Deadbeats

South Korea has notoriously week child support laws.  Some women are stepping up to change things:

"For instance, if the noncustodial parent transfers their legal possessions and assets to someone else’s name, then the court cannot order them to pay because they have no money to their name. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family can request the Commissioner of the National Tax Service or the head of the local government to 'garnish the estimated amount from [their] national and local tax refund' - yet, if the official amount of money they earn is zero or close to zero, then there’s nothing that can be done. Another step could be to file for the court to seize the tangible properties from inside their house, but again, the court cannot track anyone down if they flee their house or change their address.

In total, there are seven official legal steps that one could take to get the noncustodial parent to pay up, but there is a way out of each of them.

'Protesting outside your ex-husband’s house is difficult and even terrorizing,' said Kim. 'But we do it, because it’s the only thing we can do. If anyone says that they are going to hold a protest, we make time to help each other out.'”

As Grumpy Cat would have said, Good.

Weekend Political Post

A Warren / Harris or Harris / Warren ticket would make me a very happy boy.

Luddite

My first honest-to-jeebus smartphone arrived in the mail today (Sasmung 5S, used of course).  I have to walk over to my local SK (Korean telecom) shop and get them to put a data plan onto my current phone-and-text only plan.

In my defense, I do own an iPad so when I go out I generally use that if I need Google Maps or information or what have you.

I've just been quite content with my (ahem) 2G flip-phone for so long (also used) that I've resisted moving into the 21 century like the rest of you.

I guess the only thing left to do is send my first dick pick.

Settle down, settle down.  I'm only going to send it to Santa.

Sound Science

My college classes are over but this week I need to enter grades.  So I'm kicking off this muggy Monday morning with Nick Mason (of Pink Floyd) giving a BBC podcast on the history of music and technology.

Open Culture never disappoints.

Attacking Iran Is A Bad Idea Not Only Because Iran Will Win

Not only is a war with Iran a Very Fucking Stupid Idea, but here's a hot-take for ya -- given how spread-thin and exhausted US forces are globally, Iran will win rather easily.

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) June 21, 2019

To be more specific, after two or three US pilots are shot down, and die or are captured (Iran is a huge country with much better anti-air than Iraq ever had) The Orange Pussy-Grabber will inevitably fold like the cheap suits he loves so much.

There is no good that will come of this but then again, a healthy one-third of Americans think electing Trump made the country stronger and not, in fact, dangerously unstable and unhinged.

Orthogonally, I think Pelosi has made the right moves on (not) impeaching so far, but this would change all of that calculation overnight. If a half-dozen Republican senators start to sweat after gruesome US deaths (they won't give a single shit about Iranian casualties, of course) then game on.

"no signaling necessary"

As a true-blooded American, I'm a fan of fake Chinese food.  (Fake Mexican as well!  I miss you Chipotle, bacteria and all!)  And while the history of Chinese restaurants in America is long and winding, it's also quite dark and often driven by racism:

"Chinese restaurants in the U.S. date back to the first wave of immigration from China, predominantly from Guangdong (then known as Canton), in the mid-1800s. It was spurred by the Gold Rush, and then work on railroads, farms, and in laundries. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act as white Americans increasingly blamed Chinese immigrants for low wages and a lack of jobs. 'Out of sheer necessity, Chinese had to find or develop forms of self-employment because most forms of work were denied to them,' writes John Jung, a professor emeritus in psychology and a historian of Chinese-American history, in Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants. Restaurants popped up both as places for the predominantly male Chinese population to cook their own cuisine for each other, and as a business opportunity — especially since Chinese immigrants were often unwelcome or segregated from other communities.

'You see early on… the menus are pretty standard,' says Piccoli. They were black text on white paper, no illustration or design, just a list of food. These restaurants were typically located in Chinatowns, and because they were run by Chinese people for Chinese people, there was no signaling necessary.

The rise of Orientalist design in Chinese-American restaurants begins at the turn of the 20th century. By this point, Chinese restaurants were at least a familiar sight to non-Chinese people, and some diners who fancied themselves adventurous began to pop in — the way the bohemian class always prides themselves on their willingness to eat at a 'hole in the wall.' Chinese business owners realized they could capitalize on, and expand, this new consumer base, and 'courted business from tourists and the curious with remodeled restaurants designed with a typical Oriental motif both inside and out,' writes Jung. They brought in bamboo shoots, the dragons slithering along menu spines, Buddha statues sitting on windowsills. By 1903, there were over 100 of these Chinese-American restaurants between 14th Street and Times Square in Manhattan."

When it comes to food history and culture, nothing is authentic.  Everything is authentic.

"a crisis of liberal democracy is really just them not getting exactly what they want when they want it"

Adam Serwer has the last word on the "argument" between so-called "Never Trumpers" (who seem to always be defending the Orange Menace) and the conservatives who have bought into White Ethno-Nationalism hook, line, and sinker:

"Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of 'Operation Wetback,' or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.

Undetectable in the dispute on the right is any acknowledgment of the criticisms of liberal democracy by those who have been fighting for their fundamental rights in battles that are measured in decades and even centuries; that the social contract implicitly excluded them from the very rights white Christian men have been able to assert from the beginning. Perhaps to do so would be to acknowledge the fundamental immaturity underlying the American Orbánists’ critique: that what they describe as a crisis of liberal democracy is really just them not getting exactly what they want when they want it."

It's hard to believe these assholes have actually gotten angrier since Trump won.

New Books!

Samuel Delany, Times Square Red Times Square Blue

N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

Don McCullin, Unreasonable Behavior

Ed Piskor, X-Men Grand Design

2019 Is Almost Halfway Done

Wetter, "Just Stay Like This"

Absolutely love the vocal harmonies going on here.  Bit of a Blur vibe maybe?

I graded all of my final exams in two days.  That's definitely a record for my procrastination-prone ass.

Also, I've said it before but Onstage is absolutely the best resource for finding non-K-Pop Korean music.  Indie rock, jazz, hip-hop, experimental  -- they've got you covered.

"the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me"

Vanessa Hua is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents.  She didn't learn to use chopsticks -- resisted using them! -- into her 30's:

"In the suburbs east of San Francisco, we were one of a handful of Chinese families, and my classmates teased me and snubbed me from early on. I tried to fit in, getting a perm and donning Guess jeans, Esprit canvas tote bags, and other signifiers of suburban girlhood in the late 1980s — and I’d no sooner use chopsticks than bind my feet. At home, and at Chinese restaurants, I insisted on a fork, in a muddled form of protest, of patriotism, to claim that I was truly American. My parents must have tried to teach me how to use chopsticks, in the murkiness before my memories begin, but eventually, they had to let it go. They had demanding careers in science and engineering, and it must have taken everything in them to get our family through the day, let alone try to stem the tide of assimilation.

In college, I started taking a tentative interest in my heritage, but knew no better than my non-Chinese friends where to go for a late night bite in San Francisco’s Chinatown. We ended up at a dive with paper napkins and Formica tables, the air heavy with grease. Without a word, the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me. My friends protested. I felt pleased, but then almost immediately like a fraud — hyphenated, never quite American or Chinese enough. Most likely, the waiter had decided he didn’t want the hassle of coming back to deliver forks. Maybe, more often than not, tourists didn’t know how to use chopsticks. And I didn’t either — at least, not correctly, not then and not years later, despite my father’s renewed efforts to teach me."

What a beautiful piece of writing.  Absolutely read the whole thing.

I'm reminded of a passage in Roy Choi's great autobiography about his life as a first-generation Korean-American, L.A. Son, and how his father would hit him if he ever caught him speaking Korean.  (The idea being that excising Korean would hasten his learning of English.)

Chernobyl Was As Good To Watch As It Was Brutal To Watch (Spoilers)

Like most everybody I thought Chernobyl was great, despite many liberties taken.  Its greatest strength was how it moved, almost flawlessly, between "small" and "big" points of view -- the poor bastards inside the plant, the first responders, the local political committee who decides to try and keep it all secret, all the way up through the lead scientists and party bosses.  Hell, even Gorbachev was believable in his shock and frustration.

I actually had to look away during the animal culling scenes but again, it was incredibly effective to move from "big picture" strategy and planning down to the level of the grunts who had to do the very awful, very shitty actual work of cleaning and razing.  (The dudes running out to shovel up blocks of deadly irradiated graphite seemed to have easier jobs in comparison.)

And so maybe the conclusion was all a little too cut and dried.  Legasov never had a "final confession" moment, and maybe a bit more ambiguity would have served the show well.

As for Russia wanting to make their own "correct" version, it's hard to imagine them doing a better job at showing so much sacrifice on the part of technicians and soldiers who did their jobs knowing they could die horribly.  The whole point of the series is that bureaucrats lie -- it's their job, after all -- and poor bastards, including children, die.

I'd like to think that message comes across in any language.