2 mn readThe second presidential debate for the 2024 U.S. election, scheduled to be hosted by ABC News on September 10, has stirred controversy as Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign team seeks to alter the debate rules, including keeping microphones on throughout the debate. Have the Democrats forgotten who first called for muting mics?
4 mn readThe Final Fantasy XIV (“FFXIV”) Fan Fest is a major event for fans of the popular video game, which boasts over 27 million players according to FFXIV’s own website. The Las Vegas 2023 FFXIV Fan Fest took place over two days on 28 and 29 July 2023. Whilst content on social media about the FFXIV Fan Fest in Las Vegas can make others look forward to the FFXIV Fan Fest in London, due to take place in October, the stream of social media posts about the event can also be a source of anxiety and stress for many fans.
3 mn readThings have changed dramatically on Twitter over the past nine months, and it has been quite the roller-coaster ride. I am still on the platform, but I the time I spend on there has lessened rather dramatically. Twitter is basically a pay-to-play platform now, with Elon Musk describing their content during a Twitter Spaces session as being like the spam folder in one’s email inbox. Whether such a description was intentional or an unhappy coincidence, we probably will never find out, but the way the algorithm has been tweaked to favour subscribers, it certainly does feel as if non-subscribers’ content is only an afterthought now.
3 mn readFor me, travelling is about exploring the world and finding out more about how people around the world live. Whenever I travel, I try to learn at least a couple of phrases of the local language – making sure as a bare minimum that I know how to say, “Excuse me, do you speak English […]
3 mn readKaren Stenner points out the innate predisposition in humans, prevalent in around one third of them, to prize oneness and sameness whilst fearing diversity and complexity “manifests most powerfully under conditions of perceived threat… especially when losing a sense of shared identity and beliefs… When they’re induced to fear that [their valued ends], and the social arrangements that serve them, might be at risk.”
4 mn readThis coming weekend will see many celebrate “Chinese New Year” on Sunday 22 January 2023. What many people know as “Chinese New Year” is celebrated by those in Mainland China, but it is not an exclusive Chinese festival. Many East Asian cultures celebrate the New Year falling on the same day as “Chinese New Year” – for example the Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Koreans. Mongolians and Tibetans also celebrate a festival based on the progress of the moon through the cosmos, with the Mongolian New Year (Tsagaan Sar) and the Tibetan New Year (Losar) falling on or around the same day as “Chinese New Year”. This year, Tsagaan Sar and Losar will fall on 21 January 2023 whilst “Chinese New Year” is on the day after that. In 2024, “Chinese New Year”, Tsagaan Sar and Losar will all fall on 10 February 2024.
3 mn readIt’s a new year. 2023 is now underway. With the new year often comes the dreaded question: “What New Year’s resolutions have you made?” Signed up with the gym to get fitter? Work more sensible hours to spend more time with your family? Do something you really think you should do? Despite the clamour to […]
2 mn readThe most nutritious soil for the authoritarian populism to take root and grow are people who are already used to the stasis of living tightly held together by means of a hegemonic communitarianism. The dynamics and functions which have led different peoples to that barren plateaus are as varied as their history and prevailing ideologies and social arrangements determine, in a process with neither a subject nor a goal, in an Althusserian neither empiricist nor idealist development.
4 mn readHuman brains have limited cognitive skills, and can easily be overloaded to became unable to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from lie. A falsehood becomes true if they have been exposed to it previously, if it confirms strongly-held convictions, if they are emotionally whipped up by it, receive it from multiple sources, and hear it continuously spread. The “illusory truth effect” bias sprouts from being exposed to a lie repeatedly, even from those who debunk it. When hunting the Snark the Bellman knew, “What I tell you three times is true.” Zia Haider Rahman explains it deftly: “Their kind of self-belief seems essential to survive what would otherwise assail them as wave after wave of cognitive dissonance, statements of one thing while knowing the opposite. Surely the dissonance would drive them mad so that the only way through it all is for them actually to believe what they say.”
4 mn readFrom the pro-independence point of view, Catalonia is a great country. Period. If things don’t add up that way it must be because of Spain. Being special, the paramount good guys, other nations will rush to recognize their moral worth by crowning a sovereign Catalonia instead of the ethically bankrupt, inferior Spain. Narcissist nations in decline are prone to indulge themselves in moral-high-ground-boosting, and they often get it by harming themselves to relish both in victimhood and in fantasizing their foes may be harmed the more.
