#14. π 2οΈβ£ π¨π³ π± π π π₯ πΏ
Father, forgive the TikTok dancers, for they know not what they do.
Hi everyone!
π 2οΈβ£
Β―\_(π€)_/Β―
It would seem that neither horrible Soho bacchanalia nor wearing masks with vents have made an appreciable impact so far. Moreover, the queen persists in believing she is above everyone in just continuing as normal, working from home, staying alive, and talking to people on the internet. Disgusting. I want to see her majesty wolfing a Boots meal meal deal on the tube in one of those masks with the eating hole. Eat out to help out!
I have my first guest in 17.57 weeks this weekend, so you get to see things like this:
Credit Ruth. And also, perhaps unrelatedly, are we eating less aubergine lately?
I was happy to see them anyway. So shiny and well arranged, like a big compound eye so the shop can look at you.
π¨π³ π±
It's increasingly hard to ignore the rumbling China-Anglosphere culture war (it may extend beyond the Anglosphere but I don't know). On the one hand, there's Huawei's 5G tech being ripped out of the UK, there's Hong Kong, there's the nagging feeling that Zoom is insecure tech for reasons I can never really get straight but people keep bringing up that a lot of its software development is done in China,Β and most recently β the prospect of TikTok being banned in the US for... as far as I can make out... being made by a Chinese company? (Yes there's lots of data collection concerns but we already know this happens with US businesses too).
Some guy makes the case quite eloquently:
I am not a China absolutist; to give one timely example, while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about Chinaβs promised adherence to the Basic Law; it has become clear that was a means to the end of reclaiming Hong Kong from a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city, ultimately subject to Chinese law. Similarly, I abhor and condemn and encourage all to speak out about what is happening to Uighurβs in Xinjiang, but I am not counseling U.S. intervention.
What is increasingly clear, though, is that Chinaβs insistence that the West ignore the countryβs βinternal affairsβ is a sentiment that is not reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and FacebookΒ with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora.
In short, I believe it is time to take China seriously and literally: the Communist Party is not only ideologically opposed to liberalism, it believes that only one of liberalism or Marxism can prevail. To that end it has been taking action for over 20 years to control information within its borders and, over the last several years, to control information outside of its borders. It is time for the U.S. to respond, both on the government level and corporate level, and it should do so in a multi-faceted fashion.
The whole article is worth a read. It advances the idea that TikTok is the vanguard of an ideological attack by China on the US. You may well find all this quite suspicious. I do too β it begins to ring a little of, wellβ¦ appropriate measures β but I also suspect these ideas will become more and more central in the coming decade.Β
It certainly seems true that the anglo left adheres to its own peculiar version of American Exceptionalism whereby the US is so incomparably powerful that any external attack on the US cannot actually be real and must instead be interpreted as a xenophobic attack by the US upon the perceived attacker. It's not a bad heuristic historically, but at some point this interpretation will have to be proved wrong. Why not with China? It's a pretty incredible civilisation and hardly unimaginable that it becomes the dominant global power. Is this the future the left wants? It's an interesting question.
Plus we do like TikTok so if it does get banned this is surely going to be a huge blow for the USA's cultural influence over young people and perhaps a big boost for China's soft power in the coming decades. I'm sure there are very interesting comparisons around historical Western cultural exports. Anyone know any? The internet in general, perhaps?
π π
Just open it on your laptop and click the button. It's nice trust me.
π₯ πΏ
I watched Pain & Glory this week. It was good. Liked the ending. Also it's a nice mlm queer film! Why don't they tell me those things so I can watch them harder.
I also watched a film about John Berger made by Tilda Swinton. They have a very good and absorbing conversation. Did you know they were good friends? And they have the same birthday?Β
And also that Tilda is short for Matilda? Mind blown.
I also watched Mulholland Drive which I LOVE. I just can't put my finger on why...
Last night I had a dream which started with a special book being taken from me as a child. Then, much later after some unrelated catastrophes in which I had failed myself, and several times where I woke up for a bit and went back to sleep, I discovered the book in a discarded, deflated version of my bag (which I still had) and took it back. Then, as I was escaping, some children kicked footballs towards me and tried to get me to play their game. I knew was dangerous but it was hard not to play it because as I ran I accidentally kicked the ball, which is what they wanted.
But still, I managed to escape with my special book.
Hope you manage to escape too.
K