genusvetenskap

Though slightly recanting an early statement that the Church of Sweden is to make God gender-neutral as sensationalism and ‘fake news’—oh what has that despicable dandiprat in the White House wrought—despite a significant shift in attitude and acceptance, another congregation in Västerås has definitely stirred some controversy and defends its decision to advertise for a Christmas mass (put out in the style of a birth announcement or a baby-shower) referring to Jesus with the pronoun “hen.” Though propelled into the fore of public discussion by being a marker indeterminacy and championed by people who do not identify themselves as gender-binary, the church is bringing up another important nuance in the language. Hen/he could also be used when the gender is unknown and the dean of the church is not questioning the identity of the historical figure but the fraught and friendly pronoun is also appropriate to use in circumstances where the gender of the person is irrelevant and it was in this sense the announcement was framed in the way it was. What do you think? Jesus’ sex or whether He is cisgender does not matter today especially, but that detail has been used chauvinistically to justify a long continuum of the patriarchal establishment to the detriment and continued inequality of women and in general those who don’t ascribe to convention.

祝你生日快乐

Accomplished self-trained pharmacist and educator from Ningbo and Nobel laureate for developing malaria treatments that have saved the lives of untold millions, Tu Youyou is celebrating her eighty-seventh birthday today. It can seem very confusing but I suppose it’s really quite a straightforward matter to wish her a happy one. Ms Tu relates that her given name comes from a verse in the Shih-ching (the Chinese book of classic poetry) that the deer bleat ‘youyou’ as they gaze on wild Artemisia (hao)—a type of sagebrush whose chemical derivative (artemisinin or qinghao su), Tu would come to discover, can be used as an anti-malarial drug.

check your privilege, obi-wan

Kottke is now the host and curator of The People’s History of Tattoonie, which itself was in danger of becoming rarefied and disjointed as an anthology of sorts. Usually I find such satire a little heavy-handed for my taste as we all ought know not to impose our cachet and culture upon something long, long ago and far, far away (notwithstanding how a more advanced culture would have more mature definitions of identity than we do, and in the end we usually just look smug fancying ourselves to be the soul of consideration and accomodation) but this dialogue, line of argument is pretty brilliant and needless to say illustrative. “Your ‘Big Story’ of the military-imperial complex lets you ignore what’s right in your FACE.”

bess, you is my woman now

5x5

an error in the matrix: those iconic strings of computer code in the opening credits of the franchise are sushi recipes

clerestory: fantastic Mid Century Modern bird houses

the glasgow school: Scottish sisters and classmates whose style profoundly influenced what we call Art Nouveau, via Everlasting Blort

pseudo-random numbers: some computer encryption is based on the unpredictability underlying globules of oil and water of a wall of lava lamps

event horizon: a preview of some of the planned excursions into outer space for the upcoming year