Yes, such a claim makes him look like a small-minded piece of shit. To us. But we still shouldn’t help Musk create revisionist history.
Musk bought Twitter because he fucked around and found out. He wanted to fuck with Twitter’s stock price by feigning interest in buying it. Since that’s illegal, he was then cornered into actually buying it for an insanely inflated price.
He’s a transphobe. He’s a bad father. But he’s also a fucking idiot.
This. Please remember that he committed blatant market manipulation by not disclosing that he owned shares of Twitter when he was fucking with the stock market. The SEC was watching him very closely already, and so when the cost became more than what the entire company was worth, he had no choice. Remember when he had his gaggle of lawyers try to get him out of it by saying Twitter didn’t disclose all of the information? That wasn’t Twitter, it was him trying desperately to get out of a purchase he didn’t want in the first place.
My great grandma who wuz born in Okinawa in 1885 had traditional Okinawan hand tattoos known as hajichi. Esteemed Okinawan cultural expert, Eric Wada of da eju-ma-cational group Ukwanshin Kabudan wen do field research on what motivated Okinawan women for get their hajichi. Wada Shinshï (teacher) shares “hajichi was around and in use from pre-contact times so there is no written documentation of exactly when and how it started, however through oral and documented information, it evolved into a woman’s right of passage to adulthood and had many other spiritual connections, such as genealogy, cosmology and social status.”
Growing up my great grandma felt ashamed of her tattoos cuz in Okinawa, Okinawans wuz coming for be made for feel ashamed of everyting Okinawan. When she came Hawai‘i to work plantation, my great grandma wuz so self-conscious that she made my grandma promise that when she ma-ke time, she wanted to be put in da casket with gloves on.
But how could something that wuz once one mark of great cultural pride transform into one mark of shame? Wada Shinshï explains, “hajichi was banned and discouraged after the illegal annexation and overthrow of the Ryükyü Kingdom in 1879, which resulted in implementation of assimilation programs by the Japanese government, which brainwashed the native people to be ashamed of their ‘savage’ cultural practices and assimilate to the modern and ‘civilized’ Japanese culture.”
For da past several decades dis art form for Okinawan women had been dying out to da point where I noticed that most of my younger friends in Okinawa had nevah even seen hajichi before. Das how rare it wuz.
Interestingly, in da past couple few years seems like get one revival going on. Wada Shinshï shares his mana‘o on dis phenomenon: “I am happily cautious about the hajichi resurgence and optimistic because things that have been put to sleep can come back. There will be individuals who just want to do it as a fad or without such deep connections, and that is their choice, but for the most part, I see more interest in reviving the tradition connected to the deeper spirituality and identity.”
Below get tree young Local Uchinänchu women and their hajichi stories.
I’m stoked body ink is becoming more socially acceptable but at the same time there is so little social responsibility by both artists and consumers…
Even using the term “tattoo” (bastardized version of the Samoan word tatau) is directly related to the cultural appropriation and commercialization of the art by/for colonizers.
My pieces are more than aesthetic, as hajichi were banned by Japan since the late 1800s as a form of cultural genocide (specifically targeting women). I’m the first to wear them in my family in at least five generations.
It’s not that I think people can’t get body ink for aesthetic purposes (or create characters with ink), but I think it IS important to ask where the designs are coming from and what they really represent. It goes back further than you think.
According to some statistics it looks more like teaching sex ed (including consent) in school makes more young people realize they don’t want to have sex yet or at all or don’t want to do some specific sexual activities (also obvious from the increase of popularity of asexual-spectrum identities). Allegedly, young people who have accurate information about sexual activities and access to contraception, on average become sexually active later and are less likely to be affected by STIs or unplanned pregnancies.
Conservatives oppose sex education because it makes it harder for them to molest children
Today, I learned: There’s a volunteer project to digitally to recreate Sui-ugusuku (ja: Shuri-jō/en: Shuri Castle). They’ve done a really good job at bringing the gusuku back to life, and their work may have even influenced the physical reconstruction. I’m glad that Uchinaanchu (Okinawans) still have a Sui-ugusuku, even though it’ll take awhile for the physical one to get rebuilt.
Context: Sui (Shuri) is the former capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom, and Sui-ugusuku was the seat of the government, residences of the monarchy, and home to nearly a dozen shrines. It’s a pretty big deal culturally, especially after the American and Japanese militaries almost destroyed the whole site during WWII. When it got rebuilt, it became a World Heritage site and a symbol of Shimanchu (Ryūkyūan) resilience and a glimpse into what our islands were like before the Japanese and American military forces invaded.
Context, pt. 2: The castle burned down due to an electrical fault in 2019. So, a bunch of Shimanchu want to get it rebuilt again. Physical reconstruction started earlier this year, but this photogrammetry project started before that (probably as soon as people learned that it burned down.)
Context, pt. 3: Photogrammetry is collecting and/or shooting a bunch of photos of something from different angles and using math to generate a 3D model of the thing.
ALT