something about the blankness of those eyes. What I was learning was beginning to frighten me to death. If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy. In that eye, you do not exist: if you are lucky. If that eye, from its height, has been forced to notice you, if you do exist in the unbelievably frozen winter which lives behind that eye, you are marked, marked, marked, like a man in a black overcoat, crawling, fleeing, across the snow. The eye resents your presence in the landscape, cluttering up the view. Presently, the black overcoat will be still, turning red and with blood, and the snow will be red, and the eye resents this, too, blinks once, and causes more snow to fall, covering it all.”

None of that comes across in the film. Jenkins is a serious and talented film director, so I do not fault him, but the limits of his medium, film. A book lets you get inside the mind of a character, lets you become that character, in a way film just cannot.

“I Am Not Your Negro” (2017) was also based on Baldwin’s writing and also good in itself, but also came up against the limits of film to go beyond broad strokes. Such films, at their best, are introductory compared to Baldwin himself.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

582

Posted in stuff | 3 Comments »

the layers of my thought

Thu Jun 17th 2021 by abagond

Where my different ideas and beliefs come from, from the largest layer to the smallest:

Catholicism (1.345 billion):

  • The oneness of mankind.
  • The value of each human life.
  • Poverty is not a moral failing.
  • Life is more than sex and money.
  • We live in a fallen world.
  • The Bible and the Catholic Church as a source of wisdom (even if I do not always agree).

The West (1.012 billion):

Anglosphere (500 milion):

  • Reflexive Anglophilia.
  • Freedom – for individuals, businesses, ideas, art, trade, etc – is good.
  • Rights of private property.
  • Judges should be independent.
  • People do not need government or religion to tell them what to think.
  • Life is what you make it. It is not fate or Providence.
  • Empiricism: facts matter more than reason.
  • Religion is a private affair.
  • Incremental social change, not revolution, is best.

USA (331 million):

  • Freedom of speech.
  • Freedom of religion.
  • Constitutional government.
  • Meritocracy as a good thing.
  • Value of hard work, almost as an end in itself (an “Asian” value according to some).
  • Individualism.
  • Moralism in politics.

US blue states (~165 million):

  • No man should be above the law, not even the president.
  • Good: democracy, science, immigration, labour unions, education, pluralism.
  • Power corrupts.
  • Capitalism needs to be regulated by government for the good of ordinary people and the planet. Left to run amok it leads to things like slavery, pollution, unsafe working conditions, starvation wages, stock market crashes, etc.
  • Government can be a force for good: the abolition of slavery, defeating Hitler, the moon shots, public health and public education, etc.
  • The US civil war was about slavery.
  • The more people who vote the better.
  • Racism and sexism are morally wrong and also mess up society, making it way less meritocratic.
  • Russia is not our friend.
  • Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Black America (47 million):

Metropolitan New York (18 million):

  • The cosmopolitan model of US society – maybe this is a blue-state thing, but it is at least a New York thing.
  • No one ethnic group is a shining model for others.
  • Creative anarchy.
  • Live and let live.

Uptown Manhattan (~0.7 million):

  • Most of what the US believes about itself are self-serving lies.
  • The US will try to turn you into a soulless machine, as it has done to so many.
  • See things as they are, not as people wish them to be.
  • Money and progress are not necessarily good things.
  • In the end it all comes down to power.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

510

Posted in stuff | 6 Comments »

Mulan (花木兰)

Tue Jun 15th 2021 by abagond

Mulan as imagined in the US in 2020.

Huā Mùlán (circa 400s), aka 花木蘭 or 花木兰, is a folk hero in China and a Disney princess in the US. She disguised herself as a man to fight in the army in her father’s place. This post assumes she was a person in history, though some think she was just made up to make for a good story.

Timeline: some works that she has appeared in:

  • by 535: “Ballad of Mulan” – just 62 lines
  • 1500s: “The Female Mulan” – a two-act play by Xu Wei
  • 1695: “Romance of Sui and Tang” – a novel by Chu Renhuo
  • 1998: “Mulan” – animated Disney film (US)
  • 2020: “Mulan” – live-action Disney film (US)

Mulan was not Han Chinese but Xianbei, a Proto-Mongolic Eastern Barbarian. Some Xianbei later became actual Mongols while others took over northern China as the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534), marrying the Han and taking on their ways, but not becoming fully Han till hundreds of years after Mulan’s time.

Mulan fought Rourans, not Huns. It is a well-documented fact that by the 400s the Huns were ravaging the Roman Empire in the Far West. The Rouran were also Proto-Mongolic Eastern Barbarians like the Xianbei. In fact, genetic studies show that they were closely related. Mulan’s Roman counterpart would have been a half-Romanized German woman fighting in the Roman army against German invaders.

According to the Ballad, she snuck off in the morning to join the army in place of her father. She fought for 12 years, on horseback with armour, presumably an archer. Among other places, she fought in the Yan hills (400 km north-east of Beijing). She would have looked something like this tomb painting of a Xianbei cavalryman from the 300s:

After the war:

The Khan asks her what she desires,
“I’ve no need for the post of a gentleman official,

I ask for the swiftest horse,
To carry me back to my hometown.”

It was only after she returned home that the truth came out:

I take off my battle cloak,
And put on my old-time clothes.

I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill,
And apply my bisque make-up by the mirror.

I step out to see my comrades-in-arms,
They are all surprised and astounded:

‘We travelled twelve years together,
Yet didn’t realise Mulan was a lady!'”

In both Disney versions her gender reveal takes place while in the army.

The Ballad ends:

But when the two rabbits run side by side,
How can you tell the female from the male?

The Disney Version: Even in the 2020 remake Disney was still getting stuff wrong. For example:

  • Shows Mulan living in southern China.
  • Shows Mulan as a tomboy.
  • Adds Western story elements, like witches, dark magic, and a duel to the death.
  • Adds apples. China did not have apples back then.
  • Misunderstands qì (气) as a magical power.

At least they got her full name right this time.

Whitetastic: The director, writers, and even the costume designer were all White. As if it were made in the hills of Idaho. Or Hollywood.

– Abagond, 2021.

Sources: mainly Google Images, The Ballad of Mulan, the two Disney films, Xiran Jay Zhao for cultural inaccuracies, and, for general historical background, the Wikipedia (Xianbei, etc).

See also:

604

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Les Filles de Illighadad

Sun Jun 13th 2021 by abagond

Remarks:

I do not know the name of this song. The video is from the Druga Godba music festival in 2018 in Slovenia, but Les Filles (and the band leader’s brother in the back) are themselves a Tuareg band from Illighadad, a village in western Niger at the edge of the Sahara desert. The strange-looking drum on the right is a calabash. I found them while looking for music from Saharan cellphones.

See also:

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The Lord’s Prayer in English through time

Sat Jun 12th 2021 by abagond

The Lord’s Prayer written in Old English in 1050. Via the British Library.

The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9b-13a) in English for each century that I could find:

400s:

500s:

600s:

700s:

800s:

900s: from 995:

Fæder ūre þū þē eart on heofonum
Sī þīn nama gehālgod
Tō becume þīn rice
Gewurþe þīn willa
On erðon swā swā on heofonum
Urne gedæghwamlīcan hlāf syle ūs tō dæg
And forgyf ūs ūre gyltas
Swā swā wē forgyfð ūrum gyltendum.
And ne gelæd þū ūs on costnunge
Ac alȳs ūs of yfele.

1000s: as it appeared in a manuscript in 1050 (as shown at top):

1100s: Wessex Gospels, circa 1175:

Fader ure þu þe ert on heofene.
sye þin name gehalged.
to-becume þin rice.
Gewurðe þin gewille.
on eorðan swa swa on heofenan.
ure dayghwamlice hlaf syle us to dayg.
& forgyf us ure geltas
swa swa we forgyfeð ure geltenden.
& ne læd þu us on costnunge.
ac ales us of yfele

1200s:

1300s: Wycliffe’s Bible in 1389:

Oure fadir That art in hevenes
Halwid be thi name
Thi kingdom come to
Be thi wille don
On erthe as in hevenes
Give to us this day oure bred ovir othir substaunce
And forgiv us oure dettis
As we forgiven oure dettours
And lede us not in to temptacioun
But delyevr us from yvel

1400s:

1500s: Tyndale’s Bible in 1525:

O oure father which arte in heven,
halowed be thy name;
let thy kingdom come;
thy wyll be fulfilled
as well in erth as hit ys in heven;
geve vs this daye oure dayly breade;
and forgeve vs oure treaspases,
even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs;
leede vs not into temptacion,
but delyvre vs ffrom yvell.

1600s: King James or Authorized Version (KJV/AV) as it first appeared in print in 1611:

1700s: King James Bible of 1769:

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:

1800s: English Revised Version (RV) of 1885:

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

1900s: the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of 1952:

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

2000s: the English Standard Version (ESV), as it appeared on the Internet in 2021:

– Abagond, 2021.

Update (December 28th):  Added the  Wessex Gospels, circa 1175. Images for 1050, 1611 and 2021.

See also:

610

 

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September 12th 1855

Fri Jun 11th 2021 by abagond

Few diaries kept by Black American women in the 1800s have been published. Here is an entry from one of them, from Salem, Massachusetts in 1855, from a free state in the northern US back in slave times. (I broke it up into smaller paragraphs for easier reading):

Wednesday, Sept. 12. To-day school commenced. – Most happy am I to return to the companionship of my studies, – ever my most valued friends. It is pleasant to meet the scholars again; most of them greet me cordially, and were it not for the thought that will intrude, of the want of entire sympathy even of those I know and like best, I should greatly enjoy their society.

There is one young girl and only one – Miss [Sarah] B[rown] who I believe thoroughly and heartily appreciates anti-slavery, – radical anti-slavery, and has no prejudice against color. I wonder that every colored person is not a misanthrope. Surely we have everything to make us hate mankind.

I have met girls in the schoolroom [-] they have been thoroughly kind and cordial to me, – perhaps the next day met them in the street – they feared to recognize me; these I can but regard now with scorn and contempt, – once I liked them, believing them incapable of such meanness. Others give the most distant recognitions possible. – I, of course, acknowledge no such recognitions, and they soon cease entirely.

These are but trifles, certainly, to the great, public wrongs which we as a people are obliged to endure. But to those who experience them, these apparent trifles are most wearing and discouraging; even to the child’s mind they reveal volumes of deceit and heartlessness, and early teach a lesson of suspicion and distrust.

Oh! it is hard to go through life meeting contempt with contempt, hatred with hatred, fearing, with too good reason, to love and trust hardly any one whose skin is white, – however lovable, attractive and congenial in seeming.

In the bitter, passionate feelings of my soul again and again there rises the questions “When, oh! when shall this cease?” “Is there no help?” “How long oh! how long must we continue to suffer – to endure?”

Conscience answers it is wrong, it is ignoble to despair; let us labor earnestly and faithfully to acquire knowledge, to break down the barriers of prejudice and oppression. Let us take courage; never ceasing to work, – hoping and believing that if not for us, for another generation there is a better, brighter day in store, – when slavery and prejudice shall vanish before the glorious light of Liberty and Truth; when the rights of every colored man shall everywhere be acknowledged and respected, and he shall be treated as a man and a brother.

– Charlotte Forten, 1855.

My heart felt like ashes after I read this – at how little some things have changed.

Forten was 18, then at Salem Normal School, now Salem State University, becoming its first Black graduate in 1856. She is better known by her married name, Charlotte Forten Grimké.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

528

 

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White Rage

Thu Jun 10th 2021 by abagond

“White Rage” (2016), a book by Carol Anderson, documents the anti-Black racist policies, laws and court decisions of the US government from about 1865 to 2015. Racism goes way beyond the Klan or the N-word or rude people on escalators – it reaches to the highest levels of government and is right there in the public record for all to see. Anderson is a professor of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Recommended for anyone who believes in respectability politics, bootstraps, or clueless White people.

Blacks do not suffer from benign neglect or bootstraps unpulled – but from White rage: White public officials who go out of their way to hurt Black people, to prevent them from voting, getting a good education, living in a nice neighbourhood, etc. Even when it means hurting fellow Whites or the nation as a whole. It is no accident that ordinary White people do worst when and where the US is at its most racist.

Hood not required: Anderson:

“White rage doesn’t have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.”

Here is but a taste:

“For example, almost five times as many black college-bound high school seniors as white came from families with incomes below twelve thousand dollars [circa 1980]. The [Reagan] administration reconfigured various grants and loan packages so that ‘the needier the student, the harder he or she would be hit by Reagan’s student-aid cuts.’ Not surprisingly, nationwide black enrollment in college plummeted from 34 to 26 percent.”

It goes on and on like that, for 150 years, through Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights Movement and the first Black president. On and on. And on.

And just as she is finishing the book in 2015 – Dylann Roof is gunning down a Bible study at a Black church (June 17th). And Trump is coming down the escalator to run for president (June 16th).

“Not all Whites” – She does not say how many Whites are afflicted with this rage or why, and leaves White allies out of her account. But except for brief periods, the enraged somehow always manage to have a lock on Congress or at least the Supreme Court, so that it is always two anti-racist steps forward, 1.95 racist steps back. She calls it “backlash”, but it seems more like just Tuesday.

Respectability politics if anything only makes things worse:

“Black respectability or ‘appropriate’ behavior doesn’t seem to matter. If anything, black achievement, black aspirations, and black success are construed as direct threats. Obama’s presidency made that clear.”

Blocking Black advancement, after all, is the whole point.

Anderson:

“The truth is, white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened the nation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions of dollars on baseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick, poor, and woefully undereducated, and left cities nothing less than decimated. All this havoc has been wreaked simply because African Americans … were unwilling to take no for an answer.”

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

552

 

 

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Programming note #43

Thu Jun 3rd 2021 by abagond

I will be on hiatus for a week, till June 10th. I will continue to moderate comments, however.

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Books I was made to read at school

Wed Jun 2nd 2021 by abagond

Books I was made to read at US public school in the 1970s, listed in order of publication, rated from 1 to 5 stars like on Goodreads:

Shakespeare: Hamlet (1601) – I had to read this over Christmas Break. Ugh: 1 star.

Shakespeare: Macbeth (1606) – my English teacher adored Lady Macbeth, but she seemed like a terrible person to me. 1 star.

Voltaire: Candide (1759) – this is the only book I can remember reading in World Lit, though there must have been others. Right? 3 stars.

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (1851) – I only got halfway through this. NR.

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1861) – I hated this!!! My introduction to the dreary Victorians that my teachers seemed to so love. 1 star.

Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native (1878) – I hated this too. All my friends read the Cliffs Notes version and went to parties and laughed while I slogged through the Original Text at 60 wpm (= 45 hours). Back then I subvocalized and read at a third of the average speed. Now I do not and read at half speed. 1 star.

L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  (1900) – I liked this, though it is one of the few books where the movie is better. 4 stars.

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows (1908) – I liked this too even though I was kind of shaky on English wildlife. 4 stars.

Agatha Christie: Ten Little Niggers (1939) – a murder mystery, then known as “And Then There Were None”. 4 stars.

Esther Forbes: Johnny Tremain (1943) – the history of the American Revolution painlessly learned by way of its boy hero. Unlike at Catholic school, the Revolution was pounded into our heads. 3 stars.

Arthur Miller: The Crucible (1953) – also set in colonial times. About the McCarthy Hearings by way of the Salem Witch Trials. I would probably love this book now. I should reread it to see. 2 stars.

Pat Frank: Alas, Babylon (1959) – the world after a nuclear war. Not exactly science fiction in the 1970s during the Cold War. My father said the Eastern Seaboard would be vaporized – there was no “after” for us. I remember looking out the window at school and thinking, “All this could be gone in 45 minutes.” 5 stars.

William Gibson: The Miracle Worker (1959) – Helen Keller, born deaf and blind, is taught to speak. Teachers loved it. I did not. 2 stars.

Elizabeth Kata: A Patch of Blue  (1965) – also about a blind girl. This one is White and falls in love with a sighted Black man. I remember asking my mother what “whore” meant. She told me to look it up. 3 stars.

By century:

  • From Gilgamesh to 1600 AD: 0
  • 1600s: 2
  • 1700s: 1
  • 1800s: 3
  • 1900s: 8

By nation:

  • France: 1 – “World Lit”!!
  • UK: 6
  • US: 6
  • Australia: 1 (Elizabeth Kata)

No Black authors. One of my English teachers gushed about “Roots” (1976) by Alex Haley but she never assigned it.

Even back then I understood what a terrible list this is – because my parents and four siblings had hundreds of books and my mother took us to the library every Saturday.

The cynic in me whispers that my teachers wanted me to hate reading.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

575

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