*shows up late with a tea cup* what's the ai-designed mascot nonsense about? :o
Anon it is STILL technically CNY so you're not late at all!
On Dec 6, the official mascot for 2024 CNY was released, along with a segment on CCTV talking about all its elements being taken from culturally significant symbols blah blah blah. Here's a link to the Global Times aka the Central Propaganda Mouthpiece, on how it is a masterpiece inspired by ancient chinese elements.
There are immediate questions. It looks like AI art, there's a claw # mismatch, it has that glowy soulless AI quality. Also, it looks almost exactly like the mascot from the China Construction Bank dragon year gold bank note.
see here -- spring fest mascot up top, bank note bottom
This bank note was ADVERTISED as "the very first mascot created by AI on this planet".
Spring Night (official weibo acct of THE SPRING FESTIVAL NIGHT) responded to the internet's accusations in the most halfassed way possible by releasing CLEARLY FAKE screenshots, and even a video scrolling all their identical looking psd files:
Look, we pencil sketched an outline and cloned it a hundred times in blue!
The bank has released no statement. Their promo videos are gone, but you can still find it on the B site scroll to 2:20 and you'll hear about how their Chenchen was designed by AI.
How did Spring Night deal with criticism after that? it seems the way they're dealing with this is "not at all" and wait for it go away ... we still saw it on spring night because it became part of the show. (If you keep watching for a few minutes, you'll see a 3D version of it behind the announcers' heads.)
For a picture of the CCB bank note, you can look for 2024中国建设银行龙年金钞, or even find it on ebay by searching "2024 CCB dragon gold banknote".
source for images: singtao.ca
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ACTS DONE BY + INFORMATION LEAKED BY SASAENGS OVER THE YEARS | SUN SOOAH 선수아 [SEVENTEEN]
! TRIGGER WARNINGS ! : Breaking into hotel room, people being put in danger, cheating, pregnancy scares, fighting, personal privacy being invaded,
*If there are other trigger warnings you feel are present let me know and I will add them to the list !!
[READ MORE]
☒ SOLO DEBUT
TIME FRAME: Mid 2020
REACTION: Many Carats were upset about her personal space being hacks and the leaking of what was going to be the first soloist to debut in SEVENTEEN. They praised the song and her vocals on it as it was going to be her debut to show her vocal talent.
A few sasaengs, back in mid 2020, had hacked into her iphone account that she uses to save and keep track of her music and photos and other things in her daily life. After looking through everything they had came across a snippet of a few of her solo songs and ideas for her debut solo mini album and had leaked it around 4:14 AM KST on JUNE 14TH. She was very upset and actually cried to some of the members behind the scenes when it happened as her, WOOZI, VERNON, and HOSHI worked extremely hard on those songs for two years prior. Although the song was leaked, many Carats were interested in her solo album!
☒ DATING DISASTER
TIME FRAME: Sometimes in 2016, 2018 - 2019, and 2022
REACTION: 50/50, some fans were happy their idols were in a relationship but others were extremely upset that SOONAH and their possible biases were in a relationship. The rumors from all years are sometimes still brought up.
SOONAH is often victim to sasaengs leaking information about her dating history and relationships with other idols. Majority of the time the leaks are harmless with little to no context or facts to back up the claim that she is dating certain idols. The first dating rumor was around mid 2016 with her and iKON’s BOBBY. Both companies denied any leak and rumor stating the two had never been introduced before so them being together was untrue. In the timeframe of 2018 - 2019, she was wrapped in the dating rumors with three other idols; MONSTA X’s I.M., PENTAGON’s YUTO, ONF’s WYATT respectively. All companies responded say the pairing were not intimately close and were just close friends who were working on a project together. The most recent leak/dating rumor was with THE BOYZ’ JACOB. Neither companies nor the two of them spoke on the matter and some fans still ask to this day.
☒ HOTEL FREAK OUT
TIME FRAME: Late 2022
REACTION: Many carats were worried for her and the members she was rooming with. No one was hurt but some items were stolen. Charges or other legal actions were not filed against them.
While she was staying in a hotel room, for the FACE THE SUN TOUR, that she shared with fellow members WONWOO, VERNON, and DINO. She had just gotten off her hiatus and was able to join the boys in their BE THE SUN TOUR. While the four of them were out eating with other members, a group of sasaengs that were waiting outside the hotel for them to leave were able to get up to their room and break in. A few items of her were taken along with a few items of the other members.
☒ RUDE PERSONALITY
TIME FRAME: 2014 - 2016
REACTION: Trainees were proved to be sasaengs + accusations were debunked. Some antis still bring this rumor up to the day.
It was leaked once that she was a former JYP trainee from 2014 - 2016. A few former trainees had come out and said that she was extremely rude and had a arrogant personality while the four of them were trainees. She didn’t speak on the topic for a while until it really got to her where she had to take a mental health hiatus.
☒ GIRL FIGHT
TIME FRAME: Late 2020 - Early 2021
REACTION: The public thought that the reasonings behind her actions were justified for the most part. She had publicly owned up to her actions when the information was leaked and says she does not regret what she had done. She does sometimes joke that anyone can get it as she’s never lost any of the fights.
The information of her being in fights was one that came out of the blue. It was kept under wraps for a few years after it happened. It is a well known fact that SOONAH and JINSUNG from SOUR CANDY are extremely close as they were classmates for a while. And while little is known about the two’s relationship plenty of people knew that her and YEWON disliked each other to an extreme level. No reasoning for the two’s dislike for each other is known. They had fought behind closed doors a few times before it was leaked in 2021 of their fights.
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By: Bernard Lane
Published: Feb 20, 2024
“Gender-affirming” hormonal and surgical interventions do not reduce the risk of suicide for transgender-identifying adolescents, according to an unusually comprehensive and rigorous study.
The landmark research from Finland, an international leader in the shift away from medicalised gender change, found that suicide risk in a large group of adolescents was predicted by the psychiatric problems that often accompany gender distress, not by the gender distress itself.
Dramatic claims of the risk of attempted suicide among trans-identifying youth are typically based on low-quality anonymous online self-report surveys with no follow-up checks, potential exaggeration driven by a constant “transition or suicide” narrative, and “convenience samples” unlikely to be representative.
The new Finnish study vindicates that country’s 2020 adoption of a more cautious treatment policy which first targets psychiatric, social and educational problems among gender-distressed youth before any assumption of a stable trans identity justifying “experimental” affirmation with hormones or surgery.
“It is of utmost importance to identify and appropriately treat mental disorders in adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria to prevent suicide; in addition, health policies need to ensure that accurate information is provided to professionals along these lines,” the researchers say in their BMJ Mental Health paper.
The research team includes the psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala, from Tampere University Faculty of Medicine, who helped pioneer paediatric gender medicine in Finland, but became concerned when she and her colleagues did not see the good outcomes promised by the internationally imitated “Dutch protocol” of puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones and surgery.
Clinical psychologist Erica Anderson, a gender clinician and former president of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health, told GCN she believed that other scientific reviews yet to be published would also “raise questions about the assumption that gender-affirming medicines for youth are protective and prevent suicide.”
“If more evidence is accumulated of this type, one of the most frequent justifications for gender-affirming medicines for minors—that such medicines are lifesaving—can no longer be defended.”
Although Dr Anderson herself practises the gender-affirming model, she has been raising concerns about the weak evidence base and sub-standard clinical practices in paediatric gender medicine.
“Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is, in some cases, suicide prevention care.”—Dr Rachel Levine, US Assistant Secretary of Health, who is a trans woman and paediatrician appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, tweet, 13 June 2023
“There’s no epidemic of trans athletes dominating college sports. There IS an epidemic of young trans people dying from suicide as society questions their every civil right.”—Gender-affirming psychiatrist Jack Turban, tweet, 21 January 2021
[ Video: An alarming claim from endocrinologist Norman Spack, who was involved in founding America’s first specialised children’s hospital gender clinic in Boston in 2007 ]
Under duress
The “transition or suicide” narrative has been used by gender-affirming clinicians, trans rights activists and uncritical journalists to suggest that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery such as double mastectomy are “lifesaving.”
Parents hesitant about these poorly evidenced medical interventions have reportedly been asked by clinicians, “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?”
The suicide narrative also figures in the practice of schools keeping a child’s social transition secret from parents, in the shutting down of debate about the efficacy and safety of hormonal and surgical interventions, and in the promotion of ill-defined bans on “conversion therapy” and “hate speech.”
[ Chart: Trend over time for the Google search terms “trans suicide” and “trans kids”; 100 on the vertical axis represents peak popularity ]
“[The] politically potent ‘affirm or suicide’ narrative has been marshalled at nearly every opportunity in public debates over paediatric gender medicine… By invoking the suicide trope, individual activists, organisations like the ACLU, and Democratic politicians are violating well-recognised, research-based guidelines on how to talk responsibly about suicide.”—Leor Sapir, comment article, City Journal, 17 March 2023
“When communicating about suicide it’s important to remember that suicide is a complex issue and is often not preceded by a single event or condition.”—Mindframe, media advice
“[The] language we use to talk about suicide, how we frame the issue, the content that gets shared on the web and social media can affect what happens next—specifically, whether it contributes to more deaths or prevents them.”—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, media advice
Quality research
The new Finnish research from Professor Kaltiala and her colleagues allows unusually confident conclusions in a field plagued by low-quality activist studies because it—
• used comprehensive data from national health registers, minimising the problem of unknown outcomes for former patients lost to follow-up;
• tracked suicide as well as total mortality among 2,083 gender-distressed adolescents with a median age of 19 seen by nationally centralised gender clinics from 1996 to 2019, with a median follow-up time of almost six years;
• compared their outcomes with 16,643 counterparts from the general population matched for age, sex and municipality of birth;
• compared outcomes for adolescents who were given hormones or surgery with those who were not;
• isolated statistically the effect of co-morbid psychiatric problems on total mortality and suicide among adolescents with clinically significant gender distress.
Oxford University sociologist Michael Biggs, one of very few researchers to have researched actual suicides linked to a youth gender clinic, said the Finnish investigation was “most comprehensive study ever published on suicide by young transgender people who seek medical interventions.”
He told GCN that the Finnish paper “shows again that the risk of death by suicide for young trans-people is thankfully low in absolute terms. This confirms the results of my own analysis of British data from the Tavistock clinic, with superior Finnish data.”
“Although the rate of suicide [in the Finnish study] is just over four times higher among trans young people than their peers, this is explained by their more serious psychiatric problems. When these psychiatric problems are taken into account, there is no evidence that transgender people have a higher rate of suicide.”
In the 2,083-strong “gender-referred” group* for the Finnish study, there were seven suicides, giving a rate of 0.3 per cent as opposed to a rate of 0.1 per cent in the group of 16,643 matched controls from the general population.
[ * These were patients diagnosed with “gender identity disorder”, the term that predated gender dysphoria and gender incongruence. ]
“Suicide mortality first appeared to be much higher among gender-referred participants; however, the association was fully explained by psychiatric treatment history,” the Finnish researchers said.
“The novel contribution of this study is showing that suicide mortality associates with increased psychiatric needs; this is an important finding if we consider the failure of previous studies on mortality among patients with [gender dysphoria] to account for psychiatric morbidities.
“In light of our findings, experiencing [gender dysphoria] significant enough to seek [hormonal or surgical interventions] appears to not be associated with increased suicide mortality, but suicides appear to be explained by psychiatric morbidities.
“The suicide mortality of both those who proceeded and did not proceed to [these medical interventions] did not statistically significantly differ from that of controls.
“This does not support the claims that [medicalised affirmation] is necessary in order to prevent suicide.
“The risk of suicide related to transgender identity and/or [gender dysphoria] per se may have been overestimated.
“[Medicalised affirmation] has also not been shown [in other studies] to reduce even suicidal ideation, and suicidal ideation is not equal to actual suicide risk.
“To the best of our knowledge, the impact of [these hormonal or surgical interventions] on suicide mortality among gender-referred adolescents has not been reported in earlier studies.”
“This conclusion from the Finnish data is consistent with findings from a multi-country study of suicidality, a related concept. While suicidality in [gender-dysphoric] youth is elevated, it is similar to that of youth presenting with other mental health diagnoses.
“These findings [from Finland] underscore the fact that most youth presenting with [gender dysphoria] have a high rate of co-occurring psychiatric diagnoses, which predate the onset of [gender dysphoria] by months to years.
“[The latest from Finland supports] the direction by the Finnish, English and Swedish health authorities that psychotherapy (rather than medical gender transition) should be prioritised for most youth presenting with gender-related distress.”—Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, Twitter thread, 18 February 2024
Back to basics
Dr Anderson, who is based in California, said the conclusion by the Finnish study that gender-affirming care did not reduce suicide risk was “a startling conclusion in the current debate.”
She said the leading Finnish researcher, Prof Kaltiala, was “in a unique position as the head of gender youth care for Finland and a doctor devoted to evidence-based care for gender-questioning youth. She is smart, compassionate and rigorously honest.”
Dr Anderson highlighted the need for an immediate response to young people with severe psychiatric distress and a high risk of suicide.
“It is not enough to pivot to a focus upon gender dysphoria, if present [in the patient], and offer hormones as a treatment for such symptoms and distress,” she told GCN.
“Basic mental health practice dictates evaluation for suicide risk factors and treatment of suicidality.
“In my opinion, this should be the priority and happen first. Beliefs by some that gender affirmation will cure the patient of suicidality must now be questioned, as I have been doing for some time.
“If gender-affirming medicines could not provide sufficient relief to the adolescents so treated and reduce their suicidality, should such patients have received hormones at all? What treatment should these patients have received?”
“[The paediatric gender centre’s] website said, ‘Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that [risk of harm] goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.’
“There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the centre’s patients prove how false these assertions are.”—Gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed, article, The Free Press, 9 February 2023
Try psychiatry, not affirmation
In an earlier study using the country’s health registers, Finnish researchers noted that the surge in gender-distressed patients of recent years and the treatment response had not led to a decline in co-morbid psychiatric disorders.
“Both before and after contacting [gender clinics, these adult and minor patients] present with many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical [gender-reassignment] interventions are carried out,” the researchers said.
They said the rise in younger people with psychiatric problems going to gender clinics coincided with the crisis in youth mental health across the Western world linked to more social media use.
Although social media could ease stigma and offer support, the researchers said it might also “result in adolescent and emerging adult females—who present particularly frequently with identity confusion—seeking for a solution to their distress through [medicalised gender change, thereby overshadowing] the need for psychiatric treatment.”
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"Accept Jesus Christ or you'll go to hell" is the same emotional manipulation.
It's well established that suicide is itself a social contagion, which is why there are guidelines on responsible reporting... which many activist-journalists ignore. So, socializing the obvious lie that people denied transition will kill themselves will itself cause more people to kill themselves than not transitioning will. It's hard not to notice that seems to be what they want, so they can bolster the narrative.
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I have a theory. Bear with me.
What if - what if - the whole kate being ill is just a lie and a distraction ? And really, Kate's been put on notice and she's with her family, who are suspiciously dead silent through all this, and the sickness story is just cover for William to debut as a single man. Something is very, very odd and off about this whole thing.
He just allowed pics of him and a woman getting cozy at the last event he did and he announced eartshot I'm Capetown without saying if he or kate would be able to attend. I have a feeling he'll be attending solo.
Doesn't it make sense? They could have all made a deal behind closed door on how to roll out the divorce narrative in a way that makes it gradual and let's the public get used to seeing the single dad with other women? 😮
And in return Kate gets a lot of control over the kids (other than the boarding school issue), lots of money to keep her comfortable and of course, bailing out her parents!
And this explains why kate wasn't at last year's earth shot (the story about George having exams is ridiculous) because they need to separate her from earthshot, it needs to be associated with william alone and lead us to the sexy (barf) single young (not) dad phase of his life, complete with lots of news stories about new romances to keep the press happy.
I could be out to lunch, but I don't think I am. 🤔
Here's what I agree with you on:
Kensington Palace isn't being honest about Kate and is engaging in deception. A deception that will harm both Will & Kate but will unquestionably hurt Kate more.
And Kate didn't attend Earthshot in Singapore due to George's exams.
Here's what I don't agree with you on:
1. William having an affair.
Having affairs is always a risky thing to do when you're married, regardless of fame, wealth, or royalty. William is not a huge risk taker, and certainly not in his personal life. He is a boring dude, who got the reputation for being a "catch" because he was good looking and a royal. That's it.
2. I haven't seen any pictures of William being "cozy" at the Air Ambulance Charity banquet, but I doubt they're that exciting. Also, if William was actually having an affair, Fleet Street would have posted some anecdote to support that insinuation by now. They haven't. Because he's not having one and isn't likely to in the near future.
3. I'm not sure whether or not William (or William along with Kate) will be going to Capetown for Earthshot. Earthshot has usually been held in November, which is eight to nine months away. What I do know is that it was the most lackluster location announcement I have seen regarding the Earthshot Prize to date. It literally looks like a slapdash announcement made to fit a deadline. You know, a situation where a homework assignment is due, but you aren't going to be turning in your best work, yet you turn something in anyway because it's better than getting a zero. That's what this announcement looked like.
And the real question is: Why? Why make this kind of announcement on a Friday, which is pr dumping ground? Why did they not make this announcement next week on Monday or Tuesday, where they could also release more information, such as the dates of Earthshot Week? And also drum up more interest and excitement? Last year Singapore wasn't announced until 14 May, after the coronation. Why announce so early this year? It makes no sense.
So, yes, I have no doubt there are weird shenanigans going on at the Kensington Palace communication office and Adelaide Cottage. Kate is allegedly still so ill that William could only do a whopping two engagements this week, yet she is well enough to travel to Anmer Hall at Sandringham, whether it is by car or helicopter. Priorities.
However, William cannot even have his press office confirm that he can do his regularly scheduled engagements this month or in the future after he gets back from another vacation to Sandringham. He has done a whopping three engagements for the year. Meanwhile, King Charles--who has cancer and is receiving cancer treatments--will be back in London next week for some face-to-face meetings.
But we're not supposed to side-eye The Prince & Princess of Wales because if we do then we're just jelly haterz.
Even though all of the UK press knows that the way Will & Kate are conducting themselves is completely abnormal.
But, hey, if Will & Kate want a war with the UK press, then they'll get one. Never pick a fight with the press because the press lives for them, particularly in the UK.
Will & Kate shouldn't have violated certain agreements, but they did. And breaking an agreement with the UK press is like violating an armistice agreement, i.e. a declaration of war.
"They've broken the armistice."
And there isn't going to be a special place for Kate to jump to in order to get out of this one. No trip to Mustique will fix this.
Can't wait to watch it from the US of A.
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