Avengers! With Spoilers!

I thought Avengers: Infinity War was pretty great, with one huge caveat.  The whole thing really feels like we're being set up for a time-travel scenario where the original Avengers (all still alive, conspicuously) go back in time to prevent the murder of half the universe.

Or maybe we'll get into that comic-book thing of multiverses, where you can explode one Earth but there are hundreds of others that are just fine.

That's also incredibly lazy.

But the fact is, how else do A-listers like Spiderman and Black Panther continue to make money for Marvel?  (It's no secret they're getting sequels, as are the Guardians of the Galaxy with or without Gamora.  I'm guessing without.  My sense is that she and Loki are really-really dead, not just comic book dead.)

Nine times out of ten time-travel scenarios make for truly awful sci-fi, across all media.  They're impossible to do well because they're basically cheap -- they take away any sense of serious consequence.  They make things which should really matter into things which don't.

Scratch a Republican, a Bully Bleeds

Among the oh-so-many takes regarding Michelle Wolf decimating the Trump administration and their enablers among the Washington press corps, here's a good one by Arwa Mahdawi:

"The media needs to make sure it is speaking truth to power, not kowtowing to the powerful. However, as Wolf mentioned in her speech, even the liberal media is under Trump’s spell. 'You pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.'

Wolf is absolutely right. We all ought to do a lot more soul-searching about how we’re covering the Trump administration. That should have been the headline that came out of Wolf’s speech; not controversy about eye shadow. 

Wolf’s words should have inspired introspection amongst the press, not a liberal backlash. So, please, spare me the faux feminist outrage about Sanders. It was just a joke. The response to it, however, has been no laughing matter."

The (excellent) line about Huckabee-Sanders' make-up aside, the "but I think you love him" was the center of the routine.  And no wonder there's been as much faux-consternation from elite DC media types (it is Hollywood for ugly people, after all) as from Republicans (the perpetually petulant).

Above all else, as a comedy routine it slayed and fifty years from now, assuming we haven't exploded the planet, we'll still be watching it.

The Three Body Problem (Including Spoilers)

I finished Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem this weekend.  It's brilliant and, like most good sci-fi, hard to paraphrase.  Without spoiling too much, it boils down to an alien first contact scenario with some significant hiccups.  First, the responders are Chinese, not American or Anglo-, and set firmly in the violent turmoil of Mao's Cultural Revolution.  Second, there is no illusion that contact with an advanced civilization would be anything but catastrophic for a backwards, primitive, environmentally rapacious group of humans who happen to inhabit Earth.

The essential question becomes not if we should make contact, but if the Earth and its people are even worth saving all.

But somehow, it isn't nihilistic -- the characters wanting the aliens to come and enslave or destroy us are quite rational in their motives.  They've seen the excesses of both Communism and Capitalism and quite righteously don't want Earthlings to spread beyond our home planet.  Being destroyed is, from the viewpoint of some, actually the right thing to do.

I'm excited to already have the second and third books of the trilogy waiting for me at home.

The Dignity of Labor

South Korea is infamous for a workplace culture of "gapjil," where superiors routinely abuse those beneath them.  In fact, Korea Air has had two recent incidents of the daughters of the C.E.O throwing tantrums, and in one case threatening the safety on an entire plane-load of passengers.

So are things changing?  Possibly:

"Although very few think drastic measures like altering the corporate name will occur, the latest incident has stimulated debate within public circles, the business community and lawmakers on ways to combat gapjil. Proposed actions even encompass revising policies and laws.

Following the nut rage scandal, a lawmaker pushed forward a bill proposing a ban on members of chaebol families working at the companies they control for a set period of time if convicted of a crime.

Experts say reform measures by chaebol and deep reflection by those in positions to exercise control over others are the most important steps that need to be taken toward a more equal society. They advocate a two-pronged approach that addresses society’s demand for change to the distorted ownership structure of major conglomerates, where managerial powers are concentrated in the hands of a few owners, while at the same time generating social consensus to highlight the problems associated with gapjil that are hurting the competitiveness of the country as a whole and tarnishing the image of Korean businesses at home and abroad."

True fact: one of the reasons I'm still in Korea after so long is that my boss did his Ph.D. in America and "gets" the major differences between Korean and American work culture.  I'm very lucky for this, given the realities of how most foreign workers are treated by Korean bosses.

"like cigarette ashes thrown away on the steets"

Events are moving very quickly on the Korean peninsula, with South Korea president Moon Jae-in set to meet with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un tomorrow.  Optimism is free of course, but it's also worth remembering that North Korea has looked ready to "thaw" before.

That said, here's a great piece about North Korea defectors to South Korea who actually want to go back, given the difficulties of missing their families and adjusting to life in a hyper-competitive capitalist society:

"Others have encouraged Kim to smuggle her family out of North Korea to join her in Seoul.

'Living here for seven years taught me what it really is like to live here as a North Korean defector,' she said. 'North Korean defectors are forever strangers in this country, classified as second class citizens. I would never want my daughter to live this life.'

'North Korean defectors are treated like cigarette ashes thrown away on the streets.'”

It's complicated, to say the least.  And while getting to unification is one thing, actual unification might be an even greater struggle for the people of both countries.

I'm A Winner

That new royal baby doesn't look so tough. Bet I could take him. . . .

— Stormy Jamesiels (@wetcasements) April 26, 2018

She Is The Law

In South Korea, traditionally mother-in-laws wield an enormous amount of power over their daughter in-laws.  There are even shows and a web comic about it:

"Audiences were shocked when actor Min Ji-young had to go to the salon because her mother-in-law insisted she look her best before visiting their house for the first time. 

Or when former flight attendant Park Sae-mi, who is currently in her final month of pregnancy, cooked food at her in-law’s house while her husband was away on business. As she worked hard preparing a meal, her mother-in-law prodded, 'When are you going to have a third child?' 

Kim Dan-bin must face her mother-in-law day and night because they run a restaurant together. All three wives, despite the fact that they are members of the family, are being abused in many ways."

 This sounds like a total nightmare, of course.

I'm Not Even Mad, That's Amazing

My college's campus is pretty nice.  It's a mix of very new and very old buildings based on a hill (lots of stairs!) with some sculptures and a goldfish pond.

This afternoon I went over from my building to the main office to pick up my midterm exams for grading.  And there it was -- about 20 groundskeepers (mostly female) had drained the pond, removed all the stones from the pond (!), and were hand scrubbing each of the stones (!!).

White People Are Easily Triggered Snowflakes

Rebecca Solnit gets it, with a vengeance:

"In the aftermath of the 2016 election, we were told that we needed to be nicer to the white working class, which reaffirmed the message that whiteness and the working class were the same thing and made the vast non-white working class invisible or inconsequential. We were told that Trump voters were the salt of the earth and the authentic sufferers, even though poorer people tended to vote for the other candidate. We were told that we had to be understanding of their choice to vote for a man who threatened to harm almost everyone who was not a white Christian man, because their feelings preempt everyone else’s survival. 'Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and deplorable folks,' Bernie Sanders reprimanded us, though studies showed that many were indeed often racists, sexists, and homophobes.

Part of how we know whose party it is was demonstrated by who gets excused for hatred and attacks, literal or verbal. A couple of weeks ago, the Atlantic tried out hiring a writer, Kevin Williamson, who said women who have abortions should be hanged, and then un-hired him under public pressure from people who don’t like the idea that a quarter of American women should be executed. The New York Times has hired a few conservatives akin to Williamson, including climate waffler Bret Stephens. Stephens devoted a column to sympathy on Williamson’s behalf and indignation that anyone might oppose him. Sympathy in pro-bubble America often goes reflexively to the white man in the story. The assumption is that the story is about him; he’s the protagonist, the person who matters, and when you, say, read Stephens defending Woody Allen and attacking Dylan Farrow for saying Allen molested her, you see how much work he’s done imagining being Woody Allen, how little being Dylan Farrow or anyone like her. It reminds me of how young women pressing rape charges are often told they’re harming the bright future of the rapist in question, rather than that maybe he did it to himself, and that their bright future should matter too. The Onion nailed it years ago: 'College Basketball Star Heroically Overcomes Tragic Rape He Committed.'”

This is nothing new.  I remember back in 2008 when the great Republican philosopher, Sarah Palin, referenced "real America."

Obviously, she meant white America.  From a certain conservative perspective, "American-ness" is only valid when performed by whites, and mostly white males at that.

Nice Day At The Ballpark

I made it to my first Samsung Lions game of the season yesterday.  The weather was great, the fried chicken gizzards were on fleek, and Samsung lost 5-4 to the kt Wiz, a new team in the Korean Baseball League.

For the uninitiated, Samsung actually won four consecutive titles between 2011 and 2014, but it's been downhill ever since.

Still, with the weather being perfect, it was a Friday evening well spent.

I'm In Love With A Busan Air Flight Attendant

Sometimes you just have to quote the whole fucking article:

"A flight attendant of Air Busan, a low-cost carrier, apologized Tuesday for disrespectful comments and photos posted by one of its flight attendants on Instagram.

The flight attendant, on a Busan-Jeju flight on Saturday, took photos of the passengers from behind and posted them with comments such as 'looking all the same' and 'broccoli farm.' 

It was an obvious reference to the hairstyle of the middle-aged married women or 'ajumma' in the photo. 

One of her colleagues commented, 'The plane heading to China.' 

After the post went viral, the attendant, 'I sincerely apologize to the people who may have felt hurt.'

The supervisor of the Air Busan flight promised no repeat of such inappropriate behavior by its employees.'"

What's funnier than funny?  There is no native Korean language word for broccoli -- it's a loan word (bu-ro-ko-ri).

Please marry me, obstreperous Busan Air flight attendant.