::Homework Crapbox:: (2017)
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The rich keep getting richer (in Singapore, just look at the evil REITS raising cost of living for all Singaporeans), the poor keep on struggling just to survive, of course the anger mounts and society teeters towards self-destruction.
David Brooks says it like it is. Took the words right outta my mouth.
The presidential campaign of 2016 was an education in the deep problems facing America. Angry voters made a few things abundantly clear: that modern democratic capitalism is not working for them; that basic institutions like the family and communities are falling apart; that we have a college educated elite that has found ingenious ways to make everybody else feel invisible, that has managed to transfer wealth upward to itself, that crashes the hammer of political correctness down on anybody who does not have faculty lounge views.
As Robert W. Merry put it recently in The American Conservative, “When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation’s elites, it’s a strong signal that the elites are the problem.�
David Brooks continues to analyze why Trump's nationalistic, alienating approach is destabilizing and endangering the entire world :
The last four months, on the other hand, have been an education in the shortcomings in populism. It’s not only that Donald Trump is a bad president. It’s that movements fueled by alienation are bound to fail.
Alienation, the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote, is a “state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible or fraudulent; beyond real hope or desire; inviting apathy, boredom, or even hostility.�
The alienated long for something that will smash the system or change their situation, but they have no actual plan or any means to deliver it. The alienated are a hodgepodge of disparate groups. They have no positive agenda beyond the sort of fake shiny objects Trump ran on (Build a Wall!). They offer up no governing class competent enough to get things done.
As Yuval Levin argues in a brilliant essay in Modern Age, “Alienation can sometimes make for a powerful organizing principle for an electoral coalition. … But it does not make for a natural organizing principle for a governing coalition.�
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/alienated-mind-trump-supporters.html
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If your marriage is failing, that's because of issues between you and your wife / husband. It's pathetic to round up your gang to beat up the mistress / male-mistress, because you project your anger of your failed marriage onto the 3rd party, when the problem is really between you and your wife / husband.
Instead of the usual (happens every day in China) wife and gang strips, beats up and films mistress naked in public, here is the Malaysian version : Man in Malaysia beaten up by 10 gangsters and scalded with boiling water because he went out with a soon-to-be divorced woman
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[Malaysia] - Pastor Raymond Koh's wife says the Malaysian police chief is trying to get off the hook from this politically troublesome investigation into his abduction, by choosing to investigate the pastor himself for allegedly trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, instead of investigating his abduction, and deliberately making it public opinion that the pastor deserved to be abducted so no need to investigate his abduction further. The Malaysian police chief says it's not his decision, his hands are tied, because recently a lot of unidentified people have been making police reports against the pastor (together with several other unnamed individuals as well, more arrests on the way) for allegedly trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, so the police chief says he's just doing his job. Just a few hours ago, the police chief says, "Last week we picked up a suspect in northern Malaysia who we believe can help us in our investigations and the investigation continues."
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[Singapore] - Double-decker bus crashes into bus stop at... wait for it... Yishun.
http://mothership.sg/2017/05/double-decker-bus-crashes-into-yishun-bus-stop/
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Trump told Duterte, "I've secretly sent 2 nuclear submarines to Korea", and Duterte told the world.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/trump-tells-duterte-two-u-nuclear-subs-korean-100435006.html
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Poor boy. This kind of abandonment trauma at a young age (this boy is only kindergarten) changes the path of one's life, usually not for the better. Not just materially and financially, but emotionally and psychologically.
Chinese boy returns home from kindergarten -- only to realise parents had abandoned him
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This is how China views Singapore... someone should send LHL's FB this video link, so he knows...
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Homeless Manchester Man Is Going Viral After Rushing to Help Attack Victims
Amid the carnage, a homeless man named Steve aided in treating the wounds of people hit by shrapnel and nails from the homemade bomb. "We had to pull nails out of children's faces. Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I haven't got a heart and I'm not human still," Steve told iTV News during an interview following the attack. "They needed the help," Steve continued, adding: "I'd like to think that someone would come and help me if I needed the help."
https://sg.style.yahoo.com/style/homeless-manchester-man-going-viral-003005658.html
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Every new fight becomes the new Judgment Day for Angela Lee, because her self-identity and self-worth is predicated upon her being absolutely undefeated in her MMA career. Tomorrow (26 May) is Judgment Day at the Singapore Indoor Stadium (Kallang) for Angela Lee.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/mmas-made-am-today-angela-043745379.html
https://www.google.com.sg/#q=angela+lee+26+may+singapore+indoor+stadium
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Philippine Islamists beheaded local police chief, Duterte says
"The chief of police in Malabang on his way home, going back he was stopped by a checkpoint manned by terrorists and they decapitated them right then and there," Duterte he told a news conference.
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In first under Trump, U.S. warship challenges Beijing's claims in South China Sea
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/first-under-trump-u-warship-challenges-beijings-claims-014244202.html
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Evidently, from the way she holds that rifle (she'll lose an eye if she pulls the trigger), she didn't do NS. Handling firearms is at least 1 of the good things Singaporean guys get to take back from serving NS.
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What was the UFO that flew from North Korea to South Korea, that trigged South Korea to fire artillery at it? Was it a military drone? A top secret flying weapon? It was just a bird, North Korea claims, blaming South Korea for raising tensions over a bird.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/drone-balloon-no-bird-says-n-korea-061730825.html
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Singaporean YouTuber Wen Ruhui sings her cover of NameWee's "Stranger In The North" (featuring Wang Lihong) at Marina Bay Sands.
Both Ruhui's cover and NameWee's original can be viewed here :
http://mothership.sg/2017/05/sporean-sings-from-one-end-of-mbs-to-the-other-gets-17-million-views-on-youtube/With Malaysian composer-singer NameWee, there is always the perceived implication (intended or otherwise) of political statements in his songs, eg. NameWee's version of Malaysian national anthem Negaraku.
"Stranger In the North" describes his personal journey of leaving his homeland Malaysia (with conflicted feelings) to develop his professional singing career in Taiwan & China.
Wikipedia on NameWee being wanted and arrested by Malaysian police
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namewee#Wanted -
[South Korea] - A South Korean female naval officer apparently killed herself after being allegedly raped by a senior colleague, a defence ministry spokesman said Thursday.
The victim, a lieutenant, was found dead in her single-room apartment on Wednesday, where a message was found reading: "Tomorrow, I won't be in this world any longer."
"The lieutenant appeared to have committed suicide," a military spokesman told AFP.
She had reportedly told her boyfriend that she had been raped.
Military police have arrested a navy captain as a suspect. He admitted to having sex with her but denied the rape allegation, the spokesman said.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/korea-rape-victim-navy-officer-commits-suicide-100827662.html
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A single first dose of the new drug gave this man a fatal brain infection? Damn, new medical drugs need more rigorous testing for clinical safety!
Deadly brain infection in German MS patient prompts Roche investigation
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A repeat post, but felt like sharing this again. This is one of the few covers which could arguably be even better than the original in some ways (doesn't mean Xu Haixing is a necessarily a better singer than Coco Lee for all songs, but for this song specifically, Xu Haixing did an incredible cover).
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For comparison, here is one of Coco Lee's best songs, 我ä¾�ç„¶æ˜¯ä½ çš„æƒ…äºº. Coco (an American-Taiwanese) once seriously considered immigrating to Singapore (around the time Gong Li and Jet Li took up Singapore citizenship... but you won't see Jet Li in a hawker center anytime soon, he's never around in Singapore anyway, in fact it's possible Donnie Yen visits Singapore more often).
Coco Lee's 我ä¾�ç„¶æ˜¯ä½ çš„æƒ…äºº
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Events like the Olympics have lofty underlying ideologies uniting the world and whatnot, but in practice and in reality, it's just a colossal waste of money of Olympian proportions. With each Olympic games, that's US$12 billion dollars, ie. US$12,000,000,000 down the drain, that could potentially have profoundly changed the world for the better if invested wisely in cosmoethical projects that have far-reaching benefits across the world, eg. medical research into cures for cancers.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/rios-example-no-city-bid-host-olympics-183332226.html
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Tonight on Lethal Weapon, US law enforcement investigates another US law enforcement : Los Angeles Police Dept investigates Los Angeles Sheriff's Dept for the murder of a Texas Ranger. Includes a cool scene where the different departments' cops all draw their guns on each other, each warning the others to immediately put down their weapons.
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I love ethical dilemmas like this one (on tonight's Lethal Weapon), which illustrate my point that morality is an illusion, and there is no naïve 'right' vs 'wrong', only legality, ethics, cosmoethics, karma and consequences.
The sheriff head is blackmailing the police head over a case many years ago, where a child rapist killer was going to walk free because a corrupt cop had secretly compromised the DNA evidence, and the current police head (then the detective in charge of the case) had to secretly re-compromise the evidence to 'frame' the (actually guilty) child rapist killer, to prevent him from walking free.
Although technically committing a crime by tampering with evidence, but his selfless-yet-illegal actions (arguably an act of self-sacrifice, or at least self-risk) arguably saved many potential children victims.
This illustrates my point that legality, morality, ethics, cosmoethics are all separate and not always necessarily in agreement, it's case-by-case, and only the pitifully naïve moral absolutists / objectivists think there is always a simplistic 'right' vs 'wrong'.
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Drunk Singaporean BMW Driver Kena Hantam Jialat Jialat by Malaysian Mob after Crashing into Motorcyclist in JB
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While the guy who did the comparison could very well have smoked his way through (and none would be the wiser), but if this is the real deal, then it's pretty impressive (if not the skill, then at the very least the effort, as no other Singaporean would bother doing this).
http://mothership.sg/2017/05/here-are-the-real-distances-of-mrt-lines-compared-to-mrt-map/
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It's all Chemistry, yo. Different colours reflect different pH values in the different regions of the drink in the cup, different degrees of protonation vs deprotonation, different molarities of conjugate acids vs conjugate bases, different extents of molecular conjugation or overlap of p-orbitals with delocalized electrons, different magnitudes of energy differences between lower and higher molecular orbitals, different wavelengths of visible light absorbed when the electrons transit. It's all Chemistry, yo. The most important subject at A levels.
Tuk Tuk Cha now selling colour-changing gradient drinks too
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SHE (in collaboration with 周定緯)'s "兩個人的�島" official soundtrack for the Taiwanese Du LaLa drama series "�拉拉��記", a touching love story with a brilliant finale, in which the boyfriend travels from Taiwan to Japan (in memory of their previous trip there together) frantically and tearfully searching for Du LaLa, and he melodramatically (but very perfectly done) keeps on missing Du LaLa by a matter of minutes or meters in each scene. And this touching soundtrack plays. Until he finally finds her and begs for her to return to his arms.
S.H.E feat. 周定緯 [兩個人的�島 Desert Island] Official Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcGrAdXGlks
https://www.tvmao.com/drama/HDVjJyo=
