Archives: Tweets

@isasv I think of it more as the difference between porous and less-permeable social boundaries. Supposedly “Collectivist” societies can be profoundly atomized and profoundly focused on competition and exploitation of one’s fellow nationals, etc. @isasv Meanwhile, members of “individualist” societies often are very much enmeshed in cooperative organizations, in community groups, in charities, and so on.

“Collectivist” and “individualist” are really more like myths we like to tell about our own societies.

@isasv You do see a certain proportion of elderly people who aren’t put into a home, but are instead given an apartment and left to live “independently” until they can’t anymore. There are community centers that cater to them, and churches tend to provide their main social outlet. @isasv But to return to the original point: the whole “collectivist” vs. “individualist” dichotomy is… it can be useful, but it’s somewhat misleading as a basic characterization of each society.

@isasv I think multigenerational homes were more common 20 years ago than now. They still exist, but they’re less common than before, for a mix of reasons. Some is a decline in willingness to care for elderly parents, definitely. (That’s been a growing crisis here for decades.) @isasv But also, how shall I say this, there’s differences of opinion in how kids should be raised between generations. People in the 80s and 90s were more willing to tolerate that than people today, I think.

(For example, gender favoritism or physical discipline of small children.)

@isasv *shrug* I think at takes a certain degree of (subclinical, but serious) mental/emotional dysfunction to be willing to embrace the idea of holding civil liberties above all other values, though.

i.e. I think we’re talking about 50 cents of one, half a dollar of the other here.

And for those outside Korea, if I’m making it sound like teenagers’ lives are being determined by how well they do on a game show? Yeah, that’s about right.

Little wonder so many of them are killing themselves over it, year after year.

https://t.co/600hq6vtOl But hey, “shine brightly” I guess.

Oh, and what could possibly go wrong is a cluster infection of teenagers. Some of whom could die, and others of whom could possibly suffer lifelong health problems. Because, you know, nobody could imagine some other method for universities to make admissions decisions… … or, you know, crib one from the countless other systems used worldwide that *don’t* depend on high school kids all filing into shared indoor spaces to spend a day regurgitating trivia in the hope of maybe being consigned to fucking poverty for the rest of their lives?

Yeah, what could *possibly* go wrong?

Note the “if”: “if we screw up, a bunch of kids get infected because we couldn’t imagine doing away with a dated useless exam that essentially locks every high schooler into their academic, economic, and social future in one fell swoop.” https://t.co/RPjuhRxYu0 This occurred to me this morning, reading the notice from work that the University Entrance Exam was being held on campus this year as usual and we’d be barred from the building on the weekend.

I thought, “Wait, really? They’re still doing it?”

I mean, of course they are. ?

This one is pretty good… t.co/ea9aA27BGu

@isasv @Theshells1111 Yeah, I think that’s very pertinent. @isasv @Theshells1111 Different atrocities—indirect ones—but the same justificatory routines.

@isasv I mean, I am not sure any society was ever necessarily *great* about this, but one thing I’ll say is that a lot of societies were not necessarily as bad at it as many first-world Western states now seem to be. @isasv (The elephant in the room is that illiberal democracies—S. Korea and Singapore, for example—seem to be handling the pandemic better than the more liberal ones. Though possibly they just have better checks against the vagaries of uniquitous rates of subclinical mental illness?)

@isasv I think this is VERY much the case. It’s also just a logical extension of, “Hey, I’m [supposedly] not at risk, so I’ll do as I please.” I think Adam Curtis pretty much nailed the underlying root of this in THE CENTURY OF THE SELF. @isasv Which is that people identify first as consumers, and view citizenship through that lens, shedding whatever vague sense of mutual or reciprocal responsibility toward others… because that serves corporate interests way better than a sense of responsible citizenship would.

@isasv @Theshells1111 Yeah, I retweeted this but it seems clearly Shelly is headed, if she’s already dismissing the deaths of those over 90 as no big deal:

twitter.com/pookleblinky/s…

Very worth reading. Some COVID-denialists are already heading in this direction anyway, dismissing the deaths of the elderly as not-a-problem. (Like the kook I blocked this morning.) twitter.com/pookleblinky/s…

@isasv @Theshells1111 Ha, I mean, anyone who thinks this pandemic was planned really doesn’t understand how one would actually plan a pandemic.

I blocked her. She’s nuts and I don’t have time to argue with someone who repeats phrases as if doing so makes them true.

@Theshells1111 @isasv Oh, well, with brilliant argumentation like that… ?

You realize there was a nursing home crisis already, years before? And COVID-19 just exacerbated it?

As for how viruses behave: I trust experts over jumbled epigrams some kook (bot?) named Shelly farts out onto Twitter.

@marc_laidlaw I’ve actually been thinking about writing a screenplay for a biopic for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; if any story needs telling now, it’s hers…

@marc_laidlaw Yeah, exactly.

None of this is to discount that lockdowns do have their own problems, like increases in child abuse, spousal abuse, economic problems, heightened divorce rate, and so on. But these folks didn’t care about such issues in 2019, so… I’m pretty sure they still don’t—not *really*. Two massive ironies: a) 200 years ago, most of the “kids need school!” people would have felt the opposite, and screamed it just as loudly.

b) 200 years ago, they’ve have known pandemics were real, deadly, and not something to mess around with.

On protection: we know very little about this illness. It *could* have long term effects beyond the ones we already know some people suffer. It might not. But ranting about how keeping your kids home for a year or 18 months is “child abuse” is insane given the unknowns. And all the stuff about kids “needing” to socialize with their peers: you know, for most of human history, we did not corral children away with exact peers day after day for their parents’ convenience. Kids spent most of their time with… one or both parents or adult relatives.

I get it that it’s not easy. That badly implemented school transitions online has made life difficult/complicated for many parents, and Zoom classes suck, and kids and grandparents miss each other.

But calling it “child abuse” is so insanely disingenuous as to beggar belief. A parent’s job is to protect your kid from danger as much as possible. One’s ability will vary, unfortunately, as we live in ridiculously unequal societies. But devouring internet garbage and deciding it’s all a conspiracy is a dereliction of that duty.

(His biggest complaint is, in fact, that I have to go into the home office and work. “I wish papa could miss work so we can play all day!”)

Meanwhile, we’ve gotten to know him better, come to understand things we didn’t before, and feel closer to him than we did before. Maybe these folks should try to learn to hate their time with your kids less, embrace that the current normal is temporary and there are good reasons to stay home, and make the best of it as much as they can? (Even on the rough days.)

I can’t help but assume all the people who’re in a panic about how kids will lose the ability to socialize and who equate lockdowns with “child abuse” just really, really don’t want to be around their kids more often than usual for a while. Like, they must *really* hate it. I mean, I get that it’s exhausting: my wife and I are with our son full-time, both worked for part of the pandemic, and I’m still working. It’s exhausting.

But it’s not “child abuse.” He’d stressed by it, but less stressed than daycare made him. He’s happy.

@Theshells1111 @isasv Research ≠ stuffing your brain full of random nonsensical conspiracy theory garbage found online.

Also, by your logic, drownings aren’t “caused” by sudden floods or tsunamis, only “related” to them. You’re insisting on a truly moronic distinction.

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@yenooi Dug that Massive Attack cover! That song has hung around in my mind for years…

@KateSherrod He woke up… and staggered back into activity, unfortunately…

Remind me not to chant, “Rice, rice baby!” (like Vanilla Ice’s backing “vocalists”) to my son after he drinks water just as his mom tells him to get himself some rice to go with his lunch. (Spit take, cackling kid, soaked dad. It was funny, though.)

@yenooi Lots of that is either random stuff I did for a music improv class to get back in shape, second-tier compositions from undergrad, or soundtracks for some of my wife’s short films. But I am happy with Olhos de Gato and a few other small things there:

https://t.co/dvef1Ah7tu @yenooi Oh, and some rock albums linked from the sidebar here:

dabangband.gordsellar.com

And an ambient music show from a short-lived project here here:

gordsellar.com/tunes/Apocryph…

Sadly, not much to represent my years playing jazz, though. 🙁

@yenooi I don’t have a lot of good recordings, tbh, and very little of sax gigs. Some were plain lost when I left Canada; others went missing but turned up by chance just before the pandemic. (I was going to pick them up from my sister this past summer, but… the trip got canceled.) @yenooi (Finally resigned myself to the fact a bunch of compositions got lost. I had a pretty good Latin Mass that I probably only have a bad recording of, for example.)

That said, there’s some stuff on Soundcloud:

soundcloud.com/gord-sellar/se…

Really unrepresentative, but…

@yenooi God, transporting a concert harp would be… *shudder*

I worked as a recital assistant, though, and the worst was harpsichords. I was warned not to look at them the wrong way, as it might screw up the tuning—so having to move one across a stage was always a bit terrifying…

@yenooi Ha, I can relate: my first bass teacher was like, “Wow, you have big stumpy fingers, perfect for bass! Why do you play saxophone?” Er…

And yeah, I remember I could drag the fingers of my left hand along a brick wall not feel much, when still I played contrabass. @yenooi But carrying the thing around was kind of a nightmare. Especially on the city bus. 🙂

As someone whose introduction to stringed instruments was the contrabass? You people who can squish your little fingers into the frets on mandolins and ukeleles and other teeny-tiny stringed instruments baffle me. (Meanwhile, guitar frets are an okay size for me, but… well, there’s six strings and they’re not tuned in 4ths all the way along do it just confuses me. Even if they were, six strings is two too many for me… and they’re tiny strings. Fat bass strings feel more natural to me.)

Ah, Jordan Peterson: the shitty, unhinged, jabbering uncle of the alt right. Nicely thorough thread, though of course Peterson’s the clown who never stops giving, and there’s reams more nonsense where this came from.

(His fans are the now-inevitable ruiners of all gatherings.) twitter.com/zei_squirrel/s…

? This set by Colin Stetson is completely full-on amazing madness. Absolute (Saxophonic) Unit.  (Yes, he also plays contrabass clarinet or whatever but the bass sax, the bass sax….) tmblr.co/ZwA1ltZIjtm_mq…

Now, to be fair, online banking security here is *way* more involved, to the point where North American online banking security looks laughable in comparison.

But that’s also maybe necessary since many practice poor online identity security—in part *because* of the ID policy. Anyway, I find the cognitive dissonance funny: I’m in a society where we’re essentially forced to do this constantly… so the horrified reactions jolt me into remembering both how bananas this system actually is, and how it’s not at all normal elsewhere.

[[“Even if their numbers are leaked, people are unable to change them, so hackers are constantly trying to obtain these numbers and are managing it easily.”]]

Whatever other changes were made, this remains basically the same. We still hand out that ID number *all* the time. I could say much more about why this system exists, and how cynical its continuation is, and how revolting it’s been to see people eagerly climb up onto the corpse of every celebrity who commits suicide in order to push for its expansion. But it won’t do much good.

Experts have been saying so for years. 7 years ago, almost half the country got hacked. (Including the President herself.) They considered having to issue *everyone* a new ID number.

https://t.co/f2dBkYK8GO

(They didn’t. And we still hand out our ID will-nilly. Huh.) From the above article:

[[“Resident registration numbers’ usage across different sectors made them ‘master keys’ for hackers to open every door and steal whole packages of personal information from unassuming victims,” said researcher Geum Chang-ho…]]

• register with some apps
• access the free wifi in some cafes
• sign up for bloody anything at all online

Seriously: it’s basically a public-facing ID. You use it joining practically any site. They check a national database where your name and ID number have to match. But it’s also your one and only serious national ID for many things. And if people get it, identity theft can really mess up your life, albeit (normally) temporarily.

Which is to say, it’s a terrible policy. Terrible *government* policy, it’s worth noting.

It’s wild seeing people in the US say, “Really? Who would ever consider giving their SSN to join *any* website online? Giving that info to strangers who might misuse it, or where it could be hacked?”

The contrast with what’s normal in South Korea is kind of mind-blowing. Over here, you must give the equivalent of your SSN to:
• get a domestic portal site account (i.e. equivalent of a Google acct)
• do any online shopping at all
• open a phone account
• sign up for local MMORPGs (to avoid the midnight child locks)
• comment on news stories

“WHY DO THEY DESIGN EVERYTHING SO BADLY HERE!”

(My son, 5, when the cover ripped off his beloved Playmobil catalog. He giggled and put on his angry face after.)

Not to demean actual cooperative efforts. Those are great.

But… well, the timing and contrast is troubling. Maybe because the iron wall of, “No, we’re not dealing with this alleged wrongdoing,” is such a *familiar* establishment response.

My cynical first thought is probably not fit for print, but involved the news story about the S. Korean diplomat who assaulted an NZ worker, but whose extradition isn’t being formally requested. https://t.co/QiFlery88R The story to which I’m referring.

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_e…

Wow, that’s worse than the worst complaints my students have made about stuff their profs do/say in lectures. (Which is mostly “just reads the textbook aloud to us for lectures” and “talk about their cute pets ad nauseam over Zoom”.)

(Note the follow-up post on this, btw.) twitter.com/koryodynasty/s…

@Freeirony Oh, definitely. This is actually my go-to example for, “Okay, but what does that word/statistic actually *mean*?” I looked around for some more info but, alas, didn’t find much. (Long, busy day.) Hoping some expert will step in and expound, honestly!

I realize every government defines and tracks unemployment differently, but even so it’s wild when I hear my students complain about South Korea’s “high” unemployment rate. (It’s ~3.6%. They’re convinced this is unthinkably bad. Mention the rates elsewhere and heads explode.)

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@tweetsbymoi Wow, that is… wow. And yet somehow I’m totally not surprised given the tiny bit I know about the guy, and tbh what I know about the system. 🙁

@tweetsbymoi @GeekinKorea

@tweetsbymoi

@tweetsbymoi Congratulations. And yeah, alien forever.

newyorker.com/video/watch/fr… via @newyorker

@JustinHowe Nothing? Honestly I’ve given up on those conversations, by and large, except with family. (In which case I keep trying despite the odds because who knows, and because sometimes that’s what love is.)