Taomeow

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Everything posted by Taomeow

  1. Stranger things

    Strange but cool. 70% of resumes submitted by job seekers in Japan are still handwritten. That's because they see one's handwriting as pretty accurately reflecting their personality and ki (Japanese counterpart of qi). They glean things like reliability, awareness, and even intelligence from one's handwriting, and in 70% of cases job applicants are confident enough of theirs to demo it to a potential employer in this direct manner. So, instead of spelling out the "desirable" characteristics one would typically see in a Western resume -- "attention to detail," "a team player," "assertive" or what have you, they don't tell, they show. Yes -- good handwriting means attention to detail, a team player (you need to have awareness of the strokes before and after each one so together they interact harmoniously), etc.. A trained graphologist sees a lot more than that -- and Japanese companies and banks still employ those. Among other things, I believe this goes to show the mindset behind the current non-teaching of cursive in American schools, replaced with hand-printing letters instead. Each letter must stand on its own without supporting, or being supported by, its colleagues and neighbors, without a meaningful connection to them, without a feel for "team work," harmony, aesthetics, "flow" etc.. Extreme individualism and disregard for others in every move. And not a chance to train those hand-to-brain intelligence muscles either. When I taught in high school, I could tell a helluva lot about every student in a new class in the beginning of the school year by just looking at the handwriting of each. E.g., if someone's submitted work had no mistakes but was executed in a handwriting that was strikingly dumb, I knew they cheated. And I was later proved right in 9 cases out of 10 -- but only because I was not a trained graphologist, or the accuracy may have been 99 out of 100.
  2. Where are all the martial artists at?

    I started late, first with taekwondo, and loved it. Up to that point, everything I was ever good at was self taught -- I'm an avid learner but I hadn't been all that lucky with teachers of anything until then. Absolutely no exceptions in school (where I was either afraid of, contemptuous of, or indifferent to my teachers), and just a few at the university. So, it was my first-ever experience, and very late in the day at that, of feeling humbled by a teacher, seeing him as a role model, admiring his skill. He spoke very rudimentary English, most of the verbal instructions were roared in Korean (as though the louder and scarier they were given, the better they would be understood and followed). The overall approach was harsh bordering on merciless -- I felt as though I'd enlisted in the Korean army. But there was this fountain of vitality about the whole thing, dynamic, raw, triumphant in its disregard for complaints and limitations that made me feel awesome afterwards. In a few months I began transforming from a non-exercising woman used to feeling physically fragile, weak, vulnerable into someone who felt like "a woman of power." I had to quit due to external circumstances -- and then I scored for the second time, and bigger, with my taiji teacher. That was 20 years ago. (I won't go into that though, I've a pretty detailed taiji blog in my PPD...)
  3. The power of Russian love

    I thought twice about it too after you mentioned that you "fear to go there." I haven't got as much steam for "controversial" subjects as I used to. And way too many stories to tell on top of that... no steam for telling them because not every political climate allows for the freedom of, um, speech (among other things), and the current one is very evocative of what I used to know and hate and fear in the Soviet Union. Just the flip side of the same counterfeit coin. So, I'm not sure it was a good idea after all...
  4. The power of Russian love

    @blue eyed snake Thanks for telling the story. I didn't know it was this bad in the Netherlands, by the way... There's never been a thread here that I recall dedicated to WW2 -- everybody is too young to have been part of it personally (I think), but family, previous generations -- some of us heard many first-hand accounts of what it was like. Tragic, heroic, terrifying, or just "during the war we sometimes couldn't even buy chicken for a reasonable price" (an American relative of mine, my mom's cousin, sharing memories of wartime privations). I think it might be interesting to start such a thread sometime.
  5. The power of Russian love

    Since WW2 so many well-promoted books, articles, movies, TV series etc. appeared which depicted how scary, ugly, stupid, drunk Russians, in the nearest future, will unleash their troops and bears and balalaikas on this or that innocent country that it's small wonder. It's institutionalized bias, not something grass roots. But with the Germans, it's the opposite?
  6. The power of Russian love

    That's what Joe Rogan opined in one of his podcasts I recall. He asserts that his MA friends and acquaintances who are accomplished fighters are the chillest folks ever in everyday life. They let off all the steam and release all their aggressive impulses in training and sparring, and lose the need to act them out in their interactions with others outside the training hall.
  7. The power of Russian love

    Not even the French? A French friend of mine here in CA is Anglophilic to the core, and another one, who's British, who has dropped out of school at 15 and wouldn't be able to tell Shakespeare from Dickens if his life depended on, loves it here because people usually assume he's a college professor based on his accent alone. Whereas I've witnessed another friend, a Russian, who IS a college professor (genetics), treated by strangers as an uncouth ignoramus and talked down to like she's 5. How did you guys pull it off?
  8. The power of Russian love

    His taekwondo ranking was honorary (unlike in the other martial arts), he got it from the World Taekwondo Federation (which is known to have given it to other leaders it liked) when things were good between South Korea and Russia, but then they took it away as part of the sanctions. He practiced martial arts since age 11. I don't think it would help though if more world leaders trained in MA -- they used to, in the olden days, but wars be warring. Although a karate match between Trump and Biden is something I'd definitely buy a ticket to see. At the very least choosing a winner in this olden-days fashion would have been no less meaningful than the modern way, and much cheaper for the taxpayers.
  9. The power of Russian love

    And I will counter with, it's NOT OK anymore in the 21st century to casually insult people of color in the style of the 19th century. Toward Russians it is STILL OK and encouraged and pretty much unchanged.
  10. The power of Russian love

    George Orwell, "1984." It was the rationale offered for perpetual wars between the three major superpowers owning the world -- Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.
  11. The power of Russian love

    Probably people from Eastern Ukraine, overwhelmingly speaking Russian as their first (and often only) language and culturally (as well as ethnically) indistinguishable from Russians (unless they belong to one of the 100+ minorities also living there.) I seem to recall you posted a video at one point where someone British attempted to explain the real history of Ukraine. I didn't watch it all but the bits and pieces that I did see seemed on point. Nothing is as straightforward there as the official narrative has led most people to believe.
  12. The power of Russian love

    "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." Russians can be pretty horrible too. Really horrible. I could say the same thing about any other people. I think the advantages and disadvantages in the way Russians are perceived, aside from political manipulations, stem from the fact that Russia is, historically/culturally, not part of the West and not part of the East ("between East and West and neither") yet has been avidly absorbing stuff from both for centuries and, in its turn, returning influence both ways. A spectrum of consequences, from multicultural allegiances to multiple identity crises, is inevitable. Here's an episode from a near and dear's biography to illustrate some of the contradictions. One dark, bitterly cold evening I got a phone call from him, which turned out to be that one call someone is allowed to make upon having been arrested. So, he was arrested in Manhattan for stealing a book from Barnes and Noble. It was a book on quantum dynamics, for professionals in the field. He slipped it under his coat and got caught. Not that he couldn't afford that book, he was a VP at a major bank at the time. But he found the price appalling. It was something like $60. He thought it was unfair to charge so much for scientific curiosity. The whole episode is very Russian. Thanks for the funny way you made me blush, by the way
  13. The power of Russian love

    Yup. Especially considering that it's not some fleeting trend, it's a reliable, solid tradition that's a no brainer to embrace. To illustrate how hoary and respectable it is, here, e.g., is a popular depiction of a Russian from a very successful 19th century American magazine of "humorous" cartoons:
  14. The power of Russian love

    Looking at some of the comments made me wonder if we should add to the rules about no bias based on race, sex, gender, religion, nationality, etc.. an amendment: "except for Russians, obviously." Just to make sure that anyone in need of insulting particular groups or individuals toward establishing their own superiority is reassured that their needs will be met and they will be provided with a legitimate officially approved target -- since so many former untermensch categories are now off limits to them.
  15. Stranger things

    Gypsies, visionaries, fortune tellers... welcome to TDB I have nothing like that in my own makeup -- to my knowledge, the only unusual ancestor I had was French, and the four generations that went before me were scientists. Which may explain why I had to study taoist "spirit reading arts" like feng shui, bazi, the I Ching, etc. -- the taoist way to know what you're not supposed to know. You have to put me into a supernatural context for me to manifest supernatural feats... but once I'm in, I'm in... in for a penny, in for a pound. As for "proof" -- some of those contexts could run circles around any which proof obtainable "objectively." Part of my ayahuasca adventures was dedicated to visits to the upper and lower worlds, and I met demons in both. Many. What made the experience particularly interesting was the fact that later, when I was out of the rain forest and back in civilization, I saw artistic depictions of exactly the places and some of the creatures I met. The first one in Iquitos, the world capital of ayahuasca they call that city, so the internet cafe in the center of the city was adorned with paintings by the local ayahuasquero artists. Well, visions are visions, artists are artists... but one particular painting made me gasp and almost scream. "I know this place! I've been there! I know these creatures! I've seen them there! And this one bit me on the arm!!!" It was a place in the lower world, with its inhabitants, scenery, everything as I remembered it. If I was thinking clearer (I still wasn't -- for about three weeks I was in and out of "Her Waves," as I called that in-between-worlds state), I'd inquire about the possibility of buying that painting. Or at least finding out who the artist was... And then in Lima, I went to a museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art and saw a number of pieces there that depicted creatures and surroundings exactly from my visit to the upper world. It was as though people who lived hundreds of years ago had visited the same place, not of this earth, under the same circumstances, met its inhabitants, and then left accounts of those visits in bas-reliefs and tapestries.
  16. Stranger things

    A number of years ago someone gave me Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" as a gift, with apologies: "I know it's a children's book but I thought you might like it." I did -- particularly the idea of dæmons as human souls which in Pullman's alternative reality were externally embodied as various animals... rather appealing to someone who's always felt part feline. (And the trilogy is part children's book, part very insightful look at society in the tradition of Orwell and Huxley, tackling its another underlying imperative -- the impulse to amputate children's souls.) Reminded me of another book, or rather its title -- "Animals Make Us Human." This wouldn't be a problem if "life sciences" didn't suck so bad at even the mechanical/electrical interactions -- and suck they do due to fragmentation into a zillion meaningless parts while missing what the world (and human beings) is really made of -- patterns. That's why not only demons (most of which are indeed non-embodied, but some do possess actual physical bodies -- I could name names...) -- not only demons is something it misses, but even form-function patterns not limited to one particular organ, like classical Chinese medicine's "triple burner," or acupoints, or dantiens, to say nothing of qi. (The existence of acupoints as electrical phenomena, by the way, was proved by researchers many times, but "our" science chose to simply ignore that research as though it doesn't exist.)
  17. Stranger things

    "Demon," "monster" and similar words may mean all sorts of things, different things to different people, but there's not a single ancient, indigenous, etc. tradition where they are not present. And even though we have been led to believe that their existence is somehow at odds with modern science, this in itself is merely a belief with no scientific proof -- because no scientific studies to tackle demons have ever been undertaken by modern science using its scientific method in any shape or form. For starters, scientists would have to agree on the terminology used. What is a demon? What is it that purportedly doesn't exist? I think a certain configuration of form and function can assume the distinct behavioral characteristics of a demon, and it can happen inside the human brain and the resulting mentality and emotionality -- what psychiatry of old called "complexes" -- but it can also shape itself into something made of microplastics, of xenohormones, of social trends tinged or thoroughly permeated with malevolent insanity, of frankenfoods and drugs... I think PTSD is a kind of demon, and glyphosate is, and Rockefeller medicine, and many aspects of child-rearing and education, and and and...
  18. How to draw a 60 inch long katana

    Ah yes, I can imagine. I have a vivid memory of a guandao blade flying off its handle in the middle of a demo by a master from China who was giving a workshop to our taiji class. The master was unable to board the plane with the real thing, so he trustingly used some prop found locally (and used only as decoration, so, never tested for quality) at a hard MA place where my teacher rented the premises for a while. Just as the visiting master was twirling it over his head like a helicopter propeller, off it went flying, and could easily take someone's head off, but luckily we were an agile group and everybody ran for cover just in time.
  19. How to draw a 60 inch long katana

    I remember trying to design a sheath for my jian just so that I could carry it on the back and draw from the back -- and be able to put it back in like that, which is a bit trickier. I couldn't figure out a design that would work, so I asked someone who makes sheaths semi-professionally, and she also failed. And that's when I learned that these swords were originally designed for horseback riding warriors -- and I don't mean the stance, I mean the actual horse. No problem to draw it from the back if you're so inclined -- but you have to mount a horse first. Or else use a shorter sword.
  20. Stranger things

    I haven't come across yin devils or yang devils as categories, but my forays into taoist demonology weren't that comprehensive. Of course any demon, like any other phenomenon of the world of manifestations, can be classified as primarily yin or primarily yang, but they can also change their taiji allegiances. E.g., Sun Wukong, sometimes referred to as the "stone monkey demon," was imprisoned under the mountain for 500 years for, basically, being way too yang for anyone's comfort, and spent this long and boring time as an extremely yin entity. Whereas fox spirits (a rather well-explored category) are very yin to begin with -- until they flip into their aggressive yang manifestation. Taoist demonology and exorcism constitute a major part of the canon, not a footnote. They have their educated and trained professionals with different sets of qualifications, and detailed and specific "job descriptions." A very tongue-in-cheek analogy would be psychiatrists vs psychologists vs social workers, except what they do is not what a Western therapist would do. Taoist priests are "psychiatrists," Fashi (skillfull masters) are "psychologists," and spirit mediums are "social workers." And then there's sorcerers, those can be likened to undercover agents, and sometimes double agents.
  21. Stranger things

    Taoist yaoguai ("strange monsters") are thought of as being born due to human activities which disrupts the Way. They come into being via many venues as the outcome of deviations from the tao and the resulting abnormal, aberrant qi. They can take the shape of people, animals, objects, supernatural phenomena in the environment, and outbursts of strange, "idiotic" and/or destructive behaviors, both in individuals and in large groups of people. They can shapeshift too and possess various powers, primarily mind control and the ability to create illusions and delusions.
  22. Stranger things

    The taoist canon, the Daozang, is comprised of 1445 texts. The catalogue collated in 471 under the Director of the Bureau of Evaluation is about one-third the size of the earlier catalogue under the editorship of Lu Xiujing. Which may explain why some of the canonized texts contain recipes for immortality. What mortal could possibly find the time to study something like this in any depth?.. Especially considering abstract study ("philosophical taoism") constitutes a fraction of a percent of what it's all about, while most of it (the three main parts known as the three grottoes) is dedicated to hands-on practicalities?.. To wit, meditation, ritual, and exorcism. According to the canon, exorcism is the lowest stage of taoist cultivation, but there's no moving on to the intermediate (ritual) and highest (meditation) for anyone skipping this stage. Which may explain why modern meditators generally accomplish nothing in particular beyond maybe some sedating effect on their nerves -- if they're lucky. If they are less lucky, their demons (with which civilized humanity is infested beyond belief) that have successfully escaped the exorcism stage get a preferential chance to flourish. In a demon-infested meditator, the demons are given a favorable environment for projecting their power of delusion onto a mind which has been quieted just enough for them to come to the fore and set up shop, uninterrupted by the mind's usual everyday distractions.
  23. Everyone post some favorite quotes!

    Where evil's reach falls short, stupidity gleefully finishes the task. -- Marina and Sergey Dyachenko