I totally clicked that link. It's a good way to make people see what fucking assholes they are.
Re: first, it's very similar to a scene early in Black Panther. There, they actually injure museum staff during the theft. (Or kill, I don't remember exactly.) Also, the scene ends differently. In the theft scene in the movie, the main target is made of the mineral McGuffin that the main thief feels he has a birthright to, and the museum didn't even know how important it really was. In addition to that, the main thief also takes a spooky centuries-old mask. His accomplice asks him if it's make of the same McGuffin. The first thief says no, he just liked the look of it. This tells us that while he might have some kind of of a moral code he's still selfish and cavalier about right and wrong. Sure enough, he turns out to be the main villain of the piece.
Now that I'm done teaching for the day: Both these links are insane! 2 is exactly right.
I didn't click the first link because it wasn't BuzzFeed style.
I didn't click the first link because it wasn't BuzzFeed style.
The BGI link is probably exaggerated-- I doubt the guy is that loony. Probably there are guidelines encouraging staff to get genetic tests. But I don't have firsthand knowledge of actual current employee pressures.
That came from a thread at the other place discussing how ordinary and common-sensical Eugenics was in the US and Europe about 100 years ago.
7: Eugenics sounds kind of logical in a vacuum, until you give the slightest consideration to how actual human societies are likely to implement it and then it's fucking horrifying. I remember that formulation being applied to spandex and Communism, but it applies pretty well here.
That sounds like something Emerson would post.
Probably ruin a perfectly good ski slope with exposed babies.
1 Queen Victoria's been dead for over a hundred years, Moby. I don't think she cares.
If she was in favor of eugenics, she really failed big time.
Aggrieved reminder that the Summer Palace wasn't just random looting, it was a deliberate reprisal for the Chinese government skinning seventeen British and Indian diplomats and embassy staff to death, and they're very keen nowadays that no one should remember that.
Xinjiang is something else though-- government smartphone spyware to go into a mall or pick up a kid at school. Mandatory cremation (which is haram), no fasting for public employees during Ramadan, everybody else is strongly encouraged to participate in group sports on Fridays, which conflicts with fasting or prayer.
Megha Rajagopalan was good on this, has had her Visa renewal declined though.
13: Sure, that's a great place to start the story.
13: Right, and diplomats coming to negotiate under a flag of truce.
14: Weird, I was just reading the below. What the fuck is going on over there.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/22/chinas-mass-internment-camps-have-no-clear-end-in-sight/
I assume they're using the great distraction that is Trump's administration to do what they've always wanted to do.
Like, it isn't all about you, guys. Other people can also be evil on their own initiative.
Thanks for links LW. That GQ piece is fascinating.
So the Qing (and Ming, and Northern Song, and Southern Song, and Tang) palaces were looted by barbarians, and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth never ends. But of course it's never even considered that maybe China's problem isn't the barbarians stealing shit from rich people but the empire which is somehow always able to squeeze out money for luxuries but never able to defend the country.
Yeah, it's great that they do both now.
Everyone needs to read the link in 17.
China is also building a registry of Uyghurs worldwide and are attempting to concentrate every member of that ethnic group within Xinjiang province. They coerce family members to contact overseas Uyghurs to "encourage" them to return. Passports have long since been confiscated. The same philosophy applies domestically; a Han Chinese hotel owner in China proper was arrested last week for renting a room to a Uyghur.
Speaking of the looting of the Old Summer Palace, this is a fascinating read.
D'oh, I can haz front page post pleez?
Just saw it on the twitters, and you know, who clicks the links?
You just need to describe them better. "Doctors don't want you to click on this link" or "Local mom discovers China".
Is 13 really true? According to the well-known anti-British source *checks notes* the BBC, the looting was just "he we won a war so you get to loot stuff" random looting. The complete destruction was a reprisal, but not the looting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30810596
Personally I don't think that the Chinese would care about the contents of the summer palace if they hadn't been stolen by foreigners.
Can what happened to the Winter, Spring, and Fall palaces serve as controls?
Interestingly, this book makes it look murkier:
Then, on 16 October 1860, Lord Elgin gave orders for the Summer Palace and its grounds to be torched. His motives remain a mystery. According to Baron Gros, his friend was by then in a state of 'acute neurosis. He kept repeating that a symbolic act was necessary which would cost the Chinese face but not lives. A weak man at heart, he was haunted by the reputation of his father, vilified for saving great art. Or perhaps he was influenced by the fate of twenty-two British and Sepoy troops who had been captured by the Chinese a few months earlier. They had been subjected to appalling tortures witnessed by Parkes and Bowlby before all but one had mercifully expired. Their mutilated remains had just been discovered.
Of course, I'd like to keep in frame the fact that this all came within a war of choice with the goal of ensuring France and the UK's ability to trade on their own terms generally, trade in opium in particular, missionize, and collect indentured servants.
It turns out, there is no Spring Palace or Fall Palace. The Winter Palace is Russian, so we have no degrees of freedom.
It's a blessing Purdue Pharma didn't think to try for anything but money. I bet some people addicted to opioids would be willing to try indentured servitude for a steady supply.
I'm sure the US justice system will help them out with that any day now.
Many of said convicts being opioid addicts, held in prisons at enormous public expense...
Speaking of Britain and looting, I was wondering recently why the British museum has so little stuff looted from Britain? Specifically, why is Stonehenge still sitting out in a random field in Wiltshire instead of being in a museum in London?
There's an obvious and cynical answer which is that they have more respect for British people than foreigners, but I kinda doubt that's really why. Maybe they just didn't think it was as interesting as old classical stuff? Or were embarrassed that it doesn't look as cool as Egyptian stuff from the same era?
In Civ 5, Stonehenge is a better monument than the pyramids, at least to my way of playing.
Anyway, I think maybe Stonehenge is really heavy compared to most works of art. You'll notice they didn't try to move any of the pyramids either.
Cleopatra's Needle weighs almost ten times as much as the biggest of the Stonehenge sarsens, and they shipped that across the ocean.
33: I'd like to keep in frame the fact that this all came within a war of choice with the goal of ensuring France and the UK's ability to trade on their own terms generally, trade in opium in particular, missionize, and collect indentured servants.
After the treaty ports were opened, the China trade was carried on almost entirely by Chinese people: the treaties didn't just give Westerners access to China, they gave Chinese merchants access to more customers and capital than ever before, very much to their benefit. Missionary activity consisted largely in opening the first modern hospitals, schools, and universities in China*; mission education, and treaty port experience in general, supplied much of the first generation of republican-era leadership. (Obviously bad for the Qing, but not obviously bad for Chinese people generally.) The treaty ports were also the basis for Qing Self-Strengthening, which made a great deal of progress. In that regard the contrast with Japan suggests that China might have avoided vast suffering** if the Qing had handled the West better.
None of this is to say the British and French were out for anything but their own interest; it is to say that there was no necessary identity between Qing policy and the interests of their subjects.
*In Taiwan many of those institutions still exist, and the schools are still coveted.
**Including perhaps the Cultural Revolution, which presumably destroyed more Chinese heritage than the West ever did.
43: That's why Egyptian embroidery is so shitty.
SHE WASN'T EGYPTIAN AT ALL!
She comes from a family of immigrants, but they were there doing the jobs native Egyptians wouldn't do, fucking their siblings and being worshipped.
Cleopatra's Needle weighs almost ten times as much as the biggest of the Stonehenge sarsens, and they shipped that across the ocean.
Still a lot smaller than the whole thing, though.
Anyway, there's lots of British stuff in the British Museum. A collections search for "British Isles" returns more than 500,000 items. As for Stonehenge specifically, it was already in a convenient location for British people to see it so why bother moving it?
The ancients knew people would want to see Churchill's birth place after lunch.
They should really move Carhenge closer to some other attraction.
Cadillac Ranch? Definitely some potential synergies there.
Four Corners is just some bullshit plaque. Maybe they need something you can take a picture in front of?
Actually, I was last at Four Corners in the 80s. They may have already added something.
They recently upgraded it. I'm not sure what it looks like now.
It was pretty run down the last time I was there.
The corners needed sharpening?
Turquoise jewelry won't sell itself.
The British museum stole the Four Corners.
I thought that merited some emphasis.
Right. He represented one of the Four-Corner states.
There's already a Stonehenge closish to the Four Corners: http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/visit/stonehenge-memorial
I saw Four Corners in 2012 and it was totally souped up compared to when I had seen it in 1985. What had been a cement slab is now a whole thing with flagpoles and state seals and architecture and shit.
65: That seems even less authentic than Carhenge.
66: Maybe we meet there. I was with my family, next to the guy selling turquoise jewelry.
I know a kid who claims he peed on the Four Corners. That's impressive, if true. I've never peed in three states at the same time, much less four.
You can either stand in four states at the same time while you pee or pee four states at the same time. You can't do both, at least not without considerable mess.
I've never been, but couldn't you manage two states per foot and pee on the crosshairs?
The record for peeing across multiple time zones is probably held by an astronaut but maybe it's some exceptionally hardy polar explorer.
I've peed in every ocean except one, and also the Southern Ocean isn't a real ocean.
I am just going outside to take a leak and may be some time.
NMM to McCain. He is survived by his Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Circuit Judge Merrick Garland. His last votes included the confirmation of Kirstjen Nielsen (remembered for presiding over the breakup of hundreds of families), the approval of Trump's tax breaks and the destruction of the Obamacare mandate. He lived long enough to ensure his seat will remain in Republican hands.