#rural internet is synonymous with no internet at this point

[reliablepermitsolutions]

Why using a trucking permit service can save you money.

   Today is the golden age of DIY (Do It Yourself). People want to save money, and DIY can be synonymous with savings. Take home repairs as an example: A burst pipe can be a massive, costly headache for a homeowner. If you have the knowledge and expertise to deal with it, DIY home repairs can save you a lot of money. But a DIY job is more of a recipe for disaster when you’re trying to learn something specialized and don’t want an underwater living room. Every DIY success story has a tale of heartache with a familiar plot: First, the DIYer will spend an enormous amount of time trying to do something themselves in the quest to “save money.” They’ll have trouble doing the job well, get too busy to give it the attention it needs or find themselves unable to finish what they’ve started. At this point, they’ll end up hiring a professional. After this whole ordeal, they’ll realize that they should have hired a professional in the first place and would have saved money doing so. The moral of the story? Sometimes, you need a professional. Choosing a trucking permit company to help with your hauls is a way to avert disaster when things are more complicated than simply moving from point A to point B. We know our clients can obtain trucking permits for specific hauls on a DIY basis, and sometimes that makes sense. For example, if you haul heavy in Oklahoma regularly, you’ve probably learned what kind of permitting that entails, know the roads and can get things arranged without too much fuss. But what if your next load is oversize? Or a superload? What if you need to drive through rural florida, and you’ve never hauled there before ? Declining to hire a trucking permit company can mean exposing yourself to time-draining hassles. Permit-issuing departments have different procedures, policies and turnaround times in other states. Moreover, government-run websites aren’t famous for being the most informative and easy-to-use internet resource. You may be stuck calling a government office for help (and we all know how that can turn out). You’ve already got a job, and it’s not sitting on hold listening to elevator music.

Let’s say that you’ve done the research and obtained permits, and you find three states in the haul where you have an improper license. You may have earned yourself a tidy fine. Without the help of an expert permit services specialist, you’re also going to be running new roads with your oversized or overweight load without a logistics partner who can create ideal routes that bypass problem areas. Poor-quality roads that narrow unexpectedly or are partially under construction can mean big trouble for heavy or oversized freight and damage your investment. Luckily, helping you avoid these pitfalls is why we’re here. The Permit Company prides itself on making your haul happen without the headaches and fines, using years of experience and familiarity with the complexities of obtaining permits and hauling all around the United States (and in our neighbouring countries, too!). Don’t get stuck in a DIY permit disaster that costs you money. Trust us with crucial hauls, and we’ll stick with you every step of the way.

#trucking permit company

[writeouswriter]

When will my internet connection return from the war

#I miss my wifi so much it just died like completely #internet #wifi #rural internet is synonymous with no internet at this point #but literally everything is online 🙃 #it used to be mildly intermittent which was annoying but you could live with it now it’s legit just gone... and they said sucks to be you #like bruh it worked for the most part before and they’re just like lol no it didn’t you can’t get Internet way out there see ya #my phone data be struggling against my sudden overuse of it for important messsges I need to refrain from using it too much #or risk being charged for going one single kilobyte over #sigh

[illnessfaker]

[ cw: f-slur, rape mention ]

no reblogs pls. this is a long vent.

haha not to be a hysterical faggot crippled shut-in freak or anything but the way ppl talk abt the defensiveness around the f-slur that some gay/bi male users (and some transfem users) on here as if it's some kind superiority pissing contest thing and not primarily about...respecting the boundaries and experiences of those gay/bi male (and transfem) users. like...being on this site as a fag-adjacent person (i say that half-jokingly because it sounds silly on one hand but on the other that's the most accurate descriptor of my gender identity, lol) is becoming increasingly draining and upsetting with how "progressive" homophobia against gay/bi men is apparently becoming, like, a meme among lgbtq people and that's acceptable somehow bc lgbtq people aren't cishets or because it's "only online" and therefore doesn't matter.

like idgaf abt ppl who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem) using the f-slur in every single context possible. if they're affectionately referring to their gay/bi male (or transfem) friends with that word (so long as said friends are comfortable with it) that's one thing. who cares. i even rb'd something where a cis butch (iirc) lesbian was talking about a gay man she knew who she was affectionatly calling a faggot and the things she said warmed my heart. if they're throwing it around at every opportunity or using it as an edgy insult against random strangers on the internet, that's another. the users on here who do the latter also regularly display behavior that like...shows a pretty clear disdain for gay/bi men (or transfem ppl) not apart of their online or "irl" circlejerks and echo chambers, and that is in no way disconnected from their love of using the f-slur, lol.

the "it's only online and so it's unimportant uwu go outside" thing also really feels like such a spit in the face as someone who both lives in a rural area full of cishet white men with guns that might try to kill me if i walked out of the house in drag (not to mention i live with my bf and his family and his parents are homophobes themselves i'm sure), and is also someone with health issues that usually keep me at home and in bed when i'm not working. i didn't always live here but even in my hometown the only "lgbtq space" i had was the high school GSA which didn't do shit other than the day of silence and was attended by people i did not feel safe around (e.g. my ex-friend who was very emotionally manipulative and ended up raping someone.) i don't have any other lgbtq spaces to go to other than online ones. if i never joined tumblr i might still be a self-hating cishet girl, or i might be dead, who knows. like, i've accepted at this point that personhood isn't something i'm allowed in (outside of my whiteness) so fuck me i guess if we need to but the idea that other young, impressionable, and/or traumatized lgbtq people who only can meet other lgbtq people and learn about lgbtq things online for whatever reason don't deserve to have us make an effort on cultivating internet spaces that are as accessible and safe for them as possible, or that their experiences and feelings are somehow unimportant is just...vile. like ofc not everyone needs to "pander" to "logged on" disabled fags like myself maybe but if you have any kind of large following on social media maybe consider that the things you say and do on said social media have like...an actual effect on other people instead of pretending that it's "just online" and therefore consequences for your actions either don't matter enough (to you personally) or somehow don't exist.

but going back to the fag thing, most popular lgbtq tumblr users on my dash i see nowadays just...simply do not give a shit whatsoever about gay/bi men, to the point they're normalizing "progressive" and "acceptable" homphobia against us bc they've convinced themselves due to the bigotry some gay/bi men (often cis, white, and wealthy mind you) exhibit we are "the cishets of the lgbtq community," despite horrific violence still being committed against us every day and despite other lgbtq people being capable of engaging in that violence themselves. ppl make thinly veiled jokes and memes where the punchline is men having sex with each other or effeminacy as if those things aren't primary avenues for gay/bi men being abused, assaulted, and killed (including acts of abuse and assault of a sexually-driven nature), as if said jokes and memes don't serve to normalize the mentalities that drive homophobic hate crimes. it's not like...a coincidence that most lgbtq people who makes these jokes aren't gay/bi men (or transfem). this doesn't even get into how things like homophobia and anti-effeminacy can pretty much boot certain gay/bi men from manhood...or womanhood...or any place in gender altogether.

call me exlusionary if you want but i think it's fair to say that the chances of people who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem*) facing the repurcussions of those mentalities in any meaningful way, the chances of these people actually having lived as or going to live as "faggots" is any meaningful sense is slim to none, and that's why they're so comfortable participating in this shit, and that's why i'm triggered(tm) by them "reclaiming" faggot (which doesn't really involve reclamation bc calling random strangers on the internet or gay/bi men you hate a slur isn't reclamation you morons), because frankly if you're not apart of either of those groups, you're just not a fucking faggot. it's not your word just because some rando on overwatch called you it for picking hanzo in comp. period. end of story. it's also just extremely absurd to try and claim faggotry as something you experience while...readily and happily engaging in homophobia and fag-hate (which isn't synonymous with the former term but i'm talking abt ppl who probably seldom ever engage which discussions and theory surrounding how homophobia instrumentates itself in society - or at least that which doesn't conform to their worldview). within the gay/bi male community there's plentu of masc "straight-acting" gays who weaponize this shit against fem gays and they (should) get held accountable in the same way. you're not special.

and god, being told my gendered experiences as a fag-adjacent person where (white) cafab women are fully capable of engaging in social forms of "oppression" against me and other fags in undeniably gendered ways is somehow an outlier and therefore not reflective of broader social by (white) masc urbanite tbros with definitively more social standing than i'll ever have in my life, as if i somehow developed this understanding of gendered violence just based off my own life and not...the reported and sometimes even recorded experiences of countless other fags who get mocked and silenced because anything that deviates from a watered down, shoddy cis feminist take on gender is fake news(tm) or bordering on saying misandry exists (like no it doesn't exist but acting as if homophobic shit like anti-sodomy laws, for example, has zero to do with gay/bi men's manhood is just nonsensical). convos on here abt gender being mostly dominated by (white) cafab women or sometimes (white) masc trans guys is such a mistake lmao.

anyway i'm tired and stressed and pretty done with having "acceptable" homophobic shit shoved in my face on a daily basis both online and offline but nevertheless i must persist because i'm not lucky enough to have anywhere else to go, really. just...think critically abt ur actions regarding gay/bi male sexuality and gender-stuff pretty please. please.

( *disclaimer just in case that i definitely don't see transfems as some "type" of gay/bi men. there are transfems who identify with gay/bi manhood and/or faggotry. there are transfems who don't. that's entirely up to them. thank u. )

#op #🌙 #homophobia #gender #site culture #no reblogs -

[reseau-actu]

INTERVIEW - Le français est-il en guerre? Contre l’anglais? Frédéric Pennel, journaliste et auteur d’un passionnant essai intitulé Guerre des langues, analyse ces questions.

Avec 300 millions de locuteurs du français dans le monde, la langue de Molière ne connaît plus de frontières. Comment se porte-t-elle aujourd’hui? Le français fait-il toujours rêver? Le journaliste Frédéric Pennel publie Guerre des langues (Bourin Francois Eds), un stimulant essai sur le statut et l’histoire de la langue française dans le monde.

» LIRE AUSSI - Mathieu Avanzi: «Le français de Paris est un français pauvre»

LE FIGARO. - Votre livre s’intitule Guerre des langues. La langue française est-elle en guerre?

Frédéric PENNEL. - La planète fait figure de tour de Babel. Les langues sont soit dominantes, en expansion, soit dominées, en rétractation. Une vingtaine environ disparaît même chaque année. Dans l’expression «guerre des langues», il faut entendre une forme de darwinisme à l’instar de ce qu’il se passe dans la nature. C’est-à-dire, un phénomène dramatique pour la préservation de la richesse culturelle des langues sur la planète.

Cette expression de «guerre des langues» revêt aussi un aspect éminemment politique. Les États ajoutent en effet leur grain de sel à ce phénomène darwinien et propagent leur langue notamment à travers des diplomaties culturelles. Cela se constate par le biais d’institutions spécifiquement dédiées. À la fin du XIXe siècle, la France a déployé un véritable arsenal pour la diffusion de sa langue, un dispositif encore d’actualité, avec les «lycées français», alliances ou instituts français. Aujourd’hui, on voit ce même combat mené par la Chine qui déploie ses instituts Confucius partout dans le monde. Pour diffuser une culture, le plus efficace est de répandre une langue. D’où des luttes d’influence très importantes. C’est à qui arrivera à exporter le plus largement sa langue.

Les Français vivent en Europe et force est de constater que lorsqu’on voyage sur le continent, le français n’est pas la langue de l’international

À la lecture de votre livre, on comprend que le français n’appartient plus à la France.

Le français n’appartient plus à la France même si les Français s’octroient la propriété de cette langue pour des raisons historiques. Ses locuteurs l’ont exportée souvent par la force, mais aussi par la séduction. Ainsi, aujourd’hui, le français a échappé à ses locuteurs historiques notamment parce qu’il a continué sa route dans ses anciennes colonies, pourtant indépendantes. Chose étonnante, il s’est même davantage développé depuis l’indépendance que lors de la période coloniale. On parle beaucoup plus le français de nos jours à Abidjan ou à Casablanca que lorsque ces villes étaient françaises.

» LIRE AUSSI - La langue française gagne trente millions de locuteurs dans le monde

Comment se fait-il alors que les Français ne se disent pas francophones?

Pour les Français parler français est aussi naturel que de respirer. Ils n’intellectualisent donc pas la chose. Mais il n’en a pas toujours été ainsi. Pendant longtemps, les Français avaient plusieurs langues à leur disposition. Cependant, l’exode rural et les politiques jacobines visant à éradiquer les langues régionales au profit du français sont passés par là. Cela s’est fait de façon violente. De cette histoire, les Français n’ont donc gardé essentiellement qu’une de leurs nombreuses langues: le français dans sa version parisienne. De leur côté, les francophones hors de France vivent presque tous dans des pays multilingues. Leur conscience de parler français est donc forcément plus aiguë. Un Algérien francophone dispose a minima de l’arabe et du français pour s’exprimer. Un Franco-Ontarien se sent d’autant plus francophone qu’il vit dans une province majoritairement anglophone.

Que répondez-vous à ceux qui disent la langue menacée?

C’est une fausse idée. Il suffit de regarder les chiffres donnés par l’Organisation Internationale de la francophonie (OIF). Il y a 300 millions de francophones dans le monde! C’est la quatrième langue sur Internet, une langue bien adaptée à son temps. Elle n’est pas en danger. Il y a des langues, peu transmises et dont le nombre de locuteurs diminue, qui risquent effectivement de disparaître, comme le breton. Mais ce n’est en rien le cas du français. Pourquoi croit-on le contraire? Au-delà du pessimisme qui caractérise notre peuple, il y a une raison géographique. Les Français vivent en Europe et force est de constater que lorsqu’on voyage sur le continent, le français n’est pas la langue de l’international. Il y a quelques décennies, de nombreux pays étaient dotés d’une solide tradition francophone, comme la Grèce, où le français était la seule langue étrangère obligatoire jusque dans les années 1960, mais ce n’est plus le cas aujourd’hui. Même pour voyager dans des pays latins, dont les langues sont proches du français, il faut désormais communiquer en anglais. Cette réalité européenne dévalorise sûrement la vision que les Français se font de l’état de leur langue.

Au lieu de s’européaniser, l’Europe s’est américanisée

Mais le français fait-il encore rêver en France?

Oui, il y a une vraie fierté à parler le français! Or, il se trouve qu’aujourd’hui l’anglais aussi fait rêver, notamment dans les milieux économiques. Tout le lexique lié au monde de l’entreprise semble dériver progressivement vers l’anglais. Il y a quelque chose de comique là-dedans. L’idée que la modernité ne pourrait que s’incarner en anglais est risible. Le français dispose de tout l’attirail nécessaire pour exprimer les réalités du monde, qu’elles soient culturelles ou économiques. Dans les multinationales françaises, pourquoi le français s’efface-t-il systématiquement derrière l’anglais? Les deux langues pourraient cohabiter comme le fait Michelin. En France, pourquoi les start-up qui réinventent le monde de demain ne peuvent pas créer lexicalement en français aussi? Pendant que certaines élites économiques françaises se noient dans le rêve américain, ce sont d’autres pays, au Maghreb par exemple, qui hissent le français au rang de langue de l’économie! Avouez que c’est un étonnant détour de l’histoire!

» LIRE AUSSI - La langue française n’appartient plus aux seuls Français

Pourtant la mondialisation semble devenir le synonyme d’américanisation...

Derrière le mot «mondialisation» se cache une forme d’américanisation. C’est une langue, mais aussi un mode de vie qui s’exporte. Que ce soient sur les plans technologique, médiatique ou culturel. En Europe, c’est assez spectaculaire. Au-delà de l’histoire, quel est le point commun actuel des Européens? C’est la même culture américaine partagée et la langue anglaise. Les musiques, les séries, les stars américaines représentent un des principaux leviers de la sociabilité entre Européens. Dans le même temps, regardez le nombre d’apprenants d’allemand en France: il ne cesse de baisser alors que l’Allemagne est notre premier partenaire! Il faut donc se poser la question: n’aurait-il pas fallu commencer par une Europe de la culture?

À l’origine, on a voulu consacrer le français langue de travail des institutions européennes. Pour une raison simple: elle était alors la plus répandue chez les diplomates européens. Mais c’est la Belgique qui s’est opposée à octroyer un statut privilégié à la langue française. Le royaume était alors secoué par des mouvements identitaires du côté flamand. Le français est resté très influent en Europe jusqu’à la mondialisation, justement. À partir des années 1990, même les Français en poste à Bruxelles se sont convertis à l’idée que l’anglais était la seule langue légitime. Pascal Lamy par exemple, qui était commissaire en 1999, a favorisé l’anglais au sein de sa direction. De lui-même. Comme s’ils voulaient couper court à toute accusation chauviniste, les Français ont préféré l’anglais, une langue apparemment neutre. Au début des années 1990, l’anglais s’est imposé. Et aujourd’hui, il est hégémonique. Au lieu de s’européaniser, l’Europe s’est américanisée.

Le français devient de fait une langue de contre-pouvoir : contre une standardisation, une seule source d’idées, une manière de penser. C’est ça, la nouvelle vocation du français

Certes, mais en se diffusant, l’anglais s’appauvrit.

Oui, c’est un vrai problème d’ailleurs. Les institutions européennes produisent énormément de normes. Or, ces textes restent assez vagues du fait d’un manque de précision. Cela n’est évidemment pas dû à la langue anglaise en tant que telle, mais au fait que tout le monde doit se mettre d’accord sur un anglais médian, médiocre, faute de suffisamment de natifs. Il y a donc un nivellement par le bas. La rédaction systématique des textes dans cet anglais sommaire dévalorise l’ensemble de la production juridique. Pourtant, il y aurait une solution: renouer avec le multilinguisme. Avec notamment le français, l’ancienne langue impériale, qui devient de fait une langue de contre-pouvoir: contre une standardisation, une seule source d’idées, une manière de penser. C’est ça, la nouvelle vocation du français.

Le Brexit pourrait-il rebattre les cartes?

Non, la situation linguistique à Bruxelles ne devrait pas changer. Même si, la langue de l’Europe sera celle d’un pourcent des citoyens européens. Pourquoi l’anglais gardera sa position dominante? Parce qu’il y a un certain nombre de pays en Europe qui ont intégré l’anglais de manière intime, comme les pays du Nord. L’anglais bénéficie aussi d’une position très particulière dans les pays de l’ex bloc communiste, très atlantistes. Derrière l’usage de l’anglais, on devine une certaine représentation de l’Amérique qui les fascine. Du fait de leur histoire, l’anglais est la langue de la liberté, en opposition au russe que les habitants de l’Est étaient contraints et forcés d’apprendre.

Que se passerait-il alors si l’on remplaçait l’anglais par le français?

Aujourd’hui, on se retrouve avec les quatre têtes de l’Europe qui sont francophones: la présidente de la commission, Ursula von der Leyen, la présidente de la BCE Christine Lagarde, la politique étrangère, Josep Borrell ; et le président du Conseil européen Charles Michel. Ce serait l’occasion unique de rendre une place au français et à d’autres langues que l’unique anglais. Pour les francophones, c’est le moment ou jamais de relever la tête.

«Une langue, c’est d’abord une culture», écrivez-vous dans votre livre. Est-ce à dire que notre culture est moins séduisante que la culture américaine puisque c’est celle-ci qui s’impose?

Je ne pense pas que nous soyons moins créatifs. Jamais la musique française ne s’est autant exportée, y compris dans sa composante francophone. Le rap, par exemple, jouit d’un vrai rayonnement. C’est pareil pour le luxe, la gastronomie et nombre d’autres secteurs. Il y a une aura de la langue française bien au-delà des pays francophones. Aux États-Unis, en Russie par exemple. L’attrait pour la langue de Molière à l’étranger est indéniable, comme l’atteste le nombre d’apprenants dans les Alliances françaises, la première ONG culturelle au monde. Ce qui a changé, c’est le regard des Français sur eux-mêmes. Pendant longtemps, ils se montraient fiers de leur culture. Ils étaient même persuadés de la mission messianique de la nation française dans le monde. Puis, par un retournement de l’histoire, dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, ils se sont mis à rétrécir leur horizon. Là où ils avaient une vision mondiale de la France, ils se sont mis à penser leur pays comme uniquement européen.

Le fait de toujours piocher des mots issus d’une même origine, donne l’impression que l’anglais est supérieur au français et aux autres langues

Notre difficulté avec les langues étrangères n’est-elle pas liée à notre monolinguisme?

Oui, ça y contribue. Cette obsession d’une langue unique fait que nous prenons conscience trop tardivement de l’altérité linguistique. Si l’on initiait dès le plus jeune âge les enfants au plurilinguisme, les enfants seraient sûrement bien meilleurs. Cela développerait leur plasticité cérébrale, utile à l’apprentissage de n’importe quelle langue étrangère. Dans les pays francophones plurilingues, les enfants ont moins de mal à apprendre d’autres langues. Pareil pour les enfants des écoles Diwan en Bretagne: ils sont meilleurs en anglais.

Que penser alors des anglicismes?

Le phénomène d’emprunt est sain. Une langue vivante a besoin de se nourrir de mots étrangers. Néanmoins, le fait de toujours piocher, et de manière aussi massive, des mots issus d’une même origine, donne l’impression que l’anglais est supérieur au français et aux autres langues. Or, il se passe bien des choses dans d’autres cultures, qui pourraient nourrir aussi notre lexique! Mais on regarde essentiellement vers la Californie.

Faut-il prendre exemple sur nos voisins Québécois?

Les Québécois ont une peur existentielle de perdre leur français. Donc la traduction est une forme de résistance face à l’anglais. Ils font de leur création de nouveaux mots en français une fierté. Leur système est très efficace, ils repèrent très en amont l’émergence d’un nouveau mot et le traduisent en français avant qu’il se répande. En France, on ne se sent pas menacer de la même façon. Par le passé, on a remplacé des mots comme le terme «ordinateur» à la place de «computer». Aujourd’hui encore, les nombreux anglicismes ne doivent pas faire oublier les créations françaises. Regardez le succès de covoiturage, transformé en «covoit» par l’usage, «boboïser», «inclusif», «charge mentale», «féminicide», etc.

Sans une institution scolaire capable d’absorber la jeunesse, l’Afrique ne sortira pas de ses difficultés pas et la francophonie aura raté sa vocation d’être ce trait d’union par-delà les frontières

L’Organisation internationale de la francophonie prévoit 700 millions de locuteurs francophones en 2050. Faut-il s’en réjouir?

Il y aura un boom démographique en Afrique francophone c’est certain, mais le français sera-t-il la première langue du monde? Cela me semble douteux. D’autant qu’aujourd’hui, il y a un vrai problème d’éducation en Afrique. Les classes de 80 élèves sont monnaie courante, les professeurs très insuffisamment formés... C’est un sujet qui devrait tous nous concerner car nous avons besoin d’une Afrique instruite et qui se développe. C’est un continent plurilingue et le français se transmet surtout à l’école. Sans une institution scolaire capable d’absorber la jeunesse, l’Afrique ne sortira pas de ses difficultés pas et la francophonie aura raté sa vocation d’être ce trait d’union par-delà les frontières, reliant les ethnies entre elles et les continents entre eux.

Peut-on croire en la résistance de la langue française?

Oui, c’est une langue d’avenir. Elle peut tout à faire dire la modernité. Si j’avais un souhait, j’aimerais d’une part, que les Français se sentent pleinement fiers d’être francophones et n’aient pas peur de parler sciences, techniques, économie en français. Parallèlement, je pense qu’ils devraient renouer avec une forme de plurilinguisme. Cela veut dire parler français, les français et les autres langues, sans les hiérarchiser. Mon livre vise aussi à provoquer cette prise de conscience.

#langue française #francophonie #mots langue française #liste des mots

[bangkokjacknews]

How I was tricked into killing Kim Jong Un's brother

Young mother fooled into smearing Kim Jong Un's brother with deadly nerve agent in 'prank' that she thought would make her a YouTube star is tracked down to remote village

They were words Siti Aisyah had long dreamed of hearing, spoken by the filmmaker who had plucked this naive farmer's daughter from obscurity in order to make her a star. 'If today goes well you will be known all around the world,' he told her. 'You can become a famous actress.' In some ways the filmmaker was right: Siti did indeed become world famous – but not for the reasons she expected. Instead her name is now synonymous with one of the world's most audacious murders, the assassination of North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un's playboy brother Kim Jong Nam. He died in agony in February 2017 after being smeared with the deadly nerve agent VX at Kuala Lumpur international airport. He had been killed in broad daylight – by two young women who maintain they believed they were taking part in nothing more than a simple prank for the video sharing site YouTube. Despite their protestations of innocence, Siti and her fellow 'actress', Duong Thi Huong, faced the very real prospect of the death penalty and spent more than two years in prison – much of it in solitary confinement – before they were dramatically released earlier this year when the murder charges against them were unexpectedly dropped. Ever since, Siti has determinedly kept a low profile, returning to her remote home village in rural Indonesia to try to pick up the pieces of her life. Only now, tracked down by The Mail on Sunday, has she decided to tell her extraordinary story in full for the first time. In turns remorseful, angry and bewildered, Siti describes how it feels to have been so ruthlessly exploited by killers who did not care if she too would live or die. Indeed, it is only by fluke that she didn't succumb to the deadly poison herself. 'I had no idea what I had done,' Siti says, fighting back tears. 'They told me they were going to make me a star. I feel so foolish for believing them so easily. I didn't know who Kim Jong Un was before all of this. I didn't even know where North Korea was. I feel bad about what happened to Kim Jong Nam and I wish I had never been involved. If I could turn back time, I would never have agreed to do any of it. 'When I got out of prison I looked up my name on the internet and finally realised what it had all been about. I thought, 'How can I have been caught up in such a big murder case involving these important people?' I am just a girl from a small village. I just believed I was playing pranks. That's all I ever thought.'

He had been killed in broad daylight (CCTV footage shows the moment of the attack) – by two young women who maintain they believed they were taking part in nothing more than a simple prank for the video sharing site YouTube Certainly few could deny that Siti makes the most unlikely of assassins. Tiny and looking much younger than her 27 years, it is hard to believe she is the mother of a ten-year-old boy, Rio, who was just seven when she was imprisoned. Her story reads like something out of a far-fetched paperback thriller: a beautiful young woman is recruited by secret agents to fulfill a deadly and clandestine mission. Her excuse – that she didn't know anything about the murder plot – is even more outlandish. Yet meeting her in the modest home she shares with her devout Muslim parents in an impoverished village goes some way to explaining that. Their simple one-storey house is down a dirt track flanked with coconut and mangrove trees and the living room wall is decorated with treasured family photographs and verses from the Koran.

The victim complains to to officials at Kuala Lumpur international airport moments after he was smeared with the nerve agent Siti's interest and knowledge of the wider world is sketchy at best: she couldn't tell you, for example, who Donald Trump is. The youngest of three children, she left school at 12 and, by 17, was married with a son. 'I was only happy for the first three months. I soon found out my husband liked gambling and women and never supported me financially,' she says. The marriage broke down and she left her son in the care of her parents-in-law to become one of thousands lured into making a living in the sex industry in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. By 2017 she was working as a masseuse in the city's Flamingo hotel, and picking up night-time clients at the sleazy Beach Club Cafe where, in the small hours of a January morning, she had an encounter with a taxi driver which would change the course of her life for ever. 'He told me he had a Japanese client who was looking for someone to act in a reality TV show and he said I had just the right look,' she recalls. Flattered, Siti went to a meeting in an upmarket shopping mall the next day where she met 'James', who told her he was a Japanese TV producer making Candid Camera-style shows for YouTube. In fact, James – real name Ri Ji U – was a 30-year-old North Korean agent. Unable to speak Indonesian, he communicated via Google Translate. Siti's first 'job' was straightforward enough, if a little odd – and at £80, the pay was lucrative: she merely had to approach three men at random in the local mall and smear baby oil on them before apologising and walking away while James filmed it on his iPhone. 'Afterwards he told me I had done a good job and there would be more work like this for me,' she recalls.

Kim Jong Nam (pictured) died in agony in February 2017 after being smeared with the deadly nerve agent VX at Kuala Lumpur international airport 'I was nervous about doing the pranks at first in case someone reacted badly or hit out but I was very happy to have the work. I questioned why anyone would want to watch this sort of thing but they told me Japanese audiences loved it and the videos were being edited in Singapore for a big TV show. 'I had earned 400 ringgits (£80) for 15 minutes' work. In the hotel where I worked as a masseuse I only earned 20 ringgits (£4) for each customer.' In the following weeks, Siti was summoned by James to carry out similar pranks in other malls and at Kuala Lumpur airport. The drill was always the same: James would put lotion on Siti's hands before she approached her bemused victims from behind and wiped her hands on their face. Then, after a quick apology, she would make a swift exit and pocket a payment – now increased to £100 – for each successfully completed 'prank'. Never once, she says, did she question the nature of her new work – which she now knows was, in reality, training for just one single murderous mission. 'James told me he would take me to America,' she recalls. 'I even gave him my passport so he could arrange visas for me. I was very excited. I thought this was going to change my life and I would be able to leave my old life behind.' Siti admits she was developing feelings for James – and that may well have made it easier for her to dispel any lingering misgivings. 'I liked him because he was handsome, but he was shy around women,' she says. Their friendship did not last: within weeks Siti was flown to Cambodia and linked with another 'producer' called Mr Chang – in reality another Korean handler by the name of Hong Song Hac. Mr Chang spoke fluent Bahasa, Siti's mother tongue, but she says: 'I didn't like him. When he got serious, I was a little bit afraid of him.' The work was the same however, and Siti continued to film pranks for money in both Phnom Penh and Kuala Lumpur. Behind the scenes, the North Koreans were desperately trying to track Kim Jong Nam – who was constantly on the move – in order to carry out their deadly plan. The only credible rival to his brother, they had long fallen out and for years he had been a dead man walking as the regime suspected he was passing secrets to the US. As the North Koreans closed in on their target, they tracked him as he returned to Malaysia where, police sources confirmed to The Mail on Sunday, he met a CIA agent and exchanged a laptop full of data for a wad of $100 bills. Two days before the assassination Siti, now back in Kuala Lumpur, recalls being given a $200 bonus by Mr Chang. 'When I asked what the money was for, he said it was because I worked very well in Phnom Penh and his boss was very happy with me.' She was told her next job could propel her to international stardom. 'I didn't think I was going to be famous,' she insists. 'I liked the money.' It's clear that she was flattered, though, and was convinced enough to tell her friends at a 25th birthday party at Jakarta's Hard Rock cafe the following night. In what proved to be an eerily prescient clip, captured on her mobile phone, one of Siti's friends boasts that 'Siti is going to be a celebrity.' Little could they imagine the reason why. The following day Siti arrived at a Kuala Lumpur airport coffee shop to meet 'Mr Chang' for a briefing on her latest prank. He told her this one would be slightly different: not only did he have a particular target in mind but Siti would carry it out with another 'actress' who at the last moment would approach him from another direction. As with every previous prank, the 'filmmaker' then took out a small container, the size of a hotel shampoo bottle and poured liquid on to Siti's hands, pointed out her target in the busy airport departure lounge, and sent her off in his direction. 'Mr Chang told me the man was a big boss in his company,' she says. 'He said he was very arrogant and might get angry so I should carry out the prank and then get away as quickly as I could.' It's one reason Siti admits she was unusually nervous as she walked towards the man she now knows was Kim Jong Nam. She recalls being just two steps away from him when her accomplice Huong suddenly cut across her path from a different direction and placed her hands over his eyes. 'He looked annoyed and upset,' Siti says. 'I thought, 'He looks like a rich man and he is clearly angry and he might report us to the police.' Initially, intelligence officials thought that each woman may have been carrying different chemical components which, though harmless on their own, would create a deadly compound when mixed together. In fact, both women were carrying the lethal VX poison on their hands and were very nearly killed themselves in the process. Siti and Huong fled in different directions after the attack and both went straight to different washrooms to clean the sticky liquid off their hands – an act that would almost certainly save their lives. Just yards away Kim Jong Nam was writhing in agony on the concourse floor, his vital organs shutting down one by one. It would later emerge that Kim Jong Nam was carrying an antidote to VX in his backpack but in the grip of blinding pain had not thought to use it. After approaching airport officials he was taken to a clinic and died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

Siti Aisyah (pictured), smiled as she was seen leaving Shah Alam High Court in Malaysia in March after prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the murder charge against her Oblivious to the unfolding horror, Siti would then spend three hours ambling around the airport's shopping mall, buying clothes and having lunch before returning to the city's Flamingo hotel where she worked as a masseuse between filming assignments. So unaware was Siti of the international drama that when, two nights later, police arrived to arrest her, she initially thought it was another YouTube prank. They said, 'Where were you on the 13th? Were you at the airport?' I said yes, I was shooting a video. They asked why I didn't ask for permission and said, 'Come with us to the police station.' I thought it was just a random police check on foreign workers. 'Then at the police station they told me I had been involved in the murder of a president's brother. I just laughed and said 'You must be joking' and asked them to give me my passport and my phone and let me go home. But they got angry with me and put me in handcuffs.' Siti was taken to hospital, where traces of VX were found on the top she was wearing at the airport. It was a fortnight before she was allowed to see a lawyer ahead of her first court appearance where she was charged with murder – a crime which in Malaysia carries a mandatory death penalty. 'I was absolutely terrified when I realised I might be executed,' Siti says, her eyes once more filling with tears. 'I was so confused. How could I be in this situation? I cried every day for three months. I couldn't eat and I couldn't drink. I thought I'd never see my son again. With a forthcoming trial hanging over her, Siti spent the first year of her imprisonment in solitary confinement, her only company aside from legal and embassy visits the prison guards who watched her room and mercilessly taunted her. 'They asked me if I wanted to commit suicide because it was such a big case that I was involved in. Another time one of them told me that if I didn't plead guilty, North Korea would bomb my home country, Indonesia,' she says. Her only contact with her parents meanwhile was a weekly 15-minute phone call. 'The first time I called them I just cried,' she says. 'Even now my parents have never asked me about the case. They've seen it on the TV news, so they know what it was about, but they don't want to think about what I've been through.' After several months of agonising delays, Siti's trial was set to begin in March. Then in another dramatic development the murder case was dropped. No reason was given, with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad insisting there had been no negotiations but that the decision had merely been in line with 'the rule of law'. Her charge was reduced to 'administering a poison', a crime for which she had already served the necessary jail time. Siti's lawyer Gooi Soon Seg told The Mail on Sunday that the real killers must be brought to justice. 'It was a brilliant plot when you think about it. The plan was for Kim Jong Nam to walk straight on to his flight and die on the plane. It would have been classified as a heart attack and everything would have gone unnoticed. 'They brought VX into the country – that is tantamount to a declaration of war,' he says. 'The people who planned this murder should absolutely be brought to justice.' It's perhaps a final irony that her own role in this political killing helped Siti to achieve the celebrity she craved: treated like a VIP upon her release, she was flown home by private jet and taken straight to see the Indonesian president. For two months she was guarded in a safe house until the security risk was reduced. There are more tears when Siti recalls how, during her absence, her son Rio had grown so tall that at their emotional reunion she could no longer scoop him up into her arms as she used to. 'We had been apart for more than two years. I told him I was so sorry, and I hadn't been able to contact him while I was in prison. He didn't answer. He just smiled and hugged me tightly.' She adds: 'I have to accept that I was gullible. I am angry and upset with James and Mr Chang because I told them so many personal things and confided in them – then they put me in this terrible situation where they didn't care if I lived or died.' Today, six months on, she is studying to become a beautician and claims to want to put her notoriety behind her. 'I want a better future' she insists. 'I want to have more children and maybe someday I will marry again if I find a good man.' Nonetheless, she still seems strangely seduced by the fame that found her in the deadliest of circumstances. 'Who would imagine that someone like me, who only went to primary school, could become world famous?' – You can follow BangkokJack on Instagram, Twitter & Reddit. Or join the free mailing list (top right) Please help us continue to bring the REAL NEWS - PayPal Read the full article

[nepalhorizontreks]

TEA HOUSE AND FOOD IN EVEREST BASE CAMP TREK

Nowadays, Tea houses have become synonymous with the Everest Base Camp Trek along with many other trekking in the Himalayas in general. To those who does not have previous experience of trekking in Nepal Himalayas or who is not familiar with this term, tea houses are not those houses which serves tea, but are rather a small hotels that serves accommodation and breakfast, and they are dotted along most of the treks in the Himalayan region.

Teahouses are the most popular mode of accommodation for each kind of travelers in Everest Region as they offer an easy, pay-as-you-stay approach while trekking in the route of world’s tallest peak – Mount Everest.

‘Tea House Trekking’ involves trekking for 5-7 hours in most of the days, starting and ending at small and beautiful Sherpa Village along the route where numbers of tea houses are available. The tea houses in this region are easily identifiable by the signs outside their doors, writing, ‘Tea and Coffee’, ‘Electricity is available here’, ‘hot shower available’, etc.

The typical tea houses provides all kind of basic amenities needed for comfortable, yet humble approach to trek in the Nepal Himalayas. A clean room with single bed, hot meals, option of hot shower and some electricity are what to be expected during your stay at Teahouse.

We highly recommend you ‘Tea House Trekking’ as it introduces you to the unique traditions and culture along with the lifestyle of rural Himalayan peoples. Tea house Trekking makes you more close to the friendly and accommodating local peoples which makes your trekking more exciting. It also shows the beautiful side of Nepal that you may miss if you decide to camp by yourself rather than staying on teahouses.

Tea Houses in EBC Trek

Toilets, showers and Communal area in Tea houses during EBC trekking

It must be stated that not all the teahouses are same and offers the same kind of facilities. As you trek higher in the Himalayas you can feel the changes in services provided by the tea houses and costs. The numbers of tea house also varies as the popularity of the trekking route.

The Everest Base Camp Trekking and other most of the trekking in Everest Region are very popular, attracting more than 30,000 trekkers every year.  So, you will find many tea houses along the trekking trail, most of which are reliable and offers quality service.

On the tea houses of popular trekking trails, in lower altitude, you will find the flush toilet and hot water showers, normally at a cost of around US$4. As the altitude increases, the toilets will start to become manual flushing with a bucket full of water and eventually long drops.

As you move higher, you also have to face scarcity of hot water, but some of the tea houses offer a pot of hot water heated by a fire, with which you can wash yourself.

The communal area available in tea houses is normally a dining room, in the centre of which will be a big yak dung burning stove to heat the whole teahouse. This may be the best spot to socialize with fellow climbers or just to revel in warm environment while travelling in the Himalayas.

The typical price of a night in a tea house will vary according to the popularity of the trekking trail, different altitudes, and the season you are travelling. Expect to pay between US$ 5-10 for a well equipped, and trusted tea house per night. The cost may decrease if you manage to trek in offseason while only very few trekkers treks in the region. If you are planning trip with Nepal Horizon Treks & Expedition, you don’t have to worry about the teahouses, foods and accommodation. We book the trustworthy teahouse in advance and cost will be included in their trip package.

Teahouses in Everest Base Camp Trekking

Rooms, electricity and Wi-Fi in Teahouse during EBC Trek

Almost all the tea houses of the Khumbu Region offers twin rooms, where you will find two single beds in two sides of the room and a small tea table in between. These tea houses provide you pillow, beds sheets and bed cover, but using your sleeping bags is best idea, because it gets too cold during the nights in Himalayas. As the walls are this and not well insulated, using an earplugs while sleeping is also a good idea. For best trekking experience you should pack all the appropriate gears before trekking to Nepal Himalayas.

Most of the tea houses offer electricity for lighting and also some plug points, which are usually located in the communal areas. Normally, you have to pay US$ 3-5 per hour for using the plug points, which are typically in high demand, especially in the busier tea houses and during busier trekking seasons.

Let’s know about the Wi-Fi facilities in teahouses of the Everest Trekking routes. Only few tea houses have internet access and offer Wi-Fi hotspots at a charge. But, you better purchase a 3G SIM card and use internet throughout your journey. Mobile connectivity is pretty good in Everest Region and is also affordable.

Tea Houses in EBC Trek

Foods available in Everest Region Trekking

The availability of food varies according to Tea houses and Mountain Lodges, but both offers best hygienic foods and you don’t have to worry about the regular meals and carrying hiking foods while trekking in the popular trekking region like Everest Region. The entire teahouse provides variety of on-site prepared hot meals. But, there will not be much choice, as the meals tend to be varieties of each other, with slightly changed ingredients.

In the lower altitudes and famous towns, you will also get an option for international dishes. But while travelling to higher altitude, most of the dishes tend to be dominated by flour and cereal products, because all the ingredients have to be flown in to Lukla and should be carried along the Himalayas by yaks or porters. The lack of easy transportation makes your accommodation more costly than in lower altitudes. You will be served Bread, porridge, beans, rice and dumplings along with any kind of meals. You will also get a chance to taste the national dish of Nepal – Daal Bhaat.

We recommend not taking meat dishes, as the meats available in the upper Himalayas are not fresh and therefore not safe for consumption. According to beliefs of Sherpa peoples, no animals are slaughtered in the mountains, so all the meats available in the higher altitudes are carried on foot from the towns of lower altitude taking many days.

Have the fresh traditional rice and vegetables, and eggs in the morning and you will be well nourished to tackle whatever passes in the trekking throughout the day. For awesome experience in the Himalayas, remember; take only fresh and hygienic foods.

#nepal #trekking in nepal #trek to nepal #nepal trekking packages #everest base camp trek #everest base camp trekking

[cleancutpage]

Can 5G Fix America’s Broadband Problems?

This post originally appeared on Marketplace Advertiser, Connected Real Estate Magazine and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

Telecom carriers have failed to fulfill many of their previous promises.  

Fast and reliable internet connection has become a necessity for consumers. However, internet access has remained painfully slow in many rural areas around the world, including the country that invented the internet.  

Many detailed studies on the availability of internet access in many cities in the United States (U.S.) suggest that broadband condition is dreadful across rural America. Roughly six-in-ten rural Americans, or 58 percent of the U.S. population, believes access to high-speed internet is a problem in their area. 

Title: Percentage of rural adults in the U.S. who don’t have access to high-speed broadband. 

Less access in rural United States.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), roughly 25 million Americans can’t access broadband, over 19 million of which live in rural communities. Montana, ranks as the worst state for broadband connectivity in the US, followed closely by Mississippi and Arkansas. Improper or no broadband connection prevents these communities from starting or running an online business, accessing telemedicine, taking online classes or digitally transforming their farms. 

Pin-pointing the reasons for such lack of access in such a developed country is a difficult task. Perhaps this is a business issue, with internet providers finding the low populations and income of such dispersed rural areas unattractive for profits. Perhaps the government simply ignores this fact, allowing such companies to monopolize boldly without any worry of competition. 

Over the past five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) provided more than $22 billion in grants and subsidies to telecommunication companies to improve and sustain broadband access in rural America. Despite these huge investments and constant efforts, the country’s adoption of broadband hasn’t improved much since 2013. Maybe the government’s approach is wrong here — instead of injecting money into the industry, perhaps opening the market to competition and disrupting certain Telco’s power and reach, may change things.   

Is 5G a “fixed broadband replacement product?”  

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that the fifth-generation wireless (5G) technology would replace broadband within the next three to five years. According to Stephenson, 5G will give Americans, including those living in rural areas, faster internet access than most existing DSL and cable connections.  

5G speeds compared to 4G

Like AT&T, Verizon and many other carriers have portrayed 5G as a utopian solution to the broadband problems in rural America. If their claims hold up for broadband, it will fill a significant gap in American internet access.  

However, there are many reasons to be skeptical about the hype surrounding 5G. Both AT&T and Verizon have continuously been criticized for their failure to adequately deliver fiber in rural areas. While 5G will certainly be a faster and low-latency network, it’s not going to resolve all the problems with the US broadband.  

5G is not synonymous with fast fiber connections. 

According to Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wireless will never be competitive with high-speed wireline services. He says that the fastest speed the industry is boasting about 5G was already surpassed by fiber to the home many years ago.  

Rural carriers have long blamed companies like Verizon and AT&T for overstating their 4G LTE coverage. Now, these companies are aggressively overstating early 5G availability and fast speed wireless internet access in rural areas as well. However, considering their long-standing failures with 4G connectivity, consumers should trust their 5G promises only after they’ve experienced it firsthand for themselves.  

5G may be pricier than broadband. 

Americans are already paying some of the highest prices in the world for 4G LTE access, and 5G, so far, doesn’t seem to be cheaper. Large ISPs enjoy a de facto monopoly over the business data services (BDS) market, which adds a significant cost to providing wireless service. This “special access” market is dominated by just one internet service provider (ISP) – AT&T, Verizon, or CenturyLink. 

Smaller cellular carriers often accuse incumbents of using this monopoly power to charge exorbitant rates, driving up prices for carriers and consumers. Replacing broadband with 5G will leave millions of customers with shockingly higher bills. This ability to monopolize and charge whatever amounts desired may be the reason why lower income, less populated rural areas are left with minimal high-speed broadband access. 

Internet access is class-specific.

Experts also argue that wireless connection may soon have arbitrary restrictions that have never happened with wireline connections. Verizon, for example, already charges its unlimited data customers considerably more just for viewing full HD content. Similarly, Sprint charges users extra to avoid the throttling of video, music and games.  

Final words 

The American broadband problem seems to be a business and government problem. Businesses seem to ignore rural areas due to their low population and income compared to urban areas. Such factors are bad for business. The government seems to overlook this fact by allowing telecommunications companies in this space to monopolize and rule themselves, thereby allowing the exclusion of rural areas from high-speed internet access. 

5G, with its high-speed benefits, would be the ideal solution. It could minimize the need for physically wiring rural communities. However, 5G would need towers and other physical infrastructure to allow wireless access in such communities, and the U.S. carriers in question are unlikely to provide that for the same reasons mentioned earlier — low population and income means low profits. The telecom industry’s long history of unfulfilled promises suggests that their claims should be taken with a grain of salt. If you think 5G can fix America’s broadband problems, you should remain skeptical and wait for 5G to finally arrive by 2020 or later. 

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[addictionfreedom]

Addiction Treatment Online

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[newstfionline]

The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think

By Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty, Politico, May/June 2017

How did big media miss the Donald Trump swell? News organizations old and new, large and small, print and online, broadcast and cable assigned phalanxes of reporters armed with the most sophisticated polling data and analysis to cover the presidential campaign. The overwhelming assumption was that the race was Hillary Clinton’s for the taking, and the real question wasn’t how sweeping her November victory would be, but how far out to sea her wave would send political parvenu Trump. Today, it’s Trump who occupies the White House and Clinton who’s drifting out to sea--an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers.

What went so wrong? What’s still wrong? To some conservatives, Trump’s surprise win on November 8 simply bore out what they had suspected, that the Democrat-infested press was knowingly in the tank for Clinton all along. The media, in this view, was guilty not just of confirmation bias but of complicity. But the knowing-bias charge never added up: No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story, and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style. Practically speaking, you’re not pushing Clinton to victory if you’re pantsing her and her party to voters almost daily.

The answer to the press’ myopia lies elsewhere, and nobody has produced a better argument for how the national media missed the Trump story than FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. “As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,” Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon said. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f---g idea what’s going on.”

But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there’s another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming “bias” and “conspiracy,” or counting D’s and R’s. That’s to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed.

The results read like a revelation. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county--odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.

The “media bubble” trope might feel overused by critics of journalism who want to sneer at reporters who live in Brooklyn or California and don’t get the “real America” of southern Ohio or rural Kansas. But these numbers suggest it’s no exaggeration: Not only is the bubble real, but it’s more extreme than you might realize. And it’s driven by deep industry trends.

Parts of the media have always had their own bubbles. The national magazine industry has been concentrated in New York for generations, and the copy produced reflects an Eastern sensibility. Radio and TV networks based in New York and Los Angeles likewise have shared that dominant sensibility. But they were more than balanced out by the number of newspaper jobs in big cities, midsized cities and smaller towns throughout the country, spreading journalists everywhere.

No longer. The newspaper industry has jettisoned hundreds of thousands of jobs, due to falling advertising revenues. Dailies have shrunk sections, pages and features; some have retreated from daily publication; hundreds have closed. Daily and weekly newspaper publishers employed about 455,000 reporters, clerks, salespeople, designers and the like in 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By January 2017, that workforce had more than halved to 173,900. Those losses were felt in almost every region of the country.

As newspapers have dwindled, internet publishers have added employees at a bracing clip. According to BLS data, a startling boom in “internet publishing and broadcasting” jobs has taken place. Since January 2008, internet publishing has grown from 77,900 jobs to 206,700 in January 2017. In late 2015, during Barack Obama’s second term, these two trend lines--jobs in newspapers, and jobs in internet publishing--finally crossed. For the first time, the number of workers in internet publishing exceeded the number of their newspaper brethren. Internet publishers are now adding workers at nearly twice the rate newspaper publishers are losing them.

This isn’t just a shift in medium. It’s also a shift in sociopolitics, and a radical one. Where newspaper jobs are spread nationwide, internet jobs are not: Today, 73 percent of all internet publishing jobs are concentrated in either the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or the West Coast crescent that runs from Seattle to San Diego and on to Phoenix. The Chicagoland area, a traditional media center, captures 5 percent of the jobs, with a paltry 22 percent going to the rest of the country. And almost all the real growth of internet publishing is happening outside the heartland, in just a few urban counties, all places that voted for Clinton. So when your conservative friends use “media” as a synonym for “coastal” and “liberal,” they’re not far off the mark.

As the votes streamed in on election night, evidence that the country had further cleaved into two Americas became palpable. With few exceptions, Clinton ran the table in urban America, while Trump ran it in the ruralities. And as you might suspect, Clinton dominated where internet publishing jobs abound. Nearly 90 percent of all internet publishing employees work in a county where Clinton won, and 75 percent of them work in a county that she won by more than 30 percentage points. When you add in the shrinking number of newspaper jobs, 72 percent of all internet publishing or newspaper employees work in a county that Clinton won. By this measure, of course, Clinton was the national media’s candidate.

Resist--if you can--the conservative reflex to absorb this data and conclude that the media deliberately twists the news in favor of Democrats. Instead, take it the way a social scientist would take it: The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can’t help being affected--deeply affected--by the environment around them. Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent got at this when he analyzed the decidedly liberal bent of his newspaper’s staff in a 2004 column that rewards rereading today. The “heart, mind, and habits” of the Times, he wrote, cannot be divorced from the ethos of the cosmopolitan city where it is produced. On such subjects as abortion, gay rights, gun control and environmental regulation, the Times’ news reporting is a pretty good reflection of its region’s dominant predisposition. And yes, a Times-ian ethos flourishes in all of internet publishing’s major cities--Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington. The Times thinks of itself as a centrist national newspaper, but it’s more accurate to say its politics are perfectly centered on the slices of America that look and think the most like Manhattan.

Something akin to the Times ethos thrives in most major national newsrooms found on the Clinton coasts--CNN, CBS, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Politico and the rest. Their reporters, an admirable lot, can parachute into Appalachia or the rural Midwest on a monthly basis and still not shake their provincial sensibilities: Reporters tote their bubbles with them.

In a sense, the media bubble reflects an established truth about America: The places with money get served better than the places without. People in big media cities aren’t just more liberal, they’re also richer: Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000--$7,000 more than the national median. Commercial media tend to cluster where most of the GDP is created, and that’s the coasts. Perhaps this is what Bannon is hollering about when he denounces the “corporatist, global media,” as he did in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference. If current trends continue--and it’s safe to predict they will--national media will continue to expand and concentrate on the coasts, while local and regional media contract.

Can media myopia be cured? Unlike other industries, the national media has a directive beyond just staying in business: Many newsrooms really do feel a commitment to reflecting America fairly. Sometimes, correcting for liberal bias can be smart business as well. For instance, by rightly guessing that there was a big national broadcast audience that didn’t see their worldviews represented in the mainstream networks, the Fox News Channel came to dominate cable TV ratings. Adopting Fox’s anti-mainstream media message to his political needs, Trump ended up running on a Foxesque platform, making a vote for him into a vote against the elite media--his trash talk was always directed at the national press, not the local. Similarly, Breitbart has seen huge success sticking it to liberals, implicitly taking the side of the “real America” against the coastal bubbles. Breitbart now attracts more than 15 million visitors a month, according to comScore, which isn’t far behind more established outlets like the Hill’s 24 million and Politico’s 25 million.

Everyone acknowledges that Trump’s election really was a bad miss, and if the media doesn’t figure it out, it will miss the next one, too.

The best medicine for journalistic myopia isn’t reeducation camps or a splurge of diversity hiring, though tiny doses of those two remedies wouldn’t hurt. Journalists respond to their failings best when their vanity is punctured with proof that they blew a story that was right in front of them. If the burning humiliation of missing the biggest political story in a generation won’t change newsrooms, nothing will. More than anything, journalists hate getting beat.

#media bubble #US media #newspaper industry #Internet publishers #US journalists #journalistic myopia

[duanecbrooks]

The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think We crunched the data on where journalists work and how fast it’s changing. The results should worry you. By JACK SHAFER and TUCKER DOHERTY May/June 2017 How did big media miss the Donald Trump swell? News organizations old and new, large and small, print and online, broadcast and cable assigned phalanxes of reporters armed with the most sophisticated polling data and analysis to cover the presidential campaign. The overwhelming assumption was that the race was Hillary Clinton’s for the taking, and the real question wasn’t how sweeping her November victory would be, but how far out to sea her wave would send political parvenu Trump. Today, it’s Trump who occupies the White House and Clinton who’s drifting out to sea—an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers. What went so wrong? What’s still wrong? To some conservatives, Trump’s surprise win on November 8 simply bore out what they had suspected, that the Democrat-infested press was knowingly in the tank for Clinton all along. The media, in this view, was guilty not just of confirmation bias but of complicity. But the knowing-bias charge never added up: No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story, and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style. Practically speaking, you’re not pushing Clinton to victory if you’re pantsing her and her party to voters almost daily. The answer to the press’ myopia lies elsewhere, and nobody has produced a better argument for how the national media missed the Trump story than FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. “As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,” Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon said. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no fucking idea what’s going on.” The map at the top of this piece shows how concentrated media jobs have become in the nation’s most Democratic-leaning counties. Counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 are in red, and Hillary Clinton counties are in blue, with darker colors signifying higher vote margins. The bubbles represent the 150 counties with the most newspaper and internet publishing jobs. Not only do most of the bubbles fall in blue counties, chiefly on the coasts, but an outright majority of the jobs are in the deepest-blue counties, where Clinton won by 30 points or more. But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there’s another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming “bias” and “conspiracy,” or counting D’s and R’s. That’s to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed. The results read like a revelation. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too. The “media bubble” trope might feel overused by critics of journalism who want to sneer at reporters who live in Brooklyn or California and don’t get the “real America” of southern Ohio or rural Kansas. But these numbers suggest it’s no exaggeration: Not only is the bubble real, but it’s more extreme than you might realize. And it’s driven by deep industry trends. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Parts of the media have always had their own bubbles. The national magazine industry has been concentrated in New York for generations, and the copy produced reflects an Eastern sensibility. Radio and TV networks based in New York and Los Angeles likewise have shared that dominant sensibility. But they were more than balanced out by the number of newspaper jobs in big cities, midsized cities and smaller towns throughout the country, spreading journalists everywhere. No longer. The newspaper industry has jettisoned hundreds of thousands of jobs, due to falling advertising revenues. Dailies have shrunk sections, pages and features; some have retreated from daily publication; hundreds have closed. Daily and weekly newspaper publishers employed about 455,000 reporters, clerks, salespeople, designers and the like in 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By January 2017, that workforce had more than halved to 173,900. Those losses were felt in almost every region of the country. As newspapers have dwindled, internet publishers have added employees at a bracing clip. According to BLS data, a startling boom in “internet publishing and broadcasting” jobs has taken place. Since January 2008, internet publishing has grown from 77,900 jobs to 206,700 in January 2017. In late 2015, during Barack Obama’s second term, these two trend lines—jobs in newspapers, and jobs in internet publishing—finally crossed. For the first time, the number of workers in internet publishing exceeded the number of their newspaper brethren. Internet publishers are now adding workers at nearly twice the rate newspaper publishers are losing them. This isn’t just a shift in medium. It’s also a shift in sociopolitics, and a radical one. Where newspaper jobs are spread nationwide, internet jobs are not: Today, 73 percent of all internet publishing jobs are concentrated in either the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or the West Coast crescent that runs from Seattle to San Diego and on to Phoenix. The Chicagoland area, a traditional media center, captures 5 percent of the jobs, with a paltry 22 percent going to the rest of the country. And almost all the real growth of internet publishing is happening outside the heartland, in just a few urban counties, all places that voted for Clinton. So when your conservative friends use “media” as a synonym for “coastal” and “liberal,” they’re not far off the mark. What caused the majority of national media jobs to concentrate on the coasts? An alignment of the stars? A flocking of like-minded humans? The answer is far more structural, and far more difficult to alter: It was economics that done the deed. *** The magic of the internet was going to shake up the old certainties of the job market, prevent the coagulation of jobs in the big metro areas, or so the Web utopians promised us in the mid-1990s. The technology would free internet employees to work from wherever they could find a broadband connection. That remains true in theory, with thousands of Web developers, writers and producers working remotely from lesser metropolises. But economists know something the internet evangelists have ignored: All else being equal, specialized industries like to cluster. Car companies didn’t arise in remote regions that needed cars—they arose in Detroit, which already had heavy industry, was near natural resources, boasted a skilled workforce and was home to a network of suppliers that could help car companies thrive. As industries grow, they bud and create spinoffs, the best example being the way Silicon Valley blossomed from just a handful of pioneering electronics firms in the 1960s. Seattle’s rise as a tech powerhouse was seeded by Microsoft, which moved to the area in 1979 and helped create the ecosystem that gave rise to companies like Amazon. As Enrico Moretti, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who has studied the geography of job creation, points out, the tech entrepreneurs who drive internet publishing could locate their companies in low-rent, low-cost-of-living places like Cleveland, but they don’t. They need the most talented workers, who tend to move to the clusters, where demand drives wages higher. And it’s the clusters that host all the subsidiary industries a tech start-up craves—lawyers specializing in intellectual property and incorporation; hardware and software vendors; angel investors; and so on. The old newspaper business model almost prevented this kind of clustering. Except for the national broadsheets—the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and increasingly the Washington Post—newspapers must locate, cheek by jowl, next to their customers, the people who consume local news, and whom local advertisers need to reach. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader is stuck in South Dakota just as the owners of hydroelectric plants in the Rockies are stuck where they are. As much as they might want to move their dams to coastal markets where they could charge more for electricity, fate has fixed them geographically. Economists call these “non-tradable goods”—goods that must be consumed in the same community in which they’re made. The business of a newspaper can’t really be separated from the place where it’s published. It is, or was, driven by ads for things that don’t travel, like real estate, jobs, home decor and cars. And as that advertising has gotten harder and harder to come by, local newsrooms have become thinner and thinner. The online media, liberated from printing presses and local ad bases, has been free to form clusters, piggyback-style, on the industries and government that it covers. New York is home to most business coverage because of the size of the business and banking community there. Likewise, national political reporting has concentrated in Washington and grown apace with the federal government. Entertainment and cultural reporting has bunched in New York and Los Angeles, where those businesses are strong. The result? If you look at the maps on the next page, you don’t need to be a Republican campaign strategist to grasp just how far the “media bubble” has drifted from the average American experience. Newspaper jobs are far more evenly scattered across the country, including the deep red parts. But as those vanish, it’s internet jobs that are driving whatever growth there is in media—and those fall almost entirely in places that are dense, blue and right in the bubble. *** As the votes streamed in on election night, evidence that the country had further cleaved into two Americas became palpable. With few exceptions, Clinton ran the table in urban America, while Trump ran it in the ruralities. And as you might suspect, Clinton dominated where internet publishing jobs abound. Nearly 90 percent of all internet publishing employees work in a county where Clinton won, and 75 percent of them work in a county that she won by more than 30 percentage points. When you add in the shrinking number of newspaper jobs, 72 percent of all internet publishing or newspaper employees work in a county that Clinton won. By this measure, of course, Clinton was the national media’s candidate. Resist—if you can—the conservative reflex to absorb this data and conclude that the media deliberately twists the news in favor of Democrats. Instead, take it the way a social scientist would take it: The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can’t help being affected—deeply affected—by the environment around them. Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent got at this when he analyzed the decidedly liberal bent of his newspaper’s staff in a 2004 column that rewards rereading today. The “heart, mind, and habits” of the Times, he wrote, cannot be divorced from the ethos of the cosmopolitan city where it is produced. On such subjects as abortion, gay rights, gun control and environmental regulation, the Times’ news reporting is a pretty good reflection of its region’s dominant predisposition. And yes, a Times-ian ethos flourishes in all of internet publishing’s major cities—Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington. The Times thinks of itself as a centrist national newspaper, but it’s more accurate to say its politics are perfectly centered on the slices of America that look and think the most like Manhattan. Something akin to the Times ethos thrives in most major national newsrooms found on the Clinton coasts—CNN, CBS, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Politico and the rest. Their reporters, an admirable lot, can parachute into Appalachia or the rural Midwest on a monthly basis and still not shake their provincial sensibilities: Reporters tote their bubbles with them. In a sense, the media bubble reflects an established truth about America: The places with money get served better than the places without. People in big media cities aren’t just more liberal, they’re also richer: Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000—$7,000 more than the national median. Commercial media tend to cluster where most of the GDP is created, and that’s the coasts. Perhaps this is what Bannon is hollering about when he denounces the “corporatist, global media,” as he did in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference. If current trends continue—and it’s safe to predict they will—national media will continue to expand and concentrate on the coasts, while local and regional media contract. Can media myopia be cured? Unlike other industries, the national media has a directive beyond just staying in business: Many newsrooms really do feel a commitment to reflecting America fairly. Sometimes, correcting for liberal bias can be smart business as well. For instance, by rightly guessing that there was a big national broadcast audience that didn’t see their worldviews represented in the mainstream networks, the Fox News Channel came to dominate cable TV ratings. Adopting Fox’s anti-mainstream media message to his political needs, Trump ended up running on a Foxesque platform, making a vote for him into a vote against the elite media—his trash talk was always directed at the national press, not the local. Similarly, Breitbart has seen huge success sticking it to liberals, implicitly taking the side of the “real America” against the coastal bubbles. Breitbart now attracts more than 15 million visitors a month, according to comScore, which isn’t far behind more established outlets like the Hill’s 24 million and Politico’s 25 million. Everyone acknowledges that Trump’s election really was a bad miss, and if the media doesn’t figure it out, it will miss the next one, too. But is this really America, either? It’s worth mentioning that Fox and Breitbart—and indeed most of the big conservative media players—also happen to be located in the same bubble. Like the “MSM” they rail against, they’re a product of New York, Washington and Los Angeles. It’s an argument against the bubble, being waged almost entirely by people who work inside it. Is America trapped? Certainly, the media seems to be. It’s hard to imagine an industry willingly accommodating the places with less money, fewer people and less expertise, especially if they sense that niche has already been filled to capacity by Fox. Yet everyone acknowledges that Trump’s election really was a bad miss, and if the media doesn’t figure it out, it will miss the next one, too. Journalism tends toward the autobiographical unless reporters and editors make a determined effort to separate themselves from the frame of their own experiences. The best medicine for journalistic myopia isn’t reeducation camps or a splurge of diversity hiring, though tiny doses of those two remedies wouldn’t hurt. Journalists respond to their failings best when their vanity is punctured with proof that they blew a story that was right in front of them. If the burning humiliation of missing the biggest political story in a generation won’t change newsrooms, nothing will. More than anything, journalists hate getting beat.

#news organizations #hillary clinton #Trump #Donald Trump #the national media #groupthink #steve bannon #media bubble #internet publishers #internet publishing #economics #economists #daniel okrent #the fox news channel #breitbart #liberals #the bubble #Journalists

[mathieubuardmode-blog]

MODES PRATIQUES / Abécédaire

In and out of fashion,

selon trois grandes étapes de la vie : du goût, de l’industrie, de l’utopie.

« Vous paraissez surpris , dit-elle juste après que nous eûmes passé un moulin qui barrait toute la largeur du fleuve, à l’exception du chenal de navigation, mais qui était en son genre, aussi beau qu’une cathédrale gothique - vous paraissez surpris que tout ceci soit si agréable aux regards »

William Morris, Nouvelles de nulle part ou une ère de repos - chapitre d’un roman d’imagination utopique, édition Aubier-Montaigne, 1957, p. 473.

A

Anarchie  

« Il examina les personnes qui pénétraient dans la pièce en se rassemblant les unes auprès des autres, sans parler. Quel assemblage hétéroclite ! songea-t-il avec pessimisme. Une fille maigre comme un haricot vert, avec des lunettes et des cheveux jaunes et raides, qui portait un chapeau de cow-boy, une mantille de dentelle noire et des bermudas ; ce devait être Edie Dorn. Une femme plus âgée, brune l’air avenant, avec des yeux perçants et un peu détraqués, en sari de soie, obi de nylon et socquettes : Francy quelque chose, une schizophrène cyclique qui s’imaginait de temps en temps que des êtres intelligents venus de Bételgeuse atterrissaient sur le toit de son immeuble. Un adolescent aux cheveux crépus drapé dans un air de supériorité et de cynisme orgueilleux ; celui là qui était habillé d’un mumu à fleurs et de culottes bouffantes, Runciter ne l’avait jamais vu. Quand tous furent entrés, il compta au total quatre femmes et six hommes. Il manquait quelqu’un. »

Philip K Dick, Ubiq, édition 10-18, p. 71-72

Air du temps (Zeitgeist)

On peut postuler que l’air du temps ou l’esprit du temps est une forme d’anticipation, au sens littéraire, de l’acte de création en mode. Rien ne prédispose à ce qui advient, aucune pythie ne prédit l’avenir de la mode. Seule une série d’hétérotopies*, énoncées par des designers, stylistes, directeurs artistiques qui rassemblent et enchevêtrent dans leurs propositions la somme des désirs et des dimensions plastiques contemporaines qu’ils constatent, font la mode. Où comme le dit Giorgio Agamben « celui qui appartient véritablement à son temps, le vrai contemporain, est celui qui ne coïncide pas parfaitement avec lui ni d’adhère à ses prétentions, et ne se définit, en ce sens, comme inactuel ; mais précisément pour cette raison, précisément par cet écart et cet anachronisme, il est plus apte que les autres à percevoir et à saisir son temps. **» Hétérotopie ou dyschronie donc, qui propose une vision assemblée, un air du temps qui propose des modèles rêvées d’allures, d’identités, qui pourraient définir un horizon de mode.

* Michel Foucault, Les hétérotopies écrit en 1966, édition de la Pléiade, 2015, p.

** Giorgio Agamben, Qu’est ce que le contemporain ?, édition Rivages Poche, 2005-2006

Amish

Communauté anabaptiste issue du seizième siècle européen, émigrée en grande partie aux États-Unis et au Canada depuis le dix-huitième siècle, connue pour son obéissance exclusive aux lois de la Bible, sa défiance à l’égard des évolutions du monde, de la science et de la technologie, son mépris pour la vitesse et enfin son choix d’un mode de vie autarcique, rural et austère. La femme amish pratique les arts traditionnels de la broderie, du quilt et du patchwork, où le vêtement amish est confectionné artisanalement. Les femmes sont en robe, tablier et coiffe blanche, les hommes en costume, gilet noir et chapeau à larges bords : les silhouettes réitèrent la tradition paysanne d’il y a trois siècles, immuable—Tu ne te conformeras point à ce monde qui t’entoure. La mode occidentale, dans ses élans coupables ou ses accès de mélancolie, vient cycliquement se ressourcer dans cette esthétique roide du nécessaire, où la beauté nait de la suppression méthodique de toute forme d’excès comme de superflu.

Auteur  

Si la mode comme ensemble et système prône le culte de l’auteur et de la singularité, du couturier au designer en passant par le styliste depuis Worth, Poiret et consort, le turn over des designers organisé par les grands groupes de luxe et la fast-fashion interrogent in fine la mode sans auteur, sans originalité et ou sans futur.

Qu’advient-il de l’esprit d’une vieille maison quand ses locataires directeurs artistiques refont sinon ripolinent la déco d’un coup de peinture digitale, travaillant dans une cavalcade folle et péremptoire à l’allure marketing éphémère des produits qu’ils aspirent à faire désirer ?

De la même façon, si Hennes & Mauritz (autrement bien nommé H&M) ou Inditex (Zara, Maximo Dutti…) puisent eux avec légèreté et allégresse dans le corpus mode de leurs voisins, les vêtements qu’ils produisent semblent sans originalité ni auteur. Griffés certes mais sans auteur autant que les stylistes en présence sont considérés comme une foule d’anonymes - sans style particulier puisque les vêtements sont la somme des éléments copiés abruptement, de façon lacunaire et ce dans une perspective industrielle dont la raison est l’obsolescence programmée. Cette logique condamne le vêtement par l’usure précipité des étoffes, la fragilité de la façon, l’impossibilité d’un futur come back vintage.

Autrement, sur un mode plus joyeux, on peut interroger le styliste selon cette perspective : celui qui, avec une somme de vêtements et de corps opère par retranchement et réduction d’un montage inédit, et livre une équation modifiée de la proposition faite par son collaborateur designer ou directeur artistique. On pense ici aux stylistes grand genre qui calibrent la vision d’une collection avant défilé, qui redéploient en images pour des éditoriaux ces mêmes vêtements et corps, et fabriquent une mode sans production et cependant très industrieuse.

Alter

Alter ou autre selon son origine étymologique, la communauté altermondiale prône une décroissance synonyme de désirs et de projets déplacés où la consommation n’est plus le centre. Elle aura comme généalogie politique les babacools, les hippies et des formes communautaires plus anciennes qui proposent un mode d’existence (lifestyle ?) alternatif au modèle dominant du grand Autre, le maléfique capital et ses outils de productions et de diffusions globalisés. L’alter, finalement proche des pensées de William Morris dans les nouvelles de nulle part, édité en 1880, envisage une vie où serait produit ce qui est nécessaire et selon un mode artisanal plutôt que de ce qui est subit. Une utopie qui revendique un modèle corporatiste et local.

B

Baba(cool)

De baba (« papa ») en hindi et cool (« calme ») en anglais.

Le pied libre, le poil défait, l’utopie à fleur de tête, le hippie issu de la contre-culture des sixties rugissantes est anti-materialiste, anti-conformiste, anti-militariste, anti-bourgeois. L’allure hippie ou babacool cultive alors un éclectisme intuitif et bariolé, déjà altermondial, qui peut mêler dans le désordre l’orange, le mauve, le liberty, le jean peint, un sein nu, des franges, un gilet afghan, des cliquetis d’argent indien, et trois larmes de patchouli.

Le spécimen hippie survit encore aujourd’hui, dans sa version originale ou restaurée; on peut le trouver dans les contrées décroissantes du sud rural de la France, sur l’île de Formentera ou au festival alternatif Burning Man dans le Nevada. Au gré des tendances, la mode ranime cette figure comme une aimable et élégiaque panoplie c’est-à-dire sans les mobile-homes, les chèvres, les substances bricolées, le duvet malséant, le négligé licencieux ou le fumet fauve d’un innocent laisser-aller. On préfère dire dans ce cas Hippie Chic_ que l’on croisera plutôt sur la plage privée d’un hôtel exotique au luxe exceptionnel.

Baba(Catherine)

Tout en vélo et néologismes franglais, Catherine Baba est un personnage de la mode française.

Son allure et son parlé empoulés signent autant que ses multiples casquettes et activités une pratique de stylisme. Baba est une « living styliste » dont la vie et les modes d’être définissent sa ligne esthétique : du souci de soi comme mode de production, sans confinement ni retrait, où le brouillon et l’accompli se confondent dans une hyper exubérance. Se mêle alors le lamé des années 80, un turban années 20, des cascades de bijoux vintage, de hauts talons italiens, à la japonaise un kimono, des lunettes Saint-Laurent oversized… Baba ou l’esprit non finito du too much que l’on retrouve chez la fantasque Anna Dello Russo ou encore chez le non moins présent et mégalomane Kanye West.

Bobo(Yuppie)

Autrement nommé bourgeois bohème, ce citoyen des grandes villes européennes, ou dans une outre manière atlantique, d’un young urban professionnal des années 1980-90 fruit des métropoles new-yorkaise ou de la Silicon Valley, le Bobo incarne une des formes sociales de la post-modernité et de l’ère post-industrielle. Suite à la bulle internet, le Bobo français apparait tel un nouveau mode d’existence, communautaire, sans autre projet qu’un art de vivre individualisé à base de graines, de développement durable et de design pour tous. Plus globale et répandue que celles étriquées du hipster ou du normcore, la catégorie Bobo invite à suivre béatement le déroulé d’un style de vie à la bienveillance comptée, sans agents conservateurs (quoique plutôt en devenir), au goût prononcé pour le bovarysme.

Peut-on alors parler de bobovarysme ?

/.../

Utopie - 1

Le vêtement sans la violence sociale, sans la mode et son superflu: ce qu’ils créent d’écart, de clivage brutal, de corruption ou d’éclat trompeur. Simplicité, humilité, tempérance ou transparence sont ainsi parmi les principales valeurs connotées par le vêtement idéal lorsqu’il apparaît dans les mondes rêvés depuis la révolution Renaissante et pendant les Lumières. Ainsi Rousseau, dans La Nouvelle Héloïse : « Ce que le bon goût approuve une fois est toujours bien (…) et dans sa modeste simplicité il tire de la convenance des choses des règles inaltérables et sûres, qui restent quand les modes ne sont plus ». Et aussi: « Celui qui voulut bâtir une haute tour faisait bien de la vouloir porter jusqu’au ciel; autrement il eût eu beau l’élever, le point où il se fût arrêté n’eût servi qu’à donner de plus loin la preuve de son impuissance. O homme petit et vain, montre moi ton pouvoir, je te montrerai ta misère ».

Aujourd’hui, le vêtement lorsqu’il se rêve dans d’autres dimensions ou s’anticipe au futur nous parle moins de mode et à fortiori moins de politique, que de prouesse technologique et d’éco-système: enveloppe protectrice intelligente, soignante, hyperconnectée ou au contraire isolante.

En attendant la vie sur Mars on peut penser à cet exemple extrême: le Distille, ou la tenue portée par le peuple des Fremen dans le cycle de fiction de Dune de Frank Herbert pour survivre à l’aridité du désert de la planète Arrakis: un vêtement dont le port réclame une grande efficience et qui s’offre comme un vaste système de filtrage et de recyclage de tous les fluides corporels. Est-on alors encore en Utopie ou en Dystopie reste une question ouverte… Une tradition des Fremen est  d’éliminer toute personne rencontrée dans le désert qui aurait la folie de ne pas porter de Distille afin de récupérer son eau, élément vital sur Dune et dont on ne saurait tolérer qu’il soit gaspillé.

Utopie - 2

« Oui, dit le vieillard, le monde s’apprêtait à renaître à la vie ; et comment cela aurait il pu se faire sans tragédie ? Réfléchissez-y au surplus. L’esprit des temps nouveaux, de notre temps, serait fait de la joie qu’on éprouve à participer à la vie du monde ;  de l’amour intense tout-puisant, de la peau même et de la surface de cette terre sur laquelle habite l’homme, l’amour qu’éprouve un amant pour la chair magnifique de la femme qu’il aime ; tel devait être, dis-je, le nouvel esprit de l’époque. Toutes les autres formules avaient été épuisées : la critique incessante, l’insatiable analyse du comportement et des pensées de l’homme qui représentaient l’esprit de la Grèce antique, (…). Elle était le produit de même que l’unique exutoire du malheur de l’époque, qui donnait à la vie un goût si amer, même pour les riches, (…). Plus proche de notre conception de la vie était l’esprit du Moyen-Age, (…) laquelle il aima et embellit en conséquence, malgré toutes les doctrines d’ascétisme qui lui commandaient de la condamner, au nom des dogmes de son Eglise. »

William Morris, Nouvelles de nulle part ou une ère de repos - chapitre d’un roman d’imagination utopique, édition Aubier-Montaigne, 1957, p. 343-345.

V

Vendu

Il est désormais rare pour le créateur de détenir les clés de sa propre maison. Depuis les années 90, l’arrivée des actionnaires en conglomérats géants et les stratégies voraces des marketeurs et commerciaux à l’attaque du globe, ce même créateur est désormais devenu un genre de mercenaire, qui vend ses charmes comme fourbit ses armes au plus offrant et selon l’opportunité, qu’il s’agisse de ressusciter l’ancienne maison d’un autre telle une belle au bois endormie, ou d’accaparer les désirs toujours plus volatiles d’une clientèle en faisant le beau le temps de quelques saisons. Le marché étant capricieux, le turn over est inquiet, et le Prince Charmant volage.

Vilain

Ainsi nommé, le paysan médiéval au «  métier mécanique » est décrit de la sorte : « on pourrait dire que ces hommes sont vêtus « n’importe comment », d’une accumulation de morceaux d’étoffe très éloignée des savantes superpositions des vêtements nobles. Ces vêtements sont abondamment déchirés, rompus à l’usure et non par souci ornemental. Et ils s’ouvrent sur le vêtement de dessous ou sur la peau nue. (…) le vêtement paysan apparait impropre à tout ordonnancement ».

Odile Blanc, Parades et parures - l’invention du corps de mode à la fin du moyen âge, édition Gallimard, 1997, p.51.

VETEMENTS (Quand Demna Gsavalia rencontre Roland Barthes)

Nommer une marque de mode VETEMENTS, c’est aborder la question du branding sous le régime d’une tautologie provocatrice et transgressive. Faut-il en déduire qu’il s’agit d’un simple artifice mercatique ou peut-on considérer ce principe de nomination comme une vision de mode éprise de l’air du temps, d’un Kairos (du moment opportun). Aussi, penser la présence d’un logo vernaculaire sur un pull façon post internet, de rêver une allure slave sm quand Poutine figure en maître autocratique, de mixer les vestiaires entre chien et loup, ski et bureau, tout cela engage à penser le travail de Demna Gasavalia, selon une vision connectée à l’hyper présent et pourtant anachronique par sa radicalité. Alors être un vêtement de VETEMENTS, qu’en est-il ? C’est être réel mais pas vraiment totalement wearable mais poussant dans ce sens la limite… C’est une coupe qui déjoue les standards et bascule les lignes, tombe l’épaule ou la rétrécie fermement… déforme le tayloring, introduit du sportwear partout, encense les gueules cassées et les brutes masculines comme féminines. Sexualise et désexualise sans vergogne. Uniformise sans peur ni règles. Hackant la Couture !

Voir Neutre

W

Wave (new)

« And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself

Well… How did I get here? »

Talking Heads, Once In A Lifetime, 1981

X

Xavière

La Xavière est une congrégation religieuse fondée en 1921 par Claire Monestès et reconnue officiellement par l’Église Catholique. Une Xavière a donc décidé de consacrer sa vie à Jesus plutôt qu’à Cain mais, en tant que missionnaire, elle a pour vocation d’œuvrer parmi les autres plutôt que de se tenir dans un retrait concerté. Si elle n’a pas nécessairement la peau d’albâtre et la bouche menue requis par Gabriel de Minut lorsqu’il énonce au seizième siècle l’essence type de la Beauté Religieuse, la plus morale et la meilleure, rencontrer une Xavière peut toutefois nous en livrer une version contemporaine : sans afféterie, dénuée de maquillage, et résolument normcore.

Y

Yellow

Bien souvent considérée comme une couleur importable et infamante, le jaune est pourtant cette couleur qui longtemps dira l’or, la lumière, l’éclat… La peinture n’en fait pas un drame, la mode oui.

Voir Honte

Z

Zoolander

« I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I’m selling ? No. Do I know what I’m doing today ? No. But I’m here, and I’m gonna give it my best shot. » Hansel Mc Donald.

Hansel McDonald, mannequin fictif et meilleur ennemi du top modèle fictif Derek Zoolander ; ces deux personnages sont les Bouvard et Pécuchet d’une comédie satirique sur le milieu de la mode réalisée par Ben Stiller en 2001.

Mathieu Buard et Céline Mallet, décembre 2016, Paris.

[attractiverubble]

Day 4 -  Freak Power Vocab Quiz

A passage from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s Letters:

That was a weird notion in those days. After eight years of Ike, it was hard to imagine anyone except a retired board chairman or a senile ex-general having any influence in Government. They were the government—a gang of rich, mean-spirited old fucks who made democracy work by beating us all stupid with a series of billion-dollar hypes they called Defense Contracts, Special Subsidies, and “emergency tax breaks” for anybody with the grease to hire a Congressman.

First off, that’s exactly what this administration feels like. Old white men coming back to power. Degenerates with no inkling of real American concerns - whether they’re from rural farmers and opiate addicts, suburban unemployed, or urban artists and families. The administration is only concerned with the wealthy.

That’s not my main point though. That was one of the more tame paragraphs from that letter by Thompson. [I shouldn’t say tame, really. That’s the wrong word] That was probably the most conventional paragraph from that letter. Thompson is a master of word, metaphor and prose. He was thirty when he wrote that letter. I’m 22 right now and I can’t even imagine creating similar images as he does.

Now he does get a lot of help from drugs and alcohol. Perhaps that’s the key. As Hemingway said, (a line that is quoted entirely too much) “write drunk, edit sober.”

But I do need to read much more in order to have a larger collection to draw from. More to gain inspiration. That’s why the internet sucks. None of it is edited or proofread or even curated. Published books are at least chosen from some of the smarter people.

Another fascination of the human mind is that while reading something like Thompson - or anyone else with such a variance in word choice - is that I immediately pick up on the meaning and the context of the word, but I never am able to then respond with my own variable word choice. I recognize 10 synonyms for the same word, but when I have my own paper or article to write, I always rely on the same word. My mind moves from A to B to C. Instead, I would hope it moved from A1 to B6 to C3. The passage would have the same meaning, but goes about it with more design.

[This was all over the place. Perhaps I shouldn’t write this so early in the morning. But really I need to read more to write better.]  

[epchapman89]

Myanmar Coffee Is Having A Moment

Back in the hot days of 2016, Washington, DC was the scene of a coffee event that stood apart from the typical coffee crawls and throwdowns: La Colombe played host to Winrock International, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Atlas Coffee Importers, and the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), who invited guests to celebrate and taste the first commercially available specialty coffee from Myanmar.

Guests at the Aug. 23 Myanmar coffee tasting at La Colombe Chinatown in Washington, DC.

As toasts and remarks began, local coffee roasters and retailers stood shoulder to shoulder with guests from the State Department and the Embassy of Myanmar, as well as a fair share of reporters from diverse news outlets. Key people in the project came forward to address and share with the crowd how this coffee came to be, and baristas served espresso and brewed coffee using La Colombe Workshop’s Myanmar Min Paung.

In 2014, Winrock, an international development nonprofit, began a five-year, $27 million project (funded by a grant from USAID) in Myanmar to develop better agricultural practices, helping farmers produce more quality cherries and better connect with markets; USAID calls this work “upgrading value chains.” Coffee is just one of the crops in Myanmar undergoing value-chain development. Sprudge talked with Andrew Hetzel, a consultant for CQI on the Myanmar project, to get more information about this process.

Andrew Hetzel

For a lot of readers working on the retail level of coffee, CQI is synonymous with Q grading. Can you describe the CQI and your role within it?

CQI was originally founded as a charitable trust by the SCAA, but it’s an independent company with a board of trustees and its own staff. On a global level, it offers technical services and support for every part of the coffee supply chain, the Q Coffee System being one example. The Q is popular and important because it’s a common language, one tool for all coffee evaluators to use. But CQI does much of its work in international research, agricultural science, and business development on the production side of the chain.

I’m a project consultant contracted with CQI. For the Myanmar specialty coffee project, I was brought in about six months after the project started to help with the go-to-market portion, which is strategizing how this coffee is going to reach coffee consumers in the best possible way.

Coffee cherries drying outside in Shan State, Myanmar.

When coffee retailers want to tell a story of origin to their customers, how would you want them to describe Myanmar?

For a lot of Western coffee drinkers, not much comes to mind when you mention Myanmar. So, a bit of history first: Myanmar was formerly known as Burma and was a British colony until 1948. It was an independent state until 1962, when the military took over with a coup d’etat. In 2011, however, political reform began, and agricultural growth was incentivized by the government.

As a side note, Myanmar self-identifies as Myanmar, but the US government still refers to it as Burma, because the US never formally recognized the junta that was responsible for renaming [it] Myanmar. Happily, calling the country Burma doesn’t offend most citizens.

It’s such a fascinating country, with an ancient culture. Back in the 1700s, it was the richest country in Asia. The culture is diverse, steeped in religion and mysticism, in a really beautiful area of the world.

The weather in Shan State, where much of our work was focused, is notably cooler than humid, sea-level Yangon (Rangoon) or Thailand’s Bangkok. It has elevations of 1,100–1,200 meters above sea level, ideal for Arabica varieties.

Buddhist pagodas behind sun-dried coffee cherries in Shan State.

A really interesting aspect of the Myanmar landscape in Shan State is the sheer number of pagodas. They’re everywhere, dotting the landscape all over the region.

The producers we got to work with on this project were extraordinarily friendly and singularly motivated; it seems now that they have this chance to excel, they can’t wait to show us what they’re capable of. I remember walking around a village in Shan State with no electricity, limited running water, and these small homes, watching residents bustling around, sweeping their front steps. It was this tiny moment that clued me into a sense of pride of country, which I think is echoed in the quality of this coffee.

What varieties grow in Shan State?

There’s definitely a mix—S795, Catuai, Caturra, Catimor, SL34, Bourbon, and Typica all grow here, though the yields of these varieties may be lower because of coffee leaf rust. Even Blue Mountain can be found, probably brought directly from Jamaica at some point.

Certain Arabica varieties have grown in Myanmar long before this project started, for some 170 years, but the cherries weren’t tended to in a way that encouraged high cup scores. A lot of the coffee had been making its way over the border into China or Thailand via undocumented trade, and many of the producers had not been processing the coffee and selling it as whole cherries! It was being sold far below commodity exchange rates by generic traders buying things like rubber and soybeans. Now we’re facilitating a Free on Board (FOB) model of selling green coffee, which is putting these rural farmers in contact with an international market for high-value trade.

What does processing look like?

Shan State primarily is smallholder farmers without processing stations; the cherries are sun-dried on raised drying beds. What’s great is the harvest season coincides with the dry season here, in December/January, so there’s not rain dropping on the cherries as they’re drying. Processing of coffee is, like the production of all crops, done cooperatively.

Shan State coffee producers.

About four hours away, in the wealthier city of Mandalay, we helped establish the Myanmar Coffee Association, which represents the interests of coffee growers nationally, and from that association the Mandalay Coffee Group collaboratively purchased processing equipment with the help of the USAID grant. That group has been buying cherries from Shan State to process on their equipment, and acting as an exporter for that coffee.

How do you think specialty coffee consumers will react to a new coffee origin, especially one as relatively unknown as Myanmar?

I think as more people make specialty coffee part of their ritual, their collective set of drivers and considerations for coffee will become more and more diverse. For some, I wonder if the novel origin will be an incentive. With others, used to drinking perhaps mostly Central and South American origins, the good news is the profile of this coffee coming out of Myanmar is incredibly approachable, and similar to a Central or even Mexican in taste. Washed coffees from this region can have orange or fruity notes and still remain incredibly mild. The naturals can have some intensity, with notes of cranberry and rhubarb pie. But when we cup this coffee, it’s never a table-splitter. Because it has flavors specialty consumers have already encountered, there’s a ton to appreciate. And with globalization and the very real challenge of climate change, I think consumers will get introduced to more and more diversity in the coffee origins lineup.

On that note, this project is reminiscent of Catholic Relief Services’ Borderlands Project, which also connects growers with specialty coffee markets. Are the two similar? Is this part of a trend that may continue?

Will we see more of this type of development? Without question, because coffee consumption is rising faster than coffee production. International development projects with the goal of creating industry that’s peaceful and profitable and produces a product everyone wants is a win-win scenario. In some of my upcoming projects in Angola and Timor-Leste, a lot of their GDP is from oil production, a nonrenewable resource, and when prices are low, the whole country suffers. Coffee is a very achievable industry that can be safe and sustainable.

Raised drying beds built by Shan State producers were produced in collaboration with CQI and Winrock.

Myanmar is different from the Borderlands projects in Ecuador and Colombia in that because of the political climate, it’s like this glass bubble [has been] lifted off of it and now it’s suddenly open for business. But the goals are indeed similar. Both projects are there to connect poor farmers with a high-value market. Our project in Myanmar also has an included focus of supporting women and ethnic minorities to compete internationally.

It will be interesting to watch Myanmar as it continues to develop. It’s happening so quickly. As recently as two years ago, I had to pay for everything with cash; I picked up a little suitcase of cash at the airport so I could pay for things. My phone didn’t work, and there wasn’t really internet access. On my last visit six months ago, there was a new airport, new highways, hotels are taking credit cards and have Internet. It’s tremendous and exciting, but our goal is to implement slow and steady growth that can be sustainable.

Dawn Shanks (@DawnShanks) is an American coffee professional based in Washington, DC. Read more Dawn Shanks on Sprudge.

Photos courtesy of Andrew Hetzel.

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